Day 11 - So As Not To Be The Martyred Slaves of Time

Be Drunk

You have to be always drunk. That's all there is to it—it's the only way. So as not to feel the horrible burden of time that breaks your back and bends you to the earth, you have to be continually drunk.

But on what? Wine, poetry or virtue, as you wish. But be drunk.

And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace or the green grass of a ditch, in the mournful solitude of your room, you wake again, drunkenness already diminishing or gone, ask the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock, everything that is flying, everything that is groaning, everything that is rolling, everything that is singing, everything that is speaking. . .ask what time it is and wind, wave, star, bird, clock will answer you: "It is time to be drunk! So as not to be the martyred slaves of time, be drunk, be continually drunk! On wine, on poetry or on virtue as you wish.

-Charles Baudelaire

Day 10 - The Time of Seeing

Slow Waltz Through Inflatable Landscape

At the time of his seeing a hole opened—a pocket opened—
and left a space. A string of numbers plummeted
through it. They were cold numbers.
They were pearls.

And though they were cold the light they cast was warm,
and though they were pearls he thought they were eyes.
They blinked. He blinked back.
Anything that blinks

must be friendly, he thought, until he saw the code
—a string of numbers—carved into their sides
and grew afraid. He tried to close
the space

but it was no longer his own. He tried to close his eyes
but they were no longer his. He tried to close
his mouth, his hands, his ears
but they were no longer

his, were never his to begin with: this was the time of his seeing.
The world opened. A line began. A tree grew above him
and he thanked it. A sun dawned over the line
and he thanked it.

A building unfolded abruptly and blocked the sun
and he put his hand on its side and thanked it
for the shade, he put his hand
on the sidewalk

and gave thanks to the cement—it was cool and wet and
took the shape of his hand into it—he put his eyes
at the feet of a woman
and she lifted them,

to her own, and he thanked her, from the inside, and she understood.
Wires swirled above him, straightened out along an avenue
and the lights came on. One moon rose.
A second moon

rose on the windshield of a car and he thanked them both.
This was the time of his seeing. This was the time.
An electric green beetle shuttled out
of the darkness

and landed on his forearm, pulsing, he didn't remove it.
It seemed relieved. Some things work very hard
to leave the ground. Somewhere an infant
called out, sharply,

was comforted into silence. The deep note of an owl opened a tunnel
in the air. He was growing tired. He didn’t want to stop.
The world opened.
A line began.

It traveled out ahead of him and returned, tracing a wave,
white foam gathering, gathering the moonlight,
black water rising into a wall
and he held up his hand:

the wall froze, trembling, the head of a seal
poked through, looked around, withdrew,
he liked the way its whiskers
bent forward

as it withdrew and he liked the way his hand had stopped a wave
so he thanked his hand and moved on,
into the outskirts, the taste
of salt on his tongue,

the taste of brine, it made him thirsty although he had no thirst.
This was the time of his seeing. This was the time.
And the skeletal shadow of a radio tower
loomed to the right of him,

creaking, a red gleam, then nothing, he thought he heard music
passing through him and he was right:
he was humming something
from a song,

but he couldn't remember the words, which was fine,
they were sentimental anyway so he
thanked the radio tower
and kept moving,

the road turning to gravel, the gravel turning to dust,
the ditches sang with frogs, the ditches were silent,
a pair of yellow eyes waited for him
to pass and so he passed,

calmly, since the beetle was with him, trying to refold its wings,
and the tree was with him, unfolding its leaves,
and a man was with him, walking at his side
—he didn't need to ask

who he was, so he didn't, but in the corner of his eye
he caught a glimpse: he seemed familiar,
he looked like him
and he was,

although a string of numbers was carved into his side.
He asked if he could touch them and he said Yes,
touch them. They were cold numbers.
They were pearls.

He asked if he could kiss him and he said Yes, kiss me, and so he did.
It was a strange kiss. It was a beautiful kiss.
It seemed to last a long time.
It seemed to last a lifetime.

