On Belonging - David Whyte

We are the one part of creation that knows what it’s like to live in exile. The ability to turn your face toward home is one of the great human endeavors and great human stories. No matter how far you are away from yourself, no matter how exiled you feel from your contribution to the rest of the world or to society, as a human being, all you have to do is enumerate exactly the way you don’t feel at home in the world, to say exactly how you don’t belong, and the moment you’ve uttered the dimension of your exile, you’re already taking the path back to the way -- back to the place -- you should be. You’re already on your way home.

The Opening of Eyes - David Whyte

That day ... I heard the voice of the world speak out,
I knew ... life is no passing memory of what has been
nor the remaining pages in a great book
waiting to be read.

It is the opening of eyes long closed.
It is the vision of far off things
seen for the silence they hold.
...

It is Moses in the desert
fallen to his knees before the lit bush.
It is the man throwing away his shoes
as if to enter heaven
and finding himself astonished,
opened at last,
fallen in love with solid ground.

Everything is Waiting for You - David Whyte

Your great mistake is to act the drama
as if you were alone...

To feel abandoned is to deny
the intimacy of your surroundings. Surely,
even you, at times, have felt the grand array;
the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding
out your solo voice. ...
Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.
The stairs are your mentor of things
to come; the doors have always been there
to frighten and invite you...

Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into
the conversation. The kettle is singing
even as it pours you a drink; the cooking pots
have left their arrogant aloofness and
seen the good in you at last. All the birds
and creatures of the world are unutterably
themselves. Everything is waiting for you.

Corner Talk

And suddenly after months of floundering, it arrives - a corner around which something else will happen. A boundary between the way things are here, and how they will be after.

I still know nothing of the separating event. I cannot see the turn or the angle of light once turned.

But there is a corner where none existed before.

And that is soul-filling enough to grow patience and gratitude for the time to enjoy the sun here, now, before the turn.

The Journey - Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save.

Love After Love - Derek Wolcott

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

The Swan - Rainer Maria Rilke

This clumsy living that moves lumbering

as if in ropes through what is not done,

reminds us of the awkward way the swan walks.

And to die, which is the letting go

of the ground we stand on

and cling to every day,

is like the swan,

when he nervously lets himself down into the water,

which receives him gaily

and which flows joyfully under

and after him, wave after wave,

while the swan,

unmoving and marvelously calm,

is pleased to be carried,

each moment more fully grown,

more like a king, further and further on.

translated by Robert Bly

David Whyte asks, "What is the elemental belonging in your life?"

Personal Renewal - John Gardner

Delivered to McKinsey & Company, Phoenix, AZ
November 10, 1990

One of your most fundamental tasks is the renewal of the organizations you serve, and that usually includes persuading the top officers to accomplish a certain amount of self-renewal. But to help you think about others is not my primary mission this morning. I want to help you think about yourselves.

...I'm not going to talk about the special problems of your kind of career; I'm going to talk about some basic problems of the life cycle that will surely hit you if you're not ready for them.

...

Not long ago, I read a splendid article on barnacles. ... "The barnacle" the author explained "is confronted with an existential decision about where it's going to live. Once it decides.. . it spends the rest of its life with its head cemented to a rock.." For a good many of us, it comes to that.

We've all seen men and women, even ones in fortunate circumstances with responsible positions who seem to run out of steam in midcareer.

One must be compassionate in assessing the reasons. Perhaps life just presented them with tougher problems than they could solve. It happens. Perhaps something inflicted a major wound on their confidence or their self-esteem. Perhaps they were pulled down by the hidden resentments and grievances that grow in adult life, sometimes so luxuriantly that, like tangled vines, they immobilize the victim. You've known such people -- feeling secretly defeated, maybe somewhat sour and cynical, or perhaps just vaguely dispirited. Or maybe they just ran so hard for so long that somewhere along the line they forgot what it was they were running for.

I'm not talking about people who fail to get to the top in achievement. We can't all get to the top, and that isn't the point of life anyway. I'm talking about people who -- no matter how busy they seem to be -- have stopped learning or growing... I don't deride that. Life is hard. Just to keep on keeping on is sometimes an act of courage. But I do worry about men and women functioning far below the level of their potential.

We have to face the fact that most men and women out there in the world of work are more stale than they know, more bored than they would care to admit. Boredom is the secret ailment of large-scale organizations. ...

...How many people whom you know well -- people even younger than yourselves --are already trapped in fixed attitudes and habits. A famous French writer said "There are people whose clocks stop at a certain point in their lives." ...

I've watched a lot of mid-career people, and Yogi Berra says you can observe a lot just by watching. I've concluded that most people enjoy learning and growing. And many are dearly troubled by the self-assessments of mid-career.

Such self-assessments are no great problem [when] you're young and moving up. The drama of your own rise is enough. But when you reach middle age, when your energies aren't what they used to be, then you'll begin to wonder what it all added up to... I have some simple advice for you when you begin that process. Don't be too hard on yourself. Look ahead...

...

The more I see of human lives, the more I believe the business of growing up is much longer drawn out than we pretend. If we achieve it in our 30's, even our 40s, we're doing well. ...

...When you hit a spell of trouble, ask "What is it trying to teach me?" The lessons aren't always happy ones, but they keep coming. It isn't a bad idea to pause occasionally for an inward look. By midlife, most of us are accomplished fugitives from ourselves.

We learn from our jobs, from our friends and families. We learn by accepting the commitments of life, by playing the roles that life hands us (not necessarily the roles we would have chosen). We learn by growing older, by suffering, by loving, by bearing with the things we can't change, by taking risks.

The things you learn in maturity aren't simple things such as acquiring information and skills. You learn not to engage in self-destructive behavior. You leant not to burn up energy in anxiety. You discover how to manage your tensions, if you have any, which you do. You learn that self-pity and resentment are among the most toxic of drugs. You find that the world loves talent, but pays off on character.

You come to understand that most people are neither for you nor against you, they are thinking about themselves. You learn that no matter how hard you try to please, some people in this world are not going to love you, a lesson that is at first troubling and then really quite relaxing.

...
You come to terms with yourself. You finally grasp what S. N. Behrman meant when he said "At the end of every road you meet yourself." You may not get rid of all of your hang-ups, but you learn to control them to the point that you can function productively and not hurt others.

...

You come to understand your impact on others. It's interesting that even in the first year of life you learn the impact that a variety of others have on you, but as late as middle age many people have a very imperfect understanding of the impact they themselves have on others. ...In some measure we create our own environment. ...

...

One of the enemies of sound, lifelong motivation is a rather childish conception we have of the kind of concrete, describable goal toward which all of our efforts drive us. We want to believe that there is a point at which we can feel that we have arrived. We want a scoring system that tells us when we've piled up enough points to count ourselves successful.

So you scramble and sweat and climb to reach what you thought was the goal. When you get to the top you stand up and look around and chances are you feel a little empty. Maybe more than a little empty.

You wonder whether you climbed the wrong mountain.

But life isn't a mountain that has a summit, Nor is it -- as some suppose -- a riddle that has an answer. Nor a game that has a final score.

Life is an endless unfolding, and if we wish it to be, an endless process of self-discovery, an endless and unpredictable dialogue between our own potentialities and the life situations in which we find ourselves. By potentialities I mean not just intellectual gifts but the full range of one's capacities for learning, sensing, wondering, understanding, loving and aspiring.

...

The thing you have to understand is that the capacities you actually develop to the full come out as the result of an interplay between you and life's challenges --and the challenges keep changing. Life pulls things out of you.

There's something I know about you that you may or may not know about yourself. You have within you more resources of energy than have ever been tapped, more talent than has ever been exploited, more strength than has ever been tested, more to give than you have ever given.

