There is a question next to her,
a small dog’s face,
loyalty to what she carries,
a cluster in the sky.
She is a new constellation,
lead by nebula light
and a galaxy brain. ‘
Shy girl hiding her face beneath stars, exposed with her large naval,
all the dark matter of her belly, the crook of her arm, womanly hips.
I am in love. I believe she would carry me to the dimensions of dreams,
through the night as minutes pass. Call her Midnight and be done.
Sad Elephant (seven minutes)
The winged insects flew
in from another world.
My stomach churns diamond shards
but my tears only drop red paint.
I step into the desert half crazed and wary.
I was a dandy but now I am old
and heavy with stars, scars on my skin.
I look for the palo verde and hope for healing.
My tears become little men
who pick the palms. I’m leaving the wild ocean
for temptations of rocks and yellow sand.
I am blessed to wear elephant shoes,
but I grieve the water wings
I leave behind. Cacti rattle hymns
for the predetermined God, the One who lives
in arid spaces. I’ve gone to listen for him.
The ocean was too noisy. My birth jungle brims
with confusing myth. My tears speak of the wild gifts
buried within my heart.
I pray erosion will uncover them,
the crazed animals, dear unformed art,
the unknown blessings.
I’m breaking the rules. With Intuitive Painting, or the Zero Point Painting, sharing work is discouraged because the practice is more about process than product. My teachers say that comments, either positive or negative, may have an impact on what wants to arise from within. If someone says they like an image, it might stop the painter from modifying it. Up to this point, though, I don’t feel for me that’s the case. Now with writing . . . watch out! But I’m freer with painting. What is powerful for me is to watch my own judgments and feelings about the work. There’s a tide that I experience as I paint. I may loathe an object, be disturbed by another, fret over my ability to paint something inside me that wants birth. Michelle Cassou says we need to stay with our discomfort.
It’s a powerful lesson because that discomfort does transform if I let it be. I’ve done this enough to know that images or “mistakes” I absolutely hate when they first appear end up what I treasure most.
Being connected with the brush means being connected with myself. As I worked yesterday, I was obsessing over her face. I still do not like the nose. I wanted both eyes bright, but no matter what I did the right stayed dark. During the last-minute of class I applied the coat on the two lighter triangles and now, at least at this moment, I don’t want the eye the same shade as the other .
My teacher observed my spending a lot of time dabbing the paper with my brush. See the line from where the Mama Angel is emerging? She suggested I make strokes, feeling the paint, feeling the movement. This line was the first stroke I did. Speaking of tides, I immediately felt my bottled emotions come up. As I drew the Jehovah Angel in the left corner, I started having an anxiety attack. More emotions, and they emerged through moving my hand, the color of paint, and because I was beginning to breathe.
I’m working on a novel I put away years ago about the nature of Hell, which I really should pluralized . . . literal ones on Earth, the fantasy hell my characters fashion for the afterlife, demons, redemption, angels. Hell was very a literal place for my quasi-Southern Baptist parents, and I worry that my more traditional friends make judgments about the state of my soul. In the past this has kept me quiet about my less than fundamentalist beliefs.
So, being seen, being judged, the dis-ease of being worried about, a track record of feeling I don’t express myself well when I speak and am confronted, and BAM! Panic, anxiety, a wonderful demon Jehovah God is born, but one whose heart shows my real feelings about the Divine. The source of Love who we have made into our own vindictive, angry, jealous projections. Here’s a judgment: the panic is actually a good thing because it shows my need to feel. I have a very hard time crying. The tears almost came as I painted. They’re all suppressed as I write once again. But that’s the path I need to open in me. To allow feelings to blossom, to be okay with being afraid of their power because that is where I am. Stay with the discomfort, eh?
There’s the fairy angel, the enigma angel, and the Mama Angel, the last to appear. The flowers in her hair came late as well. I worked on her for about three hours, and when time was up I groaned because I was in a place where I was feeling and alive. She is not done. I’ll take her back next month.
