BACK TO BASICS



It matters not
Who you love
Where you love
Why you love
When you love
Or how you love
It matters only that you love.
John Lennon

I am slowly finding my voice again & it echoes this word:
L-O-V-E
Somehow, it is the only one that matters.

photo source: here

FOLLOWING THE PATH





Spring fever has fallen in over me with the fierce intensity I always forget...each year, this season--or summer quick on its heels--finds me at a loss for my own words, wild and craving green like sugar gritting in my teeth. I'm going to be taking a little break from this blog as I have many times before. Feel free to drop me an email/letter to check in while I'm "away". I can also be found over at Literary Mama, where I am going to be editing two debut columns starting in May...and continuing to take on all of those fabulous "Faces of Motherhood" submissions. Also, I am *loving* my online scrapbook and will keep sharing bits and pieces there.

It feels like time to take a nice long break...the other night, my mind was racing and I decided to take a drive over the winding backroads nearby. My windows were flung wide and instead of music, I listened to the wind coursing in and my own pounding heartbeat. Slow down, slow down, slow down, I kept telling myself, but the intellectual logic just wasn't touching the emotional process. I aimed the car over the low road between the woods and the creek and suddenly, I could hear the first frogs groaning and speaking to one another in determined staccato rhythms. My headlights shot ahead of me on the curve and there they were--hundreds of them, making the dangerous journey from the treeline to the water over the pavement. I braked hard, tires skidding slightly on the wet asphalt after days of rain. Slow down, slow down, slow down they said to me and I travelled the rest of the way at a creeping pace, slowly edging left and right to avoid them on the empty stretch of road.

Slow down, slow down, slow down...I am taking this gentle advice.

The following is an excerpt from the recent publication we "state fellows" were featured in (along with a small snippet of my book). Another piece should be appearing soon in our local paper about writing, motherhood, and me. I am going to be "on display" at a museum in our state capital as part of a writers' studio with the other grant winners and I cannot wait to see it. {The exhibit will run from June-October.} Also, I am teaching some creative writing workshops as well as part of the community aspect of my fellowship. Book Two (tentatively titled The Glass Saint Journals) is well underway now...and I am revising Migration Summer (still)--which reminds me of the quote, " A painting is never finished – it simply stops in interesting places." Can the same be said of the novel? It is a rich and fertile time for my creativity--mirroring the unfolding season all around me and I intend to get back outside and drink it in...slowly, very slowly.


from Artline News
Adjunct English instructor C. Delia Scarpitti teaches a wide range of courses, including writing and critical reading and thinking. She also evaluates portfolios for reading and writing students. Her professional writing experience is equally varied. She has served as an editor for the online Literary Mama Magazine and Natural Family Magazine and has reviewed books and consumer products for Natural Family Online. Her essays, fiction and poetry have been published in literary journals and magazines, mostly online. An eclectic reader, Scarpitti began her literary career as a poet, but over the course of a year during which she attended a series of writing workshops in New Mexico, her skill as a fiction writer blossomed. She is working to finish a novel that germinated during that inspirational year.

"Anais Nin said, “We write to taste life twice, once in the moment and once in retrospection.” With this simple yet profound declaration, she opened up the world of words for me when I was just an adolescent girl with a notebook and a pen. My work since has been an ongoing effort to feed myself through my experiences and to share these writings to nourish others. I have written essays to speak to my interests in the often jagged-edged territory dividing creativity and motherhood, my journey through post-partum depression, and how the maternal and political intersect for all of us. Over the past year, as I have moved deeply into the novel process, I find once again that the fragmented segments of family reveal our subterranean personal and collective breaks. I believe that my background as a poet has only enriched my fiction process. Unlike the contract between a writer and the reader in most prose, where sentences march politely one after another, poetry allows for wild leaps, for experimental magic, for divergent ideas to all bleed together in just one compact phrase. That transcendent magic of poetry is one I seek to carry over into the fiction genre. Just as a poem insists that we slow down and bring mindful attention to each line, so, too, can fiction writing at its best. This is what I endeavor to do in my writing." — C.D.S.

