Posts Tagged ‘Creativity’

be careful of the words

January 9th, 2012    -    67 Comments

This probably puts me in the category of a Kevin Costner sympathizer.

I’ve begun thinking in apocalyptic terms about what seems certain to be the demise of the US Postal Service. Admittedly, I’m a cultural throwback. I still think of writing as something that you do on paper, with your whole hand, in a cursive script that is elegant and intrinsic, like your DNA. I still think of community as consisting of people with bodies, using arms and legs and good manners to stand in line patiently at the post office, where we buy stamps, grouse about the three-penny price increase, see somebody we know, say a kind word, conduct our minor essential business, and go on our way, until next Monday or Thursday or tax season or the holidays.

I’ve noticed that they’ve started selling greeting cards in my little post office, which is ingenious, really, in a demoralizing way, since the only people who enter a post office these days are the sappy has-beens like me. People who saw those lame Kevin Costner movies in the 1990s predicting the disappearance of the post office, global warming, and the end of the world as we know it. And now we really do know it. read more

paw prints

July 9th, 2011    -    11 Comments

Book Review & Giveaway
by Georgia Miller

Since my daughter’s literary interests have long veered toward the furry four-legged, she was eager to share her latest book review. Read the instructions at the end of this post and you will be entered to win her own special giveaway.

A Dog Named Slugger by Leigh Brill is a touching true story about a young woman and her service dog.

Because of her cerebral palsy, Leigh was in need of a service dog. She had trouble walking and a dog would help her balance and walk up stairs. When she finally received Slugger, she had to go through several training courses. I learned that dogs can be used for more than companionship.

One day, when she was walking around on campus, Leigh met her future husband. They always loved playing Frisbee and catch with Slugger. When Leigh was interviewed for a job, they wouldn’t accept her because of Slugger. No matter how hard they tried to get Leigh to work without her dog, she wouldn’t give in. She was brave.

Of course, after the many years of helping Leigh, Slugger developed arthritis. It eventually got worse and worse, so Leigh decided to get another service dog named Kenda. Kenda was a young, fun-loving puppy. So she helped Leigh during the time when Slugger was sick and had to be put to sleep. That part of the book was so sad I didn’t want to read it at night before bed so I read it in the car on the way to gymnastics.

I thought this was a great book. It is absolutely perfect for the young dog lover, or a dog lover of any age. It’s good to read books about dogs so if you’re looking to get one, you can learn what they are like. This is now one of my favorite books. I loved it. I learned a lot about people and dogs, and it made me feel lucky.

If I could say anything to Leigh Brill it would be that you are really awesome and you are one of my idols. I hope you write a book about you and Kenda!

Now for my giveaway. Please leave a comment with your suggestion of more books I should read and review this summer. If I choose your name, I will send you a super cool duct tape wallet handmade by me!

It’s Kid’s Week on Cheerio Road. Check back frequently for guest posts on the darnedest things.

 

juicy oreo wednesday

May 11th, 2011    -    79 Comments

Book Review & Giveaway
By Georgia Miller

Rip the Page! by Karen Benke is great for the young, aspiring writer. It features everything from ideas to poems. It even has a list of 24 of Karen’s fave words! And, it lives up to its name – there are even places where you can literally rip the page! There are letters written to the reader from authors such as Lemony Snicket and Annie Barrows.

This book will help kids start writing because it gives great ideas, support and different ways to write. It gives examples of fun words to use, and tells how to write poems. Once the author tells you about a way of writing, she gives you a blank page to try it out on. It really helps to put the fun into writing. Now I’m going to share some of my favorite words:
Guadalupe
Basenji
Antidisestablishmentarianism
Bacon
Gymnastics
Juicy
Oreo
Wednesday
Turtle
Frog
Marshmallow
Actually, those are just random words that I happen to like. The point is, though, that this really is a great book for young writers like me. So I give this book two thumbs up! I really love it!

