A picture's worth a thousand words

I have seen a tremendous amount of beauty in the last week. Walking through a snowstorm can be rough on the eyes, but being out there with the snow blowing every which way on the day that I took the photo above made me wonder why I don't go out in snowstorms more often. It is such a different experience when I am standing in the middle of the whirling snow than it is from behind a pane of glass. It is beautiful, but in a raw, humbling way. The distinction between my body and the air around me feel porous somehow standing out there exposed to the elements.

I walk down this street every day. this is the quickly melting aftermath of the previous photo. I love the icicles hanging from the eaves of this building. They can be rather brutal if you happen to be unfortunately to be walking beneath one of them when it decides to give in to the pull of gravity and let go, and in reality they are simply caused by bad insulation, but there is nevertheless something magical about them, don't you think?

I had a business meeting the other day with a client whose business is just off to the left of the edge of this photo. Walking down to the waterfront to meet him that morning I had the thought "I WORK HERE..." I get to see the deep blue of the Atlantic with the sun shining down on it every day. I get to meet with clients in a room flooded with the brilliance of light dancing off water. I mean, seriously. Can you imagine waking up to this every day?

DON'T POSTPONE JOY

Photo credit: Eylon Israely, 2007 (From Flickr's Creative Commons)

I was talking to my good friend Ahava Shira the other day. She is in the process of organizing an incredible retreat called Opening to Joy on Salt Spring Island, British Colombia, at the end of this month. Ahava is doing some incredible work with men and women -- empowering them to take the entrepreneurial leap creatively, confidently, and with the support and encouragement to ensure that they succeed. This is the first retreat that she is organizing, and as such is both very exciting and a little bit overwhelming at the same time. Ahava mentioned that so far registration has been low, and that as she was driving home from hosting her weekly Radio Show, Love in the Afternoon, she had started thinking about postponing the retreat until the Fall. As she was driving and thinking about this, she looked up and noticed a truck driving down the road in front of her decorated with a bumper sticker that read: "Don't postpone Joy." Ahava is one of the most intuitive people I know, and like me, she is a strong believer in signs, so receiving such a blatantly clear response to her deliberations made her decide to use the weekend to reconsider her idea of postponing, using the time to instead try to come up with a creative way of overcoming the barriers that are preventing those who have expressed an interest in participating in her retreat from registering for it.

I have been thinking a lot about her story this weekend myself, and reflecting on the deceptively simple message on that bumper sticker. It is so easy, with the stresses and challenges of everyday life, to keep putting joy off until later. Until I have a job. Until I have a better salary. Until I have a place to call home. Until I have met a man to share my life with. Until I have a family.....There are so many excuses for putting joy off, and yet when it comes down to it, being joyful is an art form that really has nothing to do with what you have or do not have, who is in your life or not, or whether you have achieved your version of success. It is an art form that can be mastered at any given moment simply by practicing making the choice at every turn to recognize and celebrate joy. In reality, if you cannot be joyful when things are tough, how can you be sure that you will be any better at it when your circumstances change?

For my part I am not at all sure that I would be any better at it in different circumstances, so I have decided that DON'T POSTPONE JOY is going to be my mantra for the new year. There will be no more putting joy off til later. Laundry, taxes, shopping and bills--yes. Joy--no.

What about you, friends? How do you practice the art of joy in the now?

Grapelandia

I drove to Sebastopol today for a job-related meeting, passing through some of the most gorgeous wine country outside of Tuscany. Rolling hills embroidered with row after row of grape vines, their leaves all turning various hues of golden, orange and yellow. I drove down this morning, and back as the afternoon light was turning that warm golden shade that reminds me of ripe apricots. The sky was crisp blue. I was wearing a tank top and had the window rolled down in November. It was one of those days that my friends on Prince Edward Island will be dreaming about pretty soon. I only wish that someone else had been driving, because there were just not enough pull off areas to stop for photos everywhere I wanted to.

Still....

Not too shabby, eh?

Happy Wednesday, friends! I hope that these gorgeous sunny photos bring some warmth into your mid-week world! See you Friday!

The "C" word

This photograph is the property of Dionne Randolph. May not be reprinted without permission.

"To love is to risk not being loved in return. To hope is to risk pain. To try is to risk failure, but risk must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing." -Leo Buscaglia

I mentioned in my blog post last week (Deepening the Vision) that I am taking part in a course called Pathfinder, which is intended to help participants find their path in life. Every day I am sent activities to engage in to help me progress towards greater clarity about my chosen career path. Last week I made a vision board, which i posted a photo of here. Since I wrote that post however, I was told to add a few more things to my board. One was my word of the year.

A word of the year is a word that seems to best encapsulate one's goals for the year ahead. I love tasks, so when I got this assignment, I got straight to work looking over the images on my board and trying to come up with one word that best encapsulates what I am hoping to accomplish this year. I grabbed my journal and opened it to a fresh page, and got my pen out, and wrote "Joy" at the top of the page.

I sat there looking at it, and I thought --yeah, that is great, but that is not everything.

I wrote "gratitude" beneath that.

Better, but still not quite it.

I kept going:
grace
abundance
transformation
energy
hope
harmony
let go
forward
serendipity
motivation
attention
perseverance
optimism
prosperity
refinement
relationship
serenity
tenacity
truth
willingness
home
focus
courage
commit/commitment
balance
attitude

I pondered over my list all day, and went to bed that night still uncertain which one felt right. The instructor for the course, Karen Walrond, said that we would *know* when we had the right word. We would be able to *feel* it. I lay in bed that night staring at the ceiling and wondering why no one word seemed right.

When I woke up in the morning I looked at my list again. My eye kept stopping on commit, but surely, I told myself, that could not be my word for the year.

I mean...really?

 

Karen had instructed us, once we had chosen a word, to write it in large letters across our board, so I got out my whiteout and started scrolling it across my board. Half way into writing the word I started having doubts. I wasn't sure about this word. I tried rubbing the first three letters off of my board, but I couldn't wipe them away. I tried a wet sponge. No luck. I stared at the word, wishing it off my board, but there was no taking it back.

