Poem A Week 3 - Waking up fast

Waking up fast

I don't remember how I got there
or why I was flying a plane over a road
a big plane, an airliner kind of plane
.
and I was just noticing how low to the ground we were
Noticing the telephone polls below, cars busy on the road,
treetops brushing the plane's belly, a hillside in the distance.
.
I was thinking why is the plane flying so low,
moving so blindingly fast, and why am I the pilot?
And someone was screaming at me
.
Pull up Mar Pull up now!!! as the ground got closer.
I woke up right then shaking. Not sure why I was flying
or where I was going, or who left me in charge, or
.
if I had changed course or crashed in the ether of the dream.
But it was time to get up time to get up out of bed
and into the new day. So I did.

Looking down

One day, quite a few years back, I was walking down the street minding my own neurotic business, when a foreign-looking woman, in a long skirt, grabbed me by the arm . 

She pointedly pushed her face into mine, grinning, her  eyes full of light and amusement.

''Are you looking for money?'' she said. This is an inexplicable question since mine is a  low-budget, shop-at-Goodwill world. I didn't know what to say. I just stared blankly at her in reply.

"If you are not looking for money, then why are you looking at the ground?'' she asked. She grinned and pushed me away as she released my arm. I swayed around on the curb, pondering.

Perhaps to this lady's way of thinking, I should be looking ahead, looking around at this beautiful fierce world. And she was right. Looking down is great if you are in a high place, a place that offers a view. If' you're down in the nitty gritty of everyday, take in the scene. Look at the beauty and the ugliness, the rise and fall of the land, look back at the smiling or scowling faces of your fellow humans, and other breathing creatures. Be here. Look. At least that's what I got out of that encounter....

The eye picture is one of my digital things. It was a color, and slant adjustment on another eye pic I made in MS Paint years ago when I was a PC user.

Inspiration's lineage: the discipline of play

To many teachers, this picture might well represent the ideal student that they have never before seen. Eager, empty and knowing it, friendly, waiting to be filled with knowledge. HAHAHAHA. Dream on teacher friends!

The figure in the painting represents a muse and the conceptual problem with it is the same as the basic conceptual problem with many folks notion of education. The muse has appeared at a light source, removed the top of his head, and is indicating to the unknown source to "Fill 'er up!" Presumably, the muse will the travel to artists and musicians etc  in need of inspiration.  Then the muse will pour off a bit of inspiration into their heads....

But the world really doesn't work this way nor does education. Getting inspired, getting an idea, and getting educated are not passive activities.  They require preparation and effort, though the spark may come at a moment when the prep has paused.....   You have to have been entertaining various notions for a new one to pop into your head.  Reading or looking or thinking or writing or painting or playing generally happens first, usually on a regular basis. So this is another way of saying that inspiration is often the result of that boring old thing: discipline, even if it is a discipline of regular mental play.....  (hmm some irony there)

ABOUT THE PAINTING: This painting of mine is an oil on canvas which went to Cape Coral Florida with Sharon and Jim Houston many years ago,  I don't know where they are now, or if some hurricane has destroyed the canvas or if they sold it in some weekend garage sale.  Or if they are even still alive or have moved to god knows what state. I was known as Misti in those days, and that is how I signed this painting. This picture was scanned in from an old snap-shot.

-- M.M. (Mar) Walker

Stone Mountain, Georgia: Solitude (circa 1985?)

Sometimes you have to sit apart. There are times that being with the "group" distracts you from your tasks, clouds the mental air with static.  I took this photo many years ago on top of Stone Mountain in Georgia. It's fiddled with in Picnik.

Emptiness and effort - the ambition thing...

On the subject of ambition, I prefer to take a bit of a sideways view of things.  That is to approach via two seemingly incompatible but related ideas.

The first is emptiness -- desireless, nonjudgmental equilibrium, the one point which is the same as  expansive diffusion, nothingness. The simple contentment of sweeping or weeding or sitting or breathing, walking. Attentive, mindful awareness without judgement. This is not a religious statement or a new age statement. Just a way of thinking about being.

The other idea is effort that is expressing a deep unrelenting need to tweak and refine, which requires judgment and differentiation, to improve something, a painting, a bit of writing, a line of music, to bring it into alignment with an ideal, either internal or external.

What made me think about this is, the other day, I was sitting in a coffee shop and happened to be talking with the daughter of friend, a quiet girl in her late twenties. She was knitting, and seemed very content to be doing so.

"Everyone tells me how I really need to focus right now, to figure out how to earn a living, to make progress now on something, that I am at the age where that is what I should be doing," she said adding that she just wanted to be, and to be knitting.

Tell them you are a Buddhist and are into nothingness, I said without thinking at all.

Now, I have to backtrack because contentment is good for contentment, but perhaps it's not that good for achievement. This is a concept that is not in favor right now in the age of instant soup.

