 Green Windows has retired, after twelve years!
Green Windows held a Retirement Celebration on June 28, 2020. The evening honored the community that we’ve built over the past twelve years and acknowledged Peggy’s creative guidance and nurturing of our space together. Below are Peggy’s goodbye remarks, partly from her introduction to Book.Ends, and below that, reflections and goodbyes from members of Green Windows’ community.  Firstly, there are so many people to thank for the last twelve years!
My own last words are here are an excerpt from my introduction to Book.Ends: After writing in workshops that use the Amherst Writers and Artists (AWA) method since 2004, I realized, in 2006, that the AWA method was a perfect partner for my passion of bringing very different people together, safely and as equals, purposefully with care and intention. In 2007 I was certified as an AWA facilitator. In 2008, I started Green Windows and joined Intersection for the Arts as one of their incubator programs. And in the last twelve years, I’ve facilitated workshops in community colleges, youth centers, schools, community centers, affordable housing complexes, museums, libraries, juvenile halls, nonprofit retreats and for the general public. In these workshops I’ve had teens and seniors, students and teachers, homeless and housed, people with and without degrees and from different corners of Oakland. In 2009, I started a monthly drop-in workshop, sliding scale, finding a perfect host and partner in The Rock Paper Scissors Collective. And with this workshop, I drew my vast network together and people who would not otherwise cross paths wrote together, safely, as equals, each encouraged to be true to their own voice. I’ve only skimmed the surface of what Green Windows has done. I haven’t mentioned the dozens of people who have supported the work in various ways (thank you), or the mentors and mentees who make the work not a paper but a circle. The books, blogs and articles. Twelve years of words given and received. On March 24, 2020, we had the 127th and last monthly workshop. I am ready to shift my energies while deeply grateful for all this time with your words and seeing you listen to and affect each other. And deeply grateful that we made it, together, to this moment, sheltering in place from a pandemic and writing online. Twelve years brought us here, so profoundly needing each other and needing to write with each other that it feels fated. We wrote ourselves to this moment to have community while isolated and surrounded by tragedy and insecurity. Fate bewilders me; I would have never even known to ask for this blessing. And I am grateful. Listen. When I write that I am grateful for this community, I am talking about you. You. Twelve years came to this moment with you all in a Zoom room. And I will leave the room, the moment, the dozen years, with an understanding of people and of words that I did not have before, that I need to navigate the gloomy foggy future. I thank you. And I invite you. I invite you to continue the work. Each morning with your candle, over coffee six feet apart, while walking along the beach, in your dreams, in a secret notebook, I invite you to continue the work of being true to yourselves and of letting the choosing of words, the choosing of images, the choosing of characters, the choosing of plot, the respect of your own rhythms, your own voices, your own language, your own stepping stones into phrases, letting them help you to see what the truths are in yourselves, and by listening for what you like, on the beach, over coffee, in the zoom meeting, to see what the truths are that others’ offer you. I invite you to continue the work. You do not need me, or Green Windows to do it. I believe in you. I believe in your words and, when you let them, the truths they carry for you. - Peggy Simmons Founding Director Green Windows: Art of Interchange  Below are participants’ answers to the following questions: “How will Green Windows live on? How do you bring what you have learned, experienced and created with GW into your life and the world? Consider your artistic practice, sense of community, how we relate to each other, and how you see the world around you.”  My view of the world has expanded from what I consider a creative collaboration with other people, their writing styles, backgrounds, points of view. Careful, close listening skills, appreciation for words and phrasing, intended communication and subtle messages - all these attributes have been enhanced in myself and I dare say everyone else who has been part of Green Windows. I've never talked to anyone who has been to a Green Windows workshop who didn't get some kind of deepened connection - to writing and or community and or poets... the world. I've been to many a writing workshop - Green Windows had an accessibility and a spaciousness I didn't get other places. Green Windows is the only AWA based writing facilitation I've participated in that never left poor folks behind. Green windows has helped me be more authentically me and just show up as myself. It has also encouraged my writing voice. I'll be forever grateful to Peggy and Green Windows. I will always keep writing and utilizing my listening skills to appreciate other people's writing and to develop my own. I really appreciate the openness of Green Windows and the ability to share anything and everything. It's like a makerspace, and this is the mindset I will carry with me. I will continue to write with and be in community with the people I’ve met in Green windows. I will continue to use the AWA method when I write with others and incorporate everything I’ve learned into my writing practice. It’s hard to say how GW has influenced how I see and relate to people as it has been so fundamental in my growth but I’m sure it has opened my mind to different perspectives, seeing more of our shared humanity. Compassionately listening. Seeing what we like about people's lawns instead of what we don't like. A sense of imagination. A web more vulnerable & real than most. Duh. Green Windows has created bonds for me that I feel will never be broken! Immensely grateful that boundaries of space aren't keeping me from connecting and creating with others. I am much, much more daring in my creative practice. In a real and lasting way, Green Windows has shifted how I approach writing and creativity. More and more, I'm learning that the act of making something has value in and of itself. Even if there's seemingly nothing salvageable (rare!), sometimes