You can almost unwrap this one

Posted on December 8, 2011 | 19 Comments

So, as you know, I’m building a new website for the love project. In my head, it’s gorgeous and inviting and provocative, one part sanctuary, one part celebration, one part “vibrant, proudly imperfect site of fierce inclusivity.”

I wrote that in my notes. I’ve written a lot of notes because, as it turns out, learning self-hosted WordPress and site design principles,  FTP, HTML and CSS, social network and mail service interfaces, and all the other critical site-building things I didn’t know I didn’t know, is only about half of the work I’ve had to do. The other half has been about getting clear with myself what my purpose is (and isn’t) and what exactly I mean when I talk about fearless love.

Here’s a picture I took of my desk this morning when I sat down to write this post. I thought of taking the picture because in the midst of all those papers, off to the side, was my green Love Project notebook (which you can just see) and on top of that, my camera… two things I’ve been carrying around religiously for a year.

I’m really excited and nervous about the new site. I feel as if I’m wrapping the biggest present I can give, and I’m hoping you’ll love it. But it’s not exactly like that. I think the new site will be OUR site. So much of what I have in store is collaborative and experimental and holy-shit-I’ve-never-done-anything-like-this- before. I’m hoping we’ll build something amazing and unique… and fearless. Together.

I have faith in us.

~~~~~~~~~~

And, I have stuff to share with you!

First, Hannah Brencher is a beautiful, stunning force to be reckoned with. Fortunately, she’s all about love and building a better world, so “reckoning” with her is really enjoyable. A week and a half ago, she rocked my bloggy world with this. “Lady Gaga, she was born this way. Me? I was born for this.”

About a month ago, she asked me to participate in her December letter-writing project. It’s called The 12 Days of Love Letter Writing. If, in this month of crazy go-go-go activity, you’d like to pause, breathe, connect meaningfully with someone who needs your support, this is your project.

We’re on Day 4 of 12 right now. You can join in any time. Read the stories of the recipients each day on Hannah’s blog, write what you are moved to write in support of them. On December 15th, I’ll share the letter I’m writing now to one of Hannah’s 12 beautiful recipients. I’ve been working on it for two days; it’s one of the hardest letters I’ve ever written. Yesterday I cried. I’m so grateful to Hannah for asking me to do this.

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On a lighter note, I had so much fun being interviewed by David Cohen, host of the Blog Talk Radio show, “Be A Beacon.” We talked for half an hour about writing, success, art and – of course – love.

My best friend, jb, and I have a tiny blog called A Month Of Sundays, where each week we exchange snapshots of our lives. I’m sharing it here because I absolutely loved her last entry. You will too. Go see.

I went for a walk and took pictures for you. They’re posted here.

~~~~~

I have nothing to do with these incredible pictures, but I LOVE them.

xo

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An unwieldy post

Posted on December 5, 2011 | 38 Comments

I know it’s jolly and decorated and comes with happy sing-along music, but December is always a little weird for me. I’m one of those people who stands at the end of each year looking back. Did I achieve what I hoped to achieve, did I do some new stuff, some big stuff, some scary stuff? Did I write enough? Read enough? Pay enough attention to my relationships, my workouts, my skittery inner workings, my world?

I think a lot of people do this, evaluate the year that has passed, but my anal annual habit of taking stock always carries with it an underlying sense of urgency. I think it’s because my birthday is in December, and so there’s the whole aging thing, that sense of having only so much time to finish the 79 things I want to do before I die (which of course is only a fraction of what I want to do because it doesn’t include the everyday things that sustain me, like yoga in the morning and writing brave, doodling, stargazing, petting dogs, holding hands, making love, hiking trails…)

In December I always feel a little tangled up inside. Caught in my compulsive past-future analysis, both pride and disappointment are inevitable, so are hope, and fear, and wild optimism. So are the many handwritten pages I will fill trying to sort through the perfectly imperfect mess that is me.

Add to that this year, the love project.

Which reminds me… in the comment thread of my last post, Meg noted that it was the “start to the end of the 2011 Love Project,” and I felt a pang of sadness and worry, like when someone dear moves far away and you tell yourself, “Relax, it’s not like they’re dead,” but you also know, in your heart of hearts, it is a little bit like that. There will be, even with all the high-tech ways we have to keep in touch, a glaring, physical absence in the space they used to fill.

It’s the start of the end of the 2011 Love Project, and even though I’m excited by what’s to come, I’ll miss this. The Love Project has changed me. I’ll write more about that later this month, but it reminds me… I never really wrote a “here’s what happened in November, the month of giving” post. Oops! You can read my summary here.

