A Different Kind of Holiday Letter

Posted on December 22, 2015 by Heloise Jones

Though we live much of our lives outside, in action and engagement in the world,
the deeper impact of what happens is registered in the narrative of the heart…
Sometimes the simplest things effect unexpected transformation.
~ John O’Donohue

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Poinsetta w:boxes *

Christmas tree and holiday lights are out this year. In the five weeks since I returned from Santa Fe, I’ve found and secured another place to live, interviewed movers & hired one, hauled off 20% of our belongings, had a root canal, made address changes, had a 3+ hour dental procedure, dashed in for a quick pedicure. I attended a Florida Writers Assoc. holiday party, picked up used moving boxes, volunteered for our neighborhood parade of homes. I listened to podcasts, and packed the hardest room in the house, my office, and planned two books I’d write in 2016.

Angry at first to be forced from our home by an unseemly rent increase, I’m now thankful it’s happening so fast. There’s perfection in starting a new year in a new place, right after Chanukah and Christmas when many hearts open. Right as the light returns. I can almost taste the freedom from the continual maintenance in our 1910 house with an absentee landlord. Feel the ease of counter space and a dishwasher, again. Hear the silence. Silence most golden after a year of razed buildings, felled trees, beeps and grind of big trucks scraping and building the block across the street. I can imagine the words I’ll write, the life I’ll recover.

Yesterday I realized I’m looking back with new eyes now, too. I’d wanted a different year. One not weighted with financial stress and frustration. I wanted to travel. Wanted to be further along in the good stuff I’m creating. Wanted to feel better. But 2015 was about Being and Clarity. I thought what if we all wrote year-end letters from the perspective of Being rather than Doing. And I gave it a go, wrote one to you:

Wonder and awe took full residence inside me this year. I have days when moments of sparkly happy overtake me. Moments when I’m in love with the world and all the people in it. I now follow my intuition, trust it like I’ve never done before. Meaning I trust myself like never before. It’s led me to questions, new friends, a new home, to answers. Once to the answer for a question I’ve held twenty-seven years.

I briefly had a Turkish facebook friend, a ‘fundamentalist actuary’ (his words) who told me I changed the way he sees the world. Something he thought impossible. He loves an ancient tree in his yard, talks to it every morning he’s home. I think he’s a mystic, take heart in that dichotomy. I met another Facebook friend in person for the first time. She gifted me a book of poetry she wrote, read a poem out loud as we sat eating cinnamon buns. I have six new tribe members, found the way it always happens. By chance encounter, a word and unspoken recognition.

I started this blog after eight years resistance and three page re-designs. No clue what I’d write or format it’d have. It birthed itself. Two readers named it. Small journeys. Navigating through life. I write every week, stand naked in a way I never thought I would.

I was brave in my work. Submitted to contests, walked with a literary agent who solicited me though I knew she was wrong, entered steep learning curves of study. I emerged intact, more confident. Grew a Vision of myself and offerings far beyond what I’d ever considered.

I replaced my sunglasses after twenty years. With the help of a dentist I trust, learned to relax into my bite destroyed by a crazy dentist with a drill a while ago. Corrected the curvature of my spine, straightened the blossoming dowager’s hump with the help of a chiropractor I trust. Reconnected with my Santa Fe network chiropractor, blasted energetically through stuff that needed blasting.

I had Beautiful Firsts: A Super Moon. Driving back from a soak at Ojo Caliente Mineral Springs. So huge I pulled to the side of the highway, gazed with awed amazement, no thought to the cars whizzing by. A rocket launch. Like a freaky close comet in the dark dawn sky that grew to a giant balloon with a fat tail, sparked a skip in my heart with the thought I viewed an alien landing. A milestone one-page synopsis of my 300 pg. multi-layered novel. A CV list of writing classes, workshops, retreats, and conferences I’ve attended. Four pages to now that for the first time left me feeling legitimized as a writer.

