37days.com - Home of Patti Digh

thinking thursday.

pattidigh — Fri, 17 May 2013 02:10:43 +0000

mind

One question that changes everything: “I wondered what it would be like to ask myself, ‘What could (potentially) be good about this?’ when facing challenging situations.”

And another question that changes everything: “One of the best questions you can ask when something negative happens is this: ‘What does this experience make possible?’”

body

Well, IS HE? “Food choices have become important political acts, with deep moral and environmental consequences. As self-righteous and irritating as this attitude can sometimes feel, it’s still speaking to a very real and scary truth. With rising obesity rates, a destructive system of factory farming, and terror-inducing 24/7 news stories about antibiotics in chicken and E. coli in spinach, many people have come to feel that their own food choices are among the most meaningful life decisions they can make.”

I am a design and typography nerd. Perhaps you are too. “The power of a card as a visual-organization metaphor, the secret of its infiltration,’ said Duarte, is that ‘it makes very clear the atomic unity of things; it’s still flexible while creating a kind of regularity.’”

I am very interested in learning more about this link between diabetes and Alzheimer’s Disease, and am thinking about the implications for my diet and exercise.

Likewise, this list of how to improve brain function is important to me. I’m doing well on numbers 2, 8, 9, 10, and the others need work.

This food right here is on my mind.

soul

Perhaps you will recognize your definition of joy in these.

Sit every day: “The findings are striking—if we practice something, it will rewire our brains, creating a new neural pathway.” This is a very helpful entry point for creating a meditation practice.

Just because I’m missing him.

word

“We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations.” -Anaïs Nin

(photo of the first radish I ever grew, 5/16/13)

oh, daddy.

pattidigh — Sun, 12 May 2013 15:49:27 +0000

One Year

When I got to his marker, I sat on it,
like sitting on the edge of someone’s bed
and I rubbed the smooth, speckled granite.
I took some tears from my jaw and neck
and started to wash a corner of his stone.
Then a black and amber ant
ran out onto the granite, and off it,
and another ant hauled a dead
ant onto the stone, leaving it, and not coming back.
Ants ran down into the grooves of his name
and dates, down into the oval track of the
first name’s O, middle name’s O,
the short O of his last name,
and down into the hyphen between
his birth and death–little trough of his life.
Soft bugs appeared on my shoes,
like grains of pollen, I let them move on me,
I rinsed a dark fleck of mica,
and down inside the engraved letters
the first dots of lichen were appearing
like stars in early evening.
I saw the speedwell on the ground with its horns,
the coiled ferns, copper-beech blossoms, each
petal like that disc of matter which
swayed, on the last day, on his tongue.
Tamarack, Western hemlock,
manzanita, water birch
with its scored bark,
I put my arms around a trunk and squeezed it,
then I lay down on my father’s grave.
The sun shone down on me, the powerful
ants walked on me. When I woke,
my cheek was crumbly, yellowish
with a mustard plaster of earth. Only
at the last minute did I think of his body
actually under me, the can of
bone, ash, soft as a goosedown
pillow that bursts in bed with the lovers.
When I kissed his stone it was not enough,
when I licked it my tongue went dry a moment, I
ate his dust, I tasted my dirt host.

-Sharon Olds

One year seems incomprehensible. And then two. In his absence, I lived in Munich, finished college. Then four years. Graduate school, a marriage, a job. Then eight, ten, fifteen. Trips around the world, work. A divorce. A marriage. A child. Eighteen years, then twenty. Twenty-five. Unthinkable. Another child. Deaths and disappointments, great chest lifting joys, a book and then two then three and now seven. And you, my dear sweet father, you missed it all. All except the birth, the skinned knees, the piano lessons, the sledding down steep wild hills, the sits in your lap, Sunday afternoon football, the obsession with Johnny Unitas, the blackberry picking and cobblers, the whistles at suppertime to call me in from the creek, the Sunday School, the Big Church, the Hillcrest Elementary School, the dropping everything to pick me up, the dances on your black wingtip shoes, the junior high angst, the high school marching band, the friends, the sleepovers, the midnight frenzied drives to the emergency room, you clutching your chest, you human rivet the loss around which my life has spun, the strong point that has held it together, even in your absence.

