Diana's Blog: Quirky Words and Book Reviews

December 26, 2008
In a few days, I'll be interviewing Peggy McColl about her new book BE A DOG WITH A BONE: ALWAYS GO FOR YOUR DREAMS. So I read the book -- a tiny thing at just over one hundred pages, and those pages are packed.
What strikes me first is the chapter on Dogged Determination. Peggy McColl lists several examples of dreams and the final one resonates deeply with me. I've been thinking lately that I am not focused on one goal, and I must be. This chapter speaks of figuring out your dreams and being as determined as that dog with a bone. That example reads I am a New York Times best-selling author. I am known throughout the world in a very positive way, as well as being highly respected in my business. My work is making a positive and beneficial contribution to the lives of millions of others.
Just as my eyes light on that paragraph and connect with my memoir which I wrote this past year and which is with my literary agent...just at that very moment that the thought becomes a feeling connecting with my passion...just as I smile with recognition that her words work for me...a message pings in.
It is from Richard Evans. I interviewed Rick last week about his book GRACE, about a girl who was raped by her stepfather, and I revealed to the author -- as I did in a book blog on this very site a few days ago -- that my childhood was much like Grace's. And Rick asked me to send him my manuscript of my memoir BookMark:Life-Changing Secrets I Learned from Interviewing Authors, which I did a week ago.
I find it fascinating that incidents beyond our control occur at perfect moments, supporting us when we declare our dreams. Suffice it to say his email is positive, and I have goose-bumps at the timing.
The second I connect with my intention, an email affirming my choice pings in. The Universe/God works that fast. The content of the email matters less in this situation than does its timing -- it indicates to me that I am on course.
It is magical to declare your intention.
Years ago when I interviewed Chuck Palahniuk about his book LULLABY, asking him about magic, and he said it was really about intention, and that, at a New Year's Eve party years earlier when his first book was out, he had declared what he called a ridiculous goal that FIGHT CLUB, which had not even sold out its first printing would become a New York Times best-seller. It did become a best-seller, and Chuck has knocked them out of the park every time since.
Intention, Chuck calls it.
Magic, I call it.
Dreams, Peggy calls it -- and I'll have more on this Monday.
Know what you want. And then doggedly hold onto your dreams.

Labels: BE A DOG WITH A ONE ALWAYS GO FOR YOUR DREAMS, Chuck Palahniuk, dreams, FIGHT CLUB GRACE, intention, LULLABY, magic., Peggy McColl, Richard Paul Evans, transcending the trauma

December 24, 2008
It is Christmas Eve on one of the longest weeks I've experienced in recent years. The snowy, icy weather has tripped up plans for everyone. Only those who slide along -- as if their psyches are dancing on ice -- are enjoying themselves.
My son Justin -- who would have flown into Portland Oregon Monday afternoon -- with whom we would then get a tree, after which he would be the guest of honor at a surprise birthday party -- instead flew into Seattle late Monday night, stayed with a friend and took the Greyhound into Portland last night. He got in at midnight, and I picked him up. I got two and a half hours sleep, then drove at 3:15am through the treacherous snow and ice, through ruts and over berms, to my radio station, and reported on traffic all morning, a couple more hours than I'd expected. Slide, baby, slide.
I re-invited his friends for this afternoon -- and if he hadn't seen the birthday cake I'd baked for him and hid in the garage when he was starving after the flight, and scrounging for food -- he would have been completely surprised. He was, however, completely delighted. And we had a houseful of kids and my friends for a few hours this afternoon...as I chug along on two and a half hours sleep.
As I wait for my sons to finish their Christmas shopping tonight, I look through a beautiful journal of Susan Seddon Boulet's transformational art. It is a dream journal, dressed up with quotes from dream experts and wise people, among them Anne Frank. It is fitting. We're into Hanukkah, into winter, into Christmas Eve -- a time of magic and miracles. Anne's words in THE COMPLETE DREAM JOURNAL by Laynee Gilbert are captured this way:
I want to write. But more than that, I want to bring out all kinds of things that lie buried in my heart.
What a gift was Anne Frank. Every young girl read her words, wanted to be the girl who wrote those words, not for the horror her soul had to endure, but because she was so effervescently wise, so accepting of her tragedy. A snowstorm is no big deal, and changes in plans are nothing.
In this journal, Virginia Woolf is quoted:
It is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top.
Driving for hours, staying focused in the moment, I find that I can enter a more relaxed state, as well, almost a dream state. There can be no judgment when we are dropped so deeply into that which is unfolding. I wouldn't call it white-knuckling. For me, driving through the challenging ice and snow allows my subconscious to play in, too. For one thing, I keep praying in that open way that feels more like I suddenly have unseen partners in my journey. I feel safe, in God's hands, and suddenly, drifting to the top, comes my submerged truth. That these past few days, I simply accept what is happening, without judgment, and I slide, not on ice, but on truth, skating and twirling with the knowledge that whatever is, is the reward.

