Hello again, dear readers.
It’s been an extraordinarily long time since the last installment, hasn’t it?
This is because I dropped the ball last year, after about four Tales…I was pretending that no one really had time to read them, and that I was just too busy to write them.
However, an astounding number of you have mentioned to me, without rancor but with an irrefutable intensity, that you do indeed WAIT to hear the next installment.
My apologies to those of you who relate to that. An additional excuse for my lapse is the ever-quirky and intermittent access to the internet, here in the Third World. I cannot even add photos to the Tales without wifi …. And in my right-brain universe, it is the photos that drive the Tales…
This first Tale is actually a lifetime in the making, its origins stretching back before my own memories:
But it apparently begins with a Wattle Hollow Songwriters’ Creativity weekend. This fluid mix of creative folks, some familiar and some not, has met dozens of times now…. But it’s always new, and always a little scary, with the child’s thrill of breaking some rules, and daring to dare…
One of my self-chosen dares this time was to completely abstain from ALL of the thrilling pastries that our talented chef Tuesday offers, with every meal.
As my time on the planet becomes shorter, and evermore precious, I choose to make wiser metabolic choices. And the data is in (damn!):
this particular body doesn’t thrive on sugar or flour.
My own greed is vast: I prefer to be dancing, singing, adventuring and working hard for a few more decades, if I get a choice..
The mission was accomplished that weekend.
(In full disclosure: I confess that the mind-monkeys have jumped me a couple times since then.)
I was the first to leave our magical Songwriters’ weekend, on Sunday at noon, with the intention to meet with my teacher Anna Cox in Little Rock while she was available.
These rare interviews always have a seismic impact on my life:
Wattle Hollow is a relatively small retreat center (40 acres of woodlands on a mountainside in Northwest Arkansas) with capacity for 20 - 25 folks.