Finally, I’ve had the joy of four perfectly balanced meals, my best in years, all in homes of master-chef friends. And my little grandson sends regular postcards from Taiwan that split my heart wide open. It was a good year.

Tell me, what kind of year-end letter will you write? What will it say?

Happy Solstice, Return to the Light
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Postcards.2

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

A secret: I never guessed, for even a brief moment, what a year it was.
A favorite: The postcards from my grandson.

Buddha-Made Teapots

Posted on October 27, 2015 by Heloise Jones

Imagine your tea cup is three thousand years old,
it was made in Egypt by a High Priestess
during a magical ceremony
to bless and infuse every cup of tea with celestial healing.

Imagine you had to scale
fifty foot cliffs for your honey
and carry it down on your back.

Imagine you dug the earth
and prayed and weeded
and danced and harvested
and chaffed and ground and kneaded
and baked the wheat for your bread.

Imagine you fed your beautiful
brown eyed cow nice grass
and you milked her and you churned
the cream and sand the Come Butter Come Song
and you paddled the butter into its mold
and this is the butter for your toast.

Imagine you walked to Tibet from here
and you gathered the tea in your skirt on a steep
windy hillside, and then you
dried the tea in the sun for days
watching over it, you slept beside it
at night under a full moon.

Imagine the Buddha made your teapot.
He gathered the clay by the banks of the Ganges
and fashioned a teapot just for you
and built a fire of sandalwood to fire it in, and he walked
to Nepal to get the turquoise he ground for the glaze for your
teapot and on it he painted a Lotus flower.

Imagine now, there are angels singing to you because
You are so loved, now, while you are having tea with cream,
and toast, with butter and honey.
Enjoy.
~ Rachel Ballantine (Tea and Toast)
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Chama River Valley – October 23, 2015
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I have a present for you, she said, and pulled out a book she created. We sat outside eating giant cinnamon buns under the shelter at Tesuque Market, a pinon fire in an oven behind us barely cutting the almost too chill air. Noon, a time I’m not usually there. The small parking lot full, muddy with big puddles from the cold rain we’d had off and on for three days. I’ll read you a poem, she said.

I met Rachel on Facebook. She constantly has me chuckling with her stories, her sense of humor, wit, observations. We planned to meet last year but she couldn’t make it. This past winter she noted my interest incorporating bodywork in writing workshops, sent me a book for study. It arrived with a book of her poetry. This summer I got a 505 area code call, knew it was New Mexico, no one I knew. I want your opinion, she said. We talked for an hour. Last Friday I picked her up at the Santa Fe Train Depot, offered a day in town or a drive in the country. She opted for the drive. It turned out to be a gift to both of us. She needed escape from noise and place. I needed something perfect. We rode under splendid skies through the spectacular pattern and color of New Mexico countryside, the horizon clear, haze washed away. Drank in jewels of light sparkling on Abiquiu Lake, and blazing yellow-gold cottonwoods in sunshine, their bark like brown-black charcoal drawings amongst the color. We both felt fed, satisfied when I dropped her off. The next day I stepped out on the porch to the delicate fragrance of the live piñon trees spread out before me. Rare in the desert where the air’s so dry smells have little to cling to. Felt like a blessing.

Rachel shared this about the day: The Train Trip and The Fourth Dimensional Puzzle, or, A Harmonic Convergence. . .“it was my intent to take a train to see a friend and so all of the cosmos lined up for it to happen, from the past, from everywhere. I wore my grandmother’s Zuni earrings that my grandfather bought at Zuni from a ten year old boy, they were his first pair he ever made. that was in 1930. I wore my new jeans , made in Bangeldesh. I bought gasoline, where did that come from. the nice lady from Mexico at Lotaburger made my burrito, where did the beans, the flour come from. where did the coffee come from. I was grateful. I drove to the train station listening to Alice Cooper on my cassette player ‘I like the way you crawl across the cathouse floor’. At the station I think about the train tracks in the sun, who made them, who set them. who built the train? who wove the seat covers? watching the landscape I love the adobe houses and heard a woman behind me from New York City say ‘look those houses are so drab, so homely,’ I thought we take ourselves with us wherever we go. I met a nice lady who said she will buy my book. anyway my point is that when you have an intent all things converge like a giant web or fourth dimensional puzzle to make it happen. we are all in the midst of this every second. we are all held up by a million actions and people and unknowns every moment in utter connection. think about it!”

