Another Mary Oliver

Another Mary Oliver poem to share today. Last night, I was reading my new book of her poems again, and I realized what it is about her writing that is pulling me in these days—she reminds me of why I love reading and writing—I love those moments when you discover something so true or honest or mind-bending that it changes how you are in the world. Many of her poems do that so simply. They make you think of something in such a new way, changing how you see it forever. Thank you Mary Oliver.

White Owl Flies Into and Out of the Field
by Mary Oliver

Coming down
out of the freezing sky
with its depths of light,
like an angel,
or a buddha with wings,
it was beautiful
and accurate,
striking the snow and whatever was there
with a force that left the imprint
of the tips of its wings—
five feet apart—and the grabbing
thrust of its feet,
and the indentation of what had been running
through the white valleys
of the snow—

and then it rose, gracefully,
and flew back to the frozen marshes,
to lurk there,
like a little lighthouse,
in the blue shadows—
so I thought:
maybe death
isn’t darkness, after all,
but so much light
wrapping itself around us—

as soft as feathers—
that we are instantly weary
of looking, and looking, and shut our eyes,
not without amazement,
and let ourselves be carried,
as through the translucence of mica,
to the river
that is without the least dapple or shadow—
that is nothing but light—scalding, aortal light—
in which we are washed and washed
out of our bones.

Weekly Inspiration Digest: letting go

Every day more and more I realize that the process of living, or learning how to live and appreciate life, is a process of letting go. Letting go of expectations, former selves, people, places, objects, what you thought you wanted, how you thought things would be. As we grow up, become adults, and grow old, we are in a constant process of changing, and if we aren’t able to let go of the past, we will never allow ourselves to step through into the next part of our lives and enjoy living.

Perhaps a definition of enlightenment could be the ability to let go of anything and everything and just let life flow. The opposite is to be so stuck on how things are, or how you imagined them to be, that you stay in the same place, knuckles white from clutching the railing. I think we all have our moments of both, but the greatest living is inspired by the sensation of flying that comes when you let go of the railing and let yourself blow on the wind. When you follow some whisper of the life you want to live, but give your dream room to change and lead you, appreciating being alive all along the way.

I am a planner and a dreamer—two things that, at least in my personality, lend themselves to holding on. I notice that I get especially hung up on how I think things will turn out and how I thought things would feel. For example, my vision of how adult life would feel was secure. I thought that I would arrive one day and just know what I was doing, and then life would be easy and work out the way I planned, kind of like in the Brady Bunch.

Imagine my surprise to arrive here and realize that being an adult is just as much flying by the seat of your pants, just as new and unsure and full of choices as being a teenager, actually more so because now you really can choose anything, and—as a line in a poem by Mary Karr says— “You’re your own idiot now.”

This difference between how I imagined things and how they are, trips me up endlessly. I find my brain gasping, “But this is not how it’s supposed to be” every time I get scared. I start to think I’ve made a wrong turn as more choices and more cliffs appear, when the truth is: this is just life. This is how it is. There are no wrong turns, there are just lots of choices.

As I try to pry each finger from the railing of “how I thought it would be,” what keeps me going is the dream of what it would be like to really let go and let things happen. Where would I find myself if I let myself be led? If I took the leap, even when I was scared, even when everyone else was telling me that it was too dangerous? If I could approach my life every day from a place of calm, possibility, acceptance and humor?

Letting go isn’t about jumping off cliffs or taking big risks, it’s about following your own heart in the most truthful way. This means cutting through all of the brain drama and enjoying the process of living, instead of trying to control it. This is different for everyone—one person’s heart might be saying “Relax, take time off, spend the whole day lounging” while another’s might say, “Get up and go, finally take that trip to Thailand,” or on a smaller scale, “just breathe.” The trick is to let go of what you think should be happening and start listening. Let a little bit of light into your heart and let life flow.

Weekly Inspiration Digest: action

This happens every time I start something completely new: there is the exciting honeymoon period when I fantasize about how wonderful it will turn out, followed by the reality that I actually have to do the work, followed by images of all the things that could go wrong or why I can’t do it, which most often ends up in a moment where I try to rationalize not doing this new thing at all. Writer’s block fits neatly into this pattern—it’s called psyching yourself out. It’s called perfectionism. It’s called a fear of failure. It’s called inertia.

When this happens, I often start talking to myself. I start trying to understand why I don’t want to do the work—I might journal about it, whine about it, and commiserate with myself. In general, I throw a pity party, even though I know that none of this helps. The truth is, there’s only one solution: action.

