betaphilings

Are you a global thinker? To find out, go to this page and take the short quiz before you read this post. Then come back here and tell me your results. I’m eager to know you better.

I worked for a textbook publishing company in Austin once. A one-eyed millionaire owned the place and a senator’s son ran it. The senator’s son told me he hired me because I was the nicest person he interviewed.

My other qualifications were pretty sketchy. A major in English, typesetting and copy writing experience, a novel.  The owner seemed more interested in my novel than my background. So I was nice and I’d written a novel. Apparently, that’s all you need to work in the publishing business.

The senator’s son would hand me a manuscript and it was my job to turn it into a book. Each manuscript had to be copy edited, designed, typeset, proofread, indexed, printed, bound and shipped. My job was to find the right people to do each of those jobs, assign and check their work, and make sure deadlines were met.

It took nine months to make a book back then. In four years there I made 84 books.

I was perfect for that job because I am a global thinker, which means I process information backwards. I don’t look at a manuscript and see 500 pages. I look at it and see a bound book. Global thinkers process information holistically, from the whole to the parts. Their thinking can appear quite illogical and meandering because most people process information sequentially, from the bits and pieces to the whole.

Most people are not global thinkers. Most people are linear thinkers.

None of us are wholly one thing or the other. We use both linear and global thinking skills just like we use both hands. However, there does seem to be general agreement about hemispheric dominance. Global thinking is associated with right-brain dominance, and linear thinking is associated with the more logical left-brain functions.

Seventy percent of the population is thought to be left-brain dominant, or linear thinkers.

which explains why I’m such an outlier

Right-brain thinkers tend to be more creative and spontaneous. Actors, artists, musicians, and athletes are right-brain thinkers, which accounts for their small percentage in the overall population. These people have difficulty following a simple sequence of directions without changing or rearranging something. Instead of planning every aspect of a road trip, they will just get in the car and drive. Instead of following a recipe exactly, they will change it. They will pick up a magazine and open it somewhere in the middle or towards the back.

Thinking backwards is not a brain disorder but it can appear that way to linear thinkers. Because emotions are processed on the right side of the brain, global thinkers may seem overly emotional or too sensitive. They can’t help it. They make decisions based on feelings and intuition rather than on logic and reason. To the logically minded this can be seen as a fault.

which explains why I’m “so sensitive“

I left the publishing job to have my children, and after that I taught high school English. In the classroom linear/sequential thinkers (most students) are lost without a road map. They need specific steps and procedures on how to go about getting there. Outlining is a linear/sequential processing technique, which explains why I always wrote my outline after I finished the paper. Students who excel in math are linear thinkers because math problems can be broken into small, incremental steps.

which explains why I’m no good at math

Schools do a good job of assessing learning styles (visual, auditory, kinesthetic), especially at the primary levels, but I’ve never known them to address thought processing styles (global or linear). There is a test for left- or right-brain dominance at this site if you’re interested in learning more about yourself or your children. It will require more of your time than the test at the top.

Below are other traits of the global/gestalt/nonlinear/strategic/holistic/right-brain thinker.

• Prefers working in an informal, less structured, more flexible environment
• Tends to be spontaneous and likes spontaneity
• Enjoys doing several things at once
• Learns best when information is presented with humor or emotion or a short anecdote.
• Speaks with many gestures
• Tends to learn the general idea first, then looks at the details
• Can work well with distractions
• Tends to take frequent breaks
• Tends to need lessons which are interesting to them on a personal level
• Tends to work well in small groups
• Needs written and tactile involvement
• Responds well to pictures

(photo by Travis Wright)

So tell me. Are you a global or a linear thinker?

Write about Dad, you keep saying.

OK, I’ll tell you a story about your dad.

It’s a half-remembered story like they all are. All stories are less than whole. There is no such thing as the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth when it comes to memory. Truth exists only in the moment.

This story is like a broken glass with three or four main chunks lying around and smaller fragments scattered about. The big chunks include a hotel, a company Christmas party, a band from Hawaii, and a feast of food and drinks.

You can almost fill in the fragments around those chunks yourself. You could pick any big company to throw the party and any big hotel to host it. The sign out front says SO AND SO’S CHRISTMAS PARTY and the date.

That’s how Tom knew about the party. He saw the sign and came home and told me that we were invited to a company Christmas party.

Yippee!!

He lied, of course, but I came to understand that most of his lies were harmless. He simply loved to have fun, and he had no problem breaking protocols in pursuit of festivity. He had already done the hard job of rearing three children and now with just me he was rolling along carefree. Crashing that Christmas party was so emblematic of the way he approached life. The man was fearless.

Are you sure we should be doing this?

Yeah, everything will be alright.

We were dressed to the nines, looking and smelling good, Tom in a suit and me in heels. The place was packed with lei-wearing celebrants, maybe a couple of hundred in a hotel banquet room. The food was amazing, the band was hokey and loud, the dance floor was set up between the band and the food. We ate and drank and danced the night away.

Tom loved to dance. I used to make fun of the way we danced. We were so awkward together. We had different inner beats and it showed whenever we tried to dance. Still, we danced lovingly and often.

Speaking of beats, do you know anything about the Beat Generation? Your dad was a borderline beatnik because he grew up in that generation. San Francisco became their mecca so if you see any old geysers in their seventies out there, they’re probably former beats. Incredibly interesting people is what they are.

Here’s another story I love. You may have heard this one already. One day Tom came home and said he’d gotten me a part in a Willie Nelson movie.

What!?

Sure enough, the next morning we showed up at a hotel in Austin and I was whisked away to a wardrobe trailer and put into a cowgirl waitress outfit. My job was to traipse around behind Willie, Kris Kristofferson, and Rip Torn carrying a tray and serving drinks. You can see about ten seconds of me in Song Writer. Tom was seated at another table wearing a cowboy hat and tan jacket, acting like a customer. We each got a check for $88 for playing extras that day. I have pictures of us with Willie and Kris.

Your father’s fearlessness rubbed off on me. Once we were on Eagle Mountain Lake in the Texas Steel yacht, anchored in a little cove partying with a group of thirty-somethings. A sea plane began circling overhead and we all started waving. The plane landed on the lake and cruised over to the boat. I asked the pilot if he’d take me up for a ride and he agreed. So I climbed into the plane and got a birds-eye view of the lake where I met your dad. My spirit soared high that day.

Speaking of spirits, the common element in each of these stories is alcohol, which reminds me of a Visine story. We were atop a mesa in New Mexico or Arizona, one of those, laid out on a blanket in the buff when a bug crawled into my ear.

