The Open Road: a learning community

Charles Erickson, artist
2024-09-03 - 2024-09-10
This theatrical prop (above), including myself in the foreground, is an introduction to my present series of paintings about the Transfiguration on Mount Tabor.
It is about the mind and the five organs of sense–eye, ear, tongue, nose and skin–represented by the five painted portals.

“That call’d Body is a portion of Soul discern’d by the five Senses, the chief inlets of Soul in this age.”
–William Blake, from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

One portal is on the left, and one is on the right. There are three portals in back. The portal on the left is the ear, the portal on the right is the eye. The ear and the eye are cognitive senses, rich in information, and accessible to language.
The central portal in the back is skin. The other two are tongue and nose.
Skin, unlike the other sense organs, is all over the body–so it was called sensus communis in the Middle Ages. There is a reason skin is in the middle. It’s a unifier, in the same way that the mind is a unifier. There is a central axis between the mind and the skin.
*
Here’s a passage about the transformation on Mount Tabor, from the gospel of Luke:

28 And it came to pass about an eight days after these sayings, he took Peter and John and James, and went up into a mountain to pray.
29 And as he prayed, the fashion of his countenance was altered, and his raiment was white and glistering.
30 And, behold, there talked with him two men, which were Moses and Elias:
31 Who appeared in glory, and spake of his decease which he should accomplish at Jerusalem.
32 But Peter and they that were with him were heavy with sleep: and when they were awake, they saw his glory, and the two men that stood with him.
33 And it came to pass, as they departed from him, Peter said unto Jesus, Master, it is good for us to be here: and let us make three tabernacles; one for thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elias: not knowing what he said.
34 While he thus spake, there came a cloud, and overshadowed them: and they feared as they entered into the cloud.
35 And there came a voice out of the cloud, saying, This is my beloved Son: hear him.
36 And when the voice was past, Jesus was found alone. And they kept it close, and told no man in those days any of those things which they had seen
Luke 9:28-36

Kalidasa! 8/24/24
2024-08-24 19:00 - 21:00 (America/Los_Angeles)
KALIDASA

Johnny Stallings reads from the works of Kalidasa (circa 5th Century CE), India’s greatest poet and playwright. Dialogue follows. This is an Open Road event (openroadpdx.org).

Muir Hall in Taborspace, 5441 SE Belmont, in Portland
Saturday, August 24th, at 7 pm

¡Bardaphilia!: How to Put on a Play 8/9/24
2024-08-09 19:00 - 21:00
James Cagney as Pyramus and Joe E. Brown as Thisbe (1935)

Bardaphilia!

“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players…”

¡Beloved Bardaphiles!

This Friday evening (8/9/24) we will learn from Peter Quince, Nick Bottom and their friends How to Put on a Play! We’ll see how they cast, rehearse and perform “The Most Lamentable Comedy and Most Cruel Death of Pyramus and Thisbe.” We may even attempt a performance ourselves! If we do the result will be very tragical mirth!

If you don’t already love Shakespeare, this class will remedy that. And if you do…you know there’s nothing more fun than reading the plays and poems together with friends. Actor and director Johnny Stallings is the genial host.

This is an Open Road Event. Join us!

Artspace Room at Taborspace, 5441 SE Belmont
Friday evening, August 9th, 7-9 pm
suggested donation $5 per class

¡BARDAPHILIA!: Horsing Around With Hamlet 8/2/24
2024-08-02 19:00 - 21:00
Bardaphilia!

“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players…”

¡Beloved Bardaphiles!
This Friday evening the plan is to Have Fun With Hamlet. We’ll perform the one-minute version, talk to a skull, kill each other…et cetera. I’ll provide the scripts.
If you don’t already love Shakespeare, this class will remedy that. And if you do…you know there’s nothing more fun than reading the plays and poems together with friends. Actor and director Johnny Stallings is the genial host.
This is an Open Road Event. Join us!

Artspace Room at Taborspace, 5441 SE Belmont
Friday evening, August 2nd, 7-9 pm
suggested donation $5 per class

peace, love, happiness & understanding 8/1/24
2024-08-01 - 2024-09-04
THE OPEN ROAD
peace, love, happiness & understanding

August 1, 2024

I put on my glasses
to see the fog
more clearly

—John Brehm
*

Walking Through a Wall

Unlike flying or astral projection, walking through walls is a totally earth-related craft, but a lot more interesting than pot making or driftwood lamps. I got started at a picnic up in Bowstring in the northern part of the state. A fellow walked through a brick wall right there in the park. I said, ‘Say, I want to try that.’ Stone walls are best, then brick and wood. Wooden walls with fiberglass insulation and steel doors aren’t so good. They won’t hurt you. If your wall walking is done properly, both you and the wall are left intact. It is just that they aren’t pleasant somehow. The worst things are wire fences, maybe it’s the molecular structure of the alloy or just the amount of give in a fence, I don’t know, but I’ve torn my jacket and lost my hat in a lot of fences. The best approach to a wall is, first, two hands placed flat against the surface; it’s a matter of concentration and just the right pressure. You will feel the dry, cool inner wall with your fingers, then there is a moment of total darkness before you step through on the other side.

—Louis Jenkins
*

What did the zen master say to the hot dog vender?
Make me one with everything.

I was reminded of that joke because of the ending of a stop-action animated film we just watched, Marcel the Shell With Shoes On, about a one inch snail who has lost his family. It was sweet, funny, odd, and unexpectedly touching.

But I thought you’d especially like this excerpt from the end of the script, in which Marcel is sitting on a window sill, the window is open a crack, and a breeze is blowing past him:

The wind blows through Marcel’s shell, creating a LOW PLAINTIVE HUM.
MARCEL: Can you hear it? That’s it. That’s going through my shell.
WIDE ON THE ROOM
It’s a normal laundry room. But in this moment, in this afternoon light, in this breeze, we feel something transcendent.
MARCEL (V.O.): It connected me, I felt, to everything. Because if I wasn’t there the sound would never exist. I felt like everything was in pieces but when I stood there, suddenly we were one large instrument. I like to go there a lot. Because it reminds me that I’m not just one separate piece rattling around in this place, but that I’m part of a whole. And I truly enjoy the sound of myself connected to everything.
Marcel sits on an eraser, looking out the window. His shell HUMS with the wind.
CUT TO BLACK

—J Kahn
*

I replied to J in an email:

Thanks, J.

Sounds like my kind of movie.

With the ending they are trying to say something very simple, which is difficult to put into words–and is the most important thing in the world.

In Act 3 of Our Town, Emily feels that feeling and is brokenhearted that other people aren’t feeling it.

I don’t know if it is what Tom Waits is talking about in this song, but the song is very evocative of something, in any case:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-c5L_45_gA

That Feel

Well there’s one thing you can’t lose
It’s that feel
Your pants, your shirt, your shoes
But not that feel
You can throw it out in the rain
You can whip it like a dog
You can chop it down like an old dead tree
You can always see it
When you’re coming into town
Once you hang it on the wall
You can never take it down

But there’s one thing you can’t lose
And it’s that feel
You can pawn your watch and chain
But not that feel
It always comes and finds you
It will always hear you cry
I cross my wooden leg
And I swear on my glass eye
It will never leave you high and dry
Never leave you loose
It’s harder to get rid of than tattoos

But there’s one thing you can’t do
Is lose that feel
You can throw it off a bridge
You can lose it in the fire
You can leave it at the altar
But it will make you out a liar
You can fall down in the street
You can leave it in the lurch
Well you say that it’s gospel
But I know that it’s only church

And there’s one thing you can’t lose
And it’s that feel
It’s that feel

–Tom Waits

And then there’s this poem, which was in the April 1, 2021 issue of peace, love, happiness & understanding. It’s good enough to share again:

Nirvana

not much chance,
completely cut loose from
purpose,
he was a young man
riding a bus
through North Carolina
on the way to somewhere
and it began to snow
and the bus stopped
at a little cafe
in the hills
and the passengers
entered.
he sat at the counter
with the others,
he ordered and the
food arrived.
the meal was
particularly
good
and the
coffee.
the waitress was
unlike the women
he had
known.
she was unaffected,
there was a natural
humor which came
from her.
the fry cook said
crazy things.
the dishwasher.
in back,
laughed, a good
clean
pleasant
laugh.
the young man watched
the snow through the
windows.
he wanted to stay
in that cafe
forever.
the curious feeling
swam through him
that everything
was
beautiful
there,
that it would always
stay beautiful
there.
then the bus driver
told the passengers
that it was time
to board.
the young man
thought, I’ll just sit
here, I’ll just stay
here.
but then
he rose and followed
the others into the
bus.
he found his seat
and looked at the cafe
through the bus
window.
then the bus moved
off, down a curve,
downward, out of
the hills.
the young man
looked straight
forward.
he heard the other
passengers
speaking
of other things,
or they were
reading
or
attempting to
sleep.
they had not
noticed
the
magic.
the young man
put his head to
one side,
closed his
eyes,
pretended to
sleep.
there was nothing
else to do-
just to listen to the
sound of the
engine,
the sound of the
tires
in the
snow.

–Charles Bukowski

peace, love & that feeling

Johnny
*

6-29-24

Dear Johnny,

It’s a beautiful Saturday afternoon & my work is finished for the day. My mind is always full of thoughts of life outside the walls of prison these days, all of them good. It sometimes occurs to me that my past life feels like it was just a dream & that I’ve never been out of prison. I’m sure that one day my whole life will seem like one long dream. Who’s to say that it’s not just that?

I had a bunch of flowers left over from the plots & I asked if I could place them along the window sills here on my new unit. I was given permission to do so. Now the whole front of H Unit is covered in bright-colored flowers & I’ve gotten a lot of positive comments! It feels good to make things beautiful here. What I’ve done with plants & flowers, Johnny, you’ve done with people in and out of prison. Once I’m out, my plan is to do what you’ve done, plant seeds in people and help them to reclaim their lives. Well…we will see what happens once I’m out. Maybe a few friends & a good job & happiness in a simple life would be more my speed right now.

7-1-24

Here is something nice that I’ve been thinking about for the letters we all share. Being in a cell lets me have personal time to think and write.

Good things are what I need to rent space in my head. My waking life is full of dreams that come to pass. Never again will I take for granted the world that is waiting beyond the walls, razor wire & glass. I try to bring the beauty of the world outside in here.

7-9-24

The way we all think and express how we feel about the kindness we see and share with each other in the group letters we compile for me is sweet as honey dripping into my soul. We are on the path to the core of the golden world, all of us are the shining ones helping others to find this world as well.

I love the Mary Oliver poem that Ms. Jill Littlewood shared with us called “The Summer Day”! And to you, Ms. Littlewood, I must say…

I do not know who made the swan or black bear, or the grasshopper, or you, or me. What I do know is that if all of my days were like the one summer day in this poem, it in itself would be bliss. Most of my days are spent in a greenhouse and I do have grasshoppers. I even have a rock chuck who eats my kale! My prayers are to life & love & joy and friends. I speak them to the morning sun and to my coffee. With my one wild and precious life I simply plan to be content.

Harvesting saffron in the summer morning sun was a gift today. Most of the time these days it does not even feel like prison to me anymore.

My mind is always on what it will be like to have a different scale of freedom in this world…. My perception of freedom is I’m sure quite different than most.

Well, I love you Johnny & will talk to you soon.

Good things Always
Rocky
*

June 23, 2024

Johnny,

Thank you for the copy of Every Day, Holy Day. I really appreciate your doing this for me. Life at OSCI goes well. I’ve been here over 30 days now; still settling into my routine, but much here is differently-same. (More of a reasonable and calm state, yet still a carceral environment with a few “toughs” to keep things interesting.) I find I’m exposed to far fewer people here. It’s not just a smaller population, but each unit is more isolated than it seemed at TRCI, including overlapping at meals and pill-line. Each keeps to one’s own “people” or unit. All-in-all, it’s much nicer here!

Topic: Joy. Moments come when the heart dances in the light. So much more than the experience of fun, or even happiness, joy erupts when the inner sphere scintillates in its completeness. An experience touches us to the depths of our souls, and in that moment we are graced with a vision—if only fleetingly—of the flawless wholeness and perfection of all. Then the heart fills and flows over, even amid the brokenness of the world.

Week’s mantra: Mouth filled with laughter, ears with shouts of joy.

Practice: Step away from your busyness and savor several moments every day; feel the joy that is available to you. —from Every Day, Holy Day by Alan Morinis

“Heart dances in the light…joy erupts when the inner sphere scintillates in its completeness.” Such an image! To touch the “flawless wholeness and perfection of it all.” (I struggle today with RA [Rheumatoid Arthritis] stiffness and pain, in addition to allergy congestion.) The step back; the step to smell the roses; it’s developing the awareness of life’s variegated moments as they pass. Some as “happy little clouds.” Others pendulous with precipitation, yet to be deposited on earth. No matter my opinion of the moment—good, bad, etc.—moments for experiencing joy abound. I have but to develop my awareness.

—Michel Deforge
*

Peace Love Happiness and Understanding…

…can be hard to come by in this blistering hot, suffocating weather.

I have been angry at the weather: Whoever heard of ‘heat domes’ until a couple of years ago? Whoever needed ‘cooling shelters’ until a few years ago? The heat wave would cool naturally in a few days—-well, not anymore. So I’m mad at Republicans, corporations, anybody who calls climate disasters ‘natural’, etc. etc.

But then it boils down (haha) to me, personally, of course. Instead of enjoying my coveted 5-7 a.m. reading and coffee time, I have to go out at 5 a.m. to water my gardens, put shade covers on the hydrangeas, do whatever garden work I need to do before the heat hits again. Or, most aggravating of all (poor me), I have to get a bike ride in at that time and finish before it hits 80 degrees at 9 a.m.! That ‘poor me’ should not be in parentheses; this is serious stuff.

So with that merry attitude, I hopped on the bike yesterday at 6 a.m. It was 58 degrees, and felt…deliciously cool! Well, that’s not gonna last, I growled. But it was, in fact, deliciously cool, and fresh. And with cool and fresh I breathed in the almost tangible fragrance…of green. The emerald green of grass-filled meadows. The nearby meadows of one hundred lovely sheep, all browsing heads down munching on the meadow. I love those sheep. ‘Hi sheep!,’ I called, as I always do. A few of them looked up, and I could swear they nodded at me. But how can they be enjoying themselves with those hot, wool coats on?, I grimaced. It felt good to have other creatures to commiserate with, even though the sheep didn’t appear to realize they were miserable.

And then…and then…the sun rose from behind Bald Butte and bathed the fields in gold. It backlit the patches of Timothy hay and the nodding heads of wheat in a shimmering light. Golden wheat, sky blue chicory, pearly pink sweet peas lined the road.

The birds exalted in the sunrise—-the soft staccato of the mourning doves, warbling meadow larks, the chirping and twirping of all, cheering the arrival of the sun. Before I could stop, I found myself chirping and twirping and cheering this heavenly morning along with all the other creatures.

—Jude Russell
*

This poem was published in Gary Snyder’s book Turtle Island, in 1969–a time when America was in a great divide of culture, politics, generations. A time of war, protests. The poem is like a timely marker, to engage in creating a more peaceful world.

I Went into the Maverick Bar

I went into the Maverick Bar
In Farmington, New Mexico.
And drank double shots of bourbon
backed with beer.
My long hair was tucked up under a cap
I’d left the earring in the car.

Two cowboys did horseplay
by the pool tables,
A waitress asked us
where are you from?
a country-and-western band began to play
“We don’t smoke Marijuana in Muskokie”
And with the next song,
a couple began to dance.

They held each other like in High School dances
in the fifties;
I recalled when I worked in the woods
and the bars of Madras, Oregon.
That short-haired joy and roughness—
America—your stupidity.
I could almost love you again.

We left—onto the freeway shoulders—
under the tough old stars—
In the shadow of bluffs
I came back to myself,
To the real work, to
“What is to be done.”

— GARY SNYDER

Not surprisingly, yet remarkably, Johnny and my husband Bill recognized immediately the last line. It is the title of an 1863 novel written by Nikolay Chernyshevsky. “Chernyshevsky’s novel, far more than Marx’s Capital, supplied the emotional dynamic that eventually went to make the Russian Revolution.” (Wikipedia)

–Katie Radditz

peace, love, happiness & understanding Archive
2024-08-01 - 2024-08-15
painting by Charles Erickson

Dear Friends of the Open Road

Click on titles in Bold to go to any issue of our peace, love, happiness & understanding journal. The list of issues is followed by an Index, which is a guide to each issue’s content.

On this web page there is also a search box into which you can type a word or phrase, and find what you are looking for in that way.

