​Alchemists were able to turn base metals into gold. Or so the legend goes. The alchemist must undergo their own transformation. As inside, so outside.
 
So it is with writing. And the alchemy of words.
 
You have all probably read writers who have the ability to turn words into gold. But to do so, they must allow themselves to be changed in the process.
 
Here’s an example of words being turned into gold.
 
I am honored to share with you that my recent collection of words -- Happiness is an Imaginary Line in the Sand  -- has received a Gold Nautilus Award.
 
Which is certainly enough, all by itself. (I mean, I thought only people like Barbara Kingsolver and Gary Zukav won Gold Nautilus Awards.)
 
But Nautilus also named the book the Best of Small Press.

These two honors certainly go beyond my expectations. And I find myself a tiny bit at odds as to what to do with this information.
 
Of course, I want to celebrate the news with you. And I also know that social media has made us all a little weary of all the self-promotion.
 
Maybe it is just that the world is filled with bad news right now. And I thought I’d share a little glimmer of good news with you.
 
It is like the book’s titular essay explains. A big part of being happy is deciding to be happy. Creating a little alchemy of your own out of the circumstances of your life. And bringing forth a little gold from inside to light your way.
 
I hope you are well. And that you are finding reasons, big and small, to celebrate your own lives.
 
Take care of yourselves.
 
TQ

P.S. If you haven't pick up a copy yet, Happiness Is an Imaginary Line in the Sand is available here.
And my friend and fellow Landmark Prize winner Kip Greenthal also won a Nautilus Award this year. You can find her award-winning novel Shoal Water here.

Trust. As if you didn’t know better.
While we walk around guarding ourselves against every conceivable threat from the outside, most of us betray ourselves in small and big ways all day, everyday. Mostly it’s the little voice that we carry around inside us. The one that nags, criticizes, and unnecessarily narrates our lives all day long. (And all night for those insomniacs among us.) Once we turn on the light of awareness, we realize that all this listening we do to this sociopathic voice in our heads is exhausting.
* * *

Oracle Cards (& books) available through the Etsy store
Essay Collection available everywhere books are sold, including: 
Sundance Books
Homebound Publications
and Amazon

Life does not come with instructions. No one can tell you what is right for you, where your path will lead, how to find your way home.
 
The world of humans is drawn in straight lines, because other people are just trying to make sense of it. Most of the time you don’t have to color within those lines. Or walk within them.
 
You can jaywalk over to where you want to be. Even if no one has drawn an outline for it yet.
 
That path may end up being pretty crooked. And you’ll be tempted from time to time to judge yourself harshly, because it isn’t neat and doesn’t look like other people’s.
 
If you walk a crooked-path, take heart. The straight lines others have walked are no measure of success or happiness.
 
There are no certainties except uncertainty. And this uncertainty is the compost that creates the fertile soil of imagination, of creation, of beauty.
 
There are times in each of our lives when we simply get lost. Because that is life. The older we get, the more we realize how little we know, anyway. But the best way to know yourself is to walk your own path. No matter how messy.
 
Some days we are the wind, some days, the feather. The feather’s strength is its ability to let go.
 
The main thing is to be brave enough to live your own life. Even if you have to break a few arbitrary rules to do it.

So, I am writing this to put out into the world that I am doing just that. Walking my talk. Or jaywalking it, at least.

This has been a long time in the making. And it was ready to launch before covid took over the world. But now I'm making it a real thing.

Jaywalking Between Worlds, a  podcast that breaks some rules, in a good way. Stay tuned for dates, times, and debut episodes. Right around the new year's corner. See you then.

Fall is in the air. It rained today for the first time since anyone can really remember around here. And even though us West Coast folks feel like we were sort of robbed of summer, the cooler nights and shorter days are somehow welcome.
 
We’re ready for something new.
 
In that spirit, I have more good news. The seasonal winds of change have brought two more gifts to add to the Fall list:

1. A new book to cozy up with! (An anthology of sorts of observations, ponderings, meanderings, and other musings;

 
        2. A colorful companion Oracle Deck to go along with the book.
 
Details:
 
New Book.
 
