(for my sister Laurie and all the Christmases we've shared)
On Christmas Eve I revisit other years, other places. Tonight was an authentic Kelly marathon of Charlie Brown, the Grinch and a Los Angeles interpretation of the holiday season, written and directed by Shane Black, called KISS, KISS, BANG, BANG. Robert Downey, Jr. I rest my case. You might call us semi-traditionalists.
Most often I replay scenes from my childhood, though the reveries may veer into last-minute wrapping marathons his father and I shared when our son was wearing footed pajamas.
Tonight I see my younger sister and me; we have gotten into our bunk beds, too excited to sleep even for a minute - or so we believe - and our bedroom door is closed since it opens right onto the living room, site of the tree, the fireplace, Santa and the presents. Five years separate us, which can be a vast gulf when one is 10 and the other 5, but on Christmas Eve we are just girls, filled with wonder and anticipation. Our brother's room is in another part of the house...too far for whispering. I wonder if it was a bit lonely for him, especially on those nights. I will remember to ask him.
Eventually we gave in to a light, reluctant sleep and awoke to find that our stockings had been left at the feet of our beds. Whichever of us woke first let the other one know that Santa HAD been there and in the dark, being as quiet as we could while describing every surprise we pulled out, we explored toys and sampled candy.
I think of her tonight, several thousand miles away. We have only shared one Christmas - and no Christmas Eves - in the past 20-plus years, yet under our tree sits, as her gift tag describes it, "the most beautiful purse I ever saw" and hints of the creams and potions for our aging skins which it contains. Over the decades she has unearthed objects of amazement; the jointed, handcrafted rat with the sweet potato-shaped nose and articulated tail, the flea market photo album and post card collection. This year's flowered purse reminds me of a stocking already laid at my feet and I feel how much I miss her, I miss our girl selves and even our grown sisterly exchanges in the days when Joseph Magnin existed and had its annual collection of figural gift boxes. There is a mixed sense of curiosity, longing, gratitude and loss as I look at the lovely presents she has sent, yet know that, given the chance, I might trade them all to be those young dream believers again.
May all your Christmas wishes come true while absent loved ones nestle in your hearts. And do not doubt this: the magic endures and we are part of it.
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
You are so beautiful
Have I told you lately that I love you? Have you told anyone lately that you love them? We are the instruments of blessings for one another or as my Sunday morning television companion, one-man pep rally, Pastor Joel Osteen, says, we need to speak favor over each other. To which I add we also would do well to speak favor over ourselves. Those critical, fault-finding voices which hatch inside our minds are not our friends; the words they parrot (for they had to come from somewhere) were not spoken by friends or those who could see and cherish our good, the occasional poor choice and human frailties notwithstanding.
It is from Pastor Osteen that I learned the notion of speaking favor over someone as a way to catch God's ear and enlist Divine support for all of us with aspirations - for success, for the willingness to try, for a way of seeing our lives as works-in-progress rather than failures. Which is to say everyone, each being a worthy candidate for blessing and the future promise we came here to fulfill.
In his telling of the process, Pastor Osteen extends our power to bless to all whom we encounter. The kind word, the compliment, the appreciation, taking the time to find what is splendid, pleasing, noble and magnificent - on a grand or more modest scale - lets it be known that this person IS blessed, is treasured and seen not only for who they are but who they may become.
To think that each of us has the power to shape or direct the life, or lives, of those around us is humbling and daunting. It calls for mindfulness, attention to our words and intentions; it is responsibility and gift. Will we accept this assignment, gravitas on a daily schedule, or will we disbelieve, disregard the fact that we have been called to be a messenger of empowerment and love?
Revisiting my past, there were voices that spoke only favor over me, grandparents who attended every dance recital, hired me to paint Christmas scenes on their picture windows every December, who took my child self with them most everywhere, from Veterans' picnics to beach vacations. There were other voices as well which spoke faint praise only conditionally, which raged and found fault, spoke sarcasm or no words at all. The difference between them may not actually haunt, but each cell still holds the memory of the effect.
Whose praises will you sing today, whose beaming face will fill your eyes and heart as you speak your delight at their simple existence? In addition to lessons from Pastor Osteen, I have also learned from other sources that the over-spending of time in regret and recrimination is to fall into the past, sink beneath the shame of critical voices, self-applied. Whatever we may have neglected up to this minute, whatever words we long to undo, our only real choice is to let that all go and start anew here, where we stand.
