Speaker 1: I think it is important to look to just the
Speaker 1: smallest things and to know that when we offer those
Speaker 1: to others, they can have an impact beyond what we
Speaker 1: can imagine that they're really powerful moments. Welcome to the
Speaker 1: one you feed Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the
Speaker 1: importance of the thoughts we have, quotes like garbage in,
Speaker 1: garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true,
Speaker 1: and yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen
Speaker 1: or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 1: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 1: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 1: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking
Speaker 1: our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
Speaker 1: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 1: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direct,
Speaker 1: how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1: Our guest on this episode is Denisia Amaris, a poet,
Speaker 1: teacher and essayist. She's the author of the Moons of August,
Speaker 1: which was chosen as the winner of the Autumn House
Speaker 1: Press Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the Milt
Speaker 1: Kessler Book Award. Her second book, Bonfire Opera, was a
Speaker 1: finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize and winner of the
Speaker 1: Northern California Book Award. In poetry, Denisia's poems have been
Speaker 1: published in the Best American Poetry, The New York Times,
Speaker 1: Sun Magazine, The American Poetry Review, and many others. She
Speaker 1: is a Poet Laureate Emeritus of Santa Cruz County, California. Hi, Denisha,
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show. Hi happy to be here. I
Speaker 1: am really excited to have you on. We're going to
Speaker 1: be discussing your latest poetry book, actually going to be
Speaker 1: discussing all your poetry books. The latest one is called
Speaker 1: Bonfire Opera. But before we get to that, let's start
Speaker 1: like we always do with the parable. In the parable,
Speaker 1: there's a grandparent who's talking with their grandchild and they say,
Speaker 1: in life, there are two wolves inside of us that
Speaker 1: are always a battle. One is a good wolf, which
Speaker 1: represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the
Speaker 1: other's a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and
Speaker 1: hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops and think about
Speaker 1: it for a second. They look up at their grandparent,
Speaker 1: and they say, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says,
Speaker 1: the one you feed. So I'd like to start off
Speaker 1: by asking you what that parable means to you in
Speaker 1: your life and in the work that you do so
Speaker 1: many things. I love that that's your starting off place.
Speaker 1: And I think we're really in that moment as a culture,
Speaker 1: sort of a which wolf moment, aren't we where on
Speaker 1: a much broader scale, there's this acting out of the extremes.
Speaker 1: Do we go toward kindness and goodness toward each other?
Speaker 1: Do we go toward intense animosity and emphasis on difference?
Speaker 1: Where do we go? And I certainly feel that in
Speaker 1: my own life, looking at well, how do I want
Speaker 1: to be in the world, how do I want to
Speaker 1: show up? And which wolf do I want to pet?
Speaker 1: That's the other thing I think there's feeding the wolf
Speaker 1: that you really want to feed those aspects of kindness
Speaker 1: and gentleness towards self towards others. But I think with
Speaker 1: the other wolves, we want to kind of pet those
Speaker 1: wolves so that we're bringing them into the fold as
Speaker 1: well and welcoming them. And so that's something I've been
Speaker 1: thinking about a lot too. I don't think anybody's ever
Speaker 1: referenced petting into the wolf. People talked about befriending the wolf,
Speaker 1: but nobody's petted the wolf yet that I can recall,
Speaker 1: So thank you for that. And behind me you can't
Speaker 1: see it. I won't adjust the camera, but I've got
Speaker 1: too many wolves back here. Well, actually i will. Why
Speaker 1: of course, the Doggie Show would tell there's Lola, oh
Speaker 1: my god, in the back who's white, and that's Beansy
Speaker 1: right there. Beanzi wears a diaper because she's just old
Speaker 1: and incontinent, and in order to wear the diaper, she
Speaker 1: then has those suspenders that you see on her. So
Speaker 1: those are those are my two little wolves. Thank you
Speaker 1: for that. Yeah. I heard you say something on an
Speaker 1: interview that just came to mind as you were talking about,
Speaker 1: you know, this particular moment and time, and it was
Speaker 1: that you felt like we were having a little bit
Speaker 1: of a vacuum cleaner moment. And what you meant was
Speaker 1: that people are talking a lot about injustices and racism
Speaker 1: and lots of different things. But it's not like they
Speaker 1: just appeared. It's not like they are worse now than
Speaker 1: they have been before. It's just that we have had
Speaker 1: a chance to see things a little bit more clearly,
Speaker 1: that's right, And I think that it can feel discouraging
Speaker 1: because it's everything we're hearing and seeing in the news
Speaker 1: and social media, and it feels like this tremendous tornado
Speaker 1: has descended upon us as a culture, and yet we
Speaker 1: are actually talking about the issues and the underlying stuff
Speaker 1: that gets just swept under the rug, and here it
Speaker 1: is being vacuumed out and we're looking at it, and
Speaker 1: that has to be a good thing. Ultimately. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think this ability to talk about how things have gotten
Speaker 1: better without minimizing the changes that need to happen is
Speaker 1: a delicate balance that most people don't seem to be
Speaker 1: able to do. I was just listening to someone this morning.
Speaker 1: It was someone who was gay, and they were talking
Speaker 1: about how, at his age, he's fifty six years old,
Speaker 1: I believe he was like nobody came out in high school,
Speaker 1: like that did not happen, right, And so we look
Speaker 1: today and many, many, many young people feel comfortable and
Speaker 1: safe coming out much much earlier now. Not everyone, right,
Speaker 1: So I'm not trying to say like, oh, we've made
Speaker 1: all the progress we need to make. It's not that,
Speaker 1: but I do feel like it's helpful to see progress
Speaker 1: we have made, because otherwise, like you said, I think
Speaker 1: what happens is we get very discouraged, and discouragement doesn't
Speaker 1: lead to motivation, whether it be in your personal life
Speaker 1: or in the broader world. Right, if we are discouraged,
Speaker 1: we don't take positive action. That's right. We have to
Speaker 1: be tracking that arc. And as Martin Luther King Junior said,
Speaker 1: that long arc tends toward justice. Yeah, and I'm not
Speaker 1: quoting that exactly, but if we're not tracking that, we
Speaker 1: become even despondent. And I think for so many people
Speaker 1: growing up right now in a time when the world
Speaker 1: looks like this, there's a lot of deep sadness and
Speaker 1: even feeling of how are we going to grow up
Speaker 1: in this world? Yea, And so I think it is
Speaker 1: important to talk about And certainly I had that conversation
Speaker 1: with my niece and nephew saying when I was in
Speaker 1: high school, you know, people didn't come out of the closet,
Speaker 1: at least not at my school. That's not what I saw.
Speaker 1: And you know, I tried to describe the lay of
Speaker 1: the land because it is important to see, yeah, that
Speaker 1: it's different now, it's not untroubled, but it's different now
Speaker 1: there's movement. Yep. I was watching just finished last night,
Speaker 1: actually watching the TV series mad Men, which is just
Speaker 1: an outstanding drama. But it's always interesting for me to
Speaker 1: watch reenactments of the sixties, right because mad Men starts
Speaker 1: I think probably late fifties and then moves through the sixties,
Speaker 1: and I mean we were in tremendous upheaval. Tremendous you know,
Speaker 1: I mean public figures being assassinated, I mean huge generational divides,
Speaker 1: I mean the civil rights. I mean we were in
Speaker 1: tremendous upheaval. And I think what's hopeful to me about
Speaker 1: that is that we then emerge from there back to
Speaker 1: periods that were a little bit more stable. Now, some
Speaker 1: people feel like the sixties died and that was problematic.