Happiness Is an Imaginary Line in the Sand is a down-to-earth oracle to help decipher the riddles of modern life. (Hence the companion Oracle Deck.)
 
Part field notes from a seeker’s journey and part teachings of a would-be monk who doesn’t get to live on the side of a mountain, Happiness Is an Imaginary Line in the Sand is convincing in its stubborn insistence that a better world is not only possible, but within our grasp.

Best part, it is available now for pre-order! The release date is October 26, 2021. From any of these places: The publisher https://bit.ly/3zXWITI, IndieBound https://bit.ly/2XcgGeM or Amazon https://amzn.to/3zXCGc1 -- or indie bookstores everywhere.
 
Oracle Deck.
 
An Oracle Deck designed as a companion to Happiness Is an Imaginary Line in the Sand. Sixty-six unique and colorful cards that correspond t0 each of the 66 essays. Hand-crafted design and available for purchase just ahead of the release date … stay tuned!

Here’s a sneak peek of the book with Essay # 65 Feather in the Wind:
 
Some days we are the wind. Some days, the feather. Nothing is guaranteed from one day to the next.
 
To be the wind requires a strong will, a sense of purpose, a willingness to affect change. To be the feather requires a lightness of heart, an act of faith, the willingness to let go.
 
Life does not come with instructions. No matter what they teach you in church. No one can tell you what is right for you, where your path will lead, how to find your way home.
 
There are times in each of our lives when we simply get lost. Because that is life. And I don't know about you, but when I am the most lost, there has never been anyone on the horizon with a flag waving me to shelter.
 
The older we get, the more we realize how little we know. Our knowing turns from youthful certainty towards things like the realization that nothing is forever. That everything is on its way to someplace else, something else.
 
But I know this one thing: Your wound is your strength.
 
Like the feather in the wind. Its strength is its ability to let go. To float. Viewed differently, its strength is its inability to stay fixed, stationary. This condition ensures it a life of beauty, grace, adventure.
 
We should all be so lucky.
 
Like many other times in our crooked-path of history, these are challenging times. But I want to urge you to take up the challenge. You are more up to it than you think.
 
Be the feather in the wind. Tossed about by the daily news, the disheartening knowledge of how much fear and hatred is out there, the vicissitudes of fortune. And bring others joy by the beauty of your lighthearted dance.
 
Because beauty will save us. In the end, light-heartedness, joy in the simple act of living, and the brave act of loving, these things will give us back to ourselves. They will remind us who we are. And what we can do together.
 
There are no certainties except uncertainty. Tomorrow I may not be here to write any more essays. It is likely far worse and far better things will happen. Still other things will not happen at all. Or at least they won’t happen as we think.
 
And even the bad things may not be the tragedies we imagine. Because all this uncertainty is the compost that creates the fertile soil of imagination, of creation, of beauty.
 
Life is built on top of death. Light depends upon dark. And up upon down. Wholeness is just that. It is not the half moon.
 
In order for us to truly evolve, to move beyond this phase of us versus them, to create the brotherhood of man that Lennon imagined for us, we must let go of our ideas of what we thought life should look like. We must imagine all of the things it could look like.
 
We must be brave enough to allow life to change us. And to keep kindness in our hearts as we float upon the winds of change.
 
Every time I sit down to write I am trying to change my life. And the lives of others. And even though it doesn't always work -- even if it almost never works – it is still worthwhile. Even if the words are simply feathers in the wind, maybe they will delight a few people with their dance.
 
And somehow those words -- even the ones that are feathers in the wind -- they still have the ability to become bridges between me and you.
 
I think that’s important to remember. That your words, even the ones that are tossed into the wind, they are the bridges between you and everything else.  
 

photo credit: Mellissae Lucia

Life almost never looks like we imagine, like we want, like we think is ideal. Do you wonder why that is? Probably. But our mental narratives are so strong we continue to believe in our mind-made agendas, our imagined scenarios, our false sense of omniscience.

The last month has been surreal for me. Coming on the heels of a once-in-a-hundred-years pandemic that effectively shut down life as we know it for over a year, that is definitely saying something.

