Tangled Roots Writing

Newest workshop for 2012: I Have A First Draft: Shaping and Feedback

2011-12-23T18:52:00.000-08:00

Did you participate in NanoWriMo? Do you have a book project or longer writing project or short story that could use some motivating guidance?

The writer John Cheever said "I can't write without a reader. It's like a kiss - you can't do it alone."

A three part workshop series over three months. Develop your first draft into a refined piece through monthly feedback in a small dedicated group of writers while learning techniques for structuring and revising your book as well as tips on publishing. $135. Call for more info!

10 - 1:30 pm
1/22, 2/5, and 3/11

Moonshine Ink reviews Tangled Roots Writing Workshops

2011-12-03T19:02:00.000-08:00

Read the article here

Truckee’s International Peace Day Celebration: Collaborative Peace Poem Project

2011-10-04T20:31:00.000-07:00

In celebration of International Peace Day on Sept. 21st, For Goodness Sake hosted a Peace Day in the Regional Park. At my table for Tangled Roots Writing I collected a few words about Peace from many many people. Here is the collaborative poem that grew from those words:

Inhale, Hold, Exhale

Commune with the trees

outside the window, birds

that stare from their branches,

the homeless man

that sleeps in a doorway.

Silence the thoughts

of dishes with your name on them,

finding a daycare provider,

all the other "ands."

Listen to the sound of a pendulum clock.

Still water, cool and fresh,

mountain lakes, warm salty ocean, waves lapping,

crashing. Sunday afternoon

at your grandmother's house, the whisper

of golf.

Respect

tangled roots, iridescent wings, movement

from here to now. Peace

is an unknown entity.

Rain,

a warm breeze

blows through the aspens,

snow floats on a cold winter night,

a blanket of green

encircles the earth, a piece of me.

Watch children play,

a river flow

and a garden thrive, a silent

cliffside trail, a summit

in mind.

Sit on grandmother’s porch, listen

to the rain fall.

Peace is freedom

from worry.

Begin within, pour outwards -

belong in this world.

Peace is a purple New Jersey!

Peace means happy.

Learn –

the mountain looks blue today.

Explore the possibilities:

compassion

for your fellow earthling

that tailgates,

for yourself when you swear at him.

Soften,

creature of intention.

Forgive love:

wise and unconditional and blind,

the passion of dolphins, open

and hearted, full of mind.

If you want peace, a piece of me,

work for justice, feed the hungry.

Love.

Play.

Listen to the call within.

Connect with the earth’s crust,

the vibrant colors of rock and tree,

around and around. No fear within,

surrounded by surprise.

Peace is not

an absence of war

but instead

an absence of strangers.

Can you hear me?

When the compassionate

heart wins over the mind

and you love what is before you,

maybe the peace in you

will help the children get along,

help the world have peace,

a harmony with hands holding each other up,

singing and serenity

throughout the whole universe.

Peace is a deep breath.

Newest workshop offering is for Teens preparing College Application essays

2011-07-26T21:04:00.000-07:00

“These College Essays Are Driving Me Crazy”

Workshop for Teens

Join this fun and creative group for help developing your college application essays. Find the heart and voice of your writing.

^{Call for more information.}

Collaborative Poem Project at Truckee Thursday 6/16

2011-06-28T20:50:00.000-07:00

At the first Truckee Thursday of the summer, I set up a booth for Tangled Roots Writing and asked anyone willing to try for a few words in response to a quote by Jane Hirshfield's quote "Journey far enough into the terrain of language, it seems, and the heart will begin to speak."

So many people responded that their index cards covered my bulletin board three cards deep. Using only their words and phrases, I composed this collaborative poem - I hope you enjoy reading poetry that can only exist through the collaborative efforts of many many Truckee people.

Begin to Speak: a collaborative poem from Truckee Thursday 6/16

Heart pointed to the moon, a friend living close by –
far is far from how far?
When he began to speak
(the first word I understood)
he was emphatic;
a roughness implied, or uncertainty,
perhaps not his first word.
If you are still and can be silent you may start to hear
the words you have been longing.
Scream.
Heart will begin to speak, above ground and below,
places we aren’t familiar with but must cross through.
Lost souls, our purpose, heartreason.

On the other side of any journey
I want to be
waiting for the next step,
filled so big with so much. Every time
I hear of a trip taken far away
I enjoy my town more and more.
How far is far away?
Begin to speak
of the mind where the heart leads;
environment to lose yourself, a road trip
or a relationship. On the other side of the journey
I will be a baby. I am going to persevere
and love. Today is my day.

He rolled the word around
in his mouth, riding on it.
Get back on
into the language within us.
Write mindlessly. Eat another muscateer.
Rise from the wild,
a phoenix.
Journey well
deep and sound, under a tunnel
ride the escalator.
When he knew that I knew what he said he almost cried.

One-on-One Writing Project Coaching

2011-05-15T10:12:00.000-07:00

In addition to the writing workshops, I offer one-on-one coaching for writing and book projects. I can help with concept and craft, form and structure, as well as project planning and deadlines. Currently I am working with several writers and the coaching is tailored to each individual project; some writers work remotely and others meet with me weekly or monthly. Email me at tangledrootswriting at gmail dot com if you are interested in discussing whether coaching would help your project.

30 poems in 30 days success!

2011-05-10T21:48:00.000-07:00

In November I committed to write 30 poems in 30 days of November to raise money for Center For New Americans, an organization in Western Mass. that helps families with literacy and work training. How often can poetry be so directly connected to outreach?

Along with many other poets, we raised over $20,000 dollars for the Center for New Americans - thank you everyone who donated!

From 30 poems in 30 days

2011-01-24T12:13:00.000-08:00

Undercurrent
For Kathleen

If we ever sat on a rock on the coast of Maine
it would be dinnertime -
sunset staining the slate water, waves slapping
the blue painted keels of boats anchored nearby.

