Friday, January 21, 2005

Don't miss this guaranteed to be fun, transformative writing workshop!

"Creating Space: Law of Attraction for Writers" April 29- May 1

THE WEEKEND
Join writers Rebecca Lawton and Jordan Rosenfeld at CREATING SPACE, a restorative retreat designed to help you attract the writing time, inspiration, and life that you aspire to lead. Writing your vision is a big step toward feeling the reality of an artist’s ideal life. Using the Law of Attraction, an evocative principle that says feelings have a powerful quality to attract your deepest wishes, this weekend workshop invites you to explore the possibilities of your desires and your writing.

CREATING SPACE will include presentations by writers and publishers; workshops facilitated by Rebecca and Jordan to open creative channels; and exercises to shape the writing life you desire. The beautiful, private setting above the Navarro River offers the solitude to write and refill the creative well in the center’s many hideaways, by the river, and in the forest.

COST
The $390 cost for the weekend includes lodging, program fee, and the delicious vegetarian meals for which Wellspring is known. Private accommodations are available on a limited basis to early enrollers. Reduced fees are offered to commuters and those who wish to stay in the Wellspring campground (where showers are conveniently located).

Registration deadline: April 15.Thereafter add 10 percent.

For more information about the retreat, call Jordan: 707-235-0705.

For more information about the renewal center, email: wellsprg@pacific.net.

FACILITATORS and PRESENTERS

Rebecca Lawton, nominated for Pushcart awards in poetry and nonfiction, explores the world through journey and journal. Her essays and stories about wild rivers and other earthly wonders have been collected in Reading Water: Lessons from the River (Capital Books). She is online at www.beccalawton.com.

Jordan Rosenfeld hosts "Word by Word, Conversations with Writers" on KRCB radio. Her work appears prolifically in national and literary journals, and she is a contributing freelance writer for The Petaluma Magazine, The Bohemian, The Pacific Sun, and more. Visit her online site for more info: www.jordansmuse.blogspot.com

Susan Bono is a writing coach, editor, and widely published writer. She has edited Tiny Lights, a journal of personal essay, since 1995 (online at www.tiny-lights.com). She is contributing editor for the Pushcart awards, KRCB’s Word by Word, and Sheila Bender’s Writing and Publishing Essays (Silver Threads).

Arthur Dawson is an award-winning poet, author, and teacher of creative writing. He is the founder/publisher of Kulupi Press, which features “publications with a sense of place.” A new collection of his poetry, Saying this Place Right: Poems of Landscape and Language, is due out from Finishing Line Press in 2005.

Saturday, January 01, 2005

In light of the horrible and awesome destruction wrought by nature, and its genuine and formidable beauty, I send you all Mary Oliver’s poem “Shadows”, for a different kind of Tsunami relief.

Happy New Year
Jordan

"Shadows"

Everyone knows the great energies running amok cast
terrible shadows, that each of the so-called
senseless acts has its thread looping
back through the world and into a human heart.
And meanwhile
the gold-trimmed thunder
wanders the sky; the river
may be filling the cellars of the sleeping town.
Cyclone, fire, and their merry cousins
bring us to grief—but these are the hours
with the old wooden-god faces;
we lift them to our shoulders like so many
black coffins, we continue walking
into the future. I don’t mean
there are no broken bodies in the river,
or bones broken by the wind. I mean
everyone who has heard the lethal train-roar
of the tornado swears there was no mention ever
of any person, or reason—I mean
the waters rise without any plot upon
history, or even geography. Whatever
power of the earth rampages, we turn to it
dazed but anonymous eyes; whatever
the name of the catastrophe, it is never
the opposite of love.

By Mary Oliver