Susan Palmer's Exquisite Now

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  • To love them all

    Canadian singer/songwriter Bruce Cockburn performed in Eugene Sunday and I’m so glad we went (vaccine cards required, audience all masked). His voice is powerful as ever and the guitar work intricate and evocative, the way he always is. I still remember the moment I first heard a Bruce Cockburn song. I was living in Bellingham and “Waiting for the Moon to Show” came on the radio. I had to stop what I was doing and listen. Been listening to his music ever since. He reminds me of a renegade Catholic priest who doesn’t care what the Vatican is saying or doing because he’s busy feeding hungry people. Last night he played two of four new songs written this year and one of them was just stunning in its sharpness and simplicity. Titled “Orders,” it’s essentially a loving list. Here’s the second verse:

    The cynic and the crooked priest
    The woman wise the sullen beast
    The enemy outside the gate
    The friend who leaves it all to fate
    The drunk who tags the bathroom stall
    The proud boy rushing to his fall,
    The list is long; as I recall
    Our orders said to love them all

  • Beginner’s mind, learner’s mind, expert’s mind

    Chinese silk embroidery from the Jordan Schnitzer Museum collection/Susan Palmer

    I started the morning thinking about beginner’s mind, what it means, how to achieve it. I wondered if there were research about the efficacy of this practice and typed into the Google search engine “beginner’s mind,” limiting my search to sites with a .gov address. Surprisingly, the first thing listed was not research but an essay by a physician about the value of bringing “beginner’s mind” to patient encounters. I had been thinking about it from a different perspective, being a learner of something new, not an expert using the practice of beginner’s mind to inform my work. But I like this redirect.

    I’ll use it today, a writing day for me.

    The image above is an example of stunning embroidery practiced by Chinese textile artists. Despite its age, about 170 years, it’s vibrant, intricate, alive. Part of the Jordan Schnitzer’s Museum of Art collection, I can’t help but think the artist brought beginner’s mind to what is a deeply technical challenge. I know a little, a very little, about this kind of embroidery, because I’ve been practicing it for a couple of years. I’m part way through a Trish Burr design, and this practice, currently known as thread painting, uses single strands of thread (the Chinese used silk, but today, cotton is also commonly used), to create these lush images. The stitches, essentially straight lines of less than 1/8 inch to 1/2 inch long, result in the most opulent look.

    Susan Palmer

    My little owl is a work in progress, and I would say that rather than being in beginner’s mind, I’m more in learner’s mind. I wonder if it’s possible to hold a mutual awareness.

  • First principles

    Oregon coast north of Florence Susan Palmer

    It’s easy to get tugged off course. But I want to hold in mind what matters to me even as I’m engaged in the daily bustle. I want to be more conscious about the choices I make. Today I’m thinking about refugees held in horrific conditions in Libya. I know about this because reporters took time to research and took risks to provide a window into a brutal reality. The New Yorker published “The Secretive Prisons” last week. I’m grateful for this effort. It reminds me, once again, why journalists matter.

    And that brings me to poet John Donne’s thoughts about human connection:

    “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were; any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.“

    Awareness first.