I Have Found the Stars

"To begin to understand the gorgeous fever that is consciousness, we must try to understand the senses and what they can tell us about the ravishing world we have the privilege to inhabit."
- Diane Ackerman

I sit here at Navajo Lodge with nine children, one sister, and pine trees for company. The children range from one to eight years old. And the pine trees? They are much older.

Navajo Lodge is our decades old family cabin. It sits on Cedar Mountain near Duck Creek village, equal distances from two national parks, Zion and Bryce Canyon. These parks feel like great uncles in their familiarity, their wordless ways, their seasons of insight.

This mountain has been a mentor, a mother, a mecca for generations of my family. We have visited here since the 1930's. The meadows, the deer, the pink cliffs are practically ours, if only by frequency of visits and bloodline love.

Our cabin is part inheritance, part therapy, and entirely retreat.

Our stars, the ones that accompany us over our campfire and cabin roof, listen. Their light shines, infinite. We do, too, up here.

I left behind my heels, my hot rollers, my hill of vanities.

I have found the stars.

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Post Edit: Emily, over at in the hush of the moon, is hosting the series, Imperfect Prose on Thursdays. Join us!!

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Photo credit: Found Word Art, Lockyer, p. 11, via

Life Elevated

We are living 9,200 feet high this week. {A trip to our family mountain cabin.} Life elevated.

“I do not believe in creation, but in discovery, and I don’t believe in the seated artist but in the one who is walking the road.”
--Frederico Garcia Lorca

What road are you walking this week?

Photo credit: woodsmaiden

A Great Fountain

from the center of my life came
a great fountain, deep blue
shadows on azure sea water.

--Louise Glück

This past week has been a fountain, pouring. Life streaming. This fluid thing. Hours, days, breath. Every thought, a coin tossed. Even here. I don't know where the coins will land, in the fountain, in my lap again, or in someone else's pocket.

Yesterday we paraded to the tune of pioneers and one hundred and ten degree rays. Our super soaker squirt guns were worth every penny. The crowds loved the water shower almost as much as the candy shower.

It was our Pioneer Heritage Parade. Gingham bonnets de rigueur, ankle swishing skirts optional. We celebrated our ancestors who crossed the U.S. en route to Utah, the first group arriving in the Salt Lake Valley on July 24, 1847.

It is a wrenching legacy, one that I'd rather not share.

It rings with the burials of babies, wives, husbands, young children. Some froze, others didn't have enough food, others fell ill pushing handcarts, walking barefoot behind wagons, leaving behind everything but the clothes on their backs.

There is the story, often told in Mormon gatherings, of a young mother who had to claw the frozen earth bare-handed to bury her baby. Or maybe it was the husband burying the wife. Or the brother burying the sister. I forget.

At any rate, their timing was impeccably poor. Crap, even. So many lives lost. So Many. But did they have a choice? Stay and be prosecuted, tarred and feathered, burned out of their farms and homes, or reach for the west to forge a new life.

From the center of our lives pour stories. Whether or not they resonate, live in us, is another thing. But they are us, aren't they? Part of our story, too.

And in their shadow, I stand small.

You see, I resist the whole pioneer thing: the saga, the tears, the ankle length skirts. I am angry. I think: if only.

If only they'd been better prepared.

If only they could've formed an underground rail road or safe house place to go instead of hoofing it out west with So Many Children.

If they could have only stayed put in Illinois, laying low, and caught the transcontinental railroad a few decades later in 1869.

If only.

My mom is our family historian. She has a handle on our ancestors, their names, maiden and surname. She memorizes family group sheets for fun. She has fold-out charts that make the Periodic Table look like cake. She has bookcases of genealogical wonders that threaten to roll off shelves and swamp her home. And she knows the story of our iron spined umpteenth great grandma who fought off religious prosecutors and later made it out West. Whole.

My mom is a giver this way, a great fountain.

I stand small, her daughter, thirty eight years ignorant.

From the center of my life these stories come. Names, dates, genealogical veins run through my fingers like water, pouring. I want to learn them, know them all, every one, but I only pour deep blue.