making the thing clears the way, primes the pump, and/or offers a foundation for something else. I feel such gratitude for the opportunity to write with many of the same people month after month, listening to their words and getting to know each person's unique voice and style has deepened my appreciation of "voice" in storytelling, including my own. I find myself more observant of everyday expressions of creativity: a hand-painted shop window, my neighbor's little garden, an auntie's colorful outfit, a friend's cooking, zines galore. Participating in Green Windows has amplified the gratitude I feel for other community spaces in my life, and it reaffirms my commitment to cultivating mutual trust and sharing my life with other people. After writing with GW for so many years and being exposed to great writing, writing very different from my own, I have been able to try on new voices, explore the page, break all the rules I've learned. I've thoughtfully and carelessly put words and sentences and verses together always trusting that support would follow. It's precisely the support of the community that made me feel free to play in all those ways, and Peggy's voice always repeating, "trust your voice, trust your images, trust your words." GOODBYE, Green Windows! You made a difference!!!. Green Windows has been an opportunity to give my writing. For me the worst part and what turns me away from writing is the initial blank page. The prompts give me direction. They help me fill that white page. Through them I have been able to express emotion in a way I have never done before. I'll be honest though, I don't know if I have the motivation to keep writing like this on my own. But now I guess no choice but to try to fill that blank page on my own. Good thing I have great examples to take inspiration from. I took a chance and went to write there with you, one evening, and it was a good experience. Though it felt odd, not knowing anyone, and I know I look mean when I am nervous, it was good for my mind and my writing to sit with people I did not know and didn't connect with to write. Made my brain work differently. Peggy what you have done with Green Windows is so remarkable....You are very special...most of us don't find a way to 'make a difference.' You did!!!! The method of teaching and facilitating really stuck with me, and as I move on to become a teacher I know I will carry those principles with me! Very grateful for the couple of times I was able to take part in Green Windows! The artistic spirit and positive environment inspired me and those vibes will live on in my life. Thank you for all you’ve done as shared and thank you for always creating spaces that felt safe. GW definitely helped me come out of my shell. I know GW will live on in my sister, all of the GW writers, and in the works they all made together! I'd like to challenge myself more to generate prompts & really think outside of just written lines; how to make them multidimensional & invite the other senses. I loved the variety of prompts & have kept a few over the years. Perhaps I shall put them in a jar. Goodbye, Peggy! What a wonderful thing Green Windows was!! You always are so creative. Hurray! Further spontaneous writing exercises, community writing opportunities, and MORE NANOWRIMO! Peace and Love I will definitely be bringing the confidence I've gained in my writing and ways of giving good feedback in Green Window's writing workshops with me. I will also try ways to connect with people creatively through Zoom just as Green Windows has done. I have met people at the workshops who have become friends and mentors. I have heard points of view I would not otherwise have heard. I have written some of my favorite pieces there, pieces that would not have been written anywhere else--a couple of which are still getting published. GW has changed my life forever. Not only does it live on in my artistic practice, but it has given me a place to belong in the greater community, and a greater sense of how I can contribute to community.
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 Some writings tap into unconscious knowing. Such is the case with this one. It is a potent lesson that teaches us to listen to dreams, hunches, and our connection with the universe. I am ever grateful for the opportunity to write and share the pen's messages. (The following beautiful piece was written in a Green Windows workshop on June 3, 2020. Thank you, Karen! )  Now
by Karen Gordon We walk down the path. There are broken bottles everywhere. You point out one spot to me that is clear, A little stream gurgles by and To our surprise There are live frogs in it. Thru the stark silence, one croak then just a few more. Overhead a crow caws. This is where the car wash used to be. Over there are The empty bones of the mall. I guess I really thought we would be somewhere else by now. Yet the air has cleared and we can now go outside without masks. The sky is a harsh blue Beating overhead with brutal passion. It’s five years further I can still walk a good long ways. It’s sad to say that I do this alone. You wait in the old house and will greet me as best you can when I return. We didn’t know it would be like this. Yet it is so.  Photo of Katherine Genis by Lauren Thomas I first encountered Green Windows skimming through the Omni Commons’ event calendar, hungry for a way to break back into a more regular creative practice. I have a vivid memory of venturing up the back stairs and finding myself in a disco-adorned room with a ring of chairs in the middle. The workshop felt natural and welcoming, and most of all I was astonished by people’s readiness to read something so fresh and offer their thoughtful, genuine feedback. When I read that night, it was the first time since high school that I had shared my creative writing with anyone. Green Windows has profoundly shifted my relationship to writing. The care and intention that goes into the space is remarkable. Writing is both taken seriously and made extremely accessible, with the understanding that the process of writing has value in and of itself. Peggy’s skillful facilitation, often opening with a reminder to “trust your voice, trust your images, trust your imagination,” truly roots and guides the workshop. I find myself looking forward to each person’s unique interpretation of the prompt, and I consider myself extremely fortunate to share space and time with this group. Through these past few years, I’ve become curious about and invested in my own creative voice in a way I hadn’t been before. Flipping back through my notebook, every Green Windows page has not only my writing but underlined words, starred portions, and phrases I’ve jotted down while listening to other writers––all signifiers of the connection and mutual exchange that make the workshop so deeply meaningful. The following piece was written in a Green Windows workshop on January 24, 2019 in response to the prompt "item of clothing you'd never wear."  Untitled
