#161: Life is beautiful

Aug 23, 2021

Dear reader,

I hope you're doing alright and finding the right coping mechanisms to deal with these times and news cycles.

Last night was a full moon and it evoked a giddying sense of hope in me. This morning, I woke up at 6am sans alarm, went to Cubbon Park for a walk and the rest of the day was beautiful.

In the spirit of paying it forward, here’s wish you a beautiful day ahead. Feel free to do the same and carry forward the chain reaction of kindness. :)

A lovely Mary Oliver poem to capture the feeling of waking up early:

Why I Wake Early by Mary Oliver
Hello, sun in my face.
Hello, you who made the morning
and spread it over the fields
and into the faces of the tulips
and the nodding morning glories,
and into the windows of, even, the
miserable and the crotchety –

best preacher that ever was,
dear star, that just happens
to be where you are in the universe
to keep us from ever-darkness,
to ease us with warm touching,
to hold us in the great hands of light –
good morning, good morning, good morning.

Watch, now, how I start the day
in happiness, in kindness.

The poem, and its perfect timing in my life made me think of these words by Naomi Shihab Nye on poetry:

“Poetry allows us to cherish what we’re given. Whether it be a heartbreak, a second chance, a soft morning mist, a moment or . . . an onion, poetry, with its impossible-seeming combination of soft lens and precision, brings to our awareness that which might otherwise go unseen, unrecognized, un-cherished. Poetry opens us to life, to surprise, to shadow, to beauty, to insight.”
-Naomi Shihab Nye

For the love of poetry, some other wonderful poems to embrace life, flaws et al:

Life is Beautiful by Dorianne Laux

and remote, and useful,
if only to itself. Take the fly, angel
of the ordinary house, laying its bright
eggs on the trash, pressing each jewel out
delicately along a crust of buttered toast.
Bagged, the whole mess travels to the nearest
dump where other flies have gathered, singing
over stained newsprint and reeking
fruit. Rapt on air they execute an intricate
ballet above the clashing pirouettes
of heavy machinery. They hum with life.
While inside rumpled sacks pure white
maggots writhe and spiral from a rip,
a tear-shaped hole that drools and drips
a living froth onto the buried earth.
The warm days pass, gulls scree and pitch,
rats manage the crevices, feral cats abandon
their litters for a morsel of torn fur, stranded
dogs roam open fields, sniff the fragrant edges,
a tossed lacework of bones and shredded flesh.
And the maggots tumble at the center, ripening,
husks membrane-thin, embryos darkening
and shifting within, wings curled and wet,
the open air pungent and ready to receive them
in their fecund iridescence. And so, of our homely hosts,
a bag of jewels is born again into the world. Come, lost
children of the sun-drenched kitchen, your parents
soundly sleep along the windowsill, content,
wings at rest, nestled in against the warm glass.
Everywhere the good life oozes from the useless
waste we make when we create—our streets teem
with human young, rafts of pigeons streaming
over the squirrel-burdened trees. If there is
a purpose, maybe there are too many of us
to see it, though we can, from a distance,
hear the dull thrum of generation’s industry,
feel its fleshly wheel churn the fire inside us, pushing
the world forward toward its ragged edge, rushing
like a swollen river into multitude and rank disorder.
Such abundance. We are gorged, engorging, and gorgeous.
How to Do Absolutely Nothing by Barbara Kingsolver

Rent a house near the beach, or a cabin
but: Do not take your walking shoes.
Don’t take any clothes you’d wear
anyplace anyone would see you.
Don’t take your rechargeables.
Take Scrabble if you have to,
but not a dictionary and no
pencils for keeping score.
Don’t take a cookbook
or anything to cook.
A fishing pole, ok
but not the line,
hook, sinker,
leave it all.
Find out
what’s
left.
Joy Soup by William Palmer

“We should start cooking/the joy soup.” – Rumi

Too much sad soup will turn
your raspberries gray.

Sleeping all day won’t make
them red again.

But Someone is pulling up
humble carrots, rutabagas,

and sweet potatoes.
Someone is busy

in the kitchen of the heart
with the window wide open.

Someone is cooking joy soup
with mint leaves.

Let the aroma pull you awake
and draw you toward the pot.

Watch the light simmer on top.
Someone waits for you.
Was It Light? by Theodore Roethke
Was it light?
Was it light within?
Was it light within light?
Stillness becoming alive,
Yet still?

A lively understandable spirit
Once entertained you.
It will come again.
Be still.
Wait.