Water Flow

"The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters." - Norman Maclean

A river tumbles and teems with life to reveal the search for simplicity and unity. Waters weave their magical powers. Swift-surging rivers change with the light during the day. They merge with wonder in darkness. The flow provides opportunities for meditation and reflection. The river reveals a symbol of constancy within change.

Norman Maclean wrote, "Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it." The Indian word, 'hassayampah' means, the river that loses itself underground. It is like intuition.

Recall a river or body of water that affected your life.

We experience others' lives. They move on, flow through other landscapes and merge with different lives. Consider those who came before you. How, like a river do you carry them with you?

Write your personal journey as a life that flows, constant, and changing.

Scents of Pleasure

Do you use herbs and flowers to flavor the air and cooking? 

Rosemary, called "dew of the sea" finds nourishment in sea mist and humidity. Greek mythology reveals it adorned Aphrodite when she rose from the sea. Its fragrance flavors meats and stews. When it's shaped annually in the garden, the aroma scents the breeze, clothes, and work gloves. 

Take a few sprigs to add to your car, or for use in the kitchen.

Bay trees flavor many dishes like spaghetti sauce. They also have symbolic meaning. Greeks fashioned the bay laurel leaves into crowns to place on the heads of victors in games and battles. The God, Zeus, loved the laurel.  It contain oils used in medicines to treat breathing ailments.

In addition to flavoring food, plants provide olfactory effects. Lavender provides a sense of ease when we need relaxation.

Geraniums, a common garden plant, exudes an odor that meets with mixed reviews. They can smell like rose, peppermint, even chocloate and lime.

Leaves of camphor and eucalyptus refresh when crushed or rubbed.

Roses used in sachets and potpourris also add fragrance to water, baths and waft through a room when cut and placed in a vase. After the flowers of the rose have been pollinated, the fruits form rosehips.  They add flavor to tea and provide vitamin C.

Stop and smell the flowers and herbs. 

Slow down, relax and take in the simple pleasures.

Rebel Against the Usual

  

"Sometimes breaking the rules is just extending the rules. Sometimes there are no rules." 

~ Mary Oliver

Consider the joy and power of rebellion. A determination to revolt against the usual may stimulate discoveries and creativity. 

Rise and overthrow a stale notion, overworked idea or any status quo you've experienced. 

Vitality will soar as you shed numbing habits and traditions.

Blaze the page with a personal rebel call of nonviolent disobedience. Toss letters in the air and see where they land. 

Write one word sentences. Verbinate!

Extend the rules. Pursue a rebel's jubilee. 

Frolic. Flap those wings.




Take a Creative Break

poem I wrote sitting across the table from you by Kevin Varrone if I had two nickels to rub together I would rub them together like a kid rubs sticks together until friction made combustion and they burned a hole in my pocket into which I would put my hand and then my arm and eventually my whole self-- I would fold myself into the hole in my pocket and disappear into the pocket of myself, or at least my pants but before I did like some ancient star I'd grab your hand

Kevin Varrone wrote the above poem when procrastinating his current work. While writing at a coffee shop, he overheard someone talk about rubbing two nickels together. Varrone diverted his attention and started a poem. 

When stuck in a situation, avoid trying to slug it out. The brain needs diversion. 

Change your direction and add humor. 

Enjoy a change of setting.

Listen to snippets of conversation. 
                                       Let writing flow. 
         
Begin with an image to distract and direct you into unexplored creativity. 

Free yourself from life's frustrations with a creative break.

Dream Tending

"When we interact with these imaginal presentations of the night/day, we hear the myth, the dream that is moving through our life. Implicating us in all aspects of our engagements with family, friends, and our work, dreams bring inspiration, as well as insight. Dream Tending teaches ways of evolving a sustained relationship with imagination and the figures/landscapes of psyche. Cultivating these engagements and learning to interact with regard creates an on-going living relationship with the figures of soul." - Dr. Stephen Aizenstat

Investigate the dream's details. 

In the evening before bed:

Say, "Tonight I'm going to remember my dreams." 

Morning:  Keep a Dream journal bedside. Write details as soon as you awaken. Get a sense of the dream.

Bring the dream into awareness. Dreams are like friends. Get involved.

Notice what dream has to offer.

What is the most peculiar fragment?

Acknowledge the dream. What's the context? Place it in circumstances of life.




Find a pun or metaphor.

Tend dreams from the inside out. Go beyond and explore. Find the myth.

Dr. Seuss claimed, "My alphabet began where yours ended. Most people stop with the Z . . . not me."

Learn more about Dream Tending by Dr. Aizenstat.

Write into Solitude

On a leafless branch

A crow's settling

autumn nightfall

                 - Basho

Basho's Haiku investigates the value of a singular moment. In Japanese, the word sabi describes an alloy of beauty and sadness. Sabishi expresses loneliness and solitude. An essence of impermanence pervades his observation.

What does alone feel like?  Notice if sensations of impermanence percolate.  

Define words like loneliness, freedom, or solitude.

Develop metaphor and sensory imagery.

