37days

Not a self-help book, but a soul-help book.

"Better than ten years of therapy and a doctorate in art, Life is a Verb delivers more than it promises. Digh's writing is laugh out loud funny and more profound than Zen koans. Let her wise counsel guide you to live your life gratefully and as a work of art." - Patricia Ryan Madson, Stanford  Emerita, author of Improv Wisdom: Don't Prepare, Just Show Up

Now available for pre-order from Amazon, 37days.net, or my fantastic local independent bookshop that ships worldwide--Malaprop's. Doesn't your hairdresser need one?

What will it take?

Today, I feel the claustrophobic feeling I had when 9/11 occurred, when Katrina hit, when the tsunami swallowed people up, when I first toured Auschwitz as a teenager. It is the weight of knowing, the knowing we must all hold. Once we know, we can't not-know.

If my town were in Myanmar, given the new estimates of 78,000 dead, we would all of us be dead--the nice man at the Piggly Wiggly, the morally indignant dentist, the sisters who own a cupcake shop, and everyone else here. Not to mention the 56,000 still missing.

And if my town were in Sichuan province, most of us--dead.

And so, we look for what we can do. Perhaps the most significant thing we can do from where we are is  to write "Myanmar" on a slip of paper and write "Sichuan" on a slip of paper, drop them in our god box, and send an outpouring of love to all those who have lost their families, who have lost the nice man at the corner market, the morally indignant dentist, the sisters who own a noodle shop, their whole incredibly meaningful, special, fragile, beautifully mundane, human worlds.

If Prayer Would Do It

If prayer would do it
I’d pray.

If reading esteemed thinkers would do it
I’d be halfway through the Patriarchs.

If discourse would do it
I’d be sitting with His Holiness
every moment he has free.

If contemplation would do it
I’d have translated the Periodic Table
to hermit poems, converting
matter to spirit.

If even fighting would do it
I’d already be a blackbelt.

If anything other than love could do it
I’ve done it already
and left the hardest for last.

- Stephen Levine

Thanks, Lee, for sending the perfect poem for this day.

Book Tour News!

As the book draws near, I am beginning to get invitations to do readings and/or signings in bookshops and book groups across the country in September, October, and November.

One of them comes from a bookshop in Augusta, Georgia. I wonder if there are any 37days readers in the Augusta, Georgia, area who might be a point person there to encourage friends, neighbors, strangers on the street--to make it a viable stop on the tour. I'll be glad to come to Augusta if I know someone is there helping spread the news. There's nothing lonelier than sitting in a big bookshop all alone with a pile of your books hoping that SOMEONE, DEAR LORD LET SOMEONE COME UP TO ME AND ACT INTERESTED. So, if you're in Augusta and can help, please let me know!

If you'd like me to come to your community, I'd love to! All I need is a local volunteer willing to help make it happen! That might mean getting a local bookseller excited about the idea, or inviting your friends and family to a potluck dinner where I can read a story or two, or someone whose uncle's first wife's brother is a radio producer...well, who knows? You probably have far better ideas than I do. Let me know if that's you by sending an email.

Also, for those of you in book clubs where it's not possible to physically be there, if you'd like to read LIFE IS A VERB in your club, I'm happy to participate virtually--either by answering questions before your meeting or participating by phone or webcast during your meeting. As a book club convener myself, I'm more than happy to do so. If that's of interest, let me know!

And a blog tour is shaping up for the month of September, in which I'll visit--either by interview or a guest column--30 blogs during that month. If you write a blog and would be interested in being one of those first thirty blogs, let me know! Please include "Blog Tour" in your subject line.

I'm still holding out hope that the president of Air Stream will come to his or her senses and provide me with a huge silver bullet in which I, Mr Brilliant, Emma, Tess, and the dog named Blue can tour for 37 days in October. Maybe Billy Collins would like to join us for a few stops. Stranger things have happened.

Missing and forever missed

Do you know exactly what you were doing and where you were twenty-eight years ago today?

I do.

Daddy is missing and forever missed.

Mothers: life, love, learning

M, after all, is for mother.

