ADVANCE for Michael

She’s super creative in highly innovative ways – she freelances writing workshops and projects all over the USA, mostly East Coast area, but she travels. She was in Indianapolis when I was on the Women’s Journey 18 months ago! Jamie and Martine know her – she stayed with them in Indy! She was doing a writing workshop at TubeFactory in Indy, it was part of a tour or workshops she did that year.

She loves to do “Projects” that involve facebook community or real life community – recently it was a 30 day creativity challenge, where she learned something new every day for 30 days, and posted about it. Eg Origami swan. She hosts “Big Pants” day- where she invites creatives to put on their big pants and get some work done with her for a day – virtually. Then everyone checks in about what they did that day. She started a podcast about her journey step-parenting.

She does a project called SWAT on facebook – Six Word Advice Tuesday (SWAT) where people will ask her questions, and she will give advice in exactly 6 words.

She does a project on social media where she invites everyone to type a single word, and then she turns it into a poem by the end of the day.

She once rode her bike through 25 states doing poetry and writing facilitation – she took her typewriter with her!

Her father passed away last year.

what has survived you
for my father, David Stein (June 19, 1947-April 4, 2017)

Certain recipes – crepes, roast chicken, a particular salad dressing best suited
for summer – and there is a copper-hued dish that still carries the stains of a tagine
we shared two years ago. The musical you directed the spring I turned 15,
burned on videocassette and featuring a song that, a few bars in, convinces
a good cry out of me 30 years on. I have your feet, your long fingers, the look
you used to give in photographs that made it seem you weren’t wholly in the frame.
Your garden, a fraction of which was transplanted a few villages over to a good friend.
She’s been tending it since and used the word “prosperous” to describe the blooms.
I was writing in my notebook the day you died, and thousands of words have since trailed
that departure, each seasoned by a vicious tenderness that refuses to let go.

Maya Stein May. 19th 11-12pm

https://www.crowdcast.io/e/essential-conversations–2

Come join us for an enlivening and inspiring conversation with Maya Stein. We will offer this broadcast live on Crowdcast, an interactive webcast platform.

Maya Stein is a poet, freelance writer, editor and teacher whose work has inspired and informed people across the United States. Her sense of creativity and value of relationship allows her a broad exploration of exchange with the world.

“At the heart of it all, I remain curious, engaged, and hopeful about the world around me, and continue to discover new ways to be a part of it and to share my experiences through writing, exploring, celebrity photo re-enactments, and other outlets. I love leading a life of creative investigation – even with all the uncertainties it comes with – because it helps me connect with and support others who are driven by similar instincts. And I never stop forgetting how lucky I am.”

Please RSVP here for our free online event : https://www.crowdcast.io/e/essential-conversations–2

We’ll have the community chat box open for questions, and invite a few viewers to join the broadcast through a live video feed to interact with Maya and myself.

Anna Noack will provide technical support for viewers joining online, and Janet Wepner will host the online community chat during the broadcast.

I am excited to be hosting our Crowdcast interview in this particular form, and I am especially delighted to have Maya Stein as our guest.

As well, I am looking forward to seeing familiar names and faces in the community chat room, and welcoming those of you who are new to our web broadcast community.

Hope to see you on Saturday, May 19th, 11am EST!

Michael Mervosh

Michael Mervosh,
Executive Director

———————————————

Facebook Blurb: Come join us for an enlivening and inspiring conversation with Maya Stein. We will offer this broadcast live on Crowdcast, an interactive webcast platform.

POEMS and supporting references

how to climb a mountain

Make no mistake. This will be an exercise in staying vertical.
Yes, there will be a view, later, a wide swath of open sky,
but in the meantime: tree and stone. If you’re lucky, a hawk will
coast overhead, scanning the forest floor. If you’re lucky,
a set of wildflowers will keep you cheerful. Mostly, though,
a steady sweat, your heart fluttering indelicately, a solid ache
perforating your calves. This is called work, what you will come to know,
eventually and simply, as movement, as all the evidence you need to make
your way. Forget where you were. That story is no longer true.
Level your gaze to the trail you’re on, and even the dark won’t stop you.

