tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-83286411471574113782024-03-13T14:54:54.854-04:00Claudia's MusingsA meandering river sifts out the Truth.Claudia J. Tallerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17596879683695458235noreply@blogger.comBlogger169125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8328641147157411378.post-69390592305550332932017-01-09T06:30:00.000-05:002017-01-09T06:30:21.515-05:00Go with Your Heart
Confucius said, “wherever you go, go with
all your heart.” When I start out a yoga class by asking the students to go with their heart, being present may come more naturally. Our hearts are always in the moment, it's our heads that mess us up by bringing up losses and regrets. There's nothing worse than spending a yoga class thinking about all that needs to be done during the Claudia J. Tallerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17596879683695458235noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8328641147157411378.post-46400356142910223952017-01-02T11:24:00.001-05:002017-01-02T11:24:05.026-05:00Another year over, a new one begun
Another year . . . it seems cliche to talk about it. Yet that's what I focused on when I led my yoga class on Saturday. Let go of all that stuff from 2016 that haunts your dreams, that hurts your soul, and let yourself think about who you want to be and how you want to connect with people, nature, and God in the coming year. Bring that into your heart. Confucius wrote Claudia J. Tallerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17596879683695458235noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8328641147157411378.post-82090418155935386432014-09-08T17:10:00.000-04:002014-09-08T17:10:00.422-04:00Take Me to the River.One of my favorite metaphors for life is the river. It’s meandering and it pulls up muck as it goes along. In Chapter 5 of The Artist’s Way, “Recovering a Sense of Possibility,” Cameron writes “the shift to spiritual dependency is a gradual one,” and for me it’s taken years. If there is one thing I really need to work on, it’s “letting go and letting God.” If we look at the metaphor of a river, Claudia J. Tallerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17596879683695458235noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8328641147157411378.post-48803585944751812022014-09-02T22:11:00.000-04:002014-09-02T22:11:00.845-04:00Lights, Camera, Action: Why Writers Should Spend More Time at the Movies
Cinda Williams Chima, the next Word Lovers writer-in-residence, says that the average screenplay for a feature-length film is only 100-120 pages, while the average novel is much longer. The difference is the absence of narrative—those paragraphs where the novelist is ‘splaining, summarizing, describing, or telling the reader what to think and how to feel. Used sparingly and well, narrative is Claudia J. Tallerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17596879683695458235noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8328641147157411378.post-13537651240398344432014-05-05T05:34:00.001-04:002014-05-05T05:37:16.537-04:00FocusJust last week I finished the final draft of 30 Perfect Days, Finding Abundance in Ordinary Days. The project took me 18 months, but it could have been done in six. Those of us who have a tendency to go in too many directions make our lives a little crazy, but there's calmness in focusing on a project at hand and putting your heart and soul into it. Only then do you believe in your project and Claudia J. Tallerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17596879683695458235noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8328641147157411378.post-38730474806621046932014-03-23T20:58:00.000-04:002014-03-23T20:58:00.077-04:00Enough is Enough - Don't You Think? “Busy, busy, busy we pass the days of our lives—gone all too soon. Gone before we get to our dreams of creative expression, self-fulfillment, nurturing.” Carol Orsborn, Enough is Enough.Claudia J. Tallerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17596879683695458235noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8328641147157411378.post-59103552869110833482014-03-16T20:49:00.000-04:002014-03-16T20:49:00.472-04:00Relax into the Quiet that Contains the MindWilliam Butler Yeats once said, "We can make our minds so like still water that beings gather about us to see their own images and so live for a moment with a clearer, perhaps even a fiercer life because of our silence." Just being in present awareness, at ease in our own quiet hearts, can make us a reflecting pool, and those who gather around will tend to see their own images. It is possible to Claudia J. Tallerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17596879683695458235noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8328641147157411378.post-22420294918263367362014-03-09T20:55:00.000-04:002014-03-09T20:55:00.126-04:00Remember the Third Reich?In the Garden of Beasts, Love, Terror and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin is another non-fiction book by Eric Larson, whose Devil in the White City I read at least a dozen years ago. Larson has an uncanny way of telling non-fiction in an interesting way, the facts flowing like they were never researched, like the writer knew them first-hand. He’s a good historian storyteller.
