Ad infinitum

My son pointed out a few weeks ago, that mathematically .9999999 repeating to infinity is the same number as one.

The reason? Because in math, a pattern takes precedence over numbers.

I like to think of this as I work out in the gym. I don't lift as much weight as the other ladies. I don't run as fast. I can't do as many reps of v-ups. But I show up. Every week I lift weights twice, get my butt kicked in Boot Camp on Fridays, and spin for an hour on a leftover day. I have a repeating pattern. As I slog around the gym, last in line during the Indian running (do Indians really do that? I don't think so...) ready to drop to a walk, I remind myself that I don't have to be in the gym at all. I could be home watching tivo.

This is like my resurrected writing career. I'm creating patterns: send out queries to editors, get more ideas, send those out, follow up queries, get rejected, try again. Here I'm .999999 once again as I build a reputation for myself, and get back on top of my game. But I remember as I send out another query letter, that mathematically I'm the same as 1. Because it's the pattern that takes precedent over where I physically seem to be today.

There's another theory that the life you're living today, is the life you created for yourself three months ago. That's how long it takes for the ideas you envison to precipitate into the physical world. In otherwords, it will take three months for me to see the life I'm actually creating today, and I'm living the results of what I created three months ago with my actions and intentions.

You may feel like .9999999. But if you're laying down repeating patterns for yourself and struggling to create a different life than the one you didn't like, you're actually mathematically 1.

I'm going to get kicked out of Boot Camp if I keep on trying to tell them these things during our clapping pushups.

Tricks for contacting editors

Getting through to editors at magazines can be like trying to wiggle a limpet off a rock. Do they want submissions? Apparently not. Read the mastheads and it's a rare editor who lists their email address or telephone number.

However, if you read the masthead you will also find out there are precious few people running that magazine. It's stripped to the bones. Which is why they rely so heavily on freelance input. But if you're a new freelance, how do you get to the editor? Generic emails yield extremely few results.

I will reveal the secret. But if you use the secret you're going to look like a fool unless you have a slick delivery about your idea by phone, or you've got a professional looking, well-researched query letter. With that caveat (because I have been in busy newsrooms, and I do sympathize with overworked editors who get into a groove only to be interrupted by a nuisance call) use the following tips judiciously:

Go to the masthead on the magazine and write down the names of the editor, managing editor, assistant editor - whomever you want to reach. Then go down to advertising: they're the bunch that want to give out their email addresses. Look for the pattern -firstinitiallastname@mymag.com. You'll use that same pattern to email the editor with your white-hot, well-researched query (no attachments).

Then see where the editorial offices are located, and look for the number for the advertising or circulation department which is located in the same building. Now you've got the switchboard number and you can call the operator for the editor's number. If you get through to voicemail you can: call back, pitch to the mailbox, or go back to the operator and ask for the person's assistant. They don't really have assistants, I'm finding out. These magazines are horribly short-staffed.

This method takes a bit of sales practice. I like to have my pitch written out in front of me pared down to one sentence. Then they can ask for more information or send me away if it's not right for the magazine, or I can try to pitch a second article. I think if I had a list of articles it would either be impressive or annoying. I haven't tried that one yet. I'd love comments from other freelances about this method.

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Has it really been that long since I posted? Time's all crumpled up these days. I could have sworn it's only been a week.

But since then, I've had my first interview broadcast on Bexley Public Radio (Local Power FM - 102.1 in Columbus), and sat down with our engineer Eugene to edit tape for a couple news pieces. We've had lots and lots of snow, so that's been a distraction. At one point we were under a level 3 winter weather warning, which means you're not allowed to go out in your car.

Since last week I've signed up for the ASJA conference in New York, booked my flight, found somewhere to sleep; and signed up for a 'write your non-fiction book proposal class' through Freelance Success on-line. Jennifer Lawler teaches the class, and although I won't be able to take part of it due to other commitments, I thought I'd better have my proposal ready for the conference to punt to agents and editors. I've also joined the Freelance Success query challenge, and have to get some queries shifted off my desk today so that our group gets some points.

