How do we not participate in a world gone awry?

I am realizing extent to which I have no choice but to support the corporate takeover of society, if I want to save for retirement that is. Even so-called “green funds” include a lot of big companies, and in my view, big is a part of the problem.

My father did not own shares, not as far as I’m aware.

I am realizing how very lucky my mother is that my father died (in 1981) before the world changed, before his pension was decimated.

Sometimes I think my father was lucky too. Sure, he missed our college graduations, the births of his grandchildren, the Internet (he would have loved it, he was always one to reach for an encyclopedia), the gentrification of Hoboken. But he did not live to feel shame for the country he served, proudly.

“Barter” by Sara Teasdale

Life has loveliness to sell,
All beautiful and splendid things,
Blue waves whitened on a cliff,
Soaring fire that sways and sings,
And children’s faces looking up,
Holding wonder like a cup.

Life has loveliness to sell,
Music like the curve of gold,
Scent of pine trees in the rain,
Eyes that love you, arms that hold,
And for your spirit’s still delight,
Holy thoughts that star the night.

Spend all you have for loveliness,
Buy it and never count the cost;
For one white singing hour of peace
Count many a year of strife well lost,
And for a breath of ecstasy
Give all you have been, or could be.

No surprise that Teasdale’s work has fallen into obscurity – the rhyme, the cadence, lend her poems a deceptive simplicity. I have come to prefer more difficult poets myself. But there was a time when I lived, longed, “for one white singing hour of peace.”

The difficulty arises AFTER the ecstasy. It’s hard not to fall into bitterness.

I just read a great article by the wife of Gary Hirshberg, CE-Yo of Stonyfield Farm Yogurt. She describes life on their New Hampshire farm when they were starting out, sharing the farmhouse with the founder, his wife, and six kids; the hard work, and mostly, the uncertainty of it all. There were many failures and the business teetered on edge of bankruptcy for a while. Yet there’s not a trace of bitterness in her re-telling. You can tell she didn’t like it, the precariousness of life back then, but she was in love, and walking away was never an option.

I think there’s something to hardship; if you can overcome it, it lends your success a certain sweetness. As long as we can put some distance between past and present, as long as there’s no fear of going back, we can remember, even fondly, where we’ve come from.

I don’t think we should barter our future, however.

We have no way of knowing how things will play out. There is no such thing as a sure thing, as Teasdale’s own life evidences. She married a business man, not her true love, the poet Vachel Lindsay. She later (coming to her senses?) divorced.

Both Lindsay and Teasdale died by suicide.

We reject happiness at our peril.

I think …

It’s a matter of weeks, days, before I give up this blog, which is no longer serving me, at least not in the way I intended. I hoped to find my voice. I haven’t done that and I don’t feel closer to doing that. Perhaps it is when I stop looking that I will finally find it

In October, I will start a new blog with a homeschooling theme, mostly as a way of tracking what learning is happening around here. I’ve decided to center my life around homeschooling for the next bit of time. Eventually I want to start another general blog, less a journal and more a place to talk about work. I think revealing bits and pieces of one’s life is nice, I think blog readers appreciate it, and I can’t imagine writing without this personal angle. But no one wants to read anyone’s journal, not unless they’ve connected to that person on another level. I don’t mind the occasional journal entry, the outpouring of the heart, so to speak, but I only have interest in reading the journals of people who are engaged in similar pursuits, or struggles, or of people whose work or writing I admire/respect. Anais Nin excepted.

Life on Purpose: 15 Questions to Discover Your Personal Mission

I’ve made it through the 15 questions, but I am not much closer to discovering my personal mission than when I began. I’m quite sure it lies in the area of personal development, but all I’ve been able to come up with so far is “to help and inspire people to live, and to think, differently, to reject the offers on the table and find something resembling “right livelihood” outside of the corporate matrix.” I know there’s a writing component to my mission, but I’m struggling with writing now, and until I work through whatever it is that is stopping me mid-sentence, I am going to work on other aspects of my identity – yogini, friend and mother, event planner and fundraiser, etc. That covers spirituality + health, relationships, and work. If I get the writing right, it will be icing, as they say.

Life on Purpose: 15 Questions to Discover Your Personal Mission

Question 15: Given your talents, passions and values, how could you use these resources to serve, to help, to contribute? ( to people, beings, causes, organization, environment, planet, etc.)

Another difficult question. Truth is I panic, often, that I don’t have a marketable skill (I’m not a teacher, a lawyer, a doctor, etc.) that will guarantee employment. I have academic credentials (an MDiv, an MBA), but degrees don’t count for much on the job market, not compared to experience. I have experience as an academic administrator, and while there are administrative jobs a plenty, they don’t really pay the rent and god knows they don’t allow me to put anything aside.

