Home

Home is a theme that I have been writing about for years. I am a pilgrim on this amazing planet and I have traveled and moved far more often than most. The yearning for home and finding community, refuge, and sanctuary is the sound track to my adult years. In the excerpt below you'll see why. I believe that home is in the center of our being and in the Arms of the Divine, a breath apart from meaning the same thing. 

Holy Cow! Press has just published an anthology on this topic: The Heart of All That Is. This beautiful collection  includes poetry and prose from local writers that I know personally such as Margarette Hasse, Cary Waterman, Ethna McKiernan, Jill Breckenridge,  Mary Kay Rummel, and writers I have yet to meet: Karen Herseth Wee, Miriam Weinstein, James Cihlar, Alice Owen Duggan, Molly Sutton Kiefer, Linda Kantner, Julie Landsman, Amy Nash, and Ellen Shriner, and writers that I admire such as Marge Piercy and Naomi Shihab Nye. 

Available at www.holycowpress.org and through Amazon and Barnes and Noble, this collection makes an excellent Christmas present. The work ranges from nostalgia to escape, from roots to homelessness, from where we feel a sense of belonging to where we can spread our wings and fly. 
I hope if you live in the Twin Cities, you'll join us for the book launch on Nov 9 at Subtext Books. 

     While spending a month in Oaxaca, I brought along Neruda's book of poems called Isla Negra. In the foreword, Alastair Reid says that it was not a systematic autobiography in poem form "but a set of assembled meditations on the presence of the past in the present." It followed the chronology of his life. "This is cool!" I thought. "I could do that. I could write poems about the places where I have lived." I made up a list, starting with the first sub-let when I moved out of my parent's home in Pennsylvania after high school. I was stunned to count forty-two places, not including the casita I was currently renting in Oaxaca. The locations started on the East Coast, went to the Southwest, zigzagged all over the West, from Colorado to Seattle, from Montana to California. My travels culminated in an exodus out of the country to Belize and Mexico, over to Spain, the Canary Islands, Greece, and Israel.

    No wonder I related to the Jewish people! When I arrived off the boat in Haifa, I felt as though I had finally come home, returning from exile to sanctuary. This traveling was with a group of people and never felt like homelessness because we lived the same lifestyle. We owned one set of clothes, following our mantra, "Travel light.” We lived a life of self-discipline, ignoring personal comfort, having few material possessions.

    But did I live this nomadic lifestyle simply as an imposition of the dictates of our “guru" or was it the natural result of my yearning to travel as a child? I day-dreamed of hitch-hiking to exotic places, of being a Gypsy and a wanderer. I had an insatiable curiosity about the world and the people in it, a desire to be “footloose and fancy-free.” When I stuck my thumb out on the side of the road, slept on Spanish beaches, or hiked up curving forested roads, I was not aware that here was my day dream come to life. I never thought to myself, “Gee, this is exactly what I asked for when I was young.” 

--excerpt Seeking Sanctuary from The Heart of All That Is, Wendy Brown-Baez

           

Guest Blogger Michael Kiesow Moore: Writing Fantasy

I’d like to begin by talking about how writing fantasy is not different from writing any other genre. Whether you are writing fantasy, romance, mystery, or literary fiction you work with the same writing tools to meet virtually identical goals. Foremost, you have to tell a story. Proust may very well be one of the sole authors who got away without one, but most everyone else has to have one. If you don’t have a story to tell, the reader is going to close the book on you. Under the umbrella of “the story”, you also need to develop your characters, maintain point of view (be it singular or many), attend to the right balance of narration and dramatization, use appropriate tense(s), consciously employ the best chronology for the story, and so on. For the writers of most genres, this would be enough balls to have in the air.

And then there is fantasy. The very connotation of that word holds infinite worlds, limited only by the imagination of the author. Think of the worlds wrought by J.R.R. Tolkien or J. K. Rowling. Middlearth and Hogwarts are but singular side trips to the vast realms. What this means for the fantasy writer is that work unique to this genre is mastery of “world building.” The fantasy writer builds up the world the story takes place in from the ground up. But it is much more than simply imagining a different landscape.

A proper world built from scratch needs a full history, spanning not only centuries but millennia. Does your world have magic? If so, what are the rules? In most fantasies, there are often consequences for using magic, and it is not always simply done. What kind of technology does your world have? Has gun powder been invented? What metals are used? What are the social customs, forms of greeting, clothing fashions? What is taboo in your world, the rituals around death? What religion or gods are believed? Do the gods themselves appear? What forms of government are followed, the politics? What are the curses people use? (This can be a surprisingly interesting question, as the answer can incorporate religious beliefs and speaking what is forbidden.)  This is only the short list of questions that need to be answered as the fantasy world gets built.

