THE OPEN ROAD

peace, love, happiness & understanding

 

November 26, 2020

 

 

i thank You God for most this amazing

day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees

and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything

wich is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,

and this is the sun’s birthday;this is the birth

day of life and love and wings:and of the gay

great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing

breathing any-lifted from the no

of all nothing-human merely being

doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and

now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

 

—e. e. cummings  (1894-1962)

*

 

Giving thanks. There’s nothing more important. It’s the difference between living in Heaven or Hell. Something so simple. And yet, some people’s brains accidentally got programmed to complain. I usually start the day by noticing the miraculousness of everything, without exception, and then…feeling grateful. Every day a day of thanksgiving.

*

 

Poetry

 

And it was at that age … Poetry arrived

in search of me. I don’t know, I don’t know where

it came from, from winter or a river.

I don’t know how or when,

no they were not voices, they were not

words, nor silence,

but from a street I was summoned,

from the branches of night,

abruptly from the others,

among violent fires

or returning alone,

there I was without a face

and it touched me.

 

I did not know what to say, my mouth

had no way

with names,

my eyes were blind,

and something started in my soul,

fever or forgotten wings,

and I made my own way,

deciphering

that fire,

and I wrote the first faint line,

faint, without substance, pure

nonsense,

pure wisdom

of someone who knows nothing,

and suddenly I saw

the heavens

unfastened

and open,

planets,

palpitating plantations,

shadow perforated,

riddled

with arrows, fire and flowers,

the winding night, the universe.

 

And I, infinitesimal being,

drunk with the great starry

void,

likeness, image of

mystery,

felt myself a pure part

of the abyss,

I wheeled with the stars,

my heart broke loose on the wind. 

 

—Pablo Neruda  (Chilean Nobel Prize-winning poet, 1904-1973)

*

 

Kim Stafford sent us an approach to a daily writing practice. And some poems.

 

Writing as Ritual: Four Elements of a Daily Writing Page

A chapter from a work in progress, Writing for Happiness, by Kim Stafford

 

Be the Eric Snowden of your inner life.

 

I had been writing for years, by fits and starts, when my father’s death opened a

new path for my life as a writer, and as a seeker. By his last will and testament, I

inherited the care of his twenty thousand hand-written pages of daily writing

from the 1950s through the day of his death in 1993. William Stafford’s writing

practice had been invisible to me when he was alive, because he rose before

dawn to write, and I did not. All through childhood, I would see the literary

magazines where his poems were published appear on the coffee table — Crazyhorse, 

Poetry, Cimarron Review — and every year a book or two would come forth. When people

would ask him, “Bill, when is your next book coming out?” he would often answer, “Which

one?”

 

How did he do that? Simple: he wrote something every day, and his books

were made from about one day’s writing out of eight that he found worthy.

A few weeks after my father died, I started to carry the reams of his scribbling

down from the attic, and leaf through his pages one by one. His scrawl was a

challenge, and I sometimes needed a magnifying glass to examine the tangle of

feral words to tease the meaning forth. But overall, I began to see four elements

in his practice that worked together in a way both practical and mystical.

 

I want to consider what my father’s daily writing pages contained, and how

they worked for him — and how something like his approach might work for any

of us who choose to give such daily writing practice a try. His pages, which are

now housed in the William Stafford Archives at Lewis & Clark College, exhibit a

varying daily mixture of four prevailing elements:

 

1. Each page begins with the date. Is that even worth mentioning? Well, it turns out to be strangely helpful — in the act of writing, and of course for keeping track of the writings. “Once I write the date on a piece of paper,” he said once, “I know I’m okay. I have made it to my writing.” This is the “open sesame” move of the daily writing practice, for by jotting the date down on a page, you have accomplished the most difficult first step: you have shown up, and you have begun. The pen is active before any wisdom is required, and you have stepped humbly into what William Stafford called “the realm where miracles happen.”

 

2. Then, often, the page would begin with some prose notes from a recent experience, a few sentences about a connection with friends, an account of a dream. This short passage of “throwaway” writing, it turns out, is very important, as it keeps the pen moving and gets the mind sniffing along through ordinary experience. I call this stage “the boring prose.” You are beginning the act of writing without needing to write anything profound. No struggle, no effort, no heroic reach. Just writing.

 

3. Then there will sometimes be an “aphorism” — a freestanding sentence, an idea, a question, a note about a pattern he perceived, a puzzle. With the aphorism, as we call it in his pages, William Stafford would write a sentence that “lifted off” from daily experience to observe an emblem of thought, a truth, an idea, or a private joke. (“It still takes all kinds to make a world, but there is an oversupply of some.”) This provisional understanding from daily life begins to raise the writer’s attention out of the mundane into the gently miraculous realm of poetry. It is your own koan.

 

The aphorisms in William Stafford’s daily writing rarely become part of the poem to follow (though a few of his poems are built from a series of such lines). Most often, they are little wonders left to resonate as private treasure, threshold, key. A bell has been struck, bringing the writer to attention.

 

4. Then he would write something like a poem… or notes toward a poem… or just an exploratory set of lines that never became a poem. Sometimes there might be a single line of lyric mystery. But he had taken a few steps up the ladder from silence in the general direction of song.

