TAIL LIGHTS JUST AHEAD

December 22, 2009 and Daily Om sent its regular missive. Some days, I hold onto my Daily Om, ride on its beautiful back; some days the words are what take me from dawn until I get to sleep again to see what daybreak will bring.

May this one bring you clarity. Or at least encouragement. It will lift.

Fog
Coming out of a Haze

When we feel muddled and unfocused, unsure of which way to turn, we say we are in a fog. Similar to when we are in a fog in nature, we may feel like we can’t see where we’re going or where we’ve come from, and we’re afraid if we move too quickly we might run into something hidden in the mists that seem to surround us. Being in a fog necessarily slows us down by limiting our visibility. The best choice may be to pull over and wait for the murkiness to clear. If we move at all, we must go slowly, feeling our way and keeping our eyes open for shapes emerging from the haze, perhaps relying on the taillights of someone in front of us as we make our way along the road.

By and large, most of us prefer to be able to see where we are going and move steadfastly in that direction, but there are gifts that come from being in a fog. Sometimes it takes an obstacle like fog to get us to stop and be still in the moment, doing nothing. In this moment of involuntary inactivity, we may look within and find that the source of our fogginess is inside us; it could be some emotional issue that needs tending before we can safely go full steam ahead. Being in a fog reminds us that when we cannot see outside ourselves, we can always make progress by looking within. Then again, the fog may simply be teaching us important lessons about how to continue moving forward with extreme caution, harnessing our attention, watching closely for new information, and being ready to stop on a dime.

We cannot predict when a fog will come, nor can we know for certain when it will lift, but we can center ourselves in the haze and wait for guidance. We may find it inside ourselves or in a pair of barely visible taillights just ahead. Whether we follow the lights out of the fog, wait for a gentle breeze to lift it, or allow the sun to burn it away, we can rest certain that one way or another, we will move forward with clarity once again.

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HOLIDAY RECALL

Holiday's here and a year has past. Last year, only weeks after we fell into the swirling current of our national crisis, we staged a Christmas for the record books. With all the fear of a new, upside-down life situation, we made a daily decision to keep stepping forward, to remember what was important. This time last year, that was to fulfill the annual obligation to our family and friends. Christmas, Come Hell or High Water.


And it was a great Christmas. I can still feel the relief of December 26th 2008, knowing what we accomplished working with a daily (recession) recipe of nausea and resentment. We managed through the holidays with even a bit of cheer and festivity, by inviting people around and sharing a laugh. Community helped us come face to face with the pound of flesh we were about to donate, and despite the anxiety, propelled us forward.


Oh, those days, how I wished for a crystal ball. I remember thinking that if I could just pace myself, I'd make it the weeks or months of joblessness, wondering, waiting. If I'd had a crystal ball would I have believed that another Christmas would come, replete with fear and wondering, and we'd still be breathing? Indeed, if Santa had given me that crystal ball and I'd been seen a vision of the longevity of this limbo state, I think I'd have gone down in a puff of smelling salts.


We're still here. We're facing into Christmas with the same gritted teeth as last year. Committed to making the season light for our passengers, the three who didn't sign on for a year like we've had, much less another to come. The task is, again, daunting, but since I know I've done it up to now (still breathing), I can go a bit further.

Here's what worked last year:

• Scented Candles, always. Pomegranite or fir from K Hall
• Cocktail gatherings - manchego cheese, fig bread, music, someone else bring the wine
• Easy dinners - roasted chickens from the butcher, arugula, dates & parmesan
• Good and constant playlists from Pandora: type in "holiday"
• Setting up a team gift for the extended family with Heifer
  

What I'll add this year:

• Themed reading, historical novels about Tudor England like The Other Boleyn Girl and the Virgin's Lover
• Painting gestures of people and dogs in wild colors
• A card table set up to do a laser-cut puzzle from Liberty

There's a great deal of relief knowing we've made it this far. John goes off every day to a tentative workplace, intent on making it permanent. I throw creative balls in the air and hope they don't drop - but if they do?????

There have been so much inspiration and resources gained during this year of unpredictable tides. The threads are here, now we move to tie them together.

IT'S THE COLOR OF YOUR CARRIAGE

So I think we all agree, it's not a matter of how we got here, it's what color carriage we'll ride out on.

Before we arrived in the New Now - this age of "who the hell are we?" in the face of there being no free lunch after all - we didn't think much about the way out. Delivery? From what?