Yes! Exactly. And how many times have we done something never knowing what it means to either ourselves or another person? I questioned myself offering a ride in the country as I said the words. But it seemed right, and in fact, was exactly right. I can only think more was involved than random thoughts. It’s happened to you, too, right?

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

I love Rachel’s book, Recipoetry of a Kitchen Mystic, A Cookbook Scrapbook.
It’s a beauty of poetry, recipes, handpainted and collage pages. Get it here.
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A favorite: Tea and toast for breakfast. Really.
A secret: I’d noticed her earrings, studied them. The turquoise, silver squash blossom.

The Vulnerability of Happiness

Posted on October 20, 2015 by Heloise Jones

It’s vulnerable to be happy. It’s naked and raw sometimes. It’s not easy to choose beauty and love day after day. The world does not provide a lot of support for this. I think that being happy, having joy is a much deeper experience than people think, and that there’s a lot to be learned in it.
People believe we only learn from pain.
We learn from everything.
~ Nancy Peacock
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cottonwood-iii Cottonwoods in Fall. Nothing like them.
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I extended an extended trip today. My husband wasn’t happy about it, at all. I tried to explain I needed this extra time of rejuvenation, pleasure, and work all mixed into a stew that feeds me, in a place that’s always been home. That I feel a sense of space and time just mine, dissolve into a balance I’d lost. That I’m rebuilding myself from the inside out. Because days here fill effortlessly with connection, surprises and delight, good memories as in doing something I haven’t done in a long time. All so abundant it’s like being in the middle of a school of colorful fish. That without going anywhere, plump birds hop on the back porch, a flicker flies to the window, taps on the glass, twice, right after I open the blinds. Two big-racked mule deer walk through the front yard, majestic and absolutely huge. That when I look up from the kitchen sink, a spectacular hawk on the shepherd’s hook holding the bird feeders makes me think I’m truly in conversation with the Universe. That perhaps the ‘sparkly happy’ for no particular reason I feel at times in my Florida life are simply reminders this sort of fullness is possible. Argue we must bloom where we’re planted. I’ll agree sometimes that’s true. And sometimes, when we have a choice, we must go where we regenerate.

I used to write in a circle every Thursday afternoon. Two hours each week I walked through a door, turned off the stresses and stuff gobbling my life. At times so exhausted I’d nod off. Always amazed me how some of my best writing showed up when I felt so down. I was positive it rose from my pain. After reading Nancy’s comment, I’m sure it rose from the ‘happy’ I felt sitting in circle, writing, claiming my time. Because when we’re happy our hearts expand and our minds awaken. Our tunnel vision dissolves so we see more, imagine more, allow more. We open up, experience more deeply. Dive where the true stories are.

I claimed this time in Santa Fe because I needed to. I know my husband was disappointed. But when I leave here, I’ll have more to give back. It will surely be worth it. Think of it as a mental hospital, I told him, where I get work done, too.

Tell me. . .how many ways do you reclaim your time, your happy, yourself?

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I cannot pretend I am without fear. But my predominant feeling is one of gratitude.
I have loved and been loved; I have been given much and I have given something in return; I have read and traveled and thought and written. I have had
an intercourse with the world, the special intercourse of writers and readers.
Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet. . .
~ Oliver Sacks
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Another small journey. Getting to Wise.
A Writer’s Life

A favorite: Driving through broad expanses of uninhabited landscapes. Like in NM.
A secret: This extension took courage.

