Briny Pleasures

I should be in bed.  At a minimum, I should be getting ready for bed.  But my brain will not slow down enough this evening.   Tonight I'm not writing about "current events" in my life or the lives of those I love.  Nope.  My brain is on another track this evening.  

Tonight, the writing life is under consideration.  There is a man I "met" on Facebook, a friend of one of my former professors, who is caring for his two elderly parents (think incontinence, dementia and wheelchairs) by himself.  Oh, and editing a non-fiction journal.  And writing a nonfiction book about eldercare.   He is simply impressive. I'm tremendously impressed by writers who write around, or perhaps the better word is through, distractions, who are able to write despite the tentacled fingers of life's demands tugging at them.  Of course we all have distractions, but there are some - such as sick, demanding, needy and helpless parents - that anyone must admit are more urgent than the demand to sit at a keyboard and write. 

Balancing real and perceived urgency - that is perhaps what I'm fascinated by these days.  The truth is that the satisfactions and rewards of writing are so distant when one is sitting at that keyboard.  My pleasure in the acts of creation and revision and reimagining - it is real.  But achieving that is dependent upon the ability to be immersed, even if only for brief periods, in the world of language and imagination.  It is a briny sharp pleasure to consider sounds and careful selection of words, searching for the word with the precise shade of meaning that is needed.  It is a kind of pleasure to consider the rhythms of language and construction of sentences, to weave with words, to paint with images and to make the imagined come alive and become real for the reader. 

It is difficult for my writing time to compete against the simpler exchanges of time for money, time for joy, time for the healthy glow of sweat from a workout.  We have to work through balancing those exchanges - writing competes because it is as important as those things.   As an artist, one must also believe that the work matters as much as the other worldly demands.   As a result, making time to write is, if you are a writer, an imperative.  Good.  Done and done.  Next challenge, please. 

Ah, but as with any good plot, what happens when we complicate this question further?  What if our writer has not one but three imperatives to juggle?  What if some of the imperatives are practical, such as money to pay the mortgage, and some feel like a commitment that cannot be breached?  Some writers would find a way to protect their writing time at all costs.  I admire them, but I am apparently not among them.  My writing time feeds my soul and keeps me centered and makes me feel as though my life has not jumped the rails entirely, and yet when my life's plot becomes more complicated, I let that time slip through my fingers, eaten up by the other things that tug more insistently, that I perceive to have greater urgency. 

As I've written before in these posts - my greatest difficulty is accepting that I can't do everything I want to do.  Our minutes and hours are actually finite.  Very annoying.  And somehow it is related, though I don't have words for it yet, this persistent thought that the element of urgency must be the strangest element of living with and caring for someone who is sick, or caring for an infant or a dependent parent.  Everything that they need is more urgent than your own needs.  It's hard to remember your own needs, let alone continue to prioritize something as ephemeral as writing prose.  

No answers this evening, only questions that I'm tossing out into the night air.  I miss my writing self, and for the first time in a long time, I am actually afraid I won't be able to find her again.  I'm pretty sure she's around somewhere.  She's often found putting together crazy playlists in iTunes, or sitting in the garden smelling green and blossoms and searching her brain for a better way to describe the surprising lemon-sweet lush scent of a rose.  If you see her, kick her ass and send her home.  I have work to do.

Best to all who happen this way. 

~plk

Brushing off the Dust

My sister sent me an email several months ago.  When I read it, I smiled.  Ruefully.  She wanted to let me know that she would feel better about me, worry less about me, if she knew I had begun writing again. 

A few weeks later, one of my former students posed a question on his Facebook page that caught at my heart a little.  The question was:  is it more difficult to be a writer, or to be a writer who is not writing?  I replied that being a writer who was not writing was awful, and Toby asked me to clarify.  It took me a while to reply, and when I did, I did so carefully.  My reply was this:

Hey Toby - so I set this in my "tell Toby the truth" file, and am just now back here.

Yes - it is awful. It is always awful to be living in a way that does not align with your true self. I know that much of life is adjusting to what we cannot have, living happily in spite of that. But failing to do that which feeds your soul will break your heart in the thousand small ways that are hardest to repair.

So we have to find a way to balance the life-list of musts (pay the bills, etc) with the heart-list of musts (love, find things to marvel at in the world...and write).

So says the writer who is trying like hell to do just exactly that.

As with all things, babysteps.  My blog entries are an indication of my engagement with language and words - when they halt it is nearly certain I have stopped writing altogether.  So.  Apparently I am back to the keyboard with some intention.  And a lot of current material.  Ahem.

I'm taking a mindfulness meditation course at the Y led by a woman from the Cancer Treatment Center.  She repeats this sentence often, "Don't pull away but always go forward, toward the feelings and experiences you are tempted to avoid--and live fully."   Difficult advice these days, but necessary. 

Face a fear, embrace something you love and be gentle with yourself.

~ plk

No Replays

Lately it seems that using the word "passes" in reference to what happens with time is just a little too wimpy for my tastes.  The word "spend" is accurate, but it doesn't seem to capture the urgency or permanency of the act.  Sometimes our involvement with time elapsing is passive, those days or hours we allow to slip past us like river water over a stone.  And sometimes we want to hold the moments tightly, to live each breath.  In either case, though, we are well served to remember that this moment is never coming back.  We've spent it, and not in the American sense of putting it on a credit card to deal with later.  No, it's gone.  Truly gone.  And we can't save them up, the moments and hours and years.  Once gone, they are in the past.  Historical.  This is not being written to urge readers to become anxious minute-minders.  No, minding minutes in anxiety is precisely the behavior we need to avoid. 

I'm writing it because I need to hold tightly to the moment in every moment.  Live it fully, then let it go.  Choose wisely whenever I can, and if my choices seem bounded by obligation - choose to live fully in those moments, too, because even choosing to meet obligations is a choice.  I know, I know...but it is.  We choose to meet our obligations, or not to meet them, because we find joy in the completion of those things or because we do not like the consequences.  Being conscious of that choice gives me peace even in madness. 

Hmmm.  Speakng of madness, my job is still quite mad.  The way that I feel on Monday mornings is a very good barometer for how well I'm finding balance in my life.  Let us merely say that this Monday morning felt a little bumpy, but I chose to put on a smile and sally forth.  Yay, me.

My friend Ms. Mo and I visited a fabric store yesterday.  I was looking for harem pant patterns and fabric, because a seamstress I met through my troupe is going to make the pants for a performance in a couple of weeks.  After leaving the store, we stood in the parking lot and talked for a long while, standing in bright fall sunshine on a glorious afternoon with the Boise foothills arcing in golden fall tones across our view.  I spent those minutes in that parking lot wisely.  We could have parted and hurried back to our lives when we left the store.  We could have multitasked and team grocery shopped, which might have been fun.  But what we did was stand in a parking lot in glorious sunshine and enjoy the women we are becoming, have become. 

There is something else I have been thinking about, and it seems related to this understanding that time is finite, minutes all count, our days are our own but the only one we are guaranteed is today.  This other idea is that all of the very best people I know are hard on themselves.  Be gentle with yourself, and try hard to stop judging every past mistake, reliving every wrong turn or missed chance, replaying every bobbled moment.  It's not helpful.  Those moments are in the past, and the only benefit we gain from reliving them is to learn from them.  Don't sacrifice your precious today-minutes, your life-minutes, in homage to your history. 

There is more, there is always more, but for today I think this is enough.

~ plk

Fall Away Slowly

I'm back. Pink cheeked since it's been so long.

It's going to be a good weekend. I am holding tight to weekends and free hours and minutes to find solace these days. It's not the best way to live, but it's what I have just now. I'm working on a story revision to send to the Missouri Review contest, which closes on October 1. It's rough going, and slow, and I intend to do it anyway.

This was a good week for finding my rhythm again. I attended a party where there were writers, and where people who love writing talked about why literature and the arts matter. I was reminded of how smart and sharp and lovely the writers I've known often are. How they sparkle, nearly.

