37days

Some days are birthdays

What kind of deranged obsessive stalker quivering groupie would I be if I neglected to wish Mr Collins a happy birthday today, this 22^nd of March...

Sweet Billy turns 67 today. What a fine age.

Imagine my delight at finding this treasure trove of Billy online yesterday, reading one of his books of poetry, available for free download at Open Source Audio. Kind of like he’s giving me a birthday gift, instead of the other way around. Don't tell him, but I'm sending him a birthday gift, a dorodango made by a man named Bruce Gardner, a master of the art in New Mexico. Really. I think Billy will enjoy the metaphor of dirt creating beauty, of polishing, polishing to a fine sheen, using only the dirt itself.

Happy birthday, Mr Brilliant

I don't know. Have I mentioned once or twice or a thousand times that I love Mr Brilliant? Not just for the spectacular ways in which he thinks and the marvelous crazy wonderful gifts and the James Joyce glasses and the fact that he calls up the White House chef to find out how to make gingerbread icing instead of googling it and the way he smells or the fact that he tapes burning candles to his head just to make us laugh.

You're tired of hearing it, but I'm so not tired of saying it, and today is a special day in our household--Mr Brilliant Has A Birthday! Evidently, according to Tess' rakish decoration of his vegan red velvet heart cake, he turned 25 in spectacular form today. I imagine when you're 4 years old, 25 might seem just as old as 52.

And so, Mr Brilliant, happy birthday. Here's to many, many, many more, so many that we become completely insufferable old codgers together, our teeth in a jar and our veins pumped full of celery juice and doughnut holes, bothering our children with our reminiscences about the good old days way back when Andy Pettitte wasn't a snitch, when people still knew who Harmon Killebrew was, when Chuck Knoblauch could still throw from second to first, when Johnny Unitas was wearing high tops, and when pasta was just plain spaghetti.

Love. Big. MMB (that's a secret Patti to Johnny message, yep, yep it is).

Come, let's ride brightly painted inner tubes, you and I

If you have watched TV commercials for the new teeniny microscopic MacBook Air, perhaps you will recognize this song by Yael Naim. Come, let's ride brightly painted inner tubes, play cymbals in a field of sunflowers, sing with a gorgeous Israeli-French accent, and realize that there is a whole big world out there, ripe for the dancing and for the floating. That's real air.

I is for inside looking

Man need only divert his attention from searching for the solution to external questions and pose the one, true inner question of how he should lead his life, and all the external questions will be resolved in the best possible way. - Leo Tolstoy

In 2008, I will end each day by inside looking.

Naikan (nye-kahn) is a Japanese word which means €œinside looking€ or œintrospection€--seeing oneself with the mind's eye. Naikan is a structured self-reflection developed by Yoshimoto Ishin, a devout Buddhist of the Jodo Shinshu sect in Japan.

Naikan offers three questions for us to ask and answer:

What have I received from others?

What have I given to others or given back to others?

What trouble and bother have I caused them?

N is for now

“Nothing is worth more than this day.” –Goethe

In 2008, I am going to be here now.

When you unpeel it, 37days is all about now, but I find I don’t live in now very often. I live in then, or when, or one day.

I want, instead, to live in Now. This moment. What does that look like? I think it looks like a lot less time on the computer and a lot more time playing Candyland with a four-year-old or making vegan cupcakes with a teenager or raking leaves with Mr Brilliant. I think it looks a lot like paying attention. I think, for me, it looks a lot like writing or being creative every day. Maybe it just looks like breathing deeply every morning before flinging ourselves into the whirling stream of our lives. It is far too easy to be swept into the competing currents.

As Thich Nhat Hanh has written, “Life can be found only in the present moment. The past is gone, the future is not yet here, and if we do not go back to ourselves in the present moment, we cannot be in touch with life.”

Pema Chödrön has reminded us that Now is the only time. That how we relate to Now creates the future. That what we do accumulates and that the future is the result of what we do right now.

I asked Billy Collins (you know, we talk constantly) if death is the main chord of all poetry. “Yes, it is. But poetry isn’t a consolation for death, for the reality that you will die. Instead, it is an expression of gratitude that you’re alive. Poetry italicizes experience or brings it into sharper focus. It provides a fuller immersion into life.” Poetry is about seizing the day, but we only need “carpe diem” if we realize we have a limited number of diems.

Becoming Larger Than Our Skin Allows

And no, that title isn't a reference to overeating.

