A new friend brought me here tonight. Into this bustle of writers where we are working alone or gathered in small groups, talking, laughing, sipping wine with others; gathering here from a 50 mile radius; our host tonight, fellow writer, maker of extraordinary sparkling wines, Larry Mawby.
It’s a picture perfect summer evening and poems are rising. Here it comes….
Dance of Soil
Vines rise on wire scaffolding
Pushing sunshine up green spines
Still summertime-
and fruit is but a dream
sleeping quietly in the roots
I have seen this dance before on other continents.
Deep in the Barossa-
Strewn across the Andalusian plain
Spread boldly through the valley at the top of California
and here, today-
Teenage vines safely held in the heart of Leelanau
So, there’s this woman named Sally. She grew up with music and art and amazing people surrounding her and when she came into her power, she wanted to start something … Continue reading One match can light a thousand fires…
So, back in 1991, big things were happening. The Soviet Union took the first steps to disband the USSR. Yeah. So, now they are trying to put it back together, but hey, “A” for initial effort. The Internet was made available for commercial use and the number of computers “online” reached 1,000,000. The Dead Sea Scrolls were unveiled, and cyclone in Bangladesh killed 200,000 souls. Ah. You forgot about that. Sadly, me too.
Smaller things happened too. I was writing a regular column then for iCE Magazine in the Ft. Lauderdale Sun Sentinel. It was called Karmic Soup and I reviewed films, books, workshops and new technologies in the Woo-Woo realm of metaphysics. I enjoyed the heck out of that gig. I got to interview some amazing people like Dr. Brian Weiss; a pioneer in past life regression. Edgar Mitchell, the Apollo 14 astronaut who returned to Earth with a whole new thought about what’s “out there”. My favorite was The Amazing Kreskin. I was given a twenty minute time slot with him and when his agent pointed to his watch to call time’s up, he waved him away and we spent two hours talking and laughing. I still get Christmas cards from him.
On a more personal level, I was starting to cook some fiction in my head while I also did intuitive readings and was a part of a fantastic channeling circle. Yes. I did channeling. No. It’s not dangerous. It’s akin to meditating out loud. Trance channel and author, Kevin Ryerson, once said (through one of his guides) that praying is talking to God and meditating is listening to God. Brilliant. And I assume that God would have far more interesting things to say to us than we do to It/He/She.
Today, I was going through one of those scary boxes where you stash crap in hopes of one day organizing it. In among the paperclips, sketches, building plans and writing samples, I found a “list” that I had channeled on some random day in 1991. It was so simple and straight forward that I filed it in the DUH category of my “keep this ‘cuz you might want to use it someday” box.
The list isn’t going to cure cancer but it actually could create world peace if everyone followed each point. Really. No fooling.
I have a slew of things that I’ve written down; big ideas and such. A year or five would pass and there that thing would appear out in the world because someone else had the same thought and actually took the time to do something with it while mine was fermenting in the DUH box. Ask my family. They’ve been witness to dozens of moments when our mouths fell open as we saw the very thing in the DUH box on TV.
Anyway, it’s twenty seven years later, but here is A Plan For Living. Needless to say, the advice herein was mostly forgotten over time, but now I am printing this out and I’ll look at it often to see if I can actually do what I wrote.
Thank you Highest Teachers & Guides. Don’t give up on me. I’m a little slow, but eventually … I get it.
For the first third or so of our lives, we say a whole lot of hellos. New people. New experiences. New things that excite our senses. We are in full-on … Continue reading Hello Goodbye
A good story should bring us into the lives, the homes, the kitchens and boardrooms, the mind, the bedroom, the dreams and the nightmares of our character.
We need to write about real life and not just some hermetically sealed. extra light, fat- free, flavor-free version of life.
Because life is not a continuous loop of polite tea parties where characters glance knowingly at one another or blush in sudden thrall from behind their open fan.
Life is outrageous. Life is humans at their lowest lows; gripped with rage or desperation making horrible decisions for horrible reasons.
Life is humans being their very best selves; putting other people before them and risking everything so that those others can live their own outrageous life.
Life is experiencing the soul shaking surrender to a lover who guides us to deep and wondrous places in ourselves that we never dared imagine.
