tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-89233465111002592532012-01-16T12:21:43.669-08:00MARY SOJOURNER * Current essays * Published works * TeachingsNowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08822219177702795112noreply@blogger.comBlogger401100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8923346511100259253.post-34654589675931426232012-01-16T12:09:00.000-08:002012-01-16T12:16:14.131-08:00

Hopping on One Foot ...planxty (an ancient Celtic music form) is not suitable for either singing or dancing, due to its erratic sequencing...the conclusion of a phrase is so framed as to produce the idea of a beginning; and again, the beginning or middle of a phrase so constructed as to seem for a moment the notes of a passage about to close. ---Tom Cowan Fire in the Head My new student is

Nowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08822219177702795112noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8923346511100259253.post-15199327908536579272011-03-27T15:31:00.000-07:002011-03-27T15:36:39.604-07:00

I live in the world rather as a spectator of mankind than as one of the species. -Joseph Addison, essayist and poet (1672-1719)I like to watch. ---Chance the Gardener, Being There I have been a watcher since I was five and my mother went mad in our kitchen. Her terrible wordless singing carried into the bedroom in which I lay in terror. I turned the pages of a coloring book slowly, my eyes

Nowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08822219177702795112noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8923346511100259253.post-68424245609931172032011-01-22T10:01:00.000-08:002011-01-22T10:06:32.947-08:00

Thirty-five years ago I took a break from the American Psychological Association Convention. I needed to clear my mind of theory and debate. The zoo was within walking distance of the big hotel in which I'd been sitting in rooms with no windows, listening to words that seemed to suck the air from the already airless rooms. I wandered the zoo, from panthers to moon bears to aardvarks and tapirs.

Nowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08822219177702795112noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8923346511100259253.post-10579658313369426402010-10-02T14:36:00.000-07:002010-11-21T13:28:24.093-08:00

Cyndra Won’t Get Out of the TruckIf she had known how completely crazy J.B. was, even BEFORE he shipped over to Iraq, she would not have married him. Even if she had been seventeen and him twenty-one with pale blue eyes, with shoulders that wouldn’t quit, with a manner of kissing that said “I completely respect you girl, and I completely want you.”But it was too late to take it back. There was

Nowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08822219177702795112noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8923346511100259253.post-14400527656130257952010-01-01T09:53:00.000-08:002010-05-18T18:23:33.458-07:00

(I offer Circling to the unknown reader who once underlined sentences in my book, Bonelight: Ruin and Grace in the New Southwest and posed a haunting question in the margin of the essay Compromise: Ghost Dance of the New West? Should chance bring you to this blog, please get in touch with me. My gmail is bstarr67@gmail.com) We circle aroundWe circle aroundWe circle around The

Nowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08822219177702795112noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8923346511100259253.post-56542728662020907422009-11-01T12:49:00.000-08:002010-05-18T18:24:04.219-07:00

“What kinds of things do you write?” asked Martha...”I’m not exactly a writer,” Sam corrected her. “I’m a listener. I’m listening for clues about day-to-day life on the planet.”“But do you write things down?” asked Jessie.“Of course,” said Sam.“Are you writing a book?” demanded Martha“No,” said Sam. “I’m saving stories. So a hundred years from now people will know how it was with us…”---Nancy

Nowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08822219177702795112noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8923346511100259253.post-48985328182131517212009-10-19T14:43:00.001-07:002010-05-18T18:24:50.830-07:00

This is her story. I barely know her. We met at a gem and mineral show in the Little America hotel in Flagstaff, Arizona at least fifteen years ago. I bought a raw opal from her. She gave me two more for free. She had dug them from her little claim in Australia. The sun fire opal was a rough blue cylinder no bigger than the first joint of my little finger. The surface was matte. She had

Nowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08822219177702795112noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8923346511100259253.post-35252060070600045112009-09-15T11:53:00.000-07:002009-09-15T12:01:42.794-07:00

