The Beautiful Answer

A Breakthrough

In the eleven months I’ve been keeping this blog, I’ve begun to notice a few things about the way the mind works. How it strives to keep things looking bleak, perhaps so that when joy occurs, it will stand out by comparison. 

Then there are those days when you’re able to break through a pattern that has been so much a part of your life that it’s become like a second skin. Over the years I have raged at it, coaxed and cajoled it, even tried to reason with it as I attempted to move toward some sort of final releasing point, where I could finally be rid of it for good. Today, I stood up for myself in a way I have never done before. And it wasn’t really like anything I expected. 

Most people picture fighting of some sort when you say you’re standing up for yourself. They imagine swords drawn, defensive battle postures, grimacing faces. Not that I didn’t get irritated — I suppose sone of that is required before we all reach our limits and set an impermeable boundary. I did, a little. And then I got tough. 

It’s not something I can talk about in detail because it’s still ongoing, but suffice it to say that I have been offered several great career opportunities since my book Searching for Sassy came out. I’ve had agents circling, publishing companies interested in putting it out on their own labels, and film and television producers vying for the rights. It’s all been pretty heady and confusing at times, even though I have a pretty good working knowledge of how these things work, since I’ve been employed in both the publishing and film industries in the past. 

The thing is, there are all kinds of people, in each of these businesses. There are your sharks, who want to dominate you (and the conversation, apparently), even if no money is actually yet changing hands. There are your artist wannabees, who will never get quite as close to writing a book as sitting across from you on an expensive couch, and those who crave power and influence, to somehow affect the culture at large. You meet enough of them, and they all start to look the same. 

But I’ve learned that breakthroughs seldom come when you’re trying to make them happen. They tend to creep up on you, waiting to strike when you’re not expecting it. So you have to be ready to walk away from something if need be, even if the very thing you’re being offered is the thing you want most. 

I did that today. I was ready to walk away, even though it was painful, and I ended up winning. It required absolute nerves of steel. And even though this may not happen all the time, or even most of the time, just the act of standing firm and saying no made my legs and little stronger underneath me, and my connection to the earth all the support I needed to move forward. 

Pilates, My Frenemy

In the past, I’ve taken a few Pilates classes, mostly mat classes which hurt my neck. I know it’s something about the way I’m holding my body when I do it, but I don’t get much enjoyment out of the work, and not enough results to justifty the neck pain. 

Then I discovered Reformer classes. What the … ?  Just enough ass kicking to make them worthwhile, and every time, there are new exercises that work muscles you didn’t even know you had. Consider me converted. 

Problem is, now that I’ve begun to go to class on a regular basis, my body is adjusting. I want to push myself further, and have to counter that urge in my head as I’m trying to work on my form. Because if you’ve ever tried to simultaneously do a hard exercise, balance your body on a moving sled, and somehow not look like an idiot in the process, you’re doing a pretty good job. But you still want to press harder, for some reason. 

Tonight when I was driving home from class, body aching, soul triumphant, muscles taxed and shaking, I started thinking about that thing we all have, to push beyond, or try to turn working out, a singular pursuit if ever there was one, into a competitive sport. It’s why I never took Reformer classes before. It just seemed like a bunch of anorexics speed-crunching themselves to the brink of exhaustion. 

I’m happy to be wrong, of course. Every teacher and class is completely different in feeling and tone. It’s that bit in my mind I have to work on, which I try to counter by telling it that taking it slow not only makes the muscles work harder, and become more sculpted. It also helps the brain incorporate the effects of the exercise — oxygenating every part of my body from the blood to the cells, and making my heart sing in every sense of that word. 

Sure, I’ll be sore as hell tomorrow. And that’s why Pilates and I have agreed to disagree about how best to get a good workout in. Frenemies are like that. They reflect you just enough to show you where you’re fucking up, and are just enough of a good time to make you forget about why you hated them in the first place. 

The Way It Happens

Quietly but insistently, my mind has been talking to me these past few days. It has gained in strength during my nearly seven months of reframing practice, and even under stressful conditions, has helped me see clearly. It has slowed down enough during the potentially reactive bits that I could get my bearings and not add any more suffering to the mix, or exacerbate the situation at hand. 

When the shit hits the fan, as it has this week, I can’t imagine where I would be without my practice. Fifteen years is a long time to sit around and do nothing (not all of those fifteen years of course, but you know what I mean). To sit and not try to get anywhere, or do anything, seems crazy luxurious when you consider it from that angle. And just when you think there’s no “there” there, suddenly there is. When there is no net, your mind suddenly becomes one for you. 

It makes no sense on paper. It’s intangible as hell, and not likely to become any clearer. The results of my reframing can’t be put in a frame and hung on my wall, or poured into my car to make it start. It won’t feed me or clothe me, and it may never save my life. But it makes the quality of my life on this planet better, and less knee-jerk because of it. 

So mind, this one’s for you. You’re resilient and think for yourself. You don’t follow gurus blindly, and question nearly everything that filters through from the senses. You lean toward grace, and kindness, and curiosity. You seek out the beauty in every moment. And I’m ever so glad you’re in my head, and help me make my time here meaningful. What I would be without you is scary to think about. 

The way it happens, I’m deeply in love with you, even when we don’t get along, or you race too fast for me to sleep. If my consciousness resides in you, as some people believe, I hope we stay together lifetime after lifetime, like two buds just lookin’ for some fun in the cosmos. 

The Beautiful & the Fake

For the past 143 days, I’ve worked on reframing my daily reality, finding one beautiful thing, or one thing worth thinking about a little more deeply among the events of life. I’ve seen sadly beautiful things, beauty that inspired me and spurred my own creative work, and even tinily beautiful things that made me giggle with joy. 

Mostly what’s changed for me is that I see differently. It’s literally as if someone has reached behind my eyes and focused me somehow, or altered the section of my brain that interprets visual information. I don’t have to try to look beyond my normal mindframe, or work at locating what’s great about my life. Somehow, instead of receding into the background, these amazing and meaningful moments, images, people and exchanges leap to the forefront on most days, grabbing my attention and silencing anything my consciousness may want to say about them. 

In contrast, the stuff that’s fake (hey, I live in L.A.; I know a thing or two about fake) seems larger somehow and more obvious, almost grotesque. What’s falsely supposed to be great, or pretty, or “special” usually isn’t. Parts of the world are obsessed with celebrity marriages and divorces more than economic inequality or new innovation, so for me it’s time to make a decision. Lead, follow, or get out of the way? 

Me? I think I’ll lead. In my own way, in my own time. Anything less would be denying all that’s been given to me by this amazing experience. 

Reframing in the Moment

I love the moment in any average day when my brain registers the opportunity to reframe. I can practically feel the synapses firing, and my mind reaching into the universe for another reality, another possible outcome. Sometimes it happens right then and there, and other times I have to consciously bring it forward after some time has passed.

Today, I was engaged in one of life’s most boring activities — yes, filing. There’s a reason most people fob this stuff off onto temps, interns and assistants. It’s widely and incorrectly) believed that it requires the intelligence of an acorn squash to do it. Sometimes I can get into a Zen kind of rhythm, while others it’s like every single piece of paper and file folder is personally trying to torture me.

The reframe arose in the moment this time (yay for that). Since I had to get through this task somehow (I force myself to do a little each week, so hopefully the giant, multi-year pile will dwindle to an inch or so by the end of September), I saw myself as the ocean and the wind, working on a sand dune. Wearing it away, week by week, month by month, year after year. Winning, eventually, as nature usually does.

And when my daily allowance of filing was finished, it didn’t feel so much like torture that had ended but a victory of the smallest but most potent kind.