tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-89233465111002592532024-02-20T08:00:41.165-08:00MARY SOJOURNERMARY SOJOURNER *
Current essays * Published works * TeachingsNowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08822219177702795112noreply@blogger.comBlogger42125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8923346511100259253.post-47484256126600415992012-04-29T15:07:00.000-07:002013-01-08T13:44:58.369-08:00Cyndra Won't Get Out of the Truck: January 2013
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I've been in a
writing drought for too long. I knew better than to try to trick the
stories to come through. There was nothing to do but be patient. A
few days ago the story of Cyndra and J.B. resumed. It is nearly finished.
But I want to put it out to readers now, especially my Nowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08822219177702795112noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8923346511100259253.post-35024230854404189702012-04-27T11:50:00.001-07:002012-04-27T11:53:42.924-07:00The Window
The window of my soul opens,
and from the purity of the unseen world
the book of The Divine comes to me directly…
&Nowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08822219177702795112noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8923346511100259253.post-34654589675931426232012-01-16T12:09:00.000-08:002012-01-16T12:16:14.131-08:00PlanxtyHopping 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-15199327908536579272011-03-27T15:31:00.000-07:002011-03-27T15:36:39.604-07:00Pimping Life and DeathI 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-68424245609931172032011-01-22T10:01:00.000-08:002011-01-22T10:06:32.947-08:00The Gibbon Mother: a brief lesson in loveThirty-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-10579658313369426402010-10-02T14:36:00.000-07:002010-11-21T13:28:24.093-08:00Cyndra Won't Get Out of the Truck: January 2013Cyndra 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-14400527656130257952010-01-01T09:53:00.000-08:002010-05-18T18:23:33.458-07:00Circling(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-56542728662020907422009-11-01T12:49:00.000-08:002010-05-18T18:24:04.219-07:00What Now?“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…”---NancyNowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08822219177702795112noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8923346511100259253.post-48985328182131517212009-10-19T14:43:00.001-07:002010-05-18T18:24:50.830-07:00Grape PopsicleThis 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-35252060070600045112009-09-15T11:53:00.000-07:002009-09-15T12:01:42.794-07:00TendrilsWe 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-79392199083746578032009-07-31T13:05:00.000-07:002010-02-01T16:08:21.188-08:00GeographyA 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-76804961822557642812009-07-17T19:36:00.000-07:002009-07-17T19:37:29.316-07:00MagicI'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-53788878397100718152009-07-17T17:29:00.000-07:002009-07-17T19:35:13.994-07:00StarwomenTwo 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-52491144086551057532009-07-16T10:35:00.000-07:002009-07-17T19:36:09.436-07:00Now*******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-79142708615721532882009-07-04T16:15:00.000-07:002009-07-04T16:16:42.208-07:00Detained “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-9593941289309534752009-06-28T12:42:00.000-07:002009-06-28T12:44:03.360-07:00ifyou 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-15309801036078360142009-06-28T10:17:00.000-07:002009-06-28T12:42:27.661-07:00Burn ThisThe 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-81886460237919062552009-05-27T07:45:00.000-07:002009-05-27T07:48:40.792-07:00Heading NorthDespite 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 inNowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08822219177702795112noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8923346511100259253.post-69529690356836168702009-05-19T10:48:00.000-07:002009-06-28T10:16:54.113-07:00Sendings...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-8920031268664255962009-05-19T08:55:00.000-07:002009-05-19T08:57:30.678-07:00Dry1 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 Nowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08822219177702795112noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8923346511100259253.post-58422408852447642852009-05-16T21:43:00.000-07:002009-05-19T10:51:15.506-07:00Nowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08822219177702795112noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8923346511100259253.post-44880411995813751002009-05-12T23:58:00.000-07:002009-05-12T23:59:13.540-07:00She Knew...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-78157799611606198352009-04-30T11:21:00.000-07:002009-05-01T07:19:42.487-07:00Time BallWhen 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-72584734643744710072009-04-30T11:17:00.000-07:002009-04-30T11:20:10.915-07:00Veils 3You 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-3595458810199530142009-04-18T12:53:00.000-07:002009-04-18T12:57:34.010-07:00Veils 2It 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.com