Volume V, Issue 19 May 9, 2016 Word of the Week: butterfly It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by. How else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment?
~ Vita Sackville-West
courtesy of commons.wikimedia.org
by photographer Uwe H. Friese, Bremerhaven, Germany Dear , Happy Day-after-Mother's-Day, whether you're a mother or not. All of us have (or had) a mother, after all, and we all, regardless of gender, do mothering of our own, whether we nurture family members, friends, furry loved ones, tomato plants, or writing projects. I can't help thinking about mothers today, since it's the anniversary of the day I lost mine. It's hard to believe it's been fourteen years already, the memories are so vivid. Like the dream I had just hours after her death in which a swarm of butterflies gently settled all around
me.
And the walk I took at my McAlpine Greenway with my son Dan
after he got home from school and I told him the news that his grandmother was dying. I will never forget how comforting it was to walk and talk with him, and how we stopped for a long while to watch the mama ducks and their downy ducklings waddling and swimming all around the lake.
Dan and I are still walking together—yesterday it was at South Mountain State Park with his
dad and his girlfriend Patty, who kindly took this photo. (And, yes, we did see a few butterflies.)
The main reason I'm able to remember so much that happened years ago is because I've written about it, either in a poem, an essay, a letter, or
a journal entry, like this one:
[Dan is] so transparent, at age 10, walking by me holding a white vase. He asked me to
wait on the couch, then came in grinning, vase filled with offerings from our yard. "I got the idea from that tree flower," he said. (He was talking about the tulip poplar flower I'd shown him—green with a thin stripe of orange—to illustrate that every tree blossoms.) "And I got the idea to put in honeysuckle because when we were in that parking lot Friday you said how good the honeysuckle smelled. And I put that green stuff in because when you got Oma Betty those roses you put ferns in with
them."
I love having this record of my thoughtful grown son as a thoughtful ten-year-old. Yes, if you’re interested in, as Vita Sackville-West so eloquently puts
it, “clap[ping] the net over the butterfly of the moment,” writing is a wonderful vehicle.
This week's prompt offers practice in clapping that net, and this
week's featured writing is an example of a virtuoso's attempt to do so. E. B. White's "The Ring of Time" not only recounts a moment of beauty worth preserving, but also shares a writer's experience of the process. It's an essay to savor; each sentence is stunning. Why not try reading it aloud slowly? You just may be a better writer by the time you're finished.
May your butterfly net capture love and light, Maureen Upcoming WordPlay
"WRITING OURSELVES WHOLE"
Writing Workshop
Come and explore the benefits writing can provide—physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. In this workshop, you will learn and practice simple yet profound ways to use words to heal, to transform, and to grow, as well as to reflect on the way God is working in your life. These methods can also be used to create stories, poems, and/or essays. Whatever form
your writing takes, you will leave this retreat with a new set of skills for writing and growing.
Our time together will be ideal for beginners as well as for seasoned writers as we explore the renewal and deepening of our relationship with God, self, others, and the
world.
WHERE: Olmsted Manor Retreat Center. 17 E. Main Street, Ludlow, PA 16333.
WHEN: Saturday evening, May 14 until Monday afternoon, May 16, 2016
COST: $252 (includes tuition, room and
board)
TO REGISTER: To register online, please visit the Olmsted Manor Retreat Center website here.
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WRITE LIKE A GENIUS
(Expanding Our Creativity; Learning New Tools for Our Writing and Our Lives; Creating New Writing)
Discover your own genius as you learn to apply seven fascinating approaches of Leonardo da Vinci to your writing. These techniques enliven non-fiction, poetry and fiction. Expect fun, inspiration and writing galore in your preferred genre, with opportunities to share your
work.
$630 for one week-long session (lodging and meals are additional – options can be found on the Folk School website) WHERE: John Campbell Folk School, 1 Folk School Road, Brasstown, NC
28902
WHEN: Sunday, August 7 – Saturday August 13, 2016.
TO REGISTER: To register, please click this John Campbell Folk School link to register directly from them.
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SUMMER WRITING RETREAT
(Writing as Renewal
/ Creating New Writing / Tools for a Writing Life)
Renew and delight yourself. The Summer Writing Retreat is an opportunity to create new pieces of writing and/or new possibilities for our lives. Enjoy various seasonal prompts; they elicit beautiful material that
can be shaped into essays, poems, stories, or articles. After a communal lunch, you’ll have private time which can be used to collage, work with a piece of writing from the morning, or play with a number of other writing prompts and methods. You’ll take home new ideas, new drafts, and new possibilities.
$97 includes lunch and supplies.
WHERE: South Charlotte area. Details will be provided upon registration.
WHEN: Saturday, August 6th, 10:00 a.m. to 5:00
p.m.
TO REGISTER: To pay with a check via mail, email info@wordplaynow.com for instructions. To pay online, please click this link to check out using PayPal.
