Loose Leaf Notes

1. Lately, writing poetry feels like putting meat on bones.

2. The framework built over the years is in place and now I’m getting to the meat of the matter.

3. Happiness is what you make it / An easy fix that’s worth it / It’s a promise you can’t keep / that’s closer than you think – Read The Enticement in its entirety HERE.

4. I’m suspicious of happy / because it rhymes with sappy / It often follows slap / and rarely lasts / It reminds me of jolly / which rhymes with folly / and makes me think of giddy / which is often followed with up

5. Best comment last week on my poem Enticement from my poet friend Ron, “This poem makes me feel like a room without a roof; clapping because happiness is the truth.”

6. My Soulful Aging Tour collaborator Katherine Chantal read from one of her poetry books. She spoke of our next Soulful Aging series theme “Fairy Godmother’s Midnight and the Art of Archetypes,” which we will be sharing at this year’s Little River Poetry Festival, Floyd Yoga Jam and wherever else we might be invited to read. – More from our reading at the Taubman Museum for the Artemis Journal HERE.

7. Recently I posted a favorite line on the topic of ‘who are you?’  “You are a temporary localization of infinite consciousness.” – Rupert Spira

8. Here’s another one by Spira: “The Universe is an activity, not an entity.”

9. Poetry is a dousing tool for depth psychology and for mining the inner gold.

10. “Basically, you re-create the outside world inside yourself, and then you live in your mind. What if you decided not to do this? If you decide not to narrate and, instead, just consciously observed the world, you will feel more open and exposed. This is because you really don’t know what will happen next, and your mind is accustomed to helping you. It does this by processing your current experiences in a way that makes them fit with your views of the past and visions of the future. All of this helps to create a semblance of control. If you mind doesn’t do this, you simply become too uncomfortable. Reality is just to real for most of us, so we temper it with the mind.” – From The Untethered Soul, the Journey Beyond Yourself by Mickey Singer, who Joe and I met a couple of weeks ago in Gainesville.

11. My Rumi calendar for March says “Now all my old beliefs are gone! Your burning love blows the lid right off, crying: Don’t you see what’s real is real and what’s not is really not.”

12. All this for a guy who didn’t think he accomplished much in life, a guy who, when I asked him, “Jim do you think you’d try for a liver transplant if you need it?” answered, “No, give it to someone who enjoys life!” A guy who, when asked by Kathy with a video camera, “Who are you?” answered with a laugh, “A loser.”  A guy whose key chain read, “Not a happy camper.” -From my book The Jim and Dan Stories, a memoir about two of my brothers who died a month apart in 2001.  More HERE.

13. “Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length.” – Robert Frost

__________Thirteen Thursday