A Wintry Flight of Fancy

January 24, 2014 / roughwighting / 30 Comments

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I wake my daughter at 7 a.m. and exclaim: “It’s snowing. We have to go for a walk!” I’m spending the weekend with her and her young family, who are hushed into dreams. But I can’t let her sleep and miss this fun.

A best friend would turn over in bed and fall back to sleep. But a daughter rises and brushes her teeth with her eyes closed, puts on her warmest woolens, and trudges out in the air-brushed world of a winter wonderland with her mother.

The air sparkles as the soft snow cascades onto the open land. We find the path that leads to the woods and listen to the crunch of our boots on new-fallen snow atop a hard crust from past storms. I laugh and skip through the white delight; my daughter grimaces and tells me I’m crazy. She’s not awake yet, but I know she’ll appreciate all of this soon.

I stick out my tongue and taste the snow as if it’s candy. She shakes her head in disgust and walks on. I shut my mouth and decide to wait until her soul awakens and she thanks me for this time.

The air rushes through the pine trees that are iced like a wedding cake. The sound of the wind through the branches gives me a brain massage. I am so happy I think I’ll burst into song until I remember my pledge to keep quiet. But my daughter’s head snaps up, snow sticking to her surprised face. Muffled hoof beats get louder and louder, until the source of it is upon us.

“Whitey!” she exclaims. I stare at the two-winged horse in utter astonishment. When my daughter was young, I’d tuck her in bed with stories of a fairy wonderland, where the snow always fell like diamonds, where elves played hopscotch with snow imps, and where Whitey, the snow-white fairy horse, flew with the wind to find little girls to ride on her back.

I look upon this mirage with awe, but my daughter is not fazed. She’s always believed that Whitey exists.

“Ladies,” Whitey says in a soft female tone as she lowers her head, encouraging us both to slip on her back. I hold on to her stiff white mane, while my daughter circles her arms around my waist.

“Imagination is based on reality,” the horse’s feminine voice whispers toward me as we rise into the white polka dot sky. “Imagination is a free ride toward joy.”

I close my eyes and smile as I hear my daughter’s voice ring out: “Yippee!”

Energy Magnetism

January 17, 2014 / roughwighting / 30 Comments

I’m your basic centered, normal, more ‘in there,’ than ‘out there’ woman.

That said, I’ve just had an amazing experience that seems unexplainable.

It began in yoga class (and for those of you non-yogis, don’t nod your head knowingly as if that makes me susceptible to ‘strangeness’). Here in the left coast, at least, yoga is accepted as an important part of the exercise regimen of many: men, women, old, young.

So back to yoga class. I arrive after work, exhausted, ready to go home instead and plop on the couch while sipping on a class of wine. But I make myself attend the hour-long yoga session, knowing that the plow, down dogs, and a warrior pose or two will probably help.

The yoga teacher takes one look at me and inquires, “Tough day?”

“I’m exhausted,” I admit.

“Perfect, since I planned on a more restorative practice today,” she responds.

I almost clap in delight. Restorative yoga is relaxing, quiet, with some twists and stretches, but little energy demanded. My main worry is that I won’t fall asleep during Shavasana (also known as Corpse Pose).

Sure enough, I walk out of class an hour later, a new woman. Still tired, but in a restful way. I want to curl up at home on the deck and just commune with the hummingbirds.

But first I stop at the neighboring grocery store to buy some fish and veggies for dinner.

As I approach the vegetable department, wondering if I should splurge on a baked potato instead of wild rice, an onion falls at my feet.

Huh. Weird, since no one else is nearby.

After grabbing a spud, I walk past the potato shelf to retrieve the onion, but when I lightly place the brown bulb back on the shelf, another onion jumps out and totters to the floor.

I laugh, kind of, pick it up, and gently place it with the others.

But a third onion drops out of its space and falls, yup, directly in front of my feet.

Whoa, this is a pain.

I oh so slowly walk away from the misbehaving onions, and turn to my right to check out the greener (more friendly) vegetables. Two feet away from me, on the other side of the onion aisle, a bunch of parsley springs out of its snug space and drops to the floor.

NO ONE else is around.

I wonder if this is a candid camera moment. You know, suddenly a photographer and narrator pop out of the woodwork and shout, “Surprise! You’re on Reality TV!”

But no, I’m still alone, with the moving, jumping, laughing vegetables.

I rush away, noting a red pepper swaying with its ilk and, yup, falling as I run toward the seafood department.

