Tag: Imagined connections

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For Nothing is Fixed: podcast and poems

“Fixed” as in: permanent / unmoving / unchanging;
“Fixed” as in: repaired, made whole.

On this theme I present this timely and provocative conversation between Viveka and Paramananda. So much of what Viveka says (and not just in this podcast!) resonates with my experience, in particular:

Just because we’re physically together doesn’t mean we’re vibing together… Just recognizing that when we’re physically together doesn’t mean that all bodies are able to be there in the same way has been a huge teaching for me.

and:

How can we actually co-create a space that everyone is genuinely able to be welcome with others, to be welcoming others? …There’s something about the beautifulness of our differentiation where we can actually welcome each other fully.

Their conversation takes as its springboard this poem by James Baldwin, which Paramananda recites beautifully (and from memory!) at 4:40:

For Nothing Is Fixed
by James Baldwin

For nothing is fixed,
forever, forever, forever,
it is not fixed;
the earth is always shifting,
the light is always changing,
the sea does not cease to grind down rock.
Generations do not cease to be born,
and we are responsible to them
because we are the only witnesses they have.
The sea rises, the light fails,
lovers cling to each other,
and children cling to us.
The moment we cease to hold each other,
the moment we break faith with one another,
the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.

***

Here’s another excerpt of a poem, which I heard for the first time this afternoon. Apparently it is stenciled on the streets of Salem, Massachussetts in such a way that it is only visible when it rains, and I wish I could find the poem in its entirety:

Prema-Bangera-TheArtofHealing

All around the globe, Right Now, people are busy filling in the cracks of our world with gold, and I’m deeply inspired.

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Marches ~ Maya ~ Mycelia

Still I Rise
by Maya Angelou

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.
Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
’Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.
Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I’ll rise.
Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?
Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don’t you take it awful hard
’Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own backyard.
You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.
Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?
Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

 

 

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David Whyte and Jane Hirshfield on the window of waking

For years I’d been intermittently trying to find a very specific David Whyte poem. The detail I was sure I remembered after a morning yoga teacher read it aloud was a window: a window to something bigger that only exists at the moment we move from sleeping to waking, a window that closes in the morning the minute we start making plans.

Turns out there is no window — at least, no literal one — in the poem at all, so my many attempts to sift through the internet’s tons of gravel and sand for a David Whyte poem that necessarily contained the words “window” and “morning” and “plans” came up empty.

I can’t remember what new, less restrictive search I tried this last time, but Google finally yielded two gold nuggets: the poem I had incorrectly remembered, “What to remember on waking,” and a recent video of the poet himself introducing and then reading it, in his own inimitable fashion.

Below I have included the video, the text of his introduction, and the original poem.

First, however, I also wanted to share another recently-discovered bit of gold from Jane Hirshfield. She so perfectly and so differently illustrates what we can only see through the window of morning, the gold we can only discover while still wading in that different stream of consciousness:

Language wakes up in the morning. It has not yet washed its face, brushed its teeth, combed its hair. It does not remember whether or not, in the night, any dreams came. The light is the plain light of day, indirect — the window faces north — but strong enough to see by nonetheless.

Language goes to the tall mirror that hangs on one wall and stands before it, wearing no makeup, no slippers, no robe. In the same circumstances, we might see first our two eyes, looking back at their own inquiring. We might glance down to the two legs on which vision stands. What language sees in the mirror is also twofold — the two foundation powers of image and statement. The first foundation, image, holds the primary, wordless world of the actual, its heaped assemblage of quartzite, feathers, steel trusses, re-seamed baseballs, distant airplanes, and a few loudly complaining cows, traveling from every direction into the self’s interior awareness. The second foundation, statement, is our human answer, traveling outward back into the world– our stories, our theories, our judgments, our epics and lyrics and work songs, birth notices and epitaphs, newspaper articles and wedding invitations, the infinite coherence-makings of form. All that is sayable begins with these two modes of attention and their prolific offspring. Begins, that is, with the givens of experienced, embodied existence and the responses we offer the world in return.

