Let’s go Fly a Kite

 

“When you send it flying up there, all at once you’re lighter than air…” 

--Richard and Robert Sherman 

My daughter and I watched Mary Poppins a couple of nights ago. That was after we watched “Saving Mr. Banks,” how Walt Disney persuaded P.L. Travis the author of Mary Poppins to allow him to make the movie.

Neglected kids had a magical nanny come to take them on outings, play games, never be cross or cruel, never give them castor oil or gruel and never smell of barley water…. They got to laugh on the ceiling, jump in and out of chalk drawings, and Mary Poppins, instead of allowing Mr. Banks to fire her, tricks him into taking this children, Jane and Michael, on an outing to the bank where he works.  The father, George Banks, gives Michael, his son, a Tuppens to start a bank account.

On the walk to the Bank, Michael sees the old Bird Lady at the Cathedral and wants to spend his Tuppens to feed the birds as the old Bird Woman pleads. Instead, he is dragged along reluctantly to the bank.

The bank wants the money, the Tuppens. They want it enough to grab it from the boy’s hand. In the tussle, noise and confusion there is a run on the bank.  

Any reference here to us?

The movie was about saving Mr. Banks, about personal crisis and redemption. It takes Travis’ tragic childhood and writes a happy ending to it.

 The healing value of Art.

When you don’t know what to say, say a nonsense word like  "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.”

Take a sad story and write a happy ending.

And go fly a kite.

 

"Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,”

Jo

 

I took my book Your Story Matters off my blogs and decommissioned it. That is removed it from Amazon. It will come out as a new version.

 

 

However, you can read Chapter 57 here:

Art is Anything You Can Get Away With*

*Andy Walhol

Although I look back and see the beautiful scenes of my life, and I was an obedient child, I never gave my folks any problems that I know of, yet I carried a lingering sadness. And I would come home from school every day with a headache. My body was telling me something.

 

One day, later on—after I was married, I said, "The headaches are gone."

 

I could say I have a problem with low blood sugar, and I know that all through high school, I would leave the house with little on my stomach and probably little protein. At around twelve, when I was about to have my tonsils removed, they found I was anemic. 

 

Yes, they removed tonsils in those days—I remember waking up with a throat that felt ripped, and I thought the nurse who kept telling me not to roll over on my back was my mother. My mother was there, though. And that sage doctor and parent’s ploy trying to cover the hurt with ice cream is a crock of bull. 

 

By taking away my tonsils, they took away my defense mechanism, for after that, I got strep throat and had to guard against getting it every winter.

 

But back to the headaches. How much was physical, and how much was psychological? 

 

We can paint rosy pictures of our lives, remembering the good times and the highlights, or we can dig deeper and say, "What was bothering a child that she would have a headache every day?"

 

I didn't dwell on things. I put my love on the animals. I did wonder if my father ever thought of me. Grandma was gone. Tiny was gone. It appeared as though that didn't matter.

 

It mattered.

 

Mike molested me.

 

It mattered. 

 

Sometimes, it is as simple as that. Acknowledging that it mattered. 

 

Your Story Matters.

 

We lived in the town of The Dalles for about a year and a half, and I remember that as good. I played with the neighbor kids and the little boy next door and went fishing in Mill Creek, near our house. 

 

The day I caught a two-inch fish and ran home all excited, I stopped short when I found my Aunt Marie from Illinois there. Dear Marie. I loved her. Mom was a bit embarrassed for Marie to see that I was such a tomboy, which surprised me, for Mom was not a girly girl. Tomboy isn’t a word we use anymore. But then there was an issue with a girl wanting to do what I wanted. I wanted to ride bikes, play with toy cars in the dirt with the boys, and read comic books. But then, didn't everybody? 

 

I loved being a tomboy. But did it bother me?

 

Yes.

 

Within that first year after leaving Illinois, we got the dog mom promised. Somebody shot it while he was still an adolescent pup because it reared up on his rabbit hutch. I was home and off my feet because I had gotten stitches in my ankle from a teeter totter swinging into my ankle as I was on the swing. This was a collision on a swing set in someone’s back yard.  The kids from the neighborhood ran to tell me that Mike had hit the dog in the head with a hammer to put it out of its misery. 

 

I know Mike did what he thought was right because he didn't harm the animals.

 

It was a year or so later that I got Silver. 

