Colette Jonopulos
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It Would Be Comforting

10/15/2022

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Why Is This Age Worse . . . ?
Anna Akhmatova

Why is this age worse than earlier ages?
In a stupor of grief and dread
have we not fingered the foulest wounds
and left them unhealed by our hands?

In the west the falling light still glows,
and the clustered housetops glitter in the sun,
but here Death is already chalking the doors with crosses, 
and calling the ravens, and the ravens are flying in.


Translated by Stanley Kunitz (with Max Hayward)



Anna Akhmatova wrote like an oracle reaching forward in time to speak to us living in our modern-day chaos. 

We are living in what I call the, No one is going to save us, period. It is not as fear-based as it sounds, but simply an acceptance that the government we once trusted is gone. From blaming the average person for wanting too much for herself, to failed foreign policies, to a bribable FBI . . . we join civilizations that had a good run before they reached a tipping point and fell into decline.

My son and I have talked at-length about this inevitability for the past twenty years. We sensed the early decline, early revelations about the Iraq war machine made us mistrust, and all of it pointed to this critical moment in history. Our collective tipping point. Am I surprised? Saddened at the speed of our unraveling, but not surprised. There is no longer room for denial.

It would be comforting if life were a rectangle of Instagram beauty, and some days scrolling unreality is exactly what I need to keep my mind from spinning into negativity. Most days it takes digging in the dirt, shoveling manure or ripping out Serrano chili roots. Something physical that suspends my worries, an exhaustion that leaves me without the need to pretend.

I am good at pretending. I leaned this skill in church and it is still with me. I recognize it in my writing, the desire for life to be anything but random, a kind of sick perfectionism that creeps into my words. Pretending does not sustain or heal us; it only delays the inevitable. 

So what does sustain us? Where do we go to feel safe, at peace, at least less afraid for the future? My granddaughter was surprised when I told her Yes, I am a still a Christian. I saw the struggle on her face as she tried working out what she believed about Christians and my obvious acceptance of untraditional behaviors. It didn't fit. 

It does fit. Having left one belief system to finally embrace another, and then to step quietly away from that  world, has not left me foundationless. In fact, my beliefs are sustainable, based on experience, not doctrine. This is heretical to some, but necessary for those of us who, as my godmother Theodora says, . . . need to tear it up. To excavate. To question. To refuse silencing. My foundation is helping me to step forward in a time of trepidation. I sense the purposeful divide and see the instigations, the ugly deceptions, the fear-mongering and constant propaganda for what they are: an attempt to control. 

What matters in a time of escalating crisis? Family of course. True friends. Even escapism has its place. For me, the ability to turn back toward God, to lean in and trust, to remember that this is all temporary is actually comforting.

And in answer to my inquisitive granddaughter, I am a Christian, but I don't believe in a deity who gives us everything we want or takes away our problems; but one who gets in the sludge with us, who struggles as we struggle and who sorrows alongside us as we watch for ravens and pray they never appear. 

And I believe in your bright future. 

And in language that not only comforts but awakens.

Colette
aka Grandma
​aka Yia Yia

























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Unfinished Symphonies

9/26/2021

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What has transpired since my last entry has altered the way we see the world, if not the universe. Some have dug deeper into their fears and shut out anything that challenges their beliefs. Others have tossed their long-held beliefs, replacing them with entirely new ideas. Some of us have stood still so long we are not sure how we fit into the larger picture. The one point of agreement may be that the ground continues to shift, leaving us unsettled and vulnerable. 

Writing for me has always been my safe place, where I hide when the world gets too challenging. Putting my thoughts down helps me to sort out unruly emotions. In the past two years I have become an avid journaler. If you were to read my journals you'd be unimpressed. Daily activities, observations, a thread of redundant thoughts pulled tight whenever I sense the world around me unraveling. 

A haiku. A poem. A small chapbook that keeps getting shopped around. That is my recent literary output. Looking toward another winter in Denver, I have chosen to complete a non-fiction book that is screaming for my attention. The term "unfinished symphonies" comes to mind. I have dozens of unpublished poems, a book manuscript, and this non-fiction beast that deserve better than my ennui. 

