The Beautiful Answer

Reframing the Future

I can’t believe it, but this is my 365th post. It’s been a year since I started this blog,  beginning with a line from an e.e. cummings poem as my inspiration: 

“Always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question.” 

In the year I’ve been writing, I’ve asked a lot of questions. It began with wanting somehow to release some of the negativity I felt surrounded me, to let go of some aspects of myself that I had outgrown, and release some people who weren’t really making my life a more loving and rewarding place to be. 

As I began to actually go out of my way to search for the beauty, I found it. Almost immediately I could feel my heart and spirit becoming lighter. Which is not to say that all of a sudden, everything got amazing and better. But I started looking deeper and even deeper. I started noticing more. Stuff that used to bug the crap out of me, like the endless whining for more love, more attention and more … whatever someone didn’t have, began to sound like background noise. 

In reframing my present, I found. I was reframing the future as well. 

There is no real way to tell where any of us are going, even though I work in the realm of the intuitive every day, and have seen first hand how much this stuff works. But I know that I am headed in a far better direction than the one I had going a year ago. I don’t have to search for happiness now. It’s sitting right in front of me.

I can take my  camera and find a shaft of sunlight, or a little kid blowing bubbles, and everything changes. In that moment, I have found contentment, all on my own, not counted on someone else to determine my mood. I have claimed an entirely new set of tools to work with, broken them in, and even shared them with some of my clients. 

So on this last day of this blog, I want to say thank you to the people I have met. You are a cool bunch, with lots of interesting things to say. You’re funny and human and endlessly searching for that one perfect photo, or post, or joke to share with others. Because blogging is nothing but sharing, after all. So in that spirit, I invite anyone who wants to stay in touch to join me at http://www.sassypsychic.com. Think about signing up for the mailing list (don’t worry, I don’t overemail, and you always have the choice to unsubscribe), friending me on Facebook, or following me on Twitter (links on the left side of the Sassy Psychic home page). 

I hope your journey is made happier for being here. 

Why the Hell Not?

This question is going through my mind more and more as the days fly by. I only have a few more posts until I get to the one year mark with this blog, and will have to post some channeling about it before I finish this up.

Today, all I can seem to think about are moments from my past. They seem to come out of nowhere, leveling me with their intensity, until I’m forced to start looking for patterns. These are people from my past that I have not thought about for years, and others that I have set aside to grow in my own direction. What they have in common I do not yet know. 

When I was younger, I was a little dreamer without much time to dream. From my earliest years, I’ve always had a lot of jobs, and did my writing and performing (then, at least) on the side when I had time. I was taught to be afraid of nearly everyone and everything, lest it somehow be coming along to take advantage of me. But I was hungry for experience, and soon learned to throw off my fears. Not that I’m never fearful, mind you. I just have a much better handle on what’s useful fear, and what’s not. 

As this blogging project draws to a close, and things have opened up for me in an incredible new way, I’ve been thinking about how far I have come since I was that fearful little kid, and what it all might mean in the scheme of my larger life. Though I don’t have all the answers, and they’re not really tying themselves up into neat little bundles of understanding, I do have a new resolve, a WTF spirit about me, more than usual. 

If I don’t know exactly where all this is taking me, I can say why the hell not, and dive in with a little more conviction. That right there I can do. 

Moving Ahead

I’m taking an important step tomorrow, and I suppose I’m still processing it. Part of me has looked forward to this, the stepping out from behind the keyboard, and then there’s part that’s comfortable there, amongst the letters and words. Maybe all writers are a little control-freaky. They create worlds; they animate the people in them. Now it’s time to see what people do from that point forward. 

It’s scary to let go of your work, to allow others to shape it according to their own whims and feelings.

It’s scarier to think about others not seeing it, or playing with it, or trying to find it’s truths. 

So there’ll be airplanes, and there will be shuttles, and rental cars and sleeplessness. There will be squishing in next to strangers who’ve hopefully showered, and bad airport food and probably caffeine, though I seldom have it anymore. There will be reading and sleeping and looking out the window, impossibly high, at clouds and sun and sky. 

Then there will be beauty, of one kind or another, if only that one person has seen fit to look inside something I have created, pull out its meaningful bits, and make vulnerability a thing to be admired. 