 

I became friends with a little girl from a Catholic school whose parents were both doctors. A woman doctor of her age was rare as she was quite a bit older than my mother. But I thought those doctors must be a bit cuckoo, for their son, younger than the girl, had ulcers. Mrs. Doctor wanted her kids to have the same birthday, so she had a cesarean section with her son. And I wondered why both parents made such a fuss if one of their kids was injured in the slightest way. 

 

They weren't Catholic but thought the Catholic school was the best in town, and thus sent their kids there.

 

My mother got a job cleaning Mrs. Doctor’s house. Once, they took us to an island for summer vacation. I often went home with the girl after school—we were both in the second or third grade. When they served a meal, they used more than one fork. However, often, when I went home with the girl, her mother would fuss at her to practice the piano. I loved piano music, but I thought if that's the way it is, I'm not taking piano lessons.

 

Later in life, I met the girl at a high school reunion. The Catholic kids transferred to The Dalles High when they reached high school age, but we had not seen each other since the fourth grade, and in high school, we hardly knew each other existed. Had she not introduced herself, I wouldn't have recognized her—a Burnette had become a blond-that’s common, but her entire countenance had changed. The last I heard she lives on a Hog farm. Fascinating. Who would have thought? And she seems to be someone I would like to get to know.

 

When I was in the fourth grade, we moved from the town to a more rural area called Chenowith. I rode the bus to Catholic school for a year. There are nearly always some comments, however small, against the new, the strange, the different, and there I was a Catholic in a pack of Protestants.

 

I’m sure the same would happen the other way around.

 

After the fourth grade, I joined the Chenowith public school and soon joined the Protestant church.

 

I was an only child, which was okay; I like time alone. And I like having friends. And I had Silver.

 

Once we joined the Protestant church, it occupied many hours each week. There was church service on Sunday mornings and youth meetings at night. I joined the choir, and we had a Wednesday night choir practice. I met my first boyfriend at church and my future husband there. 

 

Changing churches felt much like moving from Horace Mann to a Catholic School. I felt as out of place in Sunday School as I did in Catholic school. I didn’t know the books of the Bible and couldn’t recite verses as the other kids did. Odd, that doesn’t amount to a hill of beans, to quote my mother, but it shows how we want to fit in and feel left out when others are more advanced in some subject.

 

I went to church camps and sat at a camp meeting, doubting that there was a God. And I wondered about all the "true believers" and how believing seemed so easy for them. I couldn’t mix the vengeful God of the Old Testament with the loving God of the new, and why did people attempt to mesh the two? Jesus clearly stated that he came to put aside the law.  I thought those people never doubted. I wondered what happened to the miracles.  And why couldn’t I be as sure as the true believers appeared to be?

 

I saw Billy Graham in a tent meeting once when I was Catholic and thought he was full of it. Later, as a Protestant, I saw him again. At that time, I thought he was arrogant because he said he knew he was going to heaven. I'm sorry, Mr. Graham. I believe you were a nice man. I just couldn't stomach some of the religious aspects. 

 

But I set off to find God and found that he/she lives in all of us. How we express that concept is up to us. Finding people with whom you can agree, discuss, and have a great relationship is fine and dandy; if not, travel your own road.

 

Almost everyone could go over their childhood, and each would have different experiences but with similar wonderings, longings, disappointments, and questions. We were, after all, babes in the woods. Looking back, I can see why so many feel different or left out, as though they don’t fit. I was a country girl in a sea of professional people’s daughters. Those girls shopped at Williams Store, the upscale one, while we shopped at Penny’s. And I could tell the difference. Isn’t it strange that that matters?

 

A great number of people now take antidepressants—like one-third of the American population. Why?

 

We have friends, a couple, who used to work at an Elder Facility. They told us that the same cliques occur there as they did in high school. That reminds me of a refrain I often heard at The World Healing Center, “If you don’t work on yourself, as you get older, you get worse.”

 

We have yet to learn that a smorgasbord of life is laid out for us, and we must choose what we want on our plate. We think something on the smorgasbord is going to jump onto our plates, when in truth, we must pick it up and place it there. Leave that liver, which I can’t abide, for someone else.

 

How can I say you are good enough? How can I tell people they aren't broken and need to be fixed? 

 

Experiences come and go; happiness comes and goes. We search for meaning, fulfillment, and our place in the world.

