Waiting on Me to Catch Up

Posted on July 6, 2015 by Heloise Jones

Are you ready at a cellular level
for the fact that
you can not change the course
of all that has been set in motion
long before you even knew about motion
or had met the course
but now your heart has had its recognition
and as the river moves forward
the realization hits that your heart has already
grabbed hold, when you weren’t looking. . .
waiting for you to catch up
~ Kathryn Schuth
Are You Ready

Just out of the solidity of immersion in a completed work I’m fully familiar with, I’m not ready to step back onto steep learning curves or dive out into air, which is what it often feels like before pieces of the Vision coalesce in the world. So I’m taking you to my (once) home in Asheville, when I was writing a novel.

First, pause a moment at the top of the Charlotte St. ramp, gaze upon the gray, blue, purple waves of the Blue Ridge. When done with awe, turn away from the downtown skyline, drive past the gas station and Starbucks on through the remnants of a neighborhood where signs and parking spaces squeeze amongst the trees beside large and small homes. When you get to the tiny rock house on the left that once housed the art museum, see the rock wall with pillars like giant beehives, the park beyond with genteel old homes on its far border, turn right. Go past the 10’ tall crucifix and stark white Jesus on the corner, the miniature Spartan cathedral behind it. Wind up through the narrow lane chiseled from a broad boulevard by plump medians and painted lines. Past stately residences with lawns and hedges. Past condos where the view of the valley and mountains beyond are the sole possession of empty rooms, saved for a few human eyes now and then. Past the entrance to the huge rock edifice and red roof reminiscent of a cottage gone crazy on steroids, to where the road veers right up into trees promising wilderness. Here the bank drops to a deep overgrown ravine on the left, and driveways snake up the hillside on the right. Turn at the second left, curve and coast down through a procession of remodeled 50’s ranchers. At the yellow mailbox beside wintering plants, turn toward the house with artsy bronze chimney stacks under two ancient oaks. A brick rancher morphed with tall ceilings and large spaces, dressed like a cottage.

Inside, walk through the neat, light filled rooms with comfortable furniture, handmade side tables of lovely wood, all color and texture designed to please. Pass the abstract paintings on the walls, shells and stones amongst art pottery and glass. Go to my office where the art turns personal and symbolic. Where photos of me in Hawaii and Santa Fe, my spirit-homes, are pasted on walls without fanfare. To where my everyday life’s divided into stacks. Spiral notebooks with sturdy cardboard backs, colored flags at the edges, their pages filled with scrawl in blue ink. Pictures, papers and periodicals for research and reference. Notes and books on the business of book marketing. Folders for my daily current events. My lives most recently passed, such as producer of The Honeybee Project, tucked away in file drawers. The files and artifacts of my previous lives – business woman, artist, project manager – all moved to the basement.

At night I turn my computer off because its moonglow shines into the hall outside our bedroom. My husband doesn’t mind, but it teases me. Perhaps I’m missing an email. Perhaps this thing stomping my brain can’t wait. Perhaps if I just got up I wouldn’t feel as tired as I feel in that moment.

Often the book’s characters talk to me at night. Whisper I’m doing okay telling their stories. I know come morning they’ll hover at my ear, or catch me in the shower. That they’ll forgive me, wait, when I neglect them for long stretches. I never tell them they aren’t my bliss because that’d be a lie. I look forward to the discoveries in knowing them, in their stories. I could never tell it as good as they do.

And seems I’ve done a circle, because that last paragraph is where I catch up to the here and now. Big or small, things that give meaning, offer more to the world than the sum of me alone create solid ground beneath my feet. It’s when I catch up with my heart. We know how that happens, don’t we?

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

A secret: Surprise insight this very moment (gasp) I really want to do this hard stuff in front of me that I thought I was doing because I had to.
A favorite: Hearts, Stars, and Spirals, all kinds

Top Desires & Peak Experiences

Posted on June 30, 2015 by Heloise Jones

“and unwavering. These feet have paused for stars,
for the squeal of new babies, because of shame,
because of sun, and the sound of a blue heron swooping
then landing, then standing. Perched, like I am, in light.”
~ Jean Reinhold (from ‘These Feet’)
*

They specialized in signature chops on the Taiwanese archipelago.