“Salmon, now!” I whisper, whipping out my purse and finishing the deal before the lobsters, clams, and shrimp come after me.

Halfway to the car, I hear a thud on the blacktop and trip over something. The potato, stored in the bag with my fish, has somehow escaped the confines of my purse.

I run, not walk, back to the yoga studio. “Oh my god, what is happening?” I yell, yogic peace now dismantled.

After relating my story, the teacher just smiles.

“I told you that restorative yoga can expand your energy,” she explains peacefully.

Whaa? I don’t remember her saying that. I was too busy sighing while lying on the floor with my knees facing one way, my arms and shoulders the other.

“We are all energy. Right now you have a load of energy buzzing all around you, from your practice. The energy of other living things is just responding. Everything is gravitating toward you, reaching out, sort of like two magnets pulling together.”

Gawd.

My energy.

I suddenly feel powerful.

I have energy magnetism!!

And I LIKE it!

I leave the studio, feet barely touching the ground, holding my car keys tightly, wondering what I might next attract.

I know one thing – I’m going to keep on expanding my energy, but I might avoid the grocery store from now on after my restorative “workouts.”

It’s Just Your Imagination!

January 10, 2014 / roughwighting / 31 Comments

Flash!

Scientists are trying to understand the creative brain.

Hmmm, some people in my family have been trying to understand my brain for decades. My dad used to shake his head at me and intone, “It’s just your imagination, Pammy.”

He never knew how angry that statement made me. What did he mean, JUST my imagination? Did that mean it didn’t count?

But now, wonderfully, neuroscientists and psychologists are claiming that “imagination is the cornerstone of creativity.”

Unfortunately, back when I was growing up in the “olden” days, creativity wasn’t so highly touted. But now a neuroscientist and director of the Brain and Creativity Institute of the University of Southern California says, “having original ideas is a process, not a place (within the brain).”

The implication is that it takes a lot of brain to pull off imagination and creativity.

So my capability to see tiny, dragon-like lizards on top of maple trees that suddenly glow purple, is not “just” my imagination.

It’s genius!

Researchers are now determining that imagination is only possible with the use of (1) memory (yes, it’s good news that you remember the smell of your 7th grade science teacher’s hair spray) and (2) emotions.

Carousel, Shirley Jones, Gordon McRae, imagination, emotion

Falling in love, in “Carousel.”

Here’s one of my good (emotional) memories: my brother sneaks down to the basement where I’m watching an old movie on TV – “Carousel” with Shirley Jones, in which the love of her life is killed. Little brother taunts me because I’m sobbing at the end, but my dad defends me, saying, “The world would be a better place if all people had the imagination to feel other people’s pain and joy.”

Which brings me to another point researchers are discovering. Some people are inherently more creative and imaginative than others.

I always knew that. Now, perhaps others will view creativity and imagination as immensely special and as a talent to strive for, not ignore.

In fact, a Harvard University researcher noted: “the brain is a creativity machine. You just need to know how to manipulate your software to make it work.”

Hector

Yes, that’s what I do at 5:30 a.m. when I gently wake up, neurons firing, the vivid dream world slowly fading away as I locate Geminia and Frederica, my two soul soothers/imaginators who sit invisibly within my eardrums.

“Did you notice the large whale swimming in the Bay this morning?” Geminia whispers as I begin my early morning walk.

I see a hiccup of a splash in the middle of the bay, and then a seal slaps up, barking an explanation: “That’s Hector. He gets lost all the time. He’s supposed to be in Hawaii by now!”

Ah, Pammy, there’s your imagination again….

Never Say Die

January 3, 2014 / roughwighting / 44 Comments

When my friend calls me from her home in the northwest, she’s tearful and sad.

“What’s the matter?” I ask.

“It’s Honey,” ‘Pat’ explains. “She’s gone.”

I’m not surprised, but I try to sound shocked and sympathetic. Honey is much loved by Pat, yet she gives Honey the freedom she believes a cat should have. Living in a wooded area, Honey slinks out of the house at all hours of the day and night, but by dawn, she always returns home with a smirk and sometimes a feather or tiny tail in her mouth.

“Let and let live,” seems to be Honey and her keeper’s motto, and for 9 years Honey has lived long and hard.

Pat adores the aging feline, who has fattened over the years, despite her roaming adventures.

