Author: Bo

 

When we’re granted life-sustaining rain from above, we are generally thankful. In Arizona, where I live, this is especially true. I often hear it said, or say myself, “What a beautiful day,” as the cloudy skies weep. A thunderstorm is an occasion for fascination and wonder. Rain in the summer is welcome if you aren’t at the beach or eating outdoors or you’re intent on staying dry. Gardens and crops flourish. The air is cleared and scented with the good earth. There’s reflection in the rivers, lakes and the fertile mind.

Do you have any fond memories of incidents that occurred in the rain? Times of romance, perseverance, communing with the great outdoors? How about times of frustration due to rain that just wouldn’t stop or was damaging your property? Rain can be memorable, one way or the other.

I recall once when our family was visiting my uncle and his family in the small town of Hamburg, New York. We were there just for the day and it turned out to be a rainy one. My cousins and I were taken to a movie theater to entertain us. Rain showers were coming down as we went into the dark theater and got involved in some film that had to do in part with a man and his horse crossing a desert in the American Southwest. They were on the verge of dying of thirst in a blistering hot, rocky dry river bed. The glare of the sun lit up the screen so bright we could practically feel the heat. At the height of this scene, waters from the storm outside suddenly broke open a door at the lower left of the theater. A wave that I recall to be about six feet high crashed into the open area in front of the stage. People down front were screaming and scrambling for higher ground. The movie was canceled and we were sent home. On the way back, we saw big piles of hail in neighborhood yards.

Of course, I’m not particularly nostalgic about those kinds of incidents. I’m thinking about the warm, summer rain that makes us slow down and live in the peaceful moment or enhances a special event. What would Woodstock have been without the weekend of heavy rains? There has been so much music paying homage to the subject that we can all probably come up with related songs which mean something to us. Looking for some, I came across a list of 15 songs for a rainy summer day. They cover a wide span of time and musical styles, going back to 1952 with Singin’ in the Rain, through 1984’s Purple Rain, country music’s Raining on a Sunday from 2003, to 2011’s It Will Rain. For me, there is no song with more passion than the Temptations’ I Wish it Would Rain. And I can’t fail to mention Rain by the Beatles and Have You Ever Seen the Rain by Creedence Clearwater Revival.

This is monsoon season in Arizona and much of the American Southwest. Unlike the majority of the Northern Hemisphere, summer here is not a time we relish. There are five months of extreme heat ( by which I mean average highs of 90-plus degrees) to navigate through. We stay inside, as the residents of the cold climates do during the winter months. The joke goes, “You know you’re from Arizona if you wear oven mitts when you drive.” June is my least favorite month of the year because the temperatures rise well above 100 each day for long stretches and there is no precipitation for any kind of relief. The dry heat isn’t as oppressive as in the humid regions, but an analogy I hear regularly is how it’s like being in an oven blast.

 

 

However, around the beginning of July, the wind shifts to the north out of the Gulf of Mexico and with it comes the moisture. When the monsoon is on a roll, it rains almost every day for weeks at a time and we have our relief. The majestic thunderstorms charge the air with excitement. The winds bringing the change can drop the temperature by 20 degrees in a heartbeat. The rain itself is sometimes cool enough to refresh and other times warm enough to make us feel we’re in a tropical rainforest. Before the storms start, much of the wild vegetation is parched brown. Within a couple weeks, we are up to our knees in lush green growth of all kinds. Rivers and washes flow, water barrels become full and there are new stories to share all around. Our own rock landscaping is full of green. This year, I have a virtual army of zinnia “volunteers” that will bring us flowers for the summer. Alleluiah, the desert is alive! I love the summer rains.

 

 

 

I just finished reading Don Miguel Ruiz’ The Mastery of Love, subtitled A Practical Guide to the Art of Relationship. I would be remiss to just move on without sharing my reflections on this important book somewhere.

