Once rescued, the lilac resumed blooming.
Spring brought cut grass and bones.
We are spellbound by this lovely essay and are inspired to share it with you. Words are power. Love is strength . . .and understanding the world is an act of extreme courage.
In Her Dream I Spoke Arabic: In a college composition class a few years ago, many worlds came together
Source: In Her Dream I Spoke Arabic
This is too lovely to not share:
Source: The Egg Tally
Journaling as Sacred Practice is on the way!
Last weekend, I co-faciliated a labyrinth, meditation, and journaling retreat with my partner in Yoga Retreats Napa Valley. We spent the day with 15 women–and it was fabulous! During one of our writing sessions, I urged my tribe to journal about “my dream.” It was so powerful. This is what I wrote:
My dream is the success of my book on journaling, Journaling as Sacred Practice: An Act of Extreme Bravery.
I see myself being interviewed by Terry Gross. “What a great book,” she says. I laugh. “I had a bad break-up,” I tell her. “Instead of getting sad or getting mad, I started to write. I wrote 48 chapters in 48 days. And then I put the book in a drawer. I moved to Portland, Oregon. I moved to Napa Valley, California. When it was ready, it hatched.
Oprah calls. I don’t do the interview.
Louise Hay calls. She says, “Come to I Can Do It!”
Elizabeth Gilbert calls. She says “You go, girl!” We become besties.
Dreams, dreams, dreams. A book is a dream put down on paper. A song is a dream you can listen to. Did Mozart dream in color and did his dreams come with a soundtrack? My dream is for 2016 to be like one long, rolling, lazy summer day; an impressionist painting of picnics and watercolors clouds; of bread and wine and honeybees. I dream of the sound of water, the touch of a lover. The year 2016 should be a dress floating on a breeze, the sound of a train in the distance, a piano recital, the smell of apple pie through a window.
In my dream I rise up. I lift my heart and swallow the turquoise sky, the emerald river, the comb’s teeth of a vineyard row. I will calibrate my breath on the hush of waves. Let me rest there.
My wish for my WordPress friends is that 2016 is BIG and BOLD! Decide who you are and do it on purpose.
Before setting intentions for what lies ahead, we always like to take a minute to reflect.
I recently read some Christmas gift-giving advice: give something to wear, something to to play with, and something to read. What a fabulous idea! Years ago, when my first hubs and I were young and poor, we agreed that our entire Christmas budget would be an extravagant $100. We scurried off to get our creative best, and I headed down to Acres of Books in Long Beach, CA (a wonderful world of new/used books). I blew half of my $50 budget on fabulous used books that I bought at a fraction of the cost of new, and that I new my young husband would love. And he did. It is one of the best Christmas memories ever, filled with love and joy.
Now lo, these many years later, I’m still giving books for Christmas. Nothing is more rewarding, tantalizing, or generous than the gift of a book. These days, I do love my e-books, especially for travel, but my home is still filled with stacks and stacks of delicious books — and thanks to me, so are my friends’.
If you love books too, and if you’re looking to shop for books with meaning, you couldn’t do better than to check out our friends at Green Tara Press. A small press, Green Tara specializes in books with meaning and depth, lovely tombs filled with poetry and wisdom.
This holiday season, you can shop the big box stores, or you can shop online with the giant online retailers. Or, you can make a stand for the arts, and buy a book from the indies. We love that idea, and we love our readers. Support the Arts: Buy a Book!
Wishing you a merry and jingly gifting and receiving season.
The Girls @ Sephs Salon
::REVIEW::
That you can never truly know another person is the central truth of Rufi Thorpe’s debut novel, The Girls of Corona Del Mar, but the book is so much more than that. It is also a coming of age saga, one where the narrative begins with two golden-skinned teens in sun-drenched Corona Del Mar, and it ends years later and universes away.
At the onset, best friends Mia and Lorrie Ann share lives as intertwined as any pair of young girls. So close are they, that they can’t see the stark difference between them as anything but symbiotic. Mia’s divorcee mom scrapes by in a second-rate apartment to make ends meet. Even after she remarries and Mia’s brothers come along, they remain planted in the same spot, as if by gravity. Lorrie Ann’s parents conversely, a divinely bohemian couple, sink roots steadfastly in love and music. To Mia, Lorrie Ann’s family represents the happy ideal of an intact family.
It turns out that Mia gets pregnant in high school, and naturally, it is to Lorrie Ann that she makes her confession. Seemingly chaste Lorrie Ann, the saint to Mia’s sinner, helps her through the subsequent abortion. At the end of high school, Mia is the one who goes to Yale to pursue a degree in the classics, while Lorrie Ann becomes pregnant herself, and chooses to give up on dreams of college to have the baby.
But Lorrie Ann’s baby is born horribly deformed and from then on, she can’t seem to catch a break. She marries her baby daddy, who when his restaurant job can’t cover the requirements of his special needs family, enlists in the army. Then he is deployed to Iraq and is killed. Poor and struggling, Lorrie Ann eventually loses custody of her son.
Alternately, Mia becomes a scholar. Fifteen years later, their two lives intersect in Istanbul, where Mia and her fiancé, Franklin, are transcribing ancient narratives about the Sumerian goddess Inanna. Lorrie Ann calls Mia out of the blue and Mia goes to the marketplace to meet her, only to find her old friend traveling with a clutch of jet-setters, and addicted to heroin.
