llbwritesto.me

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The Writing Life

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.

Pumpkin Blooms, The Leaf on the Glass, and the Most Delightful Toy Store

By

Dear—,

I am writing to you again from the retreat center perched on the edge of the Hudson River. On the glass, between me and the empty courtyard, is a single leaf that is tipping and tilting in the wind. I’m not sure how it’s attached there. Possibly by the slenderest thread of an industrious spider who wanted a little red roof above her spinning.

From where I sit, I cannot see the river. The river which, if I had to choose something to signify the most contented pulse of my life, is running on under a silver sky, past towns and bridges, out, eventually, past New York City, and to the Atlantic.

Beside me, there are the funniest little pumpkin-gourds, made of paper, I think, sporting autumn blooms—silk nasturtium, eucalyptus, golden rod, and something that resembles a Gerber daisy.

Do you ever feel tired, Dear—? As if you are that leaf, red with hope, but only attached to the glass by the slenderest thread? Sometimes, these days, this is how I feel.

Today, I saw a quote from Henry David Thoreau, from Walden Pond. “I had not lived there a week before my feet wore a path from my door to the pond-side,” said he. And I asked myself, what is it my feet wear a path to that is as life-giving as that pond? I am not sure.

Last week, I made my way downtown with my girls and we had tea at a little place we’d never been to before. Tea and scones. The scones were sugared, the big crystally kind of sugar, and very buttery. One had blueberries. Another had pumpkin seeds, dried cranberries, and the tiniest chocolate chips. There was a woman at a circular table, meeting with artists and writers, the whole time we were there. I was happy it was she who was meeting with artists and writers, not me. I was happy to simply be drinking Paris tea, which I’d taught the barista to decaf (just dip the bag in for 30 seconds, discard the water, then steep for the requisite five). I was happy to be with my girls.

When we left the tea place, I was ready to simply go home, but my 19-year-old begged: “Let’s take a walk.”

Always, these days, I have too many cares. I told her no. But she persisted. “Okay, just to the end of the block,” I said.

We passed a plumbing store. All the fanciest tubs and sinks and showerheads. Beautiful. But somehow, these too just made me tired, thinking on renovations and change. A few stores down and my girl suddenly exclaimed, “A toy store!”

And so it was.

Inside were the most beautiful toys I have ever seen. Wooden toys. Colorful puzzles. A unicorn notebook (which I went back and bought a few days later). My girl bought herself a stuffed animal. Frivolous? It was so soft. So needless. We took the newly-named “Rosie” home.

I ask myself, what is it, besides my many cares, that I want my feet to wear a path to each day, each week, each year? I don’t have answers. But I am thinking about the most delightful toy store, about the river, about my girls, the leaf on the glass, and the pumpkin blooms. And I am wishing, for you, Dear—something delightful today. And answers if you need them. Or, just a question to begin you on your way.

As always,

L.L.

At the Window, White Shells, and the Grey Dress Tree

By

Dear—,

I am writing at the window, because someone asked me to. But I am also feeling as if Charlotte is onto something (which she will share with us soon at Tweetspeak), so I am going to speak as if watching, or speaking mythically, which is part of what happens when a writer moves into the second person.

Second person is the name of the viewpoint, but the use of it also, uncannily, creates the sense of a second person being in the scene. A listener, a watcher, a prophet, or maybe a priest. Someone who is one step removed from the writer, but strangely intimate with the workings of her inner mind as well. Someone who might help the writer ferry from one shore to another, on a drift of once-removed words.

Enter the ferryman. The switch. Here we go. I will herewith be “you” as I continue this letter. Bear with me. Or, would that be, bear with you?…

You are writing at the window, because someone asked you to. But you are also feeling as if Charlotte is onto something. You are going to speak as if watching yourself, or speaking mythically. You might become your own prophet, or priest. You might ferry yourself from one shore to another, on a drift of once-removed words.

You used to care more about the past, how it formed and shaped you—the stepfather who fed you hunted deer, the mother who planted geraniums every spring, how she dressed the glass sliding door with crystal beads of jewel-like colors, how he nailed you out of the house at every window. These people, these acts, these days long lived at the edge of the woods, maple and fir mixed, under the full moons and the Northern lights— they held a kind of power over you, because, within you, you still had, like Cisneros’s Rachel 11, 10, nine, eight, seven, all the years down to when your mother first held you in her arms and named you Laura (against your father’s will, who wanted you to be a Laurie), though your mother had also considered Susan, your eyes were so black, like the wildflowers she’d loved since she was a child.

You used to care about writing this past. But it’s been a long time, and many words, and now, at the window you are more interested in what is right before you and how it is framed. Sometimes you spend whole afternoons looking out this particular window, the one you are looking out at four-o-clock in the afternoon, this window with its Moorish side arch and center point, open to the air, to the maple and the hemlocks and, past house and house and house and house, to the river beyond.