I was Claudia J. Tallerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17596879683695458235noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8328641147157411378.post-48106157932859547392014-03-02T20:43:00.000-05:002014-03-02T20:43:00.291-05:00Becoming an InstrumentIf Julia Cameron got me started, Anne Lamott keeps me going. In her inspired book Bird by Bird, Cameron says “Truth seems to want expression. Unacknowledged truth saps your energy and keeps you and your characters wired and delusional. But when you open the closet door and let what was inside out, you can get a rush of liberation and even joy.” Now I love that. I feel that if I find the truthClaudia J. Tallerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17596879683695458235noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8328641147157411378.post-54534081894079234632014-02-23T20:36:00.000-05:002014-02-23T20:36:00.140-05:00Give me FaithTheodore Roethke wrote, "I learn by going where I have to go." It takes a great deal of faith to trust that where we're going is where we have to go. I waver and don't believe my heart is in the right place. My faith isn't always strong enough to believe God's up there, with a plan. Choosing the right path is sure to lead to revelations because you're doing what you were meant to do. Claudia J. Tallerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17596879683695458235noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8328641147157411378.post-87980364464462618622014-02-16T20:29:00.000-05:002014-02-16T20:29:36.841-05:00THE RIGHT PROJECTSToni Morrison once said, “If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.” She points out that a writer writes not just for others, but for herself. But yet, in writing about her struggles with life, Morrison finds ways to connect with the reader, crafting her writing in such a way that it becomes something she would want to read. She's already Claudia J. Tallerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17596879683695458235noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8328641147157411378.post-88991507675928416172014-02-04T06:28:00.001-05:002014-02-04T06:28:47.199-05:00StoriesMaya Angelou once said, “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you." Daffodils and Fireflies has been that way--a story that needs to get out. So has White Preacher's Kid. As we tell the stories of our lives, they become agents of change because the way we tell the stories and their significance for us morphs into a new history, a new way of seeing ourselves. We learn Claudia J. Tallerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17596879683695458235noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8328641147157411378.post-3031689398140886012014-02-02T12:54:00.000-05:002014-02-02T12:54:00.544-05:00When We Were Orphans, by Kazuo Ishiguro, was a surprise. I don’t know what I was expecting, but I wasn’t expecting the main character to be an Englishmen who grew up playing detective games in the international section of Shanghai before the communist revolution. And then his father, followed by his mother, disappears, taken away by warlords whose livelihood was threatened by anti-opium Claudia J. Tallerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17596879683695458235noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8328641147157411378.post-7008837854595450872014-01-26T09:03:00.000-05:002014-01-26T09:03:00.417-05:00Tony Morrison on WritingToni Morrison once said, “If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.” She points out that a writer writes not just for others, but for herself. But yet, in writing about her struggles with life, Morrison finds ways to connect with the reader, crafting her writing in such a way that it becomes something she would want to read. She's already Claudia J. Tallerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17596879683695458235noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8328641147157411378.post-54162672850550614052014-01-20T12:50:00.000-05:002014-01-20T12:50:54.078-05:00Exploring Costa RicaHome from Costa Rica after a relaxing vacation to celebrate our 35th wedding anniversary.
