The O word...

I was just getting my head out of the hyacinths when realization hit that I have several large projects looming. Being a competent, well-adjusted, mature adult, I proceeded to remind myself even I could eat an elephant a bite at a time. Then, the projects took on the energetic appearance of a rogue bull charging down on me at full speed and I envisioned my skewered future as a tusk decoration.

Still in pajamas, I curled up in the recliner in preparation to hyperventilate. I called Janet, a friend of mine. This amazing woman is a Conflict Specialist and certified in mediation. She’s also very good at strategic planning. As usual, she was able to cut through the extraneous material straight to the core of the matter.

After her dry comment about feeling my agitation (did I mention she’s also an intuitive?) several hundred miles away, she reminded me, “You have all the time in the world”. Yes, I really do. I have all the time and assets I need to live my mission, and to accomplish it in the perfect order for me. She told me to get a grip because I was stressing myself out without actually going anywhere - an exhausting state to be in, wasting the resource of the moments I have. Janet stated we can overwhelm in our mind and we can reverse it in the same space. We have a choice. The elephant stopped to munch leaves as we talked.

We’ve traded these phrases back and forth for years when one of us has faced a crisis – real or manufactured by our own psychosis. When I left orchestra rehearsal last night, the bass player stated he was much happier since he’s clued into the concept people are imperfect. What a relief to find I’m in good company and have wonderful people around to point out growth is always possible.

Back to Janet. She counseled me to purchase a calendar dedicated specifically to the project, a large one with plenty of room to write in each date square. (And yes, I still have the smaller one used to keep all the plates spinning.) After a stint at the office supply store, I chose a very plain one I could fold up and toss in my computer bag to take along. All of the flowers and beaches on the other ones will only be a sidetrack for the artist self. She said mark the due date and work backwards from there to chunk it down in to pieces easily handled, marking the interim deadlines in special colors. I’m big on colors and visuals. My dear friend reminded me to build in the time for research and cooling off before review.

I have to admit my ego is screaming to add I already knew all of this. Yes, and it helps to be reminded of our skills when we lose sight of them occasionally.

The pachyderm is now a cute little baby nudging my elbow to get on with it. I have a plan.  I feel confidence return and know I am truly in control of my experience. Opportunity for fun and relaxation is built into the progress. So, the sun is shining today. Spring breezes are pressing me to take a jaunt outside. I’ve put in my time, and with a clear conscience am on my way out the door. I’m organized.

Important Stuff ...

I forgot I was a blogger. 

            Life, sunshine, art, music - like a puppy down a rabbit trail, I’ve been sidetracked by anything that moves…or at least appears new and interesting. After a winter of hibernation, rest and rejuvenation, I’m off on the yellow brick road of one mini-adventure after another.

            I’ve written a couple of poems, polished up an entry for a writing contest, hung a small art show and took another piece in for framing to go up for the last week of the show. I’ve repaired some photographs, written the first half of a screenplay and performed with the orchestra in a pops concert with two more coming up. I’ve tried designing my own book of prose and images with marginal success.  I’ve spent time on the phone with my grandchildren. I haven’t used the new planner.  I’m having too much fun.

            Also, I ran out of things to pontificate about…well, not exactly.  A ramble about the energy words carry with them is waiting to be finished up…and an exploration of the way we create.  Pedantic subjects sounding as if they fill the measure of intention for this site. Not nearly as stimulating as sitting on the back step sucking in the scent of hyacinths until can’t recall why I went out there in the first place.

            I’ve dug in the dirt and succumbed to  the temptations of the garden store no matter how many years in a row I’ve promised myself I will not buy anything new before June. I sit in the rocker surrounded by color bursting out of plastic pots and feel like I’ve been given an intravenous injection of life. I’ve also been a captive in the cave of rain for so long I didn’t remember about sunburn.

            We put weed block down last year and the squirrels used it to line their condo so I have to pull up what’s left. I watched them poke the black cloth into their mouths until their cheeks were full and it hung down in front and they almost tripped taking weed block up the tree. I am consistently amazed at the sheer genius of the little beggars. Somewhere, there is a luxury accommodation for this year’s accouchement.

            It was comforting this evening to be sharing the twilight with birds back for the summer while I pulled weeds out of the rock wall. A blue jay lives in the Camilla. Somehow, I always pictured them as winter birds.