I've also been belly dancing quite a lot this week, preparing for a relaxed show at a local festival this weekend. We've added a new dance. Lots of spinning, my first experience with a veil, a very high potential for either mishap or dizziness. So we practiced two hours on Saturday, two hours on Wednesday, and I spent an hour tonight in the quiet dark of my backyard with my iPod clipped to my tank top, spinning to the strains of Tien Afto, the iPod casting an odd glowing light about my face and the shine of the veil's gold edge catching light. It's hard to feel anything but relaxed when you are concentrating on step-together-step, glide.... or on not tripping while spinning. The calm voice of our leader in my head reminds me how I value those who make me feel at ease, calm. Usually these people are those who are centered, and I gravitate to them, am drawn to them.

My bellydance instructor, despite her energy, is calmly centered, as are most of my favorite coworkers. When given enough space and time to breathe, I am very calm and centered. It's one of my favorite compliments of all time, that "you are at once centered and full of life, joy." It was a compliment that made me blush, and that felt like a compliment about something in me that truly matters. I'm not feeling that. Not now.

Just now, I can find that calm only in snippets. There are big questions in my head, and I know because I feel that hot press of urgency against my throat that I should make only tiny decisions. Only small decisions in moments of tension, saving large ones for a time when breath comes easy. I'm not in the right frame of mind to make big sweeping ones. Small. Unhurried. Tomorrow's decision is which costume pieces I'll wear, and how to get myself to the performance (it's at a street fair). It's enough.

Dancing out in the grass, breathing the night air and stretching after each run-through, i was thinking about all the nights I have not spent standing in night air, a bit sweaty from moving in rhythm and in joy. Not thinking with bitterness, or regret, but with clear eyes. We decide every day how to spend our lives. It's my theme.

Best to all who happen this way!

~plk

The Heart Wants What it Wants

Today I'm going to start running again, after three weeks of not running. I expect it will be painful. Yay. Several of the people who love me best have asked why I'm pressing myself in this particular way. If it is so difficult, why do it? And I've pondered that. Because I want to, that's the best answer I have. It has me thinking, though.

The heart wants what it wants, and will not be denied.

I don't know the origin of this phrase, and I despise Woody Allen for using it to defend his attraction to his step-daughter, because I think the phrase is not about taking what you want, but about acknowledging your desire, and to my ear it also implies that pretending you do not desire something does not change what you feel in your heart, or your gut. I believe in desire, in the hunger for something outside ourselves to feel pleasure, or to connect with a piece of art, or to meet some other soul in this big universe who for some shiny brief moment of perfection feels what you feel. That spark of connection sustains. It is the moment of sexual spark, certainly. But it is also the moment when you exchange glances with a person who is looking at an ocean vista, or a child who is perfectly joyful, or a painting - and knowing instantly that they see what you see. It is the moment, as a writer, when a reader feels the world on your page and is moved by it.

To me, the exquisite pleasure of desire is not always about desire fulfilled. I am, after all, a recovering Catholic. Maybe it is because I know and love people who have faced struggles to find their happiness. Or, as my friend Ms. Mo often says, we are governed by our Calvinist impulses in a world that has gone mad for cheaper pleasures. In any case, to me the sharp pleasure of desire is about the cleansing, clarifying and sense-honing experience of wanting something. Appreciating the object of my desire, be it person, place, object or experience. Desire is one of the truest, most pure expressions of life. Breath-catching, heart-pounding, pulse-raising desire. Or, more simply, the hunger for a lovely meal, the energy that fuels us up a long hill so that we can see the view awaiting our efforts. I want. I want, want, want. I want is the opposite of bored disinterest, or of depression. It is part of what makes the knocked-down person stand right the hell up again and shake it off. I want.

Clinical depression robs a person of desire. I see commercials for the drugs to combat depression and hear their voiceover script "...who does depression hurt? Everyone." I hate those commercials, too. Fearmongering. Bah. But it is true that the reach of depression, the circle of it, is bigger than the person who is depressed. "Can't care..." that is the phrase that I "hear" in the voices and thoughts of those I love who fight depression. It's that loss of vital hunger for experience that, to me, makes it difficult for those who are defined by fiery desire and those who struggle with depression to remain connected to one another. When we can keep that in mind, it is easier to separate the person from the condition. It is not that Johnny can't care, it is that the depression makes him think he can't care. Depression is a soul-robbing, joy-stealing thing. I hate it, and I fight to understand it, and I want badly to wave my princessy wand and banish it from my world.

But I can't find the princessy wand. I think it is behind my bookcase.

Thus, in the absence of the wand, I'm guarding all my desires with huge energy. I want to dance in the dark. I want to read and write stories and essays and books that connect me to the world I know. I want to see new sights, and taste new things, and drink wine in places I've never been. I want to meet people I don't yet know, and spend moments with people I know and love. I want to not take dreams off my list.

So, fueled by my delightful breakfast smoothy and coated in sunblock, I'm off to revisit week three or four of the C25K plan, and get back on track with it.

Be well!

~plk

No Surprise

Sometimes I am amazed by how easily we let things that matter to us slip through our fingers, lose priority. This is not a revelation. It is not even the first time I've written about it here. Yet there are moments when the realization is so bright and sharp that it feels new, and surprising, and cutting. I've not been writing. It's not a surprise. One can't work 80 hours a week, manage to do any sort of self care AND write well. Or at all. I'm sick to death of the reasons why, though. It's simple - I am just not making it a priority. I'm in a pact with a coworker to try to work less, to stake out a few nights a week where we do not work, and to try and free time for other things. The things that matter.

My trip to see my family was filled with lots of good moments. I met my grand-nephew (CUTE, and a teensy bit spoiled!), hugged everyone, laughed a lot, floated in the surf and generally enjoyed myself beach-style. When you show up, you're in the moment. That was my big learning. I didn't miss the announcement of the newest addition to the family - Becky and Luke are going to have a baby! I didn't miss the rap-star showdown between Sexy Mike and J-man. I didn't miss the chance to teach Drew how to cut an onion. I didn't miss a bunch of moments I'd otherwise have missed...and that makes me happy.

Airports can be fun. My flight home was marked by a 5 hour layover in Atlanta, where I met servicemen just home from Iraq, and talked with them about their families and a teeny bit about their experiences. I met a couple on their way to adopt a baby in Guatemala and shared their excitement over carryons crammed with baby stuff. And I watched goodbyes - some tearful, some quick and quiet. I've never been any good at goodbye. I avoid the wrench of emotion whenever I can. And as I get older, I realize that this is something I'm getting worse at. I'm ever more aware, as I go in for the goodbye clinch, of how long it will likely be before I see this person I love again. But I'm also more grateful for moments shared, and for the love that abides across long distances.

This week I've been thinking about the lives we imagine for ourselves, and the lives we lead, and how often those lives do not really resemble one another. It's my firm belief that happiness comes from loving the life you are in, and not mourning the imagined life you did not have. Sometimes that is damned difficult. Often it is. It is sometimes easier to give up the big dreams than the small ones, the ones you hold tightest. But this week I've also been thinking about the love of parents for children - and have been considering how much more difficult it seems to be to give up the dreamed-of life for a child and celebrate the life they actually have. But you can't do both - you can't celebrate the moment that is and mourn the moment that is not without sacrificing some joy. I often think of what my parents would see in my life, and what they would either celebrate, scold or mourn in my choices. Not in a maudlin or sad way, simply in a way to connect with their memories (and sometimes to motivate myself to make a damned decision!). I can't know yet whether my life will remain childless, but I know that my wisdom about parenting is deepened by watching the difficult choices of the parents I know. My wisdom about the human heart, and what keeps me believing in people is deepened, too.

The sun is setting in a colorful show on the other side of "my" golf course, and the air is cooling in our city on the edge of the desert. I'm going to have a glass of wine on my deck, and maybe dance in the grass to my iPod.