Aachtt!!

A buzzing bug in your ear is a frightening thing. I was screaming and crazy scared. Tom got the Visine from my night case and squeezed it into my ear. The bug drained out with the fluid. Remember that if you ever get a bug in your ear.

If your dad had a motto, it was “Everything will be alright.” He said that to me practically daily for twenty years to cut through my fussing and fretting. It’s funny how when you hear something over and over for that long, you come to believe it. Now it’s my motto too. I know that everything will be alright because it always is.

Tom had another line that worked well on me. No matter where we were, if there was a room full of people, he would turn to me and say, “You’re the prettiest woman in the room.” I loved hearing that. Sometimes I agreed with him and sometimes I didn’t. Most women in their prime are pretty, especially when they’re dressed for a night out.

I never thought you looked like either of us until I put those two pictures up. Now I can see the resemblance—the nose, the mouth, the chin, even the eyebrows. Mostly, you have his fearlessness. I remember you crashing that Astricon conference in Dallas when you were a freshman because you couldn’t afford a ticket. You met Mark Spenser that day and showed him Adhearsion and that became the defining moment in your career. You’ve been on top of the world ever since.

Tom would be so proud of you.

The same thought is always in the mind—there’s something wrong with me, I am missing something, something is lacking, I need something. It is not true. You don’t need anything. Nothing is missing. — James Swartz

1952

by betaphi

My baby’s gone outside to start his day

He is the most amazing little boy

At three he’s full of life and loves to play

He heads out down the path bouncing with joy

He stops to pick up something from the ground

Perhaps a rock or stick or once-prized toy

I watch and wonder what it is he’s found

A ball, he throws it far for Mac the dog

Young Mac returns with just a curl of bark

He’s taken from the nearest Birch-wood log

Now Joey’s squatting down, he’s found a frog

He’s showing it to Mac who starts to bark

They play like this each day from dawn to dark

Poets try to help one another when we can;

however competitive we are, and we are,

the life’s so chancy, we feel so beleaguered,

we need all the good will we can get.

Whether you’re up from a slum

or down from a carriage,

how be sure you’re a poet?

How know if your work has enduring worth, or any?

Self-doubt is almost our definition.

Someone once said that to make a poem,

you first have to invent the poet to make it.

—from “The Poet” by C. K. Williams

“It’s perhaps not coincidental that a younger post material generation, while more empathic and spiritual, is less religious and less prone to otherworldly or utopian visions. If one is living an embodied full life of deep participation in the here and the now, there is less likelihood that he or she will dream of finding solace in a perfect state sometime in the distant future.” — Jeremy Rifkin, The Empathic Civilization

Do the demands of others tend to make people more productive than they would be without such pressure?

That’s the question this month’s crop of aspiring college applicants attempted to answer. Of course the demands of others make us more productive. If it weren’t for Pearson contacting me each month to score essays, I might be one of the least productive people I know.

Apart from Pearson wanting me to read a couple thousand essays every month, I have no one demanding anything of me. Nothing. Nada. No one asking me or telling me to do anything. Where all the external constraints went, I do not know. I just woke up one day and noticed they were gone.

But I’m back in my work chair now, sitting here in my paperless office reading student essays all day, trying to be productive. When I’m not scoring essays, I’m busy all day getting information overloaded. It’s dizzying.

Alvin Toffler coined the term information overload in his 1970 best seller Future Shock. I had to read that book in college and I’ve never forgotten it. In it, Toffler predicts a return to cottage industry brought on by the information age. He describes what this new age will mean.

Society is undergoing an enormous structural change, a revolution from an industrial society to a super-industrial society. This change will overwhelm people. The accelerated rate of technological and social change will leave them disconnected and suffering from shattering stress and disorientation – future shock. The majority of social problems will be symptoms of this future shock.

He got it right—forty years ago. Who says futurists don’t know what they’re talking about? Alvin Toffler certainly did.

Future shock has arrived. Too much change in too short a period of time is what we are all going through right now.  It absolutely is dizzying.

I’m going to play futurist here for a minute and make a prediction of my own. I predict that everything is going to be alright, because it always is. If you don’t believe me, just look out your window right now. There’s your proof. Everything is always alright, it always has been and always will be.

Be kind to yourself, get some fresh air, and remember: That air is shared by every living creature on this planet. What you are breathing right now may once have been inside a baby panda.

We truly are all in this together.

Lisa Ericson at MommyMystic is looking for funny baby stories. I submitted mine about setting my son on fire. Check it out in the comments there.

Lack of imagination is the cause of much human suffering.

I never knew Dr. Guisenberger’s story. I only imagined it. For decades I imagined his story. He was the hot coal in my shoe. I hated him and feared him and blamed him for turning me into a freak.

Over time my anger subsided as a new story began to emerge. The new story was imagined too. In the new, more sympathetic version of the story, Dr. Guisenberger was not an evil monster but a tortured soul, reeling from the horrors of his place in time, a damaged fragment of his former self.

It’s funny, really, how you can look at anything in different ways. One with loathing, one with compassion.

In the old story I was convinced that he hated me because my eyes were blue. I felt that he was using me to enact a morbid kind of personal revenge.  That might have been the case, but I cannot look at it that way any longer. Now I must view Dr. Guisenberger as a pathetic, broken man who had known untold horrors in his homeland. Whether that was true or not, I do not know. I only know that he was psychically sick. In my new version of the story, it was the Holocaust that made him sick.

If one needed glasses back then, one went to Dr. Guisenberger’s office.

“Is this better or worse?” he would ask.

I never knew for sure. I always guessed and I always guessed wrong.

It did not seem to matter to him whether I guessed correctly or not. All he wanted was an answer. If I said I didn’t know, he would persist.

“Of course you know. Which is it, better or worse?”

I trembled in fear of this man for ten years. Twice a year for ten years I was forced to sit in his dark, dank room and smell his coffee breath in my face and say things I did not believe. Twice a year for ten years I would leave his office with a prescription for new lenses that were stronger than the ones I wore.

“Mom, I can’t see.”

“You’ll get used to them.”

“But I can’t see!”

“The doctor knows what’s best.”

Never once did her words comfort me, nor for a moment did I get used to the burden placed on me by my elders. No one knew what to do when I cried with each new pair of glasses.

As the lenses got stronger, the headaches worsened. My childhood was a blur of headaches and heartache.

