A Soliloquy

Isn't that what a blog is, really? An outlet based on the presumptuous idea that someone out there would like to hear what I have to say regarding some deep philosophical issue? Maybe you find my shared thoughts insightful, helpful, drole, or maybe you hate me and everything that comes out of my head. Either way, Shakespeare's soliloquys were often my favorite part of any of his plays. Here's mine for today. Hopefully I can avoid virtue signaling or shame or anything upsetting about this subject that seems to have deepened the divide in our country.

But I guess it's time to be presumptuous that you'll care what I think.

I'm keeping my child home for at least the first nine weeks of school. I could give you quotes and figures and scientific studies, but then it would seem as if I were trying to convince you that our family's choice should be your choice too. What's more, it might seem like I was judging you, which I am not. Mostly, I'm saying these things so others know they aren't alone in this choice. Thought it's likely that you are cut from the same cloth as me and aren't too concerned about the aspersions cast at you by others.

There are parents out there who need to send their child back to a physical classroom. There are students who need the physical classroom. I don't have a regular job that requires me on premises. I currently have zero event contracts and am not teaching yoga anywhere. My child is a fairly easy learner, save for the scourge of elementary school known as multiplication, so sitting at home to learn with me as an aide does not present any insurmountable challenges. It's a time when I can use my privilege as a mostly stay-at-home mom to actually help others and remove my child from an already burdensome situation. This also removes him as a vector for contagion.

And if I am being honest, I am actually concerned about what Covid might look like in my own body. I'm young and healthy and take good care of myself, but my experiences with illness haven't been good this year. I started out January 1 with the flu, and it made me sick in a way that was terrifying at times. In my usual hit-it-hard great work ethic, I was back to teaching multiple classes before I recovered, and was still trying to take classes on the side to work towards fulfillment of requirements for my RYT certification. (Which I'm currently dragging my feet on... oof) Following a cold camping trip I contracted bronchitis and strep, which hit me hard. I had a significant falling out with someone I had come to think of as a friend during that time, while a design project spiraled out of control. All of those things combined to leave me sicker than I've been since 2016, when overtraining left me laying on the couch for months at a time. 

A couple of weeks after treatment for strep, in the midst of the foggy exhaustion that plagued me for most of April, I woke one morning and couldn't taste or smell anything. Leading up to this, I had been suspicious the antibiotics had not completely killed off the strep, and had other strange symptoms alongside, like pain in my armpits and dry eyes. Of course, I was tested for covid. I felt sicker as the day went on, and hunkered down in the bedroom and even made Luna, my very fluffy cat, stay out. The next morning I received a call saying my results were negative - huge relief - and returned to urgent care. We ended up retreating my strep, and I was feeling much better by that night. I still struggle to smell little things, like a lip balm I regularly use, and don't really have any explanation. 

Rightfully so, I'd like to avoid getting sick. I'm not willing to self sacrifice. Nor am I willing to risk my child's health - he's my only one, and we are casting our entire lot on him, all of our love. I want to avoid the risk of causing others to be ill, too. Facts and figures aside, my gut tells me that this time of discomfort is a way for our family to contribute to the greater good by continuing to limit our exposure to uncontrolled public gatherings. When disagreement led to the disbanding of a friendship, I told that person I wanted to get out of their way. I'm doing that now, too.

The Crash

I adore Brian Cox. Talk physics to me. Whisper it in my ear.

It was bound to happen sometime.

We learn Newton's first three laws in school. Entropy, that sneaky little secret knot at the end, ties it all together.

Everything falls apart.

Life is a constant battle against entropy. We mow the yard, wash the dishes, sweep the floor. The ants fight to bring the nature back inside while we try to bar them at the door. Out in the woods, where things make sense, the trees are growing to die to grow again. It's cyclical. The fourth law tells us entropy is constant, and whatever we do will eventually be laid to waste by forces beyond our control.

Does depression makes its place at your table when you read that? Sit with it. Make a place for what you read instead of the sadness you feel. The trees are not sad.

My body has gone the way of the lawn that's been mowed too much, the horse whose wind was broke.

It's broken for a while. Where this will take me, I don't know, but I'm learning to make a place for the reality instead of all the feelings when I respond to the sensation.

I'm reminding myself that movement isn't cancelled. It has been changed. Smaller, slower, stiller. But I am still me, movement doesn't make me. The stress that led to this isn't me, even though my mind and body struggle to identify real threats - lions and tigers - from modern threats.

This was coming for a while, evident in the moments when the words I needed were like red balloons released from a toddler's hand and drifting out of reach to the sky. The tiny pieces of sand added up to make a beach, drops that made an ocean, until I was so full and still didn't listen.

The pattern is easy to see when I look back. In the same way constellations would be hard to see if we were in the midst of them, I can't blame myself for running myself down with stress and activity. Now... now, I must be still, so I can chart my course to whatever the next destination will be. Never has there been a better time to seek stillness, quietness, smallness, than now.

Being ill - with whatever is actually it is that makes me feel this way deep into the tissues that never see the light - has forced me to be willing to allow myself to evolve. Can I embrace whatever new me lies ahead? Yes. I hope I can carry so much of the old me along.

If there is a lesson here, it's this: Stillness can be a movement, too.

Subtle Quality vs. Depth - Or, Why Is One Not Like The Other One

Life is odd right now. Can we all just agree on that?

YES.

Just say it, own it, admit it. Loudly, emphatically. May I encourage you to make it your rooftop ballad for the evening? Serenade your neighbors - we are all home anyway - with the song of your people. Own it. Because when we try to run from the fear of the unknown and shove our heads in the sand, the only one fooled is the person covering their head and saying nothing is happening. Everyone else knows you are lying to yourself. Can you embrace the nebulous state of the world and maybe even, dare I say it?, embrace your fear?

