Finding Beauty In Unexpected Places

Last August, I challenged myself to write and publish a post at least once a week. For the most part (except for one or two weeks in October), I accomplished this. Honestly, I often struggle with what to write about. In addition, I worry if my writing is good enough for others to read. I still carry some of the same worries as I wrote about in my first blog post. However, each time I post something I gently need to remind myself that the act of writing and publishing a blog post is usually enough for me, as it helps me slow down and pay attention to what is happening around me and best of all, it helps me to reflect on how I show up as a teacher, writer, and person. For me, that is a precious gift. Each time I work on a blog post, I am reminded of how hard writing is and how vulnerable you must be in order to share your writing (including your ideas within your writing) with others. I think this experience of blogging has helped me appreciate the writing of other bloggers (or anyone who publishes writing) and it gives me a lot more empathy and insight for my students when I ask them to share their writing with each other or with me.

One thing that has surprised me about blogging is the joy of connecting with other bloggers and discovering something new about writing or teaching. For example, a few days ago I read this post from blogger Margaret Simon. She wrote a post based on what another blog post challenged readers/writers to do - write a poem about finding beauty in something not considered beautiful. Margaret Simon shared her gorgeous poem called Graffiti Girl. She also introduced me to a form of poetry that I had never heard of before: Shadorma, a Spanish form of Haiku using a pattern of syllables of 3/5/3/3/7/5 in a non rhyming poem of six lines. I’ve been writing daily Haiku for a while, but I thought that it would be fun to play with Shadorma.  

I live in a relatively small, older home built in the 1940s. We have a small kitchen, sans automatic dishwasher. Due to the loss of cabinet space and a limited budget, our family never installed one. Doing the dishes by hand is often a task I loathe, and it usually makes me cranky when I realize that a stack of dirty dishes awaits me. Yet when I filled up the dirty crock pot ceramic insert with warm water and dish soap this morning, I realized beauty was in my kitchen sink. I had simply not found the time to notice or think about it.

Here is my first attempt at a Shadorma poem, noticing something I don’t usually find to be very beautiful:

“Sud Bubbles”

Suds sparkle

Shimmer against jet

Porcelain.

Light bends as

Bubbles pop and shrink into

Abundant water.

And so, Margaret from Reflections from the Teche, thank you for helping me to recognize beauty in something so mundane I see each day AND for introducing me to a new form of poetry. Shadorma is a form I will definitely play with again in my writing.