By the time I reached high school, my lenses resembled Coke bottle bottoms. By the time I graduated, Dr. Guisenberger’s version of my vision had reached a whopping 20/1000.

According to Wikipedia, 20/1000 is considered near total visual impairment, or near total blindness.

I felt betrayed by the adults in my life. I felt that they had allowed near blindness to be forced on me by a black-souled German Jew who had it out for me and my little brother. Yes, he too, my precious little brother, was dealt this same exact blow.

No one in my extended family had low vision, yet somehow my brother and I got labeled nearly blind. That alone is reason to believe the doctor over corrected us. Also, there was that little girl whose innate sense of awareness kept insisting something was wrong.

Were my brother and I deliberately blinded by a demented victim of Nazi terror? Maybe. Maybe not. There is no way to know.

In my earlier version of the story, his actions were deliberate. In the newer version, he was merely incompetent. In the new version, Dr. Guisenberger was dealt a hand much worse than my own. His country incinerated children. By comparison, slowly blinding them seems much less cruel.

I know enough about story to know that any story can be shaped. The shape of this story changed when I began to imagine a less painful way to view it. Imagining the doctor’s story differently made a difference. That and four operations. Now I am 20/350.

My brother still doesn’t trust eye doctors. He refuses to risk having surgery.

If our obstacles are our path, my path became that which was near to me, things I could hold in my hands and see clearly, like books or drawing and sewing. Nowadays it’s a computer.

I have Dr. Guisenberger to thank for shaping my path. He more than anyone else taught me the value of imagination. Imagination lets us forgive.

Kindness

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the
Indian in a white poncho lies dead
by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone who journeyed through the night
with plans and the simple breath
that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness
as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow
as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness
that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day
to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

— from this lovely site

The Greatest

Once I wanted to be the greatest
No wind of waterfall could stall me
And then came the rush of the flood
Stars of night turned deep to dustMelt me down
Into big black armour
Leave no trace of grace
Just in your honor
Lower me down
To culprit south
Make ‘em wash a space in town
For the lead
And the dregs of my bed
I’ve been sleepin’
Lower me down
Pin me in
Secure the grounds
For the later parade

Once I wanted to be the greatest
Two fists of solid rock
With brains that could explain
Any feeling

Lower me down
Pin me in
Secure the grounds
For the lead
And the dregs of my bed
I’ve been sleepin’
For the later parade

Once I wanted to be the greatest
No wind of waterfall could stall me
And then came the rush of the flood
Stars of night turned deep to dust

“Memory is a storehouse of junk on a floor where a few gems are scattered too. Find them, for that is what life is worth.” —Surinder Singh

My first real job after college was as a typesetter for a printing company. One of our customers was an advertising agency that created magazine and newspaper ads for its clients. In those days type had to be ordered from commercial print shops.

Apart from setting type, much of my time was spent interacting with a guy from the ad agency who showed up three or four times a day to pick up type or drop off copy. The designs he brought in amazed me. Somebody at that ad agency really knew what they were doing.

The guy and I became friends and one day he invited me to drop by the agency after work. He said cocktails were served on Fridays after five and lots of people showed up.

I met the owners of Carter & Daniel Advertising that day. Carter was the big, jovial front man whose specialty was hype. Daniel was the quiet former art professor and acclaimed local sculptor who made the magic happen. All the people I met there fit my idea of cool people.

I quickly determined that my life would be greatly improved if I moved from my one-woman composition department to this dynamic advertising agency, so every Friday after work I would head to Carter & Daniel and hang out like I belonged there. I would introduce myself as the typesetter, I would sip gin and tonic, I would hound Mr. Carter to hire me.

“No!” he would bellow. “I need you there not here.”

One afternoon I overheard the two of them discussing the bank surveys. Questionnaires designed by the agency to assess customer satisfaction had been completed by bank customers and were stacked in piles needing attention. That’s when it hit me: offer to do it for them.

I told them I would be glad to take the surveys home and draft a report. In fact, I would do it for free just to help them out since they sent me so much typesetting. Nothing to lose. Potential gain if I do a good job.

They liked my idea.

So I loaded my car with stacks of questionnaires and spent the weekend poring over them. English majors are good at some things, and writing reports is generally one of them.

On Monday after work I returned the questionnaires to Carter & Daniel, along with my ten-page report, nicely packaged as a term paper might be.  They were dumbstruck.

They hired me on the spot.

As production manager there, I worked with many talented people to produce TV, radio, magazine, newspaper, and billboard ads. Concepts came from the owners and execution came through me.

Concepts were often little more than a few words. My report, for example, had shown that bank customers put high value on small things like courtesy and friendliness, so the concept for the bank’s new ad campaign was called “Little Things.” At the time those words sounded fresher than they would today.

The owners gave me a lot of freedom to do what I wanted with Little Things, including writing the copy.

I gave the copy a really sentimental slant, which was popular in those days. I tore through magazines and found sappy photographs that tug at the heartstrings. I arranged and directed a photo shoot that emulated those shots. I worked with the voice talent on the right background music. Finally, I took the photos and audio recording to the TV station and produced my first television commercial.

It was a huge success. The Little Things spot was a bright and shiny gem of a thing.

Wanderlust kicked in at some point, and I moved on from that job, to another state, taking with me a new measure of confidence.

The kicker to this story for me is what happened three years later when I was visiting friends in my former state. I heard something very familiar that drew me into the next room where a television was playing. There it was, of all things — my Little Things commercial, still airing after all those years.

Ah, it felt so good!

“We’re all five-year-olds. We don’t know how to do this thing called life. We’re just learning how.” —Byron Katie

This is the picture that came on the Christmas card from my nephew. Abby turned five on December 1st. I feel merry just looking at this! Merry Christmas, kiddos!

“Let me light my lamp,” says the star, “and never debate if it will help to remove the darkness.” — M. Tagore, 1928

We’d sold the house and shipped all our furnishings to the new place. We’d spent our last day together at the marina. In the morning, Tom would drive “Miss Gigi” east along the Gulf of Mexico shoreline toward Port Arthur. The kids and I would drive the car and meet him there. It was our last night in Port Aransas.

Jill was almost two and Jay was almost three. I had just turned forty. It was late July and the fireflies were out. One flew into my hair and got caught as I was walking toward the door with the children. Good thing, because the electricity was turned off in the house. Without the lightening bug, I would have had a hard time opening the door with a baby in my arms.