We know who we are. We are those who are willing to not know much of anything else. And still we let tendrils from within us coil out. Sometimes they take hold of another. Sometimes they tremble on the air. I am most interested these strange and tawdry days in what comes my way. My friend Tony Norris, a bone-deep Flagstaff writer, musician and story-teller, sent me the following words this

Nowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08822219177702795112noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8923346511100259253.post-79392199083746578032009-07-31T13:05:00.000-07:002010-02-01T16:08:21.188-08:00

A moment of happiness You and I sitting on the verandah, Apparently two, but one in soul, you and I… …The stars will be watching us, and we will show them how it is to be the thinnest crescent moon. You and I, unselfed, will be together, Indifferent to idle speculation, you and I. The parrots of heaven will be cracking sugar As we laugh together, you and I. And what is even more amazing Is that

Nowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08822219177702795112noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8923346511100259253.post-76804961822557642812009-07-17T19:36:00.000-07:002009-07-17T19:37:29.316-07:00

I'm ready to begin working with one-on-one students again. I love working with those of you who have been meaning to write and haven't yet begun; with those of you who began and stalled out; with those of you who have been steadily writing and know it's time to go in with the scalpel and the embroidery needle. More than anything, I love working with writers who know that if they don't write,

Nowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08822219177702795112noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8923346511100259253.post-53788878397100718152009-07-17T17:29:00.000-07:002009-07-17T19:35:13.994-07:00

Two dear friends are both astrologers. They work far beyond what passes for sky-reading in the popular press. Their signals come back to us from those great distances with clarity and mystery.Deborah O'Connor: www.lovedogdesign.comCassandra Leoncini: http://www.twoeaglesastrology.comWe are, you know, made from the same particles that make up the stars. We are moved, as they are, by forces

Nowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08822219177702795112noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8923346511100259253.post-52491144086551057532009-07-16T10:35:00.000-07:002009-07-17T19:36:09.436-07:00

*******I write from a little house in Bend, Or. I have everything I could need: prayer flags ripple in a cool breeze; a cord of wood is stacked along the fence, a gift from a friend of a friend; there are three pints of loganberries and marionberries in my refrigerator; all four cats are alive and well; and there is a door on my bed-room, which means that for the first time in twenty-six years

Nowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08822219177702795112noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8923346511100259253.post-79142708615721532882009-07-04T16:15:00.000-07:002009-07-04T16:16:42.208-07:00

“There was a rebel who kept transmitting,” Yates recalled in a whisper...He kept on transmitting for years after the program ended, even though no one answered.” “There was no world afterward,” the hermit declared in a thin, haunting voice. “We had to make do.” The words brought Yates out of his trance. “No world?” “Down below were all those Chinese, destroying everything

Nowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08822219177702795112noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8923346511100259253.post-9593941289309534752009-06-28T12:42:00.000-07:002009-06-28T12:44:03.360-07:00

you never read anything again in your life, read this.If you catch me whining about my privileged plight, send it back to me.I'm so lucky.love, meTerry Pratchett's Alzheimer's Speech in Fullthis is bristol.co.uk ^ | March 13, 2008 | Terry Pratchett Posted on March 16, 2008 11:56:20 PM PDT by Hetty_FauxvertMy name is Terry Pratchett, author of a series of inexplicably successful fantasy books and

Nowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08822219177702795112noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8923346511100259253.post-15309801036078360142009-06-28T10:17:00.000-07:002009-06-28T12:42:27.661-07:00

The news is heavy...there are beasts loose that make the long walks, Auschwitz, Hiroshima, Bhopal and Chernobyl pale in comparison.---Barry Lopezfrom his eulogy for Edward Abbey, 1988...When we first moved here, pulledthe trees in around us, curledour backs to the wind, no onehad ever hit the moon--no one…From our snug place we shoutreligiously for attention, in order to hide:only silence or

Nowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08822219177702795112noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8923346511100259253.post-81886460237919062552009-05-27T07:45:00.000-07:002009-05-27T07:48:40.792-07:00

