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
*

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.

Like what you read? Sign up for updates in your inbox.

Have a book to finish, or questions about your writing? CLICK HERE.
Like to listen in your car or on your phone? CLICK HERE

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

*
Like what you read? Sign up for updates in your inbox.

Have a book to finish, or questions about your writing? Click Here.
Like to get your tips, tools, and stories by listening? Click Here.

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.

*
Like what you read? Sign up for updates in your inbox.

Have a book to finish, or questions about your writing? CLICK HERE.
Like to listen in your car or on your phone? CLICK HERE

Life–Found Poems Everywhere

Posted on February 8, 2019 by Heloise Jones

“It’s hard for anybody to put their finger on the moment when life changes
from being something that is nearly all in front of you to something that happened.
~ Pam Houston, author

I had a funky night. Two hours of deep sleep followed by way too many hours of none. I turned on the light, read. Gave up, laid back in darkness for what seemed forever. And somehow, 8am, hours after I usually rise, a dream rattling my brain that made me realize something’s changed inside me. I could think dark of the moon, feng shui flying stars migrating to new yearly homes. It’d make sense. We’re tied to the cosmos and energies we can’t see. Folks have tracked it for eons before I got here. And it made sense when I thought of the inexplicable pains in my body, growing pains called energetic by my bodyworker. The hard part is how vulnerable and unsure I can feel. The good part is mystics mapped this long ago.

The thing is, I know my gifts and purpose. I know giving up is not an option. I don’t want to. Magic happens. So, I said, Yes. . .and asked to live with a rhythm that feels good.

In answer, an article crossed my desk, written April 14, 2018. “Life is a Found Poem.” Gosh, I write and teach this, I thought. I live this. It’s my writing practice. And yet, something was different.

“If you pay attention, the events of an ordinary day can come together as a found poem.”
~ Parker J. Palmer, author

I went to the farmers’ market for the first time in 2 months. A fraction of the usual vendors display in the market’s warehouse winter home. Still, it’s full, bustling, and many of my favs are open for business. I came home with one onion, and a bag full of bread, my all-time comfort food.

A smallish boule with African nigella black seeds & turmeric, chewy and deeply crusty. Two large soft flat-breads, fresh chopped mushrooms folded in and on top, deeply savory. A whole grain raisin bread, moist with body and a tinge of sweetest to the loaf so delicious I cut the small boule in two, froze half so I wouldn’t eat it all. And for dessert – something I rarely do since my involuntary abstinence while in Africa this past December – a thick slice of pumpkin roulade cake with sweet-tart creme cheese frosting rolled in. All so beautiful, I thought Bread is a poem.

“When you’re in a very quiet place, when you’re remembering, when you’re savoring an image, when you’re allowing your mind calmly to leap from one thought to another,
that’s a poem.” ~ Naomi Shihab Nye, poet

I lingered in my car before pulling away. Four or five mountain bluebirds hopped about my moonscape front yard. Shots of blue amongst the brown & gray of dirt and winter grasses. A few more flew in. They always seem to fly in tiny flocks. I didn’t want to leave.

I was reminded of the time I lived in the middle of 500 undeveloped acres of NM desert. How they came down from the mountains in winter, lined the wide bowl of the watering station I’d set in the middle of our tiny yard. A ring of blue with russet chests.

And I thought of the bluebird house we planted 10 ft. from our picture window in Asheville, NC. . . smack in the middle of a mountain neighborhood. I’d read they wanted it south facing with a long unobstructed path in/out, and knew I could give it. For 8 yrs. a pair hatched two-three broods each season. I say ‘a’ pair, because each year I’d see the male on the same branch overhead in an oak watching out for his family. And I would often find him on the ledge of the large window or the curved handle of the storm door looking in. No logical reason can change my mind he was watching for me, because I know he knew me, and knew I loved them.