Labels: Anne Frank, book review, dreams, Laynee Gilbert, THE COMPLETE DREAM JOURNAL, truth., Virginia Woolf

December 5, 2008
I write the date and two thoughts blossom. One is the snowy cover of the book I just read, TIME OF MY LIFE -- it's already December, somehow. And, the other is that on this date, when I was seventeen, after going to watch M*A*S*H at the movies, midday, to calm my nerves, I won Junior Miss Western Union County. It wasn't the pivotal event my mother had promised it would be.
That wasn't the beginning of the blog as I imagined it. I was stirred to pick up this book today because I got a wake-up call from a man I've known most of my adult life. He laughed with me at my froggy voice, and said he wondered -- on the basis of my message from the day before to call anytime, no matter how early -- how early was too early. It was around seven-thirty, which, compared to most of my adult life, would be seriously sleeping in. But recently, I've been writing late at night, and going to sleep after midnight, after one, sometimes after two.
I'll call him D.
TIME OF MY LIFE is a novel by Allison Winn Scotch about a woman, disillusioned, in a faltering marriage with a sweet but not inordinately demanding baby daughter. And Jillian hears from a friend that her old unreliable, totally hot boyfriend Jackson is getting married. She wonders what her life might have been like had she married Jack and stayed at the Madison Avenue ad agency. And tense, from clearly not enough married sex, she climbs onto the massage table, and drifts off into the alternate life. She wakes up with a hangover seven years earlier in Jack's apartment, getting a call that she's late for a brainstorming session at the agency. She's not married to Henry anymore! She doesn't want to re-live her best friend Megan's serial miscarriages, and Megan's subsequent death in traffic, but Jillian gradually realizes she can re-sculpt what happened by, for example, arriving sooner for Megan, so the physical damage doesn't take as much toll. And her years as a real mom come in handy winning over Jack's niece at her birthday party, which gradually convinces Jack's otherwise-snooty family that she's all right. Oddly, she runs into Henry, her real-life future husband at several events earlier in her new, younger life than she recalls, and it's puzzling. Suddenly, the time shift is all too real.
The book's concept is perfect -- writers always tell me they think of an idea for a book, then torque it with "what if...." and they keep amping it until they have a novel worth sustaining the reader's pleasure. Here, not much amping is needed, because the reader brings her own story. "What if....?"
I met D with my husband when my sons were around two and four. D was introduced as our new stockbroker, because our other one, a young man, had died unexpectantly. Both kids were marginally contained by climbing over, under and around everything they could find in D's office. I was madly in love with my sons and my husband. D seemed to realize he needed to win my trust. Maybe that was the connector, because something in me took notice of D. Over the years, he married, and is enormously respectful of his wife and family. He is around my age, and he's freckled with a seductively honest smile. He was single, and a bronco-rider back then, and I thought -- even through my blissful married haze -- that that was unbelievably sexy...a stockbroker who rides in rodeos. My husband was a man then who talked on the radio about rodeos and played songs about rodeos and once in awhile got on a horse. It's not talk, but action that stirs me. On our divorce, I inherited D. And he treats me with friendly respect.
Still, just this very morning, when D's voice spoke the first words I heard, I thought, "What if...?"
And I knew the answer. I was in love with my husband more than twenty years, not really noticing we had nothing left but daily sex -- until after I filed for divorce and began sleeping on the couch.
But D. He has all the qualities I want in a man -- sexy, fit, youthful, successful, cute, risky, courageous, respectful and caring -- and maybe that's the message that was really contained in that wake-up call today. A reminder that this is the kind of man I want to marry someday -- add available and single to that list.
As for pivotal events, I've found that many of them are found in dreams, in small twists and turns, and in those voices we hear early in the morning.

Labels: Allison Winn Scotch, book review, dreams, TIME OF MY LIFE, what if, what you really want.

