Maybe I Have His Smile

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Today I decided I wasn’t a writer.  I was done.  Not up to it.  Why did I want to write anyway?  Didn’t all that time spent jotting down ideas, taking notes and blogging simply distract me from my “true” calling?  Didn’t it take away from the time I could be practicing Yoga, nurturing a tenuous connection to what might be the beginning of a social life, or watching So You Think You Can Dance?  Besides, the plastic bins of research gathering dust in my kitchen took up too much floor space in my already cramped studio.  I’d be better off taking them down to my storage locker.

Nope.  I was done.  Finished.  Finito.

And then this happened:

I went back to the family photographs my mother gave me when I visited her last September.  Only a few include images of the father I never met. I have no idea if I walk like him or if I have his sense of humor.  I won’t find out if I’m impatient because he was, or if he liked spicy food.  But maybe if I looked hard enough I could see something in his face.  Tonight I needed to be convinced he and I shared something.  I held the photographs close and then, with my face just inches away from the mirror, I searched my eyes, my cheeks, my nose.  Like almost every other middle-aged woman, all I could see was my mother looking back at me.  I stared at the photographs and back again at my reflection.  I compared his image to my mom’s and then me until finally I could see it.  There it was.  His smile.  I’m pretty certain I have a bit of his smile.

As I slipped the photos back into the treasure box I keep them in, I thought about the protagonist in the manuscript taking up space on my kitchen floor.  She’s just sixteen, but she’s missing a dad, too.  I wondered what she might feel, how she might react, seeing her father for the first time.

I opened my laptop and took a few pages of notes for a manuscript I haven’t touched for three months.

It turns out maybe I am a writer after all.

 

 

 

 

 

Truth or Consequences

I’m sorry.  I’ve been distracted.  I’ve been spending some time with my new blog at skirt!, which you can find here.

You know how it is. A website offers you the thrilling opportunity to write for free and you can’t pass it up.  They massage your ego with an application process that makes you feel special.  Chosen.  You say, “Oh, yes, I want to write for free!” and off you go.

It’s all right.  I don’t mind.  I know it wasn’t six months ago that I posted I would never give my writing away again – complete with a link to Harlan Ellison’s rant – but that was then, and those were different circumstances.

We never used to practice in public.  Secrets used to be between our hearts and the diary we hid under our mattress. Today, however, every nuance of our lives is documented.  I can’t believe this is a good thing, and yet here I am, willing participant.

Over sharing is the norm.  Bad behavior no longer shocks us. Instead, it numbs us. Bores us senseless.

My blog on skirt! is deeply personal.  In contrast, I’ve skirted (pardon the pun) around issues here at Practically Twisted.  Hedged a little.  When my Practically Twisted posts arrive at the precipice I dodge the truth with a bit of alleged wit.

I have no regrets about what I’m currently sharing with a couple hundred of the closest skirt! friends I’ve never met.  My ego (today at least) is healthy enough to believe that maybe my posts will benefit someone living with similar circumstances.  But as a writer telling a personal story I need to be clear with myself.  How much of my truth am I willing to share? How much of our truth should we share?  How much does the reader need to know to keep the truth compelling enough to turn the page?

Lists, Love and Epiphanies

An list from a few years ago...I'm exhausted looking at it.

There’s nothing like a Wednesday morning epiphany to get my juices flowing.  I’m still obsessed with the advantage and disadvantages of keeping detailed lists and goals and objectives.  The merits of having a game plan.  (I’m also wondering how we determine what is instinct and what is illusion but that’s for another post).

Yesterday I walked Rose the Labradoodle without my ever-present iPod and discovered that not having my brain bombarded with Green Day, downloads of Michael Krasny (I have a huge crush on his voice) and the occasional Miles Davis opened my brain up to the possibility of – yeegads – random, spontaneous, creative thought.  Who knew?  Unplugging the external cacophony gives us a chance to listen to what’s going on deep inside.

And here’s what I came up with on Rose’s walk yesterday:  Most writers create a story arc – an outline of who their characters are, where they’re going and how they’re going to get there.  A beginning, middle and an end.  The story arc is roughly hewn list that chronicles the events that move the plot forward, the set backs the protagonist may endure, and the big payoff – why the heroine began the journey in the first place.

