Category: New Media

Art and Writing Heal

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I am rarely sick. I know this has to do with my genes. But I wonder if my basic overall good health has anything to do with my morning routine. Every morning, I get up, drink coffee, and write about my life. I started this more than 15 years ago, a la Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way. Studies have shown that daily writing about stress, anxiety and trauma boosts your immune system.

Writing and art is good for the soul. And maybe the arts are good for the body too. Since January, I’ve not only been writing longhand in a spiral notebook, but I’ve been updating my art journal. I am repurposing the hardcover book, The Rules of the Game by Georges Simenon. The library was discarding this book.

The paper in a hardcover is much lovelier than in any spiral bound notebook. For me, the challenge is that the words are already there. Sometimes the words hinder and sometimes they help. Sometimes the words peek through and sometimes I paint over them.

One of my darlings has strep throat. Of course now the whole family feels a little sick. Even me who never gets sick. I think I will take two aspirins and write or paint in my art journal.

To learn more about making an art book, link to Effy Wild’s Book of Days.

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

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I am a sucker for a sub genre of movies that I like to call, Learning to Love Again. The first time I noticed this theme was in the brilliant movie, Shadowlands. And now there’s an even better one — The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.

Each of these retiring English characters — a civil servant, judge, housewife, grandmother — heads to India as if they were put out to pasture. What they find is life and love and one another.

Walking out onto 57th Street after seeing the movie on Monday, I felt uplifted — as if I just had a deep, funny and meaningful conversation with a best friend. As I commented on my friend’s Facebook status, “The movie is cheaper and more effective than therapy.” The movie made me feel that all things are possible. Just because I’m ageing doesn’t mean my life’s over. Adventure still lies ahead.

Each character is transformed in some way. From their transformations, I offer you these life lessons.

  1. Quit with the negativity — one character sees only what’s wrong and drives everyone away. Stay optimistic.
  2. Forgive yourself — the Tom Wilkinson character believes he has ruined someone’s life, but think again. Don’t hold yourself hostage to events of your past.
  3. Work — the character played by Judi Dench gets a job for the first time in her life. Work adds purpose and a bounce to her step.
  4. Embrace your enthusiasm — the character played by Dev Patel has a big dream. And you need a big dream to infect those around you to make big things happen.
  5. Life is a privilege, not a right — there are beautiful, wise, struggling people everywhere. Notice where you are and treasure your life. Carpe diem.
  6. You can still have sex when you’re old — this is refreshing.
  7. Age naturally — what a thrill to see movie stars like Maggie Smith with furrows, wrinkles, smile lines. Thank God, she looks real, not botox-ed, nipped and tucked and fake.
  8. Travel — immerse yourself in a new culture. See your world anew. Forfeit old stereotypes.
  9. Remain open — the thing you think will be extraordinary may not be; but the thing or person you don’t expect to change your life will change you for good.

If you see the movie, and I hope you do — it opens May 4th — what life lessons did you take away?

Making Stuff Makes Me Happy

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I have been taking a photo a day for about two months now. I post the pictures on Facebook. Sometimes I don’t feel like taking a picture. But it takes two seconds and often the result surprises me. One friend told me on Facebook, “I love your photos of the day. They are always so lovely, AND they make me want to move to NYC.” She made that comment yesterday when I had stopped for a moment to notice this doorway.

But I can’t take all the credit. The filters at Instagram make my photos look artsy. Ten million people are using Instagram (is that possible?) Also, I’ve been dipping into the Effy Wild’s Book of Days, which is inspiring one thousand people to fling glitter and self-love around in pursuit of a daily journal. (I try for weekly.)

Everyone is an artist. I believe this. I believe we get an endorphin rush every time we create. When we run too — although I have not been running much lately. Humans are wired to love creativity and fitness. Being athletic and artsy are natural de-stressors.

I love the feeling of an inch of charcoal in my fingers or the swoosh of a loaded paint brush against the paper. I love the click on my phone’s camera. I love hitting the Publish button on my blog.

I just love making stuff.

My Four Directions

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Today I took a walk in the North woods.
  • East is the direction of new beginnings, a sunrise or a new friend.
  • South is for the brightest light, the way the Southern sky fills the outside world so completely that the light must tumble into your room and heart too.
  • West is the land of the sunset and of letting go.
  • North is the direction of the North Star, the unchangeable and fixed beam in a velvet black night.

Native Americans value theses four directions and offer prayers and gratitude for Mother Earth and her four directions.

To say good bye to 2011 and hello to 2012, here is my take on my four directions.