Is it surprising to say that many a writer has gotten lost in world building and forgotten that they started out telling a story?  The successful fantasy writer uses world building to advance the story and develop character and not make it an end to itself.

I would argue that the non-fantasy writer also must successful world build. A realistic story set in the Minneapolis of right now has to consciously put that world on the page. Many writers neglect this, and weak writing results. Perhaps what sets fantasy writers apart from writers of other genres is that we take nothing for granted.

Another aspect perhaps unique to fantasy writing is that most stories in one way or another tell the Hero’s journey. In my classes on writing fantasy, I have described the Hero’s journey like this:

The all purpose hero is someone set apart from ordinary humanity through miraculous birth or other special qualities, and undergoes a test in the form of a quest or journey. The quest takes the hero out of the ordinary sphere of human life, often into a new land where different rules apply. Passing through a series of challenges, the hero is helped in the quest by the magic or wisdom of some, and hindered by others. Although the quest seems difficult, when the end is achieved, the challenge is resolved with surprising ease. The hero acquires a boon – something valued, such as new knowledge – which he or she brings back to the human community for its benefit.

You can find examples of this hero template in Mesopotamia’s Gilgamesh, the Finnish epic Kalevala, the Lord of the Rings, and even Star Wars (the original trilogy). Throughout the history of humanity we have always seemed to have a need for a hero. It could even be said that each one of us is the hero in our own personal story.

I am right now finishing the first novel of a fantasy series. Because I am writing for a young audience, I have been conscious of one other aspect that writers of children literature attend to – as if there wasn’t enough to think about already. Much of children’s literature investigate the idea of justice. As Dickens’ Pip put it, “[i]n the little world in which children have their existence there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt, as injustice.” Whether it is rebellion against an injustice, or a goal to set things right, social justice is the flame that ignites the story, and turns what began as mere characters into heroes.

--Michael Kiesow Moore

Michael Kiesow Moore is an award-winning writer of fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction. His work has appeared in several books and journals, including Among the Leaves: Queer Male Poets on the Midwestern Experience, Water~Stone Review, Talking Stick, Evergreen Chronicles, The James White Review, and A Loving Testimony: Losing Loved Ones Lost to AIDS. His awards have included a Minnesota State Arts Board fellowship, a Loft Mentor Series Award, and poetry nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He has taught creative writing at the Loft Literary Center and curates the Birchbark Books Reading Series at the Birchbark Bookstore. For more information visit www.michaelkiesowmoore.com.

The Yellow Dress

I inherited the yellow dress from my mom, probably because after the fourth pregnancy, she could no longer fit into it, or maybe she just thought it would look cute on me. It was made of a soft, sheer cotton with white rick-rack on the sleeveless arm holes and hem and the waist was cinched with a cloth belt. I was about twelve when it was hung in my closet for wearing to church.

When I heard the news that my uncle had died, my instant reaction was to rebel against attending his funeral. I announced that I would not go. I didn’t want to be in a room full of weeping relatives. I don’t believe in funerals, I protested. You either love someone while they are alive or you don’t. I didn’t feel close to my dad’s large family and I couldn’t imagine my uncle any other way than handsome, funny and charming. He had the same black wavy hair and blue eyes as my dad but he wasn’t married nor did he he have children of his own. He made all of us feel special. In fact, out of all the aunts, uncles and cousins on my dad’s side, he was the only relative I liked. The Brown family was made up of hard-working, beer drinking, gossiping German blue collar workers and Grandpa was a drunk. He always smelled like beer and being next to him made me feel sick. I was an intellectual bohemian artist with my nose in a book and my head in the clouds. Uncle Tom had made me feel comfortable in an acutely uncomfortable situation. I thought to have a funeral was the wrong way to honor his passing but I didn’t have the concept of “celebration of life” at that time. It was my first encounter with death and my response was to refuse. The refusal was a facade to hide my shock and sorrow.

I argued and tried to resist but my parents insisted that I show my respect and accompany them. There was no way that they were going to let me stay home while they all went to the funeral. It was unthinkable.  I knew the casket was to be closed due to way the body had been damaged in the car accident. This fact was another reason I thought a memorial was stupid. You couldn’t even view his body, anyway, he was no longer there. If I had to go, though, I would wear the yellow dress.