But a story arc is simply a road map.  It’s malleable.  It’s possible to turn left and venture down an unmarked avenue.

Cue big flash of insight.

When I think of my life as a series of lists, goals and objectives I set myself up for failure and disappointment.  The list is too long, the goals are too high. All I can see in my mind’s eye is that white piece of paper and one bulleted 10-point Helvetica command after another. My self-esteem is fragile enough already.  Why would I do that to myself?

But – if I create a story arc for my life then I acknowledge that there has to be room for uncertainty, moments when I decide to turn left instead of right, unexpected opportunity.  It doesn’t eliminate a game plan – I still want everything I want with all my heart and I know that I have to work for it.  But in my mind’s eye I can see my arc play out like a stunningly framed Ang Lee movie.

So, good-bye dry, boring lists.  Hello, The Story of Mimm.

Take a moment.  If you’re a chronic list maker like me, how does it feel to release those rote set of goals for a moment and instead see your life as an amazing story?

Lists, Love and Equilibrium

At last, the dust seems to be settling.  How do I know?  I made a list.  This seems like a silly indicator that equilibrium is coming home to roost.  But I am the self-proclaimed Mother of All List Makers. My last impressive list was created in the middle of January from the Embarcadero Hyatt when, disillusioned by the Yoga Journal Conference, I hid out in my hotel room for the weekend and pretended I was on a writer’s retreat. Before that I had my list of New Year’s Resolutions.  And before that it was Fifty Things to Accomplish in My Fiftieth Year (that one began three years ago – I’m still working on it).

Lists are about control.  They make me feel safe.  If I have my list I know where I am supposed to be.  I know where I am going.  Nothing can hurt me or distract me or pull me from my path.  I have my list.  Here’s my list for today:

Monday 11 April

  • 6:00 Rise: Shower, eat, feed Rose & Bella, walk Rose, meditate, post blog
  • 9:00:  Tom in Sunnyvale; d/o new clothes and stuff at home
  • Leave car at Sarah’s (walk)
  • Credit Union
  • 11:00:  FMG
  • Lunch
  • 1:00:  Avenidas
  • Sarah’s:  Rest, write, walk Rose; flowers for Bobbie & Harkins
  • 7:30:  Yin
  • TO DO:  contact Ann re. workshop; follow through on lost paycheck, poop scoop,  look at Abby’s letters from week 4, check submissions, think about query letter for cadaver workshop, drop off envelopes at CYC

It’s very routine.  Nothing exciting.  And it continues to Sunday, when I leave for San Francisco and my weeklong cadaver intensive with Gil Hedley.  The most exciting moment is when I break from my Wednesday evening tradition (staying at home) in order to leave the house for a home cooked dinner with Bettie, Richard and Dena.

This week’s list reminds me of an incident that happened about eight years ago.  I was going though another difficult time and decided I needed to talk with someone.  At my first meeting with a therapist, I brought The Ultimate List. I was so proud.  It proved I really wasn’t troubled.  It proved I had my act together.  The list was eight pages of 10-point single-spaced Helvetica and covered the next five years of my life.  I can still see the astonishment behind the therapist’s attempt to remain neutral. She looked at me and asked,

“Why do you feel you need a list?”

Wasn’t it obvious?

I didn’t remain in therapy for very long – eight years ago there were too many doors I was unwilling to open and the ability to bore cyberspace with musings on some wacky thing called a ‘blog’ was merely a twinkle in some geek’s eye.

We all experience periods of difficulty (even yoga teachers).  The goal, I suppose, is to remain functional while processing the events in our lives that have knocked us off-center.  Lists keep me functional.

The danger is that they can shut us down.  Put us in a box. Lists can create a life so ordered and precise that there is no room for an open heart.  For love and joy.  For connection.

I want love and connection.  But for now, what I need is the safety of my list.

My yoga practice this week will nurture the equilibrium I’m returning to.  There will be plenty of balance poses – including my favorite, Garudasana – and strong standing sequences.  I feel I need the grounding precision of an alignment-based practice this week.  I also need to comfort my heart, and for that I’ll turn to the organic fluidity of Yin.