I can’t tell you I agreed with everything the author had to say in his rather extreme view of the world. It is part of his philosophy that we’re all masters, but that through indoctrination as a human, we become masters of suffering through anger, jealousy, sadness and self-rejection and other negativities. They’re incorporated into our personalities to the point that we don’t even know we’re doing it. Ruiz tells us humans are living a dream of hell when it comes to relationships, then lays in some wisdom that I find to be remarkably profound. He has a way of being blunt, but sometimes you need to bring out the club to reach homo sapiens to get past all of its preconceived ideas. Accepting, for now, the premise that this is all Maya or a dreamlike illusion, we look at a bit of poetry he writes:

“Life is nothing but a dream,                                                                                                                                                     and if we are artists,                                                                                                                                                                 then we can create our life with Love,                                                                                                                                       and our dream becomes                                                                                                                                                           a masterpiece of art.”

Ah, the crux of the matter. This life of endless potential…a mix of constant challenges that remind us of how limited we are, learning opportunities, joy, suffering, fears, anticipation, disappointment and on and on…this life can become a masterpiece by mastering Love. Okay, now, I feel the attention deficit creeping in with some of you. Don’t be so quick to pull away. Ruiz is not one to leave us with a nice little conceptual piece of lightweight philosophy without any backing. He is a staunch realist on some level and would not be satisfied to give us empty information we can’t truly use. I happen to love that verse above and see how it can be pragmatic in an idealistic scenario. Maybe, though, I’m just a naive optimist. Let’s see what else he brings to the table.

He points out that we can live our lives in a track of love or a track of fear. How much of your life is guided by fear rather than love? It’s rampant. Ruiz raises our awareness of this condition and shows us in one chapter what a perfect relationship looks like.

Paraphrasing now, he says in order to truly love, we have to be able to forgive. All the blame and anger we’ve been harboring for what’s been done to us is holding our love hostage. Not only that, Ruiz states it is vital for us to forgive ourselves first. Then we can forgive everyone else. Forgiveness goes deep, too. It’s not just some surface acceptance of an apology. When it comes to ourselves, it requires healing our emotional psyche. The chapter on this definitely strikes a chord within me. He draws an analogy to how it is when we have to heal a wound or disease to our skin. The doctor may have to cut the skin to allow cleaning of the affected area, “apply medicine to it and keep the wounds clean until they heal and no longer hurt us.” He likens the scalpel to truth when it comes to opening the emotional wounds. Seeing the truth allows us to start the healing process as cutting into an infected body part enables the doctor to see why it isn’t healing. If we don’t view painful incidents truthfully, we live these incidents over and over, punishing ourselves in the process and suffering for years, possibly for the rest of our lives. The emotional poison we fail to release builds all the while. He points out that incidents of injustice are not always still happening. They probably aren’t happening right now, yet if we hold onto them and keep them mentally in the present, we suffer as though they are continually happening. “That is a choice,” says Ruiz.

Once the wounds are opened, cleaning begins. Forgiveness is the cleaning agent to use “because you don’t want to suffer and hurt yourself every time you remember what they did to you.” It helps you feel better. The next step is applying the medicine and the medicine is love–unconditional love. We love ourselves, our neighbors, our enemies. That self-love step has to happen first, though, and then the others can follow. When we are generating love, we are happy, not judging ourselves or others, not putting expectations out there and not trying to mould someone to our concepts of what they should be like.

We are Life. We are sources of Love. Surrender to these realities and see the improvement in your relationships, starting with you.

 

 

 

As a writer, I know from personal experience how cathartic it can be to put words on paper. This is especially true when the words represent a painful situation that I have not come to terms with yet. I also know this to be true in composing music. I can see how the painter or the sculptor can find therapy in the creation of their works as well. It must be true for the other arts as well. My primary focus here, however, is in reference to writing.

I’m going to quote some informative content I found in the publication known as UCLA Newsroom, from its Science & Technology section. Stuart Wolpert wrote the piece in 2007. The following are excerpts from his article.

