In The Garden Living an RPG Life

With One Thread is the name of my Etsy shop.  There’s nothing there at the moment. The name is all there is of an idea that came from the devastation of 9/11.  I wanted to know, for myself, what it was that I could do to heal the world.  It came to me that the women of the world at risk might be empowered through their ability to process cloth. The idea of the fabric trade comes from the ancient Silk Road. It also comes from hearing an article about someone I like a lot–Kaffe Fasset–who was commissioned by an organization to license his designs to a Third World women’s community.  His designs were to be used in their work and sold to create a viable economic practice.
I wanted to be him, to be someone whose work of the mind would be such that others might find empowerment.

This is the source of my novels’ world. Yes, my novels’ world is also the world I created for playing my Dungeons and Dragons characters. The nature of the breach that 9/11 created in my heart needed more than just a game.  It needed some kind of personal commitment.  I didn’t then and don’t think now that I can serve with my best as I am now.  While I could teach English with the best of the others who volunteer for the Peace Corps (my model for world service), I don’t think that is what I am best suited for.  No, I don’t know what else I can do better.  However, it came to me that the world I want to create as my own reality, the world of fiber, is the world serves the women of the world best.

Writing this now seems to have lost it’s power, somehow.  I don’t think that I have failed my intention, or that I have failed in my intention to serve.  I firmly believe that, given some other impressions and coincidences, that I have only begun the true Adventure of Service.  This last novel presents definitions and suggestions that, without the direction of a world service of fiber, would not feel so powerful.  There is something deeper that wants to speak through my intent, my focus.  I am willing to let it come out; I am willing to be dissatisfied with the appearance of my ordinary life in order for the extraordinary to seep through.

I don’t know what the outcome of The Falyns and its inspirations will be.  I am willing to risk certainty in order to discover the power of the bigger picture, the design that creates opportunities for all.

I am listening to the latest season of Cast-On, the knitting podcast.  It’s referring to the post WWII world of Make Do and Mend .  It’s the closest we have–we of the post 9/11 century–to understanding what to do with what happened.  What do we do now?  How do we go on?

By “we” I don’t really know who I mean.  I identify with creative people.  With knitters and makers and hackers of all descriptions.  I identify with the Rogue archetype, the persona that believes the rules of ordinary life do not apply.  I am the one who steals your ideas and transforms them to serve The Greater Good.

So, With One Thread,  what mischief might I achieve? What might be achieved at all?

So writing poems is not the same as posting poems.  I ‘ve got the whole month done.

They are in my journal.

OH.  And I was wrong about American Sentences being 27 syllables. They are 17, just like Haiku.  I’ve had the priviledge of trying to explain the concept to a couple of people lately.  Need to brush up on what I know for sure and what I think I know.  Having certainty in both would be helpful and build confidence.

Meanwhile, I’m back on Second Life on Saturdays leading the Global Healing Circle. That means creating more Heart Meditations.  I am thinking of publishing them in one form or another.  I like the sound of my own voice (in a non-ego kinda way) and doing a set of recordings might be nice.

Writing down my ideas for a set of stories about shamanic kids.  Thought of the idea a long time ago when I was reading more about Navajo and Hopi legends.  It was meeting Kahu and Brun in Second Life and Kuel on Huna Trainer that inspired me to finally put the idea into words.  I could see them in their adult struggles to be like children still.  Struggles with the shamanic things, anyway.  I’m having fun thinking of how to bring the world to life.  I don’t think of them as children’s stories, by the way.  Just stories about children.  I’m looking forward to seeing how they all come out.  I did a recording of the draft of the first one and like what I’ve heard.  Too much information in it, though.

I’m taking an online writing course–Holly Lisle’s “How to Think Sideways” and the lessons I’ve got through so far are really cool!  I like how she thinks and what she’s focusing on.  Since I am coaching a couple of other people in their writing endeavors, it’s nice to have someone coaching me.

Well, this is family weekend and it’s time to pay attention and visit!

