A Confession of Difference

Posted on September 27, 2016 by Heloise Jones

“There is something about me. . .I had a feeling that
I was some sort of alien that didn’t quite fit.”
~ Tim Burton, filmmaker
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amy-tingle-swim-2

I’m not sure if it came from appreciating full-tilt the un-selfconscious mind of Neil Gaiman thru his essays and blog posts, wanting one of his brilliant blogs to be the first page of my forthcoming book. Or if it’s my sister-in-law saying ‘all those people are dead” when I said I was the black sheep of the family. Or perhaps a few surprise responses to last week’s blog where I shared my experience getting carried into an altered state, my molecules shifted. Something I don’t typically share with peeps I don’t know. Or if it’s a whip-smart friend who travels in big circles, does big work in the world, sharing she’s an empath, too. But I imagine the article on Tim Burton in Sunday’s paper (which I so, so rarely read!) was the connection that got me thinking.

He was an isolated and lonely outsider growing up. In high school deemed weird. Not exactly my experience, but I moved every few years growing up. Was always reminded for a time I was an outsider. And I got the message early on I was different, like at 18 mos. old early. But I was never directly labeled or pigeon-holed. Because I never looked really weird on the outside.

And I went the opposite direction of Tim’s. I did not find my way to a brilliant showing in the world arena with my weirdness. I let comments hurt – Heloise is different, out there, too much, weird. Even the clearly dismissive comments about my tousled hair, my perspectives, my enthusiasm. Worse of all, I turned the messages inward.

— Too much for some people – too emotive, too curious, too smart. Tamp it down.
— Too particular. Muzzle your desires.
— See the slightest spatial differences – in a framed picture, a graphic, the way a shoe’s made Apologize before you mention it.
— Highly intuitive. Doesn’t matter it’s not the same as non-reasoned emotional. Hide it. Laugh it off.
— Feel things and messages in my body, hear them in my head. Hyper aware of non-verbals. Hide it.
— Cry easily. Whenever touched. Doesn’t matter not the same as being over emotional. Stop those tears.
— Smart. Soften it.
— See connections and linkages in everything. See a thousand shades of gray. Doesn’t matter it makes you pause before answering yes-no, black- white questions. Or that it’s not the same as undecided. Give them the answer. Live with it.
— Dirty kitchen counters make you nuts. Doesn’t matter your desk doesn’t look OCD. Control it.
— Naturally chatty. Muzzle it.
— Shy. Doesn’t matter it’s not the same as socially inept, like a long-ago husband said. Or that you’re not aloof, like a long-ago professor said. Smile. Remember, always smile.
— And this one. . .I was one of the girls in the mirrors shown in Hillary Clinton’s campaign ad. I was chubby, and dark skinned from my Armenian heritage. Looked very ethnic in junior high. Being neither hourglass or rail thin like Twiggy, I never had the idealized body. Was always a tad disheveled. Try to look right.

In other words, tho I’m strong, intelligent, creative, get things done, do good works, love my friends, family, and the world, over the years I’ve made myself smaller. Tamped down my enthusiasm. Apologized for my breath. Saw bad relationships up to me alone to fix. I didn’t allow myself to be who I essentially am. I let myself feel less-than as I shrugged off blank stares to my insights or wit. Bought thousands of dollars in clothing that was not Me. Over-explained myself. Justified why I see things the way I do. Hid my intelligence. Struggled with body image. Even when I was 30 lbs. lighter than my current size-8, I felt fat. Even when my socks coordinate with my outfit and I’m in a tailored suit, I feel sloppy. I still use self-talk to get past feeling frumpy or not right. And I’m one of the lucky ones. I can stop eating sweets and carbs for a few weeks, lose weight. My muscles respond quickly to the slightest exercise.

It took years to realize as many people as there are who don’t see me, there are others who do. That as much as I consider the negative voices, for they may illuminate something to work on, I need to hold the positive voices, too. Because they help me reframe my peculiarities, see past my negative self-talk. See how they may be gifts.

