Still Sundays
October 30th.
Enjoying New York City despite the winters. Truth. Social Media and this Age of Inspiration.
The day before yesterday was a golden Fall day in New York City: sunny, bright, crisp, and filled with sunbeams shooting around every other autumn leave.
Yesterday winter came unannounced like an unexpected cavity that really should be no surprise. The snowstorm was not pretty: the sleet a constant sleazy nose drip. The snow was only “pure, pretty, and white” here and there, perhaps to create a fantasy of loveliness for those who are not here via photos taken from mobile devices. Sometimes we are able to alter our reality only if someone else believes our perception of it. If you had nothing to do, sure, it might have been some sight from somewhere. If you had to walk, use public transportation (even cabs were a slushy ride), or do anything other than nothing, it was not a joy.
New York City yesterday: a post nasal drip when you have a flu.
Yesterday my brother who lives in Southern California was invited to go along for a boat ride, the other brother went to enjoy the sunset on a bike ride in Northern California.
I await the day when winter does not feel like someone is banging a hammer across the teeth. Photos of winter don’t make me exclaim, “Look! Beautiful blizzard.” If it is sunny I don’t feel the wrath of cold is a complete curse, so I endure quietly; after all, I choose to stay in New York City. That being said I do my best to escape during winters, like one may do when it comes to exploring personal uncomfortable issues in a relationship that demand reflection and growth and have nothing to do with the other person. But eventually you recognize that if this is “it” then there is no ignoring the gunk that comes. And just like in a real relationship, if you stay long enough, over the years, one becomes more equipped to handle the winters in New York City: the special boots, the ‘bubble coat’ which feels like a straitjacket but serves as a shield against the wicked wind, the extra money for cabs or extra patience while looking for parking spots if you own a car.
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Mama says I can do whatever I want with words. I know I can. It’s my superpower. The aforementioned is the picture of winter I want to paint. This is the version of truth I want to submit this Sunday despite the fact that my mother and I had an amazing day yesterday. It was an adventure trying to make it to Union Square from Uptown so I could attend a very special yoga class—two hours with Marco Rojas! My mother waited at the Barnes and Noble bookstore (grateful!) nearby while I found alignment and exhaled some weight that can’t be measured, only felt. Thereafter we endured the slushy rain and freezing puddles on the streets to see a brilliant play called The Atmosphere of Memory that will stay with my for a very long time (more on that on a different Sunday perhaps).
This Sunday morning it is sunny and the sky is flaunting blue as if nothing even happened yesterday. Stillness is sparkling and wants you to forget yesterday. If I stay quiet long enough I realize it wasn’t that awful a day yesterday—but only because I didn’t allow it. Or rather my mother didn’t allow the weather to suspend our plans. And I thought I was the New Yorker given we are notorious for nothing stopping us to go on with our plans. At yoga there were fifteen others and at the play, located on a quiet hidden Bank Street away from the glamour of Broadway, there were many others who also had endured the weather to live their lives as they had planned regardless of the weather.
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At least once a month, every other month, when the moon wants to burst on the shores of earth I feel I am in a headlock with Truth. Some months I am choking on truth and other times I am choking Truth.
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Social Media needs a Heimlich Maneuver. Social Media needs Naloxone. Either people are choking on bullshit or getting high on inspiration.
Humanity has gone through Axial Age, Age of Darkness, Age of Enlightenment, Age of Reason, Industrial Revolution, and Scientific Revolution and so on and so forth. I mention these few in no particular order, neither of chronology nor importance, but only to assert that maybe we are in the “Age of Inspiration”. Everyone is inspirational or wants to be and wants to charge something for it. And the most amusing bit is: everyone is capable of evoking a response, negative or positive, by the very nature that they are alive. That is why everyone can’t make money off of just being inspiring. These motivational quotes, thoughts, personal stories, via “posts” from blogs to online versions of print articles to print articles, borrowed and “original”, is maybe where we are at as a people and what we need from one another spiritually and emotionally because times are dark. But no one can offer each other anything practical. The cocktail made of benefit-of-doubt isn’t strong enough to get some truths drunk.
