Pinterest is a dream come true!

When we moved back from Amsterdam one of my first tourist stops in American was a visit to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. It was as close as I could get to resuscitating the world I'd left -- here's a woman who lived travel and experience, vicariously, through her make-believe Venetian courtyard and amongst her millions of dollars of art and sculpture and tapestry. Europe at home. Every now and then, Mrs. Gardner pops into my consciousness and this morning it was she in the form of this portrait. She's my muse today, and it's her energy I want to capture in what I write, how I communicate and the face I hope to put to the world. Mrs. Gardner is a traveler at home, living the style and creativity that so inspired her abroad.

It used to be I'd sit over a coffee table book and more recently a blog or magazine spread, and an image would take me away into my vicarious world. I'd gaze and think and then lose it again to that place ephemera goes - when you turn a page or go back to the business at hand. But friends, for capturing the spirit of creativity, now there's Pinterest!

They say you have to be a certain kind of person to embrace the breaking waves of social media, one who either lives a marketing existence and may or may not be paid to do so - or one with too much time on her hands. But Pinterest sates a whole different appetite, and there are far more of us hungry for it. You like pretty things? You collect stuff? You found yourself pointing over an old scrapbook from time to time, "that was this and look how sweet..." Pinterest is a scrapbook, and incredibly, people are actually interested in your photos.

Here is a fantastic and funny one-two-three on Pinterest and why we love it. Read... great blog too!

NEW, ALL OVER AGAIN

Creativity is a process. It's a place, a state of mind and a pretty scary and deep chasm into which one can fall - even when we're not actively creating. I fell into the cavern of 2011, like a blind person I went round and round feeling the walls in the dark, never sure if I was near finding a way out or just working in circles, hand over hand, over the same walls. Despite how aimless that description sounds, 2011 may have been my most creative year, as I have literally sprung from the chasm with not just energy, but with a plan.

My Now is new, all over again. I, like every person on the reading planet, have not stopped thinking about Pico Iyer's Opinion piece in the New York Times last weekend, "The Joy of Quiet". It's been tweeted and retweeted, posted on Facebook by stacks of friends. And yet for me it's overt message: turn off technology and become a human, already is NOT what resonates. Instead, the many gems Iyer includes, quotes from Thoreau and Marshall McLuhan, and Merton, and the monk David Stendl-Rast speak to the power of connection, not the call for ex-communication.

Granted, the piece is all about the pace at which stuff is coming at us - and it's voracious for sure. We're freaking out, as Iyer says, because "like teenagers, we appear to have gone from knowing nothing about the world to knowing too much, all but overnight." But there is something to do other than shriek and run away fast to escape the pace. Because isn't pace what we're judged for, as a nation and as individuals? Think what we're able to accomplish at a pace!

The last line of Iyer's article gets it for me, gets at the ways in which peace and quiet must coexist with technology, information and the flashing lights of our lives. Iyer meets a past acquaintance from his chosen escape, a few days at a Benedictine hermitage. The acquaintance seems very clear about the coexistence - his kids are his story board. In these last lines you see the guy's kids, they're running dirty and happy down a rough road in front of him, whipping it up as they hiatus, their time is free today. It's the moments, isn't it? Peace + Quiet are moments by design! And "the child of tomorrow may actually be ahead of us," Iyer notes, "in terms of sensing not what's new, but what's essential." May it be added that the child of tomorrow is - with the help of the pace, the techo-beeps and the info-floods - the innovator, the builder, the founder of the real New.

The New Now is back, and accompanied by the (constant) interruptions, beeps and diversions I look forward to the conversation about how we cope in the chasm.

Some of the quotes in Pico Iyer's article, the Joy of Quiet:

"When things come at you too fast, naturally you lose touch with yourself." Marshall McLuhan

"The man whose horse trots a mile in a minute does not carry the most important message." Henry David Thoreau

Joy is described by the monk David Stendl-Rast as "that kind of happiness that doesn't depend on what happens."

WHAT MAKES ME OPTIMISTIC

I got my hope back.

I heard it last night, the call to collaborate. It was the creative spark ignited on a grander scale. We have been living a mired existence of late. So much static, agendas and misunderstanding, and obtuse misuse of power - these are things that have been alive in our Universe, it has made me worry. I don't know the people who fight, who scream profanity. I didn't elect the people who wouldn't listen to all sides of such deeply complex issues, when so much is at stake. We seem to be at a nearly Biblical crossroads, where forces of good and progress meet competition and selfishness. I may be the only one who awoke this morning having heard, but I was energized by the message: clarity, someone taking hold, saying we must "DROP OUR WEAPONS". If we, our generation (because, folks, it is our turn) can learn from this, if we can disarm each other, we may do something heroic. I think we can be heroes.

