Under the Lid

Secrets are such tantalizing things. They are like magnets. The moment you learn about the existence of one, you feel the overpowering need to uncover it.

Discovering the nature of secrets is one of the most powerful things that drive us.

But then, so many things drive us. Hunger, desire. A full bladder. A swarm of bees.

Keep in mind, some secrets, like packages of gourmet smelly cheese, may reveal more than you bargained for.

So before you lift the lid from that boiling kettle, be sure you have a thick potholder and towels, and a proper spoon to stir the unknown contents.

Holding Hands

Sometimes, reaching out and taking someone's hand is the beginning of a journey.

At other times, it is allowing another to take yours.

You or I?

Was it you or I who stumbled first?

It does not matter.

The one of us who finds the strength to get up first, must help the other.

Money and Fire

Money is like fire.

It is only good when there's just the right amount of it, when it's properly contained and under your control.

Siblings

It's a commonly expressed and rather nice, romantic notion that we are all "sisters" and "brothers."

Let's be real. Fact is, we might be better served to accept that we are all siblings.

Siblings fight, pull each other's hair, steal stuff, and accuse each other indiscriminately.

But siblings also know the undeniable fact that they are the same blood, share the same origins, and are family.

Even when they hate each other.

And that tends to put all things in perspective.

Progression

Sunrise paints the sky with pinks and the sunset with peaches.

Cool to warm.

So is the progression from childhood to old age.

Creative Buffet

Creativity is not so much a boundless well, but an all-you-can-eat buffet of elements for your creative endeavor.

Eventually you’ve eaten your fill, and it’s time to digest and then make something.

But at some point, it will be time to return to the restaurant.

Happiness: Meditation Puzzle

I am happy.

I have something to accomplish, create, and achieve.

I am happy.

Favorite Word

Here’s a funny question:

What is your favorite word?

Think about it—maybe it’s a word that makes you absolutely happy, or a word that sounds gloriously beautiful, or a word that evokes awe and wonder. Maybe you are reminded of a great time when you hear it, or maybe it represents your life’s dream.

So, what is it? What is your favorite word of all words?

Thought about it yet?

Good.

And now, think why.

In the Kingdom of Glass

In the kingdom of glass everything is transparent, and there is no place to hide a dark heart.

Visiting Distant Places

Whenever you go on a trip to visit foreign lands or distant places, remember that they are all someone’s home and backyard.

The Saffron Shift

Science uses the Red Shift to measure deep cosmic distances. But how to measure deep historic time? How about—the Saffron Shift.

If history itself had a color, it is . . . like wood or bark, or living forest floor.

Assigning hues to time periods, the sum total of history is saffron-brown—but the chromatic arc starts from blinding white (prehistory) to sun-yellow (Ancient Greece), then deepening to pale wood tones (Dark Ages) and finally exploding like an infinite chord into a full brown palette that includes mahoganies, siennas (Middle Ages), oak, sandalwood (the Renaissance), cherry, maple (Age of Reason), and near-black old woods (Industrial Revolution) for which there may not be names.

As time approaches our own, the wood-brown palette fades to a weird glassy colorlessness, goes black-and-white for a brief span as you think of photographs of your grandparents, and then again fades until we get a clear medium that is the color of the world.

And the present moment is perfectly transparent.

It’s only as you start looking into the future, that the colors start returning. The glass is turning silvery with a murky haze, and there is blue somewhere in the distance . . .

The Bridge

Once upon a time there were two countries, at war with each other. In order to make peace after many years of conflict, they decided to build a bridge across the ocean.

But because they never learned each other’s language properly, they could never agree on the details, so the two halves of the bridge they started to build never met.

To this day the bridge extends far into the ocean from both sides, and simply ends half way, miles in the wrong direction from the meeting point.

And the two countries are still at war.

Friends

Friends are a strange, volatile, contradictory, yet sticky phenomenon. They are made, crafted, shaped, molded, created by focused effort and intent. And yet, true friendship, once recognized, in its essence is effortless.

Best friends are formed by time.

Everyone is someone’s friend, even when they think they are all alone.

If the friendship is not working, your heart will know. It’s when you start being less than perfectly honest and perfectly earnest in your dealings. And it’s when the things you do together no longer feel right.

However, sometimes it takes more effort to make it work after all.

Stick around long enough to become someone’s best friend.

Writer Ghost

Here’s a strange fact. Writers, for the most part—especially writers of fiction—are doomed to be ever on the fringes of recognition, unknown, struggling, invisible.

It is not a myth. Most of us stay “starving” if we don’t have some other job to pay the bills.

But, don’t despair.

You and I may be a writer ghost (as opposed to a ghost writer—even those people seem to get more out of their careers than we do!). But the things we have to say are as corporeal and powerful as anything on the bestseller list.

Sometimes more.

So, keep on speaking to the clean vista of blank journal pages and the wordprocessor screen.

Eventually your ghost words will haunt someone.

Tease

Dangling a carrot in front of a donkey—or anyone else for that matter—is not nice, and not fair, unless you eventually plan to give it up to them.

The Fastest Things

The only thing faster than the speed of thought is the speed of forgetfulness.

Good thing we have other people to help us remember.

Main Course

Some people prefer eating dessert to the main course.

These people have never been really hungry.

Shoes and Purses and Pretty Rocks

Okay, why is it that women are supposed to love shoes and purses and shiny expensive trinkets? Seriously. Do you, if you’re a woman? I mean everyone loves a little bling, but do we pretend we love it more than we really do?

Also, is it the object itself that we are assumed to passionately crave, or what it represents? Status, prestige, beauty, youth, vigor, popularity, attractiveness, wealth . . . A little of everything?

Did women always love these things, throughout history? Or were we taught to love and covet them in order to put us in a certain delineated frame of being, to contain us, and keep us “occupied” and easily defined?

And, as times change, will these specific material objects of desire give way to some others, such as fancy smart phones and gadgets?

It seems, the objects we covet represent society’s current ideals.

What about our own true ideals? What do we really want?

Alphabet

Each letter of the alphabet is a steadfast loyal soldier in a great army of words, sentences, paragraphs, and stories.

One letter falls, and the entire language falters.

The Point

Why does every road eventually narrow into a point at the horizon?

Because that’s where the point lies.