As I accept this mantle, for I know it to be true, I silently, for the moment, compose a list of names and attributes, bringers of gifts and grace, illumination and encouragement, love without requirements, humor and generosity and knowing, that have placed me here. My wish is to acknowledge that nourishment with gratitude and reciprocation while being alert for the openings where my words may make the difference. For today, may favor be our only language and love our only song.
It is from Pastor Osteen that I learned the notion of speaking favor over someone as a way to catch God's ear and enlist Divine support for all of us with aspirations - for success, for the willingness to try, for a way of seeing our lives as works-in-progress rather than failures. Which is to say everyone, each being a worthy candidate for blessing and the future promise we came here to fulfill.
In his telling of the process, Pastor Osteen extends our power to bless to all whom we encounter. The kind word, the compliment, the appreciation, taking the time to find what is splendid, pleasing, noble and magnificent - on a grand or more modest scale - lets it be known that this person IS blessed, is treasured and seen not only for who they are but who they may become.
To think that each of us has the power to shape or direct the life, or lives, of those around us is humbling and daunting. It calls for mindfulness, attention to our words and intentions; it is responsibility and gift. Will we accept this assignment, gravitas on a daily schedule, or will we disbelieve, disregard the fact that we have been called to be a messenger of empowerment and love?
Revisiting my past, there were voices that spoke only favor over me, grandparents who attended every dance recital, hired me to paint Christmas scenes on their picture windows every December, who took my child self with them most everywhere, from Veterans' picnics to beach vacations. There were other voices as well which spoke faint praise only conditionally, which raged and found fault, spoke sarcasm or no words at all. The difference between them may not actually haunt, but each cell still holds the memory of the effect.
Whose praises will you sing today, whose beaming face will fill your eyes and heart as you speak your delight at their simple existence? In addition to lessons from Pastor Osteen, I have also learned from other sources that the over-spending of time in regret and recrimination is to fall into the past, sink beneath the shame of critical voices, self-applied. Whatever we may have neglected up to this minute, whatever words we long to undo, our only real choice is to let that all go and start anew here, where we stand.
As I accept this mantle, for I know it to be true, I silently, for the moment, compose a list of names and attributes, bringers of gifts and grace, illumination and encouragement, love without requirements, humor and generosity and knowing, that have placed me here. My wish is to acknowledge that nourishment with gratitude and reciprocation while being alert for the openings where my words may make the difference. For today, may favor be our only language and love our only song.
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
To teach imagination is to teach everything
(for my brother Mike on his birthday)
Even Einstein told us that imagination is more important than knowledge. How do we know where one begins, leaving the other to follow? I know as well as I know anything that without imagination we might still be cave-dwellers or fishermen terrified of the Earth's flatness. In a not very original comparison, imagination feels like flinging open the school doors and letting everyone run free, trusting they will find their place, acquire the information they need to reach their destination, realize there are no walls and no limits.
To dream BIG is an adventure. If the lands we seek are only in our minds, what of it? The realms of Tolkien or Baum or Bradbury may not exist on any maps, still they are as real to us as the corner drugstore in our hometown, much more real than what we may have had presented to us as the system's version of history - pick an era. If our brains were skyscrapers, imagination would be housed on the top floor. Not difficult to reach - there are express elevators - but easily missed because gravity or the status quo or someone's expectations or fears kept us from venturing that far from what we thought we knew. Mary Chapin Carpenter has a song called "Heroes and Heroines," in which she tells of risk-takers, people who are unfamiliar with the word impossible, and speaks of our American pioneers, choosing "...a life that's never safe and dry..." and I found those words resonated for me as epitomizing reasons why we may wish to stay uninformed, unenlightened. Imagination carries the possibility of risk and reward. Yet staying put has never been a guarantee of that safe, dry life, for I don't believe it exists. Fiction has given us examples that appear in everyday language, like falling down the rabbit hole, finding the entrance to Narnia or the road to Oz. Rod Serling's introduction to "Twilight Zone" episodes mentions imagination, in almost the same breath as he speaks of worlds "...as vast as space and as timeless as infinity."
