Mary Padilla

Happy Writing?

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by Mary Padilla

Attaching an emotion to writing – specifying one in advance – seems unlikely to succeed. How could you know what will pop up when it’s all about spontaneity?  Each thing leads to the next; if it’s working, it’s unpredictable. If we could anticipate it, we wouldn’t need to do it – or want to. What makes it interesting is finding out where it wants to go on its own. Such things are not subject to free will. Perhaps nothing is, but surely not such things. Let the pencil go where it wants and follow where it leads. If we’re leading it, it’s lemmings for sure. How can we know what we think until we see what we write?  

Art that can be planned is not worth doing. We need it to surprise us, as it always will if it comes from what we don’t know that we know. That way we’ll never be bored, nor will the reader. To be happy is to be engaged, to be interested in what’s coming next, and to want to be around to find out. This is why we show up – because we want to. And wanting something is necessary but not sufficient for being happy. We need to care about something enough to want it. Whether we get it or not is much less important, neither necessary nor sufficient. 

Not trying allows it to happen of itself, if we’re not invested in making it materialize. It’s not some product we’re after, but the experience of having it pass through us freely and without interference, not needing or wanting for it to be examined or perfected. Being unexpected, it will be original – there is no other choice.

If we’re happy writing, then we’re not thinking about whether or not we’re happy.  If we’re wondering whether we’re happy, we probably aren’t. If we’re happy to be happy, that’s about all it takes. It doesn’t matter what it is we’re happy about. And if we’re not happy in this moment, that doesn’t mean that we won’t be in the next one.  It’s just not predictable. These things can come and go without our knowledge or consent, but they’re not entirely beyond reach. Just keep writing.  And then comes the most important part: knowing when to stop. When whatever we add makes it worse, it’s complete – before we start to over-think and over-write, just STOP.  

Since joining the LP2 several years ago, Mary has been trying new things, like essay writing.

 

 

 

Making It Out in Time

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by Mary Padilla

Really believing that you might be lost in the woods when the sun is going down is frightening. When you’re unsure of the trail as it becomes rapidly more difficult to discern the way, you realize that the chance of emerging before darkness is becoming exponentially less likely by the minute. Not only does it get much colder in the mountains after sundown, but that’s when the bears come out. And there’s no metal campground strongbox in the middle of the woods in which to stow your food overnight. It’s all in your backpack, and you’d better not discard it if you might be lost out there for a while. But those sealed packets won’t seriously stand in the way of detection by an animal whose sense of smell is as keen as its sight is poor. And bears are always hungry. Your rapidly increasing anxiety bodes no good. Whatever chance you have of getting out to safety soon depends on calmly attending to clues: Which way is the stream flowing so you can follow it out and down? Does the waning light making its way through the canopy line up with the moss on the trees as a compass? Can you spot any trail blazes on their trunks or the boulders? The birds are falling silent now as it darkens, so there could be a gradient of noises from civilization audible over the increasingly loud and rapid beating of your heart. Was that the sound of other hikers, or road noise…or something else? Can you recognize any landmarks you passed on the way in before it gets too dark to see any more? Is that the boulder that was next to the trailhead up ahead…or could it be the profile of an unmoving large animal?

Since joining the LP2 several years ago, Mary has been trying new things, like essay writing.

 

 

Gallery View

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by Mary Padilla
 

A moment in time
and space
–  frozen  –
as in Zoom,
suspended.
–  Leave and Return  –
They have to let you in.
You are in the Waiting Room.
What is on the other side
of that door?
Doors are virtual these days,
and apocryphal.

But the link is still there for 30 days.
There is no end time.
What does Time mean now?
It should be what keeps everything
from happening at once.
But what about
the parallel universes
we inhabit,
where we click
from one reality
to the next
and back again –
or not.

Everything happens
at once there,
except that there is
no single there.
but rather,
three-ringed circuses,
the net of Indra,
the many-stringed
multiverse.