Look, as ever, I promise I am taking you somewhere. This will not be an eternal call to embrace being afraid. No one really wants the fear, the heartbeat racing, cortisol spiking, bad dream bringing, anger brining insanity of any of this. But we can't hide from it either. We all have our coping mechanism. Mine is: Move.

To quote Saint Motel (one of my all-time favorite hot Sunday at Bonnaroo shows), "Head, shoulders, knees, toes, Look alive, it's time to go..." Or maybe Taylor Swift's "Shake It Off" is a bit more your speed.

All I am asking is, can you look a little alive and less like you're staring death down, because life is short. So I choose to make this happen with yoga. Yesterday I went a little off the track I normally follow - move, move, move, move, move, to slow down the rippling waves that bowl over the depths of my mind, the only way to get everything to just stop and be still, because if I am winded I can't think as much - and I chose a still-er than normal class. The class reminded me that sometimes when you are a pot of boiling water (raises hand) all that's necessary is to occasionally pull the pot from the stove so the water molecules slow themselves the hell down and stop being so excited all the time. It sounds like I'm talking chemistry now, and maybe I am, because aren't we all just built out of chemicals anyway?

Or maybe I am talking about cooking, because lately my insides have felt famished. Hungry for depth and complexity. But yesterday, I finally heard the call to be still and listen. It's not like no one has ever said to me,

"Honey, could you be still and listen to what is going on in that mind and heart of yours?"

For the first time, my brain said, "Oh, okay. This is novel."

On my mat in my living room, I saw that when I calm the waters, there's no depth needed. The ripples clear and everything is right in front of me and all I have to do is look to find the subtle qualities I seek in yoga, in my mind, when I write and paint and create. No, depth is not bad. But depth was perhaps not the destination at which I wished to arrive. I was cooking the wrong things, possibly, following the wrong recipe or mixing up the wrong compound when all I needed to do was take the pot off the stove eye, remove it from the flame, and let the air bubbles settle. Right there, just below the rolling surface, was complexity. I didn't need to dive deep for it.

Depth implies that seeing involves a struggle. Subtlety only asks that we observe.

I ask myself all the time, "How can I write like (enter author here)?" Perhaps the depth I seek from their work is the subtlety I can lend to my own work. Shall I choose rather than deep dives to sit with something small and explore it infinitely? Is that where my power lies, as a creator?

When Learning Feels Like Failing

Lately, I have found myself in some sticky, tricky situations.

I am learning that I know pretty much absolutely nothing.

No one tells anyone adulting is like this. So I am here to say it. 

If you are growing and expanding, trying things and accepting new responsibility, there will be a time when you realize you have no clue what you are doing.

Can we just set aside the shame? 

Can we say to ourselves, maybe loudly,

I am 36 and I don't know what I am doing. 

Ew. Did that feel yucky? That's ok. Of course, you wouldn't say you were 36. Unless you actually are, and that's a good time to figure out your knowledge fills a tiny pool. That pool might be deep and specialized, but it's still just a pool.

Are you hopping from pool to pool? Pool hoppers, I hear you. Hopping is easy, and you think you've really paddled around, but then there are all these fathoms beneath you. They're down there doing what fathoms do, stretching away into black, and this pool contains way more than you thought.

Whether you're someone changing the size of your own pool or you're a hopper sinking deep, brace yourself, because I have some crazy advice. You'll have to use your voice again. Clear your throat and maybe grab your phone.

ASK FOR HELP.

That's right. Most of these pools you land in have other occupants. There's no reason to feel frantic and alone. Ask a friend, ask a coworker, ask the previous director. Ask them to join you for coffee. Invite them to lunch. Send an email and admit it: you don't know anything about anything, even though you know something about something, and you desperately need some help to learn more about something so you can do your job really well. Accept beginnerness. Regardless of your age and the expectation that you should already KNOW.

If last year was my year to be ridiculously comfortable being uncomfortable, this is my year to accept that I know way less about nearly everything than I ever thought I did. Management, production, publishing, sewing a cuff on a shirt, teaching. My awareness has expanded (occasionally under duress!) to the point where I am clued into the massive collection of knowledge outside the circle of what I know. Is this the Dunnen-Kreuger effect on a grand scale? Likely. Does it ever get better? Unknown. All I know for sure is that I left safety and surety behind a while ago and to get it back I would need to go back to living smaller. And I want to grow.

Digging for Depth

If we thought of action as nutrition, what would you crave? I get bored easily, and I find myself longing for eccentric complexity, novelty, anything outside the lines. My mind vibrates when I read something weird, gothic, or just unusual. My body cries out for movement that isn't walking or biking, something outside normal movement patterns. Not only do I want to take part in these experiences, I want to be a provider of these peculiar, whimsical steps off the proverbial rails.

Last month, I had the joy of completing a portion of something I have pined over for years. Three weeks were spent under the tutelage of the staff at Steadfast and True Yoga, a studio in Nashville, in pursuit of my 200 hour training on the path to become certified to teach yoga. I've taught in the past, uncertified, but I found myself in a place where I no longer felt that was an acceptable option. I was increasingly aware of the disservice it was to myself and others, especially my fellow practitioners. My choice of studio was intentional: Gillian has an amazing reputation as a teacher and life-long practitioner. She's ridiculously creative, has a strong alignment-based background, and has studied with some of the best. The staff at the studio are a driving force in a mission to provide - in my opinion - a truly unparalleled experience. The daily drives to and from Nashville were a challenge, but it was a worthy sacrifice for the level of education I received, the chance to learn more about myself, the opportunity to find depth of thought and character.

Throughout training, Gillie reminded us we would, "... Teach like our teachers until we learned how to teach like ourselves."

I long for depth, so I found a teacher who offered depth.

I long for eccentricity, so I read authors who write the eccentric.

I long for complexity, so I gravitate to designers who create complexly.