And then I turn my mind over to write something else. How I prefer my mini van a/c and cotton capris. How my children are whole and well fed and getting straight A's. How I married the perfect man. And how I hope to hell I don't have to trek hundreds of miles barefoot, losing everything I hold dear for my belief in God.

Because that is exactly what my pioneer ancestors did.

What do you know about your genealogy? Family history? Spiritual legacy?

Photo credit: Tono Stano

POEM: No Sleep

No sleep,
only sheets that terrify,
their smooth plains,
cotton ligaments,
crash of days
spilling off
into gutters.

Sleep never slakes,
it is a gate
to nowhere,
a shade,
a lake
unable to
jump
off
a
plate.

This bed,
this window,
this open face,
holds a place
for you,
your iris eyes,
your hands fluttering yes,
a thousand birds,
and I fly.

--Terresa Wellborn
© 2010 by Terresa Wellborn. All rights reserved.

Have you ever suffered from insomnia?

**NOTE: This is part of Willow's Magpie Tales 24

Photo credit: Willow of Life at Willow Manor

My Heart Hangs

“On foot
I wandered through the solar systems,
before I found the first thread of my red dress.
Already I have a sense of myself.
Somewhere in space my heart hangs,
emitting sparks, shaking the air,
to other immeasurable hearts.”

--Edith Irene Södergran, “On Foot I Wandered Through the Solar Systems”

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Photo: Our three year old son, Zachary
Photo credit: Anne Savage, my sweet s.i.l.

Bearded Poets, Flarf, and One Story

Curiosities blip by from time to time...quirky lit blogs, must read journals, and digital shoe boxes of photos, art, and ephemera. All of them, deliciously distracting.

Here are a few gems blipping by this week:

Poets Ranked by Beard Weight
The Language of the Beard, kudos to The Torchbearer Society, London, 1913, and Gilbert Alter-Gilbert {and A Journey Round My Skull for the generous introduction}.

It is a fine bit of "classic of Edwardian esoterica" that discusses men's facial hair in relation to poetic gravity. It includes an indexing system for the weight of poet's beards {10 = Very Very Weak and 58 = Very Very Heavy}.

***Case in point:

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809 – 1892)
Beard type: Maltese
Typical opus: Crossing the Bar
Gravity (UPI rating): 33

{Benefits to facial hair, sweet! I'm a fan of the well-trimmed goatee myself.}

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Flarf Poetry
Flarf is popping up like the vuvuzela. Increasingly common {at least online}, and just as loud.

According to the ever astute Wikipedia, flarf is "characterized as an avant garde poetry movement of the late 20th century and the early 21st century."

The term, "inappropriate” is often used in conjunction with flarf, as these poets "mine the Internet with odd search terms then distill the results into often hilarious and sometimes disturbing poems."

***Case in point:

The very flarf web site I was going to point you, my dear reader, has recently added the picture of a half naked {AND, ironically, bearded} gent.

Google flarf and you may find it, but I'm not giving out any more clues. Just be assured that flarf has, in fact, already landed in The Wall Street Journal, the BBC, and The Village Voice...but clothed.

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One Story
On a more serious note, there is One Story, "a non-profit literary magazine that features one great short story mailed to subscribers every three weeks." {Great is modest.}

"They are small enough to fit into your purse or pocket, as well as your life."

***Case in point:

I started receiving One Story earlier this year as a gift from writer/literary/awesomesauce blog friend, Cynthia. Each issue is a different color. So far I have orange, pink, and green. I was smitten reading the first issue, awed by those authors blessed enough to publish therein.

As short story lovers and writers, if we want to support the written word, this is a fine way to do it!

What curiosities are blipping by for you this week?

Photo credit: Herb Lubalin's design for Beards by Reginald Reynolds (1976 HBJ paperback). Gracias, A Journey Round My Skull.

Digital Fasts, Moods, Summer Cleaning

I have beaches on the brain. In this 115 degrees summer oven, any body of water, even bath tubs and kitchen sinks, entice.

