The Direction of Intention

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Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

I used to have a guitar named Magnolia. Linda gave her to me a birthday gift and she was immediately one of my treasures. Magnolia was used when I got her, warm and full of story. She felt good to hold and I loved to strum her and imagine that I knew how to play. I imagined who I would be if I could play her. I carried her with me for years. I learned a few chords. I practiced sometimes, learned to stumble through a song or two, and then she’d go back in the case for several months when I went into rehearsal or flew away on a job.

Shortly after I moved to Seattle I knew I had to cut ties with the past and make a fresh start. I knew that Magnolia was never going to get proper attention from me, that I wanted to learn to play but I had on my list other things that always took precedence. I had to choose and my choice was usually the studio to paint or the next play. I knew she’d be happier with a real musician. So, I found a real musician and gave Magnolia to her. She was thrilled (and so was the musician).

I realized that letting go of Magnolia was about letting go of a life that I would never live: an ideal. I had too many other lives calling me (note: I could never bind myself to the mast like Odysseus – when the Sirens call I follow. Were I a Greek I’d have been turned into a goat or a sheep a long time ago. Cyclops would have eaten me for brunch). Magnolia was a Siren from another time, a love long lost, a heartbreak that I carried in a guitar case. And, although I grieved giving her away (seriously – I had to eat alone that night for brooding and hiding my misty eyes) I was almost immediately lighter in spirit. I’d made a choice. She helped me see how many stories and I held with white knuckles and continued to follow halfheartedly. After Magnolia I let go of the weight of so many stories I’d carried like a bag of boulders for so long. Stories can be heavy when filled with false expectation or excessive judgment. Stories, once liberated, will also let go and set you free.

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404.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

This morning the Sound was shrouded in fog and sprinkled with a slight drizzle. It was very quiet and the water was glassy and still. The islands, Bainbridge and Vashon, were doing their Avalon imitation and fading into the mists of time. For some reason, these mornings inspire my inner archeologist to come out and play. I generally feel that I am living in a culture/world that makes no sense to me so there’s always a bit of the archeologist peering from behind my eyes; the questions, “What is this?” and “Why did they do that?” are velveteen questions that I can’t help but consider.

This is what I found:

A single running shoe sitting alone on a bench – its mate nowhere to be found. I imagined the shoe to be heart broken, confused, wondering whether it’s mate left with another shoe or was tragically swept out to sea. It is the not knowing that is agonizing, the sudden purpose-less-ness that drove the shoe to this bench to stare into the foggy waters. Perhaps it drank too much and woke up alone on the bench and wonders silently to itself, “What the hell happened to me? What will become of me?”

A lime, whole and uncut, resting 6 inches from a child’s blue plastic sand shovel, broken, missing the handle. They seem to be staring at one another, curious, “Who will make the first move?” It is like a middle-school dance. The lime is playing hard-to-get. The shovel, hiding it’s lost handle, it’s missing piece, puts its best face forward hoping the lime will not notice or at least will have an open mind and give it a chance. So much yearning!

Eleven empty Corona beer bottles standing in a line on the sea wall (no where near the lime – of course, though the lime might have escaped the marauding Corona brothers and rolled into a budding love story); the bottles facing the sea. Knowing that bottles come in equal numbers raised the question, “Did the missing bottle run off with the missing shoe?” Or, perhaps the eleven bottles disposed of number 12 for a breach of the case code? They were certainly working hard to look innocent. They were too perfectly placed not to be up to something. I was suspicious but in no position to accuse.

A pile of cosmetics: eye shadow, lip liner, brushes, mascara, a pancake base, and other items laying in a pile on top of a concrete post. It was as if a purse ate too much make-up and vomited. Nothing else made sense. How many women do you know that dump their make-up on a pillar and walk away? It had to be a purse gone Roman, evidence of over indulgence.

This morning my inner archeologist was fired from his university post for excessive imposition of story on artifact. He couldn’t leave well enough alone and cataloguing did not seem nearly as fun as story-making. On his exit interview I asked what happened given all of his years of study and training. He shrugged his shoulders and said, “I’m human.” What’s the point of all that data if not to tell a good story?

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