llbwritesto.me

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Creativity

Bricks in a Curve, Tamarind, and a Velveteen Couch

By

Dear—

I woke early this morning, to welcome a mason who is taking apart (and hopefully putting back together) my front stair, which is a lovely but complicated brick arrangement with a slate top that is so heavy it took three men to lift it. As you might imagine, the pounding I am just now listening to is not quite conducive to writing to you.

But this week I am trying to remember my own advice about writing with the ingredients at hand. A crumbling step, new bricks stacked in a curve waiting to be placed and mortared, strawberry plants I tried to keep from underfoot (but am not confident will survive the day’s work), and a life that feels like it has no space: these are what I have at hand.

Last night I sat right where I am sitting now, on the muted brass-colored velveteen couch, which conjures up wishes about having my own velveteen rabbit worn with love, but the couch is not all too comfortable. My older daughter wrote a poem about it, in fact, that begins “I love my couch! It’s like a wall.”

Sitting here with my younger daughter last night, on the velveteen couch, we had just listened to a draft podcast of my couch-poem daughter talking to the people at WNDYR about work and legacies and so forth. We were mildly amused that a young woman who illustrated a bedrock story of women and freedom had told the interviewers she wanted to leave the next generation with these skills: cooking and sewing. You could almost, almost hear the interviewer fall off her chair. This was not an answer anyone probably expected from a “Gen Z guest.”

I have to admit I hadn’t expected that answer either, Dear. And I also thought all the podcast listeners would suspect I had spent my days simply schooling my daughters in domesticity. How quaint, I could just hear them thinking, in a world where legacy is supposed to be about saving the world with the next big tech solution.

Outside, the pounding has tuned itself to a more fine sound of chiseling, though I’ll tell you it isn’t any less distracting, as it goes. Saving a woman’s step is no easy job. And it’s not a quiet endeavor, either.

On the wood and glass table beside me is my morning tea. A ceylon from Sri Lanka that is so strong I can’t drink it after noontime. I learned this the hard way several nights ago, as I lay awake into the wee hours, wondering what my legacy would be. I told someone recently, and maybe this will surprise you, that even though I have “tech skills” I could put to use for financial gain, I just really want to cook for the people I love and bring beautiful work to light. That is all.

Before I sat on the couch with my younger daughter last night, I had cooked an evening meal of either Lebanese or Persian or Moroccan lentils and rice (we aren’t sure, as the cookbook is a fusion of the three). I am embarking on something I’m calling Morocco in May, and food is one of the centers of the experience. The rice was actually supposed to be bulgar, but I had none on hand. And, besides, my older daughter has recently decided to try going wheat-free. The recipe called for three red onions that I later decided must have been for sweetness. I had used up my last red onion the previous night, so two shallots and a yellow onion had to stand in. Next time, if red onions are scarce, I’ll add a half teaspoon of sugar to strike a better balance. I did happen to have tamarind paste in a jar. Tamarind, I rediscovered, is smoky sour (thus the need for a balancing sweetness). Since I actually had a bit of this molasses-black substance, I used it instead of lemon, which was the alternative for a kitchen that might not have a legacy of spices and colorful ingredients from around the world.

I’ve been thinking that whenever I have traveled, there are two things I look for: beautiful buildings and beautiful food. My younger daughter looks for beautiful clothing. She has always had a fascination with designing it and has recently taken to teaching herself to sew lavish or eclectic creations using fabrics and notions she gathers from the most surprising places. Etsy is her favorite haunt. As is the old trunk up in the attic. Poshmark and Depop are a close third. One day, for a Gish challenge, she made a pair of patchwork overalls from a dress I wore years and years ago, plus pieces of old jeans, and antique lace that was my grandmother’s. My girl looks lovely in the self-fashioned outfit. It’s adorable and totally unique.

