37days

Send him a holiday, his last.

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.

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

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

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)

Vote. Or shut up.

(photo of a fellow air traveler at 37,000 feet en route to Nebraska, June 2009)

mindful monday : let go of your brain

 "To know objects only through dissecting and cataloging them is to miss their full reality. It is to fall asleep amidst the mystery and to become numb to the wonder of this great Earth." - John Daido Loori

Sometimes, I believe, we think too much. We categorize and hypothesize and create the next big formula for success, the ten steps to financial freedom, the three rings to independence, the cute saying that will take Twitter by storm. We think too much. We slice and dice, we articulate.

Let's forget, instead. Let's sink into. Let's see without trying to package for others to see. Let's bathe in ineffable. Let's be fully present with the fog on the mountain, not reaching into our pocket for the camera.

Let's.

As Elizabeth Bishop wrote, "What one seems to want in art, in experiencing it, is the same thing that is necessary for its creation, a self-forgetful, perfectly useless concentration."

Be mindful in another way. Touch, smell, see. Really see. Not the seeing that comes with the reductiveness of language: "how will I write about this?," but the seeing that comes without any further need.

Let go of your brain.

stepping stone sunday: make room for silence

There is no need to go to India or anywhere else to find peace.  You will find that deep place of silence right in your room, your garden or even your bathtub.  -Elizabeth Kübler-Ross

It occurred to me on the way home from New Jersey this week--many airports and airplanes and meetings and workshops later--that we spend very little time in silence. True silence. Silence not punctuated by Spongebob Squarepants in the background in the next room. Silence not filled up with announcements and newscasters and commercials and the ding of text messages arriving.

Sometimes silence is absence. Things fall away, people leave, pets die, and all leave silence where there was noise, a silence that reminds us of what was, a hole.

And sometimes silence is full, full up, full of meaning and quiet and not reminiscent of loss. Sometimes it can buoy us and calm and reassure us.

This week, my stepping stone from day to day will be just ten minutes of silence, of doing nothing, of not noticing the dust on the piano or answering the phone or opening the door for a pet to go in or out or making a grocery list, but of sitting, quietly, with my eyes closed. Breathing. As Lynn Johnston has said, "The most profound statements are often said in silence."

I will learn to meditate this week, ten minutes at a time. Just ten. If I find myself saying, I don't have time, I will remind myself how utterly ridiculous and egocentric and unbalanced and awful it is to say I don't have ten minutes to spare.

"Not a square to spare," Elaine said memorably in a favorite Seinfeld episode where she is asked by the woman in the next bathroom stall for some toilet paper. "Not ten minutes to spare" has the same feeling. No? Then I will prioritize differently, create space and time, even if it means I have to go sit in the bathroom alone to get my ten minutes.

Yes.

Ten minutes a day.

I admit that I will begin with something of an immersion process: For months I have told my friend Sid Jordan that I want him to teach me how to meditate. He has offered since the beginning of the year each month when we meet for our Bridging Differences book group. Each month I have deferred--when I finish this travel, when the book is done, when the kids are back in school--and each month he has nodded, knowingly. So imagine my delight at his kind offer to teach meditation for an hour each morning during the Life is a Verb retreat starting this Thursday. (He will also offer an hour of yoga instruction to us each day--what a gift!) Sid probably recognized that I would be a captive audience during those three days, and he was right.

Yes. 

Can you spare ten minutes a day to hear nothing but the sound of your own breathing? Say yes.

Make room for silence.

simple saturday. elementary kindness.

"What I want is so simple I almost can't say it: elementary kindness." -Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams

We have opportunities for kindness every day. Every single day. A moment's hesitation to let a car enter the flow of traffic in front of us. An offer to carry a burden for someone - across the street or through life with them.

Sometimes kindness takes placing the focus of our intention on someone outside ourselves.

Sometimes kindness takes slowing down. Noticing someone seems lost or scared and asking if they need help. Letting someone with two items go ahead of us in the grocery line. Sending a note to someone we haven't talked to in a while. Just showing up for someone. Breaking stride.

Elementary kindness.

