A True Situation

Ernest Hemingway’s dictum: When you don’t know what to write, write the truest thing you know.

What subject could you write about today that involves the "truest feeling"?  Write it without using the word, true. Realize your truth with the use of metaphor and sensory imagery. Avoid abstract words.

Consider:

Return to a time you experienced a truth or situation that involved feeling "true" as a child.

Recall a conversation with a friend about a truth.

Writing about a memory of winning an argument. 

How will true speak to you in your writing today? 

Conquest and Change

During my morning run, I passed a few critters who asked if they could help Conquer the Corona Virus. They suggested the virus misunderstands its mission.

So, I named the virus Snickle. Then I decided to show it how to evolve from a disease. It would stimulate the blood cells and nerves so individuals laugh at least three times a day. That tightens the stomach muscles and energizes the brain.

This advanced form is easily transmitted. Those in this stage will wriggle, roll, and kick their feet in the air.

Challenges are gifts that force us to search for a new center of gravity. Don't fight them. Just find a different way to stand.  - Oprah Winfrey

Writing Energy

Following the routine of a writing practice assists to shape thoughts, feelings, and adjust behaviors in all aspects of our lives. After a period of time and word enthusiasm, we learn about ourselves and how to excavate ways into challenges with words.  This takes advantage of the brain's ability to form new habits. 

Scientists used to believe that after childhood development, the brain remained fixed. Nothing replaced brain cells as they aged or became damaged by substances. 





Now we know from PET and MRI technology, that the brain can add neurons as a result of our activities.

It can reshape itself throughout life.  As we increase an activity, the more connections the neurons discover. The wiring strengthens.

Yogis have experienced this neuroplasticity in their practices. In the Yoga Sutra, Patanjali explains how steady practice without interruption builds habits over long periods of time.  

Even though the way to remove bad habits by replacing them with good ones sounds too easy, the discipline of writing works to enable neural links.

As writing practice increases over time, it becomes a new habit that competes with old ways of thinking, doing, and problem solving. It systematically energizes the ability to feel what's happening in mind, body and emotions. When writing probes into the psyche, it guides many areas of life.  

Writing with the senses, we become involved with awareness and even taste food in a different way.  Touch, scents, and hearing heighten along with sight and perception.  We learn what provides a thrill and what it takes to remove angst and frustration as we write from mood to mood.

If we reach for a pen when frustrations or other emotions set in, we will return to that habit rather than worry. 

Writing just 15 minutes a day will energize the brain into new wiring. Focus on a writing meditation today. Begin with a concern and write until it deepens your awareness or another idea emerges.

Explore the Process

“Every act involves moments of directed attention.  All we have is that flow of attention.”    - Playing Ball on Running Water by David K. Reynolds 

Morita therapy, developed in Japan in the early twentieth century, involves a character-building process. It focuses on the art of doing and strengthens those who practice it to rise above problems instead of trying to knock them down. 

The concept of Norikoeru means climbing over a wall. Problems created by external circumstances include internal fears, doubts, and worries.They persist in life. The strength and skill developed in going over one wall prepare us to climb the next.  Most often the wall appears low when we look back after scaling it. Some walls we cannot tear down but can work at climbing again and again.

Metaphors of strength and resilience help us discover ways to overcome the times we get stuck in the flow of words.

Consider the force of water. It reveals the abilities we need to get beyond self-doubts and plunge into challenges. Water moves over obstacles, carves, and curves its way. When water puddles, it does not become stagnant. Many creatures obtain nourishment while re-creation occurs. 

We need to remember to enjoy our puddle time. The brain always attracts information even in a pooling stage. Water avoids retreat and the push uphill. It permits gravity to take it to the sea. Like water, we must remain in the flow and enjoy the many lakes and vistas along the route.

Both water and the pen strengthen in forward flow. Explore your process in metaphor. 

Each Day

Morning’s dew on poppies

Reflects the tangerine sunrise

Diverts focus beyond teardrops.

Imagine a bee’s view

As a creative exploration 

to let feardrops evaporate.

Collect a collage of rainbows

To rise and shine above

The storms of frustration.

What Remains Illusive?

I've always felt a fascination for the eyewink of sunrise and sunset.  In a blink, darkness animates morning and day sneaks into night.

My father and I watched our "big ball of fire" as it eased into the evening sea. We talked of mirages and light shimmers. He described a moment when the sun finds the sea and changes color in a "flash." A green sparks for a second or two. We coddled our patience through myriad twilights to catch that perfect moment - the green flash.  It never happened for us to share.

Now, living on a hill with a view to the sea, I believe and continue to watch and wait.  Many evenings the mystery unfolds when I least expect it. The search means placing myself in a variety of circumstances to "get ready."  An amazement awaits.

Life abounds with mysteries that we cannot perceive without staying in the patience of the process. We feel awakenings daily as we wait and attend the day's needs. 

The thrill keeps us eager until a flash will reveal itself.  

Believe it.  

Think about a phenomenon in nature that intrigues. Also consider an aspect of your life that has not revealed itself to you. 

What remains illusive?  

Sun Shines On

The Sun never asks for applause

Even though the moon gets all the credit

for her glow and romantic stimulation.

Sun sends energy into the morning sky.

Clouds collect and play on his palette.

A shower could arise. Sun waits to outshine droplets.

