Walking and Writing Join Hands Down Inspiration Lane

“Shall we walk as we talk?” is an old stereotyped line from movies to give the actors some action during a dialog. In a similar fashion, but without such cinematic contrivance, you can actually write as you walk. At least in your head. As I’ve mentioned earlier, I’m a big proponent of taking walks or hikes in between writing sessions. I especially like to do so if away at a writing retreat, when large expanses of my time are indeed spent writing. To clear the head, to change course, to take a fresh perspective on the last few hours spent writing, nothing beats a no-cost walk down a long city street or a circuitous tree-lined path.

Of course, I’m far from the only writer who believes in a good outdoor walk to stir the imagination and calm the intensity of previous indoor concentration. In his book “Daily Rituals: How Artists Work,” editor Mason Currey talks about some of the formulaic habits that writers, artists and composers – as well as philosophers and scientists -- have plied to aid and abet their creativity.

British novelist Charles Dickens, for one, wrote five hours daily from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. in complete silence. Afterward, he’d take a three-hour walk, during which he’d take notes – filled with ideas for the next day’s writings. Danish philosopher and poet Kierkegaard garnered many of his notions during his daily walks. Sometimes when he’d return home, bursting with inspiration, he’d stand at his desk quickly jotting down his thoughts, still wearing his hat and gripping his walking stick.

While some authors, such as Gertrude Stein, wrote only for 30 minutes a day (and remember, she wrote very short pieces), most writers that Currey examined found that two to three hours of writing a day was about right. And as far as time of day, Sylvia Plath and Nicholas Baker were or are crack-of-dawn morning writers. George Sand, Marcel Proust and Franz Kafka, on the other hand, liked to work late at night, if not in the middle of the night.

Yet among all creatives, it seems that walking is the most common way to refresh the mind and offer an inspirational break.
◦

Walking and Writing Join Hands Down Inspiration Lane

Try this friend's e-book on aromatherapy

E-books are out there on every topic, but there are few on aromatherapy. Fellow aromatherapy practitioner Andrea Butje, who runs the Aromatherapy Institute, has come out with a new book available on Kindle. Essential Living: Aromatherapy Recipes for Health and Home is required reading for those who want to lift their spirits, beautify the vibration of their homes and enhance their quality of life (see more benefits below).

Aromatherapy is all about the therapeutic use of essential oils—highly aromatic substances that naturally occur in plants.

Essential Living: Aromatherapy Recipes for Health and Home is convenient as an e-book, since you can quickly turn to certain recipes on your tablet and create your own easy-to-make aromatherapy products to use yourself or give as gifts.

Andrea brings the therapeutic use of essential oils to your home in Essential Living: Aromatherapy Recipes for Health and Home. Her easy-to-follow recipes teach beginners and experts alike how to create natural, safe products to replace synthetic chemicals and toxic ingredients found in many store brands. With a modest collection of essential oils and tools from around the kitchen, learn how to create cleaning scrubs, natural air fresheners and healthy body products. Neatly organized by room and purpose, these recipes give readers the power to replace unwanted chemicals with handmade, effective, aromatic products.

This beautiful aromatherapy recipes book offers everything a beginner needs to get started with simple aromatherapy for health and home. The book includes 60 easy recipes to help you create natural, safe and environmentally-friendly products for beauty and skin care, health, travel, emotional wellness and for cleaning and caring for every room in your home.

~ Build your collection. Learn what you need to build a basic essential oils kit for your home – including key essential oils and carriers.
~ Blending basics. Discover and practice basic blending techniques that you can perform in your own kitchen, at your own table.
~ A safe, non-toxic home. Find safe alternatives to toxic supermarket synthetic cleaners. Blend your own disinfectants, deodorizers, antifungals and scrubs for even your toughest cleaning problems.
~ Fresh, healthy skin. Keep your skin beautiful and chemical free, using gentle, safe and natural moisturizers, cleansers, scrubs, perfumes and lotions that you create yourself.
~ A healthier body. Stay healthy using simple, effective and natural preventative measures against common ailments like cold and flu.
~ Safe kids & pets. Blend safe products for your home and family that are free of synthetic chemicals, common allergens and abrasive chemicals.

Find out more about Essential Living: Aromatherapy for Health and Home
◦

Try this friend's e-book on aromatherapy

An Up-Close & Personal Q&A with Poetry Slam Founder Marc Kelly Smith

Marc Kelly Smith, founder of the original Uptown Poetry Slam in Chicago, recently answered some questions posed by Frugal Poet's Guide to Life. Starting in the summer of 1986, Marc has held the slam every Sunday night at the Green Mill Cocktail Lounge on Broadway near Lawrence. The slam concept has since gone international, with slam events held at venues around the world.

Over the years, Marc has graciously invited my husband Carlos Cumpian and me to be featured readers at the venue, most recently last month when I read from my new chapbook "Omnivore Odes: Poems About Food, Herbs and Spices." Marc himself even performed a couple of times at my place of work, making a sensation at our company's lunch-and-learn employee events.

Frugal Poet’s Guide to Life: Before you started the Uptown Poetry Slam at the Green Mill, you used to hold readings at the Get Me High Lounge in Chicago. What was the difference between readings at Get Me High and the Green Mill? What do you think was the key reason the Uptown Poetry Slam took off so spectacularly?

Marc Smith: Actually, once the Monday night show at the Get Me High took hold it had some spectacular nights itself. I started the Get Me High show in November 1984 and ran it like the old-style poetry readings for several months and got frustrated by the self-centered behavior of the poets participating. I quit doing it for a couple months in summer and fall of 1985 and then was pestered by Butchie the owner to start it up again in the winter.