Speaker 1: But to me, when things feel really uncertain, it's always
Speaker 1: helpful for me to look back at historical points and go, well,
Speaker 1: that's a lot of history. It often seems uncertain. Are
Speaker 1: we really in a time that is radically different. There
Speaker 1: was a section in that part where they were getting
Speaker 1: their first big computer. It had to take up an
Speaker 1: entire room, and people were terrified of the thing, terrified
Speaker 1: and I've been thinking a lot about AI, and I
Speaker 1: just thought, well, you know, huh, it's interesting there was
Speaker 1: a moment there of terror around the computer. I'm not
Speaker 1: saying that AA may not be tremendously destructive. I'm just
Speaker 1: saying that we've always predicted doom as a species. We do.
Speaker 1: It's one of the things we're best at. And I
Speaker 1: think about that a lot too. That you know, often
Speaker 1: it'll be a religion or sort of a cult or
Speaker 1: whatever it is that sort of creates the next doom theory.
Speaker 1: The world is going to end in this year, it's
Speaker 1: going to end in that year. And yet here we are. Here,
Speaker 1: we are with some billions of years left and our son,
Speaker 1: that is, you know, making life possible here. And we
Speaker 1: do face tremendous crises around the biosphere and around how
Speaker 1: we are engaging as a species with each other and
Speaker 1: the more than human world. Yes, and yet that is
Speaker 1: the moment when human ingenuity appears. It tends to appear
Speaker 1: most strongly in crisis, not just on an average Sunday.
Speaker 1: You know, when we're really up against something, we show
Speaker 1: up differently. And I have that faith in us. Well,
Speaker 1: changing direction, let's move into some of your poetry. I
Speaker 1: haven't been able to figure out where to start, but
Speaker 1: I think I'm going to start with probably the first
Speaker 1: poem of yours that I ever saw, which was Small Kindnesses,
Speaker 1: which is probably the poem of yours that many people
Speaker 1: encounter for the first time. But I was wondering if
Speaker 1: you would read that one for us. Yeah, sure, small Kindnesses.
Speaker 1: I've been thinking about the way when you walk down
Speaker 1: a crowded aisle people pull in their legs to let
Speaker 1: you buy, or how strangers still say bless you when
Speaker 1: someone sneezes a left over from the bubonic plague. Don't die,
Speaker 1: we are saying. And sometimes when you spill lemons from
Speaker 1: your grocery bag, someone else will help you pick them up. Mostly,
Speaker 1: we don't want to harm each other. We want to
Speaker 1: be handed our cup of coffee hot, and to say
Speaker 1: thank you to the person handing it, to smile at
Speaker 1: them and for them to smile back, for the waitress
Speaker 1: to call us honey when she sets down the bowl
Speaker 1: of clem chowder, and for the driver in the red
Speaker 1: pickup truck to let us pass. We have so little
Speaker 1: of each other now, so far from tribe and fire,
Speaker 1: only these brief moments of exchange. What if they are
Speaker 1: the true dwelling of the holy, these fleeting temples we
Speaker 1: make together when we say, here, have my seat, go
Speaker 1: ahead you first. I like your hat. Thank you for that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I love that poem for so many different reasons. It's
Speaker 1: funny as you were reading it, and there's the line
Speaker 1: about bless you a leftover from the bubonic plague, right,
Speaker 1: and if we talk about like, well, life goes on,
Speaker 1: you know, like that was a pretty bad moment in
Speaker 1: human history. But yeah, just that small kindness. And I
Speaker 1: am a believer that while there are always lots of
Speaker 1: bad things happening in the world at any given moment,
Speaker 1: there's a ton of them, there are also countless, like
Speaker 1: you said, small teensy little kindnesses. You know, mostly we
Speaker 1: don't want to hurt each other. Like that's a great thing.
Speaker 1: It is a great thing. And I think we're often
Speaker 1: looking for the big, epic thing to happen, and it's
Speaker 1: so often the really small things that people never forget.
Speaker 1: The interesting thing about having written that poem and having
Speaker 1: it out in the world is that people write to
Speaker 1: me all the time, or they write about it to
Speaker 1: each other, and they're sharing these moments that are micro
Speaker 1: moments in all the chaos of the world. You know, Oh,
Speaker 1: I was at the grocery store and this woman gave
Speaker 1: me money because I didn't have enough money to pay
Speaker 1: at the checkout. And I have been having a horrible day,
Speaker 1: and that just changed everything. And so I think it
Speaker 1: is important to look to just the smallest things and
Speaker 1: to know that when we offer those to others, they
Speaker 1: can have an impact beyond what we can imagine. That
Speaker 1: they're really powerful moments. It makes me think of something
Speaker 1: else that I wanted to talk with you about. It's
Speaker 1: the idea of these small things. And you are describing
Speaker 1: this as not a poem. I've found it an interview somewhere,
Speaker 1: and I don't remember where. It's not important, but you
Speaker 1: were describing being home as a caregiver to your son.
Speaker 1: And we may talk about your son, who you unfortunately lost,
Speaker 1: but even before that, he was not well right, he
Speaker 1: required an enormous amount of care. And you were saying,
Speaker 1: someone told me, make something beautiful every day, right, even
Speaker 1: if it's just a bouquet of flowers from the garden,
Speaker 1: And you said, I don't see what that could possibly do, right,
Speaker 1: particularly against a baby who has seizures. Right, But then
Speaker 1: you wrote and I'm going to read this because it's beautiful.
Speaker 1: I'm older now, time has passed. I know that we
Speaker 1: are always sitting in the midst of something enormous and unsolved,
Speaker 1: whether it relates to our health or the health of
Speaker 1: society or the planet. There's a crisis in every moment.
Speaker 1: It's only a matter of our distance from it and
Speaker 1: relationship to it. I've learned to wake up seeing the
Speaker 1: sun streaming into our living room from the east, to
Speaker 1: sit there and be with it for a while. And
Speaker 1: then you say, I let beauty do some of the
Speaker 1: lifting for me. Say a little bit more about that. Yeah, oh,
Speaker 1: thank you for bringing this up. Small beautiful things, the
Speaker 1: bouquet of flowers. What can that possibly do? And I
Speaker 1: find myself hesitating to ever offer advice like that to
Speaker 1: anybody else who's going through something like being at home
Speaker 1: with a child who's unwell, or a parent or a partner.
