Adrift in Wonder

On delight, Ross Gay, lunes, and WISE instead of SMART goals

Wonder is a moment of instant mindfulness when something delights or disorients us in a way that helps us see again what is real, true, beautiful, and possible.
—Jeffrey Davis, author of Tracking Wonder

by Crystal Tubens on Unsplash

I am having a heck of a lot of fun with this Small Wonders project. I hope you are enjoying it too. My days are still filled with quite a bit of challenge, mainly around my health, so this respite of wonder, creativity, and connection is so welcome.

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I am doing Jeannine Ouellette’s 12-week writing intensive, For the Joy & the Sorrow: Writing the World, inspired by Ross Gay’s The Book of Delights. (This is for paid members to her Substack, Writing in the Dark. So yes, I walk the talk, I subscribe and pay for other people’s Substacks.)

I’m doing this intensive, despite having a lot on my plate (but then who doesn’t?) because:

· Delight and wonder are closely linked

· Wonder is my “project” now, wonderfully so

· She is using Ross Gay’s Book of Delights, which I love and am delighted to re-read

· I welcome any prompts, exercises, and motivations that get me to further wonder and delight in my life while at the same time fostering creative action, making art.

Daily Delights

So, here is the first daily delight I wrote about:

Adrift in Delight

Those dried, ochre oak leaves, drifting merrily, merrily, merrily down the irrigation ditch, which ripples and shimmers with light as it takes its sweet time flowing onward to some unknown destination, cause a corresponding shimmer and ripple of delight in me. I don’t know why.

Something about these fragile yet sturdy little boats, already ostensibly “dead,” already having let go their tree of Life and succumbed to autumn, to change, inevitability, loss, and death, and yet floating so happily, so carefree and trusting on the river of Life gives me a sweet, quiet pleasure. A feeling of freedom and ease. Permission to let go and float, let life carry me.

And knowledge too, somewhere deep in me, below all the apparent problems I gnaw over and worry on my walk along the ditch—my health, income, work, our impending move and its huge implications and complexities, dissatisfaction and my longing to Awaken—that it is good, all is well, we are held and carried by a benevolent force, despite all “evidence” to the contrary.

A Bit of Wonderful Lunacy

Below is a series of linked lunes I wrote this past week on the same theme. I put them in my little yellow notebook which I am aiming to fill with short poems of short lines.

A lune is a poetic form developed by Robert Kelly, consisting of 5 syllables in the first line, 3 in the second, and 5 in the third. I learned about this form from Joseph Massey’s wonderful, poetic Substack, Dispatches from the Basement.

Massey is a master of the lune, and of the short, imagistic, emotionally powerful poem in general, and he often seems to write a series of linked lunes. I like the freedom this gives me to stretch out a bit more, since the very short poem is a real challenge for me. (You can read more about the lune here.)

Autumn Lunes

Bright coins of lime green
spark amid
detritus of fall

    •

They gather, the dead
and used up,
autumn’s bereft song

   •

One ochre boat leaf
sails with ease
on the rippled stream

   •

Unspeakably glad
just this now,
I quicken my pace.

All this was inspired by the memory of a walk I took this past autumn.

I have a truly delicious wonder spark for you this week to help you think about the past year and the coming year in a much more wonder-filled light. Plus a link to a fabulous post on wonder with an inspired way to think about naming dreams and goals for the year ahead.