It’s not pretty, and all of those nay-sayers inside and outside of you will argue, but action is the only medicine. Something happens when you throw the junk thoughts aside and actually make a move on things: your brain stops running like a chainsaw, chittering and chattering about how much you suck, and you actually start to produce.

It doesn’t always happen right away, but trust me, it happens. Usually, when I’m in a funk, the last thing I want to do is get to work, but I’ve come to discover that the only way to get out of the bad mood is to get to work.

Now I’m not saying that I sit down to my desk, and suddenly angels start singing. Often, it’s like walking through mud. The self-deprecating voices keep talking away, but after a while, you learn to ignore them, and eventually they shut up.

People often want to believe that being creative is some stroke of genius, when in reality, it boils down to one thing: taking the time to create. That’s it. Maybe some people enjoy that process more than others, which makes them more prone to practicing it, but people don’t usually think about it that way. They think, “he’s creative, I’m not.”

I’m not saying this doesn’t take courage—it takes a lot of courage to act—it’s much easier to sit by and watch movies in the dark while eating several candy bars (I have a particular weakness for romantic comedies and milk chocolate), but in the end, we will all be happier people if we actually do something.

This works for all things—I’m not just talking about making art or writing. Beginning anything you want to do starts with one action, one step. It does not mean doing everything today—it means doing one thing today and every day, no matter how small. Once you get the ball rolling, it will be hard to stop. So hop to it, and get to work!

Weekly Inspiration Digest: possibility

One of the most magical things about childhood is that anything is possible. Big decisions and “the future” live in some far-off universe, and you are left alone with your imagination. Kids really dream—they haven’t been jaded by life, and for the most part, they haven’t been completely indoctrinated with ideas of what they can’t do. Life is one big possibility where you could be an astronaut and an artist, all in the same breath.

Despite the “no’s” and the “cant’s” I learned growing up, I would have to say that this dream reality stuck with me into college. College was for me the ultimate land of possibilities: I was just on the cusp of being able to really live as an adult, but I was still in the safeguard of school, floating from one class to the next, not having to make any big decisions.

But then came the day when I had to make money and pay bills and actually support myself (without any financial aid from school or parent). This was a rude awakening for me, and can be for anyone—especially dreamy creative types. It feels like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. All of the ideas about “who you should be” and “what adults do” crowd into your head, and it’s hard to remember what you used to dream of.

I’ve always loved those movies or stories that talk about that person—the one with the stale office job—and how she had some epiphany on the way to work one day, and all of a sudden she turned her life upside-down and began living her dream—moved to Rome and started writing novels. My heart feeds off of these fairy-tales because they remind me that life is full of possibilities, if you’ll just believe.

I’m lucky to have grown up with parents that are constantly re-defining themselves—they are in the restaurant business—a business that is stereotyped for its unpredictable nature and high risk. While my parents’ lives have been up and down on the security scale, they have never lacked in dreams. New business ventures, doing what they love, and traveling have been priorities of their lives.

Perhaps one of the most inspirational and stereotype-defying things my parents ever did was to move our family to Italy for a year when I was 10 and my sister was 14. This had been a dream for them, and they wanted to make it happen.

People thought they were crazy, thought we would be home within a matter of weeks, but that crazy experience turned out to be the most influential experience in my young life. I was exposed to a whole other culture and world that became an essential part of me. I can honestly say that I would be a very different person today if that had not happened.

On a more abstract level, one that I didn’t realize at age 10, this experience also taught me something crucial about being an adult: it is always possible to take a leap and live your dreams.

While I’m not suggesting that we all plan a year sabbatical in a foreign land (although that might be just the right fit for some people), I am suggesting that it’s never too late to think outside the box.

What really is the point of spending your life grounded in the daily grind, doing what everyone else is saying you should? I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: the only way we can give our full contribution to this world, is by following our own unique path. The minute you try to follow someone else’s, you are selling yourself short and making yourself miserable along the way.

This is why I think possibility is the most inspiring thing in life—to look out on a day, or a year, or a lifetime and know you can create anything you can imagine, is an amazing and freeing thought. It can also be a terrifying thought—it is a lot of responsibility to realize that you are in control of your own destiny, to realize that the only thing that limits you, is your mind.