I have afflicted women writers on the brain, namely Plath, Sexton, Woolf. There are others I'm forgetting, legions even, but that triumvirate rises to the surface most often these days.

I have writing on the brain. Not a desperate scratching, but more a gliding, loosening, spinning down of thoughts.

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I did a self-imposed digital fast today until mid-afternoon. While away from the computer, I helped my kids paint, nommed homemade kettle corn {lmk if you want the recipe}, and rearranged oddities like rubber bands and oceans of No. 2 pencils. Much tossing, reorganizing, bundling.

Mr. Wellborn called it spring cleaning. I reminded him, not at all snarkily, it is Summer. Blazing.

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Plath submitted forty-five pieces to Seventeen magazine before they published her first short story.

Forty-five.

I am weirdly buoyed by this fact.

I'm current reading Ariel {along with five other books, don't ask me the titles}. I'm baffled by the tooth and bite of Plath's words, as I have visited and revisited them over the years. Erm, decades. Baffled in an awed, writerly way.

I feel gripped in a mania when I read her. An urgency strikes forth. I envy her words, but not her life. No, not that. Nor her end.

Then I came across this Collins poem recently, one that addresses appearances and disappearances, waiting and walking. It leads my thoughts to Woolf, and it fits my mood today perfectly {the Spain bit, as well}.

Walking Across the Atlantic

I wait for the holiday crowd to clear the beach
before stepping onto the first wave.

Soon I am walking across the Atlantic
thinking about Spain,
checking for whales, waterspouts.
I feel the water holding up my shifting weight.
Tonight I will sleep on its rocking surface.

But for now I try to imagine what
this must look like to the fish below,
the bottoms of my feet appearing, disappearing.

- Billy Collins

What are you walking across today?

Post Edit: Today, my friend, Hannah's blog, The Storialist, turns two! Stop by and tell her Happy Birthday! You'll be glad you did {her poetry is excellent}.

Post Post Edit: Still not sure if V. Woolf belly danced, but by the looks of it, she did swim.

Photo: Virginia Woolf and Clive Bell (husband of Virginia’s sister, Vanessa Bell) on the beach at Studland Bay, Dorset.

Go Dog, Go! Or How a Dog Saved My Marriage

I woke up this morning to the smell of dog. Our Waffle dog.

Mr. Wellborn arranges dog play dates.

Dog Play Dates.

You could say he's committed.

But there are perks to puppy ownership, namely, it gives me something to think about other than writing submissions, dinner menus, and college tuition for four children that will someday line up like train cars, nearly touching.

And carrot peels. Waffle recycles carrot peels. In her belly. As I grate them into the can, she snaps them up. She could be a circus dog, a clown's sidekick, if we ever needed the extra income.

A partial list of what Waffle has destroyed:

• our backyard grass {four holes, dug symmetrically. If she were human, she'd be a Math teacher}

• hallway cabinets, @ ankle level

• two toy cats {Don't tell our oldest daughter. Please.}

• innumerable pants and shirts {we blame her wicked teething stage}

• my sanity

When Mr. Wellborn brought up the “Let's get a dog” thing earlier this year, like a bone, I wanted to bury it. But after thirteen years of marriage, I caved. I put on my listening face.

He is a patient man.

We read books, we visited pet stores, we Googled and You Tubed dogs. Terriers and hounds and poodly things.

I wanted a Scottie.

He wanted a Greyhound.

I told him Greyhounds are over sized touring buses.

He wanted a chocolate Lab. I told him the only chocolate I prefer is edible, not canine.

In the end, we settled on a Bull Terrier. Our divided heart mended over this dog. Nearly truly.

Common phrases at our home:

Don't spit on the dog, Zack! {our almost-preschool-aged-son}

Don't feed her waffles, Zack!

Stop sitting on the dog, kids! You'll sever her spine!! She's not a pillow!! Do you want a paraplegic dog??? Do you want to pull her around in a little wagon the rest of her life?