Which of your unfinished symphonies needs attention? What have you started and set aside because the project is too large, your confidence too small, or your life too busy to consider its importance? Your unfinished symphonies are important. They are a part of the reason you're here. They are meant to touch, comfort and embrace others. 

This fall please choose one of your symphonies, no matter how incomplete, how ignored, how ugly. It needs your attention. The world needs your voice.


​Colette
September, 2021










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This space is for daydreaming . . .

11/26/2018

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Artist: Dee Nickerson
http://www.southwoldgallery.co.uk/artists/128/dee-nickerson​​
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So much electronic information comes at us daily, it is possible to be distracted from the moment we wake up to the moment our head hits the pillow at night.
 
Distraction has been at the forefront of my life for years. I have a desktop, a laptop, an iPad and an iPhone. I used a flip phone long after everyone else was watching videos and sending texts on their mobiles. I fought the good fight, but I lost. I’m as addicted as anyone to immediacy.

What I sensed early on (and ignored) was that I was no longer carrying a notebook with me, and I was no longer writing poems. I had gone from being a creator to a consumer of information. My originality was co-opted by my dependency on quick news, YouTube and Masterpiece Mysteries.
 
This distractibility isn’t anything unique to me, most of us have come up against immediate gratification in the form of electronics. As our computers become necessary to pay bills, communicate with friends, and to do business, the place where we end and they begin has become blurred. Much like a co-dependent relationship, it’s not healthy. This lack of healthy boundaries brings up a need for strong resolve.
 
Since I was five, I've known a simple truth: If I am to be happy, I require tons of daydreaming space. Time to ponder. Time to reflect. Time to sit on a swing or under a tree and imagine. And this has been taken from me, from us. Most importantly, it has been taken from our children. This daydreaming space is exactly what I intend to take back.
 

It is late November, not January when we are forced to look more deeply into our flaws. I choose November as my jump-start month. The month when we realize winter is really coming. November when the saddest of poems is written, when our losses feel insurmountable. November when the sky darkens too early, when we hunker down with a fleece blanket, and when even our family togetherness has a wistful sort of feel.


November from here on out is not a month to give to or to give up on, but to begin again. This is my simple November plan to reinvent myself outside the world of electronics. I can’t say I’ll be 100% successful, I never am, but I am determined this time to make it stick. 
 
   
1    Two hours tops online. (This does not include research or business responsibilities.)
2    One hour of prayer, meditation and/or daydreaming.
3    Creativity gets four hours. Creativity for me means walks, hikes, painting the walls,               writing, and creating art. And time spent with dogs and children. Creativity to you may         mean writing a book or completing an aria, dancing or identifying birds.
4    Carry a notebook, preferably a red one, wherever I go.



In the past I have made detailed January instructions-to-self that I could not possibly obey. This time I have dumbed-it-down, made it simple for myself. Will you join me? We can meet up next November and compare notes on how less electronics gave us more time to daydream, to create what only we can create, and to be present to the moment with fewer distractions. 

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year of the dog

2/17/2018

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I am a sheep/goat/ram in the Chinese Zodiac.

I love how a word conjures up an image, a sheep being someone who follows docilely behind. A goat is a stubborn being who eats everything in sight. I think of the massive trucks that lumber down Denver freeways, RAM emblazoned on the grill, some vehicles so high off the ground you'd need a ladder to climb inside. As an animal, they are anything but passive.

​It is entertaining to consider zodiac qualities, to ascribe our personalities to being a sheep or a Gemini. No matter the influence of the planets or our biologically determined 
dispositions, our human identities are formed early. The child is smart, cute, talented or awkward, shy, precocious. We get our clues from family, from society, and we learn instinctively to merge those given qualities with those of who we truly are. 

Who are we truly?

This question is possible in the West, because we have the time and opportunity to mull it over. Since the 60's, people have opened the door to consciously consider who we might be, and how to live our lives in accordance with the self that lives beneath the surface. 

The more we dig, the more we circle back and around to that self that does not change and does not move from center. I call it the core self. It is who we are when no one is looking, when we are simply being. Although we appear to change when we are angry or infatuated or simply tired, that core self doesn't waver.

That core self ought to be at the bottom of the well we dip into when we write. Anything else will give us superficial images, insincere platitudes. It is not a matter of craft, it is a matter of honesty.

