Building Up and Celebrating the Self through Visual Poetry and Creative Movement

It can be difficult to be open, to let yourself be vulnerable and at risk. Ready to fail. Open to criticism. Especially when you're young, and learning who you are, but it's even difficult as we age and are subjected to the droning messages of perfection. But when you are vulnerable, you are also open to moments of beauty. Moments of connection.

I've had two day-long sessions recently with students where we had the time to explore creative movement, writing, and our unique selves, both fragile and strong.

The second group, toward the end of the week, was with non-public middle school students. I introduced myself and the session, and let them know that we'd be writing some individual self-portraits. We'd also write countless group portraits by creating a kinetic poetry sculpture.

First we created anagrams from the letters in our names. I asked everyone to choose their favorite word from their name and then invited them to join me in a large circle in the back of the room. Each student created a movement to go with their name and word. As each person said their name and word and made their accompanying movement, it was repeated by the group, and then the next student took their turn, until we made it all the way around the circle. This never fails to illicit laughter, and is a great way to recall names.

  

We answered a series of open-ended questions, each student working on his or her own, and then we grouped up to discuss and report out some of the ideas and thoughts that were shared.

We read a self-portrait poem written by an 8th grade student, titled "The Strange Kid with the Red Face," and discussed the mood and tone of the poem, as well as all the different points of view the author used. 

We looked at some examples from the "This I Be" project, by photographer Steve Rosenfield, which explores the ideas of insecurity, vulnerability, and confidence.

We discussed some of our own insecurities, and then I modeled the trust fall with a friend who was in to audit my session. A couple of volunteers came up to give it a try. 

Whew! It's a little scary, letting yourself fall into a new friend's arms. Makes you feel open. A little vulnerable.

We wrote some of  our own "I am" and "I am not" statements, then shared them. I asked students to write an insecurity and a confidence on each hand. My insecurity is that I am clumsy. My confidence is that I am an encourager. My eyeliner pencils got a lot of sharpening this day, as everyone wrote and re-wrote, and shared.

There was a brief break in here to learn a circus (and life) skill -- balance! In particular, the balancing of feathers. We circled up, and everyone got a peacock feather and some instruction on keeping it balanced on the palm of the hand, the back of the hand, the chin -- there were a few who got their feathers to balance on their foreheads, too.

Credos, statements of belief, and creating metaphors and similes were our next bit of writing. We kept adding to our freewriting so we'd have enough content to work with when the time came for crafting a poem.

After reading another example of a self-portrait poem, we got to work writing our own, choosing the point of view, and spreading out all of our writing from the day -- the anagrams from our names, answers to the questions, I am/I am not statements, credos, and comparisons.

When the first drafts were done, we broke for lunch. Afterwards, we edited a bit, chose a few lines we wanted to use for the text transfer, and then we read a few poems out loud.

I showed the text transfer technique, and a few options for adding color to the blocks. Everyone set to work doing the typesetting of their phrases, adding layers of color to the blocks, and transferring their phrases to the blocks.

We gathered at the end of our session to arrange our blocks into different structures, and read what text appeared each time we rearranged. I asked everyone what they noticed about it.  

"It's a poem no matter where you read."

 

Lemon Cream Cheese Cardamom Cookies

I adapted a lemon cheesecake cookie recipe to create these. My mom loves lemon. So do I, but I didn't want all the sugar, so I cut the sugar by a half a cup, added cardamom, and replaced a sugary icing with a simple dark chocolate drizzle. They are delicious. The lemon shines without all the sugar, and the cardamom gives it the "what?!" that I like in baked goods.

Makes about 2 dozen cookies

1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon coarse salt
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup (one 8-ounce package) cream cheese, room temperature
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 teaspoons finely grated lemon zest
1/2 tsp. cardamom
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 large egg 

For the chocolate drizzle:
2 large squares of 63% dark chocolate

Preheat oven to 350°F.
Sift together flour, baking powder, and salt. Set aside.

