A Blogging Drought?

I seem to have fallen off quite a lot in my frequency of posting. Partly because I'm so busy. And also I haven't had sufficient impulse. It's easy to get out of the habit.

Not sure whether to let the rate sag until I feel like boldly opining more. Or to keep myself cranked up and pontificating daily as has so long been my custom.

I could flip a coin daily, and then whichever came up, I'd (characteristically) do the opposite.

Maybe, boldly, I won't ponder too hard about this. Over-pondering seems to be a favorite sport of the non-bold.

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Bold Benares #10

This rickshaw in Benares, or Varanasi, India, represents a variation on "Bloom Where You're Planted." The idea is: "Splash Color Wherever You Roll."

I like to go places where decoration shows up unexpectedly, where the ordinary objects and the unsung corners are turned into something wonderful.

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Bold Color

What is it about orange that makes it a "bolder" color than the others? Bolder even than red. A field of pumpkins for example, is much more vibrant than a great pile of cucumbers or eggplant.

There's probably some optical reason.

In the absence of knowing what that might be, I dare to guess: orange arrives at the eye sooner than indigo? there's less orange in the typical background? it has some innate charisma?

My hope is that when I figure it out, I'll know something about forthrightness that I didn't know before.

My research turns up the following:
About.com says the color is mentally stimulating, less aggressive than red, sociable, and associated with change.

Color expert Kate Smith says orange is more controversial than any other color; people have strong feelings about it one way or another. Also, it's fun and flamboyant. (I think we know what side she's on.)

Orange is the color linked with the second chakra, which is in turn associated with creativity and sex, happiness and courage.

Got anything orange in your closet?

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The Daring and Beauty of "Dear & Yonder"

Surfer women are the subject and the stars of a charming and inspiring new movie I went to see last night. "Dear & Yonder: Daring Stories of Ladies United by the Sea" had its Pittsboro, North Carolina premiere at Pittsboro General Store Cafe.

This inland village(pop.2525), 20 minutes from my house, is where one of the auteurs grew up. Andria Lessler came back to town with her movie (three years in the works) and it played to a crowded and delighted house.

It's rare that a piece of art feels all at once sunny and delightful and seriously inspiring, without being sentimental. Dear & Yonder, the story of women in surfing all over the world, manages this feat.

If you want a glimpse at some role models for daring, athletic skill, careful artistry in any field, or the creation of a new category/identity, watch the trailer here or go to the Dear & Yonder website. (DVDs will be available in early December.)

This film is also a tribute to the gorgeousness of people, the ocean, and the planet. Next showing is in Portland, Oregon.

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Bold Living: at Parties

At a party last night, I had a talk with the hostess, a woman in her seventies whom I'd never met before, and was impressed by the fact that she seemed entirely "for real" through the whole conversation. I asked myself what gave me that feeling. She seemed:

* relaxed, but not ostentatiously so
* forthcoming yet not eager to entertain or impress
* free of any sign of anxiety
* mildly flirtatious with the men who happened by
* in the moment, rather than orchestrating the coming moment
* and interested in the conversation

She, like almost every one else at the party, was a group psychotherapist, and perhaps in her case that played a part. But I also know that there are plenty of therapists who are shy as rabbits.

I mentioned to my husband my view of this woman. He agreed and said: Isn't she gracious? and she doesn't just blurt out whatever comes to mind.

My own party style has evolved: I used to talk until I was giddy and had a fine time. Over time, without meaning to, I've slowed it down quite a bit; regrettably though, I haven't liked parties as much since, which is sad.

I think last night's hostess has somehow found what the Buddhists call "The Middle Way." Best of all, it seemed to come naturally. I think it can come naturally for anyone. But a lot of us need help getting the conversation started: a search turned up hundreds of thousands of websites on how to start a conversation.

My mother, a pure example of extroverted, calls the process "finding their topic."

On the other hand, I get tired of my topics. I like it when someone steers me into an interest I didn't know I had.

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Following Bliss--Down the Highway

Driving to work one day this week, I found myself following the most delightful "trailer" I ever saw.

My cellphone photography while driving on Interstate doesn't do it justice, but maybe you get the idea. It's about the size of a large pup tent, has potted plants on either side of the door and a lace curtain at the window. Likely inside there's a nice little library, a couple of reading chairs that convert to a bed, chocolate, and hot water for tea.

It's not every day you see an Alice-in-Wonderland cottage rolling down the road. Just think of all the interesting things we could see rolling down the road if we got a bit outside the norms.

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Split Personality

Overtly being oneself is a great thing and necessary, I think, for a happy life and having any kind of satisfying success in the world.

