— Sharon Olds, Improv

*I’m Listening for What You Want |* oil on wood © Laurie Doctor

Many of you know the poem from Sharon Olds, Improv. I feel that line in her poem, I’m listening for what you want, in so many ways. As now, sitting alone in a cafe, jazz playing, listening inward, listening for what my hands want to say. Listening for what you want. Listening for what wants to come. I want to say thank you to all my readers, to all of you who come here to read and comment, to each of you who have asked me to make my online class available again. Because of your requests, my online class, “Speak to Me From Everywhere” is now available on my website. It takes principles of landscape — distance, movement, pattern — and translates them into writing. I hope you will enjoy the practices, demos, bookmaking and poetry. This course is meant for you to keep, work at your own pace, and be able to return to, like a good book. Register here:

Below are a few images from the exercises in the online class:

*Book page from the section on “movement” in our online class |* © Kay Bueno de Mesquita

*Book page from our online lesson on “movement”* | © Noelle Tennis Gulden

*Large sheet of online exercises | ©* Kati Van Aernum

I am also preparing to give an online live lecture on September 6, 2023, hosted by the Friends of Calligraphy, which will be available to a world-wide audience. The title is:

The Imagination of a Maker: Finding Your Way Through Impossible Tasks

My background is in mythology and stories, so this is an opportunity to talk about the creative pattern through an ancient Greek myth. Whether as a calligrapher, painter, poet, musician — or anyone who feels the pull to create, to make something — we face many wrong steps, blunders and obstacles along the way. As makers, we can break through self-doubt and stasis by finding ourselves to be players in a larger story, to be part of something that gives a broader perspective to our day-to-day desires, successes and misfortunes. Sometimes we just need a map to help us find our way through. In this talk I will use a story as our guide, demonstrating the way through the maze with images from artists, and the ancient Greek myth of Psyche’s Four Impossible Tasks. There will be time for questions and discussion. Join us here: Imagination of a Maker

*Where the piano meditates |* from the book purchased by the Harrison Collection © L Doctor

I will close with where we began, the listening:

On the morning of the drive from sea-level
to the mountain, I asked if we could stop for melted
cheese! at the Mexican place in Truckee.
Then I worried, does Bob think I’m a diva?
Am I always asking for things? And I thought of Toi’s letter,
and I know she is the locus of a gift—
and I am too, a spiral of energy, a genie, a dust-devil,
I was born with it, a life force,
it does not belong to me, or to anyone else,
I’m the container of it, the guardian.
And I love to let it out toward people—
nectary nosegay gusts of it.
My mother would ask me to rub her back,
she said that I had Vivian Hands,
like her college best friend’s—
the palms of my hands would listen for what
my mother’s muscles wanted — as now,
I seem to be writing, but I’m listening for what you want,
it would be my joy to give it to you.
There is so much joy on the earth even as it is being dis-inhabited
by the other animals, and over-inhabited by us—as it is being
knocked off course and smoked and drowned.
While we have food, let us share it and eat it.
There is so much action required of us now.
And pleasure is required of us.
O my darlings, so much pleasure is required of us.
— Sharon Olds, Improv