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Today’s lesson focused on aspects of self-compassion:

IMPERFECTION:
Oblivion now!
Shutter the glaring spotlight
Leave me in the dark.

COMFORT:
Rest comes at nighttime
The day no longer matters
Sweet dreams lie ahead

SLEEP:
Sandpaper chafes eyes
Unrelenting thoughts harass
Fairy dust, I beg!

ADAPTING:
Blown about by winds
Someone else’s storm thrashes
Grasping for a cloud

A difficult situation:
     The curtain rises
     Melody enthralls my soul
     A song no one hears

A frustrating challenge:
     You cannot be you
     Dagger splits the heart in two
     Tail between my legs

Limiting belief:
     Why can't this be mine?
     Stay buried in the dung heap
     Silence is golden

A mystery:
     Omnipresent Sun
     Surely penetrates my heart
     Burns away the dross

Something ineffable:
     The bucket plunges
     Dark, cool water caresses
     Filling me with Grace

This morning’s exercise was to write about a place I love. I visited Ireland for the first time in the winter of 1978. I was forever changed by that introduction to my ancestral home.

Ireland
I felt “it” the moment I debarked Aer Lingus. It was not a physical sensation but an inexplicable knowing. A soft internal whisper: This is home. You belong here.

These silent words hummed throughout my four-week visit to the lush and barren island. Ancient ruins and stone monoliths were a landscape of ancestral tethers. Turbulent, thrashing weather creaked my bones until the sun emerged to radiate its warmth, and the sky grinned its upside-down multicolored smile from ear to ear.

So many magical memories. The feral cry reverberating in the Fairy’s Glade near Blarney Castle. That eerie vision of a wooden ship sailing away from the Cobh coast toward the misty horizon of hope and freedom. Singalongs in the Dublin pub accompanied by my first taste of good beer. Invisible fairies impishly vying for my attention, insisting I acknowledge their playful antics.

I was enraptured, enthralled, utterly in love, and forever changed by the lure of these family trees and Celtic culture.

The whisper echoes still: There’s no place like home.

So, I signed up for a new writing course that focuses on using Haiku to express feelings. A haiku has 3 lines of 17 syllables: 5 syllables, 7 syllables, 5 syllables. I didn’t spend a lot of time overthinking these. I had 5 different themes to write about. This is what came this morning.

Irritation
Molecules collide
The teapot blows its lid off
Spews volcanic ash

Anxiety
Breath gasps, what is this?
Peering into the abyss
The pupa transforms

Heaviness
The dark noose tightens
Eagle wings cannot fly free
Mummified remains

Dread
Indigestible
Acids permeate the pit
Regurging its bile

Change
Decay guaranteed
Buds unfold their radiance
Life is beautiful

For the past year or so I have been practicing a writing style called “automatic writing.” Which simply means writing without rational thought. Just putting pen to paper and allowing words to come. I thought this morning’s message was quite interesting, so decided to share it here. View it as a creative foray, perhaps. I don’t claim it as Truth. But I will say it FEELS true to me.

“You feel things shifting, gears slipping into gear, momentum gathering. Not so long now. Not so long. Release release release. Release all impulse to judge, condemn, reject. Accept whatever is being projected in order to be healed. It is just a kaleidoscope of imagery to lure you away from your true center.

All is accelerating, speeding up, colliding in the super collider. What is the debris that will spin off from the collision? The dross of what is not real. Only what is true remains bound together.

Time itself is changing from linear to eternal. The illusion of linear time is being reformed into the infinity of the present. You feel it. You feel the speeding up, the collision, the spray of debris flying away from the core. It is such a powerful centrifugal force. You feel part of it, caught up in it, yet observing it like an outsider, too. All this collision seems destructive, debris flying everywhere like shrapnel, with collateral damage. Everyone feels they are on a collision course, a roller coaster ride from which they cannot disembark. It is thrilling, terrifying, powerful. A trajectory that cannot be stopped.