We were outdoors, even for meals, most of our days—hiking, sunbathing, swimming, or just taking in the scenery. The color of my skin shows it. The vacation came just in time to help me get well from the shingles, and I felt almost normal within two days of our arrival in the rejuvenating climate. Claudia J. Tallerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17596879683695458235noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8328641147157411378.post-21290274334473422572014-01-12T08:52:00.000-05:002014-01-20T12:52:19.323-05:00Wisdom of the JungleYou're reading this as I'm living in the jungles of Costa Rica. I'm writing this before Paul and I leave to explore ancient paths through heavy forests and immerse ourselves in a culture that has evolved on a strip of mountainous volcanic earth between the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean. Eight nights and nine days of living in the jungle will surely teach us something new, and I'll emerge Claudia J. Tallerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17596879683695458235noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8328641147157411378.post-20090852325836191692014-01-05T08:39:00.000-05:002014-01-20T12:49:37.728-05:00Growing Up in LorainIn my unpublished book White Preacher's Kid (hopefully that will come out in 2015), I try to capture what it was like for a white girl to grow up in the black ghetto. In a lot of ways, it was what followed, the move to Lorain, that was hard. We moved to the suburban area of Lorain near Amherst when I was thirteen. All the rules that one lives by were already being questioned, but how does a Claudia J. Tallerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17596879683695458235noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8328641147157411378.post-22917269732419843442013-12-29T08:12:00.001-05:002013-12-29T08:12:17.897-05:00Finding My AbsolutesWhat are the things that matter most in your life? Do you even know? My life often feels like I'm meandering along a river and wander into dead-end tributaries, all the while bringing up muck from the river's bottom. I focus on unnecessary things and am pulled in too many directions. The worst thing is that I ALLOW this to happen to me.
So I spent some time looking at my life and how I Claudia J. Tallerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17596879683695458235noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8328641147157411378.post-73721259197025855772013-12-16T06:46:00.000-05:002013-12-16T06:46:00.830-05:00Why Write a Book“If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.” ― Toni Morrison
Claudia J. Tallerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17596879683695458235noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8328641147157411378.post-717297872528742182013-12-06T06:45:00.000-05:002013-12-06T06:45:00.347-05:00Crafted at Word Lovers at River's EdgeBY A THREAD
Clutching what we have hollows our words into platitudes,
Empty promises cloud the connection between your eyes and mine.
We are not sorry for anyone’s loss, nor will we miss each other,
Our heavy black bags drag life from our souls until they are
As cancelled as a life insurance policy, a corpse-like non-person.
What I lost in that office that was my home for ten years
Was the Claudia J. Tallerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17596879683695458235noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8328641147157411378.post-90592479835843557312013-11-26T06:43:00.002-05:002013-11-26T06:43:26.090-05:00Why We Must Write“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”
― Maya Angelou
Claudia J. Tallerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17596879683695458235noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8328641147157411378.post-62929986620938113632013-08-25T22:35:00.000-04:002013-08-25T22:35:00.042-04:00Revisioning
Oates: The
peasure is in the rewriting. The first sentence can’t be written until the
final sentence is written . . . the completion of any work automatically
necessitates its revisioning.
Claudia J. Tallerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17596879683695458235noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8328641147157411378.post-54955159836783785222013-08-18T22:23:00.000-04:002013-08-18T22:23:00.718-04:00A Story of Second Chances
What
caught my eye when I picked up Andy Andrews’ The Heart Mender was the subtitle, “A Story of Second Chances.” The
book’s background is a surprise—German submarines came right up to the Atlantic
and Gulf Coast shores, and it was kept out of the media. It’s a tale woven
around the main character finding personal items on a beach that were
puzzling—buttons with anchors, a ring with German Claudia J. Tallerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17596879683695458235noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8328641147157411378.post-2619506749108700332013-08-11T22:03:00.000-04:002013-08-11T22:03:00.465-04:00Open to the Words
You have to have some heroes who spark your
confidence, who show you the way. One of mine is Anne Lamott, who wrote in Bird by Bird that “Writing has so much
to give, so much to teach, so many surprises.
That thing you had to force yourself to do—the actual act of
writing—turns out to the best part.” When we sit with a blank sheet of paper or
a blank screen and are open to what will comeClaudia J. Tallerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17596879683695458235noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8328641147157411378.post-58268184026548873752013-08-07T10:00:00.000-04:002013-08-07T10:00:26.712-04:00JOURNEYING
It's been a whirlwind year, starting with writing about having thirty perfect days and continuing with forty days of Lent, journaling, reading, and teaching what I know all along the way. In the midst of the writing, I was in Disciple class, attending Artist's Way sessions, leading a retreat in Michigan, and preparing for Word Lovers.
Recently, I spent a weekend at a yoga retreat at a Claudia J. Tallerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17596879683695458235noreply@blogger.com0