I'm no Thoreau...but I choose to live deliberately

My Garage 

From Memorial Day to Labor Day weekends here in southern Rhode Island, I manage a robust hosting season on Airbnb. I am one of those old-fashioned hosts who still believe in the platform's original mission to share our rooms, homes, communities, and economies with like-minded travelers from all over the world. In order to be on hand to welcome, recommend and be of service to my guests, I move myself and my beloved Carla from our four-room cottage into my 20' x 20' unfinished garage across the lawn (think shabby chic). My garage boasts no kitchen, no running water; I do, however, have an air fryer, microwave, mini refrigerator, outside shower, and a gym membership.

My life in the garage is simple, uncomplicated, and uniquely me. I choose to remain out there long after my last summer guest has returned home. Why, you ask? The answer hit me while I made the six-step journey from the corner where my iMac is located, over to the twin bed where I sleep like a baby. Henry David Thoreau came to mind, along with his 10' x 15' one-room cabin on Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts and the two years he lived there with only a desk, three chairs, a fireplace and a bed. I'm no Thoreau, but I share his desire to live deliberately, with nothing but the essentials on hand. I've come to understand that my fascination, my love affair with this simple life is rooted in the quiet inspiration and divine mind that I partner with. With no encumbrances, no distractions, I am free to create to my heart's content.

In the fall of 1996, I was a Fellow in Residence at The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts in Sweet Briar, Virginia. I was granted a one-room studio with a desk, a chair and a bed. I spent two glorious weeks finishing my short story collection: Underbelly. Twenty years later, in the fall of 2016, after a two-month whirlwind cross-country book tour to promote Linger Longer: Lessons from a Contemplative Life, I spent a month in a three-room cabin on a horse farm in rural Elgin, Arizona, a few miles from the Mexican border. It's there I discovered that less is more: less baggage, less stress, less attachment, more freedom, more connection, more memories. When I returned to Rhode Island that year, I sold my 2000-square-foot designer condo in downtown East Greenwich and embarked on a minimalistic lifestyle, the same one I enjoy today.

As November dawns here in the northeastern United States, I will have to leave my one-room sanctuary and move back into my cottage, and while geographically not much will change, spiritually my center will shift as I lay down new tracks for self-discovery and creative expression.

Tell me where, when, and how you connect with divine mind? 

For more information on Thoreau, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and/or Sweet Caroline's Vintage Cottage, check out: 

https://bit.ly/3WdLXIz

https://www.vcca.com/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8FUPrd5ra0

An Open Letter to a Woman Who Fawns

 

Photo by Alice Alinari on Unsplash

Fawn: to behave abjectly before a superior, to seek favor by servile flattery 

or exaggerated attention, to ingratiate oneself by a menial 

or subservient attitude. ~Merriam-Webster dictionary

You impressed me. The way you carried yourself---erect, poised, sure-footed in sensible shoes on the cracked city sidewalk. Your patterned vintage scarf paired nicely with your tweed jacket and upswept hair. I sensed a breezy que sera attitude as you and your partner window-shopped on an overcast October day. Then you did something that destroyed that impression. And in that moment, I was seized with a repulsion that took time to unpack.

I do not recall making eye contact with you as I briefly held open the antique oak door to the cafe for one of you to assume. I went left to make my way to a window seat overlooking the gardens while you went to take your place in line. By the time I got behind you, your man was ordering for you while you held back, just off to his right side, and slowly, deliberately stroked his back. 

Your fawning spoke volumes, it was code for, “He’s mine.” That circle you traced on his back? It was symbolic of the wall, the protection, you intended to draw around your relationship. Circling the wagons, taking defensive action, preparing for an attack, your fear was palpable. Fear of losing something you had, fear of not getting something you wanted. Energetically, you cast me an unmistakable air of one-upmanship. 

“Fawn types seek safety by merging with the wishes, needs and demands of others. They act as if they unconsciously believe that the price of admission to any relationship is the forfeiture of all their needs, rights, preferences and boundaries.” ~Pete Walker

[As an aside, and before you jump all over me, readers, for not having a romantic bone in my body, let me say, this was not about romance or love. Love is expansive, it’s welcoming, it’s inclusive. Fear, its opposite, contracts. It keeps people at arm's length. This one-way fawning, one-sided touching, was a shot across the bow, fired to warn me and other women, to back off, to keep our distance, to move along.]

