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Note to readers: My musings seem to be turning inward, perhaps as my travel schedule subsides for now. So don't be surprised if the spiritual and some armchair psychology begins to trump the travel on this blog for a while. Who said life journeys were consistent? I'm just following the path where it leads and exploring what is before me in order to move on.

"Be Here Now. Live in the Present. Live in the Moment." So goes common advice from the life coach, the therapist and the spiritual guide. There really isn't anywhere you can turn anymore without some enlightened someone urging you to put aside worries of tomorrow and yesterday in order to concentrate on making the precious moment in time you occupy RIGHT NOW full and completely experienced. The theory is that when your mind and heart are in the present moment – even the painful moment - you are not wasting energy on things you can't control. And by achieving emotional and psychic energy efficiency – mindful of the present at the expense of the past and the future - you will live a fulfilled and happy life.

Riiiiight.

Who are these people? Don’t’ they battle all the Past and Future Stress Monsters of the modern world? Don’t they struggle to pay down credit thrown at them in past times of economic "abundance" and which threatens their future? Aren't they distracted by anxiety over whether they’ll ever meet Mr./Ms. Right tomorrow or in another decade? Don’t they have children to worry about getting into college? Aren’t they anxious about our soldiers and how many more must die? Don’t they have illnesses or know people with horrible diseases eating them alive and who may never even have a future? Do they even live in the world or are they all just closet monks? Oh, please! This philosophy seems like it was developed on an ancient Buddhist mountaintop far removed from our modern reality.

Well, even though it’s very possible this philosophy was dreamed in some quiet temple - sans kids running around or cell phones ringing - through personal trial and error I have come to believe that Living in the Present is not only possible in the modern chaos of worries, but necessary.

My journey into the Present started many years ago. It wasn’t so much an event that awoke me as it was a realization that I had achieved everything I’d set out to achieve – a good career, a wonderful family, a nice house etc., but I wasn’t happy. There was always something ‘wrong,’ some problem, something keeping me from just enjoying a Moment in Time. It occurred to me that if all those achievements I’d sacrificed the Present Moment for all those years couldn’t make me happy, perhaps I wasn’t capable of happiness. And this idea scared the bejezzus out of me. I realized that if I didn't find a way to be happy in the Moment, I was going to lose the Moment entirely, and take my family down with me or drive them away.

The good news was that this scared me into starting my journey to wholeness; the bad news is that when I awoke to this new path, I found myself smack in the middle of the Forest of Emotional Instability, surround by EmoMonsters of many shapes and sizes. I didn’t realize it at the time, but Presence would become my best Monster defense and ultimately my way out of the Forest entirely.

One of my fairy godparents appeared in the guise of a corporate trainer who gave a room full of us Fortune 100 employees a ballpoint pen and a group exercise called “Be Here Now.” I would have dismissed the message completely (see above cynical rant) if it hadn't been for the gentle soul who delivered it. Learning more about how he struggled with "issues" in his life and yet still managed to pass on wisdom and peace to people he met on his journey made me look more seriously at his message of Presence.

And I’m so glad I did because a little farther into my quest I ran up against debilitating fears, doubts, worries and insecurities that attacked me like slatheringly ferocious beasts, all ganging up into one big Gigantic Monster sucking at my confidence and drive. Even though these frightening demons eventually turned out to be a large gang of annoying little gremlins and imps, in the middle of these beastly battles being Present in the Moment became my Monster Spray. On days when the Fear Demon tried to paralyze me with every imaginable concern for what had gone wrong in the past and might go wrong in the future, I found that if I sprayed myself with Presence - focusing on only those things that might go wrong in the Moment - I could focus enough to make sure the things that HAD to go right, did so. Covered in Presence I could function as a mom, wife and employee because I’d sapped energy from the Monster’s scariest weapon – overwhelming worries over things I couldn’t control.

But it turned out that Presence had only weakened the beasties, not gotten rid of them altogether. I still had to let them go. This was a bit confusing for me until I succumbed to the logic of my inability to “fix” them and simply gave them up. I let all the things I could not control go, handing them off to - other things.
    
Expunging the energy I was sending into worrying about the past, I wrote over 100 apology letters and angry rants (which I didn't send) just to purge those old wounds and gremlins out of me. Then I gave my worries about the future to God, angels, and myself in my future state. I gave the future back to the future, sending it forward in time and out of me.