When I started the Heron’s Path’s blog, the idea was to use Clive Matson’s writing workshop exercise of Writing the Present for seven minutes a day. The blog morphed into other things, but I think it is a good practice and it’s time to return to it as often as I can. So,
The straw mermaid on the mantel stands next to the three stone houses. My eyes sting though there is no salt in them. The house hums. Spring is the hardest season for me. Small words are all my hands can hold. I am held by fifty small hands of children. Adverbs are the angels in our minds. Superlative wings and adjective birds. Cubes have twelve edges and six sides. We dust ourselves with the mixture of pencil shavings and tears. We dance and stumble. Recite our tables and carry ones to infinity. We talk about dimensions and time and space. Ask Einstein questions and tell lies. Our hula hoops are crooked zeros after months of play. The girls are all mermaids and the boys become Atlas holding up the world.
Justifiably, I was curious as to the reading furor this series was creating, and, I could also claim the need for one to stay abreast of current cultural literacy, but truth be known, I was hooked after the first chapter in book one.
My best friend in San Francisco, whose copy I snuck for that first chapter, exclaimed, “I just don’t see you reading this book!” as she headed off to her mass transit work commute, book in tow.
I couldn’t wait to get back home, as I knew that the women in my spin exercise class were all reading it too, and I was ready to establish my name in the borrow queue (you might gather that purchasing the book would have been slightly damaging to my ego).
I found myself rushing this sweet woman in her 70s, who had the copy in her possession, to please hurry and finish. She said she would have it done by Wednesday. Oh well, I would have to wait.
Later that day, I was on the phone with my mother, who is also in her 70s.
She recently received a Kindle for her birthday and is enjoying downloading books she likes to read, the genre of contemporary mysteries. Her voice lowered as she shared, “you’ll never believe what I am reading for a book group I joined,” I froze and mentally pleaded, “Oh no, please do not say you are reading Fifty Shades of Grey,” as I turned 50 shades of scarlet.
She whispered, “Madame Bovary. I thought you would be proud of me.”
“Wow,” I responded with a sigh of relief, “that’s great!”
Gustave Flaubert’s tale of a French woman in a less than exciting marriage was scandalous at the occasion of its publication in 1857. While quite graphic for the 19th century, this novel of literary merit pales in comparison to the detailed descriptions one finds in Fifty Shades.
Meanwhile, I had State of Wonder, the highly acclaimed and most recent publication by a favorite author, Ann Patchett, on reserve at the library. I had been anxiously awaiting this read all summer; a novel of literary worth and smart style.
Ironically, when the book finally arrived, it was hastily positioned on my bedroom floor, taking second place to E.L. James’s paperback, which I had grabbed on Wednesday and proceeded to devour in a little more than 24 hours.
Chuckling to myself over this fait accompli’, I thought I would bring some laughs to the spin group by dropping it off at the Friday class, daring to expose my fast paced reading of what we might generally label a trashy book, one that engages very little grey matter of our intellect.
I was looking forward to finally settling in with Patchett’s bestseller and re-establishing my reading priorities.
Now as a literacy advocate, I was glad to see so many people reading and discussing a common book personally, I enjoyed the witty email banter between the two main characters in the first two books.
Oh, did I just say first two books?
Yes, I must confess that as I returned book one, someone in the class yelled out, “book two is here it’s yours if you want it!”
And while I truly thought I was done with Mr. Grey and Ms. Steele, I grabbed Fifty Shades Darker and headed to the nearest reading spot to prolong the saga of this dysfunctional, unbelievable, and yet engaging romance.
State of Wonder is now ready to resume, my grey matter ready to fire up, yet somehow I have a sneaky suspicion that book three of the Fifty Shades series will by some means find its way into my control before the summer ends. After all, it is supposed to be the best book of the trilogy.
Robin Fogel-Shrive is a high school teacher in Lake County. She can be reached at rshrive@yahoo.com.
Our interview about our creative lives and the internet (and marking the sixth anniversary for Riehlife).
