NaNoWriMo, NaKniMo, NaSouMo

Well, in the calendar of the Catholic Church, this is All Soul's Day. I'm sure mom went to church, to commemorate all the dead folk. I think it's a cool thing, but I did not go to church. I instead went up to my writing nook and celebrated National Novel Writing Month by writing my 2000 words for the day. National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, as it's familiarly called, is a crazy all out writing spree, celebrated by thousands of novelists and would-be novelists around the world. The goal is to write 50,000 words in 30 days. They don't have to be good. They don't even have to really make sense, all strung together. There just have to be 50,000 of them. I am hoping I will end up with a slightly-less-than-shitty first draft of my third book. that would please me no end. So if I am less than meticulous about writing here, you know why. I am setting aside 4 hours a day for WriMoing. I think that will do it, and even with Thansgiving, (one of my favorite eating holidays), at 2000 words a day, I'll make it. It's good to set goals, even crazy ones. So I advise you to do the same. Set yourself a crazy goal for the month of November - knit all your X-mas presents, every one. NaKniMo. Or vow to cook your way through 30 Great Holiday Soup Recipes - NaSouMo. Make up your own ridiculous goal. And have fun writing and drawing about it all. I'll only be posting approximately once a week till December, to give us all time to achieve our goals.

Your Own Little World

Sometimes we forget that everyone (including us) is in his/her own little world. We think that at least the people closest to us share the same experiences, have the same feelings, about the same things, but it's not really true. We are there, behind our own eyes, and no one has much idea what's happening behind them. One of the most terrifying thoughts for me is that someday, in real life and not just science fiction, we'll be equipped with some kind of implant that allows us to see into one another's minds. To know without a doubt what other people are experiencing. The terror probably comes from the notion I have that in the eventuality the implants become a reality, there will be no further need for fiction. But it's more than that. I like having my own private world to retreat to. I like the thoughts and things around me that make me who I am. What I value, actually downright love, in no particular order: my mother of pearl opera glasses, my shedding white Border Collies, my Sparky, my Winston Dictionary, my big box full of journals, Crayola crayons (especially the carnation and cornflower and sea green ones), the lavender light in snowy footprints, sweet corn, dancing, Annie Proulx's novels, Alice Munro's short stories, Cajun music, Renee Fleming's voice, the huge blooms of dahlias, Halloween, fireworks, my hands, and on and on. And I'd be willing to bet no other person on earth has the same list of loves that I do. That no person alive has the same list as any other. Or the same list of terrors, or kindnesses, or betrayals. We are steeped in uniqueness, and that's easy to forget. So your happiness assignment for the day is to go deep into Your Own Little World. Make a list of your loves, your longings, your quirks, and love them, because they make you unique. Choose one, and write about it, draw it. Appreciate everything that makes you your own self. And if you find out about research into those implants, do your best to sabotage it, will you?

So What?

It's interesting to have a condition like fibromyalgia, which for me, sometimes makes an appearance in the transitional seasons, Spring and Fall. Happily, the really awful years of the illness are past and I can usually be pretty functional even when I have symptoms, and most of the year be just fine and dandy. But when the illness asserts itself, in addition to being quite tired much of the time, and having some joint discomfort, I often find myself in a kind of altered state. I lose language, which you'd think would be terrible for a writer, but oddly it isn't bad. It makes me think in a different way, maybe the way people think when they take some kinds of mind-altering drugs (my experience with those have been nil, so I can't really say, but from what I've read my experience is similar). Everything slows down. I even feel my pulse get sluggish. My eyes unfocus, and the world seems like an Impressionist painting. When I relax into it, it actually feels kind of good. And probably is good for me. At least it forces me to reduce my stress level to nearly non-existent. It took me a long time to be able to do this, to just relax into it. Years, in fact. But when I fight it, it lasts longer, gets into my joints, is painful and frustrating. So now I just sit back and enjoy it. So what if I just stupidly gaze at 'pretty flowers,' and can't remember that they're called nasturtiums? So what if I read the same sentence in a book five times before I can understand it well enough to move on to the next one? I just try to read sentences that are really fine ones when I'm in a fibro fog. Annie Dillard or Thoreau are good. So what if I sit out by the brook and watch our dogs and rabbit snarf around all afternoon. It's kind of like being four again. It's kind of soothing.
One thing I've learned from this whole fibro fog thing is the pleasure of not fighting, of just being. So the exercise of the day is to say So What. So what if the dishes don't get done. So what if you serve scrambled eggs for dinner instead of roast lamb, then go sit in the backyard and Just Be. It won't kill anybody, least of all yourself. Notice the pretty flowers. Notice the clouds. Notice the leaves falling like snow around you. Then write it, draw it. But only if you feel like. Otherwise, say So What till tomorrow.

Pudding Contests and Camels

This was a strange weekend. I got sick again, because of the dreaded shift back to cold weather. But before I did that, I went off on some odd excursions. Where I live in Westen Massachusetts, there are interesting and sometimes downright strange events. The usual Harvest Festivals, a Cider Day, huge craft fairs abound. But none of those I've attended have struck me as so perfectly New Englandy as the Hawley Pudding Contest. I've been wanting to go for years, but it's never incredibly well-publicized and I always miss it. But this year, I made it, Sparky in tow. It was held at a small church. It began with a buffet ham and bean supper (it was really lunch, but we call every meal that takes place in a church a 'supper' in New England). Sparky was over the moon. He loves ham. I just skulked around, waiting for the pudding to appear. In my naivete, I thought it would be a decorous award announcement, and perhaps a pudding viewing and (I hoped) tasting. No such thing. This was an extravaganza of small town life. After the 'supper,' we were asked to enter the church proper, as the pudding contenders were readying to parade. And parade they did, carrying their dishes of sweet or savory pudding proudly before them. Some were in costume, as the pudding contest originated sometime in the late 1700's. There was song. There was a talk about vanilla. There was a pretty impressive performance from one of the judges, the culinary head honcho (and also an interpreter) from Plimoth Plantation, who described in an early New England accent, in early New Englandish costume, the event of the very first pudding making in the new colony. And there was a skit, depicting the original Hawley pudding contest, where the award went to the biggest, rather than the best pudding. Then and only then were the prizes awarded. And the prizes were GOOD, fancy skillets and Cuisinarts, and big piles of stuff for each pudding finalist. The pudding I was rooting for, a corn pudding made by my friend, Janice, came in third. The other pudding that sounded amazing, and I later discovered was, a rose geranium pudding, only got fifth. I think that pudding was robbed.
Then, after we were sated with peanut butter pudding and rum pudding and corn pudding but oddly no chocolate pudding, we headed out. Only to meet a very nice woman in the parking lot who commented on my lovely Border Collie, Charming, who I was walking a bit before the ride home. We talked about the puddings, and dogs, and childhoods, and it ended with her inviting us to come to her place the following day.
Her 'place' it turns out, is a huge fiber farm hanging off a hill looking North over to the Green Mountains. There were angora goats and llamas and Icelandic sheep and eight dogs and oddly, camels. With two humps. I forget what that means, but it was impressive. I was mesmerized by their huge round padding feet. And Jodi, who owns this animal oasis, is a poet, and a fine one. We talked for a long time, occassionally but mostly politely interrupted by her Tibetan 'grandson.' A few Tibetans live and work on the farm, helping with the animals and building stone walls.
After we bid her farewell, and wended our way through the hills still saturated with autumn color, we drove into the most spectacular blue and gray and golden sunset, and I thought, my god life is good when you can go about it so indeliberately, drifting from one interesting and unique thing to another.
So, I encourage you to find your own Pudding Contests and Camels. Seek out what seems offbeat and intriguing. Drive around looking for inspiration in color and sunsets and new people and oddity and kindness. Then write it, draw it, and know life is good.

Rain

The weather is finally tending toward autumn here in New England, after an extremely extended summer. It's felt more like San Diego for the past four and a half months. Which has been fine with me, as I adore summer. However, it was beginning to feel a little unnatural. No rain. No frosts (almost unheard of by October). I was beginning to think I wouldn't need to move to San Diego. It was coming here. But today it's rainy, and there is a chill in the air. Sparky is telling me that snow is predicted for next week. I do not believe him. Although a warm and sticky Halloween would be pretty dismal, a snowy one would be decidedly odd, too.
In any case, I am enjoying the rain, and the chill. It is good for reflection, tea-drinking, reading, outlining my new creepy novel. Sometimes rain is just fine. It makes us draw inward, and if it isn't allowed to be seen as depressing, it's good for us.
So, don't allow yourself to be depressed by your weather, external or internal. Embrace the Rain. Work on your new project. Make some soup. Have some tea. Go inward and reflect on your reasons to be happy, and write them, draw them.

Something Completely Different

I am beginning a new book, the title of which has been kicking around in my head for a few years, while I have been working on novel # 2. The elements of the new book have come to me in bits, but only about a week ago the entire outline came flowing into my head, like a river of ideas. That happens sometimes. Our minds are truly amazing. Things are always simmering away in there, like a good stew, with lots of ingredients.
What I have been doing in the week past, since having my little novel epiphany, is outlining, researching, coming up with character names and traits. This is a new process for me, as I usually just start writing, without the preliminaries. But this time around, I have decided to attempt NaNoWriMo -- i.e., the National Novel Writing Month challenge -- where one commits to writing the entire draft of a novel (175 pages, 50,000 words) all during the month of November. All I can say in my defense is that timing is everything. If the concepts for a new novel hadn't popped into my head just at this time, and I wasn't scheduled to teach a writing workshop at the library in celebration and support of NaNoWriMo, I would never do something so ridiculous. I am more of a contemplative writer. It took me six years to complete my first novel. But I decided, why not?
Sometimes it's good to be shaken up. Sometimes it's really fun to embark upon a completely new project, in a completely new way. It's exciting. It's compelling. And it promotes happiness, even in the planning stages (maybe particularly in the planning stages, when one hasn't yet become jaded).
So, today I am advocating that you begin a Completely Different project. Maybe something you've never attempted before. Maybe something familiar, but in a completely new way. If you have knit a scarf or two, try a Fair Isle sweater. If you like the climbing wall at the gym, learn sky-diving. Always been fascinated by bagpipes? Join a bagpipe band (the members are usually very nice, and will teach you right from your first quavering note - I once checked it out). Whatever you decide to do, do it with joy. And don't forget to enhance the experience by writing, drawing!

