Random memories and thoughts

See the two red spots? Those are cardinals. That is about the best I can do with bird photos.

I was sad to learn of the passing of Maya Angelou on Wednesday. I admired her a great deal.

In thinking about her, I got out my copy of her poem, “On the Pulse of Morning,” which she wrote for and read at Bill Clinton’s first inauguration in January 1993.

I was teaching English at the time. I videotaped her reading and used it in class to aid in discussing the poem with my students.

Here’s a lovely part of that poem:

"Here, root yourselves beside me.

I am that Tree planted by the River,

Which will not be moved.

I, the Rock, I, the River, I, the Tree

I am yours--your passages have been paid.

Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need

For this bright morning dawning for you.

History, despite its wrenching pain,

Cannot be unlived, but if faced

With courage, need not be lived again."

From "On the Pulse of Morning," by Maya Angelou

***

It has been rainy and stormy off and on this week. I hope Larry and I will be able to be out and about a bit today.

I also need to check in more with my garden and see if there’s anything ready to eat!

***

I love my times of sitting quietly, listening to my breath and to the sounds around me. Sometimes I get uncomfortable—physically uncomfortable, bored, distracted. But in the end, I feel better after even a 10-minute meditation. It helps with intrusive thoughts and makes me feel less anxious.

***

I started updating my blog information since I’m gaining a year today (I am turning 51 today). I decided to leave my age off the About Me section. I’m not ashamed of it, but I don’t think that’s the first thing people are interested in knowing.

I found that I needed to update other pages, too, including the page about my cats. It hurt to have to change it to reflect that Larry and I don’t have two cats anymore. The last time I updated that page, Sam was still with us. I miss her, and all my babies, so much.

***

I’ve been thinking about my life (yes, I’m a thinker). I know it is in part due to my birthday. I suppose getting older makes many of us think about the past and wonder about the future.

Some of what I’ve been pondering is what I really want to say with my writing. I love to write and, I say with gratefulness, I can write well enough, though there’s plenty of room for improvement. But what do I want to say? What do I want to say?

***

And where in the world did May go?

Our place

Note: The quotations in this post are from the poem, “Wild Geese,” by Mary Oliver. To read the entire poem, go here.

“Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.”

 

Snake skin left behind in our yard.

 

Yellow leaves among the green.

Blue feather left behind in the yard.

Raindrops on blades of grass.

A bit of moss.

Bloom.

“Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting-

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.”

What helps you feel connected to the rest of creation? How important is it to you to feel connected?

This is what my life looks like: Random 5 Friday

I blog about living with OCD, depression and anxiety. I write a lot about what OCD is like and how I deal with it, how I handle the resurgence of depression and what happens when anxiety seems to overwhelm me.

But part of what I want to do with my blog is to show that life can be full and happy regardless of the obstacles that we face. Everyone has obstacles, hard times, illnesses, troubles, pain. And everyone can find reasons to rejoice in life and to keep on putting one foot in front of the other, moving towards a life that gives them satisfaction and contentment.

With that in mind, I’m sharing five random facts again this week, linking up with Nancy Claeys’ A Rural Journal.

These random facts about me and my days are just a few examples of how even the little things in life add to its beauty.

April snow at dusk in our backyard.

1. On Thursday, April 4, in central Virginia, it snowed. I couldn’t believe it. It looked like large cotton balls falling from the sky. We only got a light covering, but it was still strange to see the snow mixing with the dogwood blooms, the flowering pears and the daffodils. The photo above shows the snow in our backyard. On the right side, about midway up, you can see a small stand of daffodils. I didn’t get close enough for a really good shot—still wearing The Monster Boot and using my extra paws!



My new haircut.

2. I got a long-needed haircut on Thursday. I haven’t gotten one in almost a year. Larry already had an appointment to get a haircut, and when I mentioned the other day that I thought I’d call the stylist to see if she had an opening for me, Larry said, “Well, if she doesn’t, you can have my appointment.” Yes, he was being sweet. He was also apparently telling me that, yes indeed, I needed a cut! Getting a new look always raises my spirits. Do you feel like that when you get a haircut?

3. Also on Thursday (a busy day!), Larry and I ate at a fabulous Indian restaurant in Lynchburg. They have a lunch buffet with many delicious foods, plenty of vegetarian selections for me and plenty with meat for Larry. Whenever I walk into the restaurant, the scents and sights take me back 25 years to when I lived in Ohio and had a good friend from India who loved to cook. I learned to love Indian food and hospitality by spending time with her.

4. I’m getting ready to start a new book. It’s Ransom River by Meg Gardiner. Gardiner writes exciting mysteries/thrillers that you don’t want to put down. And she’s an intelligent and talented writer to boot. I love the anticipation that comes before starting a book that I know is going to be good!

5. April is National Poetry Month. I plan to reread some favorites and discover some new poetry this month. My favorite poet is Mary Oliver. I read and reread her poems, always catching something new: a new idea, a new way of seeing. I memorize my favorites and recite them to myself some nights as I go to sleep. Reciting her poems is a way of praying for me.

To read others’ random 5 facts or to participate, go to Nancy’s blog.

