Choosing to Do It Differently

Posted on March 22, 2016 by Heloise Jones

This was a day when nothing happened. . .
The chicken’s diminished to skin and skeleton,
the moon to a comma, a sliver of white,
but this has been a day of grace
in the dead of winter,
the hard cold knuckle of the year,
a day that unwrapped itself
like an unexpected gift,
and the stars turn on,
order themselves
into the winter night.
~ from Ordinary Life by Barbara Crooker
*
Spring
*

I’ve changed my path walking by water since moving from the historic neighborhood bordering the bay. Sometimes it’s 12 blocks along the wide bayou that bleeds off the ocean, the far border a large small island with large homes and expansive green lawns. I often miss the sunrise because I can’t bear the quiet between night and the beginning of day shattered by a car. But I’m seeing life in a new landscape. Like two pelicans in the top flimsy branches of live oaks, balancing their heavy bodies as they bob and work those long bills made for fishing to break off a twig (a twig!) for their nests. The pickings so small for how long it took to get it.

The other day I chose to walk a longer path up to the point on the bay. I stopped at the sound of a splattered puff. A dolphin’s breath. The next morning, in a dawn nearly black under heavy overcast clouds, I crossed the grass in time to see a sleek back curve up, then down again. And discovered something extraordinary. Thick rolls of waves like a wake moving in a line. Realized it was a dolphin swimming, the water pushed, not broken. I watched the rolls change direction, come back toward me. My heart beat fast. And then, the white belly beneath the still, silken surface as the dolphin sailed by on its side, six feet below the ledge where I stood, its eye looking up. I was stunned at the discovery of those rolls, watching a dolphin’s clear path below the surface.

In a way, seeing below the surface is the theme of my life since moving to Florida 4-1/2 yrs. ago. I’ve felt alone with no close community of friends. Lunch or dinner with others random occasions. Sunrise at the bay conversations, but no people populating my days. Something new for me. Relationships and community always grew quickly, organically, wherever I lived. Alive and growing after decades, even with distance between us. Recently I marvel at the grand, divine design, tho. How I’ve been thrown to conversations with the Universe for answers to my questions, revelations to challenges. Left to see without distractions our everyday world in ways I can only call magical. I’ve been pushed to step out online. Been pushed to trust my strong intuition, trust myself, even when my humanness blazes first. Been pushed to ask what I really want. Because my outward life as it is ain’t it. And the only way to know is to honestly answer what my part is. The past two weeks seriously tested what I’ve learned. A triple whammy – friendship hitting rocks, crossing trenches and moguls with my beloved son who lives in Taiwan, and facing a decision that requires super scary commitment. The brain cramps and heart cramps tremendous.

I have this friend in NM, Rachel Ballentine, who often ponders aspects of the interconnectedness of our everyday world. She recently wrote she wonders “what did they bring to Ellis Island? how would you decide? what teapot? what embroidery? a child’s tooth? what kettle? what would be in the trunk? what recipes? what pots and pans? what would you bring from your village? what was in the suitcases? what was left behind? what lace? what shoes? and who was left behind? who got to go? who got sent back?” She spoke to me in that pondering.

At 21, I watched my in-laws house burn. My own home once caught fire. I wrote about that sort of loss in my second novel. A girl grabs one thing of personal significance for herself and each of her parents as their hard-built dream home burns to cinders. I’ve wondered as I read holocaust stories. Now as I read about refugees. Wonder as I watch friends move every year, sometimes twice a year, for years in a row. What’s their journey of letting go. And I wonder weekly as I scan my belongings, envision my 4th move in 5 yrs. this December. The one I’ll take across many states that I look forward to. I’ve already shed 1/3, then another 1/4, and another 1/4+. As my eyes rest on an item, I search inside for a feeling that might tell me something. Nothing in my home is just there. Everything once chosen by me for the pleasure or meaning in it. Holding more than the thing-ness.

And that’s what happened with each of the whammies. What do I leave behind. Compassionate honesty? Choosing silence, adjusting expectations, depriving a deeper understanding or opportunity to transcend/fix the disconnects, misread intentions, mis-spoken messages as I’ve done. Distance? Depriving the opportunity to be different with the challenges of family history. Myself? Carrying stuff inside that feeds my insecurities, keeps me small. I don’t need to be right or understood. I just need to see below the surface of myself, see myself moving forward like I saw that dolphin pushing water who had no intention but to see the other. Answer what I want, realize it’s what we all want. Connection and Love, to be seen for ourselves, with compassion in the seeing.

I chose the friendship, if it can be saved. Chose to figure how to swim the trenches so the moguls don’t seem so high with my son, feel expectation of joy holding my grandson in a big hug. And I’m hiring the help I need, tho it costs a bundle. Will face my fears of failure, success, being not good enough, stranded. I choose doing it differently. Because below the surface, I trust I’m gonna be okay. We’re gonna be okay.

