can we teach EMPATHY? flexibility? generosity? LOVE?
maybe, maybe.
http://blog.ted.com/2011/04/20/the-world-peace-game-john-hunter-on-ted-com/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TEDBlog+%28TEDBlog%29
Sunday, April 24, 2011
sensory catalogue::: wHy wRiTe iT?
today i've been thinking. no, sensing is, i suppose, more accurate.
a catalogue of that sensation?
well
[abbreviated] here it is:
the scent of a santa fe rainfall that makes all attempts at secrecy in the sandwiched witching hours between the sweep of sleep and the fluttering open of eyelashes is in itself bewitching...up the mountain this morning-- no visiting soul here to share the space with me and my breathing its dank exhilaration ininin...just the shock of enormousness that the scurrying squirrels embody and the ferocity of the wind in the pines...sends me into a dream of a day in which magic isn't just possible but potent and positively present.
....into... a dance my body knew my heart needed...gratitude to kelle for providing the space...the beauty of being able to release and to sound a "cuckadoodle doo" with chicken wings without a second thought.
texture in the kiss of fingertips to the blushing pink silk of a soul-sealed decision to touch and cradle luxurious self-love-- a purchase that sent me spinning and skipping out the door of BODY into the storm-swept skies that sang with the rightness of it.
savoring a cup of the jamaican coffee oceanna and i roasted and treasured home with a story of a once upon a time old woman living at the misty edge of a concealed corner of the world-- the taste robustly combusting and smoothing soothing simultaneously the tingling of my twittering tongue as we spent the afternoon creating transformations in the form of winged creatures.
swirls of sights that dew-drop across the web of consciousness for the brief sparkle of a sunlit second...today was dripping with them, richly.
so much over which to wonder in this day.
so this is why i need to write it: because if i don't, it gets lost in the unattended storeroom of lost living. i have no choice but to tack the senses to some words to refeel-- to "taste life twice"
so charles bukowski asks:
so you want to be a writer?
and i answer "YES...BUT"
and the "BUT" is bigger than big because i question the impulse that tells me to take pen to paper, or fingertips to the rattatat tatting keys.
WHAT DRIVES ME?
to write these catalogues, to document fragments that seem small but scream in my psyche
to write them rather than to just release them-- evaporation.
or to think and rethink and reredoublethink them?
& i don't know the answer...
and
WHAT STOPS ME?
from writing these sensations into words
[that they seem inadequate bodies for such power?]
[that i haven't the courage to face them?]
[THAT I AM NOT REALLY A WRITER?]
oh it's over this worry that i fret and fuss and obsess and upon which i lean, my ever-excuse in my absurd vulnerability, exquisite in its embarassment of its lacks and holes
but this poem helps that.
not to spin out of control into tangles of "NOT GOOD ENOUGH"; but to trust the waves of gut-wrenching MUST in the writing of it when it arrives...and to not invest in the spaces in which it doesn't show up...
it's a place for patience.
i never thought about it that way.
so LISTEN:
so you want to be a writer?
by Charles Bukowski
if it doesn't come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don't do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don't do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don't do it.
if you're doing it for money or
fame,
don't do it.
if you're doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don't do it.
if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don't do it.
if it's hard work just thinking about doing it,
don't do it.
if you're trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.
if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.
if you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you're not ready.
don't be like so many writers,
don't be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don't be dull and boring and
pretentious, don't be consumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don't add to that.
don't do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don't do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don't do it.
when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.
there is no other way.
and there never was.
so to catalogue sensation that has spoken, sung, within a day or night or a limbo half-light. this is the starting place of the authenticity for me.
if i can trust myself, and my sensation, then i can be patient enough give the writer her voice when she is ROCKETING on the incisive edge of MURDER, when it is TRULY TIME, when she has BEEN CHOSEN.
until then, i'm just soaking in it, and soaking it in.
a catalogue of that sensation?
well
[abbreviated] here it is:
the scent of a santa fe rainfall that makes all attempts at secrecy in the sandwiched witching hours between the sweep of sleep and the fluttering open of eyelashes is in itself bewitching...up the mountain this morning-- no visiting soul here to share the space with me and my breathing its dank exhilaration ininin...just the shock of enormousness that the scurrying squirrels embody and the ferocity of the wind in the pines...sends me into a dream of a day in which magic isn't just possible but potent and positively present.