At the same time, I'd like to think it was possible for all of me to fit in at one place sometimes. With my most high-serious chums, the flip, brash part of my nature kicks in; I'm all McDonald's and bubblegum music. On the other hand, with my most unhesitating, just-do-it, no-nonsense friends, I'm more likely to become Ms. Brooding Artist.

Probably just a playing out of my own conflict about having such disparate halves. I'm actually pleased that it's so, serves me well in a lot of ways. But it creates a sort of friction too; I'm ever pulling the wrong club out of my golf bag. And, curiously, doing it on purpose.

Decades ago, I told my therapist Nick Stratas as we walked out his office door that I had a strong identification with two people: 1) his famous-opera-singer sister Teresa Stratas and 2) the then-governor of North Carolina, Jim Hunt. Different jobs. And it would appear, very different temperaments. Therapist's response in short: "inner conflict."

I had the same conversation around that time with my brother Franc Payne; I told him that my problem was that I had our father's tumultuous interior and our mother's stoic exterior. He said, "you've got your daddy's hormones and your mama's Methodism." Neither of those descriptions do justice to either of our parents. But they do make a fair sketch of me. I'm assuming something of this sort of mixed-bag-ness is true for everyone. Which is one of the challenges of "being one's self."

How about you? How many people do you embody? Or do you feel yourself to be all-of-a-piece?

(In any event, thanks for listening. This has been a great relief.)

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Free to Pontificate

Useful talk today in the writing workshop I'm leading this week at Meredith College--useful for me, as it happens. We were talking about writing dialogue, and the vocabulary and sentence construction that makes a person sound authoritative or timid.

I said I use "I think..." too much before making my pronouncements while giving feedback on people's work. What I'm trying to do is not be bossy, which my younger brothers have observed I'm capable of. But I overdo the soft-pedaling. One of the writers in the group said she doesn't need all that I-think kind of preamble.

What a relief to hear someone say that. Now I feel free to be as bossy and commanding/assertive as I want to, since others do know without my telling them that they are free write any way they want.

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Too Revealing? Oh, Well

Second class day at the Meredith Writers Workshop. This afternoon we held the faculty readings. The three of us--poet Betty Adcock, novelist and memoirist Nancy Peacock, and I--all chatted and read for about 15 minutes each to an audience of the combined classes.

I read the opening few pages of my novels Sister India and Revelation and told the group where the idea had come from for each. Well, that's fairly personal. They now know a lot more about me than they did. I often wonder whether I've gone too far, offered Too Much Information. That's probably true for at least a few people in any audience.

But I'm pretty much past actually worrying about it, which is a relief. Because once you start second-guessing what people in an audience think, you're in for a lot of wasted time and energy.

I think a part of why I like public speaking is that trying to do it just right for everybody is so obviously impossible that I don't worry about it and say what I want. It's paradoxically freeing.

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Red Chair, Blue Language

My office partner Carrie who owns the building is having the place spiffed up and repainted. In this process several issues of boldness have arisen.

Most noticeably, the front porch chair has gone from pale yellow to poppy red.

And then yesterday, a wee incident raised for me some thoughts about differences in style. Carrie and I both tend to overworry about whether we've stepped on someone's toes. I also see myself as a fairly mild-mannered sort.

I had gradually glazed out on the fact that there had been workmen all over the building for days. And then my copier/printer got snarled-up and refused to proceed. I went over to the rebellious thing, which sits just below a window, and tried to fix it, all the while unleashing a staccato of the harsh and obscene language I reserve for malfunctioning machines. Didn't realize that I was speaking within inches of the nose of the man working on the windowsill on the other side of the glass. After all, we'd been professionally ignoring each other quite successfully for days.

My response to this realization, not so bold: I turned around and walked out of the room. A little embarrassing, a lot funny: that was my reaction.

I told Carrie the amusing news. She thought it was funny too. Then she went out and assured the largely Spanish-speaking crew that all was well and they hadn't done anything wrong and that it was just me having an outburst over mechanical difficulties. She explained to me privately that they're a particularly sweet and sensitive bunch of guys.

I'm not accustomed to being on the raunchy side of such moments, especially with construction workers. Not used to being apologized for, or to finding such a small awkward moment increasingly hilarious. I'm not sure where the path of proper boldness lay here, but find it refreshing to be, for a change, the mouthy brash explosive one.

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Do Your Own Thing

The fellow who runs this new Project Mojave undertaking seems to have a passion for helping people get loose from cubicles and pursue their own interests on their own time. Having been a freelancer since I was 22 (I'm now 60), I very much favor this.

Click to the site and learn how to set up an internet business using expertise you already have. Even if you don't want to do precisely that, it's worth a look, if you like the idea of doing your own thing.