With every letter-to-put-the-past-to-rest and every worry-i sent-forward, the DemonBeast before me shrank. Once I’d fully defused the Fear Demon’s past-and-future-worry-power, the stupid git had shrunk down to gremlin size and started kicking my shins. It was then I realized that by living in the Present Moment, unparalyzed by the weight of things that were inherently unmanageable, I could function better emotionally and take on the little bite-sized Gremlin Fears and Worry Imps one-by-one as they appeared as Present Problems. And so I emerged from the Forest of Emotional Instability and began my true journey to wholeness.

Today, I live a great life with plenty of things to worry about that I don't spend too much energy on. Living in the Present has made me happier and wholer and given me protection against the most terrifying of Demons, but it hasn't gotten rid of all of my problems. Life is full of Monsters and my job is to simply deal with them one at a time as they sneak up behind me, inside me and/or blocking my path. And Monsters or not, life is still an ongoing balance of the happiest of Moments and the saddest as well.

There’s more to this story, though. Having found my way out of the Forest of Emo-Monsters and armed with my new Monster Spray of Presence, I realize that learning to Be Here Now has actually changed me in some other – extremely fundamental ways. I’ll elaborate in my next post, but in some ways these other changes may have been more frightening to me than the Fear Demons that came lunging out of the dark. It occurs to me that the Worry Monsters may actually have been protecting me from what I feared the most, from the thing that Living in the Present transformed me into.

(to be continued...)

Web Site Strategy ~ $25,000

Happy Board of Directors ~ $100,000+

Ah-ha! Moment ~ Priceless






I'm a business person. A marketer. I have always believed - even taught - that price should be set according to value. Value, of course, is a very relative concept but this has never stopped me from managing the economics of it, evaluating costs vs. benefits to set prices. This methodology has helped me put a monetary value on all sorts of things, including my own consulting services. It's how the business world works. And it has worked well for me, until one day I evoked in a client something truly priceless - a genuine, eyes-wide, heart-opening, spontaneously smiling, world-view-shifting, light-bulb shining, Ah-ha! Moment.

Oops.

That sound you hear is my brain breaking.

Why? Because my client's Ah-ha! Moment - spurred by something I'd done - occurred within a nanosecond of time and had impossible-to-measure-in-the-moment consequences, and yet the expression on their faces made it clear that there was a lot of value in that nanosecond's insight that hadn't yet proven its worth. Because I couldn't ascribe a "price" based on resources (i.e., time, materials, effort etc.) and results (i.e., profit, savings, capacity etc.) - the two primary units of value -  to something so clearly valuable, my brain really has to bend a bit to think about how to "price" what is "priceless". Being a pragmatic businesswoman, I quickly turned my ability to evoke Ah-ha! Moments into part of my value equation as a rationale for charging reasonably high fees (though not as high as many.) Incorporating Ah-ha! skills, my business objective, became to "under-promise and over-deliver" by promising a strategy and delivering a strategy+Ah-ha! Moment.

But here's my Ah-ha! Moment after working this way for a while: sure, my clients value the Ah-has! But I'm learning that I value them at least as much, if not more. I value my ability to produce income which helps me feed and care for my body and family, but when I tap a creative place in myself to help produce an Ah-ha! Moment, it soothes and delights my spirit. If money feeds my body, then Ah-has! feed my soul.

Soul-feeding is not something we usually discuss in business circles, but it should be. Business Schools crank out capable managers who can monitor and moderate resource expenditures against objectives and plans. All good, except that truly outstanding businesses employ and nurture other qualities as well, including creativity and values. Business types call creativity "out-of-the-box thinking," but that's a bunch of hooey.

Creativity, so key to excellent businesses and happy souls, is not a "thinking thing," it's a "spirit thing," which is also rarely discussed in the Board Room. By "spirit" I mean that ethereal connection between the mind, heart and outside world that isn't entirely your brain or your body or "the Universe", but an ongoing conversation between them that you are only just barely aware that you are participating in. Listening in on that dialog - and participating more consciously - allows we humans to bring creativity and fresh approaches into our world, the world we shape and measure and value. But the ability to work creatively so that it enhances the business value of our output still challenges traditional economics, because creativity is simply not an economically measurable activity.

This is my second Ah-ha! There ARE no economics for the creative act itself.

Yes, that is my brain still breaking.

Those who create for a living - artists, designers and writers - know this challenge well and have found various business models to capitalize on their creative skills. These typically involve work-for-hire scenarios which are dollars-per-hour based or (maybe more often) purely results-oriented, putting a market-based price tag on something regardless of how much time and effort it took to create.

