April is National Poetry Month here in the US. I thought I would share one of my favorite poems by one of my favorite writers.

The Negro Speaks Of Rivers by Langston Hughes

I’ve known rivers:

I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the

flow of human blood in human veins.

 

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

 

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.

I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.

I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.

I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln

went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy

bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

 

I’ve known rivers:

Ancient, dusky rivers.

 

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I had to share this beautiful piece, by Ernest Holmes which I saw over at the blog of  BikramYogChick.

This is so beautiful. So beautiful. Enough Said.

She Let Go

“She let go. Without a thought or a word, she let go.

She let go of the fear. She let go of the judgments. She let go of the confluence of opinions swarming around her head. She let go of the committee of indecision within her. She let go of all the ‘right’ reasons. Wholly and completely, without hesitation or worry, she just let go.

She didn’t ask anyone for advice. She didn’t read a book on how to let go… She didn’t search the scriptures. She just let go. She let go of all of the memories that held her back. She let go of all of the anxiety that kept her from moving forward. She let go of the planning and all of the calculations about how to do it just right.

She didn’t promise to let go. She didn’t journal about it. She didn’t write the projected date in her Day-Timer. She made no public announcement and put no ad in the paper. She didn’t check the weather report or read her daily horoscope. She just let go.

She didn’t analyze whether she should let go. She didn’t call her friends to discuss the matter. She didn’t do a five-step Spiritual Mind Treatment. She didn’t call the prayer line. She didn’t utter one word. She just let go.

No one was around when it happened. There was no applause or congratulations. No one thanked her or praised her. No one noticed a thing. Like a leaf falling from a tree, she just let go.
There was no effort. There was no struggle. It wasn’t good and it wasn’t bad. It was what it was, and it is just that.

In the space of letting go, she let it all be. A small smile came over her face. A light breeze blew through her. And the sun and the moon shone forevermore.”

- Ernest Holmes

“There is no friend as loyal as a book.”  ~ Ernest Hemingway

So after [almost] completing the #Reverb10 Challenge back in December (I responded to all but 2 prompts) I clearly needed some other challenge to sign up for.  I just can’t help myself.

This challenge is one near and dear to my heart because it involves something that I do all the time anyway – READING. My favorite thing  to do in the entire world, besides spending time with those I love.  Although, depending on what I’m reading that’s sometimes a toss up.

I have joined the 2011 Reading Challenge over at online reading community GoodReads. The idea behind the challenge is simple – motivate yourself to read more. While I don’t think I need any motivation to read more – if I did I might not have time to do anything else – I do think it will be fun to track what I’m reading this year and reconnect with my love of reading a little more consciously.

The nice thing about this challenge is you get to set your own reading goal, so I have set a goal for myself of reading 111 books. There is no particular science behind my selection of the number other than that its 2011 and I like the symmetry of  the ones. (I also thought that reading 2011 books might be a little too ambitious, even for me.)   This averages out to reading 2.3125 books a week.  Time will tell how realistic this is.

I’ve already had so much fun just thinking about what I want to read.  Several weeks ago I prepared myself by spending  a day organizing my little library.  I removed all the books from the shelves, dusted them off and put them back in perfect alphabetical order.  It was fun to see and touch some of my favorite beloved books and also to be reminded of how many I have yet to read.

So expect to see me reflecting on some of the great books I plan to read in the weeks and months to come.

Check out the sidebar on the right of the blog to see what I’m currently reading and where I am with my reading challenge.

4 books down, only 107 to go.

Had my credentials been in order I would never have become a writer. Had I been blessed with even limited access to my own mind there would have been no reason to write. I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means.

(Joan Didion, “Why I Write,” The New York Times Magazine, December 5, 1976.

I absolutely LOVE this quote. Love it, love it, love it. Did I mention that I love it??

..scootch, scootch, stall; scootch, stall, catastrophic reversal; bog, bog, scootch.”
Anne Lamott, Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith

In her book, Grace (Eventually), Thoughts on Faith, Anne Lamott tells the story of how when she and her 10 year old son moved into their new house he was afraid to sleep in his new bedroom which was much further away from hers than in their old house – separated by two rooms and two short hallways.

They devised a plan to get him to sleep in his room. He slept in a sleeping bag which on the first night was on her bed. Each night they would move it about 3 feet.  First to the foot of her bed. The next to the floor next to her bed. He made it to the door on the fourth night but stayed there for two nights before he could make it into the hallway. The were three nights in the hallway and another four  during which he traversed the living room with “four three-foot scootches, one stall, and a one night when he had to drag his sleeping bag three feet”.

I absolutely love this story. What a brave sweet boy he was. The quote at the beginning of the post is how Anne describes her own attempts to make progress in her life , “with family, in work, relationships, self-image“.

