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Star in the Margin is on Substack!
Author: Ali Lanzetta
I'm a writer, artist, bookseller, educator, and certified Positive Psychology coach based in Burlington, Vermont.
Come join ali and the other booksellers and greater reading community of Phoenix Books on Tuesday, August 8th for a fun evening of poetry, stories, snacks, and surprises!
* 7pm *
All are welcome.
** Event is ticketed, and your $3 ticket is a $3 coupon off your purchase of marmalade from Phoenix Books. **
Tickets and books can be purchased by phone, website, or in-store, either in advance or at the event.
“letting”
i ‘misplace’ traces of everything this isn’t in handfuls and in my eyes, spread over the covers of the collected stories my heart zooms along, illuminated. they smell like the sky or dream like slipped jewelries to the floor of the sink in a silent clinking. they glint. some fizz. some are pulled petals and gather round, counting. i pop one into my mouth; it plays the trumpet fanfare all the way down.
some hints of everything this isn’t might draw me a map that runes to the moon, or far and away from the dark space of illicit wishes between stars. i spill them from my outturned pocket, resplendent. a few of them start a pool to write poetry or protest Empiricism. two lean in, listening. one wears a stethoscope: the heart thumps! “hold my drink,” one prompts another, beaming, and kisses me.
:: from marmalade, by ali lanzetta
Spuyten Duyvil Press, 2023
(And for more sneak-peeks into the weird, whimsical world of marmalade, check out some clips and snips and feelings here and a couple more included pieces, in full, here and here!)
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Believing it
Dear Friends,
I’m here with NEWS!! In a downright dazzling turn of events, after so many years of mornings spent quietly writing in my pajamas, something extraordinary is happening:
A BOOK! My first book. My first book!
My debut book is a charmingly yellow, rascally collection of mixed prose poetry and flash narrative nonfiction called marmalade, that has just been released (June, 2023) by Spuyten Duyvil Press (“SPY-tin DYE-vuhl”, Dutch for in spite of the Devil!) in New York.
Can you believe it?
I can’t believe it!
Can you believe it?
I don’t know WHAT to believe anymore!
I’m all fizzy and ruffled and have rainbows coming out of my ears. And those good eggs at the press let me design the cover, to boot – and I love it so much it makes my fingers tingle. Believing.
marmalade is filled to bursting with portals to the heart’s far-flung places where I call things crocodile-petaled or winterpink or like fish asleep in a long blue nap, and say things like my imagination is a museum and i am the curator! Or, becoming means blooming because it happens in a loop. You’ll find all manner of weird snaps and happenings within its enchanted pages: dandelion-eyes, swishing cinnamon feathers, a wish that tunnels out with a teaspoon, a strawberry heart with a spring, and even, on one occasion, an x-rayed ribcage with a cricket inside.
You’ll also find a variety of:
USEFUL INSTRUCTIONS: “save your whinnying, your whine, shine, and whimper. let it wing a whistle like a flushed song. . .”
PLUCKY DEMANDS: “don’t pretend to be a flower if you are a flower.”
IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: “is this yours?”
THRILLING EPIPHANIES: “with all these berries, i may never have to eat an apple again!”
GENTLE SUGGESTIONS: “sip new pennies flicker-winking in a fishpond of wishes you’ve nipped from stars. . .”
HELPFUL DISCOVERIES: “numbers may be useful: 100, for instance. diems to carpe, men to seduce, all-time slices of cake captured. . .”
UNCALLED-FOR ACCUSATIONS: “you and your vigorous reimagining!”
and lots of VERY PECULIAR ADVICE: “all you need is that bright seed at the center from which everything spins.”
Do you want it? Will you read it? I mean, who knows what else you might find in there!
marmalade is now available to order directly from the press, and will soon be available to order through Phoenix Books or your other local independent bookstore. Please feel welcome to check out what a few of my favorite people are already saying about it. Or even visit with some of my other work while you wait!
Sending all the yellow petals and light of my heart in every direction to everyone at once.
xo, ali
I recently read this gem in Ann Patchett’s wonderful novel, The Dutch House (2019).
She is one of my favorite writers. The extraordinary depth of her work and her masterful delivery dazzle me every time. She works with the perfect ratio of shine and nuance which, as a writer myself, I just find so inspiring.
And here is a brilliant example – these wise words and the power of encountering them in fiction, as we fall down that magic rabbit hole with a character.
and it reminded me of something . . .
One of the most useful things anyone has ever said to me is something I’ve re-quoted often to myself and to others.
Let’s call this person My Friend Lydia.
I was talking to My Friend Lydia during a time when I’d been feeling very overwhelmed by some less-than-pleasant emotions regarding a particular situation in my life. After holding space for me to explore the story and my feelings about it, My Friend Lydia said,
“It’s good to feel your feelings, but I want you to know that you don’t have to follow them around.
You can feel your feelings, and then put them in a box and put the box on a shelf.”
I was like, “Wait, what? I can?”
In Psychology, this is part of a process often called “Containment“.
CONTAINMENT means putting aside thoughts and feelings that are monopolizing your energy and attention, getting some distance and allowing yourself a break so you don’t become flooded.
Because of the Negativity Bias, this process is especially important when it’s difficult feelings we’re dealing with.
You can’t see how big the sky is from the bottom of the well.
The purpose of containment isn’t to deny your natural feelings or to Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind your memories by scrubbing them clean, but to create boundaries with them so you can get on with your life and attend to ALL its things, thoughts, and feelings–not just the ones that are bothering you.
