Color Your Own Parachute

Perhaps thirty years ago I read an article in Travel & Leisure about Ireland's Dingle Peninsula. I'm pretty sure it was written by Paul Theroux, a fellow travel writer/novelist, though a much more prolific one. The photos showed mist and deep green. And there was a line in the story that I've remembered ever since, which said in effect: only a fool blames his bad vacation on the rain.
Last weekend, I was at Wrightsville Beach where I grew up. The weather was so-so, and the beach was terrific: the water warm and the waves, close-up, full of light. A few clouds didn't stop the major surfing competition that brought crowds to the beach--the Reef/Sweetwater Pro-Am--though surfers had to paddle in for a little while to let a spate of lightning pass.

One way and another, people brought their own color, their own good weather. It was inspiring. Now I'm toying with the idea of taking a surfing lesson; it seems the right thing to do before I turn sixty. Also to finally get around to going to the Dingle Peninsula. I was so happy that I finally braved getting into the water last weekend. I'm generally happier, I find, when I don't let myself be stopped by a trifling obstacle, when I go ahead and take the plunge.

Dressing Bold

"Loud and Clear

The Message in Accessories? Go Bold or Go Home."

This is a message in the new issue of W, my favorite fashion magazine--and even with the fun of the Internet, I'm still a hard-copy-full-0f-perfume-ads-magazine junkie.

Now the truly self-expressive person certainly isn't ruled by fashion mavens or trends.

However, there's an advantage to each new turn of the fashion wheel. That is: for a few months, those of us who like feathered pocketbooks or other such conversation pieces will have them easily available and can stock up. And then they'll be drifting into the thrift shops for a few years. So if big color and strange clothing creations are your style of high glam, this is your heads-up.

Then too, I just sort of like the phrase: go bold or go home. I like it even better this way: go bold and go home. The real boldness is authenticity. And decorating one's self according to one's genuine taste is part of being authentic.

Approached that way the whole process is a joy, as it should be, rather than a social obligation.

And decoration is, I read, more and more of a guy thing. Note above the fine start on a decorated mailbox from RK, a novelist/teacher as well as a valued commenter here. He is continuing to work on this, with the addition of red paint, and some leaf prints. Definitely going to be a bold combo.

The Admirable Art of Self-Promotion

For anyone who is hesitant about promoting her or his own work: take a look at this piece of encouragement in the New York Times.



I am one who is blessed with what my politician brother calls microphone fever. I like promoting my work. I respect others' efforts to promote theirs.



The only time I ever cringe in embarrassment is when my husband leaves my business card, with book credits and contact info, etc, at a restaurant table for the waiter to pick up with the credit card. That's my limit. Maybe it's the fact that he's doing it and not me. I'm not sure. (I keep giving him cards, because he puts a lot of them to good use when I'm not around.)



In any event, I think most of us have some shaky moment about advancing our own passionately-held cause. I believe that, on the whole, holding back from telling people about our work is a bad idea. It leads to resentment and poor sales, and who knows what else.



You might also have a look at the book refered to in the article: Brag: The Art of Tooting Your Own Horn Without Blowing It. One review says it defines bragging as an act of authenticity. Seems right to me.

Obsession Update; Obsessive Art

The project to paint huge blue morning glories on my car has taken tiny steps forward. The custom-cut stencil has arrived from England. I borrowed an electric sander from one of my brothers. And I've acquired a thrift-shop file cabinet to practice on. (Keep in mind: I'm a writer not a visual artist.)

The idea of painting my car this way has dogged me for years. There's a very good chance that it will look awful. But I must proceed. It's in my DNA. Or my karma. It was the same way with the idea of setting a novel in the city of Varanasi, India; it was clear years before I ever visited the city that I had to write such a book. That turned out to be Sister India, which grew out of notes I took after spending a winter there.

I am possessed in the same way now, not only with the morning glories, but with research on a biography of a strange and little-known painter who died in 1947. It's a good thing it's possible to be ferociously pulled by more than one project at a time; I'd be in trouble if I devoted all my time to car painting.

The feeling I--and so many of us, at one point or another--share is that of the guy in the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind. He's obsessed with the shape of a mountain he has never seen. He even sculpts the form in mashed potatoes at the dinner table. He has to find that place.

That's one kind of obsessive art. The other is the kind that is meticulously repetitive: Campbell Soup cans, for example. No doubt, the two types of obsessiveness are related.