By all external measures, I have done a lot of things, traveled to a lot of places, and met with a lot of distinguished people in my life. But it just pales in comparison. The very most important thing I do or am is a mother to my two daughters. Even when they wake me up from my happy mother's day sleeping-in-so-they- can-surprise- me- with-breakfast slumber by screaming up a lung because their older sister won't give them a tortilla.

We all have a mother, some still with us, others not present in our lives for some reason. Whether present now in our lives or not, perhaps a moment of silence today to thank them for giving us life, or maybe a lanyard we made in camp for them. Or simply the tip of a hat this week to a mother who is having a tough time in the grocery store with her toddler. I carry little pages of stickers (that I buy by the bucket full at Staples) in my wallet for those moments, to distract toddlers from the Neet Hair Removal System they are screaming to own, to give to them, to silently say "I know" to the mothers who are desperately trying to hold it together for just one more aisle, just until they get to the Nighttime Nyquil section.

Mothering is a hard job sometimes.

But I love it. It feels like a walk off a pier, into the future.

37days Do it Now Challenge

March right on down to your local office supply store, buy some bulk packages of Curious George stickers, and stick five sheets of them in your wallet. The next time you're in the Piggly Wiggly and a child hypothetically named Tess is screaming like she has been poked with a spear tipped in rat poison because her aging mother who just received her invitation from AARP won't buy her a Pooh balloon that says "Hi Honey Bunny!," quietly offer her a page of stickers. The distraction will likely shock her into silence, the mother will drop to her knees in sheer thankfulness, offering you everything in her wallet, and you'll have done A Good Thing. And if you could do that at the Westgate Earth Fare in Asheville every Thursday afternoon around 4pm, I'd be much obliged.

She had me at "cow town"

Oh, my.

I love to shop on Etsy. Real artists making art. I've made a conscious commitment to buy handmade.

My dream is to create a small shop at 37day.net that will include only handmade objects that relate to my blog and book (did I mention I've written a book?), so in service to that vision, I've been exploring Etsy to find artists whose work I love, then asking if they are interested in creating 37days art. (Are you interested? Please provide a link to your work in the comments!)

One day last week, I found beautiful tiles with words on them. My very favorite color. I wrote to ask.

Rachel wrote back. Turns out, that the very day I wrote to her was Day 37 of a big life change. She was struck by the synchronicity. So was I. Said she'd love to create some prototypes of tiles with the six practices for intentional living that are outlined in LIFE IS A VERB.

When she sent the photos of them, I burst into tears.

There is something about seeing art made from your words that defies description. I felt that way, too, when all the amazing art flowed in from readers around the world to illustrate the book.

I loved the tiles. Wanted to tile my kitchen so I'd see the six practices every morning when I wake up and stumble in there to make coffee. Wanted to tile my shower so I could meditate on them in the steam. Wanted to create a path of them in my garden. Wanted to carry them all in my handbag so when people irritate me as they are wont to do sometimes AND ESPECIALLY THIS WEEK FOR SOME UNKNOWN REASON IS THERE A PLANET IN RETROGRADE?, I could reach in and feel the outline of the words and calm myself right down. I sent the photographs to Mr Brilliant:

"It must feel pretty good seeing your words incised in something (that isn't a tombstone). AND HEY:  speaking of tombstones, looks like she lives in the city where Oliver Loving is buried--remembered, Goodnight-Loving Trail? It was the promise Charlie G made to Oliver to carry his rotting corpse back to TX that inspired old Larry to write Lonesome Dove. So Oliver's trail ended there--she could probably drive there in 15 minutes and put a pebble on his grave if she was so inclined. Your potter lives a few miles from where the trail began for one of your favorite books. Pretty poetic. You should share with her--its a good story."

I think Larry McMurtry's novel, Lonesome Dove, is a Great American Novel. In fact, Mr Brilliant is working on a book about the series of McMurtry novels that are connected to Lonesome Dove. That's how much we like it.

I sent his story to the potter. "Yes!" she wrote back. "We DO live near where Charlie Goodnight is buried - at the Greenwood Cemetery - AND we live off of Greenwood Road. AND Lonesome Dove is one of OUR favorite books too - at LEAST once a year, we get out our Lonesome Dove CD set and watch the entire thing yet again.  We know it by heart. AND -  MY husband's name is Larry.  SO many parallels.  It is Synchronicity and  Serendipity."

