Octopi & other living things…

I admit it.  I have a visceral fear of creepy, crawly, slimy, slithery, many-legged, or unusually-shaped body things.  I’m talking centipedes, spiders, snakes, scorpions, eels, squid, octopi.  It probably didn’t help that my brother,  joking around one day, pretended to drop a ten inch long earthworm down the back of my dress. I felt it writhing down my back. But I never found the worm, despite a frenzied dance to shake it out. I was ten.  Before that, earthworms fascinated me; I would dig them out of the ground and have a good long look at their amazing strangeness.  I wondered about them.  After that day, they repulsed me.

The goings-on at Girl Scout camp each summer probably didn’t help either.  The black widow spiders in the latrines we had to clean.  Some mischievous girls putting centipedes in the sleeping bags of other girls.  I don't recall counselors ever helping us appreciate the creatures we were co-existing with.  The counselors were 18-ish, and as former campers, were probably squeamishly averse as well.

I remember finding  a spider in my bedroom when I was about 15. I screamed, in that over-the-top-girly way I’d taken on, for my father to come and kill it. He did come in my room and killed it, but also called me an “idiot” for my dramatic expression of fear.  He might have said some other things, but “idiot” is all I heard.

I always wished I wasn’t afraid.  It’s a visceral thing for me, ever since the earthworm incident. But even before that I was deeply afraid of spiders.  I do love animals. It’s not like I can’t see their beauty and worth, even in the ones I would consider terrifying in a one-on-one encounter.

I’m a great admirer of the late Steve Irwin, who was such a great, if unusual, example of how we might be in relationship with animals. How we might love, value, appreciate them, work on their behalf. I follow with interest his daughter Bindi’s lack of fear and real affection for wildlife, her blossoming into a young woman with a strong sense of interconnectedness, kindness and respect for living things, her confidence and ease in the world, her desire to serve.

   

The U.S. kills over 10 billion land animals every year to feed people, and another 20 billion marine animals.  World-wide, close to 59 billion animals are killed in slaughter houses each year.(This doesn't include animals killed in laboratory experiments (100 million/year), the fashion industry (50 million/year), and the list goes on. The numbers are so large, so appalling, I can’t really fathom the concept, let alone the reality under which these animals live and die.  I’m a vegan wannabe. It was my daughter, Anna, who got me thinking about animals as sentient beings we shouldn’t kill.  She was a vegetarian for twenty years (starting at age 14) before becoming a vegan a couple of years ago.

I’m a pescatarian.  This morning I discovered that Maria Popova of the very wonderful “Brain Pickings” is also a pescatarian.  That made me happy.  I felt in good company.  She did a little piece on octopi. In it she wrote about the octopus:  “More than one of our planet’s most breathtaking creatures, it is a life form a biologist [said]… is ‘probably the closest we’ll get to meeting an intelligent alien’ — and yet… one we murder with such devastating inhumanity that I couldn’t help but cringe at the very thought of having once considered it a favorite food.” See the whole Brain Picking post here. 

http://www.brainpickings.org/2015/05/29/luiz-eating-animals-octopus/

http://www.brainpickings.org/2015/05/29/luiz-eating-animals-octopus/

And this article in the New Yorker, which is both fascinating and,  induced in me the “ethical heartburn” it mentions.

http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/eating-octopus

There was an awesome short video on Facebook last week (which sadly I can't find now).  The octopus was walking on the beach, not slithering, walking!  And carrying a little coconut shell boat that when he reached the water, he set down and climbed in. The video was amazing, and if I can find it, I'll post it here. Seeing the octopus  walk blew me away.  I mean, who knew?  It makes me want to take another look at all my assumptions, of which I'm sure there are many. Even though I’m 67, I still have my “issues” -- personal and political, foremost of which is worry about how people treat each other (and the other animals) and the planet. 

