Reflections on 2009

2009.

2009 was solar and active and very much in the world.

Over the course of this year, I traveled to 4 different countries and traveled through 16 different states! That's a lot of frequent flyer miles! Whew.

Regardless, 2009 found me expanding my horizons in the most remarkable ways.

It was a year of exploring new terrain -- both within myself and out in the world. I discovered new sounds and tastes and my dreams and poetry deepened. Life felt more kinetic, magical and rhythmic. It was fun following the rabbit hole of possibility and synchronicity.

As done in years past, I'd like to reflect upon and compile a small list of lessons learned this year.

1. Poetry cannot be rushed. It does not operate on mechanical time. Trying to force it destroys the art.

2. "Ask, believe, receive" is a powerful way to live life. In doing this, you can manifest the most extraordinary things.

3. Joseph Campbell knows what he's talking about. Jung, too. There is great wisdom in their writings.

4. The dream world is a vast and mysterious place filled with teachers and guides, even if they come from your own interior. Much can be learned if you pay attention and much can be healed if you don't analyze.

5. Your body knows what's what. If it gets cranky during marathon training, maybe it's because your body doesn't really want to run the race. The body will let you know and will differentiate itself from the ego.

6. Health is not something to take for granted.

7. Often, if you allow the dialogue, the people who sit next to you on airplanes can offer powerful reminders. Sometimes, they even help change your life.

8. There are no coincidences. The universe awaits your engagement on a daily basis. It seeks a playmate.

9. While sad, it is important to recognize the things & people which no longer serve you in order to make room for what/who does.

10. Love teaches much. True intimacy is a remarkable and blessed gift.

11. Nature remains a purifier of mood and spirit.

12. Spontaneous giggling is the best!

Again, one lesson for every month of the year.
I look forward to the lessons and surprises of 2010
and ask for blessings upon each day.

May your own new year find you bright, happy, healthy and quite at peace.

Unaware

Yoko and John outside the Dakota building in NYC, Fall 1980.

past stands
with small smiles
to oblige a camera.

present lines up
in the same spot
with different cameras,
wider smiles.

stand where they stood.
it seems the thing to do.

but john was shot a month later
by a lunatic.

center left.

***

unaware smiles.

***

i stand in a blizzard.
someone points out her window.
"the light's on. she's home."

snow swirls and gusts.
what must she think of us,
standing in their spot
near the fields
created to hold
strawberry memories?

Musings, Solstice and Campbell

The light is returning and the Solstice has passed. The shift reminds me to move from lunar to solar; to move from the interior to the exterior. To wake up.

The poetry is waking up, too. December's quiet and the blanket of newly fallen snow has encouraged retreat and slumber...gestation. A new month and year hovers on the horizon but for now these musings emerge.

I dance out the lessons of 2009. This is the crescendo - the final movement until the birth of the new year. It is good to get kinetic. To dance funk in bare feet on hardwood floors. To bounce and move on the boards that creak and squeak and tell their age. And for my knees to reveal theirs. The body's music. I dig it.

I also dig Joe Campbell. I dig his work and I dig into it with gusto. My brain chews on the teachings and my foot bounces in anticipation of new lessons.

Not a bad way to spend December.

So, until the poetry decides that it's ready, enjoy these blips from Campbell. They're taken from Sukhavati.

***

"So yield to what is coming. We're in a free fall into future. We don't know where we're going. Things are changing so fast and always when you're going through a long tunnel, anxiety comes along. And all you have to do to transform your hell into a paradise is to turn your fall into a voluntary act."

Shift the perspective: "joyful participation in the sorrows and everything changes."

"The problem is to find the immovable center and you can survive anything. And the myths will help you to do that. And this is the quest for the inner life that will enable you to float down the stream like a human being instead of just some Babbit or robot in the hands of a political institution. And that's what I'm interested in bringing forward here and I may not be changing the world but I am changing people and that's what's necessary. That's what's gotta be done."

"The figures of dream are really figures of personal mythologization. You're creating your own imagery related to the archetypes but the culture has rejected them. The culture has gone into an economic and political phase where the spiritual principles are completely disregarded. The religious life is ethical. It is not mystical. That is gone and the society is disintegrating consequently. It is. The question is will there ever be a recovery of the mythological, mystical realization of the miracle of life of which our society is a manifestation and all of us brothers and sisters in the spirit of this all-informing mythos."

"There is no conflict between mysticism and science but there is a conflict between the science of 2,000 BC and the science of 2,000 AD. And that's the mess in our religions. We've got stuck with an image of the universe that is about as simple and childish as you could imagine, you know, the three level universe and all that of the bible. It's of no use to us. We have to have poets, we have to have seers who will render to us the experience of the transcendence through the world in which we're living."

Meandering through the Mediterranean

Exterior, St. Mary's Church, Mosta, Gozo, Malta

Colosseum, Rome, Italy

Interior, Vatican Museum, Vatican City

The homebody is pleased to have returned but the nomad continues to dream of honeyed colors and the wine dark sea. Salt spray and olives underfoot and hard local cheese and strolls through plowed farmland are terribly hard to leave but poetry lingers and that is enough.

Also lingering are the stories shared at dusk and the laughter which rang out like bells in a new land.

Poetry forthcoming...stay tuned.

Some food for thought and a hiatus

So, I'm headed out on some travels again and will be taking a hiatus for the next few weeks. I promise to return with fresh thoughts, poetry and photographs. I'm excited...another one for the bucket list.

In the meantime, I wanted to share some of my favorite Joseph Campbell quotations with you. These are taken from Sukhavati - a wonderful DVD featuring bits of his lectures about myths. (nota bene: the "I" he uses is the universal "I"...not the "I" of the ego self.) Enjoy!

***

"I am yesterday, today, and tomorrow. I have the power to be born a second time. I am the source and creator of all the gods."

"And man was not breathed into the earth but came out of the earth."

"Dreams are self-luminous. They shine of themselves as gods do. Myths are public dreams. Dreams are private myths. By finding your own dream and following it through, it will lead you to the myth world in which you live."

"The passage is from dream to vision to the gods and they are you. All the gods, all the hells, all the heavens are within you. The god is in you. It is not something that happened somewhere else a long time ago. It's in you. This is the truth of truths. This is what the gods and myths are all about..so find them in yourself and take them into yourself and you will be awakened in your mythology and in your life. In deep, dreamless sleep, consciousness is still there but it is covered over by darkness. But suppose you could find that consciousness. Suppose you could go into deep sleep awake -- to go awake into that sphere where there is consciousness but consciousness of no specific thing. Waking consciousness deals only with what has happened. Deep sleep holds all that is future because the future can come from nowhere else but the energies of the psyche."

