Life

What do you think waits for us in the afterlife?

Being that I was jeweler for over eighteen years, I imagined the afterlife, or heaven, to be the stunningly gorgeous and meticulously curated Jewelry Salon on the ground floor of Bergdorf Goodman in NYC, where all by my lonesome I could wander the aisles, open the cases, and wear whatever the hell I wanted — while wearing sweatpants.

I’ve raised the bar since then.
Now I envision my ass on a motorcycle, riding through some green, hilly countryside on my way to lunch where I will consume copious amounts of warm, freshly baked bread, and cheese stuffed deep-fried zucchini flowers. Oh, and wine. Lots and lots of room temperature Montepulciano D’Abruzzo.

What do you think about this?
In the screenplay I’m writing, one of the heroines of the story (the dead one), paints a picture of a place not too dissimilar to where we are now.

One of the really cool attributes of her heaven, or afterlife, is the fact that you carry around in your pockets some of your favorite snacks. For example, she has a never-ending supply of Fritos corn chips in her jacket pocket, her friend carries with him at all times — a bottle of Sriracha sauce.

I can’t decide what my pockets would hold. One day I’m sure it would be dark chocolate covered… anything, the next day, lemon cake from this little cafe in Italy.

I’m hoping that the afterlife is a place where changing your mind is not only accepted but revered.

THAT would be HEAVEN to me!

So I’m asking YOU, my tribe, because I want more insight into you and what YOU believe,
What does the afterlife look like to you? Or what do you imagine it to be like?
AND, OR, because I know you are not a group that likes to comment,

What snacks would be in YOUR pockets in Heaven?

Thanks, and Love you guys,
xox

A piano has 88 keys. Each one is different. But what if they were all the same? Be an original — but play well with others.
That’s all.
Carry on,
xox

Okay. Now that I have your attention, what DOES sex have to do with manifestation?
Nothing and EVERYTHING.
Stay with me.
Here we go.
Think about something you want. Wait. Let’s use a sexier word. DESIRE. Something you desire.

Can you focus your attention on that thing for ten seconds straight? You’d be surprised how long that is AND I said straight, without interruption. That’s the thing with focus. It’s, it’s…elusive.
It gets away from you.

Unless it comes to sex.

MY sex to manifesting comparisons go something like this:

First you have to find something engaging. Something that gets your juices flowing—if you know what I mean.
Have you ever tried to have sex with someone you were not that into? Yeah, me neither.
Anyway…
Have you ever found yourself eyes wide open while they’re kissing you, searching their face or body for something appealing? You know, something to get you going?
When that didn’t work, did you find yourself racking your brain as to how it is that you have come to find yourself naked with this person?
Yeah, me too.

Here’s the thing. You’ll never manifest real happiness (or a happy ending), from something you have no passion for. You won’t have the stamina or the staying power.
You may as well play some gin rummy, or watch Game of Thrones. The end.

Then there’s the focus thing.

Focus is concentration on steroids and it is absolutely, positively necessary for the happy ending to occur.

Think I’m wrong?

Start messing around and then turn on cartoons.

Get right there, I mean right there, yes, yes! righhhhhttttt theeeerrrrreeeee!! and sneeze.

Get involved in some heavy foreplay and have your dog jump on the bed and lick your testicles.
Yeah, you know what I mean. When you lose your focus—things go…limp.
Game over.

The same thing happens when you’re thinking about that new job or project you’re excited about.
You can feel your pulse quicken when suddenly, out of left field comes your father’s voice telling you that it’s too risky, or you start to imagine all the reasons why your dream can’t possibly work.
Your focus is broken and your desire becomes…limp.

Stop. Drop. Go eat a sandwich instead.

So there you have it.
Passion, or at least excitement is required to be able to maintain an erection, focus.

Distraction kills focus and it’s easy to become distracted —except when it comes to sex.

The bottom line: It all boils down to sex. Sex and bacon.

Carry on, (That has suddenly taken on a whole new meaning)
xox

Shonda Rhimes, creator of TV shows like Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal and the book Year of Yes, speaks at TED2016 on February 15, 2016. Photo: Marla Aufmuth / TED

Okay. So.
I really wanted to write something about this book. As a matter of fact, I was going to VLOG about it. That’s right, this mug, going on and on about how much I LOVED this book — on video.
Sadly, that never came to be. I seemed to run out of hours in the day. My screenplay is playing time-warp games with me and well, I just plain forgot.

