I am an excitable person who only understands life lyrically, musically, in whom feelings are much stronger as reason.

I am so thirsty for the marvelous that only the marvelous has power over me.

Anything I can not transform into something marvelous, I let go.

Reality doesn’t impress me. I only believe in intoxication, in ecstasy, and when ordinary life shackles me, I escape, one way or another.

No more walls.

~ Anaïs Nin ~

~S~

Just a little post to wish all those here, there and everywhere a Very Merry Christmas! We’ll be enjoying a lovely white Christmas here in Denver, “shooshing” and all, but we have absolutely no plans to wash our hair in snow just so you know. A little sledding maybe, but that’ll be the extent of it. There will be a lot of indoor activity like competitive goody eating and long bouts of lounging in pajamas.

So where ever you are, near or far, know on Christmas day you will all be in our hearts as we celebrate a lovely white Christmas here in the Mile High city.

It seems appropriate that today is the beginning of National Novel Writing Month, just as it is also the day to celebrate our favorite American authors. I will be honest I haven’t given much thought or attention to National Author’s Day in years past. Even though it was once federally decreed by the Department of Commerce, (probably to help boost sales of all things American in the years after World War II), it receives very little attention now, unrightfully so, especially in our very troubled economic times. (Trust me, writers need a bit of government support just as much as banks and car makers do.)  I shamefully admit I often forget this special day even exists until someone in the book world reminds us all, and I’m even more ashamed that I am often not attracted to the works of many red blooded Americans. I am more entranced by authors from all around the world and whose transplanted into America whose influences are more, well, ”worldly.”

So with the beginning of NaNoWriMo it seemed appropriate to choose today, National Author’s Day, to extol to the world a short list of my favorite authors. If you haven’t read the following authors, you should, not because I said so, but because you may be missing a collection of carefully crafted words that could change your life forever.

Here are the three writer’s that I hold closest to my heart, what I call my “holy trinity,” and I read and reread  their works as often as I can. (Yes Hemmingway, I love you, worship you, but I love them more.)

Anais Nin, whom I discovered when I was a teenager. She awakened the woman within me with her words. Then as I grew older, she brought the writer in me back to life in times when an oppressive world try to deaden my passion for writing.

We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations.

Bernhard Schlink, whose book Der Vorleser, known in English as The Reader, first awakened me to a deeper understanding of my German roots, and then solidified in me a deeper understanding of the power of choices and the power of love that I could not define before I read his book.

I’m not frightened. I’m not frightened of anything. The more I suffer, the more I love. Danger will only increase my love. It will sharpen it, forgive its vice. I will be the only angel you need. You will leave life even more beautiful than you entered it. Heaven will take you back and look at you and say: Only one thing can make a soul complete and that thing is love.

Josephine Hart, whose words are those who seem to have been written from the secret recesses of my soul, has shook me from my comfort zone more times than I care to admit. Her books reveal aspects of the human psyche that the rest of us only wish we were brave enough to say. Her death this year was a terrible loss, she was obviously filled with a vast ocean of unwritten words which death has now stolen from us forever.

There is an internal landscape, a geography of the soul; we search for its outlines all our lives. Those who are lucky enough to find it, ease like water over a stone, on to its fluid contours, and are home.  

Words move us to jump, fly, swim, dig into something deeper and greater than our own existence. Words create transformations, build courage, tear down walls. Words set people free as they are chained by captors, words end wars, words feed children’s minds, words give hope to people who never knew the word hope existed.

Words give me life. I write to breathe, to expel and intake air as I say the words. In and out I write to breathe so I can live.

If you have followed my twittering the last few days you may already have a good indication that I’m now standing at an unknown door and I am waiting either for it to open and that I’ll be pushed through it or I’ll try to turn the knob and find it happily locked until another unseen crisis finds it necessary to place the door in my path again.

I haven’t shared anything with my family, except with my husband and children, and it is unlikely that other family members or friends will read this, but if they do, I hope they realize that it is easier for me to write than to speak even more so at this moment. In fact when I do call you with any definitive news I do not know if I’ll even be able to speak, whether out of crushing fear or flooded by relieved tears of joy if my fears are unfounded. 

Last week I realized that the abnormal lesion on the septum of my nose was no longer an irritation, but it had grown and the bone below my nose has become painful, all now the sign of something terribly wrong. I realized that my stubbornness to always heal myself, (which I’ve done with great success for ten years of never being ill except for one bizarre ocular migraine because dehydration or a rare cold),  is now longer enough. I knew I needed careful consideration by someone else’s eyes, medical eyes. But when I went to the doctor’s office I received no answers, only responses such as, ”I have no idea what it is.” and “Has anyone else in your family had cancer?” It was the person’s inept way of hiding their suspicion obviously not wanting to be deliverer of a possible death sentence. And it was their eyes. Humans are still not capable of hiding what their eyes are saying.

So now I wait for Friday when I meet with the head and neck surgeon and if at that appointment he confirms for me that my fears are correct then the “C” word will become a mainstay in my vocabulary whether I want it to or not. Most of all, what I’m hoping for is that my skills as a researcher have failed me and what I have already discovered about what I might be facing is wrong, completely and utterly wrong.