Speaker 1: And the burden of caregiving is profound, yes, on the
Speaker 1: body and psyche, right, it's just profound. And yet what
Speaker 1: do you do? And I found that for me, those
Speaker 1: small gestures of okay, I'm going to pick some flowers
Speaker 1: from the garden, or I'm going to cook something that
Speaker 1: I love, or I'm going to just stare out the
Speaker 1: window and appreciate it. We're windows into another way of
Speaker 1: being in the world, and still are for me on
Speaker 1: a daily basis. I sat and watched the sun come
Speaker 1: up in the east. Maybe I didn't watch it, and
Speaker 1: that replenishes us more than we realize, often the eastern
Speaker 1: side of the house, and just let myself drink from
Speaker 1: that well of beauty. Yeah, you go on to say
Speaker 1: in this section talking about having these little moments of beauty,
Speaker 1: you say, even if I think I don't care, even
Speaker 1: if I'm still worrying about everything else, my soul cares.
Speaker 1: It accepts the offering no matter how small. And Aunt
Speaker 1: has a better chance of entering a castle with its
Speaker 1: moten stone walls than an elephant. I allow myself to
Speaker 1: honor the ant, a creature that carries five thousand times
Speaker 1: to its own weight. And that's when you go on
Speaker 1: to say, I'd let beauty do some of the lifting
Speaker 1: for me. And what I love about that besides that
Speaker 1: Aunt getting in easier than an elephant, which is an
Speaker 1: amazing analogy and metaphor. What I love about that is
Speaker 1: it points to there are these little things that we
Speaker 1: can do for ourselves. Give ourselves a moment of beauty,
Speaker 1: notice a small kindness, take a short walk around the
Speaker 1: block that we may in the moment not see as transformational.
Speaker 1: They're not the big epic thing. But I'm such a
Speaker 1: big believer in that little by little, these things accumulate
Speaker 1: and they don't change everything, but they change some things.
Speaker 1: And sometimes when we're going through deeply difficult times, I
Speaker 1: think that's sometimes the best we can hope for is
Speaker 1: something small that will sustain us. But if we think
Speaker 1: that we need everything to change for anything to be
Speaker 1: any better than we get at least, I get really
Speaker 1: paralyzed by that. Yeah, that's such a trap. And I've
Speaker 1: been there just thinking, Oh, I need, you know, my
Speaker 1: son to get better. I need this to happen. I
Speaker 1: need that to happen for me to feel differently. But
Speaker 1: what I found was that, Ay, that didn't happen. You know,
Speaker 1: that wasn't his life story. That we would find a
Speaker 1: miracle cure, that wasn't our story. And what happened instead,
Speaker 1: we're all these little moments of grace. Often it was
Speaker 1: nurses at the hospital, who would, of all things, make
Speaker 1: me laugh in the worst of it. And you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes it was that. Sometimes it was a stranger in
Speaker 1: the waiting room. I used to have a little prayer
Speaker 1: or blessing that I would say that I came up
Speaker 1: with when I just felt I couldn't go back to
Speaker 1: the neurologist one more time with my son. I just
Speaker 1: couldn't go through the ritual of them not knowing what
Speaker 1: was wrong, not knowing what to do, telling me different
Speaker 1: protocols that seemed scary side effects of medication. I thought,
Speaker 1: I can't do this, and so before I got in
Speaker 1: the car, I somehow put out the request, please let
Speaker 1: something happen that is unexpected and maybe even wonderful, but
Speaker 1: just please let something happen that's unexpected, because I think
Speaker 1: so much of dread is that feeling that we're just
Speaker 1: going to go through the same thing over and over.
Speaker 1: I couldn't bear it. Let something happen that unexpected, and
Speaker 1: I went to the neuralgia's office. There it was with
Speaker 1: my husband and my son, and I struck up this
Speaker 1: conversation with the woman next to me, or she did
Speaker 1: with me, I don't remember. I can't describe this exactly,
Speaker 1: but it felt like we were almost long lost cousins.
Speaker 1: We just fell into this ease and humor and almost
Speaker 1: raucousness with each other, laughing, and then she said, can
Speaker 1: I hug you? And this was pre pandemic, you know,
Speaker 1: wasn't that kind of request, but she's like, can we
Speaker 1: just hug? And we did, and we're hugging in the
Speaker 1: waiting room. I never saw her again, even though we
Speaker 1: exchanged information, but there was something about just having a
Speaker 1: moment outside of time with her that made the whole
Speaker 1: experience kind of wonderful. That's a beautiful story. That's really great.
Speaker 1: And I have to pause at this moment and say,
Speaker 1: you mentioned like the nurses, you know, one of the
Speaker 1: things I have noticed, So if you were a caregiver
Speaker 1: up there, I know that this can be a beleiaguering time,
Speaker 1: but the kindness of nurses is such a big deal.
Speaker 1: You know. I've been dragging my mother through the health
Speaker 1: care system for a while now for a variety of
Speaker 1: different ailments, and when anybody is just even the slightest
Speaker 1: bit kind, it means so much. It's unfortunate that maybe
Speaker 1: that's so not the general case. And now I shouldn't
Speaker 1: say that that's not fair, that's not fair. It's just
Speaker 1: that any extra little bit of kindness feels so valuable
Speaker 1: in that setting feels profound, doesn't it because we're so
Speaker 1: vulnerable in those settings. That's exactly it. Yeah, So any
Speaker 1: little bit a dropperful is just immense, immense. Who's just
Speaker 1: a little bit extra something? Yep, that nurse who's funny, encouraging,
Speaker 1: whatever it is. It just I never ever forget those moments. Yep.
Speaker 1: You mentioned humor in there, you know, laughing with the nurses,
Speaker 1: And it's one things I love about your work is
Speaker 1: there's a fair amount of humor in there, and it's
Speaker 1: right up alongside the really difficult, which is where I
Speaker 1: find humor to be most useful. Is actually when it's
Speaker 1: nestled that close to the awful. To me, it's a
Speaker 1: profound coping skill. And I often say levity's a spiritual virtue.
Speaker 1: I was wondering if maybe you would read a poem
Speaker 1: for us called Dressing for the Burial. Oh yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: I like that you're asking for that one. This is
Speaker 1: a poem I wrote after my brother died, and I
Speaker 1: guess it speaks for itself, but I'll say a couple
Speaker 1: of things. My brother died of suicide, and this was
Speaker 1: about some of the aftermath of that, and it's just
Speaker 1: a snapshot of a moment dressing for the burial. No
Speaker 1: one wants to talk about the hilarity after death, the
Speaker 1: way the week my brother shot himself, his wife and
Speaker 1: I fell on the bed laughing because she couldn't decide
Speaker 1: what to wear for the big day and asked me,
Speaker 1: do I go for sexy or amish? I told her sexy,
Speaker 1: and we rolled around on the mattress they'd shared for
Speaker 1: eighteen years, clutching our sides. Meanwhile, he lay in a
Speaker 1: narrow refrigerated drawer, soft brown curls springing from his scalp
Speaker 1: framing his handsome face. This was back when he still
Speaker 1: had a face, and we were going to get to
Speaker 1: see it. Hold up the black skirt again, I said,
Speaker 1: She said which one, and then she said, you look
Speaker 1: so maffia chic, and I said thank you. And it
Speaker 1: went on until we both got tired and our ribs hurt.