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Singing a Song from the Unconscious

Skiing on a glacier in Austria some years ago on slopes (catwalks) far beyond my ability, I realized that I had been humming the same tune over and over all day. When I finally noticed I was doing it, I immediately recognized it: "Who's Afraid of the Big, Bad Wolf?"

It was true that I'd been scared--from mild to wild--all day. This was back in my mostly-travel-writing days when I made a long-running specialty of writing ski stories for beginners and bad skiers. It tickled me that I was unconsciously singing the message from myself that I was trying to ignore.

Since then, I've realized many times that I was mindlessly humming something that was terribly appropriate to the moment: "I've Got a Never-Ending Love For You," and "Release Me" (think Engelbert Humperdinck), for example.

Yesterday, I noted that I'd been humming all day. What was the tune? "This Little Light of Mine, I'm Going to Let It Shine." What could be more appropriate for a writer's theme song?

So what's your theme song today?

Could be it would work better to pick one, instead of letting the song pick me. But even when the song simply arises, it's useful information, always good to know what I'm feeling.




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Cheeky Georgia O'Keefe and Friend

If there were ever a person who went her own way, it was the famously abrupt Georgia O'Keefe.

The Smithsonian Journeys blog has a charming story about an encounter with the painter: "The Day I Met Georgia O'Keefe."

The boldest individual involved is the author who tells of the day she approached O'Keefe's house in Abiquiu, New Mexico, carrying a handful of wilted lilacs. Many a bold individual would have dropped the lilies and run.





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Four Tips for Getting Rid of Shame

Dealing with feelings of shame can be divided into steps that help mightily to defuse the whole miserable state of mind.

This thinking comes from a book noted in an earlier post here: Brene Brown's I Thought It Was Just Me (But It Isn't): Telling the Truth about Perfectionism, Inadequacy, and Power. It's quite a good and useful book.

One of her techniques is "practicing critical awareness," which is looking hard at the trigger for the shame. Here's her procedure:

1. "Contextualize (I see the big picture)" This means noticing how economic, social, and political forces are involved in the situation. Doesn't mean to shift the responsibility for solving a problem, but it does take the edge off the shame.

2. "Normalize (I'm not the only one)" If you're not the only one, then there's less basis for feelings of personally inadequacy.

3. "Demystify (I'll share what I know with others)" Talk about the problem. And ask questions to get the info that will help. It may turn out several others in the neighborhood are keeping the same dark secret. We can help each other, or at least enjoy the company of people who understand.


One other tidbit of wisdom from this source: When other people say dumb things about the painful situation, don't counterattack. "That doesn't get us anywhere." Instead say something on the order of: that hurt my feelings. "It seems counterintuitive, but telling someone how we feel takes more courage and is often more powerful than verbally attacking them."

A small personal application: I've railed repeatedly here about some bad treatment at the "hands" of a health insurance company. One part of this reaction is that I'm ashamed that I can be taken advantage of. One of my buried assumptions is that part of my job in life is to have the savvy to keep this from happening. When I fail at this, I feel like a schlump.

Looking at this with the Brene Brown system:
1. The context: the entire healthcare payment system is in severe disrepair, to the point of national crisis. One piece of that is that our medicine is so advanced that we have tests and treatment that almost no one can afford. That's the big picture.
2. God knows, I'm not the only one.
3. I'm sure talking about it.

I still have the stupid assumption that I should be capable of throwing over such problems, and I haven't. But this critical thinking process does take away some of the feeling of failure, embarrassment and shame. And getting rid of those probably makes me more capable of dealing with a problem.













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Boldly Sexual

Bold isn't just for the boardroom. One can also take this admirable quality home to bed. Here's an encouraging item that showed on up on my Compuserve screen yesterday: "Six Habits of Highly Sexual Women."

It includes such wisdom as:

"Carnal Custom #2: Let Loose

... Sex is not rocket science. It won't cure cancer or promote world peace, or change lives. So getting all worked up and stressed out about it makes about as much sense as worrying that you're not eating your chocolate cake right...."





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Extravagant, Generous, Bold Art

If you've ever felt you wasted time by writing ten pages -- or a whole lot more -- that didn't work, take a look at the extravagant generosity of this Zen-type artist and you may feel better.

Scott Wade reproduces Old Masters and does his own original work IN DUST on the windows of cars. Here's a man who recognizes the dust-to-dust situation we're in. I couldn't do it. I'm still working on what Ernest Becker in The Denial of Death refers to as my "immortality project." Making my permanent mark.

Though I'm not going to take up dust art (so much like the sand mandalas that Buddhist monks make and then destroy), I do find it curiously refreshing to look at what this man does and to marvel.





