Bye bye, cnn. You suck my energy too much.

You too, news feeds. get the hell out of here. I am too selfish with my energy these days. I’m liking the groove I’m in a little too much.

Another very productive writing/painting day for me today, despite not getting to bed until 1:46 a.m. I’m noticing that my biorhythms are changing their flow (does anybody even do biorhythms anymore? Isn’t that so…so…so 80s???), and I’m more awake in the evenings now than when I’m teaching. I’m also getting tons of rest during the day. I’ve never, never had such a relaxing string of days in my life. There’s no desperation, no stress, just writing, painting, and familying.

But then I hopped online and, before I logged out, I had to do my usual cnn/wbal/baltimoresun news check. it was all filled with crazy news about politicians being caught in their corruptions (oh, there’s breaking news), tragedies in every county, in every state, depressing economic news, blah blah blah…I could feel the energy being sucked out of me.

So I stopped. Cold Turkey.

My sister who lives in Florida (whom I cannot wait to see in just 24 days) only goes on happynews.com. She’s been through so many life-threatening cancers and scares that she doesn’t waste her time on bad news. I think she’s on to something.

If there’s an emergency, some dj will break into Styx playing Grand Illusion or whatever is on my classic rock stations. Until then, I’m honing that energy, baby. Funneling it into me, my art, my life.

(picture taken at LRR, 6/19/08)

By all measures, I had a writer’s day.I woke up early (but not as early as I intended; still, 6 a.m. did the trick) and hit the daybook immediately, followed by a full hour of watercolors before the family started to stir. I’ve been experimenting with various blends, wet and dry brushes, all with bringing a new look to some of the photography I’ve been doing recently.

I’m having trouble with watercolor daisies, though. I’m determined to get that just exactly right by the end of the week. I’ve got a note card I want to send off, but it would be wrong to send with naturally challenged daisies…

Then it was off to the pool for about 90 minutes as my two daughters had swim lessons and my son built sand castles in the world’s most wonderful sandbox. This is a miniature playground built around a tall oak, which provides plenty of shade for the kids as they bulldoze, construct, sift, and dream away the morning hours. I brought along Natalie Goldberg’s Wild Mind to re-re-read and do some of the exercises. The first one, where she talks about ten-minute writes where you begin with one starter (”I remember”) and then take its opposite for the next ten-minute write (”I don’t remember”). Wow….

I decided to write about remembering the first time I actually workshopped a piece of writing. I remembered getting ready for the workshop, working on that first draft at my dining room table, pressing hard on that sheet of looseleaf with my blue-Bic ballpoint, pushing the ink into the paper so that, when I was finished, I had to peel the paper from the wood, where the indentations from my writing stuck to the tabletop. That was a fun write to do this morning.

Then I turned the tables and did my “I don’t remember” piece about that very same topic, and what I discovered was that I don’t remember the actual workshop. I don’t remember getting peer feedback, although I knew there must have been some. That was the whole purpose of the activity. That led me to think about my own students and the workshops we do. What do they really get out of them? Do they remember them at all?

That led me to this: What do my students really need to remember at all when I teach them writing?

I turned the page and I drafted the first chapter of what I believe to be the essentials to good writing. This chapter focused on Audience and the reasons why we resist writing in the first place. Where it ends up eventually, I don’t know. But I did cherish the thought of having these 90-minute writing sessions to focus on these chapters. 30 days at the pool means 30 chapters….

When I returned home, I shared Natalie Goldberg’s “rules of writing” with my summer grad students on our online forum, and when we went back to the pool for our own afternoon of swimming, I enjoyed reading more Goldberg, some Lamott, and a little Thich Nhat Hanh.

After dinner, I went through my old writing files and found a few gems that I can rework. I also found some email correspondence with old friends. Some of it saddened me, as much has changed over the last eight years. But much of the words reminded me of all I have to be thankful for in the present, and that was a nice surprise.

I end the night blogging, thinking about my friends out there who may be writing in their blogs, too, doing our best to stay a little sane, support each other, and express love in any way we know how.

I hope you had a good day, too. There’s so much to be grateful for…

(photo taken at Loch Raven Reservoir, Nikon D70s, 18-55mm Nikkor lens, 6/19/08)

Thanks to Janet for this one. I had great fun doing this, and I recommend it highly.

The concept:
1. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
2. Using only the first page of results, pick one image.
3. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into Big Huge Lab’s Mosaic Maker to create a mosaic of the picture answers.

My answers are in REVERSE from Janet’s simply because when I created the mosaic, it did it backwards. Good luck!

The questions:
1. What is your flickr name?