Issue #1 Spring Equinox (picture of pansy) 3/19/20
Issue #2 Humor (images: cartoons by Gary Larson) 3/26/20
Issue #3 Some Poems (image: Japanese picture of cherry tree) 4/2/20
Issue #4 Walt Whitman (image: painting of WW by Rick Bartow) 4/9/20
Issue #5 Rumi (edited by Prabu Muruganantham) (picture of flower) 4/16/20
Issue #6 Shakespeare (picture of young Johnny with Shakespeare sweatshirt) 4/23/20
Issue #7 Happiness (picture by Jan Steen: The Merry Family) 4/30/20
Issue #8 Ingersoll: Crimes Against Criminals (picture of Robert G. Ingersoll) 5/7/20
Issue #9 Compassion (picture of Einstein) 5/14/20
Issue #10 Love (picture of Hafiz) 5/21/20
Issue #11 Peaceable Kingdom (painting by Charles Erickson) 5/28/20
Issue #12 Meditation, Dialogue & Study (Goya’s Sleep of Reason) 6/4/20
Issue #13 Black Lives Matter (image of George Floyd) 6/11/20
Issue #14 Mostly Poems (Blake image: When the morning stars sang together) 6/18/20
With Issue #15, peace, love & happiness became peace, love, happiness & understanding.
Issue #15 Ripple Effect (image of ripples in water) 6/25/20
Issue #16 Blake: Innocence and Experience (Laughing Song image) 7/2/20
Issue #17 Remembering Nick (picture of Nick Consoletti) 7/9/20
Issue #18 Kim Stafford Featured Poet (picture of Kim, Hugo & Johnny) 7/16/20
Issue #19 Metaphors: Battle or Picnic? (picture of Emerson) 7/23/20
Issue #20 Humor Issue (Gary Larson cartoon: Nerds in hell) 7/30/20
Issue #21 Culture that Nurtures (picture of Wisłowa Szymborska) 8/6/20
Issue #22 My mind started to blossom… (picture of Aaron Gilbert as Toby Belch) 8/13/20
Issue #23 Poems, Stories, Letters, Thoughts (picture of four actors from Midsummer Night’s Dream) 8/20/20
Issue #24 Meditation and Mindfulness (image of Avalokiteśvara from Ajanta) 8/27/20
Issue #25 Interview with Ashley Lucas (photos of Ashley and Jeff Sanders & Joe Opyd with his mom, Sharon Lemm, and Aunt Andrea) 9/3/20
Issue #26 Paradise of Books (image of Don Quixote in his library by Gustave Doré) 9/10/20
Issue #27 Smoky (image of the Platters) 9/17/20
Issue #28 How Hippies May Still Save the World (image of Flora by Botticelli) 9/24/20
Issue #29 Gary Snyder and FOUR CHANGES (image of Gary Snyder) 10/1/20
Issue #30 The Golden World (image of glass of water) 10/8/20
Issue #31 Pollyanna (image of Mary Pickford) 10/15/20
Issue #32 Loving the Earth (image of sunrise from atop Big Mountain) 10/22/20
Issue #33 Gettysburg Addresses (image of Lord Buckley) 10/29/20
Issue #34 Gandhi (image of Mahatman Gandhi) 11/5/20
Issue #35 Writings of Lonnie Glinski (picture of Lonnie as Ophelia) 11/12/20
Issue #36 Freedom’s Firm Foundation (picture of Nitya, Nancy & Peter O.) 11/19/20
Issue #37 Writing Poems (picture of Pablo Neruda & Matilde Urrutia) 11/26/20
Starting on November 26, 2020, peace, love, happiness & understanding went from being weekly to bi-weekly.
Issue #38 Pictures (not words) 12/10/20
Issue #39 Poetry Corner (image of Mr. Natural watering the Tree of Possibilities) 12/24/20
Issue #40 Allegory of the Cave (image of Plato’s cave) 1/7/21
Issue #41 Loving Your Enemies (photo of Martin Luther King) 1/21/21
Issue #42 The Hill We Climb (screen shot of Amanda Gorman) 2/4/21
Issue #43 Valentine’s Day Special: Love Poems (image of Paolo and Francesca) 2/18/21
Issue #44 Harold and the Purple Crayon (image from Harold and the Purple Crayon) 3/4/21
Issue #45 Spring Equinox (peace, love, happiness & understanding is one year old!) (picture of Daphne odora) 3/18/21
Issue #46 Story Poems (picture of Aged Aged Man by John Tenniel) 4/1/21
Issue #47 Singer Come from Afar (picture of the cover of Kim Stafford’s book) 4/15/21
Issue #48 Bibliomania (picture of cover of Autobiography of a Yogi) 4/29/21
No issues of peace, love, happiness & understanding in May (Mexico vacation)
Issue #49 Wisława Szymborska Nobel Lecture (picture of Wisława Szymborska) 6/10/21
Issue #50 Johnny’s Imaginary TED Talk About Love (picture of sidewalk message: EVERYTHING WILL BE OKAY) 6/24/21
Issue #51 Dreams of Better Worlds (pictures: 3 by Crumb of futures, big orange splot, Wague mural) 7/8/21
Issue #52 The Art of Happiness (picture of Slava Polunin) 7/22/21
Issue #53 The Three Questions (picture of Leo Tolstoy) 8/5/21
Issue #54 War: What is It Good For? (picture: First and Last Day of Spring by Jonathan Winters) 8/19/21
Issue #55 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (picture of United Nations flag) 9/2/21
Issue #56 Another Humor Issue (picture of Mother Hubbard & her dog) 9/16/21
Issue #57 HEART! (picture of loteria card El Corazon) 9/30/21
Issue #58 Johnny’s Brief Guide to Ancient Greece (pictures of “The Death of Socrates” by David, and a bust of Aeschylus) 10/14/21
Issue #59 Poems from the Last Five Days by Kim Stafford (photos taken at the beach by Kim) 10/28/21
Issue #60 Recipe for Living a Life Rich in Meaning (pictures of four bodhisattvas: Brenda Erickson, Dick Willis, Jude Russell & Jack Baird) 11/11/21
Issue #61 Goldfinches! (picture of Goldfinch) 11/25/21
Issue #62 A Christmas Carol (picture of Scrooge beholding the Spirit of Christmas Present) 12/9/21
Issue #63 Dream of a Ridiculous Man (picture of Goya’s sleeper dreaming Peaceable Kingdom) 12/23/21
Issue #64 Brother West (photo of Cornel West) 1/6/22
Issue #65 Big Sky Country (picture of Glacier National Park) 1/20/22
No issues of peace, love, happiness & understanding for most of February (Mexico vacation)
Issue #66 Big Sky Country Part Two (picture of bee on lilac blossom) 2/24/22
Issue #67 What Are Some of Your Favorite Books? (picture of the cover of Borgel) 3/10/22
Issue #68 War & Peace & Spring! (photos of plum tree and Ukrainian refugees) 3/24/22
Issue #69 Carl Sandburg (picture of Potato Face Blind Man) 4/7/22
Issue #70 A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Prison (picture of Bottom & Titania) 4/21/22
Issue #71 Some Poems (picture of sidewalk covered with cherry blossoms) 5/5/22
Issue #72 Poems By Women first page has Emily Dickinson; pictures of the other poets accompany their poems) 5/19/22
Starting in June of 2022, peace, love, happiness & understanding went from bi-weekly to monthly, coming out on the first Thursday of the month.
Issue #73 Walt on my mind…and in my heart (painting of Walt Whitman by Rick Bartow) 6/2/22
Issue #74 Interview With Bryan Joyner (picture of Bryan Joyner) 7/7/22
Issue #75 Adventure Tales! (picture of Edith Mirante in Burma 8/4/22
Issue #76 William Blake (Blake’s painting “River of Life”) 9/1/22
Issue #77 Kate Brown on Clemency (picture of Governor Kate Brown) 10/6/22
Issue #78 R. H. Blyth (picture of R. H. Blyth) 12/1/22
Issue #79 Tender Buttons edited by Alex Tretbar (picture of Gertrude Stein) 1/5/23
Issue #80 Something That Changed the Way You See the World (poster of “Song of Myself” by Rick Bartow) 2/2/23
Issue #81 Favorite Poems (picture of a stone wall with a gate) 3/2/23
Issue #82 Favorite Films (picture of “The Rink”) 4/6/23
Issue #83 Books That Changed the Way You See the World (picture of For Your Own Good) 5/4/23
Issue #84 Peace (picture of young man putting a flower in the barrel of a gun) 6/1/23
Issue #85 Visions of Utopia & Paradise (picture of The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine) 8/3/23
Issue #86 peace, love, happiness & understanding (picture of Rocky Hutchinson with eight puppies) 9/7/23
Issue #87 Black Elk’s Vision (picture of Black Elk) 10/5/23
Issue #88 The War Prayer (picture of Peanuts cartoon) 11/2/23
Issue #89 A Letter from Rocky and Lots of Poems (picture of Lake Grinnell in Glacier National Park) 12/7/23
Issue #90 Celebration! (picture of Alan & Christine, with Santa and dogs & cat) 1/4/24
Issue #91 What has enlarged your world? (picture of Nancy in Guanajuato) 2/1/24
Issue #92 Abundance! (picture of Mexican ceramic Tree of World Literature) 3/7/24
Issue #93 Creativity! (picture of Martha Graham) 4/4/24
Issue #94 Mostly Poems (picture of cow weathervane, with bird perched on it) 5/2/24
Issue #95 Blogs and Other Stuff (picture of “The Young Hare” by Dürer) 6/6/24
Issue #96 What Stories Do You Tell Yourself to Cheer Yourself Up? 7/4/24
Issue #97 Poems, Letters & Other Writings (picture by Saul Steinberg) 8/1/24

Open Road peace, love, happiness & understanding Newsletter Index

Issue #1 Spring Equinox (picture of pansy) 3/19/20
Alan Watts quote: “there is nothing wrong with you at all”
Serenity Prayer
Metta Prayer
Night Rain at Kuang-k’ou Yang Wan-li (Deb)
Eagle Poem Joy Harjo (Katie Radditz)
Foolish Young Flowering Tree Kim Stafford
Trees in the Wind Kim Stafford

Issue #2 Humor (images: cartoons by Gary Larson) 3/26/20
jokes from Johnny, Kim, Ken, Bill & Will

Issue #3 Some Poems (image: Japanese picture of cherry tree) 4/2/20
Out breath Ryokan
Celestial Laws Walt Whitman
sweet spring e.e. cummings
a lover and his lass Shakespeare
From the Train Kim Stafford
Dennis Takes Us to the Old Trees Kim Stafford
I Ask for Silence Pablo Neruda

Issue #4 Walt Whitman (image: painting of WW by Rick Bartow) 4/9/20
Miracles by Walt Whitman
link to Marfa Interview with Johnny about “Song of Myself”
Teach Me to See, Walt! by Johnny
Song of Myself brief quotes: “seeing, hearing, feeling are miracles…this head more than churches, bibles and all the creeds,” “Whoever degrades another…,” “Dazzling and tremendous…,” “In all people I see myself…,” “This minute that comes to me…,” “Each moment and whatever happens…,” “Why should I wish to see God…in the faces of men and women I see God…”
link to whitmanalabama.com from Perrin Kerns
Kim Stafford’s story about his dad and Walt Whitman

Issue #5 Rumi (edited by Prabu Muruganantham) (picture of flower) 4/16/20
A Just Finishing Candle
The Sunrise Ruby
Prabu’s poem: “You too are flowering”
Where Everything is Music
Rumi story from Kim
Guest House from Johnny
Nancy Yeilding’s essay “Two Ways of Talking”
Bill Hughes’ thoughts and poem “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing…”

Issue #6 Shakespeare (picture of young Johnny with Shakespeare sweatshirt) 4/23/20
some thoughts
All the world’s a stage
eat no onions
lost all my mirth…what a piece of work is a man
sermons in stones, and good in everything.
Alexander died…might they not stop a beer barrel?
Our revels now are ended
The quality of mercy
My bounty is boundless as the sea,/ My love as deep…
A knave, a rascal, an eater of broken meats…
Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments

Issue #7 Happiness (picture by Jan Steen: The Merry Family) 4/30/20
yogi tea tags
The baby beats the nurse… Shax
commentary on The Merry Family: link to Rijksmuseum
Happiness Carl Sandburg
a few words about Twelfth Night: “Care’s an enemy to life”
Gary Larson cartoon about the absent Bluebird of Happiness
link to Louis Armstrong’s “A Lot of Living to Do”
aphorism: Happiness is the art of not making yourself miserable.
aphorism: The soul of sweet delight can never be defiled. Blake
“The Salutation” Thomas Traherne
Beginning My Studies Walt Whitman
Shirt of a Happy Man story
from Writing for Happiness by Kim Stafford—to be with happ is to be happ-y
“Gift” Miłosz
“Happiness” Jane Kenyon

Issue #8 Ingersoll: Crimes Against Criminals (picture of Robert G. Ingersoll) 5/7/20
Crimes Against Criminals
“in this world hate never yet dispelled hate…”

Issue #9 Compassion (Picture of Einstein) 5/14/20
Einstein quote
Gregory Boyle on Compassion and Kinship
links to Homeboy Industries and to TED talk
Please Call Me By My True Names

Issue #10 Love (picture of Hafiz) 5/21/20
The Subject Tonight is Love Hafiz
The Noble Ninefold Path Johnny
Response to Ninefold Path Essay Shad Alexander

Issue #11 Peaceable Kingdom (painting by Charles Erickson) 5/28/20
Penn’s letter to the Indians
Thomas Traherne: “Your enjoyment of the world is never right…”
Kindness by Naomi Shihab Nye
Whitman: “Whoever walks a furlong without sympathy…others will punctually come forever and ever”

Issue #12 Meditation, Dialogue & Study (Goya’s Sleep of Reason) 6/4/20
some thoughts on depression: letter to E. about meditation, dialogue & study

Issue #13 Black Lives Matter (image of George Floyd) 6/11/20
quote from Martin Luther King: …black revolution more than a struggle for rights of Negroes
some thoughts by me and quotes from:
King: “love is creative understanding goodwill for all men”
Buddha: “In this world, hate never yet dispelled hate…”
1 John 4:8
Blake: Love to faults is always blind
more Blake quotes:
Every thing that lives is Holy
Children of a future age…
Art Degraded Imagination Denied War Governed the Nations
more thoughts from me
recommendation for Between the World and Me, The New Jim Crow & film “13th”
excerpt from King’s sermon “Loving Your Enemies”

Issue #14 Mostly Poems (Blake image: When the morning stars sang together) 6/18/20
Blake quote: “The tree that moves some to tears of joy…”
Buckminster Fuller photo & quote: “I always say to myself: What’s the most
Inmate Calls Home by Kim Stafford
poems sent by Howard:
Life-and-Death by Uchiyama Roshi
It Is I Who Must Begin by Václav Havel
from Song of Myself: “I peruse manifold objects” & “Dazzling and tremendous”
“A woman went to see her therapist…” by Johnny

Issue #15 Ripple Effect (image of ripples in water) 6/25/20
“If I can stop one heart from breaking…” by Emily Dickinson
letter exchange on “the ripple effect” between Josh Underhill and me

Issue #16 Blake: Innocence and Experience (Laughing Song image) 7/2/20
some thoughts on going from innocence to experience
four poems by William Blake:
Infant Joy
Laughing Song
The School Boy
The GARDEN of LOVE
Wordsworth’s “Intimations of Immortality” (first third)
quote from Hamlet: “I have of late, but wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth…”

Issue #17 Remembering Nick Picture of Nick Consoletti 7/9/20
Can I see another’s woe, and not be in sorrow, too…?
Lonnie’s letter
some thoughts about Nick by me

Issue #18 Kim Stafford Featured Poet (Picture of Kim and Johnny) 7/16/20
To Be a Better Person essay by Kim Stafford
Dew & Honey poem by Kim Stafford
Two Rivers poem by Kim Stafford
“So many people are shut up tight inside themselves…” Sylvia Plath
“This is what you shall do…” Walt Whitman
link to talk by Cornel West on “What It Means to Be Human”
Kim’s aphorisms on poetry

Issue #19 Metaphors: Battle or Picnic? (picture of Emerson) 7/23/20
Emerson quote about metaphors
Battle or Picnic? essay by Johnny
Sifter by Naomi Shihab Nye
The Panther by Rilke
There Will Come Soft Rains by Sara Teasdale
link to Sacred Economics video featuring Charles Eisenstein

Issue #20 Humor Issue (Gary Larson cartoon: Nerds in hell) 7/30/20
two Gary Larson cartoons
one cartoon by Lars Kenseth
lots of jokes
link to video of people in India singing and dancing on top of a train

Issue #21 Culture that Nurtures (picture of Wisłowa Szymborska) 8/6/20
Consolation by Wisłowa Szymborska
The Tuft of Flowers by Robert Frost
The Fact of Forgiveness by Kim Stafford

Issue #22 My mind started to blossom… (picture of Aaron Gilbert as Toby Belch) 8/13/20
Letter about Love in prison by Aaron Gilbert
Poetry Class at the Women’s Prison by Kim Stafford
A Blessing by James Wright

