September 18, 2009 by Jeffrey D. Cloninger
Four days from the official transition from Summer to Fall, and I am grateful for the lessons of this Season. Mary Oliver accurately captures my feeling of awe and gratitude.
A Summer Story
When the hummingbird
sinks its face
into the trumpet vine,
into the funnels
of the blossoms,
and the tongue
leaps out
and throbs,
I am scorched
to realize once again
how many small, available things
are in this world
that aren’t
pieces of gold
or power —
that nobody owns
or could buy even
for a hillside of money—
that just
float about the world,
or drift over the fields,
or into the gardens,
and into the tents of the vines,
and now here I am
spending my time,
as the saying goes,
watching until the watching turns into feeling,
so that I feel I am myself
a small bird
with a terrible hunger,
with a thin beak probing and dipping
and a heart that races so fast
it is only a heartbeat ahead of breaking—
and I am the hunger and the assuagement,
and also I am the leaves and the blossoms,
and, like them, I am full of delight, and shaking.
~Mary Oliver
from Red Bird, Beacon Press
Posted in Prose essays | Tagged gratitude, Mary Oliver, summer | Leave a Comment »
Last night I played the piano in my living room, for an audience of 1.5 (my partner Todd and my cat). Almost always, however, I start with no audience. Just me, pulling out the bench, sitting and contemplating for a flash before my fingers strike the keys. I play. The melody starts pensively and after a few minutes morphs into something else.
At this point I am still alone with the music, which is perfectly fine by me. My fix comes from the physical act of moving my hands, fingers and arms and knowing not necessarily where the song will go, but really knowing just before the key is played just how it will sound. Except for the first note, each note–each moment–thereafter is filled simultaneously with satisfaction and expectation. I play, I enjoy, I anticipate, over and over again. Continue Reading »
Posted in Prose essays | Leave a Comment »
For the first time in a six years, I’m doing a show. Yes. I’m doing a play this fall. And in keeping with the title (also the headline of this post), I’ll tell you again: In September the show will play at the Bryant Lake Bowl in Minneapolis. It’s a sketch comedy, loosely tied together by all things repetitive. Rehearsals have begun, and in a few weeks the cast of The Recovery Party will be spinning on questions like the most effective way to come out of the closet, the difference between men and women (it’s really quite simple!) and what exactly is so moving about the Hawaiian War Chant.
I know you’ve been dying to know these things, so for now sit tight and know that we’re working on it. Come September I’ll remind you, again, that I’m in a show and that you should come.
Posted in News about Jeffrey | Tagged acting, Bryant Lake Bowl, Recovery Party, theatre | Leave a Comment »
This morning I woke up with the desire to garden. Of course, I’m sitting here typing instead, but surely thinking about creating a beautiful space in my yard. In order to do that, though, there’s a lot of stuff to get rid of: weeds, brush, old woodchips, the river rock the previous owners cast into the shady side yard. Then there’s the old deck which someone built on top of the dilapidated concrete steps. I know all this stuff is there, some of it visible, some of it not. But it exists, and a lot of it is in the way of my dream garden.
Now, I want thriving perennials rich with new growth, abundant hostas and a few choice plants. But first, I’ve got to uncover all that other stuff and do something with it. That takes work and isn’t necessarily the fun part. I envision a few days of scouring the ground with a spade. Maybe renting that jack hammer to remove the old steps. It sounds like a ton of work, just to create some space for the new stuff to thrive.
There’s a lot of this type of work in our world: stripping away the old to create space for the new. Sometimes it’s not even the ‘new’ we are uncovering. Just creating space for what is or could be. Who knows what I’ll discover during the weeding process?
One theory behind learning to be a great singer is to strip away all the bad habits we’ve acquired over the years. At 18, it’s amazing how many ‘things’ were covering up the natural voice within me. Stress, exams, all that book knowledge, homesickness, recollections of old Saturday Night Live sketches. Some of this good, some of this not so useful. These ideas manifested themselves in layers of tension on my vocal chords. But, like gardening, the deconstructive process of removing these layers and reorganizing them made good, unencumbered space for growth and freedom. Chipping away at it lesson by lesson slowly uncovered the singular voice within me. It’s a never ending process, too–finding the right place for all that stuff, especially as it keeps accumulating.
Somewhere deep within our overgrown world lies that beautiful song or fantastic garden. Are you willing to uncover the rich authenticity and create the space for it to grow?
Posted in Prose essays | Tagged authenticity, gardening, new growth, singing, stripping away, un-covering, uncovering | Leave a Comment »
A few years ago I started working through Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, a week-by-week program to discover and recover the creative self in anyone with an artistic dream. One of the best components of the program is the writing of “morning pages” — three longhand pages of whatever comes to mind, first thing each day. At the time I thought this was a silly exercise, and that my writings had to be perfect and distinguished. How would I fill three pages of thoughts, my thoughts, which I tend to carefully turn over and over before they find voice?
After a few days of this I realized I was suddenly creating a volume of ‘work.’ I created lists, poems, stories about my grandfather, jokes and even doodles. My mind started to open up and I felt a sense of freedom, like something had to get out, and once it did, I could go on with my day. And of course, the best part was that it was okay that some of it (if not a most of it) made no real sense. It was just fine…and fun to write.
I’ve gone in and out of phases of writing morning pages, but in times of not writing feel called to get back at it. Now we’ve entered the blog world. Typed words this time, perhaps a video instead of a doodle, but who knows. And this time for you to see, instantly.
When I go back to my pages, whether they’re typed or scribbled, I find the real treasure: a journey from one idea to the next, connected day after day. It’s an exciting re-discovery.
Keep writing.
Posted in Prose essays | Tagged Artist's Way, blogging, Julia Cameron, morning pages, writing | Leave a Comment »
I’d like to start by saying thank you. Not that you’ve done anything thus far, other than visit my blog…but even so, I am grateful for you and your taking the time to visit. Even though it’s several months away, Thanksgiving is something we should celebrate every day: the spirit of gratefulness, for having enough, for the ability to converse and share and laugh. And so, thank you…and welcome to my blog.
Posted in Prose essays | Tagged gratefulness, thank you | Leave a Comment »