En route to Newark this week via Atlanta (because evidently I believe going north requires going south first for good luck), I sat on a tiny plane beside a woman named Dorothy. She was thin and elderly and eager to talk once I asked where she was going. We talked the whole way to Atlanta - about L.A. where she lives, about Asheville where she had visited her son for a week, about life and love and work and much more. I waited with her on the plane until her wheelchair came, chatting, and then we parted.

I got an email from someone this morning whose name I didn't recognize: "You recently sat next to my mother on a flight from Asheville to Atlanta as she was returning home after visiting my wife and I. She called today to request that I get her a copy of your book as a present for her 87th birthday. I was wondering if it would be possible to obtain an autographed copy. I know she was very happy to talk with you and personalizing the book would make it all the more special. If you won't be available for this request (her birthday is Nov. 17th) I can always check at Malaprops. Thanks for being so nice to my mother."

His note made me cry. I love that she asked for my book for her 87th birthday. I love that a simple conversation brought the two of us so much.

The webs of kindness can change this world, I believe. If not the world, it can certainly change people one by one. As Seneca wrote, wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity for kindness.

Be kinder than absolutely necessary. It's sometimes very, very simple. 

(Being kind to ourselves is also important)

What can you do today to be kind to someone else? To yourself?

thinking thursday.

Every Thursday, just a few links I've discovered, things I'm thinking about. And, of course, a link somewhere 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 yours

Malcolm Gladwell has a new book out and is talking about stuff you might find interesting in this interview. (Thanks to Gay Clyburn)

The conference is dead. Is it?

From literary agent Nathan Bransford: "In posts about the writing life, Alexander Chee wrote a moving article about taking a writing class with Annie Dillard, which has some truly fantastic writing advice (via John Ocwhat), and Cynthia Leitich Smith has a post with advice for debut authors on dealing with nasty reviews."

body :: my place and yours

McFarthest point in the U.S. from a McDonald's (Thanks to Kathryn Ruth "Hot Dog" Schuth)

Let's hear it for zero waste. (Thanks to Aurora Fox)

Held by the Taliban for 7 months and 10 days is an extraordinary story (Thanks to Dan Pink)

soul :: my heart and yours

Paolo Nutini sounds and looks mighty good. Plus I really, really enjoy saying his name. (Thanks to Paula J. Kelly who first turned me on to him.)

The scream awards (Thanks to Marilyn Maciel)

I don't know about you, but I'm going to start leaving my notes now.

A final thought :: The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. -Barbara Kingsolver

poetry wednesday : otherwise

Otherwise

-Jane Kenyon

I got out of bed
on two strong legs.
It might have been
otherwise. I ate
cereal, sweet
milk, ripe, flawless
peach. It might
have been otherwise.
I took the dog uphill
to the birch wood.
All morning I did
the work I love.

At noon I lay down
with my mate. It might
have been otherwise.
We ate dinner together
at a table with silver
candlesticks. It might
have been otherwise.
I slept in a bed
in a room with paintings
on the walls, and
planned another day
just like this day.
But one day, I know,
it will be otherwise.

found-art tuesday : what is this green stuff?

Last week, Tess decided that she wanted to buy lunch at school. She talked about it, worried about it (where to put her money, how to ask for the food, what they might have for lunch, how to make sure it was vegetarian, how to carry her money and the tray). SHE WAS TRIUMPHANT! And, of course, she started writing about her lunches everyday. I just found her first lunch story. She typed it up on the home computer and printed it out. I found it in the printer tray.

In it, I believe there is much about the human condition. It is a tale of a six-year-old getting her first hot lunch at school, but look in between the lines and you'll see much about living. What IS that green stuff? Maybe we don't like it ... or maybe we just haven't tasted it yet. Maybe we spend a lot of time wondering about it. 

today i got school lunch. i had

pineapples, a potato with sour

cream, and this green stuff. It all

was yummy, except i didn't

actually like the green stuff

yet. Maybe i just havent tasted it

yet. Maybe i just did't know what it

was. I was wondering what

that was for almost the whole

lunch time! But it was just half of

the lunch time. The pineapples,

and
the potato, and also the salad

was good.

 -Tess Ptak