Happy Anniversary: A Party Dress and The Making of a Blog Mask for Feral Mom, Feral Writer:

It is good to have an end to journey towards, but it is the journey that matters in the end--Ursula K. Le Guin

I’m still obsessing a bit about hesitations, the pay-off for waiting on the periphery. But realizing we each eventually brave the stage for our part. Nature’s metaphors provide solace: take flowers. They don’t choose when to bloom, nor do they falter. The heat of the sun impels them to fold back their exquisite petals to reveal their centers. I wrote more about the fear cycle of exposure due to book publication in Tarot Butterflies and Poem Disorder and Not Saying Goodbye to Feral Mom and in a forthcoming guest post hosted by Suzi Banks Baum at Laundry Line Divine, Hesitations, The Lost Wing, and Outgrowing the Metronome. (Link updated Jan 13, 2014.)

But December marks the official six year anniversary of this blog. Happy Birthday, Feral Mom, Feral Writer--here I am in a party dress for you! I don’t post here as often as I wish—but I’m grateful my absence here correlates with joyful ventures on other websites that were seeded here. One of my favorite offshoots of this blog is working with women bloggers at Transformative Blogging—especially the fun we have brainstorming the concept of a blogging mask.

Initially, it was just a metaphor: taking on a blogging mask to navigate the blogosphere with a little shield, a little simultaneous kick in the pants to get on stage. But it didn’t take long to fall in love with the idea of making a physical mask in order to ground the process of consciously honing in on a blogging mask and focus. It not only adds a spiritual form of listening but gives us each a tangible object to write to and speak from. And a way to involve the body, and thus the heart, not just the mind. I made my first mask in 2012 with the first round of online students willing to try it out.

But we were spread out across the states and unable to pair up, so I cajoled my daughter into helping me. With a strong fire raging in the woodstove, I got supine on the tan leather couch, which meant the cat quickly graced my knees, and my daughter told me “Stop talking, Mom, you’re wiggling the plaster around your lips." So there was nothing to do for those long moments but listen to the sound of the scissors shearing the plaster strips, the wind through the redwood trees, the thunk of her little brothers trouncing down the stairs, house jiggling in response as the boys brushed my toes with their restless bodies until my daughter shooed them outside.

When my mask was done, my neck wet and cat peeved at my feet, my son surprised me by taking my place and asking his sister to make him one as well. Then she too went under the plaster in a beautiful display of trust.

I went with a base coat, applied outside in the driveway with a can of silver spray paint.

Then came the blue. So dark…I had to add the pink. There was so much pink paint on the plate I flipped the mask over and used up the paint all along the backside of the mask. When I pulled this photo up today I saw the holographic properties, the inside face, peeking through…although, it does make me feel (this photo) like I’m showing you my cervix. Try to get that image out of your head!

Next I took the mask out in the woods and tried to photograph it by some moss. Which came out dark. So then I dropped it in a silver bowl.

Then, it sat balanced on the lip of a white jug in my cabin for about a year when my husband was commuting and we were both just hanging on to withstand the separation. Because he’d hand-trowled the interior of my cabin with plaster and painted it such a lovely pale tan, I couldn’t bear to be in that cabin and write…so the mask took my place.

Then I chose a veil to veil the the mask for use on my “professional site”…something about the paint showing through the mesh made it feel naked to me.

 

Then we moved to a sunny city. I decided to teach the mask making and blogging focus workshop in person for A Room of Her Own Foundation. A friend suggested I buy face shells in case anyone was afraid to set wet plaster on their skin. I couldn’t resist the urge to play with the face shells, thinking all the while about the friends near and far the blog work and connections have brought me, and those yet to come. Here we all are, a composite flower.

The journey goes on.

Here a few phrases I found from writings the mask revealed that still align with my goals for this blog. I’m grateful to extend my best effort to:

Face the poverties (of body, soul, faith, imagination, relationship).

Ground the numinous.

Greet the past through the veil of now.

Free the self into greater joy in the company of kindred hearts.

Bessings to you and yours in 2014. Love and thank you to each one of you holding up the invisible web of love and support that goes into writing this blog. I couldn’t do this alone and I’m grateful to be in your collective presence.

Additional News:

Mordred's Dream, from the Guinevere cycle, is forthcoming in Poetry Flash--I'm ecstatic, of course. Working on the movie with Robyn's images and some beautiful flute music and this one is graced by a male reader's voice--more to be revealed.

I'm teaching Beginning Blogging in person at Coronado Adult Education on Thursday evenings from 6-8 pm from Jan 9-Feb 20 and again April 10-May 22.

and a Poetry Workshop: A Tour Through Forms on Tuesday evenings from 6-8 pm from Jan7-Feb 25 and again April 8-May 27th. Call (619) 522-8911 to register or visit their website to view the brochure: Coronado Adult Ed/ROP.

And Poetry of Motherhood on-line....hope to work with you in the future.
 