From Alison’s website:

“I’m inspired by my neighborhood, by things people say to me and snatches of overheard conversations, by folks glimpsed in passing on the street or at the store, by the borderlines where cultures bump against each other, and by love, most of all by love.”

this is how you do it

Realize, cleaning out the fridge, there are the makings
for soup. And that the tiny acorns neglected for weeks on the front lawn,
when gathered, make for a fine pile inside a glass vase.
Notice that a blank page is easier to fill when it’s down
to an index card. And how the subway train, taken one face at a time,
reveals worlds you never thought you’d travel to. Last night, your seat neighbor
on the bus to the big city asked you for help, and you traveled back together
to when you were 12 and in front of those buildings for the first time, too,
looking up and feeling lost and hopeful. You could have looked out the window
and cursed the traffic. You could have barreled through the station,
arming yourself with headphones and narrow eyes to cancel out
the catalogue of intrusions. The desk is perpetually calling, too, that book
you’d promised yourself you’d write by the time you turned 30 or 41
or 58. And you chose the kitchen over packing for tomorrow’s trip, and now
a pot is on to simmer instead and the suitcase is nowhere near completion.
But this is how you do it,
not because the to-do list told you so, or because you felt the stiff wind
of a deadline, or because religion was breathing down your neck.
You were trying to save the world, that’s all,
and this is the small circle of molecules
you felt capable of holding, the fragment of skyline that fit
in your rearview mirror, the square inches of your hand
reaching palm out into the chaos to say hello. This
is how you do it, with such tender imperfection and the knowledge
that something could sideswipe your intentions at any moment.
You do it anyway, tell the woman from Springfield, Missouri what to expect
when the bus squeals into Port Authority, rest your gaze on the
scuffed-up shoes of the policeman keeping the peace at the Bedford St. stop,
write the maybe lines of a poem on the small rectangle
you tuck into your pocket that will yield its gifts when you least expect them.
You do it anyway, resurrect a vase that delivered birthday flowers
months ago and fill it, now, with what even the hungriest squirrels refused,
and turn your scattershot kitchen into a gallery for modern art.
This is how you do it, making rough slices of a bag of carrots and sliding them
into a pot layered with oil and browning onions and fibrous curls of ginger.
And the air changes, just like that.
And the world falls down to its knees,
taking you with it.

i love your hat

“I love your hat,” I said to the tollbooth operator
on the way into the Lincoln Tunnel on the afternoon
of the funeral of one of my mother’s oldest friends.
The day was a startle of cold. The toll was $13,
up a dollar from just a few months before.
“What?” the woman asked, returning my change,
not hearing. “I love your hat,”
I repeated. We locked eyes then and forgot the cars
behind me, and the sardine can of that tunnel, and she said,
“You do?” as if I was asking to marry her and maybe
in a way I was. The service was on the Upper West Side
but I was not thinking of how hard it would be to find parking
or the too-hot sanctuary or the hands of strangers I would press
in my offers of condolence. I was here, a late Wednesday morning,
two hundred feet from the tunnel, saying “I do” to a woman
in a beautiful hat, the smile between us holding up traffic,
and for a moment longer than we thought possible,
keeping everything around us
suspended, untouchable.
Alive.

scrapping the lawn

It would be simpler, surely, to stay in tune with the neighbors, whose yards rest, placid, at the foot of each house with nary a dip in topography save a trio of bushes soldiering the front windows. And it’s true that what you’ve got planned is an upheaval you can’t predict, a loose cannon of horticultural proportions, since you’ve neither the education nor experience to guide you, exactly. But there are sacrifices for every choice that goes against the grain. You don’t slash and burn without cleaving from your own comfort. Even now, as the lawn lies partially scraped and scorned, you see you could turn back, patch the broken pieces, ignore the song of wildness and color calling you. Maybe the grass doesn’t need changing. But you do, and that knowing’s clear enough to wrap your novice hands on awkward tools to find the garden living there.

the summons

Show up. Be messy. Take care. Face forward. Admit what you don’t know. Admit what you do. Wash behind your ears. Paint your toes on the back porch. Roast marshmallows. Talk to yourself on the long drive. Sip slowly. Stand up. Move your legs. Breathe deeply. Discover a wrong turn. Turn around. Lift your chin. Accept help. Say thank you. Stay warm. Keep your grip light but firm. Fall. Get up. Again and again and again.

you will know (for t.)

