Where/Who Am I?

 I keep looking at this picture of Alice

And I feel like it’s supposed to help reveal something to me

Where are we in life without our routines?

I’ve lost every bit of mine

Yesterday from the rearview of the ambulance

I was looking at the roads that I’ve traveled so many times

But these same roads I haven’t been on in very long time

As my life has taken these many twists and turns

Once I was in the hospital for a while, I had the routines down

Now I’m somewhere new and starting from scratch

All I really want is to live life on my terms

Choose my own routines

It’s so easy to get lost in this medical mania

What will I remember most about this time?

What will I have learned from this experience?

When will it be my time to emerge?

An Elaborate Game

 

(This spontaneous riff inspired by David Kirby’s poem “King of Good Fellows”)

Writing this week was a real challenge. I felt like I wasn't able to clearly formulate my thoughts, or I didn't have any thoughts at all to formulate and had to stretch for inspiration. It hasn't been that way all along, so it was a tad frustrating. 

But then I read David Kirby's poem and I found words for what is somewhere in the periphery of my brain and heart and gut.

...what is Shakespeare 

doing if not throwing everything

against the wall and seeing

what sticks?

Yes, I thought, that is what this week has felt like. Throwing stuff against the wall and hoping I haven't totally lost my mojo.

Kirby continues about Shakespeare...

we see the world as it really is, 

a mishmash, a glorious shiny mess 

where I am king and you are queen,

but neither of us wears a crown.

Yes, I thought, mishmash. Maybe not so much glorious and shiny, but mess to be sure.

Then this...

 

Don't limit yourself, poets!

Do  you think Shakespeare said,

"I better limit myself.."

 

Yes! This whole exercise is about not limiting myself. A year of writing after a year of hardly every writing deserves a chance to test the limits. This can happen...right?

 

...because Shakespeare is so generous,

so kind to us...so possessed of a 

mind that makes no distinction

between anything and anything else.

 

Is that my problem? Too many distinctions? Reaching for something that I don't need to be reaching for?

 

an elaborate game that's totally

realistic and, at the same time,

make believe.

Ha! Maybe a bit more fantasy is needed, more imagination, more understanding that this isn't all THAT important. It's an elaborate game I'm playing in my own mind. 

a dream no one has dreamed yet,

but you're in it, and you're the star

Okay. Caught me. I think I'm so original, such a star. A little humility, gurl.

 

For some reason I felt compelled to color the picture of Pegasus I included on this post, even though I had no idea what meaning it could possibly bring. So I checked back into the Pegasus story and found he was instructed by Zeus to bring lightning and thunder from Olympus. He is the creator of Hippocrene (a fountain), and allowed Bellrophen to ride him to defeat the monster Chimera. Some stories have him dying at the hands of Zeus.

 

Sheesh. And you thought Shakespeare was throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks? What about those Greeks? Clearly, it is all an elaborate game we play to entertain ourselves. What the hell else are we doing when we tell stories?

 

We are all limitless poets, dreaming a dream in which we star.

And...gotta admit...it's an elaborate game of which I'm rather fond.

Thanks, readers, for playing along.

On Saying Yes, Part 3 (Finding Refuge)

On Monday I read Mary Oliver's essay called "Some Thoughts on Whitman." This is the one that brought everything together for me.

Mary focuses heavily on Leaves of Grass, spotlighting "Song of Myself," which is his most notable poem. Most people recognize these words:

I celebrate myself

And what I assume you shall assume

For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

 

For years, I've looked at this poem as a celebration of the individual. And isn't that the way it is always promoted?

 

But I saw it reflective of Thich Nhat Hanh:

 

I take refuge in the Buddha.

The Buddha takes refuge in me.

 

These words Mary offered on Whitman's writing resonated for me:

 

Out-circling, interest, sympathy, empathy, transference of focus from self to all else; the merging of the lonely single self with the wondrous, never-lonely entirety.

 

Noting all these things in my journal, I came to a much needed revelation:

The practice of staying connected to everything has been calming.

I do not feel alone. That is huge.

Just a few days earlier I expressed how alone I felt. But I'm not feeling that now.

*

Yesterday I spent a few hours with Jim at the cancer center while he got his chemo. Last time I was there, I felt stressed and alien. I looked at other people there, listened to them, and felt I was in a strange lonely world. 

But yesterday was totally different. I felt the healing environment. I felt connected to the people there, not separated. The people we communicated with were positive and alive and present. 

 

And it didn't feel lonely.

I've let this experience in, which is what I needed to do.

*

Mary concludes her comments about Whitman with this:

Brawn and spirit, we are built of light and God is within us.

