LIVING IN VOLUNTARY SIMPLICITY

Living in voluntary simplicity
is a lot harder than you might think!




Like uncovering a lot of grimy dust
behind the stove
and a half dead spider
behind the big screen T.V. all because
of trying to throw away
old clothes and food stuff!




It's those layers of delusion
that keep going deeper and deeper
to sort out until
I'm down to the bare essentials.


Maybe I'll still be wearing a headband, though!

Today I could be a

Brown Recluse (as in spider) Diva!

I’m on the Eight Fold Path again.

I was on it back in 2007,

and lost my way. 

It’s letting go day, again

Five more things!

Beware of possessions which

wind up owning the owner.

I felt like Samson on Saturday

because I moved the stove and refrigerator

out from the wall.

Took a photo of this Tupelo Honey bottle

sitting on the stove

before I put it in the give-away bag.

I washed the white comforter for the last time,

it’s been on the waterbed

 20 years.

This is Shelby-Joan on the comforter

a good remembrance.

Someone at Good Will will be as

happy, as I have been, in finding

the perfect needed thing.

Already I feel lighter

This is my much underlined guide book.

I’m re-reading both of these.

I LOVE to stage photos!

Learning to live in voluntary simplicity

is a never ending process.

like Sisyphus rolling

that heavy stone back up the hill.

I have time to sketch a favorite book.

 And take a photo of the ever changing garden.

~

Oops! I must catch up on the

Friday Writings

These words were from Maya Angelou’s book of poems:

dust, silence, sparrow, speak, unknown, bump

I wrote: 

A sparrow chirped outside the kitchen window,

dust was building up around their lives

she would rarely speak of things

to him, anymore,

and when she bumped her head

on the cupboard door,

oh!

the flood of tears

the flood of tears

endless,

unending 

She wrote:

she didn’t like to dust

he didn’t like to speak

he simply a bumping beat

on a quiet winter night

she merely a brown sparrow chattering

on a sunny summer morning.

~~

Is this a brown recluse spider?

It was on the white wicker bureau

just sitting there, barely moving behind the tv

I put it in an old medicine bottle.

