Burning the Old Year

So, here’s the story, in short form:

A book that had great impact on me as a college student: Sam Keen‘s To a Dancing God.

My father had just died, and Keen’s story of the Peachseed Monkey in that book touched me deeply:

Once upon a time when there were still Indians, Gypsies, bears, and bad men in the woods of Tennessee where I played and, more important still, there was no death, a promise was made to me. One endless summer afternoon my father sat in the eternal shade of a peach tree, carving on a seed he had picked up. With increasing excitement and covetousness I watched while, using a skill common to all omnipotent creators, he fashioned a small monkey out of the seed.

All of my vagrant wishes and desires disciplined themselves and came to focus on that peach-seed monkey. If only I could have it, I would possess a treasure which could not be matched in the whole cosmopolitan town of Maryville! What status, what identity, I would achieve by owning such a curio!

Finally I marshaled my nerve and asked if I might have the monkey when it was finished (on the sixth day of creation). My father replied,

“This one is for your mother, but I will carve you one someday.”

Days passed, and then weeks, and finally, years, and the someday on which I was to receive the monkey did not arrive.

In truth, I forgot all about the peach-seed monkey. Life in the ambience of my father was exciting, secure, and colorful. He did all of those things for his children a father can do, not the least of which was merely delighting in their existence. One of the lasting tokens I retained of the measure of his dignity and courage was the manner in which, with emphysema sapping his energy and eroding his future, he continued to wonder, to struggle, and to grow.

In the pure air and dry heat of an Arizona afternoon on the summer before the death of God, my father and I sat under a juniper tree. I listened as he wrestled with the task of taking the measure of his success and failure in life. There came a moment of silence that cried out for testimony. Suddenly I remembered the peach-seed monkey, and I heard the right words coming from myself to fill the silence:

“In all that is important you have never failed me. With one exception, you kept the promises you made to me—you never carved me that peach-seed monkey.”

Not long after this conversation I received a small package in the mail. In it was a peach-seed monkey and a note which said: “Here is the monkey I promised you. You will notice that I broke one leg and had to repair it with glue. I am sorry I didn’t have time to carve a perfect one.”

Two weeks later my father died. He died only at the end of his life.

I have carried that book by Sam Keen around with me for over 30 years. The cover is worn, the pages marked.

Artist Mary Campbell remembered me talking about Sam Keen and emailed that he was coming to her office in Atlanta for a presentation. She asked if I wanted to send a letter to him and she would make sure he got it. I did. I also sent him a copy of Life is a Verb and included my old copy of To a Dancing God and asked if he might sign it, which he did.

I’ve written a lot about trapeze–about letting go of the monkey bar.

Sam Keen has written a lot about trapeze–and he teaches trapeze on his property in Sonoma.

February 29th is all about leaping.

I’ll be in California giving a speech on February 28th. And I could go to Sonoma to Sam Keen’s to leap on February 29th. There is something beautifully poetic about doing that in the very year I will turn the age my father was when he died.

I called–and it may or may not work to leap with Sam Keen. If not with him, I will leap somewhere else on February 29th. I hope you’ll join me in making it a true Leap Day.

I am afraid of heights.

What leap can you envision for yourself on February 29th?

All of us paused. There was quiet on the line.

The flu gave Vickie the opportunity to slow down, she explained. And see more. And be in her body more.

In such a way, everything is an opportunity. A chance to feel great heartache and know deep inside with gratitude that heartache only comes from loving, and loving is a privilege. An opportunity to acknowledge that we are spirits temporarily housed in a body that feels pain. A journey into mindfulness when our bodies give out.

John got very sick this week. Perhaps the sickest I have seen him. There was blood involved in ways it shouldn’t be involved. It gave him the opportunity to rest and seek medical care (when he volunteers to go to the hospital, you know it is bad) and talk with the purser at the hospital and find out she worked at George Washington Hospital for 30 years and introduce her to a nurse who mentioned he wanted to move to DC and work at GW Hospital, but didn’t know anyone there.