Hiatus

Well, first I was creeped out by a comment made on my last post (am feeling OK about it now, it has been sufficiaently explained), and now the library where I post during the week is having repairs done and I am sneezing and hacking and itching because of dust, and need to get out of here. Oh, the trials and tribulations of trying to spread happiness! But I will continue posts this weekend (probably later today), for sure. Sorry about the hiatus...

Three Wishes

I have been writing a story. I don't usually write short stories at all. I just keep going, the characters just keep wanting to take me to new places, and before you know it, my "short" story is 93 pages long and I'd might as well keep going. But this time, I'm trying to control myself. It's for a contest, and there's a word limit. That's good. I don't get so carried away. I just hit "word count" on the tools menu, and that calms me down.
But what the story is about is finding happiness, and the wishes we make (usually daily) for things or events we think will make us happy. What if we suddenly had the means to make three wishes come true? I'm not talking about Aladdin rubbing the lamp and the genie pops out. I'm talking about hard cash, since most of our dreams involve having the money to do something. Buy a house, have a baby, start a business. Even attracting a mate requires some funds, usually. Springing for dinners, paying for leg-waxing, joining dating services, it all adds up.
So, the main character in my story has one night to think of her three wishes, and two are easy. They have to do with career and home. But she is stumped on the third wish, and decides to wing it when her version of the genie gets back to her. But it's the third wish that she later thinks was the key. She wishes to be happy. Now, the money she gets can't buy that, but as I am fond of observing, money can smooth things over, make life a little easier at some points. It also can inspire confidence. The character in my story, because of the money she receives, becomes confident for the first time in her life that she can be happy. And she is. Not because of the money itself, but because of the confidence it gives her.
So what is your million dollar confidence builder? It may BE a million dollars. But it may also be your ability to throw a party, or your needlepoint, or your three- year- old daughter. What you have already wrought in the world. I guess for me it would be my writing that gives me confidence. What I have wrought. And the satisfaction I get from teaching writing. Those things can carry me a long way towards happiness.
Examine what you have wrought, what gives you pleasure and amazement, and ultimately happiness. Write about it, draw about it.

Happiness Challenge

I am freezing. We have reached the time of year when it is almost always unbearably cold in the house (or in the library, where I happen to be at the moment and they still have the air conditioning on!). It is the time when we staunch New Englanders will NOT turn on the heat, until at least October 1st. On September 30th, we can be sitting at our computer with wool socks and fleece jackets on, and the VERY NEXT DAY be lolling about the house in our tank tops, sweating,the heat turned up to 85, so we can make it up to ourselves for freezing our butts the past two weeks. It makes no sense. But every year it's the same.
I love the warmth, the sun. I do not do well when it gets frosty at night and downright hot by noon. I get sick, sometimes to the point I can't force myself out of bed. Then I get cranky, anxious, and very unhappy. I tend to not be able to stop the racing thoughts of betrayals and wrongs and misery of the past. I myself am not a paragon of peaceful, calm happiness. You'll have to look to the Dalai Lama for that. (As an aside, a friend of mine mentioned that she is sick of all the Dalai Lama junk mail she recieves. I keep meaning to ask what that means. I think I would LIKE Dalai Lama junk mail. Just seeing his calm smiling face makes me happy, at least for a moment.)
In any case, I am not always happy and laughing, hand-feeding squirrels as in the photo at the right. I am sad. I am sometimes miserable. I am, in other words, a mere mortal. Especially in the autumn in New England. I do not even enjoy the foliage (or foilage, as some of us say), unless it comes quite late, and I am well past my foggy exhaustion.
Another friend e-mailed me and said how sad she was, because of recent difficult events in her life. She is one of the most loving people I know, and she was questioning whether love was enough. So it can strike anyone, at any time. Illness, sadness, depression, loneliness. And sometimes it's difficult to even try to be happy, or to find a reason to do so. My response to this, to other people but most often to myself, is that we DESERVE to be happy. As human beings, we just plain deserve it. It's fine to remember to be grateful, but I think we must also recognise what we deserve. And it does no good to think of the past wrongs we've done or had done to us. They don't make us any less deserving of happiness right now, from this moment on. Our wrongs won't change the world from this point on, but our happiness might.
So with that in mind, try with me to think grateful and deserving and happy. Try to see the blue sky and the turning trees and your neighbor's face as beautiful, and a gift to you. Try at least, first, to just see them in their beauty. To write and draw them. Then you've done something to deserve them. If you need an excuse, there it is.

With Age Comes Wisdom

Not that I'm all that old, or all that wise, but I have learned a few things from kicking around this planet for a while. Perhaps one of the best lessons I have learned is that I will not be stuck in one mood, one mindset, one way of feeling forever. I remember when I was in college and thought every time I felt crappy, because of a breakup, a disagreement with a friend, even a bad cold, it would last the rest of my life. I'd NEVER feel better, but would just have to endure the pain. Well, I was a theater student, but still. I think it's a common feeling, and most common to the very young. Now I know better. I know that each setback, emotional or physical, will sometime end, and I'll feel pretty good again.
I've been thinking along these lines lately because I have been beset by my old nemesis, fibromyalgia, and the fibro-fog has descended. After 17 years of its circumlocutions in my body, I know that it was this time brought on by the vast ranges of temperature we are now experiencing in New England. It goes from 70 during the day, to 30 at night. My body just says no to that 40 degree shift. All it seems to want to do is sleep, and wait until the weather settles itself to real cold, when I am not happy, but am functional at least. Now, when forced to function, I feel either as if every muscle has melted off my bones, or else clings to them so fiercely that I can barely move for the stiffness and soreness. Even my brain turns traitor, and slows to a crawl. I swear I lose about thirty IQ points while the fibro fog lasts.
This brings me to my point. I am quite lucky, really. This state of affairs will last a few weeks, maybe a month, and I'll adjust and be back to normal. So now it's easy to just go with the flow, knowing this will end. It's the same with most of the mental pain I put myself through, the sadness, the holding on to betrayals or hurts, all the myriad things I (fairly infrequently) find to torture myself with. I know now that they will end, just as I know the fibro fog will lift. It's still not easy going through these things, but I get that light at the end of the tunnel feeling and it helps. I know whatever it is will not go on forever. I will feel better, and sometimes I WILL MYSELF to feel better. That's part of the whole Happiness gig. I know I'll feel better, why not actively try to make it so? Sometimes, that action is limited to staying in bed and reading and sleeping, as in the case of the fibro fog. Sometimes it is forcing myself to engage with the world, as in the case of most sadnesses. I know I will feel better sometime, and trying to feel better makes it happen that much faster. So, if you right now feel great, great! Go out there and revel in it. But if you feel sad or lonely or ill, do something that will force you to feel better. Be gentle with yourself, but get out into the world, go to the park and watch kids play, or sit and sip good tea in a cafe, strike up a conversation with a neighbor. Or if you have a bodily malady, give it up and stay in bed, well-equipped with your favorite feel good books or magazines. Write if you feel like it, draw if you feel like it, but give yourself a break. Let yourself be wise. Let it all flow over you, and know that the only true constant is change.

Alchemy

I have buttermilk I need to use. How do you turn aging buttermilk, this morning's leftover oatmeal, a few frozen raspberries, a lot of geriatric strawberries, maybe some flour and butter and eggs into something like palatable food? A coffeecake? A quick bread? Sure. That's pretty easy. Baking and cooking are a lot like magic. Well, really more like alchemy.
As defined in my beloved but ancient and obscure Winston Dictionary, "alchemy" is alternately from the Old French "alquimie," the Arabic "alkimia," or the Greek "khemia," a mingling or pouring together. It is defined there as "1.) the chemistry of the Middle Ages popularly associated with magic, and especially devoted to the elixir of life... 2.) the professed art of transmuting, or changing, the common metals into gold..." Yesterday Sparky magicked a little cocoa powder and old milk and cornstarch into wonderful pudding, and today I will bake the aforementioned cake. We are alchemists, turning base materials into elixirs of life, food for the body.
So what about the other daily materials of life? The view from our windows, whether of city streets or dripping green leaves. The fading flowers of late summer in gardens or abandoned lots. The faces of those we love, whether sleeping or laughing or in a snit because we've forgotten to turn on the dishwasher. The drive to work, and the ragged man we see offering to squeegee our car windows for a dollar at a traffic light. All this can be magicked as well, turning the base metals of our lives into gold, the elixir of life, food for the soul. That's what committing Acts of Attention will do for us, and the writing, and the drawing. Make us into alchemists of our own lives.
So today, perform some Alchemy. Take stock of the leftover moments, the minor bits and pieces of the every day. What's there for you to make something out of? Is it the trip to the mall to get emergency school supplies, where you rushed through Macy's to the dollar store, but stopped to spray some new, citrusy perfume on your wrists? Is it the slog through the rain to get your dogs some exercise, and the peculiar grace of the dusky light in the forest? Add up the tiny, lucid and lovely moments. You may find more than you think possible. Then write them, draw them. Let them become your elixir of life, and you the alchemist.

Save Your Life Again

Since school is back in session, since the year is turning, the leaves are falling, the night air is cooler (or downright cold here in the Northeast), and change is inevitable, and new beginnings are inevitable, I think we should revisit the question this website is directed to. Why and how can happiness save your life?
The why is pretty self-explanatory. If you're happier, you'll live better. And probably longer. And with less stress. I don't think we really need loads of positive psychology studies to prove this.
But how is it to be accomplished? How be happier? As if that is easy, as if I can blithely say you can be happier and it will be so. I wish I were like Jean-Luc Picard on Star Trek: Next Generation and could just tell you "Make it so." And you would. Well, since I can't compel you as the captain of the ship, or wave a magic wand, I can only try to gently persuade. And I do have a kind of magic formula to share with you:
Pay Attention, Really Pay Attention To The World Around You. Commit Acts Of Attention To It. Then Fix Those Acts In Your Memory And In The World By Writing/Drawing Them.
It's really not so difficult. All you need is a notebook and a pen or pencil. 20 minutes here and there. The exercises I write up about three times a week, or your own. And your attention. And your will to be happier. That's all. I promise you if you work at this (yes, happiness takes work, like anything else worth having), you will become happier. So, in this time of transition, and of settling to something new, decide to be happier. Decide you can give yourself that gift.