You know about some of the gifts that you have left undeveloped. Would you believe that you have gifts and possibilities you don't even know about? It's true. ...

...There is no perfection of techniques that will substitute for the lift of spirit and heightened performance that comes from strong motivation, The world is moved by highly motivated people, by enthusiasts, by men and women who want something very much or believe very much.

I'm not talking about anything as narrow as ambition. After all, ambition eventually wears out and probably should. But you can keep your zest until the day you die. If I may offer you a simple maxim, "Be interesting," Everyone wants to be interesting -- but the vitalizing thing is to be interested. Keep a sense of curiosity. Discover new things. Care. Risk failure. Reach out.

The nature of one's personal commitments is a powerful element in renewal...

...You never get the impression that a cow is about to have a nervous breakdown. Or is puzzling about the meaning of life.

Humans have never mastered that kind of complacency. We are worriers and puzzlers, and we want meaning in our lives. ... [W]e are so designed to cope with [anything] if we can live in some context of meaning. Given that powerful help, we can draw on the deep springs of the human spirit, to see our suffering in the framework of all human suffering, to accept the gifts of life with thanks and endure life's indignities with dignity.

In the stable periods of history, meaning was supplied in the context of a coherent communities and traditionally prescribed patterns of culture. Today you can't count on any such heritage. You have to build meaning into your life, and you build it through your commitments -- whether to your religion, to an ethical order as you conceive it, to your life's work, to loved ones, to your fellow humans. Young people run around searching for identity, but it isn't handed out free any more -- not in this transient, rootless, pluralistic society. Your identity is what you've committed yourself to.

It may just mean doing a better job at whatever you're doing. There are men and women who make the world better just by being the kind of people they are --and that too is a kind of commitment. They have the gift of kindness or courage or loyalty or integrity. It matters very little whether they're behind the wheel of a truck or running a country store or bringing up a family.

...

We tend to think of youth and the active middle years as the years of commitment. ...People of every age need commitments beyond the self, need the meaning that commitments provide. ...

...I am not pessimistic and I advise you not to be. As the fellow said, "I'd be a pessimist but it would never work."

I can tell you that for renewal, a tough-minded optimism is best. The future is not shaped by people who don't really believe in the future. Men and women of vitality have always been prepared to bet their futures, even their lives, on ventures of unknown outcome.

...We have to believe in ourselves, but we mustn't suppose that the path will be easy, it's tough. Life is painful, and rain falls on the just. ...[F]ailure is simply a reason to strengthen resolve.

Nothing is ever finally safe. Every important battle is fought and re-fought. We need to develop a resilient, indomitable morale that enables us to face those realities and still strive with every ounce of energy to prevail. You may wonder if such a struggle -- endless and of uncertain outcome -- isn't more than humans can bear. But all of history suggests that the human spirit is well fitted to cope with just that kind of world.

....

"Meaning is not something you stumble across, like the answer to a riddle or the prize in a treasure hunt. Meaning is something you build into your life. You build it out of your own past, out of your affections and loyalties, out of the experience of humankind as it is passed on to you, out of your own talent and understanding, out of the things you believe in, out of the things and people you love, out of the values for which you are willing to sacrifice something. The ingredients are there. You are the only one who can put them together into that unique pattern that will be your life. Let it be a life that has dignity and meaning for you. If it does, then the particular balance of success or failure is of less account."

Faith (Poem) by David Whyte

I want to write about faith,
about the way the moon rises
over cold snow, night after night,

faithful even as it fades from fullness,
slowly becoming that last curving and impossible
sliver of light before the final darkness.

But I have no faith myself.
I refuse it even the smallest entry.

Let this then, my small poem,
like a new moon, slender and barely open,
be the first prayer that opens me to faith.

(glimpsed in Fish! A Remarkable Way to Boost Morale and Improve Results because of David Whyte's tour of corporate America based on his book The Heart Aroused : Poetry and the Preservation of the Soul in Corporate America.)

The R-Ws at Home

To be of use (poem) by Marge Piercy

The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.

I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who stand in the line and haul in their places,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.

Grace

And in my angst, here is the quote that found me:

"[W]hen you are following ... [a] plan in community you'll never be an expert, just a person who can notice grace in earthy places."

--Lillian Daniel, from This Odd and Wondrous Calling

A Commandment

The Oracle at Delphi said: Know thyself.

And even if you give yourself the wiggle room to say that this is an ongoing approach to life (a continual process) and not an afternoon's activity or a "You are here" X on a map you carry around, it seems a lot to ask.

I mean, so much has happened -- and more every day.

And in a bigger sense, what has really happened? It certainly makes no sense. There is no spine, no scaffolding, no progression. There is a series of days that happen to line up backward for years. So how can this explain now? Or me, now or then? Or help me recognize the me of tomorrow?

Is this why people go into therapy? Or is this why people have friends? To help remind you who you are, where you've been, what you love.

Is it just me, or is this self-knowledge quest getting harder to do in today's warp-speed world?

The Distance to Success

Quiet tiptoes
in the space
confidence
should fill.

Disoriented,
my ambition
hesitates
at unfamiliar crossroads
indistinguishable
from the decision points
that got me here.

Xeno’s paradox
in reverse
means every step
marries me
to a destiny
I do not choose
and can never recognize,
since there is no “there”
to which to arrive.

In another time
faith would frame
the space
where confidence
dwells.

Hard-won knowledge
would scaffold my belief,
and the success of surviving each day
would catapult me
headlong into the next.

Instead
I lean into
the solidity
of sunshine,
pace forward
with the dread
of anticipated regret
for all that I am not doing
to get to where I don’t know
I want to be.

Authenticity

What does it mean to feel authentic these days?

In a society where you have to have a license to drive, a degree to do pretty much anything, but no qualification whatsoever to be a parent, why is it that so many women still feel they're faking it?

Even when I'm good at what I do at work, I'm half waiting for someone to question my right to be there. "You don't really know how to do this," they'll accuse. And they'll be right. I don't. And somehow if I were a guy or a different kind of a girl, that would be okay. Or more okay than it is with me.

I have a running debate with many of my grad. school friends about who's more qualified for employment - them or me. It seems the grass is always more qualified on the other side of the fence!

I have a fantasy about being hired just because I'm smart, competent, and hard-working. I can't be hired for any other reason, because I swear to you I don't know anything about anything!

I started my college career wanting to know everything about everything. Somehow along the way, I learned only about context, not content. A postmodern dilemma, perhaps. Postmodern education to blame, probably. A postmodern lack of capacity for retaining information. My generation likes the shape of knowledge, not its heft. We understand the landscape of a theory - its genesis, the range of its applicability, its broad outlines. This mapped, we turn from it to the next big idea that we can sketch out and abandon.

And so my generation knows software - what technology can do, not what it should do. We acquire religious understanding voraciously but believe very little. We are full of empty boundaries.

Hermes was the messenger god in the Greek pantheon. He was also the god of crossroads, of borders, of humor (because what is humor but the intersection of 2 incongruous ideas?). He was a trickster, hard if not impossible to pin down. Hermes could get you out of a scrape with his ingenuity, the wings on his feet, yet few would pray to such an immutable, insubstantial, whimsical god. In this way, my generation is the Hermes generation. We map, we trade, we barter. We exist on the edges, eschew the possibility of center.

Maybe this bodes well for a war-free world in the future. Who would lose their life for an idea only loosely held, loosely sketched, easily abandoned? Who would find offense in someone else casting off such an idea when another seems to work better in their own circumstance?

