At Home

I thought this blog was going to be about Broome, my wonderful week long stay in remote far north Western Australia.

I found the most perfect photo to illustrate the vibrant colour of sea and sky, but the blog wouldn’t come. It felt like a travelogue or a crowing, the writing version of a ‘slide night’.

I want to write about being home, about now. It’s very early in the morning, I’ve just come in from my garden and I still have dirt between my toes and under my fingernails . . . I garden bare footed. I love the feeling underfoot, I can sense how warm or moist the soil is from my shallow roots on earth. Since returning from Broome we have had four days over 34C (93F) so I have watered and mulched this morning ahead of another scorcher . . . and I just can’t go back . . . and it feels wonderful to be here now . . . as it did in Broome when I was there.

The rabbit found a hole and ate all my bean seedlings, so I replanted eight more hard white beans. They will sprout with in days. I mended the tear in the netting and pulled more thistles out. The geese arrived and demanded seed, so I threw it to them and it lifted and spread in the breeze, so now I can hear Cockies and Choughs squabbling over the remains. Everyone else is still asleep except the birds and me. It’s not still; the trees are waving in a strong cool breeze. It’s not quiet; the birds are making the most extraordinary racket. I want to say I feel still and quiet, but really what I feel is at home. I feel at home. It’s not the place, it’s the awareness of being here now. I’m sorry I missed the opportunity to share Broome with you when I was at home there!

Now I’ll shower and go to the Farmers market for the best soy latte in the world, the ritual that marks the beginning/end of my week. I’ll talk to strangers and neighbours. I’ll yarn and trade with the honey man, and Alf the former wharfie who makes delicious strawberry jam, and Bill who sells ‘cosmetic’ raw milk (didn’t you know it’s great to bath in . . . of course once you have bought it, you can do what ever you like with it!) Maybe I’ll find a spectacular hat for the Greens garden party this afternoon.

Ahhhh and all the while the hard white beans will be doing their magic, that I am just a little part of.

P.S I couldn’t part with the photo of Broome . . . .

Meaning

Meaning is not something you stumble across, like the answer to a riddle or the prize in a treasure hunt. Meaning is something you build into your life. You build it out of your own past, out of your affections and loyalties, out of the experience of humankind as it is passed on to you, out of your own talent and understanding, out of the things you believe in, out of the things and people you love, out of the values for which you are willing to sacrifice something. The ingredients are there. You are the only one who can put them together into that unique pattern that will be your life. Let it be a life that has dignity and meaning for you. If it does, then the particular balance of success or failure is of less account.

~ John Gardner

Goose Update

Just a goose update! I think I had mentioned a few weeks ago that the geese were missing and that I was missing them. Well it turns out it was that spring thing again! It appears that Whitey's aggressive attitude and Collies 'walk about' were connected and biological. She is sitting on eggs outside the neighbor's bathroom window and Whitey is doing his protective thing. So every day we wait to see if she brings back goslings, and keep a look out for Felix the aging fox who lurks at night.
Still waiting . . .

Social Artistry

I was sent this quote from Jean Houston, which I found relevant to both my inner and outer life.

"We find ourselves at the end of one era, and not yet at the beginning of a new one. We are caught in a parenthesis between the reluctance to leave what was, and the terror before what is yet to be. Some of us have subsided into lives of serial monotony, while others risk all for sensation at any cost. And still a vision beckons. We are the citizens of closing times, and this makes us pioneers of opening time, bridge builders and architects, the ones who will make it happen. In this, our vision and guidance is essential for these are the times, and we are the people."

So I did a quick google on Jean Houston http://www.jeanhouston.org/index.html and found that she is a US scholar, and philosopher, considered to be one of the foremost visionary thinkers and doers of our time, and one of the principal founders of the Human Potential Movement and of The Institute of Social Artistry.

Which then lead me to this information about Social Artistry. http://www.socialartistryinstitute.org

Social Artistry is an emerging discipline in leadership development. It taps inherent human capacities for greater imagination, compassion, and resolve. The discipline integrates science and intellectual development, using multiple styles of thinking, expanding skills for contemporary leadership challenges, and applying these skills to complex social issues.
Social Artistry training is intellectually and personally challenging, merging the development of personal capacities and potential with strong leadership skills for social change by:

• Expanding intellectual capacity leading to new skills for systems thinking, strategic planning, problem-solving, effective action and continuous learning.

• Strengthening participatory approaches, partnership building, gender mainstreaming and human-rights-based approaches

• Enhancing personal will, courage, imagination, initiative, and energy.

• Appreciation for a culture’s story, norms, wisdom and insights into achieving the MDGs

Social Artists are leaders in many fields who bring the same order of passion and skill that an artist brings to his or her art form, to the canvas of our social reality. Ultimately, it is about all of us together co-creating the human and social changes needed to make a better world.