Gulls would check us out for sandwich scraps.
Red combed mergansers
would sail past, moving without moving.
We’d chip quartz crystals from veins in the granite
with dirty fingernails, veins darkened red and brown
but the chips milky white,
tiny shards of moon in your hand.
You want to collect a good one for Joe,
talk of places you imagined in your sleep.
You say we have to remember this place.

I memorize your silhouette with
ocean between forested islands beyond,
currents we can’t see making passage uncertain.

The sun has set, dinner is ready -
we’ve missed the laughter in the house.
Alone outside, ducks retreat to safe places, tuck heads beneath wings,
boats bob in silence, the moon casts our shadows
across seaweedy sand, a breeze cuts my neck,
the lobsters are red, their screams
are finished, the butter is melted.

Tomorrow you’ll chase me from dock
to dock as I jump
into the ferry wake after Joe, him yelling
Let’s do it again! Jump
Jump!

In the middle of the night steady rain will fall
on the old roof and the bent apple tree
and the quilt of green
where the baby practiced walking
(something significant that we forget ourselves)
hard rain dappling the flat ocean
while underneath, current cuts
deep channels deeper
as your mind grows deeper –

I wonder
what’s out there
between our island and the mainland.
A minke whale bends,
someone will see it in early morning
like a mirage of night sky.

But tonight we listen to the calming,
grass stems spider webs everything pressed
down, air glistening,
moonlight striated across the heavy ocean like milky crystal.

Aug 4-5: Train back to Prague

2009-08-23T13:14:00.000-07:00

rI sat in the dining car with a beer, Gambrino, writing in my journal and reading as the rural rolling Czech Republic flew past the broad line of windows. I read Too loud a solitude by Bohumil Hrabal. I thought about the turning point in growing up at which one realizes it’s not about oneself anymore. It is our responsibility not to be ignorant. Back in Prague for 18 hours, I felt like a local walking the bridge across the river one last time as the sun set. My last morning in Prague I spent looking for the gifts I wanted to buy for John, my family. Then I took a taxi to the airport. While traveling, I needed to create my sense of home wherever I was, even if it's boundaries extended only to the edges of my body. After traveling for two months, I couldn't wait to get back to the place I belong.

Aug 3: Auschwitz

2009-08-23T12:46:00.000-07:00

Rooms of eyeglasses, black metal twisted like filament, round lenses crushed. Piles of hairbrushes, shaving brushes, toothbrushes. Children’s shoes, boots, crushed leather, laces removed. Men’s shoes, women’s shoes. Chewing tobacco tins. It’s all about sorting. I’m sick to my stomach on the bus ride back to Krakow. On the bus a group of people are sorting their Ipod music, counting their gigabites. Another woman is removing film canisters, labeling them, Auschwitz. I notice that we count and sort in times of stress. How can our bodies survive for so long before giving in? Who would have imagined standing cells? At the foot is a small door to crawl through. The cell is 1 x 1 meter large, with a tiny bent ventilation hole at head level. Four men would stand in this cell all night, then go to work in the morning, then go back to the standing cell. They would die after a week or two, or not, or suffocate at night. Small gestures of shame by the Nazis; covering the windows of the barracks on the side opening to the execution wall, dispersing the ashes from the crematorium into the river, anywhere, to hide the evidence.

As I left through the metal gates, I saw a man trip over a sparrow he kicked accidentally as he walked. I heard its little body hit the boot, not a sound muted by feathers. The bird fluttered above the pavement, little flights of confusion between his legs and his girlfriend’s feet. Then its mess of wings and feathers and chirps fluttered into the buses and I couldn’t see it. Stillness. Inside one barrack was a drawing of a guard pulling his leg and booted foot back as far as he could before kicking the naked prisoner on the floor before him.

In the crematorium, three rooms, one for disrobing, one for gassing, and then a room with four ovens. Respectful memorial candles have been lit next to placards on a little makeshift altar on the floor in honor of the dead. Gassing took 15 minutes for 1000 people. Special prisoners would remove the gold fillings from the teeth and then put two bodies in each oven. Cremation took about 30-40 minutes so this was the bottleneck. Later on I wished I hadn’t gone entered the crematorium. At dinner back in Krakow, trying to recover in a traditional polish restaurant, I couldn’t shake the ghost of ash from the walls, from the air, from the ovens, all over my body. It felt like white claustrophobic chalk. My meal was very traditional sour crout with lamb and kielbasa, pickles, carrot salad, sacred home-made bread. I couldn’t eat enough.

Aug 1 - 2: Krakow, Poland

2009-08-23T12:22:00.000-07:00

Saturday after packing and checking out of the dorm, I took the 10 am train to Krakow, Poland. I changed trains somewhere just on the Czech side of the border. Love the train. The second train was older and bumpy, so that I could barely could write. Noise rattled from broken open doors, squealing metal scraping on metal, buckling joints and train cars bucking up and down. After almost 9 hours, I arrived in Krakow and slept 11 hours that first night.

In the morning I walked through the massive town square center, the largest in Europe, 200 m square. A cloth factory building commands the center. The Wawel castle stands at the end of town. Here I joined a trio of traditionally dressed street music performers. And past that, I entered Kazimierz, the old Jewish quarter, or ghetto. At Pub Stajnia with some sparkling wine, my skin was prickly with humid heat. I watched a man take a shot of vodka and then stir sugar into his cappuccino, a mixed drink waiting next to the little espresso cup. I ate pink cold borscht soup with dill and cucumber floating in it. Poland has avoided the industrialization of food production and their food surprises with flavor and color.

In the nighttime, I discovered fire dancers in the town square performing before an old medieval church. Afterwards I sat at a street café. I was perfectly comfortable and unbothered as a single woman. This is one thing I love about Eastern Europe. I walked all day. My camera has been my companion and allows me to reminisce over the day; a way to record, comment, and remember.

