SHOPPING MALLS. ENTRY HALL TO HELL?

Devil_cartoon_charactor

I found this little rhyme I did many years ago:

 

Hell’s Entry Hall

must be a shopping mall.

Vendors try to take from me

my most precious commodities!–

money and time,

while I wander

like a listless lab rat fed too much soda

in an IQ measuring labyrinth ,

the piped -in Christmas music-like sounds of singing slot machines of Vegas quickening my pulse,

urging me to hurry, hurry “ save 50%”

of nothing I would want to buy.

Is there an exit, not blocked with perfume-spraying trolls?

Kudos to those with mall- mastery.

It is above my pay grade, and brings only misery.

If I wake up after death, strolling in a mall,

it means God had no faith in my choices at all.

~~~~~~

I don’t feel this way because I’m virtuous, but because I am completely tasteless.

Right now, I am wearing super low- rise jeans that were in style two years ago. Because of weight loss, they fall in the wrong place and look like the SNL sketch about the repairman unknowingly displaying his butt crack. All that is missing is the tool belt. I don’t care.

I still have sweaters from my college days, which were an official eon ago. I once had an employee tell me I looked like a homeless person, and take me shopping, because to be seen with me embarrassed her. I don’t care.

I will probably always be a little out of date, or as I prefer to call it “ classic”, because the time I don’t spend looking for ways to spend money is time I can spend, writing, creating or making music or spending time with those who do.

Someone said that wealth is discretionary time. To me this is true .It is also freedom. It’s freedom to do what I love to do, measured in minutes hours or days. It’s not how much I can buy or even how much I can buy on sale. I save money in other ways: I tend not to spend it at all. Christmas is the exception and the Wild Card. It is fun shopping for other people, but I’m not going to take out another mortgage on my house on the 50 percent chance the gift I buy is what they really, really want.

For me, biology creates destiny: I am a woman born without the shopping gene. My mom and grandmother were born without it too. Childhood shopping trips usually resulted in tears all around.

Hey, Mall Mastery is an adventure and a challenge. I prefer walking a different type of tightrope– the life of the artist– gathering my creations, going through the painful process of self- editing, assimilating them in some semblance of order or perfect disorder, and standing there naked, daring someone to react. That means, if I do get paid, it is rarely and not much.

The less I buy, the more time I have to engage in this process, and the less pressure I have to put on myself to be a product instead of producing one. I still do, but not as much. So, if you see me on occasion wearing my clothes backwards, kindly tell me:)

 

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN HEAVEN AND EARTH CONVERGE?

cloudsonwater

 

The picture at left was the view from my balcony this weekend. The heavens appear to be literally touching the water, but it’s simply the vivid reflection of the clouds off the ridiculously clear water. Me being me, I immediately began wondering, do heaven and earth collide, and what would it look like if they did? I’m always reaching and looking towards Heaven and squinting really hard to see if I can get even a faint glimpse.

I think I now have a surprising answer. Yes, all the time, and it doesn’t look like what one would think.

I don’t know why I have to travel hundreds of miles away from my life to figure out things in my life, but apparently I do.

Because of my biblical training, steeped in Saints and martyrs, burning bushes and of course, Jesus’s example, I actually had it wrong. I thought a bridge between heaven and earth was huge, rare, probably involved the heavens literally opening and God saying something like, “ Hey, you! I’m right here!”

I now know differently. Heaven and earth collide all the time. All that is necessary is a small bridge between the two. I like to call it a Bridge to Marvel. Something that takes us, if even just for a moment, out of our worries, our fears, and ourselves and seems to direct us to focus towards a Benevolent Father long enough to notice he is there.

There was no cell service in the canyon, so I had 3 days where I was forced to pull my head out of my own purse long enough to see these amazing Bridges to Marvel happening with regularity. The first day without Twitter I was somewhat twitchy, but that sustained period of focus produced a multitude of these beautiful little bridges.

The first was the most annoying monarch butterfly in creation. Every time I got away to myself even for just 30 seconds to sit in the sun and reflect on something a speaker had said, she would show up. Not one for subtlety, it took about 10 times for me to figure it out. She would circle me and then go straight for my face, startling me. Every time. As if to say, “ Hey! I’m right here!”