Our Waffle dog is mostly gentle and kind. Except near bed time when she morphs into a sniveling ball of canine terror {thank you, Family Dog, for the phrase and the education}.

The dog days of summer don't help, either. At one hundred and fifteen degrees, they sweat us down until we feel kenneled. The evening hovers and stalls, along with our a/c unit, and Waffle lays on the cool cream bathroom tile, belly bare, pressed against it. She's OK, really. I like her best when she's asleep.

Today, I can proudly say the following are intact:

my marriage

my husband's happiness

my aptitude at face palming

my shoes, when they are placed above dog level

My kids want hamsters/cats/blue crabs next. Any suggestions?

Photo: Tumblr

POEM: Redwood Song

There is no song for you,
none that stretches
like salvation.

The Tule River Tribe calls you
Wawona,
Toos-pung-ish,
Hea-mi-withic.

We call you
redwood.

With empty arms
and barked waves,
you swim up
an impossible distance,
skimming the skies,
cracking heaven's gate,
tying evergreen and angels.

We saw you burning, once,
passing through,
a family trip
on the lip of your groves.

We leapt out with water,
a sacrament,
all seven of us.

We didn't know you germinate
only with fire.

We pressed your pines,
inhaled you like kings,
hanging on your boughs,
we, diseased beggars,
Lazarus at the
foot of such limbs.

--Terresa Wellborn
© 2010 by Terresa Wellborn. All rights reserved.

NOTE: This is part of Willow's Magpie Tales 23

Photo credit: Willow of Life at Willow Manor

Did Virginia Woolf Belly Dance?

Chime (Inhale)

Drum beat (Exhale)

Chime (Inhale)

Drum beat (Exhale)

I flew,
a falcon
spinning,
clouds whisping
beak and breath.

Last night I went to a belly dance yoga class.

I almost didn't go. I wanted to beeline to Borders, sit in child's pose soaking up the authors who have been and done.

Instead, I shimmied.

My Swiss friend, Astrid, has been a regular since January. She knows the dance instructor, the drummers by name, and yoga pants that fit like skin. Bare feet are essential. And sweat happens.

I've never been to Tibet, but last night I ommed Tibet in a candle lit loft space above Whole Foods off the Las Vegas strip, a space tourists don't dream of but locals delight.

Chime (Inhale)

Drum beat (Exhale)

I flew,
a falcon

spinning,

a ribbon of steel,

talons of truth.

Did Virginia Woolf belly dance? And if she had, thrusting hips, closing eyes, feeling the drum beat deep inside, would she have found a reason to leave the door open to this world?

“I thought how unpleasant it is to be locked out; and I thought how it is worse, perhaps, to be locked in." --Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own

Do we lock ourselves in? Out? Of friendships, children, husbands, gut truth, belly breaths? Of our own writing, thoughts, ourselves, even?

At the end, after the meditation, the waves rolled off. Panic, pressure, pain. Between shoulder blades, eyes, brain halves. Off and down, down.

The post-bliss centeredness seeped like temple worship, love making, child birth. Pulse and breath and consciousness in every synapse.

{Live and then write. Write and then live. Repeat. I think I'm finally getting this.}

Thursday night belly dance yoga class anyone?

Art credit: Francesca Woodman. Untitled, Providence, Rhode Island, 1976. Check her out, she is one of my favorites, RIP. Dark genius art.

POEM: In Praise of Schizophrenia

I want you with a wanting rivers know,
moving with pebbles and bodies that flow,
riding their banks high,
stretching out blue fingers for the sky.

I catch you with a catching breaking free,
that ocean and wind and sails can see,
the billow, the wake, the rippling thought,
our hands and lips and words have sought.

I despise you with a despising words can tell,
my words rise up in hackles, black as mail,
scaling higher, scaling harder, cliffs like wings,
a feathered grasp of air that stings.

Then why is there this wanting, jolting breath?
I pray you, need you, or favor death,
my thoughts, like night, pour from the crescent moon,
a tipped cup, up and up, they fill a tomb.