Last week at PSP

2009-08-23T11:39:00.000-07:00

Monday after workshop I visited the contemporary Kampo Museum on the Vltava river in Prague. A staircase climbs to the roof where mirrors set off the sky and funnel the heat onto your skin. In the garden a reflecting stream flows under the wall into the gallery. I stood before a sculpture in black shiny stone called “Anxiety” by Otto Gutfreund, 1911-1912. Stanley Plumly in workshop today said that you must find the form of the poem within the content, the shape of the sculpture within the material of the stone. The stone is the block, content is discovered within? The figure hunches his shoulders into his ears, arms and hands large, robe bunching around his cheeks and down into the pedestal. The face is closed shut so that the entire piece is interior. A quote on the wall says, “To see the invisible, you must penetrate the visible as deeply as possible.”

In Tuesday’s lectures we listened to Ivan Klima speak of Samizdat and Cynthia Hogue lecture on sound in poetry. Hogue spoke about thinking in song/singing in words. She looked at the musical non-verbal element in poetry, comparing sonic drive to the maternal babble and doodle of poetry. Samizdat was the underground publication of writings by Czech poets, playwrights, other artists. Typewritten, read in 24 hours and then passed on to a friend. Later, the manuscripts were smuggled out of the country by the French embassy and others, to be published by Czech publishing houses in other countries, then smuggled back to be passed secretly. Hundreds of books, 30 people reading them in 30 days, staying up all night to read. Now people watch tv. Reading is not as valued an activity. We have other sources of information, and we don’t need to fight to get them. But is the information we are receiving as stimulating, as original, as true? What is true?

At the Strahof Monastery (and brewery) are books made from the bark of trees, moss and lichen growing from the spines. Beautiful living books. And the beer was very flavorful. Those monks had the life back then. Also, a collection of dried sea creatures, painted library ceilings, bright illuminated books.

Friday night was our last night celebratory party (the drink of choice seemed to be Fantanay – Fanta with Chardonnay) with desert at Kaverna Slavia. Since it was my last night, I walked up through the castle streets late on the way back to the dorm.

July 20-26: Week Three at PSP

2009-07-29T14:53:00.000-07:00

Monday morning our workshop gained three new poets and a new instructor, Stanley Plumly. There are so many ways to read poetry, to figure out what’s going on in a wise reader’s mind. I have exciting ideas for revision but I don’t really know where to begin my rewriting yet.

Monday night I went with Jennifer, Chad, Stephanie and James to the Jazz club U Glena and watched Stan the Man perform the blues on his guitar with a drummer, base, and keyboards accompaniment. This club is downstairs in a small dimly lit cavern. Stan’s lips embraced the microphone as he crooned and shouted BB King and rock tunes to the rapt crowd. Our tiny round tables were overlapping and soon we found out our neighbors were Czech ski instructors who had skied all over the US and Europe of course, including Alpine Meadows in Tahoe. Along with the drum and keyboard solos, Stan’s singing set a spell over the room.

Tuesday night after the readings, I sipped fresh ginger tea at Café Savoy. The Savoy is a large friendly Austrian styled café with just incredible food. It has become a regular place for me to write in their comfortable booths. Thursday night held another reading.

Saturday morning our bus left the dorms for Cesky Krumlov. We wandered the old town dominated by a palace set on the spine of a hill above the river. That night we watched the Rusalka opera by Antonin Dvorak performed outdoors in the night time rain in the palace gardens. Our seats turned to follow the actors who ran the large circle around us. The lighting in the forest set off the trees and the rain that continued to drop from the branches. It was a sport performance – those actors must have run a few miles at least even as they sang and our seats spun to face us to whichever portion of the donut-shaped stage the action occurred. It was an unbelievable, magical night. After an hour or so the stars began appearing in the sky and the temperature dropped well below normal. The crowd, covered in clear plastic rain ponchos, rustled and dripped. The actors didn't show any notice of the cold and wet as they threw themselves into the grass or onto the wooden pier. In the end, will o wisp lights floated over the marsh and everyone died. It was beautiful. Long past midnight, we walked back through the castle, down the hill into town.

July 18-19 Terezin and Kutna Hora

2009-07-24T13:22:00.000-07:00

Saturday we headed to the concentration camp called Terezin. It poured rain all day. In the memorial cemetery, now a national monument, a giant metal star of David with black river stones piled at its base stands above the field of gravestones, red roses planted at each grave, ten thousand of them. Many of the stones are just numbered, bodies of prisoners recovered from a mass grave directly after WW2 ended. In the middle of the field, a taller cross, spare and wooden, stands above the star.

We toured the Little Fortress. This was a prison run by the Austrian Hapsburgs, the Nazis, the Russians, and finally the Czecks in differing political circumstances. This prison held political prisoners of whatever regime was in power, as well as Jewish prisoners under the Nazis. About a third of the prisoners would die of living conditions, crowded and suffocated in hot rooms with doors and windows closed, lose half their body weight on rations, tortured and left in isolation cells without windows. This is the prison the assassin of the Arch Duke Ferdinand was held for two years and tortured until he died of pneumonia. We stood within his cell, #1. We walked part of the 28 kilometers of tunnel system through the fortress walls, emerging into daylight again by the guillotine and execution wall, brick riddled by bullets from long ago.

In the town of Terezin nearby were held nearly 200,000 Jewish families, separated and worked 14 hours a day in a ghetto as they awaited train transport to extermination camps in other countries. In the transports, 63 over two years, about 1000 people per trainload, only 0 to 11 would survive the trip to their destination. A secret synagogue was discovered in the town only a few years after the war ended. It seems even the Germans never discovered this secretive hidden worship. Only a few people must have known within the camp itself about the existence. The museum documented many cultural events, plays, musical performances, children’s choirs and art, during the years of imprisonment. Now this haunted town is deserted, a few children riding bikes through the martial square. I ate pistachios in the rain leaning under a thin overhang outside the museum. Over lunch no one knew what to talk about, surrounded by the history of human suffering and injustice. I realized that my ignorance is not acceptable. Our responsibility is to be informed.

That night back in Prague a group of us went out to see the new Harry Potter movie. The Czechs have an intermission so people can go to the bar or have a smoke break in the middle of the movie.