Editing poetry at Tiger's Eye Press, we often found that a fresh untried voice was preferable to poetry written appropriately, neatly, cleverly. That a poet learned to write what easily appealed to the masses, meant little to us. It wasn't even originality that held us, but the sense that the writer was being honest with us. That they were putting something REAL on the page, a part of themselves that made them vulnerable.

As I ease away from the editing and move into my own writing, I too have to consider what works and what is real. So easy to write nine words across, twenty lines down, to give an editor the look of their journal . . . just the right amount of white space. But is that my poem? Was that even my idea? How deep did I go into the well to find it? 

It is a new year. The year of the dog. I feel the weight of it, the weight of saying something that matters. 18 years of editing and reading and considering the words of others. If I'd seen how this course would slow my own career down, would I have done it differently? Maybe. Maybe not, because where I am now is exactly where I want to be. Who I am at the core has never been more relevant to the writing. 

A poet is at his or her best when pretense is dropped, when the voice that whispers to write just another poem on the wind is quieted. Let the year of the dog be the year we write from our core selves and submit work that speaks our vulnerable human truths.

Colette

​
Who are you in the Chinese Zodiac?

www.chinahighlights.com/travelguide/chinese-zodiac/dog.htm








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Mojo . . . lost and found

1/15/2018

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​Setting new year's goals rankles me. Not because I don't need to alter my life, but because my 2018 goals look suspiciously like my 2017 goals:

write more
submit more
finish art projects
eat right
walk daily 
 
B O R I N G

What is different this new year is that I'm feeling an influx of positive energy driving me forward. My mojo is back.

​The unexpected influx of energy came after spending several months in monastic hiding mode. So many things in my life were no longer serving me. I had moved on physically, but was lagging behind emotionally and psychologically. So whenever I attempted something creative, it fell flat. I could create beautiful things for others, but not for myself. 
 
By taking a break from the frenetic activity that kept me from considering anything deeper than what I was having for dinner or what episode of Suits I was on, I was forced to have a vulnerably threatening look at the areas of my life that were suffering from neglect and filled with dross.
 
Finally, after I’d cleared out the dross, and there was a lot of dross, I rediscovered my old love, poetry. We’d passed on the street several times, and once even had coffee together at the Starbucks on Colfax, but we had not had a good conversation in ages. Poetry blamed me for being emotionally unavailable. I blamed poetry for being fickle.
After agreeing to stop the name-calling, we took up where we'd left off, albeit both of us a bit skittish. 

Finding the poetry still living within had nothing to do with resolutions, but more from taking time away from the chaos and frenetic movement of everyday life in a big city. It was about returning to center. And the center for me is always the writing.
 
There was too much clutter and busyness, too much driving and shopping instead of daydreaming. I’d become an avid consumer again, something I learned in Orange and Sacramento. The art of shopping, a required course for high school graduation in California.
 
Confession: I just bought a box of Prismacolor Verythin pencils. I am still a consumer. But I also wrote and submitted a chapbook. The latter giving me 10-fold more joy.
 
I am adding one more goal for 2018:

joy
 
I had lost track of joy. That sweetest of feelings that we remember from childhood. Our first loving embrace. The perfect slice of pineapple. A poem read well and appreciated.

joy brings people together

joy infuses us with creative energy

joy is the twin sister of hope, the cousin of mojo

So, while I am wishing you a new year hard body and an industrial strength power washer, a hot yoga routine and a trip to Bolivia, I am more adamantly wishing you renewed mojo and more joy than you can load into your red Target basket.
 
Colette













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Not Watching

8/13/2017

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“It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there.”
― William Carlos Williams, Asphodel, That Greeny Flower and Other Love Poems: That Greeny Flower


Like most people in America this past year, I became a news addict. The long lead-up to the election, the election itself, and the wild ride of the aftermath were watched with an eagerness I usually save for something more palatable. The anger and the disappointment, the revelry and the satisfaction. We had become a county divided, and the train wreck of bad behaviors was hard to turn away from.

This summer my salvation was frequently leaving home, being on the road and out of range of the media. Getting home and switching on the television was like having entered a time machine. Or a timeless machine. Nothing had changed; the information had not moved one iota on the Richter scale of scandal and fear mongering. 

