Mindfulness, one raisin at a time

One small morsel for mindfulness, one giant meal for a lifetime

A few years ago, I had the pleasure of taking a mindfulness meditation course with Carol Greco at the Center for Integrative Medicine in Pittsburgh, PA. It was a wonderful opportunity to practice being. Just being. Being in the moment.

One of the first things we did together was taste a raisin. (Well, we each had our own raisin We were asked to really experience the raisin, and to do so for an extended period of time rather than chewing it and swallowing in haste.

Savoring a raisin for five full minutes, noticing not just its taste, but its texture, its position in my mouth, its scent and every other sensation that eating engenders made me wistful about all of the hurried meals I eat. When was the last time I had so carefully considered a bite I put in my mouth? How much delectable food had I eaten without savoring it as much as I was now savoring this delicious raisin?

Mindfulness and the slow, deliberate attention to oneself and one’s experience of the world was a welcome yet foreign way of being in the world for me. I embraced the opportunity to learn techniques for slowing down and experiencing life rather than plowing through it without reflection. With all of the distractions of modern living, it is so easy to operate on autopilot, moving from task to task and place to place without reflection or awareness…have you ever been in the car and been so caught up in a string of thoughts that you hardly remember the last mile you drove?

I aspire to be more mindful every day; some days I am not even mindful that I’m supposed to be mindful. I fail more than I succeed. I rush and hurry and gobble and speed far more than I should. But each day is new. Each day, I can take a raisin from the box and begin again.

Saying “no” so you can say “yes”

One of the biggest challenges I face is mastering the art of saying “no.” Having grown up in a household of people-pleasers, saying “no” wasn’t a suitable response (unless you were turning down sex, drugs or alcohol…) If someone asked you nicely to help, you helped. If someone could make you feel a little guilty about even thinking of saying no, you didn’t say no.

For years, I’ve worked on exorcising this need-to-please part of my personality. Just when I think I’m getting better at saying no, I get sucked into a YES that turns into a big mistake. And the yeses that are motivated by guilt are the ones that really make me feel resentful and cranky.

But there is another “no” that can be even more insidious, because it is disguised as opportunity. Sometimes it is important to say no to that really great-sounding project that beckons like a siren, luring you to add another demand to your already jam-packed life.

Saying “yes” when you should say “no” can be devastating to your goals. As my browser home page says, courtesy of Luciano at litemind.com, “You can do anything, but not everything. Choose wisely.” It is great to entertain new opportunities and embrace new challenges, but choose wisely how you will spend your 24 hours each day. Not saying no can be a minefield. It is so easy to think, “Sure, I can fit one more thing in, because it is such a great thing!”

Here’s the rub: if you don’t say “no” enough, all the things you’ve already said “yes” to don’t get the attention they deserve.

What do you already have in your life that you can move aside to take on this new opportunity? Do you still want to, when you consider it like that? Does it get you were you wanted to go, or is it a distraction from a really awesome plan you’ve already worked out? If you are the kind of person who wants to embrace the fullness of life, you will have to make some tough choices about what will fill you up and what will make you explode.

You can do anything, but not everything. Choose wisely.

Two frickin’ years?

Some writer I am. I started this little blog with the best intentions of creating an artful space…and have let it languish since November 2009.

I have been writing. I just haven’t been sharing.

I do have a private paper journal. Sometimes I fill it with drawings; I like to try to experience the world in these pictures. I look more closely, I see and retain – and I get an interesting memento.

LIttle line drawing of Susie lying down

The tree outside our trailer at Bear Run Campground

Time and creativity

timer

What would you do if time were limitless?

It fascinates me to consider what I could accomplish if time were more malleable – if it could be stretched to accommodate my wildest dreams. If time were limitless, we wouldn’t have to make so many difficult choices – we could be less responsible and more free-wheeling. This is a very appealing notion…plenty of time to write that short story without feeling like I’m shirking some duty (more laundry? How can that be?)

