WheReeVeR YoU aRe iS ThE EnTRy POiNt!

This is my best friend, Laini Taylor, and this is her working on her book in her writing / kitchen nook. For many, many mornings she has gotten up at the crack of dawn, winded her way down her windy staircase, crept dozily into her kitchen, turned on the coffeepot, sat down at her kitchen table, opened up her laptop, and spent the wee morning hours writing away! She sits here and writes whether or not shes in the mood. When I think of Laini, I think of Maira Kalman's Max, the poet dog, describing his best friend, Bruno: "Some people say. "That Bruno is crazy." But Bruno is no crybaby. He just keeps working on the ideas in his head." This week, she will finish the second draft of her first novel! (to be released by Putman spring 2007!)

Laini is a collector of cake stands, tablecloths, books, dishtowels, and puppets. She lives in a bright yellow house with a bright red front door. She's one of the most driven people I have ever personally known and shes gone after what she loves like a straight arrow. She had no back-up plan. Her approach to life reminds me of advice Robert Henri gave : "Use the ability you already have, and use it, and use it, and make it develop itself." Laini also happens to be a wizard blueberry cobbler and bananabread baker, made more than thirty different types of cookies this past holiday season (most of which were rapidly deposited into my husband's tummy), and she also happens to have an extraordinary husband named Jim DiBartolo, who is himself an amazing painter and writer. They co-created a book together, The Drowned, which you can buy on Amazon!

Ok, I think I'm getting a bit sidetracked! The reason I chose these two things together- Laini's photo at her writing nook and "Whereever you are is the entry point"- a line from a poem I love by poet, Kabir- is because the first image inspires me, and the second, this post title, comforts me. Together, they form a joint beam of sorts that lights my way forth. When you have a friend like Laini, its easy to compare oneself and to start asking self-critical questions. Why aren't I writing more? Is talent something reserved for the blessed few? Why have I put up so many seemingly unnecessary obstacles between my most cherished dreams and myself? Is it too late to jump in and truly bloom? Of course it isn't! Do the rose and the hydrangea really need to compare themselves? No! Instead, each does what it came here to do- to unfold, to persevere against the elements, and ultimately, to bloom, and before you know it, each is a magnificent expression of itself for all the glorious world to witness! And it seems very clear to me that each of us must do the same.

I often remember Kabir's words when I am struggling painfully with something, or simply feeling really lost. Actually, now that I think about it, I often share it with my clients when they feel like they don't know "how to get to" whatever or whereever it is they think they are supposed to be. We can sit down instead, look around and look inside, and embrace that exactly where we already are is the perfect place to enter whatever it is we yearn to begin.

And while we're at it, we might consider each creating our own nooks and crannies right in our very own living spaces that invite our creativity into a sacred space. I think of Mary Engelbreit's delicious magazine, Home Companion. This month she features women whom have created their own cozy writing nooks. One has a daybed with brightly colored, mismatched cushions splashed across the peach bedspread. Another has created her own mini boudoir-style "writing station," complete with a file cabinet transformed by decoupaging pastiche papers. But theres many other possibilities too...I'm thinking candles, spools of ribbon, throws, a vase of your favorite flowers, a picnic blanket strewn across your living room floor in the middle of winter, just you and your bowl of fruit and your legs stretched all the way out, your #2 pencil, and a dream that can take you anywhere you are committed to going...

Here are some links you might enjoy!
www.lainitaylor.com
www.jimdibartolo.com
www.homecompanionmag.com

Sweet Dreams!

"A BeaUtiFuL DaY WhEn ANYthInG MaY HaPpEn...If YoU HaVe nO ObjEcTiOn tO IT!"...

Thats one of my favorite lines from one of my very favorite children's book series about the Moomins! Whenever I remember that line, I smile inside with delight.( & I apologize again for the upside down picture.. Someone more gifted than I is going to have to solve this!) Anyway, when I read that above quote, I am reminded of the (rather large) part of me that continues to be quite the stubborn ox, and that obstinate part of me sometimes prevents me from being AS open as I might and could be to an even richer and more expansive life. So I aim to start this day with absolutely NO OBJECTIONS to all the wonderful things that may arrive in packages I can recognize, and in ones that I can't. (Note to DiBartolos: One package I can definitely recognize that you might consider sending is from Anthropologie.)

I start a new journaling workshop again next week for women coping with depression and posttraumatic stress disorder, and one of the exercises I came up with for my last group that turned out to be a favorite I am going to do again, and I thought I'd share it here with you!

