Tag: change

Categories
Creativity

Wishing You an Inspired New Year

Dear Friends,

With all good intentions, I sat down at my desk today to write about this gorgeous painting by artist Lucy Campbell. It’s called Axis Mundi, a Latin phrase that refers to the center of the world or the connection between the heavens and earth.

I was deeply moved by this painting, and understood my reaction as a sign to slow down, to go inward for a while, to be quiet and rest.

Like many of us, I find myself in between — in between last year and next, in between what was and what will be, in between activity and rest. (Also in between inspiration and dormancy.)

So instead of writing something witty and thought-provoking about Axis Mundi, I am going to share with you this sermon by Reverend Rebecca Bryan, who serves as senior minister for the First Religious Society in Newburyport, Massachusetts.

• READ “The Axis Mundi” online
• DOWNLOAD a copy of “The Axis Mundi” (PDF)

The article, titled “The Axis Mundi: its role in mindfulness and across disciplines,” feels like a good companion for these final days of 2024. Within it, I hope you’ll find your own signs — maybe a sign to find your still point, to consider your relationship with change, to find new ways to connect with the world around you.

Wishing you a peaceful, thoughtful, and hopeful New Year.

With Love,

Jen Payne

Categories
Creativity

Eating Liangfen in the Love & Relationships Bagua

I am sitting on my screen porch in the Love & Relationships bagua of my house eating Liangfen. Called “Rice Bean Jello” on the menu, it is a bowl of delicate, translucent noodles served with cilantro and chili oil; a Sichuan dish sometimes called “heartbreaking jelly noodles.”

If you feel sad or heartbreaking, go and taste it,
then your sadness will go with the wind
since it is too spicy, so that
all the feeling you have is a spicy taste.

I ordered Liangfen for just this moment — Sunday lunch on my screen porch and quiet meditations on Love & Relationships — part of a mindful evaluation process a friend and I are working through this fall.

It is not surprising to me that the Love & Relationships bagua of my home — the far right corner of the nine-squared feng shui map — is a screen porch. A place where seasons come and go, where winds shift and conditions often change.

And so, the Liangfen and its intention to chase away sadness are good company as I take inventory of Love & Relationships, and honor all of the changes that line up in multiple columns on what I call my Loss List.

If I were more inspired, the Loss List could probably be one of those fancy word clouds, but for now it’s just a long list; the friends, clients, loves, acquaintances, advisors, and communities to which I am no longer attached. The people and places no longer part of my present — or my future.

Sometimes, I want to point fingers, blame the pandemic, firmer boundaries, age and natural attrition, poor choices, humans. Other times, I just want someone to validate the losses with a giant YES stamp, I GET IT.

This is grief of course — heavy, messy, capricious GRIEF that breezes in and out of my days like the unpredictable breezes from Long Island Sound.

And there’s a lot of it — like climate changing levels of grief. The kind that shifts the ground, floods your reserves, erodes hope. Or…maybe it’s the kind that burns off the detritus in a blazing firestorm to eventually become beautiful new growth?

But I’m not there yet.

Today, I’m sitting on my screen porch enjoying the first chilly afternoon of fall, there’s a hawk bearing witness to my tears, the cause of which is only this bowl of Liangfen — just heartbreakingly spicy enough for a quiet reckoning.

Essay ©2023, Jen Payne. Click here to read more from Jen. Click here for more on Liangfen from China Sichuan Food.

Categories
Zine

MANIFEST (zine): Divine Intervention

Issue #1, DIVINE INTERVENTION
What is the force that moves us? Changes us? Propels us with such acceleration that we hardly recognize ourselves. Is it grief, heartbreak, indignation? Or joy, courage, determination? Perhaps it is DIVINE INTERVENTION — masked for our benefit as demon or angel or a hurried white rabbit who intrigues us just enough to move. To trip, fall, test the waters, grow up, expand, explore. And praise be to that because often, so very often, those big and unexpected transitions become our greatest and most profound adventures.

POEMS
• Transubstantiation
• What Sound Change
• Identity Theft
• Memoir
• Alternate Ending
• Dance! I Say, Dance!
• Kintsugi

OTHER INGREDIENTS: acetone transfers, acrylic paints, Avery labels, collaged elements, color copies, colored pencils, gold star stickers, Golden gel medium, hand-cut templates, hand-drawn fonts, hand-dyed paper, handmade papers, handmade rubber stamps, ink jet copies, laser prints, metal arrow, mirror labels, original photography, paper napkin, pigment inks, poetry, watercolor paints, with cameo appearances by Sir Isaac Newton Laws of Motion, Dirty Dancing, Star Trek, Solbeam, Eadweard Muybridge, Lewis Carroll, Sir John Tenniel, Alice, The Principals of Cartography, and the Serenity Prayer.

Buy Now


Categories
Creativity Quotes Zine

Pieces of Thought

“For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction,” Isaac Newton said.

“You leave old habits behind by starting out with the thought, ‘I release the need for this in my life’,” author Wayne Dyer said, some 300 years later.

I don’t think either of them were talking about keys…but I am.

I was walking through the woods the other day, thinking about the things we carry with us. The physical things—like keys — and the less tangible, like memories. The things we carry with us can be heavy — grudges or a responsibility. Or they can be light — kind words or the lyrics of a favorite song…

The wind is the whisper of our mother the earth
The wind is the hand of our father the sky
The wind watches over our struggles and pleasures
The wind is the goddess who first learned to fly.

Often, the things we carry with us are no longer necessary.

For example, the key chain I carry holds 11 keys, three key fobs, and bar-coded tags for access to my library, AAA, and mile-long receipts from CVS.

Of those keys, I use three: house, car, post office box. One opens the door to a friend’s house, but I can’t remember the last time I used any of the other ones. That’s seven keys — or about four ounces — I carry around with no purpose.

