Today is the winter solstice. The planet tilts just so to its star, lists and holds circling in a fixed tension between veering and longing, and spins helpless, exalted, in and out of that fleet blazing touch. Last night Orion vaulted and spread all over the sky, pagan and lunatic, his shoulder and knee on fire, his sword three suns at the ready—for what?
Dillard’s winter day quest contains the urgency of a young writer (just 27 when she wrote this masterwork) as she fills the final chapter of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek with fresh blasts of air and the deep water of contemplation — tying story and landscape into messy bundles that spill out in haste as her mind moves from one place to the next. It is an internal toll that draws to Shadow Creek.
A cast-iron bell hung from the arch of my rib cage; when I stirred it rang, or it tolled, a long syllable pulsing ripples up my lungs and down the gritty sap inside my bones, and I couldn’t make it out; I felt the voiced vowel like a sigh or a note but I couldn’t catch the consonant that shaped it into sense. I wrenched myself from the window. I stepped outside. (Dillard, p. 266)
This chapter is included in our final writer’s workshop newsletter to spark contemplation during Winter Solstice. We ask our writers to take time during the longest night of the year to consider that resonate sound (Dillard’s long syllable) inside of each of them. Locate the energy, that brightness. From this point: How do you write your life forward from this place? To extend our workshop’s reach, Lakota Club Chief Matt Reyes will send the newsletters to folks in solitary confinement. Very strong writing has trickled back to us from the hole, and we want to encourage folks to stay connected.
It is likely that you too are distracted by the gifts you have yet to purchase, wrap, and distribute this year. Prisoners have little personal space and few material possessions. Any goods come from the commissary — books and magazines can be ordered by someone on the outside and shipped directly from the source. Anything that is not approved is contraband and can be taken — this can include artwork that a person has made. As part of the writing project, we are able to provide certain tools (such as notebooks and drawing paper, and reading material) with pre-approval. The materials can be donated to the culture club at OSP, or through the volunteer services in other prisons. The materials are then distributed to each of the people engaged in our programs. We give each other the gift of our time and the sharing of our words. In that spirit, we have selected these pieces as gifts to you.
STARTED WITH A SEED BY CAROLYN STICKLEY
”The ghosts of fallen leaves
Decaying yet providing
Warm compost for the seeds
Far below.”
SEED: FAITH BY GINA BAKER
“Faith is a seed of positive action. Faith is a seed that emerges from hope.”
SEED BY MANDA MOONLIGHT
“I feel the beckoning
to release above
this soil”
FOUND SEED BY DANNY WILSON
“I found this seed in my pocket ten years ago, maybe more.
I left it there in the breast pocket of this old denim jacket, hidden from light, kept dry. The jacket usually only makes it out of the hallway closet in the fall for gutter cleaning, leaf gathering, and trips to the yard debris dump. I forget about the seed during winter, spring, and summer, only to touch it again after most of the trees have let us see their inner selves once more. This time I see that this cycle — shedding the old, laying bare for us to see, starting fresh without knowing what will grow — repeats and repeats and repeats. When spring comes again, I will plant this old seed and see what we will become.”
GERMINATE
As seedlings sprout out of the ground in the spring, solitary beings will appear. But of course, seeds are surrounded by the life force of micro-nutrients in the soil heated by the sunlight. The seeds work in harmony with a world we cannot perceive — does that make it magic? What is magic but an explanation for worlds beyond our first knowledge? Understandings are based in our most concrete and immediate senses. I see the seedling. I smell the first rain. The sun heats my skin, I taste the soil. This is how I explain the magic, through observation. What of that burst that comes forth? The open-armed seedling calls out: I am here. How does she harness the energy to survive?
Here is a memory from last spring: It is dark when I reach home, I am ruminating about dates for the next writing workshop and details I need to note before I forget. My headlights hit the driveway and reveal the shadow of light rain. When I open the door, a thick fragrance fills the car. It announces itself in high floral tones with the deep bass of humidity. My first thought is daphne, but ours is too small to be so assertive. I get out of the car, turn and look up. Against the dark sky I see a riot of white blossoms in the overhead tree. I turn and look down the darkened avenue. The moonlight reveals what I could not sense in the bustle of daylight. In one upward sweep of the conductor’s baton, the symphony has commenced. | TDS