November 22, 2008
It has been November 22nd for about thirty-two hours for me -- left my Barcelona hotel around eight this morning, and just got home in Portland about 9pm. The bath awaits. But first!
All that time flying afforded me the opportunity to read a scientifically stunning book about the Law of Attraction. It is called THE ANSWER -- subtitle is Grow Any Business, Achieve Financial Freedom, and Live an Extraordinary Life. It's by John Assaraf and Murray Smith.
The duo begins with Copernicus and Galileo and Einstein, and rises beautifully until we come to the scientific conclusion that thoughts are indeed what constitutes reality. It is so beautifully spelled out in THE ANSWER, that anyone who has felt the Law of Attraction or THE SECRET is too airy-fairy will be able to perceive the scientific support for what appears to be magic. Make our dreams come true? Yeah, you bet! One of the key pieces is the part in your brain known as the Reticular Activating System. When you decide very specifically what you want, your unconscious brain will sort information at an unbelievably fast rate and you suddenly think of the right person to call, or the perfect situation presents itself and you recognize it!
Assaraf and Smith give you a working formula to rewire your mind -- backing up for a moment, they quote scientists who say "what fires together gets wired together." Often that relates to trauma, which takes undoing. And that can be done! You meditate, visualize and use affirmations to basically rewire the way you think. If you have a but after every dream, it'll never work. It takes thirty days to change neural reconditioning.
They talk about vision boards -- which I totally love. Here's a quick example -- on my vision board, which I assembled New Year's Eve and New Year's Day -- I pasted a picture of a passport because I hadn't traveled for years, and I love traveling. And, out of the blue comes this all-expense paid trip to Barcelona to interview MBA students at ESADE and sit in on Marketing, Branding, Economic and Spanish classes -- to create a podcast. Totally fabulous! Next time, I'll build in plenty of extra time to enjoy these places!
See your dreams as if they are true, reroute that wiring if you must, and live an exciting life. There are dozens of real-life examples in THE ANSWER, and thankfully, it is very specific, to the point of including how to create a successful business.
You will walk away from this book a winner.
And now the warm bath awaits...wherein I will dream up my next adventure!

Labels: Barcelona, book review, brain, dreams, ESADE, John Assaraf, Murray Smith, THE ANSWER, The Secret, transcending the trauma, vision board

November 15, 2008
Long before there were affirmations, there were aphorisms. These quotations are spiritual guideposts, soul-quests.
I swing from one quotation to the next like I used to move on the monkey bars...swinging far, farther than I thought possible, praying I would catch it, landing safely, and still swinging, reaching out for the next.
That's why I love a good quote book. I borrowed my mother's beaten blue Bartlett's Familiar Quotations so constantly when I was a kid, she gave up rights and it became mine. Bartlett's, by the way, was first published in 1855. Nowadays it's easy to go online and google a few apt phrases, but there is nothing like a book to thumb through.
THE COMPLETE IDIOT'S GUIDE TO GREAT QUOTES FOR ALL OCCASIONS, assembled by Elaine Bernstein Partnow, opens gracefully to one of the fundamental quotes I wore inside my heart from the time I first read it. I was about eight or nine, and the spark was renewed every time I saw the poem, or even phrases from the poem.
Langston Hughes' poem Dreams first appeared in a book called Golden Slippers: An Anthology of Negro Poetry for Young Readers in 1941.
Hold fast to dreams / For if dreams die / Life is a broken-winged bird / That cannot fly
Even now my body shudders with tears. A surprise.
Did Langston Hughes know some twenty, thirty years after he wrote that poem for little black girls, that this little white girl would have drowned in pain without its beacon?
Damn, I can't quit crying.
Tears are pouring down my face. Unspent tears that had been stored behind some wall inside that just collapsed. It was useless to cry then -- what could I do to make my violent stepfather happy, I couldn't figure it out. I did everything I could think of. Everything. What could I do to stop my mother from getting so drunk she kept falling and ending up in the hospital, or taking too many pills, or finding sharp knives. What could I do to make them happy? My younger brother and sister, I tried to mother them, but I made mistakes. What good was crying. Crying got you smacked.
But I could dream. Oh God I could Dream!
Did you know that, Langston Hughes, with your poem, that you saved my life, you told me I could dream, and that someday I would fly.
Now my nose is dripping and my eyes are red, and I don't know if it's tears or what licking the edge of my lips.
My cats have come to sit with me. They don't understand these loud noises coming from my chest. These are ancient tears, shed for the little girl who gave all she could and couldn't win, shed for all little boys and girls of every color who don't fit and who try to imagine a tomorrow where smiles will come easy.
Hold fast to dreams / For if dreams die / Life is a broken-winged bird / That cannot fly
I dreamed -- when I was a little kid -- that if I worked hard in school and read a lot of books, I would learn how to escape the pain...and someday I would live freely and laugh easily, and dance wildly and write passionately...and find that love is kind.
I made it.
Langston Hughes, thank you for your blessed words. You saved my life.
And now I'll go get that tissue.

