Active Surrender to Be Moved

Posted on August 12, 2015 by Heloise Jones

Finally I have meditated
 long enough
to realize
stillness is a ruse.

Everything riding this
rotund blue dervish
is in constant motion.

What the honeysuckle-infused breeze
asks of us
is not contemplative passivity,

But an active surrender to the possibility
of being moved.
~ Jamie K Reaser
*

horse in water

I’m feeling good today. Grateful after a week of weepies sparked by a cop-cam video of a young unarmed Black man gunned down. The sight of his body hammered by bullets off camera. The sound of a dozen shots resounding, pushing a burst of despair from my center. I want to inject right here I’m an easy cry. Anything that reaches in, touches or moves me – good, bad, sweet, sad, pictures or words – a spark. And this string of release was indeed note-worthy. Stopped only when imagined mold spores blew from our leaky ceiling because a professionally installed hose that forced air into rain-drenched cavities fell out, and my mind fell on threats to our carefully tended health. Helplessness. The meltdown that followed constrained proportion to the things I held. Not long ago a movie got me going. A predictable film with beautiful cinematography, likable characters. In it a writer talks about imagination. About how a character showed up, saved his life. I wept with recognition, continued nonstop until what I knew would happen, did. And a sound escaped, rasped my throat like a tiny gasp. I’ve learned to pay attention to such experiences. The first time I understood them I was a single mother with little support sitting through a second viewing of The Black Stallion. I saw how the loss, vulnerability, aloneness onscreen swirled inside me, too. Realized in watching I could safely feel myself.

There’s a taco place a few blocks away. Sun blazes over the length of the alley I cut down to get there. The path always seems longer than the block it is. I notice I have a ritual when I turn in. I pause, look the full distance, note the three smooth parking pads that wing off the uneven brick street. And I measure my progress as I pass them with a silent count ‘two more; one more.’ Feel I’ve traveled a far distance when I reach the trees at the parking lot. But on my way back I watch my feet, only occasionally lift my gaze to birdsong, voices behind fences. Two weeks ago I emerged so quickly from the alley I was sure I’d crossed my own street, was on the next ahead. Disoriented, I stood a moment before the landmark cottage with yellow trim, FL folk-art yard decoration and bloodroot colored slated fence registered. And in that space between confusion and recognition, I knew I’d passed thru a dimensional warp. The distance so short, the time so quick down that alley. And it came to me that’s how we get to something a long way off. Focus on what’s before us. Attend with presence the steps getting there.

I spent my tear-streaked week writing chapter summaries for an agent. Last time I did this was 12,000 words and years ago, when I had another agent. That time easy, loosely done because I did it for me. This time, grueling tedium. The word ‘willing’ on my lips each step of the way. Five weeks earlier I’d held another sort of willingness while doing edits. I didn’t ask while editing how to say something. I asked what did the work want to say. Issue or solution. Pain or triumph. The question ‘where’ in the spectrum of dichotomy of presence. Seems willingness and the steps getting us somewhere may run this way, too.

A dream: The man, age thirties or forties, flings his toddler out a window. I see her hair, its fine texture, curls, see her creamy skin as she tumbles in the beginning of her descent down what I know are many, many floors. A dream instant replay she grabs the sill, he breaks her hold so she tumbles away again, the arc wide like a dance. Horrible dream, I say as my eyes open. Thinking now on that arc thru the air, I wonder if perhaps she found wings. And I go back to The Black Stallion, a gorgeous film. For the first time watch the trailer. So corny, it begins, “If you want to believe in magic, in beauty, in friendship, and freedom. . .” And I say, Why, yes. Yes, I do. The heart of what I create for the world. Sometimes with tears. A good heart for offerings, don’t you think?

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

A Secret: Deep water holds fascination for me, and a deep fear I faced last year in Hawaii. Swimming in the ocean where it goes down 5,000 ft..
A Favorite: A stunningly orchestrated film.

Photo: Kurt Arrigo

An Irrevocable Condition

Posted on August 3, 2015 by Heloise Jones

Home is a name, a word, it is a strong one; stronger than magician ever spoke,
or spirit ever answered to, in the strongest conjuration.
~ Charles Dickens

MilkyWay.YangWen

We’ve had a lot of rain. All day, all night for weeks rain. The kind long-timers say they’ve never seen. The kind with job security for roofers. But grace can reign at dawn if heavy sheets of clouds are shredded. And I take my walk to the bay. I’m always looking up here. Florida skies hold a sort of splendor I’m positive isn’t anywhere else. Colors and hues that seem more from crayon boxes and little girl dreams than real. Clouds that light up, change form and shape, sail so quickly they look VFX. Locked beneath the urban-glow veil as I am, though, stars are illusive. I search, anyway. Thinking my best chance when nightlife’s dimmed and homes slumber. A count of more than a few gets me excited. A familiar constellation, like I spied last week, makes me rejoice.