I still attempt to understand, to dig into the reasons for what is happening worldwide; I haven't yet stuck my head fully under the sand. If an article appears unbiased, I rejoice until I discover which media mogul owns the magazine or paper. There are a few unsullied moments of hope that someone is telling the truth; but even then, whose truth?

Maybe it is time to get our news from poetry. It being difficult is not a good enough excuse to stop trying. 

The idea that poetry can teach us what the media cannot is not as ridiculous as we might think. Poetry cuts through convoluted rhetoric with its sharp edge of clarity. If we don't agree with a poet, at least we know his or her idea is probably based in heart-felt feelings.

I often find contemporary political poetry too didactic, too filled with opinions not allowed to sit and stew for days or preferably months. The best political poems are no different than the best love poems; they both need time to germinate.

My own poetry is often about current events, natural disasters, and the unfair treatment of disenfranchised people. I have had to be careful not to jump in with emotion only, to allow time to temper my feelings, as well as my pen. There is no substitute for temperance.

With quick and dirty communication, the immediate one-off of a clever tweet or comment, we risk becoming less humane. We are finally recognizing that from our president on down, that a few words can hold tremendous power. They can calm our fears or threaten war. Words have never been benign, and in our world of instant communication, we do well to believe in their innate power to comfort or destroy.

In honor of William Carlos Williams and his practical approach to truth telling with his poetry, here are a few of my personal favorites.

​
Complete Destruction
It was an icy day.
We buried the cat,
then took her box
and set fire to it

in the back yard.
Those fleas that escaped
earth and fire
died by the cold.


This Is Just To Say
I have eaten
the plums
that were in the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus
According to Brueghel
when Icarus fell
it was spring

a farmer was ploughing
his field
the whole pageantry

of the year was
awake tingling
near

the edge of the sea
concerned
with itself

sweating in the sun
that melted
the wings’ wax

unsignificantly
off the coast
there was

a splash quite unnoticed
this was
Icarus drowning

​

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The Dangerous World of Face to Face

2/16/2017

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Love consists of this: two solitudes that meet, protect and greet each other. 
― Rainer Maria Rilke


Paula Becker mit Clara Westhoff in Paula Beckers Atelier, um 1899,Paula Modersohn-Becker-Stiftung​


Social media gives us the chance to lean on social one-offs. We put something out there, and feel we've communicated. We might come back and respond, or we might ignore reactions to our own words. I've done both. 

Our desire to connect is inherent, it comes on the heels of our need for food and shelter. Community, people we can identify with, fit in with, is a part of our humanity. It is primal and it is dangerous. It is dangerous, because it requires our vulnerability.
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Vulnerability: open to moral attack, criticism, temptation, etc.

Social media assures a streamlined version of community, and of fitting in. We are this or that. We voted one way or the other. We prefer Nissan over Honda. We assume we are influencing others with our statements. Our influence is less vivid than we imagine though, as we find ourselves on twitter and facebook surrounded by like-minded people. Singing to the choir is what they used to call it.

Where does the grace and depth of conversation come in? Where does the element of personal vulnerability arise? The chance for acceptance or rejection?

Conversation: Informal interchange of thoughts, information, etc., by spoken words; oral 
communication between persons.


This walks us back to the idea of face to face communication. Our seeking out other people, who may or may not agree with us, our choosing to be vulnerable. This vulnerability is what teenagers fear, and what we are less and less comfortable with as we get older. But it is necessary if we are going to hear one another, really hear what another person has to say.

Today, I will watch the news, check my emails, submit a manuscript, and drive my car. None of these activities involve conversing face to face with anyone. Luckily, I have a big family and am forced to be in the world daily, to deal with immediate problems, to offer opinions and to ask questions.

I am inherently a hermit, so I understand better than most how easy it is to hide inside my electronics. Online I can be clever and opinionated, emotional and hard-headed. I can be whoever I imagine myself to be. This is part of the problem, the hubris that comes from not seeking out in-person communication. I need real, in-person feedback to know how much of my self-image is real and how much is a figment of my imagination. I need humility.

Humility: the quality or condition of being humble; modest opinion or estimate of one's own importance, rank, etc.

