Poetry tea: Rumi

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.

Don't go back to sleep.

You must ask for what you really want.

Don't go back to sleep.

People are going back and forth across the doorsill

where the two worlds touch.

The door is round and open.

Don't go back to sleep.

- Rumi

Just sayin'...

Some Manhattan gold dust. Caught on camera.

Kill your tv

I bought this poster in NYC awhile back. Love it (especially the first line).

It was a tough 2011, including an eyesight issue, so my ability to read and write was severely impaired for about a year (which explains the lack of blog posts until fairly recently).

But my sight has adjusted thanks to surgery (a blessing, thanks to all for your prayers).

During that difficult time, television became a heroin of sorts for me. And it wasn't even a legit addiction where you actually get out there. Hustle. Make money. Find a dealer. Buy the stuff. I just mainlined it into my veins like an iv of passive rococo.

I am no cultural snob, I assure you. But my television addiction slowly made me feel icky. And weak. Like it took all my superpowers away.

So awhile back, I called my enabler to cancel my subscription whereupon the lady on the other end of the line promptly offered me three months free service (kinda like a free all-you-can-eat heroin buffet). I inhaled sharply. Bit my lip and spent the next ten minutes convincing the cable girl I was, in fact, aware of what I was asking her to do.

The cable box was returned. And instead, I decided to select one book from my shelf that I wanted to read (or re-read) but life and other such matters intervened.

I chose the winning book based on the author's very first line. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Contender #1: Anna Karenina (otherwise known as a novel set in eight parts), Leo Tolstoy

"All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

Contender #2: The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald

"In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since."

Contender #3: Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad

"The Nellie, a cruising yawl, swung to her anchor without a flutter of the sails and was at rest."

Contender #4: The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner

"Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could see them hitting."

Contender #5: The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (shout out, Canadian boy), Moredecai Richler

"What with his wife so ill these past few weeks and the prospect of three more days of teaching before the weekend break, Mr. McPherson felt unusually glum."

Contender #6: Bleak House, Charles Dickens

"London."

Intrigued by a one-word start... Bleak House won.

Much love from the girl with the newfound cable-induced-short-term-one-line-literary-decision-making abilities,

Erica

Where are you hiding?

I heard Seth Godin talk about the idea of "hiding".

When we can't choose which path to take.

It means we're hiding. Plain and simple.

Like a kid playing a grown-up game of hide and seek.

The goal is ultimately to be found.

For someone to seek long enough to uncover us.

Each great idea is like our little kid self.

Waiting in the dark, hunched over behind the door, barely breathing for fear of being found.

Yet still silently longing for the moment we hear footsteps. And the door creaks open. Where the shadows give way to the light and we are discovered. Finally.

Hide less. Seek more.

I'm dreaming of...

SNOW!

All I wanted was snow to arrive in time for Christmas.

And finally last nite, it did.

I awoke to find beauty white stuff covering trees and walkways.

Gotta go play outside now.

Happy holidays to you and yours.

Much love,

Erica

Just sayin'...

*NB: Both photos above were taken by my friend during a fab day in New York City. Thanks, sweetie!

What would your t-shirt say?

We all have one phrase. At least one. A line we know deserves to be on a t-shirt.

For people to walk about town in. People passing by in the streets would nod knowingly at the t-shirt. Acknowledging, yes - "I think that way, too".

Ok, maybe I'm the only one who thinks this way.

Regardless, if I could make a t-shirt. Mine would say this:

Use it.

Or it will use you.

What are you most? Athletic? Spiritual? Creative? Organized? Nurturing?

Whatever you are most is often precisely what you deny. You try to be the other thing.

The thing you're not.

Because often, to be who you truly are isn't always celebrated. So you adjust course.

The thing most people don't realize? You can only do it for so long before your innate essence starts to fester.

When the best things about you go unused for too long, they start to turn against you. Becoming toxic and risk destroying from within.

So what are you most? Powerfully? Honestly?

Use it.

Expected/Unexpected: Cloisters-style

Expected: Seeing this on display at the Cloisters (a branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art focused on the art and architecture of medieval Europe). Centuries old.

Unexpected: Days later... seeing a gentleman... many centuries later literally trying the exact same move...

Poetry tea: Margaret Avison

Red apples hang frozen

in a stick-dry, snow-dusty

network of branches,

against lamb's wool and pastelblue of sky,

a crooked woodenness, a wizzening red.

