Brent Baldwin

Goals need to come from within you. From deep within you, from your soul, your essence, they must be congruent with everything you know and hold deeply. Your goals need to rise up from your truth and tell the world “Here is where I stand”. There is no other hope in the entire world that can wield such power and influence in your life.

When you are living with goals and beliefs that are congruent with your essence, you are beyond the slings and arrows of doubters, naysayers and saboteurs.

Sacrificing your goals leaves you in a self-imposed prison of frustration and pain. Sacrificed goals are just words on paper that allow you to seek but not find; at best you can say “I have set goals; but they never worked for me”. Choose against your goals and you choose nothing; at the expense of everything your life has to offer.

How are you going to be defined; by your natural essence, your character or by self-judgment and defeat? It’s your choice.

-Brent Baldwin

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Kickstarting: Mood Follows Commitment

Today while working on my painting I realized that I'm never in the mood to paint until I start painting. The proper mood will follow my commitment. Whether it is painting or swimming or any number of things, I have to commit first. I commit to an achievable goal, like "ten minutes", which gives me permission to escape if I have to. Commitment is first, then I can follow through. I have to trick myself into starting.

The scariest moment is always just before you start.
—Stephen King

Lily Tuck

We are surrounded by works of the imagination: our transportation, our communication, our technology. Every song we hear, every picture we look at . . .
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Taking Care

I was inspired by my neighbor who is out taking care of things this morning. So I picked up all of trash that blows through the fence from the wind-tunnel trash-tornado next door. It's an annual event. Pick up the trash just before the forsythia blooms.

I remember wanting to have a house to have something to take care of. I thought I would never be bored or lonely again because I could always take care of my house. I am a foolish dreamer! I am not always able to take care of my house to the level I would prefer but she seems to understand and forgive me. I make her promises, as soon as I can I will, and she stands stoically through the winter storms. I live and work in her many rooms thanks to her sturdy and humble magnificence.

In the rooms we call our lives.
-A favorite line from a Jane Shore poem.

Tony Hoagland Poem

I loved this poem published on Writer's Almanac today:

Disappointment

by Tony Hoagland

I was feeling pretty religious
standing on the bridge in my winter coat
looking down at the gray water:
the sharp little waves dusted with snow,
fish in their tin armor.

That’s what I like about disappointment:
the way it slows you down,
when the querulous insistent chatter of desire
goes dead calm

and the minor roadside flowers
pronounce their quiet colors,
and the red dirt of the hillside glows.

She played the flute, he played the fiddle
and the moon came up over the barn.
Then he didn’t get the job, -
or her father died before she told him
that one, most important thing-

and everything got still.

It was February or October
It was July
I remember it so clear
You don’t have to pursue anything ever again
It’s over
You’re free
You’re unemployed

You just have to stand there
looking out on the water
in your trench coat of solitude
with your scarf of resignation
lifting in the wind.

"Disappointment" by Tony Hoagland from What Narcissism Means to Me. © Graywolf Press, 2006.

Caroline Knapp

The kinds of roles dogs fill can be hard to come by in human relationships. We touch the dog or the pet at whim. There is a lack of self-consciousness and a fluidity to it that is absent from most human relationships. If someone acted that way to you, you'd feel claustrophobic pretty quickly. It's a boundary violation.
- Caroline Knapp

When you study a dog you love, you find beauty in every small detail, and so it is with Lucille: I have become enchanted by the small asymmetrical whorls of white fur on either side of her chest, and by her tail, which she carries in a high confident curve, and by her eyes, which are watchful and intelligent, the color of chestnuts.
- Caroline Knapp

I've always been drawn to solitude, felt a kind of luxurious relief in its self-generated pace and rhythms.
- Caroline Knapp

My recipe for bliss on a Friday night consists of a 'New York Times' crossword puzzle and a new episode of 'Homicide;' Saturdays and Sundays are oriented around walks in the woods with the dog, human companion in tow some of the time but not always.
- Caroline Knapp

Anne Lamott: A Huge Gift

Everyone is screwed up, broken, clingy, and scared, even the people who seem to have it more or less together. They are much more like you than you would believe. So try not to compare your insides to their outsides. Also, you can't save, fix or rescue any of them, or get any of them sober. But radical self-care is quantum, and radiates out into the atmosphere, like a little fresh air. It is a huge gift to the world.
-Anne Lamott

Peggy Freydberg

The glory and the challenge of poetry is finding exactly what you want to say.
- Peggy Freydberg

