Ignore me, please!

via Tara Mae Mulroy, via Savage Chickens

Thankful Thursday: Instead

Appreciation, my horoscope demands.

Later, this song turns up. I hit Shuffle; my iPod declares Genius. The song plays again.

Everything is sign. So, I give in. On this Thankful Thursday, I share with you my (unofficial and unrelenting) theme song: 

Instead

Madeleine Peyroux

Instead of feelin' bad, be glad you've got somewhere to go
Instead of feelin' sad, be happy you're not all alone
Instead of feelin' low, get high on everything that you love
Instead of wastin' time, feel good 'bout what you're dreamin' of.

Instead of tryin' to win something you never understood
Just play the game you know, eventually you'll love her good
It's silly to pretend that you have something you don't own
Just let her be your woman and you'll be her man.

Instead of feelin' broke, buck up and get yourself in the black
Instead of losin' hope, touch up the things that feel out of whack
Instead of bein' old, be young because you know you are
Instead of feelin' cold, let sunshine into your heart.

Instead of acting crazy chasin' things that make you mad
Keep your heart ahead, it'll lead you back to what you have
With every step you're closer to the place you need to be
It's up to you to let her love you sweetly.

Instead of feelin' bad be glad you've got someone to love
Instead of feelin' sad, be happy there's a god above
Instead of feelin' low, remember you're never on your own
Instead of feelin sad, be happy that she's there at home
She's waitin' for you by the phone
So be glad that she is all your own!

Get happy
She's waitin' for you by the telephone.
So get back home!

It's Thankful Thursday, a weekly pause to appreciate the people, places and things that bring gratitude and joy. What are you thankful for today?

Lines that bring me back

  For the lonely, the bridge is a seam
  between two skies.

- Julia B. Levine
excerpt from Golden Gate

It's heartbreaking some days, the beauty of language.

I have walked away, away from words. Between productivity and creativity, a division is made and I have lived in an urgency to get this done and that started. Everything is a checklist to the next set of things undone things, people untended.

Deep in the fog of work and chores, I have wasted days. Still, words stirred, called to me. Come back, they urged.

  The birds move like ballet dancers in the air
  but sound like truckers at a roadside bar.

- Debra Smith
from Terns flock to Everett paper mill after it closes

Today, I woke again, startled. After days of numb, I am drawn to an evocative line, a catchy phrase, the whirl of words. How had I missed them? How I had missed them!

  Silence can be a plan
  rigorously executed

  the blueprint to a life

  It is a presence
  it has a history     a form

  Do not confuse it
  with any kind of absence

- Adrienne Rich
excerpt from Cartographies of Silence

 What words call you? What lines or phrases draw you in, bring you back to yourself?

Thankful Thursday: Small Change

A wave sloshes toward me, clear, carrying, apparently, nothing. No shell, no seaweed strand, no color-glisten I can see. It spreads its froth out along the sand, sinks, and seems to retreat. The beach looks unchanged, though I know now not to trust that appearance. If there is such a thing as transformation, perhaps the smaller manifestation is often the more reliable. Perhaps if we're lucky, we might salvage the small or unrecognizable as an agent of perception, the thing that prompts the imagination to focus and funnel, to be the lime door we might occasionally walk through, the trigger, finally, to some larger question.

- Barbara Hurd
from Walking the Wrack Line: On Tidal Shifts
and What Remains

It's Thankful Thursday, a weekly pause to appreciate people, places and things that bring gratitude and joy.

Today, I am thankful for the words of others — those dense, deep ideas that trigger my heart and stir my mind.

What are you thankful for today?

Try This: Five Things

It's been a string of busy days, allowing little rest and even less reflection. My writing life needs some feeding. Yours, too?

Between errands, work and household chores, there's sometimes little room for creative life. A few of my friends show great discipline by writing in life's tight spaces: in the waiting room, on the ball field, in the dark of dawn. I'm not (yet) so determined.

But last night, restless with the void of my own written words, I squeezed in a brief, before-bed writing session — and it felt great!

As inspiration I turned to Twenty Things Morning Reveals, a keen example of acute observation, in Kathleen Dean Moore's book Wild Comfort: The Solace of Nature. 

I used her example — but I started small, with just five things. I found the more I wrote, the more I wanted to keep writing (Isn't this usually the case, and why do I need constant reminder of this fact?).

Six Things Today Revealed

1. At 7am, low tide, light shines on mossy rock, turning the beach into a beautiful green glow.

2. A sunny summer morning on the Oregon Coast feels like a crisp Colorado autumn. Is everything something else, a trigger for days long passed?

3. A clutch of foxglove line my path. Life is lush, always growing.

4. Rain draws near, grows heavy, stretches my fear.

5. Momentum matters. Once I begin — making, doing, being — it's easy to keep going.

6. The moon is a butter-yellow crescent, a sideways smile, a comma. Can I carry this pause into my sleep? Can I slow every memory into a soft, steady dream?

Try This: Write your own Ten Things (or two, five, twenty, or more). This prompt is a great exercise in observation. Tell me how it works for you. Or, even better, share your results in the Comments Section below.