Issue #23 Poems, Stories, Letters, Thoughts (picture of four actors from Midsummer Night’s Dream) 8/20/20
Practical Illusions by Kim Stafford
Kim Stafford, Ace Reporter poem by Johnny Stallings
Katie Radditz’s story about sitting next to Aaron Gilbert’s mom at play
my letter to Howard about how men honoring me in the dialogue circle
Whitman quote: “This minute that comes to me over the past decillions…
my thoughts about Kim’s poem
Thomas Traherne quote: “There was never a tutor that did professly teach Felicity”

Issue #24 Meditation and Mindfulness (image of Avalokiteśvara from Ajanta) 8/27/20
Kingdom of God is within you Bible quote (Luke 17: 20-21)
intro to Open Road Meditation & Mindfulness Project by me
Thomas Traherne: “Our blessedness, like His, is infinite…”
Pico Iyer about seeing the world more clearly and loving it more deeply
Walt: “There is that in me—I do not know what it is—but I know it is in me…
johnnypoem: “when you see how simple it is to be happy…”
notice of Deborah’s publication of three chapbooks
Deborah’s poem Early Morning Hours
Wendell Berry: Ask the world to reveal its quietude…
Huxley quote: “Unrestrained and indiscriminate talk…”
Thich Nhat Hanh: “Mindfulness is when you are truly there…”
Finding Deep Calm story about Gheed in Palestine by Kim
Invitation to join Meditation & Mindfulness Project by me
Hafiz on perfection: “the movement of your breath…the beating of our hearts”

Issue #25 Interview with Ashley Lucas (photos of Ashley and Jeff Sanders & Joe Opyd with his mom, Sharon Lemm, and Aunt Andrea) 9/3/20
Interview with Ashley
links for ordering her books, link to Open Hearts Open Minds, link to Open Road

Issue #26 Paradise of Books (image of Don Quixote in his library by Gustave Doré) 9/10/20
thoughts on books and bibliophilia
catalog of animals by Borges
thoughts on books that changed my inner landscape
Sonnet #1 by Joshua Barnes
Sheltering in Place #12 by Doug Marx
YARD SALE by Nick Eldredge

Issue #27 Smoky (image of the Platters) 9/17/20
It’s smoky: links to “Meeting in Smoky Places,” “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes,” and Smokey Robinson
Inmate Fights Fire by Kim Stafford
Second Chance by Randall Brown
Smokey the Bear Sutra by Gary Snyder
link to Smokey the Bear song with Eddy Arnold

Issue #28 How Hippies May Still Save the World (image of Flora by Botticelli) 9/24/20
How Hippies May Still Save the World essay by Johnny
lyrics to “Love’s In Need of Love Today” by Stevie Wonder & link to song
some lyrics from “What the World Needs Now” and link to song
lyrics to “All You Need Is Love” and link to song
lyrics to “Get Together” and link to song
lyrics to “San Francisco” and link to song

Issue #29 Gary Snyder and FOUR CHANGES (image of Gary Snyder) 10/1/20
Holy Smokes by Kim Stafford
FOUR CHANGES by Gary Snyder & link to Gary Snyder reading it

Issue #30 The Golden World (image of glass of water) 10/8/20
The Golden World essay by Johnny

Issue #31 Pollyanna (image of Mary Pickford) 10/15/20
The Glad Game from Pollyanna
link to Reasons to Be Cheerful website
link to talk by David Korten
link to talk by Charles Eisenstein
link to talk by Thich Nhat Hanh
Our Next Big Thing by Kim Stafford
Gary Larson Hell cartoon: “We’re just not reaching that guy”

Issue #32 Loving the Earth (image of sunrise from atop Big Mountain) 10/22/20
For Papatūānuku – Mother Earth by Nadine Anne Hura
A note of gratitude from Nadine
link to an essay by Nadine Anne Hura: “I’m Reclaiming the Name I Lost”
“I peruse manifold objects…” brief passage from “Song of Myself”
Wild Geese by Mary Oliver
Earth Dweller by William Stafford & link to him reading the poem
Pied Beauty by Gerard Manley Hopkins
“Weary of those who come with words…” by Tomas Tranströmer
“My Work is Loving the World” by Mary Oliver

Issue #33 Gettysburg Addresses (image of Lord Buckley) 10/29/20
Revising Genesis by Kim Stafford
For All by Gary Snyder
The Color of Eyes by Deborah Buchanan
Everything is Going to Be All Right by Derek Mahon
Inversnaid by Gerard Manley Hopkins
Abe & I by Kim Stafford
The Gettysburg Address by Lord Buckley and link to him performing it
The Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln

Issue #34 Gandhi (picture of Mahatman Gandhi) 11/5/20
Nitya’s encounter with Gandhi from Love and Blessings
some thoughts about having to be right by Johnny
brief Gandhi bio
Gandhi quotes

Issue #35 Writings of Lonnie Glinski (picture of Lonnie as Ophelia) 11/12/20
excerpt from letter from Lonnie
lyrics to Somebody Famous by Lonnie
excerpt from letter from Lonnie
lyrics to Bloom Where You Landed by Lonnie
lyrics to And They Just Smile by Lonnie
lyrics to It Ain’t Me by Lonnie

Issue #36 Freedom’s Firm Foundation (picture of Nitya, Nancy & Peter O.) 11/19/20
Finding Freedom’s Firm Foundation essay by Nancy Yeilding

Issue #37 Writing Poems (picture of Pablo Neruda & Matilde Urrutia) 11/26/20
i thank You God by e. e. cummings
Poetry by Pablo Neruda
Writing as Ritual essay by Kim Stafford
My Sheltering Sky by Kim Stafford
Poetry Doctor by Kim Stafford

Issue #38 Pictures (not words) 12/10/20
drawings by: Saul Steinberg, Franciszka Themerson, Hakuin, Leonard Cohen, B. Kliban, Ralph Steadman, José Guadalupe Posada, Hokusai, Pablo Picasso, Paul Klee, John Lennon, Amadeo Modigliani, Rick Bartow, James Thurber, John Tenniel, Charles Erickson, Maurice Sendak, Mark Alan Stamaty, Andrew Larkin, Hugo Anaya, Jake Scharbach, Peter Schumann, William Blake, Dr. Seuss, Rube Goldberg, Winsor McKay, Gary Larson
link to OK Go:” This Too Shall Pass” Rube Goldberg Machine video

Issue #39 Poetry Corner (image of Mr. Natural watering the Tree of Possibilities) 12/23/20
“I believe the soggy clods…” quote from Walt
“Since water still flows…” by Li Po
Found Kin by Jeff Kuehner
Elemental Thoughts by Joshua Barnes
THE MEANING OF THIS by Alex Tretbar
Hindsight (2020) by Joshua Barnes
Think Twice by Kim Stafford
Your Sovereignty by Kim Stafford
Winter Feet by Esther Elizabeth
Daily Bread by Esther Elizabeth
What Issa Heard by David Budbill

Issue #40 Allegory of the Cave (image of Plato’s cave) 1/7/21
Wonder by Thomas Traherne
DUST by Alex Tretbar
Allegory of the Cave by Plato

Issue #41 Loving Your Enemies (photo of Martin Luther King) 1/21/21
Loving Your Enemies sermon by Martin Luther King, November 17, 1957

Issue #42 The Hill We Climb (screen shot of Amanda Gorman) 2/4/21
The Hill We Climb poem by Amanda Gorman
link to Amanda Gorman reciting The Hill We Climb
Prabu’s thoughts on Tolstoy’s novel Resurrection

Issue #43 Valentine’s Day Special: Love Poems (image of Paolo and Francesca) 2/18/21
kissing rocks and throwing them story
Love to faults is always blind by William Blake
The lunatic, the lover, and the poet by Shakespeare
i carry your heart by e. e. cummings
I Loved You Before I Was Born by Li-Young Lee
The Song of Wandering Aengus by W. B. Yeats
This Is Just To Say by William Carlos Williams
What We’re Doing Here by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
I Knew a Woman by Theodore Roethke
link to Offenbach song Barcarolle sung by Elīna Garanča & Anna Netrebko
Sonnet VII by Pablo Neruda
Re-Statement of Romance by Wallace Stevens (not in prison version)
We Two, How Long We Were Fool’d
Romeo & Juliet: “If I profane with my unworthiest hand…” sonnet
Juliet: “My bounty is as boundless as the sea”

Issue #44 Harold and the Purple Crayon (image from Harold and the Purple Crayon) 3/4/21
some thoughts on Harold and the Purple Crayon
Tenniel’s illustration to A Mad Tea Party
“A Mad Tea Party” from Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

Issue #45 Spring Equinox (peace, love, happiness & understanding is one year old!) (picture of Daphne odora) 3/18/21
A Color of the Sky by Tony Hoagland
Oregon Dawn in Spite of the News by Kim Stafford
In Just-/spring by e. e. cummings
O sweet spontaneous by e. e. cummings
Spring, the sweete spring, is the yeres pleasant King by Thomas Nashe
Spring by Gerard Manley Hopkins
A Thin Sliver at the Door (prose) by Deborah Buchanan
Come Spring by Dorianne Laux
A Light exists in Spring by Emily Dickinson
Spring comes on the World – by Emily Dickinson
Issa:
Look at this world even its
Grasshoppers in the chilly breeze
Spring rain:
Basho:
I don’t know
Spring!
Chiyo-ni:
the pheasant sings-
I forget
squatting
to be in a world
Thank you’s to contributors to “peace, love, happiness & understanding”

Issue #46 Story Poems (picture of Aged Aged Man by John Tenniel) 4/1/21
And the people stayed home by Kitty O’Meara
Nirvana by Charles Bukowski
Abou Ben Adhem by Leigh Hunt
The Thee Hermits by William Butler Yeats
Three Angels by Bob Dylan
A Story That Could Be True by William Stafford
The Aged Aged Man by Lewis Carroll

Issue #47 Singer Come from Afar (picture of the cover of Kim Stafford’s book) 4/15/21
Poetry in Prison by Kim Stafford
Blue Brick from the Midwest by Kim Stafford
Ask Me by William Stafford
God made a little Gentian – by Emily Dickinson
The Divine Image by William Blake
Waxwings by Robert Francis
Meditations 47 & 48 from the Second Century of Meditations by Thomas Traherne

Issue #48 Bibliomania (picture of cover of Autobiography of a Yogi) 4/29/21
Bibliomania essay by Johnny
Prospero’s speech: “Our revels now are ended…”

No issues of peace, love, happiness & understanding in May (Mexico vacation)

Issue #49 Wisława Szymborska Nobel Lecture (picture of Wisława Szymborska) 6/10/21
Wisława Szymborska Nobel Lecture

Issue #50 Johnny’s Imaginary TED Talk About Love (picture of sidewalk message: EVERYTHING WILL BE OKAY) 6/24/21
Johnny’s imaginary TED talk about love
For the Bird Singing Before Dawn by Kim Stafford
Letter to the Mothers and Fathers of Palestine and Israel by Charles Busch
link to Fields of Peace website

Issue #51 Dreams of Better Worlds (pictures: 3 by Crumb of futures, big orange splot, Wague mural) 7/8/21
Paradise essay by Johnny

Issue #52 The Art of Happiness (picture of Slava Polunin) 7/22/21
Slava Polunin’s TED talk

Issue #53 The Three Questions (picture of Leo Tolstoy) 8/5/21
The Three Questions (story)

Issue #54 War: What is It Good For? (picture: First and Last Day of Spring by Jonathan Winters) 8/19/21
quotes from Ten Commandments, Dhammapada, Hermann Göring, and the song “War” by Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong
Michel Deforge’s response to Kim Stafford’s poem “Old Glory’s New Red, Black, and Blue”
some thoughts by Johnny on Pacifism
Kim Stafford’s poem “Old Glory’s New Red, Black, and Blue”

Issue #55 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (picture of United Nations flag) 9/2/21
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Issue #56 Another Humor Issue (picture of Mother Hubbard & her dog) 9/16/21
Old Mother Hubbard Nursery Rhyme
lots of jokes

Issue #57 HEART! (picture of loteria card El Corazon) 9/30/21
Pascal quote: The heart has its reasons…
Rocky’s essay: HEART!
wake up, heart! by Johnny Stallings
Love Therapy in My Second Home by Alokananda Roy

Issue #58 Johnny’s Brief Guide to Ancient Greece (pictures of “The Death of Socrates” by David, and a bust of Aeschylus) 10/14/21
Essay by Johnny about “Suppliants” project and Greek Philosophy & Drama

Issue #59 Poems from the Last Five Days by Kim Stafford (photos taken at the beach by Kim) 10/28/21
five poems with commentaries by Kim Stafford

Issue #60 Recipe for Living a Life Rich in Meaning (pictures of four bodhisattvas: Brenda Erickson, Dick Willis, Jude Russell & Jack Baird) 11/11/21
“Beginning My Studies” by Walt Whitman
“My Recipe for Living a Life Rich in Meaning” by Johnny

Issue #61 Goldfinches! (picture of Goldfinch) 11/25/21
Johnny’s theater piece: “Goldfinches!”

Issue #62 A Christmas Carol (picture of Scrooge beholding the Spirit of Christmas Present) 12/9/21
Abridged version of “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens (for reading aloud)

Issue #63 Dream of a Ridiculous Man (picture of Goya’s sleeper dreaming Peaceable Kingdom) 12/23/21
Johnny’s version of Dostoevsky’s short story “Dream of a Ridiculous Man”

Issue #64 Brother West (photo of Cornel West) 1/6/22
Cornell West on “What It Means to Be Human”

Issue #65 Big Sky Country (picture of Glacier National Park) 1/20/22
Photos and Texts by Abe Green, including:
Dew & Honey by Kim Stafford
Rain by Neall Ryon
quote from Love and Blessings
quote from Dhammapada: “All that we are arises with our thoughts…”
(Mexico vacation)

Issue #66 Big Sky Country Part Two (picture of bee on lilac blossom) 2/24/22
Photos and Texts by Abe Green, including:
Where the bee sucks, there suck I
Birth is not the beginning/ Death is not the end quote from Chuang Tzu
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death quote from Walt Whitman
So here I sit by my campfire… by Abe Green
It’s the job of wise people… by Johnny Stallings
thoughts on Earth’s inhabitants by Abe Green
Lessons from a Tree by Kim Stafford
The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry
thoughts on broken objects by Abe Green

Issue #67 What Are Some of Your Favorite Books? (picture of the cover of Borgel) 3/10/22
Some favorite books from Kim Stafford, Patrick Walsh, Ken Margolis, Deborah Buchanan, Jude Russell, Bill Faricy, Will Hornyak, Jeffrey Sher and Johnny Stallings.

