The Things That Come In Threes

1) I fear driving at night. Sweaty palms, racing heart, clenched stomach fear. I'm not a fan of driving in general; how I managed four years as a study abroad road warrior cruising the freeways of northern and southern California, Colorado, Washington, Arizona and several states that start with an "I" in search of institutions of higher education - all in the days before GPS and the Mapquest Lady - baffles me. Who was that intrepid chick in the rented Ford Focus, clutching printed Google driving directions to the steering wheel, hopping across the Bay Bridge en route from the Academy of Art in San Francisco to Cal-Berkeley? That's right. Yo. Screwing my courage to the sticking place, I registered for an evening information session about an MFA in Creative Writing offered by a local university. It was the last session before the early February application due date. The session was held way the crap north of Seattle, in the suburban hinterlands beyond the tip of Lake Washington. At night. You got that part, right? Rain showers. I gave myself an hour to get there. I'd planned for rush hour traffic, but silly me, I forget that Seattle drivers are touchingly unaccustomed to driving in the rain. Because, you know, it's such a RARE occurrence here. I also hadn't planned for the thirty-seven Metro buses which apparently had the same destination as mine. The drivers took great glee in pulling out in front of me at every opportunity, then stopping. The confused and snotty Mapquest Babe took equal pleasure in shouting from my iPhone: "Make a slight left onto Lake City Boulevard. NOW!" I could hear the smirk in her voice as she occasionally muttered "Recalculating." Ironic Bitch.

I don't do "Late." Teutonic blood runs thick in my veins. I do "Early" and "Stinkeye at people who can't organize themselves to be on time, the fools." By the time my trembling hands turned the steering wheel into a parking space, I was fifteen minutes into stinkeye territory. Then I realized I had the correct general location, but the wrong end. Back into the car, I flipped a U-turn (and a finger at Mapquest Bimbo), found where I thought I should be, had a minute of indecision whether to pay for parking, got the parking spot number wrong (it was dark, it was raining), finally got the pass attached to my window... Christ, I am so late. Then I pulled a Quasimodo limp-run up a hill and three flights of stairs. Did I mention I'd run a half-marathon on Sunday, in total pain, on a bum right leg? No? Well, it hurts to walk. Hurrying brings tears. At this point it was closing in on 30 minutes past the hour. Perhaps there would be enough people there that if I did happen to apply to the program, my crashingly late entrance wouldn't be remembered.

Two women were seated at the tables arranged in a square in the large art studio: the academic director of the MFA and the program's administrative manager. Just waiting. On me.

Forty-five minutes later I floated out of the building while visions of sugar-plum seminars and symposia danced in my head. The drive home was peaceful; I sang along to The Head and the Heart. I knew my route home, so I muffled the Mapquest Wench. Even the rain eased to a sparkling mizzle.

In the cold light of the following day I knew the whole proposition was folly. What the heck would I do with an MFA? Provided I could pay the tuition. Provided I had more than a snowball's chance in hell of being admitted.

2) I swam that afternoon. Sitting in the parking lot of the Queen Anne Aquatic Center, smelling like chlorine and hair conditioner, I checked e-mail. There, in the little inbox displayed on my phone's screen, was a subject line which read "Your fiction submission."  Great. Rejection. Bring it on. I'm curating a personal collection.

The opening word of the message's body was "Congratulations." People. Who needs the winning Powerball Lottery ticket when they have a publication acceptance from a national literary magazine?  I write because I don't know what else to do with stories that press at my heart. But I submit my writing because I believe as Priscilla Long does: the story is not finished until you have attempted to share it with the world.

3) Saturday I attended the semi-annual Write-O-Rama at Seattle's Richard Hugo House. This is a day-long series of writing workshops with super-serious writerly themes like Genre Variant: Essays & Found Material and less serious but equally compelling topics such as Build a Killer Author Platform. You listen, discuss and write in hour-long blasts that challenge, engage, terrify and inspire. Most sessions have one or several periods when attendees write to a prompt(s) and opportunities to read their work to the class. This was my fourth Write-O-Rama in two years and I think I might be getting somewhere with output and courage.

I have never written easily on demand. I freeze, my mind a sheet as white as my face. Spontaneity is not my strong suit. Remember that Teutonic blood? Deliberative, thy name is Julie. Yet, because I'm now in the habit of timed, non-stop writing every morning on my manuscript, either freely - to work on a scene, or to a prompt  - to generate new material, I found the challenge of writing in the fast and furious atmosphere of Write-O-Rama playful instead of Purgatory. I could write without lifting my pen to stare into space or to run a thick line through the drivel I'd just penned. No, I wrote with confidence and purpose, accepting the silliness and magic that is birthed in the pressure cooker of a group write. I even sucked it up and read a few pieces aloud. I'm sure my voice trembled and my face flushed, but who cares? My street cred was tucked away in my bag, on my phone, where an e-mail read "Congratulations."

That MFA? The classes are held at night.

The Things That Come In Threes.

Do I have to Carpe Diem today?

Go on - take at your Pinterest board, at the magnets on your fridge, at the coffee mugs replicating like rabbits in your cupboard: I reckon there is at least one version of Carpe Diem in the lot. Scattered about in forms tangible and virtual are quotes admonishing you to live life to fullest, every day, for you never know when it may be your last. Me? I've got Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever ~ Mahatma Gandhi tacked to a bulletin board; scribbled on the inside cover of my writing practice notebook is Begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life ~ Seneca. But sometimes, no - most of the time - that's just more ambition than I'm capable of sustaining. In my mind, I'm the high achiever who plans to climb Kilimanjaro and pursue an MFA and march on Washington in favor of stricter gun access laws. But in practice, I'm made of simpler stuff. The thought of living at full throttle wears me out. It makes me a little sad. Maybe I will die tomorrow, but today the laundry needs folding, the car insurance is due, I'm fretting about work, my weight, my 401k. Does a life more ordinary mean a life less lived?

And hey, didn't Nero force Seneca to commit suicide? Maybe our favorite Roman Stoic jumped the shark with his pithy advice.

There are times -  usually accompanied by a quiet peace or a ripple of endorphins - that my quotidian experience achieves a Technicolor apex. These are not epic events, but simple episodes when I focus my awareness within the moment at hand. It is wrapping a cane around a fruiting wire in a Waipara Valley vineyard with the sun warming my scalp and the Southern Alps throwing shadows across the afternoon; it is mile four of a long run, when my legs finally discover their rhythm; it is the sizzle in the pan and the swirl of aromas as minced onions and butter meet as I create art for the belly and the soul; it is conversing in French without searching for the correct verb tense; it is losing myself in laughter with a friend; it is that wrung out  and hung out feeling after a good day of writing, knowing that I moved aside and allowed the characters find their way.

Nothing monumental, just a sense of doing and being as I'm meant to at that moment.

I also know when I'm at far remove from these interludes, when I'm removed from myself. My friend Will, lighting yet another of those cigarettes that eventually killed him, would drawl in his South Carolina-thick French, "Julie, j'ai le cafard. J'ai le blues."  He would confess his melancholy when work was getting him down. I knew he dreamed of opening an antiques store on the Maryland coast; he lived long enough to realize that dream. Not as long as he should have, but he had his moment.

My blues - that cafard, that cockroach of ennui - come when I spend my time and energy on things which are necessary but not fulfilling. Or on things which are unnecessary, but pleasantly distracting. In both instances, I turn away from that which makes me feel challenged and complete, either because I must - the car insurance has to be paid, yes, it does - or because I am too afraid or too lazy to leave behind the easy affirmation and pursue a lonelier path.

But I can't Carpe Diem every single bloody day, can I?

No, but I can beat back the encroaching cafard which refuses to die. I can start every single day on the page.

I've struggled with the words these past weeks. I've resisted, procrastinated, meandered, despaired, dilly-dallied, denied, tarried, equivocated, prevaricated. I've been very busy doing everything but what I most want to. I'm not sure entirely why this is - it's not writer's block, unless one counts blocking one's own way with dilatory tactics and self-doubt. However I knocked myself so far out of my groove, I'm working, slowly, to knock myself back in.

I hit a manuscript milestone a couple of weeks ago: 50, 000 words. That felt like something. I'm now filling in scenes that were half-starts, completing characters' stories; I'm even thinking, 50,000 words in, that an outline might come in handy. I realized at 50k that my rough draft goal of 78,000 words was too modest, so I upped it. Perhaps I can put off that outline for another 10k or so.

I'm further along than I thought I would be at this point. But I can't shake the feeling that I'm losing ground, that I keep waiting for life to be just a bit more conducive to my creativity before committing wholly to my story again. I know the answer to that. I know my story is just waiting for me to return.

Here's a William Saroyan favorite to end with a little platitudinal dissonance:

“Try as much as possible to be wholly alive, with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell and when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough.”

Most days, I think the best I can do is try to be alive, with a smidgen extra: to laugh and to move, to listen and to look outside of myself. And to write.

Not All Who Wander Are Lost*

“Travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living.” – Miriam Beard

There was never a question that the celebration of our 20th wedding anniversary would involve passports. It was just a matter of where. I recall having plans to celebrate our 15th in Greece, but we found ourselves living in New Zealand that year, so we traded in visions of the cobalt Mediterranean for the reality of the cerulean Pacific. Not a bad deal. Greece is back on the table for our 25th. Italy sat at the tippy-top of the list for a long while. I've travelled it knee to toe; Brendan and I have been to the Veneto and Trentino together. But there is so much we want to do in Italy, we couldn't decide where to start. Italy got reshuffled back into the deck.