On Sunday, I took the train to the beautiful medieval town of Kutna Hora to see the Ossuary church and the cathedral. In the early 1800’s, the small church in that town took the bones of nearly 40,000 people that had piled up around the walls of the church and decorated the inside in bone patterns and pyramids, a bone challis and bone chandelier. The legend is that the church yard and cemetery around the church has holy dirt from Jesus Christ’s burial place, brought back a few centuries earlier. For this reason, people had been transporting dead bodies to this location for a long time.

July 11-17 Second Week at PSP

2009-07-23T09:28:00.000-07:00

This weekend I discovered Café Slavia, one of the oldest large marble-hewn cafes in Prague overlooking the river. I went with Brendon, Nancy, Sean, and myself to write. We ate and then wrote on our computers or notebooks. Outside, river boats and swans and people-powered paddle boats wandered the wide river. The bridge passes over an island right outside the café. Trams rattle past. People with their dogs walk by the big windows. It is rumored that Franz Kafka wrote here, and that he even conversed with Ginsberg at the Slavia.

When I left the café, lugging my computer on my back, I walked back up Petrin Hill, through the public orchard, a great workout. The hill is steep and lush through a thick forest. A funitel tram runs up the hill but I hiked the winding paths. Suddenly I was at a café overlooking the entire city, gold rooftops shining. European hares hopped back into the underbrush. In the orchard, people picked sour cherries and sat in the shade and took photos. Near the top of the hill the path becomes narrow and muddy and passes sandstone caves in the hillside where homeless people had laid out cardboard beds for later when the sun set. A reclusive place for return. And then a round wooden fountain, just some water running across a bamboo spout and the rocks covered with moss.

On Sunday I wandered around IP Pavlova, found a restaurant and the teahouse in the photo above where I wrote for a long while. I walked the long evening light back along the river and crossed Charles Bridge as it got dark. The bridge was still crowded with tourists, swans in the water, beautiful light on the buildings.

I wrote a lot of new material this week for Pamela Ushuk’s writing assignments. She gave us detailed assignments for each class, generating new poems every other day. In the photo we are in workshop outside in the gardens of the Monastery, part of the Castle grounds. The Castle is still used by diplomats and other decision makers in the Czech Republic. Remembering the picnickers from before, I spent an afternoon in the orchard by the Prague Castle, napping and writing. This time I watched many people with bushel bags over their shoulders picking cherries, peaches, persimmon, apricots. The pears are still small and hard.

We attended two readings this week, Tuesday and Thursday nights. Students in the program read their work on Friday night. One afternoon I wandered the city in the rain and found a covered garden where I could sit and eat salad and write in my journal and read my book. I've been reading Milan Jundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being. The evening when the day cools down is delicious in the orchard so I went back at least twice this week.

July 5 - 10: First Week of PSP

2009-07-11T02:11:00.000-07:00

Sunday - We crowded in the lobby to meet Milos, our tour guide of intrepid energy and unexhaustable knowledge. For the next three hours most of us followed him throughout Prague from the Old Town Square to the Jewish Synagogue and museum, to the Cubist Museum, and elsewhere. I say most of us, because frequently a few of us would get lost from the group, parting ways as some narrow turn while trying to purchase water or coffee or find a bathroom. If we were lucky, we'd somehow navigate the corridors of streets to discover Milos far in the distance standing on a statue divulging his passion for Prague. In the photo he poses on the legs of a baby at the Cubist Museum. The graffiti is a picture of John Lennon's wall, the first unformal memorial for John Lennon in the world after he was shot. Artists continually add layers to the images and words on the wall. It is nearly a block long.
Monday - Workshops met for the first time. The school building is just off Jan Palacha Square, with a broad panorama view of the Palackeho Most (bridge) and the treed Vltava river walk. Jan was a student who set himself on fire in Jan. 16, 1969 to protest the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. He was the first of many students who had signed a suicide pact. However, as he burned, he told them not to follow the pact due to the intense pain he felt. A month later a second student set himself on fire, and two months after that a third student did the same. The photo shows the view from my classroom across Prague.
Tuesday - We attended two lectures today on mythology and current day archetypes in the Czech culture. I wandered the city to find the Memorial to the victims of Communism, a surreal iron sculpture of a man disintegrating in repeated images of himself. This evening, Alison Deming and Michael Waters read very inspiring poetry and essay full of heart, nature and science. Returning to the dorm after the reading, I worked on a new poem until 2 am.
Wednesday - Workshops meet. This afternoon I jumped on a bus and visited the hometown of Pilsner Urquell Beer, named Pilsn. We toured the Pilsn brewery and drank unpasteurized beer directly from a barrel stored deeply underground in 29 kilometers of tunnels that maintain a temperature of 2-4 degrees C.
Thursday - Intense yoga in the morning. We viewed the classic recent cult film Otik this afternoon about a childless couple who carve a tree stump into a baby. As they care for it like a child, it comes alive. However, it has a voracious and unsatisfiable appetite. They feed it, but it grows and begins to eat their neighbors. Finally it eats even its parents, who are unable to kill their child (with a chainsaw) when it attacts . An old woman hoeing cabbage finally must murder the monster as the fairy tale depicts. This evening we listen to faculty readings.
Friday - Workshops meet. I wander the city for hours as I've done everyday, gradually learning how to connect the cobblestone squares and streets. Friday night was student readings, an opportunity to cheer for each other. Afterwards, I drank the best mojito of my life. This weekend I hope to get alot of writing done in cafes around the city and visit a few museums.

July 4 - Sarajevo to Prague

2009-07-04T03:34:00.000-07:00

Woke up early and hiked up the hills from downtown Sarajevo to the edge of town. An old fort was built to protect the city from Austrian attacks in the 17th century with a wall enclosing up to 900 houses. From this hilltop I had a 360 degree view of the city of Sarajevo and the hills and river and valleys surrounding it. Everywhere I've gone people have made me feel welcome, even this morning as I climbed up the cobblestone steps in a neighborhood that doesn't see many tourists. Many older people here, and cemetaries, and bullet holes in the buildings. An old man pulled himself up the steps carrying bags of fruit and groceries. Gardens are tucked between buildings or anywhere a few squash plants and corn rows can fit. Cats everywhere in the lush wild flowers, where garbage and litter are tossed regularly. I sat on the top of the world where the trees edged into town and watched the mists and river. This afternoon I fly to Prague and get down to the business of poetry.

