The Write Now

Consider choices in the right now.

What do you appreciate?  What will you ignore?

What do you have the power to adapt or change?

What does it take to accept what's given to you and spin it your way?

What do you long for?

               What do you search for?

Pick up a pen or tickle the keyboard and write to the questions.  Just go with it. 

Write Now.   

Anger and Cooked Carrots

 

Words act as symbols for a variety of emotional and intellectual connections. Everyone feels visceral responses from “color” words resulting from life experiences. Anger, love, war, and friendship stimulate mind pictures, sensory responses and complexities of mood.

During my early years when my father read to me at bedtime, he encouraged me to close my eyes and create mind images of the stories using my ears, sense of smell, taste and feelings. One evening I must have fallen asleep during his reading of Arabian Nights because I awakened suddenly out of a dream where I heard my father's voice say, "The villagers were angry."

I saw mashed carrots steaming from a bowl on a window ledge. I could smell them. Their cinnamon and clove flavor exploded into my mouth. From then on when I heard the word, angry, it elicited an association with carrots. It became a beneficial trigger to make me laugh and not get caught up in the emotion the word represented. What a benefit this has become in most of my life situations. 

Think of the "color words" that stimulate your emotions. Do you have experiences with them from the vantage point of your other senses? 

Discover By Pushing Words

 

"A quote from W.S. Merwin: 'I have with me all that I do not know. I have lost none of it.' For me that’s where creativity dwells, that’s where the discovery is, that is where curiosity leads us — to that place of both not knowing and unknowing." 

~ Terry Tempest Williams

Today marks my 5,000th daily entry to this Blog. I began in June, 2009. The daily words have energized my days. I hope readers have benefitted. 

How will you extend your creativity to push barriers? 

Consider the artichoke. Imagine who thought to rake teeth through the leaves to eat the pulp?  Who pursued into the sweetness of the heart past all the prickles? 

Crack open creativity.

Where will you investigate? 

What hides that needs revealing? 

Who holds a mystery to delve into?  

Push into a place of secrecy.

Ask why?

Dwell in an unknown and explore.




Make a discovery by pushing words.

Flex into Abilities

Consider your abilities.

What do these abilities mean to you: accountability, credibility, flexibility, and mobility?  How do you reveal them in daily life?

Which other abilities do you believe in?  Thinkability, lovability, playability, funability,

Go for possibilities with your writability.

Troll for Thrall

 

Auguste Rodin said of the first time he saw clay, "I felt I was going up to heaven . . . I understood everything at once . . . I was in thrall." When he talked about his work, he described his deepest aspiration as revealing "the hidden meaning of all things."  - Laura Carroll, Your Life Quest

Rodin saw art as "one of the paths to a deep knowledge of reality" and sought to bring his sculptures to life, to reveal "expressive truth." In how he described his purpose he saw the question: Where is the truth in the "matter"? 

Explore a freewrite to troll for "thrall."  Uncover a hidden meaning.

Fly Free

 

Have the elephants in my mind left their flannel pajamas on too long this morning?  I have to question what's going on. How will one elephant break from the herd and discover the savannah of blue for its romping pleasure?

Scents of a new day begin with the mockingbird's hip hop song. They fling me into moments in movement. Morning neck aches caused by a hard pillow or disrupted sleep, dissolve. 

I fill my lungs and begin my journey.

After I acknowledge a sense of cranky, the breeze on my arms and energy, bounding from each stride, bring a new consciousness.  

Mystery discovers me around the next turn in the sidewalk.  I push to understand the issues my body suggests and surge ahead to break beyond any frustration.

Waves jump and energize me.

I help a worm to a grass area and avoid stepping on a bee. 

Beyond the morning's congestion, I fly free, accumulating joy as I go.

Success Comes in Cans

 

Design your daily journey with curiosity for each moment's potential. Focus on what works, not what's broken. When your dreams and ideals intersect with life's real journey, let your discontent energize your positive energy. 

We open a newspaper or turn on the news and feel blasts of words detailing what does not work. How can we avoid the daily intimidation into negativity when inundated with the media's interpretation of a broken world?