What’s a small thing that makes life more enjoyable for you?

My OCD is like this

  I recently wrote this poem to describe what obsessive-compulsive disorder can sometimes be like for me.

  The poem is based in part on an experience I wrote about in a previous post.

OCD

By Tina Fariss Barbour

I stare until there’s nothing to see.

The stove hasn’t moved.

The stove hasn’t changed.

The stove hasn’t given me the answer.

I stare once more for fifty times.

I beat my hands against the wall.

Help me, God, no more.

Why not my head?

Why not my head

against the wall?

It explodes me,

leaves nothing but

promises not to do it again.

It is a prayer to God.

I won’t do it again.

I’ll do it just once.

I beat my hands against the wall.

No more, please God.

Why not my head?

Why not my head

against the wall?

An offering of a poem

Years ago I attended a Roberta Flack concert in Roanoke, where she sang with the Roanoke Symphony. I wrote a poem about the experience.

I was an adult when I went to the concert, but I remembered hearing some of her music for the first time as a teenager, especially the song “Killing Me Softly.”

 

At a Roberta Flack Concert

By Tina Fariss Barbour

Let me set the scene:

You come around the edge of the symphony

and lift up your arms,

lift and wave the black and white

billows of your sleeves

moving them like ruffled wings

before you sit at the baby grand,

raise your face to the lavender lights.

You sing “Killing Me Softly.”

There’s this thing about me and music.

I occupy the song. It’s mine.

I wrote it. It’s the story of my life.

I’m singing it now just as surely as you are down on stage

while I’m listening far above in the bleachers

near the top, high above almost everyone,

ready for my flight, my leap out

over their heads, dipping down like

a mockingbird dips to listen.

Then I soar again out of reach

of hands that would grab me and

pull me to my seat,

my program rolled in my hand

tapping slowly in time,

keep me in the seat so I won’t leap

again to the young girl who wonders how words can hurt,

how the words of a song can reveal like a lavender spotlight,

reveal this young girl of fifteen

crooning softly with the radio

turned down so low so

no one can hear.

  Have you ever felt like a song was written for you? Are there any songs that take you back to another time?

A poem: A surprising encounter with nature

This poem is based on a real incident that occurred as I traveled to Richmond on a back road one morning years ago.

I’m glad my hit-and-run obsessive-compulsive disorder was not active at the time, or I would probably still be at the scene, driving back and forth, checking for bodies.

The incident still raised my anxiety level and affected me enough to make me write about it.

On the Road to Richmond

By Tina Fariss Barbour

I thought it would get out of the way in time.

Buzzard, black and gray crypt

around the squirrel/rabbit in the road.

I thought it would sense my car,

would know when to rise,

to crook over the hood and roof.

I’d look behind to see it attack again.

But it miscalculated,

greedy for another bite.

I pulled on the steering wheel as if it were reins,

as if the car could rear back, swing hoofs,

but the bird knocked into the windshield,

flogged the glass.

A swerve, a brake.

It flew off into the woods,

Not ready for the call.

  Have you ever had a surprising encounter with nature?

A poem: What happens to our dreams?

I’m posting something different today: a poem that I wrote many years ago about my father.

He died in 1997 at age 76. A few years prior to that, I began to talk with him about his childhood and his life and encouraged him to write down his stories. He wrote down many of the stories of his life in ruled notebooks.

This poem was a yearning to understand the dreams that my father had and how they were changed by his life circumstances.

Tomorrow, I will post about how my own dreams were changed by obsessive-compulsive disorder and depression.

On my father being 72

I.

I watched my father walk through the cows.

Black Angus cows. They snorted, shifted, chewed.

He didn’t run when they knocked against him.

He never ran from them.

He climbed atop the dull red tractor,

settled into the old pillow tied to the metal seat.

He pulled away from the herd, headed to the stable,

the wagon following, me on the wagon. I was 8.

I dragged a tobacco stick in the dust below.

II.

Last week I saw a man at the park

moving slower than the power walkers pumping by.

He wore brown slacks, was bent over like he needed a cane,

like he had left it on the bleachers to try just one lap.

I glanced up as I jogged by:

white hair, not gray,

the white of my father’s hair, his father’s.

IV.

If I listened to your quiet talk, would I hear your dreams?

V.

The war, I used to think, did something to my father’s dreams,

Something that marred the surface

of his war stories of New Guinea, Peleliu, Japan.

As a child, I’d ask, did it hurt when you were shot?

Now, I’d ask, where did it hurt?

Was it deep inside to the little boy

who never missed church choir practice,

who whirled round and round in a wooden toy car,

who worked the fields instead of going to school?

The young soldier who dreamed his medic’s bag

was a doctor’s bag full of the right medicine,

enough suture for the ripped battlefields?

I wonder what dreams he had that night underneath the Jeep,

huddled with his friend, his lifelong friend

who wrapped his arm again and again with narrow bandages.

He could have gone to college, to medical school,

walked the halls of the hospitals.

But he came back to the tobacco fields,

to the sticks and twine and stained hands,

to pastures with cows.