What do you take, and leave behind?

“A white explorer in Africa, anxious to press ahead with his journey, paid his porters for a series of forced marches. But they, almost within reach of their destination, set down their bundles and refused to budge. No amount of extra payment would convince them otherwise. They said they had to wait for their souls to catch up.”
~ Bruce Chatwin, from THE SONGLINES

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

A secret: It’s not easy being human.
A favorite: Dolphins under water

Photo: free share by Ales Krivec

A New View. No Flash Fiction.

Posted on March 1, 2016 by Heloise Jones

Window w:Jennifer 2 Freaky big, in LA.
*

By the time I checked into my room in Los Angeles Thursday night, it was past midnight EST. I carried organic chocolate covered almonds for comfort food, lemons in case water was precious, raw bars, and my favorite loose tea. I was grateful for my tea as I ate my $10 oatmeal. Grateful for the almonds after I bought the $10 toothpaste in the hotel. A tad of grounding and normal in the start of three long days of workshop-seminar on how to grow an online business. It didn’t seem crazy to fly coast-to-coast, Florida shore to CA shore, to do this. I’ve been melting my brain studying and writing with little joy or satisfaction, by myself. And the pieces weren’t coming together. I felt less-than for not being further along in my plan for offers. By the time I flew out, it was all about my failing. Lack of sleep, being out of sync in another time zone seemed small potatoes.

I immediately connected with a coach whose clients need a writer (me?!). Chose a seat between an energy healer already in the presenter’s program and a kindred spirit actress turned coach with a fascinating story. Alright! I’m no odd duck. But end of Day One, after failing to complete the clarity exercises for niche and tribe I came to get, I sunk low…way low. Next morning others shared they considered leaving, felt like failures, too. Alright! Not just me. And we all decided to show up, anyway. Open, kind to ourselves, listening and trusting. What I don’t know is how they got there. Answering Yes screams in their heads as they watched yet-another-webinar, like I did.

Day Two, everything fell into place. Why what didn’t make sense in my months of study didn’t. The difficulty and time it can take to distill a clear message so you’re seen, heard in a noisy world. That meh to message can equal a quantum leap. I was buoyed. Convinced by who I saw in the person on the dais, the meat in my notebook, the format of the day with minimal rah-rah. And again, I wept that night, because I also learned I can’t do this by myself. Tribe is far more than the people who’ll benefit from our offers. More than friends or kindred spirits we meet every day or along the way. Tribe is those with us in the journey we’re in right now. And I could have every.single.piece needed for success at a reasonable price. And I wasn’t ready.

Because after I got past the money argument (never an issue once I decide to spend it), the husband won’t understand argument, it came down to me. Despite little income, my study and intent, the financial investment already made, my desire and ultimate vision, I don’t believe I can sustainably show up 120% for a solid year in a dig deep do-it fast train creating it program. It’s not a head thing, but a gut thing. And regular support + accountability won’t make a difference. Core foundational work’s missing. I had to sit, be sure this wasn’t an excuse or effort to hide back into comfort. Then I shared it with people there to help me enroll. And my shame dissolved. They nodded affirmation. Because Life is, after all, about how we show up.

I was calm flying home. Up at 2:30 for a 5am flight, only two hrs. sleep, the shift in direction strong inside me. I’ll write the book on the Writers Block Myth I put aside. Another Getting to Wise journey about getting past stuck for me and readers. Something I wanna write. I still wish I’d enrolled in the program, would have that tribe seeing me thru. Still feel scared I won’t pull off my intents. Still wish it wasn’t so much work. And I’ll find another way for help. Hire another branding coach. I feel brighter. John Lennon said, Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans. Bottom line, the view depends on which road you look down. I’ll start with my mirror, my evidence journal. What others said they saw in me. 100% where I’m at, open. It’s another good day.

What do you think? Tell me here, in the comments.

*
What we really need is to gather
in the street and talk to each other.
Any street. Lined with shrubs
or tenements. Paved or dirt
or cobblestone. With orange cones
or with wooden barriers
to set off the block so we can talk,
can talk and listen and watch the day go by.
Some will join us. They will wonder
why we’ve gathered. They’ll
pull out their binoculars
as if there’s something more to see.
There’s always something more to see,
like the way the light comes through the hedge
and makes it more gold than green.
Hey, did you hear that nightingale?
When’s the last time you heard one
All my life I’ve been too busy. Rushing
from one here to the next. But look
what happens when we gather
in the street and gawk in whatever
direction. We start to become a we—
you, me, the man in the yellow plaid shirt,
the cop, the woman in white tennis shoes.
It does not matter how we vote or
where we’ve been or how much we make
or if we pray, here we are in the same place
on the same day. Not because someone died,
not because someone’s done something wrong.
There is no one to cheer for but us.
We’ll go back to our homes soon enough,
but for now, here we are
doing the most important work,
gathering in the street to notice together
the scent of fall, the warmth of mid-afternoon sun,
the way all our shadows fall the same direction.”
~ Rosemerry Trommer (It Won’t Make the News)

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

A secret: I’m learning I glean from the musicians who uniquely show up. I hear their messages.
A favorite: John Lennon

Loving Yourself. How Hard Can It Be?