Lucky

I'm back. My eyes seem better, or did seem so until I read regular print most of the morning (Cold Mountain, by Charles Frazier, for the second time, and it's as wonderful as ever).
These golden days of late summer we've been regaled with have been reminding me of many things. I have been enjoying sitting out, lying in lounge chairs and listening to the lazy brook, reading or not, the dogs lying near, or rearing themselves up, leaping in play. It is good just to be alive in the sun, with the green light of leaves overhead. I have been feeling lucky, and that reminds me. Of when I had friends come over to stay in one of the farmhouses where I lived, good friends who spent near every holiday with me, Thanksgiving and Christmas and Easter and the Fourth of July. There were four of us. And every holiday I would unearth the napkin rings I saved for our occasions, that were simple silver bands, each stamped with one word. One was Peace. Another Beauty. The third was Love. And the last was, a little oddly, Lucky. All four of us had claimed our napkin ring, our word. Mine was the odd one, the Lucky one. And I guess that's right. I am Lucky. Lucky to have my memories, lucky to be making more, lucky to have my dogs and friends and a late August birthday, when I can go to plays and concerts and almost live outside. Camp on mountains, walk on beaches and hear the roar of waves, dip my toes into the cold brook and watch the sunsplashed rocks change with the light.
I have also been recollecting a time when I lived in a cabin in the woods of Connecticut, loaned to me by a friend in a time of trouble. There was no running water. I brought water in to drink, and hauled from a spring for washing. There was no electricity. I lit kerosene lamps to read by in the night. There was no heat. I had roaring fires in the fireplace on cold September nights, after gathering downed branches and kindling. It was wonderful. I stayed six months, with my dogs and my cat, bathed in the pond nearby, walked through the woods to my friend's house at times for company. And when I left, moved to Boston, almost fell down when I turned a tap and water flowed from the faucet. I had been grateful and lucky to escape civilization, but I felt just as grateful and lucky when I returned to it.
So I wonder, how are you lucky? What memories do you have that require you to claim the napkin ring of the Lucky? Write them, draw them, and even if they seem contradictory, be glad for them. Be glad to just plain live in the sun.

Some Time Off

I've been having some vision/eyestrain stuff going on, so have decided to take a blog/internet/dare I say it, book/ break until next week. I am trying books on tape, large print (which definitely makes me feel like an old lady, at forty-something), only responding to crucial e-mails, etc. I am going to try not to look at screens of any kind for more than about ten minutes a day. No X-Files, either. Aaaargh! On the upside, for my birthday am going to see A Midsummer Night's Dream performed by my all time fave acting company -- Shakespeare & Company, in Lenox MA. If you get a chance to go, do. Their productions are usually amazing. And I am going to eat a lot. Breakfast with my writing buddy Aimee at Amanouz in Northampton, unless it's the Miss Florence Diner in, naturally, Florence, MA. A late lunch at a great Vietnamese restaurant in Pittsfield, MA, called The Dragon. And probably some kind of pricey snack at Shakespeare & Co, while meandering around the extensive grounds, being regaled by Elizabethan sword-fights and lute-playing. So it won't be like Lent.
Although I'm pretty convinced that re-focusing from time to time is a good idea, especially if it is a re-focusing away from screens and towards real life. I suggest that for the next week, you recharge your visual batteries too, as much as you can. Take some time off from screens. Look at the real world, as much as is possible. And of course, write it, draw it. Have fun. I'll be back next week!

Perchance To Dream

I have been reading Stephen King, which is out of character for me. Usually it's Virginia Woolf, or Eudora Welty, or Charlotte Bronte, or Jane Austen, or Henry James, or Barbara Pym. The living writers I am stuck on are Annie Proulx, Louise Erdrich, Alice Munro, Margaret Atwood, Michael Cunningham. I await their books like an eager lover. But this Stephen King thing is new, and unanticipated, and, frankly, a little scary. Scary not because of his label as a horror writer, but because of the other subject matter he delves into, and does so incredibly well. Mainly, the scariness of being a writer at all. Even a writer of shlocky books. For even writers of shlocky beach-read best-sellers are tapping into something huge, and very much beyond us in our usual rounds of work and errands and drive-through McDonald's meals. Something that is lovely beyond belief, and also extremely frightening. He says in the book I'm reading now, Bag of Bones that the skin of the visible world is thin. And he is right. There is so much more beneath the surface, and it feels like a really real place, too.
For writers, the trance state we enter when we're in "the zone" leads us to that place. Even when we're writing stupid things, even when we're writing chick-lit, even when we're writing about bankers or IRS agents. And even when it's scary, we want to be there, maybe more than we want to be in the real world. I always think that really only my dogs keep me tethered here, instead of spinning both bright and very dark fictions in that trance forever. So, I am hooked on Stephen King because perhaps more than any writer, living or dead, he gets it right. How that is, to enter that bright and dark place, to want more than anything to stay there for awhile, maybe forever. And how things from that world break into this one, often around writers or artists.
Of course, that trance state is most analagous to dreaming, really is a kind of waking dream state. And it's the same in that sometimes you just don't want to wake up. If the dream is a good one, or if it's just so real it seems rude to leave it. Sometimes on waking it's this world that seems wrong, and we can't seem to shake that dream. So, start paying attention to them rather than trying to always slough them off. Keep a dream notebook by your bed, and on awakening, commit Acts of Attention to them. The funny ones, where you're knitting an office building, the ones where you're dancing with an old flame and don't want to ever wake up, even the scary ones where a huge lumberjack in a red flannel shirt is standing in your bedroom doorway, looming and terrifying you by having no face. Sometimes the only way to shake them is to face them. So if you Perchance To Dream, you know what to do.

Harvest

It's time for fairs and peach festivals and sweet corn and too many tomatoes and zucchini. Today I made salsa with some of the too many tomatoes and the corn, peach and blueberry crisp from fruit I picked in my Uncle's bounteous garden a few days ago, and I believe that zucchini and eggplant-roasting is also in my future. Sometimes it seems like just TOO MUCH. Too much all at once, too much lovely fresh food, too many events to pack in before the end of the summer, too much perfection. And yet, not enough stunningly hot days, followed by soft starry nights. Not even enough thunderstorms. The nights are cooler, now. So cool I am led to think of the blasting winter that will surely follow such glory as we've had this year. I want to get all the goodness out of this last bit of summer, can every tomato, lop off millions of corn kernels to freeze for the freeze ahead. I want to wring every last drop of fun out of every last day, go to the beach and lie in the sand, feel the hot sun on my skin. I want to eat fried dough with maple cream and huge grilled turkey legs (VT State Fair), and seafood chowder (Rochester Fair), and the best fish and chips ever outside of England & Ireland, bathed in malt vinegar (Heath Fair). I want to watch flowers of fireworks burst in the black night sky, and sweat a lot while running through Queen Anne's Lace in the fields with my happy dogs. I want to go to the gardens of stately homes and wander along in a white dress carrying a parasol, then have a decorous picnic on the intensely green lawn that rolls up to the huge behemoth, the white whale of a house. I want to ride horses through the forest, swooning at the smell of pine and hay-scented fern and horse sweat.
In other words, I want to live the Harvest, live the downswell of these days of summer's end. I want you to live them with me. Make yourself a list of Harvest desires. Do at least half of them, committing Acts of Attention all the while. Notice EVERYTHING. Then write, then draw.

Success

It's such a strange word, and an even stranger concept. I went to Melville's house on Sunday, and that led me to ponder the idea of success. Herman Melville is perhaps the most posthumously successful American writer. Moby Dick is always mentioned in every list of the five great American novels, and considered the absolute greatest by many English profs, literary critics, and just plain readers. So why did the writer of this masterpiece have to a) live off his wealthy in-laws for years, and b) then have to take a job as a customs agent in New York until he died in obscurity and relative poverty? Nobody's quite sure. But his novels and stories only gained popularity (by leaps and bounds) after his death.
Arrowhead, the house in which Melville wrote Moby Dick is in what is now the pricey edge of the smallish city of Pittsfield, Massachusetts. And although by our modern standards is a large, lovely Colonial farmhouse, it must have been pretty hellish to live in in the nineteenth century. I have lived in houses like it, idyllic houses in summer, with views of sunny field and lush forest, with wildflowers waving like a gentle sea. But in the winter, woe betide the misbegotten souls who have to haul firewood, trudge through howling storms to feed the animals, get in supplies to last for a month at a time, between days of decent weather. I feel somewhat akin to Melville, having lived like this myself for years, in the same pursuit , the pursuit of writing. And I wonder if he felt as I do, that even without what the world terms "success," (the word seems to me a combination of "suck" and "cesspool") he was happy in his study, or on his "piazza" (which was what they called the rather narrow and unpretentious porch) gazing at Mount Greylock, writing away. My measure of success, and possibly Melville's too, on good days, is the words on the page. The ideas and characters leaping to life. Possibly, someday, I will make a little money doing it, hey maybe a whole pantload of money, who knows? But will I have "succeeded?" In the eyes of the world, maybe. It will be a whole lot easier to find decent writing space, that's for sure, maybe even my very own house, and it's always nice to be able to pay the bills on time, buy nice food, give parties, purchase gifts and beautiful notebooks and state-of-the-art laptops. But it will really just be more of the same to me. The words on the page, the ones I'm happiest with, the ones I want to share = success.
What is your version of SUCCESS, the non-monetarily based kind? Is it the look on your child's sleeping, contented face after a day at the beach? Is it your dog's eyes gazing at you rapturously while you brush his silky coat? Is it a camping adventure where you remember everything and have a fine time cooking over a campfire, then everyone is gone to sleep and you get to have that last cup of cowboy coffee, admire the stars, and the last red embers of the fire like castles, and your amazing ability to rough it in style? Is it the huge dahlias in your garden, as big as platters? Is it, like me, the words you have written moving across a page? Whatever it may be, remember it, commit an Act of Attention to it. Write it, draw it.

Perseids

It is August. My favorite month. My birthday month. I am so pleased to have a summer birthday. Particularly a late August birthday, when the sun still beats on us, when the corn and tomatoes and squash bury us in abundance, when the green still surrounds us and nearly overwhelms us. The roads like cathedrals of trees, the lawns almost neon in the strong light of early evening. When the Perseids startle us with their silent fireworks, if we are lucky enough or smart enough to lie under them for awhile.
Here in the hills, where I used to live and Sparky still does, the nights are sometimes downright cold in August. It was 40 when we went to sleep last night. Sparky does not believe that this is the usual thing, having lived in California for so long. He cannot reconcile himself to the 80 degree days and the 40 degree nights. Sparky thinks something is not right, maybe it's global warming. But it is only the harbinger of winter in the midst of brilliant summer. I remember so many late summer nights, bundled in blankets watching Shakespeare plays or lying on the wet ground in my down jacket dug out for the purpose of watching the light show of the meteor showers in some field or other. Here, we bask in the heat of August during the days, make fires at night. That's the way of it. And if we embrace it, we are rewarded in astonishment. So I advise you to embrace the chill, embrace the night, to find astonishment. Find a field, take a blanket and a bottle of wine or a thermos of hot chocolate, and wait for the Perseids. Or look for an outdoor play or concert to go to. You can bring your happiness book (and a flashlight for the field). Make notes during intermission, or during a break in the meteor viewing, if you want. Or let it all overwhelm you, then write/draw after, in your house, sitting by the fire you might need, or by the air conditioner, depending.

