Idea-byte No. 4

There is a book I read half of a while ago, likely within the past year or so: The Mindful Way through Depression
by Williams and others (2007). For those who live in Kingston, it is in the public library's collection so you may explore it free of charge. It comes with a cd with short guided mindfulness-type practices, which is another good reason to know about it. On another 5 x 7 cue card from my desk, I found some jots I had made while reading the book including text from page 29:

"If we're convinced we're 'no good' or unworthy, how likely are we to pursue the things that we value in life?".

The invitation (and challenge for some, if not all) is to offer to one's own self compassion, kindness, gentleness, caring--to offer warmth to one's self, the way we offer warmth to another. You matter and so do your dreams.

Idea-byte No. 3

I'll stick to the same cue card as from the last post, which features jots taken from What Is Your Life's Work? by Bill Jensen. Today's idea-byte (in this instance a question to ponder):

"What is the legacy of your choices?"

Building on this, I might add:

"What do you want the legacy of your choices to be?"

Consider your vision for that and do something today that supports that vision--something that makes it lived and real.

Idea-byte No. 2

Today's idea-byte is taken from a white cue card, 5" x 7" in size, with text written on the lined side:

"What deserves your precious 1440 minutes every day?"
"What doesn't?"

from What Is Your Life's Work? by Bill Jensen.

Sticky-notes and cue cards: Introducing Idea-Bytes...

I've been spring cleaning this January. One of my goals--an on-going one--was to make headway with the papers that have been collecting on my desk. As I was saying to a friend this evening, I really enjoy having a clear desk yet in my home office of sorts I find this difficult to accomplish, and even more difficult to maintain.

I did make progress today on the organization front, which is great, although my desk does not fully reflect the accomplishment. While tackling one section of desktop about 6 square inches in size, I began looking through a collection of cue cards that have gathered: cards on which I have jotted little notes, questions, bits of information to remember or ponder. Over the next while, I might use them as inspiration for the blog, providing samples from this well-established habit of mine of jotting little bits of ideas I think of or encounter onto little bits of papers when they come. Cue cards, sticky notes, little notepad papers, and those letter-sized yellow note pad pages are common receptacles for my latest jot.

(As a sidebar, I might mention that I really don't enjoy writing on those yellow notepads but they are a staple in my workplace where some of my jotting down inevitably happens.)

Selected from no particular order, here is today's sample, which I will call Idea-byte One:

Forget about perfection. The object is to set in motion a higher order for your life. --Cheryl Richardson, best-selling author of the useful book, Take Time for Your Life.

My cat circles the coffee table counter-clockwise...

For at least a few months now, my beautiful, loving, aging white cat has developed a new peculiarity. In my home, the main daytime living area aside from my workspace is a medium to large sized rectangular room divided into two by function. Approximately one half of the room (the south) is dedicated to the kitchen and the other half of the room (the north) is dedicated to the living room. It is in the north half of that room where you will find in my home a blue loveseat that was passed on to me from family who no longer needed it, and a few feet in front of that, a solid wood coffee table (I think it is oak) that was also passed along.

Sadie, my cat, has had many favourite lounging places over the months and years. These seem to change like seasons with old ones fading and new ones coming into view. (This, to me, is similar to some of my own preferences and habits that stay for a while, then fade, with new ones inevitably emerging.) Lying on a cushion on the loveseat or on the back of it, on either the north or south side, has been among those favoured places in Sadie's repertoire over time. Currently, it is the back of the loveseat that draws her interest more than the seat. Why she prefers this, I do not fully understand, since it is cooler up top, being right beside the west facing window against which the winter winds routinely blow. (In contrast, my own preference is to largely avoid sitting on the loveseat for leisure during winter as I find I often feel chilled while sitting there.)

Sadie's current preference for the back of the couch, however, is not the peculiarity. It is the method that has evolved for her getting there. Before making an ascent from the hardwood floor, she circles the coffee table counter-clockwise...several times. She saunters around the table's perimeter and when she arrives at the south side of the loveseat she pauses and looks up toward the seat or the back. I am not sure what happens internally at that point but most often she continues on her walking way, circling the coffee table's perimeter again, then pauses and looks up, then circles again. My observations have not been astute enough to determine if she circles the table the same number of times each time before jumping onto the loveseat or if the number varies.

What this routine is about, I have no idea, though I am intensely curious. Is she assessing when it is the right time to jump? Has she set a goal to get more exercise and these are some of her strategies to do so, something like baby steps in the implementation of the total goal? Is it a feline method of paying homage to... to what?

What are your thoughts? I invite you to share your own hypothesis or explanation for this. All creative, funny, moving, and scientific ideas are welcome.

January greetings!

December Greetings

The portion of the days that is filled with light is getting larger. I take comfort in this.

After a few years' hiatus, this year I decided to write a letter of December greetings to send to friends. Here it is for you in nearly unabridged form complete with a few extras. I greet you today, this minute as you visit here, with kindness. While greeting you, the soft light of a candle gently glows from my desktop just to my right and a pine cone someone painted with gold and sparkles unobtrusively shimmers.