Use the paddle attachment of an electric mixer to beat cream cheese and butter until smooth. Add sugar gradually, until it is light and fluffy. Add lemon zest, vanilla, and egg. On a low speed, add the dry ingredients and mix. Do not overmix. Chill in the refrigerator if the batter seems loose.

Line baking sheets with parchment paper, and drop tablespoonfuls of batter about 2-inches apart. The cookies don't really spread too much. They are cakey.

Bake for 12 to 15 minutes, and rotate the pans halfway through, until barely golden on the bottom. Do not overbake! Let cool on baking sheets for 5 minutes, then transfer to wire racks to cool completely.

Once the cookies are cool, melt the chocolate squares. Use a fork to drizzle the chocolate over the cookies.

Waiting for the Other Shoe to Drop

You can't stop time, but there are days I'd like to shut the expectations of the calendar off.

I do not want to sum up my past year in my nine best photos from Facebook. I do not want to come up with a word that perfectly encapsulates where I'm headed in 2016. Vision boards are just a reflection of the zoo of magazines you have in your bathroom. I am not in the mood to write 25 words that  spotlight my year, either, although it's a writing exercise that my sister does yearly and it's a fascinating challenge.

Network television and the internet today will be a firework of expectations and intentions. Helpful memes, handy lists, cute ideas like leaving notes for yourself in your sock drawer so you don't feel sad on Mondays. Fresh starts! Woo! Who doesn't love them? 

Everything in me says no to this right now, and my favorite word is an all capitals YES.

So, today I say YES to just being. It's ok for me to watch the squirrels peel bark off the tree in front of my window and wonder why they do it, to binge watch TED talks, and to eat the last three Welsh cookies without guilt or shame. It's ok for me to not participate in the forced march of bright displays of storage bins, or list making, or pork and sauerkraut wishes. It's ok to just be, to let the new year start quietly, maybe even sleep through it, because where I live now, they celebrate the last few minutes of the year by dropping a very large shoe.

A shoe. "Waiting for the other shoe to drop," is an idiom that came from tenement living in New York City. As one shoe makes a sound hitting the floor, the expectation for the other shoe to make a similar sound is created.

So we can assume that somewhere around here, there is another giant shoe, waiting to drop. We can spend the whole year waiting to hear that familiar sound, or we can spend it imagining that our upstairs neighbor is Lowly Worm.

Welsh Cookies

Stacked up, they are impressive!

First, get yourself out of the mindset that your Welsh Cookies will look anything like the ones you buy in the grocery stores or at church functions: those perfectly tanned, all uniform in size treats. You will have some burnt soldiers, some crumbly ones. This is what makes the world an interesting place. Broken cookies. Remind yourself of that as you eat them to hide the evidence that you can't keep your stovetop an even temperature.

Yield: About 2.5 to 3 dozen cookies. You will burn some. You will eat some. You will wonder why you doubled the recipe (original recipe is half of the ingredients below and says it yields same amount). Making them is a marathon of dialing back temp, timing, and wondering why you didn't thank every single grandma who made these back in NEPA. A friend tells me that an electric griddle works wonders if you have one. I don't.

Total Time: Carve out an afternoon, friends. The batter takes about 10 minutes to make. Refrigeration an hour (go do a couple of yoga sessions to pass the time, you'll need the peace),  and cooking time is the better part of your afternoon. At least another hour. Unless you're really efficient, in which case, I'm afraid we can't be friends.

Ingredients:

4 cups all-purpose flour
1.5 cup sugar, plus more for sprinkling
5 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoon finely grated orange zest
2 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
1 teaspoon fine salt
1 cup unsalted butter (2 sticks), cold and diced, plus more for cooking
1.5 cup currants (a box)
4 large eggs, slightly beaten
4 to 6 tablespoons milk
Melted butter, for cooking (about a stick, not kidding)

Directions:

Whisk the flour, sugar, baking powder, zest, nutmeg and salt in a medium bowl. Rub in the butter with your fingertips until the mixture looks sandy. This part is fun, fun, fun! Messy. I like to think of all the people who say "Made with love!" when really they mean, "My hands were all over this! I swear I washed them!" 