I do have a touch of obsessive-compulsive disorder. And I don't want to romanticize that. It's no fun at all. But this passion for a project feels like an obsession of a different sort. It feels like love.

SIX LINKS, cool in extremely various ways, to more on art obsessiveness:


!Obsessive-Compulsive-Artistic Geniuses?

Why Do We Like to Watch Obsessive Art

On Being Eccentric

Inventive Art Created from the Mundane

Insect-Obsessed Artist

Obsessed with Painting vs. Finding a Balance


And A QUESTION: Do you ever get obsessed with a project, maybe one that you know is weird but MUST PURSUE anyway?

Billionaire Inventor Who Doesn't "Think Straight"

James Sorenson's teachers said he'd never learn to read, says Monday's USA Today. His mom said he could do anything he set his mind to. A friend and dean of a business school says he's a "non-linear thinker." The reporter who wrote the story said that "his thoughts meander so much that a few hours (with him) produced a...notebook full of disconnected clutter."

Yet Sorenson has, over his several decades, put his thoughts together extremely well and come up with a list of medical inventions to his credit. Many of his ideas have come to him while he's soaking in the bathtub with a washcloth over his face.

Now at 86 he has begun the Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation, sampling DNA in 107 countries. He wants to show that people have a common ancestry, without regard to races and ethnic groups. His hope is that demonstrating this will lead to world peace. His wife of 60 years says," I stand back and wait, because he does the impossible...You can't tell him he can't do something."

Biography Research: Repotting a Book-in-Progress

When I was a few months into my research on my biography of painter Elisabeth Chant, I bought a thrift shop item to house my growing stacks of notes.

That piece of furniture, shelves that were more like mail slots, was fine for a while.

But recently I realized I needed more space, and lots more different files. The distinctions in topics were growing ever finer, in addition to the added piles of bulk material.

So: a new container. I'm up to a very deep-drawered file cabinet, dressed in a sari from Varanasi, the setting of my novel Sister India. (This is the very distinctive Banarsi brocade.)

And this doesn't count the shelves of books, or the digital material.

I expect I'll have to repot another time or three before this book is done. It's a satisfying piece of the process, seeing it grow.

Repurposing

I like using things in ways other than their original purpose. To me, that's one of the three basic approaches to creativity, to making up new stuff:
1. use a familiar object for a new purpose
2. look at the familiar from a different perspective
3. combine elements that haven't been put together before (or never so well.)

This assemblage to the right is my project of last weekend: the idea being to do something with the unsightly nearly-six-foot multi-armed "stump" at the edge of my woodland garden.

I find it wonderfully phantamagorical, and expect the flower-pot-handed arms to start waving, hydralike.

Another nice thing about this kind of project is: it's not my writing, my career, and all that...I'm free to do it as sloppily as I want. Very liberating.

A Passion-Driven Career Move

The founder of Felony & Mayhem press, Maggie Topkis, likes mysteries--yet found that a lot of the kind she most admires were out of print. So, according to The Week magazine (summarizing a story originally in Forbes), she read about a machine that could print out a paperback in seventeen minutes.

She got the rights to a British mystery Death in the Garden that had come out in '95 and started printing copies. That was the beginning. She has since gone on to publish more than forty titles--"bringing the best in bygone mysteries back to life."

Necessary Uncertainty

From an old (last winter's)More Magazine, a story on re-creating one's life by Susan Crandell:

"Most great ventures arise in uncertainty. Did Louis and Clark know they would make it to the Pacific? ... The hallmark of an adventure is not knowing the outcome, trusting in the flow of events....The least successful reinventers were the ones who'd figured everything out, down to the last decimal point....You're smart. You can make some of it up as you go along."

More, by the way, did not choose me as one of their winning women in their over-forty model search. More's the pity. But wasn't it wonderfully cheeky of me to enter the contest?

How to Reduce Fear: A Strategy

The idea is to take small steps in each beginning of the work on the project. And there's neurological reasoning behind this.

The approach is called the Kaizen Way, developed by Dr. Robert Maurer. Japanese business people used that word to describe the way they went about rebuilding their businesses after the devastation of World War II.

