Anna Citrino---Poetry, Place, Pilgrimage

The Big Wide World

January 1, 2015February 4, 2019 annacitrino

Values and belief systems guide our lives, but every day the news tells disturbing stories of innocent people harmed because their ideas don’t fit a definition of what a person should be. That is disturbing. Belief systems should enable us to live and work together better–to be more compassionate, understanding, and to better be able to forgive other’s mistakes and incompleteness. The complexity of today’s world often exposes us to people with different belief systems from our own. This can make it confusing to find a path through conflicting values and beliefs to follow that guides our actions–one that nurtures the best good for all and that helps people live together peacefully. When we reside in one location for years, we are less likely to see its wonders and shortcomings. It’s interesting to be reminded of how there are many other ways of living and being besides the one we are used to, and that those ways of living and being are just as normal and familiar to them as our ways of being are to us. Outsiders can sometimes be the very ones who help us see ourselves more clearly, or to see ourselves anew.

I began writing this post while still in New Delhi after going to the market, a common task, but one that can significantly differ depending on where you live in the world. What is an every day scene for some in certain parts of the world is uncommon for others in a different geographic area. Images here are of the location in Delhi where I get groceries

Currently, I’m visiting Washington DC, a city of wonderful diversity, energy and life. Every time I come back to the US for a visit after living abroad, I feel I’m entering in a foreign land, an adjustment most people experience when reentering their country after living abroad. It’s interesting returning to the US each year, and each time to look at my country with new eyes. Washington DC has stone monuments everywhere, beautiful old brick homes, and abundant galleries and museums, as well homeless people sleeping in parks and on the streets. Traveling downtown on the city bus, I sit with people from a variety of ethnicities and listen to several languages being spoken as the journey progresses. Though Delhi also has stone monuments, galleries and museums, DC is a very different world.

The other night I went to see the the most recent version of The Hobbit, and I’m reminded of what Gandalf said to Bilbo at the end of the film, just before he returns to the shire after his long adventure. I don’t have the exact words, but something like “It’s a big world out there, Bilbo, and you are, after all, just a little being.” We all are, after all, just little humans in a big wide world of incredible, rich diversity in multiple dimensions. Does it matter that we experience what it’s like in other cities, other countries, other climates, that we experience places where people speak different languages? Yes. The exposure to different realities helps us put our own world in perspective. There are many ways of living and thinking that seem right to many people. When we find ourselves in a completely different world, we negotiate new rules in order to make sense of it. We learn to accept mysteries and paradoxes.

Because travel and computer technology are connecting the world in new ways, everywhere people are having to renegotiate rules regarding behavior and morality. Rules regarding privacy, for example have to be reformulated after people like Snowden and Heidi Boghosian have spoken out, revealing how little privacy is actually left to us, and how democracy and civil liberties are at stake. Huge, complex issues require time to work out as a global community. As citizens in the communities we live in, we can continue to consider how what we say and do affects the lives of those around us, doing what we can to create a sense of neighborliness, and how that affects and informs the world we want to live in on a broader scale.

A nation is made up of communities. The way we relate with those directly around us in our communities will always be important. Our way of interacting with others affects not only our own lives, but also who we become as a larger community and as a nation. If we feel we can’t do much to change what happens half way across the world or with complex issues, we can at least do what we can to learn to live with the diversity we find in our own neighborhood and to nurture a greater sense of well-being with those around us. If at the community level we were engaged in working out ways to listen to and respect the differences perhaps we could also improve the way we respond to differences in other parts of the world. A major obstacle to understanding each other in today’s world, is the way money driven interests intervene with the exchange of ideas in the political process so that the truth about situations can be revealed and a better way of living together emerge as a result. One way a clearer understanding might emerge might be if citizens of diverse backgrounds were more involved directly in understanding each other’s circumstances. What if one of our new year’s goals was make more of a conscious choice this year to learn about and spend time with someone different from ourselves, for example, someone in one of these groups–someone who has disabilities, an elderly person, someone of a different social class, of a different religious or political persuasion, a different ethnicity from our own, or whose first language is different from our own. Choosing to develop a connection with someone from any of these groups of people could help us personally and as citizens to better understand the needs of diverse groups.

On his website, The Center For Courage and Renewal, Parker J. Palmer quotes Terry Tempest Williams, “The human heart is the first home of democracy. It is where we embrace our questions. Can we be equitable? Can we be generous? Can we listen with our whole beings, not just our minds, and offer our attention rather than our opinions? And do we have enough resolve in our hearts to act courageously, relentlessly, without giving up—ever—trusting our fellow citizens to join with us in our determined pursuit of a living democracy?” Democracy begins at home–where we live. In his book, Habits of the Heart, Healing the Heart of Democracy, Palmer talks about ways of thinking and communicating that nurture democracy, and that can better help us live together. Palmer advocates people gathering together in communities to discuss issues and concerns. These are the habits facilitators guide the conversations around:

1. An understanding that we are all in this together.
2. An appreciation of the value of “otherness.”
3. An ability to hold tension in life-giving ways.
4. A sense of personal voice and agency.
5. A capacity to create community.

Living together peaceably is challenging, and more so today because media controls businesses and governments for their own purposes, making it difficult to inform ourselves in ways that enable us to make wise decisions that affect our future. Upton Sinclair said in The Jungle, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” Because obscuring the truth isn’t uncommon in our era, it’s worth people coming together in person to discuss ideas, issues and goals in their communities.

Nazim Hikmet writes his poem, “Things I Didn’t Know I Loved,” about being on a train from Prague to Berlin in 1962, a period of change and reform in what was then Czechoslovakia. He describes as a series of remembered scenes and events, then ends the poem,

the train plunges on through the pitch-black night
I never knew I liked the night pitch-black
sparks fly from the engine
I didn’t know I loved sparks
I didn’t know I loved so many things and I had to wait until sixty
to find it out sitting by the window on the Prague-Berlin train
watching the world disappear as if on a journey of no return

As I have looked at various exhibits in museums here in Washington DC, it’s clear that life constantly changes. Truth and the sense of community, however, are worth preserving. Diverse ways of living and being help us to gain a more whole perspective on what is worth preserving. We need diversity in order to be whole. Let us this coming year do what we can to love the world we live in all its diversity before we leave behind what is most valuable.

