Gifting The Empty Box

Organizing and wrapping the year in the waning days of 2011, I feel the greatest gift for me this year is an empty box. I've felt unreal for months. Now I think I know what that is. It's that I don't know me. My life as a perfectionist ended these last 18 months. The OCD stuff that littered my brain, world and ability to be calm and succeed is becoming the past. How can you fill your cup/realm/spirit when it's already full? Rife with perceptions, lies, and false realities imposed by everything external? We adapt to our family of origin, culture, schooling and career designed for societal success. We are trained in the roles that make it simple to keep a society asleep. I know nothing about the truth that is me. And that unknowing is a gift - a gift I can give only to myself. A big ol' box of the Linda to be. Already open. Infinitely enormous. Infinitesimally tiny. As 2012 dawns, I will treasure the not knowing in brighter light, quieter silence and joyicity.

State of Grace

Carol and I met on a Tuesday at Whole Foods in Ann Arbor. We had a croissant, a beverage and were sharing how we feel, what we understand is happening to us and the universe, and what, if anything, we can do to dissipate the year of spirit cloudiness we both are experiencing. I said something about locking ego in the closet in the basement. Carol softly spoke of the bittersweetness of aging. Then everything changed. One moment we were swathed in mist, and then we were alight in clarity. The experience was profound, dimensions beyond anything we knew before. What just happened? we asked each other. Lights had auras. The chatter in my head disappeared. We were bathed in an aurora borealis of calm warmed golden light. Carol pinched herself. Had we just ascended? I held Carol's hand. If she ascended, I was not going to be left behind. She handed me the dried seed pod from the vase on the table. This is a lotus, she said. We took off our glasses and stared at the ceiling. We laughed. We rejoiced, awed with serenity. What just happened? Carol said this is grace. We are in a state of grace. Amazing grace.

Everyone Is Creative

We create our own reality. Inventing a reason not to go to work is creative endeavor. Every lie we tell ourselves or others is creative output. We're geniuses at the sideways compliment, imagining another's thoughts, storying our past. We tell stories to make sense of our world. Everyone is creative and we can change our lives with a tiny thought torque. My best friend Beckie and I worked together at two soulless management consulting companies: Joe Versus The Volcano with moderately better lighting. Eight creatives in a grey cubed room. We had to reinvent happiness every day. This time was Easter week. Victoria had gotten us each a seasonal Pez. It was a grim day, with false deadlines rushed by necktied zombies. We were cranky and overworked. I threw my bunny Pez against the cubical wall. The neck bent open and spilled candy on the counter. Oh oh, I said. I killed my Pez dispenser. I swiveled my chair around to see all eyes twinkling. Somebody shut the door. I stuck my xacto knife in the bunny's neck, drew and printed a blood stain, and a police line yellow tape. Somebody printed bloody pawprints. The Pez police drew a chalk body outline, while all the monitor toys crowded behind the police line. A pink slinkie became the murderer's escape route up the cubicle wall. We created for days. We made a wanted poster for a senior vice president we called Nick the Thumb. We buried my Pez bunny in my Giorgio Armani eyeglass case outside the building in a solemn ceremony complete with frocked minister and mourners. We attracted the building's security, who were zombies in security uniforms. We discovered the murder victim's grieving widow was having an affair with the minister. She was pregnant. We staged a rush wedding, and, oh joy! one day I came back from lunch to report an actual wedding was being set up in the atrium! We gathered our celebrants, the hugely pregnant bride and the groom, and ran downstairs with cameras. Flounder from The Little Mermaid saw the baked cod and fainted. For weeks we had color and light and joy in our corporate lives. We created a reality to share. All of us have this power, this majesty, this bliss, this sublime creativity. I am delighted today remembering the taste of joy, and I recommit right now to recreate it every day.

Joyicity

"The Gracehoper was always jigging ajog, hoppy on akkant of his joyicity." ~ James Joyce, Finnegan's Wake

Creating with Love

We're talking daily about transitioning. We are creating lives that are sustainable. We are bartering, recycling, riding our bicycles, walking, trying to be attuned to earth and life. We volunteer, donate and help others when we can. But we also need to eat, pay the phone bill, go to the dentist, repair our vehicles and survive best way. What is bread labor and what is heart labor? Are skills I have marketable, or am I deluded? I'm over 60. It's not time to start a new career: it's time to contribute. While we are sorting out this big life stuff, we need to live in the now too. I create. My bread job is illustration - that's how I get paid. But I'm giving away more work than I'm being paid for. I want to create for entrepreneurs I want to support and grow, but those businesses are in the same shape I am financially. I need to create my own work. How to balance that and still live is the key. I am happiest when I'm creating. Dinner, illustrations, writing, friendships, jewelry, my lifestory. I am immersed in the journey when I disappear into art: I live in joyicity. That's my bliss. And if I'm creating something for a friend, then creating is nirvana. This necklace I made for Geri's birthday. I thought about who she is, as I know her; what I love about her. She is thoughtful, generous, intelligent, funny, gifted. She wears elegant clothes, has gorgeous red hair, extraordinary eyes, and her skin shines like new butter. I wanted jewelry for her that reflects her inner and outer beauty. The amber, translucent glass beads, capped with oxidized silver - I could not believe how fine they looked together! I would never have paired these, but I was immersed in Geri's essence, and these wanted to share the space on her neck. And the few bronze pearls, the dusky Swarovski crystals, the vintage toggle clasp, and the Celtic knot squares came together like a dream. Like Geri. Like Beckie, whose findings these are; and whom finding changed me. Like living with gratitude in the moment. Joyicity. The luxury of enough. Bliss.