Big Sky Mind

Father Reason, Rumi (trans. Barks)

2010-06-10T08:30:00.000-07:00

The universe is a form of divine law,
your reasonable father.

When you feel ungrateful to him,
the shapes of the world seem mean and ugly.

Make peace with that father, the elegant patterning,
and every experience will fill with immediacy.

Because I love this, I am never bored.
Beauty constantly wells up like the noise of springwater
in my ear. Tree limbs rise and fall like ecstatic arms.
Leaf sounds talk together like poets
making fresh metaphors.

The green felt cover slips;
we get a flash of the mirror underneath.

The conventional opinion of this poetry
is that it shows great optimism for the future.
But Father Reason says, No need to announce the future.

The now is it. Your deepest need and desire
is satisfied by this moment's energy
here in your hand.

2010-03-02T16:19:00.000-08:00

Tell me when; I know
where. Tell me how but not now.
Tell me why. Why not?

2010-02-28T21:27:00.000-08:00

There's almost nothing
A good book, a long walk and
a hot bath won't fix.

2010-02-25T12:33:00.000-08:00

Forty days and nights
'Til baseball's opening day
But who is counting?

Rhyming Time

2010-02-23T15:44:00.000-08:00

Haiku: Caribou
Roux Bijou New Withdrew Phew
Tofu Rendez~vous

Can't get this poem out of my head

2010-02-21T20:24:00.001-08:00

FROM BLOSSOMS

From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the boy
at the bend in the road where we turned toward
signs painted Peaches.

From laden boughs, from hands,
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.

O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into
the round jubilance of peach.

There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

- Li-Young Lee

Oops

2010-02-21T20:17:00.000-08:00

Okay, maybe a
Haiku once every few days?
Gotta start somewhere.

Hope

2010-02-19T15:48:00.000-08:00

Oh daily haiku,
Can you save me from myself?
If not you, then what?

Perspective (also known as my excuse for not blogging for 5 months)

2010-02-05T14:54:00.000-08:00

Ahh... what a difference a little time can make!

Six months ago, our life was tossed like a salad. We found ourselves in the most expensive place we've ever lived with 60 percent of our earnings gone. It was a disaster... Or so I thought. Turns out I couldn't be happier.

Looking back at my last entry, I had an inkling that this was happening; I didn't miss my Blackberry and I didn't miss (many of) the creature comforts. This remains true, and deeper. I have found a balance that gives me a great peace: Time with Sadie Sue when I don't have to think about work, and time when she goes to preschool (four afternoons a week) when I can concentrate on building my freelancing business.

I've also found my voice in my marriage: I've learned to advocate for what I want/need far better than in the past. I know I can make my new freelancing work, and I know that it's time to grow the family. So far, I've been able to get through on both points. Not bad for someone who was feeling sorry for herself just six months ago.

Basically, I've figured out that I can take on just about anything and make it work. I've also learned to appreciate my strengths and forgive my weaknesses. This, I think, is the foundation of self-love, and my ability to feel confident in my own skin allows me to extend this grace to others.

Happier, wiser, stronger. I think 2010 is going to be a great year.

Changes

2009-09-13T21:20:00.000-07:00

So. Last time I wrote, I was employed. Now, notsomuch.

In fact, I just "celebrated" a month of unemployment. Yep, my friends have made me pieces of flair on Facebook that say "Emmy and the Ax" in celebration of my being canned less than one month after winning an Emmy.

As Jos put it, "I don't know what kind of bullshit could lead to getting fired just after winning an Emmy, and I don't want to know. I'm sure it would make me angry."

I've been through the shocked stage, the angry stage, the panic stage and am now in the "Are you fucking kidding me that all we have to eat in the house is PB&J?" stage. Bozeman is a wonderful place to live, but it's expensive, and let's just say that we're not exactly comfortable on just David's salary. We dropped to 40% of our previous earnings with one phone call. Without any warning, I might add.

So yes, I've sucked up my pride and filed for unemployment, which is pending. And yes, this change has given me the wonderful chance to stay at home with Sadie Sue, which I am enjoying. It can be demanding, but no more so than my tied-to-my-Blackberry job. And, frankly, I am happier reporting to my 4-year-old than my former boss. I don't miss cable TV. I don't miss coffeehouse lattes. I don't miss going out to dinner (much). And I'm learning a whole new appreciation for the little things in life, as well as just reprioritizing. All of that is going well. I mean, yes, I would kill for a Pink Mint C.O. Bigelow lip gloss right now, but I'm saving my pennies for Sadie Sue's Halloween costume. Which I likely will end up making.

But friends, I am NOT coping well with being dependent on David. The sooner I earn some money and feel as though I have a say in the financial side of things again, the better. I feel like I've gotten the shaft financially in this whole thing, as it was my grandfather's money that paid for the last car (which we traded in for this car) and that we used to move four times and put down/lose on loans. And I've been outearning him for years. But now I'm unemployed, and suddenly the pressure's on to get some kind of money coming in.

And I know, I know... this is a great chance to live what I believe. Money is one of the last things we need to be happy. Health, love, basics like food and warmth... But as a friend advised in a recent e-mail, "You won't miss most of the niceties we all got so used to." You know, she's right. But I don't think she has any idea we're scraping together dimes to eat.

Sorry for the bitch session... just letting off a little steam. I will be back with my new and improved perspective shortly.

A trio of poems from Billy Collins

2009-06-24T20:34:00.000-07:00

I'm reading Picnic, Lightning tonight before the library demands its return. This trio represents a good balance of Collins' work, and I like these better than the ones in which he takes things altogether too seriously... The first poem is a simple observation we've all had about the importance of timing, and I had a similar thought just last week when the cabinet door in the laundry room would not shut until I had directed it four times to do so... I thought, those three seconds of frustration might have saved my life... Of course, they also could have cost me my life, but that's not what I thought at the time. That's what makes me an optimist.

I Go Back To The House For A Book

I turn around on the gravel
and go back to the house for a book,
something to read at the doctor's office,
and while I am inside, running the finger
of inquisition along a shelf,

another me that did not bother
to go back to the house for a book
heads out on his own,
rolls down the driveway,
and swings left toward town,

a ghost in his ghost car,
another knot in the string of time,
a good three minutes ahead of me —
a spacing that will now continue
for the rest of my life.

Sometimes I think I see him
a few people in front of me on a line
or getting up from a table
to leave the restaurant just before I do,
slipping into his coat on the way out the door.

But there is no catching him,
no way to slow him down
and put us back in synch,
unless one day he decides to go back
to the house for something,

but I cannot imagine
for the life of me what that might be.
He is out there always before me,
blazing my trail, invisible scout,
hound that pulls me along,

shade I am doomed to follow,
my perfect double,
only bumped an inch into the future,
and not nearly as well-versed as I
in the love poems of Ovid —

I who went back to the house
that fateful winter morning and got the book.

This next one is just too funny, thinking of a man with a catalog full of half-naked women critiquing their expressions and jotting down all the foreign and fancy-sounding names for lingerie...

Victoria's Secret

The one in the upper-left-hand corner
is giving me a look
that says I know you are here
and I have nothing better to do
for the remainder of human time
than return your persistent but engaging stare.
She is wearing a deeply scalloped
flame-stitch halter top
with padded push-up styling
and easy side-zip tap pants.

The one on the facing page, however,
who looks at me over her bare shoulder,
cannot hide the shadow of annoyance in her brow.
You have interrupted me,
she seems to be saying,
with your coughing and your loud music.
Now please leave me alone;
let me finish whatever it was I was doing
in my organza-trimmed
whisperweight camisole with
keyhole closure and point d'esprit mesh back.

I wet my thumb and flip the page.
Here, the one who happens to be reclining
in a satin and lace merry widow
with an inset lace-up front,
decorated underwire cups and bodice
with lace ruffles along the bottom
and hook-and-eye closure in the back,
is wearing a slightly contorted expression,
her head thrust back, mouth partially open,
a confusing mixture of pain and surprise
as if she had stepped on a tack
just as I was breaking down
her bedroom door with my shoulder.

Nor does the one directly beneath her
look particularly happy to see me.
She is arching one eyebrow slightly
as if to say, so what if I am wearing nothing
but this stretch panne velvet bodysuit
with a low sweetheart neckline
featuring molded cups and adjustable straps.
Do you have a problem with that?!

The one on the far right is easier to take,
her eyes half-closed
as if she were listening to a medley
of lullabies playing faintly on a music box.
Soon she will drop off to sleep,
her head nestled in the soft crook of her arm,
and later she will wake up in her
Spandex slip dress with the high side slit,
deep scoop neckline, elastic shirring,
and concealed back zip and vent.

But opposite her,
stretched out catlike on a couch
in the warm glow of a paneled library,
is one who wears a distinctly challenging expression,
her face tipped up, exposing
her long neck, her perfectly flared nostrils.
Go ahead, her expression tells me,
take off my satin charmeuse gown
with a sheer, jacquard bodice
decorated with a touch of shimmering Lurex.
Go ahead, fling it into the fireplace.
What do I care, her eyes say, we're all going to hell anyway.

I have other mail to open,
but I cannot help noticing her neighbor
whose eyes are downcast,
her head ever so demurely bowed to the side
as if she were the model who sat for Correggio
when he painted "The Madonna of St. Jerome,"
only, it became so ungodly hot in Parma
that afternoon, she had to remove
the traditional blue robe
and pose there in his studio
in a beautifully shaped satin teddy
with an embossed V-front,
princess seaming to mold the bodice,
and puckered knit detail.

And occupying the whole facing page
is one who displays that expression
we have come to associate with photographic beauty.
Yes, she is pouting about something,
all lower lip and cheekbone.
Perhaps her ice cream has tumbled
out of its cone onto the parquet floor.
Perhaps she has been waiting all day
for a new sofa to be delivered,
waiting all day in stretch lace hipster
with lattice edging, satin frog closures,
velvet scrollwork, cuffed ankles,
flare silhouette, and knotted shoulder straps
available in black, champagne, almond,
cinnabar, plum, bronze, mocha,
peach, ivory, caramel, blush, butter, rose, and periwinkle.
It is, of course, impossible to say,
impossible to know what she is thinking,
why her mouth is the shape of petulance.

But this is already too much.
Who has the time to linger on these delicate
lures, these once unmentionable things?
Life is rushing by like a mad, swollen river.
One minute roses are opening in the garden
and the next, snow is flying past my window.
Plus the phone is ringing.
The dog is whining at the door.
Rain is beating on the roof.
And as always there is a list of things I have to do
before the night descends, black and silky,
and the dark hours begin to hurtle by,
before the little doors of the body swing shut
and I ride to sleep, my closed eyes
still burning from all the glossy lights of day.

Ahh, and this one is pure peace. It's been years since I read it, but the effect is the same...

Shoveling Snow With Buddha

In the usual iconography of the temple or the local Wok
you would never see him doing such a thing,
tossing the dry snow over a mountain
of his bare, round shoulder,
his hair tied in a knot,
a model of concentration.

Sitting is more his speed, if that is the word
for what he does, or does not do.

Even the season is wrong for him.
In all his manifestations, is it not warm or slightly humid?
Is this not implied by his serene expression,
that smile so wide it wraps itself around the waist of the universe?

But here we are, working our way down the driveway,
one shovelful at a time.
We toss the light powder into the clear air.
We feel the cold mist on our faces.
And with every heave we disappear
and become lost to each other
in these sudden clouds of our own making,
these fountain-bursts of snow.

This is so much better than a sermon in church,
I say out loud, but Buddha keeps on shoveling.
This is the true religion, the religion of snow,
and sunlight and winter geese barking in the sky,
I say, but he is too busy to hear me.

He has thrown himself into shoveling snow
as if it were the purpose of existence,
as if the sign of a perfect life were a clear driveway
you could back the car down easily
and drive off into the vanities of the world
with a broken heater fan and a song on the radio.

All morning long we work side by side,
me with my commentary
and he inside his generous pocket of silence,
until the hour is nearly noon
and the snow is piled high all around us;
then, I hear him speak.

After this, he asks,
can we go inside and play cards?

Certainly, I reply, and I will heat some milk
and bring cups of hot chocolate to the table
while you shuffle the deck.
and our boots stand dripping by the door.

Aaah, says the Buddha, lifting his eyes
and leaning for a moment on his shovel
before he drives the thin blade again
deep into the glittering white snow.

Note to self

2009-06-12T10:04:00.000-07:00

"Choose not the life of imitation
Distant cousin to the reservation...

Can't stop the spirits when they need you
This life is more than just a read thru"

-Red Hot Chili Peppers

Thoughts on God, sharing, Counting Crows and Albert Einstein

2009-05-09T21:53:00.000-07:00

This has been a connect-the-dots kind of day.

Sadie loves watching Disney movies. We don't watch TV unless there's a political debate or address (hey, baseball games don't count as TV. They're oxygen), so she usually gets very little in the way of screen time unless it's YouTubeing funny pet videos or watching home movies (and what now-almost-four-year-old doesn't love being the star of her own movies?). (Really, I must stop with all of these asides.)

So when the occasional phone call from a friend comes in or, as today, David is traveling and I'm balancing dog, child and dinner, a movie it is. Tonight Sadie watched some of Beauty and the Beast and was fascinated by what motivates Gaston, the villain. I'm a peacenik of sorts, so when she asks why someone is mean, I tell her they are not mean but are acting in a mean fashion or making poor choices. Then the "why?"s begin and the conversation typically goes like this:

ME
Maybe they're acting mean because they're lonely.

SADIE
Why are they lonely?

ME
Well, maybe someone hurt their feelings and now they don't trust people.

SADIE
Why don't they trust people?

ME
Well, maybe because someone made them sad.

SADIE
Why did they make them sad?

ME
Because some people are just mean.

(See how this gets us nowhere? But I can't just say "Some people are evil," like David does -- and not because I think it's untrue... I'm no Hitler apologist [then again, I would not have hanged Saddam Hussein] but rather I don't want her growing up with black and white thought patterns.) (I am clearly committed to the aside and should just title my first novel "Footnote.")

Anyway, back to the topic at hand: As a parent, you're totally in charge of developing your child's moral compass. Not easy, that, especially when your own ideas of right and wrong are not anchored to a magnet like religion. So I took heart when Sadie Sue gave a prized possession to a little boy she met in a parking lot today just to be friendly and that she was asking questions about actions, intent and good vs. evil. (Another digression: I don't use the word "die" with Sadie; instead, we talk about "transforming." I would like to think that it will save her all of the work I had to go through to shrug off heaven and hell, but I realize it's just as likely that she'll wind up a fundamentalist compound-dweller.)

So it's no surprise that parenthood is a time of seeking for me; why are we here... what obligations do we have to ourselves, each other, the earth... Which beings are sentient and therefore require protection, how do we best balance our commitments and spend our time?

And these are things I love to think about anyway. The vast majority of the books I read in my spare time have to do with religion or purpose. That's what I love about much of the music/lyrics in my life: Ani's self-reliance and fearless challenging of the status quo; Counting Crows' crazy lyrics about death and brilliance and the spark that passes between people... Strangely, it's also what I love about physics and zero point field research: the idea that our laws of nature can somehow be interpreted as a field guide to living a moral life.

Then tonight I PPV the Bill Maher "documentary" "Religulous" and am underwhelmed by Maher's opus. He offered interviews with some interesting people but doesn't really mix it up with them; you can tell he's constantly trying to get a camera-friendly quip that shows him to be brilliant and his sparring partner to be dull-witted. Trouble is, he never really explores, never really plumbs the depth. He came in with an agenda and was not willing to be diverted from his plan of making the religious look like idiots. But all he did was make a religion out of his mockery of those with faith.

With all of these things coming together today, I am reminded of how much I like to read, think and write about these topics. Though I am considering making a real career out of agribusiness (even getting an MBA), this day gives me pause. Throughout my life, poetry and philosophy have been my true loves. Although it is extremely satisfying to find something you're good at, that doesn't mean it is your path. I think what I love about farming is the poetry and ritual of it all, not the business. Time to reconsider, I reckon.

Pendulum Swinger, Indigo Girls

2009-02-12T07:43:00.000-08:00

I meet you for coffee
We get together periodically and
I got a bad case I can't shake off of me
The fevered wandering round wondering how it ought to be
You work in the system
You see possibilities and your glistening
Eyes show the hell you're gonna give 'em
When they back off the mic for once and give it to a woman

I dream like a mad one
Brutal fantasies I catch as catch can
I'm a psychic and a laywoman
I see love and I like to make it happen
What we get from your war walk
The ticker of the nation breaking down like a bad clock
I want the pendulum to swing again
So that all your mighty mandate was just spitting in the wind

It doesn't come by the bullwhip
It's not persuaded with your hands on your hips and it's
Not the company of gunslingers
The epicenter - love - is a pendulum swinger
She is she is she is

It's fine about the old scroll Sanskrit
Gnostic gospels, "The da Vinci Code"'s a smash hit
Aren't we dying just to read it and relate it
Too hard just to go by a blind faith
But they left out the sisters
I've been praying to a father god so long I really missed her -
The goddess of benevolence -
You should listen to your mama if you have a lick of sense left

It doesn't come by the bullwhip
It's not persuaded with your hands on your hips and it's
Not the company of gunslingers
The epicenter - love - is a pendulum swinger
She is she is she is

Pushed under by the main press, buried under a code of dress
Relegated by the Vatican
But you can't keep a spirit down that wants to get up again

If we're a drop in the bucket
With just enough science to keep from saying "Fuck it!"
Until the last drop of sun burns its sweet light
Plenty revolutions left until we get this thing right

It doesn't come by the bullwhip
It's not persuaded with your hands on your hips and it's
Not the company of gunslingers
The epicenter - love - is a pendulum swinger
She is she is she is

That is NOT what I meant...

2009-01-12T15:30:00.000-08:00

From a TIME magazine article on the current Israel/Palestine conflict:

"Israeli officials are so confident of crushing Hamas that on Sunday the Military Intelligence Chief Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin gave his war briefing to the cabinet in comical verse."

Sure, you can have more fun in your life. But don't do it by killing people and making light of it.

I guess that's what happens when you're convinced you're G-d's Chosen People.

Observations on beliefs

2009-01-12T13:35:00.000-08:00

For some, there's nothing better than a good, old-fashioned war: righteous anger boiling over into the streets... people killing and dying for what's "theirs" -- a god, some land, a political system. They can't handle the idea of their beliefs being questioned. They can't handle being unsure or, worse, wrong.

Sometimes I wish "I don't know" wasn't so hard to say/believe/accept. Wouldn't things be better if we could let go of our need to nail down the "truth"?

Butterflies, pin less. Fly more.

Obama's big night

2008-08-28T09:29:00.000-07:00

I've made changes to Ani's "Hello Birmingham" below to reflect what I hope is a fantastic night for The Big O. I pray for his safety!

hold me down
i am floating away
into the overcast skies
over my hometown
on convention day

what is it about birmingham?
what is it about denver?
that the hate-filled wanna build bunkers
in your beautiful red earth
they want to build them
in our shiny white snow

now i've drawn closed the curtain
in this little booth where the truth has no place
to stand
and i am feeling oh so powerless
in this stupid booth with this useless
little lever in my hand
and outside my city is bracing
for the next killing thing
standing by the bridge and praying
for the next
doctor
martin
luther
king

it was just one shot
through the kitchen window
it was just two miles from here
if you fly like a crow
a bullet came to visit a doctor
in his one safe place
a bullet ensuring the right to life
whizzed past his kid and his wife
and knocked his glasses
right off of his face

and the blood poured off the pulpit
yeah, the blood poured down the picket lines
yeah, the hatred was immediate
and the vengence was divine
so they went and stuffed god
down the barrel of a gun
and after him
they stuffed his only son

hello denver
it's birmingham
i heard you may have trouble
down there again
and i'm just calling to let to know
that someone understands

i was once escorted
through the doors of a clinic
by a man in a bulletproof vest
and no bombs went off that day
so i am still here to say
denver
i'm wishing you all of my best
oh denver
i'm wishing you all of my best
oh denver
i'm wishing you all of my best
on this convention day

Ani, Animal

2008-06-05T10:16:00.000-07:00

More and more there is this animal
Looking out through my eyes
At all the traffic on the road to nowhere
At all the shiny stuff around to buy
At all the wires in the air
At all the people shopping
For the same blank stare
At America the drastic
That isolated geographic
That's become infested with millionaires

When you grow up surrounded
By willful ignorance
You have to believe
Mercy has its own country
And that it's round and borderless
And then you have to grow wings
And rise above it all
Like there
Where that hawk is circling
Above that strip mall

More and more there is this animal
Looking out through my eyes
Seeing that animals only take from this world
What they need to survive
But she is prowling through all the religions of men
Seeing that time and time and time again
Their gods have made them
Special and above
Nature's law
And the respect thereof

And I think when you grow up surrounded
By willful ignorance
You have to believe that mercy has its own country
And that it's round and borderless
And then you just grow wings
And rise above it all
Like there where that hawk is circling
Above that strip mall

Ask any eco-system
Harm here is harm there
And there and there
And aggression begets aggression
It's a very simple lesson
That long preceded any king of heaven
And there's this brutal imperial power
That my passport says I represent
But it will never represent where my heart lives
Only vaguely where it went

Cuz I know when you grow up surrounded
By willful ignorance
You learn that mercy has its own country
And that it's round and borderless
And then you just grow wings
And rise above it all
Like there
Where that hawk is circling
Above that strip mall

More soon

2008-06-05T09:34:00.001-07:00

...the animal i am knows very well
that Nature is our teacher and our mother
and God is just a story that we tell.

