Day 2 - Night Visitor

During those times when I conscientiously discipline myself to spend intentional time at creative pursuit a very interesting thing almost always happens... My dreams get weird!

I'm not talking about my daydreams (they're pretty much weird all the time), or my goals, plans, etc. I'm talking about the long theatrically surreal excursions that I take in the nighttime. I have a pretty vivid dreamlife most of the time,and I regularly write down my nocturnal experiences and try to bring a modicum of reflective energy to understanding them on a fairly regular basis. But the dreams I have when I am more intentionally in creative mode, get downright personal... and fast. Thus was it the case last night.

I went to bed at about 11:00 pm with the intention of waking up some time in the wee hours in order to go catch a glimpse of the Leonid meteor shower. However, when I first awakened at around 1:30 I didn't want to get out into the cold and I didn't really want to rise out of sleep, so I spent several hours drifting in and out of sleep with the constant awareness that I wanted to get up and take a look at the sky sometime before dawn. When I finally woke up at 4:30 it wasn't because of needing to see the meteors... It was because I had just been attacked by Kali...a raging green eyed, red-haired kind of Irish Kali!

In my dream I had been discussing new work and travel plans with my seemingly understanding lover when I hesitated and began talking about why I couldn't do the things I was planning to do... At this, the lovely understanding lover transformed into the threatening, raging, terrifying female goddess that even crushes the great God Shiva under her feet. She screamed that I was "timid" as her eyes turned to green and yellow stars and her hair transformed into red flame...

That's when I woke up.

This isn't my first encounter with the Goddess of Creativity and Destruction. I first became acquainted with her when she crawled in and out of my bedroom window in a small hotel in Calcutta. I thought I was being attacked by demons, but over the several days I spent in her weird hometown (with her shrine and Mother Theresa's hospice sitting next to each other on the same block) taught me much about acknowledging and listening to The Shadow, and the experience ultimately launched me into a study of these dark manifestations of the Goddess (both in literature/religion and real life, but that's another story). This encounter also, ultimately, led me to the creation of my first screenplay; interestingly, a story that I thought about returning to and revising only recently. Perhaps last night's visitation was her move to get me to take up the task... Or perhaps she just showed up to do some mental and emotional house cleaning.

What I know about these visitations is that they always come when I begin a new creative journey, and that they are not to be taken lightly.

Like most women... Kali does not like to be ignored.

Once More With Feeling

It's been nearly 5 months since the last pot on this blog and with exactly 40 days to go before Christmas, I decided this morning that it makes for the perfect time to take this attempt at some sort of personally reflective and semi-disciplined practice into action one more time.

I have decided on a simplified form and - at least for the moment - very little expectation.

I have also decided on several daily elements:

1) Meditation
2) Exercise
3) Daily writing (and a specific time schedule)
4) Dedicated time for personal reflection, recreation, and rest
5) A structured approach to all the daily minutiae that is a clear, necessary, and inevitable part of life.

40 days of practice with the intention of seeing what develops. 40 days

This will be the last time I do this... I've been playing with these ideas for several years, and in public on this blog for a little over a year.

On December 25th, whatever the outcomes, I will finally put this blog to bed.

Music for The Journey

As a means of assisting myself mentally, and motivating myself emotionally, I almost always have some kind of music playing aorund me. For this most recent trip toward my most recent goals, I compiled a playlist of 100 songs for 100 days. the first song on the list was the tune I used to close the previous post, the finale from Stephen Sondheim's Sunday in the Park with George.

The last phrase there is one of the things that truly captures my imagination at moments like these.

"White - a blank page or canvas - his favorite; so many possibilities."

To kick things in gear after that I picked two songs that express the desire to get moving and get things done. Bruce Springsteen's Working on a Dream, the title tune from his most recent album, a song about a person holding hope in his heart and a hammer (or some other implement of construction and contemplation) in his hand.

I follow that with the Elvis mashup A Little Less Conversation, a rather ironic song to place in the mix considering the fact that almost everything I do gets talked to death before, during, and after the action. Nonetheless, the tune works for me as a reminder that talking (or blogging) isn't enough. The preparation isn't the race, the cooking isn't the meal. The road itself, the journey itself, may indeed be the destination, but even under that scenario one needs to be on the road; not sitting on the couch, or at the desk, contemplating the journey.

The song also happens to be the foundation of my favorite Nike commercial.

40 Days In... 40 Days Out

Forty days back, looking at 100 days to my 55th birthday, I set in motion a new plan.

I even included a soundtrack that I called 100 songs for 100 days (I'll post the playlist later.... hell maybe I'll even set it up on iTunes).

Today marks Day 40 of that 100 Day cycle and while I'm still listening to the music for multiple hours of the day while I work, and I'm still working on bits and pieces of the plan, the plan has suffered a bit as well.

But no more.

With 60 Days to go... I am actually left with 8 weeks of 5 day segments in which to conveniently form a routine that can even include breaks (and I have definitely discovered that BREAKS in these series are as vital as focused periods of effort... duh).