And yet, even with full time and satisfying employment, folks have changed their orientation. Target and Walmart are flourishing as go-to sources for fashionistas and freestylers. Dry cleaners and tailors are reporting record numbers as we continue to shop our closets. Contractors' phones are ringing off the hook, yet design magazines are falling like dominos. Even homeowners with a budget for renovation are finding the wherewithal to do it on the inside. (An arbiter of style, a friend who has always done things just so, had her children splash Benjamin Moore on a wall-sized canvas as anchor for her new dining room - isn't beauty in the eye of the beholder?)

I'd argue that this wave of homespun creativity should have rolled in a long time ago. We'd be a nation with a lot more style and character if we were more DIY.

In the New Now, the sane option is lifting your head to hear the stories. Creativity is individual, but I have a developing theory that nothing is NEW. I have a great idea which spurs one in you. You ask for advice from an acquaintance and he discovers his gift for giving it. Creativity is a knock-on effect. You've got to be creative, and you'll come up with the color of your carriage.

The blogs out there are legion, and each of them is based on a great idea carried to fruition. I suggested a reading list in Cyber Beauty. They're all sources of inspiration, but also these blogs are just great ideas.

Read blogs! Pass blogs along! Support those who wrote them with your time and attention, and that support will come back to you in chain-letter fashion. And in them, I'll wager the bet that you'll find a calling, something that leads you forward.

Are you looking for a great idea? Do you need creative inspiration? Is it a new job, the first line of a story? Is it a subject for your next oil painting or a Partner to brainstorm with? Look up and look around, the answer is there.

CYBER-BEAUTY

There is a certain combination that in this new day - this new age - I find myself seeking in just about every medium, every day. That is the combination that makes BEAUTY.

Beauty is different in the New Now. Or I am different in the New Now, don't know which. But in this time of deep austerity, of questioning what's important and finding what matters, beauty is not just the single dimensional kind of pretty it once was. It involves the 5 senses. Now, it involves a 6th. The new 6th sense is how we bring beauty alive from our computer screen when we don't have the options we once had to go out and seek it. Not only is it possible, it is dynamic, and very real. And free.

You read my daily blog, The Daily Now. Everyday I go looking for something that inspires. It's research, beauty research. The presiding principle for The Daily Now is that beauty lives in the eye of the beholder. That may worry you, for what I find gorgeous may not even rate for you. All I ask of you is to come and visit, and see for yourself. Some days you'll look, say Hmmm (in that I-guess-I-get-it, kind of mystified, whatever sort of way) and you leave me and get on with your day. But I'll wager you go on with something different having visited. I do the research, you make your choice about how it effects you.

Roasted Radicchio with Blackberry Vinaigrette, Eating is Art

Beauty changes us, in a second. The newsstand is lined with magazines advertising the 1001 best gifts of 2009. Rarely do the gifts themselves merit such hyperbole, you may not even pick up the issue (on that "beholder of beauty" premise), but without fail, these glossy pages deliver on color and creativity, they're styled to delight.

It's that - it's the color, pattern and texture. I go even further in my beauty combination. It's music and voice. It's taste and temptation. That's beauty. Beauty itself is a performing art. Here's a list of my current 6th sense source for beauty, where the 5 real senses mingle. (Whether you buy it or not is your choice. It's free.)

BEAUTY IN TASTES

The Jewels of New York

101 Cookbooks

BEAUTY IN STYLE

The Errant Aesthete

Three Beautiful Things

BEAUTY IN THE REAL THING

Laura McPhee, Photographer

BEAUTY IN HUMOR

The Pursuit of Happiness, History and Illustrations by Maira Kalman

BEAUTY IN ART

Emerging art every day at Artist-a-day

Art and prose at the Blue Lantern

BEAUTY IN THE GOING

Pret a Voyager

BEAUTY IN SOUND

WFUV, Fordham University's unique radio station

and finally,

BEAUTY IN FLOWERS AND CUPCAKES

Bart Boehlert's Beautiful Things

GONNA SHAKE IT, BABY

Last year, Thanksgiving launched this blog. We were a few days into the New Now and it was sinking in, fast, as we felt like we were sinking even faster.

Our whole life has been a walk on the balance of control. Growing up was about taking control. Twenties were about being out of control. Thirties were realizing that control was hovering just outside our reach. The forties, I used to say, are the point on the trajectory when you are experienced enough to do it all and mature enough to handle it.

And then mid-way through, that crashed too. Control - no such thing!

So Thanksgiving again, we're in the same spot with the same concerns and yet, just a little less fear. We've gone one time 'round the seasons and I'll be damned if the sun hasn't kept coming up!

