I AM WRITING

The Fire   from Dream Work by Mary Oliver That winter it seemed the city was always burning -- night after night the flames leaped, the ladders pitched forward. ... Scorched but alive, the homeless wailed  as they ran for the cold streets. That winter my mind had turned around, shedding, like leaves, its bolts of information--drilling down, through history, toward my motionless heart.  Those days I was willing, but frightened. What I mean is, I wanted to live my life but I didn't want to do what I had to do to go on, which was: to go back. All winter the fires kept burning,   the smoke swirled, the flames grew hotter. I began to curse, to stumble, and choke. Everything, solemnly, drove me toward it --the crying out, that's so hard to do. Then over my head the timbers floated,    my feet were slippers of fire, my voice crashed at the truth, my fists smashed at the flames to find the door --wicked and sad, mortal and bearable,    it fell open forever as

Within the last decade since I moved away from California, I sent a card to my father. And I included this poem in it-- The Secret By Denise Levertov Two girls discover   the secret of life   in a sudden line of   poetry. I who don’t know the   secret wrote   the line. They   told me (through a third person)   they had found it but not what it was   not even what line it was. No doubt   by now, more than a week   later, they have forgotten   the secret, the line, the name of   the poem. I love them   for finding what   I can’t find, and for loving me   for the line I wrote,   and for forgetting it   so that a thousand times, till death   finds them, they may   discover it again, in other   lines in other   happenings. And for   wanting to know it,   for assuming there is   such a secret, yes,   for that   most of all. Denise Levertov, “The Secret” from O Taste and See: New Poems. Copyright © 1964 by Denise Levertov. Used by permissi

From May 28, 2012 “Self-boundaries determine even what one is able to think. While it is true that different impressions stimulate different thoughts in the same person, still these thoughts are pretty much determined by the person’s sense of who he is, that is, his self-image. So the thoughts that go through a person's mind are not really accidental, chaotic, or di ... sconnected, although they may sometimes appear so. They appear chaotic because a large segment of the self-image is unconscious or preconscious, and thus shapes thoughts and experiences in a way that the conscious mind cannot be aware of. This fact makes it possible for a person, by careful observation of the patterns and trends in his thoughts, to gain much information concerning his sense of identity. (Almaas, 1986, p. 15)"