My sister-friend Jamie took this picture of bluebells in my Mom's yard in Longview WA this week and posted it on her blog along with more. She has a knack for taking pictures of flowers. None of the ones I took last year turned out as nice as these. Her's have triggered a touch of homesick in me.
Thinking about taking those pictures last spring reminded me that a year ago this week i was still at Mom's house with (unbeknownst to me) another two months to go on my six month stay.
And I realized too that the anniversary of the day I started learning to crochet the bookmarks passed unnoticed by me sometime in the last ten days. So I've been at this a year and am still obsessed. Hmmm. It's lasting longer than some. I've crocheted something like 25 since the wee hours of Friday. Three more yesterday in a new pattern that was a variation on one of the others.
Meanwhile, I spent this afternoon sorting through and reorganizing my sewing and craft stuff, making some items more accessible and gathering pieces of targeted projects together in 'kits' to make them easier to get out and work on on an impulse or portable enough to take out to the porch or back yard when the weather turns sunny again. I had the whole bed piled a foot or more deep with the stuff. It amazes me it all came from somewhere in the room.
I cleaned out the bottom drawer of my sewing chest (the drawer below the one holding my collection of crochet thread) and distributed its contents to other places to make room for my yarn collection that was still in the Ziplock bag meant for storing winter coats or blankets in which it traveled to Longview and back for that six month stay at Mom's last year. Ever since last July I've had to wrestle it down off a shelf and back again while standing on the bed. Now it is directly behind my desk.
The next major project or should I say sub-project of this sort project is to sort and redistribute the items in the top drawer of that chest, which has become a 'junk' drawer for sewing and craft related items that are in a jumble and so stuffed that getting any one thing out is a formidable chore. I hope to dedicate it to the most accessed items for currently targeted projects.
I also put most of the finished bookmarks into the 8x11 inch sheet protectors I have for protecting the hardcopies of my best manuscript drafts. I say 'most' because a few were too long and those with beads on them wouldn't stay in place. If I'd taken pictures as I worked I wouldn't have had to steal one off my sister's blog for this post. [Thanx Sis :) ]
We're having a stormy week. Wind and rain and hail. We've had several power outages--lasting only a second or three but still annoying as clocks have to be reset and the DSL and satellite TV have to reset. The dirt track races have already been canceled for Saturday.
I wish I'd thought to post about this last week thereby helping to spread the word but instead I'm posting in the afterglow of an event already passed. I just finished participating in the latest Oprah Book Club web event. This time for Uwem Akpan's story collection Say You're One of Them. This time CNN's Anderson Cooper was participating and CNN.com was hosting it via CNN Live. Facebook got in on the act too putting up a feed so anyone with a Facebook account could make a status report directly from the same screen you were watching the event on. As always Skype was involved but I don't have that technology on my laptop. Not that I can really imagine myself Skyping in on a whim from this room. :)
It took most of my reserve of social courage to make that one entry in my Facebook feed at the beginning. Some times I think the real reason I'm not published myself by now (except on my web site) is due to self-sabotaging out of fear of having to make public appearances on behalf of my stories.
But I digress. I apologize. But it may happen again before I'm done. I have to just get this written at speed, going wherever my thoughts go because I'm a bit punch-drunk from sleep deprivation, having spent all last night trying to finish or reach good stopping places in several library books that had to leave when my husband left for work if I did not want to walk the mile to the library and back to make sure they were in the slot before 10. Then after the books were wrested from my grasp at eight, I spent several hours trying to close the gaping abyss between my current NaNo word count and where it should be by day 9. I made over 1700 by 2pm at which point I succumbed to the temptation to turn on the TV for Gilmore Girls.
For those in the know, it was the episode of Luke's sister's wedding near the ending of season 4. Need I say more? Sure, I've seen it at least twice and I still have my niece's DVDs but it was HARD to not turn it on knowing it was on right that moment. Besides if I got the disk out later I'd probably watch four episodes instead of just one. I chalked it up to research on story. :) GG is one of the best done TV drama/comedy ever and the things a storyteller in training can learn from watching repeatedly are innumerable.
