6/10/16 RMB Cameron and Tolle

6/10/16 RMB Cameron and Tolle

Dear Rita Mae Brown,

While my next RMB book, Claws and Effect, waits patiently for me to return to it, I’ve been indulging in Julia Cameron’s Right to Write. I recommend it for any writers, aspiring or seasoned, and for anyone keen on creativity for that matter. She brings the imagination, and what blocks or derails it, down to earth. Each short chapter ends with tools to put one on the path to progress.

This isn’t a “consider this” type of read. It is a “do this and see where it takes you” type of book. Multiple means of discovering potential are offered with her sage advice.   

Last night at dusk the air was cool for a southern California June evening. Before returning Julia’s book to the library, I walked around the block of city government buildings, passing the fire station, the police station, the bus stop, the Post Office, and City Hall, reading Eckhart Tolle’s Guardians of Being: Spiritual Teachings from our Dogs and Cats.  

Patrick McDonnell’s illustrations illuminated Eckhart Tolle’s words. There is something about seeing a dog at play that touches the heart in a place beyond where words can reach. This collaboration is superb. I am a richer person for having read this book.

Happily reading along,

Loraine

6/8/16 RMB Entire Orchards

6/8/16 RMB Entire Orchards

Dear Rita Mae Brown,

These days there is a vast gap between what I wish to accomplish and what gets done. The distance twixt the two grows fractionally slimmer day by day, a good trend though, moving closer inch by inch.

Like a soup, the recipe of our lives is adjusted to taste. All too often it is easier to take what’s tried and tested, than to branch out into new flavors and textures. So we start with a little more, or less, salt, or pepper. Maybe take just one cup and add something red, a pepper or tomato, careful not to mar the whole pot.

This is all we hold, but not all we have. Yet what we hold, we take great care to protect, even when it is not the best for us, even when there is better out there.

We have an entire Universe and more, the past, the future, and now, everyone and everything. Still we concentrate on only what is in our grasp, the house, the job, the people, always careful not to rock the applecart, unconscious of the entire orchards beckoning to be explored.

It’s a good day to try a new apple, maybe a honeycrisp or gala.

Cheers,

Loraine