Being particular means I know what I want, and claim it. The way I put my slippers neatly under the sofa can be cute. My shyness made me more courageous. My spatial sensitivity helps people feel comfortable when they’re in my home. The connections I make help people gain new insights, see things they’ve not considered before. My empathy and intuition help me be a good listener, a good activist, a better writer and author, and a better person in the world. And it’s okay I need solitude, because it’s more than being selfish. It allows me to show up 100%.

Here’s the thing. I realize every person feels this way about aspects of him/herself. And I say there’s a reason. The messages from childhood never go away, always haunt with doubt. Even for the strong ones. AND perhaps if we thought about *different* people as simply having a brain that works differently. Or took the time, considered people beyond appearances. Or considered we don’t know what’s going on in another’s life now, or what happened to them in the past. We don’t know motivations. Perhaps if we paused before we judged. We all might have fuller lives. Expand our experience of the world. Expand inside ourselves. See our own selves differently. Experience more appreciation for ourselves and the world. Perhaps even discover a renewed sense of freedom. Even when we turn away from bad apples, see things as awful as first thought.

Pollyanna. Maybe. But it’s a good lens to view the world thru. And is not unconsidered or unaware.

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

Tell me. . .what messages have you received that hurt? How did you move past.
I’ll tell you a secret. . .my astrology chart says I’m a late bloomer.

Image from “Strange Diary or How to Make a Collage” by Amy Tingle

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I’m writing a book about the creative life for people living in the real world.
The Writer’s Block Myth
Get Past Stuck, Complete Your Projects, Have Lasting Creative Freedom.

Rose Petals Under Our Feet

Posted on September 20, 2016 by Heloise Jones

“It’s the absence of all the bodies, she thinks, that allows us to forget.
It’s that the sod seals them over.”
~ Anthony Doerr (from All the Light We Cannot See)
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rose-petal-stage

I don’t take pics during a performance. This is before Deva Premel & Miten came out.
What wonderful heart energy, I thought. Those rose petals beneath their feet.
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I just read two novels back-to-back set in France during WWII German occupation. It wasn’t intentional to do that. Each showed up as the best option when I was looking for a story to settle into. One in a very small library at the beach, the other in an airport bookstore. I’d heard they were good reads. And how the author showed the characters beyond the dramatic backdrop interested me.

The first is about two French sisters with completely opposite personalities. Their motivations and actions defined and driven by their character. The book’s sympathies center strictly in the French experience of the war. The second is about two young people with very different backgrounds, from opposite sides of the conflict, coming of age in war. Both books were heavily researched. Both were page turners. But my experience as a reader with each was like night and day.

In the sisters’ story, I was pulled in close, viscerally thrust bone-to-bone into the deprivations and cruelty. Ground so hard I skimmed over concentration camp scenes. Something I rarely do. I finished still wondering, as I have for decades, at what appears to be blind inhumanity. A wondering that’s niggled me despite many essays read that explore and explain the psychology and sociological influences. A wondering that prompted me to answer ‘I don’t know’ when someone recently asked if I believed in Evil, because my head knows the reasons such disassociation happens inside people, and how fear & character allow willful blindness, but Evil seems beyond reason. What I read in the novel seemed in the realm of beyond.

The language in the second book was so beautifully poetic, and some of the scenes so full of perfectly constructed lists placing me there, that I felt distanced from the horror. Strung out in a beautiful dream that wasn’t right. As I read, I understood on a new level how the rise and fall of the German Reich happened. A sympathetic human level, if you can believe that. The author showed me incrementally, in small details, in very short chapters that switched effortlessly between the people on each side. Every awful thing, each decision made that we think we’d never make, digested as I was carried forward. Held in a tight line of cognitive dissonance the entire time, with me not fully realizing it.

Until a simple line about a boy stepping on a land mine and ‘disappearing in a fountain of earth.’ I paused after that line, reread it several times. I could see the dirt rise high, arch and fall. Hear the cascading sound of granules showering the ground. My mind knew it was awful, and yet, the way he said it held a terrible beauty. He didn’t have to describe a thing. Not even the soft pink mist of blood.