At the door, there has just been knocking. The men outside want to power up a machine they are using to cut the bricks. As I told you, fixing a woman’s step is no easy job. Mine? Even less so. The stair height, if it is to fit with the other two, requires one line of bricks to be cut in half. Who knew that brick-cutting was a thing? I did not.

My ceylon is half gone now. The rest is in need of reheating. A lone cardamom waits at the bottom of the teacup. Did you know you can use a cardamom several times over and it will still give quite the burst of flavor and fragrance to your tea? It will.

“As my legacy, I would give people communication and mediation skills,” says my younger daughter. “Empathy, too.” She and I then remember the first (and only, to date) interview she had with a woman who did not seem to think she’d be capable of handling a big crowd of rowdy kids at a local theater group. “You’re quiet and gentle. I think she underestimated you,” I say. “I think she underestimated what kids need,” my daughter returns. Then she shares a story of being with a child who told her some secret sadness on the side, at the end of a busy day at the school where she once volunteered. At some point, amidst all this talk of skills and interviews and legacy, my daughter tells me, “I loved that food tonight, Mommy.”

I loved it too. The depth and heart of it. The mix of flavors. The gentle collision of history with my unique kitchen. The way it has given my daughter something she wants to bring to this velveteen couch.

Outside, the pounding has stopped. There’s a knock at the door. Rain has begun to fall. I can see that the step is put together afresh, but now it is wrapped in plastic. So I cannot, as yet, see the total result.

And now I am thinking of you, Dear—. I don’t know what you need, but if I could, I would cook and sew it for you. If you needed me to build you a stair, I might need to learn a new trick or two. A curve of bricks, the depth of tamarind, a little velveteen, I would use whatever I could to give you space for your sadness or your joy. And remember, when you’re ready, I’ve got cardamom for you, too.

As always,

L.L.

Of Sourdough Tears, a Desert Driveway, and the Taste of Paper

By

Dear—

This morning I cried over sourdough.

Well, not sourdough exactly. But the smooth white slightly-waxy bag it came in, stamped with LMNOP Bakery in faded Baskerville letters on the front. I’d gone—curbside pickup style—to Fable Farms, for sweet corn and dark cherries and little deep yellow squashes that look like tiny flying saucers. I’d gone for olive oil, rosemary infused, which they ended up not having, so I went away with plain olive oil.

The words plain and olive oil really don’t belong in the same sentence. Olive oil itself is infused with tenacious fruiting from tenacious trees, harvested with attentiveness and, sometimes, crushed with stone that is generations old. I love olive oil almost enough to cry at the taste of it.

Eating sourdough with olive oil, especially LMNOP Bakery’s sourdough, could revive you from a life of flatness where you feel like that smooth white bag that brought me to tears just an hour ago. I had asked for two loaves this time, knowing what I was happily in for, and I had gotten the pair. Thankfully they were not out of it.

At the moment, I am drinking Buddha’s blend tea, infused with mullein I’d let grow in my driveway. I have not really gone anywhere since March, so my driveway thinks it is not a driveway anymore, but perhaps rather a garden for wild things. In fact, the other day I heard the woman next door, the one who always wears some variation of tiara in her hair, even large tiaras that look like they belong on a bride…I heard her walking by with her little blond son, and she said to him in a conspiratorial tone, “This is where the wild things grow.”

I was almost sad to harvest the mullein, but my tea and my body needed it. Mullein is good for bronchial suffering.

When 2020 began, full of hope, I did not know I would need mullein more than once. In March, when I suffered what may or may not have been The Virus that flattens us to the floor, I had none, because I’d neglected to harvest it last summer, thinking it just a weed that made my property look vaguely Southwestern, with its rosette softness that reminds me of the patterns of succulents and the single, tall, very tall cylinder of lemon flowers it eventually reaches to the sky in a way that says this is all I’ve got, in a hard parched place, but I’m making it reach and blossom in any case.

On Friday, I saw someone’s wish on Instagram. She was feeling flattened, all insular and empty, and wanting that feeling to fold itself over into something more like inspiration. This caused me to ponder.

