A neo-renaissance, eco-epicurean savors, curates and shares slices from the surf's edge on the inspiration, imagination, the art of living, the living of art - and anything that screams Life.
M. Scott Peck: The Different Drum: Community Making and Peace Just started, but compelled by the model of moving from pseudo-community (where everyone is fake nice) to a true community where no one is trying to change anyone else; and collaboration truly flourishes.
Michael Scott: The Alchemyst: The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel Just checked out of library. Adore fantasy, fairy tales, and myth. And when the jacket said that Michael Scott was an authority on mythology and folklore, I was hooked. Plus I still have designs on writing my own mythic tale down soon.
Steven Johnson: Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation Really intrigued by the title. Fabulously diverse in examples. If you ever felt like a square in round world, this book will make you sing for joy because that's what life is about--growing, moving, evolving.... The book is much stronger for being in Science section and not restricted to business innovation alone.
At first I didn't connect a friend's email subject line:
row row row your boat gently down the stream
with the "truck art" I saw last night when I went for a walk.
I mulled over that "last great unknown" phrase. So I memorized the line "last great unknown," Wyoming, Powell and resolved to look up the website when I came back home from my walk. I already knew of Powell since I've run many of the canyons* (Lodore, Westwater, Desolation, Gray, Cataract--alas not Grand Canyon) that he would explore in his expedition.
As I walked I also became less perturbed and more curious about the sensations of the flight-or-fight stress response that were threatening to debilitate my entire being (releasing cortisol, adrendaline and what-not). Logically, there wasn't a reason. I wasn't being chased by a woolly mammoth. My mind, as was its habit, was simply freaking out in wanting to know for certain what was next (even a lie would suffice to pacify it). It wasn't getting any clear signal that could serve as any reference point--and that was its issue. I don't know if the feeling is what what we commonly call 'fear' is as this physiological response felt even more primal and fundamental than emotion.
My fears weren't quelled, but there was the insight that it wasn't going to get what it wanted. And somehow there was relief in this answer answer: Actually, there is no last great unknown. It's just the next great unknown, and the next. The only drama in all this is fabrifactured when (and if) I think life and I are two separate entities at cross-purposes.
I do not think humanity has even touched the surface of what is possible when we don't rush around looking for surety of shore, when we don't hole up in cozy lakes... but allow the current of the mighty river its due. When I remember that the Unknown is also You and I, is Us, is All, then the 'have to know' rift disappears.
"Hello, my name is John Wesley Powell. It is the 24th of May 1869, and the good people of Green River City have turned out to see us start. Today we begin our expedition into the last great unknown within the continental United States. I am proud to say that I am a self-driven, self-taught man of action, and am determined to conquer these unmapped, uncharted rivers and canyons, knowing that if I should fail, sure death awaits me and my crew. The nine men making the expedition along with me are prepared to embark on what I believe will be a 10-month journey throughout lands into which no one has ventured. It is my future goal to ultimately be able to guide Americans safely into the West. I seek knowledge of, and want to explore, what many believe cannot be done. Native Americans have told me that to enter the canyon is to disobey the gods and should not be done.
I have chosen a different path than that of my father, but believe that my calling lies in the depths of the canyon walls, or perhaps rushes through the rivers’ water. I see many people here today at Expedition Island in Wyoming that I shall later invite to join me on this adventurous expedition through writings I intend to note in my journal. As our expedition into the American West is about to begin, and final preparation is quickly coming to an end, I would like to take a moment to write down how I came to be here today."
I also found it inspiring that Powell feels as if he is following a 'calling' or nudge that's bigger than his parental conditioning or any sense of self-preservation--and he is going to follow it--come what may.
Also this diary passage resonates with me because Powell ventures forth with an ensemble, and as I've come to realize that atriums are more my style than freelancing solo in a coffee shop, reading that really struck a chord. In fact, I just landed today in Silicon Valley on a scouting mission because I want to be engaged in an expedition with a shared purpose again (and that takes place face-to-face, not just virtual teams).
I noted too that Powell decides to keep a diary in order to share his journey widely. This one feels far more courageous than tumbling down thick Western rivers in petite wooden boats, but I've seen that, for me, it is important not slip into hiding, and keep on sharing, out loud--especially in these exciting times.
Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream, merrily merrily merrily merrily life is but a dream.
* I lived in Salt Lake City and my ex-husband was an investor in Adventure River Expeditions (three things I love) in southern Utah (it's been acquired, so not A.R.E. now).
p.s. If you're in the Bay Area, I'll be here thorugh June 1. I'm investigating an accelerator idea, and some other quixotry. It's too much to go into in one blog post, but you can check out my bookmarks under Education and Innovation to connect the dots and get a sense. If you tend to work best with a group of peers and partners, drop me a line.
Image Credits: U-Haul, John Wesley Powell's expedition 1869 photos from their own expedition photographer ("Powell's Grand Ambition" covers the difficulty of the Grand Canyon portion of the journey); Swimming Cities of Switchback Seas is a sculptural floating city assembled by Swoon and crew.
The ruins of the once center of the cosmopolitan world Byzantium Empire are underground in Istanbul.
Paradoxically, antique and precious things aren't the only thing underground.
Often new and too edgy things reside underground.
Although, I'm tiring of hiding underground.
Perhaps it is the function of artists, shamans and culture-makers to be culturally dystonic: To be too edgy--not by force or contrivance but simply because you are going with the dynamic of life (go ahead and rock the boat, surf the edges).
Heck, it's a dragon year in the Chinese zodiac. It's a year of adventure. No time to be tentative and timid like Ms. Chihuro in Spirited Away. She was having none of it, sulking in the backseat as they drove to their new home. Her parents said a new school could be an adventure (ya right?). Little could she foresee her dread of the unknown would be tested by far more intimidating tests than any grade school.
Switching cartoons for a minute. I know it's been ages since you watched Avatar: The Last Airbender, if you've ever have.
There's a particular scene where one character does something so uncharacteristic, they faint immediately after, and in the next scene are bedridden with fever. A second character offers them support and wisdom in this dialogue (changed two words so I don't spoil the story for you):
You should know this is not a natural sickness. But that shouldn't stop you from enjoying tea.
What's happening?
Your critical decision. What you did beneath that lake, it was in such conflict with your image of yourself, that you are now at war within your own mind and body.
What's that mean?
You are going through a metamorphosis, my friend. It will not be a pleasant experience. But when you come out of it, you will be the beautiful person you were always meant to be.