So without further ado — Take it away Kate!
xox

“A while ago, I tried an experiment,” says Shonda Rhimes, the “titan” behind Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal and How to Get Away With Murder. “For one year, I would say ‘yes’ to all the things that scared me. Anything that made me nervous or took me out of comfort zone, I’d say ‘yes.'”

Public speaking? Yes. Acting? Yes. “A crazy thing happened — the very act of doing the thing that scared me undid the fear,” she says. “It’s amazing the power of one word.

‘Yes’ changed my life. ‘Yes’ changed me.”

She wants to talk about one particular ‘yes’ that made more difference than any other. “I made a vow that every time one of my children asked me to play, I was going to say ‘yes,’,” she says. “Saying ‘yes’ to playing with my children likely saved my career.”

Rhimes is a television writer, something most people would consider a dream job. And to some extent, that’s true. “But I understand a dream job is not about dreaming — it’s all job, all work, all reality, all blood, all sweat, no tears,” she says.

Each show Rhimes works on costs millions of dollars and creates hundreds of jobs that didn’t exist before. With three shows in production at a time, sometimes four, she’s responsible for 70 hours of TV a season at a price tag of about $350 million. She has to run the business and also carve out time to “gather America around my campfire and tell my stories.”

She isn’t complaining. “I work a lot. Too much — much too much. And I love it,” she says. “When I am hard at work, when I am deep in it, there is no other feeling.”

She has a name for the feeling: the hum. “The hum sounds like an open road and I could drive it forever,” she says. “The hum is a drug, the hum is music, the hum is God’s whisper right in my ear.”

But it’s a trap. The more successful she becomes, she says, “the more balls in the air, the more eyes on me, the more history stares, the more expectations there are … the more I work to be successful, the more I need to work.”

Until Rhimes found herself wondering: “Am I anything besides the hum?” Her hum was broken; all she heard was silence.

Enter one of her daughters, who asked her to play one day as Rhimes was walking out the door. She stopped. And said yes. “There was nothing special about it. We play. We are joined by her sisters. There is a lot of laughing, and dancing and singing. I give a dramatic reading from Everybody Poops. Nothing out of the ordinary, and yet it was extraordinary.” She felt focused, still, good. “Something in me loosens and a door in my brain swings open.,” she says. “A hum creeps back.”

She realized something: “The work hum,” she says, “is just a replacement.” She had to face the hardest of facts about herself: that she, in some ways, liked being at work more than being at home. That she was more comfortable working than playing. But that only in playing did she find that hum.

“The real hum is joy,” she says. “The real hum is love.”

Since then, Rhimes has made an iron-clad rule of saying yes to playing with her kids. “It’s the law, so I don’t have any choice,” she says. “I’m not good at playing. … I itch for my cell phone, always. But it is okay. My tiny humans show me how to live. The hum of the universe fills me up.”

Her point is a simple one, yet one we always need reminding of: “Work doesn’t work without play.” Whether it’s playing with kids, seeing friends, reading books or staring out into space, it is actually important for each of us to take time for the simple joys that make life worthwhile.

http://www.amazon.com/Year-Yes-Dance-Stand-Person/dp/1476777098/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1455670361&sr=8-1&keywords=the+year+of+yes

So, what needs more yes’ from you? What big, fat, fear do you have that would shrivel up and die if you just went ahead and said “yes!” to it?
Carry on

“Bird poop brings good luck!
There is a belief that if a bird poops on you, your car or your property, you may receive good luck and riches. The more birds involved, the richer you’ll be! So next time a bird poops on you, remember that it’s a good thing.”
~Bird Poop Expert

What about if a single bird poops on your head while you’re driving in your car? You know, moving target and all. That feels like a whole lotta good luck coming your way—along with super silky hair, right?

I’m about to talk about poop, a lot!
Bird poop to be exact, so if you’re eating your eggs, best to put down your fork right about now. Or oatmeal or yogurt for that matter. Just stop eating until you’re finished reading, okay? Studies have shown that reading while eating can lead to something serious and most likely deadly, like choking while laughing, so in essence, I just saved your life.
You’re welcome.

And now, back to the bird poop.