Two of the three children in our family had imaginary friends and the third sibling lived a vicarious life through a sizable stuffed bear who had a flourishing literary career. I spent years writing dialogue in my head and wondering why, when the people around me spoke, they never used the words I'd prepared for them. Our parents followed creative paths, yet were not wildly outside any norms for their time. I no longer believe in ordinary as an inevitable state; I believe we each possess the capacity for the exceptional. One may choose ordinary but I don't think anyone who wishes to escape can really be stopped. In our minds we discover there are no limits, no walls too high, no thorn hedges too impenetrable, no world which could not exist if we gave it breath and light.
Dream huge. Stare out the window and let your thoughts run everywhere. Let the dam burst, the gargoyles take flight and twin suns rise in the morning. We are so much more than we know, unfettered, unhampered by time. We are the stories and the tellers, we are enormous, we are endless, heart-breakingly beautiful, fierce and wise. We will never be small again.
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| From the blog of Carolina Georgatou. |
To dream BIG is an adventure. If the lands we seek are only in our minds, what of it? The realms of Tolkien or Baum or Bradbury may not exist on any maps, still they are as real to us as the corner drugstore in our hometown, much more real than what we may have had presented to us as the system's version of history - pick an era. If our brains were skyscrapers, imagination would be housed on the top floor. Not difficult to reach - there are express elevators - but easily missed because gravity or the status quo or someone's expectations or fears kept us from venturing that far from what we thought we knew. Mary Chapin Carpenter has a song called "Heroes and Heroines," in which she tells of risk-takers, people who are unfamiliar with the word impossible, and speaks of our American pioneers, choosing "...a life that's never safe and dry..." and I found those words resonated for me as epitomizing reasons why we may wish to stay uninformed, unenlightened. Imagination carries the possibility of risk and reward. Yet staying put has never been a guarantee of that safe, dry life, for I don't believe it exists. Fiction has given us examples that appear in everyday language, like falling down the rabbit hole, finding the entrance to Narnia or the road to Oz. Rod Serling's introduction to "Twilight Zone" episodes mentions imagination, in almost the same breath as he speaks of worlds "...as vast as space and as timeless as infinity."
Two of the three children in our family had imaginary friends and the third sibling lived a vicarious life through a sizable stuffed bear who had a flourishing literary career. I spent years writing dialogue in my head and wondering why, when the people around me spoke, they never used the words I'd prepared for them. Our parents followed creative paths, yet were not wildly outside any norms for their time. I no longer believe in ordinary as an inevitable state; I believe we each possess the capacity for the exceptional. One may choose ordinary but I don't think anyone who wishes to escape can really be stopped. In our minds we discover there are no limits, no walls too high, no thorn hedges too impenetrable, no world which could not exist if we gave it breath and light.
Dream huge. Stare out the window and let your thoughts run everywhere. Let the dam burst, the gargoyles take flight and twin suns rise in the morning. We are so much more than we know, unfettered, unhampered by time. We are the stories and the tellers, we are enormous, we are endless, heart-breakingly beautiful, fierce and wise. We will never be small again.
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
I'll take a corner piece, please
My son believes that birthday cake could be the doorway to world peace. I say it is worth a try. We shared our refrigerator for several days with a chocolate cake-chocolate mousse filling (two layers)-fudge icing-buttercream frosting trimmed confection that really would rehabilitate a mean heart.
A friend once remarked that she enjoyed being anyplace that the Goodyear blimp appeared. In Los Angeles that can be at a parade, a football game, flying over your house...limitless choices. From my south-facing second-floor windows I have seen the blimp on illuminated night runs as well as droning northward to the Rose Bowl, readying for New Year's day. Occasionally we will see the blimp of another sponsor but the Goodyear ship, all silver and happily benevolent, one assumes, says the fun has started.
Wisely or foolishly, I notice things which I interpret as signs. As I heard the recent updates of a young friend's definitive diagnosis of a rare, troubling, ultimately curable but no day at the beach in the meantime neurological disorder, I empathized for the full roster of doctors and tests that led her to a good yet unsettling solution. In solving the mystery she had the best of care at a truly premier hospital, yet it was the sight of a party in the courtyard, cake and ice cream for all - and she said the in-patients were showing up as well, wheeling their I.V. stands - that took some of the dread out of the days and treatments to come. I recognized it as an indication that all would truly be well, that she was sent for her test and consultation - and their results - on the day when what was just birthday cake by another name was being served, joyously, generously, to the multitudes. Seconds? Don't mind if I do. The universe of my understanding has its cunning ways of giving us the nod and the wink, sometimes after the dope-slap, just to say there are better times ahead. If she had looked up, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the blimp sailed over with its own unique blessing. In spite of itself, life can be sweet.