Southeast Asia was mentioned. Enchanted by Cambodia and Vietnam during his stay in 2005 as a Fulbright Teacher-Scholar, Brendan can't wait to return with me and I can't wait to go. But it requires more preparation and planning than we have energy for right now. Then there's that walking and whisky tour of Scotland we've mapped out, with a long weekend in Iceland on the way over. Maritime Canada. Mongolia. I've been after South Africa for some time now and I've just about got Brendan convinced, but not in time for this year.

At some point in early spring we realized we were over-thinking the whole program. If you know us, you know we'd pick up sticks tomorrow and move (back) to France. France forms the foundation of our dreams. It is where we both entered adulthood, Brendan working at a family-run vineyard and Cognac distillery the year after he graduated the University of Oregon, I studying at the University of Savoie. It is the reason we met, a shared struggle over Proust in Advanced French Literature. Brendan was completing his teaching certificate at the same university where I was finishing a double major after a year studying in Chambèry and a summer teaching in Japan. We've returned to France several times over the years, mostly together, on occasion alone.

When we moved to Seattle from New Zealand, we did not resume our former careers as a high school teacher (Brendan) and study abroad program manager (me). This meant no more summers off for Brendan and the drying up of my frequent flyer mileage account. We determined that for the next few years, given the demands of our jobs that zap time and energy for complicated journeys, we'd limit our travel to the one place we know we love, where every visit solidifies our desire to make a life there, someday: France. It is travel with a strategy. We keep up our language skills and culture specific know-how while scoping out long-term possibilities (I'm talking retirement here, people, nothing like a little 20 year vision). We visit a new region each time, staying in one place to really learn it, then end the trip with a couple of days in Paris. We even have "our" hotel in Paris. It is never work to plan, but it's an adventure from start to finish.

This year, for our 20th, Burgundy called. We decided to base ourselves in Beaune and bike the countryside, rent a car for a long weekend hop over the German border to visit friends in Freiburg, take a few day trips by train south to Macon and Beaujolais; we'd drink and eat and bike our way through one of the most beautiful regions of France we've never seen. Done deal.

So, we're headed to Ireland. Come Wednesday, our anniversary, we'll be lacing up our hiking boots and setting stride along the Kerry Way.

It's been a year of tremendous change and turmoil. Events exhilarating and exhausting have left us with such a need for peace, reflection and a complete unplug from our current of thoughts. One afternoon as we mulled over where to pick up the rental car, which weekend to dash to Germany, if we should bypass Paris to spend a weekend in Champagne, Brendan turned to me and said, "Let's go to Ireland." In that instant, I knew. I felt immediate peace.

By just speaking the word "Ireland" aloud, I feel my heart rate slow, my shoulders relax, my jaw loosen. I envision those long, quiet hours on a trail, surrounded by every shade of green, blue, gray and gold the fields, sea and sky can offer, the clouds overhead as creamy white as the sheep that watch us as we tramp through their paddock.

This will be our fourth trip to Ireland in ten years. We do the same thing, in a different area, each time. And that thing is The Walk. We surrender all planning to the darling, generous, efficient, tremendous team at Southwest Walks Ireland. We simply arrive when and where we are told. We rest and rise the next morning to begin days and days of walking. There is a map, we have our packs, we hike hill and dale, stopping to marvel, rest, eat, talk when and where we will, trusting we will find our way each day to that night's lodging. In the evenings there is a snug B&B, a warm pub, a steaming bowl of stew, a Paddy's over ice or a pint of Guinness with a head taller than my hand is wide. There is music, there is silence. And always, every day, there is the long, long walk. 

In the early days we stick together, chatting, bubbling over all the things we haven't had time to share in the rush of days and weeks when we hardly see one another. But soon we fall silent. Words are no longer necessary when your hearts are in perfect synchronicity.

Warm beaches on remote islands or ocean liners on the high seas don't interest us. We both rest best when we are in motion - it is a mélange of play and exercise that allows us to let go of the pressures and expectations of our everyday lives and brings us back to the sweet and simple people we are at heart. Walking our way through a holiday adds a significant dose of zen - there is nothing more meditative than the motion of one foot in front of the other for hours on end. And nothing more delightful knowing you do not walk alone.

This is a bittersweet journey. We embarked on our last visit, in 2006, just a month before we moved to New Zealand. An enormous adventure blossomed before us, dreams on the cusp of being realized. Thinking of all that has happened in the intervening six years just rocks me. Starting over more times than we'd bargained for. Saying goodbye far too often - to loved ones, to babies, to dreams. It is staggering.

We shared that last hike in Ireland with two of our dearest friends, two men as in love and committed as Brendan and I could ever hope to be, who had been together at least as long as the anniversary we celebrate now. We made plans during that hike that they would join us in New Zealand when their retirements were finalized; we'd open a café, have a small farm... One of those men is gone now, taken by cancer. Even after two years, my life will never be as bright without Peter in it.

Ireland is in celebration our lives together, this amazing adventure that we've lived in the 20 years, 5 months and ten days that have passed since our first date. It is to recapture peace that we have lost in a tumultuous year. And it's to touch that fragile, tender part of the soul that needs looking after, before you set it free to dream again.

 “I soon realized that no journey carries one far unless, as it extends into the world around us, it goes an equal distance into the world within.” – Lillian Smith

*All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost. - Gandalf, "Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring" by J.R.R. Tolkien

These Are The Days

The first warm days of May set me thinking about the promise of summer. The season gets shorter as I age and each year my sense of urgency grows. I plan small adventures, vowing that this summer will be unforgettable, this summer I will feel like a child again. I look for quiet magic:  Shakespeare in the park, concerts at the zoo, swims in the lake, picnics at Shilshole. Once the gloom of June has passed, Seattle sparkles blue and green, wrapping an easy warmth around long, bright days. From the summer's true arrival in the Pacific Northwest in early July well into golden October, there are few lovelier places.  I never live up to my own expectations of summer. What becomes of those simple hopes, those picnics, concerts, Sundays at the market? What exactly did I do with my weeks that I have so few of them left and only a fog of memory behind me?

This year summer had an agenda that diverged so far from mine, we may as well have been in different hemispheres. I wake in mid-season, wishing I could press rewind on the remote control - not wanting to replay the weeks I'd lost, but to erase them and begin again, to insert a new story into the machine.

For seven weeks I've bled. From miscarriage to surgery to the first menstrual cycle since April, I live with a daily reminder of my helplessness over my body. A small fortune spent in the feminine hygiene aisle. A flood of hormones that sets my edge on edge, never certain what might set off the tears or the rage.

But now I emerge from the haze of heartbreak into the blue summer that is as soft as a worn pair of Levis. I tally the hurts, but also the triumphs. Days after my loss, I turned my heart to the page, filling the hollow space with words and finding joy in the act of creating characters and watching as their lives unfold on the page or screen before me. I may not have had the emotional energy to prepare those picnics or plan for those concerts, but I've made certain that every day I turn my face to the sun and move my limbs in the breeze. My running has never been stronger, my freestyle stroke never more fierce. Yes, I've retreated - it's my nature to pull away when I most need the comfort of others - but with a few deep breaths I'm able to reach out until it no longer feels like a chore.

And now it is August. The days of waking in the wee hours to the first dove-gray light of dawn have ended. I rise to the blue-black that will darken my early mornings until April. The afternoons are hot, but the brilliance has dimmed - our small section of Earth is tired from weeks without rain. The trees billow, but their bright leaves have faded to sun-baked green mottled with brown.

My favorite season is before me: Autumn, a time of renewal, when my energy rebounds in the cooling air. But the sky won't deepen to Grecian blue or glow with a Tuscan aura for a few weeks, yet. The evenings aren't ready to yield their velvety warmth to the freshness that heralds the season's change. Summer is resting, languid. The ice cubes in her sun tea have melted, the lemon wedge is limp, but she still tastes sweet. Let her stay, linger, for a while. I'm not quite finished - there is a little girl who wants to come outside to play.

These Are The Days ~ Van Morrison

These are the days of the endless summer These are the days, the time is now There is no past, there’s only future There’s only here, there’s only now

These are days of the endless dancing and the Long walks on the summer night These are the days of the true romancing When I’m holding you oh, so tight

These are the days now that we must savour

And we must enjoy as we can

These are the days that will last forever

You’ve got to hold them in your heart.

These Are The Days lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group

The First 10,000 Words

They are scattered about, those first ten thousand words. Cast like jacks among five chapters and thirteen scenes that make up Part One. Such as it is. As a rough outline of eight, perhaps nine, chapters and thirty or so scenes, Part One takes slow, disjointed shape. Three weeks ago I had an idea. I had two characters. I had a word count of zero. Today I have thirteen souls in various states of literary flesh (one poor guy makes his debut as a corpse, but his death is the snowball at the head of the avalanche). I have ten thousand (and ninety-one!) words. Hundreds more words live in character and setting sketches, research notes and scribbled morning writing prompts that remain to be transcribed into my Scrivener files.

I done wrote some stuff.

