Kindness: My Word for 2014

Prompted by Facebook posts of some friends from student days, I decided to choose a word to take into my heart in a new way this year. One of them chose thankful, another chose explore, while a third picked liberality--all good words, all rich concepts.

I chose kindness.

I chose it because sometimes I have trouble feeling it and living it, and yet I believe it has the potential to solve a great many of the world's ills. That is, if we come to understand what it really is. Because I believe it's more than common courtesy and good manners, though both of those are lacking in our world and could go a long way toward improving things. Perhaps manners are a cousin of kindness, but what I'm searching for is a path of response that changes outcomes, without being dishonest or faked or a kind of candymaking, that registers as kindness.

So please join me in the coming months as I catalog, ponder, collect and wonder over kindness. I hope to write also about other topics on my blog this year, but I will mark all the kindness posts with the word magnet photo at right and compile them in a special post link on the sidebar.

That way you can take a single dose of kindness or a mega-dose, depending on what you feel you need at any particular time in your life. Some of the posts may be orderly and well-thought-out, while others may be chaotic and random (just thought I'd warn you).

So stay tuned and send me (email, Facebook message or use the comment form here) your thoughts and stories, any quotes you come across about kindness, any suggested readings that further illuminate the concept. I leave you with this one that started it all--a poem, of course. A good friend left this for me to find on my coffee table one day after writing group. Or maybe it was tucked in her notebook and simply fell out. Either way, it was an unexpected experience of kindness that will always stay with me, so thank you, Sandra Gutridge Harris...

Kindness by Naomi Shihab Nye

Before you know what kindness really is

you must lose things,

feel the future dissolve in a moment

like salt in a weakened broth.

What you held in your hand,

what you counted and carefully saved,

all this must go so you know

how desolate the landscape can be

between the regions of kindness.

How you ride and ride

thinking the bus will never stop,

the passengers eating maize and chicken

will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,

you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho

lies dead by the side of the road.

You must see how this could be you,

how he too was someone

who journeyed through the night with plans

and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,

you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.

You must wake up with sorrow.

You must speak to it till your voice

catches the thread of all sorrows

and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes any sense anymore,

only kindness that ties your shoes

and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,

only kindness that raises its head

from the crowd of the world to say

It is I you have been looking for,

and then goes with you everywhere

like a shadow or a friend.

Writers pull from the grab bag Memory

The ancient Greeks had it right when they personified memory, in the form of the goddess Mnemosyne, as the mother of the muses--those mythical beings who whisper inspiration into the ears of writers, visual artists and performing artists. Creativity is certainly Memory's child.

When experienced writers tell aspiring ones, Write what you know, they don't necessarily mean that what we write should be literal or fact-based. They mean for us to dip into the grab bag full of experiences each of us has lived. They mean memories wait there for us to pull out onto a page in some new way. They mean that no memory should be thought unworthy of use if it helps us say what we need to say. 

In my garden is a stone I bought at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D. C. It has the word Remember cut into its speckled surface. Its message, to me anyway, is that remembering serves us well whether the memories are good or bad or just there, with no judgment attached, because each of us sees and experiences something uniquely. No two people have the exact same experience, and no two people write about similar experiences in the same way.

I brought this rock inside last Saturday before my writers arrived and cleaned the cobwebs and dirt from it. Then we passed it around as a sort of cool talisman on a hot day as we each read a stanza of the poem In the Lebanese Mountains by Nadia Tueni. We talked a bit about the poem--how Tueni's use of sensory language and unexpected imagery made us feel as if we, too, were in the faraway place she described. The prompt I then gave them was to evoke a place they knew from memory, and whether they wrote it in the form of poetry or prose, to repeat the word remember, as Tueni does.

No surprise that each writer came up with something completely different. Here's what I wrote...

Remembering Young
by Susan Lawson

Remember the dance of daylight savings time?
     No school
          Staying up long after
               the sun went to bed

Catching fireflies in mayonnaise jars
     Holes dads punched with screwdrivers
          into screw-top lids
               Bits of grass added

to ease our consciences until tomorrow
     Thinking we could keep
          the moment alive
              if we ran fast enough.