After being self-employed for over two decades, less than two weeks ago I went to work full time for the State of Nevada. Let me explain. I graduated from law school in December of 1994. I moved to Reno in February of 1995. I shopped around my writing portfolio and tried pretty hard not to practice law for six or seven years. But since I was mostly doing research and writing for other lawyers during that time, in 2003, I decided to take the Nevada Bar Exam.

But you need to understand why I took the test. It wasn’t just to make more money (though that definitely was a goal). It was because I wanted to finish writing my first novel. The overarching why here, is that I wanted to be a full-time writer.

I know that makes no sense on its face, so I’ll explain. I’d been working on a novel, but was definitely nowhere near finished. And I’d graduated from law school before that, but hadn’t closed the loop and passed the bar. So in the twisted, but well-meaning logic of my mind, I thought if I took the bar, and closed that loop, it would help me to then finish my novel.

And so I did. Took the bar exam, that is. And passed. And then I wrote, rewrote, finished, and published my first novel. But unlike my grandiose notions of how life was supposed to go, I did not find fame and financial independence from that first novel. I’m sure no other writer has had this experience.

photo credit: Thomas Lloyd Qualls

photo credit: Lynell Garfield

If ever a year needed to be broken up with it is 2020. The Go Home You’re Drunk meme has never been more appropriate. Unquestionably it has been the most challenging year in memory. Probably in the last 100 years. That’s a long time, if you think about it. Or really, even if you don’t.
 
During the last 100 years, whether you think about it or not, there have been wars and natural disasters and diseases that have been devastating to certain populations. Events that caused suffering, mass death, and destruction of infrastructure. But nothing on the global scale that covid-19 unleashed. And then there is all the other stuff.
 
Because the pandemic would have been more than enough. But of course, in this year that went on for at least a decade, there were all manner of other things. Not the least of which was the five years of wildfires this summer, literally all over the American West. Already losing our minds from the isolation of the pandemic, our only respite being the ability to get outside and enjoy nature, 2020 decided to trap us inside our homes, or risk hazardous air quality outside. Fortunately, many of us already had hazmat suits. But being outside in a hazmat suit really isn’t the same.
 
Woven into this year’s tapestry was the mostly peaceful and long overdue protests of Black Lives Matter. Somehow, groups of people gathered together to protest the shootings of unarmed civilians was threatening to a segment of society. Pointing out the empirical atrocity of a police officer unnecessarily pinning a fellow human to the ground with his knee for over 8 minutes until that person dies was seen as an afront to our values.
 
Like most every other thing I can think of, the activities and the messages of the Black Lives Matter movement were occasionally hijacked for one reason or another. Some were opportunists who showed up with the sole purpose of acting out, possibly to satisfy their own unspecified sense of disenfranchisement. Possibly for more nefarious reasons, including a desire to paint the BLM movement as violent, when by and large it is not. This is a conversation that will and should go on for years to come. And hopefully it is much more than just a conversation.
 
Of course, it was also an election year. And not just any election year. But one upon which the fate of the country seemed to rest. Perhaps rest is not the correct word. Not one of us rested during this process.

In 2020, the country was like a highjacked race car that had been dismantled piece by piece by an unskilled 16 year-old who thought he could make it run even better, despite his lack of mechanical education. Now the nation lies in pieces in the driveway. The bolts rusting, the gaskets drying out, oil everywhere. Meanwhile, the teenager, who has neither the knowledge nor the inclination to put the parts back together, posts frenetically on social media about how he is the best mechanic ever. And, in a true sign of the times, a surprising number of people believe him.
 
The lead up to the vote count felt like either those tense and drawn-out moments before a tornado hits, or maybe the world’s longest birthing labor, in which the whole planet was in the birth canal. That experience was followed not by a great exhale and well-deserved rest, but by weeks of recounting and of wondering if any planted judges would undermine our democratic process, despite one candidate having won by over 7 million votes, or even if the electoral college representatives would vote according to their mandates.
 