So I finished writing it, in fine white letters. When I was done I stood back and looked at my board. I compared it with the example Karen had given us of her board, with its big chunky green ABUNDANCE blazened across the board. I looked back at my scrawny letters. I began to realize that commit was definitely my word. I was so uncomfortable with the word that even writing it in the middle of my vision board was giving me heartburn. Yeah. I *felt* it alright.

I made the letters bigger and thicker, and I found a few quotes that had to do with commitment and added them also. COMMIT. It looks better now. More visible from a distance. Yes. I definitely need to work on commitment this year -- no question about it! Commitment in my work -- with my writing, my research and my agricultural work. Commitment to my goal of increasing my salary. Commitment to finding myself a new home somewhere. To strengthening my relationship with God. And to opening myself to the possibility of love again. The word really sits rather snugly right at the centre of everything I am seeking right now.

One of my best friends, Dionne (see gorgeous wedding photo above), just recently got married. Marriage is a huge commitment. She and her husband are a couple that I see often. I love to hang out with them because they are fun-loving and playful, but also gentle and kind. They also challenge each other -- respectfully -- to be better people. When Dionne wants to work on something like her running, or her spiritual growth, Todd is supportive and encouraging. Even when it is something that he is not all that interested in, if he can see that Dionne is excited about something he is right there behind her encouraging her to pursue her own personal growth and development. Sharing a marriage relationship is the epitome of commitment, so I am grateful that I have Todd and Dionne in my life because they not only share their hopes and dreams and joys and fears in relationship -- they are always super encouraging and excited to hear about my exploration and experiences of relationship.

My vision board is now complete, and the word COMMIT meets my eyes whenever I glance over at it, firm and defiant -- reminding me of the work that lies ahead. I am grateful for this word, and for the exercise of having to commit to a word of the year -- my first tiny step towards commitment.

Do you have a word for the year? If you had to choose one, what would it be, and how would it act as a talisman to give you direction towards achieving your goals in the year ahead? If you come up with one and feel like sharing, I would love to read your experience with coming up with one below.

Happy gratitude Monday, friends! I hope you have a great week ahead!

In the beginning

In the beginning of anything new it takes a lot of hard work for very little reward, sometimes for a very long time. Last week I planted seeds in the youth garden that I volunteer in. And yesterday, after I finished a morning on the farm teaching 6th graders about tomatoes and peppers and harvesting with them, I walked over to the bed that I had seeded last week to see how everything was doing. From a distance, nothing. But up close:

This week I worked on three tea descriptions that will be printed on packages of tea for a small company back on Prince Edward Island, in Canada, and a story about a local artisan chocolate producer here in Sacramento for Artisan's Table, an online site that connects customers to artisan producers all over the country. I know my food and travel writing is slowly improving, but it feels like I am taking such incredibly small steps towards my goal at times that it is hard to imagine my writing career reaching maturity and bearing fruit in the way I envision.

Fortunately I have farming. Farming gives me hope that all the attention and energy I am putting into my writing will pay off in the long-term. That I will complete my research and finish a first draft of my novel, and that it will someday be published, read and enjoyed.

When I got down on my knees on the earth path between rows and saw the tiny seedlings pressing up out of the soil I felt my entire body breathe a sigh of relief. Somehow the growth of the plants made all the uncertainty in the rest of my life right now alright.

The pump was down yesterday, so I hand watered everything, watching the soil get dark and the water pool in the areas where the bed was slightly lower than the rest. The sun shone through the spray, radiating rainbows into the hot air.

Being able to see progress in the garden tells me that there is undoubtedly progress happening on all fronts, even though I cannot see it.

Last night my dad and I walked home from a restaurant we had gone out to dinner at. It was a lovely evening, the sky was crisp and clear, and the moon was big and luminous, spilling her light through the oak trees, over the black asphalt, the cracked pavement and the wet lawns in front of every house on the street. Watching the moon I felt this deep sense of peace and rootedness. I was on the pavement in Sacramento, but I was also sitting inside my own house back on PEI looking out my huge windows on new year's eve two years ago making a wish that led me west while the moon flooded the living room, and climbing the terraces on Mount Carmel in Haifa, Israel on the last night of my pilgrimage with the cool stone beneath my bare feet and the sound of fountains bubbling, water streaming past me down the mountain, the call to prayer from a nearby mosque and the pale moon the colour of sun-lit wheat above me, keeping watch as I climbed up towards the Shrine of the Bab.

It is Friday afternoon. Many of my friends are attending a conference this weekend in Moncton, New Brunswick. I did not realize how much I wanted to be there until today, when I started noticing that my heart was just not in my work, and then found myself checking out plane tickets to Moncton -- leaving today. Yeah, I know. Flying across the continent for a weekend with one day's notice...totally unrealistic. I spent the rest of the day struggling through my work, and challenging myself to stay present even though I so wanted to be on the last flight that would have gotten me to Moncton by tomorrow morning. It left at 2pm this afternoon.

This year has included a lot of sacrifice of good times. Travel. Conferences. Dinners out. But more importantly it has included lots of opportunities to learn that in order to succeed, my body and my mind and heart all have to be in one time zone. For example today my heart really wanted to jump that 2pm flight to Moncton. But it would have been leaving my body behind, and how enjoyable would my company have been all weekend with my heart on the opposite side of the continent?

So instead I am staying put. Watering the garden. Going to a devotional gathering. Doing yoga in the park. Talking a walk with a friend, and doing some reading and writing. My life this year has none of the international jet setting that is my norm. Most of what I do fill my days with right now falls way below the socially exciting radar. But there is growth happening. Humble, ordinary, gradual and slow, but growth nevertheless. And I am thinking that is what I need right now, as much as I fight it.

Beginnings require a lot of focus and energy. A lot of TLC. They are a lot like these seedlings, really. Lots of potential, but none of it will be realized if we stop watering them daily at this point. 