Remember the gaggle of parents watching from the patio?
     Cigarettes in one hand
          Scotch in the other
               The clink of ice in crystal glasses

The silvery smoke trail that curled into the darkness
     on wrinkles of laughter
          Tips of gentle embers
               we could spot

from the vacant lot next door, summer’s homing beacon.
     Remember them
          always on guard,
               or pretending to be?

They found safety in numbers, just like us.
     How we knew a hush meant
          not for little ears 
               How we hid in the lilac bushes

to hear the dirty joke we wouldn’t understand and
     were overcome
          by scent.
               Remember them

perched in those folding aluminum lawn chairs?
     Plastic webs that
          stretched and frayed
               and then collapsed.

Remember dirty bare feet against starched white sheets?
     Parents who seemed so old then, and now
          I am older still
               remembering us young.

Here is Tueni's poem as it appears in the anthology This Same Sky: A Collection of Poems from Around the World, selected by Naomi Shihab Nye:

In the Lebanese Mountains
by Nadia Tueni (translated by Samuel Hazo)

Remember—the noise of moonlight
when the summer night collides with a peak
and traps the wind
in the rocky caves of the mountains of Lebanon.

Remember—a town on a sheer cliff
set like a tear on the rim of an eyelid;
one discovers there a pomegranate tree
and rivers more sonorous
than a piano.

Remember—the grapevine under the fig tree,
the cracked oak that September waters,
fountains and muleteers,
the sun dissolving in the river currents.

Remember—basil and apple tree,
mulberry syrup and almond groves.
Each girl was a swallow then
whose eyes moved like a gondola
swung from a hazel branch.

Remember—the hermit and goatherd,
paths that rise to the edge of a cloud,
the chant of Islam, crusaders’ castles,
and wild bells ringing through July.

Remember—each one, everyone,
storyteller, prophet and bakers,
the words of the feast and the words of the storm,
the sea shining like a medal in the landscape.

Remember—the child’s recollection
of a secret kingdom just our age.
We did not know how to read the omens
in those dead birds in the bottoms of their cages,
in the mountains of Lebanon.

Sympathetic Magic & Me

Call this an extended prose poem...

Sympathetic magic is when I wear long, crazy earrings and hope it reminds me to listen better--not merely when people other than me speak, but also when they are silent. What does their silence mean? What does the earth say when people are quiet enough to hear it?

Sympathetic magic is when I collect flowers and seedheads and leaves of plants and paste them in my journal to remind myself to germinate, grow, open, unfold, bloom, conceive, set seed, and die in some way to make room for something new.

Sympathetic magic is when I pick up broken bits of glass or pottery from a ditch, gum wrappers, bottle caps and bird feathers to remind myself that everything is useful and has its moment of meaning and beauty; to remind myself that we're not meant to become attached to "things" in this world. That when we lose a feather, for instance, like a bird, it's to grow a new one, stronger than ever.

Sympathetic magic is when I look for a cocoon near the place I saw the catepillar yesterday to remind me that nothing does--or should--stay the same, that the core of life is transforming ourselves into the form intended for us.

Sympathetic magic is when I garden to remind myself that I have to dig deeper to find some truths and not all "plants" are meant for my "soil" and "climate." And just because I don't have everything I want, there is plenty of beauty to go around in any place or circumstance if I'm willing to take chances and invest in what I can't yet see.

Sympathetic magic is saving nail clippings and hair my brush pulls out to mix into the soil when I plant or weed because it demonstrates the importance of giving something back when I take and treading lightly because all parts of nature depend on the others.

Happy Friday, happy weekend!

When Writers Write Together

by Susan Lawson

As writers write together in my house

clouds gather outside
and close the door on the sun
so our shadows can play
unseen.

After the writers leave my house
rain pelts
     down in
          torrents and
gives the grass back its breath
gives the flowers back their sighing
gives the sky over to its
long       sought-after      release
then washes the road
each writer
travels home.


