This image was created at Wordle, a fun site for making graphic art from cut and paste text. This particular wordle was made from a creative non-fiction essay I wrote regarding identity and race, based on our family heritage and my childhood experiences.

Creating a wordle is more than just an idle experiment, for it creates interesting insights into the text itself. Words are weighted visually by their reoccurance in the text. The juxtaposition of words are interesting, "dark grandmother","European mother", "family know" "old blood". "women - mixed - mother". It occurs to me that these seemingly random word associations could be used to shape a poem loosely based on the subject of my essay - or perhaps to explore some further issues related to the subject. There were all kinds of permutations of design, font, arrangement, colour but this is the one that appealed to me - why?

If you want to give this exercise a try and like your creation, here is a tip for saving it to your hard drive. Open it up in its own window (that option is at the bottom of your screen). Hold the "alt" key and the "PrtScn/SysRq key at the same time. It should then be saved as a screenshot in Picassa or Paint or whatever photo program you use, where you can crop it to what you would like and use it, either online or in documents. There's my techie advice of the year - it's as good as it gets!

Christmas Haikus

Christmas is upon us in all its hurly-gurdy glory. I paused and took a breath when I remembered this haiku I stumbled upon many years ago. It is written by Vancouver poet, Luci Shaw, inspired by a falling chestnut during an advent walk.

Behind me - a thud

on a sidewalk, padded with

leaves like open hands.

I turn. It is like

a key. The jade womb unlocks

birthing you at my feet.

New as a baby

you hold the heavy secrets

of growing, dying.

Now fingered and shrunk

your Fall gloss faded, you look

as spent as I feel,

But still you ride my

raincoat pocket - Christ's coal for

my five cold fingers.

I wrote my own haiku poem for the season, based on Christmas preparations, namely housework.

Cleaning and primping

my house, an old lady rouged

for Sunday meeting.

Christmas guests to come

and a proper impression

to be made, hidden.

Is the imperfect

of hearth/home and all I touch

with my clumsy self.

It shines. It warms and

gives forth in grand syle, not in-

authentic, nice!

Martha maria

Yet all I long to be is

set in light and form.

Iteration

How do we learn?

We learn best when we succumb with purpose to the iterative tendency. Imagine a line of inquiry that is circular but skewed from the symmetrical; that spirals inward to a focal point and outward again, repeating itself - not exactly but approximately. The focus narrows inward and then expands outward, and with each cycle the understanding becomes more complete and dense. (Perhaps we are not doomed to repeat our mistakes, but blessed to have another opportunity to further our understanding.)

I include this photo of the Guggenheim foyer because walking its unique structure while viewing the Kandinsky restrospective was an iterative experience, literally and metaphorically.

Ken Robinson writes and speaks about how people are most fully alive and engaged when they operate within their "element". His advice in finding one's element is to spend time alone, meditating, writing, painting, playing music, dancing (whatever inspires you) and then to move outward - go out purposefully and try something that you think you've always wanted to try but haven't for whatever reason and reflect on what it means to you (focus inward again). This seems to me to describe the iterative process, the circular spiralling in and moving out in a repetitive manner, in which each cycle is informed by the previous cycle.

Sir Ken speaks to this in this 4 minute video.

Mary Lynn Crow's study, Midlife Crisis: A Growth Opportunity for Women Educators, shows that many women who experience crisis do so out of a sense of powerlessness and a fear of their mortality. Those who come through this time the best are those who are open to new opportunities and experience opportunities for renewal. If we stop the iterative process, if we stop learning, we can feel trapped, leading to anxiety and depression. Even those who might say they have found and been operating in their element throughout their lives, may need to change how this manifests and diverges at different stages of their lives.

The story of Mamika is an example of this. A 91 year old woman, who had lived a passionate, productive life, was facing depression in her elder years until her grandson talked her into posing for some photographs which have become an inspiration to many people. She inspires others and she in turn has found a renewed zest for life. Click on the link if you need a little dose of joy yourself.

The Jewel in the Fleeting Moment

My sisters have been an inspiration to me in many ways. One sister gave me a beautiful book on my 50th birthday written by the poet philosopher, John O'Donahue, entitled "The Invisible Embrace Beauty: Rediscovering the True Sources of Compassion, Serentity and Hope". It is a book I will return to again and again. It helped to inspire the direction my thesis will take.

The "jewel in the fleeting moment", John O'Donohue writes, "the most profound events of our lives take place in those fleeting moments where something else shines through, something that can never be fixed in language, something given as quietly as the gift of your next breath."

Maybe this is why we feel the need to write or paint or photograph otherwise create, to fix those fleeting moments and capture the jewel. But though is never quite possible to do so, we try. And there seems to be something health-giving and restorative in that wresting.

Ut pictura poesis

As is painting, so is poetry . . . .

I am not a poet, in that I am not committed to the art enough to claim that title. But I do, as many do but few will admit, write poetry.

I love the way unformed thoughts morph and dance and slither into shape-shifting forms when the words are really zinging. I like that I can sometimes discover what I am really thinking when I try to express it in poetry. Writing "poetically" allows me to maintain a distance from my thoughts - disown them for long enough that they no longer frighten me. And it allows interpretation, which gives one an "out" both to self and others, as to what one really means. Paradoxically poetry allows the writer to be both brutally and painfully honest, yet objective; to be emotional and psychologically intense but to see it as an observer.

I took a class that included training on what the authors called "propriocentric writing". This is writing that is deliberately self-aware by forcing one to ask the question, "what do I mean by that?". Poetry is the ultimate in propriocentric writing - except . . . when it is not. It is as crystaline and undefined as a snowflake melting in the palm of one's hand.

I am a still reflecting pool of water - Come

See your own image upon my quicksilver self.

An unbroken surface suggests stagnant serenity

Not birthwaters pulsating within an earthen womb.

Cool waters harbour warm pockets within which some bask,

And buoyed, they find a cleansing care within my flow.

I lap the shores with gentle grace - unless

With fury upon the wave, flotsam churns from the deep.

For their are Depths, murky, veiled opaque -

Masking Something - an unknown, not necessarily to be feared.

Sun pierce, Wind stir! But break my surface

Stir my watery soul to its wildest realm, its darkest depths

Unmask me, make me known.