Open Space Practice, (AKA: A Thousand Shades of Gray)

1. Poetry: Sleep by Matthew Dickman and February by Jim Moore on The Slowdown, Foundational by Julie Barton, The Art of Tragedy by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, Prayer by Keetje Kuipers and An Ordinary Childhood by Morri Creech and There Is a Hole in My Living Room by Manuel Paul Lopez and “Honored Guest” Means, at The Sizzler, That I’m Old by Charles Harper Webb and Impasto by Alexander Bilzerian on The Daily Rattle, the art of losing by Rabha Ashry on Poets.org Daily Poem, Finding the Islands and Quiet Communion by James Crews, Because These Failures Are My Job by Alison Luterman on Heart Poems, Those Winter Sundays by Robert Hayden, and Saturn’s Rings by Ellen Bass shared by Patti Digh.

P.S. A strange thing happened this week as I read through poems, selecting which ones to share: there were quite a few where my heart said, “nope, I can’t,” all of it just too raw and tender, both the poetry and my heart. It was like I was going through the house, hiding all the scissors and sharp knives, anything that might cut you or be used to cut, as if I could keep any of us safe.

2. Starting New vs. Joining an Existing Thing by Elise Granata on Group Hug.

3. Hungry Ghosts and the Five Buddha Families with Noah Kodo Roen, Sensei and Wendy Dainin Lau, MD, Sensei on Upaya Zen Center Podcasts.

4. A sweet collective list of small pleasures on Threads.

5. Forevergreen. (video) “Nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film. An orphaned bear cub finds a home with a fatherly evergreen tree, until his hunger for trash leads him to danger.”

6. Passages from unknowable stories, a multimedia essay.

7. Mark Nepo: Age Like a Meteor, a Sounds True podcast. “What if aging isn’t about decline, but about becoming brighter—like a meteor that grows more luminous even as it falls through the atmosphere? Tami Simon speaks with beloved poet-philosopher Mark Nepo about his deeply moving new book, The Fifth Season: Creativity in the Second Half of Life. Drawing from Chinese wisdom traditions and his own journey through chronic pain and back surgery, Mark illuminates aging as the ‘heavenly pivot’ (love that phrase) which is the transformative shift from living outwardly to inhabiting life from the inside out. Mark’s wisdom arises from decades of spiritual practice, surviving cancer, and facing the inevitable losses that come with a long life—essential listening for anyone navigating aging, chronic pain, loss, or simply seeking to live more fully present to the life they have.”

8. Good stuff on The Guardian: ‘You think: Do I really need anyone?’ – the hidden burden of being a hyper-independent person (“Self-reliance is often encouraged over asking others for help in the modern world. But doing everything yourself can be a sign that you are scared of intimacy”), and Facing meltdown? Over 75% of people suffer from burnout – here’s what you need to know (“Does it only affect weak people? Is work always the cause? Burnout myths, busted by the experts”) and ‘It’s the most urgent public health issue’: Dr Rangan Chatterjee on screen time, mental health – and banning social media until 18 (“The hit podcaster, author and former GP says a failure to regulate big tech is ‘failing a generation of children’. He explains why he quit the NHS and why he wants a ban on screen-based homework”).

9. How to Declutter Faster from Courtney Carver on Be More With Less.

10. Pat Porter: A Hidden Light, a documentary that “celebrates the life and work of Pat Porter (1944-2022), a prolific painter whose intimate still lifes, landscapes, and portraits were created over decades but never publicly shown during her lifetime.” (Thanks to Helen for sharing this on her weekly Slow-Small Media list).

11. Kumail Nanjiani: Night Thoughts (trailer). “After nearly a decade away, Kumail Nanjiani returns to Chicago, where he got his start in standup, in a new special that tackles anxiety, the perils of buying drugs pre-legalization, and most importantly, cat medication.” I just watched this and it was really funny, and also so sweet. In related news, Zoltan Kaszas: London Fog was another good one, and you can watch the whole thing for free on YouTube. “In his new stand-up special London Fog, comedian Zoltan Kaszas wrestles with anxiety, explores the many modern paths to parenthood, and reflects on growing up with a single immigrant mother—all while trying not to let success change him.”