A friend once remarked that she enjoyed being anyplace that the Goodyear blimp appeared. In Los Angeles that can be at a parade, a football game, flying over your house...limitless choices. From my south-facing second-floor windows I have seen the blimp on illuminated night runs as well as droning northward to the Rose Bowl, readying for New Year's day. Occasionally we will see the blimp of another sponsor but the Goodyear ship, all silver and happily benevolent, one assumes, says the fun has started.
Wisely or foolishly, I notice things which I interpret as signs. As I heard the recent updates of a young friend's definitive diagnosis of a rare, troubling, ultimately curable but no day at the beach in the meantime neurological disorder, I empathized for the full roster of doctors and tests that led her to a good yet unsettling solution. In solving the mystery she had the best of care at a truly premier hospital, yet it was the sight of a party in the courtyard, cake and ice cream for all - and she said the in-patients were showing up as well, wheeling their I.V. stands - that took some of the dread out of the days and treatments to come. I recognized it as an indication that all would truly be well, that she was sent for her test and consultation - and their results - on the day when what was just birthday cake by another name was being served, joyously, generously, to the multitudes. Seconds? Don't mind if I do. The universe of my understanding has its cunning ways of giving us the nod and the wink, sometimes after the dope-slap, just to say there are better times ahead. If she had looked up, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the blimp sailed over with its own unique blessing. In spite of itself, life can be sweet.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Birthday
This seems to be a day for counting blessings. Why wait for the government-sanctioned observance coming in November? Kate Wolf had what I imagine was a signature song, called "Give Yourself to Love" which I like to sing in the kitchen (as I also like to sing "Pancho and Lefty" and disparate tunes from a long, eclectic musical history). My truest blessing today is that this is my son's birthday. He is the teacher I never knew I needed, bringing with him thoughts and devices that expand my world...these are not non-sequiturs but merely poorly arranged sentences...and he connects, especially, to the final verse of Kate Wolf's song, "Love is born in fire, it's planted like a seed. Love can't give you everything but it gives you what you need. Love comes when you are ready, love comes when you're afraid. It'll be your greatest teacher, the best friend you have made."
The anticipation and joy over his arrival has not diminished in the years since his birth. Fresh aspects and awareness emerge anew as he, as we all do, continues to evolve. I had never imagined myself capable of being someone's mother but the knowledge of his pending arrival (miraculous, in my mind) told me that a greater wisdom than I possessed felt I was equal to the task. That I was given the chance continues to humble me. Happy Birthday. Live long and prosper.
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1dZ-x8DLDQ - Kate Wolf singing her own song, with the added bonus, for BATTLESTAR GALACTICA fans, of Helo and Sharon scenes)
The anticipation and joy over his arrival has not diminished in the years since his birth. Fresh aspects and awareness emerge anew as he, as we all do, continues to evolve. I had never imagined myself capable of being someone's mother but the knowledge of his pending arrival (miraculous, in my mind) told me that a greater wisdom than I possessed felt I was equal to the task. That I was given the chance continues to humble me. Happy Birthday. Live long and prosper.
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1dZ-x8DLDQ - Kate Wolf singing her own song, with the added bonus, for BATTLESTAR GALACTICA fans, of Helo and Sharon scenes)
Friday, October 23, 2009
Not quite a rant, but maybe a ramble
The kitchen clock stopped working at least 2 years ago. Both of my old, but not vintage, wristwatches need batteries. Time and I have reached a different plateau in our relationship.
We do have a few clocks, our cell phones and, if I pay attention, the angle of sunlight to help me know when a call needs to be made or dinner started or if I can get those last dishes washed before FRINGE comes on. But time is not the companion I once thought. For many years I truly saw my life as endless, impossible-to-win rounds of BEAT THE CLOCK. So many tasks and deadlines in any given day, no lazing, no lolling. Family members who balked at restaurant Thanksgiving dinners (before the supermarkets started selling whole meals, pre-cooked), Christmas eve, Christmas morning, Christmas day cooking and entertaining. Self-assigned hour thieves like writing class or public access tv training, 12-step programs, volunteer newsletter editing, rubber stamp art and early-morning walking. I had to be stopped and I was. (Reminder: thank body for wisdom which far exceeded that of brain.)
