happy 4th of July! July 4, 2008

numb to the desire to live a genuine life July 1, 2008

This morning I woke up early, as usual. I made my coffee, went to the bathroom, drank my glass of water, turned on my computer, checked my email, responded to some, saved some for later…at this point I usually make a decision. Should I stay at the computer and work on a project? Do some morning writing? Lie down on the couch and turn on the TV? Lie down on the couch and read a book? Most of the time I decide to read a book. Except I just finished a book which I loved: Kafka at the shores by Haruki Murakami ~ I read it in German! :)…and so now I have a few other books I am reading at the same time, but none of them that are really capturing my attention.
So I stand there, in the middle of my living room, as I so often do when i am not sure what I should do (remember, it is VERY early in the morning…my morning walk, for instance, doesn’t happen for another hour or two). I’m turning in circles, both physically and mentally. And then I decide to open one of my cabinets that has more unfinished, unread books. I “randomly” grab one: Being Zen by Ezra Bayda. Ok, I think. let’s see where I left off last time.

Oh…I was only at page 9! Didn’t get too far with that one…

I lie down and begin the chapter at page 9. It is called: Fast, Cheap and Out of Control.

I read. I keep reading. Something inside me begins to stir. My eyes read faster than they are used to. Whoa! Yes! Exactly! Yes!
And then I stop reading for a moment. I think to myself: hey! this is speaking exactly to what I have been struggling with in the past months. Hell! My entire life! Words I have been using to describe my recent state of being/thoughts/desires: numb, genuine life, authenticity, fears, control, comfortable and safe…
Hey Ezra! How did you know that I had to pick up your book and read this particular chapter?

So I keep reading and immediately as I finish this chapter, I think of a few people I know who would appreciate reading these words as well. So I get up and I begin to scan each page. I am excited. I feel like a question I have been asking very recently has been answered. Or at the very least, what I suspected is being given to me in words on a page.
When you feel stuck, when you feel fear, when you feel numb, when you are so afraid to take steps in your life towards what you know with certainty is a more genuine life: what do you do? how do you do it? How do you get out of your MIND, out of your “too much thinking” mode and just DO IT? How do you step away from numbness, from fears, from too much self-control…how do you walk away from the attraction of what is safe and comfortable into the risks of a truly genuine life…into a more authentic life?

At my last therapy session (yes, I am back in therapy), I was asked to just close my eyes and see what I feel. See what images come to mind. Feel. Not think. Feel. Not think. I am a very ‘feeling” person, but I don’t really allow myself to just feel. I protect my feelings with my analytical mind. I control what I don’t know or understand with my ability to distance myself from it by thinking too much.

And so…Ezra gives me a clue. He talks about self-observation. I think: HEY! that is what I do all the time! But then, he immediately explains to me the difference between objective self-observation which is neither analytical nor judgmental. It observes as from a distance. It is not introspection, it is just awareness.

I think I understand. I need to learn to take one more step back and not try to hold on too tightly to understanding WHY I do what I do. Watch it, notice it, observe it, yes, understand it…and then, let it go. By holding on to it, I am placing labels on my personality. But the reality is that our personality, our being is not stagnant. It is not a lion that one can tame. It is in constant transition, change, growth. I understand my problem: I hold on so tightly to self-analysis out of fear of losing control. I do not dare to take the next step. The step that says: yes, that is me. ok. Accept it and move on.

I need to learn to take the step. Move on.

Ezra tells me that meditation can help me:

Until we learn to observe ourselves objectively, we will remain prisoners of our substitute life. Yet as we live the practice life, looking with increasing honesty at all the ways that we’ve held ourselves back in fear, we can also begin to experience the freedom of stepping outside our protected room and into the genuine life that awaits us.

Here are the pages I have scanned:

George Carlin ~ we’ll miss you! June 29, 2008

“The real owners are the big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions. Forget the politicians, they’re an irrelevancy. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don’t. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They’ve long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the statehouses, the city halls. They’ve got the judges in their back pockets. And they own all the big media companies, so that they control just about all of the news and information you hear. They’ve got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying — lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want; they want more for themselves and less for everybody else,” ranted the comedian whose routines were studied in graduate schools.