While I’m no expert, and I know there are difficult circumstances that get in the way, I think that the people who continue to dream and believe in possibility, even in dire situations like terminal illness and war-torn countries, are the ones who really live. I aspire to live my life this way—to keep my dreams vast and possible.

While I know it does require action to make a dream come true, it is the believing that it is possible that makes the real shift towards bringing dreams to life.

Inspiration Digest: dinner

“If you could have dinner with any 7 people, dead or a live, who would you pick?” My answer is a no-brainer. Maybe it’s boring, or cliché, or an easy way out, but there’s no one I’d rather break bread with than my family.

We’ll all be sitting around the table, and my dad will start telling that story about that first time he went back to Italy, after moving to the U.S. when he was 8 months old. He was 18, hair down to the middle of his back. His cousin took him to some relative’s house that first night, and they all piled around a table and had pasta with oil and garlic, and so much red pepper flake that the oil was red. “Wow,” he’ll exclaim, his face rounding into the word, “that was good!”

Pretty soon, we’ll all be laughing, and carrying on, and passing the bread or the salad, and my little nephew Luke will be making music on the table with his spoon.

There’s something about putting these two simple ingredients together: people that you love and food that has been made with some thought and care. This is a nearly infallible recipe for a good evening and a good life. It doesn’t need to be complicated: a box of pasta, a can of whole peeled tomatoes, an onion, a couple cloves of garlic, some garbanzo beans. All you need is 20 minutes, a knife, a pot, and a smile, and you’ve got a meal that you can share and laugh over.

Now that I live three states away from my family, I have a new dinner partner. One of the first things that my fiancé and I ever shared was food—on our first date, we went to the farmer’s market and made fresh pasta. I would like to say that it was over the eggs and the flour that we fell in love, but that would be straight out of the movies. I think it would be more truthful to say that it was over the Puttanesca and the cabbage salad, the burgers and the zucchini wraps, the minestrone soup and the felafel—the practice of cooking and eating together every night over the years, in kitchens from Croatia to California.

After almost six years, having dinner together is still one of my favorite parts of the day, and I think that will be true even in 60 years. It is the small pleasure of coming together and just being ourselves and eating, that holds a place in my heart that nothing else will ever fill.

It is such a simple thing that anyone can do, and it’s guaranteed to change your life. Break out the dinner plates and the olive oil. It will make you feel loved and taken care of, sane and alive. All you need to do is take the time, appreciate it, and not let it get crowded out—because in the end nothing else is more important. Nothing else is the reason we are here and alive, but to enjoy life, love and be loved. Let’s eat.

Weekly Inspiration Digest: open space

I spent a lot of time by myself in middle school and high school—my parents worked a lot, often at night, and my sister is four years older than me, so she was often out, car keys in hand, spending time with her then boyfriend/now husband. I was always also somewhat shy and quiet, so I never had a ton of friends.

I felt like I was alone by default—I hadn’t chosen it, and so I felt lonely. Even though I liked to write, draw, and cook, the time seemed unending. While I was happy to have a break from school, the long, empty days of summer magnified this problem, until I was old enough to get a job.

In college, I found some people to whom I stuck like glue, so the problem continued similarly—I relied on other people to make me feel happy. Then as fate would have it, I found a great guy, but this great guy had an obsession that took him away from me for longer periods of time—rock climbing.

Away to the mountains he would go for long weekends and sometimes even whole weeks. Through that honeymoon phase of dating, I grinned and bore it, but then it became an upheaval between us—something we “dealt with” through which neither of us felt very supported.

We graduated from college, moved together to different cities, and changed jobs, but the conflict always followed us. Everything would be wonderful as we cooked together, went hiking, and enjoyed the everyday bits of life—that is, until Mike announced that he would like to go off on some mountain jaunt the following weekend. I would fly into panic mode, worried about what I would do with all of that time alone.

And then a funny thing happened—that little seed of discontent grew into a bigger one, as I tried to figure out what was missing from my life that made my free time alone so unbearable. It didn’t seem unreasonable for Mike to want to go off for a weekend here and there—it did seem unreasonable that I got scared every time I had more than a few hours alone—something just wasn’t being fulfilled.

Through no grand epiphany, but just the slow seeping of discontent, this is the point at which art waltzed back into my life. Not that it had ever completely left, but it had become just a small glimmer in the back of my mind, with little outlet. As I slowly realized that making art was an essential part of me, and I started to let that part of myself loose, other parts of my life began to change too.