I was inspired to do it after reading a brilliant little essay by Robert Bly. He wrote this tiny marvel of a book entitled, "A LIttle Book on the Human Shadow." In it is a chapter called "The Long Bag We Drag Behind Us." Bly writes, "Behind us we have an invisible bag, and the part of us that our parents don't like we, to keep our parents love, put in the bag. By the time we go to school, this bag is quite large. Then our teachers have their say: "Good children don't get angry over such things. " So we take our anger and put that in the bag." And then !, before too much more time, to connect to our peers, our classmates, religions, culture, etc., our bags are so heavy they could break a back if you could actually weigh them on a scale.

Bly goes on to say something that resonates with me even more, because its also one of the ways out, to recover and feel whole and unencumbered again. He writes, "We spend our life until we're twenty deciding what parts of ourself to put into the bag, and then we spend the rest of our lives trying to get them out again!"

So I'm going to have a writing and drawing exercise again giving everyone in the group a chance to explore in writing, images, and collage what might lie in their own individual bags that they want to reach in, grab, and if they wish to, toss into a collective bonfire of old messages and ideas that no longer truly serve them.

So today, I wish for you that whatever may lie in your bag, may it be consciously and by choice! And may you have as close to no objections as possible to all the wonderful things that may happen to you today, whether its an unexpected kiss on your cheek, corn fairies brushing you awake with feathers, or just a brief ray of sunlight across your face.

I'm off to see the wizard this weekend...be back Monday!

(And don't forget to keep tuning in for the upcoming $100 Million Dollar Sweepstakes- you'll only find it here- you don't want to miss out on your chance, right? Theres only like 5 people reading this so you have a very, very good chance of winning indeed!)

THis MaRveLouSly MAd LiFe We LiVe!

During most of my twenties, I was determined to not own more than could squish into a teeny car. This way I could ensure that I felt free to tapdance through my days if I wished to, travel, read, nap, juggle cupcakes, write, journal, run my hands over green apples all day long if that was my whimsy, or simply, to wonder away the afternoon in the watchtower in Volunteer Park. I found a cushy job as a canine nanny on Seattle's Queen Anne Hill for a bright white, fluffy Bijon-Fraise named Poopsie Marie Maxwell. She had a bed on each floor-a waterbed in fact on the third-, and so long as I fed her at the top of every fifth hour, she was pretty low-maintenance. (This wasn't exactly the dream job my parents had hoped I'd lassoe in after college. "Lawyer" or "doctor" don't have the same ring as "canine nanny," but they wrung their hands in the air and eventually got to know the Serenity prayer by heart.)

But the thing is, for most of my adult life, I think I've been trying to avoid complications. The phrase "voluntary simplicity" really resonated with me, and I found myself packing my backpack and moving to Israel, and later on to Bulgaria, vaguely aware that I was trying to do one of three things: outrun myself, retrieve myself, or maybe slivers of both. And for the most part, I kept things pretty simple. I mastered the art of living lightly...

Flash forward to now, where I feel such an abundance-even an excess these days-of everything- material posessions, feelings, internal clutter. I look around my apartment- at my beautiful leather chair that I have become insanely attached to, my walls glittering with my best friend, Laini's, artwork, plants, books and books and more books, journals and more journals, candles, wedding presents still not used as the years passed, and growing additions to my dangerous Anthropologie addiction! But lately I just want to sweep it all aside and live in a room with sand covering the floor and nothing else but a window open to a bright blue sky. Instead, I'm writing here from Portland and on the verge of buying a home!

So, I'm starting this blog to have a place to check in, to slow down, because I find that its often when I write that the mental debris finds its way into piles that I can then sort through and decipher, and toss away if necessary. I also happen to love the blogs of others, their willingness to go deep sea diving within their own struggles, and emerge victoriously after putting words to the nebulous world of feelings. I'm also writing this since my dearest friends on this huge planet of ours, Laini and Jim, are endlessly encouraging me to keep writing, not to give up...(BTW, visit their beautiful sites! www.jimdibartolo.com and www.lainitaylor.com )

I call this blog 'Marvelous Madness' because isn't that what life is really? Its marvelously sacred and its marvelously wild like fire shooting out of your ears at midnight and sometimes, its just hard. So, I hope you'll welcome me to this marvelously miraculous cybercommunity!

And to Gene's family if you are reading this, Dobur Den!!!

P.S. The photo is my husband, Gene, and I from our wedding (we don't just dress that way any old day!)