Inspirational E-Mails: One of My Recent Projects

I thought I'd share one of my latest projects with you today.  Two weeks ago, when I returned from Mepkin Abbey, I had an idea for a way to inspire myself and my friends, and to keep us remembering our retreat mindset, even when the days of our retreat were far behind us.  I've decided to put out a weekly inspirational e-mail, with photos from Mepkin, and as I go along, to collect these into one Word document, in case I want to turn it into more of a manuscript or eBook.

So, here's what I wrote upon my return.  Does it work as inspiration?  Would you want a whole book of these or would they be tiresome?  Would you want writing/art/creativity prompts too?


Inspirational e-mail #1

Maintaining Mepkin Mind

Feb. 4, 2014

As we return to regular life, it's good to ponder the question of how to maintain our Mepkin mindset, so that our flames continue to burn brightly.

 

I've been thinking about the oil lamp in the Father Francis Kline Memorial Chapel.  It takes such a little bit of oil, yet the flame burns steadily.  I'm hoping that we can continue to burn, even during the weeks when we're running low on oil.  Hopefully we can remember this lamp and be heartened from the fact that it doesn't take much oil.

 

 

I know that some weeks, we'll only be able to get a glimpse of that bright flame, a glimpse through a slit in a wall.  Again, the flame is there.  The flame waits faithfully.

A Trip to the Rubell

A week from today, I'll be going on a field trip with an Art Appreciation class.  A week ago, I was going on a field trip with an English class.  It occurs to me that I never posted pictures.  Let me do that today.

You may remember that we went to the Rubell Family Collection.  We saw a show that featured contemporary Chinese artists.

I have written a post  with several pictures that's partly about this tube made of rice paper that was crumpled and draped over bamboo rods:

That same artist did interesting paintings too.  Are they more like paintings or sculpture?  These photos don't capture how thick the paint is on the canvas.

In fact, the very paint may ultimately destroy the canvas, as it pulls the material downward.  Ah, the slow process of gravity!

I love this tower made of scavenged door frames around Beijing.

A view from the top:

I had seen this work before.  It looks like pen or paint or charcoal, but the medium will surprise you:  ash from various Buddhist temples.

There was an interesting project done with Coke bottles.  Here's a standard approach, a collection of bottles, labels in different languages:

And the non-standard approach, which involved melting down the bottles into a gooey mess and creating a sculpture:

And this looks like a traditional painting, but it's Coke, not ink or paint.  It must be a curator's nightmare; what happens to this medium as it ages?

The project below intrigues me.  The artist approached temporary workers and asked them if he could buy everything they had on them, and he'd buy them new clothes (which also provided them a place to change clothes).

Then he arranged the clothes and the possessions.  Is this art or sociology research?  Performance piece?

I found an interesting spiritual dimension.  Are we the sum of our possessions?  What will be left behind when we die?  And there's the rapture element.  It looks like these people who inhabited these clothes just vanished, as if taken up into Heaven.

I also love this bamboo sculpture, how it rises and falls as one piece; yes, it's all one piece of sculpture!

Many of these artists use traditional materials in unusual ways, or as in the case of the classical-looking ink that's actually Coke, untraditional mediums in traditional ways.

You've still got a chance to see this amazing exhibit in this wonderful space; it's up until August 1.  Here's the contact information:

95 NW 29th Street, Miami, FL 33127
T: +1(305) 573-6090
Hours:  TUE—SAT, 10am—6pm

Calico Thoughts for Your Monday

--It was a delightful week-end, in a way, for me, but not for my sick spouse.  It's amazing how much I can get done on writing projects when I'm staying put and when my spouse is sleeping a lot.

--My spouse spent Saturday watching a variety of Westerns.  I expect to write a poem soon with the words calico and bonnet in it.

--Is there a word more delightful than calico?  And I have loved many a calico fabric too.  And calico cats have their own charms.

--Interesting to have the Westerns on in the background, with at least one show revolving around making do when the doctor can't come.  And my spouse is sick, and even with our high tech medicine, there's nothing much more to do on a Saturday than to monitor him and hope that his fever doesn't spike.

--If his fever does spike, the cure is similar to that of 150 years ago:  keep the body submerged in cool water until the fever comes down.

--Of course, we have aspirin and penicillin now.  Aspirin was helpful this past week-end.  We didn't try the penicillin; it's not something we keep on hand in the family medicine cabinet.  And on Sunday, my spouse's temperature had returned to normal, and so, it appears we will not be needing antibiotics.

--And now, it's time to head back to the disorder of the office.  Actually, only one office is in disarray.  The one that the Corporate folks will see during their visit on Wed. and Thursday is in good shape.