Stir in the currants. They look like beady little eyes. Beat the eggs and 4 tablespoons of the milk together. Stir into the dry ingredients to make a shaggy dough, add more milk if the dough is dry. Gather dough into a lump, wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 1 hour. Go do your yoga. Breathe.

Roll the dough on a floured workspace into a piece about 1/4-inch thick. Cut into 2 to 3- inch rounds.

Heat a griddle (I tried our cast iron one and it got too  hot) or frying pan (non-stick worked best) over medium-low heat. Brush the pan surface with butter. Cook the cookies until slightly brown and cooked through, about 4 to 5 minutes on each side. They rise like little pancakes. Transfer to a rack, sprinkle with sugar and cool. Stack them up and take a photo for your Instagram followers. Store the cookies in a cookie tin.

So Far Away, So Close

How a room transforms with the sound of a lone voice, reading aloud from a book written seventy years ago. What a respite from the constant intrusion of thoughts -- "we need a new coffeepot" -- "did I pack the wig?" -- "I wonder what  she meant by that comment?" Absolute relief is found in language that thrums with its ability to make you laugh one moment and cry the next.

Yesterday as I made a long drive, the grey road collecting underneath the wheels of the car, I asked myself to recall some happy Christmases. It was a hobbled attempt at cheering myself. There have been many happy Christmases in my lifetime, so I figured I'd find solace there, and I flipped through the mental files for some specificity, looking for the file folder marked, "Dancing to Rock Lobster in Front of the Tree," or "The Scent of Mushrooms and Onions." I found a parade of garlands, ornaments unpacked and squealed over (that green sequin bell my sister made with its little pearl ringer),  but I was unable to linger in any reverie for as long as I wished.

I passed a cellphone tower disguised as the world's tallest silo and swerved into thoughts about communication. Do I owe it to my "followers" my "audience" my "friends" (are they even friends, they just follow my posts, and even then I'm not sure if they do, they probably have unfollowed by now, disgusted by all my hoopla and poetry), to share my loss, disappointment, feelings of helplessness? No. I'll save that for the people I see on a regular basis, the ones who care. I should meet with them over coffee. I'll email them. Email? Call them? I don't want to talk about it at all right now.

At the end of my grey road thoughts was a performance with a variety show, the welcome transformation into another person for a couple of hours, the glee of engaging and interacting with an audience, and dinner with a friend, who I shared my sadness with over a plate heaped with spinach. Iron brings strength.

Then there was the road back home with the radio blaring, the wash off of makeup. Brewed tea, sagging eyelids, vapor of thought curling out.

I woke up this morning, and instead of my usual early writing ritual (I am so tired of my own clouds), I made myself some coffee, picked up a favorite book, and came back to bed to read. At first I read to myself, but the words were so musical I had to hear them, and I began reading out loud, to no one. The room shared the story with me. Somewhere in the middle of a sentence about a man who fears the titles of medical books, I started to cry.

All the folders of specificity were open now. Awake too early to go downstairs to the glitter under the tree, I'd climb into bed with my sister, and she'd read to me. The physical closeness, and the words of L. Frank Baum, or Lewis Carroll, or Laura Ingalls Wilder, the sound of the coffeepot being brought to life downstairs by our mother, were all served up from the filing cabinet in the part of my brain that was inaccessible to me just the day before. My own voice, which is my sister's voice. Christmas past, present, future. My sister, always so far away and so close.

Rubiayat of Memory

This is to say we remember,
not that it brings diamonds back. September
blew in and made a swirling exit,
leaves curled in the fire. You watched embers

float away, and let them. You hope your wits
won't do the same. Memory? Bullshit's
compass. There is a kind of beauty
without it, in forgetting, a benefit

in submerging your papers in a stream
to see the ink wash away. It seems
to me, well, what use are words anyway?
Mine thrum on repeat, a pattern, my bloodstream

of familiar family stories. So dear
one day I will mix and match, premiere
my latest work: a collage of December's
blankest pages, a trembling chandelier.
--

This is definitely not a true rubiayat. I followed the interlocking pattern, but discarded the pentameter (or tetrameter) rules of meter. Meter be damned -- at least in this poem.

