I woke up to amazing views of the forest.

It took some very lovely walks and got back into the silent walk>writing routine. That was really nice.

manzanita forest

We shared some wonderful meals together. It is so nice to cook and eat with friends. Here we invented a gorgeous dish of black rice pilaf with caramelized onions, shredded Brussels sprouts and toasted walnuts. With steamed artichokes and THREE dips (Sriracha, black olive and lemon paprika). Can you say yum???

I had some time to do some right-brain art. I’d signed up for an online art class and was stressing because I didn’t have the right materials or enough time or whatever. But once I got started, it was really quite wonderful.

“Mermaid In Distress”

Mermaid #2

It was good to be away. But even in remote locations, distractions can tumble in. I spent most of Friday distracted because I heard that my girl had gotten into a bicycle accident.  Her dad was working all day and hard to reach by cell. Long-distance fretting ensued. She needed to go to the ER and get a head scan. Fret fret fret. The scan turned out to be negative for bad stuff (wheww) but that took all day. And she still had a bad bump and a lopsided face and a black eye and concussion. So not much happened that day. (maybe that was the art day?)

And then there was Monday of course. The Boston Marathon and all of its heartbreak. I had several friends running in that race. Needless to say I didn’t get much done on that day other than this blog post.

I guess that’s what I’m learning. There are distractions. We do as much as we can. The world leaks in. I’ve decided to draw my nomad days to a close. For one, it was awfully nice to come  home to my Own Bed.

For the rest of my April sabbatical, I will be short-distance commuting to my new office spot at the Grotto. I brought my desk in there yesterday and am looking forward to making it all writing-conducive.

I’ve been to some amazing places this month. I’ve gotten good work in. But in the end, the place doesn’t matter as much as just sitting down and getting the damn thing done. Onward!

the silent walking cure

As it turned out, I was not as happy or productive being completely alone as I’d anticipated. In fact, things got a little weird during the three days I was in the Crabby Cottage on my own, before my friend M arrived.

I’d been at many colonies and retreats before – LOVING the solitude – for periods as long as eight weeks. But those situations involved being alone for most of the day but then gathering with other writers for dinner in the evening. I had no idea how different it would be 24/7.

It wasn’t just being lonely. I was pretty lonely. It was more that I somehow lost the ability to take care of myself. Which shocked me. I’m a mother, a daughter, an uber-caregiver. And when I was on my own, things just sort of fell apart. For reasons unbeknownst to me, I kept putting off taking a shower. The idea made me nervous. I didn’t want to be cold, wet, or naked. I lost the ability to make decisions around eating (ME!?!?!? yes.) and would either eat strange, random food, or nothing. At one point I got nervous that the tilapia I’d purchased would go bad, so I found myself cooking it at 10pm and then eating it alone on a melamine plate. It looked pretty sad. I also “forgot” (huh?) to turn on the heater, and found myself shivering under a thin blanket all night, curled up like a shrimp. SAD.

I could not face my Pages. I did not, could not, go there. I did other stuff. I wrote letters. I read some. I watched some junky TV (okay, a lot of junky TV) on Hulu. I walked (no, hobbled to town) every day. My hip was bothering me pretty badly. I spent a good part of one day seeking out the little town’s only physical therapist. It turned out, after it took me hours to figure out my insurance coverage, that she didn’t even have any openings in her schedule until the following week.

Relief, please?

It was all rather sad and strange. It was like I didn’t even know myself. But on Friday morning, when I knew M was on the road and would be coming soon, I perked up considerably. I took a shower and cleaned the cottage. I fixed myself a proper breakfast.

As soon as M’s little red car pulled into the driveway, I got happy again. Really, really happy. It was sort of stunning the difference that it made to me. And it made me realize that I need the balance of alone + company to really make it work. She jumped out of the car and then everything Started for real.

M is a meditation teacher. When I described to her my despair over the previous few days, she nodded and said that this was not uncommon in people who do long meditation retreats. Suddenly their bodies and minds are wildly uncomfortable. People are convinced they are dying, she says, when all of the distractions are taken away.

