#189 / 2011 Winter: Santa Fe

SANTA FE WRITING WORKSHOP III

#189

My tribute to the fellow writers in my group:

Go. Just write. I really wanted to ask you, Anna, what was the language your relative spoke, the one who used the term “iser?” That’s fascinating; you’re fascinating. This group who allowed me in and gave me safe harbor.

I don’t know you; you don’t know me. You really don’t know me because I am not me right now. I have trudged through Santa Fe an aching shadow. That woman who said she is grieving – that woman who seems so sad.

Onde – who strips herself so emotionally bare. I admire you; I admire you.

Adair – visually and physically all I would like to be. I think you are graceful and perfect, but you bare your fragility.

Vijali –whom I most see myself within. I have lived her life, first with mother, then Joe. Now she cares for her dying father. What is left when someone has lost memory? About her father,  I speculate: Only a man who was appreciative and kind his whole life would be so appreciative or kind at the end of his life.

I do not want to be a bitter old person. I will not be a bitter old person. I had the moon and stars all given to me; love served up to me like a big heaping plate of spaghetti.  I have been filled with love and I am grateful. I had more than most. I can not be sad. I can not be sad. I can not be sad.

These women, beautiful women, who helped me heal; who helped me, helped me. Thank you, thank you.

Love not bitterness

Beauty not pain

Beauty, beauty

inside and out.

Love, love

inside and out,

like Vijali’s father.

Santa Fe was traffic, parking meters, aggravation, lonelinesss, grief work, a struggle for enlightenment, and those women, those beautiful women, long-haired women. I swear I am going to let my hair grow long in honor of Santa Fe.