That said, I’d like to serve, contribute, so to speak. Service not my career anchor (my desire to serve is not as strong as my desire for freedom, autonomy, or my desire for work-life balance) but the desire to change the world (or to see the world changed) is there. Inequality (the pervasive sort we’re starting to see) angers me. But I have an understanding of its structural causes and really there’s nothing I can do about them apart from getting angry. When I find myself completely powerless, I get depressed. So I’m just not motivated by a my desire to change the world so much as by a will to survive, thrive even, under social political conditions about which I can’t do anything.

I’m playing now with the idea of helping others, on an individual basis, to negotiate the system we have, to find ways to flourish, in conditions not always conducive to human flourishing. Lives of beauty, meaning, can be had, on low budgets, in less than ideal conditions, but carving them, creating them, is a not easy task. It’s one I’ve managed, however, and I think it’s something I can help others to do.

Life on Purpose: 15 Questions to Discover Your Personal Mission

Question 14: If you could get a message across to a large group of people. Who would those people be? What would your message be?

This is a tough question. Probably I’d say something to the poor people, the economically disenfranchised, I’d say fight back, vote with your dollars, stay the hell out of Walmart.

I make a supposedly not bad salary and I find life impossible, financially. I live humbly, I pay nothing to speak of for rent (this cozy situation will end soon and I’m dreading it), I buy no clothes, no material goods. I spend my whole check on books and food and services. Do I need all the services I pay for? Probably not, but I can’t imagine my life (or my son’s life) without them. Do I raise a kid who doesn’t go to summer camp? I could save money, I just don’t want to.

There are things I can’t afford: music lessons, yoga workshops, retirement.

So I’d say to people wake up. Life may be better here than in Brazil, but it doesn’t begin to compare to Europe, especially if you’re poor.

There are moments when my brain goes numb, when I can’t think, really. I’m trying to remember what I did in the past, when I couldn’t concentrate, before the internet, and mindless Googling.

It’s so long ago, it’s hard to remember.

I’m trying to use the internet more deliberately.

When I finish a really bad book I can hate myself for having wasted my time, but the reality is, three or four hours *reading* (whatever it is I am reading) at least focuses my attention.

I’m trying not to beat myself over my latest read: The Witch of Portobello by Brazilian author Paolo Coelho.

I don’t know what I think about Coelho. The intellectual in me wants to dismiss him, as my Brazilian friends are wont to do. But I don’t care if he’s not original, if he’s recycling myth, legend, whatever. I agree as a writer he’s not exceptional (to be fair, I have not read him in Portuguese, though I could and should). Good writing impresses me; it doesn’t always inspire me. The Alchemist is a well-told story, a gem, really, but Coelho’s other books (the ones I’ve read) lack something. Even while they inspire, they disappoint, but I can’t put my finger on why. It’s not the material, and it’s not the language, it’s something else.

Is it that a part of me doesn’t believe wisdom should be so accessible?

The Witch of Portobello is a book that explores the feminine nature of divinity, the nature of revelation, etc. I did not like the narrative structure – the story of Athena is told from multiple view points – but I appreciated the lesson in re-patterning: “Changes only happen when we go totally against everything we’re used to doing.” And also the whole idea that love just is. We can’t, and need not, explain it.

Maybe the story tries to do too much? I’d have told it differently, but I think Coelho’s point is that the world is not ready for *revelation* if what is revealed contradicts what is known. And this has always been the case, not only with regard to religious revelation, but also scientific truth.

I’ve been thinking about the whole “economics of poetry” because my latest work project has me tracking down copyrights and seeking permissions to reprint several poems for a small in-house publication. We had hoped to make it a web-based project, but the whole process of obtaining the permissions (to say nothing of the expense) has deterred us, completely. And it’s really too bad as the impact of the volume will be limited, whereas the web version could have reached many thousands of people.

There are, apparently, poets who get really angry whenever an unauthorized copy of one of their poems shows up on the web, even on someone’s blog, and some have made a habit of retaliating, or at least taking on the offenders.

I’m guilty of sharing poems myself, on this blog, without permission, but as I have a readership of five, I’m under the radar, so to speak.

Do poets (should poets) have legal recourse when copyrights are violated in this innocuous way?