The reunion is predictably strained. Mia is just beginning to realize that she may be pregnant. She confesses as much to Lorrie Ann, who promises to keep the secret until Mia comes to terms with which path she will ultimately choose. Mia is afraid to tell Franklin, who is the best thing that’s ever happened to her. She is afraid that he won’t be ready to be, much less want to be, a father. But Lorrie Ann betrays her confidence and reveals all. One could say that as her friend, Lorrie Ann does what she feels is in Mia’s best interest. She can clearly see how much Franklin loves Mia. One could also say that as friends go, it isn’t Lorrie Ann’s secret to reveal to the fiancé of a friend she hadn’t seen in a dozen years.
Friendship. Betrayal. The nature of love, and the powerful lure of ancient mythology. Thorpe’s novel is a deep and layered journey, and for anyone who has ever deeply loved a bestie, it is well worth the exploration.
–Cynthia Gregory
Watch for my upcoming book: An Inspired Journal; the Art and Soul of Creative Nonfiction. Available soon on Green Tara Press at Amazon.com
I don’t know about you, but Christmas always catches me by surprise. How can that be? It always arrives every year on December 25, sandwiched between Thanksgiving and New Years. And yet, most years December 1 rolls around and I go into my annual holiday panic. Not this year.
This year, I’m getting a jump on the whole gift giving scene, and you can too. Our friends at Oregon Plum organics are launching a gift-givers dream of aromatherapy eye-pillows. . .by offering the product at a crazy discount. They’re offering 12 hand-crafted, organic silk, lavender and flax seed eye pillows just in time for holiday shopping with free shipping ($19.99 value) each. What’s the catch, you say? Because you know there is one.
Um, no. These are hand-crafted aromatherapy eye pillows, luxurious silk, filled with organic lavender and flax seeds. Channel your inner Santa and think about everyone one your holiday gift list. Naughty? Nice? Doesn’t matter. This is one gift that truly fits all. This year, gift the gift of rest, relaxation, and aromatherapy. (Only 12 items available: offer good while supply lasts.)
Be a Smart Santa and help launch a cottage business. Here is a link to the Oregon Plum eye-pillow purchase page. Do you shopping now, save time for toddies later.
That’s it. Easy-peasy. Thank you for helping launch this amazing product!
Sylvia Berek Rosenthal is a prolific writer. And it’s no wonder, as Rosenthal, a resident at Oakmont at Montecito in Concord, CA, who will turn 92 this August, has had plenty to write about. Her latest book, Marry Me With Marigolds, is a delicious collection of poems that reads like the spicy narrative of an interesting life. The genesis of Marry Me with Marigolds began when Rosenthal won First Prize in the 2010 Benicia Annual Love Poem contest.
The writer strongly resembles someone’s smart and jolly Nanna, with her shock of white hair, large black-framed glasses, bright floral silk jacket. She smiles gleefully. “It felt so nice for an old lady to win with a love poem,” she says about the contest.
Sylvia Rosenthal didn’t begin writing poetry until she was 75, an age when people tend to be outspoken with their truths. The poetry in this collection reflects a whole lot of truths, as it was written in the 15 years between 1997 and 2012. Many of her poems are funny and downright irreverent. Some are rich and tender. In all, her personal voice rings true. In the poem called “Maid in America,” she speaks of how her parents met.
My mother was born in Detroit.
You can’t get any more American than that
Can you?
When she turned seventeen she met my father.
He spoke Yiddish and Polish
She spoke only English.
They had no trouble.
Pillow talked worked just fine.
When she turned eighteen
They celebrated by getting married.
One year later
World War One
Began.
In the book’s namesake poem, Marry Me With Marigolds, Rosenthal uses language in a way that is both playful and evocative:
Marry me with marigolds
Tempt me with your tenderness
Covet me with coriander
Chocolate and
Cloves
Favor me with foxglove
Gather me with the garden’s garland
Circle me with summer squash
Sesame and
Sage
Woo me with water lilies
Nurture me with nutmeg
Pamper me with peppers
Red green and
Gold
And I will stroke
Your balding head
Bake you babkas
Cook you cabbage
Pat your pot belly
If you will only
Marry me with marigolds.
Rosenthal may live in Concord, CA, but to hear her speak, you know she is pure New York, where she was a grade school teacher and guidance counselor. Her husband, George, was a ceramicist and artist. For years they lived something of a bohemian lifestyle, sojourning back and forth between New York to San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. After a time, the Rosenthals moved to San Antonio, Texas, to shorten the commute between San Miguel and the states.
It was when the couple lived in Texas, that Sylvia discovered poetry. Her husband had broken his shoulder and was recovering from surgery and she had tired of being his nurse. “I decided to take a writing class at the San Antonio branch of Texas University and the only two courses available were poetry and a business writing course,” she explains. “I wasn’t going to write letters, so poetry it was.” In San Antonio, Sylvia became deeply involved with local writing and poetry communities. In San Miguel, she wrote columns for the Atencion and El Independiente newspapers.
Her first book, Mrs. Letsaveit, is the collected body of these columns, which are mainly food literature essays very much in the style of Sonoma County’s M.F.K. Fisher. The cover of Mrs. Letsaveit features a close up photograph of some of her late husband’s ceramics. The direct and humorous essays filed between the covers of the book are redolent of a happy home as Rosenthal describes her life in Mexico through a series of narratives about cooking and eating food. “Think of it as recipes through a filter of Like Water for Chocolate,” she says, referencing the 1989 best selling book by first-time novelist Laura Esquivel. In Mrs. Letsaveit, Rosenthal writes about making bagels, corned beef, Mandelbrot, and other family favorites in Mexico, far from New York – or Texas style grocery stores.
An avid reader and writer still, Rosenthal is a member of the San Miguel PEN and San Antonio Poets; she is now involved in writing and poetry groups in the Clayton/Concord Area. Is her work fact or fiction? She smiles mischievously and replies, “I like to think of poetry is a piece of the truth, but not all of it.”
persephone's step-sisters 