That line, the boy disappearing in a fountain of dirt, was where I’d stopped the day I drove an hour to Sarasota for an evening of sacred chant with Deva Premel and Miten. I felt lucky to get tickets. I heard they only booked a few US engagements this year. I sat on the 8th row in the Performing Arts Center that sat only a thousand. No one in front of me. Only 2 phones glared before being snuffed. I felt extra lucky.

Toward the end Deva & Miten invited us on stage with them. Perhaps 200 of us went up. Miten led the men in a two line song about being the ocean. The women sang one word over and over with Deva – Hallelujah. When Miten said, sing to yourselves, I put my hands over my heart and sang with abandon as I swayed side to side. I felt my blood rise, run fast and strong. Felt my heart beat under my palms. Heard it pound it in my ears. And then my head lifted right off my body. When we stopped singing, I had to leave the stage. Everyone else stayed put. Miten was speaking. I was in an altered state I didn’t want.

I’m not sure how to convey the spectrum of experience after I left the building that night. Driving home in a sort of no-worry hyper-presence. Completely ungrounded the next morning. Unable to focus with care on anything. But I didn’t want to give a day to coming back to earth. ‘I have work to do, the clock ticks’ bobbed inside my floaty brain, and I wanted to meet that commitment. At 2:30pm, knowing beef would bring me back down, I drove out for hamburger.

Something has changed inside me. As weird as it sounds, my molecules spread so far apart they rearranged themselves when they came back together. I know it. And not believing in coincidence, that night as I picked up my novel I thought for the twelfth time there must be a reason I’m reading these two particular books back-to-back.

The last chapters of the book are an extended epilogue. We get a final wrap of each character and the connections between them. As I read I felt those chapters unnecessary. A device. Thought his editor was too much in love with his writing because there was no other reason they weren’t edited out. They steal something from the reader, I thought. But then, tears started. I saw they were like the fabled diamond in the story holding water and fire, immortality and death both. Illuminating a truth.

We are all connected. The possibility of the best and worst of humanity inside most of us. The choice how that’s played out not necessarily easy. But it’s a choice, whatever the motivation. And whatever happens, life moves on. We move on. Everything that’s happened in our lives becomes part of who we are. The past can either seal us under sod, or we can soften to all that remembering in our hearts, stand helpless to empathy for others. That’s what I got.

I still have to coax myself to trust I’ll be okay, come out upright on the other side of big changes in my life. Fear still sits in the corner, waiting to win. But I don’t think about resigning or quitting, any more. Don’t doubt I’ll get where I intend to be, do what I committed to do. That’s what I carry.

Another small journey. Getting to Wise.
A Writer’s Life.
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Tell me. . .what do you carry from the remembering in your heart?
I’ll tell you a secret. . .I’ve only just begun to tell you all I’ve seen.

I’m writing a book – The Writer’s Block Myth.
About getting past stuck, living and loving your best creative life.

Getting My Steady

Posted on September 13, 2016 by Heloise Jones

Writing is not life, but I think sometimes it can be a way back to life.
~ Stephen King

desk-jax2
The little bird sign says Believe.

So, what do you do when you feel cramped inside with thoughts of big work in your life. Like downsizing for the fourth time in 5 years for a move across country, and writing a book that the publisher expects in 6 weeks. And you can’t seem to sit still and write…that…book. Chunk away at the mounds of paper choking you down, of course. The ones that feel like they own you, and you don’t want to lug them one more time.

Articles, reference notes, and 3 years of bank statements went out. And the last of my filled stiff-backed spiral notebooks where I wrote all my rough drafts of the scenes in two novels. Wrote poems, starts of stories. Journaled my mind and heart. Took notes at seminars, workshops, and conferences.

I called my husband Art to help rip the metal spirals from my pages. Then, said a prayer for gentle release of all that energy held in my words as I lifted handful after handful into the big, blue recycle bin. The archives from hundreds of hours let go. When it was done, the pages I culled from the lot easily fit in a manila folder.

