Spring Notes (1)

When I meet someone for the first time or spend time with those who don’t know me well … I sometimes sense they have already put together some sort of quick story of “who I am” … yet, I also sense that this “story of convenience” is far afield from reality.  Ever felt that way?  Obviously, the story in their minds is a reflection of their inner world, their life experience, and their personal definition of self.  It has little to do with me  or anyone else.  In the haste of life, we all lean on assumptions … we all jump to conclusions … we all want to know someone before we’ve taken the time to really know them.  Perhaps we can meditate this week on the merits of an open mind, reminding ourselves how each person is unique — not a cookie cutter version of someone you once knew or imagined.  The gifts of understanding and being understood are profound.  And are strong foundations for a more peaceful world.                 

“The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.“
~ Leonardo da Vinci

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Thanks, see you soon! 

Blog by DazyDayWriter @ work in SunnyRoomStudio:
all rights reserved.

Before I introduce my Studio Guest, author Kate Lord Brown, I’d like to share a poem for Valentine’s Day.

Sanguine

Resting near the river’s shore,

convinced the sky was within

reach, I suddenly realized its

nearness was my heart speaking

more clearly, propelling itself

upward like a balloon set free.

D.A. Hickman, 2012

Dancing with Yourself
by
Kate Lord Brown

‘Once we begin to glimpse who we really are, many lonesome burdens and false images fall away; our feet find new freedom on the pastures of possibility.’ – O’ Donohue ‘Divine Beauty’

• Recalling the events of over thirty years ago is curious – a bit like dancing with yourself.

When my memoir opens I’m younger than my daughter, and I’m finding it refreshing writing through a child’s eyes. Everything is a first – the wild, beautiful place I grew up in felt like a fairytale, snowbound and magical. I don’t think it’s being sentimental or nostalgic to say it was a more innocent time. We had a freedom I can’t imagine being able to give my children – off freewheeling along the lanes all day, swimming in rivers, riding across the moors on muddy little ponies. What do you think? Have things changed all that much in thirty years?

• Anais Nin said: ‘We don’t see things as they are. We see things as we are.’

When you’re writing about events that happened long ago perhaps inevitably you end up fictionalizing your own life. I’ve never tried memoir before, but I want the book to be about a lot of things that are as relevant today as they were in 1977 – financial crisis, the search for the good life, finding your way through childhood. The memoir brings together all the themes I write about in fiction – family, relationships, home, countryside, love and loss. I’m hoping the themes I touch on move from the personal to the universal – perhaps working through my own childhood I’ll find a few answers that strike a chord with everyone. One of the things I’ve learned is that what is true in the private heart of one man is true of all men.

• Whatever your usual mode of creative expression, memoir writing is an incredible way to trace the hidden power lines in your work.

Try prompts like these:

• what’s something you can’t deny?
• what have you left behind?
• which physical characteristic are you proud has been passed on in you?
• when did you feel compassion?
• what did you have to have?
• what did you have too much of?
• when were you in trouble?

Arm yourself with talismans from your past – keys to unlocking memories. Try cherished objects, photos, music. It’s important to constantly ask yourself: what’s the key to this scene? What’s the focus? Why have I remember this moment out of all the thousands in my life?

For any of you also writing memoirs at the moment, I’ve just read a great book – Natalie Goldberg’s ‘Old Friend From Far Away’. Just like in ‘Writing Down the Bones’ Goldberg is very good at making you come at your writing, and memories, sideways. There are some excellent prompts in there and I really recommend the book (it’s also a lot more fun than most of the memoir text books). Goldberg has some terrific ideas – she writes about how memoir is really a desire to understand living. It’s making sense of love, pain, who you were and who you are. Some of the simple but effective prompts you could try today are ten minute sprints. Why not try writing about:

• ‘I remember …’
• ‘I am thinking of …’
• ‘I am looking at …’

I began writing my memoir for British TV’s ‘The People’s Author’ contest back in 2009. It spans twelve years through the seventies and eighties, and it will be as much an exploration of the countryside, childhood and a time that’s gone as about one person’s life. It’s still a WIP (you can read the opening here)  and I’m hoping one day it will find a publisher alongside my fiction.

Writing memoir is a dance through time, and a great joy. At its very best, memoir delivers an individuals wisdom, and a direct connection with human experience. It shows how you found your way, your path through life as you made sense of being alive. One of the best ways to find your path is to engage all your senses. For example, I loved Goldberg’s idea about recalling ten smells from your childhood. Me: wood shavings, Mum’s ‘Paris’ perfume, roast dinner, geraniums, tomatoes on the vine in the greenhouse, wood smoke, wet earth on the forest floor, saddle soap and leather, rosewater, rice pudding and cinnamon. How about you?

