The Word-Spun Journey

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly Voices We Hear

2011-03-27T13:51:00.011-04:00

I confess I haven’t been writing much, except for journaling, which surely counts, right?

But my heart and mind and spirit warm at the thought of words and Brave Girls in the same sentence. I hope you are writing. I hope you are writing out your dreams and believing you can have them.

When I see the happy colors and lights and ruffles of The Brave Girls new warehouse home, it tickles something inside of me to be all I can be! Then the next little voice of the critic, the ”I can’t do it voice” interrupts and says, ”No you can’t. Give it up, that belief in you.”

What do we do when we’re battling those voices I call the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly? The Good Voice welcomes us into who we are. The Bad Voice usurps those positive vibes with derogatory, limited mind jargon. The Ugly voice takes on a manifestation all its own when the Bad Voice’s message moves down into it dark mind tapes and to where they predominate.

We long for the good voice–the Good voice is the one that welcomes us into our own lives, to ask us to bless those visions that peek into our very nature. It is the voice of joy and light and possibility. This voice is the place of our becoming–sometimes we aren’t sure what that place will look like but we KNOW, fully KNOW it wants to be.

And I’ve found, it’s okay not to know, but it’s not okay to deny the calling. I guess I thought all my life that I couldn’t do it, that I couldn’t be that creative gypsy spirit that I am. I thought that space was created for someone like Melody or Kathy, someone who has organizational skills, marketing skill and savvy that I don’t have.

But the voice is determined. It will not be denied. It demands that I listen and watch and look and become and be and delight and believe and call forth the determined spirit that matches the creative gypsy one.

I must push to see that vision happen-–that gypsy spirit find her container. That small step made upon that promise is the start of my journey on my own yellow brick road. Being on our personal yellow brick road means that at then end of it we find our own Kansas, our own home, our own truth.

Today, I must believe this can happen in me. I know that because I know how I feel when I see others doing what they love and think that maybe even I could do that in some way--own a little store and make it glittery and fun and refuse to hear the voice saying, ”Oh, no store is like that.”

I realize God gave us these creative impulses for a reason. He gave them to us so we can honor them. How that will happen, what it will look like, I’m not sure, but I’m more ready to take the baby steps and keep stepping those chubby baby feet and wiggly toes toward the honoring of my imaginings.

I want you to honor your imaginings too. I want in this huge world of yellow brick paths fir you to find YOURs and realize YOURS and come home to YOURS.

Why?

Because you are supposed to and because deep within yourself you know that more than you’ve ever known anything in your life before.

I’m here to say, ”It can be.”

Be willing to begin to fly your flag–what does it look like, what words does it have, what colors beam from it, what is its story. When we’re willing to fly the flag of self, we’re able to claim the treasure of our own soul—becoming the very person we were meant to be all along.

Maybe we can be accountable to each other; maybe we can help each other, maybe we can take baby steps together toward our goals. 

We can’t allow ourselves to be in the pit of dark without reaching again for that light above us. It is our redemption. It is our hope and honoring it brings us one step closer to finding it. 

Right now, I’m watching a minister from Huntsville, Alabama, render his sermon. Recently, I haven’t been a lot about ministers or sermons. Some of my days of late have been dark with filtered light eking through here and there–-that light is a promise telling me to keep moving toward it, to keep doing it anyway.

This minister mentioned a commercial slogan for a well-known cereal. The slogan is  "Taste it for the first time again.” When I heard that slogan, a brighter light seeped in, the light of truth.

We must be willing to taste the glory of who we are, and taste it for the first time again if we’ve let it fall by the wayside of the world’s critical voices and meandering as well as our own Bad Critic’s words.

When we allow the Bad Critic to have reign inside us, it eventually leads to the frustrated Ugly voice that encourages us to spiral down into a darkness where we were never meant to live.

As the minister suggested this morning, Taste it again for the first time. Taste the delight of who you are again for the first time and enjoy the fullness of that taste, the richness of that taste, the possibility of incorporating the TASTE of YOU in your every moment.

I’m here to ask you to do that. I’m here to ask myself to do that. Otherwise we are settling for a tasteless life–-a life catered to the palette of others–a life we weren’t meant to live. 

See what the flavor of your life is–-write about it–-make a flag of your self to honor it–and wave that flag until you get there.

You WILL get there. And so will I. 

The Writer in the Toenail Clippings

2009-04-19T01:38:00.004-04:00

You see I can’t write.

When I start, I think, well, I’m not this writer or that writer.

(Add the names here of any writers you aspire to be like—or would be willing to collect their toenail clippings in a jar, having been told all word inspiration comes directly from writers’ toenail clippings, and how handy that would be for you, not overlooking the go green aspect of writer toenail recycling).

I am not this writer or that writer. I am me writer—me writer who does not get published except once every ten years—me writer who doesn’t deliver such polished and coiffed words that make the buying public swarm into the bookstore for that fresh-inked smelling first edition.

So I don’t start writing because I’m a me writer. And I don’t know how to get over being me and not being one of them—the known ones—the writers whose words I read and wish I was Spongebob Squarepants so I could actually absorb each delicate parcel of their writings “like a sponge.”

Me writer, just trying to be funny.

And I can be funny, you see, as me writer I can be anything I want. It doesn’t matter. Even though I taught oodles of college freshman about composition and how much their written story “mattered,” and even though I believed it with all the sponginess of my heart, I cannot seem to translate that into what one does with their story once they write it down.

If it is so important for us to write down our stories or they will be lost forever, then what are we supposed to do once we take a writing chance, get the truth on paper and still no one cares any more than “before” we wrote it down?

Thinking back on those days of my trying to convey to those 25 sets of eyes how crucial their story was to the world, it seems like I was telling the “little white lie of writing.” The truth is—their story and the story of countless me writers like me—doesn’t matter after all.

Yet, each semester I could always see the importance of story in my students’ eyes before they ever tried to find their writer’s voice on the page.

The first day of class, I could see how they wanted me to know them—not in the usual stuffy English professorial kind of way—but in the can-you-lend-me-a-helping-hand kind of way because life is hard sometimes and I’m afraid.

I could see the fear stories in the eyes of these newbie composition geniuses when they opted for this seat or that one, or the one in the far back where they thought they would never be called on to be real.

They never thought they’d be called on to be real, and I never intended to be The Velveteen Rabbit of composition, but I craved real words from the inside of my students’ souls.

Their eyes told me. Their names told me. What they did or didn’t wear told me—what they would or wouldn’t say told me how much they needed to put on paper.

My job was to pull their Velveteen Rabbit words out of the holes where they hid who they really were.

Right now, I’m trying to remember how I managed to do that in the classroom so I can re-teach myself the world needs as many Velveteen Rabbit words and me writers as it can get.

And yes, it does sound like I’m a whiny writer and yes I can do that as much as I want—I have this collection on my mantle of tiny jars filled with toenail clippings I bought on ebay from the likes of Elizabeth Gilbert, Sue Monk Kidd and Lorrie Moore to back up the inspiration behind my words.

What to do when everything breaks?

2008-08-23T11:43:00.002-04:00

Last October, I took a time out from my marriage.

Now close to a year later, I'm still in time out.

I've enjoyed being by myself, purchasing little doo-dads for my tiny house I'm renting, waking in the middle of the night (like now) to only me and the hum of the refrigerator, the occasional Sleepless-in-Powder-Springs-Georgia bird chirping outside my window, the lone car's roar as it drives by at this crazy hour. Well, make that two cars. Another one just drove by.

Everything has been good.

My husband has been a wonderful partner to me for over 28 years. I love him still in many ways. Ways that won't change even though we are probably getting a divorce.

I don't regret our years together but know in my heart our journeys are turning away from one another. I know in my heart that sometimes we have to honor the turns those journeys take even when we don't understand them.

One new phenomena I've noticed the past few weeks is things are breaking everywhere in my house--not appliances thank goodness, but precious items I've bought for my place or people have purchased for me.

My mom bought me Garden Angel statuette for Christmas. The angel lost her head as she toppled from the top tier of a bookshelf. I had to glue her back together.

I purchased some light green Jadeite China at an antique store called The Classy Flea, and one of my favorite pieces, a sugar bowl with a lid, had a great fall like Humpty Dumpty and crashed into the sink from a nearby shelf. I couldn't save the lid.

I checked out prices for this item on eBay, which ranged from $63.00 to $82.00. I didn't realize what a great deal I had gotten on my sugar bowl until the lid broke.

Other things have chipped and cracked. My youngest daughter bought me a set of plates from Pier One that I love. Each time I pull something out of the dishwasher I find another white exposed part appears where brownish-gold ceramic glaze is supposed to be.

I'm thinking I may need to retrieve the dishwasher manual and take a quick read on how to properly load this appliance.

It's funny how quickly one gets attached to things--new things--how quickly they take bearing on one's heart--even if they are only lids and dishes. I find myself frustrated about the breakages.

Somehow I thought since I was starting a new life that nothing should break--that I should be given some moratorium on breaking for about a year or two.

Alas, breaks happen. Breaks happen in marriages that were by and large pretty solid. Breaks happen in hearts you thought would hold together forever without needing any kind of glue--Elmer's Glue, Gorilla Glue, spit.

Breaks creep into the exposed places in your mind, body, spirit and cause soul collapse where you just can't keep on living the way you once did--so you have to break-up instead.

I think of all the pieces of things I've tried to rescue recently, and I wonder if they represent pieces of myself that had fallen in ill repair before I said, "Hey, has anybody noticed I'm losing it here?"

No one notices the soul's call for salvation except the soul itself.

We could be sweeping pieces of our soul off the floor along with dust bunnies and never know the difference if we fail to look at what shows up in the dust pan--look how much of us has broken into shards on the floor of our own lives.

So things break. I get it.

Times may come around where I search back through my marriage, like I searched on eBay for a sugar bowl with lid to see the value of trying to replace it, and then find out how much it was worth--how much I gave up to get myself back.

Nothing is easy. Even Humpty Dumpty couldn't be put back together and he had King's horses and men. I've just got me and my resolve to piece myself back together again.

When sugar bowl lids crash into 54 green glass pieces, one grieves a bit, wishes it hadn't happened, has a brief sugar bowl pity party, and then gets used to the sugar bowl on the shelf without the lid.

The same process goes for all things that break in our lives whether they are sugar bowl lids, Garden Angels, Pier One dishes, 28-year marriages, or human hearts.

Shelnutt Copyright 2008

WAYS OF KNOWING 2008

2008-01-02T22:53:00.000-05:00

As the new year offers us the opportunity to turn ever more toward our true selves, I wish for each of you a 2008 that will offer you time to honor your own "ways of knowing."

We have ways of knowing inside. We question them--wonder if these ways are right, if they work in the boxed-in-tight world we live in. But what I've found with my own path, my own ways of knowing, is I must honor them--the wild call in my heart to live fully and the hushed whisper to draw into silence to find more truth. I must honor all I know. I must not give in to anyone else's ways of knowing. Finally I'm realizing that listening to others' calls instead of one's own only leads to someone else being fulfilled.

