I have been surrounded of late with things that have shown the way that rules and rhythms contrast and what a different experience it is when you let go of the rules for a bit and listen to the rhythm of life around you.

The Lady, sadly, is moving tomorrow or the next day and it feels a bit like summer has drawn finally to an end. A bunch of us were talking about how seasons go, how sometimes it is the weather that signals the change, but more often it is the end of some kind of experience. Doing the Demon, the intensity, the connections we all had are fading and passing as we all move onto our different things. But there is the lingering promise of reuniting for “the city of love.’

Such  a strange life this is all turning out to be.

Sometimes I just sit here with the cursor blinking at me and a million thoughts in my mind and yet none at all. Just waiting for whatever it is inside me to draw the lines between the dots and reveal the next step.

Which is something I am investigating now. I have to raise the bar tremendously to get ready to even attempt to write the city. I have so much to learn and over the next 4 months I am actually going to be teaching quite a bit which will be good for me, give me an opportunity to investigate things without all the oomph being on me. Plus I am really enjoying, as more and more people find me online, that they are sending me their work and their links. Its like something grand has opened up of late.

And I watch the news and haven’t had much to say because I have just been watching the opposite happen in the world. Governments are shifting from following rhythms and whims to trying to adopt some global rules. The UN is suddenly finding the voice it lost over the past 20 or so years and the major…children…of the world are whining and complaining that they don’t want to play that way, but they are stepping more carefully.

They are stepping more carefully while people seem to be tentatively exploring the rhythms of life rather than the rules.

Which is a wonderful thing, I see it reflected in the way that so many of the poetry community are starting to be willing to reach out to each other, I have had more contacts from poets around the world in the past week just saying “hey…the world appears to have changed and how poetry is handled and published has changed…what do you suggest?”

Come aboard…come aboard….come aboard…writing is  lonely enough process fraught with the threatening darkness of one’s own navel that we are fortunate that we live in times in which we can reach to each other across cities, across oceans, across languages.

But backs to rules and rhythms…there is a place for them both, the art comes when you begin to learn not to “decide” which needs to be in place and instead discern what is needed in the moment.

OMG it is 8:30 and I have been up since 4, how on earth can I be running late already? It is raining, MK is cocooned under the quilt. Funny how she can be so adamant that she has to go outside and then peaks out, sees the rain and its like the dial gets turned down…she won’t poke her head out till noon and even then it will only to reposition herself in the paper bag she has adopted.

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