Field Notes

Embrace Your Inner Honey Badger & Make Some Mud Balls

/ Kennedy Farr / Leave a comment

Escape your present reality and think like a honey badger.  Every time I watch this BBC documentary clip of the honey badger, I am so inspired by this animal’s persistence.  The honey badger’s focus on escaping the enclosure is nothing short of amazing.  It uses any and every resource it has to get to where it wants to go.  This animal truly is a marvel.  And what a lesson to all of us who doubt or fear or give up or don’t believe that something is possible.  The message straight from the honey badger itself: It is possible.  Just watch the video (4:12) and you will see what I am saying.  It is a hoot!

When I watch this video, I think about my life and about where I want to go.  Where I know I want to be. What I want to accomplish.  I am reminded of that quote by Lewis Carroll, “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.”  Well, the thing is: I do know . . . and I am expending personal resource: time, energy, creativity, etc.

But still . . . am I using every resource that is available to me?

This honey badger’s tenacity shows me that the answer to my question is Absolutely not.  The thing is: I know that I am capable of so much more.  Perhaps this is what drives the pistons of life’s dissatisfaction or confusion or self-defeat within my inner world.  I know that I have so much more inside of me to create, to offer, to be.  In the video, the honey badger even makes mud balls (!) to stage its escape.  Mud balls . . . an escape prop out of dirt and water.  Maybe I am easily moved, entertained, and inspired, but I find this very inspiring.  This honey badger never ceases to execute the next escape plan with what diminishing resources are available.  It uses ingenuity to make its goal happen, no matter what “tools” are available.

The word escape has so many different connotations.  It can mean that I am escaping from something that isn’t pleasant or that is demoralizing.  Or it can mean that I am experiencing a moment of escape, like the feeling of reveling in the sunshine on that Maui beach . . . but still with life’s root-of-reality reminding me of that which I will be returning to once vacation is over . . . something that isn’t bad but that isn’t all that great either.

Watch the video below (4:12), be inspired, and then click on the aqua-blue link to a fun and inspiring journaling prompt below.  Have fun with the prompt.  It could very well have the power to create a ripple effect into how you choose to live your life.  I wish you the very best of energy with your respective dreams and goals.

pencil stubClick on the aqua-blue link below for today’s journaling prompt: Your Great Escape Plan

Your Great Escape Plan

[Print this prompt out, 3-hole punch it, and add it to your journaling binder.   Take the writing journey and listen . . . you can’t get lost when you are following your own heart.  After all, you are the only one who can hear what it has to say.  The only one.  Relax, read, think, feel, listen, write.  Repeat.  And enjoy the journey.  It is a fine one, and one that is perfectly-made just for you, I promise.  Life is meant to be grown.]

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Yes, you can go home again . . . if only in your dreams.

/ Kennedy Farr / Leave a comment
ardoch II

My Hometown

Last night, I had vivid dreams of my childhood home in the Red River Valley of North Dakota.  The place where I learned to swim in post-thunderstorm mud puddles, to build elaborate snow and ice tunnels, to discover the magic of reading, to try to walk to the end of a rainbow, to revere and emulate Mae West, to respect the wisdom of my older siblings, and to understand that life sometimes deals out unfairness without warning.

These dreams of last night involved highlights of childhood that were happy, peaceful, and creative.  They were moments that contained laughter, bliss, and sibling camaraderie.  It was a rare gift of benevolent recall via slideshow with me starring as my own little-girl self.  The dreams allowed me to visit with my father, who recently passed over in December, and he took me by the hand and led me on a tour of highlights that reminded me that my early life, indeed, offered shouts of joy that have somehow become strangely muffled in the memories of my adulthood.

Life is what I make of it.  And so is fun and my sense of playfulness.  This past weekend, while writing out my to-do lists on my wall-mounted white board, I caught myself wondering,  This is nothing but work and chores and items of destined procrastination . . . What happened to simply having fun?  I wrote “HAVE FUN!” at the bottom of the lists for Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday going forward.

Still, I started to wonder: What has happened (!?) to me and my life such that I am having to start prioritizing fun?   What happened to getting out there and having some good ol’, mud-puddle-stomping, spontaneous fun?  

In an effort to re-gain spontaneous Fun in My Life (back to that concept of planning and prioritizing again!), I am going to try an experiment.  As I seem to need the reminder, I am going to write on my list of to-dos everyday for one month:

Have some fun . . . 

And cross it off my list.  And just see what happens.  And enjoy life.  I want to move out of my current state of Get-‘er-Done to a renewed paradigm of Have-Some-Fun.

