rallenta

In Italian, it means "slow down" and it was the phrase for 12/4, yesterday, but I didn't. I started off slowly, walking our 11 year old Lia in the desert where she needs to rest every few minutes or so. While she rested, I chatted with Mark or watched a hummingbird soar into the sky. We speeded up a bit on the second walk along the Rillito where the desert broom is filled with white seeds that will blow in the wind and mimic snowflakes falling across my vision. Faster mental pace after a light lunch and gift card shopping at Target. Then a pause button at Barnes and Noble where I met an author, Susan Pohlman, at her book signing for Halfway to Each Other. I received her book on Wednesday by mail and began to read it, enthralled by her snappy voice in a memoir which details how her family left California for a year in Italy. She now lives in Scottsdale and, at the signing, told me about a writing group in Phoenix, www.wisewomenwrite.com. I checked it out last night at midnight when my backyard neighbor's party woke me up (I ended up calling the police, finally, at 2:30 when the music and cantina-style singing continued to keep me from my sleep, so I am writing with less than four hours of rem-sleep under my belt). The website is exactly what I need to be reading (and Susan's blog. www.susanpohlman.com) and I really feel that my Higher Power put me in touch with her yesterday.

Another act of syncronicity took place post a conversation with a sister-writer about whether or not to get a smart phone. I reconciled myself to a "not the time to buy it" decision and then, on the way home later, discovered I had lost my phone. I called my provider and got it turned off, just in case anyone who found it might be tempted to call Paris or Mexico City and run up International calls, and I didn't much like the idea of having to buy a phone, afterall. And, before 8 a.m. today, I got a call from the manager of Boston Market where we ate with my dad yesterday; they found the phone. So, much relieved that I won't have to deal with a complex phone purchase; instead, I can restart the SIM card and get back in touch, the simpler way.

So today I will rallenta. I will, following the advice of Eat,Pray,Love (the movie which Mark and I watched last night) experience la dolci va niete (the sweetness of doing nothing)--at least practice getting to that experience as much as I can. I have much to catch up on reading and writing, chores at home, a long-delayed Y swim and, maybe go to a Our Lady of Guadalupe Celebration at Ted de Grazia's studio. But before all that, or very little of that, evolves, I did enter one poem this week by prompt and wrote two haiku while at a meeting on Friday which I will share. Here they are:

11/29 prompt: Next Steps
While relearning how to walk,
I am relearning how to live.
Practice strengthening the core muscles,
centering my spine and hips.
Keep my eyes focused ahead,
breathing as I move.
Balance on both sides of my body,
equal pressure on the limbs.
Pause between steps,
trust the need to rest.
Move sideways, pivot,
moving zigzag in longer strides.
Life, like walking,
is not a straight line.

12/3: prompt from The Writer, How to Be a Better Writer, Focus on your Writing

Write in the Middle of Things
In a stuffy room,
I listen to dry, long words,
wanting cool water.

I am in the midst
of painful transformation,
pushing through to change.