I long for visual challenge, so I adore artists who don't take the easy route.

When we visited family in Providence over the summer, we visited the HP Lovecraft Book Store in the Arcade, a shop totally dedicated to the weird and eccentric. I left with a collection of short stories by Shirley Jackson tucked under my arm, and as I read through them, I see a mirror image of my own short stories. I only read The Lottery in high school, and nothing since, so I'm certainly not lifting her style or words to use as my own. But Shirley has been a good teacher, showing me new ways to hone my craft, to stretch the truth, to catch the reader by surprise and force them to squirm uncomfortably when faced with the secrets we all stash away in the vault of our stomachs. Anne Lamott or Twyla Tharpe tell of a writer who learned to write well by copying, word for word, the works of the classics. He emerged from his experience a better writer. Obviously. How could he not? This is why as a writer, I read. This is why my favorite affirmation as a writer is this: When the reader within me unites with the writer within me, great things happen.

The Vampire's Wife is my current point of high design obsession. Susie Cave makes stunning, ethereal pieces, magical dresses, which are way outside what I could ever afford. I recently began the process of draping something similar for myself though. I can only hope what I make is a worthy homage to her beautiful dresses. Is it a copy-cat move? Yes. But I am learning about draping and form and function. From this experiment, I can apply the knowledge I gain to ideas of my own.

In high school art, we copied a particular piece of art three times over with different methods and media. Now I understand what we were doing all those years ago (Penny, I hope you are reading this!): We were learning how to create, from the masters. Reapproaching the Mona Lisa three times over didn't teach me how to copy a DaVinci well - oh no, not at all! The process taught me about shape and form and how to build the human face and hands from nothing but a pencil, how to breathe life into a sheet of paper with oil pastels, how to craft humanity from paint.

It all makes sense now, actually. We can learn by studying the masters of our craft. What I realize now is that it's okay if my work resembles these other sources for a while, as long as I give credit where it is due. In fact, it's okay if I am in that place for a while. I know I won't stay there. The more I deep dive here, the deeper my own reservoir can extend. As I learn, I am finding my own creative voice. 

A Tell of a Hun - See What I Did There?

A few weeks ago, I received a message from an acquaintance on social media. We may have spoken all of three sentences to each other, ever. All the red flags went up for me, leaving me feeling like Tootle the train in the tale of his travails off the track. Gosh, this blog is going to be full of references no one understands. Tootle is a train who discovers a beautiful world off the rails. When the trackmaster and engineers discover he is off track, they create hundreds of red flags to guide him back to the tracks where he belongs. Red flags = danger.

Look, there is nothing like being approached by those we perceive as the "cool kids", only to realize they are giving you the time of day solely for their personal gain. Wait. This isn't junior high anymore. Or even high school.

Still, even though I knew what was happening, that I was being hunned, it might have stung a little to have someone approach me and ask me fairly personal questions, then abruptly end the conversation when I tell them I am not interested. Even though I knew their play book. Even though I saw the red flags waving. Even though I didn't even play into the script. And then they just ghosted. Poof, gone, into thin air.

I know they were just doing what they do, and it's how they make money, but it seems so unethical.

But okay, shall we flip the calendar pages back a bit to the first of July? I was in Boston and had just finished a contract date for my job. I was feeling good. Optimistic. I looked out the window of the hotel room at the rough-around-the-edges city of Boston, realized it was the half year, and made a half year resolution. As an introvert (INFP), I self-protect often and am lazy about friendships. Then I hear about people having fun without me, when I should have been invited, and despite the fact that I nearly always decline invitations to do fun things, I find myself feeling disappointed. So, I resolved to be more intentional about my friendships. To be more vulnerable. To - gasp - invite people over to my house.

Now, fast forward to the hunning. Wait. Is that reference lost on you, too? Okay. Urban Dictionary defines "Hun" as:

"A term used women to address others in a condescending manner.

Often used by pyramid scheme selling moms when approaching a potential customer."

I'm using it as a verb here, but you get the idea.

But here is where I find the meat of the situation. This person was extremely intentional about getting to know me, understanding my situation, and finding a way to connect. This is the take-home. If I am serious about meeting the metrics I set forth for myself in that hotel room, I need to work from the Playbook of the Huns. Maybe we all should, in this era of fragmegration and fragmentation, of too much time spent building a life on-screen rather than off. How can we see people for who they really are? By meeting them where they are, by asking them who they are and what makes them who they are.

Maybe, just maybe, the Huns have a secret we can use to be better people, the build a kinder, healthier, happier society built on acknowledgement of individual identity, understanding and compromise. Lets just make sure we stick around instead of ghosting.

The Experience of Art

"I just don't experience art the way you do." This is what my husband says often when I rave about a song, a painting, a film, a book. I do this often, feeling coursing through my veins as I extoll the virtues of a given work. I connect with art, with creation, in an intense way. He doesn't.

This summer is the summer of shows for us, it seems. First there was Gregory Alan Isakov in a cave. Then Wu-Tang Clan at the Ryman (!!!!). I found myself on a Bonnaroo adventure last weekend and watched, most notably, Childish Gambino.

Last night was something different, though, something special. A few years ago, in the midst of the great divorce between me and all those miles on the bike, I was seeking. My rudder was knocked off by utter exhaustion, and I needed to repair it so I could find my way again. I picked up Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love, and something about the story resonated with me. Much about the story resonated with me. A deep intonation that quieted the panic at my lack of health and certainty. I finished the book, and read interviews upon interviews with Liz. What vibrated the most was this idea that we are in charge of our own vision quest, and regardless of budget, time, resources, we can find ourselves.

I went on that vision quest, and maybe I'm still riding that wave. The quest doesn't end, much in the same way the layers of proprioception in yoga peel back only to reveal another. I am, each of us are, Russian nesting dolls. What's your kernel like? You won't know if you don't dig.

