Three Loons On Island Lake

Three Loons On Island Lake, October 17th 2019, iPhone Video, Island Lake, near Cromwell, Minnesota, video © 2019 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

We are back in the Twin Cities. The morning we left Island Lake, the moon set in a dense fog. Three loons surfaced to greet the day. Magical is an overused word, but that’s how it felt sitting on the end of the misty dock watching sunlight hit the circling reeds.

We weren’t ready to step into work life Friday morning. The five-thirty alarm interrupted my dreams; the October sky seemed too dark for a waking body. When left to our own devices, we stay up late for creative work, rise later in the morning. We don’t naturally awaken at 5:30 or 6 a.m. in the city.

The ways we make a living around office computers and machinery hum (so different from the Taos hum) remind us of the unnatural habit-forming rhythms our bodies endure to live in a metropolitan landscape: traffic, crazy harried drivers, school bus dodging, and overcrowded parkways.

Cities are beautiful in a different way. Later we’ll take a two-mile walk around an urban lake and go to a friend’s home for an evening fire. The choices we make. I choose to keep writing.

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Top Of Minnehaha Falls

Top Of Minnehaha Falls, Droid Shots, Minneapolis, Minnesota, July 2014, video © 2014 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

Top of Minnehaha Falls

Twilight turns the water to mist.
Mosquitoes hum, a cool breeze
grazes the hair on my arms.

Laughter echoes off steep walls,
the three of us pull close
for one last photograph.

“You are lucky to have her,” she told me.

White winter night,
bundled beneath down comforters,
the warmth of your skin sizzles against mine.

silent monarch wings –
top of Minnehaha Falls
drowning in summer

-posted on red Ravine, Sunday, January 4th, 2015
-related to post haiku 4 (one-a-day) Meets renga 52

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Natalie Goldberg — Old Friend From Far Away

Vodpod videos no longer available. from vodpod.com posted with vodpod

Natalie Goldberg, Old Friend from Far Away – The Practice of Writing Memoir, December 21st, 2007 (to play video, click either green arrow twice)

Natalie Goldberg has a new book coming out on February 12th, Old Friend from Far Away – The Practice Of Writing Memoir. One of our readers tipped us off to a video clip from the Free Press Division of Simon & Shuster (thank you, Jackie).

Without Natalie, there is a good chance that red Ravine would not be here. Nor would Writing Practice. We are grateful for everything she has taught us.

To Natalie, a deep bow. And thank you.

Millions of Americans want to write about their lives. With Old Friend as the road map for getting started and following through, writers and readers will gain a deeper understanding of their own minds, learn to connect with their senses in order to find the detail and truth that give their written words power and authenticity, and unfold the natural structure of the stories they carry within.

An absolute joy to read, it is a profound affirmation of the capacity of the written word to remember the past, free us from it, and forever transform the way we think about ourselves and our lives. Like Writing Down the Bones, Goldberg’s classic book about the practice of writing, it will become an old friend to which readers return again and again.

-posted on red Ravine, Thursday, January 10th, 2008

-schedule of Natalie’s workshops: Natalie Goldberg Workshops

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Duck & Cover

              -Duck & Cover, posted on YouTube by maesterjay, May 16th, 2006

In a quest for memoir details and memories, I spent the afternoon driving through Southern childhood neighborhoods with my mother and step-father. When we had finished walking through tall blooming magnolias in Georgia’s historic Magnolia Cemetery, we drove by my grandfather’s ranch home from the 1950’s. I stepped out of the car and stood under ancient pecans to photograph the house and grounds.

That’s when I remembered that my grandfather had built a bomb shelter in his 50’s backyard, smack dab between the house and the pool, a space that would later be relegated to the status of forgotten relic. Every once in a while, we’d open the heavy lid and descend the metal steps to view dusty bunk beds with hospital corners, out of date first-aid kits, and neatly stacked canned goods.

When I saw the comment in I’d Rather Be Fishing (#26), “In case of nuclear attack, your children will not be released from school,”  it reminded me of the bomb shelter. Then I flashed to the Duck and Cover video posted on YouTube about a year ago by maesterjay (because that’s the way my mind works).

It’s all summed up nicely in the last comment (#28) on  I’d Rather Be Fishing:

“We told our kids, that in case of nuclear attack, they were free to break ALL the rules…It was an example of breeding a culture of fear and we are still doing that with Homeland Security, orange alert, etc, etc.”

Yes, we’re still breeding a culture of fear.

For me, this all fits together with the recent post Wishing You A Peaceful Heart – An Open Letter To Cindy Sheehan. It stands to reason – because everything is connected.

The strangely dynamic site on Cold War Culture, Conelrad, has links to Cold War movies, atomic secrets, and atomic platters. We live in a crazy world. When you add two and two together, we’ve always lived in a crazy world. There is war and there is peace. And in-between stands Bert the Turtle.

Saturday, June 2nd, 2007

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