Generational studies tell us that the new generation, the so-called millenials, are not paralyzed by prejudice in the way past generations have been. They have always lived in a world where diversity is celebrated, if not always achieved, where tolerance is demanded if not always granted. In some ways, this might make them more dangerous, more prone to repeating the atrocities of a history they don't seem connected to or inspired to learn.

And for me, it means angst about a career path shrouded in fog. Who will pay for my gifts? Is it enough to offer the skill of context, outlines, meaning without belief, without knowledge, without expertise?

The Space Inside*

“Tell me what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” – Mary Oliver, “The Summer Day” 

Pay attention (work hard), 

rest all that is not needed for the work, 

relax into the effort, 

feel how this pulse eases into hum, 

contributes to all others’ to make our lives more rich 

make us more joyful 

more alive to our gratitude 

more able to feel the ease from our troubles 

wash over us, 

leaving them sparkling, crystalline 

with salt. 

Invite them in, 

all those you think you cannot feed, 

who will fill themselves 

with exactly what you can give 

what they can receive 

from the basket of your compassion – 

your strengths, 

the limber moments 

between your daily plans – 

who will spice each bite 

with all you have learned 

to let go. 

Set the even table of your prayer for justice 

with the spirit you bring 

when flinging your loving arms 

to all you can reach, 

all you can harvest 

in this season that feeds us 

and the guests who bring us so much more 

than we can return. 

I will open the dark doors 

of my small home, 

feel the rooms grow 

as a vessel swells 

each time the water 

fills 

then hollows 

the space inside. 

*Interesting that I had forgotten a poem from 2005 called "The Space Between Us" Chapbook, anyone?

** I believe this poem was responding, in part, to the poems "To be of use" by Marge Piercy and "Love after Love" by Derek Wolcott.

Release

In yoga we learn that our thoughts and feelings line our joints like hard water deposits. I never give this much thought, partly because I'm so inflexible that I never get to that layer and partly because I'm too busy trying to match my perfectionist tendency to my woefully imperfect poses ("practice" be damned).

But late in May I committed myself to going to a hot yoga flow class every weekday through July, which I've done with few exceptions. There have definitely been changes -- things I can feel, effects I can see, progress in good directions on many fronts. In the past week, I noticed an opening in my hips that has certainly never existed before and almost immediately heard a concomitant litany of past voices -- my voices -- saying all the things I say to myself when things are hard for me: This is impossible. How can anyone be expected to do this? I can't stand it for another minute. It's so hard I have to stop, etc.

The memory associated most strongly with these messages was a summer swim team, my first swim team, without ever having learned "real swimming" beyond 2-week YMCA classes when I was little. A seemingly irrelevant yet probably vital detail: my oldest sister was one of the coaches. We swam lap after lap, and as I struggled to breathe, I struggled harder against the growing panic in my lungs that this just wasn't FAIR. I couldn't do it, so by logical extension no one could do it: it just couldn't be done and therefore asking it of me (and us, I rationalized desperately) was fascist. Did I mention I'm a perfectionist? Yes, the ugly side of perfectionism is the utter inability to deal with not being good at something, even when it's YOGA for god's sake, as though being good at yoga is anything more than practicing it intentionally!

I know this, yet the voices are so distracting this week that I cannot calm myself, cannot focus, cannot stay in that hot, unbearable room. Today, cooling myself like a nuclear rod in the shower, I realized this simple truth: I do not know how to be gentle with my ... what? failure? It's not that. Imperfection? It's not quite that either. With my own inner fascist demanding that only perfection equals even "practice." Trying means giving 100%. Not trying means skipping the pose, leaving the room, checking out. There's some subtlety here that I can't quite finger. Throughout the class, I modify the poses to be less difficult, but then I give 100% within the modification. What I can't do is approach a pose half-heartedly knowing I can do better and (gasp!) choosing not to.

This seems like a life skill that I should know by now. Yet the fact that I don't clues me into why I'm so baffled -- and resentful -- at the majority of folks who seem to be floating through life entirely unfazed at their lack of exertion and unapologetic about ignoring expectations and responsibilities that affect those around them. Who was your mama? I want to ask them. And maybe that's another clue that there's a voice other than mine distracting me in yoga.

So I need another way to think about effort - a valid middle ground between all or nothing. A new way to be gentle with myself and the chasm between my intention and the unforgiving hardness cementing my joints closed, tight, and unmoving.

These adjectives no longer serve me.

Weather or not to be

The rain,
staccato in me,
drums past any knowing
of the first drop.
Shifting puddles
cannot reflect their source.
Instead of a steady beat
lulling me into peace,
each drop swords
past capture,
slaps from my hand
what I grab –
the knowledge of self
life
spirit
I’m supposed to live in,
shoes off.

Shoes slushy,
I mush around,
confusion spilling
onto your bristling welcome mat
I hop on and off so quickly,
not wanting
you to ask what I don’t know
about what I left behind,
what sloshed out of unloyal shoes
when water realized I couldn’t hear
all it came to say.

Pre-resigned

Until the pebble settles on my last rib, I breathe around the empty space at my core. I am not yet resigned to what’s next. Without knowing the shape of my gifts, I cannot tie the ribbon or wrap the box filled with quiet resolve and generous layers of plenty. The swell will come, juicing my fingertips, levitating the hands that can hold all I love.

Existentialism vs. Job Hunting

Lately I've been thinking about how the existentialists got things right. I'm struck these days by the absurdity of our lives - the absolute craziness of our careening trajectories. Blink - you're five, feeling thirty. Blink again, you're in high school acting thirty. Blink blink, you're past thirty, still with no better idea of what you want to be or even who you want to be than when you were five. And does it matter? The minutes will pass, shooting quickly past days and months and years until a sunset stops you, stuns you, humbles you and your groping brain searching for personal meaning. Yes, we create it, but yes, it's also just ... not there. Not anywhere it can be discovered or stumbled upon or even worked toward.

I do think we're living through a new era, where adulthood is not coupled with a career, in the true sense of that word, complete with a goal and strategic shifts toward some step on a ladder you chose when you were in your twenties. Now we hop from job to job like so many lily pads, hoping for more shade or more flies or less wobble.

It is strange to feel you have gifts but no avenue to get paid to use them. It is disconcerting and unsettling and fundamentally questions your worth as an adult.

I can already sense how little sense my life is going to make in another thirty years. I could be wrong, of course. I might be heading to the culmination of all my disparate experiences that will resolve into crystal clarity how each contributed some vital skill toward some perfect, well-paying, secure job.

I just don't see it. Maybe I won't until it gets here.

Blessings

With much calmed, what I have to say is this: Thank the gods for Netflix Instant Viewing.

As my husband would say, I am not an early adopter (almost typed adapter - same difference). I resisted a cell phone, resisted Netflix, resisted watching movies on the computer, am still actively resisting Facebook (oh but the pictures! The connection with Snapfish and printing at Walgreens in Miami, where Eric's mom can finally keep up with her granddaughter's changing face...).

But after months of depression watching whatever the gods of mercy or torture put on late-night tv, I am now four seasons in to Law and Order: SUV. It is absorbing enough to take the edge off late-night feedings and early-morning pumpings. It's quality enough not to resent the minutes taken off my life watching it. It's gruesome enough that I remember to count my blessings instead of sheep.

There's the IT Crowd for family feedings and Word World for morning dressing time. There's movies and movies galore - so much that you never have to worry about running out of things to watch or re-watch.

And so, baby time is blissed-out media viewing time. Add a little reading during pumping before bed and suddenly, life's not so bad.

Now if only libraries delivered...

Hot, Calm Night

Realizing again how much the world is governed by entropy. Being a homeowner really keeps this foremost in one's thoughts. The carpet that was new upon moving in is ... dingy and spotted. The fans that were so cheery and industrial-cool last summer are dusty and in one case, broken. Baby swing? More of a baby statue memorializing fun. Toilet? Constantly moving from order to chaos. Clothes? One day from dirty.