- Ani DiFranco
Icarus, from Evolve

Everest, by Ani DiFranco

2008-04-15T13:40:00.000-07:00

from the depth of the pacific
to the height of everest
and still the world is smoother
than a shiny ball-bearing
so i take a few steps back
and put on a wider lens
and it changes your skin,
your sex, and what your wearing
distance shows your silloutte
to be a lot like mine
like a sphere is a sphere
and all of us here
have been here all the time

you brought me to church,
cinder blocks, flourescent light
you brought me to church
at 7 o'clock on a sunday night
and the band was rocking
and the floors were scrubbed clean
and everybody had a tambourine

so i took a deep breath and became
the white girl with the hair
and you sat right beside me
while everybody stared
and through the open window
i think the singing went outside
and floated up to tell
all the stars not to hide
cuz by the time church let out
the sky was much clearer
and the moon was so beautiful,
that the ocean held up a mirror

as we walked home we spoke slowly
we spoke slow,
and we spoke lowly
like it was taking more time
than usual to choose
the words to go
with your squeaky sandle shoes
like time is not a thing
that's ours to lose

from the height of the pacific
to the depths of everest

For Meg

2008-03-28T12:34:00.000-07:00

The Propagation of the Species
Jennifer Michael Hecht

It is likely that someone
will be standing there at the end
of time, looking up at the fireball
or down at the organs of desire.

It won’t be us, but only because odds
are odds: uncanny, cranky, spare. Thus
we may conclude the world to be a safe
enough place. These are the cares
of the day, the age of probability
having replaced historic ne’er-do-wells
with numbers. As for us, we live in
surprise; why not share this mood
and facial disposition with some scion
of the future generation?

We spent our meditation-time instead
confessing. The exercise delivered
unexpected fruit. Perhaps we’ve better quarry
than the truth.

The fruit of all of this is
possession and release,
mango and bananas.

Especially bananas. Try expressing
to a friend, when next you are feeling
unglued or blue, say: I’m bananas. Explain
to others that your lover, while very
sweet and handsomely randy, is a mite bananas;
is bananas. With a meaningful look in your eye,
gesture an unpeeling.

It is your autobiography
you are living. The actor eating scampi
to my left says he is not yet off-book, but
will be. Folks, I am ever-so-slightly off-book;
Friends, I am bananas.

We parse the problem, nouning out the principle
players: friends, families, prospects. I interview
the possibility of a child;
ask it questions. Intone the word: Interested?
Then: Want to learn the word for widget?
Want to read Beowulf? Want to get named?

Shall we grin and bear it?
I admit, existence is where woeful
was conjured. Nonetheless, to recommend it,
there is Jell-O; average rainfall; the anchovy
app at Luna’s; and the fact that in the middle, many
change their minds on the whole shebang — get
a good one off in both directions. But you and I
are going to have to choose.

It is our autobiography
we are eating; you snooze you
lose. Still, in the midst of going too slowly,
all hell has been known to break loose.

A gang of snails attacks a tree sloth, steals her wallet.
Down at the station, police chief
questions: How’d they get ya?

Sloth says, I dunno, it all happened so fast.

Ain’t it the truth. All this wallowing

in the details of engagement
and when the battle comes,
it isn’t quite expected. It’s slower. Also,
over much too fast to make a fair
assessment. Lounging in her tea tree,
chewing leaves and dreaming, she sees
them: tiny, slimy things with spiral shells
and damp antennae that float like sea anemone
above their wet-tongue heads. She wonders
softly: Is it a moment for decision?

Shall I bolt or battle? Or better yet,
might this pass me by without regret?
It took days for the battalion
to cross the stretch of trunk and reach
her, yet she was still mulling it over
when she found herself succumbed.
Years later, still on her way home
from the station, she wondered what
she had wanted with a wallet, anyway.

There is no way to parry ordinary disaster.
There are no odds worth playing.

Animal-stars from early motion-pictures
eat bonbons and wear feathered mules
in their trailers; the old-age home; the zoo.
What, on the other hand, will become
of you and I?

Side by side, the Studebakers inside us
ride along the Côte du Rhone,
our hair getting tangled in the violent wind of speed.

And how do you propose we un-knot
all these tangles? Not, I trust,
on the rocks below: brave souls pick
a hotel from the travel guide and go.

What do fools do? Don’t know.
Probably the same but badly.
Bombardiers stay home. Bombardiers
know too much of bombs to roam.

Still, it is a question of the result
of one’s actions. Mendel was a monk,
watching pea-pods, but had a wild effect
on pillow talk in centuries to follow;
mumblings of the pregnant engineer.

What do you get from a threesome of a tiger,
a scorpion, and a fly?
Bumble-bee.
How do you get a zebra? Mix a horse
and a tiger.
How you get a tiger? Mix a lion
with that same zebra from before.

Let us accept a rainy August day
as if it were a single, unlikely fabrication.
As if these movies had
never been on television before, as if we’d
never heard of Mamie Eisenhower,
as if her tiny bangs could still cause us to smile.

The recovering tree sloth hangs upside-down,
her three-toed feet hooked to the fat branch
above her as she lollingly observes
the tropic scene. Much, she muses,
to which we cling, turns out to be . . .
ah well. She’s lost her train of thought,
chewing a mild leaf and swinging gently
with the breeze.

Odds of the home-front; odds of the sun;
odds of a herringbone. Run, run, run.

A poem I hope doesn't apply to me for years and years

2008-03-28T12:20:00.001-07:00

In View of the Fact
by A. R. Ammons

The people of my time are passing away: my
wife is baking for a funeral, a 60-year-old who

died suddenly, when the phone rings, and it's
Ruth we care so much about in intensive care:

it was once weddings that came so thick and
fast, and then, first babies, such a hullabaloo:

now, it's this that and the other and somebody
else gone or on the brink: well, we never

thought we would live forever (although we did)
and now it looks like we won't: some of us

are losing a leg to diabetes, some don't know
what they went downstairs for, some know that

a hired watchful person is around, some like
to touch the cane tip into something steady,

so nice: we have already lost so many,
brushed the loss of ourselves ourselves: our

address books for so long a slow scramble now
are palimpsests, scribbles and scratches: our

index cards for Christmases, birthdays,
Halloweens drop clean away into sympathies:

at the same time we are getting used to so
many leaving, we are hanging on with a grip

to the ones left: we are not giving up on the
congestive heart failure or brain tumors, on

the nice old men left in empty houses or on
the widows who decide to travel a lot: we

think the sun may shine someday when we'll
drink wine together and think of what used to

be: until we die we will remember every
single thing, recall every word, love every

loss: then we will, as we must, leave it to
others to love, love that can grow brighter

and deeper till the very end, gaining strength
and getting more precious all the way. . . .

See? Poems CAN be funny

2008-03-28T12:16:00.001-07:00

The Poets March on Washington
by James Cummins

What do we want?
Immortality!
When do we want it?
Now!

What do we want?
Immortality!
When do we want it?
Now!

What do we want?
Immortality!
When do we want it?
Now

Shoebox/Fort Knox/equinox

2008-03-28T12:10:00.000-07:00

I Want to Be Your Shoebox
by Catherine Bowman

(Memphis Minnie’s classic blues line “I want to be your chauffer” was miscopied in an early Folkways recording song transcription as “I want to be your shoebox.”)

I want to be your shoebox
I want to be your Fort Knox
I want to be your equinox

I want to be your paradox
I want to be your pair of socks
I want to be your paradise

I want to be your pack of lies
I want to be your snake eyes
I want to be your Mac with fries

I want to be your moonlit estuary
I want to be your day missing in February
I want to be your floating dock dairy

I want to be your pocket handkerchief
I want to be your mischief
I want to be your slow pitch

I want to be your fable without a moral
Under a table of black elm I want to be your Indiana morel
Casserole. Your drum roll. Your trompe l'oeil

I want to be your biscuits
I want to be your business
I want to be your beeswax

I want to be your milk money
I want to be your Texas Apiary honey
I want to be your Texas. Honey

I want to be your cheap hotel
I want to be your lipstick by Chanel
I want to be your secret passage

All written in Braille. I want to be
All the words you can't spell
I want to be your International

House of Pancakes. I want to be your reel after reel
Of rough takes. I want to be your Ouija board
I want to be your slum-lord. Hell

I want to be your made-to-order smorgasbord
I want to be your autobahn
I want to be your Audubon

I want to be your Chinese bug radical
I want to be your brand new set of radials
I want to be your old-time radio

I want to be your pro and your con
I want to be your Sunday morning ritual
(Demons be gone!) Your constitutional

Your habitual—
I want to be your Tinkertoy
Man, I want to be your best boy

I want to be your chauffeur
I want to be your chauf-
feur, your shofar, I want to be your go for

Your go far, your offer, your counter-offer
your two-by-four
I want to be your out and in door

I want to be your song: daily, nocturnal—
I want to be your nightingale
I want to be your dog's tail

Ani again

2008-03-14T09:16:00.000-07:00

Joyful Girl

I do it for the joy it brings
because I'm a joyful girl
because the world owes me nothing
and we owe each other the world
I do it because it's the least I can do
I do it because I learned it from you
I do it just because I want to
because I want to

Everything I do is judged
and they mostly get it wrong
but oh well
'cuz the bathroom mirror has not budged
and the woman who lives there can tell
the truth from the stuff that they say
and she looks me in the eye
and says "Would you prefer the easy way?
No? Well, OK, then,
don't cry."

And I wonder if everything I do
I do instead
of something I want to do more
the question fills my head
I know that there's no grand plan here
this is just the way it goes
and when everything else seems unclear
I guess at least I know

I do it for the joy it brings
because I'm a joyful girl
because the world owes me nothing
and we owe each other the world
I do it because it's the least I can do
I do it because I learned it from you
I do it just because I want to
because I want to

A wee vent

2008-03-14T08:48:00.000-07:00

Because sometimes anger is necessary. Because you should have helped me and instead you kicked me when I was down. Just because you are disappointed in your own life and your own family doesn't mean you can come after mine. I'm done letting you make me feel bad about my choices.

Forgive, sounds good.
Forget, I'm not sure I could.
They say time heals everything,
But I'm still waiting

I'm through with doubt,
There's nothing left for me to figure out,
I've paid a price, and I'll keep paying

I'm not ready to make nice,
I'm not ready to back down,
I'm still mad as hell
And I don't have time
To go round and round and round
It's too late to make it right
I probably wouldn't if I could
Cause I'm mad as hell
Can't bring myself to do what it is
You think I should

I know you said
Why can't you just get over it,
It turned my whole world around
and i kind of like it

I made by bed, and I sleep like a baby,
With no regrets and I don't mind saying,
It's a sad sad story
That a mother will teach her daughter
that she ought to hate a perfect stranger.
And how in the world
Can the words that I said
Send somebody so over the edge
That they'd write me a letter
Saying that I better shut up and sing
Or my life will be over

I'm not ready to make nice,
I'm not ready to back down,
I'm still mad as hell
And I don't have time
To go round and round and round
It's too late to make it right
I probably wouldn't if I could
Cause I'm mad as hell
Can't bring myself to do what it is
You think I should

I'm not ready to make nice,
I'm not ready to back down,
I'm still mad as hell
And I don't have time
To go round and round and round
It's too late to make it right
I probably wouldn't if I could
Cause I'm mad as hell
Can't bring myself to do what it is
You think I should

Forgive, sounds good.
Forget, I'm not sure I could.
They say time heals everything,
But I'm still waiting

-- Dixie Chicks

Choreplay: The word that got me blogging again

2008-02-13T09:28:00.001-08:00

See the hysterical and OH SO TRUE article below... More to come later!

Gals make passes at guys who wash glasses

Men who share the load (of laundry and otherwise) inspire lust

By Diane Mapes
MSNBC contributor
updated 6:58 a.m. MT, Wed., Feb. 13, 2008

I had a party not too long ago where a funny thing happened. One of the guests — a 30-something, single straight guy — came out to the kitchen and volunteered to do my dishes. “That way you won’t be stuck with a huge mess after everyone leaves,” he said, filling the sink with hot, soapy water.

As he started scrubbing wine glasses, I glanced over at my guests. Every woman in the room was staring at him with what can only be described as pure, unadulterated lust.

Behold the appeal of the dishy man.

Jennifer Matthewson, a 30-year-old caterer from Portland, Ore., has witnessed this heady phenomenon time and time again.

“My husband is great at cooking and great at cleaning,” says Matthewson, whose spouse handles the kitchen end of their catering company while she takes care of the business and the books. “And every time we would do an event, there would be 10 to 15 starry-eyed women standing around him, asking him all kinds of baking and cooking questions. They’d be like, ‘Wow, does he have any brothers?' Even my mother once joked, ‘Oh, if only he were older.’”

For Heather Peterson, of Cambridge, Mass., the dishy man effect is nothing short of money in the bank.

Part of a tongue-in-cheek organization called the Cambridge Women’s Pornography Cooperative, Peterson and her colleagues recently published a collection of photographs of fully clothed men cooking, cleaning house and offering up comforting cups of tea. The book, entitled “Porn for Women,” has sold more than 140,000 copies after just 11 months and has already spawned both a calendar and the newly released “Porn for New Moms.”

‘That's hot’
“This is a humorous book, but it does manage to convey some of the things that women really do fantasize about,” says Peterson, spokesperson for the group. “When a man is willing to step up to the plate — and wash it for you — you’re going to think about him in a very different way. It’s not just that he’s domesticated. It’s that he recognizes that these things have to get done. That they’re not just automatically going to be done for him. And that’s hot.”

According to a May 2007 in American Journal of Public Health, a guy who pulls his own weight around the house isn’t just hot, he’s a boon for his lady’s health.

Researchers at the American University of Beirut studied 1,652 married couples and found that wives whose husbands were minimally involved in housework were 60 percent more likely to be distressed, three times more likely to be uncomfortable with their husbands, and more than twice as likely to be unhappy.

“Our results showed a significant association between husbands’ involvement in housework and their wives’ psychosocial health,” wrote Marwan Khawaja, author of the study.

Are there any benefits, aside from soulful glances and the satisfaction of a sparkling clean floor, that exist for men who share the load (laundry and otherwise)?

That’s hard to say, although there are some interesting indicators. A recent survey by Parenting Magazine found that “choreplay,” i.e., husbands pitching in around the house, was what put 15 percent of moms in the mood.

Research conducted by Laurie A. Rudman, a psychologist at Rutgers University, also seems to point to a hot soapy love connection. Her study, recently published in the journal Sex Roles, looked at feminism’s impact on romantic relationships. Among other things, she found that men with feminist partners reported both more stable relationships and greater sexual satisfaction.

“We didn’t ask who was doing the dishes or taking care of the kids,” says Rudman. “We asked broadly about the quality of the relationship and about the agreement of gender roles in the relationship. But we did find that if men were with a feminist woman, they had more sexual satisfaction and their relationship was more stable. Men benefit from having a feminist partner. Now the next step is to look at why. What is it about gender equality that brings about more relationship satisfaction?”

Sharing the load (of laundry)
For Maureen Judge, a 44-year-old marketing consultant and divorced mom from Seattle, that’s a no-brainer.

“Women have been out in the workforce for a really long time and it’s staggering how many women still do most of the housework,” she says. “Not sharing the load has got to be one of the biggest things that can negatively impact a relationship. So, yes, men who do their share of household chores are absolutely more attractive as potential partners than traditional guys who won’t even pick up a toilet brush. That’s where the bar should be set.”

Are men working their way towards this bar? Signs seem to indicate the Tide may indeed be turning.

A handful of housecleaning guides — by men, for men — have hit the market in recent years, each with titles that subtly play up the steamier side of the egalitarian household, i.e., “How to Satisfy Your Woman Every Time: A Straight Guy’s Guide to Housework and Good Grooming,” “How to Iron Your Own Damn Shirt: The Perfect Husband Handbook Featuring Over 50 Ways to Win, Woo and Wow Your Wife,” and “Clean Like a Man: Housekeeping for Men (and the Women Who Love Them).”

Single men have even started to fly their helpmate flags in online personal ads. A quick sweep through Craig’s List yields numerous postings where, along with interests in football, fishing, and romantic nights in front of a fire, men are expressing their affinity for household chores.

Tired of Being Alone, a 43-year-old bachelor from Sacramento, Calif., says he will “cook, clean house, do laundry and quite a few other things.” 210 Reasons to Email Me, a 25-year-old single guy from Phoenix, lists as his No. 1 incentive: “I clean and do laundry and I also know how to use an iron.” Educated Guy with a Great Career, a 39-year-old divorced dad from Minneapolis, provides a complete resume of household skills. “In addition to being able to cook all the meals, I am housebroken,” he writes. “I do my own ironing. I do laundry and fold it. I do the dishes and put them away. I make the bed. I keep the kitchen clean.”

Kitchen sink savvy
Are these ads an indication that guys have stumbled onto the dishy man effect and are trying to edge out the competition with kitchen sink savvy? Are stereotypical gender roles truly becoming a thing of the past? Or is it a little bit of both?

“I have no problem doing household chores,” says Travis Letellier, a 24-year-old civil engineer from Boston, whose ad talked up his willingness to do dishes and give foot massages. “It was always the norm growing up and it’s something I do regularly anyway. I wasn’t really trying to impress a woman by mentioning that I do dishes, but I guess I was trying to entice one.”

John McDougall, a 38-year-old medical student from Bozeman, Mont., says that while he’s never formerly advertised his “dishiness,” he has noticed it scores major points.

“When I cook for a woman on a first date, most of the time they’re stunned,” he says. “They’re like, ‘Not only do you keep a decent apartment, you can cook. Holy smoke!’ It’s like the icing on the cake. I suppose there’s probably a positive feedback loop going on that reinforces that behavior on my part. But I also think housework can be therapeutic if you choose to see it that way. Making a clean space out of a disordered space offers an internal sense of satisfaction.”

Move over, June Cleaver. Looks like you’ve finally got some stiff competition.

Diane Mapes is a Seattle freelance writer and author of "How to Date in a Post-Dating World."

© 2008 MSNBC Interactive

Montana?

2007-12-11T06:01:00.000-08:00

So hubby has received a job offer in Montana. It's just about all I can think about today! I know it's far away from family, and I know you've got to learn how to manage the wildlife that occasionally takes to Main Street, but I'm so in. I've wanted to live in Montana forever - I actually was considering moving to Missoula just before meeting my husband. But I've never actually been there, so that's a kind of silly thing. Still, whenever I read about it or see movies that were filmed there, I just know that's the place for me. Big sky, fresh air, MOUNTAINS. Plus it would be close to my new gig in Denver.

I'm trying not to be excited, but that's difficult. I was taught to make sure others' needs/wishes are fulfilled before mine, so it's been hard for me to express to hubby how cool I think it would be to live in Bozeman, since I know if he took the job he'd be turning down offers from two VERY GOOD private liberal arts schools. But there are no mountains at those schools. The pay would be better at either of the other schools, but we'd likely spend more money getting out west with some regularity, since that's where we've always wanted to live.

Montana.

Details of the offer are coming today and talks will begin. Stay tuned!

This is my new battle cry

2007-12-05T07:20:00.000-08:00

"Imagine you're a girl
just trying to finally come clean,
knowing full well they'd prefer you were dirty
and smiling...

well, I am sorry,
but I am not a maiden fair
and I am not a kitten stuck up a tree somewhere."

