International Writing Retreats & Tours

​​​​Celebration of the Circle

         Recently on my way in the desert's 109 degree heat to the Post office, I pass by the large computer board of Cathedral City High School high up on the street corner with this message:

     “Welcome, new teachers!” it says and has the names of some of these new ones.  Immediately I think about what it would be like to be one of them instead of writing at my desk looking at the Santa Rosa Mountains.  In the throes of finally completing Leap!, this book I’ve been working on for many years, and oh so want to bring to its final completion to be published, I have the urge like this sign board beckoning, to start something new!  Endings have a way of making one want to begin again, I think, like these new teachers and the high school kids who must now be contemplating what it will be like to begin a new year again, to go “back to school!”

         Remembering those first days growing up, who knew what they would bring? What new relationships? How their new teachers might truly say something that would be meaningful they might even remember years later? The meetings of the mind that could make such an impact that no one might ever know how, but the potential was always there!

                Now I fantasize how totally impactful it could be to come into that classroom in Cathedral City High  and be introduced as the new teacher! And what I would do is take out some famous author’s book, and just start reading their words, not talking about them first.  I think of Wordsworth, (how apt! “words-worth!), and Longfellow (“it’s a long road to become a ‘fellow’ in this world), old names from the litany of historic classics.  But today I would take out Mary Oliver’s poems of the beloved writer who became so part of nature wherever she went and who wrote of the Astonishment of being alive! And I would read from her white memorial book, and end with: (from “A Summer’s Day”) “And what do you want to do with your One Wild and Precious Life?”

         Taken by surprise, the students’ eyes would suddenly blaze open, out of apathy! Realizing that someone, somewhere, recognized their desire to WAKE UP! BE AWAKE! Like my poet hero eecummings when I was a teenager poet who did not capitalize any of the first words of his lines, the second most popular poet of his time to Robert Frost, he gave permission to all of us would-be writers how to be our creative best in our own unique way.

         And these students’ reactions would remind me of those visitors to Yellowstone National Park who, when I was a writer-in-residence there, would open their eyes in the same way! There I had been charged by the Superintendent of the Park to help the thousands of visitors, women, men and children, see with new eyes after the huge 1988 fires that raged for months in the Park (then an anomaly in the West, precursors of fires here now). I knew instinctively my primary purpose was to help them Wake Up to themselves and their own creativity,

         Wake up! Wake up! And so many of them did over the three years in the early 1990’s (the fires were in 1988 that weren’t stopped until the snows came), when I invited them to “write faster than they could think,” to realize they had a vast treasure within that had been waiting, an innate ability to  express their creativity.  (It didn’t have to be necessarily writing, it could be sculpture or painting as well that my colleague was also charged with to help them unearth).  In this way, they connected to the massive nature of Yellowstone around them, that was also within themselves, to write about or visualize how it could regenerate after those huge fires. 

         This is why I wrote Leap! After so many years of working  especially to help empower women (and men) to find their voices and raise their self-esteem for their lives and the sake of the planet.

         I am still amazed I’ve finished it, and now I know as I move through its completion that it will wake people up to themselves and the beauty that dwells within them. It doesn’t matter what form of creativity they find within themselves, for it is within every one, and will come from something they love.  “Let yourself be silently drawn by the stronger pull of what you really love.” Rumi

         I will always be beholden to Joan, beloved Rachel’s daughter, who also was a writer, who came close to finishing her own book she’d received recognition for but was overtaken by a remission of breast cancer.  Her last words, as she sat upright in bed, were: “Hold on to Your Intentions!”

         Joan and Rachel, also a luminous artist, there were so many moments of self-doubt and challenge, those words pushed me through.  It was an uphill climb to “Hold on to My Intentions!” but I did it, and did it for you.

         So, as I send whoever is reading this request to donate to the final, final phase of this book to open the eyes of so many,   to open the eyes of young and older students, to those starting the new school year.  I am seeing their and your eyes blaze awake!! May it be so.

With inspiration and love, Katya

🙏 From Jean Houston:

"I Gift you the Courage to Be, to know deeply the Divine Design of your Life, 

and it does come from that lure of Becoming.
It does come from the great spark that is the threshold of time and history

trying to emerge to electrify us." 

Dear Friends, I hope you will come forward to help me publish this book.

Its first introductory words are about me at 5 years old at night at The Lincoln Memorial

and that I am so impressed with Abraham Lincoln, 

the lights of Washington Monument shining on us from a distance.

It was a time of a Great Spark that was the threshold of time and history

trying to emerge to electrify me and I hope this book will do the same for you.

Thanks
Katya