I know I should be focusing on the joy in my life. All the blessings. A healthy, easy kid. A loving, kind, thoughtful husband. (But ... even though ... )

In the face of all that's right with my life, I'm starting to wonder if my tendency lately to dwell on dissatisfaction indicates a chemical imbalance from the roller coaster ride of pregnancy and nursing and a return to fertility, so mother nature tells me.

I've got an acupuncture appointment tomorrow, and I've been talking to the practitioner in my head for the last few days. He diagnoses that I have much imbalance, many little cancers of the mind, but, he says reassuringly, "We will fix."

So I try to do what I can to move toward health. Clean the kitchen. Clean the bathroom. Fill the water pitcher in the fridge. Sit outside with the Christmas lights on. Light a candle. Turn the fan to blow over my set jaw. Write.

As my boy Eliot whispers in my ear, "Anything is better than nothing." (But he still killed himself, my dissatisfied self complains.)

I spent half a day and some hours this weekend putting together a list of poems that other people list as their favorites (Love Amazon.com!) and saving them to my poetry file. I invited two of my poetry-loving friends to have an evening of poems. I will come well-stocked!

I wonder how much I'm not learning about myself by not keeping up better with the friends of my heart. Mordechai just jumped in my lap to remind me that I'm not learning from my pets, either. He's got a lot to teach me about going where others can take care of you, where you can love unconditionally, no matter how many times you get thrown across the room (yikes!) or ignored.

And so, time to pump, read a bit of Wonder Boys, maybe a B.H. Fairchild poem or two. And sleep for a few hours until it's time to wake and pump and watch bad late-night t.v.

Such do the blessings continue.

Mommy Moment

Let me start by acknowledging that I've always struggled separating "real" emotions from chemically-induced similacra of feelings. In the end, does it matter whether what you're feeling is a response to real stimula or just manufactured because of hormones? Maybe it matters in terms of how seriously to take it. How much to base decisions off it.

But even if it's "fake" emotion, doesn't it come from somewhere? Isn't it you, too? Just you hyped up on life's greatest little gift to women?

I've got this on my mind for two reasons.

1) I've got my first period after having a baby just 4 months ago in April. Some of my girlfriends are getting their first period after 2 years! I'm guessing the difference is that I'm back to work and therefore pumping instead of nursing during the day, which my body knows is not nearly as good as the real thing.

Because of #1, coupled with post-pregnancy hormones and breastfeeding hormones, I'm having intensified fears, anger, and feelings of helplessness around my job situation, which is not so viable right now. I'm not sure what to do about that or what I can do about that, hence the panic.

2) I had a dream two nights ago that I decided to cheat on my husband with this guy we know. We were at a party and flirting, and in the dream, I consciously chose to make plans to meet up with him later that night and do it in a bathroom somewhere in the house. (That's the language of the dream - very high school somehow...)

I stood in front of a mirror and went back and forth. Is this worth risking my marriage? I pictured Eric's face, tried to feel what it would be like to lose him, tried to rationalize the fact that I was going to make this horrible choice. I decided maybe I wouldn't sleep with this guy, but I would make out, and if things got out of hand, I'd deal with it then (and that meant I'd probably go all the way).

So there we were, lounging in the bathroom, not touching. It was awkward for both of us, and we knew the stakes were high. It would take a lot to get over the hump and actually start touching. But the air was electric, charged with what might be anticipation if we let it become that. We talked, laughed, and somehow got on the subject of puppy poop. We made joke after joke about stepping in poop on the lawn. And ... the dream was over, spell broken. My brain hadn't been able to go there.

But I woke up totally guilty. I had decided to cheat! I imagined it! I played the scenario out in my head in detail!

Do I tell? It means nothing. Was a dream. Is not real. But my feelings of guilt are real, and I was still soaked in the dream, like cigarette smoke on your clothes after an evening in the bar.

So I told. Apologized. Said I felt guilty. And do you know what my fabulous husband did? He wrapped me up in a big ole hug and said, "Oh, honey. I'm so sorry!" Sorry I had that dream and felt bad about it! What a guy! And so I felt close to him again and knew that I wouldn't make that choice in waking life. And knew that our relationship could weather my dream indiscretions.

But still, what does it mean that I went there in a dream?

And the job thing? I just don't know. It's one of those decision points - what do I want to be when I grow up? What am I capable of? What's realistically possible, given this economic climate?

I feel my best when I'm facilitating public involvement processes. Could I find enough work to make a living doing that?

I also like using the technologies of project management - budgets, spreadsheets, schedules. Is there a job that allows me to mix a little of this in, or would this just auger well for owning my own business?

I love putting together documents - desktop publishing, editing, technical writing, etc. Are there jobs where you get to do that? Jobs that I can still do bits of the above?

I love teaching. How does that fit into all this?

And if there is no perfect salaried job out there ... am I brave enough, smart enough, saavy enough, connected enough, and motivated enough to make a go of it? And is it a viable idea given the craziness out there? Given that I have a newborn and a husband whose job is similarly unstable?

Good lord. Is it any wonder I'm emotional?

Self-Portrait by David Whyte

It doesn't interest me if there is one God or many gods.

I want to know if you belong or feel abandoned.

If you know despair or can see it in others.

I want to know if you are prepared to live in the world with its harsh need to change you. If you can look back with firm eyes saying this is where I stand.

I want to know if you know how to melt into that fierce heat of living falling toward the center of your longing.

I want to know if you are willing to live, day by day, with the consequence of love and the bitter unwanted passion of sure defeat.

I have been told, in that fierce embrace, even the gods speak of God.

Finding Stillness

I've been thinking lately about singing meditation, mostly because the only time I have to connect with my deeper side on a daily basis is as I sing to Umea -- while she's eating or close to sleep. I find that I'm not all that patient with nursing. After the first few minutes -- when she's cute, and smells so good, and if feels so good to hold her -- you have to just sit there, thinking of all the things you need to do and could do if you didn't just have to sit there, being the producer of milk and inducer of good baby/momma hormones and general inducements toward intimacy.

I've found some hymns that always seem to break into my unending stream of should-be-doings and take me to a more conscious place. One is almost postmodern in that its message and effect reflect each other.

Find a stillness, hold a stillness, let the stillness carry me.
Find the silence, hold the silence, let the silence carry me.

In the spirit, by the spirit, with the spirit giving power, I will find true harmony.

Seek the essence, hold the essence, let the essence carry me.
Let me flower, help me flower, watch me flower, carry me.

In the spirit, by the spirit, with the spirit giving power, I will find true harmony.

That one's just for me. Then there's another that Umea seems to like.

Come, come, whoever you are,
Wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving.
Ours is no caravan of despair.
Come, yet again, come.

That makes a beautiful round, as does this one, which I also sing often to Umea:

And everyone 'neath a vine and fig tree,
Shall live in peace and unafraid.

And into ploughshares turns the sword;
Nations shall learn war no more.

Then there's this little ditty, oddly uptempo:

Soon the day will arrive when we will be together,
and no longer will we live in fear.
And the children will smile without wondering whether
on that day thunder clouds will appear.

Wait and see, wait and see,
what a world this will be,
when we care, when we share,
you and me.

Some have dreamed, some have died to make a bright tomorrow,
and our vision remains in our hearts.
Now the torch must be passed with new hope and new sorrow,
and a promise to make a new start.

Wait and see, wait and see,
what a world this will be,
when we care, when we share,
you and me.

How about this one? Sung to the classical Finlandia tune.

We would be one as now we join in singing
our hymn of love to pledge ourselves anew
to that high cause of greater understanding
of who we are, and what in us is true.