Speaker 1: And now I don't even remember what we wore, only
Speaker 1: that we both looked fabulous, weeping over that open hole
Speaker 1: in the ground. That's such a great poem and such
Speaker 1: a great moment, and it speaks to there can be
Speaker 1: both these things. There can be this awful, tremendous grief
Speaker 1: and there can also be humor. Right there, you wrote
Speaker 1: somewhere that joy is when what we want matches. What
Speaker 1: is grief is when there's a vast rift between the two.
Speaker 1: Humor is the bridge. Amen. I couldn't say it better yourself.
Speaker 1: Could you amen to that humor is the bridge? If
Speaker 1: we're lucky we have those moments. I remember in that
Speaker 1: moment that my sister in law said, is this okay?
Speaker 1: Is this okay? That we're laughing like this right now?
Speaker 1: And I said, you know what, I think we better
Speaker 1: take what we can get. Yeah, you know, we're in
Speaker 1: a moment we're going to be crying our eyes out
Speaker 1: and just having that grief that's so intense that you
Speaker 1: just feel sick. Yeah, for months even so said, if
Speaker 1: we have a moment like this, let's just take it.
Speaker 1: Let's go with it. Yep, yep. I was interviewing another poet,
Speaker 1: Ross Gay recently, and I can't remember it's in one
Speaker 1: of his two books of essays, but he's talking about
Speaker 1: him and a bunch of friends on their front porch
Speaker 1: and between them like they've all lost a parent, you know,
Speaker 1: and the things that they're laughing about. You know, He's like,
Speaker 1: I'm not possibly going to share those with you. You know,
Speaker 1: you might stop reading me. But I do think that
Speaker 1: there is a dark humor of people who've gone through
Speaker 1: a lot of loss, which you certainly have. Your list
Speaker 1: of losses is I don't know what to call it
Speaker 1: really remarkable. I mean, I think maybe everybody, by the
Speaker 1: time they get to the end of their life has
Speaker 1: a list like that. You may have just gotten years early.
Speaker 1: I think that's right. Yeah, that humor has always been
Speaker 1: such an important bridge for me between those two things.
Speaker 1: I love that. It's funny you mentioned Roscas I've been
Speaker 1: thinking about a conversation I was having with him. I
Speaker 1: think it was a couple of weeks ago about what
Speaker 1: we were calling the roughness of joy. You know, Ross
Speaker 1: is sort of own for talking about delight, joy, all
Speaker 1: of these kinds of states that make us think of
Speaker 1: a lightness, and yet we were saying how it's actually
Speaker 1: so the roots of joy, they might say, the roots
Speaker 1: of it are in parched ground that we experienced joy
Speaker 1: in a more profound way when it is in some
Speaker 1: ways grounded in loss or suffering, because we experienced the contrast.
Speaker 1: I remember when I was taking care of my son
Speaker 1: and I was in those years where my life was
Speaker 1: very boundaried. I couldn't really go places very much. I
Speaker 1: was just in the orbit of caring for him and
Speaker 1: being in a lot of fear about what could happen,
Speaker 1: or was I doing things wrong? Should I be making
Speaker 1: different choices on his behalf? And I'll never forget what
Speaker 1: it was like going to the grocery store. Them Just
Speaker 1: to go out and go to the grocery store seemed
Speaker 1: to be an almost religious experience. Everything would feel like
Speaker 1: it was moving in slow motion, just loading things into
Speaker 1: my cart and looking at the other shoppers who seemed
Speaker 1: to be almost divine beings. And I think it was
Speaker 1: because time just felt very, very, very precious and life
Speaker 1: felt as limited as it actually is. And sometimes I
Speaker 1: wish I could conjure that feeling again of going to
Speaker 1: the grocery store and feeling that way about it, but
Speaker 1: without having that backdrop of loss so close. How do
Speaker 1: we get back to that without having to re experience loss?
Speaker 1: You elsewhere said something along the lines of you know,
Speaker 1: I've had some of the best times in my life
Speaker 1: in the midst of deep grief. You can get so
Speaker 1: close to the core of life in any moment of intensity.
Speaker 1: And of course we prefer the pleasurable moments of intensity,
Speaker 1: but there is an element of sometimes that intensity giving
Speaker 1: life a particular deep feeling, which I think is what
Speaker 1: most of us are seeking in art, at least i
Speaker 1: am Franklin. I'm seeking in art and in spiritual practice,
Speaker 1: I'm seeking the sense of being closer and more connected
Speaker 1: to life. You know that life literally comes more to life.
Speaker 1: For me, that's what I'm always after. That's the thing,
Speaker 1: isn't it. How do we get close to it? I
Speaker 1: think of it or a picture. It almost like a doorway,
Speaker 1: that there's this doorway, and when we're standing in the
Speaker 1: middle of a loss, death of somebody that we love,
Speaker 1: we can get really close to that doorway of what
Speaker 1: is essential. And then sometimes a poem or a painting
Speaker 1: or a play. Often for me it's been a play
Speaker 1: or a piece of music. It gets us close to
Speaker 1: that doorway where we can just peer right into it
Speaker 1: into the essence. Here's what really matters, and we are
Speaker 1: constantly forgetting. We are forgetters by species. We just we
Speaker 1: learn things and we remember this is what matters, and
Speaker 1: then we forget, and then we got no, here it
Speaker 1: is again, and then we forget. And I feel like
Speaker 1: art is a way of trying to preserve what I've
Speaker 1: heard Jane Hirshfield, wonderful poet and essayist, call the mineral knowledges.
Speaker 1: How do we save these mineral knowledges, these essential things?
Speaker 1: Maybe we write a poem and we go back to
Speaker 1: the poem again and again. Yeah, And I think on
Speaker 1: some level it's impossible to live there all the time, right.
Speaker 1: You know. The other thing we are as a biological
Speaker 1: creature is we are up and down and we change
Speaker 1: and all that. And I think it's good sometimes that
Speaker 1: you know there is some run of the mill route moments,
Speaker 1: you know, I think we need those. But it's easy
Speaker 1: to get caught in a life where that seems like
Speaker 1: it's the vast majority of the moments and we're seeking
Speaker 1: that deeper thing. I wanted to ask you a question
Speaker 1: about engaging with art, whether it be creating it for
Speaker 1: you or consuming it. Is there any ways that you
Speaker 1: know of that bring you closer to that door in
Speaker 1: how you create or how you interact or engage with art.