2. What is one word that describes you?

3. What do you love most in life?

4. What do you want to be when you grow up?

5. What is your favorite dessert?

6. What is your dream vacation?

7. What is your favorite drink?

8. Who is your celebrity crush?

9. What is your favorite color?

10. What high school did you go to?

11. What is your favorite food? right now?

…and I think you’d like to meet her as well.

Her name is Christine Kane, and she’s an inspiring artist who does a phenomenal job of keeping in touch with her fans and friends through her blog and through email.

She’s a reminder to me of just how important it is to stay grounded in your relationships. Taking the wild, great trip to stardom–even in your own little community–means little if you don’t remember that it’s people who bring love to you, to others.

I often find myself “too busy” to keep up those contacts. I see people like Christine and I think that, if she can do it with the schedule she has, I can too. Really, there’s never a good excuse to not put people first.

The other day I was at the pool and I heard “Cat’s in the Cradle” by Harry Chapin. I remember when my first daughter was born, how I swore that I would never be that kind of parent to my children. Hearing that song again made me do a 12-year check on my promise to always be there for my kids. For the most part, I’ve kept to it. But I realized something that saddened me a little. In my efforts to be there for my own family, I cancelled too many times with my own mother because the “new job’s a hassle and the kids got the flu.”

It’s hard. No doubt about it. I’m not beating myself up about this, because Mom and I had plenty of wonderful times together. But there’s a danger in not keeping in solid touch with your family, your friends, and yes–your fans.

We’re all striving for more love in our lives, and the recent economic challenges are putting us all in a situation where, if we’re not careful, we’ll be hamsters on the wheel (thanks, Christine) doing everything we can to stay afloat, driving ourselves crazy in the process.

I, for one, would rather be driven crazy with love. :)

…by Catherine
What were you doing ten years ago?
I was quitting my job as editorial supervisor to the world’s largest weekly medical publication, The Journal of Biological Chemistry. I felt dead inside. Just dead. I faced mortality for the first time in my life, and I genuinely believed that if I stayed in that job any longer, I was going to die of a heart attack. I worked from home as a freelance writer/editor until I realized that I just could not stay out of the classroom. Going back to teaching saved my life. Now, I find it funny that I am taking aggressive measures to transition from full-time educator to full-time writer.
Five things to do today
It’s late, so I’ll do my five things for Sunday…

1. get up early to re-outline my once-finished book Cold Rock to begin the final process of last-round edits.

2. Pray to the weather gods that the rains stay in the sky, at least until 4 or 5 (I’d like to spend 11-5 at the pool with no weather-related closings…

3. Read another 60 pages of Lamott’s Lessons in Faith. Love this book. Love it even more knowing that Anne spent two years at Goucher, studying writing. 30 years later, so was I.

4. Time time time with my family.

5. composing a necessary and detailed email to my friend Catherine about a new writers’ group we’re starting.

Four places you have lived
I’ve been all around the world…

Well, not exactly. I’ve been all around the US, especially when I was younger. I ended up in New England in November/December ‘92, writing full-time. That was the last time I lived out of state. Since then, I’ve moved from Cockeysville to Hampstead, to Towson (three places, four years). Before all of that, though, I lived in two log cabins in southern Maryland. Best days of my life when it comes to living that dream.

Five things you would purchase if you were a billionaire
1. Buy lots of land in New England, North Carolina, or western Maryland.
2. Air tickets to attend Maui writers’ workshops, among others.
3. A complete Apple Trifecta: iPhone, MacBook Pro, another 150-gig iPod!
4. Old abandoned (but structurally sound) cabins and homes and convert them into writing houses.
5. New socks.
Six people I want to know more about
1. Salinger
2. Hemingway
3. My grandfather
4. My father

5. Natalie Goldberg

6. Anne Lamott

Now I’ll tag…. Michelle and Janet and anyone else who wants to play.

My friend Michelle blogged about a young girl who lost her battle with cystic fibrosis last week, and I was drawn to her caringbridge site for so many different reasons. As a teacher, I’ve lost too many kids to tragedies–some in their control (drugs, car accidents) and some not (murder, cancer, cystic fibrosis). So when I see a courageous child fighting a horrible illness like cystic fibrosis and rallying an ever-expanding community of friends and family to believe in love and life and all that is good, I can’t help but join that community, join that rally, and pray for that child and her family.Haley Palmer is that young girl who died last week, but her community continues to celebrate her life and the lessons she taught all of us. Her memorial service was yesterday, and the Oklahoma city of Owasso was painted in pink–Haley’s favorite color–as a show of support in all that she believed in. A news report that aired last night featured Haley’s two younger sisters, who talked about her favorite quote:”Footsteps in history aren’t made sitting down.”