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What is Interesting, What is Memorable, What is Beautiful

December 19, 2014December 19, 2014 annacitrino

“…experiences of beauty remain among the principal reasons for being alive, for wanting to remain alive, for sharing the joys of living with others…once we go beyond sheer survival…the quality of one’s life proves of the essence. And a life bereft of beauty–or, if you prefer, without the potential for beautiful experiences–is empty.”–Howard Gardner, Truth, Beauty, and Goodness Reframed

Traditionally, the criteria for great art was beauty. While across cultures people still find natural scenery like lakes and mountains beautiful, beauty has pretty much lost its place as an important criteria of Great Art, says Gardner. But beauty isn’t necessarily a criteria for art any longer, Gardener explains. What matters more now is whether art is memorable, whether it stimulates our interest–if it makes us see anew. This may be true, but I think for many, standing in a cathedral like Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia, still is capable for carrying people into a place of wonder and awe at how much beauty light hold can as it shines down through the glory hole above the altar because of the angle and shape of the skylight there as the golden walls reach up to the heavens.

Gardner’s criteria of making something that will niggle at people’s minds, stimulating their interest in memorable ways is possible if you are Antonio Gaudi. Gaudi’s Sagrada does both of these things in addition to being truly beautiful. I, on the other hand, am still working on practicing the most basic of basics in art. Last weekend I spent the afternoon painting on a pottery bowl–dragonflies, lily pads and grassy reeds. I’m new to drawing and painting, so it takes be longer than it would a person who is trained as an artist, but I don’t mind because the process itself engages me. For me, painting on pottery is a grand experience of experimentation. How will the design fit dynamically within the space without looking too crowded or too empty? How will I draw a design that’s not too complicated for my skill level? How will the line transform with the application of a particular glaze’s viscosity on the brush? How will the glazes’ s color change after firing that will influence what colors I choose before firing? I am a beginner, and these are questions I ask while working. Benchmarks of beauty for the the beginner in a particular field or craft are different from those who have been doing their work for years. Though it won’t pass for a high standard of beauty in the world at large, for a beginner the work one does can still be interesting and memorable–the hours spent creating completely absorbing.

My current drawing is a realistic one, but to paint it, I have to break the forms in the composition into their structural parts–deconstructing and then reconstructing objects in order to be able to paint them. I’m barely beginning to understand how to do that at the simplest level. Painters like Picasso, and Cezanne, deconstructed forms–painting from the inside of structures, so to speak, or the idea of what the structures suggested. Their work delves much further into complex understandings of what a forms are. I play with forms in order to understand how they function. Art masters, on the other hand, have gone through that stage long ago and have come out the other side. They understand forms so well that they have gained a flexibility that allows them to return to play with them anew–experimenting with them and knowing them in more intimately as a result. John Berger, in his book, Ways of Seeing, says, “The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled. Each evening we see the sun set. We know that the earth is turning away from it. Yet the knowledge, the explanation, never quite fits the sight.” Maybe this is why artists are constantly making, and making again, trying to show what they see inside an object, the feeling suggested in the form that makes it come alive.

Poetry is sound and line, shape–the use of white space to create meaning. As with visual art, in poetry also there is a kind of meta meaning going on between physical form and feeling. Beneath a poem’s words is the sound of words and the poem’s design on the page that is an integral part of the poem’s meaning. The artist places a line on the page and it, too, takes shape and meaning. Jeanette Mullaney, who writes and edits e-mails for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, talks about visual art’s marriage to poetry. These two art forms can take you away from where you are or bring everything together, she says. In my view, they might also sometimes paradoxically function to do both at the same time.

The connection of sound to emotion is interesting, even if there are no words or the words are indistinct. If you listen to just the sounds in this short animated Pixar film, La Luna, or this Polish, British, Norwegian animated film, Peter and the Wolf, (see more about the film here) much can be understood without specific words. Just the music and general sounds give an idea of what is happening. Connecting art and poetry, allowing them to resonate off of each other. Last year, poet Kenneth Goldsmith performed poems at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City while standing in front of various art pieces. According to the MOMA site, nearly everyone at the readings felt they had an impact on their visit, some saying that the associative connection between the art and the words deepened their experience of each.

Beauty is all around us in the very structure of nature–the Fibonacci curves of roses, pinecones, and the nautilus shell, for example, a structure that is beautifully balanced. It takes time to learn how to see. I want to create something beautiful but doing that is no small task. Nature took millions of years to develop, so of course I should understand that it’s going to take me a while too. But the time element doesn’t matter, really. Just working with color and shape hour after hour is somehow very satisfying. Art and poetry connect in the journey toward finding a life of meaning. Creating art, whether the form is poetry, film, painting or dance, is a way to enter in to and connect with a state of being that engenders attentiveness to life. It’s calming, refreshing, and an antidote not just to the pace of modern life but to its process as well. As Gardner stated, without beauty, life feels empty.

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Where Does Democracy Begin?

December 3, 2014 annacitrino

The human heart is the first home of democracy. It is where we embrace our questions. Can we be equitable? Can we be generous? Can we listen with our whole beings, not just our minds, and offer our attention rather than our opinions? And do we have enough resolve in our hearts to act courageously, relentlessly, without giving up–ever–trusting our fellow citizens to join with us in our determined pursuit of a living democracy?
–Terry Tempest Williams

Habits of the Heart that Encourage Democracy, from Parker J. Palmer’s book, Healing the Heart of Democracy

1. An understanding that we are all in this together.

2. An appreciation of the value of “otherness”

3. An ability to hold tension in life-giving ways.

4. A sense of personal voice and agency.

5. A capacity to create community.

Parker J. Palmer discusses Alex de Tocqueveille’s suggestion that democracy in America would be successful depending on the habits of the heart Americans nourished. Global Oneness Project discussion of these habits.