Anyone out there want to join me?  And keep me posted on what you do?  For me, it’s time to re-claim that girl who liked to sit on the front porch rail of our house, swinging my legs, and belting out Mae West quotes and tunes (C’mon up and see me sometime!) to any passerby who traveled through our tiny town.  It’s time to start having some Fun!

Mae West: You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.

ardoch

Main Street, Hometown

The Mindfulness of Hotcakes and Trapdoors

/ Kennedy Farr / 1 Comment

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I made hotcakes this morning.  I mixed up a batch of my special hotcake mix last night using the ingredients that I had on hand. There were a few essential things I was missing, but I feel that I more than made up for these by adding almond meal and toasted coconut.  These hotcakes would never be on an IHOP commercial or in a photograph on the menu. They always pour into odd elliptical shapes — unbecoming to any self-respecting advertised hotcake.  Depending on how well I have managed to pre-heat the skillet, they turn out perfectly golden or unappetizingly pasty-white or sometimes simply compost-worthy.  Today was a good day, and they came out pretty close to just right.  Goldilocks would have had no complaint.

While I was cooking them, it struck me that making hotcakes requires a great deal of mindfulness.  You can’t heat the griddle too quickly.  You need to whisk the batter just so, leaving the correct proportion of lumps.  You have to test the griddle with droplets of water and listen for the sizzle before you pour the first hotcake.

Then comes the waiting.  First, there is a test of patience that rewards you with hotcakes that are just the right color and just the right doneness before you flip them.  Then you wait some more.  It is always tempting to walk away from the stove after you have flipped them.  There are bowls to rinse, syrup to heat, butter to be put on a plate.  More coffee to be made.  Compost to be taken out.

When I do not maintain the necessary mindfulness, the bottom gets too dry or too dark or too crunchy.  These pancakes go to compost pile or to the dogs — who absolutely looooove burnt hotcakes.  I know that it is best to wait.

This morning I waited and was rewarded with the loveliest of hotcakes.  I thought of that maxim “Good things come to those who wait,” and I thought, Yes, this is so true.  About the time I am ready to despair of ever realizing my loftiest of dreams . . . or the time when I feel I am just about ready to touch one of my goals, and it simply dissipates before me . . . or the time when I feel as if all is linking up just so and then something comes along and blows the line up . . . I must remember to think Patience . . . think Hotcakes.

Life always has its twists, turns, spirals, and trap doors.  I would rather keep my eye on the prize and fall into a trap than be warily looking down at the path before me, wondering where the next booby trap is and hoping that I will somehow miraculously avoid it.

I was reading about trapdoor snails and came across this excerpt on why to keep these snails in your pond [http://aqualandpetsplus.com/]:  “All the pond books recommend these belly foots (gastropods) for ponds.   Theoretically, trapdoors make excellent algae eaters.  However, we’ve never been able to measure their effectiveness — even when kept in mass quantities.” 

So, basically, we know that these belly foots work for the reasons we want them to in the pond, but we just can’t measure their effectiveness.  The correlation of gastropods to hotcakes and mindfulness might seem to be a bit of a stretch, but it clicked for me internally.  Perhaps it is the usefulness of maintaining a dream, even when I can’t measure its effectiveness in the present moment.  In other words, keep the dreams in the pond — in mass quantities — and hope for the best end results.  Give up on measuring and simply believe that all is working as it should be.

One more thought: “Trapdoor snails (like most snails) slam their trapdoors when picked up or pestered.”  And some more food for thought regarding dreams, goals, hopes, and opportunities . . . all excellent reminders when keeping goals at the forefront:

  1. When pestered, slam the door.
  2. When obstacles block your path, scoot away as quickly as your belly foot can take you.
  3. Protect the essence of your shell and always maintain mindfulness.
  4. Keep forward progress in motion, even if it feels to be a snail’s pace.
  5. Don’t look back.  Throw away the rearview mirror.
  6. Keep flippin’ hotcakes, don’t mind the burnt ones, and shoot for the moon.

No Hesitation

/ Kennedy Farr / Leave a comment

Please, watch this five-minute video of Candid Thovex skiing.  It is nothing short of amazing.

http://ftw.usatoday.com/2015/01/watch-the-gnarliest-ski-video-ever-made

What struck me about this video is not simply the skill, commitment, dedication, and fearlessness that Thovex has devoted to his skiing.  What struck me is that there are many moments on the video — if not throughout its entirety — where it feels that if Thovex had hesitated for one micro-second, he might have crashed into a tree or gone flying off the mountain into a rock wall.  Mission Not-Accomplished.