It gave me an opportunity to take care of him (and Tess, who also joined the ranks of the Pukeys, but (thankfully) at a much lesser level even though it mean missing Pajama Day.) It also gave me the opportunity to slow down, be more realistic about what I could get done, re-prioritize on the human survival units who keep me alive.

While I hope you don’t get the flu, I hope you have similar opportunities. Well, we have them every day, don’t we? I hope you (and I) recognize them, listen to them, are grateful for them.

With thanks to neighbors and friends who have kept us hydrated. We’ve graduated to toast today. Mr Brilliant put shoes on, albeit briefly. And while I feel I might be falling prey to the flu as well now, I’ll do my very best to see it as an opportunity, as Vickie taught me.

My first “strong offer” online this year is VerbTribe, a 37-day class designed to focus on the writing process, to get you writing consistently (as in creating an every day writing practice). And an amazing group of people has gathered to join me on this journey.

VerbTribe sold out and we added 10 more spots–2 are remaining as of right now.

The more intense version (including very small group writing workshops) is called VerbTribe Intensive. There are only 10 spots in this one. And as of right now, only 3 spots remain.

If you’ve been putting “write more” on your New Years Resolutions for a while now, and not succeeding, I hope you’ll join us.

The class starts in 4 sleeps. On February 1st. Because of the nature of the class, no one will be added to the group after Monday, January 30th. You can go here for more information and to register.

Life is short. Write accordingly.

More love and more writing,

(Scroll to the bottom of the page to access the recording)

Key Thoughts:

Introducing “The Recognitions” – a biweekly podcast series from Patti Digh on living mindfully

• Exploring ideas, interviewing authors and intellectual mentors, and opening space for discovery
• Asking provocative questions
• 5-20 minutes in length, twice a month
• The root of “recognition” is “to think over again”

Ideas in this episode:

• Our lives are stories.
• We are storying ourselves at every moment.
• Story is a yearning meeting an obstacle.
• Stories are patterns of those meetings with obstacles.
• We must learn to recognize our way out of patterns rather than repeat our way out of them.

Books mentioned in this episode:

• The Recognitions by William Gaddis
• Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke
• Letters to the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
• The Unknown Masterpiece by Honoré de Balzac
• From Where You Dream by Robert Olen Butler
• War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

What is the second book Patti would take to a desert island, beside “The Recognitions”?

You can find out here: http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/big-question-little-question/id492116403

Questions to Leave By:

1. What patterns have you recognized in your life?

2. What do you recognize about those patterns? What do you know, but deny?

3. What keeps you in those patterns? They must be serving you in some way–how?

(Podcast theme song: “Relearning How to Be” by Tamara Bailie, with music by Ryan Tilby)

Heaven for Helen

-Mark Doty

Helen says heaven, for her,
would be complete immersion
in physical process,
without self-consciousness—

to be the respiration of the grass,
or ionized agitation
just above the break of a wave,
traffic in a sunflower’s thousand golden rooms.

Images of exchange,
and of untrammeled nature.
But if we’re to become part of it all,
won’t our paradise also involve

participation in being, say,
diesel fuel, the impatience of trucks
on August pavement,
weird glow of service areas

along the interstate at night?
We’ll be shiny pink egg cartons,
and the thick treads of burst tires
along the highways in Pennsylvania:

a hell we’ve made to accompany
the given: we will join
our tiresome productions,
things that want to be useless forever.

But that’s me talking. Helen
would take the greatest pleasure
in being a scrap of paper,
if that’s what there were to experience.

Perhaps that’s why she’s a painter,
finally: to practice disappearing
into her  scrupulous attention,
an exacting rehearsal for the larger

world of things it won’t be easy to love.
Helen I think will master it, though I may not.
She has practiced a long time learning to see
I have devoted myself to affirmation,

when I should have kept my eyes on the ground.

Heaven for Stanley

-Mark Doty

For his birthday, I gave Stanley a hyacinth bean,
an annual, so he wouldn’t have to wait for the flowers.