I have fallen to the depths of doubt - listening to the 3 a.m. demon who cackles on my shoulder, his reedy voice like the whine of a mosquito in my ear: "You know it's absolute crap, don't you?" I have flown to the heights of inspiration - lifted by the angel who tickles my ear lobe with her wings, murmuring in honeyed tones: "Just keep writing, sweetheart. Tell your story."

My process is all over the place. I am soaking up as many writing tips as I can stand, from the classics such as William Zinsser's On Writing Well to Larry Brooks's blog, StoryFix. Larry scares the crap out of me. Every time I read one of his blog posts, I shrivel inside. I can't live up to his expectations. Then I square my shoulders and dig in again.

I have planned. I have pantsed. I think my way forward is to strive for a happy medium. I need to stay one step ahead of my story; in writing historical fiction, factual events dictate my template. Yet, I can't risk sticking to a detailed plan lest I miss the direction the story wants to go. I need to stay the hell out of my way.

Reading has never been more important to me than it is now. Plowing breathlessly through Hilary Mantel's "Bring Up The Bodies" I learn that writing in present tense (so freaking risky) brings the reader into the immediacy of the past. I learn that the shadowy characters of history offer us a door to a story. We can still craft original material about those whom written history has fleshed out; but the juicy stories lie with those whom we scarcely know.

Toni Morrison reminds me of the power of opening sentences, of the deafening roar of the silent places. Poets Mary Oliver and Sam Green inspire me to leave behind adjectives and adverbs and seek for another verb or noun that shows, not tells, how something looks, feels, smells, tastes, sounds, how a body reacts, a mouth responds.

I have a title. I have themes. I have a premise - a thirty-word synopsis that states what my story is about. I may even have a plot. I wrote an opening scene and I love it so much that when I am certain this may be the stupidest book ever attempted, I reread it to remind myself that all I want is to tell a good story.

Everything else is a colossal, joyful mess. I haven't written a complete chapter. I'm not writing chronologically. I've just amassed heaps of scenes that I intend to sift into place. One scene leads me to the next, or forces me to jump back to sort out a plot hole - or to create a new one I'll have to fill in later.

I am building a library of books on medieval France, reading the fine print until my eyes cross. Into my Scrivener files I have inserted photos of holm oak, peregrine falcons, stone cottages, Romanesque churches and Cervélo cycles (bet you didn't know they had Cervélos in medieval France! Right. So, they didn't. Much of my story is set in 2010, when it isn't set in 1210...). I uncover magical connections as I research - what seemed at the outset a hoo-hoo plot device is in fact one of the fundamental beliefs of the culture I am trying to portray. The door opens and my story walks through.

What I am learning, in the hard, slow way that I learn, is that when I write, things happen on the page that I had no idea were waiting to occur. When I hear from other writers that they have their stories planned out, every scene accounted for, before they even begin to write the meat of the story, I'm baffled. I barely know my characters, how could I begin to tell them what to do, much less know what they are up to? We're in this adventure together and there's no literary GPS telling me which way to turn.

Completing the first 10K is a milestone. I feel a bit like I did when I ran my first road race so many years ago. "Hell, that was so much fun! Let's do it again!", forgetting the many lonely miles of training that led to race day and crossing the finish line.

And like any good runner, I know when to ease up after a hard race. I know the importance of rest before the attack can be renewed. I can do only so much in the time after work, during the busy weekends, in the wee hours before dawn. And I've done so much more than I thought possible.

I have other writing goals - those short stories that need revising, polishing and submitting before September journal entry deadlines come crashing down. I may have to set my heart aside for a couple of weeks as I complete other projects. So, I won't set a deadline on the next 10,000 words. But I will trust them to be there when I am ready.

At the beginning of a novel, a writer needs confidence, but after that what's required is persistence. ~ Walter Kirn

Today was the day.

My ideas usually come not at my desk writing but in the midst of living. Anais Nin

Today was the day. Today I wrote the opening paragraphs. I'd thought to spend days (weeks, really) drafting an outline, creating character sketches, compiling resources, delving into research. I knew, unlike the short stories I’ve written, I couldn’t pants a novel. Especially not historical fiction.

All those things await me. I know they must be done. I’ll work better within the comfort of structure, with direction and goals. I’m a Virgo after all: I emerged from the womb with an outline clenched in my wee fist. Of course, the ink was smeared so I have no idea what that outline contained. Hopefully I haven’t skipped over anything important. Sucks about the piano lessons. That was out of my control, anyway.

But damn if Virgos aren’t always working from a plan.

And that’s always been part of my problem. I worry too much about the how of the thing, instead of getting on with the doing of it.

So on this warm and glowing July day I sat myself - laptop in the spot for which it is named - at the base of a tree on a hill overlooking Elliott Bay. In fact, here’s the view, recorded and presented for the sake of posterity:

And I wrote. I wrote what I thought might be the beginning. I wanted to introduce myself to one of my principal characters, the woman who is going to carry the main thread of the story. I got her started, but then another central character started tapping a toe, suggesting his storyline would be the better one with which to begin. So he got a few paragraphs. Then I realized the real beginning was several miles away and months earlier. The page breaks accumulated as the first chapters shook out. Word count? Not so much. Racing brain? I pounded out the miles. Full throttle joy.

And there they are. My characters. Alive. Centuries apart from each other and an ocean away from me, but they are breathing. And heaven help me, I’m terrified. None of us has any idea what we’re in for.

I’d been tossing around three ideas for a novel for some time. I’d put off examining any of them seriously until a) I’d finished my wine certification program. Well, that ended in May. I still have no idea if I passed. But I’ve mostly stopped analyzing to bits every glass of wine I meet. And b) I’d finished my writing program. I mailed my final story June 21 and hit the road the same day to attend the delightful Chuckanut Writers Conference in Bellingham, WA.

Then life turned to custard. I'm working on that proverbial reclamation of mojo. Mourning is an ebb and flow of anger, grief, peace and acceptance; sometimes you are drowning, other times you are stranded. What you hope for is to prolong the times when you are just riding the waves.

But at that conference I had the first inkling I could shape at least one of these ideas into something resembling a story. The ideas battled for attention, each presenting a sound argument why theirs was the one I should pursue: one wouldn’t require research, one would be the most commercially viable, one would be legit literary.

So I asked myself, “WWSKD?” And my self replied, “Stephen King would tell you the same thing he told everyone in his most excellent On Writing. ‘Write what you love to read.’ So, if I follow that astute piece of advice, the choice comes down to Jamie Oliver cookbooks, which are already written by Jamie Oliver, and the story which now has its own folder on my hard drive. It even has a title.

I started a story novel today. Check in with me in ten years. I’ll let you know how it’s going.

The Liebster Blog Award

A few weeks ago, a writer entered my life via this blog. Her writing journey, her goals, challenges and aspirations so closely mirror my own that I feel this solitary pursuit is neither as quixotic nor as lonely as it sometimes...very often...seems. Her name is Edith, she is a beautiful, inspiring writer and I encourage you to explore her exceptional blog In a Room of My Own I am so proud to have been nominated for the Liebster Blog Award by Edith. The Liebster recognizes new bloggers "worth watching." The sweet thing is, if you accept the nomination, you are an award winner. Ah, if only the writing life were as rewarding and as simple!

Edith wrote  "Julie Christine Johnson blogs about writing, books and her sources of inspiration at Chalk the Sun. Be sure to check her blog out and enjoy basking in the lyrical beauty of her search for the truly perfect sentence."  So gracious, Edith- and so cool!!

Being a recipient of the award allows me the pleasure of nominating and awarding other blogs I think are worth watching.

I present you three blogs created by writers I learn from, am inspired by and whose work I think is worthy of many followers and great accolades:

Practice Makes Better  Dawn is a Seattle writer who chronicles her journey to an MFA program, her reading project and, very bravely, the heartbreak and hilarity of rejection on her smart blog.

DoGreat.net  Élan Karpinski's blog is a forum for creativity, setting goals and practicing compassion. Her writing flows with positive energy and determination.

Civil War Writer Virginia Wood is writing a novel based on her ancestors' experiences during the Civil War. Her blog is beautifully presented; I can't wait to read the story she is crafting.

There are 5 rules attached to this award:

1. If you are nominated for the award and accept it, then you have won!

2. Link back to the person who presented the award to you.

3. Nominate 3-5 blogs with less than 200 followers who you feel deserve the award.

4. Let the nominees know by leaving a comment on their blog.

5. Attach the Liebster award badge to your site.

Thank you, Edith, for finding me in the cacophony of the blogosphere; your generous spirit compels me to reach out and support other writers. We all benefit from the conversation!

Ten thousand words swarm around my head; Ten million more in books written beneath my bed*

Yesterday I penned  typed the final words of the final project of the writing program in which I've been engaged since late autumn 2010. From her studio in Salem, OR my writing mentor has assigned a dozen projects designed to build writing chops in someone who wrote her last piece of fiction when she was twelve. In eighteen months I have written, edited and revised thousands of words. A few thousand of those became six short stories, three of which I have submitted for publication. Two were published and one was short-listed for a national literary award. I need - must - do the slog work of getting the others off my hard drive and into an editor's in-box. Many editors' in-boxes. Rejection is an execrable and universal certainty of writing for publication. The form rejection letter is why God made the shredder. But soon, after I receive feedback from this latest attempt, I will be on my own. No deadline, no direction, no word limit, no encouragement, no criticism. If I felt writing to be a solitary pursuit before, well, welcome to hanging in the wind.