We would be one in lving for each other
to show to all a new community.

We would be one in building for tomorrow
a nobler world than we have known today.
We would be one in searching for that meaning
which binds our hearts and points us on our way.

As one, we pledge ourselves to greater service
with love and justice, strive to make us free.

I feel that if I could learn these well enough, I might carry more stillness with me into the stream of moments that have been carrying me ever faster through my days. I might be filled with more ... spirit, gravitas, calm, meaning.

I feel a slipping lately, a widening gap between where my days carry me and where I feel my strengths are, my source of power, my sense of myself.

I told a friend that I have this feeling about myself as though I'm expecting a friend to come in from out of town. I can't wait for all the great conversations we have, staying up late into the night, all the catching up we have to do. But she's not here yet, and I must gather my stories to make the most out of each moment she's here.

So I must sing. Gather my stories, and sing.

Umea Comes

Umea was born six weeks ago on April 3. We've made it this far, and I'm just starting to feel that we're getting used to each other. I didn't have that bolt of lighting love that some mothers feel. Instead, I felt wonderment that this thing that I've been wanting for so long -- a child, a daughter -- is finally here and a simultaneous effort not to try to turn this into anything I dreamed. I know she is her own person and that our relationship will take its own shape despite any dreams or intentions I might have. I wonder sometimes if I'm trying too hard to stay unattached to outcome. It may be interfering with my ability to enjoy these moments fully and to bond with her in a way that's unapologetic to what she might feel when she's a teenager.

I find myself thinking often that nothing is permanent, and while I enjoy her now, she may not always be here. I'm not sure where this macabre reasoning is coming from, but it does signal fears that I never would have expected of myself.

I actually had a dream the night before last that she was dead. It was right before Halloween, and some friends asked whether they could use her body for their haunted house, and I agreed, because, well, there was nothing to be done. It wasn't until her head was separated from her body that I collapsed into sobs on the kitchen counter, finally feeling the loss.

Part of it is feeling overwhelmed with the responsibility for caring for such a helpless creature, especially when I feel I know so little about what to do. There are so few options when she cries -- feed her, burp her, put her to bed. The relentless repetition of days tends to remove the portent of a brand new life and precipice of a new love.

Yet there are moments, of course, when it all comes crashing through all these defenses and excuses and life patterns. She's very much smiling these days. After naps, when she's lying propped up on my knees, she breaks into a crooked grin as we stare at each other. She's begun exercising control over her hands, and sometimes at the breast or when she's on my shoulder, she'll knead me or grab my hands. In these moments, it's as though she's breaking through to my dreams of what motherhood would feel like, what it would entail. This both frightens me -- what if it ends? -- and surprises me -- how did I know how this would feel? It's as though I'm becoming a mother in reverse.

It's perhaps as a wife that I'm learning the most. That part of life is much more surprising than motherhood, somehow, as though I didn't imagine it as fully as I imagined having children and therefore aren't as familiar with its rhythms and edges. Not that it's hard. In fact, it's much less dramatic and much richer than I ever dreamed. The chemical badness that always attracted me to my favorite boyfriends is replaced with an intense trust and appreciation. He follows through -- most of the time -- and when he doesn't, he either intends to or tries to on hearing its import to me or to us. I can trust that, which is so awe inspiring. I'm much better than I would have thought at phrasing requests plainly and positively. I hardly ever think about whether he knows me or not; that hardly seems the point, somehow. He loves me and has agreed to share a life. As long as I keep up my end of the bargain and keep tabs on myself, then he'll know me as well as I make the effort to teach him. As well as I make the effort to teach myself.

Everything else fades to background. For me, having a kid is like living in a land of Platonic forms. It's all the essential building blocks of life, evolutionarily speaking. Caring for an infant, securing a partner to support us, sleeping, eating, walking.

There are friends, too. They bring food and ooh and aah appropriately over our sweet girl. There is the tacit acknowledgment that I am now, suddenly and irrevocably, a woman, where before I was playacting at it. Now there's no question I'll be 50 and round and pudgy and worried about hosting visitors one day, as my mom does.

As for Umea herself, she's amazing. Utterly charming. Mecurial, with a twinkle in her eye from the first week. People commented on it. They tell me all the time she looks like she has stories to tell. She's got a great voice already -- low and pleasing. Even her noises are professional-sounding, as though she's a real performer already. She's got a temper, and she doesn't have much transition room between humor and anger. She can go from a smiling session with me to unconsolable crying in the space of a few breaths. But she's also in love with the world already, staring intently at everything for minute on minute. She's got achingly long fingers, long feet and long toes, a cute pug nose, rosy cheeks, high forhead, great, blue eyes that are so intense as to be disconcerting -- people tell me that, too. And lots of dark hair that always elicits a comment. We don't know where that came from, and yes, we think it will change.

I wish, somehow, that I could love her more, but it feels like I'm waiting for something. For her to grow up more, or to become conscious of herself and therefore able to differentiate herself from me, or for a promise that she's not going anywhere? I'm not sure. Maybe all these things. Maybe love and trust take time. I do notice that reuniting with her after we're separated for a while gets me closer to feelings of adoration than anything else. Maybe I just need perspective, a little distance to see the picture clearly and know -- this is love. This is our family. This is it.

Push and Pull

It's interesting to me how being pregnant has affected my relationships. I'm suddenly much closer to my stepmom, who's been the biggest cheerleader since she was the first one I called. Setting me up with free ultrasounds, asking around for cribs and other necessary items, and generally cooing and oohing and ahhing and not questioning every decision we make.

Other new moms have been similarly generous and wonderful -- telling me all the little things no one bothered to tell them, sending on lists of pediatricians and daycares, sharing their own worries and triumphs.

Friends who've been closest previously haven't really been there, most likely because I've never needed much from folks. Still...

And all the stereotypes I've ever had about church people and babies have come true -- from knitting to overwhelming generosity and special care. One woman offered me a winter poncho for when I get too big for my own coats. Another offered to dig out her pregnancy books -- from 20+ years ago! It does make me feel supported and blessed to not be facing this alone.

In general, I'm feeling really good these days. We know it's a girl -- Umea. Perhaps Umea Marie if I can get Eric to cave in. I'm getting big and unwieldy, slowing down, having a harder time sleeping. But generally in good spirits and good energy during the day, at least.

Life is sweet and about to get sweeter. And I have the the sweetest husband of all.

Any Night - Phillip Levine

Look, the eucalyptus, the Atlas pine,
the yellowing ash, all the trees
are gone, and I was older than
all of them. I am older than the moon,
than the stars that fill my plate,
than the unseen planets that huddle
together here at the end of a year
no one wanted. A year more than a year,
in which the sparrows learned
to fly backwards into eternity.
Their brothers and sisters saw this
and refuse to build nests. Before
the week is over they will all
have gone, and the chorus of love
that filled my yard and spilled
into my kitchen each evening
will be gone. I will have to learn
to sing in the voices of pure joy
and pure pain. I will have to forget
my name, my childhood, the years
under the cold dominion of the clock
so that this voice, torn and cracked,
can reach the low hills that shielded
the orange trees once. I will stand
on the back porch as the cold
drifts in, and sing, not for joy,
not for love, not even to be heard.
I will sing so that the darkness
can take hold and whatever
is left, the fallen fruit, the last
leaf, the puzzled squirrel, the child
far from home, lost, will believe
this could be any night. That boy,
walking alone, thinking of nothing
or reciting his favorite names
to the moon and stars, let him
find the home he left this morning,
let him hear a prayer out
of the raging mouth of the wind.
Let him repeat that prayer,
the prayer that night follows day,
that life follows death, that in time
we find our lives. Don't let him see
all that has gone. Let him love
the darkness. Look, he's running
and singing too. He could be happy.

