EDITING OUR PATHS

There are reasons to quit and more reasons not to. The one reason that hovers above all is that everything we do in life needs revision. We are never through evolving into more thoughtful, loving, or wise human beings. Every day, there is an opportunity to revise your valor and conviction.

Revising the position you walk, talk, judge, form opinions, contribute to your home, friends, and partners. Discovering what you’ve learned, dreamed, and mastered is your novel. Just as writing a new chapter when the knot tightens, and you are trapped by decisions that are outdated. Antiquities of a former persona.

Changes in life are like undeveloped photographic images, blurred. Mentally, the angles don’t fit, like schedules, routines, and commitments. Returning to former lifestyles and looking at old photographs, what I see is someone else.

This week, I walked into Scripps Clinic for laboratory testing. The last time was 2012, when I was with a former boyfriend. J was all encompassing, all consuming, generous, intelligent, outgoing, and he had to be near me like a new pet. I lasted a year, the obsession of closeness suffocated my spirit and my writing.

After the appointment, I looked across the street at Torrey Pines Science & Research Park, where I was appointed Marketing and Leasing Director in 1986 over 150,000 square feet of vacant space. I visualized myself taking clients, Qualcomm, and the Jonas Salk Institute through the newly built office buildings. My confidence was slightly off when scientists asked questions about the mechanics and cable routes, but I loved that job. My boss was the most intelligent developer I’d met; he carved me into a broad thinker, allowed my off-the-chart ideas and proposals to progress. Tears welled because the memory was enflamed by my long-distance running days up Torrey Pines hillside. I doubt I’d be running today, maybe scuffling. Life is a runway that we have to steer for ourselves. If we allow others to take the wheel, we are not authentic. No one is steering my wheel, and I have hit a lot of potholes and assholes along the way.

The puzzle is how to live, where to live, and for whom. It is the same with manuscripts; they improve with each revision.

DAYDREAMING TRAVEL

Featured ~ LouLou ~ Leave a comment

When I listen to Antonio Carlos Jobim, I dream of Brazil and of riding on a float at Mardi Gras, just once, in a feather hat, dressed like Rita Hayworth. Music evokes a writing mood, like jazz or blues writing; they are similar. When I listen to Sarah Vaughn or Nancy Wilson, it feels like a close female friend confiding in me and knowing I understand heartbreak.

When I sit at my desk and look at my mother’s photograph, I dream of the first lunch we had at Bullock’s Garden Room, watching the fashion show and discovering style. When I shovel snow, I dream of the coastal beaches: Del Mar, La Jolla, Santa Barbara, and Carmel. Commercials about travel dominate and fuel my craving for a flight. As my responsibilities here are unfinished, I will wait and daydream about the next voyage.

Daydreaming, unlike night dreaming, where we are flying, conquering, or battling some inner masked trauma, illuminates where we want to be, who we want to be, and if we take it seriously, how to get there. The medicine of daydreaming is unmatched by books, healthy food, vitamins, yoga, religion, or mind-altering experiences; it is the essence of who we are.

DELETION OF THE VOICE

February 7, 2013February 14, 2013 ~ LouLou ~ 1 Comment

Are you noticing that people are so drained from the economy, wars, murders, and mayhem that they have turned insulting, rude and detached? Facebook, twitter, blogging, match, and the next one to come, have eliminated the risk of humanizing, in the park, cafe, bar, fountain, ocean, path, rock, shop or restaurant.

Hey, checker at Kuanne’s smiles, likes my perfume. A few days later the bartender at La Posada, brings me down in front of bar, LouLou you’re reading too many novels.” “Dude I don’t read novels I read non-fiction.”

Stand up for yourself- don’t let rude dude get by.

COWARDS

October 22, 2012 ~ LouLou ~ 1 Comment

Cowards come in Plumes and Feathers, frolic and promises, High steps and
wide eyed, and then they fold, into their own skin.

ADVENTURE IN CHANGE

July 7, 2012 ~ LouLou ~ 1 Comment

It is time to turn my life upside down, instead of moving furniture, my neurosis of constant change, it is interior change that I must make. Henry Miller says, ” Words by the way, can carry you into action, carry you into thought, instead of the other way around.”

Adventure, dreams, and escapism have guided me and maybe you, and now ( as a sudden rain storm begins) it is sketching what is necessary, unavoidable, and maybe even tedious.

STARTING OVER

June 15, 2012June 15, 2012 ~ LouLou ~ 1 Comment

ADVENTURES

beijing bamboo walkways and dog pyschology (Photo credit: rejon)

in beginnings. Starting over, and rewriting a life you’ve lived many years is the same as re-writing a secret story. It takes the same blind courage. About half between forty and fifty years old, you hear people say, “It’s too late to start over,” It’s not true. Behavioral change is essential to living a full life.

In the middle of the night I woke up as if it was morning. When I looked out the window, an almost full moon, white as a laundered tablecloth, was staring back at me. It said, get up and write. I retreated to my corner of the world; a tiny room bathed in blush pink and gold, and I wrote. The moon watched.