Making jewelry is my first experience with the latter business model. When I went to price my first set of earrings, I did my traditional business math and immediately blanched. No WAY could i charge for my time - working on-and-off for days to arrange little sparkly stones until they came into the perfect alignment to make me (and others, I hoped) happy. I realized, doing a quick market survey of my earring-buying life experience, that I would be lucky to be able to cover the price of my materials. As the economics of my situation became clear, I briefly contemplated simply not making and selling jewelry, but something stopped me.

And this was my third Ah-Ha! The money didn't matter as much as the joy I took in creating beauty, and sometimes seeing that joy in the faces of others who also found it beautiful.

It was at that moment that I truly understood how important it was for me to engage in a creative act that fed my spirit - acknowledged my soul's connection to that barely-perceived dialog with the Universe. More than just acknowledging the connection, my decision to keep investing in my own creativity opened me up to more spiritual connection, allowing my soul to draw upon it, flowing it's energy into me and fueling ongoing inspiration on all parts of my life. I became addicted to creativity and am now committed to it regardless of the really bad economics of it. I'm proud of my upside-down jewelry-making business plan (which I've asked my husband to help me invest in for the tax write-off), because it is an ongoing commitment to feeding parts of me that have long gone hungry.

These realizations are why I'm more intrigued with creativity than craft these days, but it has only made me hungrier to find ways to infuse the professional work I do - which does have measurable economic value - with more and more creativity. In my perfect world, I get paid money to engage in spiritually fulfilling, shameless acts of creativity. After all, if creatively derived Ah-ha's! are valuable to me, I bet they're valuable to others - like my clients - as well. I'm still working on that particular business plan, but the relevant Ah-ha! here is that I now know what I want. And, once enlightened as to my objective, I'm usually very good at achieving it.

Stay tuned.

Photocredits: "Aura" Sculpture by Sean Hennessy, (c) 2008 (with permission)
This mixed media art is one of many wonderful pieces on Sean's Etsy site, Scenic Artisans
"Let There Be Light" Quickdraw sketch by Block Party Prints on Etsy.

Warning: Overdone analogy ahead. But it's more fun this way.

Do you know your demons? I do. I know many of them so well that I talk to them, inviting them to tea. We have conversations like old friends.

Until recently, I considered this level of familiarity with my dark side a strength. I mean, by getting to know them, I’ve been able to see them for what they really are – horridly distorted imaginings, most of whom turn out to be silly little creatures camping it up around candles that cast monstrous shadows. One by one I’ve been throwing back the black curtains where they hide to reveal them; and one by one they’ve been turning up as little imps and gremlins and – sometimes the most heartbreakingly wounded parts of me. I’m still finding them hiding in the rafters and walls of my mentally haunted house, but after years of work, I’ve finally got most of them showing up for tea to participate in a slightly more socially constructive activity than trashing my subconscious. (And those that aren’t at the table yet will at least sneak in to steal the cookies.)

But here’s the catch. Even now that they will deign to sit at my knee and sip tea with me - no longer hiding in the dark and building up my fears and anxieties into paralyzing fantasies of doom – I find that some of the little buggers are still working against my interests. That’s my big ah-ha today; they’re smaller and less threatening, but - they’re still here!

For example, I’m no longer afraid of people telling me I’m an idiot. This is not because some people aren’t willing to do so, but I no longer let worry about lack of approval stop me from meeting new people, keep me from speaking my truth or draw me into emotionally abusive relationships (personally, professionally or otherwise). Despite having called my Approval Gremlin out of hiding a few years back, however, I did recently notice an anonymous voice in my head coming up with excuses for me not to make a certain phone call... It was insidiously suggesting that I was, indeed, an idiot. “Maybe they haven’t returned your call because you’re really not all that good. They were just being nice when you met them, and you're a fool to believe otherwise….heh, heh, heh...”

WTF? Where did THAT voice come from? Upon conscious investigation of said little voice, I discovered the Approval Gremlin, sitting at my knee with his tea cup and crumpet raised, sporting the silliest, most conniving and fakingly innocent grin on his face.
 
So, I picked up the phone and made the call. The person took my call, explained why he’d been silent and invited me to call back in a few days. Ha! I’m sticking out my tongue at the little Approval Gremlin with this very blog post! Little bastard.