So GG was followed by Dr. Phil which I knew was continued from last Monday. And then of course Oprah--the big Oprah/Ellen O cover reveal. OMG I want a copy of that magazine! Besides all the other great things about it, it has my name writ in huge red script across the middle!! Yeah I know it's not really my name when it's used that way.
It wasn't until Oprah was over that I opened my PDF of the first story in the book "Ex-mas Feast", a free download provided when I reserved my spot on the web event over a week ago. I have been in queue for a library copy since the day Oprah announced the selection and I just reached next in line today which means it'll be another three weeks or more before I get my turn unless whoever has it now turns it in early.
Me being the great procrastinator in all things had that story on my lap top since the day before Halloween but didn't open it until an hour before the web event was to start. It was thirty pages and I finished it with seconds to spare--or so I thought at first before I realized that the timer on the event window had frozen at 7:34 and my watch, which is five minutes fast said 7 after 6. By the time I had tried refresh twice, closed the window and signed back in and this time accept the offer of a download/install to make a faster and smoother connection, the event was underway. I had missed at least five minutes.
So I'm probably going to go watch it over again on Oprah.com tomorrow. I could also download a podcast on itunes but I don't know if I've got enough room left on my hard drive for a 90 minute video.
Below are Oprah's video logs reacting to four of the five stories in the book. The first one had the embed disabled and there wasn't one available for the fifth at all. They are worth watching to get an idea of the powerful impact these stories can have on a reader. I can't wait to read the rest now. She is careful to share only enough of the story itself to make it a teaser and not a spoiler for those who haven't read them yet. Which is good because it appears all five have endings like the first that Oprah says make her gasp.
A homeless family in Nairobi is supported by the teen-aged daughter's prostitution as seen through the eyes of her eight year old brother.
Oprah reacts to the second story, "Fattening for Gabon" In which a family member is sold into prostitution. Different family, different African country. Yet again a child's POV as are all five.
Oprah reacts to the third story, "What Language is That?" A meditation on the communication between friends when verbal means are denied them.
Oprah reacts to the fourth story, "Luxurious Hearses", A Muslim boy travels incognito on a bus full of Christians who'd likely be unfriendly if not hostile if they knew.
The fifth story takes place during the Rwandan genocide as seen through the eyes of a teen.
What I really wish I could have posted with this was a few excerpts of the web event itself. Especially some of the Skype video of the young man who was a survivor of the Rwandan genocide, having been about the same age as the teen in the story at the time. As he shared his story and how he's coping fifteen years later and how encountering this Akpan's story at this time was such a boon. I began weeping and couldn't stop. He was still talking when CNN cut away for the next scheduled thing. I'm hoping the Oprah video tomorrow will not.
While I was sitting here in this tiny room in a trailer house in a tiny town in rural Oregon USA, listening to that young man bare his heart and soul for the tens of thousands watching from around the globe, and feeling my heart open to his, I was just overcome by the power that stories have to connect peoples hearts and then to combine that with the power of the technology to make possible for the potential of thousands of hearts around the globe to be opening under the impact of the same story in the same moment. I was just awestruck by it. It just really once again confirms for me what I have sensed in an inarticulate fashion, that story is the key to healing so many of our ills. From the stories we tell ourselves about our selves, about our family, about our neighbors, about our tribe/nation, about our religious community, about our divinities, about our universe and what it means to be alive, to the stories we share between cultures, between friends, between enemies, between our past and our future.
But stories have as much power to harm and poison as they do to heal. That's why it matters what stories we tell, and to whom and why.
When I first started thinking this way about story, I pooh-poohed my self, saying, well of course you're going to be seeing story everywhere you look and giving it credit when it's probably absurd to do so because you've not pulled your head out of one story or another since you were four years old long enough to check out other options, to see if there is anything else in the world worth waking up for each day. Biased a bit , you think?
But then something like this web event happens, or the day of the read-a-thon last month and I'm astonished by the power of the evidence to support my bias.
Read more...
I'm still reading David Wroblewski's The Story of Edgar Sawtelle and just as this time last week, I'm anticipating joining in on the Oprah.com webcast with the author. Last week I had got my dates confused and thought the webcast was to be last Monday evening and then when Monday evening came around finding me still short of the half-way point in the novel, I decided to pass on the live webcast to avoid spoilers.
