the dream life

the story will find you

In movies, a writer sits down at the computer or better yet, typewriter, loads a fresh page and types a title then a byline. The writer, hungry to tell a story, begins at the beginning. 

I've always found this a delightful fantasy. The implication, if one can begin with a title and then the beginning, is that one knows the arc of the story - knows its shape and contents before writing.

Amazing.

I wish I could do that.

My writing style is messy and disorganized. I get through entire drafts before I start to understand what it is I'm doing, where the story is, what's important.

flow

This is a morning of fresh starts.

The weather broke and I am able to come outside again. Woody got me up early, bless him, and brought me outside where he snuggled in to the wicker sofa on the front porch (his most favorite place) and I covered him with soft throw and he fell back into a deep sleep. It's raining, gently, and cool enough that he needs the cover, cool enough for me to wear a robe over my t-shirt and yoga pants.

I made my coffee and brought it to the table with my laptop and began working on the writing project that's been calling to me, the nonfiction thing that's been nagging at my consciousness. The writing this morning is coming easily, the words flowing on the screen like water.

I'm telling the story I need to tell.

So, Jamie's question, as always, has great resonance for me, Where do you wish to make a fresh start?

On this morning of fresh starts, the fresh start so immediately available and tactile, I turn my attention (again) to my physical well-being and what it means for me to listen to my body. My daily walks were ended by insufferable heat and humidity this summer and not replaced. The yoga mat languishes next to my meditation altar. 

I wish to make a fresh start here: in the muscle and bone. Let me begin to move again and move in new ways, stretching open, gathering strength. The walks, the poses, the way my body speaks as it moves through space. I wish to care for my physical self in a new and expansive way so that all aspects of this life flow the way the words are flowing this morning.

for Wishcasting Wednesday, 365project and the August Break.

creative fire

First thing this morning, I read about Connie's prophecy and thought about how her paintings are so alive and how generous she is with her creativity and how diving into her paintings reawakened her self. I am always inspired by Connie.

You see, I have this thing about painting. I'm not a painter but somewhere, in the deep underneath part of my heart, I harbor this secret desire to be one and I think one day, I will be.

The time, however, is not now.

Now is the time, (the guidance has been loud and clear about this), for me to prioritize and focus, so I'm attempting to do that, but it's not one of my strong suits. In my head it goes something like this: Priorities, priorities, what's my number one priority? Oh look, something shiny, wait, what was I doing?

After reading Connie's post, I clicked on to another of my inspirations. When I wake up and realize it's Wednesday, I can't wait to get over to Jamie's and read the Wishcasting question. Today's question, what do you wish for your creativity? seemed particularly compelling.

envisioning this thing

The class I took on my trip was Sacred Places and Landscapes. It was brief - just five days - but filled with information and experience that lit me up. I loved being in that class. I loved the tutor, I loved the other class members. I loved the evenings when we met for dinner in the dining room at Christ Church and the grace was read in Latin. I loved the sound of the Latin. Because I don't speak Latin, I was able to feel the tone, the intention, without getting tripped up by the actual words. 

I loved visiting Salisbury Cathedral and Stonehenge and I loved getting perspective - new perspective on old ideas. 

I felt, in that class, new pathways being formed in my brain.

poem news

You may have seen this on facebook or my website, but just in case you didn't, I'm so pleased to have a poem in this publication. It's one in a series that I've been working on for...um...quite a while, and the second one of the series to find itself in print, I'm happy to say. Print is nice and the fine company my little poem is keeping here brings me much joy.

 

silence

We moved into our rooms at Christ Church on a Sunday morning. The halls were impressive. Walking through the arched stone, it's difficult not to feel like you have magical powers or are, in the very least, communing with long gone souls.

The rooms were sweet and immaculate, and mine was surprisingly large, but they were dorm rooms, so I found myself plunged out of the world of our lovely and lush Oxford apartment into a cozy but simple accommodation with no television, no wifi, a shared loo down the hall and a small shower one floor down. If I'd thought of it, I could have loaded the iPad with a movie or two, but I hadn't thought of it, and without the Internet, I didn't even have a radio to keep me company. I joked to myself that sitting in my room made me feel like a cloistered nun and I was slightly alarmed at the mild panic I felt rising in my body.