But being forced to decide how to spend our time makes every choice more meaningful, and every creative success more valuable. How much more impressive is the art created against daunting circumstances? I admire the writer who perseveres to write  a book by writing for thirty minutes every morning for ten years! To have that kind of discipline may be somewhat counter to the creative mind; after all, creativity is born of letting your mind play without bounds. And yet all the creativity in the world will do you no good if it stays in your head. So the lesson to be learned is to give yourself permission to be creative and build into your life these opportunities for unfettered creativity – even if the opportunity must be scheduled.

Thus, as someone who craves the thrill of an interesting project – a story to write, a picture to paint, a photograph to create, a conversation to savor – I have had to develop structure to give myself pockets of time to indulge my creative desires. In many ways, truly having the creative oasis is my grail quest.

And on that quest, I have found some of David Allen’s Getting Things Done concepts to have really improved my life and my opportunities to be creative. I am a big fan and have adapted his basics to suit my style. And the one little tool that helps make the system work and keep time from running me over:

A timer. Yes, the basic egg timer works in a pinch, but my preferred timer is the one on my wristwatch. Between the timer and the alarm on my wristwatch (your basic Timex sportswatch), I can keep a handle on the minutes I spend engaged in one task or another. I can limit myself – spend 1 hour on this task and then move on to the next. Sometimes I find myself reluctant to live by the time limit – sometimes one hour flies by and you’re just in the meat of the project, and then comes the decision-making: can I shuffle the rest of my life to keep going, or can I keep to my schedule and move on to my next obligation? There’s the rub – it is the challenge for the creative mind to be free and unbridled and to still be effective. As long as time remains linear, this will be a balancing act.

Did Einstein or Hemingway or Seurat have limits on their creativity? Of course they did; everyone has limits of one kind or another. You could argue that all of them lived in simpler times, (they didn’t have cell phones to distract or simplify; they likely traveled by train or car, not plane…) so did they have more limits — or less? Maybe we should look at J.K. Rowling or Chuck Close or more contemporary examples and analyze how they overcame the limits. Perhaps in a future post… But the point is, all of these highly creative people likely crossed these boundaries by making their creativity a priority. Who was creative but neglected their laundry? Who lived a full life and still was a creative success? Who was a creative success at the expense of their relationships? In the end, it all comes down to how we manage our time and what we choose to make a priority.

Without a time machine, we must face the reality that time is not limitless. We must spend each moment well and give ourselves the freedom to contribute to the world. How will you spend your time, and what will you accomplish?

Four Elephants, or Elizabeth Gilbert’s Lecture, Part 1

I had the most enjoyable evening. Beautiful. Inspiring. Providential.

First, I had dinner with two of my favorite people, Gale M. and Jolene M., my fellow writers and dear friends; I thrive creatively because of these most meaningful of connections. We had a lovely, simple meal and good conversation at Gale’s. Then the three of us walked over to the Carnegie Music Hall to hear Elizabeth Gilbert of “Eat, Pray, Love” fame. First Ms. Gilbert spoke with wit and grace, and then she petitioned us as if anyone would demur, “please indulge me by letting me read to you the Introduction to my new book,” Committed: A Skeptics Makes Peace with Marriage.” No one outside of Ms. Gilbert’s family and “people getting paid to read this” have read/heard it. It was a treat, and of course, a big tease so we’ll all have to get the book now…more on that in Part 2.

Next, as I was leaving the lecture hall, I saw Beverly D., who was my 9th grade English teacher (oh the things you remember: how the class tittered when she screened Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo & Juliet and a roomful of repressed Catholic school students saw Romeo’s butt!) I swear Ms. D. hasn’t aged a day. She was waiting for one of my dearest friends, my 11th and 12th grade English teacher, Lorraine W. whom I hadn’t seen in years, and who also looks younger than I remember, if that’s possible. [Maybe the reward for teaching in a Catholic school is age-defiance...because it certainly isn't the money.]

And so it was that at a lecture by a writer whose voice and passion greatly inspire me, my past and present collided. How very moving and appropriate to be able to introduce my dear fellow writers, two of the most supportive people in my life – to two women who introduced me to literature, cultivated my appreciation for good books, and taught me more about writing and grammar than you might expect to learn in high school. (It was Catholic school after all, so admittedly the standards were pretty high.)