Are you working on developing something new in your life? A new relationship/career/journey or even Fall garden? How do you go about nurturing it and staying committed in the initial phases of growth when the proportion of energy going into it is much greater than the perceivable results? 

Have a great weekend, friends! See you on Monday!

Spiritual beings having a physical experience

I promised to write about the Association for Baha'i Studies Conference that I attended in San Francisco this past week, so here I am to fulfill that promise. The conference was entitled 'Transforming Habits of Thought,' and was about precisely that--how to re-envision everything we are doing within a spiritual framework.

There were over 1,500 individuals at the conference from all over the world. I even ran into folks there from New Zealand. There were a number of talks given in the main hall, and then in the afternoons there were multiple, simultaneous breakout sessions on rethinking our habits of thought in every area of our lives. In the evenings we enjoyed incredible music performed by professional musicians. It is hard to identify specific elements that made this conference so incredible, but I will try to mention a few things that stuck out to me, as well as my overall impression.

So many of the presentations were excellent, but a few stuck out to me, and are still making me reflect on how I think about particular issues and ideas. One was the first presentation I attended, by Keyvan Geula, a marriage and family counselor from the L.A. area. She is Iranian, and is dynamite! She addressed how to build and maintain happy, strong relationships with humour and great insight and wisdom, fully integrating the Baha'i writings into her presentation. She spoke about the importance of looking not only at whether we speak to each other, but at HOW we speak to one another; the distinction between emotions (unconscious) and feelings (emotions you are conscious of and must therefore take responsibility for); our lower, or physical self and our higher, spiritual self; the difference between empathy and sympathy; the fact that although we do have genetic predispositions, WE decide how we express our genes; the fact that marriage is a moral and social institution; the nature of our interactions--what is the spirit of our interactions with our partners/friends/colleagues, etc; and the faculty of meditation, which the founder of the Baha'i faith, Baha'u'llah, said is a characteristic of a human being (and the person who does not develop this faculty cannot be called a human being). Strong ideas to reflect on, for sure.

Another presentation that influenced me deeply was one given by a wonderful African American woman named Billie Mayo, about changing our habits of thought and practice around race. Billie has been transforming classrooms around the country through a program called Ubuntu (and I remember that word because she had the entire audience of 1,500 repeat it OUT LOUD -- I'm telling you, the woman is a genius). She is challenging educators to question their own attitudes towards children of different races, and how these attitudes influence the achievements of the children, the point being that if the teacher expects little, the children will aim low, whereas if a teacher has noble, high expectations of a child, the chances that the child will succeed are much, much higher. She followed her presentation up with having the entire room split into pairs and discuss our assumptions and experiences of people from various racial groups as we grew up. Having grown up in a country with very little racial diversity, and a lot of racial prejudice, this exercise still has me thinking about how I unconsciously treat people of different races without even being aware I am doing anything differently.Making change requires that we first become conscious of how we are thinking, right? So I guess I am on the right track. Lots to think about.

There were two other presentations that made a big impression on me. One was given by Fariborz Sahba, the architect of the Baha'i lotus temple in India and the terraces of the Baha'i World Centre on Mount Carmel in Haifa, Israel. The man has completely revolutionized what is possible in the world of architecture, and contributed works of tremendous beauty to the world. As he said, he has lovingly interpreted each place he has built in, bringing one of the names of God (beauty) into the physical realm of existence. He bases his creations on the idea, presented in the Baha'i writings by the Bab, that human beings have the duty of refinement--that it is forbidden to bring something into being in a state of imperfection when it could be made perfect. Perfection is his task rather than compromise, he explained, because beauty is a reflection of God on earth, and God is perfect.

Mr. Sahba also spoke about the four main dimensions of architecture: height, width, depth, and movement, mentioning that there is, in reality, a fifth dimension, which is the relationship between all things, because relationships are inherent in the reality of everything. He explained that for him, beauty is created through relationship, and that for him, the aim is not to have just a beautiful garden, but to have a garden that creates a space that speaks to the spirit. He highlighted the fact that God is in the details, which means that even the tiniest details that we cannot see are important. It was a truly impressive presentation, and his slide show of his creations was even more impressive. I have included some of them in this blog entry.

The last presentation that is still lingering with me is Rainn Wilson's. Rainn is an actor who plays Dwight on the T.V. show 'The Office.' He is also a Baha'i, which I think is excellent because he adds a great deal of humour to the Baha'i community. The man not only knows how to make people laugh, he knows how to make us laugh at ourselves, which is SO vital in any community. His presentation was about the intersection of art and faith, and he spoke extensively about Soul Pancake, an online community that he helped create that provides a space for young people to explore life's big questions through the arts. It is a super resource with loads of good ideas. I highly recommend checking it out if you have a minute. Rainn also reminded us of the Baha'i teaching that we are spiritual beings having a physical experience, not the other way around, and that as such we need to keep spiritual reality at the core of everything we do as artists. As Abdu'l-Baha said, "Art is Worship." To illustrate this point, he shared his favourite quote by Rumi: "The true work of art is but a shadow of divine perfection." He also encouraged the audience to allow their children to follow their hearts, quoting Oprah's favourite quote by Howard Thurman: "Don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and do that. What the world needs is people that have come alive." Point well taken. And well illustrated by a performer from the Canadian prairies with some powerful pipes who charmed the entire conference hall with her tunes. Munirih Sparrow is going places, fast. Check out her music here (my favourite piece is Midnight Prayer).

It was an incredibly thought-provoking conference this year, and I am happy I made the trek down to San Francisco to attend. Have you had any experiences/conversations, read any books or seen/heard works of art that have made you think differently about something lately?