We immediately went out to the beach for a walk. She and I began this practice of silent walking, and then writing, over fifteen years ago. It felt like home to me. We walked up and down the beach, not speaking, for an hour, and then returned to the cottage, put water on the stove for tea, and wrote for an hour. Then we shared and talked. This is the core of our practice together. It was such a relief and a joy.

So much happened in the next four days together.

• We wrote out our writing goals for the month of April, for the periods of May-September and then October-December 2013.
• We made a daily/hourly schedule for the rest of the weekend. Walk, write, share, individual work, collaborative work, meals, a trip to the library,
• I taught her what I knew about Scrivener.
• She taught me what she knew about organizing my computer, which was a painful, tear-inducing mess.
• We spoke out loud our fears and hopes. The things – the many things- that have gotten in the way of our writing work.
• I realized that I have EIGHT unfinished book projects.
• We began to dream and process about her writing retreat space in her own beach house (still under renovation) and elsewhere
• We committed. Over and over and over.
• Lots of crying. Lots of laughing.
• Pages were written. Amazing pages.
• I procured a used softball for $1 and fixed my own hip.
• Gratitude.
• 

  For courage.

  

  Putting a book together.

  

  The walks. Incredible.

  

  

  Best medicine.

  

  

  Library with the best view

  

  

  farewell

   

After flying back to California and taking care of some business, I’m ready to head off for the next leg of sabbatical – this time another retreat in the woods – with two friends. (thank goodness) Next stop: Volcano, California.

bedroom decor in the cottage

I have been waiting for this time for so very long! Like, YEARS.

I applied for a few writing residencies last year and when I didn’t get any of them, I decided to put together one of my own. Why wait for someone else to grant me the time and place to write? I decided that April would be my month of Getting Back Into It and Making Some Headway into Finishing a Damn Book.

Part one of my “sabbatical” involved taking a leave of absence from my physical therapy job. I hung up my name badge last week and won’t be picking it up again until May. That was kind of a big deal. I’d worked a LOT in December and January in preparation for this time. I will miss seeing some of my patients, but I have found that trying to combine many kinds of work is very challenging. So I’m doing the total-immersion approach for a month and see how that goes.

goodbye until May!

I flew out to New York. First part of the sabbatical involved meeting up with my BFF on her birthday, and celebrating with a trip to Ithaca, where we met each other in a writing workshop o so many years/decades (!!) ago. It was a deep immersion in nostalgia, back where our friendship and mutual writing support began.

We rented a not-so-little YURT (2 bedrooms! 2 levels!) that was adorable and cozy. We spent some hours writing, and also Thinking About Writing via this new-to-us software called Scrivener, which is an amazing organizational tool for bookwriters.

Scrivening.

We also spent some time hiking around Ithaca’s beautiful falls, which I will never grow tired of.

Lucifer Falls, Treman Park, Ithaca

Because, the thing is, if you’re going to spend hours hunched over or under a laptop (as is in my case, since I do a lot of writing lying on my back), you GOTTA get out and move the body and get some air too.

After the blissful weekend, we drove back down to Manhattan and checked out this excellent play (about transracial adoption, a topic near and dear to both of us). I found it very inspiring and provocative.

The Call, by Tonya Barfield

Yesterday, I left the city to come out to the very tippy-tip tip of Long Island, to the little town of Montauk. Most of it is closed down because it is still winter here. But it is quite beautiful, and I lucked upon an adorable, very retro little place.

It’s wonderful. But now that I am here, all on my own for several days (until another writer friend joins me), I’m finding that I’m not just pounding out dozens of pages. In fact, quite the contrary. What I’ve needed in the past several years has not been page-producing (I’ve actually done a bit of that) but time and space in which to THINK. Which is why Scrivener is such a gift at this time. I’ve had it on my computer for years, but it never made any sense to me until now. But now! YES.