She continued: "When I first read the book, Lonesome Dove, I was trail riding about once a month, living in Austin, and I grieved for an entire month when I finished it.  For Gus, AND for the book itself, that it was over.  I was so profoundly moved by that story and completely taken and emotionally involved with all of the  very colorful characters - of course, especially Gus McCrae.  And now I live here - at least 20 years later."

Synchronicity and Serendipity. Her beautiful Life is a Verb tiles will be available for sale (either individually or in a set of 6) soon in the 37 days shop. Do you like them as much as I do?

Eat raw tarantulas in hot sauce for someone

"That's it!"

"That's the dress I want!"

I peered at the computer screen over her shoulder, at a pink satin halter dress like Marilyn Monroe wore in the 1950s, with a crinoline petticoat underneath.

"Does it come in black?" she asked, worriedly.

"I'm sure it does...let's see." We clicked through all the choices--pink, gold, green, red. No black. I emailed the company. They wrote back "sorry." I emailed again to ask for the name of the manufacturer, thinking "let's go to the source." They wrote back that actually a manufacturer creates the dresses under the store's label and couldn't possibly get a black one done in time.

There's just nothing I hate more than hearing someone say, "I can't."

It had all started so innocently. An invitation to the Prom from a young man who has become very affectionately known as Kilt Boy. A need to match a Montreat tartan kilt. A 1950s halter dress that, as it turns out, not only didn't come in black but evidently has never existed in the history of online shopping in black. Trust me, I know. And, of course, the final ingredient--a mother who would eat raw tarantulas in hot sauce if it meant saving her daughter.

37days readers helped, sending links to beautiful dresses. "Not really. Nope. I mean, it's really nice, but not exactly," Emma responded to each one. Clearly, she would have settled for one that was sort of like what she wanted. But why?

Have I mentioned that I like a challenge?

It???s not??? hard to??? read, you??? just need??? new??? glasses

Thanks to all those who have written in the past few days to tell me that you're having a tough time reading 37days in your Feedblitz email updates. If you don't receive 37days in your email from Feedblitz, you won't have a bloody clue what the rest of this post is about, so perhaps you should save yourself from the Pain of Not Knowing and take this opportunity to make a cup of Earl Grey Lavender Tea with soy creamer.

For those of you affected, read on:

??? I don't ??? have ??? any idea ??? why you ??? think ??? it is ??? difficult ??? to read ??? my posts ??? with 8,000 ??? questions marks ??? in them. Some ??? people are ??? so picky ???!

I do appreciate your letting me know - just wanted to let you know that I'm working on solving the problem and at the happy rate I'm going, it should be fairly well on its way to resolution by the time Tess graduates from High School in 2021. Hang tight. 2021 will be here before you know it. You know how time flies.

Ninjas!

Perhaps you will enjoy an earlier essay of mine that appears in this month's Skirt! magazine! And thanks also to Skirt! publisher Nikki Hardin who mentioned 37days so wonderfully in her site's morning muse today - as well as mentioning the beautiful, engraved jewelry made for 37days readers by artist Sarah Blaine.

Nikki is the real reason that the book, LIFE IS A VERB, exists, having written to me over a year ago after reading 37days for awhile, to ask, "would you be interested in making a book out of your 37days blog posts?"

Many thanks to Nikki for that broader vision of 37days in the world! Only 118 days until the official publication date of LIFE IS A VERB! Let's have a big old Ninja party, shall we?

[Art by 37days reader Laura Stinson, from the book, LIFE IS A VERB]

Unplug the phone

The first principal of nonviolent action is that of noncooperation with everything humiliating. - Cesar Chavez

I was in my early 20s, in graduate school studying literature (mainly American) and art history (mainly the figure of the artist in fiction). There’s a huge employment market for people who have studied the figure of the artist in fiction, of course. My thesis was entitled “The Solids of Uccello: Near Recognitions of Reality in William Gaddis’ The Recognitions." It was a heady time, indeed. I was studying in an English Department then ranked first in the nation, in a school known as Mr Jefferson’s University that until 1970, just twelve years before, had been an all-male bastion.

