Monthly Archives: January 2021

Connection

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For the last four hours I have been attempting to learn the ins and outs of WordPress to make this site more user friendly. I have learned nothing, and have decided that sometimes it is more important to write than learn how to market one’s self.

That being said, I’m determined to learn the ins and outs of this open source software if only for the sake of saying: Aha! That’s how it works. I am a technology genius! As of now, all I can say is that I have a new page for your viewing pleasure: #VoiceToFilm (you can find it in the menu bar above, right below the image of a partial poem, in case you needed help finding the menu bar as I did when I built the site).

This new page will contain short videos: my voice placed to film. Currently, there are four different videos to view. Though I hope to have more soon. I have always enjoyed the fact that words have the ability to paint pictures in our imagination. I’ve loved building that imagination by combining storytelling with visuals. And, apparently in my attempts to become a technology genius, I’ve been dabbling with creating movies and music that go with the words I’ve written (thank you GarageBand and iMovie). It’s become a bit of an endeavor. Anywhere I go, my iPhone is at the ready to capture that one minute video of nature that could go with a poem, fairy tale, or what have you. And sometimes, you get something that works perfectly with words you wrote years ago. Time and experience developing new meaning.

I wrote the poem Connection over two years ago. It was originally titled Prospect. As you can see from the header photo of this entire site. Never did I think it would take on a different meaning in this time of pandemic and isolation. It was simply a bit of me placing pen to paper while I was sitting at Two Strokes, my favorite coffee shop in Portland, Oregon, thinking about when or if I will ever meet the “one.” But a couple days ago, on a rare moment of exploration, I took a waterfall trail in The Great Smokey Mountain National Park. The river gurgled and bubbled a hello, surprised to see so many people near during the off season. I noticed the beauty and the contrast of earth, water, and sky, and how each seemed to connect without needing words and still able to say so much. There is a light in the South that I may never be ever to put to words, the closest I have gotten to so far is “illuminating”. Somehow that doesn’t do it justice.

Returning home, I knew I wanted to place a few words to the video I captured of it, and the poem seemed to fit. I was able to have a bit of fun, testing out Mom’s professional Yeti microphone and my new bluetooth headphones. I didn’t like the fact that I could hear a delay of my voice in the headphones, so I turned the volume down on them and simply began a row of “AH’s” with my voice. It became the opening track and if you listen closely you might even be able to hear the train that blares every evening around midnight. I created the string music on my iPad, while watching my uncle’s horse, Ancient Warrior, race on a family Zoom chat. Then I pieced the whole thing together.

When it was complete I realized, at least for me, it speaks a lot to my feelings during this weird and strange time. Specifically, the wish to see without mask or costume, but I’ll let you determine your views of the video. If you prefer the written word over video, please let me know what you imagined when you read. 

Connection

If only we could speak
without confusion of definition
words rolled off tongue
no intention found

If only we could dance
in the iris of each others eyes
no music needed
though somehow present

If only we could touch
across long distance
against the stretch of time
held together in each others arms

If only we could see
each of us whole
strength by naked awareness
no need for mask or costume

If only we could taste
the salt and tears of years
trying to find
the one connection

If only it could be you

-D. Olmstead (aka D. Grazi)

Ghosts Taking Form

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As a kid, when the family would take a drive through Logan Canyon to take a hike or visit Bear Lake, I’d look through the back passenger side window taking in the mountain range trying to focus in on a distant rock formation or far off solitary tree. Today, in Tennessee, I found myself doing the same thing as the folks and I traveled down the Cherokee National Forest road.

A part of me thought, as I did when I was a kid, that if I focused hard enough that possibly the ghosts of those that walked the land would appear hidden between flashing trunks and limbs. That maybe, those ghosts of past, present, and future would tell me their story, giving me some insights on new paths I might explore within their shadows, but they only sent whispers and being in a fast moving car, those whispers were lost on the wind.

Cherokee National Forest, a section of the Appalachian Trail

Nature has always been a huge component in my writing. Glimpsing a landscape, characters come into mind. I see the imaginary walking within reality. Usually it’s mere glimpses and it takes me a ridiculous amount of time to take those ghosts and give them substance on the page. To hear their words clear as day.

To hear them again, as I did when I was a kid, is going to take a lot more practice as an adult. Practice at seeing, listening, and taking note. For some reason it’s more difficult as an adult. Too many other issues muffling the sound of the ghosts around me, too much focus on self and individual direction. Hence the need for practice to imagine and see an “other”.

Making today’s journey a great reminder as to why I’m attempting this experiment of writing 20 minutes a day. It doesn’t matter what I write, as long as I write. It doesn’t matter what I write in (this blog, my journal, my day planner, my phone, the back of a crumpled receipt), it matters that I write! That I write something other than that which seems to be hindering me as of late, and instead that which inspires.