I say ‘writing’ here, but I bet you see it could be about anything that’s fed and sustained us. How sometimes you have to let something go not because you don’t still love the thing, but because there’s been a shift in your focus. Or a shift in your life. Or maybe it’s just time to see who you are in relation to it today. I know this doesn’t just happen for writers and artists. And the way I’d been feeling all week, it was time to make space. Start anew in getting back to myself.

Labor day seemed to be the turning point. I’d hit the ground running on return from Canada. But that holiday morning, I rose at 7:30. Late. Had a long nap in the afternoon. Went to bed early. With a shut-down brain and both legs bruised (calf in one, knee in the other), I felt no guilt succumbing. Next morning, my husband commented how I’ve gone thru a string of emotional intensity for months. What I noticed was no nightmares for the first time in a week, and my calendar was clean. I announced to my facebook world I was ready to write!

But I didn’t. Jeepers, how many times do we do that, eh? And when someone let me know I spelled a word wrong in an important biz email, which meant I used the wrong word. And I discovered another typo in said email just before she sent another brief missive with more critique. . .well, I sunk low. I appreciated the feedback. But I went to the most irrational, defeatist, dumb place ever: All is Lost.

Two days later, I still wasn’t back on track. My husband woke me way past dawn to ask if I was awake. If I’m sleeping, I’m under the weather, I told him, knowing it true. As the morning progressed, an emotional malaise settled on top of my not-quite-right self. I’ll say here I know how fortunate I am. Can reframe, see both-and in people and the world. Quickly ID blessings and silver linings in dark clouds. And I was stuck.

Part of getting past stuck is acknowledging when things don’t feel good inside. Saying Hello to fear, disappointment, (fill in the blank) when they show up, but I wanted to cry, just for a minute. I wanted to feel like that soft, hazy, fat crescent moon I saw the night before. I wanted what I needed to get out of the funk.

The woman at the haunted B&B on the Bay of Fundy who hears people’s thoughts crossed my mind. I’d asked her what she heard in mine. ‘Love, & a desire for something steady in your life,’ she said.

Saturday was my husband’s birthday. He had a tooth pulled the day before (no dinner out). Felt tired from the whole darned ordeal (keep it simple). So, we went to the Bosnian-Serb bakery & market he discovered and wanted to show me. Bought sardines packed on the Mediterranean, wild blackberry preserves from Croatia, and a huge greasy pocket of chewy bread with a thin filling of feta & spinach. We went to 5 Guys, a place I don’t frequent but he likes, ate a bucket of fresh-cut french fries. Potatoes something he could comfortably eat & one of my guilty pleasures. As we strolled to the art museum, he looked at me and beamed, We’re going places we don’t have to go. It’s been such a long time since that was true for either of us, we both smiled big and stepped a tad lighter. This, I thought, is what I want more of. What I need for steady.

I’m redoing my website. Moving my novel to a single page. ‘Cause tho I’m a novelist and poet at heart, my biggest work as an author and mentor is helping folks live and love their best creative life. It’s who I am. And it needs to be center stage to the world. The image I’m putting on the header is one of my desk in Jacksonville (see it up there?). I think it says Writer Lives Here all over it. I believe this move is part of getting my steady, too.

Because writing answers Yes to my abiding question, and sustains me. I read like a writer and it stimulates me. I’ve studied craft, process, and the industry with passion, and I still never tire of talking with writers about writing. I don’t know why I write essays best on the computer, rather than in notebooks. I know the studies and brain science say pen to paper grows neural pathways, fosters creativity. But the purge of paper sparked the realization I must write fiction, again. Because listening to the story and characters as I write with pen on paper expands my mind and soul. Even in short writes, beginnings that will never see a middle and end. And I miss it. I need it.

I knew that Seer on the Bay of Fundy read a yearning for Home in my mind. I just didn’t realize all of this was part of it. A year ago, I wrote ‘sometimes a journey leads back to what you know.’ And here I am, cycling thru once more. ‘Cause Life doesn’t run on a line. It runs in a spiral.