Chop

I am Mountain with Far-Seeing Sight
*

Stuff’s up. Over and over these past weeks I’ve watched myself shrink back to small. So I signed on for a program focusing on clarity and clearing, reframing and embracing my ideals. It’s gonna take big commitment because the big shovels are out, and digging to China is not in my Top 200 List of desired ways to evolve. Night work (read, dreams), seminars, mindfulness, communication with the unseen, a plethora of short processes I’ve learned over the years definitely my preference. Lesson Two lit my entire internal control panel up red lights.

Choose your top five desires for life and for career, prioritize for each, it said. This after I whittled down to ten from seventeen I absolutely knew I wanted. I can’t have what I want? I pouted. Of course it doesn’t say that, but limiting thoughts in someone following The Rules aren’t rational. Then I went to if I have this, those others are covered. As anyone who’s heard the joke warning ‘be careful what you ask for’ can attest, that premise is not necessarily so. It didn’t stop. I re-lived confusions. Such as every time we’re in a restaurant, my big-manifestor friend says she admires that I know what I want. I finally allowed myself freedom (one of the words I left off) to name SIX for my life: Living from Desired Choices; Grace & Ease; Discovery & Wonder; Love & Connection; Creativity; and Relevance & Success by my own definitions. Since they lumped grace & ease in their examples, I don’t think I cheated. For work: Engagement; Creativity; Relevance; Respect; Success with intent-offerings-creating the life I desire. I crossed my fingers travel and learning were covered. As well as beauty, generosity, and inspiration.

Such general words. I needed to test them against real life. I looked to peak experiences I’ve had. The list off the top of my head surprised me. It didn’t include big stuff like babies and marriages or deaths. Not even my vigil and witness of my father’s passing. My list included simple things, like standing on a street corner here in St. Pete, hearing my name called, seeing an arm wave from a car before I’d even moved down, knew anyone beyond introduction. Firsts, like the James Brown concert at age16 where I was one of a handful of white faces. His performance commanding – no! demanding – I rise, move, and merge with thousands of others, become a cell in the giant, beautiful happy dancing creature with Soul.

It included drawn-out hits, like the coast to coast drive I made by myself where I saw things I’d read about in books, found my soul-home, Santa Fe. And the day in Scottsdale starting in a hot-air balloon, bleeding from one easy, fun thing to the next until 4am. And the ride across 22 mi. of a narrow Taiwanese archipelago on a scooter with my son, the sunlight and sky and water heaven-made.

It included peak relationships marked by a common energetic language between us. The most perfect working partnership I once had, cliques that coalesced for a week or two of a workshop. My group of other twenty-somethings experimenting, growing up, taking the early hard knocks. I thought of the smallest stellar moments, like the twinkling when I realize the perfection of a sentence. And magical moments like the palpable, visible river of energy I received from a Buddha on that archipelago, or the morning the sky turned the color and pearl of the inside of an oyster’s shell.

Here’s the way I see it. In all my peak experiences, alignment to those things on my desire-lists was present within me, and without me. And I was present to them. Whether the flash, or the stretch of time. It’s the best we can do.

Tell me. . .what’s your top desires for life and career? What are your peak experiences?

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

One of my favorite cliques. Ten days process painting on Molokai’i.

A secret: I surprise myself daily.
A favorite: Asian food

The Oyster’s Beautiful View

Posted on June 23, 2015 by Heloise Jones

I want to tell you about a cloud and the day the sky became the inside of an oyster shell. How the sun rose all the way to that high place it’s officially day, not as a firey ball, but as a shimmering while pearl. The whole time the air soft, the entire dome of the sky subtle washes of color and pristine mother-of-pearl. The awe in this everyday eye-view of an oyster’s, how beautiful it is.