Issue #68 War & Peace & Spring! (photos of plum tree and Ukrainian refugees) 3/24/22
link to Spring Equinox issue of peace, love, happiness & understanding (3/18/21)
Plum Trees in War by Kim Stafford
Thomas Bray’s favorite books
Vernal Sentiment by Theodore Roethke
Katie’s favorite books
On Pilgrimage by Czeslaw Milosz
At the Un-National Monument along the Canadian Border by William Stafford
a favorite book of Michel Deforge
favorite books of Brandon Gillespie and his thoughts on Spring and War
let’s pretend by Johnny Stallings
My Foolproof Plan for World Peace by Johnny Stallings
link to Ukraine meditation group

Issue #69 Carl Sandburg (picture of Potato Face Blind Man) 4/7/22
Definitions of Poetry by Carl Sandburg
The Potato Face Blind Man Who Lost the Diamond Rabbit on His Gold Accordion by Carl Sandburg
How the Potato Face Blind Man Enjoyed Himself on a Fine Spring Morning by Carl Sandburg
The Right to Grief by Carl Sandburg
Happiness by Carl Sandburg
link to Those Darn Accordions playing Let Me Stand Next to Your Fire by Jimi Hendrix
link to Flaco Jimenez, Mingo Saldivar, Pete Ybarra, David Farias & David Lee Garza
link to Clifton Chenier playing Tighten Up

Issue #70 A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Prison (picture of Bottom & Titania) 4/21/22
link to National Poetry Month on poets.org website
link to Shakespeare issue of “peace, love, happiness & understanding” 4/23/20
plug for upcoming Bibliophiles!, and link to Keith on the Mysteries of Shakespeare’s Sonnets
announcement of Portland premiere of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Prison
the history of prison dialogues and plays: how A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Prison came to be

Issue #71 Some Poems (picture of sidewalk covered with cherry blossoms) 5/5/22
A Question by Joshua Barnes
Flickering by Joshua Barnes
thoughts on akrasia by Alex Tretbar
a blue little flower is nodding by Alex Tretbar
the rumor by Nick Eldredge
How to Be an Old Man of Some Scant Worth by Kim Stafford
earth the door Orpheus goes through by Deborah Buchanan
Ghost River by Deborah Buchanan
Ukraine by Mark Alter
my sangha by Johnny Stallings
amateur dilettante by Johnny Stallings

Issue #72 Poems By Women (first page has Emily Dickinson; pictures of the other poets accompany their poems) 5/19/22
The Infinite a sudden Guest by Emily Dickinson
A Light exists in Spring by Emily Dickinson
O Taste and See by Denise Levertov
from My Wisdom by Naomi Shihab Nye
Happiness by Jane Kenyon
from Reconciliation: A Prayer by Joy Harjo
At Blackwater Pond by Mary Oliver
Miracle Fair by Wisława Szymborska
The Award by Alice Walker
Despite the Hunger by Alice Walker

Issue #73 Walt on my mind…and in my heart (painting of Walt Whitman by Rick Bartow) 6/2/22
Celebration of Walt Whitman’s 203rd birthday
link to April 9, 2020 issue of peace, love & happiness, celebrating Walt Whitman
link to new Friends of Walt Archive on the Open Road website
Emerson’s letter to Whitman
excerpt from Emerson’s essay “The Poet”
link to May 7, 2020 issue of peace, love & happiness, which featured Ingersoll’s essay “Crimes Against Criminals”
Address at the Funeral of Walt Whitman by Robert G. Ingersoll (March 30, 1892)

Issue #74 Interview With Bryan Joyner (picture of Bryan Joyner) 7/7/22
Excerpts from CRCI Studio Interview with Bryan Joyner and link to YouTube video of interview

Issue #75 Adventure Tales! (picture of Edith Mirante in Burma 8/4/22
Tales of Adventure from:
Edith Mirante
Kim Stafford
Nick Eldredge
Johnny Stallings
Abe Green

Issue #76 William Blake (Blake’s painting “River of Life”) 9/1/22
Love to faults is always blind…
Art Degraded, Imagination Denied, War Governed the Nations
Children of the future Age…
The Garden of Love
To see a World in a Grain of Sand…
aphorisms from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
from the Preface to Blake’s poem “Milton”
The Little Vagabond
from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
Enion’s lament from The Four Zoas
from Visions of the Last Judgment

Issue #77 Kate Brown on Clemency (picture of Governor Kate Brown) 10/6/22
Amanda Waldroupe’s Guardian article about Oregon Governor Kate Brown’s historic use of clemency

Issue #78 R. H. Blyth (picture of R. H. Blyth) (12/1/22)
Essay by Howard Thoresen on R. H. Blyth

Issue #79 Tender Buttons edited by Alex Tretbar (picture of Gertrude Stein) (1/5/23)
Essay “A Carafe in Bb Major” by Alex Tretbar
“Special Features” poem by Alex Tretbar
“no comas” by Irene Cooper
“the buttons are as tender as we make them” by Laura Winberry
Excerpt from the song “Tender Buttons” by Trish Keenan of the band Broadcast
“Stein’s Enigmas” essay by Kim Stafford
“Lone Pine in Scotland” poem by Kim Stafford

Issue #80 Something That Changed the Way You See the World (poster of “Song of Myself” by Rick Bartow) (2/2/23)
“In Memory of My Literary Godmother” by Will Hornyak
“Coincidence” by Kim Stafford
Story about visiting Sam Alley in hospice by Charles Erickson
Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” by Johnny Stallings
The family I choose by Rocky Hutchinson
“Five Tanka Written Upon Spending the Night in a New Apartment” by Alex Tretbar
“Leftover Rainwater” by Elizabeth Domike

Issue #81 Favorite Poems (picture of a stone wall with a gate) (3/2/23)
“Vernal Sentiment” by Theodore Roethke (Jeffrey Sher)
“After an Illness, Walking the Dog” by Jane Kenyon (Elizabeth Domike)
“I thought of all the doors that had opened and closed… by Jo Harjo (Deborah Buchanan)
“A Meadow” by Czeslaw Milosz (Deborah Buchanan)
“The Waking” by Theodore Roethke (Dave Duncan)
“Easter, 1916” by William Butler Yeats (Mark Danley)
“Together, We all go out Under the Cypress Trees in the Chou Family Burial-Grounds” by T’ao Ch’ien (Katie Radditz)
“Reading an Anthology of Chinese Poems of the Sung Dynasty, I pause to Admire the Length and Clarity of their Titles” by Billy Collins (Katie Radditz)
“May I never by complete…” by Chuck Palahniuk (Jeff Kuehner)
“Afternoon” by Max Ritvo (Alex Tretbar)
“Valentine” by Ken Hunt (Kim Stafford)
“Mending Wall” by Robert Frost (Scott Teitsworth)
“The Salutation” by Thomas Traherne (Johnny Stallings)
from “I Corinthians, Chapter 13” by Paul the Apostle (Ken Margolis)

Issue #82 Favorite Films (picture of “The Rink”) (4/6/23)
“In the Beginning” and “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” (Kim Stafford)
“Ted Lasso,” “Wings of Desire,” “Moonrise Kingdom,” “The Big Lebowski,” “Hail, Caesar!,” “Bliss,” “Brazil,” “The Kingdom of the Fairies” & “The Rink” (Johnny Stallings)
“The Count of Monte Cristo” (Brandon Gillespie)
Book: This is Happiness by Niall Williams; Film: “The Mission” (Will Hornyak)
Will sent a poem he wrote: “Why Baseball Matters”
“The Rules of the Game” & “The Rider” (Ken Margolis)
“Wings of Desire” (Elizabeth Domike)
“Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison” & “Heimat” (Katie Radditz)
“The Crying Game” & “The Lives of Others” (Jude Russell)
“Withnail & I” (Alex Tretbar)
“Andrei Rublev” & “Tree of Life” (Prabu Muruganantham)

Issue #83 Books That Changed the Way You See the World (picture of For Your Own Good) (5/4/23)
The Man Who Loved Children (Ken Margolis)
The Skull Mantra (Elizabeth Domike)
Hope for the Flowers, Johnny Got His Gun & The Power of Myth (Nicole Rush)
The Mahabharata (Charles Erickson)
Green Mansions (Katie Radditz)
Nicholas and Alexandra, Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, American Prometheus & The Orientalist (Jude Russell)
For Your Own Good, Woman and Nature, “Factory” & “Song of Myself” (Johnny Stallings)
For Your Own Good (Todd Oleson)
Man’s Search for Meaning, Writing My Wrongs, The Master Plan, My Grandmother’s Hands, Homecoming & The Body Keeps the Score (Michel Deforge)

Issue #84 Peace (picture of young man putting a flower in the barrel of a gun) (6/1/23)
Poems by Deborah Buchanan: “Early Morning Hours,” “The Only Now,” “Unexpected,” “The Tree in the Universe”
Thoughts on peace, including poem “My Foolproof Plan for World Peace” by Johnny Stallings
“Bolinas” by Tom Clark, submitted by Alex Tretbar
Thoughts on peace by Rocky Hutchinson
“Siddhartha’s prayer” by Bill Faricy
“Surrounded” by Elizabeth Domike
“Peace Tree” by Kim Stafford
“Peace Within, Peace Without”: thoughts on peace by Jude Russell
Thoughts on peace by Ken Margolis

Issue #85 Visions of Utopia & Paradise (picture of The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine) (8/3/23)
Quote from Slava Polunin
Gonzalo’s utopia from The Tempest
Excerpt from interview with Stratis Panourios about utopia and The Tempest in prison
Johnny’s thoughts on utopia & paradise
Poem by Tasos Leivaditis, translated from the Greek by Spiros Chrisovitsianos
“Borrowed Aura” poem by Kim Stafford
“Words for Cup and Water” poem by Elizabeth Domike
“What an Angel Said” poem by Alex Tretbar
“Perfect Day” poem by Johnny Stallings
Quote from Alan Watts

Issue #86 peace, love, happiness & understanding (picture of Rocky Hutchinson with eight puppies) (9/7/23)
quote from Ai Weiwei
“YARKHOTO” poem by Ai Qing
letter from Abe Green
letter from Rocky Hutchinson
“Prairie Radio” poem by Kim Stafford
excerpt from “The Final Frontier” essay by Brian Doyle

Issue #87 Black Elk’s Vision (picture of Black Elk) (10/5/23)
passages from Black Elk Speaks by Black Elk & John G. Neihardt
“All My Relations” by Kim Stafford
“My House is the Red Earth” by Joy Harjo
“Grandfathers Whispering” by John Trudell
“MOTHER EARTH: HER WHALES” by Gary Snyder
passage from The Sacred Pipe by Black Elk & Joseph Epes Brown

Issue #88 The War Prayer (picture of Peanuts cartoon) (11/2/23)
“Other Laws of War” by Kim Stafford
“The War Prayer” by Mark Twain
story about New York City teacher Sari Beth Rosenberg from CNN
some thoughts by Johnny Stallings
“Please Call Me by My True Names” by Thich Nhat Hanh

Issue #89 Letters from Rocky and Lots of Poems (picture of Lake Grinnell in Glacier National Park) (12/7/23)
Letters from Rocky
“Gate A-4,” a poem by Naomi Shihab Nye
Kurt Vonnegut quote about doing things because you enjoy them
“Driving to the Headlands on the 23rd of December,” poem by Gail Lester
“Water Song,” poem by Kim Stafford
video of starling murmuration
“Honesty,” poem by Elizabeth Domike
poem by Alex Tretbar
some thoughts by Johnny Stallings, with Dhammapada quote

Issue #90 Celebration! (picture of Alan & Christine, with Santa and dogs & cat) (1/4/24)
some thoughts on celebration by Johnny
“I am with you” poem by Kim Stafford
“The Three Wise Men” poem by Will Hornyak

Issue #91 What has enlarged your world? (picture of Nancy in Guanajuato) (2/1/24)
The Key to Sweden by Kim Stafford
Alex Tretbar recommends In Search of Lost Time
Johnny Stallings’ thoughts on the question “What has enlarged your world?”
Elizabeth Domike’s thoughts on the question “What has enlarged your world?”
Katie Radditz’s thoughts on the question “What has enlarged your world?”

Issue #92 Abundance! (picture of Mexican ceramic Tree of World Literature) (3/7/24)
Thoughts on Abundance by Johnny, including passages from King Lear, Ulysses & “Song of Myself”
“Some Tides” poem by Will Hornyak
Preface to The Lagniappe by Kim Stafford
passage from “Last Prayer” essay by Brian Doyle

Issue #93 Creativity! (picture of Martha Graham) (4/4/24)
letter by Martha Graham about creativity
“Wild Visioning” poem by Kim Stafford
“How to Make a Poem” poem by Kim Stafford
“Creativity” essay by Kim Stafford about Naomi Shihab Nye’s essay “Maintenance”
quotes from William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway sent by Keith Scales
“The Choice” poem by W. B. Yeats sent by Keith Scales
“My Process of Creativity” essay by Deborah Buchanan, including three of her poems:
“Her Gaze Never Drops”
“white orchid”
“Retroactive Prayers”
two ancient Mexican poems sent by Andy Larkin:
“Here through art I shall live forever…”
“The Artist”
“Sisters” essay by Elizabeth Domike
four short poems by Johnny Stallings:
“The trick of a poem is:”
“i want to go to the place where poems come from”
“the unwritten poem”
“if i could put into words what i see out this window”

Issue #94 Mostly Poems (picture of cow weathervane, with bird perched on it) (5/2/24)
“Remember” poem by Joy Harjo
“Birthing Your Secret Self” poem by Kim Stafford
“Not So Much” poem by Elizabeth Domike
“MAD” poem by Brandon Lee Roy
some thoughts from Rocky Hutchinson
“We Are Seven” poem by William Wordsworth

Issue #95 Blogs and Other Stuff (picture of “The Young Hare” by Dürer) (6/6/24)
“The Province of Clocks” poem by Alex Tretbar
quote from Isaac Bashevis Singer about the wisdom that older people have
“About Those Web Logs (Blogs)” essay by Elizabeth Domike
some thoughts by Johnny about “peace, love, happiness & understanding” and Walt Whitman

Issue #96 What Stories Do You Tell Yourself to Cheer Yourself Up? 7/4/24)
Johnny’s thoughts on the stories he tells to cheer himself up
link to a “Seasons Greetings” video by J Kahn
“The Summer Day” poem by Mary Oliver
“A Translation Project for Peace” and the poem “A Proclamation for Peace” by Kim Stafford
quote from Hallucinations by Oliver Sacks
“Love the Butcher Bird Lurks Everywhere” poem by William Stafford
“Gift” poem by Czesław Miłosz

Issue #97 Poems, Letters & Other Writings (picture by Saul Steinberg) 8/1/24
“I put on my glasses” poem by John Brehm
“Walking Through a Wall” prose poem by Louis Jenkins
J Kahn writes about “Marcel the Shell With Shoes”
Johnny responds to what J wrote
lyrics to “That Feel” by Tom Waits
“Nirvana” poem by Charles Bukowski
letter from Rocky Hutchinson
letter from Michel Deforge
Jude writes about finding peace, love, happiness & understanding
Katie shared Gary Snyder’s poem: “I Went Into the Maverick Bar”

Your Enjoyment of the World is Never Right Till Every Morning You Awake in Heaven: Poems & Meditations of Thomas Traherne 7/20/24
2024-07-20 19:00 - 21:00
Your Enjoyment of the World is Never Right
Till Every Morning You Awake in Heaven

Johnny Stallings reads poems and meditations of the Christian mystic Thomas Traherne (1636-1674), followed by dialogue. This is an Open Road event.

Muir Hall in Taborspace, 5441 SE Belmont, in Portland
Saturday, July 20th, at 7 pm

¡Bardaphilia! 7/19-8/9
2024-07-19 - 2024-08-09
“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players…”

Bardaphilia!

If you don’t already love Shakespeare, this class will remedy that. And if you do…you know there’s nothing more fun than reading the plays and poems together with friends. Actor and director Johnny Stallings is the genial host. Bring copies of some of the plays—(optional). We will make up the “curriculum” as we go along. This is an Open Road event. You’re invited!

Artspace Room at Taborspace, 5441 SE Belmont
Friday evenings, July 19th & 26th, August 2nd & 9th: 7-9 pm
suggested donation $5 per class

If you have questions, you can email me at: stallingsjohnny.com

peace, love & poetry

Johnny

peace, love, happiness & understanding 7/4/24
2024-07-04 - 2024-07-31
photo by Abe Green

THE OPEN ROAD
peace, love, happiness & understanding

July 4, 2024

I asked some friends to answer this question: “What stories do you tell yourself to feel okay, cheer yourself up, bless the day?”

I like to remind myself that everything is miraculous. I tell myself that life is short, this day is precious and so I want to live it in the Golden World. The Golden World is a name I give to a feeling that everything is perfect, that this is Paradise. I’m most likely to feel this way in the quiet time at the beginning of the day—especially when thought and language fall away. So, in addition to telling myself stories to cheer myself up, I love to enjoy “the storyless state”—free of narratives, free of cares.

I have friends in books who have written about those moments of perfect beauty and joy: Walt Whitman, Hafiz, Thomas Traherne, Kim Stafford, Thich Nhat Hanh, and others. I love the little book by Peter Schumann of the Bread & Puppet Theater, St Francis Preaches to the Birds. I love Giotto’s painting of Saint Francis preaching to the birds. Nancy and I enjoy watching “Jeeves and Wooster” with Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie. We love watching Wes Anderson movies. The “Chaiyya Chaiyya” video (with English subtitles) from the movie “Dil Se” on YouTube always makes me happy.

—Johnny Stallings
*

Re: the discussion, after Jill’s reading of Mary Oliver, of what to do with our one wild and precious life, I offer this link to a video seasons greetings card I made when we lived in the Sierras, long ago, made with my little camcorder and scratchy sound, circling the wildness we once tried to rein in, and later yearned to touch:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gFTtCsj0js

—J Kahn
*

Here’s the Mary Oliver poem that Jill Littlewood shared, that J was referring to:

The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
The 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?

—Mary Oliver
*

A Translation Project for Peace

by Kim Stafford

A friend at the Oregon Society for Translators & Interpreters, whose members work primarily in hospitals and the courts to help patients and clients outside the English language to navigate the system, asked if she could invite my poem “A Proclamation for Peace” to travel around the world.

I said yes, of course, and last fall we held a zoom session with translators online in Japan, Nepal, India, and elsewhere, at work translating the poem. Since then, we’ve decided to invite more languages into the project and make a book. We’re up to fifty languages and counting. As I describe the project on the back cover:

This book sends a poem for peace around the world so it may become a new poem in Arabic and Hebrew, Russian and Ukrainian, Tibetan and Mandarin, Tamil, Vietnamese, Polish, Yoruba, Yucatec, and a host of other languages. Together with notes about the peace-making translators and their languages, and recordings of voices speaking gentle words, this book is for the children of the world.

—from A Proclamation for Peace: Translated into World Languages

Here’s the poem in English, and in Persian, as translated by my friend in Tehran, Alirezza Tagdareh:

A Proclamation for Peace

Whereas the world is a house on fire;
Whereas the nations are filled with shouting;
Whereas hope seems small, sometimes
a single bird on a wire
left by migration behind.

