Wouldn’t you know it? That on this ninth day of sonnetpalooza, the recommended prompt for the day on the glorious NaPoWriMo website is to write a sonnet!? Now there’s an assignment I can get behind! It’s Easter, and I feel the urge, almost a third of the way through National Poetry Writing Month, to switchContinue reading “#447: What if I moved the cushion out into . . .”
Tag Archives: meditation practice
#444: Don’t ask me why. I cannot meditate . . .
I think I have exhausted all of the portmanteau slang I can think of: sonnetpalooza, sonnetmageddon, sonnetpocalypse–so we’ll have to try something new. Welcome to day 6 of the festival of sonnet, a sonnet-storm of 24/7 sonnets, all sonnets, all the time. I’ve said this before–I am not a traditionalist or a formalist. I amContinue reading “#444: Don’t ask me why. I cannot meditate . . .”
How I Know I Need To Start Meditating Again
It has been almost a year since the last time I meditated on a regular basis, or frankly, at all. In my last year of teaching, in the same school I taught at for 32 years, in the first year back to in-person learning after the COVID-19 shut down, a group of teachers and administratorsContinue reading “How I Know I Need To Start Meditating Again”
#347: A Prose Poem Meditation on the Penultimate Day of National Poetry Month by the American English Teacher in His Potentially Penultimate Professional Year, Ending in a Rhyming Couplet
The natives are restless, the 9th graders are rowdy, won’t stop talking, interrupt almost every teacher phrase with chatter, and because my intern has the class, I am completely unruffled. It’s the penultimate day of National Poetry Month and this is my penultimate poem in prose in the April of my potentially penultimate school yearContinue reading “#347: A Prose Poem Meditation on the Penultimate Day of National Poetry Month by the American English Teacher in His Potentially Penultimate Professional Year, Ending in a Rhyming Couplet”
Diary of an English Teacher in His Penultimate Year, Redux: Time On Our Side?
Synchronicity, as Jung described it, is a meaningful coincidence, an “acausal connecting principal.” Things happen back to back that seem to be meaningfully related; even though the first thing could not be said to have caused the second thing, we still feel the buzz or the chill of revelation, usually in a thrilling and positiveContinue reading “Diary of an English Teacher in His Penultimate Year, Redux: Time On Our Side?”
Mindfulness in 2018: A Reflection
My meditation stats were stunning in 2018, comparatively, that is. Here’s the snapshot: one hundred and seventy-one consecutive days on the cushion as compared to one hundred and twenty four days the previous year. That’s an improvement of almost an entire two month’s worth of meditation on a cushion. However, I must confess that myContinue reading “Mindfulness in 2018: A Reflection”
#316: Chakras and Chi Balls (the Last Poem of April)
Some people associate a rainbow of colors with various parts of their bodies and they ascribe certain powers or characteristics of their psycho-emotional life to these various colors or energies; Some people think you can concentrate on a color, say, orange, and a body place, say, your privates, and that somehow your relationships will beContinue reading “#316: Chakras and Chi Balls (the Last Poem of April)”
#308: An Attempted Explanation
As soon as I decided not to go shopping for music the second day in a row, my car horn alarm went off and I couldn’t get it to stop. I sat there in the car, parked, engine running, horn blasting, poking and pushing every conceivable control surface, even the ones I knew wouldn’t work,Continue reading “#308: An Attempted Explanation”
#285: A Poem Against Nothing
During meditation practice today I wrote some words and phrases on two notecards in response to the following three meditative prompts: Nothing, Form, and Intention. As a writer, I live in the world of specificity, concrete detail, or in ideas expressed explicitly and with clarity. Sometimes I struggle with some of the more esoteric aspectsContinue reading “#285: A Poem Against Nothing”
Mindfulness in 2017: A Reflection
Here’s the new year’s resolution I made two years ago for 2016: I resolve in 2016 to be more mindful, to find opportunities daily for meditation practice, and to seek out a community, some companionship on the journey. This resolution was a resounding success. I found myself a community that still meets two years laterContinue reading “Mindfulness in 2017: A Reflection”
michael jarmer 