No Small Happy Life

Posted on June 9, 2015 by Heloise Jones

“It’s not calculated at all. It never has been. One of the things I had to learn as a writer
was to trust the act of writing.”
~ E. L. Doctorow

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I’m grappling with the shape of my life. It’s no ordinary discontent. No gasp of desperation. I live a life enriched by friendships, continual learning and wonder and mystery. I’m fortunate. Grateful for each day, even when it stinks. Even when things get scary uncomfortable. I appreciate the value and satisfaction in an ordinary life as highlighted in the NYTimes The Small, Happy Life. I read about the obituary of a woman who’ll be ‘known and remembered for her pound cakes and peanut butter fudge,’ thought it a mighty fine legacy to be remembered for something you created that gave others pleasure. And yet, I hold something hot in my hands I must give away to a large, very large, circle. Something more than settling into the novelist I am. Something big.

I’ve been here before. As a 39 year-old student at a large respected university with a mere twenty-year history of women students, I learned the word patriarchy, had my eyes opened to the million ways it plays in the world. With a long ago history of abuse by a significant other, I recognized myself in the milieu. I became an activist for women’s issues. Set my sights, forged ahead with steady intent to secure a Women’s Center on campus by the time I graduated two years later. I ignored every warning it was an impossible dream. Believed every minute I would succeed. On the eve of my graduation, the Provost told me the prime space he allocated for the Center was a result of his meeting with me. Oh, it was all of us, I told him. I wouldn’t own even the acknowledgement of my part in the creation of my vision. I stepped back into the shadows. But here I am, again with no calm space inside me. Me and my toolbox crossing a crazy wide ocean of intention, far from discernible solid ground. Each day seeming to progress how E.L. Doctorow and I write novels, “…like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”

Two weeks ago I got sick. Bumped from the dogged plan I wasn’t happy in, decided to regroup. Listening to webcasts of accomplished lives by business coaches this past week I’ve felt my stuckness shake loose bit by bit. Then a friend in New Zealand gave a shout-out. You need help, he said. We spent three hours on Skype. Oh gosh, yes, some of it personal. Relationships are that way. The upshot is for the first time since my decision to step out, I feel jazzed, in motion. Feel I’m not alone. I sense a confluence of letting go yeah-but stories and the implicit messages from those living and dead that I’m too much, too loud, too weird. The Women’s Center they said was impossible was a thousand steps, unknown territory, a learning curve. It was focus and persistence and knowing it wasn’t about me. It was One Big Vision. Like now. I can trust the act of doing like I trust the act of writing. Isn’t that how anything’s done?

”In my dream, the angel shrugged & said, if we fail this time, it will be a failure of imagination & then she placed the world gently in the palm of my hand.”
~ Brian Andreas

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

A secret: I still get those ‘too much’ messages on occasion, and I don’t care.
A favorite: My mother-in-law’s pound cake.

Photo from the film Life of Pi

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

Big Hearted Souls & Unexpected Journeys

Posted on April 14, 2015 by Heloise Jones

. . .One day, there 
will be nothing but the hum 
of breathing, the drum of heart. 
So for now, look up, listen with 
the most acute attention. Can you
 hear the world singing for you? 
See the way it puffs out its chest 
trying to get you to notice, notice it all?”  
~ Jean Reinhold

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Snow Geese on the Wing

This was gonna be really short. A roll call of heroes & sheroes to balance the grim news that seems everywhere. My first entry this beautiful story by Marlisa Mills in CT that I read on facebook: ‘…in a cold and windy rain…I saw a flock of geese trying to cross a busy road, maybe to reach a patch of grass on the far side where snow had melted, left a large puddle of rainwater. The birds were weary and winter-worn, hungry and thin. Two cars in front of me had stopped for the crossing. Coming the other way, a large old beat car stopped. One by one the geese crossed the street. Then a car behind the old white car honked impatiently, zoomed around and, missing the geese, sped off furiously honking. Suddenly, the door of the old car opened and an elderly man, stooped and winter weary himself, got out and stood solidly in front of his car as the geese slowly continued. Then the man in the car behind him got out, stood next to the elderly gentleman. Then two women. Soon, eight humans stood shoulder to shoulder making a barrier so the birds could finish their journey. Tired, wet, and longing-for-spring people, saluting the courage of their winged friends who survived another season. It was something to behold. Sometimes, if we look, we see divinity standing right in the middle of the road.’

I bow to those eight, as well as to people who passionately live in their hearts, don’t see issues as too big, like this chef in India, this man in Minneapolis, and Will Allen on his urban farm in one of Milwaukee’s worst neighborhoods. And people who speak loudly against the discrimination and marginalization of women and girls, like Jimmy Carter with his huge personal sacrifice and Malala Yousafzai who won’t be silenced by a bullet or the Taliban. I love The Nature Conservancy for what they do and their continual shares of good news & triumphs. Salute Jane Kleeb and Nebraska ranchers, and self-labeled Christian-conservative-libertarian-environmental-lunatic alternative farmer Joel Salatin, who break assumptions but never lose sight we’re in this together.

Then something happened, turned this blog into an unexpected journey. A woman in a big car approached in my lane on our narrow street, stopped, wouldn’t pull to the curb on her side though she had ample room, though it’s the courtesy protocol in the neighborhood. She remained in my lane until I backed up. As she slowly passed (admittedly, my window down, voice hailing her) I saw her raised middle finger behind closed glass. Raised for her entire slow passage. A heaviness hit me. “I’m SO darned tired of people like you,” I thought. Today I realize what I felt was a visceral recognition of the violence in that f**k you. get out of MY way attitude. Something I’ve experienced before, know on so many levels. I can’t but think how many times people feel this daily.

On the same day I read about the geese, I read this by Thomas Cahill: “<Our> future may be germinating today not in a boardroom in London or an office in Washington or a bank in Tokyo, but in some antic outpost or other — …a house for the dying in a back street of Calcutta run by a fiercely single-minded Albanian nun, an easy-going French medical team at the starving edge of the Sahel…a nursery program to assist convict-mothers at a New York Prison — in some unheralded corner where a great-hearted human being is committed to loving outcasts in an extraordinary way.”

School girls like Katie Stagliano who gardens for the hungry and Olivia Bouler who raises hundreds of thousands of dollars for Audubon can give me a boost humanity’s gonna be okay. Anne Lamott with her unapologetic honesty will remind me I’m okay. Today, though, I believe we’re all a sort of outcast when we can’t see we share the same big stuff of life in our hearts. Don’t see the divinity standing in the middle of the road. That we’re truly great-hearted souls when we do.

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

A secret: These posts always surprise me.
A favorite: Finding and giving someone a gift s/he loves.

Photo by Alan Berner, Seattle Times Staff Photographer