It's been a HUGELY busy and productive ten days. Almost overwhelmingly so. On Saturday night I dreamed this amazing dream, and spent Sunday with my head in the computer turning it into a short story. It's a firecracker - but now it needs redrafting before it's in shape to send out. The week before that, a whole novel plot landed in my head ready-born, and I'm very, very excited about that project too.

I've shut down my healing practice for the month of February. That's because I concentrate so hard during the day, I'm too tired to give clients full focus once my evening office hours roll 'round. (I will be back up and running in March). However, one client came in under the wire. She's a writer too, and asked a question about writing sad or dark stories. For people who believe that intention creates our world, or that thoughts can turn into things, writing dark stories feels like contributing to the evil in the world, rather than being part of our Earth's healing.

I found a diary entry I'd written while re-drafting The LightCatcher. I had real problems with that book trying to make it dark enough. I'd become so deeply involved with my healing practice, and identified so strongly with the characters, that I couldn't give them enough pain to make the story interesting.

"One of my many blocks to writing I discovered yesterday. In all metaphysical texts they talk about not only the importance of action, but also of thought: how it's important to send good thoughts, pure thoughts, into the world, for the health of other people and also for your own health.

"Writing a dark book is an action, and it makes negative thoughts concrete. As a healer I don't want to participate in that cycle. However, the canvas (flat or sculpture or a novel) is a place where we can safely manipulate imaginary icons without damaging real people as we explore human nature for ourselves and others.

"That's why art is such an important spiritual medium, and a safe and right place to direct emotion, our wonderings and our wonderment. It's another vehicle of birth which allows the expression of emotion and the safe passage through to communion with ourselves...with others. Snapshots of other minds, other situations. Birth, and out the other side."

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Which agents actively trawl for writers? Plus a cheerful look at conference etiquette

Don't have an agent? Don't have conference fees? Feeling out of the loop?

The best way back into the loop is through conferences. There you can hear all the tips and advice and find out what the industry needs as it moves in this rapidly changing information-driven world.

BUT if you've been to the conferences at a time when your work wasn't ripe to sell, and need to know who's trawling for authors now, then go to writers' conference websites and find out who's touring. Agencies will send people who need to build their list of authors; newly-opened agencies will cherry-pick from conferences; and one-man bands will also trawl for writers.

It's best to get your butt to the conference, get your mug in front of the agent with a good-looking business card that lists your website and your blog, practice your thirty-second pitch speech in the mirror the night before, and give it to the agent with lots of direct eye contact and a firm handshake. Professional. That's what sells and that's what you've got to appear to be.

I learned two conferences ago not to have pretty folders with my tear sheets and the first ten pages of the novel ready to hand to the agents. Each person said they never accept manuscripts at conferences. They prefer to receive your information by email. So don't look like a dork and try to thrust anything on them bigger than your business card. And be ready with pen and paper in case they've run out of cards and want to give you their contact details.

I'm like all writers. I sit in my office, most of the time with a makeup free face and my weight-lifting gear still on. If I remember to put on earrings and extra deoderant after my workout (I do shower every morning, so it's not as stinky as all that), it's a bonus. But the dog and the cat don't care. However, as my children continue to remind me when I get too freaky - looks matter. As much as I hate it, people respond better to people who look normal. They give you more attentive service for looking normal. They want to please you if you make an effort to please them by wearing nice clothes.

Clothes at conferences - I consider them tax deductible. These are clothes I will never wear other than at a conference, or some job interview I may attend in another incarnation. Makeup for conferences - same. I don't wear makeup, (despite the blue lady), except for eyeliner and mascara and lipgloss from CVS. So if I have to get my nails done and put Crest strips on my teeth and buy shoes, foundation and the whole Eddie Murphy, I think that goes down as a conference expense.

