confession

A Little Confession

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

new-doll
Yesterday’s dollie as interpreted by the Dreamscope app.

Here’s a little confession: I haven’t been such a good monk-in-the-world lately. I keep letting my equilibrium get thrown. I tell myself and others that it’s the election. I tell us that it is because I am so terribly busy. I tell us that it is the season for a different sort of looking at the world.

I still write my gratitude lists, and I still try to pay attention, but I have let myself sharpen up the edges. I know, I know. No one is perfect. No one can be balanced and thoughtful all the time. Monks get angry, too. Sure, I will give myself a break. Still, I think the whole point of living this examined life is to examine–non-judgmentally–how we have been living and responding to the world.

Perhaps it was making that little corn dollie that reminded me. I have walked quietly away from my intuitive self. Finding a moment to make some art, to let my hands and heart lead the way into a process, has given me a chance to bring myself back into reflection.

Here’s to St. Benedict and beginning again. Always. Every day. Every morning.

Gratitude List:
1. One of my former teachers was walking the halls yesterday–Janet Gehman, who lit the literature fires for me. It was a treasure to see her and to invite her into my classroom, to tell my students that this was MY teacher.
2. Macaroni and cheese. Comfort food.
3. Warm layers on a blustery day.
4. Long weekend coming.
5. Small person on my lap.

May we walk in Beauty!

Confession

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

It always happens about mid-month when I am doing a poem-a-day: I start to poop out a bit, leaving the work of it–even the imagining part–until later and later in the day.  I loved the idea I started to work with today, using this crazy photo from Facebook to get the prompt rolling (it’s on the theme of confession), but now I feel the pressure to rush it so I can get on to planning tomorrow’s classes.

Confession

I admit it:
I still have the vandal’s fantasies,
One of my heroes is Banksy.
I love the artists and agitators
who take their social commentary
to the streets.

Sometimes I hear stories
of the tricksters and their mischief
and I wish that I had thought of them myself–
like exchanging the voices of talking dolls
so Barbie growls, “Vengeance is mine!”
and G.I. Joe opines, “Math class is sooooo hard!”

In college, I dreamed of joining
ninja women climbing billboards
to plaster “Not on our bodies!”
over the bodies of women
selling cars with their bodies.

Today was another last straw
in a long, long line of last straws:
Two packets of poetry magnets,
the pink one and the blue.
I want to buy them up and scramble,
then sell them in orange and green packages
declaring: Ballet worms and rugby wings!
I’ll climb into my fairy aeroplane
and grab my handbag
for a ride with the skeleton bunnies.

This is just a warning
so when you see the headlines
about the local schoolteacher
caught making a ruckus in the toy store,
you won’t need to be shocked.
Just roll your eyes and say,
“Well, it’s about time!”

Gratitude List:
1. Bluebells!  (I know–they’re technically grape hyacinths, but I don’t really care.  We called them bluebells when I was a child, so bluebells they will be).
2. Spring tonic pesto: large handfuls of chickweed, with a little dandelion, burdock, nettle, garlic mustard, wild mustard, sorrel, wild garlic.
3. Joss’s book is past seventy pages now.  He keeps adding sections: tonight included pieces of a Baby Animals calendar and a Birds calendar.  And always the demand, like a pushy schoolteacher: “Write sentences!”
4. A spring-like day.  I feel better, being slightly sick on day like today, than I did, being mostly well on a gray and cloudy day.
5. Reading Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Everything with Ellis.

May we walk in Beauty!