When I fired up the laptop to write about the evening – I had taken copious notes in my omnipresent journal, laughing as I captured clever turns of phrase – I had intended to examine the gems from the lecture and share it here, relive it, relish it. This is, after all, a CreativeOasis for just that reason… sharing what moves me and hoping it moves others. Indeed, this was my intention as I sat on our uncomfortable sofa, thinking I should really go to bed, but instead, sat with my aging laptop warming my knees, and groped for my journal. Only to find the journal wasn’t there.

With my journal misplaced, my plan to polish the nuggets of lecture that captured my imagination has been postponed.  This seems, upon reflection, to be an act of Providence, capital-P. (nothing to do with Rhode Island, I assure you.)   So, Providence, that cheeky muse, says, “screw the notes. You’ve got some interesting moments to consider.” (Okay, in my head, Providence is a muse, and she is cheeky, sassy, and convincing, and looks a bit like Bea Arthur) What the muse also said: the most important thing about tonight is not what Elizabeth Gilbert said. As amusing and meaningful as her words might be, the inspiration comes not from the lecture, but from the convergence of past and present, this momentous and unexpected encounter linking my earliest inclinations to write with my current life as a writer.

And then I recalled a story Ms. Gilbert shared near the end of the evening. During her divorce ordeal, she was feeling low and desperate on a rainy, depressing day. Despite wanting nothing more than to crawl into bed and wallow in misery, she had to go to the post office, and to make matters worse, the line was long, filled with wet, miserable New Yorkers. After a bit of crying as she waited in the line, she promised herself she must seek out something beautiful before she could let herself crawl into bed and weep. She felt compelled to find something beautiful, no matter how elusive, no matter how gray and forbidding the sky outside. One step out of the post office and there before her were four elephants walking down the bus lane, draped in diaphanous fabric and carrying dancing girls on their backs.

If not elephants, than what might it have been for her, what beauty might she have seen to fulfill her own ultimatum? A writer sees the patterns, the connections, and finds meaning in circumstance, mundane or colorful. She wills the beautiful into being just when she needs it. The elephant story resonates with me because I have had those same moments when some kind of joy breaks through the gray, and I realize that part of what makes me a writer is that I recognize this beauty, I see the connections. I seek meaning and writing helps me find it.  I enjoy possibility.

What gray clouds threaten my day? I haven’t been writing as much as I should. To be a writer, you must write. It is that simple. The clouds threaten as I realize how little time I’ve been spending writing. But I can appreciate the moments when four elephants cross my path and delight me. [I've witnessed the elephants myself, twice, when the circus came to Pittsburgh and I just happened upon elephants as they mosey in their elephant way.] Sometimes the joy that breaks through is not as big and obvious as an elephant or four. Sometimes it’s the lone gladiolus swaying in the wind. Sometimes, what I must appreciate are the moments when four friends converge and remind me I have a passion for words that deserves my time and my commitment. I can recognize Providence when she walks up and slaps me on the face, or just gently nudges me in the butt. Thank goodness for elephants. For convergence. For words. For the impulse to create. For those who nurture your gifts. Thank goodness for Gale and Jolene, Beverly and Lorraine, and Elizabeth Gilbert and her elephants. Beautiful. Inspiring. Providential.

A different kind of creative oasis

Earlier this summer, we decided to buy a patio table and chair set, complete with nifty umbrella. We don’t have a very large back yard, but figured we’d love to dine al fresco, and since we don’t have a very large front porch, we focused some attention on the back yard. We put up a fence panel to help screen us from the street, planted a few arborvitae and bought the patio set. We ate outside pretty regularly, but soon realized that a patio set on grass is less than ideal, particularly when it is time to mow.

The patio set on the lawn...not the greatest situation.

After a little (very little) research, which is so unlike me, we opted to install a patio using pavers, ordered everything we needed from a local distributor and signed up our friendly landscaper Dennis to help us with the installation. After evaluating the site, we discovered that we had a little more slope to the backyard than was desirable, and realized to install these pavers correctly, we’d have to excavate a lot more than we expected at the top end, and would need a retaining wall to boot. The “it’ll take three or four days” project was now looking more like a few weeks project, and we were going on vacation (the camping vacation mentioned in a previous post).

Lesson #1: Never proceed without a thorough design phase.

