Me and Elijah at last Saturday’s Halloween parade

Hello again, dear readers. I’ve missed you! My mode these days has been survival (baby’s due in two weeks!), and it’s been all I’ve been able to do to wrangle our little clown and keep our family clothed and fed. I’m looking forward to the day when naptimes and evenings are freed from sleep for things like, oh, engaging the world that I only assume still exists beyond the walls of this confinement pregnancy.

The good news is that I’ve been able to maintain my novel-writing sessions throughout these crazy months (would you believe that sitting in front of a computer is actually easier than watching a 2-year-old?), and last week I completed a revised outline of the whole thing. I have to say that out loud to buoy me through all the things I haven’t been able to accomplish…like emailing and blogging and reading and keeping up with the people I care about! To those of you whose emails have gone unanswered, or answered after great delay, I send heartfelt apologies and all my best intentions of being back in touch soon.

Our c-section is scheduled for November 15, so barring unforeseen labor, that’s when my body and heart (and lungs and intestines and veins and…) will be breathing big sighs of relief and embarking on the new, but, at least from where I sit now, more appealing challenge of caring for a newborn.

Thank you so terribly much for your love and prayers and words of support through these months. I’ve treasured them all.

Until soon (I hope!), and with love,
Kristin

There’s a place inside of me I miss. A place where wonder pulses like a heartbeat - now quick with in-loveness for everything - a word, a sight, a sound, a person - now slowing with the lull of the crickets outside, or the fans that make these summer nights bearable. It’s a place that’s full with beyond-mere-survival, or rather, that knows survival as integrally related with music and contemplation, good books, deep thoughts, conversations with friends. It’s where words and the unworded stuff of experience mingle, tickling each other with the joy and utter frustration of remaining mostly, but never altogether, “other” from each other. The place from which my writing springs.

I’m in it tonight, though, miraculously. My body creaks and groans still with this pregnancy, a wooden ship made better for the wiry frame of a single captain and few supplies than for barrel upon barrel of rations: blood, fluid, tissue, fat. And this not even mentioning my second passenger. I love her already, and know it a privilege to navigate her passage.

But I creak. I groan. I bail water (four? five times a night?). And rarely get to that part of the ship I so treasure.

But.

Here I am tonight. I have no idea when I’ll return again, and even less what tomorrow’s winds or seas might bring (fortune? pirates? peace?). But for now, I’ll light a candle. Dip pen in ink. Open a scroll. Try to forget the fatigue that makes my heart beat strangely, the stomach that doesn’t want to hold my meager offerings.

The sun sinks well below the western sky. The pines that guard this strip of dwellings blacken. I hear crickets, fans, a distant plane’s propeller. The click of N’s keyboard.

Past place and surroundings, I hear groanings of people I love - strong people whose strength is pressed to breaking with sufferings they don’t deserve. I hold them in the Light of this flickering wick, this quickening heart. I pray the womb of this Ship, this Mother that’s bigger than all of us, this Sea that we all of us sail, will give them safe passage. Will take them through their night. Will birth them and rebirth them as the tender, beautiful, honest, beloved creatures I know them to be.

And I hear joy. The paradox of it! Joy and suffering both on this Ship. And my own little vessel. Just now joy’s un-words resist being worded, though. Fair enough.

I try to move on, but the winds upstairs have shifted and I need to check my sails. More stores must be unpacked. A belly needs filling.

I give my candle an earnest stare, my quill, my surroundings. Be well, dear room. I love you.

Do any of you remember this post? - the one in which I practically danced off the screen and kissed you all? I have to chuckle at how true the last part of it is - how all that (broadly-defined) sexual energy just can’t sustain itself forever. How it seems to come in seasons.

Since writing that post, and expressing its inspiration most viscerally, N and I have discovered that another munchkin is on its way! This was a much desired discovery, so we’re happy, and happy to share the news. But as for energy - sexual and otherwise - mine’s greatly altered from the writing of that post. Our due date is Thanksgiving, so I’m 2 months along, and feeling very much that way (read: tired and nauseated).

