Today's The Day!

This Thursday the 1st of November is the first ever Mindful Writing Day, organised by Kaspa & Fiona at Writing Our Way Home. To join in simply slow down, pay attention to one thing and write it down (making a small stone). Read all about it here. small stones are easy to write, and they will help you connect to the world. Once you've started, you might not want to stop... You can read more about small stones and find out about Lorrie with pea-green eyes in Fiona's free ebook, Write Your Way Home. If you visit Writing Our Way Home on Thursday you'll find out how to download your free kindle copy of the new anthology, 'A Blackbird Sings: a book of short poems'. You can also submit your small stone and see it published on the blog, and be entered into a competition to win one of five paperback copies of the book. There's a Facebook invite here if you'd like to invite your friends, and do feel free to copy this blog onto your own blog. You can tweet this: Connect with the world through mindful writing - join the first Mindful Writing Day on the 1st of November:  #smallstone

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Kaspa & Fiona were kind enough to provide the above text about Mindful Writing Day, and as it is their project, they describe it succinctly and wonderfully.

My day hasn't started terribly mindfully - just a bundle of reactions and emotions. I will endeavor to channel this throughout the day and will update with stones that I find. Wishing all of you blessings and safety and peace. Keep thinking, keep writing.

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8:00 AM:

Torrent of tears and rain on the way to the bus. 

Sending them off with an umbrella for the rain.

Nothing to protect from the tears.

Stretching my heart taut over a fragile wire frame.

Doesn't quite reach far enough.

11:00 AM: 

Inhale, reach up and back. Higher than I think I can.

Exhale. Swoop down, supplicant, gather my courage from around my ankles.

Inhale again. Reaching up, but with focus. Pointing to the sky and pulling it all down to my heart.

Exhale.

Sun Salutation on a day with no sun.

2:00 PM:
I overhear a snatch of conversation as I walk past, busy with my groceries.
He is either saying something racist, or talking about good food.
I will believe it's the food.
I am hungry for humanity.

5:30 PM:
She sits on the kitchen floor with me while dinner cooks.
She asks me to tell her about God and love and a time before she was born.
Math homework is happily forgotten.

9:00 PM:
He fell asleep with a book on his head.
Wrapped in blankets of galaxies and hugging his new tiger tight.
His mouth opened slightly as if to let off the exhaust fumes from his full throttle adventures in his dreams.

11:00 PM:
Adding up the day before I fall asleep.
The columns are out of balance.
There is always profit in finding gratitude.

Collecting Stones

I found some lovely little stones on the internet a few years ago. I was intrigued by them and read them, turned them over in my mind, reveled in the idea of them, stuck them in a pocket of my mind somewhere and forgot about them until I noticed a badge on Judy's lovely blog,  Life...Minute By Minute.

The River of Stones is a blogging project started by Kaspa & Fiona over on Writing Our Way Home. Take some time to check out their lovely blog. It's as relaxing as a facial and a massage - with smooth river rocks. This river that they started is an exercise in mindfulness. The idea is to really take notice of something every day and write about it. Not an epic poem, or a long winded something or other, just a small stone. Distill the essence of something every day into a few powerful words. This is so far up my alley it's on my back doorstep. So, in addition to my daily posts where I will be doing my usual nonsense, I have added a page on the right there, right near me and my house, where I will be adding my stones daily.

My sister undertook the 365 Photos project for 2011 and it was a tough challenge, but she's done it and the results have been amazing. Not only does she have 365 gorgeous pictures from each day of the last year and a record of one year of her life, it also pushed her to pursue her photography to heights she never would have done otherwise. The finished album is also a beautiful distillation of the things she saw to be most important in her life every day for a year. The whole project turned out to be so much more than the sum of its parts. In a way, I'm hoping these stones will add up to something surprising. A mosaic of a year in the life. We shall see...

If you are so inclined, check in from time to time and see how these stones are piling up. I think this is such an incredibly beautiful project and my mind is already running in 17 different directions with it. One of the directions has been to promptly get this song stuck in my head. There needn't be much comment on that.

I am too tired to adequately describe how positively giddy I am to be participating in something that, a few years ago, I admired from afar. I looked on wistfully, thinking: wow, what an amazing community of thoughtful, creative people. Now somehow I've sneaked in the back door (probably because I brought Bob Dylan along) and it makes my head spin with delight. I owe it to you. All of you who click by and egg me on. All of you who think and write and do so well in your own corners of the webs and inspire me daily. I am really beginning to love this blogging thing.