Yesterday, Bastille Day, is the day I celebrate the birth of my one best cat, my familiar, Houdini Gatallini Bambini Baby-ini. She was a cat in a million.
In the poetry workshop I’m taking at the AWW, there is a lot of talk about cats, within poems and without. Shadows of cats against walls, rare breeds, can you really love a cat as you would love a child? Big questions. I’m still sorting them out.
I miss her, still, always.
Embroiled fully in this year’s Antioch Writers Workshop. I love being around writers, talking about writing, writing with writers, the world cracking open before me.
Before the keynote on Saturday, I was driving to campus and feeling guilty, semi-taking a week off from child, home, life, to do the workshop, because sometimes it seems like choosing to be a writer is a silly luxury (but is it even a choice? I ask myself).
However.
Then I realized (it’s so easy to REALIZE things while driving, isn’t it?) that all writing is really about life. Whether fiction or nonfiction, poetry or prose, a person (who is alive) puts something on paper (or screen, or sand) and it means something to at least one person. What else is life, if not that?
Rebecca Kuder 