Into the Blue

You'll never fly as the crow flies, get used to a country mile

When you're learning to face the path at your pace, every choice is worth your while.

--Emily Saliers "Watershed"

thoughts directions ideas

writing on Saturday mornings

bluegrass and Buddhism

road trips fathers daughters

the mountains the beaches

teaching life struggles and sins

time moments pain

epiphanies revelations stunned

inadequacies all over the place

isn't that what they are all saying?

its hard to live up to our ideal?

keep going anyway

Dylan a muse bucking trends

being what is. all coming together

you can somewhat see it now

something that has been poking

at you for a while -- since 2009,

right? and here you are all

these years later maybe making

sense of it. maybe. it hasn't

been out of the blue, any of this.

it's rooted and grown and you've

let the sun shine on it and

now it will reveal itself with

time and space and yes, effort.

Into the blue, this New Years Eve day.

Into the vast and amazing Blue. 

Christmas Spaces

It's Christmas morning, and I've had open spaces to enjoy this day. After a very busy run-up to the weekend, hosting a dinner party, and then suffering the aftermath of too much wine and exhaustion, I finally feel back on my game today. 

It feels great.

Once the sun was up, I read my poem for the day, which is by Sun Bu-er, a famous woman teacher of Chinese Taoism in the 12th century.  I took this poem in my heart with me to Lakes Park:

I arrived at the park to find they have razed all the Australian Pines that covered the islands dotting the huge lake. There were also other trees around the park that were no more than stumps.  I already had a plan to visit the gardens, so I wasn't too effected by the loss of the trees. But still, even though the trees were invasive, I was sorry to see they are gone.

I walked the gardens, visiting some of the flowers and trying to figure out a way to sit in an inviting tree (didn't work.)  I passed the Peace Pole and entered the area with the Japanese pond. There I sat and meditated for a few minutes.  It was mostly quiet.  It was peaceful.  It was perfect.

Before I left my meditation spot, I noticed for the first time the only lily blooming in the pond:

Walking back I checked out the rose garden, and then walked up and took in the view of the new lake, without the caches of trees.  It seemed strange, but I know it is the way of things.  Change.  It's always with us.

Upon my return home, I wrote my own version of Sun Bu-er's poem:

Mild Christmas morning
Walking the garden path
Sun not yet fully out.
On the rocks by the pond
I sit, grounded, being present.
December, and a rose
blooms here and there,
Irises as well.
I look.  They look back.
"Plain heart seeing into plain heart."

Back home, I entered back into a music space. I've listened to tons of Christmas music this season -- probably more than ever.  I've already played through Amy Grant, James Taylor, Jewel, Trisha Yearwood, Gloria Estefan, The Nutcracker, Chris Botti, CeCe Winans, Aaron Neville, The Nylons, Collin Raye, Nat King Cole, several Christmas playlists on amazon Prime, and more.  

Today I reached for B. B. King.

And for some reason, the blues seemed the perfect expression for today.  Not because I'm blue -- not at all.  But B. B.'s guitar and voice reached me in a new way, a way which I haven't experienced other years. It was celebratory. It was real. It had truth.

And it reflected my new motto: Just Play.  Work hard.  Accept change.  Remember to find those blue and green spaces. Remember to play.  It is what birthed the blues to begin with.

It brought to mind when I asked poet David Kirby to sign my copy of his newest poetry collection, one that begins with a poem about the blues.  I told him that I, too, had visited the Mississippi Blues Trail. He signed the book accordingly, thanking me for being a fan of the "Big Two -- poetry and the blues."

And so that is my personal Christmas celebration today -- the Big Two.  And so much more.

So, so much more.

When a poet mentioned daffodils...

When we moved into the
house we built on Harad Court,
I planted daffodil bulbs
in the little wooded
area next to our home.
They were cheap ones, and
the flowers weren't that
strong. But they did arrive
each spring, pushing through
the cold earth, the mulch
of leaves, the trees protecting
them. And until today,
I haven't thought about those
daffodils, or if they still
arrive with spring.  Have
they multiplied or died?
Does their yellow goodness
bring a smile and a
wondering of the person who
planted? Or is there
no such thought as the trees
remember, but no one else
does?

Solstice Poem

Solstice always feels special to me, especially after growing up in a cold climate.  I would always be tired of the cold and gray by late December, and found a glimmer of hope in the fact that the days would begin getting longer again. I needed the light.

Solstice is about the light. It is about warmth in the cold and dark times.  It is about evergreen hopes and silent hearts.  Its about love that knows no bounds.