Still it seems I have hope.  Hope that I can become a vegan, hope that I can be more curious and brave than I am fearful, hope that we humans can treat each other and the animals so much better than we too often have. This is a lot of hope to hold in the face of a lot of odds. I feed myself inspiration as often as I can to nurture that hope (and its manifested results) along. Some of that inspiration comes from people I don't know.  Some of it comes from people I do.  Friends, who inspire me with their care and love for this world.

In the late 60s, in the Women’s Liberation Movement, we used to say that “the personal is political”.  What I’m talking about here is personal; it’s also political.  How we treat octopi, each other, and ourselves. How we might do it all creatively, respectfully, compassionately.   Every bit of all of it, down to the last earthworm. It would probably be a good idea to re-consider many of our long-held assumptions ~ about earthworms, octopi, all of the various "others" we fear. 
   

xo,

Gayle

ps. Though I would love to hear your comments, this comment section does not seem to be working right. Several people have told me they wrote something and posted it, then it never showed up.  So, if you would like to respond, for now, please do email me, or post to my FB page.  Thanks!  

As we are... on seeing ourselves & others

As I was straightening up my kitchen a few days ago and about to toss out the vase of dying Peonies, I decided to snap a few pictures first.  What delighted me, what felt like an insight, is that the closer I got, the more apparent the beauty.  It got me to thinking. 

As we (especially human females) age, we want the lighting to be softer, we want the gaze limited,  and perhaps from a distance.  We fear being seen for our physical (and moral?) “imperfections”.  We end up not being seen much at all as we walk down the street,  sit in a restaurant,  try to speak up in one venue or another.

As humans, we are lazy in our looking. We hold close our preconceptions of what is there, what we would see if we did look.  A more nuanced perception requires more energy, and time — to not see the pre-conceived, but rather to take in, consider, take full measure of what is before us.  If a smooth skin fits your idea of beauty,  you might think you know the story of the young woman too, the ingenue. But even with a young woman, you don’t necessarily know what lies below the surface.  A wrinkled, spotted, craggy skin holds physical and emotional information of decades. We easily see the beauty in variations of bark on an old tree, but resist transferring that appreciative eye to our own reflection or the appearance of other old ones.  

We think we don’t have time to look, or we’ll embarrass the person being seen.  We feel the need to flatter.  Oh, you don’t look (however many years old you are!)   You look great for (whatever age you are!)  And the person being appraised feels the thinness of the compliment. She has learned over time to feel it’s probably best not to be seen.  That she (or he) is not enough, physically, emotionally, intellectually.  So, we make ourselves smaller, hide ourselves, take up minimal space.  A few actually accept this “lot in life”.  Others feel sad, rejected, resentful, jealous of the young, blaming of society and advertising.  And there are some (the ones I  want to be) who thrive as they are, despite societal circumstances.

 We’re living longer than ever. We want to look and feel well.  We want to be seen for who we are, or who we take ourselves to be.  We don’t want to be ignored or patronized simply for being older. I don’t think it’s wrong to want to look well, whatever that means for each of us.  But there is so much energy, time, and money spent in this way.  And so often it doesn’t end up making us happy.

Helen Mirren is a great actress and a strong, confident person.  I want to be happy she got hired by L’Oreal.  I want to go “Yay! Us!”  But instead, I have mixed feelings about Ms. Mirren’s latest gig.


 

The cosmetic industry is obviously reaching out to the demographic of aging baby boomers who have money to spend and a desire to remain youthful. Is this a good thing?  I’m not against make-up.  I use skin creams myself.  I use a little blush, a little lip gloss because I consider myself "too pale”.  I "like" myself better when I don't look so pale.  But I hate that I feel society "likes" me better in make-up. It's not unusual for me to hold contradictory viewpoints about things in this world.  I'm ok with whatever anyone wants to do (or not do) vis a vis "skin care", make-up, etc.  I just wish the messages weren't so strong that we're only acceptable ( and then, barely) when we do what we can to hide our age.  