CHORUS OF CELLS

by Peggy Freydberg

Every morning,
even being very old,
(or perhaps because of it),
I like to make my bed.
In fact, the starting of each day
unhelplessly,
is the biggest thing I ever do.
I smooth away the dreams disclosed by tangled sheets,
I smack the dented pillow’s revelations to oblivion,
I finish with the pattern of the spread exactly centered.
The night is won.
And now the day can open.
All this I like to do,
mastering the making of my bed
with hands that trust beginnings.
All this I need to do,
directed by the silent message
of the luxury of my breathing.
And every night,
I like to fold the covers back,
and get in bed,
and live the dark, wise poetry of the night’s dreaming,
dreading the extend of its improbabilities,
but surrendering to the truth it knows and I do not;
even though its technicolor cruelties,
or the music of its myths,
feels like someone else’s experience,
not mine.
I know that I could no more cease
to want to make my bed each morning,
and fold the covers back at night,
than I could cease
to want to put one foot before the other.
Being very old and so because of it,
all this I am compelled to do,
day after day,
night after night,
directed by the silent message
of the constancy of my breathing,
that bears the news I am alive.

Peggy Freydberg passed away on March 27, 2015 at her home in Martha’s Vineyard, 3 weeks after her 107th birthday. This poem is from Poems from the Pond, which will be available in May 2015.

Article

Another article by publisher Laurie David

Article from 2014 Vineyard Gazette.

Happy Birthday Anne Lamott

You are going to feel like hell if you never write the stuff that is tugging on the sleeves in your heart--your stories, visions, memories, songs: your truth, your version of things, in your voice. That is really all you have to offer us, and it's why you were born.

Earth is Forgiveness School. You might as well start at the dinner table. That way, you can do this work in comfortable pants.

-Anne Lamott

Dream

A person sitting up in bed was eating fried eggs. Another person showed up with a pepper grinder and gently peppered the eggs. Then a ladder was brought out and the person with the pepper grinder climbed the ladder and tried to pepper the eggs from the 6th rung. It was a lot more difficult for the pepper to reach the eggs. The physics of peppering fried eggs.

Anne Lamott

A friend who knows I love Anne Lamott's writing sent me this today.

I am going to be 61 years old in 48 hours. Wow. I thought I was only forty-seven, but looking over the paperwork, I see that I was born in 1954. My inside self does not have an age, although can't help mentioning as an aside that it might have been useful had I not followed the Skin Care rules of the sixties, ie to get as much sun as possible, while slathered in baby oil. (My sober friend Paul O said, at eighty, that he felt like a young man who had something wrong with him.). Anyway, I thought I might take the opportunity to write down every single thing I know, as of today.

1. All truth is a paradox. Life is a precious unfathomably beautiful gift; and it is impossible here, on the incarnational side of things. It has been a very bad match for those of us who were born extremely sensitive. It is so hard and weird that we wonder if we are being punked. And it's filled with heartbreaking sweetness and beauty, floods and babies and acne and Mozart, all swirled together.

2. Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.

3. There is almost nothing outside of you that will help in any kind of lasting way, unless you are waiting for an organ. You can't buy, achieve, or date it. This is the most horrible truth.

4. Everyone is screwed up, broken, clingy, and scared, even the people who seem to have it more or less together. They are much more like you than you would believe. So try not to compare your insides to their outsides. Also, you can't save, fix or rescue any of them, or get any of them sober. But radical self-care is quantum, and radiates out into the atmosphere, like a little fresh air. It is a huge gift to the world. When people respond by saying, "Well, isn't she full of herself," smile obliquely, like Mona Lisa, and make both of you a nice cup of tea.

5. Chocolate with 70% cacao is not actually a food. It's best use is as bait in snake traps.

6. Writing: shitty first drafts. Butt in chair. Just do it. You own everything that happened to you. You are going to feel like hell if you never write the stuff that is tugging on the sleeves in your heart--your stories, visions, memories, songs: your truth, your version of things, in your voice. That is really all you have to offer us, and it's why you were born.

7. Publication and temporary creative successes are something you have to recover from. They kill as many people as not. They will hurt, damage and change you in ways you cannot imagine. The most degraded and sometimes nearly-evil men I have known were all writers who'd had bestsellers. Yet, it is also a miracle to get your work published (see #1.). Just try to bust yourself gently of the fantasy that publication will heal you, will fill the Swiss cheesy holes. It won't, it can't. But writing can. So can singing.

