Finisterre (into the life of creative imagination)

I had an idea how this weekend would go.  I would work heavily at least one day on school stuff, as I was in desperate need of think time for my lesson planning. I would get back to my book, working diligently on word count.  I would relax, too, with family and friends.

It began with the inability to not think about school, so I got think time out of the way. I then opened up to my writing, but not necessarily my book. Well, maybe.  Since my book is a present moment memoir, I suppose it is all possible book material. I cranked out three pieces of writing Friday.  I felt invincible and creative and fulfilled.

It was amazing.

There was a conversation, though, about how hard hit we've been lately with financial demands. And other things have been poking at me, a feeling that changes are coming, good changes. And somehow Saturday morning I realized it was time to suspend taking mandolin lessons for a while.  I have no idea how long a while.  I just knew that the time had come, both financially and for my own creative life, that I leave the weekly commitment behind. It was an obvious decision. But not easy.

I've had these moments before -- a time when I knew I had to release something, even though it had seemed like a very important part of my life. It was never without good results.  I'm trusting that.

I had my last lesson, learning a boogie line for a Christmas song. I gave my teacher Tom some Grateful Dead backstage passes from various years that my husband had collected. He was deeply moved, being the massive Deadhead he is. I told him I hoped to keep up with some goals for my mandolin. He listened patiently to my rambling, and then responded: Just play.

So here it is...my new mantra.

I drove away from the lesson with tears in my eyes.  Something is happening.  I can't control it.  I can't stop.  I have to let it.

I console myself by saying, hey, you can go back any time.  I console myself by picking up my instrument and practicing. I console myself by remembering his words: Just play.

As I wrote in my morning pages today, I knew once again I stand at the edge of something.  I knew it was time for another "Finisterre"poem, ala David Whyte.  I'm coming to the end of something, but a beginning, too.  I'm excited and nervous.

Here is what arose:

Finisterre (into the life of creative imagination)

The road in the end taking the path these past months took you

into a time of unsettled weather and health, a shutting down, an

opening up. You made a commitment to remember the sky and

the message, “All will be well.”  To keep a light heart and to hold

to the roots of that which brings you strength. No way to the

future now except through the release of the limited dream.

You may want to make sense of it, but the tapestry has been woven,

your determination is to witness it from above, see the patterns

forming. Eagle has been your companion, your medicine, your

spirit guide. You have had to prove yourself again and again, step back,

charge forward, festina lente.  The underlying myth of creation guides

you now, you know there is a need for creative imagination in thoughts,

and actions, word play and everyday music. You have unloaded the

baggage thrust upon you, now able to look beyond. At the edge you

stand, ready for the transition, poised for the beginning once again.

These shoes you put on willingly years ago -- time to acknowledge

they no longer fit, as you take your courage and allow what is to be,

to be. There is one thing to remember, one vital thing, one truth that

will bring creative imagination alive, two words spoken by a wise one,

your guide in the ways of everyday music who has sent you on your

way with this simple directive:  Just play.

11/26/17

These Four Days on Sanibel Island

I have been mulling over a poem that will be a container for my experience at this years Sanibel Island Writer's Conference. I had decided to use the 17 syllable line poem (haiku), with a total of 17 lines.: what is called a 17 X 17.  At first I just wrote down things I remembered, and they weren't in any kind of order.  I knew it needed a lot of work, and it has taken a while to get back to it.

But I think that is good, because today when I returned to the idea, I decided to add another dimension: Acrostic.  I then needed to come up with a phrase that would be 17 letters, to make the 17 X 17 work; Writing in November 

If you're thinking this is a lot of work, well, I've done this kind of thing quite a bit.  I was just combining forms for the first time. And what I found was that the most important principles and meaningful interactions from the conference surfaced: my time with friends, important messages from presenters, and my own journey throughout the conference all came to the forefront, making the poem quite different from my original.

