Inspiring Women: Christine: Resilience

Christine is not blogging at the moment. “I’m spent by the time I carve out a moment to write, and that means I’m not writing the things I want to be writing. That means it becomes a chore. When it becomes a chore, it creates guilt. The last thing I need in my life is guilt. I’ve worked too hard to find some emotional and mental stability.” So we can find on her Facebook, Twitter and other blogs. I miss her frequent blog posts, nevertheless.

Because I appreciate Christine’s honesty about writing and living, exemplified in this post where she writes: “I realized that the hard work I’ve done to pull myself out of the trenches of depression and anxiety has been important and valuable, but hasn’t yet fully addressed the root of my struggles—my sense of self-worth and my ability to love and honour myself.”

In another, on creativity, she says “Creativity means filling others with emotion, making a difference through beauty or skill, inspiring.” Then she goes on to write openly, “My life has become an array of contradictions. I’m happy, but I’m numb. I’m energetic, but I’m weary. I’m productive, but I’m still hopelessly lost. I’m doing, but I’m not being. I’m full of life, but running on creative empty.”

I consider Christine inspiring because she is willing to acknowledge her difficulties and persist towards equilibrium and self-expression. Look at the compassionate and open-hearted letter she writes to her younger self:

“Take the time to really consider your goals. Don’t worry about the expectations of others. They aren’t the ones who will be living your life. I cannot emphasize this enough. Stop, think and revisit your deepest thoughts often. Reflect on who you think you are and who you want to be. What brings you joy and helps you to feel fulfilled? Use this to help you decide what you want to do with your life. A day will come when you learn that a career should be about passion and happiness, rather than expectation and success. It should complement the rest of your your life, not be your life. Otherwise, you might regret some of the choices you make.”

And the hard realized truths she shares: “And so, if you ask me what I’ve learned this year—after all the reading and introspection, this hard, soul work—I’ve learned that this is just it. Today. This moment. Life is best lived now, not in the past or the future. If you can understand that, I mean really, really grasp it, then everything else either falls into place, or it falls away. All of it.”

Keeping an eye on my reader, Christine, until next time.

Inspiring Women: Roxanne Krystalli: Open Hearted Traveller

Roxanne says in a video response to the question “who are you,” that she is “foreign everywhere and mispronounces everything.” Her honesty and self-effacement and joy are apparent throughout all that she shares. She was born in Greece, went to school in America, describes herself professionally as “a conflict management professional who specializes in the effects of war and conflict on women,” and in the same space as someone who is a “fervent believer in the power of storytelling.” Roxanne’s travels and work have taken her to Egypt, Jerusalem, Latin America and the Balkans, among other locales. On her site Stories of Conflict and Love and in her photo journal she documents these journeys, portraying not only “conflict and grief” but also human “resilience.”

Roxanne’s two posts on non-violent conflict here and here demonstrate both scholarship and lived experience. The first cites reports showing the relative success of strategically organized non-violent movements compared with violent confrontations. The second looks at violence itself and how it may backfire for both those in power and those who resist. While she expresses sympathy for protestors in her native land she does not agree with violent expression and points to a source where 198 alternatives to violent conflict are identified.

Roxanne has a wonderful eye for beauty in the landscapes she travels. See her post on light in Jerusalem during Hanukkah. From a walk in Greece, she shows us spiritual messages interspersed with violent and defiant graffiti. Or check out this variety from the fish on the bicycle in Cuba to the tree reflected in the soup bowl to the children playing in the street. Remarking of herself, Roxanne says she “preaches mindfulness” but frequently dwells in memory or worries about the future and that behind the camera “time stops, ” and that “photography makes me more mindful because it reminds me to really look... to search for beauty (or for surprise, incongruence, contradiction and conflict).” See also a tender post on waiting for someone special, the zenith of which is “I stare at the lily till all I see is a blushing world,” and the extraordinary pictures that follow.

Elsewhere, in her video introduction, Roxanne says, “the power of kindness to ourselves and others is one of the currencies I must believe in.” She exemplifies it through her work, her travel, her writing, her art and her joy.

Inspiring Women: Jessica Kristie: Journey through poetry

I’ve read Jessica’s blog and poems for a while now and what inspires me is the life journey that she records and transforms through her writing and with many voices.