My second bridge was a public one and everyone in the room at the time, knew it. God appearing in a grand flourish. The last night of the conference, there was a campfire where everyone gathered for friendship, and conversation. There were some great professional musicians there, who blessed us with their gifts. But, these musicians encouraged non- professionals to jump in. They used their considerable gifts to bolster and support people trying to escape their comfort zone. The last song of the night, a non- musician stepped up and started singing an old hymn. The guitarists joined in. Something happened. All of us, every last one of us, were pulled into the song and each other and everyone sang, harmonized, drummed and strummed. We all looked at each other like 6 year olds surveying their Halloween bounty. We could not believe it was happening, but it was. It was magnificent. It was reaching up to God and finding him.

My final bridge to marvel was in the person of my roommate. She was the closest thing to the embodiment of an angel as I’ve ever seen. Of course, she did not look like what I thought she would. She was in her late 70s, walked with great difficulty and was too tired to do the late night campfires. She had the most radiantly happy countenance. One day, she got up to sing a song about her son. In a clear, soft voice she sang of how she knew she would meet him again, for he had died of a brain tumor years ago. She sang it with that same radiant countenance. The next morning, she casually mentioned that the reason she could not join me in many of the conference activities was that she had been diagnosed with cancer for the third time. She supposed that the stress of being at her son’s hospital bedside for months on end and finally watching him die had been the culprit. Then she said, “ I’ve learned that we have to give praise anyway.” Boy, she taught me a thing or two that I still ponder and will for some time. She was a bridge to heaven. “Hey You! I’m right here, looking at you!”

So, for me it appears to be a matter of focus. If I can focus my awareness on seeing these Bridges to Marvel, they are everywhere, and if I can see a bridge, perhaps sometimes, I can be one. The hug I talked myself out of giving, the time I shrunk away from singing, speaking, dancing or loving, might have been someone’s bridge. Sometimes I am so stupid. I know that God works through people, but I try to pre- select whom he will work through. I don’t know much, but I do know that God isn’t looking for perfect people to be his reps. If that were the case, he wouldn’t have much human help would he?

REMIND ME TO FORGET

dragonfly

Next time you see me, remind me to forget for just one moment, these things:

The Meaning of Life. Commerce, Success and the Survival of the Fittest. Trying to catch up. Goals. Deadlines. Drama. Well, maybe not drama… Mortgage payments.  The Never Ending Quest.

Please remind me to forget these things just long enough to reboot my memory of who I really am:

Poet

Standing

Bleeding

Crying

Laughing

Puzzling

Preaching

Encouraging

Agitating

Moving

Breaking

Offering

Naked

Afraid

Engaging

Braving all

Remind me to forget all of the other stuff, so I can remember why I write. It is not a vocation for me, but a passionate calling. I cannot not do it.

Life is Just Moments, not goals.

It is my privilege to try to share them or maybe even provoke a few.  This is my “daily bread.” This is what gives me sustenance to go another day, another week, until those other things take care of themselves.

Give us this day our daily bread…

All that is promised is today.

All too seldom, I am seized by gratitude for all of those people whom by word, deed, and prayer or simply by their presence in my lives, have supported me in my dream of being a writer. It occurs to me that that dream is not on the far horizon. It’s right here. The ability to be passionate about something, to spread that passion and to have a loving community that supports this endeavor. What else is there?

 

WHERE AND WHAT YOUR BLISS IS?

 

 

Find your bliss, bla…bla… bla… But why is it so freaking difficult to find this thing that we are supposed to be doing, that is going to make it all make sense, make us happy, give us purpose?

Perhaps because it is a simple thing of childhood. Grownups put “childish things” away and make things complicated.  Grownups go to seminars to figure out how to live.

Grownups make-work, stay busy and take Prozac.

sunflowersincageMaybe it is as simple as this: if it makes you happy to do it, it will make others happy too.

 

What was the first lesson of childhood, besides, “No!”?

The hope of every artist is that his or her work will live on some way outside of itself. To do that, we need each other. It’s hard facing rejection every day, not just of what we do, but who we are at the deepest level.

 

Facing a case of paralysis in starting my next writing project, I holed up at the coast with bottled water, 5 Lean Cousines and a big box of wine looking for my mojo and my inner Hemingway.

Know where I found the spark? Talking to another artist and getting inspired by his work, and feeling gratitude for my friends Joe McDermott and John Cates, fellow artists lending me their kind expertise to help me on a project that I am more excited about than anything in recent memory.

I’m excited about a whole new area and want to spread that excitement like wildfire!

Our gift and our obligation as artists is to infect others : with joy, inspiration, wonder, mystery, outrage… To infect the lives of others with artistry.

 

ranchonedaisy

Set free the imprisoned splendor.

Browning