I am not and have never been one to seek thrills by daredevil skiing down the mountain or by catching air on my kiteboard in ultra-cold seawater or by jumping out of an airplane.  I love to hike the trail but am not interested in rock or ice climbing.  Still, I was thinking about how this incredibly gutsy video parallels my life.

I actually can see how it does apply to my fiddle playing or my writing or my positive intending or my Thoreau-esque sauntering down the road through the forest or . . .  you get the idea.  Not exactly the stuff of thrills, spills, and chills to an observer.  But this is my life.  It matters to me how I feel as I absorb and interpret the environment that I have chosen to live in.  Without hesitation.

Hesitation.  It has its merits.  I have certainly jumped all willy-nilly into certain situations and have not emerged with what has felt to be at the time the best of outcomes.  And before I am too quick to judge a crazy outcome, I do realize that there is a bigger picture I cannot see.  An unfinished play that has not been yet written.  A dance that is still being choreographed.  An elaborate tapestry that only allows me to see the underside — the side with the knots, the threads, and the inevitable slubs — all the while knowing that there is a gorgeous pattern seen from above.  There is fate and there is destiny.  There are many metaphors, allegories, analogies, and similes that I have read and that I have tried to apply like a Band-Aid to my wounded soul when I have really mucked up.  Depending on the degree of mucking, these word pictures have provided temporary solace and have gotten me through to the next time I did not hesitate.  And knowing me, the opportunity would certainly be there.

leap of faithI have thrown caution to the proverbial wind and plunged into relationships, jobs, adventures at random.  My brother and I are still laughing about the night that we got frozen out of our March camping trip without a tent in the unexpected snow and had to seek free hospitality à la couch surfing (we were broke: hence why we were snow camping) from one of the Lower Tavern’s regulars (stranger to us), Duane.  Not exactly flying down a mountain at incredible speeds like Thovex but a leap of faith, nonetheless, that resulted in a high-speed Dukes-of-Hazzard car chase up an S-curved gravel road (we were actually the pursuers, not our host Duane).  Yes, a leap of faith and a lengthy journal entry and a re-affirmation of my knowing that angels do exist.  At the very least, I can say that we were not in Hesitation Mode.

Still, hesitation is not all that it is billed to be.  It can really mess life up.  If there are Band-Aid moments when I have not hesitated, I am thinking that there are exponentially more times when I have hesitated.  Waffled.  Procrastinated.  Buried my head in the sand.  Dinked around.  Hoped it would go away or resolve on its own.  I didn’t know what to do, so I hesitated.  At the time, I simply didn’t realize that not making a decision is still making a decision.  I am wanting to grow my awareness of this now.  To hesitate or not to hesitate is not the question.  They are exactly the same thing.

leap-of-faith1Although I am mightily aware of my propensity to jump first and think later, my perspective has changed slightly.  There is the juxtaposition of spontaneity and hesitation.  And there is the contrasting effect of believing and knowing.     We believe with our minds, but we know with our hearts.  We say what we think, but we act with our hearts.  And . . . “Sometimes your only transportation is a leap of faith.” — Margaret Shepard

I have a research-oriented mind.  And a creative heart.  Maybe this is the challenge I create for myself.  Perhaps I am so busy dissecting experiences into rational bits of mind and body and soul, I am creating moments of hesitation that would be best lived by just allowing my knowing self to have the wheel.  Put my believing into the back seat — certainly invite it along — without the benefit of a spare steering wheel.

Can there really be so many complex parts to such a simple whole — this thing called life?   Believing is important.  Knowing is important.  Really knowing. When I allow the seamless marriage of these two . . . Pilgrim, look out and hold on!  Things are going to start happening in ways that my mind could not have ever imagined on its own.

One of my favorite quotes is “Always believe that something wonderful is about to happen.“  This has been a guiding quote through some challenging times in recent history.  I have this quote scattered throughout my house.  It is written on the front of my journal.  I really value this quote.  But I am adding to it today:

Always know that something wonderful is happening right now.  Right now.  

Walt Whitman wrote: “To me, every hour of the day and night is an unspeakably perfect miracle.”  There are feelings of comfort, peacefulness, appreciation, and joy in not only believing this but knowing that this true.

Miracles happen.  They do.  Every single moment.  I KNOW this to be true.  My awareness of an “unspeakably perfect miracle” erases the seam between my believing and my knowing.  Embrace the moment.  Ski the mountain.  Know the miracle.  Without hesitation.

