Just One Thing

I woke this morning early, perhaps 5 am. I know many of you are groaning at this bit of information, but sometimes for the writer and artist, it's necessary to get up when no one else is awake. Or simply stay up, as the case may be. Personally, I like to know the morning is coming, that the light is changing incrementally as our earth turns toward her blazing star.This morning, the moon was still on the horizon when I woke. A bright spot in a dark navy sky. And I heard the first bird sing. There's something so special about that. The trill of notes seems to be sung just for you, even though you know it's not true. It's "only" life inside a winged and feathered creature finding a way to burst forth into expression. How much more should we be singing the praises of creation; we who have voices and words and the ability to play music, sing, and dance?

Try this at home: set your alarm for 5 am one day this week. Put the coffee pot in your room if you must. Set two alarms. Sit quietly, looking out a window, listen to the rising day. Grab a pen and paper and beginning with the first thing you noticed, write a poem about it. Make it a haiku or a prose poem, a song lyric or a sonnet. Just write the poem. We are called upon to celebrate and commemorate life as poets and artists. Sometimes we must get up very early in the morning in order to do it. Leave your poem in my comments if you like. I would love to read them. Share it with someone.

I bought a great little notepad from Malaprop's Bookstore in Asheville, NC while I was there visiting last week. Each note is printed with, "I will do one thing today." Beneath that it says, "Thing."

Yesterday I mailed out a CD to a local DJ with some songs I'd co-written on it. And although I did many other things yesterday, I was most proud of the one I did that I'd written on my notepad. Today's is "write a blog post." I am doing that now. There is something to be said about the surety of doing one thing; just one, to forward your creative process. I had to get up very early in order to do this. So might you.

Try it. Make your one thing tomorrow: I'll rise at 5 am and write a poem. You might just find you like it.

Like Eve awake before Adam,
I heard the first bird sing.
She trilled from the branch of an unseen tree
music just for me.
From her tiny breast she
filled an entire dawn with dancing notes,
left me longing
to sing my own song
so easily and free
with only the dimming moon to hear.

______

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Have You Noticed?

Okay, so it hasn't gotten any easier to be uplifted with what's going on in the world right now. I believe the Gulf oil crisis is enough all by itself to keep us depressed and angry for years to come. However, those feelings will only leave us stuck in despair and lead to a personal crisis when we can't afford that either.

Although I am not burying my head in the sand, I limit the images I see and the news I hear concerning BP's big fiasco. I do what I can in my family to keep it green and wait for the next way I can see to help. When I can I will write about it, but the injury is still too fresh. At the same time, I know I must write, and I must encourage you to write as well. Here is a prompt that helped me.

Take a look around you, no matter where you are. Right now, as you're reading this. Look at your room, out the window, around the park where you may be sitting on a bench reading. Now ask yourself the question: Have I noticed? Write it at the top of a page and answer it. This will put you square in the moment where you will realize what the wonderful Zen teacher and writer Cheri Huber says, "You will never be given more than you can handle in the present moment."

Have I noticed?

How the morning light caresses the high branches of the trees outside my window long before it touches anything else? How the sun locates a hole in the world even while it is still so low in the eastern sky, takes aim and shoots a ray like an old sci-fi film hitting those three or four branches with its bright magic, giving them an energizing buzz, while all around them other limbs are slowly waking. Have I noticed that some mornings I am the lucky zapped limbs, and sometimes the lazy malingerers, sleeping deep in a dream of dark green until the bright light of a hot sun awakens, startling me into remembering, "I'm alive! Must grow. Must green. Must make oxygen!"

Have I noticed how day lilies are so appropriately named? How their big heads are bent and closed in the shadows of dawn; wet, heavy, dull with their outside skins showing. Then a little light strikes, and kapow! they are all glorious orange and red and yellow, open to the sky and the loving beams of a perfectly placed star. Have I noticed how the dew moistens the grass as Leigh leaves footprints when she walks, wetting her shoes as she trails out into the early morning to let the chickens out of their coop? In an hour, it will all be dry, sucked up into the air, waiting to fall again with night, the other side of day.

Have I noticed? Have I noticed these small, important parts of my day? Have I noticed that these little miracles occur momentarily, in every season? Because not to notice is to somehow fail each other and our Earth, to be a little less than human, to give up the passion which enables us to live up to our potential and love our lives.

This ability to take note of the world around us is a potent gift, one that burdens us lightly with a responsibility to our world. If you pay attention to the smallest things, you will experience great rewards. Have you noticed how that works, yet?