Posted in Creativity, Poetry, Writing, tagged gratitude, love, modern poetry, partnership, Poetry, Relationships on 26 Oct 2023| Leave a Comment »
I have walked
From land to land and star to star
I have walked
Through lifetimes and histories unwritten
I have walked
Learning living loving leaving
One place one life one breathless moment
For the next
I have walked
Though not alone
For with each step each thought each dream-built notion
Through crepe-hung heartaches and clean-scented joys
To lead to follow or simply to be
There has been you
We
We have walked
Posted in Culture, tagged death, gratitude, growing old, mindfulness, mortality, quiet living, Serenity on 29 Jun 2023| 7 Comments »
I’ll be honest. Death has been on my mind. For a while.
This is not unusual for someone in their early-mid-sixties (i.e., me). In the past decade, my folks died, my brother died, and friends have died. Others we know in our cohort are battling cancer (successfully, we’re glad to hear), surviving strokes, and dealing with the trials of getting older. It’s not like I thought I was immortal, before—I always knew I’d die, someday—but it just wasn’t ever . . . real, y’know? It was an eventuality, but never registered on my radar.
Well, for the past few years, it has been a distinct blip on my screen, and it is now impossible to ignore.
And again, to be honest, I’ve lost sleep over it. A lot of sleep. How long do I have? What quality of life awaits me? What am I doing to improve what’s ahead? What am I doing that is eroding my future? What can I change? What benefits will they bring, and what costs, and would they be worth it?
It always hit me at about 4AM, too, and thus, the lost sleep. Which probably didn’t help things. Vicious circle.
I’m nine months from retirement—the final act in my grand opus—and I am definitely looking forward to it. Except, that is, for all the fretting about mortality.
But (oh, come on; you knew there was a “but” coming) then I remembered something I wrote, a passage from The Year the Cloud Fell. In the opening scene, the heroine is fighting the onset of a vision. She is afraid of it, and she is struggling against it. Her grandmother is at her side, and counsels her to give in, to accept what is inevitable.
“If you fight it, you will only get sick. Then you will have the vision, and you will be sick, too.”
I realized that I was only compounding my problems. Yes, I am mortal. Yes, I am going to die. Yes, I am powerless in the face of that inevitable outcome. And all I’m doing with this fretting and “what if”-ing is making it worse. I’m stealing time, from myself.
The magnetic polarity of Earth flips every couple hundred thousand years or so. But it isn’t like flipping a switch. It’s not like, next Tuesday, we’ll wake up and all our Norths will now be Souths. It takes time. It’s gradual. It staggers around, meandering closer and farther from true polar coordinates until, after a few thousand years, our magnetic north is somewhere in the Antarctic.
This shift within me, it’s kind of like that. Seeing each day not as another step on the path to decrepitude and demise, but as a finite commodity to be cherished and enjoyed, it takes time. And effort. I have to choose to see it in this light. And yeah, I fail, and it’s usually around 4AM when I do fail, but I’m failing less and less.
My days don’t have to be stellar, red-letter days to be precious. Just the sight of a wild rabbit in the back garden, the smell of petrichor, learning something new, a hearty laugh are each more than enough to make a memorable.
Gratitude for the gifts nature has given me—breath, life, senses, emotions—make each day worth the trouble.
Onward.
k
Posted in Culture, tagged david attenborough, depression, gratitude, jon batiste, lady gaga, mindfulness on 07 Apr 2022| 2 Comments »
With my posts here, I attempt to include (or find) at least a smidgen of hope or goodness, even when the topic is difficult or life gets me under its boot. Lately, this has been a challenge. (OK, it’s been a challenge for at least a couple of years, but this year has presented me with exceptional challenges.)
At times, the best I can do is show you my distress, thinking that (if nothing else) readers may empathize and see that they’re not alone in their own near-despair.
This doesn’t always work. Not for me, and undoubtedly not for you.
In such times, I need outside help to encourage me to keep treading water. For this help, I keep a small list of “inspirers”—so much more than an “influencer,” whose goal is merely to be seen and sell stuff, an “inspirer” is someone who rejuvenates my desire to keep breathing, just by being who they are.
I limit my list* to about three names and I pull them from realms such as education, art, science, and (surprisingly) even politics. To make it on the list, the sole requirement is that, by the person’s actions and attitudes, I find myself feeling grateful to be alive at the same time as they.
Think about that for a second. Who, in your experience, makes you glad you’re alive to experience their presence, even if you have no real connection? Who—famous or not—makes you feel good about being alive? Who, when you’re faced with the tragedies and brutalities and existential crises that we all face these days, can make you stop, reflect, and perhaps say, “Yeah, life sucks, but at least we’ve got them.” Pick three names from all the teachers, relations, friends, public figures, celebrities, activists, and others you know or know of; who makes you glad that you’re alive?
Admittedly, I don’t look too deeply into who these “inspirers” are on a personal level. We’re all humans and, thus, flawed in myriad ways. If you look for perfection you will be disappointed. And so, the list changes over time, as people rise and recede from public view, and as their activities move from the inspirational to the merely admirable.
But having these names, keeping them near to mind, has helped me through darker days, so if this rings any bells for you, give it a shot. Or, if you already have a few names you keep close by for this purpose, please share who they are and why, as there are many people worthy of this title, and we can’t know of them all.
k
*For the record, my current list of three “inspirers” is:
–k
Posted in Culture, Seattle, tagged gratitude, Seattle, Thanksgiving, vignettes on 25 Nov 2021| Leave a Comment »
Today I am thankful for:
Two brothers, all bundled up in matching navy blue hoodie jackets, out on the cul-de-sac in the bright drizzle, playing a game.