"We are in accord with the universal rhythm."

Mona Lisa Moon

they blasted the moon today
--our protector--
the he-she entity
with a scientific one-two punch.

i tuned in,
glued to the tv
keen for satellite images
of exposure
in the expected
six-mile debris field.

newscasters during the countdown
said that discovery of ice
would shave billions off the space program.

human greed in a soundbite.

disbelief. dismay. depression.
the moon doesn't behave as expected.
there is anger. some scientific embarrassment.

later,
i look up into the ink
and study the moon's revolution.
so sly, this mona lisa moon,
grinning through rotation
and safeguarding truths from men
who rocket slap her face and are bewildered
when she does not yield.

Shakesperian Toe Tale

damn.

i catch a glimpse of my right big toe
and notice chipping paint and uneven lines.
i am annoyed.
so, i bend over and let my thumb
remove hyperbole from naked nail.

i schedule a pedicure
and let mood dictate color.

today it's romeo and joliet.
i like the implied tragedy in the name.

days later,
paint flakes when life rubs.

joliet wonders where romeo has gone.

so do i.

Brand X Religion

it's laundry day
and i'm using an ultra concentrated detergent.
what a modern marvel!
cleaner clothes in 1/4 cup!

i gloat as i sort,
clapping myself on the back
on not falling for those flashy brand x versions
promising to do more with more out of my pocket.

isn't religion the same?
we distill god down to
a word or a book or a vision
and we applaud our efficiency.

hell, with all this concentrated power,
we need less!
we marvel at our creation
and wonder if this version of god
will still lather us of our sins
and keep us cleaner, longer.

THANK GOD for 2x Ultra God!

Enlightenment in a bottle
and specially formulated for
high efficiency human machines.

Charnel House

i push into loamy earth
that holds a thousand bones.

my fingers wiggle through
centuries
that pile
and hug
and caress
below the epidermis.

life and death
mingling in a great orgy
as ancestors cavort with strangers
and prim echoes of "indecency"
and talk of a savior
are muffled by soil and rock and worm.

what does it matter when we all reduce to chalk and dna?

and what stops the greedy mother
from sucking marrow
and breaking bone into food for the unborn?

Prophets and Men

there are men who sit on the desert floor
and wait for god.
but there is no god but time and its various expressions.

shadows shorten and lengthen
and the moon cackles at the unnatural displays of immobility.

and in that moment
when fear and calm marry
and man is uncertain
"god" settles nearby and whispers mystery
into his ear.

a shout.
a shock.
revelation tickles.

trembling with an unknown feeling
dust is raised
as legs raise and move from the remote.
running now.
running from the promise of ecstasy
like virginal lovers in the first blush of fever.

Birthing

I've got a couple poems forming in my mind's embryonic fluid but it's not time to birth them yet...soon. For now it's enough to feel joy as each new word flutters into existence.

In moments like this, I turn to other writers for company and inspiration.

From Proust's Swann's Way:

"When I saw any external object, my consciousness that I was seeing it would remain between me and it, enclosing it in a slender, incorporeal outline which prevented me from ever coming directly in contact with the material form."

From Annie Dillard's Holy the Firm:

"Esoteric Christianity, I read, posits a substance. It is a created substance, lower than metals and minerals on a "spiritual scale," and lower than salts and earths, occurring beneath salts and earths in the waxy deepness of planets, but never on the surface of planets where men could discern it; and it is in touch with the Absolute, at base. In touch with the Absolute! At base. The name of this substance is: Holy the Firm."

From Forrest Carter's The Education of Little Tree:

"Granma said that the spirit mind was like any other muscle. If you used it it got bigger and stronger. She said the only way it could get that way was using it to understand, but you couldn't open the door to it until you quit being greedy and such with your body mind. Then understanding commenced to take up, and the more you tried to understand, the bigger it got."

From Linda Hogan's (Chickasaw Indian tribe) story "The Feathers" found in Reinventing the Enemy's Language - Contemporary Native Women's Writings of North America:

"There is a still place, a gap between worlds, spoken by the tribal knowings of thousands of years. In it are silent flyings that stand aside from human struggles and the designs of our own makings. At times, when we are silent enough, still enough, we take a step into such mystery; the place of spirit, and mystery, we must remember, by its very nature does not wish to be known. There is something alive in a feather. The power of it is perhaps in its dream of sky, currents of air, and the silence of its creation. It knows the insides of clouds. It carries our needs and desires, the stories of our brokenness. It rises and falls down elemental space, one part of the elaborate world of life where fish swim against gravity, where eels turn silver as moon to bread."

Wisdom from John Muir

John Muir, Platinum Print, c. 1910, National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

I admire John Muir. Always have. Watching Ken Burns' "National Parks" documentary made me feel as if I was with Muir in the Sierras, in Yosemite and Alaska, in the West...taking time to stop alongside wildflowers and inquire about a particular flower's day...breathing in the air that hugs old growth pine...rambling along trails and off trails, led by a boundless enthusiasm for all that IS.

Here are some of my favorite quotes from him. Enjoy.

"When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe."

"There is in some minds a tendency toward a wrong love of the marvelous and mysterious, which leads to the belief that whatever is remote must be better than what is near."

"If my soul could get away from this so-called prison, be granted all the list of attributes generally bestowed on spirits, my first ramble on spirit-wings would not be among the volcanoes of the moon...My first journeys would be into the inner substance of flowers, and among the folds and mazes of Yosemite's falls."

"Let children walk with Nature, let them see the beautiful blendings and communions of death and life, their joyous inseparable unity, as taught in woods and meadows, plains and mountains and streams of our blessed star, and they will learn that death is stingless indeed, and as beautiful as life...All is divine harmony."

"The mountains are fountains of men as well as of rivers, of glaciers, of fertile soil. The great poets, philosophers, prophets, able men whose thoughts and deeds have moved the world, have come down from the mountains--mountain-dwellers who have grown strong there with the forest trees in Nature's work-shops."

"Clusters of peaks stand revealed harmoniously correlated and fashioned like works of art--eloquent monuments of the ancient ice rivers that brought them into relief from the general mass of the range...Nature's poems carved on tables of stone."

I woke up laughing this morning

It's in the wee hours of the morning, and I woke up rather early thanks to the rumbly engine of a car outside my window. This is not why I woke up laughing. I laughed because the engine also woke up a bird (affectionately named Bentley the Bachelor Bird) that lives above my apartment, encouraging it to begin a passionate 5 minute chirping diatribe against said engine. THIS is why I woke up laughing.