I am finding that “writing time” also includes:

• reading (other books for inspiration/structure/plot)
• reading (books, mostly by friends of mine, I have been putting OFF reading until I have TIME)
• Scrivening (which is awesome but also makes my brain feel like it’s doing quantum physics)
• napping and/or sleeping late
• getting outside and moving around (good thing for me, I am 1.2 miles from Town, and I do not have a car!)
• dealing with various and sundry Details of my Life Back Home
• nutrition (I LOOOOOOVE not having to prepare meals! Thus far I have been subsisting on coffee, Cutie oranges, trail mix and cheese)
• blogging!
• ART! Yeah I’m pulling out all the creative stops. I’m going to be taking an online art journal class starting on Sunday and I bought some colored pencils and watercolors to jog that part alive as well…

Because all of these things involve different parts of the brain (and body). Well, that was today, anyway. Tomorrow I might blast out a ton of pages. But one of the biggest gifts about having time like this is about having the flexibility to do all the different things that will help one’s writing. And not just writing.

Filed under: Good Things, Life, Living, Reading, Writing ]]> http://readingwritingliving.wordpress.com/2013/04/03/writing-isnt-just-about-writing/feed/ 8 susanito bedroom decor in the cottage goodbye until May! IMG_1124 IMG_1140 Scrivening. IMG_1188 Lucifer Falls, Treman Park, Ithaca IMG_1194 IMG_1224 IMG_1217 IMG_1223 http://readingwritingliving.wordpress.com/2013/03/09/fiction-rusty/ http://readingwritingliving.wordpress.com/2013/03/09/fiction-rusty/#comments Sat, 09 Mar 2013 16:30:54 +0000 susanito http://readingwritingliving.wordpress.com/?p=1863 ]]> Yesterday I sat myself down at the Grotto and attempted to write fiction for the first time in … many years. YEARS. I’ve blogged and written a number of essays during that time, but fiction? Not a word.

And wow. It was hard. It was NOT like riding a bicycle. Or maybe it was, because riding a bicycle can be very, very difficult for me. It was painful, and creaky, and I stared at every word in horror as it emerged.

I had an idea for a story. It was actually something of a challenge, where one of your friends says, “Hey, writer, why don’t you write a story about THIS?!” I have been mulling this idea for a long time, turning it over in my head, thinking of ways I might change it, embellish it, make the character and setting different. I thought about it for months and yesterday I finally felt ready. I had the time. I was in an awesome space.

I almost choked. It was hard. I squeezed out several paragraphs -maybe a page worth and pretty much was horrified by it all.

But it was a beginning. I’m using muscles that have almost atrophied into nothing. But I picked up a little two-ounce weight, and I started. I hope that next time might be a little bit easier.

my key to the Writers’ Grotto

Wow, it’s been a long time. I know I have popped in for one post every many months or so. But to be honest, I’ve been gone. I’ve been blogging elsewhere. But I feel the tide is shifting again. I am turning back to my writing life. I am terrified, thrilled, grateful, incredulous.

I’ve been wanting to Return for a very long time now. Not writing – or not writing enough or what I really want/need to – has made me very sad. But I felt like I had to attend to other business. I felt like I needed to really focus on my health.

Which is what I did. For four years. I recently passed my four year “healthaversary.” I think I can say with confidence now, that the changes I was striving for back in 2009, have stuck. My identity has changed. I can now see myself as someone who can do three half marathons in six months and not worry too much about it.

Now. Can I see myself as someone who can truly, actually, finish a book?

Gulp.

I want that. I want that more than anything. And if I want this as badly as I wanted to be a reliable runner, then I have to do what it takes to make that happen.

These are the things I have done.

1. I have made a concerted effort to cut back on my (physical therapy) work. Much as I love it, much as it is satisfying and also as much as I love the nifty paychecks, I need to keep it in balance. So now I am only seeing patients three days a week. This is sometimes very very hard to stick to, but I am getting better at it. When I read Ang Lee’s beautiful piece called “The Never-Ending Dream,” and he talked about becoming an accountant – but then realizing that there are so many accountants who could do that work – but only HE could make his films – it made me weep. Recently our agency hired two new physical therapists. And they immediately jumped in and took on a bunch of work. Which was awesome. But it also made me realize – if I don’t do it – OTHER PEOPLE WILL. And it is just not at all true of any of my books. I can’t outsource them or ask anyone else to write them.
2. I joined the community of writers at the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto. This has always been a dream of MINE, but until now, it just didn’t work in my life. Or seem to. Now I am thrilled to commute to San Francisco two days a week, to be in a space full of other writers. To bask in the quiet and knowing that others in these walls are also tapping away at their own never-ending dreams. BEING in this space inspires me. And moves me.
3. I am taking a month long Sabbatical starting at the end of this month, to travel to rented and borrowed cabins, cottages, even a yurt, from New York to California. I am not going to work as a physical therapist during that time. At all. We’ll see how that works out.
4. I will be reading new work at The Bloom reading series, next Thursday, 7pm, at Progressive Grounds on Bryant Street. So by a week from tomorrow I will be putting it out there!