We spent an evening with a friend from Iran recently, and he talked about the The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. The Rubáiyát  is a translation of a selection of poems, originally written in Persian and numbering about a thousand, attributed to Omar Khayyám (1048–1131), a Persian poet, mathematician, and astronomer. A thousand poems!

Apartment of Regret, 1988

There was one outlet. I had to unplug the fishtank to work the coffeepot.

The carpeting smelled like a layer cake of beer.

The apartment across from mine was gorgeous, with pocket doors, a stained glass window, and the memory of my best friend. She was the reason I moved into the building in the first place. She moved out the summer I signed my lease, having lived there a year, and was fed up with the landlord.

My place was furnished with a 1950s chrome dinette set. The bedroom had a bed with a white vinyl headboard that had brass pins pushed into it, giving it a pillowed effect. It was hard.

My other furniture was wicker and it creaked. I never sat in it.

The gas oven would occasionally send out a firebomb of flames from under the broiler as you lit it. My cat was almost singed. I considered complaining, but wasn't supposed to have a cat.

A collection of poetry, discarded in the doorway among some dried leaves, became part of my permanent book collection. From it I memorized, "Music When Sweet Voices Die," by Shelley, ripe with sentimentality, and "This Be The Verse," by Philip Larkin, which I can still recite if prompted.

My landlord: a tub of a man who clipped his toenails at the desk of his main floor real estate office, who didn't like me entertaining any man in the apartment, and who I discovered once, during a thunderstorm, out on the roof by my bedroom window.

The rent was too much.

The adjoining building, also owned by the same man, had a series of rooms like a prairie dog den that were rented by the week. There was a shared kitchen and bathroom. The hall that led to the shared kitchen had an old upright piano in it, with a few missing keys.

Letters from my sister, living in Pittsburgh at the time, arrived in a mailbox at the bottom of the stairwell. I looked forward to the little sketches in her letters, and her neat handwriting.

During the year I lived there, I shopped for groceries at the Acme within walking distance, and only bought items that were a dollar or less: ramen, margarine, frozen vegetables, mac and cheese, yoghurt. I was 19 and thought I'd live forever.

My neighbors had a snake for a pet. A big one. One morning on my way out to class, he said, "Hey, the snake got loose. Keep an eye out for it." I worried about my cat all day.

One of the single room renters was a young man named Mike, who had no family nearby, and he often didn't have food. Once a week or so he'd come over to my apartment and I'd make mac and cheese with hot dogs in it, or get fancy and make my sister's ramen noodle stir-fry. We'd sit on the floor of my living room and eat and talk.

One bare lightbulb lit the stairwell. 40 watt. Squint.

Mike was simple. No pretense. He wasn't without intelligence, definitely street smart, but wasn't much of a reader. He was tall, dark haired, soft eyed, and kind. He had no family to visit on Thanksgiving or Christmas, which meant he was alone in the prairie dog den on holidays.

On Sundays I watched The Gary Shandling Show on my little black  and white 12" television.

I forget what Mike and I talked about as we ate mac and cheese, but I felt good about myself for inviting him over, the poor guy with no family.

The phone was in the kitchen. I made weekly calls to my grandmothers. One week I was recording music from the college radio station on cassette, and forgot to shut it off so I recorded my half of the conversation with my grandmother, Romayne. The music ends, and then you hear me dialing, and saying hello, and all the kitchen clinks and clanks as I did the dishes, and my responses to her.

I remember feeling guilty for not inviting Mike home with me for Christmas or Thanksgiving. I thought it was safer that way. You know, he might fall in love with me. I was doing us a favor, saving us both a very awkward future situation. I gave him my mac and cheese and thought it was enough.

I hung my college level artwork. My colorful scarves. The poster of New York. My future.