But it WILL stop when the ride is over. And something new will emerge. Something never born before. Something utterly new is coming.”

Dandelions. A harbinger of summer.

Aren’t these blooms lovely? Bright yellow wings destined to transform, like a caterpillar becomes a butterfly, into fluffy white feathers the softest breeze soon will cast to the four winds.

Blossoms labeled weeds, as if they are repulsive, unwelcome intruders. Shameful blemishes on the perfectly manicured green veneer.

Who made that decision?

Maybe dandelions can never be daisies. Still, I played “he loves me, he loves me not,” plucking each golden talon one by one, forever fearing the answer. Countless garlands made to wrap around my throat, stifling its inner cry. Remembering that tacky ooze from freshly snapped stems, stinging my eyes with their bitter tears.

Pesky, those dandelions. Tenacious. Roots running deep into the earth. Refusing to budge, they seem to say, “You can’t oust me from my home and toss me away with the garbage. I belong here.”

What if we ceded the will to dominate, to vanquish the recalcitrant invaders? Embraced their right to exist, no less valued than our cherished blades of grass.

Doesn’t their sunny disposition cheer up the place?

I say, let them live.

Alone
By the sea
How can it be
This wondrous display
Is solely for me

Sparkly diamonds
Spray-kiss the sky
As swift moving breakers
Sing God’s lullaby
Gulls page their cohort
Awaiting reply

And still, no passersby

Oh, what pageantry
Flows into me

As I sit
Alone
By the sea

Wow, it has been months since I posted here. I have been very busy with online courses, creative play, visiting friends and family, and enjoying the beautiful spring.

At last, a new composition to share. It is quite short (just over two minutes) but says all I want to say on the matter. I can’t believe it took several months for it to come together, and for me to be able to play it without one mistake. My hands must jump around the keyboard a bit on this one. Arthritis (and memory) seem to be more and more challenging with every passing day. But no excuses!

Please overlook fidelity baubles, if you notice them. I dearly wish I had better recording equipment, but right now this is the best I can do. In any event, I hope you enjoy the tune.

Despite its brevity, it feels complete. Perhaps we can only withstand a modest helping of “Pathos” in our lives these days?

Pathos

Okay, folks, so as 2022 began, I started a new venture. A daily drawing journal. The type of drawing I am practicing is intuitive, using black pen (so there can be no erasing or “fixing”), with the goal being the revelation of unconscious feelings or states of being. The drawings are NOT meant to be, or expected to be, works of art! They explore and reflect the psyche; the theory being that whatever we express on paper exactly mirrors our inner experience. Like our bodies, our pictures cannot lie. The old saying comes to mind: images speak louder and more truthfully than words.

So, I have been doing my daily journal and am having great fun with it. Because I allow myself to draw badly, to use stick figures and any other simple forms I need to express. I do not think or use my intellect in any way. This is all just hand to paper, come what may.

In a recent online Art Course called “Art as a Soul Language,” one of the exercises was to draw what failure feels like and then write a poem about it. This is what came from that exercise:

The carrots dangle
Out of reach
The flowers grow and bloom
Taunting me
Magic is in the air
I am trapped in a box
Of my own creation
Wisdom waits
For me to let myself out

I wonder if anyone can relate?

I have been radio silent for months, but not utterly inactive creatively. This is my latest piano composition. Please overlook as best you can the “crude” recording and my imperfect playing! Arthritis is my charming foil.

Another caveat: This piece has taken me a long time to embrace – both in the playing but also in its conception. This is how the music came to me, and I allowed it to come through without too much critical judgment. It has unusual construction and is dissonant at times, but there is a logic to it, and moments of beauty, I think. I hope you find some enjoyment in the listening. It may not resonate, and that is fine too. Not all sounds are pleasant to the ear and can be an acquired taste – or may never to be one’s cup of tea! So, with that mea culpa, here it is!

Circle of Life