“Why does putting our feelings into words — talking with a therapist or friend, writing in a journal — help us to feel better? A new brain imaging study by UCLA psychologists reveals why verbalizing our feelings makes our sadness, anger and pain less intense…

“When people see a photograph of an angry or fearful face, they have increased activity in a region of the brain called the amygdala, which serves as an alarm to activate a cascade of biological systems to protect the body in times of danger. Scientists see a robust amygdala response even when they show such emotional photographs subliminally, so fast a person can’t even see them…”

“The study showed that while the amygdala was less active when an individual labelled the feeling, another region of the brain was more active: the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex. This region is located behind the forehead and eyes and has been associated with thinking in words about emotional experiences. It has also been implicated in inhibiting behavior and processing emotions, but exactly what it contributes has not been known.

 

” ‘What we’re suggesting is when you start thinking in words about your emotions —labeling emotions — that might be part of what the right ventrolateral region is responsible for,’ Lieberman said.

“If a friend or loved one is sad or angry, getting the person to talk or write may have benefits beyond whatever actual insights are gained.These effects are likely to be modest, however, Lieberman said.

” ‘We typically think of language processing in the left side of the brain; however, this effect was occurring only in this one region, on the right side of the brain,’ he said. ‘It’s rare to see only one region of the brain responsive to a high-level process like labelling emotions.’

Many people are not likely to realize why putting their feelings into words is helpful.

” ‘If you ask people who are really sad why they are writing in a journal, they are not likely to say it’s because they think this is a way to make themselves feel better,’ Lieberman said. ‘People don’t do this to intentionally overcome their negative feelings; it just seems to have that effect. Popular psychology says when you’re feeling down, just pick yourself up, but the world doesn’t work that way. If you know you’re trying to pick yourself up, it usually doesn’t work — self-deception is difficult. Because labelling your feelings doesn’t require you to want to feel better, it doesn’t have this problem.’

“Thirty people, 18 women and 12 men between ages of 18 and 36, participated in Lieberman’s study at UCLA’s Ahmanson-Lovelace Brain Mapping Center.They viewed images of individuals making different emotional expressions. Below the picture of the face they either saw two words, such as ‘angry’ and ‘fearful,’ and chose which emotion described the face, or they saw two names, such as ‘Harry’ and ‘Sally,’ and chose the gender-appropriate name that matched the face.

“Lieberman and his co-authors — UCLA assistant professor of psychology Naomi Eisenberger, former UCLA psychology undergraduate Molly Crockett, former UCLA psychology research assistant Sabrina Tom, UCLA psychology graduate student Jennifer Pfeifer and Baldwin Way, a postdoctoral fellow in Lieberman’s laboratory — used functional magnetic resonance imaging to study subjects’ brain activity.

” ‘When you attach the word ‘angry,’ you see a decreased response in the amygdala,’ Lieberman said. ‘When you attach the name ‘Harry,’you don’t see the reduction in the amygdala response.’

” ‘When you put feelings into words, you’re activating this prefrontal region and seeing a reduced response in the amygdala,’ he said. ‘In the same way you hit the brake when you’re driving when you see a yellow light, when you put feelings into words, you seem to be hitting the brakes on your emotional responses.’ ”

As a result, an individual may feel less angry or less sad.”

I find it satisfying to see scientific evidence to validate something I know to be true. I don’t mind having empirical evidence on my side either. So, write those feelings down. Write those heart-wrenching stories. Your brain will cooperate and you can move on with a little wisdom in your pocket.

 

 

 

In my most recent blog, I touched on the idea that we should have fun in our art, using a couple examples of offbeat humor that plays with language in a humorous way. I’d like to carry this theme out in a more direct manner this time. Let’s take a good look at humorists.

The funny thing about humorists for me is that I didn’t know what I was talking about when I was talking about humorists. I thought they were distinguished from all the other purveyors of comedy by the fact they did humor in writing. I knew Mark Twain was a humorist. Dave Barry is a great one of our time. Erma Bombeck was arguably the greatest female humorist, at least in the United States. I looked upon Garrison Keillor as a humorist. And he is. But if I had limited him to writing, he would have failed my test because he uses his humor verbally as well as in print. Merriam-Webster defines humorist as “a person specializing in or noted for humor.”

