Author Archives: Paula Josa-Jones

Apr9

on not waiting

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I did not write a post yesterday.  I did not have an inspiration for a post.  I tried waiting, fingers on the keyboard, mind searching, digging, not finding.  I decided not to wait.

I feel like when I am waiting, I am focused too hard on wanting, and when I am focused on wanting, I am also focused on what I do not have. An idea or enough of anything – money, chocolate, fun.

When I start thinking about lack, then it is time for a change.

One of the strategies in my eBook, Breaking into Blossom, is change, inspired by Pauline Oliveros’s Poem of Change.  The point is to change anything, your position, your location, your mind, your body.  Dramatically, imperceptibly.

A few weeks ago, I listened to an Abraham workshop with Esther Hicks, and she said, “Make the fun that you are having unrelated to anything else.”  What that meant was to not make the fun you are having dependent on how much money you have, how great your blog post is, how your health is, how your kids are doing or anything else.

For the past three years, we have been trying, but not really trying, to sell our house.  We love our house, and don’t particularly want to move.  But we also feel it is time to have less to take care of, or rather, to be taking more care of what has become most important to us – our creative endeavors and each other.

So I need to stop waiting there too.  Stop waiting for a buyer, for a resolution to that uncertainty.  Because here is the thing:  if I am waiting, I am not really here, not breathing this breath, not dancing the dance of this moment, savoring what is here.

Not waiting is one of those changes that requires vigilance, noticing – so that I can tell if I have slid back into some subtle, cramped form of waiting.

What are you waiting for?

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Apr7

rebirth

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Photo by Pam White

from Please Call Me by My True Names

by Thich Nhat Hanh

Don’t say that I will depart tomorrow —
even today I am still arriving.

Look deeply: every second I am arriving
to be a bud on a Spring branch,
to be a tiny bird, with still-fragile wings,
learning to sing in my new nest,
to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,
to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.

I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,
to fear and to hope.

The rhythm of my heart is the birth and death
of all that is alive.

Apr7

passage

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Yesterday our beloved cat Musia died.

Musia is from St. Petersberg, Russia.  She came from one of the city’s “kitten clubs” and we were told that she is Siberian.  She arrived sight unseen to us 16 years ago.  Here is the story.

My dance company was performing Ghostdance in St. Petersberg.  One evening after rehearsals, we were strolling on the Kamennoostrovsky Bridge.  As we walked we saw people were standing with boxes of kittens that they were selling.  In one box was a tiny, tiny kitten with  dot on his nose.  I was smitten.  We did not take him.  We could not find a carrier, a vet.  As we were leaving, in the airport, we saw an American family smiling happily with their Russian kitten in a carrier.  I was struck with remorse.

Over the next week, I corresponded with my Russian contact, Helen Zinchik, who actually managed to find the kitten because of his distinctive markings.  Lisa First, the festival organizer agreed to fly the kitten to JFK where we would meet her during her brief layover on the way back to Minneapolis.  At the last minute Helen called and said, “Will you take another kitten?  Her name is Musia.  I have her sister Dusia.”  Of course we would.

We would fly from Martha’s Vineyard to JFK to meet her.  Our plane was late.  As we circled over JFK, I knew the window was closing.  Finally we landed, and I raced through the airport to find Lisa.  She had five minutes before her flight.  We connected, and she handed me the carrier, a quick hug, and I ran back through the airport for our flight that was also departing momentarily.  The security machine was broken, and so (pre-2001) the agent waved me through.  I could see Musia’s black and white tufted paws waving through the carrier door.

Pam literally stood in the door of our aircraft, saying the the agitated attendants, “She’s coming, she’s coming!”  I made it, and we finally had a chance to see our new Ghostdance kittens.  Nikita was tiny, huddled in the back of the carrier, with that dot on his nose.  Musia was all fur, feet and whiskers.

Some of you may think this is a silly, extravagant story.  Perhaps.  But it also feels karmic.  These two were supposed to be with us, supposed to join our family and help to create the transition for our newly adopted seven-year old daughter.

This morning we skyped with both girls so that they could say goodbye to Musia.  One of them remembered carrying Musia around in a little cloth basket, which she endured patiently, along with being dressed in doll’s clothing, and smothered with hugs.  The other was quiet, “I love you Musia.”

She is the most equanimous cat we have ever known.  Total presence and total balance.  Thank you, Musia, thank you.

Apr5

pushing through

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I read three blogs pretty religiously:  Jon Katz, Maria Wulf, and Seth Godin.

Currently, I am reading Seth’s brilliant new eBook on education, Stop Stealing Dreams.  I am reading it in a non-linear, popcorn way – dropping into whatever jumps out at me from the index.  It is free.  Seth wants us to share it.  I am sharing it.

Since I am doing more teaching, his book is perfectly timed.   It is also perfectly aligned with my ideas about teaching, how we learn and improvisation as a crucial building block in education.  I was very excited to see “improv” in his list of courses he would like to see in schools.

Seth is brilliant.  Reading his posts is like riding, except that I am the horse.  Each post is like what we call in dressage “an aid:”  a touch of the leg here, a shift of the seat there, a half-halt that helps me to connect, direct and refresh my energy.   Each day I receive a subtle, insistent correction of direction, balance and perspective. Seth is what I call and uber-thinker, a true radical.  He lives pretty much outside of any box I can think of.  And he is inspirational.  The other day he wrote:

If your happiness is based on always getting a little more than you’ve got… then you’ve handed control over your happiness to the gatekeepers, built a system that doesn’t scale and prevented yourself from the brave work that leads to a quantum leap.

The industrial system (and the marketing regime) adore the mindset of ‘a little bit more, please’, because it furthers their power. A slightly higher paycheck, a slightly more famous college, an incrementally better car–it’s easy to be seduced by this safe, stepwise progress, and if marketers and bosses can make you feel dissatisfied at every step along the way, even better for them.

Their rules, their increments, and you are always on a treadmill, unhappy today, imagining that the answer lies just over the next hill…

All the data shows us that the people on that hill are just as frustrated as the people on your hill. It demonstrates that the people at that college are just as envious as the people at this college. The never ending cycle (no surprise) never ends.

An alternative is to be happy wherever you are, with whatever you’ve got, but always hungry for the thrill of creating art, of being missed if you’re gone and most of all, doing important work.

For several days I drove by these forsythia that had pushed themselves through the fence.  I liked the feeling of their boldness, their refusal to stay inside the lines, and the wild pattern of color and shadow they created.  That, I hope, is what I have taught my daughters.  And that is what I am learning (and teaching) now.