BardBliss: A Moment

Nothing like sheets that have hung outside to dry.

Listening to: This song is overdone and then she comes along and does this.

Today's Bliss Formula: Waiting to hear if we are headed out to dinner with friends this evening. That would be lovely. A changeable day outside -- many thick, gray clouds, then some sun, and back again. A lot of bird activity.

A Moment

You are taking a mid
afternoon nap; there is a cat
in every puddle of sun
around you.
Smells of mud and promises
float in on pre-spring breezes
through doors and windows --
their capacity for opening almost
forgotten in attempts to keep out
unwanted cold.

The house is still; sounds
of summer -- screaming children,
barking dogs, motorcycles --
long enough away to be remembered
with sentimental smiles.
The clock is ticking
as I walk up the stairs,
carrying a basket of folded laundry
and wearing a short sleeved shirt.

For once, all of this does
not escape me.
I stop and hush my self
in the middle of the steps.
I hear your sleeping breath
and observe dust particles
dancing in sunlight on the landing
and I think, this is it.
And it’s plenty.

--christine c. reed

BardBliss: Burnt

From our city arboretum, LEAF.

Listening to: She looks so young here...and where are the feathers?

Today's Bliss Formula: A slow day amongst old trees in a place where cars cannot even be heard. Off the beaten path, truly.

Burnt

The fire of the sun
greeted me daily, burned
me from the moment of my
birth, left its mark upon
my flesh.

And for many days, I stared
at, picked at, pointed out
my scars to others. With pride,
I bore my burned flesh
in public like prized jewels.

For many hot afternoons, I
became my scars. In the mirror,
there was no me, only them.
I admired their pink ridged softness
and gave each a name.

Until a violet-orange sunset
came with a soft rain and after --
a gentle breeze and after --
the glow of the full moon
and her luminescent halo

poured over my burnt flesh.

And with the kiss of night
I danced naked under the dark
blanket of stars and the ridges
disappeared one by one
until there was just me.

--christine c. reed

BardBliss: Rumi & Freedom from Habit

Spiderwort out back.

Listening to: Some Persian folk music made modern.

Today's Bliss Formula: A windy, gray day, threatening to rain. I will appreciate the rain for the ground and the plants and not get stressed about the wee drip we got last night. We have lived in this house for over nine years and not once had a single problem. I will give up the habit of over-reaction and instead remain in gratitude.

From The Essential Rumi
Translations by Coleman Barks
with John Moyne

It's a habit of yours to walk slowly.
You hold a grudge for years.
With such heaviness, how can you be modest?
With such attachments, do you expect to arrive anywhere?

Be wide as the air to learn a secret.
Right now you're equal portions clay
and water, thick mud.

Abraham learned how the sun and moon and the stars all set.
He said, No longer will I try to assign partners for God.

You are so weak. Give up to grace.
The ocean takes care of each wave
till it gets to shore.
You need more help than you know.
You're trying to live your life in open scaffolding.
Say Bismillah, In the name of God,
as the priest does with a knife when he offers an animal.

Bismillah your old self
to find your real name.


Do you know your real name? Are you living from habit and not spontaneous reaction and joy? What comfort is holding you back from the life you could be living?

BardBliss: Tree Pose

The tree I was looking at when I wrote this.
But I was sitting inside. Eating pastries.
That tasted like Paris.

Listening to: Oh, the outfits!

Today's Bliss Formula: After an early morning of much-needed rain, the sun is out. The wind is brisk and singing the wind chimes. I can see the two varieties of Clematis on our mail box from where I am writing and they are beginning to open.


Tree Pose

The tree out front is dancing;
her arms reaching, straining
to sky.
If you don’t look closely,
you will think she is
standing still.
But she dances with frenzy,
with joy, emanating
clear light.

I ache for her abandon;
I, whose feet are not
bound to earth, ache
to move freely,
to abide
in the big mind
of the big sky,
to caress the air
and sing the winds,
to cleanse
breath.