Celebrate something small this week. Please.

~ patti

Choices, Decisions and Considerations

I have a great cup of coffee, have stretched the soreness out of my knee and am planning a day of things I want to do and things I need to do. It's all good.

This week was an interesting one in several ways. After months of being very good at making exercise a priority, this week I only walked twice and danced once. And I felt sluggish and out of sorts as a result. But it made me consider the idea that everything is a choice. I know this, it's not a revelatory moment. Every day we choose a hundred times before we even leave the house. What to drink, whether to breakfast, whether to read the news or browse The Onion for humor, what to wear and with which shoes - a series of choices.

It occurs to me that some people, perhaps many people, often recognize those tiny decisions as "choice" but don't recognize that each day we are remaking our life decisions, too. We are all choosing, each one of us, every day that we remain in our job, our city, our house, our relationships, our routines. Routines, after all, are only a set of decisions that we made once and decided not to rethink. Habits are ingrained routines - but all habits began as choices. Maybe 'recognize' is the wrong word. Consider might be better. We tend to see the life decisions as done deals, and the fact is we can rethink and remake any one of them at almost any moment.

This means every single day I choose to be where I am, doing what I am doing. Even those things that feel compulsory are choices - it's just a question of accepting consequence. For me, a hyper-responsible woman living in a world that rewards that particular set of choices with an ever increasing set of responsibilities, this is a very clarifying idea. As my friend Ms. Mo says, some people have heavier donkey burdens to bear. I think a corollary to that is the fact that some people make choices that add weight, and sometimes those choices are not recognized as choices.

Choice is freedom, and freedom is good.

Today I'm choosing to take a walk, work on some domestica and errands, maybe plant some flowers, practice my bellydance and read.

Be well!

~ plk

Checking In

If you're reading this, I want to thank you for checking in when I've been so long absent. These posts give me balance when I need it, so I'm going to try, again, to keep making them.

You know what makes me impatient? (That was rhetorical, no need to post a list....I'm actually a very strange combination of very patient and rather impatient.) People who say they are bored. This makes me impatient. Seriously - I have always had a hundred ways I wanted to spend each day, all vying for my attention and focus. I have a hundred stories I'd like to write, a hundred books I'd like to read, a hundred places I'd like to roadtrip, a hundred meals I'd like to prepare, a hundred (okay a dozen or two) people I'd like to spend the day with, a hundred hikes...

Please. Bored? Get out of my sight. So, given that, here is what makes me laugh, ruefully: I know how I need to fill my days to make my soul sing, I know how I need to structure my days if I ever hope to write prose worth reading, I know when I need to exercise to keep myself calm and focused and happy - and yet. Do I do these things? I do not. Instead, I let the world's clamor for my attention distract me from myself, and as a result I am less happy, less effective and less filled with the joy of a life being lived. Bah.

That's what is on my mind today. Babysteps to find that structure and focus are what I'm trying now. Wish me luck.

I apparently never posted the fact that I have braces. Hunh. Well, I do. I've had a gap forever, and it became crooked....and so now I have braces because the very charming and smart orthodontist didn't pressure me, simply confronted me with logic and "the right thing to do..." language. Also he reads literature, so I was sold. And, honestly, he and his office manager are bright spots of warmth and normalcy in the crazy life I've been leading of late. So while I dislike the pain and absolutely LONG to bite into something that isn't cut into small pieces, I'm going to be pleased with the result and I'm going to count the opportunity to meet the good doctor and the lovely Michelle among the gains for the pain.

My garden is beginning to take my energy and time again - and the lack of effort I put in last summer and fall is showing in the lackluster look this spring. I'd planned to hit the dirt this weekend and work a billion pounds of compost into the beds, but instead it rained and instead I cleaned and organized indoors.

I'm avoiding the topic of work. Let us simply say that it is too large a proportion of my life at the moment. And I work with fabulous people who are in the same boat, and we are all trying to find a way to balance it. I think we will.

I'm teaching on Monday nights this semester, and while that seemed great when I first saw the schedule, I've had a difficult time because so many of our university holidays are on Monday. We lost several weeks of class, so the class has been in a bit of a makeup mode all semester. Only a few more weeks and we'll see how they do! But teaching reminds me to read my favorite stories. When I do that, I remember why it is that a story like Dubus' "A Father's Story" is so important in the world.

The Couch to 5K plan was going swimmingly until my knee began to bother me, and that led me to the foot doctor/knee doctor, who concluded that I have either an overdeveloped quadricep or an underdeveloped hamstring from biking so much. Blahblahblah....net/net, the direction is to run VERY SLOWLY to build the hamstring. Argh. I hate running slowly. So much that I want to not bother and just go back to my walking routine. Except I am too stubborn. My bellydance class is now much more fun - we have more women, the sad/cranky/angry woman left the group and a bunch of fun and energetic new women joined, and it is just a lot more fun now. I missed class ONCE, and came back to news that "we" might be performing at an event in July. Now....I've always said I wouldn't perform, this is just for fun, just for me, just to make myself at least look with kindness on my abdomen. But it has turned into something else, I think. It's the first "group" I've been a part of that was not about debate, speech, drama or singing. It's a performance where none of my verbal skills or IQ points matters a bit. It is a celebration of women's bodies and of movement. And in some ways this is the same impulse making me want to run a 5K race, or train for a sprint triathlon - I want to test myself in a different way. So, maybe I will do it. We'll see.

Miss Allison, if you read this please know that I'm thinking of you and that I wish I'd thrown caution to the wind and bought the damned ticket. I SO wish I could hug you on your day.

It is spring, and we are in the season of unfettered growth, of plants bursting nearly fully formed from the soil. Harness some of that energy!

Let the priorities rise.

~patti

Let the Priorities Rise

Today as I was running my baby-steps-but-someday-a-5k-will-be-possible workout, I found myself quite happy. It has been a rough couple of weeks, and I still have a lot of backed up tasks and to-do's on my plate, but as is usually true in such times the important things are small and physical and real.

Let the priorities rise. That's my mantra this week, and for the next several.

A friend of mine died this week. Suzie was a friend I'd made at work a number of years ago, a friendship complicated by the heightened tensions of a workplace that was very psychologically unhealthy, and by my role as her boss. Until recently, she and I had not spoken for years, not since I left that job and she found that her loyalties were divided (inappropriately, and I feel partially responsible for that) because of the circumstances around my leaving. It was an ugly time, and it was not a time I'm proud of. But we are humans who screw up, and leaving that job was one of the best things that has happened to me as a person - I learned so much about myself, and it freed me to realign my goals and realize several of them.

But I digress. Two weeks ago, after Suzie received her final diagnosis from her doctor, she phoned. I returned her call, and as easily as we had halted our friendship, we resumed it. There were apologies, and tears, and laughter. The next night I went to see her, and she was so sick - but her eyes were the same huge pools of blue and her laugh was as easy as ever. She told me her stories of that workplace I'd left, and they were predictably maddening. She told me her plans for her service, in some detail. She lit up like a lantern when she described her grandchild. And now, it's days later and she is gone. Quietly, in her sleep. She was 57.

Do you ever feel the universe is trying to tell you something - insistently? Do you ever feel that you are stubborn for not listening, or stupid for not obeying, or dense for not understanding? Do you ever wonder if all the time we spend trying to figure out the connections, the message, the lesson, would be better spent simply picking up the phone and reconnecting with people we've let slip from our lives?

As is my wont these days, all of the moments that are difficult i am also finding clarifying. There is clarity in seeing pettiness, in recognizing mistakes I've made, in opening myself to the reality that this life is the only one we're assured of.

Be well, and let the priorities rise in your own lives.

~ patti

Living Well

I've missed writing these. My commitments are excessive, and I need to make this a priority anyway.