C. Delia Scarpitti will read from her work and talk about the writing process at 2p.m., June 1 at the NAA
C. Delia Scarpitti
Emerging Professional, Fiction
*************************************************************************************
Prologue:
Iris
The summer has been dominated by storm clouds—vast gray oceans obscuring the sun and the casual Caribbean blue. The typical rings of cirrus clouds circle the sky and then are gone. Birds in silhouette no longer blur for me…each feather is as distinctive as a fingerprint. Silver phoebes alight from our jacaranda trees beside the vibrant macaws with their scarlet throats. Christian and I spend whole days sprawled beneath the trees. When the winds kick up with afternoon storms, bell shaped flowers the color of bruises rain down from the branches, catching in the golden threads of our hair. The storms come on and I retreat to my makeshift studio on the covered porch to paint, sketch, or daydream—lost in the melodic conversations of the painted buntings with their fiery plumes and nervous wings. If the mail comes, I hungrily tear through it looking for my mother’s neat printing or Lily’s looping script. On rare days, the illegible handwriting of my father confidently coats the envelope, full of odd notes he forgot to jot in the letter, grocery lists, and coffee stains. I hardly ever cry over mail anymore, unless Lanny sends a drawing along. My eyes water then and I wander into town, rain or no, for a café con leche and a smile from Señora. Lily’s letter came just a day before she would, reading, “Don’t try to stop me, by the time this arrives I’ll already be on my way. You can’t hide out forever…you can’t outrun death, Iris. Or me.” So Eden unravels around the edges.

Excerpt from the novel, Migration Summer
by C. Delia Scarpitti
*************************************************************************************

CLOSER



"Though the tree drinks from hidden roots, we see the display of its branches." Though I'm currently drawing from the underground myself--I see the blossoming on the tender boughs. It is spring and everything is uncertain...the weather flares from a steady chill to balmy sunshine. The earth is already a little lovesick with all of this rising and falling--throwing out her most luminous blooms and feathers of leaves, just to keep the sun's attention. There are these hidden roots on words, on smiles, on the delicate jade tufts of fledgling grass. Heavy choirs of indiscernible birds sing in the trees outside...so drunk on the gathering light that they continue their call and response long after the sun has set. I write a few lines, then shred the paper in jagged edged stalks, gluing them back down on the pages of my journal and inking over them...dangerous on paper. Whenever I can be outside, I am. The floorboards of the house sift clouds of mica-flecked dirt along the edges from muddy boots and battered shoes. It doesn't matter--the sun is back again--the intoxicating flowers and delirious birds. I have had to sink deeper into my own roots and now magnolias burst open from the hidden darkness. "Whatever the earth took from heaven, it yields up honestly in spring."



{two quoted sentences by Rumi...exercise inspired by the one here}

REBIRTH





We wandered over the woods trail through quiet inner landscapes and as usual, I saw symbols everywhere. To clarify, litter is never just a scrap of paper thrown carelessly on the pavement to me. No, I am convinced the bold print: FREE!!! is telling me something about my life...The penny (heads up, of course) on the sidewalk must mean luck and so I'll pocket it eagerly. I search through clover visiting the park with the children, because finding a tender four-leaved shoot will tell me I'm on the right path. Passing the newspaper and cigarette shop on Main Street, I stop dead in my tracks at the hastily hand-scrawled, "Mind the Steps", because I am in process right now and I *do* need to pay attention to each and every step. I need to "mind" them. Yes, how did they know?

Rounding a bend and running into this tree, I crouched down and touched the wounded recesses of the trunk, my heart a fist in my throat. This was a "birthing tree"...the hidden inner life crowning painfully through the jagged-edged bark. I took one photo, then another, thinking about my own rebirth of late...I am reading the work of this fascinating thinker and one quote in particular gets at the center of things for me:

"Due to having made karma, rebirth consciousness arises. But we need not think of rebirth only in a future life. We are in actual fact reborn every moment with new thoughts and feelings, and we bring with us the karma that we made in past moments. If we were angry a moment ago, we are not going to feel good immediately. If we were loving a minute ago, we would be feeling fine now. Thus we live from moment to moment with the results of our karma. Every morning, particularly, can be seen as a rebirth. The day is young, we are full of energy, and have a whole day ahead of us. Every moment we get older and are tired enough in the evening to fall asleep and die a small death. All we can do then is toss and turn in bed, and our mind is dreamy and foggy. Every day can be regarded as a whole lifespan, since we can only live one day at a time; the past is gone and the future may or may not come; only this rebirth, this day, this moment, is important."
~Ayya Khema~

I don't know if I hold karma in a literal sense in my own beliefs--but, these words resonate for me...undeniably so. If each day is a new life, I am trying to live each one as fully as I can without worrying quite as much about what tomorrow--my next life--will bring, or what the last one I led--yesterday's--already has.

