The infinite loveliness of nothing

There is a certain loveliness in nothingness, in unencumbered stillness, in silent empty space. In this absence of something there is a void that aches to be filled. Therein lies potential and that potential is infinite.

At least I tell myself this as I sit at the back door watching the trees dance in the wind. It is early morning and I am in the process of appreciating some idle time.

I still wake up at 4:45 a.m. A feat that has taken this once proud night owl years of cultivation to achieve and I will get as much down time as I can get even if it is in the early morning. Nothing lasts forever and this extra time will not.

In order to appreciate this time that I have seized for myself in an act of desperation, I must engage myself in the art of doing nothing.

My last job was in itself a culture of stress. I worked in a very busy call center in the public safety sector. There was high expectations and a rigid adherence to numerous and various state laws and regulations that required me to make statements that made callers confused and upset, this made customer service difficult at best. My days were timed to the tenth of a second, over one minute late and you have an “occurrence” and points were given, points that added up very fast for some and there was/ is a high turnover rate. I did well though. My calls were listened to and graded. I was thought of as smart and competent , I took direction well and after a while I did start to sound like the others: A caller once told me I sounded like a robot.

I almost cried then.

There was a reason why I wasn’t the only one who had constant migraines there.

I felt I was drowning, gasping for air. I felt desperate. An anger rose up in me that was not me at all. This started to effect my relationships with my husband and family. I felt sick to my stomach and my energy was zapped. I felt like a zombie just trying to get to the next day, to the weekend where I would try to cram as much living as I could in 2 days.

I bet my former coworkers would have been surprised to know that I am on the Autism Spectrum, I have masked it pretty well my whole life but that takes its physical and emotional toll on me and that job was not the best for someone with sensory issues, it may be one of the worst. 47 hour weeks of this for nearly two years did me in and burned me out. The job that gave me and my family health insurance made me sick.

Before I gave my notice I obtained a part time temporary gig in retail. It pays the bills, just almost. In the two months I have been there I have been much happier and healthier. I am getting myself back.

To the mind that is still, the whole universe surrenders.
Lao Tzu

Nothing gives birth to creation.

It provides the empty space for something to occur. Nothing is an empty cup waiting to be filled, it is up to us to fill it.

The only real commodity is time. We are selling hours of our lives for money. Money we need to survive. Most of us have no control over this and have to spend much of our lifetime devoted to that task.

There is no time for nothing. There is no blank canvas on which to create and on which to write the narrative of our lives. Some fortunate people have jobs that them happy, that happiness is reflected in their work and everyone around them can share in this happiness. They are excited to get up and start working for the day. I want to be one of those people.

I believe that I can contribute to society in a greater way than I am now, I should say in a better way. Whether I am baking bread, selling jewelry in a store or writing something that makes people laugh or cry or think.

This rat is so very tired of the race.

And so I sit here at the back door, feeding a few squirrels that have gathered. My mind has time to reflect, my writing voice is coming back, the one that has lain dormant for a few years. I hear it speaking in whispers, I can barely hear but I am listening.

SBI

The dream of my life is to lie down by a slow river and stare at the light in the trees – to learn something by being nothing

-Mary Oliver

**

“And to tell the truth I don’t want to let go of the wrists of idleness, I don’t want to sell my life for money, I don’t even want to come in out of the rain.”

Mary Oliver

Fresh Quotes: Mary Oliver

I’ve always wanted to write poems and nothing else.

~Mary Oliver

Coming in whispers that speak to that child that lurks within

the one that plays in grassy fields and kisses the sweet spring wind

she who laughs at chickadees and muses with birds

Quietly knocking one over the head with her simple earthy words.

I have been literally brought to tears on more than one occasion by this immensely talented writer and poet.

Mary Oliver is an artist who more than paints pictures with words. She illustrates profound feeling in vivid and not so vivid colors and hues. They hit me deep down in my soul.

Never before have I so connected with another’s words. It reinforces to me the greater connection we all have with each other and our beautiful planet.

What follows are some of my favorite quotes by this Pulitzer Prize winner.

MARY OLIVER

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?”

“Instructions for living a life.
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.”

There is nothing better than work. Work is also play; children know that. Children play earnestly as if it were work. But people grow up, and they work with a sorrow upon them. It’s duty.

“I believe in kindness. Also in mischief. Also in singing, especially when singing is not necessarily prescribed.”

“Sometimes I need only to stand wherever I am to be blessed.”