Containment helps us move beyond our feelings with:
- a more spacious perspective
- more openness & creativity
- a greater, more clear-sighted sense of possibility
- an improved ability to orient ourself in the present
- a better understanding of how negative experiences fit into our greater narratives–and actually help to organically shape and grow us, allowing us to become stronger, wiser, and brighter.
Like everything, it’s easier said than done, of course, but the first thing (always) is to notice what, exactly, we’re following and/or carrying around in the first place. Whatever it is, it’s okay to feel it – but you don’t have to lug it about with you.
You’re the only one who can choose what’s in the box you carry.
a lemon?
a person?
a feeling?
a fear?
And anything that’s not helpful to have with you right now can be stored quietly on its shelf where it belongs.
If you have a pearl, a petal, a shimmer, a lark. . . put it in the box in your pocket.
Only you get to decide what’s in that one, too.
Breathe, shine, be well, and stay tuned for more! xo, ali
If you are irritated by every rub, how will your mirror be polished?
Rumi
ATTACK OF THE BIG GREEN GUY
Negativity has an energy about it.
I was having a cranky morning. The stars were misaligned, Mercury was in retrograde, I had a bee in my bonnet, whatever—I woke up on the wrong side of the bed. Midmorning, while complaining and wrestling with some blankets, hastily trying to make the bed, I accidentally knelt on the nearby window curtain and all at once (CRASH!) yanked the curtain down, with half the rod, broke the rod, and was unceremoniously (BAM!) clonked on the head by it.
I yelled a curse of some kind (obviously), and because I was already in such a sour mood, I also had an immediate, visceral reaction to this extra-annoying (undeserved!) wallop – my instant physical instinct was to go full Incredible Hulk on it and use all of my frustrated and thus superhuman strength to rip the entire thing, brackets and all, right out of the drywall.
Did I absolutely, 100% want to do exactly that in the moment? YES!
Did I do it? No.
(Winning!)
I somehow summoned the presence of mind, in that suddenly charged, negative space, to register my crankiness and reactivity, STOP, and take a Very Deep Breath. Okay, it took several—but with a few moments of stillness and breathing, I calmed down enough to assess the situation and make a better choice about what I wanted to do next. Like maybe see about fixing things instead of breaking them more.
A few helpful lessons I think we can take from this whole ordeal:
1.
Try to remember to pay attention to what you’re doing so you can avoid accidentally breaking things. (Also remember: “Do or do not. There is no try.” – Yoda)
2.
Keep practicing mindfulness and meditation regularly so you have the awareness and control needed to stop yourself from intentionally breaking things.
3.
Negative feelings have energy – sometimes BIG (hulking, paranormal-sized) energy that, if left to run amok, can very easily make everything worse!
And one more thing:
Can breath sometimes cast a magic spell? Totally.
Anyone who thinks magic isn’t real just isn’t paying enough attention.
breathing room
Whether due to a busted curtain rod or a different kind of broken flow, the challenging feelings of frustration, anxiety, irritation, and overwhelm all have something in common: they’re crowded. When we actively cultivate hope, optimism, and a positive attitude, we’re less likely to be jostled around by difficult or annoying happenings—but our better angels (the ones who laugh, shake their celestial heads, and get to work solving our problems rather than multiplying them) can still get crowded out sometimes, no matter who we are. They have wings! They need a little room.
To get that room and better insure they’ll be nearby when we really need them, we need to practice making space.
How can we make more space in our lives?
There are lots of different kinds of space we can make, and the more we make the merrier and less ruffled we’re likely be as we go along.
Here are some ideas.
Make physical space
Tidy up, declutter. Purge stuff you no longer enjoy, use, or need. Reorganize or redecorate to make your space more pleasant and aesthetically pleasing to you. Pay attention to your breath and the space it makes inside your body. Notice both your body in space and all the negative space around and beyond your body. Take a street you don’t usually take home from work to let your familiar route and world unfold and expand from the inside out.
make physiological space
Move your body or allow it to rest in perfect stillness. Shake, stretch, dance, jump around. Breathe big, hold it in, count to ten, whoosh it out. Make extra noise or be extra-quiet, depending on the kind of space you need. Get enough sleep. Go for a walk, do a little cartwheel for no reason. Don’t be shy – I mean, how would you feel if you saw someone do a random cartwheel down your street? Just saying.
make emotional space
Settle down with a good book (I find fiction works best here!) and a cup of tea. Take a moment for a little self-compassion practice. The more compassionate we are to ourselves, both in prickly moments and smoother ones, the more openness we’ll bring around with us, into whatever is happening. Keep a few reliable laughs in your mind’s pocket, too, like little charms to remind you not to take things too seriously. Laughter is an often effortless emotional space-maker. It has a wonderful way of rinsing off the moment.
make mental space
Try some breath-meditation. Sit or stand quietly, close your eyes, and rest your attention on the sensation of slowly breathing in and out. Your mind is like a puppy who will keep bouncing off after some shiny thought or feeling, and that’s no problem. When you notice it’s become distracted, just gently bring it back to the breath. Stay here as long as you’d like. This simple practice relaxes both the mind and the body and is excellent for making space. The longer you stay, the more you’ll make.
make creative space
Take a break from your creative project and do something completely different, then return to it and let new ideas and energy percolate in. Play creative games. Have fun! Fun is an excellent space-creator. Try a medium switcheroo: make something with a medium you don’t usually work with, and/or try to re-create part of your current project using a different medium (paint the song you’re composing! Hum the scene you’re writing) than the one you’ve been using. Notice the new pathways and possibilities bloom open.
make energetic space
One of my very favorite meditations (which I think I made up by mashing a few different ones together) I’ll call Balloon Levitation. It’s easy! Sit comfortably, eyes closed, straight spine, proud heart. Take a big breath into your belly, allowing it to expand in all directions as if filling up a balloon. When you get to the tippy-top of your inhale, imagine tying the neck of the balloon off to seal it, then, exhaling slowly, let the balloon float right out the top of your head. Watch it drift up and away. At the bottom of your exhale, begin filling a new balloon, and start the process again. If you do this enough times, you may start to feel yourself floating—right off your seat! (Talk about space!)
