Attention

Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

I’ve seen these two lines from Mary Oliver’s poem, The Summer Day, several times. They are usually quoted by themselves, separate from the longer poem. Usually, they are called upon to remind us that our lives are precious, that we each get to live only one life. We’d best have a plan to use it for something worthy, meaningful or enriching. Not waste it. Live with intention.

Today, for some reason,  I felt compelled to read the whole poem and to see those lines in context. I was shocked, I tell you. Shocked! The point was different than I thought it was. Although I do  believe that being intentional about how we live our days is a critical factor in living a meaningful life—to make sure we aren’t frittering away our time on sitcom re-runs or caught in a high-stress cycle of busy work— Oliver’s poem isn’t, after all,  about goal-setting or making 5-year plans. Instead of being about intention,  it speaks about attention, which is related, but not at all the same.

Here’s the full poem:

The Summer Day

by Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

So what does Mary Oliver suggest I do with my one wild and precious life?

Pay attention.

Be idle and blessed.

I wish I could say I was good at this. I’m learning, but it’s taking a while. I’m the type of person who regularly loses my car in a parking lot. To be fair,  I am  directionally challenged and can get easily turned around, but it’s not just that. Mostly  I’m just not in my car when I leave it. Or rather, my body may turn off the ignition, remove my seat belt and lock the door, but my mind is already ten minutes ahead,  walking the aisles of the grocery store, navigating the mall, or ordering my coffee. I would waste less time if I just spent two minutes out of each hour breathing deeply and checking in with my surroundings. That way, I might actually appreciate the smell of the daphne blooming on the bush by my front door. I might see the insanely green fronds of the sword fern unfurling just off the pathway. I might spend a few moments studying the way a bird nibbles on a single seed at the feeder.

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

Pausing long enough to look—really look—at something is a form of meditation that will slow your breath, lower your blood pressure, and calm your stress.

Really looking at something and being grateful for it is the best sort of prayer.

Bartering for Loveliness

There’s an advantage to being forthright about your passions: people find opportunities to feed them. This week, my daughter Sarah, while doing an English assignment, came across a poem by Sara Teasdale she thought I might enjoy. Not that she cared at all about the poem, of course. She just thought I would like it.

And I did. I wasn’t that familiar with Teasdale’s work. I knew she was a poet because I’ve come across her name frequently in crossword puzzles. But knowing the spelling of her name is about as close as I’d come to reading anything by her.

The poem was “Barter.” The first line is a stunner:  “Life has loveliness to sell.”

It’s an intriguing idea. We all want lovely, meaningful moments in our lives, but what cost would we pay to get them? Teasdale offers an answer: anything and everything. The last stanza of Teasdale’s poem reads:

Spend all you have for loveliness,

Buy it and never count the cost;

For one white singing hour of peace

Count many a year of strife well lost,

And for a breath of ecstasy

Give all you have been, or could be.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about the cost of following one’s passion. It’s been a while since I’ve been stretched this thin. In the past couple of weeks, I’ve had a lot on my plate. In addition to spending time in art classes and on art homework, I made a commitment to speak to a group of people about writing life stories, which took a fair amount of time to prepare for. Plus, my application for the art therapy program at Marylhurst was due last Tuesday. It had about 10 different parts to it, including three pieces of writing. And, of course, I wanted to keep up with my weekly blog posts.

In addition, Sarah had swim meets each week for which Doug and I were timers. Then the sump pump in our basement broke when we were having record rains in Oregon. Last week, Sarah hurt her back diving and needed to see the doctor. Then our college student daughter Kate called and said she’d like to come home for the weekend (hurray!)—and that she’d like to bring five friends with her. “Absolutely,” I said, and tracked down air mattresses and towels and stocked up on pizza and chips. Not to be left out, Sarah said she’d like to have two of her friends join the slumber party. Doug and I looked at each other. Two more people wouldn’t make a difference. They were all great kids—all nine of them. I didn’t want to say no, regardless of how busy I was.

And that’s the point. All these demands that threatened to overload my life were things I had invited on purpose because I loved them. Well, that’s not strictly true; I could live without the sump pump repair. But all the rest—art classes, art homework, writing, teaching, parenting—are types of loveliness I would happily spend all of my emotional and physical capital to obtain.

There is a cost, of course. I had to let some things go. Actually, I had to let a lot of things go.  Here’s a partial list:

• Cooking (Not necessarily a bad thing, in my case). We’ve eaten a lot of Costco casseroles.
• Cleaning my house (Poor Doug. He’s been vacuuming like a wild thing.)
• Reading for pleasure. I can’t tell you the last time I got lost in a good mystery or read a magazine. This is quite a departure for me.
• Sleep
• Getting my hair cut. I finally raided Sarah’s stash of elastics and bobby pins just to keep my hair out of my face while I’m painting.
• Shopping for anything—groceries, dish soap, cute shoes.

