BornWilder

Author. Certified Coach. Catalytic Speaker

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On Remembering

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Interior east wall of Sagrada Familia with sunlight reflecting blue and green stained glass windows

I took the above photo inside La Sagrada Família, a bucket-list destination I visited with my grandmother and sister last May. When I first encountered architect Antoni Gaudí’s work, I liked the natural elements of his design–curves, color, and texture. No photo can capture the awe-inspiring atmosphere of being immersed inside light and sculpture, of feeling part of the design itself. But it’s not only Gaudí’s buildings that I’m thinking about this last day of 2022. Gaudí’s life, and his death, are real-life allegories.

God’s Architect

Gaudí took over the plans for La Sagrada Família in 1883 and quickly dedicated his life to it, even moving into a finished portion of the cathedral so he could oversee the work 24/7. Devoted to his work and the Catholic religion, Gaudí began to live like an ascetic–self-disciplined and narrowly focused. He ate frugally and dressed in old, worn suits. A man who once enjoyed the pomp and circumstance that came with being Catalan’s beloved architect, it seems his life’s work and beliefs merged into one mission: La Sagrada Família.

One morning, on his way to Sant Felip Neri church for prayer and confession, Gaudí was struck by a tram. Frail-thin and shabbily dressed, he was mistaken for a beggar and left unconscious on the side of the road. Passersby didn’t stop to help him, not for a while anyway. When someone finally took him to a hospital, Gaudí received minimal care until the chaplain of La Sagrada Família came looking for him. But it was too late, Gaudí’s unattended injuries became too grave to heal, and he died.

Sometimes I imagine people stepping over his body on the way to admire La Sagrada Família, the church he designed with their spiritual lives in mind.

Real-life Allegory

Not quite the Grateful Dead folklore where a passerby resolves the debt of a deceased stranger and later receives karmic payment. But Gaudí’s story is similar, at least in its moral meaning. A man who looked like a beggar was left on the side of the road for dead. That man was the person the townspeople revered, but only worshipped him through the joy his art brought to their lives. The townspeople walking by Gaudí’s body focused on the wrong thing: the object, not the person.

The story isn’t fiction; there is no dire consequence for the townspeople. Gaudí died, his assistant took over, and the project continued. To this day, La Sagrada Família is not complete. Gaudí was never going to see it finished.

And yet, if we look at his life’s story as an allegory, it teaches us not to be: too busy, too stingy, and too judgmental. Another lesson is in the work artists contribute to society. For Gaudí, it’s work that exhibited kindness, time, and attention. And that is worth remembering.

Celebrating Creativity

And now, to leave you with some inspiration for 2023.

As I dig up memories while writing my next collection, I don’t know exactly what will come up. Discovery happens in the writing. This quote by Kiki Smith may not fit exactly to the writing process, but it does fit to creativity (and life) in general: “The point isn’t to know what you’re doing. The point is to have an experience doing something.”

Kurt Vonnegut’s letter to a group of students at Xavier High School in New York City has made it’s way around the internet, but listening to Sir Ian McKellen read the letter makes me want to play in my mashed potatoes. Happy 2023, may you find joy in creativity.

Text on image: “between my fingers over my shoulder in hope, in prayer, in a wish”

Image and text by author. All rights reserved.

On Reclaiming

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twenty-foot tall white owl puppet with arms outstretched in a parade at night

It’s apropos this post comes out today, the 1st of November, when I hoped to complete it one day earlier. I must have needed the help of Samhaim’s thin veils. My past and present, what I’m doing, and what I want to do–it’s all coming together in a way that is hard to articulate, except that I feel a need to leap.

October marked the beginning of my “bookmaking year.” The second poetry collection is well underway. I have written toward the collection–ideas, research, poems–since the publication of Anything That Happens. This year is for deep revision and reflection. The year the ideas become a tangible object. I only have one other experience with a bookmaking year, and I learned that some of my best work is yet to come.

Home is…

In my September 30 post, I realized,”I wasn’t born or reared here, but North Carolina raised me.” When I first moved to NC, I lived in Wilmington and stayed for seventeen years. The smells and sounds of the NC coast were integral to my growth in my twenties. In October, I spent a long weekend at a North Carolina beach with two writer-friends. In my efforts to reclaim place, I walked the beach, and said to myself, “This is your coastline. This is your home.” Memories bubbled to the surface. I couldn’t write in my notebook fast enough.