When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hang on.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
To shine and expand and keep our better angels at the ready and inner Hulks in check, we need room to think, feel, move, and breathe. Did you know that the surface area of the human lung is equal to half of a tennis court? The airways that run through them purportedly total around 1,500 miles—the distance from Boston to Miami. The more areas of our lives we can breathe that kind of magically expanding space into, the bigger the margin we’ll have when we need to stretch or adjust our perspective or response–to the little things, the big things, to All The Things.
And when in doubt, remember:
It’s always been true that the best medicine for any difficult moment is a nice, deep breath.
And if that doesn’t do it. . . there’s always dancing.
Breathe, love, be well, and stay tuned for more! xo, ali
Want to learn more? Let’s connect! I offer complimentary consultations and would love to explore working together.
The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.
Barbara Kingsolver
the worst
I saw an interview from 2012 in which Michael J. Fox said that if you imagine the worst, and it actually happens, you lived it twice.
And—no small thing—this is coming from a guy who was diagnosed with Parkinson’s at just 29 years old, at a time (1991) when he’d become both one of America’s favorite sweethearts and one of the most successful young actors in the world. Despite his diagnosis and many (many) setbacks in the 30+ years he’s been living with it, Michael has managed to grow four kids with his beloved wife, raise more than $1 billion for Parkinson’s research and advocacy, write three best-selling memoirs, and even continue acting. Is his disease degenerative, and getting progressively worse? Yes. Has he been spending a lot of time going back to a more difficult future by imagining (and reimagining) The Worst? Obviously not. You can’t do all this stuff if that’s what you’re focused on.
When you get stuck imagining The Worst, two Very Bad Things tend to happen:
1.
You have the unpleasant and unfair experience of tricking yourself into feeling The Worst Feelings in whatever actual moment you’re in. So rather than feeling, say, your dog snoring in your actual lap, or the warm cup of coffee actually in your hands, or the weird, fizzy near-actual euphoria of your sneeze, you’re making something (worse) up to feel, and experiencing that, instead.
2.
By rehearsing the feelings associated with The Worst, just like anything else you practice, you get better at feeling them. Anxiety? You get better at it. Despair? You get better at it. Anger, jealousy, sadness? Better, better, better at it. Instead of practicing being present with your feelings (or maybe even imagining your way into even better ones), you’re conditioning yourself to more easily feel The Worst.
If it seems crazy—that’s because it is!
the best
So why on earth do we kick ourselves OUT of the moments we’re IN so that we can time-and-space-travel into imaginary lousier ones? It’s not nice, it’s not rational, and it’s not helpful–but it’s totally natural. It’s called WORRYING, which essentially means using the remarkable power of your imagination for bad instead of good. Did you know that the origin of the word “worry” is Old English wyrgan, meaning “strangle” ?!
If we’re going to hop in the DeLorean and travel to a future that hasn’t happened yet, we need to choose one that helps our present-self breathe a little brighter and better instead of strangling it.
Our brains are wired to protect us, which means they mobilize all of our resources to save us from danger when it jumps out from behind a bush (a.k.a. the Stress Response). But when you’re focused on danger (including danger that isn’t even actually there), your higher brain functions—such as those governing impulse-control, creativity, empathy, and the ability to think both straight and broadly—effectively switch OFF.
By following the paths illuminated by hope instead of fear, we improve our ability to imagine what “better” might be like—and to feel, think, and problem-solve our way toward it.
We often assume The Worst when we’re afraid or unsure about how something will turn out, because we think it will help us avoid future pain or disappointment. But assuming The Worst doesn’t help us avoid those things. Worrying keeps us stuck. (If you’ve ever felt strangled by your worries, raise your hand.) Pain and disappointment are part of life, and instead of using our energy fretting and what-if-ing in a mostly futile attempt to avoid them, what we need is to keep our chins up and develop strategies to keep hope alive in our lives as they are, no matter what.
Our best bet is to put our energy (our vote!) into hoping for The Best, because imagining and preparing for that is what allows us to live it.
While we may not be able to control all that happens to us, we can control what happens inside of us.
Benjamin Franklin
the little bird
The poet Emily Dickinson famously wrote:
‘Hope’ is the thing with the feathers —
That perches in the soul —
And sings the tune without the words —
And never stops – at all —
And sweetest in the gale is heard —
And sore must be the storm —
That could abash the little bird —
That kept so many warm —
I’ve heard it in the chillest land —
And on the strangest sea —
Yet – never – in Extremity,
It asked a crumb – of me.
Emily Dickinson
She’s right about the crumbs; it doesn’t cost us anything to hope.
Actually, it costs a lot not to.