 

To write the date, some prose, an idea, and then poetic lines beyond prose — this can begin a process for distilling from ordinary experience the extraordinary report of literature. For this day, again, you have given yourself a chance to discover worthy things. Nothing stupendous may occur … but if you do not bring yourself to this point, nothing stupendous will happen for sure … and you are likely to spend the balance of your day in reaction to the imperatives of the outer world — worn down, buffeted, diminished, martyred.

 

William Stafford’s use of these four elements is capricious. Many pages, especially in his later years, show only the date followed by a poem. His long practice has speeded the process. And even in his early years, he can go many days without preliminary prose or aphorism—or he can jot a series of aphorisms as if he has been saving them to record in a rush.

 

Most of us do an assignment shortly before it is due. (That’s often true for me.) It’s better to begin the project when it’s first assigned, not when it’s due. And, I realize, again and again, it’s even better to practice self-directed searching, writing, thinking on the page — when there is no assignment given. This empowers the free range of mind, of “hands-on thinking.” By something like this daily practice, you build up a personal sheaf of riches, a democracy of inner voices, an archive you can draw from as needed for work and pleasure over time.

 

My students once said to me, “You give us a deadline for our writing. But who gives you a deadline?” A terrible sentence came to my mind: “Death is my deadline.” There are myriad latent discoveries in me. Daily, I must bring them forth. For this reason, several years ago, I made a vow to perform this four-part practice every day. What works for me is to do this four-step process first thing, before daylight. I’ve decided to enlist all four elements each day—the date, of course. And then there is always something to scribble about from the day before—the boring prose. And then—what now seems an essential element in the process—the aphorism. To wait for a thought, which always appears, given time and welcome, is the prelude to true practice. The aphorism is the hinge that begins to turn memory to thought, event to idea, scribbling to design. Then a poem, something like a poem, notes for a poem.

 

This four-step process on the page became a more mysterious form of beckoning when I learned an idea from Buddhism while traveling in Bhutan. Each place, I learned—each experience, each person, each dream, text, encounter—may offer four ways of knowing:

 

the visible

the invisible

the secret

the deeply secret

 

So there it is again: the date—visible. A scribbled memory from the day before—the invisible, but palpable. The thought—a secret episode of the Buddhist “unborn.” And then … then whatever mystery may come next, a secret so deep it will not appear unless you use something like this process to welcome what you didn’t know until you do.

 

As I tell my students, if you follow this four-step process, or something like it, you may not compose something of lasting value every day — but it will be a better day! It will be a day that begins with your own appointment with silence, with attention, with welcome. Something like this structure can lift your writing into a realm of episodic discovery reaching beyond a simple journal or diary, worthy as those habits can be. Gradually, inexorably, you will accumulate riches to return to, an archive of discrete beginnings to nurture on the path of your devotions.

 

Based on the legacy of William Stafford, as explored further in my own practice, I offer this four-part daily writing ritual as a kind of hands-on meditation. And with this pattern, I propose a year of daily exploration founded in your own version, as it evolves, of this daily practice. What will it be like to experience the kind of sustained and sustaining life of writing you have long imagined?

 

—Kim Stafford

*

 

While many have been locked down at home, what’s it like to be homeless, to watch the already fragile future dissolve, your landmarks of support and certainty vanish? Here’s a poem for anyone feeling adrift in the face of change. I hope you can support programs that help those currently living outside…

 

My Sheltering Sky

 

When I was born, when I was helpless, there were stars

Above me blue in their midnight galaxy.

When I was hurt, there were scars no one could see.

When I was growing, the sun was dimmed for me

By killing silence where there should have been a song.

 

Did you hear a song when you were young,

A chorus that sang your name with love?

How many little ways were you reminded of

Your worth, your chance, your path to rise above

Your struggles, a way to feel that you belong?

 

One night by the river when I couldn’t sleep

For streetlights glittering the water dark,

I looked above my troubles where I saw a spark,

Another world, a guide, a star to mark

My destination far beyond my pain.

 

On that shore I felt there was fatal door

I could step through into waters cold

To quench my life before I got too old

In sorrows, hard tomorrows, I could fold

My arms and plunge into the deep.

 

But then I looked above it all and saw

My shelter, my sky where stars were calling

And I felt that I was falling up instead of down,

And I wore some kind of crown

That gave me my ticket to the dawn.

 

Now I find there’s work, and worth, and wonder.

Though I know my sorrows won’t be completely gone,

Someone helped me carry on and find

A wealth in heart and mind

That helps me know I finally belong.

 

For I looked above it all and saw

My shelter, my sky where stars were calling

And I felt that I was falling up instead of down,

And I wore some kind of crown

That gave me my ticket to the dawn.

 

 

 Poetry Doctor

 

How do you feel?

How, exactly, have you

learned to feel — to be 

touched, to apprehend?

These twinges you have — 

of compassion, empathy, pain — 

how long have you had them?

Have they grown more intense

with age? Do they manifest at 

sunset? At dawn? In the presence

of beauty? Of suffering?

Does your heart ever skip?

Do you ever feel dizzy

with delight or shame? Has 

the grace of a few right words 

ever blurred your vision? Caught

your breath? Has your heart

ever become a drum when 

a song’s words told you

who you are in secret? 

 

I’m afraid my diagnosis 

must remain incomplete 

without further tests: 

Neruda, Dickinson, Basho.

 

—Kim Stafford

*

 

“Peace, love, happiness & understanding” will be bi-weekly from now on. The next one will come out on December 10th. See you then!

 

peace, love & gratitude

 

Johnny