BardBliss: Upside Down and Backwards

A detail from downtown.

Listening to right now: Some Hip-Hop Flamenco from Barcelona Ojos de Brujo (Wizard Eyes)

Today's Bliss Formula: An empty day on my iCal -- and a long weekend ahead with sun and warmer temperatures. Tonight a fire with wine and friends.

Upside Down and Backwards

In the harness of a catamaran
on the lake on a warm
and breezy summer day,
I stretched toward the sky
and let go of the ropes.
My toes slid along the smooth
edge of the boat, playing the slick
edge, tip toeing, daring.
My hair whipped my face
and I opened my heart
and dropped my head back
into the water.

It rushed over my crown
as my eyes upside down
and backward saw water
on top of sky. My body melted
and the harness disappeared
as I cut through the gray green
atop the blue, flying through
life, for a moment,
upside down and backwards.

I thought I might split open,
beginning at my sternum,
and my heart would escape
from its cage and descend
to the sky.

(copyright blisschick)

When in your life have you felt your heart open? What were you doing? Why aren't you doing it more?

BlissQuest: Better Living through Haiku

Cherry Blossoms along the edge of the cemetery.

Listening to right now: Sakura, Sakura (a traditional Japanese folk song depicting spring, which originally had the lyrics "blooming cherry blossoms")

Today's Happiness Formula: The sound of traditional Japanese music mixing with the birds outside. The sun warming. Barely a breeze (an odd day when you live on a Great Lake).

Following My Bliss By: Working on one of my children's book ideas. Making notes for a work of nonfiction that is floating around in my brain. Taking time to read a great book I am into right now about Merton, Day, O'Connor, and Percy, and the power of reading and writing.

Today is day eleven of the Flower Moon, which means we are a few days from the full moon. The "Flower Moon" is just one name for it; it is also called Milk, Dragon, Planting, Bright, and Hare Moon by various traditions.

Knowing the name of the moon attaches me to the larger cycles, cycles that we are no longer aware of since we can buy strawberries in December.

And I have become aware since the spring I started to really pay attention.

For an entire spring one year, every day, I wrote notes about the weather and what was growing (something I do now in my regular journal along with noting the moon day), and I would write a draft of at least one new poem, sometimes many more.

wind sings through wind chimes
wind dances through tree branches
sky drops small rain drops

(all haiku copyright me)

For the entirety of the following summer, I wrote, at minimum, one new haiku every day. And they are like potato chips -- once you write one, you write another and another...

birdhouse painted blue
a small spot of sky and lake
brought into this yard

This exercise taught me so much. First of all, it taught me a lot about natural cycles. For instance, each season really is equal in length.

I know this sounds funny, but many people take weather very personally (I used to be one of these folk), and so we judge weather and seasons as 'good' and 'bad.' Summer being the best and therefore seeming the shortest in our negative attitude-marred perceptions.

But really, they are all quite equal, and when you mark them day to day to day, you notice that you aren't getting "ripped off" at all. You also start to notice the grace and beauty in the uniqueness of each season.

And things start to feel...right. Ordered.

gentle morning rain
weighing heavy on flowers
pink petunias bow

Winter was no longer something to "survive," but something to pay attention to. Standing at the bus stop, the silence of a snow storm as it blanketed the park across from me. The tiniest sign of things to come. I took note. I began to feel like I was a small, sparkling piece of a large and grand puzzle.

red bird on white snow
covered branches dipping down
touching dreams of green

As I have mentioned before, depression is susceptible to attention, like Superman to kryptonite. Paying attention is not what depression requires; depression requires a brain fog, a denial of life, a saying "no."

Haiku is about saying "yes."

"Yes" to it all, to every detail, to every little mundane-seeming inch of it.

And so we have Haiku no Michi, the Way of Haiku. A "religion," if you will, in the best, most expansive use of that term.