I’d spent a week focused on clouds. My head rocked back as I circled in place whenever outdoors. Billowy clouds. Clouds changing color thru pinks, orange-golds, brilliant whites. Clouds that flickered with lightning. Clouds layered like torn gauzes and silks. Small dark ships of clouds, flotillas sailing swiftly over the bay. On an everyday sort of morning, I looked up to pink tubular trails traced toward the water. Fat trails, uniform, round. As I approached the bayshore park lawn, color blazed through the trees. I didn’t see it was no ordinary dawn until I stood at water’s edge, saw the side-to-side wavy form of a funnel rise from a singular point on the far flat horizon. Spread into a broad orange and gold fan of swirls, folds, and lights filling half the sky. At the top long fingers stretched as feathers that wisped and dissolved to gather again as the trails I followed down. The cloud shifted and changed, darkened and lightened, fascinated for nearly an hour. The point of it’s origin and the stem it grew from intact. Once evenly spaced parallel lines like shark’s gills grew across one side. Another time it turned into an invisible dancer’s skirt. And as daylight approached, it melted, puddled, stretched into a plane of peachy pinks and pearlescence. Like a conch shell, we said. And as the shimmering white pearl of the sun crested and rose, the colors and sky softened, lightened, changed to the inside of an oyster shell. We were inside the shell of the sky’s dome, like oysters, seeing what oysters see every day. It was so beautiful we were speechless. None of us had cameras. Words are so inadequate.

Since then I’ve had two dreams where I sit at a table with fresh, perfect, white vegetables. Last night white Japanese eggplant. Days ago bowls and piles of different varieties. All white. For years I’ve said I don’t want a milktoast life. But this is about so much more.

Transcendence comes through Connection. Can be hard and beautiful, both. Another’s story, another’s view, you sometimes don’t know ’til you’re in it. How many times have you been there?

Little girl, be careful what you say
when you make talk with words, words—
for words are made of syllables
and syllables, child, are made of air—
and air is so thin—air is the breath of God—
air is finer than fire or mist,
finer than water or moonlight,
finer than spider-webs in the moon,
finer than water-flowers in the morning:
and words are strong, too,
stronger than rocks or steel
stronger than potatoes, corn, fish, cattle,
and soft, too, soft as little pigeon eggs,
soft as the music of hummingbird wings.
So, little girl, when you speak greetings,
when you tell jokes, make wishes or prayers,
be careful, be careless, be careful,
be what you wish to be.
~ Carl Sandburg, Wind Song

*
Another small journey. Getting to Wise.
A writer’s life.
*

In Memoriam: 6-17-2015
Rev. Clementa Pinckney
Tywanza Sanders
Cynthia Hurd
Rev. Sharonda Coleman-Singleton
Myra Thompson
Ethel Lance
Rev. Daniel Simmons
Rev. DePayne Middleton-Doctor
Susie Jackson

Cloudy Stargazing

Posted on June 15, 2015 by Heloise Jones

All the stars were still there.
Cloudy stargazing isn’t terrible.
In fact, it feels like faith.
~ Amy McCracken

Faith3

See the egg?

I’m of an age that when I say ‘aging is weird‘ to certain others, I get nods and insider smiles in return. We consider ‘over the hill’ balloons at 40 ridiculous. We matured during a time physical proximity was a component to finding one’s tribe. When comfort or mirrors of one’s feelings weren’t available with the click of a mouse. I’ve stepped way past thinking I know it all, past achieving more than one outward definition of success. I’ve gained clarity on the lines I won’t cross. Had passion pricked from my chest so often I love the journeys as much as the destinations. I know what I want in big chunks of my life, as well as small everyday pleasures. And as a curious explorer, toe dipper and deep diver, my Universe expands into the Soul-Center of Mystery, what I call magical. I know I’m privileged, and I see gratitude and generosity as responsibility. Privilege the tool given to help, share the spoils in ways that benefit the planet and others. So, with all these awarenesses, I made a public declaration a week ago (read it here) to step out, make my best offers to the broader world.

Two days later, in front of twenty of my peers at a Florida Writers Assoc. meeting, I was tested. There to learn the changing landscape of email queries to lit agents, I was thrilled the presenter chose my letter to critique for the group. Then she asked my name – pronounced Eloise, with a silent H – immediately commented on the pointlessness of unnecessary letters in a name. It’s French, I said, my grandmother’s name. She started reading, slowed down to praise my writing, premise, craft, skill in receiving personal responses from agents. But weirdness followed. Multiple comments I talk too much. Jabs at my quiet corrections when she misread my words. Declaration I love adjectives (two, carefully chosen), code amongst writers for amateur. Bit by bit I slumped, shrunk in my chair. And more than anything she said, that’s what bothered me most. This shrinking. Pissed me off.