The competition was fierce in the English department, though I didn’t realize just how fierce for quite some time. I thought it was all about the love of literature—and it was, in large part, but with an undercurrent of beating the other M.A. students for the few, precious slots in the Ph.D. program. It was particularly competitive if you happened to be a woman (though I didn’t know that either), because many longtime professors there still weren’t sure if going co-ed had been such a good idea after all.

There was only one tenured female professor in the department who, in a memorable conversation, told me that she had suffered deeply to get there and her intention was not to help other women by making it easier for them, but to ensure that every other woman suffered as much as she did so they would understand and appreciate the journey.

Evidently you cannot help without torturing the ones who follow you, I thought. I, myself, would rather sweep a path for them, show them the landscape, be—as Sun Tzu says in The Art of War--a local guide.

Friends like these you do not need, I thought as I sat across from this woman. “Is this what Walker Percy had in mind when he wrote about ‘handing one another along?’ I asked sweetly. Having studied his work in her class, it was a fully appropriate question, I thought. She was less amused.

One American literature professor stood out for me—I took many classes with him during my time at Mr Jefferson’s University—smart, demanding, a man who knew how to teach—in an institution that, frankly, put more emphasis on research and publishing than teaching. But this professor was a shining light, sure to get tenure. I loved his classes—funny, hard, smart. I would use the word “brilliant,” but you and I both know that word is taken.

I did well there, made all As my first year, and was named a DuPont Scholar that January. I noticed a difference in how the old guard treated me afterwards, as if I had emerged from the swamp of first year to become a Real Possibility for the Ph.D. program. It was a culture built on achievement and a department in which—quite literally—a “B” was equal to a “D” and even an “A-“ was nothing to write home about.

Those were heady days. My best friend there, Ken, used to crack me up with his Marlon Brando “On the Waterfront” impersonation: “I could-a been a critical theorist,” he would wail as we worked on papers that very nearly sucked all the life out of Melville and Eliot and Yeats.

My biggest learning there began on the evening of February 28, 1983, the night of the last M*A*S*H episode. I lived in Tucker Dorm at the time and those of us in the dorm had planned a party in the basement to watch the two-hour finale together.

Just as the episode started, my roommate ran down the stairs.

“Patti, your professor is on the phone.”

Anticipation

Six short frenetic maniacal hours until prom.

More later, after we live through today's preparations, on how this dress and four inch heels (are you kidding me?), happened IN ONE SHORT HORMONAL WEEK.

Ah, two stages of life in one photograph. One twirling, the other wondering. The rapidly aging mother unit is not visible in this particular photograph because she has passed out from the sheer glory of it all.

Take a hot bath with your goggles on

It was a short, but memorable trip to Tybee Island. Cold ocean water, cool breezes, an Easter egg hunt in the sand. Bike riding all over the island. Treks up the 178 stairs to the top of the lighthouse. Homemade ice cream at the appropriately named "Sugar Shack." Kite flying. Bunk beds! Riding bikes in the surf, then racing home to jump into a hot tub to thwart the double pneumonia that surely would result from such cold. Building sand castles. Being buried in the sand up to your neck. Playgrounds! Evenings of card games. Movies. Chips and Salsa. Cotton candy! Even salads that spell out "Tybee" in red pepper. Whew, a lot in a very few days.

"We did so many things this weekend! What did you like best about the beach?" I asked Tess on the drive home. "The hot baths," she said cheerfully, without hesitation. "Those hot baths were FANTASTIC!"

I looked over at Mr Brilliant, smiling as he navigated the five-hour drive home that became a nine-hour drive because of construction. Emma was passed out in the back seat, the sun having done her in. The dog, Blue, was chewing a bone in the back and farting at will, and Tess was smiling a big smile as she continued her exposition of the merits of hot baths.

"We drove five hours for a hot bath? Paying eight jillion dollars a gallon for gasoline?" I said to Mr Brilliant after Tess got distracted by a large shiny truck.

"Yep," he said. "We sure did. Worth every mile."

And so it was. A hot bath in one context (home, boring, predecessor to the dreaded bedtime) is different in another context (beach, necessary to raise the body temperature, in the middle of the afternoon, in goggles).