Religion is what D.H. Lawrence calls "setting the little
life in the circle of the greater life"; it is sweeping
a room as if sweeping the universe; it is paring your
nails as if you life depended on it; it is winding
your watch just before you are executed.

--R.H. Blyth (THE dude of Haiku)

When you pay attention like this, everything is always okay, even in the "worst"of times. Someone is sick? But they are alive in this moment. You lost your job? But right now, you are still breathing and able to eat and have a roof.

Every moment becomes an opportunity. An opening.

You are a peony in the spring, about to burst.

bike rider and bird
meet briefly at heart center
oh, soft life

The Way of Haiku requires some commitments that are antithetical to the fast, gathering, desperate life that we are told we should want to live:

1. Slow: You can't be rushing to the store, to an appointment, to the store again...haiku are lost if you are breathless.

2. Steady: You must be rooted or your tree will not bear this particular fruit.

3. Simple: In words and in your surroundings. Too much clutter of your physical environment, as we all know, clutters our minds.

4. Sensual: Open all those senses. Learn bird songs. Smell every flower. Feel the bark on the trees.

Applying the Way of Haiku to your life, will lead to:

5. Sane: Your boundaries will strengthen; you'll know, once and for all, what is important to you and you will protect it with the reverence it deserves.

Just hear the birds and
the breeze and the bees and let
all else fall away

Let all else fall away...let the "no" fall away...let the sad fall away...let the aggression, the violence, the self-hatred...let it all fall away like the leaves off the trees in autumn.

Just say "yes," even if at first, you must only whisper...

EverydayBliss: Wherever You Go, There You Are

A stately, old tree downtown at our planetarium.

Listening to right now: The Silk String Quartet

Today's Happiness Formula: A bit of a lie in (obviously, since I am posting so late!). New music transferred to the iMac.

Following My Bliss By: Working on an essay that has been too long in the making. Getting back to daily yoga; I've been off my schedule, and being a schedule cat, I must be more faithful.

By the time I was 18 years old, my family had moved 19 times.

Yes, you read that right -- 19 times in 18 years.

The longest I ever lived in one place, consecutively, was 5 years. And so you can calculate that there were years when we moved more than once in a twelve month span.

I learned to fit in and make friends quickly. But I also learned to let them go just as quickly. I learned that friends and places and experiences were all impermanent, interchangeable, short term blips to be moved on from and forgotten.

Forgotten was best; it didn't hurt as much if you could compartmentalize it.

My partner had the exact opposite experience, being raised in one house and moving for the first time to go to college.

We have lived in this house -- a house named "lilypad" -- for over 9 years. At about year 3 and 4, I experienced a major itch. It was time to move, my internal clock almost screamed. How better to clean through your stuff? I would research places; we would visit them.

Then I would cry at the thought of leaving all that we have planted here -- the trees, the tulips, the lilac, the friendships. Finally, by about year 6, I got over having this periodic moving itch and settled in for the long haul. I can't imagine moving. Leaving this small plot of land upon which we have experienced so much, into which we have grown deep, fat roots.

Tap roots.

Trees have one or another type of root system. Tap roots are the roots that go straight down, dig deep, don't sprawl toward the surface. These trees can be placed close to structures, so they make excellent city trees. If you try to move them, most likely you will kill them.

The other type of roots stay close to the surface, sprawl. They are shallow rooted and will easily fall over in a strong storm. They don't have the staying power of a tap rooted tree.

I'm a tap-rooted tree now and proud of it.

I am recovering from a disease that seems rampantly communicable in this culture: Movingitis.

This disease is actually attached to many other diseases.

Sprawl. We are eating up our countryside in the name of finding greener pastures, which may be greener...until we get there and dig them up and throw down McMansions with poison-lawns, on which we allow our pets and children to play.

Disconnect. People are so busy moving, looking, hoping for something better -- like changing channels on the TV in case there is a better program on -- that they miss out on what is around them. They miss out on long-term, deep relationships with people, with places, with trees.