More WordPlay opportunities here. Featured Writing
“The Ring of Time” from Essays of E. B. White
After the lions had returned to their cages, creeping angrily through the chutes, a little bunch of us drifted away and into an open doorway nearby, where we stood for a while in semi-darkness watching a big brown
circus horse go harumphing around the practice ring. His trainer was a woman of about forty, and the two of them, horse and woman, seemed caught up in one of those desultory treadmills of afternoon from which there is no apparent escape. The day was hot, and we kibitzers were grateful to be briefly out of the sun’s glare. The long rein, or tape, by which the woman guided her charge counterclockwise in his dull career formed the radius of their private circle, of which she was the revolving
center; and she, too, stepped in a tiny circumference of her own, in order to accommodate the horse and allow him his maximum scope. She had on a short-skirted costume and conical straw hat. Her legs were bare and she wore high heels, which probed deep into the loose tanbark and kept her ankles in a state of constant turmoil. The great size and meekness of the horse, the repetitious exercise, the heat of the afternoon, all exerted a hypnotic charm that invited boredom; we spectators were
experiencing a languor—we neither expected relief nor felt entitled to any. We had paid a dollar to get into the grounds, to be sure, but we had got our dollar’s worth a few minutes before, when the lion tamer’s whiplash had got caught around a toe of one of the lions. What more did we want for a dollar?
Behind me I
heard someone say, “Excuse me, please,” in a low voice. She was halfway into the building when I turned and saw her—a girl of sixteen or seventeen, politely threading her way through us onlookers who blocked the entrance. As she emerged in front of us, I saw that she was barefoot, her dirty little feet fighting the uneven ground. In most respects she was like any of the two or three dozen showgirls you encounter if you wander about the winter quarters of Mr. John Ringling North’s circus, in
Sarasota—cleverly proportioned, deeply browned by the sun, dusty, eager, and almost naked. But her grave face and the naturalness of her manner gave her a sort of quick distinction and brought a new note into the gloomy octagonal building where we had all cast our lot for a few moments. As soon as she had squeezed through the crowd, she spoke a word or two to the older woman, whom I took to be her mother, stepped into the ring, and waited while the horse coasted to a stop in front of her. She
gave the animal a couple of affectionate swipes on his enormous neck and then swung herself aboard. The horse immediately resumed his rocking canter, the woman goaded him on, chanting something that sounded like, “Hop! Hop!”
In attempting to recapture this mild spectacle, I am merely acting as a recording secretary
for one of the oldest societies—the society of those who, at one time or another, have surrendered, without even a show of resistance, to the bedazzlement of a circus rider. As a writing man, or secretary, I have always felt charged with the safekeeping of all unexpected items of worldly or unworldly enchantment, as though I might be held personally responsible if even a small one were to be lost. But it is not easy to communicate anything of this nature. The circus comes as close to being the
world in a microcosm as anything I know; in a way, it puts all the rest of show business in the shade. Its magic is universal and complex. Out of its wild disorder comes order; from its rank smell rises the good aroma of courage and daring; out of its preliminary shabbiness comes the final splendor. And buried in the familiar boast of its advance agents lies the modesty of most of its people. For me the circus is at its best before it has been put together. It is at its best at certain moments
when it comes to a point, as though a burning glass, in the activity and destiny of a single performer out of so many. One ring is always bigger than three. One rider, one aerialist, is always greater than six. In short, a man has to catch the circus unawares to experience its full impact and share its gaudy dream.
You can read the rest of “The Ring of Time” here.
WordPlay Now! Writing
Prompt This is WordPlay—so why not revel in the power and
potential of one good word after another? This week, it's "butterfly."
PROMPT: Listen each day for at least one moment worth capturing, and then put that moment into writing, in any form that you like, whether it’s a quick jotting of the details, or a careful crafting of a poem or
essay.
This is not only a way to “clap the net over the butterfly of the moment” and a useful, beautiful way to practice mindfulness, but also an exercise in finding subject matter. Our lives give us wonderful material for writing projects all the time, if we are paying attention. And it's also a great way to hone your writing skill. MAUREEN RYAN GRIFFIN, an award-winning poetry and nonfiction writer, is the author of Spinning Words into Gold, a Hands-On Guide to the Craft of Writing, a grief workbook entitled I Will Never Forget You, and three collections of poetry, Ten Thousand Cicadas Can't Be Wrong, This Scatter of Blossoms and When the Leaves Are in the Water. One of her long-held dreams came true in July of 2015 when Garrison Keillor read one of her poems on The Writer's Almanac. She believes, as author Julia Cameron says, "We are meant to midwife dreams for one another."
Maureen also believes that serious "word work" requires serious WordPlay, as play is how we humans best learn—and perform. What she loves best is witnessing all the other dreams that come true for her clients along the way. Language, when used with
intentionality and focus, is, after all, serious fuel for joy. Here's to yours! |
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