 

Transformative Blogging Class Openings

Just a quick note to say I still have room in my month long on-line Transformative Blogging class that begins Monday, February 4^th. Detailed course description here at Story Circle Network (open to members and non-members alike).

All level of bloggers welcome, as we start nice and easy with an inventory questionnaire designed to help you map out your goals as a blogger or recalibrate your existing blog. Support comes several ways: 1) via the extended brainstorming we do as a class  and 2) your teacher. Expect generous mirroring of goals, specific feedback and ideas for the next step, which, it turns out, may be anything from journal writing to writing a sample “about Me” to writing up a guest post for one of your classmates (and more).

 In support of Transformative Blogging coursework and women bloggers in general, I’ve been happily blogging on my website:

 Welcome to Transformative Blogging for Women: 2013 Year of Inquiry

The Ex-boyfriend, the Blogosphere and Why Your Blog Title Matters

The Oracle at Delphi, YourBlog Subtitle, and Three Examples

Stop by and join our conversation.

 

Transformative Blogging for Women: 2013 Year of Inquiry

I’m honored to be heading into my second year of teaching Transformative Blogging for Women over at Story Circle Network—always a dynamic, alchemical exchange--such a joy to engage with each blogger who joins the circle. Out of the synergy of our shared inquiry comes new inspiration and blogging direction and well, just plain old fun. We get to the work, of course, but there’s more going on than meets the eye with this built-in accountability team: gentle encouragement, fearless brainstorming, leaps of faith. I hope you’ll join us—members and non-members alike are welcome; I still have spots left in this month-long workshop that opens on February 4, 2013. (Or contact me if you wish to work one-on-one—also an option).

I’m also very excited to announce that I have a Transformative Blogging e-workbook in the pipeline (based on the course). If you are not able to take the on-line class, maybe you’d like to work through the exercises we use either on your own or with a blogging companion. In support of the workbook, I am gearing up to provide an extended look at the world of women bloggers on my other website where I plan to kick off a year of inquiry this spring. I’ll be reviewing current blogging literature, reviewing blogs of note as well as fielding questions about blogging; hope you will stop by and join the fray.

Transformative Blogging for Women Bloggers

Thinking about finally getting around to launching your blog? Or want to spruce up your existing blog, recalibrate, re-invigorate? We will cast a large net and write fiercely and freely and eventually winnow down to crafted posts. Come join a growing group of like-minded women in a supportive, dynamic on-line classroom setting (offered through Story Circle Network--members and non-members welcome). Starts next Monday, May 14, 2012. Visit here for course description and testimonials: Transformative Blogging.

Transformative Blogging

Just a note to say I still have room for participants in my Transformative Blogging class, open to those hesitant bloggers-to-be wishing for a roadmap to help them proceed, or for those already blogging, this course promises to help set intentions and recalibrate blogging focus.
The course is offered through Story Circle Network. Outline and full details can be read here: Transformative Blogging.

Come out, come out and play...we have a beautiful group assembling already.

Deciphering the Siren: Premature Gifts, Luminaries, and Transformative Blogging

Detail from Mermaid, Howard Pyle

Jung’s wife, Emma, wrote that as a symbol, the mermaid wants to "entangle" us in "real relationships." She drags the man underwater not always to drown him, but sometimes to bathe him in the waters of life. Mermaids: Nymphs of the Sea, Aurum Press,  Text by Theodore Gachot, Photography by Leah Demchick

I crept away early on Sunday, needing time away.

Startling, the pain of leaving my youngest child behind, his sweet, sweat-tufted hair, as he lay in his comforter. Last night as we fell asleep, he said he wanted to make me an early birthday present (months away), could I guess what letter it started with…You don’t have to tell me, I said, but stopped, overcome by his absolute need to cinch the giving in case something were to eclipse it…He blurts, it starts with f…no…I mean r…Roses!

I kiss his cheek as I’d promised, whisper, I’m going, but not loud enough to wake him, I know better. I climb the ladder to my daughter’s loft bed, her kitten batting at my ankles in a plea for wet food since I’m the feeder of all creatures under our roof. This kiss elicits a sleepy, bye mom. Last, the big bed, where husband, middle child, and the Husky snore, paws and shins churned in the electric blanket. I linger with a fraction of regret, listening to the familiar sheen of breathing I so love, a shield for my childhood’s fear of the dark.

I’m only driving an hour away to meet a friend to talk poetry over coffee—yet I hesitate again...wish to burrow down, drift back to sleep, rise late in the morning and walk the dog, leashed, so she doesn’t trigger the ferals up the trunks of the redwoods as will be their fate when my husband leaves the door ajar for the dog to come and go. To stay, grind the coffee beans, compose slow emails between scrambling eggs…But if I don’t get away, the other half of me suffers.

