Feeling like You're On the Edge? Dance to Lady Gaga...

What to do on a Wednesday with nothing to do.

Somehow, about noontime today, I found myself dancing around the living room to Lady Gaga with my adorable little dog, Poco, in my arms.

What could be more perfect than Lady Gaga's heart pumping "The Edge of Glory?"

It fit the mood to a T. And here are a few lines of lyrics:

"I'm on the edge, the edge, the edge
The edge, the edge, the edge, the edge...

I'm on the edge with you
I'm on the edge with you
I'm on the edge with you"'

Here we are, Poco and me,  on the edge, with everybody else in the world.

And now I've stopped and I feel so much

calmer.

As Gaga advises during this difficult time, "Keep your mind as stress-free as possible and your body moving."

The World is Too Much With Us

The World Is Too Much With Us

BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;

The winds that will be howling at all hours,

And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;

For this, for everything, we are out of tune;

It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be

A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;

So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,

Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;

Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;

Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

    Editor's note: This morning, during meditation, I found myself saying those words: "The world is too much with us." In that poem, Wordsworth says that we are too caught up in the material world. And not paying enough attention to the spiritual world. Now, though, I think the virus is helping to change that. My husband says the irony of the situation is that as people are more distanced from each other physically, they are also becoming aware that they are more connected with one another. "We're understanding that we're all in the same boat and what each of us does really does impact everyone else." 

Good Thing!

This is a painting by my dear friend, Sharon Flitterman-King, of Hillsdale, New York. She has been painting for years and her house is filled with the most exquisite artwork!

Earlier this morning, I was playing a song called "Good Thing," sung by a very talented young woman named Kehlani. The song is all about the way we can enjoy our own company, by reminding ourselves that we've "already got everything we need."  This is a good thing to think about especially now when it's tempting to look at all the negatives associated with the virus. All the things that have been closed or lost.

We still have so many blessings!

This morning, I played "Good Thing" loud loud and I held my doggie Poco

in my arms and we danced around the living room together. I highly recommend it as a mood lifter!

I offer the lyrics here, as the song makes such a wonderful poem.

"Good Thing"

I book myself tables
At all the best restaurants, then eat alone.
I buy myself fast cars
Just so I can drive them real slow.
I like my own company
Company, I don't need it
I'm not always cold
I'm just good on my own, so good on my own!

I've always been told, one day, I'll find
Somebody who changes my mind.
If they come along, I won't think twice.

'Cause I already got a good thing with me
'Cause I already got a good thing with me
Yeah, I already got everything I need
The best things in life are already mine
Don't tell me that you got a good thing for me
'Cause I already got a good thing with me
Yeah, I already done everything I dream
I'm good by myself, don't need no one else
Don't tell me that you got a good thing for me
'Cause I already got a good thing

I make myself up
Just to dance in the mirror when I'm at home
I pose and take pictures
Then send them to people that I don't know
I like getting compliments
Compliments how I'm feeling, oh
I'm not always selfish
Just bad at romance, it's not in my bones

I've always been told, one day, I'll find
Somebody who changes my mind
If they come along, I won't think twice

'Cause I already got a good thing with me (good thing with me)
Yeah, I already got everything I need (everything I need)
The best things in life are already mine
Don't tell me that you got a good thing for me
'Cause I already got a good thing with me (good thing with me)
Yeah, I already done everything I dream (everything I dream)
I'm good by myself, don't need no one else
Don't tell me that you got a good thing for me
'Cause I already got a good thing

I've always been told, one day, I'll find
Somebody who changes my mind
If they come along, I won't think twice

'Cause I already got a good thing with me (oh, good thing with me)
Yeah, I already got everything I need (everything I need, yeah)
The best things in life are already mine
Don't tell me that you got a good thing for me (no, no)
'Cause I already got a good thing with me (good thing with me)
Yeah, I already done everything I dream (everything, yeah)
I'm good by myself, don't need no one else
Don't tell me that you got a good thing for me
'Cause I already got a good thing

EDITOR'S NOTE: The image of the woman against the purple backdrop is an extraordinary collage by another artist friend, Kellie Meisl, of Pittsfield, MA. Kellie kindly allowed me to  use the image for the cover of my second novel, Seeing Red.

Poco (on the right in the photo) is pictured here with her boyfriend, Burt, of Lenox, MA.

THE MIRACLE OF MOM AND THE ORCHIDS

HOW DO I EXPLAIN WHAT HAPPENED THIS MORNING? DO I CALL THESE MIRACLES?

COVID has closed everything down, including of course Hevreh of Southern Berkshire, our amazing synagogue in Great Barrington, MA.

It being Saturday morning, I wanted to connect to a Shabbat service. A friend encouraged me to ZOOM into her temple's service. I was excited. I even donned my purple prayer shawl.