A friend says mountain bluebirds remind her of Disney movie birds, the kind in Snow White or Sleeping Beauty or Bambi before the fire. They’re so cute they don’t look quite real, she says. I feel the same way. The ones in the east are simply pure vivid blue. Perhaps that’s why my first thought whenever I see them is ‘bluebird of happiness.’ Not for the song, but because of the feeling. Like a flash-blessing flitting by, or looking in from my windowsill. Bluebirds are a poem.

Last week temps hit 34° by 6am. I stepped out for my first dawn walk of the season. The light was magical. The sun shown luminescent thru an overcast sky not yet turned gray. On my glide by foot, the world looked fresh, washed after being buried in wet & snow for weeks. Stucco on walls and houses looked newly painted. Large & small swaths of ice lay like flat lakes in weird places. My gift, tho, was four blocks up. Two trees, their bark furled & rippled out, with edges a flurry, like feathers. A smooth oval of a face on their sides where a large limb once lived. Each face cupped by small furled-bark wings. I wondered if the wet caused the bark to rise or the frigid temps to contract the crevices. In the end I didn’t care, because in an instant I saw two women in feathered robes filled with myths and poems, and could almost hear them say ‘Yes.‘

“Poetry is the use of words where music is heard but none is playing. . .
Where you hear music by the rhythm and the cadence of the words.”
~ Elvis Costello, singer-songwriter

Finally, on Super Bowl Sunday I discovered life thru another’s found poems, and I realized it’s not the first time I’ve done that.

On intuition, I rushed to a bookstore for a memorial reading of poems by Tony Hoagland.
Nineteen poems chosen and read by people he touched in some way. The intro by his close friend, author Robert Wilder, made me wish I’d known Tony. The poems, everything from borderline bawdy to the spiritually profound, made me feel as if I did in a way. All were about being human in this extraordinary experience on earth, the beauty and the ugly of it.

As he neared death, he wrote what he feared most about losing of himself. . .”the loss of curiosity, the falling away of engagement…curiosity, the most essential feature of being alive.” Those words. Truth. I write often about that, too.

So I say, be curious. Let life, the sky, the niggling inside you be your found poems. We can all be poets.

Getting to Wise. A Writer’s Life.

My poem found in the bones on the African savannah will be published next month in The Wayfarer Literary Journal. It’s a beautiful journal. I’ll keep you posted.

*
Like what you read? Sign up for updates in your inbox.

Are you ready for your Fierce Hearted writing? CLICK HERE.
Like to listen in your car or on your phone? CLICK HERE

Unexpected Trip Back to Myself

Posted on January 7, 2019 by Heloise Jones

The calendar has turned another year. I’ve had no hesitation writing 2019. It’s been a roller-coaster of highlights & lows the past 7 years. Looking ahead feels good. In no small measure because I took a journey to Kenya in December. A return to travel after nearly 5 yrs. and no ordinary trip. A mix of awe, wonder, beautiful connections, and unexpected challenges, I came back changed.

After a few days adjustment, I slept 9 hrs. a day for days in a row when I returned. No ordinary sleep, tho. I was deep in the ethers and nether realms, with dreams I couldn’t remember. Like I was catching up on years of no sleep. I didn’t return to FB right away, either. Even after a 3 week absence, first time since I started ages ago, I’m still not back full-time. I’m finding new space.

Truth, the entire trip was the final leg of a journey back to myself, only to be seen in hindsight.

I’d been saying all year I was going to Africa, albeit with no answer how or when. Then, an email arrived from a writer friend about a writing contest, 48 hrs. to deadline. I won a partial fellowship to a writing residency.

I was thrilled. I’m intensely interested in culture and how it shows up in both works and a writer’s voice, so the chance to meet Kenyan writers excited me. Plus, we’d reside in the lower rift valley for part of the journey. I was enthralled with the idea I’d be in the place that inspired Karen Blixen to write “Out of Africa.” As time got closer, there was evidence and strong intuition all my surprises may not be pleasant ones. I was too far in, too invested with desire and money to back out, tho. I needed this trip. I needed to unplug, step away from work. To write my own work, again, and talk with other writers about writing. To be inspired by the shifts a new-to-me place brings. I’d been feeling anxious about life for too long. I left ready for something good.

