The Whole of Me, Willin’

Posted on January 3, 2017 by Heloise Jones

there are pieces of me
that stand on mountains
that sparkle
in tide pools
that contemplate
in deserts
that glisten
in city lights
but the whole of me
lies everywhere
and nowhere
at once
~ Rima Z. Kharuf

Day Three. New Year. I missed its turning. 12:09 when I glanced up and thought, Oh, my goodness. I missed the magic moment 2016 closed the door and 2017 popped its head in. I was in the midst of editing my book, knew I’d soon stop and move upstairs, pack a box for my move across country in two weeks, put my head down around 2am. Deadlines on top one another that make me feel like that 70s Little Feat song, Willin,’. . .been warped by the rain, driven by the snow. . .kicked by the wind. . .Had my head stoved in, but I’m still on my feet and I’m still, willin.‘ Metaphorically feeling it, of course, but it’s made me a bit edgy at times.

Tuesday morning now, though, and time to assess what else has been happening inside me while I was in the midst of living my life. The good and best (meaning most magical) stuff is not always what we remember. Our experience not confined to what we remember, either. If we don’t let it be. What I remember about the past week is sitting in front of the computer, squinting down at the 14” screen, editing my manuscript in the way I do with each word and syllable weighed not just for what it says or how correctly I say it, but the way it feels, the rhythm and ring. And how I’d look up at dusk, think I haven’t been outside today. It was my body feeling those lines by Little Feat. In looking back, I see it was not me ‘thinking’ those lines.

I’ve been thinking about the 4-day drive to my place on the planet, Santa Fe. A longing for belonging answered. Been wiggling my thoughts to adventure in that drive, like it used to feel when I was younger, versus the tired and pain it seems long drives leave me with now. And it was a picture by a friend following Jack Kerouac’s ‘On the Road’ path (a longtime dream of hers) that sparked the Little Feat song ringing in my head. A shot of a dusty looking place. Route 66 road sign, two low-slung buildings, and a large faded, beat by the elements sign that says ‘Tucumcari TRADING POST.’ The song started like it always does whenever I see Tucumcari or Tahachapi. I’d never heard of those places when I first heard it. I was young, had traveled little. But the poetry of the names, how they rolled off my tongue, made an impression. I arrived in both by accident.

I was driving coast to coast, Durham, NC to San Francisco, to go to hypnosis school. I drove 10 hr. days then. Left time for exploration if something unexpected showed up. Loretta Lynn’s homeplace. The Indian pottery factory an hour off the road where dozens sat at long tables, painted whatever story they wanted in symbols on little factory pots. The legend for the symbols on the wall. And one very early morning I sat eating breakfast in an independent truck stop in Tucumcari that was clearly a favorite by locals and truckers both. It may sound silly, but I felt a wide-eyed wonder to be in that place from the song. A desert place so different from its name like a tropical bird’s.

And Tahachapi – I was headed out of California. The sun had set late but I chose to drive thru the last ‘big’ town at dusk. I remember looking at the lights in my rearview mirror as the road headed up a mountain, thinking perhaps I should turn around. But I’m the kind of road-tripper who follows the highways, open to what shows up, so I was unaware there wasn’t much ahead for hours. Pitch black, I’m driving the mountain. Then I saw the sign, Tahachapi. That same little thrill I’d had in Tucumcari several years earlier tickled my chest.

I stopped in a small strip of a motel. The next morning I learned it was wildflower season. I drove out to find the hillsides covered in blooms that I saw on the postcards in the office. And though I didn’t see blankets of flowers, I stood above a huge curve of train track, the one spot in the country where you can see the end and beginning of a long train at once. I felt lucky when a train came, circled that curve.

So, this week’s really been about poetry. It’s been as Rima Kharuf writes: the whole of me lies everywhere and nowhere at once. I felt beat by the elements of life and at the same time, been reminded of the thrilling adventure and discovery in life. And in the moment when I felt like my house was on fire, a friend offering badly needed help and then making a different choice, another friend showing up with gifts of connection and words I needed to hear, the most wonderful thing happened. As I sat at the computer one afternoon, I noticed I was smiling. Not at something I read or saw. Not for anything I thought about. Just because. . .well, because I was smiling. And I noticed it, and thought what a very good thing.

