I woke at 3:30am after a few hours sleep. I’m still suffering from springtime juniper allergies along with half of Santa Fe, and this sleep pattern has persisted for five weeks now. I’m getting better. My guess others are, too, since the stores are now stocked with remedies. But it’s tough, and my day’s booked to 9pm. I wanted to go back to sleep. I didn’t. I lay there awake. A friend who woke at 2:30am wrote she got up, roasted vegetables, made a cake, composed a painting schedule, did laundry, tea, dishes, fb, called her mom twice, sorted oil paint colors and wrote morning pages. I mulled what I had to do – schedule 35 author talks, meet a 10-day video challenge around stories as author-speaker-coach-mentor-workshop leader, gather tax docs for a new-to-me accountant, and create a flier for my upcoming talk this weekend – all by 11am today. I considered I may not write my blog. I left that open.

Here’s the thing. You know that image of the sofa with springs sticking out in all directions? That’s how I’ve felt the past two weeks. Steep learning curves, shifting back into disciplines I’ve relaxed while  adopting new ones. Rising with frogs to eat each day (a new image or me). I had to ask what eating frogs meant – something you want to avoid, or difficult. I was told Mark Twain and Alexander Graham Bell said they ate a frog first thing in the morning and the rest of the day was great. It fit exactly how I feel some mornings.

A few days ago I woke compelled to transform my space. COMPELLED to end what I call ‘camping mode.‘ My task to clear space in a room for a circle of chairs where writers will sit, write, share. Pull from boxes the pottery, small paintings, & treasures I hand-chose because I loved them. Because they give me pleasure when I rest my gaze on them. Some I haven’t seen in two years or more.

When I started I didn’t realize it was the new moon. A time many believe is for wishes and intention in action. As the boxes disappeared from the wall and the room opened up, I started to see the dining table, aka desk, pushed back. The circle of chairs. Was surprised they were in a different place in the room than I’d originally thought.

In the midst of this last bit of home-making, I heard a segment of public radio’s The Best of Our Knowledge that I loved. It was on reading, books, storytelling. I wrote snippets of what I heard on a piece of paper at stoplights. One segment with Indian-American musician Karsh Kale particularly spoke to me. He talked about his music and the fusion of cultures in it. He commented on how we choose daily what perspective we will have. That it affects how we live in the world. Choose was a key word for me. He talked about how music sparks what’s inside us, can expand our experience both of the world and ourselves in it. I loved everything he said and the way he said it. I thought how it all applies to stories and writing and reading, too. All the Arts, in fact.

When asked how he came to create the music he does, he shared this story.  He was a regular American kid in Brooklyn. But not regular as in there were few or no Indian-Americans where he lived. When he played his American music, his father always played Indian music at the same time, infuriating him. But his father’s intention wasn’t to drown out. It was to include. One could say to expand his children’s experience of the world and who they are.

When I finished listening, I thought ‘my goal is to help you tell your story. Assist you on the journey.”

I used to take pictures of sunrise over Tampa Bay. I have a trove of stunning shots. I’ve begun taking shots at dawn out my windows here in Santa Fe. Here it’s a different kind of beauty than St. Pete. Light and color was so pretty there. These are about the beauty of place. Sorta like Jacksonville where I  studied the rhythms of nature, light, and water as I looked over the St. John’s River below my windows. Place that fills me.

There’s a smallish window at my back, above my head, where I sit at my computer. It faces east. I’ll often look over my shoulder at the sky there. This morning I saw swiftly moving fog across a mountain. I paid no mind for a few moments, until it struck me no mountain exists there. I rose and watched a long time before I pulled out the camera.

As I watched, the Cooper’s hawk I saw on the ground having a meal near my bedroom window crossed my mind. How curious it seemed at the time that this powerful bird took small nips of meat. I’d always envisioned hawks tearing big chunks from their prey with their formidable beaks. But they’re beaks, after all, and the birds are not as large in stature as our perception of them. I re-read the fb post I wrote and found a comment I’d missed: Did you know that blue jays mimic Cooper Hawk calls?

I took this shot of flowers in the snow ysterday.

The flowers are still there. Today in cold, blustery wind. As are the blossoms on all the flowering trees covered in snow last week that I wrote about. The ones I thought were goners.

Every one of these things contain perceptions that are incorrect. Mountain where there isn’t one. Powerful hawks ripping large chunks of flesh. Blue jays crying like hawks. Fragile flowers no match for harsh snows. The word that flashed in my mind as I watched the fog move across the sky in waves was ‘Illusions.’

There may be a flurry of catch-up on Day 5 of the video challenge. I want and need to do it. A long ago memory of a corporate marketing vid I did where the professionals remarked what a natural I am comes to mind now. My trepidation is based on an illusion. Perhaps it really doesn’t matter I sound like I’m underwater with one nostril still clogged from allergies. Perhaps the frogs are illusions, too. And fears.

Here’s what’s over my head as I type this.

An image of Archangel Michael I got in Santorini, Greece. The man asked if I was Christian when I bought it. I told him I was, and more. He understood. A crystal ball made of quartz that shows the world upside down when you look into it. And a fairy door with words on the walls around it. For years I attached hammered metal wings to the fairy door with tape. The wings fell off when I unwrapped it this time. I taped them back on 4 times, and 4 times they fell off. Perhaps it means this door has landed, and all I have to do is open the door.

Another small journey. Getting to Wise.
A Writer’s Life.

Tell me. . . what illusions do you see?
I’ll tell you a secret. . .the Universe always says Yes when I question if I have time to write this blog.