8. Families; hard, hard, hard, no matter how cherished and astonishing they may also be. (See #1 again.) At family gatherings where you suddenly feel homicidal or suicidal, remember that in half of all cases, it's a miracle that this annoying person even lived. Earth is Forgiveness School. You might as well start at the dinner table. That way, you can do this work in comfortable pants. When Blake said that we are here to learn to endure the beams of love, he knew that your family would be an intimate part of this, even as you want to run screaming for your cute little life. But that you are up to it. You can do it, Cinderellie. You will be amazed.

9. Food; try to do a little better.

10. Grace: Spiritual WD-40. Water wings. The mystery of grace is that God loves Dick Cheney and me exactly as much as He or She loves your grandchild. Go figure. The movement of grace is what changes us, heals us and our world. To summon grace, say, "Help!" And then buckle up. Grace won't look like Casper the Friendly Ghost; but the phone will ring, or the mail will come, and then against all odds, you will get your sense of humor about yourself back. Laughter really is carbonated holiness, even if you are sick of me saying it.

11. God; Goodness, Love energy, the Divine, a loving animating intelligence, the Cosmic Muffin. You will worship and serve something, so like St. Bob said, you gotta choose. You can play on our side, or Bill Maher's and Franklin Graham's. Emerson said that the happiest person on earth is the one who learns from nature the lessons of worship. So go outside a lot, and look up. My pastor says you can trap bees on the floor of a Mason jar without a lid, because they don't look up. If they did, they could fly to freedom.

11. Faith: Paul Tillich said the opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty. If I could say one thing to our little Tea Party friends, it would be this. Fundamentalism, in all its forms, is 90% of the reason the world is so terrifying. 3% is the existence of snakes. The love of our incredible dogs and cats is the closest most of us will come, on this side of eternity, to knowing the direct love of God; although cats can be so bitter, which is not the god part: the crazy Love is. Also, "Figure it out" is not a good slogan.

12. Jesus; Jesus would have even loved horrible, mealy-mouth self-obsessed you, as if you were the only person on earth. But He would hope that you would perhaps pull yourself together just the tiniest, tiniest bit--maybe have a little something to eat, and a nap.

13. Exercise: If you want to have a good life after you have grown a little less young, you must walk almost every day. There is no way around this. If you are in a wheelchair, you must do chair exercises. Every single doctor on earth will tell you this, so don't go by what I say.

14. Death; wow. So f-ing hard to bear, when the few people you cannot live without die. You will never get over these losses, and are not supposed to. We Christians like to think death is a major change of address, but in any case, the person will live fully again in your heart, at some point, and make you smile at the MOST inappropriate times. But their absence will also be a lifelong nightmare of homesickness for you. All truth is a paradox. Grief, friends, time and tears will heal you. Tears will bathe and baptize and hydrate you and the ground on which you walk. The first thing God says to Moses is, "Take off your shoes." We are on holy ground. Hard to believe, but the truest thing I know.

I think that's it, everything I know. I wish I had shoe-horned in what E.L. Doctorow said about writing: "It's like driving at night with the headlights on. You can only see a little ways ahead of you, but you can make the whole journey that way." I love that, because it's true about everything we try. I wish I had slipped in what Ram Dass said, that when all is said and done, we're just all walking each other home. Oh, well, another time. God bless you all good.

- Anne Lamott

Ego Bubble

Make your ego porous. Will is of little importance, complaining is nothing, fame is nothing. Openness, patience, receptivity, solitude is everything.
― Rainer Maria Rilke

There's a thing I refer to as the ego bubble. Each day when I'm in receive-mode I must break it. I do this by having my morning walk or commute around the downtown, walking my dog Lily. Even though I resist it sometimes, I am grateful to my dog for expecting it and reminding me to go. Taking this walk is necessary for me to break the ego bubble. I need to remind myself of the bigger world in contrast to my own inner world of work and worries. I do this by walking a loop downtown where I can experience the energy of the city. When I return to my office I resume my private world of the imagination. As a child my parents ego bubble was never broken and my home environment felt like a suffocating snow-globe. The ego bubble was transferred from house to car to various destinations but it was never ever broken. I feel this was an extremely unhealthy environment and I do not wish to live that way.