I'm facing into Thanksgiving having a little less control than ever. The place in me that used to contain that urge is filled with something different this year. It's this tiny temptation to just let it fly. With that, behold an image of doing just that. And Katie Couric has handled a lot more stress than I ever will.

Moliere said: “All the ills of mankind, all the tragic misfortunes that fill the history books, all the political blunders, all the failures of the great leaders have arisen merely from a lack of skill at dancing.”

CENTER PLACE

If you don't ask yourself where the center is, you won't find it.

The New Now is like a stallion turned out on a windy day. He gallops, flings himself through his Universe. Then stops fast, shakes, shudders; 2,000 pounds of momentum takes flight from the beast's body and dissipates like a ghost.

Here, has the pace stopped or is it still in motion, somewhere else, outside our realm? I wager, the latter. Nothing about the New Now is rational - or rationality, like the Now itself, is in the process of redefinition.

We say with a smirk, a shrug of complicity, "it's hurry up and wait". But that is because we are desperate to measure the pace ourselves, to have a hand in every beat of it, we want to mold its passing in order to divine its outcome.

It's when the stallion stops so fast you're liable to be tossed over its hock, that's when you need to get off, go find your center. You think I'm talking about a spiritual retreat, that sutra spot -- fingers lightly touching, your eyes closed... No, that's not what I'm suggesting. I'm not that calm, are you? I can count sheep faster than they can jump. I'm talking about a physical place, your space, where you stand, where you sit. Your center.

The New Now is a time, it is a state of being, and it is a place. Build it around you and go there to wait. Stallions stop short, they absorb the air and the sound and the sense, then they start moving again. They hurry up, and wait.

I Ask You
Billy Collins, Poet Laureate

What scene would I want to be enveloped in
more than this one,
an ordinary night at the kitchen table,
floral wallpaper pressing in,
white cabinets full of glass,
the telephone silent,
a pen tilted back in my hand?

It gives me time to think
about all that is going on outside--
leaves gathering in corners,
lichen greening the high grey rocks,
while over the dunes the world sails on,
huge, ocean-going, history bubbling in its wake.

But beyond this table
there is nothing that I need,
not even a job that would allow me to row to work,
or a coffee-colored Aston Martin DB4
with cracked green leather seats.

No, it's all here,
the clear ovals of a glass of water,
a small crate of oranges, a book on Stalin,
not to mention the odd snarling fish
in a frame on the wall,
and the way these three candles--
each a different height--
are singing in perfect harmony.

So forgive me
if I lower my head now and listen
to the short bass candle as he takes a solo
while my heart
thrums under my shirt--
frog at the edge of a pond--
and my thoughts fly off to a province
made of one enormous sky
and about a million empty branches.

HEAVY TOLLS

Feature article in today's New York Times: "Job Woes Exacting Heavy Toll on Family Life". For those who have experienced job loss, the reality of these words is like a glass of cold water in the face. Our home life is described in mirror shards of detail on the national front page. The rational iota of our brains knows that grown up stresses trickle down and reside with our young ones. But in order to survive the New Now, we want desperately to believe the running refrain from those who aren't walking in our shoes. "A blessing", they often call it. They say: Being home offers the gift of time to enjoy and tend to our loved ones.

But Michael Luo's article refutes this rather useless mantra. Quantity time does not equate to quality time. Think about your last 10-hour drive kids 3-abreast across the back seat to visit the in-laws. I don't care how good your integrated car entertainment system is...

Now overlay the worry, the fear. The disorientation of losing your "space" by being given infinite amounts of it.

The "Heavy Tolls" article is read days after being popped with the latest unemployment report: 10.2% jobless. It's a one-two punch which throws the panorama of our national family circumstance into black + white. The job loss happens to us, but the effects are suffered by others. The others I'm talking about are those who didn't do anything to deserve this. Accident of birth, shared address.

It's the truth of parenting. Once we were owner-operators. We spent money, we owned the debt. We got drunk, we felt like shit. We spewed and fought, we kissed and made up. With a spouse, a family, these consequences are divided equally regardless of culpability. You feel like you have no control? Go inside your 10-year old.

No one is exempt from the pain and anger, the frustration and helplessness. It's been said that these kinds of experiences are character building, they teach lessons about what's important, about the moral rectitude of frugality. Those benefits are like pension monies, you realize them in your sixties. That is, if you haven't paid them out to survive along the way.

Resist. Relax. None of this is a blessing. But survive it intact, we must. The pay-now is to teach our children that we have what it takes to navigate the ship. A small ship, for a long journey.

Resource for survival: Heather T. Forbes Beyond Consequences Institute. Subscribe for a daily reflection aimed at the heart of resistance as it applies to parenting.