Without reciprocity, your man stood stock-still, letting you fawn, more intent on eying the barista beyond the counter. Tell me, does he enjoy, encourage, require you to fawn? Does he expect it? Does he get off on your public caress? Does he need to be revered in public, and if so, what does he demand in private? 

Who imprinted on you? Who taught you to fear, mistrust, suspect other women? Where did you learn to sacrifice self for love? Who told you that fawning would prevent your man from straying? 

"No matter how well you think you carry yourself, if you do not value yourself it will show. And you'll be treated by what people perceive you as. Know who you are and be confident in it. Know your worth and act on it." ~Author unknown

Like an animal marking territory, territory that I, thirty years your senior, had no intention of violating, you staked your claim. Fear not, child; I have no interest in, no desire to touch, hold, fawn, fuck your man. I'd never interrupt the symbiotic underpinnings of your coupling. 

Sadly, you underestimated, undervalued me, my womanhood, our sisterhood, and for that I pity you. 

For more information on the psychology of fawning, check out: https://bit.ly/3NbTOSY

Tell me, mom. What do you remember?

 

Vintage photo on Pinterest

“Remembering is mental time travel.” ~Endel Tulving

Stream of consciousness, longhand writing triggers memories, excavating them layer by layer, and if you resist the urges to interrupt the flow, to worry about grammar and syntax, if you just WRITE, 

some amazing insights and recollections will emerge. One thing will always lead to another.

The following excerpt is an edited version of a prompt I received this week during 

the first day of a six-week creative writing workshop, and as such is richly experimental in nature.

Prompt: "I remember..."

I remember a time, a table, a table in the round, and round the circle the wooden chairs went. Chairs with seats mere inches off the floor, chairs that held the body and bones and brains of a new generation. Chairs that scraped up against the linoleum floors of my elementary school. School days I faced the door, a door leading out to a hallway, a hallway leading to the unforgiving playground where my limbs never got the climbing, the running, the hopscotching quite right.

My mom remembered, and I remember my mom, my mom who told me once, once or more, about that classroom, a classroom whose vision is clouded by time, blurry like a cataract. But mom, my mom remembered, she remembered to tell me, and how I wish today, and I'll wish forevermore, that I'd asked, queried, plumbed the depths of 92 years of memories, hers somehow more intact than mine. I remember, my mom remembered to tell me, "You were part of a group, a group of kids who were good writers. Your teacher singled you out." How many kids, who knows now, tapped to write creatively, and at what age? Seven, eight, nine, no, not nine, by nine, I would have been too scared, too scarred by all the dizzyingly dysfunctional drama at home. Home life with a screaming father, drunk on beer and melancholy, so I must have been six, or seven, or eight, no, not 8, not 6 either. I'll bet 7. I'll bet 7 years old for sure. 

Second grade, at that school where I went, Ellen P.. Hubbell, the one I went to when we moved to Fifth Street in Bristol, after we got kicked out of the apartment on Union Street. In Bristol where there was a whole block of streets named after numbers--First, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth. I wish I could call mom, my mom, and say, "Hey, mom, remember, do you remember Fifth Street? Remember all the streets that had numbers in their name? What street number were we? I remember Gloria who lived on the other side of the duplex. Remember her, mom? Remember how she turned yellow from the cancer drugs they dripped into her? I remember, so how old were we, mom, how old was I, when we moved to Fifth Street? I remember too, mom, going to the other school, the one I walked to with older kids. I know I was older, mom, because I had my first crush on a boy. I still remember the delicate blonde-haired boy; I remember his name: Jay Prikocki, and I still remember his phone number, the one I used to dial and hang up: 203-583-7915. That's crazy, mom. Over sixty years later, I still remember a boy's phone number. We used to walk, leave that school and walk to a lunch counter, to eat hotdogs, I must have been a pre-teen, or in my early teens. And then high school, mom, walking in the opposite direction still from Fifth Street to Bristol Eastern, so did we live on Fifth Street for ten years, mom? 

Tell me, mom, what do you remember? 

Can We Leave Now? Overcoming Generational Alcoholism.

