37days

simple saturday. happiness flow chart.

2009-11-15T12:34:21-05:00

Sometimes life is simpler than we make it out to be.

It seems to me that we are always in choice. Even when circumstance throws us unhappiness and misery and more, we choose how we are in that circumstance.

Sometimes the change we need to make is a very simple one. And sometimes it is more complex.

Are you happy? Do you want to be? Follow these instructions.

[Thanks to Will Simpson for pointing me to this. Seen on typcut.com]

write-your-own friday : ancestors

2009-11-13T15:39:54-05:00

My friend and creative partner, David Robinson, told me about a story prompt that he teaches. It is a simple prompt from which much can emerge.

Partner that with a recent email and photograph about her parents from an amazing woman, Celeste Rast, who is part of our Life is a Verb telecoaching class (her photo graces this post).

And so, take a look at the directions for "write-your-own friday" and focus on this question this week:

My ancestors were people who _________________.

And from them I learned __________________.

Write every day for a week on this. You might be interested by what emerges.

thinking thursday.

2009-11-12T00:01:00-05:00

Every Thursday, a few links, including one to you-know-who. (Where I can follow the serendipitous thread I followed to get there, I'll include a thanks to the person who surfaced it for me.)

mind :: my brain and your

I think we might be a sleep-deprived nation. (Thanks to M. Khalil Islam-Zwart)

I want to read this memoir. (Thanks to Jena Strong)

What a logo does not have to be or do.

body :: my place and yours

Speaking of "places," I am happy to go back to Raleigh, NC, to do another reading on December 12th!

Humans are sometimes idiots.

"There is a power in the transformation that starts taking place when power surges heat us up from the inside out. There is a power in the knowledge that we have nothing to prove, not one damn thing. There is power in knowing that we have every single thing we need, that we need nothing else, that we are fully human and gorgeously odd and contradictory and beautiful just as we are. That we are hot in the very deepest, richest, metaphorically resonant use of that term. That we are not broken. That we don’t need to be fixed." - from my recent guest post on Liz Scherer's blog. (Thanks to Liz for asking me to contribute to her important work in the world).

soul :: my heart and yours

Back from war, but not really home.

How can you create fiction when reality comes to call? oh, yes.

I am going to develop a yoga practice after spending an hour a day doing yoga at the recent LIAV retreat. Yes I am. Don't try to stop me. I think I will find much in it that I need.

Give my love to Rose.

A final thought :: "The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them." -Ernest Hemingway

(Image: Odysseus at the Laestrygonians. Primary source unknown to me. Secondary source: J. C. Andrä: “Griechische Heldensagen für die Jugend bearbeitet”. Berlin: Verlag von Neufeld & Henius, 1902)

poetry wednesday : now that I can cry I will sing.

2009-11-11T00:01:00-05:00

If I Sing

If I sing, I weep.
If I sing joy, even sing joy, I weep.
If I weep, if I weep, if cries splatter from me,
if I sputter snot and spit
down my chin, my shirt, your shirt,
if I shake and shake until you fear I'll shake apart,
don't be afraid for me, don't be ashamed;
I will not break from this, will not die,
but from lack of it, from the closing,
and I will not close anymore, will not deny anymore
the child I was who could not
cry out has kept crying in
me. And now that I can cry I will sing,
even if my song comes shoved out
on the wave of snot and spit I swallowed not
to cry, I will sing.

-Martin Jude Farawell

With thanks to Donna Glee Williams for sharing this poem with us at the recent Life is a Verb retreat. Let us all sputter snot and spit and sing.

[photo from here]

found-art tuesday : friendship is an art

2009-11-10T18:43:36-05:00

Friendship is an art. It spans the ages. And continents. It is found, uncovered, nurtured.

Many thanks to Elina Rodriguez for sharing these beautiful photos she took of Tess with her favorite David at the beautiful Bend of Ivy Lodge when my family arrived at the conclusion of our recent Life is a Verb retreat.

mindful monday : baba nam kevalam

2009-11-09T08:30:05-05:00

It would be hard to fully explain this past weekend's Life is a Verb retreat. An extraordinary gathering of people, a gorgeous space and weather, a shared intention to be more mindful and present, small rocks with messages from the heart left for us to find, birthday cakes, food by Dava the Kitchen Goddess, anonymous angels silently providing gifts we made with our hands and hearts, deep hot sunshine, S'mores made over a tea candle, daily yoga and meditation practice led by a master, explorations of our stories and patterns and the "structures of our land," morning music by a woman with an angelic voice, and love wholeheartedly given and received in doses we all yearn for and deserve.

By Sunday morning, we collectively spoke of the month-and-a-half we had been together since Thursday.

I think it is safe to say that we all filled up our buckets.

We came looking for different things. I believe we left with one understanding beyond all others: Baba nam kevalam. Love is the essence of all things. Love is everything. We are beloved. And we are each others' beloved.

More love.

As Mother Teresa said, "If we are without peace in the world, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other."

And so, on this mindful Monday, I offer a small piece of love and meditation.

Send him a holiday, his last.

2009-11-05T08:38:24-05:00

I believe we can rock this little boy's world, you and I and all the people we know all around the world.

I checked on Snopes; this one is for real:

5-yr old Noah Biorkman is in the last stages of neuroblastoma cancer. His family is celebrating Christmas next week and all he wants are Christmas cards. Let's see how many we can get to him from all over the world very quickly--tell your friends in Japan and Papua New Guinea and South Africa and across the U.S. and beyond. I see thousands - THOUSANDS - of cards telling little Noah (and his grieving family) that in this big wide world, he matters.

