The seasonal newsletter is up on the website, but I am including it here for you here in substack form to make it easier to find.
Happy Spring, Sippers
Here are the five books I'm currently reading at the same time:
Horse, Geraldine Brooks
This Must Be The Place, Maggie O'Farrell
The Marriage Portrait, Maggie O'Farrell
American Dirt, Jeanine Cummings
Hero with a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell
How many do you read at once? Are you a strict curator with just one book that you work on at a time? Or do you flit from book to book like a butterfly landing on the page for only a short time? I usually have one I'm reading, one I'm reading with another person or group, one I'm listening to in the car, and one I'm giving the commonplace treatment (a deep dive with lots of underlining, quotation pulling, and rumination). Needless to say my nightstand looks like a used book rummage sale, and I have not even begun to talk about my library addiction. There is a bit of snarkiness going around the interwebs that scolds people who make other people's books the core of their personality. I object. I have spent a lifetime encouraging people to read, write, think, and love art in all of its forms, and I make no apology for my admiration.
Learn something new this spring.
I am a huge fan of the beginner's mindset. I also think it is extremely important to pair your primary creative pursuit with a secondary one (preferably one that you don't consider a strength). So while my first inclination will always be towards books and writing, this year, I am also taking online guitar lessons, a ballet class on the weekend, and have rediscovered a love for singing. For some, it may look like training for a marathon, or meditation retreats, a pottery class, or gardening. Whatever it is, make sure you are allowing your brain to welcome the discomfort and welcome the joy of the simple mantra: Begin Again.
Poem of the Season
I was going through a pile of old journals and in one I found this poem clipped from an old New Yorker. I find myself thinking about fathers these days and how they cope with their own fathers and grandfathers who may find it unfathomable to be so connected to a child. I must have found myself thinking it about the same idea when I decided to cut out this poem and save it.
"Fathers" by Grace Paley
Fathers are more fathering these days they have accomplished this by being more mothering
what luck for them that women’s lib happened then the dream of new fathering began to shine in the eyes of free women and was irresistible
on the New York subways and the mass transits of other cities one may see fatherings of many colors with their round babies on their laps this may also happen in the countryside
these scenes were brand new exciting for an old woman who had watched the old fathers gathering once again in familiar army camps and com- fortable war rooms to consider the necessary eradication of the new fathering fathers (who are their sons) as well as the women and children who will surely be in the way.
How will you create the life you desire?
We all made our New Year resolutions. Some of us even wrote them down in a pretty new notebook. Some of us even said them out loud to someone else, but how many of us made a plan for keeping our resolve and momentum? Will you use an accountability partner, join a writing group, establish a weekly phone call with a friend? Will you employ a creativity coach, seek out a workshop, make a pledge for a number of minutes, pages, new mediums you will try and accomplish before the next set of obligations, holidays, and old habits taps you on the shoulder and reminds you of your other life, the one that doesn't feel so creative. I would gently remind you: You are composing a life. Sometimes you will feel productive and sometimes you won't. The interruptions are also part of this life. Just make a plan for beginning again, as many times as you need to, until you believe that the life you are creating is the art itself.
If you ever need help giving more space to your creative life, I am here. Please reach out.