Jessica’s motto is: “Poetry is my heart, anchors my soul, and documents my journey.” Next to these words on her site is the following cluster: “Learn Forgive Grow Hope Remember Love.” Quite a constellation of life directions, isn’t it? Or again in Jessica’s words, confronted with death, “Living – is where we find our verse.”

Especially facing painful memories:

"The sounds of each letter find their way to a piece of me –
I have been trying to forget." (Shades of You and Me)

"I beg for revolving doors.
Pain in: my journey in life.
Pain out: to grow and change." (Love Letter)

At the same time, appreciation for connection with others in pain:

"In an instant you breathe hope

while standing still in this suffocation.

Restoring my soul

and making me

intimately whole.

With no hesitation you breathe love.

Bringing back my estranged comfort.

Reminding me of who I can be."

(Hidden Hero)

When pain seems unending and change seems impossible:

“When I get up from this bed – all the pain,
it will,

still be there.”

(Empty)

“Change becomes the expectation
When reality plays out

It is only the exception”

(A Day Like Any Other)

Then there is the realization that change must come from within and through action:

“We Walk on Water”

"Down on bended knee, as my bluest aqua blue,

reminds me of a bitter truth -

I must change."

“Tragedy’s Room”

"Today I want to put skin around my words,

turn sentences into limbs,

and reach across the seas."

Also from “We Walk on Water”

"What a masterpiece I have created in my soul’s foliage.

It is shaped of stars with scented breezes."

"Today is the day you make a mark. Change. Years go by in moments and death replaces life. Today is the day you fix this. There is an expiration date that for this moment has been delayed, but someday, we will be out of appeals. Live. Now."

Similarly, not only changing moving forward but changing the past and how we see it, “What we think we know will halt us in our tracks, but when we move in the water as smooth as dolphins – our history can change.” (Eyes Wide Open)

Jessica’s dramatic and heartfelt first poetry collection, Dreaming in Darkness, will soon be followed by a second, Threads of Life, evidently exploring dysfunctional relationships. Jessica’s generosity to fellow artists and writers on parallel journeys is also evident from her Inspiring Ink series the open mic poetry reading she’s hosting.

Keep writing, Beautiful Butterfly, you’re something else.

Inspiring Women: Lindsey Mead: Awareness

Awareness seems scarcely sufficient to describe the gifts Lindsey presents through her A Design So Vast. Cosmic consciousness may be a more apt description.

It is this appreciation of the moment in every day, in spite of change, pain and at times loneliness, (and what they teach her,) that is so delightful and transformational about Lindsey’s work, through which I could go, to borrow the words of Randall Jarrell, “shouting and pointing.”

However, today I want to focus on consciousness and awareness and what Lindsey teaches me. Quoting Miriam Gates “Bravery is about being conscious of all life,” Lindsey goes on to write “Bravery is staring into the sun, even when the brightness of life – and the brightness is precisely because life’s minutes are burning in front of us – is painful. Bravery is not flinching and not looking away, even when the emotion of a moment overwhelms us. Bravery is not hiding, in a thousand ways little and big, from our own lives.”

Of appreciation of everyday moments of life and phenomena, Lindsey writes: “The most mundane of things, our very own life-scarred hands, are equally as transcendent as the most ornate and soaring cathedral. There is as much power and as much wonder in the simple human hand as in a grandiose cathedral.”

The awareness of the fleeting quality of life runs through Lindsey’s writing, that we are living and dying at the same time. Or, similarly here, where she emphasizes: “My every conscious moment is filtered through this prism of my piercing awareness of how fleeting it is.” She speaks of choice, a willingness to remain aware in spite of difficulty and heartbreak. And how she passes this appreciation on to her children, vastness and imagination, what she sees in an apparently bleak season of winter, as well as the solstice.

This awareness and imagination generate appreciation and endurance, and joy. Through it all, Lindsey, like others I’ve profiled this month, has a remarkable sense of the journey she is on and shares her gifts generously and profoundly.

Reverb11: Year In Review

High points

Getting a new job after a long unemployment (nine months or so.) Things just seemed to fall into place around it. I felt welcomed by the staff. Drawn to the place and its beautiful neighborhood. Even the day I went for my interview, in front of me was a cement mixer with the word on it "advance." I took it as a sign. Many people helped and encouraged me throughout the job process, and I think of Carol. When I told her that I'd majored in religion in college she said it was because I liked to find connections between people and things and ideas, and that's as good an explanation as any I could give. Calling her on the day I went to the interview was a confidence builder as well. And when she said "I put things off for tomorrow because I didn't believe in today," I kept that with me.