Under the supernaturally gorgeous 7 am skies full of gunmetal clouds, the black pavement of the road sparkles, slick, split by the yellow divider line mimicking the tangerine gold of the leaves as the muted grey of a mottled pair of white horses in the mist and the dark tributaries of the oaks fringed with velvet moss hurtle past. A slight rain descends; I’m near tears, confused by an ancient fear of losing children mingled with the urge to stop, get out, and ride one of the horses into the hills.

Likely the grief’s more triggered by this brilliance of nature and the fact that I’m a two-step away from summer’s cornucopia of nested stress. Events in my thirteen year-old marriage took most of my attention, though, the degree to which I’ve been devastated by implied actions on my husband’s part--the responsibility for my reaction--rests solely with me. A state of truce graces me for now, thanks to the net of helpers mirroring back to me ways I might better appreciate what I have, strive to place things in context, become a better person.

The need for privacy, though, extinguished any desire to write here with my usual candor. In the meantime, I’ve taken a fiendish delight in deciphering the siren: reading about mermaids, mermen, Emma Jung, in my attempts to explore the volatile/vulnerable conditions the bound circle marriage attempts to make of our desires and attractions. How we transform when we run out of air and storm the sea’s surface, claim our stake in the living, forced by circumstance to choose to be here. Through such trials comes the gift of incarnating more deeply, or at least that’s what I decided.

But let me also acknowledge the luminaries…like the dear couple, both Taiko drummers, inviting my family to a gathering the very day after my husband and I had it out (unbeknownst to them, of course). We left our house, the air heavy with the prior nights’ accusations and revelations, to drive out into the country to a home high on a hill overlooking Mt. Tamalpais. Legs planted in the vibrant green grass, our friends, married as long as my husband and I, took their position on either side of an oblong drum.

She with her long black red tinged hair, arms windmilling in gentle but powerful circles, knees turning in tandem as she poised to strike the drum. Her husband, with legs in warrior stance, connecting in slow, fierce strikes on the opposite side, the deep amber of his voice matching her softer but equally firm arc of song. In the background, our sons circled the lawn, hunting geckos in the stones rimming the hill, my daughter sprawled between my husband and I on the damp grass.

Though unable to set aside its sense of broken trust, the other half of my heart blossomed with possibility. Here, I translated, pure, from our friends, is what a couple in love is capable of creating. In the wake of their secure and fearless drumming, I took refuge from my worst fears about our marriage.

As we drove home, my thoughts ranged over the events of the last couple of years, coming to rest on the time, when, like my younger son, I couldn’t wait to give a gift. Late November, still concerned about my husband’s ability to recover from heart surgery, I’d painted him a mug: purple trident on one side, a crown and a heart in its middle, the first initial of his name along the handle, waves curling the cup’s rim, a second, secret heart at the bottom of the cup on the inside. Three weeks before Christmas, I gave it to him, here, I said, I just wanted you to have this now…and he took it…I didn’t say in case you die before Christmas….but I thought it, in fear.

In the rearview mirror, I see my youngest son drifting to sleep, his head resting on my daughter's shoulder. I wonder aloud to my husband, how many a wife, entering marriage, hasn’t felt a bit like the little mermaid, trading her voice for legs? He’s adjusting his sunglasses, the other hand resting on my thigh. I say it more to myself than him, and don’t expect him to answer.

The rest goes on in my head. Mermaid turned land girl or not, as women we continue to plumb the watery, emotional, psychic depth of human possibility. I think backing away from that gift and not voicing its truths would be a great loss in any marriage. Maybe it takes nearly half a century to find one’s voice (my plight anyway, but better late than never). And though the little Mermaid evaporates in the morning to join her sisters in the air, I don’t think the prince has it any easier. Every man, like every woman, has his dark hours to survive.



Detail of Book Cover, Author Theodore Gachot
Image: C.E. Boutibonne, Sirenes, EDIMEDIA

  Which leads me to close on this final meditation, also from the book my husband got for me in our first year of marriage, Mermaids, Nymphs of the Sea: “In tales of human-mermaid romance, the need to return to the water became an emblem of the distance between the sexes that could be bridged only through the cultivation of empathy—the relationship of two disparate parts working as a whole (Theodore Gachot)." May we mutually, male and female, “bathe one another in the waters of life” and fulfill our truer nature as luminaries, all.

One last note:

I’ll be teaching a 4 week course for Story Circle Network in January. I'm indebted to both Barbara Yoder and Marlene Samuels, members of the AROHO Speaks Interview Team, for inspiring me to apply to give on-line teaching a try, and Marlene again, for recommending Story Circle Network. (Here's a slice of their mission statement: "The Story Circle Network is dedicated to helping women share the stories of their lives and to raising public awareness of the importance of women's personal histories").

This marks a much anticipated next step in my plan to create for myself the teaching life I so desire. I would love it if you joined me, or passed this link on to friends, those cautious but curious about blogging as well as those veteran bloggers who want to pause, take stock, recalibrate. Read a detailed course description for Transformative Blogging.