Pretty much nails how I've been feeling. That sort of fever, but not quite a fever. An intense battle of my own self-images (self-mirages) clasping and collapsing.
I learned a new word last week in Shamans Through Time. "Among the Sedang Moi, a person may even drink his own urine, in the hope that this act will so depreciate him in the sight of his divine sponsors that they will take back the power they had been given." An individual who feels called to be a shaman may commit suicide as an act of refusal. It's so anathema to my self-concept, even if it is ultimately "positive" (well, maybe "whole") it wrecks how I have fixated myself.
ego-dystonic /ego-dys·ton·ic/ (e´go-dis-ton´ik) denoting aspects of a person's thoughts, impulses, and behavior that are felt to be repugnant, distressing, unacceptable, or inconsistent with the self-conception.
For a person who prides themselves on their cocky persona being compassionate might be repugnant, so ego dystonia looks unique to each. Ultimately no fixed image is going to do the river of you/us/I any justice.
Later, in the 1956 essay, George Devereux states, "shamanism is often also culture dystonic." The arts are dystonic. Who we really are is dystonic.
Recently, I read Tara Mohr contend that actually there are two flavors of fear, first is akin to worry about an imagined future fate. The second kind:
"This is the word used in the Old Testament whenever people encounter something sacred. When Moses meets the burning bush, he feels “yirah.” Yirah is described as a kind of trembling awe we feel when we are in the presence of the sacred. It is also described as “the fear that comes over us when we are inhabiting a larger space than we are used to.” - Tara Mohr
The fear that comes over us when we inhabit spaciousness, when we are the sacred.
The Evolution of Culture and The Evolution of Creativity chapters in British-Israeli physicist David Deutsch book, The Beginning of Infinity, asserts that shame and taboo are the primary tools used to keep individuals and society comfortable (or confined, depending on perception) in our conclusions and self-conceptions. In other words, tools to avoid the fever of dystonia, resist evolution, hem life.
Deutsch shares:
"Therefore no society could remain static solely by suppressing new ideas once the have been created.
That is why the enforcement of the status quo is only ever a secondary method of preventing change -- a mopping-up operation. The primary method is always -- and can only be -- to disable the source of new ideas, namely human creativity. So static societies always have traditions of bringing up children in ways that disable their creativity and critical faculties. That ensures that most of the new ideas that would have been capable of changing the society are never thought of in the first place.
How is this done? The details are variable and not relevant here, but the sort of thing that happens is that people growing up in such a society acquire a set of values for judging themselves and everyone else which amounts to ridding themselves of distinctive attributes and seeking only conformity with the society's constitutive memes. They not only enact those memes: they see themselves as existing only in order to enact them. So, not only do such societies enforce qualities such as obedience, piety and devotion to duty, their members' sense of their own selves is invested in the same standards. People know no others. So they feel pride and shame, and form their aspirations and opinions, by the criterion of how thoroughly they subordinate themselves to the society's memes." - David Deutsch, The Beginning of Infinity
Culture is a funny thing. In the West, they view dragon as adversary to be slayed, and in the East, dragons are harbingers of fortune and magic.
The dragon? It has no way of knowing, really, which culture you hail from. It just rides life.
Your humble wood dragon, Evelyn
Bonus: Self as a verb instead of self as an image is beautifully explained by Adyashanti in a January 18, 2012 webcast (available for sale) titled, "The Whole Notion of Self." (Scroll through titles on the right sidebar on the Radio Archives page.)
p.s. Yes, this is a very much an explaining post. Setting up context for what in near-future may look like up-ending memes and conceptions that have been handed down as gospel. In the end it's an experiential process of discovery that I really can't tell you about, and why I'm moving more toward exploring posts.
p.p.s. The young girl in the film was modeled after a real girl. If you've never seen Spirited Away it's a real treat for the imagination. It's been voice-overed in English by Pixar/Disney, and it is the top revenue film in Japan of all time.
“Publishing a volume of poetry is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo,” said author Don Marquis, speaking from experience. Something you’re considering, Leo, may seem to fit that description, too. It’s a project or action or gift that you’d feel good about offering, but you also wonder whether it will generate the same buzz as that rose petal floating down into the Grand Canyon. Here’s what I think: To the degree that you shed your attachment to making an impact, you will make the exact impact that matters most. Give yourself without any expectations.” - Rob Brezsny
I'm not a Leo per se, yet that truly spoke to me. And poetry is more than lyrics and lines, more fathomless in category as W.B. Yeats says, “What can be explained is not poetry.”
My last post here was back in October. Once I was locked out from updating (I hadn't paid my monthly fees), it didn't take long to see that I could appreciate a respite.
Recently, I picked up the Avatar: The Last Airbender cartoon series on DVD at the local library (no spoilers, I'm only 2/3 through). It begins in an alternate world with its own cosmology. This world is divided into four elements, with their attendant lands and kings. They are in the midst of a hundred-year war instigated by the Fire Nation wiping out many of the people and cultures in their world, including the Air Nomads and their temple.
A small tribe of Water people are deciding whether or not to banish a new-comer: a twelve-year-old named Aang whom might just be the Avatar (by balancing the four elements within himself, the Avatar can restore balance outside, ending the war). The debate ensues around whether he is too reckless to be among their serious warriors.
This is the dialogue that spoke to me, and I might just make it my mantra (internally) going forward:
Kitara: Don't you see? Aang's brought us something we haven't had in a long time. Fun. Sokka: Fun? We can't fight Firebenders with fun! Aang, the Avatar (smiling earnestly): You should try it sometime.
I can see some of you rolling your eyes at this point. Does it seem like fun = frivolous, or is it fun = harmonizing the imbalances in the world while having fun in the process? Fun = inventing and inspiring joyous ways of living?
This is where the line in the opening of the post: "It’s a project or action or gift that you’d feel good about offering, but you also wonder whether it will generate the same buzz as that rose petal floating down into the Grand Canyon" resounds. This blog, Crossroads Dispatches, celebrates it's 8th anniversary on February 6th. It's time for a shift that's closer to my gift: Less explaining, more exploring. To that end, I'm focusing on experiments in imagination and improvisation and fun; starting off easy and going into the more far-fetched and revolutionary as we go. That doesn't mean explaining shall never occur, but yeah, I'm aiming for exploratory, adventurous, experiential.