Yesterday, I received notice that I am a recipient of an Artist Support Grant from the North Carolina Arts Council for the 2022-23 year. (My first artist grant!) My funding request was for two residency periods and travel to “write in place” in my California hometown. I look forward to spending intentional time where I grew up, notebook in hand, and ready for whatever memory rises. Not knowing what I will feel or write has me giddy. The potential seems limitless. One of the differences in writing this book (compared to the last) is how it feels at this stage. I’m eager instead of dreaded. I’m also aware of the possibility. Here’s an excerpt from my application:

Forgiveness is the core of this project. To research, examine, and explore forgiveness, I will tap into an untouched area in my creative thinking. For decades, I focused on what I did wrong. This project provides me the time and space to focus on what I did right, a perspective that will increase my confidence and strengthen my writing.

As I research the places that reared and raised me: Northern California and Southeastern North Carolina, I simultaneously root into the red clay soil of where I now live.

I’ve long understood that the definition of home was multifaceted. My first born inspired my first definition: other people. The process of healing after the car crash provided the second: myself. I’m on a new journey now–one of the many roads home.

Text on image: “And so the long trial continues.”

Image and text by author. All rights reserved.

On Renewal

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September emanates a “coming home” aura. A renewal of belonging. It’s not the harvest that keeps me close to the house, preparing for winter. I’m not a farmer. I don’t even have a vegetable garden. Something deep in my bones–something creative, perhaps ancestral–pulls me to tend to my emotional soil in preparation for what I call the gestation season.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about how I’m not “of” a land. (I do mean “of” as in, a part connected to a whole.) I am of this earth in the way that I feel grounded and connected when my feet are dirty or while hiking. But I am not of place. I believe this is why I am obsessed with the emotional landscape more than the physical landscape. And yet, here I am, yearning to tap into the strength of location.

Fiction writer André Dubus III says, “The best writing comes not when you want to say something but when you want to find something.” In other words, writing is an act of searching. When I wrote Anything That Happens, I didn’t think of the process as searching (though I did want to understand). My subject was something that happened and I wanted to convey my experience with clarity. In hindsight, I see that in trying to be clear, I was searching for how to tell my story. Writers say that everyone has a story to tell, but I never saw myself as a storyteller for two reasons. First, my parents didn’t tell stories, and even more so, wouldn’t talk about the past. And second, I was ashamed of my story.

But I live in North Carolina, the self-proclaimed “Writingest State,” where people are proud to be of its landscape, and storytelling is a birthright. I wasn’t born or reared here, but North Carolina did raise me. The (life-defining) car crash happened nine months after I moved here in 1993. I was nineteen years old, a mere babe in the woods.

When I started to forgive myself for the car crash in my early twenties, I learned that I had to trust in myself first. The teachings of the beginner’s mind–“dropping our expectations and preconceived ideas about something, and seeing things with an open mind, fresh eyes, just like a beginner” (as described by Leo Babauta)–made sense to me, especially after reading the Zen Buddhism story A Cup of Tea. The crash had obliterated my expectations and preconceived ideas, so I spent countless hours creating space in my mind to remain open and fresh. To my advantage, any ideas I had about what a “grownup” should be were gone. My task was to let go of feeling shameful and unworthy. As I did this, I started to root in my belonging. None of this occurred because I had some great insight. It happened because I wanted to survive adulthood with inner peace.

Not putting down roots in place has had its consequences, mainly in my connection and participation in my community. Putting roots down within myself has come with great benefit. I’m strong on the inside. What I search for now is how to tell this side of my story. The story of connection and belonging to self. And the search has already led me to new territory. My story is rooted in place, in a state and its people who are my home.

Text on image: “This burst like the iris through much this yearn a long-tended fire burning through generations.”

Image and text by author. All rights reserved.

On Pause

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[See end of post for text overlay.]

Visiting Guano Point, located on the Grand Canyon’s west rim, was a lesson in walking meditation. With the 3,800-foot cliff only steps away, I walked slow and deliberate. I felt every wisp of breeze on my face. My mind expanded as it reached into every nook of stone carved from the power of flowing water.

It was spiritual. It was a natural high. And pictures don’t do the experience justice.

When I walked away, I thought I might get in line at the café. My eldest son was with me–a mother-son trip postponed from May 2020–and we needed to eat. Still feeling the expanse of the canyon, my mind floating in and out of ravines, I couldn’t get in the too structured, too confining line. I walked around, waiting to come down and feel my feet on the ground so I could move on to the next human thing.

BornWilder Blog Pause

There is an endless amount of pauses in life. The two most recent for me are the pandemic pause and the rearing young children pause–two momentous pauses that, like Guano Point, make me walk slow and deliberate, my mind floating in and out of daily life. But I’m pushing these pause buttons back to play–the kids and the pandemic don’t need my micro-attention, and I’m ready for the next phase of my writing and entrepreneurial journey.

I’ve mentioned all the big-picture thinking and movement since last fall, and it’s time to get the details worked. BornWilder Blog content will reflect my business changes, but it won’t be too different. The goal is to be more focused and clear, which I desperately need.

