Susan Palmer's Exquisite Now

Stuff gets done here

recent posts

  • Rudbeckia wants to please you, dammit

    Courtesy of Oregon State University

    Why isn’t it enough to enjoy the beauty in other people’s gardens? You walk by and drink it in. All the pleasure. None of the work.

    Other people’s gardens full of black-eyed susans got me started with this color-saturated perennial and its dense drifts of bright blossoms. Desire drove me like a toddler who wants the other kid’s toy. I tucked three or four starts from the garden store toward the back of the dahlia bed for a little extra color. (And I do feel the dahlia lovers shaking their heads going “You stuck that in with your perfect chic dahlias?”)

    My bad.

    Rudbeckia did not understand the assignment. At all. Two years later, I am weeding the exponential growth. Black-eyed susans send out runners in every direction. If you don’t stop them, they form these matts of new starts in the spring. The slugs love to hide from the sun under them. When you’ve cleared them, the struggling dahlias trying to fight their way up have been all chewed on by slugs, who don’t bother eating the Rudbeckia.

    Photo by Susan Palmer

    I’m about half done. I would offer these starts to some other gardener. Trouble is I like all the gardeners I know.

    Wanting vs. having. There’s some wisdom buried in there. Maybe it’ll come to me while I’m weeding.

  • Vertigo knocked me down. Dance is picking me back up

    Debbie-Lee, me and Kellie Chambers at my white belt awards ceremony. Photo by Nanou

    The first time vertigo hit, I didn’t believe it. Shook my head, got a hand on a wall, looked around. Holy hell, vertigo is a real thing. How can I, the most vertically stable person I know, have this?

    Then I learned about the little crystals that can form and wander around the inner ear. Then I discovered odd but useful head maneuvers to convince the crystals to move into a safe zone in the inner ear. Have you ever seen a model of the inner ear? It’s the definition of a complex structure. I bow to the mysteries of evolution while wanting to slap it. Simpler, dude! Make life elegantly, functionally simple. Please. Not only asking for a friend.

    You can’t dance with vertigo. Well, you probably can. But the stomach won’t like it and that gets messy.

    I’m a devoted practitioner of Nia, a fusion dance practice that melds martial arts, modern dance and healing arts. I’ve been dancing for almost seven years, two or three times a week. I’ve done seven day retreats. I once danced and blogged about it every day for 52 days (it corresponds with the 52 moves of Nia.) The daily dose brought out the full range of emotion that dance makes available. All up and down the scale, joy to a far cry from joy

    Weeks of no-dancing ensued while I got myself sorted. About the same time, I signed a book contract with a publisher for a novel. Damned exciting. The publisher’s window to get the book into production meant I had a few months to give it another polish.. My best creative work time runs at the same hours as the Nia classes in my region and I kept choosing the writing desk, not the dance floor even after the vertigo departed.

    The months of no-dancing built their own momentum. I was all in. Until I wasn’t. I don’t fully understand the lack of willingness to go back. But I do understand the value of being willing to be willing.

    It’s not just “dance your today body” as we like to say in Nia, it’s also dance your today mind. Even when the mind seems to be all “no,” somewhere in there is a snippet of “yes.” And I am finding it.

  • A workshop for writers who practice the art of noticing

    Photo by Susan Palmer

    I almost missed it. This checkered lily (Fritillaria meleagris) with its slender stem and bright down-facing blossom is no show stopper at The Butchart Gardens on Vancouver Island, where I found her a month ago. This time of year it’s the rhodies, azaleas, and dogwood blooms causing traffic jams on the paths. Checkered lilly sits in the shade in the Japanese garden area. a landscape more about shapes than plantings, I was noticing the beautifully structured paths through perfect shrubs, a slip of stream here, a waterfall there, a carved wooden bench almost invisible under towering bamboo.

    But I didn’t miss her. I didn’t hurry.

    I blame thirty years as a journalist and four completed novels, one published, one coming later this year, one queued up and ready to go, one in final polish. The cliche we all know is that the devil is in the details. A life of writing has taught me that’s where the magic lives.

    This summer I’ll be teaching a workshop in Eugene focused on three specific writing tools designed to build noticing skills. It’s meant for writers and anyone interested in noticing as a creative practice. Whether you’re new to writing or a veteran, these tools can be deployed.

    Why bother? Well, imagine having three colors in your pencil box and being handed thirty more. Your creative options just opened out enormously. The more you notice in the real world, the more real your fictional world becomes. Plus, fun.

    Maybe this checkered lilly will never land in a story of mine. But I loved meeting her, learning her name and knowing where to find her again. Maybe one of my characters will like meeting her too, somewhere down the line.

    I hope you’ll join me Saturday June 20 1-4 p.m. sponsored by Wordcrafters. Register for the Practicing Writer online.