…

Let us return to the morning bedroom, to the moment when language awakens to rise, looks outward, looks inward, asks its one question: “What might I say?” What does it mean when the answer arrives through the gaze of a Muse, that is, in the form we think of as art?

10windows

Excerpts from “Language Wakes Up in the Morning: On Poetry’s Speaking,” a chapter in Jane Hirshfield’s book Ten Windows: How Great Poems Change the World (Penguin Random House 2017).

***

In these days of the virus, when many of us are confined to our homes and confined to a different more inbound horizon, a different way of inhabiting the 24 hours, it’s interesting to think of the ancient disciplines and micro-disciplines around inhabiting the day and the night hours. One of the micro-disciplines that’s always been very, very important has been the act of waking into the world. Prayers for waking, a meditation at dawn, yoga for dawn, just standing up, taking a deep breath and greeting the horizon.

This is a piece I wrote called, “What to Remember When Waking,” that looks, independent of any religious inheritance, around the phenomenology of waking, of carrying this revelation from the reimagination that has occurred in your body, and the resetting of your physiology. And I’ve always felt that that moment of waking is an incredible opportunity and it’s quite a tragedy if you go straight to your to-do list. The tragedy of the to-do list is that it was put together with the priorities of the person you were yesterday. So the ability to wake in the world and see it anew…

What to remember when waking
a poem by David Whyte

In that first
hardly noticed
moment
in which you wake,
coming back
to this life
from the other
more secret,
moveable
and frighteningly
honest
world
where everything
began,
there is a small
opening
into the day
which closes
the moment
you begin
your plans.

What you can plan
is too small
for you to live.

What you can live
wholeheartedly
will make plans
enough
for the vitality
hidden in your sleep.

To be human
is to become visible,
while carrying
what is hidden
as a gift to others.

To remember
the other world
in this world
is to live in your
true inheritance…

Excerpt from ‘What to Remember When Waking’
From RIVER FLOW: New and Selected Poems
Many Rivers Press. ©David Whyte Source

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How being American in New Zealand shines some light on the Commonwealth

Toward the end of a yoga class I was attending this morning, the sounds of a very exuberant… school band? church band? began wafting in from the building directly across the street. Crashing cymbals, clunky piano, and off-key singing, oh my!

Our teacher closed the windows on that side of our room but frankly, I was more inspired by the live music. Much more moving than the canned soundtrack I’m getting a bit tired of hearing at every class, week after week; good thing I’m there for the yoga, not the music 😉

After class I stood under a tree and listened to the band for several minutes, inexplicable tears in my eyes, while they thrashed their way through This Little Light of Mine.

Wanting to keep that light shining a bit longer, when I got home I discovered this:

Other than having seen recent headlines that apparently they’re thinking of moving to Vancouver Island, or is it Vancouver? — I am totally out of the loop. Had no idea they had gospel at their wedding, and I approve!

But I suspect that my ignorance of all things Royal makes me yet another kind of minority here.

***

Living in New Zealand has oddly shed a lot of light on aspects of my experiences living in Canada, where my mother is from. I suppose that shouldn’t come as a surprise given that both countries were colonized by the British, and are therefore part of the Commonwealth (aka the Commonwealth of Nations, formerly known as The British Commonwealth of Nations).

To a much lesser extent, living here has helped me recognize that certain experiences I’ve had in Hong Kong, where my father is from, are also the result of British influence.