These words came to me this morning as I looked out the window over my desk onto another gray and rainy day. But instead of it depressing me, I thought about how fresh and green everything looked now that we'd experienced a few consecutive days of rain after more than a week of hot and dry days. 

The lady's mantle I planted in the spring displays a shimmer of droplets in its cape-like leaves. A spider web that spans the space between a large rock and a cat statue, beneath which one of my kitties is buried, now supports a blanket of glistening raindrops. The cup of a geode half collects water like a miniature birdbath, and a male goldfinch drinks from it.

This time the dry spell broke on Saturday morning, shortly after my writing group broke up around noon. My writers had just enough time to make it to their cars and start home before the rain let loose in a riotous downpour. A couple sent me emails later, noting that the storm went with them, whether they traveled north or south.

I have regular writers in this group who come most every week. I have others who pop in and out about once a month or so. And then there are all the other writers--you perhaps--who I've encountered in the years I've taught who never come to a group at all, now that they aren't made free by the library. I worry about them. I wonder what keeps them going. I think that's where this poem comes from.

Something happens when we gather together and write. Whatever this something is, it gets better the longer we do it and the more we get to know the other writers in our group and their voices. We learn from each other. Not only techniques to try in our own poems or stories or essays, but how to live braver and truer, how to not be so hard on ourselves, how to see beauty wherever we find ourselves, how to listen and bear witness, and perhaps most importantly, how to play and have fun.

I write more on my own when I write regularly in a group. I also write better. I find more stories to tell. I hear more poetry in my everyday life. I can't put a price on this, though in my group I charge a fee for others to attend and spend this time with me. 

Believe me, what I charge doesn't even begin to offset my addictions to office supplies and books! But it does convey the message that to live the writing life will cost us something. There will be other things and people we must learn to say no to if we are to say yes to our writing. Mostly it's difficult to say yes with how we spend our time. Sometimes investing our money in the direction we want our time to go moves us down the right road.

If you'd like to write in a group, details about my Saturday group can be found here and here. If Saturday mornings don't work for you, let me know what would in the comments section (your personal information will not appear). If I can get enough people interested in meeting another day, I'll start a second group! Or, consider individual coaching; it's a little pricier but more in-depth. Details for that are here.

And if none of these suggestions are options for you right now, paper, pens and pencils comes in all price ranges, and the library carries lots of books on writing. Listed below are some of my favorites. So stock up, and don't forget your umbrella!

 

Lessons of the Garden

"Cease looking for flowers. 
There blooms a garden in your own home." 
- Rumi

The prompt at my Saturday morning group June 22 was a poem called "The Lesson of Texas" by Cheryl Parsons Darnell, anthologized in a book called Wounded Healers (Rachel Naomi Remen, editor, Wounded Healers Press, 1994).*

We had just talked about various kinds of imagery--simile, metaphor, extended metaphor, personification and allusion. I used the poem as an example of extended metaphor, and we talked about its multiple layers of meaning.

I asked my group of writers to pen their own poem, story or essay on "The Lesson of ____," filling in the blank with whatever they chose and writing something that had more than one layer of meaning. I also asked them to use repetition of at least one phrase or sentence throughout their piece. Darnell repeats "do not surprise you" and "I grew up in Texas."

Here is what I wrote:

The Lesson of the Garden
by Susan Lawson

A girl’s got to be half-
way through her life
to call herself a gardener
and mean it.

She’s got to be halfway
through her life
to give herself the go-ahead
to dig in the earth and know
her own dirt for its true nature—
sand’s grit or clay’s muck,
so much rock up top
the plants cook
or so much rock below
the roots give up because
they can’t push through.

A girl’s got to be halfway through
her life before she learns
how to turn what she’s stuck with
into the fluffy crumbs called loam.
She’s got to be ready to make
a lot of mistakes before
anything
worthwhile
comes together
because that’s how gardeners learn.
She’s got to resign herself to watching
innocents planted in the wrong place die
while interlopers over-run
an unsuspecting lawn.