--Do you need a writing or discussion topic?  Think about this.  On this day in 1913, the first comprehensive show of modern art opened in the U.S.  Here's what The Writer's Almanac site says about the origin of the show:  "At the time, American art was dominated by the ultra-conservative National Academy of Design, which had no interest in nonrepresentational or experimental work. In 1912, a group of artists had gotten together and formed the Association for American Painters and Sculptors. One of these artists was the painter Walt Kuhn, who wrote to his wife: 'My idea about the new society is this: a big broad liberal organization embracing every kind of art, even those which I do not like, one that will interest the public ... the thing must be started so that it can grow and be as big or bigger than the academy within two or three years.'"  And so, the group brought artists to their show, and these artists are household names today:  Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Claude Monet, Marcel Duchamp, Paul Cézanne, Wassily Kandinsky, Vincent Van Gogh--hard to believe these artists were once considered too radical to be part of an exhibition.

--What art/expression would be banned by a National Academy of Design today?  Would it be something we'd find on social media?

--I've been thinking about this essay by Hannah Stephenson.  She talks about artists and social media, but her guidelines are good for us all.  I particularly like this one: "Social media is a tool for communication (both sharing and listening). It is not a replacement for human connection. It is another way to speak to other humans."  And this one:  "The purpose is not to sell work, to shout like the loudest infomercials about ourselves. We would not behave this way in public; thus, it behooves us to be mindful about our presence online. Online = in public. The point is never about getting numbers, sales, or recognition."  Oh, who am I kidding?  I love the whole piece.

--I wonder what our students would say--what instructions would they add?

--I've also been thinking about this piece and this piece that alerted me of the move amongst some to read 14 books by 14 women in 2014.  How am I doing so far?   I've read these books by women:  Traveling with Pomegranates by Sue Monk Kidd and Ann Kidd Taylor, part of The Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd, Blowout by Denise Duhamel, Paula Huston's A Season of Mystery,  Leaving Church by Barbara Brown Taylor, Flannery O'Connor's A Prayer Journal, which almost feels like it shouldn't count because it's so fragmentary and short.  And that's just the list of what I'm remembering.  Clearly, reading 14 books written by women will not be a problem, unless I lose consciousness for the better part of a year.

--Interesting that I once would have read primarily fiction, and now there's only one piece of fiction on the list.  It's not because I'm reading lots of books of fiction by males.  I'm just not reading much fiction these days.

--It's interesting that when I have a low-key week-end at home, I write.  When I have a low-key week-end away, I read.  I only recently started using my laptop.  I wonder if that will change as I get in the habit of taking my laptop everywhere.

Week-end at the House of Pestilence

It's been a strange week-end here, very different from what we expected.  My sister and nephew were supposed to visit from Thursday night until Monday morning.  But on Thursday, my sister called to say that they had snow above the tires of the cars (they live in Maryland), with another foot expected.  And so, she rescheduled for late March.

We've all been disappointed, but I've been less disappointed than I expected to be.  My spouse is sick with something that resembles flu.  We never get flu down here, at least not in our house.  But Friday night, he felt so hot that I dug out a thermometer, just to make sure he wasn't at risk.

We only have a thermometer because a decade ago, my spouse had reconstructive surgery on a finger that had had an ugly encounter with a table saw.  The doctor told us we needed to monitor his temperature, which would serve as an early warning if infection set in.  Happily, he never had a fever, and the thermometer has been gathering dust--until Friday night.

Sure enough, my spouse has a fever in the 102 range.  I tried to remember what I know about fevers and at what point they're dangerous.  I remember nothing.  But if his fever starts to spike, we'll have him soak in our backyard pool, which is quite chilly these days.  It won't be pleasant, but it will likely do the trick. 

In the meantime, he's taking fluids and aspirin.  And I'm having a pleasant week-end, nesting at home.  I've roasted chicken and made chicken and dumplings.  I've done laundry.  I've worked on writing projects and my online classes.

I won't go to church this morning.  I had told people I wouldn't be coming because my sister and nephew would be here.  And now, even though they're not, I don't want to expose people to whatever my spouse has.  Is he contagious?  Am I a carrier?  I don't know.

Tomorrow, while the rest of the nation celebrates President's Day, I'll be at work.  We celebrate on Friday.  Our classes meet once a week, and for years, Monday classes got seriously short-changed in Winter quarter.  Now that problem has been fixed, but we're out of sync with the nation.  I'll take a 3 day week-end whenever I can get one, although I do prefer having Mondays off instead of Fridays.

Today will be another day of laying low at the house.  I'll make a pot roast.  I'll keep working on writing projects.  Let me record an idea, in case it slips away from me.