Making Time . . . Power hours

From Satoriswing at Vibrant Nation http://www.vibrantnation.com/
I really think our age group has a lot to offer, be it fiction, nonfiction, novels, short stories, magazine articles, whatever one wants to do. In days gone by, it was the old time storytellers who gave direction, not by wagging their fingers and telling everyone they screwed up, but by telling stories with a not so obvious moral. They can be fun stories. They can be serious. They can be raunchy, or they can be religiously written. It doesn't matter. There is so much potential here with all of us, that it excites me. Let's all do something.
One suggestion to get someone unstuck or help a person get past the roadblocks we all put up is to force oneself to sit for 10 minutes everyday in one place, before a computer terminal or with a tablet. For ten minutes you can't do anything else. You can't get up and go potty. You can't answer the phone. You can't get up and get coffee. You have to sit there and try to think about writing. Put words to the page - gobbledygoop is okay. The words don't have to make sense at all. Brainstorm. Put down incomplete sentences about nothing important or everything important. It doesn't matter. The point is to do this every day, without fail for 10 minutes. That's how I started my first book. I had to force myself. I had to teach myself to have the discipline. A little at a time what I wrote down had meaning. A little at a time I started devoting more time to it, until I could write most of the day. I suggest you try this and see how it works for you.

NaNoWriMo

Do you know about NaNoWriMo? It stands for National Novel Writing Month and is is a fun, unorthodox, seat-of-pants approach to writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.

I've thought about doing it for years. This year I've signed up! Anyone want to join me? I love the concept because I think it models how I want to live my life . . . taking risks, making mistakes, to live without stressing about quality, about getting over being the best and just 'being'!

Here's the excerpt from the website describing what it's all about: (and for more info check out http://www.nanowrimo.org/ )

"Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It's all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.

Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that's a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down.

As you spend November writing, you can draw comfort from the fact that, all around the world, other National Novel Writing Month participants are going through the same joys and sorrows of producing the Great Frantic Novel. Wrimos meet throughout the month to offer encouragement, commiseration, and—when the thing is done—the kind of raucous celebrations that tend to frighten animals and small children.

In 2007, we had over 100,000 participants. More than 15,000 of them crossed the 50k finish line by the midnight deadline, entering into the annals of NaNoWriMo superstardom forever. They started the month as auto mechanics, out-of-work actors, and middle school English teachers. They walked away novelists.

So, to recap:

What: Writing one 50,000-word novel from scratch in a month's time.

Who: You! We can't do this unless we have some other people trying it as well. Let's write laughably awful yet lengthy prose together.

Why: The reasons are endless! To actively participate in one of our era's most enchanting art forms! To write without having to obsess over quality. To be able to make obscure references to passages from our novels at parties. To be able to mock real novelists who dawdle on and on, taking far longer than 30 days to produce their work.

When: You can sign up anytime to add your name to the roster and browse the forums. Writing begins November 1. To be added to the official list of winners, you must reach the 50,000-word mark by November 30 at midnight. Once your novel has been verified by our web-based team of robotic word counters, the partying begins."

http://www.nanowrimo.org/

Persistance

The first writing retreat I ever planned to facilitate was scheduled for November 2001 in San Miguel, Mexico. I was very nervous. Would enough women want to come? Was it priced attractively? Was my Spanish up to it? Would the villa and staff work out? Well with the support of a some great writing buddies, seven women signed up and paid to come. It was very heady, and still I worried . . . was I good enough, did I know what I was doing? What I didn't worry about . . . what never crossed my mind was that two airplanes would crash into The World Trade Center three weeks before, that the borders would close, airlines would virtually go broke and people would be terrified to travel. Every single woman canceled. I refunded every dollar, but (largely because of the financial uncertainty at the time) the owners of the mexican villa invoked the cancellation policy and kept my full payment. I was burned. It hurt.

So today is Saturday the 17th of October, and I am not at the Women's Writing Retreat in Castlemaine that I'd planned. As those of you who registered know, I have re-scheduled the retreat as a result of two late cancellations. I'm feeling a little flat as I was looking forward to it, particularly meeting wonderful new writing women, hearing new voices and new stories, and of course it has dredged up some discomfort of previous experiences!

HOWEVER . . . the next retreat is scheduled for March 19, 20 & 21, 2010. There are currently 12 people interested so I'm feeling confident the March one will fly. I do have lots of experience in persistence.

Some time after the dust settled in 2001 women started asking about the Mexico retreat. It took three years before I could muster the resilience to try again. The first thing I did was call to see if the Villa was available and what the price was now. No one answered the phone and I took that as a sign that I shouldn't move forward. I let it go. A week later I came home from work to a voice message from Mexico that said the dates were available ,and had been locked in for me . . . and they were so happy that I was finally using the credit that they had been holding since 2001! It went ahead, it was amazing.

So the wonderful Mauro at the Midland is doing the same, holding our deposit for a March 2010 retreat . . . please pass the word around . . . and put it in your diaries.

And this weekend is probably a great time for me to acknowledge patience, persistence and passion . . . keeping connected to the excitement and adventure of what you really love. I'm off to a Bushlands Bash, where half a dozen or so of my female neighbors get together to eat, laugh, and tell stories. We are all over 50, independent, love sharing and hearing each others stories and experiences, we are all examining 'what matters' post kids and partners (they are still there . . . in many cases . . . just not at the top of the list anymore!) So when the retreat door closed this weekend the Bushlands Bash opened up . . . I'll take my passion there!