Don't Wait

 

I am so tired of waiting 

Aren't you 

for the world to become good

and beautiful and kind? 

                  ~ Langston Hughes

Don't wait!

Everyone needs to spend time to learn from nature.

Spread gratitude for the simple joys.
      Bring a smile to troubles.

Let humor translate the ridiculous.
         Take responsibility from the inside out.

Don't wait.

Find Your Playground

 

"Zen is to have the heart and soul of a little child." - Takuan Sōhō

             

To inspire himself, novelist William Gass wanders outside taking photos of rusty, derelict and overlooked places. D.H. Lawrence liked to climb mulberry trees naked to enerigze his creativity.

What do you do to draw on your sources of inspiration to arouse your creativity cycle?

Wisdom grows when you expose yourself to intrigue.

Find your playground amidst challenges. Strive beyond struggles 

to discover capacities building inside.

Into the Unknown

"How will  you go about finding the thing 

the nature of which is totally unknown to you?"  

- Meno

What does it mean to venture into the unknown?  

Do you have the ability to find comfort moving forward without quite knowing where you are going? 

Are you willing to discover openhearted fun as you go in search of mysterious and impossible?

Wilderness is not an extravagance or a luxury, it is a place of original memory where we can witness and reflect on how the world is held together by natural laws. 

--Terry Tempest Williams

Writing about nature requires awareness and observation of interconnections. Often founded in science, the focus always returns to the writer's questions and observations. 

The challenge of the writer involves bringing the reader into the natural world. Nature writing evokes all the senses and delves into the possibilities regardless of the tragedies in the world. This writing puts hope, faith and possibility into concrete words and imagery. 

The unknown territory always looms. The idea or the story lurk somewhere in the desert, on the prairie, high on a mountain, or in the backyard of the mind.

Writing lives at the edges of the mysterious.

Where do the boundaries of the self extend? 

Creativity and the resulting writing require the permission to be lost. In A Field Guide to Getting Lost, Rebecca Solnit explains, "One does not get lost but loses oneself, with the implication that it is a conscious choice, chosen surrender, a psychic state achievable through geography." She continues, "That thing the nature of which is totally unknown is usually what you need to find, and finding it is a matter of getting lost."

Wander without a map or compass.

Venture into the unknown and write about it.  

Find the Music

"It is very important to develop a state of mind called "immovable wisdom." It means having fluidity around an unmoving center, so that your mind is clear and ready to direct its attention wherever it may be needed." - Takuan

Conquer distractions today. Observe how your mind wanders.

Find a focus and let your mind run its route. 

Take a few moments to feel Gratitude.

Exercise your sense of smell and remain alert to changes during its saturation.

Listen to the day's cacophony. Turn it into a symphony.

Find the music.

A Dragonfly's Tale

The sky, river, sea, and land quarreled over colors to represent them. The sky claimed blue, but the river roared in disagreement.

Land demanded multicolors, greens, yellows and browns. That decision angered both the sky and river. The sky shouted about needing ambers, crimsons, and golds.

They quibbled daily. Only darkness ended the fighting. The next day arguments surged anew.

Finally the dragonfly interceded, "Why not collaborate and exchange colors throughout the day?"

To encourage the altering of colors, her clan of dragonflies wove a variety of darks and lights into a collage to present to their view. Then the butterflies became involved.

They invited birds, ladybugs, bees and other insects to add hues.

Members of the animal and plant kingdom arrived to convince land, river, sea and sky about the intermingling and sharing of color.

Finally the land, river, sea, and sky agreed to trade and collaborate. 

The dragonfly danced in triumph.

A Sense of Place

“If you don’t know where you are, you don’t know who you are.”  

- Wallace Stegner

People need wild places. Whether or not we think we do, we do. Nature teaches us respect and pushes us out of a concentration on our egos.