So, I ask myself, is it worth it? What am I hoping to gain from  my crammed schedule, the barely-keeping-up-with-everything pace, and my shaggy hair? My answer? I’m getting the loveliness life has to sell. There was a moment last weekend when I was sitting in our living room working on a drawing assignment. I was deeply absorbed in my work, but occasionally I’d catch a conversation between Kate and her friends discussing their classes, their friendships, or their futures.  I heard the laughter of Sarah and her friends from the other room. Doug was in the kitchen, mixing another batch of dough to turn into cinnamon rolls or a loaf of ciabatta bread, which I would later eat with too much butter.

These are the moments worth having, for which I will barter quite a lot. The ironing and dusting can wait. We can eat Costco casseroles. I’ll catch up on sleep when I can. I’ve paid for these moments, and I plan to enjoy them.

Breathing Lessons

The vacation was over, the holiday done. This week, I returned home, unpacked my suitcase, and set about dealing with the inevitable return to normal life. It’s been very cold lately, even for an Oregon winter, and I’ve been bundling up in turtleneck sweaters and thick socks. I’ve been drinking hot beverages.

I’ve also been a little bit anxious and unsettled, trying not to panic over piles of unopened mail on my desk or my growing To Do List. I shuddered when I opened my email inbox.

So what did I do? I went out for coffee. To Peet’s, with Doug. I ordered a medium, non-fat latte in a ceramic mug. Many of the people who work at Peet’s seemed happy to see us and welcomed us warmly.

After draining our cups, we decided to take a long walk. We have several routes we often follow, but chose instead to walk down to a new park in our town that runs along the banks of the Willamette River. I say “new.” The park has been there for many years, but we had not yet taken the time to see it.

Down the hill we walked, crunching through fallen autumn leaves. I pulled up the collar of my coat and buried my hands deep in my pockets. I noticed the steam rising off the surface of the river, the water warmer than the air.

The park was silent and deserted. Our only company was a flock of geese that settled on a grassy field. Even they were quiet. I felt something inside me start to settle and shift. Ahhh.

And then, at the end of the path, we came upon a circle of tall basalt pillars–I think they’re called steles. It was a sculpture commemorating the poetry of William Stafford, a man who lived and taught in the area for much of his life, a Poet Laureate, and a favorite son of my city. He died in 1993, but his work has captured the attention of our community, and I am deeply moved my much of his poetry.

Most of these pillars–I’ll call them the Stafford Stones–were polished on one surface and engraved with sentences, fragments really, of Stafford’s poetry. Things like:

“The river keeps looking for the perfect stone” or

“Oregon is insanely green. It is the thin light left over from Eden” or, my favorite,

“The stream is always revising. Water is always ready to learn.”

One pillar didn’t have a polished side. Instead, words were cut into the rough surface, sentences circling the stone itself. I had to walk around and around the stone to read:

Before you have your dreams, your dreams have you.

I turn my eyes carefully.

I am loyal to the place where I happen to live.

At that moment, I certainly felt loyal to this small city of mine, to the people in this place who thought it was a good idea to create this oasis of words.

There was one pillar, however, the polished side of which carried a longer poem. Its title literally beckoned me. I stepped up before it:

In case you can’t make out the photograph, it reads:

You Reading This, Be Ready

Starting here, what do you want to remember?

How sunlight creeps along a shining floor?

What scent of old wood hovers, what softened

sound from outside fills the air?

 

Will you ever bring a better gift for the world

than the breathing respect that you carry

wherever you go right now? Are you waiting

for time to show you some better thoughts?

 

When you turn around, starting here, lift this

new glimpse that you found, carry into evening

all that you want from this day. This interval you spent

reading or hearing this, keep it for life–

 

What can anyone give you greater than now,

starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?

The poem, from the Stafford book, The Way It Is, stunned me. I stood before the stone, stilled. Everything in me circled and swirled at my feet, and quieted. Notice this moment, a voice said. Feel how cold your face is, your fingers. Feel how the breeze coming up off the river ruffles your hair. Hear the rustling of small birds in the barren bushes at your feet. See the pebbled path. Slow down and pay attention. It doesn’t get better than this.

I breathed air deeply into my lungs and let it all out. The tensions of a frazzled morning slipped and fell away. I had already witnessed miracles that day: a warm cup of coffee with my husband, a welcoming community of baristas who are also friends, a crisp Oregon day with no rain, the black and white beauty of winter geese, a quiet park all to myself. I had been ready to overlook them all. Instead, this poem slowed me down long enough to see.

I don’t need “better thoughts.” There is no better gift I can give the world than my breathing, respectful attention.

 

 

Art Journaling with Scissors and Starfish

I’d already made my purchases at the art supply store. I’d signed my credit card receipt and wished the sales clerk a nice day. On my way out the door, Doug held up a book.

“Have you seen this one?” he asked.