This is not a slap on the wrist for enjoying social media. This is a quiet request to think about what we did before the Internet became more than a research tool. If you're old enough to remember, what did you do to communicate with someone before the Internet, before texting? Did you call them, stop by their house, write them a note and slip it in a mailbox? Did you buy your books in a brick and mortar bookstore instead of through Amazon? Did you take art lessons in a studio instead of from youtube videos? 

This past week, I finally got to writing thank yous for Christmas . . . super late . . . I also had a few copies of our poetry journal to mail out . . . and personal notes . . . and a birthday package. The more I wrote, the more joy I took in thinking of the child or adult who was going to be thrilled to get something concrete in the mail. I've had poets write back in shock that we sent out thank you notes to our Tiger's Eye Press contest poets. These simple exchanges remind me that deeper communication involves my time and effort, and always has a physical component.

Physical: of or relating to the body.

We all crave recognition, we all want to belong to the larger world and yet feel important within our own circle of friends. Yet we are moving away from touch and response, from looking into someone's eyes while we converse with them. Have you been at a function and looked up from your phone to see that everyone else is looking down at theirs? What are we giving up for this instant gratification that costs us nothing on the scales of vulnerability? What part of our own humanity are we losing?

We can too easily toss our opinions out into the electronic world. We can say what's on our mind and shut the door on anyone who doesn't agree with us. We can call them ignorant, and further entrench ourselves in a narrow view of the world, political or otherwise. These actions all require very little emotional commitment, and an immediate feedback that makes us feel we've communicated. And we have, but on a very shallow level. 

The time for conversation is now. The time for conversation with a real person in real time is now, while we can still tell the difference between superficiality and connection. Call your friend, call your father. Text them. Contact them and ask them out for lunch. Or even more vulnerability-worthy, ask them to your house, open your front door and welcome them inside your private world. 

Door: a movable, usually solid, barrier for opening and closing an entranceway.

True communication, the give and take of in-person discussion is fading. As we retreat into our electronic pods, the real danger is becoming dehumanized. And then it is easier to judge the liberal, the conservative, the person who in-person might explain their stance, their feelings, and their hard work to get to where they are. You may not agree with their viewpoint, but in-person you'll see their lowered eyes, hear the slight quiver in their voice, and you'll have empathy with this human being sitting across from you. 

We're all learning how much media, social and otherwise, we can stomach. We need to consciously choose what resonates with us and what challenges us, and where we fall on the spectrum of vulnerability and overload. It may take an actual day or two of withdrawal from all of our electronics to realize how much we've come to depend on them for social interaction. 

Being fully human is being fully vulnerable. Being fully vulnerable is being present emotionally, spiritually, mentally, and just as important, physically.



(from Sonnets to Orpheus, Part Two, # 29)

Let This Darkness Be Your Bell Tower

Quiet friend who has come so far,
feel how your breathing makes more space around you.
Let this darkness be a bell tower
and you the bell. As you ring,

what batters you becomes your strength.
Move back and forth into the change.
What is it like, such intensity of pain?
If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.”

In this uncontainable night,
be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,
the meaning discovered there.
And if the world has ceased to hear you,

say to the silent earth: I flow.
To the rushing water, speak: I am.



Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) from In Praise of Mortality, trans. and ed. Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows,
Riverhead Books, 2005







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Yet have no art to say--

4/13/2016

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Paper and digital collage by Oklahoma artist Julia Lillard.


I was sitting in the parking lot of a Barnes & Noble yesterday. My best-friend and co-editor, JoAn, had just called. We hadn't talked for a couple of weeks, and I felt I needed to listen intently to what she had to say. We had a long conversation that flowed from short stories to haiku, from family to religion.

What stood out for me was her saying that she had just read two short stories in a journal out of Sacramento, and both ended poorly. In fact, neither even got off the ground, and both were contest winners. She said she enjoys the freedom of a non-specific literary direction, but these stories said little.

Her comments reminded me of what I have been questioning about visual art, the recent excitement over collage and mixed media. Is the art representative of anything? Is it enough to create randomly juxtaposed images? If the work says little to me, did it ever say anything to the artist?

