Some things will never change - Thomas Wolfe

Some things will never change. Some things will always be the same. Lean down your ear upon the earth and listen.

The voice of forest water in the night, a woman's laughter in the dark, the clean, hard rattle of raked gravel, the cricketing stitch of midday in hot meadows, the delicate web of children's voices in bright air--these things will never change.

The glitter of sunlight on roughened water, the glory of the stars, the innocence of morning, the smell of the sea in harbors, the feathery blur and smoky buddings of young boughs, and something there that comes and goes and never can be captured, the thorn of spring, the sharp and tongueless cry--these things will always be the same.

All things belonging to the earth will never change--the leaf, the blade, the flower, the wind that cries and sleeps and wakes again, the trees whose stiff arms clash and tremble in the dark, and the dust of lovers long since buried in the earth--all things proceeding from the earth to seasons, all things that lapse and change and come again upon the earth--these things will always be the same, for they come up from the earth that never changes, they go back into the earth that lasts forever. Only the earth endures, but it endures forever.

The tarantula, the adder, and the asp will also never change. Pain and death will always be the same. But under the pavements trembling like a pulse, under the buildings trembling like a cry, under the waste of time, under the hoof of the beast above the broken bones of cities, there will be something growing like a flower, something bursting from the earth again, forever deathless, faithful, coming into life again like April.

My help is in the mountain - Nancy Wood

My help is in the mountain
Where I take myself to heal
The earthly wounds
That people give to me.
I find a rock with sun on it
And a stream where the water runs gentle
And the trees which one by one give me company.
So must I stay for a long time
Until I have grown from the rock
And the stream is running through me
And I cannot tell myself from one tall tree.
Then I know that nothing touches me
Nor makes me run away.
My help is in the mountain
That I take away with me.

Earth cure me. Earth receive my woe. Rock strengthen me. Rock receive my weakness. Rain wash my sadness away. Rain receive my doubt. Sun make sweet my song. Sun receive the anger from my heart.

i thank you god for this most amazing - ee cummings

i thank You God for most this amazing

day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees

and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything

which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,

and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth

day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay

great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing

breathing any–lifted from the no

of all nothing–human merely being

doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and

now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

Russian Roulette, Indian Style

Sara Littlecrow-Russell

Russian Roulette

Indian style,

Is the spinning cylinder

Of a 500-year-old gun

With 5 out of 6 chambers loaded.

Each bullet

Has a different name—

Alcohol

Disease

Poverty

Violence

Assimilation.

Survival is finding the name

Of the empty chamber.

Albuquerque Boosterism

I've been thinking a lot in bumper stickers lately.  What do you say to capture the unique cacophony of humble greatness that is our city?

ABQ:  The good/bad news is that nothing is professionalized here!

ABQ:  Not for posers.

ABQ:  Underestimating itself for over 400 years.

ABQ:  Not for your children, or your parents

ABQ:  The only thing we hate more than sprawl is infill

ABQ:  Where we want improvement with no change

ABQ:  Where we won't change until it's too late

ABQ:  Good thing the quality of life is so high; incomes certainly aren't!

ABQ:  More open space than jobs

ABQ:  View your future the past

ABQ:  So many views, such narrow perspectives

ABQ:  Be who you want here; no one's watching

ABQ:  So cool we don't even have to be cool anymore

ABQ:  No one to dress up for; nowhere to go dressed up

ABQ:  Micro brews, nano night life

ABQ:  Come for the lifestyle, leave for a better wage

ABQ:  More beautiful than Denver, without all that pesky transit and night life

ABQ:  Bring your wealth; you won't find any here (p.s. don't flaunt it)

UUABQ Poetry Service - April 2014

Voces Editing Discussion

More on editing with Voces from 2009 here and here.

Poetry Chatter

Money Money Money Maaaanay

I've gone from never carrying a balance on a credit card to feeling really good that we have ENOUGH credit left on the credit card to get through the next month.

Not because we don't earn enough but because my husband, as an independent contractor, cannot seem to psychologically handle invoicing.