The game is:
Proceed in stages from a starting point (the truck at the near end) to a goal (the far end of the block), by one player tossing a Frisbee ™ as far as they can but not so far (or wide) that the other cannot catch it. It must be caught, or the disc goes back for a rethrow.
Eminently scalable, simple and elegant in rules, it’s a beautifully cooperative game. They win together, full stop. There is no losing. There are only gradients of victory.
Looks like they’re going for a team best, now.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Posted in Culture, tagged appreciation, gratitude, practicing gratitude, quiet living on 19 Dec 2019| 1 Comment »
‘Tis the season to be grateful.
Gratitude, I have found, is a very powerful tool. It has the power to relieve my stress and infuse me with joy. It increases my empathy for others. It restoreth my soul.
I have much for which I am grateful: good health, a sound mind, a solid income, a safe home, a well-suited and loving partner, and an interesting and quirky group of friends. Oh, and my cat; she’s a hoot.
For me, though, gratitude didn’t come easy. It took practice.
I was raised to see only the flaws in my life, those elements which could be improved upon, especially in myself. As a result, for most of my life, when I would look around, I’d only see what needed to be fixed, not what had been accomplished. In the beautiful wilderness of my back garden, I saw only the weeds. Though I have nine published novels, they only represented my failure to catch on with a larger audience. And as to my cooking skills, well, in them I only saw what I lacked when compared to other, more inventive chefs I know. Across all my successes, only the lost opportunities were visible, the deeds left undone. With this mindset, it was really difficult to feel grateful about what I did have.
But then I started practicing gratitude, actually forcing myself to see the good in things. Eventually, I began to appreciate what I had more and, as that increased, the primacy of the flaws decreased, for gratitude really is a zero-sum game. I can’t appreciate something and obsess about its flaws at the same time. I can still see the flaws, of course, but by being grateful for a thing, I take it as it is, not as how I think it should be.
Once the seed of gratitude takes root, it sticks with you, and those flaws? They are transformed from negatives into opportunities to make the whole even better, even more worthy of gratitude. I still want to improve what can be improved, but the little things—the dandelion among the roses, my lack of mastery with sauces—they stay little things; I no longer inflate them beyond their true importance.
So, during this season of holidays, where we wrap up our gifts as well as the year in general, I heartily encourage you to stop, take a few moments, look around, and concentrate on the good parts of your life, for there are many, even when things seem pretty bleak.
There is good in every day, and in every yesterday, and in every tomorrow. Cherish it.
Onward.
k
Posted in Culture, tagged empathy, gratitude, kindness, New Year's Day, year in review on 29 Dec 2017| 3 Comments »
About this time last year, I was going Full Dark Gothic on ringing (or, more accurately, “wringing”) out the old year. 2016 was a tough year for us here at Chez G, filled with deaths and troubles and disappointments galore, and though we survived it, we didn’t always manage to do it with style.
2017 has been difficult, too, with the wholesale breakdown of norms on both personal and global stages, but while difficult—incredibly so, at times—it wasn’t as painful as 2016. So, while I don’t feel particularly hopeful about what’s coming after 2017, I don’t feel as bloodied as I did coming into it. As a result, this holiday season has been, for us, pretty good.
For all of you, I hope your holidays have been peaceful, fun, and filled with love.
In the new year, let’s try to be grateful for the little things that brighten our days, like that new pair of warm winter socks or that bowl of homemade soup or the sound of rain or the smell of a loved one’s hair or the way your dog greets you when you come home.
Let’s try to remember that the person on the other side of the argument is not a demon, but a person like us in many ways, with many of the same concerns and challenges, and strive to discover that common ground that we know lies between us.
Let’s try to counter the chaos with kindness, the anger with empathy, the fear with understanding, the pain with love.
Let’s try to be good, to ourselves, and to each other.
Thank you all for taking time out of your busy lives to read my words, this past year. I hope you all stick around for what’s next.
Best,
k
Posted in Culture, tagged first world problems, gratitude, modern life, Serenity, simple living on 09 May 2014| 13 Comments »
There is nothing so infuriating to my liberal mind than FWPs–First World Problems–and this week I have been beset with them.
Why do I find them so infuriating? Because with each FWP, with each annoyance, with each disruption to my life and my regular routine, as I climb the mountain of frustration, as I reach the pinnacle, the apex of exasperation, I am also acutely aware of how lucky I am.
I know that, should I step away from the desk in my home office, take my iPad and a fresh cup of coffee out onto the deck and wirelessly tippy-tap my woes out into the social medium, my friends (who are also online) will rally to my side, nod sagaciously (albeit virtually), and say “There, there” in their myriad, understanding ways. I also know that my rant, were it to come before the eyes of someone outside my tiny, privileged world, someone who had real problems, it would be met with gaping incredulity.
So, as the top of my brain is screaming because the latest upgrade to Widget-Master 19 has completely destroyed my DirectAccess Connectivity Assistance Service, thus forcing me to lose two whole days’ worth of work as I re-install and re-configure everything on my workstation, as my inner Time Management Center goes ballistic because the weeds in the back garden are growing faster than I can find time to pull them, and as my personal I-Want-It-All-Now nodes are confounded by rain (no drives in the convertible), the rest of me, my deep-brain reality receptors, they know that it’s all hogwash; it’s all just silliness and maundering.
In short, I’ve got it good, and I’m going to shut up, now.
k
Unraveling Time
Desert Wind
Ploughman's Son
Ploughman King
The Year the Cloud Fell
The Spirit of Thunder
Shadow of the Storm
The Cry of the Wind
Beneath a Wounded Sky
Cryptogenesis: A Memoir
Kurt R.A. Giambastiani 