I think this may sound a bit abstract. I can't find the fingerprint for what I want to say. I want to say this moment 11:06 p.m. on January 2, 2008, is what I've been given--it is my gift. I've given so many of these gift moments to others thinking they could do so much more with them than I ever could.

From now on, I'm going to call my moments, my ways of knowing, my own. I'm going to put name tags on those moments that say "Karen." I'm going to invite the moments to explode into firecrackered wonder across the sky of myself. I'm going to bow in humble gratitude to the richness the moment offers and to the many ways of knowing a simple breath contains.

"Once upon a time, in a dark forest"

2007-06-22T12:49:00.000-04:00

Whenever I sit down to write, my beagle, Sidney, gets up and wants to go out and so does Sunny, my white, fluffy mutt. Once they are taken care of, I settle back into my thirty-minute writing time.

So what do I have to say—what does my writer have to say?

I’m thankful for a great night teaching composition on Wednesday—thankful for the floor in the family room being fixed, for family and friends. I’m thankful that the universe is bringing my heart’s desires to me now.

I don’t know what to write here. Julia’s correct about how starting to write thirty minutes every day will be good practice.

My writing is rusty; reddish-brown crust has oxidized on my words. The words have been exposed to so much longing, pain, insult and disbelief they figure what could a little rust hurt. The words believe: if we stay here rusting, they’ll put us in the junkyard of language where all words that could have been written are tossed, rusted and unused.

Writing works best when we don’t let it have too much idol time to break down, to lose some of itsef by not finding the page, not being offered a chance to present the words to the universe.

When our writing lapses, the page is never given a chance to provide refuge for the random verbs and nouns, adjectives and adverbs that play and twist and turn in our brains, in our hearts. The page waits; the words rust; the hand, arm, or pen forget how to dance their cursive writing or printing or typing into being against a background of what has never been.

Maybe that’s what is so frightening about writing.

When we scribble down what has never before lived, we may fear what monsters our words might create on a page, not the beauty-queen words, polished and positive, the world longs to see. Writing is more than beauty-queen words. It is the way we get to our inner beauty, our inner royalty, our inner truth.

But we must slay the dragons first.

We can’t get to the other side until we’ve written through the sixteen demons hiding in our bodies’ dark places, until we allow their fire hot breath released to the page in inked heat, until we are ready to admit that writing for the beauty-queen life alone is the most irresponsible of fairytales—one that demands happy endings, shuts down the gifts writing brings and lays at our feet.

Knowing ourselves doesn’t always mean the happily-ever-after tone for our writing, but sometimes means writing that is like tangled vines covering the entry to ourselves, words of the frozen kingdom stilled by spells of the mind—dark veils covering the heart, words silenced until the truth of a single tear falls and light and movement flow into the kingdom once again.

It concerns me how many people want writers to be positive, to write positive things so much of the time. And I know that positive is good. Happy is good. Joy is exceptionally good. But to demand happy-go-lucky writing of our daily words, starves the soul, empties it of possibility, empties it of the feast of opening to whatever is.

Whatever is in the moment contains the story that the pen must tell. Whatever word agrees in contract with the page to join together is the word that is supposed to come. The words may be ragamuffin words or twin-headed dragon words, yet all hold the golden chalice which overflows with knowing and opening once pondered upon the page.

No one gets to the light unless they move through the dark entities first, and when they break through to a shining place, it doesn’t mean the halls won't harbor dank, foreboding crevices we must continually examine, patch, mend and bring to light again.

As a teacher of writing, I’ve seen more lives changed by those who are willing to open the dark night of the soul to the page and share it with others, than from those who squish about in Happiness is thoughts all the time.

I guess to some degree it’s about balance. Yes. But consider the legend of young Arthur. He couldn’t pull the sword from the stone without coming into the open to make his claim. And we, too, won’t know the glory of our own stories unless we draw to the light the Excalibur buried in heavy stone inside us.

Fairytales have happy endings. Legends hail heroic efforts written down and told again and again.

An artist I admire, Sylvia Luna, has a wonderful website (www.silvermoonstudios.com) which displays her work and links to a blog (she calls her LUNAcy blog) about her life. Sylvia has known darkness—Excalibur buried deep in the stone. She came home one evening ten years ago to find her 20-year-old son, Steve, dead on the floor of his room where he had been completing paperwork to apply to the police academy. Steve was her only child.

One way Sylvia honors Steve now is by placing these words on her website and much of her art work—“P.S. Steve I love you.”

The loss of her precious child forever changed Sylvia. She has embraced art, but she lets it be an expression of where she is, how she feels. And on her blog she reveals her life in process. She posts pictures of the ebb and flow of her creative living and labels them: Mess 1, Mess 2, Mess 3, Mess 4, and so on.

I dare you to take a look at her site. As humans, we don’t want to look at messes, clean up messes, deal with the messes we’ve made. We smiley face, Mr. or Mrs. Clean everything so we'll appear to always be one step ahead of the mess we just cleaned up or stepped over or pretended wasn’t there at all.

I’m saying the world is changed by truth—artists and writers telling their stories in truth—dark to light and every shade of gray, green, orange, or hot rod red that comes up for us.

We never want to lose the possibility of there being a fuller life than the one we have because we are afraid to take our turn at pulling Excalibur to the light, of letting our true self—sometimes messy and ugly, vampirish and weak, sour and crude—be exposed to others. However, when these darker qualities reflect off the light of a community of words and love, the spell is broken, the words free us, and in the writing and hearing of the truth of those words, maybe others’ words will be freed as well.

And when we think we don't know how to begin this journey, we might start by writing, “Once upon a time, in a dark forest . . .”

Back to My Basics--The Heart of Teaching

2007-06-15T16:12:00.000-04:00

When I started teaching English Composition to Freshmen over four years ago now, I didn't know much about teaching. I was thinking about this recently. I thought how my getting dunked in the waters of teaching could be compared to my experiences dating as a teenager.

I think my main objective on dates then (especially with guys whom I loved, like Ken Hannah) was not to make a complete fool of myself. But while on dates, it seems some megawatt spotlight is always shining down illuminating each little time you mess things up.

One time while at the drive-in, I remember cuddling close to Ken Hannah while we sat in his cream colored Cutlass Supreme with square headlights. Lord only knows what movie was showing. I do remember we were in the front seat. I was such the prude.

That night Ken was wearing, get this, a black fishnet shirt--OK this is the seventies and these shirts were in style, I promise. My head was resting on Ken's shoulder and chest. When I tried to move my head, I was aware that my earring and consequently my ear were attached to his fish netting.

While making out with Ken Hannah, I'd caught my earring in one of those tiny triangles of his shirt. I was embarrassed. I felt like I did when I'd stuck my tongue inside the freezer to lick up fallen juices from Koolaid Popsicles I was putting in the fridge and my tongue had gotten frozen there.

Ken and I fumbled around trying to untangle me like I was some cod on a fishing line or something. Once separated from each other, I think we were hesitant to hug or touch anymore that night for fear of being permanently attached. I'm sure I never thought about just taking the earring off.

Another time of dating firsts was when I accidentally left my pants unzipped while on a double date with Ken Hannah and my best friend, JoAnn, and her boyfriend Jim. I recount that experience in my first blog entry on this site (On Leopard Print Panties and Writing) so I won't tell that story again.

In those early dating days, it didn't seem to matter what I did it still came out beyond awkward. That's how it was my first year of teaching as well.

The first semester I taught I had late night classes. My last class ended at 10:45 p.m. One night in that late class, one of my students kept looking at me kind of funny while I was in the middle of discussing Eudora Welty's essay from One Writer's Beginnings.

I thought a grandaddy long legs was on my head or something. I gave this student, Carey, a guy, a quizzical expression, and he mouthed some initials to me. I don't even remember the initials now. I didn't have a clue what he was talking about, so I kept staring at him trying to figure out what he was saying.

Finally he just said it out loud--trying not to be too loud--but loud enough that I heard. "Your pants are unzipped."

"Oh." I got it immediately, zipped my gold brushed jeans up and laughed. I told Carey thanks and told the class that I figured it was good I had gotten these embarrassing events over with early during my teaching career so I didn't have to keep anticipating something like this happening.

Since then other things have happened in class. As a teacher who tries to write and read out loud along with the class, I've had moments of unexpected tears when I've read my words to them. I've had times when I've said the wrong thing or revealed too much.

Many times I have completely forgotten what I was going to say--my mind for some reason empties of all thought--I am standing in front of 25 sets of eyes looking for some wisdom and guidance on writing and I don't even have wisdom and guidance about how I got to the classroom. These moments I usually recover from pretty quickly by saying I'm old (fifty) or gave some of my brains away when I had children, etc., etc.

Last week, however, I had a new chink in my forgetting moments during class. Room 68, a computer room in the English Building is always hot, hotter and hottest. This summer it has been almost unbearable. My students' cheeks are red. I notice this lack of concentration look as if we are all sitting in a steam room rather than a classroom. No deodorant that I choose works under this much pressure and heat. Add to this hotness and sweat and lack of connection the fact that I forget what I am going to say.

Well, it's not like I forget. I have notes. I've read the material time and time again. But you see, I'm not a from the book teacher. I'm a from the heart teacher. When I start looking at a textbook to try to teach, my inner wiring gets crossed and begins to misfire and I can't begin to see much less say the next coherent note on my pad.

I have to excuse my sweating self from class. "You all I'm sorry but I've just got to take a minute." I say that to the kids after an eternal 45 seconds of me not being able to pull it back together.

I need air and hallway space and coolness on my face that hot rooms don't provide. I leave the room. I am sweating like 23 pigs. I've never left the classroom because I can't remember something.

But I do.

I clomp my sandals down the hall while I breathe deeply the soothing air in the hallways, sip some water from the fountain, take some more deep breaths and walk back into class knowing I cannot teach from my notes.

I return to my tried and true teaching method--speaking from my heart. And it works. Of course it does. When you are acting from a space of truth in your heart things always work.

I had tried to use notes and a more formal lecture to please some "other" people, but it didn't work for me, would never work for me. Well it might work for me if my students like expanded moments of silence during one hour and fifteen minutes of class. But since this is a class of writing, of language, of words, I feel many glitches in my presentation might seem a little weird.

I make it through the class even though I wouldn't put a blue ribbon on my teacher wall for this particular night. Hey, at least I come back in the room and don't run out into the dark night never to be heard from again.

On the drive home, I try to get on to myself for forgetting, for being human, for not always doing things perfectly. Something in me won't take the rap. Something in me knows it isn't about forgetting how to teach my students in class, it is more of forgetting who I am as a teacher, as a woman, as my true self.

As soon as I step off the block of Karen Shelnutt and try to edge onto the block of another teacher who uses notes and lectures with ease, I give up the gift I have of teaching from the heart. I know it. I knew it when I had 32 pages of notes in front of me and I know it as I type this now.