I have missed writing so much. So very, very much. It feels good to be back. Ahhhh.

My life in these past several years (maybe decades) has been a challenge of perpetually trying to find balance between the many things that are important to me: writing, health and fitness, my family, my friends, my solitude, and my work. It hasn’t always easy; in fact often times it isn’t easy at all. But I have carried that mantra of “balance” in my mind every day. Sometimes it is elusive and there isn’t a second of what feels like balanced life.

But in these past 24 hours, it all hung together the way it should, like a perfectly balanced mobile with hanging baubles teetering from slim sticks with invisible nylon lines.  Last night, I went to my writing group. I adore this group and the way that the deck of prompt cards is shuffled, and a few words set us all off into our imaginary worlds: “Open a drawer.” “Dedicate.” I wrote and wrote, and time disappeared, and then the pleasure of hearing what had been born in a mere sixty minutes was just… joy.

This morning, I went to see my awesome trainer. I’d been feeling tight and messed up all week, maybe leftover imbalances from Sunday’s mud race. I not only got in a good workout, I got a good rolling and stretching and seriously ironing out of all the knots and stiffness. The gym was filled with people getting their workout in and looking amazing doing it. I was filled with awe and affection with this place that is my second home.

Then I went to work. I drove from Oakland to San Leandro visiting folks in their homes and helping them do stuff like get into their own bed without help, figure out how to get up and down their stairs and use a walker at the appropriate height, walk with a cane and do some advanced balance exercises. I loved every single one of them. I loved the driving around listening to my favorite music in my adorable car. Every minute of it made me feel happy, useful and integrated in the world.

After work I came home and made what I call First Date Soup (aka Moosewood’s Spinach Soup) for my family. It’s an awesome way to eat a giant pot of vegetables. It was so delicious and it always makes me feel happy and affectionate. I made this soup on the first date I ever had with my hubby, back in 1982. (Whaaa??? thirty years ago????)

After dinner we watched the movie Goodbye Lenin! which he had discovered while channel surfing a while back and really loved. As it turns out, I loved it too. It was a relaxing and wonderful way to end the week. Tomorrow, I have absolutely NOTHING on my schedule. (hooray!!!) I think I’m going to do a little reading, a little writing, a little fitness, some rest and maybe some home decluttering. On Sunday, I’ll venture back into the world to attend a health and fitness conference.

So this is what balance feels like!

I felt compelled to write all this because I was struck, all day and last night, with how absolutely happy I felt. Yesterday afternoon, I was talking with someone who felt compelled to tell me, “You are multitasking too much! You are multitasking too much!” about a dozen times. Which made me feel really defensive. I tried to say, “But I NEED all these parts of my life.” It’s true. And sometimes I do feel stressed and overwhelmed and I know I am trying to do to much. But what is multitasking? I don’t think that’s the right word, really. Multitasking is trying to do multiple things at once. I don’t actually think true multitasking is a great idea: texting while driving, or eating while watching television. But I do believe in serial unitasking, or many changing things in sequence. For me, it’s what makes me feel alive.

When I wasn’t working for a living, I was pretty unhappy. I like to feel like I’m contributing to the world, as well as to the financial health of our family. When I was primarily writing and not active or fit, I was also pretty unhappy. I was like a floating head of ideas, but very disconnected from my body. It didn’t work for me to be ONLY interested in fitness either, because not writing for long periods just filled me with despair. I need it all. I need to be social. I need solitude. I need meaningful work. I need my friends who give me such a deep sense of connection, and I’ve been lucky enough to have some amazing connectedness in the past month. I need my family whom I love more than life. I need it all.

