Not So Grounded

Woo Woo Wednesday

Okay ... anything worth sharing from these weird -- but extremely fun -- Woo Woo Wednesday night gatherings (scroll down to Jan 22 post) I'll share it on Thursdays. 

Last night was emotions.  Seems us humans are getting some new ones; getting much richer versions of some old standbys like love, ecstasy, and bliss; and expanding the positives from those emotions that traditionally  trip us up, like grief and sadness.  Key message was don't waste time trying to understand & define 'em in standard ways. 

We're pretty obsessed with knowing things intellectually or conceptually, trying to understand, name, categorize, label, or logically define things.  When trying to make sense of stuff, we tend to start by connecting (or jamming) new experiences, emotions, or concepts into old experiences, emotions, or concepts.  Feel new grief and we immediately start by remembering the last time we felt grief, the old then shaping the new. Same thing with love.  A sketchy past romance makes us wary next time around.  Or we try to consciously Do It Differently.  Or we compare & contrast our new love to loves of old.    Learning from experience is wise & not repeating mistakes is smart.  But shoving all new experiences into old boxes can be pretty self-limiting.

So we heard last night that some of our emotions are really brand new gigs.  Unprecedented.  Fresh starts.  Not automatically tied to our linear lifetime of experience & understanding.  They're rich and textured in ways never felt before.  We were advised to keep open to that.  Just feel our new emotions with enough detachment (a) to resist temptation to define them, (b) to allow their unique fullness and (c) to be guided intuitively to do right by them ... that way we invite miraculous surprises, outcomes beyond our current imagination.

I'm figuring, why not ...

European Union's Global Warming Plan

So, why aren't we doing this too? 

Here's a short BBC summary of the EU's plan to reduce emissions.

Don't Worry

Okay, ten of us women have recently formed a weekly group that is still just too much to admit or explain, even to myself.  Suffice to say I currently call it Woo Woo Wednesday, which my family understands means (a) they get to go out to eat without Mom-the-health-food-nazi and (b) I'll come home with yet another couple of really really really weird stories.

I promise, or at least I think maybe possibly I'll eventually promise to be more forthcoming.  But for now I share last week's tidbit:  Quit Worrying.  About everything.  Worry is the one thing that blocks out the divine.  Don't ditch compassion, or empathy, or righteous indignation.  Feel grief and sadness when you must, joy & bliss as often as you can.  And always act when it's meaningful & necessary.

But cut out the worrying part.  The sound of worry is our thickest barrier, the worst of all culprits severing the day-to-day us from that other transcendent us, whatever we want to call it -- god, divinity, higher self, true self, angels, spirit, soul, unconscious (our own or the collective), superego, inner voice, yada yada.  The other "us" that always knows there's nothing to worry about, except can't convey that peace to this "us" until we stop worrying ...   

So quit worrying.  (And if you can't just stop on your own, music's the most efficient way to blast right through it.)  Sing.  Dance.  And be merry instead.

The Story of Stuff

As our President encourages us to improve our economy by spending more money, I'm thinkin' there's a better way ... The  Story of Stuff is a decent place to start the quest.

Jo Fleischhauer Again

My cousin Jo -- a very cool artist -- just unveiled her website.  I have always known her to be this magnificent, interesting, thoughtful, inspiring visual artist (see my 11/20/07 post).  But it's different when she's also one of my longest running favorite person on the whole planet.  When she visited, her family driving from their home in Buffalo to mine on Long Island, I would sit on the front stoop waiting.  All day.  With uncontrollable butterflies of excitement in my stomach.

I still feel that way. 

(ps -- Jo, I finally got your Christmas present in the mail yesterday ...xoxo, your cuz)    

Wild Honey

Just discovered Wild Honey blog, a fabulous site dedicated to slow foods & slow cooking.  It's done by Deborah, an accountant (and new daughter-in-law of a friend of mine) and she beautifully blends together [okay, couldn't resist ...] recipes, cooking hints, her own meal-in-progress photos, links to where you might find some of the ingredients, and some history.  It's very cool.

I may actually try some things (check out 12/9/07 mole -- I love mole, and the fact that it contains chocolate may encourage John & Darling Daughter to endure the chilis), even though I'm not really known for my culinary skill.  I can pull off a yummy 2-4 person meal, if I have lots & lots of uninterrupted time and some decent music or good company.  And I can whip together the stuff that thrills virtually all 10-year olds.  But that's about it.  I once turned on the wrong electric burner and seared a full set of black rings on the back cover of my Joy of Cooking. Kinda sums it up.  And still have the book to prove it.

But thanks, Deborah, for offering some new inspiration.

    

Juno

I've stumbled into a couple of interesting conversations  about the movie "Juno," so as I mull over my thoughts, possibly for my next column, thought I'd post today's NY Times Op-Ed piece about the film.  While I appreciate the author's fair assessment that adolescent girls still bear a heavier burden around sexuality than boys, I don't necessarily agree with her interpretation of the film.  She believed it to be a fairytale, that the characters traveled through the narrative unchanged, Juno picking up her post-partum life exactly where she left off in the opening credits.  My 15-year old & I saw it very differently -- everyone was changed by the experience, and everyone chose to become changed for the better, even though some things were really tough and the characters could have chosen to make other things even tougher. 

Anyway, John & I loved the film.  So did my daughter and all her friends.  She's taking her boyfriend to see it tonight.  And I'm gonna ponder it some more 'cause I think it offers a great example of plain ol' circumstances and how we choose to respond. 

Burtie Bragg, Musical Poet

I'm finishing up a piece for All About Women about the creative process for musicians.  Burtie Bragg's one of the women I interviewed, a budding guitarist, singer, songwriter ... just returned from a song-writer workshop in Michigan.  I sat in her living room, listening her song about the Iraq war, a haunting piece, different verses from different perspectives -- a soldier, a monk, an activist, an Iraqi ... another song, the gist of which "I can't think about you right now, I have troubles of my own ..."  She performed her own "Just Want To Know" at her first open mike at the workshop, amidst seasoned songwriters.  She described how she finds a song's seed and then nurtures it along, her frustration when lyrics momentarily elude her and how she moves through the blocks.  Her new song is about a woman fleeing an abusive relationship, the man chasing her asking her to love him, her reply, "I forgot how."  Intricate, textured, sophisticated stuff.

And she's 13. 

I've known Burtie a decade, yet clearly not really until I listened to her sing ...

Beauty of Aging

My Mom just sent me a link to Beauty of Aging, a documentary with inspiring women over age 80.  It's a great way to end the day & the week -- Thanks Mom!