Last weekend I taught my Zen-fueled\nwriting workshop in Astoria. It was perhaps the last of these unique\nliterary gatherings as I move forward in new unforeseen directions\nwith my teaching and writing. I will miss teaching in the marvelous\nand inspiring house of my great friends, Jennifer and Holt. They\nhelped save my life and provided a space where so many writers\nprospered. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Twelve writers participated and we\nconversed, wrote, shared, laughed, listened and went on a wonderful\ncollaborative journey together that was quite clearly an antidote for\nthese angry, hurried times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I wrote along with the participants and\nbelow is my response to the prompt (taken from Zen and the Art of\nMotorcycle Maintenance<\/em>), write about one side of an American\ncoin: (mine was a penny)<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Lincoln Memorial…it’s what we’re\nsupposed to stand for…all the ideals are contained and flow within\nthis edifice. He just sits there in that huge, magisterial chair,\nwith words from the Gettysburg Address etched in marble, great\nwords\u2014the best words of American life that today read like fiction.\nOr have they always read like fiction? When the Memorial was opened\nin the 1920s, America was still segregated, the KKK was riding high,\nand black men were routinely lynched. Think of that contradiction!\nIt’s always the ideal and the reality of American life, that\njuxtaposition, the eternal struggle to live up to the words of the\nGettysburg Address. Do we really even try anymore? At times we have. \n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Last weekend I taught my Zen-fueled writing workshop in Astoria. It was perhaps the last of these unique literary gatherings as I move forward in new unforeseen directions with my teaching and writing. I will miss teaching in the marvelous and inspiring house of my great friends, Jennifer and Holt. They helped save my life […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5418,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meditations","category-writing","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5417"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5417\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5420,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5417\/revisions\/5420"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}