I move forward with the unshakeable feeling that the small successes I've achieved thus far are cosmically laughable, that at some point my writing will gather dust and lurk in the corner next to my abandoned acoustic guitar. My stories will suffer from skills as short as my stubby fingers; like my "C" chord, they will almost - but not quite - make it.

What will keep me writing are the moments when I lose myself in the page, when the story takes over, when the characters wrench the outline from my hands, tear it into shreds and run off in their own direction and I can scarcely type fast enough to keep up. I write for the calm which comes over me, when I have no desire to eat, drink or move for an entire afternoon, yet when I finally rise from the chair to stretch, I am replete and relaxed. I write for the one true sentence (merci, E.H.) that may appear among hundreds of attempts, the sentence for which I can't quite believe I was responsible when I read it later. I write because I have a loving partner who responds to my comments said in jest or dream about wanting to write full-time by catching my hand, looking me in the eye and saying, "I think you should, Julie." I write because I'm afraid of what will become of me if I stop.

I know that really, I'm not alone. In the brief time I have explored my voice as a writer, I have discovered the heart of Seattle's writing community: Richard Hugo House. The handful of Hugo workshops in which I've participated have inspired and terrified me. I have walked away from each with ideas, resources and a sense that I'm not entirely insane. Now that I am free from the obligations and pressures of my writing program, I can't wait to enroll in a long-term Hugo House course. Twitter, of all places, is a community of infinite possibilities. I encounter writers every day and take part in weekly discussion groups with writers of all experience levels. This blog - these pages of rambling, navel-gazing drivel and book reviews - have brought kindred souls into my writing life. My writer's to-do list includes next weekend's Chuckanut Writers Conference in Bellingham, exploring the online courses offered by the Gotham Writers' Workshop and the real-time workshops at Port Townsend's The Writers' Workshoppe.

I will regard this ending as a beginning. Whatever I write from this point forward I write for me, on the steam of my imagination and commitment to practice.The blank pages loom large. The feeling is delicious and disturbing.

*title credit to the brilliant songwriters and musicians The Avett Brothers and their song "Ten Thousand Words." I end my post with additional, painfully fitting, lyrics from this song:

"Ain’t it like most people? I’m no different We love to talk on things we don’t know about"

Me and Mon Ombre

It's been a while since I've travelled alone. In another lifetime, domestic and international travel was integral to my job. It was a groove of frequent flyer miles, hotel points, car rental upgrades; a suitcase that was always half-packed with the essentials, just waiting for the next journey. Being home was the exception, the interlude between dashes to the airport. I've never regretted giving up the hassles of travel, particularly the post-9/11 frantic harassment of airport security and the dismal state of airline service. Happily my travels these days are mostly for holiday, on flights bound for Europe, hand-in-hand with the only person I can suffer to see me through turbulence and jet lag. Brendan and I are viaggiatori simpatici. We dream of the same destinations, push ahead with equal energy levels, become tired and hungry in tandem and bicker over maps and directions without really caring who's right. We always find our way.

But I cannot deny the certain bliss of traveling alone. Undertaking a solo journey abroad is like dumping 1,000 pieces of a jigsaw puzzle on dining room table. It begins as a mission of intoxicating near-impossibility, but as you organize patterns and fit those first pieces together, you covet your independence and encircle your puzzle with protective arms, not wanting anyone to interfere with your reverie.

For a reverie it is. Traveling alone means slipping into a dream state, where anything is possible. With each encounter, snafu and discovery, the surroundings reflect you in a mirror that only you can see. This solitary state makes you vulnerable to the world and somehow floating above it. At any given moment, no one really knows where you are, what you are doing, tasting, hearing, seeing. The delightful and the disconcerting occur. During the private journey you rejoice and suffer alone.

Being a solo traveler is sitting in silence at a café on the Île Saint-Louis, sipping a chocolat chaud and watching the sun set Notre Dame aglow.

It is falling to my knees in the crypt of the Shoah Memorial before the tomb of the unknown Jewish martyr and crying alone in that vast, dark space.

It's being asked for directions to the Censier-Daubenton métro stop by a panicked looking Parisian elementary school teacher who has a gaggle of five-year-olds attached to him by a long strap; then being stopped a few minutes later on Rue Mouffetard by a grandmother, looking for the church where a funeral is about to begin.

It's lugging my suitcase up six flights of a stairs that curl like the inside of a sea snail shell, because I can't fathom squeezing myself into the tiny lift.

It's ordering a second glass of Minervois at a restaurant deep in the Marais, wondering if I'll remember the route back to the hotel in the dark.

It's running at dawn on the beach at Cannes with no one to keep watch over my shoes and socks while I wade in the Mediterranean.

It's meeting a vignernon and thinking how my husband would love this kind, gentle man who makes the most wonderful Armagnac I've ever tasted. And thinking, we'll meet again, and Brendan will be with me...

I fell into a deep sleep on the high-speed train carrying me from Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris to Cannes on the Côte d'Azur. There was one change of trains, long into the journey. I awoke with a jolt when my iPod slipped from my lap and fell to the floor, jerking away the earpiece. I caught the tail end of the conductor's announcement of our arrival. In my jet lagged haze, I grabbed my bag and stumbled down the steps of my two-tiered car, knowing I had but a few minutes to make my connection. I climbed a set of stairs and crossed to the main terminal, looking for the departure quay. Then it dawned on me. This compact, bright, calm hall was not the hurly-burly Saint-Charles station in Marseilles. I had disembarked in the idyll of Aix-en-Provence. And my train - the one on which I should have remained - had just left the station.

Likely this wouldn't have happened had I not been alone. Then again, I wouldn't have the memory of those moments with the stationmaster, chatting about hunting wild boar in the vineyards of the Rhône, before being deposited on the next TGV that whisked me away to Cannes.

Wild is the music of the autumnal wind

Wild is the music of the autumnal windAmong the faded woods. William Wordsworth "Book VI The Churchyard among the Mountains", The Excursion 1814

Two days ago I was driving up Florentia, on the north side of Queen Anne, when I entered a tunnel of scarlet and gold. The maples danced like Moulin Rouge chorus girls. They were perfectly aligned on either side of the road, flashing their brilliant leaves like petticoats a-whirl, their delicate limbs swaying in the wind. It was a gift that lasted but a few heartbeats, until the clouds shifted and the leaves ceased pulsing.

This autumn has offered many moments of heart-bursting beauty. Such an autumn as I have never experienced in the Northwest, certainly not in this city that is often shrouded by endless varieties of greens and grays. A warm, dry September and the gradual cooling of October and November set us up perfectly for this year's bounty of vibrant color.

The process itself is poetry: chemical pigments - carotenoids, anthocyanin, tannins - develop as chlorophyll production slows in the cooler weather. They mix and mingle, producing tones of bronze and gold, pumpkin orange, maroon and Burgundy red, and scarlets so deep they are almost purple. The leaves are incandescent, as if lit from inside. Their copper hues blaze on hillsides and urban avenues, they shimmer in the early morning light and radiate in the glow of sunset.

The riotous palette lasts until shortly after the first frost, which occurred yesterday. The drift of leaves towards earth is accelerating. On my run this morning it was clear and cold. Showers of crimson and golden foliage fell onto grass rimed in white. Soon we will be the Emerald City again, our firs and hemlocks, pines and madrone providing shelter, texture and tones of green to the soft grays and browns of winter.

The season has been a gift. It has given me yet another reason to be grateful for the grace this city has brought in the four years we have lived here.

A sense of place -  a connection to my environment - is vital to me. It is perhaps why travel has long been at the core of my soul. The places I discover, try on, taste, listen to, interact in and dream of reflect what is most precious to me. Every village, town, state, and country in which I've lived and many in which I've travelled have left impressions that follow me around like a gaggle of shadows. Some -  New Zealand, Ireland, the western slope of the Colorado Rockies, the deep hollows of Appalachian Ohio - have moved me, shifted my soul, altered the course of my life. It is these places I explore the most as I write, giving shape to characters and events through the lens of setting. I write of seashore and mountainside, of broken-down hamlet and hidden paradise, of antique markets and manicured gardens.

Other places - I think of France and of my backyard, Seattle - are too much a part of my present and immediate future to appear in my fictive scribbles. Though I do have plans for France: there is a story that's been burning inside me for a couple of years, but it's set in the past. My shadows will get walk-on parts, at best.

The November I returned to the Northwest, to call Seattle home for the first time, played itself out far differently than the colorful, sun-filled season now ending. That November was muted, sombre and wet. I arrived from late spring in New Zealand - where there is little pollution to block UV rays and the light is dazzling no matter the season - to the soft watercolors of the Northwest in late fall. My new-old surroundings cloaked me. I too was muted and sombre, a shadow of the vibrant soul I had been before being felled by deep, malignant depression. Re-entering this country in the season of darkness and chill gave me a chance to heal and rebuild in a cocoon of a cozy apartment, the bustling joy of holiday cheer, bursting coffee shops, and peaceful bookstores. As the city blew off the sodden leaves coating its lawns, as the light from the east broke into our bedroom earlier each day, as the season of renewal approached, I felt green shoots of hope and health bursting in my heart, even as the roots that connected me to this place grew deeper and held me fast, at long last.

And here again, as autumn drifts to winter, as day seeps toward the longest night, I am in my season of content and I am home. I am grateful for the beauty of this incomparable autumn, but I look forward to the rich darkness of winter that promises peace.

