Waiting for the Moon

Posted on May 24, 2016 by Heloise Jones

I’d like to tell you that everything I know about love is in the right hand drawer of that table from India book-ending my living room. . .
I’d like to tell you my heart will outlast every other organ in my body.
~ Maya Stein (from Still and Always)
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Tulips in Snow *

Yesterday evening, so exhausted, I simply wanted to close my computer, lie down. I got up, looked out the window. My only thought, I’m waiting for the moon. It’s been a long day, and I still have much to do. Waiting for the moon seems appropriate.

I’m in a hip season. You know what I mean. The season between the crowds. The one when winter’s not quite over and spring’s not quite here. The time sprinkled with moments feeling good, inviting to the bones like an Indian Summer day, but not necessarily fully defined. A time perhaps where you can tend to things undone without distractions, but you’ve got a hump to get over. In between time. I typically travel in the hip season. Feel sparked with anticipation. And in a weird way, that’s what’s happening now. I’m traveling fast toward the next chapter of my life – work, home, community – and not quite there, yet.

I love solitude, but my life’s felt isolated since moving to Florida 4-1/2 yrs. ago. Being friendly and talkative, I have wonderful encounters with shopkeeps and random strangers. Have a tiny group I gather with for dawn at the bay on occasion. But there’s no one for lunch or afternoon fun. That click bumping acquaintance to friend not happened, organically or otherwise. + my husband and I are so so so different, it’s often difficult despite love and caring. Community’s key for me, so it feels hard. But this week I crossed some energetic line to where I see what’s ahead more than what’s been. Can appreciate how my intuition’s refined. That I learned to share my vulnerabilities, take off my clothes for you. Be grateful the difficulties pushed me to think differently about myself, and my place in the world. Sorta like getting a charge from the Universe. I’m not sure if you’ve ever felt that, but it’s a learning curve for me.

Yesterday I was in the recording studio. My goal, audios of these blogs, and something I wrote to help creatives get past stuck. I’d googled, found page after page of fancy websites of fancy spaces with rates double-triple my budget. I talked to a friend who created her own audios. The time and patience required too counter-productive to my larger goals. Asked another for a referral from her son who studies production. All I need is a room, professional equipment, someone who knows what they’re doing, I said. The next morning, head in my hands (I knew I was supposed to do this) I googled once more. Top of Page One: Rock Garden Recording. Simple website. Rates exactly what I can pay. I looked for reviews. Found a newspaper blurb, “St. Pete’s best kept secret…in business over ten years.” He answered when I called (a rarity, I learned later). Practice, we’ll work thru it, I can help with music, schedule two hours for now, he advised. I felt lucky.

This was one of those things we think will be easy, until we do it. Jeepers, I’ve read on stage in front of hundreds of people, presented to small and large groups. I’m an expert reader of stories to young kids. And it was not easy. Pacing, consistency, breath in the middle of sentences. My voice naturally between hypnotherapist and actor, the right modulation. Not too much or I sound cartoony, too little or I sound flat. Striving for intimacy, on the edge of a conversation tho we know I’m reading. The right inflection for intent. Such as I don’t mean it as a sigh, I mean it’s difficult but good. And no flat fades at the end. The re-records right tone to be woven in. My two hours wiped me out. He says I’m a natural. I have 61 blogs to go. He’s my guy.

Because he‘s my perfect coach. He took care of me with the right kind of head-heart nurturing, and honesty when I said, ‘Hey, I’m older, what does the young dude think.’ Answered he got into it because he couldn’t find someone with their heart in their work when he wanted to record his own music. + (I LOVE this) he volunteers odd jobs, even scrubs toilets, just to sit in, listen as the Florida symphony practices in the best auditoriums. And he’s the guy who records them. He’s like-hearted.

I posted my waiting for the moon on facebook. Someone responded, ‘It’s not like you’re asking for the moon.’ I hadn’t meant it that way. But now, I think perhaps I am. Because I sure fired the rockets. I say, let’s all shoot for the moon. Imagine that.

Have you ever gone for something that felt really big?
Was it a good ride?

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

A secret: I’m big on editing. Expect 4 today.
A favorite: Yellow tulips. Just like the ones in the picture.