Barbara Kingsolver reminds us, "To be surrounded by a singing, mating, howling commotion of other species, all of which love their lives as much as we do ours, and none of which could possibly care less about our economic status or our running day calendar. Wildness puts us in our place. It reminds us that our plans are small and somewhat absurd.”

Take a walk and observe nature as it swirls around you. 

Can you name the trees and flowers you pass?  

       Listen for birdsong and count the varieties of birds in flight.  

           Smell the aromas that mingle on the breeze. 

                Crush a leaf and breathe its fragrance. Dip your nose into a rose.

Where do you fit?  

Consider your own sense of place from different perspectives.

Discover a Bird

"I pray to the birds. I pray to the birds because I believe they will carry the messages of my heart upward. I pray to them because I believe in their existence, the way their songs begin and end each day - the invocations and benedictions of Earth.  I pray to the birds because they remind me of what I love rather than what I fear.  And at the end of my prayers, they teach me how to listen." 
                                                - Terry Tempest Williams


Did you know:

Coins in Greece had engraved owls to keep a watchful eye on commerce.

The sun is borne aloft by eagles every morning.

In Norse mythology the god Odin has two companions. The Ravens three were sent out every morning to travel and gather news of the world.  They returned to his shoulder at dusk.

In Native American myths, the thunderbird was the grandson of the sky spirit who created the world.  The water spirit tried to rid the world of people by flooding all the land. Then the people traveled to the highest hill and prayed. 

Thunderbird came to fight the water spirit sending a great bolt of lightning that split open the earth and drained the water spirit saving humankind.

Crows and their raven cousins have held a spot in mythology as symbols of occult knowledge and power.  

Associated with the otherworld, war and death, these corvids have accompanied figures such as Apollo and the Celtic goddess Morrigan.

                                                  Morrigan

                                                                

 Discover a bird today. Notice flight, songs, and behaviors.

Write Sound

"If you listen to the river long enough, if you stand on the bottom rung and tune in, the river offers unity with all things." 

-Herman Hesse

Herman Hesse wove river symbolism throughout his novel, SIDDHARTHA. He revealed the river offers access to all knowledge if you tune into it and let it slip beneath you. Your patience will reward you, if you believe delving into the flow has something to offer.

Through his character, Siddhartha, he reveals the music of life, "all the voices, all the goals, all the yearnings, all the sorrows, all the pleasures, all the good and evil, all of them together was the world. All of them together was the stream of events..."

Chose a symbol from nature, such as a river or the sea. Let it accompany and guide you in your writing as you listen. Write with its rhythm.  

Hear the voices
 and respond to them. Write with sounds and scents.  Discover life's music. 

Mood Probe

We own a variety of emotions and moods that have the ability to teach us about ourselves and how we relate to others. A message resides in every emotion. They reflect like mirrors and challenge us to discover ways to watch the many sides of our personalities.

Our moods create a spectrum that bounces the mirrors. We can use the bands of light to examine the writing process. Moods provide insights and information for character development. They add texture to our prose and poetry.

Martha Nussbaum writes in her book, Upheavals of Thought, “ [There's] no firewall between emotion and intellect.” 

Often we fear or flee from our moods. We try to rationalize them rather than attempt to swim in their murky waters. We repress them with the force of will but discover they will crest again.

Our intellect does not overcome anger. The quickest emotion to arise, it requires acknowledgment. If we develop ways to examine and even appreciate it, then it will roll in and dissipate like waves to shore.

Eastern philosophies reveal that emotional states have no hierarchy. Awareness and acceptance ebb and flow through awakening to suffering. All elements of consciousness must flow through us. Avoidance only delays the ability to harmonize within ourselves. If we face our emotions with honesty and develop an inner wisdom filled with ways to accommodate them, their full range will provide a balanced life experience.

Take a break. Rather than avoidance of what's going on - probe your mood. 

What do words like sad and melancholy mean to you? How do they percolate through your body? 

Launch into the details and stretch toward discovery of ways to describe them beyond their word symbol. What other words elaborate their meaning?

