Notes & Notables

Blessing — an erasure poem by Drew Myron

Hello Reader,

It’s time for a quick spring clean with a few notes:

1. Fun Fact
When you subscribe to this blog, each post is delivered directly to your email. Go here.

2. Find Me
Already a subscriber? Great, and thank you. I've recently changed my email service and some longtime readers may find me in the Junk drawer (the nerve!). Please check your Spam folder and set me free!

If you're still not getting my emails, please send me note and we'll figure it out. Email me: dcm@drewmyron.com

3. Ask More
”Notice when you are about to make a judgment — and ask a question instead.”

I found this nuggest of wisdom in The Art of Noticing newsletter. Like most good advice, this sounds simple but it takes work. But it’s work that is worth the effort.

4. Allow Confusion
Oh Anna, yes: 

"I’ve learned to value failed conversations, missed connections, confusions,” writes Anna Kamienska. “What remains is what’s unsaid, what’s underneath. Understanding on another level of being."

5. Mask More
I’m such a broken record, I’ve worn out my voice. Still, it must be said: the pandemic is not over.

After an encouraging lull, cases of covid are up 10 percent this week, with both hospitalizations and deaths increasing as well.

Please, friends, keep wearing your mask, washing your hands, and keeping your distance. We’re close to the end but it’s too soon to travel, to throw parties, to hug our friends. Almost, almost, not yet.

6. Thank You
Have I mentioned how much I appreciate your time & attention? I do! It brings me great joy to know you are out there in your world while I’m in here in my world, and together we are reading, writing & nodding along.

With appreciation,

Drew

Try This: Write A Postcard

Postcard

Lately, I am capable only of small things.

Is it enough
to feel the heart swimming?

Jim is fine. Our first
garden is thick with spinach
and white radish. Strangely,
it is summer

but also winter and fall.

In response to your asking:
I fill the hours
then lick them shut.

Today, not a single word, but the birds
quietly nodding
as if someone had suggested
moving on.

What is that perfect thing
some one who once believed in god said?

Please don’t misunderstand:
We still suffer, but we are
happy.

‑ Olena Kalytiak Davis

The old poems hold power. Postcard appears in And Her Soul Out of Nothing a book published in 1997 and one that I return to repeatedly and appreciate more with each reading.

How timely this poem is, still and again. At the pandemic’s one year mark, I feel small still, again. And lately every action takes great effort.

The antidote? I’m writing through. You, too?

Yes? — good, let’s try something new.

No? — that’s okay, let’s use our smallness as a start.

Try This: Write a Postcard
A postcard is an ideal tool because the space is small and the pressure low. You can write a brief and breezy message, a short sassy statement, a quick observation, a poetic plea. There are no rules and you can’t mess up. The best part? Penning a postcard is a simple act that moves the hand and stirs thoughts, and together the action energizes your writing mind.

Step 1
Pick a postcard — find them at the grocery store, on amazon, thrift shops, in the back of your junk drawer. Or make your own, which is fun for you and a treat for the recipient who gets a handwritten note + homemade art!

Step 2
Write a postcard to anyone — a friend or family member, your younger self, your older self, a stranger, a lover, the mailman, your dog . . .

Need a jumpstart? Lift a line from Postcard and keep going:*:

I am capable only of small things

I fill the hours then lick them shut.

Step 3
Mail the card — or don’t. You get to choose.

* When lifting, always provide attribution or place quotation marks around the line to indicate it is not yours. Even better, follow-up your postcard with a letter that includes the full poem (Or, even more grand, purchase the book for your postcard friend).

Keep Writing!

Try This: I Remember

Try This: Word Catching

Try This: Wild Cards

Try This: Make a Scramble

Stationery

The world is full of paper.
Write to me.

— Agha Shahid Ali

---

One Small Thing

How do you wear your dream? — a cut-up poem by drew myron

Write every day.

Write when you want.

Write when you have something to say.

Write when you don’t.

All these rules and guidelines — who knows what works?

Just as we change with age and experience, surely our creative needs change, too. For a year now, I’ve urged you (and really, myself) to make something, anything. Your bed, coffee, a story, a poem, a painting, a doodle, a grocery list . . .

Make something is my prescription for despair, protection against dread, companion in loneliness. In making something, I’m engaging mind and mood. Without judgement or fix, without fuss. Just make and do. Stay active and awake.

I don’t write poetry when I wish, says Anna Kamienska, I write when I can’t, when my larynx is flooded and my throat is shut.

It’s been a difficult year. And while the days ahead offer hope, the light is faint and my fatigue still heavy. I’m making something every day, but some days this means I make the bed, I make coffee, I make do. And I often, as my mother would say, fake it ‘til I make it.

