Fun times
Topic: WC - Daily Practice
Sunday 10:45pm 6Aug06

Fun times with hot weather and Caribana. Got to hear my steel drums. I got so much sun that my skin is browner than brown and now I have white feet. Made me scream out loud.

Fun times with all types of accents and black butts. Big black butts and high black butts and round tight butts that you could eat a lunch off. I love black peoples asses!

Calypso and reggae and steel drums and soca and giggling at sexual lyrics. People smiling at each other. It seemed like every time I'd sit by myself people would come and join me in my solitary spot.

I ran into old friends and made some new friends and ...

EY

People Who Produce
Topic: Writing Outings
Sunday 5:55am 6Aug06

In keeping with my IFOA Notes

Prince
I let the music dictate what I want.

"He's an example of the ability to keep being inspired by your life" -- Ani Difranco

Earth, Wind & Fire
"I'd just get together with guys and kick it until we came up with something appropriate for a song. Piano and vocals or piano and drums, and then adding layers from there."

"We just took our cues from the Universe and kept moving on." -- Maurice White

Earth, Air and Fire didn't sound right so I used 'wind' instead, and I literally drew a picture of what I wanted the group to look like. I was reading Napoleon Hill's book, The Laws of Success, and I put the drawing in the back of the book...

The message in the music was clearly a reflection of White's vision for the group: "From the very start, I had a commitment to be different in terms of music and what was projected on stage. Coming out of a period of social confusion in the seventies, I wanted EW&F to reflect the growing search for greater self-understanding, greater freedom from the restrictions we placed on ourselves in terms of our individual potential"

Anthony Robbins
Your life can change in a minute and you can change the way you feel right now. You don't have to wait for someone to say I love you. It's already inside you. You just have to give yourself permission.

He wrote in his journal...
On one side of the page, he put the things he could no longer stand in his life. On the other side, he wrote down every thing he was committed to. Having set some higher stands for himself, he went about looking for the "tools" that would help him achieve them.

Affirmation
Now I am the voice. I will lead, not follow. I will believe, not doubt. I will create, not destroy. I am a force for good. I am a leader. I will defy the odds. Step up. Step up. Step up.

Will Smith
There's no place for a lack of confidence.
You cannot beat a person who is going to tell you the truth.
Being the guy that does what people say can't be done.
The road to success is through commitment.

Selma Hayek
Life is one opportunity
My sexuality doesn't make me less intelligent or talented.
Mexico & Frieda Kahlo - broken with an indestructible spirit.

Everything that you grow up with you have to fight against. Whether you grow up poor or you grow up privileged because you have to keep moving so that you keep learning different things. Otherwise, how do you discover life? You've got to get out there and discover who you are.
Regarding the film Frieda - You do something, you give it your best, and then when it's done you let it go, and then you have to dream a new dream.

Tim O'Brien
writing allows me to live lives I could have led.
You remember wonderful moments in the midst of horror.

Sharon Butala
Everything you do is part of your real life.
People suffer a lot of pain and try to hide it from themselves and from others.
what gifts we bring to the lives of others.

Keith Maillard
Commitment to what is true.

Mary Lou Zeitoun
Sex is tricked out of women
You can't let your self feel remorse when you write.

Mariah Carey
Impresario Lyor Cohen: "I said to [Mariah], 'What's your competitive advantage? A great voice, of course. And what else? You write every one of your songs - You're a great writer. So why did you stray from your competitive advantage?"

Eric Drooker
novel - "Flood" - a novel done in pictures without words.

Patricia Cornwall
Writing is a way of having experiences without scars.

Ray Bradbury
"I don't think I know what writer's block is. I never had it. My typewriter goes everywhere I go. I get up at 3am everyday, head for the keyboard, laugh a lot, then go to bed."

It takes him 2 hours to write a poem, half a day to finish a story, 9 days for a full-scale novel. His secret? "let your subconscious take over, keep your intellect out of the way. Be passionate about what you're doing. When you start a love affair, the last thing you want to be is critical right? Don't look back, just write. Go and write."

Elie Weisel
obsession of memory
the duty to memory
To write - to plum the unfathomable depths of being.
celebration of memory

Tim O'Brien
You have to be a great liar on the page.
The world as it could have been or as it should have been
Fascination with that what might have been or could be.
Try to make it feel true

Margaret Laurence
Waiting is an act of faith or hope.

Irving Layton
Artists are here to warn us about the dangers to the human soul.

August Wilson
has been telling the story of black America through an ongoing 10 play cycle, each play covering a decade of the 20th century:
- the dynamics of the father-son relationship ... how can a people move forward if each generation cannot help the next to realize its own dreams?
- the characters question how to build a family, an economy, and, above all, a sense of self worth.
- another consistent motif is the presence of the ancestors, as well as death.
- the spirit world and the physical plane are very much connected.

It's the question that African Americans must ask: What do you do with your legacy? Can you achieve a sense of self worth by denying your past? It's an affirmation of your past; that's how you achieve a sense of self worth.