The letter:

December greetings,

I am curious: do you enjoy receiving "Christmas letters" folded into the cards that arrive to you, or not? For me, I do enjoy hearing from people and these notes -- thanks -- and I also wonder if sometimes the template Christmas letter can feel a bit, well, I don't know, like something is missing...

With that, I send one of my own.

Oh the glory that the Lord has made and the complications you could do without

I heard a song on the radio recently that quickly drew me in. It was likely these brief lyrics--and the feel of the song--that led me to sit down beside the speakers to listen, to sit on the little wooden rocking chair my grandfather made, to take a gamble that the potato water boiling vigorously on the stove would not rush over the lip of the pot and spill.

The song was Casimir Pulaski Day by Sufjan Stevens. While listening, I experienced a panoply of images and senses combining memory, imagination, recognition: the nice feeling that can come form a neck being kissed; the dense, weighted, and overwhelming energy of sadness that can come when someone dies; images of beauty and wonder and kindness and love and pain and loss. Oh the glory and the complications.

I wonder what kind of year it has been for you? What glory? What complications? Maybe you felt glory in the complications. Maybe not.

I have experienced my own version of "the full catastrophe" as Jon Kabat-Zinn has put it with what has felt like more experiences on the draining side than on the renewing. One example: I've had the most incredible experience with a tenant and her father that eventually resulted in her eviction -- they excelled at not telling the truth and at not paying their rent and showing incredible disregard and disrespect. The situation evolved into a long, exasperating saga. It could be said it gave me an opportunity to dig deep and stand up for and assert myself. It could also be said it felt, at times, like it could do me in and was deeply disheartening with respect to the lack of virtues being displayed by the pair. Was there glory in this complication? Right now, I am worn out, angry, likely hurt.

Sometimes, also, I am dancing.

Over the year, I have put out the world more publicly some of my desires. I have taken risks as I try to move toward a balance of work that works well for me on many fronts. I have made some progress. I am not there yet. I continue on the path of trying to take care of my health and the whole of all that that means. I have had some new health complications. I continue to grow and unfold and develop. I have made some "art that works" rather than much in the way of works of art. I have wept deeply, laughed hard at times, and persevered. I have felt moved and touched by many people and many things. I have watched the sun dip below the horizon with the most extraordinary fanfare including lavish displays of colour; the moon fantastically large and orange standing, peering, rising, and glowing; tree roots tangled and woven by years and stories, conversing with the wind and traveling toward deep pools.

I think of a story I heard recently about a young neighbour of mine who is about 5 years old. A few years' ago, I had the opportunity to greet him each day along my walk to work. That autumn, he greeted me in return each day with the gift of a fallen leaf. He would see me coming and start looking for the leaf he would give me that day. I loved those gifts, his enthusiasm, and his smiles. As the more recent story goes: this year or last, he decided to dress up as the wind for Hallowe'en. He would go to people's homes and introduce himself, "I am the wind...whoosh". He would make a whooshing kind of sound. This is a boy after my own heart.

If you are feeling very sad when this note arrives and the holidays descend whether wanted or not, then what? This is a question I think about a lot. If you are feeling very burdened or angry or not, then what? If you are feeling worried or scared? If you are feeling any of these and it was autumn and we lived nearby, I would offer you a freshly fallen leaf, bright and golden. Although it is not autumn and you do not live nearby, I offer one to you just the same. I offer it not because I believe it can remove the weighted weighted weighted complications -- if only -- if only it could -- but because I want you to have it. And I am thinking of you. And I want to reach out across the chasm and say, hello. Also, there is something about a golden or fiery leaf just as there is something about a stone, a shell, a handful of sand or one grain, a maple key or other seed, a landscape of freshly fallen white snow... There is just something about all of htat that makes me want to say, "Here, something for you, to breathe with, to hold...".

And if you are feeling fine, excited, warm, delighted, I offer you also this leaf, and I also say, hello.

I look up

into the faces of stars,

into their deep silence.

--Mary Oliver

I look up into the faces of the stars and I breathe in and out and I offer my hope and my wish and my earnest prayer that you may be safe, that you may be healthy, that you may be happy, that you may be at ease. I offer the prayer that you may have access to the comfort and support of others, to shelter and wonderful food, and to kindness--from others, yes, and also from your own most precious self.

Something opens our wings. Something, and many things.

_______________

* "Something opens our wings" is a line from a poem by Rumi. The lines by Mary Oliver are from her poem (and book) The Leaf and The Cloud. The Sufjan Stevens song is from his album, Illinoise.

"Casimir Pulaski Day" by Sufjan Stevens

Here is a video for the song, Casimir Pulaski Day, by Sufjan Stevens. I find watching the video makes me feel a bit dizzy so I prefer to simply close my eyes or look away and listen. I wanted to provide this, however, to give those who haven't heard the song, an easy and free way to hear it. Having said this, you could purchase the song from itunes for 99 cents and support Sufjan, or you could purchase the whole album, Illinoise, wherever you like. It's an interesting album that I've enjoyed.