Step Out of the Plan

Posted on June 1, 2015 by Heloise Jones

“Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”
~ John Lennon

Last week was difficult. I got a cold. Small potatoes, but it’s been five years since a cold rendered my brain incapable of complex math or conceptual thinking. All interruptions to work either allergies or my own doings – surgeries, travel, procrastination, distractions. And last week only one mantra drove me forward: I have a plan, no time to waste. I was preoccupied with my learning curve in work, the necessary but not.fun.for.me stuff I wanted complete. Sick, I turned into a baby of pouts and darns. By the time I went to bed Saturday night I’d completely pummeled myself for NOT DONEs, totally convinced I was a failure.

Upstairs in bed, my husband Art still downstairs watching TV, I pulled out a pad, jotted a list of clear action steps. I numbered priorities without thinking. At workshops, the word dream spontaneously replaced the shorthand ID. Notes on the dream spontaneously sprung from the line. Some of the items big, really Big (who do I think I am!). As I continued the list, I felt my chest constrict when I wrote ID again. I crossed it out, wrote Dream. Air rushed through me as if a pillow just lifted from my face.

When I coach writers I emphasize getting out of their own way. I tell them it’s necessary to step out of the plan, start without intention or expectation for judgement to subside, for their voice to emerge. That writing is, as poet Laura Hope-Gill says, “like swimming in a rough sea, inviting us to move with the story’s inherent and natural rhythm.” That writing in our own voice is as necessary as honing our craft. And I know the same applies to living an authentic life, fully experiencing the moments in each day. I rarely forget this when I sit down to write, or listen for my next blog. But I didn’t remember when I got sick. Not even after receiving answers to questions and assurance all’s well, no matter my angst.

On my first drive out after feeling yukky, I halted a smidge over the line at a stop sign, a clear Oops. The young woman in the other car with the right-of-way laid on her horn. I understood. But she didn’t move. After long moments us looking at each other, I waved her on. As she passed, she gave me the finger. Something I didn’t understand. I admit I don’t get how casually and often young women seem to do that. Admit I tussled inside not to think about it. Not to go in a number of directions in judgement. That it still nagged when I entered the familiar near-empty market.

  At checkout I chose a line with a young gal I didn’t know for how she leaned against her register, a broad easy smile on her face. When I said I’d bag my own groceries, her young companion stepped aside. “She’s got it,” he said. “She’s in control.” There is no control, I quipped. The checker looked at me a few moments, “I always wanted someone who’s lived longer than me to tell me more about life. What they’ve learned.” As I bagged I told her to plan, but know that the magic lies between the control, and there’s really no control. As I left I leaned in, told her to go for the magic. At home I realized her gift of respect and appreciation balanced my encounter at the stop sign. It wasn’t until two days later as I stood by the water at sunrise, heard a small voice say “oh, baby girl. looky there,” did I see the gift I gave myself at the market. The reminder I’d stepped out of the plan when I got sick, no control. Time to get out of my own way, open to magic. Reminder angels, don’t you think?

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

A secret: It’s surprising how often getting out of one’s way shows up in conversations I have. I see possibilities zip across minds on the faces.
A favorite: Wandering through a natural foods market.

When Losing a Home’s Like Losing a Lover

Posted on May 8, 2015 by Heloise Jones

“Some things will never change. Some things will always be the same.
Lean down your ear upon the earth and listen.”
~ Thomas Wolfe

Wisteria – Biltmore Estate, Asheville, NC

lilac Biltmore

Are they opening, or closing?

My breath caught at the first glimpse of the Appalachians rolling below me. So beautiful. I forgot how pictures don’t do justice. I landed tucked away for a few days in a quiet Asheville neighborhood. My view trees, a tiny bit of sky. I felt grateful it’s still early for the full bush of leaves. I immediately scanned the small woods for flaming azaleas. The next day on a drive to Grove Park Inn Lost to Omni (how some of us think it), I scanned the roadside where I knew wild, thick, brilliant flames of forsythia show. Another day I expected azaleas in full bloom at Biltmore Estate. Tall walls of pink laurel blossoms on the drive to the mansion. But I’m late for the forsythia. Thick green foliage stand instead. The azaleas and laurels bloomed early. Brown nubs of spent flowers all that remain.

I had breakfast at a place I regularly frequented when I lived here. Simple meals of fresh ingredients well prepared. Fine local art on the walls, good music. Quiet, intimate with 30 seats and a short bar for diners. It sold after I moved so I don’t know the owner or staff anymore. Most strange, though, I saw Me of a few years ago in a fellow diner. A woman known by name, her special requests, her stories. Her familiarity clear by the way she praised the food, the place, her tone like an insider. I observed from the outside in, felt like a visitor for the first time in the three years since I left.

Perhaps that sparked my notice how the air feels abuzz with a difference that doesn’t invoke in me the wonder of discovery or thrill of new experience. How hearing seven new hotels approved for city center didn’t stir an outrage of ownership for my old town. I have the comforts of familiarity – knowing to check weather reports every morning, knowing the back roads, best meals, fav galleries. Share the camaraderie of longtime friends through the known and evolution of the known. But this difference feels like a love and I have changed in different ways. Like a lover lost who’s still my good friend. The comfort of not being a visitor gone.

A literary agent once asked after reading my novel if I was naturalist. Such a strong sense of the place, he said. I didn’t tell him as I told you here I don’t hike or get in the dirt. I said I observe. His remark sent me searching the book for descriptive passages, worrying I had too many, might bore my readers. I found words, random sentences, a couple short paragraphs focused on nature, all key to context and character. Writing this, I remember what Natalie Goldberg calls painting a place we can’t see into a work. If she’s painting a house and the Mississippi River is a mile behind her, she must somehow capture that river in her painting of the house. Same as I do when I write. Capture the fullness of a place without all the words. It’s what we do when we go home. Capture the fullness without all the markers, flowers, and time.

Thomas Wolfe wrote we can never go home again, meaning all things change. But I believe we can. That a place can continue to inform who we are in the world, and our relationship with it remains despite the changes. Santa Fe, NM after twenty years and Big Island, Hawaii after ten years are like that for me. I feel local when there. People treat me as local. I’m feeling my way through this sense of losing my home in Asheville, and I don’t know what to think of it. These mountains are in my blood. I’m right where I need to be, feeling good here today. Guess I’ll do what Thomas Wolfe suggests, lean down and listen. Perhaps that’s all any of us can do when the ground shifts. Have you noticed how once it starts, it ripples out?

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

A secret: I never thought the Blue Ridge Parkway drive special after the leaves filled in. We’d go to Town Mountain Rd. above the city, view the valley and ridges from there.

A favorite: Rising vapor trails of fireflies across a yard or field.

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?

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

A secret: I love Mickey Mouse
A favorite: Wildflowers in mountain meadows

Love, a Writing Exercise

Posted on April 11, 2015 by Heloise Jones

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

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

Tulipbones.1

I’m in love with Tulip Bones

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

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

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

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

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

H.Ringling.Feb2015

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Another small journey Getting to Wise.
A Writers Life.

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

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