Today my greatest accomplishment was pulling weeds. Despite my disdain for yard work, this one small act was surprisingly satisfying. I made an improvement. The morning air was crisp, the sun warm, and the small effort pushed away the throb of worries.

I’ve been writing, too, but I’m out of fresh words and out of sync. I’m tired of myself and tired of trying, and so the other day I turned my junk mail into a poem. Cut, cut, snip, snip, insta-poem. And this, too, was surprisingly satisfying. And a good reminder that poems and paintings and stories are hiding, patiently waiting for us to wake up and make ‘em.

---

Distractions & Attractions

Oh, the restless mind! For months my focus has darted and dived — yours too? — but I recently stumbled across these excellent distractions and attractions. As usual, books and film lift & move me.

BOOKS:

The Hare by Melanie Finn
A taut and intoxicating tale of bad decisions and precarious moments that make a life, with a claustrophobic Joyce Carol Oates-esque feel.

Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger
A slow and gentle novel with poignant beauty. (Starts slow — stick with it!) 

Just Us: An American Conversation by Claudia Rankine
This dense and stirring collection of conversational essays, fragments, poems and images (along with a running litany of fact-checked notes and comments) is a deep dive into the racism, privilege, and prejudice that beats beneath every surface. 

See also: Citizen: An American Lyric and Don't Let Me Be Lonely.

MOVIES / TELEVISION:

Lupin
A French mystery mind-twister, with sharp writing and quick action. The first season, available on Netflix, consists of 10 episodes. A second season is in the works.

Call My Agent!
In this rompy French series (I’ve listed two great French shows, by pure coincidence), Parisian talent agents struggle to keep their famous clients happy and their business afloat. Now in its fourth and final season, this drama-comedy is fun relief.  

Imposters
A mad-dash addictive series with millenial humor, mystery & twists. Originally on Bravo, now on Netflix. 

Books, films, poems, art — what’s moving you?

---

You Haven't Aged A Bit

Thirteen, photo by drew myron

A baker's dozen.

Friday the 13th.

Glasses, pimples, puberty.

Nancy Drew Mystery Series 13: The Mystery of the Ivory Charm.

Thirteen is Bonne Bell Lip Smackers, Brooke Shields, and a swipe of blush. 

Thirteen is shag carpet in a wood-paneled basement, casting nervous glances while playing spin-the-bottle.

Don't you sometimes — in your deepest hidden self — still feel the queasy roil of thirteen?   

Established in 2008, this blog is now 13. Happy birthday! Oh, the agony and joy of turning a teen.

“And so, let’s go,” I wrote in my first post so many years ago, “not with the thunder of the self-absorbed, but in the same way a single word, spoken softly, carries great weight.” 

Still holds true. The more things change, the more they don’t.

Thanks for aging with me. 

I'm happy you're here.

---

Types of Clarity

Types of Clarity

 1.

Winter nights, deep and still 

a well of darkness opaque 

as every unanswered call

2. 

Unexpected sun in mid winter 

freeze, I turn against cold, 

against wind, face to sun: 

                                                      fill me

3.

From winter's grim march

this blazing blue sky is a

grace I want to deserve

— Drew Myron

Hello Reader,

A sort of numb getting-through has taken over. One step, another step, press on, press on . . .

You too?

At this point, it seems we’re all hunkered down, pulling the weight of every individual and collective worry. The days are beyond heavy.

A friend is sick, a parent dies, a job lost, storms rage, depression grows. Even if covid has not touched your life directly — and I hope that’s true for you but know it’s not the case for many — the virus has intensified the grief, depriving us of the tiny things, like holding hands and gathering together, that help process pain.

How to keep on?

I had to pull off of the road and cry, a friend says, and in the telling I feel her sobs, exhaustion at the core of caring.

You have to search for beauty, says Austin Kleon.

Keep walking, says Annabel Abbs in this beautiful essay, The Body On Grief

Yesterday, a blue sky opened vivid and true. I turned to the sun and for a moment I finally felt a calm. And then wrote a few lines. It’s not a great photo, not a great poem. But it doesn’t matter. I’m making. Writing it out and getting through, one line at a time, this is how I’m keeping on.

How about you?

---

Hitting the Wall

As Winter Wears On 

As winter wears on

what fate deals you 

is a window of noticing 

fogged by the familiar 

like a storm of worry that 

becomes its own weather, this

season is a betrayal that stays. 

So much is hard to know for sure: 

how to have a conversation 

how to listen for the cloud lifting

how to wake and walk and keep on.

Let us be faithful, you say. 

Don't draw the shade. Instead

live hungry for hope's dim glow.