-Ani, again. I think I have a poetry crush!

If I keep this up, I will owe Ani money

2007-12-05T07:14:00.000-08:00

Hey, Ani? I just bought "Canon" and three Righteous Babe tees, kay?

(I think this woman is brilliant.)

Icarus
Ani DiFranco

seems like you just
started noticing
how noticably bad things really are
and when you walked past this couple arguing
in a rolled up window
of a parked car
and all of that
gesticulated bitterness
and all of that
muffled yelling hell
its dark just starts wafting at you
like a big furry rat died
inside of that wall kinda smell

breathe like it's rolling like a cold front
thunder is thundering and lightening in tow
and your tiny little life gets
even smaller
as you heed the heaven's mighty show

and I don't mean heaven
like god-like
the animal in me knows very well
nature is our teacher, our leader, and our lover
and god is just another story that we tell

and you're trying not to grasp-not to start grasping
at straws -or sticks- or stones
just learn how to sit inside your sadness
even if you're sitting there alone

it's just like Icarus ascending
never intending to look back
nature's law and your tragic flaw
I find descending
flying into the arms of a Venus flytrap

guzzle till the buzzer stops
guzzle till the buzzer stops
guzzle till the buzzer stops
guzzle till the buzzer stops
guzzle till the buzzer stops

Reflections

2007-12-05T06:56:00.000-08:00

Meg, this is the song I was talking about last night...

Joyful Girl
Ani DiFranco

i do it for the joy it brings
because i'm a joyful girl
because the world owes me nothing
and we owe each other the world
i do it because it's the least i can do
i do it because i learned it from you
i do it just because i want to
because I want to

everything i do is judged
and they mostly get it wrong
but oh well
'cuz the bathroom mirror has not budged
and the woman who lives there can tell
the truth from the stuff that they say
and she looks me in the eye
and says "would you prefer the easy way?
no, well o.k. then
don't cry"

and i wonder if everything i do
i do instead
of something i want to do more
the question fills my head
i know that there's no grand plan here
this is just the way it goes
and when everything else seems unclear
i guess at least i know

i do it for the joy it brings
because i'm a joyful girl
because the world owes me nothing
and we owe each other the world
i do it because it's the least i can do
i do it because i learned it from you
i do it just because i want to
because I want to

Turning point

2007-12-05T06:38:00.000-08:00

Interesting day ahead. Going to talk to prospective new employer this morning and get the details of the offer. I had a great time at the interview, and was offered the job that day, and wanted to give it some thought. But truth be told, once I learned what kind of work it would be and what a great new challenge it offered, I was hooked. All that's left is to hammer out the details, resign my current job and get organized to spend a good deal of time training in Denver. I will miss the girl terribly, and although I wish I could be contented to stay at home with her, I yearn for more.

My gut tells me to put myself out there again and test my wings. Sharpen my mind. Work on this for as long as I continue to enjoy it and be challenged by it, and then use the money I'll be able to set aside to write full-time. Life's not necessarily an if/then kind of thing... you can have both, just maybe not at once.

Again, with this job opportunity, I find myself hitting my head against the wall that is my mother-in-law. More sadness. She never congratulated me. We haven't even spoken since I went out to the interview. But she did ask hubby questions about how much time I'd be spending away from the girl, etc. I told hubby how disappointed I was, how rejected I felt, but that I knew it was my responsibility to deal with my feelings of doubt and fear about not spending more time with the girl, since as The Buddha would say, those seeds were there before she watered them. So while I was out of the room, he calls his mother and explains that my feelings are hurt (which was not what I would have wanted him to do, but I know it was a kind gesture and a very loving thing to do) and so yesterday I get flowers with this note: "Good luck on your new job."

Now, I am a word person. I study words, make my living with them, idolize them in part. She probably didn't mean to send me the only backhanded phrase I can think would apply in this situation, but it bugs me nonetheless. Good luck? As in "you'll need it"? Or as in "I can't say 'congratulations' because I still feel you're making a mistake so here, good luck."

I know how crazy that sounds, and yes, I'm seeing my therapist Friday to talk this out. But it shows my total lack of confidence in my decisions related to motherhood and the level of vulnerability I've developed when it comes to this woman. It's like the more true to myself I become, the less she likes me.

Whatever. Enough of this.

I wonder what Ani thinks about motherhood. She, too, has a young daughter...

2007-11-29T11:21:00.001-08:00

Not A Pretty Girl
Ani DiFranco

I am not a pretty girl
that is not what I do
I ain't no damsel in distess
and I don't need to be rescued
so put me down punk
maybe you'd prefer a maiden fair
isn't there a kitten stuck up a tree somewhere

I am not an angry girl
but it seems like I've got everyone fooled
every time I say something they find hard to hear
they chalk it up to my anger
and never to their own fear
and imagine you're a girl
just trying to finally come clean
knowing full well they'd prefer you
were dirty and smiling

and I am sorry
I am not a maiden fair
and I am not a kitten stuck up a tree somewhere

and generally my generation
wouldn't be caught dead working for the man
and generally I agree with them
trouble is you gotta have youself an alternate plan
and I have earned my disillusionment
I have been working all of my life
and I am a patriot
I have been fighting the good fight
and what if there are no damsels in distress
what if I knew that and I called your bluff?
don't you think every kitten figures out how to get down
whether or not you ever show up

I am not a pretty girl
I don't want to be a pretty girl
no I want to be more than a pretty girl

On an Ani kick of late...

2007-11-29T09:46:00.000-08:00

32 Flavors
Ani Difranco

Squint your eyes and look closer
I'm not between you and your ambition
I am a poster girl with no poster
I am thirty-two flavors and then some
and I'm beyond your peripheral vision
so you might want to turn your head
cause someday you're going to get hungry
and eat most of the words you just said

both my parents taught me about good will
and I have done well by their names
just the kindness I've lavished on strangers
is more than I can explain
still there's many who've turned out their porch lights
just so I would think they were not home
and hid in the dark of their windows
til I'd passed and left them alone

and god help you if you are an ugly girl
course too pretty is also your doom
cause everyone harbors a secret hatred
for the prettiest girl in the room
and god help you if you are a pheonix
and you dare to rise up from the ash
a thousand eyes will smolder with jealousy
while you are just flying back

I'm not trying to give my life meaning
by demeaning you
and I would like to state for the record
I did everything that I could do
I'm not saying that I'm a saint
I just don't want to live that way
no, I will never be a saint
but I will always say

squint your eyes and look closer
I'm not between you and your ambition
I am a poster girl with no poster
I am thirty-two flavors and then some
And I'm beyond your peripheral vision
So you might want to turn your head
Cause someday you might find you're starving
and eating all of the words you said

This song haunts me

2007-11-28T14:25:00.000-08:00

Chief
by Patty Griffin

Chief had been out of the army
For 15 years or more
He was still marching up and down that street
Just like he was a-walking a war
They called him the chief because he was Indian
It was a name they said behind his back
In the summer he'd march without any shoes
Until the soles of his feet turned black
'till the soles of his feet turned black

His hands wouldn't work the machinery
Cause his brain told him what to say
It's a hell of a life
But its somebody's life
Up and down the street all day

Honey have a look at the places
Like a dog running on a track
The wheels keep on going as fast as you get there
You don't ever get to go back
I don't really know what I'm doing
Just watching myself in some play
And the actress looks like she wants to go home
And lie in bed all day
Yeah lie in a big bed all day

Her hands wouldn't work the machinery
Cause his brain tells him what to say
It's a hell of a life
But its somebody's life
Up and down the street all day

Well I wish that you could see me when I'm flying in my dreams
The way I laugh there way up high
The way I look when I fly
The way I live
The way I fly

Chief got out of the army
Jesus went to live with the poor
I'm still marching up and down that street
I don't know what I'm doing that for
I don't know what I'm doing that for
I don't know what I'm doing that for

Three Sixty

2007-11-28T06:46:00.000-08:00

Remember that post I wrote about wanting to be a stay-at-home mom? What was that about? As much as I love the girl, I get bored and testy and cranky without some real mental stimulation. I went to three days a week at work so that I could be with her more, thinking that I was miserable without her, and while those days are fun and nowhere near as stressful as they once were, I find myself back where I started... bored and ready for a new challenge.

Most fathers don't wrestle with this the way some mothers do, but it's really tough to admit to myself that I'm a better parent when I'm working and really investing energy in a mental challenge. That, in turn, gives me energy and I can be my most vibrant, alive self when I'm with my daughter. And she enjoys her daycare. But it's still hard when she clearly tells me most mornings that she wants me to go with her.

So here we are again. Hubby says I should focus on nailing the interview and not worry so much about the rest of it until later.

But there's another undercurrent here that merits discussion: the need to define myself and trust that definition, no matter what others say. I've been doing a lot of spiritual reading, philosophical reading, and it has helped me center myself and spend my time contemplating the meaning of life and how I can be of service to others. It has helped me understand and appreciate our interconnectedness and the beauty in the world. It also has helped me demonstrate compassion on a more constant basis. All of these things I find to be really beneficial to my soul, to my life, to the lives of my loved ones. I know that what makes me happy isn't what will make others happy, but that I'm responsible for seeking out what works for me and changing my path as required.

But I am bitterly disappointed in my dealings with my mother-in-law. She is a hardworking, generous (almost to a fault) woman who loves her children deeply. She is also someone who, because of her insecurities, tends to be judgemental and closed-minded as to how others live their lives. During our recent Thanksgiving visit, it became clear to me that she believes I am the reason her son is an unhappy person. (Yes, she basically said that.) First of all, her son is not an unhappy person - he's just going through a real test career-wise right now. In addition, she does not give our marriage any credit for the good it has performed in each of us; we have helped open each other up to new ideas and ways of looking at things. That's true on both sides. Yes, I'm a little unconventional. I would rather have someone donate money in my name than receive a gift. I would rather visit the Middle East than Europe. I think it's important to have our daughter learn about the true spirit of Christmas by volunteering during the holiday season, and placing emphasis on helping others rather than making lists of gifts she wants. In general, I think it's fair to say that I have a broader worldview. And she voices her rejection of all of that as often as possible... so we butt heads. But I truly believe that people do not need to agree in order to enjoy one another's company. In fact, I don't really see the two of us being that different, or separate, since we're all made up of the same energy anyway. But it was clear in this last visit that she has turned her back on me, and that really hurts my feelings. I even had a dream in which I screamed at her, "You were supposed to love me!" as opposed to judging me. It's particularly hard for a woman raised without a mother for many years to find a cold place where a warm, loving mother-in-law could be.

So, that's all for now. More thinking to do...

Another on trust

2007-11-27T08:25:00.001-08:00

Trust
by Thomas R. Smith

It's like so many other things in life
to which you must say no or yes.
So you take your car to the new mechanic.
Sometimes the best thing to do is trust.

The package left with the disreputable-looking
clerk, the check gulped by the night deposit,
the envelope passed by dozens of strangers—
all show up at their intended destinations.

The theft that could have happened doesn't.
Wind finally gets where it was going
through the snowy trees, and the river, even
when frozen, arrives at the right place.

And sometimes you sense how faithfully your life
is delivered, even though you can't read the address.

New poem for us

2007-11-27T08:20:00.000-08:00

The Virtue of Trusting One's Mind
by Marcia Slatkin
from A Woman Milking: Barnyard Poems

The Virtue of Trusting One's Mind

When goats don't want to move,
they don't make sounds.

They fold legs at bald knees,
bend rough necks to earth,
and just sink down.

They never

rant, rail,
protest, declaim,
debate, explain, and then,
head bowed, plod meekly
forward anyway,

as I did
as a child—
and still do now.

Reflections

2007-11-27T06:17:00.000-08:00

All of this getting ready for my big interview on Friday has got me thinking... What is it that I truly want? I've continued to have lots of very interesting dreams, very vivid dreams. I thought I had to choose between them - between a job that uses one part of my brain and a path of creativity, but I'm less sure of that now.

I realized inbetween dreams last night why I love poetry: to write poetry requires one to remain present as much as possible. For someone who lived much of her life in the past and whose husband tends to be very future-centered, this is a blessed relief. So for me, writing is as much about living as it is about creating. For me, the only life is one in which we create in celebration of creation. It's a very spiritual calling, which is funny since I've never bought into organized religion. On my Kindle at the moment is the Hitchins book "God is Not Great" and on my nightstand is "The Big Questions: How to Find Your Own Answers to Life's Essential Mysteries" by Lama Surya Das. I'm reading them simultaneously, and that doesn't seem strange to me. It actually fits rather nicely. It all goes back to my Sufi inspiration of celebrating this glorious life without having to pin God into a butterfly box.

I have needed these drugs to quiet my mind long enough to see clearly again. I needed to break the chain. I needed perspective. But what's interesting is that I now understand the mistakes I was making in my approach to life. I had some fairly destructive mental habits and they were preventing me from enjoying the here and now... not because that's all there is, but because it's enough! And I don't want to be one of these people who lives for eternity. That doesn't make sense to me. It's like hanging a gorgeous, hand-knit sweater in your closet for fear of soiling it. It was created for you - wear it. This life was created for you - live it. Being in the present allows you to live as worry-free as possible. I also think learning to channel your energy is important, which gets me back to the original topic: work and creativity.

I am starting to believe that part of my recent anxieties have revolved around the fact that my mind is bored. I feel like a dog chasing its tail just to have something to do. The busier I am, the happier. So maybe a new challenge is in order, and maybe this job is that challenge.

The joy I get from creating does not have to be limited to writing poetry - it can extend to this or another job, to giving loving and compassionate care to my friends and family, and even to cleaning house! And from that space, I will be more open to receiving God's mystic whispers.

Holy dreams, Batman!

2007-10-31T06:26:00.000-07:00

Two distinct dreams last night. Very insightful. Very personal and, well, kinda gross. Not for the faint of heart.

In the first dream, I was "on the potty," as we say to the girl (who's learning like a champ!), and while I'll spare you the very vivid details, let's just say I discovered I'd had a tapeworm in my stomach. Now in the "potty," the worm was thick and pink and rubbery. It looked very much like intestines! And it was still alive, snapping at me. I called my stepmother (whom I call "mom") in to help. Now, I think this part is very revealing as I was thinking about her last night and about how during our upcoming trip to NYC for Haley's 30th birthday fete I will need to be careful to include her in the group of otherwise very like-minded, like-energized people. She's a wonderful woman and I love her very much, but let's just say that she's not a city person and there will be times when she may feel like the odd one out. I don't want her to be uncomfortable.

Anyway, back to the dream. I call her in and she helps me feel better about the situation, showing no fear or disgust. Showing only acceptance. I feel terrible because I'm thinking, is THIS the root of all the weight I lost this past summer? I thought I did it by shaking off my anxiety and depression, thereby changing my relationship to food. What if I've given myself credit for what this tapeworm did?

I assume this dream represents my fear that I am regressing into some of my old habits, including using food as a crutch. I have done a little bit of that, but not much. Besides, we're going into a particularly stressful time (hubby is interviewing and we're hoping to move out of this place!), and I can tell you that we both get really keyed up during interview season.

The fear that I have regressed (or will) also seems to be a strong theme in the second dream. In this dream, my friend Meg shows up to my apartment (which I do not own - nor is there a hubby or daughter in this dream) and convinces me to come out on the town with her. I don't want to go -- I've stopped drinking, I argue -- but in the end she convinces me it will be fun and I throw myself together and we go. We're drinking in this bar and everyone's looking at me strangely, but since I'm drunk (even as I'm telling someone I've been sober for months, excepting now, of course) I can't tell if I'm projecting that they're staring or they really are. Then I see my friend Wes in the corner of the bar, talking with friends, but I know somehow that I look shameful or am acting in a shameful manner, so I try to avoid him. Now, Wes is a writer. He clearly represents my artistic mirror. Finally, we're getting up to go and I realize I still have my blue mud mask on my face from when Meg stopped by. This whole time, my face has been Smurfy blue! And, what's more, my breasts are falling out of my shirt. Now this is of particular concern, because I have always felt insecure about the shape of my breasts (which was made worse when my lactation consultant told me I was malformed for nursing. Thanks!) and so this is really embarassing to me. I run into Wes, and he's like, "Girl, you are a mess. Can I help you?" But I drunkly wave him off and go on a trek across town with Meg to see a friend about... something. I don't remember. While there, I borrow a T-shirt and wash my face, then we want to get back to the other side of town, (which seems to be Tucson, Arizona - a really big place!) and all we have are child's-size bikes that this creepy guy lets us borrow. He's in the middle of watching a TV series on DVD - like 24 or something - or doing a role playing game, and hitting on me whenever there's a break in the action. Creepy. We know we have to get out of there, but Meg's out of money, having spent it all at the bar, so we can't call a cab. So we take off, still drunk but starting to feel hungover, in the hot Arizona sun, up and down hills. Soon we are in the middle of nowhere! We are not getting any closer. Then I realize I have cash at my apartment so we can just call a cab and pay once we get home, but there aren't any phones or buildings here.

Anyway, either I skip ahead or I don't remember what happened next, but I do see Wes again when sober and am apologizing for my actions. He's nonplussed, and says he used my "perfect" breasts to create a sculpture or something like that. He's basically telling me I don't have to feel ashamed, and that creativity rises from mistakes. I remember feeling relieved and yet still sad because he had figured out how to navigate the creative waters and I was still stuck looking for a boat.

So both of these dreams COULD be looked upon as a way of taking stock in my artistic self... in whether I think I have anything to offer. The tapeworm could be me thinking that I have falsely claimed credit for creative abilities, when really I don't have them at all, whereas my friend Wes in the drunk dream he has turned something I found shameful into creative inspiration. At the very end of the dream, I was left thinking, if he can do it, why can't I?

Interesting ...

Breakthrough

2007-10-30T08:37:00.000-07:00

So my father is in Europe this week (Bonjour, Papa!), exploring some famous World War II sites and learning more about that interesting time. He's a buff, so the trip is perfect for him. I miss him but I'm very glad he went! Thinking of him and reading his itinerary for yesterday got me thinking about the last trip he went on by himself: It was when my sister, Haley, and I gifted him a trip to New Mexico for a National Geographic Expeditions Photography Workshop. He's an excellent photographer, and this was a chance to visit with like-minded folks and learn from the people whose work appears in National Geographic. He had a wonderful time, and came back talking about the difference between a pretty picture ("nice postcard," as his instructor described) and a photo that tells a story. You can see a change in his work, which was always great -- but now it's really sensational.

I was thinking about this last night while cleaning up the dinner dishes... about how glad I am to have joined with Haley to spend the money to send him to the workshop. (It didn't cost a ton of money, but it took some sacrifice.) If you can spend money to feed a soul, what better way would it be spent?

Then it hit me: I was willing to justify such a sacrifice for my father, but unwilling to do so for myself. I have money I could use to go to school, stay home and write, you name it. I don't need to be beholden to anything but my own ideas and the agreements I work out with my husband. What's more, even if I didn't have the money, I could find a way to make it work. I just need to let go of some of my old ideas about things. What seems selfish -- leading the life I long to live as a mother and a poet -- is anything but, as it teaches our daughter about following your heart and really staying alive.

That doesn't mean I'm afraid to work. This new potential opportunity is interesting, indeed. But I want to go into this job search knowing where my priorities lie.

Painted by Proximity

2007-10-30T08:17:00.001-07:00

A first draft of a simple thought...

Painted by Proximity
By Hilary Parker

Walking out of Office Max
-- or was it Office Depot? --
with toner for my fax machine
(which always runs out while I'm away on business,
this time angering my husband, who needed a hotel receipt
to file his expense report for HIS last business trip,)
I stepped up onto one of those parking lot islands
filled with a lonely tree and "decorative stones."

The curb had been painted bright yellow
(which I probably have to thank for noticing it in the first place
since the tree there is rather forlorn looking and
not at all the kind of thing that requires attention).
Some of the rocks had been partially painted by proximity
to the sprayed-on yellow coat of caution
and while most sat dutifully near the curb,
one had been tossed into the middle of the island
-- probably by people like me, who walk through rather than around --
and I realized we must remember how what we feel, what we do isn't confined to us,
but spreading, always on the move.
It is a message of caution, yes, but also one of hope.
Who knows what good one person can do
when one half-yellow rock reminded me of my own potential to change the world for good?

