Stephen Dunn (and the Similarity Between Poetry and Basketball)

http://nwpr.org/post/lifes-minutiae-gain-new-magnitude-dunns-lines-poetry

"One of the points that I make in the essay is the similarity between poetry and basketball is a chance to be better than yourself. To transcend yourself, if you're hot that day. And that happens in writing in our best moments. Where we find ourselves saying what we didn't know we knew, or couldn't have said in any other circumstance.
So those are the moments in poetry I live for now. I can't play basketball anymore."

To being better than ourselves, in whichever ways we can.

Shange, On Poetry

For the full article (on the poet Shange), please visit: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/27/nyregion/a-poet-with-words-trapped-inside.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&nl=nyregion&emc=edit_ur_20131027&

 “Her art has always told the story of people who are suffering, and given meaning to their struggle. Now she’s looking back and asking, ‘What is art going to be for me in the body that I have now?’ ”
 Ms. Shange sat with a few friends and considered the question: What if poetry isn’t enough?

“You have to keep acting like it is enough,” she said. “You have to keep affirming it, and bringing yourself to it. You have to keep hoping that it will move the mountain.” 

To art that gives meaning to struggle. To faith.

Sadhguru (Washington Post: Obsessed-with-success Washington could learn a lesson from mystic Sadhguru)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-faith/obsessed-with-success-washington-could-learn-a-lesson-from-mystic-sadhguru/2013/10/24/7ff3bb94-3c39-11e3-a94f-b58017bfee6c_story.html

"The issue is: How do you conduct your life in a situation that is terrible?  The important thing is what you make out of it. You only come out wounded or wise."
-Sadhguru

I've come across this message time and time again - you are not able to control external factors, but only how you react to it (Frankl, Sadhguru...others I'm undoubtedly forgetting). So choose well. Turn the wound into wisdom somehow.

The most important message of all is this: “Love, joy, peace, bliss are not sustainable.”
-Sadhguru

What an interesting sentence, huh? Not quite what I think of when I think of inspiration. And yet maybe that's exactly it - knowing that a state of bliss, a state of peace, all those other states, aren't sustainable. Maybe that frees us of our preconceived notions, allows us to open up.

To coming out of terrible situations wounded - because I'm not so sure we can help that - but wiser.

Alan Fletcher On Music

I'm thinking a lot about work (still). Maybe it's one of those questions that will always be with me. Most people go to work for a certain amount of time and it takes up a good deal of their lives, and of the people I know, most don't really enjoy their jobs. Oh, there are parts of each job, maybe, that they'll like, but overall, not really. And I have to admit I've been that person. Who hasn't?

I still have so many questions about work and fulfillment and meaning. Reading this article gave me a little more perspective. There's a difference between a job and work, right? Between what you do for a living and who you are as a human being? I think so.

Alan Fletcher (president and CEO of the Aspen Music Festival and School) is speaking about music, but I really think his words apply to anything you love to do, even if you're not doing it full-time, even if you're not getting paid for it. Because not everything is measured in money or externally praised. Maybe some things you just have to do.

 

"I believe in you, in your gifts, and especially in your ability to use very hard, purposeful work to make something of lasting value from those gifts."

 -Alan Fletcher

 

"The music is the mission, not the money."
-Alan Fletcher

"Meanwhile, you are here to do the beautiful work that is the heart of our whole profession. You have made a profound choice in your lives, a choice for music. You have followed up that choice with an immense amount of hard work."
-Alan Fletcher

For full article: http://www.npr.org/blogs/deceptivecadence/2013/07/08/200002444/music-is-the-mission-not-money

To hard work - at your job, certainly, but also on something you love to do.

Terius Nash, a.k.a The-Dream on Songwriting

I read this article a while ago, and kept meaning to do a post. I always feel like I never have enough time to do everything I want to do, and I keep wanting to make it a priority to do things that make me happy and make me wonder. Here are two quotes about songwriting (and really, the importance of doing things that reaffirm your humanity, that keep you connected to yourself, and to something outside of you that's well, mysterious):

"It's hard to explain. It's definitely more spiritual — why I would be doing music in the first place, if I didn't get goose bumps and stuff? We're so excited, all of us — we're like kids...that just found out that you can mix the packs of Kool-Aid – mix the powder with the sugar, and just eat it straight. We used to do it as kids — I have no idea why we used to do that. But that feeling of childlike – childhood — finding something for the first time."
 - The-Dream

"it feels like the sun is rising, without me having to say that in the lyric.
With music and with harmony it's just one of those things, man. Yeah, I can't even explain it. It just makes me feel alive, I guess."
-The-Dream

For the full article: http://www.npr.org/blogs/therecord/2013/06/19/193538349/the-dream-on-why-we-all-need-r-b

To goose bumps (the good kind), to wonder and to doing things that make us feel alive.