I say, let us measure our wounds,

the shape of this ruthless subtraction.

We want a reason to trust in better days.

Maybe there’s power in refusal

or reckoning and release, in counting 

questions that never deliver the 

who what or how long

Maybe what fate deals you  

is a life of winters in a single day 

and the biggest decision is 

to trust or turn, or to simply 

and most painfully, 

most importantly

put on a coat and 

watch it go.  

— Drew Myron

 1. 
“a window  . . “ line is borrowed from Tom Vanderbilt, author of Beginners: The Joy and Transformative Power of Lifelong Learning, who wrote "a window of noticing fogged by familiarity” published in The Art of Noticing Newsletter.

2.
“ruthless subtraction” is a phrase borrowed from astrologer Holiday Mathis’ Pisces horoscope for January 15, 2021.

3.
I have “hit the pandemic wall,” described in The Washington Post as a “sudden feeling of spiritual and emotional exhaustion with life during covid times.”

“The pandemic wall pops up at different times for different people, but for a vast group of people, the wall has smacked them in the face within the past three weeks. . . . ‘This fear of being around one another — that that fear is not going to go away in eight months,’ he says. The realization made him pull over and start to cry. ‘Those people who I was trying to console and keep upbeat — now it’s official, I’m one of those people.’ ”

---

Bookish: Art In An Emergency

When the going gets tough, we need more art — and books, and books about art.

Funny Weather: Art In An Emergency is a essay collection by art critic & culture writer Olivia Laing. Art is a source of clarity, resistance, and repair, she says, then offers sweeping examples for our salvation. She offers profiles of Jean-Michel Basquiat and Georgia O'Keeffe, explores Maggie Nelson, Sally Rooney, David Bowie, Freddie Mercury, and explores loneliness, technology, women, alcohol, sex and more.

In evocative language that sweeps across decades, Funny Weather shines a light on the lives of artists in insightful nuggets like this:

“Elegance shares a border with crankiness, independence with selfishness, and O’Keeffe was by no means a saint.”

And this:

“Here’s another kind of art I like: the anonymous, the cobbled together, the hand-me-down, the postscript; collaborations between strangers that marry jubilantly, that don’t quite fit.”

Art doesn't just happen to us, she says.

“It's work. What art does is provide material with which to think: new registers; new spaces. After that, friend, it's up to you.”

Go here to read a great INTERVIEW with Olivia Laing.

Bookish is an occasional feature to share books that hold my attention and my heart.

---

Practice, not precious

Way back when the pandemic began, I joined a writing group. Every week by email the host would send a prompt to an assortment of writers, of whom I knew just one. A few days later, we’d share our work like offerings, then follow up with private notes of encouragement: I like this line or good job.

The responses were simple, easy and kind. I needed this nudge to write, and more than I’d like to admit, I needed the accolade. It felt good.

It felt needy to need but, if I’m out loud and honest, it mostly felt good.

* * *

Most of my friends have a writing group they lean on for encouragement and support. But I’ve always been a loner, not a joiner. I often lead and this was the first group I had no obligation to run or guide. Less pressure, more play.

Thanks to this somewhat anonymous and pressure-less routine, last year I wrote more than I have in years. The more I wrote the more I had to write. It was a faucet I didn’t want to turn off.

But as the summer wore on the world turned more and more grim, and we shared less and less. We were worn down with life. Weary, we took the break we all needed.

* * *

But like a run you skip just one day, and then another, I wrote less and less. I got rusty. I resented my blank pages, my dull mind, this idling blog. I grew mad at myself: what’s wrong with you? can’t you do anything? you’re so lazy!

This is normal. Writers go fallow. We need rest and restoration. But each time I hit a dry spell, my creative life feels terminal: I will never write again, I say, falling to the couch in a dramatic heap.

Of course, I always rally, I write. Life takes on a brighter hue.

* * *

Today, our writing group resumed. And I’m happy to have a structure that urges me to the page again.

But more importantly, I’m remembering — for the zillionth time, it seems — that writing is practice, not precious. My best work, and my most creative and happy self, is found through trying and messing and feeling through, without expectation or plan.

I gotta stay in the play, not in the product.

* * *

Writer-artist Austin Kleon, who modernized the erasure form with his black out poetry, blogs daily, not because he has so much to say but because “blogging is about discovering what I have to say.”

“I had no idea,” he writes, “how badly my writing muscles had atrophied. After a couple of weeks, I could feel the sentences coming easier. . . . Something small every day leads to something big.”

* * *

I’ve had seasons of daily pages, and seasons of not writing at all.

But I am reminded now of my favorite season, when I write with fever and share with abandon, when everything feels alive and abundant. I want to go back — or, rather, forward — with a loose grip.