I found a description of this technique in Unlock Your Creative Genius by Bernard Golden:

"Maurer suggests that the human brain, motivated to maintain stability and security, is wired to resist change....The fear center of the brain, the amygdala, can lead us to react to situations without first checking in with the cortex, the more objective administrative part. Thus, new challenges can arouse fear in the amygdala, the center of the brain that is involved in the "fight or flight" response. However, small steps toward change or creativity do not trigger such a response. In effect, taking small steps toward change allows you to sidestep the fight-or-flight response...."

The Anxiety of Completion

I'm almost through with a revision and ready to send it to my agent. This makes me alternately want: to procrastinate and drag the process out...or to ship it off hastily with barely a proof-reading.

Anybody had that experience?

I'm managing to keep steadily working on it without following either rash course. In between bouts of writing, I plunge into a frenzy of gardening or crossword puzzles, both of which are somehow relieving. I'm open to other strategies, if anyone else is familiar with this state. I

I'm also excited about this project, which is a great feeling.

A Bit of Pagan Encouragement from Emerson

"The maker of a sentence, like the other artist, launches out into the infinite and builds a road into Chaos and old Night, and is followed by those who hear him with something of a wild, creative delight."

Art Car: Going Bold on the Road

Some time back, I confided to you here that I've for years longed to have large cobalt-blue morning glories painted all over my 1992 pine-sap-speckled, beach-corroded Camry. (My novel-long-in-progress is titled Cobalt Blue.)

Well, I have just now ordered a stencil of morning glory blossoms and leaves, had the size of it doubled to 16 inches, and am commencing on research on car paint.

I meant to have an artist do this job; guess I'm getting gutsier: I'm going to do it myself.

And, for better or worse, you will see the finished product here. Note car in its current state (with a hint of my previous novel's title on the license plate.)

I always used to worry about seeming eccentric, and have reacted against that so much that I think I come off as rather buttoned-down. But once you have an art car, it's official, you're eccentric. It's the ultimate credential.

Saying Just Enough

Yesterday I got feedback from my writing group on fifty pages. Mostly they liked it a lot, which is always nice.

However, the parts they felt needed more work had problems of two kinds, directly opposite to each other. Or, you could argue, two sides of the same nickel. In some places, I'd hit people over the head with what I was saying, and in others I'd left too much to the imagination.

For me, getting this balance right is and has always been the hardest part of writing. If someone has discovered a guideline that works (other than getting feedback), I'd love to know.

What I'd really like is a clarity meter, a little gizmo like a photographer's light meter that can be held close to the page and that will then register the exact degree of balancing needed.

Rebelliousness

A lot of us like to think we're rebellious--as if there were something innately valuable in opposing whatever somebody else comes up with.

Intellectually, I know that's just as reflexive as slavishly following instructions.

But my gut has never gotten the message.

And in the last 24 hours, I've staged one of my frequent rebellions against myself. Having declared my ideal best life ruling principle at this site yesterday, I went home and was seized by all of my soft addictions nearly simultaneously: steady snacking all evening while turning through trashy magazines and then working crossword puzzles into the wee hours--I simply could not get myself to stop earlier and go to bed. Then of course I overslept hugely. And, worst of all, I indulged in beating up on myself.

Now none of this is so bad, obviously. Still. I'd like to feel I can stop. And an hour or two of those activities would have been plenty.

What happened is: the part of me that doesn't want anybody--including myself--telling me what to do got really fired up by my new ambitions.

The trick now is: to stay focused on my larger aim and outlast the rebellious part (I've been through this sort of thing a time or two before.) Will keep you posted.

More on Soft Addiction

A few weeks ago I wrote here about a book I was reading, The Soft Addiction Solution, on the idea that lots of us zone out much of the time doing the same habitual stuff: the TV and chips, or any repetitive escapist activity.

What I like about the philosophy of this author, Judith Wright, is that she doesn't preach discipline, self-restraint, character, deprivation, etc.

Instead the idea is to make a more satisfying choice, at least some of the time. I'm all the way to step one of this process, which is to make one overall decision about how I want my life to be, so that I at least have the option of making my daily decisions in support of that big one.

For example, like Lance Armstrong's Live Strong mantra.

I had to think about it for a while before I came up with mine. In fact, as recommended, I "test-drove" it for a few weeks. I'm happy with my selection, which is: I am living my life as my best self. I'm sorry to say I'm not bold enough to put this in boldface. I take that back. I'm putting it in boldface AND ALL CAPS: I AM LIVING MY LIFE AS MY BEST SELF.