Ballet, Art & Death

http://www.npr.org/2013/03/19/174753335/a-ballet-memorial-to-a-son-killed-at-war

"You're taking something which is horrible ... and turning it into something which is beautiful and life-affirming," Amy Wolfe tells NPR's Lynn Neary. "That's the way art is."

I think that's a damn good definition of art, don't you?

And I just think it's so incredible that we can take our grief and our pain and all the things we wished hadn't happened and turn them into something. Make them into something more. It's like that story Rumpelstiltskin, and how he spins straw into gold.

We can spin our sorrow into art.

To creating something beautiful out of whatever we have on hand.

Dear Sugar

So I was at work today, listening to a podcast (The Writer's Block...PBS?) and it was one of those podcasts that make you stop working and start listening. Not just the type of listening like the way you listen to music mindlessly while working, but listening the way you listen when you can't do anything but listen because what you're listening to compels you to Just Listen (anybody else read that Sarah Dessen book?). That kind of listening.

I was listening to an excerpt from Tiny Beautiful Things (http://www.amazon.com/Tiny-Beautiful-Things-Advice-Sugar/dp/0307949338), which I'd heard about and had been curious about but hadn't read. And now it's on my to-read list. I'm not sure how long it'll take me to get the book (let's just say the list is a long one and leave it at that), but I definitely want to read it.

This is an excerpt from the excerpt she read from. Find the whole column here: http://therumpus.net/2011/02/dear-sugar-the-rumpus-advice-column-64/

Most things will be okay eventually, but not everything will be. Sometimes you’ll put up a good fight and lose. Sometimes you’ll hold on really hard and realize there is no choice but to let go. Acceptance is a small, quiet room.
...
The useless days will add up to something. The shitty waitressing jobs. The hours writing in your journal. The long meandering walks. The hours reading poetry and story collections and novels and dead people’s diaries and wondering about sex and God and whether you should shave under your arms or not. These things are your becoming.



To long meandering walks and reading and wondering, and yes, even shitty jobs, because they are "your becoming." To becoming.

The Little Things by Carlos Bertonatti Lyrics

"If life has taught me anything,
it'’s all about the little things."
-Carlos Bertonatti, The Little Things

Things are going wrong left and right in the world. It's so easy to just sink into despair, isn't it? Complain. Scan newspaper headlines or turn on the evening news or just feel dissatisfied about your life, your job, how much money you make, how much you weigh, anything, everything.

What's the point, anyway?

Okay, I'm going to tell you right off the bat that I can't answer that question. But according to this song, Carlos Bertonatti thinks "it's all about the little things."

And I don't know if it's all about the little things...but well, the little things can certainly add up, don't you think? I know it's the same old same old (well, if your life is anything like mine) and you're trying to find joy and happiness and peace and fulfillment and all that jazz, but sometimes you look at a bright, vivid flower on a cloudy gray morning and as little a thing as it is, it's enough for that moment. Maybe for that day.

Maybe life is seizing as many of those little moments as you can, letting them go when they do, and being open to the next one. Open your eyes and really look...what do you see? I'm sure you can find at least one thing that is beautiful. Or funny or hopeful or all of the above. And if you can't, make something beautiful. Okay?

To the little things.

Oprah's 2008 Commencement Speech

(For the full transcript of the speech, see: http://news.stanford.edu/news/2008/june18/como-061808.html)

"...walk through life eager and open to self-improvement and that which is going to best help you evolve, 'cause that's really why we're here, to evolve as human beings. To grow into more of ourselves, always moving to the next level of understanding, the next level of compassion and growth.
And I believe that there's a lesson in almost everything that you do and every experience, and getting the lesson is how you move forward."

Self-improvement can sound kind of hokey. But if you really think about it, you're trying to make yourself a better person. Who care if it sounds hokey? I want to evolve as a human being, and always keep growing.

