Our Compulsion to Understand
I just read a thought provoking blog by Isaac Kolding, a teacher and student of literature, entitled "How to Like Poetry (A sympathetic guide for the perplexed). You can find a link below if you're curious.
The thought that it provoked was about perspective and our programmed need to understand. Our ability to judge requires a basis on which to form an opinion. So, our first response to something new is "What does that mean?" " What box can I put it in?"
Judgement is an unconscious way of keeping our life tidy and safe. If everything has it's box, I don't have to worry....or think. But the price of that safety is growth.
What would happen if we stepped out of our heads and asked a different question, "How does this make me feel?" That is my reason for liking a poem. It makes me feel something. I may not "like" the feeling it stirs but, in this world of numbness, it makes me feel alive.
The Art of Listening to Silence
There's a particular quality to the silence that follows the last note of a song—a pregnant pause that seems to hold all the music that came before it. As poets, we spend so much time focusing on the words we put on the page that we sometimes forget about the spaces between them, the pauses that give our verses room to breathe.
Tatvamasi
Twice a month I sit with a group of gifted people and share our time talking about what's happening in our lives. What seems to be in our way at the moment; then we do a bit of work to remove or soften the blocks, then we dance, then we write.