Writers arriving

Margie, who I've blipped before, and Hilda, also blipped before, are members of the writing group I've been attending for nearly seven years now. Today I had my camera in my hands as they were arriving, and I caught some of our joy in each other. While we've been working together, Margie has written a book-length memoir that is densely and deliciously poetic, Hilda has crafted a collection of poems, and the rest of us have been inspired and encouraged by each other to keep on finding the words for what matters to us.

After a hiatus of many months, Margie has now re-joined the group, and today she brought a piece of memoir that took us all to a different time and place: "She can still see in her mind's eye the Bronx tenements stacked one against the other, wrought iron fences protecting cellar steps and garbage cans at the curb with tilted covers, barely containing the overflow. She was one of the kids that gathered around to watch the coal-delivery from the truck bounce down the shute through a soot-covered window into the cellar. And ever present was a constant hum and rumble of the trolley passing and electric lines overhead that on wet days would crackle and sizzle with sparks flying."

There is a joy we experience in working together, in crafting and polishing our work, in hearing each other and reflecting each other, that is more important to all of us than publication. Among the six of us, we have over four hundred years of life to talk about.