Clearing the Pile

I'm definitely seeking solace these days.

What is it about us that sends us seeking ourselves at every turn in our lives? Or is that special blessing of an instinct reserved for a certain segment of the population? And what would that be -- intelligent, curious, egotistical, self-absorbed, un-insightful, unbalanced, or is it, much more to my liking, a not unwelcome side effect of choosing to live an authentic life? A life examined. At least, from time to time.

I think about my childhood more than most people, I think. I had the same best friends from age 2 to 13. I had lots of childhood trauma, which helps things stick in your memory. I read books over and over and over, helping to imprint them and myself thinking of them in my mind.

My mother recently cleaned her garage and finally got us girls to take away all the stuff we'd been storing there, including boxes and boxes of books. Much to my delight, I did a great job as a kid knowing which books to save! I have so many of my favorites now, and I've been reading them voraciously in one or two sittings, night after night. They're exactly as I remember them, and there's such a warping feeling of rightness and strangeness between how I feel now reading them and the illusion of being different while reading them.

Is there continuity in consciousness? In experience? I have to say no. My memory is much more like packets of life [ha, meant to type light] operating as particles versus a wave. Maybe that's just a factor of what I use it for: occasional introspection to get me through the next transition.

Now there's the biggest one and probably second to the last one: dying. Parenthood is more than just about inviting a kid into your life. It's about the last chance to finalize your independent identity as opposed to your soon-to-be always-relational identity of you-as-mom, you-despite-being-mom.

I see Eric facing the same challenge but played out slightly differently. While this new life twist does have me wondering about my professional identity, it's not tied to my worth as a person in the same way as it seems to affect Eric as a man. He's thrust neck-deep in the question of: "Am I a good provider? Am I doing what I want to do in my professional life? Because I'm about to lose the flexibility to make changes easily very very soon."

As an aside, something I've learned about myself recently. I follow through. I used to think of this as being anal or having a high work ethic or being a perfectionist or something. Now, I'm thankful every time I find myself bending down to pick up a string on the carpet and throw it away, or unpack that box even though it contains a bunch of junk that I have no idea what to do with.

My mom came over to help me around the house for a couple hours -- bless her -- and I found her the same way, only more annoyingly so. She kept saying, let's just do a little more so that it feels good to have it done. And I knew just what she meant.

When I was little, I used to clean my room by piling up everything from on top of my dressers, everything out of place around the room, etc., into the middle of the room. Then I'd dust, make the bed, generally clean all the surfaces I could suddenly see. Then, one by one, I'd start to put things away from the pile. If I couldn't find a place for it, I'd throw it away. It was a painstaking process, and pretty slow. But it felt good from the beginning. Good to see cleared off surfaces. Good to have portions of the room done (if you could ignore the gigantic pile in the middle of the room). Good to restore order piece by piece as the pile shrunk.

I sometimes feel I take the same tack with the rest of my life, trying one by one to clear off my commitments, trying to make the other pieces of my life feel good and set and clean, even as I work to shrink my pile of should's and have to's.

I only have another 4.5 months to shrink my pile before it leaves my control more than ever before.

On Prayer - Czeslaw Milosz

You ask me how to pray to someone who is not.
All I know is that prayer constructs a velvet bridge
And walking it we are aloft, as on a springboard,
Above landscapes the color of ripe gold
Transformed by a magic stopping of the sun.
That bridge leads to the shore of Reversal
Where everything is just the opposite and the word 'is'
Unveils a meaning we hardly envisioned.
Notice: I say we; there, every one, separately,
Feels compassion for others entangled in the flesh
And knows that if there is no other shore
We will walk that aerial bridge all the same.

No Time for Introspection

Suddenly find myself in an internal cycle once again. I should be able to recognize the signs by now, but ... life is too immediate to see sometimes.

Coming out of the most intense project at work - high pressure, fast deadlines, huge expectations, historical import. The whole shebang. It's laying in wait at the moment. Gathering comments. The onslaught will ensue next month, I'm sure.

In the midst, I discovered I've got new life growing inside me. No time to think about it, I mostly tried not to focus on how intensely uncomfortable pregnancy is!

I'm 4.5 months in now. Bought a house and moved. Still living out of boxes. Worrying about how to pay for new bills and a new mortgage. Wondering how other people do this, when we can barely do it, and I know we're better off than most. The financial collapse. The blazing political contest.

I have to admit it feels like a world in its last days. Biblical. Epic. Death throes of ideologies. All that.

And such internal silence! Amidst the sound and the fury, such thin worries! Such interim thoughts, bridging the gap between days with grocery lists. House needs. Future expenses.

What I do for myself personally these days is study "planning" to pass a certification test in November. Edifying...

It is a comment on where I am these days that my biggest joy is television shows: Pushing Daisies. Heroes. Others too embarrassing to mention.

Facing the most traumatic, life-changing times possible in life, I feel the rising panic to reestablish friendships and support networks. All after November. All in the future. All tomorrow when the pressing of today is not quite so insistent.

Several high school friends contacted me recently, which felt like a sign, but I haven't followed through. I'm not sure what I have to give, and having felt like I abandoned them before, I'm hesitant to promise what I won't or can't deliver.

But maybe all of it is crap. And life's moving so fast, there's no time to take anything back. You just have to try to do as much as you can right in the first place. Try to make the heroic efforts to fight the relentless succession of days. I wrote a graduation paragraph once that said Baudelaire was right: time is the enemy.

I am such a sad soldier. Doesn't really matter. There's always the marching.

Navajo Chant

I see the Earth
I am looking at Her and smile
Because she makes me happy.
The Earth, looking back at me
Is smiling, too.
May I walk happily
And lightly
Upon Her.

couple(t) - Chris Blakeley

three blocks later

they're still kissing

Reincarnation - Phebe Jewell

When I am born again
make me a drum,

make me an anchor
of rhythm for your hands.

Make my song
break locks,
open windows,
fill bellies.

Play me
til I shudder and break
between your knees.

Set me afire.
Watch me spark,
rising, twisting,
returning
to darkness.

Why Dreams Are Like Babies -- Erin Malone

Otherworldly, they may be naked
& speaking a language
you can’t understand.

They test you
on long division.
You’re unprepared—

This one is familiar
but wears another’s face.
You can’t run. He wakes you,
wakes you, wakes you.

Erin Malone

Courtesy Seattle's Poetry on the Bus

See more of these gems here.

I think this would make a great poem to "workshop," swapping out your own place-words to achieve a new feel.

Great Jones Wide Awake Now

dreamlife at
the great jones café
was more bar
than chow
more smoke
than booze
more t.v.
than jukebox
more motel
than barstool

now & then
a regular escaped
more sparrow
than keepsake

the rest of us
were hammered
into place
more vinegar
than oil

more fencepost
than jailbreak

April De Nonno

EVERY CASE —Wislawa Szymborska

It could have happened.
It must have happened.
It happened earlier. Later.
Closer by. Further away.
It happened not to you.

You survived because you were the first.
You survived because you were the last.
Because you were alone. Because you were with others.
Because to the left. Because to the right.
Because it rained. Because there was shade.
Because the day was sunny.

Fortunately a forest was there.
Fortunately no trees were there.
Fortunately a rail, a hook, a bar, a brake,
an embrasure, a curve, a millimeter, a second.
Fortunately a razor was floating on water.

As a consequence, because, and yet, in spite.
What it would have been if a hand, a leg,
within an ace of, by a hair's breadth
saved from a combination of circumstances.

