Fun of Flight

 

"Using our wings encourages us to take chances, approach the unapproachable, create possibility, advance in a new direction, see the sky despite the clouds and confirm our strength. We should all be willing to fly." 

- Betty Dorotik

Our capabilities often take time to acknowledge. They could be right next to us yet, at times, we fear the ways to raise our wings.

Imagine where you might fly. If you jump and flap, without regret, imagine the places you will soar.

Fledge today. Smile as you feel the breeze lift you higher and farther.

Find the fun in flight.

Reconceive Connections

In Where Good Ideas Come From, Steven Johnson documents how pathbreaking innovations derive from inventors’ ability to notice previously unrecognized connections between related fields.

Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press developed from his understanding of the screw press in wine-making and his understanding of metal-typeface design. When he connected the synergies of two fields, he conceived the printing press.  

Creativity reveals the potential to make connections and conversions. Ideas move from abstract to concrete and weave possibilities.

How many ways could you use a pine cone? Make connections beyond the obvious and pursue innovations. 

Reconceive a pine cone and innovate beyond the shape and texture. What productive use follows?

Try for five.

Would the cone's scales become replacements for a disabled turtle's shell?

Turn them into nail files for a group of gray squirrels.

Use them above windows to capture bird droppings.

Tune the scales for a rendition of your favorite song.

Combine with . . . ?

Play with pine cone reconceptions. Recycle. Reuse. Replenish.

Make Water Work

Didn’t you realize a career as lifeguard means water work? 

Even with posted warnings of riptides and undertows,

people wander and plunge into the currents. 

Many do not understand the use of sunscreen.

When their screams coil into spindrift and arms 

rise in signals of distress, you will feel needed.

Dragging orange buoys into the sea, your

shouts to the waterlogged probably won’t help. 

The water thrashers will clutch and scratch,

and draw you down. You might keep their heads 

above water . . . for a time. Engage your kick, 

as your breath surges into a sky bright with blue.

Don’t try rowing a boat to the needy. They will

clamber atop one another and swamp it. Then

you’ll paddle back to shore, fingers and toes 

ridged into prunes, eyes salted nearly shut. 

Purchase a flashlight on your next trip to the beach. 

Try light saving from the shore. Resist all distress calls

by counting back from one hundred. Plug your ears

and learn to hum your own tunes. Breathe.

Twirl the light, bounce it off slants of rocks. 

Make hand shadows into kaleidoscopic notions. 

A few will notice and follow the light to shore. 

Others might stumble, blinded by the sun instead.

Keep time with the light and your days will bloom wiser. 

Linger, wriggle ten toes in the sand. Smell the spray, 

until the ball of fire eases beyond the horizon

and busyness of day glides without force into night.

Typewriters to Computers to Laptops

 

Do you remember plunking away on a Remington, Royal or Smith-Corona? Did you take a typing class to learn the QWERTY keyboard?  Or did and do you still muddle along with fingers in hunt and peck?

Jammed keys and carbon paper once ruled the day. Writing progressed from draft to draft by rolling pages out of the platen. After a sigh, one inserted another white page and soldiered on: musing, typing, correcting, and typing again. It required hours of focused thought.  

Back then, cutting and pasting meant cutting pages into paragraphs and taping the choices in new order. This also involved pencil or pen corrections in the margins. A bottle of white fluid corrected small errors.

Then the electric typewriter arrived which had tape that corrected by removing lines of type. 

With the word processor, paragraphs could be re-arranged by a new form of cut and paste. Lines moved around right on the screen.

Now with laptop computers, one can go anywhere to patter away at the keyboard. Freedom to write feels so much easier.

During the progress from the manual typewriter to the laptop what have you discovered along the way?  If you have only experienced writing on a computer, begin with your first experience using technology to write. What did you accomplish?

A Typewriter's Roll

 

Why doesn't anyone care about me anymore?"

Herbie, the typewriter, sat glumpily in the corner on a bookshelf while the computer gloated at him across the room from a desk. The computer's annoying tickety-tak could not compare to a Coronamatic's trilling key taps. 

A typewriter didn't have to be "booted up" - Herbie was always up. Primed and waiting, he could sprink up pages of a story, poem, a letter, envelope or even a label. A computer needed a printer to do all the work Herbie accomplished.

"HRRRMPFFT!" Herbie would glope and the dust would lift a bit. How willingly he absorbed abuse to his keys when her fingers carumbled along. Forever, with a kind heart, he remained dedicated and true. Perhaps his R typed lower that the others and occasionally his o, e, a, and other letter loops would glop with ink. A speedy jaunt to the repair shop for cleaning solved it.

"GRRROMMLNK!" It was time to run away from this room. Herbie mumbled, "Oh platen, karol me like you do paper."

Obediently his planten tworled and catapoppled him off the table. Herbie, with newly found energy,  clomped onto a forgotten skateboard stored beneath his shelf. Frightened but determined he kerplanked out the door.  