 

You might have noticed that I do not have much written about how to change your life or how to become a Baddass. (read Jen Sincero’s book, You are a Badda**) 

 

I want to offer a tease to say, yep, the world is out there for you to grab. Take a chance. It’s possible. Go find a way. 

 

Once you declare that you want to achieve something, believe it’s yours, and take action to get it, you will be amazed at how the universe fills in the blanks. God, the great Spirit, the Force, the Source, the Universe, you name it, has your back. 

 

But there’s a glitch. You don’t just sit on the couch, yawn, and wait for magic to drop. You need to ask for what you want, believe it is possible, and start walking, driving, rowing, flying, whatever moves you.

 

 

Andy Warhol said, "Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art."

 

“What the caterpillar calls the end of the world the master calls a butterfly.”
― Richard Bach

The Chicago Book Fair

 

Chapter 55

 

The Chicago Book Fair

 

Bill Clinton gave the keynote address at the Chicago Book Fair the year his book My Life came out." I remember he said—as a child he got ice shards from the Iceman, and his publisher told him, “Bill, you don’t have to mention everyone you have ever met in your life.”

 

I wondered how people who wrote memoirs could include such detail. Had they been journaling?

 

In the preface to his book, Clinton writes that as a young man just out of law school and ready to get on with his life, on a whim, he picked up a self-help book titled How to Get Control of Your Life by Alan Lahin. The book's purpose was to list short, medium, and long-term goals. He didn't remember the B and C lists but remembered the A.

 

"I wanted to be a good man, have a good marriage and children, have good friends, make a successful political life, and write a great book."

 

Admirable goals, Clinton. 

 

Wendy Hiller, a literary agent, invited me to the Chicago Fair along with a few other writers. She didn't represent me, and I don't remember what I was writing at the time, nothing good, but she must have seen some potential in me, and wanted to show me how publishing worked. At the Fair everybody wants to sell, nobody wants to buy. However, you might find a publisher there, they are looking.

 

I met a delightful young mother I liked who wrote a book about Breastfeeding. Her husband and brother were with her, and they invited me out to dinner after Clinton’s speech. Now, I regret that I didn’t go. I could have rallied, but after a day of walking that gigantic stadium and then wearing high-heeled shoes to the Clinton speech, I was ready to drop. Thus, I missed my chance to go out in Chicago with a black couple who might have shown me a thing or two.

 

Here was Clinton, an ex-president, so a memoir made sense. I'm a simple person trying to make sense of it and operating under the belief that you don't have to be famous to write a memoir. Just fill in the pen drawings with color and see what happens.

 

I found a note from a blog reader in my email this morning who said she wanted to support me. Thank you, kind person. 

 

I checked to see what blog she was talking about, and it was "What Do You Wonder About?" I stole that from Auston Kleon's book Steal Like an Artist. 10 things nobody told you about being creative.

 

See, he gave me permission to steal from him, so I chose the two steps below as the manifesto for my blog:

 

Step One: Wonder about something.

Step Two: Invite others to wonder with me.

 

That man is brilliant.

 

I came across his small book, which was free on Amazon Prime, and read it before lunch.

 

"You don't need to be a genius; you just need to be yourself," he wrote.

 

I slapped my head and declared, "Thank you, God,"

 

(Thank you, Auston Kleon. I don't know if God had anything to do with that statement.)

 

I have bounced everywhere with subjects—metaphysics, the spiritual path, life blog, travel, writing about writing, blogging, chickens, animals, horses, home life, family, story, Hawaii, Oregon, California, and God. I'll even throw in sea life if that strikes me. And then I hear the voice of blogging gurus who say to find your niche and stick with it.

 

I scream, "WHAT'S MY NICHE!" (All over the place.)

 

Kleon says, "You can cut off a couple of passions and only focus on one, but after a while, you'll start to feel phantom limb pain."

 

I love that man.

 

"Do not leave your longings unattended."

 

Right on.

 

Yesterday I began the day by deciding to write something about writing, for I have readers on my blog “The Best Damn Writer Blogger on the Block.” 

www.bestdamnwritersblog.com  (Fair to say, I'm the only one on my block writing one, but maybe I should check to make sure.)

 

I am curious to know how those readers found me. However, if someone shows up, I am happy to offer them something.

 

Except that yesterday, I had nothing to say.

 

Blogs are supposed to add something of value. So, where did that leave me?

 

With Zilch. Nada.

 

Kleon to the rescue, "If you try to devour the history of your discipline all at once, you'll choke."