....into... a dance my body knew my heart needed...gratitude to kelle for providing the space...the beauty of being able to release and to sound a "cuckadoodle doo" with chicken wings without a second thought.
texture in the kiss of fingertips to the blushing pink silk of a soul-sealed decision to touch and cradle luxurious self-love-- a purchase that sent me spinning and skipping out the door of BODY into the storm-swept skies that sang with the rightness of it.
savoring a cup of the jamaican coffee oceanna and i roasted and treasured home with a story of a once upon a time old woman living at the misty edge of a concealed corner of the world-- the taste robustly combusting and smoothing soothing simultaneously the tingling of my twittering tongue as we spent the afternoon creating transformations in the form of winged creatures.
swirls of sights that dew-drop across the web of consciousness for the brief sparkle of a sunlit second...today was dripping with them, richly.
so much over which to wonder in this day.
so this is why i need to write it: because if i don't, it gets lost in the unattended storeroom of lost living. i have no choice but to tack the senses to some words to refeel-- to "taste life twice"
so charles bukowski asks:
so you want to be a writer?
and i answer "YES...BUT"
and the "BUT" is bigger than big because i question the impulse that tells me to take pen to paper, or fingertips to the rattatat tatting keys.
WHAT DRIVES ME?
to write these catalogues, to document fragments that seem small but scream in my psyche
to write them rather than to just release them-- evaporation.
or to think and rethink and reredoublethink them?
& i don't know the answer...
and
WHAT STOPS ME?
from writing these sensations into words
[that they seem inadequate bodies for such power?]
[that i haven't the courage to face them?]
[THAT I AM NOT REALLY A WRITER?]
oh it's over this worry that i fret and fuss and obsess and upon which i lean, my ever-excuse in my absurd vulnerability, exquisite in its embarassment of its lacks and holes
but this poem helps that.
not to spin out of control into tangles of "NOT GOOD ENOUGH"; but to trust the waves of gut-wrenching MUST in the writing of it when it arrives...and to not invest in the spaces in which it doesn't show up...
it's a place for patience.
i never thought about it that way.
so LISTEN:
so you want to be a writer?
by Charles Bukowski
if it doesn't come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don't do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don't do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don't do it.
if you're doing it for money or
fame,
don't do it.
if you're doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don't do it.
if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don't do it.
if it's hard work just thinking about doing it,
don't do it.
if you're trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.
if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.
if you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you're not ready.
don't be like so many writers,
don't be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don't be dull and boring and
pretentious, don't be consumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don't add to that.
don't do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don't do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don't do it.
when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.
there is no other way.
and there never was.
so to catalogue sensation that has spoken, sung, within a day or night or a limbo half-light. this is the starting place of the authenticity for me.
if i can trust myself, and my sensation, then i can be patient enough give the writer her voice when she is ROCKETING on the incisive edge of MURDER, when it is TRULY TIME, when she has BEEN CHOSEN.
until then, i'm just soaking in it, and soaking it in.
Saturday, April 23, 2011
DANCE for JOY
"I praise the dance, for it frees people from the heaviness of matter and binds the isolated to community. I praise the dance, which demands everything: health and a clear spirit and a buoyant soul. Dance is a transformation of space, of time, of people, who are in constant danger of becoming all brain, will, or feeling. Dancing demands a whole person, one who is firmly anchored in the center of his life, who is not obsessed by lust for people and things and the demon of isolation in his own ego. Dancing demands a freed person, one who vibrates with the equipoise of all his powers. I praise the dance.
