Notes on Contributors
Our book writing club
On the rare occasions when I view my image, my sense of time slaps me hard—dear reader please forgive any wrinkles in the years I present. I forget to count and I let days slip into years without a date or my signature.
We met some time ago in the school yard. Jenny’s two boys were a few years younger than my grandson. I needed to talk with someone who loved to read and write. Jenny was receptive to my energy. Zero was a book about a dangerous number, meaning zero was an outrageous concept and presented problems to the earlier religious community. Even though zero was devised to help in economic figuring, it also represented infinity. The book follows zero’s history to the present day, and the book sat in my large pocketbook waiting for me to continue its read. In the playground with children screaming their delight, I kept my hand deep in my bag to make sure I could grab it out when I found the occasional empty bench to plop down on while my grandchildren played after school.
I blurted out my excitement. Jenny opened like a morning glory on a wooden fence in a neighbor’s yard. Our discussion fell in, and we talked as if we had known each other for years. It’s been years since that gorgeous day brought us together, yakking about zero and how zero related to our personal lives. We started and remain a two person book and writing group. During our once every Friday meeting we read to each other what we’ve written during the previous week, and then we subtract sentences from our observations. Zero lasted two wonderful years. The book inspired poems, collage, essays and even an art happening, a spoken word exhibit. We have not found another book that pushed so much creative juice into our brain. Until Hinge by Grace Dane Mazur fell from book heaven, and we latched onto it with a hammering attitude. We took Zero and Hinge into our creative time space; a quantum leap onto the page.
Jennifer Peace and I meet until the summer rolls in and shortens our time together. We are grateful to our family responsibilities, so we often take a brief vacation from our artist life, to get to the other things in life. But our weekly meetings support the artist life and we give each other assignments or we listen to the pages written or the poems or the pottery Jen molds with her hands. I make artist books from subjects we decide on. The books we choose are a jumping off point to our creative dive.
Our meetings give me an opportunity to cook us lunch. Over the years I’ve combined vegetables in ways I would not have done unless Jen was going to eat with me. She is a vegetarian, and I ate whatever I wanted, until two and more years ago. I became vegan. So our food now has even more similar seasonings. Which is indicative of our writing. Jen is thoughtful and I write like a thug on a street corner. Her influence and her spiritual input have softened my muse. My word choices are what make  difference. Jen is almost ready to send out her manuscript, A Ray of Light, about her time spent in a convent. I am still working on three manuscripts, one of which we are working on together, Mapping God. The years have shown us a sweetness that we might never have known if we did not read and write together.
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