My father told me, "Don't say can't. It doesn't exist in the dictionary." Defiantly, I ran to my dictionary to show him the word. I found cant but not the contraction can't that meant cannot, so I believed him. This reminds me of one of the best lines in from a movie, "Can't walks on won't street." When we say we can't, we really mean: we don't want to and won't. 

Success comes in cans but it takes our will.

Creative thinking results from an innovative choice in the moment. This attitude adjustment pushes beyond the onslaught of impossibles. Negativity becomes a bad habit. 

Everyone has the power to make changes!

Begin a list of what works in your life as a reminder. What gives you satisfaction? Go deep into the details and sensory imagery concerning your potential.

Consider one action you can do as soon as your eyes spring open each morning that pushes you beyond inertia.

What can you do for the environment or a loved one to express your responsibility?

Each day expand your list with creative solutions whenever you confront or learn of a difficulty or problem.

Attract and invent ideas for possible ways to balance the negativity around you. 

Become O Positive in your donation of energy to others around you.

Gather Pleasure

Robert Louis Stephenson wrote, "There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy. Happiness does not need to become the goal. We need a variety of experiences and moods to write about." 

In the 1980’s Martin E.P. Seligman adopted the term, “positive psychology.”  After years of studying the “learned helplessness” that characterized depression he began to study how individuals could learn optimism. Seligman felt a search for “authentic happiness” made more sense than relying on psychology’s one-sided focus on illness and disorders. 

Study optimism, courage and perseverance rooted in social and civil well-being? Consider how to gather simple pleasures. The process itself will attract feelings of exultation.

When nature provides a feast, take time to savor all the flavors. Take a pleasure interlude from your busy life to revel in the marvelous around you. Squeeze out joy and appreciation for living, growing creatures, plants and trees.

Gather pleasure and authentic happiness

A Bridge Experience

 

Santiago Calatrava's Puente el Alamillo in Seville, Spain.

Bridges intrigue me. I linger during the crossing of a bridge and stop in the middle to feel the sway. Looking down at the water, I wonder where it meets the sky. My senses search for connections in words.

Spiders taught us how to span locations. Many bridges reveal similar lines. Often with writing projects we want the finished product right now when deadlines loom or frustration nips at our fingers. Our emotions and impatience often get in the way of the experience. We do not want to take the time to travel the bridge span from idea to result. Fun slithers into the darkness leaving us alone with a blank screen or page.

Writing requires fingers on the keys or the clutch of a pen to pursue the ink flow. How many times have we started a story or poem and the ending did not come out as planned? We discovered it came out better if we gave it space. Our synapses make fresh connections. For this reason, we need to dwell on the bridge and notice each moment before we reach the other side.

Discover a bridge experience.

Summer Solstice

 

Today, June 21, celebrate Summer Solstice when the sun reaches its zenith. It will provide the longest period of daylight in the northern hemisphere. Summer solstice derives from Latin sol (sun) and sistere (to stand still).

Cultures around the world hold events to celebrate Solstice. The Celts & Slavs celebrated the first day of summer with dancing & bonfires. They feel it helps to increase the Sun's energy. The Chinese marked the day by honoring Li, the Chinese Goddess of Light.

The Pagan Festival of Litha, celebrated by Druids, venerates the Solstice as the "wedding of Heaven and Earth.” Druidism worships nature and believes in the spirits of mountains, and divine guides.

Stonehenge in southern England holds the largest festival. Here, more than 350 mounds surround a stone circle at the center. Dating back to 3100 BC, Neolithic people started the construction. Experts cannot agree on whether Stonehenge served as a temple, a burial ground or an astronomy site. Nobody can figure out for sure how the stones were erected. Mysteries abound in the region.

Starting at midnight on the eve of Summer Solstice, revelers, spiritualists and tourists gather to dance around the fire, star gaze and hug the stones at Stonehenge. They wear robes and flowers to celebrate the year’s longest day.

The summer solstice is one of the rare occasions in the year when open access to the stones is allowed by English Heritage, custodians of the monuments.