Silent Presence

Posted on September 8, 2015 by Heloise Jones

“I wish for all of us a little silence in which to hear each other, and stillness in which to feel the millions of silenced voices clamoring to tell their stories. And I wish for all of us, the wisdom to not be so destructive, to slow down, to listen. For those struggling to trust their own voices, I wish for you to find safe places for that exploration. They do exist, but you most likely will not find them in the gathering places of the loud.”
~ Nancy Peacock, author

Palm trees in the breeze sound like a mountain brook.
In the dark when a storm’s brewing, they sound like a swiftly running creek.

Rows of palms through the park. My last half block to the water.
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Lately I’ve needed silent presence with something larger than myself. My concerns re. work have amped into fears and limiting thoughts we don’t have enough, stories I’m not enough. A month ago I moved to a bench by myself a short distance from the small group under a tree I usually stand with at sunrise. The eight blocks I walk to the bay where I hear birds, trees, other sounds, look at the sky, feel the air, let thoughts roll how they may no longer feeling enough. It’s been a good move, having nothing but sky overhead. One morning it seemed I felt a tap on the shoulder, a voice saying ‘look here.’ I twisted to see the full moon hanging in a patch of blue framed by trees. Giant, clear, luminous. Another morning I saw wide pink rays shoot off the horizon like rose quartz roads. They arched across the broad sky, landed in towering billows that flickered with lightning. Author Junot Diaz said, “The whole culture is telling you to hurry, while the art tells you to take your time. Always listen to the art.” I must look at my life as art.

My first sunrise-watch friend was Jim, a somewhat grumpy older fellow I appreciate even when we disagree and he stomps off. I’m sure we met last year because I told him the booming voice of his giant corgi was just dog talk. And he heard me wonder on mullets, saw me moon over birds, figured I loved nature like he does. We developed an acquaintance with few words. He started bringing me things. First a loan of a Florida nature book. Then gifts like a ‘duckfoot’ shell and shark’s tooth from his favorite FL key. Antique metal tokens and a glass nest egg from his collections. Copies of the NYTimes book review, a couple memoirs. Recently he brought me a bag of magnolia seeds after letting the big pink pods dry two weeks in the sun. He knew I’d love their brilliant red, and bemoaned how the color drained to that of kidney beans as he handed me the bag. Shortly after I moved to my bench, he ventured he doesn’t remember dreams but remembered me in one where I sat as I did that morning. He saw tears stream down my face. Weeping, not crying, your face pure sadness, he said. I had a quiet place in my heart at the time, and it was his dream, so I let it go. Another time he asked if I was okay. I mean spiritually, he added. So uncharacteristic. And one morning the others didn’t show up, the two of us alone, him out-of-sorts, I spontaneously swiveled back a dozen steps after waving ‘see ya.’ Said I want to give you a hug, and leaned in, put one arm around him, pressed my cheek to his face. No permissions. He put both arms around me, hugged me close for a minute. Why did you do that, he asked. Because you needed it, I said. And he laughed. Today I passed Jim heading down as I headed home, the sky still dark. He handed me a newspaper insert, said it made him cry. The insert’s theme is the power of endings. The article I read about Merl Reagle who designed brilliant word puzzles. I read Merl never asked for exactly what was on a menu (like me!). Read Meryl thrived on synchronicity and coincidence (like me!). That good things always seemed to come from these discoveries. Merl was one of my tribe I never knew. And here, the beauty of coincidence in that short piece bringing me to this story about Jim, to seeing the small ways I’m supported. I intended to talk about kindness. Then, again, perhaps I just did.

It’s been a long run of fret and made-up stories of how small I am. My comfort’s knowing life’s not about how often we fall down. It’s about how we get up. My reminder the kindnesses between people. Right now I’m moving toward the good stuff, again. Tell me, what works for you?

Charmin'

Jim got little Charmin’ after his big dog died. He really loves her.
I joke they look alike.
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Another small journey to mindfulness. Getting to Wise.
A Writer’s Life.