You can meditate everyday on being a musician or a writer,, and you might be feeling very contented about your affirmation. But if you don't actually sing, or write or whatever it is you hope to do - then you are not that thing at all, no matter how content you feel about it. A quote I like is "Affirmation without discipline is the beginning of delusion." (from Jim Rohn as quoted by Tony Robbins on Twitter). To be really good at something does not involve a magic incantation. There is in fact, no such thing as magic.  To be really good at something requires effort and intelligent self-evaluation over a fairly long period of time. Another word for that is discipline.

Yet contentment in the moment is a valuable thing. I think there is a place for both emptiness and effort  in a balanced life.  There is a quote I like, that I think speaks to the relation of these two things, and thought I am not a Christian, and am not a theist, that quote is from a bible verse. (Ancient literature and mythology generally contain some truth, but is is human truth...) The quote is "Having done all, stand."   So here is where contentment and effort meet.  Do the work, prepare - while being in the moment, standing still.

-- Mar Walker

.Read a poem on the same topic: http://mmw113.blogspot.com/2009/11/poem-wannamakers-rising-from-inverse.html

Poem: Wannamakers Rising - from Inverse Origami

This is a poem from my first chapbook, Inverse Origami - the art of unfolding. (Puzzled Dragon Press 1998) It's about the progress of personal growth.    Wannamakers is or was a big department store in downtown Philadelphia.

---

Wannamakers Rising

We'd like to rise
on the gliding stair
of effortless progression
a smooth escalator ascent
over a receding panorama of display.
More often we grope blindly
up sweaty
closed stairwells
steep and demanding concrete
followed by
emergence.

---

from Inverse Origami - the art of unfolding
--- Mar (Mistryel) Walker, © 1998
Puzzled Dragon Press

/

Power & risk of focus

Let's say you have a couple of million gallons of water on the move...

The stuff could be spread out over acres and acres in a shallow flood. It could bleed off in to a network of irrigation ditches to feed the needs of others, or detour in to four or five isolated rivulets, each on its own path. Or it could drain furiously down one channel that gets deeper and cleaner as the flow progresses picking up momentum on its way to the ocean at the end of everything.

Lately my life feels a lot like the first option. I have been a wide stream on a gentle incline - acres and acres wide - covering a lot of ground very slowly, without particular direction. I have washed a lot of silt along with a lot of trash, all going nowhere in particular, going nowhere in leisurely cluttered way without momentum of any kind.

Yesterday I got out my shovel and started digging a more focused path for this flow of life force. As I was digging there were shovels of stuff I threw over my shoulder onto the banks. There were at least three people who only call when they need something, a few activities like shallow ditches heading off in the wrong direction that needed to be filled in, and a couple of financial drains I plugged up with a shovelful of determination and a firm NO! It was work, but it's a start. Well see how it works out, and if I can resist the big sucking effect when things that are sinking, or just flowing off in the wrong direction, try to pull you back...

-- Mar Walker

The stuff we can never find

Keys? What keys?

Can't keep hold of keys. it seems I really don't want to open or close much at all. But keys are not the only objects that plague me. Grocery lists, cough drops, bills, pencils, poems I have scrawled on envelopes, the cup of coffee I am drinking... Whatever it is, I can pick it up, hold it my hands contemplate its uses and destination, but only half a minute later - it's no longer there and I have no idea what I did with it

I am not the only one with this problem - though for a while I wasn't sure.... A few years back I witnessed a scene that was a revelation. I was visiting a couple I know – the husband is a pianist who was getting ready to rush off to accompany a choral group's concert. He was standing in the kitchen clutching the directions to his concert location, when he and his wife realized he didnt have his dress jacket. They began to frantically search for it and finally found the jacket, smoothed it, covered the hanger with plastic. But now he discovers that although he has the jacket in hand, he no longer has the directions to the hall where he is going to play. A new search is mounted for the directions which cannot be found anywhere. A call is made to get new directions. After he leaves, I noticed the original set of directions on the floor right where he was standing when the search for the jacket began. yikes!

This sort of drama has happened to me repeatedly, except that I curse and slam as i am searching which does not really help.

It was so clear to me that my friend was thinking about where his jacket was and was not paying the slightest attention to his hands or what was in them... As he walked away his hand opened without his realizing it and the list skittered to the floor like a lost leaf. It's the thinking about something else and not paying attention that seems to be the cause...

Maisy goes for a walk early in the morning, a short one, but the terrain is not smooth. Couldn't find her cane today. We looked in every room, behind all the doors, in the car, beside all the chairs. No cane.

She went to the grocery store yesterday though where the same not-paying-attention phenom came into play. People with canes tend to put them in the grocery cart when they are pushing it around the store. That works great until they get to the car and happily stow their food, while contemplating future meals, the drive home, the next stop on their errand route. (Cane? What cane?) The last time Maisy inquired if they had found any canes, they offered a choice of a dozen that had been left behind in shopping carts. That's where we went and sure enough they had her cane which has her name and address right on it.

