Mary Oliver's West Wind # 2

The first poem in Housden's Ten Poems to Change Your Life is Mary Oliver's West Wind # 2.  His first book also started with Mary Oliver. Like in the first book, this poem, beckons the reader to plunge into the book and to poetry, and in this case also into love. I especially like the Oliver's words, "Without fanfare, without embarrassment, without any doubt, I talk directly to your soul." I have been waiting for messages to my soul, which would suddenly make sense of everything and dictate what to do with my life. And here Oliver, speaks to my soul without the grandiose I expected. But it appeals to me since she speaks without embarrassment or doubt. Then she asks the reader, " Lift the oars from the water, let your arms rest, and your heart, and heart's little intelligence, and listen to me." I have always looked fervently looking for actions, something to do, being still scares me to death. I have felt the need to constantly engage with something. I have learned that I am a very impulsive person, who has struggled a lot to also listen to my own instincts and my true voice. Housden in his incredible generosity can relate, "I can pile into an idea or a course of action before I have barely given it the time of the day, with what can seem like arrogant certainty. This is what Oliver calls 'the heart's little intelligence': the  impulsive response of a heart governed by the emotion of the moment" (Housden, 18).
Housden proceeds to explain, 

" the impulsive heart...knows and sees the world with a naive and definite clarity ... The soul knows in a different way. It gathers honey in the dark from near and far. The soul is always connected to a larger life. It is joined by invisible threads to the soul of all other things, and in this way, the world whispers to it without ceasing. That is why it  is natural for the soul to pause, to listen, to wonder. Only the soul in us has the time to listen deeply"(Housden, 19).

I have always been conscious of my soul's desire to pause and listen. I have heard "the world whisper[ing] to it without ceasing" (Housden, 19). Like I said I am scared of the stillness; the pause. I have always fleed at the first inclination of a pause or stillness. I stopped meditating out of this fear. This blog is an exercise in learning to pause in small increments--baby steps. I am hoping that this will be a good safe way to let thoughts play. I realize that the act of writing is my way of satisfying the urge to act. But this is a good starting place. 

I have for a long time experienced what Housden describes eloquently, "nights carry[ing] other voices on the wings of dreams. Whispers of great empty spaces, lonely and afraid"(Housden, 20). Oliver betrays that alas, you can have a life without love, a life of action not in sync with voice and pull inside. Housden enlightens, "Trust and courage are qualities of soul, and you will need them both to follow the path of love" (Housden, 21). These are not exactly qualities that come easy to me. I do remember that my last venture into loving another, proved to me that I have these qualities innately. After getting my heart and life ripped to shreds in the wake of that relationship, I am a little cautious. I really thought I was in love, madly, deeply, like the whirling dervishes. But now I wonder if that could have been just an infatuation, blown up in mind feverish mind to resemble that which I seek. 

Housden clarifies, "Only you, in a quiet moment of receptivity, can know the difference between your soul's true direction and the convincing clamor of your life's current intensity"(Housden, 23). I feel that, my previously mentioned relationship showed me that I thirst for a life with love. Housden consoles, "Wherever you are in life, her lines all out to you to let yourself fall headlong; into life that has been waiting for you all along(Housden, 23). I look forward to it; it is a great consolation to know that this life with love is available always and waiting for me. After that relationship, I really felt like my life had stopped,a that it couldn't go anywhere, and certainly not where there is love. I have as time went on realized and with great joy and comfort that it is possible to have a life with love. Now it is upto me to listen for it, and to falling into it again. On this journey I am honored and thrilled to have Housden and the poets he enlists to jump in with me.