“Real writers write.” “An artist is someone who creates no matter what.” Who is picking up your tab? Where are you living? How much do your supplies cost? Where is that money coming from? Are you considering settling with someone who can afford your bills? Why did you wait till 45 to start doing what you wanted to at 25? Because after you read all these inspiring posts and articles and books, you still end up looking for work, on your own, or have to turn to family or friends or spouse for support.
We have to earn money to pay for our physical existence here on this earth no matter which city we live in and no matter how minimal our material needs. This is the reality we all have created and given human greed there might not be a way around it for quite some time (definitely not in my lifetime). But as a dear kindred connection Oriah said, “our value is inherent”. The best we can do is find a way to earn a living that doesn’t stain our essence and diminish the fire within.
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It’s Halloween tomorrow and around the corner Day of the Dead will be celebrated in many cultures. There is nothing more scary than realizing there is nothing to be afraid of but yourself.
After mama watched the movie The Adjustment Bureau she said it reminded her of a verse in Iqbal’s poem that goes something like this, “You have free will to show the Universe what you are truly capable of achieving with desire. So much so that eventually even God concurs with whatever you have decided is your destiny.”
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To inspire, from Old French, enspirer, “to prompt or induce (someone to do something).”
I am not here to inspire. I have been thrown in this Grand Arena against the wild beasts known as Truth and Time and on Sundays I realize I have made it another week. Truth is a razor, reality is our skin, everyone wants a clean shave for smooth skin without any cuts. Whatever happens after my words somehow reach you, with or without Twitter or even my website, for words are living things, they keep on living until at least one set of ears or eyes somewhere eventually receives them—happens because of YOU. Give yourself credit.
“Whatever you are looking for, is also looking for you.”
Something tugged inside of me and those 15 others yesterday to go to two hours of Marco Rojas’ yoga class despite the awful blizzard. That is the same something that tugs at me when I keep going back to a blog, a book, an article, a particular artist’s work, etc. It may or may not be the same something for the 15 people that were there yesterday at yoga. And different people are pulled in different directions for a reason.
Trust that you don’t have to shout and scream for others to connect to your essence.
This Sunday I know that deja vu is only something we have forgotten. And we all desire to feel THIS is where I am meant to be this very moment regardless of what is pulling us where.
Marco Rojas, my yoga instructor, said yesterday when my body felt split in two halves, the upper half resting on top of the lower half as if two planks on top of one another, “Whatever you pay attention to, changes.”
Paying attention to breath changes everything.
I love winter’s style, normally. but yesterday was like a panic attack in the sky – sleazy, like you said – it felt like being bitch slapped by someone else’s depression – a stranger, at that.
To be out in it – trying to yoga yourself into something the total opposite of a tantrum of weather – appropriate, in way…
: )
I plucked two great quotes from you today…and I shall hang on to them for awhile…
(Marco’s and Iqbal poem) ♥!
thank you for stopping by… and sharing your energy in my thoughtspace.
Applause for you and your mama, deflecting the “hammer across the teeth” of winter and living your Saturday as planned.
Your comments on the Age of Inspiration get me thinking! Imagine our culture where people hope to sell and profit from packaged inspiration! And yet social media are as much a barter economy. People trade information and yes, inspiration, with each other for free. While in the midst of searching for gainful employment to sustain their material being, as you say, they pause to tweet, blog, and FB life-changing truths of the ages. What a world! 🙂 Humans truly do not live on bread alone.
I saw a book (advertised to me in a mass email), whose famous author shall remain nameless, purveying an inflammatory prediction, along with some very nasty political ideas (again which I won’t repeat). This book was in top 100 on Amazon. I said to Richard, lies have always been more popular than the truth. I thought Mark Twain probably said this or something close to it. Richard said I should tweet this, but I didn’t want to send such cynical idea out into the world without context. Because I truly believe, despite all the lies floating on the ether, there is a hunger for truth too, and truths are popularly exchanged on the web as well. Sobering truths, sad truths, and even uplifting, inspirational truths–sometimes even in books! 😀
~lucy
But not in THAT book!
~lucy
Dear Lucy,
I always appreciate the light you bring to what I gather in Sunday’s stillness. Thank you for that, this time, and often.
