By catherine | July 3, 2008
I should be writing a WOW response or working on my99 Playlist Challenge response, but instead I’m setting up an account at Zazzle to sell my prints. Here’s the first one:
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My99 Playlist Challenge
By catherine | June 30, 2008
I’m working on the my99 Playlist Challenge posted by Rus, who’s offering a 15g iPod to the best storyteller of the 99 song choices. Visit his website for the full explanation. At first, I thought this would be too time-consuming, but I’ve started to think about obvious songs and why I’d choose them. I heard Jethro Tull on the radio today and realized that would have to be one of the songs of my life, even though I haven’t heard it in years. Plus, Jagman is iPod-less after someone broke into his office and stole his nano.
But the real reason I decided to do it is because today was the my first day of ‘vacation’ and I am already going stir-crazy. I even stopped in at work briefly. (How pathetic is that?) I don’t know what to do with myself. I can’t settle myself down enough to get in the creative zone, so I’m just frustrated that I’m not being ‘productive.’ So I’ll play with my music, create a really cool playlist, try to forget about work, and maybe even win an iPod. Go visit Rus’s site if you want to play. The contest is open to everyone, even if you don’t have a blog. Post your list in his comments.
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After the Service
By catherine | June 29, 2008
Much to the disappointment of my parents and in-laws, I have eschewed organized religion for the last twenty years and have taught my children that every religion has its own beliefs and stories and that most of them think theirs is the only way, which means that none of them is the only way. My children must find their spirituality themselves, as I am doing. And while I think this has worked well, there are times when I wonder what they’ve missed, in the same way that I sometimes feel bad that they don’t have the benefits of living in a typical suburban neighborhood with lots of kids to play with.
Such were my thoughts as I sat in a two hour bar mitzvah ceremony yesterday. I was impressed with all the preparation the boy had to go through and the poise with which he carried himself. I was impressed with all the activities for kids and families listed in the bulletin, and wondered if Lima Bean was missing out on having a group of friends like that to play with. This boy was only one year older than Lima Bean, but he carried himself with so much more confidence and maturity.
I also wondered what it would be like to have a scheduled time like that to focus on connecting with one’s higher power, because that’s something I don’t have either. I squeeze it in when I can. I don’t know if my children ever do it at all, unless I take Lima Bean for a walk in the Zen Garden or Labyrinth nearby.
I sat watching these two blended families sitting side by side, supporting the bar mitzvah boy, who seemed to have benefited from such a strong religious upbringing, thinking that Lima Bean was at a disadvantage. When the Torah reading was over, the boy read a personal essay. He talked about learning the consequences of his actions after he and his friends threw rocks across a fence into someone’s yard and the police came to his house. And it occurred to me that I didn’t want Lima Bean to learn about responsibility that way; I was thankful once again for not living in a neighborhood with a bunch of kids.
As the day wore on, the conclusions I had made earlier slowly unraveled. The harmonious blended family was an illusion for one day only; the parents fought bitterly and had recently been back in court. The stepson who appeared so mature and responsible had recently been kicked out of the house.
And then I realized that the sermon I had listened to earlier had been chosen for a reason. It was about the importance of only entering into arguments for the sake of furthering good, not for power struggles or egos or money, and that in all arguments, one should be respectful of each other. I wondered if it had made a difference, really, to anyone sitting in the synagogue.
I’ve concluded that as far as organized religions go, the Quakers probably have the best idea: come to a service and sit for an hour in complete silence and figure it out for yourself.
My father-in-law spoke at his 70th birthday party recently, and one of the things he said was that his only regret is that not all of his children and grandchildren attend church regularly. He is a devout Catholic and a genuinely good man; I respect him for following what is good about his faith: compassion, charity, forgiveness. I also realize that I am more spiritual than my brother-in-law who attends church every Sunday but is a greedy, unscrupulous, corrupt businessman, and that my father-in-law will never understand that. So be it.
That’s the beauty of finding one’s own spiritualism, the connection to a higher power through yourself. There is no wrong way to do it. Mine is not better than yours. If you live your life in a holy way, it doesn’t matter whether you need a sermon from a priest, zen meditation, a twenty minute walk in the woods, or a passage from Eckhert Tolle’s book to do it.