A glimpse of EXPLAINING:
"Today, the sci-fi novels of the sixties feel like artifacts from a distant age. "One way you can describe the collapse of the idea of the future is the collapse of science fiction," Thiel said. "Now it's either about technology that doesn't work or about technology that's used in bad ways. The anthology of the top twenty-five sci-fi stories of 1970 was, like, "Me and my friend the robot went for a walk on the moon,' and in 2008 it was, like, 'The galaxy is run by a fundamentalist Islamic confedereracy, and there are people who are hunting planets and killing them for fun."
[Peter] Thiel's venture-capital firm, Founders Fund, has an online manifesto about the future that begins with a complaint: "We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters." He believes that this failure of imagination explains many of the country's problems--from the collapse in manufacturing to wage stagnation to the swelling of the financial sector. As he puts it, "You have dizzying change where there's no progress."" - "No Death, No Taxes," The New Yorker, November 28, 2011
I don't relegate the dynamic of unfolding change to technology alone. I am more interested in questioning and stretching the horizons of the possible. Sometimes that is a simple shift of perception that affects identity, culture, and society.
Here's a glimpse of EXPLORING:
Speaking of sugared petals, here's an exercise:
imagine you are host to a 101-course meal (I believe Senia gave me this seed idea originally in NYC 2006 after an adventure in the Whitney Museum).
Spring roll, raisin, red pepper, Mung bean, tomato preserve, pancake and mini pancake, maple syrup, kombucha, polenta rounds with basil and tomato, red Russian kale, thistle flower coffee, guava juice, blackberry, jalapeno, red currant, Morbier cheese, fennel seed were among the 100 bites of art offered.
Now imagine like the boys in Peter Pan that you too can be fed by the energy of envisioned food.
Or as Robert Irwin puts it, “It’s strange. With food, for instance, people seem able to understand what’s involved: you savor the taste rather than just feed the body. But people have a hard time understanding that it should be the same way with visual experience.” Actually, I'd omit visual and broaden to "the same way with experience."
So now what might you serve that nourishes the senses, spirit and soul as well?
I'd have sugared rose petals.
And pinecone, an hourglass, peanut butter on a sterling silver spoon, a jar of royal blue moist tempura paint, match tea powder (unsteeped), a haiku printed on cloth, confetti, a pincushion stuck with pins with colorful threads through them, cottonball, typewriter ribbon, swim goggles, leaf, lit tealight candle, shower curtain ring, Pocky (Japanese snack), an ice cube... and on and on.
What would you serve?
p.s. Essence of exploration: The venue above, the West Bank Social Center’s tagline is 'UNPREDICTABLE THINGS ARE HAPPENING.'
"Awestruck, she watched the animal trainers, the acrobats, the jugglers, and clowns. And then the lights dimmed and a spotlight shot upward and a lone woman climbed up a rope to a metal bar suspended far above the floor. Later Olga would learn that this wondrous sport was called "trapeze." But before she knew the word she knew her destiny. "That's for me!" she promised herself.
. . . Most circus performers come from circus families or have trained as gymnasts. Olga had neither circus connections nor gymnastics' training. She didn't even know where the nearest circus school was located. She had no allies. Her parents were conservative and practical. Her sisters, her grandmother, her friends were all walls she had to scale on her way to the trapeze. Even the friend who had recklessly lowered her onto a stranger's balcony in the middle of the night wouldn't help her run away to the circus.
"The Census says that 5.9 million Americans ages 25 to 34 are living with their parents, an increase of 25 percent over from before the recession. Men are now twice as likely as young women to live with their parents.
. . . Only 55.3 percent of young adults 16 to 29 were employed, according to the Census, down from 67.3 percent in 2000 and again a post-World War II low. - "Editorial: Generation Needs More than a New Name," Willoughby, Ohio News-Herald, September 24, 2011
*****
You read this and it seems so... dim. According to some.
According to who?
Is it?
*****
"Young eagles have no instinctual fear when they emerge from the nest. They learn to avoid dangerous predators such as the wolf and fox, so Kazak hunters must climb to the nest and capture the juvenile eagle before it learns to fly -- when it is fearless. The Kazaks call the fledging a 'balapan', which they compare to a celestial raptor Hangaard (Khan Garuda). Living with an eagle may seem impractical - the raptor must be fed a marmot or a rabbit every other day and when it is cold in winter the nomads will sometimes feed it from their own flocks. The visible benefits of owning an eagle may not seem to tally with the cost, but what binds the Kazak to the eagle is something more than utility, it is what anthropologists call 'deep play.' The Kazaks say that the eagle 'chases away darkness from a man's heart.'"-- Hamid Sardar
*****
I had lost all sense of deep play when I lived in New York City.
I tried to make it--according to other people's terms.
Students praised for performance and ability tend to want to continue receiving those kudos, and won't risk threaten their reputation as a smart cookie or as a success. "The mastery-oriented children are really hell-bent on learning something" have been praised on process and effort, and they go for it for the pure privilege of growing. They'll look foolish. So what. Kids that were praised for performance tend to want to confirm their greatness, and kids praised for process seek activities that expand their abilities. (see also Little Bets, by Peter Sims)
Why, glory be, you are so successful!="All this implied that when students were valued for their intelligence, failures would be taken more personally, even as being disgraceful."
Whoa, look at you, you are learning!="Tend to view failures and setbacks as opportunies for growth. They have a desire to constantly challenge and stretch themselves."
*****
"Uranus thus confronts the Saturnian part of us that wishes to hold on, to maintain the status quo, to resist change in favor of security, tradition, and the established order.
The rebel-trickster side of the Prometheus archetype can thus come from within or without, and in the latter case a person can feel constantly subject to problematic changes that require one to reorient one's life. Whether these changes are precipitated by other people, by new psychological or physical conditions, or by external circumstances, their role is to open one's life to something new. If one is identified excessively with the past, if one tries to hold on to structures that are outmoded, then one will experience Uranus as a disruptive force that at times can be quite uncomfortable. But the potential is always there for one to integrate the archetype, and for one to contact one’s own capacity for freedom and excitement, for openness to the unexpected and the new.
When any planet is in major aspect to Uranus, that second planetary archetype tends to be liberated into expression, often in sudden, unusual, or unexpected ways. The second archetype is given an exciting, creative or innovative stimulation, and can be a source of both freedom and unanticipated change." - "An Introduction to Archetypal Astrological Analysis," Richard Tarnas, Ph.D.
*****
"Come to the edge" he said, "We can't, we are afraid" they said...