What I do know:
***today it is spring and I am writing my second book and sending the first one out to the agents I was {kindly} referred to (after my discussion with the first one led to the conclusion, "beautiful writing...fascinating voice...you have a gift and someone will take this on--emphasis his--but I'm looking for the next big commercial blockbuster and this is just too literary for me. Here are some names and tell them I sent you." (sigh, insert stiff upper lip here)
***I bought new notebooks for the writing still to be completed on the second manuscript--notebooks like those I was sure my characters would choose to write in. I bought myself a sari-patterned hand-mirror (a nod to a significant trait of the daughter in the book) and a collection of patron saint jar candles--just like these (which matter immensely to my mother character--though no more can be revealed just yet).
***The magnolia tree is headed into full-blossom and I've actually been able to get started on some garden work.
***Baseball season has opened up, with all that this entails.
***My words are being so channeled into the fiction that I am feeling quiet otherwise. Moved by the stark layout and speed of this web service and her amazing inspirations, I've started what I consider to be a visual scrapbook of my days. This doesn't mean I won't still be here sharing my words-words-words, it just provides me a different (and more frequent) way of sharing the view from where I'm standing. No rules--no expectations about what I'll put up over there--just a blank canvas/notebook page, which feels in some ways like overdue spring cleaning.

Another opportunity for rebirth...

WAKING UP
(About The Ten Year Nap)




At twenty, I was a dreamy girl halfway through college until a brisk full-moon night laced with snow and stars revealed my firstborn's shocking existence. I fell into motherhood clumsily...ineptly. I hadn't necessarily wanted to be a mother--was never a girl who had her dream wedding planned since seventh grade with the ideal set of matching babies to go along with it. I swooned over stories of poets locked in Parisian garrets or writers with heavy notebooks thumbing rides across the country and back again. I hungered for travel and pined for a vagabond life that wasn't meant for me--right up until the baby was born, when I couldn't see any further than the glow cast by her nightlight as we swayed in the rocking chair--a whole continent unto ourselves. I wasn't a natural at it...still am not in a conventional sense. But, shhh...don't tell my three children that, because for eleven years we have stumbled along together--making it up as we go along...winging it, carrying on in a greater adventure than any I'd read about.

Still, it was unusual...juggling babysitters and packing a diaper bag with sippy cups then dashing across campus, looking to the world like just another co-ed, to attend seminars on Women in Shakespeare or Linguistics: Semiotics, praying that the mandatory study session wouldn't interfere with the baby's bedtime. I ventured into student-teaching (full-time work with zero pay), putting her in daycare without a second thought--not realizing until I stood up in front of an angst and hormone-ridden classroom that I craved my daughter like a drug and I couldn't bring myself to leave her for work "for real". The semester ended, and so did my brief foray into full-time teaching...I quickly got used to being the youngest mother on the playground and to scraping by on just one income. I never fit in with the "mommies" who had handi-wipes in their bags to share or an extra pack of goldfish crackers when I'd remembered to bring along a book of Neruda's poems in my backpack, but not the baby's snack. Somehow my age insulated me from the hotly contested "mommy wars" and related issues--I was already an odd-ball mother, and we already didn't have any money to speak of.

The characters in Meg Wolitzer's novel, The Ten Year Nap, were already established in their careers when they made the often-fraught decision to leave the workforce behind to raise their children. They contend with issues of finances, shifting roles in their marriages, and a deep sense of inertia now that their children's early years have passed. Unlike most of the material written about the relationship between stay-at-home and working-mothers, this is a work of fiction--so the potential to get deeply within the subject exists without the need for objective/academic distance. However, my feelings about this novel are definitely mixed. Wolitzer's writing is undeniably poetic and lyrical in places, however, the overall trajectory of the story was a bit slow for me. I appreciated how the author traveled in and out of the perspectives of the women, providing depth and insight into the broader spectrum of emotions brought up by being a full-time mother. But, the one "working-mother" character, Penny, isn't given her own point-of-view and is instead viewed at a distance by the full-time mothers who alternate feelings of envy and sympathy for her situation. To cover the broader spectrum of maternal uncertainty, and to illustrate that *both* working and at-home mothers experience very similar concerns and doubts, it would have made sense to give Penny a voice. Many people argue that the issues between mothers who work out of the home and those who don't have been a bit over-played at this point. Women who want to work and/or need to work should--and those who don't/can't shouldn't feel forced to. Right? However, in The Ten Year Nap, Wolitzer gives readers more to think about concerning this ambiguous and often-debated topic. It is well-worth a read.