***
You may win a copy of this book by leaving a comment telling Georgia your favorite word. Enter by next Tuesday. She will announce the winner, naturally, on Wednesday, May 18.

The Winner: Georgia selected comment #55, from Caitlin, for her word, “gubbins.” Thank you everyone for your wordplay!

Subscribe to my newsletter • Come to a retreat • Fan me • Follow me.

rilke to rodin

February 13th, 2011    -    2 Comments

With love from Rilke to Rodin:

Why do I write these lines? Not because I believe them to be good but out of my desire to draw near to you so that you can guide my hand. You are the only man in the world of such equilibrium and force that you can stand in harmony with your own work. This work, like you yourself, has become the example for my life and my art. It is not just to write a study that I have come to you, it is to ask you: how should I live? And you have responded: work.

The Living Brush: Zen Creativity Retreat

Subscribe to my newsletter • Come to a retreat • Fan me • Follow me.

so-called authenticity

February 3rd, 2011    -    17 Comments

My teacher Maezumi Roshi used the word so-called a lot. He used it before every word that really wasn’t what it stood for. (That’s every word.) It’s such an efficient way to point out the source of our confusion: confusing the way things really are with the mental artifice of words and concepts.

That’s why I’m majorly peeved by the word authenticity. As soon as I say it, I’m not. Just the notion that there is a way to be more real than you already are is a lie. People who trade in authenticity trade in deception, and it’s a deception that they reinforce by their own salesmanship. So I was happy to expound on the word “authenticity” for the extraordinarily authentic Irène Nam and her recent Simple Soulful photography workshop. Here’s what I said:

What I like to remind people is that authenticity is just a word. It is a word for what you already are. Never let anyone lecture you about what authenticity means, or how to have more of it. You have it in abundant supply. You just don’t believe it.

And then I said a lot more. Oops. Listen only if you have the heart for what is real.

Subscribe to my newsletter • Come to a retreat • Fan me • Follow me.

the living brush

January 28th, 2011    -    3 Comments

It was in February, a week before Maezumi Roshi’s birthday, only his 64th.  I’d thought that I would leave him a little something behind before I raced back home, a poem or a line inscribed when inspiration arrived.  Nothing arrived, and I hurriedly copied a story from a book I carried with me, a book of stories by William Maxwell called All the Days and Nights. The book was a treasure trove, and I’d read and recommended it frequently in the weeks since I’d beelined for the bookstore, upon hearing the delicate, eighty something voice of the author on the car radio one night.  I was at a stoplight on the way home from work and I heard him say, “I’m astonished that there always is a story, but first it has to come out of the absolutely emptied mind, the mysterious.”

The story I copied was called “The Man Who Lost His Father.”

People ask me how I write. I can’t really say, and I really can’t teach it. I’m not sure that anyone can teach you how to write. But this, I can teach.

Please read about The Living Brush, my first creativity retreat for writers and artists, by scrolling down to the depths of my Retreats page. Then let me hear from you.

Illustration (c) 2010 Andrew Buckle

Subscribe to my newsletter • Come to my Monterey retreat • Fan me • Follow me.

The first of everything

December 21st, 2009    -    6 Comments

“If you don’t see the Way you don’t see it even as you walk on it.” – The Identity of Relative and Absolute

In this week of returns and revelations, I’m leaving sand on your doorstep with a few repeat posts. Enjoy your time!

The sandwiches are packed; the watermelon sliced. Today I take the kids to the beach. It is the one day every summer every year that we do this: at season’s end, the four of us, giddy to go, spit-roasted on return. With me: the two teenagers who were once my babysitter’s babies, plus the baby who was once my own.

I believe in cycles like this, in anniversaries and observed traditions. But then, what’s to believe? They come on their own, the returns and repetitions, as reliable as seasons because they are seasons. All of life is a season. We dance in a circle the whole way! The rhythm insistent and true – our part is but to hear the music and move.