Whereas kindness is seldom in the news
and peace an abstraction
while war is real;

Whereas words are all I have;
Whereas my life is short;
Whereas I am afraid;
Whereas I am free—despite all
fire and anger and fear;

Be it therefore resolved a song
shall be my calling—a song
not yet made shall be vocation
and peaceful words the work
of my remaining days.

And here is the poem read in Yoruba, by my friend Abayo Animashaun from Nigeria:

The book will be available at Bookshop.org and other outlets by mid-September.

—Kim Stafford
*

Elizabeth Domike sent this:

To live on a day-to-day basis is insufficient
for human beings; we need to transcend,
transport, escape; we need meaning,
understanding, and explanation;
we need to see over-all patterns
in our lives.
We need hope, the sense of a future.

And we need freedom (or, at least,
the illusion of freedom) to get beyond
ourselves, whether with telescopes
and microscopes and our ever-burgeoning
technology, or in states of mind
that allow us to travel to other worlds,
to rise above our immediate
surroundings.

We may seek, too, a relaxing of inhibitions
that makes it easier to bond with each other,
or transports that make our consciousness
of time and mortality easier to bear.

We seek a holiday from our inner
and outer restrictions, a more intense
sense of the here and now, the beauty
and value of the world we live in.

—from Hallucinations by Oliver Sacks
*

Alex Tretbar wrote:

Hadn’t seen this one of Bill Stafford’s before. How gorgeous.

Love the Butcher Bird Lurks Everywhere

A gather of apricots fruit pickers left
gleam like reasons for light going higher, higher;
I look half as hard as I can to tease
the fruit out of its green.
(It is time to run lest pity overtake us,
and calamity pit invents to accompany itself:
to sigh is a stern act—we are judged by this air.)

Down the steady eye of the charging bear
a gun barrel swerves—intention, then flame;
and willows do tricks to find an exact place in the wind:
resolution steady, bent to be true.
(While there’s time
I call to you by all these dubious guides:
“Forsake all ways except the way we came.”)

—William Stafford, from The Paris Review, issue no. 22 (Autumn-Winter 1959-1960)
*

This is a summer poem if ever there was one. It makes me think of your and Nancy’s back yard. I can relate except for the part about having no aches after working in the garden. sigh . . . I know it will get better after all the beds are prepared and the seeds get growing. Then the salads make it all worth while.

Gift

A day so happy.
Fog lifted early, I worked in the garden.
Hummingbirds were stopping over honeysuckle flowers.
There was nothing on earth I wanted to possess.
I knew no one worth my envying him.
Whatever evil I had suffered, I forgot.
To think that once I was the same man did not embarrass me.
In my body I felt no pain.
When straightening up, I saw the blue sea and sails.

—Czesław Miłosz

Wishing you all such a summer moment.
xoxo Katie Radditz

¡Bibliophiles Unanimous! 6/30/24
2024-06-30 15:00 - 17:00
¡Beloved Bibliophiles!

On June 30th, our topic will be Books That Cheer You Up.

Here’s the Zoom link:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87614013058

I hope to see you there!

peace, love & happiness
Johnny

BLACK ELK'S VISION read by Johnny Stallings 6/22/24
2024-06-22 19:00 - 21:00
Johnny Stallings
reads

BLACK ELK’S VISION

Saturday, June 22nd, 7 pm
Muir Hall in Taborspace, 5441 SE Belmont, Portland

this Open Road event is free

The Fabulous Deck Boys 6/21/24
2024-06-21 19:00 - 21:00
Music Lovers!

On Friday, June 21st, from 7 to 9 pm, Deck Boys (https://www.deckboys.com)–featuring the inimitable Jeffrey Sher!–are gonna rock the Ross Island Grocery & Cafe, 3502 S. Corbett, Ave, in Portland.

If you want to have a good time, this is the place to be.

peace, love & music

Johnny

¡Bibliophiles Unanimous! 6/16/24
2024-06-16 15:00 - 17:00
“The real joy of a book lies in reading it over and over again, and always finding it different, coming upon another meaning, another level of meaning.”
–from Apocalypse by D. H. Lawrence

¡Beloved Bibliophiles!

On June 16th, our topic will be Books That Give You Something New Every Time You Read Them.

Here’s the Zoom link:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87614013058

I hope to see you there!

peace, love & happiness
Johnny

Open Road Meditation & Mindfulness Archive
2024-06-16 - 2024-09-01
Avalokiteśvara from the Ajanta Caves

Open Road Meditation & Mindfulness Community

In September of 2020, Open Road board members–Bill Faricy, Deborah Buchanan and Katie Radditz–along with Howard Thoresen and I, inaugurated the Open Road Meditation & Mindfulness Community, for people who live in prison and for those who don’t. If you are interested in meditation and mindfulness, you are welcome to join us. The idea of the Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue is to provide support and encouragement for your spiritual practice–that is, whatever gives your life meaning.

We are not promoting any religious tradition. We will just be sharing our thoughts, experiences, questions and friendship in order to support and encourage each other in living more peacefully and mindfully. To begin, we will be using Your True Home by Thich Nhat Hanh as a jumping off point for dialogue. As we go along, we will use other inspirational texts and poems, along with everyone’s personal ruminations.

I will coordinate the writings of prison residents through the Open Road post office box, and use email for everyone else. To begin, everyone is invited to find one of the 365 meditations in Thich Nhat Hanh’s book that inspires you and write something in response to it. You can use other sources of inspiration as well.

On the 15th of every month I will send out what I’ve collected from everyone to all the participants. You are free to respond to what other people write, or just ponder it.

Here is the first Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue, published on September 15, 2020.
Here’s the second Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue, published on October 15, 2020.
Here’s the third Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue, published on November 15, 2020.
Here’s the fourth Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue, published on December 15, 2020.
Here’s the fifth Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue, published on January 15, 2021.
Here’s the sixth Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue, published on February 15, 2021.
Here’s the seventh Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue, published on March 15, 2021.
Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue for April 15, 2021.
Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue for May 15, 2021.
Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue for June 15, 2021.
Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue for July 15, 2021.
Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue for August 15, 2021.
Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue for September 15, 2021.
Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue for October 15, 2021.
Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue for November 15, 2021.
Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue for December 15, 2021.
Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue for January 15, 2022.
Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue for February 15, 2022.
Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue for March 15, 2022.
Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue for April 15, 2022.
Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue for May 15, 2022.
Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue for June 15, 2022.
Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue for July 15, 2022.
Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue for August 15, 2022.
Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue for September 15, 2022.
Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue for October 15, 2022
Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue for November 15, 2022
Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue for December 15, 2022
Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue for January 15, 2023
Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue for February 15, 2023
Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue for March 15, 2023
Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue for April 15, 2023
Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue for May 15, 2023
Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue for June 15, 2023
Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue for July 15, 2023
Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue for August 15, 2023
Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue for September 15, 2023
Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue for October 15, 2023
Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue for November 15, 2023
Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue for December 15, 2023
Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue for January 15, 2024
Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue for February 15, 2024
Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue for March 15, 2024
Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue for April 15, 2024
Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue for May 15, 2024
Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue for June 15, 2024

Here are two meditation texts:
a talk on Beginner’s Mind by Shunryū Suzuki (1904-1971)
the earliest Zen text, Hsin Hsin Ming, by Seng Ts’an, the Third Zen Patriarch (529-606 A.D.)
If you’d like to join our merry band, email me and let me know.

Jake was in segregation (solitary confinement) at Two Rivers prison when he wrote this:

49 – What is a leaf?

Is one of my favorites! In segregation we have paintings that are of different scenes. At first it was cool, then I and others got over it. But since putting this wisdom of Thich Nhat Hanh in perspective you see more than a painting. For it opens my eyes to the time, the painter, the painter’s years of art skills, everything down to what makes paint…paint. There are so many miracles that came together to make these paintings! It’s amazing. Now I try to be mindful of what miracles come into place to make people I meet, foods I eat. Being conscious of what had to come together to create your best friend or your favorite food gives you much more appreciation for how they come to be in your life .

Thank you for giving me a chance, Johnny. I’m really working on myself. My goal is day by day. (Today be less ego-oriented.) Trying to not care who judges me for being me. Because that’s not my problem, I am happy and peaceful. It’s been a sacrifice, but as I’m learning sacrifice is the way to a peaceful life!

Peace Love Happiness

–Jake

May all people be happy.
May we live in love.

–Johnny Stallings
Executive Director, The Open Road

Meditation & Mindfulness 6/15/24
2024-06-15 - 2024-07-14
photo of Will Hornyak (and surroundings) by Michael Wetter

Open Road Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue

June 15, 2024

Every day, priests minutely examine the Dharma
And endlessly chant complicated sutras.
Before doing that, though, they should learn
How to read the love letters sent by the wind and rain, the snow and moon.

—Ikkyū (1394-1481), translated by John Stevens
*

“Sometimes a conversation can be the greatest adventure of your life.”

—Lyn Slater (sent by Jill Littlewood)
*

How

small birds flit
from bough
to bough to bough

to bough to bough to bough

—Gary Snyder, from danger on peaks
*
The Owyhee River

Ushers us
Through canyons
A thousand feet deep
Two million years old
Past sheer, towering
Basalt walls, chalk hills
Alive with the songs of
Canyon wrens, chukar partridge, quail.

Eons of weathering
Ice, floods and wind
Yield cracks and crevices
Ledges and knolls
Perfect perches
For eagles, hawks
Ravens and falcons.
Niches hold soil and seed
Birth flowering shrubs.
White phlox, yellow arrowroot
Erupt from unlikely fissures
In drab stone walls.

Just below Montgomery Rapids
The river slows, deepens
We are engulfed
In clouds of industrious cliff swallows
Darting wildly around us
Daubing mud, sculpting nests
The ancient stone face
Cradling new dwellings and
Delicate feathered life.

The days are long and generous
Hot springs, cold plunges
Coyote songs at dusk
Just one rattlesnake!
We navigate rapids named
“Read-it-and-Weep”
“Upset,” “Nuisance” and “Squeeze”
And dozens more
Scouting those
Where disaster is a possibility
Terror and joy flowing together.

The stars seems so close here
The night silence complete
Save for the swirl of current
The occasional slap of a beaver tail.
A touch of whiskey
Loosens the tongue
For conversation, laughter
The medicine of friendship
Like the rising moon
Renews, restores, heals.

We drink morning coffee
And welcome first light
To sage-covered hills
Sandstone cliffs and water.
Soon we’ll begin the ritual
Of gathering, packing up
Strapping down the gear
Casting off and feeling
The first tug of current
The river drawing us
To itself once again
An old friend
Shouldering our load
Showing us the way.

—Will Hornyak, June 2024
*

I was thinking about meditation the other day, and wrote this letter to Rocky:

June 5, 2024

Dear Rocky

This morning I want to write to you about meditation and mindfulness. I know you are very busy these days. I hope you are able to find some time each day—even if it’s just five minutes—to just sit.
Words like “meditation” and “mindfulness” can be misleading. Maybe just think of it as “quiet time.” A time when you don’t have to do anything, or be anyone. Awake and alert. That’s all. No past, no future.
No thought.
No thought?
If a thought arises, look at it as if it is a cloud passing through the sky of your mind. All thoughts are just thoughts. They come and go.
With thought and language we label everything. We name every thing. We take something which is very big—life!—and confine it in words.
We confine ourselves. We imagine that we are a “man,” that we are “in prison,” that we are happy or sad. That we are separate from other people and from “the world.” These are all just ideas.
In silence, all these little ideas just fall away. Something is still happening, but it has no name.
After five minutes or an hour of silence, we have to rejoin other people in the activities of life. We have to pretend to be “Rocky” or “Johnny,” and do the things that Rocky and Johnny have agreed to do—the things that other people rely on us to do.
Writing in a journal during “quiet time” can be helpful—reflecting on our life, reminding ourselves of the things that are most important. Remembering to be grateful. Remembering that every thing is miraculous. Nurturing feelings of peace, love & happiness.
Certain texts are good for “quiet time,” to bring us to “the peace which passeth understanding.” Your True Home is good. So is “Song of Myself.” Also, Tao Te Ching and Hsin Hsin Ming. The poems of Han Shan and Hafiz. The Only Revolution by Krishnamurti. Poems and meditations of Thomas Traherne. My theater pieces “Silence” and “The Golden World.” (The latter is in my book The Nonstop Love-In, which I hope has some things in it that people find inspirational.)
Silence puts us in touch with the reality that is larger than our descriptions and explanations of reality—which are small and partial. This feeling of boundless being is truer than our ideas about the world and truer than our ideas about who we are.

peace & love
Johnny
*

One Trick Pony

I’ll be the first to say it: Oh yes, I can be
predictable—rise, write a little song, then
putter the day away. And my verses, they
lament, or praise, in small compass. Nothing
too fancy, nothing too long or elaborate.
As for ambitious reach, let it pass me by.
Doesn’t every tree have all summer,
every singing bird the whole sky to fill?
Meanwhile, the sun, born in the big bang,
remains content to roil and smolder, now
and then to flare, before settling back
to seethe. So I seethe and suffer, need
and wonder, try scratching syllables
of joy, or sorrow, hope, or warning.
What more can I do than this—
a slow burn, singing and singing.

—Kim Stafford
*

#19 Flowers and Garbage
“Flowers and garbage are both organic in nature.So looking deeply into the nature of a flower, you can see the presence of the compost and the garbage. The flower is also going to turn into garbage, but don’t be afraid! You are a gardener and you have in your hands the power to transform garbage into flowers, into fruit, into vegetables. You don’t throw anything away, because you are not afraid of garbage. Your hands are capable or transforming it into flowers, or lettuce or cucumbers.
The same thing is true of your happiness and your sorrow. Sorrow, fear, and depression are all a kind of garbage. These bits of garbage are part of real life, and we must look deeply into their nature. You can practice in order to turn these bits of garbage into flowers. It is not only your love that is organic; your hate is, too So you should not throw anything out. All you have to do is learn how to transform your garbage into flowers.”
—from Your True Home by Thich Nhat Hanh

Ugh. Garbage. I don’t even want to write about this, because it just dredges up ugly, old memories—memories of my first marriage and all of its ugliness, fear, chaos… But on reading Thich Nhat Hanh, I realized that it was living through that ‘garbage’ is precisely what led me to my determination and devotion to loving and working on behalf of others who are considered ‘garbage’ by much of the world. Prison inmates, rough teenagers, Hispanic adults (documented or undocumented), the homeless, the poor. I am called to be with these people and to instill in them the belief, the understanding, that they, one and all, have value and true worthiness and beauty in this world.

My first husband let me know countless times (always in an alcoholic stupor) that I was a ‘piece of garbage.’ It is said, and it is true, that when you say something enough times, the listener will come to believe it. And I did. Who was I to believe otherwise when the person closest to me told me over and over that I was useless, stupid, and…garbage. Nowadays it’s called gaslighting, I think. Of course I was too ashamed to mention any of this to my dear, concerned family or friends, so it all just settled itself in my being and festered.

I escaped that marriage—and I flourished. (Latin—flor=flower). From the ‘garbage’ came the flower. I blossomed. I grew stronger and eventually I branched out and realized that that piece of garbage could be valuable to others. Now I cultivate relationships with the ‘lost ones,’ those denigrated and scorned and dismissed as worthless. I instill in them a sense of their value through love and attention and presence. I want to transform them all from garbage into flowers.

—Jude Russell
*
Michel Deforge asked me to let everyone know that he has transferred to Oregon State Correctional Institution (OSCI) in Salem. He likes it much better there. Here are some excerpts from his journal:

May 6, 2024

….Some things are not good for me, and at the same time I don’t benefit from obsessive focus (aversion). I simply don’t need to give any more energy than is polite to acknowledge existence. For example: my cellie of late opines loudly—whines even. If (when) I give this energy by having my own opinion, and then sharing it, I see something odious develop in the opinion each holds, and aversion arises. If, instead, I let him rave but do not form my own opinion, or at least don’t share my thoughts, aversion is less powerful in me. I may still find his ideas odious, they vanish quickly enough; unfed they wither.

May 7, 2024

Abraham rushed to Sarah’s tent and said, “Hurry! Three measures of the finest flour! Knead it and make cakes.” Abraham ran to the cattle and chose a tender, choice calf. He gave it to a young man who rushed to prepare it. [While recovering from circumcision!] —Genesis 18:6-7

Indolence is easy. The only requirement is do little-to-nothing, and think less of it. To follow Abraham’s example, hosting unexpected travelers, during the most painful day of convalescence from a minor surgery, is to fight the siren song of self and indolence. He didn’t just follow pro forma for these guests, he ran out to meet them—away from the comfort of shade and recuperation—and then back again to prepare not just a light snack, but a full banquet in honor of his guests. In his great discomfort, Abraham sets himself the task of providing for others’ comfort instead of his own. Many, if not all of us, would not do half as much. We’ll tell ourselves we would. But we know, in the end, pain and our own discomfort will win out, driving us back to our cozy convalescence. I don’t blame us! What Abraham did was extra-ordinary. That’s what ENTHUSIASM does to one, shifting focus and priorities toward where one is aiming his intent. Someday, maybe I could be ENTHUSIASTIC as was Abraham. “If not now, when?”