There’s a parallel with the music industry. Even if poetry doesn’t have the same currency as music does and even if poetry publishers lack the power of recording industry execs, sharing poems on the internet is, like sharing music, technically, illegal. And the argument (even if it’s more likely to be raised by the poets themselves, not their publishers) is the same: making poetry available for free on the internet (I can simply Google Mary Oliver and find her poems) cuts into sales of poetry books. But the “lost sales” argument begs several questions. One, it assumes every poem (or song) downloaded equals a lost sale, and this is absolutely not the case. Kids today have so many songs on their ipods because the songs are cheap, or free. If they had to pay for them, as we did, back in the day, they’d own a lot less music. And two, it completely ignores the role of the internet in popularizing music, and poetry.

I hadn’t even heard of Mary Oliver before encountering her poems on the web – maybe through a legitimate online publication, maybe someone’s blog, I don’t know, it’s beside the point. And while I like her poetry, I’m not sure I’d pay for it. I have a limited poetry budget, and all the internet does is allow me to read more poetry than I can afford. If the poetry weren’t available for free, I wouldn’t be paying for it, I’d be consuming less, reading other things.

I have no way of proving this, but I’d venture to guess that the internet is a good thing for poetry, and even for music. Sales of CDs may be down, but not by nearly the volume represented by illegal downloads. I don’t know how many lost sales are represented by, say, 100 illegal downloads, but I’d be surprised if it were even 10. The internet grows the market, even as it drives down prices.

I recognize poets have to earn a living, and it would be a pretty cool world if they could earn a living from their poetry. But we don’t live in such a world. The economics of poetry are summed up here: finding poetry manuscripts is easy, finding readers is another story. If all the circulation of poetry on the web does is produce more readers of poetry, that’s a not bad thing.

So rather than squabbling over illegal copies, if I were a poet, I’d be happy about the publicity. Maybe then I’d have some hopes of selling the 2500 copies of a book that will allow my publisher to break even.

The reality is that there was poetry before there was a market for poetry. We don’t all get to earn a living from our talents. Unless we become *popular* that is. Mary Oliver is already popular; she has the luxury of pouncing on those of us who circulate her poetry illegally. I’d never heard of Wendy Cope* before happening upon this article in the Guardian in which she argues, “You like my poems? Pay for them.” Cope makes some valid points, but there’s not much I agree with. What? We can’t read poems aloud at events without permission? Poetry needs, wants, and audience, and poetry, as I understand, is best read aloud. Here’s a great response, if not a rebuttal. A. E. Stallings envisions a future of “publishing without publishers.” Very cool.

* In fairness, Wendy Cope is one of the best-selling living poets in England, so this is a reflection on me, and my ignorance, not on her. Nevertheless, here I am, a reasonably educated American, and I hadn’t heard of one of Britain’s best poets, until I came across the Guardian article while researching copyright issues. Says something about the market for poetry, no?

Life on Purpose: 15 Questions to Discover Your Personal Mission

Question 13: What causes do you strongly believe in? Connect with?

This is not an easy question, if only because I’ve been focussed on my own needs for so much of my life that I have not developed strong commitments to “causes.” But I’d say my strongest commitment is to “human flourishing.” This means I am committed to those things that promote human flourishing, and I’d say the strength of my commitments (to various causes) lies in the immediacy of their impact on individual human lives. So, while I am committed to environmental causes, to reducing my own footprint, etc., I am more committed to economic equality (or at least to the provision of some minimal level of economic security that permits one to have cares, concerns, outside of survival).

Life on Purpose: 15 Questions to Discover Your Personal Mission

Question 12: What were some challenges, difficulties and hardships you’ve overcome or are in the process of overcoming? How did you do it?

I think this question asks me to reveal more than I want to, in a public forum. Moreover, just because I’ve succeeded in overcoming difficulties, hardships, doesn’t mean I’d ever, in a million years, want to repeat any of it. I found no joy in the challenges and feel no sense of triumph in having overcome so much adversity. I’ve made peace with my past but I have no doubt I am the worse and not the better for what I’ve had to deal with in life, even if dealing with it has given me an opportunity to develop certain strengths, resilience, etc. I guess I don’t buy the whole Nietzschean philosophy; I don’t believe for a minute that what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. I am no longer bitter, angry, etc., but I do feel “weakened” by what I’ve gone through, diminished some how.

I think what’s really helped me in dealing with stuff, even stuff I should never have been asked to deal with, is learning to live and to speak my truth. I feel good when I do it, horrible when I don’t.

Of course there are ways to do it that get you where you want, and ways to do it that make everything worse. So I’ve learned to speak my truth calmly, not forcefully. It’s my truth, no one else’s, necessarily.