Stream of Consciousness

Keeping the Heart Open

I went to a writing weekend at Esalen in Big Sur, California back in October 2003. At the final session, all the attendees gathered together and we were all asked to reflect on these questions:

What do I do to keep my heart open? How do I stay in touch with the source of compassion inside myself in these difficult times?

Thirty years ago today, American hostages were taken in Iran and I moved with my toddler to Ithaca, New York. Looking back on old journals this morning a part of research for a writing project, I found what I wrote at that Big Sur weekend, back in that year when we started on the debacle in Iraq:

I sleep eight hours, eat slow meals, walk every day. I take a short nap, cook soups from scratch, sit out on my deck in the sun and pet my fifteen-year old Siamese cat. I pick zinnias from my garden, hang laundry out to dry on the line. I read every day but I also take time to sit and do nothing, to simply be. I let the world in but only so much. I listen to music. I breathe. I haul wood for my woodstove, put oiled sunflower seeds in the feeder for the nuthatches and the finches. I write in the morning. I listen to Garrison Keillor read me a poem at 10 a.m. I practice lovingkindness toward people like Karl Rove and Dick Cheney and George W. Bush. I watch Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! I practice gratitude each and every day for my bountiful good fortune. I take deep breaths.

Closing In...

...on a completed manuscript! Hallelujah and praise the Lord! Later today, I expect to put the finishing touches on my poetry book manuscript, What Rivers Cannot Quench. A poetry pal is giving the final order the once-over today and, once she blesses and anoints it as acceptable, a few more copies to be be printed and then out the door to a batch of contests. I am beyond ready to have this project done. Some of the poems were written over five years ago and it take some finesse and tinkering to have those fit along with newer work. All this for what, sixty-one pages? Amazing, isn't it? I hope I don't have postpartum blues. I don't expect to what with my ever onward motto when it comes to marching forth into the a new forest of written words...

Betwixt, Between

There were clouds upon waking but blue sky triumphant behind and around them. Then a wind that kicked up as I sat in my upstairs knotty pine room and tried, with some desperation and silliness, to concentrate on words. Afternoon was errands, a Ladybug coffee meet-up, and then back here to re-group. Then, around early evening, the rains came sudden, real and furious, and with the rains, the cooler air and it became a day when the autumn that's six days into the future announced its arrival, early. So instead of clarity and crisp, we get diffuse and murk. Eleven years we've lived here and still the return of the rainy season seems oddly like something alien, unable to be contemplated and understood, as if its ending the spring before canceled it out as a winter weather pattern in the Pacific Northwest.

Today—the gothic green of the St. John's bridge against the forest that is Forest Park on the opposite shore of the Willamette. Today, a random tomato on Rosa Parks Way near the median—lost, abandoned, tossed out a window, what? Today at dawn, Asian elephants walked, trunk in tail, from the train, up Interstate to the Rose Garden where they'll perform assorted tricks in a circus the rest of this week. I know this from a photo in the newspaper, finally ready as the day near its close.

Listening to Divaville and, at 9 p.m., the Bob is on XM Sirius again. A calm, quiet, mostly holed-up day. The cats sleep on the futon, the dishwasher is emptied, the stack of magazines needing attention continues to grow. Dateline: halfway through September, Portland, Oregon, 2009. And now we have Gene Kelly singing in the rain. What is it about this corny music that so cheers?

September 11, Friday Morning

                                                   
Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.    —Carl Jung

To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.    —Mary Oliver

I am just getting back to this after weeks away doing travel and family obligation stuff. I have logged many miles in the air, read many books, hiked many cracked and heaved sidewalks in my dying home town. I have felt adrift and afloat, just barely. It's good to be rediscovering my quiet, simple life again today...

Too Much Information?

I continue to be overwhelmed by the written word. It is simply everywhere and, of course, everyone seems to be increasingly pecking away on tiny keypads, the text message revolution that keeps us all in contact 24/7.  When does everyone find time to do all this reading of these words? Even as the online presence of the creative explodes, my truth these days seems to be that less is more. How can we find the poetry, find the words that will speak and sing, if we don't have moments of stillness, if we don't spend time quiet in unfolding time, if we don't first keep some of our thoughts to our private selves? Sitting, staring, observing, reflecting— like the branches of this spectacular madrone over on Willamette Boulevard. I remain a great believer in the need for us to take time out to simply remember to breathe, a faithful follower of the power we all unleash when we actually think our own quirky, highly individual, idiosyncratic and wonderfully present thoughts.