It will be all right in the end, and maybe even in the middle. You will not suffer as long as you think you will. You are not fated to be unhappy. You are not destined for failure. Remember who you are. Let me say it again. Remember who you are. Be gentle. Practice exquisite acts of self-care. You don’t have to be as strong as you think you do. You don’t have to be wise and certain about your path. Your frailty is beautiful, and your innocence too. Getting lost is another exercise in navigation. You can’t fix everything you touch. You won’t break everything you touch. Don’t apologize if you’re tired. Don’t second-guess your stomach. Maintain eye contact with everything, especially yourself. Fall to your knees at least once a day. Say yes at least twice. Love daringly, wholly, unapologetically. Believe in magic. Befriend your fear. Look up. Listen. The birds will tell you everything you need to know about flight. Forgive yourself your great sadness. Unlock what hurts. Make a prayer for loss. Unpen your words. Get messier than anyone thinks you should. You’ll know when you’re ready. I’ll say it again. You’ll know when you’re ready.

this vehicle of mercy and salvation

So this is where we are, 7:38 on a Tuesday evening, and somewhere in the distance – we can hear it cross town – is an ambulance, spiraling its wail into the streets. Make way, it’s saying. The boys down the block make freethrows. We make tacos for dinner. The dog makes a beeline for the water bowl. The dishwasher makes barely any noise. The day makes the evening. Later, I hope, we will make love. But right now, right now, I am thinking of the swivel of those bright lights, the alarm of a white van going through stop signs on its way to saving a life, and I am thinking of the one who made the phone call to summon this vehicle of mercy and salvation, and I am thinking of the driver with his hands precise on the wheel, and I am thinking of the straggler shoppers coming out of the automatic swing doors of the supermarket, gripping their plastic bags as they wait for the all-clear, and I am thinking of the checkers inside making change, and the kid who makes a prize emerge from toy machine with his father’s quarters, and the father who makes himself look only at his son while the drama wages inches from the glass. Eventually, the scene disperses, and everyone makes their way home. In front of our house, one of the boys makes 7 in a row, the day’s new record. I make a promise to myself: Make a poem of this life. Read it again and again and again.

watch your eggs

she says, holding the canvas bag
at the far end of the check-out line.
The carton is balanced on a twin set
of coffee cans, a block of unsalted butter,
a package of blue sponges. I am nearing
that time I hadn’t anticipated while still
in my ripest patch of fertility, an age
a doctor would warn against starting
a family, though I have had friends
who’ve tried and succeeded. At home,
there are boys – not mine, exactly – waking up.
They don’t have my eyes, and never will.
Have a good day, I tell the woman who lifts
the straps toward me. The bag isn’t heavy,
but on the walk home
it begins to pour.

tonight, tonight

I am wedded to this seat at the kitchen counter. The phone is next to me, still warm from our conversation. I am ever more aware of this way I have come to close the night with you, this easy slip into softness, like the turn-down of a hotel’s bedsheets. But tonight, tonight, I don’t want to sleep. I want to stay awake and listen to your breathing. I want to lay a hand on your skin and feel the rise and fall of your body. I want to memorize the way your eyelashes move while you’re dreaming. I don’t want to miss a thing.

to love what we love

In the retelling, we’ll say we surrendered. We’ll say it was fate.
There is the sweet narrative we’ll draft from the complicated geography
that somehow pulled our continents together. We’ll chart the tides,
the turning leaves, the particular intelligences responsible for how the story
found its edge, that pivotal moment of knowing.

But first, what must birth out of us is trouble,
heart-legs buckling under, the muscle shoring us to solitude
sliced limp. The devastation will not be minor.
We will cut and claw ourselves away from the sharp, new light.
We will brutalize ourselves with escape.

But out of this flight and anguish a vacancy will appear,
hollowness we will mistake, initially, as loss. Here, here is where
the real beginning begins, swiping us naked from our hiding place,
imprinting the true permeability of our skin. We will be astonished
we are even alive. The cold air will feel like the slimmest kind of luck.

And then, this: A space will warm and soften around us.
We will gather the silence in at the corners.
We will squint at this unfamiliar shape of peace.
And from here, fresh breathing room for love, our bodies leaning to a steady
fibrillation, the hum of a radiator underneath the floorboards,
our mouths petal-wet, opening to the first, honest kiss.

We won’t be able to stop it. Coming alive is impossible to fix
into a single embrace. The dismantling will pull the river out of us,
and we will fall against the other in a wellspring of raw relief.
The language will be a stranger on our tongues but
we will understand it perfectly: to love what we love
is an undoing, a deliberate fall with our palms out,
hunger with the grief torn out of it. If it is surrender,
it is to the confession that we are worthy. If it is fate,
it is to the irrepressible freedom that bubbles from our darkest places.