Unhappiness. I fear that Movingitis is not a disease but rather a symptom that plays out like an individuated virus -- hiding the underlying cause, which is a soul-sickness. We are convinced that there is something wrong with us and that the right car, the right house, the right town will fix it.

Think about it. In all of human history, we are the first to move for moving's sake. And like art for art's sake, this is a purely masturbatory impulse. It's all about temporarily feeling good or feeling startled into feeling something.

People used to move because there was a real, outside threat: another clan attacking them or bad weather depleting food sources.

But we move to run. We run from ourselves. And for a while it feels good. We have a new place to learn so we feel stimulated. We have to get settled so we feel productively occupied. We have new people to meet -- people for whom we can be a brand new person if we so choose.

But after a year or two or five, we are still the same, unsatisfied person, and we are angry that this move didn't do it, didn't make us feel complete...and so we move again.

I have lived many places. They are all essentially the same; all towns have good and bad. But mostly they are the same, because we are the same person, no matter where we are.

Remember: tap-rooted trees don't fall down in storms.

What kind of tree are you?

A poem for this topic, by moi:

No Matter Where You Are

Stop saying that you are
from some place else.
Pay attention to the ground that is
under your feet.
Take off your shoes, and
go barefoot in the grasses,
in the sands, in
the waters, in the here,
in the now, in this
right place.

Stop saying that you are
from some place else.
Claim the land
of your birth.
Get on your knees and
put your hands in
the dirt, pull out
weeds by their roots,
plant seeds.
Stay and watch
them sprout and
grow. Care
for them, know
them all.

Stop saying that you are
from some place else.
Lift your face to this
sky, breathe in
deep, feel the air
on your skin.
Open your eyes to
the clouds, open your
ears to the birds.

Be the native
that you
are.

EverydayBliss: A Bit of Earth Magic

The city cemetery, about 8 blocks from our house.

Listening to right now: The Corrs & Bono

Today's Happiness Formula: Being mothers to wonderful animals!

Following My Bliss by: Today I will be brave and print out applications for passports.

Blessing of the Nine Elements for All Occasions

May you go forth under the strength of heaven,
under the light of sun,
under the radiance of moon;

may you go forth with the splendour of fire,
with the speed of lightning,
with the swiftness of wind;

may you go forth supported by the depth of sea,
by the stability of earth,
by the firmness of rocks;

may you be surrounded and encircled,
above, below, and about,
with the protection of the nine elements.

--Caitlin Matthews, Celtic Devotional

EverydayBliss: Meditation with Emily Dickinson

Our front "prairie."

Listening to right now: Jolie Holland

Today's Happiness Formula: A sunny and extremely quiet Saturday -- as if everyone is gone and it's just us.

Following My Bliss by: Spending time outside, putting in baby lettuces and sweet peas and snapdragon's. Tending to the "grounds," as we like to teasingly call them.

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,
One clover, and a bee.
And revery.
The revery alone will do,
If bees are few.

--Emily Dickinson

I know many people find Emily a bit on the obscure side, but I think she comes down to some pretty simple (meaning basic, not easy) principles: mindfulness and expansiveness.

If we approach her poems like meditations -- as we should all poems, really -- eventually they reveal themselves to us.

Spend some time this weekend with this Emily. It seems particularly appropriate right now.

What prairie are you looking to create?

EverydayBliss: Red & Blue & Stories about Who We Are

A jumble of colors for this week that seemed to be about color.

Listening to right now: Club des Belugas with Dean Martin

Today's Happiness Formula: Breakfast made outside on the grill with our neighbor -- well, brunch, really.

This poem by Ted Hughes is from his collection Birthday Letters -- a collection, it turns out, that he had been writing since Sylvia Plath's death, when people had assumed he had chosen to never write about her.

One day he walked into his publisher's office and threw a manuscript on the desk, told him to go ahead with it, and walked out the door. The publisher was shocked at the content, to say the least.

Ted died shortly after. That story gives me chills every time.

