If you find yourself with a pen in your hand, but you don’t know what to write. If you mean to put down a few lines, but you’re speechless, and you don’t know what to say.
If you find yourself staying in your pajamas for hours, promising yourself that you’ll get up, that you’ll make something happen, but then the day spins away.
If you’ve been unusually down, even though you don’t live near Maine or Gaza or Israel, and you’re not even Jewish or Palestinian, but you’ve noticed a deep grief, and you wonder whether its one thing or many things and whether you can shake it.
If you find yourself refreshing the news app on your phone every five minutes, as though you’re waiting for something to happen, but you don’t know what. Even though you know better, even though you know your phone doesn’t have the answer.
Maybe you burst into tears for no reason. If so, you’re the third person who’s told me that this week.
Maybe you’ve distracted yourself, as I have, with games of solitaire and a TV show about ranchers in Montana who fight over land and cattle, a show with beautiful panoramas of golden valleys and wild horses. Or maybe you saw a show about 20 women in their 60’s and 70’s who are vying for the love of one man who hands out roses to some, but not to all.
Maybe you swim, as I do, counting laps, wondering what I’ll have for lunch, or how my mother is doing in L.A., or If I should buy that land in Taos, even though it doesn’t seem very practical.
Maybe it’s the trees you trust, or the scent of eucalyptus or pine.
Or being barefoot, or walking with a friend, or gazing at the full moon, or the turmeric garbanzo soup you made for your family last night, or how every time you look at your daughter and her boyfriend, you imagine their children.
Maybe that’s how you settle yourself in this fireball of a world that feels out of control, where people are hurting each other in terrifying ways, as we speak, right now.
Maybe that’s how you make the pen move across the page. You start with the simple things, the things you love, that you hold close; your children, the trees, the Santa Ana winds that move through California, the phone call last night with your sister, that you made her laugh when a moment before she was crying.
You know there are larger things looming, and they hurt to think about. How could you not feel them.
You’re a human animal – you feel everything.
So start with what you love, start there.
Listen to Laurie read the piece here …
Thanks for this connecting.
You are appreciated 🙂
Watching the sunset on the cliffs above the bay, low layer of orange going deep red above, my little village over the water a black shadow in its light. Of course with Tux, the pensive, Spanish Water Dog studying his sea. I sang ever so quietly to myself Day is done. Gone the sun. From the bay from the hills from the sky. All is well. Safely rest. God is nye. And I felt a remembered safety of childhood nights at camp, so I softly sang it again watching.
This piece spoke to my heart right here right now. Interconnected we all are.
Thank you, as I sat here pondering how I could begin writing again your message was perfect, start with what you love. Thank you.
Thank you Laurie, you are so special🥰❤️❤️
Thanks Laurie. I needed those words. And that explains the well of sadness in my chest and why it keeps overflowing down my face.
Turn toward what you love …thanks.
just the medicine needed this morning. Once in Haiti, while working with a girls writing group in a displaced persons camp, while cholera was rampant, and there had been a deluge storm during the night making everything dangerous, the girls arrived in our art tent completely shut down. (understandable). I sent them out to look at, see, write about somethiing they hated. They were thrilled. The readings were powerful. And then I sent them out to write about something they love in the camp. That was a bit harder, but they did it and when they wrote, it was heart breakingly beautiful and they had transformed their despair through words. xxxxx
Beautiful story…thank you
Maybe it’s your friend who can see and hear you through the tiny screen. Maybe it’s the texture of her music in the background. The way you both veered towards the same dark poem. The promise of olives. The last of those golden leaves.
I love your words of seeking comfort during such troubled times.
No small task but I will try and watch the leaves fall like rain and let the changing seasons wiggle its way into my depleted soul. Grateful for your words
Or maybe it is the beauty of the streets of San Miguel, decorated with orange chrysthanthemums in preparation for celebrating our beloveds on Day of the Dead, or the cacophany of firecrackers heralding the vista of Saint Judas, the celebratory boom, boom, boom of a typical day in San Miguel. But not today. The boom, boom, boom transports me to a street of ruble in Gaza, bombs going off all around me, delivering me into the energy of an ancient, profound conflict. I open my eyes and I am sitting on my terrace, the sun rising in the East, a hummingbird drinking nectar, bringing me back into its medicine of joy and truth and prayers for all of humanity.
Profoundly resonating. Thank you so much.
Beautiful. Yes. And thank you!
Start with what you love-yes! Thank you for the refresh/reminder in these surreal and scary times.
Thank you so much for capturing this moment and exposing our shared humanity.
What a beautiful New Mexican sky to compliment the beautiful and painful feelings your words evoke. Thank you.
Another vivid swipe of color across the landscape of today. Thank you for speaking to the hearts of so many in such a magnificent and inspiring way.
Thank you for the audio. It was so powerful and I appreciate your voice and your thoughtfulness so very much. It is so hard right now. Sending love from Seattle.
Thank you Laurie for sharing your humanity so tenderly and inviting us to connect.
Perfect. You captured exactly how I’ve been feeling. Thanks for the words, the walks and your friendship as always. xoxo
Steph
So start with what you love.
So stay with what you love.
You are what you love.
Love everything… everything.
Love is the only thing the madmen can’t touch.