Anna Fels

Technology can also insert into the often hermetic world of the consulting room a tonic dose of reality, an experience of how the patient actually functions outside the office. My patients arrive in my office and, like gunslingers in a saloon, unload their various electronic devices, laying them on the sofa, often two or even three, before turning them off. But there are times when the phones have to stay on: There’s a sick child at home or the boss may call. Hearing in real time patients’ responses to important figures in their lives gives me an unfiltered glimpse into those relationships. A man who sarcastically belittles his girlfriend to me is surprisingly tender speaking with her on his cellphone. An unhappy, self-deprecating executive is suddenly a confident and even commanding figure speaking with one of his subordinates. An aggressive lawyer becomes shy and awkward when speaking with his mother.
-Anna Fels
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Thich Nhat Hanh

Breathing in, I calm body and mind. Breathing out, I smile. Dwelling in the present moment I know this is the only moment.
-Thich Nhat Hanh

People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don't even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child -- our own two eyes. All is a miracle.
-Thich Nhat Hanh

Burgess Meredith, Actor

Burgess Meredith - Actor
Cyclothymia did not damage his long career
By Marcia Purse, Bipolar Disorder Expert

Updated June 23, 2014.

Burgess Meredith was born in Lakewood, Ohio. He wrote in his autobiography, "All my life, to this day, the memory of my childhood remains grim and incoherent. If I close my eyes and think back, I see little except violence and fear." His father drank heavily; his mother lived in despair; the parents quarreled constantly."

A fine boy soprano voice was his ticket to escape this unpleasant home. He won competitions and a full room and board scholarship to the St. John Choir in New York City. He never went home again.

After he encountered difficulty in college, Meredith tried a variety of jobs but told a reporter, "I was no good at anything except the stage." Then in 1933 he was accepted into Eva LeGallienne's company in New York, and a series of stage appearances soon gave him his break into both stage and screen with a starring role in Maxwell Anderson's play Winterset.

Between 1935 and 1948, Meredith was married and divorced three times while appearing in around 20 films and serving in the Air Force during World War II. In 1950 he took his fourth wife, Swedish ballerina Kaja Sundsten, to whom he remained married until his death.

In the early 1950s Meredith was one of the victims of the McCarthy "Blacklist." There is a conspicuous gap in his filmography between 1949 and 1957. Beginning in the late 1950s his film and TV output was extraordinary, including well-known roles as the Penguin in Batman and as Stallone's coach in the Rocky movies, as well as one of the most famous episodes of The Twilight Zone, the heart-wrenching "Time Enough at Last." This writer's personal favorite was his role in the original Clash of the Titans.

He was called "an ardent environmentalist and proponent of causes," and was said to be "famous for his tempestuous personality." He published his autobiography, So Far, So Good, in 1994, and wrote in it that his mood swings were caused by cyclothymia, a form of bipolar disorder.

Burgess Meredith died in September 1997 at the age of 89.

source

William Wordsworth

The earth was all before me. With a heart
Joyous, nor scared at its own liberty,
I look about; and should the chosen guide
Be nothing better than a wandering cloud,
I cannot miss my way.

- William Wordsworth, from The Prelude,
featured on Writers Almanac today

Save Ashley Diamond

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Easter Pot au Feu

I had put it off too long. It was time. I had to tackle the dust bunnies and tumble weeds that were obliterating all of the right angles in my house. Start with the kitchen and see where it goes, I told myself, trying not to get overwhelmed. This is a trick I use with nearly everything. Just do one little thing, I cajoled myself. Next thing I knew I was vacuuming dust bunnies in the boiler room and under the bathtub and couch. Last time I had cleaned this thoroughly was when my nephew was coming to visit in January, and I was excited. This time I was cleaning out of necessity and dread. The dust bunnies were shouting angrily at me.

Finally it was time to stop. I was at loose ends so I took a walk to the pond. The air was cold and delicious and the wind was blowing. The shadows were long. The sky was blue. I was enjoying my walk more than usual, appreciating every step. When I got home I started chopping cabbage. I wasn't sure what I was going to make for supper, a stir fry or coleslaw maybe. I started peeling carrots. Coleslaw, I decided. I chopped celery and red onions, and made the dressing; buttermilk, mayonnaise, mustard, salt, sugar, horseradish. I added raisins. It was delicious and colorful. The full moon was out, a spotlight shining on the neighborhood. We ate our bowls of coleslaw while sitting on the couch.

What do I make for tomorrow, Easter Sunday? I found frozen chicken breasts in the freezer and decided to simmer them overnight in the slow cooker with a pound of lentils and curry powder.