My aged Peonies did not in the least mind sitting for a portrait session.  They did not say, I look like shit today.  They did not ask me to "freshen" them with a spritz.  They were beautiful despite not  gussying up, not pretending to be “other” -- younger, Dahlia, or Orchid.   In that doorway of perception, I was able to walk through into the beauty, not of an aged Peony, though it was that,  but no, just into the beauty of the Peonies as they were, aged, near death, beautiful.

Speaking of beautiful, here’s a poem by New Zealand poet, Fleur Adcock, perhaps another way to think about "doing old”.

Weathering

My face catches

the wind

from the snow line

and flushes with a flush

that will never wholly settle.

Well, that was a metropolitan vanity,

wanting to look young forever, to pass.

I was never a pre-Raphaelite beauty

and only pretty enough to be seen

with a man who wanted to be seen

with a passable woman.

But now that I am in love

with a place that doesn’t care

how I look and if I am happy,

happy is how I look and that’s all.

My hair will grow grey in any case,

my nails chip and flake,

my waist thicken, and the years

work all their usual changes.

If my face is to be weather beaten as well,

it’s little enough lost

for a year among the lakes and vales

where simply to look out my window

at the high pass

makes me indifferent to mirrors

and to what my soul may wear

over its new complexion.

I would love to hear your comments, questions, feedback. Thanks!
xo,
Gayle

beginner’s mind, wise women — Michelle, Krista, and Maria, and one really smart guy named Neil

So sorry I've been "gone" for the last 3 weeks -- technical difficulties!!  Glad to be back.

Two weeks ago, I attended my nephew Harrison’s  graduation from NAU in Flagstaff.   Commencement ceremonies mark both endings and beginnings.  In Zen Buddhism, there is a phrase — Beginner’s Mind.  It means coming at life fresh in each moment, letting go of the past in order to move fully into this moment, with your curiosity about life still burning (whether you’re 23 or 67 or 95), open to new possibilities and new understandings.  You can do this as a graduating college student. You can also do it on any day of your life.  To let go; to begin anew. Beginner’s Mind is the opposite of cynical mind, been-there-done-that mind, know-it-all mind, fear-filled mind, stick-your-head-in-the-sand-like-an-ostrich mind.  Beginner’s Mind is Don’t Know mind, open-to-new-possibilities mind.  It’s not just for kids or college grads.

Here’s a couple of  great commencement speeches I heard this last week. You can listen as part of your own commencement ceremony today, celebrating your own letting go of the past/starting out.

First, Michelle Obama at Tuskegee University.  

And Neil DeGrasse Tyson at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. This is an excerpt. In it he talks about Earth killing 97% of the species that ever existed. (Beginner’s Mind doesn’t mean romanticized mind.)

I love DeGrasse Tyson and totally trust his intelligence and still, this was hard to listen to, to take in.  We know the Earth also supports life.  It’s not personal when Earth kills her species, not even the human species.  She doesn’t take our bad behavior personally. Duh. She’s not a person.  Her shifting her tectonic plates around, causing earthquakes and tsunamis, and the work of viruses and bacteria are really just part of the mix of life.  It’s not personal.  Though some of our bad behaviors (as a species) can hurry “species-killing” along, so we definitely need to have a look at that too. 

The poets and philosophers don’t call this life a mystery for nothing.    I’ve been reading/listening to two awesome blogs that absolutely bring out the Beginner’s Mind in me.  In the realms of Science, Spirituality, the Arts, and Understanding the Human Mind, and how all these arenas of knowledge interconnect, there are a lot of awfully smart people around!

On my front burner these days are these two blogs! 

 Maria Popova’s “Brainpickings”   and Krista Tippet’s “On Being”.

Here Krista Tippet interviews Maria Popova on “On Being”. 

I am so grateful for all this wisdom arriving in my laptop every day! It's like a little commencement ceremony each morning!

xo,

Gayle

Thinking of Nepal… and all of us…

  

Terrible news this morning with a massive earthquake (approx. 7.9 on the Richter scale) in Nepal, destroying buildings, homes, killing and injuring thousands of people in and around Kathmandu, and causing avalanches in the Himalayas, killing hikers there. They’ve had over 15 aftershocks just today of over 5.0 on the Richter scale.  

