37days

Women need their own room - Virginia Woolf

What is the meaning of life? ... a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years. The great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark. –Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

I have long wanted to write a book entitled “Not to take the stones out.”

I don’t know what the book would be about—trivial matter, that—but I have the title (isn’t that the hardest part of writing a book anyway?)

The title comes from the death of writer Virginia Woolf who, at age 59, wrote a note to her husband, put stones in her pockets, and walked into the River Ouse near her house. Her body was found almost a month later by children playing on the river’s bank.

Welcome to 37days...

At some point in our lives, we’ll all just have thirty-seven days to live. Maybe that day is today. Maybe not.

There are new, interesting eyes (and, presumably, whole faces) peeking into 37days recently—many as a result of this site being newly noted as a TypePad Featured Blog.

Thanks, TypePad! What a wonderful surprise and honor...

Welcome. Look around. Poke into the archives. I hope you’ll find something of interest and, perhaps, of meaning to you and your life. Why 37days? That answer can be found here.

Arriving to a blog in progress is sometimes like entering a parlor, late, after everyone else has already arrived and is deep in a heated discussion, a conversation too hot for them to pause and catch you up, just as Kenneth Burke imagined in his gorgeous metaphor of an unending conversation. “If fact,” he writes, “the discussion had already begun long before any of them got there, so that no one present is qualified to retrace for you all the steps that had gone before. You listen for a while, until you decide that you have caught the tenor of the argument; then you put in your oar… However, the discussion is interminable. The hour grows late, you must depart. And you do depart, with the discussion still vigorously in progress.”

37days book ("Life is a Verb") coming this fall from Globe Pequot Press

Maverick writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman once wrote that "life is a verb." It is a sentiment echoed by the likes of Buckminster Fuller and Kevin Kelly.

And so it is. Life takes action, not wishful thinking. It takes mindfulness and intention. It takes slowing down and saying yes and being generous and being amazed and loving more. It takes getting out of bed and going to see the tiny Ninjas.

Together with artists from around the world who created amazing works of art to illustrate the essays, I'm so pleased to announce that my third book, LIFE IS A VERB: 37 Days To Wake Up, Be Mindful, Find Your Heart, and Do it Now (Before It's Too Late) will be published under the Skirt! Books imprint of Globe Pequot Press in the fall of 2008.

If you'd like to be among the very first to hear when it's available, please complete the form below. I can promise on a stack of vegan pancakes with fresh raspberries that your email address won't be used for any other reason than letting you know when the book emerges, with that fantastic smell of fresh ink and clean, crisp paper we love so much.

Name:
Email Address:

free forms

N is for now

“Nothing is worth more than this day.” –Goethe

In 2008, I am going to be here now.

When you unpeel it, 37days is all about now, but I find I don’t live in now very often. I live in then, or when, or one day.

I want, instead, to live in Now. This moment. What does that look like? I think it looks like a lot less time on the computer and a lot more time playing Candyland with a four-year-old or making vegan cupcakes with a teenager or raking leaves with Mr Brilliant. I think it looks a lot like paying attention. I think, for me, it looks a lot like writing or being creative every day. Maybe it just looks like breathing deeply every morning before flinging ourselves into the whirling stream of our lives. It is far too easy to be swept into the competing currents.

As Thich Nhat Hanh has written, “Life can be found only in the present moment. The past is gone, the future is not yet here, and if we do not go back to ourselves in the present moment, we cannot be in touch with life.”

Pema Chödrön has reminded us that Now is the only time. That how we relate to Now creates the future. That what we do accumulates and that the future is the result of what we do right now.

I asked Billy Collins (you know, we talk constantly) if death is the main chord of all poetry. “Yes, it is. But poetry isn’t a consolation for death, for the reality that you will die. Instead, it is an expression of gratitude that you’re alive. Poetry italicizes experience or brings it into sharper focus. It provides a fuller immersion into life.” Poetry is about seizing the day, but we only need “carpe diem” if we realize we have a limited number of diems.

Retreat to move forward

Sometimes we have to retreat to move forward.