O man, learn to dance, or else the angels in heaven will not know what to do with you." ~ Saint Augustine
in these past months, i have found so many new sources of joy...they have been overwhelmingly inarticulatable. and yet profound in a way that screams to be communicated, celebrated.
dance has been one of these.
i have never thought of myself as a coordinated person. i quit ballet as a young, contrary girl who preferred pastimes requiring less patience. more ferocity. but it's lived in my bones until now, when i've begun to listen to its music...i started to unlock it a little in my last semester of college when i took a contemporary dance class to add a little spice to my stressed senior schedule...in the years that have followed, yoga's found a way in too...
the part of me that honors the moon and the depth of the water and breath that offer this "EQUIPOISE" to my fire...
and finally, the joy of dance.
now that i'm letting go of a preoccupation with what it looks like, what it's SUPPOSED to look like, i feel free, and it's something that feels authentic...
don't get me wrong:
i still get totally frustrated with myself for not knowing how to make my feet and arms match sometimes, not knowing how to bring myself into alignment with the music as it washes over me...and in these moments when my mind tries to controlcontrolcontrol i loose the connection completely, just like in those yoga poses in which i analyze the synchronicity into fragments...
so this is about the whole person, the free person, the spontaneous yet purposeful person-- the one who finds the effortlessness, the weightlessness in the work, in the sweat, in the challenge that is the natural explosive quiet peace at the heart of it all.
like everything, i can construct this into a metaphor for life, a meditation on the parallels that are, in spite of their constant presence, always epiphanies, revelations...and i do, daily...because all veins of my life, all of the sinews of this body that i'm webbing of the physical mental emotional energies that i am, touch this: teaching running laughing skipping comforting confessing swimming crying listening observing...
practicing heaven on earth so the angel dance is just a natural next step...
[re]A-W-A-K-E
rounding this bend of spring,
[i am planting my annual nasturtiums today]
the stirrings and whirrings in my gut and in my brain [my soil & soul]
are demanding
my attention in a way that cannot be ignored any longer.
i need to write.
i need to catalogue the snapshots of poetry that i frame in thoughts as i move through my days--
small wonders
that RESOUND underneath surfaces, seismically,
that i'm so afraid to lose because they come quietly...but shake so deeply & surprisingly...
there is a need to taste the words and breathe them-- in and outward.
to make their texture is something tangible.
& then to examine them, too.
so here is rebirth, the REAWAKENING in this easter season, the breaking of penitence for the sin of living & leaving this glory unsung-- it's a breaking into blossom with the sun.
i am full of wonder at the energy that energy itself creates. at the abundance that is created by nothing more than intention. at the love that is, unquestionably, exponential.
and i know
that the state of matter is grave and gravelly and gray in this breath of the world's being.
that this reality is bloodied and disfigured and manipulated and greedy and riddled with brutality
so that its body is an unrecognizable version of its true self.
i'm not ignoring that maggoty flesh of it all.
i'm just waking up the possibility, the potential for another version, another narrative to write.
at least for myself. and for you if you want it.
i am so blessed to be brought into awakeness, into aliveness, every single day by girls who live rawly, righteously, respectfully, RESPLENDENTLY-- reveling without any reservation or recognition that there is any other way. thrown into this sharp focus, i am compelled to confront myself, and to offer the challenge: can i help this GROW? in me? in them? further? wider? deeper, even than these dimensions as we go out and touch the rest of the world.
this spring, i want the answer to be
YES
YES
YES.
a YES floating on effervescent wings & netted for moment, microscoped & marvelled into a formulation of an emulation and a re-creation, & then released to the joyful wind again.
it's waking UP and writing DOWN-- an undulation that is a celebration of the gratitude for this truth.