We kept having difficulties with the line levels, and the intervening weeks when we couldn’t work on the so called “Pit of Despair” were taking their toll on me. I had become the project manager and site engineer, in part, I suppose, because I gravitate towards reading directions and learning everything I can about a project before I begin. And because Matt kept saying, “If I’m in charge of this project, we’re screwed.” Sure, I started the learning process a little later than I might otherwise, but Dennis and I had successfully installed a much less sophisticated terrace at my other house before…so we started off with a ton of confidence. But now, the joke was, “We’ll have you over when the terrace is finished. For lemonade. Or hot chocolate!”

The Pit of Despair, covered in plastic

I kept checking in with the people at Lampus, the manufacturer of our wall stones and pavers. They were adamant about needing six inches of compactible gravel under everything because of Pittsburgh’s freeze/thaw cycle, though we’d only gotten enough from the distributor for four inches. And because the first course of pavers must be buried, we excavated the wall area a little deeper…and then I realized I hadn’t accounted for laying the wall stones level but the pavers at a 1/8″ per-foot slope. I lost confidence in my ability to figure out how to proceed. So we invited our good friend Peter to help us figure out what the heck we should do next, and without his calm competence, we might still be screwing it up. In reality, we had a great deal of fun working with Peter, too, a nice bonus.

Lesson #2: Never be afraid to ask for help. Sometimes a little compassionate mentoring is all you need to keep going.

Suffice it to say that nearly a month later, the project is finally finished and by all indications, it is pretty successful. Except for an equipment malfunction in the eleventh hour – the tamper we rented to set the pavers blew its oil cap, spewing oil all over the pavers and wall – we got the job done and have a great new space to enjoy with family and friends.

Lesson #3: Don’t be afraid to dream, but be prepared for setbacks.

So this project was a different kind of creative oasis. Most times it felt more like a punishment than a place to soothe my soul. And yet, there were moments of bliss. Like the evening as I quietly kneeled in the pit setting wall stone and cardinals and gold finches came to feed at the giant sunflower heads just a few feet away from me; their wings beat rapidly as they hovered in front of the bowing flowers, and when they had extracted their prizes, they would alight on a nearby branch to eat. I felt enormous and overwhelming joy when I set a paver in sand, whacked it with a mallet to secure it and it was perfectly placed. Despite the hard physical labor of shoveling a few tons of soil out and a few tons of gravel and sand in, despite the backbreaking task of moving 29 lb. stones to and fro, I am glad for what I learned. The “lessons” above may seem trite, but I am sincere about this project reinforcing them. I have told Matt more than once that I believe very much in hiring experts to do what they are expert in…the skills you have to develop and the tools you have to buy (and might never use again) just to say you did it yourself are not always the most valuable way for me to spend my time. And I believe it is just proper to hire someone who makes their livelihood in some particular task – for these reasons, when possible, I’d rather earn my wages doing what I am expert in, and pay an expert to earn theirs working for me.  In reality, we probably could have hired someone to do this job for us and spent less. Certainly, we’d have been less stressed out. And yet, in the end, it is enormously satisfying to know that we did build this little oasis in our backyard, that we persevered when things looked bleak, that the Pit of Despair has been replaced with a beautiful patio we can enjoy for years to come. I expect to have my coffee out there tomorrow morning, dinner out there with the family tomorrow night. I’ll stretch its utility well into the winter, when I’ll have to bundle up to sit outside. With my hot chocolate.

Completed terrace

Vacation after vacation

So what kind of vacation do you prefer? The kind where you come back feeling refreshed and ready for the world, or the kind that seems to require a vacation to recover from the vacation?

We had the latter kind of vacation earlier this summer- a trip to the amusement capital of the world, Sandusky, Ohio (I realize Orlando might demur, but bite me.) Yes, we went to Cedar Point, roller coaster capital of the world (I think this may be less in dispute.) We left on Monday morning and arrived in time to ride all kinds of rides until we were exhausted and fell into bed. The next day we started all over again, riding rides until rain (the tiniest of drizzles, more like spit than rain) kept prompting the ride operators to stop rides and decided it wasn’t worth the inconsistency of the fun to stay any longer. So around dinner time we returned to our hotel, Cedar Point’s own Castaway Bay which has its own indoor water park, and spent a few enjoyable hours splashing through water slides and riding the “roller coaster” (two people sit cross-legged in a rubber raft and travel a coaster-like path, much of it in the thrilling darkness of a tunnel). It was my favorite part of the water park. I am not exactly the biggest fish in the world, however, so eventually, I was waterlogged enough – even the large spa pool couldn’t tempt me for long.