So anyway, for those of you interested in confronting your demons, I’m putting mine up for adoption. Perhaps you’d like a little Approval Gremlin to scamper into your dark corners and drag out the little creatures you’re trying to scare up? Mine’s available immediately. I’ll give him to you! I’ll even give you his tea cup and half eaten crumpet! Ok. Just kidding, I don’t really want to sic the little beastie on you. (Just imagine if they teamed up!) But I will refer you to a worth-reading blog post last week by Joy Mazzola on Owning Pink about confronting your demons. It’s a great run-down of all the things hiding in our mentally haunted houses, just waiting to sabotage our best efforts at living confidently and with courage. I recommend it especially in the wake of Halloween, after the Monsters have left our streets and come back inside to rest.

Good luck with your demons and may they all turn up to be no more than annoying little buggers by the time you tame them into sitting with you for tea.

PS- I haven’t been posting lately because every time I put pen to paper I end up hacking up a literary hair ball. Pardon the image but trust me, sometimes silence is better.

I just got back from a week in London and Paris. It’s been 17 years since I’ve been to Europe, the last trip being when my oldest son was a bun in the oven. I’ll never forget feeling his first kick while I lay exhausted in a hotel in Beaune, France in July, 1992. His mighty foot felt like a tiny bubble popping against the inside of my five-month pregnant stomach. I laughed out loud because it tickled me – literally – and the delight on my husband’s face is with me to this day. It’s my best memory of France – ever.

This trip, I was older and joyfully sans-teenagers. (Yes! The house is still standing!) Because I could, I pushed myself through practically every room in the British Museum, the Louvre and a few other places… chasing memories of my pre-motherhood days. I didn’t find memories, though. I found a new kind of freedom. I zigged and zagged my way through culture, shopping, café-sitting, a little writing and even made it to an evensong service at Westminster Abbey to sit quietly and listen to angels singing among the ceiling vaults.

I sculpted and morphed my itinerary on the fly. It was fabulous to revel in my constantly changing mind. I flip-flopped back and forth – Dali exhibit or Hyde Park? Grass or Art? Grass won out when I determined last minute that the extra schlepping (and £30) of Dali would wear me down so I turned right instead of left on my walk to the Tube and ditched (amazing, I’m sure) abstract art for the Elfin Oak. I don’t remember ever feeling so unprogrammed.

I wrestled through my long-standing internal debate about classical vs. modern art, but getting hopelessly and happily lost in the eternal halls of the Louvre, and meandering the orderly spaces of the Musee D’Orsay finally settled it. I found myself standing transfixed before elegant bodies sculpted by the ancients but easily moseyed past religion-heavy Renaissance paintings (and I don’t count the Mona Lisa because you can’t even see it for the cell phone clicking hoards.) By contrast, I choked up the moment I entered the van Goch room but found myself trying way too hard to appreciate Degas' and Rodin’s roughened black figures. I am finally able to declare my preferences! I am an unabashed fan of Greek/Roman physical forms and an absolute fangirl for modern painting from Cezanne forward - the more abstract the better (though I do have a very soft heart for 18th Century Kyoto Japanese brushwork as well).

My husband and I had a fabulous time revisiting some old Parisian memories we shared in and around his work meetings. I snuck in texts to stay in tune with the kids and just enough email to keep from being overwhelmed on my return. I went on little hunts for my personal favorites, bypassing  European fashions (which don’t look good on me anyway) for tea, chocolate, beads and fine writing notebooks and pens. I tried to be a happy American and noticed that I got fewer French eyebrow-queries than I recall from years gone by. I don’t think America’s international standing is any greater in the world these days, so I will declare this a personal victory for overcoming my inability to speak their language with friendliness and kindness. (Even the English hotel clerk didn’t understand half of what I said and vice versa. But we did have a fascinating conversation about “underpants”, “trousers” and the Bermuda Triangle.)

The ethnic blending in London especially was amazing and encouraging with respect to the future of the human race. Skin colors blended into beautiful soft brown hues passing me on the streets and in the Tube. Most of them spoke the King’s English and when they didn’t, the happy chatter of many languages turned into a fascinating song of humanity, lilting from French to Romanian (I think) to Japanese to Spanish and on and on and on.