“None of us are getting out of here alive, so please stop treating yourself like an after thought. Eat the delicious food. Walk in the sunshine. Jump in the ocean. Say the truth that you’re carrying in your heart like hidden treasure. Be silly. Be kind. Be weird. There’s no time for anything else.”
~ Christopher Walken, actor and soul extraordinaire

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

Tell me. . .what poetry do you see in your life?
I’ll tell you a secret. . .when ‘she’ said I’m too sensitive to my environment, I replied I’m sensitive, not too sensitive. That was a first.

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Silent Night & Gifted

Posted on December 27, 2016 by Heloise Jones

I climbed into bed at eleven, feeling good to snuggle down so early after a week of insomnia. Then I remembered Tuesday morning. Blog.

It’s the day after Christmas. I had the week to myself. My husband Art gifted a flight to Charlotte by a colleague. The timing couldn’t have been more perfect. I was behind with edits on the book, and feeling frustrated. Feeling like four feather pillows burst, throwing different colored feathers in the air, my task to gather them into like piles. Once he left, I dived into the book, but I had the hardest time following my own wisdom (the wisdom I write about in that exact book) to focus on process, not product. To let it take as long as it takes to do it right. To be present without expectations. And here it is the day after Christmas and I’m still not done. But I have two piles of feathers pretty much sorted. I know when I’m moving and how I’m gonna do it. And I have unexpected, perfect tech help for what I need to do beyond the book. This last was cause for giving myself an attagirl when I figured how to find a permalink so peeps can see my blog images on social media. I added a high five because the link’s in computer code and my brain was firing off of 3 hrs. sleep. Yeeeaaaa Me, I thought.

The week had moments of Hallelujah, too. Said admitting nothing gets me up with a heart bursting from my chest like the Hallelujah Chorus. Which I heard one evening and indeed jumped into the middle of the room, hands held to the sky, body swaying side to side, me singing at the top of my lungs. Noticing how rusty my voice sounds and how alive my heart felt when moments before it was so quiet.

All day Friday I thought about the yummy salmon BLT I recently discovered at a little place down the road. No regrets I found it on the cusp of leaving, only feeling an intent to enjoy it while I can. But I forced myself back to the manuscript and computer. Fighting the pull of the rare non-humid day with temps below 80*, too. I desperately wanted to be outside. I washed sheets and a blanket, hung them on drying racks in the sun, lingered before turning back to work. When they were dry, I buried my nose in the fresh smell on the sheets, which made sitting at the computer even harder. Just get to page 50, I told myself, then go. Which I did, but I was 30 min. past lunch and the cook wasn’t gonna do it. ‘Get a dinner sandwich and a side of bacon,’ the gal said. ‘It’ll be on a bun instead of bread, and it’s only 75c more.’ I had my salmon BLT and she got a $5 tip ’cause she never let me feel ignored, and it was Christmas.

Saturday, Christmas eve, when I picked up our holiday dinner at the natural foods market, I noticed they left out the kale salad. Long after I got home I discovered they left out the dressing, too. I LOVE homemade dressing. But Christmas morning, after a full 5 hrs. sleep (longest sleep in a night all week), a conversation with the most sparkly little boy in the whole world and my son looking the best I’ve seen him in ages. . .I could only thank the Angels for sparing me the carbs.

I had no tree. There were no gifts exchanged at our home. But I felt gifted the entire week.

A gift in the parking lot at Trader Joes. The title track to Leonard Cohen’s last album. This line hitting me to the marrow – ‘You want it darker, we kill the flame.’ I still feel God bumps when I think, no, we hold the flame. I’m not sure what my response entirely means, yet, but sitting in my car, listening to his deep, deep voice singing in that cadence he has, I knew it held some special meaning for me.

And this by my friend Rachel Ballentine in Albuquerque who writes wonderful poetry and colorful observations of the world around her. I love it because it’s brilliant and beautiful, and is a message of hope and appreciation and awareness:
“because of my eye I’ve been scared, so i tried eating my breakfast with my eyes closed, just to experiment. try it. the birds were a lot louder, the thyme in the omelet was tastier, I didn’t like the toast as much when I couldn’t see it, the coffee was tasty, and i ate much much slower. and not as much. I’d better start making art instead of fb and pouting. I mean, what if???? we have so so so much to be grateful for.”