We tend to think of our habits as repeated actions, which they are—whistling, humming, smoking, slumping—but most of our habits are much less tangible than that. What drive our habitual behaviors are our habitual ways of thinking, feeling, and reacting. And I’m going to go out on a limb here (surprise!) to suggest that just as worrying is a habit, hope can become a habit, too.
so what does it mean, then, to live inside our hope?
refocus
It means putting your hopes, instead of your fears, in the foreground. It means bending your energy and attention toward the light of your hopes whenever you feel yourself leaning into The Worst.
superhero
It means having the courage (and audacity!) to get in the habit of visualizing, planning for, and taking steps toward The Best. Using the power of your imagination to fight evil instead of inviting it.
reality check
Living inside our hope means getting real:
The Best is often just as possible an outcome as The Worst, but our fears keep us from hoping for it.
But when did disappointment kill you? It didn’t, it doesn’t.
In a recent talk, I heard Queer Eye‘s Karamo Brown say, “You’ve survived 100% of the challenges you’ve faced.” And I thought, whoa, STOP right there. . . he’s right! Take a moment to consider this. IT’S TRUE! It’s unequivocally true. Every hardship, heartbreak, loss, scary thing, setback, letdown, curveball, calamity. . . you’ve survived them all. You’re scared, I’m scared, everybody’s scared. We need to get over it. Being scared isn’t the problem–it’s part of living, we survive it–the problem is what happens when you let fear dictate your outlook, your attitude, your art, your actions: your field of vision gets narrower, your world gets smaller and smaller, until—blink! Where even are you?
Courage means feeling your fear and doing things anyway.
I think living inside your hope, right under its roof, means to stubbornly imagine The Best, no matter what, and to continue taking whatever baby bunny steps, whenever and however you can, toward it. And to remember to enjoy the process—because the process is your life.
“Can I just keep going in this adventure? Because if the worst I’ve had is as bad as it gets, it’s been amazing.”
Michael J. Fox, New York Times, 2019
Breathe, love, be well, and stay tuned for more! xo, ali
Want to learn more? Let’s connect! I offer complimentary consultations and would love to explore working together.
how to be nicer: start with yourself
I worked as a barista in a café in the upper Haight for years when I lived in San Francisco, and we had one basic rule, broadcast by a big sticker on the side of our espresso machine (which happened to face the entrance):
As long as everyone was following the rule, we could keep the vibe on the high side and things stayed pretty peachy in there. If not? All kinds of trouble ensued.
While I understand that we can’t exactly “leave” the scene of our inner unrest when we’re not being nice to ourselves, I think this is a good motto for all of us to stick up somewhere inside and try to remember while we’re managing our own inner emotional and creative environments.
No matter what we’re up to when our own inner instigators arrive to disturb the peace, we should let them know, in no uncertain terms, that they can either be nice or be quiet. And if they can’t be quiet, they can GET OUT! They’ll definitely come back. (It’s kind of their thing.) But if they get 86’d enough times, many will stop showing up as often, if at all. Or they’ll linger on the doormat muttering until you notice them (sometimes that’s the trickiest part! But with practice, it gets easier), and eventually, one little stink-eye from you (and a “READ THE SIGN!”) will usually send them packing.
Keeping the peace is often really just about having an effective strategy to fall back on in a charged moment (aka, call the cops immediately if that Age-of-Aquarius guy with the banjo starts taking his clothes off in the doorway again). One that I like to share is the self-compassion practice that research psychologist Kristen Neff teaches. The steps are simple, and it can be a real game-changer when practiced regularly.
self-compassion practice
1. Mindfulness
Recognize and accept that you’re experiencing pain or difficulty. It’s not easy to feel like this; this feeling is challenging.
2. Shared Humanity
Remind yourself that this is a human thing to feel, and lots of other people feel this. Many are feeling it right now.
3. Kindness
Offer kind gestures and words to yourself. A pat. A deep breath. Kind words, like “I’m doing my best”, or “these things happen.”
One of my personal favorite things to say to myself in these moments comes from writer/coach Jen Sincero:
“I’m just a little bunny, working through my issues.”
It really helps lighten the feeling! You’re just a little bunny–you’re going to be okay.
This peacekeeping self-compassion practice is useful not only in everyday moments of frustration, disappointment, confusion, or self-doubt, but also in deeper times of anxiety, despair, or anything in, around, between, or beyond them. At the end of the day, we’re all just little bunnies, bumping along, trying not to get eaten. When you find yourself in a dark or dodgy moment, try to lighten up, be nice, cut yourself some slack, and then get on with the business of living and being present in your life, doing what you can to shine up the place.
Being consistently nicer to ourselves helps cultivate more compassion in general, which spills out into other areas of our lives, improving all of our relationships. Kindess is catching.
If you get the inside right, the outside will into place.
Eckhart Tolle
Dear Sugar
If you’re interested in social psychology and have never listened to the “Dear Sugars” podcast, you’re in for something special.
Writers Cheryl Strayed and Steve Almond answer any and all questions listeners have about life, love, and relating, with profound care, openness, wisdom, and humor. They discuss topics ranging from gender roles to romance to in-laws to infidelities and much, much more, inviting relevant experts and artists on here and there to chime in and help sort things out and offer advice.
As with the collected columns in Cheryl’s book Tiny, Beautiful Things (from her time as “Sugar”, the secret advice columnist for The Rumpus), all of these episodes are absolute gems, regardless what, exactly, you’re personally or currently dealing with.
As I read recently in Jami Attenberg‘s fantastic novel, All Grown Up:
“I hate to tell you something so obvious, but we are all the same lying down.”
Jami Attenberg
more on our relationships with our creativity. . .