Trading spaces

2007-10-26T05:20:00.000-07:00

(Written Thursday afternoon, posted Friday morning)

CHICAGO — So I’m at this big trade show for my job – the kind where you stand behind a booth for hours and/or walk around to back-to-back press conferences held at other companies' booths (which, not incidentally, always seem to be on opposite sides of the giant show floor). No worries, though – I packed my “sensible shoes.”

Anyway, at the show, my publisher has been giving me a hard time about our May parting date. She’s tried to get me to agree to stay on and do the occasional writing and trade show traveling, she’s tried to convince me that the grass is not always greener... etc. That hasn’t given me much pause. But what has gotten me thinking is the time I have spent with other members of the industry at the show. I love these people. I genuinely LOVE this industry. I’m not ready to scrap the knowledge I’ve amassed and just pick up and start over. I want to use what I know.

Aside: Why does it HAVE to smell like baked beans near our booth? Thank God I’m not pregnant.

Anyway, at this very show four years ago, I met a nice young man who was starting an online career service for this particular industry. We did a story on his burgeoning business and celebrated with him two years ago when he was incorporated into another online company. I recently had received a press release from him via my job and knew he’d be exhibiting at the show, so I made a mental note to stop by and just let him know that I’d be available in May, should he know anyone looking for someone with my skill set. To be honest, I didn't think he'd have much luck placing me, but it never hurts to ask.

So today, between back-to-back, opposite-side-of-the-GIANT-ASS-trade-show-floor press conferences, I ran across his booth and stopped to chat.

Well, darlings, he practically fell out of his seat. He immediately introduced me to the CEO of the company, who started talking about THEIR need for communications work and how they’re totally interested in hiring me! Um, oh my God! I explained I would want a part-time, telecommuting job with a flexible schedule, and he said that sounded perfect. I’m going to send them both my resume and start talks about what kind of a role I can play in the organization. Wow.

I know there's a lot of talk in this industry, and just because they have a need doesn't mean we're a good fit or that they'd be able to pony up the cash, but ... This could be something really great!

Today’s lesson is: Don’t be afraid to ask for what you want. You just might get it!

Update

2007-10-23T09:28:00.000-07:00

Spent a wonderful four-day weekend with the girl. This was my first Monday back in charge of her. Previously, I had been taking Mondays "off" to do therapy, writing, and generally let off some steam while the girl went to daycare. And that was great for a few months. But then I started missing our daughter and wanting more time with her, so now we have Friday through Monday together. It has been wonderful! Not without its moments of frustration and whatnot, but not nearly as scary as I remember. I'm ready to be at home full time! I can't wait until May.

One Eighty

2007-10-17T06:16:00.000-07:00

Remember "I am NOT cut out for the 24/7 motherhood thing" Hilary? Where'd she go?!

I am a mess without my little girl today! Lately she's been clingy, sad and angry when it's time for her to go to daycare, so that's not helping. I know she's fine once she has had a chance to calm down, but no amount of prepping seems to lessen it. I'm sure it will get better, as everything's a stage (my personal tough-times motherhood mantra), but in the meantime it's just devestating.

Maybe my change of heart is due to the knowledge that she will be our only child. (Why? Several reasons had us leaning this way, but the effects of the global population explosion sealed the deal. Read "The World Without Us" by Alan Weisman. No, seriously. Read it now.) Maybe it's all the therapy... that through addressing my anxiety in general (and my motherhood anxiety in particular) I now have the courage to really get in the game. For instance, I now recognize that sacrificing myself in every way for our daughter is not good for me and disasterous for her. So that makes things more pleasant. And on the creative front, I now know that the girl is not hindering my writing - if anything, she's the source of so many beautiful reminders of how to be present... how to really live this life. That's something I'm really working on, both as a person and as a writer.

Or maybe it's simpler than that... Maybe after escaping the anxiety, I can enjoy her more. That's a natural instinct - to want to be with the ones you love.

Here are some songs I've connected with lately. Hope all is well out there!

H.

The One Who Knows
Dar Williams

Time it was I had a dream
And you're that dream come true.
If I had the world to give
I'd give it all to you.
I'll take you to the mountains,
I will take you to the sea.
I'll show you how this life became a miracle to me.

You'll fly away, but take my hand until that day.
So when they ask how far love goes
When my job's done you'll be the one who knows.

All the things you treasure most
will be the hardest won.
I will watch you struggle long
before the answers come.
But I won't make it harder,
I'll be there to cheer you on.
I'll shine the light that guides you down
The road you're walking on.

You'll fly away, but take my hand until that day.
So when they ask how far love goes
When my job's done you'll be the one who knows.

Before the mountains call to you,
before you leave this home,
Wanna teach your heart to trust
As I will teach my own.
But sometimes I will ask the moon
Where it shined upon you last
And shake my head and laugh and say
It all went by so fast.

You'll fly away, but take my hand until that day.
So when they ask how far love goes
When my job's done you'll be the one who knows.

She
Elvis Costello

She
May be the face I can't forget.
A trace of pleasure or regret
May be my treasure or the price I have to pay.
She may be the song that summer sings.
May be the chill that autumn brings.
May be a hundred different things
Within the measure of a day.

She
May be the beauty or the beast.
May be the famine or the feast.
May turn each day into a heaven or a hell.
She may be the mirror of my dreams.
A smile reflected in a stream
She may not be what she may seem
Inside her shell

She who always seems so happy in a crowd.
Whose eyes can be so private and so proud
No one's allowed to see them when they cry.
She may be the love that cannot hope to last
May come to me from shadows of the past.
That I'll remember till the day I die

She
May be the reason I survive
The why and wherefore I'm alive
The one I'll care for through the rough and ready years
Me I'll take her laughter and her tears
And make them all my souvenirs
For where she goes I've got to be
The meaning of my life is

She, she, she

The last sensible thing I do

2007-10-11T06:53:00.000-07:00

So my boss and I came to a great agreement for everyone involved which has me staying through May 15. That means I work on the big annual project one last time and they have time to promote someone to my position as well as hire and train a replacement for that person. It also means we can all part on the best of terms, which is important to me. My boss has been understanding and flexible and has remained loyal to me all these years. I know how lucky I am.

Still, this turn of events has highlighted just how passive-agressive I have become. I wanted to quit. I've wanted to quit for some time now. I tried many different ways to distance myself from the job, including pretending I don't care about the quality of my work, underperforming, telling myself it was too good a deal to give up (I work from home three days a week and am handsomely paid), saying it was the perfect job for someone who was starting a family, etc. But the truth remained: I was bored, I was running in place, I was waiting for life to happen to me. Worse, I was telling myself that my family could not handle it if I were to have a career I cared about, since hubby's career dominates his life, time, thoughts, heart (and therefore requires a substantial amount of energy and time from me). I even thought this job might be the only thing I would ever be really good at. When I daydreamed about school or writing, I would remind myself that one Ph.D. in the family is enough and besides, the chances of achieving any kind of success as a writer was desperately small, as my (well-intentioned) father told me when I declared my creative writing major in college and again when I shunned the job market upon graduating to move to Madison to waitress and write.

Papa didn't want me to go hungry or set myself up for a big disappointment, and that's understandable. I'm glad I knew enough then to ignore him. If you'd asked me in May of 1997, I don't think I could have articulated it quite this way, but I KNEW that what mattered was living my life with access to the creative force that was trying to beat its way out of my chest. When I moved to Madison, I set up a creative space and set my own priorities and was having a wonderful time. I worked on a screenplay and a bunch of other things, but mostly I wrote poetry "just for fun." Too bad I didn't notice how drawn I was to it and start pursuing the form of poetry further then. Apparently that had to come later.

So here's where life enters and throws me a curve... A year after moving to Madison, I am my most genuine self when I meet and fall in love with hubby, who is also at a point of having made big decisions and moves to pursue his dreams. We were drawn together, I believe, to support each other's aspirations and to complement one another - he's the analyst, I'm the dreamer. We need reminders of the other spheres in our lives. What's more, he's adorable and he really gets me... sometimes better than I get myself.

At the time we met, I had been working at an ad agency in Madison. I actually got fired from the agency (guess I wasn't meant to be a production manager, after all - though the principals both were going through divorces and having an affair, plus the firm's big client was refusing to pay their bill, so maybe that had something to do with it). Hubby (then boyfriend) was supportive and encouraged me to apply to the job I'm leaving in May. I started there in December of 1998, leaving for a year and a half in the middle to work for a newspaper association, and then returning when my superior went part-time. I learned the job and, for awhile at least, really enjoyed it. I became a dutiful and enthusiastic employee who was proud to be using her college degree in a related field. Since I was writing all day, I didn't want to come home and write, so I slowly put those plans on hold. I don't think I even really recognized I was doing it... or I thought my next creative period was just around the bend... after the learning curve at the job lessens, or after the next big project or once we're through the holidays.

And, despite hubby's being super supportive of my wanting to pursue my writing, I chose to use my energy to master the supportive partner (later wife) role and lost myself somehow. Granted, this is the model my mother laid out for me (at least, that's what I seem to recall, though grief has eaten up a ton of my memories and shifted things about a bit in my head). But there's more to it than that: I lost my nerve. I lost my confidence in myself, or at least I lost touch with the idea that this life needs living - true living - not just getting by. I bought into the whole idea of a traditional work/lifestyle and accepted the limits most people inherit from their parents' generation. I accepted that my life would look like most people's; no, I WANTED that. I wanted the marriage and house and children and apronstrings and - apparently - I wanted to take a break from living intensely, the way you live when you know what it's all about... when you remember to fight assumptions and think less about money and more about happiness... when you draw your energy from a place of trust rather than sadness or fear.

I think either this marked the beginning of my depression or my depression followed as a result of this "break." I want to be clear about something here: Hubby is not the cause or effect here; if anything, he's been the person who has helped me see clearly in recent months. But now, after months of medication, therapy and time to myself, I'm beginning to recognize what I do and do not want in life.

I want to continue to have a solid, loving relationship with my husband. I want more time with our daughter. I want to write poetry. I want to go to grad school for an MFA or more schooling in religion and philosophy (or all of the above). I want to quit my job.

But I haven't acted on these desires. Maybe I think I don't deserve them, or that I don't have a right to press my desires on other members of my family. I grew up duty-bound, and it's ironic that when I finally walk out of the fog of the last few years, I have the most responsibility of my life (our daughter, in particular). Or maybe it's because of these responsibilities that I finally woke up.

My point is this: How did I become someone who needed permission to do what my soul is crying out to do? Permission from myself, certainly, but also from others? As I look back, I've been sending up flares at my job for years. Whether I knew I was doing it or not, I have been basically trying to get fired. I mean, look at me now: I'm on deadline and have several people counting on me producing today and instead I sit at my kitchen table, blogging. It's absurd.

Instead of making a decision that it was time to move on from my job, I finally told my superiors how unhappy I was and that my heart had gone out of it. This is after months upon months of skirting my responsibilities, underperforming, etc. Why did I need them to draw first blood? And why do I need hubby's permission to leave my job? So it comes at a bad time for him, and I am sympathetic. But maybe I've been too sympathetic. So it is a little stressful. Life is stressful. We have financial reserves to draw on, reserves that are mine and that were good enough to pay off his car, etc. Why aren't they good enough to buy me some time?

I see the sense in waiting until May to leave my job. I've agreed to it in order to buy me some good will on the part of both my employer and hubby. And it's no one's fault but my own! But between now and then, I'm going to work on interjecting my priorities some of the time so I'm ready when it's my turn.

Because on May 16, it's my turn, damn it.

Perhaps if I'm lucky, this will be the last "sensible" thing I do - the last time I put everyone's priorities before my own, the last time I put the creative will inside of me on hold. I'm not saying I won't be a loving mother and wife. I'm just done pretending I have nothing to say.

"And hours become days and days become years,
And you could burn down this town
If they made matches from fear.
Buy you're no worse off than anybody else.
Hey, don't you even know,
Don't you even know
Yourself?

So you're standing outside your high school door -
The one you walked out of twenty years before -
And you whisper to all of the girls,
Run, run, run!"

- Stealing Kisses
Written/performed by Lori McKenna
(More famously performed by Faith Hill)

Isn't that like being a little bit pregnant?

2007-10-09T02:53:00.000-07:00

So I accidentally quit my job yesterday.

(See post title.)

Yeah, I dunno. Maybe it's the result of too much therapy -- or too little -- but I've just been calling it like it is in my personal and professional life lately, and this is the latest shakeup to result from that new habit.

Needless to say, hubby is less than thrilled.

I have been with this company since 1998 (with a year-and-a-half break to do something else, though I still was freelancing with them at the time) and it's just time for a change. I guess saying as much to my publisher is something I did in a strangely half-hearted, passive aggressive manner. The timing certainly could be better.

The company has proposed that I stay through the end of the year. I'm trying to decide if I want to counter with a proposal that has me there through May 15 -- through a big annual project that I hate but that they really still need me for. I think the stability would make hubby happy, and an end-date would make me happy. There's no guarantee the company will go for it, though.

Half of me is scared to death. After all, I was raised to think and plan before jumping, not to lead with my heart. The other half of me realizes that on one level or another, this is not such a big deal. So I'll get another job. So what?

And I know that money is not all that important in the grand scheme of things. I have a cushion, after all -- but is this the way I want to use it? Is this my cry to stay home with the girl full-time? Is this me just trying to assert my authority since hubby's career has been dictating our lives for a long time now? It's shaping up to be one of the most self-centered things I've ever done... and all without really meaning to. At least I think I didn't mean to.

Maybe it's time to hightail it to my therapist.

Bottom line: I am so sorry to cause hubby to feel extra pressure during this critical time. That's the most regrettable thing about this. So I need to figure it out soon, before he has to make decisions based around this new development.

I've sent out a bunch of queries for work at home/telecommuting editing jobs. At this moment, the silence in my inbox is deafening.

More to come!

Two from Mary Oliver

2007-09-27T09:57:00.000-07:00

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save.

Burma's courage

2007-09-27T08:46:00.000-07:00

See the very moving photo here:

http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2007/09/24/world/24myanmar_CA0.span.ready.html

And a poem to relay the significance of their fight to God, in case He's too wrapped up in watching good and evil do battle to remember that we suffer during this Passion Play. Or perhaps He knows this will be a great turning point in the human struggle for freedom. Let's hope so.

Vespers
by Louise Glück

In your extended absence, you permit me
use of earth, anticipating
some return on investment. I must report
failure in my assignment, principally
regarding the tomato plants.
I think I should not be encouraged to grow
tomatoes. Or, if I am, you should withhold
the heavy rains, the cold nights that come
so often here, while other regions get
twelve weeks of summer. All this
belongs to you: on the other hand,
I planted the seeds, I watched the first shoots
like wings tearing the soil, and it was my heart
broken by the blight, the black spot so quickly
multiplying in the rows. I doubt
you have a heart, in our understanding of
that term. You who do not discriminate
between the dead and the living, who are, in consequence,
immune to foreshadowing, you may not know
how much terror we bear, the spotted leaf,
the red leaves of the maple falling
even in August, in early darkness: I am responsible
for these vines.

A gentle reminder for me...

2007-09-27T07:49:00.000-07:00

LET THE MYSTERY BE
Iris DeMent

Everybody's wonderin' what and where they they all came from
everybody's worryin' 'bout where they're gonna go
when the whole thing's done
but no one knows for certain
and so it's all the same to me
I think I'll just let the mystery be

Some say once you're gone you're gone forever
and some say you're gonna come back
Some say you rest in the arms of the Saviour
if in sinful ways you lack
Some say that they're comin' back in a garden
bunch of carrots and little sweet peas
I think I'll just let the mystery be

Everybody's wonderin' what and where they they all came from
everybody's worryin' 'bout where they're gonna go
when the whole thing's done
but no one knows for certain
and so it's all the same to me
I think I'll just let the mystery be

Some say they're goin' to a place called Glory
and I ain't saying it ain't a fact
but I've heard that I'm on the road to purgatory
and I don't like the sound of that
I believe in love and I live my life accordingly
but I choose to let the mystery be

Everybody is wondering what and where they they all came from
everybody is worryin' 'bout where they're gonna go
when the whole thing's done
but no one knows for certain
and so it's all the same to me
I think I'll just let the mystery be
I think I'll just let the mystery be

Amen, sister...

2007-09-26T07:01:00.000-07:00

Life's A Song

Written by John Hadley & Sean Locke
Performed by Terri Hendrix

Lately I've been countin' up all my days good and bad
I found that joy has more than doubled all the trouble I've had
From now on I'm not gonna worry about what might be
I know I'm part of something a whole lot bigger than me

Life's a song we're all singing
Life's a song that never ends
We pass it on to sons and daughters and it starts all over again

We're all one big family like the stars in the sky
When we fall all the others shine on through the night

Life's a song we're all singing
Life's a song that never ends
We pass it on to sons and daughters and it starts all over again

For all the ashes on the wind and the bones beneath the ground
Another baby's born and this world keeps spinning 'round ... and 'round

Lately I've been countin' up all my days good and bad
I found that joy has more than doubled all the trouble I've had
From now on I'm not gonna worry about what might be
I know I'm part of something a whole lot bigger than me

I heart my husband

2007-09-20T07:01:00.000-07:00

He gets me. Not ONLY was he clutch during my depression/anxiety bouts, supportive of the whole "hey, I'm kinda going through a rejuvenating period here and waking up artistically" thing over the past few months, he also is willing to put his time and money where his mouth is and take me (and the girl!) to Ann Arbor next weekend to celebrate Rumi's 800th birthday (www.ruminations800.com)!

Coleman Barks and Robert Bly will be there and doing a big reading on Saturday night. We have a hotel and I have a ticket to ride. True, I threw in some Zingerman's (www.zingermans.com) to sweeten the deal, but he was on board even prior to that because he knows how important it is that I unearth the source of my soul's power. And that, of late, has been poetry. He knows how eager I am to join a community of other poets and writers and how tough it can be to work from one's home and not interact face-to-face with many people on a day-to-day basis. He even supports my dream of going back to get my MFA in creative writing, which, I learned recently, I could do while still working if need be as there are several "low-residency" programs that require campus time for just a few weeks a year. Otherwise, you communicate via e-mail, etc., with your mentor and classmates. Since I do so much of that now at my current job and know the ups and downs of that arrangement, I think that might be a real possibility for me.

Anyway, all this is to say that when I count my blessings, he is at the top of my list: a wonderful partner, friend, co-parent, teacher and scholar. And he's cute, too. :)

Pens and feathers ... none better

2007-09-19T14:25:00.000-07:00

Rain King, Counting Crows

When I think of heaven
Deliver me in a black-winged bird
I think of flying down into a sea of pens and feathers
And all other instruments of faith and sex and God
In the belly of a black-winged bird.

Don't try to feed me
'Cause I've been here before
And I deserve a little more

I belong in the service of the Queen
I belong anywhere but in between
She's been crying and I've been thinking
And I am the Rain King

And I said mama, mama, mama, why am I so alone
I can't go outside
I'm scared I might not make it home
I'm alive, I'm alive
But I'm sinking in
If there's anyone at home at your place, darling
Why don't you invite me in?

Don't try to bleed me
'Cause I've been there before
And I deserve a little more

I belong in the service of the Queen
I belong anywhere but in between
She's been lying and I've been sinking
And I am the Rain King

Hey, I only want the same as anyone
Henderson is waiting for the sun
Oh, it seems night endlessly begins and ends
After all the dreaming I come home again

When I think of heaven
Deliver me in a black-winged bird
I think of dying
Lay me down in a field of flame and heather
Render up my body into the burning heart of God
In the belly of a black-winged bird

Don't try to bleed me
'Cause I've been here before
And I deserve a little more

I belong in the service of the queen
I belong anywhere but in between
She's been dying and I've been drinking
And I am the Rain King

Calling Me Home by Patty Griffin

2007-09-19T13:48:00.000-07:00

For my Mama, born 65 years ago tomorrow and dead now five years longer than the 13 she spent with me.

Mama, I hear you calling tonight
your old song calling me in for the night
in the tall grass, down from the trees where I climb
when day is gone, the birds sing their last songs in the pine

I hear your voice calling
by the back door light
it reaches as far as I roam
it's calling me all the way home

Mama, the darkness is falling so fast
Somehow I thought the day would always last
I'm afraid that I walk alone in life
Following the sound of your voice by the light

Your sweet voice is calling
by the back door light
It reaches as far as I roam
It's calling me all the way home
It's calling me all the way home
Calling me all the way home

Mama, the night is so long and so deep
Won't you stay a while — stay with me here 'til I sleep

No excuses. I must get rowing.

