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Watercolor of a tulip I painted in our garden during quarantine.
Make art! Heal the spirit!
https://fineartamerica.com/featured/tulip-lynette-yetter.html |
Wednesday, April 29, 2020
Tulip painting, Make Art! Heal the spirit!
Thursday, April 9, 2020
Make Art to heal humanity
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Trillium I painted in our garden during this global quarantine.
Shine your light! Illuminate humanity.
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Wednesday, April 1, 2020
Anxiety (or: I’ve Got Those Novel Corona Virus Blues)
Stop.
Stop in the name
of love. Let it be. There
will be an answer, Let it be.
Musicians sing the answer, There
will be an answer, Let it be. When news
Stop in the name
of love. Let it be. There
will be an answer, Let it be.
Musicians sing the answer, There
will be an answer, Let it be. When news
seems hopeless, full of anxious worry, despair,
Let it be. But John Lennon was murdered. Climate crisis
escalates. Maybe fears of corona virus (headlines say) are affecting sales of fossil fuels. Stock market dropping. Maybe these changes, like stars in a black night sky, are a new way of seeing, of living. Using less fossil fuels is good for all species. Right? Anxiety, corona virus. Shall I bring my books all home from my thesis desk in the Reed library? Shall I cancel all my social encounters? Shall I hole up with my partner at home—no guests—in order to protect ourselves from corona virus?
The thought of acting on this anxiety by shutting down, shutting away, isolation, makes me weep. Mourn. Pink POLST on my fridge tells first responders not to resuscitate me. Life I want to live while I’m alive. To shut out all joy of human interaction in order to hopefully avoid illness or death—for me is a kind of living death. Day by day, I’ll decide what’s appropriate, based on ever-changing public health warnings, and my own conscience and heart. Let it be. Swine flu. 2009, Lima, Peru. Quarantine. The SGI Buddhist group (and other groups) cancelled all gatherings.Advised everyone to stay home. Do not visit each other. It passed. Before that, it was bird flu. Someone I know survived bubonic plague. That was H., who grew up on a ranch in Colorado, and now lives on 100 acres of
Minnesota forest where she makes pottery. Let it be. Bridge over troubled waters. If you can’t let it be, walk over it to the other side. Poking a pimple doesn’t help it heal. Let it be. One foot in front of the other, eyes open. Reminding myself to enjoy the moment, slant of dawn light on the upper branches of the giant fir next door. Glisten of frost on green lawns and black mud tire tracks. Song of a flicker greeting the day. This morning my partner saw two crows outside our kitchen window. They bobbed in unison as they cawed—a mating ritual. Celebration of connection, love, cycles of life, rooted in their lizard past, dinosaur scales evolved to glistening black blue iridescent feathers. Moon last night, round white crisp disc beaming reflected firelight from the blazing sun through our
bedroom window, coating our comforter and wool blanket humped bodies in its light that has shined since before humans were a glimmer on the evolutionary calendar, and will continue to shine billions of earth cycles looping through space into the future. There will be an answer, Let it be. Stop (worrying) in the name of love. Get your rod and reel and go fishing from the bridge over troubled waters; enjoy the sight and sound of its tumbling rapids.
Let it be.
Let it be. But John Lennon was murdered. Climate crisis
escalates. Maybe fears of corona virus (headlines say) are affecting sales of fossil fuels. Stock market dropping. Maybe these changes, like stars in a black night sky, are a new way of seeing, of living. Using less fossil fuels is good for all species. Right? Anxiety, corona virus. Shall I bring my books all home from my thesis desk in the Reed library? Shall I cancel all my social encounters? Shall I hole up with my partner at home—no guests—in order to protect ourselves from corona virus?
The thought of acting on this anxiety by shutting down, shutting away, isolation, makes me weep. Mourn. Pink POLST on my fridge tells first responders not to resuscitate me. Life I want to live while I’m alive. To shut out all joy of human interaction in order to hopefully avoid illness or death—for me is a kind of living death. Day by day, I’ll decide what’s appropriate, based on ever-changing public health warnings, and my own conscience and heart. Let it be. Swine flu. 2009, Lima, Peru. Quarantine. The SGI Buddhist group (and other groups) cancelled all gatherings.Advised everyone to stay home. Do not visit each other. It passed. Before that, it was bird flu. Someone I know survived bubonic plague. That was H., who grew up on a ranch in Colorado, and now lives on 100 acres of
Minnesota forest where she makes pottery. Let it be. Bridge over troubled waters. If you can’t let it be, walk over it to the other side. Poking a pimple doesn’t help it heal. Let it be. One foot in front of the other, eyes open. Reminding myself to enjoy the moment, slant of dawn light on the upper branches of the giant fir next door. Glisten of frost on green lawns and black mud tire tracks. Song of a flicker greeting the day. This morning my partner saw two crows outside our kitchen window. They bobbed in unison as they cawed—a mating ritual. Celebration of connection, love, cycles of life, rooted in their lizard past, dinosaur scales evolved to glistening black blue iridescent feathers. Moon last night, round white crisp disc beaming reflected firelight from the blazing sun through our
bedroom window, coating our comforter and wool blanket humped bodies in its light that has shined since before humans were a glimmer on the evolutionary calendar, and will continue to shine billions of earth cycles looping through space into the future. There will be an answer, Let it be. Stop (worrying) in the name of love. Get your rod and reel and go fishing from the bridge over troubled waters; enjoy the sight and sound of its tumbling rapids.
Let it be.
About this poem: I wrote this March 10, 2020 in an interfaith spiritual writing group. We'd chosen our topic months before: anxiety. Wow! Mystic, eh?
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