Inside the darkness, as the lightening bug flashed, the entire room filled with the most beautiful ambient light I’d ever seen. A sense of peace and wonder and gratitude settled over me. A blissfulness.

Thank you, I thought. Thank you, firefly.

The children were tired from a day in the sun and water. The drive to the house had made them groggy. I put them on the air mattress and they went right to sleep, wearily aware that a wondrous thing was taking place.

I lay down beside them, marveling at the truth. On a night when I had no electricity, a firefly flew into my life.

It was a magical moment, the kind that makes you certain there is magic in the world. This is the memory I go to when I want to feel supremely loved.

Here is a supremely lovely poem by Tagore titled “The Unnamed Light.”

1
I touch God in my song
as the hill touches the far-away sea
with its waterfall.

2
“Let me light my lamp,” says the star,
“and never debate
if it will help to remove the darkness.”

3
The flame met the earthen lamp in me,
and what a great marvel of light!

4
Between the shores of Me and Thee
there is the loud ocean, my own surging self,
which I long to cross.

5
Life sends up in blades of grass
its silent hymn of praise
to the unnamed Light.

6
The butterfly counts not months
but moments,
and has time enough.

7
Let my love, like sunlight,
surround you
and yet give you illumined freedom.

8
Birth is from
the mystery of night
into the greater mystery of day.

9
Faith is the bird that feels the light
and sings when the dawn is still dark.

10
My life’s empty flute waits for its final music
like the primal darkness before the stars came out.

11
The world is the ever-changing foam
that floats on the surface of a sea of silence.

12
I leave no trace of wings in the air,
but I am glad I have had my flight.

13
Before the end of my journey
may I reach within myself
the one which is the all,
leaving the outer shell
to float away with the drifting multitude
upon the current of chance and change.

14
When death comes and whispers to me,
“Thy days are ended,”
let me say to him, “I have lived in love
and not in mere time.”
He will ask, “Will thy songs remain?”
I shall say, “I know not, but this I know
that often when I sang I found my eternity.” 

————

SOURCE: Fireflies, by Rabindranath Tagore,
The Macmillan Co, 1928 / Rupa & Co., 2002

Here’s how my friend Travis Wright spends his time. Click on the image to see larger version.  The kid in the chair is Travis.

This is my forty-first digitally drawn face. The other forty faces are all archived on my Deviant Art page. There’s a few in My Gallery here. Click on image for close-up.

“To change, you must face the dragon of your appetites with another dragon: the life-energy of the soul.” —Rumi

Recently, Oprah interviewed Stephanie Meyer, the gazillionaire author of the Twilight series. Meyer said that she got the idea for her book from a dream. She awoke one morning with a memory of a boy and a girl in a clearing. The image was crystal clear and lingered with her through the day, so she wrote it down and that scene became Chapter 13 of her first book.

A similar thing happened to me a few years ago. Right in the middle of May scoring, I awoke one morning with the vaguest memory of twin baby dragons. How my brain came up with a dream about dragons I do not know. I have never been the least bit interested in dragons. There is Puff from the song and Elliott from the movie and that is all I know.

The twin baby dragon memory lingered through the day as a sort of smear rather than a clear image. My fascination multiplied; I felt I was on the brink of some awareness that would link meaning to the dream.

I gave myself over to it fully, meaning I became emotionally hushed and mentally silent, which I cannot do easily and readily but I can do occasionally. Sometimes the trance-like quality of mindless scoring induces this quiet state.

The words “twin baby dragons” lazed around in my brain as I continued working. Later that day I began to become aware of another strange phenomenon as I got up for breaks and this and that. Six words began repeating themselves clearly: It is a sarry story mine. What’s interesting about this is the repetition, for one — the same six words over and over. We tend to notice repetition.

More noticeable, however, was the accent on the word “sorry.” The voice in my head was not saying sorry. It was saying sarry with a distinct Scottish brogue. Great, I thought. I have a Scottish voice in my head repeating, It is a sarry story mine. What am I to make of this?

Then the baby dragons would come to mind and I would find myself in a whale of a quandary trying to make meaning of baby dragons and a Scottish lyricist and score essays at the same time. Soon I came to realize that a poem wanted out.

My inner poet often prefers the stricture and structure of rhymed verse. There is a limiting aspect to rhyme that keeps me off the slippery slopes of free, unrestrained, anything-goes verse where I am vulnerable to a mild form of madness. My “Pinball Nation” poem is a good example of that. It’s a long, rollicking, free-verse poem set within the confines of a pinball machine but just a tad bit wicked crazy. I blame it on the pressures of grad school.

I logged off my work program, picked up a pen and paper and wrote, It is a sarry story mine. The next three lines appeared instantly. About a beast what eats her kind/And how I borne to be a twin/Kept me from meeting my sure end

There it was. A Scottish female dragon about to tell her tale. Such excitement! Droplets squeezed from a dream were appearing on a page. The first half of the poem fell out of me in about five minutes. I remember looking at my watch aghast. I diddled with the second half over the course of several hours.

I love this poem and the way it happened. “Why the Dragons Went Away” attempts to link the demise of the dragons to an ice age. Because dragons are allegorical, this becomes my first allegorical poem, significant because allegory is the highest form of make-believe. Aristotle claimed that allegorical thinking is the hallmark of genius.

No, I don’t think I’m a genius. I think we all have glimmers of genius that are somehow connected to imagination, dreams, and states of consciousness. Albert Einstein claimed that every major discovery he made came through a dream.

What follows is my little ballad about a baby dragon born in a dream, explaining why the dragons went away.

It is a sarry story mine

About a beast what eats her kind

And how I borne to be a twin

Kept me from meeting my sure end

It was a time they ate they younger

So’s to quelch they burnin hunger

Every season another born’d

Every birth a death not mourn’d

Tiny tidbits tease delight

The palette of a thing of fright

A monster mother she for sure

And for her appetite no cure

Except the tiny morsels flung

From twixt her loins onto her tongue

The times they were all full of frost

And little babes they could get lost

But lost to me I’d rather be

Than chomped upon and et by she

So slid I down the frosty slope

Onto the teat of an antelope

Who lay beside me night and day

And succored me till early May

When then my wings began to sprout

And I began to flit about

Unawares that a dragon mum

Was what I’d someday too become

And when the antelope told me this

I yelled aloud Such heinousness!

Yee gads ye gods! I’d rather tromp

With antelope than ever chomp

The babes I bear upon the high

No no! Not there — ye gods come nigh!