At the bridge

We spent all day in the Cotswolds yesterday and finished with a meal in a village called Lower Slaughter (a name that has to do with mud, not the killing of animals). It was a breathtaking place, beautiful in a way that a photograph can't touch. In the tavern where we had dinner, a sweet sleeping dog curled beneath the table next to us, the ceilings were low and the windows open to the garden where couples sat at wooden tables on the grass. Afterwards, the sun setting, we walked along the quiet stream, crossed a stone bridge. I stood in front of that glowing golden stone, the climbing roses, and Ian asked me, "Are you thinking of a story or a poem?" Three ducks rose from the water and flew over our heads. I could hear the rustling of their wings, their strength and tenderness. A story or a poem? How is that we choose the thread and name it the one, the one of the many, the one worthy of attention?

I don't have a point; I just like Shirley MacLaine

I rarely turn the television on during the day. Yesterday, however, I was struggling a little and asking for guidance and I felt the nudge to go downstairs and turn on the TV, so I did. Immediately, I tuned into the Bio channel piece on Shirley MacLaine. 

Within the first few minutes, I received some messages that seemed to speak directly to the questions I'd been asking and as the story unfolded, these little hits just kept on coming. Small things directed at different areas and questions. Fascinating how that happens -- and it really does. It happens all the time. (So maybe I have a smallish point - life speaks in all sorts of ways. Even through the Bio channel.)

Lessons from swadhisthana

Not long ago, I was in meditation and I realized that something was going on in my second chakra. It was all swirly and roiling and boiling. It was not a pleasant sensation. Some truth was being called to the surface and it was intense -- the sort of thing you want to numb out or ignore -- so I breathed into it and acknowledged it and did not go eat five tons of pasta in an attempt to drown it out. 

Later, I went to my massage appointment and afterwards, my massage therapist said there was a lot of heat at my sacrum. I didn't really know what was going on, but it was nice to have the validation.

Sacral chakra is about creativity and manifestation, sexuality, relationships, choice and letting go.

Letting go.

Interesting.

Owning the uncomfortable

In a dream, a good friend of mine said, "I think you should learn to play the guitar." 

"Why?" I asked.

"Because it will be hard and you won't enjoy it and you'll have to sit with the uncomfortable emotion."

Where I've been

I've been preparing for my trip - doing things like shopping for comfortable shoes and figuring out which pieces of my wardrobe are the absolute essentials, because I want to take the smallest bag possible, and making playlists. I've also been working on clearing out the house, getting closets organized, carrying out bags of stuff to be donated or sold or tossed. I've been making decisions, too--or considering decisions. I've been letting ideas float into my head, noticing how they feel in my body, then releasing them in hopes that I will soon have clarity.

And I've been watching Madonna videos.

This feels like transition.

A funny thing about transition -- it's not always where you think it's going to be. Sometimes you walk steadily for years toward the doorway then step through it only to find more choices, more pathways leading to more doorways. 

Sometimes you think you know what you want only to find that what you want spins and rearranges and presents more possible desire. Sometimes you think you know your priorities only to find they have other plans.

This is called life.

And when I can remember to release my grip on it, I see that this way that it is -- this mysterious and complicated unfolding-- is exactly how it should be. I can feel that it is beautiful even when it is uncomfortable or unclear.

When I release myself from plans -- when I remind myself that I don't have to know anything until the moment I know it and that even after I know it, the knowing can change a thousand times -- I can breathe deeply into my lower chakras and be still. When I am still, I am open, and when I am open, all sorts of fantastic has room to get in.

Unlocking the body's secrets

Questing for vitality, I decided to give Denise Linn's Unlock the Secret Messages of Your Body a try. I'm a sucker for day by day books - books that you work through one section at a time - but the truth is I usually start out strong then lose interest somewhere around the second or third day.

Not so with this one. It may be a case of the exact right book at the exact right time; I wake up excited to see what's in store and get to work in my journal. 

I love Denise Linn; she's one of my favorite people to listen to on Hay House. She comes across completely authentic -- like someone you would want to spend the afternoon with talking and laughing. I have several other of her books including Sacred Space, which is one of my all-time favorite books about Feng Shui and space clearing, and one day I'd like to complete her Soul Coach training.

So, it's not really a surprise that I love this new book so much, but what is a little bit of a surprise (to me) is how engaged I am with the exercises, and how I feel them rearranging me almost as soon as I begin them. There's something about the act of acknowledgement that sets change into motion and I'm loving what's moving in my life because of this powerful plan.

I don't want to reveal the book here, so I will just say that this is my miracle box, and it works.

Process

In the beginning, I write for me.

Sometimes I begin because of a moment--because a slice of light or a loaded phrase or a little passage of time takes my breath away and I want to describe it, which is another way of saying that I want to possess it, I guess, or that I don’t want to forget it, or that I want to look deep into its center and know something about it.