Oh, my. I was not prepared for how deeply I’d feel a connection to the land and people I encountered in the silences. Africa became a part of me as if my DNA changed. Several people have told me since that this is what happens. It’s deep, or not at all. No middle ground.

In a weird kind of way, one of my discomforts turned into a blessing. Most who meet me think I’m an extrovert (or weird) because I’m authentically curious, interested, and expressive. The truth is I spend most of my time in solitude, and typically travel alone. Long periods with people talking in groups feel overwhelming for me. One way I dealt with this was to sit up front in the seat next to the driver on our group drives. I didn’t run, scream ‘shotgun,’ it seemed to evolve. Like the angels watched my back, even in a lucky invitation by the guide when we went on safari! I was happy sitting there quietly where I could see, have questions about what I observed answered. Things like history of the land & people, rhythms of African life & traffic/travel, the city, the country, animals. All the things I was interested in.

My experience on The Maasai-Mara National Reserve was perhaps my biggest surprise. I saw bones gleaming white on the savannah and they captured me. Strings of them behind black-horned skulls, everywhere. Sitting beside our Maasai guide who was educated as an animal and land conservationist, I learned the close cropped, tawny colored grass covering the ground would rise tall and green with the rains in the fall, and the animals would safari (to travel, from the Arabic safara; to journey in Swahili) across the hills from the Serengeti. That the plains would blacken with thousands of animal bodies, and one could see a wildebeest brought down by lions once every hour. And how when the lions were done, the wildebeest fed waves of hyenas and jackals. In the end, beautiful vultures unlike any I’ve ever seen, white-backed and gray-backed, picked the bones clean. What struck me was every skull rested chin forward. I thought an animal in death would lie on its side. Who knows, perhaps the weight of the horns righted the skull after the flesh was gone. I didn’t invite a logical explanation. It was a spiritual experience. The bones talked to me of sacred offerings and the cycles of life.

When we returned to the rural rustic accommodations on the Maasai preserve where we stayed, a poem flowed thru me. The only fresh thing I wrote on the entire residency. When I got home, I edited it, added a dedication to my Maasai ‘teachers,’ community leader Simon Metekai Masago and safari guide Jackson Kayionni Letiol, shared it with them. It’s been accepted for publication this spring in The Wayfarer, a beautiful professional journal with the tagline “Reimagining the Possible – Charting the Way to Change.” Could this be any closer to what happened for me?!

With all the good stuff, I’d be remiss to not admit there were moments of deep challenge on the trip. Things that hurt and couldn’t be fixed. And in the end, I had a choice. I could let them take me back to what I know for sure: Sometimes we can’t fix things in the moment. We gotta own what’s ours, learn and move on, without putting up walls. We all look thru a lens created by our experience. And ultimately, the best we can do is find our way to who we are in our Heart, and BE that. My choice, fierce hearted.

Amazing lyricist (poet) and musician Bruce Cockburn says it best in his song, When You Give It Away. “I’ve got this thing in my heart, I must give you today. It only lives when you Give it away.”

This turning inside me feels like the animals must feel with the promise of fresh grass.

Wishing you All Things Good in 2019.

The photos are O’Hare Airport, Chicago, USA. This is what I saw when I entered the terminal. I swear, after 25 hrs. travel, I didn’t see the affirmation facing me on the globe ’til I got there & looked up.
Africa.

Getting to Wise. A Writer’s Life.

This blog is dedicated to my friend Johnson Mwangi Mathenge, who I sat beside for probably 22 hrs. as we drove thru Kenya. He shared so much about what I saw,
and brought me the best Kenyan tea.

*
Getting to Wise. A Writer’s Life.
Like what you read? Sign up for updates in your inbox.

Have a book to finish, or questions about your writing? CLICK HERE.
Like to listen in your car or on your phone? CLICK HERE

….. Your Guide that keeps you writing & creating.

The Writer’s Block Myth – A Guide to Get Past Stuck,
and Experience Lasting Creative Freedom
*