My East is my mastery with writing. In 2011 I wrote a lot. I was published in cool places and won a few nice awards. I taught some amazing people and made new friends. My writing and indulgence in creativity made every day new.

My South is, of course, my kids. They brighten every single day. And as my neighbor Ron says, “Not one of them is a shrinking violet.” They bring me so much light and laughter (and yes, tears and frustration and hard work too.) But always, they fill my life with light.

My West is the sadness around the decline in intimacy with Chris due to his Parkinson’s Disease and our differing levels of energy and engagement. This is a place of light and dark for me, and a sunset on certain dreams that we used to share.

My North is my faith in a Higher Power, not always seen but always felt in a tug towards compassion and creative living.

This post was inspired by The Circle of Wholeness: New Year’s Reflections http://dld.bz/aAZrw by Joel and Michelle Levey

What are your four directions? Your beginnings? Your light? Your sunset? Your North Star?

Nothing Good’s on TV When You’re About to Die

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Siesta Key Beach -- the world's most beautiful beach

I don’t want to be too dramatic. No, not me. But on the JetBlue plane ride home from Florida on Sunday, we hit an air pocket and we suddenly dropped far and fast. It felt like we dropped 100 feet. Some people gave out a quick short scream — like we were on a roller coaster ride. I didn’t scream. I even thought, Good for you, MB, for not screaming and adding to the general terror level around here!

I had just closed my laptop on my tray table. My seat mate’s Diet Coke flew all over my arm and my tray table. And I thought, if I live and my hard drive needs replacing, I’m so screwed with the guys in my workplace IT department.

The seat belt light ding-ed on. Once we leveled off to normal turbulence, the pilot was on the loud speaker, assuring us that other planes ahead of us had also experienced this weather.

“So we’re not alone,” my seatmate, Win, said.

We were in the 5th row. I looked back, down the aisle, and it was littered with ice.

Wyn said he had his pilot’s license. He assured me that the kind of clouds we now saw outside the jet’s window, long and thin, were less dangerous than the clouds, big and fluffy, we’d just flown through.

“You’re scared,” Wyn said.

“Yes,” I said. “I can’t have anything happen to me. My kids need me.” I tried to breath. I explained that at times, I was a single parent because of my husband’s Parkinson’s Disease.

We stopped talking. To distract myself from my clammy hands and shortness of breath, I turned on the TV. I channel-tripped across a couple of dozen channels. There was nothing on. Nothing. Nothing that comforted me or distracted from my thoughts — we were about to die. There were home decorators, chefs, political pundits all yapping. But nobody was saying, “You are going to be okay. Don’t worry. Life is deep and rich. You’re still a part of it.”

What did comfort me? The real people around me, like Win, who was steady and unflappable; the flight attendants and their calmness; the idea that planes are designed to fly, even through turbulence and big air pockets.

I noticed the flight attendants seemed to be ministering to someone laid out in the back of the cabin. That didn’t comfort me.

Once we landed, I thought, I don’t want to fly again for a very long time. Unfortunately, I’m going to have to fly again in a few weeks.

I worried about my laptop, but when I turned it on again, thank God, it booted up.

Business as usual. Just keep flying. One day at a time. We’re not alone.

Celeste Victoria and 9/11

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Cat was watching a Linda Ellerbee Nick special. I frowned. She explained, “I want to know what happened.”

“Turn it off,” I said.

“It’s okay, it’s on Nick. There will be no upsetting images,” she said.

I left the room. A few minutes later, I heard H. tell Cat, “Turn it off. This show’s upsetting me.”

Cat turned it off and came into my room. “Why does it upset you? Do you know anyone who died?” She asked.

celeste victoria“I did. I knew this great, nice, fun mom. Celeste Victoria. Though sometimes I’d get her name mixed up. And I’d call her Victoria Celeste. But she’d laugh that off. She worked with me at Manhattan Neighborhood Network. She was incredibly kind to everyone. Seriously. I remember telling her that too, ‘You’re so nice to EVERYONE. To all the crazy people with cable access shows.’

“She helped me with my show. And it was just so unfair to me that someone so incredibly nice and beautiful would die. She was a single mom, about my age. Her little daughter would be with her at MNN sometimes, doing homework at the reception desk. She was such a nice little kid too. It was just crazy that her mom would die.”

Back in my MNN days, I’d heard Celeste’d gotten a job in the corporate world and had left MNN. And I learned Celeste was helping to staff a breakfast at Windows on the World that morning. I thought of how she must’ve found it lovely to arrange a breakfast there and probably had looked forward to it. I always loved going to Windows on the World with friends or family, especially when I was in college.