The next 37days retreat is scheduled for September 28-30, 2007, and registration has just opened for it. Limited to 14 people, I hope you can be one of them. I'll be joined by my business partner, David Robinson, in facilitating the weekend retreat. He's magical and brings so much to the gathering. Plus, we laugh a lot.

September 28-30, 2007  / MIND THE GAP: The Power of Personal Stories

[A 37days Retreat]

“The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it.” -James M. Barrie

If you had only 37 days to live, would you feel happy with the story you have lived thus far? How would you express that story, learn from it, leave it for others? Those are the fundamental questions behind this blog and the grounding for this unique, experiential weekend gathering focused on unmasking our personal stories to achieve greater creativity, healthier relationships, and fuller engagement in what poet Mary Oliver calls our “one wild and precious life.”

Often, there is a gap between how we wish to be seen and who we really believe ourselves to be, between the story we meant to write and the one we’ve written so far. This gap mutes the colors of our lives and inhibits the quality of our engagements with other people—in our families, our organizations, our communities. Maintaining that gap diminishes our creative impulse and often splits our intentions. Why, then, don’t we do more to shorten that distance and mind that gap?

This unique Gathering will explore these questions:
How do we make meaning of our lives through story? What are the stories we tell ourselves about others? About ourselves? How do those stories reduce us? What learning and significances are right in front of us, in the stories of our days? How can we summon the courage to move beyond the limits of who we think we are into what we were meant to be? How can we relinquish our “role” in order to discover who we might be beneath the mask?  What treasures can be found in the in-between space between me and you, between perception and preconception, between my Self and the Other?

We’ll explore concepts such as:  Life as a finite or an infinite game, intention and direction, wicked problems & tame solutions, and naming our vicious and virtuous circles, those patterns that either reduce us or allow us to live expansively.

Learning Activities / We will: 

• Use improv theatre, ritual, metaphor, mask, story, writing, and other narrative tools
• Explore “role” and other expressive personal and organizational “masks”
• Be 85% experiential--not in the sense of simulations or role plays—but as unmasked engagement with others
• Invite participants to extract meaning from experiences as a collaborative learning community
• Use focused free writes to help participants frame experiences in their own language for deeper exploration
• Experience how changing ourselves can deeply impact our families, communities and organizations.

Here's what people had to say about the last 37days retreat:

“You created a safe environment for valuable learning.”

“I loved the gentle humor that developed in the group, the inclusive quality of the experience, and the practical writing techniques that I’ve probably encoded into my cells.”

“You don’t facilitate as if to say ‘we are the leaders.’ You’re great at taking cues from the group.”

“The story you wove through the whole weekend was masterful and amazing.”

“Your facilitation is beautifully collaborative.”

“Your ability to bring movement and play into the experience, and at the same time, relate that play to deeper concepts, was truly a pleasure to experience and to watch.”

“I appreciate all the thought, caring, and preparation you put into making the retreat weekend transformational for all of us.”

 Cost / To honor the impulse of giving behind 37days, this retreat is offered for a reduced fee of $475-775 inclusive of tuition, materials, housing, and all meals. Please pay what you can in that range.

Location / Our 2007 retreats will be held at the Bend of Ivy Lodge in Asheville, North Carolina. Go here for more information and registration forms for this and other 2007 retreats (PDF).

We'd love to have you join us there. It won't be the same without you.

Read more poetry

Two years ago, I attended the North Carolina Writer's Network annual conference. I was amazed to find hundreds of writers there, all talking about writing.

It had never occurred to me that so many people write or that, in fact, people actually study how to write. Go figure. Just think of all the time I've wasted, not in a writing group or studying with a teacher.

It was a real moment of clarity - I decided that it might be a good thing to take a writing class or twelve, to get work in front of others for their comment, to explore whether a writing teacher could see the architecture of the pieces that I couldn't see, not yet.

At the last moment, and at the last session of that conference, I decided to attend a workshop on memoir. For some reason when I walked in, I felt that the teacher was someone who would be significant in my life--I didn't know how, and I knew it didn't really matter if we continued our connection past the end of the workshop, but for that moment, his influence would be significant. And it was. I'm still figuring out how. It doesn't have to do with proximity, as so many things do.