Video introduction to the habits by Parker J. Palmer.

gratitude, snorkeling, Tabitha Cambodia

Beauty and Reasons to Travel

November 30, 2014December 13, 2014 annacitrino

A trip this week to Hikkaduwa beach in Sri Lanka got me wondering about how places we travel to change us. Some trips I’ve gone on I thought I would return from changed, that my eyes would be opened to some newer, deeper understanding of life, but that didn’t actually happen. Other travel, however, has left an indelible impression on me–such as the trip to southern Italy to visit the towns of San Lucido and Amantea and walk the streets where my husband’s grandparents came from, or the summer I spent in Guatemala helping with relief efforts after an earthquake, also my first trip to India when I saw the way people lived a life so different from my own, and how difficult life was for so many. After visiting Sri Lanka this week, I’m left feeling deeply grateful for the places on earth where greenery and beauty are still in tact, where people can breathe deeply and the air is pure, for places where people can restore themselves. Hikkaduwa beach is such a place.

photo 1 (9) — Tsunami memorial, north of Hikkaduwa

Maybe we should be able to transform our minds and way of being without visiting other lands or worlds, but travel can boost our potential to do that as it places us in entirely different realities operating under different rules and understandings. Walking around in such a world for even a few days can help us to see things don’t necessarily have to be how they currently are. Old patterns can be broken. Something new can emerge. What we perceive as fixed boundaries defining the way the world is or functions, we discover when traveling, is actually a social construct that people collectively build and uphold, and that can change. Whatever the actual cause–whether it is simply time away, or new connections made as a result of being as totally new environment, what seemed impossible before travel to a different location often seems doable after travel.

Over the years of living and working abroad, I’ve been able to travel many places, and doing so has given me a clearer picture of the world. Unlike a few decades ago, nowadays, of course, a person with Internet access can simply look up an area of interest and view absolutely wonderful images. The mosaics in Ravenna, I learned after reading in William Dalrymple’s book, From the Holy Mountain, together with those in the cathedral in Trastevere in Rome, are Europe’s best examples of Byzantine mosaics outside of Istanbul. Traveling to Ravenna isn’t currently possible for me, however, but the online 360 degree view of some of these mosaics online at this site is truly stunning, and it’s fantastic to be able to see them. Then there are the videos of locations, like those on this site of Ravenna, that you can also explore.

photo 2 (7) — Roadside grave from 2004 tsunami victims, Sri Lanka

Mini mind breaks that take us vicariously to other locations are not an adequate comparison to the kind of transformation that can occur from visiting a place in person, however. Traveling in person allows you to meet people, make connections, learn about history in context, find yourself in new contexts and situations, and to experience first hand the subtleties of a world built on different foundations. In the world today when so many are afraid of differences, it seems much good could come if people were able to travel often so that they could experience the contexts and causes that create various world views and realities. Perhaps we would find ourselves better able to listen to and understand those different from ourselves, and empathy between people would grow.

: Hikkaduwa home, Sri Lanka

On the other hand, the environmental state of the planet is a growing concern, and airline travel contributes to the unhealthy state of the environment, raising the question of when travel is justifiable. If we are traveling merely for pleasure, is the expenditure of fuel justifiable? When we arrive at the new location, does what we do there add to other’s lives in a positive, constructive way? It’s true that tourism is important to the economy of many places, but our current economic systems aren’t sustainable. If we care about the places we go to visit, and I do think that when we visit new places we generally have a greater affinity for them, how are we giving back something to these places as a result of our travel? How are we are connecting with a place in a way that sustains it, as opposed to using it as a consumer–taking away from it what we can, and moving on to the next location? These are questions I’ve thought about for some time now.

A few alternative travel options people can try are opportunities like snorkeling with whale sharks in the Seychelles where a portion of the money you spend helps contribute to research and tagging efforts. Having done this previously, I can say it’s a fabulous experience–you have a close encounter with one of the most amazing animals on the planet, and you contributing to efforts to understand them better. If you want to read someone else’s blog post about this activity, see here. If you’re interested in places you can connect with to snorkel or dive with whale sharks, see here. Additionally, travelers can visit places like Ravenna and take a workshop where you learn to make a mosaic. The Shaw guides to art, writing, and other cultural workshops as well, lists thousands of learning travel opportunities around the world. An alternative option is travel where you can contribute to social efforts like helping to build houses with Tabitha Cambodia, something I’ve also done on several occasions and found a moving and valuable experience. All these reasons for travel are ways a person can either learn or give something back while traveling.

Still, just being in a new environment can broaden us, a bike ride through the mountains, for example, can help us understand the world in new ways. Sometimes a person just wants to see the art in France because of a love for art. Maybe others want to visit Eastern Europe to get a better sense of history there. Some people may want to climb Mt. Olympus because they loved their high school world history class and it would be a dream to visit the location in person. There are many reasons for desiring to travel and there are no simple guidelines for what are the right reasons to do it, but maybe one consideration to nurture could be how we might use our travel experiences to in someway give back to the world or enhance our relationship with others.

: Twilight, Hikkaduwa, Sri Lanka

This weekend when I put on my snorkel and stuck my head underwater and saw the thousands of fish swirling about in the shallow pool just off shore, the eels poking their heads out of the rock, the lion fish with their striped fins floating next to the coral wall, and the juvenile emperor angel fish dancing about their tiny holes wearing their fancy blue, white and black patterns, I was filled with joy. It was, after all, Thanksgiving weekend in America, and I felt fully alive and grateful for the earth’s abundance, for the life given me to experience such beauty. I don’t know if one person’s experience of beauty can ripple out to others in a way that helps to restore lives, but more and more, I’m convinced of beauty’s importance for our lives. From Ravenna to the fish floating in Hikkaduwa’s beaches, could it be possible that if more people experienced nature’s beauty, maybe more would want to cherish and protect it and fewer would be willing to trade it away for economic gain? I’m encouraged by Mary Oliver’s poem in Swan: Poems and Prose.

