Asking for help (aka Lessons in Humility)

I haven't written here for a while for a number of reasons. The batshit crazy state of the world being a big reason, but also I tripped on last step down to subway platform on June 14 and fell. I thought I had sprained my ankle and muscled through the Wesleyan Writers Conference for 4 days, then came home to take care of it. It didn't heal, went to urgent care twice, was x-rayed and at first no sign of fracture. When - a month later - I saw an orthopedist in a clinic (the fun never stops when you're on Medicaid), they took more X-rays and there was a fracture - a small fracture - on top of foot. I now have an air cast and feel saner, because there's a reason it wasn't healing. I'm not a wimp or whatever.

So, that is difficult because we live on the fifth floor of a walk-up. I am isolated much of the time, because: stairs. Lots of stairs. I do go out, because if I didn't I'd go insane, but can't walk for very long, etc.

OK, so there's that. And of course that has meant asking for a lot of help. I am not good at asking for help. Ask my husband. I either refuse to acknowledge I need the help and potentially hurt myself or decide I do need help - but when I do - I Need To Have The Help NOW. Fun times for both of us as you can imagine. I'm getting better at it. A little bit.

But...this has converged with a couple of editing jobs falling through for me while John has gotten work, so he's also had the motherlode of the paying work plus dealing with me limping around and not able to do much around the house. Thank Goddess we had fixed up the study before this happened, so he has a good place to work. And the living room is now a space for just being. So we can have some space to work and rest.

So, this is where I start to need asking for help from you. John and I have begun a small editing business, that I have announced here, but again here is that link: Barclay-Morton Editorial+Design
If you know anyone who could use writing, editing, proofing and/or design services, give us a shout. Or recommend us. or both!

I have also begun - after careful consideration - a Patreon. This is a different kind of crowd-funding platform that helps creators fund their creations, per month. I have chosen this model, because I have a number of projects on the go right now, including my book that is now complete and for which I am seeking representation and publication, beginning another book, a play-text that will be produced in September on Governor's Island, a photographic and video practice that documents daily life in small-form meditation, and of course this blog. I am also beginning to write essays for publication.

Therefore, what I could use - as this platform is set up to provide - are patrons of my artistic life in general. As with a regular crowd-funding campaign, at different levels there are different perks, but you can become a patron for as low as $1/month. I figure this is as democratic as it gets.

Am I going to save the world with my work? No. Am I glad I - and my other wildly talented friends -can create works of beauty and contemplation in the middle of a world gone seemingly mad? You bet.

Last night, I accidentally put on the RNC. I saw Giuliani practically foaming at the mouth but in a relatively articulate way, and a crowd who adored him. I became afraid. I then went and looked at my little Patreon account with the short meditative videos, and I could breathe again. I then started to type up handwritten work for November that is the beginning of a new book. And I could breathe some more. Even with my gimp ankle, I did some gentle yoga and some breathing meditations. I did some more writing. I was able to breathe a little more.

My work cannot save the world, but as William Carlos Williams wrote:

It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there.


So this is me asking for your help to do my part to put my kind of poetry into the world - in the form of play texts, performance events, prose, short videos, askew photos, reflective blog posts and essays. I will send you little bits of me and my work every month, so you will know what I am doing and why and something about the process of creation. You can partake in as much or as little of that as you want.

Any support - no matter how small or large - means the world to me. It holds me accountable to you and to my work. It means that I am creating for an audience, that there are people out there who believe in poetry - in the largest sense - and supporting living artists, specifically this living artist.

Here is the link.

Alternatively, if you would like to make a one-time contribution to the original crowd-funding campaign for The Amazing True Imaginary Autobiography of Dick & Jani, you can do so. The book, as mentioned, is now written, but not yet published. However, if you donate on this site (and on some levels of Patreon), you will receive a copy of the book as soon as it is available. I am in the midst of querying agents and publishers. This process - including revising the book (last revision this past month in response to excellent feedback at Wesleyan Writers Conference) has taken way longer than I imagined, so could use help completing this process as well.

Thank you all for reading these words. Thank you for letting me ask you for help. This is me now letting this go.

Back from the Green Mountains of Vermont

Wow, that was kind of amazing.

Just went on a two week writing retreat at Vermont Studio Center, where I edited 80K words of my book in 2 weeks. I laid groundwork for this in NYC (about 50K in 6 weeks), but managed to really motor through a little more than half the book while there.

I wish I could have stayed for the month, because might have had an edited book at the end, but I'm hoping to use momentum from that extraordinary time to move through the second half. Also, hoping to get back up there ASAP.

I was affirmed, through the sheer ability to work so long and so hard, in the work itself, and also through meeting other writers with challenging projects, who were both inspiring and encouraging.