Posted on February 23, 2016 by Heloise Jones

The Goal of Yoga (No, it’s not the handstand)

The yoga pose is not the goal. Becoming flexible is not the goal. Standing on your hands is not the goal.

The goal is to create space where you were once stuck. To unveil the layers
of protection you’ve built around your heart. To appreciate your body and
become aware of the mind and the noise it creates. To make peace with who you are.
The goal is to love, well. . . You.

Come to your yoga mat to feel; not to accomplish. Shift your focus and your heart will grow.
~ Rachel Brathen

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winter low tide2 What’s usually underwater, now easy pickin’s.
*

When I read those words, I didn’t see the word yoga. I saw Life. I thought, there’s volumes written on each point – self-help, psychology, spiritual. I’ve read a lot about each of them. I never figured how the heck I love myself, though. I can look into my eyes in the mirror, say the words I love you, but I haven’t located the feeling inside. Not the way I feel love for the world or another person. I wonder, does Dalai Lama say he loves himself. Mother Theresa, did she? Muhammad? Jesus? Or is it implied in messages we see others as one with ourselves. I don’t know.

I don’t think either of my parents learned how to love themselves, either. My mother, a first generation Armenian-American, worked beside my traditional grandmother in the kitchen from the time she was three. Married an older man to escape when she was eighteen. But he was hard, sometimes abusive. She returned to her mothers’ home with her baby. When I was seven my grandmother moved next door. She was my mother’s best friend.

My father ran away from home when he was ten. By seventeen he’d sailed three times around the world, and joined the merchant marines. He taught himself to read, studied everything he needed or that interested him, including the siege of Leningrad. Somehow these two people who never experienced a childhood got together in their mid-thirties.

I remember John Travolta saying he knew he was lovable. His parents thought he hung the moon, he said. I walked across the room, they’d applaud, he said. I had lots of evidence my parents loved me, too. I believe they did. Thrilled when I was born, they felt proud of the smart, artistic, perfectionist child I became. Having my father’s curiosity and sense of wonder, I was his favorite. I had passion, emotion, strong will, but it never translated into me being lovable. Not until long after I left home at seventeen did I think about the days, weeks, sometimes months, I spent with relatives and friends. Only eighteen mos. old the first time mom sent me off. Sometimes my younger sister with me. I asked my sister once if she ever felt abandoned. No, she said. I always had you.

My first husband, a Viet Nam vet, was love at first sight. So smart, funny, and full of demons and issues long before war. Eventually he told me to shut up in front of his lifelong circle of friends. When one of them wanted a business partnership, ingratiating the wife was important. Surprised I wasn’t the mindless bitch he expected, he spread the word and the circle enfolded me. I attribute him with saving my life. Eventually my husband hit me, a lot, and stayed out all night. You didn’t talk about those things back then. At some point I started writing the weekly grocery check for $5 more, stashing the money. When I got a 25cent/hr. raise, I hid that, too. When I knew I was strong enough, I took my seven yr. old son, the $325 I saved and left with a set of dishes, a rocking chair, and a rug. Each night I stared into the dark, so scared I couldn’t breathe. It was a year before I decided my friends were either nuts for liking me, or I was. I taught myself to hear kind words by turning them all into glass figurines in my mind. At the end of the day, I set them on the table so I could see them, accept them. I trained myself to say Thank You. But I still didn’t get I was lovable.

It’s only now, lifetimes later, that I have an inkling what loving oneself is. After decades of reading, workshops, trainings to understand the world and human beings. Years of contemplation, working on myself. Learning to recognize what stuck feels like, what space inside feels like. What making choices, shifting focus, reframing means. After letting go earning my breath. Letting go apology for knowing what I want. Decades connecting to Spirit, the Universe, God. Letting my natural-born compassion seize my heart without fear, accept I may be weird, and that’s okay. I don’t know why some people get it young and I didn’t.

The other morning a thin misty fog hung in the air. The really wet kind. I almost didn’t head to the bay for sunrise. But the small voice said go, there’s something there for you, As I crossed the street to the park in the dark, a woman said hi as she passed. Heavy-set. African-American. I noticed her voice, how she answered with more than one word when I said ‘how are you.’ I circled along the wide promenade by the water, paused to take pictures, walked past the thick mangroves. There she was, on *my* bench. Rather than move on, I asked if she minded I sit. I always stop here, she said. I could go into our conversation. How I learned she’s a social worker, her thoughts after seeing so much. Her mama’s wisdom. How she kept saying the word choice as she talked about parenting and life. The main thing, tho, was we agreed the generation that frustrates us in so many ways is the one that will save us. That beautiful both-and of humanity. And we both felt we got a Blessing that morning. If you’d asked me then if I love myself, I would’ve paused for the feeling, said yes. Yes, I do.

