So my writing recently has focused on things other than for this blog. It’s a shift I’m enjoying, but being a little out of the blog habit makes emerging from my shell that much more uncomfortable. Today, though, I thought I’d share a few of the things that have been on my mind:
1. This article about phone use and boredom. It came out more than a week ago but I keep thinking about it. This idea that allowing the mind to wander is great for creativity is not new to me, and I have been working to make/keep space for that in my life. (My new battle cry, in fact, may be “Make space!”—not just for creativity but for life in general.) The idea that my smartphone gets in the way of or fills that space makes sense. I do not think I will download an app to help me with this problem, but it is something I’m attending to in my own life. The thing that actually fascinates me the most about this article, though, is the idea of boredom. I’ve maybe always equated boredom with restlessness, for example being in a situation that I had to pay attention to something I wasn’t interested in. The state I’m in when my mind wanders—I don’t have a lot of trouble getting there, and I enjoy it a lot. I’m not sure I’ve ever considered that boredom. What about you?
2. One of the books I’ve been burying myself in recently is The Gift: Poems byHafiz, translated by Daniel Ladinsky, entirely because of two poems I keep running across/thinking about: “With That Moon Language,” and “Dropping Keys.” I'm moving slowly through this book; I keep finding new favorites. I keep wanting to write more poems myself, and at the same time I feel tempted to quit. Maybe everything good has already been said.
2. And then this, a TED talk by Cristina Domenech, “Poetry that frees the soul,” about teaching poetry in an Argentinian prison: “And in that seventh circle of hell, our very own, beloved circle, they learned that they could make the walls invisible, that they could make the windows yell, and that we could hide inside the shadows.” Please make time for about 12
½ minutes and subtitles.
