Dear Reader,

Hola from Spain! I’m here visiting Simone (my daughter), who’s studying abroad in Granada. Eric and Gabriel will join us tomorrow, but I came early to see Simone and also have a little writing retreat for myself.

It’s been a nice respite in many ways, and it's been nice to step outside of the nonstop news cycle of the US. That said, I’m also watching from a distance...the release of the Epstein files (as a sexual abuse survivor, I'm particularly interested), state violence, resistance, regeneration–these are ongoing stories, as are the stories of storms, mycelium, bees.

How will we participate? What larger stories are we part of and what are our own unfolding life stories?

As we approach Black Friday and are inundated with messages to consume, buy, get things cheap (is this our true American holiday?), what if we ask instead, what do we really want?

I thought I'd share two poems—one by Rumi and one of my own. I hope these poems speak to you; I have a few prompts for you at the end :)

Don’t Go Back To Sleep

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you
Don’t go back to sleep!

You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep!

People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.

The door is round and open
Don’t go back to sleep!

–by Rumi, trans. by Coleman Barks

Power

I turn the questions over and over
when I cannot sleep,
when my mind will not turn off.

The waters of the ocean creep up the shore.
The temperature slides up
half a degree, then more.

The high glacial shelf in the arctic
breaks off.
What is it that I want?

At my daughter’s camp,
at night when it’s hot,
in the dark, the girls take off

their clothes at the docks
at the lip of the lake
for “special swimming.”

I want to take off my clothes
for special writing
in a dark that is soft

in the water that will hold
me, my body still a girl’s
with the whole world

before me, opening in song,
the words not yet written
on the page: O:

letter by letter, as the oil,
drop by drop, is coaxed
from the earth, is held

Together, broken apart, taken
into the guts of fish, their
cells, our mouths, our milk—

Dare we ask for what we really want?

—by Nadia Colburn from I Say the Sky​

Writing can be one way to ask those questions of meaning, a way to see under the surface and beyond the veil of forgetfulness.

In my last email, I wrote about the art of revision; this act of revising or re-seeing is so crucial not only to our writing but also to our living. And it is something we do all the time: see where we are, accept reality, and shift our orientation and direction forward.

Writing prompts:

1. In what way are you on a threshold/ in a period of transition?
2. What do you want? Write down what comes to mind without judgment.
3. Take a moment to feel your desires. Sit with them. Are there other deeper desires under them? Stay with them.
4. What can you do that is in your control? We can’t create world peace individually, but how can you be part of the sensation, the energy, the movement that you want?
5. Celebrate at least one thing that you are doing in your life now that makes you feel awake–even if that awakeness contains some discomfort. Write about it. Use specifics. Try to use as many of your senses in your description as you can.

Let me know if this sparks anything for you! I love to hear from you.

I'll write next week with a Thanksgiving offering :)

I hope you have a good weekend!

with love,
Nadia