Well, this just about ruins my whole premise for this article. A stand-up comic qualifies, a vaudeville team also. Comedic actors, puppeteers, class clowns even–they all fit the description under that definition. Is there no special place in humor heaven for the classiest of them all? I feel like lodging a protest to the Keepers of the Wit in all nations of the world to maintain order, to set the scribes of humor apart and above those who would bring us laughter with the mere telling of a joke or goading us with a sight gag. Alas, was it just my misunderstanding of a word that had me construct this castle of sand for my fellow writers?

So now I’m looking to see who others consider the greatest humorists, whether current or in the past. The all-time greats as listed by the website Ranker, Vote on Everything, look like this for the Top 10:

1) Mark Twain

2) Oscar Wilde

3) Frank Zappa

4) Dr. Seuss

5) Aisha Tyler

6) Linwood Barclay

7) Ambrose Bierce

8) Al Clouston

9) Woody Allen

10) Terry Pratchett

Ranker goes on to list their Top 100. Here’s what they have to say about humorists. “A list of humorists, both old and new. A humorist is a writer who specializes in humorous material. Unlike comedy writers though, who go for all-out laughs, humorist writers are more subtle and cerebral. But don’t take that to mean they’re any less funny. One of the most famous humorists in the United States is Jean Shepherd, who narrated and co-wrote the movie A Christmas Story, which is based on his autobiographical short stories. The humorists on this list are some of the best, and well worth a read if you’re looking for something that’ll amuse and make you smile.”

Okay, I feel a little better about my comprehension of the humorist. The only problem is I don’t even know who half of the Top 10 are. I won’t embarrass myself by admitting to those with whom I’m not familiar. If you’re reading this, you might be bound to say, “You never heard of ___________?” Imagine how I did with the rest of the Top 100. I’m at least relieved to find some of my absolute favorites on the list. In my personal critique, I made sure to notice there are some missing who I think should be mentioned. Inevitable, right? But enough of the lists and the quibbling over definitions. Let’s just get to the heart of the matter–the priceless humor.

From the man who kept getting in trouble as a newspaper editor…

“Get your facts first. Then you can distort them as you please.” –Mark Twain

From the unlisted Steven Wright: “The girl I’m seeing now, Rachel, is a very pretty girl. She has emerald eyes and long, flowing plaid hair. The last week in August, we went camping way up in Canada. We were laying around in the woods and stuff, and I don’t know how she did it but she got poison ivy on her brain and the only way she can scratch it is if she thinks about sandpaper.”

From George Carlin: “Have you ever noticed that anyone driving slower than you is an idiot and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?”

From Fran Lebowitz: “My favorite way to wake up is to have a certain French movie star whisper to me softly at two-thirty in the afternoon that if I want to get to Sweden in time to pick up my Nobel Prize for Literature I had better ring for breakfast. This occurs rather less often than one might wish.”

From Art Buchwald, who said in 1987: “This is not an easy time for humorists because the government is far funnier than we are.”

The greatest ones’ material is timeless.

 

 

In the world of the arts, there is considerable expectation of those who would wish to be critically and financially successful to adhere to certain rules and formulae in creation of their work. The unknown musicians that submit songs to record companies quickly find that if their music doesn’t follow the patterns of established hit trends, there will be no interest. Or, if there is interest, then any divergence from the successful formula must be changed to conform or the songs and their composers will be cut loose in a hurry. Had record companies applied such conventional logic to the music of The Original Dixieland Jass (yes, Jass) Band, The Beatles or Radiohead, the world would have been cheated of tremendous musical evolution.

Whatever the medium of art, those talented visionaries who have dared to move beyond the accepted conventions are often the ones who are remembered and treasured the most. I’m no expert on the visual arts, but painters such as Monet and Picasso come to mind for their innovations that must have shook the art world in their times. Although there is debate about who invented free verse poetry, Walt Whitman at least popularized it to a great degree in Leaves of Grass. These geniuses and others like them move their medium forward by quantum leaps with ideas most could not conceive.

