The Numbers by Kim Addonizio

How many nights have I lain here like this, feverish with plans,
with fears, with the last sentence someone spoke, still trying to finish
a conversation already over? How many nights were wasted
in not sleeping, how many in sleep—I don’t know
how many hungers there are, how much radiance or salt, how many times
the world breaks apart, disintegrates to nothing and starts up again
in the course of an ordinary hour. I don’t know how God can bear
seeing everything at once: the falling bodies, the monuments and burnings,
the lovers pacing the floors of how many locked hearts. I want to close
my eyes and find a quiet field in fog, a few sheep moving toward a fence.
I want to count them, I want them to end. I don’t want to wonder
how many people are sitting in restaurants about to close down,
which of them will wander the sidewalks all night
while the pies revolve in the refrigerated dark. How many days
are left of my life, how much does it matter if I manage to say
one true thing about it—how often have I tried, how often
failed and fallen into depression? The field is wet, each grassblade
gleaming with its own particularity, even here, so that I can’t help
asking again, the white sky filling with footprints, bricks,
with mutterings over rosaries, with hands that pass over flames
before covering the eyes. I’m tired, I want to rest now.
I want to kiss the body of my lover, the one mouth, the simple name
without a shadow. Let me go. How many prayers
are there tonight, how many of us must stay awake and listen?

 

Gratitude: October 3, 2022

1. Wildflowers at Ping Tom Park

One of my fave spots for a skyline jaunt along the river has been further enhanced with wildflowers.

 

#delightfulsundaystroll

Walk as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet. ― Thích Nhất Hạnh

2. Morning listening: Arthur Rubinstein's rendition of Chopin's Nocturnes

#WistfulWandererVibes

3. The Layers

I have walked through many lives, some of them my own, 

and I am not who I was,

though some principle of being

abides, from which I struggle

not to stray.

When I look behind,

as I am compelled to look

before I can gather strength

to proceed on my journey,

I see the milestones dwindling

toward the horizon

and the slow fires trailing

from the abandoned camp-sites,

over which scavenger angels

wheel on heavy wings.

Oh, I have made myself a tribe

out of my true affections,

and my tribe is scattered!

How shall the heart be reconciled

to its feast of losses?

In a rising wind

the manic dust of my friends,

those who fell along the way,

bitterly stings my face.

Yet I turn, I turn,

exulting somewhat,

with my will intact to go

wherever I need to go,

and every stone on the road

precious to me.

In my darkest night,

when the moon was covered

and I roamed through wreckage,

a nimbus-clouded voice

directed me:

“Live in the layers,

not on the litter.”

Though I lack the art

to decipher it,

no doubt the next chapter

in my book of transformations

is already written.

I am not done with my changes. 

Stanley Kunitz

 

 

4.  cultivating compassion in meditation 

OMM: "Meditation practice isn’t about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better. It’s about befriending who we are already." ― Pema Chödrön

5.  Self-Awareness 

Big and strong is my style.

#somedaysoon 

Note to self: 

Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it. -Rumi

6. Still missing you 

(Yes, you.)

7. Rilke helps.

Losing too is still ours; and even forgetting
still has a shape in the kingdom of transformation.
When something’s let go of, it circles; and though we are
rarely the center
of the circle, it draws around us its unbroken, marvelous
curve. 

Gratitude: October 2, 2022

1. Encouragement

healing isn't about filling your life with pleasure

or never having a hard moment again

it's about being real

and facing what you feel

so that it doesn't accumulate in unhealthy ways

being with the down moments is better than

carrying unprocessed pain everywhere you go

Yung Pueblo 

#lighter

2. Poetic Compass

Burning the Old Year

Letters swallow themselves in seconds.   

Notes friends tied to the doorknob,   

transparent scarlet paper,

sizzle like moth wings,

marry the air.

So much of any year is flammable,   

lists of vegetables, partial poems.   

Orange swirling flame of days,   

so little is a stone.

Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,   

an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.   

I begin again with the smallest numbers.

Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,   

only the things I didn’t do   

crackle after the blazing dies. 

Naomi Shihab Nye

the words won't come together to compose an apt apology. 

part contrition, part resignation 

recurring flashes of embarrassment, disappointment, and acceptance. 

