Magic, magical thinking, and the Story About the Hat...

Magic. It’s really my word for connection because it’s the one we learn in fairy tales. It’s that tingle when you know you are tune in to more than the manifest universe. And that so often, if you allow the alchemy, that expresses its presence as pure joy.

The trick, if you will continue the metaphor … making it real.

As much as the media right now are pushing to make you believe that people like me are all about selfishness and denial of reality, no one serious is suggesting you get happy by pretending to be happy or that what makes you sad really does not exist. That’s called crazy, not happy.  Joy is  about acknowledging the world around you for what is is, as well as how you feel about it, but also finding the place in yourself where you can get perspective to decide and act positively, kindly, and constructively. Reset by meditating, walking in the park, going to church, visiting a museum - you will know you are connected when it feels right, and exactly what to do.

I am also seeing mockery of New Thought as Magical Thinking, and because I wanted to address that and the Universe gives us what we ask for, I now have a true story that demonstrates the difference:

Last week, right around the solstice, I felt chilly outside, but realized I had donated my old hats last year and would be cold when not wearing a hood. So I said to myself, “I want and need a hat!” Then I just waited for the perfect hat to arrive -- NOT!

Busy on other errands, I stopped at  a nearby shop and found nothing I liked at all. But it was SUPPOSED to be there, wasn’t it? No, that’s magical thinking, Magic is letting it happen, not waiting for it. Walking along the Park, I realized I had some extra time and was near a crosstown bus.  I changed direction and went to my favorite store, where I tried on several berets - the style I really wanted  - but none were cool. It was getting colder outside, so I did select a reasonably priced fleecy black bucket that would do.

The End (NOT!! Here comes the Magic!)

At this point I realized I was near a dear friend’s home and we were trying to catch up because she had a gift for me, but when I called her she was still at work. Could I meet her an hour or more later? So I headed pretty far downtown on another errand.

On the way back to the train what do I find lying in the middle of the street? MY HAT! (not exactly) But a perfectly nice hat, with a snowflake pattern... which, since I no longer was in great need, I set up on a street fixture to be retrieved by its owner or adopted by someone who really needed one. In that moment, I remembered a young man who recently offered me a pair of gloves he found because I was not wearing any. I thanked him and told him the truth, I was just being too lazy to dig out my gloves at the moment, but please give them to someone who needs them. Real Christmas spirit, and I carried that energy with me back uptown.

My friend was at a local cafe having supper, it’s one of those places where “everybody knows your name.” She handed me a gift from her vacation - a HAT? No, an absolutely enchanting piece of art (shown above). As we hung out chatting I met one of the regulars for the first time. Not sure how the conversation got here, but suddenly he presents us each with  - yes, a hat. And of course mine was the perfect black beret!

Magical thinking would have had me just wait for the hat to arrive, but that was not the way this was going to happen. By looking for the hat rather than wishing for it, even acquiring one, I engaged an energy called Law of Attraction, which basically says, what you focus on, the universe brings you more of. I chose to act to acquire a hat and attracted 3 - one a gift to myself, one re-gifted to someone, and one a gift from a brand-new friend. None of this happens if I am not open to seeing the opportunity --  in the form of 30 minutes, a bus, and an unlimited Metrocard --  to alter my plans and lean in unexpected directions.

Personal and spiritual growth are hard work, and a leap of faith. And of course there are people who, whatever their reasons (profit, prestige, or just that misery loves company), would rather have you do something else - cringe at the news all day, medicate/self-medicate, shop --  and will try to discredit anyone offering you community and support in a different direction. But it’s really your life, your choice.

And I have a feeling we will be leaping into the New Year with some amazing New Choices!

The Dream About The Bag...

Sometimes a dream stays with you…

It’s likely many of us have versions of dreams like this, and that’s how this one started out - I left my purse, the one with the ID, phones, money, etc. - on a bus. But that’s about where it diverges from the usual, where I find it immediately or wake up to make sure I have the “real’ one.

This time, it was not the regular pocketbook or tote, it looked more like a large cylindrical pencil-case, aqua blue with embroidered scenes scattered, and a short looped strap. And although I went about my business on some kind of creative project pretending nothing was wrong, I kept seeing it hanging off the armrest in my mind and feeling, rather than panic, a deep sense of grief. Mainly, I kept telling myself all my efforts would be for naught because  “I don’t have my ID any more.”

Stop shouting at the screen, I hear you. Yesterday was a day of receiving spiritual and practical guidance and I was left with the realization that, for large chunks of my life, I abandoned my true self as the only way I saw available to stay connected with others. And also of how magical it was to meet Mark and have that kind of spiritual and creative growth in the context of a relationship. And that, regardless of the past and present circumstances and challenges, I am ever so happy to be alive.