All kinds of sunshine was pouring from the sky and falling gently on my keyboard.

To say the service was chaotic does not begin to describe what was happening on the Zoom screen this morning. Having dozens of people trying to sing prayers together at the same moment wasn't working at all!

I was more than a little bored, so I began scrolling through some old word files and suddenly I came upon a word file called 

‘OH SPRING1” 

which originally contained a poem I wrote for a magazine called EDIBLE BERKSHIRES.

BUT SOMEHOW THE POEM HAD DISAPPEARED.

INSTEAD THE FILE CONTAINED QUITE AMAZINGLY A BIRTHDAY GREETING THAT I WROTE IN 2013 FOR MY DEAR MOTHER, 

DENA CLEMINTINA RICCI,

ON HER 87^TH BIRTHDAY.

How can this possibly be, I asked myself. But really, I wasn't altogether surprised.

THINGS LIKE THIS KEEP HAPPENING.

Call them what you will: COINCIDENCES. MIRACLES, all kinds of weird things I cannot explain. MY SPIRITUAL TEACHER MARY M SAYS IT’S TIME I’M WILLING TO ACCEPT THE FACT THAT THESE MIRACLES KEEP OCCURRING. It's time I start keeping track of them.

Okay, back to Saturday.

As I was sitting there puzzling over the disappearance of my poem, my husband walked into my study.

"Going to the grocery store so wish me luck," he said.

I turned to him. "Hey honey, would you buy me a small purple orchid," I begged.  Not that I need another orchid. My kitchen counter has seven already. 

He chuckled. "Honey, I have all I can do to buy food in these COVID times. You can do without another orchid."

He left and then I turned back to the birthday greeting I had written mom years back.

Imagine my shock when I read this:

"Dear Mom,

Today is your 87th birthday.
When you turn 87, there aren't a whole lot of birthday presents one can buy.

You want health and happiness for
Yourself and all of those

You love
Orchids.

The one I bought you a year

A few months ago
all the blossoms
had disappeared
and Dad said, let's
get rid of
that plant it's just three bare sticks.

But no, Mom,
despite your vision issues,
you saw something
tiny and green budding there
on one of those bare branches
something wonderful
four or five new pink blossoms appeared!

So eager you were to visit
the sun room
each morning
each week, on Tuesday,
you put two ice cubes in the pot
not a drop more water.

You were just adorable
caring for your orchid.

So today, your day, it
wasn't difficult to know
what to buy you
I ought to get my mother

another orchid I said
so
I did.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!
We Love You So Much,
Claud

*****

I ASKED RICH FOR ORCHIDS AND HE DIDN'T WANT TO BUY ONE BUT MOM BROUGHT THEM TO ME INSTEAD. 

SO OKAY MOM YOU ARE SENDING ME SIGNS AND I HAVE FINALLY STOPPED DOUBTING IT.

I'm going to do what Mary says: record all the miracles that are happening to me all the time!

A Divine Sunrise on Maple Syruping

It's been almost 18 years since I published my first novel, Dreaming Maples. I still recall how thrilling it was to live in the sugarbush in Vermont with the women artists who inhabited my book. 

Recently, a wonderful writer named Kathy Joy, from Erie, Pennsylvania, sent me this stunning photo.

Kathy is the author of a four-book series, "Breath of Joy."  She writes for the collaborative group, Books For Bonding Hearts, and is a blogger at www.coffeewithkathy.blogspot.co Kathy snapped this photo in the little hamlet of Cable Hollow, Pennsylvania, where her mother resides, and where sugar maple tappers are enjoying a robust season.

Flip the Weather Switch

Two Drops of Ink, a wonderful on-line literary site, has published my poem, "Flip the Weather Switch."

It begins this way:

Once again the weather forecast calls for a solid grey day.

But once again they – whoever the forecasters are – have got it wrong.

Maybe we can explain it this way: weather men are operating out of the same negativity bias that scientists tell us is hard wired into our brains because long long ago in very ancient times humans had to be on guard for every possible saber-toothed tiger and other disaster lurking around each corner.

Consider this: scientists say that negative emotions have three times the impact that positive emotions do.

So if 24 wonderful things happen to you today and just one bad thing

It’s quite likely the dark event will shadow your whole mood.

But the really good news is

It doesn’t have to be this way once you know what’s going on.

Like right now, I am sitting here

staring into the forest and somehow the sky is turning that powdery blue right outside the window...

Italian is Alive Inside Me

Dedicated to my wonderful parents, Dena and Ric Ricci

The meadow is blank with fog this morning.

The grasses are every shade of tan and grey.

My mind feels empty.

This is the kind of

day when I open

my mouth to say

something and

my breath is

the only

thing

to come out.

Still. I keep hoping for

for some grand inspiration.

