In last night’s dream, I am talking with a friend who has become a successful writer and artist. She is making a living doing what she loves to do. I ask her to tell me how she got from point A to point B, and she tells me it was the book. She just published the book, and that was it. Suddenly she could afford to do what she wanted. I start to explain how hard it is for me to figure out how to get published, how I can’t figure out the process, how I can’t seem to pull the right stuff together. . . Then I stop. I say, “You know what. Anything I say right now is going to sound like I’m whining.”
And I was whining. I was so jealous, so eaten with envy.
But maybe I need to just stop telling myself I am being a whiner. Maybe I need to find a coach or mentor who can help me think through the ways that I block myself. I get started on a project, or I work with great intention on a project, but then the work of my paying job intrudes, or another shiny project comes along, or I get depressed and weary. Perhaps jealousy of my dream-friend can spur me to focus.
Gratitude:
1. My bicycle is a red Mt. Fury Roadmaster that my friend Vince fixed up and sold to me a few years ago. I call her Lady Fury. Last fall, our neighbors gave us their Saris trainer, and I was really excited about riding Lady Fury through the winter. Trying to switch to the Saris quick release skewer on the rear tire, I got myself into a fix, so I took her down to Cycle Works in Wrightsville. They didn’t shame me for having messed up my rear axle, and very professionally took care of it. Now I have Lady Fury all set up on the trainer and I can ride my bike through winter. I am so excited.
2. Watching Barb’s horses running in the field on the hill. She took one of them out on a trail ride the other day, and the one who stayed behind whinnied the whole time the other was gone. She said the one she was riding did the same. They do not like to be separate from each other.
3. Zoom church. What a delight to see people’s faces in real time. After the insurrection, I have been feeling the need to be with this community of faith-based, justice-oriented beloveds.
4. Oatcakes. Oat scones. Quick and easy baking.
5. Mockingbird has been coming to the feeders lately. I am such a fan of Mockingbird.
May we do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly together. In Beauty may we walk.
“Things don’t really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together and fall apart again. It’s just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.” —Pema Chödrön
“The artist deals with what cannot be said in words.
The artist whose medium is fiction does this in words. The novelist says in words what cannot be said in words.
Words can be used thus paradoxically because they have, along with a semiotic usage, a symbolic or metaphoric usage. (They also have a sound—a fact the linguistic positivists take no interest in . A sentence or paragraph is like a chord or harmonic sequence in music: its meaning may be more clearly understood by the attentive ear, even though it is read in silence, than by the attentive intellect.)” —Ursula LeGuin
“A common woman is as common as a common loaf of bread, and will rise.” —Judy Grahn
“The plan, a memory of the future, tries on reality to see if it fits.” —Laurence Gonzalez
“When you walk a path you love, there is something deeper calling you forward on it, like a beautiful question that can never be answered.” —Toko-pa Turner
“A well-read woman is a dangerous creature.”
―Lisa Kleypas, A Wallflower Christmas
“Keep walking, though there’s no place to get to.
Don’t try to see through the distances.
That’s not for human beings.
Move within, but don’t move the way fear
Makes you move.” —by Rumi (Barks)
“I think pleasure is really the gateway to feeling connected and inspired.” —Dreamwork with Toko-pa
“Courage is an inner resolution to go forward despite obstacles.
Cowardice is submissive surrender to circumstances.
Courage breeds creativity; Cowardice represses fear and is mastered by it.
Cowardice asks the question, is it safe?
Expediency asks the question, is it politic?
Vanity asks the question, is it popular?
But conscience asks the question, is it right? And there comes a time when we must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because it is right.”
—Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
“Instructions for living a life.
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.”
―Mary Oliver
Mockingbird Chronicles 