Let me Persillia Dragoness

Upon the ground to build my nest

And lie beneath a wingless beast

And on me babes refuse to feast

So days they come and finally

The dragon mums no more they be

Now babes have ground on which to play

And that’s why dragons went away

Lo on this ground are men what feast

Just like me mum on babes of beasts

They think they are the highest thing

When all they are is ground b’ings

They cannot fly like dragons soar

Nor ope they mouths and like us roar

They cannot run like antelope

Nor see in dark like cats do nope

They cannot speak without the word

As beasties do in every herde

They are a kind of lesser beast

For in this world counting us least

They has it wrong of course we know

We beasties do still run the show

While men and wem walks to and fro

Familiars flit, fly and flow

Ay taste for flesh is naught but ill

But men and wem they eat us still

Like dragon mums of long ago

When all there was was snow and snow

And so dragons no more they be

Alas our kind is safe and free

“Excuse me while I kiss the sky.” —Jimi Hendrix

I worked for a small town daily newspaper once, in the display ad department. I was pretty good at selling ads. I always liked to draw and doodle, so it was easy for me to sketch out a boxy little ad and sell it to some retailer who hadn’t realized until I showed up that he really needed to run that ad. It was almost too easy. I was making the owners a ton of money and feeling uninspired doing it.

Then HE showed up in town, this studly, handsome young man who had taken a position with the pilot school at the airport. I was sent there to write an ad announcing his arrival and upcoming training sessions. Something lit up in me that day. All the elements of romance that I adored in film and fiction were staring me in the face. Flight. Adventure. Travel. Attraction. These notions wouldn’t go away as I trudged through each subsequent work day. It was as if the airport had taken a bite out of me and I had to go there to get it back, to be whole again.

So I concocted a grand advertising plan for this company that wanted to promote its flight school. I would convince the publisher to let me run a series of “Women in Aviation” posts chronicling my adventures in the hometown skies in exchange for pilot training. Terrific idea! I thought. It was the mid-70s and women were starting to assert themselves in the workplace and elsewhere. Surely I could fly an airplane just as easily as a man. Sarah Bernhardt had. Groundbreaking idea! I thought.

The publisher didn’t think so, but his wife did. She ran the advertising department and knew what a go-getter I was. After several discussions and many deliberations, it was finally agreed that I could do the series, under my boss’ careful supervision. After all, I was not a journalist. I was merely an English major who had barely gotten her feet wet doing whatever it is that English majors do, which is mostly nothing, according to some. In my case, it was mostly making money for other people.

Super! So now all I had to do was convince the guys at Natchez Aviation to give me free flying lessons in exchange for all this publicity. Not a problem for an ace salesperson like myself, I thought. But there was a problem. The price of fuel. That’s what they kept talking about. The price of fuel. . .

Ground school came before flight school, though, and there was no cost attached to my reading training manuals, so the guys agreed to let me take one of their big red plastic-clad binders home and get started on ground school. Since reading was my strong suit, I figured I’d breeze through that big fat notebook and be ready for flight in no time.

It took longer than I thought, much longer. And it was much more difficult than I thought it would be, especially reading the maps. Flight maps looked like nothing I’d ever seen. There was simply no point of reference to be able to connect them to any form of learning I’d ever done. I persisted, nonetheless, through the tell-tale doubts about whether I should be doing this. My desire to fly an airplane and write about doing it grew stronger with each passing month.

Finally, I finished ground school and it was time to take to the skies.

Here’s the short of it. After logging ten hours of flight in a little single-engine Cessna 152, I ended up in the hospital with a collapsed lung. While I was in the hospital, my flight instructor called to tell me that he had accepted a position in Brussels, Belgium and would be leaving town that week. Double bummer.

Oh, well. I couldn’t understand a word the tower guy was saying over the radio anyway. And those aerial maps still looked like pages from a Tolkien novel depicting some fantasy place. I took it as an omen, a sign from above that I shouldn’t be up there. There would be no more flight time for me, but that was alright. I had a great time and made some wonderful memories. Taking a plane off the ground and flying it from Natchez to New Orleans and back and landing it safely both ways was the best thing I’d ever done.

As for the three articles I’d written about my experience learning to fly, I couldn’t bear to look at them unfinished and unpublished. I crumpled them up and threw them away.

My favorite memory from that time involved a night flight over Natchez. My flight instructor wanted to show me some rolls, the kinds of things you see at little county air shows. Aerobatics.

The night was so clear and the stars were so bright. When he turned the plane upside down and I saw stars where the city lights used to be, it took my breath away.  He flipped the plane again and again, until I couldn’t tell up from down,  earth from sky. There was a marvelous continuity about it, a sense of wholeness and cosmic wonder, a sensation of being enveloped by stars. Those are the kinds of moments you live for, the ones that take your breath away.

Nobody knew what caused my lung to collapse, but I think it was breathlessness.

“Her voice changed like a bird’s: There grew more of the music, and less of the words.” — Robert Browning

I was in a play once, playing the role of a middle school English teacher. The director who cast me didn’t know when he cast me that I’d been teaching middle school English for three years. I thought, this will be a cinch. I’ll just act like I normally do.

After a few weeks of rehearsal, the director lost it one day.

“This is theatre. It has to be larger than life,” he yelled. “You’ve got to act!”

I knew how to act. I had a trophy from high school to prove it. But I didn’t know how to act like I was acting like a middle school English teacher. I only knew how to be one. I couldn’t do it any differently even when I tried.

“It’s boring the way you’re doing it!”

Ouch.

I decided to drop out. The director wasn’t happy and I wasn’t enjoying his jabs. I told the man cast as my husband that I was going to quit.

“You can’t,” he said. “We’re too far into rehearsals for him to recast. Just do what you’re doing. You’re doing fine.”

That helped. We continued rehearsing through Thanksgiving, through Christmas, New Years, and finally January 16th rolled around. Opening night. Dress rehearsal the night before had gone well. We were ready for an audience. Nerves were comfortably subdued, or so I thought.

When it was time for my entrance, a curious thing happened.

I walked on stage to speak my first line, and my voice came out a full octave higher than usual. What? I could see the surprised look on the face of the man playing my husband. I could feel my face flushing with fear. Yikes! What do I do now?

What I did was struggle to stay in that same voice for the next hour. It would have been totally wrong to switch voices after that initial delivery. I sounded like Julia Child, but at least I was acting.