DON’T HESITATE

Mary Oliver

If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy,

don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty

of lives and whole towns destroyed or about

to be. We are not wise, and not very often

kind. And much can never be redeemed.

Still life has some possibility left. Perhaps this

is its way of fighting back, that sometimes

something happened better than all the riches

or power in the world. It could be anything,

but very likely you notice it in the instant

when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the

case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid

of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb.

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The Importance of Doing Nothing

November 23, 2014December 4, 2014 annacitrino

photo 1 (10) — Cloudscape, Wildomar, California

“In an age of constant movement, nothing is so important as sitting still.“– Pico Iyre

This summer I was taking photos of clouds, fascinated by their shapes, something that is uncommon in Delhi’s skies this time of year where mostly what one sees is a haze hanging in the street from the ongoing air pollution. Gavin Pretor-Pinney, a graphic designer from the UK moved to Rome and began noticing clouds in paintings and it made him think he should do something more with clouds. He gave a lecture at an arts festival, and the Cloud Appreciation Society was born. The society post images, poetry and music inspired by clouds, and has a manifesto that essentially declares if we had blue skies every day, it would be monotonous. Clouds are nature’s poetry, expressing mood. Their beauty is overlooked, and contemplating them benefits the soul, the manifesto describes. I’ve got to say, the benefits are certainly enticing.

In his interview with Guy Raz on the TED radio program, Pretor-Pinney explains that gazing at clouds benefits us, and that we should really look up more often. “We need to be reminded that slowing down and being in the present – not thinking about what you’ve got to do and what you should have done, but just being here, letting your imagination lift from the everyday concerns down here and just being in the present. It’s good for you. It’s good for your ideas. It’s good for your creativity. It’s good for your soul.” I imagine staring at clouds does something similar for the mind as going for a walk–it encourages associative thinking and nurtures creativity as a result.

Currently, the air quality at the measuring station across the street of particulate matter in the air at 2.5 is at 253, which causes “significant aggravation of heart or lung disease and premature mortality in persons with cardiopulmonary disease and the elderly; significant increase in respiratory effects in general population,” according to the US embassy air quality data site here in Delhi. It hasn’t been a good day, overall, for cloud viewing, but the idea of finding value in letting the mind wander, allowing it to take a break from thinking about the long list of what needs to get done has got me interested wanting to drift with clouds. Recently, I participated in a guided imagery in which the leader asked people to go in their minds to a place that made them very happy. I went directly to my garden in California, and I visualized myself sitting in the dirt, letting it sift through my fingers. I wasn’t traveling to some fabulous location to dive, wasn’t wandering down a beautiful street in a foreign city or climbing a mountain. I was doing the most mundane thing, doing nothing, really, and was feeling supremely content. What is it about doing nothing that is so satisfying?

photo 2 (8) — Southern California clouds at sunset

It seems I’m not the only one thinking about the need to simply do nothing, Pico Iyer, known for his writing about global citizenship, in his TEDRadio hour interview, also with Guy Raz, “How Can We Find More Time To Be Still,” says he left New York because he was “making a living there, but wasn’t making a life.” What is more satisfying in life, he says, relationships and quiet exploration–the invisible things. Most people live in cities where the pace is intense. Often work place increases its demands. It is the constant speed of everything we do, Iyre suggests, that creates the yearning for the opposite. “…in an age of acceleration, nothing can be more exhilarating than going slow. And in an age of distraction, nothing is so luxurious as paying attention. And in an age of constant movement, nothing is so urgent as sitting still.” The desire, the need, to do nothing is felt by many. Lawton Ursey on the Forbes site talks about Andrew Smart’s book Autopilot: The Art and Science of Doing Nothing. He explains that research shows that when not focused on a specific task, the brain becomes more active, “more organized and engaged in idleness.” This is a positive thing. It seems that focusing too hard on getting things done, might actually make us less efficient. Doing nothing, it appears, is underrated.

When we have to make difficult decisions, when we’re under stress, we are actually less able to see the big picture, less able to think clearly and act out of a wiser, balanced position. What can we do to take back our lives from the pressure of obligations and to create more space? Many people are talking about the need to create space in their lives so they can live a reflective life, but how many of us actually do it? We are admonished to find balance, but the structures and systems we live in make that very difficult. Over 200 years ago, Wordsworth wrote, “The world is too much with us; late and soon,/Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.” It doesn’t seem much has changed in this respect since he penned those lines.

When my recent 49 days of purposeful observation ended, the thing I realized is how much I have cramped my life into a corner, and how in need I am of opening up more space for being. My intention was to use the observation time to make more space in my life. Sometimes my “purposeful observation” was literally reduced to a few seconds. I don’t think anything will open up and change much in my life if I continue to let the pressures of the world around me control my life. I must return to a practice that allows me to learn how to create space, and create life for myself. I suspect most of us can’t move away to a new city right now like Pico Iyre did. If we want more space in our lives to live and move and experience being, perhaps it would help if we could find one simple thing we can begin with where we are, and then start to practice it. For example, I might set a focus for the day, something I am going to purposefully work on, then coming back to it at the end of the day and keeping track of how it went. Something I long for is a sense of spaciousness, so maybe lighting a candle purposefully might be a good focus practice. For others who have a similar need, maybe it is sitting in the doorway sun for 10 minutes in the morning, if you have a house where you can do that, or for others it might be listening to a piece of music with full attention–one small thing to create a crack that will lead to a larger crack in the structure we’ve built that doesn’t makes space for breath, for living the other part of ourselves–our unlived lives, so to speak. Richard Rohr in his article in Sojourners, advocates a daily time of silence. I’m reminded that catholics have a practice of the Examen, and this might be useful for some. We don’t need to do all, be all, have all. Maybe we need to remind ourselves of E.F. Schumacher’s idea more often, that small is beautiful, as his book title says. It can be enough.