A Secret: I see synchronicities and coincidence all.the.time.
A Favorite: Palm trees (a new love).

Writing Novels Like a Hummingbird

Posted on August 31, 2015 by Heloise Jones

When I am really into a novel, I am seeing the world differently during that time –
not just for the hour a day when I get to read. I’m actually walking around
in a bit of a haze, spellbound by the book
and looking at everything through a different prism.
~ Colin Firth, actor

This little bird building her nest mesmerized me.

I read a hummingbird’s nest is the size of a walnut. That they’re so strong they’ll survive being whipped by the wind. And the tiny birds will cling tightly to their nest, protect eggs as a limb’s flung about in wide arcs. I wove that image into my novel. The same way I wove the Granny Woman in, though I don’t claim credit for her. She just showed up. I can’t even remember where I learned about these wise women healers who know herbs, are gifted with ‘the sight.’ I wove in my father, too. His frame, merchant marine days, his love of a yarn and how he opined. But that was invisible to me until I finished the book.

And I wove in something I’m hesitant to talk about, that I avoid mention except as occasional sidebar. The years of battering, the silence I carried. Because though it’s part of my experience, I’m so strongly identified with my redemptive story that it’s not the conversation I want to have. And I see people generally don’t understand the dynamic that exists within so many abusive relationships, nor the aftermath. That regardless of context and process, it’s not a fast track to redemption once one leaves. Mine took three years. And the journey before I left included several years of secretly tucking away $5 a week, looking to therapists for help and not finding it. Until one day I knew I was strong enough, set a date and stuck to it. For many months afterward unable to breathe at night, fear so heavy on my chest. All during this time without help from a soul I knew. Because one did not talk about such things back then. Not even with best friends. Not even when sporting a black eye.

So, in a way, it’s a foreign land uncomfortable for those who’ve never been there because it’s so counter-intuitive to what we know as healthy, as common sense about protecting ourselves from harm. Movies, images, stories are inadequate to fill in. + It was decades ago, is not the story I’m to tell. I weave that experience, my empathetic understanding into the work.

Many of us novelists write like the hummingbird builds her nest. We weave in pieces of experience, wonder-nesses (yes, it’s a word), stories and facts we’ve chased, researched, gathered, chosen. Tamp and settle them into shape and order with our hearts, souls, and minds. Wrap them with the strongest threads of our skills. Create a delicate weaving that when done is a story of perfect proportion, if we’re good enough. If we’re wordsmiths and poets at heart, we feel the beats by reading aloud. Adjust commas, line breaks, phrases. Consider the layers in meaning of words. But to write what we know – being human – we must listen, find the character’s heart, her culture’s heart. After all, what do I share with a ten year boy in the different world of 1952 rural Appalachia, whose only reference for everything rests in the woods and the words of his abusive stepfather? I listen. Then recognition’s sparked in authors and others who come from generations in the mountains.

An agent who rejected me a year ago writes, “I can’t get these people, this story out of my mind.” The reader enters the world, feels it like Colin Firth does. And it doesn’t stop with the page. I must listen to truly see people. For what can I really know of refugees fleeing war and devastation, people of color living under deep-seated racism in the USA, the maligned homeless deemed invisible, or even a right wing conservative. I must find a place in myself where we meet on a human level. Enter into the conversation with myself and/or the other. Experience that story. Said admitting I’m not Buddha, and I have convictions. But it’s a fascinating, beautiful journey. Even when not easy. One I share with you. At least that’s my hope.

What do say you? What journeys have you traveled with stories?

I’ve fallen in love with literature. I try to read for one or two hours every day. I only have one life to live. But in books I can live one thousand lives.
~ Young woman in Rasht, Iran (Humans of New York)

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

A secret: Understanding doesn’t make things easier for me. It keeps my heart open.
A favorite: The perfection of that tiny nest. Like it’s made of porcelain.