I am grateful I had the space in my life to make this writing time.  I'm grateful for how it has enhanced my life.  I'm grateful for the fabulous friends who joined me, and the new friends I met.  May we all keep the lessons of SIWC close to our hearts and our own writing lives.

These Four Days on Sanibel Island

When you spend four days writing with your friends, there is a certain magic,

Reveling in time together on beautiful Sanibel Island.

Images of the weekend stand strong, as well as words from presenters.

“Tell about a moment that rocked your world.” “Shout your story to the sky.”

In an instant I know the urgency of my present condition.

Not to be ignored, I move forward into my profound truth and fear,

Giving attention to my own attentiveness, as is most writing.

“In the specific, the universal.” “Tell the truth no matter what.”

“No doubt your rage will find you – let it be your instructor and your muse.”

Now I hear a story of layers of decisions we all will face;

One step closer to my own truth, shouting to the sky these mounting fears.

Vocalizing is what I need, releasing grief of my own story.

“Emotional truth is most important,” Alice says, and I believe.

Meeting poets who inspire form and content, a writing container.

Beth Ann, the hummingbird herself, lights up tiny texts for us, we reach

Ever so quickly, and share our own little moments, concise, complete.

Revealing treasures we gathered these four days on Sanibel Island.

11/24/17

Diving into the Depth of Gratitude

Last summer I made a commitment to gratitude.  It was around the time school was starting, and my friend gave me a beautiful journal. These two things came together to make gratitude the focus of my school year.  I created a bulletin board just for notes of gratitude from my students, and I dedicated the journal to gratitude for the daily blessings of my job.

It has gone well. Many students have responded quite positively to identifying daily gratitudes.  My journal started out strong, but became sporadic over time. Mostly because I started to feel like it was all the same.  Was I discovering anything new about gratitude?  It didn't feel like it.

So, as I tend to do, I decided to live the question: How can I bring depth to my gratitude practice?

This morning I listened to the Michael Meade podcast "The Origins of Gratitude." I've been following his series of podcasts on how we can deal with the current calamities of the world. In this podcast, Meade uses a Mayan creation myth to instruct how we can live with deeper gratitude in the world, mostly because we are charged with actually creating this world as we go along.  We have to be grateful for this fact, and take on the role of imagination and vision to make our world a better place.

I've also been participating on an e-course on the Gratefulness.org website called A Fierce and Enduring Gratitude with Dale Biron. Today it was the 4th lesson "The Poetry of Paradoxical Poetry." In this segment, Biron talked of the things that have happened in our life that were tragic, yet we cannot imagine who we would be without these events in our lives. He uses the poetry of Antonio Machado, Lisel Mueller, and Dante to teach how easily we can ignore the gifts we've been given, and how grief can take us to places that we never imagined.  Reasons to be grateful are always at our fingertips.

These two insightful podcasts/lessons took me closer to the answer I've been seeking. Afterwards, I wrote this:

Regarding gratitude: I feel I've barely scraped the surface of understanding its transformative power. I feel there is something I haven't reached yet. Michael talked about the core of imagination which leads us to seeing like the gods. Dale spoke of the paradox of grief, and how it leads us to places we would have never chosen to go. These are places to enter the depth of gratitude. 

So perhaps instead of just being "thankful," which is a lot of what I've been doing, I think of gratitude in terms of reaching into my imagination or healing some kind of grief. These will require thinking beyond the obvious. I'm not even 100% sure what I mean, but I am willing to begin the practice. For example, instead of being grateful my students responded well to the lesson, perhaps I need to think about the core of the lesson, what inspired it, and identify gratitude for that. Now I'm looking below the surface at what creates vision and the power of productive change. 

So I begin with gratitude for the Mayan myth of creation and the poetry of Machado and Mueller and Dante which have inspired me to take this step, and helped clarify the direction.  It's not the lessons themselves that inspire gratitude -- it is the deep roots they contain which caused their creation, as well as the positive actions of those who chose to make them available to me on this November day.