Prefaced by some very substantive caveats (obviously not everyone is like this / I’ve observed far more similarities between New Zealand and Canada than New Zealand and Hong Kong / this is not an attempt to summarize ALL aspects of my experiences in those countries / etc), some of these common Commonwealth aspects I’ve noticed include:

  • British-style Tea as an Event (including varied, though always-specific personal expectations about preparing the beverage, and what to serve with it);
  • Less willingness to speak directly or engage in interpersonal conflict compared to my experience in the US, sometimes coupled with a bit more unexpressed intolerance of differing opinions;
  • A cultural commitment to remembering the lives lost during the first World War;
  • A sense that anything British is better than anything that might have been there before the British arrived (people / values / culture / animals / plants other than those deemed useful for selling back in Britain or elsewhere) or who might be arriving more recently, namely, immigrants from non-European countries;
  • An obsession with the British monarchy, including most recently the activities of Harry and Meghan… speaking of immigration.

The combination of these observations, plus several others that are much more subtle and difficult to articulate, have also given me a much stronger sense of my American-ness. Sometimes I even feel vague sense of pride that the American colonists of yore stood up to the British. It’s not constant, or concrete. “Pride” doesn’t even really feel like the appropriate word. Maybe it would be more accurate to say that it’s more a noticing that Americans chose a different path that resulted in some different outcomes, for better and for worse.

Most of what I feel as an American is a sense of shame that I am somehow representative of or responsible for the havoc wreaked around the world by American exports, including war and consumerist values. I cringe every time someone points out that something I tend to do is “so American.”

And I cringe even more when people here lump all Americans together when making an observation. Clearly they don’t understand that the US is an enormous AND enormously diverse country. No, not every single person in the country keeps the tap running while washing dishes, and no we certainly don’t all support our current president any more than all citizens of Commonwealth countries are the same or love the Queen.

I hold out hope that my particular way of being may help demonstrate that not ALL Americans are that bad, even if we do sometimes share some cultural similarities to each other, and even to the mythical America that Americans and non-Americans alike cling to.

May we all let our lights shine, no matter where we are from or where we find ourselves living now.

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Four reminders in two songs

As I get deeper into my Buddhist studies, I’m increasingly seeing things through the lens of its teachings. While I have no interest in claiming anything as “Buddhist” when I notice resonance, I do feel a bit like the proverbial little boy who, when given a hammer, starts to see everything as a nail!

Consider this Chastity Belt song, for instance (and in case you’re wondering whether or not to hit play, that’s the name of the band, not the subject of their song… though that would be an interesting read on it):

I’ve been playing this song over and over in the car for weeks. When I finally sat down to read the lyrics (see the end of this post) I immediately thought to myself, “Oh! What a great representation of the Four Mind-Turning Reflections!”

I like thinking of the Four Mind-Turning Reflections, AKA the Four Reminders, as a Buddhist “Facts of Life” of sorts, designed to keep us focused on the things that are really important.

Here’s an attempt to paraphrase them into my own words:

  1. Being alive, in this body, right here and right now, is a unique opportunity;
  2. We’re all going to die eventually;
  3. Our intentions and our actions have an impact; and
  4. We’re fooling ourselves if we think we can control everything to suit our preferences, and ultimately the attempt to do so leads to even more suffering.

I’ll spare you my line-by-line analysis of the song’s lyrics but I’m satisfied that they cover off all four pretty effectively 🙂

Then this morning I remembered another song I’ve appreciated for ages, the classic Feel So Different, from the person formally known as Sinéad O’Connor:

The songs’ titles are similar, obviously, but they share a lot more than that. This one too feels distinctly “Buddhist” to me right now.

Is it though? I have no idea how she identified when she wrote Feel So Different nearly 30 years ago (and she recently converted to Islam)  so I can only guess: probably not, and it doesn’t matter; I care a lot less about assigning labels, and a lot more about appreciating reminders to stay awake to my life’s priorities, no matter what form they take.

***

Lyrics to both songs below. Continue reading “Four reminders in two songs”

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I Love Lizzo

Feeling the same kind of way about Lizzo that I did when I discovered Janelle Monae’s Pink and then some. Hat tip to Mitra Jouhari on The Creative Independent for turning me on to this wonder. Oh, to be this positive!