Many people the world over believe that if a bird lets loose on you, then good things are coming your way. One idea is that it’s a sign of major wealth coming from Heaven (the place where ALL real wealth resides), based on the belief that when you suffer an inconvenience (like a head full of bird shit), you’ll have good fortune in return.

The most popularly held belief is that if a bird hits your noggin, it is so lucky, so random and rare (statistically speaking it is rarer than being hit by lightning), how can a lottery win be far behind?

A Case in point — and true story:

Can a head full of bird poop be lucky, you ask?
A Bay of Islands man swears it is, after winning $100,000 on an Instant Kiwi ticket. The man said a bird recently pooped on his head, and his friends told him it was a sign of luck coming his way.

“This win gives me the funds to be able to get down there and be able to help out in any way I can in the city’s rebuild,” he said.

Let me just start by saying that the man in the story is WAY more altruistic than I’ll EVER be. Or maybe not. After he pays off his debt and relocates, how much city rebuilding can he do? I’m worried about him and his financial planning abilities. He has to make that money last and $100,000 doesn’t go as far as it used to. Maybe he’ll have the free time to volunteer. Okay. I feel much better now.

Anyhow, on Saturday the hubster and I decided to get a jump-start on Valentine’s Day being that we had flaked, waiting until the last-minute and all the good ideas for Sunday were taken. Left to our own devices, we hopped into the car, put down the top, and decided to drive really fast out of the beautiful, summer-like temperatures and head into opaque whiteness of a foggy purgatory, the beach. Faced with the choice of putting the top back up or leaving fog-ville altogether and going for a big lunch, you guessed it, THE BIG LUNCH WON! (No surprise there).

Winding our way through the tree-lined upscale neighborhoods at a brisk 40 mph (oh, don’t get your panties in a bunch, it wasn’t a school zone and besides, it was Saturday. Nobody drives below 40 mph. on Saturdays), on our way back into town and our search for the perfect kabob, I felt something clobber my cranium.

“Hey!” I exclaimed, hands on my head looking around like a freak. You have to admire my economy with words. Don’t feel bad. I’m a writer.

Anyway…

At first, I suspected it might be space debris or a tiny piece of meteorite, and it was only when hubby, with his two bare man-hands, picked a rather large and thankfully solid piece of avian excrement out of my hair—that I realized my good fortune. Lottery WINNER!

Can I just take a moment to thank my husband for his courage, strong stomach and lack of any real hygienic awareness? (He’s French). You are my hero and I will split the money with you AFTER I rebuild a city.

Needless to say, when the laughter subsided, (thankfully we share the same warped sense of humor that causes us to laugh at another’s misfortune), we hightailed it to the diviest Liquor Store we could find (because everybody knows THAT is where REAL wealth resides — not Heaven), and bought us some Power Ball, Super Lotto and Mega Millions tickets —and a box of Triscuits—the Rosemary and olive oil kind.

Then with big shit-eating grins on our faces (that’s an idiom, not literally, mind out of the gutter people, Ewwww), we drove to lunch.

Lottery or not, nothing says LOVE like picking bird poop out of your beloved’s hair—so I’m already a winner!

Love you my Big Handsome!

I know. You guys envy my life of glamour and romance. What can I say? I’m one lucky girl. Maybe YOU had a better Valentine’s Day than me? Huh? I don’t think soooo but I’ll listen!

Carry on,

xox

” Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world,
I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport.
General opinion’s starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed,
but I don’t see that.

It seems to me that love is everywhere.

Often, it’s not particularly dignified or newsworthy,
but it’s always there – fathers and sons,
mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, old friends.”
~From the movie LOVE ACTUALLY

Happy Valentine’s Day My loves, God only knows what I’d be without YOU!

xox

“The other world is this world rightly seen.” – Nisargadatta

“The been there’s and done that’s of the adult mind — we’ve seen it all. Familiarity breeds boredom”

I think we’re all a little guilty of this to varying degrees. Don’t you? And I agree that travel can revitalize the most numbed-out mind. It’s probably one of the reasons I LOVE to travel. Makes me want to jump on a plane right NOW!

Anyhow, take a look and enjoy your weekend.
xox

If life is a dance, I have two left feet.
Which also explains my wonky sense of direction and makes it hard to buy shoes.
But if you’ve seen me dance, or do Zoomba, or even Tai Chi, you know what I mean.