How do you love yourself?

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

winter low tide1 Low tide seemed to stretch halfway across the bay, the birds with it.
Winter low tide, they call it.
*

A secret: I never bought into the thought you have to love yourself before you can love others. I think love works any way it can.
A favorite: That time in the circle of Friends sharing music, books, discoveries, concerts, food, when I first learned how community feels.

Thank you, Susan, for that morning on the bench.

The Magic Between Writer & Reader

Posted on January 19, 2016 by Heloise Jones

Morning glories are one of my favorite flowers.
Considered a weed and nuisance for their vining that entwines anything near.
But the flowers! So gloriously rich in color. Such a greeting for a new day.
I like the metaphor, including the vining.
*

morning glories *

I’m starting my New Year two weeks late. One might say swirling new energy in a new space is a start, in which case I’m not really late. That late’s in my head, tied with expectations, plans, arbitrary things, because after all, I’m healthy. True. But I feel as if I’ve been away on a far-off journey. And you know how that is. It takes time to regain everyday rhythms, even if you’re glad you’re home. I’m still clearing mental dust on the Heloise Jones 2016 track, which includes you.

Here I am….Piles of orphan stuff tucked away. Pictures on walls are all that’s left to claim home. My ideals are written down. Outline for my first non-fiction book’s printed out. I’m asking who are my readers, who do they think I am, what can I give that anyone wants which also lets me write what I write.

Four days into our new digs, I read a facebook post by author Christine Hale that stuck in my bones: ‘Upside down in yoga class today, looking at my (unlovely) toes and the utterly utilitarian ceiling joists way up above them, I found myself thinking about how much tedious, close-focus work goes into the production of a book. Work that readers never notice, unless you don’t do it well. I’d spent the morning proofing spacing and fonts in the publisher’s galley of my memoir. The book deviates in its typography from prose conventions, and getting the typeface and spacing right is about to kill me and the publisher. Upside down, tiring, sweating, but holding the pose, inhabiting its discomfort fully, nothing before me, temporarily, but those toes and those joists, I thought about how you gotta love it: the tedium, the sweat, the fierce quiet satisfaction of a commitment to GETTING IT RIGHT’. . .

Yes! I thought. The tedium of every edit, decision on every word, comma, space. How it sometimes feels like my brain’s melting, and how much I love it. Especially the moment I get it right, knowing there’s no perfection. And yes, I think about writing all the time.

Virginia Wolf wrote, ‘Style is a very simple matter: it is all rhythm. Once you get that, you can’t use the wrong words. But on the other hand here am I <she> sitting after half the morning, crammed with ideas, and visions, and so on, and can’t dislodge them, for lack of the right rhythm…profound, what rhythm is, goes far deeper than words. A sight, an emotion, creates this wave in the mind, long before it makes words to fit it; and in writing…one has to recapture this, and set this working (which has nothing apparently to do with words) and then, as it breaks and tumbles in the mind, it makes words to fit it’. . .

And again I thought Yes! Rhythm. Exactly. And it transforms into something inside me, and the reader.

After David Bowie died, I read about him. Watched videos. Here he says the work’s not finished or complete until the audience comes to it. And I read this by publishing media specialist Jane Friedman: ‘The real magic of a book happens when an author’s words and a reader’s mind make something new: page as telepathic intermediary. . . ‘

Yes! Yes! I thought, again. I write not because I must, as many seem to express. Or because I have something to say. Or because a story burns inside. I write because I love the journey, the process, the challenge. The beauty of the moments when I can answer Yes to my abiding question (Am I okay?) in my choice of a word, completion of a sentence, a paragraph, a page. Feeling that rhythm, finally imagining that space between me and reader. What happens when we feel something, think something new. The connection. It starts with me, ends with us. Because we’re always tumbling somewhere into something.

I want to make this year intentional tumbling. Intentional requires conscious awareness. I can do that. I’m a writer who believes in magic, including the magic that happens in that middle space between you and me. Join me.

Where and how do you feel the magic of connection?

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

A secret: David Bowie, Alan Rickman, Glynn Frye. I remember the moments I ‘met’ each one. Like I remember the moments I heard Kennedy and John Lennon were shot.
A favorite: Sunshine and big skies.

Photo: Jamie K. Reaser

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A Different Kind of Holiday Letter

Posted on December 22, 2015 by Heloise Jones

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

*
Poinsetta w:boxes *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Happy Solstice, Return to the Light
*

Postcards.2

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

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