My heart is bursting to get my book written sooner than later, so once again, in light of my energy drain, I’m stream-lining my activities to try to make that possible. I’ll post here when inspiration hits, but if the last few weeks are any indication, I’m largely out of line of fire these days.

In the meantime, please be most welcome to explore the archives, or the essay links on my writings page. And drop me a line any time! I’m always happy to engage that way.

Much love to all, and blessings on your Spring!

Well, a month has gone by, and the keys on my computer are looking very well-loved. And I’m missing you! It’s been a great month of writing, but lopsided, and I’m ready to spread my writing chi around a bit more. My book has sucked all of my writing chi up, and I’m (almost) at a good place to keep fistfuls for myself, to have plenty on hand for sprinkling over things like blog posts and emails and short stories.

So first things first: an update on the book. After a difficult fall of trying in so many ways to come up with an angle for the story that I liked (I had a completed draft at that point that needed much tightening), and a narrator’s voice that could truly pull it off (”it” being the angle I was still trying to find), I have finally created a detailed outline of the entire project, and (re)written a first chapter with a voice I’m pretty sure will work. That I can say all of that in one sentence brings tears to my eyes, since it does so little justice to the volume of work involved in such a feat. I’m sure most of you can understand (haven’t we all accomplished things we cannot begin to capture in the time it takes to report on them?).

This week I will make two packets of these documents (the outline; the chapter), and drop them lovingly into the mail to two dear readers, who will help me make sure I know my true north on them. I’ll let my novel-mind rest for the weeks it takes my packets to return, and try to get a short story written in that time. And some blog posts.

So that’s my writing update. While I’ve been away, others have been hard at work, too! You must be sure to take a look at my friend Jen’s newest zine, which she’s calling Beginnings, and which is filled with her lovely artwork and hope-filled worldview. It’s a treat for anyone, and especially inspiring for people who have felt a little stuck in the beginnings department.

My blog friend Sage is also embarking on a month of writing, and if any of the poetry she’s published or posted thus far is any indication of the kind of beauty and poignancy she’s capable of, this month’s work will not disappoint. Keep tabs on this woman. She is amazing.

Other blog friends have been churning out stuff, too! Christy Lambertson of Dry Bones Dance recently published an article in PRISM (Jan/Feb 07) called “Handmade Hope, Homegrown Faith”, about a women’s cooperative in Juarez, Mexico. Jenell Paris wrote a chapter in recently-published This Side of Heaven: Race, Ethnicity, and Christian Faith, called Race: Critical Thinking and Transformative Possiblities. Cindy of Quotidian Light (and of 2006 Pushcart Prize nomination infamy) will have two poems run in next month’s edition of Relief. And Heather of Fumbling For Words has been nominated for best writing over at Share the Love Blog Awards (put in your own vote here).
Have I missed anyone??

I am inspired to know these people, and to feel as though my silent hours behind this screen are actually joining many others’ to become one ginormous writing party! Woohoo! Write on, dear friends!

It’s cold outside today, and windy. The sky is the royalist of blues. Last night this same wind blew a storm away until all that was left was the kind of sunset that bursts my heart wide open. There were just enough clouds, half of them streaked with blacks and grays, to bounce back all the color–pinks and tangerines, yellows and white. And the moon watched with me. She was huge. I came out of the library just as it was all happening, just as the wind and sinking sun and sky were in mid-stride, and felt this rush of gratitude and gladness. I smiled and wrapped my coat tighter and said thanks for the chance to be alive. I pictured the vast universe around it all, and me on this tiny rock, orbiting the sun, getting to take such a moment in. I felt small in the best way, and unfathomably lucky.

I’m on a kind of role with my novel this week, yesterday’s pre-sunset session not excluded, and am hungry to give myself the added boost of more progress than I can make during my few afternoon sessions alone. So I’m knitting time together from other places in my days, and have decided to take a short break from blogging as a way of putting time and focus more directly on my book. I have months to go before this project is through, and I don’t want to step away from this space for that long (I love it here, and would miss it here too much), so let’s start with a month of sabbatical and see what kind of progress I can make on the book in that time.

Much love to all of you, and a wish for winds to blow into the distant sky what you most need cleared away right now, to bring the kind of beauty and perspective your heart most needs to take in.