I did not know this young, courageous girl, but here in Baltimore, as I get ready for a busy but fun-filled day with my children, I take strength from Haley’s favorite quote.

Today, at 7:59 p.m. EST, marks the beginning of summer solstice, which literally translates to Standing-Still-Sun. It is the longest day of the year and the shortest night. Beginning tomorrow, the days will begin to get shorter and shorter until we reach winter solstice, on December 21, where the sun stands still once again.This is the earliest that summer solstice has occurred in 112 years–or since 1896. In my opinion, it’s the perfect occasion to mark the significance of Haley’s words.In mourning, we pause to reflect, to remember, to celebrate the life of a friend or loved one who has passed away. Our worlds stop, or stand-still, during this time, and we shift our priorities to embrace what we believe to be most important in life.

Thousands of years ago, individuals used to do the same thing during the solstice, where they would stop and take stock of the things they may have taken for granted or neglected. This is especially true during winter solstice, when in BCE times, individuals believed that the Gods were so angry with them that they decided to take away their sun. It wasn’t until a few days after winter solstice (around the 25th of December) that they realized that light was returning (the days were getting noticeably longer), and the celebration began that, once again, the Gods forgave them for all that they had neglected and taken for granted.

So maybe today–tonight especially–is the right time for us to take Haley’s words to heart. As the sun-stands-still at 7:59 p.m., maybe we can make those personal resolutions to get up and resume making our footsteps in history.

It doesn’t matter how you do it. A call to a nephew, a visit with Dad, even a return to a memoir piece you started years ago. Whatever it is, get up. Don’t let the sun go down on you. Take some steps. Make some history.

LIVE. LOVE. GROW.

(picture taken at Loch Raven Reservoir, 6/19/08, as my children fed bread to the Canadian geese)

(This is the second of a two-part story detailing a rather odd dream I had two nights ago. If you have not yet read part I, which precedes this post, dip below this entry and read the background of where part II picks up!)
“Welcome back.”

Staring back at me were the two escapees whose faces were printed on the other side of the door. My mind kept repeating those words printed in bold under their pictures: DANGEROUS. DO NOT TRY TO APPREHEND. CONTACT AUTHORITIES IMMEDIATELY.

I tried to remain calm, even offering them a nervous smile. They returned with their own devilish grins, and I quickly turned my head to look down the hallway to call for help.

Still empty. Still sterile.

I turned back to the escapees and invited them inside (thoughts of the Dead’s “Dire Wolf” come to mind here), but they refused. What followed was a tense, nervous showdown of stares, until I finally broke free and made a mad dash down the empty hallway, screaming for help. I banged on doors locked shut, strained a wide-eyed glare through windows with drawn curtains, just looking for some movement, some activity.

Suddenly a door opened, and two individuals, a very strong-looking man and an older woman, appeared in white. He grabbed me, neutralized me, as she spoke calmly to me.

I realized then that I was considered a patient at this hospital, this mental institution. I started screaming that they had it all wrong. I told them about the tunnels, the waters and the flood. I told them about the two escapees and that they were just on the other side of the door, and all we needed to do was go get them and then everybody would be safe.

The strong man and patient woman placated me by walking me to the door, where, of course, there was no escapees, there was no water, there was nothing that I had described. They looked at me satisfactorily, as if they knew all along what they would (not) find, and the strong man proceeded to “guide” me to the room just outside the door through which I first entered.

He strapped me to the bed as she smiled, and both told me it was all going to be okay. Once I was strapped in, she pulled out a long needle, did a quick squirt to make sure there were no clogs, and walked toward me, grinning.

“This will make everything all better,” she said.

I screamed, and immediately I awake, bolting upright in my bed, sweating. Before I realize where I am or what is happening, I say, “I have to get out of this room NOW.”

I look around nervously, first left, then right. My wife is tending to our 3-year-old in his bedroom as he wakes. The girls are still asleep in their own bedroom. Slowly I begin to realize that the whole event has been a bad dream, but the unsettled feeling remains that something great has happened in this world, while I slept, and I am nervous to get out of bed and proceed through my morning routine like nothing has ever happened. I am aware of something important, I am absolutely sure of it, and I feel like, if I don’t use this information and take it seriously, I will be in dire danger.

I get out of bed and walk cautiously out of my room, down the hallway, and to the lower floor. I search each room, check each door; nothing is out of the ordinary.

Still, I know that something is different.

I try to shake it off. Fix myself a cup of coffee. Sit down at our stone dining room table. Open my daybook to the next blank page to begin my morning pages.