stay tuned . . .

~~~

CREATIVE WRITING ON A BROWN DAY

I FEEL SAD . . . that’s how I started

my Blue Tomato Journal this morning.

I drew what I felt like, 

a sad wilting brown plant on a table

with rickety legs.

The cartoon me looks bewildered.

I’m not bewildered, I’m a sad BROWN kind of sad. 

I couldn’t use any color in the drawing,

even though I’d gone outside

to try and change my sad feeling

and taken some beautiful photos

The red zinnia

the Heavenly blue morning glory

the lone fig high up in the tree

which I WON’T ever get to eat!

A blue jay will get there first.

The fragrant tea olive blossoms.

A beautiful obscure weed

The first Jean May camellia sasanqua

The last of the cherry tomatoes.

The gorgeous heirloom tomatoes

I bought to eat & keep the seeds.

It didn’t help my feeling sad.

I feel like everything I’ve been

accomplishing or building toward

is slipping away,

no forward energy,

no ray of hope,

no excitement about anything.

Nothing’s working out like I thought.

That’s the problem with having expectations.

I shouldn’t feel sad, I think to myself,

but maybe it’s an accumulation

of little disappointments,

like my evening class,

and that I’m going to have to

quit the clarinet, it hurts my arm too much,

or frustrations, like self-publishing my poems,

and anyone ever hearing my music,

or ever getting a scale model set built

of my sketch for the musical.

Maybe that’s inevitable when

you have so many bright ideas

that come out like magic, 

like the soap bubbles I love, 

and then POOF they're gone.

And, I’m so tired of having

to make so many decisions

all by myself,

What to get fixed?

What to do myself?

What to leave undone?

I had a dream last night in which

I was left out of a familiar group.

That’s how I woke up feeling this morning--

feeling like I don’t belong,

“No one to hear my song”

as the lyrics go in my musical.

That dream is about not having

a group I belong to, that I fit into.

The sadness is about an accumulation of stuff, 

like the dust I wrote about yesterday.

And then I thought,

 I can post the poem

I created yesterday for our Friday Writing.

We have no expectations when we do our writing,

just let flow whatever wants to come out.

The writing exercise was from the book,

Old Friend From Far Away:

The Practice of Writing Memoir

 by Natalie Goldberg

“Find something ordinary

 and write about it.”

She wrote:

It is the only blue glass vase

on the wrought iron shelf,

sitting at the end of the row.

It’s bright color mocks the other clear bottles.

The sunlight streaming through

the window stops in the cobalt,

held like light in a church window.

A single mum tops it, like a mop of hair.

Any moment it will dance away from the others,

like a scene from

Fantasia.

----

Mine was:

I’ll tell you about something

as ordinary as dust,

piling up on molding

or floating in a sunbeam

streaming through beveled glass

on a Saturday morning.

Ordinary red-dirt-dusty-car dust,

until someone with a swipe of

their finger, writes WASH ME!

I’ll tell you about something

as ordinary as dust

gathering on piano keys

with the lid left open to capture

the instant pleasure of playing

a familiar tune.

Dust reminds me of an unseen world

that quietly builds and grows,

like anger or resentment

until some nagging finger

of conscience or consciousness

says WASH ME!

~~

This blog is a life-saver!

It’s instant gratification for creative effort.

Even though only a handful of people read it, 

somehow it gives me hope,

just to know

I’ve put something of me out there,

somewhere in cyber-space,

and I’m not so alone.

~ ~ ~

Racing Toward Nirvana!

Racing Toward Nirvana

I’m supposed to be cleaning out stuff,

Throwing away 5 THINGS every day!

But now I’m come upon this sketch for a Musical,

 Racing Toward Nirvana!

This would’ve been back in the 80’s

New Age Resurgence

The Harmonic Convergence

Remember that? 

I see I've written on the stage set sketch,

Kundalini, Reflexology,

Brain Tuning, $10, Past Life Regressions

Holographic Breathwork.

I learned a lot then, took to some of it,

tossed out the rest.

I consider myself a HEALTHY SKEPTIC

And believe the body has it’s own wisdom

and wants to heal itself.

Here are some books I’ve yet to throw or give away.

Writing this Blog is like chronicling my life,

so maybe I can say Good-bye to an era

& put them in the Library Book Sale.

But, let me linger a little longer

back in the 80’s. . .

I pictured a musical in which we've

created a great new loving, healing energy as the Finale.

But first I'd written this humorous Opening Song.

RACING TOWARD NIRVANA!

Channeling messages from past lives regressed,

A crystal, a charkra, a con-nect-ed-ness,

Dreamers and healers and questors and feelers,

We’re Racing Toward Nirvana.

We go with the flow and follow our bliss

A mantra, or tantra or self-analysis,

If we can buy it, we’ll run out and try it,

We’re Racing Toward Nirvana.

Metaphysics and psychic readings,

Green and yellow auras,

Guided visualizations

None of these bore us!

Brown rice and tofu and macrobiotics,

We’re healthy holistically, enlightened neurotics,

Sufi’s and swami’s and guru’s and llami’s,

We’re Racing Toward Nirvana.

A bad Tarot reading will find us needing,

To consult with an astrologer,

She says, “You shouldn’t have paid,

Mercury’s in retrograde!”

We’re Racing Toward Nirvana.

Metaphysics . . . .chorus, repeat

We sample the wares at psychic fairs,

Pisces and Libras and Capricorns,

We’ll drink a toast of herbal tea to your health,

We’re Racing Toward Nirvana,

Yes, We’re Racing Toward,

We’re Racing Toward,

We’re Racing Toward Nir - va - na!

~ ~ ~

There is some poetry written

in that same old yellow legal pad

I see I had copied out words

from the Tao . . .

I was just turning 5O then,

A lot of growing and consciousness raising

discovering things

illusions breaking apart

 evolving into  . . .

Maybe that’ll be the next blog . . .

stay tuned . . .

~~~