And I get it.  I have the opportunity to apply for a promotion at work, and I'm paralyzed. I've known for days, and I can't seem to get past the initial questions on the application.  There's something that kicks in about worthiness and having to prove it with a job application or an invoice or a summary report of your monthly activities.  We want to be appreciated and loved for who we are, not what we brag about on paper.  And maybe we feel entitled, too. We're awesome; why can't they just pay us for that?

But after four months of no salary coming in, it's worse than scary. It's crazy-making, rage-inducing, marriage-wrecking awful.  Not sure we'll survive even when the crisis passes.  There's just so much trust that's been lost and so much of my faith betrayed, wracked up like the credit cards with no minimum payments.

Anger the only dividends.

We barely touch anymore. Laugh infrequently.  Parenting and Hulu about all we share.

I might be more sad about that if I wasn't so angry all the time.  And tired of being angry all the time.

I want to be saving money for a house addition, and instead we're tens of thousands in the hole.

Invoices would put us right but not ahead.  And once we do get paid, we will likely owe much of it in taxes.  Which I'm happy to pay.

Sigh.

Maybe it will be enough to plan a trip to Chicago and Michigan this summer.  Maybe all will be right in a matter of another month, and I can breathe again and unknot the pretzel at my core.

Well being

I don't know what it is tonight...

A presenter's high.  A bolt of coffee late in the day.  Exercise three days in a row. Drinking enough water, finally, throughout the day.  Enough sleep. A new regimen of Vitamin D kicking in.  Several good work days in a row where I've gotten SO.MUCH.DONE.  An evening without the grind of small children and cooking and bedtime.  A tiny amount of money in the bank at the moment. A reprieve from allergies.  Good music. Good friends.  Good life.  All of it together in a trough of life chaos.

But I'm feeling good tonight. Whole. Called to action.  So happy that I'm working on the project of a lifetime with co-workers I love and respect and care about.  Doing work that matters, will matter.  Precedent-setting, once-in-a-generation kind of work.  Work that takes me to the edge of my competence, that uses all my skills, that feels like I've been building up all of my experiences and education and talents for this.  An opportunity.  A challenge.  A blessing.

I've been thinking a lot about my high school boyfriend who took his own life a little over a year ago.  He was a tortured soul.  I loved his dark side, felt it complemented my goody two shoes shallowness in a way I knew was needed.  I think he was drawn to the commitment and effort I put into everything I do.  It complemented his own sporadic runs at greatness.  I miss him.  I miss the way he loved me and forgave me my earnestness.

And he foreshadowed all the other boyfriends in that same vein for me. The boys trying to be men sporadically.  The black hole love they offered and I fell into every time.

My marriage is the light side of that dark side moon.  Constant but unchanging and therefore often easy to overlook.  In my worst moments, all I can feel is its lifelessness.

But today, it just seemed like sunlight.  Impersonal, maybe, but ultimately life-sustaining. Warm.  Like a day in April when everything seemed full of Spring potential and latent energy.

I've done two events connected to my work project now that have felt FATED. Where I was so on, so connected with folks in the room, that nothing could fail.  Where the right words came and hit just the right note, set just the right tone.  Well received and reciprocated.

That is so magical.  I imagine it feels like preaching a sermon that resonates with people you are called to love.

I am a true believer, it appears.  And the optimism that once drew dark boys is now drawing community members into a story of hope and potential and opportunity.  And at just the right time.

Oh hallelujah.  Just the right time.  I am so grateful and so full of grace and so grateful to be so full of grace.

The Afterlife (poem) by Billy Collins

While you are preparing for sleep, brushing your teeth,
or riffling through a magazine in bed,
the dead of the day are setting out on their journey.

They're moving off in all imaginable directions,
each according to his own private belief,
and this is the secret that silent Lazarus would not reveal:
that everyone is right, as it turns out.
you go to the place you always thought you would go,
The place you kept lit in an alcove in your head.

Some are being shot into a funnel of flashing colors
into a zone of light, white as a January sun.
Others are standing naked before a forbidding judge who sits
with a golden ladder on one side, a coal chute on the other.