• Bio: Kate worked as an art consultant, curating collections for palaces and embassies in Europe and the Middle East, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. She was a finalist in UK ITV’s the People’s Author competition in 2009. Her debut novel ‘The Beauty Chorus’ was published by Atlantic in 2011, and is out in paperback February 2012. ‘The Perfume Garden’ about the Spanish Civil War will be published later this year.

Find Kate on Facebook and Twitter
or on her blog, What Kate Did Next

Thank you, Kate, for sharing your insights on memoir writing.  Wonderful ideas.

Please feel free to ask Kate a question or leave her a comment below.

Thanks for visiting SunnyRoomStudio:
a creative sunny space for kindred spirits.

Blog by DazyDayWriter @ work in SunnyRoomStudio: all rights reserved.  

Yes, most of us have memories (good, bad, in-between), but everyone feels differently about the role they play in their lives.  The mysterious aspect of memories is difficult to ignore.  And some memories are so powerful that we can’t let go of them even when we try.

“Don’t be controlled by your memories.”  How often have we heard that piece of advice?

Every man’s memory is his private literature. 
~Aldous Huxley

• How do memories impact your life?
• What is your earliest memory?
• What memory would you never share with anyone?
• Do some memories catch you by surprise, sneaking into your awareness when you least expect it?
• Ever thought about “collective memories” v. “individual memories?”

Memories comprise our stories.  Like sand castles, each life rises and falls.  Even our most dedicated and deliberate efforts can’t prevent the ocean tide from rolling in, leaving nothing behind.  Merely a smooth surface, the castle swept away in an instant.  Yet, that reality is something we stumble over time and time again.

On some level we want our lives to be made of stone, lasting “forever” (whatever forever is), and thus, we miss the beauty of the moment because we are overly focused on the future and making things last.  True?

Memories remind me of sea shells.  Beautiful remnants of various colors, sizes, shapes.  They dot the beach, the sand, and we collect them.  Save them.

Unlike the sand castle, seashells retain their shape.  Some for millions of years.  The ones we pick up and take home are empty, clean … the life they held, no longer visible.  So we marvel at what is left, don’t we?  And memories are what is left …

One cannot collect all the beautiful shells on the beach.
One can collect only a few, and they are
more beautiful if they are few.
~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh

I thought I understood the power of memories until Matthew’s loss nearly 5 years ago now.  But once you experience a profound loss in life, you begin to look at everything differently, especially memories.  Their role is suddenly magnified.  Nearly overpowering.  It seems they seek you out, coming into your awareness with incredible force from out of the blue.

A piece of music can trigger an avalanche of memories.

A picture can lead you down a path you don’t want to travel.

A letter can almost be unbearable to read, because each word leads to one inevitable conclusion.

And memories, as a whole, point to the steady advance of a mortal journey.  The time between today and yesterday forever lengthening.  Always reminding us that our sand castle is temporary, fleeting.

The pear tree Matt is standing beside was on our Christmas cards in 2011.

To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heavens.

The picture and the quote capture life, as a whole, so eloquently.

Little did Matt know how I would look back on this picture with such deep appreciation for his life: for his season on earth.

This picture was taken in August of 2006, ten months before his death in June of 2007.

And of course my mind still reels with the reality of it all.  We never get used to loss.  We are never “over it” because it is life’s greatest lesson.  Maybe it is the only lesson of life.  Ever thought about it like that?

The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things.
~ Rilke

Maybe, like the seashell, when we are “empty, clean” our beauty will be revealed in a different light.  The sand castle will be long gone, of course.  Our futile, nearly silly, efforts unable to withstand the universal tide of loss.  And though unthinkable sorrow is clearly part of this process, we are part of it … we are it, in fact.

Looking at my son’s picture, a sunny morning on the farm with coffee in hand, I could study his smile for limitless hours, days unending.  What was he thinking about?  The pears.  The beauty of harvest.  The warm day.  The blue sky stretching overhead like an eternal peace offering.  The day ahead.

How could it be that the season has ended so soon?

The leaves of memory seemed to make
A mournful rustling in the dark.
~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I forge on, albeit slowly, with a memoir about Matthew, letting the fertile ground of memory guide me.  Not wanting to force a storyline like memoir writers are instructed to do, I’m focusing on the deeper aspects of loss … the moments when I am “defeated by greater and greater things.”

Only love can never be defeated.  Only love remains.

Everybody needs his memories.  They keep the wolf of insignificance from the door.  ~Saul Bellow

From day one we carry loss within us.  Yet, we fight its presence in myriad ways.  What would the world be like if we allowed loss to dwell within us more peacefully?  How would that change your relationships, your priorities, your values?  

Isn’t most of the drama, the conflict and violence, the suffering, caused by our fear of loss?  By irrational thinking.  By our subconscious drive to outsmart it, outrun it, out maneuver it? 

If loss is indeed the lesson of each life, does that make our memories more or less important?  What do you think?