I played it safe and breezy.

Grime on every surface I tried to clean off.

Odor of loneliness.

"It Sucks To Be Me" Chicken Pot Pie

It helps to start with a November mind. A few shaggy and grey thoughts, blustery with maybes and indecision, plus a dash of stress. Maybe because the Department of State won't recognize  the legal document that states your election to resume your maiden name, so your passport application is delayed. Maybe it's a big stress, or a small thing that digs in like one of those metal frame corners under your fingernails. Feeling it? You're ready to allow yourself the luxury of feeling sorry for yourself and to start cooking. Frustration and slightly cooler weather is key. If you don't have both, save this recipe for later.

Serves: Several saggy souls. Have some containers for leftovers.

Ingredients:

1 chicken, fully cooked
8 carrots
1 med. onion
3 stalks celery
4 small red potatoes
4 c. chicken or vegetable broth

For the noodles:

2 c. all-purpose flour
2 medium eggs
dash of salt
splash of water (as needed)

For the optional roux:

3 tbsp flour
1/4 - 1/2 c. water
splash of milk

Directions:

Bake a chicken.

What? I thought this was going to be an easy recipe! I don't have time to bake a chicken! I'm sad and frustrated and have had a long day.

Do you want this to taste good? Quit whinging and bake a chicken (it takes about an hour in a 350 degree oven), and while it's baking you can work on the rest of the chopping and mixing of noodle dough. Or you can phone it in and get one of those sad and wrinkly baked-for-your-covenience chickens that's been sitting in a plastic bag on a warmer for four hours and suffer the culinary consequences. Up to you.

While your chicken is in the oven, put on some music that makes you want to dance, and cut your carrots into rounds, dice up the celery and onion, and cube the potatoes. I like to arrange the rounds and little vegetable pieces into a pattern on the cutting board, just for fun. Playing with your food is ok, and no one needs to know, unless you photograph the design and post it to your Instagram feed. Hey, "Lovely Day" by Bill Withers is on! Groove.

Saute the vegetables in a little bit of oil at the bottom of a deep pot. I like to use a Dutch oven. When the onions are transparent, add the broth, put a lid on the pot, and let it simmer for awhile as you make the noodles.

The noodles are simple, and I learned this gift of a recipe from my friend Robin. Put the flour into a medium bowl, crack the two eggs into a small bowl and whisk with a fork. Add the eggs to the flour, and use the fork to mix. Add the dash of salt. When it starts to hang together, add a little water until a shaggy mass forms. Spread some flour onto a clean surface, and roll the dough out until it is about 1/8" thick. The noodles will puff up a bit in the broth as they cook. If you want them thicker, roll them out thicker. Cut into whatever shapes you like — squares are traditional. I have a circle cutter I use. Cookie cutters work — why not have hearts and giraffes?
When you're done cutting, lay the noodles out on a cookie sheet lined with some parchment or wax paper so they don't stick.

Chicken done? Let it cool a bit and peel the meat off the bones. Save the bones for making chicken broth. Put them in a bag and stick them in the freezer if you can't do it tomorrow.

Check the doneness of the veggies in the broth by actually tasting them. Don't just poke at them with a fork. Indulge in taste-testing. They should be done by now.

If they aren't done, or the chicken is still cooling, take a walk. It's November, so it's windy, and it will air you out. The trees are calligraphic against the sky, see?

When you're back from your walk, add the chicken pieces to the broth, and the noodles. Bring the broth up to a low bubble and let it gurgle for about 10 minutes. If you have larger noodles, stir occasionally to make sure they aren't sticking together. Add the roux to thicken the broth just a bit. You don't have to do this step if you don't want to, it's just an added bit of comfort that I like.

Serve in bowls. Light a candle for the table. Put your phone away, don't take photos of your food. Just eat, and enjoy. It's not quite so bad now, is it?