 

Of course, not everyone who experiments with their art form comes up with a stroke of genius. Although I hate to think in terms of good or bad because in the critical acclaim and popularity departments, good or bad can defy logic. What is it about an abstract painting that makes someone see it as brilliant? Colors? Perhaps. A hidden message? Plausible. Going along with a formula? Not likely. In any case, someone has to appreciate it for what it is. To make a splash, so to speak, it would help if a critic wrote a widely read article about it. Then, others could “get” it and a movement could begin, lifting the painter out of obscurity and into a place in the sun. Or, the critic could have eaten some bad escargot and missed the gallery show altogether, leaving the artist to struggle in obscurity until he took up painting houses for a living.

Now, here I go with the judgment I just said I would rather avoid. I recently read Nobel Prize winner William Faulkner for the first time. He is known for his experimental style and use of “stream of consciousness” in his stories. He wrote many novels in the 1920’s and ’30’s. I tackled three short novels of his and for the first time I can remember, I stopped reading a book out of dislike and frustration. That “stream of consciousness” led to sentences that lasted a page-and-a-half sometimes. Also, his defiant lack of punctuation served no purpose as far as I could see. Of course, there were many internationally who loved his work and I ultimately will leave it to taste or my lack of appreciation. And I applaud this Faulkner quote, “Let the writer take up surgery or bricklaying if he is interested in technique. There is no mechanical way to get the writing done, no shortcut. The young writer would be a fool to follow a theory.” We have a right to experiment in our writing, our art in general, and in our lives. It makes the whole experience richer.

John Lennon was an experimental writer whose work I admire. He wrote In His Own Write, a compilation of short stories, poems and micro-plays. Here is A Suprise for Little Bobby. “It was little Bobby’s birthmark today and he got a suprise. His very fist was jopped off, (The War) and he got a birthday hook!

“All his life Bobby had wanted his very own hook; and now on his 39th birthday his pwayers had been answered. The only trouble was they had send him a left hook and ebry dobby knows that it was Bobby’s right fist that was missing as it were.

“What to do was not thee only problem: Anyway he jopped off his lest hand and it fitted like a glove. Maybe next year he will get a right hook, who knows?”

Now take this excerpt from Theories on Stuff and Stuff by the unrenowned Froth P. Harrington, Etc. “While supping on wild roons at the foot of the Humidooras, I saw myself run down a mountainside clothed only in Ghandiwear. I was shouting in meter and rhyme decades before rap made a scene. Issuing instructions to the local Tibetan bear clan, I prevented them from falling through the cave portals into the astral plane. I was almost sucked through myself as I chanted mantras I learned from a Banana Republic tapestry salesman, but I reconsidered when I saw the portal was about the size of the eye of a needle. Thank you, roons, for saving me from that embarrassment.” If anything, experimental art should be fun!

I submit that every day of our lives should, on some level at least, be an adventure into the unknown where we can learn from our mistakes and soar to new heights in the process. For life is the ultimate art form, is it not?

 

 

 

 

 

You may have heard a character in a film ask, “Will I ever know true happiness?” It’s as though they see happiness as a possession doled out by Fate. “Am I to be granted happiness?” I don’t see it as something bestowed upon us. Perhaps it is earned, but certainly it is not due to a decision made by some god or other entity. If, indeed, we play a key role in generating this coveted state of mind, is there any reliable guide to help us achieve it?

In The Art of Happiness, a book co-authored by The Dalai Lama and Howard C. Cutler, M.D., it is stated, “In identifying one’s mental state as the prime factor in achieving happiness, of course that doesn’t deny that our basic physical needs for food, clothing, and shelter must be met. But once these basic needs are met, the message is clear: we don’t need more money, we don’t need greater success or fame, we don’t need the perfect body or even the perfect mate–right now, at this very moment, we have a mind, which is all the basic equipment we need to achieve complete happiness.”

