Thanks Giving

Posted on November 24, 2017 by Heloise Jones

And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.
~ John O’Donohue (from ‘Beannacht’)

Today is Thanksgiving. I had a blog written, was posting it yesterday. And last night I watched a Frontline show on PBS about children and hunger in the US. I decided I’d post this morning. Instead, I lingered on Facebook for more than a dash, a rarity these days, and looked at my fellow beings across the globe. And was brought back to the moments of my life. Not the big moments or questions, the little ones that are part of the web that makes a life. And I decided I can only share stories. That the words of two poets and people of great spirit say what’s in my heart better than I can today.

“GRATITUDE is not a passive response to something we have been given, gratitude arises from paying attention, from being awake in the presence of everything that lives within and without us. Gratitude is not necessarily something that is shown after the event, it is the deep, a-priori state of attention that shows we understand and are equal to the gifted nature of life. . . Thankfulness finds its full measure in generosity of presence, both through participation and witness. ~ David Whyte (from “Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words.”

“When we experience the Beautiful, there is a sense of homecoming. Some of our most wonderful memories are of beautiful places where we felt immediately at home. We feel most alive in the presence of the Beautiful for it meets the needs of our soul.” ~ John O’Donohue (from ‘Beauty)

Little things and stories in which I’ve been both participant & witness:

Each morning I walk I’m pinned to this scene as I come down a hill. The wires disappear. I only see the trees bordering the road, their many textures & colors. And the mountains that stretch across the horizon, the wondrous forever sky, that special blue & salmony pink only here in Santa Fe. Each morning, struck with awe.

Part of my walk is across a very green lawn with giant, old trees. At the end, a rose garden. I walk thru the roses when they bloom. In fall, I walk thru fallen leaves that lie like broad yellow skirts around the tree trunks. Even knowing they’re leaves, I think every time I walk on flower petals. I wish you could see how yellow and magical they are.

Throughout the day I stop & gaze out my kitchen window. My view’s to the west and two mountain ranges, the same ones I see coming down the hill. I watched this tree blaze miraculous gold all fall. It held on when others let go. No matter the time of day or light in the sky, it stood out. Was a gift. It’s gone now, but I have this picture that says it all.

Then there’s people .

Sparkly little boy of my heart in Taiwan. Oh, gosh am I thankful for every second I have with him. Even if it’s Skype. Sometimes not for weeks. Even if hugs in person are 2-3 yrs. apart. I’m just lucky. I get him, + pictures he paints and postcards. And I get to send him cards and tiny gifts he keeps in his ‘treasure box.’ He’ll like the lizard & big rhinestone on this one.

And people I touch, who then touch me. Like the woman beside me listening to the symphony, chorus, and soloists from New Voices of Santa Fe Opera perform the ‘Messiah.’ When my heart rose to the heavens with the Hallelujah Chorus, it was all I could do not to sing at the top of my lungs. I mouthed the words, swayed my body. She asked if I was a musician, I felt the music so. Said she was lucky to sit beside me, be part of that energy. Her words, my gift.

And this. . .

I expected a card or perhaps a small painting from Wendy Davis when she said she was sending me something (she’s a wonderful painter). But I pulled this from the box. With a handwritten note, “I saw this mug and thought of you instantly.” The story stretches back 6 years.

That photo’s from a retreat I co-hosted that Wendy attended. Transformative is the word everyone used at the end. I remember thinking what a fine writer & storyteller she is. Now she’s coming in March to the retreat I’m hosting with artist Kendall Sarah Scott. As she packed the box, her Daily Om email popped up. . . with *exactly* what this retreat is about! Angels at work, I say.

Indeed, I’ve learned to notice angels and say Thank You. As when on impulse I look up from writing an important insight. And there across the room is a ball of light in the hands of my statue. A ball of light like a diamond I’ve never seen before or since. That stayed as I retrieved my phone from another room and took pictures, before it stretched out to a line like every other morning.

