Simple Thoughts

I wanna hang a map of the world in my house. Then I'm gonna put pins into all the locations that I've traveled to. But first, I'm gonna have to travel to the top two corners of the map so it won't fall down. -  Mitch Hedberg

"If you want to make your dreams come true, the first thing you have to do is wake up." - J.M. Power

I found this poem by Mary Oliver on the web at peacefulrivers.homestead.com

Bone

1.

Understand, I am always trying to figure out
what the soul is,
and where hidden,
and what shape
and so, last week,
when I found on the beach
the ear bone
of a pilot whale that may have died
hundreds of years ago, I thought
maybe I was close
to discovering something
for the ear bone

2.

is the portion that lasts longest
in any of us, man or whale; shaped
like a squat spoon
with a pink scoop where
once, in the lively swimmer's head,
it joined its two sisters
in the house of hearing,
it was only
two inches long
and thought: the soul
might be like this
so hard, so necessary

3.

yet almost nothing.
Beside me
the gray sea
was opening and shutting its wave-doors,
unfolding over and over
its time-ridiculing roar;
I looked but I couldn't see anything
through its dark-knit glare;
yet don't we all know, the golden sand
is there at the bottom,
though our eyes have never seen it,
nor can our hands ever catch it

4.

lest we would sift it down
into fractions, and facts
certainties
and what the soul is, also
I believe I will never quite know.
Though I play at the edges of knowing,
truly I know
our part is not knowing,
but looking, and touching, and loving,
which is the way I walked on,
softly,
through the pale-pink morning light.

from Why I Wake Early (2004)

and from the same site

You can outdistance that which is running after you,
but not what is running inside you.
-Rwandan Proverb

You can outdistance that which is running after you,

but not what is running inside you.

-Rwandan Proverb

You can outdistance that which is running after you,

but not what is running inside you.

-Rwandan Proverb

You can outdistance that which is running after you,

but not what is running inside you.

-Rwandan Proverb

To Discoveries

wandering a stray from my tribe
i find new discoveries in abundance
yet more joy in the return

I just met Kaylin Haught’s delightful, powerful poem “God Says Yes to Me” in Patti Digh’s book Life is a verb(which I am, also, enjoying)

Since Jan recently nudged me to share another poem I forwarded to her, I had just enough inspiration to push past the wall of inertia to say, hey, have you seen these poems yet??

God Says Yes To Me

by Kaylin Haught

I asked God if it was okay to be melodramatic
and she said yes
I asked her if it was okay to be short
and she said it sure is
I asked her if I could wear nail polish
or not wear nail polish
and she said honey
she calls me that sometimes
she said you can do just exactly
what you want to
Thanks God I said
And is it even okay if I don't paragraph
my letters
Sweetcakes God said
who knows where she picked that up
what I'm telling you is
Yes Yes Yes

from the book In the Palm of Your Hand, by Steve Kowit

And, another one that has touched me enough to elicit multiple readings, which I first encountered in the book, Ten Poems to Open Your Heart by Roger Housden, and again yesterday in the new book I am reading, Saved by a Poem: The Transformative Power of Words by Kim Rosen

Kindness by Naomi Shihab Nye

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and
     purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you every where
like a shadow or a friend.
 
from The Words Under the Words: Selected Poems

life is good so why ain't i blogging - don't know  . . .

Hiatus

Ah, so quiet here, looks abandoned
life is simmering on below the surface
words will crop up again in time

"There are days when solitude is a heady wine that intoxicates you with freedom, others when it is a bitter tonic, and still others when it is a poison that makes you beat your head against the wall." - Colette

And into the void I crawled where I was,
Soft and comfortable, yet missing warmth
so I reach slowly to touch the edge

Work has been absorbing my time and energy for the past few months.

This is a little experiment tonight as I am trying out the speech recognition program from Windows 7.  So I am writing this by dictating rather than by the using the keyboard.  It is interesting as the computer heard me say keyport instead of keyboard. 

It seems to be trying to teach me to pronounce things more clearly.  It is fascinating to see the words appear as I talk and is saving my fingers a little work.  And the computer thought I was trying to save my fingers a little quirk.  Some of it has been quite amusing.  Something that I said to it translated as councilman lime, and I totally forgot what I had actually said.

And so, now, a little story of my trip to Whole Foods.  I was ambling along with my cane, and stopped to get something out of the freezer case.  I could hear a woman talking, and realized she was talking to me even though my back was to her.  So I turned to see what she wanted.  She preceded to tell me how horrible it was that there was someone who was deaf working there in the store as a clerk.  She was very upset that they would have someone working there who couldn't answer her questions.  She asked for my agreement that it was wrong to have a deaf person working.  I found it ironic that she picked the only person around shopping slowly with a cane.  Unfortunately, I didn't give her the agreement she was looking for.  And, as she walked away, I noted that she was slightly hunched over and limping as she walked.

Later, as I saw her get into her car, I had the thought that I hadn't heard her either.  And perhaps, a compassionate response would have been to say, I am sorry that you didn't get the help you needed.  And, I am pondering the encounter still.

Well, I am tired and ready to slip back into the void.

"I feel akin to the Platypus. An orphan in a family. A swimmer, a recluse. Part bird, part fish, part lizard." - Trevor Dunn

"They say that God is everywhere, and yet we always think of Him as somewhat of a recluse." --  - Emily Dickinson