 

 

Runs with Goats

/ Kennedy Farr / 1 Comment
changing from jeans to pajama pants

changing from jeans to pajama pants http://i.imgur.com/IXWIWe6.jpg

What is it about goats?  Goats.  They are just such interesting animals. Goats are known for their lively and frisky and erratic behavior.  It is believed that goats discovered the coffee bean.  Goats have rectangular eyes so that they can see well in the dark.  Wild goats don’t sleep.  The proper name for a group of goats is a trip — not a herd.   

Goats express so much with their faces, their voices, and their antics.  People refer to a willy-nilly and unmanageable situation as a goat rodeo.  When I see a video of a goat being a goat, I don’t see chaos.  I see Par-tay!!  Were I to have a piece of land that would allow for a happy goat habitat, I would invite a small trip to come and party.

There is something about animals that tug at our heart strings in ways that humans cannot.  When we see a roly-poly puppy at the park, we drop our defenses.  When we see a little kitten pogo-hopping across the floor, we say, “Awwww!” When I see a goat, I crack up.  Goats are just so comical.  There is something majestic and regal about having the power to be so funny.  Anything or anyone that can make me laugh out loud has my utmost respect.  It’s not easy being the jester for a human.  It sometimes takes a lot for us let go and laugh out loud. Goats.

The Choice to Choose

/ Kennedy Farr / 2 Comments

IMG_0719I found this quote by Marianne Williamson as I was clicking through folders on my external hard drive.  I tried to remember the circumstances under which I felt compelled to take the time to copy this quote and save it under the folder entitled “Choices,” but the date stamp of over 2 years ago on the document was not enough of a clue.  What was I doing, feeling, or thinking two years ago?  Was I at some intersection of hope and denial . . . and a’waiting some guidance to come traveling my way?

“The choice to follow love through to its completion is the choice to seek completion within ourselves. The point at which we shut down on others is the point at which we shut down on life. We heal as we heal others, and we heal others by extending our perceptions past their weaknesses. Until we have seen someone’s darkness, we don’t really know who that person is. Until we have forgiven someone’s darkness, we don’t really know what love is. Forgiving others is the only way to forgive ourselves, and forgiveness is our greatest need.”  – Marianne Williamson

This is a great quote.  Marianne Williamson is an inspiring and excellent writer.  Whenever I read her writing, I feel inspired to stretch a little further and search a little deeper.  It is good to read words that encourage me to grow in exponential directions.  I find that I can only read so much of Williamson’s writing before it is time to set the book aside for some absorption time. It makes for a slow read this way, but I always feel enriched and guided by the thoughts that are inspired by her words.

I do not create very much time to read in my daily life and, as a result of this non-priority, I have been carrying the same book by Marianne Williamson on various vacations for over 5 years.  The book has a lot of notes scribbled in the margins and the pages are curled along the edges.  There is beach sand embedded where the pages meet the binding.  If you hold the book open and fan the pages, the reminder of Hawaii will sift onto the table.  The cover is faded from sunlight, and the pages have been dog-eared and un-dog-eared.  I am about 1/3 of my way through the book.  It looks like this book is going to see a lot more travel by the time it is retired on the bookshelf.  It is too worn and weary of a passenger to be passed on to a different reader.

Besides, trying to decipher someone else’s notes in the page margins always breaks the flow for the new reader.  It leaves one wondering why the passage on this page is so significant that someone took the time to pen a remark.  The new reader feels that he or she perhaps missed some essential point that the previous reader clearly pounced on and duly noted.  I find that it is better to start with a fresh book than to try to analyze another reader’s scribbles and observations.  Maybe I am odd that way, but I like to create my own flow.

I thought I lost the book on one of my trips to Hawaii, so I bought a new copy that was all clean and smooth.  Then the old copy re-surfaced in a carry-on bag while packing for a trip, so I switched the newer version for the original version.  Back to Square One in the home-i-est of fashions.

So, I was reading from my well-traveled book the other day — now that I am traveling for a few months — and thinking about how life has moved me into a blessed place in time: an imaginative and real culmination of a dream I have nurtured for well over 10 years.  It feels as if I am in a magical bubble that is allowing for me to pursue interests and dreams and disciplines that have felt to be so distant from my daily reality.  I am exercising everyday again.  I have all of my instruments out of their cases and at-the-ready to be played.  I l-o-v-e this.  I have my laptop set up in an inspiring spot in the new house I am renting for the winter — with a view to the west and to the north.  I am cooking from recipes — not simply broiling a quesadilla or throwing compatible food ingredients into a pot and calling it good.  I baked chocolate chip cookies yesterday.  For those of you who regularly bake, this may not seem like such an extraordinary thing.  But for me?  It has been many years since I have done anything even remotely this wonderfully culinary.  The cookies came out too dark, flat, and lacy at the edges . . . not my preferred genre of cookie. Still.  I made cookies and the house smells great.

