Thank You, Rochelle

What does your writer/artist-community look like? This week, I’ve been thinking lots about my community, or communities to be specific, and find myself evermore grateful for all the support I’ve managed to find for my creativity over the years. This is not without effort, of course, because the world does not usually come crawling to kiss your feet. Maybe especially the writing world. In many ways, to be an artist is to go it alone – so to gather together, to create, a circle of like-minded or like-creative friends and acquaintances is not an abracadabra-it’s-here happening.

For me, first there was the group that poet-therapist Rochelle Brener led at the Capital District Psychiatric Center years ago, called Relatives Writing Workshop. These were the gatherings that brought me back to writing. To join, you had to have a relative or close friend with a mental illness. Finding this group – and Rochelle – in 1992 was a god(dess)-send, all the way through to its closure in 1995. It was Rochelle who handed me my first brochure for the International Women’s Writing Guild summer conference, which I finally attended in 1995 (and haven’t missed since). When I decided to create a writing group emulating the inspiring, supportive IWWG event’s atmosphere, it was at Rochelle Brener’s newly opened Mandala Center for Creative Wellness that WomanWords first came together. We continued to meet there for almost five years, until my friend moved to Sedona.

I think of all the networking – the communities – that have come out of that life-changing moment when I first saw the tiny blurb about Relatives Writing Workshop in some newsletter. IWWG led to WomanWords, WomanWords to meeting so many gifted women, who led me to the active open mic scene in the Upper Hudson/Mohawk River area of New York State, to the Hudson Valley Writing Guild. WomanWords also resulted in my organizing smaller writing groups- Wild Women Writing, Beach Writers, a 4-person poetry feedback group. Through writers and artists encountered in all these communities, I’ve gotten acquainted with others, attended workshops, friended folks on Facebook. The connections go on and on.

No wonder the WomanWords logo includes a spider web, symbolizing the ever-widening connections between women writers. It goes beyond women to ALL writers. Each thread affirms the spirit and enthusiasm with which we honor our words. Our stories are everyone’s stories, individualized and universal.

Rochelle passed away in Sedona two years ago this past March. How do you thank someone who gave you a gift you already possessed but needed to own? What do you say about a person who gave so much of herself to everyone she encountered, yet would tell you she received as much and more in return? You can’t “miss” an angel when you know she sits on your right shoulder always, and yet sometimes you’d love to hear her voice, get another e-mail from her with her latest poem or announcement about her activities.

Here’s a poem I wrote at a workshop with John Fox, author of Poetic Medicine: The Healing Art of Poem-Making (http://www.poeticmedicine.com/), late last year. I believe the prompt was to write to someone asking their assistance with something, perhaps in letter or prayer form. For me, the result speaks to all Rochelle was, as much as it entreats her spirit for a little help in areas in which I could use it! (Still haven't figured out how to stop Blogger from destroying my poem's format, so this one's off too!)


INVOKING ROCHELLE*
by Marilyn Zembo Day

Teach me to listen, dear friend,
for the bubbling undercurrent,
the spring from which heart and soul
erupts, where words attempt to describe
a life, a vision, a world unseen by others
yet real in its gifts and inevitable losses.

Show me how to focus, to bring myself
inward, to scratch away unnecessary
scrabble that pulls me further from
streams of consciousness, threatening
to scatter me like white wisps of dandelion
to impotent corners far from my creative self.

Rochelle, bring me to your place of discovery,
shared with so many, that I might produce
even a fraction of what you imparted to a broken
weeping world: words, visions, confidence,
empathy, sympathy, joy — folded into star-studded
packets of poetry, prose, expressive arts.

Keep me from spilling into my tendencies toward
over-doing, spreading into multiple layers
of plans, workshops, appointments. Take me,
instead, into the silence I am learning
to cherish where you, my Muse, remind me

I am called
to create.

I ask this, my once and always friend,
in the names of all goddesses we invoked,
in honor of countless lives you enriched,
for warming light you brought to shadowed faces,

because your torch burns still, in our hearts.

Blessed Be.

*Rochelle Brener (1945-2008), writer, editor, poet-therapist, Senior Poet Laureate of Arizona, artist, photographer, mask maker.


Do I think this is the best of poems? No. But, for me, it is healing. It addresses the woman who showed me how to create real community and to sustain it. Remember that movie title, Pay It Forward? This is what I do, for Rochelle, for Judi Beach, for Hannelore Hahn, for every person (most of whom have been women) who inspired and supported me. And for myself, because my mentors have taught me that to nurture the world, one must first nurture and love one’s Self.