The title of the chapter in which this appears is Training The Mind for Happiness. The Dalai Lama discusses how there are many thoughts or minds, which I interpret as types of thoughts and different states of mind. He categorizes them as generally helpful or negative. We should nourish the positive and try to cut down on the harmful. He goes on to say, “So, the first step in seeking happiness is learning. We first have to learn how negative emotions and behaviors are harmful to us and how positive emotions are helpful. And we must realize how these negative emotions are not only very bad and harmful to one personally but harmful to society and the future of the whole world as well. That kind of realization enhances our determination to face and overcome them. And then, there is the realization of the beneficial aspects of the positive emotions and behaviors. Once we realize that, we become determined to cherish, develop, and increase those positive emotions no matter how difficult that is. There is a kind of spontaneous willingness from within. So through this process of learning, of analyzing which thoughts and emotions are beneficial and which are harmful, we gradually develop a firm determination to change, feeling, ‘Now the secret to my own happiness, my own good future, is within my own hands. I must not miss that opportunity!’ ”

This realization of being able to create your own personal destiny along these lines is uplifting and energizing all on its own. Without it, a person is like a boat adrift on the seas, tossed by the waves and hidden currents. It can change everything as long as you remain conscious enough not to lose it. From there, structuring your life in such a way as to increase the activities that enrich your existence will deepen your feeling of enduring joy. Here are a few examples from my own life. For as long as I can remember, I have taken great satisfaction from writing. I simply love putting together sentences and paragraphs. I feel engaged and fulfilled from the mere act of writing. This extends to composing lyrics and music as well. Playing sports also gives me great pleasure. Hitting a ball solidly with a bat, swishing the nets with a basketball, or rolling a perfectly breaking bowling ball for a strike all fill me with satisfaction. Then there’s meditation and prayer. This daily connection to the divine often results in nothing short of bliss.

Faith, of course, brings a tremendous source of contentment and a sense of well-being for the believer. I find this to be completely valid, but there are many who don’t agree. There is a point of consensus, however, for many on either side of the topic of theism. That would be service. I daresay that for any of us who have activities we truly enjoy which bring us wholesome pleasure, there must come a time when we reach out to our community of relatives, friends, acquaintances and perfect strangers to lend a helping hand. We can try to lift those in need with our time. We can volunteer to organize community building events. We can battle diseases with fundraising walks. We can fight for justice, taking on corporations or governments that make a habit of oppressing the common folk. These and many other selfless undertakings will bring gladness to the heart as we transform our own lives and the lives of those to whom we are connected beyond our understanding. May we continually create an environment that illuminates any emotional gloom in our sphere of influence. Be merry!

 

I heard recently that babies in the womb dream. Considering the old Freudian theory that humans have a basic wish to return to the womb, the prenatal dream may very well be a pleasant one. There is warmth, quiet solitude, and everything is soft. All needs are met with no demands of responsibility. Curling up into the fetal position and withdrawing to that virtual, personal utopia is a comfort, at least in thought. Our beds are sort of like that. They’re soft places to fall at the end of the day, they’re dark when the lights are off, and as we drift into slumber, we disengage from the world around us to take our delicious rest.

While we certainly need our sleep to brave the world each day and keep our sanity, there is only a rudimentary aspect of the connection between sleep and happiness. Food, rest and water are basics to maintaining the body and giving us a chance at delighting in our time as human beings. Obviously, though, there’s much more to it than that. However, in the end, I believe it’s essentially simple even if it tends to be elusive.

So, who is genuinely happy? Does this sense of satisfaction welling up from within gravitate toward the well-born, the talented or the lucky and desert the poor and the plain? Obviously not–there are those living in joy and those living in misery among all types of people. However, one would think just maybe there are consistencies of some kind that transcend all walks of life.

The United Nation’s Sustainable Development Solutions Network releases an annual World Happiness Report that ranks the happiest levels of nations around the world. They have been doing this since 2012. They consult certain key factors that contribute to those levels and survey large numbers of people from many countries. The factors used are caring, freedom, generosity, honesty, health, income and good governance. The 2017 edition of the report shows Norway to be the happiest sovereign state. Actually, they and their Scandinavian counterparts dominate the top 10, placing five nations in this select company. Switzerland and the Netherlands, also northern European countries, account for two more. The others are Canada, New Zealand and Australia.

SCANDINAVIANS ENJOYING LIFE

The World Happiness Report states in its analysis that “this year’s report emphasizes the importance of the social foundations of happiness. This can be seen by comparing the life experiences between the top and bottom ten countries in this year’s happiness rankings. There is a four-point happiness gap between the two groups of countries, of which three-quarters is explained by the six variables, half due to differences in having someone to count on, generosity, a sense of freedom, and freedom from corruption. The other half of the explained difference is attributed to GDP per capita and healthy life expectancy, both of which, as the report explains, also depend importantly on the social context.

