sheltering notes
Shelter in Place Day 10: notes from the field, preview of Journal Camp 2020.
Prompt: temptation
If you had asked a month ago I wouldn’t have recognized that person. What dances outside my reach is coffee with my pals squeezed between meetings, lunch at Toast, riding elevators, a trip to the Rack, visiting with a neighbor so close we can exchange oven-warm oatmeal cookies, church, the dog park (Dog is my co-pilot), casual conversation about nothingness and madness, leisurely stalking the aisles of Sonoma Market, stopping at a winery to taste just because, farmers market, office gossip at the water cooler, doggie day care drops offs, playing Scrabble, Tuesdays at Mantra, Sunday morning yoga, reading the newspaper at Peets, airplanes, airplanes, airplanes.
If Journaling is your jam, click here to join us at: Journal Camp 2020. It’s the most fun you can have writing from the sofa! You’re welcome.
journal me
Journal Camp 2020 has landed, and it is nothing short of ah-mazing! Herewith, a sample of the kind of genius free-writing can provoke:
Going Home
I bid farewell to the state of old New York, My home away from Home – In the state of NY I came of age, where first I started roaming….;
I’m a rambler and a gambler a long way from home – Old Irish folk song
My mom is a wanderer, and my dad was a climber. He dragged me through ashy volcanic landscapes festooned with blocks of air-popped basalt purple to the eye and rough to the touch. I, for my part, walked behind him resenting every minute of it. Why couldn’t we go to Mendocino for a change, I asked?! The view from the picnic bench perched high above the grey-brown cliffs, the mist of the sea, the tang of sun-dried tomato fresh from the larder in one of the few contemporary buildings that was in that old-timey town.
Talk to me of Mendocino, writes Kate McGarrigle.
Mendocino and its rough and tumble but not really cousin, Fort Bragg, with the mirror-ball garden trinkets reflecting rainbowy purple-blue into the mists and the welcome sun. Mendocino where everything around me came alive one chill morning after dreaming of a boy-child I realized I had a crush on despite my annoyance with him. Mendocino – just a 5-hour jaunt across rugged mountains and treacherous canyons that even the best of drivers could careen into.
Mendocino is my heart’s home and I miss it. Your mists are my mists and those of my sisters. We weave our beads into Mendocino’s tiny-kernled beaches only find them once again, shimmering in the sea, when we return again.
by Sam Allen
journal camp 2020
Extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures and I’m super excited to announce a special Journal Camp 2020 starting April 4. Channel random anxiety and free-floating restlessness into your writing practice in this hands-on writing workshop which magically also helps you practice safe social distancing without going stir crazy. Register at Event Brite: Journal Camp 2020.