            When I took a break for a few minutes and sat under the Empress tree, I couldn’t figure out what the stuff was coming out of the sky.  Looking like black dandruff, it covered everything we’d so scrupulously painted white. A woodpecker was enlarging the nest from last year and throwing out miniscule chips. Sawdust changed to the gift of magic dust as it sifted down. Now, if I could just get him/her to clean my bathroom.

            In other words - no pun intended - while I’ve been enjoying the process of creative energy itself, and soaking up the imagination of nature in spring, I’ve forgotten to write about the important stuff.  I haven’t worried about whether or not my platform will hold up if the fairy godmother of all agents accidently stumbles over my blog or whether my work is strong enough to sustain scrutiny by the faithful writer friends who stop by to check the site - mostly to see if I’m still alive. They love me anyway and are used to, or becoming used to, my foibles.

            Speaking of which, I add my gratitude for those same faithful friends who move in and out of my life in their own seasons. They bring dynamite and blowtorches because candles and matches are too tame for all the big ideas we have. They stand solidly behind me with support and encouragement for impossible dreams. They shove chocolate through the mail slot on the bad days and deliver veggie platters to help recover from the chocolate binges.  I have wonderful friends.  And, I think I have spring fever.

The Planner

I’ve had a perfectly nice planner for some years now. Trim. Elegant. Professional looking with a luxurious red leather cover and inserts I buy every year to record the white rabbit experiences of life.

Last night, I bought a new one. An inexpensive department store variety. The kind a parent uses to keep track of the children’s activities. There’s a column for each day of the week and the bottom of each column is divided into four spaces. I guess any more children and two planners would be necessary.

Instead of inserting pictures of the kids under the plastic front cover, I slipped in my visioning pictures and inscribed my name beneath them. Not as classy as a red leather one. It does, however, have a certain energetic clout. Every time I pick up the planner, the photographs remind me of where I’m going with my life, spiritually, mentally, physically, emotionally and financially.

The four spaces at the bottom of each weekly column are labeled Child Weekly Plan. It gives me a space to track my “children”. The screenplay I want to complete by 1 May. The amount of time I spend on my health and fitness to enable investment in greater creative efforts. Daily visits with a spiritual discipline to return the harvest of peace and security. As I look at the visual space, the amount of time for mundania like day job appointments and haircuts is reduced by half. The balance of the space is wide open to receive my intention. Running three projects concurrently seems to be enough at one time.

I left one of the spaces for family and friends. The planner was a heads up to tend important relationships. Just as our goals and visions won’t come to fruition without persistent attention, our relationships will not thrive without care. I am reminded to connect regularly with the people who are important to me.

When I was at college, there was a professor whose home was an hour drive from the school. I went by his office without an appointment for clarification on some assignment and he reassured me by relating he built in an hour every day for such occurrences. He said someone was always in the ditch in the winter and dedicating an hour of his day let him know he had the time to stop and help on the way into work. If everyone managed to stay on the road he had even more time for people who dropped in. I’ve tried to implement his philosophy into my time management.

By checking in with myself and my goals on a daily basis I have the perspective to set or change priorities. Most importantly, I know when I need to build a space for myself to enjoy life. I know it’s important to set aside time to cultivate friendships or be available for an impromptu play date with my new neighbor. And remember the last time I did nothing to schedule more of it.

The best thing about this planner is that it offers child wisdom on each page. One of the pearls is: “Some people can tell what time it is by looking at the sun. But I have never been able to make out the numbers”. I think that is a great place to start in the process of “managing” our lives and our time.

Creativity and Rest

Sometimes, as creatives, we consider sleep an imposition.  I learned to view sleep as a deeply restorative time for my body and welcome a rich dream life as an exciting alternative to waking and working. Studies are beginning to persuade us sleep deprivation leads to everything from weight gain to chronic illness. We are coming to understand driving ourselves with stimulants to hyper generation of effort is counterproductive to what we as artists strive to achieve. Taking enough time in our lives to darken the room, settle back and enter sleep is imperative for our health and quality of life. We’re becoming more willing to acknowledge we need sleep.

There’s a difference between sleep and rest and we are not as able to embrace rest in our culture. 

