Here-ness

In a bid to finally upgrade my car stereo from cassette to cd / mp3, I thought I would give myself the (surely) manageable task of listening to every single cassette tape I owned and to get rid of (recycle) most of them.  During this process I've come across a six-part series of tapes by the poet David Whyte called 'Clear Mind, Wild Heart'.  At one point I had listened to this series so many times I had sections of it memorised, but at best count, it's probably been about 6 years since I last listened to it.

And listening in the past two weeks it has been like the first time all over again.  The poems that struck me on the many other listens had me again.  But the main thought I was left with as I finished the final section, on a dusky drive up the M25, was the 'here-ness' Whyte talks about.  The last words before the final Rumi poem are:

'Wherever we are is Here. And this here-ness is the taste, the essence, the very marrow of life.'  

Over the weeks I'd been listening to the tapes I'd found myself deeper in thought about my own writing, my poetry.  I've been so immersed in the world of PhD academic writing that my own poetry has taken a back seat in the past few months.  Suddenly I found myself writing regularly again in the early mornings and regularly thinking about what it means to be 'here', where I am right now in the world, in my writing, in my life.  And I don't mean for this to sound like a thought about just 'me' really.  It felt more like a thought about attention and what type of attention I give to the world.  How I choose to be a part of the global community in this 21st century world.

To make a long story short, I felt the need to start my blog again, to take up writing about what interests me and what matters: sustainable living, wildlife, poetry, wellness.  And so many other things we share as human beings--love, grief, joy, sorrow...but above all, life.  What goes on around us.

Looking forward to sharing with others and making new observations about this 'marrow of life'.