All of that is mostly behind us. But there is still plenty of tension. The teenager continues to dig in his heels and refuses to share his tools. He continues to tell anyone who will listen that the car in the driveway is his. He continues to break as many of its parts as he can. And it is unclear how, when, or if he will get up and go home when the time comes. Whatever happens, one thing is certain: his mess will be left for others to clean up.
 
Other devastation visited us, including hurricanes, which in other years would have captured more attention. The teenager though, mostly consumed by twitter wars and rounds of golf, did almost nothing to help with the pandemic, or anything else. And lately he has not made any pretense of leading, pretty much telling us all we were on our own.
 
There are, for sure, good things that came out of this historically bad year. The winners of the election not only promise to start rebuilding the car, but to do so in ways and with technologies that are long overdue. Also, one of the winners of the election made history twice by being the first woman and the first woman of color to sit in the Vice President’s chair. Again, in any other year, this would be grabbing more headlines.
 
It was a year that challenged our resilience, our creativity, our adaptability, our courage, our empathy, our senses of self, our willingness to serve and to sacrifice, and to hold steadfast vision of the future we want for ourselves. In large and small ways, we met these challenges and found reserves and resources we had either forgotten or had no idea existed.
 
Also, the murder hornets did not sweep the country, as once feared. But other things most certainly did. Including the awareness that over 70 million of us apparently live in an alternate reality. This is no small thing. And it is only the beginning of another long and uncomfortable conversation that we must have.
 
But after what we’ve all been through and achieved in 2020, I believe we are up to this challenge. Oneness is not just a new age buzzword. It is the reality of our existence. It is up to us to acknowledge that fact and to begin to work towards it in earnest. It is time to rebuild all that is broken with its blueprint.
 
For all we have lost and gained this year, I am grateful we are on this path together. Happy New Year, my friends.

​T.

There are two primary worldviews, two lenses through which we see the world. In one, the world is wired together, connected. In the other, the world is made up of separate things.

In the first view, things and people are interconnected. We are interdependent upon one another and upon the earth. What each of us does matters to the whole. We have impact on the world around us. This view is held by a broad range of people, from biodynamic farmers and Buddhist teachers to meteorologists and quantum physicists.

This view embraces the idea of oneness, which has many faces. One aspect is that what we do to the world, and anyone or anything in it, we actually do to ourselves. I don’t often quote him, but for those so inclined to his teachings, Jesus speaks to this when he explained that whatever was done to the least of his brothers and sisters, was done to him.

​In other words, Love your neighbor as yourself.

Chief Seattle famously spoke to this: All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself… What befalls the earth befalls all the sons of the earth.

The second view believes that we are born into the world alone, and we die alone. And in between, whatever success we have is up to us alone. That humans are islands, separate and apart from one another. That humankind were given dominion over Mother Earth and everything that is in and on her. And that nothing we can do while here has any significant impact upon the planet or its inhabitants.

This view requires some tricky footwork. But if you can disconnect yourself from the world around you in this way – if nature is just something over there, something to serve as a backdrop to your life, a movie set – then you can easily put poison onto the soil and still eat the food that grows from it. You can dump toxic waste into the oceans and still eat the fish that swim there, without concern. You can do this even though you probably wouldn’t pee into a bucket of water and then drink from it.

This belief also allows you to distance yourself from other humans. How other people are treated -- for example those with different colors of skin -- has no bearing on your life. Restrictions on others as to who they can love or marry has nothing to do with you. They are not you, after all. People who make less money or are otherwise less fortunate are not really relevant to your life. There is no reason you should you concern yourself with them. Also, criminals. Just separate them out of view from the rest of society so we don’t have to think about them.

Another trick of the brain required for this view is that one has to accept the benefits of firemen, policemen, public education, public roads, Social Security, Medicare, and other community benefits, while still decrying socialism in all its forms. Anyone who wants to take part what you’ve worked hard for is a freeloader. They just need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and do what you did, without help from anyone. (Of course this is not true, but that is just another trick of the brain to be mastered.)

In short, large blinders are required for this second view. We learned as kids that the leg bone is connected to the ankle bone. Just as everything in the body is connected to every other thing. Just as we are microcosms of our world and our universe. Separation is indeed an illusion. There is simply no proof of it.