And this, a poem by a poet of great spirit who loves this planet as much as I do. These words exactly what I will tell you are truer than True:

The Magic of the Season

If you are to learn something of this day,
learn about magic:
how it is real,  and the explanation for everything
that matters most.

I’ve seen it,
and felt it,
and lived it in dreams too grand
to live out in a single life.

And I am all the better for it.

You too are like the star whose entire
reason for being is to
point the way
to the human heart.

~ Jamie K. Reaser (from Winter: Reflections by Snowlight)

The photo above is of a star being born somewhere light years away. A baby star, like us.

I love anything that has to do with space-time continuum, have a dream to go into space before I die. I loved the movie Interstellar for everything in it, especially for how it showed simultaneous realities in other dimensions. Because I’ve experienced them, and wondered if they’re real. I don’t wonder anymore. And so, Christmas day there was so much Love in my heart, and I’m still editing the manuscript.

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

Tell me. . .what do you know is truer than true?
I’ll tell you a secret. . .the entire week was like Silent Night, holy.

Lifetimes Led by Wonder

Posted on August 18, 2015 by Heloise Jones

All winter you went to bed early, drugging yourself on War and Peace
Prince Andrei’s cold eyes taking in the sky from the battlefield
were your eyes, you went walking wrapped in his wound
like a padded coat against the winds from the two rivers
You went walking in the streets as if you were ordinary
as if you hadn’t been pulling with your raw mittened hand
on the slight strand that held your tattered mind
blown like an old stocking from a wire
on the wind between two rivers.

 All winter you asked nothing
of that book though it lay heavy on your knees
you asked only for a shed skin, many skins in which to walk
you were old woman, child, commander
you watched Natasha grow into a neutered thing
you felt your heart go still while your eyes swept the pages
you felt the pages thickening to the left and the right
- hand grow few, you knew the end was coming
you knew beyond the ending lay
our own, unwritten life.
~ Adrienne Rich (The Novel)

bird.palm__Nikolay-Staykov

When I get a friend request on Facebook, I look for how we intersect. I heard from a gal in Phoenix, thought of a friend with Phoenix connections. On her wall I saw protestors at Oak Creek, thought like-minded. I accepted. Then learned she’s someone I knew in another lifetime when she was married to a best friend who drifted away, who I still periodically look for. She shared he died in 2007, but nothing more though I gave her my email address, asked her to write. A sadness settled with that door closing.

I remembered the last time my long-ago best friend and I spoke. After so many years. He said I sounded the same. I remember wondering if he’d become more of his darker self, or if his tone was simply the moment. I hoped the latter. When I shared the news of his passing with my husband, he commented I’ve lived seven lifetimes, moved through three since I’d seen my friend. Lifetimes, as in phases in this body with a whole structure of doings and being. Patterns of thoughts, beliefs, interests, pursuits. Environments of home, city, work. Each unwritten in the beginning, forever ended at the close. Oh, way more, I said.

I’m in the midst of another unwritten life forming. This one with more acceptance, and more valuing of myself. I want it to be marked by giving with a fearless heart. Want to be like Annie Dillard when she wrote ‘Pilgrim at Tinker Creek,’ a book Geoff Dyer describes as a series of ecstatic wonderings, united by a tone and a mind capable of extraordinary attentiveness. A brilliant chemist friend told me once some of us are passive wonderers and some of us are active wonderers. Investigating what you wonder is what lets you feel like you have an oar to guide your canoe.

With his words I immediately saw a grand confluence of active wondering in myself – art, creating, psychology, sociology, patterns, cultures, spirituality the unseen, nature and beauty. Oars guiding my canoe through lifetime after lifetime. The ground for the novels and essays I write. For all I consider real. Are we born with it? Reminded and sparked along the way? Mine certainly showed up early. Last time I saw my mother, asked her what I loved doing most as a small child, she replied without a breath of thought ‘draw, from the time you could hold a pencil.’ And they’d always boast I had cat eyes, could see in the dark as a toddler. Because I roamed the house at night in a place where no streetlights shown through windows. I don’t know.

