The Heart of the Message in Spring

Posted on April 9, 2019 by Heloise Jones

“Somewhere around the corner of your mind there is a place
where Angels and Dolphins dance.”
~ Hannah Swain
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Spring in the New Mexico high desert is a subtle thing. Swings from 40° highs to 60s. Big wind. Flowers in full bloom against warm adobe walls that are barely buds elsewhere.

This year we had a ton of snow. Every week, water-soaked ground. Melt from the mountain filling the reservoirs above town. The junipers got happy early, donning their thick brown coats of pollen begging a breeze to carry the little beasts off. And boy, did it. We’re a town snarfling, clawing eyes that feel on fire, walking foggy brained from lost sleep. The store shelves wiped clean of all remedies, natural or pharma, that promise relief. And still, I headed out for dawn walks as soon as it warmed above 34°.

Spring brings changes that seem to happen overnight, but oh, not true. The best stuff is as it unfurls. What’s changed. What’s not.

The bunnies are still at the house I’ve found them the past two years. I’m comforted to know they’re still around, haven’t fallen prey to a hawk. Like saying things continue.

Tree branches covered in tiny leaf buds have turned to lace, no longer look like long skinny fingers. The cluster of leaf buds on a tree in my yard looks like moss today. I know the moss’ll turn into tight fists before the baby leaves push to open, when those fists will into small turbans.

Even the sky’s changed. Winter’s overcast softening, breaking up like arctic ice. Clouds like islands on flat blue plains. Like giant longboats or submarines sailing by. Puffy, soft gray & palest yellow billows rising from one side, as if dust from wheels of chariots just passed. I can almost see another world up there. I know how all those pictures of a heaven in the clouds came to be.

The light is different, too. It hits the world sooner, softer, rounder, looking warmer. The other day a tree stopped me short. It was so different from anything around I could think it from a parallel dimension. Flat looking, ethereal, suspended in air, as if cut from fragile gold gilt. I recalled once hearing the Navajo/Dine word for dawn means yellow light. In that moment I didn’t think sunlight, I thought gilt.

Right after that big wonder and awe of the gilt tree, I noticed the birds had quieted. I thought how I once actively sought birdsong each morning in an act that felt like saving my Soul.

We were in Florida, pushed on short notice from our home in a historic neighborhood I loved. Where I walked 9 blocks each dawn to stand on the edge of Tampa Bay, watch light & color on water, a profusion of birds, mullets and dolphins, the sky shift as the sun rose. My path on brick streets lined with oaks, jacarandas, and palms, an eclectic mix of homes and vintage apartment buildings built 1910-1950, in and out of rich fragrance of gardenia, jasmine, fruit blossoms. Sometimes I strode in the dark when bats fly and possums venture across streets. And though our rented home was way far from ideal, I’d often wind thru ten extra blocks on the way home, in love with the magic of palms and the beauty, human and nature.

The place we moved to was very different. It was a circular complex of two-story condos, immaculately landscaped with lawns and lovely palms, three blocks off a continually lit commercial district that wiped night from the sky. Our condo was pristine, completely redone, everything far higher than average. We rejoiced once more having a large kitchen. Every view out the big windows was pleasant.

I often worked at the dining table where I could glance out double glass doors to a narrow lawn that sloped 12 ft. to a strip pond. It was a tad wider than a car lane, and ran the length between two rows of freshly painted units. Tiny flocks of ducks swam onto the bank, napped in the sun. Egrets and a half dozen kinds of herons slow-stepped on stick legs, hunting fish. Dragonflies buzzed, and occasionally the snout of a turtle poked the water’s surface.

Mornings I could walk laps around the circle within the short stucco walls of the complex, see the sky and clouds reflected on the big round lake at the entrance. Or I could escape the forever lit garage and porch lights, go out into the hood.

