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.
The topic last week was "how would I describe the essence of my authentic self". Here's what came out.
What would it be like to be me, he wondered. Do I have to know who I am to be myself? How do I just be me?
I've spent so many years being the person I'm supposed to be when I'm with them...or you. Doing, saying what I think you want see or hear. Is that who I am? What happens when you're gone?
Is that person who appears when I'm alone the Real Me, or is it the reaction to being unrestrained for the moment?
How do I ever know which me is real and which is pretense?
Perhaps I'm all those me's....and more. The me who feels the peach of a tree in the forest, who heals the pain of a friend, who shares the joy of a passing moment without concern for what "they" will think.
The me that feels unbounded behind closed eyes.
I am that.
Finding Poetry in Ordinary Moments
There is a quiet kind of alchemy that exists in the world. Not the sort that turns lead into gold or conjures storms from spells, but a subtler, more intimate kind—one that transforms the ordinary into something luminous, simply by the way we look at it. This is the kind of magic born from attention, presence, and wonder.
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.