And that reminds me… I need to formally announce December as the month of volunteering. I’m happy to say that the first three organizations I checked into are so full of volunteers, they don’t need additional help. I think that’s a good thing, but it does add to my December discombobulation.

Which reminds me… I did say yes to one beautiful, big-hearted volunteer request. I’ll tell you all about (in the hopes that you’ll join me) on December 15th…

You’ll be happy to know that that doesn’t remind me of anything except how unwieldy a post can get if the writer surrenders to each new thought like a dog rolling over for a belly rub. I should delete the last few paragraphs and regrasp the (admittedly tenuous) narrative thread I’d established in the opening lines, but I won’t. This post is an outward indication of my scattered, jumpy, harried, ambivalent, inner state.

I’ll be fine, don’t worry; it’s just December.

Tell me about December for you.

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A dozen different versions of me

Posted on December 1, 2011 | 35 Comments

I’m becoming a fan of “the pause.” Between notes and pages and words and breaths, between thought and voice, between action and reaction. In that momentary stillness, in that space between before and after, there is possibility, a  myriad of paths that can be taken, a dozen different versions of me.

I’m not good at the pause. That’s what I’ve realized about myself. I tend to rush through it. I get excited, or angry, or nervous, or restless, and I erase the pause, just like that, and only later do I think of it, often with such yearning.

“If only” thoughts are some of the hardest thoughts of all.

I’m sorry for the pauses I’ve missed, the times when I could have stepped into that stillness, breathed, found the best part of me, uttered something different than the thing I did say, caught up as I was in the heat of the moment. I’m sorry for the times I rushed through it, that chance to be more thoughtful, more receptive, more giving. I’m sorry for the people I may have bowled over in my exuberance or anger, the ones who were maybe only pausing themselves, in search of a path, a better version of themselves.

I’m late but I’m learning, and I can spot them now, the pauses between things, the opportunity to get quiet, to still everything else, if only for a few seconds, and  just activate my heart.

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Gratitude

Posted on November 28, 2011 | 21 Comments

During this, the Love Project’s month of gifts, I’ve been thinking a lot about the nature of what we give to each other, both the tangible gifts and the ones that are easier to miss. I’ve also been thinking about gratitude and the art of receiving, and how I believe that it is an art even though we don’t treat it that way, and how, like any art, it takes practice.

We have a tendency to think of gratitude in general terms. We say prayers, meditate, chant; we write out gratitude lists and make an effort to focus on our abundance rather than on our lack, but all too often we skimp on the actual act of being gracious, shrugging off compliments and praise and acts of kindness with responses that don’t acknowledge the magnitude of the gift we’ve been given.

It always breaks my heart a little when people say they aren’t good at receiving. It’s an acceptance to say that, like saying “I’m not good at math,” only worse because saying you’re a bad receiver is like granting yourself permission to belittle another person’s kindness. I knew a woman who used to ask her children to include receipts with the gifts they gave her so that she could take them back if they weren’t what she wanted.

Yeah. It’s like that.

~~~~~~~~~~

I was given something wonderful in November. This month, 50 generous people donated to my son’s film project, “The Waltz” (for which I wrote the screenplay). For those of you who don’t know how Kickstarter works, each project has a certain amount of time to earn its funding goal. If the goal is not met, no money is donated to the project. I adore Kickstarter, but it’s a stressful, all-or-nothing proposition.

The Waltz project made its goal in the final hours of funding. I was literally biting my nails, thinking about how to move forward if we didn’t make the goal, where to compromise the vision, how to talk to Dillon about it. When I saw the notification that our goal had been met, I exhaled. I whooped. I shed some happy tears.

At its most basic, achieving the funding goal means that a festival-quality film will be made. But it means so much more to me.

Being a parent means you have to give some hard speeches. You have to explain how the world works and then nurse some wounds as your child finds out for himself. But not this time.

This time,  I don’t have to tell my son about how important it is not to give up on his dreams, not to lose faith in himself, not to see failure as anything other than proof that he is aiming high. This time, I don’t have to tell him about how  times are hard and people are strapped, and it just means we have to be more… creative (whatever that means). This time, instead of a pep talk, I get to just congratulate him, tell him how proud I am, tell him how this is a vote of confidence from people who believe in him… people who aren’t his mom.

I haven’t seen Dillon since the project met its funding goal. He’s working 16-hour days for next to nothing on a film that is making him crazy. The film is about gang life. They shoot nights, in gang territory. Someone’s car was stolen.

And yet… every day I see him, he tells me how lucky he feels to be able to do this work. Every day he throws his whole being into doing what he loves – making art, telling stories, telling truths.  I am beyond grateful to everyone who is making that path possible for him.

From the bottom of my heart, thank you.