It's a pretty clarifying idea. And I pay attention to it some of the time. I'd say it has steered me away from a lot of fried food and to a couple of yoga classes--and made clear a few times that it was time to knock off work for the day and go home.

I'm excited about this. It works. Will keep you posted on the next step in this process.

Discernment

What's the bold action for this moment? By bold, I don't necessarily mean flamboyant or loud. I mean taking the most direct road to where I want to be--and doing it without obsessing over it or second-guessing myself.

Here's the moment in question: I'm suddenly depressed (since Friday morning), mysteriously losing too much hair, and have also lost a surprising amount of weight (7 lbs in a week and a half.) I expected to lose some weight because I was teaching writing at a fitness spa, Rancho La Puerta, for a week of that time. So I ate healthy and worked out a lot. But I didn't expect to lose that much.

At first I thought I was just having back-to-the-desk letdown. But that doesn't cause weight loss.

What I've done so far: checked with my hairdresser yesterday morning and found that she too noted some missing hairs, called my doctor, went in and got a thyroid blood test in the afternoon, am now waiting to hear from test in a couple of days. So far so good, on the boldness front.

Now it's Wednesday morning and my impulse is to lie down on the floor and close my eyes.

Is that the boldly effective move? Will it help? Or is it better to keep working?

Sometimes making the bold move isn't the hard part. Instead the trick is to figure out what that move is.

Buddhism teaches sticking to right thought, right speech, right action, etc. I'd like to have a sort of pocket calculator that tells in any given moment what the right move (or lack of move) is. But I haven't yet seen one in any of the gadget catalogs.

Easy Does It

A useful bit of wisdom at a turn in the path.

Performance Anxiety

There are some yoga poses that are for me a reliable indicator of performance anxiety.

These are any that require balance on one foot.

When I do these at home, I can balance for long periods of time with no problem.

When I'm in a class with other people, I have a lot of trouble getting into equilibrium and staying that way. I'm never conscious of any audience effect in yoga classes-- but what else could cause this difference?

One thing I've learned that helps when I'm wobbly. The Sanskrit word for it is drishtee, roughly translated as "point of focus." That means find a spot to fasten your gaze on and don't look to the left or right.

When I do that, pretty soon I'm maintaining balance. The same principle applies to working on a novel: just focus on the work at hand.

(The photos are at Rancho La Puerta where I've been teaching: the sculpture in front of one of the yoga studios, the one of me taken on the grounds just after I finished with my last class. This is a good example of how we unconsciously reproduce what we see or visualize. I passed that sculpture every day, but didn't realize I had copied the pose, and even dressed the part.)

The Guts to Be First

(First a note about photos, etc. I'm on a Spanish-speaking computer and can't find some of the clicks. So I can't seem to move these the way I want. What's here: the swing under the Rancho pepper tree, a blossom that was growing beside me in the chi kung class, and a bit of BOLD ART in my room. And then the story....)

The couple that started the fitness spa in Baja where I'm teaching this week are an astonishing example of bold creative thinking. They were health nuts in 1940, with some ideas that are treated as news in recent years.

The place now called Rancho La Puerta welcomed its first visitors under the name Essene School of Life: "$17.50 a week, bring your own tent." (The Essenes were, among other things, highly successful farmers of antiquity, producing prodigious crops in poor Dead Sea area soil.)

Founder Prof. Edmond Szekely of Transylvania and his wife Deborah created what was in its early years the home of what the Prof called cosmotherapy, a regimen heavy on grape juice. He also believed that people need 20 minutes a day of direct sunlight for vitamin D, but that baking on a beach blanket is unhealthy. He was sure ahead of a lot of folks on that one.

A 1949 article in The San Diego Union reported that he kept a crystal ball in his study.

Szekely foresight also led to the school being an organic farm with a mainly vegetarian diet.

Today Deborah Szekely is still fit and active and inspiring, and still the grand dame. (The Prof died some years ago.) Grape arbors are still here, visible through a glass wall of the yoga gym. And the food remains largely vegetarian.

Now it costs a bit more than $17.50 and there's no need to pack a tent. The garden campus has enough Mexican-style cottages to house about 160 people, attending classes on mainstream topics like writing and Pilates.

And nobody thinks it's odd any more to eat a lot of vegetables or to drink the fruit of the vine for high anti-oxidant levels or to avoid skin cancer by limiting sun-time.

A fair number of people are comfortable with the idea of a crystal ball.

Back then it took courage.