You Say Goodbye And I Say . . .

September. It is the month of beginnings, of fresh starts, of renewal and reconnection. I took my first breath on an early September day at 3:36 a.m. at Our Lady of Lourdes hospital in Pasco, WA. Twenty-three years and two days later I started a new life with Brendan, a few minutes after 5 p.m. at Mt. Pisgah Presbyterian in Roslyn, WA. I fell in love in September, landing in Paris on the morning of September 10, 1990 and stumbling wearily from a jetway into a country that would hold me in its spell to this very day. A thirteen year career in higher education, running parallel to Brendan's as a high school teacher, meant that our lives ran according to a September-August calendar; Labor Day marked the end of one year and the head-long rush into the next. Even in New Zealand September marked the turn of new page: the first of the month was the official, meteorological start to spring. I breathe easier when the calendar flips from torpid August to bustling September. The light loses its glare, deepening to a soothing blue that tempers still-warm afternoons. The sun glows lower on the horizon, beaming harvest gold before sinking behind the Olympic Mountains earlier each evening. For a few glorious weeks the earth balances on the cusp of ripe and decay and the air pulses with deep, ancient smells. Early morning fog brings aromas of a cooling ocean to my doorstep, late afternoon sunshine warms the sugars in the apples and plums that fall and burst open on my neighbors' lawns.

This year an estival twist has challenged my internal calendar. After bemoaning a spring that never was, we have been graced with cloudless skies and temperatures that have held steady in the 70s and 80s since late July. September has brought our warmest days; the skies glow Tuscan red and orange at daybreak and sunset as fires burn deep in the Olympic Mountains. We've toasted our weekend dinners of grilled salmon or simple salads on the patio with chilled rosé, even as I dog-ear recipes for hearty soups in the autumn issues of cooking magazines. The bedroom fan, silent for most of the summer, finally got a good dusting off a few weeks ago and oscillates through the night.

I've been grateful for this extension of summer, content to remain in my warm weather uniform of Tevas, tank top and running skort, eating finally-ripe tomatoes and lush peaches, knowing these hedonistic pleasures are fleeting in this land of perpetual dripping green.

But this morning I caught a glimpse of the week's forecast as I flipped through the Sunday paper. Clouds and cooler temperatures will be ours by week's end. I cannot wait.

Brendan just interrupted me, insisting I go outside to look at the moon. The moon that will wax full in few hours. The Harvest Moon. And on the other side of that moon is Autumn. The season to start anew.

Feeling the Pull

Vacation is about doing things that you can't, won't, or shouldn't do at home; tossing routine out the window and letting loose the child you once were- the one who simply lives in the moment, the one who lives simply...the one who sleeps with abandon, who eats only when she's hungry, who anticipates with giddiness the day as it dawns, knowing it is full of adventure and play. For 2 1/2 weeks I didn't talk about work (not an easy feat when you work with your husband). I didn't run, swim or strike a single yoga pose. I didn't write, I hardly read. I remained untouched by and unconnected to the digital world.  I didn't swallow any cod liver oil, worry about my low iron stores, or my weight. I didn't care about paying $8 for a gallon of gas, $200 a night for a hotel in Paris, or splitting a $400 bill for dinner with friends.

I did eat chocolate. Every single day. I drank wine. Bottles of beautiful, rich, refreshing Corbières, Minervois, Picpoul, St. Chinian, Saumur. Even at lunch. I gorged on red meat, salmon, chèvre, fresh bread, Charentais melon and Italian gelato. I slept. Oh my, did I sleep.  Eight to ten hours of deep, peaceful, gorgeous slumber, hours past my usual 4:30-5 a.m. internal clock.

I did watch television. Our mornings began slowly, with thick, black coffee, and Télématin. The evening news came on at 8:00, just as we sat down to dinner after a long day's adventuring through the Languedoc. We munched and sipped silently, captivated by the exquisite Laurence Ferrari, the world's most divine news anchor (Hugh Laurie was a puddle of blush the evening Laurence interviewed him about his new blues album. It was a treat to see House squirm under the spell of a beautiful woman). We played "La Roue De La Fortune" - France's Wheel of Fortune, feeling smug and silly for correctly guessing the French word or phrase before the contestants. I never did make it through an episode of 'The Closer." Lieutenant Provenza's acerbic wit  just doesn't translate well in dubbed-French.

I played. The day's biggest decisions were which Cathar castles we would seek out and where to stop for lunch. Brendan drove, I navigated, and we made certain to stop and smell the coquelicots. There were hikes to ruins where the history whispered achingly in the ever-present winds. There were naps along shaded riverbanks, picnics in silent meadows, ice cream cones while perched on Roman walls.

I did speak French, to the degree that I lost my English words, where it was more natural to speak French with Brendan when we were in public, and Franglish when we were alone. It was easier to read Midi Libre than the International Herald Tribune. Easier still to let the newspaper slip away and simply stare into the distance, whether it was into the meadows outside Couiza or into the crowds passing our café table in Paris.

I did dream. In each village we wandered,  as we hiked the foothills of the Pyrénées, I wondered "Could I live here?" I dreamed of the hectares of vines outside Montséret or near Limoux that Brendan would tend, of the stone cottage with blue shutters in tranquil Minerve where I would write, of a cheery red front door in the village of Félines-Minervois that would open to our visitors from near and far, a cold pichet of rosé waiting on the table. I plotted a garden and my cycle route to work in Capestang, including a stop at Francisco's tabac for the morning paper. I planned for summers on the coast in Gruissan while Brendan toiled (happily, I should add) in the heat of the Corbières garrigue only 20 miles west.  I answered that question time and again with a definitive, exuberant, and wistful, "Oui, sans aucun doute."

Alas, vacation is just that. A break from what is, what must be, most of the time. I was grateful to return to my bed, to snuggle with Lola, to eat a simple meal of toasted quinoa and steamed broccoli (with a glass of Touraine, of course), to return to job I love, to see friends and colleagues, to hug my dad after he loaded my suitcase, heavy with bottles of wine and books, into his van. And hey. Vacation is paid for. I weigh less than before we left on our hedonist holiday, I'm back in half-marathon and tri training mode. I submitted a story for publication and I'm plodding through this post.  It's back to normal. At least for the part of me that is back in Seattle.

*Title from The Swell Season song, Feeling the Pull

The finish line- just a start, really...

Thirteen point one. Got 'er done, and in record time to boot. It wasn't the first half-marathon I've run, nor God and all her saints willing, will it be the last. But it was the most meaningful. It was the first half completed in my fifth decade. It was my first half after a stream of injuries. It was my first half as I  let go simultaneously of some dreams and embraced new ones. By the way, can we think of some other name for this distance? It's not half of anything. It is a whole 69, 168 feet; 27, 667 steps; 21 kilometers. It is a months of training, two sets of earbuds, 507 songs on the iPod, two pairs of running shoes, 3 seasons, a month or two of Sunday mornings devoted to the dreaded "long" run. Which kept getting longer. There is a movement afoot - so to speak - to rename the half-marathon "21k" or Pikermi, which is the town halfway between Athens and Marathon. I kid you not. Team Pikermi.

I took chances and learned lessons as I trained. For reasons to do with timing, planned vacation, surgery, and unplanned injuries, I followed a very loose and likely very inefficient training plan. It looked something like this: Run. A few times a week. Longer on one day. I debated for months the usefulness of my gym membership. In August I let it go - the first time in over fifteen years I haven't belonged to a gym. I decided that the mind-numbing stints on the elliptical and the miles on the treadmill would never properly condition my legs and feet for the road. I accepted that weight lifting was more about aesthetics and wasn't the best way to achieve sustainable fitness  (and truth be told - I do a lot of heavy lifting a few days a week at my day job).   I had to commit to the harder work of  training out-of-doors in all sorts of weather, of finding ways to cross-train that didn't involve equipment run on electricity, and of concentrating on yoga as a whole-body approach to building strength, stamina, and that all-important core.

I turned to my bike as cross-trainer #1 and landed hard on the pavement, derailing my training with ribs so sore that laughing made me cry.  I followed a night of dancing barefoot with a morning's hard run and landed myself in a big black boot, on my way to a stress fracture of my left metatarsal.  I ran my last long run too close to race day and found myself back in that damnable boot only days before the marathon, pumping ibuprofen and denying away the pain.

But somehow the self-inflicted insults stitched themselves together into muscles and bones that knew what they wanted to do once my feet crossed the starting mat. They ran and ran, even when I thought I'd run out of gas. My one stop was a stretch and pee break at the 4 mile porta-John. After that, the pavement rolled out before me, sometimes agonizingly uphill, sometimes painfully down. Miles 5-9 felt steady and smooth and I was able to enjoy the beauty of Lake Washington and the Arboretum at autumn's end. I lost my hat somewhere along mile 8, which wasn't a problem until about mile 10, when the wind rushed off of I-5, my reserves were running low, and I felt a deep chill building in my extremities. But mile 12 gave an extra jolt of adrenalin and that gave me the needed heat.