[i am planting my annual nasturtiums today]
the stirrings and whirrings in my gut and in my brain [my soil & soul]
are demanding
my attention in a way that cannot be ignored any longer.
i need to write.
i need to catalogue the snapshots of poetry that i frame in thoughts as i move through my days--
small wonders
that RESOUND underneath surfaces, seismically,
that i'm so afraid to lose because they come quietly...but shake so deeply & surprisingly...
there is a need to taste the words and breathe them-- in and outward.
to make their texture is something tangible.
& then to examine them, too.
so here is rebirth, the REAWAKENING in this easter season, the breaking of penitence for the sin of living & leaving this glory unsung-- it's a breaking into blossom with the sun.
i am full of wonder at the energy that energy itself creates. at the abundance that is created by nothing more than intention. at the love that is, unquestionably, exponential.
and i know
that the state of matter is grave and gravelly and gray in this breath of the world's being.
that this reality is bloodied and disfigured and manipulated and greedy and riddled with brutality
so that its body is an unrecognizable version of its true self.
i'm not ignoring that maggoty flesh of it all.
i'm just waking up the possibility, the potential for another version, another narrative to write.
at least for myself. and for you if you want it.
i am so blessed to be brought into awakeness, into aliveness, every single day by girls who live rawly, righteously, respectfully, RESPLENDENTLY-- reveling without any reservation or recognition that there is any other way. thrown into this sharp focus, i am compelled to confront myself, and to offer the challenge: can i help this GROW? in me? in them? further? wider? deeper, even than these dimensions as we go out and touch the rest of the world.
this spring, i want the answer to be
YES
YES
YES.
a YES floating on effervescent wings & netted for moment, microscoped & marvelled into a formulation of an emulation and a re-creation, & then released to the joyful wind again.
it's waking UP and writing DOWN-- an undulation that is a celebration of the gratitude for this truth.
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
the space between
There is no panacea
for missing syllables:...we
all know what matter's mostly made of—: space
....
Sometimes the absences in us seem so profuse,
I wonder we don't pass through wood. (excerpted from RR Lyrae Matter by Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon)
for missing syllables:...we
all know what matter's mostly made of—: space
....
Sometimes the absences in us seem so profuse,
I wonder we don't pass through wood. (excerpted from RR Lyrae Matter by Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon)
Friday, January 7, 2011
up-sTaNdinG!
aspen cathedral on the way to la vega-- santa fe, 2010.
in spite of how fantastic i feel in every other respect, today the nerve running up and down the back of my right leg is in the most excruciating pain i've experienced yet. after vinyasa today (which helped, especially right after a bikram session), i asked my teacher about it, knowing pretty much what her response would be: sciatica. it's ironic, really, because sciatic pain is typically caused by prolonged sitting and my lifestyle is really anything but sedentary...quite the contrary really, almost to my detriment i've been led to believe. however, it's not coming from the typical source of a bulging disc but rather from something stemming from the inside of the upper thigh/buttocks and burning like fire down my sit-bones and my leg, into the back of my knee. so i used to commute a lot last year-- such periods of prolonged sitting were absolute agony...now, i try to keep sitting to a minimum, but i've been told that over-exercising was my issue. there's no happy medium...although i'm thinking now that bikram's yoga is exacerbating the issue tremendously. need to work on healing this...it is absolutely awful...
in any event, i am celebrating the fact that i ENJOY being vertical-- not horizontal, or sedentary...vertical and vital! funnily enough, my POEM OF THE DAY from poets.org celebrates this very thing....
Vertical
by Linda Pastan
Perhaps the purpose
of leaves is to conceal
the verticality
of trees
which we notice
in December
as if for the first time:
row after row
of dark forms
yearning upwards.
And since we will be
horizontal ourselves
for so long,
let us now honor
the gods
of the vertical:
stalks of wheat
which to the ant
must seem as high
as these trees do to us,
silos and
telephone poles,
stalagmites
and skyscrapers.
but most of all
these winter oaks,
these soft-fleshed poplars,
this birch
whose bark is like
roughened skin
against which I lean
my chilled head,
not ready
to lie down.
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