Then Monday night I discovered my mistake and that I had a reprieve. A whole week more. Seven days. So did I tuck into the story and finish with plenty of time to contemplate it and compose questions for the author? Ha. I promptly fell into the rabbit hole of Inauguration week, watching news on TV and online, reading blogs. All my spare time here at my Mom's went there Tuesday through Friday. I can't bemoan it too much though because it was a major historical event and also entwined in the theme and plot of my WIP and recent NaNo novel, Mobile Hopes. So it was the responsible thing to do as well as the thing my heart and soul was drawn to.
So today with three days left, I returned wholeheartedly to the novel. It wasn't that I hadn't picked it up at all since last Monday but I didn't get to read more than a page or two at a time and thus could not fall into the story. Today I fell back in and had to struggle back to the surface every time 'real' life intruded--meals, family interaction, chores, my mini-tramp workout and shower.
In fact I took the book outside with me for my tramp workout and read during the gentle warm up and cool down minutes. That worked so well--because of the peace and quiet and feeling safe from interruptions out on the porch--that I actually worked out longer than I have since the 6th when the ER nurse told me to stay off it until the swelling and all signs of infection were gone. I started up again last Saturday with one three minute gentle swaying session and today I almost made a full hour with multiple cool down periods bracketing multiple vigorous ones. And I know it was a good workout because I am feeling it now ten hours later from neck to ankles.
Want to know what all the hoopla is? Watch these two interviews with the author:
And if you've read the book and already know why it is so special, join in the webcast Monday:
Neither will I after spending the last ten Monday evenings participating in the largest classroom in the world.
Tonight was the last of the Oprah and Eckhart Tolle webinars discussing Tolle's book, A New Earth. The experience has had a profound effect on me. I've been reticent to discuss it here besides the passing reference to it in the early weeks. I'm not sure why other than that old childhood superstition that if you talk about something precious to you it will jinx it somehow.
Or it could be that I wanted to see real world effects that I could pin on the insights before I tried to talk about them for it is more than a truism or superstition that those who do a whole lotta talking about something are often not those who are walking their talk.
I am starting to see those effects. But it still feels too tender to poke at with too many words.
I think I can pin the last seven weeks of new hot-off-the-keyboard poems and story snippets to insights from Tolle's two books (The Power of Now being the other one) applied to my real life issues with anxiety and perfectionism. But it is too soon to know if the last several weeks of a significant lessening of both is a trend or a fluke or just another fluctuation in the cycling of my mood swings.
The poems themselves, though, are the result of deep contemplation of the concepts in A New Earth and The Power of Now. The poems do seem to express those concepts much better than rambling posts like this one.
Just like last week and the week before, I'm having trouble switching my mind off what has occupied it all day in order to post about something else. This is the third Monday I've participate in the Oprah and Eckhart Tolle webinar about Tolle's book A New Earth. Each time I spent several hours preparing by reviewing the chapter to be discussed. I don't know if I can keep coming up with something fresh to day about it for seven more Monday's but tonight I'm bowing to the inevitable one more time.
But I'm really too tired to organize my thoughts to write about it so I'm posting three YouTube vids. The first is a short trailer posted by Oprah.com:
The second, also posted by Oprah, is a clip of the discussion with the audience after the show the day Oprah announced the new book club selection and the planned ten week live web event:
The third is the first nine or so minutes of the first class and it was posted to YouTube by a fan. The entire ninety minute class each week will be available for download or streaming view on Oprah.com on the Tuesday afternoon following the live event.
I'm posting this opening clip partly to show a bit of the flavor of the event. But also there is an interesting comment he makes near the end of it about the process of writing both The Power of Now and A New Earth which I think is applicable for any writing task. It is about making the writing time/space available and honoring it each day whether the words are flowing easily or not. And something about being available for the thing that is trying to be born through you. Those are both mangled paraphrases from memory after one viewing of the clip a couple hours ago.