Speaker 1: Is there anything you know of that makes that proximity
Speaker 1: to that door more likely? Well, strangely, I think it
Speaker 1: sort of refers to what you just said. I think
Speaker 1: it's the ordinary. Often I get closer to that door
Speaker 1: because I'm tending my garden, I'm doing laundry, I'm doing
Speaker 1: really ordinary things and allowing myself to just be present
Speaker 1: with those ordinary things. And then somehow that opens that
Speaker 1: sensitivity to appreciating art more deeply. Or even maybe a
Speaker 1: poem will occur to me while I'm doing chores, regular stuff,
Speaker 1: going on a walk around the neighborhood. I think being
Speaker 1: rooted in just a regular life. When you say a
Speaker 1: poem will occur to you, I'm curious. Do you get
Speaker 1: a line? Do you get multiple lines? Do you get
Speaker 1: an idea for a poem? All of the above, mix
Speaker 1: and match? I think all the above. I think often
Speaker 1: it's a line. The two poems I've read so far today,
Speaker 1: I think both of those it was a first line. Okay,
Speaker 1: no one wants to talk about the hilarity after death, right,
Speaker 1: I think that's how that one occurred, so I think
Speaker 1: those both arrived in a first line. And that's often
Speaker 1: how it is. I just have a line and I go, oh,
Speaker 1: better write that down. No way I'm going to remember
Speaker 1: it otherwise. But then it's always a mystery what the
Speaker 1: poem's going to be about. Yeah, you've said that you
Speaker 1: don't think a poem is done till it has changed you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. Otherwise it's some notes, it's some freewriting. But
Speaker 1: I don't feel I have a draft of a poem
Speaker 1: until I've been changed in some very small way. I
Speaker 1: know we're talking a lot about smallness today, but it
Speaker 1: could just be the way that I see the subject
Speaker 1: matter that I'm writing about just shifts by like five percent,
Speaker 1: or it could be some tremendous sea change where it
Speaker 1: completely changes how I view a certain event, person, animal, idea.
Speaker 1: But there has to be some kind of progression. I
Speaker 1: can't be the same person I was when I started
Speaker 1: writing the poem. I don't want to go too deep
Speaker 1: into the creative process because that's not what this show
Speaker 1: is about. But I am interested in what's the process
Speaker 1: of work going through a poem. When you say the
Speaker 1: process of working through a poem, it has to change me.
Speaker 1: Can you give any example of that of a poem
Speaker 1: where you've been working through and something has changed? Is
Speaker 1: it just that something comes out of your I guess
Speaker 1: it not out of your mouth, exactly out of your
Speaker 1: hand that you simply didn't know you knew. Sometimes it
Speaker 1: happens that way, or organically happens that way, and sometimes
Speaker 1: it happens by asking myself a lot of questions. So
Speaker 1: very often in the process, that's what it looks like,
Speaker 1: and I ask myself things like, well, what's underneath that?
Speaker 1: And what's under that? Is there another layer under that?
Speaker 1: And so it's sitting in this sort of uncomfortable soup
Speaker 1: of questions and allowing myself to notice what thoughts arrive
Speaker 1: or what images. But often that's what it looks like.
Speaker 1: Do you find that that is a lot of what
Speaker 1: commitment to a creative process is being willing to stay
Speaker 1: in that at sort of uncomfortable place where you are
Speaker 1: with questions more than you are with answers. Because it's
Speaker 1: very satisfied to write something down and be like, oh,
Speaker 1: that came very easy and it was good, right, Like
Speaker 1: that's very satisfying, But it's not at least in my case,
Speaker 1: a consistent and repeatable path to something right. It doesn't
Speaker 1: tend to work that way. I would say, yes, it's
Speaker 1: what the poet John Keats called negative capability, that ability
Speaker 1: to sit in that uncomfortable place without what he calls
Speaker 1: an irritable reaching for solution for answers that are immediate
Speaker 1: or obvious. Right that we want to be able to
Speaker 1: sit in that place of asking ourselves difficult things, of
Speaker 1: noticing things about ourselves that maybe we don't really like,
Speaker 1: of being open to seeing something we dislike through the
Speaker 1: eyes of love. Any of those things might happen that
Speaker 1: stretches in a way that's just a little bit or
Speaker 1: a lot uncomfortable. Yeah, I think it is very difficult,
Speaker 1: even if we're not talking about creating art. But if
Speaker 1: we're just talking about generally asking ourselves questions that we
Speaker 1: don't know the answers too, there's a very strong tendency
Speaker 1: and a lot of us to turn away. I was
Speaker 1: interviewing an author recently. His name is aj Jacobs, and
Speaker 1: he's written a number of really interesting books. He tries
Speaker 1: these experiments on himself, like The Year of Living Biblically,
Speaker 1: where he tried to follow like everything in the Bible,
Speaker 1: growing out his beard. But his most recent book is
Speaker 1: about puzzles, and it was interesting to hear him talk
Speaker 1: about the process of solving puzzles because generally, what I've
Speaker 1: noticed is with a puzzle, for me, if I can't
Speaker 1: figure it out relatively quickly, I just go and forget it,
Speaker 1: give it up, right. But he talks about the joy
Speaker 1: of you stick with it and then in that bafflement
Speaker 1: eventually then when you come through that, it's this very
Speaker 1: beautiful moment, and so being willing to stay with these
Speaker 1: things that are uncertain. I lead people through Values work sometimes,
Speaker 1: and values are very difficult. That is difficult work to
Speaker 1: do because either a we're not sure we don't know
Speaker 1: the answers, or b we start coming right up against
Speaker 1: the places that we are out of alignment with what
Speaker 1: we value the way our lives are right. There's a
Speaker 1: lot about it that's difficult, and so it's very natural
Speaker 1: to not want to do it and turn away from it,
Speaker 1: which I think is kind of that way in general
Speaker 1: with questions that we don't know the answer to. I
Speaker 1: don't like that, let's just say it. I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: be I'm gonna be clear, you don't do not like it. Well,
Speaker 1: it's interesting what we get praised for, right, What I
Speaker 1: got praised for as a child was being smart. So
Speaker 1: if you're praised for being smart, not being smart is
Speaker 1: very scary not knowing the answer. So I think I've
Speaker 1: trained myself a lot to say I don't know, but
Speaker 1: it's still is a place of discomfort, and I think
Speaker 1: it is, you know, maybe for everybody, but some people
Speaker 1: more than others. Yeah, the not knowing is where so
Speaker 1: much of the good stuff happen. And we know this,
Speaker 1: but it's so amorphous to not know, and it lives
Speaker 1: in this darkness. And I think we also have that
Speaker 1: dichotomy of the light and the dark, and the light
Speaker 1: seems like the light of knowledge and knowing and clarity,
Speaker 1: and the dark is something evil and terrible. If you
Speaker 1: look up synonyms for dark, it gets really interesting. Nefarious, impure,
Speaker 1: all of these things that we associate to danger and evil, right,
Speaker 1: is a synonym for dark. And I guess I don't
Speaker 1: have to mention how that might play out in race relations, right.
Speaker 1: You know, there's some obvious implications there, but the idea
Speaker 1: that the dark and being in the dark about something
Speaker 1: is how we partly describe not knowing, and so how
Speaker 1: do we allow ourselves to be in the rich and
Speaker 1: fragrant dark. Yeah. Yeah, as you were talking, I was
Speaker 1: thinking about how, like if we knew that sitting through
Speaker 1: that was going to lead to something on the other side,
Speaker 1: I think it'd be easier to sit in it. But
Speaker 1: that's part of the not knowing, right, That's part of
Speaker 1: the not knowing is like, well, is this not knowing
Speaker 1: leading to something eventually? Like is the good stuff in
Speaker 1: this dark? Or is this just dark? You know, Like
Speaker 1: it's that uncertainty. I've practiced a lot in the Zen
Speaker 1: tradition and they talk all the time about this you know,
Speaker 1: not knowing is most intimate, it being, to use Suzuki's line,
Speaker 1: beginner's mind, Right, this idea of you know, not knowing
Speaker 1: is the path to so much wisdom and opening and frankly,
Speaker 1: that thing we were talking about earlier, that connection to
Speaker 1: life comes generally, at least for me when I don't know,
Speaker 1: because if I think I know, I just tend to
Speaker 1: gloss things over. Right, If we know, we're bored, even
Speaker 1: if we knew exactly how our lives would go and
Speaker 1: it was on a little sheet of paper that we
Speaker 1: could carry around with us, and we knew the whole plot.