And connection with so many wonderful people online, particularly through Twitter, more than I can count, has been especially gratifying. Especially Belle and her We Love Gratitude which encouraged my daily awareness and acknowledgement of what's good in my life. And also Christa and Amanda who both invited me to post short writings on their sites, Christa's question being how we might spend a day together and Amanda's a group of seven relating a favorite childhood memory. And Jessica asked me to review her book of poetry, and her work still delights me.

Low points

In February, the roof nearly fell in and we were evicted from our house. A lot of daily disruption and uncertainty, and accepting what I can't fix or control has, if not helped, certainly kept me from making things worse. And there is completion in sight.

And at times I've struggled with depression. Negative self talk. It's better today, because I'm refocused on what worked for me before. It's practice. Being grateful, staying present, paying attention, keeping active and focusing. And I have so many people to help me do that and I need to stay connected with each one.


The year as a whole

It would be great to say the path is linear. Maybe it's more like a sine curve. At times I've really felt held by something greater, and at other times this nagging anxiety like a boy who never has his homework finished. Maybe it's better when I don't take it so seriously. It's been a hard year and a great year.

Reverb11: Writing

From the Reverb11 event:

What is my favorite piece of writing from 2011?

This one, about another man's story. This one was hard to write, due to my feelings of inadequacy. So I took time and listened to the story several times and remembered details and nuances. I tend to remember the arrow or the direction of the story or the argument but am not too mindful of the particulars. Taking time to acknowledge these gave this writing balance.

On the other hand, it's typical of me because I stop short, lacking endurance.

If I had a second choice, this would be the one. It reflects taking a new direction in life and opening my mind even in a commonplace repetitive activity such as driving. At the same time, there's the usual allusiveness, which may be a copout, pointing to someone else's work rather than writing what I mean.

I can look back on some things I've written and say there was something alive in me and maybe something will be alive in me again.

Withdrawal

I found a wistful story in the New York Times Magazine about a man who ultimately felt compelled to withdraw from Twitter. The writer notes that he accumulated some 25,000 followers, but is there any way to verify the veracity of such a number? And from his description, his tweets were like drive-bys. Did he share useful information? Did he attempt to build something of a community through retweeting, conversations, support others he met and sustain online friendships offline?

I can't tell, because the fellow evidently deleted his account.

Certainly I identify with his one-time obsession.

As in real life, ongoing Twitter engagement takes time, away from other activities. Reading through my follow list I saw people I was interested in enough to include, but gradually it becomes overwhelming, to read all the tweets, never mind the blog posts. And I want to know. At some point, though, I had to stop, or level off. I wasn't getting my work done. Neglected analog relationships and obligations. Slowly trying to reconnect.

Because so many in the Twitterverse, more than I can name or recall, sustained me through particularly difficult times with the messages and examples that I needed to read and hear and read and hear again. This morning there was a thread called #spiritchat, in which I read: "Grateful that the internet brought twitter so that I may share and learn from other spirits across the world." Agreed.

My favorite story

This may be my favorite story.

I heard it in January 2010 at a storytelling event held at the Monti in Durham, North Carolina.
Scott Huler, an author of several books, talks about a time when he was "so thoroughly unhappy," "exiled to the state news desk" at the News & Observer. Why was he unhappy? Because journalism, at least what was expected or required of him, moved from telling stories to providing information ("Get statistics and write stories in the passive voice.") Through the experience, closeness with the escaped chimp, and writing the story, he discovers how he needs to change his life. He's just doing his job and doing it, figures out it no longer feeds him. The warmth, the humor, the surprise, the unexpected conclusion, all make it continue to resonate with me. Mixed in are some horrifying aspects, the prospect of an escaped chimp on the loose in Charlotte for a week, the roadside zoo in light of the recent tragedy in Ohio, the chimp biting the cameraman down to the bone, the chimp chain smoking. I forget these shocking details as I feel the storyteller's anger when the newspaper truncates the story which described an amazing day shared by many people. I like his description of how he checks his version of events with what others' experienced, it's a community storytelling, not something he feels possessive about.