Kristin

You must go read. All the way to the end. De-lightful, and just what I needed to jumpstart my session at this screen today.

Heather asked about my mention of fear in the last post, about how the undoing of it is one of the things I’m giving my life to. So I’ll try and explain more of what I mean by that.

I think fear is at the heart of our world’s problems. How’s that for a bold statement?? I think it’s at the heart of our individual problems, and at the heart of our collective problems, and the reason why it’s such an uphill thing, at least much of the time, to work well (or at all) together toward good.

Pushed far enough, maybe the core of our fear is fear of death, but I don’t think that’s what most of us are conscious of. I think most of us are conscious of fears like that of loneliness, joblessness, lack of clear or appealing identity, debt, getting dumped, getting raped, getting robbed, being ugly, being fat or thin in all the wrong places, losing health, losing respect, losing popularity, losing our minds.

I think there’s another whole layer of fear, though, that we’re not so conscious of, and that may be far more toxic than the rest. I think it has to do with who we are in a very deep and vulnerable place, and the kinds of questions we ask from there. Are we loveable?, is a big one. Are we okay? Is the world an inherently hostile place? Will the people I love abandon me? Will they get taken away? Will I have to suffer more than I can bear? Does God exist? Is God as critical as it seems sometimes? Are you going to hurt me? You? How ’bout you? Are you going to make me feel small? Will you take advantage of my weakness if I show it…or can’t hide it like I’d wish?

At heart, and of course to varying levels, I think we’re all afraid, and that every one of the “stupid” things we do collectively or individually can be traced to this. I think they can be traced to trying to protect ourselves, or keep from gaining or losing the things we’re afraid we’ll gain or lose. Traced to making sure that whatever hurt us before won’t ever hurt us again.

Surely many of our fears are well-founded. They make sense, and they’re there for good reason. But I think far more often than not, they’re bigger than they need to be, and when acted upon, only perpetuate the need that we and those around us have to be afraid. If I get defensive, for example, because I’m afraid you’ll trump my view, then my defensiveness will cause your voice to raise, and your defensiveness along with it. The two (three?) will escalate until we’re saying and doing things we never thought we would, given how we felt only five minutes ago. We will be fanning the flames of distrust for future interactions. We will be fanning flames of shame for having overreacted, if indeed we see that’s what we’ve done. We will be shrinking the bold, expansive, playful, curious, eager, trusting parts of ourselves that can’t come out when fear is at the helm, and nurturing an inner tightness, a vigilence, self-consciousness, clenched fists. We won’t be able to think about the common good, but be consumed with shoring up what we personally (as individuals, groups, nations) haven’t yet lost. At the farthest, most gruesome extreme, we will start wars.

I think versions of this process happen constantly, at every level, around us. It’s a web of fear and subsequent violence…and subsequent woundings, and the needs that follow our wounds to be afraid and protect ourselves…that we all get born into.

So. I want to be about the undoing of fear. I want to be about the shrinking of it, where it’s grown too big. I think the opposite of fear is trust, so I want to be on expeditions everywhere to unveil reasons for fear to actually turn into trust: trust that life can be good, that we’re okay–all the way to our core, that healing can happen, that no critical God exists apart from the ones we’ve grown inside ourselves, that our vulnerable selves can actually find safe places to be seen, and loved, and nurtured on toward Life, in the very best sense of that word.

I’m a writer, so written words are what I use most toward this end. But I think the shrinking of fear and the growth of trust can happen by many other means. I’m experiencing it through Qigong. I’ve felt it in Tai Chi, and the belly dance classes I’ve taken. In therapy. In laughter at no one’s expense. In sex and hugs and friends’ and mentors’ presence. Through music and visual arts. Through the work of raising my son. I see it happening as people love their pets, and as the motley crew of us gathers daily at the neighborhood park to talk and watch our kids play.

As far as I can tell, fear feeds on judgment and criticism and threats and looks of disapproval, so none of these, despite our best efforts at using them on ourselves or others well (said partly in jest, but partly with all seriousness), can lead to the alchemy I’m talking about, I don’t think. Trust is allergic to them. I think trust is allergic to many of the concepts of God that we work hard to feel loved by.