Waking to a half-dream state as light filtered in, I realized I had the bag in my hands, maybe the whole time, and my heart was filled with love, awe, and gratitude. So I got up and started writing (well, after starting to make coffee then dashing to the store with the coat over my pj’s because I was out of cream for my coffee and then making the coffee) and here we are… and my dream was about writing!

The Oxford English Dictionary defines certain usage of the word “bag” as follows:

“A preoccupation, mode of behaviour or experience; a distinctive style or category…”

In my late teens writing, along with reading and discussing books, was definitely “my bag.” The typewriter was always at the ready, the journal followed me everywhere, and I scrawled and tapped much as we consume electronic media today - wherever, whenever, whatever struck my mind…most of it ended up making no sense the next week, but it was great exercise as well and a constant reminder of my creativity and connection with “something more.” It is no coincidence that this was the time I also began to read Tarot cards.

Sadly life became more “involved” for me, socializing became about relationships “going somewhere,” money and jobs became more of a thing and less of an adventure, parents said, “Very nice, now go to law school or you are nobody.” Fiction and poetry took a back seat to the business of living, and it felt permanent. I wrote my papers, my correspondence, maybe one poem per year. I did manage to graduate with an Arts Major, but a huge chunk of me was still buying into the successful business career and power marriage ego trip, and by the time I was 30 I still called myself an artist but was ready to call myself anything else, and try to prove it, when threatened with the withholding of acceptance.

Thankfully, as they say, rejection is protection, I can’t swallow Kool-Aid so I was a dismal failure at my revisionist goals. Through my thirties I fed myself a rich and steady diet of proto-new-age authors like Barbara DeAngelis, Wayne Dyer, and M. Scott Peck, and psychology via Nancy Friday, Eric Berne, Claude Steiner and more. This was a journey back in, but not via writing. Career again became jobs du jour and a learning experience, I kept active in the arts, and at least I knew something was missing beyond the right guy, salary, title, approval…

A guy was a big part of a major shift for me, so was technology, and they arrived at the same time -- a writer and his computer! My latest job had transformed me from digital virgin to software wizard, he came along with the hardware, the romance, and an active collaboration on professional projects. And while little endured from that platform, memories are golden, I got to practice swimming with the sharks… and I was WRITING!

The next amazing encounter was finding Francis Ford Coppola’s labor of love for writers, Zoetrope Virtual Studio. At the complex social media and online workshopping network for member writers of all forms and levels, I started with screenplays to test what I had been doing. Loving the folks I was meeting,  I ventured over to the short fiction/novella side to write stuff someone might actually read and, dare I say it, publish! I learned so much from the other writers there  --  it is a gift every day that many of us hang still together on Facebook  --  I started to take writing seriously, and also got to host a bunch of these partners in crime on my roof at an in-person get-together, Labor Day Weekend… 2001.

It was because of some serious writing and a little money set aside that I was able to give myself a small gift of time, taking a break from work the latter half of that summer to focus on my writing and learning how to get it out there. After the holiday weekend I felt I was not done, and kept telling myself “a few more days…” even though I felt totally irresponsible doing so, as I rarely blow off deadlines, even my own.

Which is why I was not temping somewhere in Manhattan on the morning of September 11, 2001.

The days and weeks that followed are kind of a blur, not because my memories are not razor sharp, but because I need to defocus most of the time. Much of what I wrote then was non-fiction, reporting what was going on, inside and outside myself, on the Zoetrope site boards. The love and concern and support and plain reading I was given were truly a lifeline at a time I felt half-dead, I hope I was helpful to others as well, it was just pouring out of me.

I literally walked everywhere for months, something about being in a bus or subway terrified me. Luckily I was invited to a holiday party just across the street because I had “helped” the hostess find her kittens (I told her they were somewhere in the apartment, she finally realized they were living under the cabinets). And that was where I first met Mark, after 6 years of living on the same intersection and frequenting the same coffee shops.

Our 10 years together is another story, full of change, growth, and magical synchronicities. In our collaborations and on my own, I never stopped writing.

It’s my bag.

© 2016

Acknowledgements: Nancy Levin, whose Jump Coaching Call yesterday planted many seeds that sprouted here; Marianne Williamson, whose live “A Course In Miracles” talk on the topic of relationships filled my heart to cracking and my soul with hope; Ron Brawer for the etymological research. Namaste.

related holiday flash fiction written in 2001

A Tale of Two Mothers

"As many mothers will attest, we can become time travelers when we begin a search or when we are found. We can be reeled back into the past with a word, a song, a rejection, as repressed traumatic memories resurface without warning."

Two Mothers Share a Child - Why Can’t Their Hearts Be Open to Each Other?

A Sunday Share, Carol Schaefer's intimate story speaks volumes about the treasures that open themselves to us when we act out of love rather than fear... let it change your day, your outlook, your life...

photo by Mark Wiener