Category Archives: talks

This afternoon, I wanted to take a nap but got up and ran on my minitrampoline while watching TED talks on vulnerability, shame, and the brain.

(that’s probably too much running after not having done it in a year…)

This evening I needed to make some food for breakfasts and lunches for the rest of the week, so I prepared:
– hard boiled eggs
– roasted sweet potatoes
– Gujarati carrot salad
– rice with ghee, tamari, and nutritional yeast
– 10 grain cereal with dried fruit, nuts, butter, and maple syrup

While doing all that and the dishes, listened to:
– Ray Olson: 02-12-2012: Zazenkai: The Great Escape: Breaking out of the Prisons of our Minds
– Kaz Tanahashi: 01-25-12: Joy Density

Tonight I did some mild cleaning and listened to two talks from Upaya Zen Center:

• Natalie Goldberg: 2-29-12: Shut Up and Write
• Jimmy Santiago Baca: 02-22-2012: Awakening Through Writing: Poetry with Dance

I want to make writing more of a practice. For years, I wrote daily, but when I started full time work over two years ago, I let that go. It takes time, but it is and always has been so necessary to the way that I operate. I know my deep self, my wild mind, my soul better when I write on a regular basis.

Goldberg talked about the importance of sticking to something. Baca spoke about the words pushing you out so that you reinvent yourself in space.

I know about meaning-making. Documenting. Amplifying. Sifting-through.

But where to write? What to write? With what intent? That doesn’t matter right now. Shut up and write. On a regular basis.

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If I were suddenly shrunk to the size of a bug, the last bird I’d want to see is the American Robin.

This after watching one disembowel a cicada last summer, and another peck at an earthworm last week.