From the Archives: September

Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.  ~William Wordsworth

September begins tomorrow. Now that this blog is a year old (and then some), I have decided to honor the first day of each month (or in this case, the day before the first day of the month) by bringing back a few posts from the previous year. Here are some from last September.

Expanding Time
Time expands when we are present in the moment.

Economic Equality
With our presidential election looming, consider the concept of raising all boats.

Letting Go
I’m convinced this is one of the keys to happiness.

Discourse
How can we heal our fractured society by coming together?

Happy Labor Day Holiday, everyone!

Renewal

The wave always returns and always returns as a different wave. ~Marina Tsvetaeva

Jekyll Island, 2007

These words are from the Russian poet’s essay on lyric poetry. According to Tsvetaeva, renewal is the “pivot of lyricism.” Edward Hirsch writes about this idea here, and I love what he says about poetry causing us to “deepen our breathing, our mindfulness to being, our spiritual alertness.” Geez, no wonder I love poetry!

There’s something lovely and hopeful about this line. I’m reminded of new mornings that bring a fresh perspective, rain that clears the air. Today, I have practiced an old yoga routine, one that my body remembers from long ago–so long ago, in fact, that I practiced to a Richard Hittleman LP (that’s long-playing 33rpm record, for those who aren’t sure!). A returning wave, but a different one as well, rolling through this 54-year-old body.

Earlier today, I worked on my journal project. I am culling things I want to keep from old journals and destroying the rest. Things I want to keep are generally quotations (are you surprised?), ideas about writing, poems, titles of book I’ve read, and major events of my life. I am almost caught up to the present and can certainly say that renewal has been a theme. Although these journals may read over time like the same old same old (and are often quite boring!), I can see from a longer perspective and condensed view that each time I wrote about a returning wave, it was also a new wave. 

What does renewal mean to you?

Words That Sing

In journalism, there is no music that does not conform to truth; in poetry, no truth that does not conform to music. If you can’t find truth that makes music, you must change truth to make music. ~Judson Mitcham

I’m sure that is not an exact quote, but it is the gist of an idea I heard Mitcham express in a writer’s conference in 1996. He asked, “Where does the poem sing?” At the same conference, Mike Fournier asked us to consider how a poem would sound to someone who doesn’t speak English. He said the sound of a poem is what makes it memorable.

The two books I remember from my earliest reading days were a cloth book and a Disney book. The cloth book began, “How big are you baby, why don’t you know? You’re only so big, and there’s still room to grow.” The Mickey Mouse book began, “Bang, bang went the hammers, and zzzzz went the saws. A new house was being built.” I remember these lines because they were music. As were the Cautionary Verses of Hilaire Belloc I memorized and recited as a child. (“The chief defect of Henry King/was chewing little bits of string…”) Verses may not be poetry, but they can teach us about words that sing.

Charles Olson talked about the poem as syllable + line: The head, by way of the ear, to the syllable. The heart, by way of the breath, to the line. Makes perfect sense to me. I don’t know if this one sings, but here’s a poem from 2004.

Wildflowers

The ones we saw: violets in profusion,
dwarf crested iris, trillium,
the ubiquitous cinquefoil.

We stooped to see the brilliant red stamens
on the tiny star chickweed
and exclaimed at acres of mayapple
umbrellas all along the trail.

The ones we didn’t see–
pink lady’s slipper, mountain laurel,
and the majestic rhododendron–
will come in their own time.

And the ones we overlooked
will keep their secrets, while we
will go on planting our huge feet
one in front of the other until
we must lie down with our sisters
among the leaves.

Cereus Blooms!

Beauty, more than bitterness, makes the heart break. ~Sara Teasdale

We live only to discover beauty. All else is a form of waiting. ~Kahlil Gibran

Here it is, before and after blooming. As you can tell, I had to stand in the rain to shoot, and, of course the photo doesn’t do the bloom justice. Just the whiteness of this flower is breathtaking, let alone its exotic beauty. Hoping next year for fair skies!

Healthy Habits Redux

Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in getting up every time we do. ~Confucius

I had such good intentions of practicing healthy habits, losing weight, getting fitter, in my post of May 17. Things have not worked out the way I envisioned them then, but today I am again eating well, doing yoga, meditating, and loving what is. For I know that these practices are a series of choices, moment by moment. I am starting a tiny journal (a Moleskine Cahier to be exact) to record my motivation, resistance, and success. I can’t imagine what life would be like for me without the ability to chart, to write, to record!

On another topic entirely, our Night-Blooming Cereus bloomed last night! I always feel like I am witnessing a miracle when that happens. There are more buds, and I hope to take a picture tonight for tomorrow’s blog entry. Meanwhile, here’s another blog devoted entirely to this extraordinary member of the cactus family, including some beautiful digital photos by Professor Robert Fovell.

Deeper and Wider

You can’t do anything about the length of your life, but you can do something about its width and depth. ~Shira Tehrani

I have been considering death and dying a lot lately, as death’s shadow falls on members of my family. Of course, mortality and the knowledge of our mortality are conditions with which we all have to contend. As a young person, I remember thinking I had some sort of “edge” on understanding it because of losing a parent at 14. But midlife brings a new level, a new way, of understanding. Life is a spiral, after all.

Given that the length of my life is an unknown, I am cheered to think about having at least some measure of influence over the “width and breadth” of my existence. Learning every day is one of the most important ways I sustain myself and engage with the world. Writing is one way of learning, as I write into understanding, not from it. Today I am profoundly grateful for learning, for writing, and for you, the imagined reader.