"Come to the edge" "We can't, we will fall" "Come to the edge" and they came and he pushed them and they flew. - Guillaume Appollinaire
"After years of rampant consumerism and easy credit, such nascent initiatives speak to the new mood in Greece, where imposed austerity has caused people to come together — not only to protest en masse, but also to help one another." - "Battered by Economic Crisis, Greeks Turn to Barter Networks," NY Times, October 1, 2011
*****
". . . . Unlike most runaways, who are impelled by impulse, Olga postponed her departure for months. She would need at least a little money, and, not being a thief, would have to earn it. And she needed an act.
. . . For a few days she tried juggling with stones and fruit, but having no one to teach her, quit in frustration. She thought of animal acts. . . Her father refused to buy her a dog so Olga went to Ishim and befriended a tiny shaggy mongrel she spotted at a refuse dump. It followed her home, where she washed it and named it "Lassie," after a dog she had seen in a movie.
Her father said, "You can't take care of yourself! How are you going to care for a dog?"
But Olga proved a good master and proceeded to train Lassie with a determined patience she rarely accorded humans. In no time Lassie was standing and playing dead. Olga would make her climb the stairs one at a time. If Lassie failed to stop on a step until given permission to continue, Olga would make her start all over. By the end of the month she had an act." -- Dreams of the Solo Trapeze: Offstage with the Cirque du Soleil, by Mark Schreiber
*****
"“I felt liberated, I felt free for the first time,” Mr. Mavridis said in a recent interview at a cafe in this port city in central Greece. “I instinctively reached into my pocket, but there was no need to.”
Mr. Mavridis is a co-founder of a growing network here in Volos that uses a so-called Local Alternative Unit, or TEM in Greek, to exchange goods and services — language classes, baby-sitting, computer support, home-cooked meals — and to receive discounts at some local businesses."
. . . For Ms. Houpis, the network has a psychological dimension. “The most exciting thing you feel when you start is this sense of contribution,” she said. “You have much more than your bank account says. You have your mind and your hands.”- "Battered by Economic Crisis, Greeks Turn to Barter Networks," NY Times, October 1, 2011
*****
"Now all [Olga] she needed was a train ticket to Tyumen, her first stop on the road to Moscow. She had no money of her own and certainly couldn't approach her parents. There weren't many jobs available for a young girl, and she was still attending school. She and her friends had brought lollipops from gypsies in Ishim, but none of the townspeople sold them. So one day Olga asked a gypsy woman how they were made and went in to business for herself, stealing sugar from her parents' kitchen. The first batch was awful, but the second was good enough to sell to her friends. Her father kept asking where all the sugar was going. To this day he doesn't know it financed her escape, the first yellow brick in her long road." - Dreams of the Solo Trapeze: Offstage with the Cirque du Soleil, by Mark Schreiber
*****
Exactly one year ago today I was living in NYC.
I'm not sure if I were there today I would be part of the Occupy Wall Street protest.
mid-14th century (implied in protestation) "solemn declaration," from Latin protestari "declare publicly, testify, protest," from pro- "forth, before" + testari "testify," from testis "witness" (see testament).
my public declaration
I can certainly identify with many of the frustrations of the protesters. I was broke, I was running out of options: tried and tired all the grant proposal crayon inside the line forms, tried potential investors (long story, 'twas a media venture), tried X and Y and Z's and Kickstarter and plain hustle. Gave up. Try the government. Trudged to the food stamp office, uh-huh so they'd alert my landlord, and that would send them red flags (I was month-to-month, not on a lease) -- so there goes that. I'd never felt so powerless. So I left NYC before rent was due up again. I did not Make It in America. Near penniless with just enough for airfare, I moved in with family across the country.
(btw, I'm only able to share this aloud now since I've shifted into
a growth mindset...
even if the USA is predominantly a fixed mindset...
it's
a #
not me
although one can fixate on poor too)
So yeah, I can certainly identify.... and yet....
I am not 1%. I am not 99%.
I am the 100%--and I don't see that message conveyed much.
Except I just did when I read this. There are instances... for instance, that one woman.. you'll recognize her when you get to that point in the story below (and this again is an excerpt of a longer piece) conveys the I am the 100%:
"We stood there for a while, and when it started to rain, we got under an umbrella with an older, white couple who looked to be in their mid-sixties or so. Then they walked up to a police officer, spoke to him, and he motioned for them to approach the ranking officer in front who was standing with a bullhorn. We then saw this couple walk out of the netted area and leave.
At this point, Rebecca and I walked up to the same ranking officer and politely requested to leave. We were told no and to get back in the crowd. We overheard two officers holding the netting asking each other what they were going to do with all these people. They obviously had no idea what the leadership’s strategy was, if any. We then went under the umbrella of a group of young women who were in their teens and twenties and were talking to a detective (or someone with the NYPD who was wearing an overcoat). He asked us some very leading questions: “Are you all together?”, “So no one told you to disperse?”, “Did you know you would end up here?” We said we had no idea what was happening. Then he told us to talk to the same ranking officer with the bullhorn. This time when we approached, the cops gave him a signal and he motioned for us to all pass through. Just like that.
As we were leaving, I asked one of the women what she had said to the officers before we came over and why they had let us go. She said she had struck up a conversation with an officer and told him he was “beautiful” and a “beautiful person” and that the “love and good vibes” she had sent his way seemed to have an impact on him."
Alas, in the next sentence the writer belittles
the magic and power of the 100%...
the compassion of unconditional love and remarks in response
to the truthfulness of that woman, she adds: "Oh, I’m sure."
It's so easy to be jaded.
Dig deeper. Be still. Feel the undercurrent.
Be sure of love. It's there's 100%.
*****
Olga calmly told her parents she was running away to circus school one day in August.
"Let her go," he told his wife, whose tearful pleading was no more effective than his own threats. "She'll be back tomorrow."
. . . . She was fourteen years old.
Olga Sidorova became a trapeze artist with Cirque du Soleil for many years.
Today, she teaches master classes at the aerial dance studio and school she founded in Sydney, Dancing in the Air.
*****
There were too many roads, too many versions. There were too many roads, no one path--
And at the end?
16. List the implications of "crossroads."
Answer: a story that will have a moral.
Give a counter-example.
17. The self ended and the world began. They were of equal size, commensurate, one mirrored the other.
"The millet fileds were generous and the harvest was good. The hard work of collecting and transporting grain from the farm to the roof of the houses where it waited to be put into the granaries was over. Now, in the fallow season, the villagers turned their attention to spiritual matters, to initiation. The dry season would be painfully idle if there was nothing else to do. One afternoon I was sitting outside with my sister when a town crier came running to my father's house. In a Dagara village, the town crier is considered an envoy of the spirit. He does not greet people or otherwise behave normally, for he is possessed by the message he has been commissioned to convey. He appears very agitated while doing so because he is responding to what the spirits have told him to do.