-Christian Hawkey

Day 9 - I Am Not Done With My Changes

The Layers

I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being
abides, from which I struggle
not to stray.
When I look behind,
as I am compelled to look
before I can gather strength
to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling
toward the horizon
and the slow fires trailing
from the abandoned camp-sites,
over which scavenger angels
wheel on heavy wings.
Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!
How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?
In a rising wind
the manic dust of my friends,
those who fell along the way,
bitterly stings my face.
Yet I turn, I turn,
exulting somewhat,
with my will intact to go
wherever I need to go,
and every stone on the road
precious to me.
In my darkest night,
when the moon was covered
and I roamed through wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice
directed me:
"Live in the layers,
not on the litter."
Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes.

-Stanley Kunitz

Day 8 - Every Morning a New Arrival

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

-Rumi

Day 7 - Something Like A Prayer

Admonitions To A Special Person

Watch out for power,
for its avalanche can bury you,
snow, snow, snow, smothering your mountain.

Watch out for hate,
it can open its mouth and you'll fling yourself out
to eat off your leg, an instant leper.

Watch out for friends,
because when you betray them,
as you will,
they will bury their heads in the toilet
and flush themselves away.

Watch out for intellect,
because it knows so much it knows nothing
and leaves you hanging upside down,
mouthing knowledge as your heart
falls out of your mouth.

Watch out for games, the actor's part,
the speech planned, known, given,
for they will give you away
and you will stand like a naked little boy,
pissing on your own child-bed.

Watch out for love
(unless it is true,
and every part of you says yes including the toes),
it will wrap you up like a mummy,
and your scream won't be heard
and none of your running will end.

Love? Be it man. Be it woman.
It must be a wave you want to glide in on,
give your body to it, give your laugh to it,
give, when the gravelly sand takes you,
your tears to the land. To love another is something
like prayer and can't be planned, you just fall
into its arms because your belief undoes your disbelief.

Special person,
if I were you I'd pay no attention
to admonitions from me,
made somewhat out of your words
and somewhat out of mine.
A collaboration.
I do not believe a word I have said,
except some, except I think of you like a young tree
with pasted-on leaves and know you'll root
and the real green thing will come.

Let go. Let go.
Oh special person,
possible leaves,
this typewriter likes you on the way to them,
but wants to break crystal glasses
in celebration,
for you,
when the dark crust is thrown off
and you float all around
like a happened balloon.

-Anne Sexton

Day 6 - Are You Breathing Just A Little?

Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches?

Have you ever tried to enter the long black branches of other lives
tried to imagine what the crisp fringes, full of honey, hanging
from the branches of the young locust trees, in early morning, feel like?

Do you think this world was only an entertainment for you?

Never to enter the sea and notice how the water divides
with perfect courtesy, to let you in!
Never to lie down on the grass, as though you were the grass!
Never to leap to the air as you open your wings over
the dark acorn of your heart!

No wonder we hear, in your mournful voice, the complaint
that something is missing from your life!

Who can open the door who does not reach for the latch?
Who can travel the miles who does not put one foot
in front of the other, all attentive to what presents itself
continually?
Who will behold the inner chamber who has not observed
with admiration, even with rapture, the outer stone?

Well, there is time left --
fields everywhere invite you into them.

And who will care, who will chide you if you wander away
from wherever you are, to look for your soul?

Quickly, then, get up, put on your coat, leave your desk!

To put one's foot into the door of the grass, which is
the mystery, which is death as well as life, and
not be afraid!

To set one's foot in the door of death, and be overcome
with amazement!

To sit down in front of the weeds, and imagine
god the ten-fingered, sailing out of his house of straw,
nodding this way and that way, to the flowers of the
present hour,
to the song falling out of the mockingbird's pink mouth,
to the tippets of the honeysuckle, that have opened

in the night

To sit down, like a weed among weeds, and rustle in the wind!

Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?

While the soul, after all, is only a window,

and the opening of the window no more difficult
than the wakening from a little sleep.

Only last week I went out among the thorns and said
to the wild roses:
deny me not,
but suffer my devotion.
Then, all afternoon, I sat among them. Maybe

I even heard a curl or tow of music, damp and rouge red,
hurrying from their stubby buds, from their delicate watery bodies.

For how long will you continue to listen to those dark shouters,
caution and prudence?
Fall in! Fall in!

A woman standing in the weeds.
A small boat flounders in the deep waves, and what's coming next
is coming with its own heave and grace.

Meanwhile, once in a while, I have chanced, among the quick things,
upon the immutable.
What more could one ask?

And I would touch the faces of the daisies,
and I would bow down
to think about it.

That was then, which hasn't ended yet.

Now the sun begins to swing down. Under the peach-light,
I cross the fields and the dunes, I follow the ocean's edge.

I climb, I backtrack.
I float.
I ramble my way home.

-Mary Oliver

"Have you ever tried to enter the long black branches of other lives." This line resonates such truth; we seem so interested in other people's lives, captivated even. We peer into the grocery basket ahead of ours to see what that person and their family will be eating for dinner that evening, gaze out of our bay windows as we do the dishes to see what our neighbors are up to, we even tilt our heads at the coffee shop to see the cover of the book that man is reading by the window. In theory, someone else is doing just the same, straining to get a better look into our lives, yet we fail to see the fascination because it is our own.

There is a scene in "You've Got Mail" where Kathleen is evaluating her life and trying to find the seemingly hidden meaning and she says, "I lead a small life, valuable but small, and I wonder if I do it because I want to, or because I haven't been brave. So much of my life reminds me of something I read in a book once but shouldn't it be the other way around?"


Most of us feel that we lead small lives, and that other people lead grand, extraordinary lives when in reality, they lead lives quite similar to that of our own. As an outside person peering into my life, or as a medical examiner performing a life autopsy, if you will, I would see a 30-year old woman who is married with a precious newborn baby and a spunky 12-year old boy. Although she currently lives apart from her spouse they are experiencing [what I, the outsider, deem as] the excitement of house hunting to become first-time home owners. She has recently left her job to become a stay-at-home mom [a dream for a lot of working moms] and in her spare time enjoys reading, writing, and designing jewelry [how creative!] for her Etsy shop. She is blessed with having some truly amazing people in her life! She is at the tail end of her Master's degree in teaching and upon completion she will begin teaching secondary English in the fall of 2012. She has SO much going for her. What a lucky young woman! She's in the prime of her life where everything is coming together! Reading back over this, I would think exactly that of another woman in my position. Why is it that we constantly fail to see the accomplishments and blessings in our own lives?

The next time you find yourself--and by yourself I also mean myself--peering into your neighbor's grocery basket in the check out line, take a moment to instead peer into your own grocery basket and perform a quick life autopsy on yourself. Then thank God for all of the blessings you have in your own life and that while you may still enjoy admiring that other person's life, you will be grateful to have yours, and yours alone.

Day 5 - The One Line Written Inside You

The Journey

Above the mountains
the Geese turn into
the light again
Painting their
black silhouettes
on an open sky.
Sometimes everything
has to be
inscribed across
the heavens
so you can find
the one line
already written
inside you.
Sometimes it takes
a great sky
to find that
small, bright
and indescribable
wedge of freedom
in your own heart.
Sometimes with
the bones of the black
sticks left when the fire
has gone out
someone has written
something new
in the ashes
of your life.
You are not leaving
You are arriving.