For the next three days I am preparing to launch a last 40 day plan on the way to my birthday on August 25.

The plan is going to be unique in that unlike my previous efforts (most of them documented here) I am keeping the structure of the program to Monday - Friday with ALL weekends between now and August 25th reserved for rest, reflection, relaxation, and revitalization. I am going to be working on goals I have set in seven areas (stolen from a talk by Jack Canfield). Those areas are:


Work
Relationship
Money
Physicality
Fun
Personal
Legacy

I'm not going to detail the three goals I have established in each of these areas (at least not right now) but I will do some reporting on the process. Some of these goals are quite long term, some are more mid-range (with target dates approximately a year away) and others are set for 60 days hence with my birthday as the target.

I am also following the advice of some other folks I've spent time with, read, and listened to and laying in a series of things I am going to STOP doing. The most significant of those to be revealed in more detail as we get closr to the date where it takes effect.

The primary point of this entire experiment is not really any different from what I was thinking when I first started this blog ten months ago. When I arrive at my immediate goal of this next 40 Days to Life plan I will bring the whole year long experiment to a close and will, shortly thereafter, take down the blog.

This is it... My 40 Day Swan Song.

Those who know me well, will not be terribly surprised that it begins with Sondheim.

Lent - Day 35 - The Things Left Undone

This Lenten season is rapidly spinning it's way down into Holy Week and most of my discipline during this year's season has consisted of regular acknowledgment to myself that I have not been particularly good at keeping any discipline.

As usual, I have had many intentions on my list. The most serious (and at the same time most traditional) was to stop eating meat during this time. While I have certainly cut down considerably, I have certainly not remained true to this chosen discipline.

I also had - as with so much of what I have talked about in this blog - many personal and professional goals I was desiring to wring out of my recalcitrant psyche, only to discover that, as my friend George Williamson likes to say, "I was born in sin."

It's my thought at this point that there may be something worthwhile in that awareness. Like the liturgical discipline in which one kneels to ask forgiveness for the things "we have done, and the things we have left undone." My greatest repentance this year certainly lies with what I have left undone and perhaps that's the way the universe really is, most of the time.

I could go on and on with regard to the things in my life (both recent and longstanding) that I have left undone, but I've decided that for my purposes here, I really have a single confession, and step of repentance, to make.

I have not loved writing with my whole heart.

I have spent pretty much all of my adult life imagining myself as some kind of writer, hoping to be that writer, and regularly pretending that I am, or was, or will be... that writer.

But something that I learned a very long time ago is that there is one thing that defines you as a writer and it's not the articles, essays, scripts, poems, and books you've written (and at one time or another I've written a fair share... clearly... I feel the need to find a way to defend myself even against my own accusations). There is one thing and one thing only that makes me - or anyone - a writer.

A writer... writes.

SO... today I am beginning again. I am dedicating myself to a daily "words on paper" (or screen) discipline of writing. From time to time different people have commented here about what I might, or might not, do. More than once it has been suggested that perhaps picking a SINGLE thing to work on would be of help in the process.

This time around, I'm taking that advice.

I've made up my mind on a schedule, a plan, a trajectory and an expectation, but THAT I'm not going to write about. I'm going to keep that to myself.

As I have with the other attempts at growth and discipline that I've delineated in this blog, I'll report back on my progress.

Dispatches, as it were, from the front lines of my personal literary (and disciplinary) war.

Lent - Day 8

One week of this deep 40 Day season and where am I?

As I sit at my computer, I am looking out at the giant oak tree in my back yard as the sun filters in through clouds and leaves and a lovely sun shower (something that I always remember fondly from childhood, but which rarely happens in Northern California) pelts down on the gables just beyond my window.

On the one hand, I am on the verge of economic panic as I struggle to find a way to pay my rent. On the other hand, I feel an incredible sense of peace.

For much of the last week I have been anything but calm. I have, like much of the culture, been captured during the last week in a frenzy of Twitter and that has done what so much of that type of thing does. It has left me feeling strangely detached and disjointed; much of the time I experience myself in a sort of disembodied cyber-tunnel.

I wonder what it would be like to truly remove myself from technology for a period of 40 days (or even a period of 3 days!). Many of these 40 Days posts have talked about my attempts (more or less successful) to remove myself from technology for ONE day and the fact is such experiences really do seem to help me reconnect to the earth and spirit at the center of my being. I can't help but imagine that a greater separation of the silicon based universe would lead to a greater connection to the carbon based universe. Moving away from the virtual world almost always reconnects me to the real world.

But then, even addressing things in this way raises (or more precisely re-raises) the basic existential questions at the core of everything we are. What is real? How can you tell? What will you do about it?

To me, this is the jewel at the heart of Lenten practice. It is a time for taking a look into the cave of existence to see what might be hiding in the shadows of your life, coaxing it out of it's hiding place and asking it to tell you something you don't already know (or that you have forgotten). It is my deepest belief that this is the heart of existence; this is what brings meaning to my life. It's not the rules I follow, the things I give up, the plans for new work and new goals and new things. It's finding the center and hanging out there for a while.