We can be intentional with our time and presence. Creating the conditions for change and then practicing them until they habituate is necessary. All skills take training, even creating space for rest.

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Living in a World of Need

November 7, 2014November 7, 2014 annacitrino

Why do I continue living in India year after year? There are practical reasons, of course, but there are other reasons too. Just last week, for example, I saw a camel walking down the road amidst busy traffic. One doesn’t see that sight on the street every day! It’s not exactly common here either, but then again, it’s not something that could never happen.

Though I’ve lived here for a number of years now, a recent trip to Old Delhi, like all trips to Old Delhi, opened my eyes once again to entirely other ways of being and living that remain a wonder even after seeing them many times. There is the wonder of wire, for example, and how the city caries on though wires are tied in Gorgonian knots most anywhere you choose to look up–yet it does, and that’s amazing. Monkeys climb around the neighborhood balconies, monkeys occasionally appear on the school roof, and climb along the wires, moving from building to building. People pull and push loads so large it seems it would be impossible for the driver to navigate. On the side of the street amidst busy traffic you might see someone getting his ear cleaned, a person taking a nap or quietly reading. Everywhere on the city streets people are engaged in activity–sweeping, selling, driving, sleeping, eating. A whole world that holds a thousand stories is laid before your eyes–narratives with intricacies and ways of being that remain a mystery to me, even though I view the story in process before my eyes.

It’s true that India is full of many wonders but on the other hand, it’s also true that living in India with its enormous population, pollution and poverty constantly poses questions I don’t have answers for, this is one of the benefits of continuing to live here. It confronts me every day with challenges to the heart, mind and body. How do you negotiate daily through thick traffic? How do you breathe through months of smoke and pollution where the particulate matter in the air consistently ranges in the dangerous zone? How do you look at beggars on the street and who come to your door year after year and keep your heart open without looking away when there seems to be no end to their ongoing grief and pain? Even the dogs on the street carry in their bodies the imprint of loss and neglect. Look at their eyes and you can read their need. It is good to live with these questions, and to ponder them. They don’t go away, and won’t depart though I someday will. They make me ask questions about what is important in how I live, and what I’m doing with my life that matters–what are we doing together with the incredible gift of life on this earth. How are we using what we’ve been given for the good of all, including the earth itself?

When we see need in those around us, and of the earth around us, we can see the parts of ourselves that are lost, alone, and broken, and feel compassion. We can become more aware of our own interdependence on others. None of us are truly self-sufficient. Henri Nouwen says, “We can trust that when we reach out with all our energy to the margins of our society we will discover that petty disagreements, fruitless debates, and paralysing rivalries will recede and gradually vanish.” Draw near, look the need in the eye. So often we don’t want to look at poverty in the eye. It’s too painful. We may not be able to fix the world with its pain and short comings. Still, we can reach out silently in our heart, with a “hello” of recognition. We can give a small offering of food. We can practice being present.

The traditional story “Loosening the Stopper,” from the Hassidic Jews of Poland describes a man who had a lot of money and gave generously to the poor. One day, however, the man was in conversation with fellow businessmen when a beggar approached him asking for money. The man didn’t want to interrupt his conversation to get his purse, so simply gave the beggar the loose change he had. The beggar threw the coin at the wealthy man, hitting him in the face, declaring it was an insult since he could give so much more and why didn’t he? The wealthy man decided that from then on he was going to give only a half-penny to anyone. When two rabbis approach him later asking for a donation, they agree to be grateful for whatever was given them that day. The wealthy man gave his half penny, and the rabbis thanked the man for his generosity. Later, the wealthy man returned and gave them much more money, again returning to giving generously.

The story concludes with one rabbi explaining to the other what it was that opened the wealthy man’s generosity. “It is also said that each step upward leads to another. Once we accepted his half-penny, we loosened the stopper on his generosity. Each gift he gave made the next one possible. Now, our willingness to receive has restored him to his goodness.” For those of us debating what to give, to whom and how, the wisdom in this story is to start somewhere. Give something. It is better to open up the stopper on your compassion than to go a lifetime holding back.

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Taking Time to Live

October 19, 2014October 22, 2014 annacitrino

In his book, Creating True Peace, Thich Nhat Hahn describes what life was like a number of decades ago when he was young, living in Vietnam, and people took time to live. He describes how people would organize a gathering– a poetry reading, birthday party, or party to mark the anniversary of a family member’s death, and how people would walk or bike to the reception, even if it took them all day or they had to leave the day before. When as many as four had arrived, they would be served food so they could eat together with others. When a fifth person arrived, that person waited for three more to arrive so they, too, could share their meal together. People sang, recited poetry, talked, and time was open and flexible so you could leave whenever you chose. (p. 67) I’ve been trying to imagine what a life where relationships and being human together was more important than getting things done, where we have space to truly, deeply listen to each other and be heard, and when I came upon this description. I felt I got a glimpse of what that life might look like.

Thich Nhat Hahn describes another example that beautifully illustrates a way of living where people took time slowly, experiencing time in what I can only describe as deep living:

“Years ago in Vietnam, people used to take a small boat out into a lotus pond and put some tea leaves into an open lotus flower. The flower would close in the evening and perfume the tea during the night. In the early morning, when the dew was still on the leaves, you would return with your friends to collect the tea. On your boat, was everything you needed, fresh water, a stove to heat it, teacups, and a teapot. Then, in the beautiful light of the morning, you prepared the tea right there, enjoying the whole morning, drinking tea on the lotus pond.” (p. 68)

How astonishing and lovely that description is to me–to think that people had time to live like that. It’s interesting that these examples are found in his book about how to create peace, and this suggests to me that to be at peace has something to do with valuing time differently. Hahn asks the reader to consider, “Are we engaging in a lifestyle that touches the beauty and goodness within and around us, and leads us in the direction of compassion and understanding?… If what we now take refuge in—work, food, material comfort, television—cuts us off from our feelings, our family, and our society, it is not really a place of refuge. If our lifestyle numbs us to the reality of our suffering and that of others, we are moving in the wrong direction. We are isolating ourselves, and we are committing violence in the form of exclusion.” (p. 66) Beauty and goodness are values to be nurtured, and to nurture them requires space and time to grown organically if they are going to be places of refuge that enable us to give back to the world.