Life is wringing out the last drop of compassion for another and reaching that place where a required action is business only; no emotion.
Life is heart wrenching sweetness and heart crushing pain.
It’s messy and raw and ugly and beautiful. And it 99% deeper than another shallow police procedural or drably written script where characters follow a Girl Scout approved path from their parents door to their spouses.
Thank fuck that it is. Anything less and we would all perish in a monochromatic, Xanax fog without ever breaking a perfect nail.
Can I talk about flowers for a minute? Gee. Thanks.
Owning a wedding and event venue, I see a lot of flowers. A lot. From rare and exotic to the roadside weed, baby’s breath.
I love flowers. I love to grow them. I love to get them as gifts. I love to take photos of them. I love to go into flower shops and talk them into letting me enter their cooler so I can hand pick specific blooms for whomever I am making a bouquet or for whatever event I am embellishing with natures little beauty pageant contestants.
Sometimes, I hear the tired and sad logic of non-flower fans, “It’s such a waste. They just die anyway.” My heart hurts every time I hear that and it makes me wonder if these people have pets (who die anyway) and friends (who die anyway) and long term relationships (that, eventually die when one of the participants exits planet Earth.)
Flowers are proof of the existence of whomever or whatever dreamed up this whole three dimensional experience of life. Flowers are small freaking miracles. They are little works of art; each and every one of them. When I see them, they remind me that there is a much larger and grander overall plan for this world. Larger than binge watching an entire TV series on Netflix in a weekend. Larger than some sophomoric company whose goal is to gather a bazillion dollars and be the king of the hill- until the next king comes along.
Flowers are constructed of aerodynamically perfect proportions, balanced to exacting measurements to catch rain water and sun rays and the attention of bees and birds that go about the busy work of pollinating the heck out of anything that needs their sweet nectar. They grow in cracked cement in unlikely places as readily as in the greenhouse of a master gardener.
They announce seasons and wave their colorful faces like a viral Tweet from the Universe… @Mimi! Look over here! I’m being beautiful, just for you, right now!
Sure, they’ll die soon. And they would anyway in a field or a greenhouse or a backyard. The point is, for the glorious moments they are visible, they are treasures we can hold and smell and look at and they cause us to halt in our steps to look again at their perfection and be, truly, in the moment. They are an organic Zen moment if we honor them by acknowledging their short and perfect existence.
Some of the non-flower people I know spend a lot of time and money on courses in enlightenment and proudly parrot people like Ekhart Tolle, author of The Power of Now. “I just stay centered and in the moment and that’s how I find my bliss.” Bullshit. You totally missed the lesson. You are focused on the future, when the petals start to fall and you are missing the actual NOW of the brief life of a bloom; a source of beauty and joy right in front of your face. If you missed the flower’s life because you can’t see around its impending doom, what else are you missing out on while you’re “centered in the moment”… well, future moment, anyway?
I had run in with breast cancer ten years back. Tons of fun. I was there and now I’m not. I remind myself each day that NOW is the very best moment…ever. And I’m truly grateful for now. And I celebrate each subsequent now with noticing beauty- anything beautiful- each and every day. I don’t do it for anyone else. I do it for me because I know that this now is the only now I am guaranteed. And if I squander it by turning my nose up at small, affordable treasures like a hand full of flowers to brighten my day, then I am a damn fool.
Buy the roses, clip that blossom and put it in a glass by your bedside table. Bring the neighbor a bundle of wonder. Send that bouquet to the one you are thinking of. I once had a *someone* who sent me a rose every day to my office. It was such a small thing but it let me know he was thinking of me and it made me feel like a queen. Do that for someone you think of. Do it now. It’s the only now you are guaranteed.
“Gather ye rosebuds while ye may…”
Roses today- August 10, 2017My cactus bloomsCopper Harbor, MICrocus near my driveway
There is no engineer designing the temporary structure; no operating manual or planning meetings. Instead, the whole thing rises in a matter of hours, like a gossamer tent large enough to hold the people, the food, the photos and the gigantic emotions that will gather shortly to hold sacred space together.
A good story should bring us into the lives, the homes, the kitchens and boardrooms, the mind, the bedroom, the dreams and the nightmares of our character.
