Carry On (fun.)

No commentary this morning.  Don't read anything into it.  Just seems that all the elements came together to make sense to me. I heard this song (new to me) on Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist Tuesday night (if you are not familiar, go go go watch it now; Season 2 just started on NBC, and Season 1 is available on Hulu!), and the poem popped up in my inbox Friday morning.  Aren't I a lucky woman to magnetize these works of art into my personal Universe? ... 💞

And this:

SONG:  Carry On by fun.

BOOK:  The Listening Path: The Creative Art of Attention (A 6-Week Artist's Way Program) by Julia Cameron

POEM:  [i don't know what living a balanced life feels like] by rupi kaur

i don't know what living a balanced life feels like

when i am sad

i don't cry i pour

when i am happy

i don't smile i glow

when i am angry

i don't yell i burn

the good thing about feeling in extremes is

when I love I give them wings

but perhaps that isn't

such a good thing cause

they always tend to leave

and you should see me

when my heart is broken

i don't grieve

i shatter

QUOTE:  “I have been thinking lately about what it would be like to lose the compulsion to create, to make poems, or any kind of art. Would I miss it? My life would surely be less hectic, spiritually speaking. I am curious, but curious the way I am curious about what it is like to be something I can’t even conceive of being, like a stone, or the sound of water dripping. Another state of being I will have to write my way toward, I guess.” ~ Marc Pietrzykowski

The Blessings (Dar Williams)

SONG: The Blessings by Dar Williams

BOOK: Blessings: Prayers and Declarations for a Heartful Life by Julia Cameron

POEM: The Art of Blessing the Day by Marge Piercy

This is the blessing for rain after drought:
Come down, wash the air so it shimmers,
a perfumed shawl of lavender chiffon.
Let the parched leaves suckle and swell.
Enter my skin, wash me for the little
chrysalis of sleep rocked in your splashing.
In the morning the world is peeled to shining.

This is the blessing for sun after long rain:
Now everything shakes itself free and rises.
The trees are bright as pushcart ices.
Every last lily opens its satin thighs.
The bees dance and roll in pollen
and the cardinal at the top of the pine
sings at full throttle, fountaining.

This is the blessing for a ripe peach:
This is luck made round. Frost can nip
the blossom, kill the bee. It can drop,
a hard green useless nut. Brown fungus,
the burrowing worm that coils in rot can
blemish it and wind crush it on the ground.
Yet this peach fills my mouth with juicy sun.

This is the blessing for the first garden tomato:
Those green boxes of tasteless acid the store
sells in January, those red things with the savor
of wet chalk, they mock your fragrant name.
How fat and sweet you are weighing down my palm,
warm as the flank of a cow in the sun.
You are the savor of summer in a thin red skin.

This is the blessing for a political victory:
Although I shall not forget that things
work in increments and epicycles and sometime
leaps that half the time fall back down,
let's not relinquish dancing while the music
fits into our hips and bounces our heels.
We must never forget, pleasure is real as pain.

The blessing for the return of a favorite cat,
the blessing for love returned, for friends'
return, for money received unexpected,
the blessing for the rising of the bread,
the sun, the oppressed. I am not sentimental
about old men mumbling the Hebrew by rote
with no more feeling than one says gesundheit.

But the discipline of blessings is to taste
each moment, the bitter, the sour, the sweet
and the salty, and be glad for what does not
hurt. The art is in compressing attention
to each little and big blossom of the tree
of life, to let the tongue sing each fruit,
its savor, its aroma and its use.

Attention is love, what we must give
children, mothers, fathers, pets,
our friends, the news, the woes of others.
What we want to change we curse and then
pick up a tool. Bless whatever you can
with eyes and hands and tongue. If you
can't bless it, get ready to make it new.

QUOTE: "May we be a channel of blessings for all that we meet." ~ Edgar Cayce