Things, lately, I've been thinking

1. PATIENCE. Thing I am trying to do lately::::cultivate patience!? How does one do this?

Rumi says ". . .patience expands your capacity to love and feel peace."

Also, "The beauty of careful sewing on a shirt/ is the patience it contains."

Those quotes don't help me cultivate patience but I like them nevertheless.

Because I have been a little pushed to some edges, lately. I just don't know how to discipline Finn at times and I also am not very patient.

2. IMAGINING. Another thing I've been doing::::::trying to imagine what a seed is before it's a seed. In other words, I'm trying to go back before before, heh. I'm trying to write poems from the perspective of little bits of nutritional matter that are spread apart but will someday be connected into one wholesome seed; I'm especially thinking of the seed of a human, since that is how it fits into the baby-mother-midwife-psychopomp-EPIC-thing I've been writing:

"each real code;
I could not unhook myself from it nor hook myself to it.
I was floating in space,
A self unknown to itself.

Selves. The eye too--
A circle of wild strawberries around a tree.
In the distance I wait for my midwife to catch me."

Also:

"A clearing opened the sky-size of grass,

We went to seed again to find out about middle children & youngest children.

Each of us would be one of them someday;

This was before we had a body.

We found our lifeless parents in a bog with reeds and ducks.
When I was 20monthsold [same age as Finn now] I tried to wake my father who was dead.

This time I tried to wake your mother.

This is what I found before seed."

This last bit reminds me that I've been noticing so much how being a parent forces you back into your own childhood, in a way. I've been thinking about what life was like for my mom when I was Finn's age, etc, and also thinking about how those first years really have shaped me. Very Freudian I know. Still.. .

3. VALUES. I've been thinking about values, inspired by Melissa;I mean the values by which I wish to live my life. It has been a difficult time to do this, perhaps because we are moving again (!) and stress levels have been quite high (our second move this semester!). I wonder if a values list can be a changing list, or if that's a cop-out?

Well, here are some things I value:

.being near bodies of water
.imagination
.music
.the ecstatic
.family--immediate
.family--far away, extended, ancestral
.change & transformation (adaptability, allowing yourself to change)
.centeredness
.living by your beliefs & values as closely as possible
.expression/ expressiveness
.poetry
.children
.friendship
.long walks
.the handmade--especially making gifts for others
.community/ finding ways of being together
.being able to let things go
.learning/taking notes
.creativity, the spontanteous
.projects/ideas
.good home-cooked food/ meals with family & friends/ cooking for others & baking
.the out-of-doors!
.animal friends
.breaking free from stress and just being;;;;;;;