Every Day

Why is it so difficult to love your life every day, never mind every moment? Oh, it's a question for the sages. But it's admirable, it's even courageous to try. And one is usually rewarded. Or at least often. For even in the most mundane moments lie happiness, ideas, interest. I say this again and again, to all you, to my writing students, even sometimes dare to say it to my relatives, my most unflinching critics.
Speaking of my writing class (which I do quite often these days as my students are often in my thoughts), I was watching them last night, writing away, working on an exercise. And I realized I had not done this before. Just watched them write. I for some reason didn't think it was polite. Or I was too busy doing my writing -- I usually do the exercises, too, so as to encourage them and be able to give them examples if they ask. But last night, for a goodly time, I just kind of surreptitiously watched them. And I was gratified and amazed and humbled. They were all so absorbed, each in their different ways. One was studious and poised. Another very workmanlike. Another lay back in her chair as if it were a recliner, looking dreamy as her pen moved across the page (which I understand completely, as Laz-Y-Boys are my desk chair of choice). They were lovely. They were inspiring. They were working on something that came out of my head. And that was the humbling part.
So those moments, when I watched them doing the fairly mundane activity of writing, became charged with interest, with caring, with happiness. It seemed like nothing special, but it was, because I was really PAYING ATTENTION. So I come back to this again and yet again:
to increase your happiness, to love your life, really pay attention EVERY DAY, for as many moments as you can. It helps to record your observations. Write it, draw it, make your happiness book in the most unlikely places, at the most mundane moments. Today, don't go anywhere special. Try not to. Do everything you usually do, but PAY ATTENTION, as much as you can, whenever you can. Write or draw your favorite moments, the bits that made you love your life.

Characters

I have been haranguing my writing students about finding and developing characters. I am trying to impress upon them that there are characters everywhere you look. And that writers need to have a continual curiosity about the world. I think they are beginning to believe me. Maybe. Sometimes they still look skeptical, though.
Really, what I want to say is that to be human and happy you need to have a continual curiosity about the world around you. Especially the people around you. Including yourself. You have the potential to be a character. Your spouse does, your mother, your baby, the spotty teenage boy working at the 7/11 where you buy your fuel, and the old guy who is always in there buying scratch tickets. All you have to do is observe. There are stories all around you, waiting to be seen, waiting to be cared for like a stray animal. And like a rescued dog, they may bite you, but mostly they will be grateful and love you and enrich your life. Especially when you write them down, which is the best way to care for them.
Mostly, good stories spring from characters, like Athena from the head of Zeus. So you want to watch people, listen to them, love the stories they tell. Even when they're mute stories. The big guy with tattoos on every discernible inch of his body, mowing the lawn for his tiny mother who is watering the flowers in her house dress as he plods behind the lawnmower. The old guy wearing a different jaunty Hawaiian shirt every day, shelving books in the library, always and forever, every time you are there thinking there couldn't be that many books in the world to shelve. They are everywhere. There are stories wherever there are characters.
So the exercise of the day is to find one or two Characters. You can find them anywhere. At work, at the supermarket, walking down the street, at home. Observe them for a bit. Notice what they wear, how they look, what they tell if you overhear them speaking. Then write/draw their story, or what you think their story may be. Make it up from their physical characteristics, their setting, their mannerisms. Or if you're brave, just ask. Sometimes that works, too.

Wherever You At, There You Be

This is a tough lesson for all of us time-travellers of the mind. We tend to think in terms of our past or future in our inner monologues. But as one of my favorite old Cajun musicians used to sing, "Wherever you at, there you be." So it helps not only to make the best of where we are at, but to really celebrate it and enjoy it. I am particularly ready to espouse this belief, as it is summer, and a fine one. That always makes right now seem wonderful, when the lilies are splendidly, yellowly blooming, when the big puffy cumulus clouds drift lazy through the blue bowl of sky, when I can feel the air on my skin, and snuff the smell of hay-scented ferns.
But then, it is not always easy. The last day or so, I've been wishing I was in Japan, where money seems literally to be falling from the sky, or showing up in random mailboxes all over. And right at this moment, I am in the library, and my usual cozy computer station was taken and I have to be out in the open at a big table, surrounded by children playing video games and a guy who always talks to himself about stuff not working. Or he mumbles about nothing being the same. But you know, that's OK. I have become much more flexible about change the last few years. I am no longer particularly upset by it, as the guy to my left seems to be. I am trying to be where I'm at, and the guy next to me is part of that. The construction on my road that makes the house shake is part of it, along with the lemon lilies and the blue sky of summer, along with my beautiful dogs panting in the backyard and licking the sunscreen off my legs as I try to write amidst the noise of trucks and big machines. And I do write, and I do drink the coldest of cold water, and I do sweat then the breeze comes over, and the light shimmers in the pool next door and I can imagine the beautiful coolness of the water, and in the beautiful coolness of my own mind I write of forest pools where deer come down to drink.
So, the exercise today is Wherever You At, There You Be. Pick up your notebook and pen, take it with you into another room, or in the car, and sometime, when you feel really present, write/draw whatever is before you. Try to stay right in it, describe everything you see, smell, hear, etc. Then love it all.

Summer Nights

It seems like I haven't posted in just about forever, as last week was incredibly busy -- started my writing class (yay! thanks to all my great students!), then next day left for a long weekend at the Lowell Folk Festival. If you have never gone to the Lowell Folk Fest, indeed if you have never heard of it, I am here to testify that it is one of the best music festivals in the country, if not the world. And I've been to a few, here and abroad. First of all, it's free (volunteers schlep donation buckets around, and you get lovely Mardi Gras beads when you contribute, but you don't have to. Although I highly encourage it, as we want this grand tradition to continue). Second of all, you can hear fantastic music from all over the world -- this year some of the samplings were a kick-butt rocking Irish band, Brazilian Forro (kind of like Cajun music), Cajun, of course, Laotian, Afro-Cuban, and an amazing practitioner of Gypsy Jazz, a guitarist a la Django Reinhart, and his band and guest artists from France. Thirdly, the city of Lowell turns into one giant street fair, with great food, all the cool mill museums open, and just a great scene.
But maybe the very best thing about the folk fest for me is that I can indulge in perhaps my most favorite activity of all time, which is to be outside on hot summer nights. There are so many ways to do it, for so many reasons. You can lie on a blanket at a night concert, listening to great music. You can take a telescope out to star-gaze. You can round up your friends and go for a forbidden midnight swim in a resevoir, and have the cops chase you through the woods, dripping, and carrying rather than wearing most of your clothes (I wouldn't recommend this one unless you are under 25). You can simply sit on your back stoop and watch the fireflies. Sometimes, I set up my tent in the backyard and lie reading far into the night by lantern-light, with all the tent windows and sky lights open so whatever breeze there may be finds my skin. I read summer books then. Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine is one of the best, as is the great Eudora Welty's Losing Battles. Or I read books set in cold climates, in winter. A wonderful book I call the mukluk book (it's real title is Ordinary Wolves, by Seth somebody). Or the amazing His Dark Materials trilogy by Phillip Pullman, which includes The Golden Compass, The Amber Spyglass, and The Subtle Knife. Right now I'm reading a fairly new Stephen King called Lisey's Story ( I'm not normally into Stephen King, but his books really are good reads, I'm discovering). But enough of the summer reading list.
The exercise today is really a night-based exercise called, naturally, Summer Nights. Find a reason to hang around outside tonight. Take a walk through suburban streets, look in the houses. Maybe you can even see faces illuminated by the blue TV light, or older couples sitting on their porches. If you live in the country, sit in the nearest field and look for shooting stars. In the city, sit out on your porch, or on your roof, and listen to the parties going on around you, or the kid next door practicing his sax, or the dogs a few streets down calling to each other mournfully. Or take a walk on city streets, as everybody is out walking around too, eating ice-cream cones, instead of sitting in their hot apartments. Whatever you choose to do, commit an Act of Attention to it, then write it, draw it. And enjoy it, as summer is all too fleeting.

Who's Your Harry?

I suppose I can't ignore it anymore. Potter-mania has taken over the world. Since the latest movie and last book burst onto the scene, nearly every form of media has been infiltrated 24/7 with Potter related stories. And that's OK. I, too, love Harry. I admire him for his basic decency, his humanity, his ability to (mostly) do the right thing in extreme circumstances. I admire J.K. Rowling for creating him, and for continuing to use her amazing imagination to move the story forward, for making leaps of connection to the past books and the past of the Wizarding world. I am impressed that these leaps work, if sometimes a little creakily.
Perhaps there has been nothing quite like it in the history of children's literature, or indeed literature in general, so many people waiting, desperate for A BOOK. To follow their hero's next adventure.
I am trying to remember my heroes and heroines, when I was at the tender age of Harry's younger readers. I can't think of many, literary or not. I enjoyed the tales of C.S. Lewis, but didn't really identify with any of his Narnian characters, even Lucy. I think horses were my heroes. The Black Stallion, the Blood Bay colt, Man O'War, the Pie from National Velvet. Then, when I was twelve, I read Jane Eyre, and she became my favorite literary heroine. Still is.
But the real people who could have been role models for me were pretty sparse when I was growing up. I didn't personally know any writers or artists or musicians, doing the things I loved to do. I've talked to friends who also lament the lack of role models in their young lives, too.
So, I thought, can't we have them now? Can't we strive to emulate the people (or characters)who inspire us in our present lives? I guess we can. I guess we're not too old and shriveled up to strive.
I think my role model now would be, among others: Julia Child, for her love of life and food, and teaching others to do the same. Her humor and uniqueness. She didn't let anything stop her. She just went on merrily chortling through her long and productive life. She didn't really find what she was meant to do (ie, cook) until she was in her late thirties, when she also found her husband, Paul. She didn't publish her best- known tome, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, until she was nearly fifty, and the TV show didn't take off until some time after that. Then she went steaming along until well into her nineties. She gives all us late bloomers hope. I think she's my Harry Potter, right now.
So Who's Your Harry? Literary or not (and maybe Harry is your Harry). Someone you admire, someone you'd want to emulate? What are they like? How do they affect the world? How are you like them, how would it have changed you to have them as a role model as a child, how could you be more like them now?
Write it, draw it.