On Valentine's Day, we lost someone unexpectedly. Tom Otto, my brother in law, died unexpectedly while visiting Arkansas. His funeral was last Tuesday, and it still seems surreal to imagine him gone. I spoke with Denise, his wife, on Saturday, and in her voice I could hear how unreal it still feels, despite the fact that she is now home. She was telling me of several other calamities, and one other death, and we both laughed a bit ruefully - it's enough, already. Tom's humor and his stubbornness, his chuckle and his wry humor when dealing with things that frustrated him, those are the things I will remember. His smile was contagious. He lived well and raised a beautiful daughter who will make him proud forever. He leaves a big hole, and the world a better place for his having passed through it. And though I know the adult in me made the right decision in not racing to Arkansas for a whirlwind trip, I wish heartily that I could hug Denise, and Katie. Denise in a crisis reminded me of the many strong, capable, get-it-done women I love so much. The ones who just take care of business and then make potato salad for 30, because it needs done.

There are two things that I want to write about tonight, thinking of this. One is that we never know when we will be taken, and so we all need to live without regrets, and especially without delay. Do not delay your life until it is a more convenient time, a "better time" - do it now. Do it now, not out of fear that you may not have the chance, but out of pure hungry desire to live every day fully. Not out of fear, though. Never from fear. Follow your heart, make space for what makes your heart sing. Don't wait for the world to arrange itself so that you can, just make it happen.

The other thing I want to write about is the act of facing a fear. I've been on a bit of a journey the last few years, on a mission to face down the things that I avoid out of fear. Most of those things, in my little head, are physical. I've long trusted my brain, my ability to speak well and easily, to argue effectively, to make others laugh, to solve difficult problems. My fears are around physical things - dancing "with intention" as I do when I bellydance is one fear I'm facing. It is also mixed up with the fear of being judged for the way I look. And another is running. I'm all good with hiking, walking, biking and now with bellydancing (though NOT yet with performing). But running...it was off my list. I was too uhm...curvy. Too heavy and too curvy and my knee might get hurt and I'm not the athletic one and....yeah.

So when I realized my stock statement about running ("I'm just not built for it.") was actually a copout, since I have never actually tried to run, I decided it had to go on the blasted list. Dammit. So I started this program called the Couch to 5K. I'm not a couch person. I've been walking 3.5-4 miles a day most days since...a long time. But this program is very gradual. It mixes running segments with walking segments, gradually increasing the time you spend running until, by the end of the 9th week, you are running 5K, or 30 minutes. Yay! I'm not going to make it in 9 weeks, let's just get comfy with that reality right now. I'm running, though. A tiny bit, but I didn't give up even when my knees hurt and I really wanted to give up. So I'm on my third iteration of week 1, and I think by next Saturday I'll be ready for Week 2. It turns out I need more walking and much more stretching before the walking/running segments.

How is this important enough to be in the same post as losing Tom? Easy - this is one less missed opportunity on my lifebook, and one less fear standing between me and the clarity I'm trying to find.

Be well, and make some space this week to let your heart sing.

~patti

Choose

It's snowing in Boise! We had a little skiff of snow yesterday when I went out for my walk, just enough to blow about a little. But when I was a block from home it began snowing more heavily, and soon I was abominable snow Patti. I stopped every half-mile or so to brush off the flakes and shake out my hair, and it was very smile-worthy. And I walked 8000 steps, which is a bit over 4 miles for me. Today the snow is really falling, we have accumulation and the world is frosted in white. Sigh.

Yes....I have a step counter. I'm not sure I mentioned that here. I'm wearing this bodybugg thing that measures your calorie burn and steps (which for the most part is not all that effective for me). The very accurate step counter IS motivating.

So. On the deck at the moment is my Christmas tree. It is a fake. I'm mildly morally opposed to fake Christmas trees, but I'm also very very aware of not pushing myself too hard. As a result, I went Christmas tree shopping yesterday, and came home not with the fresh smelling fir that I normally select, but with an artificial, pre-lit fir in a big box. I was trying to wrestle the damned thing into my Explorer in the parking lot when a nice guy nearby came and saved me. Probably he was laughing on the inside, but he was just plain helpful on the outside. And that experience made me smile, too.

Don't overcommit. That is my current motto. Choose. It's hard to do that everywhere, maybe hardest to do at work. At work there are so many competing needs, and I am relatively certain that those needs would not be equally prioritized by everyone who might want to vote. But...I still need to choose. And I am. In my personal life, choosing is clearer, if I stay mindful of the fact that a choice exists. Fancy dinner, or take that time to exercise? Read a book or watch a movie? Decorate for Christmas, or not? It is amazing how the awareness of choice calms me. Amazing.

My bellydance classes are now at the studio. We are putting together step combinations, not so much a scripted dance (though that will come, I am told) but step combinations that work. It's so very much fun. I find myself dancing all the time now, hearing the correct rhythm pattern in a song on my iPod and dancing - three-quarter shimmy to Melissa Etheridge, or Bryan Adams, or....well, almost anything. It is goooood.

But I digress. The studio classes are smaller, and that means more chitchat with the other dancers. The woman who knocked me down last week is 28, it turns out. She was surprised by my age, and the other (supertense!) woman standing nearby said "you don't have kids - and anyone who doesn't have kids has no idea how hard life can be." My eyebrows hit my hairline, and I opened my mouth but did not say anything. Supertense woman is an interesting case. She is in her 40's, married, very tense and her parents buy her things that she shows us - like her new Cadillac SUV. She is...unhappy. Visually, clearly and in every line of her body unhappy.

Her comment reminded me of a Thanksgiving I once spent with my friend Carol, her mother and her now-ex husband. I was in a great mood, and I was making everyone laugh. He was laughing as hard as anyone, but at some point he said - "only someone who is deeply unhappy can be as funny as you are." And I felt defensive, and then I felt sad for him. The truth is something else, I think. Difficult things happen to you, and you can choose to stretch your schema a bit. You can either shift your whole "potential for happiness" range down, to allow for the new bad thing that has happened to fit in your range, or you can stretch your range. In other words, if something that bad can happen, there must be an even higher high that can happen. That is what I believe. I think my earliest life, with parents who truly believed I could do anything (except sports!) and who made me believe it, too - that set me up to be the person I am. And, too, I am of the opinion that the experience of loss or hurt or pain can give you a fresh and sharp perspective on what is at risk, what you should celebrate having in your life. Nothing is permanent, everything changes. That hurts, and at the very same instant it reveals opportunity and joy in every tiny shift.

So, to that cranky now-ex-husband I say - I'm sorry that you could not believe sadness could transform someone into having a greater capacity for pure joy. To supertense woman I say - stretch a little and own some of your unhappiness, so that you can change it. To the charming 28-year-old-with-THREE-left feet I say - life will send you dificult things, deal with them and let them sharpen your appreciation of good things. And to the universe? I'm thankful that my experiences have made me perhaps sometimes-tired, but not bitter. I'm grateful that somehow, despite everything, the way I look seems to suggest to others that I've led a life without pain or loss.

So while it has been a very rough year for everyone, I am very very lucky in many ways. So while I'm decorating my well-lit and unscented Christmas tree, I'll light a "glistening snow" candle and practice some threequarter shimmies to Celtic harp music. I'll wish I could hug the people I love who are far away, and bake them brown sugar shortbread cookies, or other buttery delights. I'll send them good thoughts.

Hug 'em if you've got 'em. :)

~ patti

Clearing the Fog

Four signs that your life needs to be reordered:

• You feel as though your life is seriously out of sorts, but you can't find even an evening, or an afternoon, to sort it.
• The bookshelf has a stack of unread and promising titles, and you literally cannot choose one.
• You find yourself so frustrated that you well up.
• You can't remember the last time you didn't feel behind. Very behind.

This was a week that had many many many moments of frustration at work. And...I'm quite sick and tired of work dominating my waking hours and my thoughts. So I'm not going to write about it here.