The whole time, I felt so happy to be alive on this earth. With all its strife and war and misunderstanding, there is so much beauty behind us and walking with us every day. And I was happy with me. I arrived home jet lagged and had only enough brain cells to do my laundry (well, get it started anyway), and make a Manga-Me (turns out that making a Manga-Me takes virtually NO brain cells. Who knew?) I tried to make a real me and then for fun made a “wacky me”. Funny, they really don’t look that different. I guess the real me is good enough these days

                    
Perhaps it shouldn’t have taken me a trip half way around the world (ok, not half, but far) to find myself happy in my own walking shoes, but “should’s” feel pretty irrelevant. I was happy to find a little piece of myself I haven’t lost walking with me in the streets of two of the greatest cities on the planet.  And I am happy to be home.

Being on an island, you’re always running into edges, no matter what direction you go, and so on our recent trip to Hawaii I couldn’t stop noticing edges everywhere I turned.

Twenty years ago when I visited Oahu we traced the edge of the island and found – predictably – that the land constantly ran into the sea and there was no escape. I briefly experienced “island fever,” which made me think of island edges as a form of natural containment. Being an explorer at heart I am naturally tempted to push the edges and “back then” this meant getting on a plane after some less-than-stunning snorkeling. But this time we did not stop at Oahu, but pushed on to Kauai. On Kauai the idea of containment is simply ludicrous, despite very stark and stunning edges around every bend.

On Kauai I rediscovered edges.

The Kauaian edges between land and sea are captivating, a fascinating blend of dangerous elemental collisions where the sea pummels unforgiving volcanic residue, the edge of the great blue deep perpetually smashing down on black rocks and then sucking the weaker pebbles, secretly pulling them back below the powerful eddies of its undertow. Sitting on the edge of this ongoing battle is a favorite pastime of mine, and on Kauai I reveled in it, especially on a not-so-hidden, but still-hard-to-reach beach along the Na Pali Coast (Hanakapi'ai). It’s impossible not to be aware of the risky nature of edges when you perch between where the waves break; survival tactics differ so dramatically on either side of you that the importance of staying firmly on one side or the other becomes paramount. This heightened awareness is itself a gift, however, and walking the rooted and rocky cliff path to this beach, exploring its caves and then climbing some of its rocky cliffs focused me on gorgeous detail I might otherwise have missed.

Looking carefully at the micro details of this massive edge transformed it for me - from a containment barrier to an adventure.

I became so conscious of the fact that I was on the edge – in this case between land and sea – that I began to observe my reactions to other edges as we explored the island further. Not all edges are sharp and violent, and many roads and trails we followed along steep cliffs were gentle and curving. Pondering as we traveled I realized that over the last two decades I have come to appreciate edges – even the dangerous ones. I now find them freeing as a delineation between things, the recognition of which offers me choices – to push beyond, to retreat from, and to follow along for the sheer joy of simultaneously living on both sides.

Nowhere has this constant tracing of danger been more evident than in my career, the life of a consultant being a perpetual dance along the edge between wealth and destitution. Wandering the edges in Kauai I realized that I have become comfortable exploring the consulting edge, comfortable to the point of truly enjoying it and perhaps more importantly gaining faith in my ability to navigate its gentle dips and weaves as well as its sheer, heart stopping drop-offs. While I won’t claim that my husband has developed the same love of the consulting edge, my comfort on this edge is giving me the courage to take my practice in new directions and the patience to let parts of these businesses evolve, to explore their natural contour as the waves of client need pound out weaker spots to reveal firm and solid capability at the core of me.

I found other edges in our island explorations surprisingly interesting, uncovering little treasures in bead stores, for example. Though not particularly “edgy” from the outside, once they got inside me, some of these little bits of bone and stone probed my relationship to beauty, pushing against a containment barrier I hadn’t known was there. Compelled to buy certain baubles because they were simply lovely, and despite the fact that I couldn’t imagine wearing them myself, I realized that my creativity has developed a habit of bumping up against my own consumer mentality, reflecting a moderated and practical aesthetic. Would it go in my house? Does it go with my wardrobe? Is it a good value for my money? These questions assume an economically necessary, but still narcissistic edge - a constraint around my own perception of beauty that is not necessarily even there in any ultimate sense.

The beauty of a lavender jade Chinese bead and a dragon carved bone pendant in particular challenged me to unleash my creative energy in new ways and explore their edges for the simple joy of doing so, absent the pragmatic question of whether I or anyone else I knew might wear them. After all, other people’s houses are different than mine, as are their wardrobes and value equations. What I if I lifted my personal limitations on which kinds of beauty I pursued? What if I followed the edges suggested by a lovely piece simply for the joy of it? What might I create then? I suppose these questions demonstrate that I’m learning to explore the edges of my pear.

