Full Circle

Posted on October 11, 2016 by Heloise Jones

“Human life itself may be almost pure chaos, but the work of the artist is to take these handfuls of confusion and disparate things, things that seem to be irreconcilable, and put them together in a frame to give them some kind of shape and meaning.”
~ Katherine Anne Porter, author
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fall-cottonwoods-santa-fe *

This is my 19th trip to Santa Fe since we moved back east 18 yrs. ago. Some time back I noticed themes in these sojourns that coincided with what I needed or where I was in life. I don’t know how long it’d been happening, but I could trace it thru a few visits. All my friends calling immediately upon my arrival, filling my calendar the year I needed community. Reconnecting with former healing practitioners the year I needed clearing and clarity. This year it’s about coming full circle. And the layers of them are freaky cool.

For the next week I’m settled in a super nice place nestled in a pine & piñon forest 20 min. outside Santa Fe. On top of a ridge above the tiny village of Cañada (pronounced Caun-YA-da). Population 439. I have no cell service. Internet works best on the kitchen counter at my back, facing the opposite direction from where I work. To get here I drive up a slightly washboarded dirt road. A good friend got me in. She lives across the driveway here on the property. I love that. I’ve always wanted a best friend for a neighbor.

At first I kinda freaked about the lack of contact with the world. My web designer. My friends. How will I do it?! But I learned the landline in the house works. Something I didn’t guess since the house is a second home. And it dawned on me I’m saved from email distractions, because I have to move the computer while I’m writing if I want them. Noooo worries. But here’s the kicker. I’m writing my book in the exact spot I did the <first> final draft of my novel with an editor years ago. In the same chair, at the same table, looking out the same window in this house that this very same friend got me in back then. Full circle.

And in two weeks I’m hosting a private retreat for a writer who’s completing her memoir. A Writer’s Dream Retreat because it’s designed specifically for the individual, and includes lots of coaching from me. The gal who’s coming started her memoir in a retreat I co-facilitated 5 years ago. I started with you, she said. I feel drawn to complete this with you. Another full circle.

And the big full circle, after 18 yrs. I’m moving back to Santa Fe when our lease expires the end of January. A move I’m excited about, and one I’ve fretted over finding a place. I know this town well. Know how I live in it. Where I go. What I do. Know the essentials of what I want in a home and rhythm in life. I’ve tried shifting my head. It’ll all work out fine, has every move, I tell myself. But this move is different, and I know it. We’re setting up two households. Have no fall-back. The thought’s not been far from my mind.

In Whole Foods a woman approached me as I read the label on a small bottle of rose oil moisturizer, started talking. It felt easy. I learn that, like me, she’s moving to someplace she loves where she feels expansive. Like me, growing a business. And then she says, ‘You oughta move into our house since we’re leaving. Our landlord’s great.’ And tho I knew I couldn’t budget her rent, I thought. . .can it really be this easy?

The first morning, as I rounded the bend halfway up the near 1/2 block long driveway, intent to try for cell at the road, before I found out the landline worked, two huge mule deer stood in profile at the top of the drive. Their heads turned, big dark eyes focused on me. Ears larger than their gorgeous black & white faces erect, like gigantic seed pods. I stopped. We watched each other for minutes. Over and over I told them how beautiful they were. Not until I reached for my phone, looked down to set the camera, did they walk on. I knew it was some sort of blessing.

The Native Americans think deer are shaman. Some think them messengers from Gods. Perhaps so. Those deer and I met before the woman in Whole Foods. Before I connected all these full circles. I have a feeling there’s more to come.

Another small journey. Getting to Wise.
A Writer’s Life
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Tell me. . .what theme might be running thru your life this season?
I’ll tell you a secret. . .days seem to be melting away, even tho I’m present to the moments.

Special Thanks to Lindy Teresi for my home in the woods these 10 days.

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In a Sudden Strangeness

Posted on October 4, 2016 by Heloise Jones

“Buried under all the mute experiences are those unseen ones
that give our life its form, its color, and its melody.”
~ Amadeu de Prado (from ‘A Goldsmith of Words’)
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red-apples-orchard

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Each dawn I step out, expect cooler air, humidity lifted. It’s fall. October. The turn past my least favorite season should’ve happened already. But not here, not yet. Tho once a couple weeks ago it felt like it may.