"Yes, your family history has some sad chapters. But your history doesn't have to be your future. The generational garbage can stop here and now." ~Max Lucado

Walking out of my favorite bookstore on Saturday afternoon, I saw a little girl, maybe 7 years old, sitting cross-legged on the floor with a book in her lap, while her mother stood nearby perusing the stacks. As I passed, I overheard the girl ask if they'd be leaving soon, and I was taken back to my own childhood, and all the times that I’d asked the same question. In my case, I was asking my father if he, my brother and I could leave, but we weren't in a bookstore. We were in a noisy bar room, and my brother and I spent a whole lot of time there. My mother worked nights to help make ends meet in the late 1950s. My father always answered my query with, "In a little bit. Charlie just bought me a drink." If it wasn't Charlie, it was George or Hank. "Here, go play the jukebox," and he'd toss us a quarter. My brother and I would swirl around on the sticky dance floor for a few songs before tugging at his shirt again. 

My father only drank beer, but don't let anyone ever tell you beer drinkers can’t become alcoholics. And even though I swore I'd never become my father, once I got to college, I became a daily drinker with no regard for anything other than my obsession for that next drink. And by the time I became a mother at thirty-three, my preoccupation with alcohol had blossomed into full-blown alcoholism. I was a functional alcoholic with a high tolerance for booze, so unless you were a trained professional, I hid it pretty well. But make no mistake, I became my father the first time I took my 18-month-old daughter into a bar for the first time, sat her up in a high chair, fed her a meatball, and deluded myself into thinking this wasn't a barroom because they served food.

Fast forward. Blessedly, my three grown children have had a sober mother/grandmother for over 14 years now. Twelve-step work saved my life and slowed (hopefully, halted) the curse of generational alcoholism.

Today, that 18-month-old daughter I’d dragged into barrooms is a beautiful mother of three children of her own. I love our Thursday mornings when she and I routinely take her brood to the library. 

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Change the Voices In Your Head: Make Them Like You Instead

imposter syndrome (noun):

the persistent inability to believe that one's success is deserved or has been 

legitimately achieved as a result of one's own efforts or skills

According to an article in Healthline Media, "Imposter syndrome, also called perceived fraudulence, involves feelings of self-doubt and personal incompetence that persist despite your education, experience, and accomplishments." 

I am familiar with the manifestations of this soul-crushing trait. 

Back in the mid-1990s, I wrote a monthly column for a national trade magazine, my first book of informational non-fiction was about to be published, and I owned and operated a company that wrote marketing plans for small businesses. I had every right to call myself a writer, yet, I had gotten it into my head that I wouldn't be a real writer until I could write fiction. On top of that delusion, I also believed I needed a post-graduate degree, so in 1995, I embarked on a two-year low residency master of fine arts degree, where for my final thesis, I wrote Underbelly: A Collection of Short Stories. 

Upon graduation, I went on to publish my poems and short stories and enjoyed the success of my second book of informational non-fiction. In hindsight, did I need that MFA? Probably not, but while in the throes of imposter syndrome, I used it to quiet the voices in my head and to create legitimacy for myself. 

Fast forward to 2012. Without premeditation, without practice, without a degree in photography, I became a contemplative photographer. (Remember, my MFA was in creative writing, not photography.) In a moment of divine inspiration, I was inspired to create Earth's School of Love, an inspirational greeting card company making use of some of the photographs I'd begun taking with my digital Sony. A Facebook group grew to over 13,000 global followers as folks signed on to read and view my work. It never occurred to me to pursue an advanced degree in photography.

So what changed in those fifteen years? Certainly the wisdom of age, and I also stopped worrying about what other people would think. I stopped defining my talent in terms of framed certificates. Today, I am an urbex photographer who chases opportunities to photograph abandoned churches, schools, hospitals, buildings and junkyards. I learn from other photographers; I practice consistency: I take creative chances. I have a solo show coming up at a respected gallery in November, but every now and then, that imposter syndrome kicks in. Then I have to remember, I'm not a photographer because of the camera I own, or the number of lenses in my camera bag, or the certificate on the wall. I'm a photographer because of the way I choose to see and interact with the world. 

Who might you become, what latent talents might surface, if you shrug off your self-imposed doubts,  perceived fraudulence, and just go do what you love? What if you change the voices in your head? Make them like you instead.