- Margaret Avison, Sunblue (23, 1-5)

A wish for my beloved

Fair warning: a little intense and deepy-deep for your Friday. But this is my wish for someone I love deeply...

You coddle your pain like a newborn. You nurture him. You breathe him in.

You hold him with fullness.

Every day you gather evidence and once you have enough to make the case, you sit back. Somewhere, somehow, satisfied.

Proof of what you have long suspected. Finally.

Rageful your case is made, you begin to make promises. You outlaw people.

When all you want is to be included. To matter. To be loved.

Your actions serving only to push them all further away.

Until they leave. And you are left. All alone.

Whereupon the pain cries softly to you - more insistent now, arms outstretched.

You pick him up and swaddle him. Soothe him. Grateful he is the one thing that has never left you...you are once more safe and comforted in his warm spell.

I have never asked you for anything.

But I will ask you this.

Please love something more than your own pain.

Anyone. Anything.

Please.

Love something more.

Sink-in moment: "Will you have a coffee with me?"

I heard Barbara Marx Hubbard recount the time she once invited Maslow to coffee.

She sought to learn more about the field of psychology and wanted to surround herself with the people she found interesting. Maslow agreed to meet her.

Inspired by this story, I instantly thought to email Jerry Colonna. A venture-capitalist-turned-coach in NYC. I have long admired his work - and his blog resides among my favorites list. Simply put, his voice resonates.

When I knew I would be going to Manhattan, I emailed him.

The subject line of my message read simply:

"Will you have a coffee with me?"

My email further explained who I was along with some background. Hours later, he responded and agreed to meet me.

The only way to describe our meeting is to say that it was the spiritual equivalent of oxygen. As I left Jerry's office and stepped into the hustling throngs of Christmas shoppers along Broadway, I instantly welled up (yes, this is Jerry's superpower - he makes people cry). As I bit my lip to hold back the tears so as not to alarm passersby, I wondered how I had managed to hold it together so well in our meeting, only to cry at the end of it. What I realize now is that it was a soulful longing to be around someone that could speak the same language. You see, I believe we're all soul-to-soul connections. But most daily interaction requires varying degrees of translation between souls in order to be understood. Sadly, this translation can often result in distortion where the essence of what the soul is trying to communicate can be diluted or lost entirely.

My time with Jerry did not require translation. The lines of communication were clear. The soul felt understood. It is his gift. And I will always be grateful for the opportunity he gave me.

So who is your Maslow? Who is your Jerry?

Try it. Reach out.

Seven simple words (one of them being "coffee") really can start something special...

Trust me.

With much gratitude,

Erica

Just sayin'...

Extraordinary words: Big sister wisdom

"There's never too much clapping, Bubba."

We stood at the National Arts Centre in a standing ovation following the performance of the Messiah. By the third standing ovation, my hands ached and I leaned on my sister's arm in an exaggerated motion. But big sis is right (she kinda usually is) - there really is never too much clapping.

Applause is the act of the creator.

Be a creator, not a critic.

Poetry tea: Love, music dance, and poetry

A few years ago, I called to speak with my aunt in the hospital. She was ill and knew she was dying. I was living in Manhattan at the time and as I held the receiver in my hand, I awkwardly fumbled with what to say. Or not to. She made it easy for me. With her bright mind meeting easy heart, her final words to me were these:

In the end, all that matters is love, music, dance, and poetry.

I try to do each one of these things in some form every day.

The love, dance, and music parts come naturally. But poetry? It's taken me a while to discover it. But now, it's like a warm cup of tea for the soul. Something tells me my Auntie Marg would love this one...

Of Love

I have been in love more times than one,

thank the Lord. Sometimes it was lasting

whether active or not. Sometimes

it was all but ephemeral, maybe only

an afternoon, but not less real for that.

They stay in my mind, these beautiful people,

or anyway people beautiful to me, of which

there are so many. You, and you, and you,

whom I had the fortune to meet, or maybe

missed. Love, love, love, it was the

core of my life, from which, of course, comes

the word of the heart. And, oh, have I mentioned

that some of them were men and some were women

and some - now carry my revelation with you -

were trees. Or places. Or music flying above

the names of their makers. Or clouds, or the sun

which was the first, and the best, the most

loyal for certain, who looked so faithfully into

my eyes, every morning. So I imagine

such love of the world - its fervency, its shining, its

innocence and hunger to give of itself - I imagine

this is how it began.

- Mary Oliver