In the U.S., today is Thanksgiving Day (and my friend Karrie Manson's birthday, so a shout out to her for being so powerful that the nation stops when she ages). This year, I'm not spending Thanksgiving at a long table full of vegan alternatives to turkey, but hunched over a computer screen like a madwoman, panicked at my book deadline next week and snarking at my family when they breathe too loudly. What was I thinking?, I'll be thinking, in one of those beautiful infinite regresses of thinking, the fear that emerges from finality, essays congealed into book form.

Soon, I'm sure I'll give in to the overwhelming urge to eat cranberry sauce from a can, as detailed last year this time on 37days,and will pop the Tofurky into the oven. But not before being thankful, and deeply so, for all of you who come here and read my few words and email and comment and hold me up when I'm falling. My deepest thanks.

My glorious friend Sid Jordan sent a Thanksgiving message this morning that I'd like to share with you this fine day. Let us lift each other up.

Becoming Larger Than Our Skin Allows

We seek metaphors
To describe our friendships
But alas, even these fall short of our true emotions
So we joke, tell stories, and hold each other
Accepting the inner weaving of our connections
As part of the evolving tapestry of our lives

What is amazing to me
Is how little it takes to impact another human being
In profound and deep ways
Simply by being present
By witnessing each others stories
By honoring each others thoughts and feelings

It is physically possible to lift each other up
And hold each other under a starlit sky
Enough to feel the power of the universe enfold us
Wrapping us up with simultaneous feelings of love and immensity
Yes, we are only a speck in the whole of things
Yet, our love mingled with the love of others
Is more immense than we can ever intellectually know

Our ability to tap into the collective energy of the world
Allows us to transcend our language
Each of us becoming larger than our skin allows
Each of us finding power
From the source of our humility and awe
But mostly from each other
As our hands work to lift each other higher

-Doc Klein

Celebrations

Happy birthday, Mama.

Where every day is Now

37 days goes by quickly.

So does a life. After a young woman named Meta died this past fall, and in the slightly homebound recuperation following my fall in November, I created a 37days calendar for 2007 to raise money for a scholarship fund in Meta's memory.

The third and final printing of that calendar is now complete. If you'd like one, they are $10 (+$4.50 shipping/handling for 1-5 calendars), with half of that applied to printing costs and half donated to Meta's scholarship fund.

Many of you have generously bought calendars - thank you. You have fed my burgeoning dream of sitting in a vast, spacious, uncluttered studio painted in shades of teal and umber surrounded by papers and textiles, creating small worlds of art that hang from silver threads or fantastic, bright cupcakes. Or something like that. I hope the calendars met your expectations.

If you haven't bought one and would like to, you can order one (or more!) online using PayPal (send PayPal payments to patti at thecircleproject dot com - please include your mailing address in the notes section and let me know how many you want). If you hate PayPal and All It Stands For, you can send a check payable to "The Circle Project" to The Circle Project, 37days Calendar, P.O. Box 18323, Asheville, NC 28814 USA, and the fantastic elves will handle it from there...

Pop up your Nimrod

“There are three wants which never can be satisfied: that of the rich, who wants something more; that of the sick, who wants something different; and that of the traveler, who says, Anywhere but here.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

I grew up in a small Southern town where nobody knew the street names, but just gave directions by landmarks and events: turn left where the Biltmore Dairy building burned down, go straight past the Pool Hall where Guy "Frog" Ramsey got shot in the face, turn right at Mull's Feed and Seed where evidently nothing of note happened other than the rambunctious selling of feed and seed.

Daddy was the town barber. Mama worked at the bank on the Square with the Town Clock on the side of the building that was always off by 8 minutes but it really didn’t seem to matter to this slow-moving populace, perambulating past my vantage point in Modern Barber Shop like they were wading through tepid water. It was as close to Mayberry as you can get; I was Opie’s missing red-headed sister, working at the public library and taking piano lessons from Myrtle Muench once a week for twelve whole years, culminating (of course) with a slightly mechanical (yet secretly rousing) rendition of Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition.”

Celebrate every orange flag

“The truth is that everything that can be accomplished by showing a person when he's wrong, ten times as much can be accomplished by showing him where he is right. The reason we don't do it so often is that it's more fun to throw a rock through a window than to put in a pane of glass.” - Robert T. Allen

Three stories, one theme:

The first story

One afternoon a few weeks after my older daughter started first grade, I picked her up from school and drove to my husband’s bookshop to say hi. When we pulled up, John ran out to see us, leaning in the car window to give Emma a kiss. “How was school today, Buddy?” he asked.

“I had my first test today!” she exclaimed brightly. (How wonderful, I thought. A whole lifetime of testing has opened up for you…).

What was our first question to her?  “How’d you do?” (Yes, let’s get straight to the bottom line.)