How can I describe sitting in the same room as my idol? When I was in high school, I went on a trip to Europe. Hearing Elizabeth Gilbert speak, to be privy to her reading of City of Girls, was like seeing the Mona Lisa in person, across the crowded gallery, or standing in the Sistine Chapel. This person who has created so much magic, and there she was in an auditorium in Nashville. How could I be so lucky?

After her reading, which was a sheer delight, she offered Q&A, which was even more delightful. Of course. Questions surrounded the matter of creativity, process, and embracing your own eccentricity and right to exist as your accepted self. I was moved to tears when she responded to a question at length about her now-defunct podcast, and why she no longer records episodes. She said, "There's only one reason people don't do the creative thing they want to do, and that is fear."

My current has been filled with fear lately. Fear of mediocrity. Fear of lack of success. Fear of sharing. Fear of putting words on paper because they'll sound trite and novitiate. I've been a boarded up Victorian house, ramshackle boards criss-crossing the windows, ghosts rattling the floorboards, with the bushes growing high at the front to hide myself. I came, I shared, and then I went into hiding.

At the Wu-Tang show, they played an intro with quotes dubbed in, and one I can't place stuck with me.
"You know, anybody can rhyme, but it's what you say that make people know about you."
Look, I don't want to make this a random collection of quotes, but I could go on and on. This brings me to the final question of the night, and Liz's answer. The question regarded our essential humanity and sexuality, but her response circled back around to creativity in such a beautiful way. I think our creativity is far too tangled with these other ideas to ever find the end of any string.
"What the universe seems to want is constant creative response. It's always growing and creating... It's not Creation, capital C, it's creating, and we are part of creating." 
It's quintessential to our nature, our elevated consciousness and awareness, to create. To make simple things beautiful.

So pardon me while I rip the boards off the windows and replace the curtains, repair the roof and make friends with the ghosts in the parlor. It's time to move with the Universe and create. Maybe someday I can also pack an auditorium.

Devotional Beauty and the Act of Doing

I don't have any pictures to share, it was so long ago. I have them, of course, but they're tucked away in a box somewhere at my parents' house, with all the things I need to finally go through with adult eyes. It was the year 2000, a jubilee year, and I was just seventeen. My only serious high school boyfriend and I had just gone our separate ways; he had gone off to join the Navy, and even though he thought we were marriage-track I had known all along that I liked his affection and attention way more than I actually liked him. And there I was, in Europe. With friends and a teacher who became my friend. The train had carried us through to dawn and France. I was hungover from a love affair with Italy and was mourning my loss of the sight of medieval embattlements and Roman columns and Renaissance magic around every corner. 

To say the word dawn implies light. What I've since learned is quintessential French spring weather welcomed me, damp and chill, and I sighed at the loss of my real love, my first true love, warm Italian sun and art and men with espresso cups clasped between tanned fingers reaching from the arms of suits. Still, I swoon. 

I was naïve of France. Of Paris. As Americans, we sometimes seem bent on denigrating France. Look at our response in the early aughts. Pouring champagne down drainage gullies and rebranding fries and toast. That baggage was packed into my ramshackle, overpacked rolling suitcase as I bounced off the train in flipflops and a rain jacket. I shivered, and we boarded a bus destined for Our Lady. I don't remember standing in front of the façade of the cathedral, but I recall skipping puddles as our tour guide discussed flying buttresses and the rose window and surely the forest in the ceiling of this magnificent specimen of high gothic architecture. Two years later, I would find myself seated in an art history class during my year as an art history major, hearing these same words and rehashing that rainy walk. 

Inside, out of the rain, the light was dim. I'm grateful for the rain that day, the clouds, the failing quality of the light outside, for Notre Dame was all candles flaming and flickering and stained glass saints with their rose window, captured in bright white stone. I don't have a cute photo in front of the façade. Or maybe I do and I don't recall. But what I do remember is the beauty of the secret inner being of that place built of devotional beauty. I realize as I carried my phone tearfully to my husband yesterday, he who I did know in an instant that I could settle down and spend a lifetime with, that I wasn't mourning the loss of something tangible. Tears fell at the loss of beauty that we as a people share. What I learned yesterday is that we can't always wait and rely on the reliable. If you have something to create, do it. We need more beauty in this world. If there's something inside you that must be said, say it. If there's something you must see, see it. To be held, hold it. To be done, do it. The act of doing is beautiful. Make doing your devotion.

I settled into a heart opener. Bolster beneath my back, so that my sternum opened up to the sky. Let energy come in. Allow it to leave. Breathe and feel your skin stretch and expand. Then, she said it...

"It's not just about the work."

Class had been fantastic. Fallen triangles, wild things, a dancer where my favorite instructor-friend (emphasis on friend) supported me so I could reach for the full pose. I felt like a ballerina. Touching deep into my artistic side is one of the best things yoga offers me. Sometimes, maybe I do get wrapped up in the work.

But Suzanna said that, and all my preoccupations fell away.  What is life, if we aren't here to enjoy it when we can? It really isn't just about the work, the way we toil away at our life's efforts. It's about rest, too. And fun. And the love we have to give. Finally, it's about joy.

I fear it, the honest truth that sometimes on my mat and off I am too absorbed in the big picture to see the small moments in their golden glory. Can I live more awake to the lulls? To the in-between times with their abundance of goodness to offer? Rest is good. May we find joy in it, rather than guilt that we aren't doing enough. Can we let others support us so that we may reach further? Allow the light in, friends.

Thirty Six

My own New Year.

I spent the first hour and a half of the first day of year 36 on a mat. Not my own, but a rented red foam mat, in a very warm studio in Florida. Like the religious seek out a church for worship, I find a place to practice when I'm on vacation, a place to move and breathe, an anchor for my days and months and years. When I step on that mat, I know what to expect in a way, and that I won't leave the same as I entered.

