Marti’s Theory

About six years and many blogs ago, I came to an odd realization.  Whenever a profound and timely bit of universal wisdom came my way that I was particularly “supposed to” hear, a funny thing would happen.  The song Tin Man, by the group America, would begin to play.

Whether it was from the  radio, the TV,  even coming from another car while waiting at a light –  hearing that melody was a clear message to really PAY ATTENTION to whatever I was thinking or talking about at that moment.  The strangest time was last fall.  While sitting in the parking lot at the restaurant Stella Blues, I stopped to tell my friend about a decision I’d just made.  She listened for a minute and said, “Oh, that’s gotta be the right thing because the guitar player is singing your Tin Man song!”  Sure enough… I tuned in to the faint sounds coming from the restaurant just in time to hear “…smoke glass stain bright color…”  Damn.

That brings us up to earlier this evening.  Something had been troubling me all day.  You know, how it goes around and around in your mind?  Finally, one clear, strong thought rose above the rest.  Is that it, I wondered.  Is that the answer?  At that moment  [Click here now and then come back and finish reading this] my car began to slowly fill with the familiar acoustic guitar intro.  Yep.  Confirmation.  I’m on the right track.  Thanks!

I totally accept this as tongue-in-cheek universal guidance.  I’m only posting this because I have a feeling this truth might be something a few others might need to hear at this exact moment.

What was I thinking when the song came on?  Just this:

“Do not accept less than you deserve.”

Aloha…

Marti

In May of 2005, I created my first blog and loved the experience. I found witty & thoughtful goofball friends who knew their way around a keyboard. We read each others’ stuff, commented, re-commented, re-re-commented and generally had a grand old time. It was a semi-anonymous experience, as my ‘fellow bloggers’ were from all over the globe, so we were not a part of each others everyday life. This left room for a certain openness that felt comfy. Unfortunately, it was also on an adult-oriented website (long story), so my efforts to get the people who ARE part of my life to come read my blog didn’t go over very well.

Well, life moved forward and we wandered away from that site, looking for something a little more mainstream and palatable to others in our worlds. To this day you can find traces of my blogging journey – from blogspot to my LiveJournal blog to the really cool WritersCafe, which managed to lose -yes LOSE- everything I posted. One of my favorite blogging experiences was on a site called Six Sentences. The catch was, each post is supposed to be exactly six sentences. Not five, not ten, but six. Way harder than it sounds and it’s a GREAT exercise for writers. My page is here and I hope I wander back some day.

A couple of years ago, I decided to create my own wordpress site, so MartiWrites was born. Originally intended to be a showcase where I park stuff that I considered “good” writing, it never really developed a personality and now is a little stuffy and not much fun.

These days, the omnipresence of Facebook, the fact that 50% of everyone I’ve ever known is there and my innate laziness makes it easy to just toss up semi-mindless soundbites, get good interaction and just forget about blogging altogether. However I recently found a wonderful group of Social Media experts/afficianados who know how to coalesce all these online apps and ops into something directed and purposeful. (Well, okay, maybe the purpose is to play, but that’s fine). Through them I joined a Maui Bloggers Group and if I don’t post something at least monthly, I’ll get kicked out. So here I am.

The blog site that I’m putting together right now is called Achieving Our Dreams, and it’s my first blog to actually have a purpose beyond the fact that I like to hear myself talk. Over the past year I’ve developed a three part workshop called “Manifest Your Dreams” which deals with the idea of manifestation; from both the pragmatic to borderline spiritual perspectives. One thing we’ve learned is that many of us need some outside motivation to keep us focused, some sort of accountability, something in our brain that says “wow, tomorrow someone’s gonna ask me if I did what I said I was gonna do, so I better do it.” [see Maui Bloggers Group comment above] Thus the blog. It’s not completed yet, but the point will be to supply those who are interested with a sort of gentle carrot/stick support. I like the focus.

But back to the point …
The online persona identity dilemma. Where should I blog? Everywhere? Do I keep them all or dump all but one? When I read some of my posts on blogspot, a site I hadn’t visited in three years before today, I was reminded of what I first loved about blogging. I wasn’t trying to “BE” a writer. I was simply having a conversation with anyone or everyone who might be interested in joining in. Sort of the poor man’s Dave Barry. That’s what I miss and that’s what I want to get back to.

Now WHERE I’m gonna do that – THAT’S the next question. Stay tuned, lol…

I’m pretty sure this is just going to be marginally edited, non-premeditated writing – the purpose of which isn’t so much to tell you my opinions than it is for me to figure out what they are.

When I saw that bin Laden had been killed, my first reaction was surprise. Followed by a sense of relief.  Followed by something a little more disturbing and confused.  Watching people celebrate didn’t feel quite right for some reason.  And it’s not that I’m sorry he’s dead – I’m not sorry at all.  That particular person’s existence encouraged unbelievable pain and suffering in this world so goodbye already.    Then what was so unsettling?  I spent a few minutes trying to understand what wasn’t setting right with me.

From the perspective of tangible human drama, it was easy to see what was off for me – This is not 1945 and al-qaeda are not the Nazis.  They don’t march in goose stepping perfect rows, all regimented and proud.  They are intentionally opaquely ferreted away in oblique configurations we refer to as cells.  And now they have a martyr.  So now what?   Am I waiting for that other shoe to drop? Hmmm…so the biggest part of my confused reaction was fear.

Another part of my reaction springs from not being a particularly vengeful person.  I’ve never been an “eye for an eye” type, unless that second eye could actually give vision to the one who lost the first.  I’m more from the “the best revenge is a life well lived” ilk.     Watching the revelers – who certainly had a right to celebrate the elimination of a man who had wreaked such havoc on us – made me realize that celebrating the death of our enemies is a pretty close dance, y’know?