When I restarted the Get Me High show in the winter of 1985/86 I did so with a new philosophy that the audience was the most important element of the show and that the poets should (and must) be in service to the audience. No poet was allowed to belabor the audience with self-centered blathering. Poets were allowed to read no more than two or three poems and if those poems sucked the audience was allowed to let them know how bad they were.

It was at this time that I also realized that performance was the key to the successful communication of a poem to an audience in a public setting. The art of performing had been ignored by poets in the later 20th century, indeed, it was a taboo to most poetry circles to dare to perform poems. I knew that there was no sound reasoning behind such a position and encourage (sometimes demanded) that the poet learn how to perform poems rather than just muttering them on stage.

Of course, there were some individuals in Chicago like David Hernandez and Mary Shen Barnidge who had been performing their poems for years. I sought them out and brought them to the Get Me High as featured guests and examples of what was coined “performance poetry.”

I do not claim to be the one who came up with the idea of performing poetry. Poetry as you know began as a performance art long before the human species scratch a written word into a clay slate. What I did do was to focus a new collective attention to the art of performing poetry and to announce to the world that it was as important an ingredient (performing) to effective communication of poetry to a public audience as the writing of the text is.

And despite all the criticism leveled at me from the old guard poetry establishments then and now I think I was right.

Frugal Poet’s Guide to Life: As a poet and worker in Chicago previous to the slam, did you everdream that life as an impresario might take front and center?

Marc Smith: Very few people believe me when I tell them that I’m for the most part a shy person. I learned how to be at ease on stage by struggling with stage fright and the demons of insecurity and low self-esteem. My success as a performance poet and impresario is a testimony to the fact that performing is an art form like any other that can be learned and mastered.

Frugal Poet’s Guide to Life: What role does drama and theater play in your life?

Marc Smith: I love the stage and the theater. I have had roles in a few stage productions and love the ritual nature of rehearsal and performing the same actions and lines over and over through the run of the play. The same, yet totally different every night. And for shy Marc (unlike nightclub performing) I get to disappear backstage after the performance and become almost anonymous to the public who just a few minutes before saw me (and applauded) in the footlights.

Now that I am a little more financially secure (and older) I would love to do more and more theater production. And if I stop being so lazy, maybe I will. ##
◦

An Up-Close & Personal Q&A with Poetry Slam Founder Marc Kelly Smith

Spiritual, Creative & Dream Journaling Retreat in November 2013

Save the weekend before Thanksgiving and take special time for yourself before the holidays. Head up to beautiful, peaceful central Wisconsin for my Spiritual, Creative and Dream Journaling Retreat at the Christine Center.

Spiritual, Creative and Dream Journaling Retreat
Three-day journal writing exploration
November 22-24, 2013
Christine Center
Facilitator: Cynthia Gallaher

Deepen your spirituality, better understand relationships, foster creativity and delve into your nightly dreams with more focus through journal writing. Over the course of this three-day retreat, leader Cynthia Gallaher will help you uncover the journaling method or methods that best suit your personality. You’ll take part in hands-on explorations of journal dialogs, Japanese haibun (journal entries that end in a short poem) and naikan gratitude journal methods, Leonardo Da Vinci-style notebooks, artists’ journals, modern dream journaling techniques and more.

This retreat provides a stimulating and non-judgmental atmosphere for both newer and long-time journal writers. By the end of the retreat, participants can experience more clear direction toward spiritual, creative and emotional renewal through journal writing, and be motivated to develop a regular journal writing practice. Tuition is on a sliding scale basis. Range is from $85-$125, plus meals and lodging.

Friday night, November 22, 7 p.m.-9 p.m.: Journal writing introduction, overview personality quiz and getting started.
Saturday morning, November 23, 9 a.m. to noon: Stepping Stones and Dialogues as the basis of modern journaling.
Saturday afternoon, 2 p.m. to 5 p.m.: Japanese techniques, artist and creative journals, and what would Leonardo da Vinci do?
Saturday evening, 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.: Dream journaling intensive -- plus, what do you do when life gives you synchronicities, serendipity, coincidences or confirmations?
Sunday morning, November 24, 9 a.m. to 11 a.m.: Final thoughts for future journaling.

Cynthia will also present a few PowerPoint presentations, provide handouts and display selected books on journal writing.

At the completion of this retreat, participants will be able to:
•Focus on the type of journal writing to fit his or her personality.
•Access their own list of numerous, personal journal writing topics and questions.
•Use journaling methods of Stepping Stones and Dialogues to address personal and creative issues.
•Understand and use the Japanese methods of haibun and naikan.
•Create a Leonardo da Vinci-style notebook, artist’s journal or other type of creative journal.
•Create an active, personal dream journal.
•Use journaling to explore and understand personal values, issues and memories.

The Christine Center is a natural sanctuary for spiritual deepening and global transformation near Willard, Wisconsin. It is situated in a tranquil forest setting with a guest house, small hermitages (cabins) and camping on 125 secluded acres. Besides the workshop programming, there are opportunities to take part in trail hiking, morning and evening guided and silent meditations, vegetarian meals, a wood-fired sauna and more.

Bio:
Retreat leader Cynthia Gallaher is a poet, playwright, nonfiction writer and journal writer. She leads journal writing workshops in libraries, schools, centers and spas throughout the Midwest, and teaches an online course on journal writing at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

◦

Spiritual, Creative & Dream Journaling Retreat in November 2013

Chicago tattoo artist & muralist addresses urban themes

The Taste of Chicago addresses the palates of visitors with delicious foods distinctly Chicago. In turn, what satisfies the hungry eye with the urban visual wonders, themes and issues of Chicago? A good place to start is at the studio of Camilo Cumpián, Chicago-based tattoo artist, muralist, creator of wooden miniatures and paintings of every size.