Janet Riehl helped to shepherd me through the release of my middle grade novel HUNGRY in 2007. She explained blogs, web pages, and podcasts to me one day as we walked the paths of Anderson Marsh State Park in Lake County, California. Janet now lives in St. Louis where she takes care of her 96 year-old father Erwin A. Thompson. Janet is a multifaceted artist, musician, and storyteller. She maintains her lively blog-magazine Riehl Life: Village Wisdom for the 21st Century, writes for Story Circle Network , and creates doodle art on her smart phone that is causing a sensation at her Facebook page.
Janet traveled across Africa, Asia, and Latin America, where she initiated and directed development projects, provided training, and taught. Her cross-cultural focus continued upon her return to the U.S. in her work with Native American pueblos, inner-city African Americans, Latinos, and—perhaps most foreign of all—the California computer industry. Janet was also the recipient of a three-year leadership fellowship in international development from the Kellogg Foundation.
Janet is probably best known for her poetry book Sightlines: A Poet’s Diary and the audio book Sightlines: A Family Love Story in Poetry and Music. Sightlines is a memoir told in story poems of the year following her sister’s death when Janet returned to her childhood home on the bluffs above the Mississippi River. It’s a frank portrait of her family coming to terms with its grief, while celebrating its past and difficult present.
Janet’s essays and poems have been published in numerous national literary magazines and her work appears in several anthologies. She was twice selected as finalist for Poet Laureate of Lake County, California.
The following is from a conversation Janet and I had via both Skype and cell phones on July 8, 2012. We discussed the effort it takes to maintain an active Internet presence, the advantages of “micro-blogging,” and her new passion of Doodles made on her smart phone. I interviewed Janet previously in 2009 for Suite 101: Part 1: http://suite101.com/article/janet-rhiel-healing-grief-with-poetry-a234962, Part 2: http://suite101.com/article/janet-riehl-creativity-and-community-a235067
You started to build your website after Sightlines was published in 2006. Tell us how you began and how that grew in the six years since.
First, I set up a website geared completely to Sightlines. I’ve had several web designers and tech people help me on my sites as they’ve morphed over the years. This first one was put up very inexpensively by my internet service provider near where I lived in Northern California. We met face-to-face. Later in 2006 I signed up for a promotional package from Author Marketing Experts (AME). The cost was a real stretch for me. And, frankly, I’m not sure what concrete results were achieved from the promotional campaign. But, I did learn a heck of a lot, made connections, and started my blog Riehlife at the moment blogging was going mainstream. This one was also designed inexpensively by a man in Florida whom I never met. I’ve learned that site techies come and go. From first internet site to the current one, I’ve worked with five. At that time, too, I’d become one of Amazon’s star book reviewers.
Rather quickly these various contacts, a supportive network started to grow around the country and even internationally. Some of these blogging and internet buddies—most of whom I’ve yet to meet–remain strong colleagues six years later.
Gradually other vehicles opened up on the internet and I followed the trends as best I could. I tend to hit these at medium maturity.
What are the top tips you could give someone starting a blog or website?
Approach it like any project. No matter who you hire to help you, remember that you remain the project manager in charge of goal, budget, and timeline. Know what you want to get out of it. Keep in touch with your family and friends? Teach, help, and change the world? Promote and make money? Personal expression and having fun?
Everything else flows from your purpose: name, mission statement, look and feel, audience, and how intense your relationship is with your blog. As you name your blog and formulate your mission, bounce these off people you trust.
Download and study the 4th edition of “Blogging for Dummies,” by Susannah Gardner and Shane Birley. This handbook demystifies all the seemingly arcane stuff like “trackback links.”
http://www.freedownloadsebook.com/Blogging-For-Dummies_212.html
Blogs must be fed to continue to engage readers, and generate reasonable traffic. If you want to try it out to see how you like it, go on a group blogging site like My Opera, Typepad, WordPress and so many others. Don’t jump into creating your blog as a standalone website. Then, you’re like the dog that caught the car, and you have to keep ahead of it.
How did you come up with the name for your blog-website?
My last name is Riehl, of course, and I liked the play on words of Riehlife. The tagline “Village wisdom for the 21st Century” came from a testimonial for Sightlines by Clive Matson (whom I like to refer to as my “writing mother).