Ordinarily, I go to the woods alone, with not a single friend, for they are all smilers and talkers and therefore unsuitable. I don’t really want to be witnessed talking to the catbirds or hugging the old black oak tree. I have my way of praying, as you no doubt have yours. Besides, when I am alone I can become invisible. I can sit on the top of a dune as motionless as an uprise of weeds, until the foxes run by unconcerned. I can hear the almost unhearable sound of the roses singing. If you have ever gone to the woods with me, I must love you very much.”
♥

“Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable.”

“I want to think again of dangerous and noble things.
I want to be light and frolicsome.
I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing,
as though I had wings.”

Do you love this world? Do you cherish your humble and silky life? Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath? Do you also hurry, half-dressed and barefoot, into the garden, and softly, and exclaiming of their dearness, fill your arms with the white and pink flowers, with their honeyed heaviness, their lush trembling, their eagerness to be wild and perfect for a moment, before they are nothing, forever?

Yes…yes I do Mary Oliver… thank you for your inspiration.

♥

~nlm

Mary Oliver was born in 1935 in Maple Heights, Ohio. She attended both Ohio State University and Vassar College. As a young poet, Oliver was deeply influenced by Edna St. Vincent Millay and briefly lived in Millay’s home, helping Norma Millay organize her sister’s papers.

Oliver is notoriously reticent about her private life, but it was during this period that she met her long-time partner, Molly Malone Cook. The couple moved to Provincetown, Massachusetts, and the surrounding Cape Cod landscape has had a marked influence on Oliver’s work. Mary Oliver held the Catharine Osgood Foster Chair for Distinguished Teaching at Bennington College until 2001. In addition to such major awards as the Pulitzer and National Book Award, Oliver has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. She has also won the American Academy of Arts & Letters Award, the Poetry Society of America’s Shelley Memorial Prize and Alice Fay di Castagnola Award. She lives in Provincetown, Massachusetts.

(Excerpt from the Poetry Foundation Bio)

⊕

Mary Oliver (Poetryfoundation.org)

(Great site chocked full of resources including full-length poems)

⊗

Wander

“Not all those who wander are lost.”

J. R. R. Tolkien

I sit and stare at the blank page waiting to be filled with splashes and sploshes of delightful and colorful words. Words that convey a profound wisdom and grace. Words that draws one in. Words that come alive. Words that tease the imagination and beckons you to play. You have fun all day in the sun and before you realize it, you’ve learned something. At least I want my writing to be like that but lately….not so much…

I remember when I started blogging. I would read many a post from a fellow blogger who would begin the post with a “Sorry I’ve been gone so long but...” I swore I would never do that but it seems like I’m doing that now.

I could say that I’ve haven’t had much time to write but who does really? I know one must make time to write and I haven’t done that. I suppose I haven’t wanted to or I haven’t had anything to say. I seem to be running away from something. My thoughts perhaps? There is a running dialogue that presents itself to me. It fills my mind and it races almost too fast for me to keep up. I will read things I have written previously and be awestruck at the strangeness of it. I recognize bits of myself but other bits I don’t recognize quite as well.

I have been using my travel time to work to just sit. I zone out and allow my mind to be still which usually leads to some interesting meandering. I’m taking it all in; whatever crosses my path on my journey literally and figuratively. I just allow myself to just be.

Writing has always been therapeutic. I’ve put my feelings down in words ever since I could hold a pencil. It’s been my outlet to the outside world. Starting this blog and writing over 200 posts has profoundly changed me. I’ve grown in leaps and bounds over the last four years. Never can I go back to what I once was. I must forge ahead. Part of that forging is taking my writing to the next level. I haven’t submitted much as I find I have nothing I deem worthy.

Putting heart and soul out there in words is what I do best, but there are a million others who can say the same thing. Who am I to presume that I have anything to say that anyone would want to hear, must less pay for? I realize now that I should abandon my hope of being a paid writer as money cannot be my focus. I have to go where my heart lies and seldom in this life do the two go hand and hand.

I have been distracted by life and rightly so. Whatever I write is not only deeply effected by my current experiences, it is built on them. I put myself into it. I don’t know of any other way.

I have been conflicted as of late on what to write at all really. I have some bits and pieces that I have written lately, many are tinged with an anger at the state of the world. I am a crazy idealistic dreamer who goes on pessimistic forays now and then but I always return with a renewed sense of vigor. This is vigor has been rising up but is confused as to which way to go. I always have to have a answer. I cannot seem to finish a writing piece without having the issue settled in my mind and it seems everything is up in the air and I don’t have all the answers. I’m learning that is okay too.