What about me? Do I have a cage to break out of, or is it self imposed, like Blake's mind-forg'd manacles? Maybe that's an illusion, as Belle shows us. It's love and service. And gratitude. And doing what's worked before and may work again.

And what about what I call "my story?" An illusion too, maybe, just signifying the parts that I can recall at this moment, forgetting that I'm part of something greater?

OK, computer

When you are writing, do you prefer to use a pen or a computer? (#NaBloPoMo prompt)

I generally type on the computer when I'm writing. It hasn't always been the case. I wonder, yet, if in doing so I hide what I've written, file it away and forget. If I carried a notebook instead, perhaps I would read and reflect more, not to mention capture the little inspirations and thoughts that arise without my knowing it.

I spend most of my day at a computer. I'm trying to break up the consecutive time, at Michele Thebirge's suggestion. From Michele I learned about a meditation timer for the macintosh and downloaded it. When I remember, I activate it, a little chime that gets me away from the repetitive screen staring and typing, pausing and being aware if only for a fraction of a moment (whatever that is.) It's a sharp sound that makes me think of liquid metal or one of those beads rolling in a maze or something like a clock, not like the clapper against an otherwise empty bell.

Mostly I write on 750words.com and when I reach 750 words I stop, feeling pressed for time or lacking in fortitude, endurance to keep writing. And forget about going back and reading what I wrote before. Maybe you don't forget but I do.

When I was younger, I didn't eagerly learn word processing. Eventually writing out college papers in longhand and then typing them proved to be onerous and editing them as I went using the software saved time considerably. Before that I filled a number of spiral bound notebooks with my daily thoughts. It was as if I was trying to record every event in my life I could think of. And I would become frustrated when the next day came and I hadn't finished telling the story of the previous day. This was especially the case in college when I was more likely to go out drinking rather than write a journal entry. In high school, I had a curfew and journal entries were a welcome way to delay homework.

But I couldn't tell you what I was doing at any time. What I was trying to say or understand. Those notebooks, wherever they are, most likely they are hosts. Fragments echo in my mind that probably have scarcely any connection with the actual events.

I like computers today. Can't imagine doing without one to check email or Facebook or Twitter and follow the resultant links via the browser, but writing something substantial on one, that I can't claim to do.

Maybe I give up too easily, throw up my hands and say I don't know. Something of me prefers the darkness. I read a quote in a library book from the gospel of John, that men preferred the darkness to the light. Maybe so it is with me. I'd rather not get too deeply into whatever it is, avoid the effort of facing the facts and having a choice to solve my problem(s).

Soundtrack

Today's #NaBloPoMo prompt: "Can you listen to music and write? What song did you hear today?"

Often I listen to music and write, or type, I suppose. I shuffle my iTunes library or hit Genius and listen to the same songs over and over again. At first Genius's response was pretty limited; I thought it more appropriately should have been named "Nimrod." Nevertheless, Apple has consistently improved the product.

But right now I'm not listening to anything except the revolving soundtrack in my head. Something's always playing there. Right now it is the last strains of John Fahey's instrumental "Orinda-Moraga." Before that it was Sonic Youth singing a chorus "you better not waste away." Most of the time there's no particular reason for the song. Other times, however, it would be good to keep silent. Why do I have such a hard time being with myself? The iPhone cranks for the duration of the car ride. Wouldn't it be good to listen to a conversation such as in a Podcast? Or nothing? What is a song, anyway, or notes, or sound? (Or silence, thinking of Cage's 4'33 or the prisoner who made a wooden piano and played the silent music on the keys.)

And at the same time, I agree with Jessica, who writes "Music is so important in all of our creative journeys as well as in our own personal soundtrack of life," and she shares a song every Lyrical Friday.

The best thing about writing?

Inspired by my friend Rachael, I decided to give the #NaBloPoMo a bash. What is my favorite thing about writing? I love and I hate to write. Maybe my favorite thing is stopping. And then the distance and time, or in the form of time, make what I've written more palatable and even afford me some discovery. What was I thinking? What was I doing? Because lately I've taken scarcely any time for reflection. Twenty years or so ago I kept a journal for a brief time. Some time later, reviewing what I'd written, I was surprised to discover what I'd said, which I don't remember and the book is long gone or packed away.

Thoughts come and go. I can scarcely remember what I was thinking about this morning, although, recalling a dream where I'd put my name to a book that I had not, in actuality, written. A prompt such as this is a gift. I have learned recently or had to learn again that once I have stopped writing, it is hard to begin again. Jacques Barzun in the Modern Researcher remarked that it required the strength of Samson. He also said that unlike the alcoholic who cannot touch a drink again the writer cannot stop for a day.

I have been asked why do I want to write, and I don't have a very good reason. Certainly there is a desire, but I lack compulsion, practice, structure, technique, knowledge of rhetoric, I don't know what I'm doing and I find it hard to answer a simple question. Yet I know that when I don't write, something is missing from my life, there's a longing. It was simple at the age of 6, writing and drawing, about a neighborhood like mine, about events in my life, like the woman I thought was a witch, though maybe that's what an older boy told me. "She's not a witch," my grandfather said, "she just doesn't like people trespassing on her property." I don't remember if it was after or before then I made "No trespassing" signs of my own.

And maybe none of it matters. And maybe it matters to me. I don't know. I do know that by writing it, it is something, whether it is what I thought I was thinking or not.

In Bold

Response to today's #Trust30 Dare to Be Bold

What is the one thing I've always wanted to do? Writing. And I've seldom done it, never acquired a discipline or a practice or a technique. I know nothing of phrasing or rhetoric or other technique, so what comes out is what comes out, if anything comes out at all.

In recent years, I've introduced myself as a librarian and a writer, thinking that by saying it, I would become it. It is not so.

Why do I want to do this? What am I trying to express? Would anything be better left unsaid?

I've had moments of satisfaction, writing articles for various publications throughout my life, school and career related, many papers that I was proud of once the agony of composing them had abated, and two poems, one for my wife and one that just sort of came to me some summer day. I do not have them hand but will post them when I do.

With this blog and other endeavors I've tried to acquire a habit, a practice of writing. But I don't strategize successfully. I am often at a loss. Words don't come out easily, the thoughts in my head don't seem to translate into written words.

What's going on? What is my aim with this? Creation? Passing on what I've learned? Celebrate something?

It's deep within me, this desire, but I cannot say why, I don't have a good reason. Wrote stories when I was a kid. I can smile at them now, not cringe. Something I have always wanted to do and never given the time.

I'm grateful to Buster Benson and his 750words site, which I have been using daily for several months. However, I have not gone back and reviewed anything, made use of it. Might be a good place to start.

However, I need to be with the process, not just dump something and throw it over the wall and be done with it. Revisit.

"What can communicate tries." Cid Corman

"But I haven't got anything to say!"

I am thinking of the Peterkin Papers, a children's book from the late nineteenth century. I read it to my kids when they were younger. An evidently well-to-do family seems quite befuddled and their friend, the lady from Philadelphia, shows a bit more sense than the rest. For instance, the Peterkins have a piano delivered, and it is placed with the keyboard facing the wall. So the daughter sits outside on the porch in all kinds of weather and plays the piano through the window. Then the lady from Philadelphia suggests the family turn the piano around. Most of the stories are like that and some are more interesting than others. My thinking and acting, throughout my life, has been much like the Peterkins. Find the most complicated, convoluted way to do or say something. My ex-wife once said, regarding this behavioral pattern, "it must be difficult to be you?"

The one incident from this book that sticks with me today is when John John, one of the sons, decides he's going to be a writer, and goes out and buys a fine writing table, fine paper, a handsome pen and other accoutrements (probably a comfortable elegant chair, too.) Then he's seated at his desk with all his new things, pen freshly inked and raised, with a sad look on his face, and he says, desparingly, "but I haven't got anything to say!!!"

I often feel like that when I log on to this blog, or even meeting an acquaintance on the street, I fall into a strange blank space and don't know what to say. However, upon further review of the play, there is something to say (and sometimes it's OK to say nothing.) I read a fine blog post by Victoria relating her experiences teaching writing to students at a community college, and one of the guidelines she mentions hit me between the eyes: "A writer is someone who writes." Everyone has a story to tell and not everyone has to listen to everyone else's story. "Listen to all sides and filter them from yourself," Whitman wrote. Or as Ornette Coleman wrote in his notes to Body Meta, "if you can read or write, but don't write or read, why?" The thing is to make a beginning. Now. As Tony's quote of Goethe urges me: "Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now."