I’m usually in Santa Fe wearing jeans by now. But this year I’m delayed a week. One part of me thinks it okay. That I have no time for studio tours and hugging aspens. Basking in the golden light of sunshine through fall cottonwoods. Driving with friends to my favorite river valley for studio tours. Tasting heirloom apples from all over northern New Mexico.

And my Soul reminds me the silence I crave will greet me each dawn and night my first ten days, as I’ll in the country outside town. No dozen a/c’s vibrating around me. Swarm of traffic, mowers, or leafblowers. That I can look up, see multitudes of stars, the Milky Way coursing over. No lights glaring in my windows. And it will be fall. It’s time to go.

What happened was a new project. After weeks delay and no progress with my web designer. The audio program I had fun creating, that needs to get into the world, still going nowhere. My publisher recommended someone to help. I usually shop around, bootstrap when cash is tight. But after days of back ‘n’ forths with this guy, I made the decision to redesign the whole site vs. patch everything in. It was a hard decision. I love my site. It reflects me in so many ways. But it can’t give me what I need. I put aside The Writer’s Block Myth book I’m writing, and turned to web content and instruction.

4:30am after my decision, I woke questioning the choice. In angst, I asked for guidance. Then questioned what I heard. Was it me or *real.* The little voice answered, ‘I’ll give you a sign you can’t miss in the morning. Go back to sleep.’

I woke not feeling like a walk. I typically stay in when I feel this way, but I looked out the window, saw a weird fat river of cloud running in a straight line, and decided to go out for the fresh air, look at the sky. Above me, on an empty field, stretched a giant wishbone. Down to the slight curve after the fork.

As days melted past, my personal deadlines slipped to the next day and next. I forgot the wishbone, began to question if I’m pushing the river because of physical world needs. Because I know breath in creating something new is a good thing. Even teach the necessity of it. And despite waking to new insight & inspiration each morning, real world needs butted against feelings I may not be doing enough, fast enough.

Something poet Maya Stein wrote this week has stuck with me. She says that as a poet, she gravitates toward the grey areas of things. ‘I’m drawn to ambiguity and paradox,’ she says. ‘I’m fascinated by neither-here-nor-there, by not-only-but-also, by kitchen-sink moments where everything’s in the mix and the boundaries are hazy. I’m far more intrigued by doors than I am by walls.’

I’ve gone back to that paragraph again and again. Feeling there’s something more than the big Me, Too I’m to get. Just now I understand what it is. . .this new website that’s sucked days and hours of thought, that’s caused me angst, is a door. The boundaries are hazy because it opens to big, new territory. And that can be scary. Right now, I’m not in control. But it’s all part of the big cloud wishbone I saw stretch across the sky last week.

On the little tag hanging from the eyelet of my new shoes: Asics is an acronym from the Latin phrase, ‘Anima Sana In Corpore Sano.’ A sound mind in a sound body. I’m taking that intent under my feet. Counting to twelve, keeping still, as Pablo Neruda says.

I pack tomorrow.

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Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still.

For once on the face of the earth,
let’s not speak in any language;
let’s stop for one second,
and not move our arms so much.

It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines;
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.

Fisherman in the cold sea
would not harm whale
and the man gathering salt
would look at his hurt hands.

Those who prepare green wars,
wars with gas, wars with fire,
victories with no survivors,
would put on clean clothes
and walk about with their brothers
in the shade, doing nothing.

What I want should not be confused
with total inactivity.
Life is what it is about;
I want no truck with death.
If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with death.

Perhaps the earth can teach us
as when everything seems dead
and later proves to be alive.
Now I’ll count up to twelve
and you keep quiet and I will go.

~ Pablo Neruda (Keeping Quiet)

Another Small Journey. Getting to Wise.
A Writer’s Life.
*

Tell me. . .what would you have wished for had you seen that giant cloud wishbone?
I’ll tell you a secret. . .even as big as that wishbone was, I looked a long time, hardly believing it.

