enlightment

Amma hugs–I’ve had three. Why?

Standard

Amma
“Amma will embrace all these people tonight.”

‘My daughter, my daughter, my daughter,’ she says over and over in my ear.

I’m lost in the lap of something so much bigger than I am, and I rest there. All I can see is the folds of her white robe as I’m overwhelmed with the permeating scent of roses, which are everywhere. And then I’m falling out of the hug, as her attendants pull me back to put the next person in, pressing rose petals and strangely, a Hershey’s kiss into my hand.

I was charged with the energy of that hug for days after, hearing her words in my ear–‘My daughter, my daughter, my daughter.’

Once a year Amma, India’s hugging saint, comes to town. She arrives at a large hotel in Albuquerque that can accommodate the thousands who come for a hug, as crazy as that might sound. When you arrive, you remove your shoes, are organized into groups, given your hug number, fed and are presented with all kinds of memorabilia to buy, from photographs to clothes. While you wait for your group to be called, you listen to Indian music, are strewn with rose petals, watch multiple large-screen videos of Amma’s good works around the world, and look at everyone else who has come.

It all moves along smoothly. She and her team are experts at this–after all, she’s hugged more than 30 million people world wide, royalty and celebrities included.

When your group is called, you join a double line of people, in chairs, gradually moving forward, like musical chairs. Up ahead, Amma is dressed all in white, sitting on a sort of low throne, hugging people, one after another—families with babies, the old, the infirm, young people, people speaking different languages. When you’re finally next in line, her attendants move you to your knees a few feet from her, asking you what language you speak.

You’re sort of dropped into a tight group of front line attendants, dressed in yellow robes, who are plunging people into Amma’s lap and then dragging them out, in a claustrophobic frenzy. You’re in a feel-good, out-of-body daze as you’re pulled out.

At first I thought that wonderful feeling was from her, from what she has. After the third hug, I began to believe that we generate it together. She calls it forth, and what I feel is my soul answering.

Photo: Erode, Tamil Nadu, Monday, January 12, 2015

The Snake

Standard

Water drops on blue background

From Jumping: a Novel.
Babe, on the arrival of her sisters. [I have three sisters.]

“I remember seeing a snake come down from the porch roof of a cabin I was staying in with friends. As we watched, it extended half of its length down through space as if the space had substance to support it, leaving its other half anchored on the porch roof. It lowered that front half right into a fir tree leaning against the porch, into the nest of a small mourning dove, a nest clearly visible to our group on the porch, a nest with two small eggs in it.
The dove had left the nest, probably because we had scared her off by coming out on the porch, and the snake had seen its chance. It moved into the nest with half of its body still on the porch roof, and swallowed both eggs, so quickly, so effortlessly, I could almost believe it hadn’t happened. I didn’t want to believe it had. Then it withdrew itself back up onto the roof, again as if suspended by invisible wires, and disappeared from sight. We stood there, silenced by the finality of its act. . . .
“Later I found a snakeskin tucked in the fold of the bottom step of the back porch. It was beautiful, elegant, like a woman’s elbow-length opera glove, dropped unheedingly, while she was on her way to somewhere else. . . .”

Keep the Channel Open

Standard

DR jumping
“It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open.”
“There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the other.”

The best thing I’ve read in a long time on why we do what we do:

http://99u.com/articles/34649/7-pieces-of-wisdom-that-will-change-the-way-you-work

Liking our female characters

Standard

ScottandBaileycast

I’m writing about a lead character who is going to jump into the Void, and I want to like her more.  Isn’t it enough that she has the courage to jump? What’s missing?  I think about the female characters I like–most recently, Scott & Bailey, the detectives on a PBS series (that’s them above, with their boss on the left).  Why do I like them?  I have to admit the truth–it’s because they smoke, drink, and make bad relationship decisions.  And they might have tattoos.  They’re a mixture of girly-girls (make-up, skirts, heels), bad girls (smoking, drinking, etc.), and smart girls (we have evidence of this, usually in their work).

But I discover there’s something else that’s part of the hook–they have some kind of inner courage, every-day courage, the kind no one else usually knows about but that is a defining pattern for them. They hold steady on this. That’s what I want to see in my lead character–something that isn’t publicly seen but that is regularly practiced, that helps us understand her jump.  Other women might have a pattern of drama, a pattern of manipulation, a pattern of hiding, even a pay-it-forward pattern of kindness.  But these women have a consistent pattern of courage born from living against the grain.

If they come up against rejection, abandonment, violence, they don’t stick at that spot, memorializing it so that they can borrow from it later.  They’ll either take it aboard or they’ll discard it, but–either way–they move on.  They aren’t held back a grade because they haven’t gotten what came before.  They decide and move on.

I think it’s a hard thing to have.  Life pounds and pulls, telling them they’re weak or stupid or crazy, but bent and weather beaten, they stand, deciding against the grain.

For me, that makes these characters jumpers–women who would. Without making a fuss about it.  It’s what will make my lead character a jumper.

And I don’t think they’re alone out there.

I think that’s what you might be, if you’re reading this. A jumper. That’s what keeps me writing to you. I’m looking for the jumpers.

