After a revelation – about why I was so enchanted by an author’s work – I stumbled on a technique for story-generation and voice discovery. The jolt came when I realized that her discontinuous, multi-format structure was resonating with the way time and reality feel to me now (erratic), my attention whipsawed by climate news […]
Floating in Solutions
December 18, 2022 by
I’m writing to you at midnight on a moonless night, from inside the warmth of an ink-black pool, a mountainside hot spring in the high desert. Oceans of stars glitter overhead in the clear sweet air. The only sounds are a soft breeze soughing through the trees, unseen critters skittering through pine needles. This is […]
Chiaroscuro Time
March 19, 2022 by
Equinox sensitizes me to light-dark contrasts. ‘Chiaroscuro’ (clarus: light + obscurus: dark), art’s intense shadowing (Caravaggio, Rembrandt), surfaces from deep memory while looking at stark contrasts in my email in-box: terrifying news and dire philosophies alternating with shiny announcements from a hopeful world, sprinkled with techniques for dealing with the terrifying news. Simultaneously, I’ve felt […]
Gold Threads in the Dark
December 21, 2020 by
Feeling creative is, for some of us, a life-support function – especially in recent times. It’s easiest for those who have shelter and food, while holding awareness of those who don’t. For hundreds of millions, just thinking up and acting on the next step toward survival — if survival is still possible — are supremely […]
Polyphasic New Year
January 1, 2019 by
Polyphasic: a favorite new word (new for me, a couple of months ago). It’s a quick way to say complicated things about multiple layers of reality (many phases of existence) – in an individual or in a whole culture. It came up when I was listening for what to say at the beginning of a […]
Midwinter Dreamscape
December 21, 2018 by
Through a dark time tunnel, morning and evening like midnight, I treasure this season of inwardness, enfolded in soft wraps against the chill. Warmth and stillness billow into the forefront of luxuries. What I can share here are ways to feel the warmth and stillness any time, ways that have emerged from a convergence of […]
Repurposing Inner Work
July 1, 2018 by
As chaos mounts in the perceptible world, I’ve been listening for new ideas about what to offer here. To my surprise, I’ve noticed that some earlier techniques can be dusted off and repurposed, used in new ways, in the new environment. I’ll offer links to them here, with possibilities for working with them in times […]
Contrapuntal Equinox Experiment
September 21, 2017 by
Public life these days is so filled with stories that intend to grip the audience – wildly countervailing narrative and dramatic “melodies” all playing at the same time – that it can be a strain to hear one’s own profound song. My sense is that becoming a deliberate singer/songwriter of life, a benevolent master storyteller, […]
The Light inside the Cave
May 1, 2017 by
I became (again?) a cave painter one recent morning, hyper-aware of wanting to inscribe something from deep inside, something from far beyond that would echo through and far beyond me. I was in a new space, in every way: the first spring in a new residence, with a writing chair facing east. In the first […]
Self Portraits
January 18, 2017 by
In this month of inspiration to bring new visions into outer expression, first I mused on what would feel good to be done with, to clear the field, and in that creative spaciousness got reminded of an enlightenment from long ago. I decided to invoke it in the current moment, not just marvel at it in […]
The Learning Birds of Summer
August 10, 2016 by
They’re old enough to be out and about, trying to function in the world for the first time. A young jay, with gray fuzz sticking out from wings that were still pale blue, its head a tufted gray ball, struggled to balance on a low branch in the shrubbery. Its short brilliant-blue tail feathers bobbed […]
A Perfect Score of 42
July 12, 2015 by
I found a new way to relax, even feel more creative and awake, when hearing the word ‘perfect’. My mind started chewing on it after two encounters with someone steeped in fashion philosophies: In the first, he announced that painful difficulties reflected the perfection of the moment; in the second, he said he wasn’t perfect. […]
Storied Synchronicity
April 30, 2015 by
After an editorial project that enchanted me day and night for a month, I’ve spent days getting back to myself with yoga, deep-tissue massage, and exotic literature to whisk me into other inner worlds. This morning, noticing my mind had again wafted back into the project – one that altered my deep interior and will nourish me […]
All Seasons, All the Time
March 16, 2015 by