Thirty-three years. One year. The same.

What were you doing thirty-three years ago today? Do you know?

My friend Elina Rodriguez posted something on Facebook three years ago that stopped me. I had heard parts of her moving story of coming to the U.S. before, but I didn’t understand that as she experienced her treacherous journey to the U.S., I was in a hospital intensive care waiting room as my father lay dying. Elina wrote: “Thirty years ago today, at 2am, I left my home in Havana, Cuba. Hope and Faith sustained me during the longest 3 days of my life, journeying from Mariel harbor to the land of some unknown thing called ‘freedom’.”

Daddy would die on the second day of Elina’s trip; I was struck by the parallels of the journeys, so different and yet shared. Elina wrote back: “Patti, thirty years ago tomorrow, I was in an overcrowded lobster fishing boat, with 120 other people including my 2-year-old son, “refuged” from a storm in a harbor controlled by authorities that had banned us as ‘traitors’, hungry, thirsty, not able to go back and not able to go forward, unable to touch land anywhere–Striking that we were both journeying; he to a place of peace. My love is with you.”

We are all on a shared journey.

I miss Daddy. Can you tell? It was his heart that gave out. My job, all these years later, is to make sure that you know who he was. Melvin Lonnie Digh. We keep people alive by telling their stories.

Death ends a life, not a relationship.

Daddy died on Mother’s Day weekend; we found the cards he had bought for my mother in the trunk of his car after he died, signed and ready days ahead of time.

Please, please listen to these nine minutes and forty-five seconds, and pass it along to others who will also listen (from the audiobook version of Life is a Verb). The end of the recording may give you some idea of my loss, all these years later:

Click here to listen to Live An Irresistible Obituary 5-11-2010

thinking thursday.

pattidigh — Fri, 10 May 2013 00:35:27 +0000

MIND

Here are 20 classic novels you’ve (probably) never heard of. For your reading list?

The science of self-deceit: “After three decades of pondering how self-deception might have given our predecessors an evolutionary advantage, Trivers has come up with a theory: We often deceive ourselves because it then becomes easier to deceive others.” And sometimes that self-deception has fatal consequences.

Talk about marginalia! A beautiful example of the architecture of thought, made more beautiful by Mr Brilliant’s appreciation of it.

BODY

Oh, lord, yes, I want this strawberry balsamic and olive oil cake to show up on my kitchen table tomorrow like magic. MAYBE SOMEONE IN MY FAMILY COULD MAKE A VEGAN VERSION OF IT FOR ME FOR MOTHER’S DAY.

Being swallowed by a hippo is not a perspective one has often. And it can have tragic consequences.

Did you know that sewage plants are especially vulnerable to climate change?

SOUL

This photograph of a final embrace will remain with you: “Every time I look back to this photo, I feel uncomfortable — it haunts me. It’s as if they are saying to me, we are not a number — not only cheap labor and cheap lives. We are human beings like you. Our life is precious like yours, and our dreams are precious too.” (Bangladesh, garment factory collapse)

This free mending library is, in some ways, a collaborative community project, spearheaded by one man with a sewing machine. “Viewed as ‘social artist’ by some and a curiosity by others, Swaine insists he is merely a ‘guy who sews.’”

WORD

“In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.” -Margaret Atwood, Bluebeard’s Egg

(image from here)

thinking thursday.

pattidigh — Fri, 03 May 2013 02:30:46 +0000

mind

Things I am afraid to do. To do.

I am a big fan of mash-ups, translations from one form to another, one time to another, one art form to another: sampling of all kinds. So I loved this look at what Van Gogh’s famous self-portrait would look like as a photograph.

Overcoming my self-talk about canoeing in the Boundary Waters.

body

You had me at curried chickpeas.

Asparagus with a zing. Yes, please.

Customizable soups.

Maybe you know all these tech tips. Maybe you don’t.