I feel that I am in this gracious bubble of choosing to make conscious choices.

IMG_0739Still, being in this extraordinary moment is the culmination of many challenging times and sometimes-awkward choices.  I have stated my preferences and not stated my preferences.  I have turned left when it might have been more advantageous to have turned right.  I have laughed when it was inappropriate and I have cried when the tears weren’t worth the effort.  Everything has all somehow flowed into one channel that has led me to a time of feeling peaceful and fulfilled. With life’s chaos reigning these past years, I have the awareness to appreciate the bubble while it is floating.  And it feels great.

I sometimes feel as if we are afraid to celebrate too loudly . . . these delightful and surprising moments of awesome-icity that just make for incredibly-saturated present moments and delicious memories.  If I celebrate too loudly, will moments like this ever return to me?  Haven’t I been trained to hide my ecstatic joy under a bushel basket, lest it be conceived as a negative sort of expression that speaks too loudly?  I don’t know.  Maybe I was raised in a more stringent time or culture — one in which we are taught to not proclaim feelings of joy too loudly.  It might make someone else feel badly.  Or it might be perceived as bragging or trouncing someone else who is struggling.  Or it might be simply bad manners.

Is it?  I hope not.  That would never be my intent.  Never.  I am just simply feeling the atmospheric joy of the bubble. toaster oven

What’s next?  I wrote in my journal yesterday.  I thought of several things and wrote them down in my signature columns and charts and boxes that organize my thoughts.  Then I realized that what has essentially led to Now has been honoring my intentions, my dreams, and my goals.  The lines from all of those columns and lists and analyses have been blurred into Now.

Events, blessings, and surprising circumstances are possible.  The bubble is real.  Dreams may not line up in my presupposed perfect chronological order, but I received the encouraging confirmation this winter that if I keep the dream safe to my heart and extend it to the greatness of the Universe, it will all come ’round right.

I tell myself everyday, “Always believe that something wonderful is about to happen.”  Some days I don’t believe in this as ardently as other days.  But today?  Today has been an extraordinarily good day.  I walked in the forest and on the beach.  I didn’t see another soul the entire time I was out.  I wrote.  I played my mandolin and kept my own time without a metronome.  I finished baking the second half of the chocolate chip cookie batter, hoping that by refrigerating the dough overnight the cookies might look better coming out of the oven.  They didn’t.  They are even more burnt looking and lacier-edged, and flatter.  They are stored in the freezer for some hapless house guest who will be offered a frozen, home-baked cookie.

Life is good.  I l-o-v-e this song!  Kool and the Gang are awesome!

Celebrate good times, come on!

 

 

 

What are you waiting for?

/ Kennedy Farr / 4 Comments

time-travel-clockWaiting . . . why do we call it waiting when we are always doing something else while we are doing what we call waiting? We wait at the bus stop.  At the doctor’s office.  In the conference room for a meeting to begin.  At the lacrosse field for practice to be over.  At home for dinner preparations to be completed.  At a restaurant for a predictably-late friend to show.

red child shoesWe wait for our friends, our spouses, our partners, our parents, our family.  We wait for children to tie their shoes or to pick up their toys.  We wait for our spouses to finish getting ready so we can get going.  We wait for our friends to all arrive so we can go into the theatre and find seats.

We wait while anticipating what we consider to be predictable outcomes.  The truck to get lubed.  The light to turn green.  The ferry to arrive.  Our grades to be posted at the end of the quarter.  We wait for serious things like test results. We wait for unstable relationships to resolve by themselves.  While in this labyrinth, we wait while we stay and we wait for the other person to go away.

We wait for technology to deliver. We wait for texts, emails, and attachments.  While we wait, we bury our thoughts in our phones and our computers and our iPads.  All in the name of waiting.

Sometimes we are patient; sometimes we are impatient.  Sometimes we are intense; sometimes we are dreamy.

