Category: life

Extreme Presence is the Key

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The past month feels like I’ve slept more than I’ve slept the entire past five years. Slept in a purposeful cut-back on brain and doing with an intent to reclaim time for myself, learn to be forgiving with lazy, and simply rest. To slow down the mind-whirl inside and outside me of m.a.i.n.t.a.i.n.i.n.g. Recovery from the push – create, disassemble, reassemble, create book, home, life.

I set out to get my animal body moving once more, too. To step into the early morning like I once did. Feel blood circulating in my legs and joints. I confess, wanting my ankles and hips back to their only months ago size is also a motivation. What gets me moving, tho, is being present to the sky + everything around me outdoors. I experience space inside that allows a return to creative work where the only function is telling a story and playing in the mind-field of my imagination.

It’s working. I spontaneously wrote three poems in the past two weeks, and something magical happened as I clipped around and across my designated 2 x 3 block square where there’s little or no moving vehicles.

About half the homes are sweetly landscaped. Some I simply love and wish were my own yard. I even play games with myself as I pass. How I’d maintain that yard. How much it would cost to plant. How long to mature garden.

One morning I heard the sound of sprinklers 1/2 block from my home. A gorgeous yard with beds of flowers and swirls of pebbled walkways, an entire row of roses bordering one side. It took me back to Florida where I heard sprinklers every morning as I walked eight blocks thru the fabulous historic neighborhood to the bay. Every morning heard them, even with monsoons.

I stopped to admire the yard and searched for the darkened pebbles, sandy dirt, or thorny trunks of  roses that indicate wet. I looked for the glisten of droplets on the yellow, pink, magenta, and lavender flower heads. I listened, looked, and found nothing.

As I passed the yard on the last stretch home after I’d criss-crossed my chosen territory, I was looking up at the sky. And how the breeze riffled the tree canopies. At the back of the gorgeous yard was a tall tree with tightly packed leaves the size of your palm. The entire canopy rippled. The undersides of the leaves caught the early sunlight with the rhythm of the breeze.

From it I heard the sound of the cool nourishment of water I’d searched for 20 min. earlier. It came from leaves rubbing against one another.  As I stood, my attention went to the small spade-shaped leaves of the aspen in the front yard, the lower timbre of the sound they made. I thought, aspens don’t quake. It’s us who quakes inside at hearing them.

Everything in the world dropped away except for me, the sound of nourishing water, the sight of the leaves riffling amongst one another on a field of the broad saturated blue flawless sky. My perception of myself completely altered. I was one with it all. I moved on only after a raven called.

Days later I went to a workshop by Brooklyn born Persian poet Haleh Liza. She composes music, writes poetry, and translates Rumi. Has performed and read all over the world, including Carnegie Hall. Throughout the workshop she sang and read in her, and Rumi’s, native language – Persian. Again, my perception completely altered.

What I heard in Rumi’s poems spoken and sung in Persian is they hold the rhythm of his whirling in prayer. The cadence regular and palpable. And the lines rhymed with each rotation. I felt it before she said, listen to this.

I realized how all that magic gets lost in translation to English. For how can you translate rhythm and rhyme when a single word in one language holds sentences of meaning in another.

When I went to Rumi’s resting place in Konya, Turkey, a vast complex of museum and mausoleum that’s a pilgrimage for many, I felt the reverence in the people and place. I also felt something I couldn’t identify. Not until this workshop shifted my perception, and relationship to Rumi’s poetry, could I name it. I’d felt the rhythm and rhyme in the place and people like an extension of his movement in whirling prayer that reached out to exist as air we breathe.

I shifted inside in that moment. I heard our everyday humanness in his words not as being flawed or longing, but as present as the Divine. I felt like I did watching & listening to the leaves that sounded like water. My humanness merging with the Universe.

I shared someone asked what the heart of my teaching is. What is the craft of your teach, the way she put it. How I told her there is more than one way to look at things. I’m adjusting my answer right now to include this: how we perceive ourselves in the world has the power to expand our understanding infinitely, and bring us back to ourselves in a new way. Extreme presence is the key.

When I left the workshop, even the hollyhocks looked different than when I went in.

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

Tell me. . .have you ever had a transcendent experience where you left yourself, and returned knowing yourself different?