“But I’ll tell you what they don’t want,” Carlin continued. “They don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that. That doesn’t help them. That’s against their interests. They don’t want people who are smart enough to sit around the kitchen table and figure out how badly they’re getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago. You know what they want? Obedient workers — people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork but just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, reduced benefits, the end of overtime and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it. And, now, they’re coming for your Social Security. They want your fucking retirement money. They want it back, so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street. And you know something? They’ll get it. They’ll get it all, sooner or later, because they own this fucking place. It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it. You and I are not in the big club.”

For more of the article I got this from, go to:
George Carlin, American Radical

or…check out this video:

Democratic Primaries in Just 8 Minutes June 10, 2008

Pinocchio ~ Effort and Grace April 30, 2008

As I am reading David Richo’s book “The Power of Coincidence”, I find this powerful paragraph that I want to share with others…

Every one of us is like Pinocchio in the Disney cartoon. We were not born real; it is something we have to achieve by effort and receive by grace. At first we think becoming real / healthy / whole means being dutiful: “Go to school and follow your conscience” — things we can control. Soon we find it takes more than that. We have to confront our dark side. We have to notice how we lie, how we look for a quick fix, how we still believe our addictions can content us in ice-cream land. Then we find out that we have to go into the belly of the whale, the depths of the unconscious, and be inventive enough to light a fire to help others live. Only then are we reborn from the dark, that is, spit out of the whale’s mouth.

Then and only then are we ready to become real, but we are still not real yet. We cannot achieve the final part of the transformation on our own. The Blue Fairy has to lean lovingly over the body of a broken boy, a disassembled, dissolved ego ready for rebirth. The Blue Fairy (feminine intervention) represents the grace that makes us whole. Effort (masculine power) was not enough, not even heroic effort. It takes the wand of grace to tap us in its own time for the process to be complete. The reality of liberation is achieved AND received.

We saw all this in the childhood cartoon. Now, in this paragraph. we see INTO it in a new way.

This too is synchronicity.

these MOMENTS April 25, 2008

Once in a While by Madeleine Peyroux

There ARE these moments

I wrote about “moments” in another post. And right this minute (now about 2 minutes ago) I had a moment I need to write about.

It is early in the morning (7:30am) and I have been up a while. After checking my emails and reading a few news articles I decided to get back to our “story”. Yes, a friend of mine who is to remain anonymous for now and I are writing a story together. He lives in Germany and we discovered that we have a similar style in writing and thinking. It started as a fun project to encourage each other to WRITE! It still is a fun project, but the story is taking on a life of its own. We have already managed 25 pages (small font, no double lines). The story goes all over the geographical and psychological/spiritual/emotional world. It is fun, it is challenging, it is always so exciting when the latest few paragraphs arrive in my inbox.

So this morning I decided to add my paragraphs. I have not touched it in a few days and had to reread the last page as well as return to previous pages that connect with these last ones. These words I was reading suddenly triggered a powerful feeling inside. I felt completely connected to my higher Self. It was a surprise, because honestly I have been feeling a bit lost lately…disconnected…confused…numb…and when I feel that way, I know that I am not able to connect with my creative / strong / confident / unique Self. I stopped reading. I just stared at the screen, but my vision was completely focused on a spot in the depth of my belly. I feel this feeling in spurts. It is like being in love. For lack of vocabulary, it is the closest description I can give.
It is a feeling that screams:
YES! and
IT IS POSSIBLE! and
IT IS REAL!

It is a feeling that splatters bright colors onto the grey wall. And then, outside my window, through the sounds of cars riding up and down this San Francisco hill, I hear what I gather as being the sound of a crow. Perhaps it is not a crow, but it it’s not a small bird. It is not a dove…it sounds like a larger bird. It doesn’t matter. The image in my mind is that of a crow. And there is a crow in our story. It is in a dream. It is white at first, and then it is black. And I hear a crow outside my window. I think it is a sign. I decide that it is a sign. Synchronicity. It is saying something to me.

When I was a little girl, I used to have this weird feeling inside of me that I never could really describe. It used to happen a lot. As I grew older it happened less and less. I’d be lying in bed (but sometimes it happened while I was up and about) not necessarily just before falling asleep. And suddenly a strong and very strange feeling would come over my entire body. I’ve never been much of a meditator, but I imagine that perhaps for people who meditate a lot, this might be a feeling they get after a while. Or perhaps even what it feels like when you are high. It was a wonderful feeling. It was a feeling that connected my mind and my body. My eyes were open, but my entire body was motionless and almost in a sort of trance. Sometimes this feeling lasted for a short time, sometimes for what felt like 5 minutes. In my inner vision I used to see opposite movement: fast and slow ~ large and minuscule ~ circular motions ~ it has always been very difficult for me to describe it. I was not dreaming, but it felt as though I was in a dream state.