Out of breath, he stopped in front of us, mumbled something, and drew a cross on the mud wall of the women's quarter. He said nothing, but instead sang a bizarre song. As he was about to go away, I stopped him.
"Wait a minute. What's all this about?"
"What? You don't know? Well, a child who lives in this house will become a man--if he lives that long. . ."
This answer transfixed me, I sat down. I had imagined that Baor was scheduled for the middle of the dry season.
Seeing my perplexity, my sister tried to clarify things for me. "You cannot be told about it until the day before. If you know ahead of time, something is wrong."
"So my initiation begins tomorrow--and I am not the least prepared for it."
Now is the dry season. The millet harvest was good. The season of initiation for my eternal boy. Not just in the Northern Hemisphere. Or in the tribe of the Dagura of Africa. Here in the imaginal hemisphere, too.
Typically, I wouldn't be thinking what I was doing or who I was being ten years ago although the recent attention to 9/11 had that effect. Plus, the photographer Brooke Shaden wrote an open letter to her future self in ten years time.
"I’d like to see the world, but not in the way that most people say they want to. I want to go places and sit in every open field I can find in each unique country and hear the wind talk to me." - Brooke Shaden, "34-Year-Old Me"
Ten years ago... ten years ago. I read both Of Water and the Spirit: Ritual, Magic, and Initiation in the Life of an African Shaman as well asHidden Journey: A Spiritual Awakening by Andrew Harvey in the same time frame in the winter ten years ago while I lived in Salt Lake City and was still a computer engineer (unemployed) and still married (separated). Both books influenced my life by upending what I thought I knew about how the world works. Yet my life was already being upended as our startup closed up shop January 2001, I found looking for work as a former dot-com CTO daunting (the "new economy" was now a pariah in traditional IT circles) and my husband asked for a divorce.
I was more willing to listen to alternative answers than I'd been ever before. (The open-ended question I threw out was, "What is my purpose?"--pretty standard, yet almost any question will do....)
"So it comes to pass that, when we pursue an inquiry beyond a certain depth, we step out of the field of psychological categories and enter the sphere of the ultimate mysteries of life. The floorboards of the soul, to which we try to penetrate, fan open and reveal the starry firmament." -Bruno Schulz
Okay, I'm willing to listen. Maybe consensual reality maybe wasn't a fixed reality or reality, after all.
"To a Dagura man or woman, the material is just the spiritual taking on form." - Malidoma Some
It also shook up my belief that everyone has pretty much the same universal world-view.
In a letter to a friend, Gustav Mahler reveals this about the composition of his Third Symphony, "I tell you in, at certain places in the score, a quite uncanny feeling takes possession of me, and I feel as if I had not created this myself." I would read things like this in 2001, and it'd sound romantic and soothing to hear--although, then, truthfully, I had no clue what Mahler meant.
So reading Of Water and the Spirit was like standing at the edge of a lake--the first body of water I'd ever set eyes on. Although no book is going to be an experiential dive, and until I at least dipped a toe, I would not know wetness. The book did, however, entice me to care about exploring and experimenting with wetness.
So, a few days ago in a Google+ exchange, someone was sharing how they were upset by a brand-new violent, pornographic game (or book?) and another person replied: "Words are wind." And added, that it doesn't matter what the content is as it's only make-believe.
"The world of the Dagara also does not distinguish between reality and imagination. To us, there is a close connection between thought and reality. To imagine something, to closely focus one's thoughts upon it, has the potential to bring something into being." - Malidoma Patrice Some
If I fully believed that words are 'merely' wind, I wouldn't be writing now nor ever. Although paradoxically, words are wind. It's only that many underestimate the power of Air.
In fact, there is a good deal the dismissive tone of the comment, "Words are wind" stirred a fire within me. Noting my anger I connected it with something a mentor of mine said recently, Stifled passion, sooner or later, ends up bursting out as anger. All which has catalyzed me to wholeheartedly commit to accomplishing a few "word as wind" projects with optional interactive elements that I've had on hold (for several reasons with "no money" among the excuses).
“Words that merely come from other words are hard and aggressive. Such words are also lonely, and a great part of the melancholy in the world today is due to the fact that man has made words lonely by separating them from silence.” - Max Picard via Dennis Lewis, "Some Impressions on Words, Voice, Listening, and Silence"
"As in the case of "Star Trek," Westerners look to the future as a place of hope, a better world where every person has dignity and value, where wealth is not unequally distributed, where the wonders of technology make miracles possible. If people in the West could embrace some of the more positive values of the indigenous world, perhaps that might even provide them with a "shortcut" to their own future." - Malidoma Patrice Some
"I'm going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn't any Narnia." - C. S. Lewis
I didn't read The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe (2nd in The Chronicles of Narnia) as a child. In fact, I first cracked open the series only a few years ago. I did savor fairy tales and classic myth from globe spanning cultures such as Greek to Sumerian to Japanese to Navajo. (Sweet surprise! The book devas generously are gifting away all the Kindle versions of one of my childhood faves--Andrew Lang's The Green Fairy Book plus other colors of the prism.)
I'd read in many sources that it's worthwhile to recall childhood instincts and inclinations to reclaim natural, innate talent and delight as a potential livelihood. The most recent example I'd come across is real-world game designer (and motivational speaker) Jane McGonigal's story shared briefly in this excerpt:
". . . Jane’s first year in the real world [after college]—editing at a dot-com in New York, ruling out law school and publishing—left her feeling a little lost. One day [her sister] Kelly asked her, “As a child, what did you do that you loved?”
“Making up games and giving motivational speeches,” Jane answered. “But that’s not a career! Who does that?” - Elle magazine's article on Jane McGonigal
So it would seem that I applied the same logic, my conclusion should be read (and write) fairy tale and modern myth. (I'd probably lean toward the stylized parables that appeal to young and old, male and female, like The Alchemist.)
You'd think that's the logic if early innate inclinations are any clue.
Immersed (yet thoroughly trapped indoors as an eight-year-old), I imagined realms where I would saunter in adventures with elfs, unicorns, and undines well beyond the fortress walls of the concrete block house in our Miami suburb.
