Tonight I’m reading at the sold out “Rock and Roll Story Slam” at Oriole 9. The Woodstock Writers Festival kicks off the weekend bash with these 31/2-minute rock-tune-inspired performances of the written word. Tomorrow I’ll post my written piece here.
Thanks again to The Golden Notebook for helping bring all things literary to Woodstock. The Augusten Burroughs event—hosted by Vogue’s Jonathan Van Meter—on Saturday night should be fabulous.
Early Spring:
The fallen blooms drift
magnolia on frost-tipped stone
–seasons colliding.
Left neon city
piercing night’s forgotten vows
–in dreams, mountain spring.
~me
Meatpacking NYC and Cabin P0rn:
125-Seat-Space Tumblr
100 Word Story Anthology is now a dotcom! Visit and ‘Follow’ to receive email updates about new stories by fabulous guest contributors. And since March Madness begins this week, here’s a 100 word story on basketball:
Echo
Ball meets concrete: cracked, uneven, bleached from heat and exposure. Echo. He remembers years ago, after the hard rains, trying to dribble through patches of debris blown onto the court. Sky’s the same. Blue heat, cloudless—-always been like that above what drove him out here alone in the first place. Looking off-court, he surveys The Vehicle—-his roving funhouse, logging highway miles. No nets on the rims now. He lifts the ball, shoots. Spalding rolls off his middle finger into the habitual follow-through, nearly perfect. He remembers the boy, squared up, obedient to form, listening to echoes of dusk.
—Sharon Rousseau
Excerpt from piece published in The Rambler magazine, July/August 2008
“Besides me wanting to be an artist, I wanted to be a movie star.” ~Patti Smith
Performance dialogue, locations and performances on 125-Seat-Space Tumblr. If you stage it, do it with love.
On the last day of my first trip to Palm Beach, wind-tossed sea covers the sand, and I pack summer clothes into laundry bags, pulling black boots from the corner where I discarded them the minute we arrived. Leaving a place always makes me wish I’d written down everything. Of course, when I’m walking on a beach or lying by a pool, I don’t, but I try to pay attention to the way salt water beads on my skin and the sun’s relationship to paths of scalloped ridges in receding tide. Here are some prose fragments, glimpses of Palm Beach from this trip, possibly story starters.
In night breeze through cabana drapes, sea glass flickers with candlelight, shadows of orchids bow.
Awake early, sunrise colors fade into opaque sky; it all changes so quickly, bending clouds and sun separate, sea’s finite illusion.
Southern beaches from my childhood, miles of dunes, sea oats, even sand—a landscape existing in memory, ocean now.
Writing with a sweep of rain, rhythmic on tile, pushing my story.
From a balcony in palms, wondering how many miles to the sea’s horizon where light gathers before reaching the shore.
The Woodstock Festival didn’t happen in the village of Woodstock, NY, but the event’s story began there, and the town’s name instantly became significant as a description of the building musical and social consciousness of peaceful freedom. The valley was already a home for spiritual seekers, artists, writers and musicians seeking refuge from New York City and industry’s disconnect with nature. The Arts Students League in New York City formed its first summer school of painting in Woodstock in 1906. Renowned artists followed, and the list is long. By the time “Woodstock” shut down the New York Thruway, made music history, and changed public perception of the long-standing artists’ colony built under the shadowy beauty of Overlook Mountain, visionaries had been working for years trying to create a utopian dream. And the pursuit of that dream continues.
The Varga Gallery, which focuses on outsider and self-taught artists, seems to blend the original intent of the Woodstock festival with the goal of creating and selling art in a town of artists. Christina Varga opened the gallery nine years ago beside a church-turned-theater where Jimi Hendrix played guitar on stage and used the Varga building as a dressing room. In the summer, giant sunflowers create a fairy tale forest to the gallery’s front door. In winter, the walk’s shoveled, but an expected country chill hugs the gallery unless an opening party packs the rooms and spills over into the street. Varga’s currently hosting her yearly Goddess Festival. My mixed media contribution, Altar, isn’t for sale. It’s interactive poetry, and if you want to see it, visit Woodstock and drop by the gallery. Also check out the Woodstock Artists’ Association Museum and The Center for Photography at Woodstock.
I’ll post more about Woodstock history, artists, and the happenings around town. Stay tuned.
Freedom within structure. Years ago at a writing retreat in New Mexico, the teacher Natalie Goldberg used that concept as a resting place, a still point to return to when the pressure of how or why began to pull us in wild, frantic directions. She talked about her own writing, painting and meditation practices and how structure had saved her many times when “monkey mind” threatened to whip the day into a frenzy of no work.
Several years after the retreat while wandering around the Unoppressive Book Store on Carmine Street in New York, I saw a discounted book filled with 99 word short stories. I took the book off the shelf and read a few. Not too long after that, Gotham Writer’s Workshop sponsored a contest for 100 word fiction. I wrote one and won second place.
Lately, I’ve been writing some 100 word stories, both fiction and memoir, and have found the form to be a great exercise—sort of like haiku. Working within structure, trying to find the story or mood and to convey it simply, slows me down and creates a realistic goal for a writing practice while I explore ideas for longer pieces. They’re snapshots, prose poems, memory fragments, dreams. Try it.
Waking to coffee
and more buzz about Gisele
— Super Bowl Sunday.
All part of the show
angel wings, dragon tattoo
“American Life.”
~me
Material Koan I found yesterday in Manhattan near Material Girl’s old stomping ground. Appropriate for the day…
The potter’s hands turn / curves of earthy seduction / molding dampened clay. ~me, city.