I might need some sugru.

soul

Find what you love and let it kill you: “And yet. The indescribable reward of taking a bunch of ink on paper from the shelf at Chappell of Bond Street. Tubing it home, setting the score, pencil, coffee and ashtray on the piano and emerging a few days, weeks or months later able to perform something that some mad, genius, lunatic of a composer 300 years ago heard in his head while out of his mind with grief or love or syphilis. A piece of music that will always baffle the greatest minds in the world, that simply cannot be made sense of, that is still living and floating in the ether and will do so for yet more centuries to come. That is extraordinary. And I did that. I do it, to my continual astonishment, all the time.”

In case you missed it, my move to Wisconsin.

I think our education system is flawed. I think our way of measuring knowledge, learning, success inside and outside of school–all flawed. Tests, bank accounts, competitions–flawed. We are asking the wrong questions–for example, the question is not how can art fit into the measurement system we now have (standardized testing, for one example), but how can we create a new system of measurement? Here’s one principal who learned to ask different questions, who knew that art saves lives by opening space for people of all ages to find out who they are: “In a school notorious for its lack of discipline, where backpacks were prohibited for fear the students would use them to carry weapons, Bott’s bold decision to replace the security guards with art teachers was met with skepticism by those who also questioned why he would choose to lead the troubled school….But now, three years later, the school is almost unrecognizable. Brightly colored paintings, essays of achievement, and motivational posters line the halls. The dance studio has been resurrected, along with the band room, and an artists’ studio.” Art saves lives, institutions, cultures. We need to step back from what we believe is needed to something deeper than that surface need. What the situation seemed to call for was more enforcement; what was needed was more access to deeper parts of ourselves. Art serves an identity function–for individuals, for communities. It is not a quick fix, but a deep fix. Paul Watzlawick talks about first and second order change in his book, Change: Principles of Problem Formation and Problem Resolution. What this school principal did is second order change.

word

“The most difficult times for many of us are the ones we give ourselves.” – Pema Chödrön

(Good lord, I love freckles. Photo: Unknown source)

journey to a little red free library.

pattidigh — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 22:58:10 +0000

A story in 13 parts.

1. I’ve wanted to put up a Little Free Library for a few years, but we just never got around to it.

2. I saw a little red schoolhouse for sale in Wisconsin that had been turned into a house.

3. I fell desperately in love with that schoolhouse.

4. I started checking the weather in Wisconsin daily and realized I might not be well suited for cold.

5. I kept looking at that little red schoolhouse until I realized the parts of it I loved: The color and the lines.

6. I figured out it would be cheaper to build a tiny version of it from scrap lumber we had in our garage than it would be to buy the one in Wisconsin and move there and buy winter coats for everyone. (Note: this was an important step).

7. John saw the glint in my eyeball and went to Habitat for Humanity and got an old kitchen cupboard for $10, and a piece of plexiglass.

8. I went to Sherwin Williams and got red paint.

9. He built it and I painted it.

10. He built a stand for it from scrap lumber and leveled it and poured cement around it. I have no idea how he did that, but I love him for it.

11. We filled it with good books.

12. I am happy.

13. I think we did a good job of capturing the essence of that little red schoolhouse in Wisconsin, don’t you?

thinking thursday

pattidigh — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 21:50:50 +0000

After some hiatus, I offer Thinking Thursday once more:

mind

Meet the first digital generation: For the roughly 4 million Americans born in 1993, these contradictions must constantly be negotiated: public versus private, virtual versus real, active versus passive.“You can totally imagine Goethe doing the same thing, preserving each precious instant of angst for the posterity that would someday recognize his genius. Except Daniszewski doesn’t preserve them all; some she sends out with Snapchat, so they appear on friends’ phones for around six seconds before vanishing irretrievably. In an era when everyone has the tools to be an artist and everything is recorded and stored—potentially forever—this counts as provocation. Daniszewski is embracing the ephemeral.”