I imagined it grumbling about the neighborhood (chirp, chirp, CHIRP), the ridiculousness of some engine noises (CHIRP!), and why in heavens name were people up so early anyway...on a THURSDAY (CHIRP! CHIRP! CHIRP!).

It made me giggle and I am still giggling but also slightly envious. After chirping off, it managed to fall back asleep but I'm up...for good, methinks. 'Tis okay...it's the first day of a new month and I'll be up to welcome the first rays of sunshine.

Osmosis

i'm outside
taking this great biological ground of mine
for a walk.

the landscape blurs in its banality.
rush, rush, rush.
yuck.

i do not want THIS.

what i want is to get THERE
but THERE is inside -
contained neatly within my body's protoplasm.

i wake. i sleep. i step. i move.

my feet feel the jungle beat
the cosmic heartbeat
the rumble tumble pulse
of cellular reverberations

i am pushed through the transparent membrane
and PLOP
i am the outsider come in from THERE.

the ground is blanketed by winter moss
and i want to roll around on frost
that crackles and splinters beneath me.
taste the manna on the ground.

i cry.
arrival, it seems.
give us this day our daily wish.

Stagnation

click
click
click

i pound into the concrete
with three-inch jack-hammer heels
and diffuse disappointment
of another day spent on a wheel that refuses arrival.

a shitty frequent traveler program,
i decide, as the

tick
tick
ticking

of the second hand reminds me
that as time moves
so must i.

Lessons from the Small

Salamander

in santorini i notice a small salamander resting in the crevice of cooled bricks.
it is brown and green and gray and seems content in its rest.

taking advantage of its immobility, i lay on the floor,
stomach adding heat to tile,
and investigate.

i am freckled by the sun.
is this enough camouflage to disguise my presence
or do my eyes give me away?

likely the latter.

i try to slow my blinking
but it is hard to stop my body's automaton response
honed over 32 years.

the salamander is uninterested with me
and my one-sided babble of inquiry.
why do i feel the need to hear my voice?

rays of sunshine reach me and i grow tired of trying so hard.
i fall into waking dreams of
folgers coffee containers holding anxious amphibians
and of newly learned greek superstitions surrounding fire and these creatures.

i blink and my companion is gone
and i learn a simple lesson
of the wisdom of gathering heat to move
and of surrendering to stillness in the meantime.

Travels in the Wine Dark Sea: Greece

Parthenon, August 2009

"...whose land have I lit on now? What are they here--violent, savage, lawless? -- or friendly to strangers, god-fearing men?"
~ Homer, Odyssey, 13.227-29

I dream of olives now that I've returned from my travels in Greece. Olives and tzatziki and Mavrotragano wine. My Converse sneakers still hold dust from climbing Santorini's volcano and pebbles from trekking to Homer's Tomb in Ios. It seems wrong to disturb these stowaways before more walking naturally displaces them.

Ios, August 2009.

"The highest point a man can attain is not Knowledge, or Virtue, or Goodness, or Victory, but something even greater, more heroic
and more despairing: Sacred Awe!"
~ Nikos Kazantzakis, Zorba the Greek.

What wild sensuousness is Greece! Never has a country made me feel so much in such truncated time. Total elation and awe to sit at dusk and take in the Acropolis and witness its entasis for myself. Losing myself in Athens' overly heated labyrinthine streets and feeling the deep effects of the Meltemi winds. Sailing choppy Aegean seas with vigor and child-like glee. Tasting and tasting and tasting: salty air, perfect olive oil, sweet crepes and bitter Retsina. Listening to Italian vacationers' non-stop revelry, the whir of motorini and ATVs, donkeys braying in cool night air, cruise boats bleating last calls in Santorini's cauldera. And the color, it is useless to try to describe it. It simply IS.

Imbibing Santorini's sunset, August 2009.

Odyssey

careening cliffs and departure --
i wheel into the cement vortex
and watch birds circle in the updraft.

seven there
moving with unfamiliar motive
and i feel a compulsion to point to the sky
and shout out interpretations:
"portent!"
"message from the gods!"
"sacrifice!"

but there is nothing with which to acknowledge these signs
but words and they feel inadequate.

what to do?

i reach into history and sit,
imagining temple priests reading entrails and offering explanations
through the smoke and the smell which homer never describes.

i drink wine.

and like odysseus,
i follow the gray-eyed goddess home.

Oia, Santorini, August 2009.

Barnacle

i push my kayak to the cliff
and examine the barnacles which cling to the salted rocks,
establishing residence there.

this frontier existence begs study.

do they sputter for breath with each wave?
i pull my ear closer to investigate
but hear only the sea's rhythmic drone and sigh.

encrusted, calcified, persistent.
rough to my hands - sharp and determined shells.
hard to chip away so i don't try,
seeking to remain above the line of life's cruelty.

not often but lately i turn myself
to the rock hard chest of a lover
and cling hard during the certain uncertainty of life,
gasping as i go but resolute to survive
in this breath and in the next.


Sunset, Santorini, Greece 2009.

copper speckled light finds me
and i burst to dance and come out of myself.

one snap here and my foot stomps
in an alien rhythm of expression.

snap, snap.

i have no choice but to move
and to wheel and to follow
the mandolin in one
continuous splendiferous motion
of stacatto movement.

opa!

More from Mary Oliver

A good friend of mine sent me this poem of Mary Oliver's today to remind me that geese fly and that people can too. Thank you, L!

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Return

I've just returned from my travels and am preparing a lengthy post about my time overseas. In the meantime, a friend sent me this Mary Oliver poem and there is much here with which to sit and chew. Enjoy!

West Wind #2

You are young. So you know everything. You leap into the boat and begin rowing. But listen to me. Without fanfare, without embarassment, without any doubt, I talk directly to your soul. Listen to me. Lift the oars from the water, let your arms rest, and your heart, and heart's little intelligence, and listen to me.

There is no life without love. It is not worth a bent penny, or a scuffed shoe. It is not worth the body of dead dog nine days unburied. When you hear, a mile away and still out of sight, the churn of the water as it begins to swirl and roil, fretting around the sharp rocks -- when you hear the unmistakable pounding -- when you feel the mist on your mouth and sense ahead the embattlement, the long falls plunging and steaming -- then row, row for your life toward it.

Hiatus

Hello, All. I'm taking a short hiatus from cyberspace for the next few weeks but will return in September with new musings, poems and pictures.

Enjoy these halcyon days of summer!