Possibly Tennessee’s scenery is exactly what I need to bring me back to the kid that loved to look off into the distance and see. I must say, this region is spectacular for star gazing. Finding myself late at night, staring into the far off sky able to see the farthest stars dancing with each other in the night. The stars are so clear here that I finally was able to see with my natural eyes the two stars that name two of the main characters of my novel. Seeing those stars sparked the reaction to grab that novel out of the box and begin working on it again.

With continued practice, I can only hope that those characters will begin walking next to me again, or sit by my side in the car as I look upon new views and scenery. This time, instead of whispering, I hope they will begin shouting. Ghosts taking form.

Who Said Writing is Solitary?

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Writing in my journal yesterday, I thought of the misconceived notion that writing is a solitary event. Yes, a writer is typically set alone placing pen to paper or cursor to screen, attempting to write something profound or at least something that might be read. But therein lies the rub, writers words want/need to be read. The act of writing is not singular, it’s a partnership. A partnership we so readily want to forgo for some reason.

Think about it. For a writer to even begin writing they need an idea. This idea typically comes from an interaction either with the world or an individual within the world they live. The words are set to the page and then in one way or another, reviewed by another person in order for the revision process to take place. This is when the “story” takes shape, as if every book has gone through its own Darwinian process of evolution to become that which is placed on a shelf to be examined more thoroughly.

No published book is ever printed before it has been passed through the hands of multiple people: writer, agent, editor, publisher, the list goes on. The reason for this, is the hope that millions more will want to interact/become immersed in the words. Yet, even when that book hits the booksellers shelf, the process is not complete. Once in the hands of the readers, the book takes on new forms. It is mixed with the life knowledge of each and every reader, which builds the story from one of static words on a page to that of ideas, images, views toward meaning, likes and dislikes.

Writing, therefore, is not solitary but a team effort.

And the team is needed for any development to occur.

Why am I thinking about this? Because I realized that this presents an issue in blog writing and even journal writing. It seems I have abandoned the team, and set out, may I add aimlessly, on my own.

Each post in this blog is for lack of a better phrase, MY thoughts of the day. It’s a more concrete journal of MY reflections, and until comments start popping up on the feedback section, it will continue to be MY solitary views set upon a void in the ethernet. I have had little interaction with others to truly prompt what I write. (Though I will say, as I’m reading Ursula K Le Guin’s book No Time to Spare, there may be a bit of reflection with another writers thoughts prompting my own.) No one is truly directing the direction this blog takes. So why is it a shock to me that when I arrive back at the screen the next day, I see a limited visitor count? This shouldn’t be a surprise to me, it takes time to build the trust of others and develop that team camaraderie.

Blog writing takes time alone. It takes development not only of the posts but of the actual site (which I still need to figure out). It takes your own thinking that you have something others want to read. And right now, I’m not sure if you do want to read what I’m writing. I don’t know if you want to be part of the team. I feel a bit as though I’m back in elementary, middle, or high school wanting to create stories, but constantly being told my writing isn’t good enough.

This is a mental battle I’ve faced for quite a while now. As a person who loves to tell stories, having years of people with authority saying I’d never be able to do it, makes it that much more of a struggle. I guess you could say, I’m a defiant person by nature, but I also hate getting in trouble, and therefore like to follow authorities rules. It’s a paradox.

Their reasoning, at the time, was sound. My spelling was and is appalling. I had little knowledge of grammar rules, but that might have been because they stopped focusing on teaching grammar when I was eight. And, as is the case with everyone, my vocabulary could use a bit of development. I recognize my weaknesses, but I continually surround myself with the tools to get me around them.

Authority focused on my weaknesses, rather than my strengths. But I always told my students, “Recognize your weaknesses, but develop your strengths.” My strength has always been, and I hope it continues to be, my willingness to share my work. To share in the process of development. To allow another to say to me, “this makes no sense, can you clarify?” To share in the reflection and understanding of ideas.

Which brings me back to this blog. Currently, I am encompassing the misconceived notion that writing is a solitary event. I sit alone at my computer, cursor flashing against the screen, with it screaming back at me, do you really think anyone wants to read this? What do you have to share? My writing is not an attempt to be profound. I know you have to muddle through the mundane to ever think of getting to something that reflects the profound. Each post is my willingness to wade through of the mundane, to overcome my weaknesses, with the hope that one day my team will arrive and together we build a partnership that reaches the moment when together we exclaim, “Damn! Now that says something.”

Adjusting Environmental Routines: It’s a creative necessity

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Raised by a father who is an environmentalist and a mother who is a storyteller, it shouldn’t be a shock that each plays a significant role in my passions and creative process. For years I’ve enjoyed discussing stories with my Mom, and finding inspiration for my writing while on a hike with my dad as he attempts to explain why a plant is called “doghobble” (it took awhile for us to fully communicate the history and reasoning behind this recently).