Photo: Tamara Linse

All Under the Same Sun

Posted on May 17, 2016 by Heloise Jones

“You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.”
~ Louise Erdrich, The Painted Drum
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freaky big sun Just peeking up it’s taller than one of the multi-story mansions on the island.
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I finally ordered Patti Digh’s book, the Geography of Loss. It’s been on my list since 2014. I’d shared the intro paragraph from Amazon with hurting friends as comforts. Read some of the pieces, knew it was gorgeous. But after I ordered it, I wondered why I felt moved just now. I thought perhaps because my son’s due for a visit in July, 2 yrs. after the last time we hugged. My desperate grief in the loss of his moving to Taiwan renewed. The incredible sadness still lingering after a fissure that changed our relationship in ways we haven’t had a chance to fully revision, yet. I thought how community’s on my mind. That for days I’ve missed my friends. My tribe. Connection with people I don’t have here where I currently live.

By the time I unwrapped Patti’s book Monday, I was thinking Father stuff. Because my dad, dead since 1993, had drifted thru my thoughts for days. Always coming back to that aha moment I found him reading a fat book on the siege of Leningrad. His reply to my question why, ‘because it’s interesting.’ How that moment defined his character to me. I realize now it was probably the first time I thought books a person read revelatory about them. And like magic, an article on the siege popped up on Facebook. Story about a seed bank there. How scientists locked themselves in the vault to protect the treasure from starving citizens. Chose to die of starvation themselves rather than eat, rob the future. Treasure collected by one of the first scientists to ask traditional peasant farmers around the world why they felt seed diversity was important in their fields. The next morning I heard a dear friend’s father died Monday. 6 days later, heard another friend’s father had brain surgery Monday. Last week’s blog was about noticing. I noticed. Father stuff.

By Wed. night I noticed two back-to-back stories about tribal fabrics made from natural materials. Hawaiian kapa, barkcloth. I watched people in the documentary strip and scrape and pound. Gather nuts and roots and leaves, make dye. Carve delicate stamps for intricate patterns. Each family’s watermark only seen in certain light. Western ideology that superior Europeans introduced sewing cracked open. A couple days later a series of stunning shots of Indonesian women preparing palm and ramie fibers. Weaving fabric that will adorn windows here and abroad.

Noticed in the midst that out of the blue, four friends from afar sent personal notes about how I show up, what I mean to them. One in response to my fb profile pic posted several years ago (!) that placed it back into status feeds. Four Likes for this image people see every day followed. Imagine.

Lately I’ve been thinking about the stories I could tell. Loss, change, identity, home, abuse, validation, craft, persistence, courage, survival, courage, persistence. I hold so many under any of these headings. And how every week I wonder what story will emerge here. This week it’s a fill-in-the-blank from author Mary Anne Radmacher. ‘I live in service to the _______HEART.’ Meaning Essence. Soul. All encompassing. You-Me, where we connect.

Mary Anne repeated words she once said to me,’I love it when you write about the sky,’ and sent a meme. Which took me to remember a shot taken Aug. 2014 on the last flight out of Honolulu before an impending hurricane. The plane empty but for me, the crew, and one other passenger. Along the way I flew over rainbow after rainbow. And not until I chose a shot to share did I see the swatch of blue behind the clouds was in the perfect shape of a heart, a rainbow shooting from it’s center. And I noticed how her fill-in-the-blank showed up the very day I was thinking about the guy I rented my condo in Kona from. How he lived in Santa Fe when I did. Our many overlaps without us knowing.

Comforts for my grief are everywhere. Telling me that even in my solitude, I’m linked. Woven like the natural cloth. Protected like the seeds. Sharing, though not knowing, the heartache of friends for their fathers. That I’m indeed seen, even appreciated. We are tribal animals. Not meant to be alone. Not even when we love solitude as I do.

Last night I stepped from the Chinese take-out to a man riffling the trash, a dirty Chic-fil-A fries carton in his hand. I felt the weight of my bag filled with my hot dinner. He didn’t ask for money when I said ‘are you hungry.’ He wanted to know if there was a church nearby serving food. As I turned to leave, having paid for his shrimp fried rice, he looked me in the eyes, said ‘it’ll come back to you.’ In a flash my whole being softened. I smiled, said ‘it always does.’ I can’t figure that one out. But I think I must know in my Heart it’s true. After all, we’re all under that big freaky sun.

How do you feel connected to others?

MaryAnne meme clouds

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

A secret: I imagined these two lines as a way you’d get to know me.
A favorite: A friend said she looks forward to reading what’s here, in these two lines.

Maybe It’s Simply to Take Notice

Posted on May 10, 2016 by Heloise Jones

“. . .I don’t know the meaning of life.
But, maybe, it’s simply to take notice.”
~ Jamie K. Reaser (from My Mother Was)

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For months I rose at 5am Tues. to write my blog, edit it down to right rhythm and message by my 10am deadline. But 5 wks. ago I committed to changes that require a different discipline. Gotta listen earlier for what’s up. And over and over this past weekend, it was a pivotal conversation with a friend in the late 80’s. Details lost, but my words, ‘I’ve changed,’ and her response,’So what’ still with me. How that initiated a quest to know, does change matter. My conclusion – Change is the one constant of Life. Today I’d add Love. Thing is, I’m in the middle of big change now. Sometimes it’s a wondrous thing. And exciting when I think about returning to what feels like native ground. Other times it’s far beyond uncomfortable. The promise of being a better person small consolation.

Last week I raised my voice with the gal on the phone at the bank. Could hardly lower it thru the dozen apologies I uttered for my rudeness. I was horrified with myself. I’m nice to telephone customer service peeps. Know they simply answer the phone, that I need only get to the right person. That most know little beyond notes on their computer and perhaps a procedure manual. I’m so nice I once received a basket of fruit as a Thank You. But last week, I lost it. They’d declined two time sensitive payments. No text or phone warning. Five days gone, so no save. While on the phone, I noticed one charge actually went thru. Later learned the insurance co. got their money, too. Calmed, I saw it as a sign how close to the surface my nerves are. Noticed things were not what they seemed. I’m OK. I can’t undo my unkindness, but I can take notice.

We went to Weeki Wachee a few days later. An old Florida attraction from the 40s sporting mermaids, now a state park. I hadn’t been since the early 70s. There was no manmade beach and water park built around the pristine crystal clear river, then. Or kayak launch with people crowded in que. Or river boat. If we sink, the river boat guide said, jump and walk to shore. It’s only 4’ deep. He stood on the platform at the bow the whole way, called ‘kayaks, to your right. kayaks, to your left. make way.’ They looked like colorful bumper cars out there. Two paddled along, didn’t pull over, anchor their oars in the sandy bottom, as instructed. Seemed so oblivious that I spoke my thoughts out loud as we passed. He means you, I said. The guy below looked up. What I noticed was his pained expression. ‘I’m trying,‘ he replied. Too late for me to fix that one, too. But it caught me. . .not what it seemed. Jeepers, we’re all trying.

Facebook has these naming games. Answer the questions, they tell you who you are. I can’t resist. I learned last week I’m a fantasy mermaid. Surprised me, ’til I read You break the seal of a hidden door. Mists envelop you and draw you into a fantastic world filled with magic and wonder. When the fog lifts, you’re virtually unrecognizable. I do use the word ‘magic’ a lot. And sure feels like I’m in the fog.

I’ve had a big dream a long time (like YEARS long time) to visit flower fields. Sunflowers, daffodils, bluebonnets, tulips, lavender, wildflowers as far as my eyes can see. Since coming to Florida, walking petal strewn streets, a picture of cherry blossoms coating the surface of a river in Japan enchanted me, was added to My List of must-sees. Another of a field of soft blue flowers the color of the sky made my heart stop. Like walking on the sky itself, I thought. I added that, too.

This world, so filled with magic and wonder to experience. All the hard stuff in changes is simply the Universe asking if we mean it. Letting us notice we’re OK. We’ll find our way.

What have you noticed in your world?

Another small journey. Getting to Wise.
A Writer’s Life.
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A puddle of palm flowers noticed yesterday.

A secret: I had no idea palm trees had flowers. My first sighting ever.
A favorite: My husband suggested Weeki Wachee right after I learned I was a mermaid.

Where the Heart Is Home

Posted on May 3, 2016 by Heloise Jones

“. . .I find that my home is my church. 
and my heaven,
a chair by the hearth.

In the dearness of it, 
I find the sacred at work.

