Last late night

It's gotten late again, almost midnight. The day goes quiet, though I've come strangely awake, the way it happens sometimes when it's silent and we know things we couldn't understand earlier in the day. I had meant this to be an early night. But this is Sunday, my last evening here, the last one that stretches open to me before I finish packing tomorrow night and leave very early Tuesday morning. I want to savor it; this quiet moment. Before.

So much, so much. This morning Michelle Sumares emailed a lovely article in the Asheville Citizen-Times--A sweet piece foreshadowing Thursday's Sisters Singing event in North Carolina. It hits all the right notes, and goes out to who knows how many thousands of people. Later in the day, Robin Rector Krupp writes to say that a diner called the Early Girl Restaurant is offering a 10% discount to anyone who mentions "Sisters Singing" between 4 and 6:30 pm on Thursday, April 2! This of course, the night of the reading, and they are on the same street as the Jubilee! Community Center where we'll have the event. So come on down! I can hear in the back of my mind, like some grand, big-hearted, easy-smiling women are welcoming us all to town.

How did this come to happen? Good people. Good people, devoted to a life of creativity and the spirit live in this town, and they have welcomed us to join them. And the fact that three artists in Asheville have organized a Sisters Singing art show this month (my dear friends Terese Armstrong and Michelle, along with Robin), and that twenty members of the local women's choir Womensong, hugely popular, are joining us that night. Sisters Singing is held within networks and circles and webs and waves of creativity and connection. Everywhere I turn, a friend.

A lovely weekend, getting ready to leave. No commitments; lots of sunlight splashing in through the south-facing windows, spring crashing into our lives in a great brash flash of color from the bulbs Jean planted last Fall. Daffodils, narcissus, tulips, crazy wild yellow and red and pink and orange, and the birds bathing for hours in the watery bath and the squirrels visiting and chirping around. Two great crows in the redwoods squawked for hours this afternoon -- the finest sound around, in my view.

I slept. I woke and read and did a little work. I ate and slept and dozed and ate. I watched it get dark and come light again. Jean and I chatted and twined around each other the way mates do when they are resting. As trip preparation help, Jean has done all my laundry, which lies in folded piles right now on the living room floor. She is determined that I will not leave my packing until the last minute. And now the Early Girl Restaurant in Asheville is offering discounts if you mention Sisters Singing when we're there! A strange series of events are knocking into each other as if we are meteors meeting in the sky. None of us knows each other, really. And yet we are all comfortable; there is ease in this. We do know each other, in the end.

My mother had daffodils that came up every spring just about now, in the bed right in front of the house. They were reliable as the sun, and abundant. They continued to spring to life each spring long after my mother stopped gardening or spending much time outside at all. But I remember the younger mother, leaning in the soil, tending her roses. Those daffodils never needed special treatment. They were common, unspecial, consistently beautiful. There were years they were the only color in our yard, after my father had the roses taken out. Once in my early thirties I lived near a great shady oak tree, and to my delight that first spring I found that someone had planted hundreds of daffodil bulbs underneath. A crazy, unending splash of yellow flowed up under that tree, and I found then that I love daffodils with the undying affection of the seven year old child. Jean has them in little vases throughout the house; it is as if they they bring spring inside; not only this lovely one in Santa Cruz, but every spring I've ever had.

The air was fragrant and breezy this weekend; the light fine. I sat in the sun and stared at the redwoods swaying. Something is settled in me. As if I can take the light of those daffodils and contain it in my skin. As if I can carry it with me where I go; offer it out; as if light itself can enter the heart and turn it bright.

I think it is possible to travel like a beam; to carry spirit like daffodils in your pocket, always a bouquet ready. Now there are just the last details; that little list on my desk that I am always adding to and crossing off. It's gotten kind of short. We're almost there. Just one more day. Then leap... and land in the arms of big-hearted women and men, waiting, and ready, in the blossom-filled mountains of a vibrant, sweet North Carolina town. Yes, leap.