I’m trying to live in the moment and just take life in. I am grateful for what I have and I am enjoying whatever comes. I am content but restless. I feel like something is left undone and I have a strange feeling of deja vu right now. It’s like my future self is rooting for me to do the right thing —whatever that is. Honestly I don’t know sometimes…

I also have been finding myself getting lost the beauty of the words of others such as those of Mary Oliver who has in the short span of a year has become one of my favorite writers. I feel a kinship with her writing. I love the whimsy and the focus on the small and quiet things of nature, on that which is difficult to hear but essential to the ear. I’ve been ordering them one by one from the library. I look forward to cracking open a new book . Her words have made me laugh and cry, they have delighted and amused me, they have made me think. Never before have I been so emotionally affected by writing. Her words are so real, so poignant and oh so lovely. They are a beautiful escape to me. I see myself there, I identify and find kinship there. And then it dawns on me; that maybe I can do some of that too, in my own way. Provide an escape. A refuge in words and imagery for others to retreat to too. Writing doesn’t have to be “important” all the time, or wise or impressive to mean something to someone. To touch another person with words is amazing and I would love someday to be able to touch people like Mary Oliver has touched me.

Something to ponder on a cold and windy day in November….

Seems like I’m back for a spell.

~NLM

“Instructions for living a life.
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.”
― Mary Oliver

Cavorting with Nature

It happened so quickly: a flutter of wings, a white flash..and then I saw them…two cavorting butterflies, cabbage whites, I think. Fluttering all around me; my head and legs, coming so close I can feel the gentle breeze on my face created by the fritterings of their little wings. I sit as still as I can and take in this surreal and glorious moment. Then just as abruptly as they appear they flutter off together into the blue October sky. It was quite a moment and strange as it sounds I got the idea they were thanking me for something. A place to cavort perhaps. A resting place amid the growing greenness in this nondescript urban oasis that is my backyard. A wildish place of ordered chaos. A pesticide-free zone with a little bit for everyone. Native plants and more. Providing nectar and seeds and shelter and safe spots to forage with berries and tomatoes and lots of tasty bugs and worms.

A respite from the lifeless urban jungle of hard concrete and indifference.

These moments bring me such joy; my encounters with the urban wildlife that visit my garden. There are the squirrels who compete for nuts with the squawky jays. They are beautifully blue and like to fly from rooftop to rooftop swooping down in the yard hunting and catching insects.

Along with the white butterflies, there are bees galore, buzzing from here to there, intermixed with hover-flies which seem to defy gravity. These beneficial insects love the sweet asylum that seeds itself freely and grows every summer against the southern wall that borders the driveway. This once barren slab of cement now teems with exuberant life. The other side is filled with a hodgepodge of annuals and perennials.

It resembles more of a science experiment than a tidy yard. I’ve never been a very tidy person but the urban fauna doesn’t seem to mind.

And as the season progresses and as October turns to November my time in the garden has decreased in fact admittedly, it has been nearly a week since I have been back here. I take advantage of a much needed sunny day and plan to spend some time working and appreciating. All the work I do know will pay off next Spring.

Of course I leave much of the wildness for the urban wildlife who will winter here.

All the remain of the once vibrant yellow Susans are the jet black seed pods which the chickadees and finches have been devouring with a flourish.

goldfinch-eating-black-eyed-susan bird — Goldfinch on Black-eyed Susan

I am always reflective this time of year and I do much of my reflecting back here. The fuchsia is still blooming and the Pineapple Sage is in it’s full glory. It’s scarlet spires provide nectar to the hummingbirds which still visit as the season progresses and progresses it does. The leaves have changed and many have fallen to the ground. I can hear them crunch under my feet. My mind goes back to the white butterflies and my brief encounter with them just a couple weeks ago. I haven’t seen any since. Our next meeting will have to wait for Spring when they return. And so will the Canada Geese that I hear flying overhead, their distinct honking flooding the sky with such riotous sound. This brings me back to Autumn’s past. It is these living harbingers of winter who make me sit and pause and reflect upon life and time. It will be the Geese again who will prompt the same reflection upon their return.

And now it is my turn to say thank you to the fantastic world around us. From the smallest proton to the largest supernova…from the tiny microbe in the soil to the hummingbird to the black and white house cat to the awestruck and humbled human. We are all connected and what a beautiful thing is that.

Have a fantastic day!

♥

Nancy

“…Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.”

― Mary Oliver

Frank Sinatra – Come Fly With Me