When you step on your mat this week, take a moment to check in with your emotional state.  If you’re leaning too far to one side, how can your practice help bring you back to center?

Fate, Faith and Free Will, Part II…sort of…

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Donegal, Ireland

I don’t dance, but I remember dancing.  The last time I danced – and I mean really danced with full on arms flailing wild abandon – was in 1996 at a wedding reception in Dundalk, Ireland. I had been in Ireland for two years. The tuxedoed disc jockey, per my request and to the annoyance of everyone else, was playing Kula Shaker. I weighed a good one hundred ninety pounds at the time. And while I whirled my fat half-drunk dervish on the empty dance floor the rest of the wedding party laughed and chugged pints by the sidelines or slipped outside for a smoke until the Macarena was cued up for the fifteenth time.  Oh sure, there have been a few half-hearted attempts since then:  my awkward shuffle at Derek’s Halloween birthday party three years ago or that time the August before at the bar up in the City with Una and Forrest.

But reckless abandon?  Not even close.

When did I start taking myself so seriously?  When did I forget how to dance?

When fear snuck up on me and began to run my life.

Free Will

I have friends who like to tell me I was brave when I sold everything, packed up and moved to Ireland. There was nothing brave about it.  I was running away.  I had some half-cocked plan about being an artist, about reinventing myself, but the truth was that I was full of despair for the lack of direction in my life.  And that despair went back fifteen years to college, when I chose art over academia.  I loved art, but I loved books more.  I wanted to be a history major.  I was too afraid.

But doing something daring, like moving to a different country in my mid-thirties, would somehow make up for my fear of failure at eighteen.

I knew one person in Dublin, a scummy chef who chain-smoked Rothmans.  I arrived in Dublin on December 7th. It only took two weeks before I never wanted to see him again.  I was truly alone.  Free to become whomever I wanted.

I lived in a cheap hotel for a month and then found a ten by six-foot bedsit above a chippy on Parnell Street.  I began making crafts to sell at Mother Redcap’s Market. That’s the market near Christ Church, just up the hill from St. Patrick’s Cathedral.  Did you know Handel himself used the choir from St. Patrick’s for his début of the Messiah in 1742?

At the same time I found work as a coat check girl at Rumour’s Nightclub next to the Gresham Hotel on O’Connell Street.  I did not last.  But not long after I was hired by the National School of Art and Design as an artist’s model.  I had plenty of experience in California and it wasn’t long before my skills as a model were in demand.  But, after two years, I was done with Dublin.

I found my way from Dublin to Donegal.  For a time I made furniture with a boyfriend.  When that ended I took work at the local health food store.  I studied nutritional counseling, massage therapy and reflexology.  I taught yoga and I opened a clinic in the spare bedroom of my rented house.  That’s how all this began.  By my learning how to survive.

I also have friends who tell me that I was brave when, eleven years later, I packed everything up for a second time and moved back to California.  Again, I wasn’t being brave. I was admitting defeat.  Moving to Ireland had been an experiment.  As much as I love the friends I know there, Ireland was a mistake.  It was time to come back to the closest thing I had to a home.

I returned to California in late spring 2005 with some books, the clothes on my back, a few thousand dollars and a few new skills. I was a different woman.  The difficulties I had in Ireland somehow purged me of envy.  I knew how far I could fall and I was grateful to be alive. Rather than being burned by envy all I wanted now was to feel the heat of California sun on my bones. I was happy to be a witness to the success of friends I had not seen for more than a decade. And I had faith that after everything I had seen and done, fear would no longer rule my life.

It didn’t quite work out that way…

To Sleep, Perchance to Dream

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Good Question…

I was introducing a group of Spanish-speaking clients at the pain clinic where I teach yoga to the power of Yin.  A young man dressed in baggy jeans and a baseball jacket gingerly attempted to find a twist that challenged him yet did not aggravate the injury to his lower back.  He positioned a small bolster under his left thigh, relaxed and closed his eyes.  A moment later, through his interpreter, he asked me,

“Where is the mind supposed to go in these poses?”

