Creativity is Inside

As an empty nester, I'm finding myself talking to the cat more often. "Like the way that lamp shade catches the light, Russell?" I say as he blinks his lively green eyes. And I know what he's thinking, "she's gonna give me some treats."

Yesterday I went into one of the neighborhood dry cleaners and spoke with the wife of the couple who own it. I spoke as if we were old friends, and gushed over the steal of a cashmere winter coat I'd found at Salvation Army for $20. "Stop talking like you're old friends," my head told me as I noticed her just staring as I spoke. She'd only heard Salvation Army.

It's not easy being alone. Not as easy as I thought it would be. I watch Tavis Smiley last thing at night like someone might drink a glass of warm milk before going to bed in order to sleep.

Tonight I bought $5 worth of clear holiday lights for my window in the living room. Last year I went out onto the fire escape and strung icicle lights from one end of the grill to the other. This year this single window has my attention. Maybe Leila and Sarah's rooms, too. Yes, that is what I will do. This year it's all about what's inside.

So after announcing to Russell what I was about to do, I took the lights out of the box and took down the fall curtain and left the beige sheer panel up.

"This is going to be our solitary curtain for the holidays, Russell," I said. "Come and watch what I'm going to do."
Hoisting myself up on a chair, I looped the lights over the top and then curled the string down and around the lower half of the curtain, creating a luminous braid and laid the tail end of it on the windowsill.

I loved it.

Maybe it was from watching the World Fashion shows last night and listening to the creative ideas of each designer as well the hair and make up stylists, too, but something stirred in me. What I am learning: Trust your ideas.

Russell came out and quickly left. A crazy lady on a chair is spooky. But I marveled and can't wait til my daughters come over and see it, too. I hope they will see that their mom is finding light where at first it seemed the brilliance left with their luggage.

Thankfully for all of us, parents or not, there will always be light.

It is inside.

Listening Ears

Thanksgiving.

A time to peel potatoes, yank the neck out of the poor turkey and feel it's a victory.
To chill three cans of cranberry sauce and wonder how many sandwiches it will serve as a spread until I say, 'no more!'

This year has been an awakening.

Change is the thing to embrace
shaking, quaking,
listening to Sarah's rap

and thankful.

For each and every one of us in our own expression - as Lyle Lovett describes the World - the good and the bad motions of the human experience when all we're doing is trying to remember

the Ocean we swam in,
the inner tube of life.

Searching.

Happy Thanksgiving.

How Sweet the Sound

My delicious daughter, Leila, bought me a seat into Dr. Wayne Dyer's talk last night at the Jacob Javits Meeting Room. I went, took the F and then the A to Penn Station, got out on 8th Avenue and walked the three avenues to the Center. Passed a million, it seemed like, young people in line for a concert at the Hammerstein Ballroom. I'd forgotten how much black clothing teens wear. Gothic Gotham. I smelled whiffs of pot and smiled. And on it goes. The rebellion, the enthusiasm, the raw feelings I hope they will hold on to and not blow away like the smoke.

At the Javits Center, I walked up to the glassy-walled tall building remembering the weekend I'd spent here probably eight years ago when I took a gig at the NBA All Star event as a people counter for each specific attraction. I must have walked every inch of that enormous space 50 times for those three days. When I was done, I felt crippled. Walking on the shiny hard floor last night brought back the hobbling remembrance and I smiled, sort of.

I sat down, happy to be alone and to be able to absorb this wonderful evening of listening to Wayne Dyer speak about our connection to the Source. Tonight I would sit and physically be in the same room as him, and to be able to just listen. I knew I was supposed to rehear something from, "Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life" a book of his essays after meditating to the 81 verses of the Tao Te Ching for an entire year.

A woman sat beside me and started up a conversation. She was from Pennyslvania, the Poconos, and I thought of Ronnie, a boyfriend from years ago who had a summer trailer in the Poconos. How beautiful the land was there but how wrong we were together. I associate the Poconos with Ronnie. I spoke with her but I really wanted to sit in silence and as soon as another woman sat on the other side of her she began to talk to her and I realized some people just need to connect with someone. Was I an oddball for loving the fact of sitting there - in the midst of 3,000 people - and glad to be alone? Once she stopped talking to me, though, I kind of missed it. By then the evening began.