What is surprising is how much I’ve recently learned how the environment, or I guess I should say, my environment, affects my writing.

I use to have a routine. I’d be out in the world, on a hike or in the city interacting with nature or people, and I’d get an idea. I’d either jot it down on a piece of paper or make a note of it in my phone. Then I’d head off to the coffee shop (I like noise while I’m writing), talk with the barista, order my latte with about half the amount of almond syrup normally put in, and then I’d belly up to the bar looking out the window and open my journal or computer, take a sip off my latte and I was ready to begin.

It use to feel like a waisted day if I didn’t make it to the coffee shop. Then life changed. The pandemic hit, and living in Oregon we were under the “Stay Home, Save Lives” order. My creative environment, my comfort zone, wasn’t available any more. Like many, I felt lost. Wandering to find my place, while continually sequestered in “my place.”

Writing didn’t feel right. It felt foreign. Reading was the same way. It was as if I forgot how to do either. With the added oddity of not interacting with people, I didn’t feel inspired or motivated to continue with my past passions.

So, I guess it isn’t that odd that, knowing I needed a creative outlet, I tried something new. Isolated in my little apartment, it felt right to learn a new skill. I started watercoloring. It started with simple shapes, then moved to my investigation of youtube watercolor tutorials, to getting comfortable with sketching a scene on one of my social distance walks to the park.

My environment changed, and so did my focus.

So did my desk. Plants became needed. Office organizers were acquired and filled with paint brushes, artist tape, and paper. Colorful tiles were placed just so, in order to distinguish between the mason jar that held the water for my paint and the mason jar for the water I was actually drinking out of. No longer did I leave the junk mail on the top of the desk, I needed space to create. The computer was near if the urge to write came about, but it would take another environment change before that happened.

Just getting comfortable in my environment, everything finally feeling as though it had a place, I tore it all down having to make the long cross country move across states (though I’m still trying to say that it’s simply an extended winter vacation from Portland in the hopes to keep my sanity). It was a move I didn’t want to make, and one that I never intended or expected. Arriving in Tennessee, I recognized immediately what needed to be done. I needed to find my space of comfort. My environment that makes me feel creative. I needed to set up my space (an important concept this pandemic has taught me).

Of course, I used my trusted resources and allies. My dad set to work on making me a desk (it’s beautifully stained blue for the color I need in my life) to write, paint, or simply sit and look out the window from. My mom, I’m so thankful for her suggestion to Dad to make the desk for me.

To be able to write, I realize now that I need color. I need noise. I need interactions and movement to feel as though I have something or someone to write about. I need space. I need a plant (the first thing I bought on my arrival to this state). My environment is imperative to my process.

I’m still figuring out my place here. There is still more work I need to do to make myself feel fully comfortable in this new found environment, I’m working on it. I’m writing. I’m reading. I’m painting. And every day, I make an effort to build this room into the creative inspiring space I need to keep me going. As much as I can’t wait for the day that I can return to my coffee shop and order that latte, my journal and pen in hand ready to sit hours at the bar in comfort. I want the environment I live in every day to be just as inspiring and comfortable if not more so.

Education isn’t just for the classroom: So what can you teach me?

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Starting this new endeavor to write 20 minutes a day makes me reflect back to my teaching years. As an adjunct instructor of English, I started each class making my students write for five minutes on their thoughts toward a quote that was written on the board. They could write anything. ANYTHING. Even if it was “blah, blah, blah, this sucks, why is she making us do this? blah, blah, blah” I didn’t care. The point was to write.

When the five minutes was up, each student had to pass their writing to a fellow student to review and edit. This, of course, was to point out that the only way our writing (our voice) has an impact is if it is shared. One never knows if their point is coming across well, if it’s not reviewed.

Finally, the small paragraph filled papers would be handed back to the original writer and they were allotted five minutes to revise their point before I called on people to read out loud their writing.

I now realize they must have found me sadistic!

It’s the second day of this adventure, and all I could think of writing was “blah, blah, blah,” but no one wants to read that. Hell, it’s tedious to even think of writing that word over and over again for twenty minutes. Finding a topic I could readily delve into writing about, and the self inflicted pressure that anyone would read it, is daunting, and may I add a little humiliating to say the least (my students would be appalled at my lack of initiative, or, if they’re reading this, they’re cheering and saying out loud “Ha! See how you like it!”).

Who in this day and age wants to hear what I have to say? Do I have anything to say? Why am I making myself do this?

The answers haven’t yet resolved in my mind, but I know it has to do with education. Not the education that is so readily thought of. I’m not standing or sitting in a formal classroom, telling or being told what to write on or read. Instead, I’m sitting in my room, alone, trying to understand my own thoughts all because a former student posted an accomplishment on Facebook of reading 20 minutes a day for a year back in November. The student became the teacher without even knowing it.