The opening night of “Sylvia” was probably our best night.  The surprising voice that issued forth provided just enough tension to keep things interesting. Sounding like Julia Child was definitely more theatrical than sounding like myself. But it was a lucky accident caused by opening-night jitters. On all subsequent nights my voice came out as it normally did, and we fell naturally into a mode that felt more like rehearsal than live performance.

I love it when life serves up little happy accidents like this one.

We like to think that we are so in control of ourselves, when that is not always the case. The lesson for me is that when things don’t come out the way we intended them, just go with, whatever it is. There is always the chance that something better than we hoped for will occur.

Synchronicity

There are several coincidences related to this story that capture my attention. One is my being cast in a stage role that I also performed in the work world. I heard about auditions while mindlessly switching radio channels in my car one day. I knew nothing about the play when I showed up for auditions, and the director knew nothing about me.

Another coincidence is the date of the opening — January 16th. That trophy I won in high school was for my role in an Ayn Rand play titled “The Night of January 16th,” a courtroom murder drama that allowed twelve members of each night’s audience to serve as jurors and thereby choose the ending. I played the role of Magda Svenson, the housekeeper in the home where a murder had occurred. Magda’s Swedish accent came naturally to me for some reason and was the reason I got the best actress award.

Robert Browning’s quote seems uniquely suited for this post as well, for it was the sound of my voice in both plays, not the words, that made each performance unique.  Her voice changed like a bird’s: There grew more of the music, and less of the words. Both Magda Svenson and Julia Child had voices that exuded musicality.

Finally, there is the fact that after posting this piece, I picked up my copy of this week’s The New Yorker and found a six-page article on Ayn Rand, which brought me back here to talk about synchronicity. Some things are just too obvious to ignore.

I love it when life serves up happy little coincidences like these!

A Poem by Rumi

God has given us a dark wine so potent that,
drinking it, we leave the two worlds.

God has put into the form of hashish a power
to deliver the taster from self-consciousness. 

God has made sleep so
that it erases every thought. 

God made Majnun love Layla so much that
just her dog would cause confusion in him.

There are thousands of wines
that can take over our minds.

Don’t think all ecstasies
are the same!

Jesus was lost in his love for God.
His donkey was drunk with barley. 

Drink from the presence of saints,
not from those other jars. 

Every object, every being,
is a jar full of delight. 

Be a connoisseur,
and taste with caution. 

Any wine will get you high.
Judge like a king, and choose the purest, 

the ones unadulterated with fear,
or some urgency about “what’s needed.” 

Drink the wine that moves you
as a camel moves when it’s been untied,

and is just ambling about.

“Awakening is doing away with all that is false in us. Releasing and awareness both lead to this quiet, innocent, imperturbable awareness—it is love, the love of life.”       — Kaushik Chokshi

“Why, Courage Then! What Cannot Be Avoided ‘Twere Childish Weakness To Lament or Fear.” — Suzanne Foxton

Here I am, and here I stay
I am everything today.
I am time, and I am space,
Every deed, and every place

Every when is when I am
I am lion, I am lamb
I am anger, I am peace
I will never ever cease.

I, the only thing that’s real,
That can harm, and that can heal,
I, the only thing that lasts,
No more futures, no more pasts.

I am what has always been.
I am sainthood, I am sin.
I am everything I see.
I am what it is to be.

All that happens, that is me
All love and antipathy.
I cannot reject myself;
Take me from the dusty shelf.

Everything - yes, that is me.
I am all, totality
I am me, and I am you.
This, no matter what I do.

“Only from the heart can you touch the sky.” — Rumi

Jay at eCOMM

He left San Francisco on crutches this week and made it to Amsterdam for eCOMM Europe, a three-day conference on the future of mobile and internet communications. The title of his presentation was “Entrepreneurial Advantages with New Open-Source Technologies.” I found this picture of him online today.

God I love this kid! I get so excited when I find pictures of him.

When he was in high school, his computer science teacher and his guidance counselor took it upon themselves to convince someone at the school district office to come up with a code number that would allow Jay to get credit for a new course they created called “Webmaster.” He was the only student in the class. He worked out of the computer science teacher’s office and created the school’s first website. Maintaining the website gave him unparalleled autonomy to roam the campus with a camera around his neck, pop in and out of classrooms at his discretion, talk to whomever he wanted, or sit in a quiet room by himself and do whatever he wanted with a computer.

What a gig!

It’s been all uphill ever since. At the top of that hill is a broad netherworld where the makers of tomorrow reside. The makers say that our future as a species — our ascension — is interwoven with our collective creativity and our technology.

Conference, anyone?

My son is only one of countless talented individuals working tirelessly around the globe to make this shift toward a better future happen. His interests are technological, of course, while mine tend toward the inspirational. I would love to go to a bloggers conference and meet some of the people who have inspired me so much this year.

Airfare, hotel, conference fee, food — it might not be cheap, but speakers get in free. What would you have to say? What would you want to hear? Who would you want to see there? Where would it be? The conference organizer makes the money, or donates it to charity. Are you a speaker or an organizer or both? If you organize, you also have to promote.

Where is the next generation of Katies and Williamsons and Chopras and Dyers? I suspect they are out there now, writing blogs and ebooks, little start-ups each of them, shaping future thought, inspiring us to live better lives. Some are good at organizing and promoting. Some are better at writing. Some people do both well. Some are natural speakers. I know I could name dozens of bloggers I would pay to see on stage, either speaking or reading or doing both.

I want to go to a conference and hang out with makers of tomorrow like Jay does. “Makers Conference 2010″ or something like that. A thought conference. This sounds like a job for Lance Ekum, writer, organizer, and promoter extraordinaire. Check out the Levity Project he is promoting with Katie West in Chicago on November 7th.

On Second Thought

While contemplating conferences, the rational part of me reared its hemisphere and started whispering swine flu! I don’t know. Maybe this is not the best time to be traveling and congregating with people from around the world. I haven’t had an H1N1 shot and really don’t want to get one. Maybe next year, or the year after. This is my first pandemic. I don’t know how long they last.

The days that make us happy make us wise.                         —John Masefield

Is using humor the best way to approach difficult situations and problems?

That was the question students attempted to answer in the writing portion of the October SAT. With humor as a topic, I expected to read some dumb jokes, like what did the fish say when it bumped into the wall? Dam! Or what is invisible and smells like worms? Bird farts. But there were no jokes. Students took this assignment very seriously. I read 1,385 responses, and the majority of them stated that difficulties should be met with seriousness, not humor.

