Latest posts

  • You are Invited! Upcoming Creativity Workshop in Capo Beach

    “The arts are not a way to make a living. They are very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’ sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a…

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  • Friends

    When I showed up at the Care Home late in the afternoon,  this was the scene that greeted me: Erik and Luke had come to visit Vernon, and they had been sitting at this table for a couple of hours before I arrived. They had been showing him videos of different bands they’d deduced he liked.  “Not…

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  • Making Space for Art

    Since Vernon’s life doesn’t seem as endangered this week, I find myself trying hard to make up for lost time, creatively, even though I still need to drive up to see him most days. Maybe its because I have another Creativity Event on the near horizon (link coming soon!) or because I went to that writer’s workshop…

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  • Boulder Basin

    Maki chose these as some of his favorites from his climbing/camping weekend at Boulder Basin.  I think he should take the camera out more often—he’s great!    

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  • The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

    “We must never allow the future to be weighed down by memory. For children have no past, and that is the whole secret of the magical innocence of their smiles.” —Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting   It’s writers like Milan Kundera that can take me back to my dreamy college-girl self. Sweet magical…

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  • “Tourniquet”

    One concept/tip  that came up in the workshop I attended on Saturday was that we should always be listening for stories.  They are happening around us all the time, and we can use what they offer,  either now or later.  We were also encouraged to write five minutes stream of conscious poems.  So I tried doing both…

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  • Weekend Nutshell

    I have so much in my head and heart tonight, at the close of a full weekend, that I won’t even try to process it all here. It would be better to go to bed and let my dreams work things out. But because I rarely remember my dreams—and increasingly, the details of my daily…

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  • Letting Go and Forgetting

    A very wise therapist made a comment about my last post on Bereavement.  She explains ‘letting go’ so well, I want to keep it in this collection of pages. I also want to share it with others. ‘Letting go is not an action it’s a mind-set. It’s not like holding on to a rope and…

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  • Bereavement

    Sometimes I check in on the 5 or 7 Stages of Grief, just to see where I might fit that day. It’s not official grief, since Vernon is still with us, but there is obviously a major sense of loss that hits me in different ways at different times.  I guess I’d define today’s check-in…

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  • A Room of His Own

    I got a call this afternoon from the Dialysis center. Vernon’s chest catheter had been acting up for a couple of weeks, enough to close some of his sessions early. It had been getting clogged—at least, that was the description I was given. After that, I don’t know how to elaborate.  So today, after another faulty…

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