We humans usually bring our shiny new lists into a shiny new year, hoping for the best, but, very often, not expecting much. After all, the first day of the new year is just a flip of a page on a calendar, and it is also the next day in a long line of days in which our habits have accumulated and settled in with us. Still, it is a treat to hit that mental “reset” button. In order to truly reset, we have to do some different things and not just vow to “do things differently.”
I am a firm believer in MLK Jr.’s “inescapable network of mutuality” and “single garment of destiny,” and not just for human beings who share the same time period, but for us and those living before and after us. In fact, this web of mutuality binds us to all of creation. In this same way, all of art is bound together in the way it speaks to us, teaches us, comforts us, challenges us, sees us. And, like us, art is bound to everything else and everything else to it.
So, with that in mind, I am vowing to crawl further out on the web this year … and I am dragging my mother with me. She and I have agreed to meet every Tuesday at the same time in order to briefly explore some endeavor that either we have left dormant for too long or have never experienced before. At any rate, the very intentionality of the encounter will automatically change the experience. It is to be a process of both learning and doing. Field trips will be required.
January’s Tuesdays will be devoted to the visual arts. Yesterday, for the first time in a very long time, my mother and I visited a museum together; we went to The Mint Museum. It was a good start to the month. I was inspired especially by the Lois M. Jones “A Life in Vibrant Color” exhibit.
One particular “aha” moment connected me back to poetry.
In my Poet’s Dictionary (by William Packard), poetry is defined simply as, “The rhythmic creation of beauty in words.” Naturally, there is more to say, so the entry goes on for a full two pages, and includes some definitions that poets, like Wordsworth and Dickinson among others, have offered throughout history.
There is something to be said for not sharing a poem that is just hours old. Like all newborns, perhaps it should be sheltered from the outside world for a little while. And there certainly is something to be said for not sharing a poem that made the poet cry before she had even finished writing it, a poem so fraught and wrought with emotion that a Wordsworthian cooling off period is advisable. In fact, it would not surprise me to learn that all those “somethings to be said for not” such a sharing are right in line with conventional wisdom. Well, as I like to say about writing sometimes, “Rules were made to be considered.” 
It is that time of year when I feel renewed (or feel that I should feel renewed!). I always liked this time of year and going back to school; I always liked the opportunity to learn something new. It’s little wonder, then, that when autumn comes and I watch as my daughter prepares for her new routine, I begin to prepare for mine.
Talking to Myself ... eavesdroppers welcome 