-David Whyte

Day 4 - Feel The Future Dissolve in a Moment

Kindness

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 until 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 everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

-Naomi Shihab Nye

The hubs and I have both been pretty frustrated with our current situation, him working almost two hours away which keeps us living apart for the time being with the exception of one or two days during the week when he's off. The frustration on my end has turned into this festering anger that simmers inside of me, eating away, which I hate, but can't seem to help these days. In turn, I lash out at him quite a bit, something that I'm really trying to work on. Joyce Meyer, an evangelist primarily for women, always says in her audio sets that you must do certain things, even if you don't want to or feel like it if you're desire is to truly change. For example, she says you have to "[fill in the blank] on purpose," in this case for me the blank would be filled with love, or perhaps be kind, in relation to the hubs. I toyed with my thoughts on this mini-blog this morning about whether or not I wanted to "dedicate" it to him and I came to the conclusion that if I don't adhere to Joyce's advice to do certain things on purpose, the anger is going to take full possession of me and I'd prefer to be rid of it as quickly as possible.


So, I was looking at my orchids this morning, the ones the hubs got me the day I was released from the hospital after having Wyatt--yes, I've managed to keep them alive this long--and I started thinking about all the thoughtful things he does for me. Those sweet, small things that most women only dream for their husbands to do, mine does on a regular basis. I'm very lucky and I don't tell or show him enough how much I sincerely appreciate him and love him. ♥


Were they ever a good match?
These two.
After all, they spoke two entirely different languages, if you know what I mean.
Hootie and the Blowfish said it best, they "come from different worlds."
Did they ever just stop and say,
"I can't understand a word you're saying.
A-gah-gah-gah-gah-gah!"

Day 3 - The Second Half of My Life

Crossroads

The second half of my life will be black

to the white rind of the old and fading moon.

The second half of my life will be water

over the cracked floor of these desert years.

I will land on my feet this time,

knowing at least two languages and who

my friends are. I will dress for the

occasion, and my hair shall be

whatever color I please.

Everyone will go on celebrating the old

birthday, counting the years as usual,

but I will count myself new from this

inception, this imprint of my own desire.


The second half of my life will be swift,

past leaning fenceposts, a gravel shoulder,

asphalt tickets, the beckon of open road.

The second half of my life will be wide-eyed,

fingers shifting through fine sands,

arms loose at my sides, wandering feet.

There will be new dreams every night,

and the drapes will never be closed.

I will toss my string of keys into a deep

well and old letters into the grate.


The second half of my life will be ice

breaking up on the river, rain

soaking the fields, a hand

held out, a fire,

and smoke going

upward, always up.


-Joyce Sutphen

To be fair, I think we should consider dividing our lives into thirds, after all the innocence of our childhood and the ignorance of our adolescence prevents us from really being able to live in the first third of our lives, although to live as a carefree child sounds like perfect living to me. We must climb the steep and dangerous rocks of our twenties before we can really evaluate what life means to us and what we want our life to mean to others. So, perhaps in serious consideration of this poem, a better and more applicable repetitive line would be "the last two thirds of my life." But I don't guess that has quite the same poetic ring to it. :)

Day 2 - We Create Without Turning

The Apple Tree

I remember this tree,
its white flowers all unfallen.
It’s the fall, the unfallen apples
hold their brightness
a little longer into the blue air, hold the dream
they can be brighter.

We create without turning,
without looking back, without ever
really knowing we create.
Having tasted
the first flower of the first spring
we go on,
we don’t turn again
until we touch the last flower of that last spring.

And that day, fondling
each grain one more time, like the overturned hourglass,
we die
of the return-streaming of everything we have lived.

When the fall apple rolls
into the grass, the apple worm
stops, then goes
all the way through and looks out
at the creation unopposed, the world
made entirely of lovers.

Or else there is no such thing as memory,
or else there is only the empty branches,

only the blossoms upon them,
only the apples,
that still grow full,
that still fail into brightness,
that still invent past their own decay the dream
they can be brighter,
that still
that still

The one who holds still and looks out,
alone
of all of us, that one may die mostly of happiness.