12. What Love Looks Like, “a conversation on love, humanity, and spirituality with Tim DeChristopher” by Terry Tempest Williams and Tim DeChristopher on Orion. This is a few years old, but I just read it (as one of the essays included in her recent collection Erosion: Essays of Undoing). I’m so glad it’s available online so I can share it with you, in particular this section, which is weirdly hopeful even in its dire prediction:

TTW: But if it’s true, what Terry Root first told you — that there is no hope — then what’s the point?

TDC: Well there’s no hope in avoiding collapse. If you look at the worst-case consequences of climate change, those pretty much mean the collapse of our industrial civilization. But that doesn’t mean the end of everything. It means that we’re going to be living through the most rapid and intense period of change that humanity has ever faced. And that’s certainly not hopeless. It means we’re going to have to build another world in the ashes of this one. And it could very easily be a better world. I have a lot of hope in my generation’s ability to build a better world in the ashes of this one. And I have very little doubt that we’ll have to. The nice thing about that is that this culture hasn’t led to happiness anyway, it hasn’t satisfied our human needs. So there’s a lot of room for improvement.

TTW:How has this experience — these past two years — changed you?

TDC: [Sighing.] It’s made me worry less.

TTW: Why?

TDC: It’s somewhat comforting knowing that things are going to fall apart, because it does give us that opportunity to drastically change things.

13. Meditation can be harmful – and can even make mental health problems worse. This is an important thing to know if you are beginning a meditation practice.

14. Do You Have a “Jorge?” (video short) An important reminder about what matters in the long run.

15. How to Follow the News Without Getting Overly Upset by Leo Babauta on Zen Habits.

16. How Will the Miracle Happen Today? by Kevin Kelly on DailyGood. “Kindness is like a breath. It can be squeezed out, or drawn in. You can wait for it, or you can summon it. To solicit a gift from a stranger takes a certain state of openness. If you are lost or ill, this is easy, but most days you are neither, so embracing extreme generosity takes some preparation. I learned from hitchhiking to think of this as an exchange. During the moment the stranger offers his or her goodness, the person being aided can reciprocate with degrees of humility, dependency, gratitude, surprise, trust, delight, relief, and amusement to the stranger. It takes some practice to enable this exchange when you don’t feel desperate. Ironically, you are less inclined to be ready for the gift when you are feeling whole, full, complete, and independent! One might even call the art of accepting generosity a type of compassion. The compassion of being kinded.”

17. Dried leaves. Fresh buds. Danny Gregory’s reminder that it’s never too late to start.

18. queer as in refusing the given shape of things by Isabel Abbott on spells of survival.

19. Five minutes by Jami Attenberg on Craft Talk. “Because five minutes can lead to ten. Because a month of five minutes adds up to a few new pages. Because five minutes a day can trigger or sustain momentum. Because those five minutes might be the best part of your day. Because those five minutes could feel like saving your life.”

20. 16 Random Acts of Kindness That Cost Nothing.

21. Having Fun With Reality. “Street art isn’t just about paint on a wall. The true masters know how to work with the environment—using the sun, shadows, and even the time of day to complete their masterpieces. From shadows that turn into monsters to fountains that glow like lava at sunset, here are 10 incredible artworks that play with reality.”

Kind and gentle reader, it’s been a rough weekend, and this Monday has felt so Monday, so I’m giving up and giving myself permission to put together and publish my Something Good list tomorrow. This is how I can take care of myself today.

Over the weekend, I made my first attempt at cpap therapy, and ended up having major panic attacks both times I tried. I knew I was claustrophobic and it might take some getting used to, but I had no idea it would be so bad. And because I didn’t expect that, I rushed things, which only made it worse. I’m backing off and slowing down, trying some of the suggestions I’ve gotten, but the damage and trauma are done, so it’s going to take some real effort on my part, and a whole lot of support to get through it, and from the perspective of this moment, I’m not very hopeful that in the end I’ll be able to continue with this option.

It was aggravated by the fact that after six years, I only recently weaned myself off my anti-anxiety meds — which yay for me but also maybe not the best timing? The experience I had trying the mask, feeling like I couldn’t breathe, also triggered some big grief around the loss of Eric’s mom, as she died because her lungs would no longer work, and some of her last words were “I can’t breathe” and feeling that terror for those few moments I did made me so sad for the way she suffered in the end, and so sad that she’s really and truly gone. And of course, as you may know yourself, every grief is connected to all the others, and sometimes you can’t help but feel the full weight of that lineage of loss all at once, and it is heavy.