Here are some of the indicators that have crossed my windshield today. For these too, I am optimistic:

3 Beautiful Things, written by a blogger in England, this short, 3-bulleted list is posted every single day. 3 things that open her eyes, 3 trivial things that together made a day to remember. I have followed 3 Beautiful Things for over a year and marvel at the writer's focus. It is more zen than meditation.

Pret a Voyager, a travel blog that picks you up and takes you there. Like Gourmet did. Not wistful, just hopeful. Every destination is just a decision away.




The Home section of the New York Times published a telling 3-page spread today, Best Sellers and Bombs. It is a beautiful, creative collage about what people like (and didn't like), what appeals to us, what we have actually bought through the final cycle of this windstorm recession. I love beautiful things. I collect ephemera and treasures, things that remind me of lighter times. This spread, which used to be published every year, hasn't been written since September 2007. It feels like we're raising our shades a little and letting some light shine in.



Buddhi Mat Yoga opened in our town. It is new and clean, and buzzing rather than funereal. It opened in what was only months ago a bank branch. It seems every new business that opened in the recent past were a tendril of yet another bank. Now it's yoga. Specialty food stores. Places of character and warmth.

Miss Whistle is a blog about life and culture and movies and poetry. This week she quotes Aldous Huxley, who said "it's a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one's life and to find at the end one has no more to offer by way of advice than: 'Try to be a bit kinder'". If we can all just embrace kindness. Sibling to sibling, Democrat to Republican, Boss to Employee just let go. If we can channel compassion, we will commit GREATNESS.


Photo art from 20x200 a Project by Jen Bekman offers limited edition prints, photographs, posters to people like me, seeking images to inspire. The small ones may cost $50. The larger ones, $500. First come, first served. This poster hangs in my kitchen and has been a catalyst for conversation between John and me, also between our children. We range from bad days when we "don't even get it" to better days when it elicits the inspiration for making pancakes. That's creativity. You first have to get excited, then you make things.

INSPIRATION AND FINDING IT

"Arrange whatever pieces come your way." - Virginia Woolf

The new year has happened, and I'm afraid it's receding fast in January's wake. New Years was when things were going to be put back in balance and I'd finish what I'd started, in a state of mind to set priorities and move forward with what is right for now. Leave the rest in good spirit.

My book, "The New Now", was supposed to have been started. The Artist's Way sits next to my bed. I initiated the Morning Pages back in the Fall, having identified the Artist's Way as my guide for this project. Yet somehow, everyhow, I've gone too many directions, and -- well, the Artist's Way sits there by my bed.

Inspiration is elusive, so say those who live their life in search for it. "The New Now" is meant to be written, for you, for me, to fill the widening void of support for how to get through a day once life has shown us it isn't what we thought it was.

I want to write like Virginia Woolf. Michael Cunningham wanted to write like Virginia Woolf too, he's the one who came up with The Hours which, in my mind, is so worthy of her they might have been in the same room when he wrote it.

I have emulated Virginia Woolf. I've followed her every breath, from Bloomsbury to Firle. I have camped out in the gardens of Charleston House and sketched the gatherings, so alive it's as if I sat amongst them. I've read Woolf's biography, I've speculated about her life, analyzed the essays and watched her story dissected on stage.

And now, I have a confession. Despite my dedication, or maybe because of it - I never, not ever got Virginia Woolf. Her words, they're so beautiful and perfectly pitched, but what they mean seem just out of my reach. Like a hanger-on at the cocktail party, nodding and laughing, I've been faking it. As if the language being spoken was one I boasted of, but in fact, only had through high school (a long time ago...)

This confession comes by way of closure, many thanks to Michael Cunningham's essay in Mentors, Muses & Monsters. Cunningham, who sits at Virginia Woolf's right hand, says:

"I was ready... or maybe I should say I was ready to be
ready - for Woolf's sentences. I had not only never seen language like that;
nothing I'd read had prepared me for the fact that a human being could do what
she had done, line by line, using the same ink and paper available to anybody. I
had neither read nor conceived of sentences that complex and muscular and
precise and beautiful. It may, perversely, have helped that I didn't quite
understand what the sentences actually meant. It may have helped free me to
better appreciate their tones and variations, the sheer virtuosity of their
structures and sounds. I remember thinking, Hey, she was doing with language
something like what Jimi Hendrix does with a guitar. Riffing, that
is, as only a genius can; finding over and over again an exquisite balance
between recklessness and control, between chaos and pattern."

So now I see. Virginia Woolf wrote not to be gotten. She is the true conduit, she provides life and truth, fulfillment and disappointment, bypainting them into a picture we cock our heads one way then the other to view. Long ago, she gave us the OK to leave the picture with our own interpretation, to apply it as our kind of beautiful to whatever we choose.

This is what I am trying to do in "The New Now". Provide the words for you to take and interpret. Onward, inspiration.