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recycle

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

Tell me. . .what gives you your Steady in life.
I’ll tell you a secret. . .I say writing, but it’s always been art and creating for me.

I’m writing a book, The Writer’s Block Myth – A Guide to Lasting Creative Freedom.
The creative life for people living in the real world.

Lessons from a Little Boy

Posted on August 16, 2016 by Heloise Jones

I’d like to tell you everything I know about love is in the right hand drawer of that
table from India book-ending my living room.
~ Maya Stein (from Still & Always)
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WaterWings

The little family (my son, grandson, daughter-in-law) spent the last days of their trip in the States not far from me. I pulled out the big pad of paper and crayons. Lined up the kid’s books I got from the library. Pulled out the bowl a potter glazed with happy faces. I wore the earrings they sent for Mother’s Day my son said they all chose together. Imagined how tickled little boy would be when he saw pictures he painted and shells he gave me around the house. But he didn’t come, as promised. Two days in a row didn’t come. I did little else but wait in the waiting. Their silence and my wondering like screams.

When the call came saying he could’ve gone to the beach, but he wanted the day and night with us, I drove over immediately. That night I woke from an unplanned nap on the sofa to him in a chair beside me. ‘I’m watching you,’ he said. I don’t know what he was thinking, but I know he watches and notes everything. Even cheese, if it matters. Because I asked, ‘how did you know,’ when he picked it up at the market without hesitation. The spice on the side, he said, rubbing his finger over the pepper. I glanced at the other differently herbed cheeses on display. No mistake he knew.

I also know he lives within tight lines. I tried to widen them a bit for him. I think I did. He now knows why broken shells are gems. That he can color like artists, make things any shade he wants. And if he’s asked what goes in the blank space on his drawing, his idea is the right one.

Walking this morning, I thought how much he loves a pool. How when I warned of deep water he said ‘it’s okay, I got my water wings.’ And he kicked off free. With total trust in those wings. I could use wings like that, I thought. Ones I can count on to hold me up. Let me break seeming boundaries, experience adventure. My husband Art wondered at his lack of self-consciousness wearing two giant clown fish. I thought I could use some of that, too.

You know how you can see where the rain falls in the near or far distance? The gray striated sheet that drapes down from a cloud? Today, from a pink-lit cloud that looked like a giant misshapen heart, tatters of pink sheets. The bottoms wisping to shreds where they fell out of the dawn-sun’s reflection, turned to gray. I watched as the pink faded, thinking the whole scene – weeping bruised heart to gray mist finish – a picture of my insides.

But I’ll be okay. They’re soon back in Taiwan, my week’s a busy one, and Thursday I fly to Canada. On adventure with a enthusiastic Canadian writer, scoping venues for my workshops there next spring at her invitation. She tells me night is pitch black where she lives. I’ll see the stars if the fog doesn’t roll in from the sea. Even with the full moon. I’ve longed to see stars in a dark sky, again. The trajectory’s still going up.

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WaterWings2
Another Small Journey. Getting to Wise.
A Writer’s Life.

Tell me. . .what do you trust to hold you up, carry you thru seeming boundaries?

I’ll tell you a secret. . . what I know for sure. We’re all learning from each other, if we pay attention.

I’m writing a book, The Writer’s Block Myth.
The creative life for people living in the real world.

Good Stuff Coming

Posted on July 19, 2016 by Heloise Jones

This. So friggin’ lovely. The space. The books.
The impetus to do such a thing. Preserve a theatre by transforming it into a bookstore.
The interest and support to keep it open.
Humanity. So friggin’ beautiful.

bookstor.theatre.1

I’m losing track of time. My clue. Sunday I thought it midweek. Yesterday, Monday, I thought it Friday. Because whew, what a month. A lot of grief and sadness. I imagine you’re feeling it, too. So, I thought I’d share good stuff this time. Because when I asked, my husband said I mostly write about my awe and wonder with the world. Nice he gets that in the midst of my shares how I move thru the hard stuff in life. Nice he reminds me that, my goodness, a bunch of good stuff’s happening.