So, on this Thanksgiving day, I notice the small moments of my days and the big hearts of people. . .the gifted nature of life.
A heart. A seed. A diamond light.
*
Another small journey. Getting to Wise.
A Writer’s Life

Tell me, what small moments do you notice that you’re present to?

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The Color of Autumn

Posted on October 11, 2017 by Heloise Jones

Fall in my neck of northern New Mexico is about studio tours. Artists across valleys and in small communities display their creations & welcome visitors. It’s a decades-old tradition. Many of us regulars look forward to visiting our favs. Know there may be cookies, apples, or posole. One I’ve attended every year since 1994 is the Abiquiu tour in the Chama River Valley. These days as much for the place as the artists.

The Chama valley is where I take visitors. For me, it glows, and holds the magic of northern NM like no place else. Not even the dramatic stretches beyond that lead to Ghost Ranch. This valley speaks of land and people. Orchards, vineyards, lavender farms, the Rio Chama winding in big loops thru it.

Yellow is the color of autumn in New Mexico. We get a few russets, a bit of burnt orange, but it’s yellow that we see everywhere.

Sunshine groves of aspens that stretch swaths across the high mountains. Luminous golden yellow cottonwoods seemingly lit from inside that line waterways, sprout on mountain sides, cluster in valleys and on old homesteads. Fields & roadsides of sage green chamesa crowned with fuzzy looking yellow flowers. Mediums & neglected patches of ground covered with leggy yellow daisies.

The sky was clear the day we headed to the studio tour. Writing this, remembering how my friend and I felt lucky for such a day, I realize clear skies used to be expected. I couldn’t wait for it when I landed back here during those years I lived on the east coast. Then there was the year of wildfires. The smoke coming up from Arizona, and all directions around Santa Fe. But it cleared. Then (I can’t remember when), I noticed how many days the skies seemed bleached. A shroud of haze hanging on the horizon. It reminded me of my visit to the Grand Canyon five years ago. Me wondering if it would ever clear as the smoke from the electric power plant on Navajo lands continued.

This is smog from Albuquerque that blows up, my friend says. It’s smoke from the entire west up in flames, I think. We are all linked.

Our last stop on tour was the lavender farm. We sat at a table on the porch of the small wooden dwelling they call their teahouse. We sipped lavender tea, looked out on fields striped with rows of short domes of pruned lavender under a solid blue sky lifting to heaven. Light filtering thru the cottonwoods at the borders tinged the air golden.

A half dozen people sat or strolled about, quiet and mellow. So, when a woman came onto the porch and brightly proclaimed the sun strong for this time of year, she stood out. Not from here, my friend and I said. The sun’s always strong in the high desert, even in winter.

In 1993 I drove across country to live six weeks in the Berkeley Hills above San Francisco and get a hypnosis certification. I rented a small room in a house high above the bay, and 6 days a week drove over the mountain to the small town of Lafayette. It was a really small town then. Not having near the wealth that predominates the township now. I don’t remember much about the place, except the 2 pump gas station I filled up at. The first time I pulled in, I got out of the car. A guy who looked and spoke as if of middle eastern descent came over, chastised me, told me to get back in the car. It took me a moment to realize he was going to pump the gas. Full service stations had all but disappeared in North Carolina where I lived. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m not from here.’ The next moment has never left me. His expression and demeanor immediately changed, softened. His voice turned quieter, kinder. I’m not from here. He’s not from here. We shared something, including understanding that feeling of ‘not from here.’

This wasn’t what I thought about when the gal walked by where we sat, tho. ‘You’re covered with flowers,’ I said. She looked down at her blouse and the large, vibrant, clearly defined flowers on a white background. I guess I am, she said. She was from Charleston, SC, a place I know. We chatted briefly.

Somehow it came up – yellow is the color of autumn in New Mexico. I told her how the trees seem to be lit with thousand watt lightbulbs at certain times a day. She quieted as she looked across the grounds and up the mountains in the near distance. Noted one tree tinged russet. Then said she thought she’d hang around, not return to Ghost Ranch right away, as planned.