Do I Have To?

This weekend, instead of going out to enjoy the perfection of summer weather we've been blessed with, I mostly stayed in the house and worked. Being a writer is always fun, but there are times that one must put one's nose to the grindstone and get a project finished. It's really like any job. Of course, I would rather have played outside all weekend, or just hung around reading the last Harry Potter in a hammock, so I could take naps between exciting bits. But it was not to be. It was a little like being a kid and mum telling me I have to clean my room/go to the mall with her to buy socks and underwear/go to the Y's craft class she signed me up for without my knowlwdge (I still hate crafts), before I could go out and play. Only this time, I was in the roles of both the kid and the mom. There was no one but me to ask, "Do I have to?" There was no one to blame. But it was fine, really. I got my work done, I accomplished a lot. It felt good. Kind of like the craft class, where I made lopsided potholders and bracelets from gimp, and once put glue in Theresa Szot's hair, because she wanted me to glue a flower to her head. A big orange sunflower.
So for the exercise today, I'm going to make you ask "Do I Have To?" I'd like you to do something you wouldn't ordinarily do, and try to have some fun. It could be going to a little league baseball game if you don't have kids. It could be going to mall or a museum if you normally hate malls or museums. It could be singing in church. Just something to challenge you, stretch you a little. Commit your Acts of Attention, as many as you can, then write, draw.

Go Outside And Play

If you were born between, say, 1950 and 1970, "go outside and play" was the constant refrain of mothers everywhere in the US. No one was then particularly worried about kidnappers or sex offenders, children roamed neighborhoods in great packs like wild dogs, and mothers just seemed to need a lot of time to bake cookies, hang out laundry, cook the dinner, watch Peyton Place etc., without having to manoeuver around kids draped over the furniture or lying on rugs, playing video games. Actually, back then there were no video games, and daytime TV was not (still isn't) kid-friendly, so what the kids were doing was complaining. "I'm bored," "I'm hungry," "Janey's teasing me," "I can't find my [Malibu Barbie], [GI Joe], [Man O'War model horse]." So mom would get fed up -why does no one ever say they're fed up anymore, anyway?- and tell the kids to go outside and play. Or "go play in the street," if the mom had a sick sense of humor. I loved that, when the moms would say that.
Then the kids would heave big sighs, like it was the worst thing in the world to breathe fresh air, heave themselves out of dad's Laz-y-boy, and shlump out the door, not to return till dinnertime. Well, I have to qualify, here. I was always out the door before mom had to tell me. She actually had to beg me to come in. I was lucky enough to live at the edges of a place and a time that barely exist today, where suburb melted into farm, and farm melted into woods. Almost every day, my friends and I were denizens of forest and field, plucking princess pine vines to wreath around our heads, galloping like horses -we WERE horses, snorting and tossing our manes- leaping into streams, following the trails of animals, just to see where they went, where their hidey-holes were.
It was magic.
I am lucky enough to still have some of those magical places to go. They have not all been swallowed up by housing developments. The place I first rode remains(the horse was kept by a lovely woman who let my horse- crazy friend Holly and I ride and groom her Chincoteague pony - another near-impossibility in this day of liability). It is still a place of wonder, with big cattails growing, and marsh, and the sky always seems to be blue with big puffy clouds. I remember my first gallop there, down the hard-packed dirt paths, though a big field, the saddle slipping, the rough mane in my hands. The dangerous and wild feeling of it. I often try to re-capture that feeling, when going out to play meant that anything could happen, any wonder. Sometimes I can. Today I went out to that same field to collect Queen Anne's lace to press in newspaper for Christmas (when it makes wonderful snowflakes for the tree). As I spread out the paper, started cutting the flat, plate-sized delicate flowers with the sun on my back, I got that feeling, that child-wonder, that feeling of timelessness. I get it when I go rapberry picking in the places they grow wild (I find old sunny graveyards attract raspberries, as the stony tops of hills attract wild blueberries).
So, for today, try to remember that feeling of wonder, try to rekindle it. Go Out And Play, somewhere you have felt that wonder in the past. Take your Happiness Book with you. Plan on spending time to become timeless. Then write it, draw it.

Back To The Now

The last few posts have been about looking inside ourselves, to see what we find. Although it's important to reflect in these ways, it's perhaps even more important to get back to the now, look outside our amazing minds, and see what's there to enjoy. There is usually a lot, if we look carefully. If we forget about the horrible state of our gardens that need desperate weeding, the horrible state of our world that we feel helpless about, and can't just go out with a trowel and put to rights (oh, if only!), we can most often find very familiar things around us that bring us joy. After all, why are we here, but to find happiness where we can? I didn't make that up. Aristotle said it, the Dalai Lama says it, we're here to learn the habit of happiness. And we can find it now, in inexplicable places, like our kitchen when we make a peach pie, in our dog's faces, in the car when we're driving to work and we see a woman walking down the street wearing a golden sari, or a large purple hat with peacock feathers waving above it. We can find it wherever we happen to be, right now.
So, go Back To The Now. What do you see, right now where you are? (Or wait a little while, and ask yourself this question when you're ready with your Happiness Book and a pen). You don't have to be anywhere special for this exercise. Your backyard or your rooftop or your office or waiting in the car to pick up the kids from day camp. Look around you. There are probably at least ten things to delight you wherever you are in the now.
I am, as usual, at the library. A little girl sits next to me at her computer, playing video games. Her feet tap, her shoulders scrunch with concentration, and every now and then, she nearly jumps out of her seat when she defeats a foe, finds the hidden Barbie, or something equally exciting on the screen happens. I can feel her joy,and although I think video games are mind-numbing pablum, she doesn't. She's just having some fun, and I can appreciate that, and catch some of it, just from the energy she's throwing around. Then the sounds of the library delight me, the hushed voices, the humming of the computers, the sound of the printer printing out book return receipts. It is all incredibly familiar and soothing to me. People walk by with books clutched to their chests, as if they are new lovers, just waiting for the time when they can get home and be transported by their new book, their love. (Why do people do this, this book clutching thing, pressing books to their hearts? We all do it, the book-lovers among us. We don't clutch a head of lettuce to our hearts in the supermarket, or a pair of jeans from the Gap.)
The books on the shelves themselves give me untold joy, in anticipation, expectation of new worlds, new thoughts, and just the colors of them, the textures of their covers and pages...
I could go on, but you get the idea. So write your now, draw it, take joy in it, clutch it to your heart.

Amazing Mind

I love the fact that we are all so amazing. Our inner lives are unknown territory even sometimes to ourselves. It doesn't matter what our outward circumstances are, there is such rich stuff going on in our minds. Thinking all the time. Even if it's of hamburgers. All of them different in our heads. You may dream of a huge, juicy home-grilled monstrous burger on a fresh-from-the-bakery roll, gently draped with lettuce and tomato. While my perfect burgers may be drifts of White Castle midget-burgers.
Once, I went to a thing called a re-birthing, with a new agey friend. We went to an apartment complex in a nearby town, and in this very white walled, carpeted, badly glazed apartment was a guy who channelled a spirit of some kind named Eon. He had us all lie in a kind of spoked- wheel shape, with our feet almost touching, and began to chant. I just lay there, thinking this is such a pile of horse doo-doo, when I suddenly went into this altered state. I felt really calm, almost sleepy, but also very awake behind my eyes. I started seeing these images. The first was of a sort of tent, in a winter field, but a strange shape, six-sided, with a hole in the top through which good-smelling smoke wafted. There were also blue designs on the side of the tent. I really wanted to go into the tent, but something was stopping me, something in myself. Then I was whisked away into a cloud of red dust, somewhere altogether different. There were chains on my ankles, and I was connected to other chained people, but couldn't see them because of the dust. We were dancing. Chained but dancing. And I felt a wave of tremendous joy. Then I sort of woke up and the first thing I thought of was going to Burger King for a Whopper. Really.
So, I don't know what it all means, but the images, the thoughts, the movies in our heads are wild and mundane and terrible and joyous and totally unique to us.
We should always appreciate this ability we have to project these pictures in our minds. We can even send ourselves into the future, like no other beings can, that we know of. This is what puts us at the top of the food chain, an even greater gift than opposable (sp?) thumbs.
In the spirit of honoring this great gift, the exercise today is Amazing Mind. Get yourself somewhere comfortable to sit, with your Happiness Book and pen handy. Close your eyes. Let your mind go. Don't care what you think about, just sit and let it happen. First you'll probably think that the car needs an oil change, or repeat the conversation you had with your friend who made you so angry, then you'll think of the last time you went to the beach, then you'll think about your vacation in August and what you'll do on Prince Edward Island, and soon you'll be biking on a flat dusty road between dunes and sea. When you 'wake up,' write all your thoughts. Draw what seems interesting. Let your mind amaze you.

Look Around

Have not posted for a bit, as I have been working on getting a series of writing classes off the ground. I will be teaching the end of July into late August, and the series is entitled Save Your Life Writing -- a kind of spin off of the Save Your Life Project. It will be based on the notion of committing Acts of Attention in order to get a book project started. The classes are designed for the people who always tell me, "I have a great idea for a book, and I love to write, but I'm really not a writer." To which I say, "Hogwash. Anyone who loves books and writing can write a book, and here's how to do it." It will be enlightening, and entertaining, and inspiring and FUN.