The question, considering his lifetime practice of yoga amounted to approximately sixty-two minutes, was remarkable.

How was I going to answer without delving too deep, too soon, into all the possibilities?

I told him that in some practices we focus on the breath, or gaze toward a particular point, but in Yin we can close our eyes and free the mind to travel, and that each new position might bring up a different set of emotions or memories.

And then I confessed that there have been times during my Yin practice when I’ve entered the trance state I like to call “napping”.  Seriously.  While Yin’s startlingly challenging stretches are percolating into my connective tissue, I’m dozing.  Sometimes I can even fit in a thirty-second dream.

Speaking of Dreams…

Shortly before I woke this morning I had one of those weird “what does it all mean” sort of dreams.  Listening to someone tell the story of a dream is a bit like having to sit through four hundred photographs of Uncle Mort’s week in the Poconos.  But stick with me.  This gets good.

It was the sort of dream our subconscious constructs to help us find answers.

I’m teaching yoga to a group of people dressed for Carnivale. Every one is wearing a mask.  I can only identify one or two people and even then only based on their ‘energy’.  The scene is disordered and chaotic but not upsetting.

I am told I’ve been diagnosed with a serious illness.  To be healed, I must take the medicine handed to me in an ornate bottle. But I don’t want anyone to discover that I am ill so I hide the bottle.  Meanwhile, we’re all going on a journey and all my students are packing suitcases and gathering tickets and it’s happy mayhem.  In the excitement, the medicine gets lost in my baggage.

And then Max, one of the felines I’m currently taking care of, jumped on my chest, woke me up and I never discover if I take the medicine or if I’m able to leave on the journey.  The last thing I remember in the dream is accidentally handing over a fifty-dollar bill as a tip, realizing my mistake, taking it back and replacing it with ten dollars.  Odd.  I’m usually more generous.

That dream is going to settle over me for the rest of the day like a satisfying film.  I can still feel the mood of the dream – the tiny moments and the colors – all dark shimmering blues and silver.

I’m open to your interpretations, but I think the one thing that can heal me becoming lost in my baggage is pretty telling…

On that note, just to tie some loose ends from previous posts and to take a few tentative steps into the future:

  • No, I still haven’t canceled my cable.  Yet.  I will.
  • I’m no longer vibrating.  My beating heart has stilled. I feel more grounded than I have in months (although you might disagree when you read further).
  • I enjoyed my last day with the critique group.  I read a personal essay about how difficult it has been to process the reunion I had with my mother in September and how, when my heart was finally open to needing a mother, she wanted to talk about the weather.  Pete cried.  Terry and Henry said, “That’s the best thing you’ve ever written.” Terry added, “Submit it.  Now.”   I came home, cleaned up the formatting, wished it well and sent it off to a few magazines.  Fingers crossed.
  • I’m looking forward to the Thai Massage I’ve scheduled for Friday.  Thai Massage is a bit like having yoga given to you.  I’m pretty desperate for some bodywork.  Can’t wait.
  • And now, for the  You’re Doing WHAT? moment.  In the pursuit of new experiences, to satisfy my curiosity and to venture outside my normal comfort zone, I’m having my Tarot Cards read today.  Yep. It’s all right.  Go ahead.  Even I’m rolling my eyes.

Potential

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On my mom's fridge: a photo of house I lived in as a child.

I don’t know what to say about the past month.  I’m pretty thrilled February is barreling right into March.

I broke up with my critique group this week.  It had been fomenting for months, but I couldn’t find the courage.  Each time I summoned the strength to leave, someone else would drop out or move or drift away and I would feel the guilt of their leaving strong enough to enroll for another eight weeks.  Now that I’ve finally let go, I’m wondering what not having five fresh pages to share each Wednesday afternoon will do to my writing.

It wasn’t your typical critique group.  We didn’t see one another’s work until the day we met, and then we had fifteen minutes – sometimes twenty depending upon who was in attendance – to read and receive comments.  My strategy was to bring in about five minutes of reading so I could receive ten minutes of review.  Others in the group enjoyed spending most of their time reading, with little time for feedback.

You can see how one might become frustrated.