Speaker 1: How bored would we be? And yet we kind of
Speaker 1: hope that it will be like that and go according
Speaker 1: to our best laid plans, and then it gets interesting
Speaker 1: when it doesn't. I remember being on a road trip
Speaker 1: years ago with my mom and sister in Lawn. Our
Speaker 1: car broke down and we ended up in a Walmart
Speaker 1: for about seven hours, and you know, disaster of disasters,
Speaker 1: we're just stuck by the road and we're stuck in Walmart. Well,
Speaker 1: what do we remember about the trip? You know what's
Speaker 1: the most memorable party was everything that happened with the
Speaker 1: tow truck driver who was showing me all the tattoos
Speaker 1: he had on himself of his grandkids. And the Walmart,
Speaker 1: the interactions we had with people there. That was sort
Speaker 1: of the really, in a weird way, the highlight of
Speaker 1: the trip. Yeah, well it's funny. Just this very Christmas,
Speaker 1: my son and I were fortunate enough to be able
Speaker 1: to go to Mexico together, just the two of us.
Speaker 1: He's twenty four, so time like that is very special.
Speaker 1: And we got on a plane to come back to
Speaker 1: the States, and I thought about this. I was like,
Speaker 1: maybe we should not get on the plane. There's kinds
Speaker 1: of travel difficulties. But talk to my travel agent. Travel agents,
Speaker 1: I think you'll probably be okay. You're going through Minneapolis,
Speaker 1: and I think the worst of it's blown through there. Well,
Speaker 1: sure enough, we get off the flight in Minneapolis and
Speaker 1: they're like, well, your flight has been canceled and there
Speaker 1: are no other flights out for the next three days.
Speaker 1: And I just left sunny Mexico where it's eighty degrees
Speaker 1: and I'm now in Minneapolis, where it's like the windshills
Speaker 1: like negative twenty and I'm just like, why did I
Speaker 1: get on that plane? What a thing? And so we
Speaker 1: spent Christmas in Minneapolis, him and I. But I tell
Speaker 1: you it is a Christmas I will never forget. I
Speaker 1: couldn't tell you what has happened the vast majority of
Speaker 1: the last ten Christmases, but this one is etched in memory.
Speaker 1: Christmas in Minneapolis even has a good ring to it.
Speaker 1: It sounds like the title of something it does. It
Speaker 1: turned out to be a lovely time. I think he
Speaker 1: would say the same thing, although he might have been
Speaker 1: like just because then when we got home and we
Speaker 1: found out we had COVID and we had to quarantine together.
Speaker 1: And so for me it was a boom of epic
Speaker 1: proportions to get that much time with my son. He
Speaker 1: probably was like, oh am, I ever going to get
Speaker 1: away from my father. One of the things he probably
Speaker 1: will most remember too, He will, he will. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: another thing that you said somewhere, and you're talking about
Speaker 1: your godson, jeremiahs And he said to you, I want
Speaker 1: to be a marine biologist, but I'm afraid of sharks.
Speaker 1: And you said, that's how it is. The thing you
Speaker 1: truly love usually lives next to the thing you fear.
Speaker 1: I was a child who was afraid to speak to
Speaker 1: express myself. Once in the second grade, I cried because
Speaker 1: I couldn't fill out a paper asking me how I
Speaker 1: felt happy, sad. With help from another girl in class,
Speaker 1: I wrote, I am sad because I can't do this.
Speaker 1: My tears stained the page. But I love that idea
Speaker 1: that the thing you truly love lives next to the
Speaker 1: thing you fear, doesn't it Though. I talked to so
Speaker 1: many people who say, well, I want to do this,
Speaker 1: but I'm afraid of that, or I really don't like
Speaker 1: this aspect of it, you know, Like Heremia is saying,
Speaker 1: I want to be a marine biologist, but I'm afraid
Speaker 1: of sharks, and I thought, that's, oh gosh, that's me too.
Speaker 1: I want to write and I want to express myself,
Speaker 1: and I was so shy and introverted growing up. I
Speaker 1: thought this is impossible. I think the tasks were given
Speaker 1: through our desires are almost always impossible in that same way. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: So I would be curious how you learn to sort
Speaker 1: of move forward in that direction, because one conclusion that
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people can reach is if
Speaker 1: I'm this afraid of doing it, it must not be
Speaker 1: the right thing for me to do. Yes, that's true.
Speaker 1: That's where we can go with that. And I think
Speaker 1: this comes back to petting the wolf. I think it
Speaker 1: goes back to that in the sense that I assume
Speaker 1: that these kinds of shadows are going to accompany me
Speaker 1: wherever I go because I'm a human being, and so
Speaker 1: it's more about how I engage with them. So in
Speaker 1: that case, if and I'm not saying I do everything
Speaker 1: that I'm afraid of, I really don't. I'm not bungee
Speaker 1: jumping anytime soon. There are a lot of things I'm
Speaker 1: afraid of that I don't do, but if it's connected
Speaker 1: to something that's crucial, then I think, well, I have
Speaker 1: to find a way through this and pet that wolf
Speaker 1: and just befriended a bit or however we want to
Speaker 1: put it. And one of the other ones that's accompanied
Speaker 1: me in that way is envy. I studied art, went
Speaker 1: on to study writing because I was jealous of people
Speaker 1: who were doing that, and so that was another indicator
Speaker 1: to me that if I feel envy or jealousy, if
Speaker 1: I want to be the person who's getting to study
Speaker 1: painting or study writing, then maybe I need to be
Speaker 1: doing that. That's really interesting, because I do think envy
Speaker 1: and jealousy are really interesting emotions because there are times
Speaker 1: that we can become envious, I should say, I can
Speaker 1: become envious of things I don't even necessarily really want
Speaker 1: all that much. That might misguide me, Like I see
Speaker 1: a beautiful house on TV and I'm like, well, I
Speaker 1: need a house that's like that, and so I'm envying that, right,
Speaker 1: And that's a form of social comparison that actually leads
Speaker 1: me in the wrong direction. But you're describing a type
Speaker 1: of envy or comparison that leads you in the right direction, right,
Speaker 1: that actually points to this is my heart's deepest longing.
Speaker 1: I'm just curious how you think of telling those things
Speaker 1: apart well, now that you're asking, I am too, how
Speaker 1: do you know those how can I tell? I mean, one,
Speaker 1: I think of a sacred envy, sacred envy, and I think, again,
Speaker 1: it's let's say this, it is tied to my deepest values.
Speaker 1: If I'm just thinking, God, I want a car like that,
Speaker 1: is that sort of right next to my deepest values?
