scrabble

A few mornings this week, I wake up feeling endy, which isn’t bad or good, just is, and I scribble the word into my notebook with repetition.  Endy makes me think of the expression “at loose ends” and I look up the expression even though I know its meaning, almost as if I don’t trust my own defining.  Merriam-Webster tells me the idiom means not knowing what to do, not having anything in particular to do.  I’m not at loose ends, am not at anything, am simply sensing pieces of me fluttering in some breeze and feeling a bit chilly... you know, endy.  In my search, I also discover that endy is not a playable word in Scrabble… but if it were, would afford me eight points.  I find this amusing.

On one of these endy mornings, I read a poem entitled “My Uncle Teaches Me About Prayer” and it touches me, leaves me feeling soft and open, humble and comfortably small.  I look up the word hohou, translated as thank you in the Arapaho language, in the Maori language as to bind together, to make peace.  Thank you as a prayer, thank you as a binding together, thank you as a means for making peace.  Hohou.  I whisper the word over and over, attempting to shape the vowels and match inflection to the recorded voice coming out of my laptop, settling instead on feeling the word in my whole body instead of only in my mouth.  Hohou, hohou, hohou.

On this same endy morning, I also read an email from my friend.  These two pieces – the poetry of CooXooEii Black and the poetry of my friend (for her emails sometimes read like poetry and her heart most certainly is) – shift something inside me, gather some of my loose ends.  As I move deeper into the morning, my ends gently weave themselves together, binding not too tightly, loosely and just-right, warming me.  I’m eight points down in a theoretical game of Scrabble but winning otherwise, words rolling over tongue and settling into bones, loose ends gathering and binding (just-right), a February sky and tea and thick wooly sweater, the rest... waiting.  Hohou. 

…which is how poetry works – you start in a sacred place and get zip-lined somewhere truer.
~ Mary Karr ~

P.S. My FREE five-day journaling series Letting Go, Calling In is available through February. Go here for details and to receive this offering, from me to you. (and a p.s. to the P.S. you don't have to be a journaler to do this... just curious and open to reflection.)