—Michel Deforge
*

Katie Radditz sent this poem by Rilke:

Dear darkening ground,
you’ve endured so patiently the walls we’ve built,
perhaps you’ll give the cities one more hour
before you become forest again, and water, and widening wilderness
in that hour of inconceivable terror
when you take back your name from all things.
Just give me a little more time!
I want to love the things
As no one has thought to love them,
Until they’re worthy of you and real.

Rainer Maria Rilke, 1875 – 1926
*

Elizabeth Domike sent this poem by Stanley Moss:

Bright Day

I sing this morning: Hello, hello.
I proclaim the bright day of the soul.
The sun is a good fellow,
the devil is a good guy, no deaths today I know.
I live because I live. I do not die because I cannot die.
In Tuscan sunlight Masaccio
painted his belief that St. Peter’s shadow
cured a cripple, gave him back his sight.
I’ve come through eighty-five summers. I walk in sunlight.
In my garden, death questions every root, flowers reply.
I know the dark night of the soul
does not need God’s eye,
as a beggar does not need a hand or a bowl.

—Stanley Moss
*

Our Lady of the Mangoes

Señora Mango
Doña Mango
holds court behind the counter
of her shop,
a five minute walk
from our casita.

Morning till past dark
she waits, taciturn,
does not look up.

Her buyers approach her
for pronouncements of cost:
two tomatoes
or one potato, a handful
of eggs secured
in a produce bag.

Most days I find her
sipping Cup of Noodles,
glued to the soaps
on a tiny TV
beside the withering lettuce.
Her husband watches
from a produce crate
out of view.

I am there for mangoes
zucchini, avocados, tomatoes
onions, bananas
garlic, limes
papaya and pineapple
a profusion of necessities
some too extravagant to buy
at home.

She frowns at my use of
her plastic bags.
I learn to bring my own.

There’s no space on her counter
for all I want to buy. Over time
recognizing me, she
motions me to hand her my
shopping bags. She jots down
my total and picks
the right coins from my hand.

I greet her always and thank her
when I leave. One day
as I turn to go I hear her call
after me “Qué la vaya bien.”
I call out to her in return.

Did I catch just a hint of a smile
in her eyes? We have made progress.
I walk my mangoes home.

—Gail Lester, Guanajuato, March, 2024

peace, love, happiness & understanding 6/6/24
2024-06-06 - 2024-07-03
The Young Hare by Albrecht Dürer

THE OPEN ROAD
peace, love, happiness & understanding

June 6, 2024

Live righteously and love everyone.

—tag on Yogi Tea bag
*

Alex sent this poem:

The Province of Clocks

There aren’t many leaves left in the galaxy
magnolia planted on the museum grounds.

Ravens explode from the county hospital
roof as a result of internal pressure, recalling

to me the nurse who caressed my hand
-cuffed wrists at two in the morning

when I was sick and awaiting arraignment. She didn’t
have to do that. Now when I’m bored and uncurious

I try to remember what it was like to remember
how I held my face so close to the juniper, redirected

a moth from annihilation, and asked my grief
for the hour. Contrary to popular belief, clocks have more

to do with space than time, and all guns really do is move
a thing very quickly into you.

—Alex Tretbar

first published in the journal Sixth Finch
*

Ken Margolis shared this:

“Literature has neglected the old and their emotions. The novelists never told us that in love, as in other matters, the young are just beginners and that the art of loving matures with age and experience. Furthermore, while many of the young believe that the world can be made better by sudden changes in social order and by bloody and exhausting revolutions, most older people have learned that hatred and cruelty never produce anything but their own kind. The only hope of mankind is love in its various forms and manifestations—the source of them all being love of life, which, as we know, increases and ripens with the years.”

—from the “Author’s Note” to the book Old Love by Isaac Bashevis Singer

Isaac Bashevis Singer (1903-1997) won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1978—the only Yiddish writer to do so.
*

I invited Elizabeth to write about her personal experience with blogs. Here’s what she wrote:

About Those Web Logs (Blogs)

I didn’t start writing regularly on the internet until the summer of 2000. Before then I had been posting poetry drafts for workshopping on a site called Open Diary. Not because I was workshopping the poems there. I was posting there because I met a couple of guys that wanted to workshop poems and instead of printing our poems out to share at our weekly coffeeshop meetings, one of the guys suggested we use this online diary site. We could put our poems up, we could see them, critique them, and hey maybe if we got lucky someone else would as well.

That was in 1998. We used what we called “diary names”. There were three of us at that first meeting. When we put up our draft poems there was a front-page feature that folks out in the world would scroll through and click on something that interested them. There was the ability to leave notes on someone’s post. I think we had rudimentary hashtags too, so people interested in poetry might find us that way.

I didn’t get much traffic, but the two male poets got more, and I would look at their notes and click on those people’s diaries. These were people writing regularly all over the world about their lives behind this porous wall of assumed anonymity.

There was flirting, there was drama, as more and more folks coming to the local open mic readings found out we were doing this and joined. People started writing more than poetry and those of us still writing poetry and reading it were parsing it for the juiciest possible details about each other. Factions developed. Feelings were expressed. It was a free for all.

I was reading about the daily lives of people all over the English-speaking world that I stumbled upon or who had found me. I remember a particular day clearly, keeping the poetry page, I decided to set up a page to talk about myself and my life, so I didn’t feel like I was lurking, I was participating. There were ads but somewhere around 2003 or so we got the option to have no ads if we paid a modest amount either monthly or annually.

There were various levels of privacy available too. You could have Friends Only; this is before Facebook became ubiquitous. But I decided to keep my writing public. This became an issue when my family and coworkers started reading what I was writing. Did I mention drama? Crazy drama with misinterpretation and envy and grudges and…

It was kind of fun in an I know this probably isn’t a good idea transgressive sort of way.

Now you would think, oh, well the thing to do then is manage privacy to minimize the drama, but being a person who likes a challenge I decided to figure out a way to write regularly about my life that my family and close friends could read and be okay with. This took a couple of years, and I would say that the biggest lesson I learned is that the only story that is mine to tell is…mine.

Still to this day, things can get a little slippery in this arena if I know someone isn’t reading my posts or a perceived affront occurs… but mostly, I manage the impulse and keep things on the understated side. So… no trainwrecks.

One of the poets I started this adventure with I became very close to, and he pretty much only posted poetry. He didn’t have the diary impulse. His diary name was Mr. Finch and mine was (and still is) noko. Noko was my first cat, a gorgeous Norwegian Forest Cat. Johnny’s diary name is Walt, for obvious reasons.

But oh, Mr. Finch was able to create drama. And he had strong (right wing I might add) opinions.

And then he got sick. By then we were inseparable. I wrote about his illness. He had lung cancer that had spread to his brain. Taking care of him was this isolating thing. I was working full time and caring for him and I wrote about it all on this diary, blog thing, as often as I could.

People we had connected to all over the world were following along. They left unbelievably supportive and useful notes. We would read them together. And it helped. It helped us get through the hard days and the days where silly things happened and the days, deep breath, I needed to interact with his insane family full of alcoholics and one particularly challenging niece with M.S. and a crush on him. But we won’t go there, okay.

At some point the guy running the website decided he couldn’t do it anymore. There was much distress. Eventually another guy decided he would set up a new website and many of us went there. It is called Prosebox. It works a lot better than Open Diary ever did, costs a modest sum to use without ads, allows pictures if one hosts them elsewhere.

When Mr. Finch and I, (we often called each other by our diary names) started a poetry press, open mic reading, we also started a Blogspot blog. We both wrote on that. It is a blogger’s blog called Meander Knot Press. I haven’t written on there since 2016 but it is still extant.

The reach of the writing I do on Prosebox, usually twice a week and noting every few days is small, meaningful, and broadly international. A number of people who “read me”, I read as well and (for some of us 24 years) our communications have developed into deep caring connections. I have met some people in person over the years. Never a disappointment.

I have accounts on Facebook, Instagram, Medium and Substack. But I barely use any of them. I do read some accounts on Substack regularly. This has become the place where folks who are not part of a media organization go to say things they have to say. People put up a certain amount of content for free or you can subscribe for more.

Substack has expanded recently to include podcasts. I love podcasts, the voice is so intimate.

The most popular Substack is by the historian Heather Cox Richardson: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/. It is called Letters From an American. If you give your email address you can have access for free to some material. There is now a feature where if you subscribe, (I do for $5 a month) you get access to her reading her posts out loud. I wasn’t finding time to read them regularly, but I can listen when I am doing chores and I happily do.

A popular independent and successful blog is The Marginalian by Maria Popova that I know a number of you subscribe to. You can find her here: https://www.themarginalian.org/about/

The thing is… people are busy. When I get asked why I would write about myself regularly and make it public…that is crazy… I just smile. I don’t expect anyone to read what I write unless they find something to connect to there. I wrote a post a few hours ago with a picture of wild blackberries in bloom and a widow in Midland Canada who was born in Singapore and married a missionary and a retired maths teacher with partial dementia from Victoria Australia read it and left notes.

The sweet serendipity of it all makes my heart sing a happy song. It appears the years of effort were worthwhile.

—Elizabeth Domike
*

“The Marginalian” was originally called “Brain-Pickings.” I’ve been getting it in my Inbox for years. It is one of the inspirations for “peace, love, happiness & understanding.” I like to think of this as a “journal,” rather than a “newsletter.” There’s no news in it. When Covid was arriving in early 2020, Nancy and I were thinking about how it was going to make life in prison even worse! I thought some of our friends in prison might enjoy getting something in the mail every week, especially something with upbeat, inspirational content. (I rely on poems a lot.) These days it comes out on or about the first Thursday of the month. I mail it to about 2o people in prison, and email it to a little over 100 people “on the outside.” (Does emailing it make it a “blog”?) Since the Spring of 202o, a lot of our friends who were then in prison are out now. Hallelujah!

On the Open Road website there is a peace, love, happiness & understanding Archive: https://openroadpdx.com/event/peace-love-happiness-understanding-archive/. This is the 95th Issue!

Walt Whitman’s 205th birthday was on May 31st. We celebrated with a cake and I performed my hour-long version of his poem “Song of Myself.” I’ve been doing that for a long time. It seems to make everyone happy—including me.

It’s weird to me that 169 years after Walt wrote this poem, it is not more widely read, appreciated, and enjoyed than it is. Many people I ask about the poem say they haven’t read it—or that they read it long ago, in school.

Chapter Two of the book Black Elk Speaks and “Song of Myself” seem to me to be the most important texts that have come from America. As a wisdom text, I have found it to be more helpful in changing the way I see and feel and experience the world than the Sermon on the Mount, the Bhagavad Gita, or the Tao Te Ching. High praise!—but true, I think, for me.

Here are some things about Walt Whitman and “Song of Myself” from the Open Road website:

https://openroadpdx.com/event/peace-love-happiness-walt-whitman-issue-4-9-4-15/
https://openroadpdx.com/event/peace-love-happiness-understanding-6-2-22/
https://openroadpdx.com/event/friends-of-walt-an-archive/

And there’s an essay titled “Walt and Me” in my book The Nonstop Love-In, which is available from the Multnomah County Library:

https://multcolib.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S152C2348579

It can also be ordered from Open Road Press

https://openroadpdx.com/open-road-press/

and from Powell’s Books and Amazon.

Well, that’s about it for this time.

Much love to y’all,
Johnny

¡Bibliophiles Unanimous! 6/2/24
2024-06-02 15:00 - 17:00
painting of Walt Whitman by Rick Bartow

¡Beloved Bibliophiles!

On May 31st, Walt Whitman turned 205! We celebrated at Taborpsace with a birthday cake and “Song of Myself.” This Sunday at 3 p.m. (PDT), we will read together from Song of Myself and talk about the passages that delight and inspires us.

Here’s the Zoom link:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87614013058

I hope to see you there!

peace, love & happiness
Johnny

Johnny Stallings performs Walt Whitman's Song of Myself
2024-05-31 19:30 - 21:00
painting of Walt Whitman by Rick Bartow

Johnny Stallings
performs

Walt Whitman’s

Song of Myself

Friday, May 31 * 7:30 p.m. * Muir Hall at Taborspace
5441 SE Belmont

this event is free

AS THE SKY BEGINS TO CHANGE: Kim Stafford Poetry Reading
2024-05-21 18:00 - 19:30
Hey Everyone!

Kim will be reading from his latest book at Broadway Books (1714 NE Broadway) this evening (5/21/24) at 6 pm.

It will be wonderful!

peace, love & poetry

Johnny

Bibliophiles Unanimous! 5/19/24
2024-05-19 15:00 - 17:00
¡Beloved Bibliophiles!

On Sunday, May 19th, at 3 p.m. PDT, our theme will be Old Poems! What are some of your favorite poems that were written before 1900?

Here’s the Zoom link:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87614013058

I hope to see you there!

peace, love & happiness
Johnny

Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue 5/15/24
2024-05-15 - 2024-06-14
Open Road Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue

May 15, 2024

Katie sent this:

Do all the good you can,
By all the means you can,
In all the ways you can,
In all the places you can,
At all the times you can,
To all the people you can,
As long as ever you can.

–John Wesley (1703-1791)
*

For so long I wandered in the darkness and stayed from the light, I was safe there, I was out of sight.
Not knowing what it was that led along in life, a thread pulled on my heart, some would call it luck, I am alive.
Whatever it is, I’ve always followed my heart and when I’ve not done so…things don’t work out so well for me.
We all have a passion inside of us; driven by it, great things come from each of us for others, for all we love in life.
To give to each other the love we have in our hearts, is truly what is important in life, it keeps all of us together.

—Rocky Hutchinson 4-18-24
*

#16 Embrace Them With Great Tenderness

“Do not fight against pain and do not fight against irritation or jealousy. Embrace them with great tenderness, as though you were embracing a little baby. Your anger is yourself, and you should not be violent toward it. The same goes with all of your emotions.”
—Thich Nhat Hanh, from Your True Home

Oh how important it is to remember this! I am so glad that Thich Nhat Hanh is here to verify, to validate this aching truth for me.

After fifteen years of inexpressible joy with my dear pooch, my dear dog, Lolo (yes, named for Lolo Pass in the mountains, to replace her shelter name of…Tiffany), she is deteriorating rapidly, and I doubt we have six more months with her. Where once not long ago she could hike 10-12 miles with me, now she can walk only a couple short walks around our property. Her kidneys are failing and her hind legs wobble and collapse until I prop her up and give her a little pep talk.

My heart is breaking. Yes, we’ve had 15½ joyful years with her, so true, but now comes what I have dreaded—accompanying yet another dog through the death process.

My heart is breaking, and yet I realized that this great sadness is so filled with love that it is beautiful, that I am fortunate to be feeling this sadness, because it is all love for this creature. My heart is full, and whether it is sadness or joy, the important thing is that my heart is full, and alive.

—Jude Russell
*

Beauty Blind

Have I grown blind to the attractions of the ordinary?
Have I lost the mundane matrix in background weave
of common days, where the blossom distracts me
from the stem’s grace, which distracts me
from the leaf’s holy hue, which distracts me
from earth, essential earth, each crumb of origin?

Any bright young face in the crowd can steal
my attention from all beautiful variations
of the human tribe, from the honest old, the brutal
broken, the pluck and persistence of the unseen.
Wake up, sleepy wisdom. See as sky sees,
pouring light in bounty over all of us.

—Kim Stafford
*

Why should I be unhappy? Every parcel of my being is in full bloom.
—Rumi

As is the world right now!

—Jill Littlewood
*

From the Rubaiyat:

The Bird of Time has but a little way
To fly—and Lo! the Bird is on the Wing.
—Omar Khayyam

—J Kahn
*

Rhododendrons are in bloom! Our whole neighborhood is a gigantic garden.

Under the greenwood tree
Who loves to lie with me
And turn his merry note
Unto the sweet bird’s throat,
Come hither, come hither, come hither.
Here shall he see
No enemy
But winter and rough weather.

Who doth ambition shun
And loves to live i’ th’ sun,
Seeking the food he eats
And pleased with what he gets,
Come hither, come hither, come hither.
Here shall he see
No enemy
But winter and rough weather.

[“Who” here means “Anyone who”]

This song comes from Shakespeare’s play As You Like It. The play and the song belong to the pastoral tradition in literature, where rural life is imagined as idyllic and innocent. Usually shepherds are involved. William Blake’s Songs of Innocence are in that tradition.