Imagine if the non-tangible things carried weight as well? An ounce for that grudge, another for that resentment. Two ounces for that grief, and two more for that heartache. Perhaps they do.

But can I “release the need for this in my life,” I wonder as I walk? Can I let go of those old things that no longer serve a purpose? Can I leave stale habits and welcome new ones?

If I want to change things, according to Newton, I must do something: every object tends to remain in its state of motion unless an external force is applied to it.

If I “release the need,” and there is an equal and opposite reaction…will I manifest positive change? What new doors will open?

And won’t I need a new key?

Windsong, John Denver

If you like this poem, you’ll LOVE the Divine Intervention issue of MANFEST (zine)

Categories
Art Living Poetry

Alternate Ending

As soon as I heard the tone of your voice
I knew I would change the story.
Right there, sitting on the step,
with the phone still warm against my ear,
I said out loud “It will not end this way.”
I never looked back.
I just cut a hole through the wall,
and changed the language of doors.

©2013 Jen Payne. IMAGE: The Open Door, Leon Spilliaert, 1945

If you like this poem, you’ll LOVE the Divine Intervention issue of MANFEST (zine)

Categories
Memoir Poetry Writing

Memoir

In the pieces of memory
and scraps of conversations
transcribed in situ
I will tell you about
the headless groom
and the dead dog,
about the failure of Saint Raphael
and the irony of the phrase
“you could get hit by a bus.”
I’ll tell you the 15,000 words that broke me
and the ones that almost put me back together
until I realized my heart was better
cracked wide-open like that anyhow.
Now all I need to do is type

Happy Ending.

on the last page
and hope it will suffice.

Poem ©2017, Jen Payne. Image: Woman writing, Edouard Manet.

If you like this poem, you’ll LOVE the Divine Intervention issue of MANFEST (zine)

Categories
Memoir Poetry Writing

Identity Theft

I look
in the mirror
and see nothing.
Pieces of familiar fall away.
Sticks poke at what’s left.

Start from scratch
or use a box mix?
Put square peg
in square hole…
that’s never been my style.

I take a walk
to get answers.
Insert A into B, get C.
But all I see is ocean.
Vast and unresolved.

IT doesn’t seem
to need answers.
In. Out. Back. Forth.
Up. Down. [Repeat.]
I take my cue and leave.

It’s OK. Really.
I was bored with me anyway.
If you please,
may I see something
in a polygon?

Poem ©2008, Jen Payne. Image: Girl in front of mirror, Pablo Picasso

If you like this poem, you’ll LOVE the Divine Intervention issue of MANFEST (zine)

Categories
Living Poetry Wellness Writing

Transubstantiation

Be the change you wish to see in the world — be the change you fear.

Serve it up in bite-size pieces and make peace with it because resistance is futile.

Change comes and change comes and change comes
and you change and you change and you change.

Extra change in your pocket
is just reserve for the next detour.

Recalculating.

Better to live in fluidic space, liquid and organic,
bending time, not biding,
moving from here to there effortlessly.

Gracefully.
Gratefully.

Because an object at rest stays at rest
but an object in motion stays in motion

and we all know it’s the motion in the ocean that counts.

Poem ©Jen Payne

If you like this poem, you’ll LOVE the Divine Intervention issue of MANFEST (zine)

Categories
Poetry Writing

Dance! I say. Dance!

I told him once it was a dance,
and I hyphenated
the push – pull – go – come
choreography
like a tormented poet might.
How clever the analogy!

(And how could he not love clever?)

Watch me pirouet, I said.
Put a spin on this
so the song doesn’t end,
and the routine goes on forever.

(Did you see that? Clever again.)

It’s the same old song and dance, love.
We can’t side-step the family dance-step,
it’s in our genes, and I don’t mean Kelly, so…

I’d like to shake things up a bit,
you know, move with the times…
Why not dance this year’s dance to—
the pachenga.

Poem ©Jen Payne

If you like this poem, you’ll LOVE the Divine Intervention issue of MANFEST (zine)

Categories
Zine

MANIFEST (zine): Divine Intervention

Issue #1, DIVINE INTERVENTION
What is the force that moves us? Changes us? Propels us with such acceleration that we hardly recognize ourselves. Is it grief, heartbreak, indignation? Or joy, courage, determination? Perhaps it is DIVINE INTERVENTION — masked for our benefit as demon or angel or a hurried white rabbit who intrigues us just enough to move. To trip, fall, test the waters, grow up, expand, explore. And praise be to that because often, so very often, those big and unexpected transitions become our greatest and most profound adventures.

POEMS
• Transubstantiation
• What Sound Change
• Identity Theft
• Memoir
• Alternate Ending
• Dance! I Say, Dance!
• Kintsugi

OTHER INGREDIENTS: acetone transfers, acrylic paints, Avery labels, collaged elements, color copies, colored pencils, gold star stickers, Golden gel medium, hand-cut templates, hand-drawn fonts, hand-dyed paper, handmade papers, handmade rubber stamps, ink jet copies, laser prints, metal arrow, mirror labels, original photography, paper napkin, pigment inks, poetry, watercolor paints, with cameo appearances by Sir Isaac Newton Laws of Motion, Dirty Dancing, Star Trek, Solbeam, Eadweard Muybridge, Lewis Carroll, Sir John Tenniel, Alice, The Principals of Cartography, and the Serenity Prayer.

July 2019, Color, 11×17, folded, $6
(Spotify Playlist)

Categories
Creativity

New Leaf

New Leaf

Oh for the new leaf turning,

the new chapter beginning,

the door closing

silently, silently, silently

the window opens

ohhhhh for the new leaf turning…

©2020, Jen Payne