For me, time is a thing that evaporates...you know it was there yet when it has gone, no trace, not even a water line, remains. My perspective is greatly skewed - whether that is good or not, I can't say - and what I think has been a few weeks is actually six or seven months. And then I started listening to talks by people who understand things like energy and physics, who say things such as, "Everything is now." And for a flickering I have a glimpse of what they may be telling us. Concepts appear to me either as visuals or metaphors, or a combination, and I saw time as a bowl of water, out of which I believed I'd been asked to construct something solid and dimensional, as I might have done with a bowl of clay. But it resisted all my efforts to shape it into something that could be called tangible. It was still there, it just wouldn't behave.
My studio bulletin board once held a quote clipped from somewhere that said, "Life should feel like floating." It is more than that, it IS floating, allowing us and all our hours to be here AND there simultaneously. We are at once walking histories of all we've done or seen or heard and also repositories of ages, eons, wisdom and dreams from every direction and distance. This is information that I process slowly, incrementally, noticing without much surprise that there might be a reason why I've always been drawn to stories of time travel. I don't think (speaking of time) that it is too late to learn what physics can teach or perhaps it is a variation on that discipline which holds the answers. My advice? Avoid all who would have you believe that life is not a mind-expanding experience, that all walls are solid and time is just numbers on a clock.
I grew up among people who believed passionately that THIS was not the whole of anything. One of the few teachings I retain from a junior college geology class comes from Edward Teller. We listened to a tape of one of his lectures in which he described everything we could possibly imagine or guess at in the universe - picture great minds really stretching - as being (I quote as accurately as possible) "...a goldfish in a fishbowl on the back of a great white elephant." Will we grasp the lessons that don't match anything we thought we knew? Time will tell.
We do have a few clocks, our cell phones and, if I pay attention, the angle of sunlight to help me know when a call needs to be made or dinner started or if I can get those last dishes washed before FRINGE comes on. But time is not the companion I once thought. For many years I truly saw my life as endless, impossible-to-win rounds of BEAT THE CLOCK. So many tasks and deadlines in any given day, no lazing, no lolling. Family members who balked at restaurant Thanksgiving dinners (before the supermarkets started selling whole meals, pre-cooked), Christmas eve, Christmas morning, Christmas day cooking and entertaining. Self-assigned hour thieves like writing class or public access tv training, 12-step programs, volunteer newsletter editing, rubber stamp art and early-morning walking. I had to be stopped and I was. (Reminder: thank body for wisdom which far exceeded that of brain.)
For me, time is a thing that evaporates...you know it was there yet when it has gone, no trace, not even a water line, remains. My perspective is greatly skewed - whether that is good or not, I can't say - and what I think has been a few weeks is actually six or seven months. And then I started listening to talks by people who understand things like energy and physics, who say things such as, "Everything is now." And for a flickering I have a glimpse of what they may be telling us. Concepts appear to me either as visuals or metaphors, or a combination, and I saw time as a bowl of water, out of which I believed I'd been asked to construct something solid and dimensional, as I might have done with a bowl of clay. But it resisted all my efforts to shape it into something that could be called tangible. It was still there, it just wouldn't behave.
My studio bulletin board once held a quote clipped from somewhere that said, "Life should feel like floating." It is more than that, it IS floating, allowing us and all our hours to be here AND there simultaneously. We are at once walking histories of all we've done or seen or heard and also repositories of ages, eons, wisdom and dreams from every direction and distance. This is information that I process slowly, incrementally, noticing without much surprise that there might be a reason why I've always been drawn to stories of time travel. I don't think (speaking of time) that it is too late to learn what physics can teach or perhaps it is a variation on that discipline which holds the answers. My advice? Avoid all who would have you believe that life is not a mind-expanding experience, that all walls are solid and time is just numbers on a clock.