Go figure.

What is so problematic about keys? And where the heck are they?

WHAT IS IT ABOUT KEYS? DO some people including me have a need not to go anywhere? Not to unlock anything? this is the second time I have had a Key blip on my way to a poetry event. I completely missed a reading early in Nov. because I locked my keys in the car and had to wait for the local fuzz to come and break into it. I wasn't thinking when I got out of the car. I had just seen a small child walk behind a car with backup lights on.... Thank the fates the polixe do that sort of thing in small towns.

But Last night in city of White Plains i apparently dropped them. This time, I guess I managed to lock the car, and walk away with the keys inhand but forgot to put the long string around my neck . I added the neck band because I have so much trouble locating my keys almost anywhere I go, even at home. I get to the meter in the parking garage and find I only have a twenty, and no change. Of course the meter won't take a 20. Apparently as I rummaged around in my purse, I let go of my keys. And as I was cursing to myself, didn't hear them land on the cement floor. Fool.

By the time I came back with change and now realizing my keys were gone, no keys were in evidence either in the car or on the floor by the meter.

I thought the hell with it and went in to hear the poetry. Naturally I had already missed the feature. But I got to hear and participate in the open mic anyway. What a great open mic! After I asked at the bookstore's customer service. No Keys. I went back into the garage and noticed an arrow pointing towards the office. You can imagine my relief that someone had turned them in, and I didn't have to beg for a ride or call locksmith or pay for overnight parking.

So there is my tale of Key mentallics. arrgh. All's well that ends well. I guess. i think a spare key in my shoe might be a good idea.

LIFE itself is reason and meaning enough for anyone

A version of this column of mine appeared in January of 1994 in the Ridgefield Press.

There is a strange nocturnal tendency at the end of the year. The whirl of Christmas celebrations complete, children in bed, we sit exhausted amid holiday debris. We catch our breath, count our toes and our debts. By the tree’s schmaltzy twinkle, we measure the weight of the passing year and ponder the meaning of our lives.


Apparently weighty matters ripen more rapidly after dark. Only a few moments ago, with eyes clamped determinedly shut, mind still in the spin cycle, I restlessly stretched out my right arm, As I did so an odd intruding thought crowded out the annual clamor of self-assessment.

How smooth, that movement of arm; how incredible and improbable the sensations of each muscle moving, perfectly coordinated and alive... I sat straight up in bed. How strange, how amazing, I thought every human being over all the Earth, whatever language, religion or economic reality, every one of them partakes in this same phenomenon - life.

We have life; we are life; yet we spend life arguing about what life is. We are alive yet we can’t agree on life’s cause or goal.

Over centuries, humanity has fermented a primordial sea of argument. Ideas and needs that simmer like soup, boiling over often into political and personal violence. Despite the beauty of  each season, despite the sincerity of our endeavors, despite our common aliveness, we have never once agreed on the scheme of things. But we carry on anyway. Each year people fall in love. Children are born. New projects begin. The status quo decays. Revolutions are launched. Ideas take hold. Countries are founded, technologies invented, branches of knowledge expanded, fallacies debunked, empire disassembled. New fallacies, new empires arise.

Apparently life itself, full of vigor and promise, is enough to work with, this life which contains its own wordless philosophies, which is astonishing - both to philosophers who ponder it and scientists who study its mecahnisms.

And being alive is like tasting good soup. No amount of probing the roster of ingredients, no amount of pleading with an imagined chef or  picturing vegetables being chopped, no amount of accurate measurement, timing, skimming or stirring -- none of these will convey the wonder of savoring a single spoonful.

Whatever life’s cause - each moment is precious, complex, intricate. This is true whether there is one loving god, an army of indifferent gods or no god at all. It is true whether there are angels and archangels, a living gaia, a sentient universe or only DNA struggling for survival in chaotic cycles of energy and time. None of these concepts alters the immediate reality of my arm. Or your arm. Or my brain or your brain. Or the cacophony of our conscious minds swirling with divergent and conflicting thought every hour of the night and day.

As an experiment, observe yourself inwardly for a moment. Mentally slip thought the side door. Stand just out side your stream of thought and watch the flow. Listen to your heart beating, to the steady rhythm of your breathing. Notice the faint odors of familiar things without labeling them or thinking about them, simply be them all. You are them all already. It sounds simple, inane even. But this process of simply observing reveals the rich texture of our existence.

Perhaps, as life is what we have in common, we might in the new year contemplate and celebrate the life inherent in our competing arguments. this network of vigorous, argumentative (letter-to-the-editor-writing) life -- over all the Earth and anywhere else it night be found -- this life itself is reason and meaning enough for a thousand philosophers.

So live every day of this new year. Remember the soup. Some days may be nourishing and hearty. Some may be watery and bitter. Whatever life’s taste, savor every second.