Because everywhere is poetry and poetry is everywhere

Funny, Tuhan said something last night similar to Chatty's post on helping other poets as a way of getting published herself. The idea here is of course cultivating karma. But also believing that the their success, your success is also my success as well. That what kills the poem and the poetry, as I may extend the idea from the kali lecture last night, is indeed our pettiness, our greed, our jealousies, our envy, our possessiveness. As if this is our "precious" (ala Lord of the Rings), that we must hoard from other's hands.

I've heard people call the ability to write poetry a gift, something that comes to them. A poem that is lost, will return again one day. So what your parents told you when you were two about sharing your toys is still true. To give our gifts away, because the gift is not the thing, the poem, the technique, the real gift is being able to do it at all, the gift is really living.

I used to be scared about Tuhan seeing my students. I was afraid that they would not do well, that what I had been teaching them was wrong, that he would judge me, that I would not be worthy of my title. And during that first seminar that my students attended, I was nervous. I came to realize that I had to let go of my fears and learn to believe in the things I taught and believe in the people I taught. I had to learn to see their potential, there ability to achieve. And since my students are my mirrors, as are most people you encounter, I also began to see my own potential. Just when I think that I stink at this, that I have nothing more to teach them, something happens, something comes to me to make me believe again.

I am weak, sometimes, some days it's hard not to be petty, or greedy, or jealous, or possessive. It's so easy to be afraid, to not believe. And what you hope is that on those days that you are afraid, your karmic seeds will have blossomed and returned to you, that someone out there that you believed in that you helped will believe in you.

We don't always get it right, we don't always get to win. Afterall that's why all of this, the kali, the poetry, the living, is all a practice.

will be not blogging for a few days. there are people and things to take care of. be back soon.