An early bird to any new studio, I arrived with plenty of time to work out the kinks that arise when I spend time folded up like a paper clip in a car seat for hours on end. First I sat and took in the heat in the room, the way it pressed in against me, the space thick with dry warmth. Then I began to stretch and take up area, to press back against the atmosphere gently, with some hamstring work and then a supine twist to each side.

Twists are delicious poses, to be devoured and digested, and I love the feeling of my spine and ribs spiraling toward purpose. I thought to myself, as I often do, "Am I moving from my core?" So I felt with my free hand across my stomach cavity, to feel my muscles doing their work properly, then slid my fingers across my ribs to sense the skin stretching and twisting and exhaled to find more space in the posture.

And I wondered, as I looked at the darkness of my closed eyelids... Can I live my life for the next year, moving from my core?

Can I, for 365 days, move and live in such a way that is loyal to my innermost being?

Can I, for 365 days, trust the amazing power that lies within?

Can I, for 365 days, find joy in every moment?

Can I, for 365 days, lay aside 50% of my cynicism?

Can I, for 365 days, see my plans through? Can I flexibly deviate when needed?

Can I, for 365 days, move from my core?

This will be a year of choice. Choice for action. For courage and bravery. For chasing the horizon. For lovingkindness. Join me. Even when you're tired, when you've been folded up, can you find the space to love yourself, to move, to take a risk, to find more?

Growth Mindset

This year so far, if I could give it a title, would be called, "The Year of Being Comfortable Being Uncomfortable."

Playing in a huge window in NYC

The summer when I was ten, the divider between third and fourth grade, I sat down to write a book. I could see the idea in my mind, crystalline in all its juvenile detective noir goodness, but when I started something awful happened. Somewhere, there's a little black diary with hearts all over it, with a starting paragraph that stops abruptly. All because, CLICHE. I wrote down the phrase, "... little did she know..." and I never picked up a pencil for anything but academic writing and teenage poetry until a couple of years ago when I finally felt comfortable enough -- or deep enough in existential crisis -- to trust myself to write the strange worlds in my head.

I was still terrified of the thought of sharing my work. What if someone found out I was an amateur hack? Or even worse, an imposter. Because to any kid who came of age during the nineties, whether you preferred grunge, hip hop, or pop, being a creative poseur was literally the worst thing you could be. To be a poser was to be unacclaimed, unauthentic, disingenuous. So I started slowly, sharing little stories here and there, with friends and family. But a creator can't grow with only pats on the back. I need to stand up for critique.

Thanks to a random meet-cute on New Years Eve, I found my way into a local writer's group. I gradually began to share, and the first time was a disaster. But I heard critical thoughts I desperately needed to move out of the first stage of the Dunnen-Kreuger scale and understand I'm not prodigious or a wunderkint. And that's alright. Because I am an amateur, with so much to learn, and I'm grateful for this chance where I am in my life.

Speaking of growth, I've also spent the winter learning a completely new skill. I started working with a friend at events for Cycle for Survival, and this has proven to be a whirlwind of learning and growth for me. Before the first event weekend, I listened to a guided meditation from Positive Energy Magazine on YouTube about trusting that we have unbelievable abilities stored up inside us, just waiting for the need to arise so we can unlock the vault and dig down deep to find just what we need. Great challenge means great growth.

The delightful team I've been lucky to be a part of

I used to believe the lying voice that tells me that if something is hard for me, it must mean I'm not good at whatever the challenge is. I'm learning to trust that I can tackle any task, and while it might not be easy, I can learn to be comfortable outside of what I know. I am definitely an amateur, but my creations are authentic and genuinely mine, and I won't stop learning to be a better and more adept creator of beautiful things, so I can give the visions justice.

We are gathered here, dearly beloved...

… to get through this thing called life.
                                     - Prince

Here we are on this last day of the year 2018. I've had good days and bad days and in between days, and that's the way life is made up, right? On the good days, we can be good to others, so others can see good. On the bad days, we can receive the good from others. On the days in the center of the spectrum, we have a choice, and I think this is where we find our power.

2018 was full of: growth, new friends, old friends, family, new dances and old dances, books read and books written (!!!), film and art and theatre, hundreds of miles walked and even a few at a snail's pace run, new discoveries, seams stitched, chaturangas and savasanas galore, three journals filled, cookies baked, pizzas and tacos and fries devoured, obsessions kindled (Twin Peaks and Haruki Murakami, I see you...), road trips, waterfalls, golden snowglobe fall days, new dinosaurs, unicorns, llamas, a cute sloth, one extremely anxious gray ball of fluff, one cute boy, one dear husband.

In 2019, I can only hope to continue to fully embrace my curiosity, peculiarities, kindness, drive, love, empathy, creativity, and let them take me where they will, all fostered by a sense of exploration with a studied reticence at the urge to treat me, myself, like a problem that needs to be solved. I want to be good to me in 2019. And eat more fish, because that's a great way to be good to myself.

Let's Get Weird. Or A Home For Peculiar Children.

This morning, a kid told me my child was, "annoying. All he ever talks about is dinosaurs and Star Wars." My heartrate soared behind the placid waters of my face.

He is mildly annoying sometimes, what with the perpetual talk of the raptor family and Storm Troopers, and theories about dinosaur extinction and mammals living in tandem with dinosaurs. He's an intense deep diver with a deep seeded desire to be a paleontologist. He even has his own fossil collection, largely found on his own. He's also a little peculiar, but that's fine by me, so long as he's cool with the Weird, too. I mean, this same kid who said this had literally just sat and pulled his red hoodie over his forehead, exclaiming to his deskmates that he was The Flash. All kids are all weird. If you're saying another kid is (insert negative descriptor) you're probably missing the fact that you're totally weird, too.