One wonders where the regulatory self wanders 

why do you allow utterly asinine behavior

to reflect who you are (sweet girl)

but you know why

she does it

so let it go.

(I wanted this one tho.)

3. The will to stay in (when being called out to play on a Saturday night)

Exhaustion can be a delicious feeling. 

Surrendering to it is a joy.

4. ❤️

5. MusicMOOD: Ryuichi Sakamoto

6. Graceful gestures

(Thank you for sharing your light.)

7. Begin Again. 

#wakingup

8. So much inspirational music

#simplybecauseyourenearme #soonerthanlater #idontwantwhatihaventgot

Gratitude: October 1, 2022

1. Listening intently to Bjorks's new joint: Fossora 

(it's gonna take a few attempts)

2. Revolutionary Letter # 1 

I have just realized that the stakes are myself
I have no other 
ransom money, nothing to break or barter but my life
my spirit measured out, in bits, spread over
the roulette table, I recoup what I can
nothing else to shove under the nose of the maitre de jeu
nothing to thrust out the window, no white flag
this flesh all I have to offer, to make the play with
this immediate head, what it comes up with, my move
as we slither over this go board, stepping always
(we hope) between the lines

Diane di Prima

*

1/2 of #2

(The value of an individual life a credo they taught us
to instill fear, and inaction, 'you only live once'
a fog on our eyes, we are
endless as the sea, not separate, we die
a million times a day, we are born
a million times, each breath life and death:
get up. put on your shoes, get 
started, someone will finish)

3. Juxtapositions in Sound:

Freddie Gibbs: $oul $old $eparately  

(beautiful riffs on this one)

4. Starting strength training today. Time to get ripped. :) 

(Still sweating it out 90 minutes a day in the hot room. Grateful AF my practice reliably brings the smiles and is helping me grow bendy in the best ways. How I need it to keep me relatively sane.) 

5. Friends who indulge my proclivity towards yummy things.

An

A

An

I recommend Andersonville. 

6. The possibility of seeing Makaya MacCraven plus at The Green Mill tonight. 

#choices 

7. Touch

My hands
Open the curtains of your being
Clothe you in a further nudity
Uncover the bodies of your body
My hands
Invent another body for your body 

Octavio Paz 

8. This song popped into mind while I was yogagirling today and it made me laugh out loud in the middle of an asana. 

(who knows why these things happen so randomly but silly reigns supreme)

Gratitude: September 30, 2022

1. Grateful my Intuition gets things right, even when i don’t. 

I knew I wasn't ready, so I took preemptive measures to try to prevent a regrettable outcome, but my impatience, idealism, and shadow struck hard in tandem and sabotaged, yet again. 

How to unravel being mortified and frustrated beyond belief in the midst of grieving? 

MORE YOGA. MORE MEDITATION. MORE DRINKING. MORE NUMBING OUT.

I honestly don't know. Too much cancelling out the progress in that mix for my comfort.

Goodgod please help me do better at honoring and trusting myself. 

 #iamonlypartfoolio #PERSEVEREMYLOVE

2. Thank you for the willingness to face my fears and check my ego.

Humble pie still sucks ass. 

Perhaps it's an acquired taste?

#tolookwithoutfear #momaondeck

3. Cultivating Patience

Wait

Wait, for now.
Distrust everything if you have to.
But trust the hours. Haven’t they
carried you everywhere, up to now?
Personal events will become interesting again.
Hair will become interesting.
Pain will become interesting.
Buds that open out of season will become interesting.
Second-hand gloves will become lovely again;
their memories are what give them
the need for other hands. The desolation
of lovers is the same: that enormous emptiness
carved out of such tiny beings as we are
asks to be filled; the need
for the new love is faithfulness to the old.

Wait.
Don’t go too early.
You’re tired. But everyone’s tired.
But no one is tired enough.
Only wait a little and listen:
music of hair,
music of pain,
music of looms weaving our loves again.
Be there to hear it, it will be the only time,
most of all to hear your whole existence,
rehearsed by the sorrows, play itself into total exhaustion.

Galway Kinnell

4. musicalMood

5. Give Yourself Some Flowers

And in the beginning,
God gave your body
a checklist:

Keep your heart
on beat
and your lungs
dancing with oxygen,
not passive to air.