The leading “outsider” art magazines often feature some form of a woman’s head atop a pink flamingo body, her gossamer dress on fire, her flamingo feet hovering aboveground. It occurs to me that our artistic boundaries have widened considerably, and within our boundless artistic freedom we may have lost something vital.
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But then I remind myself that both JoAn and I are older, our worldview is different than someone 20, or even 40. A millennial may not care if a short story has a theme or if the flamingo-woman has meaning. It may simply be a flamingo woman with a gossamer dress laced with fire. Or the artist may be making allusions to her life, or possibly interpreting societal norms in her own way. Whatever the mixed media or digital artist is attempting to convey, most likely the work makes complete sense to him or her. Like in a fragmented poem, the artist can jump from one image to another and come full circle having traveled somewhere unexpected.

Still.

Still this discomfort of mine may speak to a desire to make metaphors, to create stories, to create order. I am uncomfortable with too much chaos. You wouldn't think so, I had five kids and now have 14 grandkids. I move frequently.

So why is this chaos different from the chaos I've chosen to invite into my life?

What if my poems and my tepid attempts at visual art, are my way of creating order in a universe of seeming chaos? When I write a line that describes an aspen, am I not capturing that tree? Am I not stalling it in time? Am I not comparing it to some other tree in some other season on some other mountain in an attempt to control the uncontrollable?

To pull the lines of the aspen poem together in order to construct a satisfying ending, has been the literary norm. Not to tie a bow on the tree, but to have said something meaningful about nature or aspens or the comparison of the summer aspen to the winter aspen, it's distinct bark the more stunning for not being hidden by wavering silver dollar leaves.

I am conflicted.

​I like collage and mixed media art. I just took a mixed media class. I love the freedom to create at-will, without specific expectations or boundaries. But sometimes when I'm searching for inspiration, the series of birds on watercolor paper is more appealing than the random words pasted sideways on a flower than is growing straight out of a man's cranium.

And this discomfort with artistic ambiguity (that is my own) is worth investigating. What if not having distinct boundaries, artists and all creatives are developing a new reality? What if brave artists and poets, no matter their age, are perfectly equipped to set aside tradition, to experiment with undetermined juxtapositions? 
​
What if women really do have flamingo heads, and I've been too stubborn to see? 

I am caught between loving the voice that tells me to create without boundaries and that other voice that urges me to use lines from poems in mixed media, possibly even use the visage of the poet who spoke those words, i.e., Emily's face with interwoven strips of lines from "Nature" is what we see--

"Nature" is what we see--
The Hill—the Afternoon--
Squirrel—Eclipse— the Bumble bee--
Nay—Nature is Heaven--
Nature is what we hear--
The Bobolink—the Sea--
Thunder—the Cricket--
Nay—Nature is Harmony--
Nature is what we know--
Yet have no art to say--
So impotent Our Wisdom is
To her Simplicity. 

Emily Dickinson

I fall back on the lines, "Nature is what we know--Yet have no art to say-- ..."

In these words I find the crux of my discomfort, the very reason I write, the tension that insists I create something, anything to make sense of my world. I will never have the perfect metaphor or painted line. If I do create a traditional work or something unbound, it will be specific to my aesthetic, not yours. You may be creating wildly without caution, or carefully developing a botanical drawing. In the end, it is personal, particular, and up to each of us to choose our venue, to dance with our own demons, and to share only what we are ready to share.

We ultimately have no art to say-- about nature or anything else, but we keep attempting to say it, each generation building on and stripping away past attempts. 

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Fourteen years after . . .

9/11/2015

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Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul - and sings the tunes without the words -
and never stops at all.       Emily Dickinson 

Fourteen years ago today I stood with my son in front of the television in our suburban California living room, our eyes riveted to the image of the second tower falling. We were incredulous, frightened by the power of an unknown enemy, by the space between coasts. The West as vulnerable as the East. Was San Francisco next? Or Los Angeles? Or Sacramento where we lived? 

Our belief in safety was forever changed.

9/11 changed the way I envisioned my country. I changed political parties. I rethought my concept of revenge and justice. I feared for our country's blind hatred that would eventually further destabilize the Middle East. The president was not speaking to me or for me. The earth beneath my feet was no longer solid ground.

My husband had left California just a few days earlier to begin a new job in Tennessee. He would not have left if he'd known what was about to happen. Our lives began to mirror the country's collective unrest, eventually moving us from suburban Sacramento and trendy Nashville to Oregon and then on to Colorado. We were caught in the slipstream of change that all Americans have since endured.