Then again... I still have to pay my rent.

The Great Journey of Lent

As some of you know, this whole experiment of 40 Day programs originates for me in the unique choice of 40 days as a time frame for various types of preparation in various spiritual traditions.

Today, being Ash Wednesday, begins one of those 40 day explorations that have been programmed into calendars for millenia.

So I've decided to try another reset-restart moment and begin anew the 40 days I started a couple of weeks ago. The difference this time is that I plan on taking this in a more internal, thoughtful, prayerful, restful direction. I've done a lot of big plans, big changes explorations and they've all met with varying degrees of success.

This time, I'm going to take a bit of E's advice (see... I really do pay attention from time to time) and move things to a slower, more reflective pace.

Personally... I'm curious to see where this takes me.

Act One - Groundhog Day Becomes A Love Supreme

As The Nord pointed out in his comment on the previous post, I'm now nearly two weeks into this new cycle... so what have I learned and how am I doing... any way?

Two weeks on... exploring the directions that I want to go, the last 12 days have been a definite first act, finding the characters, learning the landscape (again) spending time noticing what the content of my life is really about.

The supremely (the pun was unintended but I've decided to keep it anyway) beautiful "A Love Supreme" by John Coltrane is playing as I write this and the structure which Coltrane places into his musical magnum opus (and in my opinion, the best recording ever made) reflects most particularly what I am feeling at the moment... Acknowledgement is the name of the first movement, and acknowledgement - facing, looking, considering, and nodding at my life as if it is a friend on the other side of a crowded room - is what the last 12 days have been like.

Over the last two weeks I have been extremely busy with a recording project, a set of personal dramas within the local club I am a part of, raising money in order to get through the "new world order," and searching through the ways to put all my plans (enumerated below) into motion. It's been a frenetic, thoroughly unbalanced and only minimally productive period of time. There's a lot going on, but most days it really seems like sitting on a stationary bike, peddling my ass off, and getting absolutely nowhere.

So, yesterday, in the midst of all the craziness, I simply stopped to lift my head up and take a look around.

Acknowledgement:

1. an act of acknowledging.
2. recognition of the existence or truth of something: the acknowledgment of a sovereign power.
3. an expression of appreciation.
4. a thing done or given in appreciation or gratitude.

As in the beautiful pattern of Coltrane's piece, the first act is about recognizing the reality of the life I have. It's about looking, but not just looking, it's about SEEING what's in front of me. Only then is it possible to begin working with what's there. This is really not that different from what I was talking about in the last post. As I think about it, the key to the basic idea in Groundhog Day is that the main character must first notice what's going on before he can begin to transform that reality.

So there we are... Act One - Acknowledgement

Taking the time to look and to see
Paying attention to the patterns as they unfold
Recognizing what feels right
Seeking to find the thread

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Thanks again to The Nord. I discovered a new blog this morning by a photographer from San Francisco, Rebecca Jackrel, She is presently out on a true 40 Days to Life adventure, which frankly makes my repetitive attempts at a search for meaning seem like so much cream of wheat (and I really hate cream of wheat!).

From Groundhog Day to the Ides of March

So here we go again... It's Groundhog Day and as I mentioned in my Quicksilver blog, I've decided to use Punxatawny Phil's annual prediction to jump start another 40 Days to Life.

It's been just over a month since I abandoned the last program and in that time a lot of things have sprung up. It's been a chaotic, crazy, distracting time and I am feeling the need of a focus, a set of goals, and a plan to bring me back to some kind of driving potential that lets me feel like I'm "getting somewhere."

So what do I hope to accomplish this time around?

Here's my Day One list... It's in no particular order, and subject to change without notice.

Physical - I am FINALLY going to start running again - My 40 Day Goal is an across the Bay 12K on March 15.

Creative - I will finish the first draft of my novel, Dan and Dianne and the screenplay for The Reunion.

Business - Finish the incorporation of Quicksilver Amusements, select and begin ONE new production project. Begin the process of finding a new agent.

Educational - Begin learning French (again).

Income - I have an income goal, but I'm going to keep that to myself.

Personal - I will finish and submit my application for Irish citizenship. As with the above, I have other personal goals but I'm going to keep those to myself.

Spiritual - Continue daily meditation discipline - Journal at Bleeding Daylight.

Throughout the process, there are several things that I have picked up over the previous iterations of this process that work and that I intend to keep.

These include:

• A clear and intentional relational connection. I will actively engage and be involved with the people I have been given to inhabit and nurture my heart.

• Daily meditation practice.

• Continued attention to my diet and my health (most people probably do this as a matter of course... not me... I have to focus on it).

• Email/Internet discipline - Email checks three times a day... Weekly Digital Sabbath.

• Volunteer activities and charitable giving.

• A weekly afternoon committed to volunteering, personal growth, education, and friendship.

Here we go!