Wordplay Magic

Do you believe in magic? Let me ask a deeper question here: What is magic? I keep a link to Dictionary.com on my favorites bar. The drift of their definition is that magic is appearances created by sleight of hand and devious means. I'm so disappointed. I do believe in magic, and the magic I believe in is the appearance of the unexpected, that which is not ordinarily possible. A related word is supernatural.

That word, supernatural, brings me to the point of this post.

Questions may be the single most powerful life writing tool. I refer to those open questions you pose on the page, then suspend thought and write the answers from wherever they come — your subconscious, God, the Universe. I'm less concerned about the source than the substance.

Winding along the path of my daily adventure of discovery on the pages of my journal, I wrote into a dream fragment that took place in a church of sorts, a sacred space. I posed a question: “What is sacred? What does the concept mean?” Two words flowed out of my pen, morphing into altered configurations:

Trance-form. Trance-in-dance.

I felt a tingle of excitement and delight at the invitation into this wordplay game with Wisdom. Trance. What is trance? My answer is “altered state of consciousness, awareness, or  perception.” I could interrupt my writing to check Dictionary.com, but my meaning is the one that matters when I'm on a journal page. That's my reality. The trance definition I work from is a state of being open to the super-natural, aka God or Wisdom.

Thus transform, or trance-form, involves suspending or setting aside the limitations imposed by (my) ordinary ways of thinking and entertaining alternate points of view and possibilities.

Aha! Of course! How could I change, grow, develop and learn without opening to alternate possibilities? That's the only way forward, out of a rut.

I moved on to trance-send. While in that trance, I send (or am sent) from one way of understanding to another, from one form to another. The sending led me to the next step:  trance-in-dance. Dancing is movement. Dancing is energy.

All these thoughts swirled together in a satori moment: for me, sacredness involves suspending belief in the limits of what I currently know and believe so Wisdom can mold my understanding into new forms better suited for whatever purpose is at hand. In an even more fun-da-mental sense, sacred means opening to the pure energy of life, of God. This new point of view, this new understanding of sacredness, forms an evolutionary thread connecting stages of faith and belief through my life.

The effect of those words and that wisdom flowing from the page into my awareness and understanding is magic — the appearance of the unexpected and ordinarily impossible. I might have struggled for weeks or years to come to that realization if I'd sought it deliberately. I definitely, strongly believe in magic — the magic of opening to the possibility of the page!

Write now: spend some time freewriting, easing into a deep place of meaning for you. Then pose a question similar to the one above, “What is this concept? What does it mean?” As the answer begins to emerge from your fingers, engage with it playfully and let it magically trance-port you to new vistas.

Image credit: h.koppdelaney

Puzzles, Choices, Truth and Story

This morning as I wrote in my journal a name flowed out onto the page along with the thought, “Which Truth is True?” I have many conflicting feelings about this person, whom I'll refer to as Heesh, because nothing about the identity of this person is important. On impulse I began listing “true statements” about Heesh.

• I admire Heesh.
• Heesh makes me nuts.
• Heesh sometimes says hurtful things.
• Heesh is a b... .
• Sometimes I avoid contact with Heesh.
• Heesh doesn't mean to be hurtful.
• I learn a lot from Heesh.
• Etc.

The list grew. Without conscious transition or intention, I began adding statements about my role in this relationship, the filters I perceive through. My filters subtly shifted as I realized the role they have been playing in my perceptions of this person. I became aware that I can choose filters. 

At some point my hand quit moving and I fell into a reverie, staring at the tiny lights on the small Christmas tree a few feet away. I became transfixed by the glow as it warmed the darkness of early morning. All thought ceased for a few delicious moments before I glanced at my list again. In those few moments it had been transformed. I no longer saw it as a list of paradoxes. I saw it as a picture with light and dark areas. All these things are Truth. It's possible to hold conflicting feelings, just not at the same time.

And … here was the payload: when one of those dark thoughts comes clouds the sky of awareness, I have the power to replace it with a neutralizing positive one. That does not make the dark one untrue. It simply makes me happier. I feel better. I feel strong. Making that list lit up my whole morning, and my view of Heesh.

I include details of this process to underscore the power of writing in a journal, but that wasn't the end of it. My thoughts moved on to stories. I've written a couple of short vignettes about Heesh in the past, each showing an isolated list element. Each is a scene showing behavior, without comment or reflection. I doubt that they'll ever be included in a volume for others to read, but writing them served the purpose of clearing my mind at the time. It felt good to get those stories nailed to the page. 

Now is a good time to follow through and write an expanded story that includes illustrations of each list item and some reflection on the evolution of my feelings toward and about Heesh. This story will deepen the narrative aspect of my morning's experience and perhaps solidify it to ensure a permanent shift in my filters to enhance the light rather than darkening it. This is in alignment with James Pennebaker's observation that research subjects who developed the strongest narrative and insight in their four days of writing showed the strongest indications of improved health. Such an involved story is more than I can dash off in thirty minutes, but it will be a good investment in my own growth and transformation.

By the way, this is not a co-dependent relationship. I might look at things differently if self-destructive behavior were involved.

Write now: think of a puzzling person you have conflicting feelings about and make a list as I did. Be prepared to shed a few cleansing tears between fond chuckles. If you don't feel cleansed and filled with light when you finish, you may want to spend a couple of days writing about the troublesome list elements until you work them through.