You see there’s too much I have left undone, two sons that still need me, a husband who relies on me too much, and words, so many words I have written that need tending to and words so many words still unwritten.

Just three more days. If I can just stay in this present moment for three more days, I will deal with whatever Friday brings, good or bad and face it head on in whatever labyrinth I am plunged into, slay the minotaur if need be, and hope I can find the guiding string out of the darkness.

We did it. We survived the hottest summer on record in Colorado. Thank goodness for my trusty cadre of electrical fans by my desk and throughout the house that kept us dry. I gave up even trying to write on days when the sweat dripping from my brow began pouring like Niagara Falls. Who can think when it’s that hot, let alone type while wiping your forehead every five minutes. All I can say is that I am not sorry to see this summer go. Cool fall evenings and snow spitting on Halloween are things I can’t wait to enjoy now.

Heat aside, the rest of my hiatus from being online was well worth it. Outlines, rewrites, and new book ideas made the sweltering heat bearable, well almost bearable. Then, when I wasn’t writing, I spent every waking moment making sure the kiddos had the best summer possible. Pool time, summer reading programs, Rockies game, drag racing, Elitch Gardens, they enjoyed it all.

Out of the whole summer, the one thing that our whole family enjoyed most was our best veggie garden ever! I have to say that if I was not a writer I just might chuck it all in and be a farmer. Like writing, it’s in my blood. I have a picture of my Irish great-grandfather tending his crops. I learned it all from my mother though. She kept us fed one summer with her garden. We were dirt poor, much like we and the rest of the country are today, but I remember eating like a king that summer on her vegetable haul, much the way our family has devoured our garden goodies this summer.

Some people think that spring is the time for new beginnings, but for me, at least this year, my new beginnings will come in the fall. So much to do, say, share, I’m ready for the garden work and the heat of summer to be over and will be happy to sit inside this fall and winter with a warm cup tea while I cuddle up with more of my writing, finishing the work I did over the summer. Oh and I might cuddle with the hubby between rewrites, if he’s lucky.

Happy end of summer everyone!

“Those whom the gods love do not die young:

they live to be old, remaining quick to learn and to feel.

But they are few, and need to be wise as well as fortunate.”

~Raymond Mortimer

I am not quite old yet, and nowhere near ready to die with so much left to write.

I am however fortunate that I will be offline (updated) until the end of summer, learning, feeling,

but most of all writing, and hopefully growing a little wiser along the way.

See you when the heat of summer is in full bloom.

~S~

Josh Fattal and Shane Bauer are strangers to me. I have never met them, but I have for nearly two years followed the news of their false imprisonment in hopes that today their families would be given a sign that their release was imment, but to all of our shock the Iranian government has decided once again to inact a continued unjust, unwarranted punishment on them. The unthinkable, the denial of the trial promised to them months ago and continued denied access to their legal counsel. Worst of all the denial of their family’s right to see that they are safe and well. There is no justification for this delay, their trial, their release could happen at any minute of any day, and yet it doesn’t. It is apparent once again that they have always been and continue to be pawns in a game and that game needs to end.

To those of you who have followed my solidarity with the hikers as I took part in the fast for their freedom, I thank you for your support, especially my husband and even more my two sons, and it is at their urging that I broke my fast today after 61 hours with no food. In my hardest hours earlier this morning, when I was having difficulty focusing and speaking, it was apparent my commitment to the fast could no longer outweigh my commitment to my family, so I ended the fast hours sooner than planned. Yet my suffering has been like a pin prick compared to Josh and Shane’s imprisonment and Sarah Shourd’s as she and their families wait for their release.  The pain of the fast hit hardest, not physically, but mentally today, when I listened to Sarah speak to KTVU. I heard not only the deep pain in her voice, but the poignant haunting words that there is a possibility that Josh and Shane could be on a hunger strike now in light of today’s events, just as all of us who were fasting go back to our daily lives.

It is hard to hear that their pain may be increasing in hopes of pressuring their captors, but knowing that fact must strengthen our resolve. It is not time to give up hope. It is not time to stop shouting for their freedom. The time is now for even more of us to take a stand for the freedom of two Americans who have been so wrongly accused. New voices need to rise up along with those who have already been calling for their release for the last 21 months. It is time for all of us to keep demanding that Shane and Josh be released now!

Make yourself heard! Go to www.freethehikers.org

Today I will not be writing about the last 36 hours of fasting for Josh and Shane’s freedom. My suffering in no way equals theirs as they sit wrongfully imprisoned in Iran.

Today is about reminding the world that all three of the hiker’s are innocent.

On May 11, they will once again have to endure what they went through earlier this year, a trial that accuses of them of crimes they did not commit. Today, just as they have for 648 days, their families, their friends, and those of us who are supporters fasting to show our solidarity in the hours leading up to their trial, demand their freedom now.

Let Josh and Shane hear your voice, go to www.freethehikers.org

“I want to be perfectly clear: Sarah, Shane and Josh have never worked for the United States government. They are simply open-minded and adventurous young people who represent the best of America, and of the human spirit. They are teachers, artists, and advocates for social and environmental justice.” — President Barack Obama