2007-09-18T17:39:00.000-07:00

So I'm already regretting my earlier post about being bored. With a few more hours of introspection, I realize that I'm dragging my feet on really breaking with my previous perspective and habits and diving into the next stage of my life. I'm mistaking my desire for an outer change (like starting a graduate program) with my need for inner change. I pledge to start listening to myself more carefully and to use the introspective time I have to listen to my soul. Although eager, I know I cannot simply set out in any particular direction and expect results.

Mary Oliver says it best:

West Wind #2

You are young. So you know everything. You leap
into the boat and begin rowing. But listen to me.
Without fanfare, without embarrassment, without
any doubt, I talk directly to your soul. Listen to me.
Lift the oars from the water, let your arms rest, and
your heart, and heart's little intelligence, and listen to
me. There is life without love. It is not worth a bent
penny, or a scuffed shoe. It is not worth the body of a
dead dog nine days unburied. When you hear, a mile
away and still out of sight, the churn of the water
as it begins to swirl and roil, fretting around the
sharp rocks -- when you hear that unmistakable
pounding -- when you feel the mist on your mouth
and sense ahead the embattlement, the long falls
plunging and streaming -- then row, row for your life
toward it.

I'm bored

2007-09-18T13:27:00.000-07:00

Today I'm experiencing a downside to all this self-discovery stuff: the highs are so high that sometimes you've just got to bottom out for balance. And in this bottoming out period, which began today and hopefully will go as soon as it came, I am bored and frustrated with my lack of community. I am seriously contemplating going to grad school in the next few years, and much of the draw of school is the community of thinkers and writers I could find. Because I work from home, I am alone in this house a lot. I surf too many gossip websites while I am supposed to be working, and they are turning my brain to cotton candy. I want something that challenges me to stretch my mind, to use my imagination.

Basically, I am going through major withdrawal from my fantastic conversations this weekend with Mrs. T. We talked until late into the night both Friday and Saturday about God and life and excess and purpose and meaning. She says people don't think about these things, don't ask these questions. In part, it's because I'm now raising a child that I ask them, but these are the questions I've always wondered about. I don't think I'm going to be content until I can spend time on them, whether that's through philosophy work or theism or even through getting a poetry MFA.

In my mind, great poetry forces the reader to stop and open up to different perspectives. We want poetry to entertain and shock us awake. We want it to remind us of our once innocent perspective on life, to encourage us to take ourselves less seriously. Sometimes, we want poetry to cry with us. It's that connection we want -- that feeling of insight revealed only between poet and reader. The sharing of a great truth.

I want to explore the world and I need traveling partners. It will be years before I am able to enroll somewhere, assuming that's what I decide to do, that there's a program in my area and that I am admitted. So I'm going to need something in the meantime. I thought about switching jobs, just to get out of the house and interact with people, but I really enjoy my job (most of the time), like my co-workers (almost all of the time!) and enjoy the flexibility it gives me. So that's out. Maybe I'll look at the local universities for some kind of lecture series or check with my church about a Fish and Philosophy sort of thing.

I guess not all my days can be filled with purpose.

Tricked out

2007-09-18T06:46:00.000-07:00

The man known as Trick (http://twitter.com/trick) said the funniest thing in response to Jocelyn's What You Did This Summer blog post (http://www.ilovepauljack.com/), and I had to share:

"As a symbol of my age (40), I also bought a minivan, which is particularly ironic since the one I had in college sported a 'Kill Your Television' bumper sticker and this one actually has a TV in it."

Is this what happens when the "I'd rather be reading Bukowski" set becomes parents?

H.

David Wagoner poem that knocked my socks off

2007-09-17T11:29:00.000-07:00

The Author of American Ornithology Sketches a Bird, Now Extinct

(Alexander Wilson, Wilmington, N.C., 1809)

When he walked through town, the wing-shot bird he'd hidden
Inside his coat began to cry like a baby,
High and plaintive and loud as the calls he'd heard
While hunting it in the woods, and goodwives stared
And scurried indoors to guard their own from harm.

And the inkeeper and the goodmen in the tavern
Asked him whether his child was sick, then laughed.
Slapped knees, and laughed as he unswaddled his prize,
His pride and burden: an ivory-billed woodpecker
As big as a crow, still wailing and squealing.

Upstairs, when he let it go in his workroom,
it fell silent at last. He told at dinner
How devoted masters of birds drawn from the life
Must gather their flocks around them with a rifle
And make them live forever inside books.

Later, he found his bedspread covered with plaster
And the bird clinging beside a hole in the wall
Clear through to already-splintered weatherboards
And the sky beyond. While he tied one of its legs
To a table leg, it started wailing again.

And went on wailing as if toward cypress groves
While the artist dew and tinted on fine vellum
Its red cockade, gray claws, and sepia eyes
From which a white edge flowed to the lame wing
Like light flying and ended there in blackness.

He drew and studied for days, eating and dreaming
Fitfully through the dancing and loud drumming
Of an ivory bill that refused pecans and beetles,
Chestnuts and sweet-sour fruit of magnolias,
Riddling his table, slashing his fingers, wailing.

He watched it die, he said, with great regret.

Two new (rough) poems

2007-09-13T13:02:00.000-07:00

KNOCK, KNOCK

Picture a door:

What is it made of?
Wood? Metal?
What color?
Is it the entrance to a great hall
or a modest home?
Does it bear a wreath, a sign, a window?

None of that matters. Distractions, decorations only.

Here is my point:

Is it open
or
closed?

PSST...

Hey, God here.
Did you know your neighbor
celebrates Me differently
than you do?

I don’t mind
as long as
you
don’t.

-Hilary Parker

Quarterly report

2007-09-13T07:03:00.000-07:00

Jocelyn (www.ilovepauljack.com) is working on a great post about what she did over the summer, and solicited others' status reports for inclusion. By the time I was done writing mine, I figured I should post it here, too.

What I did over summer break, by Hilary Parker

Conquered my anxiety of anxiety medication.

Used less anxious presence to ask big questions, like What are we doing here? and What is happiness? What is freedom?

Finally forgave myself for not being able to "save" my mother from dying of cancer in -- wait for it -- 1989.

Baked banana bread with my daughter -- her first baking experience!

Quit drinking.

Lost weight.

Bought a new swimsuit, and wore it with confidence.

Guiltlessly used money to buy instruments of bliss, including a hammock, mala beads, poetry, iTunes, Nanette Lepore's Shanghai Butterfly perfume, a pair of Diego di Lucca clogs and the MLB Baseball Package.

Became a runner.

Gave up on an old friendship we had outgrown.

Decided it's OK if we don't have another child. Decided to adopt a child if we want to add to our family.

Became someone who is open to the magnificence of the world around me.

Wrote poetry.

Studied philosophy.

Started a blog.

Realized that all the pieces of my life that I thought were disjunctive simply were waiting for the right time to come together, and that the time is now.

Intent

2007-09-12T07:51:00.001-07:00

Intent is what that last post is about. Unintended actions... The things we do because everyone does, without stopping to think.

The things we think, without stopping to do.

The power of intent is a raw, unbridled thing -- scary to some, indeed. And all of this analyzing is at once sophisticated and simple -- mirrored -- leading many to distrust it because we've been taught something can't be two things at once, or in two places at the same time. We've been sold a bill of goods about the very properties of this world and our opportunities within.

How to untangle it all? How do we cut through the illusion, the sanctioned presentation, the collective mistaken vision? How do we change the rules, and to what?

Aspirations and currency

2007-09-12T06:12:00.001-07:00

The human condition is one of aspiration.

That to which a person aspires is their form of personal currency, and it tells you a lot about what they already have either attained or cast aside as unworthy of pursuit.

Some want love, others money. Power. Security. Adventure. Quiet. Fame. Serenity. Beauty. Fitness. Cleanliness. Order. Harmony.

These are the demigods of our daily lives, and they largely shape who we become.

But how many of us carefully choose these measures of our success? If we review how we "spend" our time on a day-to-day basis, it is easy to see what we outwardly hold as important. I'm willing to bet that for the vast majority of people, their inward and outward lives do not match, resulting in our quiet but deep dispair. After all, everyone else has structured their lives this way; why do I deserve a better life?, we ask.

The spiritual work I've been doing raises more questions than it answers, but suddenly that's not a big deal. Wondering, after all, is mostly wonder. There does not need to be a negative connotation to something unknown. We are not meant to conquer this life, just to experience it. Still, as I look around, I do wonder this:

Why do we continue to be satisfied with a life spent doing what we do not like, do not want to do -- a life spent chasing someone else's idea of success? What bargains do we make with ourselves that end up "allowing" us to enjoy such a small part of our days? It's no wonder, then, that we fear sadness and death, that we block grief, despite all that those experiences have to offer us: We inately understand that we're not living, that we've made a bad go of it, that our "work" here remains unfinished.

In thinking about peace this morning -- specifically about how to solve some of the current global conflicts without violence -- I had two thoughts: that a people, a civilization, takes its own path toward harmony, and as much as we'd like to control that path, we can't; and that perhaps the only way to attempt to influence another culture is to set an example. If Americans as a culture could wake up out of the dream of consumerism and live more in the moment, maybe we could inspire others to do the same. As it is, the amount of wealth and influence amassed in this nation has a strange reinforcing effect on its citizens; it says, the way you're living must be right, because look at all that you "have."

If the date of your death were stamped on your forehead, how would that change your daily routine?

I think another way to shed light on the state of the human condition is to look at our expectations. These are certainly linked to our aspirations, but separate, too. What we expect is seemingly below that to which we aspire, but we must be equally diligent in identifying these expectations and looking at how they were established. In the American Dream, we want our children to be "better off" than we are/were. But that's getting increasingly difficult, and it leaves each generation with an assumed baseline of expectations for wealth, status, education level, etc. It's time to compete on a different plane, or, rather, to evaluate our lives and set both expectations and aspirations with fresh eyes.

Interesting. This song just came on my Pandora radio (www.pandora.com, for the uninitiated):

Shooting Stars
Edwin McCain

We keep our love in a plain brown box
We keep it tied with a simple lock
We hold it close 'cause it's all we got
We think it's ordinary but it's not

In a world that's starting to fade
A little love could pave the way
Don't keep it tied with the simple lock
You think it's ordinary but it's not

Chorus:
Maybe this life is just about love and tenderness
If all we are, are shooting stars
Maybe we, we can fight
All of this pain and loneliness if
All we are, are shooting stars

Tired of hearing 'bout the bling-bling
We're so concerned with material things
It's all cars and diamond rings
And do you think it's going to ease your sting

Cause that's a hole that you can't fill
Velvet rope overkill
Free your mind let your heart sing
And just remember that they're only things

(Chorus)

I used to live by the minute
I was too blind to see
Now I've found the strength to admit it
Now it's all I believe
Please oh please

(Chorus)

And now there's BoDeans on. :)

"To live and die, it seems
Is a waste without a dream"

BoDeans will always remind me of the Fourth of July in 1994, dancing in the rain at Summerfest in Milwaukee at the BoDeans show on the big stage. We all got so soaked that we stripped and danced in our underwear while the music hitchhiked on the raindrops, dropping on our heads and into our eyes and ears. That was a time of crazy love and freedom... a time when I was more open than in subsequent years, but a time in which I knew far, far less than I know now. A bright red page in the book of my path, for certain... And now, knowing to be true what I suspected at the time -- that the crazy love burned too bright to last -- I still wouldn't change it. It made me feel as alive as I've ever felt, and that vitality is something I still long to recapture. But it taught me about really being in the moment and enjoying life for what it is, not for what it may be. Too often we shade our eyes to the truth of things in an attempt to change them, when really they are just meant to be enjoyed.

More enjoying, more true sight, less accumulating. Less trying to fill the holes in our hearts, more diving into them and listening to what they offer. We do not need to fear pain or death, only the shadow life.

Thoughts on poetry and religion

2007-09-11T07:24:00.000-07:00

I've been reading the Roger Housden series on poetry (Poems to Set You Free, Poems to Change Your Life) and while initially I find the way they are packaged to be a little suspect and Hallmark-commercially, they contain great springboards and careful, thoughtful, soulful analyses of the Big Subjects: Love, Death, Life, Freedom.

He says two things in the books I've read so far that bear mentioning. I also will post some of the poems here when I have a chance. But consider this:

“Poetry gives voice to a spiritual reality that is beyond the copyright of any religion.”

“(Religious) methods of any kind are strategies, and strategies do not open the heart’s door. It has to be blown open by a great wind, the wind of love, which is the only thing that will truly carry you away.”

It's GO time, bitches ...

2007-09-06T06:41:00.001-07:00

Enough talk and worry and weight-of-the-inherited-world gloom.

Enough reading and thinking and excuse-making.

Write.right.rite.

Analysis=Paralysis.

Action=Traction.

Who taught me this? Betcha wouldn't guess Eminem.

"Lose Yourself"

Look, if you had one shot, or one opportunity
To seize everything you ever wanted-One moment
Would you capture it or just let it slip?

His palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy
There's vomit on his sweater already, mom's spaghetti
He's nervous, but on the surface he looks calm and ready
To drop bombs, but he keeps on forgettin
What he wrote down, the whole crowd goes so loud
He opens his mouth, but the words won't come out
He's chokin, how everybody's jokin now
The clock's run out, time's up over, bloah!
Snap back to reality, Oh there goes gravity
Oh, there goes Rabbit, he choked
He's so mad, but he won't give up that
Easy, no
He won't have it , he knows his whole back's to these ropes
It don't matter, he's dope
He knows that, but he's broke
He's so stagnant that he knows
When he goes back to his mobile home, that's when it's
Back to the lab again yo
This whole rap shit
He better go capture this moment and hope it don't pass him

[Hook:]
You better lose yourself in the music, the moment
You own it, you better never let it go
You only get one shot, do not miss your chance to blow
This opportunity comes once in a lifetime yo

The soul's escaping, through this hole that it's gaping
This world is mine for the taking
Make me king, as we move toward a, new world order
A normal life is borin, but superstardom's close to post mortem
It only grows harder, only grows hotter
He blows us all over these hoes is all on him
Coast to coast shows, he's know as the globetrotter
Lonely roads, God only knows
He's grown farther from home, he's no father
He goes home and barely knows his own daughter
But hold your nose cuz here goes the cold water
His hoes don't want him no mo, he's cold product
They moved on to the next schmoe who flows
He nose dove and sold nada
So the soap opera is told and unfolds
I suppose it's old partna', but the beat goes on
Da da dum da dum da da

[Hook]

No more games, I'ma change what you call rage
Tear this mothafuckin roof off like 2 dogs caged
I was playin in the beginnin, the mood all changed
I been chewed up and spit out and booed off stage
But I kept rhymin and stepwritin the next cypher
Best believe somebody's payin the pied piper
All the pain inside amplified by the fact
That I can't get by with my 9 to 5
And I can't provide the right type of life for my family
Cuz man, these goddam food stamps don't buy diapers
And it's no movie, there's no Mekhi Phifer, this is my life
And these times are so hard and it's getting even harder
Tryin to feed and water my seed, plus
Teeter totter caught up between being a father and a prima donna
Baby mama drama's screamin on and
Too much for me to wanna
Stay in one spot, another day of monotony
Has gotten me to the point, I'm like a snail
I've got to formulate a plot fore I end up in jail or shot
Success is my only mothafuckin option, failure's not
Mom, I love you, but this trailer's got to go
I cannot grow old in Salem's lot
So here I go is my shot.
Feet fail me not cuz maybe the only opportunity that I got!

[Hook]

You can do anything you set your mind to, man...

What kind of world do YOU want?

2007-09-05T12:18:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Haley for sending me to this site:

www.whatkindofWORLDdoyouwant.com.

I think the following is such a beautiful message, though I disagree that there's more to it than love. Maybe love is the bedrock everything else stands (or doesn't) on... Maybe what he's saying is that it's not enough to love one another -- we have to act on that love. Love in motion. The momentum of love.

Anyway, what I like about this song is the way it encourages us to take a fresh look at where we're going -- that history is something WE create every day, not something we inherit. Maybe it's that I'm 32 now, or that I have a child, but I'm starting to feel it's our generation's turn at the wheel. And I just pray that we'll use whatever wisdom we've gathered in creating our history.

You can watch the (also very beautiful) video at the link above.

WORLD by John Ondrasik (Five for Fighting)

Got a package full of Wishes
A Time machine, a Magic Wand
A Globe made out of Gold

No Instructions or Commandments
Laws of Gravity or
Indecisions to uphold

Printed on the box I see
A.C.M.E.'s Build-a-World-to-be
Take a chance - Grab a piece
Help me to believe it

What kind of world do you want?
Think Anything
Let's start at the start
Build a masterpiece
Be careful what you wish for
History starts now...

Should there be people or peoples
Money, Funny pedestals for Fools who never pay
Raise your Army – Choose your Steeple
Don't be shy, the satellites can look the other way

Lose the Earthquakes – Keep the Faults
Fill the oceans without the salt
Let every Man own his own Hand

What kind of world do you want
Think Anything
Let's start at the start
Build a masterpiece
Be careful what you wish for
History starts now...

Sunlight's on the Bridge
Sunlight's on the Way
Tomorrow's Calling

There's more to this than Love

What Kind of world do you want
What Kind of world do you want

What Kind of world do you want
Think Anything
Let's start at the start
Build a masterpiece

History Starts Now

Be careful what you wish for
Start Now

Don't look now! Peace is breaking out all over!

2007-09-02T10:12:00.001-07:00

OK, so I'm still skeptical. But man, this would be great news...

U.S.: North Korea agrees to shut down nuke facilities (from cnn.com)

GENEVA, Switzerland (AP) -- North Korea agreed Sunday to declare and disable all its nuclear facilities by the end of the year, the chief U.S. negotiator said -- the first time the communist country has offered a timeline to end its secretive atomic program.

Negotiator Christopher Hill says the agreement bodes well for the six-nation talks slated for later this month.

The North Korean envoy, in separate comments, told reporters his country was willing "to declare and dismantle" its nuclear program, but mentioned no dates.

Two days of talks between the United States and North Korea in Geneva had been "very good and very substantive," U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill said.

The meetings would help improve chances of a successful meeting later this month with Japan, Russia, South Korea and China in six-nation talks aimed at ending the North's nuclear weapons program and improving relations between North Korea and other countries, Hill said.

"One thing that we agreed on is that the DPRK will provide a full declaration of all of their nuclear programs and will disable their nuclear programs by the end of this year, 2007," Hill told reporters, using the initials for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

Hill said the declaration will also include uranium enrichment programs, which the United States fears could be used to make nuclear weapons.

Kim Gye Gwan, the head of the North Korean delegation, told reporters separately, "We made it clear, we showed clear willingness to declare and dismantle all nuclear facilities." He mentioned no dates.

"We are happy with the way the peace talks went," Kim said.

Hill said earlier Sunday that improving U.S. relations with North Korea will depend on other progress in the talks, saying it "is a relationship that we will continue to try to build step by step with the understanding that we're not going to have a normalized relationship until we have a denuclearized North Korea."

"To the extent that we can move quickly to denuclearization, we can move quickly to normalization," he added.

Hill said both sides also discussed what needs to be done for North Korea to be removed from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism.

He said they also had a good discussion of what North Korea wants to achieve and how it can improve relations with Japan.

He said he expected the next full session of the six-nation talks to be held in mid-September and that it would produce a "more detailed implementation plan for disablement" of North Korea's nuclear facilities.

The meeting in Geneva was part of a flurry of "working group" sessions called for in February's six-nation accord in which North Korea agreed to disable its plutonium-producing nuclear reactor and declare and eventually dismantle all its nuclear activities.

In exchange, the economically struggling North will receive oil and other aid. The United States, as part of the agreement, promised to begin the process of removing the country from the terrorism list and work toward full diplomatic relations.

North Korea has already received 50,000 tons of heavy fuel oil from Seoul in return for the shutdown of its plutonium reactor in July.

The energy-starved country will eventually get further energy or other aid equivalent to 950,000 tons of heavy fuel oil in return for irreversibly disabling the reactor and ending all its nuclear programs, but has yet to set a date by when it will disable its nuclear facilities.

