Several years ago I stood at the top of Atwater Bluff and watched a storm move over the lake, towards me, towards me, and finally above me. Everything I wore was wet with rainwater. I thought it was pure, clean, no need for the washer and dryer, I’d hang my soggy jeans on the line. That’s when I discovered the reek of acid rain.

Since then I haven’t purposely let a storm drench me, no matter how dramatic its entrance into the eastern sky. I do walk or bike to the bluff, especially for spring and summer sunsets, whenever I get the chance. Sometimes I merely admire the scene, sometimes I draw, sometimes I write. And I hope that the only drops falling on me will be eavesdrops.

My purse is filled with pieces of scrap paper, shorthand scribbles legible only to me. Here’s one about two or three weeks old: Two days ago at the verge of sunset, the Atwater Beachscape mesmerized all of us there to celebrate a break in the rains. The pastel pink clouds to the south were so distinct they appeared outlined. The still water, luminous as it reflected the vanishing light from the west, was streaked aqua and pink. And now I’m here again, same time of day, benched on the landing one flight above the sand.
“So many steps, this is absurd,” mutters someone climbing upwards.
“Long way down there,” says a woman peering from the top.
“A lotta stairs.”
“Look at all these steps.”
“It’s a long way down,” a boy’s voice this time.
The light gradually turns dreamlike, but tonight everyone’s looking at the steps.

Here’s a piece of paper that actually has a date, June 25: It’s stunning again tonight, but people as always trudge up and down, attention focused on steps instead of pink-blue sky reflected on pink-blue lake.
“I thought you said you were gonna carry me.”
“Carry you? No. You need an army to carry you!”
The redwing black birds converse in melodic bird chirps. It's hard to imagine what they're saying. Do they, too, love luminosity?
Still water, rippled streaks, colors subtle, alluring, luring me to stay when it’s time to go.
Bird speak, bird cheep, bird trill, tones sweet, getting dark, three-dimensional bird-sounds, gulls add their sour notes. It’s hard for me to leave the birdversation.

I’ve been a shore bird my whole life, writing, drawing, painting, contemplating. So I’ll end with one of my lake poems, written years ago:

THE DARK SIDE

Where the surface is textured
Like treads on a tire
The water is dark,
But where it is calm
There is light,
Where it is calm
There is light,
Perhaps that's why lakes
are streaked.

Where warmth and cold meet
There's traveling heat
Creating wind, gale, breeze.
If there were no cold,
where would warmth go?
If there were no cold,
where would warmth go?
Would there be currents
in lakes, lagoons, seas,
Would there be currents
in me?

The outside opposes,
Or flows with,
the currents beneath,
Affecting the light side
The dark side, the streaks.
What would light fill
If darkness weren't there?
What would light fill
If darkness weren't there?
Would there be currents
in me?

The inside opposes
or flows with
Crosses
or goes with
Exposes or hides.
Unlike the lake
our surface being skin
Makes less transparent
the currents within
The light sides, the dark sides
What do our hides hide?
Why do we live our lives streaked?
 

Since I'm one of the original members of the Earth Poets, and our twentieth anniversary performances take place this Friday and Saturday, I thought I'd post our press release, and a poem.

Global warming was considered a fringe concept when Jeff Poniewaz founded the Earth Poets in 1988. Now it's 2008, and the fringe has become mainstream. "Green" is the latest buzz word, and it doesn't mean envy. It means harmony, living in harmony with nature. For their 20th Anniversary Performances, four of the original poets, Jeff Poniewaz, Louisa Loveridge-Gallas, Suzanne Rosenblatt, and Harvey Taylor, and the two musician members of the group, Jahmes Finlayson and Holly Haebig, will continue to transform inconvenient truths into conscientious action. The performances will also feature a special guest, activist and poet James Godsil. Scientists say it's not yet too late, so the Earth Poets and Musicians will contemplate how we can slow down the rush towards global warmth!