Missed Connections

I used to read them, back in the ’80s and ’90s, those missed connections at the back of most major newspapers. One person sees another, thinks there’s chemistry or eye contact and advertises to see if the slight chance that the other person feels the same way, not to mention reads the same newspaper, could lead to something more. 

Part of me used to find them funny, or sad, or some combination of both. Now that I deal with all kinds of people on any given day, I’ve come to realize that missed connections may be the most common of all. 

Today I read a few people, helped extend healing to a few others, and got some writing and research in. On any given day, a theme will emerge, and today’s was love that had somehow taken a sharp right or left turn, or a connection that were supposed to happen which just somehow … didn’t. 

These days tend to make me sad. After all, my years of reading people of all kinds has taught me that we’re so seriously after the same things that no matter where you come from, no matter what your race, creed, color, shape or size, you want to be loved. You want to feel special, to know someone cares about you. To not feel alone. 

You want to feel safe and secure. You want to know happiness. And this happiness sometimes depends on forming and maintaining connections with others.

How can we form these connections when we’re moving so fast beyond one another?

How can we see that we may be perfect for someone right in front of us?

And how can we slow down  for a few minutes at least, to see the person right beside us, who wants and needs the very same things we do? 

So Humbled to Be Part of This

Today I reached a milestone in more ways than one.  I’ve mentioned before that I am a writer, and have been doing this professionally (i.e., getting paid for it) for better than 15 years. I’m also a reader and healer, and have been doing this professionally (again, getting paid for it in a regular basis) for even longer. Sometimes, none of that matters, like today. 

I have been on the radio a lot more these days, to talk about Searching for Sassy, a new e-book I’m releasing called Astrology for Foodies, and a workshop I’m teaching on Intuitive Dating. That’s given rise to a pretty big surge in new clients as well. I’m getting people from England, Holland, California, Japan, Australia and New Zealand, and other parts of Europe. Even got a new client from the Cayman Islands yesterday — pretty neat. 

Let me say for anyone who doesn’t know that that it can be jarring to meet so many new people every day if you’re intuitive. You’re picking up on all sorts of energy and have to read it while talking (hard enough) and then make sure you’re making sense to your client (harder still), all the while toggling back and forth from this world to the other. But every once in a while, you meet someone you’re clearly so destined to meet, where your skill set, manner and belief system are so clearly meant to come into contact with someone else’s that it’s like two trains running toward each other on the same track. 

I don’t want to mention this person’s name, to protect his privacy. Suffice it to say that like many people, he was moving through a crisis, a time of great upheaval and tumult. I meet a lot of people like that and have learned to get out of the way and let them have their process. I can’t solve everything. All I can do is apply my skills and hope for the best. So I did, and he healed somewhat, becoming lighter and lighter as I talked to him. 

By the end, he claimed to be a skeptic who had heard me on the radio and, as he became overwhelmed and began to cry, said he knew when he heard my voice that I was the one who had to deliver a message about his healing and growth through this tough time. O … M … G. 

Cut to me dropping to my knees, emotionally speaking.

It’s not about me. I repeat; it’s not about me. I am a vessel for the divine. Its various aspects operate through my body and mind on a daily basis. It’s such a tough thing to even get across, after so long doing this. But I am so damn humbled to be part of this process, so grateful to be right here, right now, to help one more person move through the pain and back into the light. 

I strive to be helpful, to be of service, and hope that I am. 

Short Post Tonight

… and to sleep with tired me. So much rewarding stuff going on these days, but I’m still trying to take time to smell the cappuccino. actually, that’s a terrible metaphor. I hate coffee, any kind of coffee, with a passion. No amount of coffee would probably even keep me awake right now anyway. 

I love my blog. I love my life. But I love sleep more now. 

I can always tell when it’s time to scale back on the blogging and ramp up the writing when the characters of some new work set up camp in my brain and won’t quit, even when I want and need to sleep. 

So it’s off to San Francisco for me this weekend, to attend a private reading & signing party for Searching for Sassy, then back to L.A. for some theater stuff (trying to moe my play to NYC & L.A.) and then back on the road to Baltimore, to attend a performance of Punk Rock Mom and teach a workshop on Intutive Dating at breathe books. 

Can’t wait for all that travel, and to keep listening to the stories that want to tumble out form between my ears. But tomorrow, guys, tomorrow. This lady needs her rest. 