Last Wed. I signed a contract with a publisher for my forthcoming book, The Writer’s Block Myth. I’ll begin writing this week, and publish in January. Right when we all remember we have real lives awaiting after the holidays, and want to make them better than ever.

On the other spectrum. . .completion. Within weeks I’ll launch two accessible offerings that’ve been great fun (!!!) to create. An audio subscription of blogs I chose from archives, and my signature program – The Creative Life for People Living in the Real World. A package of audio recordings and printed guides speaking to writers, but really for all of us. Because it’s really about Life, and we’re all creative.

The thing is, this work to support us living and loving our best lives, is a call from the Universe I resisted for years. Even turned my back when I heard a roomful of angels scream in my head two years ago in Santa Fe.

And now, here I am. Running 6 deadlines simultaneously, personal and professional. Believing it all good. Including my son, grandson, and daughter-in-law, who I call the little family, arriving tonight from Taiwan. Four years ago I was on a countdown to their arrival. Hours, minutes, and when I knew the plane flew close, watching the second-hand sweep the clock face. But it was not the visit I anticipated. It was the kind that can happen with family sometimes. The kind that blindsides. I spun into nearly unbearable grief. And have never repeated the words said to me.

Because the lines we knew, the boundaries of love, the ways of being with the one you love most in all the world were broken. And it was impossible to mend thru emails. Time and love all to hold a heart together. And acceptance for what may (may, the key word) evolve.

They came, again, two years later. We found a peaceable kingdom between us. And messages have come after. We’re healing.

Tonight I pick up them up, two years since our last hug. We still don’t talk much on Skype. And the beach where they’re staying requires a drive too unpleasant to repeat daily, so I rented a condo close. But I’m counting hours, again. And making a breakfast care package. And my grandson, now half past 6 yrs. old, regularly writes me postcards. Lettered in pencil. The pretty girl who likes him. The teacher he likes a lot who’s also beautiful. How he cried at his kindergarten graduation, it was so beautiful. The markets of handmade goods he likes, and fun with best friends. How he loves flowers. Writing this, I notice how much he uses the words likes and beautiful. He notices how much I talk about birds. You probably do, too.

So much good stuff. And there’s more. Messages from the Universe! One morning at the bay for silence. Not bad humid. My bra soaked but not my shirt. I rounded a curve bayside, a large deep pink semi-circle appeared beside me in the water. Reflection of a cloud that accompanied me, kept me enfolded in visions of pink. On the way back, a bird called from above. Clear, three notes, in cycles that felt like the rotations from a lighthouse. I expected a small bird. But it was an osprey on the tall lamp post. I listened with it after each call. And indeed heard an echo. A response from a mate, I thought.

And a few days after that, two blocks thru the neighborhood, I hear the same call. Tip-top branch of a tree to my left. Like the other. Looking not my way, but out to sea. Again, 30 min. later. Bayside. All silent ’til I get close, Osprey in the tree right ahead. In three years of bayside walks, two yrs. nearly every day, this is the first I’ve heard osprey. Now 3 call, just as I approach, fall silent once I see. Say what you like. I thought them letting me know something good’s coming.

To make sure I got the message, these fell from a plastic bag in a box
I don’t usually riffle. Face down.

Keys-Pebble

Look, the voice said. I turned the keys over first.

I saw a man softly hop-jogging beside a short tree stump of a woman. Her face focused on pavement before her. 30‘s, clearly fit, he gently encouraged her each step. ‘Come on, mama, doing good.’ I think, good son. When they come back by, I tell him so. He grins. She stops, looks up, smiles broadly. ‘He workin’ me hard.’ And she laughs, deep from her chest, her belly shaking. ‘Keep moving, mama,’ he says. I hear the love in his voice. The next morning, my wonderful Sound Man tells me about his father’s major heart surgery. Every detail of action and emotion inside him thru the ordeal. His eyes misting. Good son, I think.

Believe, the pebble says.

Now, tell me. . .what good stuff can you share?

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

A secret: I’m learning to share secrets. The warmth I get back helps me be brave.
A favorite: How all of us love flowers.