What was important about this week? I accepted a few things that I cannot change. I made time to walk, and made moving my body a priority. I danced, and it was fabulous, and bought music for my Ipod so I can dance with abandon wherever I might be, whenever I care to. My black boots that were once too tight are now not. Yay. My shimmies are faster and more sure, and my egyptian basic steps are snappppy now that the swivel feels easy. Yay.

Last weekend I watched the Kurosawa film "Ran" - it's very interesting. It's a retelling of King Lear, in Japan, with amazing costumes and complicated, bloody battle scenes...and quieter, more chilling scenes of a scheming woman who brings the brothers to their deaths. The film feels long, but certainly worth the investment of minutes. What I am still thinking about, a week later, is the intense and impressive way that Kurosawa used colors - the scenes are saturated with the colors of the landscape, the uniforms of the armies, the blood of the fallen.

This week I went to the orthodontist to have him do impressions of my teeth. I have this gap, see. And of course, he sees other issues, and he wants to make my mouth perfect. Which would require two years of braces, probably. Ehh. I made him laugh (he reads literature! I quizzed him!) and by the end of the appointment he agreed that he would give me not two quotes/treatment options, but three. The right way, the maybe not so perfect but still clinically pretty great way, and "a twist and orthodontic bondo." See - I kind of like my gap. But I don't like that it has become crooked since one of my wisdom teeth was extracted. It should be interesting, both hearing the options and whether I go for it or not.

Have you ever had someone thoughtlessly hurt your feelings, unintentionally, and had a flash of shame that YOU had certainly done that to someone else at some point? Something in my personality makes people feel comfortable enough with me to let down their guard, and let me just say, sometimes that's not all that great for ME. With some people, I'd like to see that guard stay up. High. Because the things that come out of their mouths make me like them less, or make me like me less, or make me like the reality of my life less - well, you see the pattern. For some reason, I do not always kick those people out of my life. Do I keep them around to remind me to be careful with the feelings of others? I truly do not know. But I'm not sure that it's a healthy habit.

It seems to me that my criteria for allowing people into my life is skewed, that I need to rethink the process I use to decide who will be invited into my life, to gift with my time and care. Basic "niceness" aside, these are essentially decisions about how we spend our lives. Those decisions should be active - people I choose to give my minutes should be selected, the way I once decided actively how to spend my days at work, and after. The people who only take, who remember to give only when prompted, who are too insecure or greedy to give until they get - they may be familiar personalities to me, but they are not good for me. Not at all.

The clarity of that realization was my gift this week. Something in the way Kurosawa aimed his camera, the unblinking and relentless view of truth - it reminded me that not looking is a decision we can't afford to make. Clearing the fog, recognizing the truly required and what only clamors to be so - that was my gift.

Have I mentioned that it was a brutal week?

This weekend is going to be one to recharge and regroup. Wish me luck!

~ patti

Nearly December

It is a gray November day in my corner of the world, cold but not frigid. Soon I need to drag my buttkus out and walk, but I'm enjoying taking a Saturday to do as I please. French press coffee, a novel, curled up in my still-feels-new study on a comfy chair with my spoiled rotten fluffball of a feline on my lap and quiet Celtic music on Itunes. Yay.

I finished readng the Ondaatje novel Divisadero this morning. It reminded me of some things. That fictional memories, to feel true, have to be about some small moment that surprises us and feel real, if inexplicable. Plot turns on big moments, but people are created in small ones on the page. I forget that, and remember it, and forget it again. My own natural voice is for the vivid small moments, my stories contructed around wafer-thin plots. I am picking apart the Ondaatje in my head, determining how he moved the story lines forward without having his plot obliterate the small lovely moments he renders.

It feels pretty fabulous to be thinking about plot. Whew.

It would have been nice to take the long weekend, but instead I worked yesterday and finished some things that I wanted to. Not as many as I would have liked. I'll likely do some work tonight, or possibly tomorrow. Here is the thing: there are not only too many priorities in my life (writing, working, household minutiae, working, dancing, weight loss....did I mention working?) but there are too many priorities within each category. The number of priorities I'm juggling in my job is becoming a source of almost-hilarity - or is that hysteria? But if I can nudge a few of them forward this weekend, maybe sometime soon I can hand a couple over to someone ELSE. Yay. Here is the other thing: if you are good at juggling priorities, it seems to me that someone is always willing to hand you a couple more. It's like watching a juggler with three balls in the air - don't you feel almost compelled to say, "can you add one more?!" There is something odd in that impulse, isn't there? Something like rubbernecking at an accident scene. And the truth is, only the juggler can say "nope, three's my limit."

Yes, I'm aware that I don't say "nope..." very often. So shoot me. Or give me a megaphone. :)

This year the holidays will be a season of reflection and celebration for many of us, with more of an emphasis on reflection than we often manage. That's my prediction, anyway. It seems to me that the world can't help but benefit from that. I was thinking this morning about the idea of writing as an act of hope, about the question of whether the work of writing stories is "important enough" to be a life calling. And then I read the Ondaatje, and remembered why I love books. He quotes Nietzsche. "We have art so that we shall not be destroyed by the truth." It is art's expression of hope, of shared experience, an empathetic connection across miles and ages and lives - that's the magic, for me. Anna, arguably the heroine of the novel, goes on to say that "A paragraph or an episode from another era will haunt us in the night, as the words of a stranger can."

I am not often haunted in the night. Some who know me best might say that I make myself too busy, drive myself too hard, so that I will not be. Meh. I simply think some are haunted, while others accept and move on; it is a behavior driven by some quirk of personality, or some unmapped fold in the brain that houses a cluster of neurons devoted to such work. So while Anna is haunted, I am merely endlessly fascinated by the intersection of life episodes, and what they mean. I'm fascinated by the tricks of fate that cause some people's lives to be more heavily burdened with loss and difficulty than others. Ye olde questions of fate versus free will versus divine intervention. To quote that other great artist, Bryan Adams (come on, I can't always be quoting novelists and big thinkers!), "some get the silver spoon, some get the heavy load." Indeed. I think the haunted souls often focus on the question of why this is true, while those who are more resilient perhaps focus more on now what? It's a continuum, not a category.

There are so many expressions of hope that go unnoticed, while we seize on the expressions of fear and bitterness that we feel "typify" our world. I'm trying hard to keep my eye on the quiet, small expressions of hope. The fact that on a cold dreary day in November, you can still find a few dozen people at the Food Bank, sorting donated goods onto shelves. The fact that resilience is still celebrated in our world. And, yes, the fact that novelists, essayists, poets and short story writers keep writing, and keep sending us their artful expression of the world, despite the obstacles between their conception and any hope of publication.

Be well, and of good cheer as we enter the madness of this season.

~ patti

Beautiful Imperfection

It's a rainy day in Botown, and I spent a while this morning out on my covered deck with a cup of coffee and NO input....just listening to the rain patter on the metal.

This weekend my bellydance teacher hosted her annual festival called "Hafla" - this year is her 30th. My friend Maureen and I girled up and went to the dance showcase last night. It was scheduled to be 4 hours long, though we left after about 2.5. But...wow. It was fun. The performers are anywhere from just-past-beginner to women who have danced and performed for years, and that mixture made it even more fun. There were different styles of bellydance, from the quieter traditional dancers who wear full length dresses adorned in sparkling embroidery and layers of veils, to very modern and athletic dancers who combined bellydance with moves that looked a lot like synchronized swimming. Bling everywhere, of course - sequins, coins, beads, jewelry, headpieces, feathers, amazing swirls of colors and metal and sound. It was fabulously raucous, and just what I needed.

I've had this conversation running through my head, on a slow repeat, for the last week or so. It was a talk I had with a friend, someone who is a bit stuck because he can't quite forgive someone in his life for a terrible thing that was done to him. He said "forgiving and forgetting is just a little too easy on her." And I said...well, I don't actually think that forgiving and forgetting is the critical step. It's accepting and moving on that we need to accomplish, letting go of the anger and the "iwishthathadn'thappened" so we can get to the next thing that will come into our lives, and be prepared to accept that gift.