 

 

Are you selling out when you sell yourself? Sure!

Standard

You can’t let it change you.  Then it’s not selling out.  But is that even possible?  Nowadays, if you’re a writer, you’re in sales.  We just used to think someone else would be doing it for us.

The other day, the 21 year old technical whiz who works with me and I produced the first draft of a video for youtube.  The publisher will either edit it and put it up or send us back to the drawing board.  Their marketing person said two minutes, don’t read, talk about the book, but don’t give it away.  Right now, we’re at five minutes and six seconds.  And we’ve got lots of out-takes.  A couple of times we got to laughing and almost couldn’t stop. The techie/director took care of lighting, sound, time, setting, wardrobe, hair frizzies, script management, feedback, production design, and more.  I supplied the script and showed up.  That was a lot!

I think the truth is my apprehension, at core, comes from the fact that I’m still getting to know the book.  I wrote it and moved on to the next one.  Now I look at it and try to remember.  I’m surprised and unsettled by the comments of others who’ve recently read it.  They’ve seen something I didn’t know was there and been moved by it.  The book is clearly a thing unto itself.

I will say, as I go back into Jumping, looking for things to quote or things for readings, I find a lot I remember and still like.  Maybe that’s because I know the book wasn’t written just by me.  Go, little book!

 

 

I’m in my own words now.

Standard

Last night, someone close to me who is reading Jumping said to me that so far Chapter 12 is his favorite, the most beautifully written.

It’s a description of one of the main characters–Miles, Duncan Robert’s uncle and a fellow jumper–and I’d thrown it in at the request of my editor, who wanted more background on Miles to explain the later anti-war stance he takes into the Void, into an epic battle scene.

I wrote that chapter straight as it came to me, not questioning it, not needing to edit it.  My editor didn’t touch it, either.

Now I see my words differently, because of what my friend said.

I’m in my own words now, not someone else’s. I haven’t been reading much since I’ve been writing.  I don’t think I was supposed to be reading, so I could steep in my own words for a change, after a lifetime of reading–since I was a child and won contests for reading the most books. I’d never let go of the words of others as the way, not seeing the power of my own words to set a life by.

No matter what happens to Jumping out there in the world, I see myself and my words differently.

I hope readers keep talking to me.

 

Like Jumping on Goodreads–or not

Standard

Goodreads-badge-add-plus

The largest site for readers and book recommendations.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21543939-jumping?ac=1

It’s a really humbling proposition to see your book go up among a sea of other books and wonder about its ability to swim.  Was I a good teacher?  Anne Lamott says if it’s good enough, it’ll make it.  Now, rather than wondering if you’re in the smaller group of people who will actually finish a book and find a publisher, you’re back in a large group of writers who’ve all accomplished what you’ve accomplished.  So, you try to provide water wings, life preservers, and even cpr to keep this vessel holding what you believe is the best of you moving forward.  The further I extend this swimming metaphor, the harder it is to abandon it!

You’ll have to join Goodreads to recommend, review, or rate the book.  I’ve been a member for a while because I like sites that bring readers and books together.  Also, it’s an easy way to know what’s out there and what’s good, based on reader opinions.  And I like that you can ask any author (like Anne Lamott and many other famous ones) questions, and they answer.  I just agreed to answer questions, too.  So, use your own judgement.

 

People are getting their books–whoa!

Standard

Sometimes I forget how and where and why I even wrote this book–after all, I wrote it more than two years ago and have written a few more since then–and now it’s out there.  Actually, that was the first question of the Examiner interviewer–how did I come to write it.

I said I wrote it for two reasons: (1) I took a creative writing class at Inprint, a great writing program in Houston.  There were eleven of us in the class, an engineer, a physicist, a lawyer, a teacher, a student, etc.  What inspired me is that they always wanted me to read first, to see what happened next.  I wrote the intro to the book in that class, but I didn’t know it.  (2) Every psychic I’ve seen, and that would be about a half dozen in the past decade, generally done with a group for fun, would ask me where my book was. Not that psychics necessarily have a corner on the truth, but by the time the sixth one asks you, you begin to wonder.

Ultimately, writing is such a private act, there’s still something shocking about it going public, even when you know it’s coming.  I wrote it every night after work is the how.  Generally in my second-floor Albuquerque apartment (corner of Broadway and Coal) is the where, staring out the window at downtown whenever I paused in my typing.  The real answer to why is that it came and it kept coming, every time I sat down to write and sometimes in between.  It still comes.  I keep a notebook with me, to catch it.

Now I feel as if I’m in that dream where you’re standing naked in front of a clothed crowd, no where to run, no where to hide.  Even though this must have always been the goal, I’m still a little freaked out to have achieved it.  I guess I’ve jumped.

 

“Kinetic energy on the fly!” – the Void.

Standard

1920x1080 Wallpaper

No one documented the small patch of singed grass under the trees nearest to the Void or the tiny iridescent scales that dazzled in the sunlight.

“I’m a study of a man in chaos in search of a frenzy.”- Oscar Levant.

Standard

bj7493

“The coils of “reality” began to unravel, After I scored the twine of dreams.” – Margaret Ornelas