I can't pretend to be what I am not. When I do Spirit interrupts with something--unzipped pants, awkward silences, blistering hot classrooms. The silence I experienced last week in class was really a gift of Spirit saying, "Hey sister, shift gears. You are way off course. Go down the hall. Drink some water. Tell your heart you're sorry for not including her. Then go back in and do it the way you know how."

Where Change Meets the Past--and Sometimes Never Gets Up

2007-06-08T17:24:00.000-04:00

"Tone it down."

As I sit to write in my journal, I hear this message in my head. It's a message from the past.

I don't know why it's chosen to present itself now.

I was often told as a child to settle down, be still, stop squirming, stop being so prissy. The way adults in my life saw it I was too big for my britches, I needed to watch my mouth, needed to be seen not heard.

I see why I still don't want to bring my full self to light even at fifty years of age.

At fifty, I hear echoes of the in-charge voices around me when I was five or six or seven or eight or ten and on.

When I hear those voices, I go into my children-obey-your-parents mode or my respect-your-elders behavior. If there wasn't room for fancy-pants, full-of-herself me as a kid, why would I believe people would suddenly request a truthful dose of who I am today?

So I hide and smother. I root myself as a couch potato and grow back into the same soft indention of the couch's nurturing place day after day. I sleep continuously as if sleeping will keep me from remembering what twenty-four hours fully realized might look like.

I make plans to change while I'm couch inclined. I make plans to read the books I've collected on rituals and then write an article on friendship and ritual and submit it to a magazine.

I'm going to peruse the books I have on folklore and personal narrative, on gypsy stories. I'm going to research labyrinths online and insert that information in the journal about my labyrinth walks.

I'm going to revise my novel, work on my new business of the week, grade an essay or two, and on and on the list goes of things I don't do, of things I only couch-think of doing.

I argue with myself--surely there's only so much sleep a person can need. Not me. I need that much and more. One more nap might reveal the Power Dream that answers all my questions, heals all my sassy-ass behaviors I acquired as a kid, the behaviors that prompted the tone-it-down commentary in the first place.

After the Power Dream, I might wait around for Power Dream II and Power Dream III before I take action. No need to get in a hurry.

It's pitiful. Dismal really. I don't know if I can blame it on this pattern of past voices twist-tied into my memory telling me to get over myself already and that I'm not the reason the sun rises every morning.

And in truth, I don't want to blame anyone as much as I want to rip my couch-potato-rooted self off her cushioned behind and send her on some real adventures--adventures that don't involve closed eyes and a wishful heart.

There must be a way to push through this malaise. Even as I try to type here, my eyelids flutter in an attempt to stay open, but prefer sleep.

Maybe answers come in time. Isn't fifty years enough time? How many years do I have and are the couch and sleep truly that appealing to me?

Right now they are.

The more I fight it, the more I curse it, the more I rebel against the heaviness of it, the more consuming it is.

I must believe that a pattern is the worst just before it clears. I must believe that even in my fatigue and ennui I am loved. I must believe that the way out is by loving myself fully for how I got in this space to begin with.

I must believe that when truth is offered as prayer, even when the words are formed from a self unsure and imperfect, not on her knees but on her couch, progress is somehow being made, patterns are somehow being broken.

On Truth, Tacky Gypsy Bracelets, and Magic Gardens

2007-06-02T13:38:00.000-04:00

"Truth must be realized individually. It must be realized by you; otherwise, it is not your Truth. Only your Truth . . . is expressed in your life, not anyone else's. How do you find your Truth? By seeking and finding the Teacher within. You see the Teacher and the Truth within are one."
--John Randolph Price, With Wings of Eagles

What is my Truth? What does my Teacher within say? Each time I grow closer to my Truth, others taunt me as the oddball kid on the playground--the kid who dresses different, who looks different, who picks odd things to like.

No wonder we don't want to honor our own Truth. Often choirs gather around ready to sabotage even the earliest seedlings of our findings.

What if I purchase a funky bracelet that speaks to my Truth, show it to those closest to me, and say to them all excited, "Look at my new bracelet"?

"It's cute," they reply, no attempt to mask their sarcasm.

"It's my gypsy bracelet!" I try to share how the gypsy in my spirit is part of who I am, and how the bracelet makes my soul happy because it engages that part of me.

"I like how you excuse the tacky things you buy simply by calling them 'gypsy.'" That's what they say about my gypsy bracelet--tacky.

So if I have the Truth of the gypsy spirit in my soul, and I begin to express it in clothes, shawls, fringe, bracelets, it makes other people nervous.

The closer we get to our inner Truth, the more frightened some people become. Why? We represent the possibilities waiting dormant inside them. We represent their truest core trying to find its way out.

As long as I'm the gypsy, I'm terrifying the unawakened parts of people and a knowledge that inside them there is a golden latch on a garden gate that leads each of us out of being less and into being more--no, not being more, but being everything and then even more.

First we have to open the latch.

The gold of it shimmers, glints in the the sun. Our fear of being different, of wanting to be like everyone else tugs on our shirtsleeves and holds us back from entry into the magic garden beyond the golden-latched gate into our true selves.

This magic garden allows--it allows fairies, angels, explorers, scavengers, seafarers, and of course it allows gypsies. The magic garden allows whatever trueness our spirit holds.

We are gods and goddesses of our own gardens if we will only enter.

No one else but us knows what we are inside--what our wildness contains, but I've discovered in my magic garden that gypsy bracelets aren't the least bit tacky but are welcomed, lauded, desired.

So what do I want? I want my Truth to be respected. I want to live my Truth, but I'm not sure what that means, or maybe I'm sure, but I don't want to tend the magic garden.

Why? What if people don't want me or like me once I've discovered my Truth. What if I'm supposed to be a certain something to them? And why can't the garden I have be one of those that never has problems with weeds.

I want someone to say, "You are a gypsy. How marvelous!"--not how tacky.

How does one live where one is not honored fully? I wish the Truth and the Teacher within would answer that one.

I hear them answer in my heart even as I ask. Their response is kind. They giggle,yet are serious at the same time. "Find more tacky people to hang out with you in your garden."

I believe I will. And I'll wear my gypsy bracelet to my garden party.

Would you like to come?
---------------------------

Flatline Words

2007-05-28T13:15:00.001-04:00

All my writing lately seems to suck.

It’s like I’ve forgotten how to do it—tell my story—it’s like my story has gotten impacted in me somehow and won’t budge. I don’t know if my story will ever return.

When I wrote articles for the AJC, I still had story words. They flowed. They had meaning. They didn't flatline like the most recent words I've put on the page.

Maybe I’m not seeing the potential in these new words. Maybe I’ve forgotten how to see potential in them—potential in my story--potential in me. Maybe flatline words come in direct proportion to a flatline life.

And when did that happen—when did my life turn flat? When did I stop caring how much weight I gained, or whether I socialized with friends, or whether I dusted each week, or whether I had a conversation with my husband? When did I give up the possibility of a life with heartbeats, a life of pulsation and passion and joy and prosperity and love?

I gave up the possibility when I gave up on the power of my own story.

Our stories matter. The simple way we began our fourth grade autobiography, “I was born in . . .” is the first clue to our narrative, the beginning of the pulses of our life and journey. When we decide to give up on the importance of who we are, of what we are here to do, what an injustice we do to the tiny baby we were that was born into such a promise of story. We must honor ourselves into the fullness of who we are.

But that seems a contradiction to a flatline life doesn’t it? How can we honor who we are if we are barely getting by—if each day is as generic as the last, if the coffee tastes the same, the car sounds the same when we crank it, the stale air in the office smells the same, and our co-workers become a mere backdrop against a bad play where we are the main character and our performance is a bit lackluster.

I don't know the antidote for life when everything seems lackluster. All I know is that I seem to have lost my writing voice. It disappeared with my settling for anything.

I can’t write details because it is too painful, too real, too believable, this life I’ve allowed myself. Where do I go from here, what do I do from here, what is my purpose from here? I am a willing heart and soul with a faint heartbeat.

I don’t know how to get myself back.

For that reason sometimes I don’t even want to try. I don’t want to try unless there is a guarantee my words could change someone, unless something I say could help another.

And when I think of my words changing someone, I hear the inner critic sound off-you don’t know how to write a short story or a poem or a book or an essay. You don’t.

Mentally I have the words "You don’t" etched over and over on the lining of my brain. I can’t let go of the fact that I’m not perfect, that there will be things I’m not able to do, places that I won’t fit in.

Trying to write about it makes me tired. Makes the next word harder to type. Makes stopping seem a better idea than keeping going. Makes being a writer seem improbable for me.

Today I’ve written myself out of my own life, and I know the only way back to my story and my true self is through the very words that won't yet come.

Journeys

2006-12-31T13:47:00.000-05:00

I read a friend's article about journeys today--new journeys--toward one's creativity. For some reason, reading about journeys about to be or journeys never had causes the sockets in my eyes to get soggy.

I sit here at the computer on a rainy New Year's Eve in the no light of my kitchen. My daughter's dog patiently rests at my side one moment and then rustles to the window to check out the chickadees and tufted titmouses at the feeders the next. I find myself wondering if dogs think about journeys.

Dogs' journeys consist of waking up and licking their owner's face in the bright light of a morning, searching out the dish for food twice a day, sipping clean water from the bowl, taking extra naps for good measure (especially naps basking in the sunbeams coursing through the window), playing well with others and their toys in between, and keeping watch for exciting happenings like birds at the feeder or the squatter squirrels who try to act like birds and steal their seeds.

Maybe each day of a dog's life is a miniature journey where they carry on and into whatever that day brings. Dog medicine in Native American beliefs represents loyalty. Dogs are loyal to their owners and to the day--the day they open their shiny eyes to and the day they curl into a warm slumber with at night. Dogs take the journey as it comes. Their creativity comes in the living of the day.

Some of us never take the journey at all--creative or otherwise. I think that's what my friend was saying.

Some of us open our eyes on the new day's sun only to let a foggy filter keep us from seeing our true selves--that little girl who always wanted to take tap dance lessons and wear red-fringed costumes with sparkles--the lad whose one wish was to hike across the country but whose only hike is to and from his desk at the office.

We know those dreams. We dropped them behind us in little pieces of bread crumbs like Hansel and Gretel hoping we would always be able to find our way back. But when we're ready, the crumbs are gone and the dreams diminished, barely recognizable, so we keep doing what we do instead of being who we truly are.

And the sad thing, between all these mixed metaphors of dogs and Hansel and Gretel and lost dreams, is some of us never find our way out of the murkiness and mediocrity of our own lives.

Why? We're too afraid what we'll find in the glory of who we are sparkles more than any glittered costume we ever could have worn as a small child. We're afraid if we let ourselves shine it might cause someone else to go blind.

Our answer to all those fears comes in the living of the day. If we awaken to the sun and truly see it, bless it, revel in it, then we begin to know. If we eat our three or however many meals in thanksgiving for the peas, beans and squash prepared before us, we begin to know. If we hustle to the window to welcome the day’s excitement, we begin to know. If we take those we love and cradle them in our arms, and laugh and play and dance twenty-four hours in joy, we begin to know. If we, upon our slumber, realize we have given to that day everything we are and have and might be and will be, we begin to know.

