Step Out of the Plan

Posted on June 1, 2015 by Heloise Jones

“Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”
~ John Lennon

Last week was difficult. I got a cold. Small potatoes, but it’s been five years since a cold rendered my brain incapable of complex math or conceptual thinking. All interruptions to work either allergies or my own doings – surgeries, travel, procrastination, distractions. And last week only one mantra drove me forward: I have a plan, no time to waste. I was preoccupied with my learning curve in work, the necessary but not.fun.for.me stuff I wanted complete. Sick, I turned into a baby of pouts and darns. By the time I went to bed Saturday night I’d completely pummeled myself for NOT DONEs, totally convinced I was a failure.

Upstairs in bed, my husband Art still downstairs watching TV, I pulled out a pad, jotted a list of clear action steps. I numbered priorities without thinking. At workshops, the word dream spontaneously replaced the shorthand ID. Notes on the dream spontaneously sprung from the line. Some of the items big, really Big (who do I think I am!). As I continued the list, I felt my chest constrict when I wrote ID again. I crossed it out, wrote Dream. Air rushed through me as if a pillow just lifted from my face.

When I coach writers I emphasize getting out of their own way. I tell them it’s necessary to step out of the plan, start without intention or expectation for judgement to subside, for their voice to emerge. That writing is, as poet Laura Hope-Gill says, “like swimming in a rough sea, inviting us to move with the story’s inherent and natural rhythm.” That writing in our own voice is as necessary as honing our craft. And I know the same applies to living an authentic life, fully experiencing the moments in each day. I rarely forget this when I sit down to write, or listen for my next blog. But I didn’t remember when I got sick. Not even after receiving answers to questions and assurance all’s well, no matter my angst.

On my first drive out after feeling yukky, I halted a smidge over the line at a stop sign, a clear Oops. The young woman in the other car with the right-of-way laid on her horn. I understood. But she didn’t move. After long moments us looking at each other, I waved her on. As she passed, she gave me the finger. Something I didn’t understand. I admit I don’t get how casually and often young women seem to do that. Admit I tussled inside not to think about it. Not to go in a number of directions in judgement. That it still nagged when I entered the familiar near-empty market.

  At checkout I chose a line with a young gal I didn’t know for how she leaned against her register, a broad easy smile on her face. When I said I’d bag my own groceries, her young companion stepped aside. “She’s got it,” he said. “She’s in control.” There is no control, I quipped. The checker looked at me a few moments, “I always wanted someone who’s lived longer than me to tell me more about life. What they’ve learned.” As I bagged I told her to plan, but know that the magic lies between the control, and there’s really no control. As I left I leaned in, told her to go for the magic. At home I realized her gift of respect and appreciation balanced my encounter at the stop sign. It wasn’t until two days later as I stood by the water at sunrise, heard a small voice say “oh, baby girl. looky there,” did I see the gift I gave myself at the market. The reminder I’d stepped out of the plan when I got sick, no control. Time to get out of my own way, open to magic. Reminder angels, don’t you think?

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

A secret: It’s surprising how often getting out of one’s way shows up in conversations I have. I see possibilities zip across minds on the faces.
A favorite: Wandering through a natural foods market.

Stepping Into Wonderland

Posted on May 25, 2015 by Heloise Jones

There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.
~ Leonard Cohen

Big Sun - Version 2

A year ago I discovered half-closed blossoms bigger than my hand covering a small tree, stunning flowers on plain, prehistoric looking cactus tendrils entwined through the branches. ‘Oh, the night blooming cereus opened last night,’ a woman behind me said. She took me to a large oak engulfed with similar vines, small nubs furred with what looked like coarse gray dog hair pocked along their length. I learned the nubs would stretch into thick reddish stems, push a large teardrop bud out at the ends. That I had to go to the tree the very night the buds plumped. Nothing prepared me for the miraculously beautiful sight of an entire tree draped, roots to the ends of its furthest limbs, in an abundance of 8” blooms. The white petals felt like feathers, the abundant yellow stamens baby-soft. I took pictures, vowed to remember, because the whole show played just once a year, at dark night. By 8am the blooms would close, drop their heads.

But I missed the night display this past week. Not because they came early, which they did, but because I forgot to feel the excitement of anticipation, head out in the late late night. I stood before the fading display the morning after, wondered at myself for finding the splendor in the waning blossoms less than when I first found them a year before. Wondered at thinking them not quite as fine as when they glowed wide-bright in the night. I even noted there weren’t as many on the tree this year, as if that lessened their magic. I’ve experienced peak perfection, I thought. And immediately saw what I was doing. I was dismissing this year’s grandeur with comparison, not appreciating the divine before me. These, no different in their life progression than the gorgeous sculptures of disintegrating tulips and insides of broken conchs, the rugged ocean battered beauty of aged shells that I love.