Today's Krishnamurti quote

"Freedom is a state of mind--not freedom from something but a sense of freedom, a freedom to doubt and question everything and, therefore, so intense, active, and vigorous that it throws away every form of dependence, slavery, conformity, and acceptance. Such freedom implies being completely alone. But can the mind brought up in a culture so dependent on environment and its own tendencies ever find that freedom which is complete solitude and in which there is no leadership, no tradition, and no authority?

This solitude is an inward state of mind, which is not dependent on any stimulus or any knowledge and is not the result of any experience or conclusion. Most of us, inwardly, are never alone. There is a difference between isolation, cutting oneself off, and aloneness, solitude. We all know what it is to be isolated, building a wall around oneself in order never to be hurt, never to be vulnerable, or cultivating detachment, which is another form of agony, or living in some dreamy ivory tower of ideology. Aloneness is something quite different."

~ J. Krishnamurti, Total Freedom, pp. 124-125.

Journal of a Solitude

I finished reading May Sarton's "Journal of a Solitude" in the past week or so and was struck by the simplicity of the poet's message but also her stress on the importance of solitude throughout one's life. The book, her journal, is a treasure and a wonderful accompaniment to any retreat. I'd like to share a few of my favorite passages here with you:

December 2nd:
"It is only when we can believe that we are creating the soul that life has any meaning, but when we can believe it--and I do and always have--then there is nothing we do that is without meaning and nothing that we suffer that does not hold the seed of creation in it."

February 2nd:
"We are aware of God only when we cease to be aware of ourselves, not in the negative sense of denying the self, but in the sense of losing self in admiration and joy."

February 5th:
"...for it is only through this communication that each consciousness will discover the essence of its destiny which is not to perceive things or to dominate them, but is to live, and that means to find outside itself other consciousnesses from which it never stops receiving and to whom it never stops giving in an uninterrupted circuit of light, of joy and of love, which is the only law of the spiritual universe."

"I do not think it is the business of a poet to become a guru. It is his business to write poetry, and to do that he must remain open and vulnerable. We grow through relationships of every kind, but most of all through a relationship that takes the whole person. And it would be pompous and artificial to make an arbitrary decision to "shut the door."

And from Jung, whom Sarton quotes and whom remains one of my most treasured writers:
"The shadow is a tight passage, a narrow door, whose painful constriction no one is spared who goes down to the deep well. But one must learn to know oneself in order to know who one is. For what comes after the door is, surprisingly enough, a boundless expanse full of unprecedented uncertainty, with apparently no inside and no outside, no above and no below, no here and no there, no mine and no thine, no good and no bad. It is the world of water, where all life floats in suspension; where the realm of the sympathetic system, the soul of everything living, begins; where I am indivisibly this and that; where I experience the other in myself and the other-than-myself experiences me."

Clarity at 32,000 feet

i stand outside doors which once
opened into honeyed heat and into places
where i understood "home" a thousand ways.

but my key no longer grants access
and i discover disappointment
amongst frosted asters
and darkened windows.

what else is there to do
but acknowledge this new reality
and begin the hard labor
of sorting memories
and discarding the unnecessary?

yet, not all is sent to an amnesic river.
some remembrances i savor
and press into wax so that they
may outlast natural forgetting.

someday i will rediscover them
tucked away in books
and in boxes
and will feel surprise and nostalgia

but for now
i shove them into dark recesses
of my carpetbag
and strike out for those glimpses of promise
which flash against my eyes
like hope in a pan.

Marathon Training Lesson #5: Fuel

After weeks of experimentation, I think I finally discovered the right fuel for my body on long runs. What seems to work (at least it did today when I ran 15 miles) is:

• a large bagel topped with peanut butter and one mashed banana

• 1 cup of coffee.

After said consumption and imbibing, I waited an hour or so and then hit the run. The first 10 miles breezed by and, other than hydrating, I didn't feel like I needed additional fueling. Miles 13-15 were more challenging, methinks, because I forgot to bring my Clif Bar Shot Bloks with me and my body was hurting for serious energy (a mistake I will not make again). But, these are reasons why I train...to learn what works, what doesn't and what my body really needs while running.

Another thing I've learned about myself is how much fluid I require and consume. I'm constantly drinking, which I think is good, but the downside of this is that I run out of the fluid I carry on my belt much faster. I'm pretty sure there will be hydration stations along the marathon course, so it's likely I'll just have to stop more often.

The best part of my marathon training is becoming more aware of my body's intelligence and its needs and in learning its own distinct voice - the one which is separate from my mind. By doing so, I'm able to hone in faster to what it's telling or asking me and keep it balanced.

Magpie

it was in that summer
on the picket line between childhood and adulthood
that i knew blue

and you stole it from me
like a greedy magpie
to add to your nest of memories -

something flashy here
old strands of linen there

and my blueness
hastily woven into your history
as you bed someone new.

nights reveal hushed whispers
and "sad" stories

and i,
the vehicle,
the gasoline,
which you surreptitiously light
in the inky darkness,
burn your wings
and cry "martyr".

Crow

old grave's shifted soil
reveals protruding memory bones,
o'keeffe white.

the crow sits,
patient observer --
deliberates.

inspects the buried,
looking for another
morsel of encapsulated time
to suck
and pick clean.

its beak reaches
and the earth's skin
breaks and bleeds anew.

and i watch the carrion bird at work
fascinated and angered by its
natural biological propulsion.

Marathon Training Lesson #4: Smiling goes a long way

This morning I threw on my running shoes and hit the trail early. The air held the promise of a beautiful day and with the light breeze and cool temperatures, I was eager to take this body of mine out for a spin to see what it could do.

When I run, I don't listen to music, preferring instead to take in the sounds around me: snippets of conversations between old friends, various tones of bicycle chimes, dogs barking, hawks screeching. I start wondering about all these lives and what motivates them to get on the trail that early on a Saturday morning. It gives me something to ponder as the miles stretch out before me.

About half way through my run, I noticed an older man, probably late 60s/early 70s, chugging along on the trail. My first thought was "bully for you!" but what affected me long after we passed each other was his huge smile. Here was someone running with a genuine smile! Runners don't always look happy to me, especially as the conditions worsen and pain kicks in, but this guy clearly knew bliss.

I wondered to myself what would happen if I finished my run in imitation of him?

Answer? An even better run!

A yoga teacher once told me that sometimes the hardest thing to do in a challenging moment is to pull the corners of your mouth up into a smile. And, if you could do that one small thing, you'd find you'd feel better within seconds. He was telling the truth. Marathons are certainly challenging, as are all the months of preparation, so I took the tip from my joyful messenger, smiled and grinned the rest of my way through the run. I was surprised to learn that I finished it faster and with more energy than past runs.

Lesson learned! Smile. Smile often on the running trail...on the life trail. It sure makes the journey a heck of a lot more exciting and felicitous.

