DEEPEST NEED IS TO FEEL CONNECTED

Much of the personal writing on this post has been removed. I know it is probably cached but I felt it may be a mistake to leave it here.

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I believe the deepest need we have is to feel connected. The best that I can do is to open up. I know there have to be others out there who are looking to connect and just haven't found the words, the understanding or someone to confide in their deepest feelings and tenderness.

We are by nature fragile beings.

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Aside from looking at my own vulnerabilities, I have become interested in Heath Ledger recently. I have come late to the admiration of his work, but also I am trying to understand what is so connectable about him for me. The best parts of his movies' dvds are the special features and commentaries. I like those on A Knights Tale, The Four Feathers and Brokeback Mountain. He isn't fidgeting in the interviews of A Knights Tale and The Four Feathers, but calm and introspective. There is a wonderful segment just about him on the dvd of A Knights Tale. I used some of it in this video.

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In Brokeback Mountain's dvd special feature - The Making of Brokeback Mountain - he says that he always likes to bare his soul a little bit...that it is theraputic.

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Making Of Brokeback Mountain
Uploaded by LoveLeeR. -

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Shekhar Kapur and Deepak Chopra talk about Heath

Ang Lee talks about Heath

It is apparent that when Heath was creating, he was most at home and comfortable. There had to be some internal struggle. The drugs, legal or not, didn't serve him well. What he could convey through the lens of a video camera came across as genuine and connected to my heart. Except for the joker in A Dark Knight and Ned Kelly. The humility, down-to-earth conversation, shyness and restlessness that came across in interviews couldn't help but show a side to Heath that showed him to be a mystery of complexity. I'll never understand Heath.

I do have keys to my soul.

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Self-Knowledge ~ Kahlil Gibran

And a man said, "Speak to us of Self-Knowledge."

And he answered, saying:

Your hearts know in silence the secrets of the days and the nights.

But your ears thirst for the sound of your heart's knowledge.

You would know in words that which you have always know in thought.

You would touch with your fingers the naked body of your dreams.

And it is well you should.

The hidden well-spring of your soul must needs rise and run murmuring to the sea;

And the treasure of your infinite depths would be revealed to your eyes.

But let there be no scales to weigh your unknown treasure;

And seek not the depths of your knowledge with staff or sounding line.

For self is a sea boundless and measureless.

Say not, "I have found the truth," but rather, "I have found a truth."

Say not, "I have found the path of the soul." Say rather, "I have met the soul walking upon my path."

For the soul walks upon all paths.

The soul walks not upon a line, neither does it grow like a reed.

The soul unfolds itself, like a lotus of countless petals.

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Having a Voice

by Sandra Hammel

I’ve found my voice

Never to be stilled again

Not going to live voiceless anymore, especially when it comes to you

The small kernel of courage to live out loud has emerged

and

It feels right,
it feels good,
it feels like home.

You’ve kept me quiet with nothing but my need to have you love me.

And now something has been unleashed within me

and my voice must speak
its truths

braving your total disregard

which seems nothing more than what’s been my lot anyway.

Nothing really to lose

but to gain,
oh,
I can’t even begin to imagine
what I have to gain.
But I anticipate the possibilities with no more sadness.
Excited.

In my life’s garden, I expect gladness, gratitude and shining bright colors blooming inside

BURSTING to get
out

This is where I have always wanted to be.

Now,
I’m here.

It’s great to be here,





home.


Written January 13, 2006

CHILDREN FREE TO WRITE POETRY

Today, I read a very raw letter that my son wrote a long time ago. It is good to have. It wasn’t written to me, but to his birth mother. I myself write from a raw place many times. I find it healing and a source for bringing clarity and richness to my understanding.

I have lots of books. But most of them I have never read. Several weeks ago, I began to finally use some exercise equipment that I bought years ago. It is upstairs, although I live mainly on the first floor of my home. I have noticed that there are places in my own home where I feel more comfortable going than others. So now I have found a reason to venture to a place in my house every day, that has a far away feeling to it. The equipment is surrounded by nine shelves of books. When I need a breathing break while doing the aerobic exercise, I reach for a book and read for a short while. Recently I picked up book that has poetry by children in it.

Below I have put the foreword to the book. It is a book for teachers and parents to understand how to nurture creative writing in our children. But also in adults.
This is taken from the book:

“…a girl writes

It’s hard to wrestle with some people,
But harder still to wrestle with life.
I seem always to lose…
But some day I shall win.

Such confessions as this are valuable to adults; they show us children struggling no less than we, to be accepted, to be adequate. Often they astonish us by revealing to us how little we know about certain children. To judge by his behavior, here is a nine-year-old boy who seems the least reflective, the most heedless, the most insensitive of children, and yet he writes:

Loneliness

Something is missing from my life,
It makes me sad and lonely.
I can’t play, I can’t think.
My heart shakes in me like a hammer.
I try to take my thought off of it,
But I cannot.”



“One twelve-year-old writes…

What is sorrow?

Sorrow is a dark cloud
That has moved across
The sun of happiness.

…This same child into whose life had come the shock of parental separation and financial insecurity, wrote a poem she called “Contentment.” Much of her contentment may have arisen from the writing, for during the poetry hour she seemed relaxed although completely absorbed, and she would remain at her writing long after the group had been dismissed for play.

Contentment

It is a gray day
And I am happy.
I am not happy because something special
is going to happen,
I am happy because I am content.
I am satisfied with everything.
I do not wish I was somebody else,
I am glad I am just I.
I do not wish that you would be different,
I like you just the way you are."

The book
Children Write Poetry - A Creative Approach by Flora J. Arnstein

The foreword
written by Hughes Mearns, Chairman of the Department of Creative Education, New York University, August 12, 1946

“…The beginning years are most important. Then it is that the creative spirit must be released again and again, and in an environment wholly favorable to it, for it must have the long, slow chance to grow in strength. And alien and unsympathetic world could easily kill it unless it is protected and nurtured in the early years.

Not only beauty but wisdom is here; and kindness, pity, mercy, a care for living things, love of the world, unprejudiced observation, instinctive insight, the joy of sharing, a reaching out to other peoples, the very core of humanitarianism. It is there, and always has been there, in the guarded secrecy of child thinking and child feeling, an amazing potential power, which could some day remake a troubled and distracted world.

Flora Arnstein belongs to that small but growing group of artist teachers who know that guided self-expression opens up important paths not only to cultural living but also to learning, to morality, and to health; that each revelation of the inner spirit thus successfully handled by adult guides has canceled at once a hundred personal and social problems of the faraway future.”

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