I will not recount to you my losses since the beginning of this year. You’ve had enough of thinking about the suffering of the world. Plus, you’ve had your own. This is part of why you (and I) feel flattened.

When I think of flatness, I think of the two dimensions of A Wrinkle in Time, in which, at one point they accidentally get propelled to a place where they cannot expand, not even a little. It’s painful. Only a fast escape, a shift in magic to a different dimension, allows them to once again breathe, to feel whole and full and rounded with life, though their dark journey is not nearly over.

After I folded the LMNOP Bakery bag into a perfect rectangle I could hold and easily smooth between my hands, I remembered the workshop I’ve picked up and put down creating for the last six years. Day 1 is about breathing and holding. I decided to try it myself, not for the purpose of writing anything, but simply to try it, and because I wasn’t ready to discard the sourdough paper bag.

This was when it happened.

I closed my eyes and took in the fragrance of fresh-bakedness. I ran my fingers over the paper and felt its crinkles here and there. I heard the sound of softness, rustling. And my grandmother came to mind. Her land, ten acres of corn and dark cherries and flowers growing wild. No olive trees, but there were mulberries. And there was tenacity. And the attentiveness of love. The humid air, the way I could almost taste the paper of the patterns she cut with care and pinned and fashioned into dresses for her and for me.

It has been a long time since I’ve written to you here. I noted that the last entry was in the season of wineberries, which I now see was in July, from a year that feels like it was surely seated in another world, though it was only twelve months ago, right here on Earth, and on this very porch where I am yet again sitting with my feet resting against the dark brown Adirondack chair. I was drinking jasmine tea. Today, it’s peach-fragrant white and green.

Sometimes, Dear–, it takes many months to unfold, to find, again, our fullness. But sometimes, if we close our eyes and breathe, and hold, it takes just a moment for the taste of paper to tesser us to memory. And that opens us back up to reaching with our words.

So that is what I wish for you today. The taste of paper. Or dark cherries. Or sweet corn. The startling moment when something old unfolds—into something newly-born.

As always,

L.L.

On Silence, Burnout, and Writing (Anything at All)

By

Dear      ,

Not long ago, I wrote at Jane’s place, and told people I’ve been burned out. I wish I could say it’s completely gone. It’s not. Like I said at Jane’s, “I still haven’t worked out all the details.”

As a high-capacity person, I find it particularly perplexing to feel so “low capacity.” The upside is that it makes me more compassionate in all kinds of interesting ways. The downside is, of course, that I keep hitting the edge of my capacity far sooner than seems logical. Then I feel sad. Then that makes me feel even more burned out. Not a very fun cycle, as you can imagine.

In my notebook, now, is a word map. It’s my possible path. It’s a wager. And definitely an exploration. I don’t recall if the word silence is in one of the little circles (I put all my words in circles, unlike some mappers), but it should be.

In another circle is the word voices. And I’ve been keenly listening to the ones around me. Today, I listened to a 9-month-old boy fussing to his mama in the grocery store. I stopped to chat with him for a moment and got the cutest smile in return. His mom looked happily proud and a little grateful. I was glad to have been privileged to listen to their voices.

So when I say that silence should go into one of my circles, I’m not talking about the absence of sound (though that has its virtues too). I’m talking about the observation of poet Michael Longley, who noted in an interview with Krista Tippett that he’d gone without writing poems for ten years. He thought he might never write another poem. To his surprise, he eventually did. “Silence is part of the enterprise,” he concluded.

When I write to you, it asks of me not to be silent. Some of you help support my writing (for which I’m grateful), and I wonder if it seems odd to you when I am silent, as if that’s not part of writer-me. But it is. For, in silence, I find myself again. I find you. I find the little boy fussing to his mama. Today, I even found a poem.