So you are here? Straight from an abrogated moment?
The net had just one mesh and you went through that mesh?
I am all surprise and all silence.
Listen,
how quickly your heart beats to me.

Except that there's this career thing...

If you have been working toward a promotion or a raise, things might finally start to loosen up on the job front now that Mars is again pushing forward in your 10th House of Career. But don't expect too much too fast or you will be disappointed. Your rewards could fall short of your desires, but it may take a few more weeks until you see the full results from your efforts.

And I have been, and oh boy does it help that the stars are aligned to make that a bit less painful and arduous...

Today and Every Day. Amen.

From tarot.com:

Perhaps you have reached a phase in your life when work starts to lose its prominence. Of course, you must be dutiful enough to meet your responsibilities or everything could fall apart. But in order to do something extraordinary, you might have to push your own personal envelope and take a risk. Talk about your fears now, for it will be harder to deal with them later.

The Next Two Years

January 2008, here's what the stars have in store for me:

You are in a transition in which you are fundamentally coming to terms with yourself. That change is about getting relief from nervousness and instability, and calling your life into focus. It is about having the confidence and substance to stand up to the world, which is so rare to find. Finally, this transit is about finding the ability to go deeper into yourself, your ideas and your sense of existence. These things have life on more than the level of thought or concept. Ideas are powerful, and you have reached a point of maturity that you have been working toward for a long time.

To the extent that you are fundamentally passive, Saturn will compel you to take an active role in your life and in your relationships. To the extent that you understand that authority is something we embody or we don't grow, you will be granted enormous assistance in taking on your true role in the world. In doing so, we take away the authority that others seem to hold over us, whoever they may be.

In ordering our lives, we liberate the energy we need to persist in our creative work and our service to the world. You are, by nature, a sober and sensible individual. You understand that life is an opportunity and a profound responsibility, only magnified by our commitments to others.

"My Father with Cigarette Twelve Years Before the Nazis Could Break His Heart" (poem) by Philip Levine

I remember the room in which he held 

a kitchen match and with his thumbnail 

commanded it to flame: a brown sofa, 

two easy chairs, one covered with flowers, 

a black piano no one ever played half 

covered by a long-fringed ornamental scarf 

Ray Estrada brought back from Mexico 

in 1931. How new the world is, you say. 

In that room someone is speaking about money, 

asking why it matters, and my father exhales 

the blue smoke, and says a million dollars 

even in large bills would be impossible. 

He's telling me because, I see now, I'm 

the one who asked, for I dream of money, 

always coins and bills that run through my hands, 

money I find in the corners of unknown rooms 

or in metal boxes I dig up in the backyard 

flower beds of houses I've never seen. 

My father rises now and goes to the closet. 

It's as though someone were directing a play 

and my father's part called for him to stand 

so that the audience, which must be you, 

could see him in white shirt, dark trousers, 

held up by suspenders, a sign of the times, 

and conclude he is taller than his son 

will ever be, and as he dips into his jacket, 

you'll know his role calls for him to exit 

by the front door, leaving something 

unfinished, the closet light still on, 

the cigarette still burning dangerously, 

a Yiddish paper folded to the right place 

so that a photograph of Hindenburg 

in full military regalia swims up 

to you out of all the details we lived. 

I remember the way the match flared 

blue and yellow in the deepening light 

of a cool afternoon in early September, 

and the sound, part iron, part animal, 

part music, as the air rushed toward it 

out of my mouth, and his intake of breath 

through the Lucky Strike, and the smoke 

hanging on after the door closed and the play 

ran out of acts and actors, and the audience -- 

which must be you -- grew tired of these lives 

that finally came to nothing or no more 

than the furniture and the cotton drapes 

left open so the darkening sky can seem 

to have the last word, with half a moon 

and a showering of fake stars to say what 

the stars always say about the ordinary. 

Oh, you're still here, 60 years later, 

you wonder what became of us, why 

someone put it in a book, and left 

the book open to a page no one reads. 

Everything tells you he never came back, 

though he did before he didn't, everything 

suggests it was the year Hitler came 

to power, the year my grandmother learned 

to read English novels and fell in love 

with David Copperfield and Oliver Twist

which she read to me seated on a stool 

beside my bed until I fell asleep. 

Everything tells you this is a preface 

to something important, the Second World War, 

the news that leaked back from Poland 

that the villages were gone. The truth is -- 

if there is a truth -- I remember the room, 

I remember the flame, the blue smoke, 

how bright and slippery were the secret coins, 

how David Copperfield doubted his own name, 

how sweet the stars seemed, peeping and blinking, 

how close the moon, how utterly silent the piano. 

-- from The Simple Truth

My Life Coming to Get Me

Been pretty unhappy w/ work for a while now - up and down, certainly, but more often down than up.

Been vaguely dissatisfied with the way I've been living my life, too -- too much sitting around and not enough digging deep. I've told myself I'm still resting up after 20+ years in school and working, running myself ragged and so busy as to be blind to most everything else.

Took the time to attend a meditation retreat, with Rilke by my side and on my mind. What rung through me clearly is his admonition from Sonnets to Orpheus:

"You must change your life."

And this one --

I am too alone in the world, but not alone enough to make each hour holy.
I am small in the world, but not small enough to simply be like a thing -- just as it is.

I want to know my own will
and to move with it.
And I want, in the hushed moments
when the nameless draws near,
to be among the wise ones—
or alone.

I want to unfold.
Let no place in me hold itself closed,
for where I am closed, I am false.
I want to stay clear in your sight.

I would describe myself like a landscape I’ve studied
at length, in detail;
like a word I’m coming to understand;
like a pitcher I pour from at mealtimes;

like my mother’s face;
like a ship that carried me
when the waters raged.

- From Rilke’s Book Of Hours translated by Anita Barrows & Joanna Macy

So of course, the universe opened up, testing me with new opportunities, throwing my current life into bas relief, forcing me to question just how dissatisfied I am with it, and which parts I wouldn't, couldn't, shouldn't throw away.

There are things I want more of --

• Money to save and not worry about each purchase and unexpected expenses/emergencies
• Time to meditate, to read, to follow my interest & development
• Focus to study and pass my AICP exam for planning, which opens the door to project management and career advancement
• Teaching, because it rockets me to understanding and challenges me to question everything -- and write about it
• Inspiration -- to go where my life takes me, joyfully, fully, present
• Kids

And so, what path will lead me toward these things, and which path will make it harder, or impossible? Which lets me ride the wave, and which leaves me paddling on a calm ocean, trying to surf?

It's a blessing to be presented with this moment to make choices. That is clear to me. And even the opportunity to do nothing, change nothing, except my attitude and gratitude at what I already have, is valuable for me now.

Still.

It's such a huge opportunity to change so much that it's hard not to feel fate's hand.

I must listen and calm myself in order to hear clearly -- both what the universe whispers or shouts to me and what my own instinct says.

What's the biggest move I can handle that would make Rilke proud? Isn't it interesting that the more you allow for the possibility of fate, the more you feel the press of its hand?

Rilke's Book of Hours -- Selections from Barrows & Macy Translation

God, give us each our own death,
the dying that proceeds
from each of our lives:

the way we loved,
the meanings we made,
our need.

*****


You who know, and whose vast knowing
is born of poverty, abundance of poverty --

make it so the poor are no longer
despised and thrown away.

Look at them standing about --
like wildflowers, which have nowhere else to grow.

*****


I thank you, deep power
that works me ever more lightly in ways I can't make out.
The day's labor grows simple now,
and like a holy face
held in my dark hands.

*****

You too will find your strength.
We who must live in this time
cannot imagine how strong you will become --
how strange, how surprising,
yet familiar as yesterday.

We will sense you
like a fragrance from a nearby garden
and watch you move through our days
like a shaft of sunlight in a sickroom.