Other times, I begin with a question. Why would a person? How could I? What if it happened this way?

I was going to say that the novel I’m working on began with a question, but as I typed that, I reached back into my memory for verification and discovered that the question emerged early but not at the very beginning. At the very beginning was simply a drive to tell the story.

There are moments of worth; there are questions that want answers, but what comes to me first is voice. I tend to write first person narrative because it’s the narrator’s voices that I hear first. I feel them like a pressure in my heart and they will not rest until I dictate for them.

In the early drafting stages, the narrators and I live in this floating rule-less world and the only thing that matters is getting thoughts and images on to paper. It’s all white hot excitement and it’s a mess and I can’t really see it but I love it unconditionally.

There’s this moment in my writing process when I start to believe that what I’m writing is the greatest thing that’s ever been written. Shortly thereafter comes the realization that it’s complete rubbish, doesn’t work and is going to have to be picked apart and put back together and that the best I can hope for is the survival of a couple of paragraphs. After that comes the putting-it-away and pretending-it-doesn’t-exist.

Throwing darts

I’ve said it before and here I am to say it again: Most of the time, when I hear a book or movie or other work of art labeled as “self-indulgent,” it’s a pretty good sign that I’m going to like it. I also tend to like things that are “overwrought” and “overwritten.” I like it when artists push things a little too far.

I like to read things that are intensely personal. I find truth and beauty there. I love to know about people’s lives, the more details the better. To me, the global is in the personal, but it’s also a matter of taste. My favorite poet can write five billion poems about her father if she so chooses and I will read every single one of them.

It’s the passion I respond to. I like the wild untamed of the deep subconscious. I like unguarded honesty.

I’m thinking about this because I’m walking around in poems again and the poems I write are undeniably personal. I will stop just short of labeling them as self-indulgent, but I’m quite sure they are. (I do, I do, in every moment of my life indulge the self!)

I have more gremlins attached to poetry-writing than anything else. I think it’s because poems are sort of holy to me and people who can write them well are the people I revere the most in the world. I’ve always written poetry, but I’ve never really understood it. I believe there’s a set of knowledge, a magic formula or two, some big thing about poetry that I don’t know, but I’ve been too intimidated to take a poetry writing class because that would mean I would have to actually share the poems I write as they’re happening and I don’t really think I could do that without total body collapse.

This is true of all writing but especially true of poems: I can’t tell until I have a lot of distance whether or not the poem I’m working on has potential for goodness or is utter crap. I really, honestly can’t tell until I get far, far from it and even then, my discernment is not the greatest. This makes submission difficult. I may as well pin fresh poems to the wall and throw darts at them to figure out which represent my best work, because I have no idea.

What I mean by creative wellness

If you hear a voice within you say "you cannot paint," then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced. ~Vincent Van Gogh

As my energy and focus migrates toward my new work reality, I become increasingly aware of old limitations and the cut-off places. I'm looking out across the expanse of all that is possible, discerning what it is that I actually want, and dropping the things that I don't.

I don't want to become one of those people who promotes day and night and yet I do want to get the word out about what I offer and where I'm going. It's a delicate balance.

I've always believed that when you do the work of your soul and you do it with joy and passion, your people find you. I don't believe there's such a thing as competition between practitioners who work in the healing arts and I quickly shy away from anyone who seems to me like they're leading with their ego. I love being a part of a community, sharing thoughts and ideas. The more love we pour into this thing, the more love there is. I'm not interesting in running down other practitioners. I'm not interested in that sort of suspicion, and I'm always a little shocked when I bump up against. (Whether I bump up against it in myself or others.) There's room for all of us and my goodness, I have enough on my plate tending to my own soul. I don't need to spend any time or energy judging someone else's. 

I feel this way as an artist, too. I was very careful to study writing in a program that was serious but nurturing. Art is not a race or a sport. You don't succeed by proving how much better you are than everyone else. If you can't see the good in others than you can't see and if you can't see, how can you write?

And that leads me to why I've chosen to apply the umbrella name of creative wellness to what I do. It's a phrase with multiple meanings and first refers to the notion of complimentary health practices (i.e. Reiki). As I continue down this path of energy work, I find that I'm adding more and more ideas and tools into my kit (Theta healing, for instance. Bodywork,) and this will always be the primary life-thread running through my work. Whether I'm using aromatherapy oils or doing an intuitive reading or leading a workshop on chakra health, I'm on the pathway of holistic wellness and creative here means looking outside the constraints of mainstream thought and belief to embrace a more full and authentic experience of wellness.