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YOUR TURN

• Make a list of your “communities” – groups of people in your life, however formalized or freeform they might be. Writing groups, co-workers, community action groups, art organizations, neighborhood friends, family, etc. Jot down notes about how each supports you. Note also if there are negatives, i.e., do they pull you down sometimes? call your goals pipedreams?
o Choose one group, one member of that group, and write a letter to her/him. Ask their help with something: a project, a personal matter, etc. (Note: all “letters” in this exercise are meant to be “Unsent Letters” although you could really mail them if you like.)
o Write a Thank You note to each community.
o Write a Letter to Self, promising that you will spend more time with the supportive community folks than those making you feel that you can’t write/create, that nothing you will do will ever be good enough, or that you should re-focus on the money-making side of life.

• I re-contacted my favorite high school English teacher years ago, after WomanWorder Judith Prest wrote about letters and meetings with her old English teacher at a WW session where our theme was “Mentors.” While Judy’s teacher has since passed away, I still occasionally have lunch with mine (she moved back to the Capital Region several years ago), often bringing books for the library in her community of Roman Catholic sisters.
o Write about someone who nurtured your desire to write or create art of any kind. Can you recall what s/he looked like? Her/his scent? Put it in the context of the period in time (what did the clothes look like? automobiles driven by this person, if any? anything that will put your mentor in a time and place). How were you mentored? Did this person have faith in your abilities when others didn’t, when you didn’t? Were you reluctant to accept help or encouragement? Do you know where your mentor is today?
o Write a letter to someone who nurtured your creativity. Thank them. Tell them how they did it and what you’re doing now with what s/he taught you. This person may not be alive today; or you might know where s/he lives.
o Write a letter to someone you think needs encouragement, especially in the realm of writing/creativity. Point out specific talents you’ve witnessed in her/her, and give them hope that they can enrich the world with their work. Make them want to make more art, to develop their talents. Tell them about what they may encounter on their artistic path and how to counter negativity.
o Often our mentors aren’t real people in our lives. They’re people in history or books, writers we’ve never met, subjects of news stories who’ve inspired. Write about someone you’ve admired from afar, real or unreal, living or dead—what they did/said that impressed you; how you might like to emulate her/him. This could be in letter form, if you like.

WHAT COLOR IS YOUR/MY AURA?

I have a new car: a 2009 Saturn. It wasn’t our (hubby Bill’s and my) intent to purchase a new car this year but our daughter’s need for a new/used transport was coming to a critical head (maybe she could take our old Saturn), and then there was that new jumpstart-the-economy tax deduction as an incentive (buy a new car this year, claim tax paid on it as a deduction in January 2010). We couldn’t find a decent used car for her at a reasonable price—at least not quickly—and so the idea of Kristen’s acquiring my beautiful (in my eyes anyway—it’s served me well) white station wagon popped up. In the end, we decided to pay off one car loan to acquire another.

But that’s not really what this blog entry is about.

I am not a car person. I almost never remember what kind of a car someone drives, although maybe its color might be recalled (I know Grandpa Boyd had a blue car and that my mother always said that he never had an accident but he probably caused a few because he drove in the middle of the road). I don’t have the name of auto manufacturers and their model names on the tip of my tongue. Some remain familiar for one reason or another: in my younger days, I recognized Corvettes, Carmanghias (although I probably still don’t spell that one right), Volkswagen bugs, Ford Falcons (my brother George’s first car) and... aw geez, now I can’t even remember the name of that cute little white foreign job that my cousin Diane drove (she’d pick me up at the bus stop on campus my freshman year at SUNY Albany, announcing her arrival a half-mile away with its noisy muffler). I thought the Datsun Z was ultra-cool, but then I was unduly influenced by the fact that a guy I had a crush on drove one.

I don’t even like to drive. If a car runs well enough, has automatic transmission, sports little enough rust on it so as not to embarrass me and, nowadays, doesn’t consume gasoline faster than a camel slurping water at its first oasis in days—I’m a happy camper, uh, driver/owner. I also want a CD player that works.

When I walked into the office the day after we’d looked at new Saturns, I wasn’t jumping for joy at the prospect of a larger car payment—but I could tell my co-workers that we would be submitting paperwork to the credit union to see if they’d approve the loan. Asked what model car I’d chosen, I said, “Oh, it’s a Saturn Acura.” Oops. Wrong model for that dealership (I’m still not sure—would an Acura be a Toyota? Nissan?). We’d considered the Saturn Vue, which had much more room for art materials to be carried to my workshops, but it was worse on gas mileage and much more expensive.