And where are we in all this?
Are we in this?
If outside, where?
Given a place to stand,
could we move it?
What if there is
no place to stand?
And what would it mean
to move?

If nothing is fixed,
what then is our perspective?
That of the omniscent narrator?
Of the fish eye immersed
in a medium it can’t fathom?
And of what significance this?
If we can sense only
what we are primed to experience,
then we cannot perceive
what we do not expect.

Sensations are feelings.
We will not feel
what we cannot know.
Oblivious to the rest,
we each live now
in a world
of our own creation,
socially distant
in a fundamental way,
and alone.
What would it mean
to connect?
 

Since coming to the LP2 several years ago, Mary has been trying new things, like applying the economy of the poetic form to expressing what can be more felt than understood.

Annunciation

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by Mary Padilla

Is that what it is, then?
Something that puts in motion
a sort of cascade?  Personal?
Write it down
before it slips away.
Such things don’t usually
need setting up.
They come into being
by themselves.  Impersonal.
Maybe the pieces aren’t ready
to be locked into place yet.
To need to do this thing,
but not necessarily
because it’s likely to succeed,
It’s an exchange with the part that
observes, integrates,and only manifests
when the synthesis is complete,
to wake up with it in mind,
and live with it always before you,
as a sort of waking dream –
like the cuckoo in the clock
that makes its presence known
only intermittently – rarely –
then quickly disappears again.
when the fit is on, you must do it.
And so you discharge it, this necessity,
It won’t be coaxed out again
until it has something else to say,
and that fully formulated.
deliver it in the doing.
Or don’t, but then it will persist.
This sort of thing doesn’t – can’t – happen
on demand, under contract, or by a deadline.
Not exactly taken over,
haunted, preoccupied, obsessed,
you simply must pursue it,
if you are possessed by it,
or it just might destroy you.
It just bubbles up
when it’s ready
and can no longer be contained.
Not its agent,
but rather reduced to it.
All that can be done is
to give it the time it needs,
as everything else is stripped away,
superfluous to what it in essence is,
this thing that can exist only through you.
and then record the result
What matters is the essential need
for this inessential thing,
meaningful perhaps only to you,
to be,
when it’s ready
and to continue being,
to be delivered.
even after you no longer are.
 

Since coming to the LP2 several years ago, Mary has been trying new things, like applying the economy of the poetic form to expressing what can be more felt than understood.

Poetry is…

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by Mary Padilla

Physics is what physicists do.
(Richard Feynman said this )
So poetry is…
up for grabs, perhaps, but
it does involve some constraints.
You need to use words.
Well, maybe not –
maybe just syllables
or even sounds.
It uses a verbal medium anyway
not a visual one – except
that there can be an impact
of how it looks on the page
and then there’s word-painting.
Is it like music then –
all about the rhythms
and the emphases
and the inflections?
Yes but
could it be more
about the spaces between the sounds
and the things left unsaid at the end?

Mary set out last semester to investigate poetry by signing up for two study groups on the subject.  When that wasn’t sufficiently clarifying the nature of the medium for her, being at TNS, the home of John Dewey, she tried learning-by-doing and attempted to write some of her own.

On Understanding

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by Mary Padilla

Van Gogh thought that he
“would be understood without words.”
We do think in pictures
when we think of some things.
Some of us do, anyway.
And most of us do think in words sometimes.
But as for being understood…
do we even understand ourselves?

Mary set out last semester to investigate poetry by signing up for two study groups on the subject.  When that wasn’t sufficiently clarifying the nature of the medium for her, being at TNS, the home of John Dewey, she tried learning-by-doing and attempted to write some of her own.

Experienced Brain Technicians

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by Mary Padilla

After poetry class
I drive home in a blizzard.
The van in front of me
says Experienced Brain Technicians.
I am thinking of Frank O’Hara
in whose world I just spent 90 minutes.
Maybe that is what poets are,
experienced…brain…
Five miles pass
some snow falls off
the B becomes a D
and I am following plumbers.
Still
there does seem to be technique
to poetry
and
it seems to come from experience
real or imagined.
I am a poet, he keeps saying
very much a poet.
Does he doubt himself so much?
Very much, I am a poet.
I am poet, very much.
A poet I am.
Am I?