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

GIRL POWER

I have a friend who publishes daily on diverse social media sites. She paints a picture with photography, or You Tube video footage, quotes or other ephemera, and posts it for her Facebook and Twitter friends to follow. To decipher, for daily we have to figure out both where she is and where we are as a result of the experience she provided. This friend likes vintage. She is also a fiery feminist - her subjects tend to be empowered, emboldened, impassioned women.


Posted by Susie, this morning

People are losing their jobs, still, in the continuing firestorm of Recession. I heard today from yet another friend disclosing her Husband's loss, just 5 days ago. They - we all - will recover, but it takes time, and these folks are only now starting their process. I heard the weariness in her wavering phone voice. Knowing that her Husband was sitting next to her in the car, I realized her message was tactfully edited. But what I heard was all too familiar, it was the weariness of knowing what this process was going to require from her. Despite the fact that the fall was taken by him.

A woman's resume' will never reflect the job she really does. I'm not talking about the child-bearing, or child-rearing, or home-management or man-management, the jobs that defy articulation even if they were deemed resume' worthy. Job characteristics for a Partner in the New Now is inclusive of all these characteristics - and more. Now you're a crisis manager, rational thinker extraordinaire. You manage up, down and sideways, you keep the peace. And your forte' is finding and coaxing the humor back into the team. For a woman knows that without humor at home, we're sunk.

I am encouraged by how much Girl Power is coming to the fore in the New Now. Women are finding their way, doing jobs for free, all in the name of creating a ground swell. Outside of the home and even their partnership, women are collaborating, being cheerleaders for other women. I know the weariness, but like a strong cup of joe, the Will in us is rising up.

Tomorrow may be "a king-sized drag", but sister, look what kind of ground swell we got behind us. Girl power!


Posted by Susie, yesterday

ROLE MODELS

There's a tremendous surge in the times these days. Those in the financial world are breathing again, bonuses are healthy and the Dow has topped 10,000. Main Street has a pulse, and though we won't break any records, folks are getting out, they're buying and selling and some are even driving new cars.

But there are still trenches, and here in the trenches, we're just hanging on. We wonder why the Financiers get to report the uptick and cash the bonus checks, when that's where all the trouble started in the first place. Shouldn't recovery start where the hurt is actually being felt?

The surge is actually happening down here in the trenches, and we're not doing it alone. In this astounding time of change and redefinition, momentum is building almost like a chain reaction. This is a time for seeking and nurturing Mentors. And for Mentors to revel in the power of their role modeling.

Creativity is not just discovering the novel in you, or uncovering your latent talent to put on sale on Etsy. You may be a painter or a poet, a soloist or a sculptor, and though as powerful an outlet as that may be, it is just a small part of building the momentum we need to survive in the New Now. Creativity is watching, listening, and invoking, in order to capitalize and build on the wave already in motion.

In my quotidian blog, The Daily Now, I grab onto an image or a message that cracks open the world of opportunity on a given day. Could be some one's face or a tune they've sung. Could be a panting pinnacled for posterity, or a line drawing spotted on a square of pavement. Nothing on the Daily Now is mine, it is borrowed, it is riding a wave already in motion.

Who is a role model? Is she such today and for always? Is she such for a moment, a second, someone with bright red lipstick and shiny gold hoops who tells you she loves what you've got going on? Is she famous, or regular? Is she prolific or a one-off? She's all those things. Collect role models.



We have a choice. We can do this in fear, we can throw balls in the air and hurl ourselves around trying to catch them. Or we can watch, listen, and learn. Your role models are going to keep you company.



Photograph of Sylvia Weinstock, "Leonardo DaVinci of Cakes", by Thayer Gowdy, 2009

MAKE MY DAY

Searching high and low for something to make me smile. We ponied up money for the girls to play soccer this Fall. Following the gripes, resistance and small change requests from the families who aren't feeling the same sense of privilege that their kids can just play again this year, I got an email from Cassie's coach this morning with the simple words: "We smile and have fun all the time."

The news is littered with hard court battles waged by the opposing sides of our Healthcare debate. There are no more hidden agendas, this warfare is about which side is going to win. The scores of uninsured have no position on the team.

We're losing it, people, losing it!

And for those of us trying to make sense of the New Now, trying to find a job, to reassure our children that we live in constructive times; those looking simply to settle in to the year with the hope that we just might be afloat this time next year; the dearth of humor is just not funny.

The 23 year-old and unknown Patrick Kelly was featured today in "City Room", a relatively hidden, sidebar of a column you can read Thursdays in The New York Times. He too appears to be looking for some light relief. Frustrated by the lack of jobs but buoyed by the creative burst, he's started a blog called Make My Day with Patrick Kelly. His readers post New York-based challenges for Kelly, challenges he commits to fulfilling every day for a full year. For example, he'll set himself up at a busy cross street surrounded by a couple chairs with a sign offering "Free Advice". On September 8th, he headed to a bench in Central Park with his guitar and writing tablet, the challenge was to find people to help him write a song. The result is not just what they produced, but what was effected in the process.

