Writing Tip

"Ole Golly says description is good for the soul and clears the brain like a laxative."

Harriet the Spy

Louise Fitzhugh

Morning

She opened the shutters. She hung the sheets over the sill.

She saw the sky.

A bird looked at her straight in the eyes."I am alone," she whispered.

"I am alive." She entered the room. The mirror too is a window.

If I jump from it I will fall into my arms.

Yannis Ritsos

translated from the Greek by Nikos Stangos

A Way of Listening

I step off the bus and look up, and there is Dee standing outside the cafe', waving. We sit at a long table, and I read her a short story of mine. "That's gorgeous," she says, "read it again." Dee has a way of listening. She brings all of herself to it. Like she is thrilled I have written something and she gets to hear it. I have never met anyone who listens to writing with such enthusiasm. I finish reading. "Ahh," she says, like I have made her year. "Send it out. You can't keep that to yourself."

White Soul Swans

Within the body are gardens,

rare flowers, peacocks, the inner Music;

within the body a lake of bliss,

on it the white soul-swans take their joy.

Mirabai

My People

Just got off the phone with my friend, Pat. Sometimes when I first hear his voice, I imagine spreading my fingers in front of a fire, just leaning in to the warmth in his syllables. "Hey, you," he says, or "Hi, friend" or "Hi, sweetie." I reminded him tonight of the British documentary that I talked him into going to that was so sad that at the the end as we were walking out, he said, "That was like going to a funeral." He laughed, a laugh I've known for five years yet it feels like forever. My therapist said to me once, "When you find your people, you just know."