Outside my therapist’s office in NYC, she had hung a piece of paper with a whole list of truths about life. I can remember only the first two, and I’m paraphrasing:
1. Life is for learning lessons.
2. A lesson will keep presenting itself to you until you’ve learned it.
One of the lessons that keeps presenting itself to me is being in the moment. I know that ‘staying present’ is one of the classic human struggles, but seriously, I think I have a learning disability around this one.
Parr exahmpluh (that’s Fronch, for you ign’ants): My new love is contra dancing. It’s fun, it’s good exercise, and the people are, as they’d say in Boston, wicked nice. AND. Contra dancing really forces me to be in the moment. The way it works is: everybody has a partner and another couple (“neighbors”) to dance with; the caller walks you through 6 or 8 eight-counts of movements, which leaves you with a different pair of neighbors; the band plays, and every couple dances that same little routine about a dozen times, each time with a different set of neighbor-couples.
You really have to stay present! It’s easy enough to learn but doesn’t become so ingrained that you can do it mindlessly. Nice, right? Well, at my second-ever contra dance last night, I was bumping up against this lesson YET AGAIN. I’d see someone I thought I recognized, and while I was trying to figure out where I knew him from, I’d forget what I was doing and run into somebody. So I thought about it and practiced staying in the moment. Perfect, right?
This morning I went out into the yard with the dogs. The sky was barely light, rain continued to plop down in haphazard bursts, and there was one of those leaves hanging from a spider’s thread so it looked like it was suspended mid-air. For a moment, I was transfixed. It was sublime. And then I ran to get my camera. When I got out there again and started fiddling with the controls, my puppy noticed the subject of my interest, stood up on his hind legs, and snatched it out of the sky.
Just perfect.
Amy, everybody I know thinks you are the best — at least one of the best writers in the family — oh, hell, THE best. If you’re thinking of publishing, and you should be, let’s talk. The most appropriate genres
(is that the right word?) would, I think, be the prose poem (q.v.) or the “lyric essay.” Nobody advises anyone to try to publish verse poetry, these days. There are reasons I’ll save for later. Prose poetry, however, is a semi-honest form, and still an open possibility for publishing. I’ve been “semi-honest” myself, and have had a couple nice comments on my stuff. That’s usually all you get. Oddly enough, there is a better chance to publish poetry of any sort in a “chapbook” of 48 pages and up; some people even self-publish them, and other than in a contest, it’s not a bad way to go, for starters, especially. Plan to give ’em away; I do. You live in a community rich with writers and some decent literary journals or stores which will probably consider your stuff (SUN, RAMBLER, and the guy at The Regulator bookstore if I’m right). The “online” marketplace for anything that might be publishable is already jammed, though it has infinite space; but it isn’t clear anyone reads that stuff. Let’s talk.
The “lyric essay” (sometimes crosses identities with the LONG prose poem) or “creative nonfiction” piece is still publishable. Letter to Redford might be such. There are “things” I’d avoid in creative nonfiction too. SARABANDE PRESS (q.v.) will still read creative nonfiction all year ’round, and has some kinds of writing contests starting now–
Sept. 1 for a month, I think. Sarabande “reads” fiction for only one lousy month a year, by comparison. Word to the wise, don’t even try to publish fiction on paper anymore, unless you’re awfully good. Standard advice. As a writer, you, Amy, are awfully good! Even the fiction you wrote back in NY was good. Nuff said. Let’s talk.
I met a very old contra dancer, btw, who was wearing a nasty Kalashnikov and bandoliers of ammo, and said he was on his way to look for old Latino commies. Let’s all live in the moment! Love, Dad