Do not go to conferences on what you cobble together from your existing wardrobe, ok? I did that my first conference. What was I thinking with those beaded cream party shoes and a sensible skirt? Apart from falling off my shoes regularly because of the hefty case - full of all those useless folders for agents, remember? - I felt stupid and out of place. Wear a black pumps and black trousers, a decent jacket and a nice sweater or not-too-dressy blouse.

Get the Mary Kay lady to show you the latest tips for applying makeup, and then practice at it. Hold dry runs. Makeup is a real pain-in-the-tuchus for me. I played in trees and wrestled with the neighbor boys, instead of Barbie. I was disappointed to learn the makeup I'd bought and worn forever - blue eyeshadow and silver eyeliner - had to go, despite the 80s being 'back' this season. In came various shades of brown, with matching shades of brown lipstick. Sadly, sparkles are out.

You're going to be at it for a couple days, back and forth to the coffee table and in and out of sessions, so be comfortable while you look nice. Show your personality through your earrings and your manicure, rather than mis-matched I-live-in-a-garrett clothes, or drama queen scarves you bought because you wanted to look like a writer.

Writers who make it are extremely together and professional. Be her.

PS - Thanks for the comment Isabel! (Previous post). I'm glad I wasn't the only bluesy chick scrabbling for inspiration last week. Hope you found yours!

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The business of freelancing

It's hard to face the computer and the tasks I know I have to do today. We've had freezing temperatures in the below-zeroes for the past two days, and now there's snow falling horizontally outside my window.

Weather isn't any reason not to write. (Ok, revise that. It's very hard to write in August when it's blazing sunshine and the cool pool beckons). I don't know why I'm feeling discouraged. I've got two wicked-awesome tapes in the recorder - the first a collection of stories from the non-violent communication conference, the second the drug story I'm doing with the OSU professor. Both I like. I also got a 'good' rejection from Natural Health magazine for one of my stories today, and reminded them of an outstanding query on another story they might like. And emailed a contact to thank him for an interview, and sent him an idea. All good stuff.

But I feel blocked. I'm having a difficult time with this drug story, wrestling it on the page. Problem is, it seems like two stories, or even three. It has angles to sell to mens and women's health magazines, Psychology Today, as well as military and mainstream magazines.

I think what it needs is a day at Borders, going through magazines and collecting names of editors - but why don't I just use the Writer's Market? Because I get a better feel for the pitch when I see the real magazine in front of me. Sometimes there are magazines I've never seen, either - like the day I ran across Tea Experience Digest and that sparked an essay idea for me. Borders, Writer's Digest, or the Internet? What will it be? Of the three I like Borders best because I can buy magazines and bring them home to precisely target my piece.

So that's why I'm blocked. Because I really need to be at the bookstore instead of watching incessant, falling snow.

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Non-Violent Communication conference

The Non-Violent Communication movement is big in Columbus. Following the work of Marshall Rosenberg, NVC teaches people how to speak heart-to-heart and connect to their feelings and needs when handling difficult conversations.

I went to the two-day conference as a paying guest yesterday, but took along my digital recorder and a microphone to get some tape for the community radio station. I talked to several people and came away with about five interviews. It's a balance - I wanted to participate in the workshop but also knew that with the growth of this movement in our city, it'd be a great story for radio.

So that meant taking time to chat with people at lunch, and slipping interviews into break time. I made myself work when I wanted to relax, but I'm happy I did. Today I'm exhausted.

Marshall Rosenberg spoke for two days, and broke us into pracitise groups only twice. This gave him almost no breaks in his speaking, story-telling, ceaseless demonstrations of the techniques of Non-Violent Communication, and songs. His energy filled the room, making him seem younger from a distance than he appeared up close.

Time after time he coached participants through difficult conversations, helping them to breakthroughs of empathy and understanding. I saw profound healings of old emotional wounds all day, and believe that, on an energetic level, the healers in the audience also participated in making this happen through their attention, presence, and engagement.