The neighborhood was nothing like my complex. Small, simple one story houses, many still with sandy yards. What we’d call ‘old Florida.’ Nothing like the gentrified neighborhood I left. There were big trees, tho, where birds gathered to sing their hearts out. And regular spots mockingbirds stood singing a full-throated chorus to someone on high. I found them all. I found dark places on roads where I could see stars, too. Birdsong and stars were like finding Home for me, and healed me for a day.

What followed that memory was a comment made at the time by someone I thought a friend: Her husband said we moved where we belong. I was confused which he meant, the complex or neighborhood. It didn’t matter I got no answer. Because it felt like a slight, and hurt. Neither were Me.

Walking the last block home, I pondered why this memory settled on me now, after my moment of wonder and awe. It took a while to understand…. it was a gift.

That friendship dissolved with never a visit to my new home. I could surmise my assessment right. And what I need to get is my response at the time reflected my feelings. How I saw myself. Which was…out of place, inside and out. Alone. Wondering if who I am is okay.

That memory was a reminder we learn as much about ourselves by our response to what others say as we learn about the people who utter the words. And it was a nudge to notice what’s changed.

Spring and that memory, both saying ‘Be Present. Notice.’

Home is still up for me. Perhaps in some way it always will be. What’s isn’t up is my question ‘am I okay.’ I know my insights some call weird are Superpowers. That they’re why I work like Bruce Lee, with a sixth-sense clarity, presence, direct to the heart. With results. I am more than okay.

You may also enjoy reading my very short first blog, Born Today, about the wonder I felt walking that historic neighborhood. How I answered why I do it when someone asked.

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The #1 Best Life Hack, Ever

Posted on April 2, 2019 by Heloise Jones

“All my inspiration comes from life. That’s how it never stops”
~ Marina Abramovic

March 5 was my birthday. Themes run in my life like love letters from the Universe, saying look here, notice….get it. I’d been smacked three weeks earlier with the thought of found poems in life. Smacked with the idea there’s magic in moments and fragments we see that grow bigger inside us, encapsulating memories, connections, emotions, beauty. Presence being our one ‘active’ requirement. (Read the magic here and here)

Now, the confession I couldn’t tell anyone. By the time I wrote that blog on my birthday, I was several weeks into a brutal allergy season. My entire body felt miserable. I wanted breath, sleep, ease somewhere. And I’d hit a wall with work. I was lost in “I can’t do this. I can’t create my vision. I can’t write this book. I can’t reach people (read, help people).” I was ready to give up.

Then, standing at my kitchen window, I saw eight robins encircling the water tray in the yard. They dipped in a swoop, and drank. Over and over, dipped and drank. Some would call this ordinary. For me it was extraordinary. Because in my twenty-five year relationship with Santa Fe, I’d never seen a robin. Not even with multiple watering and feeding stations.

I was overjoyed. A flood of memories streamed through. Without trying or thinking about it, I smiled, and kept smiling. I was crazy overjoyed when the gang returned later, drank long minutes more. This was no coincidence. I looked up the meaning for robins: Renewal. New Vision. New Starts.

And I thought, my gosh, that’s what I do when I bump up against I can’t, this is hard, I don’t know what next. I find a new way of seeing. Every time.

That day I paused. I saw where I was, and though it wasn’t where I desired, yet, it wasn’t time to give up, either.

Then, as if the Universe didn’t want me to forget….2 weeks later, with riotous birdsong all around as I took an early morning walk, I heard a single voice above me in a tree on a strangely quiet block. I looked up. A robin. And a half block up, another single robin in a tree, singing.

I have patience today for the new Vision to coalesce. It feels right. It’s easier to talk myself thru brain cramps.

And I invite You….

Each time you bump up against those hard moments, find a new way of seeing. I promise, it’s the #1 best life hack, ever.

And go out, watch a robin. How it goes step-step-step-pause, hop-hop-hop-pause. It doesn’t take 10 steps in a row. It’s takes a pause. We can, too. Call it a deep breath.

“There is only one way to see things, until someone shows us how
to look at them with different eyes.”
~ Pablo Picasso

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

Photo of Robin: Jongsun Lee

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What is a Found Poem, Anyway

Posted on March 5, 2019 by Heloise Jones

“Poetry is the beauty between the lines that we can only feel but never really explain.”
~ Irish poet Michael Hickey.