Tender webs

Up at 3am this morning, thinking of details and emails and lists and inky possibilities of poetry and song. In the dream I was surrounded by a great gathering, an ocean of people. Some were celebrating our book, others were just there among the multitudes. But there was celebration everywhere, like a great New Orleans street party, and we Sisters were the guests of honor...

Too much at the desk. I turn to the redwoods outside the deck, hear Jean rumbling around as the day begins. I've been working for hours now, and the day's come light. It's three days before we leave. Someone emails me from the midwest to say that a friend to whom she sent "our book" just emailed her from Philadelphia, writing that there is a Sisters Singing reading in her town next week. We find ourselves within a multitude of tender webs–without lists, members or formal structures, simply organic wholes of friendship, shared history, caring, support. That Sisters Singing is gifted within these webs is a perfect part of the book itself. Each day grace falls to me through these webs, and I feel it: the tender grace of Love, something in a pure form. People hold each other with such beauty. Again and again and again, and all day long, this happens. It's true. It's constant, and common. It's human. And it's our future. Tender circles of love and concern. Threaded out so that we open our arms to broaden and sweeten. In the dream, the multitudes sway like a sweet warm ocean.

All next week we'll stay with various friends and Sisters, parts of the web. Someone's uncle in New York City, old friends in Asheville, newer friends in Philadelphia. We'll live inside this web as it extends and connects. Easy. The arms will be open. We'll know what to do. There is something about an embrace that melts what is singular and lonely. We'll all put out our arms.

Continuing

All day, thinking of writing. Thinking of what it is to put words together, like a catalytic converter inside of me making alchemy of these ordinary moments, pen, paper, fingers, wedding ring, wrist watch, tapping on the little board, as if at a piano, carving out the tune.

My mother drew out little songs at the old upright in our basement, and tried to teach me the chords. But I had no gift for the glyph of notes; I was drawn to the letters themselves, A, B, C, D, E, F, G, the melody in their mating and coming apart. What it might be to create concoctions with the notes caught me early, and excites me now as if I am still that little girl up late with the book reading. And today, thinking of what it will be to tap these songs in the morning or late evening, and send them immediately upon the waves in the great ocean. It is as if language has been given to me anew, as I imagine you there with me, swimming along.

We get ready to leave. Jean looks over her clothes and buys a new pair of pants. We get our hair cut, update our prescriptions, take all our vitamins, remove the suitcases from the back of the closet. The sisters are singing already. I can hear them, like sirens or fairies or even the furies–those sisters whose song haunts you and you cannot resist. I did not do all of this to create a reading tour for Sisters Singing in order to sell a book or create a franchise. I did it to thread this web–as if the sirens singing a crazy tune touch the pulse that lives at the core of my purpose and being. I am called to be with the Sisters, if I can get to them. To be together, to sing the songs, to say: these truths live. That this is how we live, this is what we call sacred, this is our tune. We touch each other, we hold hands, and we offer the blessings out to the world. Again and again, this is what the Sisters Singing gatherings are. To be clear that we will make our way through the great ocean together.

Beginning it all...

Last night, Judy Phillips asked if I was going to keep a blog during the Sisters Singing tour, and I promptly said No, that I wanted to be in the moment and with everyone we'll be visiting––not more screen and computer time. Then I went home and even more promptly set up this blog. Because writing is what I do, and something inside me said that this was a time to share my private journal, to make it a public, and by that I mean something that belongs to all of us, as a community.

So Jean and I will set off in four days for Asheville, New York, Philadelphia and Fredericksberg. Amazing women and men and communities and synchronicities are already flowing in each of these towns. Asheville will be a week from last night. As I awoke this morning I felt the sensation of a great ocean around me that is warm and flowing, opening and threading me towards something new. This ocean is vast. Imperceptable. Holding us all. As Jean once said to me, early on, when we had just met, "Swim with me." I took this as a proposal to share a journey, which it was. I offer the same to all of you, in my way. Swim with me. Let's journey these tides together.

(Written 7am)