This clip of coach/entrepeneur/philanthropist Marie Forleo talking with Elizabeth Gilbert about creativity is one of my all-time favorites, and Elizabeth in general is a bright, shiny, superstar in the margin who I return to regularly! She’s most well-known for her memoir of travel and self-discovery, Eat, Pray, Love, but she’s also a seriously excellent writer and a truly extraordinary thinker on all things relating and creativity. For these reasons, especially, she’s one of my heroes.
And lastly (but never leastly!)…
book recommendations
Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend.
Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.
Groucho Marx
Here are some books that I’ve found extraordinarily helpful as I navigate the relationships in my own life, trying to be the best bunny I can be for myself, my creative work, and for the people and world around me.
May they help guide your heart in all its directions, as they have mine.
Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself, by Dr. Kristin Neff
Tiny, Beautiful Things, by Cheryl Strayed
Over the Top: A Raw Journey to Self-Love, by Jonathan Van Ness
Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear, by Elizabeth Gilbert
Your Inner Critic is a Big Jerk, and Other Truths about Being Creative, by Danielle Krysa
The Art of Communicating, by Thich Nhat Hanh
As always, please consider supporting your local independent bookstore if you decide to purchase these or others. Remember – your vote is your superpower! If you enjoy wandering in actual bookstores (who doesn’t?! I know I’m biased, but still), it’s on you to keep voting for them. Most will ship books right to your door, too! If you don’t have a brick-and-mortar bookstore in your area, bookshop.org is a great option for ordering; they support small bookstores all over the country. Happy reading, and happy relating, loving, and following your very own weird!
“Being normal is being completely unique, because nobody’s the same.
Normal, honey? Who is she, anyway?”
Jonathan Van Ness
Breathe, love, be well, and stay tuned for more! xo, ali
Want to learn more? Let’s connect! I offer complimentary consultations and would love to explore working together.
We are the most alive when we’re in love.
John Updike
the love light
Most of us know what creative flow feels like. We’re contentedly lost in whatever we’re making or doing, time stands soft-eyed and doe-still, or falls away from us like so many little bright beads of “What? Did you say something?”. We’re energized, inspired, and flooded with ideas that spill out sparkling, one after another. Our inner critics are off bowling or something. The river is running and the current is clear. We sail along without having to stop and think or fuss or second guess anything at all.
IT’S. THE. BEST.
Being in flow is not unlike being in love! We’re blissed out and hyper-present, and we only have eyes for the object of our affection. But flow, like infatuation or any other state of being, is ephemeral–so to keep the vibe high, we have to have a strong relationship we can count on when the dreamy feeling passes.
As in our relationships with the people in our lives, our connections with our creative work have to be able to withstand the flops, lulls, puzzles, and derailments that will inevitably come. Establishing (and maintaining) a strong creative habit is one way to build more primacy and stability into the relationship, but we also need ways to keep the love-light shining, to stay tuned in and tuned up even when things get tiring or tricky or tense. As with any long-term important relationship, we need to love our creative work, for better or for worse, no matter what.
So how do we fall and stay in love
with our creative work?
We treat it like it’s one of the loves of our lives – because it is.
Here are 3 strategies to keep the living, crystalline hearts of our creative relationships central, polished, and shining!
#1: leave the light on
I’m often asked, “Where do you get your ideas?” The short answer is: everywhere. It’s like asking, “Where do you find the air you breathe?”
Ideas are all around you.
Twyla Tharp
Ideas are all around us. So how do we live our everyday lives with our creativity humming in the back and foreground, active and in motion, to catch them?
use related activities to charge your creative process.
I have a little post-it by my morning coffee/reading/writing spot that says “MAKE READING = WRITING”. Reading and writing are two sides of the same coin for me: reading is part of my writing practice, and vice versa. Like everyone, I read for escape and enlightenment, but, as a writer, I also read to inspire and inform my writing. I read with my magic star-catching glasses on. And never without a pencil.
I like to think of this as “Creative Reading” – a kind of reading where the heart and the head are holding hands, where my reading is actively involved in a kind of ongoing improv skit or shimmer my writing. It’s active and creative. There is an ongoing and generous starring of margins. When a lightbulb blinks on over my head, I snatch it out of the air and move over to my notebook or laptop to scribble it down.
invite your creative projects into seemingly unrelated activities.
Inviting your work to tag along with you while you do other things is also a fantastic way to keep the connection alive. I try to bring an awareness of my creative projects with me while I walk, while I wait, while I wander or race around in my day. In this way, we can make our creativity feel welcome everywhere—both when we’re in its familiar territory (such as books, words, stories) and while we’re doing less related things. When we intentionally bring our creativity with us into a variety of settings and activities (even just in our heads!), we tend to sponge up more stuff, widening the net.
Whatever we’re doing, we can try to leave the light on for it.
try this:
Find ways to let more of your daily activities nourish and inform your creative work.
As I’ve said, reading is a big one for me, as it should (and must) be for all writers. But how many unrelated daily activities can we use as opportunities to engage and provoke our writerly imaginations? Or if you’re a musician, can you make an effort to listen to both jazz and traffic with your music in mind? Visual artists may consider the quality and variety of shape, line, and color both at the gallery and the gas station. Both/and!
When we use everyday experiences as opportunities to connect with our creative work, we braid the two together and the relationship is reinforced, allowing all of it to come more interestingly alive.
#2: collect stars
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
Oscar Wilde
Make a practice of capturing the things that spark your creativity so you can use the sparks to illuminate your work.
