You only have one shot

So - while away this week, the power of email hit me square between the eyes. I got a facebook email message that one of the women from my Kenyon Review writing workshop had died. She was 20. She had been living with cancer - no blossoming. She was a hell of a writer. Man, she could craft a poem. She could tear one apart also.

I had the privilege to learn with her. Grow with her. Write with her.

She was just finishing up a round of chemo and had fast talked her doctors into letting her attend the workshop. She rested alot and hung out with me at meals. She could jive with my diet issues and fear of an upset tummy. I never balked as she swallowed down horse pill after horse pill.

I told her about my mom. I got it. The process of cancer. I also was not hung up on it. She was not dying - she was living and I think - seeing my mom battle through chemo - that is important to note.

What she showed the world and continued to show - as I followed her on Facebook and Goodreads - is life is for living - ONE DAY AT A TIME. Squeeze it and hang on tight. Sure maybe an afternoon nap is in order, but do not coast, do not sleep it through, cuz you have no right to expect tomorrow to include you.

As a teenager it had to be tempting to just give up, get pissed, be angry at the world. Instead she took summer school, online and sometimes from the hospital, getting chemo. Seriously.

This spring, she and a friend were hatching some public poetry project and sent out a call for work. I sent her some of my work. Happily so. I hope her friend sees that vision through.

Her words, written during the workshop will never cease to inspire me and make me want to write my very best. Such skill with the pen and at such a young age. I wish I had the chutzpa to write like her when I was twenty. I was shy, maybe once you realize that tomorrow is not a guarantee you just write like you don't care. It took me years to learn to take those risks.

As the news settled into my gut, part of me wanted to be angry. What kind of Universe takes away someone with some much talent and such a gift to inspire. Then I remembered - it is not how long you have - it is how you lived what you were given.

I think M's words speak for themselves. She lived every single second... and just like a good poem. Ever single word counts.


Some of her lovely and and totally moving prose can be found here.

Kenyon Review readings

If you want to hear all the awesome goodness, which was created at the summer workshop I attended, you can listen to the readings by following this link.
I was impressed with the quality of work generated, many cases overnight, at the workshop.

I read on Thrusday for those who are curious, towards the end and after some amazing fiction created by some very talented 20 somethings. Pure genius, some of it.

If you are thinking about writing or what to step up your game, this is the workshop for you!

The call of the wild is truly the call of the divine

I decided rather than rush tomorrow, I would go print my poem tonight. The lab is just up the road. I told my suite mate where I was heading and I headed out.

On the path, across the road near a huge oak tree, was a doe. She looked at me and I looked at here, eyes full of wonder and longing. She watched me, I watched her and this stretched between us for uncounted seconds. Then I looked away and she followed me, as I began to walk away, getting further and further away and then she bowed her head and again ate the sweet grass.

When I returned, a few minutes later, she was gone.

Sauce Phobia

Yes I have sauce phobia, if the sauce is brown it likely has soy sauce in it and that means wheat. If the sauce is brownish or thickish, then that means a rue, which is flour and butter - both bad or it is creamy and well, creamy is not catastrophic, but bad all the same.

Last night there was rice with the stir fry in a brown sauce. I ate the rice with the cooked turkey sausage I brought from home and some lovely roast plum tomatoes I also brought from home. Yum. (Whole Foods.)

Tonight I had brought the other half of the sausage and plum tomatoes, hoping for more rice. Nope, bread, bread, bread. I so did not want to walk back to my cottage, after my 40 minute hilly bike ride, to get said rice. My legs and ass felt like jelly. Enough already.

So I inquired if perhaps, they did not have left over rice. Nope no rice. So I said, well I am gluten free and the dinner tonight is not?

Gluten Free you say, hold on and let me get Chef Brian.

Chef Brian?

So Chef Brian appears,complete in traditional chef gear, offers me some rice pasta and says, pointing at my tupperware of sausage and tomatoes, want me to warm that up and toss it with the pasta.

Yeah buddy and could you kiss me while you are at it.

So he proceeds to take out a pan, one labeled - Gluten Free Only.

"Is vegetable oil, I mean canola oil ok?"

Yes I say.

He heats the oil tossed in the pasta, added my meat mixture, tosses it.

"How about some dry white wine?"

I nod. Thinking I should just jump the glass, open flame be damned and kiss him.

He hits it with the wine, deftly slides it on a plate. Smiles at me and says, "Wow, that is not bad."

I nod, he tells me he will bring me my container after he has it washed in the dishwasher.

Wow. That pasta was amazing and way better than the weird stuff my class mates had to choose from.

Kenyon is developing a plan to be able to offer a gluten and lactose free entree at every meal this fall. With dedicated cookware and appetizing and non stigmatizing menus. He was hired to do that and was somewhat excited to have four woman, this week, to work with. He wants to learn. He asked me many questions about what I liked, what worked. He has taken classes in cooking for those with allergies and this is his first chance to be an agent of change, to make it happen.

It felt so nice, to have someone take care of me that way. Certainly I had brought the components, but Brian had deftly and sweetly combined them and cooked them and asked me thoughtful questions.

No sneers or sighs. Just simple cooking and a great meal.

Kenyon Review Writers Workshop

This week I am at the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, studying poetry with Carl Phillips. Google him, he is way cool.

The campus is lovely and the time to think and write is so valuable. I have not been feeling as focused the first half of this year and I am hopeful that this experience will renew my creative well and help me that Zen writers place.

I am not short on ideas mind you, just time and focus.

I have never been to anything like this before and many of the participants are back again, which says something I think.

It also reinforces the notion that I write because I am a writer. Being published or actively seeking publication is a different animal. While it is is a goal, to be sure, it does not define me as a writer.