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Valerie Roney

Poetry as a Metric

image One of the sticks I use to measure just how excellent I am being to myself is how often I compose in my head (and jot down!) little bits of poetry. Getting it together to actually post here as a Sohbet is A+ gold-star life management.

What poetry actually measures for me is life-saturation of moments of stillness, time with a bit of quiet in my head. If you’ve been following me on twitter or paying any attention here, you’ll know there hasn’t been much coming out of me creatively. This is probably the most stressed I’ve ever been in my life (six hundred fifty one bad sectors on my hard drive was just the capper – I’m thumb-typing this whole post on my phone – twitch).

I had a lovely moment of stillness last week – before the cold, wet Autumn weather hit. I got to sit by a pond, enjoy the amber leaves and smile at the duck feeding in front of me. For the first time in weeks a wee little haiku stirred in my brain, which I subsequently forgot as I didn’t write it down.Read More »Poetry as a Metric

ToV 12 – The Magpie and the Sky

Shiny! Shiny! Squaahk!

You can almost hear our little grasping magpie brains being addressed in chapter 12. It isn’t my intention to fully quote Stephen Mitchell’s words (rather to encourage you to buy the book and read along), but this chapter is so elegant in its concise entirety I would do it a disservice by cutting out only a piece for you:Read More »ToV 12 – The Magpie and the Sky

ToV 11 – Taoists and Topologists

Click on image for interactive Wolfram Demonstration

There’s an old math joke says: a topologist can’t tell the difference between a coffee cup and a doughnut (pausing while you look up topology and doughnuts, or sigh and wonder what is wrong with me). To a Taoist however, the coffee cup has a useful sort of emptiness the doughnut does not, and that’s what this stanza is getting at:

We shape clay into a pot,
but it is the emptiness inside
that holds whatever we want.

It’s a hard concept (and a big Taoist one) to get your head around: the use of emptiness, the value of nothing.Read More »ToV 11 – Taoists and Topologists

ToV 10 – Chill Sistah!

There’s something about that hint of fall in the air, that gentle reminder summer is wrapping up, nudging you to quit goofing around and get back on with your life.

Had me a wee freak out the other day, tried to take my notebook down to the park to add to the zombie romance, instead found my head swimming with All The Things that I had to do, wanted to do, needed to do. Some of which were new and scary and overwhelming. My stab at fiction abandoned, I instead started making notes on all those things, trying to fit them in some set of priorities, what to focus on next, how to get around that obstacle.

Just getting it out of my head and on paper gave me some perspective and put all that tumble rolling around into something that fell into some manner of separateness on paper. It was no longer All The Things, All At Once. But just a bunch of things, all with their own varying needs and timelines.

Then I read this:Read More »ToV 10 – Chill Sistah!

Meditation, How to Begin

I’ve had a number of people ask me of late how to get started in meditation, where to go, what you actually do, books to read. Rather than trying to squeeze answers into a tweet or fit advice in over the bustle of a dinner, I’m just going to sit down and gather all my thoughts and resources in one handy link (just for ya’ll, see I’m looking out for ya!).

Meditation isn’t really anything exotic, we’re hardwired to do it, though our current culture derails most of our natural tendencies. Pretty much every religion and philosophy has some sort of meditation, even if it doesn’t describe itself as such.

I think it was maybe the Dalai Lama said, start with the path that’s close to home (that feels very Tolkien-esqe eh?). If you’re at all connected to your own roots, be it Christian, Jewish, Hindu, whatever, start there (just google your religion + mediation, who knows what you’ll find). Maybe what’s close to home is more literal, like the yoga studio in your neighbourhood. Keep in mind if you’re looking for a group, a place to practice, you’re going to have to go there on a regular basis, you don’t want all that inner peace fried by the commute.

Regardless of the sect/philosophy you choose, in a group, what matters most is you feel an affinity for the people around you and the things they practice. Read More »Meditation, How to Begin