This prayer/poem I wrote this morning reflects many of the things on my mind this Solstice time.
Inspired today by Joy Harjo's "Eagle Poem"; these lines:

To pray you open your whole self

To sky, to earth, to sun, to moon.

To pray you open your voice to the

magic of language swirling around you.

To pray you seek sisterhood and brotherhood

with all living beings.

To pray you remember to cut away the

brambles, and let the lotus bloom.

To pray you rest your feet on the ground

and heal with the earth's energy.

To pray the New Moon brings

intentions to see beneath the surface.

To pray you make a fine meal for the

holy-days and keep them sacred.

To pray the gifts you give are well-received

and to remember love is the greatest gift.

To pray the music you play and the songs

you sing will lift saddened spirits.

To pray all your practices keep you whole

and fulfilled and connected to Spirit. 

To pray the darkness of Solstice lights

a fire in your heart.

Merely to know...

Today's inspiration comes from a Buddhist nun named Kojiju living in the 12th century.Her poem gives a wonderful format in five short lines.

Merely to know
The Flawless Moon dwells pure
In the human heart
Is to find the Darkness of the night
Vanished under clearing skies.

I wrote several, but here is my favorite:

Merely to know
Questions are at the heart
Of every matter
Is to no longer reach or seek
But simply to ask.

"the voice of this Calling"

 We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

--T.S. Eliot --

Somehow I knew this weekend was it.  I have been tinkering with this idea of a memoir, often knowing I was writing it in real time, but not knowing the exact starting or ending point. But this week it somehow became clear that I am now at the end point. I have my parameters.  A question I've been living has been answered.

My plan was to take myself on an Artist Date out to Bowman's Beach, somewhere I haven't been in a long time, and just to listen deeply for my next instructions.  But I got lazy and just went to Bunche, as the weekend had been flying by and I didn't feel like committing the time to driving out to Sanibel.

Bunche's tide was out farther than I've seen it in years, and solid enough to walk on.  I enjoyed the cool weather, the lack of people, the expanse of space across the mud flats to walk, the sun on the water, the gentleness of the waves, the quietness of my mind.  I kept waiting for something profound to emerge, but...nothing.

I found a little piece of worm rock and held it in my hand. Then I tossed it into the water with a blessing for new beginnings.

When I got back to the car, I wrote this:

Walked the sand flats

as tide was way out.

It's the ending.

It's the beginning.

For a couple of years I've 

pondered my true

identity, the true me.

Through illness and returning to

places I love and

pursuing music and

better teaching and

better writing and

deep gratitude.

It's an ending.

It's a beginning.

I know my borders,

the boundaries of me,

what works, 

what still needs to work.

It's an ending.

It's a beginning. 

I have arrived at this place --

blue and green and all colors in between --

and I know it again for 

the first time.

Title and Eliot quote from his poem "Little Giddings"

On Questions and Contradictions

I read a poem by Czeslaw Milosz today called “One More Contradiction,” which began with this line:

Did I fulfill what I had to do, here, on earth?

And that brought me to this piece of writing, this prose poem based on a video I watched today, and my experiences of the past week.  It brought up lots of questions. And it also brought me back to a book I had read many years ago called Living with Contradiction by Esther de Waal.  It is a book about Benedictine spirituality and includes this gem:

Life does not add up: the longer I live the more that is brought home to me…It is curiously liberating to realize that I shall go on until the day of my death trying to hold differing things together and that the task (for which I need all the help I can get) must be to do it creatively, so that the tensions may become life-giving.

I had a note next to this that I highlighted it on August 5, 2007.  I am still learning. 

Here is my response to all of this – the poem, the video, the tensions.

I.

This morning I watched a video on sunflowers – some students who used sunflowers as the basis of their school year study – to observe, classify, paint, write about, and eventually make a video.

And I cringed and writhed inside.

My students are taking each others’ things, calling each other names, erasing each others’ work, and in general causing chaos.

I’m sick and tired of it.

Mostly sick.

I’m at that place again, that stop in the road where I say

I HAVE TO DO BETTER.

THEY HAVE TO DO BETTER.

II.

Mary Oliver says to ask the questions of the sunflower.  Allen Ginsberg wrote “Sunflower Sutra” which was a dialogue with a sunflower long past its prime, standing gray and forlorn in an abandoned train yard.  He famously asks these two questions:

Poor dead flower?  When did you forget you were a sunflower?

I have some sunflower questions of my own.

III.

