Tag: transition

Staring Down the Barrel of Age in the Middle of a Hostile Government Takeover

Post author By Jen Payne
Post date March 2, 2025
1 Comment on Staring Down the Barrel of Age in the Middle of a Hostile Government Takeover

I’m reading a book voraciously this morning, swallowing down pages like I did the Chinese take-out last week, like I do most things these day…it’s Sunday and it’s supposed to be Sacred Sunday — a day of slowness and quiet and rest, a day without the distractions of technology and that loud, noisy world…but the silence these days is hungry, it needs something to fill it up before the monsters come, before their loud clanging of concerns vibrates my mind at a deafening frequency. They’ve already invaded my spine, their long, worried tentacles crippling any attempts to move forward, their slimy bodies slithering into thoughts at night, racing thoughts and me running faster than I can in the wake of days — the technician lists off the degenerative changes, the demineralization, osteophytes, and narrowing spaces, but neglects to mention the impact fracture caused by my inability to see past my own feet. I’ve never been one to skip to the last page of a book, I swear, I’ve always trusted in the ability of its pages to take me where I need to go, to help me manage the outcome with whatever dose of resilience was needed…but this? this story? I am already so braced for the ending there are days I can’t move.

On a lighter note, if you have not read Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt, please do. It’s a lovely read.

Tags age, coping skills, Grief, HGT, loss, transition, writing in 2025

Creativity

Wishing You an Inspired New Year

Post author By Jen Payne
Post date December 30, 2024
No Comments on 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

Tags axis-mundi, change, New Year, New Year's Resolutions, Resolutions, transition

Creativity Poetry

Sometimes Haunting

The specter
I never reveal
is in the line next to me
and I step back
as if to disappear
behind a display

only an illusion

funny, we were here
the last time I saw him
and he called out
across the parking lot
an apology that seemed sincere
but somehow haunting

I still hear it

The fraught words
admission of the time
he went a little crazy
so much I left lights on
and locked doors
listened for creaking floors

the ghost of a threat

If you like this poem, you’ll love the poems in my new book…

Tags art, Books, Connecticut Poet, Grief, Jen Payne, poems about writing, Poetry, rebirth, Sleeping with Ghosts, transition, Writing

Creativity Poetry

Overcoming

I’m afraid I stayed too late in dreams
this lovely autumn morning
turned and turned and turned again
because I was flying

Flying!

and I didn’t want to land,
become pedestrian
in the pursuits of the day

I wanted to keep flying

over the black sand beach
where it started

over the incoming tide
its waves no longer at my feet

over the jetty
where people stood and stared

I want to stay with the
monstrous effort of lifting,
of pushing the air like water
higher and higher
as if I was drowning before

and

perhaps

I was

Perhaps that —
all of that —
was just drowning
and this is rebirth
pushing and pushing and pushing

forward or up or through
blankets puddled on the floor
sun streaming through the window
the morning roaring
Get Up!

no matter that I already am

If you like this poem, you’ll love the poems in my new book…

Tags art, Books, Connecticut Poet, Grief, Jen Payne, poems about writing, Poetry, rebirth, Sleeping with Ghosts, transition, Writing

Creativity

Eating Liangfen in the Love & Relationships Bagua

Post author By Jen Payne
Post date September 18, 2023
2 Comments on 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.

Tags baguas, change, feng shui, Liangfen, Love & Relationships, transition, writing about grief

Memoir National Poetry Month Nature Poetry Writing

Zeitgeist

It started with the shock
(And the shock and awe)
Then the monetizing
of fear and attention
stimulated by 24 hour
scrolling alarm.
There was finger pointing
and hate fanning,
an us-against-them
rip current
we couldn’t escape.

We glimpsed Hope
then we lost Hope
over and over,
until the hate spilled out
formed a tsunami
fueled by the
the lock-step
dumbing down,
the entertainment value
of ignorance
broadcast on our
unescapable devices.

So we coronated a devil
the leviathan
who gorged on hate
and let plague prosper,
while swarms of protest
were never enough
to stave off the
the dead ones in school halls,
the bloodied rights of masses,
the arming of idiots
the fires and floods,
the crimes of church and state.

Then two decades in
to this human debacle,
our sanity eroded and collapsing,
they announced
that aliens walk among us
and I wondered,
hoped and prayed

Oh! but what if they are angels?

Poem ©2023, Jen Payne. Image: group of angels, Corrège. If you like this poem, you can read similar in my books and zines, available from Three Chairs Publishing on my ETSY SHOP. They come autographed, with gratitude and a small gift.

Tags Connecticut Poet, Jen Payne, Poetry, poetry about transition, poetry after 2020, transition

Zine

MANIFEST (zine): Divine Intervention

Post author By Jen Payne
Post date July 23, 2021
No Comments on 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

Tags #IZM2021, change, CT Zine, Jen Payne, Perzine, poetry zine, Three Chairs Publishing, transition, zines, zinester

Creativity

Every body wants to be a cat…sing along!

Post author By Jen Payne
Post date July 21, 2021
No Comments on Every body wants to be a cat…sing along!