Next week we end these short summer months with a true family vacation. Venturing up north, where the ocean is darker, the air misty, the forests thick. Yesterday I remembered that Big Sur was the last vacation destination my husband and I took before Georgia was born. Hardly a vacation, it was the place that the full catastrophe of my sickness was felt, and the shock of its sudden conclusion would bear down. We spent three days roaming and moaning the northern coast, and on return, I was hospitalized. Georgia was born too soon after. This Sunday is the anniversary of her coming home.

So I’m riding the waves and wind these days, again, and next week I’ll find myself back at the first of everything. All over again. Completely new.

Subscribe to my newsletter • Come to my retreat • Fan me • Follow me.

How to unwrap your life

December 8th, 2009    -    22 Comments

I speed-read a short story collection last week, Ishiguro’s Nocturnes, which I cannot recommend. Despite that, one story in the book stuck. It was about the relationship between a cellist and his musical mentor, a woman who described herself as a virtuoso. The woman gives her protégé weeks of technical and inspirational corrections before revealing that she cannot play a cello herself. “We are both virtuosos,” she explained in pitch-perfect logic, “but my virtuosity has not been unwrapped.”

A wrapped-shut virtuoso. Does that resonate?

We dare not yet pick up our own instrument for fear of, well, everything. We are cautious, guarded, unprepared. Getting closer, we tell ourselves. Getting ready. Awaiting the moment of fulfillment, when our mastery will be revealed. In the meantime, our virtuosity is unchallenged, shielded beneath layers of tissue, inert, immobile, a precious empty ideal. Held in reserve for one day.

How to Unwrap Your Life

1. Do something you’ve been avoiding, without thinking twice.
2. This might mean that you need to mail the letter or send the proposal. It will put things in motion.
3. This might mean you need to make the call or send the resume. Go for broke.
4. This might mean that you need to tackle the hand wash cold.
5. This might mean you need to make a meal from whatever you have on hand in the kitchen, without restraint or apology.
6. This might mean a dog walk or a litter box cleaning.
7. This might mean forgetting what he said, she said, you said and everything that has been said before now.
8. No one can tell you a thing. There is no “how to do.”
9. There is only do.
10. Play as if your life depends on it. Without you, there’s no music.

Subscribe to my newsletter • Come to my retreat • Fan me • Follow me.

Unbearable likeness of being

July 17th, 2009    -    9 Comments

I feel brave when I’m performing
It is the color of confidence
And it feels like magic

This is a page in Georgia’s art journal she made as part of the Mini-Mermaid art e-camp this summer. She made it right before she auditioned for a part in a play last week when she was beaming pure gold and glitter like the color of confidence.

She didn’t get the part she tried for. She didn’t get any part she tried for. They gave her the part of a boy. This seems to be a recurring tragedy in her life drama. She cried for a day, and for two nights she wore sponge curlers to bed so she could convince the director, too late, that she is a girl like the girls they cast.

But she feels brave when she’s performing. She’s decided she likes her part. She’s having fun, surrounded by friends, intoxicated by the 190-proof enthusiasm that is the stage life. Watching her dive, and dip and swim to the surface again, I’ve decided that I like her part too. It’s called Georgia, and like magic, she can be anything.

Note to self: nevermind

July 16th, 2009    -    2 Comments

There must be something in the connotation of the word “being” that makes it seem like the opposite of “doing.” I say that because I’m sometimes asked how, as an avowed meditator, I ever get things done. Perhaps they picture me curled up in a corner.

A regular meditation practice is the last thing that prevents me from totally engaging in activity. It helps me do more even as I think about it less. Hidden in the question is how preoccupied we are with to-doing rather than doing. To-doing or should-be-doing takes up quite a bit of time. It could well be the principal occupation of our lives: imagining scenarios, planning strategies, fretting outcomes, second-guessing choices and then sticking the whole rigamarole back into the familiar rut that’s so hard to get out of.

Emptying the mind of that kind of doing opens it up to a spontaneous and creative undoing that is quite marvelous and, I dare say, breathtaking.