We wait in traffic and in line, while seated and while standing. While we wait, we laugh and we cry and and we grump and we think that we are thinking about nothing.  While we wait, we make grocery lists and we think about how we should clean the bathroom before our guests arrive for dinner that night.  We go for a quick run or we shoot a few hoops.  We tidy our desks or we empty the dishwasher.  We walk the dog while waiting for the car pool to arrive.  We feed the cat while we are waiting for the last few minutes of the spin cycle to be done so we can transfer clean clothes into the dryer.

All of this productivity while we are waiting.   There is a whole lot of energy that goes into waiting.  Waiting is doing.  And being.  And thinking.  And feeling.  And living.

140Do you ever feel as if you are waiting for your life to start?  For it to begin in the way that you once saw it unfolding in your imagination?  Did you see yourself living on Maui or did you think that you would have published at least two New York Times Bestsellers by now?  Did you think that you would have lost all of that extra weight or that you would have been in good enough shape to climb Annapurna?   Did you see yourself having returned to school and then walking across that stage for your diploma?  Did you see yourself being an awesome studio musician or a brilliant politician or an inspirational speaker or . . . ?

121I am aware that life is a swirl of matter and motion and that I am in my life’s vortex.  I very much appreciate the amazing blessings that abound and that allow for me to be living my dream.  My dreams.  If waiting is living, then there is no time left to be thinking about waiting.  It is officially time to set aside the sometimes overpowering notion of waiting and just start being alive.  Am I waiting?  If so, for what?  Time is ticking and there truly is no time like the present to kick up my heels and yell Hallelujah.  No more waiting.

vintage movie cameraThere are several songs that come to mind . . . lyrics that talk about how life is not a rehearsal.  It is an impromptu performance and you are the star.  Yes, you.  As introverted or private a person you may be, you are the principal actor in this play called Life.  There are no second takes, no director calling, “Cut!” or “Action!” or “Roll ‘em!” or “Fade to black.”   It is all a brand new Right Now.  Why wait?  Let the camera roll.

The next time I find myself waiting for anything, I hope that I am reminded of these thoughts and that I will re-direct my Waiting Thoughts into Creating Good Stuff . . . and continue to always believe that something wonderful is about to happen . . . while I am Waiting. toaster oven

believe that something wonderful

Today? Let’s do the twist . . . then write . . . then . . .

/ Kennedy Farr / 1 Comment

Come on, Baby!  Let’s do the twist!

Today is January 2nd, and I am thinking about the List of Intentions for 2015 that I scribbled in my journal.  Being a process-oriented innovative type and not the get-‘er-done-and-check-‘er-off-the-list implementer type, there is nothing on my list with any defined or measurable outcomes.  In the past, I have tried to quantify resolutions into SMART-goal format — unsuccessfully so — as I gravitate toward quality experiences that are momentary and poof they are gone.

As I result, I do not make any New Year Resolutions.  I don’t say that I am going to kick butt at the gym and run for 10K 6 days a week, or that I am going to write 2000 words daily in one of my ongoing short stories.  I do say that I am heading to the gym or that I am going to write when the afternoon quiets down.  Perhaps if I were to quantify or to schedule such things, life would feel more accomplished.  Would I feel more successful?  I don’t know. I read once that it is better to schedule one’s priorities, rather than prioritize one’s schedule.  It is something to experiment with: schedule my priorities.

On my list for 2015, I wrote things down such as: Smile more.  Laugh at absurd moments that enter my life.  Meditate.  Exercise my mind and my body.  Play “Allegro” on violin and/or mandolin and do not slow down to lento in the more difficult passages.  Dance more.

I used to go dancing every weekend.  Friday or Saturday or Sunday night. . . or all three nights.  It was an important part of my physical, mental, and social life.  It still is important to me . . . I just don’t go to the bars anymore to get my dance groove going.

I woke up this morning with Chubby Checker’s “The Twist” running through the latter stages of my dream.   Then I found this awesome video, and it really made me smile.  And laugh out loud.  I felt so good that I felt prompted to tune my violin.  It was cantankerous due to having been moved into a new climate, but it is happily singing now.  I then spent some time meditating to further enjoy the morning.  Meditating always feels good.   When I completed my meditation, I found myself humming “The Twist.”  Then I replayed the video again.  Turned up the volume on my laptop and twisted with the awesome dancers on this video.  This definitely put me in a very happy place.  Back to one of my intentions: laugh at absurd moments.

What does this mean to me?  The power of writing.  The connection of writing to realizing my goals and my dreams.  After scrawling my “resolutions,” I was not consciously aware that I was following my morning’s “to-be-experienced” list.  When I wrote these things, I was thinking of a fuzzy concept to be wafted into my future 2015 — things that I enjoy doing or experiencing.