But the morning of Pat’s call, Honey is not in her customary cushioned pillow on the sunny spot in the kitchen corner. Honey is missing.

I figure she’s probably used up her nine lives.

Pat discovers a service she’s heard about, but never believed existed.

Hunting dogs that find lost, injured, or killed cats.

The dogs arrive a day and a half after Honey has disappeared. They search Honey’s home for items to smell – her ball of string, her pillow, her bowl. And then they take off with a bark, their trainer and Pat trailing behind.

They all race through the wooded paths, up the hills, down, over and around, for a mile, the dogs barking, hot on a trail, the humans puffing and stopping now and then, hands on knees, praying they find nothing, but wishing the dogs would stop.

Suddenly, all three animals lay down on a wooded path, panting hard, staring straight ahead.

“What are they doing? Why’d they stop?” Pat asks, looking around for some sign of Honey.

“The death smell,” the dogs’ trainer explains.

“What?” Pat trembles at the words.

“My dogs stop when they catch the cat’s death smell. She’s gone. Probably coyote. You might find her carcass somewhere near this spot, but most likely, there’s not much left.”

My friend trudges home, disheartened, depressed, mourning the loss of her treasured kitty cat.

Two days later, a despondent Pat answers the doorbell – a neighbor who lives down the street standing in the doorway wearing a puzzled expression.

“You missing your cat?” the man asks.

“Yes! Why?” Pat replies.

“I just heard a frantic meow – some fuzzy animal is stuck underneath my garage.”

Pat runs the 200 yards to the rather slanted garage with a dirt hole underneath it. “Honey?”

A responding meow answers back.

A shovel and shouted encouragement soon brings Honey, minus death smell and a few pounds lighter, back into Pat’s arms.

When she calls me with the good news, I want to shout out the moral to this story.

But I don’t, because I’m not sure what it is.

What do you think it might be?

I’m not so happy about this…!

December 27, 2013 / roughwighting / 37 Comments

A little over a year ago my daughter celebrated the birth of her third baby.

Her first child, Sophie, was 4, the middle boy Clark was 3, and now a baby. Everyone was thrilled: the parents, grandparents, great-grandmothers, aunts and uncles, and friends.

And everyone told Sophie and Clark how very lucky they were to have a baby brother.

A day after the baby was born, when the last guest left, patting Sophie on the head saying, “You must be a happy big sister!”, Sophie cuddled up on the hospital bed next to her mother, who was nursing the baby.

“MaMa?” Sophie began.

My daughter turned her gaze from her fresh, newly hatched being and gazed at her daughter. “Yes?”

Sophie whispered apologetically and guiltily, “I’m not so happy about this.”

Ah, how well we understand the misgivings, fears, and acknowledgements that new circumstances, changes, and relationships do NOT make us happy.

Like when my guy moved us from our perfect setting in the bay area, with moderate temps, a great group of friends, a fun job, and comfortable routines, for his new job in New England. I acted thrilled, gaily checking out the real estate, the university that our son attended just miles away in Boston, and the need for a new wardrobe for a 4-season-state. But inwardly, I was NOT so happy about this.

Yet, I jumped into a new job, tutoring special ed high school students, learning a million new facets of myself. I grew close to my mother-in-law, whom I’d never really known because we’d always lived thousands of miles away. I discovered the beaches of Cape Cod and the lakes in New Hampshire, and delved more deeply into writing (and writers) while living just a few steps away from Louisa May Alcott’s and Henry David Thoreau’s spiritual and brick & mortar homes.

I even learned to like Baked Beans, lobster, and the soundless arrival of snow.

During this time, a New England friend, happily traveling throughout the world in his upper management position, was suddenly “retired early.” Oh, how he fought what he saw as a downturn in his life. How could the company possibly live without his skills? He sulked, he ranted, and he knew he was not ready to “go out to pasture,” as he spouted to anyone who listened. He was not so happy about this!

But he surprised us all in a breathtaking way by signing up for a position in a non-profit organization that trained the disabled so they could acquire jobs and make a living for themselves. My always-corporate friend now earns a salary a quarter of what he’s used to, hobnobs with women and men who have less than a high school education with tough sad backgrounds and sadder tales of struggling in this world.

His corporate experience helps him procure donations and grants, and he encourages companies (like the kind he used to work for) to hire the needy who he represents. He has made a difference, and he is a happy man –feeling a deeper purpose in his life. His hours and his attitude are more relaxed; thus, his golf game has improved dramatically!