Did you know that each issue of MANIFEST (zine) includes a Spotify playlist especially curated for readers? For the CAT LADY CONFESSIONS issue, I explore all things cat, with songs by artists like Dee-Lite, Peggy Polk, Psapp, Alexis Saski, Lee Ann Womak, and Janet Jackson. It’s purr-fect! Take a listen now!

Tags #IZM2021, cat lady, crazy cat lady, CT poets, CT Zine, Jen Payne, Perzine, poetry zine, Three Chairs Publishing, transition, zines, zinester

Creativity

MANIFEST (zine): Cat Lady Confessions

Post author By Jen Payne
Post date July 19, 2021
No Comments on MANIFEST (zine): Cat Lady Confessions

Issue #2, CAT LADY CONFESSIONS
Poor Cat Lady. She always gets a bum rap. No one ever makes fun of Ernest Hemingway, whose Key West home was filled with cats — and he of a certain age. His strapping action figure includes a typewriter and a shotgun. Cat Lady? She gets six cats, bed head, and a ratty bathrobe. Doesn’t she earn points for opening her heart wide open? for loving even the most unlovable? for her strong, independent nature; Her patience and acceptance? for her superpower ability to nurture trust, stillness, solitude, balance? This issue of MANIFEST (zine) explores the oft-maligned life of the cat lady: crazy or contemplative? recluse or dancing to the beat of her own drum? You decide.

POEMS
• The Obscurity of This Week’s Words
• Bury Me in Yellow
• Serenity
• Chasing
• Note to Self: Smell Roses
• The Anatomy of 3 a.m.
• Sunday Haiku
• Cat Meditation

OTHER INGREDIENTS: acrylic paints, appropriation art, collaged elements, color copies, color scans, colored markers, colored pencils, cracker box, crazy cat lady action figure, Golden gel medium, hand-drawn fonts, hand-dyed paper, handmade cat mask, handmade linoleum block print, handmade papers, ink jet copies, laser prints, latex animal cat head mask, original photography, pigment inks, poetry, ribbon, rubber stamps, soap wrapper, sparkle paint, vintage photographs, watercolor paints, with cameo appearances by Cassastamps, Vikki Dougan , Matt Fry, Carl Larsson, Nina Leen, Pietro Longhi, Amedeo Modigliani, Mary O’Connor, Pixelins by Dana, Eckhart Tolle, Hattie Watson , Helen M. Winslow, and special thanks to Fuzzy, Calico, Crystal, Emily, CJ, Mousse, Little Black Kitty, and Lola.

24-Page, Full-Color, 5.5 X 8.5 Booklet, $6.00

Buy Now

Tags #IZM2021, cat lady, crazy cat lady, CT poets, CT Zine, Jen Payne, Perzine, poetry zine, Three Chairs Publishing, transition, zines, zinester

Creativity

MANIFEST (zine)…It’s About Time

Post author By Jen Payne
Post date July 15, 2021
No Comments on MANIFEST (zine)…It’s About Time

MANIFEST ZINE
Issue #3, It’s About Time!
Poems & More by Jen Payne

We humans sure are creative with time, aren’t we? This arbitrary turning clocks backward or forward twice a year, assigning time to zones and lines and frames. I myself try to trick time, setting clocks randomly wrong and always fast as if I can somehow control the hours, beat the Kobayashi Maru of time. Even Albert Einstein said time is an illusion — “a stubbornly persistent illusion” — that time and space are merely “modes by which we think and not conditions in which we live.” Of course, if you think too hard on things like that you end up down rabbit holes and worm holes…want to come along?

Then check out the next issue of MANIFEST (zine). It’s About Time this time — time travel, time loops, time passing — a 28-page, full-color book filled with artwork, photos, poetry, and a curated Spotify playlist just for you. Cost: $6.00.

POEMS
• Time Peace
• Moonwalk Writer
• Time Flies
• Time Traveler
• There is No Synonym for Reunion
• This Affliction of Longing
• Shape-Shifter, Time-Shifter Crow
• Black Bird Haiku
• Missing Banksy

OTHER INGREDIENTS: acrylic paints, appropriation art, collaged elements, color copies, color scans, colored markers, Dymo labels, ephemera, essays, Golden gel medium, hand-drawn fonts, ink jet copies, laser prints, mixed-media collage, one sci-fi geek, original photographs, pigment inks, poetry, postage stamps, postcard art, rubber stamp art, time travelers, vintage magazine pages, vintage photos, vintage postcard, and watercolor paint, with thanks to the Leo Baeck Institute, Joy Bush, Paul Delvaux, Albert Einstein, Esther Elzinga of StudioTokek, Rowland Emmet, the Everett Collection, Michael Jackson, Julien Pacaud, Robert Louis Stevenson and Charles Robinson, Sir John Tenniel, and Rudolph Zallinger.

Issue #3, It’s About Time!
28-page, full-color 7.5 x 5.5
Cost: $6.00

BUY NOW or SUBSCRIBE and get 4 issues for just $20!