Seven boxes

I was out at Soil Born Farm today, where I volunteer one day a week. It is that time of year when everything is full fruit, and much of it is very ready to be harvested. When I arrived at the farm, Guy, my partner in garden crime handed me a pair of clippers, and led me down a path overgrown with cucumber vines under which nestled bucket after bucket of three varieties of cucumbers. Lemon cucumbers are round and look vaguely like miniature yellow and white marbled watermelons on the outside. I slipped on my gloves and got to work pulling vines up and peering underneath, yellow globes hiding underneath the prickly leaves, resting against the warm earth, sunshine and pale green leaf-shadow dancing across the bed. These particular cucumbers are perfectly ripe when they are mostly white, with just a pale yellow glow radiating out from one end of the fruit. Most of ours were over-ripe -- the result of Guy being far too busy to keep up, and his not having enough volunteers to be able to monitor the fruit as it swells beneath the canopy of vine cover. After sorting through the piles of yellow cucumbers, we hauled the over-ripe ones to the green compost and emptied bucket after bucket into the pile. When we were done we moved onto the Syrian cucumbers--long, ridged, pastel green cucumbers that look so delicate and proper that they seem far more English than Syrian. After the Syrian cucumbers we harvested the deep green field cucumbers, and then on to the bumpy, melted wax bright orange-yellow squash, and then the gigantic zucchinis which had clearly been growing so long that they looked more like stone-age clubs than anything that could possibly be edible.

Done with the massive zucchini, I moved on to the peppers while Guy harvested potatoes. I have never grown peppers before, and they are a humbling vegetable to be sure -- especially the green bell peppers and the jalepinos, because they blend right in with the plant, making harvest a real hunt. In addition to the green peppers, I harvested banana peppers (which, you might have guessed, look exactly like bananas), chocolate peppers (which like look similar to bell peppers, only much smaller, that turn a lovely melted chocolate colour as they ripen), and some bright orange wrinkled peppers whose name slips my mind now. When I had them all in their box, they were a bright, Autumn-hued collage.

After the peppers Guy let me do what my fingers had been wanting to do all day -- harvest some tomatoes. We have beautiful cherry tomato vines climbing up trellises, but there are also a number of larger tomato varieties that I had been noticing swelling bright crimson beneath the thick layer of foliage.

 
These tomatoes are gorgeous friends. Sun-ripened, smelling of sunshine and that sharp, invigorating smell that tomato plants grown outside ooze like honey. It was hard to not sink my teeth into one (although Guy kindly gave me a few to take home which I fully intend to sink my teeth into over the next few days!)

The larger tomatoes were hard to find -- most of them were hidden deep inside the vine, so I searched with my hands, pulling out bright red fruit after bright red fruit -- the colour alone was dazzling in the afternoon sunshine.

I am telling you. You would have been drooling...

It made me want to make insalata caprese with fresh basil and Mozzarella di bufala, drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with coarse sea salt crystals.

While I was drooling over the tomatoes, Guy was hard at work harvesting carrots. Many of our carrots suffered from not having been thinned very well (for which I take full responsibility, since I started the job and then never managed to get around to completing it), but we were very happy to see that some of my thinning efforts did pay off, as he managed to find a good number of well-sized carrots in the rows, which made him exceptionally happy. This is what Guy looks like when he is exceptionally happy:

Ok. So as he pointed out, I need to discover the zoom, but this is Guy looking exceptionally happy from a distance, with our gorgeous youth garden all around him (which you would not see as much of if I had discovered the zoom before snapping this shot!)

I had to take off early, but I heard from Guy later today that he washed up everything we harvested, and made seven boxes of fresh produce, which he delivered to seven lower income families in the area. He said they were really psyched to receive the boxes. Very excited to receive all this fresh, tasty food. The image of their joyful faces makes me so. incredibly. happy. 

I did a few other things today that I did not get photos of. The best thing, that I wish I had taken photos of, was my visit with my friend Dionne and her gorgeous son Lucas. We sat on her living room floor and said prayers together, and studied Ruhi Book 2, which totally transformed my day for the better. We also took a walk around McKinley Park, beneath the huge oak trees in the late afternoon sunlight, trying to lull Lucas into a deep sleep (it worked, but only temporarily).

This evening I had a delicious supper with my parents, using some of the freshly harvested ingredients from the farm. It has been a day of bright colours, divine aromas, good company and sunshine, and I am looking forward to a very full weekend of service. I am heading down to Santa Cruz to learn how to facilitate a group of 24 Junior Youth who are in the redwood forest for the weekend. I love working with youth -- mainly because it is deeply humbling, and I learn SO much from them, and at the same am forced to grow beyond what I think I am capable of. I am looking forward to the challenge, and to meeting lots of new, radiant souls.

Whatever you are up to this weekend, may you enjoy it fully, friends. I hope you have a weekend saturated with colour, flavours, friends, laughter, and blue skies!

Quietly wondering

It is Tuesday night, and it is finally silent. Well...sort of. I can still hear traffic outside, but there are fewer cars, and in between I can hear the wind in the trees outside. It is only 10.20pm. By midnight it will be mostly quiet. Late night has become my favourite time of day here, I think because it is the only time when I can lie in bed and listen to nothing but the wind in the trees. A train rumbles across the valley late at night--some places I have lived have church bells. Here the rumbling train moving across the valley marks the passage of time in the same way. It reminds me where I am--in the middle of a wide open floodplain valley that is considered to be some of the most productive agricultural land in the country. It reminds me that I am in a vast land, and that the coast that I am used to having so near by that I can almost reach out and wrap it around my shoulders like a shawl, is far away.

Earlier I was in the kitchen barefoot waiting for the kettle to whistle, and listening to the wind sing through the screen door leading out into the garden. Dinner was over. My parents had gone out for a walk, and it was quiet for a precious 30 minutes. I could hear my own feet move across the kitchen floor.