At the end of the day, though, the group gave me discipline.  And developing discipline is priceless.  I wouldn’t have a novel length manuscript under my belt if our leader Terry Galanoy hadn’t said, “That’s a good idea.  I want five pages next Wednesday.”  Classic critique may have been pretty thin, but encouragement and support was heaped upon me.  I’ll miss them.

In February I received my Get Out of Jail Free Card.  This is more difficult to explain.  I guess I had one of those experiences that cast a sliver of light on a very dusty part of my soul.   I had an awakening, of sorts.  A door opened.  That’s a good thing.  But if you’re old enough to remember the opening sequence of the 1960’s classic “Get Smart” then you know that behind the open door is…another door.  In other words, I have an awful lot of work to do on myself before my Get Out of Jail Free Card is valid.  I reckon a good couple of years.  But when that final door opens – it will be well worth the work and the wait.

At my penultimate meeting with the critique group, the only other women attending that day asked me, “What is your theme?” The men were staying shtum as the scene I had read was about a protagonist’s first menstruation.

I couldn’t answer her.  I hemmed and hawed until at last she answered for me.

“You are the sum total of your experiences.  Or not.  There has to be room for potential.”

I am the sum total of my experiences.  Or not.

Faith, Strength and Losing Control

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On the Tuesday morning that I cried in the shower, something very freeing happened.  I let go of the rules I had imposed upon myself and gave myself permission to write about anything I wanted – simply for the joy of putting “pen to paper” as it were.  (Except, of course, it’s rare anyone actually puts pen to paper these days.  Maybe I should have said, ‘fingers to keyboard’).

I don’t believe I was aware of how immobilizing my good intentions were.  The truth is facing the tables I had created to chart my progress only charted failure.  I could never meet the high expectations I had set for myself. They had to go.

I know there are plenty of writers, teachers and life coaches who would suggest I’m making a terrible mistake.  That if I don’t have a plan – if I can’t see a clearly defined goal – then I have no chance of reaching it.  I’m willing to take that risk.

Besides, I do have a goal.  It’s simple: be a better writer.

You’re right.  It’s a goal that can’t be quantified.  I won’t be able to – in five weeks or five months or five years – announce to the world “I’ve done it.  I am now a Better Writer.”  It will require faith.  And it will require that I let go.  I have to believe that if relinquish control of the flow chart that took over my life and instead find the strength to build a deep and unshakable foundation of discipline – if I write every day, relentlessly, without fail, about anything I want – then I will learn how to write.  I will be a better writer.  Goal.

As much as I would like, someday, to have those other things – a book to call my own and an audience who want to read it – I must consider this time in my career as a writer a precious gift.  This is my time to explore, to make mistakes, to discover if I have an affinity for fiction or personal essay.  It’s my time to provide myself the space to discover who I am as a writer.

And that’s what I’m going to do.

Why Do We Write?

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Why do we write?  Because we have a story to tell. Sometimes it’s a true story; sometimes it’s a story clinging to our heart desperate for liberation.

A friend says to me “You must tell your story” and I’m not certain what he means.  He says, “You have a facility for writing” and recounts the opening to a manuscript I’ve been struggling with since last year.  But that isn’t my story.  It’s just something I made up.  Something that has some tenuous association with the truth.

So why do we write?

Twelve days ago I stood in my shower and began to cry. The tears fell spontaneously.  They fell without warning.  I wasn’t sad.  In fact, I was standing on the precipice of happy. But still the tears spilled down my face, merged with Palo Alto’s municipal water supply and joined the wastewater on its way to be cured and returned to San Francisquito Creek.

I began to realize that my tears were a mix of elation for the decision my heart had made without my asking and mourning for the goals I hadn’t achieved.  I was liberated.  I was a failure.

It used to be different.  I wanted to write.  That’s all.  I didn’t think about writing a best seller, receiving a huge advance or being chosen for Oprah’s Book Club.  I wanted to write because it brought me joy. I wrote because it filled a void.  It was a way to clarify – an outlet.  And I loved the challenge.

I took a few classes and created a few blogs before I settled on the one you’re reading. I wrote a few articles for the local paper.  I wrote a manuscript that could, with a little polish, become a novel. No small achievement.