Tags CT poets, CT Zine, Jen Payne, Perzine, poetry zine, sci-fi zine, Three Chairs Publishing, Time Travel, transition, zines, zinester

Creativity mindfulness Nature Writing

The Healing Process

The storm took so much it’s difficult to consider — gone the familiar, the known path. Feet so sure there was no need to gauge progress. It was how I became present again, how I stepped back in the moment.

It was where I could breathe, let go, release my rooted stride. Slough off thoughts. Embrace the solitude with just a heartbeat and birdsong for company.

But her wide canopy of solace is gone now, and I have been hobbled.

Those sacred spaces of breath and respite are changed.

And so am I.

So I take a different path this morning and it comforts me.

It whispers…

This rabbit will caretake the old path.

This turtle, hopeful, lays its eggs. As does the robin.

Part of this snake is here but its heart has moved forward,

and this spider writes her poems in the spaces left behind.

Essay ©2021, Jen Payne. If you like this essay, be sure to purchase a copy of my book LOOK UP! Musings on the Nature of Mindfulness, available here.

Tags Grief, Jen Payne, loss, mindfulness, Nature, the solace of nature, Three Chairs Publishing, transition, walking in nature, Writing

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)

Tags change, CT Zine, Isaac Newton, Jen Payne, John Denver, letting go, Perzine, Three Chairs Publishing, transition, Wayne Dyer, Wellness, zines, zinester

Creativity

MANIFEST (zine): It’s About Time

Post author By Jen Payne
Post date March 22, 2021
No Comments on MANIFEST (zine): It’s About Time

MANIFEST ZINE
Issue #3, It’s About Time!
Poems & More by Jen Payne

Issue #3, It’s About Time!
28-page, full-color 7.5 x 5.5
Cost: $6.00

Tags CT poets, CT Zine, Jen Payne, Perzine, poetry zine, sci-fi zine, Three Chairs Publishing, transition, zines, zinester

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.

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

Tags change, CT poets, CT Zine, Jen Payne, Perzine, poetry zine, Three Chairs Publishing, transition, zines, zinester

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.

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

Tags change, CT poets, CT Zine, Jen Payne, Perzine, poetry zine, Three Chairs Publishing, transition, zines, zinester

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?

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

Tags change, CT poets, CT Zine, Jen Payne, Memoir, midlife, Perzine, Poetry, poetry zine, Three Chairs Publishing, transition, Writing, zines, zinester

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.

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

Tags change, CT poets, CT Zine, Jen Payne, Perzine, Poetry, poetry zine, Three Chairs Publishing, transition, Writing, zines, zinester

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.

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

Tags change, CT poets, CT Zine, Jen Payne, Perzine, poetry zine, Three Chairs Publishing, transition, zines, zinester

Creativity

MANIFEST (zine): Cat Lady Confessions

Post author By Jen Payne
Post date February 22, 2021
No Comments on MANIFEST (zine): Cat Lady Confessions

Issue #2, DIVINE INTERVENTION
Poor Cat Lady. She always gets a bum rap. No one ever makes fun of Ernest Hemingway, whose Key West home was filled with cats — and he of a certain age. His strapping action figure includes a typewriter and a shotgun. Cat Lady? She gets six cats, bed head, and a ratty bathrobe. Doesn’t she earn points for opening her heart wide open? for loving even the most unlovable? for her strong, independent nature; Her patience and acceptance? for her superpower ability to nurture trust, stillness, solitude, balance? This issue of MANIFEST (zine) explores the oft-maligned life of the cat lady: crazy or contemplative? recluse or dancing to the beat of her own drum? You decide.

POEMS
• The Obscurity of This Week’s Words
• Bury Me in Yellow
• Serenity
• Chasing
• Note to Self: Smell Roses
• The Anatomy of 3 a.m.
• Sunday Haiku
• Cat Meditation

November 2020, 24-Page, Full-Color, 5.5 X 8.5 Booklet, $6.00
(Spotify Playlist)

Tags CT poets, CT Zine, Jen Payne, Perzine, poetry zine, Three Chairs Publishing, transition, zines, zinester

Zine

MANIFEST (zine): Divine Intervention

Post author By Jen Payne
Post date February 1, 2021
4 Comments on MANIFEST (zine): Divine Intervention

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

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

Tags change, CT Zine, Jen Payne, Perzine, poetry zine, Three Chairs Publishing, transition, zines, zinester

Creativity Photography

Because Things Grow: Hope

Last year, my holiday postcard wished friends and family “a twisted, imperfect New Year.” Was I psychic?

And while I certainly did not wish 2020 on anyone, I am still of the mind that twisted and imperfect makes for a life LIVED. Twisted and imperfect is the dark, rich compost from which things will grow…

• Read more in our Holiday Newsletter

With hidden links, videos, and rabbit holes to explore, the Holiday 2020 Newsletter is meant to be savored slowly. Enjoy!

Tags coping in a pandemic, creativity during a pandemic, looking ahead to 2021, Neil Gaiman, Random Acts of Writing, transition

Essay ©2021, Jen Payne. If you like this essay, be sure to purchase a copy of my book LOOK UP! Musings on the Nature of Mindfulness, available here.

Windsong, John Denver

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

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

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

Poem ©Jen Payne

Poem ©Jen Payne

©2020, Jen Payne