July 3 - Train to Sarajevo

2009-07-04T02:56:00.000-07:00

Lonely Planet lists the two and a half hour train ride through the mountains from Mostar to Sarajevo as one of the top five most scenic trips ever. Our train wound its way into the mountain canyon, following the green Neretva River gorge and hydroelectric dams and little farms. Through tunnels and switchbacks we crossed the Bjelasnica Mountains and descended into hazy Sarajevo.

In the afternoon Patricia and I wandered the old city, winding cobblestone streets and vendors chasing us down with perfume knock-offs. One of my best meals yet was at a tiny restaurant where we pointed out to the woman behind the counter what we wanted and then she created a bowl combining what we'd pointed at. The place was filled mostly with men, something I've noticed in this Moslem country. Nothing was written down yet everyone's bowl was made just right. I had dumplings with cream/cheese sauce, a specialty of this area, and meat-stuffed peppers and tomatoes. Incredibly savory.

Last night we tasted the beer at the large Austro-Hungarian Sarajevo brewery. I asked for a menu and the surly waiter told me they had three beers; light, dark, and unfiltered. He didn't give us a chance to order a second beer. The rain poured down as we left, crossing the Latin Bridge where Franz Ferdinand was shot, triggering the beginning of world war. We made our way darting from awning to awning until we found City Pub. Here a dj played house music and American classics like Micheal Jackson.

July 2 - Mostar

2009-07-03T06:15:00.000-07:00

Patricia and I were joined by Rachel from Australia this morning as we left the hostel for coffee. I'm experimenting with my coffee order - most coffee is served in a thimble-sized cup and although very strong and flavorful, it encourages slow sipping. I've tried ordering coffee with milk, coffee long with milk, cappuccino, nescafe with cream, Bosnian coffee, etc. And still your morning coffee is a short-lived experience unless you drink slowly.

After coffee, the man who showed us to the hostel the night before rode past on us his bike, giving us a big greeting and pointing us in the right direction to the turkish house tour. A rich Bosnian family in the turn of the century lived in still- existing traditional Turkish home. Saudi, the tour guide, told us to take our shoes off, and pointed us into the garden and the rooms for the men and women. A wife would indicate she was ready to entertain her husband by draping a white cloth over her door. The men's room was beautifully suspended over the river by columns outside the house. The ceilings were ornate beechwood mosaic. Saudi hinted that we could dress up in the traditional clothes kept in a trunk upstairs. She then told us to go tour the oldest and most important mosque in Mostar and to tell the man at the entrance that she said we didn't have to pay the entrance fee. You should have seen face when we said this, but he let us in for free.

July 1 - Korcula to Dubrovnik to Mostar

2009-07-03T05:46:00.000-07:00

The early morning bus hopped the ferry to the mainland and arrived in Durbrovnik with plenty of time for me to wander back to my favorite internet cafe until the afternoon bus for Mostar, Bosnia. I was excited to go to a new country. Croatia had been generous and friendly but I was done with the island vibe. I was getting the travel bug - my curiosity and the hints of the past war with Bosnia, seen in the mortar holes in the tile of my rented bedroom and in the conversations with Croatians, made me ready to move on. My time traveling alone was short-lived - on the bus I met Patricia the Canadian, in the beginning of a two month travel from Italy to Turkey.

We arrived in Mostar around 7 pm, found our hostel, checked in, and wandered down to the old bridge that gives the old town of Mostar its reason for initial existence. The influence in this country is Muslim and Turkish, with a smattering of Autro-Hungarian in later centuries. In the 15th century, the bridge across the river Natadve was built to connect the East and West traders. This geographical spot seems to be where Europe and the East intermingled. And the town of Mostar, between buildings blown up by mortar fire between the years of 1992-95 by Croats and Yugoslavian forces during the fall of Yugoslavia, still has a strong Muslim presence. For the first time, I heard the 5 times daily humming of the call to prayer from loudspeakers on the minerets of mosques. It was beautiful, like evening crickets in summer.

June 30 - Mljet to Korcula

2009-07-03T05:21:00.000-07:00

Sara joined our little impromptu group last night for dinner and singing, hailing from England. She had left her 'wandering eyes' traveling companion for greener pastures and found us. This morning, tempted by the rumors of Ullysses' Cave hidden on the island, we rented a scooter (unfortunately not the bunny one in the photo!) and putted up the mountain roads into the interior of the island. Between the rocky mountains lie sloping valleys of vineyards and lush family farms. After asking directions in a small town post office where a man laughed at me the entire time I inquired, we found the path between old orchard trees of olive, lemon, and fig.

It was hot, hot, hot. Sweat drenched my clothes. The rocky trail wound down to the coast, about half an hour hiking, and suddenly below us gaped a cave opening like a dark mouth. The only entrance seemed to be jumping into the ocean and swimming into the cave, which we left for another trip. Deep in the cave, a few abandoned row boats dotted the entrance sand, and some wooden steps dropped into the water. On the edge of the cliff over the ocean some old stone cottages looked out towards Italy. After shooting some photos, we climbed back through the cliffs and orchards, along deep paths below stone walls, to the scooter. The cool air was a welcome relief on the ride back. Thanks to Sara's expert driving, we handled the hairpin curves and the speeding cars that regularly cut the corners with finesse.

Then Miguel the Sombrero Waiter drove us as fast as he could, cutting the corners to test our courage, to the ferry boat to Korcula, a nearby island. Korcula has a old walled city similar to Dubrovnik's in smaller scale, and was very influenced by Venice in the 16th century. If we were looking for a party, we had found it. The celebration of the half new year was tonight, a chance to dress in costume and get very very drunk and play loud music in the town square until the early hours. However, I was looking for quiet places to write, so I welcomed the resurgence of partying music blasted from loud speakers at 5 am as an alarm clock to make it to the bus station in time for the first morning bus out of there.