And if we are able to do all these things, rest assured we've rubbed the mediocrity from our eyes and have begun.

Holding On/Holding Still

2006-12-02T13:09:00.000-05:00

Sometimes in life we feel stuck. We drudge through the murky mud of confusion--confusion definitely too muddy and murky to get unstuck.

I've spent much of the past ten years stuck--stuck in fear of moving into all I can be, stuck in refusing to look at life and relationships with a magnifying glass of truth, stuck in failing to lift one dirtied foot from the mire and step in action as a method of moving on.

Sometimes mud on our boots can appear safer than a clean pair of Keds on a mission.

Don't get me wrong about being stuck though. It's not like my life has been on pause the entire time. I have done stuff--finished my masters, now teach English to Freshmen in college, have written a novel.

But this stuckness is a pattern--a pattern of holding on to what is--whether or not the clean after the mud might offer growth, light, love. The mud--it's just too thick.

So I hold on.

I wrote about holding on in my journal the other day. This is how that went:

November 27, 2006

In this moment, my eyes feel like heaters blow inside the sockets drying them out, causing pain. I hear the faint roar of car engines on the highway, of people headed back to their jobs post Thanksgiving. I hear Sunny (my white fluffy dog) moaning and snoring. I hear the faint call of birds through the morning's dark.

I feel my hand on the page of this journal, holding it down, holding it in place, and I think about how I'm always either trying to hold my life still so I don't have to change, or change and get my life to a point where I want it to hold still while I revel in finding what speaks to my soul's essence.

I remember as a little girl when my mom tried to comb my hair or pin up a hem on a dress she was making for me, or measure an outfit against me while in the process of sewing. I'd squirm. She'd say, "Hold still a minute so I can do my work."

But I always had the propensity, the coquettish nature to move around and flirt with my image. Whether attempting to stand still for my mom or while gazing at my image in a mirror or my reflection in one as I passed by, I couldn't hold still. Even in professional photographs of family, I was the one turned in the opposite direction, my head tilted just so unlike anyone else in the picture.

I've been trying to hold still forever, to contain my body's fever and passion and desire. I figured if I held down the page of the journal securely enough or tried to hold myself still for my mother or for a picture or for my life, maybe I wouldn't catch up to what I wanted to be.

So what do I do with all this trying to be still when my spirit wants to splash barefoot in clear streams? I need to let go. Let myself go, my life go. I need to give myself permission to mess up the photograph, to be prissy in front of mirrors, to find that girl in me who couldn't be contained, but somehow, over the years, learned to crave the safety containment offered.

She's in there somewhere. She's not sure what she wants exactly or how it will look exactly, but it will offer a chance for opening to all she is rather than telling herself over and over "just hold still a few more years."

Seven Commandments of the Goddess

2006-06-23T08:13:00.000-04:00

I wrote this at a writing conference held at Ghost Ranch in New Mexico taught by the truly gifted, award-winning writer Eunice Scarfe. It sort of "came" one early morning while I inhaled the beauty of that much Red Rock form in one place. I love how this writing calls us to journey always toward our true selves.

Enjoy your day!

Karen
--------------------------------------------------------
Seven Commandments of the Goddess

I went to the mesa.

I saw the goddess.

The goddess said, “Bow down. You are on holy ground. For every place you are is holy and every place I am is holy and one is not holier than the other. So bow down low and rest your head on your own holy of holies.”

Then her breath came as a cream wind, but it came and lifted me off the holy ground of me and you and her, and it lifted up my arm as if it was a puppet of the cream wind, and placed a thin stone in my hand. Then the voice, gentle and hers, that matched the cream wind again spoke.

“Carve.”

I knew what to do.

1. Always look back at Gomorrah. You don’t want to miss one thing. If you turn into salt, then salt the earth with your body, a human shaker across the bland lands.

2. Don’t wait for the sunrise to come on your dream. Arise, it has come. Look out your window. It has raised its balled fist of fire to say, I can. I will. No one can stop me. Just behind the mesa it rose and surprised us all. The power of it.

3. Abandon any thought of others “doing” life for you. You are the carver, the Red Rock your tablet. If the Red Rock remains without story, the etch of your four elements—air, wind, earth, and fire—nations will not know. Go alone. Do not fear the mesas.

4. You may want to bring your mother or father, brothers or sisters, or significant others to witness the holiest places you’ve been shown. You may do this if you wish. Know the price of pinning miniatures of your family to your garments for the journey. You see, they have their own journeys as well where you can’t go. They have their holiest place and you have yours. Allow. Allow the split in the rock to occur naturally.

5. About saving the world with whatever it is you carve in the Red Rock. Bow your head in humility—the world is saved as each one of us takes up our thin stone driven by the cream wind of goddess and drives epics into the walls that have held us captive. Save yourself. The world is nourished by one woman telling her story and the next and the next until we’ve created a weaving of story, a vibrant shawl of light we can wrap around the world as love gift. Remember, wrapping something in love and trying to save it are two different things.

6. Go where no woman has gone. That means if you stand on Kitchen Mesa, reach on your tippy toes as high as you can, your hands trying to touch the secrets of the lowest stars. Don’t stop there. “Bend and stretch. Reach for the stars. Stand on tippy toes. Reach for Mars." Reach farther, even though it may hurt a little, for the nine planets of women that haven’t yet been discovered. Be an astronomer of women. They sparkle about the earth undiscovered. They live in wells as holy water never drawn. They are embedded in rock waiting for lullaby hands. They smother underground. You see the sprig of their growth atop the desert. Dig down under the smallest green and you may find a vegetable or root you’ve never known.

7. Never forget each of you have the cream wind—no one different from the next. The cream wind blows the same for all. It comes down to who is willing to be on the mesa alone, take the tool in her hand, and change the shape of the Red Rock forever.

Shelnutt Copyright 2006

Pages I completed in Linda's book Winter Garden for round robin

2006-06-22T13:18:00.000-04:00

CLICK ON IMAGES FOR A LARGER VIEW OF PAGE

From Linda's Winter Garden Altered Book

"Queen of the Winter Garden"

Pages from Altered Book Round Robin/Sheila Frank's book What is Art?

2006-06-22T12:55:00.000-04:00

"Art Attack"
"Artsy"

"We are born as works of art."

"Art Freaks me out!"

"Art is getting naked on the page"
"Naked"

"Art Stat"

"Art is swimming to the deep end."

"Art is in the eye of the beholder"
This is the first page I did in Sheila's What is Art?
book. I loved working on this theme. This page
is a pop-up.

"Art is Poetry"
These pages are from entries I did in Sheila Frank's
book in a round robin. Her book was called
What is Art? Some verses from a poem I wrote
appear on this page.

If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all.

2006-03-25T13:20:00.000-05:00

January to February. February to March. I'm counting it on my fingers and it has been two months sinced I've dared open the doors to the blog space. Why? Who the hell knows? Well, I have some ideas. I got this feeling that I should only write happy, smiley-face entries. I could hear in my head the many times adult people had told me when I wasn't an adult people, "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all."

So I haven't. The thing about me is--the way the part of me that wants to say something nice arrives at the point of saying something nice is by allowing some of the not nice to find its splat of space too. Okay, I hear you saying, "But do you have to tell us everything? It is sooo depressing?" And you know, I don't have to and I haven't for two months. This past two months hasn't been overly visited by the smiley-faced fairy, and what I might have written here wouldn't have been pretty. Not at all.

I have conversations in the winter wilderness, during those chilled and sunless months, with God or whomever will listen to please keep my mood-meter at least on the moderate-to- operational level. I struggle with seasonal depression--it's kind of like spring allergies except you don't sneeze--your brain just goes into some odd incubation period for three months of the year. I try to cop a deal with God about borrowing the sun and putting it exactly inside my house for those months--who else really needs it as much as I do then--I think having the sun to myself for the winter would pretty much take care of seasonal anything.

Usually, by late March my brain tissue begins to thaw and all is well and all matter of things are well, or however that goes. So you've caught me in thawing mode--which I guess could be good or bad--but here I am, feeling better and looking at the daffodil my husband placed beside my computer this morning all contented in its crystal vase. Have you ever noticed how much some daffodils look like smiley faces? Now that is a scary spring-like thought for you.

So from my cocoon of winter slumber I say, "Hello, world!" Thank you for not giving up on me. Thank you for smiley faces even when I don't get them, even when I wish I could collect all the smiley faces in the world and distort their gleeful countenances. Everything is better after March 21--even though it's 32 degrees in Atlanta--I guess God did let me borrow the sun--I am well.

And to those adult people who told me to say nice things or not say anything at all when I wasn't an adult people, "Look, I finally did it." :-)

Happy Spring!

Woman Carrying Papason Chair

2006-01-21T13:15:00.000-05:00

On Tuesday night, I had my composition class write from prompts of a poem of Tony Hoagland's called "Man Carrying Sofa." I wrote along with them. This type exercise, which I learned from some wonderful writing teachers, always offers the most amazing writing by students.

I thought I would type Hoagland's poem here and then type my response. Of course, Hoagland is the professional poet. What I have written is not a polished poem as Hoagland's is, but a form to loosen the unrelenting phlegm the writing critic produces inside us which keeps us from our words. This exercise then allows a space for more imaginative and creative words to be written.

Man Carrying Sofa

by Tony Hoagland

Whatever happened to Cindy Morrison, that nice young lesbian?
I heard she moved to the city and got serious.
Traded in her work boots for high heels and a power suit.
Got a health-care plan and an attorney girlfriend.

Myself, I don't want to change.
It's January and I'm still dating my checks November.
I don't want to step through the doorway of the year.
I'm afraid of something falling off behind me.
I'm afraid my own past will start forgetting me.

Now the sunsets are like cranberry sauce
poured over the yellow hills, and yes,
that beauty is so strong it hurts--
it hurts because it isn't personal.

But we look anyway, we sit upon our stoops
and stare, --fierce,
like we were tossing down a shot of vodka, straight,
and afterwards, we feel purified and sad and rather Russian.

When David was in town last weeK,
I made a big show to him of how unhappy I was
because I wanted him to go back and tell Susan
that I was suffering without her--

but then he left and I discovered
I really was miserable
--which made me feel better about myself--
because, after all, I don't want to go through time untouched.

What a great journey this is,
this ordinary life of ants and sandwich wrapper,
of X-rated sunsets and drive-through funerals.
And this particular complex pain inside your chest;
this damanged longing
like a heavy piece of furniture inside you;
you carry it, it burdens you, it drags you down--
then you stop, and rest on top of it.