Just last night our monthly writers group met at my house.  The format we use, “Writing From the Soul”, was developed by the wonderful Jane Brunette, an American who lives much of the time in Nepal.  Though I’ve never been to Nepal, I have a deep sense of connection for several reasons.  A friend of mine’s brother lived in Kathmandu with his wife and three small children. I met them many years ago when they were visiting here. On their way back home to Kathmandu, they were killed in a plane accident.  Nepal doesn’t have an advanced air traffic control system, but has lots of cloudy weather and mountains.  In stormy weather and poor visibility, their plane flew into a mountain. 

Another connection I feel with Nepal is through the work of Olga Murray and her Nepal Youth Foundation.   Olga's built and staffed homes, schools, and hospital, and saved tens of thousands of children.  I first learned of Nepal Youth Foundation more than ten years ago and have supported it ever since. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ex1uAtwfFcs

 Another American, an extraordinary young woman named Maggie Doyne, perhaps a saint, at the very least, a wise being, has also  done amazing work in Nepal, creating the Kopila Valley Children’s School and home for orphaned and impoverished children.  Maggie started doing this work when she was 18. She’s now in her mid-20s.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dgA0WasFus

This kind of compassion in action totally knocks me out.  I first heard the term Compassion in Action from Ram Dass in the early 90s. Ram Dass co-founded the Seva Foundation in 1978 along with by Dr. Larry Brilliant, Wavy Gravy, and others. Seva is best known for its work restoring eyesight to over 3 million blind people suffering cataract blindness in Nepal and other countries. (interesting note of interconnectedness: Steve Jobs was an early Seva advisor, and gave the  first significant cash donation as well as an Apple II to enter and analyze eye care survey results in the original Nepal program.) The symbol for SEVA (the image below) is the same one you find on stupas all over Nepal.  

http://www.seva.org/site/PageServer

My friend Mary Watson just returned from a trip to Nepal.  Last night she brought  a gift, a small ceramic disc painted with the traditional “Buddha’s eyes”, the symbol used by Seva, a symbol so prevalent throughout Nepal that it has become  symbolic of Nepal itself. 

While in Nepal, Mary visited the place that Olga Murray created, saw the work that was being done, saw the healthy and happy children.  I don’t know if Olga Murray, Maggie Doyne, and all the children under their care are ok, or if Jane Brunette is ok.  I don’t know if the friends Mary Watson made there are ok. I’m thinking about all of them today. I’m also worried for my friend Montserrat’s stepdaughter, who lives there.  And then of course there are ALL the people living there. 

This morning I was feeling so sorry for the people of Nepal.  Then I remembered I am sitting in San Francisco, on our own serious earthquake fault, ready to shift at any moment.  Mother Earth is alive and, while not as well as she could be, she’s active and moving.  What happened in Nepal today Will happen here.  It will be different, but it will be huge in its own way.  We’re told we can count on this. I’m reminded of our interconnectedness, our fragility, our precarious perch in this life, no matter who we are, where we are.  

At this sweet 29th St. cafe where I’m sitting this morning sipping Earl Grey tea with soy milk, writing on my lap top, I’m feeling my good fortune, which today is tempered by my sense of interconnectedness with the people of Nepal.  There’s a guy at the next table. He’s wearing a red t-shirt with big white block letters that says STANFORD ENGINEERING.  He’s got his headphones on and he’s plugged into his computer.  He’s young, tall, blue-eyed, blonde, handsome, white.  He looks strong and healthy.  I noticed myself wanting to slap-dash concoct a whole made-up story about his privilege and his life, and of course it would be connected to the changing, gentrifying nature of the Mission District in San Francisco. My made-up story might be right, but I don’t know him and what his suffering might be.  I do know that somehow we are interconnected. He has a mother who loves him too, at least I hope she does.  Maybe someday he’ll go to Nepal and help engineer some better construction techniques, or help build a state-of-the-art air control tower.  You never know.  Everyone has their own struggle and their own contribution to make.  Somehow we have to hold tragedy and hope at the same time. Hopefully we can let go of habitually creating the “other” and instead feel our interconnectedness and put our compassion into action.  

The Nepal Youth Foundation, Maggie Doyne’s Kopila Valley Children’s School and Home, and Seva would all be good places to offer a contribution to the healing that will be needed in Nepal. (if the links don't work, all three are easy to google.)  Thinking of Nepal… and all of us... 

xo,

Gayle

What she said...

Today,  this article!  I tried to post the link, but it didn't seem to work.  So, I've copied and pasted.  Thanks Courtney E. Martin.  You are awesome.  
xo,
g

Listening in the Cracks

BY COURTNEY E. MARTIN (@COURTWRITES),  ON BEING COLUMNIST

I get to a small town in Indiana just 15 minutes before the restaurant within the Holiday Inn is closing for the night. I don’t feel particularly hungry, even though it is nearly midnight. I am still riding the adrenaline of the 100-mile drive through an unknown darkness alongside semi-trucks.

I’d flipped through the preposterous number of Sirius radio channels before settling on silence. I don’t get a lot of silence these days. My darkness is mostly familiar — a baby whimpering in the next room, my husband getting up to go to the bathroom, the homeless folks sorting through the recycling bins outside our bedroom window. It felt good to be hurdling myself through night, alone and on a mission.

My eyes wander over the menu, unsatisfied. “The chicken wings are really top notch,” says the man sitting at the bar. A long, rectangular plate filled with chicken wings and onion rings is piled in front of him. He takes a long sip of his beer. He is black, balding, wearing a cranberry velour jumpsuit, looks to be in his 50s. 

“Everything is good here,” the waitress reassures me. She is young, maybe in her late 20s, wearing a lot of foundation that is even paler than her already pale skin. I’m cynical about her claim, but order the burger and hope for the best. I sit at a tall table, away from the bar, hoping to send the message that I am enjoying my rare solitude.

I end up eavesdropping instead. It’s a compulsion.

My previous partner, Nikolai, a born-and-bred New Yorker, tried to teach me how to look into the glass of the subway doors so I could see the reflection of the people I was listening to rather than staring straight at them, but I never got the hang of it. I’m hopeless. I eavesdrop like other people watch reality television, I guess — a little guiltily, but with so much pleasure that I can’t resist.

Credit: M. Jeremy Goldman License: Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0).

In any case, the chicken wing aficionado clearly isn’t a guest of the hotel, but a local who frequents the Holiday Inn for late dinners. He and the waitress have the kind of rapport that evolves over many late nights of shooting the shit. They talk about their love lives. He is gay, struggling to find partners in a town where there isn’t a very visible gay community. She is trying to get over a bad man, someone that she knows doesn’t deserve her but she loves all the same. They even talk about sex. He’s scared to have it again after so long. She’d thought it would make him stay; now she realizes that it’s better it didn’t.

It’s such an intimate conversation. There is so much shared struggle between these two people who, on paper, would seem to have nothing to talk about — different generations, different races, different genders, different sexual orientations. Yet, here they are, in this small town plunked in the middle of endless cornfields, perched on opposite sides of a hotel bar, just listening to one another talk.

The Center for Courage and Renewal, the organization that Parker Palmer co-founded, has what they call a “touchstone,” which basically means a guideline or agreement for a group: “No fixing, saving, advising, or correcting each other.”

The first time I read it, it sort of took my breath away. So much of our time is spent listening to other people in a doggedly goal-oriented way. Underneath our listening, we’re asking ourselves: What can I pluck from what this person is saying that I identify with? What confirms my worldview? What gives me an opportunity to offer advice or a response that will showcase my own intelligence or a chance to share an experience about my life?

I don’t mean to make that kind of listening sound shallow or manipulative. Ultimately, it’s with great intention that we listen like that. We crave to connect. We crave to be seen. We crave to comfort. It’s a very useful kind of listening. It helps us create new nodes, get things done, coalesce within communities.