Everyone else is moving in sync to the right while I’m moving, always with great conviction, to the left.
It’s just my nature.
Always has been.
As much as I desperately want to avoid embarrassment, it is next to impossible for me to just blend in, to stay inside the lines, to behave and dance like everyone else.

But, I really have tried, and it has been exhausting.

Just like I play my own soundtrack in my head as it runs through my life (don’t you?)
I have my own unique, sometimes awkward and clumsy choreography—which I often dance alone.

It may not be pretty, but it has gotten me here.

Every once in a great while, I’m supremely graceful; like the Prima Ballerina in Swan Lake, dancing around, up on pointed toes, with my neck long, and my arms fluttering slightly.
The only problem is, the rest of the world is doing a tap routine, and I look like an ass!

So, here’s the thing: I had a humongous epiphany after catching The Dead Poet’s Society on HBO a couple of weeks back. Damn! I had forgotten what a great movie that is, OR, I didn’t have the depth of character in 1989 to fully grasp its meaning. Probably the latter.

In case you can’t remember, it takes place in the 1950’s at an elite all-boys prep school. There’s a new, unorthodox English professor, Mr. Keating, who, among other things, has them stand on top of their desks to see the world in a different way. He also challenges them to call him “O Captain, My Captain.”

John Keating: “O Captain, my Captain. Who knows where that comes from? Anybody? Not a clue? It’s from a poem by Walt Whitman about Mr. Abraham Lincoln. Now in this class you can either call me Mr. Keating or if you’re slightly more daring, O Captain my Captain.”

He is pushing these boy-men to embrace great literature and poetry, to become free thinkers, to question authority and buck convention. In other words, my Holy Grail!

Bear with me here, because it was this next scene that really got to me.
He has his class assemble in the school courtyard where, as an exercise in self-expression, he has them walk in a circle. A couple swing their arms, several stomp their feet, but soon they are all marching perfectly in time, hands and feet synchronized like a chain gang. Although they found it funny, Mr. Keating was proving a point.

We may start off marching to our own beat, but soon we succumb to the herd mentality.
We all fall in step, conforming, becoming a part of that herd.

It’s encoded in our DNA.

Mr. Keating wants them to break that code, to consider being another way.
Perhaps, to even entertain the idea that it might be okay to go left instead of right, to dance to their own untamed choreography.

Hmmmmmm. Maybe my feet aren’t broken after all.

John Keating: Now, we all have a great need for acceptance, but you must trust that your beliefs are unique, your own, even though others may think them odd or unpopular, even though the herd may go,
“That’s baaaaad.” [imitating a goat] Frost said, “Two roads diverged in the wood and I —
I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”

Amen, O’Captain, My Captain.
Carry on,
Xox

HAPPINESS
1. “Happiness is a mental or emotional state of well-being defined by positive or pleasant emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy. A variety of biological, psychological, religious and philosophical approaches have striven to define happiness and identify its sources.

”

And they can’t.

Because defining happiness is like describing a boobie to a blind man. You just have to feel it.

Uh, that word happiness.  It’s such a trigger.

I once heard happiness described as being “As important to living as oxygen.”
At the time, it pissed me off something awful. What wing-nut would equate happiness with life? You can live a perfectly fine life as a miserable bitch—just ask my dog.

Listen, our Founding Father’s did. They even wrote it into our country’s Bill Of Rights — “Life, Liberty and The Pursuit of Happiness.”

Have you ever tried to pursue happiness? The big smiley face kind? I have.
That is one slippery, elusive, and habitually unattainable little fucker—when pursued.

That’s the thing. You have to let happiness come to YOU. Find YOU.

What about JOY. If you hate the concept of pursuing happiness, you’re going to loathe the word JOY.

I hear you, Joy sucks. Does it even exist? Joy? I mean really? Who walks around JOYFUL?

Stop being so angry for a second and consider of this:

Have you ever felt curious about something? Approaching it with wonder and awe?

Have you ever been in love? Maybe romantic love has passed you by, but did you ever win a fish at the inky-stink neighborhood Carnival? Or collect ladybugs at the vacant lot around the corner? Or help a hummingbird find its way out of your house?

What about when you fix something that’s been broken? Or find something precious that’s been lost?

I helped a little boy who was lost in Target find his mother.

