Pain is Water

A few days ago, I participated in a jam night with blues music as its focus. I very much like blues music. I very much like jamming. I did not very much like this night's jam as a participant. Perhaps because my ego got involved or perhaps because the musicians were more annoyed than inspired. I got hurt. I was not happy with the way I felt.

No one made me feel these things. I felt them. I'm not confident enough in my own emotional control to say that I chose to feel the feelings.

The world is a reaction.

Everyone is a microcosm of the world. I can either turn the butterfly wing flap of their words into hurricanes of anger, or I can west wind them over plain states in order to turn turbines and make a change through the charge I was given. After all, turning wind into the way you're reading this post is the new transmutation, ins't it?

Pain is water. We are plants. Too much pain, and we can drown. Too little and we can become anemic. Just enough and we can grow.

Pain allows us an opportunity to grow so long as the pain we've felt is looked at as something that can help us pinpoint our difficulties and take steps to fix them.

This is where poetry steps in.

The Prompt:

Think of a memory that has a lot of pain associated with it. (Sometimes the farther back in time this memory is, the better.)

Let it all out - every negative thing you felt, put that down on paper and let that stuff go.

Now, think of what actions this experience led you into taking.
Who are you now that you've survived the pain?
Who might you have been without it?

As for the jam I talked about earlier. I realized that my knowledge on blues chords is severely lacking. I can comprehend what a 7add13 chord is, but I have no idea how to fret one on a guitar. For this reason, I'm going to learn a lot more about how to play those chords. And I'll try my best not to be upset that I don't know as much as I'd like to.

Perception

Okay, okay. It's March. Some might think that this is just a reminder that time is inexorably marching on towards "oblivion" or something equally as depressing. Sure. I mean, you could also look at oxygen as one of the most corrosive forces on earth as opposed to, say, the stuff that you need to be able to admire all of the other corrosive things on earth.

Really, it's all about perception.

Now, I'm not saying that looking at the world and imagining that it is full of butterflies (Yep, butterflies, everywhere!) will suddenly make an earthquake shake into the product of a billion butterflies flapping their wings at once... but that is a pretty awesome image... No. What I'm saying is that the way we view the world has serious implications on how we feel about it.

And how we feel about ourselves.

If you think that everyone is out to get you; that they're keeping you in whatever hell hole you've been trying to claw your way out of, then just keep in mind that "YOU" necessarily falls into that whole "EVERYONE" category.

Ever wonder why you hate Bill in accounting for being so damn lazy? Well, my friends, you're probably Projecting your own laziness on poor Bill. In other words, the things we dislike about other people are usually much more informative on our own crappy habits than they are honest assessments of the other's character. I'm not saying that Bill isn't lazy; I'm just saying you dislike Bill because you hate your own laziness. It's just that it's easier to dislike someone who isn't us first.

This is probably the greatest and most humbling lesson another individual can teach us.

Anyhow, back to perception.

The point of talking about Bill from accounting was to point out that humans very often do not have objective ideas about reality. We are stuck with our animal instinct perception of everything. Granted, you can train yourself out of this way of thinking by focusing on Mindfulness and Awareness (two good reasons to do Yoga, Kung Fu, or Meditation), but most people suck at being mindfully aware (self included - but I'm working on it). Ahh, but this brings us right back to Perception.

The world is a vast and expansive place. The oceans still hold mysteries. This place is pretty damn cool. If you view the people around you as miserable bone bags who just haven't woken up to the fact that this place called life is a Ronda Rousey fight (short, brutish, and ending in all your limbs being broken), then your view is essentially right. And painful.

However, if you view the people around you as trying their best and who just need a little help every so often and you view yourself as both student and teacher... Well, then you're right too.

I can view all the painful crap that happened to me as reminders as to why life sucks, or I can view all those as reminders that I wouldn't know the brightness of the light without seeing how bitter the dark is.

So, what do we do with this? Simple answer: write poetry.

It's not cold outside; it's the world reminding us to hold someone close.
I'm not sleeping; I'm rewarding myself for getting crap done.
I'm not crying; I'm offering up a salary of tears like a tithe.

The prompt for today:
Think of something from a minor annoyance to a big frustration and redefine it using a metaphor. What implications does that have for the rest of the world? For all the things around it? What changes must be made for this metaphor to stay true?

This can work to varying degrees with tragedy, too but that's a topic for another day.

Remember, perception is one of the poet's most important tools.

Dance of Life

I rather like the life of a poet. Traveling and writing; telling stories and meeting new people. Dancing. Okay, perhaps that last one is not necessary to be living the life of a poet, but it is necessary for my poetry.

For me, dancing is the missing connection between hearts. Sure, we can speak words which allude to feelings, and we can hold hands as though treating the other as a transfusion, but dancing creates a rhythmic connection as though the body is moving within the beat of a universal heart – add to this that two bodies are moving together connected by hands to make a circle unbroken – dancing is alchemy for transmuting music to movement through hearts powered by feet.

The common metaphor for life in today's culture is one which refers to life as a race. We are all trying to get somewhere the fastest. I'm still not sure towards what we are racing, but it promises to hit us with the casual snap of a broken ribbon. I am not so sure I want to know what is at the end. Races never really end. People are always running. Or training to be able to run that much faster than their opponent in the next race. What are we running from? To what are we running? Where does this all go? Why do we look so beat when we cross the finish line? I can't make sense of a metaphor in which little is left to interpretation. So, instead, I'd like to turn toward a different metaphor altogether. If one doesn't like the concept with which he is faced, one must invent new words or supplant the old ideas with one more fitting. So, I turn back the hands of the clock into a time less focused on time but more so on timing.

In the Middle Ages, the prominent metaphor for life was that of a dance. I feel as though this makes more sense because music is ephemeral. It will not last any longer than the vibration of a string, the stirring of air. Lungs power music as much as hands do. Music has a definitive ending point, but we can replay the song in our minds a million times over without – melodies get stuck in our minds like stories. Music ends, but it can be replayed, and no one wins at the end of the song except for those who danced. If life is a dance, then we only need to tap into timings in order to tap into time. Feet don't have to move, but when they do to a rhythm, a beauty emerges. And it expands in every direction.

Life is not linear.

Music is not linear.

Dances are not linear, and music is interpretation rather than command. A poet speaks in rhythm just as bodies speak in dance.

Races have a right answer and a wrong time.

Dancers need not apologize.

So don't apologize when your feet feel too tired to move, you are not running a race with points to its end; you are engaged in a dance where the universe holds your hand. Listen to the rhythm and fear not the end of the song; we all will be dipped, but this dip is one of beauty and is not to be feared because we will not be dropped. We will not be dropped. We need not compete to get underground faster.

And I will remember to live, breathe, love, and dance.

January 29 Prompt: Sick of...

Today, I'd like to present the idea of working with metaphor.

There are things in this world which get to us.  Every single person has something or other that drives him or her absolutely crazy.  I want you to tap into that idea:

Think of something that makes you feel sick.

This can be anything from that one food you absolutely love but is just bad for you; it could be politics; it could be other people and their silly eccentricities; it could be anything you want it to be.  Now, to keep this idea going: when we get sick, we have some kind of medication that we can take to help alleviate the symptoms.  So, if you get sick of hearing about politics, what do you do in order to alleviate that "sickness"? Do you talk to other people, yell at the TV, write poems, cry in a corner?

If we think about the things that annoy us as a sickness and the things we do to deal with those annoyances as medication, then we can start to build a poem/metaphor out of those ideas.

Good luck and happy writing!