Write more, write better, write now.

I want to bumble and flub, to kick off the rust and oil the gears. I want to write the odd phrase, the awkward break, share the almost-there line, the not-quite poem. Not to preen and gleam but to build muscle, to let go of the precious line and sacred space so that I can return again to the power and flow of making.

Years ago my first and favorite teacher, Judyth Hill, told me: Writing needs air!

Yes, yes! It needs to crackle and spit, to fire and flash. Let us not hold our poems too close, our words too dear, but instead share wildly and with great cheer.

Are you with me? Let’s go!

---

(Trying To) Pay Attention

Shifted, an erasure poem by Drew Myron

Dear Reader,
Not a letter, or poem, not even email. I have not written.

Not because there is nothing to say but because there is too much. 

I’m still here. And you?

1.
Silence is not the absence of something but the presence of everything, says Gordon Hempton. 

2.
I'm trying to pay attention. But the world is too much and my mind too heavy. This constant darting, this fatigue. You feel it too? 

I want to know know know but when I know it's not enough. I crave more details, more nuance, more information. Feed me, more more more. It's addictive, corrosive, wearing. 

3.
Full sentences are too much. The mind files only nuggets, lines, bits. I sift for words and meaning, for sense. I stand at watch, seeing chaos and rubble, seeing nothing, nothing, everything. 

4.
Teach us to care and not to care.
Teach us to sit still. 

— Ash Wednesday by T.S. Eliot

5.
Phrases we never want to hear again:

Now, more than ever. . .

In this challenging time . . .

Unprecedented.

6.
This is not sadness. Not depression. Aren’t we all just so full?

Not sated. Not glowing with plentitude. The other full: flooded.

7.
The moment of change is the only poem, wrote Adrienne Rich.

The poem is in us, in action and rest, rising, forming, in this very moment, in our every now. What is your poem?

8.
How to get through?

Keep reading, writing, walking, thinking, reaching.

Keep awake.

Keep trying.

Keep going.

You, yes you, keep on.

---

On Seeing

Her hair is rumpled, shirt stained, and still she is grateful when I take her picture.  

You have a beautiful smile, I say, and her eyes flutter and cheeks flush.

She looks down and back again, into my camera. The moment turns shy and empowered in equal measure, and I feel like I'm seeing a new sort of truth.

It’s an easy thing, a tossed moment, a simple photo. She is painting, something that happens routinely here in the nursing home, just another craft activity. It's nothing much, really, a blink of time. 

______

Sometimes I take a picture and later, when editing, I see a beauty I had missed: bright eyes, slight smile, a shy pride. But then I wonder, do I see the beauty in this image because I see the beauty of a moment? Will you see beauty in these ravaged faces and messy hair, in the marks and spots and displays of decay?

______

If you look at a window, you see fly-specks, dust, the crack where Junior's Frisbie hit it. If you look through a window, you see the world beyond. 

 — Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking

______

Scrolling through social media I often see photos of "old" people, a friend's parent, say, or some inspirational vision of age, and I pass by without emotion or second glance.

But at work, in each photo I snap, I see details that a camera can never catch: the flash of a smile, an unexpected laugh that is full and fast but too quick for capture.

Or the light of the room, how when he moved near the window, a cloud opened, a bird sang.

Or the quick smile followed by slow conversation, how the clock seems to stop because I must slow up, slow down, let my breath catch my mind. 

There is always much to do: meetings, deadlines, phone calls, photos. I keep moving, moving, moving. Even when I want to stay longer, talk more, I am conflicted with the desire to both absorb and wipe away. To lean in and to leave. 

______

When Doris fusses with her hair, I am fretting on my own appearance.

When Herman cannot be calmed, I feel a buzz of bees too.

When Pearl tells me about life on the farm — Momma had hundreds of birds and they sang every morning— I am her, dazzled by every small and simple thing.  

______

What looks bare is usually a different kind of abundance. 

— Sarah Cook, This Place is Beautiful, This Place is Gross

______

Time slows to stillness here, when I pay attention, when I slow myself. And so this exchange, of easy banter and click, click, click, is nothing much. And yet, when trust is established, time feels precious.

Each click says I see you. 

As I leave, her eyes are soft and pleading as she says thank you.

* Names and identifiers have been changed to protect privacy.

** Photo from Istockphoto.com

---

Good Books of 2020

All year I moaned about my lack of attention for reading. I’m too distracted, I said, with everything (insert hand sweep here to indicate: pandemic, racial injustice, election chaos, economic crisis, and crushing fatigue).