FRIDAY, APRIL 18,  2008
7 P.M. Interactive Poetry and Music for the Whole Family
8 PM Earth Poets and Musicians
Jahmes Finlayson, Louisa Loveridge-Gallas, Holly Haebig, Jeff Poniewaz, Suzanne Rosenblatt,
Harvey Taylor, and SPECIAL GUEST: James Godsil
URBAN ECOLOGY CENTER
1500 E. Park Place
$5.00 Per Person, $10.00 Per Family, UEC Members Free

SATURDAY, APRIL 19, 2008, 8 P.M.
Jahmes Finlayson, Louisa Loveridge-Gallas, Holly Haebig, Jeff Poniewaz, Suzanne Rosenblatt, Harvey Taylor, and SPECIAL GUEST: James Godsil
THE COFFEE HOUSE
631 N. 19th Street (Just South of Wisconsin Ave)
Donation: $5.00

MUCH OBLIGED
By Suzanne Rosenblatt

What's an artist to do?
He paints, dances, writes,
Maybe he recites,
Composes a sonata, deftly draws a flower
As the mad world succumbs_   
To those greedy for power
He may struggle to get others   
To listen or look
As he tries to make a living   
With his painting, song, or book
Yet he loves what he does   
In his cranny or nook

Should he reimburse the planet for his talents
And work to put the earth back into balance?
Pay rent for his creative space
By trying to make the world a better place?
I'd say yes, we have to do what we can
Have to set up our personal
Repayment plan
 

If intention were action, I’d post a blog every day. I always write one. In my head. Sometimes I write down the first paragraph, in fact don’t yet know whether this will be merely another first paragraph. I find almost everything interesting, but can’t find time to write about it. And if intention were action, I’d post a blog after every Second Sunday Soup and Salad Salon. First we share our food, after that our thoughts on a specific topic. We examine the issues that affect our lives, philosophical, environmental, cultural, political.

This month I resolved to write beyond paragraph one, maybe because our topic was voluntary simplicity, which covers every aspect of how we live. Simplicity enforced by poverty was not the topic, nor the simplicity that will be imposed on us as climate change progresses, but simplicity chosen by those who are lucky enough to have that choice. What is it, what does it require of the individual, where are each of us now? What is the media’s impact on this? Why do so many people buy into the importance of THINGS?

We touched on the range of complexity entailed in simplicity and how each of us deals with it. People mentioned personal quirks they were trying to work on, like the man with more shoes than Imelda, or the woman trying to get rid of her excess so her children won’t be stuck with it.

My view: to live simply we have to examine our lives, know our priorities, know what makes us content, recognize that things are merely things. Here are a few things I do, or avoid doing:
I don’t drive, but rather bike, walk, or bus
Grow my own vegetables, but what about all those trees that make the crop smaller each year?
Make sure my grandkids know how wonderful it is to eat food you yourself have grown
Use fresh produce, preferably organic, preferably local
Avoid processed foods, red meat, farmed salmon
Minimize eating out
Use organic products for cleaning and lawn care, avoiding pesticides and other poisons
Recycle, and that includes buying, when possible, at rummage sales
Keep the thermostat low and wear sweaters and long underwear in winter
Minimize water use, hard when I have a vegetable garden
Remind myself to let go, of things that don’t really matter, of the things I want to do and don’t have time for, of things I own but don’t need.
Use whatever talents I have to make people contemplate their own impact on their surroundings. That’s why I’m writing this!

There’s more I do, and much more I should do. One thing I want to say: every single item on my list enriches my life rather than depleting it.

Yvette wrote this to me after last Sunday’s salon: “I realized that my life has been simplified over the last 5 months due to a change in my eating.  I've become a vegan (by default) to help reduce the tinnitus (ringing in my ears).  I've reduced the amount of food I consume.  I cook more and eat out less.  I buy most of my veggies from local farmers markets and have taken the time to nurture myself in this way.  It has been a worthwhile journey.  Change your eating, change your world!...One point that we didn't discuss:  Rhythms can greatly simplify our life.  We create a harmonic rhythm to the day and it flows as we flow with it.  We can also create a beautiful rhythm to tasks that come on a routine basis.  It requires conscious thought and aware alignment, but ultimately as we align ourselves with the rhythm of the universe, we find flow and peace in voluntary simplicity.”