Stripes of rain

make empty

streets cozy;

drench trees so

they bow and

tickle snails;

make puddles

and me a

rain dancer.

When I was writing on Huna Trainer regularly, a few of us started writing three-word comments.  It was so much fun that I decided (as a good logarrheatician would) that the three words could be cubed into three lines of three words each.  Well, today I thought I was doing the original “cubes” but realized I was focused on syllables instead.  And then I realized that three sets of nine syllables made an American Sentence.  So, you can read it either way:  As three cubes or as one American Sentence.

Green rain drips

from branches

from rooflines

from grey skies

into sun-warmed streets I’m not walking on.

Tonight there is a news story about the finding of a small girl who has been missing for a while.  When I heard the news story earlier today, I knew that the suitcase found contained the body of the girl.  It is not a good feeling to have this image in my heart.  I do not know how to process this event into a reality that requires the pursuit of happiness as a measure of the quality of ones life.  How is her full life the pursuit of her own happiness?  Who is happy now?  She was eight years old.

I don’t often allow my heart to be swept away by the emotions of outside events.   This intent to write poetry, to allow my feelings to drive the quality of my life, to determine what my attention is focused on, has created a difficult dilemma.  Do I commit to the feeling?  Or do I succumb to the media and the community?  These are concepts that I do not usuially consider when I write, when I focus on a topic.  What happens now?

It is dark here

A body found

A small girl trapped in a suitcase.

What travelling has she

agreed to?

adventured to?

It is not for me to give her life a story.

When we hear the story

of happiness and judge

that we are not choosing this path

what other choices do we have?

The villian chooses control.

The hero chooses fearlessness.

What does a child choose?

(For Roachie - Mae V. Cowdery)

A brown aesthete writhes under the glareof historical texts.

No Poe.  No Keats.  No Cullen or du Bois.

Only soaring into paths not travelled across galaxies

Light years to go before sleep

What did it matter that Death kept its eyes on my skin

its hands on my heart.

You had gone first.

I was an unknown shadow on your horizon.

Only now do our separate events approach each other.

Startled by a comma,

a sudden intake of breath

becomes a public endeavor

to explain the presence

of god in the voice.

It’s ridiculous to think

that writing is hard work.

After all, there is nothing

one can do but put down

neural nets and

chemical pulses across

gaps of memory.

Nothing to it.

Cutting through the strings

hearts untwine.

Alone, we are not ourselves anymore.

Wrapping up the book

pages unfurl.

Bound, our stories tell themselves.

My niece is participating in National Poetry Writing Month, an event sponsored by Poets.org and the Academy of American Poets.  Seems like a good plan to get me back into gear.  I’ve had some interesting revelations in the last week that have left me needing a mental rest.  Perhaps this is the way to go.

It’s not like I don’t have other writing to do, though.  Have an assignment for my technical writing class that I only have general notes for and it’s due on Sunday.  I’ve left things till the last all semester long, so I don’t see why I should rush and get things done, what–early? On time?  Who is to say when that really is?

No, not justifying my writing behavior.  Just wondering where in the timestream I am sailing.  ReadWritePoem.org is pledging to provide prompts for the month’s activities.  I’m liking the first one which requires using terms from different disciplines.  This could be the extra push I need to even think about the paper: a technical description of a transistor.  Part of my block is that I am not naturally that linear.  I don’t usually even think of things completely, relying instead on general impressions.  When I do focus, I find myself using metaphor as a kind of placeholder for the reality.

Even considering doing this project, I realize that this could be just what I need.  Dual focus. It’s what English teachers suggest to help one through reading texts: double entry.  On one side of the page you write notes from the text.  On the other side of the page you write whatever occurs to you.  The idea is that both streams come together in a final understanding of the piece.

Poem 1
Taking down the apples,

leaves pressed against palms

scented blanket of season’s memories.

Her softly dried skin held that scent,

that touch,

that sun dappled pressing of palms against bodies.