Invitation to Write #13- Original Form

As the sole non-English major of the contributors to this blog, I am sometimes on guard about my form. I will post hesitantly to my writing group, or to this blog, and apologize for a wonky form or structure in my piece. My fellow authors always tell me not to worry about it. I believe one of them once told me, fuck form! We have a rule amongst the TrailBrazens: No apologies. And while we seem to have gotten out of the habit of literal apologies, we sometimes qualify our writing in words of explanation, as we post.  I can't for the life of me recall where I read this recently. Nevertheless, I read somewhere that women use qualifiers in their writing, much more than men do. We tend to utilize words like perhaps and actually, when we should boldly say what we need to say. No qualifiers. No apologies. Though this is not the original source from which I read about the idea, here is a pretty simple online article about it: How Women Undermine Themselves with Words.

In celebration of our Brazen roots, in a quest to unapologetically be who we want to be, with a loud and proud FUCK FORM! I give you the lucky number 13 Invitation to Write. It comes from Pat Schneider's book Writing Alone and with Others. The idea is to create your own original form. That's it. Make it up. Write whatever you want to write and create your own form for doing it. Schneider says to make it "difficult, exacting, challenging... being as hard on yourself as possible, allowing yourself no easy solutions to difficult tasks." She provided the example below from one of her workshop participants (pg. 137). Go for it... be Brazen!

Schooled

I misread our invitation to write #12  as a prompt to re-work something we had written in the past, not something we had written at our Annual SWFL Women's Writing Retreat. So, I am posting the image poem I put on my own blog and our Trail Brazen page.

Sometimes, teachers have to follow their own advice and reread the directions!


I saw a red flower,
a fiery blaze among a wasteland of twigs and dead grasses.
Its petals like miniature trumpets,
blasting out the sound of red, unapologetically announcing its presence.

A lesson in resilience.

I saw a dusty path leading nowhere,
yet leading me somewhere, to a window carved in between bent trees.
Its view like a portal
to a watery world with hidden treasures and unknown wonders.

A lesson in curiosity.

I saw a piece of barbed wire,
rusty and mangled, restraining the remains of a tree.
Its spikes like a crucifix crown,
digging into the already dead tree, a warning to those who passed.

A lesson in obedience.

I saw a congregation of fish,
growing from three to eight, all waiting for something.
Their fluid movements keeping them in place,
moving, yet not going anywhere, all eyes affixed on one spot.

A lesson in patience.

I saw a patch of vegetation,
jutting out from the water, rebelliously rooted in the glassy water.
Its blades like unruly hairs of a cowlick.
Swaying in the breeze, sticking its middle finger to the plants on the shore.

A lesson in rebellion.

I saw a tree,
offering a secret, shady respite from the blaring sun.
Its dewey leaves like half-opened umbrellas.
Boulders surrounding it as if to welcome the weary, the down trodden.

A lesson in spirituality.

I saw spiky pods,
split open and rotting on a sea grape tree.
Their prickly skins like porcupines.
Daring anyone to touch them, waiting to pierce the skin.

I saw next to them, brand new grapes,
green and firm.
Their smooth skins soft as a newborn.
A gentle reminder that each death results in new life.

Lessons in endings and beginnings.

Indskydelse

I was stuck somewhere between wanting to nap and wanting to write.  Words were rushing through my head.  Not mine. Like a madwoman I rushed for paper.  Grabbing a notebook. ..more like a planner, I thought that will do. I started to write. . As I was inebriated,  and time was slowing down,  I made a discovery I always had a hunch about.  I always said, about my giftedness,  that I am dyslexic but my brain moves fast. This is true. I saw the words swim, both after I wrote them, and while I was writing,  as if some invisible force were trying to keep me from understanding. While another force was fighting to help me write the truth. My truth.  The truth of the universe.
I didn't waste time with introductions. I knew God or an angel was dictating and a force of evil was fighting me on every word.

This is why the ten commandments were written in stone.

Yes.

Because they couldn't be burned.

Yes.

And why I am writing in a planner, because I always read them before I throw them away?

Yes. We need you to remember.

And why I write notes cockeyed and randomly placed.

Yes, but it isn't random.

I wrote, the meaning of life is to find your gift  purpose of life is to share it.

A quote I'd used in class this week.

Then I wrote, I know my gift  because of my passion.

What are you passionate about?

Words....literature,  love, and learning.

That's the secret.

To what?

To everything.  I laughed, uncontrollably, because I saw, in an instant, the truth, and it was so simple it seemed silly to write down and my hand couldn't move fast enough. Some words were such a fight my handwriting looked like someone suffering from schizophrenia. 