Fourth of July Festivities

July is one of my favorite months. It's the height of summer, people are generally more relaxed, and the weather is usually sunny and bright. I had some time off around the Fourth and was keen to do something, so we hopped in the car, set our sights on Charlottesville and its environs and got on our way.

First stop: Luray Caverns. I'd gone caving before as a kid but that was some time ago so when the opportunity presented itself to explore under ground, I was game. According to their website, the caverns began to form 4,000,000 centuries ago and are the largest and most popular caverns on the East Coast.

Titania's Veil, Luray Caverns, photo taken from website.

The caverns were such great fun and I felt my imagination soar as I took in the natural art around me. Incredible to think that all of this was created by dripping water! Fascinatingly, the caverns boast of a Stalacpipe Organ--the world's largest musical instrument created by Mr. Leland W. Sprinkle in 1954. By attaching rubber-tipped mallets to some of the stalactites, he was able to create musical compositions, some of which can still be heard today in the caverns. Luray Cavern was full of surprises and I think I most enjoyed skulking about like Persephone!

Next up: Skyline Drive and Shenandoah National Park. Skyline Drive is one of the most beautiful drives I've done to this date. It's about 105 miles of winding roads through pretty country tucked amid steep mountain ridges. The trees were lush with summer greenery and I found myself thinking that I would have to come back to tour fall's colors. Camping, hiking, backcountry opportunities abound! Lots to do here other than soak up its beautiful vistas. If you're in the Virginia area, do check it out.

As we twisted our way to C-ville, we decided to try out local wines. Since moving here, I've learned a bit about Virginia wines, even drinking a few bottles. I was surprised...some are actually pretty terrific! So, don't be fooled when folk tell you Virginia should stop making wines. False information! Virginia boasts of several rather intrepid winemakers who are happy to sit down and chat about their visions, processes and wines. Over the course of the weekend, we went to 5 different vineyards, tasted, chowed down some burgers and listened to bluegrass on the premises.

We tasted at Afton Mountain, Jefferson, First Colony, Kluge, & Blenheim and bought wines from each vineyard. We brought home Afton's Mountain Rose, Riesling 2008 and Gewurztraminer 2008; Jefferson's Chardonnay 2008, Cabernet Franc 2007 and Viognier 2008; First Colony's Cabernet Franc 2006; Kluge's Ablemarle Simply Red 2004; Bleinheim's Cabernet Franc 2008, Viognier 2008, Rose 2008. Of these, I think the wines at Jefferson, Kluge and Blenheim impressed us most for their crisp taste and overall quality.

After each day of touring, we contented ourselves with the simple charm and hospitality of downtown Charlottesville, feasting on terrific meals and taking in the folky yet sophisticated ambiance. The city has this relaxed college town vibe, reminding me a little of Missoula but not completely. I was previously in C-ville back in 2003 when I was thinking about attending the University of Virginia's Architectural History Ph.D. program. Princeton won out but there are days when I wonder what I missed out on down there in the Blue Ridge mountains.

Entrance to Monticello, July 4, 2009.

History buffs that we are, we decided it'd be a sin not to stop by Monticello on the Fourth and pay our respects to Jefferson (he died on July 4, 1826). I consider him one of our nation's most ingenious, fascinating yet perplexing individuals. Here was the man who argued that the U of V should be place in Ablemarle Co. because it had the state's longest living people...the man who brought architecture to the forefront of early American thinking...who was a voracious reader and talented statesman. BUT he was also the man who argued against slavery while owning slaves. And what about his hush-hush relationship with Sally Hemings? Was that love or simple advantage?

On the whole, it was a lovely trip, a feast for all senses. If you find yourself in Virginia, do try to get over to that section of the state. It's gorgeous and rich in learning opportunities.

Krishna

"come and see," he said
and opened his mouth wide
to reveal the universe's vastness.

and she saw the simultaneous
blush and pallor of worlds --
birth and death --
contained neatly in the charioteer.

"come and see,"
he said
and beckoned her.

and she took the opportunity
and climbed into the mouth that fed her

one with the starry universe

and swam in the embryonic dust
of her unborn self.

Prism -- For Moon Woman

water shimmers and shimmies
refracting light -
internal bling on display.

illusory
but visible

moving mirages under water.

Dragonfly

whir of impatient wings
actively flirting
with the shine
from a new car.

and i sit within
and record the
unrequited mating
with a giggle
as it flashes by

one
more
time.

Fractal

little snippets of self,
replicating
upwards and outwards
like a Pythagoras tree.

living dna
in miniature
ever reducing itself
towards the infinitesimal

and shifting
to the beat of a
mathematical leitmotif.

Marathon Training Lesson #3 -- Hot Water Never Felt So Good

Today, as part of my ongoing marathon training regimen, I ran 14 miles. It is the longest I have ever run in one go and I ran it in about 2 hours and 10 minutes. Whoa.

I have to admit that I was a little anxious before I got started given that I had just returned from a short vacation and was uncertain how my body would react to a weekend off my training diet/schedule. Apparently, my body dug it because 14 miles came and went without a drop in energy or cadence. The last mile was perhaps the toughest due to some tender knees and ankles but, on the whole, I bee bopped along without incident.

Still, given that I'm really trying to be careful with my knees (it'd be nice to have original parts at 80) and knowing (from experience) how sore my muscles get after these long runs, I soaked in a jacuzzi for a while and let the hot water work its magic. Afterward, I massaged the muscles with some oil and stretched them out for a while longer.

Soaking afforded me a little time to contemplate today's run and the mileage that still awaits me in the coming months. In that moment, I recognized that I was pooped but invigorated...that my knees and ankles were barking but that the hot water soothed them...that working past the mind allowed for great achievements in the body...and that I was proud of myself and my small accomplishment. 14 miles isn't 26.2 miles but it's more than half way there!

Winner Announced as Voice of Wisley

After two months of waiting, the Royal Horticultural Society finally announced the winner of May's Voice of Wisley contest. And, in my book, the best part of the announcement is that the winner is none other than Sarah Darwin, Charles Darwin's great-great granddaughter. What a lovely historical continuation involving one botanist to another!

Over 40 individuals came to Wisley to audition for the contest in late spring and the contenders were wittled down to about ten or so based upon their reading of favorite literature--from Shakespeare to poetry to the great books. The tomato plants listened to these recordings through headphones secured to their pots and measurements of their growth were taken over the two months. Results showed that Ms. Darwin's tomato plants grew 1.6 cm higher than the control plants in the study. Her choice of literature? Selections from The Origins of Species, of course.