 

Okay, back to the beginning of the day. Hemingway was a good place to start. However, Hemingway was reluctant to talk about writing, for he felt that saying too much might inhabit his muse.

 

Although Hemingway was known for his adventurous spirit, he was first and foremost a writer. He might have been reluctant to talk about writing, yet, over the years, he wrote letters to friends in various parts of the world at different times, and talk of writing invariably crept in. 

 

Along came Larry W. Phillips, who uncovered Hemingway's comments on writing and included them in a book called Ernest Hemingway on Writing.

 

"All good books are alike," wrote Hemingway, "in that they are truer than if they had really happened, and after you are finished reading one, you will feel that all that happened to you and afterward all belongs to you; the good and the bad, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was." –By-Line Earnest Hemingway page 184.

 

This quote explains why my eyes cross when people say, "I only read non-fiction." As though fiction is frivolous, and they are into "serious" learning.

 

Quite the opposite is true. Good fiction writers can hit you with the truth when you don't even know you've been hit. And where do you see the outer workings of a person while being privy to their thoughts except with a fictional protagonist? 

 

There's a place for both. Yes, for all my ravings about fiction, I am writing non-fiction. 

 

Write whatever is itching to come out.

 

 

"The secret is that it is poetry written into prose, and that is the hardest thing to do." –Ernist Hemingway.

 

Hemingway left a lot unsaid. He wrote simply, quite against the flowery prose of his day. His style was considered the iceberg effect; much was beneath the surface.

 

Okay, back to Steal Like an Artist:

 

"We're talking about practice, not plagiarism. Plagiarism is trying to pass someone else's work off as your own. Copying is about reverse engineering. It's like a mechanic taking apart a car to see how it works."

 

If you steal from one author, it's plagiarism, but if you copy from many, it's research, “If you rip off a hundred people,” Panter says, “the folks will say, “You're so original."

 

I believe the following from Kleon applies not only to artists but to anyone starting a business:

 

You will need the following:

· Curiosity

· Kindness

· Stamina

· A willingness to look stupid.

 

Barbara Kingsolver said in her last tip of five on writing, "If you are young and a smoker, you should quit."

 

I qualify as a writer. 

 

I don't smoke, and I'm not young.

 

Writers and Artists

 I’m sitting in the car waiting for my grandson.  Moments ago, I read a post by Grant Faulkner, who in 2016 was the Executive Director at National Novel Writing Month.

“I’ve been remembering the 2016 election this week,” he wrote.

Normally, he said, November draws thousands of writers; however, after Trump’s election in 2016, writers’ stories literally collapsed.

It wasn’t just the NaNoWriMo writers. (Writers who commit to write 50,000 words for a novel in 30 days.) Many of his friends and professional writers stopped writing.

They were traumatized.

Faulkner said before that November, he didn’t believe in writer’s block, but then he saw that writing is difficult and sometimes impossible for a battered brain.

Trauma and depression can turn off the spigot of creativity.

“It’s easy to think that our art is trivial when it’s up against such a menacing and malevolent block of history as we’re living through, but the opposite is actually true: our art isn’t trivial; it’s what can deliver us.”

 Faulkner said that James Baldwin (Go Tell it on the Mountain 1953, Notes of a Native Son, 1955) expressed the importance of the role of the artist better than he could:

 “You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was Dostoevsky and Dickens who taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who ever had been alive.”

 Howard Zinn’s quote, “An artist is a sort of emotional or spiritual historian,” provided Faulkner with hope because we need to see that “compassion, sacrifice, courage, and kindness” are a part of every era.

I look up from behind the steering wheel and notice that the great flock of Canadian Geese I admired before settling into this page have dwindled to about 25.

The 25 are scattered about the grass, their white breasts glowing like snow patches left after the bulk of snow has been absorbed into the ground. Some are preening, and occasionally, one—male or female, I can’t tell the difference –will spread their wings in a morning wake-up stretch, revealing dark feathers beneath.

(Like some of us, some geese are slower to wake up or are simply basking in the glory of the day before getting to work.)

 Don’t let them destroy your connection to life and the joy of living. Appreciate the world we live in and the fantastic beauty surrounding us.

If you are still reading Your Story Matters, Living Your Life in The Most Awesome Way Possible, Chapter 54 "What We Need is a Wise Grandmother," is posted here Page: Edit