A Mindful Life

Truth is simply whatever you can bring yourself to believe.
–Alice Childress
Discuss! (I may write more on this later.)

One of my personal development goals at my job (AmeriCorps service involves setting aside time for such) was to increase my presentation skills and confidence speaking in front of others. I’ve had two semester-long classes in this before (one for my B.A. and then for my M.A.). But like many, I don’t have the opportunity [...]

You probably notice that I’ve been changing the font. The Georgia style (all curly and fussy) was harder for me to read. Then I tried Arial, but it felt inelegant. So I settled on Verdana at a font size I like for my laptop; it will still be pretty big for users of regular computers. [...]

The cherry trees weep
tissue paper petals.
Crows shout at each other
about nothing. And here
I sit alone in my car
parked at the Boys & Girls Club,
softened by sadness
heavily hopeless
unable to look spring in the eye.

A dead man’s photo peers over my bed
The silent witness who lives in my blood.
Absence is the soul’s starvation diet.
I have been hungry since before I was born.
Plan for madness to heal you.
Plan for sadness to fly.
Plan for hope estranging your happiness.
They surely will.
The finite hours and days,
The years,
Dissolve with relentless measure
And apathy.
This will grieve [...]

Food
I want mother’s milk,
that good sour soup.
I want breasts singing like eggplants,
and a mouth above making kisses.
I want nipples like shy strawberries
for I need to suck the sky.
I need to bite also
as in a carrot stick.
I need arms that rock,
two clean clam shells singing ocean.
Further I need weeds to eat
for they are the spinach of [...]

Okay, folks. You ever wonder why I moved away from Syracuse, my hometown? Here’s one reason: 123 inches of snow this season. That’s 10.5 feet, people! Syracuse wins the Golden Snowball award this year and almost every year. In March 1993, there was a blizzard which broke the records for all areas affected by it. [...]

With civilized tones we bade him good-bye
as his face drained white and
his still fingers grew chilled,
undeniably gone.
                       It was a hard labor
his leave-taking, punctuated
by lung fluid gurgling with each breath
his eyes rolled upward unseeing,
breath stopping, pausing long, starting again.
We sat vigil and held his hand all night.
On this day I learned what irrevocable means.
Still the stomach [...]

You can read another poem of mine here.
I’m thinking that’s where I’ll be spending more time for awhile.
Today I culled hundreds of magazines that I’d saved for “someday” collages. I’m going to recycle them. I kept a few dozen on hand, but the hoarding was becoming oppressive. In doing this exercise, I realized how many [...]

The curse of curiosity is that it causes one to spread attention too thinly. I’m feeling it. I’m feeling rag-tag, superficial, scattered. I want too much, want to do too many things, and wind up doing some of them some of the time and never become excellent at any. Which does the dilettante want to [...]