This morning I’m thinking about how we live inside the worlds we imagine. In our lives, innocence gives way to experience. And then maybe…I don’t know what…another kind of innocence. Here’s a poem from my book The Nonstop Love-In that may be about that:

let’s pretend

instead of pretending that we are afraid
that we must improve
that we have enemies
that the future will arrive someday

let’s pretend everything is sacred
pretend this is Paradise
pretend every moment is precious
pretend we love everyone

pretend our joy knows no bounds
pretend we are the whole wide world

—Johnny Stallings
*

GRATITUDE

“The Hebrew term for gratitude translates as ‘recognizing the good.’ Myriad benefits come to us every day, but most of us find it easy to overlook them and instead focus on what we lack. This trait is an invitation to sensitize yourself to the good and to the gifts that are certain to be present in your life at every moment, even if at the same moment there happen to be difficulties.

—AWAKEN TO THE GOOD AND GIVE THANKS

PRACTICE: Say ‘thank you’ to every person who does even the slightest thing that is helpful or beneficial to you.”
—Alan Morinis, from Every Day, Holy Day

It is easy to obscure my daily Positive experiences or overlook the seemingly-small kindnesses of others during the day. Yet, I know from previous experience (now lapsed) that any effort to see and appreciate these moments only expands my joy and positive experiences throughout the day. I enjoy the mantra for today. Giving thanks is the easy part, mostly. The seeing of good or Positives—thus awakening—is my threshold of challenge. I can’t help but recall the Robin Williams movie, “Awakenings”; noticing how easy it is to fall into a torpor of catatonia for others’ kindnesses—not even “seeing” that which is slapping my face, repeatedly. Like the patients, I need an “L-Dopa” therapy to shock me from my torpor to sharp alert and to fully present experience of my world and life as it is. Here’s to awakenings for even slight helps, benefits or “good” moments Today!

I’ve wanted a “new” mindfulness practice: Providence has afforded me this Mussar practice—combining Judaism, meditation and mindfulness into a regular practice. I learned recently in a read on Hasidis that Zen, which I practiced earlier (2014-2020), is very akin to Jewish Kabbalah practices, and now I have Mussar exercises for my meditation moments daily!

P.S. Having an audience for writing is a helpful focus and—THANK YOU ALL FOR YOUR SUPPORT!

—Michel Deforge

Bibliophiles Unanimous! 5/5/24
2024-05-05 15:00 - 17:00
¡Beloved Bibliophiles!

On Sunday, May 5th, at 3 p.m. PDT, our theme will be Sci-Fi! What are your favorite Science Fiction books and movies?
Here’s the Zoom link:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87614013058

I hope to see you there!

peace, love & happiness
Johnny

peace, love, happiness & understanding 5/2/24
2024-05-02 - 2024-06-05
THE OPEN ROAD
peace, love, happiness & understanding

May 2, 2024

Katie sent this poem. Joy Harjo was Poet Laureate from 2019-2022.

Remember

Remember the sky that you were born under,
know each of the stars’ stories.
Remember the moon, know who she is.
Remember the sun’s birth at dawn, that is the
strongest point of time. Remember sundown
and the giving away to night.
Remember your birth, how your mother struggled
to give you form and breath. You are evidence of
her life, and her mother’s, and here.
Remember your father. He is your life, also.
Remember the earth whose skin you are:
red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth
brown earth, we are earth.
Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their
tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them,
listen to them. They are alive poems.
Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows the
origin of this universe.
Remember you are all people and all people
are you.
Remember you are this universe and this
universe is you.
Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you.
Remember language comes from this.
Remember the dance language is, that life is.
Remember.

—Joy Harjo
*

Birthing Your Secret Self

Music can get you without being seen.
Painting can move you without a word.
Poetry works because you can’t explain.
Drawing distills your vision’s blur to lines.
With film, you swim a different river.
Live theater plucks you from time’s prison.
Puppets lift you into antic life. Dance
tugs your dreams from darkness to stand
and stamp, pivot, swoon and swirl. So,
freed from gravity, from barren facts,
your spirit sings its colors hid too long.
By art, slow days are quickened, and
all your torn hopes healed as by these
magic acts to your inner eye at last
rising tall you stand revealed.

—Kim Stafford
*

Not So Much

I used to be captured by longing.
Not so much anymore. The ghost
of it resonates, rain on an
industrial drum outside a warehouse
near an old dock, quiet on a Sunday afternoon.

The place the ache left remains.
Wind comes up then whistles
through big sky, open horizon.
The possibilities aren’t quite as endless
as they used to be. Blue petals

of a flower open anyway.
There is a break in the clouds.
I go for a walk.
Even if it is just in my mind.
More space has opened up to roam.

—Elizabeth Domike
*

“MAD”

It never makes Sense.
Once you’re down the rabbit hole,
You’ll never come up.

Oh no! I must be morbidly mad;
For can’t you see that everything that falls upon me—
the good, the bad, the pretty, the ugly was eloquently
envisioned to carry me (no, not you! Rather simply just me.)
through the event horizon to a new reality?

My mind, it ebbs and it flows on the shore with the
rocks. I mustn’t be late! Tick…Tock…alas it
does seem, I am in need, of a new “cuckoo” clock.

The stars in the sky, they seem so high.
That is of course unless you view them from my
mind’s eye. A light year’s not far, and an eon’s not
long.

Will you come with me to a new dimension?

—Brandon Lee Roy
*

3-26-24
5:40 a.m.
Dear Johnny

It’s a beautiful rainy Spring morning here. I just wanted to start sending pieces for both newsletters again. I should never be too busy for this.

When I read “The Open Road” & “Mindfulness & Meditation” I feel the Love & emotions that every one has in them. The amount of wisdom I get is…stunning, to say the least. To me they are works of art from everyone’s heart. Nothing in these compilations we all participate in are simple information; they’re complex, beautiful & cultivate positive growth within each of us in some way. In some way each of us needs some piece of them to complete some part of us…for me, that’s how it feels.

Love You All
Love, Rocky
All of the ways I’ve seen, all the paths I’ve walked, all that life was, is & will be—can it be that I have found in it all the paths that set my heart ablaze with love and the will to be free from self doubt & self limitations?

Even confined within the concrete walls, the fences, the endless spools of razor wire, through the fightings, cuttings, stabbings and broken bones, the lying, backstabbing, manipulations, and the fear of the prison guards who play with our lives, minds and souls, I’ve found this path.

The path is not an easy one to navigate all the time. Every day has its distractions & traps to overcome, same as life outside the walls of prison. But the golden path is the path I’m on, and no one can take me off of it but me. I’ve no plans of trekking away from it any time soon.

The world keeps spinning, eclipses happen like a cosmic clock, my heart is like yours—limited beats full of wounds, love and joy. It rages like a thunderstorm on the sea in my chest, the engine of my soul driving along my golden daily path.

—Rocky Hutchinson
*

Here’s an old poem:

We Are Seven

—-A simple Child,
That lightly draws its breath,
And feels its life in every limb,
What should it know of death?

I met a little cottage Girl:
She was eight years old, she said;
Her hair was thick with many a curl
That clustered round her head.

She had a rustic, woodland air,
And she was wildly clad:
Her eyes were fair, and very fair;
—Her beauty made me glad.

“Sisters and brothers, little Maid,
How many may you be?”
“How many, Seven in all,” she said,
And wondering looked at me.

“And where are they? I pray you tell.”
She answered, “Seven are we;
And two of us at Conway dwell,
And two are gone to sea.

“Two of us in the church-yard lie,
My sister and my brother;
And, in the church-yard cottage, I
Dwell near them with my mother.”

“You say that two at Conway dwell,
And two are gone to sea,
Yet ye are seven! I pray you tell,
Sweet Maid, how this may be.”

Then did the little Maid reply,
“Seven boys and girls are we;
Two of us in the church-yard lie,
Beneath the church-yard tree.”

“You run about, my little Maid,
Your limbs they are alive;
If two are in the church-yard laid,
Then ye are only five.”

“Their graves are green, they may be seen,”
The little Maid replied,
“Twelve steps or more from my mother’s door,
And they are side by side.

“My stockings there I often knit,
My kerchief there I hem;
And there upon the ground I sit,
And sing a song to them.

“And often after sun-set, Sir,
When it is light and fair,
I take my little porringer,
And eat my supper there.

“The first that died was sister Jane;
In bed she moaning lay,
Till God released her of her pain;
And then she went away.

“So in the church-yard she was laid;
And, when the grass was dry,
Together round her grave we played,
My brother John and I.

“And when the ground was white with snow,
And I could run and slide,
My brother John was forced to go,
And he lay by her side.”

“How many are you, then,” said I,
“If they two are in heaven?”
Quick was the little Maid’s reply,
“O Master! we are seven.”

“But they are dead; those two are dead!
Their spirits are in heaven!”
’Twas throwing words away; for still
The little Maid would have her will,
And said, “Nay, we are seven!”

—William Wordsworth (April 7, 1770-April 23, 1850)

Fabulous Deck Boys! 4/26/24
2024-04-26 19:00 - 21:00
The Fabulous Deck Boys!
featuring Jeffrey Sher
will be rocking Ross Island Grocery & Cafe
3502 S. Corbett Ave.
this Friday from 7 to 9 pm.

The Nonstop Love-In Book Reading & Signing 4/17/24
2024-04-17 19:00 - 20:30
¡Dear Friends!
There will be a Book Reading & Signing of The Nonstop Love-In by Johnny Stallings at Belmont Books, 3415 SE Belmont, in Portland, on Wednesday, March 17th, at 7 pm.
I hope you can come!

peace, love & happiness
Johnny

Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue 4/15/24
2024-04-15 - 2024-05-14
photo by Abe Green

Open Road Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue

April 15, 2024

Jude wrote this for the March issue:

TOUCH THE EARTH

“Walking is a form of touching the earth. We touch the earth with our feet, and we heal the earth, we heal ourselves, and we heal humankind. Whenever you have an extra five, ten, or fifteen minutes, enjoy walking. With every step it’s possible to bring healing and nourishment to our body and to our mind. Every step taken in mindfulness and freedom can help heal and transform, and the world will be healed and transformed together with us.” —Thich Nhat Hanh, from Your True Home #232

I am so, so lucky to live where I do. Every morning, rain or shine—or snow—I take my dog, Lolo, and we walk up to the irrigation canal (or the ditch, as most ingloriously call it) and walk for at least a half hour, usually more. Most mornings the mountain is accompanying us. Some mornings her cloudy cloak is covering her shoulders; if so the cloak is tinged with pink and peach with the rising sun. I hear an owl, a red-winged blackbird. I smell the red-flowering currant and the heady mock-orange draping the path.

But it’s what’s at my feet that settles my heart: moss and grasses, ferns, frilly lichens, maybe the golden newts wriggling to escape my footsteps. The path itself is made up of pine needles, fir needles, smushed oak leaves, aspen leaves—all of which exhale their delicious scents at each step. There’s the earth itself, the dirt: moist and crumbly in the spring, dry and powdery in the summer, muddy after a fall rain.

And winter? I try to celebrate winter up here in the snowy woods. It is beautiful—for awhile. The sculpting snow transforms and heightens and softens every branch, every shrub, every leaf. The ‘for awhile’ part last…for awhile; but come early March, when crusty, pockmarked snow still covers my trail, I long for all those delectable senses of the earth uncovered. I am more than ready now! C’mon SPRING!

—Jude Russell
*
3/18/24
5:30 a.m.
HAPPY SPRING TIME

Dear Johnny

Hello and good day to you my friend, it’s a beautiful morning here so far. I’m in the day room now and the TV is still off! So nice and peaceful. I really don’t like the TV very much…most of the time.

I’ve been thinking…the day I get out—if I release from here or Columbia River [prison]—I need to stop at Multnomah Falls, “or any waterfall,” & stand under it and let it wash over me. I just have this overwhelming feeling that I need to stand under a waterfall, let it cleanse my soul.

For almost a year now I’ve been having these subtle changes take place in me. All of the prison “things” that seem to plague everyone, stress, anger, frustrations, turmoil, etc., for me most of them have slipped away. All of those things just don’t matter as much & it’s sad to see others stuck in this frame of mind in here when you really don’t have to be at all, anytime. It’s really only a choice of a state of mind….

In two years from now I will be starting my new chance at life, a re-birth, the spots & stains from my past remain as a reminder of where I came from, never will go back to.

All of the things in the world that used to call on me have become mute and they have no appeal to me at all. I can feel the calling of a beautiful path, full of simple joys, filled with friends and a family, like I’ve never had in my life before. For the first time in my life good things await me.

The sun is just now filling the sky with its colors…the beauty we witness and have is a universal gift to everyone. Life can be so beautiful…if we look. Coming from a dark place in life, the beauty of it all for me always seems to be a gift from within the veil, wrapping me in itself. Thank you for giving my heart eyes to see the things only few can see, my friends!

Love,

Rocky Hutchinson
*

Ken Margolis shared this poem by Billy Collins:

Aimless Love

This morning as I walked along the lake shore,
I fell in love with a wren
and later in the day with a mouse
the cat had dropped under the dining room table.

In the shadows of an autumn evening,
I fell for a seamstress
still at her machine in the tailor’s window,
and later for a bowl of broth,
steam rising like smoke from a naval battle.

This is the best kind of love, I thought,
without recompense, without gifts,
or unkind words, without suspicion,
or silence on the telephone.

The love of the chestnut,
the jazz cap and one hand on the wheel.

No lust, no slam of the door—
the love of the miniature orange tree,
the clean white shirt, the hot evening shower,
the highway that cuts across Florida.

No waiting, no huffiness, or rancor—
just a twinge every now and then
for the wren who had built her nest
on a low branch overhanging the water
and for the dead mouse,
still dressed in its light brown suit.

But my heart is always propped up
in a field on its tripod,
ready for the next arrow.

After I carried the mouse by the tail
to a pile of leaves in the woods,
I found myself standing at the bathroom sink
gazing affectionately down at the soap,

so patient and soluble,
so at home in its pale green soap dish.
I could feel myself falling again
as I felt its turning in my wet hands
and caught the scent of lavender and stone.

—Billy Collins
*

Jill Littlewood sent a quote and a poem:

There’s no money in poetry but then there’s no poetry in money either.
—Robert Graves
*

Because These Failures Are My Job

This morning I failed to notice the pearl-gray moment
just before sunrise when everything lightens;
failed also to find bird song under the grinding of garbage trucks,
and later, walking through woods, to stop thinking, thinking,
for even five consecutive steps. Then there was the failure to name
the exact shade of blue overhead, not sapphire, not azure, not delft,
to savor the soft squelch of pine needles underfoot.
Later I found the fork raised halfway to my mouth
while I was still chewing the last untasted bite,
and so it went, until finally, wading into sleep’s thick undertow,
I felt myself drift from dream to dream,
forever failing to comprehend where I am falling from or to:
this blurred life with only moments caught
in attention’s loose sieve —
tiny pearls fished out of oblivion’s sea,
laid out here as offering or apology or thank you

—Alison Luterman
*

Thoughts on presence and absence

As I age and find that this appears to be a time of perpetual loss—of friends, loved ones, abilities—and all of the minor affronts and assaults that living a fairly long life brings, I have spent some time in reflection about the importance of remaining aware and grateful for what remains present in my life. I believe it is all too easy to reflect on the unavoidable losses and become consumed with what is absent. And of course this is not merely an affliction of the aging and aged. In my years as a psychotherapist, I often noticed how people often focused upon what was absent in their lives: the job lost, the fractured friendship ended, the fantasy trip not taken, etc. And with this focus on what was absent, what was both actually or potentially present and the vitality and affirmation of the potential current richness always still available was lost. Yes, I can no longer run a marathon, but I can walk along the river and be grateful for that opportunity. Shall I mourn and obsess over the loss of a friendship for reasons that I never understood, or shall I rejoice in the meaningful friendships that I do have? I think there is always a choice to put one’s emotional energy and focus on what is missing— Absence—or what is available right now—Presence. And in attending to what is present a deep sense of Gratitude often emerges. While I am not a formal meditator, this is my practice. Give it a try sometime!

—Jeffrey Sher
*

On Friday, Johnny and I spent a Day of Mindfulness, in dialogue and meditation practice on keeping our hearts open.

We read this poem together in our group of 24 people:

Kindness

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

— Naomi Shihab Nye
*
I have been thinking of Naomi—how her heart is aching for her Palestinian friends and family, her loved-ones. I feel her warmth and hear her voice, reading the poems in her 2019 book, The Tiny Journalist.

Some excerpts from My Wisdom:

When people have a lot
they want more

When people have nothing
they will happily share it

No bird builds a wall

Open palms
hold more
*

In Some Countries

There were people who had a hundred handbags
People who hired maids to take care of their maids.

You could float down the Rhine and see castles.
Dogs wore coats for daily walks in Central Park.

A dog’s diamond collar glistened.
We were not dreaming of these things for ourselves.

We needed basics, starting small.
Hello, you look like a human being to me.

