I can find myself flowers…(parody)

 (With apologies to Miley Cyrus)

I was rested, I was ready

A good night’s sleep had me steady

I was right with the day

Time for myself in its sway

I drove my car

To Lakes Park land

Camera firmly in my hand…

I can find myself flowers

Take steps on winding paths

Be one with them for an hour

The colors in varying swaths

I can find peace in the morning

Set my day upright

I can find myself flowers

And share the wonderful sight

Pink (nonet for a Sunday)

 

To enjoy the pink and blue sunrise

This morning, a ten minute walk

Around the block, muggy day

I was alone out there

Too early for some

Pink found me twice

Hibiscus

Wet with

Dew

Some Bright Spots in My Week (7 Lines/7 Days #94)

 #108Weeks

February 27-March 5, 2022

Painting by Banksy

Fell in love with Aretha Franklin’s album Young, Gifted, and Black.

Watched the movie Waitress again. So delightful. And completely void of the F word which was refreshing.

The present changes the way we see the past.

Rebecca Makkai is an excellent short story writer.

I remembered this week to ask the Holy Spirit for help which was a promise I made to myself in my beach walk.

I hate that there is war, but love seeing sunflowers and peace symbols everywhere.

Feeling happy and proud of what I am accomplishing in the classroom. It’s all good.

Thinking Out Loud on an Auspicious Solstice Morning

 Written 12-21-21

I am finding inspiration and motivation from every direction.

A few days ago I realized I was ready to move on from the place I've been, which has been rather stuck. I knew this was coming, but I did not have a vision.

Today the vision began to form.

First, with Atomic Habits by James Clear. I'm thinking What kind of person do I want to be? And What habits will get me there?

This motivated me to get on my exercise bike, and I put on a podcast from Michael Meade called "The Cultivated Heart: In Loving Memory of Robert Bly."  I have met both of these men before, and Robert passed a month ago today.  In the podcast, Michael focused a lot on writings Robert did for a poetry anthology they worked on together called The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart. It has always been one of my favorite collections.

What was helpful to me is that the topic of cultivating our hearts caused Michael to focus on a few specific poems, two of which really spoke to me.

 

I think I will also take a moment to mention why I knew I was stuck, even as I knew it was time to move on. First, I had a meeting with some friends where I found myself blaming a lot of others for things I'm encountering. This left me emotionally reeling for at least 12 hours, and was not a pleasant experience.

Second, I met a friend for lunch and a Broadway show, only to find myself surprised that she brought me Christmas presents. Why I was surprised baffled me. We always exchange gifts. How is it that I have not even given it ONE thought these last few weeks when I knew we had this event coming up?  My only answer is that I have become ridiculously insular and selfishly focused that even things that should be evident go right past me. Not a good feeling. I blamed myself deeply for the neglect of this important exchange.

Another thing I encountered recently that brought me up short was revisiting other blog posts from Decembers of previous years. It is there I found something I wrote on December 9, 2017 called "On Questions and Contradictions." In this post I discovered that much of what I keep complaining about now are the exact same things that were happening then. Have I not even figured out how to do better?

In the blog, I referred to the poem "The Sunflowers" by Mary Oliver, in which she suggests we ask sunflowers questions:

Come with me
to visit the sunflowers,
they are shy
but want to be friends;
they have wonderful stories
of when they were young –
the important weather,
the wandering crows.
Don’t be afraid
to ask them questions!
Their bright faces,
which follow the sun,
will listen, and all
those rows of seeds –
each one a new life!

I then proceeded to ask myself a lot of questions, many I still have today. Things like...How do I get through to my students? Why do I go through this every year? What will make real change? 

And most importantly, Why can't I be you, Sunflower?

Coming upon this blog post was unforgettable in this current quest.  Leave it to Michael Meade to pick up the pieces for me when he read this poem:

This poem connected everything together -- all my tears, my grief, my vulnerability, my blaming of others, and a good comeuppance on how wrong my view can be. This is about seeds being cultivated. It has been too easy to tighten up and not let that seed explode into something wonderful. After all, everything real in life is about breaking open to the moment. Without it, there is no creativity, no innovation.

Michael goes on to explain:

[We must live] with immediacy of the soul, that rare sense that the next moment can break open. And that we must...marry it, step into it, and become ourselves in that moment of opening and awaking. If we fail to do that we have not fully participated in the world.

It is obvious I have to do that which is really difficult for me -- truly open up, live more fully, love more actively. I have been saying this for years, and I think I'm doing it, but recent events have found my fault lines. And recent events have also taught me I have no time to waste. I look ahead and I see an end line. This is a new feeling, and one I must reckon with.

But Michael wasn't done. Then he introduced this poem, which gave me further marching orders!