~~~~~~~~~~

Over the holiday weekend, I read Sugar’s gratitude column. It’s full of chaos and dysfunction, and the mad, improbable love that, again and again, makes me hopeful for humanity in all its exuberant, beautiful, heartbreaking imperfection. It’s called “94 Ways Of Saying Thank You,” and it’s all about fearless love. Go. Read it. Renew (or just affirm) your faith.

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Five questions for Friday

Posted on November 25, 2011 | 51 Comments

Okay, I have five questions for you. They’re all questions I’ve been asked over the last few weeks, and the discussions that have ensued have been lively, hilarious, illuminating and, in some cases, surprisingly touching. Don’t feel you have to answer them all if you don’t want to, but I’m excited to hear your thoughts, especially the why behind any answers you do share, so feel free to take a stand.

Okay, let’s go!

  1. Do you let the douche-baggery of an artist influence your opinion of his or her art? (This came up in a conversation about Roger Waters and Pink Floyd. If you have examples, I’d love to hear them.)
  2. Do you feel strongly about the over-under toilet paper debate? And, if so, have you ever changed it at someone else’s house?
  3. If you had the opportunity to ride a rocket into space for a year, would you take it?
  4. Would you buy a house in which a murder had taken place?
  5. If you could only see one (and never see the other) for the rest of your life, would you pick to see sunrises or sunsets?

Number 5 came up last night over a bottle of wine with a friend. We didn’t agree, and the why of our answers turned out to be revealing in ways I hadn’t anticipated. I’m very much looking forward to hearing from you.

xo

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The conversation

Posted on November 22, 2011 | 36 Comments

“You’ve been walking the ocean’s edge,
holding up your robes to keep them dry.
You must dive naked under,
and deeper under, a thousand times deeper.”
~ Rumi

I’ve been doing a lot of soul-searching lately. As my year of loving fearlessly comes to an end, I’ve been thinking about what comes next. I’ve known for a while that I wasn’t through, that this has become more than a year-long project for me, that this quest to live a life of fearless love is fundamental somehow; it lies at the core of who I am.

In January, I’ll launch a new website (she says, confidently, despite having just inserted html code that was supposed to add a widget but instead rearranged everything on the home page except the header). I’ve been thinking hard about what the new site will look like (and, consequently, what Zebra Sounds will look like once the new site is up).

Here’s what I know for sure. I’m ready to get serious. In the comment thread of Friday’s post (a post I wrote because I needed to, because a message sent to me innocently touched on something raw), Patricia wrote, “You are writing / musing on a truer aspect of the core of love then you have for a bit…”

I knew just what she meant. in response, I wrote this…

This year has been so transformative. I’ve never been more naked, more open, more awed (and sometimes hurt) by the world. But I’ve been feeling the pull lately to go much deeper in my writing on the subject of love, beyond the hugs and the sweet gestures and the mindful kindness (which are all important), to the real, complicated, hard-to-articulate, harder-to-answer questions. Your comment makes me know there will be people who want to go there with me.

So that’s where we’re headed. Into what I hope are very honest, very searching, very hopeful and occasionally white-knuckled conversations about love and what it means to attempt a life of openhearted fearlessness. On the new site, I want to talk about vulnerability, fear, intimacy, self-love, truth, global love. I want to explore the intersection between love and art. I want to collect love stories and share them because I think there is power in the permission, acceptance and light that comes from sharing our stories with each other.

Here, in Zebra Sounds, I’ll be talking more about creativity, writing, finding north, and things you might not know.

<Shameless plea for readers> In the beginning, I’ll only be publishing once a week on each blog, so I won’t be overwhelming you with posts. I’m hoping you’ll all follow me in both places. </shameless plea>

(That was a little html humor… which I promise not to do anymore…  in either place… truly, I promise.)

Over the weekend, I participated in an event, which included a visit from Brene Brown. I didn’t write down all of what she said, but I did write down this because it’s true for me too. “At the heart of this work is the conversation.”