Juice mantra:

If I’m shining EVERYBODY gonna shine

And she is so shiny… just dumping all my faves here (and I thought it was funny when 2 Chainz married himself), including an Anchorman spoof at the bottom. #flutegoals

Enjoy!

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More than one way to write a story

You may have seen Mandy Len Catron’s recent article, What You Lose When You Gain a Spouse. I share the author’s experience that many of the costs associated with marriage ring true for those of us who are partnered-and-co-habitating, if not actually married. 

But the part of the article that made me yell out loud in agreement was this sentence, a quote from psychologist Bella DePaulo:

 When the prevailing unquestioned narrative maintains that there is only one way to live a good and happy life, too many people end up miserable.

I believe we could replace “…live a good and happy life” with just about anything and it would still hold: when there is only one way to “raise a child,” or “save the world,” or “use gender pronouns,” too many people end up miserable.

I also believe we need to question the narrative that there is only one way to write a life story.

Six months ago I attended a long-weekend writing workshop to see if I wanted to sign up for the school’s longer program. The MFA-esque course in fiction and memoir writing would have required a significant shift in life priorities, and I was seriously considering it. I decided not to sign up for a number of reasons, including the fact that I found myself more than a little triggered by the main instructor’s assumptions that:

  • Being published would obviously be our primary — if not only — motivation for investing in such a program, and 
  • The only way to get published is to follow the very specific, tried-and-true story arc.

Now I’m not arguing that the Story Arc doesn’t work for that specific purpose, but I am Very Resistant to the idea that it is the ONLY way to tell a story. I know I know — you have to learn the rules before you can break them, etc. But some of us would rather not pay cash money for yet another experience of learning that we “have to” mold ourselves to someone else’s — or some entire tradition’s — definitions of how we should be in order to be “successful.”

(Related: except for one piece by Arundhati Roy, the authors of every single excerpt we studied, and every member of the longer program’s listed faculty, and every one of my fellow students, were white. I recently read a powerful account of a woman’s experience of racism during a writing class and am grateful that none of my fellow workshoppers behaved as unskillfully! Still, I am weary of wondering if I am the only one in the room who even notices details like those I listed above. And I wish it were possible for me to simply appreciate the curriculum, rather than also having to weigh the pros and cons of bringing up what — and whom — it leaves out.)

And so, rather than polish my craft under the watchful mentorship of professional writing teachers, I continue to write rambling, unpolished pieces for… myself. And you 🙂

***

Speaking of stories, I loved Tommy Orange’s There There. My friend Mike, the most prolific recommender of books I know, suggested I read it long before the New York Times listed it as one of their best books of 2018, but I didn’t get to the top of the waiting list for the library’s electronic copy until the end of December. Took me only two days to finish as I couldn’t put it down.

As a follow-up, Mike suggested Terese Marie Mailhot’s Heart Berries: A Memoir. “A much different book,” he said, “but crazy intense as well.”

Wow wow wow, so much REAL! 

And a very interesting structure. To be honest I can’t remember whether it follows THE Arc or not; there were so many other details that held my attention, including the author’s choice to name the names of those who had harmed her and her mother. 

Even before reading Heart Berries, I’d spent a fair bit of time lately thinking about:

  1. The ownership of stories (as in: what are the ethics of telling other people’s stories, even if they belong to the author as well?);
  2. The difference between what actually happened and what we remember, and how much / when that difference ultimately matters; and
  3. The many ways we (as individuals, families, institutions, a society in general) practice “healing” and “justice” in the aftermath of the various types of trauma we cause each other, sexual and otherwise.

There’s a lot to sift through and process. In the book and in our own lives, clearly.

The very next book I read was Maggie Nelson’s Bluets, also a memoir of sorts, which I discovered because a bunch of people on The Creative Independent (a collection of essays and interviews that Kickstarter publishes to support the emotional and practical needs of creative people) keep recommending it.