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"Painting into Light"

"Painting into Light" is an art exhibition at Guilford College in Greensboro, a one-man show by my friend George Wingate.

Thursday night Bob and I went to the campus to hear the artist talk about his work. George was his intriguingly digressive, imaginative, thoughtful self, before a packed SRO house. I didn't take notes and couldn't begin to quote from his outpourings.

But there was a line on the wall in his artist's statement that is well worth passing on:

"It took a long time to discover that one can't make a career out of being somebody else. I still have to fight being somebody else. The artist even has to fight to not be what he/she was yesterday."

George was in high school with Husband Bob, which would make him approximately 67 years old. And he has been a full-time artist for decades, with his work on the cover of American Artist and well and lengthily reviewed in the New York Times. He's still engaged in a daily wrestle.

If you are too, you're in good company.





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Be the Gift

I once heard a woman say in the flurry of "doing" Christmas that she'd decided one afternoon to "be the gift." Often a phrase like this means giving a gift of time: changing someone's lightbulbs or hanging out with them or some such.

But this woman was thinking of it differently. And she was on her way to the mall at the time. So she proceeded to be especially nice to every clerk or cashier she met, every shopper she bumped against. The whole experience was lighter, easier; and she had a wonderful time. Don't you love that? I thought it quite bold.

Another way of thinking about this approach, which I ran across in a sermon: "A Quaker friend of mine used to say to me, 'I will hold you in the light.'”

Of course the whole busy business also applies to Hannukah celebrations and others at this time of year. I've also seen the experience referred to as "doing December." Whatever the occasion, "being the gift" can work.

I watch people like my office partner who celebrates both Christmas and Hannukah (interfaith marriage) and once did a symbolic candle-lighting ceremony on the fold-down tray table on a flight to France (where they were to spend a year) with her family including brand-new baby. Now that's multi-tasking. Or multi-enjoying. She's one who is good at being the gift.



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Dressing Up, Costume, and Being Eccentric

Being a self-employed writer isn't conducive to what used to be called dressing for success.

Even though I have an office away from home, I could get away with going to work in my purple fleece Couch Sack if I were sufficiently what-used-to-be-called laid back.

Today, however, I went hog-wild in the other direction and put on a pencil skirt and heels and a semi-fancy shirt. Mon Dieu! It changes my view of myself and the world. I feel much more grownup (this is important at 59) and to-be-taken-seriously.

What may have inspired me to do this: last night I watched the first half hour of Grey Gardens, the documentary on Jackie O's poor relations, when they were revealed in the mid-70s to be living weird reclusive past-obsessed lives in their wretchedly decaying old house full of cats in the Hamptons. These two women, Big Edie and Little Edie, mother and daughter, both born beautiful and still wildly theatrical, brought back to me my childhood mantra: I will not be eccentric.

Having that running through my head regularly as a wee kid should have been a sign.

In recent years, however, I've mostly abandoned that resolve, and pretty much do and dress as I please. And I haven't gotten too weird.

Last night, though, I was sobered. Seeing the state of their house -- when I'm a so-so-minus housekeeper and spend much time alone with husband and king-size dogs in our very messy house in deep mossy shade-- made me think about my old childhood resolve.

But the truth is that, having relaxed, I haven't turned into a camp icon. The truth hasn't turned out to be so bad. Even so, I'm turned out like a hip CEO today. The old fears seem to always leave their traces.



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Host/Hostess Anxiety

I find entertaining difficult, not while people are at my house, but in advance of the event. Has to do with cleaning up the house.

We live in a log house in the woods and have one large dog and one very-large dog with us in the house; both of them, bless their hearts, are shedders and one enjoys rubbing against furniture and appliances. And then my husband Bob --bless his heart too--uses the seats of chairs for storage areas.

I didn't suffer from hostess anxiety while I was single. And this is curious because I was and am what an English ex-boyfriend referred to as "a heap." If it was my junk, it was okay for people to see.

I opened a book this morning that has been useful for me: Daring to Be Yourself by Alexandra Stoddard. Saw a couple of things I'd underlined way back: "There is no need to be a nervous hostess. I feel comfortable when I entertain but only if I don't put on airs." and "Your guests want to experience your natural style."

But my natural style does not involve dog hair. But I've also come to realize: my heapish artist style did not produce the rustic house next to the pond, all of which I like very much. Bob (and his ex) were the creator of that. And I get more credit than is due. So maybe it all balances out. Or maybe none of that matters. (That's an idea I try on for size; actually I don't buy it.)

In any event, it seems to be my natural style to marry a guy who creates a wonderful woodland house where the leaves are now madly and brilliantly falling as well as the dog hair and piles of books. So that's the style that it's okay to show.



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