All during college I worked as a front desk clerk the Vista Hotel in the World Trade Center. I walked through the concourse hundreds of times, ate my lunch in the windy, sunken courtyard between the buildings.

It’s really too much. The commemorations are everywhere you turn this week. On every newspaper cover, on every TV channel, on every announcement in the my workplace elevator, there’s some kind of ten-year anniversary reminder, prayer service, discussion group. Christ! And then there are the images — ghost-like light beams of the twin towers at night.

If I have to remember 9/11 at all this week, and apparently, I have to, I’ll remember Celeste Victoria and her smile.

I don’t want to be re-traumatized. I don’t want to return to the incredible beauty of that morning.

Maybe it’s okay, it’s raining all week. It’s fine to be depressed.

Dreary’s fine. Eventually we’ll get sunshine. We won’t get Celeste. But we can be like Celeste — hard-working mothers who are friendly to everyone, even (and especially) the crazy people.

This was the sunset over the Hudson the other day.

Schwarzenegger, Strauss-Kahn, and Working Women

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Every day I thank God that I am not a maid or a housekeeper. People take advantage.

First, the news about Dominique Strauss-Kahn and the hotel worker — and now, Arnold Schwarzenegger and the housekeeper. WTF!!! Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely (from Machiavelli) — even into our homes and hotel rooms.

I worked at the front desk of the Vista Hotel in the World Trade Center all through college. It was no secret. My room service and housekeeping friends told me that business men made inappropriate, illegal requests just about every single day. My friends would knock on the doors to clean the bathrooms or deliver the food with a certain dread, not knowing what lay on the other side of the door.

I am so pissed — Who do men like Strauss-Kahn and Schwarzenegger think they are! The women who work in service jobs are simply women making a living — trying to feed the kids at home, maybe support a disabled spouse, and even pursue their our dreams of an education. (I can identify!) They do not deserve such treatment!

This world is so messed up. People swoon over celebrities like Schwarzenegger and flip off working women who make beds and deliver food.

Women’s service work is not valued and too often women’s income is based on non-existent tips so we don’t even feel entitled to speak out. Our innate niceness keeps us down.

Nice no more! We need justice for the working women!

Maybe the Schwartzenegger affair was consensual. I don’t know. But I do feel sorry for the women — especially the imbalance of power — if you are a woman who cleans houses and hotel rooms. They are almost always immigrants and they should not have to put up with such BS.

I wrote about this, too, a year ago: http://gettingmyessayspublished.wordpress.com/2010/07/11/the-end-of-men/ when I learned that women still make 80 cents on every dollar that a man earns.

As a society we profess to value women’s skills of team work, collaboration, and service, we really do not care about the women, especially nameless nannies and housekeepers.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/la-times-schwarzenegger-shriver-split-up-after-he-acknowledged-fathering-child-with-staffer/2011/05/17/AFBMTW5G_story.html

How Lucky — To Work So Hard!

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My fake spouse reassured me, “It takes a long time to become an overnight success.”

We were at a call back for a Kodak commercial. I was auditioning for the part of a young mother. I didn’t get the part, but I got that awesome advice!

I had been bitching about my slow-moving talk show career to the actor who was auditioning as the father. I said, “You know I worked so hard on my cable show, Mary Beth & Friends, and honestly, I am surprised I haven’t become the new Katie Couric.”

This was years ago. I never forgot my pretend husband’s wisdom. It kept me going. Success takes time. Fake husbands (and actors) can be so smart.

But now it seems the whole world is discussing this wisdom:

Luck is out. Hard work is in.

Last night, I was listening to the Ted Talk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xE6lWGzO_7A from David Shenk, author of The Genius in All of Us. http://geniusblog.davidshenk.com/

Here’s what I got. Genes don’t matter a hill of beans unless you work hard. There’s no such thing as born smart!

This is a difficult revelation for me – me! The daughter of a genius (okay, two geniuses)! I always felt I had a slight genetic, intellectual advantage — swimming as I was in the Mensa gene pool. But no, sorry, not so.

My working 3 jobs, auditioning for commercials, and producing and hosting my own cable show probably mattered more to my current success (ahem!) than my brainy family tree.

I was thinking about this today, when from the LinkedIn group, LinkEds & writers, Indy Quillen, emailed her introduction.

Indy said, “Many years ago, when I excitedly showed my martial arts teacher my first place trophy, he smiled and said, ‘See how lucky you are when you work hard?’ I’ve never forgotten that lesson!”