The next day we headed for Put-in-Bay, a little island in the middle of Lake Erie (which seems to be trying for a Key West vibe, with its ample bar scene and scandalous tee-shirts (the kids were moving from shop to shop saying, “that’s so inappropriate!” or “Daddy, don’t read that shirt!” That was later in the day, however, as we were looking for a place to eat and maybe a souvenir or two. Earlier, we had disembarked from the ferry, rented a golf cart (perhaps the most common and decidedly the most fun means of transport on the island) and tooled around for  bit. Then Matt and Jason stopped to throw a line in, and Chloe and I went and toured a winery and stood inside the largest geode in the world (a fairly impressive crystal cave that goes more than 30 feet across at one point). After an overpriced dinner on a deck overlooking the shore and a pelican, we headed back to the ferry and the vacation was over. We pointed the Honda Fit towards Pittsburgh.

Now we’re having the first kind of vacation — relaxing and underscheduled. (Yay!) I’m sitting at a small table in a dumpy little rental trailer in Bear Run Campground, just off Lake Arthur near Moraine State Park. This is more of the relaxing vacation I’ve been craving all summer. Everyone sleeps while I type away, and though the preparations for this trip were more exhausting (and may be worthy of their own posting later under the category “Better Living Through Planning”) we have been forced to slow down and just be. Yesterday, rain poured on us all day (we are grateful to have avoided tent camping) and we spent the day playing games and laughing despite the weather. The connection you can establish within a family when you unplug and leave electronic devices, especially television, out of the equation are delightful.

Chloe and I relax and enjoy doing nothing!

So my writing time is over – Matt is up, the kids will stir soon – and I’m going to unplug from the interconnected tubes to breathe in the fresh camp air and laugh a lot more.

Lady Tung Chao

I have always loved dogs that look like wolves. It could be Spenser, the German Shepherd who saved me from a snake when I was toddling around my grandparents’ farm, that got me started. Or perhaps it was the shetland sheepdog my parents got that looked just like Lassie, that I think I called Lassie (I was very little) and who was too big for our small house and went to work (really, my father swears) on a farm in Hookstown. Not as wolf-like as
Spenser, but still, not the poodles that were our family pets from 1971-1987.

When my daughter and I moved into our house with the big yard, we chose Lady, a shepherd/collie/chow mix (with the tell-tale purple tongue which inspired us to give her a more formal name). She came from a foster home in Ohio, a detour we took on our way to pick up a Belgian shepherd pup. [Note to her former foster parents: send me a note as I have something for you and have lost your contact info.] Lady definitely has some high-strung collie in her, a fierce herding instinct, a high prey drive, and a sweet, if occasionally (regularly?) annoying disposition.

Lately, though, she is losing steam. No one knew for sure how old she was when we took her in – now we can only guess at somewhere between 9 and 12. Her muzzle is significantly grayer, her eyesight is not what it used to be, and she has arthritis in her knees and hips. She stumbles on our walks, and is no longer the wonderful pacesetter for running that she was when we first explored Morningside together.  Now, I am loathe to go more than a block with her for fear of having to carry her back (an indignity she will not tolerate, smashing herself to the ground so I can’t pick her up, forklift-style, to manage her length).

More often than not, you’ll find her crashed out in the side yard of our new house, or lying on the rug next to my side of the bed, pawing at the air as she chases a squirrel, dreaming dog dreams. I would give many treasures to know what Lady thinks, what she sees in her dreams.