My parents were trying to get my three siblings dressed and ready and didn’t have time or energy to fight with me any longer. I can’t remember their reaction but I wore that dress to the funeral. I don’t remember anything about the service or the gathering afterwards, although I’m sure there was one, with plenty of beer. The only thing I remember is that I knew Uncle Tom could see me in that light-reflecting yellow dress. I knew it would make him smile. I knew I would never wear black to a memorial if I could help it. I would go as myself, my dynamic, feisty, alive self.  

Pasa doble

Did he love me more than anyone else? Didn’t he ask me to stay? But he didn’t beg me to stay. In fact, he was both sad and relieved when I decided it was time to go. And so was I. Admit it, we were in over our heads, partners in an unreal pasa doble. Not able to dance to our own beat and yet out of sync. I was in love with the impossible and the hope of home coming dissolved the further out to sea he swam. It was the alcohol, finally, that did it in. At first it made everything shining, a patina of transcendence. To sit at the restaurant drinking mojitos while the Buena Vista Social Club CD played, watching the blue sea fill the horizon. Suddenly a deluge, a tropical storm, dumped its water, churning up the bay, invisible in the wall of rain in front of us. Thank goodness we were safe under the roof. No windows, just an open room and the loud violence of that outpouring of water, the echo that roared from all sides. How we laughed! His latest partner stared at us, puzzled by the innuendos and the bark and dip and the sudden locking of our eyes in understanding. No one else knew what we had been through. We wanted to draw blood. There were secrets between us. It was impossible to let go. We were bound soul to soul. And so I had to leave, to extricate myself because the behavior had degenerated from silly cocktail happy hour to so many martinis the devil came into him. A threatening malevolent presence. He could be mean. He was still flirtatious with whoever was sitting with him (sometimes it was me!) but he would turn, at the last minute, and venom would spew out. Would we make it home safely? Would he be able to handle the creeps who came out of the woodwork sniffing at his pockets? Oh, the pretense of money, of being wealthy, of success! It turned out later that he was more vulnerable than he realized. That was my cue. But I had already drifted away, began my journey back to sanity and safety. The leap had unfurled my pain to a deeper dimension where healing could begin or I would drown. Finding my way back from the underworld, connecting back to life and family, getting home without his presence to distract me.

Dancing solitaire. Dancing without a net.

excerpt from Feisty Women

This summer I promised myself that I would scan the complete manuscript of my novel Feisty Women as it had been written on a word processor and not on a computer. I am about half way through. My goal is to send out query letters to agents and editors and yet, every day, time zips by and it hasn't been done. Teaching, coordinating the youth program at church, fb and emails, submitting grant proposals, editing an anthology....all these things must get done and by late afternoon, I am tired of the screen. I have no excuses. I always admonish the participants in my writing classes that time can be and must be found if progress is to be made. I share the story of writing another novel in 15 minutes a day while employed as a nanny. Take my own advice! Here is the first chapter of a novel I feel is a parable of what is possible. An elderly woman takes in a younger woman and eventually her home is filled with people of all ages. Her insights as her relationships grow enable her to recognize her failings with her own children. Take a read at this preview and let me know what you think....

Feisty Women

By Wendy Brown-Baez

Chapter One: Dreaming

   

      Every day I watched from my window.  Before I knew who they were, I watched them walk by in the street, women who walked past my window almost daily.  I noticed their beauty, their grace, their youthful stride. Not that they were more beautiful than other women. It was something else, a purposefulness that was also full of tenderness. I wanted to meet them and yet felt afraid, ashamed almost.

     In contrast to their youth and loveliness, I was old and ugly. My skin dried and blotched with age marks, warts, skin tags and the dried salt of tears. My thin hair wispy on my shrunken head made my ears stand out like flaps. My bony hands and shoulders and pouches under my eyes. My fragility compared to their vitality. My thin body could no longer support me in the dance of life was carrying me inevitably toward the dance of death.

     Those girls, those women walked--no, strode, danced, trotted, almost flew through the streams of people, the sunlight glancing off their jewelry like sparkling fireworks going off before my eyes. Those girls, those women--who still had firm breasts and rounded hips, thighs rippling in jeans, hearty feet in boots, and brilliantly colored scarves! Those women bedazzled me, in my brief glimpse into their world as they passed by my window, tugging along a small straggling child, yanking sharply the leash of a furry dog, carrying sacks of groceries, shaking their heads, smiling at no one in particular, pleased with themselves, pleased with life. And I, old, ugly, misshapen, strapped into this horrible stiff metal and leather contraption with wheels, hands uselessly folded in my lap, eyes dimming and limbs stiffening, rejoiced in their beauty. I was not jealous. I yearned to reach out and caress them as you would an inspiring work of art. I did not know their names yet, so I gave them names: Passion, Grace, Faith and Delight. I yearned to speak with them, to hear the music of their voices, to enfold them in the peaceful harmony of the measured tread of time.