Hot baths mean more when they are in contrast to freezing in wet clothes after a bike ride from the cold, cold beach. They just mean more. And while we spend a lot of time avoiding the cold, cold ocean and that cold, cold ride in wet clothes, it's the only thing that makes that hot bath so incredibly special.

We know it is the small things in life that make it worth living. We all know that. It's the small grape, the bowl of cheerios, not the Official Edict or Big Event. And yet, it's so hard to remember that, when we are measured in big ways, not small ones. It is so hard to remember; we forget it every single day.

37days Do it Now Challenge

Ride your bike straight into the cold water--take a risk, get messy, explore, tire yourself out. Then take a nice, long, warm bath. Pop some floaty toys in the tub with you, suction cup some goggles on your face and go exploring. Soak, soak.

A wee Haiku to end the Poemapalooza

You might know that I like Haiku. I like writing book reviews in Haiku. I like trying to capture the essence of a day, or a conference, or a walk, in a Haiku. The limitation of the syllables is what creates the safe, clear playpen.

We believe creativity comes with wide, free reign--no holes barred, whatever that means--but sometimes creativity comes instead with stricture and closeness and tight form imposed onto it. Rhyme schemes and color wheels. I know this to be true, as much as I have railed against it in years past. The form paradoxically releases the art. And yet...

The Problem with Haiku

Of all the things I
Wish would be, the one that most
Occurs to me is

-Michael S. Glaser

(made me laugh).

And so, our National Poetry Month Poemapalooza comes to an official end until next year. In the next few days, you'll find a PDF of this year's poems, just as I did last year. I hope you'll enjoy it.

And now, on to a month of a different kind, the writing kind, the finished-the-book-need-to-move-on kind. Back to challenges, back to the instruction manual for my daughters, back to paying attention, and back to the urgency of the timeline. 37 days. If we got that awful diagnosis today, we'd be dead by June 7th. What's the biggest, best, most meaningful, deepest use of our next 37 days we can imagine? I wonder. Let's ponder. June 7th. What can I create in the lifetime between now and then? Memories? A book? A relationship? A letter to each person I want to have understand what they mean to me? What's my art form between now and then?

Poets urge us to join the circle of simple, passionate thusness

Only When I am Quiet and Do Not Speak

Only when I am quiet for a long time
and do not speak
do the objects of my life draw near.
Shy, the scissors and spoons, the blue mug.
Hesitant even the towels,
for all their intimate knowledge and scent of
fresh bleach.
How steady their regard as they ponder,
dreaming and waking,
the entrancement of my daily wanderings and tasks.
Drunk on the honey of feelings, the honey of purpose,
they seem to be thinking,
a quiet judgment that glistens between the
glass doorknobs.
Yet theirs is not the false reserve
of a scarcely concealed ill-will,
nor that other, active shying: of pelted rocks
No, not that. For I hear the sigh of happiness
each object gives off
if I glimpse for even an instant the actual
instant -
As if they believed it possible
I might join
their circle of simple, passionate thusness,
their hidden rituals of luck and solitude,
the joyous gap in them where appears in us
the pronoun I

- Jane Hirshfield

My thanks to Lee for sending this poem. It reminds me of how little we are quiet. Where "we" is "I".

[paintings that I adore and want to hang in my own home by Nancy Bea Miller]

37days Retreat SOLD OUT for Sept 2008; Next one set for April 24-26, 2009

Wow. We have been overwhelmed by the response for the upcoming 37days retreat (Sept 26-28, 2008) and the retreat is SOLD OUT. We will welcome participants from ten U.S. states and Canada at the beautiful Bend of Ivy Lodge in the fall for that gathering. If you are interested to be put on the waiting list should a space open up for that retreat, please email to let us know.

In response to several inquiries, we have set the date for our first 2009 gathering, which will take place again at the Bend of Ivy Lodge near Asheville, North Carolina, from April 24-26, 2009. I hope you might be able to join us there! It is a beautiful time to be in these hills, as this photo from our trip out to the Lodge a week ago can attest.

If you'd like to be sure to receive details about that April 2009 retreat when they are available, please complete and submit the following information.

