This is a new kind of writing for me, more technical than usual. I hope the essays are entertaining, of course, but as I was writing, the term “workbook” kept coming to mind: a book that will be work, sometimes hard work, but work that we’ll be doing together, with the intention of urging ourselves deeper into these stories than a simple first read would allow.

The idea here is that working closely with the stories will make them more available to us as we work on our own; that this intense and, we might say, forced acquaintance with them will inform the swerves and instinctive moves that are so much a part of what writing actually is, from moment to moment.

George Saunders, A Swim In A Pond In The Rain

If the world is torn to pieces, I want to see what story I can find in fragmentation.

I have taken to making collages.

When everything feels like it is coming apart, the art of assemblage feels like a worthy pastime.

The paradox found in the peace and restlessness of these desert lands, where rockslides, flash floods, and drought are commonplace, allows us to embrace the hardscrabble truths of change.

In the process of being broken open, worn down, and reshaped, an uncommon tranquility can follow.

Our undoing is also our becoming.

I have come to believe this is a good thing.

Terry Tempest Williams, Erosion

Immature poets imitate.

Mature poets steal.

Bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.

Eliot

Mystic chords of memory…

Abe

You and I have memories longer than the road that stretches out ahead.

Paul

I’m gonna wave my freak flag high, High, OWW!

Wave on, wave on…

Jimi