The past is never dead, it is not even past.  ~William Faulkner

Because of my memories, Matt is forever “alive.”  His voice as clear as a bell; his life journey, its many twists and turns, something I revisit often.  He had a wonderful sense of humor.  Would have made a great comedian.  Those are endearing memories.  Matt imitating someone, offering a joke or a funny take on a situation.  And since we all represent “loss” (realized or to be realized), our memories are as vital to this moment as what can be seen right in front of us.    

Memories are life. 

It’s all one in the same.  No need to worry about “being controlled” by our memories, because in the grand scheme of things: It is all inseparable.  Bottom-line, don’t let anyone make you feel guilty about celebrating, enjoying, or acknowledging the power and place of your memories.  Dwell with them as you choose.  Talk about them.  Write about them.  Savor and treasure them.  Love them.  Allow them to be part of who you are today.  Express them in ways that are meaningful to you.  Trying to wish them away or cut yourself off from them is pure nonsense.  And its painful and pointless.

The whole of life is now. 

As Faulkner so wisely noted, “it is not even past.” 

May you find joy in your memories.  Allow them to release the love in your heart that can never be defeated. 

• And to you, Matthew, thank you for teaching us that imperfection is part of the universal plan.  None of us could even define perfection if we had to … because it is an illusion.  Yet, we chase its shadow like fools, allowing some make-believe condition to take root in our imaginations.  Imperfection is perfection.  It is all life and it is all inseparable.
  

To live in hearts we leave behind
Is not to die.
~Thomas Campbell, Hallowed Ground

I hope this blog post brings comfort to anyone who is coping with loss
and trying to understand its lesson.

Thank you for visiting SunnyRoomStudio: a sunny creative space for kindred spirits.  My next Studio Guest is Kate Lord Brown on the 14th of February.  You will love meeting her.  See you then!

Blog posts by DazyDayWriter @ work in SunnyRoomStudio: all rights reserved.

• And so we return to LifeThemes2012 as part of the 2-year anniversary celebration of SunnyRoomStudio.
• What life themes have you identified so far?  Are you taking surface themes and digging deeper … looking for the underlying thread?
• Are you looking for themes that have been part of your life for as long as you can recall?
• This is the 3rd post of this series; find the others on the sidebar blog menu: The Only Journey, A Whisper Away.

When I look back on the road that has been my life, yet another theme (besides nature and spirituality) comes to mind.

Writing. – Creativity. –  Exploration. — Reflection.

It seems that writing is how the other concepts manifest themselves in my life.  One of the primary ways, at least.  I was a letter writer as a young girl.  And recall a few diaries.  For me, there was always something magical about the written word … going to the library was even great fun.

Words were a way to connect with other people, more deeply than in a quick verbal exchange.  Writing gave me the opportunity to really consider how I was feeling about something … I learned about myself when putting paragraphs together.  Words also provide the cushion of time.  There is space around each one.  I can ponder or meditate on something before  communicating.  Sometimes understanding takes time — the written word can be read again for enjoyment, clarity, or thoughtful consideration.

Enlightenment is not imagining figures of light, but making
the darkness conscious. ~ Carl Jung

• Were you a letter writer as a young person?  Did you enjoy doing book reports in school?  Did you keep a journal?

I suspect there are plenty of people out there who really haven’t come to terms with their love of writing.  For instance, I took it for granted for many years.  And then one day it dawned on me that nearly every professional position I’d held had provided me with an opportunity to write.  And that’s what I loved the most.  To say it was a significant insight is truly an understatement.  I was blown away by the realization.  It was sort of like finding a sea of colorful flowers amidst the cold of winter.  And I kept wondering: How had I missed it?

All the clues were there from my earliest days.

I’m sure that is one reason I spent so many years working with nonprofits — writing was a key skill when it came to fundraising.  Letters, grants, brochures.  Even as a graduate student in sociology, I should have suspected that I really wanted to write.  Knowing I had to write a research paper was cause for excitement.  Really.

Everything in creation has its appointed painter or poet and remains in bondage like the princess in the fairy tale ’til its appropriate liberator comes to set it free.  ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Writing also has a certain kind of beauty, doesn’t it?  Consider the poetry that has moved you deeply.  Or the novel with the ending you’ll never forget.   Maybe a love letter you received or wrote to someone.  Perhaps a memoir that helped you see your own life in a new light, or that brought you comfort.  Maybe memories about the loss of someone you will always miss recorded in your journal.  A quote from a great spiritual leader — one that always points you back in the right direction.

• Is there anything you love doing that you’ve somehow overlooked?  What talents or interests can you set free?  Can you look across the scope of your life, as a whole, and see something there in the pattern … something you’ve missed or minimized until now?
• When I begin to write, there may be stress or anxiety, but there is also joy.  It’s unmistakable.  It’s palpable.  So thank you for being here to read these words.  I hope they are good food for thought.  And I hope to see you here again next Friday.  Until then, take care.