In partaking of it
 —belonging to it— 
my heart swells 
with a joy not to be conveyed.”
~ L. M. Browning (from My Religion is New England)
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roadbig_bend1024x768 *

Talking to the guy sampling alkaline water in the market, he mentions his friend opened a store in Asheville where I lived for 15 years before moving to Florida. I know that store, I say. Seeing the front desk, the wall of clothing, the cafe in my mind’s eye. It used to be the old Alfalfa’s, I say. And catch myself. The store I envision is in Santa Fe, not Asheville. Santa Fe, where I first saw the Milky Way. Held a hawk on my arm. Felt earth, sky, vistas, and dirt like my own blood, kindling a comfort in my skin I’d never felt before. The place and I so aligned, a friend once remarked ‘Santa Fe loves you.’

Home has been up for me for a very long while. I wrote about it here, here, and here. I think how we miss things in a place. As much as I wanted out of Jacksonville, a city difficult on so many levels for me, I miss the taste of burgers from Harpoon Louie’s. Just right, med-rare without being runny red. The perfect grilled flavor, buns the perfect size & sweetness. I miss the real Belgium chocolate ganache frosting made by a gal with Italian blood who stirs and reduces it, lets it set for hours. So rich she sees people scrape it off. My love so appreciated she always scrolled an extra layer on my cupcake. But I don’t miss the mile-broad river I know saved me those 2 yrs. The sight and sound of dolphins there. The rhythms of pelicans and other seabirds I tracked and noted. The sky canyons on the water’s surface. Foggy mornings that looked like an impressionist painting out my windows. They were of that place, a salve, a memory, not like a taste on my tongue. Or feeling in my bones.

The other morning I heard my husband whisper ‘sky watcher’ as I looked over the rooftops. The trees whipped, so I knew a strong wind blew at the bay. Gotta get in a car to see it, I said. And I did something I’ve not done since we moved in January. I pulled a housedress over my jammies, stepped out into the middle of the street, rocked my head back. Watched the clouds spread in a pattern like leopard spots on the rich blue wall of the sky. Walked to the corner, looked down to the warm rose & peach blush that says Sun Rises Here. The sky and birds, the color reflected on water my saviors in this place.

A friend asked why I’ve been so stressed. I gave her a short version of the big reasons. Stunned, she said, ‘you did not show it.’ I can hold both, I told her. The difficult, and the good of connection with new people, places, and sights. Can understand how this that feels so hard is important. Because I found what I needed to move forward in it. Isn’t that really the dance of life for so many of us lucky ones?

Today a beautiful adolescent black snake stretched along the low ground cover close to our door. It’s head lifted above the greenery, tongue tasting air. I delighted in how quickly it arched and dived to disappear under shelter as I stepped out. I have family members who warn of evil hearts in snakes, venomous or not, but I see them as signs, like the woman in my novel does. That snake today made me think how something big has happened in my life every time I saw a black snake. Only once a bad omen. With my husband and I both at a crossroads on several fronts of work and life, I choose to think today’s a good omen.

What I know. . .the page has already turned. Tho I don’t know how it reads, yet, I see the destination. The place looks like the two photos on this page. Mountains. Nature that consumes more of my sight than roads and buildings. Greets me without my trying. Is the source of the only sounds breaking silence. Places where my heart swells. I feel expansive, connected. And the work’s created in the sacredness of it. I’m very happy about that.

What calls to a place have you heard?

“Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.”
~ James Baldwin (Giovanni’s Room)

BlueRidge

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

A secret: Faith, intuition, and gratitude have pulled me from the floor more than once.
A favorite: Appalachian springtime. New Mexico fall.

Photos:
New Mexico – unknown
Blue Ridge – Kathryn Magendie

How to Tune & Patina

Posted on April 26, 2016 by Heloise Jones

They know when they’re been parked
for the last time, despite the promises of a new
transmission or bumper or fuel pump
The tires somehow know too and slowly
begin to sink into the land
and the land rises to embrace them, and gather
the car back to her
trees and leaves know too, and try to help
they shower the car with branches and fallen leaves
and slowly it becomes their own
becoming much more organic than when it was on the hiway
humans are now shut out of the picture
and the plants and animals
now have the title to the car.
~ Rachel Ballentine (Old Cars)
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cloudy-skies-7 *

I admit I feel chosen by the great blue heron that lights down in front of our sliding glass doors, hunts little fish from the strip pond. That as I watched it sink low into the water the other day, its neck curved, folded down like when it flies so it looked like a strange giant duck floating there… and watched it dip its head, fluff & flutter it’s feathers, take a bird-bath (!) before wading to a small concrete slab where it sat in the sun with it’s wings splayed and bent, tips touching in prayer like some bird buddha…I knew I was.