Mushrooms Grow in Manure

How often do you stop to think about the source of mushrooms when you slice one up for an elegant meal you’re preparing? Did you know that commercial mushrooms grow in manure in dark caves?

“Wait a minute,” you may be thinking. “Are you trying to spoil my dinner? And what on earth do mushrooms, manure and and caves have to do with life writing?”

More than you would have guessed. Mushrooms are a gourmet item, turning many a mundane meal into a foodie’s feast. Stories perform a similar function, perhaps livening conversation at that feast. Though not all stories have mushroom-like roots in dung, and not all originate in darkness, some of the most compelling ones do.

I mention this to urge you to look back through your life and explore a few of those dark moments you generally prefer to leave behind closed doors in the dungeon of memory. Grab a pen and paper and fling open that door, fearlessly facing the never-quite-forgotten. Do this with a strong sense of hope and confidence that your exploration will result in a feast of flavorful story (perhaps for an audience of one), freeing you from the tyranny of secrecy, and you’ll experience significant health benefits as a result.

Don’t be surprised if your emotional temperature begins to rise as you explore this mental manure. Before mushroom spore is planted in horse by-product, the offal must ferment or “cure” for three to five weeks. The pile becomes quite hot in this process, killing harmful organisms like weed seeds and pathogens. Mental manure has a similar effect. It’s quite common to feel some distress as you recall dark, upsetting memories and events. When you’re done, the memory is “cured,” and succulent Truth mushrooms can grow from it.

Rest assured as you do, this is a sign the process is working, and after three to five days, your mushrooms will be planted. It will be time to shut off the cave again and let the mushroom stories grow and mature. Go outdoors and bask in the light. By the way, writing about happy positive memories has been shown to have the same health benefits as writing about dark ones.

After a suitable period of time, recheck your cave, and don’t be surprised to find a long list of stories ready to be transcribed.

Here’s a link to a collection of blog posts about the Pennebaker research and process and how to use it, along with others related to mining those mental mushrooms.

Write now: make a list of ten memories you could use as manure for growing mushrooms. Set aside some time to begin curing your compost and get started.

Photo credits:

Mushroom cave: ChestofBooks.com

Portabello Bake: Jules.stonesoup

Playing with the Process

Yesterday was my dad's 90th birthday. One day last week the following conversation took place between my husband and me:

“Rats! I forgot to shop for a card for my father!”

“Why don't you make him something like Gil made my mother?” Gil is a friend of my mother-in-law's who lives in her retirement community. For her recent 98th birthday, he snagged some historical highlights of her birth year from the web, added a few sappy sentiments at the end, and wowed everyone. It was sweet, but … if I were going to do something like that, it would be a bit more, well, elegant. And definitely not sappy.

“I don't want to. It would take forever. … But … let me look at Gil's thing again.” He dug it out.

Hmm, I thought. How long could it take to pull a few facts off the web. A little bit more formatting, maybe a couple of graphics. Surely I could think of a suitable conclusion.

I cranked up Google to explore 1920. Most events pertained to war, the aftermath of war, or what would later be recognized as preludes to war. But did you know that's the year it became illegal to mail babies via the USPS? Prohibition began that year – for alcohol in this country and contraceptives in France.

I started playing with layout. A little graphic maybe? Yeck! Boring hardly began to describe it.

Let me see what I can do with PowerPoint, I thought. A few slides, a few graphics. How long could that take?

I knew. I truly knew. But I realized I'd been bitten by this bug and  the only way out was through.

Let's just say I didn't sleep much that night, and most planned tasks sat undone the next day. By the middle of the day after that, I had created a PowerPoint slideshow with animated loads and transitions for text and graphics. I'd snagged audio of a 19w0 top hit parade song. The final slide was an animated version of the image you see above, accompanied by a version of  Happy Birthday, sung way better than our family could ever do. I'd converted the file to a Flash video with the free iSpring plug-in. All was done.

“Good grief, if I'd realized how much time you'd sink into this project, I never would have suggested it!”

“I knew. It's always that way. That's why I didn't want to do it, but I'm glad I did. It was fun.”

It was fun. And it's typical of most projects I do, even more intentional ones. A project may seem too big, too vast. But I've learned through time that if I just nibble on a corner, I'll find my way.

I cranked out a handout recently for the next series of my Writing for the Health of It class. I had no idea how to do it. So I began writing a few basic ideas. Those led to more. Soon I had a sense of direction. In a surprisingly short period of time, it all flowed together. A formatting tweak here, another there. Print it out for an edit.

The key is to get lost in the process. Let it lead the way. If I try to force it to go the way I want, I always get discouraged. If I let the energy of the project lead the way, the path is a lot smoother.

These are some of the principles I've always known and used on some level, as far back as high school when I worked on the props committee for drama club plays. I was delighted to find that Mark David Gerson summarizes them most eloquently on the front page of his website, starting with Rule #1:

Rule #1: There are no rules: How can there be when creativity is all about breaking new ground and breaking old rules?

Thanks Mark David. This list is wind beneath our wings and a great reason to ask Santa to put a copy of your book in our stockings — paired with a copy of mine!

Write now: think of a story you want to write and play with it. Using Mark David's list as guidance, let it tell you how it wants to be written.  

P.S. I know you'll wonder. I can't show you the finished product, because I created it for strictly personal purposes and posting it publicly would violate copyright all over the place.