It was a night to remember. It was a night like any other. It was a night like no other. It was just the other night. It was the night I lost her. It was the night I lost everything. It was the night I had nothing to lose. It was the night my faith died. It was the night I found Jesus. It was the night I wrestled with God. It was the night I sold my soul to the Devil. It was a devil-may-care night. It was a nightmare. It was a dream of night. It was the taste of night. It was the night in me that made me do it. I remember the night it happened. That night, I could have done anything. I don’t remember that night. One night, we could hold back no longer. I only wanted one last night. I wish I could take back that night. He came to me one night. Night settled over us like a shroud. The night was flush with stars. The night was gone. Good night. Tonight will be the night. And then I went out into the night.

A Christmas Prayer

For those who believe in the birth of Christ and those who do not;
For those who have and those who want;
For the hale and mighty and the meek and small;
For those left in the cold, and those who stand by warm fires;
For the beautiful and the unlovely, for the ugly and mean;
For the son and the daughter and the mother and the father;
For the fatherless, motherless, childless, bereft;
For those who fear loss they’ve not yet known, and those who have lost more than they can bear;
For those whose burden is great, and the light of heart;
For the lost and tired and the weary and hope of being found, of finding;
For those overseas and far from home, and those whose homes they pass;
For the joyless and the sad, for the bright-eyed and the happy;
For the cynic and the satirist, the bully and the bloviator, the loud, the silent;
for the scared, for the sick, for weary, the angry, the dispossessed, the suffering;
For us all, united after all in what is human: in error, in disappointment, in failure and inadequacy;
In hope, in desire, in common dream;
May we have the courage to try, even when the odds are long, the pain imminent.
May we refuse to become selfish, arrogant, myopic, self-righteous, and violent.
May we forgive. May we find solace and comfort.
May we dream. May we laugh. May we sing. May we listen.
May we pray with generous hearts, in prayer that exceeds ourselves.
May we be better than we are, each and everyone.

Oregon Arts Commission Fellowship

I am honored that the Oregon Arts Commission has just selected me for a 2011 Individual Artist Fellowship:

"Oregon Arts Commission Awards 13 Artist Fellowships   
Grants Recognize Excellence in Performing and Literary Arts   
    
The Oregon Arts Commission announces 13 recipients of its 2011 Individual Fellowships, awarded to performers and writers of exceptional talent and demonstrated ability, professional achievement and continuing dedication to an artistic discipline. Peer‐review panels of artists and arts professionals from across Oregon recommended the recipients to the Arts Commission.  
 
Fellows may use the $3,000 award to complete work in progress or embark on a new body of work, undertake research, study or experiment with new materials or media.   
Over 70 artists working in the literary and performing arts submitted applications for review.

“The artists selected this year have proven themselves to be thoughtful, with outstanding talent and a commitment to the creation of new work. These artists are representative of the highest caliber that Oregon offers,” commented Arts Commissioner Henry Sayre of Bend, who chaired the review panels." 

"What we speak becomes the house we live in."
--Hafiz

There are many possible meanings in this quote-- the poet who was quoting it to me took the metaphor to be constructive, ie, the words that make up the structures and attendant meanings of poetry can provide us shelter and solace. In the mouth of someone not a writer, the line could be cautionary: watch your language, your judgement, the degree of harshness or rancor or anger or ugliness that you put out into the world, as you are the aggregation of those words-- they surround you. I prefer the gloss that includes both those meanings: as writers, we have only the words we use and what we say with them. We are of them; we are culpable for them; we had best make sure that we can live under their weight, that we have said something of substance that is constructed with craft, that what we speak we can bear to inhabit.

"To transform the things and events around us into the metaphor of the story form and to suggest the true nature of the situation in the dynamism of that substitution: that is story’s most important function."

--Haruki Murakami in the New York Times