LIVING FROM THE HEART: HEALING THROUGH THE ARTS & THE CHAKRAS

CAM00262My friend Margaret Riordan and I are planning to teach another class on writing, the heart, and connection. Margaret has a lot of information about the chakra system that she is eager to share, and I’m itching to get you writing.

We have a lovely flyer that I can forward to you if you email me. The class will be in Olympia. Even if you can’t make it, I hope you’ll forward this announcement to anyone you know who may be interested.

Dates: Six weeks, meeting three Saturday afternoons, 2-5:00, February 13, 27, and March 12.

Location: Physical Therapy and Pilates in downtown Olympia. (http://fusionolympia.net/directions/)

Cost: $55.00 per session. $150.00 when paid prior to the first class.

Contact: Bethany at bethany.alchemy@gmail.com or Margaret at (425) 373-6118.

Save Twilight

“It would grieve me if despite all the liberties I allow myself, this took on the air of a collection. I never wanted butterflies pinned to a board; I’m looking for a poetic ecology, to observe myself and at times recognize myself in different worlds, in things that only the poems haven’t forgotten and have saved for me like faithful old photographs. To accept no other order than that of affinities, no other chronology than that of the heart, no other schedule than that of unplanned encounters, the true ones.”

—Julio Cortázar

Do We Ever Really Know Where We’re Going?

Yesterday I was sitting in my green chair, trying to work, texting my sister, wishing I had better hair — all the usual distractions, and (of course) not working. I wrote this text:

I think I need a therapist.

Then the phone rang. It was my friend M, who happens to be a therapist.

Maybe universal synchronicity, maybe just a coincidence (though I am claiming it as universal synchronicity). We laughed. I told her a few of my problems. She told me a few of hers. I repeated to M what my sister and I are always saying, about our mother in particular and life in general: “I wish I had a crystal ball.”

Ah, that’s the problem, M said. We all want to know where we’re going. Just remember (she said), that even when we think we know, we don’t really know. We just have to go there.

To paraphrase Ray Bradbury, to write a book all you have to do is figure out what your hero wants, and then follow him while he tries to get it. “Tries” = takes action. Clarity isn’t, in other words, a guarantee, but it is one big step in the right direction.

I am awake rather too early because I’m thinking about my writing projects, which are a little muddled right now. So, Bethany, let’s begin here:

What do you really really want?

 

Quotable

desalvo coverI was thinking of this quote yesterday when I wrote my blogpost. Not sure that it entirely fits, but here it is. (Quoted by Louise DeSalvo)

“In the absence of any record of my illness, I shall write it myself. Invent it out of whole cloth. It is what a writer can do that a doctor cannot.”

                           -Richard Selzer, Raising the Dead