I am in Plainfield, Vermont this week (via Brattleboro, where I got to have a brief dip into the beautiful world of my sweet friends Emma and Mike). Yesterday I drove with new and old friends up and up unfamiliar roads to find the best view of the ‘Super Moon’ cresting–our same old beautiful, constant…
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This past weekend I went to Oregon and saw three of my favorite people in the world. One of them happened to be getting hitched (!!!!!!!!!), and witnessing her kickass community was another gift altogether. I know I’m prone to hyperbolize–but seriously, these women. We can be out of touch for months, not see one…
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Another week of absolute magic culminates in a gathering tomorrow. I’m so grateful to be in the presence of so much grace and honesty and generosity. This community, a web we weave and reweave, feels like a salve in the midst of all the world’s suffering. There is hurt and courage and a willingness to…
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I say goodbye a lot. It’s one of my least favorite things to do–always has been. I moved schools a lot when I was a kid and I would avoid the active work of saying goodbye as often as possible–making jokes to diffuse the situation or skipping the last day of school. Even now, I’ll…
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I woke this morning to two things: 1. An article in the NYT about 4 Palestinian boys killed at the beach. The oldest was 11 or 12 and had sent his 8 year old brother home, because it was “too dangerous.” In the interview with the reporter the 8 year old child said, “He was…
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These past few days, I was welcomed in to witness a life completely unlike my own. A life where rattlesnakes are an ordinary concern, where the tap of hummingbirds against the rafters and fingers transcribing art through the keyboard are expected each morning. Often I forgot I was out of my element, in a place…
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This weekend began with a thunderstorm just after I returned from work. Rain fell in sheets over everything and I remembered the monsoon in Bangladesh viscerally–something flowed brighter in me. Out on my balcony, the potted Spider Lily, a descendent from my great-grandmother’s garden in Dhaka stood against the rail, unbowed against the falling water.…
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A few weeks ago, a new writing group participant asked a regular, “So basically, we just read her favorite poems and then write?” I hadn’t quite thought of it that way, but I guess it’s more or less true. It’s nice as hell being the poet in charge. There are certain pieces of writing that…
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Last Friday, at the Look At Me opening at Workhouse Arts Center in Lorton, ten veterans read their writing in front of an audience of 75. No two stories were the same–and yet all of the stories were familiar in some way. By naming their specific experiences of the world, they challenged any external…
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Community is the coming together of individuals “who have learned how to communicate honestly with each other, whose relationships go deeper than their masks of composure, and who have developed some significant commitment to rejoice together, mourn together and to delight in each other and make others’ conditions our own.” If I have used this…
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