I’ve been feeling like a frayed rope, strands flying loose, each ending with a question mark or beginning with ‘complete this sentence.’ I’m strong at my core, crystalline & heart-centered. I know what I’m good at. And yet, those bedeviling threads.

Then last night the strangest thing happened.

I’d received unsettling news about work. Anxious, I jumped to what does this mean for me, I need to make a plan, solve it now. I need answers! Truth. I saw myself jangling and I didn’t have what I needed to comfort myself. That’s when the angels stepped in with an intervention. Really.

A cloud of peace & calm enveloped and filled me. I heard a voice say ‘It’s gonna be alright.” I didn’t try to figure it out. It was so palpable, I could only observe with wonder the feeling and the smile on my face that lingered so easily & sweetly. Feeling no hurry or stress, only gently whole. Wow, Thank You my only prayer. It lasted 30 minutes.

This morning familiar anxiety hovered at the edges of my Being. You know the feeling, right? I thought about the stories I’ve been telling myself. How they’ve been isolated, singular, like the wild threads of the frayed rope. And I realized I missed how the threads have been bundling. Not as fast as I like, or in a way that’s clear to me yet, and still, bundling. I considered it might be time I do what I guide others to do: Follow the story. Trust.

A few weeks ago I wrote how life is full of found poems. I knew I’d been living this perspective for years. In fact, my found poems were the core of the poem I wrote that was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. I wondered, though, if anyone who isn’t a writer read that blog.

For most folks, poem means written verse that includes meter, images, stanzaic structure, metaphor, symbols, words carefully arranged and chosen for their sound or beauty. And yet, at its heart, a poem is something that stirs the imagination, thoughts, and/or emotions of the viewer. Something that awakens memory, or feelings of awe & wonder. Life and the world around us is full of them when we think this way.

For me, it’s observing with an awareness so we see with new eyes. Or so something’s awakened inside us that shifts or transforms us in some way.

This week it was robins in my yard. There were eight. Tho I’m told they visit other people, these were the first I’ve seen in New Mexico the entire 25 years I’ve lived and sojourned here. And there were 8! They reminded me of my Asheville home, the one I designed. I’d been pining for the Appalachians lately, too. (weird, as I couldn’t wait to leave all that capital G Green) Watching those robins walk, punctuated with a pause every few steps (step-step-step-step-stop), I remembered the phalanx of 15 I saw hop into my yard one day from the trees on the left. Once in the yard, they turned in tandem, faced the house, and hopped forward together in a line, stopping 7 ft. from the picture window where I stood. They stared up at the house for minutes. An extraordinary moment that left me wide-eyed, hunting for meaning.

…the ordinary is what the extraordinary yearns to be. ~ Bayo Akomolafe

Days before my NM robin gang appeared, I’d seen author Richard Powers speak about his journey writing ‘The Overstory,’ how it changed his life (his words). It started with a walk thru the redwoods in the hills above Palo Alto, CA when he came upon a massive giant unlike any around it. Surrounding it were second growth trees, and this one lone tree had somehow miraculously escaped the chainsaws. It was as wide as the middle section of the theatre, he said. 12 theatre seats wide. Rising straight up-up-up to the sky beyond what he could see. It is a 1200 year old tree! He was gobsmacked in awe.

He crossed the country to the Great Smokies National Park to walk in one of the few remaining old growth forests on the planet. This was where he pulled me in.

He could feel the moment he stepped from second growth forest to old growth. The sounds and light and air are different. The ground and understory are different. The sensations run deeper, there among those ancient trees of the eastern tribes – birch, poplar, hickory, sourwood, oak, maple. In my mind they became people. And I thought of the pictures I’d seen of the American Chestnuts before the blight wiped them out in the 1940s & early 50s. And how I felt deep within me the land, the bones on the savannah, the voice of the breeze in Africa. I wanted to leave immediately, walk that forest in the Great Smokies. I felt chastened I’d not done it while I lived so close for 15 years, in Asheville.

