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

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?

Some weeks are harsh. Thursday was like a harsh week in a day! A car accident in the family, one of my aunts passed away after a long illness, and some crazy work stress for the busiest day of the year. I'm kind of deflated right now. I feel like I should watch Terms of Endearment and sob like a cartoon.

But I've been attending a 10-day Narcissism seminar through Sounds True and it's been really mind expanding, the topic taken from many facets so far: workplace, politics, relationships, the larger culture, the spirit…I'm thinking about ways to be in the world differently.

The Prompt: What To Say

This week's prompt:

"A wise man speaks because he has something to say; a fool because he has to say something."
        – Plato

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:

Bird tweets by day, then
Crickets are prophets, silence
Lies beyond the field

The Reflection

So both death and narcissism were on my mind this week. There's a cemetery up in Harding County where I can see myself in eternal rest. It's flat smack in the middle of the high plains prairie and there's nobody for miles but a few trees and meadowlarks. It feels very much like the afterlife just visiting and the horizon line looks like the great beyond, the unseen future. Many of my aunts and uncles and my grandparents are there "beyond the field." 

And I had nothing for the drawing this week. I was frustrated trying to figure out how to depict silence and then with relief realized a drawing wasn't always necessary. Silence was my drawing. I guess I was struck dumb by the prompt. Sometimes the lack of an answer is an answer.

How did you approach this one?

Where have I been? I lost two weeks in there!! Okay, one Friday I just plum forgot to post and then the next week was INSANE. The whirlwind included visitors, covering for someone at work with family care commitments. But so much has been going through my head: new MOOCs, short little trips, the holidays coming, a very sad death in the family just yesterday. So all the things I wanted to talk about came and went like a bird passing through. Did I mention Halloween??

That’s okay. If they were important, hopefully those thoughts will come back.

The Prompt: What You Think You Know

This week’s prompt:

“Knowledge is learning something everyday. Wisdom is letting go of something everyday.”
        – 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

…inspired by my drawing:

Leaving is for now
Dropping is for the season
They will all come back

The Reflection

This one is always work-to-do for me, the little Hermione that I can be. But I hear it in other people too: knowledge as a shield, as a way to gain traction in the world, as a way to master (even the word!), a way to elevate yourself above those without the knowledge. Sometimes you can plainly see this working intentionally in people. Other times, it’s completely subconscious.

Which is what makes beginners mind so, so handy. If you think you’re an expert at something: think again. Start over. 

I do this myself with instructional books of poetry. My first thought when I buy a book on how to write poetry (which I’m still doing 35 years in) is disappointment that the book is too “beginners.” I’m ready for the advanced stuff, teacher! Give me the hard stuff. And undoubtedly we get a lot from advanced books which crunch our brains. But I’m always humbled by some little gem hiding out in a beginners book, some perspective I’ve never ever considered. Admittedly if feels tedious at first, but it’s the surest way to true discovery: losing the crutch of the knowing. 

I think this is why teachers love beginners students: because they learn something from them. It’s also why beginner poems are so exciting: they’re freewheeling, and not from rules, but from innocence.

Give it a try.

This week's prompt is about erasing, which reminds me of erasers, an object I particularly love.

My first eraser set came in a tiny Hello Kitty package when I was four or five years old in 1975 (back when Hello Kitty was new and happily bizarre). I've long since lost that little set but when I started working at CNM years ago I had too much desk space and went on a eraser collecting binge.

Sadly, my collection is crammed into my home office.

Back at CNM I also started an Eraser Manifesto which became a poem earlier this year.

The Prompt: Erasure

This week's prompt:

"Only the hand that erases can write the true thing."
        – Meister Eckhart

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 (it's a vinyl record, but it looks more like a boob to me):

Scratches of memory
Harsh runs the eraser
Thinning the ink trees

The Reflection

This is true with cleaning the house, cleaning your head, cleaning your writing and gardening: the art of taking something out is painful but makes a beautiful thing. It's a fine balance to learn how not to erase too much but also to take out just enough. It's fun to practice.

An eraser is a symbol as much as a pen or pencil of creativity and balance.

I need to take this lesson and thin out an eraser collection, eh?

What do you think?