Oriah Mountain Dreamer speaks powerfully here to anyone in a life situation that stifles the soul.  Can we disappoint another —usually meaning opt out of living the way they want us to live— in order to be true to ourselves? 

 

This seems to be the perfect prelude to "The Journey" by Mary Oliver, possibly my favorite poem.

 

The Journey

 by Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice --
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do --
determined to save
the only life you could save.

Happy Halloween, Y'all!

From Delilah/FB

Thought for This Day

From Little Bird You Are Perfect/Facebook.

Pat Conroy on Banned Books

This letter—a feast for book lovers of all ages—was emailed to me by a friend; the origin of the post was cited as Letters of Note.  Apparently it was posted on the internet during Banned Books Week.  I believe this is more than noteworthy:

When, in 2007, author Pat Conroy was told by a concerned student that two of his books, The Prince of Tides and Beach Music, had been banned by the Kanawha County school board following complaints from parents, he sent the following letter to the area's local newspaper, The Charleston Gazette, and made known his disgust at such censorship. It was immediately published. After much deliberation and publicity, the bans were eventually lifted.



October 24, 2007



To the Editor of the Charleston Gazette:


I received an urgent e-mail from a high school student named Makenzie Hatfield of Charleston, West Virginia. She informed me of a group of parents who were attempting to suppress the teaching of two of my novels, The Prince of Tides and Beach Music. I heard rumors of this controversy as I was completing my latest filthy, vomit-inducing work. These controversies are so commonplace in my life that I no longer get involved. But my knowledge of mountain lore is strong enough to know the dangers of refusing to help a Hatfield of West Virginia. I also do not mess with McCoys.



I've enjoyed a lifetime love affair with English teachers, just like the ones who are being abused in Charleston, West Virginia, today. My English teachers pushed me to be smart and inquisitive, and they taught me the great books of the world with passion and cunning and love. Like your English teachers, they didn't have any money either, but they lived in the bright fires of their imaginations, and they taught because they were born to teach the prettiest language in the world. I have yet to meet an English teacher who assigned a book to damage a kid. They take an unutterable joy in opening up the known world to their students, but they are dishonored and unpraised because of the scandalous paychecks they receive. In my travels around this country, I have discovered that America hates its teachers, and I could not tell you why. Charleston, West Virginia, is showing clear signs of really hurting theirs, and I would be cautious about the word getting out.



In 1961, I entered the classroom of the great Eugene Norris, who set about in a thousand ways to change my life. It was the year I read The Catcher in the Rye, under Gene's careful tutelage, and I adore that book to this very day. Later, a parent complained to the school board, and Gene Norris was called before the board to defend his teaching of this book. He asked me to write an essay describing the book's galvanic effect on me, which I did. But Gene's defense of The Catcher in the Rye was so brilliant and convincing in its sheer power that it carried the day. I stayed close to Gene Norris till the day he died. I delivered a eulogy at his memorial service and was one of the executors of his will. Few in the world have ever loved English teachers as I have, and I loathe it when they are bullied by know-nothing parents or cowardly school boards.



About the novels your county just censored: The Prince of Tides and Beach Music are two of my darlings which I would place before the altar of God and say, "Lord, this is how I found the world you made." They contain scenes of violence, but I was the son of a Marine Corps fighter pilot who killed hundreds of men in Korea, beat my mother and his seven kids whenever he felt like it, and fought in three wars. My youngest brother, Tom, committed suicide by jumping off a fourteen-story building; my French teacher ended her life with a pistol; my aunt was brutally raped in Atlanta; eight of my classmates at The Citadel were killed in Vietnam; and my best friend was killed in a car wreck in Mississippi last summer. Violence has always been a part of my world. I write about it in my books and make no apology to anyone. In Beach Music, I wrote about the Holocaust and lack the literary powers to make that historical event anything other than grotesque.



People cuss in my books. People cuss in my real life. I cuss, especially at Citadel basketball games. I'm perfectly sure that Steve Shamblin and other teachers prepared their students well for any encounters with violence or profanity in my books just as Gene Norris prepared me for the profane language in The Catcher in the Rye forty-eight years ago.