In another circle on my word map is green spaces and blue spaces. I got the idea from Laura Brown’s upcoming workshop. Every day I am trying to give one of those kinds of spaces as a gift to myself. Sometimes it’s a walk by the river. Sometimes it’s just a walk in the rain. The back porch has beckoned, and amidst its simple setup (folding chair, portable coolers that have convenient cup holders, cement floor), I can watch the greening of my tiny, tiny yard.

I’m not sure if the blue and green spaces will ultimately soothe my burnout, but today the little herb garden, with its sage and oregano beneath the weeping forsythia, brought my heart a small gift of words.

With thanks to Michael Longley,
quoted within

“Silence is part
of the enterprise,”
he says.

It is true.

Here, you know
that the new sage
tastes like earth—
not just any earth, but
yours at the edge
of the little herb garden.

Here, the pine
is in conversation
with the maples,
while the wood-winged bushes
come alive. Here

the “forgeries”
fall away, the fruited
green tea feels like silk
—liquid and full—
that touches every part
of your open lip.

And you write
your first word
in what feels like

forever.

Today, Dear——, I wish for you silence, if that’s what you need. After all, it’s part of the enterprise of being a writer. And, if you’re not a writer, I suspect it’s part of the enterprise of being almost anything that takes a good deal of heart and soul, so I wish it for you. Tip it to the lip of your heart, and soul.

As always,
L.L.

Callie, Energy, and Rocktopia

By

Dear      ,

They are charging $91 a ticket for Rocktopia.

I saw it for free.

“Free” might be the most you’d want to pay for the show. I’m not saying that to be unfriendly. Honest. It’s just, well, a question of energy.

Recently, I published a snippet of author Callie Feyen’s annotations journal. She annotates as part of the writing process, to help her decide: should it stay, or should it go?

Watching Rocktopia for free was a cool thing to be able to do, barring the mundane parts (which were remarkably many) and the just-didn’t-gel parts (which were also remarkably many). Only two songs in the whole production seemed of interest to the people on stage.

Everything else lacked energy. Or it felt like energies-in-conflict.

I kept thinking about Callie during the show. Callie is one of the most honest-with-herself authors I’ve met. Somehow it’s a combination of her personality and perhaps the particular MFA program she attended. When she annotates, she is asking a lot of “Why” questions that get at the question of energy—a lack of it, or energies in conflict. She’s not afraid to do that. It can mean dropping whole chapters (or whole articles), in the end. It can mean reversals. Often, she discovers something she had no intentions of discovering.

Today, I am thinking about me.

Lately, I’ve lacked energy, Dear——. Or perhaps it’s just energies in conflict, within my own soul. I feel like Rocktopia!

The two good sections of Rocktopia seemed completely embodied. Suddenly, these weren’t just singers. They were players of parts, deeply felt. And they were in sync with each other. A common love of the message, the moves, and the sounds made these sections absolutely riveting. The rest could have fallen away.

If I had it to spare, I would have paid $91 to see the parts that the cast loved. They were that good.

Today I am asking myself, “Why?” and “What should fall away?” I am looking to be in sync. It feels like a time of massive change, even though on the surface everything appears to be doldrums.

And you, Dear——? What are you feeling right now? I do wish you the will to annotate your life, if that’s what you need. And, then, the sometimes harder step: to act on your discoveries. Or, if you are just singing along, embodying life with great joy, I’ll sit here in the afternoon sun, looking out over the river, and listen. Together, we could feel free.

As Always,

L.L.

30 Days, 30 Poems Eco-Challenge Merge

By

Dear      ,

Right now I am cleaning the dining room. I mean, I was cleaning it this morning, and I’ll get back to it soon.

If you were here (in my dining room), you’d see me sorting through a stack of handwritten lists and copying them over onto one new list. I make a lot of lists. Things get done. Things don’t get done. I make decisions about what undone things to carry forward. I drop things. I celebrate the finished tasks with a momentary smile.