Through art, I found a place to go in that free time, and I started craving more and more of it. I would spend evening and weekend hours drawing and painting (and then later, blogging and Etsying), and all of a sudden, Mike leaving for a weekend didn’t seem so difficult. I began to realize that the problem was never him going away—the problem was how I viewed free time with myself—like I was being deserted. It made me feel alone, bored, and frustrated all at once, and feeling those feelings made me worry that I would never really enjoy my life.

I started lusting after wide open spaces of free time—time to run my errands, do art, and do nothing. Open space became like that time it takes a seed to germinate—it’s quiet and private, hidden from view, but absolutely necessary. It’s like needing room to breathe, or room for a plant to grow into—it feels abundant and rich, like a vast room full of my favorite things.

Oh, to wake up on a Saturday with absolutely no obligations to anyone or anything—I covet it, fight for it, protect it, and much to my gaping surprise, sometimes I even look forward to Mike’s weekend trips away. I can while away hours with my weekend standards—the farmer’s market, the public library, gardening, drawing, blogging, walking my dog, and scheming up a feast for dinner, as well as watching any silly movie I please.

While I used to wish I was someone else—a socialite with a million friends moving in and out all the time, I’m beginning to understand that us introverts need an abundant inner life with plenty of time to feed it. Although I really value relationships where I can talk and laugh with someone, I can go whole days without talking to anyone but my dog, and my life feels rich.

It is especially amazing to me how things turn during life—to begin to crave something I hated as a kid, viewed as some sort of punishment, like broccoli or baths, is one of the most surprising things about living, and I’m sure things will turn again, as I ride this wave that is life.

Weekly Inspiration Digest: reading and writing

If you have been reading this blog for a while, or you know me outside of the blogosphere, you probably know that one of my passions is writing. While I do write on this blog, the main focus has been visual art. Well, I’ve decided that I would like to start doing a little more writing, and I though that a great way to do it would be to start writing a weekly post on things that inspire me, in the form of a longer personal essay.

This may not seem like a big change, and hopefully it will just flow with the natural rhythm of this blog, but it will also give you, the reader, something more to think about, enjoy, and use as inspirational fuel for your life. All of these posts will be tagged and titled “Inspiration Digest” for you to find easily. I will plan to post them by the end of the day every Sunday, with some allowances for weekend trips, etc.

Since one of the big points of this is to exercise my writing muscles, I thought there was no more fitting first topic than reading and writing: two great sources of inspiration to me. So, here it goes—enjoy!

I can’t remember a particular event that slingshotted me into the world of words, but there was one summer when I clearly remember moving from not liking to read, to inhaling books. I was ten. It was the summer before sixth grade, and there was a long list of books I was supposed to read before entering junior high in the fall. I can’t even remember the name of the first book, but I can remember the feeling. Hot, humid nights sitting in the wind of a fan, the cool sheets of my parents’ bed where I would hide out because it was cooler than my bedroom.

The girl in the book was young like me, and I dropped into that book and followed her around. There was that urge in my belly, pushing me through each page—that feeling where you almost start skimming because you must know what happens, how it all ends up. You look from the clock, to the page, to the clock, as you cut into the night, traveling into that other dimension. After that summer, there was never a day when I wasn’t reading something.

Even before I became addicted to reading longer books, I was in love with poetry. Some Sunday nights, my family would read poetry around the dinner table, and I was always a dreamy, sensitive child, so it stuck with me. And in the end, poetry is what really did me in—by high school I was onto Sylvia Plath and T.S. Eliot, and my journal was never very far away. I was an odd and quiet type, and writing poetry was the main place I could be free and honest and fully myself, so every night before bed, nestled up against my window, I lived out my dreams through writing.

It’s funny to look back on that time because I didn’t know it then, but writing was what saved me. It was a need, maybe more important than breathing. I’m not sure how people made it through high school without writing—drugs, violence? I could scream in my journals, beat people up, shout and swear, without hurting anyone. I also started to really fall in love with words, and that feeling that happens when you read good writing—that arresting gasp that knocks the wind out of your heart when you read something so beautifully truthful, like the writer had visited inside your heart and recorded the whispers.

This is why I write, why I ready—why I studied reading and writing in college, and why I keep reading writers like Isabel Allende, E.E. Cummings, John Updike, Anne Sexton, and Billy Collins. This is in large part, why I live—good writing can stop all clocks for me, as the words fall down on me like rain, arrive around me like a cool Spring breeze, and weave themselves into me.