According to Cumpián, whose tattoo art measures from the smallest original icon placed on a woman’s delicate ankle to full scenes spanning the arms and chest of the burliest male, such work was influenced largely by the traditions of Chicano art from both the Southwest and Midwest. “I’ve made images that are all my own, put my own twists on subject matter and think of my tattoos as ‘new school’ Chicano art,” he said.

Cumpián also reworks and enhances tattoos on clients who have been unhappy or disappointed with ones they’ve received from other tattoo artists. “A number of clients have approached me with tattoos they’ve had done elsewhere that look muddy, out of proportion and without focus. Sometimes I can ‘repair’ them with more defined, dramatic emphasis and color. Other times, I can create something completely new around and through what was there before. I’m pleased that I can help out so many of these clients, who are thrilled with the transformations,” he said.

Born and schooled mainly in Chicago, Cumpián also spent many years out east, and is now back in his hometown, busy not only taking on clients for his tattoo art, but also creating paintings on urban themes with original characters, and three-dimensional wooden miniatures of spray cans, trains and boxcars wrapped with whimsical creatures.

Crayons2Cans is Cumpián’s signature handle and name of the website where you can enjoy slideshows of his tattoos, artwork and wooden miniatures portfolios. “The name Crayons2Cans comes from my life-long journey as an artist, starting as a child using crayons to a teen and then adult exploring wide-ranges of media and mastering skills in acrylics, mural paint, spray cans and ultimately tattoo inks.”

Visit Camilo Cumpián’s Crayons2Cans website to see his work first-hand. Tattoos at his private studio are available by appointment.
◦

Chicago tattoo artist & muralist addresses urban themes

Remembering Chicago poet David Hernandez

When I first saw David Hernandez and Street Sounds perform in the 1970s, I hadn’t yet graduated from college as an undergrad. I had only written a handful of “contemporary” poems in school in addition to some sappy love poems I kept trying to get published in Glamour magazine (at one time, this fashion mag actually published poetry – and fiction!). Up until then, poets such as Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman were pretty much my reading mainstay, though one of my mentor-like girlfriends had previously introduced me to Ginsberg’s “Howl” and Codrescu’s “License to Carry a Gun.”

Nothing had yet really hit me, or hipped me, to the notion that poetry was and could be more out-of-the-box than I’d imagined right here in Chicago until I went to a cultural extravaganza in what was then called the Midland Hotel on West Adams (now “W Chicago City Center”).

Someone or some group had transformed the hotel’s grand ballroom into an almost pitch black atmosphere. Here, they strung together nonexistent rooms or sections that each loosely housed a different genre – a two-sided film-screening room showed the latest in locally crafted short subject movies, a gallery of abstract and naïve and tribal-inspired paintings hung from temporary canvas banners, a bevy of women in multi-colored diaphanous outfits wound through the crowds performing modern dance movements to pan-pipe music, a collection of handcrafted books climbed the staircases, a magnificent array of mobiles suspended from the ceiling, a bar of headphones beckoned you listen to groundbreaking compositions by Chicago musicians. It was like a haunted house, but an enlightening instead of scary one. It was like a carnival, but full of earnest and eccentric art over cheap thrills.

Then, along the center wall, they fired up. The live band with horns and congas slowly drew every eye toward them as their Latino sound pierced the air like a pop-top then wrapped snake-like around the crowd’s previously distracted attention span. Then the guy in the straw fedora and sunglasses stood up. He was short and stocky like the Mayor Daley Sr. then in office. But this particular mayor was on a tropical vacation, complete with Hawaiian shirt and sandals. He had a few things of his own on his mind that he just had to get off his chest. And without reservation, he did, sparring with the air in front of him, shifting the paradigm of the room by the vibrato of his delivery. Each word was like a song, a truth, an invitation to agree with the urging of the easy-handed, smile-striking opinions of this powerful pontificator.

“Just who is that?” I asked my date. And surprisingly, my non-poet, photographer date knew. “That’s David Hernandez and his group Street Sounds,” he whispered to me as David piped on about pigeons and the Sun-Times and waking up. “They’re a poetry band and he’s the most popular poet in Chicago.”

A poetry band? There is such a thing as a poetry band? And before I could even question myself further, I was surrounded by the sights and sounds of these Street Sounds guys and another poem from this Chi-town Brown, this famous poet, this “unofficial poet laureate.” We stood spellbound until their set was through. I have no recollection what happened afterward that night. That night’s memory is frozen in that time and place and performance. My mind’s eye opened several f-stops during the experience. After seeing David Hernandez and Street Sounds that evening, I realized that you could do anything you wanted as a poet in Chicago...just as long as you were good. ##

David Hernandez passed away on February 25, 2013. My sincere condolences go out to his wife Batya, his daughter Matea, and his brother Eliud. ◦

Remembering Chicago poet David Hernandez

Punxsutawney Phil Groundhog Day Poem

Punxsutawney Phil
Seer of Seers, Sage of Sages, Weather Reporter Extraordinaire

Halfway between the dawn and sunset of winter,
it’s the high noon of the season.
Will old sol wear sunglasses today
and keep his rays of warmth and wisdom to himself,
or take Punxsy Phil by surprise?

Phil ascends with bleary eyes
from watching “Groundhog Day” over or over
again last night in his public library lair,
and looks as puzzled and ruffled haired as Bill Murray
as he pokes his head out of the tree stump, wondering,
“What did I get myself in the middle of?”

He stands on hind legs and raises his paws
you’d think he were Santa Claus the way the cameras flash,
causing artificial shadows of himself
to loom in every direction,
like a dozen enormous cut-outs of T-rex, vexed.

Halfway between Christmas and Easter,
between the solstice and equinox,
between a native ritual and a European tradition,
between a squirrel and a woodchuck,
Phil’s stuck,
here, with all these people.
He keeps looking over the crowd
for Andie MacDowell, but only faces strangers.

