Saturday Morning: Standing in front of another new year

aborginal-bush-medicine-Gloria-Petyarre

[…]
Ocean, alive.
Earth, alive.
Sky, alive.
Air, alive.
Love, alive.
and here I was standing in front of another new year,
very much, alive.
And for the first time ever,
I could actually sense it,
in each one of my bones there was a whispering,
‘it’s going to be a good one,
dear.’

~ Sarah NorradA Poem to the New Year


Credits:

  • Sarah Norrad was born a Wild Woman in the rural and rugged forests of the Nimpkish Valley, on Vancouver Island, BC, a place where the mountains, forests and rivers speak louder than the People. She uses her body to teach Yoga, her mind to study Social Work, her soul to offer Community Counseling and her heart to write as a columnist for elephant journal.” Find her bio here: Elephant Journal
  • Poem Source: Thank you Make Believe Boutique.
  • Art: Gloria Petyarre “Bush Medicine” via Aboriginal Art World.  Petyarre is one of Australia’s foremost indigenous painters.
  • Don’t miss this painting in Blue.

 

New Year Resolve / To Shove Away The Clutter / To Come Back to Still Water

Austria,lake

The time has come
To stop allowing the clutter
To clutter my mind
Like dirty snow,
Shove it off and find
Clear time, clear water.

Time for a change,
Let silence in like a cat
Who has sat at my door
Neither wild nor strange
Hoping for food from my store
And shivering on the mat.

Let silence in.
She will rarely speak or mew,
She will sleep on my bed
And all I have ever been
Either false or true
Will live again in my head.

For it is now or not
As old age silts the stream,
To shove away the clutter,
To untie every knot,
To take the time to dream,
To come back to still water.

~ May Sarton, “New Year Resolve” from Collected Poems, 1930-1993


Notes:

 

Burning the Old Year

burning-letter-love-new-year

letters swallow themselves in seconds.
notes friends tied to the doorknob,
transparent scarlet paper,
sizzle like moth wings,
marry the air.

so much of any year is flammable,
lists of vegetables, partial poems.
orange swirling flame of days,
so little is a stone.

where there was something and suddenly isn’t,
an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.
i begin again with the smallest numbers.

quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,
only the things i didn’t do
crackle after the blazing dies.

– Naomi Shihab Nye, “Burning the Old Year” from Words Under Words: Selected Poems


Notes:

2015: Flummoxed by the Paradoxical Commandments

new-year-resolutions

If you haven’t read Kent M. Keith’s The Paradoxical Commandments, it’s worth a few minutes of your time.  If you were looking for the origin of these commandments and the connection to Mother Theresa, look here: The Mother Theresa Connection.

In my reflection of events in 2015, I do find the commandments paradoxical.  Let’s take a few highlights for a spin.

KMK:
People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.
Love them anyway.

DK:   You are on a JetBlue flight. The woman sitting next to you in Coach removes her shoes, her stockings and then places her feet up on the seat in front of you. She wiggles her chubby toes to air out her dogs. (In case you were dying to know, she had a nice pedicure. The toenail polish was a pretty baby blue matching her fingernails. And there was no visible toe jam.)

KMK:
Give the world the best you have and you’ll get kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you have anyway.
KMK: Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway.

DK:

You come home from work, its late, it’s been a long (very) day. You are eating dinner, alone. Your head is down.  (Important to note: Head Down.)  Your spouse of 30+ years looks over from the couch, sees Gaps, and asks if you’ve considered Rogaine.  You lift your head, your mouth is full – you try to validate if you just heard what you think you heard.  You chew. You swallow, and then ask: “Excuse me.  I didn’t hear what you said.”  She repeats it crossing the “Red-Line” of no communication during the first 10 minutes of the King’s decompression zone. You reel from two scuds to the chest, elect to drop your head down with no response and finish your dinner. For the next 123 days, you start your day each morning staring at the mirror assessing the speed of the backward march of your hair line. Continue reading “2015: Flummoxed by the Paradoxical Commandments”

13 days in. New Year. New Me.

funny-new-year-resolution-tweets


Source: themetapicture.com