To get back to this project: I am posting from Sparky's place, where I came to spend a small town 4th of July (which is my favorite holiday, as it comes at the height of perfect summer weather and there are no big expectations of big meals, big presents, big emotional roller coasters. Only, hopefully, big parades and fireworks displays, and a big cold chicken and potato salad nosh).
Whenever I'm here at Sparky's, I can never help but notice a few fundamental differences between men and women. One is the propensity of men to be huge attention seekers. No sooner do you tell them, "OK, I'm going to work now, and would appreciate a little quiet time," they begin to say "Shit, shit! Ow, ow!" under their breaths, just loudly enough so you can hear, play back their phone messages at top volume in the next room, rustle papers, again quite loudly, saying "Ow!" the whole time, then spill coffee all over the dog, when the "Shit!"s rise to full volume and the dog rushes to you dripping coffee all over your lap and looking for pets and reassurance that you've not left them forever with the crazy person in the next room. It's not just Sparky, either. Probably 78% of men exhibit this behavior. It annoys me.
Another annoying habit of the male persuasion is the determined inability or sheer unwillingness to look about them. Sparky will say, often, "I can't find my glasses" before he even looks. I will gaze up from my book, and immediately spot them on the coffee table, not three feet from Sparky's nose. I will point this out, and he will grunt and stick them on his face and "lose" them again exactly seven minutes later. Then he'll call from the other room, "Did you move my glasses?" The accusatory interrogatory, of course, is even more annoying than the interrogatory of oblivion. "No," I'll reply. "I've been sitting here reading the whole time you've had them. Have you checked the bathroom sink?" Which is where he sets them down about 67% of the time. I'd say this annoying habit occurs in 94% of males.
So, this is a special exercise, to hone all our short term memories. It was inspired by my encounters with Sparky's oblivion to objects, but we can all benefit from this one, and I'm not trying to single out one particular gender, but, well...It's called Look Around. For five minutes, wherever you happen to be, really look around you. Notice objects. Small objects on surfaces. A note pad, keys, an old cassette tape, the book you're reading, a pen, if you're at home. Cups on tables, a folded newspaper, a display of cakes on a counter if you're in a cafe. Etc. Notice where the objects are in relation to other objects. Make a detailed mental picture of them. Then go do something in another room, or go outside for five minutes. Wash the dishes, hang out laundry, throw a frisbee for your dog. Forget about the objects. Then, after the five minutes are up, still in a space where the observed objects are not, write about them. Draw them. Be relational, be specific about details of their appearance and position. Then when you're done, go look. Did you remember?

Rich as Nebuchadnezzar

It occurs to me how rich our lives are. All of us. Neanderthal or not. Nebuchadnezzer or not. This guy was a Babylonian king who was all over the Old Testament. He made war, punished those who refused to obey him, had a dream that Daniel interpreted for him (King N was represented in the dream as the golden head of a huge statue), which he ended up taking rather too literally, had a golden statue made and required everyone to worship it. Only a few guys refused, and would only worship their God (the true and right God, as it turns out in the book of Daniel). He had them bound and set afire. They walked out of the fire unscathed, and not only that, but God had been hanging out in the fire with them. So King N of course declared that real God, fire God, would only be worshipped. Then he had another dream, a very cool one, very poetic (check it out in Daniel 4). Daniel interpreted it again, and told King N he'd be driven from his kingdom, live in the wild with the animals, lose his reason, eat grass, and grow long freakish fingernails. And lo, it came to pass. For seven years the mighty King N wandered in the wilderness. Then, all of a sudden, after the predicted seven years, his reason returned to him, he praised God, and was returned to all the riches and glory of his kingdom.
Does this not sound like life?
We are all Nebuchadnezzars, I think. We have great riches, go mad, lose the riches, regain them, and only we know how amazing our lives really are. What comedies and tragedies we live every day. What dreams we wake from, the wonder of them, what visions or nightmares.
The exercise of the day is called Nebuchadnezzar's Dream, in which we commit an Act of Attention to remembering a time of great change, where we've gone mad, wandered in the wilderness, grown talons like eagles, then been restored to our great wealth and the riches of our kingdom. Maybe monetary riches, or maybe the riches we wrote about using our Neanderthal Eyes. Remember, reflect, write.

My Neanderthal Life

I have been contemplating the oddness of life in the 21st century lately. Why have we become so defined by what we do, rather than who we are? It's usually the first thing new acquaintances want to know about us. "What do you do?" they ask. I am often stumped for a reply. Of course they want to know what I receive a pay check for. Am I a lighting designer, store clerk, elephant bather, financial consultant (god, no)? Do I spend my days doing menial tasks or sitting at a desk? That's really what people are asking, I think. They want to know one's social status. They want to know if the person they're talking to is worth talking to.
I think this is decidedly strange, considering that for most of history homo sapiens and their predecessors did the hunter gatherer thing. Like dogs and wolves, there were spurts of major activity to find food, then once it was found and eaten, everybody kind of hung out, just being. That is what I imagine, at any rate.
And this leads me to ponder: why can't we all just leave ourselves and others alone about what we do? Is it not good enough that we are alive and kicking, and able to appreciate our lives, and tulips and grass and pudding and silk and boots and yellow and fireflies and dancing and soft and each other? At the end of our lives will it satisfy us more that we got a lot of raises, or that we went to Nova Scotia once and camped on a cliff with a lover and saw whales leaping in the Bay of St. Lawrence?
Would not a better question be "What do you like to do?" on meeting a new acquaintance? It opens up so much more possibility to see into a person's life. So I like to indulge in this kind of pre-civilizationary thinking, and imagine my Neanderthal self. What would I most admire about myself and my life? (Sparky thinks it's a crack-up that I say "And another thing I admire about myself is..." Like all of us he is unused to anyone blatantly admitting there is anything to admire about themselves.) So the exercise of the day is My Neanderthal Life, in which we ask ourselves what we would appreciate most in our lives if we look through our Neanderthal eyes, and shed our appreciation of fancy cars and big screen TVs and the like(which we'd fear as Neanderthals, most probably)? Would it be our strong legs that carry us on our hunt through the supermarket most days? Would it be our good vision, with which we spot our child playing in the bush without our consent and oblivious to danger? Would it be the shade on a hot day, where we can sit and read Jane Austen? Would it be, simply, hot fish fresh off the grill, and roasted sweet corn? Look through your Neanderthal eyes. Pay attention. Write it, draw it.

Unexpected Joy

I'm having a very lively library time this morning (I post from the local library, I won't have Internet access at home as it is such a time suck). It's a fine thing that the chairs are kind of bouncy and forgiving, as a world music percussionist is performing in the meeting room, and I am dancing to the beat, as much as typing and vaguely sitting down will allow.
Which leads me to talk about taking our pleasures where we find them. I can't say how often this happens to me (and probably to you as well). I am doing something random, like typing away in the library, or driving on the ramp to the highway, and an unexpected moment -- or hour -- of joy occurs. The ramp to the highway event included 10 baby geese, still yellow and not too steady on their feet, flopping around after their mum.
So, the exercise for today is to look out some Unexpected Joy for yourself. Go to a fairly innocuous place where you have experienced such things. For me it can be supermarkets, parks, especially airports. Or you can just take a bike ride or a drive or a walk, and really open up your Attention pores. Look, listen, smell, feel what's unexpected and unusual in the everday. Then write/draw it. Now I'm going to the concert, and dance till I drop! I'll file my report next week.

Ordinary Computer Time Please?

I've been having computer woes this week, so have not posted much...very sorry. I will try to get this posted before either my computer or Blogger decide they've had enough. I am obliged to keep it short this go round, so there will be no witty repartee with myself, or humorous yet insightful vignettes. Maybe tomorrow, when I hope computer time is more ordinary.
I wanted, at the very least, to get the next exercise out there. This exercise is a continuation of the last, thus it is called Ordinary Time, part 2:

Sit across from the person you wrote about/drew the last exercise. (The someone you are very close to). Observe him/her carefully. If you don't want him/her to know what you're doing, pretend to make a list. This is always a good ploy when you want people to think you're just being somewhat normal...While committing your Act of Attention to your person, try not to think about what you wrote/drew when you did the previous Ordinary Time exercise. Write or draw them now with fresh eyes and wild mind (as Natalie Goldberg would say).

The Journey Through Ordinary Time

I went to church with mum yesterday. A very Poish Catholic church, I might add, one she's been going to forever, and that I guess I have to admit I was raised up in, even going to the church school for eight years.
As I was sitting there before the mass started, trying to distract myself from the wierdness of being in a church at all, I read in the church program thingy that we were now beginning the journey through ordinary time. What that means is that it's not a particularly special time, like Advent or Easter or Epiphany, etc. Yet, as I discovered when I checked it out this morning, ordinary time doesn't quite mean common. It is from the word "ordinal," which means "counted" time. The website I was perusing didn't really explain counting. Counting what? Probably the weeks until the next big show, like Advent.
In any case, it made me think that most of our time here on this planet is not party time like Christmas, or dire like Lent. It is just kind of, well, ordinary time. But, according to the church calendar anyway, it is counted. It counts. (Now the word "counts" is looking odd to me, as if perhaps I have not spelled it correctly. I guess I've used it too many times, so I'll stop.)

What occurs to me in not exactly a blinding flash is that our ordinary time matters, firstly because there is so much of it. Our journey through it ought to have some significance. Which brings me to the exercise today, which is, naturally: Ordinary Time.
Describe/draw someone you're very close to. Your spouse/child/friend/ father/mother, you get the idea. Do this exercise when the person is not present. Try for loving and positive, without getting all teary-eyed and sentimental.
Here's mine:
Mum has amazingly soft-looking skin. The skin of her face is like a kind of furrowed peach. She puts cold cream on it. No fancy potions for her. Cold cream, like many other simple things, have been good enough for her for eighty five years. There is a photo in the living room of mum and her sisters, arms entwined, around 1938. They have beautiful curling hair, puffed up around their faces. None of them look so different now, really. But mum, the oldest, has retained the most energy, the most activity. She does much of the yardwork still, trimming, watering and weeding her impatiens, the only annual she will plant. She complains about the yard all the time, but it's obvious she is pleased with it, to have it in her life yet, the same 1/2 acre yard she planned with my dad fifty years ago. Her hands are bumpy and blue-veined and arthritic, her feet are similarly afflicted, but she does not rest them much, does not give in to them. They are the cross she has to bear. Although she complains about small things, the water bill, the persistence of vines that encroach on the garden, she doesn't complain about her health. Once in awhile she'll sigh and fan herself, and say she has a headache. The extreme is "going to lay down," which again, she hardly ever does. She falls asleep at eight nearly every day while watching TV, and her head falls back, and her hands unclench, and she finally lets go of the vines and the water bill and my persistence in aggravating her and dreams then of a perfectly clean house, or a Dan Kane concert, or my dad sitting across the table from her once more...