"When you're doing the work you're meant to do, it feels right and every day is a bonus, regardless of what you're getting paid.
 ...
And how do you know when you're doing something right? How do you know that? It feels so. What I know now is that feelings are really your GPS system for life. When you're supposed to do something or not supposed to do something, your emotional guidance system lets you know...If it doesn't feel right, don't do it. That's the lesson...There are many times when you don't know what to do. When you don't know what to do, get still, get very still, until you do know what to do."

I'm going to keep searching for the work I'm meant to do. So far, I've learned about the work I'm not meant to do. And you know what? That's part of finding what you are meant to do. 

"...forget about the fast lane. If you really want to fly, just harness your power to your passion. Honor your calling. Everybody has one. Trust your heart and success will come to you.
...
But having a lot of money does not automatically make you a successful person. What you want is money and meaning. You want your work to be meaningful. Because meaning is what brings the real richness to your life. What you really want is to be surrounded by people you trust and treasure and by people who cherish you. That's when you're really rich."

There are so many different definitions of success. Mine includes doing meaningful work. I want to be excited to go off to work in the morning and find my work meaningful and be interested in things. Not just what I'm doing, but in what other people are doing, in what's happening in the world at large. (It can feel small sometimes, but a lot of things can happen out there!)

"If things go wrong, you hit a dead end—as you will—it's just life's way of saying time to change course. So, ask every failure—this is what I do with every failure, every crisis, every difficult time—I say, what is this here to teach me? And as soon as you get the lesson, you get to move on. If you really get the lesson, you pass and you don't have to repeat the class. If you don't get the lesson, it shows up wearing another pair of pants—or skirt—to give you some remedial work.
 But, if you ask the right question—not why is this happening, but what is this here to teach me?—it puts you in the place and space to get the lesson you need."

I'd like to approach failures this way. I need to work on asking what lessons are in the failures.

"This is what I know for sure: In order to be truly happy, you must live along with and you have to stand for something larger than yourself. Because life is a reciprocal exchange. To move forward you have to give back. And to me, that is the greatest lesson of life. To be happy, you have to give something back. ...if you're hurting, you need to help somebody ease their hurt...
...helping others is the way we help ourselves."

I completely agree. Okay, this is going to sound kind of silly, but I helped someone find a book at the library yesterday, and it made me feel pretty happy. Yes, it's a very small act (I didn't cure cancer or facilitate peace in the Middle East or anything like that), but I helped someone when I could have chosen not to. I didn't know him. I don't work at the library. But I took the time to help him and honestly, I improved my day and his. So go out there and help someone find a book or something. Improve your day and someone else's.


"So, I know this—that whether you're an actor, you offer your talent in the way that most inspires art. If you're an anatomist, you look at your gift as knowledge and service to healing... if you choose to offer your skills and talent in service, when you choose the paradigm of service, looking at life through that paradigm, it turns everything you do from a job into a gift."

Whatever you do, think of it as a gift.

To finding the lesson, honoring your calling, and helping others.

Lenka - Live Like You're Dying Lyrics

You'll be under the table and you'll realize  
That all of your days are numbered, all of them one to one hundred  
All of them millions, all of them trillions

...

So what am I gonna do with my time?
I'll take every moment, I know that I own them 
It's all up to you to do whatever you choose 
Live like you're dying and never stop trying 
It's all you can do, use what's been given to you

from Lenka (Live Like You're Dying)

We don't know how much time we have, but we can choose how to spend the time that we do have. There are a lot of things we can't choose in the world, but some of them we can. It seems like such a small, simple truth, doesn't it? 

Do something you want today. Not because of anything or anyone else - just because you want to. Take a nap or sit outside and stare at the sky. Sing and dance. Make art. 

To using what's been given to you.

All I Really Need To Know I Learned in Kindergarten Review

Overall, this book was an easy, quick read. It's a collection of brief essays, all heartwarming and reaffirming the goodness of human nature. Plus, the essays are funny. If you're feeling kind of blue, this is a nice little pick-me-up.

The topics touch on daily life ("the daily ordinariness of life") - everything from laundry, chicken-fried steak, crayons, visits to the zoo, neighbors to flight. It might make you appreciate ordinary moments more deeply. I felt more optimistic after finishing this book.

The author, Robert Fulghum, has written other books that I'm curious about and am adding to my reading list.

