Put your lips to the world

When I first entertained the thought of blogging, my biggest influence for delving into this medium was author Jon Katz. I read his books, loved them and his style of writing, and then got hooked on his blog. He combines writing with photography, animals, deep thought, introspection, and well....life.

I read his blog daily and soon got up nerve to contact him personally through email. We exchanged a few emails discussing this or that, and he gave me the encouragement I needed to finally get back to expressing myself through the written word--something I did and loved as a child.

We wrote of blogging and filters, and mostly about letting go and opening up to the outside world. I have to say, I thank Jon for pushing me onto that "rickety limb of doom", as I called it--he encouraged me to tread into waters unknown, with my heart open to the world. Or whatever little readership I had at the time.

I got the chance to meet Katz in person a year or so ago, he was in town for a book signing. I had a great time talking to him about photography and again, boundaries and filters. It was nice to meet someone who had such an impact on me--I wonder if he ever really knew how much he inspired me.

I no longer read Katz, for personal reasons. Sometimes we don't always agree with or like what others do and it makes it hard to like them after that. So, while I don't read him anymore, I do stop by his blog periodically just to see what's going on.

And I did that the other day.

I hadn't been there in long time, but he surprisingly wrote a line from a poem that he quotes often and that I have posted on the wall by my computer--it is Mary Oliver's "Mornings at Blackwater". It is a poem that Katz loves and it inspired me as well--brought me home, so to speak. I get emotional when I read this poem because it changed my life.

Mornings at Blackwater (Mary Oliver)

"For years, every morning, I drank
from the Blackwater Pond.
It was flavored with oak leaves and also, no doubt,
the feet of ducks.

And always, it assuaged me
from the dry bowl of the very far past.

What I want to say is
that the past is the past,
and the present is what your life is,
and you are capable
of choosing what that will be,
darling citizen.

So come to the pond,
or the river of your imagination,
or the harbor of your longing,

and put your lips to the world.
And live
your life."

It's funny how your life is fluid and changes with time like a river. It's odd on who comes in to change the course of things, makes you think a little differently, or who sticks a pebble in just the right place to make the current of your life move just a tad differently.