The Serious Side

The question for me is why this year’s crop of students is so serious-minded. I can think of a few possibilities; namely, the current state of the nation, the seeming importance of the SAT, the serious tone of academics in general, and perhaps traditional expectations.

Current Affairs

Students listed a host of current problems, both global and national — war, famine, AIDS, swine flu, depression, recession, inflation, corruption, health care, unemployment, global warming, natural disasters. These definitely are serious matters affecting all of us. Though young people may not give them much thought in general, when asked specifically about “serious problems,” they know what the problems are. One student wrote, “This economic depression that the U.S. has been slipping into has got everybody down.” Another student wrote, “Too many people feel like broken cakes — crummy.”

Importance of SAT

Many students have come to view the SAT as “the most important test of your life,” as one wrote. Adults know this is hardly the case. However, students approach this test with a huge amount of anxiety, which causes them to have a serious mindset. They want to answer questions correctly and may think that the “right” answer to this question is the serious one. After all, most of the adults in their lives are serious people, aren’t they?

Academics in General

Except for the inclusion of girls and minorities, not a lot has changed in public education since 1635 when the Boston Latin School opened. The basic format is still very much the same: sit down, shut up, do your work. Students often write about their favorite teachers being the ones who joke around. They also mention how strict and serious most teachers are, especially coaches and AP instructors. English teachers may seem especially serious, foisting as they do one tragedy after another upon students — The Diary of Anne Frank, The Scarlet Letter, The Crucible, Hamlet, Macbeth. I have never understood why we put so much emphasis on tragedies. Students are led to believe that tragedy is more important than comedy. William Shakespeare wrote ten tragedies and fifteen comedies. That should tell us something.

Traditional Expectations

Tragedy remains in the curriculum because that is the tradition, the same outdated, Victorian tradition that viewed life as serious and play as sin. One brave student volunteered the notion that “Education is a sort of sick joke played on youth by society.” It may be just that, a sick joke, but if it is, nobody wants to admit it and deal with it “head on,” as they say.

Facing problems head-on was the overwhelming response to the question, but that’s not very clear. What does it mean to face something “head-on”? How do you do that? They didn’t know. Only one student in 1,385 provided a clear method, which involved careful planning, correct preparation, and precise execution.  His assessment of the SAT as a serious problem provided him with this strategy.

The Funny Side

I probably read close to a thousand papers describing grave situations, literally. Funerals are no place for humor, I’m told, even though the cast of “Grey’s Anatomy” burst into laughter at a grave site recently. One student wrote that on the day his grandmother died, her horoscope read, “Something will come up to block your normal routine.” Another student wrote that “without death, life is never-ending.” Yes, it is.

Despite their seriousness, they make hilarious mistakes — heart cancer, additude, up most for utmost. Over the Cookoo’s Nest by Kenny Chesney cracked me up. Martin Luther King, Jr. helping to create and enforce Jim Crow laws was pretty funny, along with Africans being captivated by Europeans. There are penalties for language errors but not for factual errors. If a student writes about President Benjamin Franklin, it’s sadly funny and nothing more.

My favorite essay, in terms of the one I remember most, was written by one of those divergent thinkers that every teacher loves. He threw out both humor and seriousness as effective approaches and wrote a beautiful piece about how music gets him through any difficulty. He used lyrics from a song in “Wicked” to make his point. I wish I’d written them down. I wish I could see that play.

The title of this post came from the first sentence of one paper. The John Masefield quote came from another paper.

I agree with this student.

“Laughter helps, and as long a there’s help, then there’s always hope.”

I admire this student.

“Even though humor may not be the best way to deal with some problems, it could be the only way to deal with others.”

I am inspired by this one.

“To be at peace with oneself and humanity is the only truly healthy life.”

I am content with what I’ve seen this week from a sampling of America’s youth. The writing, overall, was quite good, better than I’ve seen in recent years. These students were in 7th grade when the writing test was added, so they’ve had five or six years to prepare for a  two-page timed essay. In this case, expecting more from them has allowed them to rise to the occasion. I think the internet is also helping to create more literacy. When students read more, they write better.  Also, giving them topics that they know something about helps.

The poem that follows was mentioned by several students. It’s tragic, of course, but it shows you what they like. I like “The Walrus and the Carpenter.”

Not Waving but Drowning

by Stevie Smith

Nobody heard him, the dead man,

But still he lay moaning:

I was much further out than you thought

And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking

And now he’s dead

It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,

They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always

(Still the dead one lay moaning)

I was much too far out all my life

And not waving but drowning.

My work schedule follows the school year, and tomorrow my work year resumes. I score SAT essays online seven months a year. I’ve been doing this since 2005 when the College Boards added the essay to the exam.

Pearson Education manages the scoring of SATs. According to LinkedIn, Pearson has more than 10,000 employees. The designation I hold is that of “reader.” During the October and May scoring projects, as many as two thousand readers may be needed to complete the scoring. During December and January testing, as few as four hundred readers may be needed.

Scoring is by invitation only. So far I’ve been invited to participate in each of the 32 tests given since March ‘05. To qualify for scoring, you must have taught a high school or college writing class for three consecutive years within five years prior to applying. Once hired, you then have to qualify for each specific scoring project. Once scoring begins, you have to maintain ongoing standards relating to speed, accuracy, and number of hours worked in order to stay on the project. So far I’ve managed to avoid being booted from a project. There is a stiff penalty for getting kicked off  — you won’t get invited back for twelve months.

Each year in October all readers must retrain and requalify for scoring. In subsequent months, training and qualifying are specific to the writing prompt. Prompts cover broad topics such as compromise, consequences, creativity, ethics, experience. The format may be expressive, comparative, narrative, or persuasive.

The job requires a minimum of five hours a day of scoring and at least 30 essays per hour. I average closer to 40, which means I read about 200 essays per day. That’s more than 60,000 essays since I began this work.

I enjoy reading and scoring student essays. This job allows me to work from home in my pajamas if I want, or pack up my laptop and work from anywhere. It pays me to be online, which I would be doing anyway. It keeps me in touch with the dreams and concerns of young people. Students are very open and honest in their writing because they know that the person reading their paper will not know them. I learn a lot from these high school juniors and seniors from around the world.

Training starts tomorrow. I am eager to get back to work. Sometimes I read amazing stories that inform and inspire me. Occasionally, I’ll get some profound insight. If either of these things happens, I may write a follow-up post.

“Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold.”          —Helen Keller, 1940

A Poem by Paul Maurice Martin

“Forget all that might have been or might not be and there you are.”  — PMM

What is, is. Let me be a piece of that,
Amid the horror, explosions, shatteredness,
The strands of sense and beauty, the irresolvable whole.
WHAT IS is, and I shall be myself.
Contradictions are not resolved, yet I begin to resolve
The contradictions. I do not feel the tension any more.
The Whole is doing what it does, and I
Am wholly doing what I do.
In the crosshairs now, I see WHAT IS.
I cannot miss!
Desiring nothing for my splintered self,
I am being every inch something.
I care, but do not care.
I let go of my stake in all former aspirations;
Aspiring to nothing, I am occupied, every inch, with being something.
The worst cannot undo the act of what I am doing, and the best
Cannot change it. I am here. I am desperate, wise, strong
And live now beyond the land of my own dreams.
None of this is on my time. I resent nothing and no one.
I share in the whole world by laying claim to none of it,
Tasting what is sweet and bitter even in my own life
Like a sample off a plate in someone else’s home.
I am not here to stay and know it, and I no longer have a care
Because I wish to stay sane enough to keep caring.
Care like you died and kept on caring.
Care without a care, almost in just the way so many other events
Happen with no reflection or without meaning to,
But only because you mean it so much
That you are willing to be as heedless as it takes.
Become as ignorant of the parts and the frictions between them
As you were once so conscious of them in relation to yourself.
Be aware of being who you are in the arms or in the teeth of what is.
Forget all that might have been or might not be and there you are.

A Poem by Drew Hunter

For the longest time

I believed I could figure it out

comprehend what this life was all about

but it was a sane religion that saved me

One that purported things just happen

and reasons are false idols

and God’s logic is as unintelligible

and sacred a mystery as there is.

It’s true. . . 

I was losing my mind

at that other house of worship

(from Pretending to be Two, Longing to be One)

People only change under great stress. If a crisis is tolerable, people will tolerate it. — Osho

“A new global mind is emerging and its neural and heart networks are being laid down in cyberspace (Akashic Field) thanks to Twitter.” —Deepak_Chopra

“All matter can be broken down into smaller and smaller subatomic particles, which eventually can be seen to be composed of nothing more than light, or emptiness, or space.” — James Braha, Living Reality

“We all create exactly what we need.” —Adyashanti

“Thou art the Great Cat, the avenger of the Gods, and the judge of words, and the president of the sovereign chiefs and the governor of the holy Circle; thou art indeed the Great Cat.” — Inscription on the Royal Tombs at Thebes

“If animals could speak the dog would be a blundering outspoken fellow, but the cat would have the rare grace of never saying a word too much.” — Mark Twain

“When you judge a person’s worth based on their behavior, you paint a little bit of your world black.  You create a dark spot on the reality you see, and it stays there as long as your verdict remains unexamined.  If you are particularly judgmental, most of your world eventually becomes stained in this way, until you live in a world you don’t like.” — David Cain, Raptitude

“Find the stillness between breaths. This is awareness. It is the quiet, gentle noticing. . .the inner stop, where the mind is momentarily quiet. Be alert and aware in between breaths and you will feel it.” — Kaushik, Beyond Karma

of Buildings in Water

of Buildings in Glass

A Poem by unasleep

Magnificent blooms

In the garden

Establish their roots

And become a rose

A violet

A daffodil

A sunflower

Of striking beauty

But none alone is

The Flower of Perfection.

Give thanks for their fragrance

That drew you

Down this little-traveled path.

Fear not the intimacy.

Hesitate not to collect their pollen

Swollen and heavy,

Begging recapitulation

Into the honey of the purest gold.

But be warned:

Do not become enchanted with any flower.

Assign not to one position

Or one form.

It is a deceitful death

Of senseless limitations.

For there you shall stop.

Transformation ceases.

Vanity freezes you to that spot

Forevermore.

Never imagine you have defined

The indefinable

And ever unfolding

For the revelation never ends.

The door you are knocking upon

Opens slowly.

Instead

Be the enlightened bumblebee

Who ignores classical physics

That tells him he cannot fly.

He hears nothing but

The voice of God

Defiantly evident in the hum of his wings

As he eagerly delves deeply

Into the soul of each flower

Collecting only the best,

The Essence of Life,

And takes it into his home

And feasts upon it.

Recounting an OMG Moment

The great news is that my daughter found out she was pregnant two days ago. The interesting news is that I now find myself confronting yet another mystery, not the conception and birth mystery, but something Slade Roberson set up in his last article.

Slade wrote about the birthday present his mother gave him on his fourteenth birthday — a recorded session with a credentialed intuitive/astrologer/psychotherapist. His mother had observed what she perceived to be psychic sensitivity in her child.

Using his natal chart and her own preternatural abilities, the IAP lady determined that Slade was indeed psychic. She also taught him how to draw on his spirit guides, to bring them closer, something psychics apparently can do. Slade spells out the method in this way.

• Simply be still for a moment.
• Close your eyes if you wish — it helps you curl the fingers of your attention inward.
• Invite the guardians who are watching over you to step closer.
• Tell them you want to feel their presence.
• Pay attention to how your body responds.
• Notice any subtle air pressure changes — your skin and hair are like millions of tiny antennae.

So I tried this and then left the following comment, hoping Slade would write me back.

I bowed my head, closed my eyes, clasped my hands together at my forehead and said, “Guardians watching over me, step closer. I want to feel your presence.” Almost immediately, my daughter entered the room to ask me a question. Does this count for anything, given the fact that yesterday she told me she was pregnant?

Slade replied to my comment with this.

Of COURSE it counts! I believe you got something more than the simple sense of Their presence — you received a full-on Sign, Serendipity, and Synchronicity. I have no doubt the timing of that experience is very significant. Had you perhaps just “sent” your Guardians to your daughter (whether you consciously realized it or not — I bet if you think back to her telling you about her pregnancy, you “deployed” your guardians to be with her for some extra protection, huh?)

I think Slade may be right. When Jill showed up during my experiment, all I could think was OMG, my spirit guide is your baby. It felt like an altered state, one in which I had lost all control of speech and thought yet simultaneously gained a momentary glimpse of clarity.

Hehe! I am so happy to know that guardian spirits have been deployed to protect my as yet unborn future grandchild. Thank you, Slade. You may have helped facilitate a mystical experience, although whether it really was that or not is still kind of a mystery.

“There is plenty for everyone. . .the Divine wants you to have an easy life and easy provision.” — Mark Silver, Heart of Business

“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye.” — from The Little Prince