Your mission for Riehl Life is to create connections through the arts and across cultures. What does that mean for you?
Over the period of my professional career(s) I’ve done so many different types of things that I’ve discovered that it’s my job to make sense of it all. The through-line has always been “creating,” “connecting,” “cross cultural communication,” and working in every branch of the arts. Gradually it became clearer to me that this was as good a mission statement for my life and work (and therefore my blog) that I was likely to come up with.
One of my biggest concerns was having a large enough playing field to express the range and depth of my interests and my penchant for synthesis. That’s worked well over the life of the blog and drawn many fascinating and nurturing colleagues to me. Offhand I’d guess that at least 300 writers and artists have been guests on Riehlife—through interviews, stand alone posts of essays and commentary, blog duets (a tem I coined), having their creative work appear on the site.
I ran across a comment by Susan Tweit, the author of Walking Nature Home, who wrote that Riehl Life is a journal “where the sense of thought provokes imagination.”
I couldn’t be more thrilled by Susan’s comment. That’s precisely what I’ve sought to create: a place where I could both express my personal views, work, and life while reaching beyond that. I wanted to create a “Riehlife Village” and I’ve done that.
You’ve mentioned your changing relationship with your blog—and, indeed, with the internet in general. Can you trace that?
As a creative person I’m a “Generator”—someone who’s good with ideas, motivation, and enthusiasm—towards the beginning of a project. I work best with “Realizers” who help me bridge ideas into action, keep focus, and sustain my energy level. I learned this from Carol Lloyd’s book Creating a Life Worth Living. It’s by far one of the best books on creativity and life design I’ve ever read. As a generator it can be hard for things to hold my attention, and I’m more of a sprinter rather than a marathon runner. I typically stay with a project between 1-5 years. So, around 2010 (the fourth year), my energy flagged as I became disillusioned with what I was getting back from the site.
Spending three to five years on any project seems like a big commitment to me. I’ve always been amazed at your versatility and the depth of feeling you put into both your writing and your art.
Thanks, Alethea. That means a lot to me. My pay-off has been affecting lives and having that come back to me as affection. I need to feel that I’m making a difference in the world. Responsiveness and energy coming back from my readers feeds me which in turn feeds my work.
My audio book based on the Sightlines book came out in 2009, and I ran an extensive blog tour. In 9 weeks I visited 30 blogs—drawing on the network I’d created up to that point. I ran all of the logistics, and wrote original posts for each site. Usually on a blog tour there are several boiler plate choices with perhaps a minimum of customization for your site. My web mistress sent out messages to my readers promoting the tour—along with my activity on Twitter and Facebook and referral sites like Digg.
The big disappointment here was that after all that work, I gained lots of accolades, but hardly any book sales—way short of paying for the time, effort, and money I’d invested. The practical results I’d hoped for were pretty wan. My intense focus in the blog started waning after the tour. Rather than being the home room for my creative life, I began drifting towards Facebook. I gradually posted less. In 2011 I stopped my monthly Riehlife email messages for blog subscribers. I just didn’t have the energy, and these can be seen in the number of posts and the traffic stats. Here’s the report card for 2006-2007 that gives you an idea of where I’d built it to that point. There were over 400 posts, I had good traffic, good response rates, and—most rewarding to me—Google ranked Riehlife with a number 4 in importance on a scale of 10 (with, of course, Google being 10). The strongest sites by regular people typically don’t go over a 5. http://www.riehlife.com/2008/01/13/riehlife-report-card-year-one/ By 2010 I’d gone down to 220 posts. By 2011 there were only 80 posts. And in 2012 so far? Maybe only 30. Naturally my traffic stats have dropped dramatically. I can’t get Google Analytics to give me a yearly report, but clearly my readership is down. Energy in = Energy out
Like so many of my creative endeavors, Riehlife has been a labor of love. Love in = Love out. It’s given me a lot and also given those who wrote for it and read it a lot. It feels odd to be so detached from it. In these Labor of Love projects the artist must receive some form of pay. If not money, then emotional, intellectual, social, and creative satisfaction. For many years Riehlife did all that. It was enough to make something beautiful for God.