As I've come back from Mepkin Abbey each year, I've written "What the monks can teach us about __________."  I've filled in the blanks with a lot of words:  creativity, worship, food.  I wondered if I had enough for a book.  I put every blog post that was remotely related into a document.  I don't think there's enough for a book.

Yesterday at spin class, I thought, hey, I have a similar series of posts with spin class and exercise.  Maybe I could create a book with sections.  But I'd need one more section.

This morning, I remembered that I think I've done something similar when I've spent time with my little nephew, as he's passed through toddlerhood and the following years. 

Maybe I'll spend some time this afternoon collecting those essays.

Weeks When the Universe Reminds You of Who You Are

This has been a tough week for mostly less-than-bloggable reasons.  In case your heart stops in your chest when you read those words, let me say that at the end of the week, I'm still employed and almost everyone I love is still alive and all of my belongings that I want to keep are still with me and as far as I know, all my friends are still my friends.

In short, it could have been a far worse week.

But it's been moving week at work, and it was only announced as moving week on Monday.  So my ideal moving process suddenly got extremely compressed.

Once I determined that we would still have access to our old offices after the move, I decided to focus on getting the big, heavy stuff ready.  I packed boxes of books and got all the files into the file cabinet that was moved.  I emptied the bookcase that I wanted taken over to the new office across the street.

And Thursday, the moving guys showed up (not as burly as I expected, and without basic equipment like a 2 wheel cart) and got everything moved.  The bookcase fits just as I measured and expected it to do.  There's not a lot of room between the desk and the bookcase, but I'd rather have books than room to twirl around.  There's not a lot of space in my new office anyway.

I unloaded all my poetry books and the undergrad/grad school books I'm keeping.  Seeing them on my shelves makes me so happy.  It's always been my approach to moving:  unload the old friends first.  Ah, books, the fastest friends!

Yesterday, as I sorted some of the office stuff left behind, I found an old legal pad from back in 2009, when I thought I'd try to write poems at work.  There's some good stuff in there!  Maybe I should go back to that, writing poems at work.

Moving week meant that I spent many extra hours at work before Friday, so I headed home early Friday afternoon.  Because it was a gorgeous afternoon, we had burgers and wine by the pool, after we took the car to the shop.  My spouse is sick, so he slept on the sofa while I worked on the laptop.

My Amazon order came in the late afternoon:  2 poetry books!  I'm looking forward to spending time with Kelli Russell Agodon's Hourglass Museum and Susan Rich's Cloud Pharmacy.  And yes, I feel some guilt about not ordering directly from the poets or from the publisher, but I had Amazon points and no cash, and so, I commit to buying an additional copy of each at some later point--hopefully, at a poetry reading!

When my spouse woke up, we decided to walk to the beach to watch the moon rise.  We shared a beer and a pretzel at the organic brewery on the beach as the full moon emerged from the clouds on the horizon.  It was a simple, cheap way to celebrate Valentine's Day, but I loved it.

As I think about the week in review, I think about how many reminders I've had that I'm a poet and a Brit Lit person and a Lutheran monastic--all those things first and foremost before the other identities the world would want to foist upon me (and for the sake of brevity, I'm leaving aside identities as wife, friend, daughter, sister).  I had a conversation with a woman who was trying to place the origin for the idea of the willing suspension of disbelief; her MFA professors had no idea.  I immediately knew:  "It's Samuel Taylor Coleridge.  I'd loan you the book, but it's in a box right now."

As people got more and more stressed, I tried to be my best hospice chaplain self.  I listened to their grief as I prayed silently for them.  And when I needed renewal, I slipped away to the stairwells where a solitary person can sing.  The notes vibrate off the concrete and rise far above my head.  I sang the lines I learned at Mepkin Abbey:  "Oh God, come to my assistance; Lord, make haste to help me."  I sang the first verse of "Oh come, oh come Emmanuel."  My spirits immediately lifted, along with the notes.  I love the way it sounds like I'm singing in a cathedral when I sing in the stairwells.

Most of all, I kept bumping into reminders that I'm a poet, and that the poet identity is important to me.  I wrote a poem and worked on the revised manuscript.  I rejoiced in the fact that so many publishers are still putting out books of poems.  I took solace in the older volumes.  I continued to hold onto my vision of my book with a spine making its way in the world.

Could it happen by this time next year?  Probably not a book on paper, but maybe an acceptance.  That would be a dream come true.

Ways for Artists, Writers, and Other Creative Types to Celebrate Valentine's Day

Sure we could make Valentines out of construction paper and lacy doilies.  We could bake cupcakes.  We could write a sonnet. 