--------------------------------------------------

Now my turn:

Woman Carrying Papason Chair

by Karen Shelnutt

Whatever happened to Ernest Angely, the Elvis-hair lookalike
TV evangelist who I watched heal thousands as I lounged
on my papason chair at the Chateau de Ville Apartments
when I was in college in Birmingham, Alabama?
I haven't heard a thing about him for 25 years.
Maybe his hair fell out, or he married a prostitute, or he got a
huge illness called reality and stopped doing crazy religious TV.

Myself, I don't want to change.
It's January and I'd give anything for it to still be my
junior year of college and to be eating rice slopped with butter
and fried chicken breasts from Piggly Wiggly and watching Ernest Angely
and then Family Feud hosted by Richard Dawson.

I don't want to step through the doorway of the new year.
I'm afraid I've never gotten over being a junior, drinking spiked
punch at law school fraternity parties, and finding out way too
late for me what sexuality feels like. I'm afraid I can never
go back to exploring life and my vagina quite like I did it then.

Now the sunsets are like mushroom clouds, and yes, the
bright light and radiation are strong and it hurts because,
well, I told you, I can't find Ernest Angely on TV anymore
and now that bearded guy, Al, from Home Improvement hosts
Family Feud.

But we look anyway, we sit upon our last 25 years
and stare,--fierce,
at the sunsets of destruction in between like we just heard
there's an atomic bomb drill and we're in fifth grade
and we crawl under cafeteria tables and giggle to disguise our
fear of being blown away.

Years ago when David was still my friend,
I made myself to seem like some intellectual, but needy,
goddess, because I was still wanting the papason chair and
my junior year of college.

but then he left and I discovered the raw smell of aftermath,
of rotting eggs in my heart, and a mannequin life--which
made me feel better about myself--because after all, I don't
want to go through time untouched.

What a great journey this is,
this ordinary life of sleep and sleep,
of sleep and more sleep. And this particular complex
pain inside your chest, this damaged longing for
the papason chair and the junior year of college, is
like a heavy piece of furniture, you carry it,
it burdens you, it drags you down--
then you stop and rest on top of it.
--------------------------------------------------------
If anyone is interested in the prompts for this exercise, let me know and I'll send them along.

To our words,

Karen

-----------------------------------------------

Letting the Dust Settle

2005-12-05T16:15:00.000-05:00

Recently, a sensitive, wonderful student sent an email to several folks in which he pondered the many questions that college often erupts into the life of a freshman.

When I read the email, I felt like I was in C-Dorm at Samford University trying to figure out if I mattered anymore. My mom and dad had just left me sitting on my mintish-green metal trunk and crying as they prepared to drive back to the life I had known--the life where I had been somebody--where I had been important.

These feelings invaded my thoughts as I read this student's letter. As I responded, I thought of how many of us struggle with the same issues of dark and light, the confusion about us. Sometimes we have to allow the dust to settle in order to be able to find our own way to believe.

I know when I entered college that I, too, stumbled across a doorway of light and dark, of answers of truth and answers that seemed evil, of what I thought was the right way and what everyone thought was the right way. I was amazed at what I was told in my classes, even at a Baptist school, about the flood being simply a folklore story found in various civilizations. Questions also arose about the truth of the Virgin Birth.

As a Southern Baptist preacher's kid, I struggled to mesh together the God of my First Baptist Church roots and the God conveyed in the college classroom. The hymns, prayer meetings, and scriptures which were the support beams of my upbringing began to crumble under this newfound knowledge. Religious dust scattered everywhere and with it my confusion.

Yet into that place of not knowing, God met me where I was--just as he is there to meet each of us. God doesn't change because people tell us different things. He is the same God, and will always be, and will always be there when we call.

I had to learn in my college days to let God be who he was for each person in the numerous ways he spoke to them. I had to realize I wasn't in charge of Religion of the World 101. It's a lesson that I'm still trying to learn at times.

During those days of questioning in college, a thought came to me: Why should we limit God to such small thinking? Are we the ones to say that God can only be God in a specific way? What I discovered then was that this God who knows our hearts and minds, our every need, the number of hairs on our head, can walk us through the confusion, and sometimes the confusion can make us stronger.

For me, once the dust had settled, I felt stronger about my belief in God. I felt if there was so much discussion and ongoing this and that about God, how more real could he be? If he wasn't real, then I didn't think people would care.

I was not in the manger with Mary and Joseph when Jesus was born. I was not with Noah during the flood. I cannot say first person what happened. But I trust by the grace of God that whatever happened and whatever way it happened and to however many cultures it happened and was told again and again, that it remains true in whatever sense I can hold it and grasp it. For what I'm holding is not a belief about a Virgin Birth or a flood story; I'm holding a belief in God's love, and that gift is universal and unending.

We are always on the journey God has set for us. Once we let the dust settle, he is still there.

ks

How to Hunt Down a Writer

2005-11-20T15:34:00.000-05:00

Yes. Let's learn how to argue better and more. Yes. Let's teach our composition students arguing for its own sake as the basis for their writing skills.

Keep in mind these students approach the English 1101 and 1102 classroom with the trepidation of those who have been sentenced to the gallows. As I write this, I can see their sallow faces on the first day of English 1101. I imagine the word "prey" taped over their eyes, as their eyes tell me they feel hunted in writing class, and we, the teachers, are the hunters.

During this first class, I ask the students if they are afraid of writing, if they have ever had a negative experience occur in a writing class. Hands rocket up, and at least the dreadful noise of the room's technology buzz is challenged momentarily by the sounds of human beings--of students--of students terrified of English Composition. Maybe these students aren't terrified of English Composition, itself, but of the hunters who they fear teach it.

Into this class environment of hunter and hunted, I quote Donald Murray and Peter Elbow. Murray says, “You don’t have to think you have talent to write. There is no secret society of writers you have to join,” and also, “All writers are self-taught. Your instructor can help, your classmates can help, this book can help, but you still have to learn how to write in your own way” (7).

I tell them that Peter Elbow, a pioneer of voice in writing, suggested to me once when I was stuck with my writing that I write as much bad writing as possible. Then I, too, add my comments to the students that writing can be an exhilarating act of discovery, writing can be their ally; this community of 1101 writers can be a support tool for them. I tell them how writing has saved my life. They stare at me like I am Bozo the Clown.

Yet at the end of a few classes, the students surround my desk with their stories of being hunted. I remember one young lady who was a freshman sat alongside me with her head hanging close to the fake wood desktop. She whispered how she'd failed 1101 last semester and how her professor had said in conference, "Your writing is terrible. You should not be in this class." Those remarks would certainly encourage me to write that next polished essay.

Another student who failed 1101 and felt berated by his professor, found upon taking the class again that he could write. In fact, the op-ed article he sent to the Atlanta Journal Constitution was selected for publication. Ironically, the subject of his op-ed piece was hunting. This student wasn't a failure as a writer when he took 1101 the first time. We failed in giving him the confidence to know he could write.

Stories like these are numerous and frightening. I've never found a student who has failed 1101 to be a student who cannot write. I've found students who have had the writer in them erased, but not one who wasn't a writer.

Now add to this a writing discipline focused on argument--let's argue. Let's teach the students how to defend their stance--let's be able to defend our policy on Iraq, our position on the Patriot Act. A world that argues more is assuredly a better world.

I can hear others say as they read this that argument is a skill of scholars and all threads of knowledge can be traced back to argument, which may well be true. But is the place for this English Composition 1101 and 1102 where English class is a huge monster of essay and word that students would rather drop again and again than endure?

I say everything is not an argument. Donald Murray reveals in Write to Learn about persuasion, rather than argument, as he prefers to call it:

In fact, I believe academic argument is a term and a process left over from the days when the academic world was exclusively male . . . . Truth was found by two men taking completely opposite sides and each trying to destroy the other. . . . Persuasion is the basic form of intellectual discourse; it is the way that new ideas are introduced, that old ideas are discarded, and old ideas are adpated to new trains of thoughts. (313-314)

I believe it is okay, as does Murray, to teach these skills; however, to make this the basis of our discipline disturbs me. One might say I am simply an emotional rant of an instructor on this subject--that I'm too emotional to be objective. I would have to say that is true. I'm one of the students who had my essay-writing hand slapped by a college professor that wanted to make sure his students knew they couldn't write. I didn't fail the class. I made a B. The grade wasn't an issue. I made several Bs in college. The issue was I didn't write with a voice of my own for twenty years. And writing is my first love.

We have to be emotional when the writing lives of our students are at stake. Do we want students to feel like I did and many do when they leave 1101 and 1102 and they are afraid to put any word to paper, or do we want them to say as they leave 1101 and 1102, "I will never look at writing the same way. I am not afraid of it anymore. I know I can write"? Each semester we don’t want to say we have hunted down and crushed the potential of 100 writers, but want to say we've given 100 students the opportunity at writing brilliance.

I suggest let’s take off the camouflage outfit of the hunter seeking failed writers as their spoils. Let’s put down our guns, our rights and wrongs, our arguments. Yes. Let’s become who we truly are--teachers of writers instead.

Work Cited

Murray, Donald. Write to Learn. 8th Ed. Boston: Thomson, 2005.

Copyright 2005 Shelnutt

The things we carry . . .

2005-11-12T10:57:00.000-05:00

One of the journal exercises I do with my composition students involves taking prompts from Tim O'Brien's powerful short story "The Things They Carried" and having the class fill in the prompts according to what their lives have required them to carry.

Sometimes I will do the exercise with them, sometimes not. I did write along with them this past week. I am posting my entry which I read to the class when we shared.

Truthful, honest writing, I believe, is accomplished most readily by opening the words our souls have given us and sharing them with a community of fellow writers. This exercise always generates some amazing words from the students.

With a thanks to Tim O'Brien for the use of a few lines from his work.

The things we carry are largely determined by necessities. Among the necessities are a house that carries the spirit of the previous owners, Gary and Ronna Jordan, who hid the permanently foggy windows in the bedroom when they were trying to sell the place by pulling their green brocade curtains taut, who failed to tell us the house was falling apart because of the hate they carried for each other.

So now we carry a roof that leaks that the they said was new. We carry brown water spots creating a random design on our family room ceiling, the girls’ bathroom, and bedrooms. We carry the Jordans’ mold that continues to grow in our house because of their lies. We carry our own mold inside us because the weight of their dishonesty is too much to carry.

We had carried a hope people were honest when we first moved into this house. Now, even though Gary Jordan was a construction project supervisor, we carry the discovery of duct tape on anything that has ever been broken in this house that he tried to fix. They even duct taped their marriage together, but it didn’t last.

We carry the fear that the house remembers their duct-taped marriage. We carry the fear the duct tape of our own marriage won’t hold either. We have a fear what the Jordans carried at 2117 Breconridge Drive is catching. We carry no illusion about honesty anymore.

At night I carry peculiar little odds and ends. I carry ghosts. I carry sleeping in any other bed than with you because the beagle snores louder than a human. She gets to sleep next to you. I don't.