I wrote Glow Ball Worming for our Earth Poets and Musician performances last April. It plays around more poetically with my ideas on voluntary simplicity and ecological living, which are intertwined. I hope you’ll add any thoughts you might have.
 

You click the wrong spot, and you never know where you’ll end up. I did that the other day, and since that wrong spot was in Eudora, my Email application, I ended up with a garbled in-box. Over 500 messages had been waiting for me to deal with them, and now they’ll never be dealt with. Rather than try to sort out the messed messages, which I already knew was impossible (previous experience, believe it or not), or search for missing information that now was dislocated, I trashed everything in my in-box.

It’s over 3 ½ years since the last time I did this. Here’s a poem I wrote then:
CLEAN-UP OF TIME POLLUTION
I lost everything in my in-box
Messages I intended to answer
Articles I hadn't read
Yet
Political actions, invitations,
Birth of Jeremiah congratulations,
So why aren't I up-
Set?
656 messages waiting for action from me.
Now there are none.
Suddenly I'm free.

Did I learn anything from that first mistake? Yes. Let go! It was time for those messages to say goodbye.
Have I learned anything from the second mistake? Yes. But I don’t yet know what it is.
 

Last fall, and again last week, I had a unique opportunity: to talk to Alverno transfer students about the creative process, to give them an idea of what I do, why I do it, and, most important, how I go about it. Here’s my presentation:

I'd always been a visual artist, but a month before my fortieth birthday, I had an unusual dream: I was searching in the dark for the bus stop. I had to get the number eighty, it was the only way home. My feet led me, over concrete, gravel, clay, through a cornfield, over twigs and underbrush, and finally to a bed of pine needles where I fell asleep.

When I awoke (and this is still part of the dream), light was seeping through pines, and the world was transformed. I walked along roads unknown yet hauntingly familiar, and arrived at home exhausted and exhilarated, unaware that the number eighty had passed me by.

The dream was so vivid I wrote down every detail in the middle of the night. The following day I wrote a short story. Then another. Then another, ten short shorts in a week. It was unsettling. After twenty years of trying to establish myself as an artist, why was I suddenly writing?

That was almost 30 years ago, and I'm still writing. The dream had told me to take another path, and was so intense it became the path. Popping into my mind a few days before I turned forty, it showed me a new route to eighty.

But not a totally new route. Instead of giving up art, I combined it with my writing. While drawing a weeping willow at the duck lagoon, I noticed that weeping willow leaves look like tears, so I used the words weeping willow leaves look like tears to form the leaves of the willow. I soon was drawing ducks using the word duck, and geese using the word goose, and gradually almost all of my drawings became wordrawings.

At first I wrote short shorts, and then short stories. A poet friend invited me to read with her at Woodland Pattern, and soon I was reading the stories in public, something I never thought i'd do. In 1984 Clyde Morgan, dancer in residence at UWM, invited me to write something for him to dance to. After many conversations with him, I wrote my first performance poem, Yoruba Pygmies, based on both Clyde's life as a dancer in Brazil and on my environmental concerns. Here's an excerpt:

ECHOING THE ECOSYSTEM, ECHOING THE ECOSYSTEM,
HE DANCED ON THE ROCKS LIKE A LIZARD, LIKE A LIZARD,
ABSORBING THE WARMTH THROUGH HIS FEET.
HE DREW FROM THE ROCKS LIKE A LIZARD, LIKE A LIZARD,
THE ENERGY BENEATH.
HE DREW FROM THE FORCE OF THE SEA, OF THE SEA,
FLOATING ON THE WAVES
LIKE SEAWEED, LIKE SEAWEED,
HE DREW FROM THE FORCE OF THE SEA, LIKE SEAWEED
SWEEPING SHOREWARD, SWEEPING SEAWARD.
HOW MUCH IS A MAN LIKE A LIZARD, LIKE A LIZARD
ABSORBING FROM THE EARTH BENEATH?
HOW MUCH IS HE LIKE SEAWEED, LIKE SEAWEED,
SWEEPING SHOREWARD, SWEEPING SEAWARD?
HOW MUCH IS HE LIKE SEAWEED
DRIFTING TILL HE'S STRANDED,
DRIFTING TILL HE'S STRANDED?