I don’t want to let go of the blog, or completely park it. So much of my life’s work is there. I’ll do my best to sustain and maintain it. Will I be doing it into my 70s or for that rest of my life? Likely not. My attention is turning to harvesting my work and bringing it together. We’ll see where that leads.
As a multi-talented person you have the luxury of choice. I’ve seen you slip from poetry and writing projects to visual art exhibitions to community theater during your time in Lake County. As you step back from so many of the activities that used to absorb you—like blogging and presenting at conferences—what’s the current leading edge in your creative life?
Quite by happenstance (happy accidents are a staple in determining direction) I started making digital art on my smart phone using an app called “Doodler,” and then immediately post them on Facebook. That has given me a built-in audience with encouraging feedback beyond my wildest dreams. I now have close to 700 Doodles as I build a body of art work. As you said in your introduction the Doodles are getting great response on Facebook—I would go so far as to say I have a Doodle Fan Club. This audience keeps pointing out that the Doodles are legitimate art and also have commercial possibilities. Right now I love having them in this free-open-play space. They bring joy to me and those who see them. Commercial? Maybe, down the line.
I’m working to get my music back—claiming it as my own. In spite of coaxing myself, I’m still dragging on practicing my violin. Luckily a friend and I are now playing together once a week with a modest goal to hold a recital for friends at her place. Stay tuned!
I’m part of a blogging consortium for Story Circle Network’s “Telling Her Stories.” My monthly Creative Catalyst column draws comments which lead to satisfying dialogue.
As my focus shifts away from Riehlife, these three projects keep me in touch with visual art, music, and writing. Having completed every conceivable practical preparation for my father’s death, I’m now working at getting back on my creative horse. No hope of riding like the wind, but just ambling along is okay with me right now.
Ah! The creative connection! I enjoyed reading about the process of making your Doodles on your last posts in Story Circle Network .
Underlying what we’ve been discussing is “What is success?” I feel each of us defines and accesses that in different ways. Perhaps the idea of what success is shifts during our lives. What are your thoughts on this?
Ah yes, success. America is so results-oriented that our culture sees success in any field equated with what can be quantified. For instance how many books have you sold? How much money have you made. In Europe, it’s not like that. When I’ve met Europeans and told them I was an artist and writer, they were very interested and immediately jumped to the content and form of the work itself. In America the first questions are: “Would I have heard your name or the title of your book?” Or, the old stand-by: “Can you make money doing that?”
In art school a speaker framed the question nicely: “Do you want your art to support you? Or, do you want to support your art?” Your entire creative practice will flow from your answer. I decided that I wanted to support my art. That meant—as it means for most people in the arts—that I needed a day job. Carol Lloyd’s “Creating a Life Worth Living” is tremendously helpful on figuring out some combination that will work for you. I found myself consulting, substitute teaching, running after-school art classes, coaching writers, and directly a family literacy program for migrant farm workers.
I’ve made little money from my years of creative production. But I have made meaning for myself and others. Meaning, love, and adding to the life of the world—these have been my rewards. When I suffer from a meaning crisis (see Eric Maisel’s work for more on this term), then everything takes a dive. My job is to keep focused on what my work means to me—to affirm that “I matter, and my work matters.” This is a tough job, and only we can do it.
Resist writing beautiful words if none
are called for. Admit that your knitting needles
click at the bottom of the guillotine. Freedom
is formed from nightmares, made from the messy
soup of the chopping block, in breach births,
and in the haunted souls of the stillborn.
Liberty is written as the mad harlot’s song,
rising with the smells of the boudoir
as she gives birth to the blind child
who will one day cast silhouettes of hope.
Lies must be digested and shat in the gardens
of darkness, decomposition igniting light. Resist
all beautiful words if none are called for.
Do not trust overlays of light not yet explored.
Go free. Ring ounces of pretension
from your nakedness. Kill the aristocrats,
and then have your enemies as dinner guests
in rooms purged, made spacious enough for light
to filter through high arched windows. Resist
beauty if you can not find it in despair,
in the clenched fists clung to barbed wire, on walls
upon which the graffiti of limits are written.