Some have already joined the celestial choir
and are singing as if they have been doing this forever,
while the less inventive find themselves stuck
in a big air conditioned room full of food and chorus girls.

Some are approaching the apartment of the female God,
a woman in her forties with short wiry hair
and glasses hanging from her neck by a string.
With one eye she regards the dead through a hole in her door.

There are those who are squeezing into the bodies
of animals--eagles and leopards--and one trying on
the skin of a monkey like a tight suit,
ready to begin another life in a more simple key,

while others float off into some benign vagueness,
little units of energy heading for the ultimate elsewhere.

There are even a few classicists being led to an underworld
by a mythological creature with a beard and hooves.
He will bring them to the mouth of the furious cave
guarded over by Edith Hamilton and her three-headed dog.

The rest just lie on their backs in their coffins
wishing they could return so they could learn Italian
or see the pyramids, or play some golf in a light rain.
They wish they could wake in the morning like you
and stand at a window examining the winter trees,
every branch traced with the ghost writing of snow.

Run before Dawn (poem) by William Stafford

Most mornings I get away, slip out
the door before light, set forth on the dim gray
road, letting my feet find a cadence
that softly carries me on. Nobody
is up-all alone my journey begins.

Some days it's escape: the city is burning
behind me, cars have stalled in their tracks,
and everybody is fleeing like me but some other direction.
My stride is for life, a far place.

Other days it is hunting: maybe some game will cross
my path and my stride will follow for hours, matching
all turns. My breathing has caught the right beat
for endurance; familiar trancelike scenes glide by.

And sometimes it's a dream of motion, streetlights coming near,
passing, shadows that lean before me, lengthened
then fading, and a sound from a tree: a soul, or an owl.

These journeys are quiet. They mark my days with adventure
too precious for anyone else to share, little gems
of darkness, the world going by, and my breath, and the road.

The Expanse Cast Graphic Edition!

And because I couldn't resist, here's one more graphic, from one fan to another...

The Expanse - James A. Corey

I admit I read the books because I was college roommates with one of the authors.

But I loved them for the awesome!

And now, I'm highly anticipating the SyFy tv series and obsessively watching for news like this...

But nowhere has a cast list with pictures, so ... for my own edification.  Here's the list such as it's public to date.

The range of attachment... what explains my relationships

And from this article:

Attachment Style	Parental Style	Resulting Adult Characteristics
Secure	Aligned with the child; in tune with the child’s emotions	Able to create meaningful relationships; empathetic; able to set appropriate boundaries
Avoidant	Unavailable or rejecting	Avoids closeness or emotional connection; distant; critical; rigid; intolerant
Ambivalent	Inconsistent and sometimes intrusive parent communication	Anxious and insecure; controlling; blaming; erratic; unpredictable; sometimes charming
Disorganized	Ignored or didn’t see child’s needs; parental behavior was frightening/traumatizing	Chaotic; insensitive; explosive; abusive; untrusting even while craving security
Reactive	Extremely unattached or malfunctioning	Cannot establish positive relationships; often misdiagnosed

A Ritual to Read to Each Other (poem) by William Stafford

If you don't know the kind of person I am
and I don't know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to play through the broken dyke.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,
but if one wanders the circus won't find the park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider--
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give--yes or no, or maybe--
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

The Three Goals (poem) by David Budbill

The first goal is to see the thing in itself
in and for itself, to see it simply and clearly
for what it is.
No symbolism, please.

The second goal is to see each individual thing
as unified, as one, with all the other
ten thousand things.
In this regard, a little wine helps a lot.

The third goal is to grasp the first and the second goals,
to see the universal in the particular,
simultaneously.
Regarding this one, call me when you get it.

"Tired of Speaking Sweetly" - Hafiz

Love wants to reach out and manhandle us,

Break all our teacup talk of God.

If you had the courage and

Could give the Beloved His choice, some nights,

He would just drag you around the room

By your hair,

Ripping from your grip all those toys in the world

That bring you no joy.

Love sometimes gets tired of speaking sweetly

And wants to rip to shreds

All your erroneous notions of truth

That make you fight within yourself, dear one,

And with others,

Causing the world to weep

On too many fine days.

