Volume VII, Issue 33 August 27,
2018 Dear ,
Forgive me any typos, please—I am writing this on the road home from Chautauqua (via Reston, Virginia, where my daughter and her family live) as my sweet Richard,
who flew to Virginia to meet me and spend a tiny spot of time with our grandchildren, drives.
What a glorious summer!
And I will be glad to be home.
I've gotten a lot of use out of the beautiful travel journal, peppered with quotes, that my beloved teacher, mentor, and teacher Irene Blair Honeycutt gave me this April when I was honored with CPCC's Legacy Award that bears her name. I've been using this
journal to record my daily gifts and gratitude, among other things. The quote I encountered this past Thursday was by Mark Twain: "Why not go out on a limb? That's where the fruit is."
I had to smile. Not
only am I a big fan of going out on a limb in general (because I do believe that, so often that is where the fruit is), but I had also just seen a clip from Ken Burns's documentary, Mark Twain, during Chautauqua's 10:45 a.m. lecture when Burns, along with Dayton Duncan and Geoffrey C. Ward, who co-wrote the script, discussed storytelling, collaboration, and process.
Burns said that "Twain wrote as if he invented literature" and that the clip they were showing us included "one of the most important
scenes we have ever put together."
This is where I have to confess that I have somehow never read Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,
so the words of Huck that end the clip (and today's featured writing) were new to me. In a time when I believe many hearts and minds are open to both a hard, honest look at the least honorable events of our country's past and a more loving, accepting, inclusive present and future, Huck's moral quandary—and his ultimate choice—moved me to tears. Truly, Huck went out on a limb in a most gut- and soul-wrenching way, remaking his entire belief
system despite what his world had taught him.
But going out on a limb comes in all shapes and sizes. I was definitely going
out on a limb some 28 years ago when I took my first poetry class at Chautauqua's Alumni Hall. Could I have dreamed that all this time later, I would be listed highlights by name in the week's program event list and giving a reading with two friends I met way back then?
Jane and Bill Pfefferkorn are now long-time friends, and it was a joy to share a "billing" with them. Our poetry reading was a dream I barely dared to dream that came true.
What about you? Is there a limb, small or large, that you can go out on sometime this
week? It's sure to give you something to write about, now or in the future.
Happy "fruit" picking! And don't forget to check out this week's prompt.
Love and light, Maureen Upcoming WordPlay
NEW OFFERINGS COMING SOON!
Featured Writing
an excerpt from
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
by
Mark Twain
I went to the raft, and set down in the wigwam to think. But I couldn't come to nothing. I thought till I wore my head sore, but I couldn't see no way out of the trouble. After all this long journey, and after all we'd done for them scoundrels, here was it all come to nothing, everything
all busted up and ruined, because they could have the heart to serve Jim such a trick as that, and make him a slave again all his life, and amongst strangers, too, for forty dirty dollars. Once I said to myself it would be a thousand times better for Jim to be a
slave at home where his family was, as long as he's got to be a slave, and so I'd better write a letter to Tom Sawyer and tell him to tell Miss Watson where he was. But I soon give up that notion, for two things: she'd be mad and disgusted at his rascality and ungratefulness for leaving her, and so she'd sell him straight down the river again; and if she didn't, everybody naturally despises an ungrateful nigger, and they'd make Jim feel it all the time, and so he'd feel ornery and disgraced. And
then think of me! It would get all around, that Huck Finn helped a nigger to get his freedom; and if I was to ever see anybody from that town again, I'd be ready to get down and lick his boots for shame. That's just the way: a person does a low-down thing, and then he don't want to take no consequences of it. Thinks as long as he can hide it, it ain't no disgrace. That was my fix exactly. The more I studied about this, the more my conscience went to grinding me, and the more wicked and low-down
and ornery I got to feeling. And at last, when it hit me all of a sudden that here was the plain hand of Providence slapping me in the face and letting me know my wickedness was being watched all the time from up there in heaven, whilst I was stealing a poor old woman's nigger that hadn't ever done me no harm, and now was showing me there's One that's always on the lookout, and ain't agoing to allow no such miserable doings to go only just so fur and no further, I most dropped in my tracks I was
so scared. Well, I tried the best I could to kinder soften it up somehow for myself, by saying I was brung up wicked, and so I warn't so much to blame; but something inside of me kept saying, "There was the Sunday school, you could a gone to it; and if you'd a done it they'd a learnt you, there, that people that acts as I'd been acting about that nigger goes to everlasting fire." It made me shiver. And I about made up my mind to pray; and see if I couldn't try to quit being the kind of a boy I was, and be better. So I kneeled down. But the words wouldn't come. Why wouldn't they? It warn't no use to try and hide it from Him. Nor from me, neither. I knowed very well why they wouldn't come. It was because my heart warn't right; it
was because I warn't square; it was because I was playing double. I was letting on to give up sin, but away inside of me I was holding on to the biggest one of all. I was trying to make my mouth say I would do the right thing and the clean thing, and go and write to that nigger's owner and tell where he was; but deep down in me I knowed it was a lie—and He knowed it. You can't pray a lie—I found that out. So I was full of trouble, full as I could be; and didn't know what to do. At last I had an idea; and I says, I'll go and write the letter—and
then see if I can pray. Why, it was astonishing, the way I felt as light as a feather, right straight off, and my troubles all gone. So I got a piece of paper and a pencil, all glad and excited, and set down and wrote: Miss Watson your runaway nigger Jim
is down here two mile below Pikesville and Mr. Phelps has got him and he will give him up for the reward if you send. HUCK FINN I felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now. But I
didn't do it straight off, but laid the paper down and set there thinking—thinking how good it was all this happened so, and how near I come to being lost and going to hell. And went on thinking. And got to thinking over our trip down the river; and I see Jim before me, all the time; in the day, and in the night-time, sometimes
moonlight, sometimes storms, and we a floating along, talking, and singing, and laughing. But somehow I couldn't seem to strike no places to harden me against him, but only the other kind. I'd see him standing my watch on top of his'n, stead of calling me, so I could go on sleeping; and see him how glad he was when I come back out of the fog; and when I come to him agin in the swamp, up there where the feud was; and such-like times; and would always call me honey, and pet me, and do everything
he could think of for me, and how good he always was; and at last I struck the time I saved him by telling the men we had smallpox aboard, and he was so grateful, and said I was the best friend old Jim ever had in the world, and the only one he's got now; and then I happened to look around, and see that paper. It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a trembling, because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself: "All right, then, I'll go to hell"—and tore it up. 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 "limb."
PROMPT: Write, in any genre, about a time you, or a character, real or imagined, went "out on a limb" out of conviction and courage.
It's fun to play with prompts in community with fellow writers, and to be able to share the results when you're done. You can find out about WordPlay classes, workshops, and retreats here. 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.
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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