June 29 - Polace, Mljet

2009-07-03T04:54:00.000-07:00

I woke up to the sounds of boats leaving for their morning fishing sessions. After less than 24 hours here in the tiny fishing and tourist village of Polace, I needed to hide at a different cafe down the street from the friendly people I've met so far in order to find some uninterrupted writing time. I drank a coffee on the patio and ate a cheese omelet as I wrote in my journal looking out over the harbor. This afternoon I rented a bike and rode into the park again along the edge of the lake. Within the sweet smelling shade of pine trees I dropped my bag and jumped into the warm ocean water. About 100 feet up the shoreline, two older European women sunbathed. They skinnydipped, laughing and chatting. I sat by the lake for a couple hours as the dark thunder clouds rolled across the still water.

Finally, I left the peaceful place and rode the bike up and down a small mountain to a nearby port and then back to Polace. Little did I know the restaurant, Konoba Ankora, would complete its adoption of me and my friends tonight. I met up with Yolanda and Gorge for a beer there just as three Croatian families, each in their own sailboat, docked across the street. They ate dinner at Ankora and as the night progressed, the waiter donned a sombrero, another Croatian man appeared with a guitar, Paulo the owner sat down to sing, two women stood up to dance, and blueberry brandy poured.

June 28 - Island of Mljet

2009-06-28T11:51:00.001-07:00

I think this island emits an energetic friendliness - even before I boarded the ferry early this morning leaving Dubrovnik, I befriended a couple from northern Spain, Gorge and Yolanda. Here we are having lunch once we arrived on Mljet - that's an anchovie hanging in my hand, caught about ten minutes before I ate it. It was delicious. The legendary belief is that Mjlet is the island inhabited by the Sirens that lured Odysseus from his trip and trapped his sailors for some time before they could escape the generous hospitality. The island is heavily forested and in the middle of the island is a salt water lake open by a fjord to the ocean. And on that lake is a small island with an old monastery, St. Mary's. I rode a bike around the lake this afternoon and took a small boat out to the monastery. A cross stands before the ocean where sailors can pray for good weather before they sail. I ate the excellent anchovies at Konoba Ankora, the restaurant I am now having dinner at - a fresh plate of homemade goat cheese and proscuitto salad. Life is good in Croatia.

June 26 - Dubrovnik, Croatia

2009-06-26T11:06:00.000-07:00

I found a private accomodation last night around 7:30 pm after getting in from the bus station. I'm staying with widow Maria in her extra room. She brought me into her kitchen and told me to ‘sit’, and poured me some orange syrup and water in a glass, a refreshing drink after 8.5 hours on the bus from Zadar. She made some big gestures of something coming down from the air, or maybe from the rocky bare hillsides above town? I thought maybe she was referring to the bombing by the Yugoslavian army in ’92. I asked her if she stayed or if she left town, that it must have been scary, trying to show compassion on my face because she spoke no English. She made big booming noises with her hands above her face motioning something. I thanked her for the juice, confused. Then as I was dressing to leave for dinner, thunder cracked above town. She came down with an umbrella, made the booming noise again and the hand motion, and handed me the umbrella for the evening. She was talking about rain.

I was exhausted enough to sleep in the lumpy dipped bed, shaped like the country of Croatia, with a large mountain range splitting the coast from the interior valley. But I only had to walk half a block down the narrow stairs to find a cafe this morning with wi fi.

This city is marble streets, narrow stairways, hanging gardens, cafes and churches. People speak an unimaginable amount of different languages in Croatia. A tour guide I met spoke ten languages. In a street table, writing on my computer now, tours walk by me every 15 minutes - a different group, a different language. Chinese right now. And the smokers – the train from Zagreb to Zadar took a ten minute smoking break for everyone. Everyone cheered and rushed off to stand in the rain on the platform.

Today I walked the massive fortified walls of Dubrovnik. This independent republic city survived a 15 month siege in the thirteenth century. The Maritime Museum is filled with old documents of ship logs, legal agreements, contracts. The oldest contract recorded in the world was enacted here in Dubrovnik in 1260 or so. It seems this independent republic city has been protected and prosperous by shrewd trading and negotiations since 800 AD.

June 25 - Bus to Dubrovnak

2009-06-26T11:00:00.000-07:00

The bus ride was 8.5 hours long, but passed quickly as I spoke with 3 different traveling partners. A woman studying in Zadar and living south of there, studying French and German, told me she may teach, or maybe with her language knowledge work in tourism. Then Mario sat by me on his way to Split, a friendly mechanical engineer from Zagreb. He gave me lots of info and will be checking my blog. Hi, Mario! And finally, Carl and Amber, from the US but now from the UK, entertained me with their world travel experiences. I enjoyed a risotto dinner with them last night in old town Dubrovnak on the harbor. The rain poured off the umbrellas around us in torrents. Tomorrow I explore Dubrovnak.

June 24 - Zadar Old Town

2009-06-26T10:51:00.000-07:00

I woke up refreshed and wandered the shoreline, rimmed with older hotels. A sea wall and pebble beaches and stone piers. Families and children and old people in bikinis, playing and sunning. I lay down on a pier. My back against the old flat stone felt reassured. I lay and wrote in my journal, after days of rain turning my white body over in the sun. In the afternoon I took the bus back to old town and this time it was quieter. Oh, the sea organ, moaning and wheezing and singing like whales, from the wind and wave action at the end of the peninsula. People loved it, stopping and cocking their heads like little dogs. Old men peered under the steps to see the openings for the wind, air and sound. Little children played in the waves. I walked the old Roman ruins on the other edge of town and then along the edge of the wall barricading and protecting the city.
Then I walked back to the hostel along the coast, almost an hour, at a good clip.

2009-06-26T10:44:00.000-07:00

June 23 - The train to Zadar

The next day I took the 6:50 am train to Zadar, a seven hour ride. My seat faced a table and the two seats across from me. So we were four for the ride; an older Croatian man who spoke English, a younger man working on his computer, and an older stylish Croatian blond woman who spoke no English. We spoke on and off for the ride. When I got off at Knin to change trains, I had three people yelling at the steward to help me find the next train.