This is what my practice, “Star in the Margin”, refers to – we have to mark the bright stuff when we snag on it so we can use it to light our way, and the sparks don’t just go fluttering off like embers in the dark. Sort of like collecting fireflies in a jar, then using the jar to see by as you go.
In addition to inspiring our work, star collection can helps us in a few other ways:
spark detector
Capturing what interests us turns on our radars for these little bright moments, making us more mindful of where, when, and by what we feel inspired and activated. Remember radar detectors? Think of these like. . . SPARK DETECTORS! The more we know about our sparks, the better we can work with them—and maybe even start setting traps to catch them!
diving board
As we make a habit of noticing these bright snags, we move through the world in a richer way because it becomes creatively charged with little diving boards and bulbs twinkling on everywhere. The more the merrier, and the more interesting, exciting, and buzzing with possibility our seemingly ordinary lives and experiences become. Win/win!
magic portal
Creative life becomes just – life. There’s less of a separation between them. When your creative life is more lovingly integrated into your day-to-day life, it becomes easier and more automatic to slip from one side to the other and back again. Think of it like someone propping the magic portal open so you can flow more easily between them. Pretty great, right?
try this:
Start a collection of starry-stuff.
Start it anywhere that’s interesting to you. In a journal. In a jar. In a shoebox. In your pocket, to empty out later. Just start collecting.
When I lived in the city, I kept a little plastic basket in my kitchen drawer where I’d collect weird things I’d hear on NPR and scribble on scraps while cooking. They said things like, “SPACE JUNK” and “the disappearance of Amelia Earhart” and “the moons of Jupiter (79!!!)” Of course I saved them all, and now they live in my art desk in a tupperware container labeled “magic scraps”.
Use the stars as jumping off points, like diving boards, into your own work. Let yourself be inspired by any/all you find. Scatter them into the mix and use their light to see something new, to brighten and bedazzle your creative process.
#3: experiment & play
If there’s no joy in it, it’s just no good.
Stephen King
Enjoy it!
You do this because you like doing it, right? Why else are you doing it? If our relationships aren’t fun, well – they don’t last. Or they do, but we resist them, or they make us miserable, and eventually we start throwing our shoes at them and they fall apart, or we do. Let’s not!
Just like in our other relationships, we can be loving toward our creativity by doing things fun things together, and by keeping the things interesting. Instead of trying to make your creativity sit still in the same hard chair and keep its head down “working”, for example, try inviting it out for a conceptual skinny-dip, a space picnic, a magic show, an adventure. Notice how it behaves differently when you let its hair down.
My own personal creative mantra, especially when I feel lost, stale, or stuck, is:
Start wild. follow the weird. Experiment and play.
And think – but not too hard, not too much, and not for too long at once.
Playing creative games is a fantastic way to breathe some new light and life into your projects and processes. If we don’t stay open and follow the weird, we never end up somewhere new or interesting. (Everything new is a little weird at first!) Just like in our other important relationships, we have to remember to enjoy our creativity, to stay open, and to have fun together. Otherwise it might just wander off and find someone more interesting to play with. (Maybe even—gasp—your old meanie inner critic! And could you blame it?)
try this:
Make up a game or trick to play with your creative project or process.
Try creating something using found words, sounds, or materials, like artist Truong Tran (click pictured piece!) does. Play a game with your work by employing “chance operations” to create something new and unpredictable–or shine some sponteneity into an existing project. Trick your project into some random form or structure. Find a way to explode it, then repair it–with only half its pieces. I often bring a bag of scissors to class and ask my writing students to chop their printed writings up, then rearrange the snips. I once prompted a class of poets to write a poem as “a wishing well.” And they did! And all our wishes got to pickle and preen and run poetically amok.
Here is one fun list of ideas to get you started. A quick internet search will yield many more. Remember you can translate these into any medium and do exactly whatever you want – you’re playing! That’s the point. Combine weird things. Think like an adventurer. Make it a game. Start wild.
When danger approaches, sing to it.
Arab proverb
the truth
The truth is that loving relationships–whether with ourselves, our creative work, or the world—are critical to our health and happiness. We can cultivate loving relationships with all sorts of things. No matter what you make or why, from fictions to fugues to flower arrangements, finding ways to connect lovingly, wholeheartedly, and cooperatively with our creativity is essential for finding flow more easily and often, and for living happily as the charmed, curious, wondering, wandering wizards we are.
In the following idea, what if we changed someONE to someTHING, and that THING was our creativity? Humble thanks to its writer—artist, minister, and teacher Robert Fulghum–for letting us co-opt it and make the necessary [adjustments]. And by thanks I mean sorry , we have our own places to go, but have stopped to draw little stars around the heart of it.
We’re all a little weird. And life is a little weird. And when we find some[thing] whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with [it] and fall into mutually satisfying weirdness — and call it love — true love.
True love.
Breathe, love, be well, and stay tuned for more! xo, ali
Want to learn more? Let’s connect! I offer complimentary consultations and would love to explore working together.
toast
One of my dad’s favorite stories to tell about me as a little kid is that I regularly talked to my toast. I’d be sitting at the kitchen table by myself and he’d overhear me and the jelly toast carrying on in whispers:
“You’re not going to eat me, are you? Don’t eat me!”
“But I have to eat you, Mister, I’m hungry!”
“Wait, hey! Owch! Come on.”
“I’m really sorry! But you’re my breakfast!”