Perhaps one of the most revealing aspects of the study is that the plants reponded better to women's voices than men's. No explanation is given for this but some like Colin Crosbie, Garden Superintendent and curator for the "Voice of Wisley" experiment, suspect that it may have something to do with tone and pitch. Regardless, it makes me want to draw all my plants around me and read them stories nightly!

Shiver me timbers!

"i am sitting through the most mind numbing training,"
she complained to her friend.

"it is some of the most unintuitive,
utterly ridiculous stuff i've ever had to learn
and it makes me sigh and say inwardly
'there has to be a better way to do this.'

she paused.

"but mutiny probably isn't a good idea,"
she consented with a grin.

"although i have a direct line to Blackbeard
in case i decide to go forth."

Ocean

cerulean sea's natural heartbeat
the need to merge into it --

to climb back into
the womb that birthed us.

For Ruth Stone

she stood wide-eyed
on the black earth
and knew the words were near.

familiar muse rattled towards her -
intent on finding voice.

so she ran
and ran
and ran

ran over soil
and grass
and straw
and wood,

into her home,
child's feet on the stairs,
fingers finding pencil
and paper

pulling the words
into her and onto the page -
exposed.

Olfactory Nerve

in the stairwell
she caught a whiff
of oil of olay and
late summer roses --
olfaction
and memories
of her grandmother.

with child's eyes
she noticed the weathered skin
and softness of body and muscle
as she was caressed and hugged -

the purse that was well-stocked
with wrigley's doublemint gum.

and in all this closeness
love still felt very far away.

Joseph Campbell and Jiddu Krishnamurti

My ongoing reading of Joseph Campbell's life has taken me into new directions and into new literary terrain I have not frequented; it's exciting. Joseph Campbell--on a steam boat from Europe to America in 1924--prodigiously encountered Jiddu Krishnamurti, a famous speaker of religious and spiritual material, and later said that the serendipitous meeting changed his life.

Campbell would encounter Krishnamurti several more times during the 1920s but his last visit occurred in 1929 when he went to hear Krishnamurti speak in Eerde, Holland. Krishnamurti was considered by some theosophists to be the "World Teacher," but he later disbanded the group (Order of the Star) in 1929 which had sprung up around him.

Campbell was so inspired by Krishnamurti's words while at Eerde, he offered the following to his journal:

"So here I hang between my past and my future--trying to fan a spark to flame--a spark which came as the final gift from my past. And now I feel that the old shell of the Joe who was searching and never quite finding lies somewhere in the woods which are about Krishna's castle. --But through the shell was a fairly huge thing, the creature which stepped out of it is microscopic in size! Sometimes I lose him amidst all the rubbish of my old feelings--and I never have seen him stand up on his own feet and walk. But this tiny spark of what I hope to be--this glimmer of gold which I've discovered at last in the midst of disillusions--this thing is what I'm going home now to nourish, and to build into something" (An Open Mind, p. 113).

I think this is why I am so drawn to Campbell's words -- they soothe me and validate my own experience of growth and expansion into the world and into myself. I make it a habit to follow synchronicity whenever it shows up in my life, so when Krishnamurti's name began to pop up rather frequently on my radar, I decided to follow in Alice's footsteps and investigate. I'm beginning with Krishnamurti's "Total Freedom," which is a collection of his work and one which seems to echo my quest for greater self-discovery and awareness.

Krishnamurti writes in his essay "What I Want To Do":

"What I want to do is to help you, the individual, to cross the stream of suffering, confusion and conflict, through deep and complete fulfillment. This fulfillment does not come through egotistic self-expression, nor through compulsion and imitation. Not through some fantastic sentiment and conclusions, but through clear thinking, through intelligent action, we shall cross this stream of pain and sorrow. There is a reality which can be understood only through deep and true fulfillment" (Total Freedom, p. 10).

I'm not entirely sure where this new direction is taking me, but I'm game to find out. Besides, I think it's a tad thrilling to read Campbell and Krishnamurti simultaneously given that they were friends in real life. Perhaps they will look kindly upon my search as I plow through their literature and point out what I need to know and tuck away for future exploration.

Callings

"come back,
come back,"
said the Self.

"come back
from your
waywardness.

"come back
and sit
in the place
where there is
wholeness

and you
no longer rise
to meet the wind."

Maya Lin at the Corcoran Gallery

Tonight I went to the Corcoran Gallery of Art to hear Maya Lin speak about her new exhibit "Systematic Landscapes" which will show there until July 12, 2009. If you live in the DC area or are planning a visit here in the next few weeks, I encourage you to go and see it for yourself - it's amazing and encourages you to look anew upon all which surrounds you.

I've been drawn to Lin's work for years -- the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial (since moving to DC), The Women's Table at Yale University in New Haven, CT (during my time as a student at Yale), "Reading a Garden" at Cleveland Public Library's main branch downtown (near where I grew up) and "Storm King Wavefield" at the Storm King Art Center in NY (one of my favorite and most frequented places on the Eastern seaboard) -- so it was quite a treat to engage with her new work in person and to hear her speak about it.

Lin shared with us that she's always been moved by the land and hoped that each of us would begin to look at the world differently and more expansively after viewing her pieces in the galleries above.

I think what pulls me most to Lin's work is the quiet center which sits in stillness within each of her pieces--the pause within each work that acknowledges your connection to it even though you lack intimacy with it.

Again, I find myself hearing the same message but from still a different teacher...this message of "within"...of "go within"...of "go to the center and sit and know stillness." Lawrence Weschler wrote in the foreward to "Systematic Landscape":

"I kept finding myself being put in mind: of this, and then that, and then of course right past all of that to the hushed core, the stilled center, into which one eventually always seems to find oneself arriving with her work...with Maya's pieces, how one is always shifting back and forth like that, between the particulate and the seamless, between material facticity and transcendent form--all of that, all of that, all of that stuff, and then grace quite simply abounding" (p. 11, 13).

So, I sit. I know stillness. I wait. I see the answers coming to me but they're still far away on the horizon, like the coming of a dusk or a brilliant dawn. I watch the movement and the shadows as they lengthen and then shorten and anticipate the light which will brighten my face and my soul. And the answers that will come and sit with me in this still space.

In the meantime, I sit.

I know stillness.

I wait.

Joseph Campbell

I've been on what I would affectionately call a "Joseph Campbell" kick much of the past year, feeling pulled to read and reflect on his writings and on the content of his interviews with others (most famously those with Bill Moyers conducted in 1988.) Currently, I'm reading "A Fire in the Mind: the life of Joseph Campbell" and am learning about his transformative time in Paris during the years 1927-28.