I carry the sounds of the day in my head, a pre-programmed litany that occurs whenever I close my eyes. The question“Is Christmas day still on the 25?” I asked my manager at the bookstore. The open dialogue my brain waves have with each other about how stupid I’ve been. During the dark, I carry the wide awakeness of a premenopausal woman—something I thought I’d never carry, not the premenopausal stuff, but the wide awakeness part. I slept for twelve hours a night as soon as I came home from the hospital after I was born. Now, being a hormonal ghost, walking my own halls is a haunting thing to carry.

Some things we carry are determined by superstition: For instance we believe if we carry the honor of treating others right, then they will treat us right in return.

Some things we carry in common—among those we carry a hope that will sustain us. We carry the fact that we were both preachers’ kids. We carry the junk that being preacher’s kids carries with it.

While we were dating, we carried Captain D’s as our favorite restaurant. We carried the knowledge that we were good people, that neither of us had much money growing up. You wore those corduroy tan pants for twenty years. I had to be told the clodhoppers I wore to the office weren’t appropriate. We bought our first Christmas tree for $9, and most of the needles fell off by the time we got it in the apartment. We carried no furniture into our first apartment. We sat on the orange shag carpet and ate meals in front of a black and white TV. We carried love then so we didn’t think it mattered all the things we didn’t carry.

We carry the land, the mold, the rotten roof, the brown spots on the ceiling, the duct-taped everything since we bought the Jordans’ house. Now, six years later, if we get along we carry the hope that we still love each other, the hope that if we hold onto the rope long enough, we can carry the possibility of someone seeing what a good job we’ve done of holding on and everything. We carry the hope that the other person will make sure we never completely fall.

We carry all we can bear, and then some, including the silent awe for the terrible power of the things we carry.
---------------------------

Shelnutt 2005 Copyright

How tempting the couch is to the frightened soul.

2005-10-25T10:34:00.000-04:00

The soul invites us to come into our own. Often the problem we have is defining "our own." Am I an artist or a writer or a teacher or a bookseller? Am I supposed to give full attention to my novel or delve into realms of art where I'm not as accomplished or should I give in to the couch of doing nothing--the place of softness that calls me and says, "It's easier here on the foam and tapestry of our cushions. You don't have to work. You don't have to try. You don't have to risk. You are safe."

Ah, how tempting the couch is to the frightened soul. How much more decadent it seems than polishing off Chapter 32 of the novel revisions. When the soul is in the recline position, when we've wrapped it in our most comfy terrycloth robe and purple pjs with stars and moons dancing on them, when we tug the chenille throw far enough over our eyes that we don't have to see the decision we've made of not doing, there is a soul burial going on.

On that couch, our spirit conforms to the shape of thinking but not doing. It's almost like having a migraine except it occurs throughout the entire body. If we move, it hurts too badly. If we act, we might succeed. If we peek from behind the chenille throw, our own light might shine too brightly. Then what would we do?

I'm going to tell the truth here. Not because of anything, but because telling the truth is the only way I know how to live. I've suffered from this soul burial disease that couching causes for fifteen years. Some refer to it as depression. Even with medical interventions, this malady is unrelenting. Some days are better than others. Sometimes the couch is the best possible option and I'm thankful for it.

I'd like to tell you that I am Betty Crocker or June Cleaver or Ms. Perfect Something, but I'm not. I struggle each day to find meaning. I struggle each day to understand why I am on this earth for this lifetime. I struggle each day to believe the gifts I have can make a difference.

And what do I struggle against? In my head, there is a heavy syrup of doubt repeating, "You're not good enough and why do you think you can make something of yourself and did you see how you taught that class last night and, really, the couch is the optimum place for you in this life, sweetie."

Yet, the soul's call is persistent. Even when one is tagged with depression or tagged with grief and sorrow or tagged with illness, the soul in its all-knowing way pulls us from the comfort of couching and onto the two feet of our own competence. The soul's call, much like the voice of doubt, is determined. It becomes then a dance or a duel of sorts between the you cans and you can'ts minding the brain's store.

Whatever the journey offers from dawn to dusk, whether it is a couch-safe day or a soul-defining one, we are striving toward a more keen listening to the soul's call. We are striving to fold the chenille throw and let it rest on the arm of the couch. We are striving to adjust to the brightness of our very own light.

copyright 2005 shelnutt

The only bad story is the untold one.

2005-10-13T22:28:00.000-04:00

I have started reading a novel called The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Luiz Zafon. What excites me most about beginning a book is when I have to get up from my comfy, overstuffed chair to find a pen so I can underline precious words found early on in the book's pages. I figure if there are treasures for the quotation trove on the first page of a novel or the second, then imagine the underlinings for 486 pages.

This book is translated from Spanish byLucia Graves and is being published in more than twenty countries. It has been on the New York Times Bestseller List. But these are not the reasons I'm reading The Shadow of the Wind. I'm reading this novel because a sweet woman at Barnes & Noble recommended it to me, and I like to read books that others have suggested.

The story is set in Barcelona and begins with the narrator's telling of his memory of the day his father took him to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books. When I read the words Cemetery of Forgotten Books, I fell into some spell of soul connection with the author or the narrator or somebody. I was hooked.

The following passage is where the father tells the main character (Daniel) about the Cemetery of Forgotten Books:

This is a place of mystery, Daniel, a sanctuary. Every book, every volume you see here, has a soul. The soul of the person who wrote it and of those who read it and lived and dreamed with it. Every time a book changes hands, every time someone runs his eyes down its pages, its spirit grows and strengthens . . . . when a book is consigned to oblivion, those of us who know this place, its guardians, make sure that it gets here. In this place books no longer remembered by anyone, books that are lost in time, live forever, waiting for the day when they will reach a new reader's hands (Zafon 6-7).

Then again at the end of the first chapter on page 8:

Once in my father's bookshop, I heard a regular customer say that few things leave a deeper mark on a reader than the first book that finds its way into his heart. Those first images, the echo of words we think we have left behind, accompany us throughout our lives and sculpt a palace in our memory to which, sooner or later--no matter how many books we read, how many worlds we discover, or how much we learn or forget--we will return. For me those enchanted pages will always be the ones I found among the passageways of the Cemetery of Forgotten Books (8).

I think about the soul of books Zafon writes of here. I consider what the enchanted pages were for me that I will always return to. I think of a respite for the books that no longer have hands to caress them--sweaty hands of a butcher after a day of carving beef, powdered hands of the affluent matron, puffy hands of a small child.

In my house and probably in yours, each of us has our own Cemetery of Forgotten Books. I may have saved the tattered copy of that 1890s romance novel by the relatively unknown author when I paid six dollars for it and gave it prominence on my nightstand.

Each night before I click the lamp off, I brush my fingers across the worn white cover, the oval inset picture of the damsel in crimson, the edges of the cover that look like they've been chewed by a toddler. I slip it into my hands like it is too hot or too cold and I don't know what exactly to do with it. The pages that were once white have turned light brown. The smells of previous readers are held somewhere in the pages, in the lines, in the words. When I hold my 1890s romance novel, I say a prayer for all forgotten books.

I believe if I save forgotten books then some day maybe someone will save my words. Whether they are published or not, maybe some person will discover my notebook of pages and will pay for them because the pages are old and the notebook is old and the story is old.

A reverence exists in every story our hearts hold whether fiction or non-fiction. For that reason, I want all books, all stories to live forever. I want to volunteer at the Cemetery of Forgotten Books. I want everyone to know that we can't let the stories die. We must save them. Book by book. Page by page. Word by word.

We must save them and we must tell the stories our own hearts hold. If we don't tell our stories, our readers won't have a chance to pull out of their comfy, overstuffed chairs and underline our pages. If we don't begin, then those things we always wanted to say will remain buried in the Cemetery of Untold Stories. If we don't begin, our words cannot be saved.

Work Cited

Zafon, Carlos Ruiz. The Shadow of the Wind. Penguin: New York, 2004.

ks

Subject--let the writing pick one.

2005-09-27T11:11:00.000-04:00

This is one of those days when so many thoughts are ricocheting in my head I can't single one out for my journaling. They're each screaming, thinking they are the cutest, and they want me to pick them to write about.

The thing is--I want to write about them all at once. I wish I had ten hands and I'd assigned each pair of hands a different topic. One pair of hands would write on the connection of the erotic to creativity, the second pair of hands would write about art--how cool it is, the third pair of hands would write about how I sometimes worry over what I say but when it's too late to take it back, the fourth pair of hands would write about the tons of dreams I have had about houses (had a new one last night), and the fifth pair of hands would write about how when I'm not writing my soul is a little down on the "if you're happy and you know it" meter.

I honestly believe I could be writing an essay to a tree (and I'm not putting down the importance of trees here, by all means) and I would be gleeful about tree essays. I mean if my audience happened to be trees, I wouldn't have to go far to look for them, they couldn't tell me they didn't like what I'd written, and I could always take those breezes that shake their limbs back and forth as the trees' nods of approval. My next question is--why have I been writing to people for so long?

Something about generating writing begins this gentle hum inside me. I truly believe it is addictive--this hum thing. The endorphins in there are having one rousing good time. Even though I can sense my heartbeat start to hurry to keep up with the words on the page, there is still a rhythm to the hurriedness, a rhythm that is soul soothing.

So why don't I do this writing thing for the entire day? Because there are budding freshman who I want to teach about the hum of writing, because there are bookstore customers who I want to put books into their hands that will start this hum inside them as they read the pages where someone else took time to tell a story. Because a lot of other reasons not nearly as lofty as those I just mentioned.

In the past, there have been days where I've written from the moment I wake through to suppertime. (Forget writing until bedtime; I'm never going to do that in my life.) I will stop for food, however. My muse gets word fatigue after about three to four hours of pen to page. It's unfortunate, but she doesn't experience the writing hum in the same way I do. She starts twisting this one strand of hair over and over on the back of her head, and I begin to worry that she's going to go bald, so I stop.

When I was writing my novel, I had many obligations at the time and figured there was no way I could get to Marjorie (my main character) as much as I wanted. And since I had set my goals to be a good writer and write long hours and long days and get done and prosper forever and ever amen, and since this goal was not obtainable, I let Marjorie's words slip into the background of my days instead of trying to negotiate a deal with her.

Well, when I had gone without the hum for long enough, I returned to the draft of the novel and dialogued with Marjorie about our predicament. Often as I wrote the novel I would dialogue with Marjorie as a way of processing what was going on with me, what was going on with the characters, what was going on with my muse and that hair-twisting thing. Marjorie was all wise and knowing. If you ever want a therapist who you don't have to pay but who is way smarter than you are, start a novel and dialogue with your main character. It will change your life and hair-twisting habit.

"I can't handle writing on this novel for periods of eight hours at a time." This was what I told Marjorie.

"Why?" She was alway curious like that. You couldn't get away with a simple answer and think it was going to get approval just because you had written it down.

"Well, I have two jobs, two children, three dogs, a husband, no housekeeper, no butler, and I'm not the Queen of Energy either."

"Hmmm." That meant she was thinking it over. You're always afraid that can't be good.
"How many pages do you think you can manage at one sitting?" she asked.