He walked down the meadow strip into the corn,

into shady tunnels.

  Have you ever wondered what happened to the dreams of a parent or someone else in your life?

Learning: The power of poetry

April is National Poetry Month, a celebration started by the American Academy of Poets in 1996.

A friend of mine suggested sharing bits of poetry on Facebook during the month, and that got me thinking about other ways I could celebrate poetry and what it means to me.

Why poetry?

I’ve written before on this blog about my love of Mary Oliver’s poetry and the peace and calmness it brings me.

I have always enjoyed reading poetry, and even wrote a lot of it years ago.

I love words, and each word is important in a poem. The entire meaning of the poem can turn on one word and its definition and connotations.

Beyond that, great poets reach into their souls for their words and in turn have the possibility of touching others.

Reading poetry centers me. It’s harder for me to pay attention to the racing thoughts of anxiety when I’m caught up in the cadence of a poem.

Certainly reading poetry is a viable choice for me when I’m trying to redirect my attention away from compulsive urges that go along with obsessive-compulsion disorder.

And many a poem has offered me hope when I’ve been sunk in depression.

Poetry adds beauty and insight to my life, and that’s a good thing for anyone, not just those who suffer from OCD, depression and other anxiety disorders.

Let’s celebrate!

The website for National Poetry Month provides 30 suggestions on ways for individuals and the community to celebrate poetry. Here are some of my favorites:

Celebrate Poem in Your Pocket Day. This day is April 26. You are invited to carry a favorite poem in your pocket and share it with others.

I didn’t want to wait until April 26. I carried a poem in my pocket today. I liked reaching into my pocket and remembering the poem and reciting it to myself. It was an Emily Dickinson poem that reflects the power of words:

“A word is dead

When it is said,

Some say.

I say it just

Begins to live

That day.”

Read a book of poetry. I plan to revisit some poets I haven’t read for a while, and look for new ones.

Memorize a poem. I love memorizing poems. They are available to me whenever I need solace, encouragement or a bit of beauty.

Start a commonplace book. According to the website, commonplace books are personal anthologies. You copy favorite poems and quotations into the notebook. These notebooks “can be a source of enjoyment and solace, reminding the keeper of favorite books and poems, and can even become family heirlooms.”

I’ve done some of this in my journals, but I plan to begin devoting one journal to my favorite poems.

Integrate poetry and technology. This involves including poetry as part of your email signature, on your voice mail message and on social media like Facebook and Twitter.

I plan to share a bit of poetry every day on my Facebook page. It will keep me reading, and, I hope, share some beauty with others.

Write a letter to a poet. I’ve never done this. But I’d like to show some appreciation to poets who have touched my life in a positive way.

What is your relationship with poetry? How does reading poetry affect you? Who are your favorite poets? What poem would you carry in your pocket? Do you write poetry?

Mary Oliver: a gift

One of my favorite writers of any genre, and my favorite poet, is Mary Oliver.

She is an American poet who writes about animals, trees, flowers, ponds, God, death, meaning and so many other things.

I have reread her poems many times—not in the OCD way of rereading, but for new insights and inspirations.

Her poetry—any great poetry—is like that. I can return again and again and find another layer, another meaning.

I don’t remember how I first came to read Oliver’s work. I have degrees in English and taught writing and literature many years ago, but I don’t remember my first exposure to her.

I do remember going to a reading that she gave when she was a writer-in –residence at Sweet Briar College.

It was such a wonderful experience. The room was packed, and she looked so small and frail at the front, but her reading was powerful. That’s where I first heard her poem, “Wild Geese.”

I have memorized the poem over the years, and when I’m anxious and my thoughts are racing and there seems no hope in slowing them down, I recite the poem to myself and it helps to calm me.

“You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.”

-from “Wild Geese,” by Mary Oliver

I’m still trying to figure out the full meaning of that last line, even after all these years.

The words that end that poem are some of the most comforting I know:

“Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.”

-from “Wild Geese,” by Mary Oliver

I’ve memorized some of her other poems, too. One of my goals is to memorize more of her work so her inspiration is literally just a thought away.

I think what calms me are her ideas, her questions, her deep connections to nature and her beautiful word choices. And I feel like she speaks to me and for me in so many ways.

I finally came to realize that when I read or recite her poetry from memory, I am really praying.

I have found her poetry to be an integral part of my attempts to pray and to meditate, and I expect it always will be.

I do have to be careful not to recite the lines by rote and forget about the meaning. Memorizing a new poem usually helps me with that.

One of the poems I want to memorize is the first one found in her volume of poetry “Thirst.”

“Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?

Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me

keep my mind on what matters,

which is my work,

which is mostly standing still and learning to be

astonished.”

-from “Messenger,” by Mary Oliver

   I’ll end this post by writing about “When Death Comes,” an Oliver poem I memorized a long time ago and still recite some nights.

   In the poem, she writes about the inevitability of death and how she wants to face it “full of curiosity.”

“And therefore I look upon everything

as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,

and I look upon time as no more than an idea,

and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common

as a field daisy, and as singular. . . ”

-from “When Death Comes,” by Mary Oliver