Even as a child, I wanted to live out an enchanting fairy tale in real life--no mere vicarious thrill would sate me.
Perhaps the closest that rings true (for me) is real-life mythic life and real-time writing of it. Yet to be honest, that feels like I am putting my very life, soul, heart, spirit, plus everything sacred and profane on the line. (Have you ever noticed how easy it is to scramble sacred and scared?) I tremble as if I'm staring down a dragon. Why so? I happened to read this recently, and it resonates:
"If you didn't know human nature, you might suppose that a single activity like painting, mountaineering, or writing could be treated separately, but the whole person is affected because the whole person is being expressed. (This is why it's said that you get to know yourself on the mountain or in front of the lank canvas.) Even if you pick a very narrow skill, like running a marathon or cooking, your whole sense of self shifts when you succeed with passion as opposed to failing or backing off.
The willingness to reach inside every part of yourself opens the door to total understanding. You place your entire identity on the line, not just an isolated part. This may sound daunting, but actually it's the most natural way to approach any situation.When you hold some part of yourself in reserve you deny it exposure to life; you repress its energy and keep it from understanding what it needs to know." - Deepak Chopra, The Book of Secrets (longer and worthwhile excerpt online)
The pilgrimage shall in the mists of perceived time slay all identity. In the meantime, gumption and courage might have to do.
"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius— and a lot of courage—to move in the opposite direction." - E. F. Schumacher
"I'm working on this because it's the most challenging, riskiest, scariest thing I can think of to do among my livelihood options. Plus, if I live through it intact, it will take me to my edge while using my gifts."
"Creativity is like breathing – pointers may help, but we do the process ourselves. Creative clusters, where we gather as peers to develop our strength, are best regarded as tribal gatherings, where creative beings raise, celebrate, and actualize the creative power which runs through us all." - Julia Cameron, A Guide for Starting Creative Clusters
p.s.I am more partial to the first book The Magician's Nephewbetter than the more popular 2nd in The Chronicle of Narnia series, partially because it tells of the creation myth and authoring of the world of Narnia and of another world. All photos from the movie version, as well as movie stills from http://kingsandqueensofnarnia.tumblr.com.
“The only way you can tell the difference between disaster and opportunity is to decide to make an opportunity out of every event.” - John T. Unger
In last few days, I've heard several inspiring true stories of disaster and adversity overcome through surrender and grace. In no particular order...
Bob Doyle shares his story in this 15-minute video via Sonia Ricotti's site, Unsinkable. "I felt like a complete loser.... To be someone who wants to make a difference in the world that wants to give up--talk about being knocked down." / "If you can give it up to the Universe, you're life can change." / "I'm just going to have fun with this, I'm going to follow whatever comes up [as far as intuitive nudges]."
"My good friend (and bestselling author) Sonia Ricotti went through a NASTY phase herself. A potentially deadly blood clot shattered her health. Financial devastation stole her lifestyle and home out from under her. An important relationship ended (which, to make matters worse, involved an alcoholic)...all of it hitting her AT ONCE. Something like that could destroy most people, but Sonia knew what to do and did it in style... She bounced back on a grand scale... and rebuilt a thriving business and a beautiful life." - from an email by Joe Vitale
"Want to hear the story of how I created my first product while homeless, crying, and living in my car, out of a K-Mart parking lot in the slums of South Philadelphia? And how I leveraged my blog to pull me out of homelessness?" - Ash Ambirge
John Unger's third disaster was "having the roof of his studio cave in while he was standing on top of it, which nearly brought him to bankruptcy but ended up as the catalyst for the full-time art career he has now." - Chris Guillebeau interview with John Unger / Then John shares: "Part of my resilience is that I know from experience that just because it seems like the apocalypse, it doesn’t mean tomorrow isn’t coming. I figure that the world ends every second, and it starts over the very next second. I’ve seen the end of the world so many times I’m just not impressed by it anymore." / And another gem: "In fact, one of my favorite lines about how I started my art career is “I did it with nothing, because nothing is free.”"
I'm sharing these stories because I realize there a ridiculous amount of stigma and shame around job loss, business and financial "failure" (particularly in the success-frantic USA) that it's time to directly confront that failure/success see-saw duality that can get us fixated (and stuck). Failure?... whatever--it's merely an inflection point in a very very amazing process called Infinity. (btw, I adore James Carse way of looking at Life as an Infinite Game.)
My first brush with disaster was when my Dad died fairly suddenly two weeks before my high school prom. It's one thing to deal with emotionally (and I touched on that previously in Father's Day posts), but it was also a financial ruin for our family. My Mom had no income source--other than social security widow's benefits, and no marketable skills. Zero life insurance. Three kids, and I was the oldest. I managed to graduate college with zero debt and zero student loans from a private university (read: private=expensive) by working part-time (first job ever), qualifying for merit scholarships, and jumping at the right time at the right place (the state was pouring resources to any student whom wished to study computer engineering when I was second semester sophomore--so I simply switched my degree from computer science to computer engineering even though it meant losing credits and going to summer school to catch up).
I believe I dealt with that disaster and also with the post-tsunami "post-traumatic growth" opportunity fairly well (considering) because both felt like random, outside events out of my control. Surely it wasn't my fault that my Dad died when he did. It wasn't my fault that a tidal wave formed at the exact minute we were vacationing on an island shore in Thailand.
Yet, if we lose a job, or bankrupt our business venture, or get mixed up with sabotaging romantic/business partners and everything goes to hell in a handbasket, it can feel like a thoroughly personal reflection and assessment of our unworthiness (or our stupidity or insert-the-self-berating-term here) in comparison to natural disaster or an accident. Those times are when I've found it hardest to recover since I tend to focus far too long on, "Oh no, this is all my fault."
And, to be perfectly honest, when it isn't a wild natural disaster, allies are few and far between. Mostly, their refrain goes something like, "I told you so." Plus the entire universe seems to agree that it is so totally your fault and you are the duddiest dud in the entire galaxy--that is, until you stop that b.s. In other words, get over yourself--it's all part and parcel of process of your unfolding myth.
Pretty much the Ego is always vying to find some identity to affix to, and "poor me" works just as swell as "rock star me." (Neither are true.)