As for me, I will be joining the full-time workforce this fall with the onset of a high-school teaching gig. I have cobbled together a part-time college adjunct and freelance writing and editing career in the eleven years I've been a mother...so, in many ways, I still hover just beyond the edges of this discussion, not fully fitting into either mothering "camp". Still, my heaviest work days are ahead of me...my eldest will enter junior high in September and come home to an empty house afterwards. My third-grade son and kindergarten "baby" will be in a classroom until after I am done work for the day. Unlike the mothers in this novel who grapple with whether or not they want to go back to work, I am leaping in without a second thought. Life has shifted profoundly in the past six months and, for me, having this teaching career launched once and for all is a part of the deep process of "waking up" I'm experiencing already. I think women's experiences are far more complex and dynamic than to distill mothering down into two roles: SAHM or Working Mother and then declare one superior to the other.

And anyway, there will always be the gypsy-mamas like me who never quite fit into the carefully constructed ideals...who are surprised by motherhood, shocked by the ferocity of their love for their children...mothers who keep active in the workplace but also spend long afternoons painting watercolors with a toddler...mothers who are wistful on cold starry nights and who may not be able to run a company or to remember to bring the color-coded-tupperware-lidded-baked-from-scratch cupcakes to the classroom party either. But, my backpack is still full of poetry...and if you ask me nicely...I just may share the ephemeral wonder of words with you.




***I'm also willing to share my copy of The Ten Year Nap with one random commenter below! (Leave your thoughts about this issue or about "waking up" in general & I'll let you know next Thursday who that is.)***

Edited to add: we put the names into a baseball hat and my youngest picked JANUARY's name out! I hope you enjoy the book...

LOST AND FOUND

"For whatever we lose (like a you or a me),
It's always our self we find in the sea."
~e.e. cummings~

















{final photo, amazingly blurry, but taken with much love by my daughter featuring my mother, my sister, and I at the very high-class--note: glass and expensive antiques plus my three children and a heady dose of maternal anxiety about what all of that could equal--at my fellowship awards reception where our secretary of state gave me my certificate "For Artistic Excellence in Literature-Fiction". Sigh...that day came on the heels of my seaside weekend writer's conference where I can honestly say I started to feel "found" after some extended time lost. How good it feels to be circling back to myself again...migrating home.}

THOUGHTS FROM MY MORNING OFFICE



This morning, the woman who now owns my favorite cafe had a tall glass of vanilla chai waiting for me when I came in and sat down in the windowseat. She asked how the writing has been going and I smiled, thinking of my poetry group meeting last night where my friends there were reveling in my fellowship win with me...people who were strangers to me a year ago but now cheer on my every effort. We are a mismatched group in terms of age and life experiences...but there is something intuitive they seem to understand about my process that makes any differences irrelevant. Plus, they see me as a creative spirit--in fact, know me as nothing else. In our lives, we are all viewed according to our "roles" and "jobs", according to the old stories our families or friends tell about our background and history...it is unusual to be noticed for our creative work alone. Like the cafe woman handing over the tea and the acknowledgement earlier, I am being witnessed as a writer. I feel the subtle difference--the way the process is in motion for me.

This weekend, a few of us will meet up at a writer's conference by the sea and immerse ourselves in words for two (and a half) luxurious days. Next week this time, I will be getting ready to attend a "Reception to meet the 2008 Individual Artist Fellowship Recipients" in an art museum an hour from home. I am nervous and excited to see the other winners for the year and to hear about their projects. I will be *seen* as a writer all over again by a room full of strangers...With book one completed and in process with final revision work, I have started reading over the 100+ pages I already wrote for book two. There has been just enough time and distance from the material that I can consider it objectively, like the words aren't even mine...like the concept for the story wasn't even generated in my mind. But, it was...and it is SO different from the first I cannot even say. With a full-time teaching gig coming my way within the next five months, I told myself at my cafe table, "Well then, that gives you four and a half months to finish this second baby...ready, set, go!"

The sun struck the orchids beside me and saturated my left hand with light as it skimmed along with my pen and I forgot about the fact that Migration Summer took me years to write and decided to jump right in with some bold trust in myself. Unlike so many revision-minded-writers, this creation phase--the blind stumbling along, the "without-a-net-tightrope-walking" stage, the "messy" unraveling of the narrative is my absolute favorite. I am moving right ahead with the work, grateful for the shelter this creativity provides for me from the difficulties of the rest of life. No matter what struggles I am facing, I can come back to the page again and again...and, by doing so, come back to the center of who I am.

"The reason birds can fly and we can't is simply that they have perfect faith, for to have faith is to have wings."
--J.M. Barrie, writer and creator of Peter Pan--