    How could I know it was my longing to be heart to speak aloud the multitude of memories that swelled up in me day by day, swelled unspoken and unheard, memories, stories, treasures of a long-lived life. I yearned to invite them in to my own small fragile world. "A cup of tea?" I would ask. "Or do you girls drink coffee? Cookies? Chocolate chip or ginger snaps? My teeth are too brittle for them. I bought them for you. They used to be my favorite. Or perhaps the pumpkin bread or the strawberry tarts would be better." Not the same as homemade. I used to bake quite well but these would have to be fetched from the bakery...

     And so my mind would ramble on, dozing in my chair by the window, dreaming of tea parties, and laughter and friendship.

      A light touch on my shoulder. "Mrs. L Mrs. L." It was Felicia, the paid care-taker, 2-9 shift. Her brown plump face was expressionless, impassive as she wheeled me around to a small card table set for two, the long formal dining room unused for many years. Sometimes we ate in the kitchen, but too often it reminded me of my inability to cook or bake, which I had loved to do. The joy of braiding the challah every Friday night and baking sweet cakes and pastries. I wondered if Felicia was worried about her husband again. He beat her sometimes, I knew. Even for a blurry eyed old woman, I could see the bruises. On those days, she was unusually quiet, brooding perhaps about leaving him. Or him leaving her. I did not know, she didn't confide in me. Our relationship was strictly business.

     “What’s for dinner?' I croaked, my voice harsh from disuse. I shuddered to hear myself asking the same inane question every night.

     “Chicken breasts and mashed potatoes, Mrs. L," Felicia explained, carefully spooning the gravy liberally to drown what I assumed would be instant mashed potatoes again. I sighed, remembering baked potatoes, fried potatoes with meat, french fries crisp and hot, potato latkes, and I longed to say to her, ”You lazy girl! Do you give your family instant potatoes?" But I knew it was hard for her. She had kids and an unruly husband and she didn't need to be scolded by me over the potatoes. So I bowed my head to say Grace.

     I insisted on saying Grace always. If you're not grateful, you don't deserve to eat.

     Felicia cheered up and started to chatter to me. She was usually cheerful and pretty friendly, just a bit stupid and cowed under by men and the system of things, poverty and lack of education. I liked to hear the sound of her Spanish accent. I wished my brain was young and flexible again and she could teach me Spanish. But I didn't grow up around Spanish speaking people and none of it sticks with me.

     My mind wandered from dinner to my window watching that afternoon, before I dozed off. I saw “Faith" today, looking more serious than usual, her face turned to the ground, hands deep in her coat pockets. It was a wool coat, I believe. A navy wool coat or was it brown? And a bright red scarf under all that long hair. Faith looked sad, Faith needed a friend.

     "Mrs. L-desert tonight? I make tapioca, just the way you like it'"

     Felicia used that voice that meant I was a stupid old lady lost in a dream world. I glared at her, but she was already standing up to gather up the plates and silverware. But I did love the way she made tapioca, whipping the egg whites and serving it with fruit and whipped cream. I forgave her the potatoes.

     "Yes, Felicia, I would love some." Somehow my tone was always formal, although this woman must undress me and dress me in my pajamas, help me on and off the toilet, hear unladylike burps and farts. By nine, when she was ready to go, I was in bed.

     The longest shift, the night shift, came in quietly. Natalie was a quiet person, her presence comforting when I was sleepy and annoying when I was wakeful. Every night she read to me. She spent the most hours in my home, but paid me the least amount of attention except when I was sleepless and restless. She calmed me with hot tea, foot rubs, and sometimes songs.

     Some nights I longed for a ride through the park on a horse carriage, like my husband and I did every summer on our anniversary. Or to go out on the town, passing lighted bars and cafes where the sounds of laughter and music and smells of liquor and smoke wafted through the door when someone came out. When we arrived at our favorite place to dance, The Silver Moon, we found it filled with women in brilliant evening gowns and men in dark suits and bow ties. The sounds of glasses clinking and laughter flowed around the band playing a rhumba while couples moved on the smoothly polished circular floor. We took our places among them, graceful and sure of ourselves.