Raise Your Voice

OK, I’ve finally had it. In any average week, I can only get by for so long before the siren song of writing — something, anything — begins to call. I try to resist, feeling more and more like a freakin’ junkie with every day that passes. But eventually, I have to, I want to, give in. 

Then, usually, I spend about two weeks debating — should it be a play or a novel? A book of non-fiction or a screenplay? I have a lot of ideas, and am always shocked when people don’t have them, or come up to me assuming that I need their ideas: their Aunt Molly’s story about lost shoes, say, or Uncle Floyd’s Battle of the Bulge experiences. 

Um, no thanks. 

Today I finally broke. With book marketing moving along pretty well, radio appearances and tour stuff humming along, I have a little more time. Sure, I have a lot of new clients due to the release of Searching for Sassy, and a pretty full schedule on a daily and weekly basis. But I can sleep on some days, indulge my twin passions for reading and learning new skills, and write. 

So I started a new play today, currently without a title, dealing with all the little ways we lie every day to make our lives more palatable. I don’t know if it’s a need to raise my voice, or a compelling desire to tell stories or some combination of both. All I know is that I have to do it. I can’t not do it. And when it calls, I listen. 

I Know How He Feels

“I consider thay I have many responsibilities but none greater than this: to last … and get my work done. I want to be an honest man and a good writer.” 

— James Baldwin (Notes of a Native Son)

You Get What You Need

I’ve been thinking about direction today, and how what we set out to get often differs from what we get. I don’t say that in a pessimistic way, assuming that somehow our needs or goals will never be accomplished. I don’t say it out of bitterness or even a defeatist attitude. Not at all. There is wisdom inside that statement — You Get What You Need — and all we need to do is look inside it, without judgement, to truly understand it. 

Direction is something we start out moving toward. It’s what motivates us and keeps us moving along a path. But direction can, and often is, changed as we make our way toward those goals. Contrary to popular opinion, it’s not about being punished for not being good enough or deserving enough. It’s not about being open to staying on the path, or not. Or starting out in one direction, then taking a detour before dovetailing back with your original direction. 

I started out wanting to be a filmmaker. I wrote a few things, directed a few things, and still love movies. But other than writing them, I have no desire to make them anymore. I was a professional writer and editor for many years, and though I still write books, plays and sometimes screenplays, another aspect of my life — healing — arose when I needed it most. 

A few people in my family went through some illnesses. I went through one, a big one, and used all that I had learned about healing to heal myself. And now I can’t imagine my life with this additional aspect. Some part of me believes that there will probably be still more directions or tangents, to my life. Maybe there will be television, or business partnerships that expand what I’m already doing. 

It’s true that we all get what we need. But according to Mick and the boys, we may also get what we want sometimes, and not just in song. 

And Away We Go

When you’re approaching a big deadline in life, you can go two ways, I’ve found. One is to ball up into the fetal position and rock bak and forth in bed, wondering why you ever had the idea to write that book, or stage that play, or record that song. The other is to try your best to surf the energy of the moment, bypassing any crazy things like sleep or, in many moments, food and proper hydration. 

The latter brings about better balance, and maybe stronger mental health. The former results in, well, better rest, I suppose, as long as you can sleep while fetal. The reason I’m thinking about this, I’m sure has to do with the fact that I have a book coming out in 9 days. I’m not scared. Hell, I’ve been in this position two other times. I’m not exactly blase, either. That just smacks of a kind of arrogance I hope I never feel. I’m somewhere in the middle, even though there are times when the gravity of this moment of my life sneaks up on my and pounds me down to the ground.

It’s in those moments that I find the best stuff to work with. Today I found a morsel of fear connected all the way back to high school, and released that shit for good. I found a pocket of anticipation, and a wee bit of anxiety and, yes, even some anger that had been held back for so long I couldn’t even trace it back to its source. Gone, gone and gone. Thanks for playing.  Don’t need you anymore. 

Releasing all this old stuff in preparation for my book launch was so fun I was releasing negative thought patterns on the treadmill, and kicking old beliefs to the curb in Trader Joe’s. And even when a woman almost ran over my foot with her shopping cart, I was able to laugh and get out of the way, thanking whatever force gave me these reflexes and this indelibly powerful will to live. Not just live. Thrive.