To Be a Slave of Intensity (Kabir, trans. by Robert Bly)

Friend, hope for the guest while you are alive.
Jump into experience while you are alive!
Think...and think...while you are alive.
What you call 'salvation' belongs to the time before death.

If you don't break your ropes while you're alive,
do you think
ghosts will do it after?

The idea that the soul will join with the ecstatic
Just because the body is rotten -
that is all fantasy.
What is found now is found then.
If you find nothing now,
you will simply end up with an apartment in the City of Death.
If you make love with the divine now, in the next life you will have the face of satisfied desire.

So plunge into the truth, find out who the Teacher is,
Believe in the Great Sound!

Kabir says this: When the guest is being searched for, it is the intensity of the longing for the Guest that does all the work.
Look at me, and you will see a slave of that intensity. 

JUMP INTO EXPERIENCE WHILE YOU ARE ALIVE.

BREAK THE ROPES.

I simply LOVE that! 

"So plunge into the truth, find out who the Teacher is, Believe in the Great Sound"

Welcome it all--joy and sorrow. Don't ignore any of it. ENGAGE!

So the answer to Why can't I be you, Sunflower?

is

I AM. I just don't activate it.

*

I'm not quite done, even though that seems like quite a lot.

For the first time in a long time I pulled a Rune stone. And the word was perfect, of course: FAITH.

This is already a word I have embraced during the journey over these past few months. I discovered it when I did the 33 Question Cards to find my word. When the Rune divination said the same, well, I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

And I still needed these words:

Faith encourages us to believe that we can make a difference -- in ourselves and in the world.

And so, on this auspicious solstice day of 12-21-21, I commit more fully to the life I know I need to live. I commit more fully to vulnerability, innovation, creation, and joy. I commit more fully to cultivating my heart, leading with my heart, shining light from my heart. And I seriously commit to not blaming others or myself for what is. I welcome it all--every ugly or beautiful moment, encounter, or feeling-- as TEACHER.

I needed to identify the turning point, and this has been it.

11:05 am  12/21/2021

 

21. Pregnant

 #66Challenge

 

I had a dream I was walking along, then I sat down. A doctor (female, Indian) approached me and told me I was pregnant.

I knew it was the truth.

And I was happy. Ageless.

Nothing else involved, and no one else.

All I can think now is that I'm pregnant with the possibility of birthing something new in my classroom, somehow pulling together to grow and learn and thrive.

I'm pregnant with ideas on how to let the kids do the productive struggle instead of me constantly struggling against them. Breathing into, rather than holding my breath.

It will be much like those midnight feedings and even colicky babies you have to drive around in the car to soothe and get quiet calm. In other words, it will be rocky for a while, I am sure.

I am slowly giving birth to what I already know...and what I don't.

This is a sacred time for me, and I need to keep my mind on

love

wisdom

caring

listening

lifting

and recognizing the 

moments of 

brilliance.

 

Productive Brilliance (7 Lines/7 Days #81)

 #108Weeks

November 28-December 4, 2021

Orchid Bee photo by Kara Vereen. 2021

I dreamt of crystals again -- this time they were buried in sand

This week was a new beginning

I'm doing well keeping loving attention

I started privately giving "orchid bee" recognition to learners showing "productive brilliance"

My bottom line: I am a reading teacher who will stick with what she believes no matter the horrible curriculum sent her way

I realized (from journal entries) that the day I saw the two eagles on the roof was the beginning of this part of my journey -- it was October 5th, the day of my first meltdown

Friday tried my patience, but my goals for the week were met, so I am happy

8. The Heart is a Gateway

 

 #66Challenge

I wrote this on Sunday, October 17 after reading an ancient poem by Sun Bu-er, which I read every day, but on this day I felt like I received messages as I read. By the end of the week, I would have a better understanding of why.

The bold print is Sun's poem. The italicized is mine.

 

 

Cut brambles long enough

I'm getting to the core of things

    looking for the new growth

    cutting away that which 

    does not nourish

Sprout after sprout

Each learner a reader in their own right

How do I assist this growth?

And the lotus will bloom

All good things take time and nurturing

Of its own accord:

Whose day is it for a breakthrough?

Could be me

Already waiting in the clearing

It is happening, it has happened

I must bear witness

The single image of light

Be present. Notice. Celebrate.

The day you see this

That will be the day you become it

Everything is becoming

if the environment is set

Get out of the way

Give room for growth

Be true to the reader you are

Be true to the cause of books

Have faith in your vision

Bring awareness

Bites of learning and

times of building stamina

Keep the light shining

on the power of language

 

Wildflowers (7 Lines/7 Days #71)

#108Weeks

September 19-25, 2021

 

I'm starting to think of my learners as wildflowers

My heart brims with affection and expansion

Things are moving along well

Heard "Daydream Believer" on the way to work and got all green lights

I'm falling behind on my personal reading

Love the Lucinda Williams song "When Your Way Gets Dark"

The week ended with the feeling of accomplishment and completion

6. New Growth

New orchids on my lanai inspired this piece

 #66Challenge

Practicing Presence (7 Lines/ 7 Days #64)

 #108Weeks

August 1-7, 2021

 

 Be present. Pay attention.