by Katherine Genis My cowboy lover sends me video diary entries whenever he’s at a station with strong enough wi-fi. He’s not really a cowboy, but we’ve had the good fortune of eating real beef: once a proper steak and once just broth but still made from an actual animal. Both were strange and luxurious experiences. The first time, I vomited after we got home from the restaurant. My stomach isn’t used to real meat, let alone red meat. That was years ago now, but I’d do it again, even if it was as good as flushing hundreds of dollars down our water-efficient toilet, zeros and ones sliding away instantly without fanfare. These days, I tend to the local grove and help people make offerings. Occasionally, curious tourists and romance-inclined teenagers come by, but mostly I see the same handful of faces, people who have known the grove for years. It’s slow work, so I keep an herb garden on the side. The satchels turn my fingers fragrant and medicinal. When the next shift arrives, I pack up my workstation and head home. A video message waits for me. My lover, all dressed in black with greasy hair. He’s wearing the silver face paint I gave him, and his image fills the thumbnail preview. I tap play, and he tells me about his day and the other cowboys he’s met. He talks with his hands and describes, in maddening detail, a poached egg he was gifted by chance. His recounting of the yolk spilling over potatoes turns my head fuzzy with desire. After this job, he says, we’ll have eggs together. He doesn’t go into specifics about work, but he still finds lots to talk about. Mostly I just want to know he’s alive. I think he knows this. The video auto-deletes after playing. So long, partner. I pull my hood around me, grinning in the dark apartment with only my screen to see.  What brought me to the Green Windows workshops? For the most part, it was a desire to resuscitate my long-dormant creative writer identity. My partner Karen has been attending, and as she’s always liked the all-too-infrequent poems and prose I wrote for her, she thought that this workshop might be a good fit for me. As it turned out, she was absolutely correct. The supportive atmosphere is a shining contrast to a creative writing class I once took back in college. I admit then when I took the class at age 20, I was hardly rife with real-world experiences, and I ultimately felt that my creative flow was stifled by a lack of good subject material and a middling imagination. Nevertheless, the stories I read to the class inevitably resulted in negative reactions from my classmates. My literary soul melted before their no-holds-barred approach to criticism disguised as critique. The teacher was not much more supportive, spending most of her analyses discussing what did not work in my stories than what did – if anything. She happened to be a published novelist. One day, I obtained a copy of one of her novels. I have a vivid memory of settling down on my dormitory bed and opening her book with great anticipation. I couldn’t even finish it. The prose was clumsy, the characters shallow and underdeveloped, the dialogue stilted and dull. One-third of the way in, I had had enough and tossed it aside permanently. How, I asked myself, could any publisher even touch that manuscript without wearing rubber gloves? But perhaps my standards were too high. During that same semester, I was enrolled in a class devoted to the 20th Century American novel. I was reading Faulkner, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Joyce Carol Oates, Toni Morrison, Ralph Ellison, Saul Bellow… Was I spoiled? No. Did my teacher’s book just seem poor at a time I was reading one literary giant after another every day? I’d have to say yes. Comparatively or not, sometimes bad writing is just bad writing. Unfortunately, her class killed my desire to continue to develop as a writer. This is why I thank God for Green Windows. This is the place to go for writers trying to figure things out and expanding their creative frontiers. I'm grateful to everyone involved in making Green Windows happen. The piece, below, was written in a Green Windows workshop, inspired by a piece of music.  The Stag
by Chris Folger A stag bows behind his front leg, then rises, stretching himself toward the clouds. He takes several steps in the direction of the rocky brook, his legs caressing the forest floor in beatific syncopation. His eyes shine with the intelligence of the cosmos. He is Nature’s highest form of evolution. His stride seamlessly flows into a graceful gait; pebbles kick up out of his way with all due deference and gratitude. His head darts in multiple directions, keenly spying on his world; his instincts ever on the alert for the unexpected. He arrives at the brook. He leans down toward the drink, then stops. Is he gazing at his reflection, as much in awe of his majesty as are all other creatures? Even the reeds piercing the surface of the water bend in his direction. Are they begging him to do them the honor of feasting on them? Now he touches his lips to the brook and begins to drink. The reeds curl away, rejected. His antlers, spiraling high from his brow, scrape tracks in the water, as if they too are thirsty. The stag rises, satisfied. He turns and sees his mate. She approaches and they touch shoulders. They inhale the commingled fragrance of their breath  Green Windows gives me a forum in which to share personal experiences in a fictionalized way. It is not therapy, but it does give insight into feelings and motivations that can be expressed in powerful descriptions of life. Some of my best fiction and memoir has come from the opportunity to explore and reveal scenes to myself that lie just below the surface, untapped. I find this invaluable as a writer. The piece below was written in the January Green Windows Uniquely Yours workshop. The prompt was Pain, specifically images of things that remind you of pain. As is the magic of writing spontaneously from a prompt, you never know where your pen will lead you, if you let it. This is where it led me (unedited). Karen Gordon  |