One day about two years later, I said to my dog, "Lilac, here's your water, hey, Lilac, here's your waterwaterwater." and it struck me that water rapidly repeated sounds like water. I wrote a visual poem called THE SOUND OF WATER, using the word water to look like waves. It was totally visual, handwriting flowing on paper. But one day I decided to figure out a way to read it, and discovered it was actually possible!

Basically I'm saying that all sorts of incidents and challenges can open up your life to new directions, but only if you let them. That applies to whatever you do in your everyday life.

I write in cafes, libraries, airplanes, seldom at home where there are too many other things I have to do. I paint and draw along the lakefront, in parks, department stores, in darkened theaters, immersing myself in the outside world. If I have a routine, I’m more likely to write on a regular basis. Since the unconscious mind may form images that the controlled, conscious mind could never create, before I sit down to write, I swim, bike, or walk and let my mind drift, extremely important in the creative process, at least in mine. In fact a few days before that dream, I had suddenly begun to swim every day, and I'm sure there was a connection!

I once took a fiction workshop, and in her introduction the facilitator said, writing isn't fun, it's hard work. Hmmm, I thought, work and play aren't mutually exclusive. They're often intertwined. And for me, writing is fun. Painting, drawing, dancing, anything creative is fun, so long as I can relax, get into the flow, and not worry about masterpieces. That’s one thing I never do: I never sit down, look at the blank page, and think that I’m going to draw or write a masterpiece.

My physics professor at Oberlin always emphasized that scientific discovery depends on taking advantage of accidents. Adolph, my husband and art teacher, also stressed the importance of accidents. I have to be open to, and not afraid of, the outrageous, the strange, have to be open to play, the kind without rules, to going with the flow, allowing my mind to relax so ideas enter freely and, theoretically at least, take unexpected forms. Most of my dancer drawings were done in the dark during performances. When I write a story, each sentence suggests the next. When I write a travel journal, I want to bring the reader along with me, to catch the thoughts that normally might flit away unnoticed. I sit in the middle of the action and describe what I see, and what I feel. 

Working on a poem, I often take a word and bounce it around. During the first Gulf War, I’d read we were doing apocalyptic damage to Iraq. I bounced apocalypse around and it became I pucker lips! 

APOCALYPSE APOCALYPSE APOCALYPSE
I PUCKER LIPS, I PUCKER LIPS, I PUCKER LIPS
APOCALYPSE, I PUCKER LIPS, A BOMB OR A KISS 

When writing CHANGES IN THE LAKE, I noticed that if I put the last syllable of horizon at the beginning, I got in her eyes. Strange. That's what a horizon is, not a location, except in our eyes:
HORIZON IN HER EYES IN HER EYES IN HER EYES
HORIZON CRYSTALLIZING ON A PINPOINT IN HER HEAD
INFINITY ON A PINPOINT ON AN UNKNOWN PINPOINT
ON AN UNKNOWN PINPOINT IN HER HEAD.

Writing my RAISING CAIN poem, I discovered that "Cain and Abel" sounds like cannibals: FROM CAIN AND ABEL, CAIN AND ABEL, TO CANNIBALS CANNIBALS MOTHER EARTH'S ANIMALS, CONSUMING MOTHER EARTH.

I play around with ideas in the same way, say to myself I want to write about some specific idea, and let it percolate as I walk or bike or swim. Or sleep. And I always have pen and paper with me or next to me, so whatever strikes me won't slip away.