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I’m writing a book about the creative life for people living in the real world.
The Writer’s Block Myth
Get Past Stuck, Complete Your Projects, Have Lasting Creative Freedom.

A Confession of Difference

Posted on September 27, 2016 by Heloise Jones

“There is something about me. . .I had a feeling that
I was some sort of alien that didn’t quite fit.”
~ Tim Burton, filmmaker
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amy-tingle-swim-2

I’m not sure if it came from appreciating full-tilt the un-selfconscious mind of Neil Gaiman thru his essays and blog posts, wanting one of his brilliant blogs to be the first page of my forthcoming book. Or if it’s my sister-in-law saying ‘all those people are dead” when I said I was the black sheep of the family. Or perhaps a few surprise responses to last week’s blog where I shared my experience getting carried into an altered state, my molecules shifted. Something I don’t typically share with peeps I don’t know. Or if it’s a whip-smart friend who travels in big circles, does big work in the world, sharing she’s an empath, too. But I imagine the article on Tim Burton in Sunday’s paper (which I so, so rarely read!) was the connection that got me thinking.

He was an isolated and lonely outsider growing up. In high school deemed weird. Not exactly my experience, but I moved every few years growing up. Was always reminded for a time I was an outsider. And I got the message early on I was different, like at 18 mos. old early. But I was never directly labeled or pigeon-holed. Because I never looked really weird on the outside.

And I went the opposite direction of Tim’s. I did not find my way to a brilliant showing in the world arena with my weirdness. I let comments hurt – Heloise is different, out there, too much, weird. Even the clearly dismissive comments about my tousled hair, my perspectives, my enthusiasm. Worse of all, I turned the messages inward.

— Too much for some people – too emotive, too curious, too smart. Tamp it down.
— Too particular. Muzzle your desires.
— See the slightest spatial differences – in a framed picture, a graphic, the way a shoe’s made Apologize before you mention it.
— Highly intuitive. Doesn’t matter it’s not the same as non-reasoned emotional. Hide it. Laugh it off.
— Feel things and messages in my body, hear them in my head. Hyper aware of non-verbals. Hide it.
— Cry easily. Whenever touched. Doesn’t matter not the same as being over emotional. Stop those tears.
— Smart. Soften it.
— See connections and linkages in everything. See a thousand shades of gray. Doesn’t matter it makes you pause before answering yes-no, black- white questions. Or that it’s not the same as undecided. Give them the answer. Live with it.
— Dirty kitchen counters make you nuts. Doesn’t matter your desk doesn’t look OCD. Control it.
— Naturally chatty. Muzzle it.
— Shy. Doesn’t matter it’s not the same as socially inept, like a long-ago husband said. Or that you’re not aloof, like a long-ago professor said. Smile. Remember, always smile.
— And this one. . .I was one of the girls in the mirrors shown in Hillary Clinton’s campaign ad. I was chubby, and dark skinned from my Armenian heritage. Looked very ethnic in junior high. Being neither hourglass or rail thin like Twiggy, I never had the idealized body. Was always a tad disheveled. Try to look right.

In other words, tho I’m strong, intelligent, creative, get things done, do good works, love my friends, family, and the world, over the years I’ve made myself smaller. Tamped down my enthusiasm. Apologized for my breath. Saw bad relationships up to me alone to fix. I didn’t allow myself to be who I essentially am. I let myself feel less-than as I shrugged off blank stares to my insights or wit. Bought thousands of dollars in clothing that was not Me. Over-explained myself. Justified why I see things the way I do. Hid my intelligence. Struggled with body image. Even when I was 30 lbs. lighter than my current size-8, I felt fat. Even when my socks coordinate with my outfit and I’m in a tailored suit, I feel sloppy. I still use self-talk to get past feeling frumpy or not right. And I’m one of the lucky ones. I can stop eating sweets and carbs for a few weeks, lose weight. My muscles respond quickly to the slightest exercise.

It took years to realize as many people as there are who don’t see me, there are others who do. That as much as I consider the negative voices, for they may illuminate something to work on, I need to hold the positive voices, too. Because they help me reframe my peculiarities, see past my negative self-talk. See how they may be gifts.

Being particular means I know what I want, and claim it. The way I put my slippers neatly under the sofa can be cute. My shyness made me more courageous. My spatial sensitivity helps people feel comfortable when they’re in my home. The connections I make help people gain new insights, see things they’ve not considered before. My empathy and intuition help me be a good listener, a good activist, a better writer and author, and a better person in the world. And it’s okay I need solitude, because it’s more than being selfish. It allows me to show up 100%.

Here’s the thing. I realize every person feels this way about aspects of him/herself. And I say there’s a reason. The messages from childhood never go away, always haunt with doubt. Even for the strong ones. AND perhaps if we thought about *different* people as simply having a brain that works differently. Or took the time, considered people beyond appearances. Or considered we don’t know what’s going on in another’s life now, or what happened to them in the past. We don’t know motivations. Perhaps if we paused before we judged. We all might have fuller lives. Expand our experience of the world. Expand inside ourselves. See our own selves differently. Experience more appreciation for ourselves and the world. Perhaps even discover a renewed sense of freedom. Even when we turn away from bad apples, see things as awful as first thought.

Pollyanna. Maybe. But it’s a good lens to view the world thru. And is not unconsidered or unaware.

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

Tell me. . .what messages have you received that hurt? How did you move past.
I’ll tell you a secret. . .my astrology chart says I’m a late bloomer.

Image from “Strange Diary or How to Make a Collage” by Amy Tingle

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I’m writing a book about the creative life for people living in the real world.
The Writer’s Block Myth
Get Past Stuck, Complete Your Projects, Have Lasting Creative Freedom.

Rose Petals Under Our Feet

Posted on September 20, 2016 by Heloise Jones

“It’s the absence of all the bodies, she thinks, that allows us to forget.
It’s that the sod seals them over.”
~ Anthony Doerr (from All the Light We Cannot See)
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rose-petal-stage

I don’t take pics during a performance. This is before Deva Premel & Miten came out.
What wonderful heart energy, I thought. Those rose petals beneath their feet.
*

I just read two novels back-to-back set in France during WWII German occupation. It wasn’t intentional to do that. Each showed up as the best option when I was looking for a story to settle into. One in a very small library at the beach, the other in an airport bookstore. I’d heard they were good reads. And how the author showed the characters beyond the dramatic backdrop interested me.

The first is about two French sisters with completely opposite personalities. Their motivations and actions defined and driven by their character. The book’s sympathies center strictly in the French experience of the war. The second is about two young people with very different backgrounds, from opposite sides of the conflict, coming of age in war. Both books were heavily researched. Both were page turners. But my experience as a reader with each was like night and day.

In the sisters’ story, I was pulled in close, viscerally thrust bone-to-bone into the deprivations and cruelty. Ground so hard I skimmed over concentration camp scenes. Something I rarely do. I finished still wondering, as I have for decades, at what appears to be blind inhumanity. A wondering that’s niggled me despite many essays read that explore and explain the psychology and sociological influences. A wondering that prompted me to answer ‘I don’t know’ when someone recently asked if I believed in Evil, because my head knows the reasons such disassociation happens inside people, and how fear & character allow willful blindness, but Evil seems beyond reason. What I read in the novel seemed in the realm of beyond.

The language in the second book was so beautifully poetic, and some of the scenes so full of perfectly constructed lists placing me there, that I felt distanced from the horror. Strung out in a beautiful dream that wasn’t right. As I read, I understood on a new level how the rise and fall of the German Reich happened. A sympathetic human level, if you can believe that. The author showed me incrementally, in small details, in very short chapters that switched effortlessly between the people on each side. Every awful thing, each decision made that we think we’d never make, digested as I was carried forward. Held in a tight line of cognitive dissonance the entire time, with me not fully realizing it.

Until a simple line about a boy stepping on a land mine and ‘disappearing in a fountain of earth.’ I paused after that line, reread it several times. I could see the dirt rise high, arch and fall. Hear the cascading sound of granules showering the ground. My mind knew it was awful, and yet, the way he said it held a terrible beauty. He didn’t have to describe a thing. Not even the soft pink mist of blood.

That line, the boy disappearing in a fountain of dirt, was where I’d stopped the day I drove an hour to Sarasota for an evening of sacred chant with Deva Premel and Miten. I felt lucky to get tickets. I heard they only booked a few US engagements this year. I sat on the 8th row in the Performing Arts Center that sat only a thousand. No one in front of me. Only 2 phones glared before being snuffed. I felt extra lucky.

Toward the end Deva & Miten invited us on stage with them. Perhaps 200 of us went up. Miten led the men in a two line song about being the ocean. The women sang one word over and over with Deva – Hallelujah. When Miten said, sing to yourselves, I put my hands over my heart and sang with abandon as I swayed side to side. I felt my blood rise, run fast and strong. Felt my heart beat under my palms. Heard it pound it in my ears. And then my head lifted right off my body. When we stopped singing, I had to leave the stage. Everyone else stayed put. Miten was speaking. I was in an altered state I didn’t want.

I’m not sure how to convey the spectrum of experience after I left the building that night. Driving home in a sort of no-worry hyper-presence. Completely ungrounded the next morning. Unable to focus with care on anything. But I didn’t want to give a day to coming back to earth. ‘I have work to do, the clock ticks’ bobbed inside my floaty brain, and I wanted to meet that commitment. At 2:30pm, knowing beef would bring me back down, I drove out for hamburger.

Something has changed inside me. As weird as it sounds, my molecules spread so far apart they rearranged themselves when they came back together. I know it. And not believing in coincidence, that night as I picked up my novel I thought for the twelfth time there must be a reason I’m reading these two particular books back-to-back.

The last chapters of the book are an extended epilogue. We get a final wrap of each character and the connections between them. As I read I felt those chapters unnecessary. A device. Thought his editor was too much in love with his writing because there was no other reason they weren’t edited out. They steal something from the reader, I thought. But then, tears started. I saw they were like the fabled diamond in the story holding water and fire, immortality and death both. Illuminating a truth.

We are all connected. The possibility of the best and worst of humanity inside most of us. The choice how that’s played out not necessarily easy. But it’s a choice, whatever the motivation. And whatever happens, life moves on. We move on. Everything that’s happened in our lives becomes part of who we are. The past can either seal us under sod, or we can soften to all that remembering in our hearts, stand helpless to empathy for others. That’s what I got.

I still have to coax myself to trust I’ll be okay, come out upright on the other side of big changes in my life. Fear still sits in the corner, waiting to win. But I don’t think about resigning or quitting, any more. Don’t doubt I’ll get where I intend to be, do what I committed to do. That’s what I carry.

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

Tell me. . .what do you carry from the remembering in your heart?
I’ll tell you a secret. . .I’ve only just begun to tell you all I’ve seen.

I’m writing a book – The Writer’s Block Myth.
About getting past stuck, living and loving your best creative life.

Getting My Steady

Posted on September 13, 2016 by Heloise Jones

Writing is not life, but I think sometimes it can be a way back to life.
~ Stephen King

desk-jax2
The little bird sign says Believe.

So, what do you do when you feel cramped inside with thoughts of big work in your life. Like downsizing for the fourth time in 5 years for a move across country, and writing a book that the publisher expects in 6 weeks. And you can’t seem to sit still and write…that…book. Chunk away at the mounds of paper choking you down, of course. The ones that feel like they own you, and you don’t want to lug them one more time.

Articles, reference notes, and 3 years of bank statements went out. And the last of my filled stiff-backed spiral notebooks where I wrote all my rough drafts of the scenes in two novels. Wrote poems, starts of stories. Journaled my mind and heart. Took notes at seminars, workshops, and conferences.

I called my husband Art to help rip the metal spirals from my pages. Then, said a prayer for gentle release of all that energy held in my words as I lifted handful after handful into the big, blue recycle bin. The archives from hundreds of hours let go. When it was done, the pages I culled from the lot easily fit in a manila folder.

I say ‘writing’ here, but I bet you see it could be about anything that’s fed and sustained us. How sometimes you have to let something go not because you don’t still love the thing, but because there’s been a shift in your focus. Or a shift in your life. Or maybe it’s just time to see who you are in relation to it today. I know this doesn’t just happen for writers and artists. And the way I’d been feeling all week, it was time to make space. Start anew in getting back to myself.