EY

Second Thoughts
Topic: Freeflow
Saturday 5Aug06 10:40am

There's a reason to take your time.
Those small annoyances that creep up unexpectedly:
his tone of voice, a shortness that pinches your feelings, a smile that veils possible outbursts.
He’s not the person you thought he was.
His true colors vibrant with emotion, a negative attitude.
A new uneasy air hangs between you. Yesterday your heart fluttered, today your mind seeks escape.
Time to rethink that fantasy of possibilities in his eyes.

EY

Slo Mo
Mood:  lazy
Topic: WC - Daily Practice
Saturday 10:08am 5Aug06

I'm moving in slow motion this morning, coloured people time? It is jump up after all. Went to bed late with my last ditch effort to reorganize my apartment. It looks great. My writing area has become a lovely cozy nook. At the opposite end of the room I've got a little reading corner to get me away from the desks, once in awhile. I now have floor space to work out once again. Now I just need to take care of the kitchen and the bathroom and, and...

In keeping with my newfound floor space, I hooked up my VCR to my television in order to play my work out tapes and what did I discover? My television doesn't need a converter, ha ha! So the Dead Television Report will have to be renamed the Not So Dead Television Report. I've enjoyed all that I've been accomplishing without the television so I'm going to need to keep that up. I don't really need to watch re-runs do I?

I still have a stack of tapes of the shows from last season. Almost caught up on Prison Break. Don't know if I'll watch it this season, but who knows it starts in a couple weeks.

I'm going to rollerblade to the parade, packing a frozen bottle of water, a smoothie and some cherries. Prep my stomach for all the West Indian food I can stuff in. Just because.

It's so important for me to have a good writing space. An area that testifies that what I love to do is a priority. A space that insists on a writing frame of mind. And clearly off limits to people who come to my apartment to visit. My space was so wide open before that people just assumed that they could sit in it and peek at what was on my desk.

Okay... jump up jump up!

EY

Write One Page at a Time
Topic: Newsletters
Your Limitations Are All in Your Head

An excerpt from
Count Your Blessings: The Healing Power of Gratitude and Love
by John F. Demartini

Do the thing, and you will have the power.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Dear Friends and Students,

Are you in your own way?

Many people have a long list of reasons to explain why they’re not doing what they love, but few of them objectively examine their reasons and look for underlying fears. The reality is that there’s a hidden fear behind every imagined limitation, including sickness. As much as we may be tempted to blame other people or outside circumstances for our current condition in life, sooner or later we realize that we attract and create our own limitations. And while that may be a humbling reality, it’s also an inspiring one.

Since we attract or create our own limitations, we can also break through them. Not by repressing, ignoring, or denying them, but by learning to love them. Yes! Love them. Because anything we don’t love runs us and inhibits our inspired actions with fear. Our limitations represent all the aspects of ourselves and others that we haven’t learned to love and appreciate yet. So each time we take an honest look at a limit or a block, we give ourselves an opportunity to love and to reach a higher level of awareness.

Every one of us has the creativity and ability necessary to rise above our own limitations. But sometimes the limitations feel comfortable and the idea of achieving our dreams frightens us, and that’s when we’re most tempted to sabotage our own efforts. That’s the frame of mind in which I found a young man named Jeremy when we met on an airplane. I was working on my laptop computer when Jeremy sat down beside me and introduced himself. When he asked what I was working on, I told him I was writing a book about the mind, body, heart, and soul connection, and the healing properties of inspiration and unconditional love. He nodded his head, but his eyes glazed over, and for the next half hour he was silent. It wasn’t until the flight attendant brought our meals that he said, “You know, I can’t believe I’m sitting here next to someone who’s writing a book. Do you know how long I’ve been wanting to write a book? How can I get from wanting to write a book, and talking about writing a book, to writing one actually?” he asked.

I explained to Jeremy that the only difference between wanting to write a book and actually writing one required taking action steps. “When I begin a book,” I said, “I know that it’s a process, and I know that the book will change as the process continues.”

Jeremy’s eyes widened. “So you just do it. You just write one page at a time and you like some stuff and you don’t like other stuff and you change things, but you just keep writing until you have the book that you want!”

“Yes,” I said, “that about sums it up.”

Jeremy shook his head, smiling. “You have no idea how much what you just said means to me! For years I’ve been afraid to type a single word on my computer as if it’s somehow getting chipped into stone or something. Writing a book is like doing anything else! It doesn’t have to be perfect from the start, nothing is. Everything I do is a process ... Wow.”

I haven’t run into Jeremy again since that conversation, but I’m sure that he’s much closer to writing his book than he was before he realized that he was creating his own limitations.

Feel the fear, but don’t let it stop you.
-Anonymous

Whatever you feel uncomfortable about – and don’t love – is stopping you.

Gratitude and Wisdom,
Dr. John F. Demartini.
DeMartini Newsletters