Let you Unfold

We cannot grow if we are not fully present in the evolutionary experience. Present can be challenging, uncomfortable, and tedious, but ... Enjoying and fully experiencing the journey of life is as important as achieving goals and reaching milestones. Let you Unfold.

Who am I

Who are the Poets?

They embrace the power and fragility of words in lines. Poets can find that authentic, revealing and potentially universal place between a random access release of personal feelings and observances of our world. They discover the obscure, esoteric personal connectivity to our being. Some master tools of form, others rhythm, metaphor or illusion. 

No longer necessary, ...

It takes energy to stay informed. The world seems smaller or at least closer now and my younger self-was so wrong about the need to advocate soon to be unnecessary.

At age 17, I actually thought all the important fights had been fought: that advocacy for causes on the side of good & right were no longer necessary. An eighteen-year-old could now vote. There was an end in sight for Vietnam War. The Civil Rights struggles would now be history lessons. Even at 28, I was still in the shallows. Iran Contra seemed 'nothing' compared to Vietnam. I had just served two years in VISTA but failed to connect the dots between the Criminal Justice System I found broken and the failed of Civil Rights Activism and Acts. At 33 I became a community leader by title; a full calendar with tasks and topics: reproductive rights, recycling, voter engagement as President of the League of Women Voters of New Haven. I got swallowed up in the consensus agendas for several years. I did not stay a member after this immersion. I needed to retreat. I did however find another nonpartisan venue: Community TV.

My shallows
Was I a victim of my shallows, my education and media choices?  Did I measured the value of the revolts by the numbers of participants I observed as reported on TV?  Was broadcast news a real window on the world? The Vietnam war was piped into our homes daily. How did it really deepen my understanding of the world or the why of it. Ironically I read Gloria Steinem My Life on the Road to discover so much context for my life.  It was a gift and is truly that.

Today I can stand with those saluting the American flag and taking a knee during the Anthem. While I enable free speech in my daily pursuits, I can not stand with anyone who condemns civil protests.

Much in the world will continue to need advocacy, including Mother Earth herself. Symbols and words have power.  Choose wisely. 

Embracing the work of others, sharing it as a treasure

CLP: More than serendipity and improv

Update: I received a CLP invitation to participate 7/14/17; engagement begins this Fall. Grateful.

My paid work-life is bookended by full-time volunteering. I am in more than full-time service mode now. Graduate studies, in research, then in e-media, preceded these opportunities to serve my community; initially as a VISTA Volunteer in New Haven and now operating a nonprofit Community TV station in Wallingford, CT.  

I recently applied to Community Leadership Program offered by a Foundation serving New Haven. Its mission is to equip, support, and inspire community leaders. I did this to help moderate, and enhance, the next leg of my journey. If diversity includes a middle-aged white suburban woman, I may get selected. Chances are said to be less than fifty-fifty in this year's aspiring and deserving applicant pool.

My Journey

My personal life is peppered with name alterations and course corrections. The bulk of my career was with one corporation that had many transformations of its own thus providing no opportunity for my stagnation. 

I have had many common labels like foster mom, analyst, team lead, poet, president, adviser, chairman, victim, and maven with not-so-ordinary stories to accompany them. 

At age 10, I decided my home would have a window above the kitchen sink with a view of a bustling bird feeder. I have this. At 21, I wanted to be a writer and thought my day job would be a social worker; neither truly came to pass. At 32, I became a mom giving birth to a son and a pen name ~Adele Houston. Both would become my sanctuary. At 40, I had a moment of independence. At 50, I decided to face my technology anxiety which derailed my training in Library Sciences in 1975. I returned to school for a second advanced degree which put me into an ever-changing e-media landscape and an abundance of lifelong learning opportunities. Currently, I aspire to a fulfilling mid-life with my sights set to double infinity (88). I still do not know what I want to be when I grow up. I firmly believe that serendipity makes the most of choices and fate. 

To equip, support, and inspire can describe my day job with storytelling at its core. Some days I wish my toolkit was less improvisational. My leadership style is situational as it should be, however, it is not as informed as it could be. Every experience provides a new or revived life lesson. I seem to be acquiring fewer scars along the way.

At the moment my life is substantially driven by whatever walks in the door of the TV station. As such, I change lives including my own in unexpected ways, daily. 

In spite of successful strategic outcomes, sustainability remains elusive for the organization I serve. For this to change, I need to not only help build organizational capacity but be willing to personally be less anonymous. Some peculiar constraints are also tied to local politics with a mayor of 34 years who dare I say is not a fan. Many stories herein. 

I remain uncertain as to whether I should be a bit more take-charge of my life. Ironically, I am perceived as someone in-charge.

Next: Will authenticity grow wrinkles? or Over today's Rainbow

Dutchboy and me

My 1st Haibun is written (while among other poem-makers) in response to a vase of artificial tulips and porcelain kissing dutch ceramics.