Once the loan was approved and Bill had corrected my model mistake, I was again asked what kind of car I was buying, this time via telephone by my friend Mary. “A Saturn Aura,” I replied. Mary hesitated a mini-second and then said, “How appropriate for you.” Of course I knew exactly what she meant. I have earned a reputation as a more-or-less New Age-y person, mostly because of interests in feminist spirituality, labyrinths, personal altars, mandalas and things of that nature; thus, “Aura” would trigger her reaction. In response to her next question, about its color, I had to say, “Well, I don’t want to tell people that my Aura is gray.” That evoked a laugh.

I am not into “auras” as in the New Age definition (whatever that is) but I do understand the concept. I think it’s really not far from the definition in my Webster’s, which reads, in part: 1. a distinctive and pervasive quality or character; air; atmosphere; 2. a subtly pervasive quality or atmosphere seen as emanating from a person, place or thing…

Years ago, when I worked part-time as receptionist at Mandala Center for Creative Wellness (one night a week to offset the cost of renting space for my writing group), I got to know a well-known, local psychic who sometimes leads workshops on detecting auras. Theresa offered walk-in readings on some of the evenings I sat at the desk, and we hit it off quickly as we chatted—especially once I realized how down-to-earth she was. Once, I asked how she can “teach” someone to see another person’s aura. She told me that we all have that ability but it gets lost as we grow older and more acculturated to Western values. In other words, I surmised, we stop trusting our intuition—which can tell us lots about a person when s/he walks into the room, when s/he first speaks, when s/he gestures in any way at all. What she was doing was telling people how to access their natural psychic abilities.

“But,” I queried further, “what if you just don’t see a color, what if you don’t see anything around that person?” “Make it up.” “Make it up? No way.” “Yes, make it up.” If we don’t “see” anything, we should still feel something. And colors have emotional meanings to us. Is there anyone who hasn’t thought of red as passionate, or painful, or exciting, or sensuous? How about blue as peaceful, or nurturing, or cleansing? It is Theresa’s position that we begin to see auras after we learn to trust our own feelings/ intuition about our people-judgments.

My friend Leiah Bowden creates gorgeous Energy Portraits (www.lightspeak.com), and she teaches others how to do the same. At her workshop, ever the feet-on-the-ground skeptic, I couldn’t follow her into a deep meditation (I have too much “monkey mind” to meditate well) yet I immediately took to the process of adding colors to my Energy self-portrait. Without prompting, I applied Theresa’s make-it-up theory to the activity—only I found that I wasn’t making anything up. Here was the red passion of my creative fire; there, a violet sensuous love of life; in this corner, golden sunlight, my general optimistic nature… and more. Leiah’s portraits are auras on paper. A fleeting glimpse of the soul using color.

My Aura is gray. My 2009 Saturn Aura, that is. But then perhaps, if I want to imagine it, my other aura is tinged with a bit of gray too—steel gray, a gentle but firm courage that buoys me up in harder times and allows that “general optimism” to flourish into abundant joy in better periods. Mary was right: how appropriate.

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YOUR TURN

You’ve read about my Aura/aura—now it’s your turn, reader/writer/artist. Here are a few options:

1. Stand in front of a mirror and imagine your own aura (who knows—maybe you’ll actually see one!). What color is it? How far out from your body does your aura extend? What do you think the colors represent? Does the aura change while you’re watching yourself in the mirror?
2. Write a story about a wo/man who’s never seen an aura before but all of a sudden starts seeing them. One of them, emanating from a co-worker, frightens her/him. Why? What happens, once she sees the aura?
3. Write a “car memory”—your first car; the family car growing up; the first time you made out in the back seat; the last time you went to a drive-in movie; how you met your mechanic, whatever memory that emerges in which a car somehow shows up.
4. You buy a new car with a mystical name. It takes you on an adventure. Where do you go? How long are you gone? Include feelings, sights, smells, noises. Make it a fairy tale or a myth, if you like.
5. Go to Leiah Bowden’s website and check out the Energy Portraits. Try creating one of yourself or someone you know. Make a meditative afternoon of it. Better yet, sign up for one of Leiah’s workshops!

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Let me know if you created anything—writing or visual— from the above prompts. Make my aura shine a little more golden!

Love,

Marilyn