Once, when I was a bit older, I tried really hard (during one of these episodes) to define it, to give it an image in order to describe it. The image that popped into my head was that of a womb in uterus. When I imagined that, somehow it felt right. It felt close. Of course, it also felt weird and overwhelming.

Now that I had perhaps found an image, I still didn’t know what it meant. And still today I don’t know what it meant. But today I know more about life and its mysteries. And somewhere deep inside of me I want to believe that this feeling was some sort of connection to something spiritual. Perhaps a connection with my True Self. Perhaps a memory of my past self. Perhaps a memory of my reincarnation (and I believe in reincarnation). I will never really know. And I haven’t felt that feeling in a very long time. I wish it came back because it was an amazingly beautiful feeling. It was so peaceful and I felt so completely connected.

But perhaps that feeling does come back, only in a different manner. Perhaps it is in those “moments” when I feel deeply “in love” with life, and when I feel hope and laughter and depth and creativity…perhaps these are the times when that something is trying to remind me of something I forgot. Something I once knew a long long long long time ago. Something we in essence all know, yet have forgotten.

And so…the moment has passed. But I feel good. It has inspired me to write these lines. And I am happy I did, because now I will always have these lines to read to remember THIS moment.

And so…I return to our story. And I try to bring what I just learned into our story.

Synchronicity April 21, 2008

I just started reading this book that I “happened to” find at the library yesterday. It is called “The Power of Coincidence” by David Richo.

This paragraph in the introduction already made me want to share here:

Most of us are quite aware of our limited powers and not so aware of our boundless potential. This potential is our true Self, an energy that is unconditionally and universally loving, discerning with the wisdom of the ages, and abundantly rich with healing power. When these sleeping powers are activated, we are acting in accord with the best in us. Our spiritual powers may, however, remain sleeping giants in our psyche and never display themselves in our actions. Then our destiny remains unfulfilled and a sense of something missing may pervade our life. Synchronicity comes along to wake us and fulfill us.

Synchronicity shows us that the world orchestrates some of our life events so they can harmonize with the requirements of our inner journey. This is reflected in the opening quotation by Shakespeare: “Such harmony is in immortal souls.” Synchronicities are unusual, unexpected, not constructed or controlled by the human ego. In this sense they are miracles of conjunction between ourselves and the events of the world. We cannot cause these kinds of miracles to occur, but we can greet them and grant them hospitality in the yet unopened rooms of our souls. Then the power of coincidence is respected and it opens us to many marvels.

I have though a lot about coincidences (or synchronicity) throughout my life. Whenever that word comes up I always say “there are no coincidences”. Many people say that. I truly believe it. I have a file on my computer called “synchronicity” where I write down such moments. Sometimes I try to figure out why something happened or happens. Why you meet certain people. Why certain people say certain things to you at a specific moment of your life. Sometimes it takes me years to figure it out. Sometimes I don’t ask myself that question. Perhaps because it is too painful to look at. Perhaps because it is just a good story that I like to remember. No lesson. Just a good moment.

I will keep reading this book. The subtitle is “How life shows us what we need to know”. Yeah. Many of us need this. I need this.

But I know myself. Supposed coincidences to me are like dreams. Just another tool of communication with your deepest self. The messages are there. The happenings occur. There are so many tools out there.

But do we listen to them? Do I hear them? Yes! Do I listen to them? Yes and no. Not enough. Especially right now in my life. It is there…on a silver platter.

greet them and grant them hospitality in the yet unopened rooms of our souls…

That, my friends…is the challenge. You can greet them. You can grant them hospitality…but take the next step and act upon them…THAT is the challenge.

En L’homme ~ by ETYL April 18, 2008

The other day a friend of mine sent me this song…never heard of this group called ETYL, but I really like this song:

(Je crois en l’homme = I believe in man)

Life is about Moments April 15, 2008

Wishful Thinking by The Album Leaf

Life is about moments. In our minds we see pictures. Sometimes still, sometimes moving. In our dreams the still and moving pictures mesh into each other ~ around and over each other. The demarcation lines fade away ~ they disappear. A body can swim in the air, a tidal wave can come crashing over you while you are watching it from a distance.