Anyhow, without further ado, here's another graceful way to look at "failure" that one rarely sees mention of in the risk-averse public sphere from former vice-president of Facebook; this is an excerpt from Chamath Palihapitiya's final email to his troops as he left to start his own venture fund:
"don’t ignore that which you don’t immediately understand and keep pushing to evolve faster than what people expect. it can create unease at times but its our only path to long term relevance.
speak the truth. its too easy to “manage” – upwards, sideways, downwards and be rewarded for it. this is death. speak candidly especially when it means it won’t be well received. respect the person but don’t let bad ideas go unchallenged.
their is more valor in failure than success. success is hard to define and hard to isolate root causes when it happens. its rare to learn much of anything from success except to conflate luck and skill, but you learn tons in failure. take enough risks that you continue to fail… and celebrate those so that it becomes the battle scars you talk about when you do eventually succeed." - Former VP Facebook, Chamatch Palihapitiya
p.s.PLAY as LIFE is an INFINITE GAME... Join us on Encanto monthly... more unfurling on July 1st when pricing goes up slightly (new and current subscribers by July 1st are locked into their original contribution amounts).
art credits: from seesaw glum to glee: not sure who's digital illustration this is but it's via Big Kid Walking Through the Park blog; illustration "I am nothing without you" by Niko Geyer (see also his site, Niko Geyer); oh, I've saved this seesaw photo from ?? for several years--yikes, not sure whom to credit; photograph "Woman on see saw" by photographer Ann Giordarno
"Creation is pleasure and torture at the same time. It’s trying to make something out of nothing. It’s a birth of some sort. Sometimes it’s like pulling a piano out of a swamp. Sometimes it’s like walking on air. The torture of that nothing-space in front of you, and the pure elation of filling that space with something good—it’s one of life’s great juxtapositions. I am grateful for that—the torture and the pleasure. " - Zooey Deschanel, Southwest Air Spirit Magazine, April 2011
Make something out of nothing. She can't literally mean nothing, right? I mean you need at least a studio, or a Mac Air, or a guitar, or an illustrator wanting to be paid for that picture book collaboration. Where does all that come from? Money? You think? I used to think so.
Nope, not money. Where does money come from? Keep following down all the turtles... Nothing. (Five purple stars for any homework turned in by the participant reading this: Don't just take it on word, check it out for yourself.) Okay, another tack...
"In 2009 a group of wealthy Germans asked their government to require them to pay higher taxes. "We have more money than we need," said the 44 multi-millionaires. They wanted to help alleviate the ravages of poverty and unemployment. I urge you to make a comparable move, Leo. In what part of your life do you have more abundance than most people? Are there practical ways you could express your gratitude for the extravagant blessings life has given you? I think you'll find that raising your levels of generosity will ultimately lead to you receiving more love." - Rob Brezsny, Leo horoscope for May 19, 2011-- nope I'm not a Leo btw, this just seemed relevant
I hadn't read The Diamond Cutter (the business book, not the Diamond Cutter sutra which I have re-read) since 2005. Recently, I found it tucked in the Buddhism section in a bookstore recently although it more appropriately belongs in the Business category. It made so much more sense to me now than it did six years ago. In fact, I was fairly stunned by author Geshe Michael Roach's description of "The Economics of Limitlessness."
"You can just throw out the idea of sharing limited resources, and by the way you can throw out the idea of poverty itself. Wealth is a perception (and therefore a reality) forced on anyone who has been truly generous in the past. It is therefore available to all people. The mind--a mind crippled by the assumptions and, frankly, fairy tales [collective imprinting at subconscious level] of our civilization, passed down by well-meaning parents over its entire length--balks at the possibility that every living person could have more than enough wealth. It's not something that has ever happened before in our recorded history, says this state of mind, and so it could not happen now. We've heard this argument before; it wasn't true then, and it's not true now. Watch out, Columbus [and all the explorers prior], you'll fall over the edge because the world is flat. Iron could never fly in the sky, or float for that matter. It's not possible that practically every person in the world could have the same access to the world's information, running through wires made of glass or beamed down from a place beyond. Where is the absolute amount of wealth in the world? Where does new wealth really come from?" - The Diamond Cutter: The Buddha on Managing Your Business and Your Life, by Michael Roach
There is just no way that I can fathom to distill this idea of limitless wealth for all into a single blog post. The crux comes down to knowing the source of wealth (i.e. the source of anything) and changing subconscious imprints (personal and collective) from separation to wholeness, from scarcity to infinity: "this particular imprint can be planted only by watching yourself giving all you can to others.... financial, yes, but also in terms of giving your own time, and your emotinal and professional support, and helping people with ideas."
Connecting the dots between these three excerpts this also means I will be giving much more of my time and ideas to this blog as time and ideas are two things I have in extravagant abundance currently.
So ask yourself: In what part of your life do you have more abundance than most people?
p.s. I'm in the mood to chat more about symbols, myth, subconscious, storytelling futures, especially experiential art, alchemy, and luxury (more in the Coco Chanel way, "Some people think luxury is the opposite of poverty. It is not. It is the opposite of vulgarity.”), creative process, and such flux.
BONUS: And making something out of nothing is pretty much alchemy, eh? I've transcribed an excerpt here from Deepak Chopra's The Book of Secrets on the alchemy of transformation which relates to the source of wealth (Chopra calls it "one reality"), the nothing. The alchemist in the diagram appears next to a huge salt shaker, which reminds me of this passage from the excerpt that distinguishes transformation from change: "The key to true transformation is that nature doesn't move forward in step-by-step movements. It takes quantum leaps all the time, and when it does, old ingredients aren't simply recombined. Something new appears in creation for the first time, an emergent property. For example, if you examine hydrogen and oxygen, they are light, gaseous, invisible, and dry. It took a transformation for those two elements to combine and create water, and when that happened, an entirely new set of possibilities emerged with it, the most important from our point of view being life itself. The wetness of water is a perfect example of an emergent property. In a universe without water, wetness can't be derived by shuffling around properties that already exist. Shuffling only produces change; it isn't sufficient for transformation. Wetness has to emerge as something completely new in creation. Once you look closely enough, it turns out that every chemical bond produces an emergent property. (I gave the example in passing of sodium and chlorine--two poisons that when combined produce salt, another basic element of life)."
"What is best in music is not to be found in the notes." - Gustav Mahler
It's been difficult to write lately, as I didn't wish to be explaining... I yearned to express, but it wasn't happening. There was something that needed to complete and be directly experienced first.
Last night, I was watching what to me was an amazing video. It consolidated a concept I'd been thinking about myself. I kept wondering why some art was able to convey a transpersonal and direct transmission of the divine.
Sometimes I call that "black hole" art.
