wrestling with roller coasters

Listening to the radio has become a joy!  Where I used to flick the television on to see if there are any disasters, now I flick the radio on when I go downstairs in the morning.  I hear music instead of commercials and chatter (mostly), and it's oriented around my town, instead of New York, or Los Angeles.

Yesterday, listening to the local public radio station, I heard part of an interview with Natalie Goldberg.  I was busy doing other things, but I caught a section where she talked about making her creativity part of her practice.  Very interesting... I already have her "Writing Down the Bones" ...  OH!  I just checked.  I have "Wild Mind" in my creativity library as well...  Yay!  Hmmm, I suspect the next few evenings will be quite busy re-reading these.

Anyway, I decided to go to the library to see if any of the available books of hers were directly about creativity as practice, and if I could maybe translate her writing instruction to my wax carving of silver charms.  I found two books.  One called "Thunder and Lightning", which seems more directly related to questions of writing, and a book called "The Great Failure".

That title grabbed me.  I have had some major failings in personal relationships recently, and I was hoping, hoping, hoping that her failure (was this about her failure?) could help me with my own.  It did.  I read the whole thing in one evening.  It also helped open up my perception about the Pema Chodron and Shambhala reading I've been doing.

"We spend our life on a roller coaster with rusty tracks, stuck to highs and lows, riding from one, trying to grab the other."

Yes.  I need to buy this book now.  I think I'll get some Beyonce too... "to the left, to the left"...

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The rowboat is almost complete.  I need to refine the shape a little more, carve the oars, and texture it, and then it's off to casting!
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