“However, 80% of the variance of happiness across the world occurs within countries. In richer countries, the within-country differences are not mainly explained by income inequality, but by differences in mental health, physical health and personal relationships: the biggest single source of misery is mental illness. Income differences matter more in poorer countries, but even their mental illness is a major source of misery.

“Work is also a major factor affecting happiness. Unemployment causes a major fall in happiness, and even for those in work the quality of work can cause major variations in happiness.”

Since social issues are of significant importance, one might see in part why the United States has fallen to 19th in the rankings since starting in the number 3 position in 2012. Political polarization, racial unrest and the evermore commonplace mass murder crisis give a few clues as to why we’re falling in the rankings. In contrast, the Nordic countries are consistently near the top, often changing places for the number one spot.

The people in the lowest-ranked nations, many of them in Africa and the Middle East,  suffer from the ravages of poverty and war. Their misery index is easily understood.

What can we take from this? Money isn’t the answer, but for the poorest among us more income can bring us up out of the doldrums at least until our basic needs are met. Additionally, family and friends and broader social support go a long way to making life meaningful and fun, so their contributions to happiness are crucial. Stability and predictability seem to be a common thread through these key ingredients that feed our individual happiness. Still, these guarantee nothing and we can all cite examples of people who maintain an enigmatic discontent in the face of abundant blessing. In the next installment, we take a thorough look at what we can do to truly enjoy our lives…or not.

 

The Tucson Festival of Books is just around the corner! I am always excited to attend, but this year is the biggest one for me since I am going as an author. I will be taking care of the booth (number 217) along with another author, James Dalrymple, all day Saturday, March 11th, 2017 for our publisher Black Rose Writing. For those who don’t know, this comprehensive event is located on the mall of the University of Arizona. We will be located a little southeast of the Food Court and in front of the Science Engineering Library. It should be a lot of fun meeting people and talking about books. My kind of people!

A little history of the festival is in order. The Tucson Festival of Books Foundation, a non-profit organization, was founded by Bill and Brenda Viner, Frank Farias, John M. Humenik and Bruce Beach. They launched the first event on March 14th and 15th, 2009. They attracted 450 authors and presenters, 800 volunteers and 50,000 visitors. What a turnout for their debut! The named sponsors, meaning those whose name appear on the logo for the Tucson Festival of Books, are the Arizona Daily Star and the University of Arizona. Attendance has increased most years since and has reached at least 130,000. I can’t seem to locate the 2016 stats, but that highest figure I have was for 2015. It is now the third largest book festival in the United States. I’m proud that the Old Pueblo has made such a statement for culture with its overwhelming support. Most importantly, proceeds go to helping improve literacy rates in Southern Arizona.

I’ll have you know the activities go beyond reading and writing, too. There is a wide variety of entertainment for everyone. Well, maybe not everyone. I don’t want to oversell it or anything, but you won’t suffer for something to do if you’re not a bookworm. The food alone could keep a person busy. There is Science City, a huge section of many tents that house everything from agri-science to animal studies, from the latest in brain research to astronomy. For the less nerdy, there are musicians and dancers. You can see stand-up comedy. For the children, there will be a character parade in which they can participate or active imagination theatre for the entire family. A Cirque de Soleil-style circus will feature literary masterpieces. The Daily Star has its own tent with topical lectures of interest. The Western National Parks have a wonderful exhibit. And there’s much, much more. So, yeah, plenty to do.

For me, though, it’s about the books and the authors. There will be approximately 430 presenting authors alone. That doesn’t count the authors like me who were not invited to make presentations or participate in panel discussions for fans. Nonetheless, we were published by traditional publishing houses because of the quality of our books. Then there are all the self-published authors who are pursuing their craft with legitimate works of literary art and who, like the rest of us, are out there doing the marketing that all writers have to do. We each have stories to tell, and hopefully we contribute to the evolution of humanity or at least entertain the masses while they struggle to make the world a better place. The famous rub elbows a bit with the fans while sharing something we all have in common. We learn more about those stories and how they came about. We learn more about the authors, seeing them answer questions and reveal their personalities, for better or for worse.