Two weeks ago, out of the blue,

I decided I had to learn Italian.

I grew up hearing it spoken, my mom forever conversing with

my beloved grandparents, Mish and Claude.

But I never had any inclination to speak it myself.

I was content to learn Spanish and French.

Now I can’t get enough Italian.

The soft round sounds of the language are so

comforting. And the words feel so alive, like they are

beating inside my heart.

Part of what is going on is that I miss my very gentle mother. Dena.

And my dear father. Ric.

I miss them a lot.

As my friend Peg pointed out to me last week, it’s only been six months

since my Dad passed. Not that much time.

I still can’t get my head around the fact that I'm never going to see him or Mom -

ever again.

I will never visit their cozy house in Pittsfield for homemade bread and mouth-watering pot roast and 

the best apple pie I’ve ever tasted.

But that’s only part of it.

Lately, I have been practicing

staying in the NOW, not thinking or doing,

but just BEING alive and AWARE.

And constantly opening up my heart.

When it works, this present only practice brings deep

satisfaction. And gratitude. And feelings of love. Love for all creatures.

Italian, so musical and sensuous and romantic, fits this mind and body set perfectly.

It helps to keep me grounded in my senses.

It's the same kind of feeling I get when I hold my dog Poco on my chest. She's warm and soft and she

just rests there. It's so reassuring!

I have started an on-line Italian class, and I'm also using a translator program to write

phrases and sentences that appeal to me. I love speaking the sentences out loud. They make me feel 

like I'm taking care of myself. Saying what I need to say. And finding out who I really am.

Ironically, learning Italian not only connects me both to present day feelings but also links me 

directly to feelings and events in my childhood. Some of these events are terrifying.

But certainly not all of them.  I think of all the funny sayings my mother had. For 

example, when something really nice happened to me (like when I met my wonderful husband) she 

would smile and say: "Li cascado lu caso sober le maccheroni." Translation: "The cheese fell right on 

the macaroni!"

For my parent's 50th wedding anniversary in 1999 I made them a book

of my grandparents' favorite sayings. 

Saying them aloud is a lot of fun. 

These days, I am even enjoying conjugating verbs: like essere (to be) and

mangiare (to eat)

and of course, amare (to love).

And I'm busy transcribing Italian into my journal:

“Stay in the now!”

Resta nell’ora!

“Each moment is a gift.”

Ogni momento è un regalo.

“Life is a precious flower.”

La vita è un fiore prezioso.

"Stay present."

Rimani presente.

“May you enjoy all the small miracles today!”

Che tu possa godere di tutti i piccoli miracoli ogni giorno!

I hope Mom and Dad are listening to me

speak and learn new words every day.

As I write this all of a sudden a wild rain starts to fall.

Could that be a sign?

Papà e mamma ti amo così tanto!

Dad and Mom I love you so much!

A few minutes later, I try to print out this file. But the only thing that appears is this photo of my parents and me!

Could this be another sign?

POETREE

If I could,
I would
write
poetree,
plain black
lines scrawled
against the azure sky.

No matter what the
season,
poetree need not
have a reason to
be other than
its vital urging to
stand tall
and call all to see
its full breathtaking
shape.

No paper wasted
(ah, trees saved)
Nor ink.
I think today
I am
satisfied that
I saw this sprawling bit
of God's beauty
and I knew enough
to bow down to it, and
be done speaking.

Babies? Boring? Hardly!

Some mornings when I wake up,

this thought comes to me:

"Oh gee, another boring day."

Thankfully, I get up at that moment

and a few minutes later,

armed with steaming coffee in my turquoise cup,

I head down the hall to meditate.

Sitting cross-legged in front of a tall window,

I look out onto the meadow.

And there I unravel

the word "boring."


Before I know it, a little animal, a mink,

chocolate brown in color,

scoots across the stone steps, and then,

dashes back into the woods.

Up above, the morning clouds are tinted pale pink

as they drift across the blue sky.

Birds are swooping and dancing on the lawn.

Pine trees tower over the edge of the meadow.


And here, right beside me is the red

vase of flowers my

husband bought me for Valentine's Day.

Miraculously, they are still fresh a week later.

Now I see how silly a word boring is.

How can flowers and trees and birds and clouds and the blue sky

be boring?

That's like saying a baby laughing and gurgling is boring.

Or that breathing is boring.

Sure, we do it over and over and over again, but whenever I think about it,

I'm always exceedingly grateful for the next breath.


By the time I finish meditating, golden strips of sunlight are lying on the brown meadow.

Tall marsh grasses are waving in the distance.

Once again I realize what a miracle it is just to be able to see!

The sky, the grass, everything around me.

That's the way I start my day,

breathing.

Awed and full of appreciation,

love and gratitude.