Then Phil sees the sun peeking out from behind
a billowy cumulus cloud,
and hears the sudden roar of the crowd,
because everyone finally notices his real shadow
is what’s on the ground,
and think he’s afraid when he looks where they’re looking,
then exits the other way back down the tree stump hole.

But he’s not scared at all,
just plain tired of all the fuss
and from staying up so groundhog, doggone late,
when any other rodent worth his fur
would know to hibernate.
##

~ Cynthia Gallaher ◦

Punxsutawney Phil Groundhog Day Poem

Omnivore Odes: Poems About Food, Herbs and Spices

Cynthia Gallaher’s chapbook Omnivore Odes: Poems About Food, Herbs and Spices brings together poetry, foodie fantasy and herbal healing into one collection.

After some glorious hours of kitchen testing at the Culinary Suite of the Writers Colony at Dairy Hollow in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, a workshop at the Culinary Institute of New England in Vermont, and time spent cultivating organic fruits and vegetables at Lisa Fishman’s Poetry Farm in Wisconsin, I wrote Omnivore Odes to celebrate superfoods and wonder herbs in our era of otherwise fast food and depleted nutrients.

The poems span foods from carrots to tempeh, herbs from black cohosh to turmeric, and spices from cayenne to cinnamon.

Cinnamon: The First Shall Be Last, and Last First

Cinnamon radiates like sun-warmed brick
in Sri Lankan woods,
where bark curls into little scrolls
where the world writes childhood memories.

Its beguiling fragrance
beckons grown-up customers into shops,
quickly sells market-listed houses
as heated ovens exude its allure.

Cinnamon, once the spice
that launched a thousand ships,
its coppery payload, darling hostage
of world trade and exploration.

To those from India, cinnamon
tastes like curry,
to Cincinnatians, chili,
to Mexicans, café canela,

But to most western tongues
its dozens of dessert appearances
seem to form their own
12 days of cinnamon Christmas.

Between sweet homemade apple pie,
crock-pot mulled cider and
oversized rolls sold in airports,
it’s the all things nice part about

This spice,
an insulin stand-in
to lower
blood sugar levels.

Did we not notice until now
its covert worth behind kitchen cabinets,
when it dropped its rolled-up-in-a-rug disguise,
to reveal its power to metabolize.

~ Cynthia Gallaher

Omnivore Odes: Poems About Food, Herbs and Spicescan be ordered through Finishing Line Press. It also makes a unique gift for your poetry-loving, foodie or natural healer friends.

Order Omnivore Odes

Here are a few comments on Omnivore Odes from authors I admire:

“What fun! In Omnivore Odes, Cynthia Gallaher uses wit and deft language to sing the music of the kitchen larder. Gallaher’s whimsy wanders from Popeye landlocked in the Texas spinach capital of the world to peanuts, ‘like the elephant, what many of us work for.’ In her gifted hands, the foods and spices of everyday life undergo transformation into fairy tales and new mythologies.”
~ Linda Rodriguez, author of Every Last Secret (St. Martin’s Press), Heart’s Migration (Tia Chucha Press) and The “I Don’t Know How to Cook” Book – Mexican (Adams Media)

“Cynthia Gallaher weaves threads of science with seeds of the sacred. The result – a walk along a path that informs with delight. Certainly the best herbal poetry since Shakespeare.”
~Steven Foster, senior author of National Geographic’s A Desk Reference of Nature’s Medicine and Peterson’s A Field Guide to Medicinal Plants and Herbs

“Omnivore Odes by Cynthia Gallaher is now one of my favorite books of poetry -- giving voice to food, herbs and spices. The poems are so well-crafted she succeeds in making them simple, and in that simplicity lies richness. She paints with words -- and the paintings she leaves are vivid and bright. Especially inspired by the line in the poem ‘Black Cohosh Cool’ – ‘That a certain age can’t be played in a minor note.’ Her poems make me hungry for such wisdom.”
~ David Hernandez, the “unofficial” poet laureate of Chicago and founder of “Street Sounds” poetry musical performance ensemble

Cynthia Gallaher, a Chicago-based poet and writer, is author of three full poetry collections and a writing workshop leader. She is on the Chicago Public Library’s list of “Top Ten Requested Chicago Poets” and named one of “100 Women Making a Difference” by Today’s Chicago Woman Magazine. She tweets about food and poetry at http://twitter.com/swimmerpoet. ◦

Omnivore Odes: Poems About Food, Herbs and Spices

Writer’s solitude tucked into Wyoming’s northeast corner at Ucross Foundation

Alternate 14
offers new levels
of steepness

Wyoming,
home to 10,000
microclimates

The above are two haiku I wrote on the road to Ucross, Wyoming, while traveling east over the Big Horn Mountains. My husband Carlos, friend Raul and I happened to be on our way back to Chicago from a visit to Montana and Yellowstone National Park. The Ucross Foundation Residency Program is one of the premier writers' and artists' retreats in the United States and I had hoped to stop by to visit since we'd be right in the area.

We had taken Alternate 14, which appeared as a shortcut to the city of Sheridan on the map, but turned out to be one of the steepest climbs imaginable through switchbacks and around harrowing ledges, however breathtaking, which eventually landed us in the uplands, grasslands and former Lakota bison hunting grounds on which the Ucross Foundation now occupies.

This gently rolling expanse, 27 miles southeast of Sheridan, was once on an old stagecoach route and former home to the Pratt & Ferris Cattle Company, circa 1880s, of which Marshall Field (of Chicago department store fame) was a founding partner. Today, the town of Ucross (population 25) and the Big Red complex of the Ucross Foundation is surrounded by a 22,000-acre working cattle ranch, devoted to ecologically sound, holistic ranching practices. Half the land has been placed as conservation easement through the Wyoming Chapter of The Nature Conservancy.