If I have to say anything about the moment I am living in, it is that. 

 

Unifying the light and dark is the best way I can describe it. 

 

Scared and lonely has no place in the refuge of God.

Without judgment or avoidance, I say a clear and resounding YES to this calling, this emergence, this never-lonely entirety.

Don’t Waste Your Life (On Saying Yes, Part 2)

On Saturday morning I went for my biweekly massage. While I was there, I realized a couple of things, one being that I need to reread Thich Nhat Hanh's book Being Peace. I first read this in 1992, bit by bit, and have returned to parts of it many times. This time I knew I had to read all the way through.

 

After I returned home, I got right on it. It wasn't long before I wrote this in my journal:

 

I have already started reading and my eyes are opening. 

I'm realizing just how much I've let the current circumstances give me "permission" to be a bitch.

I knew it felt wrong. But it was easier.

Thay (his nickname) suggests doing "gathas" -- four lines that help you focus. Here is an example:

Breathing in, I calm my body.

Breathing out, I smile.

Dwelling in the present moment

I know this is a wonderful moment.

Thay is very big on smiling, focusing on breath, and being aware of suffering. 

It is the last one that has had the most impact on me. 

This is the thing I turn away from consistently. I ignore it and focus on other things. But it is always there and by the time I finished the book, I knew it was the thing I've been missing for a very long time.

I am now practicing my oneness with suffering--my own and others. I now can see more clearly how much impact this has on me, and how healing it can be. It brings peace.

Thay mentions that in every Buddhist monastery they have an 8 line poem posted. It ends with the words "Don't waste your life." I cannot waste this opportunity for growth.

 

*

Sunday morning I read Mary Oliver's essay on Poe, entitled "The Bright Eyes of Eleanora: 

Poe's Dream of Recapturing the Impossible."

My first thought with the word "impossible" is that it is possible to ignore the suffering, but not possible to escape it. On page 91, Mary expresses this perfectly in relation to Poe:

We do not think of it every day, but we will never forget it: the beloved shall grow old, or ill, and be taken away finally. No matter how ferociously we fight, how tenderly we love, how bitterly we argue, how persuasively we berate the universe, how cunningly we hide, this is what shall happen. In the wide circles of timelessness, everything material and temporal will fail, including the manifestation of the beloved. In this universe we are given two gifts: the ability to love, and the ability to ask questions. Which are, at the same time, the fires that warm us and scorch us. This is Poe's real story. As it is ours. And this is why we honor him, why we are fascinated far past the simple narratives. 

He writes about our own inescapable destiny.

Wow.

If that doesn't make you cry, nothing will!

 

*

This connected back to reading Being Peace. The suffering is around us. Impermanence is the law. 

We share an inescapable destiny. We can be in the moment. Smile. Breathe. Love.

We can be One.

And this was the takeaway -- one with everything. 

One with the minor irritations.

One with nature.

One with fear.

One with joy.

One with worry.

One with the Sacred.

 

I am nature and nature is me.

I am joy and joy is me.

I am the universe and the universe is me.

 

No matter what comes up, I apply this non-duality.

 

I am cleaning the pan. The pan is cleaning me.

I am listening to music. The music is listening to me.

I am my orchid. The orchid is me.

 

 I have to record this today so I may refer right back to it at any time. 

*

Mary ends her essay on Poe saying his words and valor are all he had. She ends by referring to a character in one of his stories, rushing forward and battering hopelessly against incomprehensibly, 

with frail fists, with "the wild courage of despair."

I feel for Poe and his characters.

But I don't want that to be me.

I've had enough of that already.

So I will live these words from Thay instead:

 

Emerson & the Stars

I finished reading Mary Oliver’s essay about Ralph Waldo Emerson today. Like her, I have specific connections to him.

In my classroom I have this poster, the one the kids call “the eye chart.”

Every year I wait until someone notices it and tries to read what it says. Sometimes it takes weeks. Sometimes months. But it is always a fun moment when they do. 

In case you’re having trouble, it says When it’s dark enough you can see the stars.

But that is not my only connection. 

In the fall of 2010, I was teaching the Transcendentalists to my Junior English Honors class. I typically got up at 4:15 a.m. so I could leave for work around 6 a.m.  One October morning, I woke and knew right away I had to take a walk around the block, which was not my usual routine. I clearly recall looking up at the starry night sky and recalling these words by Emerson we had just discussed:

Since that day, I cannot look at a starry sky without thinking of Emerson and his revelation that this celestial glory should be acknowledged and celebrated. If we don’t, who will?