I didn't feel a great sense of accomplishment crossing that finish line. But neither did I feel wrecked or exhausted, just tired and happy. I had a sense of ease and energy, like I could do this again sometime soon. This past week of recovery week was harder emotionally - the post-event blues- than physically. I've walked long and hard, run short and tenderly, biked, and melted into some healing yoga. And I'm planning out the next race - perhaps Whidbey Island Marathon (half) in April, and a couple of local 10ks to keep me motivated through the winter. I'm investigating lessons with a swim coach to train again for a sprint triathlon.

And I'm already signed up for the Seattle Rock-n-Roll Marathon (half) in June.  It is this event I anticipate with particular excitement - my fingers are crossed that I will be joined by friends from near and far (I'd cross my toes, too, but I need them to train!). These friends are from my distant and recent past, some are new and some are those with whom I have corresponded for years but never actually met. Some of us will run the whole or half-marathon, some of us will walk, some will be cheering from the sidelines. If you are reading my blog post, I throw my arms wide and invite you to join us in June. If you are on Facebook, I'll add you to our training and support group - just drop me a line.

And a few notes to self, on those lessons learned:

• Miles 10-12 were rough. Means I need to do more long runs, earlier on.
• BUT longest run no longer than 12. That last mile is sheer adrenaline. I risked it going for 14 in training.
• Last long run 3 weeks out. No later.
• I'm pokey. I'm not interested in speed for the sake thereof- too much pounding on my joints and bones. But I could make an effort to be a more efficient runner. This means heading to the track at Greenlake and running fartleks. It's an excuse to buy a fancy new watch with supercool functions, right?
• And bleachers. Need to run the damn bleachers.
• My hips and psoas say "Thank you, Julie, for making an effort to stretch and strengthen us. Might we have some more, please?"  Ashtanga before breakfast. My new mantra.

Namaste.

Poetry in motion

Once upon a few lifetimes ago, we owned many, many books. Our library spilled from bookshelves to boxes, nightstands to nooks. Then we moved one too many times, finally traveling across a vast ocean, and we let go of our library. We gave away, donated or sold thousands of words, images, tales and dreams. The millions of commas, periods, exclamation points and the letter "e" that used to belong to us now live in other libraries and other homes, hopefully opening windows on the same worlds of wonder as they did for us. But of course, we never really owned any of these words that were spun together to create stories, poems, and plays. We just rented their ink and paper.

I've lost that lust for owning bound pages. I have a fear of collecting more than I have space for and clutter makes me shudder. I'm also insufferably picky about what I spend my time reading; so many of the books I pick up from the library's "Holds" shelf I snap shut after the first twenty pages and return them to fill some other reader's queue.

So, I rarely buy a new book unless it's a favorite author or a classic I know I will reread (Jane and I have a once-yearly date: "Emma" is on tap for 2011) or it's on the bargain table for $6.99. Every so often we cull our bookshelves and take a stack to Ophelia's in Fremont or Third Place Books in Ravenna, trade them in for store credit and replenish with used books from the stacks or bargains on display.  But mostly I just wait for the hot titles to filter their way down from the library wait list.

But bookstores, God help me,  I love them. I'm blessed to live in a city that still celebrates and supports independent bookstores, so I never need set foot in big box chain store to find exactly what I didn't know I was looking for.  And what could be more soulless than browsing the mind-numbing pages of Amazon.com? I need to hold a book in my hands, caress its cover, feel its weight and the cut of its pages, inhale its ink, view the swirl of its font, read the author's bio and skim the first chapters to know if it's worth my time and maybe, just maybe my cash.

I have explored the wonders in Queen Anne Bookstore; Elliott Bay Book Company; World Wide Books and Maps; Secret Garden Bookshop; Fremont Place Books Ravenna Third Place; Edmonds Bookshop; Eagle Harbor Books on Bainbridge Island; University Bookstore; Santoro's on Greenwood; Pegasus in West Seattle; Ophelia's...and I have left them all with a piece of my heart and, often, pieces from my wallet.

But mostly I just snoop. I linger in the cookbooks section, flipping through Nigella, Jamie, Marcella, Alice, Claudia, Thomas, Rick, dreaming of the time and money to cook my way through the recipes of the River Café and The French Laundry,  of exploring culinary Provence, Mexico, and Italy from tip to toe. I pore over the "Staff Picks" cards, trying not to make gagging sounds at rapturous praise for The Lacuna or Room. I squeeze past the ubiquitous "The Girl Who Pays for the Lease on Our Building" display; I too think Lisbeth Sanders kicks some brutal ass but I wouldn't pay for the pleasure.  I check to see if there is a travel guide to the Languedoc we don't yet own. I look through the fiction stacks, overwhelmed by all that I have not read, knowing the forty-five or so years left to me on this planet aren't enough to get through them.  I console myself with the knowledge that most wouldn't be worth my while. But there could be that hidden gem, that Shadow of the Wind, that Unbearable Lightness of Being, Crossing to Safety, The Suitable Boy, The Catcher in the Rye, The Secret Garden or Persuasion that turns my world around, that enchants me with the beauty of its language and images, that makes me crave to live inside its words.  So I peruse, I jot down titles, I leave clutching the store's newsletter to update my library request list.

A couple of rainy Saturdays ago I stopped in at the Elliott Bay Book Company -  perhaps the Queen of Seattle's indie bookstore empire - and enjoyed a bowl of Pumpkin Soup in the café. Belly full, I wandered onto the sales floor. I scanned the fiction aisles, but I was uninspired and bored by the titles therein. Nothing spoke to me.  It seemed I'd either read the novels I espied or had no interest in what waited beyond the front cover.

Heading for the door, I knocked against one of the low stacks containing poetry. I was surrounded suddenly by the ghosts and glimmers of Neruda, Rumi, Codrescu, Ryokan and Rilke; of Nietzsche, Frost, Dickinson, Sappho, Eliot, Plath, and Poe; of Ginsberg, Goethe, Whitman, Harrison, Milosz, and Millay. I could go no farther. I pulled out volume after volume, scanned their stanzas, whispered their meters, stumbled into enjambments, crashed into caesuras. I felt like a tourist wandering through a souk in Marrakech; my senses were overwhelmed by colors and visions, and by voices calling to me in a Babel of languages I did not understand.

Then images began to take shape as I let go of the literal, of paragraph, of theme, and of conclusion.  Words coalesced into shapes of beauty, sorrow, anger, sensual passion, of longing, of Ireland, Argentina, Montana, of Death, of war, of every emotion and physical sensation felt by man and some that defy conventional expression.

The velvet cadence of a Shakespeare sonnet, the whimsy of e.e. cummings, the beloved clarity of Frost, the baroque melancholy of Apollinaire, the elation of Elizabeth Barrett Browning- I was intoxicated by so many words strung together in astonishing and devastating ways.

I didn't know where to start or where to stop. I walked to the counter with loaded arms, my face flushed and heart pounding. I felt as if I had discovered a new world and was bursting with my secret- undecided whether to share my news or to keep the treasure to myself.

As my purchases were being rung up, another bookseller looked through my selections. He paused at The Poems of Emily Dickinson, edited by R.W. Franklin and patted the volume lovingly. "Ah, the bible." He sighed. "I read a poem every morning; I've memorized seventy-five of her poems so far."  Hard to think of a more beautiful and fulfilling way to begin one's day. Maybe there's an Emily podcast I can listen to while I run...

And my bookcase is full to bursting again.

Miles high

All week we'd been graced with autumn days that felt like the sound of Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 4 in G - a swirling uplift of leaves and breeze, a gentle descent of sunlight in the western sky, impassioned bursts of color from trees singing their last joyous harmonies before winter's fugue silences their glory. But the weekend's forecast threatened the end of our sun-splashed reverie. The announcers on our local public radio station gleefully read the latest bulletins from the National Weather Service: winter storm watches for the mountain passes, high surf warnings for the ocean beaches. And for metropolitan Puget Sound? Rain. Pounding, driving, blowing, Pacific Northwest autumn rain. Rain that inspired the likes of Eddie Bauer and the founders of REI. Rain that makes Seattle the most book-reading city in the nation. Rain that creates a highly caffeinated yet oddly subdued collection of down-and fleece-sporting citizens.

I woke at 5:30 on Sunday morning and lay still in bed, listening. I could hear a few drips landing on the sodden plants beneath our bedroom window. But there was no steady patter of showers, no rush of wind gusts. The unexpected silence was such a relief. My planned training run was 10 miles and I dreaded having to slog through it as the rain soaked my shoes.

I rose for coffee and a pre-run yoga session. Shortly after 6:00, as I was grimacing through Crow, it hit. The glass front of the fireplace rattled, there was a howl from the living room window where I'd left it open just a sliver, and the building shuddered as a blast of wind careered in from the northwest.  Within moments the windows were streaked with thin streams.  "Well, kid," I thought, "you signed up for the no-bullshit training plan. You ARE running a half-marathon at the end of November. Rain is your present, rain is your future."

I stepped out the door shortly after 7, waterproof jacket zipped to my chin, long pants zipped tight at my ankles. And there was the moon, low on the horizon,  ripe and lush after waxing full during the night. The clouds rushed past carrying away the rain and the sky shimmered a silvery-blue. The wind blew deliriously, claiming its right to change the seasons on a whim.