Love that!

I don’t know how to fit in my awareness of the importance of hard work to my Rules for Living.

Maybe Rule Number 3? Remember your hoops of steel (priorities) — even when you think success should occur magically and quickly. Success takes time.

And hard work is 1 of 3 parts that makes up community:  https://mbcoudal.wordpress.com/2011/05/07/what-is-community/

Your Messy Life

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It’s amazing that when authors admit their flaws, weaknesses, suckishness on their blogs or in books like Donald Miller’s “A Million Miles in a Thousand Years,” people love it. Admitting you have a lousy life frees people to admit they do too. Being brutally honest creates some kind of safety net or hope.

If I blog about how awesome I am, how brilliant my kids are, how pristine my house is, I will lose readers. But if I write, ‘Dangit, I am having the worst day. My husband and my job are so annoying.  My kids are spoiled. I have caught three mice in my kitchen over the last month,’ I will keep my 29 readers (and hope to eventually lose the mice). 

I don’t know why this works. Maybe readers feel, ‘Thank God I don’t have her life. She’s a mess. My life’s not so bad. My house is much tidier.’

The trick is not to make the everyday honesty seem like a perpetual state of complaining or whining. Throw in a little bit of your awesomeness after you hook people with your chaos.

And make the mess of your true life story seem real and funny. Like, you don’t take yourself or your sucky life all that seriously. Because it is true, this difficult life will pass, perhaps to be replaced by challenges even more difficult, and therefore potentially even more humorous.

My advice to bloggers? Throw open the curtains to the mess of your life and you find you are not alone.

So you open the shades wide into the living room of your difficult life and let everyone, including the sunshine, in. Let the party start. Eventually, the party will wind down. Let everyone go to home.

And then, close your curtains again. Create mystery. I’m not really sure how to do this. I personally am much more with the TMI camp — I like hearing all the details about peoples’ messy lives. I don’t like that my life is difficult. But I like that your life is difficult. That makes me happy – and human.

Big Answers on Small Screens

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I like knowing where to find answers to life’s mysteries.

“And the answer is seen on that little screen. The answer is seen on that screen,” sung to the tune of the “Blowing in the Wind.” Everybody now, join in.

Ken Medema improvised this song at the Religion Communication Congress in Chicago this weekend right after hearing Jeffrey Cole, director for the Center for the Digital Future at University of Southern California. Like so much of the RCCongress 2010, Medema and Cole were brilliant. 

We are finding answers to life’s mysteries on small screens — for most of us, on our phones. In the near future, 5 billion out of the world’s 6 billion people will have cell phones. We will use our phones more than our computers or televisions (or iPads?).

I don’t know what this mean for people (like me) looking for big answers.  

Cole reported that in 35 years the amount of time we spend in front of screens has doubled. In 1975, we spent 16 hours in front of screens. In 2010, we spent 34 hours per week in front of screens.

That’s a lot. Too much, really, doncha think?

When is the TV turn off week? (To find out, I’ll Google TV Turn Off Week.) Let’s make it this week. I’m going to have my children turn off their Xbox and laptops. And yes, their cell phones. (You may want to share your experience or opinion on TV Turn Off Week on this blog. Or don’t. Just go outside and take a walk in the park.)

I just walked in Grant Park with my aunt. We wandered. We found a bench to sit. We people watched. We dog watched.

We discussed books we’d read. I told her how I loved “Let the Great World Spin” by Colum McCann. She didn’t really like “Wolf Hall.” Both were book club selections. So was “The Happiness Project.” I told her how in that book Gretchen Rubin describes having to put ‘Wander’ up on her checklist of things to do. We have trouble wandering. Aunt Kathy told me about a woman who followed Oprah’s advice for a year. We are searching.

We are searching the internet; we are asking each other. We are wandering. I am writing this on the plane from Chicago. A man just walked down the aisle with a tee shirt that said, “Not all those who wander are lost.”

So, let’s follow that advice and not act lost. Let’s pretend that when we wander we find the answers. Let’s pretend that the answer will come as we wander. Let’s pretend that the screens will reveal answers.

I read in the New York Times that James Cameron showed his film, “Avatar,” to indigenous peoples and leaders in Brazil. He said the real-life plight of preserving the people’s land was like the plight of the animated peoples fighting for their wandering island.

So the answer for the people in Brazil was found on the big screen, which you probably could view on a small screen.

My small answer to this big question is to turn off the screen. Maybe just for a week. During that time I hope to wander and find a spot on a park bench.