I grew up among people who believed passionately that THIS was not the whole of anything. One of the few teachings I retain from a junior college geology class comes from Edward Teller. We listened to a tape of one of his lectures in which he described everything we could possibly imagine or guess at in the universe - picture great minds really stretching - as being (I quote as accurately as possible) "...a goldfish in a fishbowl on the back of a great white elephant." Will we grasp the lessons that don't match anything we thought we knew? Time will tell.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
May We Always Expand
Even as time’s moving sidewalk pushes me within months of THAT date, the moment when we Americans become truly senior, there are still so many things I want to be and do when I grow up. Perhaps it would be more appropriate to say “with the rest of my life” but really growing up, in spite of chronological age, milestones observed, challenges faced - with grace and courage or without - is, for me, an ongoing process. I learn every day; my hope is that I grow every day or evolve or morph or refine or draw closer to enlightenment so I choose not to declare myself a complete grown-up. Which leaves so many doors to peer behind, endless lives still waiting to be tried on. Sometimes it is the mental process of considering, envisioning; other times, actual steps are taken toward enlarging my bag of tricks.
This week I would wish to be Neil Gaiman, for his fluid and vividly humorous (or frightening) writing but mostly for his mind and how it appears to his readers to travel without footprints from ordinary to most decidedly non-ordinary reality with stories we can move right into without renovation - or any intentional suspension of disbelief.
To see the world with his imagination, to paint the - or so we should believe - impossible so that we not only nod in recognition but wonder precisely where we can buy a ticket is a gift for which no measuring instruments exist. It may be that as he writes he feels constrictions, limitation, but I find no sense of that in his work. It flows without boundaries like water across the Earth and reminds me that anything described as infinite is really, really vast.
What a wonder it would be if, with the rest of my life, I possessed the ability to conjure worlds upon worlds with the letters of the alphabet as my tools, that and a mind which stretches in either knowledge or speculation on our institutions, our very gods, ourselves in alternate realities; who we are, from where have we come and who knows and can tell us the rules.
Contemplating my Gaimanesque existence, I wonder if there was some switch that was thrown, either by divine forces, chance or something unnamed, that carried a young Neil to the borderlands where, as I picture it, he was given a hat that didn’t fit quite so tightly, his brain/mind had more room to expand. It was allowed to breathe deeply of the what-ifs; I do not know his biography so I can merely speculate. I only know that I long to learn the secret of dreaming such dreams and then being able not only to recount but interpret them, for myself and all seekers.
While it may not be the answer, I follow the work of teachers who believe we can learn to get out of our own way. Where we may be blocked, we can open; where we resist, we can practice surrender. In the best possible sense, I believe our limitless child remains the larger portion of who we are and the notion of, at 65, anticipating a life that will burst into flower given the right circumstances may denote an understanding of perhaps the way things really work.
This week I would wish to be Neil Gaiman, for his fluid and vividly humorous (or frightening) writing but mostly for his mind and how it appears to his readers to travel without footprints from ordinary to most decidedly non-ordinary reality with stories we can move right into without renovation - or any intentional suspension of disbelief.
To see the world with his imagination, to paint the - or so we should believe - impossible so that we not only nod in recognition but wonder precisely where we can buy a ticket is a gift for which no measuring instruments exist. It may be that as he writes he feels constrictions, limitation, but I find no sense of that in his work. It flows without boundaries like water across the Earth and reminds me that anything described as infinite is really, really vast.
What a wonder it would be if, with the rest of my life, I possessed the ability to conjure worlds upon worlds with the letters of the alphabet as my tools, that and a mind which stretches in either knowledge or speculation on our institutions, our very gods, ourselves in alternate realities; who we are, from where have we come and who knows and can tell us the rules.
Contemplating my Gaimanesque existence, I wonder if there was some switch that was thrown, either by divine forces, chance or something unnamed, that carried a young Neil to the borderlands where, as I picture it, he was given a hat that didn’t fit quite so tightly, his brain/mind had more room to expand. It was allowed to breathe deeply of the what-ifs; I do not know his biography so I can merely speculate. I only know that I long to learn the secret of dreaming such dreams and then being able not only to recount but interpret them, for myself and all seekers.
While it may not be the answer, I follow the work of teachers who believe we can learn to get out of our own way. Where we may be blocked, we can open; where we resist, we can practice surrender. In the best possible sense, I believe our limitless child remains the larger portion of who we are and the notion of, at 65, anticipating a life that will burst into flower given the right circumstances may denote an understanding of perhaps the way things really work.
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