I started researching a travel article that I had to have in to an editor today last Friday. I researched all day Friday, most of the night Friday night, all day Saturday, and most of the night Saturday night, all day Sunday, and Sunday night. On Monday I started writing. I wrote all day, and late into the night last night, sitting, sitting, sitting at my desk trying to conjure up images of Atlantic islands in my imagination. Trying to remember how it felt to drive along the Cabot Trail on Cape Breton with close friends, the sunlight filtering down through the trees, the car filled with laughter. Trying to decide which parts of Prince Edward Island to not include in my short few paragraphs about the island. Which part of six years of places I love are most essential? I finally sent my article off this afternoon, and went out on the back porch and sat in the sunshine and watched birds whose names I do not know hop around in the garden, and a squirrel leap from tree branch to tree branch. I inspected my tomato plants--two of which are covered in tiny yellow cherry tomatoes, and two of which do not show signs of ever producing fruit, and glanced at my arugula, which bolted before it ever really grew.

I have been doing a lot of silent wondering lately. Wondering whether all the work I am pouring into my writing is going to pay off in the long-term. Wondering how long it will take until I can write for magazines that pay a salary that will actually support me. Wondering if I have the stamina to keep going long enough to succeed as a writer. Wondering. It is a rough road, this much is very clear to me. I have given up social engagements and the hope of actually going anywhere exciting this summer, shopping and movies and new books and meals out with friends--even my weekends have been swallowed up with work, because I am still learning how long it takes to write a polished article, and because the learning curve is steep. For the first time in my life I am having to make large sacrifices on many levels. Giving up things makes me wonder a lot, and I am one who tends to do her wondering silently, while listening to the wind moving through the trees.

There is less traffic now, and more wind. In a place that tends to be hot and still at night, this unexpected breeze is a lovely surprise. I read in a blog recently that the best way to accomplish goals is to set them out loud and in public, but I find that setting my goals quietly and reflecting on them in my head and heart while I wait for the kettle to whistle, or look at the way the golden light is filtering through the upside down Mexican fishing basket that I converted into a lampshade at the bottom of my bed is making patterns on the ceiling seems to work better for me. I find that quietly wondering helps me work towards my goals slow but steady, in a way that loud sharing and public statements do not.

Do you quietly wonder?

4th of July

Photo by Andy Wilkes, 2008

As I type this post it sounds like bombs are exploding all over the city, the noise blossoming up and out, followed by spurts of crackling, fits of shots, and a shrill whistling that sounds like a balloon releasing its last breath under pressure, through a taut rubber opening. Fortunately all of the commotion outside is the city celebrating the 4th of July, and not the beginning of yet another war. My family had friends over for supper this evening, and after they left we did not feel like getting in the car and pushing through crowds to get to an official fireworks destination, so we decided to take a long walk through our neighbourhood and enjoy the small street celebrations that families all over the country were putting on this evening.

It is a hot, still summer night. The street lamps are glowing beneath the almost continuous canopy of oaks that dominate my neighbourhood, illuminating the full leafy constellation above our heads. Many people, wanting some peace and quiet to set off street fireworks with their children, have parked their cars across the street, blocking off traffic. A rare night of pedestrians, cyclists, and clusters of adults and children holding glow sticks and sparklers, standing in semi-circles around fountains of bright pink, green, red and blue sparks shooting up into the air -- some spinning, others releasing the high-pitched whining whistle, and others sending off erratic sparks in different directions like fireflies lighting up in swarms that slowly move across the darkness. Laughter and chatter fill the air. Some teenagers are sitting along the pavement sending text messages while their younger siblings draw pictures in the air with light. Parents kick back with cool bottles of beer that clink as we walk by. Groups of 20 somethings slide by on their beach cruisers. Blossoming trees are lit up as another fit of sparks explodes into the night. Windows are lit up with warm light. Lush foliage surrounding houses lights up momentarily and then falls into darkness. Roses are silhouetted against front porch lights. A pale yellow sickle moon hangs lopsided just above the rooftops. In front of us our shadows merge and separate, stretching out fluid along the cracked pavement ahead. Children yelp and shout with excitement, their voices rising and falling as we turn a corner and encounter another cluster, lawn chairs on the pavement, faces lit up brighter and brighter until the firework is spent. Scuffling and fiddling follows, and then another firework is lit and children scurry back, ushered by their parents, to stand or squat a safe distance away and watch, eyes wide and alert.

This morning when we woke up every house on the block had an American flag blooming out of its front lawn. There was nothing there last night, so someone must have come during the night and planted them there, feeling strongly that our entire street must come together in this unified show of patriotism. It is the first time I have ever had an American flag anywhere on my property. Standing on the pavement earlier today, I looked down the street and saw the miniature red, white and blues waving proudly in the breeze, and thought about the various dates throughout the year that people all over the world celebrate some form of independence. In a sense it is a universally shared aspiration, although it may mean something very different in diverse parts of the world. It probably means something very different to each individual as well. Having been raised in the Mediterranean, I have only celebrated a handful of 4th of Julys in my lifetime, and I had never, until tonight, really contemplated what we are celebrating. The right to self-government. I think about how many people do not have the right to determine how they live their lives. What religion they will follow. Whether they will go to school or work.

As the fireworks go off all around me, I am thinking about all those people in the world who are not free. Who are being persecuted for the colour of their skin, the language they happen to have been born speaking, or the belief system they follow. The 4th of July is a celebration of national independence, but it is also a reminder that each of us has a responsibility to continue speaking out against any form of injustice and the withholding of personal freedoms, so that some day everyone can enjoy an equal degree of freedom. Because really, if there is even one person who cannot claim independence, are any of us really independent?

Happy 4th of July, friends! While you are celebrating, why not take a minute to reflect on what independence really means to you? How does your country celebrate it? How do you personally celebrate independence in your everyday life? And how can you support others around the world who are still fighting for it?

