Shawn L. Bird

Original poetry, commentary, and fiction. All copyrights reserved.

Seizing the dream May 10, 2010

Filed under: Pondering,Reading — Shawn L. Bird @ 3:01 am
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Before I had the blog up and running, I was writing blog entries. Here’s one from a month ago.

April 11, 2010
Dream that dream

Yesterday I picked up the unauthorized biography of Susan Boyle by Alice Montgomery, called Dreams Can Come True. Today I was reading the back. It begins, “On 11 April 2009, forty-eight year old spinster Susan Magdalane Boyle stepped out on to the stage of Britain’s Got Talent to jeers and sniggers.” I’m sure you’ve seen the You Tube video. It probably hit you in the gut just as it hit me and thousands (if not millions) of people around the world. We know Susan Boyle’s story by now.

Check the date. April 11, 2009. Exactly one year ago today shy Susan Boyle, unemployed, gathered her courage dared the “jeers and sniggers” to stand on that stage and take another stab at her dream. She opened her mouth and captivated the world. Look what has happened in that year.

She has rocketed from obscurity to world renown. She has travelled the world singing to thousands of people, and broken records for pre-order CD sales. She has been interviewed, photographed, and become the subject of an unauthorized biography.

What a difference a year makes.

In a year, a baby can be conceived, carried, delivered. A book can be conceived, written, published and on book shelves. A hundred pounds can be lost at a healthy two pounds a week. A student can earn an A and secure a scholarship. A career can be made. A dream can come true.

What will happen to you in the next year? What can you do to make your dreams come true? Are you brave enough to take the steps to see your dreams realized by this time next year? You don’t need New Year’s Eve to make a life change, spring is a wonderful time to make a new beginning.

Is it time to seize your dream?

 

Altering perspectives on the self May 9, 2010

Filed under: Pondering — Shawn L. Bird @ 1:41 am
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I rolled my tongue across my front teeth the other day and for the first time since I was twelve, it was a smooth path. No lump. No left front tooth jutting diagonally over top the right front tooth. All smooth. Wow.

It felt weird. I looked in the mirror and my mouth was different. It was an odd sensation, like a part of me had altered in a way that would never return. That is the point, of course. I didn’t begin the process of getting Invisalign braces with the idea of my teeth remaining the same, and yet here I am, only six weeks into the process and my front teeth are completely changed.

I was surprised at the way it challenged my visual self-image. If something as simple as a straightened tooth can cause this re-alignment of my self-awareness, what happens to someone who re-builds her nose or sculpts a new chin?  How do people take the image they’ve always seen in the mirror and equate the new person they see there? Can they even really see the new person or is the image altered by expectation of what has always been before? How about people who have been heavy their entire life, after they lose 100 lbs? What about someone who has had facial reconstruction after an accident?  What about a burn victim?

How does the new person in the mirror become ‘me’ for these people?  Do they ever feel like the outside and the inside don’t match anymore? Do they doubt the sincerity of the people they meet? Do they live in terror that someone will figure out the ‘real’ them isn’t the person that is visible in the mirror?  Or is it just the opposite: the mirror finally matches the person they knew they were inside?

A re-alignment of teeth is a pretty minor adjustment really, and yet it’s altering my perspective. I’d love to hear from others who’ve gone through some altering of their perspective on themselves.  Is it as difficult a process as I imagine?

© Shawn Bird 2010

 

I am myself May 8, 2010

Filed under: Poetry — Shawn L. Bird @ 2:30 am
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I am myself
No secrets left
My heart is bared
My soul bereft

I am myself
Open to you
Whate’er may be
Whate’er is true

I am myself
Given with joy
No hidden place
Naught to annoy

I am myself
Just as I am
I give my heart
Be mine, madame.

05/09

(c) Shawn Bird

Just having some fun with iambic dimeter in quatrains.  ‘4X4ing’ in an ABCB pattern 😉

 

Spring haiku May 7, 2010

Filed under: Poetry — Shawn L. Bird @ 3:49 am
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Evening sky blushes

Scent of blossoms on the breeze

Above lake and hills

 

Beautiful People May 6, 2010

Filed under: Grace Awakening,Pondering — Shawn L. Bird @ 5:41 pm
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I’ve been thinking about beauty lately.

A couple of years ago, I decided that I wasn’t going to bring anything into my house that wasn’t aesthetically beautiful. Following that “A thing of beauty is a joy forever” model, I determined that if an object can be beautiful, why choose the ugly one over a beautiful one for the sake of a few dollars? So far this has worked out very well with objects, but an obsession with beauty poses some complications when dealing with real people.

We have such a love/hate turmoil over the concept of beauty. Most of us equate beauty with attractiveness. Attractiveness seems to be a ephemeral thing, yet studies say it can be measured on an attractiveness scale that relies on symmetry .  Other studies suggest the key to beauty is being absolutely average (a fascinating phenomenon called koinophilia that I will explore in another blog entry). I’m not sure that attractiveness is truly synonymous with beauty.

Attractiveness suggests a drawing in of others. To attract is to pull others to you, and our society has made it easy to become attractive. Miracles are promised by this cream or that potion. Surgeons are ready and more than willing to prey on the desire of people to lose their uniqueness, to be so average that they become pretty. Bigger breasts, flatter tummies, straighter noses, and firmer chins are all for sale. Everyone looks like everyone else and theoretically people are being drawn to each other like bees to flowers.

The wonder of beauty is that it has an air of the unattainable. It is distant. Physical beauty is to be worshipped and admired, not to be possessed. It’s not about drawing in; it’s about standing apart. In people attractiveness exists briefly and then fades as sexual virility is lost to age. It is temporal. But there is a beauty in form and movement which reveals a special grace beyond time. In an elegant elder, grace shows in a spirit of beauty that is completely indefinable. There is nothing symmetrical about it. It is far from average. It is a beauty that grabs you and leaves your heart glowing in your chest. That’s real beauty. It is unique, creative, and eternal.

True beauty is grace.

© Shawn Bird 2010