17 yrs. later, while in Bluefield, WV doing research on the coal fields for my second novel, a friend offered to help me see what I was looking at, as she put it. She interpreted the landscape and culture, gave me perspectives. Like the sun is always strong in thin air. My experience of the place and understanding of where I was shifted in magical ways. I wasn’t thinking of this, either, when I greeted the woman from Charleston.

In fact, I’m not sure why I spoke to her. It might’ve been a way to mollify my initial dismissal for myself. And I think it’s because I felt something in her besides the space she took. She truly was earnest and engaged with being there. And completely unselfconscious about it! I simply wanted to share what I love, that I’m always in awe of, so she could love it, too.

In the end, I gave her a way to see what she was looking at, like my friend did for me in West Virginia. And a way for us to connect, like with the guy at the gas station in California.

The experience at the lavender farm has dogged me for days, and just now I understand why. I talk often about observing with awareness. Awareness the key word. That experience illuminated a whole new level of what awareness means. It’s more than presence and noticing. It includes the meaning we don’t know. It includes the Other – nature, human, place, culture. It’s allowing our understanding to expand.

It’s the heart of the work I do with writers. Allowing their relationships with themselves, their work, and their lives to deepen & shift toward what they desire. Because unless a hurricane drowns your world or a fire swallows your life whole, change happens in shifts. And presence to the creative process is about flow. Constantly changing in small shifts.

It’s the questions answered in the retreats and workshops I offer, such as the women’s retreat with amazing visionary artist Kendall Sarah Scott that’s happening on the full moon in March. Questions such as how do we go toward what we’re drawn to? How do we see all that we look at, and engage with awareness? How do we take what we see, and deepen our relationship to ourselves and this world that seems to burning, drowning, and crumbling in so many corners? How do we find our allies, the ones who support us feeling stronger, more alive, connected, and full of good stuff?

It’s a journey.

Tell me. . .What sparks you when you look around?
I’ll tell you a secret. . .The field of alfalfa really was this green, the sky really that high, and those trees really that luminous.

**Special Thanks to my angel messenger this week: The woman from Charleston, covered in flowers.

*
Another small journey. Getting to Wise.
A Writer’s Life.
*
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Do the Good Work

Posted on August 19, 2017 by Heloise Jones

As I slowed down things became brilliant. Grass growing through a cement crack, a stop sign …suddenly mattered, because I saw them.
~ Natalie Goldberg (from Living Color – A Writer Paints Her World)

On the way to the hair salon, I pass the gourmet creamery that makes small batches of yummy ice cream. It’s impossible not to peek, see what’s on the board. The elevated sidewalk in front of the short row of small businesses is narrow.

This is herb season, so the day’s special flavors are tumeric, black cardamon, and ginger. I chose ginger, surprised cardamon didn’t woo me. I also got a taste of what’s next, but not ready to serve: rose-green tea, and thyme-lemongrass. We can tell a lot about a person by the flavors he creates, I thought.

As I sat eating what seemed too small a taste of sweetness for this heavy heart, I looked at the pristine sky. Listened to the sound of leaves in the trees fluttered and rifled by the wind. I thought about a line I just read in a new book by Sheila Blanchette. How her character described the sound of oak leaves in the wind as like silk rustling. I thought of the morning I believed I heard water running, and looked for the source. Only learned on my way back it was two tall trees shimmering in the breeze. I couldn’t think what the sound resembled that particular day I ate ice cream. Only that it was all around me, that I was surrounded by trees. And how we can go in our minds to where we’re nourished if we let ourselves.

I’ve been very quiet inside for days. Some of the time feeling I’m in a semi-fog. I thought eclipse energy, or the fullness of my new Monday night writer’s group where they show up open, sharing, and bringing their best, even on their bad days. Perhaps it’s me simply needing space inside so I can write stories and poems, I thought. What worked before – writing with others to prompts – hasn’t worked. I was stepping back to a quieter space and it felt like goofing off. My thinking mind wondered what might be falling thru the cracks. And strangely, something else inside me said this pause was completely necessary.

