The sky held smoke from a brush fire burning in the valley, even though our submission party was being held in a business park transformed into a college campus in Culver City. As hard as it was to show up on this Saturday morning, we were there.
It was hot, even for October in Southern California, so the title of Rocio Carlos and Rachel McLeod’s workshop, “Pay Attention: Attending and Collaborating at the End Slash Beginning of the World” pulsed with urgency.
We walked through glass doors, down carpeted hallways, and into an air conditioned classroom. We brought life with us. Writers breathed into the space, offered snacks, hauled metal water bottles, laptops, notebooks, and pens. Rocio and Rachel scattered pieces of greenery across tables. Cuttings of sage, lavender, rosemary, and citrus welcomed us. We pressed leaves between fingers, brought the outside in, and as more writers filtered in, the smoke of the weekend lifted.
Rocio and Rachel, the collaborative authors of Attendance, shared their process with us: their attending to the world; Rocio to flora, Rachel to fauna, and to all of the overlapping spaces. They paid attention. That Saturday morning, for a collection of moments, we collaborated with them. We shared their process, by attending together, paying attention, breathing in air, and taking care. It was not the kind of self-care Rachel described as being important so we can be more effective workers, but a mindfulness that connects us with one another, that helps us create connection even if the world is ending slash beginning.
We wrote together. We shared our names, and some flora and fauna. We wrote. We walked and breathed in one another’s work, and then we wrote again. We took attendance. Rocio and Rachel illuminated a bit of their process, and then sold all of their copies of Attendance.
As we stand at the end slash beginning of the world, it can be tempting to bury our heads in the ground, but this workshop reminded us to look, to lift our heads to the weather and take the pulse of everything around us: to take attendance and take care. It was exactly the way we all needed to spent a few moments on a hot fall day before getting to the business of submitting.
You can view this workshop stream on the WWS Facebook page. You can support Rocio and Rachel’s collaborative work by purchasing Attendance.
Noriko Nakada is the editor of the Breathe and Push column. She writes, blogs, tweets, and parents in Los Angeles. She is committed to writing thought-provoking creative non-fiction, fiction, and poetry.