Is that because they're struggling to write what you say? They're hearing a message and can't get it down right?

They're taking notes but aren't writing the full idea because truth comes so fast?

I felt the universe shake it's head enthusiastically.

And why some artists say they write better drunk or high. Why we like that feeling?  We hear you better?

Yes. Anything that slows the mind. Yoga helps, walking helps.

I knew I was getting into dangerous territory here, following a rabbit hole of disconnected ideas, and that sharing them could get me locked up in more ways than one.

The point of all of this is to experience ourselves.  So writing time is time with ourselves,  our true nature. For we are gods and goddesses. Angels and demons fighting a spiritual war over our own soul. The war is this:

I have to write. But I have to slow my mind down to do it. It is my passion,  therefore  my gift,  therefore my purpose.

Things and people who try to keep me from it are doing evil. The point of that evil is to make me fight for what I love.

If God is love and he commanded free will, he wants us to chase our dreams, because that is how we get to experience divinity.

Writing is an important part of this. We are creating worlds in our sentences.  Readers are living in those worlds. It is how we share in the universe and dance with ourselves. This is free will. This is freedom of speech. 

Literature is a compilation of mystical ideas, words, and associations from divinity.

We know things etymologically that have spiritual implications.  This is why wisdom is simple,  too simple to grasp. Writers share their divine inspiration. 

That's why we invented fiction,  so we won't be locked up or burned at the stake for having visions anymore. 

Writers are prophets.

Lauren Hill was right.  Everything is everything.

Kanye and Eminem are right. As we are authoring, we are expressing our godliness. That's why they are so adamant and shameless in their pronouncements.  They are both gods, and we, sweet Brazens are goddesses.  Writing communities are sacred. We are being goddesses, recognizing the goddess in each other.

Metaphor, satire, rhyme and repetition are tools to share the mysteries of the universe.

Sharing our ideas in other languages is sacred too.

That's why evil leaders burn books, devalue literature and art, and amplify barriers among people of other cultures.  Because there is magic, too, in our idioms.

The translation of words is stuff of the sacred too. We are all right. Homonyms,  words with multiple meanings, variances in translations,  these seem like obstacles to understanding truth. But sometimes they are clues too.

Love is true communion. Making love is communication. 

We miss communicate all the time.  We right, write, rite.

We hear (t) right. But we right it wrong. 

New Beginning

Glorious is the sun rising over a new day,
out of the swirling clouds like a genie from a bottle.
Her golden glow casts metallic iridescence
over the dark surface of the deep blue waters.
She lifts gradually, higher into the great wide open
basking in her own reflection,
shadowing the clouds slowly melting them away.
Up from the horizon she takes her throne in the heavens
and the expanse of her golden light clears
the azure, vibrant and bright.
And we rise with the sun
her warmth, her glow, her power
and her promise of a new beginning.

If This is My Final Destination

 Response to http://trailbrazin.blogspot.com/2016/05/invitation-to-write-12.html

If This is My Final Destination

(Inspired by Nick Flynn’s “If This is Your Final Destination’)

by Helen Sadler

If this is my final destination

what did it all mean?

That I spent the last hours of my life

watching a pink sunrise behind purple clouds.

I spent the last night not in my own bed.

My husband is not near me.

If this is the end, I spent it writing with

friends, finding images of birds and beach,

randomly creating poems, imagining

my unlived life.

If this is my last morning,

I was blessed to see Brown Pelicans flying

in formation

and to read what I wrote a year ago

about B.B. King and the “Key to the Highway”

Don’t I always have that key?

Why do I only know that now –

                                            on the last day?

If this is my last stop on the Universal Express,

I sat in the moment reading Nick Flynn’s poetry

and writing my own.

I listened to strangers talking on the balcony below

   while waiting for their breakfast in the microwave.

Even from the 12^th floor perch, I could

hear the waves slapping the beach

once a boater sped by:

a repetitive sound like a song,

a “Mystery Train” of nature.

Then quiet again.

Now the sun – stunning orange popsicle glowing neon

pops out of the plush purple clouds

"Surprise!

I was here all along,

while you watched the pelicans,

and listened to the waves,

and read Nick and eavesdropped on strangers.

The world was still turning.

"And you kept on writing,

heading toward your final destination."

hms  5/15/16

Invitation to Write #12

Our next invitation is to polish up something you drafted at the retreat and post it here.

Not everyone was able to respond to the previous prompt, but it is not closed off. Feel free to respond  whenever the spirit guides you.

We will have our next dinner meeting in June.