In Zadar I took a bus to the old town and was overwhelmed by the throngs of tourists, mostly Italian families. I escaped to the youth hostel and luckily they had a single room for me. I ate dinner – yoghurt and banana and potato chips - on a quiet pebble beach looking out at the lights around the coast of the Adriatic. I imagined Odysseus sailing, looking for the few lights along the shoreline that might reveal a port or two to guide his ship. Imagined the walled old city, originally Zara, with its fortifications around the church within.

June 22 - In Zagreb, Croatia

2009-06-26T10:22:00.000-07:00

I awoke to rain falling over the red tile rooftops, and some intestinal trauma. Was it the glass of white wine at the Regent (that cost as much as my lunch) or the goulash? So I walked gently into the morning around the squares, sipped some tea, then some coffee. I visited the old Stone Gate. A massive fire centuries ago burned much of the city’s Cathedral to the Virgin Mary, except for one stone gate of the church. The wood carving of the Virgin Mary and her child was left untouched by flames. The gate is now its own cathedral and I walked through the gate into a small open air sacred space. In the darkness of suddenly leaving the sunlight for this L-shaped stone arch stood a woman selling candles, a few pews. Many people prayed in front of many burning candles by the wooden statue on the wall; sudden darkness and quiet of prayer. I passed through into the empty cobblestone square of St Mark’s Church. In the center of the square stood a large painted egg of Croatian art, about five feet tall. And strangely, the couple on the bus I met going to Dubrovnak days later had a picture of me standing by the egg, only I was hidden by the egg so you couldn’t see me. They swore I was in the picture.

I walked for hours through the city. From the churches, I walked to the funicular tram in the center of town. Then down a narrow alley with a small open air theatre and bars within the trees and graffiti on the walls. Everywhere, tags. In one park a sphinx had purple eye shadow and lipstick painted on its face. I wandered uphill into a park and deep trees. Many dogs being walked. Dogs are given a respectful citizenship in this country. Hours of walking through park trails, old roots, fountains and iron sculptures in the park plazas.

Finally made it back to ride the tram, all 50 feet, up to old town again. It was a Monday, the day all museums are closed, and a holiday at that. It was the day Croatia began fighting against the Fascists in WW1. None of the shops were open. In the evening I walked the old streets filled with cafes and people lounging, socializing, drinking. That night from my window the city sounded like a wedding party, as if everyone knew each other and was talking together. The noise was congruous. There was no city noise of buses, cars, sirens. Only the loud happy talk of many people in the same conversation all across the city.

Days 2 & 3: on to Zagreb, Croatia

2009-06-21T10:00:00.000-07:00

Day 2
I finally admitted yesterday to myself that I have a poor sense of direction. Give me a map and I'll find my way. But let me wander, and I really need a border collie to show me the way back. A few tips for overnight trains - the steward holds onto your ticket while you travel. And the moment you close the door of your tiny efficient sleeper car and the train begins its gentle unannounced rolling out of the station, you rediscover the ecstatic excitement of the unknown, or of newness. Even 15 hours felt quick. And then the sun set beautifully - and somehow I had a view to the west.

The Czeck Republic landscape traveling to Austria was a private Monet painting in my panoramic window with couples riding bicycles down dirt lanes between farm fields and small brown deer leaping and white cranes with black tipped wings lifting over wetlands. Slovenia was a raging mud colored river and rock cliffs and deep wild dark coniferous forests of Peter and the Wolf and Little Red Riding Hood. Even later on as the sun rose and I needed the sleep I couldn't stop watching the movie out my window.

Day 3
I arrived in Zagreb at 8:30 am exactly on time. Accidentally wandered into the flower market and the farmer's market. Past the Cathedral to the Assumption of the Virgin Mary surrounded by Gothic towers from an even earlier time, maybe 1260? Luckily the inn keeper took pity on my tired face and gave me the triple at a single rate. I wandered the Botanical Gardens just now before settling into a green velvet sofa at the elegant and generously free wi fi hot spot Regent Hotel to check my email.

This city is a surprise - light and large palaces, museums, parks and squares, and people out everywhere enjoying cafe, the sun, chatting, chairs on the streets, lots of italian men and croatian men talking animatedly in groups. There is a funicular tram, famously the shortest in the world, that rises above, well, not much. But I'll check the view and report. In the garden, I discovered a very rare and endangered cousin to the Redwood tree thought to have been extinct for 5000 years until one was discovered in 1941 just before WW2 broke out, in China. It took 5 more years before others could study this find and realize that this Chinese Redwood still existed. Unfortunately, it was cut down until today the tree is truly near extinction and exists mostly in botanical gardens around the world. It grows quickly and unlike the California Redwood, and although it is coniferous, it drops its needles each year after they turn a golden red color in the fall.

Prague - day 1

2009-06-20T04:55:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was day one of my trip through Eastern Europe this summer. I awoke in the dorm after 11 hours sleep to beautiful rain. Birds chirping. Not as much English spoken here as I'd thought but a smile is all you need. I somehow found my way via the tram to a Starbuck's - I know, pathetic. But I hadn't had coffee yet.

There I discovered the incredible convenience of my new iphone gps system. I walked 215 steps up to the top of the St. Nicholas bell tower for a view of the city. Bells are forged in the ground, with casts, at the spot they will be installed. It is bad luck to transport a bell by animal or to let anyone dirty (women) touch them. If they must be transported, hundreds of boys would pull them, and were paid in a drop of mead. Bell makers were wandering artisans. It was believed that the sunday before Easter, the bells flew to Rome for a blessing - and after WW1 and 2, the bells that had been melted down into cannonballs also flew away from the battlegrounds.

I wandered across the Charles' Bridge, lined with dark religious statues leering over the artists selling earrings, paintings, photos, and fridge magnets. It began to gently rain again. In Old Town, I walked with my head craning upwards to see the architecture -

Seven hours later I found my way by tram back to the dorm where I thought I'd sleep again. But unexpected jet lag? hit me and I lay awake until finally I read some Kafka. It put me right to sleep.