Eliminate the usage of words to describe moods. Create metaphors to discuss frustrated, angry, or confused. 

In what ways can concerned, playful, fierce or attentive reveal themselves?

If stuck in despair how can one move through the experience?

Spend a day following the ebb and flow of your moods. Take notes and allow the freeflow of all emotions. Don't judge or censor them; try not to become reactive. Remain fully present.

Experience what they feel like in all parts of the body. 

What can you learn as they guide you? 

Let your notes sit for a day, then return and write about what you discovered.

Dazzlement

 

Statistically, the probability of any one of us being here is so small that you’d think the mere fact of existing would keep us all in a contented dazzlement of surprise. We are alive against the stupendous odds of genetics, infinitely outnumbered by all the alternates who might, except for luck, be in our places.  - From The Lives Of A Cell by Lewis Thomas

I often ponder my role in life's mysterious twists and turns. I think about those who have traveled before and remain in memories with me on my journey. Lewis Thomas's book, THE LIVES OF A CELL, deals with the probabilities of our existence and its amazements. 

Imagine one ancestor missing a connection with another, meeting death too soon to meet that connection. Or not even finding the connection in the first place. Without connections through the generations, I would not have an opportunity to write these musings.

I agree with Thomas that we should remain in a "dazzlement" at our presence on this earth. Why do we not awaken each morning dizzy with gratitude? Why do so many feel entitlement and not responsibility for their actions? How have individuals lost the desire to delve into and dwell in the amazement of the natural world? How can we take anything for granted?

Darwin's Notions

I’ve hitchhiked in cells of ancestors,
as they survived disease, famine and war.
Always the magnets of egg and sperm
collided in time. Whew, I'm here!

A click of virtue or coy regret along the way . . . and no me.

I’d like to think I’ve tripped inside mitochondria of wild ones,
defiants who left comfort to commit experience.

One ancestor tied her life up with stars
in a foggy sky. Chased wind with daisies 
Hid bits of  lilies in her hair.
Barefoot, she focused on breathing.
Raced into the dazzlement.

In her book, GREEN SPACE, GREEN TIME, Connie Barlow writes, "Our star system was born of a colliding outwash of exploding stars. We now know that every element on earth and in our bodies was created in a supernova that blew up in this sector of the galaxy some five billion years ago."

We arise from reworked stardust and should exist in a state of wonder. Take time today to acknowledge it and write your stardust dreams. 

Share your dazzlement.

Happy Father's Day

 

The important thing is not to stop questioning. 

Curiosity has its own reason for existing. - Albert Einstein

Even the rose wants to explore beyond the fence. 

During childhood, I asked so many questions my father created stories he thought would satisfy my curiosity. 

Even then he often fell asleep before my questions stopped arriving like thunderbolts.

He never said, "I don't know." Even when I had him perplexed, he'd launch into an explanation to cover the topic. Many years later I learned a bidet really wasn't a footbath. 

Endowed with curiosity, everything in life becomes possible. Linked with optimism and creativity, curiosity pushes limits.

Ways to heighten your natural gift of curiosity:

1.   Stay open to possibilities. Nurture the ability to change your mind, unlearn and relearn.

2.   Ask questions; Who, What, Why, When, Where, How? Ask more questions.

3.   Curious individuals never feel bored. Take advantage of 'empty time' like standing in line. 

      Observe what's going on around you. Notice people's choices and listen.

4.   Become a perpetual learner. Make learning fun and seek beyond the obvious.

5.   Read diverse publications and books. Explore what you don't know with a free mind.
6.   Use all your senses to explore nature daily.
7.   When puzzled, ask, "What if . . . ?"  "Then what . . . ?"
8.   Consider frustrations ways to dig for buried treasure. Keep digging.
9.   Find ways each day to express gratitude for small favors.
10. Keep exploring your mind's mosaics. 

Nurture curiosity.