But there was also a strange thing happening to me. Because I wanted to cover the story for radio, I'd emailed the organizer ahead of time asking for an interview with Marshall Rosenberg. I'd been a bit sloppy and left it to the day before. However, I knew another reporter would be at the conference, and that she'd emailed well in advance. So I thought we'd get one interview between us, and expected a fifteen - at the outside 30 - minutes shoed in somewhere.

Instead, I got an extremely chilly shoulder from the organizer when I introduced myself on the first morning. And continued to receive the same chilly demeanor when I bumped into him for the next two days. On the morning of day two, my colleague revealed that the organizer said he hadn't even asked Marshall about an interview. We put together a note with our bios and left it on his chair.

Funny thing was, I knew the organizer! We'd actually conducted a conference opening some years previously, and had attended a couple meetings together. I thought he'd at least put together half a smile at some point in the day. But it felt like I'd received the label 'Press' and he couldn't see past it. I felt sad that at a conference where we learned for two days to speak heart-to-heart, I'd been labeled. And also sad that the radio station for which I'm creating the story, was put together by the same organization (Simply Living) whose conference we'd opened together in 2004!

We didn't get the interview with Marshall. Although we approached him during a break, he referred us to his team. And when we approached the team at the end of the conference for one final bash at it (reporter 1: if you go up and ask, I'll give you lots of empathy if you get rejected. reporter 2: Deal.) their manner was closed down and brisk. Get rid of the press.

I loved the conference. I received tools I'll use for the rest of my life. But I wanted to share that joy with a wider community through my gifts of communication, and got blocked by being labeled as a pest.

Do I have a point? Maybe. Perhaps they've been burned in the past. Perhaps he's too frail to give one ounce of extra energy during two days of teaching, that he must reserve all juice for his healing work. Fair enough.

An editor once said to me: "Don't be a reporter unless you enjoy sticking your head in a meat grinder." In situations like this, that piece of unfortunate advice still seems to ring true.

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Writing Contests

Here's a site that sends regular lists of writing contests. But check Preditors and Editors before you enter anything you don't know by reputation. Some charge entrance fees just to get your money in the door.

Preditors and Editors is a fantastic site for anyone considering an agent, a book deal, entering a contest, or whether a person in publishing is legit.

To sign up for the contest list, send a blank e-mail message to crwropps-subscribe@topica.com

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Journalism

I'm feeling my way forward as I reconstruct my writing career in Ohio after building it in London.

It's not easy. But I've found a friend in radio to buddy with, and we talk on Monday mornings and Friday mornings, for an accountability check. A radio friend works well because she's not selling to my market, so I feel good about talking about my stories, and I'm not selling to her's. She also encourages me to get into radio, and I encourage her print sales.

It's also a matter of finding out where to look for work. I joined Freelance Success. They send a monthly e-newsletter with publications to pitch, and host several on-line forums where I can chat to other freelances and authors. The group has strong ties to the ASJA and several members go to that annual conference.

Another great resource is Publisher's Lunch, an online daily newsletter from the publishing industry. You can get a short, free version which is enough if you want to just keep tabs on your genre. Or you can subscribe for a monthly fee, which gives access to an editor and agent database. Then it's a matter of typing in your genre, and up pops a list of potentially interested editors. You can also pick out a book that matches your book's theme, and find out who agented it. Then it makes it an easier approach. People at conferences rave about Publisher's Lunch.

If you're looking for writing work in your area, try Craig's list. Please add your comments to this blog if you've got any writing work tips or urls.

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Reality?

This morning hefting a 15lb weight for a bicep curl at the Y, I said to my compatriot on the next bench: "this isn't reality you know. It's just a series of events that we label reality. What's reality is the template behind the events that precipitate them into our lives. Birth and death are the huge clues that this is all an illusion."