Thay’s quote reminds me of the quote I’ve included in earlier blog posts where Thomas Merton, quotes Douglas Steere, explaining that there is a “pervasive form of contemporary violence to which the idealist fighting for peace by nonviolent methods most easily succumbs: activism and overwork. The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone and everything is to succumb to violence. More than that, it is cooperation in violence. The frenzy of the activist neutralizes his work for peace. It destroys his own inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of his own work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.” To be peaceful, or to be a peacemaker in this world is difficult. It doesn’t mean doing good deeds. It’s more difficult. It means learning how to be peaceful, and that means making different choices in our everyday lives.

“Nowadays,” Thich Nhat Hahn says, “you may have a lotus pond, but you do not have the time to look at it, let alone enjoy it in that way.” Nevertheless, Thich Nhat Hahn clearly directs readers to understand the days given to us are our life, and are “much more precious than money.” How can we truly live quality lives today in a world where our social structures generally function in a way that make it easy for us feel like we are Charlie Chaplin in the film, Modern Times, where his job is to constantly focus on the next item coming down the conveyer belt? Chaplin doesn’t have time to scratch his nose when a fly distracts him, much less find time to take life slowly enough to savor it. If we don’t have time anymore to make lotus tea like Thich Nhat Hahn describes, how can we at least learn how to savor our lives so that we are not merely focused and productive at work, but are living fully?

It has been several weeks since I’ve begun including a short, close observation practice into each day with the aim to see how the practice might open up a space for seeing how I might live differently. It’s not been easy finding the time each day for this practice, and admittedly, some days the observation has only been a few seconds long–a remembering to glance at the light coming through the window as I continue on, working, focused on my responsibilities. Even so, during the day, the thought surfaces periodically–pay attention, pay attention to your life–and I realize I am so focused on my work, that awareness of other aspects of life narrows in a way that lessens me.

It might happen that I spend the whole day inside simply with the goal to be prepared for the day that follows. What, then, happens to the importance of family or close relationships when I do this? What happens to my awareness of the wider world around me? How am I being a model of wholeness when I say to others that these are important to living? Over time, if this pattern continues, I will be losing something very valuable. That small glimpse at the light through the window while continuing to work reminds me, that I’m supposed to be observing life so I can learn how to live. I’m put on earth to live. I am here to be alive, not merely to breathe and move and perform a function. The sense of obligation and commitment to my responsibilities at work wins out, even while the lines from Mary Oliver’s poem, “Have You Ever Tried to Enter Long Black Branches” in her book, West Wind, come to mind,

Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?
While the soul, after all, is only a window,
and the opening of the window no more difficult
than the wakening from a little sleep.

So, this weekend, something radical happened: I set my work obligations aside. Yes, and here’s the brief chronicle of what occurred: My husband and I talked during breakfast with family members at some length who’ve been in Italy for a month. We went grocery shopping, after which we took the metro across town to check out a new sporting goods store that might have shoes for the climbing club my husband works with. Using the public transport, we packed ourselves into the subway car with what must have literally been a thousand riders. It was a hot, tiring adventure that took most the whole day getting there and back. We had lunch at a market where we also bought a box of milk and had something repaired before returning home. After an hour’s rest, we went to a friend’s housewarming party where we met a number of new people, participated in several interesting conversations, and lit candles for an early celebration of the Indian Diwali holiday.

This morning I read the news, then weeded in the community garden with my husband. Later, I talked briefly with a friend I saw as I walked over to swim in the pool. After swimming, I worked on an art project in the clay room. This evening, my husband and I made dinner together, after which we watched a detective program on the computer.

It’s been ages since I’ve taken time off like this when not on a holiday. Actually, I feel as if I’ve had a holiday. I feel so alive! I could say it seems it takes so little to be so happy, but taking a weekend off isn’t really a small act. I don’t know how often I can put time aside like this, but I can truly say I feel more whole, more alive. I feel prepared to meet my students as a human being, not just as someone who has worked very hard. As a result, I have some questions about responsibilities that I didn’t have before. I have a responsibility to meet my students’ needs, to help them improve their skills, yes. But is the purpose of education only to help students compete eventually in a market place–on a job? I think not. The purpose of education is to help students discover who they are and how they can contribute to the world meaningfully. To live meaningfully means we also have a responsibility to live fully. To live fully means to pay attention to and nurture relationships with family, society, and the earth. Wouldn’t the world be better off if we all took time to grow these relationships? If we can’t do that, in whatever work we are involved in, we help those around us, including our children to do that. If we can learn how, then we will make it more possible for those around us to be able to live in ways that enable them to be more fully alive as well.

Some days my noticing practice has been a brief, purposeful glimpse through a window. Other days, observations seem to ride in to me on waves. Is the practice of daily observation leading me to see how to make a larger space for being, or was this past weekend a one time occurrence because of a natural break in a workload? I don’t yet know. What I do know is that the weekend has felt so enlivening, as if I’m living in a miracle, aware of the abundance of relationship. I am hoping to continue further down this path. I take my responsibility to my students at work seriously. To do that requires time. To live a full life requires giving oneself the space to be whole. This, too, requires time. Can the two be done together? Others have learned how, and maybe I can too.

Maybe you have some wisdom of your own about this path, dear readers. What does your journey look like? How does it feel?