In the end, our trip to Kauai, while offering the boyz many waterlogged hours of body surfing, gave me a new chance to explore the edges of things. In fact, I’m well over the edge in a few areas of my life and my consciousness about just how far I’ve come since their crossing is now a little sharper. This excites me and my commitment to explore these new territories leaves me eager to find the new edges ahead.
 
Life is truly a journey and I am truly an explorer. With a little luck and a little skill I hope to keep finding edges to plunge beyond and to dance along. Want to join me?

Photo credits: Me! (well, except for the pic of me, which is hubby’s handywork.) The pic of the boy is my eldest son, and adventurer in his own right.

When I was four I went to an art class and was told to draw a circle. My circle sucked, the crayola shape resembling a pear very unlike the teachers' beautiful round shape glowing in adult perfection on the board. Being four, I mistook poor craft for a lack of creativity and -right there in class - added "uncreative" to my self-definition. In all honesty, maybe I was right. Perhaps a truly creative child would have just pushed through, bravely allowing her creativity to explore itself despite an apparent lack of hand-eye-coordination. What might that pear have become if I'd seen it as creative opportunity instead of poor craftsmanship?
It's not just your average four year old that confuses good craft (i.e., skillful manipulation of thoughts, materials and muscles) with creative inspiration (i.e., that unique, highly personal perspective that gives birth to something fresh). Craft and creativity are so closely entwined that the distinction may be pragmatically pointless, for creative inspiration without some level of craft to express it (so others can enjoy it) is only interesting potential and craft without the creative spark is merely manufacturing.

I find the tension in the concepts interesting as I (finally!) follow the creative urge that I put aside so young. I enjoy eschewing craft in favor of creativity quite often - choosing to struggle through problem-solving some jewelry design concept instead of taking a class which would speed my learning curve (though, frankly, schedule constraints factor in as well). To me, I find the problem-solving itself is very much part of the creative process, the experimentation and failure good practice for my craft and my life. I'm the same way with writing, choosing to learn by doing. I suppose if I had designs on either jewelry or writing as a profession, I would invest more in developing my crafty skills, but for now at least I am working on self-expressive growth and a wherever possible creating a source of joy for myself, and hopefully for others here and there.

Where I don't find the tension between craft and creativity very interesting is in my consumer life where I see so much craft disguised as creativity. Walk into any store - home goods, clothing, office supplies, groceries - and the design that now passes for "upper middle class desirable stuff to spend your credit on" is highly manufactured and the design concepts narrowly bounded to appeal to the lowest common denominator target market. Pop radio, TV and movies are the same way. In my day job, I do a lot of marketing so I really get the economics of this, but personally, the older I get the more I find it boring (which doesn’t mean I don’t consume it.) Contrast this with my average stroll through a craft fair or Etsy , which is delightful exploration of people's creative visions and crafty skills (see Roz's pears for the kind of delight you're likely to stumble upon). I am so grateful to the Internet for resuscitating the niche markets in the highest common denominator zone and making them economically viable.

I haven't mentioned Art yet because to me Art is altogether different than either craft or creativity, while building upon them both. Craft and creativity come out of human beings as unique individuals; they are expressions of our personality, tastes, abilities and unique ways of looking at the world; but Art... Art is something whole and complete to itself,something with a gift for us, the ability to evoke an emotion or perspective (sometimes pleasant, sometimes not) that makes us perceive the world a little differently. To me, a work of Art - great or small -has its own spirit which chooses a human (sometimes a professional Artist, sometimes not) to birth it into this world. The human Artist is its channel from wherever it existed before into a form of being that other humans can perceive. Artists use their own creativity to let the spirit capture them and to fall in love with it - which is ultimately the Artist's greatest skill - to fall in love with the spirit seeking entry to our world and to journey with it, helping refine its expression through craft so others can perceive its gifts. Often being in love with an artistic spirit is a messy process, one that requires faith and perseverance with no guarantee of success and often no knowledge of the impact their dance with spirit has on others. Those who pursue the artistic path are some of the most courageous people I know. They have the guts to listen to what is not seen, heard or perceived (yet) by others and let it carry them away, sometimes to dead ends, but often to amazing places.

In case you've ever been visited by an artistic spirit who made you question your sanity, you'll enjoy writer Elizabeth Gilbert’s take on the spirit that lives in the walls of her house.