     Sometimes my body felt like a straitjacket, gnarled and bony and useless. I suffered because I could no longer dance, could no longer stay awake until dawn, my husband's hand on my back with secure strength to lead me and guide me through the crowds of friendly and sometimes flirtatious men and friendly and sometimes snide women. All that was left was a memory.

©Wendy Brown-Baez 2013

There are many forms of death by Kevin Hershey, writer in Writing Circles for Healing workshop

There are many different forms of death

 

There’s the death of the bright yellow tulips

brought to my grandmother on Easter Sunday

already browning in their vase by Tuesday.

The death she awaits, as her green eyes grow foggier

each day staring toward the ceiling, looking for the place she knows she will go next.

This will be the death of the last immigrant

death when her green eyes close

and cease to reflect the green hills and gray seas of her home

and death of the stories she might never have told us.

 

There’s death in the piles of unread newspapers by her entry

faceless, nameless, technicolor death in oil-rich nations or marathon massacres.

Death was in the brown leaves that crumpled on the grass last fall

buried beneath a blanket of snow

only to resurface this spring, wet.

There was the death of that deer on Highway 61

who dashed out of the woods

and now she’s crawling with flies.

Hundreds of deaths all over the windshield

smudges obliterated by sprinkling skies

above the lakes next to the road.

Sometimes we call death

passing or crossing over or moving on

when it’s really just death

but sometimes it isn’t death at all

 

My hair was already dead

when it fell off my head

as chemotherapy caused the death of me from the inside out

a million little deaths in my cells that I could not even imagine

The backyard compost was full of death

when I scattered it with black shiny locks

greening orange peels,

the slimy pieces of onions we carelessly discarded,

old autumn leaves,

coffee grounds from many mornings ago.

My dead hair mixed with our dead waste.

It made a bed for next year’s tulips.        

Kevin Hershey returned to his hometown of St. Paul after completing college last year. Currently, his life is dedicated to full-time soul searching.

There's the Light (Writing Circles for Healing workshop participant)

                                        There's the Light from My Grandbaby

                  There's the light from her smile that greets me each time she enters the room.

                  The light of morning that moves on her face like invisible eyes blinking.

                  The light from her eyes as blue as the ribbon tied in a bow around her white face.

                  There's the light from her laugh that makes me a child after she wails and cries then

                  stops as if she was saying, I fooled you again.

                  There's the light from Van Gogh and Cezanne so perfectly arranged it moves my

                  blood to boil in my heart and sends little bubbles up my spine                                                                                                

                  and stimulates my mind for creations that I create.

                  The light from the moon that spreads in holy halos from its edge.

                  There's the light vanilla smell that emanates from her cheek against mine as we 

                  wrestle for the toys. 

                  There's the heat within the sun like the heat from her hands as she hugs my neck.

                  

                  There's the light through the shattered windshield after the wreck.

                  The light of winter’s skies, gray and still as the casket’s canopy.

                  There's the light reflections off my broom faced wrinkles as they gather as my mind

                  grows old and holes perforate my brain and block the memories of her.

                  There's the red light from a cat’s eye the in middle of the night Edgar Allen Poe.

                   There's the absence of light below the earth where the bugs and spiders clean the bones.

                   There's the empty light without her, without god, without soul, just an animal waiting for death.

                   There's the holy light of belief that relieves me as I lay down for my last sleep.

                Also, there's the light of god seen through the tunnel 
 that beckons me to her and to heaven 
 and to all my missing relatives and friends 

 that fly together on wings

 of wind to a better dimension of time and space.

Mark's statement: In '98 I contracted a serious case of colon cancer so I moved back here to be with my family.  After many months of treatment, the cancer went into remission; there has not been any since. In 2001 I was accidentally shot with a large caliber rifle and spent  months in the hospital near death many times. It has taken me 50 operations and 7 to 8 years pulling myself back together fighting chronic pain and infections. It is a story in itself of fighting through physical and mental trauma. I was always an artist ever since I was 5 or 6 when my brother and I started to draw to escape an alcoholic father and poverty.  I was always the best artist in the class and was chosen to do murals and art projects for the class. Through the years I've spent my time painting and writing poetry and short stories

 Mark East was a participant in Writing Circles for Healing presented by Wendy Brown-Baez and held at the Wellstone Center in St Paul. Wendy Brown-Báez is a fiscal year 2012 recipient of an Artist Initiative grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. This activity is funded, in part, by the Minnesota State Legislature from the State’s art and cultural heritage fund with money from the vote of the  people of Minnesota on Nov, 4, 2008