It feels like a hint of synchronicity because I just returned from Paris and felt pulled to many of the same places once frequented by Campbell, like Paris's famous English bookstore, Shakespeare and Company. I first discovered the store in 1996 and now make it a point to revisit it whenever I'm in Paris. In 1927, Campbell had the good fortune to meet its first proprietor, Miss Sylvia Beach, who ran the little store, hosted literary salons there, and even managed to get James Joyce's Ulysses published in Paris -- no small feat given that in 1922 the book was banned and even burned in both America and Great Britain.

Shakespeare and Company bookstore, Paris, June 2009.

Campbell later wrote that reading Joyce helped him "to translate knowledge and information into experience: that seems to me the function of literature and art. And it was with that I made the step not to becoming an artist but to try to find what the experience would be in the material I was dealing with (A Fire in the Mind, p. 84).

Also while in Paris, he encountered Angela Gregory, a young American sculptor who was studying under the master sculptor Antoine Bourdelle, and later introduced him to her teacher. Bourdelle, a former student of Rodin, took a liking to Campbell and invited him into his inner circle, even permitting him to watch him at work.

Bourdelle taught Campbell that one's totality was the fuel on which the spirit fire of the creative process fed (A Fire in the Mind, p. 91). The master sculptor also offered this quote which perfectly articulates all that I feel right now:

"Let us be ashamed of our superficial life, it is full of lies. There are only two possibilities: the one is that we are not able to see truth, the other that, when we have once seen it glimmering before us, the path that is leading to it, we are devoured by the eternal thirst to follow it to the end. He who is filled with this love for truth goes out into life like a hero without weapons, but under the spread-out wings of an archangel."

I find myself dutifully following a type of rabbit hole that first presented itself to me in my dreams last summer. The course has been interesting but there's a theme and it's connected; Campbell is just one guide along the way. What I've also noticed as of late is that my inner voice has much more to say than my outer voice, and I'm craving deep and meaningful conversations with others on matters of spirituality, comparative religion, Jungian psychology, and comparative mythology. This is the type of work with which I want to spend my days and what I hope to transition into sometime soon.

Going Inward

If last summer's theme was to raise my vibrations, this summer's is about going within. It's not a new theme but it's gotten to the point now that it's popping up SO frequently and in so many diverse places that I just have to giggle and tell the universe, "Okay, okay. Message received. I'm on it."

But what does this mean exactly? I take it to mean the following: meditate, pray, reflect habitually enough so that you can eventually come to a place which transcends even silence. There, in that space, the answers will come. Insight will come. Peace will befriend you. Anxiety will melt away and creativity will blossom.

And I know that this works because I've followed this practice before, even religiously so. Humanoid that I am, I have fallen OUT of this practice the past several months and am feeling the effects. My efforts are sporadic now, so I take the universe's message anew and will address it.

Over the weekend, I went on silent retreat at a monastery and relished its natural beauty, rhythm and proffered silence. It was good to be still and silent and to follow my soul around for a few days, reminding me of a curious puppy content to do one thing one moment and then do something else 30 minutes later. During my time there, I felt pulled to walk the monastery's grounds after meals and the habit allowed me to run, hop, and skip through fields and dance with the wildlife there. I saw blue herons greet each other in the morning with loud squawks which I translated as, "Morning, Tom. Morning, Fred." Bluebirds and woodpeckers flitted about, white and yellow butterflies hovered in verdant fields and cows lowed to each other at dusk.

The silence tempered my thoughts and allowed me to go within unhindered and unhurried. Joseph Campbell and the Upanishads were within close reach. Rilke, too. I smiled when Campbell began to discuss the need for inward journeying. "So there are two stages to this: one is going inward, and finding the relationship of your own deeper self to the ground of being so that you become transparent to transcendence; the other is bringing this realization back into operation in the field, which is the work of the artist--to interpret the contemporary world as experienced in terms of relevance to our inner life (An Open Life, p. 22).

Later he says, "And what the Orient brings is a realization of the inward way. When you sit in meditation with your hands on your lap, with your head looking down, that means you've gone in and you're coming not just to a soul that is disengaged from God: you're coming to that divine mystery right there in yourself (p. 89).

Rilke counsels the young poet seeking advice in the following manner: "You are looking outward, and that above all you should not do now. Nobody can counsel and help you, nobody. There is only one single way. Go into yourself...ask yourself in the stillest hour of your night: must I write? Delve into yourself for a deep answer...What more shall I say to you? Everything seems to me to have its just emphasis; and after all I do only want to advise you to keep growing quietly and seriously through your whole development; you cannot disturb it more rudely than by looking outward and expecting from outside replies to questions that only your inmost feeling in your most hushed hour can perhaps answer (Letters to a Young Poet, Letter One).

I am moving towards stillness. I have been reminded. The stay at the monastery didn't answer my questions (I knew it wouldn't) BUT it has fortified me for the inner journey ahead.

Boundaries

One of my most treasured finds this summer is Maya Lin's book entitled "Boundaries." I checked the hardback version out of the public library and took my time pondering her style and her expressions of self and of art. It will be hard to return it as it is a meditation of page and image.

It is poetically done. Thoughtfully and honestly composed.
Blessed work of hands and spirit.

Architecture has always moved me. Historically, I have captured more pictures of man-made materials and their compositions and interactions with light and shade than of human beings. Buildings and their builders speak to me, and I understand this need of architects to build and compose works to sit within the natural world and blend, mimic, manipulate and, sometimes, even dominate it.

Architecture can also an expression of memorial. Lin is most well known for her design for the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial but her work and mind reaches beyond remembrances for the dead. Like Andy Goldsworthy, she respects and plays with natural elements. She puzzles out clues within the land and grants them voice.

And, as she points out, life and art is asymmetrical. "To combine the rational and the intuitive, the straight line and the curve. The one without the other doesn't balance; it is the juxtaposition of the two that informs the whole" (p. 10:04). Architecture then cannot separate the land from the viewer -- building and site must remain fluid and joined.

I was excited to learn that the Corcoran Gallery has a new exhibition of hers on display, and I am looking forward to conversation with the architect herself as she presents her reflections on earth in a world abuzz with technology and environment.

Condensation

cumulonimbus
builds and spreads upwards
on invisible air drafts
as if generated by the hand
patiently turning the summer fair's cotton candy.

reaching
and
reaching

upwards and outwards

and downwards
towards the earth

rapidly shifting
but still penetrated by swift contrails
which mark their ride on exhalations
from the dirt
and from witnesses who are parched
and await its offerings below.