For everything there is a sign

"O SON OF MAN! For everything there is a sign. The sign of love is fortitude under My decree and patience under My trials." Baha'u'llah, The Hidden Words

A friend read this Hidden Word to me on Tuesday. We were talking about how to move through periods of life that are challenging with grace, commitment, determination, faith and joy. Everyone who has ever tried to do anything that is the least bit risky in life has gone through periods of tests and challenges, but usually when we read about these moments they are within the context of a larger story that ends in triumph. A best-seller, a movie....you know what I mean. The stories that inspire us to keep going when life is throwing massive tests in our direction are usually the ones from people who have already pushed on through and come out triumphant. We do not so often come across stories of what life was like for these people when they were in the middle of those tough times, and I'm thinking that is because when they were there, very few of them were certain they would triumph in the end.

I was reading a blog entry today by Yaro Starak. The title of the entry was 'How to remain productive when you feel like giving up.' You can read it here. I thought this article was good because although Yaro has made a successful business out of his blogging and helping others to be successful bloggers, he very clearly went through some tough times getting there, and is very honest about how hard you have to work to succeed as an entrepreneur.

I am very definitely in the phase of developing my business (which is writing) where I feel discouraged a lot. Unlike a few months ago, it is not that I am not getting any writing jobs. It's that the number of writing jobs I am getting is not growing fast enough to support me yet. I say yet because despite feeling discouraged, I recognize deep down that I do not actually want to give up. That this is my passion and my gift, and that I have to keep trying. I believe that I will succeed. I just wish it would happen a little faster!!

Over the last few weeks I have gone from writing only for myself to writing a minimum of two travel articles a month, at least one tea description a month for a small tea company, and at least one or two other articles a month for various companies. Today my first printed piece was published in the Sacramento Natural Foods Co-op quarterly paper. Yesterday one of my travel articles was published online at Bootsnall, and I was contacted by a company that markets handcrafted food products and is looking for writers a couple of days ago. Compared with two months ago, I am actually making a lot of progress. But it is slow going, and there is a steep learning curve. I know how to research, and I consider myself a relatively strong writer, but I have never had to write under time constraints. Researching and writing the quality of writing that I know I am capable of in a short period of time is a learned skill, and one that I am very much immersed in at the moment. Because I am working as a freelancer, I have to constantly be scoping out future article ideas and sending off pitches, which in itself is time-consuming. There is a lot to think about, and none of it is second-nature to me at this early point in my career.

There is a distinction for me between the idea of being patient, and the how one actually ACTIVELY practices patience, because while accepting that I need to be patient is one thing, coming up with practical ways to do this that do not involve just sitting back and waiting for something to magically happen is another thing entirely. When I am discouraged, it feels like the weight of the world is hanging over me, and motivating myself to get going can sometimes take a hell of a lot of energy. Coming up with practical things I can do when I hit that wall is helpful. I know I will get where I want to be eventually, but right now I am down here in the valley of hard work and struggle, with very little reward for all my hard work, so what I need is a what to do list for the days when the going gets tough.

One of the things in Yaro's article that stuck out to me was the question "what can you create today?" I like the idea of asking myself this question because when I am struggling to get past a threshold, taking on huge projects is hard. Putting this question in front of me is much more doable. It does not have to be big, but it has to be moving me towards my goal. Any small act of creativity will do to help get me over that blip in the road until I am speeding along again full-force.

I decided to put it into practice today. Despite all the great things that I have going on with my writing this week, today was a blip day. The reason for the blip was that most of my friends back in Canada are all hanging out at a very cool camp in the forest this weekend, and I would really, really like to be there with them. But since my salary is practically non-existent at the moment, I will probably not be traveling at all this summer, let alone taking to the skies to join friends in Canada. I was sitting at my desk this morning and thought to myself: OK. You have to do SOMETHING. Or, as Yaro would say, "What can I create today?"

What I created was a lovely description for the tea company I write for, and this blog entry. I had committed to researching and writing one tea description a week, and pulling myself together and creating this little description helped me to make my goal. I had also been meaning to re-commit myself to my blog as I have been noticing that as I write more and more for others, I seem to be doing less of it on my own blog. As I finish writing this entry my father arrives home all excited with the newly printed Co-Op Reporter. True to their word, they did indeed give me a full page article. And an email just came in from the National Holocaust Museum with some excellent news about contacts for the research I am doing for my novel. I'd say it is working. :-)

So word from the trenches is to keep slugging away troops. Get up. Get moving, and take a step forward, even if it is only an inch. I am starting an official list of ways to keep moving. I now have number one thanks to Yaro.

Happy Friday people. And if you are stuck, remember to ask yourself "What can I create today?" and go for it. Let me know how it goes. And if you have other suggestions for my list, please give me a holler.

An afternoon with Mould, Matisse and Picasso

The Sketchbook Project in San Francisco, June 17th 2011

Last Friday was my birthday. It was also day 2 of a three day stopover for the sketchbook project, a traveling exhibit of over 10,000 sketchbooks filled with drawings, paintings, sketches, poetry, cartoons, thoughts, stories....you name it, it was in the exhibit. San Francisco was the last city in the tour, and I was there for a reason. One of my best friends, Louise Mould, had a sketchbook in the exhibit, and it being in San Francisco on my birthday was the best kind of birthday gift!

Driving into the city

I went down to the city with my parents on one of those rare sunny days in San Francisco. The sketchbook project was set up a bit like a library. You pick a theme from a long list, and then a country, and they bring you a sketchbook from that place. I started with Louise's sketchbook of course, give that it was the whole reason I was there. As usual, she had filled it with beautifully detailed pen drawings with fine geometric pieces of coloured paper integrated into the otherwise black ink abstract drawings.

Me with Louise's sketchbook

 I took my time browsing through the gallery of images that Louise had so beautifully filled her sketchbook with. The theme of her book was "Secret Codes," which had me wondering on every page whether there was a code, and what it was! It is an interesting experience to be enjoying a piece of artwork that has been in the hands of a good friend way on the other side of the continent, and even more so because I was doing so surrounded by a large crowd of strangers. An intimate moment of connection in a foreign space surrounded by strangers.

Me enjoying Louise's sketchbook in San Francisco

The exhibition took place at Madrone Studios, and the gallery space had a high ceiling, and was flooded with light. A number of sofas sat around the edges of the room for people to enjoy the sketchbooks.