I got what I went for re. queries. Know her behavior was inappropriate on so many levels, obviously not about me. But it took time to process. And Peace did not reign in Dreamland where I miss my connection flying because I help a boy, and a shuttle doesn’t take off. No win. Far from home with neither computer nor underwear. Gasp. My dead mother giving me new, size 3 pale yellow & pink flowered panties that appear will fit my size 2 frame. Yes, numbers in my dream. There’s urges from others I make new reservations, but the temple on my eyeglasses falls off, and I discover the bridge broken in two. I ask for superglue. All after fearful running, men wanting to mess with my mind, bursting in the moment I think I’m safe, put down my one treasure – a framed portrait of my son I painted years ago. I need superglue.

Here’s the kicker. Despite my years, my baby girl vulnerable self is still learning not to care about attacks. And my wise woman self is still remembering that though forgiveness for my trespasses, sins, and trip-ups may be hard, I can pardon myself. And in the end it is about me. The buttons pushed. The Universe asking when I make a declaration if I mean it, really mean it. Offering the chance to choose again, grow into it, say Thank You.

Occasionally butterflies flutter at my window. The side with raised blinds, where I can see them. Nothing’s flowering out there. I think they’re messengers.

Tell me. . .what declarations have you made?

No, the egg wasn’t intentional. I puzzled it for a while. I forgot Faith.

Faith2

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

A secret: On a lakeshore in Washington state I asked for a heart rock and found one right there at my feet. A perfect heart bigger than my hand. But I can have the hardest time asking anyone on earth for help.
A favorite: Rocks, and shells, in all states of being.

No Small Happy Life

Posted on June 9, 2015 by Heloise Jones

“It’s not calculated at all. It never has been. One of the things I had to learn as a writer
was to trust the act of writing.”
~ E. L. Doctorow

Movies_Life_of_Pi_Boat_Clouds_Reflection_67582_detail_thumb

I’m grappling with the shape of my life. It’s no ordinary discontent. No gasp of desperation. I live a life enriched by friendships, continual learning and wonder and mystery. I’m fortunate. Grateful for each day, even when it stinks. Even when things get scary uncomfortable. I appreciate the value and satisfaction in an ordinary life as highlighted in the NYTimes The Small, Happy Life. I read about the obituary of a woman who’ll be ‘known and remembered for her pound cakes and peanut butter fudge,’ thought it a mighty fine legacy to be remembered for something you created that gave others pleasure. And yet, I hold something hot in my hands I must give away to a large, very large, circle. Something more than settling into the novelist I am. Something big.

I’ve been here before. As a 39 year-old student at a large respected university with a mere twenty-year history of women students, I learned the word patriarchy, had my eyes opened to the million ways it plays in the world. With a long ago history of abuse by a significant other, I recognized myself in the milieu. I became an activist for women’s issues. Set my sights, forged ahead with steady intent to secure a Women’s Center on campus by the time I graduated two years later. I ignored every warning it was an impossible dream. Believed every minute I would succeed. On the eve of my graduation, the Provost told me the prime space he allocated for the Center was a result of his meeting with me. Oh, it was all of us, I told him. I wouldn’t own even the acknowledgement of my part in the creation of my vision. I stepped back into the shadows. But here I am, again with no calm space inside me. Me and my toolbox crossing a crazy wide ocean of intention, far from discernible solid ground. Each day seeming to progress how E.L. Doctorow and I write novels, “…like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”

Two weeks ago I got sick. Bumped from the dogged plan I wasn’t happy in, decided to regroup. Listening to webcasts of accomplished lives by business coaches this past week I’ve felt my stuckness shake loose bit by bit. Then a friend in New Zealand gave a shout-out. You need help, he said. We spent three hours on Skype. Oh gosh, yes, some of it personal. Relationships are that way. The upshot is for the first time since my decision to step out, I feel jazzed, in motion. Feel I’m not alone. I sense a confluence of letting go yeah-but stories and the implicit messages from those living and dead that I’m too much, too loud, too weird. The Women’s Center they said was impossible was a thousand steps, unknown territory, a learning curve. It was focus and persistence and knowing it wasn’t about me. It was One Big Vision. Like now. I can trust the act of doing like I trust the act of writing. Isn’t that how anything’s done?

”In my dream, the angel shrugged & said, if we fail this time, it will be a failure of imagination & then she placed the world gently in the palm of my hand.”
~ Brian Andreas

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

A secret: I still get those ‘too much’ messages on occasion, and I don’t care.
A favorite: My mother-in-law’s pound cake.

Photo from the film Life of Pi