YOUR STORY HOLDS YOUR POWER

The Story is what's left. The Story is the destination. The Story is everything in between. Afterall, we dream in narrative, remember, anticipate, hope, despair, believe, doubt, plan, revise, criticize, construct gossip, learn, hate and love by narration.

Humans, as conscious beings, are meant to live conscious lives, aware of our every feeling and response-whether painful or pleasurable, conventional or unconventional, pious or irreverent, constructive or destructive-uninhibited by the proscriptions of culture, religion, personal beliefs, or family values. We feel what we feel. Period. And that is neither good nor bad. How we respond to our feelings is another matter.

To retain or regain awareness of feeling is to develop power. To deny or bury feeling is to diminish power and choice: the choice of whether to act on a feeling or not, and if so, how.

The freedom to be conscious of our negative emotions without acting on them leads to a full emotional life, a fully present life, a healed and healthy life. We cannot be scared, angry, bored, or sad when we are living totally in the present. We are healed when we no longer hate or distrust what we feel.

Radical Writing is a spontaneous approach to writing opens doors to expression and identifies energetic leaks in the spirit and psyche. the process intensifies our abilities to sense how and where our subconscious minds affect our physical bodies. With this awareness, we heal internally and externally.

The novelist Don DeLillo has described writing as, "A form of personal freedom. It frees us from the mass identity we see in the making all around us. In the end, writers will write not to be outlaw heroes of some underculture, but mainly to save themselves, to survive as individuals."

Whereas psychology tends to focus on the questions of "why" and "how," RADICAL WRITING applies the questions of classic storytelling: What happened? Where and when did it happen? Under what circumstances did it happen? It also asks: Where in my body do I harbor the memory? What is my pattern of response? What do I want the picture of my life to look like? What stands in the way of materializing it? Am I willing and ready for that manifestation? Am I willing to take total responsibility for my own power?

Personal power requires far more responsibility than is required to live in unquestioned accordance with cultural, religious, and family training. Therefore, it is one thing to say we desire more power in our lives and quite another to accept the changes that power will inevitably cause. Only we ourselves can determine the weight of history or the measure of responsibility we are willing to bear. At certain times, we simply may not have the strength to endure the pain of a particular recollection or discovery. Honoring our limits is one way of accepting responsibility for our power.

Resistance to acknowledging our own negativity and emotions often comes from our fear of their power. The more intensely we've kept negative thoughts and feelings under control, the more we are likely to fear that their exposure might obliterate our self-control, precipitating unstoppable rage, depression, or mania. We might well fear that our anguish will be unending or our pain will cause suffering to others. We might discover our inner resources to be inadequate-a terrible blow to the ego.

In truth, suppression of negative feelings provides only the illusion of control. When we freely express our thoughts, we relinquish illusion and release our anguish. When we acknowledge our passions and fears, we liberate ourselves from the physical, emotional, and spiritual tyranny of unhealed wounds.

RADICAL WRITING, an online course that turns up the volume on your perception safely, requires only 15-minutes a day and NO writing experience or expertise, not even any ability in spelling, punctuation, or grammar. You simply allow your hands -- not your head -- do the writing. teaches exactly this freedom. We learn that persistence on the path of self-exploration is a form of communion, that our devotion to that path is the art of healing, and that the role of Creator is ours.

THE VISIONARY’S IMPACT

HOW ONE MAN’S VISION REVITALIZED NEW YORK REAL ESTATE
and PROVIDED A PERPETUAL URBAN HIGH

It's almost as if the buildings convened to create a portrait of 20th century architectural form -- brick geometry, perpendicular glass paneling, undulating choruses of banding. Such a view! I took this photo (with my iPhone!) from one of New York City's greatest civic sites, the High Line, the elevated garden walkway linking three Manhattan neighborhoods with acres of open space atop an abandoned rail deck. Would that the visionary who conceived it, Peter Obletz, were still alive to rejoice in its pleasures and success.