This particular poem is about story and how sometimes we tell ourselves stories about who we are that are not only untrue but also destructive of our essence.

Red

Red was your colour.
If not red, then white. But red
Was what wrapped around you.
Blood-red. Was it blood?
Was it red-ochre, for warming the dead?
Haematite to make immortal
The precious heirloom bones, the family bones.

When you had your way finally
Our room was red. A judgement chamber.
Shut casket for gems. The carpet of blood
Patterned with darkenings, congealments.
The curtains -- ruby corduroy blood,
Sheer blood-falls from ceiling to floor.
The cushions the same. The same
Raw carmine along the window-seat.
A throbbing cell. Aztec altar -- temple.

Only the bookshelves escaped into whiteness.

And outside the window
Poppies thin and wrinkle-frail
As the skin on blood,
Salvias, that your father named you after,
Like blood lobbing from a gash,
And roses, the heart's last gouts,
Catastrophic, arterial, doomed.

Your velvet long full skirt, a swathe of blood,
A lavish burgundy.
Your lips a dipped, deep crimson.
You revelled in red.
I felt it raw -- like the crisp gauze edges
Of a stiffening wound. I could touch
The open vein in it, the crusted gleam.

Everything you painted you painted white
Then splashed it with roses, defeated it.
Leaned over it, dripping roses,
Weeping roses, and more roses,
Then sometimes, among them, a little blue
bird.

Blue was better for you. Blue was wings.
Kingfisher blue silks from San Francisco
Folded your pregnancy
In crucible caresses.
Blue was your kindly spirit -- not a ghoul
But electrified, a guardian, thoughtful.

In the pit of red
You hid from the bone-clinic whiteness.

But the jewel you lost was blue.

QuoteBliss: Rumi

Let yourself
be silently drawn
by the stronger pull
of what
you really
love.

--Rumi (trans. Coleman Barks)

QuoteBliss: Rilke

There is only a single, urgent task:
to attach oneself someplace to nature,
to that which is strong, striving, and bright
with unreserved readiness, and then
to move forward in one's efforts without any calculation or guile,
even when engaged in the most trivial and mundane activities.
Each time we thus reach out with joy, each time we cast our view
toward distances that have not yet been touched,
we transform not only the present moment and the one following
but also alter the past within us,
weave it into the pattern of our existence,
and dissolve the foreign body of pain
whose exact composition we ultimately do not know.
Just as we do not know how much vital energy
this foreign body, once it has been thus dissolved,
might impart into our bloodstream!

--Rainer Maria Rilke, (1875-1926), German poet, born in Bohemia

EverydayBliss: Big Sky & Hafiz

Out our back door.

Listening to right now: Edith Piaf

Today's Happiness Formula: Two rabbits in our backyard playing and jumping many feet into the air, over and over -- and managing not to crush one piece of asparagus!

We have not come here to take prisoners,
But to surrender ever more deeply
To freedom and joy.

We have not come into this exquisite world
To hold ourselves hostage from love.

Run my dear,
From anything
That may not strengthen
Your precious budding wings.

Run like hell my dear,
From anyone likely
To put a sharp knife
Into the sacred, tender vision
Of your beautiful heart.

We have a duty to befriend
Those aspects of obedience
That stand outside of our house
And shout to our reason
"Oh please, oh please,
Come out and play."

For we have not come here to take prisoners
Or to confine our wondrous spirits,

But to experience ever and ever more deeply
Our divine courage, freedom, and
Light!

--Hafiz

I did not intentionally pair Hafiz's poem with Edith Piaf, but now it seems perfect to me.

Edith with her precious wings and her tender heart -- wings and heart that so many people and circumstances tried to cut and tear and destroy, but wings and heart that she refused to fold or close.

Edith's life was short, but she took flight for every second of it.

Are you doing the same?

EverydayBliss: Rest

Just sit there right now
Don't do a thing
Just rest.
For your separation
from God,
from Love,
is the hardest work
in this world.

--Hafiz