Because the ultimate experience of Art - that emotion or perspective which is evoked in the observer - is personal and internal, Art will always be debated. And the creative process that brings that spirit into being is equally mysterious, but in its mysteriousness is the very thing that sets it apart from both craft and creativity.

On my own journey, despite having detected some spirited whispers here and there, I have decided to focus on learning to work for the moment with creativity, weaving it into everything I do and exploring its potential through the - sometimes awkward - development of craft. I find that opening myself to creativity improves my relationships, helps me find more fulfilling work and generally makes me a happier person. So far no downside.

But I still hold out a small hope. I hope that at least once in my lifetime I will be lucky enough for a spirit to find me a useful vehicle through which to become a piece of Art, and that if that happens, I will have the courage to give myself to the love affair. If it happens more than once I will consider myself truly blessed.

The relationship between Art and the spiritual is a rich area of exploration, which I won't explore in this post but may more in the future. If you have opinions on these subjects, please let me know as I would love to explore these things in community and discussion with other explorers, following their own paths.

Credits:
Pear: Oil on canvas by RozArt on Etsy
Wine Labels: Marketing pic for Tall Horse Wine (Yes, those are giraffes. No, I've never tried this wine.)
Artist: Sergio Olivos in the studio he shares with his artist wife, Claudia.
Writer: Elizabeth Gilbert, Author of Eat, Pray, Love

My husband and son recently took a trip to Europe. They had a wonderful time, as did I, truth be told; but still, I missed them. I went on with my life, but part of me was 'on hold,' waiting for them to return. My kids are still at home, so my husband and sons (all of whom were away the same week!) are still the center of my universe. We are approaching the emptying of the nest - still two years away - and I know this feeling will have to evolve and change into something else, a joy when we meet instead of a weight when we are parted. We will do fine. Busy lives and good relations with our children will smooth the way, but I can feel the change beginning.

While they were gone I saw a moon that spoke to me. I did not understand why "this" moon so moved me in the grocery store parking lot, but out poured this haiku (and I don't usually 'think' in haiku!). When they returned, I knew why I'd been inspired by that particular moon when my husband showed me this picture he took.




Moonsliver hangs. Suspended

Heavy. Over me.

Poised. Still. Unable to fall.




Photocredit: my husband in St. Malo, France.

The romantic me likes to think my poem and his picture were the same night. Whether they were or not is irrelevant. It's the thought that counts.

We were thousands of miles from home, living out of a suitcase and beginning to tire of the sun and water and tours; I decided to go stone hunting. I chose to hunt down a bead store in Honolulu that looked on Google Maps as though it was within walking distance. I wanted to find treasure buried in the environs of Pearl Harbor, where WWII memories and working Navy yards have pushed out the real pearl hunters, and so I packed up my backpack with essentials, including my credit card and cell phone, and parted from the family.

As I struck out from my Waikiki posh abode, lush with koi ponds under unHawaiian wedding chapels and water splashing artfully over precision-placed lava rocks into swimming pools full of noisy children and their parents sucking rum drinks, I headed over the arching bridge towards the less touristed part of town. Before I even exited my temporary home, I was struck with a noxious odor. My nose automatically wrinkled into a little snort right before I heard the plea, "Do you have a quarter for something to eat?" The vision of rumpled black cloth over thin bones came and went before I fully realized that just behind the concrete pillar of the bridge I had crossed lay a homeless man. I was a little disoriented, cars rushing everywhere and no street signs and the homeless man reeked. Feeling uncomfortable and beginning to wonder if I was lost, my charitable nature contracted and I'm ashamed to say I kept walking.
I was beside an expressway between rushing, noisy, smelly, oily vehicular motion and walls of concrete that ran horizontally.along parking lots, shopping malls and office buildings. These were the backs of places I knew – Starbucks and Borders, Crazy Shirts and Subway, Hair Salons – but they were inaccessible to me because I had come to the rear side where there were no doors. I wasn’t homeless, but this was not my home; Gripping my backpack I thought of my cell phone but I wasn’t giving up; I wanted my treasures. So on I walked on until I was sweaty and my feet hurt and I stopped to get out my map at a crosswalk where a nice young Japanese tourist was also lost. He wasn’t homeless either but he was clearly not at home, and we were unable to help each other - me not speaking Japanese and he not speaking “Engrish”. We shared a smile of encouragement instead.
Determined, I continued into the tropical concrete rim of Honolulu until I reached the road I was looking for and followed the street numbers to the dingiest little strip mall I'd seen yet. Up the stairs of the 60's era, flat-roofted, steel gray concrete brick structure I trudged to find a barren concrete courtyard that reminded me of out-of-the-way places I'd visited in Latin America. Though I’m sure Virginia has equally run-down malls, at that moment I looked on the dumpy little place, I truly felt far from home.
But there was my bead store!!