That post made me realize education needs assistance. Like the writing prompts I gave to students, the nudge of another person asking, what are your thoughts on “this”, and then you delve into the adventure. Education comes from sharing and developing ideas. Ideas that are yours, but also others. Education shouldn’t and doesn’t need to be done alone.

So I take my education to the internet, to this blog and its social media platform I am still trying to figure out. If you’re reading this, I have a request. I need help. I need writing prompts! I don’t care if they’re quotes, topics, news headlines, images, stories I’ve told you one time that you want to see on the page, give me anything. Anything that will keep me writing, anything that will give me a challenge, anything that will make me have to think, write, share, and then revise. Give me something to learn.

If you want to help, leave your prompt in the comments to this post. If you think I am sadistic for even thinking a person could/should write for 20 minutes a day, then stay silent. If you’re one of my past students about to leave a prompt, I beg you please don’t make it the writing exercise where I made you describe a Norman Rockwell image and you weren’t allowed to use pronouns or definite articles in your writing.

Let the education commence!

Welcoming in the New Year: It’s time to rethink the word sexy.

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Like many, the marking of the end of 2020 came with enthusiasm. It’s been a long–difficult–road for all of us. So when the clock struck midnight and we were able to say hello to 2021, I had a few hours of feeling hopeful. Waking in the morning of January 1, 2021 I realized there is still a long way to go.

A late start to the day, and that feeling of the eyes not wanting to open due to the amount of alcohol consumed (or possibly the smoke from the bonfire) the previous evening made it a struggle to wake. The day began like any other, a reach for the phone to see what possible headlines were missed in my eight hours of sleep.

With the sky gray, the clouds dark building for rain to wash away the lingering stench of 2020, my eyes landed on the headline:

“How to Feel Sexy Again in a Post-Lockdown World”

Of course I clicked on the link. I’m a 41 year old, single woman, who due to the financial constraints of the year had to move across country into her parents house in the hopes that I have longer to pay my bills. I could use any help I can get.

But all I got was the sub headline: “Few people report feeling sexy in the pandemic. But there are ways to reignite the spark.”

Then the Wall Street Journal and Apple News+ wanted payment to learn their views on how I could reignite that spark. Sadly, my money has other commitments. So I’m left wondering: how do I feel sexy in this crazy time of being told to stay home, don’t talk to strangers, and wash the dirt off your hands continually.

A part of me feels as though (and maybe you’re with me on this one) I’m in one of those crazy horror movies with a parent making their child wash their mouth out with soap, or take a bath in bleach, or whatever crazy thing it is they do in horror movies that I know I get too scared to watch. Only the parent is government, and the parents are quarreling as they disagree on priorities and how to raise their children leaving the child in limbo while they’re being bullied by their peers, and you just know it’s going to end badly with pigs blood thrown everywhere or a poltergeist escaping from the TV.

None of these things help with the “spark” to feel sexy.

For the last ten months I have been in little else than sweat pants or pajamas. I haven’t put on makeup. I’ve worn my glasses instead of contacts. Most days I can’t even remember if I brushed my hair. My weekly outing has been the grocery store, and even that is gone now that I’m here at the parents. Now I’ve never been one to put the full effort into the routines women have been taught (or are learning) to put themselves through to “make them feel good,” but I had my own routines. Now, I’m wondering if I’ve begun to lose all enthusiasm in putting in the effort. Is this what makes a women feel sexy? Why is it, whenever I think of the idea of what “feeling sexy” means, it comes because of another’s recognition of my body? Is lingerie and a partner required to feel sexy? Is a low cut dress and the acknowledged stare of a stranger at the bar the thing that makes us feel sexy or worthwhile?

Currently I feel like the dog in the floatation device…

Good God, I hope not!

There are two definitions of the word sexy in the dictionary on my phone. The first gravitates to the erotic: “sexually suggestive or stimulating” (and may I just add I hate definitions of words that use the word to define it), the second suggests the appealing: “generally attractive or interesting”.

I think it’s high time we redefine our primary use of the word sexy from it’s erotic definition to that of appealing. Every time in my life when I’ve truly felt “sexy” it’s been when I’ve been doing what I love and sharing it with others. I’d like my sexiness to be viewed in all my interests and my attempts to succeed in learning them rather than the outfit I’m wearing at the time. Having interests a person wants to share has always made me look at that person as appealing, attractive, and yes, sexy.

So in this New Year, I’m taking back my sex appeal. It’s time to get back to my interests and joys in life: sharing stories, writing, reading a good book and talking about it, painting a new watercolor, baking as much good food as I can muster, spending time with friends (please 2021, make this possible soon), seeing the world and finding how I fit within it.

Let’s face it, how can our spark be reignited if we don’t see how sexy we already are within it?!