Happy Halloween

Halloween decorates neighborhoods and malls. 
   
  



Ghosts, witches, and goblins abound at every corner. 

Skeletons shake in the breeze. 



Pumpkin designers become more creative each season.

Write a fable or poem about a Halloween happening. 

Choose a costume to describe yourself. 

Imagine a cat in a artichoke costume.

Transform a carved pumpkin into a story of flight.

Write about a haunting at Halloween. Who lives here and what evil lurks in the shaded rooms?

Imagine what happens in the turret?  Creep around to the back where you hear dogs growling.

What does the full moon inspire?

Create clankings and eerie sounds that arise from the basement.

Do you dare open the front door?

Boo!

Adventure Portals

A picture 
lives by companionship.  - Mark Rothko

"There are things known and things unknown and between them, the doors." - Jim Morrison






What happens beyond the gate?

Words in response to pictures reflect and interpret the world and form a relationship with others.  Sentences search a world of paradox and mystery. Barriers invite curiosity as portals to adventure.

What natural entrances invite story or poem?  Do you see the man of the sea hiding?

Take a walk and capture a collage of portals. Or, use the three above. 

Do a freewite to investigate their connections.  Do stories and poems arise from one side of the entrance to the other?

Shine up your Whines

“This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.”  George Bernard Shaw 

Do you worry too much and have serial complaints that take up brain space?

Stop the chatter and take up a pen or go to the keyboard. Write, don't whine.

l. Use awareness to learn about your complaining moods. Who or what sparks your whine tones? What area three ways to eliminate or minimize your exposure to these sparks that set off your flames? Add a humorous line.

2. Gratitude saves the day. Write three things, people or opportunities that make you feel grateful. Don't stop with three.

3. Take a breath before you gripe. When you feel a whine whirring about in your brain, toss a thought in its path. Write about overcoming blame. Keep thoughts handy for the next toss for gripe deflection!

4. Let creativity spark your troubles. Start with positive statements and write a few humorous lines about how to solve problems.

5. Rethink a whine and make it shine.

Questions for Autumn

I would like to beg you dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.

    - Rainer Maria Rilke, 1903 in Letters to a Young Poet

Autumn brings a time of vibrance and change. Glimmers of orange, crimson, magenta, and flashes of gold permeate the days. As shades of blue search for a turn, gray flannel consumes the clouds. 

Landscapes arouse with lightning, thunder and showers. Scents of cinnamon and cider fill the air along with aromas of wood smoke from chimneys. The breeze tastes of promise. Nature's multiple personality during autumn reminds us to consider possible changes and pursue, rather than judge, our writing.

The time arrives to explore and pile questions upon questions instead of a search for answers. A pondering of  ". . . and then what” provides possibilities. 

We mine for more understanding if we permit the questions to climb upon one another. They will wrestle for opportunities we have not considered.

These ten questions will spark others as you write to them. Respond only with more questions. See what happens.

l.  How would you answer Rilke’s question:

Ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write?" 

2.  How are you with your writing? 

3.   What biases affect your writing. Recognize their existence, list and write to them.

4.  What amuses you about your writing?

5.  How do you write about what feels wrong?

6.  Do you celebrate your strengths in writing?  In what ways?

7.  How do you provide constructive feedback for your writing? If not, who does?

8.  If you considered your heart’s desire about your writing, what would it involve?

9.  What do you write away from? How can you bring it closer to you?

10. What’s the greatest question your writing nudges in you?

Take time to involve yourself with the questioning process as autumn displays its wonders. 

Percolate with Smiles

Autumnal awareness increases connections to elevate the spirit.

Discover expanded freedom of creativity and choices.

Find a true reverence for life.

Explode in self-expression.

             Explore passions.

Follow nature's examples.

Nourish your roots and strengthen your foundation.

Upgrade your self-care.

Add a tingle and hint of humor to situations.

Notice a rose's smile.

Invigorate the influences that nurture and support you.

Percolate with smiles.

Chase Curiosity

“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.”  - Albert Einstein 

Have you discovered a note on the pavement and taken a peek?

Do you sneak around corners and peer past angles to discover what's there?

Let collisions of petals

and dew inspire.

Find sounds and scents that mingle memories.

Chase Curiosity Today.

Accentuate the Positive

In her book, RAPT, Winifred Gallagher writes about attention and the focused life. What we attend to creates our experience. The mind becomes shaped by what it imposes on itself. Rapt means: engrossed, absorbed, fascinated and "carried away."

When we concentrate, we affect the brain. This increases our chances of having an experience we want rather than enduring a negative one. Researchers have discovered that focus on positive emotions regulates our emotional states. 

When confronted with a negative situation, if we switch thoughts and dwell on compassion, joy, and gratitude, this may strengthen neurons in the left prefrontal cortex. As a result, we interrupt disturbing messages from the fear-oriented amygdala.

Writers benefit from living a focused life. We can choose to avoid a fragmented, distracted state of mind. If we reach out and explore positivity in each moment, more ideas arise for prose and poetry.

For a day notice negative thoughts that travel in your mind. Choose two positive thoughts to replace each. Write them down. At the end of the day write about the experience.