Then Charlottesville. The sounds of division and hate. In counter, the intellectual conversations, points of helpless and hopeless. None of it OK.

I am not neutral on this.

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)

I’ve been here before, sorta. It rolls in like big ocean waves. I talked here about the hard truths of differences. How I’m the liberal my sister despises and my efforts to understand the thinking. I’ve shared here my stance on immigration, refugees, and value of difference. I’ve shared here what I care about as a heart-filled person. And here what I call my shame points that some call badges of honor. I talked about how loving oneself can feel so hard. And my hopes we turn to the better angels of our natures. My belief we all cast ripples, that it’s our choice what ripples we cast. Neale Donald Walsh puts it this way in ‘Conversations with God:’

“Your life is about everyone whose life you touch.

‘It is about how you touch them,’ God told me. ‘How you touch them determines how you experience your Self–and how you experience your Self determines how happy you are.’

In this sense, my life was about me…but in a *reverse English* kind of way.

I was to pay attention to myself by paying attention to others.
I was to help myself evolve by helping others evolve.
The fastest way for me to be happy was for me to make other people happy.”

The first day of my Monday night group was August 7. We introduced ourselves. I told them they could read my website for the regular stuff. I wanted to share what matters to me in the work I do.

My goal, I told them, is to contribute in creating great reading and writing so people are exposed to something beyond themselves, or their experience, or what they think they know. So they can find, see, and hear fresh perspectives. Can experience the both/and of Life. Meaning the good/bad, and the shades of gray of differences that live side by side. For me, this means using my genius to free writers’ Voices, so they can release their stories. Because the power of connection for us humans is in stories.

Sharing those words, I realized this work I do empowering artists’ and writers’ Voices is my Resistance to division and hate in the world. To the two H’s, hopeless and helpless, too. It’s my contribution that stretches beyond my dot on the planet. Because writers and artists can be powerful. Their influence so strong they’re executed in some countries.

Author Barbara Kingslover says it this way:

“A newspaper could tell you that one hundred people, say in an airplane, or in Israel, or Iraq, have died today. And you would think to yourself, “How very sad,” then turn the page and see how the Wildcats fared. But a novel could take just one of those hundred lives and show you exactly how it felt to be that person rising from bed in the morning, watching the desert light on the tile of her doorway and on the curve of her daughter’s cheek. You could taste that person’s breakfast, and love her family, and sort through her worries as your own, and know that a death in that household will be the end of the only life that someone will ever have. As important as yours. As important as mine.”

And then Charlottesville.

I am not neutral on this.

Over the past month I created collaborative relationships with two artists in Santa Fe with the intention to co-host workshop & retreat immersions that combine writing and art. One on Sept. 22, a nature immersion. The other March 1-4, 2018 called ‘Madonna: Contemporary Ally,’ an immersion into all aspects of this powerful icon for today’s time. Once solidified, I wondered how the heck this fit my goals. I considered my inexplicable love of nature. The need for something grounded beyond Wonder Woman. And it came to me. . .this is how we go home to Life that sustains our humanity. This is my activism in counter to hate and division in a way that uses my genius. Nature (think, forest bathing in Japan), and the strength of a steadfast teacher centered in principles of nurturing life.

There’s a weekly column called Free Will Astrology. Friday it said I have a cosmic pass to ‘loiter and goof off…to put off making hard decisions.’ That I’m in a time one might call the equivalent of pushing the reset button, re-establishing default settings. Yes, I am.

“Alone, we are defenseless. Collected, we are sacred.

We will march by the millions. . .
We will be courageous with our love. . .”
~ Sherman Alexie (from his poem Hymn)

Many of us won’t march or join rallies, petition representatives, canvas door to door, wait for an audience outside a closed congressional door, lick envelopes, or stand in freezing weather to protect our beautiful planet & its creatures. Many of us can, do, and will use our genius in ways to do the good work beyond loving those who look like us, think like us. Beyond supporting our own comforts or profit. Beyond railing against others with the same hate we don’t want. We do the good work to sustain the expansion of life, not the contraction. The hard conversations, the listening, the advocacy, the feet on the ground. I know. I’ve done it before. And I know we can.