But back to my heart rate and the way it took off like Elon Musk funded its design. Being The Weird Kid - note the capitalization - was often more a cross to bear for me than a neatly wrapped gift for such a long time. Some days, The Strangeness still feels like a heavy mantle to shoulder.

I've come to think of it as something for which I can find gratitude, though. I can embrace the way my mind works these days, now that I have found my way through the labyrinth of adolescence and chased away the darkness that knocked chips in my shoulders. I'm probably not a normal, gold star sort of person, but I'm a good person, smart, ridiculously creative, intensely driven. I care for myself, for who I am, deeply, and regard others with that same respect. And the Weird? I hold it close, even at times when it makes me feel all alone in a crowded room, which still happens more often than I like to confess.

That embrace is softened by the way I feel when I'm alone now, the acceptance I've extended to who I am, who I was, who I will be, without the outside influence of judgement. I'm okay. I was okay. I will be okay. Frankly, I dig who I am. I feel like I have found a group of friends who get me and foster self-acceptance; that has been the most fortifying thing about developing adult friendships.

If there's any one single thing I hope to teach my child, sooner rather than later, it's that judgement passed upon you by others is not your problem at all; it's their burden to slough about this world. Be deep and complex, and know that sometimes intensity like we hold is intimidating and uncomfortable and scary to those around us, but that's okay, because sometimes bright things are uncomfortable to behold.

The Lately Later Thoughts

This one will ramble. As I do sometimes.

A couple of weeks ago, Paul and I went on one of our bookstore adventures. I adore bookstores, and have dreams of lying in piles of books all day long, luxuriating in the smell and picking each one up and devouring it in a single sitting. Weird books, classic books, nonfiction, journals, kids books, you name it. I - generally - don't discriminate. Words, pages, you had me at hello. Okay, enough with my literary wet dream. Back on track, Jessie, back on track. I purchased Austin Kleon's Steal Like an Artist Journal, apparently named after his book of the same strain.

It's full of fun exercises to get your scratching (to reference Twyla Tharp) maxed out, gather those ideas, and have a place for them. I already scratch for inspiration quite a bit, from books, film, daily life, dreams, but this flips the concept on its head and sends you to weird places for ideas, and I LOVE IT. My favorite exercise so far has been charting out a creative family tree. 

For this particular exercise, I chose Gabriel Garcia-Marquez and Kurt Vonnegut as my points of inspiration, but I could easily have chosen writers like Naomi Alderman, who I know is inspired by the great Margaret Atwood, or Phillip Pullman. Anyone, really. It's a fun workout to see that the same people who inspired these great writers are also sources of inspiration for me. Garcia-Marquez was deeply influenced by his grandparents' own stories, as well as Dickens, Dostoyevsky, and Kafka. In the upper branches, you can also find Hemingway, Thomas Paine, Poe, and Nietezch. I'm in good company whenever I sit down to write. It's comforting to realize this, and reminds me of one of my favorite affirmations for writers:

When the writer within me meets with the reader within me, great things happen.

I know this to be true, and I like to wrap myself in this truth like a cozy blanket. Good things will happen if I just continue on.

I felt lousy and tired all week last week. Following the aforementioned glutening the Sunday after Thanksgiving, I've felt drained and achy, consumed by the gluten flu lite, and functional but barely. The nugget had a lock-in at school on Friday, and I told Paul we should relax and start on the last two seasons of Twin Peaks. 

Speaking of creators who inspire me, David Lynch is a brilliant artist. He stretches his media to the limit to convey sprawling ideas that are challenging, uncomfortable, delicious. I hope someday I can create something so... complex.

The marathon stretched through the weekend. We finally finished last night, and I'm still in awe. But something happened while I was watching that was unrelated to the story. Candy, a pretty, slim girl walked on screen, and I found myself in my normal thought pattern. My brain begins whirling it on a secret command prompt, arrows in front and a go, a virus planted there along the way as I've walked through this world.

"I wish I knew what it was like to have legs like that."

For the first time ever, though, I peeled back the curtains of body dysmorphia, curious to see the hidden mechanism. I asked myself, why? What spurs this process? I dove in, brave, wind blowing in my hair as I jumped from the precipice. And on the way down, I saw that I don't necessarily want a different body, but rather to not have to think about my body. To not feel the constant urge to sidle in front of the mirror to see that my thighs don't look too big in an outfit. To not feel out of place because of my appearance. To feel at home, and to devote the energy I waste wishing for something other than what I have to more worthy pursuits. 

But I can do that anyway, be at home, here and now. I don't have to waste my precious time and energy hiding.

I am not required to continue complicity in a culture that robs women of so much time and energy, a culture that would attempt to mold us to its own selfish desires than to mold to each woman. I can't say I will never look at my body in the mirror and lament a perceived extra five pounds again, or legs that if they were a mere two inches longer would be a work of perfection, or a waist that will just never be that narrow by proportional ratio to my hips and bust. Or wrinkles that grow with love and laughter and deep thoughts that stitch together my brow. But maybe, just maybe, a modicum more of my time and space can be devoted to the things that are more intrinsically important.

Look, I don't blame the normal sources. I don't blame fashion magazines, Barbie, the golden ratio. I blame a patriarchal system that subjects women to inestimable standards that only a tiny portion of us can reach. We are all someplace on a sliding scale, but the scale is a liar and a cheat, and it will take your life if you let it. Don't let it. 

The Gentle Relentless Power

Sleeping tree limbs
A gray burial shroud
Scattered with jewels
To cover what will be
When the next year rolls around
Now we lay Uncovered

And Bare
Exposed.

 A mercifully free day popped up on our radar. No practice for Hobbes' stage debut in the Nutcracker Fantasy. No family commitments. No bike rides or writing or anything at all. Just freedom. So we slept late, feasted on cinnamon rolls (I, a gluten free, egg white only, flax seed milk cinnamon roll mug cake because I am extra like that, and had been presumably glutened the night previous.) and dressed for a day in the woods.