It had been a toss-up between our visiting Devil’s Tower and the Ucross Foundation, since our trio only had time for one. I had already seen Devil’s Tower as a child, and my two traveling companions weren’t too keen on making a sidetrip to a sacred Indian landform given up to the name of a western demon, in their words, so Ucross it was. Hooray! I had wanted to get a better handle on what this colony was about for years. The three of us called ahead while in Sheridan to find out if we could stop by for a visit.

A half-hour or so later, we pulled up to the Big Red Ranch House, one of the oldest standing houses in the area, beautifully refurbished and home to the Ucross Foundation administrative offices and Alkire Library. Sharon Dynak, president of the Ucross Foundation and head of its Residency Program, greeted us in the lobby, chatted with us about the program and our trip, then walked us over to the adjacent Big Red Barn. This sizable building houses an art gallery of residents work, a conference space and other offices. Visual art styles range from traditional western themes to highly experimental forms – an exhibition catalog spanning former residents' work is available onsite.

According to Dynak, the foundation’s residency program which hosts 65 writer and artist residents each year has been especially popular with musicians and musical groups. Besides the artists’ and writers’ studios and separate living quarters, are a separate studio with a lithography press, and two composers' cabins, Jesse’s Hideout One and Two, each equipped with a piano and electronic keyboard.

Spring and fall session residents are chosen by a panel of professionals in the arts and humanities in a highly competitive application process. Former well-known residents include Elizabeth Gilbert, author of “Eat, Pray, Love” and Adam Guettel, composer of music and lyrics for "The Light in the Piazza" musical. Residents have gone on to win the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the Tony Award, the Guggenheim Fellowship, the MacArthur Fellowship, and many other honors. Gulp. Not sure if I’m ready to forward my latest chapbook published by a teeny, tiny press as my application documentation.

While Ucross is truly out there on a far-flung ranch, there is nothing rustic about it. The grounds, common buildings and studios are all first-rate and recently updated. The frugal end of the deal is that accepted residents can receive two to eight weeks of living accommodations, workspace, and lunch and dinner prepared five days a week by a professional chef with ample provisions on hand for the weekends – all on Ucross Foundation’s dime. The only financial incidental one has to be concerned with is getting to and from Ucross, Wyoming, from wherever is called home.

And you don’t need a car once you get there. There is absolutely nowhere to go within double-digit miles and everything you need to create poems, novels, paintings, plays and compositions lies right before you – giving you tremendous solitude and little distraction besides the local hiking you might attempt and a big sky full of stars to ponder by night. Note: You are not in the mountains here, but can see them in the distance. Find out more about the Ucross Foundation Residency Program, 30 Big Red Lane, Clearmont, Wyoming, at www.ucrossfoundation.org.

◦

Writer’s solitude tucked into Wyoming’s northeast corner at Ucross Foundation

Use wabi-sabi in your journal entries

Wabi-sabi, the quintessential Japanese aesthetic, can be applied to journaling and is, in fact, an integral part of true journaling, whether we realize it or not. Wabi-sabi is the beauty of things imperfect, impermanent and incomplete. It is a beauty of things modest, humble and unconventional.

Published writing is usually rewritten, edited and polished writing, set in symmetrical fonts and printed in uniform order and quality.

Journaling, most often, is composed of our raw thoughts or emotions, scribbled down in an unsteady hand on a commuter train or a dimly-lit kitchen. Perhaps the pages are occasionally smudged with ink or stained by drops of coffee. Entries may be heartfelt and passionate, but can simultaneously be random, incomplete, unconventional and bold, without need to please an audience.

In the long run, the journaling process may add up to a complete picture or an epiphany of revelation, but tracing any single journal's pages, one-by -one, can render a modest journey, the humbleness of following a foggy path with no promise of reaching a clearing.

Most distilled, the Wabi-Sabi of journaling embraces a sense of faith -- in yourself, in life, and in the promise of a future. ◦

Use wabi-sabi in your journal entries

Autumn Equinox Fire Ceremony

Fire has its own life, it transforms everything, it is never static. Fire sustains us, warms us, cooks our food, keep us through cold nights. Fire nurtures us but can also bring death. Fire destroys, burns legacies, ravages forests, but allows new undergrowth to spring forth like a phoenix from ashes.

On the first night of the fall equinox, my husband, two friends amd I attended a fire ceremony in a Chicago suburban backyard. We were here to take a look at ourselves, at the new season and to possibly change and heal ourselves. Would gazing into an outdoor campfire of crackling logs set us on that path?

Some drawbacks: there were too many people in the backyard, too many lawn chairs huddled together, with the warmth of the campfire too far away on a night that dove into the 40s. Nevertheless, after some initial discomfort and disappointment, I chose to ignore these inconveniences. Being here with like-minded people who wanted to use fire as a meditative focus was all that mattered.

The leader started the ceremony. She talked about fire, about rituals, about Native tribes and had each of us, in rotation, throw a small tobacco offering into the flames. It was in thanks for the earth on which the fire stood. It was in thanks for trees and air which feed the fire. She explained how the ceremony would serve to help us release what no longer serves us, such as fear, and set intentions for what we wish to manifest, such as a fervent dream of ours.

Subsequently, we each privately examined that which we most feared. During this fear meditation time, the leader drummed on a bohdran-type handheld drum. Afterward, we each cast a sprig of cedar into the criss-crossed flaming logs. This served as a symbol through which we might banish the fear we identified. In response, the fire rose up briefly in acknowledgement each time. Afterward, we internally cast our thoughts into our dreams and wishes - again more drumming. Then we each tossed a small amount of sage into the fire.

After each segment of the ceremony, two or three of us teamed together to share our thoughts, our fears, our dreams and what we saw through our meditations. I had fulfilling private visions, a mind's-eye visitation of a bluejay, and creative ideas that seem to emerge from nowhere. What blessings!