If I have book or event news over the summer, I’ll send a quick note. Otherwise, I plan to restart the blog in September 2022. Thank you for being on the other end of the blog/newsletter. The writer-reader relationship is a sacred space.

All good things to you this summer.

Text overlay:

This is not the first time
This has happened
This is the only time
This has happened

Quote from unpublished poem “Season 2022” that won first place in the Burlington Writers Club 2022 contest. Image and text by author. All rights reserved.

On Movement

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bright blue rippling pool water
“No postage necessary”

I started 2022 chanting joy joy joy. There’s no quantifiable evidence “joy” has helped my mood. But I can say it was a hectic two months, and I kept grounded and purposeful.

It’s not only the mantra that has me moving forward with intention. On December 29, 2012, I finalized my first Writing Life mission statement: “To actualize my vision for a life’s work that integrates my writing-life with my work-life and my community-life.” (I’ve written about it here and here.) What’s kept my winter busy is the restructuring of my web design business which includes combining it with my writing life–one big writing-working-community business.

I’m thrilled how things are coming together. More importantly is the awareness that writing, revising, publishing, and talking about Anything That Happens got me here. Writing is how I process the complexity of my emotions and the perplexing existential questions. Expressing myself through writing has helped me in my personal life since I was seventeen years old. I knew it helped in my professional life; I didn’t know how much until seven months after the book was published. (And it’s not the big poetry money rolling in.) This next phase of my career is taking a fair amount of self-confidence in an area of my life where confidence previously lay dormant.

Spring is showing itself here. My irises inch their way through the mulch. It’s been a long two years–I’m reemerging into a familiar world but don’t know how to navigate it. So I pull from my experience–those first weeks and months after the accident–when I reemerged into a familiar world I didn’t know how to navigate. I was twenty years old. Almost twenty-eight years later, I have some things to share with the girl who stood beside the wrecked car, stunned and stunted. Unknowing is an opportunity to renew; to walk steadfast and supple; to reach deeper and build broader. I know how to rebuild myself now. What’s better? I’m getting better at helping others rebuild too.

Quote and photo by author. All rights reserved.

On Order

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closeup of fern leaves in an ordered pattern
“As a river carving her way I howl”

It’s fitting to think about how I put order to Anything That Happens. Since its publication, my daily life has unraveled. I’m scattered, or is it that I’m feeling pulled in different directions. It’s summer. Post(?) pandemic. In my family sphere, there is a lot of movement and growth around me as I remain stationary. I also feel some America Gone Wild vibes. After a year at home, the world seems to move in fast forward. And I’m drawn to clean out my closets. (Obviously, something I didn’t do last year.)

I also realize writing about the car crash was part of my identity. The story fits differently into who I am now that anyone can read it. Now that I talk about it. Now that I created something from the experience that will outlive me. I’m not comfortable in my new outfit quite yet.

My approach: relaxing into the disorder. It’s not like I have control over it anyway. And I’ll get some clean closets out of it.

More virtual book launch questions answered.

How did you decide which experiences (besides the accident) to include?

One part of decision-making was by process of elimination. Fear of sharing my story loomed over every draft of the manuscript. In earlier versions, I had poems about the role of architecture and a friend’s death by suicide. At one point, I wrote 242 pages of a memoir, a process that proved invaluable to the finished poetry collection. I added, cut, and rearranged many times. With every revision, I learned not to be stubborn while putting together a poetry collection.

Other decisions were more straightforward.

My mother’s illness and death allowed me to step up in a way I never had before. It was a time when I tapped into all of my experiences, including what saved me in the aftermath of the crash. There was a full-circle element to caring for her, and it made sense to have that experience as a large piece of the book.

Becoming a mother inspired me to become a happy, whole person. My eldest son is integral to my story of self-forgiveness.

After the crash, I tried to figure out how I came to make a grave decision. Naturally, I reflected on my childhood. I also became a mother, prompting further dissection into the relationships I had with my parents. I never wanted to write about my father–he didn’t deserve my attention. But his absence is something I had reckoned with during my twenties. The book became a fuller, focused story with him in it.

How long does it take you to organize a collection of poems? Was this process vastly different from your other projects?

Anything That Happens is my first book-length project. It took many years and iterations to get it right, including the 242-page memoir draft. If I were to consider the first draft of the final product–the one I sent to editor Tom Lombardo–the answer is two years. I sent Tom a rough draft in June 2018 and my final draft in July 2020.

I believe this project is different from future projects. It is the story I had to tell, and it was emotionally draining to write. Now, I get to tell the stories I want to tell. I have a focus and direction that I never had with this project. And what I have learned while completing the book will help me streamline my process.

Quote and photo by author. (From “Remember” in Anything That Happens.) All rights reserved.