I could tell he was tired. I had looked at his schedule before coming and we were his second to last talk on this tour. I could only imagine. Since teaching, I've realized the enormous energy that is consumed and even if it's a subject of passion, the physical body wanes.

His voice was deep and tired. His daughter appeared and talked to us about him and it gave him relief. I watched him rise up and suddenly the Wayne Dyer I had seen on PBS shows for years was back. The message saved him.

And here's what I needed to hear -- again.

* Allow the spirit to direct the physical.

* Be kind to the kind and to the unkind.

* Go with the flow.

* Know that I chose to be born for a reason and the more I allow the Tao to show me, to take me there, then the more at peace I will be.

* I am on the right track as bizarre and mad as it has seemed lately.

He spoke of the morning of our lives being ambition and the afternoon being meaning. My craving for freedom and for actualization is right on time. And never more have I wanted to do right for my daughters. My capacity for love is as tall and wide as the Jacob Javits Center.

The woman next to me cried when Amazing Grace was played on the speakers, sung by a singer named Cecilia accompanied (I kid you not) with the sounds of whales. The woman next to me wiped away tears and more came. She did it silently and without expression to both of us beside her. It was a moment for her and during the break I watched her go off by herself and when she returned, she sat down, spoke to the woman on the other side, and when the program resumed and she wanted to take notes but could not find a pen, I offered her one of mine, and she looked me in the eyes and said thank you.

She got it.

When the program was over and Dyer honored us as we honored him with a standing ovation as he said 'Namaste' (I recognize the God in you) to each direction of the crowd, I asked her if she wanted me to walk up the avenues with her to her parked car as she had mentioned we might do earlier? She looked at me. I could tell she wanted to be alone or I think so. I realize now she was free from that fear of being alone. But she agreed because I had extended the invitation to her in friendship and perhaps she thought I might be afraid. It didn't bother me in the least to walk back to Sixth Avenue to take the F train. But we did and we walked past the hundreds of teens exiting the concert. We laughed when we realized we looked like oldsters who couldn't let it go and had crashed the concert. But I suspected more we looked like the parents nervously drinking Starbucks coffee and trying to look cool behind the guardrails, watching for their black hoodied babies.

She said good-bye to me at Eighth Avenue and we exchanged email addresses and warmly smiled at each other. From the Poconos to Brooklyn, we reconnected to the source of love. She was going home to her boyfriend and I to Russell, the black and white cat. I see him right now, sleeping as he was last night. It is rainy and windy and the trees outside my fire escape are golden and their rhythm reminds me to allow, again.

Amazing grace.

Thank you, Leila.

P.S. Just finished reading (for the umpteenth time) Deepak Chopra's "Seven Spiritual Laws of Success" and finally I get it! Get me! It is in these times of getting to a place where your path may be sitting under an avalanche of rocks, that is when clarity comes. I asked for a miracle this morning and just now, in reading the summary to Seven Spiritual...I realized that NOTHING happens without the law of giving. Everything is contingent on giving! Now while I consider myself a giver, I realize, too, there is MUCH more I can do and that means to look into the dark crannies of me and bring light.

This I know now.

Origami Ocean

Yesterday my Uncle Dean and his new wife, Anna, had an art show in Huntington at the library on New York Avenue on Long Island. Anna discovered how to take my uncle's printed artwork and turn it into origami. Exquisite. She realized this while visiting her new son, Ken, at his home in West Orange. His daughter, Harley, I believe it was Harley and not his son, Peter, made an origami box and placed chocolates in it. And so the inspiration evolved into an art show.

Viola.

This is where I'm at. Learning to take the inspiration, the tickling that won't go away, the feeling of doing something, accomplishing something, something that is growing stronger as I am growing older. There are many layers to burn off before getting, returning, moving back into the heart of a child, who I was all along, who we all are, from the source of love.