We made our way to Greeter Falls, a place I've been but barely remembered, until I reached the bottom of the spiraling staircase and saw the huge amphitheater carved out over the millennia by the steady, relentless, gentle-but-powerful flow of the water down, down, down, down the drop. And I'm reminded even now of what gentle relentless power can do, flowing over day by day, year by year. That kind of force unbridled can create something beautiful to behold.

I fell in the water while rockhopping, soaking my right foot. Then Paul accidentally loosed a branch he was holding as we skirted the top of the gorge, which flew back and hit me hard in the forehead. The boy serenaded us for seemingly hours with endless lectures about his imaginary friend Gagel the cat and his cohorts, as well as the cats from the Warriors series, with a smattering of dinosaurs. Someday, he is going to be a writer or a professor or some other profession where he can write and convey thoughts.

But then we took a short spur out to a place neither Paul or I had ever visited, Blue Hole, and as we descended into the little hollow there were laurels and rhododendrons, and it was like a whole other world set apart, and I was filled with happiness.

"The clearest way into the universe is through a forest wilderness." - John Muir 

Existential Crisis: Honesty In Motion

How do you meet the wave?

Do you plunge over the top?

Do you dive through the center, bubbles swirling around you?

Do you swim sideways, rolling over and under?

Do you swim away, allowing the wave to push you back to your starting point?


What if there is no single correct answer, and all you need to do is simply take action? The wave is coming, regardless of your choice.

We are all alive, and then we die. This awareness seeds anxiety deep in my heart. That seed germinates and blooms into fear of failure and too much pressure.

I've started things later than most, finally trusting myself to spin tales and create beautiful, sometimes eccentric, things to behold, to read, to wear. All because I chose to explore and see what actually waited to be uncovered on the inside. It took so long to get to the start.

Bad habits are old friends with bad influence, and I've known them so long I find it hard to end the acquaintance. I stop exploring, and start building out of expectation, forgetting that Rome wasn't built in a day. I want it all, and I want it now. Because I see my talent and giftedness, and I am impatient for the reward of what is sometimes lonely work, toiling away at something I divined up out of my mind.

And I am reluctant to take the risk of sharing, not just with friends, but also the people who could make or break me. This reticence makes me feel hopeless. Like I'm never going to meet my goals of creating for a living.

I catch myself in the quagmire of self doubt, then say to myself, "What if someone could teach me to do this thing I already know how to do?" because this feels safe, like a fail proof, when a life of creativity never will be fail proof. And that, that truth, is the secret that has scared me away for at least thirteen years, and hindered me being my most true self.

I want freedom and reliance together, and sometimes those concepts are mutually exclusive. If I want to grow my creative self, it is imperative that I choose to embrace the danger-or-adventure of taking the plunge below the surface to become part of the wave and embrace it; I think this is the best choice for me. Soaking myself instead of protecting myself, indulging in the joy of deeper exploration of just what I have to offer, and sloughing off expectation as I go.

So, for me, I think the time has come to go deep.

Short Story: The Cavity

Sometimes the news feeds me an idea I can't ignore. The discovery of teeth in a wall in an old dental office was too good to pass up. Enjoy The Cavity.

The wall was fresh from the plaster and paint, smooth to the touch, and he patted it over the invisible patchwork. Was there energy inside the wood and drywall? He could sense something in there. Behind closed eyes, between his last appointments ever, he recalled the strange day so many years prior. That day had led to here, and would lead to tomorrow, too.

He was still young then, blond hair just beginning to lighten to gray at the temples. Courting Anna, who found his manner and appearance dignified and his secret touch electric, Walter had no plans for the week following or the one after that. He cleaned teeth, saw Anna, and little else, for there was little else to do in a place like this. James, the farmer from the valley across the top of the ridge had just stood from the chair and walked out the door to see Virginia at the front desk to settle up his affairs, leaving the door ajar behind him.

Walter stood at the counter, sanitizing his tools, the smell of isopropyl alcohol hanging in the air, his mind vacantly jumping from one thing to another. Outside, summer breathed its last breath of flame into the trees and the leaves were just catching. The date was September 30^th, and that was the day he learned how not to die.

The gentle clicking of the hallway clock filled the room. Walter brought it with him from Delaware, and the southern climate had taken its toll on the timepiece. Humidity stretched and warped the proportions of the wood, but the inner workings still turned and clicked away their reliable rhythm. Walter could never be sure how long the silence persisted before he noticed the clock had stopped its familiar clicking of the long hand’s advance, carrying with it the short hand, but as he cleared the counter, there it was. Quiet.

Walter, unsurprised the clock had given up finally, turned toward the door, still half open as if waiting to share a secret. Through the openings between the hinges, where the door met the door facing, Walter saw her. She shifted into the room slowly, feet unmoving, but rustling, and he dropped the tiny dental mirror to the floor where it clattered then stopped, and the silence was heavy, pushing Walter to the edge of the counter for fear of suffocating under its weight.

Still half covered by the door, she sought to build a connection with Walter, and caught his eyes in her own. She pushed hard on the door without raising her hand. The door slammed into the wall, rattling everything inside the renovated shed he called his place of practice. This was not Willie, the small boy from the next town over who was scheduled for a checkup. Her gray lips pressed firmly together, until she spoke. Walter saw into the gaping hole as she spoke, and the darkness beckoned behind the shiny gray gums. The smell of sweet rotting meat and leaves left to decay filled the room. Her voice shook the room as she said, “You, Walter Windrow Sutton, will die.”

Her jaw did not move to enunciate the words. The sounds escaped her gut, booming out from the darkness she held inside, tempered with the sounds of grinding and jostling of the secrets within. “Unless,” and the stones and gravel inside rolled, “you fill me.”