That’s when I see the entry. My words. Scribbled desperately, repeatedly across the page in black ink:

DANGEROUS. DO NOT TRY TO APPREHEND. DO NOT CONTACT AUTHORITIES. IMMEDIATELY.

I close my daybook. Shut my eyes. Shudder at the discovery.

Upstairs, my 3-year-old jumps off his bed, lands squarely on his Bob the Builder mat, and begins his hop, skip, jump along the hallway, down the stairs, to the dining room.

“Good morning, daddy,” he says.

I clutch my daybook, smile and look at my son. “Good morning, B!”

My wife follows him down the stairs. “Coffee?” she asks.

“Of course,” I respond. Normalcy fights my revelation to begin the day as it always does. Yet I know that something happened last night. Something came out of my dreams and found its way into my daybook.

My muse is back.

Am I scared? Not anymore. There’s such a shift from teaching to writing that, at times, the transition is like two fronts meeting each other, colliding into one colossal storm. The other day, my older daughter, now 12, was asking me why some storms are more intense than others. I told her that when a front passes through, it’s like a bully has come into town. If it goes uncontested, it does its typical bully-type damage and then goes on its way. However, if there’s another bully in town to contest the bully-visitor, then there’s going to be a monumental clash, with hail, high winds, downed trees.

That clash happened for me the other night. The two fronts met–teaching and writing, and writing is the new bully in town.

I’ll clean this up and make it into its own story and see what I can do with it. I welcome back my muse, and this time, I hope it stays in town for good.

I’m just not sure where this one came from, but it’s weird enough that i thought I’d blog it out there and see what everybody else thinks. Literal? Figurative? Bizarre, either way…

…I’m under the pool at our swim club. I mean, underground under it, walking through these secret tunnels that have glass ceilings, where the sun refracting through the water casts a fluid shadow against the white-washed walls. I am alone, but I keep sensing that somebody is behind me, following me. There’s a sense of desperation surrounding me, enveloping me as i keep a steady pace down this interminable hallway.

Through the rippling shadows I see a three-step ladder ahead, and a door. As I walk toward the ladder, the hallway begins to fill with water, and I try to break into a run to beat the rising tide. My run turns into a labored, slow-motion jog through the warm waves, and suddenly I’m treading water, doing what I can to keep my head above, gasping for air and swimming as fast as I can to reach the door before all air is stolen from me. I take my last gasp of air, swim under water, reach the ladder, climb it, and grab the handle to the door.

Locked.

I bang on the door as fast and as hard as I can, but I feel like I’m pounding through setting cement. I scream, but only bubbles of precious oxygen escape my lips, and I find myself beginning to sink, sink as I cling to the door handle, my fingers losing their grip one by one, until I am holding on by my right index finger, a crooked hook as a last-second lifeline.

I feel my grip loosening, sliding along the handle, and I am certain this is the end. I look up through the water and see the kicks of little feet above me, youngsters swimming in the pool, oblivious to my tragedy unfolding just feet below them. I look over to my finger, now sliding to the end of the handle, and I begin to count down:

5

sliding…

4

sliding…

3

sliding…

2

sliding… Read the rest of this entry »

I was blessed with two early-morning hours of writing in solitude. I found the event to unfold in three rather untidy stages: the dumping of all that which has clogged my brain–deadlines, to-do’s, anxieties; the recognition of why we’re here in the first place; and the rededication to hold on to those things that are most important in this life and deny the distractors, the life-suckers, the opportunity to take me away from living, loving, being.The picture above (thanks, flickr) is the perfect fit for where I am right now. We’re getting steamed crabs from Ocean Pride just down the street, then heading to the pool for a day of relaxing and communing. But yesterday I took a 200-mile round trip to St. Mary’s, close to Maryland’s southernmost point (Point Lookout, to be exact) to lead a workshop in the teaching of daybook writing. It was a wonderful morning, and I enjoyed working with fellow writers in the rural environs of southern Maryland. One fellow writer even shared a cigar from his humidor, which I find to be a great gift to share among writing friends. I will enjoy it on June 29, when I put Cold Rock to rest, ready for press.

Returning to Southern Maryland, where I lived for most of my 20-something years, was a reminder of a time when I cultivated a love for Maryland’s natural side and began the lifelong process of consciously discovering the mystery of me. Spending time along and on the waters of the Chesapeake and its many tributaries seemed so natural, and every time I return to the area, I return to that time of discovery, of immersion, of celebration.