Look to the better angels.

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

Photo by Marc-Antoine Dépelteau

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A New Frontier

Posted on July 21, 2017 by Heloise Jones

“Pink is my new frontier.”
~ participant in an intuitive painting workshop led by Chris Zydel

I remember when Pink became my new frontier. I was in my early 40s. I’d disliked and avoided the color my entire life. No pink kid dresses. Only one doll with a pink dress. She was not a fav. I could enjoy a pink rose, and I turned toward red or peachey toned flowers. I appreciated soft washes of the color when mixed with greens, ate off the china with pink flowers my mother gave me , but pink wasn’t a choice, ever.

Understand, COLOR is important to me. I see it like I smell aromas and taste foods with a thousand taste buds. Grasses are never simply brown or green. I can tell the color of an M&M in my mouth. I will change clothes if the color doesn’t feel right on my skin. So, pink was not simply something to like or dislike.

My relationship with it changed dramatically at a Monet exhibition. I stood immersed in Monet’s signature blues/greens/aquas on a round canvas. The colors were deep, intense. As my gaze drifted to the top right of the painting, I wasn’t prepared for the vibrant burst of pinks shaped loosely like a human heart. It physically & viscerally knocked me back a few steps. As if by electrical shock, or a shove by a sudden gust of wind. I staggered, stood in a daze, unsure what had happened. On my way out, I bought a snack at the small museum deli, entranced by the pink netting it was wrapped in. I hung the netting on my rear view mirror for the long drive home, where it stayed for months.

I was in a new frontier, uncharted terriroty with pink.

Frontier: a line or border separating two countries; the extreme limit of settled land beyond which lies wilderness; the extreme limit of understanding or achievement in a particular area.

We often enter new frontiers, tho we don’t think of them that way. We move to a new city or neighborhood. We start a new job or line of work. We change our style of dress, the sorts of earrings we wear, the sorts of ties and jackets we buy. We downsize or upsize our homes. We travel. Life delivers a blow, such as illness and we’re in new frontiers of pain, or loss and we’re in new frontiers of grief, or like me when my husband was run down by a car, new frontier of insurance and medical worlds. For artists and writers, when we follow the work, allow the dance floor of creativity to expand, every painting, story-poem-essay, creation is a new frontier. Heck, what’s happening across the globe, our knowledge and relationship to this changed world is a new frontier.

In every frontier, we can choose to explore, learn and adjust, expand who we are. Or stay same-same. Whether in comfort, resistance, or futile control. Even pull the horizons of the frontier to the boundary lines of what we know.

For me, why this, why now is because that painter’s statement about pink, and my remembering my own experience, made me realize I’m in a new frontier. And it lifted me from (confession) doubt. Back then I let pink show up in all its intense glory, didn’t water it down as a wash when it called. I experimented, bought a pink scarf, discovered I look really good in pink. Not coral, the color I typically went to when pink tapped me. I let myself live with it and decide, not react, what my relationship and interaction with it would be. I even let pink Beings show up in my paintings.

This may seem simple. And simple & safe are our best teachers for the bigger stuff.

I’ll tell you a story. Last week the little voice said ‘take your camera’ as I stepped out for my early morning walk. 3 blocks up is a 12 ft. rough carving of St. Francis out of a dead tree trunk. The style common here in Santa Fe. I stopped to take pictures. A raven lit on the edge of the branches closest to me in a tree to my right. Bent his head low, cawed. I told him he’s beautiful, and he gurgled, clicked, chattered. I’ve never heard them gurgle before, I thought. Then he flew to the tree on my left, did the same. I felt satisfied with myself. This bird wanted to talk to me. Ravens remember faces. I wondered if he was the bird I’d seen another time that flew from the tip-top of a very tall tree to the middle branches so he could observe me better.

He then flew to a tree 20 ft up the road. As I caught up, he flew to a tree 30 ft. further on, landed on a sawed off limb with no cover of leaves. He sat silently for minutes, me standing below in the road, before he flew to a pole where I could see him. Too far for me to catch up.