American Echo

It is simple to make your opinion known if
you have a Facebook account or Twitter. There
but for the grace of god go we, smug are
our memes, the filtered photos that prove our gods
have or haven't failed us. Did you see that they
changed our precious logo? The nerve. Our favor
runs solely on Dunkin, or let champagne flow for us
only, since it cures dementia, did you hear? We all
want to remember forever what we shared to
each other's walls, how we became our own brand of death.
--
A variation of the French form, Bref Double a l'Echo, which I learned years ago and fell in love with for the challenge of writing to the end words without it sounding forced. I came to this poem by reading about grace this morning, then looking up the word grace in Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (I wanted the idea of grace notes in here, but the quote of the martyr John Bradford ended up in here instead), and by having a stew of opinions in my head from my morning newsfeed. Boy am I tired of the internet, and everyone's opinion, including my own. It shows in this poem.

Being Here

The wind sweeps her breath
into my room,
a cloud of seedpods and earth.

Browned leaves chitter shiver
on their final branches,
arms reach foreverly.

A bird squees, a dog howls,
and sunblush spreads across
the bark of the black ash.

Interruption or preference,
the light and sounds
of dawn?

Meditate on the protective barn,
the unscreened window
that invites all inside,

and lift your eyes to listen,
scrub your mind to listen,
to hear, you're here.
--

This poem is as close to a triversen as I could get this morning. A Native American form of variable accentuals is the triversen stanza, which was developed by William Carlos Williams and a number of others. One stanza equals one sentence. Williams was after the breath pause -- breaking the line or sentence into phrasal lines. My version very lightly kisses this idea. He also spoke of the variable foot -- each line could vary in length, carrying from two to four stressed syllables.

Who Is Your Audience?

Pleased to meet you. I'm Chintz Davenport. But you can call me Chintzy. All of my friends do.

I performed for three hours in a furniture store on Saturday. I did no harm. I broke no lamps. I was paid well.

When I gave the store employee making the sale announcements my stage name, he didn't flinch.

Bouquets of mylar balloons bloomed from nearly every corner of the store, and a whiteboard with timed sales events greeted customers at the front door. I've learned not to carry in any hoops, props, or the amp until I've figured out exactly where I'll be in the venue, so I walked in, all rainbow wig and socks, found a sales associate, and asked for directions. I was in the Smith room. The furniture in that room, which was ringed with hundreds of hanging upholstery samples, hadn't been moved. There was no space for hooping in there yet. The woman who booked me arranged the room with a coworker, and once all the mirrors and shelving units were out of the way, I was set with a space that was suitable. Not ideal, but suitable. I had no idea the fireplace I was next to was motion-activated, but about 15 minutes into starting, bathed in sweat, I found another sales associate to help me turn it off.

Pro-tip: When performing in furniture stores, make sure you're not near the motion-sensored fireplaces.

My amp was loud enough to drown out the Muzak in the Smith room, and as long as I didn't stray from my spot or turn down my volume, I didn't have to endure Barry Manilow. It was a slow sale day. The weather was bright and beautiful. Everyone was probably out picking pumpkins, or sipping cider and thinking about their Halloween costumes. It was difficult not to feel just a little bit silly in my getup, with all my hoops, performing in the middle of a mostly empty furniture store.

The employees stood in the middle of the first floor, waiting for customers to come in, and they were in the direct line of sight of my performance space, so they watched from a distance, and chatted. The woman who hired me came over, but not too close, took a photo, said "Got it!" and turned and walked away. I thought, 
Well that wasn't the best I can do for a photo, so I did a four-split and held it for a minute. I waited for her to notice, but she never did because she was looking at her phone and then talking with a coworker.

About forty feet away from me was a complimentary nacho bar, replete with sour cream, salsa, and cheese. There were a couple of employees who hung out there exclusively for most of the day, and walked past to say "Wow, that's cool," or "Now that's a neat trick!" as they crunched their chips. One of the Nacho Cheer Squad helped me out with the fireplace.

Every hour or so, there was an announcement over the loudspeaker:

Welcome customers! From 2 to 4 p.m. enjoy an additional $100 off any sectional leather sofa during this one time only sale! And make sure to visit the Smith room to see Chintz Davenport, hula hoop specialist!