She held out a tooth in her grimy right hand, nails broken and blackened and wrinkles and folds filled with decay, a bright and perfect molar. The roots were clean and the tooth shone out against the grime of her pawing palm. The mouth yawned wide again, further this time so that her jaw hung down onto her clavicle, and she shoved her right hand, folded into a fist, deep into her mouth. Walter watched as the wrist and forearm followed and could see her throat bulge beneath the dangling jaw until her elbow was all that was left. She withdrew her hand and closed her jaw.

Once more her jaw opened and the sounds of rustling emitted from inside her, before she loudly rasped out, “5,000.” Walter realized the jumbling noises within were not stones or sticks, but teeth, rolling and jostling below the surface. He gripped the metal edge of the counter until his fingers might bleed, breath coming fast and shallow, his mouth a dry hollow. His head back and forth, tracing a line up and down with his nose, eyes locked on the darkness just inside those gray and desiccated lips. She was hunger. He would fill her.

The clock started up again in the hallway. There was Walter, still hanging onto the counter top, fearful of drowning in the smell of death. He was already there, though, and the smell had filled him, deep into the crevaces of his lungs and floating into his bloodstream as it flowed throughout his earthly form, so the eternal and the temporal could mix and be one forever. When the boy settled into the chair, Walter felt it was important to extract a molar. He was certain this baby tooth needed to go to clear the way for the tooth bud below to grow, and smiled as he held the tooth up in the golden late afternoon light shining and pink with blood.

Now this wall held the full 5,000 teeth, and Walter was old and tired but immune to death’s final blow. The teeth here, he had broken the best things in his life to fill this hole, and he thought of Annie’s jaws emptied of bite. He wished for rest, something to fill the emptiness yawning inside him, a cavity to be charged, and Walter Windrow Sutton understood the levy placed on his life. He rustled out the door and the stones jostled within as he laughed at the sky.

**Creator retains full rights**

Heart Wide Open

Sometimes I struggle to live openly, welcoming what may come. But that's not how we, these tiny bits of stardust, Rumi's "Universe in ecstatic motion," are meant to live. 

Open to what is offered

From time to time, I find a place, especially a space in time, where I feel myself open up. I spread and bloom to welcome in the light and the dark and all the beauty around me. And love and kindness seal in the warmth and goodness. I carry them with me, those sensed feelings, until they meet with me again in full. I see all the possibilities of my life, the way it intersects and influences others, all because of the magic of that space.

Overlooking Burgess Falls in White County, TN

Yesterday, the three of us loaded up in the car and drove to White County to visit Burgess Falls. The park is stunning, with a fairy tale of a hike past several large drops. The Falling Water River loses around 250 feet in elevation as it runs through the park, creating a river gorge that feels more like it belongs in in the western states than the center of Tennessee.

I often wish I could visually capture the magnitude of these moments, but no picture or painting can do justice to the breadth of an experience. But yesterday was special. The golden sycamore leaves fell from high up in the ridge tops, floating out over the gorge before falling down to the water to drift past us before hitting the top of the water to be carried away to some other place. A bright blue sky created the perfect backdrop, and only served to highlight the autumn snowglobe in which I found myself and my two favorite people. 

With gratitude, I share this magical experience. When we bloom out, we create the space we need to flourish. Be willing to be visionary, to explore.

A Love Note To Myself

There are so many voices in this world. All of them, most of them, some of them, maybe half, maybe a quarter, a handful, the inner circle, one that matters, they want what is best for you, or possibly something of a compromise between what is best for you and them, perhaps even what seems good for you but is excellent for them. They make tons of racket, noise that lets you know that you should love yourself as you are but you should also lose ten pounds, stop eating your favorite food, graduate from an Ivy League university in two years with no debt and solve the problems facing society, while you run ten miles daily, meditate for at least ten minutes, feed your family three squarely healthy meals a day, read a book a week, and be a general portrait of perfection.

But that noise, it blocks out all the best things.

The sound of leaves as the rustle on these days just before autumn sets in full, lazy afternoons with small people watching movies on your worn-in (well-loved?) sofa, the sound of your heart churning away to let you know it is still there, keeping you awash. The quiet whir of your mind as it goes to someplace amazing, leaving beautiful things in its wake.

We aren't projects. I am not a project. You are not a project. You don't have to constantly improve. I don't have to work so damn hard all the time. Neither do you. Unless that's your thing. I don't suggest that you leave all attempts to be better behind, but are you doing all this to quiet down the most important sound of all? Sometimes I catch myself listening to all the noise, and I devour the words and they become part of me, because you are what you eat. I will brutalize myself in the name of improvement.

When I do that, I stifle the most important sound.

Let your inner voice be your guide. Allow her the volume to reach through to your daily life, to fuel your happiness in the present. Muffle her power less. Nurture her, so that she may be a beast among men. Then we can take on the world, with love in our hearts. Love yourself.

Note: I have not read the piece from which this graphic is excerpted.

Working on the Inside

"What's he building in there?
What the hell is he building in there?
He has subscriptions to those magazines,
He never waves when he goes by,
He's hiding something from the rest of us,
He's all to himself, I think I know why..."
Tom Waits, What's He Building In There?

But really, what are you building in there? What magical, dark, great, goodness-only-knows, genius, singular, unusual, unique, wonderful thing is spinning up inside your skull and chest space that you haven't unlocked yet out of fear? Fear of failure, fear of trying, fear of being known, because being known, truly seen, is the hardest thing of all? Gosh, just give it all up and open it all up and let yourself grow and bloom and be. We each inside of us store things we will never know if we don't take the time to use this life to explore and find out just what the inner us is constructing. What are you building in there? Take a risk, take a chance, be real, and show off your weird, your funky, your million-ways-completely-fucked-up, your imperfect symphony, your unfinished work of art, the words you scrabble. Let me see your insides.