Category: Whole Life of the Poet (Page 7 of 18)

This week my friend Natalie and I were on the phone talking about perfectionism because we really wanted to reduce our anxiety and issues around our tendencies toward being perfect. My desire to work on this was mainly in response to reading the book Selfie by Will Storr. Culture today, with all its self-help books, podcasts, classes and all the reality "game" shows on the air seeking the most perfect singer, clothes designer, cook, survivor on some island of woebegones, has resulted only in a sad mess of narcissism. Well, that's not everybody, but it's a lot of us. 

Some people are driven by their negative self-loathing voices. I'm not that person. I'm driven by the high of doing something perfectly, like Mary Poppins. Early model. 

I'm that guy who will polish the silver appliances and faucets before a diner party. My house is a mess until the diner party, but everything must sparkle and be a full-sensory adventure of amazing-ness for my friends. It becomes controlling and ridiculous, with all due respect to Mary Poppins. I don't imagine I'm going to stop doing this but I'd like to tone it down.

But even our drive to reduce our perfectionism seeks to do it perfectly. It's a hard habit to break.  You see it when people first try to meditate and are convinced they're doing it wrong. 

I'm trying to acclimate to the idea that I'm a mess of imperfections in many tragic areas and these issues may not be resolved in my lifetime. I may end this life without having fixed my imperfections. And that's okay. 

The Prompt: Waiting

This week's prompt:

"When the student is ready, the teacher will appear."
        – Zen Proverb

First task is to sit for a meditation on that for 5-10 minutes or however long you feel is good to you.

The Drawing

My Haiku

…inspired by my drawing:

The wood of knowledge
on the throne of readiness:
the cusp of blooming.

The Reflection

But giving up on perfectionism is not the same thing as giving up on yourself, giving up on growth and being better. It's just giving up control of when and how that happens. Another thing you can't control is when your epiphanies will come, when you will get those enlightened moments. I hate to use the word patience but it does involve waiting. A better goal is to forget the whole idea of self-improvement on a set schedule. If you relax into your life and take things as they comes, the teacher does appear.

And now…you.

When you have a big list of todos, sometimes you can't get them all todone and you have to just go with the flow. I was doing really well on my enormous checklist this week when two illnesses took me down on two separate days. Flexibility…it's what keeps us in the game of unpredictability! Not the same thing as giving in exactly, but a regrouping!

The picture top is of poet May Sarton in her office. I really love the look of a cluttered office! All that beautiful paper in toppling towers. So much work to do! How fun! Just this week I published a poem of hers online that pertains tangentially to the political situation in 2020. I have a page that's getting a lot of visits right now, an anthology of poems about dictators and political struggle.  This week I posted her poem "An Observation" which is very similar to our quote this week (how serendipitous!) but where this quote says be soft to be tough, her poem talks about an individual toughness needed for a gentle world. 

The Prompt: What is Strength?

This week's prompt:

"Only when you can be extremely pliable and soft, can you be extremely hard and strong."
        – Zen Proverb

First task is to sit for a meditation on that for 5-10 minutes or however long you feel is good to you.

The Drawing

My Haiku

…inspired by my drawing:

Roots and stem, then wind.
All across the valley floor
the tough plans disperse.

The Reflection

I love the Zen proverbs that are paradoxes, that ask you to accept the absurd contractions. And isn't that the magic of it all?

Go and get 'er done!

A lot of people don't like housework. Although I don't like vacuuming particularly and I never have time to do the full abode regularly, I don't hate doing it. I hate the looming pressure of it, but not the actually task. And I think this wisdom below has helped me in that area of "things the living must do," unless you hire these activities out to a cleaning service, to which I would say (unless you're old and ailing), too bad for you. 

The Prompt: Washing Dishes

This week's prompt:

"When walking, walk. When eating, eat."
        – Zen Proverb

First task is to sit for a meditation on that for 5-10 minutes or however long you feel is good to you.

The Drawing

My Haiku

…inspired by my drawing:

Focus of calmness
Mind for what the hand can hold
Chopping, washing, love

The Reflection

There's a kick to doing something mundane with purpose and concentration, something you first learned to do very long ago, like walking. Or something you learned when you were still forming into a person with an identity, like cooking, cleaning, mowing. It's fascinating to focus on your resistance to the task: what is upsetting you? Why don't you want to do it? How do you feel when you're doing it and why? Is another feeling an option?

Things like this seem mundane, but they can change your life.

You try it.

Well, so our backyard sprinkler froze and our living room flooded over the holiday. Good times. It's always something, huh? As I was thinking about this week's New Year's post, I found a list of sayings I once had when I lived in Litiz, Pennsylvania. The area has a big Amish and Mennonite population, plus a plethora of elder-religions of the Colonial era like the Lititz's Moravians and the nearby Ephrita Cloister (which you can tour and it's lovely). Plus all the existing Christian churches and you get a local tradition of them putting their wise sayings on billboards by the street. Churches everywhere have them and even liquor stores and auto mechanics got in on the action. Here's a list of funny sayings I collected:

• "Give Satan an inch and he will become a ruler." (very pertinent to our times in 2020)
• "Got beer"
• "Do your plains fail or do you fail to plan?"
• "As long as your eyes hear, your head won't swell." (wha?)
• "Do you own things or do things own you?"
• "Beer won't come to you. You'll have to come to us." 