We are completely blind to the ordinary occurrences in our lives, forever looking, PURSUING, the big, jumping in the air, new pony, fireworks and screaming, Red Ferrari, giant Happy Face moments which, if we’re lucky, happen a handful of times in our lives.

I needed a steadier stream so I learned to redefine what it meant to feel happiness and joy. I expanded the parameters ( Yes, you can do that) to include, well, everything, and I retired my track shoes. I ended the pursuit and opened my eyes.

This says FIND THE JOY IN THE ORDINARY. I say, SEE THE JOY IN THE ORDINARY, that feels SO much more doable to me. How about YOU?

Happy Hump Day y’all,
Carry on,
xox

Dearest body of mine,
I would like to extend my most heartfelt apology for under appreciating you all of these years and for being your harshest critic.

It is high time I write this. It is way past time actually–horribly overdue by years, maybe even decades.

I’m sorry. I can be such an ass.

I certainly deserve your indifference and yet you are so endlessly forgiving.
I could learn something from your example.

Anyway, I’m here to say…I’m sorry. And I love you.

I have repeatedly ignored your wishes, judged you and even called you names.
Tiny department store dressing rooms, covered in carnival mirrors and bright, unforgiving fluorescent lights can attest to that fact.

Please accept my sincerest apology.

Over the years, I have deprived you of sleep, rattled you with stress, covered over your anxiety by overworking you and then made up for it at times by smoking and drinking too much, (which I’m sure is exactly what you did NOT need).

Other times, I have marinated you in a melancholy laced dissatisfaction until it affected your health, at which point you knocked me on my ass with anxiety attacks, Mono, a lung infection, strep throat or some other malady long enough to get my attention and give me time to re-group and let you heal.

Thank you and I’m sorry.

I have systematically starved and over fed you; brutally sunburned you summer after teenage summer; changed your natural hair color and texture too many times to count, tweezed, waxed and lasered you beyond all reason and basically treated you like shit since, well– since I was old enough to get away with it.

And don’t get me started on that face.
Every time I look in the mirror I only see the flaws–the thin chicken lips and over-plucked eyebrows, several deep divots due to teenage acne and just when it looked as if I had come to terms with it all–alas, the wrinkles.

But you always cut me slack. Don’t you just want to strike back at me? Like with a giant forehead zit, you know, the kind that hurt like a mutha or a stye in my eye?

You should! What the hell’s wrong with me?

Just the fact that my eyes have sight, my legs still carry me and that I can hear and smell all the wonders of the world around me–is a lottery win! You are sturdy and strong, hearty and healthy — but why hasn’t that ever been good enough?

I’m so sorry.

As a young woman I was naturally thin, (another unappreciated lottery win), so of course, I wanted to be curvy.
I never appreciated your stellar metabolism for one minute. I took it for granted, stuffing my face with junk food knowing you’d save me from myself, when suddenly at around age forty you dialed it back so that now I have to exercise like an Olympian and watch what I eat–every morsel registering on the scale.

Well-played. I know, I deserved it.

I apologize for never knowing you were good enough just as you were.
Listen, I’d like to call a truce. Can we be friends?

I finally realize you are not some cosmic mistake or last minute consolation prize. I wasn’t supposed to be Cindy Crawford or Florence Joyner. I get that now.

God chose you for me, or better yet, it was a collaboration between both of us before we were born, for the life we were meant to lead.

You house my soul for crying-out-loud–my very essence. We are a team, you and me, so you’d think I would have held you in higher regard.

I am so sorry.

So now, having said all of that,
I don’t care what you weigh as long as you’re healthy.

I don’t care if you can’t run five miles like you used to, your legs are still strong enough to hike–hikes are good.

I don’t care if you have wrinkles. Together we have worried and we have laughed–we earned those lines by engaging in a life well lived.

I promise to try to drink less alcohol (you keep telling me it no longer agrees with you).

I promise to get you checked out on a regular basis, you know, for tune-ups –like the high-performance vehicle you are and trust that you can fix yourself most of the time.

I promise to get enough sleep.

I promise to keep us stimulated, body, mind, and spirit, well into old age.

I promise to quit looking around to see how other women are aging and just be happy and make the most with what I’ve been gifted.

I promise to listen to you and to pay closer attention to what you’re telling me.

You, my glorious friend, are a work of art and a freaking miracle and every creak, groan and crack are there to remind me to treat you with respect–After all, we are a team.

Love you,
xox