Cute? Yes. Slightly wicked? Maybe. But it was sort of like we had a funny little friendship going on – and it was kind of a game. I knew that, ultimately, the toast understood that no matter how it tried to con me otherwise it was, in fact, breakfast, and would end up being nibbled.
Even as an adult, I have a habit of sort of making secret friends with stuff. I often genuinely feel bad for inanimate objects that seem to have been hurt or discarded. Seeing a branch being sawed off a tree makes me cringe as if I’m watching a person getting their finger lopped off. I reflexively whisper, “Sorry! Thank you!” when I pick flowers or prune my lilac bush. I rescue spiders from the sink. I don’t (usually) talk to my toast anymore, but I definitely talk to my houseplants. And (constantly!) my dog. And the birds. And the trees. I pretty much talk to anything with whom I have some kind of relationship, which is to say. . . everything.
take care
It might seem silly and overly sensitive (and to some degree, it’s both), but we could do worse than treat the things of our lives with a little extra empathy and charity. Because the real thing is: it’s not just about how the toast or the tree feels—it’s also about how we feel.
It’s about how interacting warmly and compassionately with things cultivates a loving quality of attention, and how that quality of attention doesn’t just support us in our daily interactions with things, but spills over into our relationships with ourselves, our creative work, and with other people.
One of my favorite Zen sayings, which I repeat to myself often, is How you do anything is how you do everything. So maybe it’s no small thing, then, being polite to your breakfast!
Caring for each other isn’t just about how we care about people, or even the pets or plants in our lives – it’s about cultivating a respectful and affectionate way of being in the world as well as with it.
To improve and maintain our relationships with one another, we have to practice care and respect for all the things to which we are related (everything!) and maintain the awareness that it’s all connected.
savoring
One practice we can use to cultivate a higher-vibe quality of attention is called SAVORING, a process of slowing down enough to really taste not just a perfectly ripe strawberry or just-baked sugar cookie, but any pleasant experience, all of them. There are amazing things happening around and inside of us all the time, but we’re often monkeying around too much to notice them. Or if we do happen to notice (damn, that was a good berry!) we’re zooming by too quickly to really experience it. Our primitive brains are wired to pay attention to the rough stuff so we can rally the internal troops, if and when need be. (In psychology, this is known as ‘The Negativity Bias‘.) But the good stuff? We have to practice bringing it front-and-center, or we risk missing much of it entirely.
The ‘savoring’ practice is pretty simple. Here’s how to do it:
notice
Notice when you like something – a sensation, a scent, a passage in the book you’re reading, a joke. To practice, just look around for things you like! A color here, a sound there. An emotion. A texture. The feeling of your feet tucked into your soft socks. It doesn’t matter much what it is—it doesn’t have to be grand or profound. Big things are great, but there are tiny, wonderful things happening all around us all the time. If you train yourself to snag on them, you begin to snag on them without even meaning to.
stop
Stop and notice how the ‘I like that’ feeling feels, and lean into it. Pay attention both to the feeling and to the thing you snagged on. A weird cloud. An interesting passerby. The way your dog is looking at you like he is writing a love song about you in his head. I know you think you don’t have time to stop, but you do! It doesn’t take long. Just a quick pause to allow the light of your full awareness to shine on something that sparks your curiosity or care, and that you’re going to miss if you don’t slow down.
linger
Linger on the object of your attention and the pleasant feeling it’s stirring up. Savor it! Allow yourself to feel suspended there for a moment, floating in the feeling for a breath or two. Get a little air. Give a quiet thanks that you get to experience this, whatever it is, that it’s part of your day and, as such, your life. When you’re ready, continue on your way with this pleasant feeling tucked under your arm like the little float that it is – if you remember to let it lift and carry you. Feel its lift and carry.
Practicing savoring things we like and love not only gives us a boost and helps us experience the world in a richer way, but it activates and trains our liking/loving muscles, which affects how we treat and feel about all the things and people in our lives–and how they, in turn, feel to and about us.
[IN THE NAME OF LOVE]
With practice, it gets easier to come more peaceably to the less pleasant things, too, with more compassion and patience, because our general way of being is both softened and strengthened. Being able to be more present with things is a skill that can be both profoundly subtle and sweepingly, dramatically transformative, and is an excellent strategy for starting to improve your life and relationships right away. Look up! Look around. You can start right now.
miracles
The famously colorful poet and playwright Oscar Wilde is quoted as saying,
Never love anyone who treats you like you’re ordinary.
And many of us were taught as children to
Treat others as you’d like to be treated.
In his book Your True Home, Thich Nhat Hanh, the beloved Zen master, scholar, peace activist, and teacher, sums up one of the basic principles of Zen practice by saying:
Around us, life bursts forth with miracles–a glass of water, a ray of sunshine, a leaf, a caterpillar, a flower, laughter, raindrops. If you live in awareness, it is easy to see miracles everywhere. . . when we are tired and discouraged by life’s daily struggles, we may not notice these miracles, but they are always there.
The lesson here in all of it, I think, is something like this:
Treat things like they’re extraordinary, because they are. There is magic all around you. If you want to experience it differently, pay a different kind of attention. If you want the world to feel friendly, make friends with it.
Breathe, love, be well, and stay tuned for more! xo, ali
Want to learn more? Let’s connect! I offer complimentary consultations and would love to explore working together.
Everyone has an inner critic. Some of us have a whole garage band full of them! Self kindness and care is fundamental to happiness and success in all areas of life, and we can’t take good care of ourselves without addressing and managing the way we talk to ourselves. We can tune our inner radios to stations that can either cheer us on or cut us down – and we get to choose.