Depression runs in my family. I suffer from depression. Do you? I appreciated this list of 21 tips for beating depression, including this one: “Face a window as often as you can – at work, at home. Look out into the world. Watch. Observe. Try to find something you find pretty or interesting to focus on. And, handily remember that one in five of those people out there feel the way you do.” Sometimes this translates, for me, into simply putting on clothes and standing barefoot in the grass at least once a day.

body

We are weighed down, most of us. My older daughter, Emma, posted this link. I urge in this direction. To be sure, it will take a while to get there, and I may not. But the impulse toward this kind of simplicity is already changing my life: “Most of us can only handle stacking, storing and stepping over our stuff for so long before we start to feel claustrophobic. We go on a cleaning spree and give (or sell) it all away. But that’s only a temporary fix. Living small requires a more permanent shift.”

Conflict Kitchen is a take-out restaurant that only serves cuisine from countries with which the United States is in conflict. The food is served out of a take-out style storefront that rotates identities every six months to highlight another country. I want to go there.

I would like this sandwich. Now.

soul

This gorgeous piece of writing about the Boston Marathon bombing stopped me: “And so I wish on all of us, the moment beyond anger, when we suddenly know, deep in our soul’s roots, that it is not the other that angers us, but our own ineffectiveness, or inability to create change, our fear for the life we have, or the life we want to lead. Our terror that our children will go hungry or be too scared to sleep. Our suspicion that we are not enough, not pure in the eyes of our Gods, not heard by our partners. Not lovable. Our sudden knowledge that it is not the other that angers us, it is ourselves.”

My heart breaks when I see what we humans are capable of: Minutes after the explosions, internet tough guys and girls were already pointing the blame and ready to kill. (Here) is some of the horrible shit that was said online, all posted no more than a couple hours after the tragedy happened.”

word

“As human beings, not only do we seek resolution, but we also feel that we deserve resolution. However, not only do we not deserve resolution, we suffer from resolution. We don’t deserve resolution; we deserve something better than that. We deserve our birthright, which is the middle way, an open state of mind that can relax with paradox and ambiguity.” -Pema Chödrön

(photo from Conflict Kitchen)

poets show us how to keep quiet

pattidigh — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 12:00:01 +0000

Keeping Quiet

by Pablo Neruda

Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still
for once on the face of the earth,
let’s not speak in any language;
let’s stop for a second,
and not move our arms so much.

It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines;
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.

Fishermen in the cold sea
would not harm whales
and the man gathering salt
would not look at his hurt hands.

Those who prepare green wars,
wars with gas, wars with fire,
victories with no survivors,
would put on clean clothes
and walk about with their brothers
in the shade, doing nothing.

What I want should not be confused
with total inactivity.

Life is what it is about…

If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with
death.

Now I’ll count up to twelve
and you keep quiet and I will go.

(National Poetry Month)

throw open your heart doors.

pattidigh — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 18:24:08 +0000

From my post at 3x3x365 today:

This is what the end of a long race should look like.
Not horror, not blood, not confusion and hurt and death and more.
But joy and the fulfillment of a dream
and the end result of hard, hard work to get there.

But something happens.

Bombs at the Boston Marathon or the Olympic Park in Atlanta.
Columbine, Oklahoma City, 9/11.Is this an act of terrorism?

I wonder at that question mark.

There is no doubt: it is an act of terrorism
when people are made to feel terror for no reason.
It is an act of terrorism when bombs go off
at a crowded sporting event.
It is an act of terrorism when two students
shoot up a high school in Columbine,
when one young man slaughters first graders
at an elementary school in Connecticut.

They are all acts of terrorism.
All of them.
People are in terror.

But I know why that question mark exists.
It exists because the real question is this one:
Was this one of us? Or one of them?

What is this distancing?
Already the Muslim-bashing has begun.

Let us not throw the terror of racism at this horror.

Choose love, instead.

Open your heart doors as these strangers have in Boston:

This, This. This is what we urge toward,

like a plant toward the sun.

Community, helping, love.

This is the strongest offer I have ever made.

pattidigh — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 17:08:40 +0000

To This Day from To This Day on Vimeo.

(Poet Shane Koyczan created this amazing video. He has just been confirmed as a speaker at Design Your Life Camp!)