There are no rules ~ there is that other world we always wonder about. We wonder if it really truly exists. In our dreams the answer is a resounding “yes!”. Upon waking we slide back into the safety of a brick walled room we call “this world”.

I imagine a moment. Just before dying. I imagine the last exhale when I finally surrender to the truth. That it never was “another world” ~ that that other world always existed in me, always accompanied me. That it always peaked its head…in those very moments…of a still photo or a fleeting moving picture in my mind. And all I needed to do was open my eyes and notice it. See it. Welcome it. Acknowledge its existence. Embrace it and allow it to do its work. Guide me. Lead me. Carry me back to the raw dirt of my existence. Side by side with every other moment of every other being’s own personal and universal existence.

I wish for my eyes to open up and see it. Always. Now. Not then.

Bridging the Tourist/Artist Gap — Your Suggestions Wanted April 14, 2008

The following is written by Eric Maisel, author and creativity coach, who lives in San Francisco. I have read his book “A Writer’s San Francisco” and have the good intention to read more of his books when I get through the endless other books that I plan to read and finish reading.
I have subscribed to his newsletter and will be contributing to a blog he is creating called ” A Purpose-Centered Life”. In yesterday’s newsletter, he asks his readers to give him suggestions about a topic he is thinking about, writing about and will be speaking about at conferences. The topic is very interesting to me and I intend to put my thinking cap on and see what I can come up with. In the meantime, I thought it would be good to share this with all you creative types, artists and well, tourists too (which we all are, usually at least once a year). I think the idea of bridging that gap is a good one. Living in a very creative city like San Francisco and having worked with tourists for years, i love the idea of finding a way to narrow the divide between local artists and tourists / visitors.

So, read the following text and if you have any comments, you can either put them here (and with your permission I can forward them on to Eric Maisel), or you can email him directly at ericmaisel@hotmail.com

Hello, everybody:

At the end of this newsletter I’ll be asking for your suggestions. I hope that you’ll consider my questions and send along your thoughts. I think that every creative person has a stake in the subject I’m chatting about today: it relates to the rent you pay for your apartment and your studio and your ability to pay that rent, the relationships you fashion with your audience, your ability to create meaningful experiences that help reduce your sense of separation and alienation from the mass culture, and other issues having to do with the way we are each embedded in specific cultures and live in specific places.

I’ve been learning a new language as I immerse myself in the areas of “creative tourism” and “creative cities,” in preparation for a plenary talk I’ll be delivering at the Santa Fe International Conference on Creative Tourism, which runs from September 28 to October 2. (I’ll also be giving a “Creativity for Life” chat at the conference). Although the website for the conference isn’t up yet, you can learn more about the conference and its sponsorship HERE

I’ve long been interested in the dynamic relationships between place and the creative life and I’ve described some of these dynamics in essays like “Privilege and the Place Vendome” and “Demographics” in my books A Writer’s Paris and A Writer’s San Francisco. What, for example, if you find yourself living in a flag-waving, church-on-every- corner, shop-at-Walmart town that is indifferent to the creative spirit or actively antagonistic to it? What if you happen to reside in a large city where the concentration of wealth produces cultural institutions like museums and symphonies but, because of these same capitalist forces, generates rents that you can’t afford and jobs that only support mega-commerce and mega-tourism? You can be an investment banker or a waiter there, but can you be an artist? These realities matter, psychologically and practically, in the lives of creative folk.

One of these dynamic (and difficult) relationships is the relationship between the tourist, who may be attracted to a place because of its cultural reputation, and the artist who lives in that place (or very near that place, as the rents in-town are probably prohibitive) and creates the culture. The artist, for his part, likely feels scorn for the tourist who travels in what Erik Cohen has dubbed an “environmental bubble” and who eats well, buys souvenirs, cranes his neck, and displays no real feeling for the culture around him. The tourist avoids the artist; the artist avoids the tourist (except when, as part of a sales interaction, he must smile and nod and agree that the customer is right); and the distance between the two is carefully maintained on each side.

