lilacs out of the dead land

[silveraspen]

It is April, which means it's National Poetry Month once again, and also means that I'll share a few poems here and there as the mood strikes me-- some familiar, some less so. The subject line for this post, of course, is from one of the more familiar: T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land. I have an enduring fondness for that piece, as odd as it is.

It's spring once again, for the most part anyway; spring, a time of new growth and rebirth. Inspired in part by areyoumymemmy, I'm trying to establish a new daily routine. Three things make a day, to wit:

1. Do some sort of physical activity (yoga preferred, for purposes of improving flexibility and calm).
2. Do some work that leads directly toward the great goal: finishing the dissertation.
3. Do some other random thing, whatever it may be, and do it deliberately.

So far I've been reasonably successful at it. This morning I started the day with a brief, gentle yoga practice (courtesy of Gaiam's "A.M. Yoga" DVD), and this evening I spent two hours collecting and reviewing social science/social theory texts.

Today's third thing was to study the introduction and opening section of Peace Is Every Breath, by Thich Nhat Hanh. I'm coming up on the end of the year of living mindfully that I had hoped to chronicle along the way. I didn't do so well with the chronicling, and not as well as I'd have liked at practicing mindful living as a whole... but I did learn from the attempt, and each day is a new beginning. We'll see what the next year brings.

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