It wasn’t because I couldn’t possess their impermanence, either. For they’re no different than other beauty I can’t hold – changing light across the bay, the turning of trees through seasons, the birds and clouds. I realized I’d somehow projected my perfectionism for myself, my current angst of not in right time, not the right output, not good enough onto the stunning flowers that help us see their prehistoric looking host differently 364 days a year.

Three days later, the sun barely up, the sky spread flat, uninspiring, I left the bay earlier than usual to walk home. Halfway up the walk I turned, saw pink, pale yellow, the biggest.sun.ever over the water. And something otherworldly happened. I was transported to Wonderland.

Light shown with a difference reminiscent of New Mexico, what I imagine in Provence. Every street I looked down was a tunnel to somewhere shining at the end. Wherever I looked, color popped, was intensely 3-D against the hundred shades of green and brown around it. Lit lamps floated before buildings. Small white flowers hovered mid-air, glowing. Purple cloth, a pale lemon umbrella, hot pink chair danced in front of dirty white stucco. Daisies on thread stalks, brilliant yellow splats on a red-dirt colored wall. Subtleties were painterly, the brush strokes luscious. And sunlight cut through like timed spotlights, illuminated a patch of peach wall in the shadows, hot orange-red palm tassels overhead, and ahead, lit bright, the entire tall trunk of a tree covered with the limp drooping heads of night blooming cereus.

Rumi says the wound is the place where the Light enters you. I say sometimes it takes a gift like a trip thru Wonderland to open your eyes. Perfection’s everywhere, every moment. The big secret. . .we define it.

Tell me. . .you see that, too, don’t you?

*
The morning after
*

Another journey. Getting to Wise.
A Writers Life.

A secret: I really was in Wonderland.
A favorite: Wonderland

Space, Time, Marriage – A Writer’s Life

Posted on May 19, 2015 by Heloise Jones

“Space is the twin sister of time. If we have open space then we have open time
to breath, to dream, to dare, to play, to pray to move freely, so freely…”
~ Terry Tempest Williams

ll-ori-and-orion-nebula

Yesterday was the new moon and my 29th wedding anniversary.

Time’s been simmering in the back of my mind. Another play in a familiar game with the Universe. The rules: I hold requisite trust and patience, open to a question I didn’t know I had, pay attention for both question and answer. My reward, the fun and surprise of synchronicity, discovery in chance meetings, written passages, or a TV show. This round’s probably sparked by a mash-up of a recent heavily weighted birthday with new goals that’ll earn me a Wonder Woman suit when achieved. Or. . .perhaps by my thirst for space.

For seventeen years my husband Art and I lived apart. He in big cities for jobs during the week, me in smaller arts oriented enclaves where he joined me on weekends. At first he called 6:30am every day. Then, not. In solitude I learned my rhythms, my preferences, my vast imagination. Enjoyed autonomy in decisions on top of my duties of household finances and maintenance. I worked outside home, worked at home, never felt lonely or bored. After I wrote my first novel, I created a writer’s life. It took seven months to clear my commitments to others. To carry uninterrupted the worlds of my imagination as I fixed food, washed clothes, took walks, did errands, wrote. As I wandered, gazed out windows, listened when stuck. Seven weeks into my new writer’s life a car struck Art as he walked on a sidewalk. Care-taking, advocacy, dealing with insurance companies, lawyers, doctors swallowed me. When he recovered, I traveled, eventually stepped toward what I’d resisted. I left friends and community, relinquished my solitude, moved in full-time with my husband. Soon after, his job ended, throwing us 24/7 together for months on end.

Psychic space to write, viscerally tangible as boulders to me, turned into fluttering birds impossible to catch. I floundered. On my yearly sojourn to Santa Fe, NM, I met Amando Adrian-Lopez, an artist I related to for his work seemingly born of dreams and stories – fantastical mixed media sculptures of angels, allegorical spirits and vignettes, paintings of women with flowers, birds, and spirits clearly inspired by his Mexican Indian heritage. He told me about the novel he’s writing and illustrating. We talked a long time about the process of creating such work. How he needs solitude. How the space he inhabits while alone, the psychic space, allows him to see the visions, hear the voices of the materials he works with. How he’s conflicted because he wants his relationship and it’s so hard to be with his work and give to his mate at the same time. It could’ve been me speaking, especially when he said, “If I’m working, someone walks through the room, says nothing, I still feel him. It interrupts.”