Absolutely. I’d love to hear what you think, what you’d like to talk about here and on the new site.

~~~~~~~~~~

p.s. I’m off schedule. My inadvertent post on Friday has me slightly discombobulated. How about we meet back here this Friday for some good old-fashioned shenanigans, and then next week, I’ll get back on track.

xo

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Shattered

Posted on November 18, 2011 | 55 Comments

This week, I got some loving, well-intentioned, unsolicited advice. At the heart of a longer message was this: “Love more, j,” with the clear implication that I was,  perhaps, not being open to the very love for which I’ve spent almost a year advocating.

My first reaction was to feel blindsided. My second was to become angry and defensive. My third reaction brought me here, to this post, to deal directly with something I’ve been writing all around, because I think it’s important. And confusing. And while love, in my opinion, doesn’t lend itself to unequivocal language, I’m going to try, because this matters. Because I want to get it right.

I’ve talked a lot this year about “loving more.” That frequently means working through the hard stuff, tapping into your deepest reserves to find patience, understanding and acceptance… but not always.

Choosing love doesn’t always mean staying in. Sometimes it means having the courage to walk away while there still is love.

The truth is not everyone you meet will be good for you, and some people – even good people – will be bad for you. When you find yourself tied up in knots, constantly navigating another’s emotional landmines; when someone else’s pain and rage makes you afraid to tell your truth; when you feel as though staying in a relationship risks your sanity and your sense of self, “loving more” gets very complicated, and it may not mean staying put. It may mean letting go, before the hurt or deception or crazy-making kills everything that was ever good about the relationship.

And there’s something else. I’ve said many times that the most important love of all is self-love; all other love stems from that. I believe that when the choice is between loving yourself or losing yourself as you try desperately to please someone who is bad for you, you should always choose love. Always choose yourself.

Always.

I’ve made the wrong choice before. I’ve stayed in a bad relationship so long that I began to doubt my perception of the world. I looked in the mirror and felt unsure about who was looking back at me. I laid awake at night crying, wondering where I’d misstepped, how I’d managed to get so terribly, terribly lost.

In the end, I chose love. I did it by choosing to trust the people who were closest to me, the ones who were worried about me and who had, for years, done nothing but love and support me. I chose to believe them when they said that I wasn’t crazy or terrible, and I wasn’t obligated to stay in a relationship with someone who made me feel that I was both.

I chose me, though not soon enough to prevent the damage. I was exhausted, shattered.

Reassembly is not a straightforward, linear process, and even now, I know I don’t look like I used to. I don’t think or act or love like I used to. Every day, I feel the internal shifts of evolution, and I try to have faith that I’m becoming more and more the person – the magnificent, badass love warrior – I aspire to be.

Make no mistake about it, though. I did not stay in the relationship, but I did, absolutely, choose love.

It’s not easy to know which times are which, when you should stay and when you should go. It has been confusing (and transformative) to live a life in which I remain committed to – in fact, hellbent on – fearless love. It is beautiful and astonishing in ways I never dreamed of when I started. What it isn’t, and what it never will be, is simple. But then, the best things rarely are.

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I do so love the word “begets”

Posted on November 17, 2011 | 19 Comments

Not long ago, I was talking to a writer friend who hasn’t been writing. She’s had a lot going on, inside and out, and it’s been hard for her to find that place inside,  where it’s both quiet and humming, dreamy and focused, wild and disciplined… that place where the artist and the art beautifully, magically collide.

I understand. I’ve been there too. It’s like living on the perimeter of your soul. She said that she was thinking of trying something completely different: painting. She’d always been interested in it but never pursued it because she didn’t think she was good enough, and so… maybe now…

I dropped everything to reply:

Yes!

I think it’s so important for us to indulge our creativity – even when the project that pulls us isn’t part of our plan, even when it won’t make us money, even when it feels frivolous and beside the point. In fact, especially when it feels frivolous and beside the point.

I love ill-advised creativity, the kind we don’t really expect to be good at. When you do something creative outside your field, it’s like giving yourself permission to be an absolute beginner. You can mess up, challenge conventional wisdom (because… well, hell, you don’t even know what the conventional wisdom is). It’s hard for a writer to let herself write crap, but it’s not that hard for a writer to sculpt or paint or photograph crap.

When you indulge your creativity outside your field(s) of expertise, you invite a sense of play. Less attached to the result, you can open to the experience – the crazy firing synapses, the giddy newness, the FUN. I told my friend that I have that sense of adventure every time I take my camera out into the world. Talk about not being attached to the result, I’m delighted when my subject actually appears in the frame.

And here’s the really wonderful part. Much as love begets love, creativity (of all kinds) begets creativity. I think if my friend starts painting, those first beautiful, timid, exhilarating brush strokes may also be her first beautiful, timid, exhilarting steps back to her writing.

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Giving, receiving, and the power of painting donkeys

Posted on November 14, 2011 | 26 Comments

I’m finding that a good way to approach the Love Project’s month of gifts is to act (immediately, whenever possible) on your loving impulses. I have become, over the last year especially, a huge proponent of action. Hope is good, analysis is prudent, downtime is absolutely necessary, but the only way to get unstuck – in work and life and love – is to get out of your head and actually, physically, move.

Next time you think, “I should send a thank you note” or “I should tell her what she means to me” or “I should tell him that he’s beautiful,” do it. You’ll be giving yourself something invaluable at the same time.