She told me to shut up.

So I tried again at the bank. While the guy notarized my letter, I said: "It's a 'what is the nature of reality?' kind of a morning. I guess this is a sign that I've got too much time on my hands."

He said: "Go to Starbucks and get a coffee and then drink a Red Bull. That'll shake it out of you."

He seemed so certain that caffeine would solve my existential questioning, I didn't have the heart to tell him I've given up caffeine because of palpitations.

I think I've been more existential than usual because A: I saw a client yesterday for an energy healing session and B: I'm working on a story about how people withdrawing from drug addiction have difficulty solving problems where multiple solutions present themselves.

So (A) the energy healing session showed me once again that there's a template level for our physical bodies and if we can alter the template we alter first our moods and our level of possibility in our lives, and then our physical bodies start coming into better alignment.

Part of (B) is that they've discovered a commonly-available drug which can help people in withdrawal solve complicated problems. This has wonderful implications - it means that addicts have a way to keep performing and reduce anxiety as they get clean.

What do A and B have to do with each other? Well, they are different ways of tackling our problems. Some people might say they're mutually exclusive. But I see both as part of a raft of solutions.

What is reality, anyway?

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Toffees

One of the guys I worked with in London has THE premier blog for Ireland. It's rude and fun (but not explicit) it's http://www.blogorrah.com/ I think you'll like it!

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Spinning

I love it when ice crystals skate across the road in gray, ectoplasmic swirls. The temperature finally dropped after weeks of rain to a clear 28 and a crisp frost descended over the grass. Ice-cicles hung over the park's stream, and with the sun shining on the water glittered like our twinkling Christmas lights, so effortless without electricity or plastic or wires. Ice-cicles, our original sparkling inspiration, created silently, invisibly, unshouted, over a little stream.

This poem came to me:

I am the spider
weaving in darkness
creating what is to come.
Purposeless these silver threads
seem to me
over a stream with no fish.

But when the world turns
and lifts its burning eye,
for that day
my web

completed
a mandala of moonlight hope
circle and spoke

will catch what
Earth provides -nothing less -
and I will be satisfied.

Timidity

For all our bravado as a nation, we've been timid about standing up on a local level. Problems seem to large. The country itself seems to big. DC is too far away. We're afraid of repercussions, from being blanked by the other parents at school to being shot by a lunatic for voicing our minds.

I felt this keenly when I moved from Britain back to the US, and voiced my disapproval about the Iraq war at its beginning. People told me to 'go back where you came from' if I though our nation was wrong. Even though I'd originally come from Seattle.

Every time there's violence in my community, I feel cowed. That if I speak up against guns, some NRA nutjob will leave poop - or worse - in my mailbox. Yet how will we stop our children dying in school, on their own porches, in their own homes from guns?

I remember Britain after Dunblane, the terrible Scottish tragedy when a lonely, backwards little man gunned down a school in his home town. I felt amazed as I watched the British Parliament swing into action to ban handguns, rifles and shotguns once and for all.

They held gun amnesties across the nation. People brought Uncle Fred's service revolver down from the attic, and into the police stations. They collected piles and piles of guns - even a few ancient muskets that would kill the next person who tried to fire them.

Why can't we do this? Our kids die each year. If we can try to get a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage - which hurts no one and helps a bunch of people - why can't we ban guns? Is there really a justification for bearing arms now that its historical context is gone?

Guns do one thing. Kill. And it's totally within our power as a society to stop gun violence.

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Keep on keepin' on

The act of creation is the hero's journey. Anyone who creates an organization, a company, a novel or a piece of art embarks on the hero's journey.

We are so used to working en masse, of doing what's been assigned to us, or what the prevailing current provides, that it's the toughest act to create from an idea that no-one seems interested in or bothered about, and to imbue that idea with energy, with its own spirit, and charisma.