Some of my favorite quotes:

"Every person passing through this life will unknowingly leave something and take something away. Most of this "something" cannot be seen or heard or numbered. It does not show up in a census. But nothing counts without it." (119)

"Maybe we should develop a Crayola bomb as our next secret weapon. A happiness weapon. A Beauty Bomb. And every time a crisis developed, we would launch one. It would explode high in the air...And people would smile and get a little funny look on their faces and cover the world with imagination." (52)

On Beethoven and his Ninth Symphony, which he composed when he was deaf: "Out of all that sorrow and trouble, out of all that frustration and disappointment, out of all that deep and permanent silence, came all that majesty - that outpouring of JOY and exaltation! He defied his fate with jubilation!" (113)

To appreciating ordinary moments more deeply, to crayons, and to music.

Monday Mainstay: a (second) Emily Dickinson poem

There is no frigate like a book
To take us lands away,
Nor any courses like a page
Of prancing poetry.

This traverse may be the poorest take
Without oppress of toll;
How frugal is the chariot
That bears a human soul!


If it's not obvious by now, I love to read. I love how books can whisk you to "lands away," no matter what is going on.

To books taking us "lands away."

Catcher in the Rye Review

I read this for the first time as a high school junior. I don't remember liking the book very much. All I remembered is how Holden hated phoniness, and something about a carousel, maybe.

I can't say that this is now my favorite book or anything, but I liked it more this time around. I guess the first thing is just the whole tone of the book. It's so conversational and it feels natural, not forced at all. And I relate more to Holden - he seems so lost. He's looking for something, but he doesn't know what. He only knows that the world he lives in isn't the world he really wants. He's drinking and meeting people and going out and talking, but having so much trouble connecting to them. He feels depressed so much of the time.

There's this one part where he's talking to a former teacher of his. They have maybe the most profound conversation in the book.

“But what I mean is, lots of time you don’t know what interests you most till you start talking about something that doesn’t interest you most. I mean you can’t help it sometimes.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

I like this quote because it seems true to me about life in general. You have to experiment and maybe do a lot of "wrong" things until you get to the right thing. Maybe the thing that's most important is that you start at all. You have no idea where you are or what you want? Fine, just start with one little thing. When was the last time you felt happy? What were you doing? Or try something you've never tried before. 


One more quote. Holden's talking to his younger sister Phoebe.

“Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around - nobody big, I mean - except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye 

 

It's beautiful and impossible and terribly, terribly sweet, don't you think? It sounds like Holden wants to help and maybe save (as much as you can save others, anyway) kids. In one alternate universe ending, maybe he'd be a school counselor or something. (I don't know how well he'd do with bureaucracy and all...but actually, I think maybe he'd be understanding with the kids.) 

 

I like that Salinger never answers the question (too easy, right?), but I'm curious nevertheless. I can see him as a temp, bouncing around from position to position, drinking and smoking and reading all the time and still searching for something, whatever it is. I can also see him as a writer, like his brother D.B. Maybe not a commercial success, but he'd be doing something he believed in. Or maybe he does leave everyone and everything he knows and goes out west to work on a ranch or something. Who do you think Holden would grow up to be? 

To getting to the things that interest you most.

Moonstruck (On Why We're Here)

Loretta, I love you. Not like they told you love is, and I didn't know this either, but love don't make things nice - it ruins everything. It breaks your heart. It makes things a mess. We aren't here to make things perfect. The snowflakes are perfect. The stars are perfect. Not us. Not us! We are here to ruin ourselves and to break our hearts and love the wrong people and die.
-Ronny Cammareri to Loretta, Moonstruck 

This is my absolute favorite quote from the movie. (Perfect if you need a little pick-me-up.) I love that last sentence - how we're here to ruin ourselves and to break our hearts...It's almost giving you permission to do something you know you're going to regret but have to do anyway.  

And I love how Ronny is romantic and anti-romantic at the same time, talking about how love isn't like "they" (whoever "they" is, anyway) told you, but how "it ruins everything. It breaks your heart. It makes things a mess."

To ruining ourselves, (of course). 

Monday Mainstay: an Emily Dickinson poem

IF I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain;
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin	5
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.

                                                  -Emily Dickinson

I've decided that Mondays need a little something to brighten them up. So this Monday, it's Emily Dickinson to the rescue.  I think she's eased the aching in countless lives and cooled countless pains - maybe even stopped hearts from breaking. Her words still resonate with us today.

I must say that one of the reasons this particular poem appeals to me so much is its simplicity. She says everything outright and so clearly and elegantly, too. This poem is so utterly sincere; doesn't it kind of stop you in your tracks?

To not living in vain and to Emily Dickinson.