So last night, while I was sitting at the Hafla, I was of course thinking about body image and the beauty of women's bodies, the celebration of fertility and life force that the dancers bring to the stage, knowingly and unconsciously. The movements of bellydance, the joyously high-energy shimmy, the deliberate undulations, the powerful hip snapping turns - they are about life, all the variations. It's part of why the movements feel right, and part of why the form is so addictive. Watching all these women on stage, their imperfections out there for the world to see, framed in fact by bling and shimmying hips and sinuous arm movements....well, a lot of those women have done the magic thing, accepted and moved on. Imperfect, but glorious.

And I found the moment that I need to describe to my friend, to tell him why it's important to accept and move on. It was a tall, elegant, dancer with perfect porcelain white skin and a shimmering costume in white, at least 40 years old, and her bio included this information "...I had let myself be convinced that I could not dance, though I always wanted to. Practicing bellydance showed me otherwise." This dancer, Deborah, had a dance that involved a sword balanced on her head while she shimmied, grapevined, turned, sunk slowly and gracefully to the floor and snaked upward again....and the absolute triumph on her face while that sword stayed on her head, swaying but sticking - that's the reason we accept and move on.

We can't simultaneously serve the past and reach for the future. There was some moment that Deborah stopped listening to the voice in her head saying "you can't dance" and started listening to a voice that said "swords are awesome..." Accepting doesn't mean agreeing, or forgiving - it means we've stopped letting the sting of whatever it is, the pain or hurt or self-doubt of it, shape our days. Put it away - the failure, the injustice, the mistake, the hurtful words we can't stop hearing - and accept that the thing happened or was said and move on. Let it go. We hold on to old hurts, and old tapes, and old...well, stuff. We let it define us, because it's a pain in the ass to question everything all the time, and it's sometimes scary to consider what changes we would need to make if we accepted AND moved on. We choose to be defined by it.

So let go of one of your old hurts, or mistakes, and move on. Imagine all possibilities, and choose one that sings to you. If it is too scary to do that for your whole life TODAY, then do it for today. Find joy in the choosing. Revel in your beautiful perfection of self and reach for something bigger.

~patti

Fire Energy

Wowie...another crazed week.

I had a very frustrating day on Thursday of this week. So, being me, I lowtalked my way out of the room and then let the dust settle so I could think about what had frustrated me to the point of anger. It was several things, as so often is the case. Fatigue being chief among them.

Here is what I'm thinking today, safe in my quiet home office with my tankard of french press coffee and dressed for a hike in the gorgeous fall day: it should, at some point, stop surprising me that I'm both drawn to and battered by the same things. I love to be in high energy environments, but I throw myself into things so wholly that it is also a teensy bit dangerous for me to live/work in them unless I am mindful to maintain balance. That's what lowtalking is - a way to make the energy of a situation balance itself. Too much heat, too much vehemence, too much volume - I am not wired to retreat, exactly, but I am also not wired to throw gasoline onto the fire by raising my own voice. Choices.

When I worked at the medical center, there was a time when they brought in a consutant to work with the management teams, which at that time were crazily dysfunctional. We went to a Catholic retreat center in town, which was serene and lovely. There were tears, and shouting. And this consultant then used the concepts of Chinese elemental healing to talk about what was going on. She explained that the elements (metal, fire, earth, water and wood, as I recall) each had important characteristics that were necessary to balance the earth, and that she believed communication/interaction styles could be organized in the same way. Everyone has a mixture of elements, but usually one predominant one and another that is secondary. Metal energy is strong, but lacks flexibility. Water energy soothes and buoys. Earth energy grounds everything, it's the foundation on which everything is built.

Fire energy, though...that was the one we talked about most. Fire energy is warm, inviting, attractive - and it can burn if out of balance. Fire energy is what we often admire and are drawn to, but get too much fire and you lose focus and feel frenzied instead of focused. And, for many of us, the exposure to too much fire energy makes us retreat to some other place. It makes us try to cool the flames by pulling back our own fire energy and switching to something more like water, if we seek to calm, or metal if we seek to hold our ground. When it feels too rushed, too hurried, too emotional - we become slower, more deliberate, cool.

And - the important thing - all of this adjusting is fantastic if it is a choice, and tiring/demoralizing if it is a reaction.

So, what did I learn about myself this week? Hmmm. I have always been very comfortable leading without authority. I don't wait for a title or a crown or a podium. I can't endure milling about - so in the absence of a clear or logical leader, I get started making people talk to one another, make decisions, commit. Some mixture of crazy curiosity and an inability to solve a problem I don't understand means that I am often to be found in the weeds, asking a zillion questions until the issues seem clear. This is all good stuff, for the most part. But it needs to be a conscious choice - because it all costs a little effort.

It's better, today. It gave me both opportunity and motivation to speak frankly with one of the participants and it let me see more clearly how I am functioning in my current work role. It gave me the opportunity to hear from, and be heard by, at least three people that I admire, and value. It motivated me to use a made-up Hallmark holiday as an excuse to thank those people for being who they are. I'm hopeful that it will be the start of a longer conversation about the root issue, which is competing urgent priorities in a system of finite, scarce resources.

Let the difficult stuff illuminate who you are and what you value. I'm sure I read that somewhere, though I don't know where.

Be well, as we prepare to enter the season of thanks-giving.

~ plk

Threads of Connection

This has been such a week. I sincerely believe that things happen as they should - but sometimes it is damned frustrating to be both a "git 'r done" type and a person who believes that things happen as they should.

Two big thoughts for tonight. I am writing again, and I love the way it calms my bee-buzzy brain to spend time thinking about prose rhythms and finding words for a scene, or a moment, that will make it possible for a reader to be pulled right into the story's page. I love it. And I love that thinking in that way makes me see connections in things.

Have you ever thought about the way that we use the phrase "good at putting spin on it" to describe someone who is a bit tooooo shiny, someone who might do well selling used Buicks? I don't think spin is inherently negative. To me, a lot of people who are good at spin are also optimists. The best optimists, and the best spin artists, are not people who do not see the risk or the downside, but who see the odds of achieving the upside as high enough to put some skin in the game. In other words, they think the thing they are saying is possible. They believe it is. I'm one of those people - I can put the best face on something only if I believe in it, and I always describe the ugly underbelly, too. I emphasize the pretty, but the ugly is real, so I have to acknowledge it.

It occurred to me today that this spin thing is not just coincident - it is actually an expression of optimism. Of course is doable, it's only a question of effort. That's what the optimist believes. And so, too, it is what the realistic, optimistic spin artist says.

With me so far?

And that brings me to a trickier connection. It seems to me that giving in to addiction is, often, an expression of pessimism. Giving in is the action of a person who can't see the possibility of beating the addiction. So it can be no surprise to anyone who reads this or knows me to hear that active addicts make me uneasy. Work addicts, food addicts, alcoholics, narcotics addicts, smokers who cough madly and still reach for their nicotine - it all seems so clearly a choice to me. I'm not judging, I swear. I'm not. It's just that, to me, it's a matter of choice and priority. And when an addiction doesn't get in your way, then sure - indulge. Have your coffee, or your sugary treats, or your favorite form of fried potato or WHATEVER it is that is keeping you from tipping over the boat and swimming for shore. But when that behavior starts to get in your way - when you are lying about it, hiding it, breaking promises because of it or when it feels like it is in charge of you - then you need to change it.

Just change it, eh? Just, what, snap your fingers? Poof, not doing that any more? Well, kinda. That's how change works. You try and try and try, and then tada, change happens. No magic wand, just choices and effort. Developing, or having, an addiction is a tough break, but not a knockout punch. Giving in to it will eventually result in a knockout, or a TKO, or...well, you get the picture. All of which is why people like me find it difficult to live with addiction. Because guess what? It's a choice for the person living next to it, too. Their choice is a kind of tacit complicity. For many, living next to an active addiction is like watching someone give up 100 times a day - excruciating.

