Impossible?

In the Artist Way, Julia Cameron suggests each participant sit down to write three uninterrupted pages of whatever spills out every morning.  These are my morning pages for January 18.  No editing to begin with.  I many go back and add a few periods and correct some  misspelling but the real purpose of these pages is open the unconscious or whatever and give it a place to light on the paper for this time.  Today feel better slept thru the night.  Slight head ache. Red wine often does that to me. I did pass over my two glass limit by one.  Still had a wonderful time at the Warren’s tree party.  Once a year they take all the furniture out of their living room and throw a big dance party.  It is a celebration of life.  During hurricane Elvis a tree crushed the back of their house, fell on their bedroom.  They could have been killed  i think they were out of the country.  i might be wrong.  Point is, they are alive and we danced.  Great dj.  Fun.  lots of people.  I mean lots, maybe 300.

Today is Saturday.  Another day to live life fully.  So grateful l to feel better.  just a hint of a sore throat intuition is to take it easy. Our dog, Kali, has been vomiting all over the house since yesterday.  I am just noticing that it smells like vomit in here.  Not good   Will have to revisit places on the carpet where she got sick and re-clean them.  Poor baby. I don’t know what she ate.

Book is going well.  I think  I am so grateful to Dani Shaprio.  Seems every time I get stuck, have doubt, i read something from her book Still Writing, that inspires me to go on.  Yesterday she wrote about courage.  The courage to spend it all every day.  Not to hold back.  To go for the win, dig deep, don’t hold anything back. Do you know how hard that is to do.?  John O’Donohue says there is a voice inside of each one of us, inside me that even I have not heard.  I want to hear it every day. to listen to find the connection to my soul.  No I want more than that. I want to write the great American novel.  Me.  I want to be a true novelist. I want to create real characters, the ones that move you to laughter and tears. that tear at your heart-strings, that compel you to live more nobly with more compassion, with a greater zest for life.  I want to inspire, to intrigue, to upset and to disturb, to heal, to undo, to invoke, to enlighten, to do what.  I do not know.  I know I am called to do this.  It is sometimes so lonely and can feel so futile.  Not like working retail and at the end of the day running the tape to see how much you sold.  Not like cleaning the house and seeing the difference.  Not like teaching a yoga class that has a beginning and an end.  Not like going to school to get a degree and then have important looking letters to put after your name.  There are no guarantees.  Only dreams, hours spent pouring out my heart and soul.  This is a choiceless choice.  Now that I have started, I cannot go back.  funny how that works.  No turning back.  Sometimes I think how great it would be to get a job at Starbucks or even at the glitzy new Whole Foods Store they just built here.  But when would I write.  I am so lucky to be a yoga teacher and to have students who want what I have to offer.

…..Divine mother please use me as a vehicle for your creative energy.  Help me to listen so deeply that I hear you move through me so that I can put on paper more than words.  Spill it, use it, give it all every time you write.  Do not hold back.  Spend it all.  Every day.  When do you hear that?   We are always told to save.  Save for a rainy day.  Save for the unexpected.  Sock it away.  Be careful.  Be a saver.  Do not be extravagant.  That sounds good.  I want to be an extravagant writer.  Not wordy.  I do not want to ramble on and on about nothing but I want to splurge when I write.  I do not want to worry about whether I will have anything left.  I believe that creativity is limitless. I want to go the limit every day.  Every time I sit down to write.  Spend it all.  Go for broke.  Empty my wallet.  Put all my bills on the table, every idea,  I want to vomit them all up.  Spill them out and not clean up afterwards.  Let the words, the sentences, the phrases find their way, their order, their reason for being on the page.  No control.  No idea of the shape, the beginning or the end.  Just do it.  Whew.  Sounds a little extreme,  but what have i got to lose?  Nothing and everything to win.  Work as if this is the most important thing I have ever done and let go of the results.  Surrender the fruits of my labor.  Words of wisdom from the Bhagavad Gita. 