HEALING JOURNEY: OPEN YOUR HEART AND STAY PRESENT!

Every once in a while I think I have written far

too many words for my own

GOOD.

I’ll be browsing through the computer searching for this or that

and I'll happen on an old scribble and it will surprise

or maybe even upset me.

Dear God, why the hell did I write that?

A friend of mine once said that she had a dream

that I got swamped (or was it drowned?)

by all the millions of words I have written.

No.  I reject that notion.

I still stand by the idea that writing unclogs your heart and starts you understanding the mysteries of your own mind.

Writing is healing me at this very moment as I do the free writing that well respected researcher James Pennebaker claims heals college students and all kinds of other groups of people. Just write freely about your feelings two or three or four times a week, make sure to attend in depth to what's bothering you, such as right now the frozen feeling within when I gaze out at the lawn and the icy bare trees and the white sky and the grey rock. If I just keep writing and writing and letting my feelings go down on paper and unlock my heart and let it flow, if I do that, my immune system will work better and I will have fewer trips to the doctor.

I have a therapist named Mary M and there is no therapist like her. She is a Jungian psychologist which means in part that she can analyze dreams.

(Last night I had one of my old recurrent dreams about finding my high school boyfriend. Dear God how can I keep dreaming the same old same old _____ for 50 years?)

Anyway, what Mary has done for me in the years we've worked together is mind boggling or heart stopping or popping or something even more profound.

She relies deeply on keeping your heart open, on spirituality on BEING PRESENT WITH YOUR FEELINGS. She works with EFT otherwise known as tapping on meridean points, a very simple technique with profound results.

But to say that's how she's helped to heal me is way too simplistic. Better to say that she has taught me that LOVE IS EVERYTHING LOVE IS AS IMPORTANT AS BREATHING which may explain my fixation of late with hearts in my painting.

Suddenly I feel a flood of fear right here write here about the fear that somebody will come along and read this and decide I'm not mentally stable which of course is a crock of 

(Why do I have trouble saying the word shit?)

Instead, write the word LOVE. 

It happens to be February 7th - one week away from Valentine's Day.

How many trillions expressions of love will there be in the next seven days? 

How many different ways can a person say, I LOVE YOU?

The other day I listened to a Sounds True podcast with clinical psychologist Shauna Shapiro who has a Ted Talk about mindfulness that has been viewed more than1.5 million times on Ted Talks. Basically Shapiro says that it's not just mindfulness (the paying of attention to the present moment without judgment) that we need to practice. We have to practice mindfulness with a LOVING INTENTION.

She talks about how important -- AND HOW DIFFICULT -- it was for her to learn how to say "Good Morning, I love you Shauna." (She has a new book out called Good Morning I Love You.)

AFTER I LISTENED TO THAT PODCAST ON SUNDAY I DECIDED TO SAY "I LOVE YOU CLAUDIA" IN ITALIAN:

"TE VOGLIO BENE, CLAUDIA." It rolls off my tongue so lovingly.

And perhaps it's that achievement that has helped to bring me to this essay today.

I want to say that on Wednesday I had a breakthrough, I wrote a piece of fiction called "LEAH ON THE FROZEN LAWN" and it went deep into the heart of me.

But the real awakening happened a few weeks ago when I finally understood that I can LIVE IN THE PRESENT MOMENT AND NO MATTER WHAT I FEEL I CAN FEEL MY FEELINGS IF I SIMPLY FOLLOW Eckert Tolle's advice. Tolle is the brilliant spiritual teacher who wrote quite a profound tome, THE POWER OF NOW. I pick up the book with all its wisdom frequently during the day. And every time the least negative thought arises 

Bam, I turn to page 192:

"So whenever you feel negativity arising within you, whether caused by an external factor, a thought, or even nothing in particular...look on it as a voice saying "Attention. Here and Now. Wake Up."

Tolle's profound teaching is that the PRESENT MOMENT offers us immediate access to the BEING, the sacred, or whatever word you'd like to use for

GOD.

He also guides us to "offer no resistance" to whatever you are feeling in the moment.

I first read Tolle's book in 2008 or so but it has taken me all these years to really absorb his teachings and honestly if it weren't for Mary constantly reminding me to feel my feelings I don't think I would grasp The Power of Now right NOW.

So that's my schpeil for today. MAY YOU JUST KEEP OPENING YOUR HEART which is the phrase I wrote over and over again in my journal on Wednesday when I suddenly had a breakthrough in writing about a character named Leah.

Writing about Leah has helped me realize that I can write about my healing journey of the last seven years. Heaven knows there are a gazillionpeopleouttherewritingabout their healing journeys. Does the world really need one more?

Yes. The world needs one more because I was frozen before. And now my heart

and mind are open and flowing.

So be it. 

SO BE

PRESENT.

It is ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING.