Excerpts from Tao of Pooh

I have talked often about what I don't believe in, but not so much about what I do believe. One of the most important things that I believe is about balance. I am most at peace in myself when I am balanced...in all the different aspects of my life. I came across this book, The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Huff when I very dear friend recommended it. I was in a place in my life where most of my illusions and beliefs of childhood had been washed away in a very painful and difficult time. I found myself left with nothing other than the question "Why?" Well as most people have learned, regardless of belief systems, "why" is one question that is very often left unanswered. After reading this book, which was a delight to read, one of the main concepts I was immediately left with was the understanding that the question really isn't "Why is this happening", but "How am I going to react to this". I cannot control many things that come into or bombard my life, but I can control how I react and how they affect me. I see so many people around me who are full of negativity and the bits of negativity feed on each other until their whole life is one large crisis. Often there are legitimate negative things happening in their lives, things they have no control over, but they loose sight of the fact that they control how they react and to what degree they allow these things to subsume their lives--the Eeyore complex in the world of the Hundred Acre Woods.

"Hallo, Eeyore," they called out cheerfully.
"Ah!" said Eeyore. "Lost your way?"
"We just came to see you," said Piglet. "And to see how your house was. Look. Pooh, it's still standing!"
"I know," said Eeyore. "Very odd. Somebody out to have come down and pushed it over."
"We wondered whether the wind would blow it down," said Pooh.
"Ah, that's why nobody's bothered, I suppose. I thought perhaps they'd forgotten."

My personal balance wrecker at the moment is the Bisy Backson trouble, like in Christopher Robin's note:

GON OUT
BACKSON
BISY
BACKSON.
C.R.

It's noted that if you want to be healthy, relaxed, and contented, do the opposite of the Bisy Backson people. Don't run around with your head cut off, don't schedule every moment of your day, don't stretch yourself thin, don't always be looking around the next corner for good things. So, its time for me to get out of the Bisy Backson club and back into the Pooh club.

Summation of
The Tao of Pooh
by Kelly Bowron 1996

Life is ever shifting,
changing,
turning
moving;
a mountain river tumbling,
smooth, than rapids churning.

People go along, struggling,
climbing,
scrambling,
falling;
anxious of their footing,
fear of loosing, failing.

The wise move along, floating,
changing,
turning,
moving,
following the changes, drifting,
ever learning-- living.

What is the worth of the soul? Is the worth of a soul high enough that you would forgo life here and now in order to assure it a good place in the hereafter? Or is the worth of a soul low enough that it is better to let the soul die inside of you then to step out of the ruts and live life how you feel it needs to be lived in order to survive. Maybe a better question would be, what is a soul. To qualify my remarks I would have to say that my definition of the soul is that it is the essence of who you are, the body merely being the shell and tool of the soul whereby it gathers information through the senses.

Based on this definition then, what is the worth of the soul? Well, anytime a merchant is determining the worth of something, I would suppose he or she would use some basic techniques to determine that worth. They would need to determine the value of the object to those who may be appreciating or purchasing it. So right off we can see that worth can be a very transient thing. Let us take, for an example, a baseball card. Now, if anyone were to come to me and hold up a baseball card and say to me, “This is a such and such card, its worth is $150.00, but I am willing to sell it to you for $100.00”. I would simply raise my eyebrows and probably start to laugh because to me, that little baseball card does not have even the $100.00 value. However, to a baseball card collector, the value, and hence the worth of the card would likely match the seller’s.

Based on this then, is the worth of the soul and its value dependent on other people? Not necessarily, the worth of the soul would be judged on whose shoulders you place the determining of its value. If, for example, you decide that the value of your soul is determined by people around you, then you will never decide what the worth of your soul is because to different people it will be valued differently. My conclusion being that you need to find the worth of your own soul and that its value is determined by yourself and whether others around you accept the value and hence the worth of your soul is not important. Perhaps once we find the value of our own souls, we can learn to value the incredible diversity of those around us and society could only grow stronger.

A dream from 1996:

For a brief moment the world spins and I feel myself on the verge of chaos... then I regain my balance and open my eyes to...

Nothing moves, nothing touches my senses, no sound, no sight, no breeze upon my skin... the absence of everything begins to press about me, then out of the nothingness comes the gentle sound of shepherd’s pipes, their tone so pure and perfectly pitched that tears begin to well up in my eyes. The melody wraps itself around me like a delicate spider web, capturing me as sure as if it had been chains. Almost unnoticed, a deep soothing harmony slips in, working into my skin, seeping into my blood, whispering to me and singing to me of life itself. The song blends together and sweeps me along, the tempo and intensity building up, different sounds, each as pure as the one before it, slip into my soul. A deep pulsing races upward, my heart struggling to keep time to what can only be the very heartbeat of time itself until I touch a point where I know I must explode from the intensity...

In a heartrending wrench the music is gone, and I feel with certainty that my soul must have been pulled out with it and I open my eyes to see what death looks like...
Velvet black. I stand in the midst of a field of stars, there is no up or down, no sense of perspective, simply blackness sprinkled with a myriad of lights. Slowly as I watch around me, I see a spectacular silent dance going on in the very stars and I am awed as I see the song that I had only heard before. My senses begin to reel as they are washed over, seeing the dance of stars for what it is... the patterns of life, all of the ‘what is’ and ‘what could have beens’, the ‘what was’ and the multitudes of ‘what may be’ and I begin to fall, spiraling ever downward through a sea of infinite possibilities...

The sensation of falling stops abruptly as my body is blasted by an onslaught of sensations that it had forgotten in the eternity of the past moments...
Soft grasses caress my skin as a breeze blows gently around me.
I hear the rustle of leaves and the scurrying of life around me. The smell of wildflowers lingers as the breeze moves by and the taste of warm damp earth invades my mouth. I open my eyes to a dazzling palette of colors; rich greens roll out before me sprinkled with patches of vivid purple and yellow flowers. Deep browns rise up from the grass then burst full of many hues of green leaves then turn into the softest blue of the sky blanketing over it all. LIFE moves around me, a cycle of living and dying and decaying, then life springing from the decay to rise anew... I hear the song and see the dance and rest at peace and simply... live.

Silence
12/13/96

Silence, sweet silence,
Like a cloak of midnight black,
Slips over my soul
As I walk an endless track.
Sweet, sweet silence.

An ebon tunnel
Through an eternity of stars,
That wraps around my mind
Against the bright light noise that jars.
Oh, sweet silence.

Not for me the light
Of piercing pain or joys,
But for a single moment
Give me freedom from the noise.
Calm, sweet silence.

So rich a quiet
As to almost be a sound;
My soul, drained by chaos,
Can revive as it is drowned.
Sweet, sweet silence.

Copyright @ Kelly Bowron

We went to Niagara Falls this weekend, on the Canadian side. I had been as a 13 year old, but I remembered all the cheesy things...the tourist trap street full of Ripley's Believe It or Not, Movie Star Wax Museum, and etc. etc. etc. A winding street of bright lights and amazing things. So I came back to the falls, excited, but with a bit of skepticism over the cheesiness of the whole place. One look out the hotel window and I was awe struck. Still, standing in line to go on the Maid of the Mist ferry ride, I was still skeptical. Crowds of people lined the boat all sporting see through blue plastic bag parkas with cameras and video cameras clutched in hand. I followed my husband quickly to get the prime spot and made out to be enthusiastic. Been there, done that, as my daughter would say.

I was wrong, I was bowled over by the sheer enormity of being in the middle of the horseshoe falls being whipped about, soaked to the skin, and deafened by the roar of so much water cascading so close by. Grinning from ear to ear and water running down my face, the boat turned to head back out of the fall area and I was once again floored. I was instantly glad of the water running down my face because it hid the tears as I looked at the most perfect rainbow, beginning and end. The end of the rainbow wasn't over there behind that cloud, or down the next street, or in the next town, but right in front of me down in the water. I cannot tell you how many "End of the Rainbow" finding expeditions I went on as a child, as many times as there were rainbows to be seen. Here I was, 35 years old and I had found a rainbow with both ends in sight. So while my kids squeezed their eyes shut to make a wish on the best wishing rainbow ever, I could only grin and cry. I know rainbows are made from light refracting the water, I know that anyone can make a rainbow with some cut glass or a crystal, but for that moment I ignored the logic and simply enjoyed the pure magic of rainbow--then I grabbed my camera:

Religion is an issue I mull over a lot. For the most part because it played such an integral part of shaping who I was. This seems to be poetry week, so I'll throw in a poem that sums up my take on religion:

Progress
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Let there be many windows to your soul,
That all the glory of the universe
May beautify it. Not the narrow pane
Of one poor creed can catch the radiant rays
That shine from countless sources. Tear away
The blinds of superstition; let the light
Pour through fair windows broad as Truth itself
And high as God.

Why should the spirit peer
Through some priest-curtained orifice, and grope
Along dim corridors of doubt, when all
The splendor from unfathomed seas of space
Might bathe it with the golden waves of Love?
Sweep up the debris of decaying faiths;
Sweep down the cobwebs of worn-out beliefs,
And throw your soul wide open to the light
Of Reason and of Knowledge. Tune your ear
To all the wordless music of the stars
And to the voice of Nature, and your heart
Shall turn to truth and goodness as the plant
Turns to the sun. A thousand unseen hands
Reach down to help you to their peace-crowned heights,
And all the forces of the firmament
Shall fortify your strength. Be not afraid
To thrust aside half-truths and grasp the whole.

I love the sound and the taste of that last, "Be not afraid to thrust aside half-truths and grasp the whole." Its all very liberating and very resounding. Yet I still have a respect for people who choose to walk the path of one faith, one religion, and when I'm being very honest with myself...I am envious of them at times. There is a comfort in faith. In surety that someone, or something is watching over and guiding your life. When you step outside of that, there is a loss. What does one do when you hear your brother is in a car accident hundreds of miles away, that he stopped breathing in the ambulance? What do you do when a friend calls and has been told her mammogram showed some unusual tissue and needs to go back in a few days for another? My mother is what I would call a prayer warrior. The person people call when things have gone wrong and they want to get ahold of God. She's the kind of person who says, "I'm so sorry, I will be praying for you." And then, rather than go about her life and do nothing as many do...she actually prays, and prays fervently. Instead of sitting by idly and worrying and wringing her hands, she prays and puts it in God's hands. What do you do when you have no one else's hands to put trouble into but your own? Somehow saying, "I'll be thinking of you." or "I'll be sending good thoughts your way" just doesn't have the same sense of comfort as, "I'll be praying for you."

There is no question that religion has the power to comfort, why else would people cling to it so fervently in all cultures and societies? Is there such a thing as a culture without some sort of religious system? I have never heard of one. Still, despite these days when I want to fall back into that comfort of leaving it in someone else's hands, the truth is, religion takes an act of faith. No matter how one might try to back it up with facts or proofs, the very nature of religion requires that proverbial leap of faith. I can't manage that leap anymore, but now and then I can envy other's ability to do so.

Some of my favorite poems of Sara Teasdale, I remember reading these for the first time and thinking...I wrote that! Not that I had written them, but the feeling that they were taken from my insides, a recognition. It is amazing when you find a connection that tranverses space and time. She struggled much of her life with spirituality vs. religion, a struggle I well understand.

The Sanctuary

If I could keep my innermost Me
Fearless, aloof and free
Of the least breath of love or hate,
And not disconsolate
At the sick load of sorrow laid on men;
If I could keep a sanctuary there
Free even of prayer,
If I could do this, then,
With quiet candor as I grew more wise
I could look even at God with grave forgiving eyes.

Interlude: Songs out of Sorrow


I. Spirit's House

From naked stones of agony
I will build a house for me;
As a mason all alone
I will raise it, stone by stone,
And every stone where I have bled
Will show a sign of dusky red.
I have not gone the way in vain,
For I have good of all my pain;
My spirit's quiet house will be
Built of naked stones I trod
On roads where I lost sight of God.

II. Mastery

I would not have a god come in
To shield me suddenly from sin,
And set my house of life to rights;
Nor angels with bright burning wings
Ordering my earthly thoughts and things;
Rather my own frail guttering lights
Wind blown and nearly beaten out;
Rather the terror of the nights
And long, sick groping after doubt;
Rather be lost than let my soul
Slip vaguely from my own control --
Of my own spirit let me be
In sole though feeble mastery.

VII. Refuge

From my spirit's gray defeat,
From my pulse's flagging beat,
From my hopes that turned to sand
Sifting through my close-clenched hand,
From my own fault's slavery,
If I can sing, I still am free.

For with my singing I can make
A refuge for my spirit's sake,
A house of shining words, to be
My fragile immortality.

Brain dead. I most certainly feel brain dead. I guess that qualifies me to write following the theme of "The Edge", the edge of insanity! Too much school work, too much mixing of Victorian Edwardian literature, with feminism, patriarchy, norms, racism, racialism, etc. etc.

So, I'll touch on the topic of insanity. I have always found this an interesting topic, one of my aunts is into iridology--a method whereby a person examines your eyes or irises and are then able to tell all sorts of things about you. She looked in my eyes during one of those infamous family reunions we have and told me I showed a tendency for not being completely sane. Well, if it helps my writing to be a little on the edge of insanity, so be it, we use what we have. ;)

Two books that are fantastic, "The Bell Jar" by Sylvia Plath, and my favorite of the two, "Woman on the Edge of Time" by Marge Piercy (Note: Author of "He, She, and It" which is truly one of my favorite books of all time, a must read!). After reading both, not at one time, I wrote this poem:

Hope in a crack
or ray of light
4/8/00

She walks
eyes to the ground
chin to her chest
shoulders hunched
against the
onslaught
of life

as if trying
to take up
the least
space possible
in a world
too big
yet infinitely
too small.

She darts
occasional glances
at the glass
jar barrier
confining her
hoping
not expecting
a crack
or a ray of
Light
from Mattapoisett--

but she is
trapped too sane
in a world
where only
the blind walk
eyes ahead
shoulders straight
free.

What does it mean, you ask? I'm not sure, I think it is interesting to wonder who exactly are the insane ones, and perhaps some people we think of as insane simply have knowledge, like Connie in "Woman on the Edge of Time", that the rest of us are missing. Perhaps it is those who see life the clearest that have the hardest time living, and the only ones who can walk nonchalantly through life are those who are blind. Doesn't someone say that there is a very thin line between insanity and genius? I believe it. But maybe I'm jsut hoping that dot in my iris that says I'm insane is really a dot in my iris that says I'm genius and set on a course to writing the next great American novel!

While doing some reading for my literature class, I came across a passage that really struck me. It is taken from Alfred Lord Tennyson's "Ulysses":

I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.

It reminded me of a quote that I heard once, I have no idea what it was or who it was by, but it had to do with our lives being like drops of water that slide down a window glass. Each bumps into another and slides down taking a part of the other drop. The gist being that we take something from every person and every experience that we have. Tennyson takes that further in that not only are our experiences part of us, but we are part of them and it is those experiences that make a door for us to step through for more...ever beyond reach...always an experience ready to be lived.

There are so many people that I have met that I will likely never meet again, and yet they had a profound impact on my life. It might be for best, memories are always more powerful than reality. Still, sometimes out of the blue something will trigger my memory...a song, the lines of a poem, a color even...and I suddenly have a deep longing to reconnect with someone. There is nothing in my life that I would change, no one I have known that I would "unknow"...they are all part of me and I can only hope that I have left something in them as well.

I'm up watching television entirely too late, once again, and saw a commercial that struck me oddly. It started out too cute, with with little kids talking about they thought was in water...one little girl so thrilled when she said, "Mermaids!"...the commercial ended up being a water filter and ended up by saying that their system filtered out everything, even Mermaids. Now, obviously I'm not going to start a campaign against this organization who is endangering mermaids ;) However, it does make me wonder why we are so quick to make our children be little adults, to trim off all the "excess" imagination, think critically, logically, cease to dream? Is this what we really want for our children? When my kids ask me if I believe in mermaids, I ask them, what do they believe? They respond that there are depths of the ocean we have never explored and have I seen some of the wild and amazing things they "have" found. So, it is a possibility that there are mermaids we haven't found, but they don't know. Sounds logical to me, seems to be thinking critically...and still dreaming. Aliens? There are so many galaxies and so many planets, they note, and so yes, it seems to reason there are. One concludes they are most likely like us, the other is holding out for something a bit more exciting... :) Santa, hmm, they believe that one simply for the joy of believing, sort of an unspoken "suspension of disbelief". The tooth fairy, though, that is a whole other ball game. There is no question on that one as they have seen our black cat, Lucky, chasing her out of their room early one morning. Who can argue with that?

Tonight was "stupid movie" night at my house with my sisters. Every now and then we are just in the mood for a stupid movie, and tonight was such a night. Stupid movie indeed. The choice for this nights stupidity was "The Bulletproof Monk". I think the title speaks for itself. Actually it started out with the makings of a "good, stupid movie", but went downhill from there and descended to the level of "so stupid we can't hardly stand to watch it but we have to know how it ends even if it ends stupidly"! Phew, well, stupid or not, it did give me some food for musing, so it wasn't worthless. I have always been fascinated with the concept of reality, and what truly is reality. I guess it is why I love "Matrix" so very much, as it has all those mind boggling "what if" concepts going on.

The major theme of this was very "Matrix" oriented in the line of, if you truly "believe" and know that, for example, water is no different in substance than earth or water, then you could walk on it like stepping on a stone, or swim through it like swimming through water. So it is our belief that defines reality, or at least allows us to play with it a bit. If I could choose what to believe and make it so, what would I believe? I would believe in reincarnation because it makes the most logical sense to me. It makes good sense to me that a person cannot get it right the first go around, and would need more than a few to make good on life. If I could choose to believe, I would look at a butterfly and see what I've been seeing all along but didn't see because I had been taught not to see it--that it is really a fairy. That's a start anyway, certainly I'd like to do something about world peace and harmony, but I think the believing only works on yourself. I can't believe a person into believing they can change reality. I guess that is the sad part. Still, its movies like the Matrix, myths of our culture, that at least are saying to people...you do have choices, even though it doesn't always seem like it, you do have choices--choose wisely, the red pill, or the blue pill?

Today I turned 35 years old. I suppose I should be writing about how it feels, but it really feels a lot like turning 20 or 25. Life is good--really good. I think if you can go into the next year of your life still being able to say that, then the number of candles on the cake doesn't really seem to matter. That's all I really have to say about turning 35.

I was listening to an interesting interview on NPR this evening. It was with an author, teacher, philospher named Azar Nafisi. Something she said struck me, because it dealt with the issue of "betweens" or edges. She was talking about a painter who embodied something about America that wasn't often portrayed--not only in our culture and media, but in how other countries portray us. We aren't a society full of heroic adventurers, or even a society full of loud-mouthed egotistical louts. It was inbetween those, in the forgotten places where people lived in isolation...in loneliness despite the "loudness" of our society. From those places came works of art (be it painting or writing) that had something important to say. Now, I'm paraphrasing in the extreme, this isn't a quote, but the gist of what I heard.

