Heveled

My mind disheveled

Thoughts meander. Breathe in, in.

Breathe out, ‘til heveled.

My Mind Disheveled

My mind disheveled

Thoughts meander. Breathe in, in.

Breathe out, ‘til heveled.

Anxiety is a companion who can be quiet on life’s journey. He can take his leave for a while and then show up at the next way station. He can be a chatterbox, dominating the conversation, repeatedly interrupting rationality and care, who also travel in the group. Sometimes anxiety teams up with depression, and then what a fine mess we find ourselves in. Subsequently, the destination seems far away indeed; the time to reach it stretches out like a gum on a hot sidewalk. One just can’t pull far enough away to create separation.

Like my mom coming each evening to tuck me in or the water swaying under a fishing boat, the gentle rhythms of life calm, sometimes even shoo away, anxiety and his collaborators fear and insecurity. Yes, the gentle rhythm of breathing in and out, call it meditating or contemplating or mindfulness or emptying, takes the mind’s cacophony – the imagination’s equivalent of the heart’s atrial fibrillation – and rhythmizes it. Leaves just what contributes to the flow, to the sway, to the evening-tucking-in. This is mind-ablation, removing that which is not needed. Scars will remain but the procedure allows healthy thoughts to receive life-giving blood instead of being strangled. This is actually not a one-time procedure, but works most effectively as a practice, ablating mental dissonance over long periods of time.

Breathe in, in. Breathe out, out. Breathe in, in. Breathe out, out.

Generosity

Generosity

Compassion and gratitude

And lovingkindness

Does one have a generous spirit, filled with compassion, love, care, and charity? Or is one self-serving, giving only to get, a transactional giver instead of a transformational giver?

It is pretty easy to see who has a generous spirit, isn’t it? In politics, business, religion, at work, in the neighborhood. Over time, it's not hard to tell.

I don't care how many books you've written, how rich you are, if you are an elected official, or if you won the Nobel Prize. I may respect you. Honor you. Learn from you. Love you. But it'll always be the folks with a generous spirit who fill my heart with love, who saturate my spirit with their own, and who inspire me to be a better person.

The Dance Of Nature

The dance of nature

Is the waltz in my backyard

Birds, bees, leaves, trees twirl

Sometimes my backyard resembles Grand Central Station, with all the comings and goings of birds pushing each other aside to get to a favored spot on the feeder. With squirrels chasing each other through branches on high and then down on trunks of trees, all this unceremoniously interrupted as our puppy Tink comes rushing out the house to chase them . I can’t see the spider from my porch but I see her webs. I can’t see the worms in my lawn, but I see our dogs pawing the grass for them. I can’t see the wind or what brings this all to life each day, but I can feel this eco-dance. A waltz, in 3/4 time, is a human invention, like words or ideas or making art out of driftwood. These constructions are helpful and can be beautiful and represent humanity, until we think they are the whole kit and caboodle. The words for beautiful sunset will never fully describe the sunset we see and, in fact, our eyes are limited biologically to what they can see as well. Ideas, ideologies, beliefs of all sorts are human-made constructions, ways of categorizing, and while we need them they are not truth, but at best only partial truth. They are just one of many, many ways of considering this or that.

And while the birds and bees and leaves and trees and winds and worms and spiders and grass and weeds all twirl in my back yard, their eco-dance is far more intricate than any "Fascinatin' Rhythm" (thanks Ella, George and Ira) a human composer could knock out on some honky tonk piano or create to play at Carnegie Hall.

Reading The Art of Pausing , by Judith Valente , Brother Paul Quenon , and Michael Bever , and writing a haiku, has become a daily practice for me. The authors recommend this, and I have found in the few short months I have been doing this, it to be such a meaningful activity when paired with reading a daily haiku and narrative from the book.

I’m not a trained poet, but I don’t think poetry has to be created by an MFA graduate to be meaningful, and certainly meaningful to the author.

If you are interested in this poetic form, I highly recommend the work in The Art of Pausing . So, so good.

What Is Haiku?

Three lines. Five syllables the first line. Seven syllables the second line. Five syllables the third line. They aren't supposed to rhyme, but of course why have rules if you can't break them once in a while.

More about haiku here.

It can be so beautiful. Take a look at some here.