Bumpily bump down the hill to the ocean, Herbie klerked and treetered poised for adventure.

Screeleeshing to a halt the skateboard's found his voice, "YAHOWEWA!  I'm also overlooked these days. Thanks for your encouragement and getting me going. Now, we're free," the skateboard sprung wheelie after wheelie. "Let's cruise some chicks."

Onward they farwheeled, friendshipping in search of adventure.

Where is Your Child's Eye?

 

Do you recall your childhood association with words? Did you create names for animals and plants? Did you tell stories?

Where’s your child’s eye today? Do you still have a loving relationship with words? 

Frederick Smock, a teacher of creative writing, learns daily from his students to think with a child's mind. One student astonished him with her words when she wrote from the point of view of a coconut. “I never have to go on vacation because I carry the waves inside of me,” she wrote.

Today, delight yourself with possibilities and let your words scurry around corners and under bushes. Look into the sky to capture connections. Consider all your areas of knowledge: animals, insects, gardening, travel, economics, and relationships. 

How will you communicate the awareness that makes your days and nights glitter? 

Let your words flee and flourish. Delight in metaphors to tell your stories. Return to your child's eye.

Into the Flow

 

We live in a universe of constant flow, flux, and metamorphosis, and we ourselves are but a speck of color floating into shape for a brief moment before being washed into the perpetually re-patterned marbling of existence; that any one life, including our own, is as precious as it is improbable and transient, and all the more precious for its improbability and transience." - Maria Popova

Push beyond the problems that tend to engulf concerning the pandemic and current state of life.
     Breathe beyond frustrations that arise.

Turn into a white egret that soars among the blue.
   Let worries diminish as the breeze sends harmony and the sun brightens the day. 
      Feel your anxiety diminish.

When you tame your mind's distracted movements, you can race beyond fear and banish anxiety. Within each breath appears a sense of spaciousness.

Set yourself free, aware, and open to nature's nurture. Count the colors, breathe in fragrance, pet a flower and leaf. A flow of energy enlivens and presents possibilities instead of problems.

Notice how other creatures stay active and focused on a goal. 
             Feel the flow.

Playfulness of the Sea

 

San Diego's surf surges into foam creatures.

Bubbles rise. Forms and shapes nudge curiosity with creativity.  

The fun begins ...

A shape slithers on the rocks.

Sea dragon emerges,

arching his spine.

A sea horse whinnies in the sunshine.

A California creature ambles on the rocks.

Is it a baby elephant

swaying its trunk?

A pair of hippos jump into the surf.  

Squint and imagine. Notice a friendly ghost rising to surprise you.

Success of a Seedling

 

"Truth is, one day I planted a flower. As the flower grew I began to feel something come alive in my own skin. I would go out at weird hours of the day and night, just to fuss over the flower. I dug in the dirt to let the flower breathe. I planted more flowers to give the flower friends." 

- Terry Hershey

Terry Hershey discovered that life is a garden. He would tell his flowers stories, laugh out loud into twilight. He wrote, "A strange grin spread over my face as I realized what was happening. I felt at home."

As Hershey continued to plant more flowers, vegetables, and trees, he brought friends over. He watched their smiles. As the garden grew he felt joy, "I came face to face with a part of myself that had been missing and I liked what I saw."

Plant seeds in the garden and in containers inside your home.

Observe how they grow. It takes time for a seed to break its case. Seedings show strength and push upward to the light and downward to develop a foundation. Provide for their nurture with water and nutrients.

Once the leaves spring their green, feel the leaf texture.

Smile when a bloom appears.


The scent of a flower may appear in time.







Discover an approach to life by watching a seedling's success.

Listen to Mountains

 

Writer, Ursula K. Le Guin was asked, "Who is the most important person you ever met?"  She replied, "A mountain. I discovered that Tamalpais was at the very center of my being." 

Etel Adnan fell in love with Mount Tamalpais, the first vertebra of the backbone that stretches all the way to Tierra del Fuego. She found herself,  “left with the sort of wonder that the sense of eternity always carries with it,” with a “feeling of latent prophesy.” The mountain became her muse, which she celebrated and serenaded in a flood of paintings and poetry. 

With Adnan’s insights, the mountain became both object of reverent curiosity and sovereign; both metaphor and not-metaphor.

Etel Adnan: Mount Tamalpais, 1985. (Sursock Museum, Beirut, Lebano

Skinner Butte in Eugene, Oregon inspires with its views of the city and beyond to Spencer Butte's silhouette. 

Eagles nest in high branches. Along the snaking trail, squirrels, hawks, osprey, bluejays, flickers and sparrows share the journey to the top. 

Mind mountains attract daily as a struggle or an insight. Enlightenment arrives from reflection on sensual delights and challenges of nature's experiences. We learn lessons of solitude and climb beyond the fear of falling. In the step-by-step process, we defeat self-doubts. 

A mountain's simplicity and tranquility calm and soothe us into views where blues of sky meet the azure sea.