But we've been doing those things for years.  Let's think about some different ways to use this holiday for inspiration:

--Make a list of everyone you've ever loved.  Reflect on which of those people would make good characters for a narrative.  What conflicts could they generate?  Write that scene, short story, novel, or script/play.

--Use a traditional Valentine's Day image (the heart, the rose, the box of candy) and make a piece of art that subverts it.

--What would a modern Saint Valentine look like?

--It's becoming clear that we need to ask the question:  do we love our IT devices as much (more?) than we love our families or pets?  What might this love look like in the future?  Are we really helping silicon based forms become the dominant life forms on the planet?  Daniel Dennett thinks so.  Make a piece of art that translates these philosophical questions into art.  Or write a philosophical treatise for the silicon age.

--We're also in the middle of the Holocene Extinction, the 6th great die-off (the 5th one killed the dinosaurs).  Write a love letter to the species you will miss the most.  Create a piece of art to honor it.

--I heard a scientist say that an asteroid killed the dinosaurs; this time, we're the asteroid.  What does it mean to be the asteroid?

--When I was in elementary school, we took shoe boxes and turned them into boxes so we'd have a place to receive Valentines.  I've thought that could be a powerful inspiration.  What Valentines do you want the world to send you?  What kind of recepticle do you need?  Create it now.

--Create a Valentine for yourself.  There are plenty of reasons that you are loved.  Make sure the Valentine mentions them.

--You've got the art forms that you love already.  Today, try a different creative medium, technique, or tool.  If you always quilt in small patterns, make a crazy quilt.  If you write short poems, write a poem that's at least 200 lines.  If you write in one genre, try something else.  If you paint, try sculpting something.  On and on I could go.

--Today is a good day to try a luscious desert.   If you can't have something sumptuous on Valentine's Day, then when can you?  But maybe you've had the kind of week that I've had, a week that's left you limp with weariness.  On my way home last night, I heard this piece on NPR about a simple chocolate mousse recipe.  All you need are eggs, salt, sugar, and chocolate.  I'm willing to bet that chocolate chips whirred in the blender or food processor would work just fine.  And sure the eggs are raw, but my friend with advanced degrees in microbiology says that as long as the shells aren't cracked, there's no risk of salmonella.

--If you don't make something special to eat, do something special for yourself today.  Maybe a nice lotion for your chapped hands--what a winter many of us have been having!  Maybe some flowers when you're at the grocery store.  Buy yourself some music or play something already in your collection that you haven't heard in awhile.  Go to bed early or sleep in.  Congratulate yourself for recent good news, whatever it may be.

Valentine's Eve

Here we are, the day before Valentine's Day, a day that can be full of symbols and signs.  It's also a good day to consider how overused those symbols have become.  Can we refresh them?

Take the simple rose.  It's the flower that I use when I teach symbols to my English 102 students.  They're not taking my class to become a better poet; they're looking to get a requirement out of the way.

So, I say, "If I arrive home to find a dozen roses waiting for me, my response would be 'Wow!  Who loves me?'  Unless, of course, it's a dozen black, withered roses.  But if it's a pot of geraniums, I'm likely to have a different response."  They get that.

Likewise the heart.  Is there a way to make that symbol new again?

Here's a poem that attempts to do just that.  I got the idea one summer, around 2001 or so.  I was reading Rick Bragg's latest book and thinking about the men who worked in the mills.  And this poem emerged.

I realize that some readers might be puzzled at the idea of me dividing myself into parts this way.  Literal readers will say, "But the heart is part of you."  Yes, I have this sort of medieval approach to my body, seeing it as separate from myself.  I expect to spend my life integrating all the parts of myself that I see as separate but really aren't.

This poem was published in Coal City Review.  I would have sworn it was also part of my first chapbook, but when I checked this morning, I realized that it's not.  Once I had that chapbook memorized; strange to realize how many years have gone by since I put it together.

Mill Worker Heart

 

 

My heart is a mill worker,
slaving long hours, hidden away in dark hollows.
It knows it cannot miss a day of work and so it slogs
away, pumping with its powerful muscle mass, conserving
energy by slaving steadily.

I throw fits, create dramas, drop into hysterics

for the most minor of reasons.  My heart ignores
me, like the man who knows he can’t be late
to work, who takes his lunch bucket, steps
across the children, kisses his weeping wife, and escapes.

I spend the better part of each day pondering, wondering

if I’m living up to my life’s ultimate purpose.
My heart spends no time on such a ridiculous
torture.  It knows its purpose, its primary
part in the body of my life.  Long ago it heard
its true calling, and it has never lost a beat.