And now I would like to recommend it to you! Nelson’s writing in Bluets is beautiful, lyrical, and explicit in its exposition of the messy, nonlinear cycle of remembered joy –> nostalgia –> shattering grief –> –> coming back together again.

As I was reading Bluets I couldn’t help but notice the similarities between its structure / tone / the author’s approach to writing about vulnerability / relationships / heartache (etc) and Mailhot’s in Heart Berries. Because I like being right, I said to Scott, “she must have been inspired by Maggie Nelson,” though I knew full well he hadn’t read either book.

***

In an April newsletter from independent publisher Catapult, they announced their latest offering, Meander, Spiral, Explode: Design and Pattern in Narrative, by Jane Alison. I look forward to reading its “deeply wacky pleasures,” as described in this New Yorker review.

In the meantime I can’t stop thinking about the excerpt quoted in the book’s description: 

For centuries there’s been one path through fiction we’re most likely to travel— one we’re actually told to follow—and that’s the dramatic arc: a situation arises, grows tense, reaches a peak, subsides . . . But something that swells and tautens until climax, then collapses? Bit masculosexual, no? So many other patterns run through nature, tracing other deep motions in life. Why not draw on them, too?

I thought about sending a copy to the writing program’s leader, who also happens to be an acquaintance of mine, but I suspect I’m only tempted to do so for ego-boosting reasons (Scott points out that this piece isn’t exactly a conversation starter).

Also, it’s sold out.

***

A few weeks ago, after the similarities had been gnawing at me for months, I resorted to Googling whether anyone else had, in internet-discoverable format, compared Mailhot’s style in Heart Berries to Maggie Nelson’s in Bluets.

What I found was so much more exciting than that: an entire Atlantic article in which Mailhot describes Bluets as a critically-important inspiration for her own work, and tangentially, her marriage. 

She goes on to critique “the established MFA aesthetic” (which she describes as “essentially white”):

I’m suspicious of when we try to compartmentalize the formula for success as an author, instead of just inviting the person to be as weird as they need to be to express something. Let them be the person they’re supposed to be, instead of trying to mold them into the aesthetic of this moment. It’s so difficult and important for teachers to try to bring that weirdness out.

Again, I’m tempted to substitute any other description of identity where the word “author” appears here. Why not challenge the compartmentalized formula for success as a woman, a man, a couple, an employee, or anything else for that matter?

I read these quotes as Calls to Action to become the teacher / friend / sister / daughter / partner / colleague that I want to be: the one who, by fully embracing both my weird and conventional qualities, contributes to the cycle of bringing out the unapologetically weird and conventional in others. And I offer an immense Thank You to those of you who have let your own evolving self shine forth, as this has helped me come to love and express my own.

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Interwoven

 

AnniAlbersUntitled.jpg
Anni Albers
Untitled, n.d.
lithographic crayon on graph paper
231⁄2 × 151⁄2 in. (59.7 × 39.7 cm)
1994.10.276

I found this lovely weaving/drawing/metaphor here

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How to measure distance: a poem by Charlotte Pence

Guernica’s e-newsletter led me to a lovely poem by Charlotte Pence (daughter of Spike, not Mike), which led me to her website, which led me to this sparkling nugget, such a perfect thing to discover right after posting my review of In the Distance, Hernan Diaz’s book!

How to measure distance*
a poem by Charlotte Pence

I. Only Use Light Years When Talking to the General Public

or to squirrels testing spring between two
branches. Or to a new mother saddened
by thoughts of earth and its death; sun’s death;
her death. She watches her husband leave
the room for a burp cloth, wonders, could she
do it without him? What’s the measurement
of distance between two people growing
too close, too quickly?

II. The Measures We Use Depend on What We Are Measuring

Distance between parents? Hills? Rogue comets?
Within our solar system, distance is
measured in Astronomical Units.
Or “A.U.,” an abbreviation that
sounds similar to the “ow” of a toe
stub. Or similar to the sound of a mother
teaching the beginning of all sound. “Ah,
eh, ee, oo, uu.” Watch her mouth widen,
purr, and close. This is the measurement
for what we call breath.

