Inside Out/Outside In...AND some writing news

OUTSIDE IN

On Tuesday night I saw "A Breath for George," shown outside on a tiny screen against the wall of the Guthrie Theater. It could have been shown on a grain of rice and would have still packed a punch. We said in the sanitized chairs provided, masked and socially distanced, some of us in lawn chairs carried from home-- a crowd, undistracted by birds, or motorcycles, or the voices of children somewhere in the park behind us. Only the helicopter flying too low pulled our eyes from the screen. I don't know if these showings will be only in the Twin Cities or if they will come somewhere near you, but the website of the theater that produced the movie is a must see. It is full of resources you might not have seen other places.

http://newdawntheatre.org/index.html

There's a mural of George Floyd on the front of the Guthrie, composed of little post-it note like squares. 

INSIDE OUT

It's amazing how much the sky can change in an hour. Nature shows us change every season, every hour, every second. We can change too.

This is the view I see from my bedroom floor--the place where I do my yoga practice.

WRITING NEWS

An essay of mine (along with 29 others) is on the shortlist for the Masters Review Anthology. I should know by the end of the month if I get chosen as one of the ten winners.

Top reasons for a writer to love paper making and paper marbling

It's not just black and white.

You get to use fun tools like eyedroppers and whisks made out of broom straws.

 A tray of water with paint floating on the surface is more fun than a laptop.

You do it while standing up and moving around.

Even the flawed pieces are great.

You can turn out a lot of pieces in an afternoon.

The above photos are from a Turkish marbling or "ebru" workshop at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts. Below is some of the paper I recently worked on at Cave Paper. While I didn't form the sheets, I did apply all the walnut crackle onto the sheets. This paper is spectacularly beautiful in person. It would make a gorgeous journal cover for....writing.

The Papermaker's Apprentice

A few weeks ago, I began an apprenticeship with a renowned papermaker.

The first thing I made was seed paper. I just learned a tiny bit of the involved process of paper making.

I spent all day at it. This paper has the seeds of native plants in it. Here is how it will be used by a  Native American artist.

The sculptures this artist makes will be left in the landscape, reseeding it to native plants.

I became smitten with the book arts after moving to Minneapolis. I've been learning some basic book construction.

Today I practiced the art of Japanese paper marbling.

I'm still writing. It's National Adoption Awareness Month, and I have resolved to write several pieces on Medium. com this month. Here's the free link to the latest one: https://medium.com/@demanuelclemen/top-secret-my-sons-name-2189f230b6b6?source=friends_link&sk=88543939d1a03e10c52b9c751bcf2f77

And here's where I'm interning: Cave Paper  Check out Amanda's artwork using her handmade paper.

Bird of the Week

Trumpeter swans at the Sherburne National Wildlife Refuge

I stopped at the Sherburn Wildlife Refuge on my way north to a writer's retreat. If you've ever heard the call of a trumpeter swan, you'll know how they got their name. Galloping horse birds would also be good if you were to name them for the beating of their wings on the water as they take flight. They weigh 25 pounds or so--the heaviest bird in North America, and their getaway is noisy and lumbering.

Some fun facts from allaboutbirds.org:

• Starting in the 1600s, market hunters and feather collectors had decimated Trumpeter Swans populations by the late 1800s. Swan feathers adorned fashionable hats, women used swan skins as powder puffs, and the birds’ long flight feathers were coveted for writing quills. Aggressive conservation helped the species recover by the early 2000s.
• Trumpeter Swans form pair bonds when they are three or four years old. The pair stays together throughout the year, moving together in migratory populations. Trumpeters are assumed to mate for life, but some individuals do switch mates over their lifetimes. Some males that lost their mates did not mate again.
• Trumpeter Swans take an unusual approach to incubation: they warm the eggs by covering them with their webbed feet.

Collage

I have discovered collage. 

Mostly though, I've been writing, and writing, and writing. 

Stopping the words and reveling in the visual is a relief.

Luckily, I can send these creations out as greeting cards to friends. They can do with them what they will. Space here in my new abode is limited.

Collaging summer scenes might be fun when it's 40 below here. Right now winter fascinates me.

Now that I've made a few collages, I see that the world is a collage. Clouds, cityscapes, the fallen leaves. All of it pasted together by nature, god, and man.

Weaving

I spent an hour or so weaving this morning. There's a fiber artist here who's asked for some help on a big project in exchange for a beautiful handwoven scarf. The conversation about process would probably have been enough. "Do you have a big sketch or a painting that plans this all out?" I asked. She said that she didn't. That she's working intuitively and often works this way. She has finished weavings on her wall that look like beautiful landscapes. Snow dusted mountains, fields of poppies... or not. You might see something else.

Right now the floor of her studio looks like this:

My desk looks like this. I have two stacks of index cards--story idea cards with ideas for stories or maybe the first paragraph or two. The other stack of cards is images, a snippet of overheard dialogue, a line of information that amazes me, whatever catches my eye or ear or breaks my heart on any given day. When I  begin, I chose a story idea that feels "hot." Then I spend several minutes shuffling through the image cards, intuitively pulling out whichever ones feel connected to the story. I weave them together, following the emotion, the action, the character and the trouble they're in. If they don't fit, images cards go back into the stack for another day.

In the end the weaver has to sew down the ends in that big tapestry to anchor them. I have to edit, and edit, catching up loose ends and pulling some bits out.

