Half My Heart...

From The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have.

As an inlet cannot close itself to the sea that shapes it, the heart can only wear itself open.

This is a magnificent key to health: that, despite our resistance to accept that what we've lost is behind us, despite our need at times to stitch our wounds closed by reliving them, and despite our heroic efforts to preserve whatever is precious, despite all our attempts to stop the flow of life, the heart knows better. It knows that the only way to truly remember or stay whole is to take the best and worst into its tissue.

When I read this – as I sit here thinking on what it all means, on where I have come from to be where I am now, as I sit here feeling the loneliness of being apart from my guy, feeling tired and knowing that in the not too distant future I will have to take myself to bed; end this day and begin a new one; sit here wondering and worrying when will be the next time we can walk along hand in hand; sit here remembering the moments we've shared, both good and bad – the walk along the Mall, or the hallway – the walk up to the top of our mountain overlook, the carriage ride through the Biltmore grounds… the walk to sleep alone after being at odds, nesting on the floor next to each other, caring for my guy through sickness, and worrying, laughing together, crying together, being together… contemplating all the things that have been, are and will be a part of our life together – as I sit here on one side of an internet connection, one thought fills my wise heart:

We may be almost 4000 miles apart in distance, but we are never apart in our hearts. The beat I hear, the beat I feel with my hand against my chest, is the love of my 'husband' and our hearts becoming whole.

Writers Write!

I'd like to take a moment to share a brilliant idea with you all - an idea that mirrani thought of, after she and I have been working on some writing activities for a couple of weeks. She has posted about it on her own journal here, and I would actively encourage everyone to go and take a look at what she's proposing, and then weigh in, in answer to her post. (You could also answer here, I'm sure she'd see it!)

The idea came out of an exchange she proposed where we would each help each other with aspects of our writing. I had stalled working on Use'ara: Thirteen Stars, as my muse seemed tired out, so she offered to give me little prompts to work on every day that were designed to help my creativity, well, THEY HAVE! They have in spades as a matter of fact... so much so that we talked about it, and thought perhaps to extend the prompts and invitation to others to join in. Mir writes this in her original post:

We bounced the idea around that maybe I should be putting this stuff up somewhere else.. maybe on the writing livejournal we started years ago and kind of left for dead as our lives became far too complex to continue it... I'd thought before about maybe letting other friends get the email assignments and it being a correspondence thing, but I think I've decided I might want to do it on here, where responding to individual accomplishments is much easier and won't clutter up people's inboxes.

The question is: "If I do it, will they come?" ;) Would starting something like this actually get people to go to the writer's block and participate in these activities, read other people's work and give real, honest feedback? Would anyone pass the word on to others? We created that place in the hopes that it would catch on as something fun for writers to do... but no one ever really came and it just died away, forgotten. Could it grow now?

No particular prompt would be a requirement, of course, but the way I do things, it certainly helps to do them all in order. The goal each week is to pick out one aspect of a story a day.. a visual element, a physical element, an emotional element, an element of personality, and a final fun element using stickers and randomness. On top of the daily assignment, there is a weekly one, like "find a letter or symbol on a bulletin board that you pass every day, take note of it's form and shape, sketch it if you want, but give it attention when you walk past..." that kind of thing, all intended to give you a chance to include an element observed over time, something to build up on. On the weekend, the task is to take what you have done and create a story around it based on the assignment I've written. The little assignments aren't usually long, so it's easy enough to splice and merge them together in a way.

I can't stress enough how much this has helped me, even after only two weeks I can feel my creativity awakening again, and it's doing so in an interesting and thought provoking way - encouraging things that can make the difference between a good story, and a great story.

Seriously - head on over to her journal... no really - head on over to her journal to read her original post... join in... it really is a lot of fun as well as being worthwhile!

Words Fail

From The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have.

I lose sight of us at times;
the way that fish can't see the ocean;
the price of lovers swimming in their love.

…sometimes soothe ourselves, and sometimes drink of each other.

I'm losing the will to live!

I don't mean that literally – I just mean that I'm so damn frustrated. I can't seem to do right for doing bloody wrong… and today – today just… I actually stood there and thought 'why the hell am I doing this to myself?' For the first time EVER (or at least as 'ever' as I can remember), I actually contemplated walking out of a classroom.

I felt totally incapable… I saw myself as useless – talk about crisis of confidence, and talk about having it at the worst possible time – there was no soothing myself. No amount of 'I can do this' could bring me back onto an even keel, and allow me to find my feet again for what felt like the longest time.

Then I thought of Mir… I thought of the times when we've sat talking to each other on the phone about difficult kids, difficult classes, strategies to dealing, things to do, things to try, things that sometimes work and things that haven’t… thinking what a superb teacher she is, and letting that strength flow through me. It helped. It helped tremendously. I was able to make it through the day.

I'm still not entirely thrilled at the prospect of going back to the same school tomorrow, but I can do it. I can do this.