There comes the point in each hero's journey where he can choose: to return home to safety, or to soldier on against exhaustion, starvation, and harm. At this eleventh hour, he always gives up and loses hope, if only for a few minutes. When he decides to try again, the hero finds he's changed. He's died a little death, and given birth to himself. A new, stronger, more determined and experienced person tackles the final summit to fight the last ogre.

We have all given up and returned home at some point in time. We've all plumped for safety over plunging on. But we all have to turn again to the hero's journey if we want to feel truly alive and engaged with the world.

What part of the hero's journey are you on today?

Under Construction

Got the stomach bug this weekend, and a gurgling tummy put me flat on my back in bed with nothing to do except comb through my energy system.

What does that mean?

It means visualizing the body as energy, and find the gunky places. Then you scoop out the poop, take it away from the body, and pour light (kinda like spraying on bleach) into that place. It's fun when you get good at visualizing your body and taking the virtual tour. And it works. Apart from tiredness, no more stomach sickness. All gone.

I found these little erector-sets around my chakras, the funnels which bring energy into main points in the body. (Acupuncture uses the chakras to help rebalance the body.) I seem to be under construction.

It certainly feels that way. I have SO MANY dreams. How can I bring them into the physical world, so they can be manipulated and played with? Work.

When I was a kid, work scared me. It meant picking up rocks in the back yard, .25 cents per bucket. But now I want it. Work means engagement with the world. Work means creating my life.

Mister Hat

Paolo had a great birthday and got a cowboy outfit - yes, really. I gave him a hat and a belt to match, and his mom got him the plaid flannel shirt and he had the boots, a wedding gift from my brother, so that goes back a few years.

To understand this hat, you have to picture Rod's Western Palace. It's off the freeway in Columbus, and you know it from the full-sized fiberglass horse standing on the front porch. A wooden Indian says 'How' to customers, and cowboys croon over the P.A.. You've got cowgirl chaps and riding britches, saddles, lariats, whips, spurs, horse-shoe earrings and lone-star necklaces. You've got pink boots and brown boots, turquoise boots and white boots, for all the cowfolks in your life.

Well, this cowboy hat was so authentic, Paolo had to take it back to Rod's to get it blocked. They steam it and put in the crease on the crown, and a curl in the brim. The man behind the counter was so po-faced in his grey felt hat, deep-yoked shirt and fingers hooked around his shiny belt buckle, I thought he'd ask Paolo to show him a picture of his hoss - or at least his 200 acre spread - to prove he was a re-ul cowboy before he'd shape the hat to Paolo's skull. (Ok, so Paolo's English accent didn't make him sound like a minor character from Brokeback Mountain, but our counter-cowboy had ingested so much of Rod's soundtrack and southern atmosphere, he'd got a good picture of himself as Mr Stallion. All non-hat knowledgeable people who stumble into Rod's from mainstream america were geldings....)

And I felt thoroughly ashamed to have only 5 acres and no chickens until I saw a Mexican fella skulking around the hat counter. He caught my eye and gave me a sly grin, as if to say these gringo cowboys don't know sh*t. That made me feel better, because I knew that guy had more cowboy in his little finger than Mr Hat had under his button fly. Later I saw the same guy pick out a pair of black matte boots with a square silver toe which were solid working plus a little bit of show, an easy double for salsa on Saturday nights.

We climbed into our SUV and drove home to the range. Paolo will look fabulous riding the tractor this summer in his black cowboy hat, button-down banker's shirt and sarong.

The Moms of Powell

Ok, we get bored in the 'burbs some of these gray days. At the bank, the sour face of a middle-age woman (and then in Kroger...and then at the Y) inspired this rap. Why's everyone looking so miserable? Cheer up guys. It's not the end of the world.

Dah boom boom boom...

We drive da SUV
we on da cellphone constantly
Da moms of Powell
Da moms of Powell.