Labor day seemed to be the turning point. I’d hit the ground running on return from Canada. But that holiday morning, I rose at 7:30. Late. Had a long nap in the afternoon. Went to bed early. With a shut-down brain and both legs bruised (calf in one, knee in the other), I felt no guilt succumbing. Next morning, my husband commented how I’ve gone thru a string of emotional intensity for months. What I noticed was no nightmares for the first time in a week, and my calendar was clean. I announced to my facebook world I was ready to write!

But I didn’t. Jeepers, how many times do we do that, eh? And when someone let me know I spelled a word wrong in an important biz email, which meant I used the wrong word. And I discovered another typo in said email just before she sent another brief missive with more critique. . .well, I sunk low. I appreciated the feedback. But I went to the most irrational, defeatist, dumb place ever: All is Lost.

Two days later, I still wasn’t back on track. My husband woke me way past dawn to ask if I was awake. If I’m sleeping, I’m under the weather, I told him, knowing it true. As the morning progressed, an emotional malaise settled on top of my not-quite-right self. I’ll say here I know how fortunate I am. Can reframe, see both-and in people and the world. Quickly ID blessings and silver linings in dark clouds. And I was stuck.

Part of getting past stuck is acknowledging when things don’t feel good inside. Saying Hello to fear, disappointment, (fill in the blank) when they show up, but I wanted to cry, just for a minute. I wanted to feel like that soft, hazy, fat crescent moon I saw the night before. I wanted what I needed to get out of the funk.

The woman at the haunted B&B on the Bay of Fundy who hears people’s thoughts crossed my mind. I’d asked her what she heard in mine. ‘Love, & a desire for something steady in your life,’ she said.

Saturday was my husband’s birthday. He had a tooth pulled the day before (no dinner out). Felt tired from the whole darned ordeal (keep it simple). So, we went to the Bosnian-Serb bakery & market he discovered and wanted to show me. Bought sardines packed on the Mediterranean, wild blackberry preserves from Croatia, and a huge greasy pocket of chewy bread with a thin filling of feta & spinach. We went to 5 Guys, a place I don’t frequent but he likes, ate a bucket of fresh-cut french fries. Potatoes something he could comfortably eat & one of my guilty pleasures. As we strolled to the art museum, he looked at me and beamed, We’re going places we don’t have to go. It’s been such a long time since that was true for either of us, we both smiled big and stepped a tad lighter. This, I thought, is what I want more of. What I need for steady.

I’m redoing my website. Moving my novel to a single page. ‘Cause tho I’m a novelist and poet at heart, my biggest work as an author and mentor is helping folks live and love their best creative life. It’s who I am. And it needs to be center stage to the world. The image I’m putting on the header is one of my desk in Jacksonville (see it up there?). I think it says Writer Lives Here all over it. I believe this move is part of getting my steady, too.

Because writing answers Yes to my abiding question, and sustains me. I read like a writer and it stimulates me. I’ve studied craft, process, and the industry with passion, and I still never tire of talking with writers about writing. I don’t know why I write essays best on the computer, rather than in notebooks. I know the studies and brain science say pen to paper grows neural pathways, fosters creativity. But the purge of paper sparked the realization I must write fiction, again. Because listening to the story and characters as I write with pen on paper expands my mind and soul. Even in short writes, beginnings that will never see a middle and end. And I miss it. I need it.

I knew that Seer on the Bay of Fundy read a yearning for Home in my mind. I just didn’t realize all of this was part of it. A year ago, I wrote ‘sometimes a journey leads back to what you know.’ And here I am, cycling thru once more. ‘Cause Life doesn’t run on a line. It runs in a spiral.

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recycle

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Another small Journey. Getting to Wise.
A Writer’s Life.
*

Tell me. . .what gives you your Steady in life.
I’ll tell you a secret. . .I say writing, but it’s always been art and creating for me.

I’m writing a book, The Writer’s Block Myth – A Guide to Lasting Creative Freedom.
The creative life for people living in the real world.