Nope, I hadn’t. After paging through it for a few minutes, I was back at the sales counter and pulling out my credit card again. The book was Raw Art Journaling: Making Meaning, Making Art, by Quinn McDonald. The thing that I liked best about the book was that much of her work blends images and words. Plus, right there on page 19 she has printed a beautifully designed Permission Slip, granting carte blanche permission to engage in whatever creative enterprise you feel you’d like to pursue if you could get past the nagging idea that someone else had to tell you it was okay.

So this week, I decided I would grant myself permission to make art, and I decided to use an idea from McDonald’s book:  Found Poetry. The idea behind this project is that you don’t intentionally “write” a poem; you discover it. You start by collecting printed words from something you don’t mind cutting to shreds and paying attention to how those cut-out words speak to you. It’s sort of like those magnetic poetry sets you stick on your refrigerator. In this project, however, you get to choose the words as well.  As McDonald writes, “found poetry helps your inner perfectionist let go and relax.” Speaking as someone whose inner perfectionist is pretty tightly wound, I thought I’d try it. Here’s how my project went:

Step 1: Discovering Words

The first step was to collect a random assortment of words. I picked up a Land’s End catalogue that had just arrived in the mail and started thumbing through pages. When I found words that caught my eye, I cut them from the page. If you’re anything like me, your inner editor wants to leap out at this point and grab the scissors from your hand, telling you things like “That’s a stupid word. You would never use flannel in poetry.” This inner editor is also, at this point, terribly worried about the finished product, thinks it will be a disaster and wants to start actually writing the poem. I just had to tell her to relax, pour her a glass of wine, and keep cutting out words without knowing how I would use them. I ended up with quite an assortment.

 

Step 2: Creating a Surface

Because I was placing this in my spiral art journal, and because my inner editor was worried about messing up the clean pages, I decided to do the project on a separate 5″ x 7″ sheet of watercolor paper. The paper is thick enough to hold up to wet paint, but thin enough to glue into my journal later. I could have decided to work directly in my journal. Either way, to create a nice background for the words, I painted the paper with a wash of acrylic paint in a nice warm yellow.

 

Step 3:  Playing With Words

The next step was to start putting words together. It often helps to have a journaling prompt or a question in mind while working. My prompt was a gift from a friend who asked me last week: “If you could have the answer to one question, what would that question be?” I let the prompt play in the background of my mind while I moved words around. It felt like working a jigsaw puzzle, fitting this word with that one, mixing them up, seeing what fit. It actually helped to have a limited set of words to work with. Sometimes imposed structure eliminates confusion. I gave myself permission to go back to the catalogue if there was a particular word I wanted but hadn’t yet cut out–words like “the” and “and.” After about 15 or 20 minutes I had a poem. It only used about 36 words out of the 100 or so I cut out. I’m keeping all the leftovers in a file for another project.

Step 4: Finding Poetry

Next I laid my words out on my canvas, trying out different orientations, spacing, arrangements. I decided to include the image of a starfish that I’d found since it worked with my theme. When I had it the way I wanted, I glued the words down using Mod Podge. Acrylic medium would have worked as well. So would white glue or even a glue stick.

 

Step 5: Goofing Around

Finally, once everything was in place and the glue was dry, I decided to finish up by coloring on the canvas. Actually, I just wanted an excuse to play with one of my new favorite art media–Caran D’Ache Neocolors. They are really just grown-up crayons, waxy and thick. However, they can be smudged a little like pastels and they are water-soluble, so you can paint with them as well. Great fun. I colored and smudged and painted until I decided I was done.

The final poem reads:

You cling to the exceptional.

You look for the absolute and dream of unparalleled beauties.

Yet …

There’s an ease and comfort

Which comes from Good Enough.

The hidden, little starfish is one of nature’s best ideas.

I would never have thought these sentences could come from a Land’s End catalogue, right along with winter scarves, rain boots and warm sweaters.

Step 6: Figuring Out What It Means

I glued the piece into my journal and wrote over it the question that was my prompt. The next step is to write to the piece, one sentence or many, to explore what the imagery and found words are saying to me. I’m not sure yet what it means, but I’m looking forward to finding out.

For Suzanne, by Bev Allen

[Written for the memorial service of her neice, Suzanne Allen, age 34]

 

I have seen what many may not,

The world from a place atop

With glistening snow and sunshine bright.

Stars that shine so bright at night.

For who could be closer to the face of God

On top of mountains I have trod

The world, my playground, with

Valleys deep and friends abound

I’ve gotten to meet.

My own path allowed to choose

Alone. Myself alone could I amuse.

And now my spirit soars above. My life

I did not live in vain.

I did not  mean to cause your pain.

Perhaps one day they all shall

See those wondrous things

That have been shown to me.

And seeing, see the lovely things of earth

And knowing get beyond the pain,

For my life was lived not in vain.

Next Page →