Uncategorized

What Writing Does–Author Barry Lopez on Writing

October 16, 2014 annacitrino

Why do we write and tell stories? Author Barry Lopez, in this excerpt from his thoughts on writing from his web site, tells readers his thoughts about the value of writing. He reminds us that in the act of writing we draw on the fabric of the community in which we live, and learn and the histories and stories that have gone before us. Also, he suggests that in our storytelling writers bring readers into a place of hope. Writing, in giving place to the imagination, holds up a light for people to see what is possible, and enabling us to understand more of what it means to be human. In Lopez’s own words:

It’s a cliché, certainly, to say an artist or a writer should lead a questing life. It’s less often acknowledged, however, that in pursuing such a quest, a person frequently leaves behind a trail of at least minor injustices. I believe an artist has to remind herself or himself, in other words, that when you write or paint or compose music, you draw in mysterious ways on the courtesy and genius of the community. It is this sensitivity to gifts welling up unbidden, this awareness of the fate of the community, no matter how ego-driven or self-absorbed a writer or artist might become, and no matter how singular the work, that divides art from commerce.

In traditional communities all over the world, this ethic of communal reciprocity, in my experience, is what separates acts of selfishness from the work of leadership. The role of the artist, in part, is to develop the conversations, the stories, the drawings, the films, the music—the expressions of awe and wonder and mystery—that remind us, especially in our worst times, of what is still possible, of what we haven’t yet imagined. And it is by looking to one another, by attending to the responsibilities of maintaining good relations in whatever we do, that communities turn a gathering darkness into light.

community, place

The Delights of Diversity in Colorful Goa

October 5, 2014February 4, 2019 annacitrino

“The life thatI touch for good or ill will touch another life, and that in turn another, until who knows where the trembling stops or in what far place my touch will be felt.”–Fredrich Buechner, The Hungering Dark

With only a few hours of sleep the night before, my traveling companions and I arrived in colorful Panaji in India’s southern state of Goa where we spent the Indian Dusserah holiday. Dusserah is the celebration of good conquering evil–the celebration of when Ram killed the 10 headed demon king, Ravana, who had abducted Ram’s wife Sita. Ravana wanted Sita for his own, but she resisted him. In the end, the goddess Durga gave Ram the secret knowledge of how to kill Ravana and Ram and Sita were reunited, demonstrating, Hindus believe, that we can be saved from the difficulties and chaos that threaten to overcome us–God still remembers us. In Delhi, Dusserah is a holiday where throughout the city people burn effigies of Ram.

In Goa, people celebrate with flowers instead. From busses to tractors to motorcycles, everywhere vehicles are strung with marigold garlands. Flowers hang from door frames along the streets. It’s a pleasing sight.

The Malabar Coast has been an important center of trade for 3,000 years, trading with the Mediterranean region. The Portuguese came to India in 1498, with Vasco de Gama’s arrival in Koshikode in Kerala, south of Goa. The area was important for its spices. Afonso de Albuquerque soon after developed Goa into an important trade center.

Religious tolerance has vacillated in Goa. The original openness changed to intolerance during the period of the counter revolution in Europe. If this taxi stand in the photos below is an indication, it seems that once again, people are living in open acceptance of each other’s different ways of thought. It wasn’t until 1961 that the Portuguese surrendered their control of Goa, and this forcefully when Indian troops marched into Goa. Goa was an autonomous area until 1987, however, when it became an Indian state. Portuguese influence can still be felt in the architecture and food. Churches, roadside crosses, and statues of the holy family are scattered through the neighborhoods, along with Hindu temples and mosques. The layers of culture add interesting texture to the city.

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Everywhere one looks in Panaji and Old Goa, it seems there is something to notice–so many things to behold all carrying their history. Four centuries after the Portuguese arrived, we still see their touch on India’s history in the region. Even older, is the celebration of Dusserah in India. In Panaji, just like the orange shrine at the taxi stand demonstrated and Buechner’s quote at the top of this post describe, for good and for ill, histories intersect. Down through the centuries, our lives touch each other, the tremblings are felt.

Looking For...

Observations and a Meaningful Life

September 28, 2014February 4, 2019 annacitrino

When I first started the exercise of purposeful noticing, a friend living in Singapore wrote me, wondering about the value of observing the same location repeatedly vs. seeking out new places and things. I have family members who return to Venice, Italy every year, never tiring of it, always seeing something new in the familiar. There’s something to be said for pushing your boundaries within confined parameters, and my friend’s comment reminded me of an exercise of Ann Berthoff’s, which had students observing an object for 10 days in a row and writing about it in their journals. Through this activity, the writers grew to know their chosen object in new ways while interacting with it–sometimes talking to it, sometimes analyzing it and breaking it down into its parts, other times imagining how the object might be used–each writer taking a different approach.

photo 3-4 — Light Play–Patterns of the Afternoon’s Dappled Light on Front Steps

Berthoff, who was interested in the interaction between reading and writing, suggested that people make meaning as they read, and that language’s power comes through writer’s attempts to construct meaning while looking for patterns and explore the tensions in a text, both while reading and while writing. I recall the photo of splotches on a page in one of her books, Forming, Thinking, Writing, that when viewed, the brain translates into a Dalmatian. You can see how your brain does this for yourself here on this link. The recognition of a dog occurs because our brains search for patterns and connections. This wrestling with our confusion and making patterns out of it is actually what enables us to come to know what we know. Not only that, this shaping is a recursive process of naming and renaming, not a linear one with the goal of getting to the end product and then moving on.

From this foundational view point, we can understand that confusion is actually valuable. Confusion actually leads us into an interactive, exploratory composing process. When actively working with our confusion, we come to see how meaning is fluid, not static. We are wise, then, not to rush to conclusions, or be too quick to line up our points in an argument. It is our play with ideas, our extended experimentation and exploration, that is essential to deep thinking and understanding. We explore as we write, we think as we write, and through that, understanding grows. I believe this process actually holds true in many areas–whether exploring a question or a train of thought in science, or experimenting with materials in art. It is the extended play and continued exploration that expands our understanding of anything’s complexity, and that, in the end, can bring us back to a relationship with wonder.