It was so great to see my brother, James, and my niece, Tori. Tori has cerebral palsy but she's growing stronger every day, every time I see her. More clarity. The school she is attending that my brother and sister in law, Melissa, ferociously strove for, is paying off. I see her finding her way a little more each day.

I think that's only what is in the mix for us, too. To find our way. Everyone has it, a path. It's just taking the time to slow way down and play, look, realize, find it right there, where it's been all along. It's us who are scrambling in all directions but where our playhouse sits. Seek and you shall find.

I also got to see my cousin's wife, CJ, who I adore. I spoke with my brother, Steve on the phone after returning last night and he said it best: she is centered consciousness.

Yup.

Just a joy to sit next to and when I could slow my talk down enough, to listen to her was refreshment. CJ, as you read this, I want to say, you have much to say. Say it from that slamming VP office, say it after hours, on Saturdays, in the wee hours of the morning. Learn from my mistakes. Say it NOW even while the mêlée is all around. There are people like me who will read it. All of it.

Ken and CJ's children are thriving and strong. Happy. Like I remember flouncing around with my brothers and sister. Knocking each other around and bonding. Harley has had severe arthritic troubles but she is coming out of it and her parents have stayed with her, fought it, protected her, have become her lifeforce when it was horrific and she is coming out of it. She is the strongest and brightest of all. Peter, pure joy. Just like his father. To look at Peter is to smile and remember there is a twinkle in all of us.

My Uncle Dean also is finding his way and is at peace. A fabulous artist, it's not easy to switch gears and he gives me courage to continue for he's found his way in his fourth quarter. I'm in my third and much to do.

His son, Dean, is wall to wall heart. Dean helped me get my first job here in New York. I worked for Estee Lauder in the Foundation and what an experience. I went from middle management to office girl but I got to see the operation and the view over Central Park is what every newcomer to New York should witness. And Ronald Lauder's divine art collection. The teddy bear wrapped in gauze or the bronze statues of people who looked so real, I often said hello to the man in the corner of the massive area where the receptionist sat. Each time I laughed and blushed, but it was this clever creativeness that I feel running through me this morning.

Dean freely gives all the time. No fee is charged. No taxes. No 'now you owe me.' Nothing. His karmic debt is clean. He is clean. He only need go into his photo office and create fiercely and free. Be Andy Warhol.

His wife, Michele, is slamming it as the President of a family business now in its fourth generation, I believe. That's a talent. I see her satisfaction, and it's good. Her daughters, Chelsea and Taylor, are lithe and robust. They see through eyes that will guide them. There is much heart swimming toward them.

All this I saw last night as I sat at a long table with my family. I've been away from them for a long time. I had to go away and find myself. Much solitude. I wanted to tell them last night I had holed up from everyone. It was something I had to do. I still love it. Right now I am completely alone in quiet and since it's Veteran's Day I will take a break and watch the View. I love Whoopi Goldberg. And then I'll meet up with my daughter, Leila, and life will begin again.

And again.

Do what you love. From a cubby turned office to a humble Brooklyn apartment, do what gives you centered consciousness.

The Mystery

I am so tired tonight but just can't go to bed yet. I watched Charlie Rose interview Jerry Seinfeld; Tavis Smiley talk with Valerie Plame Wilson, and then flipped the channel to hear Dwight Yoakum talk about Buck Owens and get teared up. I love it. Two of the three shows were on public broadcasting. I wish every channel was as forthright and strong.

If you think what you are doing, what your passion is, what you were born to do isn't enough, isn't worth stepping into the fire, think again. I've been thinking about it all night as I watched these shows and then finally the last one, Garth Brooks. Each person interviewed spoke of loving what they did and loving the process, act, creation. I watched these folks who are courageous enough to try. And I knew then I was on the right track to step into the fire, to feel my feet simmering.

I read Marianne Williamson today, too. She spoke of the magic being all around us.

I'm humbled and inspired.

As I go into this I find I love my daughters more than ever. I hope they know this. This action incites my surrender to love. Maybe I can sleep now. I have much to do tomorrow. "Look. It's already here."