How many forget his nurture of daisies and daffodils?

Yet, the audience blames him for sunburns,

the need for blinds, or those stormy days. 

Sun shines on beyond the crankiness.

Swirls and provides a master show each evening.

Imaginate

The world is but a canvas to the imagination. - Henry David Thoreau

In every crisis there is a message.

Crises are nature's way of forcing change

breaking down old structures,

shaking loose negative habits

so that something new and better can take their place.

- Susan L. Taylor

Consider how you have grown from experiencing challenges.

How did you discover possibilities to take their place?

Imaginate today!

Happy Earth Day

For years, Eudora Welty nurtured a photographic career. She said, “Life doesn’t hold still. A good snapshot stops a moment from running away.” 

Later she translated her creativity into writing. Eudora decided words conveyed more of life than photography. Her legacy encompasses all aspects of the imagination in stories, novels, essays and reviews.

During morning runs, I relish moments of sights, sounds, and scents even though they interrupt my forward progress. Thanks to my cell phone’s photo capability, I chase the illusive.

Often an osprey will pose for a click.

. 

How does a squirrel
translate, by tail,
the metronome of trees.

Poseys will always pose.

As spring blooms with opportunities, take a walk with a digital camera.

See if the illusive aspects of nature inspire words.


Celebrate Mother Earth.

Find Wonder

What makes us human is not the fact of that elemental vulnerability, which we share with

all other living creatures, but the awareness of that fact — the way existential uncertainty worms the consciousness capable of grasping it. But in that singular fragility lies, also, our singular resilience as thinking, feeling animals capable of foresight and of intelligent, sensitive decision-making along the vectors of that foresight.  - Erik Fromm

During our travel in uncertain times, Erik Fromm reminds us, "may a thousand of sanity bloom, each valid so long as it is viable in buoying the human spirit it animates. And may we remember the myriad terrors and uncertainties preceding our own, which have served as unexpected awakenings from some of our most perilous civilizational slumbers."

 " . . . and may we remember the myriad terrors might steer the country toward precisely such pathways to greater strength, clarity, joy, independence." - Erik Fromm

Feel Gratitude today for what you have the ability to control. Discover strength with clarity and joy. Let possibilities turn into realities. 

Seek the richness of each moment and find wonder.

Random Acts of Kindness

Life requires random acts that include courtesy and kindness.

                         Practice RACK today!

Reach out to a stranger.

       Anticipate a way to show appreciation.

Create an adventure to share.

               Keep searching to share Kindness.

How to See a Tree

How to See a Tree

At first light, three men entered the forest

The axe man downed a tree riddled by insects

Seeing it worth only fire wood

The logger brought a chainsaw with greed in his smile

He would sell lumber and make a fortune

The woodsman searched all day

Playing fingers over bark and limbs.

Filled his nostrils with scent of tree

He honed planks suitable for

Instruments whose living notes

Might please a weary world

Notice the Details

"It's noticing that 

    cracks us open, 

   lets something in.

Shows we're in use.

Uses us.

Right now.

Right this minute.

    - Lia Purpura

"On soft spring nights I'll stand in the yard under the stars. Something good will come out of all things yet. And it will be golden and eternal just like that." - Jack Kerouac

Stay aware to observe details in your day. Notice lines, circles and whirls in all you view. Discover scents and how they stimulate other sensations. Listen for sounds that swirl around you. Sing and enjoy music.

"Wasn't happiness like electricity?  Weren't we all just conduits."wrote Sarah Addison Allen in Lost Lake.

During our time of social isolation, we need to share insights and the marvels of nature.







Collect wonders and send them to populate friends' lives.

A Day to Unclutter

Spring encourages my need to unclutter in a ritual I call - Throw Don't Stow. A tug toward a turtle's simplicity pulls during observation of my office. Ah, to have a paperless space.

How to push past clutter to keep life's essentials?

I envision a smiling vacuum to suck until my surfaces shine in emptiness.

After the purge, I'd add to my desk: one tall vase with a daisy and my Wizard.

As my desk charmer, he sits with hands in the air, eyes closed. His white beard reveals a sneaky smile.

Light bounces from a crystal ball beneath his belt that rests on the robe.





Of course, I'd have to keep my fountain pen stable.

UNCLUTTER 

Part 1: Take fifteen minutes today and open three drawers in a room. Take out the contents and put them in a box. Go without them for two months. If you can do it - don't peek - throw them!

Part 2: Lose two pieces of writing today. Hide them a month. Then - Approach them again. You'll discover possibilities.

Brighten your day and have fun as you uncluttered and throw instead of stow.

Tame Your Mind

Place your fussy mind in a drawer. Hear the closing click.
Hang a favorite and weighty item. You don't need a key.
Listen for the jostling and grumbling inside.
Say, "Stay."

Put on your happy shoes and saunter out the door.
Let nature intrigue with its delights.
Trees will show their color.

Feel Gratitude release from tendrils of mind.
Go into your heart to flee into experience.




Discover your neighborhood: a gush of breeze, fresh earth and drift of lavender. Hear a Phoebe or crow's call.

Wander unit you have forgotten your mind.

Just take your time.  No need to rush.

Energize the spirit and play.

When you return, open the drawer
to a renewal of friendship.

"The greatest meditation is a mind that lets go." - Atisa Dipa