The next morning the two great oaks in my Asheville yard visited me. One in front I called Grandmother oak, and one in back I called Grandfather oak. I felt again the shock I experienced when I saw the new owners had cut Grandmother down. I realized what I hadn’t before – the shock was of memory. The shade that tree gave, the way the light filtered thru, the color of the air under it. Seeing the daddy bluebird sit on a limb year after year above the house where his little family grew. How I watched cicadas fly like tiny birds in bee-lines under the canopy the year they rose from their 17-year sleep. The shock of seeing that tree gone was the flood of all that. I realized, too, that in the shock, I forgot to see if the bluebird house still stood.

That 1,200 year old giant sequoia is a poem. Richard Powers’ journey was a found poem, and the robins in my yard. And all the memory they sparked. Because found poems are the things that arouse connection within and between us. We don’t have to write them down. We just need to be present.

Richard Powers ended with this: “We can’t tell the story of us humans without telling the story of place. There has to be a change in the way we look at things that are not us.” Look. Find the poems.

***
Getting to Wise. A Writer’s Life.

The photo at the top of the page was taken at St. John’s College (Santa Fe, New Mexico). When I see it, my heart travels to Taiwan, bending to the water with my then tiny grandson to feed the fish.

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Look for the Stories

Posted on August 22, 2018 by Heloise Jones

“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me,
‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’”
~ Fred Rogers

Seems I see scary things in the news every day. I contribute to organizations (women, environment, children, human rights) that assure me helpers are out there. What I constantly tell myself is Look for the stories. Stories make my world bigger, and more fun. They help me make sense of things. We are made of stories. It’s what we humans have in common. Perhaps it’s because at the heart, stories are connection. And our choice whether they’re destructive or empowering.

Before the sun clears the Sangre de Cristo mountains I see from my living room window, I’m out for a walk most mornings. 7 blocks up, 6 down. A quiet experience, as a rule. This week I got stories.

Walking up, I saw a skinny coyote with big ears ambling down the street, coming my way. It looked flea-bitten, and raggedy. We both stopped, scoped each other out for minutes. It looked more tired than threatening. I wondered if it thought me a threat. I decided to keep walking. S/he moved, then, too. We passed on our own sides of the street, both of us eyeing the other as we did, then both of us checking over our shoulders a few times ’til I rounded the corner. I wondered what the story was with that scraggly coyote walking toward more civilization, seeming to have a destination, which was strange.

Walking down, at the long grassy park by the rose garden, I saw a guy munching crabapples. Aren’t they bitter, I said. Best apples, have one, he replied. I had to jump to pluck one from the tree. I learned his name is Max. He used to be a marine biologist, and had worked up & down the coasts of Central and South America. Now he lives in his truck, works on farms. What do you do in the winter, I asked. Go to beaches where it’s warm, he said. As we walked toward his shoes, he did a little singsong chant walking in the grass is a gas, gas, gas. Immediately I could feel the grass between my toes. I wanted to take off my shoes, but I didn’t. I shared it on Facebook. And the spin from that feel good 60s song sparked folks. Who knew so many remembered! Connection.

Two days later he told me the big tree I visit each morning, the one I say hello to, and look up her trunk as I touch her ‘face,’ that’s bigger than any other tree in the park by a long shot, is a giant sequoia. It’s a baby in sequoia-years, he said when I wondered about its canopy so low. He told me the story.

A man who still lives in Santa Fe planted both it and a redwood. The seeds wouldn’t germinate here, so the man went where they would and brought the saplings back. How do they get water, the ones in CA take it from fog, I said. The spray from the sprinklers in the park. I’m checking out the redwood in another neighborhood this week. Imagine. A giant sequoia in the desert. I’m just wowed. And oh, gosh, what’s the story of the man who went to such lengths to plant trees he’d have to live 500 yrs. to see as adults?!