Here's a great article on this subject: https://www.healthline.com/health/mental-health/imposter-syndrome

Your body as compass

 

“My body is a compass – and it does not lie.” ~ Terry Tempest Williams

I teach weekly meditation classes on the touring platform, Heygo, and one of the things we do prior to each session is a body scan (https://www.heygo.com/the-footloose-muse). During the body scan, I invite participants to check in with their physical bodies, to notice any areas of tension, stiffness, pain. From there, I direct them to send some intention to those areas, to send some love, some light, to invite those areas to soften, to yield, to release. 

Too often we either deny pain until it's too late, or we push it away instead of embracing the lessons it has come to teach us. Pain or dis-ease is instructive; it acts as a roadmap, a compass, an indicator that some part of our life is out of alignment with spirit, with source, with the divine. Pain points us to our true north, the course correction we so often need to lead happy and healthy lives. In order for pain to inform, we must first ask, "What have you come to teach me?" and then we must listen for the answers.  

I wrote about the instruction I'd received a few weeks ago when, seemingly out of nowhere, two frightening episodes of vertigo rocked me (https://carolmossa.substack.com/p/what-had-the-frightening-episodes).

Vertigo is an inner ear imbalance, so I framed the question, "Where in my life am I experiencing an imbalance?" and the message was loud and clear, "Find time for more play." I heeded the call and blessedly, vertigo is no longer an issue.

Four years ago, an MRI revealed crippling arthritis in both knees. My orthopedic doctor suggested surgery, but I resisted, choosing to do the mental work of asking my pain what it had come to teach me. Surprisingly, I discovered that contrary to slowing down, I was actually being challenged to move forward towards a fuller and more expansive life. I had created a perfectly comfortable yet complacent life. I wasn't reaching, wasn't stretching outside of my comfort zone. The pain subsided once I began building in outings and new experiences. 

This week, I find myself in the midst of asking and listening again. I have a tooth that was scheduled for extraction last year, but I chose to save the tooth by innervating the nerves around the gums. A year later, the tooth is acting up again. What has the dental discomfort come to teach me this time? Might it be time to let go, to surrender? Where in my life am I experiencing a similar reluctance to let go of something that no longer serves me? (If you read last week's column here, you already know the answer.)

Always seek medical attention for your dis-ease, and simultaneously, undertake your own inquiry. Identify where the discomfort is located. What is the pain preventing you from doing? For example, is back pain preventing you from bending? Next, frame a question like: "Is there somewhere in my life where I'm unwilling to bend, to compromise?" Endeavor to fix that area and you may experience pain relief.

The answers will come if you ask the right questions and then take the time to listen.

I prefer freedom

 "Safety is all well and good: I prefer freedom."~E. B. White

I like money; I make it welcome in my life. I do all those things metaphysicians tell us to do when manifesting wealth: I keep my wallet tidy; I smile when I pay my bills; I have a mindset of abundance rather than lack. But I value freedom more. I value my personal freedom---freedom of movement, freedom of choice, freedom from soul-crushing encumbrances---more than anything else, more than all the tea in China. 

I lead an unencumbered life. I am not weighed down by debt, by other people's expectations of me, by relationships that require more than I have to give. Yet every so often I find myself spread too thin, too engulfed in obligations, too stuck. Last weekend caught me off guard. Waves of discontent engulfed me and I had to pause to examine why. I am an instructor in a wonderful adult education program and I love the curriculum, I love the students, and I love the other instructors. But what I love more than anything else in the world is freedom to come and go as I please, freedom to go through life with no strings attached. Those are difficult objectives to achieve if I'm bound by other people's expectations of me. I realized last weekend that it may be time to reevaluate my commitment to this gig that offers me a chance to put in one weekend a month for four months in the fall and winter. The compensation is fair and it always comes in handy. 

One of the greatest sources of unhappiness is the feeling of being stuck. ~Dr. Robert Anthony, Doing What You Love, Loving What You Do

But for this Sagittarius who has been unabashedly self-employed for decades, one who has known lean and prosperous times, I agree with E. B. White: I prefer freedom. And while it's not necessarily an all-or-nothing proposition, at my age, I ain't wasting time chasing anything but my heart's desire. 

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