That was a strange moment. I immediately plummeted with the thought constellations are the brightest, most visible stars. And my mind flashed to a recent shot of the Milky Way by a photographer who chronicles the west the way my heart does. Through landscape, vistas, and sky. His young son often in them these days, a tiny boy looking comfortable in big, wild places. For the hundredth time I wondered if I’d ever see stars again while home. See them like I did in 1994 Santa Fe where we lived in the middle of 500 then-undeveloped acres close to town (I like living close to town). Each night my head rocked back, eyes skyward. The Milky Way coursing above me. Kerjillions of twinkling lights on the night ceiling. And I questioned how I missed the spectacle in Flagstaff, a dark-sky city, just a few years before. Wondered perhaps stars hold something of home for me. Because I don’t feel smaller when I gaze at the cosmos as some do. I feel INFINITE.

Home is up for me right now. I like where I live. This 1910 house with character and the things I need + a great porch. The bay, multitudes of birds close by. Palm trees I’m completely enamored with. Easy town. But we’ve been challenged in supporting ourselves since we moved to FL. Good that it’s pushed me out into the greater world with my work (another tangent of fragility). Bad that it feels scary months and months on end.

I had to pull out my Remember This List. The one that says redefine quantities as qualities. As in a sense of space for having large space (I tamp down, become small in a small space. not good). Focus on priorities, never compromise on things that matter – light, space, flow, a far view to rest my gaze, gathering of familiar beauty and meaning, ease moving through – things of the heart. Remember I’m a creator, that creators live with shadows and generalities as the form grows, gets clear. Keep moving forward. And when home’s up, look everywhere for inspiration. Pull it inside, let it roll around. Pay attention.

The little fellow below arrived in a calendar. They start in August. Ocean Conservancy and National Wildlife Fed. I’ve tried asking they save a tree, share I only recycle for collage that never really happens. I didn’t recycle this little fish, tho. He sits on my desk because his face looks just how I feel as I study and plan, set a course with intent to help others live a life more fully present. I love this little fish. Love his beautiful home & refuge. Especially the way it flows. Feels like the stars in the milky way, actually. Or like the night I paused on a steep, rough, ridiculously narrow road wedged between cliffs and the sea in Santorini, Greece. Gazed at a star salted black sky. Tide and silence the main sounds. I choose to think these are clues, not straws I’m grasping. That they’re practice in twisting my head a different way, seeing the shape of my life with new eyes. Redefining to qualities. The gift at the end, more desired choices. Perhaps, even stars.

What’s home mean to you?

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

Clown fish

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

A secret: A few months ago something went wrong at the salon. Turned my red hair shockingly dark brown. Not once in the fourteen weeks without my red hair did I feel at home with my reflection in the mirror. I hated it, in fact. A lesson in another aspect of home (among other things).

A favorite: Hearth (a nest word) contains the words heat, eat, earth, art, heart, he, her, hear, tea(!), are.

Photos:
Milky Way, by Yang Wen
True Percula Clownfish, by Kirsten Himelein

The Fragility of Spiders

Posted on July 28, 2015 by Heloise Jones

Her voice is as lovely and delicate as a web.
She describes how fragile they are,
how they can die from a simple fall.
Then she tells me about their burrows
which are tidy and dry and decorated
with silk. They are solitary, she tells me,
and utterly mild, and when they are
threatened they fling their hairs, trying
not to bite. She says they are most
vulnerable when they molt: unable
to eat for days while they change.
They are misunderstood, she explains,
and suddenly her description becomes
personal. She wants to keep one
as a pet, to appreciate it properly,
to build it a place where it belongs.
~ Faith Shearin (My Daughter Describes the Tarantula)

Mother-Bear-Susan-Seddon-Boulet-475x357

My stomach’s tied in knots. Days of knots that wake me at 2am, hold on for hours. Resurface in daylight to render me jangled. Knots over a decision that involves something I care about, that I entered an agreement around. That requires courage and ultimate trust in myself, because it might shake down to more on the line than a preferred outcome. Because it could change my life. And I don’t know if these knots are fear or my intuition. They can feel so much the same. I feel fragile.