But as I look back now, I realize I enjoyed a lot of really good books, and feel encouraged to know when all else fails books can (still) change my heart, mind & mood.

Here are the Good Books I read in 2020:

FICTION

Take Me Apart by Sara Sligar
Art, writing, mystery — all in one engaging story. I could not put this book down; read it in one riveted day.

My Life as A Rat by Joyce Carol Oates
Whew, what a disturbing, haunting, page-turner! Written in second person "you," Joyce Carol Oates is a master of claustrophic hunger that revolts and mesmerizes all at once.

The Nix by Nathan Hill
A funny and touching debut novel about a son, the mother who left him as a child, and how his search to uncover the secrets of her life leads him to reclaim his own. This story is chocked with great lines, like this: “Seeing ourselves clearly is the project of a lifetime.” 

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
With an unusual story set up — twin sisters are raised in a small town founded by and for light-skinned black people — this engaging novel stirs ideas on race, identity and home. 

My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell
Dark, disturbing, compelling. Extremely well-written.

The View from Penthouse B by Elinor Lipman
Easy but not insipid. The perfect read for full and distracted minds (like mine).

POETRY

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
This novel is both long poem and full sigh. Beautiful and unusual. Vivid and sensory, rich and haunted. The writing is, well, gorgeous, line after beautiful line.

Hotel Almighty by Sarah J Sloat
These visual poems are stunning one-of-a-kind mixed-media collage, with each served on a miniature canvas. So visually evocative my only wish is that the book were a larger format so I could absorb its beauty even more.

Gravity & Spectacle by Shawnte Orion and Jia Oak Baker
Inventive, innovative, inspired! This unusual combo of photos and poems is a powerful art project that is silly, serious, fun, sad, and strong.

If the House by Molly Spencer
Layered, textured, rich and deep. A stunning debut. After years of quiet, thoughtful, diligent work, Molly Spencer is finally seeing well-deserved acclaim. Read also: Hinge, just published. 

HOW-TO 

The Art of Noticing For Writers by Rob Walker
This Kindle ‘short’ is a fun and valuable nugget of inspiration for all kinds of writers. Read also: The Art of Noticing:131 Ways to Spark Creativity, Find Inspiration, and Discover Joy in the Everyday. 

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone by Lori Gottlieb
An unexpected gem! Great writing, pacing, and character development in a self-help ‘story’ penned by an insightful doctor-writer. 

MEMOIR

 Save Me the Plums: My Gourmet Memoir by Ruth Reichl 
Another great Ruth Reichl memoir! She's penned several and this is now among my top picks, right up there with her first (and still my favorite), Tender at the Bone.

___

Dear Readers & Writers,
In the new year, may your heart & mind make room for reading.
The world is full of good writing, read on!

With love,

Drew

---

On Sunday: Allow

---

Fast Five with Penelope Scambly Schott

"I believe that every person has a true landscape of the soul and that some of us are lucky enough to find that place.”

— Penelope Scambly Schott

Welcome to Fast Five, in which I ask my favorite writers five questions as a way to open the door to know more.

Penelope Scambly Schott is the author of over a dozen poetry books, a novel, and a “slightly fictional canine memoir.” She has earned an Oregon Book Award and numerous other literary achievements. She splits her time between two Oregon towns: the city of Portland to the west, and the small farm town of Dufur to the east.

1. 
Let’s start with your most pressing and poetic theme: Dufur, Oregon.

I have a love affair with the small (population: 623) central Oregon town of Dufur. I’ve had my house here for ten years and each year I become more attached to the community. (I’ve bought a plot in the local cemetery so that even though I wasn’t born here I can be dead here.) I’ve published a chapbook called Lovesong for Dufur and, just this spring, On Dufur Hill, a full-length collection of poems about the cycle of a year here.

[ Read excerpts from On Dufur Hill here.]

I believe that every person has a true landscape of the soul — be it beach, mountains, whatever — and that some of us are lucky enough to find that place. I grew up in New York City as a free range child (remember those?) but have never again felt so at home as I do here. When local kids see me walking with my dog Sophia they yell out, “Hi, Penelope,” and when the dog and I step into the post office past the “No Dogs Allowed” sign, Sophia stands up at the counter and Dave or Mike will give her a biscuit.

2.
Why write?

Because I can’t help it? Because when I was a tiny child just learning to speak I stood up in my crib and spoke sentences? Because it’s too lonesome to have words in my mind that I can’t share? I could say that I write, as in putting the words on paper, because, unlike Homer and other bards, my memory isn’t good enough to compose and recite without a crib sheet. And that’s not just a joke; I am obsessed with the sounds of language. Most of my poems originate with a line or two coming into my head as I am out walking, usually climbing Dufur Hill which I do every morning. Something about the rhythm of walking triggers spoken language. I repeat the line or lines all the way down the hill and then when I get home I write them down and continue with the rest of the poem. Maybe writing is my way of coping with noticing and feeling.