Make sure
the path of your blood
slows down
for checkpoints
and avoids
bumps
in the road.

Train your nerves
to keep a balanced pace
and stay within
the lines
of steady flow.

Push forward
without putting
too much
pressure
on movement.

Remember
to return to water
when your spirit
and its frame
are in drought.

Treat your body
like a well-rounded planet
built for all seasons,

or pretend you are
an adaptable star:

Float in the black
and stay there
if you need to,

save some light
for yourself.

In other words,
rest like the sun does:

Schedule some time
to stay out of sight
when too many people
praise warm energy.

Keep in mind
all of these things

when depression
tells you
nothing is working.

Keep in mind
all of these things

when it tells you
there is no
invisible force
connecting us,

when your veins
are stopped by blood clots,

when your bones are dry,
and the water
is too quick to boil.

Keep in mind
all of these things
when it tells you
that the soul is like the body:

Made to be broken,
open to deterioration
and doubt. Yes,

keep in mind
all of these things
and remember:

Even when it
seems like
the clock isn’t ticking,

you were made perfectly
for this moment
in time.

Marcus Amaker

6. letting shit go

 

“In the face of an obstacle which it is impossible to overcome, stubbornness is stupid. If I persist in beating my fist against a stone wall, my freedom exhausts itself in this useless gesture without succeeding in giving itself a content. It debases itself in a vain contingency. Yet, there is hardly a sadder virtue than resignation. It transforms into phantoms and contingent reveries projects which had at the beginning been set up as will and freedom. A young man has hoped for a happy or useful or glorious life. If the man he has become looks upon these miscarried attempts of his adolescence with disillusioned indifference, there they are, forever frozen in the dead past. When an effort fails, one declares bitterly that he has lost time and wasted his powers. The failure condemns that whole part of ourselves which we had engaged in the effort. It was to escape this dilemma that the Stoics preached indifference. We could indeed assert our freedom against all constraint if we agreed to renounce the particularity of our projects. If a door refuses to open, let us accept not opening it and there we are free. But by doing that, one manages only to save an abstract notion of freedom. It is emptied of all content and all truth. The power of man ceases to be limited because it is annulled. It is the particularity of the project which determines the limitation of the power, but it is also what gives the project its content and permits it to be set up. There are people who are filled with such horror at the idea of a defeat that they keep themselves from ever doing anything. But no one would dream of considering this gloomy passivity as the triumph of freedom” 

― Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity

7. Finally shed some tears today. 

Brought this piece by Thich Nhat Hanh to mind.

Gratitude: September 29, 2022

1. Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
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

2.. Noguchi Garden & Juju

3. ARTIC

4. The New Yorker 

5. Song For Autumn

Don’t you imagine the leaves dream now
how comfortable it will be to touch
the earth instead of the
nothingness of the air and the endless
freshets of wind? And don’t you think
the trees, especially those with
mossy hollows, are beginning to look for

the fires that will come—six, a dozen—to sleep
inside their bodies? And don’t you hear
the goldenrod whispering goodbye,
the everlasting being crowned with the first
tuffets of snow? The pond
stiffens and the white field over which
the fox runs so quickly brings out
its long blue shadows. The wind wags
its many tails. And in the evening
the piled firewood shifts a little,
longing to be on its way.

Mary Oliver

6. I Release

 "I release what is no longer 

relevant to make space for the 

magic already on the way."

7. LOW HANGING FRUIT

Devastating reminder from a beloved friend what not to be in the realm of men.

Gratitude: 9/28/2022

1. Level 42 brought smiles this morning..

2. Read a Little Poetry. 

forgive me for the parts of you i’m yet to kiss
Ifeanyi Ogbo

i used to think there was only one part of 
the body meant for kisses, 
but on your body I discovered a thousand places.

you were born naked so I could clothe you with kisses, 
my lips were made to adorn every inch of 
the landscape of your skin.

kisses on places you’ll never want your mother 
to read about, 
sinful actions too holy for confession.

and when we finally merge into one 
my body memorizing every part of yours 
i discover there are ways to visit heaven without dying.

(It's gonna take a minute to get there, and I'm looking forward to when I do...)

3. Rumi

“What you seek is seeking you.” 

#howdohugsworkinthischema

4. ;)

5. The Killing Eve G

6. This one too