To me, the fire, tobacco, cedar and sage are all instruments of God and are servants of God. Going through an autumn fire ceremony is a human way to ritualize new beginnings and take a meditative look at what we hope for our futures.

My friend Raminta, though of few words in between the ceremony segments, said she got much from the event. She had arrived on the scene with her mind awhirl, she said, but over the course of the ceremony found peace, relief and relaxation. She looked refreshed with her eyes dancing with new life! ◦

Autumn Equinox Fire Ceremony

What is wabi-sabi? How is it continually and intimately expressed in the life of a frugal poet?

One of the most refined, thoughtful and poetic societies, Japan, has gone through unfathomable disasters in recent history, such as the profound earthquake, tsunami and nuclear catastrophe at Fukushima. Nevertheless, the Japanese people continue to push forward in quiet strength, dedicated to and motivated by their culture, history, sense of humility and connection with one another.

Wabi-sabi is a philosophy based in Japan that embraces a sense of flawed beauty, the profundity in nature, and of things impermanent, humble, primitive, transient and incomplete. It celebrates the modest, rustic and unconventional. It is the organic versus synthetic, the rough-hewn and uneven over the measured and laser-edged. Loosely explained, wabi means a philosophy of imperfect, natural beauty and sabi means the artistic expression of what’s assymetrical, aged or unpretentious.

Daisetz Suzuki, one of the first scholars to interpret Japanese culture for Westerners, considered wabi-sabi “an active aesthetical appreciation of poverty.” Rather than a poverty of pain and a sense of desperation, it instead gives the relief of removing the weight of material concerns from our lives.

Wabi-sabi suggests the notions that nothing lasts, nothing is finished, nothing is perfect. The Persians are known for a proverb about the true beauty of rugs, a wabi-sabi attitude reflected in a different culture, “A Persian rug is perfectly imperfect, and precisely imprecise.”

Remarkably, wabi-sabi has everything to do with the spirit of the frugal poet. We exist. We go with the flow. We focus on the beautiful. We have strength in light of hardship or snags in our lives. And our poems reflect this attitude. The concept of wabi-sabi reminds me of the lyrics in Leonard Cohen’s song “Anthem,” “Ring the bells that still can ring/Forget your perfect offering/There’s a crack in everything/That’s how the light gets in.”

It is the poets and those with a frugal poet’s spirit who can see both implicit meaning and opportunity in any situation, and can find voice, or at least search for it, to express compassion and humanity even amid injustice or when in mourning.

I had signed up for a multi-evening workshop in the craft of handmade bookbinding at Chicago’s Hull House. Our upper floor studio itself was a wabi-sabi space of lovingly worn benches, nicked but well-used work surfaces and natural lighting pouring in from screenless windows. We used hand-crafted papers, linen thread, monster-sized needles, scads of glue, bone folders, thick pieces of cardboard and stiff oilcloth in an array of colors. There, we crafted and sewed a number of hardcover blank books, Japanese side-stitched bindings and cloth-covered boxes.

I admired a fellow student’s finished handmade book, even though the pages were uneven and had a naturalistic waviness to them. “The only thing perfect is God. I try to remember that in everything I do,” she said. “I am imperfect and every act of creation carries human imperfection along with it.” But therein lay the beauty of her handmade book!

Flawed fictional characters, for example, are more interesting, textured, memorable and beautiful than perfect, static ones. What would Cyrano de Bergerac be without his big nose, The Little Match Girl without her poverty, or even Star Trek’s Mr. Spock without his lack of emotions? ◦

What is wabi-sabi? How is it continually and intimately expressed in the life of a frugal poet?

Japanese haibun method: mixing journal entry with a haiku

A haibun is a Japanese form of journaling involving a journal entry followed by a haiku poem. The haiku serves as a distillation, an associated thought or an epiphany to the actual journal entry. The Japanese poet Basho and the beat poet Jack Kerouac worked in the haibun form.

Remember, the classic haiku poem is 5-7-5 -- meaning three lines of poetry; five syllables in the first line, seven syllables in the second line and five syllables in the third line. However, in English language haiku, these rules are flexible.

◦

Japanese haibun method: mixing journal entry with a haiku

Frugal Poet’s Guide to Montana-based Hot Springs Spas, Part 3

Most pools at Bozeman Hot Springs are indoors

After having bathed in some of the remarkable outdoor Montana hot springs locations, I was a little disappointed that all except one of the nine Bozeman Hot Springs pools were indoors. I suppose in the dead of winter this would be the ideal.

However, nearly all the pools are butt up to one another making this main indoor poll area humid and crowded. You either have to walk along narrow tile catwalks balance-beam style to get to the inner hot pools - or pull yourself up and over from one to another. The hottest pool has exposed hot faucets and pipes which burn to the touch. Be careful! Only one hot pool really smelled like authentic sulfuric mineral waters and I shifted between that one and the cold plunge. Best feature are the very roomy sauna and steam rooms. They are both excellent!

Bozeman Hot Springs is located about eight miles west of the city on U.S. 191. Entry fee is a humble $8.50. According to the spa founder, "the water resembles in its chemical composition the water of Carlsbad in Europe."