For the 30 Days, 30 Poems Eco-Challenge merge, I decided I need a list. You might not find this very interesting. Or you might. (I just found it very interesting to see what one of my teammates has chosen to do for the Drawdown Challenge!)

Okay, so here’s my Challenges list. Undone. And done. Maybe once I do some of them, instead of “checking them off,” I’ll add links to where I found resources to help me accomplish them. That could serve as my “done” check mark.

Buildings & cities

• I will spend at least 30 minutes researching other Drawdown Buildings and Cities Solutions

• I will complete an online energy audit of my home, office, or dorm room and identify my next steps for saving energy

• I will spend at least 15 minutes researching heat pumps to see if installing one makes sense for my home/building

Electricity Generation

• I will watch a video about methane digesters (also commonly known as anaerobic digesters)

• I will spend at least 15 minutes learning more about the energy generation potential of Micro Wind

• I will spend at least 30 minutes learning more about the energy generation potential of biomass

• I will spend at least 30 minutes learning more about the energy generation potential of wave and tidal energy

• I will spend at least 30 minutes learning more about the energy generation potential of geothermal energy and consider investing in this technology

Land Use

• I will spend at least (___) minutes finding out if anyone is working on perennial biomass projects in my region and how I can get involved

Food

• I will spend at least 30 minutes researching other Drawdown Food Solutions

• I will spend at least 30 minutes watching videos and/or reading about the environmental benefits of silvopasture

Challenges Already Completed Before The Eco-Challenge, As Part of My Ongoing Interest in Life

• I will enjoy meatless or vegan meal(s) each day of the challenge

• I will use smaller plates and/or serve smaller portions when dishing out food

• I will spend at least (___) minutes learning about the need for more regenerative agriculture

• I will buy from organic and local farmers who have made the decision to not use synthetic nitrogen fertilizers

• I will start a compost bin where I live

• I will spend at least (___) minutes researching the impact of my diet to see how it contributes to deforestation

Dear——, my 18-y-o daughter has chosen just three challenges. You could choose just one, if you want to join us. The number doesn’t matter. It’s about choosing doable things that might interest and inspire you.

Also, I’m going to write poems to go along with my challenges. Being creative feels important as a part of this. My daughter? This is what she made. Video is her art.

Today, whatever challenges you are facing, I wish for you a creative response of your very own. Art, beauty, creativity. This is what helps us stay energized—and hopeful.

As Always,

L.L.

The Heart, Waterfalls, and Making Poems

By

Dear      ,

I truly believe that it all begins with the heart. If our heart isn’t in something, then it’s a wisp, a wish, a passing distraction we’ll never turn into something we pursue with… all our heart.

What do you love? What makes your heart just fill with that inexplicable sense that inspires forward motion?

This year, I read a book that explains, in its way, why we use “heart language” like this—why we say our heart is in something. Or not in something. Or broken. Or warmed.

We say this because our nervous system causes us to literally feel things “in our heart.” This is the seat of compassion, of positive forward motion that can link us to others. At the very least it’s a survival mechanism. I like to think of it, though, as something that makes us beautifully human and capable of kindness, poetry, art, song.

When, the other day, I saw stunning pictures of waterfalls pouring over the sides of melting Arctic ice, I felt something right in the center of my heart. The waterfalls reminded me of magical childhood secrets that were mine in the woods, on the creek, so long ago. I felt a sense of forward motion.

But? I also felt a nervousness that traveled deep into my bones. A feeling of coldness washed through my body again and again, like waves. I could almost feel myself, my own very self, careening off the sides of that majestic, melting, Arctic ice.

And, Dear——, I felt unmoored. More than unmoored. I felt myself falling.

The waterfall picture was in a Scientific American article called Meltdown. The statistics were so sobering I wanted to cry. Best case scenarios place the complete disappearance of summer Arctic ice at just 22 years out. My daughter is about to be 21. In one more daughter-lifetime, the ice will have died, disappeared.

