I’ve started reading poetry. Why? Well, my second attempt at starting a writing habit (I talk about my first attempt on Creative Life) starts today and I am terrified to get back at it. I’ve started reading poetry because it inspires me. There is something a little bit magical about taking an excellent book of poetry, closing your eyes, asking the universe to show you the perfect poem for you right now, and then opening the book. 

I did this yesterday. Here’s the poem that I opened the book to:

Leaving Spaces

It takes a courageous
person to leave spaces
empty. Certainly any
artist in the Middle Ages
felt this timor, and quickly
covered space over
with griffins, sea serpents,
herbs and brilliant carpets
of flowers–things pleasant
or unpleasant, no matter.
Of course they were cowards
and patronized by cowards
who liked their swards as
filled with birds as leaves.
All of them believed in
sudden edges and completely
barren patches in the mind,
and they didn’t want to
think about them all the time.

*This poem is by Kay Ryan. She was the United States Poet Laureate from 2008-2010. Her book of poetry is called “The Best of It: New and Selected Poems”

Read the poem again (I’ve always found, with poetry, that every poem must be read at least twice to wring out of it any sense of meaning). This was the perfect poem for me at this moment.  When I read this poem I think about the mind. Meditation (at least based on my understanding of it) is about teaching yourself to slow down your thoughts so that you can appreciate what is going on in the moment. When our minds are full, we can’t appreciate what is in front of us. We can only see, hear and feel what we saw, heard and felt the day before. It’s a cycle. A cycle of noise that gives us the comfort of an identity.

This is who I am. But in emptiness, in space, there is no identity. There is only you. Your essence. Of course you will always be a culmination of everything that has happened in your past, and everything you dream about in your future… but is there something else?

I used to divert my gaze. Now I look people in the eyes. You know that moment when you accidentally lock eyes with someone you don’t know, and you feel that electric shock of being seen flicker through your body. I live for that feeling. I’m terrified of that feeling, but in that feeling there is no noise. There is only presence.

Friendship can only exist in presence. Love can only exist in presence. Art can only exist in presence. Go figure that all the things I long for most are also drenched in the fear of being here. Time to grab an umbrella. The rain can be beautiful.