-Galway Kinnell

Day 1 - This Is What Life Does

Starfish

This is what life does. It lets you walk up to
the store to buy breakfast and the paper, on a
stiff knee. It lets you choose the way you have
your eggs, your coffee. Then it sits a fisherman
down beside you at the counter who says, Last night,
the channel was full of starfish. And you wonder,
is this a message, finally, or just another day?

Life lets you take the dog for a walk down to the
pond, where whole generations of biological
processes are boiling beneath the mud. Reeds
speak to you of the natural world: they whisper,
they sing. And herons pass by. Are you old
enough to appreciate the moment? Too old?
There is movement beneath the water, but it
may be nothing. There may be nothing going on.

And then life suggests that you remember the
years you ran around, the years you developed
a shocking lifestyle, advocated careless abandon,
owned a chilly heart. Upon reflection, you are
genuinely surprised to find how quiet you have
become. And then life lets you go home to think
about all this. Which you do, for quite a long time.

Later, you wake up beside your old love, the one
who never had any conditions, the one who waited
you out. This is life’s way of letting you know that
you are lucky. (It won’t give you smart or brave,
so you’ll have to settle for lucky.) Because you
were born at a good time. Because you were able
to listen when people spoke to you. Because you
stopped when you should have and started again.

So life lets you have a sandwich, and pie for your
late night dessert. (Pie for the dog, as well.) And
then life sends you back to bed, to dreamland,
while outside, the starfish drift through the channel,
with smiles on their starry faces as they head
out to deep water, to the far and boundless sea.

-Eleanor Lerman

No Matter What...

This was a sign posted on a broken tree among the aftermath of one of the tornadoes that hit a local county Saturday evening. Homes were lost, people were injured, the damage is devastating, but the one thing that a tornado can't take from these people--or anyone for that matter--is their faith.

"No matter what, trust God." This is something that I have been diligently trying to work on in my own life, trusting God. Having taken a huge leap of faith and quitting my job shortly after the baby was born, I have been facing fears that things may not work out, fears of having to rely on the hubs when I've never relied on anyone my entire life. The security of knowing that I will be taken care of because I take care of myself has vanished. My peace of mind has always been determined by my sense of security and I'm currently struggling to maintain my peace of mind without it. I am trying to rebuild my relationship with God. I have finally arrived at a point where I have accepted that I am not perfect and that I have a long way to go to be in the place I need to be but I am taking baby steps to arrive there. I have been praying for the ability to trust Him rather than scramble around frantically trying to mend the things of my life or to always have a solution readily available rather than relying on Him to take care of things, to show me which path to take, to trust. A few days after leaving my job my car left my baby and I broken down on the side of the road. My first thought was that it was a sign that I had made the wrong decision leaving work and then that thought was crowded out by one a bit louder telling me, or perhaps God has created an opportunity for you to trust Him. I decided not to act on the reply to give him a call, a response to the email I had sent to my boss inquiring about the possibility of coming back. Though a constant struggle, I decided to trust.

Recently, I have been finding acute inspiration from various poems that I have come across. Getting back to my 37 Days project compilation that I abandoned shortly after the new year, I decided to create my own 37 Days project and post these inspirational poems here on my blog for the next 37 days. Even if I am unable to post personal blogs, I will remain committed to these poems in hopes of, if for no one else, uplifting myself, offering hope, instilling peace.

I'll begin with this motivational quote I found on a bottle of body wash, no doubt. The company Philosophy is all about luxurious and scrumptious bath and body products, each bottle containing a fun and feel-good quote, shampoo for the body and soul, if you will. This one I found particularly inspiring. It's called Shear Splendor, and splendor it is; the bottle reads:

we dream of the perfect life, perfect health, the perfect relationship, even perfect hair. in doing so we lost sight of the most perfect thing there is. we call it the perfect plan. it is the invisible energy life force that directs our every move, every triumph and every set back. it is the master plan that requires no perfection. once you surrender to it you genuinely see the perfection that is God's plan.