I beat myself up for not finding new ways to my work. I thought about JK Rowling in a tiny apartment with a baby, writing on bar napkins. It didn’t matter I later learned the napkin legend wasn’t true. Because the fact she didn’t clean house, “lived in squalor” (her words) as she wrote was evidence I wasn’t good enough, couldn’t sacrifice enough, was flawed for feeling clutter and crumbs an invasion when my insides scream for quiet space time. Then I learned Dylan Thomas, Roald Dahl, Michael Pollan, Virginia Wolf, George Barnard Shaw all had writing sheds. Samuel Clemens and Neil Gaiman built writing gazebos. Maya Angelou retreated to a favorite hotel room. JK, with her many rooms in mansions, finished Harry’s last book in a hotel suite. And best, a writer friend spends one day and one night a week in a studio apartment without her husband. It’s not just me.

Sometimes a journey leads back to what you know. Two weeks ago Art started a new job. His hours are long for now. I live with those twins Space and Time, again. And it’s still true Art’s added to my life, I’ve added to his, and my best writing occurs, as Henry Miller says, “in the quiet, silent moments.” Open space.

What happens in open space for you?

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

A secret: I always wanted a best friend across the street. Now I want that friend to be a generous good writer.
A favorite: Lift off in a helicopter.

Photo: LL Ori and Orion Nebula (Quelle: Nasa / ESA / Hubble Hertage Team)

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When Losing a Home’s Like Losing a Lover

Posted on May 8, 2015 by Heloise Jones

“Some things will never change. Some things will always be the same.
Lean down your ear upon the earth and listen.”
~ Thomas Wolfe

Wisteria – Biltmore Estate, Asheville, NC

lilac Biltmore

Are they opening, or closing?

My breath caught at the first glimpse of the Appalachians rolling below me. So beautiful. I forgot how pictures don’t do justice. I landed tucked away for a few days in a quiet Asheville neighborhood. My view trees, a tiny bit of sky. I felt grateful it’s still early for the full bush of leaves. I immediately scanned the small woods for flaming azaleas. The next day on a drive to Grove Park Inn Lost to Omni (how some of us think it), I scanned the roadside where I knew wild, thick, brilliant flames of forsythia show. Another day I expected azaleas in full bloom at Biltmore Estate. Tall walls of pink laurel blossoms on the drive to the mansion. But I’m late for the forsythia. Thick green foliage stand instead. The azaleas and laurels bloomed early. Brown nubs of spent flowers all that remain.

I had breakfast at a place I regularly frequented when I lived here. Simple meals of fresh ingredients well prepared. Fine local art on the walls, good music. Quiet, intimate with 30 seats and a short bar for diners. It sold after I moved so I don’t know the owner or staff anymore. Most strange, though, I saw Me of a few years ago in a fellow diner. A woman known by name, her special requests, her stories. Her familiarity clear by the way she praised the food, the place, her tone like an insider. I observed from the outside in, felt like a visitor for the first time in the three years since I left.

Perhaps that sparked my notice how the air feels abuzz with a difference that doesn’t invoke in me the wonder of discovery or thrill of new experience. How hearing seven new hotels approved for city center didn’t stir an outrage of ownership for my old town. I have the comforts of familiarity – knowing to check weather reports every morning, knowing the back roads, best meals, fav galleries. Share the camaraderie of longtime friends through the known and evolution of the known. But this difference feels like a love and I have changed in different ways. Like a lover lost who’s still my good friend. The comfort of not being a visitor gone.

A literary agent once asked after reading my novel if I was naturalist. Such a strong sense of the place, he said. I didn’t tell him as I told you here I don’t hike or get in the dirt. I said I observe. His remark sent me searching the book for descriptive passages, worrying I had too many, might bore my readers. I found words, random sentences, a couple short paragraphs focused on nature, all key to context and character. Writing this, I remember what Natalie Goldberg calls painting a place we can’t see into a work. If she’s painting a house and the Mississippi River is a mile behind her, she must somehow capture that river in her painting of the house. Same as I do when I write. Capture the fullness of a place without all the words. It’s what we do when we go home. Capture the fullness without all the markers, flowers, and time.