I’ll tell you a secret. . .you really gotta listen to Haleh Liza.

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Editing, Life or a Book

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The other morning I thought I’m editing my life. And immediately thought, exactly like editing a book. I’m taking out what doesn’t work or serve, keeping what supports the structure of my life.

I’d just cleared small piles of papers I let accumulate around the house in everyday living. Cleaned screens and windows I intended to clean when I moved into my sweet home months ago. It led me to straighten the storage area in the garage and start to sort through boxes I brought across country, consider what stays and what goes. I know stuff will go. It’s here simply because I had no brain cells or energy left for decisions by the time those boxes got packed. All decisions reduced down to expediency.

I wiped the dust from the lids of the plastic bins I bought, will make those decisions as I transfer things for safe keeping from mice and whatever. As I consider how I’m constructing my life, aka story.

This whittling down to what truly adds value for me comes after four major downsizes in five years. Final edits before I fill in what I’m building now.

I do have a short inventory of what will flesh out my home. A small bookcase, narrow bench for the portal, mulch and large pots for flowers to make my moonscape yard inviting. The additions in the yard not simply for beauty, which is important to me, but a landscape I’m building. Important details.

I know feng shui, and I’m creating flow. I know interiors and design, have been a visual artist, and I’m choosing the elements for the whole.

Our life in the real world is our creative life. We edit it as we edit any work we write. We use the same rules. Editing is a creative process as much as anything we build or generate.

It was uncanny how my activities this week were such a blatant reflection of that editing process. Right after I announced to the world how much I love editing written works.

  • Notice the story a closet or the landscape around you tells.
  • What important details do you pay attention to when editing, either in life or your writing?

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How to Shift Your Awareness

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It would stay with him always as everything you ever did stayed with you. . .always there
like a tangle of telegraph wires in the brain where no dispatch was ever lost,
what an odd thing, an odd thing.
~ Paulette Jiles (from “News of the World”)

A friend came thru the house the other day. A tour of sorts, to show her how special this little house is despite the moonscape of a yard. What I noticed after she’d gone were the small piles of papers here and there. Work papers & lists, coupons, to-be-filed’s, announcements, to-be-mailed’s, weeks of weeklies saved for articles, you name it. Across the counter in the laundry room, on the edge of the table in the kitchen. One side of my desk covered and short stacks on every flat surface in the office from chair bottoms to small tables.

I also noticed the 3 dirty screens & windows I intended to clean when I moved in.

I started in on it that day. I cleared and filed papers. Ripped the articles from the fat weeklies. It didn’t take long. Then I wrote a poem about it.

The next day I cleaned screens & windows. The day following I went thru a box in the garage, pulled out a few items and taped the box up, perhaps forever. I carried books to a friend as I’d intended for weeks, and threw out empty herb bottles on my desk kept as reorder reminders, and placed the order.

It’d happened so fast. This shift in how I saw things. In fact, the side of my desk is already covered again. That fast. What got me was how I’d looked past so much and left little tidies undone. I keep a neat house. My external environment affects my insides. Something had reversed. My outsides reflecting my insides. Because I’d been down for weeks, in the middle of loving my life. It’s felt like 300 pages of a manuscript flung in the air, the papers jumbled and fanned at my feet, out of order. Perhaps this is what it eventually feels like when you step onto a completely new road. A sort of catch-up.

I choose to put those pages in order. Is that possible? And which order is the question.

Writing this, I understand my shift back into awareness started a while ago. The insight about my mother’s messages to me a huge one.

Author Paulette Jiles was asked who she wrote her National Book Award finalist novel “News of the World” for. ‘I wrote it for myself,” she said. ‘I like re-reading my own work. Especially when I’m traveling. Typos seem to self-generate and it makes me happy to catch a few more.’

Her answer made me laugh out loud with It’s not just me!  “The Writer’s Block Myth” launched with unforgivable typos in the Table of Contents and an 18pt. bold chapter heading. After three passes by a line editor, a dozen by me, + readers. I couldn’t let them pass. Then, someone who knows told me first production copies were coveted just for this reason. Ack. I still couldn’t rest with it. And now, tho I still don’t like them, I don’t look at typos the same way, anymore.