When that person said, “You are multitasking too much!” I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I thought, what would I give up? What can I give up? For better or for worse, I can’t give up any of it. The many, many facets of my life are what make my life so precious and beautiful and shiny to me.

Mary Oliver asks,

Tell me, what else should I have done? / Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon? / Tell me, what is it you plan to do / with your one wild and precious life?

It is my one wild and precious life. I want it all.

I had forgotten about the shoji screens until I saw someone post on Facebook this morning, about the shoji screens her grandfather had made by hand. And a ripple of panic passed through me. Where are my father’s shoji screens? He had made two sets of them, with my uncles, in our house in Park Ridge; one next to the front door, which created a small entry way into the living room; and the other set covering the sliding glass doors that led from the cluttered, sample-filled basement to the concrete patio that later became an enclosed, cluttered storage room. No matter. They were not in a beautiful or Zenlike setting; they were in our green, suburban ranch house in New Jersey. But what mattered is that my father made them by hand. He made them with my (not my real) uncle Ted Tono, both of them skilled carpenters, trades they learned from their Japan-born fathers. With help from my (real) uncles, Kiyoshi and Asao.

Those shoji screens were a marker in our suburban home. Japanese people live here. The only ones in our small town. But it was a way of saying, we are here, this is who we are. We build small delicate walls of wood and paper. I was so proud of those shoji screens, of my father’s hands who had made them, as well as the kitchen cabinets and basement built-in storage units and my elaborate stilt house in the back hard.

When my father passed away and it became suddenly clear that my mother would not be able to live alone, we sold the house in Park Ridge quicker than I could catch my breath. We flew to New Jersey and in a scramble, met with realtors and called movers without having any sense of what we were doing. I flipped through the Yellow Pages in my mother’s kitchen and selected what was advertised as a “family owned” moving company, rather than a nationally known corporation. I liked the sound of “family owned.” I thought they would take care of our family.

It was a terrible mistake.

In the move cross-country, the small “family owned” business managed to disappear several items from the truck they packed in New Jersey. Including a bureau filled with photo albums and my mother’s wedding gown. Including the shoji screens.

Did I not remember this until today? I remember dismantling the screens and unbolting them from the floor with care and pride. I don’t remember that they ever arrived in California. They are certainly not in our house today.

Another loss. Another reminder of a past dismantled, a piece of history gone. I have to steady myself against grief, and to tell myself it’s not my father who is gone (although he is). That it was real. I want to touch them again, those paper walls, those thin gleaming strips of dark wood. I want to remember his hands holding a piece of sandpaper, the different grades of roughness, how they mattered to him. How he made the shoji and placed them in our home, how these delicate walls grounded me in suburbia, in our family, in what it meant to be us in that place in that time.

They are gone. There is nothing I can do. They are in a landfill, a dumpster, a stranger’s home. I don’t know. But they were real and we were real. My father’s hands on sandpaper, steadying the whining circular saw in his basement workshop, the sweet tangy sawdust on the floor.

Yo, Mas (sitting) and Ichi Ito

I got the news this week that my Uncle Yo had passed away. He was the youngest of the three Ito brothers, of whom my dad was the middle. My Dad died in 2000, and my Uncle Ichi a few years after that. Uncle Yo had been hanging in there, the last of his generation and family, and even though I hadn’t seen him in many years, it gave me great comfort to know he was still there.

Both of my father’s parents died before I was born, so I never knew my paternal grandparents. But I’d heard stories about them – about my blind grandfather, once a carpenter and woodcrafter, who re-shaped a miniature leaning tower of Pisa that my uncle had brought back from Italy during World War II. He could feel it, and he knew that something was wrong, so he fixed it so that it stood straight.

I asked my father once, during one of the ubiquitous and dreaded family tree assignments, the names of his grandparents back in Japan. He admitted with great remorse that he really didn’t know, that his parents never spoke of them and that there was really no record.

We had a small family. My uncle Ichi had had kids way before I was born, so they were adults when I came on the scene. Uncle Yo and Aunt Mary never had kids. We always had Thanksgiving at Uncle Ichi’s and Aunt Florence’s house, and pre-Christmas dinner at Aunt Mary and Uncle Yo’s. Their house was always immaculate (this is what happens when you have no kids!) and elegant.