--Terresa Wellborn
© 2010 by Terresa Wellborn. All rights reserved.

What do you feel schizophrenic about?

PS: Check out this new blog community, One Stop Poetry. You'll be glad you did.

Art credit: John William Waterhouse, Circe Invidiosa

I Can't Say It

“When I look at my life and its secret colours, I feel like bursting into tears. Like that sky. It’s rain and sun both, noon and midnight… I think of the lips I’ve kissed, and of the wretched child I was, and of the madness of life and the ambition that sometimes carries me away. I’m all those things at once. I’m sure there are times when you wouldn’t even recognize me. Extreme in misery, excessive in happiness - I can’t say it.”

--from A Happy Death by Albert Camus

I fall back on quotes when my own words don't do. Quotes are a safe place, they cocoa my thoughts, render them sweeter.

I don't trust my words much today. Therefore, the quote.

This photo reminds me of the invisible race, a longtime laugh between myself and Mr. Wellborn. Like the spoon in The Matrix, I look out of life's window and think, "There is no race." No race. No race.

To publish.
To mother.
To live my unmothering moments unfettered.
To finish my manuscript.
To garden.
To capture the damned garden, any garden, with words that unfurl.
To repaint our house.
To move to a bigger house.
Etc.

I meander from hour to hour, unrecognizable even to myself.

I can't say it.

I can't say so many things here without losing myself completely, giving myself away: how many loves, how many losses, what the score is at present, how few books I've read this year, how I disgrace professional Librarians with disorganization and literary ineptitude, how I forget, how I wheedle and whine, how I loathe and love writing, and how I want to walk away from it all and start needlepoint.

My mom has a fine collection of threads and needles. I am paying her a visit later this week.

"It’s rain and sun both, noon and midnight..."

I shrink and grow in cycles, dazzled at the beauty of others, all of you, and the small cup that is my own, my life.

PS: Now watch this flash mob, I Believe She's Amazing, and cry. {Thanks for this, Lindsey. Compassion Counts.}

PPS: One more link You Must Visit: Days With My Father by Phillip Toledano. {Nod to The Storialist for this link. :) }

Kicking myself, afresh, for not doing more when my grandmother was still here. Capturing more, writing more, sitting with her more and holding her hand...

Tell me a joke in the comments. Heaven knows I need one.

Photo credit: Antanas Sutkus, The marathon on the University street. Vilnius, 1959

POEM: Where We Need to Go

It happened in the garden,
following grandpa,
six children deep,
where the earth's lips
rose to meet the morning sun.

They plucked tomatoes,
summer squash,
earth awe.

Bees greeted them,
dappled in liquid light,
vines unfolded
like birth.

He knows
how to sing green,
beckon blossoms,
call the earth's lips
to rise,
to meet the morning sun.

That is where we need to go,
growing hearts and sticking
them in the soil,
growing an earth love
and tending it
like this Star Valley farm boy,
bearing fruit,
a blessing.

--Terresa Wellborn
© 2010 by Terresa Wellborn. All rights reserved.

NOTE: This is part of Willow's Magpie Tales 22

Photo credit: Willow of Life at Willow Manor

Life as We Live It

"Do any human beings ever realize life as they live it, every, every minute."
--Thorton Wilder, Our Town

That is the question of our lives.

The past two days we have been knee-deep and wading in life:

post wedding reception bliss {for my brother in law, Shaun and his beautiful bride, Brooke}

chocolate fountains

Samoan dancing {fierce, heart-felt; I'll post pics & maybe video later}

happy birthday pancakes

temple grandeur {Draper, Utah; divine}

and happy tears.


We are on the road and reading Mary Oliver's Red Bird. Loving Every Poem.

We are on another plane of existence, a shimmering one, that as we trip into it, fills us completely.

This is life as we live it, every, every minute. And it is full.

What is your life full with today?

Photo credit: Maxfield Parrish - Air Castles
PS: Parrish is one of my favorite artists, we named our first son -- his middle name -- after him. I haven't posted his art in awhile and it was high time.