Rest is not necessarily a shut your eyes, power down experience. In music, for example, the rest - the distance between the played notes - is as significant, vibrant and necessary as the melody itself to creating the experience we have. One of Webster’s definitions of rest is relief from anything distressing, annoying or tiring and pressure, stress or weight is lifted from us. In the pursuit of our endeavors, a rest becomes as important to us as it is to a symphony performance. The place in our life of doing no thing, of waiting, of being receptive to the Spirit of Becoming is what will move in us to make something out of the richness of no thing that existed before. Everything creates in our soul before it ever becomes art, music, dance or acrhitecture. The manifestation of the arts flow out of the invisible before they become form in our known world. We need to take the time to renew ourselves through rest.  To allow our genius a time of arranging, shaping and designing in us before it can birth.

In our Puritan driven ethic we have confused busy-ness with achievement. We are sold on the idea we have to look continually occupied to be socially acceptable or suffer the (often self-imposed) guilty consequences. The bottom line is we convert time into our ally and believe the clock that pushed relentlessly before is now our friend.  We woo the instants as a lover and realize to keep the relationship we must sacrifice for it. The offering is simple. We turn inward and connect with the sacredness of ourselves and our abilities. In the paradox - the doing of no thing - the rest - we can create and become everything we imagine to become.

Resting is imperative for people who want to be creative.  These are the moments strung together when we do no-thing, then take a break and do more of no-thing to gestate ideas to emerge when we return in creative high gear.  We stop and listen to our own breath; we are quiet enough to hear the leaves falling down through the branches in the fall, and sit in the sun to let ourselves be warmed without thought of what we must do to receive the gift. That space cultivates inspiration. The miraculous alchemy is by becoming inactive we manufacture an increase of energy to extend ourselves far past the period of usual physical accomplishment and time itself seems to extend and expand to accommodate our desire to bring forth.

Years ago, when I asked my youngest step-son what he was doing, he would say nothing. “You’re not sleeping?” (It looked to me like he might be sleeping.) “No, I’m doing nothing.” “You’re not watching t.v.?” “No, I’m doing nothing.” On we would dance through the list of options and he would come back to the core of his premise of doing no thing. I think, looking back, he was wiser at eleven than I ever will be about resting and doing no thing.  And believe me, he had the energy to prove it.

Honoring creativity where we find it...

I am privileged to play music with a great group of people. As a result of the “economic downturn” there haven’t been the usual financial donations to purchase new music scores. Some humorously said we should set up on the street in downtown Portland and put out our hat.  I told the orchestra I had a problem with that allusion because street people were actually trying to make an honest living when they offered their music to indifferent passersby. Intruding felt disrespectful to me. My husband told me later he had an hilarious picture of the chaos of sixty people with instruments, stands, sheet music and paraphernalia creating such a backup in traffic people had to go blocks out of their way to get around.  Whether or not  it was because he had to eventually go home with me, when he understood, my spouse agreed with me.

There is metaphor in here somewhere.  An orchestra needs money and its okay to hit people up for hefty donations.  A street musician does the same thing expecting much less and how far out of our way do we go to avoid him or her? People who perform on the avenues are making a straightforward attempt to earn their living and exchange for what they receive. Melody is one of the most powerful energies of the Universe and when a homeless person offers music they gift us.  They deserve remuneration just as those who appear in the posh venues do. For us, the only difference between a sidewalk concert and one in an elegant hall is, we are buying our physical and emotional comfort. Some of us are paying to be seen.  Some of us shell out the cash so we can say we have seen.

Street performers play in plain awful conditions - poor acoustics, noisy distractions, inattentive audiences, bad weather. In 2007, a world class violinist, Joshua Bell, played a 3.5 million dollar Stradivarius violin in the New York subway and had one person stop to listen for only three minutes.  Bell made $32 dollars and change for the same concert people purchase hundred dollar tickets to hear. “It was still almost hurtful sometimes when somebody just walked by when I really did try to play my best,” he said. “It was difficult to see.”

A homeless person who hasn’t had a meal in days starts muttering and we call them crazy. We label it psychotic break.  Religious fast for days and their mumbles and manifestations are called visions and canonized. We are one paycheck, one catastrophe, one label away from becoming the people we go to such lengths to avoid. The homeless are teaching us about ourselves.  How willing are we to examine and live in the depths of our compassion?

Joshua Bell playing in the subway illustrates it’s all in how we look at things, what we are willing to see. By honoring the creative beauty in others with our time and our money, as we are able, we honor our own creativity.

For the complete Joshua Bell story see the Washington Post story or for a synopsis the Reuters article.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401721.html http://www.reuters.com/article/entertainmentNews/idUSN1124665920070411