P.S. Additional Thoughts on Man's Search for Meaning

Oh, and maybe Frankl's main point is this: that man is driven by the search for meaning, for purpose. I find that uplifting.

You know all those conversations about whether humans are innately good or innately bad? I go back and forth. I read about horrible things happening in the world, but then there are also people trying to do good. Dedicating their whole lives to it, in some cases. Right now, I believe that people are born with the potential for good as well as the potential for bad. Their parents, their environments, etc. shape them to a certain extent of course, but then they also choose. They make the decision to do whatever it is.

Since I graduated and started working last year, I've been thinking about meaning a lot more. I agree with Frankl, that humans are driven by the search for meaning and purpose (as well as you know, food and shelter and all that). I'm searching for my meaning, my purpose.

I definitely haven't found it yet. I don't even think I'm close. I think I'm still pretty much at the beginning of it, actually. It doesn't really matter where you are, though. You know that line about how it's not the destination, but the journey? Cliched and corny as it is, it's true. So it doesn't matter how young or old you are, how far you think you may be from where you need to go...just start. Search.

And hey, look out the window once in a while. Enjoy the scenery.

Man's Search for Meaning Review (and of course, a few quotes)

Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.
-Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

I read this book a few months ago, mostly during breaks at work. There I was, not exactly thrilled about being at work, and then I would travel back in time (15 minutes at a time) to the 1940's, to Auschwitz. To being a prisoner at Auschwitz.

I was stunned by this book. Frankl managed to make life in a concentration camp meaningful. How many people have so much, and yet live their lives dissatisfied? I told myself that if Frankl could make his concentration camp experiences meaningful, surely I could endure work in higher spirits.

I was struck by that quote, how a person always has the freedom "to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way." There is so much we don't know, so much we can't control in life. But we can control our attitude, how we react. It might not sound like very much. But it can be everything.

Frankl made it through the concentration camp partially because he knew he had a book manuscript to finish. He had a higher purpose. He had to make it through the concentration camp so he could fulfill his destiny. And you know what? He did.

"If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete."
-Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

I'm an agnostic. I'm not sure exactly what I believe. But I'm inspired by this quote. It's logical, too, isn't it? I don't know what the meaning of suffering is, but to believe that there is a meaning to it can help.


"human life, under any circumstances, never ceases to have a meaning, and that this infinite meaning of life includes suffering and dying, privation and death."
-Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

Even if you don't feel like your life has meaning (I think everyone feels this way at least a few times), it does. I can't explain it to you. Maybe no one can. It's yours to make, yours to discover. It's a great, great privilege (as well as a challenge and a responsibility), don't you think?

To choosing your own attitude, your own way, especially in the times it seems like you can't.

Come alive

“Don't ask what the world needs. Rather ask--what makes you come alive? Then go and do it! Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
― Howard Thurman

I've always loved this quote. It really struck me the first time I saw it. I had one of those moments where I just sat and re-read it a few times and thought. I mean, how many people do you know who seem alive every single day?

I don't have a five-year plan or know exactly what I want to do with my life, but I know I want to do what makes me come alive. I want to be alive, every single moment, every single day. Even if you can't do what makes you come alive every single moment, do it as much as you can. Come alive. 

Meaning & "a moment without meaning"

http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2012/06/19/155344057/stars-planets-and-the-meaningless-life

Astronomy is not really something I've taken a great interest in. But something in this article resonated with me.

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about meaning. The meaning of life - well, the meaning of my life, in particular. And this article was just plain reassuring.

My favorite quotes from the article: "In a small patch of sky, in a small wedge of space, there are worlds out there right now. There are, most likely many thousands of them. These are places just like here, places where you can stand and look around. These are places with landscapes."

"Thus, for me, anytime I can be lifted from the crushing sense that this is all there is, it's a good thing. Anytime I can be reminded that there is more, so much more, than this mortal coil, it feels like a good thing.
One doesn't have to search the Kepler archive to find that feeling. It can arrive in the form of art, poetry, your kids laughter or just looking up and out. I hope you get a moment to do that today.
May you have a moment without meaning."

Sometimes you need a moment to step back from everything in your life and realize that in the grand scheme of things, whatever you're worried about isn't as big a deal as you're making it. I mean, I am one person out of almost seven billion in the world out of possibly thousands of worlds. It always comes as somewhat of a shock, realizing my own insignificance. (Not in a bad way...sometimes it's reassuring.)

Would it be strange to say that I guess there is more to life than life?