Blog posts by DazyDayWriter @ work in SunnyRoomStudio: all rights reserved. 

I know it’s not summer yet, but I ran across these pictures today and thought you might also enjoy them.

“Sometimes we don’t want to expose the underbelly of our story but that is often where the true lessons come from.  Our circumstances do not define us.  She is a true optimist and living proof that a good sense of humor can get you through almost anything.”

The moment you accept what troubles you’ve been given,
the door will open.  ~ Rumi

NOAH … here in SunnyRoomStudio

I think Rumi’s quote is one of the best I’ve ever read.  So true … that first we must accept what has come into our lives for whatever reason … before we see options and alternatives that move us beyond our suffering.  We all have wounds in life that require attention if we are to get better.  When Noah had an issue recently and we had to soak his paw, wrap it, and so on, we started calling him Red Paw.  Immediately, he seemed to feel better … or maybe we did :)  It’s amazing how a shift in perspective from “oh, this is terrible” to “we can do this” makes a huge difference in our lives.  Of course Marianne Williamson in A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of a Course in Miracles defines a miracle as a shift in perspective.

Just think of the many miracles happening each moment.  All around us.  Quietly.  Without notice.  Yet, there just the same.

• Welcome, Barbara, to this sunny space for kindred spirits.  Your story illustrates this miraculous shift in perspective so beautifully.  Thank you for sharing it here.

Beyond Definitive Answers
by
Barbara Hammond

Having grown up in a very dysfunctional family with a mother who was abusive, psychologically and physically, and attracted men who were the same, I often asked myself how I remained ever hopeful.  Was I just a cockeyed optimist?

It was a meager childhood in every sense of the word.  In spite of that I never gave up the belief that there was a better life “out there.”  I believed I could rise above my circumstances and have a happy life.

• My beliefs weren’t based on religion.

In fact, my grandfather was a Southern Baptist minister and frightened me away from religion by the time I was five.  In my heart I knew there was a God and he/she couldn’t agree with the accusing and hateful tone I felt in that church.  The assumption we were all sinners and needed to go through this pious bureaucracy to get to God made no sense to me at all.

I found this quote by the Dali Lama really summed up what got me through the childhood years of anger, divorce, constant relocation and despair.

“I believe that the very purpose of our life is to seek happiness. That is clear. Whether one believes in religion or not, we all are seeking something better in life. So, I think, the very motion of our life is towards happiness…”

Seeking happiness kept me going.  I knew happiness wasn’t a tangible thing.  I wasn’t living in a Pollyanna bubble.  My day to day was very real.  There were bright spots along the way and enough love to keep my hope alive.

• Are some of us born optimists?  Perhaps.

A Time magazine article last May gave scientific data that proved the majority of us tend to be more optimistic than pessimistic.

“Hope keeps our minds at ease, lowers stress and improves physical health.”  You might find the article as fascinating as I did — The Optimism Bias.

When you survive a horrible childhood, a massive car crash, cancer… anything that is life threatening, it reinforces your belief in something bigger than yourself.  It creates a lot of questions too.  “Why was I spared?”

• “How do I honor this gift that is my life?”

“How can I repay…?”

I survived my childhood and a couple of massive car crashes.  My husband has survived lymphoma.  We’ve been tested again and again.  It hasn’t given either of us any iron clad certainty about life or purpose or belief.

Perhaps understanding there are no definitive answers is what keeps us hopeful.  If we let go of negative emotions and focus on what is positive in our lives it creates a wonderful dynamic to live by.  You no longer fall into despair because you are actively looking for the affirmative.

Or, maybe I really am just a cockeyed optimist.  ~

Thanks, Barb, for your words of wisdom. 

Barbara Hammond is an Artist, Writer/Blogger and Published Author and illustrator of The Duffy Chronicles, her first children’s book.  Blogging made her realize we all have a story.

• You can find Barbara on Facebook or Twitter, and feel free to leave a comment for her below.

The garden of love is green without limit and yields
many fruit other than sorrow and joy. ~ Rumi

• Thank you for visiting SunnyRoomStudio.  On Friday, with a new blog post, I’ll return to our LifeThemes 2012 blog series, as we continue our journey within for the 2-year anniversary of this sunny space.  ♥
  

• But who is this, you might ask …
  

Introducing a new studio pet: ORION.

Named for the lovely constellation of the night sky, he will keep us looking to the heavens and hopefully remembering how a shift in perspective is always within reach.

He joins our other schnauzer, Noah, and Lola (our cat).  Both are about 10 years old.

On the other hand, Orion is only 10 weeks old and quite energetic.  We are struggling to keep up!  Click on his name for more information about the constellation.

Blog by DazyDayWriter @ work in SunnyRoomStudio: all rights reserved.

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