Berthoff’s ideas resurface for me now as I reflect on the past nine days of purposeful noticing, and observe what is happening as I continue this practice. I’ve not been able to get out and see new places much, and have, therefore, needed to observe more closely things that are familiar, that I see every day, and try and give them focus through directed attention. As a result, I’ve found myself asking questions I’ve not thought of much or even at all. I’ve also noticed how observations lead to further observations and additional questions that I wasn’t planning on. Additionally, I’m beginning to more frequently see how the things I’m noticing can serve as metaphors.

Here are my observations, and a brief synopsis of what they’ve led me to think and wonder. (The previous observations are in previous blog posts.)

Day 5: Outside my apartment, birds caw in distinctive ways, as if in conversation. What does their conversation mean? I’m noticing the birds in the tree I see through the window. How the tree that has died and been cut off half way has caused birds to shift from one tree to another. When something is taken away, we find another place to rest.

Day 6: At the swimming pool: The thin line between the surface of the water and underneath the water–two worlds separated but containing each other. So beautiful, this fluid division of realities.

Day 7: At the pool: The wobbly hexagonal shapes the broken surface of water makes on the shallow floor of a pool. What causes this shape to occur?

photo-40 — Reflections, Nehru Park, New Delhi

Day 8: Dragonflies. Yellow wings swarm and swirl by the hundreds above the trees outside my window. (Aren’t dragonflies viewed as good luck in Far East Asia?)

Day 9: Drooping collard greens in the window box. Leaves curling under, as if to hide from the afternoon’s oven heat. What appears to be fragile, isn’t necessarily. But even plants have their limits as to how much heat they can tolerate.

Day 10: The glistening leaves, toss white light as they blow outside the window. One brilliant pink flower, still and unmoved, beneath a harbor of vines.

Day 11: A layer of water spreads in thin pools across the stony green path. I walk across the sky and trees reflected there. Water allows stone to become mirror.

What are these observations? I don’t yet know, but surely many of the things I’ve listed here are metaphors for other things we experience in life. What do any our live’s observations bring? Our brains like to create patterns, as I said earlier. They want to make meaning. I want the whole of my life to be meaningful. Writing and seeing are ways into making meaning. They are tools for anyone who chooses to use and cultivate them, enabling us to wrestle with existence, and to find our place in the midst of the current of days flowing through us.

This belief about writing’s value leads me to wonder more of how, through writing, I can better help others find wrestle with and affirm their own questions, explorations, and discovery of meaning. Martin Seligman, talks about what makes a meaningful life. He has done research on what things actually allow people to have a more content, satisfying, whole life. There are three aspects: 1. a pleasant life–defined as experiences of positive emotion, 2. a life of engagement where time stops and you’re in the flow of what you’re doing, and 3. a meaningful life. He explains that the pleasant life, or the presence of positive emotion, is a largely hereditary and that these experiences habituate: Pleasurable experiences are great when you first experience them, but the thrill wears off fairly rapidly. A life that is satisfying is more than merely experiencing positive emotions. This is where the idea of “flow”, to use Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s term, comes in. Flow, Seligman explains, is where you are totally connected to what you’re involved in and are experiencing. When you are in flow, time stops for you during that activity. The recipe for experiencing flow, Seligman says, is knowing what your highest character strengths are, and then reshaping your life so that you are connecting to and using these character strengths at work, at play, and in all you do.

Here is his site where you can take a character strengths quiz to help you identify these strengths. Alternatively, you could also take the character strengths survey on this site. Both sites have quizzes for young people as well. The VIA site, gives a variety of ideas for each character strength of what you might do to enhance that strength in your life. The experience of living meaningfully, Seligman says, can be expanded through knowing what your highest strengths are, and then using them to belong to or be in the service of something larger than yourself.

Here are some specific things Seligman suggests in his talk that his research shows people can do to enhance well-being in their lives: 1. Take the character strengths quiz and then once you know your strengths, design a beautiful day that uses and enhances these character strengths. Use savoring and mindfulness to deepen and enrich the day’s experience. 2. Gratitude visit: Write a 300 word testimonial directed to a person that you never properly thanked but that did something enormously important that changed your life’s direction. Make an appointment to meet with that person face to face and read them what you wrote. The positive effects of this experience last for several months, his research shows. 3. Strengths date: couples (and I suggest why not friends, or even enemies as a way of creating understanding) identify their character strengths through taking the strengths test (available on Seligman’s site and at the VIA character strengths site.) Then the couple designs a date or an evening where they both use their strengths. This activity serves to strengthen the bond between the couple. 4. Fun vs. philanthropy: Doing something philanthropic gives a sense of inner contentment or well-being that lasts longer than doing something fun. Do something that helps, enriches, or enhances other people’s lives, and your sense of well-being increases. Through research, Seligman discovered that the pursuit of meaning, in addition to doing things that people find engaging and where they are experiencing flow, contribute to people’s lives at the highest levels of well-being. If you’re interested in Seligman’s ideas, I encourage you to read his book Flourish, where he gives additional specific ideas and suggestions about what enables people’s lives to flourish, and how his research at the University of Pennsylvania is exploring what factors contribute to and nourish a meaningful life. (View Seligman’s TED talk here about these ideas.)

photo-41 — Going Inside a Stone: Rock Crevice at Night, under florescent light.

I began my purposeful observation with the intention of making some cracks in my busyness so that I might find ways to live more purposefully, intentionally, meaningfully. I’m finding the close observations of tiny things are leading me towards some bigger observations and questions. How can I more purposefully keep my aspirations alive? In the work I do each day, how can I continue to renew those aspirations as I apply the skills I have to meet other people’s needs? What I’ve been given and what I’ve nurtured, strengthened and learned, is to be shared. How can I keep that focus before me so life’s meaning continues to deepen? We look and we look again. We explore and play. Step by step, we grow towards understanding of what it is to walk on this earth.

What insights do you have into what deepens your life’s meaning?