For some, security became all-important, their angst projected onto granite counter tops and stainless steal appliances. Maybe we couldn't stop terrorism, but we could keep our family safe in a perfect environment without too many walls. We wanted open concept living spaces, where we could watch every move our children made. Safety became a national obsession.

9/11 opened us to the uncomfortable knowledge that we are never completely safe. We are no longer observers of national suffering, we are participants. Like the refugees currently fleeing Syria, we learned that safety and security are elusive concepts, not guarantees.

9/11 opened Americans to something raw and terrifying and new, our own vulnerability. It reignited our patriotism, broke our hearts, and sent us out into the streets less sure of ourselves. Our national image was no longer one of invulnerability. We had colors to signify our various levels of safety.

9/11 opened the door to a horror new to our country, as it opened a depth we had not anticipated. More mature nations with their histories of war and famine, loss and renewal, know that depth is the inevitable outcome. Smug in our idealism and youth, we had no idea.

We can fear our own depth, or we can accept its necessity. Poets, more than most, allow the edges to be torn away in order to see what resides in the recesses. Beauty can be found in a bleak landscape, as well as a field of flowers. It is not about dwelling continuously in either, but accepting the ambiguity of each. 

Because of 9/11 America is a country based in ambiguity. How we deal with that reality is important. We can deny it, make an open concept safe-house of our lives, or we can move out among the hurting, among the vulnerable, offering consolation. We are not innocent bystanders anymore, we know what it's like to be flattened by life. 

We might have gotten our revenge differently, shock and awe giving way to invasion and lies. We are still learning that bigger guns and smarter bombs only make for more dead bodies. Our unchecked anger and fear did not give birth to a safer world, only to an increasingly unstable planet. Our current fascination with the idea of electing non-politicians to run the country is a reflection of our continued mistrust and dissatisfaction . . . fourteen years later we are less a united country than a frayed populace.

Still. as the day is memorialized in story and myth, I am left with  . . .  that thing with feathers that perches in the soul. Maybe it is irrational, maybe I should be more jaded. But I choose to live in that place of ambiguity where hope is as real as despair, where borders are man-made and hatred is a choice.

I choose hope over fear.

Hope over hatred.

Hope over ignorance.

What do you choose?



 














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beautifully distracted

2/22/2015

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Picture













Amid high fashion in last weeks WSJ Spring Fashion Issue, I found artist and poet Etel Adnan. A woman who quietly creates in two genres.

http://www.eteladnan.com

As we become more attached to our electronic fixes, twitter feed, instagram postings, whatever distracts and entertains, the artist in us waits. Instead of creating, I am on Pinterest looking at what other people have created . . . it is one thing to be inspired, another to use my precious time unwisely.

The muse, mine is less like an ephemeral angel, and more like Medusa, blows in furious and loud, asking pointed questions and making opinionated observations.

so when are you getting off that computer? 

put it down, put down the phone.

the child is talking to you, look at his face.

another episode of House of Cards, really?

you do know there is no discernible subtlety in texts?

didn't you look at your Facebook page ten minutes ago? 

didn't you look at your Facebook page fifteen minutes ago?

We are a bunch of easily distracted animals. Distraction does not make for good art. (Nor does it enrich our relationships.) The beauty of my sitting on my bed in my pajamas typing while listening to Spotify is its seductive ease. I am beautifully distracted.


If Etel had spent her time googling the life out of herself, what a vast wealth of wonder we would have lost. And what are we losing of our own creative life by hiding in our increasingly vapid cyber-worlds? Even the word "friend" has been cheapened. Becoming a friend takes time, usually years of nurturing reciprocal entanglement. A friend on Facebook may be someone you don't know or even care to know. But we have 238 of them, and suddenly we are all in high school again aching to be popular.

Some gentle suggestions:

call your friend (the real one) just to hear her voice.
hug a child.
pet a dog.

read a book, a real paper and ink book. Murakami preferably.
and stop reading this blog entry, go for a long walk, then come back home and create something exquisitely your own.

Oh, if you didn't read the article, Etel is 90 years old. 















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    My writing often deals with the environment, my poetry filled with allusions to natural and man-made disasters. I have unlimited hope though; there is just too much wonder in this world to become a defeatist. To quote Margaret J. Wheatley, '"Hopelessness has surprised me with patience."

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