3. 
Tell us about your professional life. What do you enjoy about teaching?

I got my Ph.D. as a union card. I was a single mother with two kids and I had to do something to feed them. It was only when I started teaching that I discovered I actually liked it. I like: figuring something out clearly enough to explain it, learning from my students, making an emotional connection with each student, hoping I am useful. What I especially like about leading poetry workshops is how quickly we become a community.

 On my resume I’ve been a college professor and a workshop leader, but for many years I also had jobs on the side. I worked as an artist’s model which taught me a lot about art and also that a body is just a thing. The most meaningful non-teaching job I’ve had was the five years I worked as a home health aide. I had felt I needed to learn more about old age and dying, and I sure did. Although I was treated with more respect as Professor Schott, I may have been more useful as “the girl from the agency.”

4. 
Which non-literary piece of culture — film, tv show, painting, song — has influenced you?

I grew up without a television and never learned to watch. I see very few movies. The songs that have been important to me are not popular music but old Scottish ballads. Perhaps the biggest influence on me was the art I saw as a child when my mother took me regularly to the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan. I remember being completely freaked out by Picasso’s painting Guernica showing the consequences of war. I can still hear that horse screaming. I was also greatly affected by a Giacometti sculpture called The Palace at 4 a.m. which was full of inexplicable mystery. I think I could trace much of my writing to those two pieces of art.

5.
Is there a book you wish you had written?

When I was a girl that book was Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden for its discovery of the unknown. Now it might be any of the poets who write very short and unforgettable gems — maybe some of the Chinese poets of the Tang dynasty or the wonderful one-line pieces by the Greek poet Yannis Ritsos as translated by my friend Paul Merchant in Monochords.

Bonus Question: What are your favorite words?

Almost anything with a B or a P or a K. I love making those sounds. 

Poke, kitchen, spit, slump, noncombustible. 

Of course there are also wonderful words like interrogatory and flat. 

Hey, I guess I love ‘em all.

---

Nugget

Hello Friend,

This is just to say hello & hold on.

With love,

Drew

Stretched & Choosing

An art-poem by Tracy Weil and Drew Myron — made with love for a friend who loves lichen & life.

A friend is sick.

A mother ill.

A funeral today, another tomorrow.

Business lags.

Is this cold or flu or worse?

Where’s my ballot?

I have a litany of worries (don’t we all)? When I tell a friend, she is warm and wise in her response:

The heart stretches and stretches and stretches.

And I think of Maria Popova, the force behind Brain Pickings. Each year she distills one thing she’s learned about living while reading and writing her way through life. This year, she says, the challenge has been “colossal.”

“Depression,” she says, “has lowered its leaden cloudscape over me again and again since I was fifteen, but no other year has lidded life more ominously, as the staggering collective grief we are living through together densified the black fog of private loss.

In such seasons of life, one is pressed against the limits of one’s being, pressed eventually against the understanding — no, more than understanding and less than understanding: the blind elemental fact — that no matter the outer atmosphere of circumstance, one must lift the inner cloudscape by one’s own efforts, or perish under it.”

What did she learn this year? To choose joy — not as sappy platitude, but as intellectual and emotional survival:

“Choose joy. Choose it like a child chooses the shoe to put on the right foot, the crayon to paint a sky. Choose it at first consciously, effortfully, pressing against the weight of a world heavy with reasons for sorrow, restless with need for action. Feel the sorrow, take the action, but keep pressing the weight of joy against it all, until it becomes mindless, automated, like gravity pulling the stream down its course; until it becomes an inner law of nature. . . . “

Read the whole beautiful, essential passage here.

And so we keep weighing and stretching.

Please, dear reader, keep on choosing.

So few grains of happiness
measured against all the dark
and still the scales balance.

— Jane Hirshfield
from The Weighing

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How does it feel to be able to breathe?

Hello Reader.
I’m weary. Are you too? I want to burrow in, head down, until this ugly season passes. But though I’m tired, I’m even more tired of feeling powerless. I’m sharing this video with you because words have power, music moves, and art transforms.

Please keep on.

With love,
Drew

Commander in Chief

Were you ever taught when you were young
If you mess with things selfishly, they're bound to come undone?
I'm not the only one
That's been affected and resented every story you've spun
And I'm a lucky one
'Cause there are people worse off that have suffered enough
Haven't they suffered enough?
But you can't get enough of
Shuttin' down systеms for personal gain
Fightin' fires with flyers and prayin' for rain
Do you gеt off on pain?
We're not pawns in your game

Commander in Chief, honestly
If I did the things you do
I couldn't sleep, seriously
Do you even know the truth?
We're in a state of crisis, people are dyin'
While you line your pockets deep
Commander in Chief, how does it feel to still
Be able to breathe?