We like da blonde highlights
we stay inside at nights
we drink da wine
and wish we could go back in time
da moms of Powell
da moms of Powell

Kroger is our only store
we shop there more an' more
what we buy is instant trash
but we give dem all our cash
da moms of Powell
da moms of Powell

Da YMCA is our gym
we swim and stretch and spin
and when we finish wit da pain
we weigh and see what weight we gain
Da moms of Powell
Da moms of Powell

To da soccer we are slaves
to da dance class, gymboree and skate
we buy our children many ting
and ourselves dat diamond ring
but when the bank say cash is due
we look around for someone to sue!
da moms of Powell
da moms of Powell

Happy Christmas everyone. Don't spend more than you earn. Make cookies instead!

Time Candy

Everyone has their time candy. The thing they do when they're avoiding that thing they should be doing. Mine is reading New Age websites. I'm particularly addicted to Solara's NVisible and her work with the 11:11. Ok, don't switch off. Hear me out. As an addict, I'm also a connosieur, and I read Solara's because she's so damn accurate. She says things like: this week we're releasing pockets of the past, and it's going to be painful but quick (my paraphrase. check out Solara if you want the horse's mouth). Purification. And that's what it's been like for me.

The weather's doing some purifying in Ohio at the moment. Traffic lights are at a horizontal as high winds kick leaves into crunchy brown vortices. I'm in Borders, and Tony Bennett's singing his creamy and mellow 'there'll be peace at Christmas' while the wind snaps branches in the parking lot. And that's sort of what it feels like in my body at the moment: that abiding peace that's moved in and decided to make a permanent home in my chest, but at the same pockets of the past burst, showing me the fear I used to feel reaching out for my deepest desires.

Overlaying it all is this vision of Oregon and the Pacific Northwest where my family lives. I missed Thanksgiving for living too far away for the 20th year in a row, and I'm really done with that. I'm beginning to seriously dream how we can make life there a reality for us within the next 2 years. (I've actually set a personal deadline, but I'm not telling yet.) It inhabits alot of my thinking during dawdling time - dishes, driving, or catching myself staring out the window, body in Ohio, spirit in Oregon.

When I moved to Ohio, I had these dreams of going along a river road looking at houses. I saw how the light moved in bars through the trees, and how the bank cut steeply above the road. Six months later, I drove along the same road looking for houses with a realtor. That hasn't happened yet. But I have begun its precursor - the dreaming. Make it an expansive dream. Give it room for everyone to grow and thrive. Dream big! This is the intention, the planning phase. I can feel it coming, like when a woman knows she's pregnant before she takes the test. The exciting part is the journey, our onward journey of never-ending change.

May peace inhabit your heart.

Belief speaks

It seems that now is a powerful time for belief. That belief separates and defines us at this moment in the USA in a way that is overly or supra-significant. It feels like belief is as important in this time as belief was when fascism was on the rise. As if people must create or adhere or attach themselves to beliefs in order to have power in the world.

It's not about achievement right now, a litany of accomplishment. It's not about what you've built or the good deeds you've done. But what belief brought you to this point in time and your choices in the now. George Bush showed this when he climbed to power on the back of belief, an ex-addict with a track record for spin.

The election next month is all about 'what kind of Christian am I?' and candidates hand out business cards with the ten commandments on the back. We are in dangerous territory, and a hop, skip and a jump from the rule of Ayatollahs. We are at war with Islamists because of oil but also because they are fundamentalists. They mirror part of ourselves, the part of this nation that wants control over women's minds and bodies and wills, that seeks to control entertainment, sex and free speech.

The Lord supports us; everything we do is right because we are in service to Him. You are not us, you do not serve our Lord. You are dangerous as an outsider.

Belief is a precursor to action. So what we believe, we create. Ideas become words which become strategies which become things. What are we creating with our National beliefs? What intentions do we send into the world?

Crush!