And so I ran. I ran the steep climb from 65th to Phinney and descended cautiously on pavement slippery with Big Leaf maple and White birch leaves. I splashed through puddles that dotted the outer perimeter of Green Lake. I ran as the sun rose and the dog walkers emerged. I ran to the inner perimeter and dodged couples sipping lattes from travel mugs and moms trotting with strollers. I ran past the Aum Shinrikyo guy meditating in full lotus by the west end bathrooms, past the tai chi group practicing behind the viewing stands; I ran past the scullers and the geese paddling in their wake, past the turtles sunbathing on logs, past the Blue Herons posing in the shallows. I crammed my gloves and my earband into the pockets of my jacket and stripped to shirtsleeves, cursing my long pants as my body heat steamed through the layers.

About five miles on, it was as if someone had suddenly dimmed the lights from 75 watts to 40. The golden-green glow in the sky dulled to a lusterless gray as the clouds rolled in, heavy and low. And then the rain began. There was no warning interlude of slow drops. It simply spewed forth, pummeling straight into my face, sending my contact lens astray.

But I'd reached the crazy point. The point at which your body has settled in the groove, your endorphins are in command of the show, you are running because there is no other option, there is no other place you could be. As the paths emptied out, the walkers making a dash to the shelter of their cars and nearby cafes, the runners were left to splash through their circuit. You'd catch someone's eye as you passed, realizing that shit-eating grin smeared across their rain-plastered face was a mirror image of your own. There might be a nod, a lift of a finger, as an acknowledgment of the camaraderie between maniacs. Or you might simply be witnessing someone lost in their own pace, surviving their pain and the elements by the grace of will and the perfect set of tunes on their iPod.

I feel like I'm one injury, one disaster away from not running. The chronic pull in my groin,  the sharp twang in my left metatarsal, the deep ache in my plantar fascia have sidelined me in recent years (recent months!); only this week have I stopped feeling a jolt in my ribs from September's bike crash. So every run feels like a gift. I GET to do this. I get to run in weather than numbs my legs and leaves me shaking from a cocktail of adrenalin and exhaustion. I get to rise in the wee hours before dawn to do what I know will heal me -  yoga -  before I set out to do what shreds me apart.  I'll never be fast, I'll never be thin, I'll never assume the finish line is mine. But no one else runs those miles for me. Those miles are mine.

This morning I set out under clear skies. By the time I finished, the clouds had gathered and the first drops were falling. Today I ran 12.  The half marathon is twenty eight days away.

Crossing borders

I learned of Richard Hugo House last year while scouting out writing classes. The catalog of workshops and seminars made me weak in the knees with desire, but I was far too intimidated to pursue even the most fundamental. These are programs for real writers; those who come with manuscripts bursting from their hard drives, with poems filling tattered notebooks, with screenplays spilling from their bike bags. These are serious classes, with enigmatic titles like "Fleshing It Out: Breathing Life Into Our Fragments" and "Ain't Look Right, That There: Stories in Odd Shapes"; Master Classes in poetry and prose; classes to help fine tune plots, characters, and dialogue; classes on finding an agent and a publisher once your manuscript is burning in your hands. I was just hoping for some guidance and inspiration to move beyond "It was a dark and stormy night."

At the end of the summer, I scrolled through the online Fall quarter catalog  and espied an afternoon workshop on travel writing. I thought, "Okay, my passport's been around the world, maybe I wouldn't embarrass myself too badly." I made a mental note to think about registering.

Some brain worm awoke earlier this week and nudged my selective memory. I was certain the class I had chosen to forget about had already taken place or was full. But no, the class was three days away, Richard Hugo House was happy to take my late registration, and there was time enough for the instructor to send me an e-mail of what to bring and how to prepare. Oh God. I have to prepare? Oh well, it's only an afternoon -  I can suffer anything for a few hours. I enrolled.

The instructor's instructions were simple: bring a few mementos, such as photos, postcards, art objects, money,  and maps to use as memory triggers and writing prompts. I chose a Pāua shell from New Zealand, a rice paper parasol from Kyoto, a necklace with a Celtic pendant from Ireland, a portfolio that held a series of woodblock prints of Chambèry, and a CFA franc note from Chad.

Then it occurred to me. I haven't traveled all that much. I've lived abroad, in extraordinary places, but I've never Eurailed through thirty-seven countries in three weeks, I've never bicycled in Southeast Asia or gone on safari in the Serengeti. I've never been to Disneyworld or the Yucatán, I haven't touched the Great Wall of China or seen Old Faithful spew. I haven't labored up the steps of Machu Picchu or cruised Norwegian fjords. And this was a class on writing for travel publications. What was I thinking?

There were ten of us in the class. One woman spent seven years with her husband sailing around the world. The pierced and tattooed Millenial next to me had just returned from two years in Lima where he worked at a kick-boxing studio. A recent retiree dressed entirely in purple intended to write about painting workshops in Greece.  A thin, elegant social anthropologist was writing a memoir of her experiences in East Africa in the 70's. A handful had taken writing classes; others, like me, were complete novices. We held pens to blank paper, hands trembling in anticipation.

Sandwiched in-between brief explanations by the instructor and a bit of group discussion was the meat of the workshop:  a series of directed, timed writing prompts. Then we read our words aloud. I guess I had realized that sharing was a part of writing workshops, but after our first writing exercise when the instructor asked us each to read what we had written, my stomach dropped and my face flamed hot. Suddenly the afternoon loomed long and dark. I braced myself, breathed deeply and  thought - "It's okay, I never have to see these people again."

Round-the-World Sailor was first to go. She was the only one who brought technology greater than a ballpoint and sheets of 8.5x11. She tapped away at her HP Notebook through the instructor's entire introductory remarks, then admitted that she had spent the first writing exercise working on a scene for some unrelated project. Right. Well. I guess it's your money, you can spend your time any way you choose. She never did read any of her work aloud.

And so we went on. Six writing prompts in all; four of these became the beginning, middle, middle-end and end of a complete piece. Some people read aloud once or twice, then remained silent in the remaining hours. Others plowed on with emotion or humor, and all with an amazing ability to create vivid settings, characters, tension, emotion and resolution in five to fifteen minute writing slams. I read each of my segments aloud, my heart slamming, my face pounding with heat, my voice stumbling through the words I had scribbled on the page with a hand squeezed around my pen, cramped in an unfamiliar pose. No one laughed at me.  I saw a few heads nod in encouragement and agreement as I read. The instructor congratulated me on first describing a character by their hiking boots and the sound of their voice, not with the usual hair color and body build; she pointed out some stylistic choices I made that took the narrative in an unexpected direction (I did? Uh, do I let on that I was totally unaware of making any choices? I was just writing as fast as my Pilot Pen would go).

At one point, when the instructor told us to finish the sentence we were on and set down our pens, I realized I had lost myself on the page. It was like losing myself in a run - the point when you stop thinking about running, about the miles ahead of you, about the pain in your hip - everything slips away and you become running machine. And I was writing like a runner - I was gone into my words, into my heart, I didn't want to stop.

I'm suddenly crying as I recall this moment of pure writing abandon. How often are we ever completely of and in a moment, doing exactly what it is that we are meant to do? How much of our lives do we waste pushing away our dreams because we fear the failure of our own possibility, because we can't afford the luxury - the time, the money, the neglect of responsibilities to family, job, community - of answering our questioning hearts? For a moment, just a moment, I was there. I touched the possibility.

It struck me that no one was at this workshop to write an article for Condé Nast Traveler about the best hotels on the Adriatic coast or the newest yoga and wine spas in Napa or skiing holidays in the Atlas Mountains. We all had personal journeys to share, emotional borders that we crossed during our travels, an aching need to illuminate our scrapbooks with the light of our words. One woman related the story of traveling to Korea to meet her adopted daughter. Her description of the foster mother's last moments with the baby had several of us wiping away tears. The retiree in purple used humor to describe her deep disappointment in accepting that she would never be the painter she dreamed.

I wrote about a trip to Germany Brendan and I took in the early years of our marriage, when we were struggling to find our way as individuals and learning how to be partners. We traveled to Bavaria to visit René and Marie-Thérèse, the brother-in-law and sister of the family Brendan had lived with in France before we met.

René and Marie-Thérèse met at the end of World War II. He was an 18-year old German prisoner of war assigned to work at her father's estate in western France. She fell in love with his hands - his long, tapered fingers and trim, clean nails. They waited ten years to marry, when the scandal of a French girl marrying a German soldier would be softened by the forgiveness of time and the growing Western European solidarity against Communism. She moved to Germany, not speaking a word of the language, and lived with his parents in a small village deep in the Bavarian Alps while he set up his design business in Munich. Grasping the enormity of their story, told over the course of dinners that stretched for hours into the summer twilight, was like a balm on the growing pains of our young marriage. The trip became the honeymoon we hadn't yet taken.

The story of René and Marie-Thérèse's extraordinary marriage has been a small seed in my heart for many years. After yesterday's workshop, I feel it starting to grow.

Back in the saddle again.

I am typing with my left arm braced against my side, holding an ice pack to my ribs. It's ten days since The Tumble, the afternoon when my flesh met pavement. I think I may have won the battle, with Red Bike by my side, but I am now a vigilant warrior, guarded against the mean streets of Seattle that threaten to smack me down again. The scabs from road burn are closing over with tender new skin; the bruises have run the color palette from angry red to moody blue to outrageous Chartreuse. They are fading now to a soft sea green. I was able to shuffle-run a couple of times this week and yesterday, finally, I was able to do a full Upward Dog and a Side Plank during yoga practice without collapsing on the mat.

