Event Horizon

What a time!

Tomorrow is my birthday. It's not a big deal this year .... except the idea of "quitting" (smoking)(again) persists...

I want to write the last of the three new songs I promised in the Landmark Effectiveness Seminar. I attended the last session on Monday and am very happy to be done with that ... experience.

Standing on the deck (at Barb and Pete's vineyard estate) this morning, some sort of insight or awareness about myself arrived: I finally acknowledged the "undies in a bundle" energy I've been carrying for a few weeks about Landmark Education. Not enough to wrinkle my brow or clench my teeth but extant nonetheless.

When the insight dawned today, it cracked me up.

The text for the last (next) song will be from Rilke. Here are the ones I'm considering:

Each mind fabricates itself.
We sense its limits, for we have made them.
And just when we would flee them, you come
and make of yourself an offering.

I don't want to think a place for you.
Speak to me from everywhere.
Your Gospel can be comprehended
without looking for its source.

When I go toward you
it is with my whole life.

God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.

These are the words we dimly hear:

You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.

Flare up like flame
and make big shadows I can move in.

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don't let yourself lose me.

Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.

Give me your hand.

[both from Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God, translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy]

Whichever text is chosen, I will write for piano and voice this time rather than guitar.

On Monday, instead of attending the final session of the Landmark Effectiveness Seminar, I will board a train bound for Oregon. My excitement and delight are boundless.

Creative focus throughout the journey will be fulfillment of my intention to be "visible in the world as a committed working artist and arts educator." Specifically, I'll spend my time a) polishing the new songs, b) writing my show, and c) mapping the next 12 months of my life/career.