Thankfully, I am shaped by my thoughts

Monday, October 31, 2011

This is one of those weeks when I’ve had to apply “Rule 21.”

It’s a directive I invented and one that I have to fall back on now and then when it appears I have nothing to write about.

It is a flexible rule that varies in regulation and content depending on what I’m looking for as a catalyst to my creative block.

“Rule 21” is meant to put me on a slope, where I am at the top looking down upon the thing I must write about.

If I have to deploy “Rule 21” it means the incline to the thing is going to involve a twisty and slow cross-country ski to the finish line and will not be a speedy downhill slalom.

However, it has not been a week in which the Universe has conspired against me in terms of writing. That never happens. There always is something to write about. Sometimes I just have trouble seeing the story between the everyday ordinary pages of my life.

For me, “Rule 21” is sort of like what a dog does when it wants to lie down. Around and around in circles the dog works the spot to improve the little nest where it will spend considerable time.

Or I do what author Sarah Ban Breathnach believes about exercise and spirit. “I walk regularly for my soul and my body tags along.”

Indeed, I am a better thinker and creator when my body is busy doing something else.

And I shake my head because it’s not like the door to my imagination ever closes. There’s “applied” Beth whose wallet is stuffed with scribbled thoughts, and there’s “iCloud” Beth, who absorbs and stores ideas wirelessly.

But sometimes all those little writer’s memos don’t add up to much of anything I can use to make this column longer than the 317 word count in which I have just blathered.

So today when the write tank appeared empty, I cleaned house, washed dishes, vacuumed, folded laundry, baked, ate a lot and contemplated what the heck I was going to be for Halloween.

Ghoul, ghost, or goblin?

Maybe my creative block is a “turning 51” slump thing, because I certainly am dredged and brain dead from all the “death by chocolate” birthday cake I’ve eaten in the last 24 hours.

I should have had oatmeal for breakfast, but when I woke up at 6 a.m. today—on Halloween morning—it was all I could do not to peek in the fridge at the three-quarter remainder of chocolate lusciousness tucked gingerly atop the yogurt tubs and a head of lettuce.

I cut my piece in a larger-than-life wedge, one eye closed, the other gauging how thick of a piece I could get away with. By now, at 10 a.m., almost all the chocolate cake is gone and I am infused with enough caffeine and sugar to rival my three-year-old grandson in a somersault contest on the couch.

Got to have food for thought.

Maybe one more slice would jumpstart my creativity? I think about that for 10 seconds until I look down and see the laptop resting comfortably on my “Buddha.”

I scowl and fidget and lament the “Buddha” but then suddenly I have a very bright idea.

“What we think, we become.”

I know who I can be for Halloween.

Best selling author Neil Gaiman penned good advice. “Write. Put one word after another. Find the right word, put it down. Finish what you’re writing. Whatever you have to do to finish it, finish it.”

This is my first rule.

My world is made of small treasures

Monday, October 24, 2011

I walked into the living room and there he was—a perpetual giggling ball of somersaults recoiling back and forth across the length of the couch.

The remaining three little peppers stood about in “jaw drop and stun” mode, clearly amazed as the little whippersnapper rotated in an orbit oblivious to the laws of gravity and Granny.

I, too, stood there in awe of the energy force captured in my three-year-old grandson. My parents were sitting in the next room at the kitchen table expressing their amusement in loud and healthy guffaws that translated into words like “parental payback” and “nailing J-ello to a tree.”

I suddenly understood why all those years ago my baby brother was habitually encapsulated in a large playpen.

My mind wandered adrift in my own childhood and the nursery rhyme that read: “Frogs and snails and puppy-dogs’ tails, that’s what little boys are made of.”

The heck they are!

I grabbed a pen and paper and scribbled a new version to the verse that included the inertia ingredients of the metal “Slinky,” monkeys, chipmunks, elastic bands, and slingshots.

I thought about the 17^th century British mastermind Robert Hooke, the father of “Hooke’s Law” of elasticity.

“Wikipedia” reads “Hooke’s law of elasticity is an approximation that states that the extension of a spring is in direct proportion with the load applied to it. Many materials obey this law as long as the load does not exceed the material’s elastic limit.”

Yep, the youngster levitating off my couch was a prime example of that law. Perhaps, I pondered, Mr. Hooke took his inspiration for that 400 year-old principle from his own sons, bounding about on the horsehair sofa.

Robert Hooke also was the first to suggest that matter expands when heated—clearly a deduction he made after seeing how angry his wife was when she found out he was using the children—his “Hookean” materials—as part of the experiment.

All I know for sure is that my grandson had been a compression spring in a former life and all that stored-up energy had sprung.

Saying “No” wasn’t going to work this time. Even the other grandkids knew that, as they looked at me with inquiring minds poised on what I was going to do to quell the one who was in clear defiance of the “no jumping on the couch” rule.

“SQUIRREL!” I shouted. Both dogs leapt to attention at the back door and starting a barking frenzy, which stopped the little whippersnapper in mid air as he cleared the coffee table and did a two-foot dismount and ran to the living room window to look outside for the rodent.

“Can we go outside Granny?” All four little peppers with saucer-sized eyes looked in my direction.

Okay. This is where I met myself—yet again—at the fork in the road of responses. How was I supposed to answer that?

I thought about the quote by Gene Perret. “My grandkids believe I'm the oldest thing in the world. And after two or three hours with them, I believe it, too.”

