Quick Reminder
Structure & Surprise: Writing Poems That Move, starts today at 2 pm, PST/ 5 pm, EST. All workshops are recorded, so you can study with us in real-time, or on your own time. You can register for this 6-week workshop by making a donation to our Go Fund Me Campaign here.
“There are no problems, only solutions.” - John Lennon
Like so many people these days, I’m feeling the ground shaking underneath me. There are so many things changing in the world, and I’m wondering what my life, my city, and this whole planet will look like tomorrow and the day after. Maybe it’s because I’m an eldest daughter, maybe it’s because I’m a control-freak, but I often feel like it’s up to me to fix things, to look into the future and plan what we will all do if and when things go, as my grandmother used to say “all to poop.”
This is a lonely way of thinking. It’s stressful and myopic. Of course I can’t predict and plan for every potential disaster. I can’t protect everyone either. But my mind sure can try to dream up ways to try. Dare I say it’s very “American” way to think. It’s an “us vs. everyone else” mentality we’ve been cultivating for 200 years.” But it is limited. Maybe, after a long period of focusing on the values of individualism, it’s time to think more about a collective.
I think of what that physicist says, “for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.” The more I look around at what is going on in my community, the more I realize I am not the only person working to make a positive change in the world. Many others are thinking about how they can help one another individually, or even how they can build whole communities around helping. This last month alone I realized there’s a new food forest down the road from where I live, an art store that sells used craft supplies to prevent waste and encourage creativity in the community, and a dozen community gardens that grow food to be donated to food kitchens.
While some forces are working to divide us, other forces are working to bring us together. And the good news is that you do not have to start one of these organizations on your own in order to participate in their success. You just have to find them. This is a little bit of a problem because most of the do-gooder organizations that I know about don’t have huge budgets for advertising. Unlike for-profit organizations they aren’t going to put their product in front of you during a prime-time commercial.
Instead, I’ve found most of these organizations either by word-of-mouth, or by doing an intentional search for what I wanted to see in the world (to paraphrase Gandhi.) Lately, rather than “doom-scrolling” I’ve been “Inspiration-searching.” Every time I think about a problem, I also think, “what could be a solution?” Then I see if there is any organization out there working on addressing this issue.
It’s a useful way of reframing each problem as an activity I can get involved in, or a cause I can contribute to. This makes me feel more empowered to act, and less at the mercy of forces I cannot control. I had all of this in the back of my mind when I reread this poem by Tim Kahl this morning in workshop.
Passport I go to the post office to see about my passport. My wife warns that I'm likely to wait a while in line, that I can't just jump to the front. I tell her I was built for disappointment. It's true. Every day I wake up and think of the new ways people are going to let me down. Maybe that's not healthy. Maybe that's not fair, but I've learned to downgrade my expectations. My notion of spic and span and the harmonious order has been damaged beyond repair. I have tempered my jubilation waiting for the next shoe to drop. It's the flipside of being cautiously optimistic. I'm suddenly bemused by all the silver linings. I anticipate that sudden lift when things fall just short of disaster and someone has to send in the Marines. Hey, maybe that'll be me with my bright shiny passport. I can go to foreign shores and bring back some age-old practice of flower arrangement. I can imagine myself handing out nosegays to everyone on the embattled streets of San Francisco. Have a lavender day, ma'am I might offer in hope of returning to that one shining moment when an old Buddhist man offered my notoriously gruff father a flower in an elevator. How it cut through to his gooey center and brought him back to his own family's immigrant roots. The transformation was shocking. There was silence in the car all the way home. All it took was the sacrifice of a flower, one man offering it to another man, turning the tables on his expectations, stamping his passport for entry into hope.
I really love that ending, about how all it takes is “the sacrifice of a flower,” and how that can flip over the table of a person’s expectations, or their entire mood or perspective. In so many ways, that is what poetry does for me every day that I read it or write it or teach it. Poems invite me to reconsider my perspective. Sharing that poetry, and listening to the poems of others always reminds me that no matter what I am going through, someone else has gone through something similar before, and that I am not alone.
If you want to write more poetry, share your perspectives with a group of fellow artists, and learn new ways to shift your ideas in and outside of writing, I invite you to join us for our upcoming workshop, starting today.
In this workshop we will continue exploring the structures in Michael Theune’s book/blog, Structure & Surprise. We’ll talk about the many ways you can come to an “epiphany,” a “wisdom line,” or a “volta” in your writing. You can use this workshop to generate new writing or revise old writing, or both! We will meet Mondays, July 27th - Aug 24th, 2 pm, PST/ 5pm, EST. This workshop is offered on a sliding-scale, donation basis. (Suggested Donation of $25 - $175, Nobody Turned away for Lack of Funds. We Want to See You Here.)
Make a Donation Here to Register
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