What matters is how you live your life, every day.
Topics: life in general | 1 Comment »
WOW:What’s Your Line?
By catherine | June 27, 2008
Write On Wednesday’s Prompt: I think once you’ve found your voice, your theme, your preoccupation, then your writing life becomes a lot simpler. You begin to focus your vision of the world through that lens, and pretty soon you start relating everything you see and everything that happens to you in terms of that focal point. What do you catch yourself thinking about? What experiences and relationships in your life are the most meaningful? What catches your attention when you’re out and about? These are the things you’re going to know, the things you’re going to care about, and that knowledge and caring will resonate in your writing.
This is where you’ll find your line.
How about you? Have you found your line yet? Do you think you have one? How do you go about expressing it?
This was a prompt that was going to require more thought from me than I had to give to it on Wednesday, which is why I’m doing the Write On Wednesday on Friday. In fiction writing, my ideas all center around female search for self journeys, mostly around women who have a false sense of reality. My first nano novel was about a woman who was a wealthy elitist with the ‘perfect’ life, clothes, car and house until her husband dropped dead. Then she found out that he’d been having an affair for many years and was nearly bankrupt. She had to face the reality of who she was and how superficial her life had been. For my next novel idea, I chose a helicopter parent, because they drive me absolutely crazy. I really can’t understand how a woman can have no life beyond her teenager’s social world and think that that’s ok. Denial is a common theme: my child is perfect. So her son winds up dead and she has to face the fact that not only was he NOT perfect, but also that she doesn’t know who she is because her entire world revolved around being at his school activities.
I think I would have enjoyed being a psychiatrist, because I find myself constantly analyzing people. Even at work, I analyze (and sometimes overanalyze) their comments, actions, motives, intentions. I am always trying to figure out what people are going to do or why they behave the way they do. At social gatherings and in restaurants, I am usually listening to at least two conversations at the same time. I am mostly fascinated by women and our roles, the societal masks we wear, trying to be true to ourselves in a society that bombards us with who we should be and leaves us little time to figure out who we really are.
As I thought about this prompt, I realized that while I did have a “line” that I go back to for fiction writing, I really have never found that “line” for my blog. I think that’s why I have struggled so much, periodically, with whether to keep it up or not. And in ruminating over this prompt, I think I may have come to an answer. My fiction ideas focused on the circumstances that cause a woman to begin a search for self journey and portray that unraveling of pretenses. But in real life, my focus for the last couple of years has been my own spiritual growth and creativity and how to balance that with the demands of being a working mother. I spend a lot of time reading blogs and books on those subjects, doing morning pages, gratitude journals, and intentions. Watching the Oprah Monday night series. Nearly all my free time for most of this past year has been focused on staying centered and grounded, making time for first things first, keeping perspective…which is not to say that I was always able to do so.
Two weeks ago I discovered Christine Kane’s blog. Last week, for the second time in two months, I got poison ivy that required steroids. I’ve never really even had poison ivy before, other than a mild patch, even though I’m out in the woods all the time. And I kept trying to figure out why I was now so susceptible to it, so suddenly. On my second day of steroids, I opened her blog and her post was on poison ivy! She related it to spirituality, intentions, the power of the mind over the body… all the things I’d been reading about for the last year and trying to apply to my own life. And it suddenly clicked.
I should be writing about my own search for self journey and how I’ve been trying to link the theoretical, book explanations with the reality of life. Like: if we’re supposed to be able to control things with our mind, why am I getting poison ivy?? Because that’s the kind of crazy stuff I think about all the time. And there might be people interested in crazy stuff like that. Or what I’m reading about in Women Who Run With the Wolves. Or why I can’t get the female characters from The Pillars of the Earth out of my mind. Or going to the zen garden and not knowing the significance of stacking the rocks. Or why I don’t watch tv anymore.
I think I’ve always been so aware of writing for an audience, that I’ve censored a lot of my own writing. And just as I need to find balance between work and personal time, I also need to find a balance between writing for an audience and writing for me.
Topics: writing | 9 Comments »
Entrance to the Zen Garden
By catherine | June 25, 2008
Be present in the moment. Enjoy the silence.
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