But there is another kind of listening, a listening that we neglect at our own peril, that is not about getting some particular place, but simply about witnessing another human being. This kind of listening is long and open-ended. It’s patient. It’s curious. It’s not calculating. This kind of listening operates on only one level — the words coming out, the way they hit the ear, the shaping of a story, a sadness, a yearning, a wish.

The guy and the woman in that Holiday Inn, close to midnight on a Monday, were listening like that to one another. Witness over chicken wings. And they made me think about all the people all over the country, sitting in hotel bars and lingering outside of churches and snuggled on living room couches and sitting over steaming cups of tea and maybe even crammed onto airplanes who listen without static or plotting. It’s an overlooked kind of love, a way we stay sane. It happens in the cracks, under the radar, just between two people. And it doesn’t happen enough.

The burger was surprisingly good. The lesson in listening, totally unexpected.

"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" Mary Oliver

Like Kwan Yin, (the Buddhist Goddess of Compassion) I hear the suffering of the world.  I do what I think I can, volunteer work, starting and facilitating some women’s groups, supporting good causes, signing petitions, voting, random acts of kindness...  It never feels like enough. Maybe I need to think bolder, or more humbly.

Though I often feel disconnected, I know my joys and sorrows are intimately connected with those of the world. Writing a blog is one way of connecting with myself and hopefully others.

Currently I’m straddling middle and old age.  Straddling loneliness and feelings of connection.  Straddling affection for my comfort zone and a strong desire to move beyond it.  Straddling fear and bravery.  Straddling fine and not fine. 

When someone asks me how I am, if I answer right away, I say Fine! If I delay my answer by two seconds, checking inside myself to see how I actually am before I answer, I'm in big trouble! Inside I’m chock full of fine-ness and not-fine-ness --  weather systems of the most contradictory natures.  Mostly there is wind, as in butt-kicking tornadoes. Gentlest breezes are my best days, or hours, or minutes.  Inside me skies can be leaden gunmetal grey or the calmest and soul-warming of baby blues with wispy white cloud puffs purely for delight. I’m learning to live this way, weather being what it is and apparently outside my/our control. (except when it comes to global warming, but that's another post).  It’s not always easy to offer a weather report, when someone says How are you?  It’s probably not what they’re asking for.  They’re probably just saying Hi!  But still the question provokes; sometimes I hear it as a real question. Answering How are you? with Fine often feels mechanical. I want a real conversation.  I want weather reports!  of the human and global-warming varieties, of the here's-what's-on-my-mind and here's what-I-fucking-care-about-today variety. I have no interest in Fine. 

That said, real conversations take time and energy. They bring out the best and worst in me. Sometimes I lack grace and clarity in expressing myself.  Sometimes I state my feelings too strongly, other times, too timidly, overly ready to apologize.  I’m always ready to apologize.   If I bump into you, or even if you bump into me, I’ll probably give you a double apology.  “Excuse me, I’m sorry”.  I’ve noticed mostly it’s women that do the double apology.  Rarely a man.  I almost fell over the other day when a man gave me the double apology for a minor collision with a grocery store cart.  It might not have even been his fault; it might have been my fault. It was just a small collision.   I didn’t know him but I wanted to stop and have a whole conversation telling him what a unique guy he is.  Instead, I just looked at him with silent awe, and said, “It’s ok”.

Clearly I’m a work in progress.  We all are.  This is how life goes, never finished until it’s finished. Dead, I mean. I need to keep in mind both  strengths and vulnerabilities. Yours. Mine. Our Fine. Our Not Fine.  The Listening needs to get deeper. The Offering of kindness and compassion also deeper.  It’s not easy.  Sometimes the "deep” I’m going for turns out to be a hole I’m falling into and then have to pull myself out of.  Yep.  Right on course.  Fine. Not fine.  Sorry, not sorry.  Still, the real conversations are needed.