I woke at four fifty from the scent of curry. I came down and stirred the chicken to break it up. Lily and I stepped out into the dark yard. The moon was partially obscured by clouds. Lily barked once and I hurried her inside hoping I hadn't wakened the neighbors.

The bread dough had risen overnight in the buckets. There were lots of lovely air bubbles. I greased the cast iron pots and placed the shaped dough in each one and set them to rise again. To the pot of chicken and lentils I added Francine's frozen pumpkin puree, and three ribs of chopped celery. I added salt, chopped onions, chopped olives and fresh garlic and wine. It is still simmering and it smells fabulous.

A Cyclothymic from Saturn

God turns you from one feeling to another and teaches by means of opposites, so that you will have two wings to fly, not one.
-Rumi

Last night I told my husband that I was ready to marry my painting. I've had a bunch of tough uphill days and a few surprising flow days that made me remember the romance of painting that I used to have as a child, days that made me want to grow up to be a painter. Sinking in to the flow is the ultimate gift because I am awake and alive and in the process. Dare I say I sometimes enjoy it? I do not use the word enjoy and painting in the same sentence very often, not since I was 11 and first fell deeply in love with it. I told my first boyfriend painting was my first marriage.

Lately I have been in 'receive mode' which is an inward and often excruciatingly painful emotional place that I live in twice a year. I drop off the radar. I get quiet. Morning is hell. I contemplate suicide. Deciding to paint feels like a matter of life or death. One of the gifts of receive mode is that I can hear what my paintings want. I know it sounds strange but let me explain. I am laid so low receiving signals from within that the only place to hide is in my art. Many of these signals are a hellish narrative of fears, panic, and doom and gloom coming from my own mind. Keeping a simple routine can be a life saver. Get up, have coffee, read the news and emails, spew letters to God in my notebook, take a shower, walk Lily, have a meal, touch the brush. Then afterwards take a long walk to the pond and swim. Each element is inward then outward, alternating, building stability to counteract the internal tumult. I try to guide this state toward what it is good for, painting. Gentle, clear, persevere, is my motto. When my painting is not flowing I find refuge in the physical, my walks and swims. Yet when my painting is flowing I still find refuge in my walks and swims.

'Transmit mode' comes twice a year also, and is the opposite of receive mode. Morning is sacred. I wake with joy bubbles in my abdomen at two or three AM and I get up and go to my desk to write. Everything is sensory and lush and my physical energy and joy is gushing. I am on the other side of Saturn. Words, thoughts and ideas are flowing and all is right with the world. Life is perfect flow. I am not in the land of painting, I am in the land of words and poetry. I am in the land of people. I am talkative. After writing I willingly houseclean. I find joy in vacuuming and washing blankets and curtains. The internal narrative is utopian and makes perfect sense to me. I read and read. Words are delicious morsels I taste in my ear. I bake and cook. I have appetite. My skin is singing, electric, and I dance. I feel happy and beautiful and I am ready to make a banquet for my friends, neighbors, the whole city.

Both states are lonely and not lonely. Both states are about my life on Saturn. I try to bargain with the gods to let me live in one home but they do not comply. This is how you were made, they remind me. Go forth and make good use of it. My challenge is to accept that I was born with two wings to fly. It's always a difficult challenge. I share my challenge as honestly as I can.

Omar Shekhey and Amina Osman

Shekhey and his small staff pick up where the resettlement agencies leave off, he says, helping refugees feel at home. "We are like soldiers. We go do whatever's needed. No time sheets, no nothing. Just go."
***

Omar Shekhey is not the only Somali immigrant helping refugees in Clarkston. Amina Osman, known around town as "Mama Amina," can be found almost daily outside a local grocery store. She calls the spot her "office," and offers advice to the many refugees who come by.

"I love to do community, to listen and understand," says Osman, 64. "Many people are new in America and they are confused. They don't know English."
[...]

Osman knows how difficult it can be for refugees. She came to the U.S. in 2009 after 17 years in Kenya and Burundi. She went there from Somalia after her entire family — including her 10 children — was killed during that country's civil war.

Osman was also shot, stabbed and left for dead, but says she was saved by a humanitarian worker who noticed she had a pulse when her body was brought to the morgue.

She says she helps others now, because she can't help her own family. "All my neighbors, they're like my children," she says. "I could live for my family, but today, I don't have them."