Saturday we crushed 375 cases of grape - cabernet sauvignon, merlot, pinot noir, San Giovese, syrah - to make 27 barrels of juice and must. A big party! Brothers Mike and Marty, their parents Marie and Ott, Fairy Sue, Jay and Susan and little Cory, Kevin and Martha, and James the blue barrel supplier and his new, very tiny blonde girlfriend, Anton the elder, Mike and Katrina and us - Paolo, Cynthia, and our kids.

Our first surprise came when Marty picked up a bunch of blue-black San Giovese and found a black spider with a red hourglass belly clinging to the underside of the stalk. The black widow, chilled but alive from its refrigerated journey, went into a little salsa jar. Later we found another spider on the outside of a box and popped that in too. Jay said he saw two more on empty wine crates he'd loaded into the truck for his homeless friends to burn.

And as Sue and Susan and I sat inside with cups of tea and leftover lunch we found another black widow crawling up Sue's sleeve. Susan dispatched it with a squish inside a paper towel. As Anton-the-elder changed out of his grapey, tractor-man clothes, he found he'd been cuddling with another one of the arachnids for god-knows-how-long. It kinda freaked him out.

But no-one received injury despite this spiderly plethora as we sorted grapes for hour upon hour (barehanded - rubber gloves are in order next year) and we had a little production line: grapes go into the tractor dumper, which toddles off to the hopper, where pulp, seeds and grape gets sucked into the basement via hose & pump.

Guests began to dwindle at 4pm, but the men still had several pallets of grape and kept it up through a thunderstorm, then hail, then spectacular double rainbows before sunset that called everyone away from their posts to gaze in admiration, rainbows stretching from the southern to northern horizons.

We finished cleanup by 10pm and fell asleep soon after, exhausted by the day and by the preparations for it, holding the energy and vision for all who come to our house to participate in a joyful event.

Our wine will be full of the chattering of friends, of our silly jokes as we sorted grape, and of our dreams for what the success of this venture will bring.

Moon Dancing

Naked pagan hippies, dancing in the moonlight. Maybe a mudbath or two. That's what I told the winemakers we'd be doing at the women's retreat last weekend. Writing in our journals and sitting in a circle listening to each other cry doesn't sound so glamorous.

Ok, so we did some of the first - but clothed. Modesty and mosquitos are powerful incentives. We camped next to a pond and they were on the buzz for blood to lay more eggs. I've got bites on my legs and my hands, but none on my eyelids. That's the worst place for a mosquito bite because the skin is so thin and it swells up like an apricot.

I'm a huge believer in women pampering themselves, in whatever ways we can. I'm cast in the supporting role at home, as mom and cook and household visionary, and I need outside air. This one, at the Ecological Center, had plenty.

We cooked a meal on the first night from food raised at the center, on its farm. Goat milk ice-cream with apple crumble, the goat milk not goaty at all, but a nice undertone like a ripe cheese. Stuffed green peppers, a salad with flowers from the herb garden including orange nasturtiums and yellow citrus marigolds, herby purple potatos, and good bread.

At 7am we got up to feed and milk the goats, cut sunflowers for the farmer Laura Ann to sell in the town market who also led us in stretching exercises. As well as a farmer, she's a polarity therapist & mom. Then off to an incredible breakfast including fresh-baked bread, blackberry muffins, eggs from the chickens and sausages from the pigs.

As well as cooking and eating, we also played bubbles, jumprope, kicked a medicine ball, walked in the woods, and meditated. I felt like my feet chewed on the gravel, and when I closed my eyes I saw indigo and green, orange and violet.

In the forest we tried to feel the woods observing us. I felt a tree's energy field expand to encompass me as if the tree's field took a cast of my body as it wrapped around me. The tree sensed how far my roots grew, and knew I was a thing that travels on top of the soil. It knew I don't fly. Then it communicated this to other trees through its trunk, branches and leaves.

Whether these impressions are flights of fancy or the way a tree truly senses, doesn't matter to me. What I treasure is a brief, possible perspective of another living being.