The ice bag I now clench is soothing what remains of the pain. I still can't sleep on my left side. Sneezes- oh the horror- come out as strangled yelps of pain. But this morning I was aching to run. Not to shuffle, but to break out and pound. So I did. And I'm paying for it. But Sweet Jesus in the Garden, it hurt so good. I intended to go an easy, steady 5 miles, just to break in the legs, but found I couldn't stop despite the brittle pain that radiated from my left ribcage.  I finished my circuit and kept going, dashing past still-sleeping Ballard bungalows, running without destination or intention just for the sheer joy of movement. Endorphins are magical, wondrous things. As are the three Ibuprofen now working their way into my pain.

I've had an on-again, off-again relationship with biking (I hesitate to write "cycling" because that seems very serious and laden with gear and intention that casual riders such as I do not possess).  For all the years I lived in small towns with unlimited country roads, I barely ventured out. Two words: loose dogs. As much as I adore canines of all persuasions, I simply cannot abide being chased. Brendan, a true cyclist, has enough experience and power to out-race those chomping, foaming jaws. I seem to think that I can reason with or at least out-bark a frenzied dog, so invariably I come to a halt and start shouting "No! Bad Dog!" As if. My bike became a means to get to and fro in the safety of my little towns.

Ironically, it took a move to our first city to embolden me to bike regularly.  I marveled at the bike lanes that criss-cross elegant, Victorian Christchurch and determined that learning to ride on the other side of the road would be an adventure I couldn't pass up. I found a Specialized European-style Cruiser that I named Poppins, because I feel very Mary Poppinish sitting on its high, feminine frame. It's the bike that now takes me to and from work.

Then we moved to the Back of Beyond and I had to have a country bike to tackle the winding roads that lead from the hamlet of Cheviot, past sheep paddocks and eucalypt groves, to the endless expanse of the Pacific Ocean which opens at Gore Bay. So we found me a racy red KHS mountain bike. New Zealanders have the good sense to keep their animals properly enclosed and not once in all my meanderings on those Canterbury roads did I encounter a cantankerous mutt. Once, a llama took off after me. But there was a fence, so the only danger was from a well-aimed llama loogie. Fortunately, I could bike faster than it could spit.

We shipped our Kiwi bikes back to Seattle and I pretty much fell off the saddle. It was too great a hassle to schlep the bike up from our apartment's basement. Besides which, we lived atop Queen Anne and the return from anyplace other than a relatively level 2-block radius was a dispiriting exercise.

Even after we moved to Ballard, I let my two-wheeled companions deflate in our storage unit, breaking Red Bike out on a rare day when Brendan could convince me to wheel to Shilshole Bay. I nearly gave away Poppins but after she sat on the back patio for three weeks, gathering rust from the rain, I knew I couldn't let her go. Back into storage she went.

Then came this summer. Brendan's promotion meant a complete change in schedule, taking him from a late afternoon to 2 a.m. shift to an early morning to mid afternoon schedule. Our routine of me walking to work and Brendan leaving me the car to drive home was over. My ride was gone.

So, on July 9- the first day of Brendan's new job- I began commuting by bike. We fixed up Poppins with a rack and a pannier and flashing lights that now come in handy as I trudge up 8th Street in the dusk of early autumn. Each morning the cyclopaths speed by, decked out in aerodynamic helmets, reflective Lycra tights and clipped-in shoes.  I am content in my geeky glory that includes a fisherman's-yellow rain jacket two sizes too large, reflective bands that velcro around the hems of my Levis, and my scuffed-up Brooks trainers.

I have to laugh at my own folly. It takes me as much time commute by bike as it did to drive. Those first minutes when I leave the store and I'm pedaling on the Burke-Gilman as it follows the Ship Canal - breathing in the still air, watching the sunset glinting off the rippling water - are some of the most peaceful and restorative of my day. Of course, the slog up noisy 8th Street is still ahead of me, but each week it gets a tiny bit easier. The dark nights of autumn and the wet chill of winter are still to come. I hope that a habit has formed. I'm determined to see this through.

But it's the biking I now do beyond the easy commute to and from work that has been transformative. Brendan has taken me out every weekend since early summer, showing me routes he's created from Ballard through Magnolia, around Greenwood, beyond Sunset Hill, to downtown via Interbay and Myrtle Edwards Park, around Lake Union and of course, the wonderful Burke-Gilman trail that extends miles and miles north. We live in the perfect biking community - hills abound, streets are wide, bike lanes a-plenty and Seattle dog owners are so well-trained- fenced yards, leashes and poop bags are de rigueur.

I venture out on my own a few times a week, using my rides as a cross-training workout to give my run-weary joints a rest. I am utterly enamored with my rides, novice though I am. I have a favorite route that takes me to Shilshole Bay and up the hill past Golden Gardens Park. From there I can weave in and around Crown Point neighborhoods, taking as long or as short a route home as my energy and the fading light allow. When I first began biking this route, I would stop halfway up the Golden Gardens hill to catch my breath and slurp some water. Now I don't even stand up from my seat to power my way to the top.

I was on a workout ride through Greenwood, crossing a busy street off 45th where it separates Phinney from Fremont, when I crashed. I glanced over my left shoulder to check for traffic before sliding into a left turn when my tire hit a split in the pavement. My bike shot to the right and I went down, my right leg tangled up in my bike, my left side slamming into the pavement. I bounced.  I recall saying something accurate but ultimately unhelpful, like "I'm going down", to no one in particular.

I had one coherent thought and that was to get out of the way of oncoming traffic. I scrambled up and dragged my bike out of the road. A passing cyclist saw what happened and rushed over to see if I was all right. Doing my best Monty Python Black Knight impression ("It's just a flesh wound!") I assured her I was okay. It wasn't until she biked away that the sunlight suddenly narrowed to a thin white tunnel, then faded to fuzzy gray. I slumped to the sidewalk, contemplating the lunch that was suddenly pushing against the back of my throat. The indignity of vomiting next to a Metro bus stop brought the world back into focus again, as did the jarring pain in my left arm and ribs.

I walked Red Bike about twenty yards, to a quiet side street, then realized I was in trouble. My legs were trembling, my vision was narrowing again, and I began to hyperventilate. I sat on the edge of a traffic circle with my head between my legs and considered my options. Crying seemed like the best one at the moment, but even that took more energy than I had. I watched a spider push through some bark dust, a cat came to sit beside me, and the sun draped like a warm blanket across my back.

After a while I thought I could get home on my own steam and I did. Red Bike clanked and wobbled a bit, or maybe that was me. Brendan was home and made all the right worried noises over my scraped skin and bruised shin. He said "Isn't it a great thing that you are in such good shape you could walk away from a crash!" God bless that man. I was working on the theory that ample padding on my hip had broken the worst of the fall. I like his version. I'll keep it handy.

Yesterday was my first serious ride since The Tumble. We rode from Ballard, walked across the Locks, climbed through a few hills in Magnolia, stopped to admire the views of Elliott Bay and downtown Seattle. I'm wary of uneven pavement, my guts clench at steep descents and I worry about how I will manage when the rain sets in and wet streets raise the hazard level to the nth degree. But for the moment I'm back in the saddle again.

Tune in, turn on, say "Ahhh...."

Recently I read an article in the New York Times* that chronicled the adventures of five eminent neuroscientists who spent a week camping “off the grid” in southern Utah- no laptops, no cellphones, just gear and a guide.  In between rafting and hiking excursions, these academics discussed how the compulsive use of digital technology affects our learning, memory and decision-making abilities and whether we should give our brains an occasional vacation. Like me, you probably don’t have any trips to the back of beyond in your near future, no forced retreat from the demands of your digital technology addiction. You must grasp those moments of peace and tune in, turn on to what you can access with your five senses, not with a wireless connection.

Let me offer you a simple exercise, an antidote to the rush and whirl of the daily digital grind. We’ll call it “Mindfulness in a Glass. “

Disconnect the phone, turn off the computer and the HiDef whatsit (it’s all right to have Cassandra Wilson or David Gray playing softly in the background). Pour yourself a glass of wine and settle in.

Tilt that glass to the light and consider the wine’s color and intensity. It may be the pale lemon of verdejo, or the deep purple of syrah. Notice how the light reflects the brilliant clarity of youth or the rich warmth of age.  Now, gently swirl the wine and stick your nose deep in the bowl of the glass. Inhale. Savor.  You may be transported to an orchard of ripe peaches or a meadow of violets, or find yourself tangled in a thicket of blackberries.  Inhale again and let almond blossoms or freshly-mown hay tickle childhood memories, allow the lavender and tobacco to take you to warm and distant lands.

Take a generous sip and let the wine spread throughout your mouth, coating your teeth and tongue. Close your eyes and be seduced by the musky mango of Spätlese or the rosewater-laced cherry jam of Barolo. Imagine the forces that combined to create this moment of quiet pleasure; the millennia of floods and glaciers, the seasons of sun and rain, the labor of planting and harvest, the passion of the winemaker, the volatility of chemistry, and the patience of the cellar.

Richard Feynman, Nobel Laureate in physics, once said “if we look at a glass [of wine] closely enough, we can see the whole universe.” We might think we hold the universe in our iPhones; a glass of wine reminds us that by savoring unplugged time, we can discover a universe of far more real and satisfying pleasures.

*(Richtel, Matt. “Outdoors and Out of Reach.”  The New York Times, 15 Aug. 2010).