One afternoon, I pulled in where I was giving a mini-workshop. A row of red cars almost the only cars in the lot. Red. No white or gray. A clear first ever in my life.

I joined the line. (mine is the wagon, 4th up). Two people sat in their red car while I took this shot. Even offered to move their car if it’d make a better picture. We laughed at the rarity.

Another day, sparkly little boy, my grandson in Taiwan, said in the middle of our chat, ‘This may scare you, and maybe not. We’ve been talking 25 min.’ Effortless time. Nope, didn’t scare me. And for him to say that, it must’ve startled him. His perception of time shifted.

On a drive thru open countryside, a friend and I stopped high in the mountains at White Rock, a town above Los Alamos where they developed the first nuclear bombs. At the overlook, we gazed down on the Rio Grande, how it snakes for miles thru the mountains. ‘It’s hard to tell just how wide and deep the river is from up here,’ she said. ‘Look at those rapids. I’d avoid them.’

See the white spot at the bend? They looked like ripples.

Another morning the convergence of rock stars and gospel choir brought me to tears. Pure Gospel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ylSoAxpcKk

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Think of this. . .I walk past bushes covered in roses higher than my head. They’re everywhere here. Those delicate petals we tend and baby in the lowlands thrive in the desert!

All of these reminders to shift perspective. Ways of seeing differently everywhere everyday when we stop, notice, and consider.

Last month someone asked what the heart of my teaching is. What is the craft of your teach, is the way she put it. I told her: There is more than one way to look at things. Our history, wounds, beliefs, desires, and intents affect how we see things. As does the messages we’ve heard, how our brains apply data, and the condition of our hearts. Our triggers, energy, control, and teachableness are affected. And we have a choice.

That was my answer. And these past weeks I got it for myself.

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

Tell me. . .has the way you see some things changed or shifted lately? Tell me about it.

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On a New Path

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“There are elements that determine paths taken,
and we can seldom find them or point to them accurately. . .”
~ Elizabeth Strout (from “My Name is Lucy Barton”)

Last week I saw a short video of documentary filmmaker Ken Burns talking about story. Everything he said rang true to me. And what stopped me cold was the reason he said he does what he does.

He tells historical stories. Is now known for what’s called the Burns affect, blending first person narratives into the telling of events. He surmised his ‘why’ for doing these types of stories led back to his mother. He never knew her well. She had cancer his entire life and died when he was eleven. “It might be that what I’m engaged in, in a historical pursuit, is a thin layer thickly disgusted waking of the dead. . .may be very obvious and close to home who I’m really trying to wake up.”

I often say the Universe swoops in with answers to my questions. Delivers messages in articles, quotes, passages in books, and random words. Hearing Ken Burns when I did was no accident.

I’d just gotten a new awareness about how I’d generalized to the world at large a message from my mother. One I received from the time I was very small. The message I’m too much.

The awareness came after a conversation that’d turned strange and difficult. A comment made that immediately felt true & not true at the same time. It took days to sink in that so many variables affect perception – experience, preference, information given, how the brain works, one’s own tics, rules of Truth, interpretations.

What was true – in that moment, and perhaps in many moments, I am ‘too much’ for that person. And her reason why is valid. I have responsibility in this. And for my mother, I was indeed too much. The evidence not only in words, but action. She sent me to my grandmother’s when I was 18 mos. old. It was 190 miles away. She couldn’t handle my newborn sister and me at the same time. Something I learned while sitting at a small table in a Mexican restaurant at Disney’s Epcot with my father. ‘You were gone six weeks,’ he said. ‘I wanted you back. So, I went and got you. You were just a little girl.’ The pattern repeated my entire life growing up.

How it turned wrong is I embraced that message so strongly I made myself smaller, quieter, less Me in response. I carried it like a flag draped around me and saw the whole world repeating it. I forgot I can take responsibility, and the message is as much about the other person as it is about me.

Ken Burns says we tell stories to continue ourselves. I believe that’s true, too. Those of us who are storytellers can see how we include ourselves in what we write. If not directly, our passions and interests.  I write stories about outliers, good people with a longing for Home who are at a crossroads. Stories about loss. And in my novel (‘Flight’), set in 1952 rural Appalachia, I rewrote the story of my mother and me.