~~~~~~~~~~

I made a cheesecake for The Boy’s birthday.

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Sometimes the best gift you can give someone is to be a GOOD RECEIVER.

~~~~~~~~~~

My friend, Mary Moellenhoff, wrote me an email about singer/songwriter Jennifer Haase. Jennifer just came out with her second CD called “No More Invitations.” Mary thought I’d like the music (I do) and she thought I’d appreciate the brave beautiful (love) story that produced it: Jennifer gave up corporate life to pursue her art and dream, full throttle.

Badassery at its shiny, sparkly, big love best.

I’m sharing this with you because I love how Mary wants to help Jennifer any way she can, and I think the world would be a better place if more people acted like Mary. I also think Jennifer’s CD is sweet and soulful. You can listen to her music and buy the CD (as a gift – for yourself or someone else) on her site and you can read Mary’s review of the CD on her blog, Other Things.

~~~~~~~~~~

Gina Mulligan wants to comfort and support women recently diagnosed with breast cancer by having us hand write them letters of encouragement. When Gina was diagnosed in 2009, she received hundreds of letters and cards, many of them from people she’d never met. Their letters, sharing personal stories and well wishes, helped Gina, and now she wants to do the same for as many breast cancer patients as she can. Her project is Girls Love Mail. It’s cool. It doesn’t cost you anything except the time it takes to be there for someone else. It breaks my heart to think that anyone would ever go through the diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer alone.

~~~~~~~~~~

And here’s my gift to all of you. After writing about self-validation and the impulse to create in Thursday’s post, I stumbled across Julia Fehrenbacher’s piece about how to paint a donkey. She is more poetic than I was, and absolutely, straight-through-the-heart honest. Go. Read her. She will feed your beautiful, yearning artist’s soul. I promise.

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The (real) worst thing

Posted on November 10, 2011 | 44 Comments

I was talking to a writer on Twitter, an amazingly talented writer who regularly blows me away with the power and clarity of her essays and the emotional precision of her stories. She told me that her parents don’t take her writing seriously. I know another writer who never told her husband when she decided to write a book. She didn’t tell him when she finished it either. Or when she landed her agent.

Sometimes chasing a dream, throwing your best, most creative self at something that doesn’t net you a regular paycheck, a positive performance review or a set of fancy business cards is lonely work. The people you normally depend on for emotional support and encouragement fall short; they don’t know what to say or how to say it. Maybe they don’t even understand what drives you.

Yesterday I was talking to a friend about this, telling her about how I sometimes get discouraged by the attention my writing doesn’t get from people I love or admire. I think it’s common for creatives to feel that way because so much of our work isn’t compensated, and the only measure we have that it’s good or impactful is the number of views we get, the comments or mentions, an editor’s decision to publish our piece.

In the end, I told her, you have to write (or paint, or take pictures, or perform, or make jewelry, or sculpt) because it’s where your passion lies, because it’s the thing you can’t not do, and because deep down inside, no matter what people say (or don’t say), you believe your work is meaningful.

Self-validation is a skill, one I’m only beginning to master (and by master I mean, most of the time, I can keep writing, not let the doubt and uncertainty swallow me whole). And when I’m feeling the aloneness of it, the disconnect between the fervor and faith inherent in my creative process and the sometimes unnervingly quiet response, I’m learning how to make myself feel better.

Sometimes I write myself through it. My journal is full of pages that start out as angsty artist rambling and end up as pep talks. Sometimes I grab my camera and go someplace pretty, or find a trail and let the rhythm of my feet align my insides. In the best of times, I tackle the next new thing, because I know that’s what creatives do. It’s the thing they can’t not do, and the only thing worse than failing (or being ignored) is not having created anything at all.

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