Resist beauty if it is false. If it remains in palaces
instead of on the streets. If it exchanges terror
for cosmetics laced with lead. Your sole may leave a
bloody footprint as the baskets filled high with heads.
Offer yours.
Resist.
It’s still July 14th on my side of the world.
I wrote this poem a few years ago for a reading I did at Cafe Arrivederchi in San Rafael, CA. Subsequently, it was published by THE DICKENS, the wonderful literary magazine that Copperfield Books put out for a several years. It won the Eugene Ruggles Poetry Prize, sponsored by the magazine.
I started this blog saying I was going to write for at least seven minutes daily. It has morphed and taken on a personality all its own, however. I like that it has. It’s been awhile though since I’ve just sat down to write and see what I want to say. Summer is speeding by, as always, but this summer seems to have roller blades. School starts August 14th (I think, if that’s a Tuesday).
Some people would say, Oh, you have a month, but come the first of the month I’ll be my classroom getting ready, putting up paper for bulletin boards (I reused the same paper two years in a row, time for a change), sorting math supplies, peeking into our new reading curriculum . . .I’ll most likely teach first/second grades again which means learning Pearson for both grades if my school can’t find a way to separate kids for reading time. We’re small, one or one and a half classrooms per grade and sometimes the numbers don’t work. Nobody wants 35 kids for reading. Last year I had only 10 first graders for math, though, and it was delightful.
There’s smoke in the air. A fire is burning a long way off, but the sky is red and that burning feeling is up inside my nose.
Wondering what to start writing next, the project I’ll be committed to for the next year. I thought my mermaid novel, but in working on promoting HERON’S PATH I’ve found a plethora of mermaid books. Going to look over my novel THREE DEMONS and see if it’s salvageable. I think the Las Vegas part works well. But I need to re-envision Hell.
I am so grateful for summer.
This picture depicts the stereotypical view of Mary Magdalene: drama queen, hysterical, perpetually grieving, and piling on the guilt from her randy younger ways. See where living naked in a cave in France will get you?
During my workshop on the 21st, this is the image we’re going to release and walk toward the fact she may have been the one who knew Jesus best, who really understood his message.
What excites me about The Gospel of Mary Magdalene is that, from what I gather from people who have studied it for a long time, the gospel speaks of the nature of Eternity, the kingdom of heaven on Earth, and how to become more complete, fully human even in small glimpses within the limitations of our ego. Some of us, Rumi, Blake, Saint Francis, the enlightened beings who we have never heard about, somehow get through the ego trap and live/lived in Eternity while in the mortal body.
Cynthia Bourgeault speaks of the alignment of the vertical axis with the horizontal, present time and Eternity in sinc. She theorizes that Mary Magdalene stayed with Jesus in a visionary state during the time he died and was resurrected, during the time of the “harrowing of hell” in which his work to liberate human beings was occurring. She got his message. We are free and eternal and that our suffering results from our attachment to matter, our bodies, and our egos.
But this does not mean that matter is not real, in a Platonic sense. The world is not a projection from the ideal, but rather an important part of the existence of God. Our egos though get misaligned by projections and clinging. Bourgeault speaks of the NOUS, the part of us, the kernel we all house that is the conduit, bringing divine energy into our lives, and thus the world. She calls in “the eye of the heart,” and “the homing beacon between realms.” We activate it by prayer and meditation.
One of the first things Jesus was called was ihidaya, meaning “the single one.” Jesus’ parting message in the gospel is: “The Son of Humanity already exists within you.” Mary Magdalene understood this and knew “when the heart is aligned with its eternal image, abundance cascades forth from the place of that origin, infinitely more powerful than the scarcity and constriction of this world.”
Christianity then becomes more than an acceptance of faith, but as a practice in purification of the heart and living in the faith that God and good are ever-present.
Quotes from The Meaning of Mary Magdalene by Cynthia Bourgeault, Shambala Press, 2010 pages 50, 51, 52, and 55. I don’t know how to do superscripts!