Part of the High Line's allure is its physical isolation, carving its way for miles through the urban fabric two to three stories above ground. It is framed mostly by the backs of buildings and billboards, with occasional views opening out to the Hudson or across Manhattan. It has provided Manhattan with a park in the sky (one of only two in the world -- the other being in Paris), pastoral, futuristic, yet accessible to everyone.

Obletz lived in the then-dilapidated neighborhood where the Tenth Avenue train track ran down the middle of the street and, with distressing frequency, ran down pedestrians. (The street was nicknamed Death Avenue.) He began rallying for his reclamation idea nearly 30 years ago, but it was not until 1999 when a not-for-profit group of neighborhood residents, business owners, design professionals, and civic groups formed Friends of the High Line to engage the city's notables in its cause.

The original elevated railway track was built at the turn of the century to serve the warehouses along the West Side. Train traffic soon slowed to a trickle, however, thanks to the familiar death blow of the Depression and the popularity of truck transport. The last train (said to be carrying a load of turkeys on Thanksgiving morning) ran on the High Line in 1980, leaving the artery to rust and grow wild with weeds. Conrail, the railroad's owner, wanted it gone, as did a consortium of local property owners led by one of the area’s largest interests, Edison Parking, and the City. At the height of the battle with Friends of the High Line, Edison Parking launched a propaganda campaign. One flyer read, “”Money doesn’t grow on trees, and last we checked, it isn’t growing in the weeds of the High Line.” And so the High Line languished for decades.

But once the cause became invested with a certain intangible downtown sexiness -- -- a landscaped aerie planted with wildflowers, an urban oasis, a scenic retreat --  the possibilities for the long-neglected piece of industrial detritus began to excite the potential donors needed to fight for its cause. Movers and shakers of the art and architecture worlds, civic powerhouses, and celebrities such as Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick got involved, and the vision began to take root.

Property owners were persuaded by the Department of City Planning to sign over their rights using the tool of allowing the owners to transfer their development rights to surrounding properties. Then parts of West Chelsea were rezoned to allow for new, larger developments.  In fact, the partnership between city planners and High Line advocates was one of the most sincere efforts in recent memory to protect the public interest from an onslaught of commercialization. The final zoning regulations for the area require setbacks to protect some major view corridors; at other points, buildings are allowed to shoot straight up to maintain the sense of compression that is part of the High Line’s charm. The core of several blocks, meanwhile, remain zoned for manufacturing in the hope of maintaining some of the area’s character.

Today, a dozen or more luxury towers and a new branch of the Whitney Museum of American Art have claimed the High Line neighborhood. The Standard Hotel actually straddles the Line. The surrounding neighborhood, too, has been  revitalized, and real estate prices, which have escalated more than 30 percent,  are now among the highest in the city. Because of Obletz' vision and the efforts of those he motivated, even the humblest civic undertaking has now become viewed as a potential gold mine.

MAKING SHIRLEY'S PORTRAIT of HER and HER PORTRAIT

Our neighbor Shirley, who died last summer, was as indelible a presence in the neighborhood as was her startling makeup and Indian black hair. A tiny woman in brilliant red lipstick and vivid circles of rouge, she walked up and down the neighborhood for at least four hours -- or eight miles -- a day. A vision of perpetual, steady motion, her head bent forward, her frozen shoulder curved behind, she was a moving fixture enveloped in an aura of happiness. “When I’m walking, it’s like I’m in heaven,” she used to say.

No one knew how old Shirley was, except Harold, her deeply protective husband who was retired from his career as a welder for Pan American Airlines and who wasn’t much for talking. I guessed from her height (maybe 4’10”) and sun-stained skin and fragile-looking bones that she might be around eighty. Of obvious Cherokee descent (her hair was obsidian black and her cheekbones angled high), she grew up on Florida’s west coast in deep orange grove territory where, on her walks to school, she encountered all manner of “Swamplandia’s” creatures. When the School Board insisted she ride the school bus, she refused. Her mother stormed the School Board office, arguing on Shirley’s behalf…and won. Shirley walked the several miles and several hours each way, in bliss.