Hoping for Words to Flow Like Water

Eureka Springs, Arkansas is the town that water built. Plaques mark the springs on Spring Street, and their entrances look like shrines, the stone arches set off with carefully manicured topiaries and pristine gravel paths bordered with plants. There are benches or stone tables where presumably once upon a time one might have been served the healing waters. Spring Street boasts bath houses that offer healing massages and steam rooms, and the sound of water singing in the limestone bluffs never seems far away.

I'm here to write, not bathe. But I know that words can also can also heal us.

Or dirty us. I'm trying to cut back a bit on reading our national news--or at least choose to read some things that offer a few drops of hope.

This Is My Ocean

And it's your ocean too. Whether or not you ever, in whole entire life, see it up close in person.

It's your ocean.

It's my ocean and when I'm away, I miss it. I miss it right now, sitting at my desk typing away under the picture of my ocean for a little time with it before I tear into Chapter 19 of my book.

I'd write by the ocean if it weren't so terribly impractical. Sand, wind, sunscreen, etc. Like those movie sex scenes on the beach. Sand. Wind. Sunscreen.

These days at home, I like to write facing the wall.

I'm at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts

I'm going to the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts!

Greetings from the Taubman Museum of Art in downtown Roanoke

I'll be heading for the VCCA in a couple of days. Meanwhile I'm visiting fabulous old friends and getting shown the sites in Salem and Roanoke. 

The Taubman Museum is a gorgeous place, designed by Randall Stout, who worked for Frank Gehry.

The VCCA is its own kind of gorgeous. I think at least half of my published stories were drafted there during prior residencies.  http://deniseemanuelclemen.com 
I'm thrilled to be going back.

Where the Muse Can Find Me

Since May 7th, I have written every single day (except one) for a minimum of two hours. The first night was in a weird motel room in Needles, CA where I used the same table and chair to later barricade my door. It's been easier since then.

It turns out that what my favorite mentors told me years ago is true (at least for me right now.) If you park your ass in a chair and get ready to write, the muse will know where to find you.

State of the State of Margaritaville

Evening walk last week.

I'm alive and I live in paradise.

For more than a year I've been wrestling.
Swollen joints.(They went away; yesterday the swollen knees and ankles came back) A hoarse voice.
Grief.
Musing over  Dan's central tenet. You're doing the best that you can. Really, you did the best that you could at the time. Really really, you did the best that you could at the time with what you knew at the time.
Really?

I am alive and I live in paradise.

My voice is unreliable. Is that the same as an unreliable narrator?

Why am I not working on a writing project right now?

Some days I can barely make myself understood. In places that I go regularly, people know to lean closer. Other days I clear my throat a million times. The phlegm lady.

Yes, I've been to doctors.
Hooray, I'll be on Medicare in November.

The lungs are the seat of grief, the acupuncturist says. Okay.

The Integrated Medicine doc says no dairy and gluten. Sometimes I cheat on the dairy.

What do you do with grief when you're grieving over a dead person while taking care of a dying person?
Wow, wasn't that like, a long time ago?

No.
I am alive and I live in paradise.

Paradise itself is struggling.

Starting in the lower right foreground, notice the white bumps, and follow them into the distance. These are the breasts of western grebes, poisoned by domoic acid. The Pacific loons, cormorants, and pelicans are darker and cannot be distinguished in the photograph.

The beach, early morning, after the winds have subsided.

Monday Morning Beach Report: a tall ship, clouds, and beach glass

San Salvador leaves the harbor

She nears the mouth of the harbor--and in black and white below so you can see the moon in the morning sky.

And she's out to sea.

I drove north a mile or two, hoping to catch a glimpse with the sails unfurled, but she was already a mere shadow in the fog, far from shore.

Nice clouds, though. 

And a ton of beach glass. All colors, including a rare piece of red and a large chunk from the neck of a bottle.

And now, I have a ton of paperwork to tend to so I can re-fi my house. I have a short story to finish editing, and an essay to send out a few more places, and another essay to put the finishing touches on, and an essay I want to write with a September 30 submission deadline. Wish me luck. And good luck to you with your day. Remember to stand up and stretch, okay?

P.S. Thanks for the love and kind words re my mom's birthday. Last night's party was beautiful. We toasted her. And my friend Carol blew out the candles on her cake via Skype (with a little help from us.)

The State of the State of Margaritaville

Last night I had the opportunity to gather with a group of writers for the first time in a long time. I listened to colleagues read their work and read a story of my own. There was delicious food and a crockpot of hot toddies promising their own warm buzz. It seems like a dream now, but it was real-- the amazing Amanda McBroom sang to us, each of her songs its own story. Afterwards I drove home through the rain to my quiet house, sinking into stories true and imagined, pondering how good it feels as a reader or writer when we are drawn quickly into the deep middle. I slept a lot today, turning a new story over in my head, resisting the urge to talk about it. Write it, don't tell it to us, a favorite teacher used to say.  It never ceases to amaze me that so much wreckage can be made sense of and turned into something new.

It's been a slow process these months since my mom has left my house for me to realize that I am free to come and go, stay out late, spend a day in bed if I like. I miss her though and wish that I could see her more often. But it's completely obvious what a good choice it was for her to go back to Iowa where there are so many family members to visit her.  I'm glad I wrote down the stories she told me while she was living here, or someday they might feel like a dream too.