I remember the first time I heard spiders are fragile. I thought how I’d shook them out doors and windows for decades instead of killing them. A few times from many stories up, actually thinking they’d throw a thread, were tough like insects oughta be. Even with knowing they weren’t insects. Then one day I had to face I probably did harm in my saving, and I felt bad for my ignorance of their fragility. Something I could forgive myself, considering how far I’d come from a deeply instilled phobia. A phobia my mother imparted to protect me from an abundance of black widows in corners and on ledges. To assure her little girl safe. One that by the time I decided I didn’t want to deal with the spider thing, anymore, I couldn’t remember when I hadn’t avoided a picture of one of the creatures. But I could remember the no fear as a tiny girl watching a man in a movie stuck in a giant web, knowing he’d be okay though a monster-sized spider moved toward him.

I was twenty-seven, alone with a seven-yr-old, having left a many-years abusive relationship when I claimed that no fear, again. I can still see the space and the spider that moment I knew I’d gained agency over another tiny slice of my life. The small, dim room with cheap brown paneling, brown indoor-outdoor carpet on the floor. The simple desk with the IBM Selectric typewriter and font balls where I designed brochures and resumes. Where I sat in my chair, watched a spider walk the entire perimeter of the room. Learned, for sure, I’d still live.

I’ve reached out to others for perspective regarding my current angsty questions, and with what I’ve learned about the failings of allowing my head to pull me back from intuition, I’m moving forward with care. + Muscle test says it’s fear this time. Which means things get down to this. . .Can I trust the person and process I’m not sure I trust, yet. Trust I’ll know the right path. Not assign outcomes that match perceptions before I discover what *is,* like with the fragility of spiders. Can I let this spider walk the perimeter, see I won’t die. Because we have to start somewhere in trust to become better stewards of fragile things. Even when it’s ourselves. That’s what I think, anyway. What do you say?

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

A secret: Sometimes when I turn off the light at night, I’ll turn it back on, check under the covers for spiders. Even when I know they’re not there.

A favorite: Satisfaction when my intuition proves right, and I listened.

Painting by Susan Seddon Boulet

Longing to Jump Tracks

Posted on July 21, 2015 by Heloise Jones

“. . .toward what are we drawing our line?. . .The weight of our bones
in every twinkling star. Brief but wondrous lives.”
~ Amy Tingle
*

A Most Perfect Day – 澎湖, Pénghú Archipelago, Taiwan
*

We’d just finished breakfast. I heard him say change of scenery, and the longing that stalks me daily rose. I’m home this year. Prudent because our income’s cut in half and there’s little left to trade. Prudent with continuity as I create a new business, knowing interruptions bring me back to my work with different interests, different relationships to it. And I’m confused, unsure what’s best for my intentions. Perspectives new scenery provide, or continuity without interruption. Unsure if this longing is a desire to run away, or that familiar nudge saying space for answers to questions lies elsewhere.

It’s been intense. Revisiting past travels in a hundred exclamations of discovery and joy in friends’ pics of Italy on facebook. Landscapes in the U.S. with another. Elizabeth Gilbert pricked me with “WHY DO WE TRAVEL?” Sparked a smile with “Traveling is expensive, inconvenient, tiring, time-consuming and sometimes — like all interesting things (sex and creativity, for instance) — it’s even boring. You don’t speak the language, don’t recognize the food, the toilets are confusing, the crowds at the museum are ridiculous, and sometimes. . .situations can get uncertain and scary. Airports can be a nightmare, taxi rides can be life-threatening. You come home jetlagged. . .to 900 unanswered emails, to piles of laundry, to stacks of unpaid bills. . .behind on every single obligation. Why bother?” And I think, I know why. Because despite those reasons, I shouted YES! when she said we break the chain of interchangeable days, ignite, jump the tracks of daily life. We’re compelled to taste the new. sigh Oh, longing.

I had one goal until my mid-30s: Experience (capital E). I pushed past comfort, stepped out with courage for it. I said Yes to things that seemed impossible in my circumstances, like traveling to New York by train for a major Picasso retrospective. When I heard something that intrigued me, I didn’t think why I didn’t want to do it, or why I couldn’t. I leaned in, let it roll around inside, felt how it tickled and settled. Then, well, I got married, rolled into the adjustments of honoring a relationship, into justifications. Lots of stuff happened – explorations in work and learning, moving across country (twice), creating-maintaining-remodeling homes, returning to college, activism, attention to budgets, jobs, caring for others, fulfilling shoulds and oughtas, addressing the oh-so-unexpected, like a house on fire and my husband run down by a car.