But how?
According to meditation teacher Jeff Warren, using “humor and irreverence to good-naturedly undermine the authority of our inner critics” is one of the best ways to shush our internal negative self-talk—and give ourselves the space and courage to get on with it already, whatever ‘it’ is, without the running negative commentary that bums us out and hedges us in.
Here’s how to do it.
HOW TO UNDERMINE THE INNER CRITIC
1. NOTICE when the negative tape starts playing and your inner critic chimes in (my hair is too big and I’m going to fail at life today? Ohhhh-kay, wait a sec.)
2. NAME it / give it a funny persona (the possibliities are endless—some examples below!)
3. UNDERMINE it by good-naturedly imitating it in the voice of the funny persona, which softens its authority, allows you to stop taking it so seriously, and maybe even cracks you up, instead.
why this is useful:
– We train ourselves to NOTICE the inner critic instead of mindlessly listening to it all the time, and by noticing it we can choose to react differently to it.
– By using lightheartedness and humor, the critic’s AUTHORITY starts to collapse and we can see it for what it really is: a bossy and unhelpful voice in our head that makes us feel smaller and less capable than we actually are and can be or become.
– It can brighten the moment and our mood, and even make us laugh, giving us a little HAPPINESS BOOST instead of bumming us out – and we know from Positive Psychology that happiness actually opens us up and allows us to think more clearly, calmly, and creatively.
PERSONAS
Jeff calls this process ‘The Swedish Chef Trick’ because when he notices his own inner critic chime in, he imitates it in the voice of the Swedish Chef from the Muppets (“Merndi shmerndi berndi…!”). I’ve tried this one and can attest to both its hilarity and its power. Another celebrated meditation teacher, Sharon Salzberg, think of her inner critical voice as well-meaning but self-important Lucy from the Peanuts cartoon and, rather than imitating it per se, uses the refrain “Chill out, Lucy” whenever she notices the voice start fussing up.
I’ve always had a particular affection for the cheerful spirit and good-natured humor of the Muppets, so I’ve been thinking of my own inner critics as those two guys in the balcony—remember them? The tall one (Statler) and the short one (Waldorf) who are always wise-cracking each other and razzing everybody from their little perch up above the action?
That’s pretty much what our inner critics are doing if left unchecked. They hang out in the background with their popcorn and do this running critique of our show.
By putting my inner criticisms into the voices of Statler and Waldorf, shouting back and forth and heartily “ho-ho-ho!”ing at their own cheeky wit every time, I can see the nonsense of it all for what it is, and I can even laugh about it. These two ridiculous old fellows are hanging out in my head, uninvited, acting like they’re experts while trying to out-zinger each other and sometimes falling out of their seats? I think they’re in charge?! Give me a break. These guys are hilarious—and they aren’t even the real issue.
“Our inner voices are not the problem,” as Jeff says. “The problem is the authority we invest in them.”
try this:
Give your inner critic(s) a name and persona.
Spend some time today trying to notice when your inner critics are piping up and then imitate their critique in this persona. Notice how you feel when their authority is undermined. You can also try Sharon’s brilliantly simple refrain, “Chill out, Lucy” (or Waldorf, or whomever).
Next, see if you can add someone else into the mix: an inner cheerleader.
Make a list of 3-5 characters, real or imagined, who you love and admire, and who you’re 100% certain do or would have your back. (Some of my inner cheerleaders are: my very favorite teacher from my 21 years of school, writer Toni Mirosevich; Gandalf, from The Lord of The Rings; the inimitable Jonathan Van Ness of Queer Eye; and my cherished-from-afar Zen teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh).
Once you’ve subverted the authority of your inner critic, invite your inner cheerleader to have a go.
What would this character say in this circumstance to cheer you on? Picture their face and hear their voice. Trust them and listen to them. As you move into your next moment and the ones that follow it, bring that voice along instead of your inner Debbie Downer’s. Notice the often big difference this little shift can make.
…AND THIS (FOR CREATIVES):
Next time you’re working (painting, writing, music-making, photographing, imagining, designing, etc., etc.) have a quick check-in with one of your inner cheerleaders, then get to work and turn all the voices down but that one. Two of my favorite personal sayings for my own work are START WILD and FOLLOW THE WEIRD. Work without censoring yourself whatsoever. Some weird path unfurling? Great! Let’s follow it to see where it goes.
Want to mix those two weird colors? Do it, use it. Do it again.
Want to take your protagonist into a closet that turns out to be a portal to a parallel dimension? In you both go. Close the door behind you. Keep going.
Sing nonsense. Resuscitate a bug. Play all the wrong notes on purpose, or everything at once. Take eleven pictures with your eyes closed. Put a square thing on top of a round thing. Levitate it. Knock the whole thing over.
Start small and experiment and don’t think about what you’re doing – if you keep your inner cheerleader cheering in the background and just keep doing instead of thinking, your inner critic won’t have any space to shut things down by trying to clean things up.
Make a mess and enjoy it. Creativity is fun, that’s why you do it! You can pick through it later to see what treasures you got. For now, just do and keep the right tape rolling in the background. It’s probably impossible to turn the inner critic off completely, but with practice, we can at least turn the volume down some and find our groove in peace.
It’s taken me all my life to learn what not to play.
Dizzy Gillespie
Breathe, love, be well, and stay tuned for more! xo, ali
Want to learn more? Let’s connect! I offer complimentary consultations and would love to explore working together.