In the Rodgers and Hammerstein version of Cinderella, the one with Brandy and Whitney Houston, Whitney sings the song Impossible

(Godmother)
Impossible, for a plain yellow pumpkin to become a golden carriage.
Impossible, for a plain country bumpkin and a prince to join in
Marriage,
And four white mice will never be four white horses!
Such fol-der-ol and fid-dle-dy dee of course, is— Impossible!
But the world is full of zanies and fools
Who don’t believe in sensible rules
And won’t believe what sensible people say.
And because these daft and dewey-eyed dopes keep building up impossible
Hopes,
Impossible things are happening every day.

My grand daughter Amelia loves this movie.  We watch every Monday when she comes to stay with us.  The words of the song dance at the edges of my mind through out the week.  Impossible things are happening every day. Jordan is alive and well.  He died and returned to us fully intact.  I am no longer a victim of my childhood abuse.  I do not suffer from depression. I am writing every day.   I have a good marriage, a loving, supportive partner whom I still find sexy after 14 years together.  Love that.  After two failed marriages who would have thought I could do it well.  I started and operated a successful business, one that I was able to sell.  Wow. I have friends whom I love and who love and care about me.  My life is an adventure today more than ever.  Who knows where I will be this time next year.  Krishnamacharia as quoted by his son Desikachar, in Yoga and the Living Tradition of Krishnamacharya, says “something that is impossible at this moment becomes possible through yoga.” We reach a point we have never reached before.  “Today I sit on the floor and can barely stretch my legs in front of me.  After several weeks of practice, I may be able not only to sit erect, but to stretch and bend forward easily, with knees straight, reaching toward my toes.  In stages the impossible becomes possible.”

So I practice writing every day.  I have no idea where it will lead me, but I go willingly.  Divine Mother, I trust in your love and guidance as you create through me for the greatest good of all.  May I follow you blindly and without question.  They will be done.

Stone Cold Sober and Loving Every Minute of It!

Where do I start?  At the beginning.  Great.  Where does this battle with alcohol begin?  In the womb.  My placenta contained vast quantities of vodka.  Okay, so what?  Begin again.

I began working through the Artist Way by Julia Cameron on September 8 of this year.  I know now why I stopped writing for so long.  I cannot sit down and put a pen to paper without confronting my relationship to alcohol.  Being honest about alcohol requires a great deal of courage.  I would rather keep my drinking a secret.  Secret from whom?  My friends and family know full well that I have struggled with drinking.  I quit for 10 years thinking it would cure my depression.  Instead, avoiding alcohol exacerbated my sadness and forced me to seek counseling and medication.  When I started drinking again I did so under the auspicious that I successfully drink again and would never again drink too much.

Drinking too much is not the problem for me.  I cannot drink at all.  In the past two years, my body has clearly gone through some sort of metamorphosis.  Drinking even one glass of wine makes me loopy.  Drinking 2 glasses of wine means the following day will be foggy and fraught with disappointment.  Why disappointment?  Because as soon as I take the first sip, I know I am denying my deepest inner voice. I hear her screaming.  “Do not drink.  You do not even like the taste alcohol any more and you certainly do not enjoy the effect it has on you.  Why are you doing this again?”  Good question.

In the course of writing my morning pages, a sankalpa spontaneously arose. I am stone cold sober and loving every minute of it.  First let me explain what the word “sankalpa” means to me. Sankalpa has the potential to release tremendous power by clearly defining and focusing on a chosen goal. Its effect is to awaken the willpower within by uniting conscious awareness with the unconscious forces lying dormant in the mind. It takes the form of a short phrase or sentence, clearly and concisely expressed.  I use the same wording each time I say it. A sankalpa, practiced over time, with intention,  brings about a positive change in one’s life. The spontaneous eruption of my sankalpa, I am s tone cold sober and loving every minute of it, passed from my pen to the page about a month ago.  Since then, I stopped drinking for 6 days and have gone without alcohol on several days.  I intentionally stopped for the 6 day period, but the others were unpremeditated. I knew when I woke up on that particular day, that I would not drink and I did not.

More to come later today.