Enjoy a writing festival today in celebration of Summer Solstice. Imagine yourself reveling at Stonehenge near the fire. Think about Shakespeare and have a "Midsummer Night's Dream.

Nature Positivity

 

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. 

Nurture Positivity.

Responsibility

We make choices every moment. It becomes our basis for empowerment. When viewing this photograph, it's obvious that someone made a choice. A barrel for discards stood inches away.

If each person took responsibility for his or her air space and discards, a clean world would flow around us. Instead, a cigarette butte here, facial tissue or toothpick there and soon the landscape takes on a cluttered appearance.

People ignore trash on the street rather than picking it up and tossing it into a container. Why?

I observed a mother stop her car and let her son out. He approached a man putting trash into a bush and said in a polite tone, "Sir you dropped this." Why do we need to remind one another?

The Story of Stuff - www.storyofstuff.com/index - reveals the process of goods production through utilization and disposal. We need to take a long look at our individual impact in this system. 

We're all a part of the Web of Life and have a responsibility. 

Write Now

 

Oh, the power of the P word - Procrastination - Birds don't do it, bees don't do it. Even educated fleas don't do it. A squirrel would never do it. Yet, people find ways to do it all the time. Blame it on the prefrontal cortex that has the responsibility for complex cognitive behaviors and decision-making.

The word that causes stomachs to churn comes from Latin - procrastinatus. Pro - forward and crastinus - of tomorrow. Avoid today what you can defer until tomorrow.

We need to understand more about our tendencies along the journey. Then we can develop techniques and ways to trick ourselves to push past reasons we avoid "doing." This bring up the relationship between the P word and the B word (Writer's Block). Idealism and Perfectionism become untrustworthy partners. Know when to relent and strive for excellence instead.

Try a freewrite to examine your behaviors:

Take a look at your habits of delay in all areas of life when deadlines loom or undesireable tasks confront. 

How do you deal with your inconsistencies? 

In what ways do you defer actions to cope with anxiety of starting or completing a task?

Do deadline pressures and guilt increase your motivation?

What does apprehension feel like in the body?

How do you define failure and recognize its effectiveness in accomplishing a goal?

What benefits do you gain by delaying behaviors?

How does time management factor in your choices?

What reward system do you use to get the job done?

When you feel like avoiding the next pressing confrontation in life, write about how you will accomplish it within a time limit. Right now.

Curiosity's Gift

Even the rose wants to explore beyond the fence.

The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. 

- Albert Einstein 

During childhood, I asked so many questions my father created stories he thought would satisfy my curiosity. He often fell asleep before my questions stopped arriving like thunderbolts. He never said, "I don't know."

Even when I had him perplexed, he'd launch into an explanation to cover the topic. 

Endowed with curiosity, everything in life becomes possible. Linked with optimism and creativity, curiosity pushes limits. 

Ways to heighten your natural gift of curiosity: 

1. Stay open to possibilities. Nurture the ability to change your mind, unlearn and relearn. 

2. Ask questions like a reporter: Who, What, Why, When, Where, How? Don't feel content with easy answers. Ask more questions.

3. Curious individuals never feel bored. Take advantage of 'empty time' like standing in line. Observe what's going on around you. Notice people's choices and listen. 

4. Become a perpetual learner. Make learning fun and seek beyond the obvious.
5. Read diverse publications and books. Explore what you don't know with a free mind.

Interact with your curiosity today.

Black Phoebe Fun

Black Phoebes won my attention when we moved to an apartment complex during our home remodel several years ago. I discovered a park next door and decided to spend an hour each day observing and writing about nature with all my senses. I sat under a sycamore tree in late summer and waited.

Above my head, a black bird cleaned its beak. Then it flew to a lamp post and off into the ivy behind me. Each day for a week, I observed this fellow in action. One day I brought a seed bell and hung it under the bird's sycamore branch thinking I'd attract even more of its friends.

I searched the internet and discovered the Black Phoebe fit the description of the behavior I had observed. My seed bell must have caused a snicker in the bird community since these birds only eat and catch insects on the fly. Called hawking, they fly from from sunrise to sunset eating all day with the tenacity of a hummingbird. I've seen them capture bees and moths for dining pleasure.