Read the rest and leave a comment on “The Laundry Line”
my blog at Shambhala SunSpace

Subscribe to my newsletter • Come to my retreat

Actual testimonial and giveaway by a mini-mermaid

June 11th, 2009    -    17 Comments

I think this camp looks fun because I love art and drawing. In this camp a video is given once a week to give you the theme of an artbook page. We then make a whole artbook by ourselves. Flickr photos of your drawings will be posted for those who want to share. I want to do it because I love art and because I want to have other friends all over the world I can share it with. During the summer my mom usually says “Get off the computer right now!” or “Don’t even think about turning on the TV!” but this way I can do my art and connect with my new art friends. I’m gonna do it this summer. How about you?

Yours,
Georgia G. Miller

little girls changing the world from mccabe russell on Vimeo.

Georgia is signed up as a mini-mermaid art e-camper this summer with the one and only dancing mermaid and we have an even bigger mess in store with one full camp tuition to give away to another girl age 8-13 (or younger, or older!) The camp runs all summer so you can start anytime and count Georgia G. Miller among your best art friends in the whole world. I’m tellin’ ya, she’s devoted to her worldwide web of friends. Leave a comment here, with a way to reach you, and give your girl a chance to show her stuff this summer. Winner to be drawn and announced sincerely by Georgia G. Miller next Wednesday, June 17 on her last day of school. Look out world!

Winner: Georgia picked Shanna. Congratulations!

From a tipi to a tribe

May 27th, 2009    -    2 Comments


Perhaps if this woman had ever been here, she would have had the fearless forethought to stay there. Maybe if more girls could find their own expression, they wouldn’t be lost in translation. It’s not farfetched to imagine the day we’ll have one of our own braves as chief. That would indeed be tribal justice.

My friend Wendy Cook has taken an impossible dream out of her laptop and into her lap with the launch of the Mighty Girl Art empowerment camp starting this summer. It’s for our tweens riding the raging waters between slippery rocks and hard places. (And those aren’t just the frontiers where calls get dropped.) I have a tween, and I hope in the months and years ahead she will learn to trust the voice of her native intelligence above the mindless cacophony of the crowd. But she needs wise mentors and guides beyond her mother’s fleet fingertips. All of our girls do.

What I really want is for Wendy to bring her tipi to my front lawn for a West Coast outpost. Saving that, I want you to look around the camp see how you can add your muscle to the magic. How can we grow this? Spiral it outward? I liken it to my own recent kids’ writing project, which has ricocheted to 70 places all over the world in just the last week. There’s no underestimating the power of getting ink all over your hands, and no one has to make a case for it.

It’s about time, girls, to put our faith in the tipi instead of the WiFi, connect to the sacred circle and not just a cell network, and flex something other than our thumbs.

We have a whole world to rescue and seven generations to serve, starting now.

Whoop!


Subscribe to my newsletter • Come to my retreat.

After the ecstasy, the ecstasy

May 20th, 2009    -    10 Comments


For the before, click here.

Dear Karen,
Thank you for helping us doing our book. You are a very good author. Yesterday at the book tour I was kind of shy to read it but then I was very excited to do it. The kids asked us how many months did it take to do the book. We said it took us about 2 months. We kind of got like every kid’s question. They loved us and they loved our books a lot. One of the kids said I want to be an author too!

You are the best author ever in the whole wide world!

Love,
Wendy

Pages: 1 2 3 Next

on my plate

Attention - Beginnings - Childhood - Creativity - Dharma - Georgia Grace - Giveaway - Hand Wash Cold - Happiness - Love - Maezumi - meditation - Mindfulness - Mother's Plunge - Parenting - Practice - Retreat - samsara - Satisfaction - True Nature - Trust - Truth - Work-Life balance - Writing Life - Zen

Special Friends Offer

Save 40% on Two Signed Copies of Hand Wash Cold.

Choose destination:
Names for inscriptions:

archives by month

twitter bits

written to read

stay in touch