Namaste. (All that is best and highest in me greets and honors all that is best and highest in you.)

Funny Favorites

It’s time to lighten up! Too much sadness, illness, and seriousness lately. And just to shake things up further, today the commentary is the prelude to the quotations. Here are a few of my favorite humorists and a sampling of their witticisms I particularly like. Enjoy!

Oscar Wilde
* In the world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.
* The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means.

Dorothy Parker
* The cure for boredom is curiosity; there is no cure for curiosity.
* This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.

Mark Twain
* Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.
* The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.

Groucho Marx
* I find television very educational. The minute somebody turns it on, I go to the library and read a good book.
* Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.

Do you have funny favorites to share?

Denial and Surrender

When you deny emotional pain, everything you do or think as well as your relationships become contaminated with it. You broadcast it, so to speak, as the energy you emanate, and others will pick it up subliminally…You attract and manifest whatever corresponds to your inner state.

Surrender is the simple but profound wisdom of yielding to rather than opposing the flow of life…It does not mean that on the outer level you cannot take action and change the situation. In fact, it is not the overall situation that you need to accept when you surrender, but just the tiny segment called the Now.

~Eckhart Tolle

The heartbreakthroughs continue, and they are good and cleansing–the opposite of the denial Tolle speaks of. I am somewhat astonished by the body-centeredness of emotion. As someone who has no doubt relied too heavily on intellectual solutions in the past, I am learning that there is no “figuring out” one’s emotional response, there is only being with it, feeling it.

For so long, my difficulty with surrender had to do with thinking of it as “giving up” while wanting to change things for the better. But Tolle reconciles these ideas in his quote above: Acceptance of the moment, presence in the Now, does not require being satisfied with the overall situation. In fact Tolle says, “…to surrender is the most important thing you can do to bring about positive change. Any action you take is secondary. No truly positive action can arise out of an unsurrendered state of consciousness.”

What do you feel or think?

10 Tips for Reading This Blog

We read to know we are not alone. ~C. S. Lewis

It seems fitting that as I approach the one-year anniversary of this blog, I am reflecting on what it means to me. Yesterday, I thought about why I write here. Today, I share a few ways of interacting with the blog. Let me know if you have others.

1.  Daily Meditation: Subscribe by e-mail and receive new posts in your inbox as a daily meditation. (OK, sometimes when I’m busy it’s every few days!)

2.  Tiptoe Through the Tag Cloud: Click a term on the tag cloud to find postings on a particular topic.

3.  Rockin’ Blogroll: Explore related blogs (also blogs I just like) by clicking on the links in the blogroll.

4.  Get a Feed: Subscribe in a reader so you are notified of new posts and can read or ignore them as you have interest or time.

5.  A Month in the Life: Pick a month in the last year and dip into the archives for a varied selection of posts.

6.  Express Yourself! Leave a comment, then subscribe to the comments for that post (click on the RSS 2.0 link), so you can see when others respond.

7.  Digg It! Share the blog with others. Forward posts you particularly like or want to share. (I will be adding a badge for Digg as soon as I figure out how to do that.)

8.  A Bundle of Bookmarks: Click to bookmark on your browser or on a social bookmarking site such as Delicious.

9.  The Pop Top: Check out the most recently-viewed posts in the Top Posts box.

10.  Link to Library Stuff: Visit the I Love Libraries site or my LinkedIn profile for professional connections, whether you’re a librarian or just care about libraries.

There you have it–ten ways to enjoy and interact with this blog. See you in the ether!

Why I Blog

Many ideas grow better when they are transplanted into another mind than the one where they sprang up. ~Oliver Wendell Holmes

Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds you plant. ~Robert Louis Stevenson

The greatest gift we can give people is our work on ourselves, so that we become an environment for them, so that, if they should ever want to come up for air, there’s nothing in us that would keep them stuck. ~Ram Dass

The future enters into us in order to transform itself in us, long before it happens. ~Rainer Maria Rilke

If you have knowledge, let others light their candles at it. ~Margaret Fuller

He who finds a thought that enables him to obtain a slightly deeper glimpse into the eternal secrets of nature has been given great grace. ~Albert Einstein

Words do two major things. They provide food for the mind, and create light for understanding and awareness. ~Jim Rohn

These are some of the reasons I have found this blog satisfying and continue to do it. I discover glimpses of truth, I bear witness to personal revelations, and I have hope that sharing my journey will occasionally have meaning for others. Why do you read?

Awareness

Do not look back in anger, or forward in fear, but around in awareness. ~James Thurber

Travels to coastal Georgia this week reminded me how much I love the slower pace one encounters away from the bustle of Atlanta. And that slower pace is so much more conducive to what Thurber calls looking around in awareness! I had lovely and real conversations with people outside the library as we waited for the doors to open. I felt more balanced, more at ease.

How can I slow down, become an eddy, inside the hectic pace of my commute/work/travel, the rapid swirl of activity that is the city? Remembering to breathe deeply is key, I think. Coming home, I found my chest tightening as I got closer to Atlanta on the freeway, and I noticed my breathing becoming more shallow. I read recently about one technique for “tending your own energy field“: visualizing light in the solar plexus, spreading and expanding to fill your whole body.

What helps you maintain your calm equilibrium when you are surrounded by frenetic activity? I want to practice looking around in awareness.