32 Perfections

Spent a good part of the past week getting Sparky off to the airport for his son's graduation from UCLA. See sidebar for a photo of Sparky. The preparations included planting trees, bathing a big dog, and bailing buckets of water out of the nearly overflowing washing machine. And of course the usual mad searches for clean t-shirts, matching socks, an unbesmirched tie. Then the actual race to the airport, with me clutching the steering wheel, white-knuckled, driving faster than I ever have except on other trips to get Sparky to airports relatively on time. It was only when we were pulling onto the ramp for the airport that Sparky discovered he was wearing two different (even though incredibly similar) boots.
When I got back to the house after this adventure, I collapsed and ate Boston Chicken and watched X-Files, in no mood to drive the hour plus back to mum's.
Then, the next day, yesterday in fact, my 'friend' came to visit, it was that time of the month, you can apply whichever euphemism you prefer for menstruation. And it was one of the approximately 3 times a year that I am truly stricken by the process. All I wanted to do was lie down and moan. I did manage to get back to mum's and get a little work done, but I also have this tendency to become incredibly brain dead, unable to think of the words for common things like 'cup' and 'window.' I actually say things when I'm in this state like: "Could you open the...thing. You know, the thing to the outside. That you can see through. You know." Needless to say, I didn't post.
But it got me to thinking about the next exercise. Yesterday I had also read about a young Nepalese girl's visit to Washington. Sajani Shakya is a 10 year old living goddess. She is a goddess because she has 32 perfections. It is believed the goddess Kali inhabits her and will do so until she reaches puberty, when the goddess will leave her, and she'll be retired and get a pension. This is a real, true thing. Even the pension.
But will she still have 32 perfections after she reaches puberty? Will menstruating somehow wash away those perfections? Now, even though I can't remember the word for 'window' and sound like David Sedaris speaking French when I try to refer to one, I think I still have at least 32 perfections. Maybe 56. Maybe more. You do, too, even if you're a man and don't menstruate at all.
So, this exercise is called 32 Perfections. And it's simple -- just look around you, look inside you, and perform and Act of Attention to your 32 perfections. What is perfect about your life, your person, your mind, your dog (although that's really the dog's perfections, not yours)? Write them, draw them. If you don't have time for 32 this round, do what you can then take an extra five minutes every day for the next however many days, and do a couple until you're up to 32.

My perfections have to start with:
1)My ability to write, which gives me so much joy. To write and spill my guts, or write about the most delicate images, the violet wash of color in footprints in the snow.
2)My ability to see, just to see yellow. Just to see the wrinkles in my mum's face, all soft and powdery. The bursting, silky peony...

I have been saying I will share my Bake a Cake exercise, or some of it, anyway. Here it is...
Did not bake a cake. Mum doesn't like me to use the stove, because of electric bill. Or maybe that's an excuse, and she expects me to burn the house down.
So...went on an adventure instead. There are mills in Indian Orchard (I want to base an exercise just on that name, someday). The mills used to produce cloth. Mum says that she bought a lot of my clothes there when I was young. Jerseys. There don't seem to be jerseys anymore, at least no one calls them that. In any case, there was a factory outlet store at the mill. Also, I remember my dad saying that the Chicopee River, that runs through the Orchard, used to be a different color every day from the dye. Disgusting, but I wonder if it wasn't kind of pretty, too. The mills now house a rug outlet, and artist's studios and a gallery.
The Orchard is plastered with banners, purple with white lettering, that tout the artist mills, and oddly, a Titanic museum housed behind Henry Ochrymowicz's jewelry and watch repair store. I'd never been to either, so opted for the gallery which seemed more promising, somehow.
After a kind of creepy drive through an industrial complex, now mostly abandoned, with broken windows and pot-holed roads, I found it and it was wonderful. Once I parked in the lot that was weedy and surrounded by crumbling loading docks and stairs that led no where, I found the entrance and went in. It was lovely. I immediately stopped imagining being done in in the parking lot by knife-wielding men with stockings over their faces.
The space was huge, and light-filled, the old factory elements muted by white walls and sage colored upholstered benches. And of course, art in many media. There was a warren of studios as well as the gallery, down narrow hallways, with all kinds of more art hanging on the walls. There was:
1)a stained glass dog, maybe a Boston Terrier, vivid and humorous.
2) a representational woman in a draping pink gown, looking very Edwardian- upper- class- tea- party. "After Thomas Eakins," the caption said, and I could see why.
3) bluey-pink landscape, with snowy crest of hill.
4) brown cows in a field...

Where's The Bundt Cake Pan?

As some of you have read, the last exercise was the Bake A Cake exercise. Not necessarily about baking a cake at all, but doing something calming that you really enjoy, committing an Act of Attention to the experience, and writing about it. You could bake a cake if you wanted, and my preffered way of doing this exercise is by baking a cake, hence its name. But I decided, by necessity partly, to do something different. I went to see art. I love museums and galleries, they calm me down. Unfortunately, I forgot to bring my Happiness Book, so can't transcribe it for you. Will do so my next post, by which time I hope to have figured out the scanning thing.

But while I was casting about for ideas re my Bake A Cake exercise, I was wondering...Where Is My Bundt Cake Pan? I make this fantastic cocoa spice cake with walnuts ground so fine they're like a fluffy powdery substance, quite unlike themselves, and buttermilk and molasses, as I recall. I still have the recipe, but the necessary Bundt pan went missing a while ago in one of my many moves. I have moved 21 times in 26 years. I admit this at the risk of sounding crazy, but I have gone a few years between some moves. It's just that some years I've moved a couple of times. Maybe that doesn't make me sound less crazy. But I recently discovered that Beethoven moved 44 times. That made me feel slightly better.
In any case, in all those moves, numerous and sundry objects have been left behind inadvertently or not, broken, stolen while momentarily unattended, fallen from the top of the car, etc. Pondering this, I remembered this exercise, called My Favorite Things. I am not a big fan of The Sound of Music, and particularly of the song, but it's appropriate. So, what is your favorite possession? The one thing that when you were moving, you would sit right next to you on the passenger seat of your car, swaddled in bubble wrap (if appropriate), making the friend helping you move scrunch in the back seat with piles of old New Yorkers and lamps and baskets of potpourri and other general detritus of your life. The possession most redolent of memory, most comforting. Is your favorite thing your high school yearbook, or your old Karmann Ghia, or the paisley blouse your daughter gave you for Mother's Day in 1969 that you can't wear anymore, but can't throw out either?
Whatever it may be, take it out, commit an Act of Attention to it. The thing itself, and the memories that arise from it like a cloud of incense, settling around your head.

OK. Mine is a cup. Or rather, a mug. It was given to me by my college roomate, junior year, when we had the most amazing huge room, and had tea every afternoon at four, complete with chocolate covered Wheatolos and really good tea, and loads of friends that would drop by for the ritual.
It is a Blue Willow mug. The pattern that I have loved ever since the mug came into my life. It tells a story. There is a landscape, blue on a white background, with a bridge, and willows and two flying birds, and two people on a bridge, and a third following. I think the two are supposed to be lovers fleeing from the woman's father, who kills them and they turn into the birds. Or something like that, with time compressed in the design. It is a ubiquitous design, being I think the first mass produced pattern in England, then here, now it's back to China, where it originated.
My blue willow mug is smallish, and a little squat, not elegant. But I love drinking from it, the way it feels smooth in my hand, with bits of the pattern peeping between my fingers-- the birds, then the willow, then the solitary man on the bridge.
The memories carried in this small piece of pottery extend over 25 years, and include The Speech. Every time I move and have a new housemate, I give The Speech. The speech consists of a warning. "You can use anything I own, maul it break it, take it to work and leave it under a radiator. But THIS (holding up the mug). If you use it and break it I'll kill you. If anybody's going to break it, it's going to be me." I can tell what kind of housemate they'll be by their reaction. If they just look at me like I'm a little touched and shrug and say OK, I know they'll basically be fine. If they swear up and down that they would never disrespect my possessions, and thank me for telling them, I know that the first time I go out, they'll use the mug. They will be compelled. If they say "If you even touch my hockey stick, the one that's signed by Bobby Orr, I'll kill you," I know it's the beginning of a beautiful friendship...

Cultivating The Happiness Habit: Why Writing?

I was perusing our local used-t0-be-alternative-but-now-is-filled-with-advertising freebie newspaper, and came upon an article about happiness experiments conducted by a UC Santa Monica professor, Sonja Lyubomirsky. In case you don't know, positive psychology is an academic field growing by leaps and bounds. Everybody's doing it.
Ms. Lyubomirsky developed these particular experiments to attempt to discover whether people can rise above their genetic happiness set point (yes, apparently, happiness, like everything else, is about 50% genetically determined). Her objective is to find out how happiness works.
The conclusion she has come to after various studies is that, yes, happiness can be affected, can be increased by specific actions people take. In her studies, she has people keep gratitude journals, and "kindness interventions" (the article didn't specify how). The results indicated that as long as people practice happiness, they really are happier, but a few months after they stop, they become less happy. So habit seems to be key. The happiness strategies have to become habitual to keep working.
Which brings me to the real point of this post. Why writing? Why can writing be a great tool to practice happiness? I think because writing is already habitual to most of us. Besides breathing, speaking, walking and reading, it is probably the most habitual act we perform. Even if we don't think of it as real writing, we e-mail, we text, we write memos and lists and phone messages every day. So it should be easy to make the leap to using writing as a tool to create other habits, like the habit of happiness. That's my theory, anyway. You don't need to think of it as real writing, but like e-mails and lists, as a means to an end. You don't have to be a writer, you don't have to be an artist, you just have to PAY ATTENTION. Like Ann Lamott says in her book about writing, Bird by Bird, "...we may notice amazing details during the course a day, but we rarely let ourselves stop and really pay attention. An author makes you notice, makes you pay attention, and this is a great gift." So, think of yourself as the author of your own life. Make yourself pay attention, write it, record it for posterity, which may be you ten years from now, or your kids or grandkids. Or maybe you'll be the Samuel Pepys of your generation, the great diarist of the common man or woman.