We were taught when we were young
If we fight for what's right, there won't be justice for just some
Won't give up, stand our ground
We'll be in the streets while you're bunkering down
Loud and proud, best believe
We'll still take a knee while you're

Commander in Chief, honestly
If I did the things you do
I couldn't sleep, seriously
Do you even know the truth?
We're in a state of crisis, people are dyin'
While you line your pockets deep
Commander in Chief, how does it feel to still
Be able to breathe, breathe?
Be able to breathe

Won't give up, stand our ground
We'll be in the streets while you're bunkering down
Won't give up, stand our ground
We'll be in the streets while you're

Commander in Chief, honestly
If I did the things you do
I couldn't sleep, seriously
Do you even know the truth?
We're in a state of crisis, people are dyin'
While you line your pockets deep
Commander in Chief, how does it feel to still
Be able to breathe?
Able to breathe

— Demi Lovato
Commander in Chief

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Fortune Found (by mistake)

Sometimes you stumble upon a book and the discovery is delight.

Rotten Perfect Mouth is a wonderful surprise.

I was watching I’m Thinking of Ending Things (Netflix) — a fantastic mindbender of a movie, based on a book, that deserves more attention — that includes a stellar performance of the poem, Bonedog.

When I googled the poem, everyone says Bonedog appears in the book Rotten Perfect Mouth. It doesn’t. But that’s okay because I now have a new-to-me book of poems by a poet I’m digging, and I’ll continue my search for the elusive poem that kicked off a hunt that led to the discovery.

(In the meantime, Eva, are you out there? Send me a note, will you?).

Almost everything about this book appeals: the title, cover photo, poems, the indie edge, the mystery of the author’s name — H.D.? What’s she hiding or knowing or keeping close? Is this challenge or game, rubik or ruse? Oh poets, how we love the artful dodge.

Every page bursts with rough beauty:

Nothing is as long or as hard as one hopes.

— from One Night On The River

All winter I
have been barrelling along
the highway, slim with
mediocrity. Winter changes
its name and nothing else

— from Modern Science

I am thinking one thing and saying another.
I am spinning a prayer out of manic luck.

— from The Minotaur

And then this:

Racing It

The sky never touches the ground but races it, forever and ever.
Amen.
I am driving us home from the church,
away from the last of summer, through the
funeral dusk. There is no bend in the road.
She is riding shotgun, exhausted, curling away
from awful truths. Blowing smoke from a crack
in the window, eyes closed.

We are surrounded by wheat and corn,
just like people always say.
I can feel the farness in my muscles.
I can feel the love in my teeth, humming.

When we get home, we can have a drink,
uncoil, not talk about it. This is what we
do best.

I want to stop the car, walk out into the fields,
and lie down on the ground, flat on my back.
I want to lie flat out, not feeling it,
until forever lets me on for the ride.

— Eva H.D.

Your Turn: What’s your latest great find?

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Proclamations

Something of Myself 403 — an erasure poem by Drew Myron

1.
Make something.

Make up, make do, make coffee, make love, make art, make the bed — make something.

2.
Lonely seeps.

Some days, even the bright ones, the soccer net sags, the sun leans into the grass with a sigh, even the trashcan stands askew.

I am loping along an abandoned track when the cool morning air turns my watering eyes to full sob for a brief moment for no real reason. Isn’t there so much loneliness to these days of getting through?

We’re all doing the best we can. Of course, of course, of course.
Make do, re-do, getting through. We’re all doing doing doing.
It’s the endlessness that wears.

3.
Poetry is medicine.

“I’ve been thinking about how poetry can sustain us,” says doctor-poet Rafael Campo, who treated patients during the height of the AIDS crisis and is now treating Covid-19.

“We need poetry now as we did then to make sense of our experience of suffering.”

4.
Write through.

What to do? Write through.

“It’s like often nothing happens when you stay still. I always feel like I write something out of a transition of some sort,” says writer Eileen Myles.

“You know, like, coming into my apartment thinking: Another day in which I haven’t done any writing. And then that thought fills me with anxiety and I walk in and I write something. . . . I mean, a poem is just a list. It’s a kind of sharing. It’s just an exploration of the filing system of your brain as it moves through space and time.”

5.
From now on . . .

Today is the day, I say.

I often make these sort of statements. I think I’m making conversation but my husband calls them “proclamations,” then asks, “Are you telling me or telling yourself?”