There is no going back, our gaze wrenched away
from a lock-jawed past, the bones of us already fusing,
the sky wide above in the perfect V of flocking geese,
and a clear and faithful morning
welcoming us awake.

This is a piece of writing from 2012, from a project in the spirit of Amy Krouse Rosenthal. Amy died last year, and the work that was inspired by her work continues to move me, in new ways.

things to remember before the journey

In the spirit of Amy Krouse Rosenthal’s work (Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life, The Beckoning of Lovely), 16 bloggers set out to “Plant a Kiss” in the world on Sunday, April 29. We each did something we thought would spread a little extra joy, color, connection, poetry, or magic. Then we watched to see what would happen!

It begins when you begin. There is no such thing as too late. There is no such thing as too early. There is only right on time. You are always right on time.

Eat. Not just at mealtimes. Between and around and under them. Feed yourself with more than just what will suffice. Feed yourself with what will nourish.

Ask for help. Not in the way of apology or guilt or wantonness. Not in the way that contorts you into the shell of your own power. Not in the way that drills your guts into the ground. Not in the way that divorces you from boldness. Ask for help in the way that expands you, that blushes you awake to your own life. Ask because asking is another kind of love and another kind of faith and another kind of courage.

Invite imperfection. Know that the missteps and mistakes will become amusing anecdotes eventually and perhaps even teach you something further down the line or sooner yet, and that the places of wrongness and upset ultimately come the underpinnings of transformation, and that even disappointment offers a cure for inertia. Let go of the outlandish expectation that “whole” means “unbroken” or that you are only good if you get there twice as fast as anyone thought you would. Know intimately the bald tire that bursts, without warning, on an uneventful road, the error in judgement that leads to a locked door, the desert mirage that doesn’t shimmer into fortune. The raw material of your defeat is pure gold, the bones that build you back, the song that sings you home, again and again.

Believe in luck, in slim margins, in ludicrous hope, in the magical alignment of planets. Trust the pixie dust of stars, the winking moon, the magic hour that tilts sunlight into halo. Hear the soft prayer your body makes, waking to a snowfall, and how the rain leans you so close to yourself, you can feel your own heartbeat in your hands. The shiniest moments are hardly the only evidence that you were here, living your marvelous life. There are eddies of quiet, deep knowing that will gift you a thousand times more grace.

Remember the path is full of detours, places and reasons to get lost, narrow passageways that tempt with risk and long, wide fields of drowsy musing. No matter. The geographies that bridge you from here to there are flecked with breadcrumbs, small reminders of where you came from, river stones beneath the listless current, a muscle capable of so much flexion, your reach startles you sometimes, the way you carry leopard equally with lamb, your conviction latticed with mystery, and all at once, inside of you the same blood threading your veins, the same breath holding you fast to this earthly heaven, this heavenly earth.

Guest Preparations for Use of Crowdcast Software for Online Video Broadcasting

https://www.crowdcast.io/setup – This is the “test” feature, to make sure your computer’s microphone and camera are working properly.

http://www.speedtest.net/ – this is the internet speed test, to check speeds.

https://tlk.io/herosjourney – this is the link to chat for tech support. (open a new tab)

Event Preparation – ½ Hour Before Event

Host, Community Chat Hosts and Guest(s) get on Crowdcast.
Guests are welcomed to the “Green Room” – check headsets and view of background, make any other audio or video adjustments.
Chat hosts deal with pre-welcome, tech questions etc.

Event Launch – Going ‘Live’

Pre-welcome by Hosts in the Chat: Thank people for joining and let them know what time things will kick off. Ask people to share what locations they are joining from as they enter the chat, and while they’re waiting.
Welcome: Broadcast host (Michael) introduces himself. Mention guest’s name and the topic. Thanks attendees for joining.
Instructions: Introduce Crowdcast forum, walk them through the features and where to participate. If they are to hold questions until later in the event, let viewers/audience know; tell them where to submit questions.
Formal introduction of Guest: Introduce Maya and give perhaps a short bio? Introduce the topic and it’s relevance to today’s life, and our own evolution.
Bring Maya live online.
Janet to Host Community Chat, Anna to host tech support on a separate chat. https://tlk.io/herosjourney
Q&A and wrap-up: We will provide a link to stay informed about our ongoing Essential Conversation series, and to any books or workshops Maya would like to promote!

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