Another point of disagreement has been over allegations that North Korea has a second, undeclared nuclear weapons program using enriched uranium. North Korea said recently it was willing to discuss the issue, although it did not acknowledge having such a program.

Years of tension and deadlock over North Korea's nuclear program -- which peaked with the country's nuclear test last October -- have started to ease in recent months as the talks have made progress.

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

All girl

2007-09-02T08:01:00.001-07:00

Just have to note here how funny it is to be someone who doesn't consider gender a big deal RAISING a very girly-girl. She got some "princess shoes" from her Baba (grandmother) the other day and LOVES them. They're plastic with feather boas, sparkles, etc. They're really cute. But, being plastic, they're not the most comfortable on her when she tries to wear them all day (in the house). She does NOT care, friends. She says, "Shoe hurt" and kicks them off, only to put them on again. When I remind her that they're hurting her toes (since the plastic isn't the most breathable thing in the world), she refuses to heed my advice.

It's a defining moment for a girl, really. I was kinda proud of her. :)

Then again, I'm the girl who is always banging into things with my extremeties (ask my broken little toe from yesterday) - so I'm clearly someone who is willing to suffer a little pain to get where I'm going. It's kinda strange, actually - like I don't know the dimensions of my own body, or like I remember a different body from another time. Very strange.

Anyway, just had to share.

I heart the Pope

2007-09-01T15:29:00.000-07:00

There's a lot of beauty in his message. I never thought we'd get such forward-thinking from the former Cardinal known as "God's Rottweiler."

Pope leads Church’s first eco-friendly rally
Benedict XVI urges youth to respect Earth, shun ‘disposable love’

Updated: 2:53 p.m. ET Sept 1, 2007 msnbc.com

LORETO, Italy - Pope Benedict XVI on Saturday led the Catholic Church’s first eco-friendly youth rally—where nearly everything used was biodegradable or recyclable—and urged his young listeners to shun “disposable love.”

The 80-year-old pope told the young people, estimated by organizers at some 300,000, to dare to change the world and search for lasting, meaningful relationships.

The two-day rally, which coincides with the Italian Catholic Church’s “Day for Safeguarding Creation,” saw young people sprawled on a vast hillside near the central Adriatic shrine city of Loreto.

Italy’s Catholic Church, which organized the event, said it was the first environmentally friendly youth rally, a break from past gatherings that left tons of garbage and scars on the earth.

A participants’ kit included backpacks made of recyclable material, a flashlight operated by a crank instead of batteries, and color-coded trash bags so their personal garbage could be easily recycled. Meals were served on biodegradable plates.

Tens of thousands of prayerbooks for Sunday’s mass were printed on recycled paper and an adequate number of trees would be planted to compensate for the carbon produced at the event, many in areas of southern Italy devastated by recent brushfires.

In his speech to the young people, who listened to music and heard inspirational stories before the pope arrived, Benedict told them not only to dream of a better world but build it by helping others and seeking true love.

“Discover the beauty of love, but not disposable love, that is here today and gone tomorrow, that is deceitful and prisoner of an egoistic and materialistic mentality but a love that is real and deep,” he told the crowd.

“The beauty of creation is proof that God exists,” he said.

The Vatican has become progressively “green.” It has installed photovoltaic cells on buildings to produce electricity and hosted a scientific conference on climate change.

Last month Benedict said the human race must listen to “the voice of the Earth” or risk destroying its very existence.

Loreto is famous in the Catholic world for the “holy house of the Madonna” a small stone structure purported to be where Mary grew up in the Holy Land and where she was told by an angel she would give birth to Jesus although a virgin.

According to popular legend, it was “flown” by angels from the Holy Land in the 13th century to save it from Muslim armies.

Modern scholars have said parts of the walls may have been brought in pieces from the Middle East by defeated Crusaders or that the entire structure may have been built on the site where it now stands in order to draw pilgrims to the city.

Copyright 2007 Reuters Limited.

I think I'm closer to Hafiz than even Rumi. This guy is solid!

2007-09-01T15:28:00.000-07:00

THE GREAT WORK

Love
Is the great work
Though every heart is first an
Apprentice

That slaves beneath the city of Light.

This wondrous trade,
This magnificent throne your soul
Is destined for-

You should not have to think
Much about it,

Is it not clear
An apprentice needs a teacher
Who himself

Has charmed the universe
To reveal its wonders inside his cup.

Happiness is the great work,
Though every heart must first become
A student

To one
Who really knows
About Love.

~ Hafiz ~

(The Gift -- versions of Hafiz by Daniel Ladinsky)

Poem of the week

2007-08-30T09:29:00.000-07:00

It's still early, being a Thursday, but I'm ready to call it. This poem is amazing. Alas, too long for a tombstone (especially considering I want to be cremated, not buried). I believe this is a Robert Bly translation.

The woman I adore
Dante Alighieri

The woman I adore carries ecstatic love in her eyes.
Whatever she looks at grows less worldly.
When she walks past, each man turns to look at her;
And if she notices him, his chest trembles.

And then, his eyes on the ground, he turns pale;
He can feel his inadequacies inside his heart.
Self-absorption and self-mothering leave ahead of her;
All you women, help me to say this rightly.

When a man hears her voice, sweetness and thoughts
Of ways to serve others come into his body.
I say then, much praise to the first man who glimpsed her.

And when she smiles, for even a short time, there is a feeling
Of someone I cannot speak of, nor keep in rememberance.
This is all some sort of miracle, fresh, amazing.

More Rilke

2007-08-30T06:14:00.001-07:00

All will come again into its strength:
the fields undivided, the waters undammed,
the trees towering and the walls built low.
And in the valleys, people as strong and varied as the land.

And no churches where God
is imprisoned and lamented
like a trapped and wounded animal.
The houses welcoming all who knock
and a sense of boundless offering
in all relations, and in you and me.

No yearning for an afterlife, no looking beyond,
no belittling of death,
but only longing for what belongs to us
and serving earth, lest we remain unused.

~ Ranier Maria Rilke ~

Kabir knows

2007-08-29T06:22:00.000-07:00

If your bonds be not broken whilst living,
what hope of deliverance in death ?

It is but an empty dream, that the soul shall have union with Him
because it has passed from the body:

If He is found now, He is found then,
If not, we do but go to dwell in the City of Death.

If you have union now, you shall have it hereafter.

Another by Meredith

2007-08-29T05:58:00.001-07:00

What you have to know about this poet, who passed away in May, is that he began to suffer from expressive aphasia after a stroke in 1983 -- he had lost the ability to express himself at will. As the poet Michael Collier explains in his foreword to Meredith's most recent publication, Effort at Speech: "Trapped, as it were, inside his body, which has profoundly betrayed him, for the past decade and a half Meredith has remained occupied with the poet's struggle—the struggle to speak."

Starlight
by William Meredith

Going abruptly into a starry night
It is ignorance we blink from, dark, unhoused;
There is a gaze of animal delight
Before the human vision. Then, aroused
To nebulous danger, we may look for easy stars,
Orion and the Dipper; but they are not ours,

These learned fields. Dark and ignorant,
Unable to see here what our forebears saw,
We keep some fear of random firmament
Vestigial in us. And we think, Ah,
If I had lived then, when these stories were made up, I
Could have found more likely pictures in haphazard sky.

But this is not so. Indeed, we have proved fools
When it comes to myths and images. A few
Old bestiaries, pantheons and tools
Translated to the heavens years ago—
Scales and hunter, goat and horologe—are all
That save us when, time and again, our systems fall.

And what would we do, given a fresh sky
And our dearth of image? Our fears, our few beliefs
Do not have shapes. They are like that astral way
We have called milky, vague stars and star-reefs
That were shapeless even to the fecund eye of myth—
Surely these are no forms to start a zodiac with.

To keep the sky free of luxurious shapes
Is an occupation for most of us, the mind
Free of luxurious thoughts. If we choose to escape,
What venial constellations will unwind
Around a point of light, and then cannot be found
Another night or by another man or from other ground.

As for me, I would find faces there,
Or perhaps one face I have long taken for guide;
Far-fetched, maybe, like Cygnus, but as fair,
And a constellation anyone could read
Once it was pointed out; an enlightenment of night,
The way the pronoun you will turn dark verses bright.

What a stunning work...

2007-08-29T05:54:00.000-07:00

The Illiterate
by William Meredith

Touching your goodness, I am like a man
Who turns a letter over in his hand
And you might think this was because the hand
was unfamiliar but, truth is, the man
Has never had a letter from anyone;
And now he is both afraid of what it means
And ashamed because he has no other means
To find out what it says than to ask someone.

His uncle could have left the farm to him,
Or his parents died before he sent them word,
Or the dark girl changed and want him for beloved.
Afraid and letter-proud, he keeps it with him.
What would you call his feeling for the words
That keep him rich and orphaned and beloved?

More poet seers for us

2007-08-17T17:49:00.000-07:00

I'm still battling a bit of anxiety today and some dizziness, so while I had hoped to have this space contain more original work, here's an even better series of poems to inspire.

An Image that Makes them Sad

How long will grown men and women in this world
Keep drawing in their coloring books
An image of God that
Makes them
Sad?

-Meister Eckhart, as translated by Daniel Ladinsky

Capax Universi

Capax universi, capable of the universe are your arms
When they move with love.

And I know it is true that your feet are never
More alive than when they are in
Defense of a good
Cause.

I want to fund your efforts: Stay near beauty, for she will always
Strengthen you.

She will bring your mouth close to Hers and
Breathe – inspire you the way
Light does the
Fields.

The earth inhales God, why
Should we not do
The same?

This sacred glame we tend inside needs
The chants of every tongue,
The communion with all.

As capable as God
Are we.

- St. Thomas Aquinas, as translated by Daniel Ladinsky

Power is Safest in a Poet’s Hands

Power is safest in a poet’s hands, thus for the artist
God will
Pose.

The realms of thought sublimely wild, the finest pigments of
Ground suns, the violin’s divine plea for a
True friend;

What is all this world has seen from art: the shadow more true and
Glorious there

Than in the cage where there is often talk of right and wrong.

The reins of God say to His lover,

“Hold me in your mouth, dear,
as you toil with all your limbs and strength
to free the magnificence
in man.”

The reins of the Sky sing,

“Grab hold, and you will know God
lowers His cup into you
to drink.”

-Hafiz, as translated by Daniel Ladinsky

The Sun Never Says

Even
After
All this time
The sun never says to the earth,

“You owe me.”

Look
what happens
with a love like that –

it lights the whole
world.

- Hafiz, as translated by Daniel Ladinsky

Live without the Thought of Dying

We work so hard to fly
And no matter what heights we reach
Our wings get folded near a candle,
At the end.

For nothing can enter God but Himself,
Our souls are some glorious substance of the divine
That no sentry wants to stop.

Live without the thought of dying,
For dying is not a truth.

We have swayed on the sky’s limb together,
Mant tears there the same leaves grow.

But then they get that look in their eyes
And bid farewell to what they have disdained or cherished.

This life He gave the shell, the daily struggles we know,
Sit quiet for a minute, dear, feel the wind,
Let Light touch you.

Live without thought of dying,
For dying is not a
Truth.

--St. Catherine, as translated by Daniel Ladinsky

Laughter Came from Every Brick

Just these two words He spoke
Changed by life,

“Enjoy Me.”

What I burden I thought I was to carry –
A crucifix, as did He.

Love once said to me, “I know a song,
Would you like to hear it?”

And laughter came from every brick in the street
And from every pore
In the sky.

After a night of prayer, He
Changed my life when
He sang,

“Enjoy Me.”

-- St. Teresa, as translated by Daniel Ladinsky

They Have Different Needs

Some seeds beneath the earth
Are dormant.

They fell the last time the cool air
Turned the leaves
Gold.

Those seeds have different needs than we do;
Let them go about their life
Completely unharmed
By your views.

We have cracked open, we sensed
Even beneath the earth –
The holy was near,

And are reaching up to know
And claim
Light

As our
Self.

-- St. John of the Cross, as translated by Daniel Ladinsky

Closing the factory

2007-08-16T05:19:00.000-07:00

Wow. So the coolest thing happened this morning, and I just had to share.

When Dave and I first talked about having children (before we were even married, because that's what people do unless they want to wake up three years into wedded "bliss" and realize they have completely different ideas on this subject - a total deal breaker), we said we wanted two. He and I both have siblings, and we love our siblings. Two, then.

Days short of our five-year anniversary, our little girl was born. She completes us in ways that are so immensely beautiful and magical and being a parent is way better than I ever dreamed. She never ceases to amaze us and make us laugh. She has been the force that set me on my spiritual path. She mended the anger I had at God for taking my mother so young. Basically, she brought me gratitude again and reminded me to trust God's plan.

That said, the first six months were absolutely terrible. As I described to another new mother recently, "We owned a house on Hell's half-acre." Not only was she a long labor followed by an emergency C-section delivery, but my recovery was awful and then she ended up not breastfeeding (total heartbreak for me). It took eight weeks before we finally found a formula she could tolerate. That's a lot of screaming, friends. I have been through some tough things in my life, but nothing like this.

At this point, still knowing we wanted two children, we said, "OK, let's get this over with. Let's get pregnant again right away and get past this stage." But that didn't happen, and thank goodness. I was just too depleted for babymaking. I know that now, but at the time, you're just keeping your chin up and pushing to get through.

So then we thought better of it. We thought, "Now wait a minute. Let's be patient and try to space the little ones out a bit. Maybe with more experience and more child-rearing under our belt, we will have a better experience."

Now with two years of perspective, the less each of us is convinced that we want to go through the birth and infant stages again. This may sound selfish, but the months of recovery from surgery and the sleepless nights really did a number on us. Dave couldn't digest anything he ate and was all crabby. I kept running around like I didn't have a 10-inch fishknife cut in my gut and was yellow for months.

That's all prologue to this morning. This morning, Dave comes to me and says, "You know, if we want a sibling for the girl, why not adopt one?" My jaw just about hit the floor. I've been talking about adoption for years now, but he was determined to have a biological child. I thought the experience of biological parenthood would be beautiful, too, especially having lost both my mom and his dad -- it would be a piece of them to continue. But I was always open to the idea of adopting one or both. I have very good friends who have had amazing experiences with adoption, so it's not a foreign concept to me. And I feel that I could be a very good adoptive mother because I lost my mom at a young age and certainly would have a lot of empathy to give.

All those reasons are personal. There's also the idea that there are SO many people living in poverty, who are sick and need love. This is a beautiful way to share our love.

For Dave, it also means getting a slightly older child so that we don't have to go through the whole infant stage again. Fine by me. And no C-section required! For me, it means being able to give love to a child who has been abandoned and is so in need of a home. I can't tell you how amazing and cathartic it would be to rescue someone like I needed to be rescued.

Anyway, that's the latest thinking on our little family. What at amazing development!

H.

Coffee karma

2007-08-15T07:09:00.001-07:00

As I wrote my very alive friend Jocelyn this morning, this is how I started my day:

"I have enhanced my karmic potential already this morning: A woman in a minivan was arguing with her child in the backseat and was tailing me very aggressively while I was on my way to the Starbucks drive thru. She very nearly created two accidents in two stoplights' space. Gifted, clearly! So I held my hand up in the rearview mirror like, "Hey, I've got someone in front of me, too, and you're not going to get anywhere faster with your behavior." She failed to back off. I then noticed when I was in the drive thru line that she was behind me, and I thought about actually getting out of my car and confronting her. Instead, I bought her coffee. You catch more flies with coffee, right? :)"

I think I did this in reaction to the other coffee karma experience I had last week. A woman in an SUV with an "In God We Trust" license plate (new to Indiana... and though I like the sentiment, the people who tend to request said plates are often the kind of "Christians" that give people of spirit a bad name. See below.) cut through a parking lot at an unsafe speed and nearly ran over a pedestrian in order to get in front of me in the Starbucks drive thru. I saw the license plate and laughed.

And don't get me wrong... I have done things like this, too. I am just so thankful for my new perspective on life, and moments like this remind me I'm on a good path, at least for me. I want everyone to have this sense of peace.

Finally, a shout out to Boo, Wes and Angela's three-legged mutt dog we met this past weekend. He is a shelter rescue dog who'd had an accident of some kind and now is missing his front left leg, but you wouldn't know it. He's got a great outlook on life and loves it when you pet him, even rubbing where the leg used to be. He's a legend in the neighborhood. He's my hero. I'll post a photo when I get one.

More to come...

Olana

2007-08-15T06:56:00.000-07:00

A place of inspiration.

www.olana.org

Olana
By Marc Cohn

They say my final masterpiece
Was this house upon the hill
High above the great and mighty river
My hand could not hold the brushes
Yes, I guess I lost my will
And you can't keep painting paradise forever
Oh forever

From the Andes to Niagara
To where we stand today
I drew the great creations of my Master
'Til the oil and the canvas
Lord, I threw them all away
And traded them for stone and brick and plaster
I traded them all for you

(Winter wind blows and the river lies frozen at my feet)
I traded them all for you
(Springtime come and the river wanna run above the street)

She came to me one night
While I was tossing in my dreams
She said she'd give my family protection
I recall the night I died
Beneath her arches and her beams
I thanked her for the shelter and direction
I was lost until Olana

(Sun beat down on a summertime town -- he left me there)
I was lost until Olana
(Watching these hills turning gold for one more year)

Oh I've been from Jerusalem to Rome
Now I'm floating through these rooms tonight alone
And looking back on everything
All I ever wanted was a home

I was lost until Olana
How sweet the sound
How sweet the sound

They say my final masterpiece
Was this house upon the hill

This one is mine

2007-08-07T08:58:00.001-07:00

Notes from a Hammock

Each string worries it cannot hold me,
but it doesn’t need to.
The string’s mistake is thinking
that it exists independently of its brothers and sisters,
when really they are woven together
in support, in flexibility, in strength.

The string is too enamored of the day’s anxieties
to understand its place in the web of life,
just as we deny our reliance on this net of souls all around us.
But the more we open our hearts to the Light,
the more we come to understand that we
are woven amongst all living beings on this earth.
The Divine Spark,
which is threaded through each
hand and petal and claw and wing,
strings us together.

As no one soul could carry the whole of God’s Divine Weight,
He created us each with a part of Him
and blessed our hammock with the ability to cradle God.
When enough of us understand that our mission here is one of love –
only love --
God can rest at last.

Maybe at this exact moment
He’s dreaming of looking up at Creation’s trees and Heaven’s blue skies
as the Spirit sways God gently to and fro.
He must be waiting patiently
to surrender
for just a moment
and trust us
to hold
Him.

- Hilary Parker

More mystic poets

2007-08-07T06:23:00.000-07:00

OK, boys and girls... I'm getting ready to post my poem. I'm going to work with it a bit today and then share. Big step for me, as silly as that sounds. Or, more accurately, a big step for the old me.

Now I feel like all that we have inside us is pre-approved -- has been sent, has come through us. When I am able to take my ego out of it -- when the writing I do is not something that I have crafted but something that has been sent by the life force -- I don't get so worried about whether it's "good" or whether it would be critically well-received. It doesn't have to be amazingly smart or insightful. It's enough as it is.

When we use our gifts, however great or modest, we are worshipping. We are pleasing God.

As Jocelyn would say, "That is all."

Poetry to follow...

Wring Out My Clothes

Such love does
The sky now pour,
That whenever I stand in a field,

I have to wring out the light
When I get
Home.

- St. Francis, as translated by Daniel Ladinsky

That Lives in Us

If you put our hands on this oar with me,
They will never harm another, and they will come to find
They hold everything you want.

If you put your hands on this par with me, they would no longer
Lift anything to your
Mouth that might woul your precious land –
That sacred earth that is
Your body.

If you put your soul against this oar with me,
The power that made the universe will enter your sinew
From a source not outside your limbs, but from a holy realm
That lives in us.

Exuberant is existence, time a husk.
When the moment cracks open, ecstacy leaps out and devours space;
Love goes mad with the blessings, like my words give.

Why lay yourself on the torturer’s rack of the past and future?
The mind that tries to shape tomorrow beyond its capacities
Will find no rest.

Be kind to yourself, dear – to our innocent follies.
Forget any sounds or touch you knew that did not help you dance.
You will come to see that all evolves us.

If you put your heart against the earth with me, in serving
Every creature, our Beloved will enter you from our sacred realm
And we will be, we will be
So happy.

-- Rumi, as translated by Daniel Ladinsky

Okay, I’ll do it

Okay, I will do it:
Sing longer songs tonight because sometimes
You’re just so damn hard to please, and I guess I am
Still courting you, trying to get into
Your soul’s knickers.