Oh, there is something beautiful about creating an experience for other human beings.

First, creating a program that thrills me: Smart, creative people who have something important to say. Poets and musicians and business coaches and writers and photographers and philosophers and thinkers, all addressing three vital components of life: Courage, Creativity, and Community. Getting deeper than the “how” to the “why.”

I’m not writing long, never-ending sales pages for this event, the ones with arrows and big “buy it now” buttons and endless reiterations of what you’ll get and bonuses. It’s simple: You’ll be nourished and inspired; you’ll be transformed in ways that have no balance sheet.

I’m not inviting you from a place of lack or fear in opening up the opportunity to be there. No threats of “if you’re not there, you will miss out and your life will have less meaning and you won’t achieve the wealth you deserve.” Because if you’re not there, you’re just not there. Your life will go on. You know that.

It seems the selling point for many events is getting wealthy. You may not get rich or grow your business by attending this Camp. I don’t know. This is about a different kind of wealth. The focus is you: your life, your energy, your wisdom, your urge to live a more intentional, meaningful life, to get to the end of your life without regrets, to process and make art from your life, to live more joyfully and fully, to laugh deep, deep belly laughs, and to finally, yes, find your tribe. Perhaps that translates into growing your business or getting more page views or getting published–I don’t know. Only you can know what feeling more grounded in your own life will mean to you. Or if it means enough all on it’s own to justify being there.

Who is this for? It’s not just for “creatives,” but any human being who longs for meaning in their life, who appreciates being open to the opportunity to think more deeply and broadly, who gets that courage, creativity, and community are necessary building blocks to a life well lived.

What will you get? I think the question is, more importantly, what will you bring? Will you bring your wise, beautiful self and make strong offers to the community? Will you bring your vulnerabilities and strengths and full, beautifully chaotic human self?

My strong offer is world class speakers and workshop leaders and live music and just plain fun. I’m offering surprise and joy. I’m offering the experience of a lifetime, unlike any other conference you’ve attended. I’m offering an amazing tribe, the opportunity to be part of the program, and brain and body food.

I talk a lot about making strong offers: This is mine, the strongest offer I’ve ever made. I know, in my heart of hearts, that we will attract the right people to be there, the ones who see beneath the surface, the ones who know innately the importance of courage, creativity, and community in their lives, the ones who see life as a grand adventure, or want to.

I know we will create an amazing tribe of thinkers and doers, of people who do and can make strong offers of their own. As a community, we are going to do amazing things.

We want to make this as accessible as possible:

By offering a payment plan with as little as $37 down (this offer expires 4/15/13).
Be offering the opportunity bring a friend for an over 60% discount so both your registration fees are much cheaper (this offer expires 4/30/13).
By randomly selecting five people who complete this survey to receive free registration!
By offering you the opportunity to propose a “Spark” or “Creative” session for the program and if you’re chosen to speak, a free registration.

I am committed to this amazement; I am all in. I hope you might be too.

I would love to welcome you there. Magic awaits.

Love,

poets know you are tired.

pattidigh — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 00:37:41 +0000

Click here to listen to “you are tired (I think)” read by me

You are tired, (I think)

-e.e. cummings

You are tired,

(I think)

Of the always puzzle of living and doing;

And so am I.

Come with me, then,

And we’ll leave it far and far away—

(Only you and I, understand!)

You have played,

(I think)

And broke the toys you were fondest of,

And are a little tired now;

Tired of things that break, and—

Just tired.

So am I.

But I come with a dream in my eyes tonight,

And I knock with a rose at the hopeless gate of your heart—

Open to me!

For I will show you places Nobody knows,

And, if you like,

The perfect places of Sleep.

Ah, come with me!

I’ll blow you that wonderful bubble, the moon,

That floats forever and a day;

I’ll sing you the jacinth song

Of the probable stars;

I will attempt the unstartled steppes of dream,

Until I find the Only Flower,

Which shall keep (I think) your little heart

While the moon comes out of the sea.

With thanks to my daughter, Emma, for introducing me to this poem.