I picked this week's saying from my list.

The Prompt: New Start

This week's prompt:

"Never let yesterday use up too much of today."
        – Neffsville Auto Center

First task is to sit for a meditation on that for 5-10 minutes or however long you feel is good to you.

The Drawing

My Haiku

…inspired by my drawing:

Another warm light,
the edge of the wide open:
the year's gray morning

The Reflection

January 1 is probably my favorite day of the year: it marks another beginning, a do-over, a clearing away of the bad karma (as if karma followed this Roman calendar). It's a time of new lists and new plans. And it always feels refreshing to me. 

Now: you.

This is my last post of the year. I'll resume in the first week of January 2020. We're a bit behind, but that's okay. I can't believe I've been doing these since February! Going into the holiday season, stay calm! Let some joy in. 

The Prompt: Happiness

This week's prompt:

"All I can guarantee you is that as long as you are searching for happiness, you will remain unhappy."
        – U.G. Krishnaamurti

First task is to sit for a meditation on that for 5-10 minutes or however long you feel is good to you.

The Drawing

My Haiku

…inspired by my drawing:

Plant your flag, decide
not to delay, unfurling
like leaves on a tree

The Reflection

My mom always had a variation of this quote from Abraham Lincoln: you are only as happy as you decide to be. His official quote was, "Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be." I do want to add the caveat that this prescription does not apply to anybody with chemical or situational depression, but for all the rest of us with vague ennui, happiness is one choice of many. 

What do you think?

I'm back to feeling productive this week. I feel like I'm in a good groove of continual clean out and have devised some good readings and projects for next year. Getting ready to take a break for the holiday. We have about 13 weeks left of this haiku challenge and I'll be starting up an essay reading review next year. I've accumulated quite a stack here and it's time to let them go via this blog. It's time to make some emptiness for the future.

The Prompt: Emptiness

This week's prompt:

"We shape clay into a pot, but it is the emptiness inside that holds whatever we want."
        – Lao Tzu

First task is to sit for a meditation on that for 5-10 minutes or however long you feel is good to you.

The Drawing

My Haiku

…inspired by my drawing:

snow pears, leaves of gold,
the rubies of oxygen,
bowl full of desire

The Reflection

I have long loved this quote. It inspired the clay bowl carried around by Coyote on the cattle drive in my book Cowboy Meditation Primer, and I even talk about ideas around the insides of bowls in the Traveler's Guide to the book. Bowls are so meditative, especially when you are making them from earth materials. The air seems so much more valuable. The space is as valuable as the stuff.

Now your turn.

Nothing I planned to do this holiday break quite worked out. Uncharacteristically we had a snow storm that hit on the eve of Thanksgiving. Dinner was postponed and everyone in the city spent the afternoon shoveling snow. 

I also spent the week replacing a car that had been barely totaled from a rear-end collision a few weeks ago. Schedules. Not for the light-hearted.  

The Prompt: The Moment or the Mind

This week's prompt:

"You can have the mind or you can have the moment."
        – Naval Ravikant 

First task is to sit for a meditation on that for 5-10 minutes or however long you feel is good to you.

The Drawing

My Haiku

…inspired by my drawing:

Always the wind blows
softly through your hair, always,
even in the lull

The Reflection

Sometimes life gets exiting in its string of random moments. Sometimes you just have to ride the wave and let go of the rest of it, the plans, the control. 

Let the whole intention derail and then, what ever spot you've been tossed and landed, what ever snow drift you find yourself hurled upon: enjoy it, pay attention to it. As Herman Melville said, "It is not down on a map. True places never are."

No map got you here! What a blessing!

Now your turn.

Things are a bit too busy for what I can handle right now. I feel like I've been buzzing and not in a good way. Stress has also attracted two illness in two weeks.

So I'm looking for ways to clean out, say no, calm down. As much as I want to do everything (and I do), my head is spinning and I have no free time to decompress from all the classes, work stuff, writing projects and house obligations (fall yard cleanup!). And then life stuff: like car accidents and other mishaps. I started cleaning out my office this week and asking myself the tough question: am I going to live long enough to do this crazy idea I had when I was 25? 

The Prompt: Accomplishments

This week's prompt:

"Don't be satisfied with your accomplishments nor be dissatisfied with them."
        – Unknown

First task is to sit for a meditation on that for 5-10 minutes or however long you feel is good to you.

The Drawing

My Haiku

…NOT inspired by my drawing:

Labor's rituals,
prayers of the task and muscle,
sweat's epiphanies

The Reflection

I feel my drawing and my haiku went in two directions this week, maybe because there was an unintended time gap between them. When I did the drawing I was reflecting on my whole life's achievements boiled down to a tombstone epigraph and how not to take that seriously. Eventual death, in case I don't have 50 more years, also crept into my clean-out decisions this week.

But the haiku was more about life, about how the work is the thing, so much more exciting than the praise or regrets about the final results. My happiest is when I'm embroiled, involved, consumed (and yes, inundated) with the tasks regarding whatever it is I'm trying to do. The biggest accomplishment then would be to keep working on something (until it makes you crazy, I guess).

What do you think?