Like from a storybook. We. Inhale.

You are 100%. Your name means house in Dutch. 

Now my name, my home is salt & peppered 

with Delftblue, porcelain, clogs, wooden shoes and the abundant promise of tulips in port.  

My imaginings still linger, Kiss Me In Paris, circa 1950, posterized Doisneau nuanced in black and white, more me, than you.

Sans fragrance

In shiny, colorful cheer

we are molded.

I AM Where the Enneagram finds you, and points to.

Every day is one of evolution.

1 THE REFORMER The Rational, Idealistic Type: Principled, Purposeful, Self-Controlled, and Perfectionistic 2 THE HELPER The Caring, Interpersonal Type: Demonstrative, Generous, People-Pleasing, and Possessive 3 THE ACHIEVER The Success-Oriented, Pragmatic Type: Adaptive, Excelling, Driven, and Image-Conscious 4 THE INDIVIDUALIST The Sensitive, Withdrawn Type: Expressive, Dramatic, Self-Absorbed, and Temperamental 5 THE INVESTIGATOR The Intense, Cerebral Type: Perceptive, Innovative, Secretive, and Isolated 6 THE LOYALIST The Committed, Security-Oriented Type: Engaging, Responsible, Anxious, and Suspicious 7 THE ENTHUSIAST The Busy, Fun-Loving Type: Spontaneous, Versatile, Distractible, and Scattered 8 THE CHALLENGER The Powerful, Dominating Type: Self-Confident, Decisive, Willful, and Confrontational 9 THE PEACEMAKER The Easygoing, Self-Effacing Type: Receptive, Reassuring, Agreeable, and Complacent

I zealously pursue noble causes see the blacks, whites; But systems fail me. I desire from my heart But it turns tortuously inside me, conflicted - by desire for affirmation. I feel the place where I lay my head But I do not rest - that I might not recognize some success. I sense majesty in all creation, long to be empowered But find no completion. I listen precisely to intimate intimacies But remain aloof. I understand what is right: protecting, supporting, uplifting But I know no direction. I show, express, perform, teach with an eventful flair But know no certainty. I passionately lust ahead exaggerating the rightness of where I stand; But refuse to turn any corner. I hear the quiet of my pulse Like a secret, feeling it pounding out of time. I am at the foot of the cross brokenness awaits your resurrection in me.

I am diligently desiring good most tolerant of imperfection. I am generous of spirit extending and uplifting embrace. I am creating from within achieving great things in love . I am extraordinary in the ordinary present in all wonder I am discerning and the walk is daily. I am trusting deeply, drinking from the strength of truth. I am enthusiastically embracing wisdom. I am passionate for life championing social justice. I am profoundly tranquil confident, and at peace. I am whole head, heart and gut chains broken for this time and forever I AM.

De Journey to My Solstice

Imprecise memories mingle.

It is not obvious in my days 
what I tangle in my mind.

Fallible in skips, voids, 
misplaced in thought and keys

at midlife, still searching for luck .

Four-leaf clovers occupied my imagination

more than Barbie or Jesus. 

Suspecting luck, the kissing cousin of fate,

would - could - should hobnob;

leapfrogging me over necessity 

into a tyranny of urgent, of possible

with Art. Fractal Gobbled-y-gook:

What does one do with luck?  Get a snowflake’s

destiny! Help it along. Add a regal “de”

before the family name.

Vittorio de Sica, our acquaintance made 
in caressed pages of a shelf-long encyclopedic

book by wide-eyed ogling, me. Our name 
in local marquee lights. Comedic. The world 
is on show. ‘Divorce Italian Style’. A matinee. 
A man, nothing to do, nowhere to go. Fate’s 
finite area rhythmically repeats. Irony 
in cinematic modes of vision, unerring.

Serendipity, makes both true: choice and 
chance. I marvel. A celluloid masterpiece, 
directed by an infinitely distant cousin. Awake
from Winter an invisible Summer, an uncertain
man and his dog story, Umberto D (and Flike)

a disillusioned optimist’s real legacy.

My last triad, taking stock again of leaves:  
embracing the darkness of My Solstice and nature 
like a poet with cautions to heed: not to arrive 
with Blue Jay beggary I fold into the dark 
with thickened fur, to cherish the world and people
as they are, with all their failings, and faint
tender connections to the beauty of being. Space 
lurks in the tilted balance of my body clock,  

between same old things in infinite perimeter. 

Copious clover with three leaves belie the fact
that Life is truly a factor of four. 

By Adele Houston Week One and Two of 2017

The Writing Prompt: Use concepts of Transition, Solstice, New Adventure, Hero’s Journey, or other concept of change relating to endings and beginnings. Relate it to yourself, our world, religion, politics, or other situation that feels right. NOTE: Maiden name S.A.Sica

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