1.     How did I get through to my students?

2.     Can I get through to them?

3.     Why do I keep doing what isn’t working?

4.     Why do I go through this every year?

5.     Why aren’t I listening better?

6.     Why am I rushing?

7.     Why can’t I be you, Sunflower?

8.     What will make real change?

9.     When will my kids say: We are observers. We are storytellers. We are artists?

10. How can I help this happen?

IV.

I finished with a strong feeling of calm.  There are contradictions and tensions in the every day learning environment that I just need to deal with.  As de Waal says, holding these differing things together is the forever work.

But there is a life-giving way…and it is through creativity.  This is the place I must go back to again and again.

V.

In Milosz's poem he concludes saying that we cannot fulfill our destiny, our reason for being here, unless we venture away from that reason.  So I suppose that is why I find myself here time after time.  It's kind of inevitable, I guess.

Call it contradiction. Call it duality. Call it life. This is a dream worth pursuing. The dream signified in the video, which of course was edited for perfection. I know that.

But it doesn't take away the fact that there is much to observe, there are many stories yet to be told, there is much art to be made.

Without the tensions, there is nothing to observe, nothing to say, nothing to express.

It is time I find that place. It is time to bring my students there.

And it begins in the depths of our own sunflower hearts. 

Always

Today's inspiration is a line from the poem "Sunset" by Louise Gluck.

And yet your voice reaches me always

I hear it always.

I heard it as a child, although I didn't 

know what to do with it.

I heard it as a teenager, so I wrote

it down a page.

For a long while it was quiet as I

pursued a different life.

But then it returned, and returned,

and returned.

Sometimes I think it is still

returning.

Coming up through the mud, rootless

yet grounded, a beautiful flower,

a strong symbol and sign

that life is always.

 

Stretching

Today's inspiration is a poem by 14th century mystic nun Hildegarde of Bingen.  Her poem is called "Alleluia -- Verse for the Virgin."  Here is what emerged for me.

Alleluia! Imagination

burst from your untouched

creativity like a rainbow

stretching across the sky

playing the music of the

spheres. The colors blend

and integrate and new

ideas are born.

Azima

I began the day being inspired by many things.  Among them a poem by Naomi Shahib Nye that showed up in my Facebook memories, some poetry lines from an ecourse I'm taking, and an African word for healing: Azima.  The "zi" in the means "star."  The rest of the word means the energy of the earth that heals.

This was a perfect series of inspirations to take to Six Mile Slough where my writing group was having a writing marathon today.  We spent hours in the slough, communing with earth and wildlife and the community of others who were also there today, checking out the alligators and turtles and birds, this picture perfect December Sunday.

Here is what I wrote today, in several parts, representing various stops along the way.


AZIMA

I.
The earth is sending up energy to me
as I walk a healing path.

Azima -- the star in the middle of me.

The earth feeds me with song and sound
and the blessings of all that came before.

I am only here for a short time.

I'm only here because the people of the past and
the future allow me to be here.

There is a star in the middle of everything.
It shines and lets the forests and the swamps
know where we are.

Energy flows from the dark earth.
I'm fed. I'm nourished. I'm one.

II.

III.
If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in the water. -- Loren Eisley

I live like I know what I'm doing. Every time I'm around water, it is where I want to be. Just yesterday I identified lake and river and ocean bay as an inspiration. It's the water in me that moves to new places, carrying me along. It's the water in me that feels the energy -- electrified --from the earth.  Azima. Stars and earth and trees and water. And in the middle -- a STAR.

A magical star.
An electric bright star that knows the truth, how always I'm being carried, high or low, to the new spaces, the new places.
In the water it is impossible not to be submerged.

IV.
Here is my pond.
My habitat.
It is beyond valuable.
It is a green slice of heaven, yes!
This is what I have today.
My soul being fed up through my feet,
into the spiritual enhancement it needs
every day.
Depletion happens too quickly.
The edges of the pond recede
before I even know it's happening.
This is my pond.
A pen in hand.
A notebook.
The December breeze cool and giving.
I look.
I stop.
I listen.
The forest, the swamp, knows where I am.
It can find me. Azima.
The star that never goes out.
The pond that never truly dries up.
I know the truth.
It is the water. The tree.
The air plants. The ferns.
The movement of the slough.
Imperceptible, but certain.
The cypress knees,
the ironweed vine,
the alligator gliding,
the limpet feeding,
the turtles sunning,
the hawk calling,
My friends, gentle and kind and
the bringers of peace.
Here, it is impossible
not to know this song,
this healing,
this grace.