The world of literature has everything in it, and it refuses to leave anything out. I have read like a man on fire my whole life because the genius of English teachers touched me with the dazzling beauty of language. Because of them I rode with Don Quixote and danced with Anna Karenina at a ball in St. Petersburg and lassoed a steer in Lonesome Dove and had nightmares about slavery in Beloved and walked the streets of Dublin in Ulysses and made up a hundred stories in The Arabian Nights and saw my mother killed by a baseball in A Prayer for Owen Meany. I've been in ten thousand cities and have introduced myself to a hundred thousand strangers in my exuberant reading career, all because I listened to my fabulous English teachers and soaked up every single thing those magnificent men and women had to give. I cherish and praise them and thank them for finding me when I was a boy and presenting me with the precious gift of the English language.



The school board of Charleston, West Virginia, has sullied that gift and shamed themselves and their community. You've now entered the ranks of censors, book-banners, and teacher-haters, and the word will spread. Good teachers will avoid you as though you had cholera. But here is my favorite thing: Because you banned my books, every kid in that county will read them, every single one of them. Because book-banners are invariably idiots, they don't know how the world works—but writers and English teachers do.



I salute the English teachers of Charleston, West Virginia, and send my affection to their students. West Virginians, you've just done what history warned you against—you've riled a Hatfield.



Sincerely,

Pat Conroy

A Room of One's Own

Intellectual freedom depends on material things. Poetry depends upon intellectual freedom, and  women have always been poor, not for two hundred years, but from the beginning of time ... That is why I have laid so much stress on money and a room of one’s own.

 
Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own, 1929

 

Even though I'm working on some writing projects and continue with promotion for Dancing on Mars, I feel the urge to get back to my coaching.  That is, working with individuals or small groups to encourage and empower them as they take on personal writing projects.

 

Virginia Woolf was right about having a room of one's own.   I always tell coaching clients, if we're to fully express our creative selves, space of our own is an important thing to have.   In circumstances where a dedicated room is not do-able, there are other ways to claim physical space where creativity can flourish.   I once removed bi-fold doors from a double closet and had the shelf moved down to a comfortable height for writing or painting.  There was a light in the closet, so no need for expensive electrical work.  Even though the room was a dedicated guest room, my cozy alcove worked well until I moved to another town and made studio space a priority.  And it's the room with the best view!

 

If you don't have a room of your own, there needs to be a clear understanding between you and your housemates, be it spouse, partner, children or roommate:  That is, when you're in creative mode, you count on their respecting your time and solitude.  If necessary, work out a schedule where a particular room belongs only to you.  A room that has a door you can close while you are working if you need to do that.  Most of the time I need a quiet environment for writing; I don't even do well with most background music.  With painting, music sometimes stimulates my process.

 

Some writers do well taking their laptops or journals to coffee houses or the public library.  While I'm too easily distracted for that to work for me, public places sometimes work well for others.

 

I once gave a friend a tiny birdhouse—probably intended as a Christmas tree ornament or somesuch—to hang on the door of her designated writing space when she didn't want to be disturbed.   You might consider using a similar symbol that tells the family or housemate you are busy; it's a warmer way of saying "DO NOT DISTURB!"  It might be something as simple as a scarf tied around the doorknob.  And if you have children or a Type A partner, you could post a note on the door, giving a time others may expect you to re-enter their world.

 

One thing I especially enjoy coaching people through is writing their life legacy.  As I write this, I realize how ready I am to get back to that. Let me know if you're ready to launch a personal writing project; meanwhile, I wish you a creative day!

 

Today

I'm riding out a flood of uncertainties on a raft of hope.   Make your life raft sturdy, and you can trust it to get you safely through life's turbulent waters.  Every time.

A Reader-Friend Shares Food for Thought

Thanks to a thoughtful friend and fan of Dancing on Mars for sharing this thought.  We all can benefit from remembering these words and not waiting for our storms to go away before committing to fully live and love life, dancing our own authentic dances, even in the rain.  Thank you Dianne!

From Rumi

"This Love journey
is surely the hardest and
most twisted road I have taken.
I began the journey
but my Heart is still dragging behind

                                                 wrapped around your feet."

                                                                                      ~Rumi

  (from Rumi Quotes page/FB)

This One's For YOU!

 "Beauty in You" - Karen Drucker

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5Jz6gLDOhg

Know, always, there is beauty in you.  Never doubt it.  Dance to the music of your beauty.  Follow it where it takes you.  Be the beauty that you are.  Live as authentically as the beauty that you are.  

I see beauty in you.  I see beauty in you.   Look in the mirror and see it, too!