I haven't seen the video of the first class yet as I was among the thousands who, due to technical difficulties at their end and mine, saw nothing but a black screen that first week. I have listened to it on Oprah and Friends XM radio but haven't got around to watching the archived video yet.
It's time I start making my spiritual quest as much a part of Joystory as my writing and reading. That was what I implied I would be doing in both my profile and the sub-heading here. And yet I've kept avoiding the topic.
I identified the reasons as two-fold. First, the experiences are very personal and my practice (if you can even call it that) has been hit-and-miss at best. Second, fear of scorn and condemnation from two fronts--the skeptics of all things unverifiable by scientific investigation via the five senses and the physical and mathematical tools created to enhance them; and the doctrinal fundamentalists of the Christian tradition I was raised in--which would of course include family and other members of the particular sect I was raised in along with the various Christian watchdog groups with a mission to war(n) against all thing 'New Age'.
But my reluctance to talk about anything related to this quest here has often made it difficult to prepare my daily posts because on the days when the most significant activity or thought or experience has been impacted by this I have to yank my focus away long enough to think up something 'safe' to blog about. This has become even more of an issue since the first of the year and the beginning of the big Creative Change project I engaged in with my sister-friend Jamie in which the two of us are committed to making the changes for physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health and identify and work toward our big dreams and goals and to encouraging each other and holding ourselves accountable to each other for following through on our intentions.
Creative Change was the impetus for the big de-clutter and organize project I began on Jan 1st and though I posted about that frequently I kept the spiritual aspects of the experience either muted or entirely out of it. For example, though I think I mentioned that I spent those first five days of the big room do-over tuned to Oprah and Friends XM radio I did not confess that I'd committed to doing the daily exercises of A Course In Miracles with Marianne Williamson and have stayed with it. This is the fourth time I started working with ACIM since 1993 when I first encountered Marianne's book, A Return To Love, but the longest I've stayed with it. I bought the ACIM book shortly after reading A Return to Love and somehow it survived the journey between then and now. I still have it though as I've mentioned here before the majority of my personal library was either sold or left behind in the Silicon Valley in 2001.
A month ago , when Oprah announced the new book club selection, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose, and announced the planned ten week webinar course, I expressed an interest and Ed bought the book for me a week later. I have been reading it but have never mentioned it here. This evening was the first class in the webinar. I was so committed to this that I excused myself from joining the family for dinner at 6PM. I may be 50 years old but it is still difficult to opt out of coming to the table for a meal prepared for you; especially by a mother or mother-in-law.
I ended up spending the first hour of the webinar in total frustration because I was not getting the streaming video. Then Ed, who had returned from dinner and was watching news while I was staring at a black flash screen, put the TV back on Oprah and Friends Radio in preparation for turning off the TV and lo and behold they were broadcasting the webinar there. I wonder if that was a sudden decision due to the technical difficulties because I heard no announcement on either Oprah.com, the Oprah show or Oprah and Friends Radio over the last several weeks that such a thing was planned.
So it was nearly 8PM by the time I got to the table and I had to warm up my dinner and eat alone. I had gotten over hungry and a headache was nagging but I thought eating would fix that. It didn't. By the time I was done eating it was more than nagging and by the time I finished cleaning up the kitchen it was raging. I opened blogger to begin my post and the act of trying to think of something to post about that had nothing to do with what was really on my mind made me nauseated. I had to lay down. I didn't even close the laptop lid.
I woke up at 3:30 seemingly headache free and started staring at the blank post on the blogger WYSIWYG. As I contemplated options for topics to blog the headache started nagging again. I realized that what I was doing seriously lacked integrity which is one of the major themes of my Creative Change project as well as my spiritual quest--the two are essentially one and the same in my mind. I also realized that my efforts to stay committed to these episodic attempts to change my life over the past fifteen years have been continuously sabotaged by my efforts to keep them compartmentalized from my interactions with most of the people in my life--there are few in my circle of friends and family who would not be either, skeptical, scornful, disinterested or dismayed by these topics and especially so by knowledge of my interest in them.
I myself have been by turns skeptical, scornful, disinterested and dismayed. But I can no longer continue to deny that which is awakening within me.