In the tourism industry, the places where some of these questions are beginning to be addressed (or ought to be addressed) are in the areas of “cultural tourism” and “creative tourism.” Cultural tourism is an umbrella idea that includes all of the following: attracting visitors to a place because of “grand” cultural attractions like famous art museums or symphony orchestras; attracting visitors because of a place’s “cultural mosaic” of art galleries or live music venues; or attracting visitors with the lure of experiencing a particular “culture,” whether it’s “natives in native dress” or the “Italian culture” of an old-line Italian neighborhood with its delis and cafés.

Creative tourism, by contrast, is described in a Wickopedia entry as follows: “Creative tourism has existed as a form of cultural tourism since the early beginnings of tourism itself. More recently, creative tourism has been given its own name by Crispin Raymond and Greg Richards. They have defined ‘creative tourism’ as tourism related to the active participation of travelers in the culture of the host community, through interactive workshops and informal learning experiences. Meanwhile, the concept of creative tourism has been picked up by high-profile organizations such as UNESCO, who through the Creative Cities Network have endorsed creative tourism as an engaged, authentic experience that promotes an active understanding of the specific cultural features of a place.”

To put it simply, when you visit a gallery, you are a cultural tourist; when you take a workshop from the artist himself or herself, you are a creative tourist. I think that it would be wonderful if we moved this last idea from its narrow version of the occasional tourist taking the occasional local workshop to the broader idea of how tourists can be encouraged to change their internal story about why they are traveling, helping them to add “meaning” to the usual litany of restaurants, shopping, and golf; and how artists can be encouraged to change their internal story about the necessity of keeping tourists at arm’s length. I am thinking that it might be useful to call this rewriting of the internal stories of tourists, artists, and locals “narrative tourism”: the effort to change the relationship between visitor and local (including local artist) by helping all concerned rewrite their internal stories about what travel means.

The typical artist forms no particular connection with the tourists who visit his or her city and the typical tourist forms no connection with the artists who live in the city he or she visits. The main reasons for this are three-fold: the “mass tourist” (usually divided into the categories of “individual mass tourist,” the tourist who makes his or her own arrangements, and the “organized mass tourist,” who takes a packaged tour) is not fundamentally interested in creativity and culture; the artist has no models or instructions about how to engage with tourists in meaningful ways (on in any way); and tourism stakeholders (city, state and national governments with their convention bureaus, visitors bureaus, and arts commissions, international agencies like UNESCO, non-profit tourism research organizations, hotel chains and restaurant chains, etc.) spend their time, energy, and money elsewhere.

Bridging the gap (or gulf) between local artist and out-of-town visitor necessarily makes a place more creative, more human, and more humane for tourist, artist, and resident alike. It also reduces the tension between local residents who feel “on display” and tourists who descend to “use the facilities.” When tourists visit a museum, they do nothing to bridge this gap; when, by contrast, they go out of their way to attend a lecture at a local Laundromat or watch a filmmaker’s movie projected onto a schoolyard wall, as they can do in my San Francisco neighborhood of Bernal Heights, both they and the artists involved are enriched.

Tourists and artists alike need considerable help in bridging this gap. A local writer, actor, painter, musician or craftsperson is unlikely to consider inviting tourists to join her in some interactive experience; by the same token, tourists are unlikely to seek out such opportunities even if they existed. Artists need help in conceptualizing such possibilities and help in enacting them; tourists need help in creating the inner narrative that permits them to feel comfortable “doing something creative”, “mingling with artists”, and moving their vacation in more existential, experimental, and experiential directions.

The realities of both constituencies— the tourist arriving as consumer and observer, looking mainly for diversion and recreation, the artist marginalized and struggling, isolated in his own community—militate against this gap narrowing. One of the great opportunities of the creative tourism movement is to promote strategies that change this dynamic and bridge this gap, producing more meaningful experiences for visitors, new social and marketing opportunities for artists, and a more genuinely creative place for everyone. I have certain strategies in mind that might help in bridging this gap and I want to present them to you over the next few weeks. But first I would love to hear from you.

1. What, in your opinion, might help bridge the tourist/artist gap? What are your thoughts?

2. What have others tried to bridge this gap? Do you have any stories?

3. Have you tried to personally to bridge this gap? If so, what were the results and what did you learn?

I look forward to your thoughts. Please send them along to me at ericmaisel@hotmail. com

Have an excellent Sunday!

Best,

Eric

ericmaisel@hotmail. com
ericmaisel@sbcgloba l.net