Over the past year I’ve been scootching along very nicely in all areas of my life. Yes there have been some stalls, but they haven’t lasted long and I’ve been able to get myself scootching along again without to much trouble.

Over the last month or so however I’ve had a series of catastrophic reversals.  After having moved pretty far along in several areas like diet and self-image it all went to hell in the proverbial hand basket.

My self-esteem has taken a self-inflicted and deadly beating.

All the ways in which I feed my soul – writing, reading, meditation, exercise have been grossly neglected if not eliminated.

My diet has had the most catastrophic reversal of all. I stopped eating the minimum 50% raw food diet I’d been aiming for. I stopped drinking my daily beloved green-smoothies which make me feel so good. I stopped eating fresh fruit and vegetables and drinking enough water.

Its not just a case of me not eating the healthy, nurturing food that I’ve been trying to make my primary source of nourishment – I actually regressed to the point of eating and drinking things I’d long given up.  In the past month I think I’ve had 4 sodas (pop/cola/soft-drinks). Those who know me will be shocked, knowing that I gave up soda several years ago. It has been the one vice which I have never felt a desire to pick-up. I have eaten candy. Lots of it. Something I don’t particularly like. But I did it anyway.

Last weekend, I set out on a quest for my old nemesis – Popeye’s fried chicken. It wasn’t easy. It required a special trip to a mall that I happen to know has a Popeyes in it. I spent 20 minutes driving around this gargantuan mall in search of the food court and because it was so busy I had to walk though acres of parking in sub-zero temperatures. (OK maybe they weren’t sub-zero but it sure felt like it.) Obviously I was jonesing pretty badly for that southern fried chicken and was willing to go to any lengths to get it. Even braving the frigid cold.

What has happened to make me regress in this insane way?

I don’t know. All I can tell you is that the regression has spread like a petroleum-fueled blaze. So powerful and quick has it been that I’ve only been able to watch in horror as one act of self-violation has led to another.  And as it has spread I’ve felt more and more awful. My body is staging a revolt. My digestive system has all but gone on strike. My skin is losing its brightness and dark circles are starting to reappear under my eyes. I have no energy. My mind is fogged over and moves with the speed of an ant that’s been thrown into a vat of molasses. Depression has crept in and shrouded me in its pervasive cloak. I have been feeling like shyte in body, mind and soul.

The good news is that I’ve stopped to take a breath and refocus on what I’m scootching towards. I’m stopping the madness.

In Anne Lamott’s essay, after a massive binge involving fried apple-fritters, Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and fried jalapeno poppers – she finds herself immersed in “waves of nausea and self-loathing”.  She calls a friend who says:

“You struggled through something really miserable. You told the truth when its to tempting to cover up and disguise it. You said ‘This is the mess of my life, and I need help.’ And now you’re being helped.”

So I guess I’m telling the truth and asking for help. It certainly helps to “talk” about it. I feel better. And as a wise friend advised me, I’m not going to beat myself up for beating myself up.

I am being helped. Going to my writing group yesterday helped push my reset button. Picking up a couple of my favorite books helped. Eating  a fresh persimmon for breakfast helped. Help is always at hand.

Isn’t this what life is like for many of us though?  The constant steady scootching; the frustration of stalls and bogs and the devastation of catastrophic reversal.

The only thing I’ve been able to figure out is that you have to keep on scootching. You have to be kind to yourself, remember what it is that you are scootching towards and recognize how damn far you’ve scootched already!

Disclaimer: In the interests of full-disclosure, you should know that this post is about technology. While there is no techie-speak involved, it is about technology nonetheless.  Techno-phobes be warned!

I’ve been accused by many of being a total geek.   They’re probably right.

Even though I consider myself to be the least geeky technology person I know, there are some aspects of technology which make me giddy.

If you pair my love of cool technology with my even bigger love of BOOKS, you’ve got a recipe for off the charts giddiness.

Such was my joy today when I visited one of my favorite spots on the net – LivingSocial.

LivingSocial is social networking tool that lets you catalog your interests and share them with other people. Right now you can manage books, tv shows, music, movies, video games restaurants and beer. I use the books feature and on a lesser scale music.  If they add shoes and wine to their offerings then my cup will runneth over – hopefully with a tasty pinot noir.

So here’s how it works. I’ll use the book example because that’s what I love.

I use LivingSocial:Books to keep a record of all the books I am reading, have read and want to read. Adding books is as easy as searching for a book on Amazon. And just like Amazon, LivingSocial makes recommendations for you based on your prior selections. How cool is that?

If someone recommends a book to me I add it to my list and mark it as Want to Read.  With one click I can change a book’s status from Want to Read to Already Read.

In and of itself, the ability to have a database of all the books I’m interested in is very cool – but it gets better.