Anyway, enough proselytizing. Here's the exercise. Which I have not done yet, bad me. Not that I haven't done it in the past many times, but...I usually bake a cake or cook something, and right now I can't, mum has a hissy every time I use the stove for more than five minutes, so I have to get over myself and just do something else then report back Monday. I call this exercise, for the reason above, Bake a Cake.
Think of one thing that gives you a real break from your daily stuff. It should be something solitary this time, so you can really concentrate and commit a good Act of Attention. A bike ride, or baking a cake, or just driving or walking to a pretty spot in your neighborhood. Something pretty tranquil.
Find an hour at least to do this exercise. Just before you start, take your anxiety pulse. Are you an anxious 7 on a scale of 1-10? Write your 'score' down. Then start your activity. Really pay attention to the experience. Take notes if it's not dangerous, don't perch your notebook on your steering wheel (I've done it and can't recommend it). If you can't take notes, just try to remember as much as you are able. The misty day, the dewy feeling on your skin. Remember the shiny smoothness of batter, the intense, grainy sweetness when you taste it.
Or do any people who may pass seem preoccupied, energized, exhausted? What are they wearing? What expressions are on their faces? I once noticed while driving that most people had angry expressions on their faces. Another day, they all looked crazy. One was driving through a sea of balloons packed into a tiny car.
Try to remember any details you can, even if they're not bizarre. Then, as soon as you're done, write your experience and/or draw it. Every detail. Then take your anxiety pulse once more. Is it lower? Is it a lot lower? Bet it is.

The Elusivity/Elasticity of Happiness

OK, so I'm not even going to go into what happiness is. I'll leave that to the experts. Suffice it to say we know it when we feel it.
But here's a burning question. Why are so many people somewhat miserable, somewhat often? I have a crackpot theory, and it goes way back to our founding fathers. Why did these otherwise really smart guys go with Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. That implies we Amuricans will never achieve it, only be doomed to the bloody pursuit ad infinitum. Why couldn't they just say we're entitled to Life, Liberty and Happiness and not qualify it? They jinxed us.
Whatever the theories are, lot's of people are unhappy. Often with good reason. But really, we are our best sources of happiness, or not. We can't count on a new car, or a trip to the Mall of America. Sometimes all we want to do is stay in bed all day. Sometimes I do. But inevitably, after a while, I get up, eat an egg (Jane Austen's Mr Woodhouse says eggs are not unwholesome), talk to my dogs for awhile, then get back to the world.
Sometimes I don't want to go. I feel exhausted, sweaty, feverish. But I desperately want to go. I am sick to death of my mum's obsessively clean house, the pristine neighborhood where there aren't any real people outside, only landscapers roaring around on the Chemlawned expanses. I want to see people, feel connected. So I force myself to just do it.
Here's the assignment. The one I call Back to the World. Go to a place where there are people. Bring your notebook. Sit in a cafe, or on a park bench, or the mall foodcourt if need be, and cultivate your senses. Use them all. Notice what people say to each other(or themselves). How do they use language? Write them down, word for word. Their conversations may be quirky or amusing or dull, but notice.Describe the people who walk by. Their clothes and hair and dogs. Smell the pizza in the air. Is it veggie or pepperoni? How do the clouds move across the sky?

Alright, now I'm in the cafe. (I am drawing as well as writing, but stupidly haven't yet figured out how to let you see them) Here's a guy who came in. His hair is pretty outrageously curly. I wrecked his eye -- it looks like he's wearing an eye patch. Oh, well.
Then there's this guy, who has all kinds of lines in his face when he smiles. He's not bad looking in real life, but my drawing makes him look ghoulish. I am still terrible at drawing people, but that's not the point. I'm absorbed and entertained. And my bad drawings make me laugh, and laughter is good for the soul.
Here's a guy with a cap, and a big wad of food in his cheek. He reminds me of an old boyfriend who had this theory of eating. He took the biggest bite of food he could manage to stuff in his mouth, wadded it up in his cheek, and then chewed methodically, bit by bit, swallowing when each bit was mush. He had to chew like forty times for each bit, and each wad took about five minutes. He was the slowest eater I've ever known...
This exercise always makes me happy. I am usually uplifted or armed with some fresh absurdity by my observations
There are all kinds of people in the world, with interesting or silly habits and thoughts. You are only one of them. While you're busy observing and noticing, someone may be observing you, too. We can all be part of making each other's day, making one another's story.

An Act of Attention - a happiness how-to

AN ACT OF ATTENTION

(Pre-script: Sorry these beginning posts are so long -- they will get shorter once the explanatory stuff is out of the way. For the impatient, the happiness exercise is in bold type, as are my run-ins with them. The quotation marks indicate a book excerpt)

"To allow happiness to save your life, I am advocating two steps.
The first is to try to see, hear, smell, feel the world around you, at least once a day.
Really notice light, clouds, rain in puddles. Feel the air on your skin. Or in the supermarket, notice the pyramids of fruit, the colors, the textures, all the abundance. Or take a shower and really feel the warmth of the water sluicing down your skin, the steam in your nose. Close your eyes and just feel it. Try not to think of anything else.
Then, take the Act of Attention to another level. Create something from it. Bring a small notebook and a pen or pencil wherever you go. Then you can write or draw your experience of your Acts of Attention. Writing for me is easiest, although sometimes I draw, too. Remember, this is for your eyes only, so you don’t have to be intimidated. Use the medium that feels most comfortable, or a combination. No one else will see your drawing or writing unless you choose to show them. This is only for you.
You don’t have to produce anything akin to Leonardo’s notebooks the first week, or ever. God knows I haven’t. Nor does your writing or drawing need to be particularly “creative.” This is initially, at least, only a tool to remember experiences, to recreate them and to have a record. If you feel that you must be “artistic” it’s doubtful you’ll do anything but create more pressure in your life.
Keep It Simple
At first, just notice the day. Write the date and time, your estimate of the temperature, generally what the weather is like—cloudy, sunny, snowing. And one or two other observations, after really attending to some aspect or aspects of life around you. Squirrels are good. “There is a squirrel in the backyard.” Then try to draw it or describe it. “A fat and happy squirrel, getting ready for winter. It seems redder than other squirrels. It just looked at me. Maybe it’s observing me, too. It has little beady eyes.” Remember, it doesn’t have to be a profound Act of Attention. It just has to be one.
If you’re thinking now, “How can noticing a squirrel, then making an inept drawing of it make me happy? This project is a dumb waste of time,” I’m sure you’re not alone. But these will be your Acts of Attention, your drawings and writings that will be aids to your memory. The moments of happiness, or simply moments of attention in your own life. Believe me, they will eventually accumulate and make you appreciate your life and your self more than you ever have.
What You Will Need
1) This book, for a while. How to use it: read it through, doing the exercises as they come up (or the next day if you don’t have time while reading). Then embark on the thirty exercises at the back of the book, one for each day of a month. Then you can repeat them, or make up your own.

2) A notebook and a pen or pencil.
(Choose them well. The notebook should be a size that is easy to take everywhere, to carry in your backpack or purse or shirt pocket, depending on how light you travel. The paper quality should suit your writing tool. I like juicy pens, so I need pages that will not bleed through. They can be lined or unlined, whichever you prefer. The notebook should be bound well so that pages don’t fall out. Experiment with paper, pens and pencils. Find what you like best. This is important. You must enjoy using them, whether you use a designer pen and notebook or a #2 pencil and your second grader’s discarded Malibu Barbie notebook.)

3) Twenty minutes a day (less if this is not possible, but twenty is optimal).

That’s all.

Getting Started
So you have your notebook and your pen. Set aside twenty minutes. Sit in a comfortable place in your home, at your kitchen table, in a recliner, on your bed, out in your garden if you have one. Write the date and time. Now look around you. Write something about the first thing you see. Really look at it, as if you’d never seen it before. Then take your time writing, drawing. You don’t have to speed, you can be very deliberate. Really look before you put pen to paper, then think what you want to say before you write. “There is a water glass on the table. It has a blue tint to it, and swirls in the glass. It is from my mother’s house. I remember it came from a box of laundry detergent, a long time ago, when I was a child.” Then write about the next thing. “The curtains in this room are faded, like ivory. They would look really good if someone embroidered on them, in pale colors.” “My dog is chewing a rawhide as big as his head. The end looks all soft and smushy, like dough from him gnawing at it.”

THE FIVE EASY PIECES EXERCISE: Write about five things you see. Write whatever you happen to observe or think about them. Write only a few sentences for each object. Then if you like, you can draw them as well. Try not to be too critical. Try not to incorporate your own feelings, unless they are either fairly neutral or positive feelings. Go.

If this has taken you twenty minutes, that’s fine. If not, look at more things, describe them. Draw them if you want. If you commit Acts of Attention to only three objects, that’s fine, too, as long as you use all your time. Then stop and read what you wrote, look at what you drew. Do not judge. Close the book and wait till tomorrow.
Congratulations. You have started on the road to being happier."

OK, so here are my five easy pieces, from the garden that I can see out the window, as it is raining massively and I wanted to start with the garden:

A fan of chives, the green of the stems dripping, and the puffed heads of the flowers, the color of the thistle crayon in the BIG box of Crayola crayons. Always it was one of my favorite colors, along with sea green and salmon. The kind of colors you would only need in bottom of the ocean mermaid coloring books.

There is a large plastic owl in the garden, the kind they sell in hardware stores to keep the crows from stealing the seeds. Only there is a huge and shiny and rain-soaked crow perched atop the owl, looking very pleased with himself.

Marigolds, which surround my bedraggled basil plants at the stage where they’ve not decided whether to flourish or give up the ghost. The basil seems kind of transparent, as ghosts are portrayed. The marigolds, however, are almost wildly bright and look pleased with themselves.
A pot of geraniums, whose leaves I love, circles of green with darker hearts inscribed on them. I tend to notice the leaves more than the flowers, even though these are bright screaming pink and want to be admired beyond reason.The leaves yet remind me of Fantasia flowers, although it’s been forever since I saw the film, the images are still vivid in my mind.

Rhubarb. Talk about leaves. I made a hat from one on Sunday, remembering a Eudora Welty character making her baby a hat out of a leaf. Oh, it was Gloria in Losing Battles. One of the best summer books. But rhubarb is the quintessence of spring. It’s sharpness, it’s pink and greeness. Made a strawberry rhubarb pie. I got the crust right even though it was not pretty. Flaky and crisp and delicate brown, with the filling leaking a little, just enough to glaze the edges a bright berry pink.


So, that took about twenty minutes to write. Could have written more except that I was distracted by my mother coming in and asking, “Are you writing?” I nodded my head. She continued right along. “There are some good specials at Big Y, but I don’t like to park there. And I don’t like the aisles being so narrow. You know, I saw a cat in the garage the other day. I don’t know, I think it’s terrible that people let their cats roam around...” I try to just carry on, and I don’t know, I guess I really started doing this blog to save my life (see my profile, which should be up v. soon). And no, I’m not 14 years old...but the five easy pieces exercise did make me happier, it really did. Hope it does the same for you.






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