What I learned from this?  In the morning, make a short list of intentions that I would like to experience today.  Nothing definite or solid . . . just things that would be fun or fanciful or maybe even practical to see or to do or to be.  Then see what happens.  Write down wacky or unlikely things along with the more specific things with measurable outcomes like going to the gym or taking 10 photographs to document today’s awesomeness.

So, I guess this does create a resolution for me this year.  Be open.  Write things down in a dedicated notebook.  Look back at what I have written at the end of the year.  Start checking things off.  [This is beginning to feel like SMART goals!]  Be happy and celebrate the things in life that give me joy and that provide laughter.

Tis the Season to Appreciate

/ Kennedy Farr / 2 Comments

 

It is post-Christmas week.  One of my favorite weeks of the year.  Thanksgiving feels to be so long ago.  Christmas Day is in the near past.  For many, the practice of giving is now moving into a new dimension.    We tend to shift our sense of openness, generosity, awareness of others and their needs after the holidays.  There are so many ways to give.

I have witnessed many selfless acts during this past holiday season.  It has been a blessing to see how openly and sweetly and richly others have shared their love, goodwill, traditions, and time.  I am thinking of the fabulous feasts that were so generously prepared by family during this recent holiday season.  The measure of time and love and sense of tradition that went into these meals was truly amazing.  I felt the love when I saw all of the cookbooks opened on the kitchen counter, the living room coffee table, and the couch.  I could feel the meals from holidays past lilting from the open and stained and dog-eared pages.  There were homemade cookies to be enjoyed.  Chips and vegies to be dipped.  Crackers to be cheesed.  The variety of dishes served was astonishing, actually.

When my daughters were young, it was our tradition that they would create the holiday menu.  It was fun and always a culinary adventure.  The menu was generally quite limited to a few favorite foods that were general considered to be taboo by any nutritional standards.  And the added bonus was that their menus demanded a blessedly brief amount of time and a decided lack of culinary talent on my part.

I think of the year that I served red Jell-O in the shape of teddy bears with freshly-whipped cream.  Or the year that we ate nothing but potato chips and onion dip for the entreé and pumpkin pie for dessert.  These were not incidents of pure laziness or nutritional abuse on my part.  These meals built a foundation of culinary autonomy . . . it was a day of Anything Goes.  Why not?  We were not serving others who held expectations of basted turkey, cornmeal stuffing, and giblet gravy.  We were Gastronomic Outlaws – bucking the current societal holiday conventions that demanded hours of shopping, food preparation, and marathon clean-up.

There was one year that I did cook a turkey.  It was a rare year, as we had family visiting us and it would not do to forego the traditional meal.  Whining from one of my more outspoken house guests would ensue, and we could not have that.  Placating with a cooked bird was preferable to listening to his traditional ranting.

Alas, we don’t remember enjoying the golden-brown-basted turkey from that year because we lost our power and our running water for five days, starting on Christmas Day morning – about 1.5 hours into bird-cooking time.  I remember looking at the turkey that was half-cooked in the electric-powered oven . . . wondering how I could possibly continue to cook an entire bird while balancing it on the top of the old barrel wood stove in the living room.

The solution?  I went out to the woodshed and got a shovel and buried the turkey in the field.  We had no refrigeration and no promise as to when the power would return to us.  I didn’t want to invite any unwelcome poultry illness . . . or any opportunistic animals to come marauding in the night, had I tossed the uncooked bird onto the compost pile.  As insane as this sounds, it felt like a righteous act to bury poor Tom Turkey, as my heart was not entirely in agreement with cooking an unfortunately-fated bird that year.  A silent blessing was bestowed.  R.I.P.

While we still had daylight, we went sledding instead on Hamburger Hill – the name of the sledding run behind the school . . . one that had been dangerously groomed by the school children during the previous weeks before Christmas break.  It was a fun and memorable and active way to spend the day.  We came home and made hot chocolate by balancing a tea kettle on the round arc of the barrel stove. We made peanut-butter-and-honey sandwiches by candle light and finished the meal off with Christmas cookies.  Not even my best of turnaround traditional attempts was to come to fruition. Only minimal whining about the peanut butter was uttered by the Traditional Outspoken Relative.  We had somehow managed to maintain our time-honored tradition of eating minimalistic nutrition for yet another holiday.