What makes this a social network is the fact that it’s — well– “social”.  You can become “friends” with other people in the same way you do on MySpace or Facebook. I can see what books my friends are reading.   I can check out book reviews written by my friends and others. I can write my own reviews. I can also participate in discussions of books with other people on LivingSocial who have read them

There’s more! I know – its all too much – but stick with me.

Because the folks who develop LivingSocial are too cool for school, you can also use LivingSocial in Facebook and some other social networks. I first started using LivingSocial in Facebook and continue to do so.  I love checking out what my friends are reading.  Even those in other countries who I don’t get to speak to very often.  I often discover new books by following what they’re reading and vice versa.

Today I discovered the latest feature to be added to LivingSocial and I LOVE it.

It’s a nifty little widget which you can check out in the sidebar on the right of this blog. (If you read my posts via e-mail you’ll need to go to the site in order to see the widget).

The widget allows me to embed my LivingSocial account on the blog. You can see what I’m reading right now. And yes, if you’re wondering, it’s very current and accurate. The books that you see there are the books sitting on my night stand. As soon as I start a new book I add it to my now reading list. I’m pretty obsessive about it.

If you click on the blue next button, you can also see a couple of other lists: some of my favorite spiritual reads, books I’ve already read and books I plan on reading some day.

If you’re an avid reader, I highly recommend LivingSocial. Visit them at http://www.livingsocial.com to see how it works. If you decide you love it, look me up and add me as a friend.

If you’re already on FaceBook and you’re one of my friends, you can check out my profile and you’ll see my books on there. You can add LivingSocial to your own Facebook account from there.

If you’re not already on FaceBook and want to get started, then go ahead and Facebook me! You know you want to.

Happy Reading.

“…what I’ve come to learn is that the world is never saved in grand messianic gestures, but in the simple, accumulation of gentle, soft, almost invisible acts of compassion.”
Chris Abani
From a TED talk recorded February 2008 in Monterey, California

I’ve just gotten home from spending 4 days at the largest poetry event in the known multiverse. I was sure I would have so much to say, but surprisingly I don’t.

Maybe it’s because I worked the event, and I’m still feeling exhausted. Or perhaps its because I’m still blissed out on what I did hear.

I feel like I’m still assimilating and absorbing some of what I heard.

I will say this. Undoubtedly, the highlight for me was getting to meet a writer that I have long admired. His novels are achingly beautiful, and as I discovered from listening to him read, so are his poems.

I speak of the amazing Nigerian writer and poet Chris Abani. I must admit that I have a total writers crush on his work. It is extraordinary. He published his first novel when he was 16. The novel, called Masters of the Board, is a political thriller about a failed Nigerian coup. The story was convincing enough that he was thrown in jail by the Nigerian government under suspicion of inciting a real-life coup. He was arrested twice more, put in solitary confinement and tortured. Much of his poetry is based on the harrowing experiences of the time he spent in prison.

What I find particularly remarkable is that while he writes about the darkest recesses of the human soul, his work is uncompromisingly life and humanity affirming. He writes with a beautiful juxtaposition of darkness and light. He is a truly “human” writer if that makes any sense. He’s also very kind, funny and gracious.

At the end of one of his readings my friend was standing behind a woman who turned to her companion and said “He is a miracle of a poet”. I couldn’t have said it better myself.

I was able to listen to him several times, got a book signed and even talked to him briefly and asked a couple of questions, which he graciously answered. And look….I even got my picture taken with him

]]> http://thesublimepassage.com/2008/09/29/blissed-out-on-words/feed/ 1 http://thesublimepassage.com/2008/09/19/oprahs-latest-book-club-pick/ http://thesublimepassage.com/2008/09/19/oprahs-latest-book-club-pick/#comments Fri, 19 Sep 2008 18:42:29 +0000 Sue http://thesublimepassage.com/?p=146

Big news. The woman who has catapulted many a writing career into the stratospheres of success is getting ready to do it again with the announcement of her latest Book Club pick, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by first-time novelist, David Wroblewski. The big O is making the announcement on her show today.

Needless to say I’m headed to the nearest book store ASAP, and I will have the book in my grubby little fingers by this evening.

Check out the Oprah Book Club site for details on the selection, and read a message from the author, written especially for O Book Club members. Nice!

Did you know that you can download a special O Book Club bookmark complete with the dates for Q&A Fridays with the author and a place to write quotes/notes as you read? She thinks of everything.

I can’t wait to start reading.

“Art is man’s constant effort to create for himself a different order of reality from that which is given to him.”

“If my mind is crowded with ideas or thoughts or plans or other people’s creations there is less room for my own.  And it is my own mind and journey that I wish to experience, because it is from this vantage point that I can most truly engage others.

Alice Walker
We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For: Inner Light in a Time of Darkness