You went to the river earlier today, and looking out this window now, you can find your way back to the leaf-cupped shore, where tiny white shells, clean as a brilliant linen and water-soft, crowded the shore beneath your feet, each one carrying their past upon their backs, but each one also blissfully collected in pockets and ridges of eddied sand as if all that mattered was right here, right now. Tomorrow they might be carried out to sea. Except, of course, the few you collected.

You collected, too, what you named “the grey dress tree,” tried to memorize its every curve and curlicue, watched the way its bronzed leaves lightly clapped with the wind, clapped against each other, and looked remarkably like little turnstiles which, every so once in a while would detach, then fly into the river, to join the journey of the little shells. If, you thought, some designer made a dress with the pattern of the grey dress tree, and it’s moveable leaves, like flat bronze bells or little turnstiles, you would accept it as a gift if someone wrapped it up for you in paper as light and smooth as the day’s wind, in paper as subtly silver as the river that lapped and lapped with a sound as mythic as forever and mirrored a sky of smoke and pearl.

Yes, you used to care about the past, about how the windows, looking out, or looking in, could recall something that seemed important to tell to the world. But now it feels like the best thing you could do is memorize the changing world, and, like your mother before you, love it, and call it by name: silver river, white shells, grey dress tree—and simply open each day new.

As always,
L.L.

P.S. Speaking in the first person now, Dear—, I wish you a day of windows onto the gifts of this beautiful, beautiful world. Yes, beautiful, despite the many cares of its people. If I could give you a grey dress tree (or a grey suit tree, for you, Sir), a handful of white shells, a silver mirror of water to ferry your soul to somewhere you need to go, I would. Here, now. Here is my open hand, full with the vision of it. Take it, if you wish and will.

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.

Play With Your Writing: George and the Cattle Ranch

By

Dear      ,

Do you ever play with your writing? I mean, simply do something without the pressure of finishing—and just for the joy of trying?

I haven’t played with my writing in a long time, but I wanted to share an older piece with you that was a bit of fool-around-fun. The dialog that starts with the idea of selling things and borrowing money and what might be done with the proceeds is based on an actual conversation I overheard at a restaurant (minor details changed). You can make this stuff up, but why work so hard when life offers you such juicy possibilities?

* * *

“I could make it work. I know I could.”

George tilted his head, thinking hard now, calculating the worth of the Dodge sitting in the restaurant parking lot.

She picked up a packet of foil-wrapped butter and slowly pulled back neat corners. The butter was too warm, so when she went to gather it on her knife, it slipped onto her black lycra pants.

Traci swiped at it, only pressing the mistake further into stretch-cloth. She sighed and reached for another gold packet. But now he grabbed her hand and stopped it, pushing her palm flat to the table before she could get her fingers around the new pat of butter. His own meaty fingers toyed with her wedding ring.

“If I sell the Dodge and your ring, plus everything that’s in the apartment, and we borrow some money, I could make it work. I always wanted a ranch. How hard can it be to raise cattle? Come on, Traci, you know I can do it. You know it.”

She looked down at her unbuttered bread, then off beyond him, to the exit sign at the back of the room. If she could just look straight into his grey eyes. Or excuse herself to the bathroom. Or something. Her hair caught the light so that instead of looking like the vivid red she’d asked for at the beauty shop, it morphed into an odd dark pink that looked unreal.

The waiter came now. He set down a broad-noodled alfredo with peas, for her, and an oversized steak for George, who stabbed his fork into it before she even picked up her own fork. Her bread was still unbuttered too, and would stay that way for the meantime, since George must have taken the last portions while she was looking at the exit sign.

And now it was suddenly too late. She hadn’t looked George straight in the eyes, and her food was waiting, and George was chewing fast and hard.

* * *

On this sunny morning, I wish you a little bit of play. In your writing. Or in your life. Which, often, comes to the same thing.

As Always,

L.L.

Ailing Bees, Energy, and Missing The New Yorker

By

Dear      ,

I’m wondering. Do you know what a skep is? I did not know until Alexander Langlands told me.

He wanted to make one for the bees.

I wanted to go hear Rachel Aviv yesterday and tell you about it here and maybe in an exclusive on Patreon. Rachel has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 2013. I have never been a staff writer at The New Yorker, and I had questions for her.

I did not have questions about skeps or bees, but this is the beauty of reading—it expands. And I know you know this about reading, but I just wanted to say it, because it’s sort of like something else I know you know—listening can expand your world in ways you hadn’t expected. This is why, when Alexander Langlands was talking about bees and skeps, though I didn’t have questions about either of these things, I thought maybe I’d take the time to listen.