It’s hard to know what open roads mean
if you’ve always had them.

We can’t imagine
the luxury of open reads.

—Naomi Shihab Nye

—Katie Radditz
*

After Hours

Lately I have been too cold by furnace,
warm as I shoulder the bag of ice

in the aisle of ignored announcement:
it is closing time, and no clerk

can I convince that I have already gone,
am home, removing every bulb

with ceremony, with a touch like hers, how
when something is removed it is itself

again, holy in the original sense
of being set aside, and always when I wake

it is like this, my bed more public a place
than I should like it, a bird or bothered person

in conversation I cannot parse, machines
are being fixed all around me, and I like it:

to be broken and unreachable, to be a camera
without film and yet recording.

—Alex Tretbar
(first published in Colorado Review)
*

Katie Radditz and Pat Malone led “A Day of Mindfulness” at First Unitarian Church last Friday. It was a lovely way to spend a day. Several people said they “needed it,” because they felt overwhelmed—mostly by the daily news. Katie and I started this monthly Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue in September of 2020 as a way of reaching in to friends in prison with support and encouragement for their spiritual practice. (“Spiritual practice” can be anything that gives our lives meaning.) Since then, a lot of our prison friends have “graduated.” This currently goes to 10 men in prison and about 70 people “on the outside.” It comes out on the 15th of every month. If you get this, feel free to contribute.
Here are some things from my “Translating Traherne” project:

26
All things are spiritual—being objects not just of the eye, but of the mind. The more you value each thing, the happier you will be. Pigs eat acorns, but don’t consider the sun and rain and soil that nourished the tree from which the acorns came. We can appreciate the endless miracles of life and live in joy, or live in ignorance and be miserable.

27
You never enjoy the world aright, till you see that a grain of sand is a perfect miracle. Everything is here for your delight—not just because things are beautiful, or useful, but because our life is woven into the tapestry of all that is. Wine quenches more than our thirst when we feel it to be one of the countless miracles which are ours to enjoy, and give thanks. When the happiness of others makes us happy, life is good. To be grateful for all our blessings is to be blessed, to live in Paradise.

28
Your enjoyment of the world is never right till every morning you awake in Paradise—until you look upon the earth and sky with boundless joy. If you are grateful for everything, no one who ever lived has more reason to be happy than you.

29
You never enjoy the world aright, till the sea flows in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens, and crowned with the stars—till you perceive yourself to be the sole heir of the whole world, and more than so, because people are in it who are every one sole heirs as well as you. Till you can sing and rejoice and delight in all of creation, as misers do in gold, you never enjoy the world.

—Thomas Traherne (1636-1674) from Centuries of Meditations, versions by Johnny Stallings

peace & love, y’all
Johnny

Day of Mindfulness Retreat with Katie Radditz 4/12/24
2024-04-12 09:30 - 15:00
Hello all you on the Open Road

I wanted to let you know of a Day of Mindfulness I’m offering on Friday, April 12th, from 9:30 to 3 at the First Unitarian Church in Portland. (The entrance is on SW Salmon Street, between 11th & 12th.)

Bring a sack lunch!

The focus will be on developing equanimity and practices for opening our hearts. Inspired by Loving-Kindness practice and the Open Road Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue.

I would love to see you there. I hope you will be able to come!

love and peace,

Katie Radditz

The event is free, but please click on this link to register:

https://www.firstunitarianportland.org/events-calendar/

Bibliophiles Unanimous! 4/7/24
2024-04-07 15:00 - 17:00
¡Beloved Bibliophiles!

On Sunday, April 7th, at 3 p.m. PDT, our theme will be Mysteries! What are your favorite mystery stories and novels?
Here’s the Zoom link:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87614013058

I hope to see you there!

peace, love & happiness
Johnny

peace, love, happiness & understanding 4/4/24
2024-04-04 - 2024-05-01
THE OPEN ROAD
peace, love, happiness & understanding

April 4, 2024

Creativity!

Kim sent some helpful words on the subject of creativity by Martha Graham, a couple of poems, and an essay:

Letter from Martha Graham to Agnes deMille

There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique.
And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost. The world will not have it.
It is not your business to determine how good it is; nor how valuable it is; nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.
You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you.
Keep the channel open…
No artist is pleased…
There is no satisfaction whatever at any time.
There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction; a blessed unrest.

(Martha Graham was a revolutionary dancer and choreographer in New York in the mid-twentieth century, here writing a letter to her friend Agnes deMille)
*

Wild Visioning

They say her name is Susan, and she holds these
“Why not?” sessions somewhere east, up the Gorge.
She’ll ask, Why should we believe only one can say,
“I have a dream…”? She says, “Why have freedom
if we don’t sing out loud the best we could ever say?”

So they practice wild imagining. People get fierce
and joyful, saying, “What if I…What if we…?”
They start with dark news, and turn it inside out.
They vision, then they plan, and then they act.
Once they shake things up, they’re hard to stop.
They summon mayors. Then city councils catch
the fever. Then voters start to see things otherwise.
Some friends went to learn what it’s all about. They
never came back. Now they’re comets, lighting
our way across the sky. —And you? And I?

*

How to Make a Poem

Let it open like a flower—but you won’t
need the bud, blossom, scent, or petals.

Let it beat like a heart—without naming
anatomy, blood, valves, counting the pulse.

Let it be warm as sunlight fingering
through storms to find you shivering.

And may it address the world of silences,
of kinship short a few right words.

Now take down the scaffold. Let it grow
by brevity: Open hearts warm the world.

*

Kim does a good deed every day. He writes a poem. In addition to being a writer, Kim has been a teacher of writing for many years. He is a treasure trove of ideas on this subject. He even sent an essay on someone else’s essay!:

Creativity
How Naomi Shihab Nye does it…for example in her essay “Maintenance”

She likes eccentrics and she remembers details about them. She looks at her subject—housework, order, maintenance—sideways, while looking directly at people. The essay begins as a catalog of people, with each including observation, location, dialog, and now and then an oblique observation on maintenance, and the deeper meaning of maintenance: keeping a place for the life of the spirit.

One trick is to keep changing categories as a way of keeping the range of interest broad, the opportunity to include rich details wide, the essay in the realm of daily life: “Barbara has the best taste of any person I’ve ever known—the best khaki-colored linen clothing, the best books, the name of the best masseuse.”

The narrative voice can move from one topic to another—maintenance, feminism: “I never felt women were more doomed to do housework than men; I thought women were lucky. Men had to maintain questionably pleasurable associations with less tangible elements—mortgage payments, fan belts and alternators, the IRS. I preferred songs, and the way people who washed dishes immediately became exempt from after-dinner conversation.”

She takes every opportunity to bring detail to her sentences: on Thoreau, “A wealthy woman with a floral breakfast nook once told me I would ‘get over him,’ but I have not—documented here, I have not.”

And she lets Marta Alejandro have the last word. “Is your house still as big as it used to be?”

—Kim Stafford

(If you want a copy of Naomi Shihab Nye’s essay “Maintenance,” let me know and I can mail or email it to you.)—JS
*

Actor, writer and director Keith Scales sent a couple of quotes and a poem on the subject of creativity:

Here’s from William Faulkner’s Nobel prize acceptance speech:

(His output was the result of) “a life’s work in the agony and sweat of the human spirit, not for glory and least of all for profit, but to create out of the materials of the human spirit something that did not exist before.”

The Choice

The intellect of man is forced to choose
perfection of the life, or of the work,
And if it take the second must refuse
A heavenly mansion, raging in the dark.
When all that story’s finished, what’s the news?
In luck or out the toil has left its mark:
That old perplexity an empty purse,
Or the day’s vanity, the night’s remorse.

—W.B. Yeats

And:

“Don’t talk about it or you’ll lose it:”

—Ernest Hemingway, from The Sun Also Rises

—Keith Scales

*

Deborah Buchanan wrote about her creative process:

My Process of Creativity

I waste a lot of time. I do the laundry. I cook something. I procrastinate—I’m a champion at waiting for another hour, another day, maybe another lifetime. All the while I am pondering, turning ideas and phrases over in my head. Or maybe I turn my attention aside and let whatever the idea is gestate in darkness. Many, many slips of paper with little notes on them. Look at my kitchen counter right now—phrases, words, topics, the beginnings of poems. Some I come back to and a flash happens. Other times I wonder, What could I have been thinking? I listen for a dream. In fact, some of my best poems began as a dream, a voice that spoke to me. In all this, time doesn’t matter. Some poems wait for years, others die on the vine. All of that is okay. I remind myself that Stanley Kunitz wasn’t particularly prolific—he said he only wrote a poem that spoke to him, he didn’t force things. There is also a quote from Theodore Roethke that I have repeated to myself countless times. It goes something like this: “A poet spends his life standing outside in the rain, waiting for the lightning to strike.” A perfect image in the Northwest.

Here is one poem I wrote about the process.

Her Gaze Never Drops

The muse is angry,
her words sting,
she wants to be inside you,
a deep place you rarely find.
It is like a seed, the shell broken.
Through the cracks, words.
Here, this is yours,
see the clear tunnel.
Where have you been?

The fist can be hot, the sound hard.
We stand in the open,
crackling vibrations around us,
listening our only option.

Another poem, which comes with a story. Many years ago I was at the Gurukula Botanical Reserve in India’s Western Ghats. Wolfgang was showing me around, plant lover to plant lover. When we were in the orchid area he pointed to some dirt and said, “This is where the underground white orchid flower blooms.” Well, as an earth sign I went wild. I tried and tried to write a poem about that. Only nine years later as I was at a workshop and learning about the fungus on plant roots did an idea come. This is the result.

white orchid

waxy petals unfurl slowly against the tropical earth pale insects burrow in
drawn by fragrance escaping molecule by molecule through soft loam
surrounding the tendril of whitened stem piercing soil branching off
a flower then another creeping underground this life unseen unheeded
above ground our life drawing sustenance from the dark explosion

And a final story and poem. One summer I spent a week camping out on the Zumwalt Prairie as part of Fishtrap’s annual workshop. In a discussion I used the phrase retroactive prayers. A friend said, What a great poem idea. Again, many years passed and I couldn’t think of any way to use those two words. Then this last winter I wrote the following poem as part of a song cycle.

So my advice: Pay attention to suggestions, forget time, let the world offer itself to you. And delete, delete, delete.

Retroactive Prayers

Moist pads on frog feet turn leathery,
streams and ponds evaporate,
water’s flow drains, then vanishes.

We didn’t think of them, we turn trying to see

Ants and beetles, roaches and worms too numerous
to count, all refugees from untallied worlds, wander this
damaged landscape—habitats scorched, flooded—buried.

We turn, we turn trying to see

Flocks of birds drawn to the sky, called by season’s
change, by earth’s magnetic lines— overcome
by heat and ash countless bodies drop to earth.

We didn’t think of them, we didn’t think

Wanting what is lost, our prayers reach out
to these abandoned lives, reach to recover and embrace,
to become each other’s prayer of remembrance.

—Deborah Buchanan
*

Andy Larkin shared some thoughts about creativity from the ancient Mexicans:

Here through art I shall live forever…
A singer, from my heart I strew my songs
I carve a great stone, I paint thick wood
My song is in them…
I shall leave my song-image on earth

Toltecayootl a ycaya ninemiz ye nicã ayyo.
Ac ya nechcuiliz ac ye nohuan oyaz onicas a anniihcuihuana ayayyan cuica-nitl y yehetl y noxochiuh nõcuicayhuitequi on teixpã ayyo.
Hueyn tetl nictequin Tomahuac quahuitl nic ycuiloa yã cuicatl ytech aya oncan no mitoz in quemanõ in can niyaz nocuicamachio nicyacauhtiaz in tlpc

–Nahuatl poem (circa 1570)
Cantares Mexicanos, fol. 27r-27v

The Cantares Mexicanos is a collection of lyrical poetry from the courts of the Triple Alliance (Aztec). I think the poet was the philosopher-king of Texcoco, Nezahualcoyotl (Fasting Coyote). He’s the tough-looking guy on the Mexican 100 peso note.

Also:

The Artist

The artist: disciple, abundant, multiple, restless.
The true artist, capable, practicing, skillful;
maintains dialogue with his heart, meets things with his mind.

The true artist: draws out all from his heart;
works with delight, makes things with calm, with sagacity,
works like a true Toltec, composes his objects, works dexterously, invents; arranges material, adorns them, makes them adjust.

The carrion artist: works at random, sneers at the people,
makes things opaque, brushes across the surface of the face of things, works without care, defrauds people, is a thief.

-Nahuatl poem from the Codex Matritensis,
fol. 115 v. (208), ca. 1540—1585

—Andy Larkin
*

Elizabeth Domike is a poet and yoga teacher:

Sisters

We’ve talked about boundaries as sisters to creativity. These days I lean on them heavily. Not teaching yoga for an institution, but for the specific students who have been drawn to the material I share, some of the boundaries I have are defined. Say for time.

Every week I send a reminder with a theme for the next five days. And I head that with a photograph, one I have (most often) taken during the previous week. This is something I hold close when out and about it the world. What would work, what would set the tone, represent the world here and now in this place.

Every weekday morning I choose a poem to read at the end of class. I’ve tried doing this in advance and it doesn’t work as well as those spontaneous moments reading poems in the early dark. It is a kind of meditative practice after writing 750 Words and exploring the nature of my thoughts and emotions there so close to the dream state. For the poem I choose a key word or words, like relief, or old trees, or hyacinth. And then I read what comes up and choose one that has the length and tone that I think might work and might inspire an image or thoughtfulness to carry us all through the day… a tiny bit richer.

Then during the class, although I do prepare, (sometimes for hours, depending on the material), I let go, responding to who is there and what their needs might be. Each practice, an all-consuming creative act. This took years for me to be confident enough to do. It is a kind of free fall, with the invisible ropes being the structure I have spent time revisiting again and again.

These practices have taught me that everything I do, can in some way, be expressed creatively. And most times is, without me even trying. Any experience of connecting to the sources we carry within and translating them into the language of the present moment is, in my opinion, an offering, a gift, a blessing for us all.

—Elizabeth Domike
*

Here are a few of my poems that might relate to the subject of creativity in some way:

The trick of a poem is:
Don’t say too much.
If you do
*

i want to go to the place where poems come from
*

the unwritten poem
is completely useless
*

if i could put into words what i see out this window
i would do with language what no one has yet done
if i could say what this bean plant means
everyone would fall down and worship my poem
well, probably not
because, as it is, we don’t kneel before the bean plant
and water its roots with our tears

holy holy holy is the bean plant
the cup of coffee
the stuffed animals on the window sill
that have been loved unto baldness
the song sparrow
the sunlight
and even the man sitting with his laptop
failing once again to say the unsayable
*

Like all good topics, the subject of “creativity” is endless. Many creative people have written about what they do, but most of the inspiration we get from them comes directly from the poems they’ve written, the paintings they’ve painted, the music they’ve played, the dances they’ve danced, the meals they’ve cooked, the gardens they’ve grown, the films they’ve made. A couple inspiring documentaries about artists at work are “Rivers and Tides” (2001) and “Shangri-La” (2019).

On Saturday, March 23rd, there was a wonderful book launch for my first book, The Nonstop Love-In: poems, stories, essays & other writings. It was a Love-In! The Multnomah County Library has ordered some copies. Check it out! You can get a copy at Belmont Books in Portland. You can order a copy by emailing me at: stallingsjohnny@gmail.com. It’s also available from the websites of Powell’s, Barnes & Noble, Amazon & IngramSpark. Coming soon to Powell’s Books on Hawthorne!

peace, love & happiness
—Johnny Stallings

Bibliophiles Unanimous Live! Book Launch for The Nonstop Love-In by Johnny Stallings 3/23/24
2024-03-23 18:00 - 20:00
Dear Friends!

I’m excited to be publishing my first book–The Nonstop Love-In! The release date is Saturday, March 23rd, 2024.
There will be a Book Launch that very evening at Ross Island Grocery & Cafe, 3502 S. Corbett Ave. Food & drink from 6 to 7. Reading and signing from 7 to 8.

From the back cover:

If you know Johnny, you will love this book. If you don’t, after reading, you will want to meet him—by reading this book. Who else can provide such a good-humored, big-hearted, modern Socratic quest into the nature of human happiness, and the myriad paths to finding joy? Johnny lived in India—and in the remote Eastern Oregon town of Ashwood. He’s spent years in prison—as a generous visitor creating dialog circles to bring lively thought to shadowed lives. And all the time he was writing these zesty morsels of insight, poem, story, meditation, and manifesto just for you.

—Kim Stafford, author of As the Sky Begins to Change

I hope to see you there!!!

The book is available now to pre-order, from Powell’s…

https://www.powells.com/book/the-nonstop-love-in-9798989801107

Barnes and Noble…

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-nonstop-love-in-johnny-stallings/1144757191

and Amazon!

Order yours today!

peace, love & happiness

Johnny