One small white rose glowed in the sunlight, floating in a dark-green sea. I was mesmerized. This could not be. Yet there it bloomed, staring at me, laughing. This went on for days – no other flowers in the vast hedge, just this one, living its full cycle before the others even began. I wondered […]
The Complexity of Now
January 1, 2015 by
It’s January 1: a spirit horse of imagination charging across a clear field. Its tracks are changing the field. Its tracks reflect the infinite factors that went into hooves touching snowflakes in this instant. And you, right now, looking at this picture, are laying tracks, altering the subtle field with each thought and feeling about […]
Speculative Magical Links
September 1, 2013 by
Unusual worlds are opening. I’ve been journeying along one of my less-traveled paths, returning to a lifelong love of fantastical stories. Clues to my own emerging voice pop out of page and screen. This post’s trip report has links to a few favorites, some notes on writing and consciousness, and a little peach-flavored magic realism. The […]
Voice II
June 8, 2013 by
“If I write that, people will think it’s me.” This quote from Amy Tan, in her spirited TED talk about writing fiction, has been singing to me for days. It struck the place in me that’s so focused on integrity that the idea of representing something that’s not-me, when my name is on it, felt dangerous, […]
Voice, Format, Audience
April 2, 2013 by
Mercy. Another writing career. The inner machinery of expression – the place I go to inside, to feel words form – is changing again. It’s being altered by the convergence of two worlds from opposite extremes: (1) inside-out: shaping ever-subtler inner experience into outer form, and (2) outside-in: practicing the audience-driven formats of screenplays and […]
A Kaleidoscope of Women
November 11, 2012 by
Visions of “the feminine” started shape-changing for me this summer, watching Beasts of the Southern Wild. Startling imagery, elaborate mythology, a rich resonant soundtrack, poetic and vivid dialogue – and the unimaginable performance of its tiny girl hero-star – coalesced. Ancient self-images, affections, terrors, and enthusiasms got remembered and rearranged, transformed, even though the movie’s surfaces […]
The Animation in Receiving Art
April 26, 2012 by
Such second-hand creative raptures in recent days. I feel blessed. Sometimes, opening the heart to another’s art is as marvelous as the inspiration to express. Yesterday, I got dazzled by a psychologically intriguing Juliette Binoche film called Certified Copy. Following Ms. Binoche’s character and her paramour through their reality-shifting interactions is a levitational experience. This morning, I […]
Bliss, Fulfillment, Happiness, Passion
March 13, 2012 by
Fun to wonder if the apparent convergence of blogs and videos about “find your passion” (links provided below) has been statistically true – or is just a mirror of my own focus. Multiple notes and links led to discussions of this staple of the “consciousness movement” in a compressed time span. Impatient with so many […]
Flicker and Peep
February 29, 2012 by
These are the words – flicker and peep – for the play of light and shadow, for the sound of sound, in the felt senses. Waking early, in the cold and dark, I notice flames dancing and crackling in the fireplace now. Outside, coyotes yip-whoop in starlight. Time collapses between aboriginal and modern. The resonance […]
Fight, Flight, Freeze, or Flow?
February 7, 2012 by
Awoke to a vibration of wistfulness: glad for the relaxed pleasure in encountering everything with soft regard, and glad to feel only a faint rippling awareness of multiple kinds of violence in the world – sprung from obvious conflicts of identities, motives, and boundaries in the news. It was inspiring to notice the ripples without […]
The Ever-Morphing Novella (=Life)
January 25, 2012 by
Why do I expect to revise my novella after it’s been published? (I hear this is possible with e-books.) It’s already rewritten itself at least four times since it was conceived last summer. The same could be said of me, still experiencing alterations of perception, inspiration, intent, and relationship with life-as-a-work-of-art. Transformation practitioners know about […]
Adaptation: Not Always Second-Hand
January 15, 2012 by
Once again, a word-origin is revealing a hidden coherence: ap, which becomes apt, adapt, aptitude, adept and inept. It’s about fittedness, fastening two phenomena, one or both of them in motion. Like dancing: the fittedness being between the music and the body, or between two or more bodies, in spontaneous or rehearsed choreography (on a […]
Creativity’s Hidden Gateways
January 12, 2012 by
Several new emails in the past 24 hours have touted creativity programs and ideas. One of this morning’s emails feels like a goad. It was about setting up the day to be about one’s own creativity, versus checking the incoming mail and web feeds to see what others are doing. Fashionability (attention to what others are doing), can […]