Find Your Truth

Finding Your truth

I read a number of posts about Comic-con as the celebration of nerds. Nerds are the new sexy, you know. Getting off the train in San Diego on Saturday I wished I had donned my old superwoman costume, just to scream without words that I also fit in.

We look upon each other as a label. My children are forming their own name tags; they are athletes, scholars and creative persons on a mission to find their prize  here on earth. When we look at a friend, or meet someone new, we ask them what they “do” in order to get a sense of who they are and what to call them. I’m not referring just to the politically incorrect skin color, ethnic heritage or status zip code where they originate. It is easier to give something a name, and context to not think carefully about what is inside.

I have reinvented myself a couple times in my life, by deciding to focus on a part of “me” that has ability. I've been an artist and performance poet who lived in an urban loft, I married my college sweetheart and became a business woman to support my next hat, being a single mother. Along the transformations, I was always creative, keeping journals, blogging, taking photographs, making paintings that I rarely shared with anyone, for fear it might tip the balance of the identity behind which I wore as a mask. The job circle of work partners saw me as only one thing- the leader lady who made them Be great. My children saw me as the Mother whose position was to drive, clean and arrange a fantasy, my ex-husband saw me as a pretty thing to control.

Being one thing when I give my elevator speech, “hi I’m C. G. I am Wonder Woman,” might not sound so crazy at Comic –con, an event where everyone is allowed a fantasy. Walking the talk, speaking only my own truth, every moment of my life, now that’s a challenge.

What if you hold the power to do anything, to make anything to be anything?
I believe you do already have it but just need a nudge. I’m whipping out my magic lasso and granting you four wishes, BUT, now you must do the work.

Be great today my friends, I need to get back to writing.

C. G.

Open Your Eyes and unzip all that is possible

Man Ray sculpture I really like the reflection of myself upon the glass taking the photo.

Pray Big

Dear God:
Keep my children safe on their journeys.
Thank you for the gift of great family.
Let my friends who read this know I care.
I appreciate every wonder moment on this earth.
Thank you for your love.

C. G.

P.S.
Please help me "write great."

Through These Veins We Are Connected

Boundaries Bound  by Mulugeta Gebrekidan

Through These Veins

Anne Marie Ruff takes us on an adventure in the coffee highlands of Ethiopia. The bitter taste of death, sweet almond extract of true love and intrigue are wired together in this epic story.

Ruth and Zahara are two strong women searching for truth. They want to save those they care for from the tortured death by AIDS. A cure is within their very grasp.

Stefano, the Italian scientist, is plant collecting before the forest disappears. He meets a medicine man who has found katannii leaf extract can cure AIDS.

Life replicates fiction- I understand what it is to collect plants, having been a collector of roses and rare plants. Stefano’s passion for rescuing the secrets of the forest is romantic and true. The charming Stefano streams with life blood.

The topic of a cure for AIDS is timely. Timothy Ray Brown is the first person to have had HIV totally eliminated from his body. Will some plant that is burned or cut down hold the secret to something better than a “functional cure.”

Our oldest human relatives come from Ethiopia, a now country suffering with drought, deforestation and death. With one Medical Doctor for 100000 citizens, survival rates are low. Locals hold to superstitious beliefs that spirits and supernatural forces can cause bad fortune, and illness.

Ruff stands apart from preaching to us about Pharmaceutical Companies, corrupt governments or political action. “Pepsi and Coke should start a big political campaign,” Ruth says. Ruth speaks a profound idea.  Ruff’s writing flows gracefully showing the evil forces what they are.

There are passages where Ruff’s images are handsome and bitter as raw coffee, as in, “She wrapped both hands around her wine glass attempting to steady herself, to prevent herself from descending into the abyss of uncertainty.” As if the red wine, or liquid of the glass could save her fall.

Above the image of the beautiful paintings of Mulugeta Gebrekidan. He is an Ethiopian painter using mixed media and oil. His work expresses the same longing to save, to stir greatness without explaining.

Ruff inspires us to conserve this beautiful earth’s biodiversity without asking or waving a flag. “Think carefully about how you can stay true to your values-”

Through these veins we are all connected. Ruff’s novel is romantic, thrilling and uplifting. Read it and be changed.

Anne Marie Ruff Grewal lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two boys. Photograph courtesy of Anne

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Fear Uncertainty Doubt Oh My

Back to basics, son is off to the Sequoia's with Uncle Jerry and the boys. I've moaned about this before,  how I miss my beta reader...  Now that the next novel is almost ready for editing, I beg anyone who reads thrillers or transgressional fiction to take a whirl at my current manuscript. Thinking of offering bribes, yes cash money.

I read this twitter conversation about FUD, or more exactly how writers but I think also our world wide economy feel overwhelmed with fear, uncertainty, and doubt. The best solution for that is to be ready. Write your plan on a yellow pad, break it down into daily chores, then execute. 

Perhaps I post a cardboard sign stating: will read your book in trade...? Anyone write literary fiction out there? Hello ~ 

"Fear uncertainty and doubt ~ oh my, no forget about it."

Gone Fishing

Or Frankly Scarlett, he doesn't seem to care either.

One of those days... thanks Margaret Mitchell, Gone With Everything.

Writing is slow today, son packing for camp, daughter packing for Ireland.

I'm putting up the gone fishing sign on my brain.