Okay, technically, reading is not listening, and I promise I have also been listening in the ordinary way. So last night I went to Rachel’s house—not Rachel Aviv, mind you, but a dear friend who’s been letting me park in her driveway so I can stop getting $30 parking tickets (due to the car disaster, I vowed not to park the remaining car in the driveway until the wayward maple could be trimmed, and The Town has refused to listen to my pleas for a street parking exception due to extenuating circumstances, and it feels very sad not to be listened to and to feel alone and uncared for by The Town, but Rachel graciously let me park in her driveway, and so last night we had tea, and I listened.)

The skep, first made as early as the 8th century (mid medieval times) is fashioned of willow or hazel, or from straw that’s been twisted and bound by cane. It looks like a 60’s up-do you might expect to see on one of the B52s. Just add bees, and you’ve got honey.

If you listen to Rachel, you’ve got honey, too. Maybe if you listen to anyone at all, you’ve got it. There is something strangely magical (or, at least surreal) about concentrating on the voice of someone and listening with every part of your being, not just to the words, but to the sounds, to the person, and the way they are moving and the look on their face.

Rachel Aviv looks kind of intense, while at the same time looking almost medieval (not that the two need be mutually exclusive). Maybe it was the particular photograph and the way her hair and the neckline of her blouse reminded me of watching the show Merlin. She looked like Gwendolyn, but with fair skin and fair locks and maybe blue eyes, though it can be hard to tell eye-color in a black-and-white photo.

It was snowing in the morning yesterday; regardless, I still thought I’d go see Aviv. The day unfolded with more snow and more snow, and then the sun made a late appearance, the roads cleared, and all seemed well with the world. I could have gone.

Alexander Langlands, when I listened to him, told me something I hadn’t known about bee-keeping. Many of the big keepers kind of forget about the “keeping” part. They feed the bees sugar water, which is a sub-par form of energy. It makes the bees sick over time (I’ve been meaning to say, Dear———, sugar will make you sick over time, too), but it means the keepers can take all the honey they want and push the bees to keep working.

I’ve been working really hard lately. Well, I work hard all the time. But lately I’ve been working even harder, to meet some increased demands in my personal and business life. So, after Monday, I was still tired yesterday. My car was at Rachel’s. I did not have energy to go hear Aviv and ask my questions under the gaze of her intense eyes. I am sure I would have enjoyed listening to her, because I’m learning that there’s honey to be found in the act of creating an extra-special keeping-space for someone else’s words.

But.

There is a way in which we can run our lives that is like living on sugar water. And I thought of Langland’s last statement regarding skeps, and keeping, and bees… “The craeft in beekeeping is not in the meddling of the bee’s affairs but in the preparation of their home.”

In my home, there is actually not even one copy of The New Yorker, though I think it is such a cool magazine because it’s been around for a very long time and even Dr. Seuss had a friend there, once upon a time. I thought about this. I thought about the skep I needed, in order to keep writing to you. It did not include going to see Rachel Aviv—at least not yesterday.

What do I wish for you, then? A skep of your own. With the heartiness of a honeyed life. No sugar water. Because I want you to be healthy for as long as you call the 21st century your home.

As Always,

L.L.

Writing Love, Energy, and Empty Sandboxes

By

Dear      ,

You might remember this. There are people who do.

Five years and four months ago, I quit blogging. I wrote about that at Jane’s. The departure was, to a great degree, about energy—energy I no longer had. And the years have gone by since then, and so much has changed, and so much has not.

What has changed? Read about that, too, at Jane’s.

What has not changed…

I love to write to you. If that’s all I could do, I would probably be quite satisfied. Writers have their ways.

Today I am tired, and all the things I’ve been thinking to share with you are folded into their sleepy little beds in inaccessible parts of my brain. My sandbox is quiet and empty. I think it’s important to go with that. So I’m respecting the absence of energy and sharing someone else’s words with you instead.

She wrote it for me, when she heard I was blogging again. I like to call this “friendship writing.” It’s one of my favorite kinds. Thank you, Maureen, my friend.

Energy is more than E=MC2.

Picture it: the yogi displaying
not one whiff of sweat as she
mind-bends her way to Nirvana;

or the green-eyed poet stringing
i ams among six stanzas she will
later commit to mime and memory;

or the race-walker powering up,
post-workout, on granola bars
created with all-natural ingredients

harvested from her garden of greens
denied such chemical transformations
as might be recalled from the sixties;

or the scientist springing the door
to her media lab, announcing
the antithesis to the synthesis that’s

just come clear; or the once-full-time
blogger envied by all who know
that to read her is to love her both

in and outside the virtual world
that she codes in 1s and 2s before
translating her HTML into terabytes

of prose and poems her fans will
twitter and tweet so long as they
get to play in her sandbox too.

—Maureen Doallas

For you who have come to my sandbox today and found it quieter than you expected it to be, I wish you the ability to listen to your own rhythms and go with them. I wish you, too, a little friendship writing.

As Always,

L.L.