I dove deep and was amazed at how long I could hold my breath.  I charged into study and schedules and goals.  I wrote without thinking.  I wrote without feeling.  I dreamed of maybe, one day, having a book I could hold in my hand and saying, “I wrote this.”

And then things got ugly.  I forgot about the joy. I forgot about how crafting a decent sentence makes me giddy and the magic that happens when a character takes over and becomes the boss of these tired, typing fingers. I forgot about plot, structure and setting all in the race to be there first. But the truth is, I’ll never be there first.

That Tuesday, standing in my shower, finally craving air, I broke the surface and gasped for breath.

It wasn’t working.

The five o’clock alarms.  The word count goals.  The platform building.  The hollow dreams.  It wasn’t working.

I wanted to write.  This wasn’t writing.  It was micro-managing.

I put away all the tables that charted word counts, blogs posted and queries sent to magazine editors.  I closed the file on long-range goals, short-term goals and the list of forty-five writing goals I needed to achieve – today – while teaching classes and visiting clients.  I gave notice to my critique group – the six people with whom I shared every Wednesday afternoon for the past three years.

And I went back to basics.  I pulled out John Gardner’s On Becoming a Novelist.  I opened Janet Burroway’s Writing Fiction.

And then, finally relieved of the burden of high expectations, I began.

I write.  I will continue to write.   It is how I will tell my story.

Fear Trips Us Up

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I like WordPress.  Have done since the leader of a seminar I was attending encouraged all of us to write a blog as one step toward building a platform.  At the time – this was about three years ago – I was only beginning to understand how our lives were being impacted by the growth of social networking.  I’m certain I didn’t understand how to set up a blog (although I had fumbled around a bit with Blogger) and I hadn’t grasped the long-term influence blogging might have on my writing future.

But now, thirty-six months later I’m quite comfortable spilling my inner demons for the world to read.  I’m happy to share the struggles of an aspiring writer.  Let me correct that.  I’m not aspiring to be a writer.  I am a writer.  I’m aspiring to be a “successful writer”.  What is that?  How do we judge success?  Is it the first paycheck?  If it is – well – I managed that last year.  Or maybe it’s finding an agent.  Am I not a success if an agent wants to spend time selling the words I lay down on paper?  Ah yes, but I know it won’t be enough.  The book will have to be sold to a publisher.  And even then I won’t be happy until I’m on Oprah.  Or listed in the New York Times.  Or win a Pulitzer.

I dream – as the cliché goes – big.  I can see how long the road is, and, since that first and only paycheck just about filled my CRV’s gas tank – I can see how far I have to go.

So – getting back to wonderful WordPress:  as part of their commitment to the “post a week” concept they’ve been providing suggestions for topics.  I’m generally able to come up with my own – case in point my lambasting of the Yoga Journal Conference in my last two posts.  But today’s suggested topic intrigued me:

What’s the most important thing you’re putting off?

And why haven’t you done it yet? What do you need to make it happen?

I’ve been putting off making the kind of commitment it takes to be the successful writer I know in my heart I have to potential to be.  I blame my insane schedule.  I blame my raging hormones.  I blame my age – I really should have begun all this fuss earlier in life.  I blame the day of the week and the fact the sun shines on my computer screen at an awkward angle.  But none of those excuses are credible.  This is what it boils down to:

fear

Not fear of failure – I’m had plenty of failures.  I know how to brush myself off and climb back into the saddle.  I’m talking about fear of success.  What do I do then?  What happens if I actually succeed?

In the past, when I’ve thought about what success looks like, it has always involved being over-committed, flying back and forth to New York, rushing about.  Having to find my inner extrovert.  The pressure of always being good enough.  That’s the picture I painted in my head of success.

What if I paint a different picture?  What if the picture includes being able to afford a home of my own and a secure retirement?  What if the picture includes a schedule that allows me to teach the yoga that I love but also gives me solid days of secluded writing.  What if the picture includes – wait for it – a yearly vacation?

I feel better already.  Now I’m motivated.  But the question remains, how will I make it happen?

By taking the first step.