Thermopolis, anyone?
After we headed farther south to Yellowstone National Park. While waiting for Old Faithful to blow, my husband, friend Raul and I got into a conversation with an adventurous fellow who had traveling throughout the Rocky Mountain area for four months. We told him about our hot springs visits up in Montana and he suggested Thermopolis, Wyoming, which is another haven of hot springs bathing he had personally enjoyed. Guess it will have to wait until our next trip out west, but I’m intrigued by the town name and locale. Anyone out there have any experience to share about Thermopolis, or the Montana hot springs?
◦

Frugal Poet’s Guide to Montana-based Hot Springs Spas, Part 3

Frugal Poet’s Guide to Montana-based Hot Springs Spas, Part 2

Unique motel package deal in Plains let us enjoy Quinn's hot springs in Paradise, Montana
During a visit to the area, a local Montana friend had booked my husband and I at the Glacier Crossroads Motel in Plains, Montana, eight miles north of Quinn's Hot Springs Resort. It was a humble, clean, if spartan motel room, but priced at $60 a night, a value. The big perc was receiving a pass for two to Quinn's Hot Springs pools for each night we stayed at the Glacier Crossroads!

Since the hot springs admission is $10 a person, our passes were worth an extra $20 per day. After our two-day stay at Glacier Crossroads, we used the passes to admit the two of us as well as our two friends to the Quinn's pools. The changing area was clean and nicely decorated.

When we arrived, the sun was just setting and the stars began to poke out one-by-one and dot the sky as we bathed in the rich, sulfuric mineral pools. Pools are open late. I alternated between the hottest pool and the cold plunge right next to it. What a way to relax, feel fabulous and spend time with friends. The cabins situated around the resort look top-rate and, if one has the budget, any one of them would be a wonderful place to stay.

But I think our motel package deal was an excellent way to both enjoy the pools and save on accommodations.
◦

Frugal Poet’s Guide to Montana-based Hot Springs Spas, Part 2

Frugal Poet’s Guide to Montana-based Hot Springs Spas, Part 1

Symes might offer the hottest, most mineral-rich hot springs in Montana, if not North America
A local Montana gal friend introduced my husband, another friend and myself, three poets from Chicago out on the western trials, to the wonders of the Symes Hot Springs Hotel in Hot Springs, Montana. The unincorporated town proper is one of the funkiest, most laid-back corners of the state, with a natural food grocery, a Zen cafe and lots of former hippy types casually milling around in western laid-back style. We didn't stay at the hotel itself, but paid a mere $7 each to loll for hours in the artesian mineral bath outdoor pools. Meanwhile, dramatic 4,000-foot mountains served as breathtaking background, part of the Flathead Indian Reservation.

Balneotherapy or "taking the waters"
Deep beneath Hot Springs, Montana, lies hot mineral water springs heated by thermal pockets and warmth of the bedrock. At Symes, the hottest (108-degrees?) and most sulfuric-rich pool is absolutely amazing! Our Montana friend told us the waters are only second to Baden-Baden in Germany for rich mineral content. I couldn't find any such claim later online. But maybe she's right!

Our other friend, who has a slight case of arthritis in his hands and lower back, found relief over the next three days after bathing in the sulfuric waters. He mentioned that he hoped to bring his 78-year-old mother up there sometime for her arthritis woes. However, I would imagine the extra-hot waters far too intense for someone in their upper years. But the four of us did feel wonderfully loose and relaxed after lolling in the pools for a couple of hours. It was almost dreamlike!

The Symes Hotel itself is a throwback to the 1930s, when it first opened. Not too much renovation seems to have been made, but the art deco facade is striking. Randomly weird gift shops inside. Off the first floor lobby, a long hallway leads to private, clawfoot bathtub rentable spa rooms. Here is where folks can bathe in mineral waters au natural and adjust the temperature to their liking. These bathtub rooms of barebones, dated design -- kind of remind me of little hallway rooms a house of prostitution might have in a town like Bangkok (not that I would know) -- or as portrayed in that 1980s Albert Finney movie "Under the Volcano." One room even had a thick red rope that looked like a noose hanging from the ceiling. Yikers!

Then, at the end of the hall lies a private whirlpool and sauna spa room, which can also be rented. Poor room ventilation and cramped quarters, however, made it a turn-off and we didn't opt for it. The women's changing room and shower was nice, however.

Looked at another local motel called Alameda's that offers mineral hot springs in its own motel bathrooms and that seems like it might be a good choice for those who prefer the indoor, individual bathtub experience vs.the little rentable bathtub rooms at Symes.
◦

Frugal Poet’s Guide to Montana-based Hot Springs Spas, Part 1

Frugal Poet's Guide to Planting Copies of Your Book During Your Travels

If you are a published poet, I think the most important items to bring along on any out-of-town trip or vacation, but which also might weigh the most, are copies of your book or chapbook. When you visit new cities or towns, these destinations have bookstores that haven’t seen your work.

After you introduce yourself, the bookstore owner or manager may buy a couple copies from you outright or take some on consignment. If the bookstores take them on consignment, face the possibility you may never see any money sent cross-country from their sale. Be humble. Just be content that your books have found an additional home where you can send interested parties you meet along the way. Also, different cities may have open mics where you can read your poems and sell your books to audience members who like your work. Or you might meet other writers who simply want to exchange your book of poetry for theirs. It’s a great way for you to expand your poetry tastes and personalize your experiences out of town.

You might also want to donate a copy of your book to the local library of the place you’re visiting. Introduce yourself to the librarian. Tell him or her why you’re in town, and personally hand off a copy of your book for their circulation shelves. You never know who might pick up your book and read it. One of my books “Swimmer’s Prayer” had found itself in one of the Los Angeles libraries. Turns out the poet Charles Harper Webb actually picked up, perused and checked out the book from the library. Before long, he wrote telling me he’d like to republish my poem “Deb at the Ham Slicer” in an anthology he was editing for the University of Iowa Press called Stand-Up Poetry: An Expanded Anthology. Suddenly, I was being published in the same anthology as Billy Collins and Charles Bukowski!