So, is that view a controlling view? I think the answer to that is ALL in what you do with the realization. So long as you remain focused on making choices that have to do with your own behavior, and not bargaining to make choices for someone else - I think you're probably staying out of the red zone. The truth is that we are responsible for our own individual choices. If living next to an addiction makes you feel a part of it, then you have a choice to make.

If I were in Cameron's office, right about now is where he would be saying something like, "are you confusing addiction with compulsion?" and I would be saying something like, "end of the day - it doesn't matter to me because either is a choice." He'd be tapping a pencil on his hand or his desk, and I'd be hugging one knee to my chest and holding my ground, but NOT stubbornly. And I would be smiling, because to me having the choice is all I really need. Making choices is difficult, but being denied the right to choose is the crusher.

Hunh. Politics aren't enough to argue about this month, apparently? I want to throw addiction versus compulsion versus choosing and pessimism vs optimism into the fray? :D

TGIF-eve!

~ patti

Little Gems

I am trying to sort through piles of mail, email and other neglected mess. In my email mailbox I found pictures of my uhm...what is the correct term for the son of my niece? Grand nephew? GACK. :) Let's call him Gavigan the beautiful baby and leave it at that. Rumor had it when Gavigan was born that he was going to have brown eyes...but wow, he's got Newman blues.

I spent Saturday NOT working, after a series of weeks and weekends with more work than I'd like. Someone I like and respect very much described me as a workaholic on Friday, and the word surprised me. I'm not, as most people know. I am a person who hates to disappoint those I work with, and who is a perfectionist - and a dreamer. But I had to admit that from his shoes, I probably look like a workaholic. Interesting. So on Saturday I walked, and practiced a new belly dance step (just one, yes, that's why I can DO bellydance, it's the same steps over and over...) to the Robert Plant and Allison Krauss song "Fortune Teller" - fun. Also watched some movies and generally just chilled. Today I'm gearing up for a long bike ride in the beautiful fall air.

One of my friends recently said, with much alarm in her voice, that she didn't want to see me paint myself into a corner. Which is sort of funny to me - despite her great intentions. Painting oneself into a corner is the act of making a decision that limits options. More than anything, my experience is that life paints you into the corner, not that it is a series of reasoned decisions. You make the best decision you can in the moment, start painting, and then poof - life throws a bucket of paint over your escape route. It's just how the world works.

Also, like a lot of perceptions - the phrase implies, somehow, a permanent state. It implies that if we make decisions that paint us into a corner, we'll somehow be marooned there. And what is the truth? If we paint ourselves into a corner we have two options - wait for the paint to dry and walk calmly back to where we started, or walk on wet paint and deal with the mess that will create, and the rework. Either are a choice, one we can make actively. And choices can be unmade, and rethought, and...well, you know the drill. What we all hope for is some crazy escape door to appear, but most of the time it's a decision and not an escape.

Some people find the thought of waiting for the paint to dry impossible, but I am not one of them. In part, that's because I'm very aware of the mess that walking on the wet paint will create, and I'm quite sure I'll likely be the one who cleans it up. But my patience sometimes surprises people who know me, who see my impatience with minutiae and think it extends to bigger questions. Nope. Bigger things create bigger messes if quickly reversed, so about big things, I can wait. I can. I do. I've learned how. I've learned to wait out my first response and make sure it is real, and true. What I'm not good at is recognizing that when painted into that corner, I could choose to walk on the wet paint, pull the "undo" ripcord and try again right this very minute. Every day we choose. Every hour. That is a freeing thought. I'm filing it under MacGyver move number 7.

My friend Al recently had a story publication in a journal that we all admire (see it here). I'm thrilled for him. But like all writers, my thoughts turned immediately to what I'm not doing with my own work. Al's success is related to what he (and his wife) have done to make his writing a priority. I'm painted into a corner on this one - if other things in my life demand to be priorities, how do I choose between two important priorities. Let's just say...my physical health and writing? I don't know. It seems maybe the lens should fall on the other things that are demanding center stage. My work, demands on me at home. I say writing is a priority, I once said THE priority, but...I don't make it so, and that is something I can change so long as I'm aware that it may create a mess when I walk on the wet paint between me and the point where I can reframe that decision.

Some lucky, gifted souls are successful in what we choose to make a priority. And of course, everything can't be a priority in our lives. I can pack a lot into my days, but it is not possible to pack everything I want to have, everything I'd like to do, into the hours I'm allotted. So I need to choose. We all do. We all are choosing. Choose mindfully.

~ patti

Angled Mettle

Sigh. What a great birthday I had. :) I'm a proponent of celebrating birthday week. Why limit yourself to a mere day? Birthday week brings with it veto power on television programming, dinner selections and numerous moments of fun "instead of productive" activities. I recommend it.

For those of you who hear from me sporadically...I'm good! Working too much, taking care of myself, reading too little and writing only in smidges...but I am well. Also - Cameron-the-Counselor is forgiven. Put away your tiny voodoo dolls, and your spell-casting gear, and your novena cards and candles. He misspoke, or I overreacted, or somewhere in the middle. Group hug.

This year my birthday week officially started on Wednesday, THE day. I had singing wishes, cards, email, e-cards, poems...the gamut of good wishes. I loved it. We spent the evening at the outdoor Shakespeare theater here watching this season's production of Macbeth. It was....lovely. We brought a potluck picnic that had perfect components - two lovely salads, grilled prawns, amazing cheese and bread, much great wine. And then cake. Yay. The performance was memorable, too. This is the theater: http://www.idahoshakespeare.org/theater_info/experience.html - though this picture is taken in the daytime, and as dusk falls it is more lovely and intimate. All in all....lovely.

I love fall. Some people feel their pulse and "get organized" impulses on January 1, some feel them when spring's warmth begins to seep into the gray chill of late winter. But for me - it's the new school year feeling, the one where anything is possible, and summer's long days make life feel limitless. Also, frankly, I live in a desert climate but I am genetically predisposed to misty cool moors, and green spaces - so the brown, sharp, HOT summers of southwestern Idaho are sometimes a joy to leave behind. My bike goes faster in the cooling days of late summer and fall, and my feet are easier to hurry on my walks. I love it. Time for cookouts and friends on the deck, now that the heat is easing.

This is a quick picture I took last night while on an evening bike ride. It was taken from the bikepath's converted railroad bridge over the Boise River near downtown. It is the place where a spur on the bike path crosses the river and heads into the city, out of downtown. What you can't see in the picture is that there were divers in the river last night, practicing, and I saw an eagle while riding. Had I taken the picture looking downstream, you'd have seen the overpass just a few hundred feet away, arcing over the river. All these interesting intersections of....everything. Angled metal meeting concrete bridge decking, water meeting shorelines, sky meeting mountain ridges, nature meeting city.

In January I posted about my annoyance at the naysayers who were raining on the big dreams (also known as resolutions) we make. Fall has always been my New Year. I've always loved the return to classes and the cooling, shortening days. I'm making lists and setting goals and buying a daily calendar to write things in. I'm cleaning and organizing email, cleaning cabinets and tossing clothes that are too big into bins to donate. I'm trying to decide whether I want to try backpacking or kayaking this year. And while I do all that, I have been thinking about dreams, how difficult it is to hold them when we know how much it will cost, in effort and sacrifice and sometimes conflict with those we love, to chase them. And still. And still it is impossible for me to say 'ease up, and let go.' I can't, or I won't, and the difference in those two words doesn't much matter. Hang on, and make them a priority, and remember that you'll probably regret those decisions and choices you make in service to fear, and not those you make chasing joy.


~patti

Clear-eyed Gaze

I'm writing this from the deck of our rental house on the Oregon Coast, just south of Newport. The sound of the surf is everywhere, a sweet rushing backdrop to the sun and the wind. It is, easily, 30 degrees cooler here than in Boise - and the cool air makes me want to walk for miles, or ride my bike until I tip over.

