Category Archives: improvisation life

Dec7

occupy life

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Photo:  Pam White

This morning I read the article in the New Yorker about Ray Kachel and Occupy Wall Street.  I thought about gifted, desperate people like Ray.  The photograph of him is arresting, haunting.  He is looking straight into the camera.   There is both a challenge and a softness in his eyes.  His story is horrific.  His story is common.  I want to be angry.  I don’t want to be angry.  I want to do something immediate and helpful.  I don’t want to do anything.  I am powerless.  I have choices.

One choice I am pretty clear about: I don’t want to be in Zuccotti Park.  I don’t want to visit, I don’t want to feel what it is to camp on tarps, to be hungry and wet, and surrounded by sounds and humans over which I have no control.

Another choice: I want to show up, in my way.  To shine a light.  To do my best today. Even when I am not sure what to do, there can be a grace in that.   Maybe to just sit with my despair, my confusion and my love.

Yesterday I also read Jon Katz’s eloquent post about animal rights.  Another light shining.  More grace.

postscript:  This week in The Journal, I am writing another ragged little memoir.  The working title is The Beast.  You can subscribe to The Journal here. (As always, you can unsubscribe at any time.)

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Dec3

finding focus

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I saw this cabbage in Whole Foods.  It was so beautiful that I bought it specifically to photograph.  It was also sweetly delicious.  Since I got my new camera, I have been obsessed with image-making.  I am like a kid in a candy shop of color, light and shape.  Seeing me in my pajamas on the road is becoming a common sight for morning commuters.  Oh well.

I am also a new blogger.  I LOVE that.  I feel as if I am awakening from a long hibernation, and stretching out in the sun like a cat.  Writing has become luscious, unpredictable, my morning improvisation.

It has also pushed me to re-calibrate, to look at my goals.  Life goals, work goals.  To articulate them for myself and for those who are helping me figure out how to attract more people to the site.  More readers, more conversation, more connection, more community.  Practical law of attraction work.  Yesterday I heard Abraham say that if your action is driven by need or worry or lack, it is counterproductive.  That the best way to attract what you want is to get happy.  Simple as that, really.  It is a vibrational universe and we have to be vibrating at the highest, happiest frequency to attract what we are wanting.

I am pretty happy these days.  Actually joyful.  That has not always been something I could say.   I am writing about that this week in The Journal. What it is to be A Dangerous Woman.

Today though, I am writing to you, and that makes me very, very happy.

What is making you happy?

Dec1

to be clear (I hope)

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Yesterday I launched a new offering.  A number of you have expressed interest and confusion.  Obviously that is my lack of clarity.

So here it is:  For some time, I have wanted to offer a class that has a wider reach than my local demographic.  Something that you can do with me if you live in L.A. or Juneau or Paris.  (I will come to Paris to teach, of course).  So this is an online class.

I also wanted to share more of the work that I have been doing privately and in classes and workshops.

For  five weeks you will receive two lessons a week.  This is some but not all of what they will contain:

  • writings and teachings from people that have inspired me in the world of improvisational living
  • specific strategies for opening more doors to creative, full throttle living.
  • suggestions for new ways of discovering “ordinary magic” by using improvisation in your work and your daily life.  This is about learning to be non-habitual; stepping out of the rote.
  • writing prompts to help you open new creative doors.
  • assignments to help you dig into the details of your own goals and practice. These are more of a cafeteria of choices rather than a fixed menu.

You can use what appeals to you.  I won’t be checking your work.  The intention is that this an alive offering, as opposed to archival.  That is why we will engage on Google+ in a private forum.  For those of you not familiar with Google+, I will help you get started there.

My goal for you is that by learning to see and live your life more improvisationally, and by becoming more intentionally embodied, you will find new and delicious ways of experiencing/approaching work and play.  

Finally, yes, some of the exercises are movement-based.  However, they can be done by anyone, regardless of background or fitness.

Let me know if you have any more questions.  The full course description is here.

The link to sign up is here.

 

Nov30

holy light!

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This morning opened with this light.  I kid you not.  It looked like this.  I ran up the road in my pajamas to catch it and five minutes later it was gone.  The sun slid under a cloud, and when it re-emerged an hour later, it had that cool, fall crispness to it.  No longer like honey on the trees against an unreal blue sky.

That is how the creative moment is.  You have to catch it.  I have learned that if I don’t follow the impulse in that moment, it is gone.  The readiness to go into the studio and move.  The readiness to write.  If I let myself be distracted by too many things, like checking my Mailchimp account, or looking at email (other people’s work), the impulse is like that light.  Gone, or too cool to cook with.

This morning I caught the light, but not the writing.  There actually is a reason.  Outside, the truck is chipping all the branches from my shattered trees. The noise is deafening and seeing what remains of the beautiful cherry, the pear trees and the lilac is painful to see.  I wrote about that in The Journal two weeks ago.  The Journal is my ragged memoir, unfolding in fragments, every week.

This week I am writing about The Dangerous Woman.  I hope you  will join me.  You can do that here.