It’s a good place. In my writing this morning, in those two brief hours post-dawn, I returned to a place where I need to stay. How hard it is, though, to do just that. Tomorrow I’ll go back to school to finish my grades, go through the process of getting “checked out” by admins, financial managers, and our principal. I dumped a lot of the stress this morning in that first phase of my writing. But I’m going to have to make the time again tomorrow before I switch gears.

After that–after all the signatures from the admins and others, I’ll leave and begin the full immersion into recuperating, revitalizating, re-energizing. But I think that this morning already put me on that path.

I’ll be around a lot this summer. I’m looking forward to the journey, the new path, the new focus.

I do too much. It’s as simple as that.
I never really thought that it affected anybody but me. In fact, I thought that others benefited from my little whirlwind of productivity. I’ve mastered the art of multi-tasking by cutting a few corners here and there, and although I might not come across as being the most organized guy on the lot, I always know what’s going on.
Or so I thought.
I was workshopping a paper written by one of my students this morning, and as I get deeper into the story, I am left breathless by the incredibly personal and vivid descriptions of her surgery to pre-empt what seemed to be an inevitable bout with cancer. I turned to her and said, “Wow, Jess. This is amazing writing. Is this true?”
She looked at me with a mix of incredulity and sadness, biting her lower lip, nodding.
“When did this happen?” I ask.
“Last year,” she says.
I keep reading, realizing that this happened to her while she was a sophomore, and I have spent her entire junior year with her, never even realizing that she had been such trauma.
Then I said something like, “Gee, Jess. That must have been really hard during your sophomore year.”
This time, there was no sadness. A drift of anger joined the incredulous look.
“Not last school year. Just this past October.”
Well, my heart sunk, and all I could do was stare at her. She had endured all of this: the cancer scare, the operation, everything, during her school year with me, and I didn’t even realize it.
Meanwhile, another student of mine was undergoing brain surgery at the same time, and I took the time to visit her in the hospital, talk to her on the phone, spend time with her parents. Everything. We even took a class picture with a huge sign we made that said, GET WELL SOON, which we sent to her immediately via cell phone.
For Jess, I never even acknowledged her absence. I am sure that when she came back and saw that big get well soon sign, she felt like she just didn’t matter.
Nothing could be further from the truth of course. But that doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter one bit at all. I saw the sadness in her eyes today. I saw the gentle affirmation that seemed to tell me, Finally, you idiot. Finally you realized that I, too, faced mortality at this too-young age of 16.
We just wrapped up reading Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, a tremendous read about hope and the pursuit of holding on to love. The protag, a boy of 9 whose father was killed in the 9/11 attacks, wishes everything could just go in reverse, and the attacks never happened, and things were like they used to be.
I wish I could go in reverse and make it different, but I cannot.
As a culminating activity, we talked about his father’s last words left to him on the answering machine. Ten times he cried out, “Are you there?” And in the eleventh time, he is stopped midway through, presumably when the towers began to fall.
I asked my kids to reverse that question as well. Are you there? becomes There You Are. Tell the ones you love that you see them. Tell them they matter. Tell them you love them. Just tell them anything. Then they’ll know that they are there. In your mind. In your heart.
I didn’t practice that with Jess last October, or any other month, for that matter. I was too busy. I wasn’t there.
And that’s why today is one of the saddest days in teaching I’ve ever had in these 20-plus years. I became too busy for what really matters in my job, in my life. I was too busy to notice that one of my students was facing cancer scares and surgeries.
I’m not going to end this post by saying I’m going to slow down. That I’m going to be more mindful of my kids. If I didn’t have the common sense to do those two things, then I probably wouldn’t have the common sense to even write about it, which would really make me a jerk.
But I will end it by saying this:
Jess, you matter. I know where you are now. I’ll never forget that look in your eyes, that resigned sadness that you knew all along that I didn’t know, and we had reached the point where I finally got it. I’m so sorry, Jess. I told you that today, but I mean it even more now.
I preach Carpe Diem to my kids, my family, my comrades in grocery store checkout lines. Live to the fullest, I shout. It is my barbaric yawp that I shout from the rooftops, indeed. But living fully doesn’t mean being a master at multi-tasking. I think that when you lose touch with the very human beings that comprise your small, wonderful community, you’ve stopped living to the fullest. You’ve lost your direction instead, and you need to heed the warning signs before it’s too late.
I think I need to revisit some Thoreau.
Live your life fully, folks. Just do it fully with the ones you love. Never stop shouting, THERE YOU ARE. For if you do, you’ll experience the sadness I felt today, and nobody should live their lives so neglectfully, so selfishly, that they carry with them the pain of not one but two broken hearts.
There you are, now. I see you. All of you. And nothing should ever get in our way again.