Sunday brunch was a surprise -- really felt the love from my dear friends.

Lots of ups and downs the first day. Why was I so emotional?

The student numbers in my intensive reading classes are higher than I'd like them to be.

Open House was great. So. Many. Hugs.

I'm so grateful I have an experienced team around me. I have more support than ever.

I continue to be chill and let what I need come to me. This is the result of practicing presence.

Walking a Memory

 It was still dark that December morning when I ran this trail, alone in my disbelief and grief. At 6 a.m. in 1980, my husband at his night shift job at the steel mill, I was a solitary figure on a new bike trail that ran along the soon to open I-480 in North Olmsted, Ohio.

This morning I relived that memory of the morning I heard John Lennon had been killed. I recall running on that mild morning, tears welling up time after time. My desire to be a runner was hard fought, and I have never really become one. I gave up on it long ago. And one thing I know—after that morning, I don’t think I was ever on this trail again until today. 

When I heard our hotel was close to Great Northern mall, I couldn’t stop thinking about walking the trail. The area is extremely built up now, not the many fields with a highway cutting through. I was surprised by the number of houses, as I would have told you this bike path was totally remote. I was amused by the barn on one property, so reminiscent of the farm community North Olmsted once was, and the high rise looming up behind it. 

Much like that day in December over 40 years ago, I was alone on the trail except for one woman with her dog way ahead of me. The maintenance isn’t great, and I know there are better trails in the area for people to frequent. 

Returning here today helped me breathe easier somehow.  I can’t help but think again how grief layers into us. The fact that I had no one to talk with about this for a few hours means I had to handle it alone. I can see now why this has always stuck with me.

Delighted by the wildflowers, and happy that I got a 2 mile walk in, I returned to my hotel, my heart at peace and a lingering memory resolved. 

Flowers

Inspired by Joy Harjo's "Everlasting."





I am clinging to my deep knowledge
that all will be well.
If I'm learning anything, it is that
I have bounced through life,
confronted with tough situations,
and I was assured I'd make it
through.
I did then.
I will now.
I may or may not be offered the
flower of choice;
it will be what it will be.
We charge forward knowing the harm,
and this is baffling.
We have lost our way.
There are flowers for the dead
to come.
Will I be among them? I don't know.
Understanding that I am not to
worry means I cast my soul to
its destiny...

and let it be.

Walking in a Different Direction

It is the first full day of spring break.

Ordinarily, I would be totally exhausted, crashed out, not willing to move.

But this year is different. I am full of energy. I'm committed to keeping my body moving, to get out in the sun and beautiful air, enjoy the last of this winter and the early days of Florida spring.

This past quarter was one of the easiest I've ever had. The curriculum I'm teaching, as well as the four creative writing classes, are keeping me from getting dragged down.

Then today, by happenstance, I took a slightly different pathway through my neighborhood. I didn't realize that I usually walk in the same direction in this particular section of our development. It struck me the minute I saw the yellow house with the purple door.  Hmmm...I've never seen that before.

Then it was the frog menagerie:

The tall monkey pine, towering over every other tree and house.  Noticed there were actually two of them in this area.

And my favorite, a lone yellow flowering tree. This is a tree I love here in Florida that only blooms in March. Unfortunately, most of them got destroyed in Irma.

What have I learned?  It pays off to do things differently.  My classes at school. My wardrobe. My walking patterns.

Mix it up. Find joy. Pay attention!

21. Truth

#64Challenge

Inspired by a journal entry from Terry Tempest Williams, I reflect on a moment with the student Harry I wrote about in previous post.




A child. A smile. I didn't expect to see him sitting there,
like an unexpected sunflower. I said "hello" to him.
The joy on his face! A comfort in this place. It brought me
to the knowledge once again: where I put my attention
expands. Simply that. I believe in the fire of this truth.

A Reminder

Inspired by the poem "Fresh Wind in Venice" by James Wright.

This poem

took me

to spring

in my

Cleveland childhood

where we

would watch

for signs, 

the daffodils,

then the

tulips blooming

in the 

 beds around

the front

window, and

we could

walk to

the park 

and break

off pussy

willows from

a tree

whose branches

bent over

the fence,

making it

public property

in our

view. And

those willows

would be

put in 

a vase

on our

kitchen table

and last

a long 

time. Fuzzy

and soft,

a reminder

that harsh

winters don't

last.

hms 6:33 a.m.

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?

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.

 

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