Noah Biorkman

1141 Fountain View Circle

South Lyon MI 48178

(Thanks to Evelyn Kalinosky for pointing me to this.)

thinking thursday.

2009-11-05T00:04:30-05:00

Every Thursday, just a few links I've discovered, things I'm thinking about. And, of course, a link somewhere to a man who lives near Paris just because he exists.

(Where I can follow the serendipitous thread I followed to get there, I'll include a thanks to the person who surfaced it for me.)

mind :: my brain and yours

If this headline is true, then I am obviously the mother of the future leader of the entire galaxy past, present, and future.

I sure hope Santa reads 37days.

Millenials: The greatest generation (of networkers). Can obsessive networking make you a good employee?

body :: my place and yours

For immigrants, illness can bring a death sentence.

Wacky no-weight scale. Makes sense to me. It's all relative.

It's Vegan Awareness Month. The month of November. The month of Turkey Day. One day, we'll look back on eating meat and say "We were barbarians." (Thanks to Gay Clyburn)

How is it that Americans, so solicitous of the animals they keep as pets, are so indifferent toward the ones they cook for dinner? The answer cannot lie in the beasts themselves. Pigs, after all, are quite companionable, and dogs are said to be delicious. (Thanks to Dave Pollard)

Jonathan Safran Foer again on veganism. Because he has a new book out about it.

soul :: my heart and yours

I love reading to Tess at night. Here are a few of my favorite books to read to her: I Can't, Said the Ant , Ish, How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World, Zen Shorts, The Okay Book, and It's Okay to be Different. (There are so very many more...)

Be still my wee predictable heart.

Enjoy where you are. (Thanks to Laura Neff)

A final thought :: The question is not, "Can they reason?" nor, "Can they talk?" but rather, "Can they suffer?" -Jeremy Bentham

AND A SPECIAL REQUEST:

I believe we can rock this little boy's world, you and I and all the people we know. I checked on Snopes; this one is for real: 5-yr old Noah Biorkman is in the last stages of neuroblastoma cancer. His family is celebrating Christmas next week and all he wants are Christmas cards. Let's see how many we can get to him from all over the world--tell your friends in Japan and South Africa and across the U.S. and beyond: 1141 Fountain View Circle South Lyon MI 48178. (Thanks to Evelyn Kalinosky)

poetry wednesday : poetic bloodlines, a word's worth

2009-11-04T00:01:00-05:00

Poetry has a job to do, a bloodline to further. Poets teach people and take back the world. They must be about something.

One night, God came to me in a dream
With a scheme that seemed to be out of this world
He approached me and opened his robe
And showed me a hypodermic needle in the shape of a pen
And my first reaction was to step back fast
But then God grabbed me and said
“Slow down my child,
I’ve got a job for you to do”
And with a burst of light God grabbed my arm
And said “I mean you no harm”
And he pushed the pen in
And it filled my arteries and God charted me
To write some new shit, some true shit, something just for you shit
And when I was done with part one
God said “write some part two shit”
He injected me with Billy’s Blues and a muse of Langston Hughes
And God said “you’ve acquired some of the tools in the school you’ve been attending
But now it’s time to stop pretending”
And he started sending into my bloodstream
The poetic feats of John Keats
And the published greats of W.B. Yeats
And just when I thought God was through
He started slipping me hits of Maya Angelou
And God asked “do you know what I’ve handed you?”
And my response was “No” and God said “let me show”
And he continued to fill my veins the same way he had been
Giving me a fix of Emily Dickenson and my bloodstream seemed to scream
As God gave me the liquidated literary genius of W.E.B.
And I got lost between doses of Robert Frost
And my eyes got blurry in a flurry
And I was no longer seeing ‘em but I could feel Emerson, Tennyson, and Stevenson
And God said “you won’t get far without Paul Orange Dunbar
And you can’t start spittin ‘til I’ve given you Whitman”
And God kept filling me and it felt like he was killing me
And I closed my arm tight and God snapped it back open
And screamed “you’re not yet ready to write”
He said “tonight has just begun
Everything’s alright my son
You see I need you
I use poetry to teach people
The world I created has been overrun by ignorant thinking
And I need poets to take the world back and break the curse
Now unbend your arm so I can give you William Wordsworth”
And again the pen was shoved in my veins and God grabbed the reigns
And as if I was a mule
He said “I use you as my tool and plow the field with you
Fulfilling empty minds’ needs while planting knowledge seeds
No longer will there be a flourishing time for malnourishing minds
I want you to make intelligence a law cuz ignorance is a crime
Now I need you to go and reap what you sow
While captivating minds like Edgar Allen Poe
I gave you the wings so now fly like the raven
This world needs saving
Feel free to fight off your fears
Cuz they’ll disappear within this injection
Of my tears which contains the remains of great things gone
And new things to come beyond the next dawn
You’re the next in a bloodline of greats
You are a poet
You command the attention of large groups
You ready the troops for revolution
You write words that can commend or condemn
Turn boys into men
Make other poets push pens
And you must be about something more than slam scores based on ten
Because you are a poet
Think about all the great things poets have accomplished
And when the writing gets rough
Hold on to your pen
And don’t drop this
Always take time in your mind to reflect back on the fact
That you’re the next to step forth
From a poetic bloodline

-Gemineye

found-art tuesday : shadow

2009-11-03T17:06:04-05:00

They may as well have called the sun a ball of flaming joy. ~Star Richés

Find art in shadow.

As Sven Nykvist has written,
"Light can be gentle, dangerous, dreamlike, bare, living, dead, misty, clear, hot, dark, violet, springlike, falling, straight, sensual, limited, poisonous, calm and soft."

Find light.

Find shadow.

They are everywhere.

(shadows on my living room window, 3 Nov 2009)