Thomas Wolfe wrote we can never go home again, meaning all things change. But I believe we can. That a place can continue to inform who we are in the world, and our relationship with it remains despite the changes. Santa Fe, NM after twenty years and Big Island, Hawaii after ten years are like that for me. I feel local when there. People treat me as local. I’m feeling my way through this sense of losing my home in Asheville, and I don’t know what to think of it. These mountains are in my blood. I’m right where I need to be, feeling good here today. Guess I’ll do what Thomas Wolfe suggests, lean down and listen. Perhaps that’s all any of us can do when the ground shifts. Have you noticed how once it starts, it ripples out?

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

A secret: I never thought the Blue Ridge Parkway drive special after the leaves filled in. We’d go to Town Mountain Rd. above the city, view the valley and ridges from there.

A favorite: Rising vapor trails of fireflies across a yard or field.

What’s Zen Got to Do With It

Posted on April 30, 2015 by Heloise Jones

In the fall when the leaves turn that shade of red and gold that shakes your breath
loose, so unnatural the natural, when the edge of crisp touches the air and the sky
turns blue again because it can’t help itself. In that time, the young girl thought
she was a horse on a hill. Her face to the wind, there’s always a wind, well,
more like a breeze, in that time on the hill not beneath her feet
but in her mind she decided she was a princess. It wasn’t enough
so she decided she was an artist. It wasn’t enough
so she decided she was a lawyer. That didn’t feel real.
She went back to only second not enough, an artist,
felt most real of all. . .
~ from the poem, Whitney Houston Sings

Grace-Fairytales.1

Grace and Me with Patti Digh’s book, “What I Wish for You”
Fairytales shop. New Zealand, 2011

Grace is the most unself-conscious, authentically enthusiastic about Life person I know. A complete stranger, she messaged me on facebook my last day in New Zealand. I hesitated, then accepted her offers of a bed and short tour of Auckland before I flew out. We drove about the city in her large, older-model car, joined others atop Mount Eden for 360 views, ate fish and chips out of newspaper rolls at the waterfront. The fairytales shop was not a place I would’ve stopped. But she said “you have to see this” as she whizzed past, turned around to pull in front of the only lit windows on a short row of dark shops. Inside it sparkled all pinks and pastels, flowers and glitter. We donned tierras. Grace shared our meeting with the shopkeeper, showed her artwork on pg. 109, my essay on 110 of Patti’s book. Then she read my words aloud with the joy of offering something grand. Hearing those newly published words spoken by another for the first time, seeing the woman’s face as she listened, was indeed a grand gift. I didn’t realize until now what it is about Grace that’s so enchanting. What she models so freely.

Here’s the thing. An article titled 20 Things Only Highly Creative People Would Understand tripped me up last week. I ticked down the list, ignored the exception (#16), noted how those (#4, #13, #18) tempered by years of self-helps, jobs, and heavily weighed Virgo in my chart made sense. I felt exonerated for my weirdness, wanted to share with my husband, say “see, see, I’m not the only one.” Until #20, They will never grow up. I didn’t bother reading the explanation. I was born grown up. Believe in grown-up, taking responsibility. I’ve had to be grown-up. Watching over my younger sister, off on my own at seventeen, no help leaving an abusive marriage, single parent for nine years, house fire, husband run down by a car the short list. I am not Peter Pan, I thought. I love a good laugh, have a sense of humor others appreciate, am very enthusiastic, but I do not ‘play.’ I wasn’t the mom on the floor for hours with her kid. That #20 niggled me, though. I let it perk.

Three days later, I woke compelled to go to the tea shop as early as possible (#15). There I met a neighbor for the first time. A writer others said I’d like to know. I also knew her by her Little Free Libraries, her magical fairy-like Christmas lights I loved. She mentioned one of her projects, a year’s experiment seeing through childlike eyes, sparked by her daughter’s belief “This is It! Every day the best.day.ever!”

Reading her online, I realized the Kidness I thought I had, then thought I didn’t have, is indeed inside me. It lives beside this grown-up who likes being grown-up. Actually holds my guiding principles and intents for life – curiosity, wonder, awareness, openness, trust, faith, enthusiasm, optimism, timelessness, giving, authenticity, love, kindness, presence. I write about them here on my blog.

Shortly after, sitting on my porch on a gorgeous day, knowing I hadn’t been particularly productive based on my current goals and tangible intents, I felt an overwhelming happiness swell inside me. I knew it by my heart, how expansive it felt. By the sense I’m on the edge of something big and good. By it’s companion, Fear. And I thought, this here, this is my child-self.

I went back, read the description for #20: Creatives…never lose a sense of wonder. For them, life is about mystery, adventure, and growing young. Yes. Exactly.
You, too?

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

A secret: I love Mickey Mouse
A favorite: Wildflowers in mountain meadows