Dispatch from San Francisco

Okay, to stop some of you from pestering me about keeping my blog updated here’s the latest.

I’m here in the City by the Bay for a week long writers’ workshop and I’m sitting in a dorm room waiting for a call from the incredible poetry workshop leader so I can have a session with her. The room is classically college-stark in its design and coloring. I’m sitting at one of those built into the wall desks with my new laptop and speakers (currently playing Cannonball Adderley’s version of “Once I Loved”). It’s been my home since last Sunday night and I’m nested and happy here, soon to take down my collage and pack my week’s worth of dirty clothes and head back to Virginia.

I carry a lot back with me. Memories, thoughts, visions, people that have invaded my heart and moved in making themselves at home will be packed and carried back with me. I have been striped searched and found whole and growing. My work this week has produced my first performance poetry and given me new directions for my work.

I worked with the great Jimmy Santiago Baca in the Master’s Seminar: Telling Your Story in Poetry, Novel, or Memoir. I thought I came here to learn about novel and memoir since that’s what I’ve been working on at home. But what I came here to do was actually to write a poem and perform it in front of my literary family and several guests.

I was blown away by the reception I got, and, hopefully, I’ll use it to further inspire myself.

Most of the people here have left. Suheir, that wonder woman I mentioned earlier, is here through tonight, like me, but I still feel the vibrations created here during the week. Although I’m alone here I don’t feel that way. The leftover energy is strong. Strong enough to last me another year perhaps, but one of the things I learned this year is that I can create my own energy, I can renew it too.

One way to do that is to post here more frequently; another is to create that damn web site I’ve been threatening to do. I promise to do both (to the consternation of some of you I imagine) and quickly.

Meanwhile I have to get back to writing and waiting for that call. I hear that the session will be about so much more than just my writing. After hearing and seeing her perform I can’t wait to see the person she helps birth out of this man typing these words.

Peace comes only through truth.

“My blood is a million stories”
Jean Grae