Learning to Wait

(Image from amir kha's flicker)

Lately I have to keep reminding myself to have patience. My life has rapidly changed in the past year and a half, and due to all of the fast going changes I've had, my natural want is to continue to progress. To work towards what I need in life (whether that is selfish or selfless), and to feel like I am continually moving forward has become a natural state for me. Over and over I have been told to slow down, it will come to you, take life one step at a time, baby steps, things don't happen over night. These are all good pieces of advice, but I haven't been listening.

Today I began to recognize my obsession with goals: publication goals, career goals, personal goals, and how the months have passed by so quickly since I've moved home. Inevitably panic struck. I started to think about the people in my life who are patient, who take one step at a time, and how I want to and need to embrace that way of life. But how? The answer came from googling and stopping at thinkexist.com.

The following are quotes on patience that struck me (some in good fun, some as sincere meditations):

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions.

-- Rainer Marie Rilke

Never run after a bus or a man. There will always be another one.

--Irish Proverb

Patience is passion tamed.

--Lyman Abbott

Patience is the art of hoping.

-- Marquis de Vauvenargues

If we are facing in the right direction, all we have to do is keep on walking.

--Buddhist Proverb

Have patience with all things, but chiefly have patience with yourself.

--St. Francis De Sales

Post to a post and home for a home

Last week (ish) I went to a phenomenal poetry reading hosted by Frostburg State's Center for Creative Writing. Before the reading, I did a little promotional blog for the CW Center's site. Can be found here: http://fsucenterforcreativewriting.wordpress.com/2011/02/04/crystal-williams-profile/

The reading itself was full of good vibes. For me, it was the first time I'd been in the Lyric Theatre as a theatre space, a theatre/ building that has caught fire twice. Once in its early days and more recently when it was home to Gandalf's Restaurant and Bar in 2004. To hear poetry here made me think of how the space itself thrives to be a public gathering point.

Crystal Williams was entrancing to watch. Her reading brought one to realize, poetry is an oral art. It should never be only on the page.

As I continue to think about her work, I realize just how much place informs our creative outlook. For the moment, I am happy to be home and to recognize the importance of environment as it relates to identity. More on that in my work. Most recently in my poems I've been exploring the first house I grew up in in Brimfield, Ohio, re-visiting memories and interconnecting the now with those memories. This first came about from reflecting on Williams' work, and later teaching a writing workshop at the Frostburg Senior Center, then finally into fruition when I told a love of mine I want to see Frida Kahlo's blue house. He said, "You are a blue house," jokingly, and coincidentally, my first childhood home was a blue ranch, and now I am working on a series of poems called just that, "You are a blue house." A good challenge.