God wants to manhandle us,

Lock us inside of a tiny room with Himself

And practice His dropkick.

The Beloved sometimes wants

To do us a great favor:

Hold us upside down

And shake all the nonsense out.

But when we hear

He is in such a “playful drunken mood”

Most everyone I know

Quickly packs their bags and hightails it

Out of town.

Carry on, Warrior - Glennon Doyle Melton

I loved this book.  Even when she annoyed me, she had me.  She's at her best on the edges, and boy does she have a lot of edges.

She's a bad mom's best friend.

Evidence:  The kickoff quote

"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle."  - Rev. John Watson

"Including you." - Glennon

"if you are thin and smile a lot, people tend to believe that you have the universe's secrets in your pocket and that a raindrop has never fallen on your head."

"Since brokenness is the way of folks, the only way to live peacefully is to forgive everyone constantly, including yourself."

"Life is hard--not because we're doing it wrong, just because it's hard."

"You can hide from the sun, but it won't take that personally. It'll never, ever punish you for hiding.  You can stay in the dark for years or decades, and when you finally step outside, it'll be there, steady and bright as ever, just waiting for you to notice, to come out, to be warmed. ... The sunrise was my daily invitation ... to come back to life."

"[W]riting, reading, water, walks, forgiving myself every other minute, practicing easy yoga, taking deep breaths, and petting my dogs ... don't fill me up completely, but they remind me that it is not my job to fill myself. It's just my job to notice my emptiness and find gradeful ways to live as a broken, unfilled human."

"My experience has been that even with God, life is hard.  It's hard just because it's hard being holey.  We have to live with that.  If there's a silver lining to the hole, here it is: the unfillable, God-sized hole is what brings people together.  It've never made a friend by bragging about my strengths, but I've made countless by sharing my weakness, my emptiness, and my  life-as-a-wild-goose-chase-to-find-the-unfindable.  Holes are good for making friends, and friends are the best fillers I've found yet. Maybe because other people are the closest we get to God on this side. So when we use them to find God in each other, we become holy."

"Writing is about noticing who you are and noticing life and sharing what you notice. When you write your truth, it is a lover offering to the world because it helps us feel braver and less alone."

"As Kathleen Norris reminds us, the Greek root of the word crisis is 'to sift,' as in shake out the excesses and leave only what's important. That's what crises do. They shake things up until we are forced to hold on to only what matters most. The rest falls away."

"Friend, we need you. The world has suffered while you've been hiding. You are already forgiven. You are loved. All there is left to do is step into your life."

"We had helped each other grow up together. Together is good. Not easy, but good."

"It's really hard to distinguish between a chute and a ladder. Maybe all my days are filled with little miracles, but I'm too distracted by what I think is my life to notice them.  Sometimes bad news is the best way to see all the good quickly and clearly.  Bad news has a way of waking us up, sort of life a glass of cold water in the face. We might prefer waking in a gentler way, but we can't argue with the efficiency of the cold-water method."

Joanna Macy:  "the heart that breaks open can contain the universe."

"Grief is not something to be fixed. It's something to be borne, together.  And when the time is right, there is always something that is born from it. After real grief, we are reborn as people with wider and deeper vision and greater compassion for the pain of others. We know that. So through our friend's grief, we maintain in our hearts the hope that in the end, good will come out of it. But we don't say that to our friend.  We let our friend discover that on her own. Hope is a door each one must open for herself."

"Reading is my inhale and writing is my exhale. If I am not reading and writing regularly, I begin to suffocate and tend to climb the nearest person like a frantic cat, clawing at the person's eyeballs and perching on his head, desperate to find a breath of air."

"I pray and pray for God to help me feel some peace and stillness in the midst of my mommy life instead of feeling constantly like a dormant volcano likely to erupt at any given moment and burn my entire family alive.  And God says: Well, G, here's the thing. Peace isn't the absence of distraction or annoyance or pain. It's finding ME, finding peace and calm, in the midst of those distractions and annoyances and pains."