The opposite of train

2009-03-29T10:29:00.000-07:00

by Karen Terrey

Paddle across yourself. Canadian geese black feet push push
pushing left, right. High in grey trees, osprey gather

rope bark molted coyote fur. The train shot up tracks straight
from Truckee to the pier at Tahoe Tavern and past, sparks igniting lumber,

each plank a milled forest. Heavy wheels spinning iron hundred feet out
over the lake. Stopped at a dead still idle, engines spewing.

San Francisco socialites, sequined flapper dresses, those perfect hems at the hip,
slim suits, disembarked. Yellow moonrise above the Carson Range.

The opposite of train is lake. Brimming. Soft feathers hard in fast wind.
She reveals only what obscures – sky, storm, light.

Wind ripples her misleading surface. Long bent wings. She
dances the salmon orgy each spring running from Camp Richardson,

fat and urgent. Stone rubs feet raw, soil-to-be. Drop
beneath the tension. Open your eyes. A lakebed of satiated volcanoes.

Silence. Tucked bodies diving. No more train. Uprooted pier
became window frames, hundred-year-old redwood, so old and hard

it doesn’t need to be sealed. Lake so old and hard, loss
hangs in her deepest waters, a gallery on fishing line.

Published in Rattlesnake Review #18 Summer 2008

These Days

2008-06-03T17:22:00.000-07:00

by Charles Olson

whatever you have to say, leave
the roots on, let them
dangle

And the dirt

Just to make clear
where they come from

Politics of the Trampoline

2008-03-18T11:21:00.000-07:00

by Karen Terrey

The ground shimmers -
children laughing, falling,
clumsy feet stomping
up and down.

After dinner, ten year old boys
curse on the trampoline deck,
practicing.

In the morning three year olds
Carla, Naomi, and Maria
play house under the trampoline
with tiny dolls.
They call out to me, Hi!
They say, Look what I have!

And inside balled dirty hands
one reveals a ripped picture of a gorilla
from a magazine,
It’s a monkey!
or a broken piece of white reflector,
Its ice!
The smallest girl holds a crumpled piece of paper without even a picture,
It’s a dog! she yells.

The ground shimmers all around - shards of broken glass in the hot sun.

Originally published in Moonshine Ink

2008-03-10T10:32:00.000-07:00

Ability of Response

2008-03-10T10:26:00.000-07:00

by Karen Terrey

One is not much larger than the other
in the New York Times photo:

on her hip the old Bedouin carries
her teenage son everywhere
“it is exhausting”

She is not old she has ten other children she wears black
against the blowing desert sand.

The son clings
he will burn himself cut himself he feels no pain
his left leg is amputated.

When she finally puts him down
how long will he survive?
“I cannot stand it”
says the man who leaves
the room.

It is not that simple

She married her cousin
forging strong family bonds -
rare recessive disorders make their way
to the surface. Footprints
of custom in the desert.

Simple Mendelian genetics;
lids concave across the rims,
the dip of a tablespoon,
children born eyeless.

The eyeless nomad’s response:
choose a wife by her DNA
“genetic testing is good”

:

How do I fit into the picture?
I do not know
if I am the same age
as her. I have no children
and wear corduroy
to Starbucks. I can only contrast:

I turn off my alarm clock and roll back under the covers
she lifts her son from the ground
I heat up my car
she carries him

Circle what is similar
and hidden between us:

what do I carry
tiringly?

:

Nov. 4 2004
after I heard the election results
I threw out the moldy food in the fridge,
cleaned the closets,
packed up the deck furniture for the winter
under the house. I stored
my anger away -
in the spring I didn’t bother with it.

She carries him.

My dissent
is an artifact, wind
across the surface of the sand.
I was almost an anthropologist.

The Bedouin woman’s dissent
“he is glued to me -
I support testing”

She carries him.

Will I pick up my anger,
carry it tiringly?

:

The ability of response:
each morning
picking the son off the ground,
carrying him
until exhaustion at sundown.

Does that mean she’s happy?

:

Fill in the telescoping space
behind the Bedouin woman in the photo
with a television, a kitchen, Cosmopolitan:

my coffee maker cost $100 dollars
my coffee; $9.95 a pound
That is nearly $647 for the 65 pound boy.

:

Perhaps it was all a mistake, centuries
of marrying first cousins,
decisions;

not gravity

but in her case,
the gravity of who one marries.

Can custom be valuable only as an absolute?

A faith in nothing
is unerring freefall
:

At 4 am naked
we both turn towards a body,
the Bedouin woman and I,
like someone else’s dream or the memory
of many nights alone.

Hairs rise
reaching out to the other with the static
electricity of almost touching:
the ability of response.

Originally published in Moonshine Ink, March 2007

2007-11-09T08:39:00.000-08:00

Saffron Bullets

by Karen Terrey
Inspired by NY Times articles,

September/October, 2007

Begging bowls turned upside down
No way to heaven now
Who can solve this problem?
Writes a little girl

Burmese monks in saffron robes
Bruised and beaten shining heads
No outside help all we have
Is patience patience patience

Their guns scare us the Junta know it
No outside help they take advantage
Buddhist tolerance and our good hearts
Bullets in the crowd

Marching monks in saffron robes
Bruised and beaten shining heads
Her own government who can help?
Fire in one hand water in the other

A nine year old writes in her journal

Heads bowed down police batons
They come these days in nighttime raids
Shooting saffron bullets

All we have the Junta know it
Police batons and our good hearts
Fire in one hand water in the other
Patience patience patience

Begging bowls turned upside down
No way to heaven now she writes
Soldiers tore off saffron robes

Made them jump like frogs

2007-11-06T10:56:00.000-08:00

What relationship advice would a lake give?

2007-11-06T10:28:00.000-08:00

Etta James and Thunderstorm
by Karen Terrey

Cracking lightening
make me cringe
down look up
see the yellow
white light streak
to the ground
bent
and violent.
A slash. A whip.
The earth, resolute.