Phoebes move in a circular pattern in their territory and work harder than anyone I know. In the spring, they pair and create a nest from mud, one beakful at a time. The male stands guard and often sits the nest in rotation with his mate. 

I discovered the conical nest high in the eaves of our apartment building. The next stage involved nesting behaviors. Resident crows became aggressive causing both phoebes to take turns chasing them causing disruption to their feeding ritual. I heard peepings but could not see how many chicks had arrived. Unfortunately, I left on a trip for two weeks.

Upon my return to the park, I did not see the pair I'd named Flash and Fee. The nest appeared vacant and no peepings sounded. I felt a sudden fear that the crows had taken over during my absence. Then I looked at the center of the park to discover four phoebes. They took turns dancing on air. I crept closer and watched this marvel of flight training.

After returning to our renovated home, I searched the neighborhood for Black Phoebes. I missed this daily association. This spring I discovered a pair at the end of the block. They had placed their nest under a neighbor's eaves. Once again I left town and missed the fledging.

I continue to create water sources in my yard to attract my favorite Black Phoebes. One day a breeding pair will return to capture my fascination.

The Write Way

 

Seagulls write their musings across the sky. Do they vacation from the need to fly?

Writing accompanies me everywhere. Without it, I would miss my well-being. Vertigo would take over and upset my balance.

Writing glides with me during morning wanders by the sea, while in line at the super market, and in the twilight time just before sleep. In one way or another, I'm always collecting and collating words. 

My senses stay in awareness mode for bits of conversation, amusements in nature and the wisdom discovered around a curve in the road.

In his book, Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell reports that it takes 10,000 hours to become a master at something. For a writer that just scratches the surface. 

Discoveries and learning occur in every waking moment and during dream time.

It takes discipline and the distraction of sensory experience to awaken a writer's rhythm. Life surrounds us with words to choose for exploration.

No vacation is needed from the thrills that writing provides. 

Adventure into the write way.

A Tasty Write

What could an apple do for your writing?

Discover the colors that circulate around an apple: red, yellow, orange, a tinge of green. Does the stem pull out or must you twist it several times? Hold it to your nose and breath in its scent. What memories arise? Feel the skin texture when you take an apple from the refrigerator beaded with moisture.

Bite into it and observe the impression your teeth create on the white flesh. Do you see red veins inside? Feel the texture and the squirts of saliva as your cheeks suck inward from reaction to the tart flavor. Observe the change in fragrance as you chew. Notice a liquid release, then the after taste. 

Let your tongue mingle with the apple's skin bits and succulence. Feel the texture on your teeth. Examine a swallow. Notice the apple until you lose its sensation as it enters the stomach.

Consider a variety of apple experiences. What if you bit into a mushy apple or one with a worm's tunnel? Will you eat around a brown spot? Sprinkle slices with cinnamon and clove. Do you prefer a Delicious, Granny Smith or New Zealand?

What could you combine with the apple to enhance the flavor? Will cheddar cheese raise the taste buds and coat the tongue? Add raisins and cranberries. Describe ways sweet intervenes.

Try an orange or peach. Experience them and write with connections to early memories. Write about discovering how to peel a banana. Imagine the first person to eat pomegranate seeds.

Smiggle  into Silliness

Advice Avoidance

 

Benjamin Franklin said, "Wise men don't need advice. Fools won't take it." Charles Shultz might have adapted Lucy's sign in agreement. 

Most of the time no one heeds advice and would pay to avoid it. Active listening supports family and friends but individuals gain skills in problem solving by trial and error. Everyone needs experiences to gain knowledge.

If you must delve into the depths of another's concerns try these suggestions:

Avoid jumping in to solve another's problem.  

Ask questions instead of providing solutions. Help someone think about the issues.

Share experiences and lessons learned without offering advice. 

Emphasize how your experiences could be different or similar.

Encourage rather than judge. Avoid negativity.

Refer to professionals to impart knowledge about life skills. 