And you have to go read the ENTIRE "Initiation" chapter. I laughed until I cried.  The description of her direction-challenged relatives and their misadventures in cooking are priceless.

"Repentence is the magical moment when a sliver of light finds its way into a place of darkness in my heart, and I'm able to see clearly how my jerkiness is keeping me from peace and joy in a specific area of my life.

The chapter on "Sucker - On Vacuuming" is also hilarious in its entirety.

"I stopped sharing important things with [my husband] Craig. I stopped offering him special gifts because the offerings felt like a waste of my time and breath.  Like each day we were building sand castles that were washed away each night. So now we go through the motions, doing what a husband and wife are 'supposed' to do... I save my real stuff--my hard stories and worries and thoughts--for Sister, my parents, my girlfriends, and the blank page...  Is wanting more too demanding? Am I asking my husband to communicate like a woman? Or is it sexist to suggest that a man can't get as deep and true as a woman can?  ...

[H]ere's what happens: I recoil from Craig's touch often.  He hugs me, and I politely endure, looking over his shoulder at the unfinished dishes and the toys on the floor lying in wait to break my ankle... Sometimes the anger is mild, like annoyance. I'm so tired after a long day with the kids, so used up, so saturated by need and touch already, why must you be needy too? Can't we just be grown-ups and do something practical? There's so much still to do: the laundry needs to be folded, the lunches packed, forms signed... miles to go before sleep. Is there really time for something so unproductive? And really, we haven't talked, really talked  for weeks."

Anais Nin: "And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to bloom."

"Look. I know it's hard. It's all so damn hard and confusing and complicated and things get wound up so tight you can't even find the ends sometimes.  All I'm saying is that somebody's got to pour that first glass of wine. Because love is not something for which to search or wait or hope or dream.  It's simply something to do."

"When Dorothy Parker was asked if she loved writing, she replied, 'No. But I love having written.'  What I want to say to the sweet women [who tell me to enjoy every minute of raising my small children because it goes so fast, and oh, they just loved every minute of being a parent], 'Are you sure?  Are you sure you don't mean you love having parented?"

"There are two different types of time.  Chronos time is what we live in.  It's regular time.  It's one minute at a time, staring down the clock until bedtime time.  It's ten excruciating minutes in the Target line time, four screaming minutes in time-out time, two hours until Daddy gets home time.  Chronos is the hard, slow-passing time we parents often live in.

Then there's Kairos time.  Kairos is God's time.  It's time outside of time.  It's metaphysical time.  Kairos is those magical moments in which time stands still.  I have a few of those moments each day, and I cherish them.

These Kairos moments leave as fast as they come, but I mark them.  I say the word Kairos in my head each time I leave Chronos. And at the end of the day, I don't remember exactly what my Kairos moments were, but I remember I had them.  That makes the pain of daily parenting climb worth it."

"what I do when I make a big or little parenting mistake, which is several hundred times a day, I try to remember two things:  #1 Who I am / #2 My most important parenting job

human beings make mistakes. Almost constantly.  We fall short of what we aim for, always.  ... That's okay. It's just the way it is.  We're human. Can't fight it... Then I remember what my most important parenting job is, and that is to teach my children how to deal with being human.  Because most likely, that's where they're headed.  No matter what I do, they're headed toward being messed-up humans faster than three brakeless railroad cars.

There is really only one way to deal gracefully with being human, and that is this:  Forgive yourself.

It's not once-and-for-all thing, self-forgiveness.  It's more like a constant attitude. It's just being hopeful.  It's refusing to hold your breath. It's loving yourself enough to offer yourself a million more tries.  It's what we want our kids to do every day for their whole lives, right?  We want them to embrace being human instead of fighting against it.  We want them to offer themselves grace.  Forgiveness and grace are like oxygen: we can't offer it to others unless we put our masks on first. We have to put our grace masks on and breathe in deep. We have to show them how it's done. We need to love ourselves if we want our kids to love themselves. We don't necessarily have to love them more; we have to love ourselves more. We have to gentle with ourselves.  We have to forgive ourselves an then ... oh my goodness ... find ourselves sort of awesome, actually, considering the freaking circumstances."