A girl’s got to be halfway through her life
to recognize a good tool when she sees it—
the spade with the hardwood back
and relentless bite, the deep-brimmed hat that
shades her face, the clippers that make
short work of the thickest brush. She’s
got to be halfway through her life to respect
the contributions of all creatures—
worms for their composting,
ants for their fearlessness,
birds for their willingness to sing
while spreading seed—because,
let’s face it, she's going to hose off
a lot of bird and bug shit in her time.

So much so

she needs to

keep her eyes on

the prize of

cool water
on bare toes
at a hot day’s
end and
the righteous
slap of
wet soles
on concrete.

I said
to call herself a gardener
she’d have to mean it.

A girl’s got to be halfway through her life
before she learns
not to get in the way of
what nature sets in motion
for reasons all its own—
the raccoon who empties a duck nest
of its eggs, the drake who seems
to stalk and rape his mate,
the bony mallard wing cast off
by a hawk who’s had his fill.
She’s got to be halfway through her life
before she sees past ugliness
all the way to beauty.

I’ve heard people say that
life began in a garden and then—
like some kind of calamity came along
in the shape of a girl and spoiled
it all. But I am a girl half-
way through my life and I say
Look around and I mean it:
We make a garden 

wherever we be.

* Thanks to Amy Lyles Wilson for sharing this prompt with me.

All Open All

Sometimes the simplest writing prompts are the best. And sometimes--probably quite often--prompts are all around us in nature.

At my Saturday morning writing group June 15, we met on my patio, and I plucked a prompt from my tropical hibiscus patio tree.

We passed the seven-inch diameter, deep coral bloom from hand to hand, and each of us--all women this week--took a turn at tucking it over one of our ears, like we were posing for Gauguin to paint our portrait.

This particular bloom lasts only one day; tomorrow a different bud will open and this one will shrivel up.

When the bloom reached me, I turned it over and discovered a sort of gaily striped beach umbrella as the coral seemed spun out from a lemony cream. There is no fragrance, but the lush bloom is openly sexual-looking, inviting; not surprising since all flowers are reproductive organs and their beauty is meant to attract pollinators. Butterflies and hummingbirds tend toward the red end of the color spectrum, while bees prefer blues.

But attraction has its place in creative endeavors, as well as procreative ones, and that's what the bloom makes me think of every time I look at it. It's why I buy one most summers! Here's what I wrote...


All Open All

I want to be all open like
a tropical hibiscus bloom

spread wide to take in each day
like it was my only one.

I want to live inside the color coral
like flame burning but not consuming

an invitation but not a trap.
A flower is all sex--

all legs spread wide
all orgasm all setting seed.

I want to be a sower.
I want to be sown.

I want to watch the harvest
from inside the root.

I want to send up bloom
after bloom after bloom--

each day every day a gift
that opens a dying world.


I think it's important to mention a little horticulture (and put my master gardening training to use): To pick a flower does not destroy the plant or cut short a bloom's life. In the case of hibiscus, you can actually prolong the flower's beauty for several days if you float it in a bowl of water. (And it makes a gorgeous centerpiece too!)

You see, a plant is all about producing seed to ensure its future, and seed is the fruit of a pollinated flower, which only ripens as the bloom dies. Left on the plant, flowers may turn to seed quite rapidly and stop blooming. So picking off withered blooms isn't just about aesthetics; it actually encourages the plant to produce more flowers.

We unintentionally cut short the plant's beauty-giving ability by not picking, in the same way we miss out on something very special in our human lives by not giving, by not risking, by not being open.

Here's wishing all of you the courage to be all open all.

Thanks again, Bev

Thanks to Beverly Crawford for allowing me to use her beautiful artwork in my website nameplate AGAIN. Bev was a familiar face at my library writing workshops--one of the west-side gang who often popped up on other sides of town as well.

A great thing about Bev is that her writing is just as fun as her art, and she's generous with both. Check out her full art portfolio at http://indybev.blogspot.com. You'll find a sample of her writing on my YOUR WORDS page.

I change the art in my blog header every few months as the spirits move me. So if you'd like me to consider something you've done, please email me.