Indian Market’s a huge event in Santa Fe. If you’re not a collector, Sunday’s a great time to go. No crush of crowds. Space & time to talk with artists. I love seeing work from other parts of the country. I always look at the placard for their tribe, always ask where they live now. When I saw an artist from Standing Rock, a sob caught in my throat. ‘Oh! I’m so sorry,’ I said. ‘I just get choked up.’ I’m glad, she said. That story we both know in our own way, sharing the feeling.

An artist from an Alaskan tribe caught me with her stunning sculpture of a whale, one of my spirit animals. She got it so gracefully. The eye perfect, with Soul. A woman emerging from its back. Subtle, and yet not. I saw stars in the perfectly placed sprinkling of shiny ‘barnacles’ she included. I marveled at how the bronze looked like stone. She said she knew the stone she wanted, and sent a piece to the person who cast & finished it to match. I looked her up online. She does a lot about women transforming into animals. Stories from her tribe, her site says. I wonder why those particular stories in the far north.

I saw Ledger Art for the first time, something new to me. It emerged in the early days on the Indian reservations when the buffalo hides they typically painted their symbols & visual stories on weren’t available. They gathered paper from discarded ledgers. Preserved their culture in images over the records of their white captors. These stories socked me to the heart, and captured my imagination.

There were lots of stories about turquoise. How rare stones from closed mines came into their hands. The father who worked building roads for the state carrying stones home in his lunch pail. His daughter having trash bags full in her basement. The artist who worked on the rigs, no one believing he was a professional artist like he said. Except for one guy who gave him a small bag of the precious rock.

I shared a rock story of my own. A day I spent in Bisbee, AZ in the early 90s, before it ‘boomed.’ Bisbee turquoise being prized. Few people were there then. A few dusty rock shops, a sweet gift & clothing shop, and a jeweler mainly what I remember. How the jeweler told me to hold my hand straight, palm down, fingers together. And from trays he kept locked away, he lifted precious & valuable gems with tweezers, placed them in the cracks between my fingers where they met my hand. For two hours I felt the energy and light of those stones. It was magical. ‘I could’ve bought Bisbee turquoise for so little,’ I said, ‘and I didn’t.’ But you have a great story, the artist at the market replied. Sharing that story, I saw & felt that day in Bisbee all over again.

Stories are everywhere. They take us down roads we don’t imagine. Help us relive memories. Broaden our thoughts about places, people, and things. They get us to ask the what if, why, and how come of curiosity that feeds our writing. They shift our perspectives & connect us.

Like the guy behind a deli counter this week. His wide open face. His hand shaking, almost imperceptibly. His presence with his task, so earnest. And that brilliance of a smile each time he looked at me. I told him ’Thank you’ when he gave me the small container. Then added, ‘and thank you for your smile. You made my day.’ It was impossible to match his beaming face when I said that. It’s impossible to know his story. I will tell you, tho, a part of my heart healed in that moment, and the story I head in my head about the day changed.

Every July author & artist Mary Anne Radmacher gets a Christmas card from two friends. Because it’s halfway between Christmases, and their story says Christmas is a season that lasts 365 days a year, and 366 every four years. The Story is the Spirit. not the day. Whatever you celebrate. I just love that. Look for the stories.

“And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because
the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places.
Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.”
~ Roald Dahl

Getting to Wise. A Writer’s Life.

Photo: Luis-Alfonso-Orellana

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Lessons from Sam Shepard

Posted on August 10, 2018 by Heloise Jones

July 27th was the one-year anniversary of the death of Sam Shepard, writer-actor-director. Someone I always felt in my bones. On the 29th, I sat in what looked like a ‘pieced-together’ theatre in a warehouse space bordered on one side with a gallery showing fabulous works, and a market of crafts and cultural goods on the other. There were black walls, and rough wood risers with rows of seats clearly salvaged from another theatre, their glory days long gone. The stage was a large platform two steps up.

I love this sort of space. To me, it always says ‘earnest art performed here.’ I love the intimacy, too. Here, 200 seats in a wide semi-circle around the stage. Perfect for the series of readings billed as An Evening Honoring the Work of Sam Shepard.

