Thursday, January 7, 2010

How Are You?


One of my beloved friends in England
read something on my blog that
prompted him to send me an email,
asking pointedly, "I repeat:  how are you?"

Last weekend, I called a friend in New Mexico,
and he, too, asked directly,
"And how are you?"

Another friend, here in town,
asks me every day in an email,
as a separate subject or line item,
"How are you?"

I'm NEVER prepared for that --
for anyone asking me, I mean.
And certainly I never have an answer.
I struggle to respond.

I guess I could practice by asking myself, huh?
Life as Art:
instead of creating a page, a piece, a painting, a poem,
create the ability to articulate how I feel,
in the moment.
Look in the mirror more than a few times every day,
pose the question,
"How Are You?"

LISTEN FOR THE ANSWER.

Maybe that would start to balance the obvious
conditioning I've experienced in being asked,
perhaps,
but without the chance given for response
or
(mostly)
not even being asked.

And with practice,
asking myself,
maybe I can overcome my conditioning that
"they" (or I?)
don't really want to
know the answer.

4 comments:

  1. how are you? (lol) i do want to hear the answer.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Oh...my...goodness. I want everyone I love to read this post today.

    Oh...my...goodness.

    ReplyDelete
  3. well you know....we really do want to know how you are !! and as far as figuring how you are....we are all on that self discovery path that sometimes has a rainbow at the end of it and other days just pile of dog shit...

    my best friend has answered this question amongst her tribe for years with a "shut the hell up" and it works for her....

    you could try that sometime to just throw everyone off a bit....

    ReplyDelete
  4. When people ask me how I am and I say "I'm OK, they say, "Just OK?"....I say to them..."Where I come from, OK is better than not OK." Where I come from is a violent, abusive family and it was not ok to be OK....after 20 yrs of Therapy, I am OK.

    ReplyDelete

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