We know only some of the consequent effects, like sea levels rising 13 to 20 feet, which means the loss of Miami, the naval base in Norfolk (VA), large portions of New York City and London and Silicon Valley. There’s Venice to lose, too. And Shanghai. New Orleans (and all that great cooking and culture).

There’s gravity to be messed with. Gravity? Yes, unbelievably, this was first picked up by satellites monitoring the effects of receding Arctic ice. I have no idea what it would ultimately mean to mess with gravity.

I do have some ideas of other effects. All interesting. Some strange. Some perplexing and complex and hard to parse. But must I know any more, understand any more deeply, before I take my artful life and put my heart towards mooring prodigal carbon back here on earth—drawing it down, back home?

Sometimes we know enough to take steps. Sometimes we know more than enough. Sometimes the real issue is that our hearts must be captured by a waterfall—of love, of fear, of vision.

Mine is captured, Dear——.

So I’m going to take a few Drawdown challenges and write poems along the way. I promise to tell you what they are. I’ve written them down. But, for today, I offer a simple poem…

Melting,

my heart is.
Falling.

Careening

over the edge
of what is

and what will
be.

Come with me,
friend.

The sea

is rising,
in a daughter’s dawn
of time,

to meet us.

Today I wish for you vision, Dear——. Not fear, but vision. Make poems with me? And embark on explorations? Let’s put our creative hearts together and bring carbon home.

As Always,

L.L.

Thundersnow, Energy, and Creativity

By

Dear      ,

Today the world is magical.

Yesterday it was thundersnow.

Today it looks like Walt Disney sent his team of animators to transform the maples, the pines, the mountains beyond the river, anything that sits on the ground or rises up into the air—white, and white, and white, thick-painted, delicious white. The sky is the barest blue. The soft, amorphous clouds are fleece blankets spread across the heavens.

I have never been in a thundersnow storm. Only 6.4 (how do you get half a storm?) thundersnows are reported each year in the U.S. My eldest daughter looked that up last night, after, for the first time ever, we saw lightning in the dark and driving snow.

Lightning!

I wish you could have seen it.

There was no audible thunder. The snow is a buffer. So you would have seen the lightning, but you would not have heard the thunder. It was there, though.

Have you read the book The Geography of Genius? I love that book. It helps explain thundersnow and it helps explain the wind storm that destroyed my windshield (via the beautiful maple who now stands transformed in this magical today-world). It helps explain why someone just my height (tiny lady) can reach the top of the Rose of Sharon tree, which is otherwise inaccessible to me. (She is bent so low in the layers of snow that are leaning her towards the little rock garden.)

Of course, Eric Weiner speaks of none of these things directly. He talks about wars, famine, plague, and, surprisingly, the genius that came of them. It’s complicated. Athens, Rome, Edinburgh. Conditions had to be right. But part of these conditions were a few very unwelcome elements that upended “the way things are.”

When I saw the galaxy of glass-stars inside my car, I knew that at least one part of my life had been upended. For some reason, as much as shattered glass troubles me, it also attracts me. It looks like so many millions of diamond boats upon a silver-blue sea. I asked my younger daughter to please take a picture. The next day, I started this blog. I felt such an unexpected surge of creativity. I can’t explain it.

Thundersnow is so rare because of the way the air currents need to organize themselves. You need a certain kind of void, a certain kind of cold and colder air collision, a certain kind of physics. Then the energy exchange begins, and—lightning!

If thundersnow were a city, we’d have to call it Athens, Rome, Edinburgh. Nature’s rare and beautiful genius.

But back to you and me.

If you are feeling a certain kind of void today, or cold and colder air colliding, if lightning is striking and upending “the way things are,” I wish you a galaxy of stars in return—creativity and genius that otherwise would not have been yours.

I know it doesn’t always work that way, and I also know that we still have to deal with the destruction. But I can wish upon a glass-star for you. And so I am.

As Always,

L.L.