What makes you like that – grouchy around the edges?
What classrooms have you lounged in;
What nonsense have you traded
Your gold
For?

How can you look so needy,
God is growing in fields you own.

He hangs from trees you pass every day. He is disguised as that
Peach and pine cone.

Every sound I hear – He made it.

I have been walking with two canes these days –
Guess why?

It is because of His beauty and that blond peach fuzz floating
Everywhere like dust –

It has made me
So drunk.

-- Rumi, as translated by Daniel Ladinsky

Love Does That

All day long a little burro labors, sometimes
With heavy loads on her back and sometimes just with worries
About things that bother only
Burros.

And worries, as we know, can be more exhausting
Than physical labor.

Once in a while a kind monk comes
To her stable and brings
A pear, but more
Than that,

He looks into the burro’s eyes and touches her ears

And for a few seconds to burro is free
And even seems to laugh,

Because love does
That.

Love frees.

- Meister Eckhart, as translated by Daniel Ladinsky

A document which changed my life

2007-08-01T07:18:00.000-07:00

The following is from http://www.sufiorder.org, the site of Sufi Order International. (Which, actually, is a little bit creepy-looking at first. I will have to explore it further.)

As a preface, let me say this: I was never very into religion. I was baptised in a Presbyterian church and forceably confirmed in a Methodist church, but as an adult, I went through a period of agnosticism. I have always been very suspect of the Bible and other "books of the word of God" and prefered to find God in nature and in others. I explored the Quaker tradition for a time, and finally became a Roman Catholic after a period of great gratitude revealed to me the importance of having a faith tradition -- and that so accepting that tradition didn't mean you thought the Church was perfect. Knowing we wanted a family, I also thought it would be helpful for our child/children to have a basis in a faith tradition, but I remained committed to encouraging exploration of other faith traditions and the idea that nobody has it "right." Our daughter was baptised in the Catholic church, and we do still sporadically attend (do weddings count?). But that's more because the little one is such a handful to wrangle at this point than a lack of desire to commune with our fellow man and think Godly thoughts.

Then I happened upon Rumi. I didn't know what a Sufi was, and I wasn't looking for another system of beliefs, but I recognized immediately a strong life force in him - a vitality - along with a loving pragmatism that soothed my very soul. I have now read many other Sufi masters' works, and this revelation of applied Glory continues. It is the most wonderous, light-filled experience. But I'm still not looking for a religion. Still, the principles of Sufism confirm things my soul has known and has been trying to tell me all my life. Thank God I have listened!

Now, this doesn't mean I'm no longer Catholic, it just means that for once, I found a God-focused group of people that is inclusive rather than exclusive, loving rather than judgemental, and committed to unity rather than division via ego. I feel like what is written here is the Truth, direct from God.

Here are the ten principal thoughts of Sufism. Enjoy!

--------------------------------------------------

There are ten principal Sufi thoughts, which comprise all the important subjects with which the inner life of man is concerned.

I

There is One God, the Eternal, the Only Being; none exists save He.

The God of the Sufi is the God of every creed, and the God of all. Names make no difference to him. Allah, God, Gott, Dieu, Brahma, or Bhagwan, all these names and more are the names of his God; and yet to him God is beyond the limitation of name. He sees his God in the sun, in the fire, in the idol which diverse sects worship; and he recognizes Him in all the forms of the universe, yet knowing Him to be beyond all form: God in all, and all in God, He being the Seen and the Unseen, the Only Being. God to the Sufi is not only a religious belief, but also the highest ideal the human mind can conceive.

The Sufi, forgetting the self and aiming at the attainment of the divine ideal, walks constantly all through life in the path of love and light. In God the Sufi sees the perfection of all that is in the reach of man's perception and yet he knows Him to be above human reach. He looks to Him as the lover to his beloved. and takes all things in life as coming from Him, with perfect resignation. The sacred name of God is to him as medicine to the patient. The divine thought is the compass by which he steers the ship to the shores of immortality. The God-ideal is to a Sufi as a lift by which he raises himself to the eternal goal, the attainment of which is the only purpose of his life.

II

There is One Master, the Guiding Spirit of all Souls, Who constantly leads His followers towards the light.

The Sufi understands that although God is the source of all knowledge, inspiration, and guidance, yet man is the medium through which God chooses to impart His knowledge to the world. He imparts it through one who is a man in the eyes of the world, but God in his consciousness. It is the mature soul that draws blessings from the heavens, and God speaks through that soul. Although the tongue of God is busy speaking through all things, yet in order to speak to the deaf ears of many among us, it is necessary for Him to speak through the lips of man. He has done this all through the history of man, every great teacher of the past having been this Guiding Spirit living the life of God in human guise. In other words, their human guise consists of various coats worn by the same person, who appeared to be different in each. Shiva, Buddha, Rama, Krishna on the one side, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Mohammed on the other; and many more, known or unknown to history, always one and the same person.

Those who saw the person and knew Him recognized Him in whatever form or guise; those who could only see the coat went astray. To the Sufi therefore there is only one Teacher, however differently He may be named at different periods of history, and He comes constantly to awaken humanity from the slumber of this life of illusion, and to guide man onwards towards divine perfection. As the Sufi progresses in this view he recognizes his Master, not only in the holy ones, but in the wise, in the foolish, in the saint and in the sinner, and has never allowed the Master who is One alone, and the only One who can be and who ever will be, to disappear from his sight.

The Persian word for Master is Murshid. The Sufi recognizes the Murshid in all beings of the world, and is ready to learn from young and old, educated and uneducated, rich and poor, without questioning from whom he learns. Then he begins to see the light of Risalat, the torch of truth which shines before him in every being and thing in the universe. Thus he sees Rasul, his Divine Message Bearer, a living identity before him. Thus the Sufi sees the vision of God, the worshipped deity, in His immanence, manifest in nature, and life now becomes for him a perfect revelation both within and without.

It is often for no other reason than clinging to the personality of their particular teacher, claiming for him superiority over other teachers, and degrading a teacher held in the same esteem by others, that people have separated themselves from one another, and caused most of the wars and factions and contentions which history records among the children of God.

What the Spirit of Guidance is, can be further explained as follows: as in man there is a faculty for art, music, poetry and science, so in him is the faculty or spirit of guidance; it is better to call it spirit because it is the supreme faculty from which all the others originate. As we see that in every person there is some artistic faculty, but not everyone is an artist, as everyone can hum a tune but only one in a thousand is a musician, so every person possesses this faculty in some form and to a limited degree; but the spirit of guidance is found among few indeed of the human race.

A Sanskrit poet says, “Jewels are stones, but cannot be found everywhere; the sandal tree is a tree, but does not grow in every forest; as there are many elephants, but only one king elephant, so there are human beings all over the world, but the real human being is rarely to be found.”

When we arise above faculty and consider the spirit of guidance, we shall find that it is consummated in the Bodhisatva, the spiritual teacher or divine messenger. There is a saying that the reformer is the child of civilization, but the prophet is its father. This spirit has always existed, and must always exist; and in this way from time to time the message of God has been given.

III

There is One Holy Book, the sacred manuscript of nature, the only scripture which can enlighten the reader.

Most people consider as sacred scriptures only certain books or scrolls written by the hand of man, and carefully preserved as holy, to be handed down to posterity as divine revelation. Men have fought and disputed over the authenticity of these books, have refused to accept any other book of similar character, and, clinging thus to the book and losing the sense of it, have formed diverse sects. The Sufi has in all ages respected all such books, and has traced in the Vedanta, Zendavesta, Kabah, Bible, Qur'an, and all other sacred scriptures, the same truth which he reads in the incorruptible manuscript of nature, the only Holy Book, the perfect and living model that teaches the inner law of life: all scriptures before nature's manuscript are as little pools of water before the ocean.

To the eye of the seer every leaf of the tree is a page of the holy book that contains divine revelation, and he is inspired every moment of his life by constantly reading and understanding the holy script of nature.

When man writes, he inscribes characters upon rock, leaf, paper, wood or steel; when God writes, the characters He writes are living creatures.

It is when the eye of the soul is opened and the sight is keen that the Sufi can read the divine law in the manuscript of nature; and that which the teachers of humanity have taught to their followers was derived by them from the same source; they expressed what little it is possible to express in words, and so they preserved the inner truth when they themselves were no longer there to reveal it.

IV

There is One Religion, the unswerving progress in the right direction towards the ideal, which fulfills the life's purpose of every soul.

Religion in the Sanskrit language is termed Dharma, which means duty. The duty of every individual is religion. 'Every soul is born for a certain purpose, and the light of that purpose is kindled in his soul', says Sa'adi. This explains why the Sufi in his tolerance allows every one to have his own path, and does not compare the principles of others with his own, but allows freedom of thought to everyone, since he himself is a freethinker.

Religion, in the conception of a Sufi, is the path that leads man towards the attainment of his ideal, worldly as well as heavenly. Sin and virtue, right and wrong, good and bad are not the same in the case of every individual; they are according to his grade of evolution and state of life. Therefore the Sufi concerns himself little with the name of the religion or the place of worship. All places are sacred enough for his worship, and all religions convey to him the religion of his soul. “I saw Thee in the sacred Ka’aba and in the temple of the idol also Thee I saw.”

V

There is One Law, the law of reciprocity, which can be observed by a selfless conscience, together with a sense of awakened justice.

Man spends his life in the pursuit of all that seems to him to be profitable for himself, and when so absorbed in self-interest in time he even loses touch with his own real interest. Man has made laws to suit himself,, but they are laws by which he can get the better of another. It is this that he calls justice, and it is only that which is done to him by another that he calls injustice. A peaceful and harmonious life with his fellow-men cannot be led until the sense of justice has been awakened in him by a selfless conscience. As the judicial authorities of the world intervene between two persons who are at variance, knowing that they have a right to intervene when the two parties in dispute are blinded by personal interest, so the Almighty Power intervenes in all disputes however small or great.

It is the law of reciprocity which saves man from being exposed to the higher powers, as a considerate man has less chance of being brought before the court. The sense of justice is awakened in a perfectly sober mind; that is, one which is free from the intoxication of youth, strength, power, possession, command, birth, or rank. It seems a net profit when one does not give but takes, or when one gives less and takes more; but in either case there is really a greater loss than profit; for every such profit spreads a cover over the sense of justice within, and when many such covers have veiled the sight, man becomes blind even to his own profit. It is like standing in one's own light. 'Blind here remains blind in the hereafter.'

Although the different religions, in teaching man how to act harmoniously and peacefully with his fellow-men, have given out different laws, they all meet in this one truth: do unto others as thou wouldst they should do unto thee. The Sufi, in taking a favor from another, enhances its value, and in accepting what another does to him he makes allowance.

VI

There is One Brotherhood, the human brotherhood which unites the children of earth indiscriminately in the Brotherhood of God.

The Sufi understands that the one life emanating from the inner Being is manifested on the surface as the life of variety; and in this world of variety man is the finest manifestation, for he can realize in his evolution the oneness of the inner being even in the external existence of variety. But he evolves to this ideal, which is the only purpose of his coming on earth, by uniting himself with another.

Man unites with others in the family tie, which is the first step in his evolution, and yet families in the past have fought with each other, and have taken vengeance upon one another for generations, each considering his cause to be the only true and righteous one. Today man shows his evolution in uniting with his neighbors and fellow-citizens, and even developing within himself the spirit of patriotism for his nation. He is greater in this respect than those in the past; and yet men so united nationally have caused the catastrophe of the modern wars, which will be regarded by the coming generations in the same light in which we now regard the family feuds of the past.

There are racial bonds which widen the circle of unity still more, but it has always happened that one race has looked down on the other.

The religious bond shows a still higher ideal. But it has caused diverse sects, which have opposed and despised each other for thousands of years, and have caused endless splits and divisions among men. The germ of separation exists even in such a wide scope for brotherhood, and however widespread the brotherhood may be, it cannot be a perfect one as long as it separates man from man.

The Sufi, realizing this, frees himself from national, racial, and religious boundaries, uniting himself in the human brotherhood, which is devoid of the differences and distinctions of class, caste, creed, race, nation, or religion, and unites mankind in the universal brotherhood.

VII

There is One Moral, the love which springs forth from self-denial and blooms in deeds of beneficence.

There are moral principles taught to mankind by various teachers, by many traditions, one differing from the other, which are like separate drops coming out of the fountain. But when we look at the stream, we find there is but one stream, although it turns into several drops on falling. There are many moral principles, just as many drops fall from one fountain; but there is one stream that is at the source of all, and that is love. It is love that gives birth to hope, patience, endurance, forgiveness, tolerance, and to all moral principles. All deeds of kindness and beneficence take root in the soil of the loving heart. Generosity, charity, adaptability, an accommodating nature, even renunciation, are the offspring of love alone. The great, rare and chosen beings, who for ages have been looked up to as ideal in the world, are the possessors of hearts kindled with love. All evil and sin come from the lack of love.

People call love blind, but love in reality is the light of the sight. The eye can only see the surface; love can see much deeper. All ignorance is the lack of love. As fire when not kindled gives only smoke, but when kindled, the illuminating flame springs forth, so it is with love; it is blind when undeveloped, but, when its fire is kindled, the flame that lights the path of the traveller from mortality to everlasting life springs forth; the secrets of earth and heaven are revealed to the possessor of the loving heart, the lover has gained mastery over himself and others, and he not only communes with God but unites with Him.

"Hail to thee, then, O love, sweet madness! Thou who healest all our infirmities! Who art the physician of our pride and self conceit! Who art our Plato and our Galen!", says Rumi.

VIII

There is One Object of Praise, the beauty which uplifts the heart of its worshippers through all aspects from the seen to the unseen.

It is said in the Hadith, 'God is beautiful, and He loves beauty.' This expresses the truth that man, who inherits the Spirit of God, has beauty in him and loves beauty, although that which is beautiful to one is not beautiful to another. Man cultivates the sense of beauty as he evolves, and prefers the higher aspect of beauty to the lower. But when he has observed the highest vision of beauty in the Unseen by a gradual evolution from praising the beauty in the seen world, then the entire existence becomes to him one single vision of beauty.

Man has worshipped God, beholding the beauty of sun, moon, stars, and planets; he has worshipped God in plants, in animals; he has recognized God in the beautiful merits of man, and he has with his perfect view of beauty found the source of all beauty in the Unseen, from whence all this springs, and in Whom all is merged.

The Sufi, realizing this, worships beauty in all its aspects, and sees the face of the Beloved in all that is seen, and the Beloved's spirit in the Unseen. So wherever he looks his ideal of worship is before him. 'Everywhere I look, I see Thy winning face; everywhere I go, I arrive at Thy dwelling-place.'

IX

There is One Truth, the true knowledge of our being, within and without, which is the essence of all wisdom.

Hazrat All says, 'Know thyself, and thou shalt know God.' It is the knowledge of self which blooms into the knowledge of God. Self-knowledge answers such problems as: whence have I come? Did I exist before I became conscious of my present existence? If I existed, as. what did I exist? As an individual such as I now am, or as a multitude, or as an insect, bird, animal, spirit, jinn, or angel? What happens at death, the change to which every creature is subject? Why do I tarry here awhile? What purpose have I to accomplish here? What is my duty in life? In what does my happiness consist, and what is it that makes my life miserable? Those whose hearts have been kindled by the light from above, begin to ponder such questions but those whose souls are already illumined by the knowledge of the self understand them. It is they who give to individuals or to the multitudes the benefit of their knowledge, so that even men whose hearts are not yet kindled, and whose souls are not illuminated, may be able to walk on the right path that leads to perfection.

This is why people are taught in various languages, in various forms of worship, in various tenets in different parts of the world. It is one and the same truth; it is only seen in diverse aspects appropriate to the people and the time. It is only those who do not understand this who can mock at the faith of another, condemning to hell or destruction those who do not consider their faith to be the only true faith.

The Sufi recognizes the knowledge of self as the essence of all religions; he traces it in every religion, he sees the same truth in each, and therefore he regards all as one. Hence he can realize 'the saying of Jesus, 'I and my Father are one.' The difference between creature and Creator remains on his lips, not in his soul. This is what is meant by union with God. It is in reality the dissolving of the false self in the knowledge of the true self, which is divine, eternal, and all-pervading. 'He who attaineth union with God, his very self must lose,' said Amir.

X

There is One Path, the annihilation of the false ego in the real, which raises the mortal to immortality, in which resides all perfection.

'I passed away into nothingness--I vanished; and lo! I was all living.' All who have realized the secret of life understand that life is one, but that it exists in two aspects. First as immortal, all-pervading and silent; and secondly as mortal, active, and manifest in variety. The soul being of the first aspect becomes deluded, helpless, and captive by experiencing life in contact with the mind and body, which is of the next aspect. The gratification of the desires of the body and the fancies of the mind do not suffice for the purpose of the soul, which is undoubtedly to experience its own phenomena in the seen and the unseen, though its inclination is to be itself and not anything else. When delusion makes it feel that it is helpless, mortal and captive, it finds itself out of place. This is the tragedy of life, which keeps the strong and the weak, the rich and poor, all dissatisfied, constantly looking for something they do not know. The Sufi, realizing this, takes the path of annihilation, and, by the guidance of a teacher on the path, finds at the end of this journey that the destination was himself. As Iqbal says:

I wandered in the pursuit of my own self; I was the traveller, and I am the destination.

Poetry for us

2007-07-30T11:43:00.000-07:00

Here's a bunch to chew on that I typed as I was reflecting on the new poem I have written.

Yes, for those of you keeping score at home, I have finally written a poem. At least, a poem I want to eventually show people, starting with David, tonight. A poem that has some real concrete ideas in it, and is simple and clear and full of hope.

You know, a Sufi poem.

Anyway, here's a bunch of other ecstatic writings for our eyes and hearts today. Oh, and visit Jocelyn's new spiritual quest blog for awesome additional insights into life:

http://thenatureofsand.blogspot.com/

She is fierce, intelligent, fearless (at least most of the time!) and full of beauty. I can't wait to see what she unearths.

To David, about his education
(blogger's note: a cautionary tale)

The world is full of mostly invisible things,  And there is no way but putting the mind's eye,  Or its nose, in a book, to find them out,  Things like the square root of Everest  Or how many times Byron goes into Texas,  Or whether the law of the excluded middle  Applies west of the Rockies. For these
And the like reasons, you have to go to school
And study books and listen to what you are told,
And sometimes try to remember. Though I don't know
What you will do with the mean annual rainfall
On Plato's Republic, or the calorie content
Of the Diet of Worms, such things are said to be
Good for you, and you will have to learn them  In order to become one of the grown-ups  Who sees invisible things neither steadily nor whole,  But keeps gravely the grand confusion of the world  Under his hat, which is where it belongs,  And teaches small children to do this in their turn.

--Howard Nemerov

An Insidious Idol

Commerce is supported by keeping the individual at odds
With himself and others, by making us want more than we need, and
Offering credit to buy what refined senses do not want.

The masses become shackled; I see how their eyes weep
And are desperate – of course they feel desperate – for something,
For some remedy

That a poor soul then feels needs
To be bought.

I find nothing more offensive than a god
Who could condemn
Human instincts in us that time in all its wonder
Have made perfect.

I find nothing more destructive to the well-being of life
Than to support a god that makes you feel unworthy and in debt to it.
I imagine erecting churches to such a strange god will assure
Endless wars that commerce loves.

A god that could frighten is not a god – but an insidious idol
And weapon in the hands of
The insane.

A god who talks of sin is worshipped
By the infirm.

I was once spiritually ill – we all pass through that –
But one day the intelligence
In my soul
Cured
Me.

-Meister Eckhart, as translated by Daniel Ladinsky

Venus Just Asked Me

Perhaps
For just one minute out of the day

It may be of value to torture yourself
With thoughts like,

“I should be doing
A hell of a lot more with my life than I am –
Cause I’m so damn talented.”

But remember,
For just one minute out of the day.

With all the rest of your time,
It would be best
To try
Looking upon your self more as God does.

For He knows
Your true royal nature.

God is never confused
And can see Only Himself in you.

My dear,
Venus just leaned down and asked me
To tell you a secret, to confess

She’s just a mirror who has been stealing
Your light and music for centuries.

She knows as does Hafiz,
You are the sole heir to
The King.