My Uncle Yo was a quiet guy and I can’t say we were “close” but I was glad we were related anyway. He and my aunt owned a little jewelry store in the Pan Am building in New York City, and it always gave me an enormous thrill to visit them there. I remember my uncle sitting on a stool, wearing a special jeweler’s monocle, and he would be setting a diamond into a ring or tinkering with the insides of a watch. They always gave me a little piece of jewelry for my birthday – a heart shaped locked or a delicate little watch or a bracelet with my name engraved into it. Visiting them made me feel grownup and special, and the fact that it was in the famous PAN AM building (is this why I am such a sucker for the not so good TV series?) just heightened it all. They worked in the big city, in an important building, in a JEWELRY store. I mean, come on. I was enraptured.

My aunt Mary was the closest I had to a “buddy aunt.” She sat with me at family gatherings and colored or drew with me, shading each apple with three or four crayon colors, bringing them to life.  I heard she’s thinking of going up to her family in Canada, where she came from when she met my uncle after the war.

I guess this is what it feels like when people in your family, who were once larger than life, the grownups, start peeling away and then guess what? We’re the grownups now. Our kids are even turning into grownups. It’s sobering and strange and just one of those huge doses of reality that just hit you. Now I’m the grownup making the stuffing for the turkey and cooking the gravy and just, you know, doing it all, the way the grownups did for so long when I was growing up. So many of them are gone now.

The Ito brothers. Are they “together” now? I don’t know what I believe about that. I kind of hope they are, and with their younger sister Kiyo, who died as a college student before I was born, and whom I was named after (middle name).

Image by Lasse C via Flickr

No, not website hosting. People hosting.

Ever since we’ve been together, my spouse and I have really enjoyed having people visit or live with us. I mean we’ve really enjoyed it and it’s been one of the landmarks of our life together. We had a family who stayed with us for over five years, and we’ve also had houseguests who’ve stayed for a month or three. It just makes us happy, to have other people around. It broadens our lives and I think it makes us kinder, friendlier people. When it’s “just us,” we tend to get grumpier and more impatient. But we put on our company selves for company, and the nice stuff leaks back into the family.

Right now our elder daughter is being hosted by a family in Costa Rica. They are housing her and feeding her and taking care of her. I have lived with many a host family while studying Spanish in Mexico, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and they have all been wonderful to us. Now it’s her turn to go out there.

So when we got an email this week asking our crew team if people could host the US National Rowing team (that’s the OLYMPIC rowing team!), I got so excited. A new guest! An Olympic rower! Are you KIDDING? We signed up right away.

Our new guest is six foot eight and a wonderful guy. And he won a bronze medal at the Beijing Olympics. How cool is that?!?  He’s staying until January.

I’ve seen people grousing about having houseguests, especially around the holidays, but I really kind of love them. Of course it helps to have extra room to put them in. It might be different if I was tripping over them every five minutes. But for us, it gets kinda lonely when it’s “just us.”

October 1: Stories of the Body retreat at Santa Sabina

writing and moving at Santa Sabina

October 4: swim practice at the Richmond Plunge

Oct 8: video shoot on the Golden Gate Bridge!

I was so excited to be chosen by the Diabetes Hands Foundation to represent healthy active diabetic people doing the Big Blue Test! They took video of us running on the Golden Gate Bridge. You can see the finished product here - SO awesome!

Oct 10: 3 generations together again!

my girl turned 21 the day she came home from her travels

Oct 15: mini practice triathlon

birthday party with wishing rings on the candles

my baby is grown up

college tours with younger daughter

we loved the food truck pods in Portland!

Oct 23: French Pastry baking class!

the class was a Team in Training fundraiser. GO TEAM!

Oct 25: Occupy Oakland torn down across from my office building

Oct 27: Jet-setting Junior is at SFO, taking off for Peru & Costa RIca

Oct 28: Last chance workout: conquering open water fear at Lake Temescal with the awesome sports psychologist

Posterior tibialis tendonitis: trying to keep my cool while doing paperwork

That was October. A total whirlwind of workouts and busy daughters.

I thought about doing NaNoWriMo for about five minutes this year. I miss writing something awful. But.. it’s not my year for it. 2012! YES!