It is Friday, September 30th. I'm sitting in my office on campus at Penn State, listening to Chris Whitley's first release, Living with the Law, editing a poem, catching up on email, and generally winding this past week down.
It's been since December since my last post, the anniversay day of the massacre at Wounded Knee in Pine Ridge, South Dakota, when I was visiting my family outside of Philadelphia. The yard was full of deer in the early evenings, and red-tail hawk and crows throughout the day. The posts have been long delayed by the necessity of healing from the injuries I got in my car accident last May. This past spring and summer, I was told by my doctor and physical therapist to limit computer work, writing (can you imagine?!), etc. to give my arm and neck more of a chance to heal. This time, I listened to them all, and took a long hiatus.
Taking a long break was a strange experience for me. I've been keeping myself so busy for so many years, between teaching and performing and the activism, that to actually come to a full stop was a little jarring for me. Admittedly, it only took a few weeks to adjust to, and once I actually got accustomed to moving slowly, sleeping a LOT, and reading in the sun between appointments, I enjoyed myself. Immensely. And learned a lot about resting, about going easier, and gearing down.
Sometimes the most simple of realizations take on the proportions of epiphanies.
I'm back to teaching full time at Penn State. And performing again, solo and otherwise. The Neo-Spinsters (Pat Payne, Reina Prado, Evie Shockley and myself) had one show at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island for the Performance Studies International conference on April 1. The four of us on stage together was great fun, big energy, and I was grateful that we were all able to travel together again, as we did last summer for our show at Stilring University. There are photos from this show about to be added to this website, so check back for them.
Last week I traveled to Scranton, PA, to join the Barbara J. Hart Justice Conference, organized by The BJ Hart Justice Center, the Women's Resource Center, and Marywood University. The focus of the conference was on keeping children safe. As I said during my talk, awareness of the experiences and challenges of children living in violence always cuts me deepest, seems the most brutal of experiences of violence. I was more than willing to join this conference, and felt honored to be a part of it, to close the day out with poems from the first chapbook,
the scorched earth, and the 25th anniversary poem I wrote for the PA Coalition Against Domestic Violence. Last Friday was my first solo show in many many months, and doing it felt good, especially for such a good program and the inspiring women and men who run it and who participated in the conference itself.
Pat and I have been asked to join the first Nairobi Poetry Festival: The Imagination Of Poetry in the AIDS Pandemic in Kenya on December 1, which is World Aids Day. Reina will be traveling elsewhere, and unable to join us, but Pat and I are figuring out the details with the amazing woman who invited us, Pamela Ateka, from Nairobi, whom we met after the Stirling, Scotland, show. I've always felt drawn to Africa, and Kenya, in particular. If the show happens, I'll keep you posted.
Mcuh has changed in my life since December. I moved to a farm outside of State College, complete with 4 beautiful horses (one is almost albino, but for pale blue eyes!), sheep, goats, dogs, cats and hollyhock flowers that grew to 12 feet high this August. Hollyhocks always remind me of northern New Mex, so I felt right at home at the farm with them growing up toward the second storey windows. Last night was our first freeze, a killing frost, and everyone at the farm was out late, trying to harvest every last thing possible before the temperatures dropped. I woke to mist in all the fields as the sun came up, and my own breath like smoke in the air before me.
Since the summer off, I've definitely been improving physically, the injuries less a daily issue for me as I've gotten stronger. The physical therapsit, Craig, tells me that I could actually train to run a marathon next summer, if I keep improving at this rate. We'll see. After where I was last year at this time, I'm just grateful for the difference bewteen then and now.
Thank you for all the emails over the spring and summer, and bear with me as I find my way through the them and get to responding. I aprreciate all of the good wishes and kindnesses that came to me through email - thank you to each one of you who took the time to post.
Chris and I are working on edist to the site, finally, so check back. The bio has already been updated, and there are new poems coming, too. I'm working on the next collection of peoms, looking forward to finally releasing them and getting on to some of the other projects that are calling.
Again, thank you for all the emails over these last months, and all best wishes to each one of you.
PEACE. DORA