Although I do agree that people trade information and yes inspiration for free, I am not sure to what extent it is free—free of expectations of something. A retweet? A post hit? For me all that is shooting arrows in the dark and worse than trying to make a profit of helping someone who slipped down the steps and is sitting there. : )
I think if you had tweeted that, it would have been the truth too. : ) That is the glory and danger of social media: people add their own context!
Thank you for more food for thought. I am now curious about this author and book!
gratitude,
~annie
I love your writing, Annie. It is thoughtful, fresh and satisfying. 🙂
Dear Robin,
Thank you for stopping by and your sincere encouragement, today and many times before. I appreciate our connection. Thank you for always keeping it real and inspiring.
~annie
Hello Annie,
Been meaning to respond since Sunday, but already a very busy week : ) But wanted to comment on “An artist is someone who creates no matter what.” For me, that is so very true…. I can not be a starving artist, with a family to support and take care of, that is my #1 priority so I work 40+ hours a week and then come home to do my ‘real’ job and paint during the night (or very early mornings are the best to paint as well!).
There are times driving home from work that I feel drained and exhausted yet I find the energy to make it happen and paint. I do have down time too but for me you have to be organized with your time to do it all and do it well.
Art supplies are so very expensive and to pay for them I need to work. In fact the last time I was at the art store buying supplies (that will last maybe 2 – 3 months) I purchased 4 quarts of paint plus several large tubes. The cashier looked at my basket and exclaimed very loudly “YOU”RE BUYING ALL THAT!” She freaked me out with the amount of paints I was buying and I questioned myself, how much am I going to spend here?! I even made a joke to my husband that perhaps he should go to the car before he sees what this will cost us : ) But I ended up spending about $550 which will last a few months. So I alone easily spend a couple thousand dollars a year on my supplies.
But for us, we agree that we can not limit what it may cost us on purchasing our art supplies but we sacrifice in other areas to make sure we have money for art. We don’t go on vacations or go out a lot, the money that would be spent on that is spent on making art. I love to cook so rather make a nice homemade meal, then eat out, don’t go to the movies so all extra money is spent on our art. I am grateful I have a family that does the same thing as I. My son doesn’t like going out either, he likes making and editing videos so we live in an art house full of creating, for me painting, husband music and writing and my son he does some music but really more into editing and making videos (daughter- loves photography and cooking which she does on her own now).
My husband just said to me the other day, we are making a life, not making a living here and that is how we want to live. It’s not about financial success or needing financial gain. I don’t want to sell my work especially online via twitter when you see a few artists selling their work. Ummm, wrong platform anyway as usually it’s other artists looking at your work not buyers.
So for me, working full time to support my family and art, allows me to paint for just ME, not for what I want someone to buy or like. There is no pressure or need to be pigeon holed into a specific genre or style because your audience expects that from you. So for me, yeah I might have to work full time right now but my art is my own and I have creative freedom to do anything that I want.
One has to be hungry enough to want it all, I work hard at my day job because I know I’m doing something bigger at home which gives me the energy and inspiration to keep on going. : ) Thanks for another very thought provoking Still Sundays. Take care! xoxo ~j
Dear Jen,
I thank you for taking the time to leave such a generous, honest, and refreshing comment. I believe the reality you describe is one that is true for most. Unfortunately, people (in real life too but mostly social media) like to project otherwise. It is a joy to discover an artist as yourself and your husband.
I will take this with me for the rest of the week, “we are making a life, not making a living here and that is how we want to live.” Beautiful. Talk about living life as if it is the real art. : ) Maybe it is, after all.
Naloxone… great reversal… ” wake up, you’ve gone to far asleep ” I keep it on hand at work all the time… it made me laugh to see it used here.
I love your mama’s take on things.
we recieved no storm, no snow, just a little cold and thinking of all my friends digging out, made me remember how I dislike the bitter cold… my toes know that they shall be stuffed inside socks and shoes, arrrrrrrrggggg LOL
may the fire within burn brightly
may the wonder it creates flow freely
may we become the inspiration we need
have an awesome week
and may the slush evaporate
in a indian summer
that last well past thanksgiving
:~)
off to do what I do so well
help my patients & their people
i like how you refer to your patients’ animals as people and view them as such.
“may the fire within burn brightly”, indeed.
gratitude for stopping by.