Labels: Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, dreams, Elaine Bernstein Partnow, Golden Slippers, Landston Hughes, THE COMPLETE IDIOT'S GUIDE TO GREAT QUOTES FOR ALL OCCASIONS, transcending the trauma

September 9, 2008
Neale Donald Walsch and I have met for interviews in Portland Oregon several times at two different hotels and a radio station, and in Beverly Hills in the most astonishing suite at the Four Seasons, and most recently in a tiny manager's office at a local Borders.
We sat knee-to-knee in the back room, and we just talked. Of course, there was a mic in my hand, but to me, it is a magic wand, gathering in wisdom.
There is so much content in HAPPIER THAN GOD, that in the interview I found myself simply dancing with Neale through whatever ideas popped up.
One of Neale's points in the book is to get out of your story so you can truly live your life. Too many of us are stuck in who did what to us when. That's gossip. Not good. Awareness, very good.
Another tool is illusion. Do you think what you're living is your life? Not really. Everything is an illusion. Stay with me here. It's a mind-bender.
Before I interviewed Neale. Before I even received his book. I had the most real dream. I told him about it:
"I was at a gathering, and there was a performance going on. I was being given notes as to how to improve this performance, as I was doing the performing. I wanted so much to be the best I could be that I was taking notes very diligently, thinking how would I improve, what things would I do."
"And, suddenly I saw the strings on the performers/me in front of me," I told Neale, "They were puppets in front of me, marionettes, but they didn't look like puppets. They were me. They weren't me. And I reached out and I plucked one of the strings, and the whole thing -- whoosh -- vanished, and the entire picture went to black. And, I said, 'Oh my gosh! I'm making it all up'."
"It was just such an amazing picture." I said, "Then I read your book -- and I realized this is your tool Illusion."
"That's a very powerful imagery," Neale says to me, "I think you were given an insight. Many people live their whole lives without ever receiving such an insight. That is absolutely true. We are all puppets on a string. What we don't know is that we are both the puppeteer and the puppet."
How very freeing!

Labels: dreams, HAPPIER THAN GOD, marionette, Neale Donald Walsch, puppet

August 27, 2008
THE FRONT is the perfect size for summer reading. It's spare and smart. Patricia Cornwell has a somewhat new set of characters -- Massachusetts State Police investigator Win Garano and DA Monique Lamont, who debuted in AT RISK. Very different from Cornwell's well-known character, Kay Scarpetta, but still as sharp a read.
Lamont "owns" Garano, which is all the more perturbing when he realizes that she is creating a connection between a victim of sexual homicide and the Boston Strangler -- that may not exist, and for her own gain. I bristle at the improper use of power and the lack of integrity in Cornwell's female DA. And I really like Garano, even though he seems confused and insecure at times.
My favorite is Garano's grandmother -- Nana, a woman of the Craft -- a good witch. Those two powerful forces -- Nana and Lamont -- both lay pressure on Garano.
His Nana reminded me of my grandmother. Her name was Blanca, and there was a mysterious silence about her. Every afternoon, at four, she would dress in her nurse's uniform, and head for Lenox Hill Hospital in NY. She'd worked there for decades as the head RN in the ER. She giggled when they finally figured out that it was time for her to retire. They thought she was 65. By then, she was close to 80. She knew things. In the 70's -- long before the body-mind connection was in the mainstream -- she would say "Don't keep that anger inside you. It is a toxin -- it will poison your body if you don't release it." There was also a back-story I found fascinating.
Blanca came from a family of about eight children, but several passed away along the journey from Peru, over the Andes, eventually to New York. I met two sisters -- my great-aunts Lola and Raquel. Lola played piano at Carnegie Hall when she was four. Raquel was an artist who invented pop-ups. Blanca's daughter -- my mother -- was born around the time of the Lindberg baby's kidnapping, and Blanca invented a baby intercom so she could hear my mother -- as a baby -- sleeping in the other room. The kids in school teased me wickedly, not believing me, until I showed them the newspaper clipping documenting that. Another sister was a dancer. And Marguerite, whom I never met, was said to be a lawyer.
The story goes that Blanca wanted to be a physician, but her father forbid her -- simply because she was a young woman. After he died, Blanca got her RN in the early 1920's, and worked in the ER -- as close as she could to make her dreams come true.
She would make predictions -- and I never knew her to be incorrect. And, she could read cards and palms. She knew about salves and healings. And, I always wondered if maybe, just maybe, she wasn't a doctor or a nurse...but a good witch. Like Garano's Nana.

Labels: books, dreams, grandmother, Patricia Cornwell, THE FRONT