I thought about what she'd asked and the number seven popped in my head. "Seven."

"Okay, then. From now on I will only give you seven handwritten pages of my story at a time."

"Really?" I asked this like I had never considered the possibility of my character providing me a certain amount of her story for each writing session. Instantly, I felt delighted about writing again.

"It's a deal then." She wanted to make sure she had my promise. Sometimes she was kind of a baby like that. If we were in the room together as physical beings, she probably would have made us prick our fingers.

After that dialogue with Marjorie, she always gave me seven pages of handwirtten story each time I sat down to write--no more, no less. And I never felt overburdened by the time aspect of writing.

I guess what I'm saying is even a good hum can only last so long. Compare it, if you will, to any other good feelings you know and the length that they last. I enjoy the hum of writing whenever I get the chance. When there are ten hands' worth of subjects in my brain, I let the writing pick one and get on with the humming. It feels so good. You should try it.

ks
2005 Copyright Shelnutt

Eileen's Birthday

2005-09-23T08:02:00.000-04:00

I NEED TO LET EVERYONE KNOW THAT EILEEN'S BIRTHDAY IS NOT ON SEPTEMBER 19 OR SEPTEMBER 21, BUT EILEEN'S BIRTHDAY IS ON SEPTEMBER 20. AND I LOVE EILEEN. SHE IS A GREAT FRIEND NO MATTER WHAT DAY SHE WAS BORN ON AND REGARDLESS OF THE FACT I TRY TO BIRTH HER ON THREE DAYS IN SEPTEMBER INSTEAD OF THE ONE SHE CAME TO THE EARTH ON.

EILEEN, YOU'RE THE BEST!

LOVE,

K

And Another One Bites the Dust

2005-09-23T07:28:00.000-04:00

And another one's gone, and another one's gone, and another one bites the dust. Yep. You know it's going to happen, but you're not prepared for it. A certain amount of glee and pride come with starting a blog. It doesn't matter so much that the world is looking on as much as it matters that you have a place to tell the world your story whether they choose to look or not.

So when I set up my blog the other day, at first I hesitated to send a notice to my friends. I figured I would wait and adjust to blogging before I invited the world in. After a few postings, however, I sent some emails letting folks know I was here. What I wished for in return--I guess was little blog cheerleaders shaking their blogger pom-poms screaming, "Good job, Karen. Good blog. We like your blog. We like you."

Sounds like a note a second grader would write. But isn't that what we all want--blog or not--love and acceptance? And isn't that why we share with our closest friends our small blips of accomplishment along the way? And isn't it true that we need all the encouragement we can get, all the cheerleaders we can find because we live in a global world that is connected in so many ways but disconnected and disgruntled in so many others?

That's why I sent my friends my email about this blog. And they've been so supportive and cheerleaderish that you'd think they were part of the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders. And I've felt warm and loved. I want to say thank you to my friends for their love and support. Thank you to the tribe cheerleaders--specifically--Antoinette, Chris, Denise, Eileen, Erika, Joyce, Linda, and Sheila. You guys are the best of the best of the best!

Some folks don't want me to tell my truth in this blog. Those folks are going to have to bite the dust. And I don't mean that in a terse way. I mean that in a way that says: I've lived for 48 years, many of those years spent having to hide dark secrets in pockets of skin and bone. Once those secrets escaped, the global world had nairn a thought what it was in for.

And I've made some mistakes telling the truth. I've told too much truth sometimes. I've told the truth in front of the wrong people and hurt those I hold the most dear to my heart and I'm not proud about that. And I've learned there are ways to tell the truth and ways not to, but this is my blog, and I don't intend to hurt anyone here because I'm just happy as a goldfinch to be typing and writing and typing and writing. But I intend to be truthful, even sometimes if that seems like I might not be perfect and whole all the time. Hey, I'm not a loaf of bread. I'm not perfectly shaped or browned or textured or anything. I'm irregular. And I like that. And I like the truth.

So I made the decision, within my promise to be truthful to myself and harbor no more dark pockets with secrets in my body, that truth rules. I'll try to honor others, but what is true for me will be on this page.

For any persons who happen upon this blog and think the truth is too much or too vivid or too whatever, then those are the folks that I've decided I can't please anymore. They have to bite the dust. It's difficult for me to say this and yet freeing as well. Why? Because it is the truth. I wish those souls light and love and peace and I understand their feelings about truth. But I cannot be them or be in their place. I can only be me. And that's exciting. And that's the truth.

kss

Hurricane of Words

2005-09-23T06:41:00.000-04:00

A gifted writer and former student sent me an email recently. Part of it reads:

"Oh my goodness. The most basic advice you gave, to just write, is the most difficult part for me. I have all the writer's fears, nothing to say, nothing to write, nobody wants to hear, blah, blah, blah. But I am getting to the point where if I don't get the words, and I don't know which words they are, whatever they may be, out of my head it's going to start spinning on my shoulders. When you started writing . . . did you have that problem?"

My reply:

Writing involves a huge amount of trust--trust that the words already know what they want to say and how to say them and when to say them. The story is already inside of us. We are the ones who get in the way. We demand to have Cheerios when the writing says it wants Cream of Wheat for breakfast. In other words, we go by our plan and sometimes our plan isn't the plan that the story, the journal entry, the essay, the novel have in mind.

One of the most difficult things for writers to learn to do (and I know because I have a great deal of practice trying to learn this) is to let go of any preconceived ideas about what ends up on the blank page.

Let the writing tell us. Become a stenographer for the words. Take dictation. Oftentimes if I don't know what to write, I will literally start my journal entry with, "So what do the words want to say today?" That way it has less to do with me. And it should have less to do with me. When we are thinking the process too much, the words get lost in our thoughts. They need a clear path to the page. The best we can offer them is a streamline of pen in hand and letting them (the words) be in charge.

Many times I don't "receive" the stellar journal entry I had planned out in my head, but one of the problems with my receiving that entry is the audacity I had to plan it ahead of time.

Writing sometimes makes us pay the price for not letting the words be in control. I have a lot of bad writing as proof; however, I'm not saying that bad writing is a bad thing. Every word that spills from our pen is useful to our creative learning. The way it is useful may be simply in accepting we can have "average" journal days and "complaining" journal days and "naughty" journal days and whatever we want.

There are no damn rules with writing except to let the words be in charge. They are the master creators. We are merely the scribble-the-words-on-paper person. As writers, this is something we come up against repeatedly. It is a lesson that seems equally as hard to learn the first time as the umpteenth time. But it is an important one.

Another suggestion about allowing words to come has to do with letting up on the pressure. I've been around a couple of pressure cookers that lost their black rubber stoppers and silver rocking knobs and have plastered kitchens with vegetable soup and chili and steam. We have to turn down the pressure sometimes. Be still.

I've gone on solo retreats and have used my journal only as a coaster until it was time to go--not a word written in it. Was that frustrating? Yes. But it was also the best thing for me--to be silent--to let the writing come back home.

I know I could go on and on about this topic and I know if you ask ten other writers what their thoughts are about this you'd get that many more answers and I know that is what I believe is so exciting about writing. Donald Murray says to "write about what makes you different." We are all so gloriously different in this quirky world; we might as well be able to get in our two-, four-, six- and eight-cents worth about it.

We must write about the marked differences that make us who we are. Sometimes I think of myself like a bad hair color I'd like to rinse out of my head, but for some reason, the color stays and stays and stays. I can't rinse out who I am. That is where we should write from. The things that won't rinse out.

My best advice to the writer is to trust their intuition. If they feel so many words spinning in their head that they fear it is about to rocket of their shoulders, then these word messages must be wanting to land somewhere. But they want to do it their way. Offer them a journal and a cup of tea. Take ten deep breaths and tell them, "Say whatever you want to say, and it doesn't even have to ever be good."

Don't ask them to write a novel if they are still a hurricane of words. That may mean their story is part of a huge storm churning inside--searching for the safest place to land.

kss
p.s. A great book about resistance and fear for writers and artists is The War of Art by
Stephen Pressfield, author of The Legend of Baggar Vance.
Copyright 2005 Shelnutt

The Nasty Pet/Critic Critter

2005-09-21T07:43:00.000-04:00

This morning I've been looking at websites of artists who create altered books. Their websites are so creative; their art is so creative. Why does viewing other people's beautiful gifts make my gifts to the world look like the dull penny no one wants to pick up off hot asphalt?

I've always had this persistent voice in my head that reiterates the "not goodness" of whatever I do. This voice has selected the wrong person to reside inside. It wants perfect. I am more of a mess. It wants instant--instant weight loss, instant novel publishing, instant Ponder Design marketing. It wants instant and perfect. That makes me sigh and resign myself instead to never and not good enough.

I wonder whether during this lifetime I will be able to override this voice inside that comments on everything I do. I'm on constant alert of possible failure--of not teaching my class well enough last night, of not making everyone like me at the bookstore yesterday, of never turning out to be what I thought I'd be.

There's no way to live a life of freedom with a damn critic in your head. No way. There are not enough drugs in the world to drown out that nagging, penetrating chatter.

Why can't I have the voice of a fairy or a gypsy instead--voices that cheer all efforts, that believe magic is born with our first footfall from the bed each morning, the first breath our lungs take as we walk upright into a new day? Why can't I have those positive voices who pat me on the back, even when my back is covered with twenty pounds of extra fat?

Fairies and gypsies don't care how much fat is on someone's back. They care about someone's spirit--their pizazz inside. Why hasn't anyone ever noticed my inside pizazz? Whenever I show that around the pesty internal critic, he begins a soliloquy on why I don't have pizazz, have never had pizazz, and then points out all the specific times in my life when I didn't have pizazz. After that, I'm pretty sure I never had any pizazz too.

I'm sitting here at the computer wondering how to smush the vile critter in my brain, eradicate him. He is slowly depleting me of any gumption I had to carry on toward the prize. It's difficult to want to do anything when you know it won't be good enough for the critic critter inside your head. So I dread doing anything. Things I might normally love become something else to wish I didn't have to do--because what if someone finds out that I am no good just like the critic critter keeps saying--what if someone finds out I'm not qualified, or I don't know the definition of every word in Webster's dictionary, or where every comma is supposed to go on the page, or how to make it through the day without dragging the blanket of being wrong with me.

Some days I come close to warding off the critic, but then he returns pumped with venom and ready to have at me again. I stand at the mirror and try telling myself how much I love me, and I hear bounce back off the mirrored reflection, "No you don't. No you don't. No you don't."

Hey, and you might think I'm crazy because I have to deal with this offensive voice terrorizing me. It's like having bad body odor or something. I'm one person trying to live from day to day just like you. I'm one person trying to turn down the volume of the voices that violate my head. I'm one person putting one foot on the floor first thing in the morning just like you. The only difference is the voice tells me every time that I didn't do it right.

kss

plot (plot), n., v., plot-ted, plot-ting.