For instance, one day last September I was feeling pretty down and out. Even an art museum could not cheer me up. Room after room in a fog of color splotches. Yet the moment I entered the room with Van Gogh's Olive Trees in a Mountainous Landscape (with the Alpilles in the Background) all was right with the world again. It's a difficult thing to explain as it is experiential. Right now, looking at a photograph of the painting doesn't have that same knowing that takes one into that felt sense of Absolute. (I reckon it may be because the photographer resists going there.)
So, of late, I've been calling that "quality" as black hole art, as in:
"I have contacted a place of internal gravity within myself beyond my own doing or my own will that is pulling the impulse and energy of the "I Am" thought into Itself." - in a letter to Adyashanti from one of his students
Back in 2003, I was in Berkeley improving my Spanish at a local language school while vaguely hoping the tech economy would pick up again so I could get back to work. Although the truth beyond all the obvious is I was on a pretty hardcore spiritual journey ever since 2001 when the dot-com startup I was at (first employee after the founders, so I was very emotionally invested) imploded followed rather quickly by my divorce and other sundry personal disasters. When I went to the bookstore looking for a good Spanish-English dictionary, I wasn't quite expecting to find a book that would accelerate this 'journey.' But once I opened the book, I couldn't stop reading it. That book led me to an intense study of A Course in Miracles. I read the entire thousand-plus pages over a course of days (it may have taken a week or so, as it's not easy reading) sitting in that studio apartment. I probably ought to have been looking for work, but even then I guess I was starting to realize this is my work.
"It is not Goethe who creates Faust, but Faust which creates Goethe." - Carl Jung
Since then, I have spent more time in my own sort of self-study into the nature of Reality and my own true nature that has taken me on many paths including Buddhism and Advaita, yet I have a lot of respect and appreciation for A Course in Miracles to this day, and also for Ken Wapnick whom I've studied in person several times at the Temecula classroom.
Anyway, that's a long-winded way of saying that I have a thorough appreciation for ACIM and Ken, although I don't really even know where my big blue book is (I suppose it's in storage). The words in the book aren't the point anyhow.
The beautiful part of the video is when Ken shares his own personal journey on how he realized his psychotherapy grad school studies were coalescing with an understanding of why he was so drawn to music, and in particular some of Beethoven's later compositions.
"I wrote from the heart, may it reach the heart of the listener." -- dedication in one of Beethoven's scores
Two aha! moments to pay attention to are when Ken shares how he wished to create a mood in the room, an environment in his therapy practice that was as palpably peaceful as he had experienced at a concert of Beethoven's music the evening before. (Ken was in grad school at the time, and said he couldn't pull it off.)
The other aha! is when Ken talks about the felt difference between Schubert and Beethoven's compositions he experienced. Listening to Schubert he could feel the sadness that he would not allow himself to go "there". This sadness I recognize now as the core of the Dark Night of the Soul. And the "there"?...
Plus it explains everything I've failed in past to convey in my art (akin to how Ken says he failed to establish a presence of peace in his early psychotherapy practice), and why I set aside everything--paid work that might have provided living wage, relationships, et al-- to go through this Dark Night of the Soul... and, actually to go "there"--all the way.
"Art is a kind of innate drive that seizes a human being and makes him its instrument. The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realize its purposes through him." - Carl Jung
Today is the first day of the Casi Cielo Intensive Salon--an online group encouraging living in the present moment and sharing the art that emerges from Now with other artists. Daily blog posts consisting of contemplative and writing (and sketching) prompts through Easter are public (subscribe to Casi Cielo Salon blog free here via email).
I have plenty of material for this blog, and so the daily tidbits of inspiration will stay separate and over at the Casi Cielo blog. Yep, you can still sign up to participate in the private, shared space with fellow Salonistas, and/or donate. To give you a peek, sample post today is below:
"Contact with the awareness of the Absolute can come about only when the mind is fasting, when the process of conceptualization has utterly ceased. When the mind feasts, Reality disappears. When the mind fasts, Reality enters." - Ramesh S. Balsekar, A Net of Jewels
Today is Mardi Gras. Fat Tuesday. I've lived in New Orleans--and in fact, was residing in the Marigny neighborhood during last year's Mardi Gras. Fat Tuesday is a holiday, and traditionally the last big hoorah to indulge before Lent begins. (Although, in New Orleans curbing indulgence isn't in the city DNA.) Alhough I was marginally raised as Catholic--I quit after my communion, I don't observe Lent either, at least not in any typical sense.
Me? This year I'm "giving up" memory. I'm giving up rehashing the past for Lent.
Live by the current of inspiration alone.
Perhaps, spurred by the quote by Balsekar above (just serendipitiously sent by a friend this a.m.) give up believing in my thought gyrations. Reality happens in the present not in the synapses of my brain. Beyond (or more accurately, below) what I think it is, it is.
Today I'm not providing a writing prompt.
Indulge your intuition. Feed on your inner muse. What does It prompt?
When I Met My Muse
I glanced at her and took my glasses off--they were still singing. They buzzed like a locust on the coffee table and then ceased. Her voice belled forth, and the sunlight bent. I felt the ceiling arch, and knew that nails up there took a new grip on whatever they touched. "I am your own way of looking at things," she said. "When you allow me to live with you, every glance at the world around you will be a sort of salvation." And I took her hand.
Most people 'paralyze' the muse with their thought gyrations of perfection. Consider that anything you write is okay, and that you can not write it wrong. Trust in simply showing up... each day for 40 days (minus Sundays). When poet William Stafford was asked how his daily practice of writing one poem a day could possibly produce quality poetry of high standards, he replied: "I lower my standards."
"William Stafford woke up every morning, seven days a week, at 4 a.m., made himself a cup of instant coffee and a piece of dry toast, and stretched out on his family's living room couch. There, notebook on lap, he wrote until the sun came up. He wrote a poem a day, a process he describes in the short lyric "Just Thinking": "Got up on a cool morning. Leaned out a window. / No cloud, no wind. . . . Let the bucket of memory down into the well, / bring it up. Cool, cool minutes. No one / stirring. No plans. Just being there." Stafford was a late bloomer whose first major collection of poems, Traveling Through the Dark, was published when he was forty-eight. It won the National Book Award in 1963. He went on to publish more than sixty-five volumes of poetry and prose." -- "The Poets Laureate Anthology" edited by Elizabeth Hun Schmidt
ART CREDITS: Sure takes a lot of showing up every day to a blank page to get this vortex of words. Book sculpture and architecture by artist Matej Kren.
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