On Practice, Poetry, and On Always Carrying Something Beautiful in Your Mind

Mar 19

Mar 19 On Practice, Poetry, and On Always Carrying Something Beautiful in Your Mind

I’m writing to you from in the company of the black dog. This is fine. In the words of Simon and Garfunkel, “I have my books and my poetry to protect me.” A lot of it comes from pure old grief, and we know these days, that grieving takes many forms, comes from a lot of places, and that loss compounds loss. The hierarchy of grief is such that the black dog cares not which rung. My griefs, I know, are relatively small, and the collective grief of the world is large. Still, I invite it in.

I was flipping through some of my favourite anthologies of poetry and re-read the following:

Talking to Grief

by Denise Levertov

Ah, grief, I should not treat you
like a homeless dog
who comes to the back door
for a crust, for a meatless bone.
I should trust you.

I should coax you
into the house and give you
your own corner,
a worn mat to lie on,
your own water dish.

You think I don’t know you’ve been living
under my porch.
You long for your real place to be readied
before winter comes. You need
your name,
your collar and tag. You need
the right to warn off intruders,
to consider my house your own
and me your person
and yourself
my own dog.

So yes, poetry. I wrote the following post on Instagram a few days back:

Things I'm thinking about this morning: the architecture of the soul, photography and witness, Rilke's line, "you must change your life," Larkin's "what will survive of us is love," Lispector's "each of us is responsible for the world," Zagajewski's "try to praise the mutilated world," Cixous's "whoever says: I am alone breaks the solitude and affirms it by this act of speech," Dufy's "some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer utters itself," Pessoa's "to be great, be whole: don't exaggerate or leave out any part of you." I could go on. The line at the center of my novel Rumi and the Red Handbag, is "what are you going through?" and I'm thinking a lot about that one too.

In John O'Donohue's book Beauty, he reminds us of the words by Pascal: "In difficult times you should always carry something beautiful in your mind."

I hope you have something beautiful to carry in your mind, too, today.

“In difficult times you should always carry something beautiful in your mind”

— Pascal

When I was thinking about what is the most useful thing I might have to give on this blog today, I kept coming back to the words via O’Donohue. I’ve also been thinking about how I’ve been very centred on “practicing my practice” out in the world, lo these many years. That practice being to exercise my compassion, my empathy, my kindness, my hope, my ability to see poetry and beauty in the ordinary. My practice is to keep my soul enlivened so that you also may keep yours so. My practice is tonglen. My practice is to participate in the good breathing of the world. My practice is to remember that I have 23340 breaths a day. My practice is the great AUM. My practice resides between the divine and the divine.

The thing about having a practice, is to remember that it’s just that, a practice. It’s not something ever present, but something to continue to work toward. Sometimes there’s joy, sometimes not.

Rumi:

Work. Keep digging your well.
Don’t think about getting off from work.
Water is there somewhere.

Submit to a daily practice.
Your loyalty to that
is a ring on the door.

Keep knocking and the joy inside
will eventually open a window
and look out to see who’s there.

So it is for the poets, also for the practitioners of inner peace. There’s no lay-off.

Poet’s work

by Lorine Niedecker

Grandfather
advised me:
Learn a trade

I learned
to sit at desk
and condense

No layoff
from this
condensery

I feel fortunate to have so much poetry at hand. To carry the beautiful words of others in my mind.

This next poem has appeared in this space before. It pretty much lives in my head, even though I’m not at all a religious person.

God Says Yes To Me

by Kaylin Haught

I asked God if it was okay to be melodramatic
and she said yes
I asked her if it was okay to be short
and she said it sure is
I asked her if I could wear nail polish
or not wear nail polish
and she said honey
she calls me that sometimes
she said you can do just exactly
what you want to
Thanks God I said
And is it even okay if I don't paragraph
my letters
Sweetcakes God said
who knows where she picked that up
what I'm telling you is
Yes Yes Yes

So, I asked God if if it was okay to feel betrayed by and worn down and completely done with the fuckery of the world and yah, God said you can feel exactly how you feel. And that helped.

And another poem that helps is one I originally found on Anthony Wilson’s blog and then in his book Lifesaving Poems, which as always, I highly recommend.