Speaker 1: You know, probably not, But you know there's some car
Speaker 1: fans out there, car collectors. Maybe it does have a
Speaker 1: different meaning in your life. But in my life that
Speaker 1: wouldn't be tied to my deepest value. And so if
Speaker 1: I'm feeling that and I examine it and it's just
Speaker 1: so braided into things I deeply care about, that's the difference. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think there's a whole art to learning
Speaker 1: what it is we actually want and need and what
Speaker 1: is helpful to us and what is good for us.
Speaker 1: And it's always been a problem, right, I mean, the
Speaker 1: phrase keeping up with the Jones is right is not
Speaker 1: a modern phrase, right, I mean, it comes from a
Speaker 1: time that predates us, but it does seem to be
Speaker 1: worse and worse today given the prevalence of social media
Speaker 1: and how everything gets sort of prettied up, you know.
Speaker 1: Like I'm a big believer in that everything has a cost.
Speaker 1: You pay a price for everything, you know, And part
Speaker 1: of what I think it's challenging is the way that
Speaker 1: we are presented a lot of things as we don't
Speaker 1: see the cost, right, We just see the pretty side
Speaker 1: of it, you know, we don't see the cost of Well,
Speaker 1: I might be able to have a house like that
Speaker 1: if I was willing to work in that type of
Speaker 1: way for that hard with that amount of pressure, Like maybe,
Speaker 1: but I'm not seeing that, right, I'm just seeing the
Speaker 1: sunny side of it. And so I think at least
Speaker 1: for me, recognizing satisfaction in life and really coming to
Speaker 1: terms with the choices that I've made or that I'm
Speaker 1: going to make, is really trying to say, can I
Speaker 1: see both sides of or all sides of this? What
Speaker 1: is the price for this thing? What am I giving
Speaker 1: up by having this thing? What am I not getting?
Speaker 1: What am I mean? There's just a lot of complexity,
Speaker 1: but back to what you said earlier, which I think
Speaker 1: was really beautiful, was it's being willing to ask a
Speaker 1: lot of those questions, to sit in those questions. Is
Speaker 1: then when I'm able, at least for me better able
Speaker 1: to discern like, yeah, I really do want that that
Speaker 1: does matter to me, or that would be nice if
Speaker 1: it just dropped in my lap. But I'm not willing
Speaker 1: to do what it takes to get there, or to
Speaker 1: have that, or to do that. So many of the
Speaker 1: things we want are connected to a lot of discomfort.
Speaker 1: I don't like sharing my most intimate aspects of my
Speaker 1: life in a public way. Part of me doesn't like that,
Speaker 1: and part of me is compelled to do that as
Speaker 1: a writer, and so I'm uncomfortable all the time. And
Speaker 1: when I talk to my best friend, I'm sort of
Speaker 1: giving the daily report of what I've done. That's really
Speaker 1: uncomfortable because it's daily. Every day, I'm taking some kind
Speaker 1: of risk that makes me uncomfortable, even if it's just
Speaker 1: on the page, or maybe by reaching out to someone
Speaker 1: I really want to talk to and be in dialogue with.
Speaker 1: I feel like these kinds of conversations and dialogues are
Speaker 1: some of the things I value most when we're talking
Speaker 1: about exactly this and all the other things that branch
Speaker 1: out from it, how do we navigate our lives? How
Speaker 1: do we figure out what matters? And so the daily
Speaker 1: discomfort is kind of the diet that I feel that
Speaker 1: I'm on, and it makes me feel more alive, it
Speaker 1: makes me feel uncomfortable, it does all of the things.
Speaker 1: But it's the price I'm willing to pay for this
Speaker 1: kind of growth, I suppose, for feeling stretched in a
Speaker 1: certain way. I'm willing to pay this price. You don't
Speaker 1: always like it, Yeah, well, it's very helpful when we
Speaker 1: can reframe things that way. I've embarked on a creative
Speaker 1: project that is really stretching me in ways that are
Speaker 1: deeply uncomfortable. You know, all the doubt, all the fear,
Speaker 1: I mean, all of it is there, And thankfully I've
Speaker 1: gotten to a place where most of the time I go,
Speaker 1: that's what I want. Like, that's actually a sign to
Speaker 1: your point that I am right doing exactly what I
Speaker 1: should be doing. Because I'm frightened by it and because
Speaker 1: it feels overwhelming and because I feel like I can't.
Speaker 1: But I spent a lot of my life not knowing
Speaker 1: that right and that led me to turn away again
Speaker 1: and again from certain things because I didn't recognize that
Speaker 1: that discomfort was part of the price of admission. Oh
Speaker 1: that's so good, something that was good versus something that
Speaker 1: was bad. It told me what mattered versus telling me
Speaker 1: what I couldn't do, you know, not being willing to
Speaker 1: sit with a puzzle longer because I want the answer right.
Speaker 1: It's counterintuitive because you're saying I moved toward the thing
Speaker 1: I really wanted and I felt terrible. Well, on just
Speaker 1: a physical level, we are self protective beings. We don't
Speaker 1: put our hand into a fire because it hurts and
Speaker 1: it burns, right, And so if you're feeling this discomfort,
Speaker 1: it's natural to think I shouldn't be doing that. And
Speaker 1: yet exactly as you're saying them at least matches my
Speaker 1: experience exactly that as I'm going in the direction that's
Speaker 1: most meaningful, the voices come up more and more strongly
Speaker 1: that say, who do you think you are? Ye, what
Speaker 1: do you think you're doing? Who told you you could
Speaker 1: do that? You know? And a million others. You sort
Speaker 1: of activate the hornet's nest. It all gets activated because
Speaker 1: you are stepping into more of the fullness of your being,
Speaker 1: and there's a part that wants to protect us, and
Speaker 1: it's going to try and talk us out of it.
Speaker 1: And so it's so helpful to see the increase in
Speaker 1: the self criticism, or the increase in fear and discomfort
Speaker 1: actually as science that you're going the right way right
Speaker 1: as you are talking. It made me think about how
Speaker 1: important the support of others can be in this. I
Speaker 1: didn't know that for a long time, and so I
Speaker 1: didn't do certain things because I didn't know that that
Speaker 1: discomfort was exactly part of the process. I've had the
Speaker 1: great fortune now to interview so many just exceptional people
Speaker 1: who all say something similar, you know, And I've had
Speaker 1: the sense as I've embarked on this to be like,
Speaker 1: I'm going to read books about making art, not like
Speaker 1: a technical book about making art, but books by people
Speaker 1: who are writing about how hard it is, because I
Speaker 1: need to hear that again and again, like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're right where you're supposed to be. This feeling is
Speaker 1: perfectly natural, this is the process. But outside of that support,
Speaker 1: it's very difficult to keep marching in the direction of
Speaker 1: what matters to us. So true, and I think it's
Speaker 1: true with creative practice and the spiritual practice. Yes, I
Speaker 1: love that you brought up you know, both an artistic
Speaker 1: process us and in spiritual growth. This support is so
Speaker 1: so important. And I was wondering if you would read
Speaker 1: a poem for us. I don't know if it's in
Speaker 1: any of your books, but it was published somewhere online
Speaker 1: and it's called Nothing Wants to Suffer. This poem and
Speaker 1: what it's saying has been one of the most foundational
Speaker 1: spiritual awakenings for me that I have deepened into and
Speaker 1: deepened into over and over and over and has changed
Speaker 1: the way I really relate to so much of the world.
