Head bumps and puppies

I'm recovering from five days of Spencer time. He was here and now he is not. We celebrated his birthday with dinner at a new local restaurant called Sweet Grass. My buy. I also bought him a new video game which, to my delight, we could play together and enjoy together. The only less than great thing that happened was when Spencer knocked his poor head into the corner of my night stand. We're not really sure how it happened. But it did, and he had the welt to prove it.

We went to the mall and looked at puppies, like we so often do, even though we know we can't get one. And I always fall in love with a cute little babe. This one was especially hard to leave.


We named her Charlie, because she kept biting our fingers with her little puppy teeth (if you don't get the reference, Google "Charlie bit my finger").

I've been working non-stop this weekend, which is good for my wallet and bad for both my attitude and my body. Sore feet, aching back, etc. More than anything I hate the way it makes me feel about the people I wait on. By the end of the day I'm so annoyed and ready to be done that I think they're all idiots. But today was okay. I had some nice customers and it was busy, so I kept my mind focused on staying ahead. I didn't have time to gripe.

I took a picture of this family:


They've been coming to the Deli since I started working there, which has been three years now. I feel like I've watched the kids grow up. And they love their dad, and they are so playful with him. I don't know where the mother is, but they seem happy enough to be out to The Deli for breakfast with their pops.

Reading and writing and replying.

Writing letters. Drinking coffee. Sending out postcards to far away loves. Yum.

Taking Back the River

Excerpts from Women Who Run With the Wolves.

Respond; that is how to clear the river. Wolves lead immensely creative lives. They make dozens of choices every day, decide this way or that, estimate how far, concentrate on their prey, calculate the chances, seize opportunity, react powerfully to accomplish their goals. Their ability to find the hidden, to coalesce intention, to focus on the desired outcome and to act in their own behalves to gain it, are the exact characteristics required for creative follow-through in humans.

To create one must be able to respond. Creativity is the ability to respond to all that goes on around us, to choose from the hundreds of possibilities of thought, feeling, action, and reaction and to put these together in a unique response, expression, or message that carries moment, passion, and meaning. In this sense, loss of our creative milieu means finding ourselves limited to only one choice, divested of, suppressing, or censoring feelings and thoughts, not acting, not saying, doing, or being.

Be wild; that is how to clear the river. The river does not flow in polluted, we manage that. The river does not dry up, we block it. If we want to allow it its freedom, we have to allow our ideational lives to be let loose, to stream, letting anything come, initially censoring nothing. That is creative life. It is made up of divine paradox. To create on must be willing to be stone stupid, to sit upon a throne on top of a jackass and spill rubies from one's mouth. Then the river will flow, then we can stand in the stream of it raining down. We can put out our skirts and shirts to catch as much as we can carry.

Begin; this is how to clear the polluted river. If you're scared, scared to fail, I say begin already, fail if you must, pick yourself up, start again. If you fail again, you fail. So what? Begin again. It is not the failure that holds us back but the reluctance to begin over again that causes us to stagnate. If you're scared, so what? If you're afraid something's going to leap out and bite you, then for heaven's sake, get it over with already. Let your fear leap out and bite you so you can get it over with and go on. You'll get over it. The fear will pass. In this case, it is better if you meet it head-on, feel it, and get it over with, than keep using it to avoid cleaning up the river.

The moon from my eyes.

It's glowing bright and full like it has been for a few nights now. I feel when the moon is full. I feel when it is half full. I feel when it is empty. I mean dark. I mean, gone.

Some rambling convictions

Lately I've spent a lot of time trying to find a way to be successful, creative and generally productive without a full time writing job. More than many things, I want to get paid to tell good stories, but it seems the world has little need for story tellers right now. Instead there is a call for investment bankers, economists and the like.

However, I refuse to believe our people have been consumed, digested and reborn as sterile, number crunching robots with no sense of connection unless fed by a remote control or an electrical outlet. It cannot be that there is no need for creative sharing between humans. It is impossible that we are only interested in our individual lives and I don't believe we, as a people, are content in just being awake. Just breathing...blinking.

We want to live. We want to understand our purpose for living. That's why we go to bookstores and search the aisles for a gripping novel to read in what little spare time we have. It's why we buy candles when we don't need them to illuminate our houses but just want to bask in their warm, flickering light. It's why we meditate when the only real minimum requirement is eight hours of shut eye. It's why we still sit down together for holidays when we could settle for a conference call or a Skype session. It's why we still look into the eyes of our loved ones and why we all wonder, every single day, what the person next to us is thinking. We want to connect with our souls. We want to feed our spirits. We want to study our existence as living beings. We are still trying to figure out where we came from and why. We are still trying to find meaning in our lives and this cannot be found without extending outward to those around us.

It is for these reasons I refuse to believe humans have maxed out their creativity intake. There is room for more. In fact, there is a gaping hole waiting to be filled with new ideas, new stories, the ponderous thoughts and concerns of the people around us. Our meaning doesn't lie within our bank accounts or computer hard drives. So let's step away. Step away and cradle the value in a good conversation, in understanding human nature. Doing such is like coming home from a barren landscape to an oasis of nourishment

We all feel the same emotions. Sharing them and studying them like the precious clues they are can bring us closer to enlightenment, well being, inner and outer peace.