Finding the way...

A friend of mine sweeps into town every couple of months.  She’s flirting with Portland, thinking of a move, not ready to make the commitment. She doesn’t really drive here.

I’ve lived in the city for most of a decade, getting to know my way around the quadrants as long as it doesn’t involve I-5. I’ve become an expert at creative avoidance navigation and back ways. 

Both freeway challenged, we were on an adventure to see the amazing play, The Outgoing Tide at the Coho. Point A was Wilsonville, Point B ~ 23rd and Raleigh. For the first time, I drove north on I-5, to 405 and the theatre.  

We had great directions and as we traveled farther into the heart of the city, the signage was more frequent and the markers we’d been given hadn’t appeared yet.  Attempting reassurance, my friend declared:

“They always write way more than you need on a freeway. You don’t need the part for everyone else, you only need the part that tells you where you’re going.”

Words to live by. 

When life is flashing past, sometimes it’s difficult to travel our own path with so many other  trails intersecting while we move at breakneck speeds. Easy to get lost, or intimidated, or sidetracked by something shiny blinking in the distance. In the end, we find our path by tuning in to personal discernment and reading the directions intended for us. Only for us. On our very distinctive route through life. The road only we can follow. 

Just ignore all the signs that aren’t meant to get you where you’re going.

Easy Peasy. 

Objects in mirror...

I use the bathroom mirror as a huge whiteboard… because it’s big enough for the big ideas I have first thing in the morning and because I’ve been yelled at since I was three for writing on the walls. This statement is part of the current intention. 

The Hubs was driving me to an event and I was eating worms over a perceived lack of time, energy et al.

He:  (Attempting to remind me of the affirmation) “What do you read in your mirror?”

Me: (Rousing from the gloom to glance at the side mirror) “Objects in mirror are closer than they appear.”

I was in Hyperdrive speeding toward Venus while he was waving frantically from Mars. 

After considering for a couple of days, I realized the mirror is indeed a teacher especially when we understand with our soul the intentions we set really are closer than they appear. 

 

Suspending disbelief...

Oct 2012, graphite drawing

After two days, 860 pages (I’m always polite about reading the acknowledgments) and a struggle to learn the language, customs, geography and history of dwarves, elves, Urgals and dragons, I crashed landed back in reality this morning.

Suspending disbelief for an extended period is like a two week vacation in Neverland.

A bit more death and destruction than I prefer but I guess that’s the way it goes when you’re fighting an evil king-magician-spellcaster person who didn’t know for a couple of centuries what kind of pain he caused. The dragons hook up but sadly for the hero (and us) Eragon floats off into the sunset alone. Although, with a life expectancy of 1k years plus, he still has a chance to get the girl, or elf, or dwarf, or ….  Four books in umpty-dozen languages and a movie under his magic belt at age 27. A great start for Christopher Paolini author of “Inheritance.”

Suspending disbelief is a great tool for creatives.

In the dark...

My spouse was already out cold. I’d almost completed the rituals in preparation for rest and stood at the side of the bed after a very long day. I flicked on the light, set the phone alarm, applied lip balm, fished the sleep mask from the top drawer and skimmed it into position across my eyes effectively blocking all visual information. I kicked off the slippers and slid into bed, pulled up the covers and the universal sigh of “I finally get to lie down” emanated from somewhere deep in my soul. Blissful deprivation with the relative quiet of evening in a suburb of twenty thousand people right over the back fence from 2 plus million. I’d curled into my favorite dream position and was dropping off when the voice came out of the dark, very close to my ear…


“So, Zorro, you gonna sleep with the light on all night long?”


I’ve mentioned before our bodies are the evolutionary product of thousands of millennia and physically our responses are slow to catch up and cope with the myriad of technological stimulations we’re subjected to. Back in the day, we slept in caves and didn’t have to deal with blinking cell phones, glow from alarm clocks, computers downloading at three a.m. and street lights seeping glare through the blinds. I’m told there are even those who sleep with the television on. In the bedroom.

The consequences of these exterior conditions are hard on the health of our still indigenous bodies. Melatonin is a hormone necessary for the regulation of numerous critical physiological functions. Melatonin doesn’t trigger and function properly in the presence of a light source, no matter how small. Recently, studies suggest women who sleep with lights on have a higher incidence of breast cancer. Yep. It’s serious.

One of the solutions, when we don’t have the option to regulate our environment, is a simple sleep mask.

So, turn off the lights and keep the sword handy, just in case.