A few people came over to watch, and interact, and they all had children. The rest either looked past me as if I were a garish highboy they would never buy, or pretended I wasn't there (probably sending up quiet prayers they wouldn't be hit with a wild hoop) as they lifted the tag on the storage ottoman that was right behind me.

An employee walked over to give me regular reports on when there was a child in the store who might be interested in hooping. "There's a little girl in here. She's wearing pink pants. Her name is Elise. If you see her, say her name. That will wow her."

I never saw Elise. Ok. The pay was good, but where was my audience?

And then eleven year old Sarah came over. She told me all about how the circus came to her school and taught them all how to balance peacock feathers. I had feathers in my suitcase. "This is the best furniture store ever!" she said. "I didn't want to come shopping today, but now I'm glad I did."

We hooped together, balanced feathers, and I showed her the Toroflux, which engaged her imagination for a full twenty minutes. She imagined she was a magician, and her showmanship was spectacular.

There are days (all of them) when I doubt what I do, but I'm reminded plenty that I'm there for someone. Sometimes my audience is an audience of one, and that person has my full attention, and I get to put all my energy into them. I really see that person, and they really see me, or they see me as Chintz, the circus performer who magically appeared in the furniture store just for her.

Sarah was my audience on Saturday. I was also her audience as she performed her Toroflux magic.

What's that? Just looking for a sofa. Mmm. Yes, that sofa looks like it will survive with a toddler in the house. No, I'm not sure where the bathroom is. You weren't expecting to see a hula hoop specialist in the middle of the furniture store today? Well, life sure is full of things we weren't expecting. Oh yeah, I'm sure I'm right where I belong today.

Time and Time and Time Again, Hello

When we moved from the city to the countryside this summer our belongings and furniture heaved a collective sigh of "Oh good, we can just be ourselves now, that apartment was too swank for us." Among those belongings was a wall clock that belonged to my grandmother. It never worked since it was in my ownership, and so hung on the wall with the rest of the art, a sort of homage to time. 

Dan is always doing thoughtful things, and he loves to make things work, so he ordered a new movement for the clock, and a new pendulum, and now the clock sings the Westminster chimes on the hour. It has made me hyper aware of the passage of time. It also made me fill up my grandmother's candy dish. Why not? I need caramels. We are now the couple with the chiming clock and candy dish that is always filled. 

Sometimes when the clock sings, I hear: "You're getting old/the time is now/get off your butt/you lazy cow." Ow. The part of my brain that enjoys making up lyrics, impromptu musicals, and jingles can be a real meanypants smartass. But she also has a point.

The ancient Greeks had two words for time, chronos and kairos. Chronos refers to chronological or sequential time, and kairos signifies a time lapse, a moment of indeterminate time in which everything happens. I think of kairos as spiritual time. Chronos is quantitative, but kairos is qualitative. Kairos, to me, is time well spent. Chronos is a demanding schedule.

We say we "spent time" working on a new logo or cooking a meal. Spending is a good word for it, because time is a currency. It's an odd bank account where you never see your balance. No one wants to think of what number remains on the statement. Is it close to zero? Have I been squandering what I have left?

Unitasking is kairos. You are focused, in the moment, and working on one thing at a time. You are appreciative. You're in the flow state, or what some people call "the zone." Kids are brilliant at hanging out in kairos. They are unitaskers by nature. I love spending time with children, because it is time well-spent. My mother is also a unitasker. I love spending time with her, too. I learn from her.

Multitasking is chronos. When you find yourself saying, "I have to go to the cleaners, and then pick up that script, and run to the post office ... oooh ... maybe I can get a few more hours of that volunteer data entry in after that and get it finished," you're in chronos. Chronos can feel like an infinite loop. It's an endless to-do list, where you don't have time to appreciate the little things, like the wooly worm on the sidewalk.

