Vegetarianism

Now I can look at you in peace; I don’t eat you anymore.  ~Franz Kafka, admiring fish in an aquarium

Sam is not here to cook, and I have eaten salad for my last two meals.  (Yes, it did have a little ham on it!)  But I think I could become a vegetarian without much effort.  Not only is it healthy, it helps save resources.  I’m not sure about the ethics of eating animals, since plants are also living things.  What makes them less sacred?

Next week at the beach (yipppeee!) I plan to read Frances Lappe’s Diet for a Small Planet.  What would or did compel you to become a vegetarian?

Busy-ness

It is not enough to be busy; so are the ants. The question is: what are we busy about? ~Thoreau

I’ve just returned from a conference in Charleston. Although most of the scheduled time there was very productive (Sandra Nelson teaching people from state libraries all over the country how to develop a Continuing Education plan), there is so much busy-ness to traveling: the planning, the packing, the breaks in routine that necessitate extra decision making, the orienting oneself to surroundings, the eating out, the meeting new people, the long hours of driving (in this case) or flying, the unpacking…

Now I am looking out at Cedar Ridge across the valley, and being grateful I am through with busy-ness for at least a day or two.  It has rained, a slow and gentle shower, and now mist is rising between Chestnut Knob and the ridge behind. 

It’s a good thing I will forget the irritation of busy-ness quickly, because this weekend I do the packing all over again for a week’s vacation at Gulf Shores (hallelujah)!

Bumper Sticker Wisdom

Live simply. Give generously. Care deeply. Speak kindly.  ~from a bumper sticker (thanks to nonprofit consultant Illene Roggensack)

I particularly like the “give generously” part. I find that generosity serves me well. (Is that a contradiction?) Here’s how: approaching life from a mindset of abundance, rather than scarcity, not only makes me feel richer, but helps me see the goodness in others. So many of us on this earth are wounded, act out of woundedness, see the world as hostile–or at best, something to be struggled against and overcome. Acting generously, I can give first to the other, and often reciprocity follows. Giving first is giving up nothing.

Wright on Writing

I wrote a few children’s books… not on purpose.

I’m writing a book. I’ve got the page numbers done.

My girlfriend does her nails with white-out. When she’s asleep, I go over there and write misspelled words on them.
~Steven Wright

I just love Steven Wright’s sense of humor.  I find that I generally like other people who also like Steven Wright.  Do you have a favorite Steven Wright joke? One of the few I can always remember is “I bought some instant water, but I didn’t know what to add.” 

Possibilities

Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door.  ~Emily Dickinson

Life is all about possibilities right now.  And what I’m finding is that it’s difficult to hold open many doors–I want to find THE right one and close the others.  So it’s a good exercise for me, staying open to a multitude of possible futures, choosing none, but striving to live in the present all the same, stretching my tolerance for ambiguity.

Starting Over

You may have a fresh start any moment you choose, for this thing that we call ‘failure’ is not the falling down, but the staying down. ~Mary Pickford

This quote seems particularly appropriate today, since I have missed a couple of days of posting (travel to Savannah and back to do a library board training session).  I am getting better at “starting over;” that is, identifying those practices that are important to health and happiness and, without chastising myself for NOT doing them (“I will not should on myself today!”), simply begin again another day. I have always made a lot of resolutions, and have (without fail) failed to live up to them. But I’ve learned that I can fall down today and get up again tomorrow.  And some of those things I’ve resolved (flossing, for example) have since become daily habits…so there!

Joy and Fear of Loss

It frightens me—the awful truth—of how sweet life can be. ~Bob Dylan

How often I find a particularly joyful moment followed by deep sorrow at the knowledge of loss.  Shakespeare said, “Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate– / That Time will come and take my Love away: / –This thought is as a death, which cannot choose / But weep to have that which it fears to lose.” The antidote may be mindfulness, as well as a deep understanding of impermanence. The Buddhists say we are part of a flow, that our suffering springs from our illusion of separateness. Thus, there is no “my Love” that can be taken away.  There is no “having” or “loss.”  No subject/object. Only awareness and present moment.

Writer’s Block

When a man does not write his poetry, it escapes by other vents through him.  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

And perhaps that’s what this blog is about, after all.  No poetry to speak of for many years. Natalie Goldberg and many others talk about how much bad poetry you have to write, as writing practice, before a good poem arises. Banish the critic and just write.