-- Hafiz, as translated by Daniel Ladinsky

“Dig Here,” the Angel Said
(Blogger's note: For Jocelyn, with love)

She caught me off guard when my soul said to me,
“Have we met?”

So surprised I was to hear her speak like that
I chuckled.

She began to sing a tale: “There once was a hardworking man
Who used to worry so much because he could
Not feed and clothe his children and
Wife the way he wanted.

There was a beautiful little chapel in the village
Where the man lived and one day while
He was praying, an angel
Appeared.

The angel said, ‘Follow me.’ And he did out into an ancient forest.
‘Now dig here,’ the angel said. And the man felt strength in
his limbs he had not known since youth and with just
his bare hands he dug deep and found a
lost treasure, and his relationship
with the world changed.”

Finding our soul’s beauty does that – gives us
Tremendous freedom
From worry.

“Dig here,” the angel said –
“in your soul,
in your
soul.”

-St. John of the Cross, as translated by Daniel Ladinsky

Because He Gave Birth

So
Precious
Is a person’s faith in God,
So precious;

Never should we harm
That.

Because
He gave birth
To all

Religions.

- St. Francis, as translated by Daniel Ladinsky

Lousy at Math

Once a group of thieves stole a rare diamond
Larger than two goose eggs.

Its value could have easily bought three thousand horses
And three thousand acres of the most
Fertile land in
Shiraz.

The thieves got drunk that night to celebrate their great haul,
But during the course of the evening the effects of the liquor,
And their mistrust of each other grew
To such an extent

They decided to divide the stone into pieces.
Of course then the Priceless became lost.

Most everyone is lousy at math and does that to God –
Dissects the Indivisible One,

By thinking, by saying,
“This is my Beloved, He looks like this and acts like that,
how could that moron over there
really
be
God?”

--Hafiz, as translated by Daniel Ladinsky

Always from the Child’s Hand

Always from the child’s hand the sword
Should be removed.

I think every nation is
An infant.

-St. Francis, as translated by Daniel Ladinsky

I Have Come into this World to See This

I have come into this world to see this:
The sword drop from men’s hands even at the height
Of their arc of anger

Because we have finally realized there is just one flesh to wound
And it is His – the Christ’s, our
Beloved’s.

I have come into this world to see this: all creatures hold hands as
We pass through this miraculous existence we share on the way
To even a greater being of soul,

A being of just ecstatic light, forever entwined and at play
With Him.

I have come into this world to hear this:

Every song the earth has sung since it was conceived in
The Divine’s womb and began spinning from
His wish,

Every song by wing and fin and hoof,
Every song by hill and field and tree and woman and child,
Every song of stream and rock,

Every song of tool and lyre and flute,
Every song of gold and emerald and fire,
Every song the heart should cry with magnificent dignity
To know itself as
God;

For all other knowledge will leave us again in want and aching –
Only imbibing the glorious Sun
Will complete us.

I have come into the world to experience this:

Men so true to love
They would rather die before speaking
An unkind
Word,

Men so true their lives are His covenant –
The promise of
Hope.

I have come into this world to see this:
The sword drop from men’s hands
Even at the height of
Their arc of
Rage

Because we have finally realized
There is just one flesh

We can wound.

--Hafiz, as translated by Daniel Ladinsky

Finger string

2007-07-26T15:09:00.000-07:00

This week has been pretty hectic, what with getting ready for my MIL to visit and having a bunch to do at my job. As a result, I have not been reading as much of my Sufi masters as I would like, so I am pasting another Poet Seer's words below as a reminder to slow down with the doing and do more with the nothing this weekend. Not coincidentally, my hammock came via FedEx today, and I'm SO setting up that baby as soon as the rain stops!

74

If you realize that all things change,
there is nothing you will try to hold on to.
If you aren't afraid of dying,
there is nothing you can't achieve.

Trying to control the future
is like trying to take the master carpenter's place.
When you handle the master carpenter's tools,
chances are that you'll cut yourself.

(Tao Te Ching, trans. by Stephen Mitchell)

For my sleeping cats

2007-07-25T06:43:00.000-07:00

All that matters is to be at one with the living God
to be a creature in the house of the God of Life.

Like a cat asleep on a chair
at peace, in peace
and at one with the master of the house, with the mistress,
at home, at home in the house of the living,
sleeping on the hearth, and yawning before the fire.

Sleeping on the hearth of the living world
yawning at home before the fire of life
feeling the presence of the living God
like a great reassurance
a deep calm in the heart
a presence
as of the master sitting at the board
in his own and greater being,
in the house of life.

D.H. Lawrence

An argument against defending your personal ideas about God

2007-07-25T06:41:00.000-07:00

In all ten directions of the universe,
there is only one truth.
When we see clearly, the great teachings are the same.
What can ever be lost? What can be attained?
If we attain something, it was there from the beginning of time.
If we lose something, it is hiding somewhere near us.
Look: this ball in my pocket:
can you see how priceless it is?

Ryokan

Not all circles are happy and whole

2007-07-24T10:29:00.000-07:00

The Diameter of the Bomb

The diameter of the bomb was thirty centimeters
and the diameter of its effective range about seven meters,
with four dead and eleven wounded.
And around these, in a larger circle
of pain and time, two hospitals are scattered
and one graveyard. But the young woman
who was buried in the city she came from,
at a distance of more than a hundred kilometers,
enlarges the circle considerably,
and the solitary man mourning her death
at the distant shores of a country far across the sea
includes the entire world in the circle.
And I won’t even mention the crying of orphans
that reaches up to the throne of God and
beyond, making
a circle with no end and no God.

-- Yehuda Amichai

Why I have no more excuses... I must get writing

2007-07-21T04:30:00.001-07:00

WHAT TO REMEMBER WHEN WAKING

In that first
hardly noticed
moment
to which you wake,
coming back
to this life
from the other
more secret,
moveable
and frighteningly
honest
world
where everything
began,
there is a small
opening
into the new day
which closes
the moment
you begin
your plans.

What you can plan
is too small
for you to live.

What you can live
wholeheartedly
will make plans
enough
for the vitality
hidden in your sleep.

To be human
is to become visible
while carrying
what is hidden
as a gift to others.

To remember
the other world
in this world
is to live in your
true inheritance.

You are not
a troubled guest
on this earth,
you are not
an accident
amidst other accidents
you were invited
from another and greater
night
than the one
from which
you have just emerged.

Now, looking through
the slanting light
of the morning
window toward
the mountain
presence
of everything
that can be,
what urgency
calls you to your
one love? What shape
waits in the seed
of you to grow
and spread
its branches
against a future sky?

Is it waiting
in the fertile sea?
In the trees
beyond the house?
In the life
you can imagine
for yourself?
In the open
and lovely
white page
on the waiting desk?

~ David Whyte ~

Brunch with Hafiz

2007-07-21T04:25:00.001-07:00

TODAY

I
Do not
Want to step so quickly
Over a beautiful line on God's palm
As I move through the earth's
Marketplace
Today.

I do not want to touch any object in this world
Without my eyes testifying to the truth
That everything is
My Beloved.

Something has happened
To my understanding of existence
That now makes my heart always full of wonder
And kindness.

I do not
Want to step so quickly
Over this sacred place on God's body
That is right beneath your
Own foot

As I
Dance with
Precious life
Today.

~ Hafiz ~

Exactly

2007-07-21T04:23:00.000-07:00

Instructions

Give up the world; give up self; finally, give up God.
Find god in rhododendrons and rocks,
passers-by, your cat.
Pare your beliefs, your absolutes.
Make it simple; make it clean.
No carry-on luggage allowed.
Examine all you have
with a loving and critical eye, then
throw away some more.
Repeat. Repeat.
Keep this and only this:
what your heart beats loudly for
what feels heavy and full in your gut.
There will only be one or two
things you will keep,
and they will fit lightly
in your pocket.

~ Sheri Hostetler ~

For David, with thanks

2007-07-19T08:36:00.000-07:00

"You Get Me" by Michelle Branch

So I'm a little left of center
I'm a little out of tune
Some say I'm paranormal
So I just bend their spoon
Who wants to be ordinary
In a crazy, mixed-up world
I don't care what they're sayin'
As long as I'm your girl

Hey, you are on my side
And they, they just roll their eyes

You get me
When nobody understands
You come and take the chance, baby
You get me
You look inside my wild mind
Never knowing what you'll find
And still you want me all the time
Yeah, you do
Yeah, you get me

So what if I see the sunshine
In the pouring rain
Some people think I'm crazy
But you say it's okay
You've seen my secret garden
Where all of my flowers grow
In my imagination
Anything goes

I, I am all you want
They, they just read me wrong

You get me
When nobody understands
You come and hold my hand, baby
You get me
You look inside my wild mind
Never knowing what you'll find
Still you want me all the time
Yeah, you do
'Cause you get me

Hey, you are on my side
They, they just roll their eyes
Yeah, yeah, yeah

'Cause you get me
When nobody understands
You come and take the chance, baby
You get me
When none of the pieces fit
You make sense of it
You get me
You look inside my wild mind
Never knowing what you'll find
And still I want you all the time
Yeah, I do
'Cause you get me
Yeah, oh, yeah, oh

Note from preface to Ladinsky's Hafiz translations, The Gift

2007-07-19T05:32:00.001-07:00

"True art evolves us — opens our arms and weakens our prejudices so that the ever-present seeds of healing and renewal can take root in our soul and sinew, cause joy," Ladinsky says.

I'm beginning to understand that this is what I've been working toward in my life and my writing; that this is the subject matter I've been put here to handle. It's my job to extend the reach of these masters by using modern language and communication tools to refresh the spirits of this world.

Before you e-mail me and say, "Um, Hils, you might want to talk to your shrink about a new medication," know that I KNOW THIS SOUNDS CRAZY. To you, maybe, and certainly to most people. But it's no longer crazy when you immerse yourself in this ancient understanding, this innate knowledge that relies not on fact or dogma or ritual but on light and love and instinct. I feel like I've been trying to push a square peg through a round hole, only to realize that the problem wasn't with the mismatch, it was with the misguided effort. Living is not a burden, or a hurdle, or a race to be won. Living is not about schedules. Time is only an idea. Moments of bliss and connection are the key, the "linking drug" to a higher conscious. Well, to a higher state, as it's not always about one's conscious state.

In America today (and many other parts of the world, but I'll stick to what I have the most experience in), our culture puts emphasis on all the wrong things. Material things, for one, but also on work. Why do we place value on acquiring things when it only builds rancor, envy and jealousy? Our material rat race leads us to work longer hours for things we feel we "need" but then don't enjoy because either we're too busy working trying to pay for them or once we have it, we want an upgrade, or the next thing. There are messages of simplicity screaming at us every day, but because they don't come from K Street, we don't hear them — or we don't trust them. Anything that is good and pure and easy is suspect.

*** Next morning***

More on this later... This post got interrupted by a tornado siren and I will have to take this up again after having some coffee. Even poet-seers in training need caffeine, friends. :)

H.

An Optimistic Thought by Blues Traveler

2007-07-18T13:12:00.000-07:00

When she wakes it seems so shady
She remembers she's a lady
Ah but could it be that maybe
She was having lots of fun
She sees she's wearing leather
In her navel there's a feather
She just has to crack a smile
And close her eyes, her prayer begun

Life I embrace you
I shall honor and disgrace you
Please forgive if I replace you
You see I'm going through some pain
But now I see clearly
And the dawn is coming nearly
And though I'm human and it's early
I swear I'll never forget again

An explorer he went wandering
To satisfy his pondering
Basically meandering
Unsure of what he'd find
Braving any danger
But to his family he's a stranger
And from time to time he turns around
And this runs through his mind

Life I embrace you
I shall honor and disgrace you
Please forgive if I replace you
You see I'm going through some pain
But now I see clearly
And the dawn is coming nearly
And though I'm human and it's early
I swear I'll never forget again

There's a multitude of story
Some is clean and some is gory
But there is no need to worry
If you're sold or if you're bought
We're just spinning on some granite
That we like to call a planet
And if you need to contemplate
Well here's an optimistic thought

Life I embrace you
I shall honor and disgrace you
Please forgive if I replace you
You see I'm going through some pain
But now I see clearly
And the dawn is coming nearly
And though I'm human and it's early
I swear I'll never forget again

For all you parents out there, an excuse to play

2007-07-17T08:31:00.000-07:00

THE WAY WINGS SHOULD

What will
our children do in the morning?
Will they wake with their hearts wanting to play,
the way wings
should?

Will they have dreamed the needed flights and gathered
the strength from the planets that all
men and women need to balance
the wonderful charms of
the earth

so that her power and beauty does not make us forget our own?

I know all about the ways of the heart – how it wants to be alive.

Love so needs to love
that it will endure almost anything, even abuse,
just to flicker for a moment. But the sky’s mouth is kind,
its song will never hurt you, for I sing those words.

What will our children do in the morning
if they do not see us
fly?

What my husband is thinking THIS week

2007-07-17T07:14:00.000-07:00

He climbed a tree on Sunday. This man is in bloom, friends!

Expands His Being

All beings
are words of God,
His music, His
art.

Sacred books we are, for the infinite camps
in our
souls.

Every act reveals God and expands His being.
I know that may be hard
to comprehend.

All creatures are doing their best
to help God in His birth
of Himself.

Enough talk for the night.
He is laboring in me;

I need to be silent
for a while,

worlds are forming
in my heart.

~Meister Eckhart, as translated by Daniel Ladnisky

What it's like to come back into the light

2007-07-17T07:12:00.000-07:00

A Strange Feather

All
The craziness,
All the empty plots,
All the ghosts and fears,

All the grudges and sorrows have
Now
Passed.

I must have inhaled
A strange
Feather

That finally

Fell

Out.

-Hafiz

What my depression taught me...

2007-07-17T06:34:00.000-07:00

Sweet Darkness

When your eyes are tired
the world is tired also.

When your vision has gone
no part of the world can find you.

Time to go into the dark
where the night has eyes
to recognize its own.

There you can be sure
you are not beyond love.

The dark will be your womb
tonight.

The night will give you a horizon
further than you can see.

You must learn one thing:
the world was made to be free in.

Give up all the other worlds
except the one to which you belong.

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn

anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive

is too small for you.

~ David Whyte ~

Poetry by Pat Green

2007-07-17T05:57:00.000-07:00

Some things I've done make my conscience burn
My very spine shudder and squirm
I only hope that I've learned from my sin
I heard a voice when I was thirteen
Got baptized - washed up clean
But the world has a way, if you know what I mean
To scuff you up again and again

I can't explain a blessed thing
Not a falling star, or a feathered wing
Or how a man in chains has the strength to sing
Just one thing is clear to me
there's always more than what appears to be
And when the light's just right
I swear I see poetry

Now, somebody made every natural thing
From the soul, inside out to saturn's rings
How my baby smiles and how Ray Charles sings
Of course we were created
The clouds make rain, the ocean makes sand
The earth breates fire, and lava makes land
Now that took a mighty hand
And a wild imagination

I can't explain a blessed thing
Not a falling star, or a feathered wing
Or how a man in chains has the strength to sing
Just one thing is clear to me
there's always more than what appears to be
And when the light's just right
I swear I see poetry

The dreams I dreamed came back ten-fold
The friends I have, the woman I hold
I look down and I'm on streets of gold
After all the mud along the way
And sometimes the big old mystery
Just leans right on me
And whispers that I'm home and I am free
And I'll take that any day

I can't explain a blessed thing
Not a falling star, or a feathered wing
Or how a man in chains has the strength to sing
Just one thing is clear to me
there's always more than what appears to be
And when the light's just right
I swear I see poetry

Our Deliverance by the Indigo Girls

2007-07-16T08:39:00.000-07:00

Now we can say that nothing's lost and only change brings round the prophecy
Where now it's melting, the solid frost was once a veil on greener landscapes we would see
Beneath my surface the water's heating
And steam comes up and out the tears you see me shine

For every strange and bitter moment there was never a better time
For every pleasure exacts its pain
How you hurt me how you were good to me

Beneath my window a mournful train that makes me smile at my bad poetry
Beneath my surface a song is rising
It may be simple while it hides its true intent
We may be looking for our deliverance but it has already been sent

It's in the night fall when the light falls
And what you've seen isn't there anymore
It's in our blind trust that love will find us
Just like it has before

They're sending soldiers to distant places
X's and O's on someone's drawing board
Like green and plastic but with human faces
And they want to tell you it's a merciful sword
But with all the blood newly dried in the desert
Can we not fertilize the land with something else?
There is no nation by god exempted
Lay down your weapons and love your neighbor as yourself

In the night fall when the light falls
And what you've seen isn't there anymore
It's through our blind trust that love will find us
Just like it has before

2007-07-15T14:48:00.001-07:00

WE HAVE NOT COME TO TAKE PRISONERS

We have not come here to take prisoners,
But to surrender ever more deeply
To freedom and joy.

We have not come into this exquisite world
To hold ourselves hostage from love.

Run my dear,
From anything
That may not strengthen
Your precious budding wings.

Run like hell my dear,
From anyone likely
To put a sharp knife
Into the sacred, tender vision
Of your beautiful heart.

We have a duty to befriend
Those aspects of obedience
That stand outside of our house
And shout to our reason
"O please, O please,
Come out and play."

For we have not come here to take prisoners
Or to confine our wondrous spirits,

But to experience ever and ever more deeply
Our divine courage, freedom and
Light!

~ Hafiz ~

Poem for a fellow seeker

2007-07-12T11:03:00.000-07:00

Here's the one I promised while we were weeding. :)

I talk about it sometimes with Him, all the suffering in the world.

"Dear God," I have prayed, "how is it possible
all the horrors I have seen, all the atrocities you allow man
to commit when you — God — are ever standing
so near and could help us?
Could we not hear your voice say 'No'
with such love and power
never again would
we harm?"

And my Lord replied, "Who would understand if I said that I cannot bear
to confine a wing, and not let it learn from the course it chooses."

But what of a man walking lost in a forest
weeping and calling your name for help, and unknown to him he
is heading for a covered pit with sharp spears in it
that will maim his flesh when he crashes
through the trap?

"Yes, why don't I remove every object from this world that could
cause someone to weep? Yes, why don't I speak in a way
that could save a life?

I opened up my hand and the Infinite ran to the edges of space —
and all possibilities are contained therein, all possibilities,
even sorrow.

In the end, nothing that ever caused one pain will exist.
No one will begrudge me.

The Absolute Innocence of all within my creation
takes a while to understand."

- St. Catherine of Siena
(translated by Daniel Ladinsky)

Big Sky Mind

Father Reason, Rumi (trans. Barks)

Rhyming Time

Can't get this poem out of my head

Oops

Hope

Perspective (also known as my excuse for not blogging for 5 months)

Changes

A trio of poems from Billy Collins

Note to self

Thoughts on God, sharing, Counting Crows and Albert Einstein

Pendulum Swinger, Indigo Girls

That is NOT what I meant...

Observations on beliefs

Obama's big night

Ani, Animal

More soon

Everest, by Ani DiFranco

For Meg

A poem I hope doesn't apply to me for years and years

See? Poems CAN be funny

Shoebox/Fort Knox/equinox

Ani again

A wee vent

Choreplay: The word that got me blogging again

Montana?

This is my new battle cry

If I keep this up, I will owe Ani money

Reflections

Turning point

I wonder what Ani thinks about motherhood. She, too, has a young daughter...

On an Ani kick of late...

This song haunts me

Three Sixty

Another on trust

New poem for us

Reflections

Holy dreams, Batman!

Breakthrough

Painted by Proximity

Trading spaces

Update

One Eighty

The last sensible thing I do

Isn't that like being a little bit pregnant?

Two from Mary Oliver

Burma's courage

A gentle reminder for me...

Amen, sister...

I *heart* my husband

Pens and feathers ... none better

Calling Me Home by Patty Griffin

No excuses. I must get rowing.

I'm bored

Tricked out

David Wagoner poem that knocked my socks off

Two new (rough) poems

Quarterly report

Intent

Aspirations and currency

Thoughts on poetry and religion

It's GO time, bitches ...

What kind of world do YOU want?

Don't look now! Peace is breaking out all over!

All girl

I *heart* the Pope

I think I'm closer to Hafiz than even Rumi. This guy is solid!

Poem of the week

More Rilke

Kabir knows

Another by Meredith

What a stunning work...

More poet seers for us

Closing the factory

Coffee karma

Olana

This one is mine

More mystic poets

A document which changed my life

Poetry for us

I heart my husband

I heart the Pope