We got here late on Friday night. I arrived home from work Thursday fully aware that the list of tasks I had assigned the vacation-fairy on Wednesday (that's me, I just like to pretend I have minions) remained undone. Some laundry, banking, all the packing, load the car, shop for essentials and a few treats for our fabulous housesitter....choose vacation books! I also added roasting a chicken (Road Picnic!!!!) and trying to fix the "broke-at-the-last-minute-Weber-grill"....

I make fewer lists than I used to. I am less well prepared than I once was. I am clear, crystal clear, that preparation has limits and that it can replace joyous improvisation, or provide a false sense of security about the world and our ability to knot up a safety net. I only make lists now when it is to capture a detail that is important (roast chicken Thursday night for picnic!), not because I think a trip will be ruined if I forget my copy of "Oregon for the Curious" or my nail care gear. Here is how I pack now: I have a travel bag of toiletries that I just toss in, and then I just walk around my closet and pick up clothes. It takes me literally 15 minutes, 8 of them spent wrestling the suitcase down and choosing shoes. Whatever you choose, you'll wish for some one other item. Whatever you do to prepare, the world will toss some unprepare-able action your way. Some will read that statement as cynical, or negative - and some will see that it is merely true, and that the acknowledgement of it, the acceptance of it, is a path to joy.

So we're here, and I've walked and walked, ridden my bike to the top of the Yaquina Bay Bridge (SO glad I brought my bike), read two books and several magazines....napped a LOT.

The sound of surf calms me, as I think it does many people. It makes me think clearly. Here is what I'm thinking clearly about this evening. My last conversation with Cameron-the-Counselor was, to me, unhelpful. He is pressing me to accept my life, to limit my dreams, or to "accept my limits." I know why. I look at me as he would and think "give yourself a break, already - in fact, give everyone around you a break and let UP." And I appreciate, sort of, that thought. Thank you, I'm sure your heart is in the right place. But since I'm me...I've an opinion. It is one thing to be sure that a person sees the limits, knows the odds, is aware of what they are up against. But whether to take them on is an achingly person decision. So, say to me "you know the challenges, right?" but not "accept your limits." From...well, forever, I've been refusing to accept limits. Why on earth would I start now? Because it's easier? Pfft. It's easier to limit our dreams. It is easier to stay home. It is easier to drift through your career, numb yourself with TV and purchases and investments. It's easier to grow fat and unfit and "accept your over-40 limits." Yeah, this advice hit a nerve. It's maybe smarter, certainly it is less turbulent. But I want to say to him "did you forget your give-a-crap tie today?" I'm not interested in advice to limit my dreams - until it is proven to be impossible, get the hell out of my way. I'm not an idiot, so I know that I have to keep making make small, necessary adjustments. But I'm a long way from accepting my frigging limits. Maybe this is what he intended, to kickstart my "kissmybuttkusCameron" motor - if so, it worked.

One of the books I brought, and am reading slowly in small sips, is Tony Doerr's Four Seasons in Rome. To read Tony's books is to know something of him, of the smart, generous, funny, careful person that I watched lead one of my fiction workshops. His work continues to delight me, and to be a distinctive and lovely mixture, a marvel of craft and heart and science, truths of the kind that can be researched and the kind that can only be felt. One of the lines in this book caught me, though, both in the offhand delivery and in the truth of it: "We came to Rome because we'd always regret it if we didn't, because every timidity eventually turns into regret."

It is true, I think, that when we pull out the moments we regret, and turn them over honestly, that they are often entangled in moments of timidity, in snarls of self-doubt and fears of unnamed origins. But I suppose it is something of my Scottish roots, or maybe my life experiences, that makes me achingly aware of how much the expression of fear, of timidity, is rooted not in some weakness of character but in the bruising and "lessons learned" from the world's blows. More, I wonder at those who are able to keep it at bay, who get knocked down, stand up, and somehow keep the fear at arm's length. I've long said that I admire most those who are knocked down but get up again. That, for me, is the test. Will you get up, and will you do so with your hope somehow still intact? It's what we hope for in our heroes, and in our secret hearts it is what we hope for in ourselves, and fear we will not do.

So, yes. You can't write something like that sentence, or read of Tony and Shauna and their babies in Rome, or think of the sacrifices my friends are making to make the space to create their art without being humbled, and without grinning. Okay, Ms. Patti. From the top, this time with feeling...give it a little something and make it sweet.

Be well, wherever this finds you!

~patti

Rain-soft Grass

If you are a person who reads, do you remember the first time you had the joy of being lost in a book? Were you 6, or 9, or maybe you were 15 and it was some book you thought you should hate, but instead loved? I don't remember a time when books did not carry me off wholly. I can't recall ever preferring picture books to words, to the magic of unlocking the secret code of letters in print on a page that smelled of the cool linoleumed Berkley Public Library, or the smell of mittens drying on the winter radiator, the smell I'll always associate with Pattengill Elementary's books. I remember my mother, cheeks pink with annoyance, pulling more than one book from my hands and saying, "did you not hear me calling you?" Clearly, my expression must have said....No. I was with the Bobbesy twins in their boxcar, or with Scarlett at Tara, or on any one of a number of Eastern Seaboard islands with names like Chincoteague, running wild with a horse named Misty and wind in my hair. Books are experience, for me. I'm looking forward to losing myself in one or two on my vacation.

I'm the oddity, I always thought. My childhood memories divided equally between the utter solitude of a book and the crazily noisy, social world of "them" - my immediate and extended family, the ones who had weekend-long parties and played music all night long and ate huge breakfasts in long, pork-filled shifts to fit everyone in. I loved the parties, learned to do Lily Tomlin impressions to make my mother laugh, and to be the center of attention. I felt most at home, though, behind a mask in those big social settings. Give me a stage, a microphone, a set of lyrics, or some comic persona to be behind, and I'm very at home in the center of it all. Or put me in a room with my wisecracking relatives, and watch us one-up the energy and humor until it's dizzying and our sides hurt from laughing. But know that sometime soon after I'll want my book, or my iPod and my bike - solitude and no verbal output.

What I've always sought and valued in my friends, in those I love, is the straight, clear gaze of someone who sees me behind my personas, who doesn't find my need for solitude or quiet to be in any way at odds with my laughing, top-spinning, high-energy self. They both are me, the true and happy me. It is good to feel at ease in that realization, and not to feel as though I need to prod myself to move more quickly or put on a happy face that I don't feel. It is lovely to feel true joy, and share it. And today I was thinking that I love the people who don't sit out the quiet me, waiting for the fun one to arrive. I love the people who don't make me feel a moment of discomfort on days when I just want to be in the presence of those I love for a bit. I have a lot of you in my life, and I'm so lucky in that.

So, tonight I came home from work and dressed in my yoga clothes. I put on my iPod, and went into the backyard. It rained today, and the earth was softened by the moisture, giving a bit underfoot. I stretched, then practiced bellydance moves in the quiet dark of the yard, my feet cushioned on the grass, my hips finding the patterns that feel right, and moving, as my instructor says, with subtley and intention. Tek - a was the beat in my head, slow and unhurried at first. Then speeding to teka teka and then to the hip shimmy, tiny moves, snapping hips and tekatekatekateka. No mirrors tonight, just movement and intention, grapevines and shimmys, lebanese hip circles and the difficult belly rolls, then those lovely easy hip circles, the slow, slow spin, one shoulder dropped and the shimmy effortless and impossible at once.

Bellydance is supposed to be performance, I'm told. I don't know. It's yoga with better music, or maybe it's just that I'm not ready to share, not ready yet to hide myself behind the public persona I'd need to dance in performance. But I don't care about that tonight, nor about worries, or decisions, or fence sitting or any of the things that my thinking self weighs every day. Nope. Tonight, I danced in the dark under a big sky, flirted with the moon through my Russian Olive's branches, moved through air sweet and heavy with the scent of summer dogwood blooming and Hyperion daylillies, and felt soft earth under my feet - which once again can dance.

~ patti