Apparently, this incredibly rich concept is being launched for the experience, not as a money maker. The book will no doubt follow, and truth is, I'll buy it. Kelly proclaims the experiment is designed to be as fulfilling for his contributors as it is for him. They live vicariously as he takes the risks. They see their small ideas turn into a live event.

Read the blog. The kid is a kid, for sure, and his writing will assuredly not change the world. But what will stick with you is how brave he is, what little he has to lose. That's the place where creativity thrives.

My children will follow the Make My Day blog, as will I. To bring home the simple message that anything is possible. Nothing's for sure, but anything is possible.

Patrick signs off from his latest post with this salutation: "Stay classy, Planet Earth. Watch football tonight."

We've got to meet humor where we find it.

NEW WAY TO LOOK AT FIREWORKS

In my daily trawls for inspiration I came across an artist who uses fireworks as her medium. Here's what Rosemarie Fiore says about her work:

"My drawings are created by containing and controlling firework explosions. I bomb blank sheets of paper with different fireworks including color smoke bombs, jumping jacks, monster balls, rings of fire, and lasers. As I work, I create imagery by controlling the chaotic nature of the explosions in upside-down containers. When the paper becomes saturated in color, dark and burned, I take it back to my studio and collage blank paper circles onto the image to establish new planes and open up the composition. I then continue to bomb the pieces. These actions are repeated a number of times. The final works contain many layers of collaged explosions and are thick and heavy."

Creativity comes in many forms, yet Fiore's art is something you just can't make up. Where did she get the inspiration to bomb fireworks, and when she was done, bomb them again to make a pretty picture?

Our lives are lived at least a few inches below the surface of activity and obligation. So many things have to come before setting down to write, or picking up that book, or painting the image we photographed so many months ago. Yet incredible ideas come to us, and we have a choice. Seize and pursue, or wait in the hope that another one won't be far behind.

I am nourishing a very big idea, which I hope will meld creativity with profession. Indeed, this idea was inspired by The New Now, which inspired The Daily Now. My inspiration is a living room for all of us, for my ideas and your ideas, a salon to share and compare, to co-op and crystalize. More on this idea in the months to come, but let me not lose this moment as a challenge to myself and to you. To take action, steps very small, noticing the knock-on effect. We may not be pyrotechnics, but we will rise out of all this with amazing product if we take care of the ideas.

CREATIVITY STUDY: MONK HELPERS

The thing about inspiration is that you can't predict when, or where, or even how it'll hit.

Often it takes anger and confrontation to put on a new headset. After one of the worst down-days to date in our New Now, John and I met in the ring this morning. Each of us were backed by 24 hours of soul searching - which meant we approached one another with a fresh, pointed and undeniably individual line of thinking. And we were prepared to "share it with eachother". That is, if sharing means someone wins and someone... doesn't.

Understand, we are at a turning point, that place when a decision is not arrived at, it's forced. Hence the 24 hours we each spent figuring out how we felt about where we are. I woke up clamoring "Creativity" - let's liquidate and move to where we want to be -- good luck will surely follow and we'll be more fulfilled than ever. Peace Corps, Key West, the Riviera...

John, though, had steeped through the night, in "Conserve" - let's liquidate and head for the hills, move in with Mom & Dad, hide out and spend nothing until the storm passes.

Two very different corners, where shall the twain meet?

We parted having made our arguments, indeed, argument was the process. We are in this together on no common ground.

I turned to the New York Times looking for inspiration. Here's what I found.

Two entrepreneurs from Colorado sell their copier cartridge business to some Cistercian Monks in Wisconsin who've decided they want to be in the cartridge business. You see, monks are charged with making money, supporting their order, but this group had the big idea (cartridges?) but no head for business (rather make honey and sculpt), so after the deal was made, it becomes clear that the women from Colorado were at the Monastery - to stay - to run what's become a multi-million dollar enterprise, LaserMonks.

The irony of it is what makes is so inspirational. What monk wants to be in the cartridge business? What urban woman of a certain age dreams of her small-beans computer supply company being run to support a Cistercian Monastery? I'm thrilled by how UNpredictable it all is, and it made my morning.

How can you not feel the power of this: “Good morning, LaserMonks. Greetings and peace,” Victoria Bench answers the Monastery's phones. Apparently she's a zen-like presence but the humor doesn't seem to escape her. She says that more likely than not, what she hears on the other end of the phone is “You don’t sound like a monk.”

We're in a tight place in The New Now, and we don't know where we're headed. But I'm starting to realize that we'll likely end up in a place where "we don't sound like a monk".