See what I mean about using a book or chapbook as a calling card? The point is to bring your books along on your travels, but to lighten your load along the way. Force yourself to sell or give away every single book so you have none left by the time you wind your way home. You might become a Johnny Appleseed of sorts, but of poetry. Instead of planting apple seeds (and future trees) where ever you wander as Johnny Appleseed did, you will instead plant your poems along your traveled path. If they take seed, you will grow new readers, audiences, and possible future readings and publishing opportunities.

And if you don’t yet have a book or chapbook, then simply use a calling card. A business card that you either craft yourself from a template and print on a laser printer, or purchase from one of the “free’ services online that only charges postage is the “poor poet” way to go. The card should contain at least one url link: to your website, blog or other electronic page where one or more of your poems appear. It could provide a link to the purchase of your poetry e-book version, if you have it available for Kindle or Nook. Hand out this card to interested parties and/or fellow poets you meet in your travels who would want to read your poems. It’s also a way to make new Facebook friends and build correspondences with those who share your interests from other parts of the country, or world.
◦

Frugal Poet's Guide to Planting Copies of Your Book During Your Travels

A creative, spiritual escape in central Wisconsin: The Christine Center

Living in Chicago and in the 21st century, I sometimes think it's impossible to get away from it all in the traditional sense. At The Christine Center in central Wisconsin, I found out it is 100 percent possible. Close to a state forest, this spiritual retreat center is buffeted by birch woodlands, clean air and quiet.

Over the course of an inspiring "creativity week," I tried the Intuitive Painting process, walked, meditated, wrote poetry, took time for my journal, chanted, ate vegetarian meals, perused the eclectic spiritual library, watched DVDs with others on ecology and the artistic process, tried a wood-fired sauna for the first time and logged some quality group yoga hours.

Founded in the mystical, Essene, Catholic tradition, the Christine Center welcomes guests from any belief system, with silent meditation morning and afternoon sessions in which participants can worship or visualize according to their leanings. Where else can you find a Catholic chapel with stained glass windows marking the colors of the seven chakras? Singing bowls, finger labyrinths and mandalas grace the walls and meditation hall.

I opted to stay in a modern hermitage with full kitchen and shower, cooked my own breakfasts and lunches and joined others for delicious homemade soup and salad suppers at the center. Rustic hermitages have no kitchens or showers, but all buffets meals can be purchased, with solar-powered showers available steps from one's quarters.

Campers have a choice of two locations on safe, clean acreage close to the center and also have access to meal purchases and showers. A return trip to The Christine Center is surely part of my plan. ◦

A creative, spiritual escape in central Wisconsin: The Christine Center

Vitamin B6 May Help You Remember Your Dreams

After waking, if the memory of your previous night's dreams dissolves as quickly as the sugar in your morning coffee, you may want to add Vitamin B6 to your diet. In a blind test, participants who were given 250 milligrams of Vitamin B6 had more vivid, bizarre, colorful and emotional dreams than participants who took lower doses of the vitamin or none at all.

While it can be argued that most dreams are bizarre, colorful and emotional, it may be the vividness quality that fosters the memorability of the dreams.

The theory is that Vitamin B6 helps convert the amino acid tryptophan into serotonin, which wakes up the brain during REM sleep, the time when someone is dreaming, thus enhancing dream recall.

According to dream expert Robert Moss, bananas are an excellent source of Vitamin B6. One of his dream workshop students claimed to have remembered his dreams for the first time in months after eating a banana before bedtime.

Training yourself to remember your dreams is the first step toward keeping a dream journal. Likewise, dream journaling also helps you get in the mindset of remembering your dreams. ## ◦

Vitamin B6 May Help You Remember Your Dreams

Poor Poet's Guide to Being a Performance Poet

Technorati Profile
The Uptown Poetry Slam started in Chicago at the Green Mill Jazz Club, circa 1986, and soon became an international phenomenon, thanks to impresario Marc Kelly Smith. So anyone from this town who has anything to do with poetry does, or has done, performance poetry on stage. We need to set an example around here!

Otherwise, you might as well be some suburbanite sitting in a basement by yourself with a stack of envelopes and postage stamps, nursing a plastic tumbler of boxed wine.

Performing poetry doesn't mean just giving a poetry reading. It means breaking the fourth wall and leaping into the crowd with your poetry, if only figuratively.

How do you "perform" poetry or get into the "perfpo" scene? I started in church. Praying helps. But I also volunteered as a commentator and got lots of practice in front of my audience, i.e. the congregation, by presenting field-tested material, i.e. biblical passages.

Simultaneously, I also volunteered to read at least one of my own poems at every open mic reading I attended, which at one time, were legion.

I also took voice and breathing lessons at St. Nicholas Theater Company, in between serving as a volunteer there as well, though you may find this unnecessary.

Memorize at least one of your poems. A performance has to mean you lose the page. Once you get past dwelling on the words, you can move on to your oral and dramatic interpretation. The poem is then released from the mind to the body. The words go on automatic pilot and the actor or actress takes over to transform and deliver the words to the audience emotionally.

I eventually memorized 10 or more of my own poems and actually created a charm bracelet of these poems. My bracelet comprised silver charms I bought on ebay, each one symbolizing an important feature in a given poem, whether it be a sardine can, mermaid, owl, etc., which I attached to a slim bracelet, also purchased on ebay. I wore the bracelet to performances to remind myself on stage which poems I might care to perform, without the need to riffle through pages of a book or peek at an odd index card in case I went completely blank.

But the biggest breakthrough I experienced as a performance poet was to study different accents (there are CDs at the local library) and apply them to a couple of my poems. I read one poem set in Ireland with a Dublin accent. Hearing Frank McCourt read the entirety of "Angela's Ashes" on audio also helped me master some of the subtleties. For another poem, set in the south, I ply a Carolina accent. When I perform these poems, in particular, I really get outside of myself and feel as if I enter the world of the poem, in the purest and most complete sense. ◦

Poor Poet's Guide to Being a Performance Poet