What I know is I didn’t understand what wonder meant until now. That I held a recognition for twenty-two years, given me in a moment I’ve mentioned before, without knowing it. A day with my father on a screened porch, readying to cut his hair. Months before he died. He watched a bird, said “I wonder. . .” Gobsmacked, I noticed the air slowed, paused. Noticed the light on the porch, on him. I can still see it. And hear my thought ‘he wonders.’ Feel how something clicked inside me I couldn’t entirely grasp. It was about him, seeing him differently, as if something all made sense. But sitting here, I understand the true gift for me. A word for my being-ness that I would come to know as, well, wondering. Because curiosity, the word I used, was incorrect. And my words ‘I ask why’ don’t convey the right spirit. Because for me, wonder is an open vessel, an entry to awe. To understanding, the beautiful and the not so beautiful.

I eventually heard back from the gal in Phoenix. My lost best friend had indeed softened. And I could see in how he made his last passage he was the same, too. Doing it the way I know he wondered, the same as when he doctored and played tennis, finding the sweet spot of perfect maneuver, meeting the ball lobbed at him, alone. I’m ready to write my next lifetime like poetry for the world. But not alone. I want company.

Tell me, what roads has wonder led you down?

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

A secret: I have boxes of rocks, and shells, and bird feathers. Boxes of awe.
A favorite: Bird feathers, on birds. Unless they leave one behind for me.

Photo: Nikolay Staykov

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

Love, a Writing Exercise

Posted on April 11, 2015 by Heloise Jones

Some days your novels will be narrowed down to grocery lists
 and the screenplay burbling inside will pinch into a note
 you leave the kids to walk the dog or change their sheets. 
There are so many blank pages you could fill, poems you jot
 on the margins of your day, what you tell yourself you’ll transpose
 later, after dinner’s on the table, after the phone stops ringing,
 after you get more gas in the car. It’s alright. Maybe, now, your prose 
is meeting some other page, absent of a pen or the room to use it in. 
What will be written here is more than words will ever do. 
This vast and vibrant book that’s always writing you.
~ Maya Rachel Stein (what will be written there)

Writing Exercise: Each day for one week, fall in love at least three times.
Write in detail about each.

Tulipbones.1

I’m in love with Tulip Bones

I finally sent the last of the file boxes stacked in corners to the storage unit. Important papers like income tax documents and years of spiral notebooks in which I wrote the stuff of my craft. I kept aside one heavily tabbed and labeled book of un-transcribed scenes to peruse later, tore out beginnings of poems, notes, and writing exercises. A page caught me, would not be filed. At the top in my handwriting, “We can fall in love with a star or species of wildflower, or a human being who is different from ourselves, or music.” Yes, I thought, but fall in love, three times a day?

I don’t know why I couldn’t let it go because surely this is something you feel through, not think through. In love is not an act of will, but a recognition, tap on the heart, an awareness that burrows in, says ‘hold me.’ Something deep in the cells for more than the moment. The very instant it becomes a part of oneself in love viscerally remembered. I glanced at that sheet of paper for two days before I found a hint to the question I couldn’t articulate. Buried in a beautiful short film about art-journals with artist and sage Paulus Berensohn. “Art is being present to something. Love is to pay attention.”

Tulip bones grabbed me on a day I was too blue to do more than notice the flowers’ delicate dance, how the petals looked as if they spoke sign language, their colors of age richer, more peaceful. Rereading a favorite book these past weeks, I noticed the storytelling as the kind you’d hear around a campfire, or at a table one afternoon over coffee or tea or beer. The form unconventional in novels, and masterfully done. This morning when I stepped out I noted the sultry air. Was surprised by the wind blowing eight blocks away at the bay. Wind that rendered birds stationary flapping aloft, where herons spread legs to stand rooted in water whipped sideways. Where everything color clings to is swept aside, nothing left but the pure pale yellow of the sun’s robes on the sky. My own body was pushed so photos blurred.

Back home, such a short distance, I looked up to pink clouds on a field of the sweetest baby blue. I understood, felt it. To pay attention is indeed Love. The kind in love follows. Indeed writing me. Have you felt it?

What is the whole of our existence but the sound of an appalling love! ~ Louise Erdrich
(from The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse)

H.Ringling.Feb2015

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

A secret: Walking slowly is hard for me.
A favorite: The sound of palm trees in the wind like mountain streams or ocean surf.

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