A few thoughts for a lazy Saturday morning

Jennifer Louden writes some great women's comfort books about doing retreats and other ways of taking care of yourself. I read a couple of her books years ago and recently came across The Women's Retreat Book again. I visited her website and signed up for an email series about self-trust inspiration. Yesterday's email was about making promises to yourself, being clear about them and noticing when you've followed through. I make promises to myself all the time. Sometimes I follow through and sometimes I don't but I realized I never give myself credit when I do.

One of the promises I've made recently is to not do things or be around people who make me feel bad and erode my commitment to what I want. It ain't easy though. I have the following excerpt from Transcendental Etude by Adrienne Rich posted in a couple of places in my apartment. It reminds me of what I want and that it isn't going to be easy.

But there come times –perhaps this is one of them—
when we have to take ourselves more seriously or die;
when we have to pull back from the incantations,
rhythms we’ve moved to thoughtlessly,
and disenthrall ourselves, bestow
ourselves to silence, or a severer listening, cleansed
of oratory, formulas, choruses, laments, static
crowding the wires. We cut the wires,
find ourselves in free-fall, as if
our true home were the undimensional
solitudes, the rift
in the Great Nebula.
No one who survives to speak
new language, has avoided this:
the cutting-away of an old force that held her
rooted to an old ground
the pitch of utter loneliness
where she herself and all creation
seem equally dispersed, weightless, her being a cry
to which no echo comes or can ever come.

I was looking for the complete text of Transcendental Etude to link to but didn't find it. I did find this video which I really liked and wanted to share though!

Bead Journal Project

I've been participating in the Bead Journal Project for the last year. This is a year long commitment to making a beaded project each month. It's been a lot of fun and I feel very proud of myself for finishing (I tend to procrastinate a lot!). My 12 projects now have a home in the Bead Journal Member's Gallery! Take a look and if you're inspired to start beading, sign-up for the 2010 project which begins in January.

My projects were all based on poems and each one I finished was my favorite at the time. Looking back, I think that my Venus figure is the one I like best:



It's based on a portion of the poem Transcendental Etude by Adrienne Rich:

But there come times –perhaps this is one of them—

when we have to take ourselves more seriously or die;

when we have to pull back from the incantations,

rhythms we’ve moved to thoughtlessly,

and disenthrall ourselves, bestow

ourselves to silence, or a severer listening, cleansed

of oratory, formulas, choruses, laments, static

crowding the wires. We cut the wires,

find ourselves in free-fall, as if

our true home were the undimensional

solitudes, the rift

in the Great Nebula.

No one who survives to speak

new language, has avoided this:

the cutting-away of an old force that held her

rooted to an old ground

the pitch of utter loneliness

where she herself and all creation

seem equally dispersed, weightless, her being a cry

to which no echo comes or can ever come.

I like it best for a lot of reasons. I've been trying to lose weight (with varying degrees of success) for quite a while and one thing the Venus figure symbolizes for me is how important it is to accept myself right now and be happy with myself. It's also important to work to change, to pull back from the incantations, rhythms we’ve moved to thoughtlessly. It's hard work though and often that pitch of utter loneliness gets to me. That's when I feel like everything I've done so far to change is pointless and all I'm doing is making another mistake. But I'm not and I'm going to keep working on change and things will work out!