So this–this work of undoing fear and cultivating trust–is what I’m giving my life to. It’s the wind that fills up my sails and urges me on to write.

I got tagged by Christy for this meme: Five Things Feminism has Done for Me. Let’s see…

1. I grew up believing that when I grew up, I could do whatever I wanted to do. Vocationally, I mean. :) I didn’t think that because I was a girl, I was automatically excluded from anything. I had no idea that the Christian denomination I was a part of would not ordain women or allow them to be lead pastors of churches. I assumed that women were just not choosing to do these things, like being president, and that if I wanted to do them, they were open to me. I’m guessing this latter assumption had a lot to do with my parents’ views on men’s and women’s roles, and a little to do with my churches not being particularly vocal about the limitations that women had in them. Or maybe I was oblivious to the vocalizations there were? In any case, feminism helped make vocation an open field in my childhood mind.

2. Leading up to and throughout the ten years of our marriage, N and I have worked hard to be conscious of power imbalances between us, and to do whatever we can to lessen them. This has been the hardest long-term project that either of us has ever worked at. The hardest, but the most rewarding.

3. I’m a writer, giving a significant number of prime time hours (after 8am and before 6pm) to writing each week. This while also being parent to a one-year-old. And having no money for childcare. N is in school, so we’re in a unique situation in that he has a schedule that can flex for shared kid-duty. But I think feminism has made this set-up conceivable at all by helping both of us see my writing, which at this point has no dollar signs attached to it, as a real vocation, and my pursuit of it as equally important as N’s pursuit of his. (The fact that there will be dollar signs attached to his in a few years, and that his is what will enable us to pay our bills (and loans!) and eat food that we actually buy at stores makes us give a lot more hours of work-beyond-home time to him each week. But that’s a pragmatic more than philosophic choice.) The task of coordinating work-at-home time and work-away-from-home time for both of us, and being as present to Elijah and each other as we want to be, is probably the second hardest long-term project that either of us has worked at. And of course, also totally worth it.

4. Increasingly I’m able to feel–and this beyond just knowing intellectually–that the entertainment and make-up and clothing and hair-product and skin-product and teeth-product industries are bankrupt in the ways they define feminine beauty and sexuality and life force as narrowly as being 18-25 years old with smooth skin and straight, white teeth and thick, highlighted hair and large, firm breasts and designer clothing and gym memberships and curves here and not there and fingernails that look like they’ve never seen dishwater. I feel the narrowness of these definitions, the way these industries have not stripped women down in their adds to expose our true beauty, but rather stripped beauty itself down to expose the ugliness at the heart of machines that would want all of us–as many as is inhumanly possible–not liking ourselves, wanting bodies that aren’t real, funneling huge portions of our incomes into becoming ever less so.

I feel the evil of this. And I feel the beauty and life force and sexual attractiveness of people–men and women–in things far deeper and broader than any ad will ever convey.

5. Number five is a catch-all drawer: I’m happy most of the time. I don’t feel like the world is only depressing and that an oppressive God exists. I haven’t had an ulcer for a very long time. I feel gentle toward my body. I like wearing feminine clothing and don’t have dreams anymore where I’m trying to pass as a man. I take intuition seriously. I take art seriously. I don’t feel obligated to fit my spirituality or metaphors for God into patriarchical frameworks. I’m a mom, and this by choice.

None of these would be true or possible apart from the feminist thinkers and writers and artists and theologians and mentors and friends who have helped me in my work of healing and self creation/re-creation in recent years.

Okay…I tag Jen, Adam, and Trish. And Adam’s wife, Sarah. :)  Okay, and Trish’s husband Richard, too.  Jen?  Heck…and Jen’s husband Dave!

Hi everyone! Welcome to the new pad…er…press! It is such a joy to invite you into this new space!

I’m still getting used to WordPress (a great big I LOVE YOU out to Typepad for being so user-friendly…or is it just that I’ve had two years to learn it?), but hopefully the transition can nevertheless be smooth.

So…why the new site, you ask?

The new site because my life as a writer has slowly moved beyond infancy, beyond adolescence, even, and the time has come for a ritual to mark this passage into true adulthood. What could be more appropriate than the gauntlet of creating a new website??