This last thing, 6 yrs. ago, was the blessing in horror you read about. I couldn’t think about life the same, anymore. I saw one desire remained on My List my entire life – travel. And the files of articles, stacks of travel mags, travel shows and conversations with friends I devoured seemed pitiful. I made a declaration and reservations. Taiwan to see my son and grandbaby, two weeks in Hawaii on the way back. Gone for a month like I always wanted to do.

I’ve learned that the adage we get stuck in our ways can be uncomfortably accurate at times. That I want more comforts these days, and things seem slightly harder than they used to. That my mistakes sting more, and after 5 weeks, I wanna be home. But immersion in other cultures, connection with different peoples, freedom and discovery journeying through landscapes all run deep in me. I will never catch up. But I can return to places that touched me, do things differently. Be braver. Order food in Taiwan, not knowing what I’ll get. Stay longer. Walk streets in Italy until dark. Roam across Crete. Things time taught me to appreciate.

Two hours after I wrote this, Hilton Resorts called. $167 and a 2 hr. timeshare pitch for 3 nights/4 days in Orlando. Not exactly what I had in mind, but we’re veterans to the pitch, and it’s definitely a change of scenery. And until I sojourn to Santa Fe in October, my essential like the cave to the monk, it’ll do. I know, because I feel lighter, calmer. Just what a gift wrapped as coincidence should make me feel.

Tell me. . .do you ever long to jump tracks, travel the unknown?

Italy 2570

Portofino (Italy) out the window.

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

A secret: I enjoy traveling solo. Next best is with my son.
A favorite: Wandering streets in new places.

Chocolate Covered Almonds, Soul Food

Posted on July 13, 2015 by Heloise Jones

“…love is not just a reaction and a falling into, but a choice made every moment to be open to the possibility of glory, of connection, of the change I want to be and see. So again I choose, and the next moment of pain comes, and I choose, and again….again and again and again…. “
~ Michael Johnston

Crow-Eagles back - Version 2

Yesterday I made special trips to two stores. One for cranberry walnut bread I’d slather with butter, the other for my fav 70% dark chocolate w/ginger bars. The dark chocolate covered almonds were a bonus. By bedtime I’d consumed half the loaf and way too many handfuls of choc almonds. Soul food while trying to settle into productive activity. Get past a heart feeling squeezed and a head buzzing from something that morning. Written words with someone I respect, a person with good heart and good works who I trust, turned very wrong. By the time it was too late in our exchange, I simply wanted an end with kindness. But it couldn’t be fixed. All afternoon and evening I read and re-read the thread to see my part in it. See how I might’ve conveyed the message and energy she saw that I did not feel. See if I’d indeed written what I thought I had, words and tone saying I believe both/and.

This morning I rose before dawn, stepped out into the dark. The moon was a sliver. Lightening flashed above and around me, caused me to pause, look up, make sure I’d be safe. Over those eight blocks I walked to the bay, I was able to fly above what happened yesterday. Feel compassion for what I suspect could be happening with her. Dive beneath the steel edge of discomfort I carried, sit with the muck. A brief while ago I would’ve took what happened all on myself. Berated myself for not doing better, being better. Decided to withdraw, not speak up. I might’ve tried really hard to fix it, again. Not let things rest, settle. I definitely would’ve compared myself to this person, found myself less-than, because there are so many ways her ‘plus column’ objectively stacks higher than mine. But when I stood at the water, said my Gratitudes aloud (a luxury I don’t typically get with others nearby), I surprised myself by ending with I’m grateful I’m me.

I told my husband about all this. How the conversation could’ve been different. What I learned through it all. What he understood most were my insights at the water. I let go of comparing myself to another, saw my strengths, my positive contributions. Let go of my regrets, am present, here now. Let go what’s not mine, still owning what is, good and bad. And beyond this, the realization what happened yesterday is a snapshot of something bigger. A parallel of broader conversations across the country – race, guns, abuses, inequities. The topics that can shrink us, leave us feeling angry, sad, hopeless, helpless. That it’s about what’s said, what’s heard, intent and action. Our responsibility to hear the other, find where we meet, a common language, and change, be better. Things for a person of strong heart. And sometimes it hurts, a lot. Takes chocolate covered almonds to get there. But we rarely ever travel alone, do we?

Another small journey to mindfulness. Getting to Wise.
A Writers Life.

Bread,Choc

A secret: Potato chips are my standard stress food.
A favorite: Rich chocolate cake with dark chocolate ganache frosting.

*Crow & Eagle photo from National Geographic