Journal

I’m talking on the phone to friend and fellow writer, Ann Jacobus, who lives in San Francisco. As she talks, I’m watching the way the Amsterdam rain hits my bay window sideways. Lots of things slip sideways here, as if sideways is a portal to dreams.

One Winter Solstice, lying on a comfy sofa in front of an open fire in France I was reading aloud to my soul sister of all-sorts, Joanne. We were engrossed in a Nordic myth recounting the death of Balder, the sun-beautiful, at the hands of his blind brother, Hod.

We meet over lunch under a large glass dome and the rain on the edge of Vondel Park in Amsterdam. I want to talk to my friend and fellow writer, Gina Miroula, about shapeshifting. About the freedom to change shape and structure and become something finned, furred or feathered. But her thoughts go straight to skin. Human skin and very human emotions.

Charles of the beautiful Cartesian mind is trying to explain the game of tarot to me. I know tarot as a system of divination and more loosely, a calendar for the year. But here, in the South of France, Charles is teaching me the rules of a game he has played for over twenty years.

I’m thrilled to participate in the My Writing Process Blog Tour. The four simple questions I was asked have acted as anchor and star in what I hope will be a new cycle of focused creativity and growth.