It reminded me of something I used to think about a lot. People seem to live for high moments in their lives...the peaks. But the truth of the matter is that most of life isn't in the peaks, its on the way down from the peaks, or on the way up from its lowest lull. Its much like the medieval notion of the wheel of fortune. If you were on top, you'd best hang on because with one flick of Fate's wrist, you were apt to be on the bottom. If you were on the bottom, just hang on because there was no where to go but up--the only way off was when life was over. Life isn't on the peaks, it isn't even in the lowest points, most of life is spent inbetween the two. So what does all that mean to me? Enjoy the peaks when you reach them but don't get comfortable, don't stress over the lows because it has to get better, but most importantly, find the real joys in the inbetweens.

Here it is after 1am again and I seek to settle some thoughts in place so perhaps I can lay down and go to sleep quickly tonight. I am taking a Women's Studies class online this semester. The class is challenging, both in work load and in forcing us to use our minds. Given the nature of the class, it invariably stirs up lots of memories, and high emotions in my class mates and for myself. We are discussing patriarchy, right now, and that is one step quickly taken to religion. Religion, politics, women's issues, all thrown into the pot and stirred around! It is no secret to anyone who knows me that I have issues with organized religion of all sorts. I feel that anytime human beings get their fingers into the mix, a mess is more likely to come out than a delicious cake. I feel like I am getting to the point where I don't react with negative feelings towards religion, I have a deep respect for people with strong religious beliefs, it is just not a path I can take. I guess that leads me once again to an inbetween state. I am not an atheist, because I feel there is something "more". I don't believe that life is cut and dry, black and white, explained away by science. I live with the eternal hope that there is something just beyond my vision that I haven't quite seen yet. However, I cannot embrace any religion I have looked into. The closest I get to a religion, is more a philosophy, that of Taoism. But even that is not in the traditional Taoist path, but of the path of Winnie the Pooh. ;) People who want to put me in a neatly labeled box seem to find it frustrating, because when they ask just what do I believe...I can only shrug and say I know more about what I do not believe than what I do believe. So I strive for balance in my life, for not fighting the flow, but moving with it. For not asking why, but focusing on how I react. For accepting that life is made of stages and I cannot live in all the stages at one time. To live open to possibilities...to walk the wall, to live at the edge the abyss. I've already looked in and seen the monster Nietzsche warned of...it was only me, and not so scary for all that.

Carrying the theme of edges and inbetweens, which is apt sitting here in a quiet house in the very edge of a new day, why a fascination with inbetweens? Magic. I think it all comes down to magic. The inbetween times are times when the veil between this world and fairy are supposed to be thinner and you are more likely to stumble into something inexplicable by the normal vision of reality. I have always had a difficult time sleeping. Since I can remember, I have done all sorts of things to fill up the time between laying down and actually going to sleep. Counting as high as a third grader can count, which seemed at the time to be in the millions, but probably was in the hundreds, was always high on the list. But most of the time I filled with telling myself stories. Stories I had heard, stories I had dreamt, books I had read and rewrote to my satisfaction in those times. My daughter loves to write, loves stories, loves to read. She too is "blessed" with that difficulty of sleep. I have tried to show her that to write, you need time to be quiet, to dream and tell yourself stories. In today's society our lives are filled with noises and busy-ness with no time for our stories. She has been given quiet time between laying down and sleeping to tell herself the stories that she will wake up and write. Use it, I tell her. And she does, she writes wonderful stories and while I could wish for her the ability to simply lay down and sleep that some days I dream for...in the end I am glad that she has taken up my love for stories and the time in which to dream them.

I have newly become fascinated with the online phenomenon of blogging or weblogging, sortof an online diary of sorts. I named my blog The Edge because it is a book title I hope to write some day of short stories dealing with things from the edges of reality. Here's a fun little poem I wrote about edges:

Dragon's Song
1/31/99

By the shore of a lake,
at the base of a cliff
that fell from the edge of trees,
on the side of a field,
at the outskirts of town,
heard right at the break of dawn--
came singing that was wild,
and music that was free,
and a song not of this world.
The town's people, they slept,
and the animals stirred,
but all of the children danced
by the shore of a lake,
at the base of a cliff
that fell from the edge of trees.