On Friday night, I read aloud a couple pages to my fellow writers, which was a first for this book. Haven't shown it to anyone for 4 1/2 years. I was moved by their response, and was taken aback by how emotional I felt reading the section I did. I knew I felt for Dick and Jani, but I didn't realize how much until I started reading aloud.

So, I feel much more confident, like I do have a book on my hands, and this is invaluable to see me through to its completion.

Wish me luck in keeping up the momentum (though I could not work at the level I did those 2 weeks here without exploding - I think I can ramp up my focus here). I don't want to dismiss the work I've done here in NYC either, because in many ways it was the hardest bit.  However, at the retreat I got through the section/s of the book I felt were going to take the most out of me emotionally, and that was a wise choice.

I hit a wall only once, and did my laundry. When I returned to the studio (after also having kvetched to some fellow writers) - bam - could work again.

Our studios looked out over a river, so with the window open, the sound of the water running through the stones and mini-rapids soothed my soul.  There is a deep internal expansiveness on offer at VSC, and I feel so grateful to have experienced it. They even offered Kripalu yoga two times a week, so I was in heaven. And good food!

I am now back in Inwood, it's hot and I left behind some folks I really liked meeting in Vermont (including visual artists - with some of whom I hope to collaborate on future performance projects), but I also returned to John, my beloved Canadian and Ugo, my beloved rescue cat. My little family who were happy to see me. That's truly special, too.

I'm feeling pretty damn grateful right now and just plain old lucky. There have been many hard roads leading to where I am now, and those roads are - whether I like it or not - why I can write this damn book in the first place. Those roads are also how I know what a gem John is - true love is the best gift ever. That combined with meaningful work is life's jackpot as far as I can tell.

Thanks to all of you have been and are supporting me through this process. I think I have one last push to get this over the finish line - at least stage one finish line - a readable draft.

In praise of slowness

So I did get back to the editing. It's going more slowly, but I'm also happier with the results. Been combing through the first hundred pages over and over again - kind of like a knotty bit of hair - needs to be brushed a number of times through to untangle, but if you pull too hard it'll just resist. The returns need to be gentle. The hand needs to be patient. Then the strands gives way.

I've found more cuts, added some bits, and am hearing Dick & Jani's voices more clearly with each pass. I don't know if this will make the rest of the book editing go more quickly or not, but I've surrendered to the pace.

On what would have been Dick's 100th birthday (April 27), I was accepted to Vermont Studio Center for a residency. I could only accept the two week slot (May 10-23), but after panicking about it (what I have taken to referring to as New York agoraphobia), I said yes and then was - and am - delighted at the choice. Everyone I know who has been there, has loved it - it sounds like Kripalu for writers and artists. Will tell you more about it when I'm there, but this opportunity feels like a huge gift from the universe.

I am now preparing for that retreat time, which will be more of a sprint than a marathon. I realized that to be able to do what I want there, I need to be well-rested going in - and need to prepare my papers and such to bring up what I need. I put together a PhD in four weeks in the Orkney Islands in Scotland in 2009, and the first two chapters for upgrade (which I then revised entirely) I wrote in two weeks in September 2006 (also on the Orkney Island)s. Vermont is not nearly as remote, but on the plus side, all my meals will be taken care of and there's a yoga studio, meditation room and a bunch of other weirdos running around. I hope not to be distracted by same. I can find a certain kind of focus when I am all alone that I'm not certain I ever find when anyone else is around, but will do my best. When the balance of alone time with people concentrating on their creative tasks, there can be a kind of wind underneath one's sails, which I hope to experience. I've never been on an art/writing retreat before, so we'll see. The other ones were self-made and done alone.

I would love to finish the revision in Vermont, and hope to make a lot of headway, but need to remember what I've written earlier here, that some of this just Takes Time and two weeks isn't a lot of time.

No matter what, I am fairly confident I'll get a lot more done there when that is all I need to do and surrounded by so much beauty and quiet. Or maybe I'll just fall asleep. Who knows?

In other news, I've had an endless tooth odyssey, which involves waiting for a root canal and such, when all I thought I had agreed to was something much simpler...I won't go into all the gory details, except to mention that the filling that was removed and is in process of being restored was put in in the 1970s, around the same time of the material in the book that I am editing. This has had an interesting effect emotionally - not all pleasant - but of course any openings are good - even they involve teeth and pain. Thawing frozen places is not pleasant whether physical or emotional and sometimes they seem to weirdly intersect.

Spring is springing, and that, too, is generally a bittersweet time (touched on in last post), but overall it is quite beautiful after such a long, hard winter. Now to take a walk in the sun with my beloved....

Speaking of which, I want to give a shout out to John, who is supporting my retreat time even though neither of us like to be separated. I've never been in this situation before, where I can both leave and know someone will be home when I get back (and not have gone off with someone else) and know that the person at home will care that I have returned and have missed me when I'm gone. This may seem like a basic thing, but for me it's a first, and a deeply healing one. Love is an astonishing thing.