Take time, when mountains call, to listen to the messages.

Positive Psychology

 

Martin Selyman, pioneer in positive psychology, defines happiness as pleasure combined with deeper feelings of meaning and purpose. He celebrates three measurable components: pleasure, engagement, meaning. A full life requires them.

Aristotle used the word, eudaemonia to explain human flourishing. 

"For me happiness is the joy we feel striving after our potential," writes, Shaun Achor author of, The Happiness Advantage. Achor believes, "The chief engine of happiness is positive emotions, since happiness is, above all else, a feeling." He pushes beyond  sharing smiley faces.

Some researchers prefer to use the term, "positive emotions," rather than happiness.

Barbara Fredricks, researcher at the University of North Carolina, lists positive emotions:
joy, gratitude, serenity, interest, hope, pride, amusement, imagination, awe, and love. Her, 
"broaden and build theory," promotes positive emotions to broaden the amount of possibilities we process. This makes us more thoughtful, creative, and open to new ideas, instead of using fight or flight as negative reactions.

Eager as Love

a seedling greens inside a lemon

cocooned in silence

it startles awake

When the juice of opening 

reveals opportunity

                    - Penny Wilkes

Broaden your scope of cognition and behavior.

       Move into creativity and build more intellectual, social and physical resources. 

            You will rely upon them in the future.

Humor Vincit Omnia

 LAUGHTER CONQUERS ALL

Did you know that five-year-olds laugh 400-500 times a day? Grown-ups laugh only 15 times a day on average, says Leigh Anne Jasheway who believes laughter is the best medicine.

Jasheway is concerned that people are, "peppered daily by angry talk radio and news media reminding us to feel angry or to panic." She claims, "levity is the opposite of gravity." We need to express ourselves in laughter.

Studies reveal that laughter produces basic mammalian benefits of reducing tension snd fear.  

Check out rats laughing:   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-admRGFVNM.

Create a humor antidote to your frustrations.
Laugh about the weather.
Giggle when you make a mistake and try again.
Enjoy a few ha ha ha moments when you're at a low ebb.

You will discover how the funny bone takes over to energize the mind and spirit. Take a negative situation and turn it into a laughter solution.




Silly up!

Laughter conquers all.

Your Youthful Brain

Dr. Phillip Stieg says, "You can't help getting older, but you don't have to get old."  He specializes in cerebrovascular disorders and believes the secret to aging well centers around humor, interests, and relationships enjoyed when young. 

Keeping a sense of humor and staying cognitively stimulated energize the brain. George Burns lived with humor. He told jokes daily and lived to be 100.

Mental stimulation of all kinds preserves brain cells and can generate new cells and connections.

Move into awareness. Mindfulness occurs in the present moment, perpetually on the crest of the ongoing wave of passing time.

Keep your brain active with silliness too.  Try these:

The father and son light a fire in the fireplace. "Are we pyromaniacs?" asked the son. "Yes, we arson," the father replied.

Why did the potato cross the road? He saw a fork in the road up ahead.

When a mouse raced into the kitchen, I caught her before the refrigerator.

Let humor reign for a youthful brain.

Meditation at Sunset

 

While the sun does his dance into the sea, 

benefit from the final moments of each day. 

Find a place to watch for an evening 

                                                     to enjoy the sun's play.

When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you. - Lao Tzu

Visualize the color in all its depth, intensity, and discover a metaphor.

Notice how the sun wriggles to set in tangerine dreams.

Discover creatures who play and chase the sun as he rolls down the sky.

Feel grateful for the moments.

Write Your Truth

The problems of our time are political, ecological, economic—but the solutions are cultural. How do people speak their truth? How do we listen eloquently? If communication is the fundamental alternative to violence and injustice, what is the work of each voice among us?  - Kim Stafford

If you had access to resources of power and possibility, what solutions would you pose to solve issues that face our country?

Choose one concern to investigate. Rather than take sides or shred current views, let your creativity and writing skills launch an alternative.

Write to present creative solutions and uncover ideas when you speak your truth. Pursue what Kim Stafford asks, "What is the work of each voice among us?"

Love is the Bridge

A moment of happiness,
you and I sitting on the verandah,
apparently two, but one in soul, you and I.
We feel the flowing water of life here,
you and I, with the garden’s beauty
and the birds singing.
The stars will be watching us,
and we will show them
what it is to be a thin crescent moon.
You and I unselfed, will be together,
indifferent to idle speculation, you and I.
The parrots of heaven will be cracking sugar
as we laugh together, you and I.
In one form upon this earth,
and in another form in a timeless sweet land.
                                                 - Rumi

Immersion in a natural setting provides moments of tranquility. Sharing smiles and laughs brightens the spirit and engages the human connection.

Watching a cormorant nesting gentles the mind.

When laughter conquers the day's mishaps and exercises the stomach muscles, contentment circulates.

Love is the bridge 
between you and everything. - Rumi