"we don't love people and animals because we will have them forever; we love them because loving them changes us, makes us better, healthier, kinder, realer.  Loving people and animals makes us stronger in the right ways and weaker in the right ways. Even if animals and people leave, even if they die, they leave us better. So we keep loving, even though we might lose, because loving teaches us and changes us."

And then the Transcendentalist chapter.  Fall on the floor funny.  Followed by Office Superhero.  A true parenting parable.

"At the August's family meeting, I smiled pretty and announced to the children that I was officially done with the following:  Smiling when people spill things.  I am past the mommy point of no return. Which means that I can no longer pretend that I'm not mad at you when you spill your cereal, water, or entire dinner plate fifteen seconds after I put it in front of you.  I know I've been acting calm and saying, 'It's okay, sweetie' through clenched teeth for a few years now.  That's all over. It's not okay, actually.  If you spill, expect the wrath. Prepare for it, take a deep breath, 'cause it's a-coming'.  Oh yes, I know it was an accident, Mom! and I'm sure your future therapist will be happy to talk to you about how this injustice made you feel. Please know that I have forgiven myself unequivocally for my unfairness, random rage, and unforgiveness, and I can only hope that this will bring you comfort."

"Writing, painting, acting, creating, living out loud: Are they acts of humility or confidence?  Yes. They're both.  That's what I've decided. Confidence and humility are two sides of the same coin. They are character traits that stem from the two beliefs I hold most dear. I think most of our character traits are simply manifestations of what we believe to be true.

I am confident because I believe that I am a child of God. I am humble because I believe that everyone else is, too.

They go hand in hand. They've got to.  If I am humble but lack confidence, it is because I haven't accepted that there is a divine spark inside me.  It means that I don't believe in the miracle that I was made by God for a purpose all my own, and so I am worthy of the space that I occupy on this earth. And that as a child of God, no deserves more respect, joy, or peace than I.  As a child of God, I have the right to speak, to feel, to think, and to believe what I believe. ...

And If I am confident but not humble, it is because I have not fully accepted that everyone has won the lottery.  Because everyone has the same amount of God in her.  If I am in the habit of turning my back on others, it is because I haven't learned that God approaches us in the disguise of other people.  If I am confident but not humble, my mind is closed. If my mind is closed, my heart is closed. A closed heart is so sad. It is the ned.  A heart cannot grow any larger if it decides to let no more God in. There is always room for more. A heart expands exactly as much as her owner allows."

Howard Thurman:  "Don't ask what the world needs. As what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive."

"I have a sign in my house that says, 'WE CAN DO THE HARD THINGS,' and sometimes I think I should add a second one below it that says, 'BUT WE CANNOT DO THE EASY THINGS."

Namaste.

The Onion nails it exactly

oh the horror of how spot-on this is...

I’m Sorry, But You’re Just Not The Man I Hoped You Would Become When We Got Married

Today, it’s evident that you’re simply not the nonexistent, purely hypothetical person I always wanted to grow old with. Just last week, for example, when you didn’t so much as look up from your laptop after I came home from work, even though you knew I was supposed to hear about my promotion that day, I realized that you aren’t even capable of magically changing into what I need in a husband. When I look at you now, all I see is a workaholic with intimacy issues who has persisted unchanging for the past decade and a half—no longer the ideal husband I convinced myself you would morph into through some miracle.

...

Honestly, it’s almost as if you’re the exact same man I married.
...

It hurts to admit this, but after watching your behavior and personality remain constant day in and day out since we first fell in love in 1999, I’m left to wonder if there’s even anything left of the attentive, interesting man I repeatedly told myself you would someday be.

...

So, I guess I’m just going to have to accept that the partner that only ever existed in my frequent delusions doesn’t exist anymore. And come to terms with the fact that I won’t be living out my days beside the perfect man that you, in all of my endless cycles of denial, willful self-deception, and refusal to engage with reality, were supposed to become. Because that figment of my imagination that I married is gone. Gone forever.

Unless, maybe, you’re willing to let me project onto you a sense of determination to work things out.