Mary set out last semester to investigate poetry by signing up for two study groups on the subject. When that wasn’t sufficiently clarifying the nature of the medium for her, being at TNS, the home of John Dewey, she tried learning-by-doing and attempted to write some of her own.

A Metaphysics of On-Street Parking in Lower Manhattan

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by Mary Padilla

Having joined the IRP last semester, I have found that this has required me to up my game. And in no aspect is this more evident than in the matter of finding the requisite on-street parking following my commute. While defaulting to paid parking is theoretically an option, to do so would be to forgo the essence of the experience. For, properly construed, the discipline of on-street parking, I have learned, is not only paradigmatic of the intellectual enterprise with which I am now engaged, but in some sense transcends it.

Unlike its suburban counterpart, which might be likened to shooting fish in a barrel, finding parking in the West Village operates on a higher plane, involving a more refined and nuanced form of metacognition, situated somewhere between Eastern thought and the creative process. For an empty parking space cannot be willed into being, invoked by desire, or called forth by an appeal of any sort, however sincere. One can encounter it, rather, only through forfeiture of agency. It requires a searching of a particular type, one that involves the use of a species of open awareness. It is necessary to employ a form of alertness that permits you not to miss the thing that is sought by going by too quickly, intently focused on the pursuit of…that very thing.

And if a space should present itself, it would not be because of anything you could do…or do right…or not do…or not do wrong. It would just be – there – just so…or else it simply would not. It would in fact materialize more as the result of trying not to try than as the effect of trying. Only then would it present itself, so clearly what was wanted – was needed, even. It could be gained only when not looked for directly, but only by indirection, lest it be driven away by the bright glare of focused attention. For it would reveal itself only to a more drifting mode of surveillance, a contemplative state of ungrasping to be attained through a willingness merely to set up the proper conditions…and then to wait.

And if then nothing came, that void where the space should be would constitute its own statement. For on-street parking is a gift. It is not a right, or something to which we can in any sense be entitled. If it should appear, then we can only be grateful for something that we can in no way deserve. And if it does not, we need to find a way to be comfortable with this reminder that the point is the process, the exercise of seeking that which cannot be sought, but only found.

Since starting at the IRP last year, Mary has discovered that for her a major part of the experience is the drive down from northern Westchester. Approached in the proper spirit, it provides extensive time for thinking, as well as the opportunity to practice classical voice. Now that she no longer has an 8:30 study group, as she did in the first semester, she no longer even has to leave home before dawn.

Poetry is…

by

by Mary Padilla

Physics is what physicists do.
(Richard Feynman said this )
So poetry is…
up for grabs, perhaps, but
it does involve some constraints.
You need to use words.
Well, maybe not –
maybe just syllables
or even sounds.
It uses a verbal medium anyway
not a visual one – except
that there can be an impact
of how it looks on the page
and then there’s word-painting.
Is it like music then –
all about the rhythms
and the emphases
and the inflections?
Yes but
could it be more
about the spaces between the sounds
and the things left unsaid at the end?

 

Mary Padilla set out last semester to investigate poetry by signing up for two study groups on the subject.  When that wasn’t sufficiently clarifying the nature of the medium for her, being at TNS, the home of John Dewey, she tried learning-by-doing and attempted to write some of her own.

 

On Understanding

by

by Mary Padilla

Van Gogh thought that he
“would be understood without words.”
We do think in pictures
when we think of some things.
Some of us do, anyway.
And most of us do think in words sometimes.
But as for being understood…
do we even understand ourselves?

 

 

Mary Padilla set out last semester to investigate poetry by signing up for two study groups on the subject.  When that wasn’t sufficiently clarifying the nature of the medium for her, being at TNS, the home of John Dewey, she tried learning-by-doing and attempted to write some of her own.