Then on Saturday, a back leg strain or sprain Ringo had a few weeks ago that we thought had healed was triggered and he was in so much pain, we had to take him to the emergency vet, and then today take him to his regular vet, and also get him on the schedule with his rehab vet, since the underlying issue is most likely his arthritis. When you have a 12 year old, or any dog really if you look at my experience with my dogs, anything that happens is either fixable, manageable, or a sign of “the big bad,” and you enter into the diagnostic discovery phase not knowing which one it will be. Thank goodness Ringo has the best team of doctors and therapists supporting him and us. We are so lucky for that. Rest, pain meds, x-rays on Friday morning just to be sure, and more attention to a long term management plan is the strategy.

So instead of a list of good things, today I’d like to share three poems with you: a book spine poem I unintentionally “wrote” by the way I put together a stack of books, and two poems I wrote while I was in Oregon recently and shared with my writing group a few weeks ago. I’d also like to encourage you, as I have been myself the past few days, to stay tender, keep your heart open, keep practicing, and don’t give up.

finding beauty in a broken world

the fifth season
an unspoken hunger
the magic words unlocking the heart
a still life
the path to kindness

P.S. As I looked at this image again this morning, I realized there was a book title peaking over the stack from the back, and that it was actually the title, so here’s the revised poem.

finger exercises for poets

finding beauty in a broken world
the fifth season
an unspoken hunger
the magic words unlocking the heart
a still life
the path to kindness

Keeping Time

Here in this house, in this place
Moments in time overlap, layer and loop
shadowing each other like hungry ghosts
a snake swallowing its own tail
Past and present and future
Every clock, every measure
telling a different story

7:48 real time
8:52 microwave time
7:01 blinking oven time
8:50 dining room time
8:55 living room time
9:06 thermostat time,
with settings for “here, away & sleep”

1:56 Mom’s bathroom time,
no longer moving forward,
lingering in one place, going nowhere
1:37 Dad’s bathroom time, stopped
7:35 Dad’s tool bench time, also stopped
6:36 the clock on the opposite wall
where he kept his collection of toys and cars,
also holding still where it stopped
hanging next to a sign that reads,
“What happens in the garage, stays in the garage”

Then there’s the time not measured,
like in the room where Dad died,
entirely emptied out now,
the windows closed,
no longer a clock ticking out
the minutes as they pass.

Both sets of parent’s homes had that in common,
the quiet there never entirely silent,
always the tick of time passing,
sometimes so loud I couldn’t sleep.
Now the measure so far off lived time,
it isn’t exactly clear what the
remaining clocks are measuring.

Awake Again at 2 am

Middle of the long night
Thirsty, a hungry ghost in an empty house
Get a glass of water, drink
As I walked across the dark house
to the kitchen sink
I could have sworn the moon was close to full
but Google says it’s only a waxing crescent
only five days away from full dark
I spill some of the water
And it feels like a ceremony

Marble jar, middle of the night friend
May this find you sleeping
When I’m awake I write you a poem,
even though I’m not a poet
Or maybe I am
A poet of grief puzzling words
in the glow of two candles
in what was their bedroom

At the wild edge of sorrow
in Blackwater woods where Mary walked
The trees reminded her that it’s simple,
to be filled with light, to shine as they do
She reminded us we only need three things
to live this life, the third and final one being
to let go, let go

We are all poets, hungry ghosts,
some of us awake,
the noise of the owls and clocks
too loud for sleep.
While others are sleeping
some are waiting to die,
calling out, “Are you awake?”
Some are dreaming
that the wolf is chewing their bones.

Poets of the apocalypse, awake in the dark
which I suppose we all need to be now
If we are to survive it
I am up doing the water ceremony
Drink some, spill a little
Like the way one might pour
a shot of liquor on a loved one’s grave

There’s a half bottle of Jim Beam
in the back corner of the bottom shelf
in the laundry room cabinet
My brother told me just yesterday
that when he was here
taking care of Mom and Dad,
after her stroke,
him dying in the back room,
He drank it to help him sleep
“I’ll never drink dark liquor again”

If I could, I’d tell him about the water ceremony,
about the light of the trees that’s also in us,
about the letting go
I’d tell him to read poetry
Or write it, eat it, drink it, spill it

During COVID, at 8 pm every night
we’d all go outside and howl,
together but also not.
And here we still are,
all here together and also not,
at the end of the world
in the middle of nowhere,
middle of the night,
asleep or awake,
dreaming or howling,
writing poetry, making offerings
of water and light.