 
When you were done with one, you could go back and ask for another.

In addition to Louise's book, I decided to check out books from Tasmania (which included the journal of a ten year old girl whose sketchbook documented everything she could do in five minutes!) and New Zealand (a superbly executed sketchbook by a Ken Beatson, who lived through the Christchurch earthquakes, and not only documented the entire experience, but finds great moments of humour even in the face of tragedy -- is this a NZ characteristic or what??). I also took out some sketchbooks from Japan, hoping to see some reflections on the tragedies that the country has undergone this year, but the only two Japanese artists that had submitted sketchbooks made no mention of the earthquake. One other sketchbook that made a great impression on me was Miguel Ruibal's, from Spain. The man is a superb artist. You have to see his work to fully understand. If I ever publish my novel, I will be contacting him to design the cover!

 It was the perfect way to spend my birthday. After leaving the gallery we stopped by my now all time favourite tea place, Samovar, for a delicious meal and a cup of hot chai before heading over the the SF MOMA for an exhibit of the artwork that used to be in Gertrude Stein's Paris apartment -- Matisse and Picasso, among many others. The curators had set the gallery up to mimic Gertrude Stein's apartment, including a large selection of black and white photographs of the apartment with an array of well-known painters perusing art, eating meals together, and enjoying each others' company. A few items of furniture that had been in the Paris apartment at the time were also included in the exhibit, which made me feel as though I was actually wandering through the apartment with Gertrude! Having just seen Midnight in Paris last week, the experience was amazingly tactile. Very different than other exhibits I have been to. I was experiencing the artwork in the intimacy of a home, surrounded by friends and artists.

We headed back to Sacramento in the evening, fully satiated with creative energy. It was a superb birthday, and Louise, your notebook was beautiful. Two other women came looking over my shoulder and asking if they could check it out once I was done (which they did).Thank you, Louise. Thank you, Ken Beatson and Miguel Ruibal. And thank you Picasso and Matisse. I fully enjoyed my afternoon in your superb company!

For those interested in taking part in next year's sketchbook project, check out their website. It is a wonderful initiative to be involved in.

An illogical conclusion

A friend of mine came over to visit today with her gorgeous 4 month old son. The sun had finally come out, and so we sat in the back garden barefoot beneath the shade of the Japanese Maple sipping our drinks, munching on Green & Black's white chocolate, and talking about a number of things -- all while enjoying her son's gorgeous, radiant face and happy laughter.

One of the things we talked about was winning. I have been noticing an interesting pattern emerging in my life over the last few months. As most of you know, I won a trip to the Dominican Republic to build a drinking water system in an organic cocoa-farming community at the end of March. Then a couple of weeks ago I entered a draw on my favourite blog, Chookooloonks, and won a hand made Kenyan scarf. And then this week I came across a blog written by another adventurous spirit, Bahieh K, who was doing a giveaway of SKY's recently released awesome new CD "Now,"and I just got an email yesterday that it was my lucky day! I won that too! Given that I have been looking for full time work now for a year with very little success, it is incredible to me that I have won three amazingly beautiful things/experiences in just four months. I was recounting my excitement over having won SKY's CD to my friend, and she said "yeah -- I noticed that you were doing a chocolate giveaway on your blog about a week ago, but I didn't enter because I didn't think I would win." Hearing her say this struck a chord with me, and I felt a whole bunch of dots suddenly connect.

The truth of the matter is that up until recently, I rarely entered giveaways, and the reason was that I did not think there was any chance of my winning. Why? Because I have rarely won anything in my life. Why? Because I have rarely entered to win anything. Not because I have entered to win over and over and over and been unsuccessful. Because I never even gave myself a chance to win. So really I have no logical reason to think that I would be unsuccessful. In reality, the few times I have applied for things, I have actually been very successful. I applied to college and got in. I applied to art school and got in (and did not go). My application to law school was successful -- again, I decided to not go -- but I did get in. I was also accepted to an MFA program in creative writing which I chose to not pursue in order to enroll in a Master's program in Island Studies at the University of Prince Edward Island. I wrote a UNDP grant application while I was in graduate school to go do research on a Mediterranean island, and it was funded. I wrote two more grant applications, both of which were also funded. I won an award for my Master's thesis. I could go on, but I think I have made my point.

I write with two other women writers two days a week. Both of them were telling me about their successes with their creative projects this week -- Ahava Shira had applied for two separate grants to fund her creative, collaborative, community-based arts projects, and had just received news that both of them had just been funded, and Daniela Elza recently published a book and completed her PhD, AND sent off a manuscript of her poetry to a publisher. Listening to them, and reflecting on my own experiences lately that challenge my previous assumptions that I do not win anything has made me think it is time to start expanding my success with winning to some other areas of my life. As I mentioned in my last blog entry, I am currently reading the novel The Tiger's Wife, by Tea Obrecht. Tea is only 26 years old, and her first novel has just made the cover of the NY Times. As I read, I have been asking myself how she accomplished this at such a young age, and at the same time finding myself thinking -- you could do this, you know. Not the same way she is doing it of course, but in your own unique way. Sure it would take a lot of work, and you need to practice your craft and hone your writing technique....but the truth is that when I hear that other voice that always has an answer that shoots me back down whenever I start to dream about accomplishing a dream, it has no logical foundation. How would I know whether any novel/poetry manuscript I write would not be successful when I have not ever even tried to get anything published? I sent off exactly two other article proposals to travel magazines before I had my recent article about voluntourism published at Bootsnall. And I am now working on a second article for them that will be published in July. So if the two positive responses I have received are any indication, I would have to say that at this point the only thing standing between me and publishing my writing is my own lack of initiative.

Which reminds me of a poem I used to have up on the wall in my kitchen by Marianne Williamson that I really need to get back up on that wall, which says:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light not our darkness that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous,
talented and fabulous?

Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.
Your playing small does not serve the world.
There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other
people won't feel insecure around you.

We were born to make manifest the glory of
God that is within us.

It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine,
we unconsciously give other people
permission to do the same.

As we are liberated from our own fear,
Our presence automatically liberates others.
_________________________________________________

When I think about it, I know I would never have entered the draw to win the Kenyan scarf if I had not won that trip in March. I would probably not have entered to win the CD either. But I am learning a rather obvious (in retrospect) lesson -- that the more I apply for, the more often I succeed (and just for the record, out of the 25 people who read my chocolate giveaway blog entry, only two people entered the draw to win a large stash of really, really good chocolate, so your chances of winning were incredibly high). I have entered to win a number of other things this year that I have not won, but even the things I didn't win led me to connect with new people and enlarge my community. Shortly after returning from the Dominican Republic, I entered a draw for two female bloggers to go to Kenya to write about a water project that was to bring water safely into a community, so that the local women did not have to walk all the way to the water source through areas that posed a threat to their physical safety. I did not win that trip (but you should check out the work of the two incredible women (Rachel Cernansky and Tonyin Ajao) who did, here), but about a month later I received an invitation to join a community of women bloggers composed of all the amazingly talented women around the world who had applied for this trip, and I have been exchanging ideas, thoughts and information with them ever since, enriching my own writing, building relationships with fellow female bloggers, and introducing me to an endless supply of inspiration and encouragement. So I guess I won something there too, after all, eh? 

It seems to me that the biggest difference between the writers who become best selling authors, or the business owners who succeed, or the ___________________ (fill in the blank here) who become international successes and those of us who do not is the willingness to try. My grandfather used to say that "the right angle to use when attempting to solve a difficult problem is the try angle." I give you full permission to roll your eyes at that one -- I did it every. single. time. he said it -- I have no idea where he got that from, but he may just have had a point.

Next time you come across something that sounds like fun, but you think "what are the chances that I will win/be selected/be nominated/succeed," why don't you just give it a try? Just for a change. Just to see what happens. Oh -- and please jot me a note if you do. I am really interested in hearing what the outcome is!

Have a great Thursday, people!

Eve of light

Photograph by Ariana Salvo. May not be used without permission.

“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to bloom.”  -Anais Nin

I came across this quote, which I love but have not read in ages, on Bahieh's lovely and inspiring website Soul Searcher. At sunset tonight the month of Nur or Light began. Being a Baha'i, my calendar has 19 months of 19 days in it, and each month has a title. I particularly like the month of Nur -- I think because it comes at the beginning of the summer as the light stretches out long and expansive from dawn til nightfall, and I can actually *feel* the advance of summer, which is my favourite season. 

Photograph by Ariana Salvo. May not be used without permission.

This has been an incredibly challenging last month, and I am ready for a fresh start, fresh ideas, and the potential for new opportunities to enter my life, so beginning a new month also feels like a weight has lifted, ever so slightly. 

I just started reading a new novel. It is called The Tiger's Wife, by Tea Obrecht, and although I am only on page two, I can already tell I am going to love it. Interestingly, I was doing some research on the author, and found out that in addition to being the youngest best-selling author in the United States (she is only 26), she also lived in Cyprus for a while, loves Pablo Neruda, and says that a topic she likes to explore through her writing is how place influences character. Having grown up in Cyprus, owning every book of Neruda's poetry, and being equally fascinated by how place influences people and identity, I was amazed at how much I have in common with Tea. I was kind of wishing she were more easily contactable because she sounds like the kind of woman I would love to look up and invite out to tea! Since all I can find online is the information for her publicist, I am thinking connecting may not be all that simple, so I may have to content myself with reading her engaging new novel. 

Photograph by Ariana Salvo. May not be used without permission.

I have been thinking a lot about listening the past few days. Thinking about it, and trying to do it more. I have been trying to be more silent. To sit and listen after I pray. To take more time after waking up to soak up the sounds of morning -- the doves cooing on the eaves outside. The sound of the kettle boiling in the kitchen. The sound of my own breathing. I find that being silent more and listening to what is happening around me is also helping me to listen more internally -- to my higher voice, or heart voice. Tuning in, if you will. Trying to find the right frequency. 

I can't say I have found it exactly. At least not consistently. But I do think I may have felt momentary zaps of it over the last few days, like miniature electric shocks that come and are gone again so fast I barely register that they happened at all. Only I am registering it. And I am hoping that noticing those sparks and how and when they happen -- what I am doing, saying, thinking, and not doing, saying and thinking -- might help me to hone my internal frequency tapping skills so that I can get there more and more often, until maybe I reach a place where I can get a few whole minutes at a time of uninterrupted connection. 

It has rained on and off all weekend. I have been feeling pretty low on energy, and missing the company of my friends back in Canada who I seem to speak with less and less often, and so have been drinking lots of tea and doing a good deal of reading, writing and praying. It's interesting how making the decision to slow down and focus on listening, everything suddenly starts reflecting that state of awareness. It is as if the openness to receiving -- the willingness to walk, ever so slowly and gently through the space that is loneliness, and keep going even when I cannot see or understand where I am headed, invites the universe to send tiny messages my way. Like the beautiful bouquet of flowers that my mother brought home for me from the market that she placed in a vase on my writing desk. Or the call from one of my best friends this morning asking me to join her for breakfast at my favourite breakfast place (Orphan). Or this novel, which I have been wanting to read, and am on a waiting list for at the library -- risen to number 90 on the waiting list this -- that my mother came home from her trip to the bookstore with the other day. Yes, I am hearing things. Internally and externally. 

It has just started raining. The pitter patter is gaining momentum as I type, and as the Sunday night traffic dies down I can hear the sound of the wind moving through the oak trees. I love listening to the rain as I fall asleep. There are few things quite so calming, quite so perfect to lull me into a deep, dream-filled sleep. 

Photograph by Ariana Salvo. May not be used without permission.

Happy Monday! And may your week be filled with light.