That is why the meals from this current year were exemplary.  All of the stops were pulled.  It was one wing-ding of a holiday meal.  I do not recall ever seeing so much love poured into a meal that was to be served to loved ones.  My daughters?  They served up seconds and thirds on dishes that they had never tasted before.  Green bean casserole, sweet potato casserole, soft white-flour rolls . . . What had they been missing all of these years?

But who said that you always have to serve the perfect holiday meal that fulfills all of the nutritional requirements of the food pyramid?  We have survived the sugar highs, the salt-induced edema, the Year of the Sauerkraut, the subsequent tummy aches, and, yes, the year of the peanut-butter sandwiches.  And we have built a lot of memories along the way.

It is strange how even non-traditions present as gifts of love.  It is a way to measure . . . a way of setting fence posts through time.  There are so many ways to give.  We give through sharing, through accepting, through laughing through the crazier moments that define where we are today.  What we choose for today.

We have an amazing opportunity to give.  To breathe life into a holiday in ways that are unexpected.  Memories are forged and we laugh in spite of the years that felt to be a bit tougher.  Life is good.  There is much to be appreciated.  And we anticipate the next holiday season with wonder and awe – never knowing what it may bring to us in the way of unexpected gifts. toaster oven

 

Freedom. What is it?

/ Kennedy Farr / Leave a comment

What is freedom?

When I have asked people this question, their responses have been both delightfully unique and predictably predictable.  Freedom is time for travel, not having to work, doing whatever it is one wants to do, playing music, volunteering, not having to set an alarm clock every night, eating a limitless amount of cheescake and not gaining weight, experiencing no boundaries. . .

Many people equate freedom with money.  Financial freedom has its many perks that allow for choices that can be bought.  Exotic travel, a newer car, a bigger home, a better body that has been nipped, tucked, and enhanced.  A better wardrobe, more shoes, a bigger closet.

But what about those many things in life that do not have a price tag? Like health, love, laughter, respect, integrity . . . many of the things that ask that an active and committed and mindful choice be made.  Choices about the food we eat, how often we exercise, what kinds of supplements we want to add to our diet.  Our choices to extend love, to share, to forgive someone their humanity – even when we truly do not even feel like it.  Our choices to walk through the walls of our ego for a different view and laugh at ourselves and with others.  Choices to not sell ourselves short too quickly for a short-term solution.  Choices to believe that something wonderful is about to happen.  Always . . . believe that something wonderful is about to happen.  Choices to stay on the sunny side and to believe in optimistic outcomes.  All of these choices . . . we have so much freedom to choose in any given second of any given day from an infinite library of perspectives.

But I sometimes think that I tend to oversimplify . . . especially when I am writing at my old, favorite, beat-up library table with a fire going in the fireplace and a glass of white wine nearby.  There is beautiful music playing and it is official: we are on the sunny side of winter solstice.  I am blessed with so much and choices feel easier when life feels good.

I read East of Eden by John Steinbeck many years ago.  The idea of timshel is discussed – the Hebrew word for thou mayest.    We are born with a sense of free will that allows us to make choices for better or for worse.  Timshel is freedom of the mind, but isn’t it also freedom of the heart entwined with freedom of the mind?  I am not sure how to separate the two.  Which camefirst?  The thought or the feeling?  There are neuro-scientists and neuro-psychologists that can surely answer to this.  There is amazing and impressive research concerning our emotional intelligence and what occurs during an emotional hijacking . . . how our emotional brain races ahead of our rational brain.

timshel

Thoughts.  Feelings.  I am convinced that there is an additional element that blends and swirls with our thoughts and our feelings: timshel.  We can accomplish many amazing things; we can meet many goals; we can overcome staggering obstacles.  Amazing and stunning displays of success.  But what came first?  The Thought?  The Feeling that motivates and drives us?  Or the Freedom of Mind that opens the doors that allow our Thoughts and our Feelings to pass vigorously, creatively, and humbly into the worlds and dimensions around us?

john steinbeck quote east of edenWhat is freedom? ” . . . the way is open . . .”  Some definitions of freedom remove obligations but my current definition asks that I embrace responsibility for Freedom of Mind . . . for embracing timshel and understanding that thou mayest means different things to different people.  Defining anything can introduce a wealth of confusion and possibly disagreement.  Words, as wonderful and beautiful and elucidating as they can be, can also limit us in the ways of thou mayest – a blessing of optimism.  “Now that [we] don’t have to be perfect, [we] can be good.”  Simply put . . . what is freedom?  I believe that it is optimism.  Always believing in the possibility that something beautiful has the power to enter into my world. toaster oven