He said, Mark, I have just the place for it!
as if he’d spent ninety-eight years

anticipating the arrival of this particular vine.

I thought poetry a brace against time,
the hours held up for study in a voice’s cool saline,

but his allegiance is not to permanent forms.
His garden’s all furious change,

budding and rot and then the coming up again;

why prefer any single part of the round?
I don’t know that he’d change a word of it;

I think he could be forever pleased
to participate in motion. Something opens.

He writes it down. Heaven steadies
and concentrates near the lavender. He’s already there.

[image from here]

I’m continuing my quest to become bendy in 2012.

Sometimes I fall off the wagon. Do you?

I have made a conscious decision from the moment I started writing 37days that I would not allow ads on this site, though many have asked. That I wouldn’t accept product reviews. That I wouldn’t create affiliate programs or participate in them.

This means that if I write about something I love–lavender cake or a Tom Bihn bag or a series of wellness seminars with coaches I admire, I’m writing about it because I love it and want to share my excitement about it, not because I’m going to profit from it at all.

I wanted to create a better reading experience–for me AND for you. I hope you enjoy the simplicity and grace that brings to this site.

I’d rather make strong offers into the world and if you respond, that’s magical. If you don’t, it’s magical in a different way.

I refuse to make you feel you’re broken in order to sell you a course or a book. You’re not broken, and you don’t need to be fixed. If you’d like to explore with me in a subject-focused way (rather than an expert-focused way), I welcome you with open arms and much love.

Here are my current offers. I’m very excited about each of them. I hope one might resonate with you or someone you love.

February 1, 2012 – January 31, 2013 / 37days book club: read and think more / Online

February 1, 2012 – March 8, 2012 / VerbTribe & VerbTribe Intensive: creating a sustainable writing practice in 2012 / Online (spaces are very limited at this point, but feel free to join the waiting list)

March 17, 2012 / The Geography of Loss: Creating an Art Quilt of Grief/ With artist Jane LaFazio, San Diego, CA (limited to 25)

April 7, 2012 / Story Blocks: Your Story. Your Art. Your Life. / With artist Kimberly Joris, Milledgeville, GA (limited to 22)

April 19-22, 2012 / Groove, Drum, Create: A Women’s Retreat on Letting Go / With Leanna Joyner and Michelle Currie, Asheville, NC (limited to 17)

Love,

[photo by Jeremy Madea, rocks by The Rock Fairy]

Reply to the Question: “How can You Become a Poet?”

-Eve Merriam

take the leaf of a tree

trace its exact shape

the outside edges

and inner lines

memorize the way it is fastened to the twig
(and how the twig arches from the branch)
how it springs forth in April
how it is panoplied in July

by late August
crumple it in your hand
so that you smell its end-of-summer sadness

chew its woody stem

listen to its autumn rattle

watch it as it atomizes in the November air

then in winter
when there is no leaf left

      invent one

[image from here]

So. I spent the day trying to figure out how to use my microphone and Macbook Pro to create a podcast and a video. All stinkin’ day. Plugging and unplugging, trying it out, hearing nothing, flipping another switch, changing one system preference and then another. Endlessly. I felt like I was chipping little marks in a stone tablet.

Finally! I figured it out!

And created a short video to announce my newest online course, VerbTribe. It was gorgeous! Flawless! Every word trippingly fell from my mouth like a beautiful waterfall.

I hit “save,” and then “play.”

There I was, so cute! And there was my mouth, moving. But no sound was to be found anywhere.

And so, this video is what happens when you are voiceless. Lemons, lemonade. I hope you enjoy it half as much as I did salvaging it from the trash pile and making an old-fashioned silent movie out of it.

What I am trying to say in the video is this: You’ve wanted to write for a long time. Perhaps that time is now. I’m here to help, if you’d like. A limited number of spaces remain in my first 37-day class of 2012. It’s called VerbTribe. And it’s for people like you who have had “write more” on your New Year’s Resolutions list for far too long.

Life is short. Write accordingly. Go here for more information on how you can create a sustainable writing practice in 2012.