Her mother must have adored her, for when she asked Shirley what kind of dress she’d like for her first grown-up outing, Shirley showed her a picture of Suzy Wong in a frock with a Chinese collar. Her mother sewed the dress for her and added a bauble that Shirley wore around her ear. Years later, she would have a portrait painted of herself taken from a photograph of her in the dress and bauble. This portrait was the beginning point of our friendship.

I, too, am an avid walker. And whenever Shirley and I crossed paths in the neighborhood, we’d stop and chat. Usually about our mutual love of being in nature. “I could live happily under a tree,” she’d say. “I could live happily in a tree,” I’d answer. When I revealed to her that I was an artist, she asked if I’d like to see the portrait. It seems Shirley also loved to paint, and it was this passion, along with her love for the memory of that dress and her mother, that had prompted her to have this special portrait made.

I was eager to see this evidence of Shirley’s history. Waiting outside the chain link fence that surrounded the ramshackle house where she and Harold lived, I contemplated Shirley’s devotions – walking, communing with wildlife, and now, it seemed, art. Harold emerged through the front door carrying the portrait. Even from the sidewalk, I could see that it was elegant and articulate. Up close, I could easily detect not only the determination Shirley possessed in her youth, but also her youthful beauty.

Colorful, dare I say dramatic makeup was only one among Shirley’s notable features. Her black eyes were starkly framed by bangs and braids. A beautician once convinced her to cut off the braids. She compensated with braided wisps which lent her an incongruous twist of urban chic.

Shirley’s smile outshone everything else. I never once encountered her on my dog walks when she didn’t greet me with a grin so generous it could fill a movie screen. “You look so pretty today. I love what you’re wearing…or, I love those earrings…or I love the color of your shirt,” she’d say. And she truly meant it. She was easy to delight.



I asked Shirley if I could bring over my camera and photograph her with the portrait so I could do a painting of her. Harold granted permission and chaperoned the event. Later that year, 2009, I invited them over to my house a few blocks away to see the finished work. The painting is nearly life size, and I titled it, “Shirley, Now and Then.” Harold nodded at it. Shirley grinned and glowed. “You’re a really good artist,” she told me. Then I took a photo of her standing next to my painting of the picture of her holding the portrait and then another photo of her standing next to my painting holding the photo of her holding the portrait. (Very post modern, indeed.) Now, added to her compliments about my appearance whenever I saw her was always praise for my talent.

Shirley and I often talked about animals – my dogs, the squirrels and birds she fed, her own dog, Bonnie. Bonnie was a sweet old pit bull who, apparently, loved to dance. Music was yet another of Shirley’s passions, and she told me how every night she would put on a record and dance. (Learning this was reassuring, because I’d never been entirely sure their house had electricity). Bonnie, it seems, also loved dancing. Upon hearing the music, she would stand up on her two hind legs and “walk” across the floor to dance with Shirley.

For years, Harold and Shirley bought birdseed to spread around the front yard poincianas where Shirley also fed individually-named squirrels and foxes. You might have taken her for St. Francis of Assisi…or Snow White (if Snow White could be a tiny Cherokee woman with vivid lipstick and wispy braids), surrounded by adoring woodland creatures and glowing with beneficence. (Knowing, squawking blue jays perched on Shirley’s shoulders as she tossed morsels to the assembly, their tails a riot of twitching arabesques. Then, money got tight (I assume Harold and Shirley lived on his Social Security), and Harold determined that the wildlife food was too much of an expense. The feedings stopped. Still, a squirrel or two would often trot alongside Shirley on her walks, chattering, maybe scolding, but undoubtedly sustaining the bond.

Long after telling me the story of Bonnie the Dancing Dog, I asked what had happened to Bonnie. Dade County, it seems, had passed an anti-pit bull ordinance restricting the breed from residential neighborhoods, and the dog police had come and taken Bonnie away. Shirley related the story to me soberly, but without anguish or even nostalgia. I was crushed. Shirley resumed her walking.