I even felt my discovery of 5 tiny ducklings swimming fast & furious in a bunch along the seawall. In and out, picking bugs from the bricks above the shells stuck at waters edge. Mama behind them, watching, as a moment I was chosen to witness.

Author Patti Digh in a piece about Prince says he’s like a piano she has that can’t be tuned to a prescribed note, only to itself. Making beautiful music all the same. I believe that’s what’s happening to me. I’m relearning how to tune to myself. That it’s my innate nature reclaiming me like nature reclaims old cars in New Mexico. Rising to entwine and embrace me. Pull me closer so I hear my intuition clearly, follow it. Experience the world in remembered ways. That I’m revealing layers of rust, gorgeous color and texture of myself like what happens to old cars in the desert. Mold impotent on me like it is in dry air. And that like old cars in the desert I’ll one day patina, be seemingly as lovely as old buildings in Italy and Morocco, my own way.

I’ve been talking to writers as research for a book I’m writing that’ll support us moving thru stuck-ness so we can work, live, and create at our best. I say to them, tell me your dreams, the big ones. Often they need encouragement. But when they finally speak, I hear their shoulders drop, their breath exhale. Their voices fill out, grow round. Then they tell me how the pressures of their life push their dreams to the sidelines to wait. Reminds me I’ve put my own dreams aside. Time spent writing stories about characters you can’t see until you read my words. Moving back to Santa Fe where life organically embraces me, and I meet hitchhiking angels all the time. I asked one writer how his frustration felt in his body, and he described hearing a voice between his heart and his collar bone that he ignored for years. And one morning he woke knowing that day he’d ignore it no more. And the yellow brick road appeared to a mentor, community, publication, and a fulltime writer’s life with purpose for greater change in the world. I hear that voice, too. Have ignored it, too.

Patti Smith wrote in her book M Train about meeting one of her heroes, chess great Bobby Fischer. How he was bizarre, paranoid, almost childlike. She concluded that “…without a doubt we sometimes eclipse our own dreams with reality.” It reminded me I eclipse moments of wonder and magic all the time. Like the morning I stepped out my door, looked up to a sky like the painting of clouds by Georgia O’Keeffe. The clouds over my head glowing with lights inside them (not white) in an ethereal moonlit (not blue) sky. How I ignored that dreamscape, jumped in my car for the reality I knew at the bay. Where the wind blew so hard, not a magical cloud remained.

But then, there’s the time a tall, big-framed older man stepped up, parked at the monitor displaying my purchases as I bagged my groceries. The one slap next to the credit card machine. I noted the space behind him, and when ready to pay, said in a nice voice, I’m not done checking out, sir. And he didn’t move. So I moved up, squeezed my elbow to my side, dug in my purse. ‘I’m not looking at what you’re buying,’ he gruffed as I slid my card. It’s not about that, but about space, I said. At which he took a step sideways, turned away. ‘They’re everywhere.’ The checker leaned in to hear him better. He’s talking about me, I told her. A big smile on my face because strange as it seems, he didn’t bother me a bit. Not even when he moved further back, turned and looked straight in my face, said in a not nice voice, ‘Yes, I am. You’re a lot of trouble.’

I tell you the truth. I stood smiling as the checker struggled with the tape machine, as she handed me the receipt. Smiled as I replied to the man with utter sincerity, Why, thank you, I appreciate that. I even stood smiling when it was all done, before going outside, wondering if I was nuts. Hoping *we* were indeed everywhere. A friend later said I put into the world what I wanted back. And that’s not crazy, at all.

Perhaps it’s simply all part of my innate nature saying look here, and here, and here, spend time with Joy. And my thanks and appreciation in the market, so sincere, making no sense, were for a chance to experience joy in a moment that looked rough.

What do you think?

Another small journey. Getting to Wise.
A Writer’s Life.
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A secret: The past four years have been really hard. I guess I needed it.
A favorite: Rachel Ballentine’s poetry. I shared a wonderful day with her in NM.

Image: painting by Georgia O’Keeffe