Not until a friend exclaimed there’s a message in that last landing did I see it. My new frontier is not the work I’m doing. I’ve done it for decades. Nor is it simply showing up as All of me, adding the words deep intuition to my job description on my website. (it’s one of my greatest Super Powers, for Jiminy’s sake) Nor is it expanding what I do to thousands of people. Or exploring new ways of recovering things that matter to me, like writing fiction in longhand, because this busy-ness of my current life requires it. My new frontier is going out on a limb like I’ve never done before. Choosing the broad open field of the sky as my arena and horizons, and staking my place in it. Having faith I’m here for a reason, and I can meet it. Faith is my new frontier. What a new way of thinking that is.

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

Tell me. . .what frontiers have you entered? How did it feel?
I’ll tell you a secret. . .I’d be lying if I didn’t say this new frontier is both exciting and scary.

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Focus, the Sorcerer

Posted on July 13, 2017 by Heloise Jones

I’m taking a class at the community college, Movie Going as Memoir. As with most things I start that don’t seem to make sense, intuition got me there. Our first assignment – think about a movie that was meaningful to us as a child or adolescent that we haven’t seen since, and free associate on the experience seeing the film. Having engaged in personal inquiry for 35 years, I’ve re-watched nearly all of the films that stuck with me, either for story or images. The same reason I reread childhood books. . for a glimpse inside myself or my life at that age.

I didn’t jump on the assignment. The week turned intense. Long satisfying meetings and new connections. Tech snaffus. Creating and launching really cool projects. Two hours before class I got to it. I free associated, but the juice that emerged clearly wasn’t in the assignment.

I explored my history with movies and film, starting at age 3. Heidi, the little girl so like myself who lived in a different world. ‘Fantasia’s’ sorcerer’s apprentice. The unstoppable brooms, the waves, and magical night all coming alive with agency of their own. I moved to those Saturday mornings at age 6 I was dropped off at the big, dark theatre for double features. Then the Saturday mornings as an adolescent. My diet of movies never regulated, or even considered.

I saw how character, moments & freeze frame images, the cinematographer’s palette & tone were what stayed with me. The whole vs. specifics of the story what I remember. As Maya Angelou says, “. . .people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” My take-away is the very things I noticed and remembered as a child are the very things that inform my relationship and being as a person in the world.

I understood that the very fact I was left at such a young age to whatever showed up on the big screen, left to make sense of the world on my own, is most likely the start of my interest in sociology, psychology, and life on earth. A fine toolbox for a writer. My piece was not so fine for the class, however.

While others shared vivid descriptions and stories of their experience with their chosen movie, I shared a too-full account of my relationship with the genre without specifics. And a too-long list of images relevant to me but not specific enough to engage them. I was talking about how I learned to assess life thru film, and it wasn’t fleshed out so they understood. I hadn’t edited. The piece wasn’t focused. I didn’t connect with the listener. . .one of the main tenets of writing. I felt chastened.

Focus is a huge gift of editing, and I got my reminder.

One could say Focus has been a theme the past two weeks, it’s popped up so often.

Three authors contacted me about it. One who’s writing a memoir, wants to know how to focus her large story. Another has boxes of files of her writing, wants to know how to approach them and organize. Another has a chapter he isn’t sure hits the marks of either his editor’s or his own intentions.

And two weeks ago, I envisioned and launched a Focus Group – Keys to Writing Success. Am calling people to it now. A group where members gain fresh perspectives, insights, tips, & tools. Connect fully to their writing & creative life. Feel supported, motivated, and confident. In short, write more and write freer. What I’m all about.

Focus. It seems I hit a mark.

Ask yourself as you edit, what is the thread in this work. What’s the spine of the story that the bones of scenes, exposition, and narrative hang from. This helps discern your focus.
Ask what your intent is for the piece you’re writing (book, essay, story, poem, article). This informs the narrative.

Here’s the sorcerer’s apprentice. I’m still enthralled. Animation starts at 20 sec.

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