Read This: Living Life in Poem

Life is full of the small coincidences that are sometimes so intense, it is painful to experience.

The past several weeks, I have felt stalled.  I pick up a pen and put it down.  I open a file, read a few lines, then close it.  I am choking on emotions.

There is something in me desperate to emerge, but I can't find words for it right now.

So I decided to look for a book of poetry exercises that was recommended by several writers I respect, Sage Cohen's "Writing the Life Poetic."  After a tai chi class this morning, I stopped by a local bookstore to buy it, but they didn't have a copy in stock.  I browsed the writing books and ended up buying "Wabi Sabi for Writers" by Richard R Powell. 

I started reading it and was struck by the elegance and terrible simplicity of what wabi sabi is.

Then a few house later, a friend sent me the link to this article in the Boston Globe, an editorial by Elissa Ely, a Boston area Psychiatrist and writer, on Living Life in Poem.   

And I read this:

"Putting things in Poem is more than poetry, it’s prayer and pillow talk. For instance, someone once told me that the Zulu translation for the English phrase “far-away’’ is, “Where one cries, Mother, I am lost.’’"

This struck me to my core, reverberated like a gong.  I hear the echoes still.  And in the piece, Ely talks about Wabi Sabi.

As Ely puts it:

". . . wabi, “the unpretentious suchness of the ordinary,’’ and sabi, “a sense of hopeful sadness or recognition that nothing lasts, nothing is perfect, nothing is finished.’’"

I am nearly undone by this, by Ely's words, by Powell's writing, by my dear friend thinking to send this to me, this day, this moment in time.