Despite the best efforts of the Mojave to hold me fast with its beauty and dear people, I leave today for Bend, Or. Thanks to my son, Matt; and my beloved friend, Fred K., every object I own is in a 5X8 trailer and my Vibe. I carry with me the silhouette of the Joshua Buddha, 395 sightings of the moon; pressing my face to the rough bark of the old Joshua west of my cabin and breathing in

Nowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08822219177702795112noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8923346511100259253.post-69529690356836168702009-05-19T10:48:00.000-07:002009-06-28T10:16:54.113-07:00

...and I lift my glass to the Awful Truth which you can't reveal to the Ears of Youth except to say it isn't worth a dime And the whole damn place goes crazy twice and it's once for the devil and once for Christ but the Boss don't like these dizzy heights we're busted in the blinding lights, busted in the blinding lights of CLOSING TIME.... ---Leonard Cohen This being human

Nowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08822219177702795112noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8923346511100259253.post-8920031268664255962009-05-19T08:55:00.000-07:002009-05-19T08:57:30.678-07:00

1 One week of intensive addiction treatment for free. I was poor. I knew it was time to take a break from main-lining my favorite drug. The clinic was famous. It was the favorite place for more than a few You Know Whos to dry out. I was one of the Who the Fuck Are Yous. I drove south from Flagstaff on a brilliant June day. My drug-of-the-season had written from Algiers to say that It wasn

Nowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08822219177702795112noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8923346511100259253.post-58422408852447642852009-05-16T21:43:00.000-07:002009-05-19T10:51:15.506-07:00

Nowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08822219177702795112noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8923346511100259253.post-44880411995813751002009-05-12T23:58:00.000-07:002009-05-12T23:59:13.540-07:00

...kiss the snake so that you may gain the treasure... ---Rumi My mother, in her deepest heart, was a jazz pianist. She had perfect pitch, could learn by ear anything she heard on her cherished records. Satin Doll. Don’t Get Around Much Anymore. Oscar Peterson. Marian McPartland. “The best by the best,” she’d tell me. She made music everyday, but I never heard her describe

Nowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08822219177702795112noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8923346511100259253.post-78157799611606198352009-04-30T11:21:00.000-07:002009-05-01T07:19:42.487-07:00

When Hemos Johnson (hereditary Hahwannis chief of Kingcome) was an old man visiting his daughter at Comox she took him to Elk Falls, a place he had heard much about but had never seen. He stood where he could behold the raging torrent in all its splendour, gazing in silent wonder at the majestic sight and when he came away he announced, "It gave me a new song." It had all come to

Nowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08822219177702795112noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8923346511100259253.post-72584734643744710072009-04-30T11:17:00.000-07:002009-04-30T11:20:10.915-07:00

You must leave your home and go forth from your country. The children of Buddha all practice this way. ---The thirty-seven Bodhisattva Practices I stand firmly on the ground on the other side of the Veil. Here, loneliness is transformed to honed and solitary awareness. Here, longing is transformed into the path to my own door. Here, places are re-named. A people

Nowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08822219177702795112noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8923346511100259253.post-3595458810199530142009-04-18T12:53:00.000-07:002009-04-18T12:57:34.010-07:00

It is one thing to step through the veil. It is another to take my place on the other side. There is no turning back. Those of you who step through know. If you try, you see that the veil is gone. Only a new world that seems to be the old world surrounds you. And then, as you move into this new lost world, you are shaken by what has always been around you. Inside you. Hidden.

Nowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08822219177702795112noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8923346511100259253.post-89118643413973742062009-04-12T23:47:00.000-07:002009-04-12T23:49:05.109-07:00

Where there is no doubt, there is no understanding Where there is little doubt, there is little understanding Where there is great doubt, there is great understanding. ---Buddhist teaching My friend and I climb to the top of the old stone tower on Mr. Constitution. I look down. Orcas Island lies below me---cedars and fir, mottled green, oval patches of cobalt water. The San Juan

Nowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08822219177702795112noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8923346511100259253.post-90969456765238941272009-04-03T12:35:00.000-07:002009-05-19T08:54:24.773-07:00

I rarely take photographs. I tell my students that using a camera short-circuits the pathways that fix an image in my memory. And, a picture cannot bring in sound or scent, taste or dawn warming my back as I pray: For the furthering of all sentience beings and the protection of earth, air and water. I trust what surrounds me. I trust I’ll retain what I will someday need for the Work. Not all

Nowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08822219177702795112noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8923346511100259253.post-28296532095407037052009-03-06T19:42:00.000-08:002009-03-06T19:47:36.416-08:00

"We don't so much create threads between ourselves and others, we find that existing threads have become luminous." A friend once told me that. In the last few months I have been granted illumination from connections to the Northwest, to an eagle and the man who both loves and is loved by her.Meet Freedom and Jeff. Click on Eaglewalker in my links.

Nowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08822219177702795112noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8923346511100259253.post-47787049253769942512009-02-25T12:04:00.001-08:002009-02-25T12:26:52.088-08:00

Temple Cats Americans are obsessed with the notion of control. The control is just an illusion. ---Lee Barnes, writer Bean, the 10-month old gray tabby, is possessed to leap up on the old dresser that serves as the center for my faith in what little I know of Tibetan Buddhism; and all I am learning about the nature of

Nowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08822219177702795112noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8923346511100259253.post-70680787231085123662008-10-14T10:09:00.000-07:002008-10-14T10:12:58.788-07:00

Forty years and 2500 miles ago, I hauled myself and my three kids free from Welfare when I found work in a nursing home in New York state.  Recently I learned I didn't get a job in the little Mojave Desert town where I live. I had already applied for everything else that was available.  At sixty-eight, I found myself hauling my tanking credit cards and drained savings back to welfare.    I

Nowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08822219177702795112noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8923346511100259253.post-40593718244685253762008-08-13T11:05:00.001-07:002008-08-13T11:07:03.379-07:00

We are living in the Age of Nugacity. This, from a word-a-day servicea friend once gave me:nugacityPRONUNCIATION:(noo-GAS-i-tee, nyoo-)MEANING:noun: Triviality; futility.ETYMOLOGY:From Latin nugax (trifling), from nugari (to trifle).Last night, after I had read in the LA Times and on Yahoo about AdolfHitler's Olympics unfolding in Beijing, I took myself out to theJoshua tree and watched the

Nowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08822219177702795112noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8923346511100259253.post-24814471338603972752008-06-24T15:25:00.001-07:002008-08-13T17:01:58.208-07:00

I am a free-lance writer, editor and writing teacher. I begin to think about credentials and balk. You can google Mary Sojourner to find my books and articles, my NPR commentaries and writing conference gigs. Here is what is important:Last night I walked out over the desert, into light that went from too much to burnished to cool gray. I was heading back when I saw a jade-green snake coiled

Nowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08822219177702795112noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8923346511100259253.post-49365127372338358292008-06-21T15:35:00.000-07:002008-06-21T15:36:21.542-07:00

for Jaybird And the days are not full enough And the nights are not full enough And life slips by like a field mouse Not shaking the grass. ---Ezra Pound Letters, Arizona Daily Sun, December 20: Dear stranger who returned my wallet, I’m in a down-town restaurant thinking about how this diner, in the nearly ten years I’ve lived in Flagstaff, has served everybody: tourists, folks

Nowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08822219177702795112noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8923346511100259253.post-22576191020573696982008-06-21T15:27:00.000-07:002008-06-21T15:37:01.708-07:00

3 White Mojave sunset I study the persimmon sand a tiny jawbone a downy plume the length of my thumb there is no quartz no plastic shard but when I look up the moon is a sliver of lace agate. 3 Cinnabar mercurial apricot to molten above the western mountains fooprints (mine) what burns imperfectly all of that there is no need for more And still I find more

Nowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08822219177702795112noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8923346511100259253.post-35887785864938080172008-04-09T16:21:00.001-07:002008-04-09T16:21:50.899-07:00

I have become a ghost in a ghostland. TERRA INCOGNITA1. Cabin Becoming a Crow Seven years ago my best friend and I drove East on I-40. We were headed for a writing conference in central Oklahoma. When we saw the Cuervo highway exit in New Mexico, we pulled off. It was time for coffee. What better place to drink my friend's fierce dark brew than a dirt road on which we might be

Nowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08822219177702795112noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8923346511100259253.post-77709409567957156312008-01-26T09:59:00.001-08:002008-01-26T10:05:43.718-08:00

"Each generation receives a little capsule ofinstructions, says Eisley, that passes through theeye of the needle like a blowing seed. They arecarried "through the molecular darkness of a minute world below the field of human vision and of time'sdecay." "They are tranmitted from one generation toanother in invisible puffs of air known aswords---words that can also be symbolically

Nowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08822219177702795112noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8923346511100259253.post-64136047607333767802007-12-17T09:52:00.000-08:002007-12-17T09:55:34.423-08:00

I woke this morning in the wake of this last year inmy writing. I was not depressed or frightened,but I knew it was time to take a cold look at therealities of the attrition---personal and greater. Here is the accounting: (Personal): I worked for at least four months on thefine-tuning of the fine-tune of my second novel, GoingThrough Ghosts; then fine-tuned that fine-tune for twomonths. I

Nowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08822219177702795112noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8923346511100259253.post-17084236934355412872007-12-08T16:33:00.000-08:002007-12-08T16:45:27.515-08:00

We go toward Winter Solstice. Sun and moon are themarkers for any holy days I keep. These wishes use upno trees, no fossil fuels, nothing but your time. Life is gift enough. ms*******************algorithim "algorithim: A finite sequence of well-defined stepsfor solving a problem. Named by 9th century Persian astronomer andmathematician Abu Jafar Muhammand ibn Musa,

Nowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08822219177702795112noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8923346511100259253.post-55703771992224772452007-11-10T10:36:00.000-08:002007-11-10T10:37:51.676-08:00

Last night I. and I walked out into the pines to visitthe Witches Broom. I. is not me. The Witches Broom isnot a human device for sweeping away clutter; nor ameans for flight.The sun had dropped behind the trees. The light wasgray-green. We came upon a scattering of bones: aspinal column arced like the path of a meteor; adelicate pelvis; slender tibia---and two paws. Wecould tell from the

Nowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08822219177702795112noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8923346511100259253.post-79812666355861570082007-10-13T15:27:00.000-07:002007-10-13T15:28:02.590-07:00

Caitlin LivesKathleen Walters/Martha Shideler is releasing her wondrous Celtic novel, Caitlin, Priestess of the Goddess. While the story is set in ancient times shrouded by our forgetting, the message is crucial to our deeply troubled world today.Caitlin emerged a chapter at a time in Flagstaff's Aradia Bookstores writing circles. It is a pure gift to know I will be able to hold it my hands

Nowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08822219177702795112noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8923346511100259253.post-24626882100257762132007-10-11T12:03:00.000-07:002007-10-11T14:57:59.891-07:00

I am home from teaching at a Land Trust conference in Denver. I stayed with a new friend in Boulder. I drove three round-trips between Boulder and Denver. At the close of each forty minutes on the highway, my eyes felt as though they had been sand-papered.My friend's home was a haven, her back-yard green solace. The highway, the downtown, the hotel in which the entry-lounge to the Ladies Room

Nowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08822219177702795112noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8923346511100259253.post-42389875728044831972007-09-30T09:36:00.000-07:002007-09-30T09:39:55.856-07:00

I've entered Scylla in a competition which might do her proud. She will be disqualified if she is posted on-line. I'll begin posting other fiction, old and new. m

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