Invest in Your Potential

Between the banks of pain and pleasure the river of life flows. It is only when the mind refuses to flow with life, and gets stuck at the banks, that it becomes a problem. 

By flowing with life I mean acceptance - letting come what comes and go what goes. Desire not, fear not, observe the actual. You are not what happens to you, you are to whom it happens. 

Ultimately even the observer you are not. You are the ultimate potentiality of which the all-embracing consciousness is the manifestation and expression.  
                    - Nisargadatta Maharaj

Every morning, even before I open my eyes, I know I am in my bedroom and my bed. But if I go to sleep after lunch in the room where I work, sometimes I wake up with a feeling of childish amazement — why am I myself? 

What astonishes me, just as it astonishes a child when he becomes aware of his own identity, is the fact of finding myself here, and at this moment, deep in this life and not in any other. What stroke of chance has brought this about?  
                  - Simone de Beauvoir 

Open the mind and spirit to discover an amusement, an astonishment, and an amazement. 

Get unstuck. Move into the flow.


Delve into nature to notice what happens. 

Ask questions about chance and motivation to make something happen.

Find your child's eyes and ears. Engage with aromas sent by the breeze. Explore with the fingertips.  

Invest in your potential.

The Ten Percent Zone

Have you felt a fascination to explore your upper limits?  This involves determination to delve into the ten percent zone. The highest level of capability exists in a fragile space. Self-knowledge increases while spending time and energy to examine this area.

Does this appear abstract and mysterious?

When I trained to run marathons, I discovered ways to access the ten percent zone that frightened and unnerved me.  At first, fear surrounded any notions of dashing into the red blinking lights of exhaustion or into a space that could cause injury.

How could I balance the extension of my ability and not break down as a result?

I explored in small increments, attempting each time to push my spirit of discovery and monitor both mind and body. It felt like entering a room of steel without air. The space loomed dark and cluttered with pricks of exhaustion. Fear clogged my throat. Dizziness and chills often spread throughout my body. At the limit, my hearing heightened and vision diminished. I moved out of the feeling as fast as I moved in.

Gradually, I learned my territory beyond "terroritory" and befriended my discomfort zone. It teased with its sense of purpose and wilderness. Each time, I gained information for the next excursion. My performance improved if I did not quit or allow my pride to push. Rewards became apparent, measurable and kept me returning. I learned not to stop before it felt relatively good.

What does it feel like to break open, break out, and push beyond self-imposed limits? Each person will encounter a different process. Once discovered, the end result includes possession of a skill to translate into all areas of life.  

True confidence develops beyond the fear. Learning the self and making discoveries translates into a new understanding.

It requires more than daring. The result occurs in the doing. Wisdom arrives from a balance of experiencing what the body can endure before harm occurs.

Have you pushed to your limits of achievement in an area? 

How did you get into the ten percent zone?  

Explore your possibilities.

Try for the ten percent zone.

Writing Motives and Contradictions

How well do you write about uncomfortable and sensitive situations?

Fictional characters are human beings with fickle natures. Mercurial personalities revolve from desire, fear, love, spite, pride, and guilt, to name a few.

Explore motives, contradictions and consequences of thoughts and actions. When planning plot investigate the extent to which a character feels the nature and source of suffering. What's uniqiue about existence in this entanglement of pleasure and pain?

How does each individual cope with the suffering?  How does the character think about what is lacking? What does he thinks he wants? How will she set about getting it? Discover the variety of ways.

Investigate a world view or moral view that has troubled you. Begin by writing about a moment of concern for a persona created from your perspective.

Ready to KRE8

Think of yourself as an observer, a spectator fascinated by all that whirls and dances about you.  Life comes together. Bubbles burst by confusion.  Cold and heat surround stillness and motion of day.  You might notice parting and reuniting mingled with smiles and the glisten of faces. Ears tune into a symphony of sounds and raucous beats.

Discover a place free from the chains of routine. Go into a personal space where you can admit aspects of life you've let go of or turned your back on.

Observe with wonder and curiosity at an opportunity not taken. Develop a metaphor like an unfurled scroll where you write and draw a new life, another beginning, a renewed earth.

Create an invisibility. No one can find you but you can see stars born, the sparks of insights, flames bursting into light. A scent swirls into questions. Gradually what's no longer needed releases.

Renewed strength attracts courage and a true sense of self.

Move to write from and toward your center.

The Lunatic, The Lover and the Poet

"The lunatic, the lover and the poet are of imagination all compact."  - William Shakespeare

We view all such characters in Shakespeare's "Midsummer Night's Dream"  from which the line is taken.  

What is the world of the imagination for you?    

Where does it nurture and take you?

In a lunatic's mind a dance occurs among demons, daring and dread.  The lover's heart and soul fill with sensory wonder.  Sounds, sights, scents and tastes become heightened.  The poem imagines beyond his or her reality and uses it to write about the world.

Writers require this multiple personality to achieve a jounce of words into sentences that propel into paragraphs and pages.

Pulls of extremes, spells of things, passion, courage and persistence define a writer's life.  To live life on one's own terms requires intensity and perseverance. Once patience settles in, we write on and on.

Consider stories that have shaped your life.  How can you explore them from the perspective of a lunatic, lover and poet?