It was pitch black outside.

“Sure,” I said, picturing the unleashing of four sprites who’d just eaten a whole chocolate “Skor” cake for dessert. They would scatter like the break shot after the eight ball and burst out in all directions and I’d have to call in rescue helicopters with big spotlights to find them in the dark yard.

Then I remembered that earlier that day, Jon and I had hung more than 400 ft of Christmas lights in the evergreen trees along the driveway, making good use of a warm fall day to get the job done.

There are no words that do justice to the high-pitched glee that tumbled out of those little children when they were all standing underneath the long rows of trees that night when I turned on the lights.

Wonderment. Now that, folks, is what little children are made of.

I am a fool at heart

Monday, October 17, 2011

I was standing in line at the bank the other day clueless to the world around me. I was fidgeting with my wallet and the ever-growing stash of old receipts and slips of paper in the coin purse.

Some of those little notes contained chicken scratch ideas for my column and other spur-of-the-moment writing thoughts. If you ever come across a slip of paper on Scott Street scribbled with:

“Remnants of the Dead Sea in a bath salt package. It looked dead, was green as mint-flavored Listerine and it smelled like Vicks” and “Did you know that at minus 47C (-53 F) you could pound a nail into a two by four with a banana?”—just give me a call and I’ll come pick it up.

The woman in front of me at the bank turned around and said “Hi,” as I came out of my little bubble realizing we knew each other. I returned the greeting and in the microsecond that followed, my intuition was shadowed with a dark foreboding. She was one of my column readers and I hadn’t published anything for more than two weeks.

I saw it coming from 20 light years away. I held my breath.

“You’re all dried up are ya’?” she asked, sporting a crafty smile.

Okay. This is where I met myself at the fork in the road of responses. How was I supposed to answer that?

“Yes, as the matter fact I am” or “No, I’m just saving all the good stuff up for next time.”

All I could do was tilt my head back and cackle in nervous laughter and hope that every one behind me knew what she was talking about as the words, “No, no, no, no,” tumbled from my lips.

Then I wanted to jump into my protection suit and explain to her that my absenteeism in the newspaper was due to my “original thinking, needing plenty of time to let ideas percolate before taking action, highly-focused, perfectionist” personality.

And I would not have been lying.

However as my soul sister Norma Jean pointed out this morning—when I was lamenting to her that nothing was happening in my neck of the woods that warranted writing about—I could call on my wisdom fairies.

As it turns out mine were busy clearing cobwebs upstairs, so Steven Colbert stepped in to save the day.

“Don’t be afraid to be a fool. Remember, you cannot be both young and wise. Young people who pretend to be wise to the ways of the world are mostly just cynics. Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the farthest thing from it. Because cynics don’t learn anything. Because cynicism is a self-imposed blindness, a rejection of the world because we are afraid it will hurt us or disappoint us. Cynics always say no. But saying yes begins things. Saying yes is how things grow. Saying yes leads to knowledge. ‘Yes’ is for young people. So for as long as you have the strength to, say yes.”

YES. YES. YES.

I am a fool at heart

Monday, October 17, 2011

I was standing in line at the bank the other day clueless to the world around me. I was fidgeting with my wallet and the ever-growing stash of old receipts and slips of paper in the coin purse.

Some of those little notes contained chicken scratch ideas for my column and other spur-of-the-moment writing thoughts. If you ever come across a slip of paper on Scott Street scribbled with:

“Remnants of the Dead Sea in a bath salt package. It looked dead, was green as mint-flavored Listerine and it smelled like Vicks” and “Did you know that at minus 47C (-53 F) you could pound a nail into a two by four with a banana?”—just give me a call and I’ll come pick it up.

The woman in front of me at the bank turned around and said “Hi,” as I came out of my little bubble realizing we knew each other. I returned the greeting and in the microsecond that followed, my intuition was shadowed with a dark foreboding. She was one of my column readers and I hadn’t published anything for more than two weeks.

I saw it coming from 20 light years away. I held my breath.

“You’re all dried up are ya’?” she asked, sporting a crafty smile.

Okay. This is where I met myself at the fork in the road of responses. How was I supposed to answer that?

“Yes, as the matter fact I am” or “No, I’m just saving all the good stuff up for next time.”

All I could do was tilt my head back and cackle in nervous laughter and hope that every one behind me knew what she was talking about as the words, “No, no, no, no,” tumbled from my lips.

Then I wanted to jump into my protection suit and explain to her that my absenteeism in the newspaper was due to my “original thinking, needing plenty of time to let ideas percolate before taking action, highly-focused, perfectionist” personality.

And I would not have been lying.

However as my soul sister Norma Jean pointed out this morning—when I was lamenting to her that nothing was happening in my neck of the woods that warranted writing about—I could call on my wisdom fairies.

As it turns out mine were busy clearing cobwebs upstairs, so Steven Colbert stepped in to save the day.

“Don’t be afraid to be a fool. Remember, you cannot be both young and wise. Young people who pretend to be wise to the ways of the world are mostly just cynics. Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the farthest thing from it. Because cynics don’t learn anything. Because cynicism is a self-imposed blindness, a rejection of the world because we are afraid it will hurt us or disappoint us. Cynics always say no. But saying yes begins things. Saying yes is how things grow. Saying yes leads to knowledge. ‘Yes’ is for young people. So for as long as you have the strength to, say yes.”

YES. YES. YES.