The other night I went with my dear friends Lincoln and Lisa to see/hear this comedian Sherry Glaser performing in Berkeley.  I laughed for 2 hours straight, all three of us did.  The whole audience did.  By the end we were also crying. It wasn't the kind of crying that happens from laughing too hard.  Sherry was hilarious, off-the-charts funny. But the material was Real, and that meant it was also Sad, Tragic, Poignant-as-hell.  Fine. Not Fine. It was like gaining access to all one's internal weather systems at once. I wish you could have been there. The conversation was as real as it gets. The next time she performs, I'll definitely let you know. 

xo

Gayle 

With a little help from my friends…

Sometimes you get into something, a new town, a relationship, a blog site, and it becomes clear pretty quickly, it’s not a good match.  And so it was. not. a. good. match. with. WordPress.

Better to realize one’s mistake and move on before things just get more unhappy.  At least, I think so.

So, with the advice of a few good people Fran Loosen, Beth Kanell, I’ve been inspired to make the change to Blogger. Thanks Fran, and Beth, and Karen L. who sent me to Beth (who lives in Vermont) for help (thank god for the obliteration of distances with FB, email, and blogs!) So here I am, hoping this will be a place I can stay for awhile.

As author, poet, and blogger Beth wrote to me, as she generously offered to answer any “Blogger” questions I might have “We’re all in this together, right?”

Who knew that writers, or at least women writers, or at least the ones I’ve met, are such a generous-spirited group of individuals?  I am wowed, and so grateful.

I will post my first three essays that were up on WordPress here too, so they can all live in the same place.  You’ve already read them (maybe). I want to keep my "kids" together.  

As I post, I keep getting questions answered.  This quote by Anne Lamott was posted in my Maui writers’ group this morning, which answered the question I had about what I had to offer.

 #s 6 & 7, from a list of what Anne's learned so far…

6. "Writing: shitty first drafts. Butt in chair. Just do it. You own everything that happened to you. You are going to feel like hell if you never write the stuff that is tugging on the sleeves in your heart--your stories, visions, memories, songs: your truth, your version of things, in your voice. That is really all you have to offer us, and it's why you were born". (my bold italics added)

7. "Publication and temporary creative successes are something you have to recover from. They kill as many people as not. They will hurt, damage and change you in ways you cannot imagine. The most degraded and sometimes nearly-evil men I have known were all writers who'd had bestsellers. Yet, it is also a miracle to get your work published (see #1.). Just try to bust yourself gently of the fantasy that publication will heal you, will fill the Swiss cheesy holes. It won't, it can't. But writing can. So can singing.”

I'm not really thinking about publishing. It's the part about writing and singing I like.  This morning visiting with a 3 year old named Jack, I played my ukulele and sang a Malvina Reynolds song called “Magic Penny”. Jack enthusiastically played along  with a set of shakers I gave him.  Afterward he said, “Sing it again!”  My first request for an encore!! Yes!

Anna Ty Bergman answered another question, by posting Sugar's own words (though I also appreciated Anita Kline’s and Arpita Brown’s take on the same question) of what she meant when she said “Be brave enough to break your own heart”.

Sugar wrote: ”You are not a terrible person for wanting to break up with someone you love. You don’t need a reason to leave. Wanting to leave is enough. Leaving doesn’t mean you’re incapable of real love or that you’ll never love anyone else again. It doesn’t mean you’re morally bankrupt or psychologically demented or a nymphomaniac. It means you wish to change the terms of one particular relationship. That’s all. Be brave enough to break your own heart." - (comes from this column #64 in Rumpus Advice from Sugar).

You should really read the whole column from which this quote was taken. I read it this morning and totally remembered why I had fallen in love with Cheryl Strayed.  Ridiculous levels of wisdom and compassion.

So today I’m just feeling grateful.  1) that I am brave enough to make the move, 2) that there are answers to some questions, and 3) that although late (better late than never) I have made contact with my own writing self, and all of you.  Thank you!

xo,

Gayle