Paris

Tour Eiffel, Paris, June 2009

"If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a movable feast."
~ Ernest Hemingway

I've been lucky enough to have toured Paris several times in my life, and I've enjoyed the city on each occasion; however, I have to confess that it's never formed roots in my bones like Jerusalem or Prague or Rome. So, I was surprised that I came to admire Paris and its citizens during my stay and I departed with a new affinity for France's rich culture.

Bookseller along the Seine River

On the morning of my second day in Paris, I found myself up early and unable to sleep any further. I tossed and turned and debated about trying to fall back asleep. I decided against nursing my jet lag and hopped out of bed, determined to see as much of Paris as I could. Since my hotel was a stone's throw from the Louvre, I began my day with a stroll through the Jardin des Tuileries. The early hour allowed for silent wandering which refreshed my spirit.

Monet's Les Nympheas, Musee de l'Orangerie, Paris

I later sat in the room dedicated to Monet's waterlillies at Musee de l'Orangerie. This is not the first time I have beheld Monet's work--having visited his gardens at Giverny and museum exhibits dedicated to his work around the world--but this was the first time I was moved emotionally. I was struck by the sheer size of the paintings so neatly contrasted by the room's white walls and floor. Monet is my mother's favorite artist and I grew up listening to her short lessons on the artist along with viewing his works at her side. The moment was not lost on me that my adult self sat taking in these considerable works in my mum's absence. No postcard or letter can convey the richness of what I saw...though I tried.

Musee d'Orsay, Paris

labyrinthine twists under paned glass
and steeled architecture providing shelter
as she roamed through
marble
and oil
and light
and air
until she rested in front of nature's reveal
and captured it on celluloid
for public viewing back home.

Le Nature se devoilant devant la Science, Ernest Barrias, 1899
(Nature Unveiling Herself To Science)

The city was fresh and cool and perfectly coiffed and stayed.
Unmoving.
Frozen but fluid.
Merged and married.
Vibrant.
Filled with je ne sais quoi.
And more.

Sacre-Coeur, Paris

and god sat above on a hill
and watched the skirts fly in montmartre
as liquid was exchanged
as easily as money
and souls walked along the shadows of moulin rouge
in search of something --
a need lit in red
and secured by the lust of others.

Travels

Off on some travels but will return with new material and thoughts sometime soon!

Embryo

the ocean is a restless mother
simultaneously birthing and aborting -
excreting scents from her womb which confuse this witness.

foam meets scarred earth which
the mother soothes twice a day.

she wipes clean the striae
of
cycles
and
prints
and
paws

and the living pick over the dead
and its skeletons

and press it all into fine dust.

Photosynthesis

pretty wildflowers
flooding a stretch of earth --
gravid with yellow.

like sweet spring chicks
following the sun,
their heads bobbing and gaping for nourishment

drinking from the mother
and swaying from the swish of a passerby.

Hiatus

Hello, All. I'll be taking a short hiatus from the blog but will return in June! Enjoy your holiday and I'll catch you next month.

Rest is good. Mental rest is better!

Wisdom from Heron Dance #303

The most recent Heron Dance "A Pause for Beauty"--written by its founder Rod MacIver--had some lovely advice embedded within that I'd like to share here. It stresses the importance of slowing down and cultivating balance in your life. It stresses the need to slow down your life and look around at all your blessings. In short: it's truly lovely. Enjoy.

"I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what it means to live life guided by love. I’ve got a long, long way to go but every day I’m trying to get a little further down the path. Love is a simple and obviously profound word, and in part that’s why I like it. I need something I can boil right down because I fall so easily off track.

I remember an inmate who had been in prison a very long time saying in an interview — it may even been one of the inmate interviews I did in the early days of Heron Dance — that “I love you” is one phrase we humans never tire of hearing. An Op-Ed article in the New York Times last week, by David Brooks, described a 72-year study of 268 men who attended Harvard College. They were gifted, affluent and apparently well-adjusted. It is a fascinating article (visit here to view), and the conclusion of the man who oversaw the work for 42 years was that “Love is happiness. Full stop.” The degree of happiness in a person’s life depends on the quality of human relationships.

Yes, I agree, but there is more to it than just human relationships. The degree of love we are able to pour into a work — for instance, a creative work — or even a place — for instance, a wild place or a community — affects the quality of our lives. Pouring love into a home even has an expansive effect: — creating a home of peace and beauty, a simple home, a home where others — strangers, friends and family — feel comfortable and at peace, contributes to the quality of a human life.

To build a life around love requires thought and care. You need to be rested. You can’t fill yourself with love when you are overtired and grouchy. You need to live a low stress life, a life with a margin in reserve — a financial margin, an energy margin. You need to put understanding and acceptance ahead of winning conflicts or prevailing in disputes. A life built around love probably involves a fair amount of surrender over relatively minor issues.

You also need to minimize the number of moving parts. When I’m going in lots of different directions or responsible for lots of different projects, I can’t find love inside myself and can’t offer it to others or even to my work. All of these things have some relationship with one’s friendship with oneself and, perhaps, as a part of that, a relationship to time in reflection and quiet meditation.

The Op-Ed piece also contains these observations: “A third of the men would suffer at least one bout of mental illness. Alcoholism would be a running plague. The most mundane personalities often produced the most solid success.” Mundane? We can’t be what we’re not. I’m not mundane and don’t want to be, but I have a very happy life. I love adventure, challenge, and learning. I’m fascinated by life. But balance is another thing. I often struggle for balance. I’m prone to extremes. When I’m living a balanced life — work and play, physical exercise and rest, the paddle down a wild river and then the return home to a quiet evening — I’m most able to find the love inside myself and offer it to the world."

Starbucks: The Way I See It #76

This morning I noticed the below quote on the back of my Starbucks cup. I thought it was so well stated, especially how it captured the essence of what it means to commit to something, that I wanted to share it here. Thanks, (self described "organization builder, restless American citizen, optimist), for sharing your thought with us.

"The irony of commitment is that it's deeply liberating--in work, in play, in love. The act frees you from the tyranny of your internal critic, from the fear that likes to dress itself up and parade around as rational hesitation. To commit is to remove your head as the barrier to your life."

~ Anne Morriss, self described "organization builder, restless American citizen, optimist"

Forming a commitment to something or someone goes well past ideas of attachment because when you commit, you give of yourself; you become one with something other than yourself and with all simultaneously. You no longer exist for yourself alone -- you can't. Perhaps this is why it is both so welcomed and so feared. For in the midst of our commitment, we let something -- whether an intellectual or spiritual pursuit -- or someone into our deepest center and make the decision to show up 100%. There is no hiding when committed. There is no hesitation...just discernment beforehand and then the plunge.