Yesterday, despite having had a double booked to-do list all week, I drove to Jackson to the MS Museum of Art to see the Of Salt and Spirit: Black Quilters in the American South exhibit. I’m an avid quilt fan and first became enamored with quilting when I lived in San Francisco and went to the Gap Headquarters where they had a collection of Amish quilts on display. My ex mother-in-law was a quilter, and…
I went on a biblical journey that centered around the Tin Shed. When I bought the 100 Men Hall, there was a work shed on the property, and I applied and received a permit to remodel it into a Musician’s Cottage with the help of grants from the Heritage Area and Coast Electric Round Up. The idea was to encourage musicians to come stay here, to soak up the ancestors’ vibe, and to relax into…
I have led a wonderfully textured life surrounded by artists. In 1989, I moved to San Francisco, and lived on Mason Street in the middle of a three flat building on the streetcar line. I could see the bay on a nonfoggy day and the roof was perfect for watching the fireworks show when the barges rolled out in the water for Fourth of July and New Year’s Eve. It was a wonderful time –…
The beauty of my life is I am surrounded by artists who create excitement out of even the most mundane. My artist friends have encouraged and helped me start my collage project. They have supported my writing. An artist friend, whose design sensibility and dance moves have taken her all over the world, threw a party last night – always lovely – a covey of female artists. Whether through photos, food, writing, painting, fashion, curating,…
I share my kitchen with the 100 Men Hall and many times what is on my kitchen counter is not representative of me. Right now, there is an enormous bag of cashews, a super sized bag of Fritos half empty, a box of cocoa dusted chocolate truffles, and a pint of rum. I’ve committed to the health and vitality of my body this year and that means, physical therapy, massage and stretching, beginning to walk…
I was in Shanghai when my sister from another mother, Gloria, took me to see an I Ching Master. We walked up the stairs to the small government apartment and knocked on the door, and I’m not sure what I was expecting, but a very thin, grey haired man, opened to let us in. He led me to small table by a window with two seats. He sat in one and I the other, while…
Before Steve and I married, there were moments that have now become seared in my memory where he said something, I felt something, and yet we went on as if nothing had happened. One of these moments happened right after we had had sex in his bed on the floor, on Mason Street, with the foggy light of the San Francisco summer, and the noise of the trolley clanging its way up the hill. “I…
Today, The Writing Room has a visiting writer facilitating the group. Ellen Ann Fentress, a friend of Ellen Morris Prewitt, our writer in residence. I was thinking about The Writing Room in a conversation with Marta Szabo, whose Authentic Writing workshop was a game changer for me many years ago. I came across one of the first essays I wrote in The Writing Room, which coincidentally was about The Writing Room: What Matters? (Oct 2018)…
Is there something you want to tell me? I am a conflict of speed. My go to is to move fast, think fast, and I feel an inner drive to go faster and faster. My body is telling me to slow down, I’m moving too fast, I need to be kinder to the age of my vessel. My mind is telling me to slow down, I’m thinking too fast, I’m turning and spinning too fast,…
“Thoroughly unprepared, we take the step into the afternoon of life. Worse still, we take this step with the false presupposition that our truths and our ideals will serve us as hitherto. But we cannot live the afternoon of life according to the program of life’s morning, for what was great in the morning will be little at evening and what in the morning was true, at evening will have become a lie.”Carl Gustav Jung…