On the small shrine on my writing desk is a white ceramic Bodhisattva with two dogs. I found her first and the bigger dog two summers later at the Flea Market in Waldport, Oregon. The tiny white plastic poodle with her is one of the only toys I ended up keeping from when I was a kid, my Barbie Doll dog.
I look at the three of them and it reminds me who I am, where my power rests. The feathers she holds remind me that softness is strength. It is also not lost on me that the same form that allows flight can also be dipped in a well of ink and used to write. The card I pulled this morning, a ten of cups, urged, “do not doubt this power.” This is who I am.
1. In Praise of the Comfort Zone on Scoutie Girl. Something I’ve thought about every time I read something about how you should be pushing yourself beyond your comfort zone. So glad someone finally wrote this.
The end of the year is a threshold — a passageway from the past
into the future. An opportunity to stop and listen to yourself, to
hear what your heart is really yearning for, to allow yourself to
ask for what you really need, and to find your way back home —
always to yourself.
19. Savannah Making Headlines! on Life, Love & Laundry. Pictures of the cutest little girl who has Mitochondrial Disease and loves to dress up in the raddest costumes.
20. New (to me) music from Ruarri Joseph.
and
I love the chorus for this last one: “Well we love and we lose but we need and we choose anyway.”
If you know what you love, if you know what you want to feel, are you steadfast about it? Do you wake up in the morning remembering it, remembering yourself, aligning yourself like a compass to your true north, regardless of whatever else is happening. Or whomever else.
If it’s the holidays, do you say oh what the hell or do you say, yes, even now. Even this. Even today. Especially today.
It’s a practice, being steadfast with what you love, but most especially, with yourself. I keep remembering this (and as I’ve said before, it doesn’t matter how often you forget, only that you remember. Again and again. Practice remembering. That’s steadfastness itself!). Hear the song you most want to sing to and for and of yourself. Let yourself come back, come back.
Overwhelm does not come from too much to do. It comes from lack of clarity. When you’re clear—you know you don’t need to do everything. You just have to do the right thing. The right thing is always the one step you feel guided to do right now.
32. A Simple Year, “12 months of guided simplicity.” If I were still taking ecourses, (I’m no longer allowing myself, need to move from being a student to being the teacher), I would definitely sign up for this.
Poetry is the parade
for the gorgeous rubble of memories
that is buried
day after day
by a fresh falling
of moments
so few cute or sad enough
to remember
like this morning
when your dad asked you
if every animal in the book
was a hippopotamus
and you laughed until
you ran out of breath
and announced
I’m having too much fun
we write them trophies
these flutters of time
we pin them up with words
we take their invisibleness
and make it immortal
this is what poetry is
not an observation of profound things
but the hooking
of what would otherwise
blow away.
34. Reverb13, three different options if you are looking for prompts: #reverb13 hosted by Kat McNally (two of the prompts in this set were written by me), Project Reverb, and Reverb 2013 hosted by Besottment.
On the small shrine on my writing desk is a white ceramic Bodhisattva with two dogs. I found her first and the bigger dog two summers later at the Flea Market in Waldport, Oregon. The tiny white plastic poodle with her is one of the only toys I ended up keeping from when I was a kid, my Barbie Doll dog.
Open Space Practice, (AKA: A Thousand Shades of Gray) 