We will not be herded into churches,
for you are not made by the crowd,
you who meet us in our solitude.

We are cradled close in your hands --
and lavishly flung forth.

"Troublemaker" (poem) by Wilson Diehl

Every family has one -- usually the one 

who writes, the one who spills family secrets 

onto the page like so much grape juice 

on beige carpet -- creating continent-shaped 

stains that are slow to fade and never disappear 

entirely.

Brocaded Life (For Eden) by Hagar Shirman

from Poetry on the Bus

My mother's hands are silken gloves
Woven of the warmest thread,
Embroidered by the day, year, life.

Each caress a flower,
A vine ...
Strength etched in lines.

For this I strive,
This tapestry of life accomplished:
Instead of gold, a softly callused cloth.

Wedding Vows

Eric & I got married last Saturday, Sept. 29, 2007.




I still can't bring myself to tell the whole story -- Friday night welcome dinner for family and out-of-town friends, a day-long treasure hunt, Volcano fiasco in the wind and rain and hail, two-hour rain delay, and backyard ceremony by firelight with friends all around.

I'm proud of all of it, despite the fact that my family will make me pay for each and every moment of discomfort, inconvenience, and unconventionality. Almost more than anything else, I'm proud of the vows we wrote and recited to each other.

Our officiant, Mindy -- a friend to both of us and partner of one of our closest friends -- cued us with the bulleted word, and we provided the rest of the vows. We did the whole list in turn.

§ Kindness: I promise to give the highest priority to the kindness that our connection deserves.

§ Growth: I agree to take responsibility for my own happiness, health, and growth and help as much as I can, as gently as I can, with yours.

§ Gentleness: I will try to understand myself first in silence and speak the hard things softly in order that we both may hear.

§ Connection: I will continue to learn and respect who you are and search out points of connection.

§ Humor: I will do my best to appreciate the moments of humor and celebrate moments of joy that we may lighten the darker times.

§ Responsibility: I promise to take responsibility for the quality of our life together.

These rings, which were once symbols of your private commitment to one other, now become public symbols of the larger commitment you are making to your friends, to your family, to your larger community, and to the work you will continue to do together in this world.

Do you, Eric, choose Mikaela to be your family from this day forward?
I do.

Do you, Mikaela, choose Eric to be your family from this day forward?
I do.

Do you, Eric and Mikaela, agree to be the best partners to each other that you can?
We do.

Do you, Eric and Mikaela’s family and friends, agree to support this couple, individually and together, from this day forward?
We do.

Do you also agree to take responsibility for your relationships and the work you will do in the world and in your communities?
We do.

A Philosophy of Connection & Autonomy

Ever since flirting with being an Objectivist my first year of college, I've been fascinated with the idea of philosophy. I wanted to know everything about everything, a trajectory that led me to try to write an undergraduate thesis linking T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets with quantum physics and William James' pragmatism. The thesis never quite came to fruition, but the idea is still a good one, and I come back to it all the time.

Although I've outgrown Ayn Rand and her very thin, black-and-white fanaticism, I still admire her tenacity of mind and organization to bring followers with her in her thinking. Back in that freshman year of college, I had the poster on my wall listing her main tenets, covering the major branches of philosophy:

• Ontology: This is the only reality there is.
  
• Epistemology: We know what we know because of reason.
  
• Ethics: Self-interest.
  
• Aesthetics: (Can't really remember other than to say she hated emotional music ala Wagner or sentimental art ala Monet, which I discovered when the President of the Objectivists came to my room and tried to argue with me about why I liked the Monet poster hanging on my wall)
  
• Social Organization: Democracy. (Not sure but must have been Representative Democracy, because she wasn't very optimistic about the intelligence of the masses or trusting of their ability to go beyond emotional pleas to reasoned voting patterns)
  
• Economics: Capitalism. Period.

There's an objectivist institute. Objectivist books. Objectivist positon papers on current events. Alan Greenspan was an acolyte. This woman had followers. She did for philosophy what Frank Lloyd Wright did for architecture. She made lay people fans.

There was a time -- years, actually -- when Atlas Shrugged was the second-best-selling book in the world, second only to the bible. The bible.

Ever since that time, and after reading quite a bit of lay person quantum physics (Brian Greene and Heinz Pagels, high among them), I've flirted with my own philosophical structure of belief. Ayn Rand was a modernist, but we've moved to the postmodern age. A quantum age.

What holds it all together? Why do Rilke and Heisenberg both describe the same thing, and why does it resonate so powerfully?

I've written about connection, and implicitly about autonomy, but recently while reading the introduction of Edward Said's Culture and Imperialism, I realized these two form the basis of what I believe about everything. Together, they form my ontology.

Ontology: Connection & Autonomy

Gravity operates at all levels, pulling us toward leaders, attractive people and ideas. Where our autonomy is overpowered by this influence, we are sucked into the black hole and lose ourselves. Where our autonomy overpowers our attraction, we lose connection. In the balance, we find growth, health, and love.

From these, all things can be derived, from the atomic level to that of political systems, love, family, etc.

So how do we know what we know? How do we know what's real? What are the building blocks of how we live, how we think, how we reason, how we love?

I think there's a hierarchy, or at least a progression. I believe it goes something like this:

Epistemology:

• Awareness
• Kindness
• Respect
• Impulse toward meaning
• Choice
• Identity
• Family
• Community
• Culture
  

How do you know how to act?

I think there's an ethics that flows from the balance between connection and autonomy, too.

Ethics:

• Sharing - information and resources (the balance to find here would be leverage -- maximizing connection in a way that capitalizes on the autonomy of both sides to benefit both
• Listening/receiving - needing both openness and acceptance -- vulnerability being as important as strength
• Prioritizing - ordering our connections, our own needs, our values, and our actions
• Valuing/celebrating - the ability to appreciate and be grateful is one of the ultimate purposes of consciousness. Think Color Purple: "Everything wants to be love. Trees do everything people do to get attention accept walk. It pisses god off when people walk by the color purple without noticing."
• Cultivating/sustaining - we take our celebration of the world one step further when we plant, kern, harvest -- cultivate and perpetuate what grows, in our fields, in our families, in our communities.

Consciousness is our ability not just to notice the world but to construct narratives about it, adding lyrics to the melody of what grows and the rhythm of what is. Plants can dance; we sing.

Love is the degree to which we can strike the balance between our respect for others' autonomy and our attraction to the connection. Where those two things enrich both -- it's healthy love.

Power is the extent to which we can manipulate gravity and pull others into our sphere of influence through both space and time.

Given this definition, what makes a good politician? What's the difference to the universe between Hitler and Martin Luther King, Jr.? Those who strike a balance between protecting the rights of the individual with the good of the community. Beware of any leader who asks for personal sacrifice for the good of all -- or asks that individuals compromise what they know to be right for a bigger cause.

So what is justice? That which maintains the balance between autonomy at the small scale and connection at the large scale over space and time. What is expedient in the short-term but doesn't lead to a sustainable connection over time? Not just. That which asks the community to bear the burden of negative impacts for what's good for one little capitalist at one point in history? Not just.

There are implications for faith that I'm still trying to explore. This is the first pass. As Prof. Claudia Isaac would say, it's the first pass at creating the groove in the head. Each pass makes it deeper.

Voces Book - coming this Spring!

This is the cover for the Voces Program Anthology coming out from UNM Press this Spring.

I am sooooo excited!

Dare to (Just) Be

Realize the strength
in weakness

in the space between
stronger forces.

You do not need to be the mountain
or the man rolling the boulder up its hill.

You can be the stone resting
the apple already fallen

the shade that gives comfort
because it is not the sun.