I’m almost always telling myself.

Like this blog, equal parts confession and cheer. So here’s my proclamation to the world (and mostly myself):

Let’s make something!

But let’s not go alone. Please join me. What are you making?

Share your words, art, poems & proclamations with me: dcm@drewmyron.com

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Fast Five with Robert Jackman

"The perspective we take has the potential to expand us into love, or contract us into fear.”

— Robert Jackman

Welcome to Fast Five, in which I ask my favorite writers five questions as a way to open the door to know more.

Robert Jackman is a psychotherapist who combines principles of mindfulness, hypnotherapy and spirituality as paths to healing. He has a private practice in Chicago, Illinois, restores his spirit in the coastal village of Yachats, Oregon, and is the author of Healing Your Lost Inner Child.

If ever we’ve needed a voice of calm reassurance and authentic peace of mind, the time is now. Please welcome Robert ‘Jake’ Jackman:

1. 
After working for years as a psychotherapist, what prompted you to now write Healing Your Lost Inner Child?

I wanted to write the book for years but a part of me was apprehensive and my latent inner child wounds of not feeling good enough kept creeping in to stop the process. Then in December of 2019 I heard an interior voice say very emphatically, it's time to write the book now! Once I started to write, the flood gates opened and the manuscript developed very quickly. Gone were any of the apprehensions and now I couldn't wait to see my book in print. The material kept coming and after I sent my manuscript to my editor I still had more content that wanted to come through and that's how the Companion Workbook was born.

2. 
I really appreciate your "homework" approach as a way to utilize practical tools for inner work. What key advice would you offer those working on personal growth?

For anyone considering looking at themselves introspectively remember that it takes a great deal of courage to be vulnerable. The most important advice I give people going on a journey of self-exploration and therapy is to know that they will get as much out of the process as they put into the process. The secret is to begin to listen and not be afraid of the voice coming from the shadow world of the subconscious. So much is stored within and many people push this away thinking that their own truth will swallow them whole. The other piece of advice is to trust in yourself and the wisdom you carry. Therapists are just mirrors reflecting back a person's wisdom. Too often we doubt our greatness and make ourselves smaller. You are stronger than you think.

3. 
What books — or people — have influenced your professional life, and how? 

Carl Jung and his lifetime of work specifically his wisdom regarding the subconscious and archetypes.

Louise Hay, author of You Can Heal Your Life. She was such a bright soul and her kind and gentle presence lives on in her words. Through her work I learned how to transform trauma wounding experiences from diminishment and sorrow to loving messages of healing and encouragement.

Michael Newton, author of Journey of Souls. His books have helped to expand my understanding of energy and life. Reading his books greatly influenced my understanding of metaphysics and helps me to rise above the fray and not be mired in the fear-based illusions that always seem to be presented to us. His work and my study of metaphysics in general have helped me gain a larger perspective in which to see the world. 

4.
In these difficult days, what keeps you going? 

Knowing and trusting at a deep level that this too shall pass. To deeply understand that the perspective we take, that which we are in control of, has the potential to expand us into love, or contract us into fear. When I'm inspired and have a quiet moment, I will make an intention of beaming love to everyone on the planet who may be at that time in some state of fear. My intentional meditation and trust in the unfolding events centers and calms me. And, having survived a near-death experience where I experienced waves of undulating infinite love and the resonance of a serenely deep calm with no knowledge of time, instantly calms me when I connect to this part of my memory.

5.
I'm a word collector, and keep a running list of favorite words. What are your favorite words? 

 erudite, magical, ephemeral, and magnanimous

Bonus Question:  
What are some common things that most people do that create a great deal of stress in their lives?

Number One: Making up Stories
This is a fear based projection most people use when they haven't gotten the answer they want or they have not heard back from someone for example. We all do this and too often we make up the wrong story and then we start to believe our made up story as a fact. This pattern tends to create a lot of stress within people and is avoidable.

Number Two: Giving Power Away
When we give power away to others we lose agency within ourselves. Making others greater than, and ourselves less than, perpetuates the false illusion that we are not worthy which then creates a cycle of victimhood. This perpetuates the idea that for some reason we are not deserving of love.

Number Three: Having Unrealistic Expectations
When we project an expectation into our future we are setting ourselves up for a potential disappointment. It's almost impossible to not have expecatations and the trick is to transform the expectation into a hope or intention. We still may not get what we want, but the sting won't be as bad.

To know that we all screw up, but remember whatever decision you made that you now regret, at that moment in time it was the best decision to make based on everything you knew about yourself and life at the time. Be gentle with yourself, earth school is hard enough.

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