Speaker 1: So I would just love it if you would read
Speaker 1: that poem. Wow, well, I'm honored to read it. And
Speaker 1: it's after a writer and poet named Linda Hogan who
Speaker 1: writes so beautifully about the natural world. And this was
Speaker 1: from an essay that she wrote about the corn, about
Speaker 1: being in conversation with a field of corn. Nothing wants
Speaker 1: to suffer, after Linda Hogan. Nothing wants to suffer. Not
Speaker 1: the wind as it scrapes itself against the cliff, not
Speaker 1: the cliff being eaten slowly by the sea. The Earth
Speaker 1: does not want to suffer the rough tread of those
Speaker 1: who do not notice it. The trees do not want
Speaker 1: to suffer the axe, nor see their sisters felled by
Speaker 1: root rot, mildew rust. The coyote in its din, the
Speaker 1: puma stalking its prey. These two want ease and a
Speaker 1: tender animal in the mouth to take their hunger, an
Speaker 1: offering one hopes made quickly and without much suffering. The
Speaker 1: chair mourns an angry sitter, the lamp, a scalded moth,
Speaker 1: a table, the weight of years of argument. We know this,
Speaker 1: though we forget not the shark nor the tiger, fanged
Speaker 1: as they are, nor the worm content. And it's windowless
Speaker 1: world of soil and stone, not the stone resting in
Speaker 1: its riverbed, the riverbed gazing up at the stars, least
Speaker 1: of all the stars ensconced in their canopy, looking down
Speaker 1: at all of us. They're offspring, scattered so far beyond reach.
Speaker 1: That's such a beautiful poem. There's so many beautiful lines
Speaker 1: in there. It's been so helpful to me to just
Speaker 1: recognize that core idea that nothing wants to suffer, you know,
Speaker 1: now you take it beyond living things. And so I'm
Speaker 1: not going to talk about that one way or the other.
Speaker 1: But with all living things, for sure, we all want
Speaker 1: to avoid pain and experience more pleasure. I mean, even
Speaker 1: down to you, like single cell organisms, they behave that
Speaker 1: way like it is so wired into us. And for me,
Speaker 1: when I'm able to recognize that about everyone and everything,
Speaker 1: then what I feel like I'm arguing with people about
Speaker 1: a strategy right forgetting that. You know your strategy may
Speaker 1: be problematic, but like I said, that's one I've deepened
Speaker 1: into and continue to deepen into. But it's done more
Speaker 1: to open me to the world than most any other idea.
Speaker 1: It's profound at its root, isn't it that everything wants
Speaker 1: to survive, wants to thrive in some way. Even a
Speaker 1: plant is I don't know how to talk about it,
Speaker 1: but a vine is trying to lean towards something it
Speaker 1: can rest on. We don't want to assign intentionality in
Speaker 1: a way that is more or less than what is
Speaker 1: just true that all things are trying to grow and
Speaker 1: thrive in some way, and how do we then support that? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's a beautiful idea. So we're nearly out
Speaker 1: of time, but I would like to get one more
Speaker 1: poem in and I think a poem that speaks a
Speaker 1: lot about what we were just talking about. Is this
Speaker 1: desire we all have for ourselves and those around us
Speaker 1: not to suffer, not to struggle, to not face hardship.
Speaker 1: And you have a beautiful poem about that called in Shella. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you for requesting this. And I wrote this during
Speaker 1: a time when I was waiting for something to happen,
Speaker 1: and in fact, it was waiting to see if my
Speaker 1: first book got picked up. With this book that I'm
Speaker 1: now holding in my hands, and I knew that it
Speaker 1: was in the hands of the poet Naomi she have nigh,
Speaker 1: and that she was going to be deciding which book
Speaker 1: to choose, and it just brought up for me the
Speaker 1: whole thing about that state of waiting, often when the
Speaker 1: stakes are much higher than the ones I just described.
Speaker 1: So here it is inshalla. I don't know when it
Speaker 1: slipped into my speech, that soft word meaning if God
Speaker 1: wills it, inshallah, I will see you next summer. The
Speaker 1: baby will come in spring, inshallah, Inshalla. This year we
Speaker 1: will have enough rain. Any plans I've laid have unraveled
Speaker 1: easily as braids beneath my mother's quick fingers. Every language
Speaker 1: must have a word for this, a word our grandmothers
Speaker 1: uttered under their breath as they pinned the white soaked
Speaker 1: in lemon, hung them to dry in the sun, or
Speaker 1: peeled potatoes, dropping the discarded skins into a bowl. Our
Speaker 1: sons will return next month, and shallah Inshalla, this war
Speaker 1: will end soon, Inshalla. The rice will be enough to
Speaker 1: last through winter. How lightly we learn to hold hope
Speaker 1: as if it were an animal. They could turn around
Speaker 1: and bite your hand, and still we carry it the
Speaker 1: way a mother would carefully from one day to the next.
Speaker 1: That's beautiful. I'd love to maybe finish with a little
Speaker 1: discussion about a word you used in They're called hope.
Speaker 1: Hope is a really interesting idea because oftentimes we don't
Speaker 1: get what we hoped for, and in your case, in
Speaker 1: some of the most profound ways, right like the amount
Speaker 1: of hope you must have had for your son to
Speaker 1: get better and then have him not get better and die.
Speaker 1: I'm curious how you relate to hope having seen really
Speaker 1: tragic things happen. It's such a delicate thing. I think
Speaker 1: that's where that image of an animal that could turn
Speaker 1: around invite you came for me. Because I'm so aware,
Speaker 1: as we become aware over time, that often the thing
Speaker 1: you pray for, the thing you hope for, the thing
Speaker 1: you think you can't live without, or the person or
Speaker 1: whatever it is, that's not what you get. And so
Speaker 1: I think often we misplace hope, we connect it to
Speaker 1: much to a certain, very specific outcome, and maybe the
Speaker 1: real hope, the deeper hope, is almost always something else.
Speaker 1: I really hope my heart will open more. I really
Speaker 1: hope I will learn something. I really hope that whatever
Speaker 1: happens is the best outcome for everyone involved. It's like
Speaker 1: this shifting over of hope that the arc we we're
Speaker 1: talking at the beginning about that long arc of progress
Speaker 1: and that long arc of justice, hope that the long
Speaker 1: arc is being served without being too attached to the particulars,
Speaker 1: if possible. Well, that is a beautiful place to wrap up.
Speaker 1: And that's a really beautiful idea. Denisia, thank you so much.
Speaker 1: This has been such a pleasure. I have enjoyed every
Speaker 1: minute of it. I love your poetry, and I'm so
Speaker 1: happy to have gotten to spend some time with you.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for having me, and I so
Speaker 1: appreciate your deep rereading and all of your questions. Just
Speaker 1: really enjoyed our time together. If what you just heard
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