This morning I made a list of things I consider chronos, and things I consider kairos, and it was interesting to see that some overlap. Riding a swing is kairos, but the pendulum nature of the movement throws it into the chronos zone. Cooking a meal is kairos, but then there's the chronos of coordinating the cooking times.

If you've ever been in a casino, shopping mall, or grocery store, you've been manipulated into thinking there is no time. They are all designed to put you into what you think is a state of kairos, but it's really chronos as you flit from aisle to gleaming aisle (or game to game) like a drunk bumblebee.

Jenny's List of Kairos Activators

looking at the sky
reading a good book
listening to someone's story
puppet shows
live theatre
the symphony
creating art
sex
writing (not journalism)
reading a letter
taking a walk
floating on your back on a lake (especially good if still wearing a dress)
giving birth
daydreaming
imaginative play
taking off stage makeup
baking bread, a cake, or cookies
playing a game with a child
improv
performing (the moments I'm performing, not leading up to it)
meditating and coloring 
riding a swing
stargazing
holding the hands of someone dying
looking into another person's eyes and really seeing
watching the ocean waves
swimming
library and bookstore browsing
eating a really great meal
dancing alone
dancing with a partner
typing with a typewriter
playing piano
helping someone who needs it
hooping with a stack of hoops, or just one, or an invisible hoop
listening to wind in trees
wiggling my fingers in a jar of buttons, or a bag of rice, or a sack of marbles
pretty much anything in nature, with the exception of being chased by a wild animal, that's definitely chronos, chronos with fangs and claws.

Jenny's List of Chronos Activators

data entry
webinars
being in an online social network
my smartphone, which is not "smart" 
the computer (software, organizing files, all of it)
being alone
packing for a big trip
late night worrying
dentist visits
waiting rooms
H&R Block
car maintenance
government offices
meetings
television 
my iPad
YouTube
being ill
worrying about being ill, or losing your memory
air travel

These aren't comprehensive lists, and if you've read all the way through this far I owe you something. Like a hug. Oh, hugs! Hugs are kairos. So is eating a caramel from the candy dish.


 



 

A True Story

Not looking for an ocean
or a river
            You can skip this video in 3 seconds
Not looking for a lake
smashing placidity against sky
            This window will close in 2 seconds
You found rain over cornfields
so cried and waved back
            This list will tell you what to believe
Dusk has a way of emerging
in the droplets of memory
            Click to begin the slideshow
Looking for what was real
from global connectivity
you found sponsored content
            The Surprising Cost of Not Taking a Vacation
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            Can You Make It Through This Post Without Smiling?
Today, the window is open
the sill is wet,
a leaf slicked its way inside
            Your brand is a storyteller
You are here, a person.
Agony, agony! Fermenting
dreams! Always looking.
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Write your name in the sand
and watch the tide come in.
That is a true story.

Who Do You Think You Are?

She's such a show-off, she said from the other room. She just wants attention.

I was making a doll in a sparkly red dress juke about in the doorway, to entertain my teenage babysitter and her friends. It didn't have the desired effect. I was about three or four years old. They were probably fifteen, and so didn't want to be bothered with dancing dolls. I knew by her tone that a show-off wasn't good. A show-off was a bad person. So I stopped.

I stopped and pulled on the knit hat of shyness. I kept my dancing dolls, circuses, radio programming, imaginary television shows (where I was the host, of course!), restaurants, and beauty parlors limited to the confines of my bedroom and to the audience of my family when I felt an audience was needed. My family was encouraging. No one ever said, "Who do you think you are ... Carol Burnett?" when I did my mudlizard impressions at the dinner table. We all joined the theatre together, right around when I was fourteen or fifteen, the same age my babysitter was when she called me a show-off. Being among other "show-offs," I took off the knit hat. It was stifling under there.

The question 'Who do you think you are?" is a really great one if asked without a tone of disapproval. When you erase the tone from it, and just allow the question to bring about a thoughtful answer, it is fun to consider. Who do you think you are? hints at Who do you want to be? What are you testing out, trying on, or discovering?