That is gratitude that goes beyond the surface.  I'm going to make my gratitude practice about diving in deeper, and see where it takes me.

You Are Here

You Are Here

the sign says.

And I stop.

I am here.

The place I love, my Sunday morning temple.

Cypress needles abandoning the trees and the

cycle of life continuing after nature's fury.

A pair of Pileated Woodpeckers flit about overhead.

A rat snake in my path ponders his direction.

Ironweed and Arrowhead flowers grow along the boardwalk edge,

November flowers in the swamp.

I am here.

David Whyte says, 

"Your full presence only in rest

and the love that asks nothing."

I am here.

I walk slowly,

then steadily.

Turtles sun themselves on the ends of logs sticking

out of the Wood Duck Pond.

Snowy egrets roost in the autumn Cypress trees

across Gator Lake.

I am here.

Green space, blue space, river flow.

Open to the love

that asks nothing.

Autumn in the Cypress Swamp.

Pileated Woodpecker

Lance-Leaved Arrowhead

Snowy Egret Rookery along Gator Lake

 

Tall Ironweed

Awaken -- me!

I met a couple of poets on Sunday that opened me up to new places in my voice. One in particular, David Kirby, had a poem I read that made me think, Hmmm, why aren't I referencing more literary and musical allusions in my work?  It seems so natural for me.

Then today I read a poem by James Wright where he is taking on a quote by the famous British poet Matthew Arnold.  Arnold had said man and nature could not be fast friends.  Wright's poem was about how his experience is quite different.

With all of that roiling around in my mind, here is the poem I wrote today:


I have my own way of receiving seeds.
They are dropped and sometimes
      lay fallow for a long time.
Then there is recognition -- a sprout.
Sometimes a forest grows.

I met two poets, and their seeds
have been received in fertile soil.
Awaken -- me!  They are here.
"All My Jellies" and Odes and
intricate structures that force
something new.

Awaken -- me!  A poet
who teaches.     A garden.     A forest.
A stream of music and knowledge and words
and love
            love
                  love.

Art Space Illusion

I'm sitting in a writing workshop taking place in an art gallery. The young published essay writer is trying to help us see how the personal is universal. She is sweet, has great stories and writers' quotes to share, but not terribly prepared or inspiring.

So I look across the way and become obsessed with an abstract painting, brilliant colors dripped down on the page, a ridge of green across the top that appears to me to be a line of trees -- in abstract, of course.  I spend a great deal of the workshop staring at the painting, I cannot remove my eyes from the significance it seems to have for me. Visual art can speak for us when words cannot.  I know that already. It's happening again.

I write in my notebook:

There is a painting across the way that is abstract paint drips.  It appears to me that at the top there is a tree, and all the colors -- yellow, red, purple, and lime green drips are the roots, tangled and alive and thin and fat and forever under the ground doing their thing.

The workshop ends with the usual stories from childhood prompt (yawn), and I move across the hardwood floor of the gallery with my cell phone to get a picture of the painting.

And I discover it isn't at all what it appeared to be.

This is an intricate machine. This is a well-designed and chaotic commotion of color that goes way beyond paint drip on the page.  This is what technology does to Jackson Pollack.

As I write this blog this morning, I realize I did not even bother to get the name of the painting or the artist.  I had noted that it won a prize -- Best in Show.  I will take another look today for pertinent information as I have committed myself to three workshops in the gallery.  It is a must.  It is the art space that is calling me and challenging me to find words. My tangled and alive and thin and fat and chaotic commotion deep inside needs examination.

Things may not be what they seem.  I must allow that. Today I dig for the roots.

(The painting is called "Still from Cities of Inextricable Velocities" by Ryota Matsumoto.)

And so begins the best weekend of the year

(Opening lines inspired by Annmarie.)

Listen. 

What speaks to you today?

The cool air. The poet's words. 

The fresh new notebook and pens. 

Time with friends. Laughter. 

All here, within my grasp. 

Long time coming. 

Ready. 

Listen. 

The island calls.