To those of you who got used to (un)Veilings and are sad to see the amazing artistry and superb browser compatibility and utterly underlined sidebar links of that space go, all I can say is I’m with you, and that I hope with time we can all get used to such a new look and feel. You’ll see, though, that the soul of (un)Veilings has come along with us (meaning all the content is still here…and I am too!), and that that soul is actually more accessible and surf-able now by means of clearer (and actually-assigned-to-all-the-posts) categories. The search tool in the side bar can also help with that.

A great big THANK YOU out to Adam of cleave*design for turning a mock-up of this site into the real live deal, and navigating the choppy waters of Explorer 6.0 to try to make it look right in that browser. He works magic, I tell you.

So…glasses up, and here’s to many more years of exploring inner and outer landscapes together!

All my love,

Kristin

This week seems like the week for blogging writing things.  I wrote about the tug-of-war between my writing and mothering lives last time.  Jen Zug has been blogging her commitments and feelings around moving toward a book project.  Jen Lemen has written about her writing process, how the non-writing, extroverted stuff of her life is the food that fuels her muse, and how her muse is also wooed to work by music.

I want to write some more on my writing life, and specifically on the weirdness of claiming this vocation before having a resume to stand it on.

Sure I have a resume.  I’ve done some things, worked some great jobs, gotten a few degrees, and really everything I’ve ever done in my life is related to writing (as could be said of anyone’s life, were they to wake up tomorrow as writers).

But my resume has little by way of publications.  That’s what I mean.

What other occupation can a person claim without some sort of institution saying, "This person?  This worker?  We pay her for this job.  She works for us."?  Parenting, sure.  But that’s different.  I could write a book on how that’s different.

I was having dinner last night with some friends, telling them about a website I’m creating (with the help of cleave*design).  It’s an author website, and I want to have a place there to talk about the projects I’m working on.  The bulk of my writing gets poured into a novel, which you won’t see in print for an unknown length of time (I’m working on revisions, but there is much to be done on that front.).  I wrote a short story this summer that, even as I type, is on its cross-country quest for a home.  And an essay I wrote about my early moves away from the faith of my childhood will be run in the OE Journal this fall.  That essay may turn into a book proposal sometime soon.  But…and this was what I was asking my friends… Which one of those projects can any of you see now, hold in your hands, or open on your screens, and say in response to:  "This, now this is the work of a writer."?

Not one.

They aren’t avaiable yet.  And yet I am a writer.  That’s what I do.  It’s a strong soul, no?, that can claim something confidently using evidence the public just has to trust you on.  Ten years from now I hope to refer you to a nice bundle of proof, a nice collection of stories and books and essays on which Almighty Editors have smiled kindly, and that bear that magical, chills-producing phrase, "by Kristin Noelle". 

But this is now, and that bundle is still in its womb-entombed stages.  So ask me what I do–go ahead–and I’ll move through an entire Rocky scene inside before answering.  I’ll set my alarm for 4am and pop up for a high-protein shake and a 10-mile run and do a whole punching bag routine before throwing around some weights and maybe even get sit-ups in before flexing all my muscles and meditating for a long, silent stretch in that position before saying in my calmest, most built-on-a-psyched-up-internal-foundation voice:  "I’m a writer."

And you’ll nod pleasantly and say, "Really?  What do you write?"

And I’ll say, "Fiction, mostly."

And my inner Rocky will be like, YEAH!, and growl a few times while flexing my whole upper body, and then jump around with my fists up, like I’m in a ring, ready to win every single round against that menace that is So You Don’t Actually Have a Real Job Then, Do You.

And you’ll say, "Cool!  I’ve always wanted to write," or some version of that.  And the conversation will move on, and Rocky will realize how exhausted she is, and wonder why in heck she just did that whole routine. I’ll look at her gratefully and say with my eyes, "That was awesome.  You did great," and daydream of the day I won’t feel like I need her. 

I’ll daydream of being like my friends last night, who said, "Why do you need publications to be legitimate?  You’re a writer.  That’s what you do." I’ll forget entirely how much I wanted to kiss them all.