The undertone of my reaction was quite sombre,  probably brought on by wondering how those who were the most directly affected by 9/11 were feeling tonight and remembering the anger, hate and hurt that has grown since then – on all sides, directed towards so many.

Yet at the same time, I was deeply appreciative and respectful of the military elite that executed their mission with surgical precision and accuracy.  I truly wish we lived in a time where humanity had evolved beyond the need for wars, but clearly we haven’t.  So I understand the need for our military, I applaud you and thank you.  Honestly and truly.

And then there’s the writer in me … WHAT a story.  I mean, really.   I love examples of  tricky jobs done well and like so many others, am rabidly curious about the details.

Odd mix of emotions, for sure.  But about that uneasiness, where is it coming from?

I zeroed in on the ‘what happens next’ part.  If succumbing to worrying about the future or exacting further revenge are not the answers, then what is?

And that, I believe, is where it gets personal and your answer could be quite different from mine.   Here’s mine:

For the past few years I’ve been following a spiritual path that teaches (in highly simplified terms) that there are only two things: love and fear.  Love, in this context, comes from a higher, divine source and at least a glimmer of it – and often much more – can be found within all.  Fear is everything else.  No matter what thought, emotion or action I can imagine, I believe it springs from one of those two place.  So for me, what I now know – of which I was unclear when beginning this post – is that my job is to sidestep the fear, and focus on that glimmer of divine love – to believe it resides in all places, to believe only it is real, and to have the confidence in our collective ability to bring it forth.

Whew.  Glad I got that settled.

What’s your take on it all? What are your thoughts about how we can steer this crazy “the worlds are shifting” kind of time in the right direction?

Yes, those were the feelings and thoughts simmering and bubbling within me as I learned about the death of  Osama bin Laden…

Dear Music Fans Under Forty,

You are lucky to exist in a time which offers such convenient access to music.  I mean that – it’s wonderful.  Even though navigating the world of ripping, iTunes and all things mpg is to me what changing the clock on a VCR was to my parents, I love having digital music at my fingertips.  In fact, the wonder of it extends beyond music.  Listening to my textbook downloaded onto an iPod, plugged into my car radio system is pretty amazing.  And don’t even get me started on the video aspect.  Instantly watching my Netflix queue over my flatscreen TV?  Wow.  Marti’s version of the future is here!

But you know what I miss?

Records.

Yeah, those big, clunky, breakable, unwieldy things we had to deal with in order to hear music.  It’s not so much about the sound – although records are like film cameras, distinctly different from digital.  What I really miss about records is the overall experience.

Sitting on the living room floor, shuffling through albums.  Reading the liner notes.  Opening the double LPs and following along with the lyrics.  Spontaneously inspired mixes.  Rediscovering  dusty jacketed tunes that we hadn’t listened to in way too long.  All resulting in a wonderful little impromptu concert – with friends or not – getting  joyfully lost in a little magic carpet ride to another world.

Wait.  That last phrase?  Perhaps I went too far.  Perhaps that dealt with what altered state I may have been in while listening.  Never mind.

It’s still possible to do all these things, I know.  All I have to do is Google “A Day in the Life lyrics” and there they are.  I can go to YouTube and find pretty much any song imaginable.  In fact, doing exactly that is what inspired this post.  I have to smile when I see a friend posting a string of songs to Facebook because I know.  I know.

The pinnacle of my record collecting days was in the mid 80′s and  I probably had about 300 – 400 LPs.  They were alphabetized, and the Beatles and Eric Claption were tied for the largest section.   Of course that many records pretty much took up all the floor or shelf space in a large room, so chalk one up for the digital world.  After carting Eric and Joni and Jackson and Miles and Ella and everyone else from Napa and  Los Angeles to Kona and Hana, I finally gave away my record collection.  It was like giving away a beloved pet because the landlord said no.  Ed – a fellow vinyl worshipper – promised to love them, keep them safe and play them often.  And it was done.

That was nearly twenty years ago and as I said – I do love new gadgets and digital technology.  But sometimes I miss the interactive-ness of playing with records.  And I can’t even imagine what flat, smooth surface  ”kids these days” use for rolling a joint.  But I digress…

Point is – I am very happy to have experienced that little vestigial piece of life.

Had an interesting two sentence conversation with my dear friend and maternal beacon this morning. I mentioned that regardless of how much I love the tiny town in which I lived for twenty years, that I never really fit it. She abruptly turned, looked me in the eye and said, “it’s not a question of whether you fit in here. It has to do with whether or not it fits your needs.” She was dead serious and you know – I think she was right.

My adopted town is beautiful, filled to the brim with lovely people and sweet memories. It also has its share of pain and pilikia, but that’s not the point right now. The point is – I needed to leave and it had nothing to do with the community’s thoughts, feelings or perceptions of me.

There’s a safety element to living here – sheltered and secluded from the rest of the world. Geographically, yes, but also in more subtle and layered ways. For me, Hana was a place to hide out – to avoid many challenges of life.

And for a while, that was really good – a much needed respite. But frankly, I sort of overdid it. Respite can turn into stagnation, if we close our eyes to it. And that’s pretty much what happened to me.

So I moved on.

Or at least 90% of me did. What I’ve come to realize is that the part that didn’t move on contained the ideas, beliefs and attitudes – not particularly positive ones – that have been deeply rooted for years (lifetimes, perhaps) and those things steeped and simmered within my years of stagnation here.

And this week, all that changes. I’ve come to reclaim, dismantle and refresh my last ten per cent.

Wish me luck.