Invite the reader into a moment of solitude.

Tips for Resilience

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters to what lies within us. - Ralph Waldo  Emerson

In Time magazine's, "The Science of Bouncing Back," Mandy Oaklander explores strategies for resilience. Oaklander reveals that while traumatic stressors can have a devastating impact on our health, “countless smaller stresses take a toll” on our bodies.

Resilience is defined as "the capacity to adapt successfully to challenges." The small things rather than the larger issues of life can bring us down. One resilience researcher feels the way we cope with little stressors strongly predicts how we’ll do when big stressors hit. 



Coping results in the small choices we make, rather than our personality traits.

Oaklander presents “Expert Tips for Resilience” as 10 ways to train brains and bodies to cope and bounce back. 

1.   Tap into your core (unshakable) beliefs.

2.   Use each stressor as an opportunity to learn.

3.   Do what you can to remain positive.

4.   Learn from a resilient mentor or coach.

5.   Don’t run away—confront those things that scare you.

6.   Look for and reach out to your support network in   difficult times.

7.   Keep your brain active and learn new things as often as you can.

8.   Exercise regularly.

9.   Live in the present—don’t dwell in the past.

10.  What trait, characteristic, skill or talent makes you the strong person you are? Own it and give yourself credit for this strength.

Ask yourself questions about your level of resilience. 




How do choices help you fit into the points above? Which cause the most challenge?




Do you have a resilience plan for the coming week?

Always Ready

People of accomplishment rarely let things happen to them. They happen to things. 

Leonardo da Vinci

The United States Coast Guard has a motto, "Semper Paratus" (always ready).  It's a motto for everyone to work toward. 

When life surprises us, we need a backup plan. 


How do you prepare in advance? Organization begins with a simple mindset. Do you have two or three extra tissue boxes, paper towels? Don't forget the toothbrushes and bathroom rolls.  

Nature reveals how it prepares.

Consider your preparedness habits.

Are you ready for the unexpected?




Find ways to create beyond challenges. 




Get ready. 




Start today to define your motto of semper paratus.

Where's the poem?

Become a puppeteer and dangle observations on nature’s stage. Eavesdrop on human nature and add emotion. 

Search for surprises and how the man-made world and nature co-exist or conflict. 

A reciprocity develops with personal ideas and philosophy danced upon the outside world and then pulled back inside.

Where does a poem come from? It glistens at the crossroads of preparation and possibility, muscled from writing practice to the moment observed.

If it’s hiding
search for it
in a spider’s dream
or web of twilight.
You might find one
in lemony shadows
that attach to ladybugs
who sway near eucalyptus.
Consider it
in the moon’s crackle
blinking past pines.

Discover moments
before stars sprinkle
dusk with a promise

of what we most need.

Do you notice an elephant emerging from the rocks?

Where might the osprey take your creativity?

Search for a poem. 

Dig into nature and look under a few rocks.

Delete The Craving

Discover where and how your cravings arise. Which benefit your life? Which hold you back?

Define a craving and how it differs from a need.

What do you really need and what will you get from delving into the craving if it does not help you?

Try another approach to the attraction of a negative behavior.

Let go and watch the craving fly out as a thought or feeling.

Exchange the desire for a positive benefit.


Turn a fear into a creative action.
      Overlove yourself instead of overeating.
             Accentuate your best qualities.

If you overthink a situation, stop the chatter and breathe for five and out for six.

Certain thought patterns have no nutritional value.

Let them go.

Give negative thoughts and behavior a chance to become benefits by using your intuition and creativity to delete them.

Defeat and delete a negative craving with Positivity.

Follow a Thread

The Way It Is

There's a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn't change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can't get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you can do can stop time's unfolding. 
You don't ever let go of the thread.
                                     - William Stafford

Describe the thread you follow with its mystical potential.

Show its weave in colors. Does it thunder? 

        Will it spark imagination with lightning? 

                 Add a scent like the earth cleansed by rain. 

Consider how it entangles or trips you at times. 

How does humor run through it? 

Do you share it?

A Funambulist

Become a funambulist - acrobat or tight rope walker

In addition to rope dancing, funambulist also refers to a person with mental agility and skill - a writer. As writers, we struggle from concept to expression along lines that quiver with illusion and reality.

Begin rope dancing with a thought, add a feeling, and a difficult aspect of life.  

Discover where ability and skill will move you.

Imaginate

It is the marriage of the soul with Nature 
that makes the intellect fruitful, and gives birth to imagination. 

- Henry David Thoreau

Observe and Imaginate today!

In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous. 

-Aristotle

Find Laughter in flowers.

Fun your way in play.

Sweep into Stillness

What does it mean to feel an internal stillness?

Birds feel their presence in each moment aware of branches and breeze.

Staying still as a statue, the Black Phoebe watches and waits. Cock of head, spread of wings, he sprints into the air to capture an insect. From branch to branch he focuses for his prey.

With their immersion in life unfolding moment by moment, birds avoid the incessant internal chatter we often suffer.



How will you sweep into the stillness?