III. For Most Everything Else—Stars, Galaxies, Etc…. —the Distance Unit Is the Parsec (pc). This Is a Convenient Unit

for gathering groceries, grains in silos,
gasses we cannot package and discount.

This is convenient, too, when measuring
stars’ distances by triangulation.
1 pc = 3.26 light years =
about the distance to the nearest star.

An equal sign leading to an “about.”

An estimate. A close enough.
Close enough feels safer than being wrong.
Or exact. “Close enough,” we say of that
asteroid skimming past our atmosphere’s skin.
“Close enough,” we say when he returns
with a guest towel.

IV. For Distances Within our Galaxy or Other Galaxies, It Is Kiloparsecs
She is unsure what fatherhood will do
to him. Accurate measurements require
one to know where one stands, where one belongs,
where one imagines going. Rub the toe
of the blue shoe into the dust. See how
the dust is not a bit bluer. The shoe,
a bit browner. Distance = a thing
between and against.

V. The Exception to These Units Is When One is Studying a Smaller Object

Father to mother to early zygote.
Branch to squirrel to tail-twitch and release.
Knee to toe to spring mud too soft to flake.
No units for these.

VI. One Might Say, “Its Radius Is 5 Solar Radii”, Meaning It Is 5 Times the Size of our Sun

Her fear is five times the size of sun, five
times the hours of sleep or lack thereof.
Five times the huddle of father, mother,
child. Five times the energy created
for one nap as opposed to the distance
of that nap, that leap.

VII. She Wants Answers
but is realizing that won’t happen.

She fears the truth that nothing stays the same.
Rashes fade, yet skin will prickle again.
Cries will quiet, yet the quiet will cry.
The man will leave, yet the same man will leave
again. That’s why eyes are bloodshot, why she
answers questions as if she doesn’t care.
All answers are “almost” or “about”—
everything moving. And this thing called light
years is a distance she can’t comprehend,
yet somewhere she squirms at one forever-
changing end of it.

*Note: Italics indicate lines are from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center website written by Jonathan Keohane.

I can’t help but draw other connections. “Au” is also:

Source of the poem: Charlotte’s website, accessed 4 January 2018, and I think the heading “Uncollected Poems” means it hasn’t been published anywhere else?

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The stars sing too / I know they know me back

Back in April an acquaintance shared a song she’d just released:

This part in particular really hits me:

I talk to the stars I know they know me back
You talk to the dark I know it holds you back

Then, just last week, my favorite English teacher from high school shared a Mary Oliver poem with me (see below, thanks Ellen!). I’d like to imagine ARA’s song was inspired by this poem, and in particular, this line:

So fancy is the world, who knows, maybe the stars sing too,

Here’s the whole thing:

This World
by Mary Oliver

I would like to write a poem about the world that has in it
nothing fancy.
But it seems impossible.
Whatever the subject, the morning sun
glimmers it.
The tulip feels the heat and flaps its petals open and becomes a star.
The ants bore into the peony bud and there is a dark
pinprick well of sweetness.
As for the stones on the beach, forget it.
Each one could be set in gold.
So I tried with my eyes shut, but of course the birds
were singing.
And the aspen trees were shaking the sweetest music
out of their leaves.
And that was followed by, guess what, a momentous and
beautiful silence
as comes to all of us, in little earfuls, if we’re not too
hurried to hear it.
As for spiders, how the dew hangs in their webs
even if they say nothing, or seem to say nothing.
So fancy is the world, who knows, maybe they sing.
So fancy is the world, who knows, maybe the stars sing too,
and the ants, and the peonies, and the warm stones,
so happy to be where they are, on the beach, instead of being
locked up in gold.

Continue reading “The stars sing too / I know they know me back”