A mother receives a prophecy her beloved tiny boy will leave her and the mountains while still young. Believing fate unstoppable as mountain code dictates, she withdraws from her son to steel him for his fate. Eight years later, as the prophecy unfolds, watching and protecting her son from afar is no longer tolerable. She reckons with her choices to get him back, and breaks code in the process to save herself, too.

A year passed before I saw fully what was there. The mother’s choice was a sacrifice. She had a good reason, beyond her perceived control. The longing I felt for my mother burned in the boy. The abandonment in the end was not hers, but his, and neither wanted it. It had to happen. Death was the alternative.

As my mother lay dying, she told my husband how much she loved me. Something I always knew. She also said she never understood me. “From the time she could talk, before I could think of an answer to her first question, she’d ask another,” she said. That revelation rewrote the story of us together, too. And was a comfort for me.

In looking back, I see my path has been one filled with grace. The unfolding of my childhood story at a time I could understand it, the story I was given to write in my novel, and the story I’ve created over and over in life.

Now it’s time to move on, be more than I’ve been. Which also means being less than I’ve been in many ways, too. For one, I can let others get the details of me wrong. It doesn’t matter. What matters is I’m rewriting my story once more. I chose the stories with love at the center, and still do.

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

Tell me. . .what stories do you choose?

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The Writer’s Block Myth
A Guide to Get Past Stuck & Experience Lasting Creative Freedom

Trip Slowly into Imagination

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I discovered a small piece of paper the other day in a box with biz cards and notes. A few sentences I wrote at least eight years ago on it. I can tell it’s been that long by the paper – small, vertical, glossy. It’s from one of the small books I carry in my purse for notes, quotes, and miscellany. And this page was from a book I haven’t carried in at least 8 yrs. At the top are these words:

Privilege of staying inside the fog of my own imagination as long as I desire.

What was going on in my life when I wrote that sentence!?

Let me take a break here to say I’m under the weather. A bout of allergies after a most glorious 2-mile hike thru meadows and rock bluffs. I’m caught this minute in a deep down lethargy. A coughy throat that kicks each time I lower my head. Drainy sinuses that turned into a hard spot at the bridge of my nose. + A brain caught on slow. A real drag as I (and much of Santa Fe) just came out of an extreme allergy season that lasted many weeks. A season that hung on people’s lips because many of us mightily suffered. But today, I believe this slooooo is perfect for drifting into my imagination, and extreme presence.

Said admitting it was tough this morning. I scheduled a mini-workshop to give. ugh As I dressed, I thought about the time I saw Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band. How he rocked full-out for 3-1/2 hrs. How I learned later he had the flu. I thought to myself, I’ll just call myself Bruce today.

I didn’t have my usual verve in the workshop. But the participants shared stories in answer to my questions, and had questions of their own, something that doesn’t usually happen. It was fine.

When I got home I stopped a moment to watch poppy petals. They’re so delicate and thin, each is like a little silk scarf. The slightest movement of air sends them sideways, trying to furl. Then they’ll gently roll back, open and show me their centers. Until the next breeze.

The key for engaging with my imagination requires I slow down. It requires I organize my time, fit fun in the mix. It says write with others because it sparks me. Write fiction and poetry, follow stories and images, because it’s not only fun, but I love it. Be present with what comes up, because so much fascinates – how river oxbows form, how baking soda strips hair color, how the clouds looked as if they were painted on the sky the other night. Notice how narrative and all the ways it plays out in lives and cultures is suddenly in front of me in articles and videos. Notice with presence.

As if the Universe agrees, on the three main roads coming home from the workshop, I got caught behind cars that never inched past 20 mph. 3 separate cars, on 3 different two-lane roads, driving far below the speed limit nearly the entire way home. I decided to call it a sofa day.

I think perhaps every one of us needs something to balance our Soul. For me, right now it’s slowing down, engaging my imagination, and living in extreme presence. A practice of trust. Because I have a book, things to share, people to connect with, a business to build. And I haven’t done this slow trip in a very long time. I can do this. After all, I write about it.

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

Tell me. . .What gives you balance in your life?
I’ll tell you a secret. . .For the first time in ages, I read a novel in the middle of the day. It felt really good.

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The Writer’s Block Myth
A Guide to Get Past Stuck & Experience Lasting Creative Freedom
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