Time seems short, and yet I know I make time for things that really matter. Is poetry one of those things? I’ve never felt more alive than when completing a poem, so it must be. To have a writing practice–that seems a worthy aim. Can it be done by refusing to expend so much energy on my day job?

Doing Right

Always do right; this will gratify some people and astonish the rest. ~Mark Twain

It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust. ~Samuel Johnson

Would that the simple maxim, that honesty is the best policy, might be laid to heart; that a sense of the true aim of life might elevate the tone of politics and trade till public and private honor become identical. ~Margaret Fuller

Lately I seem to find myself in the position of being the “conscience” in the group–uncomfortable to say the least, (especially for others), but dang it, I am going to be authentic and as ethical and honest as I can possibly be regardless of the culture in which I find myself.  While it doesn’t make friends and influence people, it’s the right thing to do.  Hence, my distaste for politics, where appearance and rhetoric are the important things, and honesty and authenticity are secondary at best.  In a political world, how do people balance personal integrity with political effectiveness? Is it possible?

Measurement

Not everything that can be counted, counts, and not everything that counts can be counted. ~Albert Einstein

What is now considered education, it seems to me, is teaching to a test, and test scores are the most important measure of the success of the educational system.  I’m all for using outcomes to measure the success of programs, as long as we remember that for many programs, it’s next to impossible to really understand their impact by measuring.  Who can say what reading great literature really does for a person?  Yet we know it is of value.

Is the liberal education really dead in our modern world of job training disguised as school?  As T. S. Eliot put it, “Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?”–which reminds me of another of my favorite quotes: “Remember, Information is not knowledge; Knowledge is not wisdom; Wisdom is not truth; Truth is not beauty; Beauty is not love; Love is not music; Music is the best.” ~Frank Zappa

Authenticity

Music is your own experience, your thoughts and wisdom. If you don’t live it, it won’t come out your horn. ~Charlie Parker

I love this quote. And I don’t think it’s just about music. Any creative act (and everyone performs them) is only as good as the naturalness, the inevitability, of its expression. The next line in a poem MUST be a particular line in light of what the poet has lived, and tuning in to find out what that next line will be is the trick!

Lies

If we were consciously aware of what we really know about ourselves and others, we could not go on living as we do, accepting so many lies. ~Erich Fromm, from To Have or To Be?

There are so many things we are unaware of, and must be, to live in the world.  If I consciously attended to the news about our president’s war, deeply felt the planet’s anguish, held those in distress close to my heart, how could I happily eat the carrot salad I had for dinner, or drive 75 miles one way to work?  I am drawn to expanding my heart and practicing compassion, and at the same time terrified of letting in what hurts.

Women and Society

Real solemn history, I cannot be interested in. The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars and pestilences in every page: the men so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all. ~Jane Austen

My goodness!  The women made it possible for men to do all those nasty things, I suppose, by keeping house and raising children.  But since the birth control and women-in-the-workplace revolutions, where are we now?  It seems that both men and women are just racing to keep up, with a few dropping out (like my husband) to create a home and a saner existence.  What is the role of women in today’s world?

On the Creative Process

Spontaneous creation comes from our deepest being and is immaculately and originally ourselves. What we have to express is already with us, is us, so the work of creativity is not a matter of making the material come, but of unblocking the obstacles to its natural flow. ~From a marvelous book by Stephen Nachmanovitch, Free Play: The Power of Improvisation in Life and the Arts

I find that the moments in which I am most absorbed (when I “lose myself” in whatever I am doing and lose track of time altogether) are the best clues to what I should be doing. Nachmanovitch also says, “The workmanlike attitude is inherently nondualistic–we are one with our work. If I act out of a separation of subject and object–I, the subject, working on it, the object–then my work is something other than myself; I will want to finish it quickly and get on with my life…But if art and life are one, we feel free to work through each sentence, each note, each color, as though we had infinite amounts of time and energy.”

Mindfulness as Key

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately; to confront only the essential facts of life and see if I could not learn what it had to teach and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. ~Henry David Thoreau

Mindfulness, living deliberately, waking up, paying attention.  Is such a practice not the key to life, the universe and everything?  Is our central task what Dolly Parton advises when she says “Find out who you really are, then go do it on purpose?”