I'd done it! I'd found my grail! It was bright inside and so I entered air conditioned paradise. Friendly propritors met me and ushered me into a little treasure chest where I found more beautiful stones than I have available to me at home. Appetite and Imperial Topaz. Carved Pink Tourmaline and Mossy Agate. I found the tiny gold seed beads I've been seeking and some cute little sterling silver "rice" spacers. Not so many pearls I couldn't get elsewhere but I was so delighted with my finds that I stayed too long and spent too much. Treasure acquired, I reluctantly headed out into the sunset along the expressway for my trudge back to the paradise most people come to see.
   
I took the ocean park side of the rushing trafficked road back and even though my ankles were swollen (I totally wore the wrong sandals) my heart was light. I'd found my treasures, I knew the way back and my adventure had taken me into the real places where people who have homes here go. I passed many homeless hovels in the park, but no one was home for me to give a handout to. Unlike homeless people at home, these people acted more like these compilations of carefully arranged trash were really their homes, leaving them to go out and about in the balmy evening air.

I walked past the garbage containers for the yacht club and the sludge backup in the canals which would return me to the tall concrete manmade cliffs with busy elevators. Approaching the arching bridge I was ready to help the homeless man, but to my disappointment I realized I was four lanes separated from him – being on the ocean side of the expressway this time – and once more helpless to help. My heart in the right place at least, I walked on aching happy feet back to our manufactured jungle hotel, complete with fake waterfalls and tiki torches where my children were ready for dinner. I was satisfying with my hunt for this day; I had wondered off the beaten path, acquired my treasures and found my way back home.
After more adventures in the Islands, our family has agreed that we won't visit Waikiki again, preferring our temporary homes to be somewhat less precisely arranged and our treasures to be a little harder to find than on Google Maps (though it's getting tough to find anything NOT on Google Maps). The following week we moved on to Kauai and were much more at home in our suitcases. More on that later.

All my life I've had secret lives, some so secret I only recently found them at all. I've lived them without knowing it by alternately listening and ignoring the voices in my head. Sometimes I wrote down what they said and interesting things came out. More often I put away the groceries, met the deadline or quietly pushed them back into silence, which became louder all the time.

I don't want to try to find the silence any more. It's too hard.

I want to learn to live out loud, to integrate the voices which express themselves in poetry, flowing ramblings like this and pretty stones arranged to delight me.

Why the stones? I don't know, but my subconscious brings me back to them over and over again. Collecting them on beaches. Making jewelry. Imagining some of the voices as little elves in the mine of my mind, plinking away on some gem of an idea or another.

Living out loud doesn't mean being noisy or obnoxious. It means living. And expressing. And sharing.

I hope you'll join me on this new practice of mine, to live out loud. Ihope over time it becomes more integrated and if there's a theme inhere, it becomes apparent.

Namaste.

PostScript a few months later:  I'm still figuring this out, but my decision to speak more opening about things inside me is having ramifications all through my life. Ramifications that I like and that are helping me grow. I think most of it you can "see" through my posts on Armchair Psychology. It's an evolving journey, but I am finding that I am not alone. That there are others who find enlightenment and healing through speaking their stories, truth, perspective and mind. Thus, I think it's a universal reality that through expressing ourselves we grow into ourselves. If you are reading this, I invite you to ask yourself what truths are left unspoken and to explore them out loud. Find a safe place and speak.

Imaginings are the leaves of time that thrive and then fall
to litter the walkspaces and thoroughfares of places others call home.

Why would you imagine except to live more fully the life that waits
somewhere beyond your perception, somewhere others would not call 'real'?

'Imagine something for me', you say, and
I see cold places that are the chill in this morning's air,
 I feel the echo of passion where weariness now stirs and
I sense death in the life throbbing around me.

'Imagine yourself,' you say, and
the moon swirls into view, full and cold
and powerful.

Still in the sky, I see it imagining me as it slips
away into the light of day.

StoneTosser (c) 2006

Photo Credit: My son on his Peru trip in 2009.