I thought about that night for days afterwards.

I’ve been to readings of plays before. The distillation to the heart of the work they present appeals to me. How the action’s pared down to words, facial expressions, tone & inflection in the voice. How they require a different level of engagement when there’s no set or scenery to distract. The hotel room is the one I see in my mind. That sunset she gazes upon out the window is the one I see in my mind.

There were 19 readings over the 90 minutes. Three actors each time. Each choice showcasing what I’d not seen with such precision before…full character, story, and stakes embedded in the scene. I didn’t need to know the entire story. The mysteries remained a mystery, and I was still satisfied. I believe it’s what he meant when he said he’s not interested in the explanations.

“I’m interested in the provocation. Explanations are a dime a dozen. I think it’s a cheap trick to resolve things. . .stick to the moment to moment thing of it.”

The provocation keeps it going for us. Our mind and heart feeling the full story. As a writer, it blew me away. Where the story really is.

I’ve never seen a play written by him, tho he’s written 44, and received a Pulitzer + multiple Obie Awards for his plays. And yet, I recognize his work when I see it onscreen, every time. I’ll watch a movie and think, this feels like Sam Shepard wrote it, and I’d be correct. It’s his Voice.

I talk a lot about a writer’s Voice being their SuperPower. Both as a tool for empowerment, and as a way of expressing one’s authentic self in the work. Sam Shepard’s is a clear, true signature of tone, subject, theme, pace, timing, and atmosphere. We know he knows what he’s writing about. We know he’s in it. We are always in our most authentic work.

He was living here in Santa Fe when I briefly met him. A friend worked at the Santa Fe Institute where he was a SFI Miller Scholar. He wrote on a typewriter in the library there. A window facing the Jemez mountains above his desk. Cormac McCarthy sat and typed on his own typewriter close by. I admit I was in awe, standing in that inner sanctum where masters create. As luck had it, another friend wanted to off-load two vintage typewriters I thought he may be interested in, and he walked into the building before I left.

What impressed me most from that seven or so minutes we talked was his presence to the moment, and to me. I viscerally felt his attention.

Later I thought how I’m drawn in every moment he’s onscreen. His manner holding my attention through each movement and word, whatever the role, so that I lean in. John Sayles is the only other person I’ve ever spoken to and observed interacting with others who has that same sort of presence to the moment & person. It’s something rare to experience. Total Presence.

I believe the #1 question we must answer for anything of note we do is ‘What does this thing (writing, teaching, fill in the blank) mean to me?’ Because the answer is the key that opens us up, and keeps us moving to do the thing. It’s what keeps me at this desk editing draft after draft. + The answer gives us purpose, whether we’re aware or not. I found his answer to the question in the program notes from that night:

“I started writing to keep from going off the deep end. I was breaking ice with myself. I can remember being dazed with writing, of finding I had these words inside of me, these voices, shapes, light, elements that cause anyone to make a journey.” Connection.

And of his early works,
“They were chants, they were incantations, they were spells, or whatever you want to call them. You get on ‘em and you go. To say they were well-thought-out, they weren’t. They were a pulse.” Follow the Pulse.

Years ago when he and writer/singer Patti Smith were collaborating on a play, she told him she was nervous writing for the stage, this being her first time. What he told her is my mantra.

“You can’t make a mistake when you improvise,” he said.
“What if I screw up the rhythm?” she said.
“You can’t. It’s like drumming. If you miss a beat, you create another.”

No fear in screwing up. Create your own beats. Support one another.

Sam Shepard was poetic, real, and full of contradictions. A reviewer said we get a chance to explore the hidden pieces of ourselves when we view his work. Perhaps that’s what I’m always looking for when I see him onscreen. As if these pieces are hidden in plain sight, to be found if we look long or hard enough. It’s the biggest lesson, because it’s exactly what living life fully is about.

Sam Shepard
November 5, 1943 – July 27, 2017

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