2005-09-09T12:32:00.000-04:00

plot (plot), n., v., plot-ted, plot-ting.
n. 1. a secret plan, usu. evil or unlawful.
2. the main story of a literary or dramatic work.
3. a small piece of ground.
-v.t. 4. to plan secretly or conspiratorially.

I think about plot but I don't do any plotting. I look up the definition of plot in my Webster's and copy it into my journal. That doesn't make me feel more like writing about plot.

I light a candle where I can see its low lights flickering across the room and believe calling in the sacred will make me write about plot. It doesn't. I've started the pen's movement on the journal page, but my stomach is plotting a rebellion of sorts. It feels like there is an anvil inside me that is weighted with sadness.

Yuck. I hate this writing. I'm plotting this writing.

The first definition of plot reads--a secret plan, usu. evil or unlawful.

I sit here on my 20-year-old Herculon sofa with my white fluffy mutt by my side. He is as close to me as the fluff on him will allow. Sunny, that's his name, is terrified of thunder and it's thundering. We are best buds at the moment.

I'm plotting an essay that will make the room dance when it's read, that will bring all eyes to attention, that will stop everyone else's plot and make them listen to mine.

There, I've said it.

I need my plot to be specialer, to be crispier, crunchier, flakier, more full-bodied, more endowed, new and improved over what everyone else has plotted.

That's sick. There's no sacred spirit in that. Maybe that's the heavy anvil feeling inside me--guilt for wanting recognition, for writing to want recognition. That’s the first definition of plot in Webster's after all--a secret plan, usu. evil or unlawful.

"Hello, my name is Karen. I plot secretly to write better than anyone else." Oh God, there's no hope for someone like me.

2. The second definition of plot reads--the main story in a literary or dramatic work.

Well, I think often about the plot of my novel, Marjorie's Rules of Order. I think about her main story, about what she is driving toward. I hear, the answer--search of self. Then I hear, "No one is going to read a novel about search of self.”

I think about the plot, the main story of my own life. It's been the same as Marjorie's--search of self. Maybe her plot is a way to help me discover more about my own story, what brought me to writing, what to do with depression, recovered memories of abuse and the disbelief that joins itself to that.

Maybe Marjorie’s plot is a way to allow me to accept my own.

3. The third definition of plot is--a small piece of ground.

As in a burial plot, I wonder. As in, all I want is a wife and kids and little plot of land. As in a small piece of ground to call one's own.

A small piece of ground--kind of an earthy room of one's own.

How much I long for my small piece of ground where I can say--in this square space of ground I am fine--the way I cook is fine, the way I clean is fine, the way I procrastinate is fine, the way I eat is fine, the way I look is fine, the way I write is fine. It's a fine piece of ground I'm standing on. No need for everybody to try to change it or criticize it or take their passive-aggressive anger out on it.

The other day I was telling my husband how my mom had said I used to come home from college in the summer and clean house from top to bottom for her.

My husband looked at my college-age daughter and laughed. "Now, it's hard to believe that ever happened isn't it?"

My own piece of ground where they don't make fun of how I clean or how often. If they had lived in a body worn down by cycles of depression, if they knew how hard it's been to accept that I'm never going to be the normal person I used to be, they wouldn't laugh.

But I'm fine. My plot of ground is fine.

It may not be as Windexed and Pledge-shined as their plot, but mine has smells of incense and wine, candle wax dripping warm down long stems of light. There are books open everywhere. Cushions abound in the deep red shades of Persian rugs. There are pages and pages to be written on my plot of fine ground. Some dust on a blank page never kept me from writing the next word.

4. The fourth definition of plot reads--v.t. (verb transitive), plot as a verb-to plan secretly or conspiratorially.

I plan to escape. I plan to plot freedom, to say, "For one year I'm moving out to see if the self hidden under everyone's objections still exists. To see whether underneath the adult me, the little girl who was always okay, whose eyes always opened huge as chocolate Tootsie Roll lollipops, the little girl who loved grape snow cones cold on her teeth, cool grass against her bare feet, Bazooka bubble gum and princess telephones, can come out to play again."

She is--I am--a verb transitive. I am action. I want to be action--my own action that takes on a direct object--me. Me. The object of me—now there’s a plot for you.

The fifth definition of plot reads-- to mark on a map or chart, as the course of a ship.

If I could plot my own course, writing or otherwise, I would tell everyone to leave me alone,and that I'm fine as I am. It took me 48 years to see it, but fine is looking back and smiling at me in the mirror.

I'd wake each morning to a lighted candle and writing words. I'd write through the early shift of sun across my window. I'd stop for lunch, walk in the afternoon, run errands, read and relax in the evenings. I'd extinguish the flame at night upon rest. I'd anticipate the possibility of the coming of the new day, the lighting of the candle in a way it has never been lit before. I would honor the plot of simplicity threaded into each moment.

kss

Writing is the huge movie screen of your life.

2005-09-08T10:55:00.000-04:00

Note to all--this journal entry was written in the classroom along with my English 1101 students.

I like writing when I can share with someone else how special it is, when I can let them know that reading their writing is like touching the smooth skin on their face.

I don't like what I'm writing here. Who am I trying to be? What am I trying to say?

I want people to know that words, written words, can do so much. They can heal us when we're trying to understand the devastating breakup. They can help us see how things didn't go so well while teaching English 1101 today, how sounding like a fool sometimes is okay.

Writing is like open arms of acceptance on paper. It never says--you are too dumb, you need to clean your room, you're too fat or too skinny, no one will ever love you.

Writing allows us to love ourselves even when it seems like no one else does--on the bad days when the dog dies or we have the horrific accident and our world tumbles over and over. Writing lets us have a space, a place for how that feels and how life can suck, how life can be beautiful, how sex last night was great or how I never want to talk to that guy/girl again.

Writing is the one place where we can look inside and whatever is showing on the screen is fine--if it is a horror movie of the times our parents screamed at us, then let it be that. If it is a musical of our favorite songs flitting across the page, then let them.

The words come to us for a reason.

Don't push them. Allow them a place. Allow them a voice. We need to tell ourselves that we are important enough to know how we felt throughout the day--not just give a reporting of what we ate or drank at Starbucks--whether we had venti or grande--but how we felt when our best friend lied to us, how we felt being in the classroom.

The page is the beginning of our stories. Aren't our stories worth the telling--the telling in written word? I think so.
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Copyright Shelnutt 2005

On leopard-print panties and word collapse . . .

2005-09-05T22:39:00.000-04:00

Typing on this blank space and thinking that someone will read it (even if it is only shoppers I commandeer and pay one dollar to while browsing the Wal-Mart parking lot) causes me to "word collapse."

Word collapse is a simpler name for writer's block. Writer's block sounds so fatal that I like word collapse better. Plus, I made it up. I'm counting on the cute, made-up things I do to trap you and you and you into returning to a place where we can make up words and life and story and it will be so rich and true and real (how is that for a few abstracts in a row) that we will grow a huge community of us.

Right now, my definition of word collapse is as follows: All the words I know, all the words I have known, all the words I will know tumble into some center I call fear. Well, fear is too charged a topic to begin discussing on my first post. But you can bet that when "word collapse" happens to most writers, fear is standing behind the words (and sometimes the writer) pushing them over the edge.

When word collapse happens, I feel my toes cringe, my heart becomes arrhythmic (it believes this is a way to assure I will stop trying), and I smell the odor of every room where I blossomed as the fool. Those smells would include the greasy hamburger-and-fry smell of the Village Hut when I went on a date with Ken Hannah, my knight in shining Country Squire Station Wagon. JoAnn Ranck and I scurried to the bathroom which was about the size of the phone booth where Superman changes clothes. (Truly if he's Superman he should be able to get a better changing room in his contract.)

The two of us squished ourselves into this plywood potty room and checked in the mirror to make sure we matched, as closely as possible, those images of Cheryl Tiegs on the cover of Seventeen magazine.

Then, we urinated. That's the proper name for peeing as given to us by the beloved Mrs. Pasinger, our sixth-grade p.e. teacher, on one of those rainy days during the school year when you couldn't play kickball or badminton, but were stuck learning about menstrual flows and urination and having a talent show where girls took turns singing to a trapped dressing-room audience.

I always sang "Tammy's in Love," from the movie. I guess I finessed that song so much it became a regular request on rainy days when dressing rooms always got me down. Rhonda McMillan, who was a real gospel singer, who had a real album and who could really sing, would also tune up with a song that began, "I've been saved. I've been new born no-ow. All my life has been rearranged." Well, you get the idea. Rhonda had the best voice and musical prowess in all of Giles County maybe in all of middle Tennessee. I was jealous, but it didn't stop me from having my own mini-American Idol 35 years prior to that show's inception.

Oh my, I didn't want to ramble on this post. However, it is my posting so I can ramble if I want to. Isn't that what authenticity is about--that and finally telling the truth about my jealousy of Rhonda McMillan? I will ramble at will. I encourage you to do the same. There may be those fetid memories lurking from your sixth-grade-p.e.-dressing-room days that you've never shared. Send me your story. We could probably start a sixth-grade-p.e.-dressing-room anthology.

Now back to smells and fools. When JoAnn and I emerged from the restroom, I lounged on one of the twisting stools (not to be confused with "fools") at the counter while she and Jim, her boyfriend, and Ken stationed themselves in a booth. I was "feeling my oats" as my dad always reminded me, and was also "acting full of myself," as he always reminded me.

JoAnn's ivory-girl complexion, I noticed, turned redder and redder like she was a front burner on the stove that you just directed to high and then stared at it until the glowing coals were like a fiery bullseye.

I did not know what JoAnn was trying to tell me--maybe I was acting out too much even for her. So, I toned it down a bit. The color of her face remained turned to HIGH. She would also giggle and shake her head which perplexed me even more and she kept nodding to indicate something was wrong--maybe I had Bazooka Bubble gum stuck to my shoe.

I guess it was when I looked at my shoe for bubble gum verification that I saw my pants were unzipped and revealed my leopard-print nylon bikini panties to the Village Hut staff and patronage. Now every time I smell greasy burgers and fries, I think of the Village Hut and leopard-print panties and how I began an early pilgrimage into "acting the fool."

What you must notice here is that even though word collapse threatened this writing, I wrote anyway. Even though I remembered the greasy-hamburger smell of the location where girls go who don't zip up their panties on important dates, I wrote anyway. Even though I rambled, I wrote anyway. That's what makes my heart, right now, less arrhythmic and more smooth. Yes, the rhythm of my heart beating is smooth. I like that.

Honor the writer within, the fool within, the girl-who-forgot-to-zip-up-her-panties within, the dressing-room-singer-who-is-jealous-of-Rhonda-McMillen's-fame within. When you write past word collapse, or don't make word collapse win, you hear your favorite song in your ears cheering you to some level of writing victory. My song might be "Tammy." You know what song you'll hear.

Honor the word collapse within. It is sure to taunt you when you write. Honor it, but don't give into it. Tell it about the time you revealed your leopard-print nature to the teenage world at the Village Hut. Tell it a story. That always shuts it up. Word collapse is a sucker for a story.

kss

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