Name:
Email Address:
Zip or Postal Code

If you'd like us to hold a space in the 2009 retreat for you, please go here for more details on the retreat and on the registration process - we would love to have you there! (Those who register by 6/30/08 will be guaranteed the 2008 retreat prices).

[Please note: as indicated earlier, we are sponsoring a full-tuition scholarship for a single parent to attend the 2008 retreat in September. The deadline for applying is April 30th and the scholarship will be awarded by mid-May. If you'd like information on this opportunity, let us know]

Poets take us into the grass that has overgrown causes and effects, to that place where we unearth rusted-out arguments

The End and the Beginning

After every war
someone has to clean up.
Things won't
straighten themselves up, after all.

Someone has to push the rubble
to the side of the road,
so the corpse-filled wagons
can pass.

Someone has to get mired
in scum and ashes,
sofa springs,
splintered glass,
and bloody rags.

Someone has to drag in a girder
to prop up a wall,
Someone has to glaze a window,
rehang a door.

Photogenic it's not,
and takes years.
All the cameras have left
for another war.

We'll need the bridges back,
and new railway stations.
Sleeves will go ragged
from rolling them up.

Someone, broom in hand,
still recalls the way it was.
Someone else listens
and nods with unsevered head.
But already there are those nearby
starting to mill about
who will find it dull.

From out of the bushes
sometimes someone still unearths
rusted-out arguments
and carries them to the garbage pile.

Those who knew
what was going on here
must make way for
those who know little.
And less than little.
And finally as little as nothing.

In the grass that has overgrown
causes and effects,
someone must be stretched out
blade of grass in his mouth
gazing at the clouds.

-Wislawa Szymborska

Poets ask us questions we need to answer

Questions Before Dark

Day ends, and before sleep
when the sky dies down, consider
your altered state: has this day
changed you? Are the corners
sharper or rounded off? Did you
live with death? Make decisions
that quieted? Find one clear word
that fit? At the sun's midpoint
did you notice a pitch of absence,
bewilderment that invites
the possible? What did you learn
from things you dropped and picked up
and dropped again? Did you set a straw
parallel to the river, let the flow
carry you downstream?

-Jeanne Lohmann

Tell me, has this day changed you?

Poets sound out over miles

Elephant Love

Fourteen thousand pounds

Shift silently

Over ruts worn deep

By the lure of water.

A behemoth link

In the tail to trunk chain,

Slinking under night’s cover

Toward the wide, gentle sea.

Each massive foot,

Distinct as a thumbprint,

Hints at treetops and weather,

Speaks of dry and cracked earth.

Using sub-human decibels,

He sounds out over miles,

Summoning kin to the water,

To its cool and its drinking,

To its diving and bathing,

To its feasting and mating.

His way there is slow,

Just five miles in an hour.

Imagine the courage.

One hundred thousand muscles

And nerves all bundled together,

Trumpeting the call

To elephant love.

-Liz Granfort

Like several others featured during this National Poetry Month Poemapalooza, this poem appears in LIFE IS A VERB, with thanks to the poet.

Poets take us to five mile-per-hour love, a ton of love, nerves all bundled together, trumpeting in the forest. Imagine, just imagine, the courage. We all, in our own way, and in our own time, have made our way there to the sea, lured by that water.

Poets take us on a bike ride to another world

If There is Another World

If there is another world,
I think you can take a cab there--
or ride your old bicycle
down Junction Blvd.
past the Paris Suites Hotel
with the Eiffel Tower on the roof
and past the blooming Magnolia and on--
to the corner of 168th street.
And if you’re inclined to,
you can turn left there
and yield to the blind
as the sign urges us--
especially since it is a state law.
Especially since there is a kind of moth
here on the earth
that feeds only on the tears of horses.
Sooner or later we will all cry
from inside our hearts.
Sooner or later even the concrete
will crumble and cry in silence
along with all the lost road signs.
Two days ago 300 televisions
washed up on a beach in Shiomachi, Japan,
after having fallen off a ship in a storm.
They looked like so many
over-sized horseshoe crabs
with their screens turned down to the sand.
And if you’re inclined to, you can continue
in the weightless seesaw of the light
through a few more intersections
where people inside their cars
pass you by in space
and where you pass by them,
each car another thought--only heavier.

-Malena Morling