Lady Tung Chao, graceful even in sleep

Last week I found myself in bed with a persistent upper-respiratory ailment, and since I had to sit up to keep breathing, Lady’s stillness compelled me to draw her. In the twenty or thirty minutes this sketch took, she didn’t move once, a foreshadowing that brings me to tears. Lady is slowing down, slowing down, s-l-o-w-i-n-g d–o–w–n. Every morning I check for the rise and fall of her ribcage before I swing my legs over the side of the bed. She may fool me and last another few years, and I’m doing everything I can think of – better foods, fish oil and glucosamine, Prevacox – to keep her around longer. I’m not sure I’m going to be a good judge of how long is too long, should it come to that…but now, I’ll put off thinking about it. For now, I’ll enjoy this mellower, less needy Lady, who sleeps more than she did when she could run endlessly; who is content to lay at my side (though never on the furniture or bed – she prefers the floor) and dream dog dreams, chasing the rabbit across an endless field, howling at her wolf ancestors, baring her fleur-de-lis teeth to keep Death at bay.

Dream on beside me, Lady Tung Chao, for a little while longer.

The good thing about being sick…

is spending time in your pajamas, with your sketchbook on your lap.

The bad thing is, you’re sick.

A view from the vineyard, part 2

So, of course I was waxing nostalgic about my trip to Croatia in the previous post, and I woke this morning with the prevailing thought that I had written about the wrong thing. I had strayed from my original impulse. And now I feel a need to be the tiniest bit contrarian about my own post.

The view from my cousins' vineyard in Croatia

As I awoke this morning, my very first thought was, “But when would you write? When would you paint?” Clearly my subconscious had churned the night away, pondering my thoughts on my lovely Croatian family’s situation. In the back of my mind, I could imagine Svjetlana saying, “it’s nice you think this is wonderful but if I don’t get my own place soon I’m going to go crazy!!”

Indeed, the photo of the vineyard that prompted the post – the leading photo – was compelling to me because I could imagine spending much of my time there in solitude. I have been craving that kind of space – a secluded building with enough comforts of home and the natural world exploding with color and life right outside my window, so I could write, or paint or draw. It was this very need to have room to be creative that prompted me to start this blog in the first place.

Nota bene: Nothing I said in the previous post was untrue or insincere, and I do believe my family in Croatia has created a beautiful life for themselves, an enviable life. And yet I wonder how they find the space – and if they find the space – to be creative. Before I left, Nada made me a beautiful needlepoint that I cherish, and I realized she had carved out time to do this, but certainly she could do it and be surrounded by people, even engage with them at some level while creating beautiful handwork.

So this is why my brain was so fixed on the previous blog post, why my very first thought upon waking was a cry for creative opportunity. I am, famously among my friends, an extravert. When confronted with the choice to be alone or with people, I would venture to guess that 8 out of 10 times I’ll choose to be with people. And yet, my passion for writing is often at war with my passion to be connected to people. I can write business documents, even creative marketing copy in the midst of others – and as a matter of fact, the engagement with others sometimes improves marketing copy on the spot. And certainly, I would not be a very good writer if I didn’t have ample time to engage with people and observe and listen and absorb and even analyze, subconsciously or consciously. Ideas collect, much like, I imagine, a grape is formed on the vine – elements combine – water, sunlight creates sugars, cells form membranes, pulp – together they form, whole and shapely, into a single grape, and grapes form a cluster, perhaps like ideas bound together by branches. To continue the metaphor, then, who is the writer? The creator of the grapes, or the vintner, selectively churning and processing those ideas into an intoxicating wine? Both, neither…it depends. More to explore than I intended for this post. But a great topic for another day.

In the end, no matter how much “research” I might do from socializing or just being out in the world, voyeuristically observing my fellow humans, listening to the  snippets of conversation that waft into the ear as you walk past a couple talking…in the end, it is an absolute necessity to be alone enough to engage the mind to create. And being alone is counter to my nature. Thus is my dilemma. It is why posting about the beautiful, interconnected and enmeshed lifestyle of my Croatian family is so compelling – I truly desire their situation – and yet realize I would have to strike a balance, a balance I struggle with already, without living with extended family. It is perhaps the primary struggle of my life – balancing my need for connection with my need for independence, or more precisely, intensely solitary creative opportunity.

I imagine I’m not alone in this struggle. I crave a lovely vineyard to ponder this balance, a space where I can be alone but quickly return to the embrace of family. For now, the third floor of our house offers this, to some degree, without the amazing view and with only the fruit of my mind to savor.