Suggest resources in articles, books, or web-based information.

Communicate with encouragement.

Become an example and shine your light rather than direct with it.  

Ask for 5 cents for no advice.

Savor Life's Wonders

 

"Authentic joy is not a euphoric state or a feeling of being high. 

Rather is it a state of appreciation that slows us to participate fully in our lives." 

- Pema Chödrön 

Equanimity involves mental composure. Moving into a difficult situation with calm brings balance. "In the moment we come to abide with the energy instead of acting it out, we are training in equanimity," says Pema Chödrön. 

We achieve freedom by engaging with the energy of the moment rather than reacting. Not an easy activity, it takes discipline and practice to release former behaviors and select others to replace them. 

When sad or glad, we need to widen our circle of understanding and compassion.

Use creativity to change attitudes.

Get out of the way of the ego's control. During a negative experience, project that event as a movie and see it in all its dimensions. Breathe to calm and quiet the emotions that arise. Observe the scene with all senses.

Imagine a musical or comedy evolving from the situation. Sing into silly.

The next anxiety that arrives, use a metaphor from nature. Watch it bloom like a rose. Count the petals, smell the fragrance, feel a touch of breeze. Make positive problem solving choices without judgment.

If an initial reaction to stress is, "Oh sH&^!" find a word to replace the habitual response with a key word.  Say:  Shift. Turn. Flip. Then say the chosen word. Get to the other side of your typical response.

Rainer Maria Rilke said, "This in the end is the only kind of courage that is required of us. The courage to face the strangest most unusual most inexplicable experience that can meet us."

Awareness, creativity, and patience help us dwell in the places that frighten or frustrate. Flexibility in times of uncertainty enables equanimity.

Slow down to savor life's wonders.

What Would Water Do?

 

"A waterfall would be more impressive if it flowed the other way." - Oscar Wilde

Water has the ability to move in a variety of ways.

 

Water offers its power. 

Creates reflections. 

Nurtures and replenishes. 

Slows in pools and puddles.

When do we need to ease up on the power we energize?  How will a slow flow benefit?

Discover how water waits. 

     Find a rainbow in a backward movement in your life.

When challenged, consider asking, "What would water do . . .?"

Write Out of Your Mind

 

We own a variety of emotions and moods that have the ability to teach us about ourselves and how we relate to others. A message resides in every emotion. They reflect like mirrors and challenge us to discover ways to watch the many sides of our personalities.

Our moods create a spectrum that bounces the mirrors. As writers we can use the bands of light to examine the writing process. Moods provide insights and information for character development. They add texture to our prose and poetry.

Martha Nussbaum writes in her book, Upheavals of Thought, “ [There's] no firewall between emotion and intellect.” Often we fear or flee from our moods. We try to rationalize them rather than attempt to swim in their murky waters. We repress them with the force of will but discover they will crest again.

Our intellect does not overcome anger. The quickest emotion to arise, it requires acknowledgment. If we develop ways to examine and even appreciate it, then it will roll in and dissipate like waves to shore.

Eastern philosophies reveal that emotional states have no hierarchy. Awareness and acceptance ebb and flow through awakening to suffering. All elements of consciousness must  flow through us. Avoidance in a variety of means only delays the ability to harmonize within ourselves. If we face our emotions with honesty and develop an inner wisdom filled with ways to accommodate them, their full range will provide a balanced life experience.

Take a break. Rather than avoidance of what's going on - probe your mood. What do words like sad and melancholy mean to you? How do they percolate through your body? Launch into the details and stretch toward discovery of ways to describe them beyond their word symbol. What other words elaborate their meaning?

Eliminate the usage of words to describe moods. Create metaphors to discuss frustrated, angry or confused. In what ways can concerned, playful, fierceor attentive reveal themselves? If stuck in various states of despair how can one move through this experience?

Spend a day following the ebb and flow of your moods. Take notes and allow the freeflow of all emotions. Don't judge or censor them; try not to become reactive. Remain fully present.

Experience what they feel like in all parts of the body. What can you learn as they guide you? Let your notes sit for a day, then return and write about what you discovered.