Stay Eager

Do stuff.  Be clenched, curious.  Not waiting for inspiration's shove or society's kiss on your forehead.  Pay attention.  It's all about paying attention.  Attention is vitality.  It connects you with others.  It makes you eager.  Stay eager.    ~Susan Sontag

I should know better than to title a post with the day of the week...then everytime I look at my blog, I'm reminded how long it's been since I've written anything.

But I also remind myself that writing is not an obligation to be dreaded like grocery shopping, or paying bills, or weeding the garden.  It's the way I honor my observations about life in general (and my own in particular), the way I make sense of a sometimes senseless world, the way I connect with friends all over cyberspace.

It's the way I pay attention.

But I've been a bit attention deficit lately, not paying attention to the bracing aroma of my morning coffee, or the symphony of birdcalls that greet me on the back porch each morning as I take the first sip. Not paying attention to Magic and Molly's exuberant greeting when I return home from work. 

And I haven't been doing stuff  either.   Haven't been riding my bike along the avenue of smooth new blacktopped roads running through our neighborhood.  Haven't been talking with friends over drinks at our favorite outdoor cafe.  Haven't been playing piano for any singers anxious to rehearse. 

So I'm neither vital nor eager.

Eagerness - it's that "on your mark, get set, go!" kind of feeling.  The "can't wait to get started" butterflies in your heart, the chomping at the bit, hooves pawing the ground urgency. 

 I vaguely remember it...

Do you?

A young woman whose work I greatly admire has an inspirational project afloat in the blog world.  It's called Be Brave, and it challenges participants to "do one thing each day that scares you."  One thing about which you would normally shy away, procrastinate, or say "Oh, I couldn't..."

In addition to Being Brave, perhaps we should add Stay Eager to our list of personal challenges. Pay attention to the things that exicte us, and find new things when old familiar ones begin to pale. 

I'll be on the lookout for some.

I'll keep you posted.

So, how about you? Have you been Paying Attention?  How do you Stay Eager?

Coming Alive

Don't ask yourself what the world needs.
Ask youself what makes you come alive, and then go do it.
Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.
~Harold Thurman Whitman
Each time I come across these words, I feel an electric shock run down my spine.     
                                  
They remind me that the world, myself included sometimes, is filled with people going through the motions of their days, finding no joy, no deep indwelling sense of satisfaction or accomplishment, nothing that created the feeling of life abundantly lived.  So these words prod and poke me, nudge me to search for the things that generate a creative spark in my soul.
They confronted me this morning when I opened my copy of Foolsgold, by Susan G. Woolridge (author of Poemcrazy).  Another day in my office beckons, a day of paper shuffling and organizing, a day of sifting through piles of medical records and information.  Nothing about the prospect of this day makes me come alive.

But I recognize that I'm luckier than most~I've achieved half the battle to follow that credo.  I, at least, have found the things that make me come alive.

Certainly, writing is one of them.

Foolsgold promises to help me "find the artist within by cultivating a creative lifestyle that will not only expand and inspire you, but may also ground and heal you."  A "creative lifestyle" is what interests me here.  In the past months, as I've come to realize how much writing means to me, I've allowed it to play a bigger role in my inner life.  Yet I keep it tucked in the cupboard of my lifestyle, afraid to let it play in the daylight hours, only taking it out when I've completed all the other, less livening activities. 

Perhaps in order to start living that "fully alive" life the world needs, I must allow creativity to permeate my entire lifestyle, not just those few "off hours" when the regular work is done.

What does that mean in practical terms? I'm not sure. It could mean branching out in my writing activities, going "beyond the blog" and taking a creative writing class or reading a poem on poetry night at my local coffee house.  Maybe it means looking for other avenues of musical expression - learning a new instrument or joining a new group.  Perhaps it could be taking up a new activity entirely - working with paper crafts or collage.  I'm quite sure it means taking another step outside the safe little box I've erected around my current creative efforts.

"Coming alive" also means "paying attention," being aware of those things that startle you with their beauty or meaning.  Sometimes they're as simple as the wind rushing through the trees in your own backyard, or as complex as a perfectly crafted poem by Keats or the intricate movement of a fugue by Bach.  It means being aware and being reverent to the world around us, and, for those of us who write, attempting to convey that sense of wonder to our readers.
It will be a journey, this "coming alive" process.

I'll keep you posted.

How about you? How do you cultivate creativity in your life?  Have you found the things that make you come alive? Are you doing them? Shouldn't you be?
 
*wordpress is being very creative (and stubborn!) with the fonts in this post...enjoy the variety, because there seems to be nothing I can do about it!

Monday Musings

After a rather long, non productive weekend, I was hoping Monday would find me feeling more energetic, more ready to roll up my shirt sleeves and take on the world. No such luck.

I've been curiously lethargic of late, a feeling I can usually trace to a lack of scheduled activity or responsibility.  I realize I need the impetus of deadlines and appointments to keep my metabolism going, and without them I sink into this torpor of inactivity.  I was moping around the house yesterday, needing to do something and not feeling like doing anything.

"Can't you just relax?" my husband (the master of relaxation) asked me. "After all, you worked every day last week, you deserve some time to just chill out."

"I don't do relaxing very well," I admitted.  "It makes me kind of mad."

Jim just shook his head sorrowfully.  "I'm doomed," he said under his breath, returning to his spot in front of the television.

I do feel mad at myself when I'm not being productive...not writing, not practicing, not exercising, not cleaning or cooking or caring for some elderly relative, not playing with the dogs, or brushing them or walking them, not doing something.

Yet while my mind spins furiously with all these things I should do and should want to do, my body feels awfully stubborn about remaining perched in one spot, complaining with increased aches and stiffness about gardneing or biking, invoking extra effort to read with eyes that can no longer bring fine print into focus.  

Today started out brightly enough  - I did walk the dogs, make some phone calls, settle in to write (right on schedule!)  Yet now that the morning is coming to an end, the prospect of a long afternoon stretches before me and I'm feeling a bit directionless.

As we head toward preparations for back to school, I realize this is the first time in over 10 years that I have no musical "calendar" for the coming year.  Scaling back on my musical group participation was deliberate, a way to give myself more flexibility and time to concentrate on other activities.  But now I feel pressure to use that time productively, and I'm not quite sure how to do that, or if I'm up to the task.  And I'll admit there's a certain sadness that comes with the loss of that venue of self expression.  There's also a void in my social life at the moment, since the majority of my friendships revolve around musical activities. 

All told, I suppose it's no surprise that I'm a bit like a lost lamb these days.

Wish me luck as I work my way back to the flock.

Practice Makes -Brillante!

Mille grazie,  Miz B, one of the Write On Wednesday regulars, for honoring WOW with it's first blog award!  Brillante  is occasionally written as a musical direction, meaning to play with "verve and excitement."  It requires hours of practice to achieve that goal at my piano keyboard, and the end result of our work at the computer keyboard takes an equal amount of effort.

Just this morning I was reading Natalie Goldberg's book, Writing Down the Bones.  In her chapter entitled Writing As A Practice, she says this:

Writing practice embraces your whole life and doesn't demand any logical form.  It's a place that you can come to wild and unbridled, mixing the dream of your grandmother's soup with the astounding clouds outside your window.  It is undirected and has to do with all of you right in your present moment.  It's our wild forest where we gather energy before going to prune our garden, write our books and novels.  It's a continual practice.

I'm really enjoying sharing part of my writing practice with all of you - your words provide great inspiration and insight for the journey.  In my book, you are all Brillante!