Indeed, the Tucson Festival of Books is an enriching experience for so many in our desert community. We can be truly proud of the event brought to us every year by the founders, the sponsors and the many volunteers that make it happen. Dig as deeply as you can in the two days you have to experience this. So many books, so little time!

 

 

You’ve just had the worst week of your life, intensifying with each passing day. You have enraged your boss with your continued poor work habits. Your significant other can hardly stand the sight of you anymore. You’ve alienated your best friend with your insensitive remarks and even your dog doesn’t bother to greet you at the door. Worst of all, you’re bitterly disappointed with yourself, knowing vaguely how you got here while you watched it happen…without doing anything about it.

It’s late now. You’re the only one still awake in the house because you can’t sleep. You go to your desk and pull out your journal instead of the flask that you’ve been resorting to lately. There’s an urge to get your feelings down on paper, but there’s a barrier as thick as a briar patch crisscrossed with confusion, conflicting emotions, guilt, self-righteousness and melancholy. It’s downright chilling to take a peek into the swirling maelstrom of the mind. And yet, you know deep within you have to if you’re ever going to sort this all out.

 

 

So, you find an entry point and you begin writing with something like, “My life is horrible!” You tap into an anger you’re suddenly glad you have. Chronicling all the areas that are troubling you with a dramatic flair feels deliciously satisfying somehow. All the people and uncontrollable factors and animals that have impeded your quest for an ideal life. But then your attention turns to you. Ahhh, the stabbing thrust of responsibility…and with that, the healing begins.

In this scenario is found the therapeutic side of journaling. I say from experience that this is undoubtedly real. It worked for me tremendously when I was in my teens and into my mid-20’s. I used it often then, working through self-loathing and general frustration for which I had no other workable outlet. As I matured and mellowed, the peaks and valleys evened out and I didn’t need the journal for therapy. Well, not so often anyway. There were challenging times in my career and my personal life which made me dig deep within for answers. Analysis through writing helped bring me to those answers that may have remained untapped otherwise. Please realize this wasn’t just putting my misery on the page and feeling relief from the release of emotion. I often made valuable discoveries about myself, resulting in joy and excitement for my future.

Documentation of milestones is another excellent reason for keeping a journal. Noting those memorable moments of your life–graduations, first loves and firsts of any kind, significant losses, turning points–creates a record of a life lived and examined. From an early age, I saw the value in writing out these pivotal scenes so that years later I could come back and gain wisdom from the perspective it would give me to read what I had written. There’s definitely a certain amount of ego required to bother with such self-absorbed activity, but this last year I wrote a memoir. I found my journals and old letters I’ve saved invaluable. When I had to revisit my viewpoint at a given juncture, my written thoughts and feelings brought considerable understanding to areas that were shrouded in shadowy misconceptions for a long time. As a side note, it’s surprising how often I had lost sight of the details of some incident and actually remembered it incorrectly! I’m so glad I have these old papers to keep me honest.

The moments of epiphany, which we all have from time to time, are my favorite entries in my journal. The lows and the struggles can help us grow. The agonizing processing of these difficult phases make for some interesting writing and are important to our spiritual evolution, but when we poke our heads above those storm clouds, we appreciate the view as well as the rush of exhilaration brought by new understanding. To capture those moments of truth while they are fresh in my mind and beaming from my heart is the quintessence of my journaling life. The irony, I suppose, is that those experiences are imperfect expressions when reduced to mere words. Nonetheless, we must always try. The great poets show us glimpses, at least, of the inexpressible and the sacred. When we look within and see what is truly there behind the pain and suffering, we have the opportunity to perceive in all senses the beauty waiting to be known.

Kahlil Gibran wrote, “Beauty is life when life unveils its holy face. But you are life and you are the veil. Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in the mirror. But you are eternity and you are the mirror.”

By contemplating and reflecting in the medium of the written word, you can bring to full blossom the entire range of life experience.