His name was (and still is) Sebastian Matthews. A poet and memoirist, he teaches classes in which we read and listen to other writers, explore the structure of our pieces, and workshop the works of others in the course. I'll begin my next class with him on February 14th.

It's important to support writers, don't you think? Sebastian has a new book of poetry out - a perfect Valentine's Day gift, perhaps? You can find out about it here.

And guess who has written praise for Sebastian's work? Yep. None other than my beautiful Billy: "Music and musicians run through most of these poems—Louis Armstrong to the Beach Boys and many in between—but Sebastian Matthews has his own poetic music, which is poised, tuneful and able to shift from major to minor so nice you hardly notice. We Generous is a terrific collection, an assembly of smart and evocative moments." —Billy Collins

Account for your days

“So teach us to number our days, that we may get us a heart of wisdom” -Psalms 90:12

Flinging oneself into a new year is an easier jump if the past is accounted for, the ledger closed. I’ve written some 175,000 words on 37days this year. That’s a lot of periods, semi-colons, subjective cases and semi-annual partially plural separating conjective commas each week. I’ve held dear each piece of grammar I cannot diagram, despite Mrs. Harbison’s best efforts in the 7^th grade.

Write some blues

“I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.” - Duke Ellington

I entered a writing contest six months ago with “Laid to Rest in Suit Number Nine,” a quirky little Southern gothic tale about a fastidious man named Nial who numbered all his suits as well as every possible suit/tie/shirt/sock/shoe combination, tracking them on a neatly hand drawn matrix on the inside of his closet door so he wouldn’t go to church two Sundays in a row wearing the same combination. Not that anyone would see them under his ubiquitous beige satin choir robe with that long pointy burgundy sash, or if they did see his outfit, that they’d remember which shirt he was wearing with which tie, but I’m giving this way too much thought.

Clear your own ground

“If the desire to write is not accompanied by actual writing, then the desire must be not to write.” – Hugh Prather

I hope you won't mind this wee note to celebrate.

37days started a year ago today. It is the best job I never had.

It began as a simple promise to myself.

For years I made the usual New Year’s resolutions, including the one about writing every day, and yet for years I had to face the emptiness of those resolutions gone to envy, sometimes just a few weeks into a new year—all those journals stepped into and impossible to continue with so many days missing, the regret at the gaps too large to overcome, the "I'll try," not "I will."

Evidently those promises to myself were not enough to keep the pen moving or maybe the desire wasn't really to write, but to complain about not having the time or space or perfect conditions for writing. Or perhaps I hadn’t yet found the voice, the impetus for voice, or the place to stand while telling the story.

Always carry a pencil

“What writing is all about is what happens on the page between the reader and the page...What I want is a collaboration, really, with the reader on the page where the reader is also making an effort, is putting something of himself into it in the way of understanding, in the way of helping to construct the fiction that I am giving him.”  -William Gaddis

Not surprisingly (given the inscrutable depth of our relationship), My Personal - Poet - Patti - Laureate, Billy Collins, has spoken directly to me again by ostensibly making a commencement speech, couching his words for my ears in a vehicle he pretends is also for others to hear. This time, he’s talking about marginalia:

“When Nabokov was asked, "Who is your ideal reader?"--he said, "My ideal reader is someone who reads with a dictionary and a pencil." A very literal way of keeping alive our inner student lives, I think, is that simple habit of making marginal notations. When we do that, our pencil acts as a kind of seismograph—to register the mental tremors we're feeling as we read. I'm not talking about the yellow highlighters—that’s a device easily abused—because there is a physical, I think, almost erotic pleasure in just doing that—and, so, there's a tendency to just fill the book and just make it yellow. I'm talking about a slightly more judicious kind of notation that might go on, in which we create a dialogue with the author, and our reading becomes an interaction with that person. Such jottings are a sign of our presence, and the book we hold in our hands becomes, not just The Heart of Darkness, but my reading of The Heart of Darkness—the silent communication and conversation that took place between me and Joseph Conrad.”