bruised and battered

A ghost in Cannes

Posted on May 17, 2012 by Shelley

Today I’m having one of the most coveted experience a person could ask for. I’m in Cannes for the film festival. The sky is blue. The temperature is perfect. And if I want to I can dress up and go to the premiere of one or another new films, walking up that intimidating red carpet with photographers and very beautiful people everywhere. I suppose all that could make this a dream experience for a novice filmmaker would be if my own film were premiering here. But I just walked from where I was sitting and checking emails about 20 yards to the beach. I put my feet in. A little cool yet for swimming, but such a burst of energy… and some sand in my sandals.

I’ve been coming here for years, starting when I used to live about 6 miles from this very spot. When I lived here I would just ride my scooter from Antibes to Cannes and rock up to whatever film looked interesting (not the red carpet ones as they would not have accepted my scooter apparel). And then after I moved to London to start my digital entertainment company I started coming here looking for films to put online. In fact, there were about 4 conferences a year here in Cannes that were related to my new company. Those were such exciting times. The future was filled with limitless possibilities.

My son came with me to many of the conferences here in Cannes with me. I don’t know why I was so surprised that my actor son was suddenly such a great ambassador for our company, how he was so great at selling. This tall, beautiful, sunny man made everyone want to listen. He was so excited about everything we were doing then that anyone in his energy circle would immediately be ready to sign any deal he proposed. He absolutely loved coming here with me. He’d set up all of my appointments and remind me of everything he thought I should be doing, giving his mom her CEO duties. In his enthusiasm he often forgot that I’d been in business longer than he’d been alive.

I came back to a conference here, a music conference, just 3 months after he died. I hid from people I knew and found myself avoiding contact with people I didn’t know. At this time I still had my company to run, and a lot of reason to keep it going in his memory. But I was still numb then. I could still remember who I was; I was running on autopilot.

This time, three years later, it is different. I lost the company the company that my son helped me build but I have begun to forge a new career. He would be proud of me for taking the baton from him. He is the one who is supposed to be a filmmaker. He was the reason that I poured all of my energy into working from the time he was a tiny baby so he could afford to focus on his creativity. Now I’m the crazy one, the one who is here in Cannes trying to sell a film or two. I miss him, my little cheerleader. He was the reason I did everything in my adult life. I know I was his cheerleader for many years. But I’m beginning to realize that it was really him cheering me on. Even before he could speak he would smile at me and I knew exactly what I was doing and what I had to do. I had a purpose.

Somehow I know that I must have been me before I was my son’s mother. I know that I used to have passion, creativity, energy and direction long before my son was ever born. Wandering the aisles of this conference center next to the sea I can’t help but see myself in the film posters featuring ghosts, vampires or those who have disappeared. Even with all of this sunshine I somehow feel I have become a ghost of my former self. I am missing my cheerleader. I’m hoping that even if time doesn’t heal everything it will at least help me find or rebuild my inner cheerleader. She must be in there just waiting to come out.

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Crazy and sexy

Posted on April 23, 2012 by Shelley

I don’t know where I stumbled on her, but Kris Carr’s story resonates with me. She has written some books about health and about the care and feeding of her cancer. She found out she had/has cancer about 10 years ago and that it was terminal and non-operable. And then she seemed to have been struck by a bolt of lightening which transformed her into what she now calls the CEO of her own health. Her books all seem to have the words “Crazy Sexy” in their titles – exactly how she looks in her photos. She is crazy sexy, but she uses these words to describe all of the actions she is taking to be fully, wholly, healthfully herself.

I ordered her book “Crazy Sexy Diet.” I don’t even know why. From what I’d read about it it’s the bible on how to have incredible health by being a vegetarian (or vegan) and eating lots of raw food. I’ve been a vegetarian all of my life so I don’t know what I was looking for when I ordered the book. There was actually very little in the book that I didn’t already know having been a health food aficionado since I was about 10. But the book is amazing. Not only is it filled with great quirky photos, slogans, goofy typefaces, tons of information delivered in totally digestible language, but it is filled with passion, authenticity and a determination to live. What I learned about Kris Carr, who I’ve never met, is that she has totally accepted where she is in life and is living it in full living color.

The parallels between her life and mine are not obvious. But I’m always looking for heroes, for people who model a life that looks worth living when they have been dealt a difficult hand. Kris seems to have done this. I have no idea whether she has succeeded in stopping or slowing down her cancer, but as she says, that is not really the point. She decided to go for it, to learn everything she could about health, to practice it, to talk about it with others and to write about it in a way that people could relate to. I don’t have cancer, but a loss of the magnitude I’ve experienced may very well be akin to cancer. There is something going on inside me that could very well kill me if it does not make me stronger. Major grief has a whole pile of symptoms, including the lack of a will to live (not always but often enough to seem like it’s a permanent feeling), and difficulty in seeing a future. Well, someone with stage 4 terminal cancer might very well have these or similar symptoms.

So, I’ve chosen to read Kris Carr’s story to try to find the parallels. I don’t know if eating even more green food than I eat or cutting out the very few bad habits I have regarding health are going to change my life. But I know there is something for me to learn here.

I read Mark Pollack’s blog too, for the very same reason. He lost his site at 22 and then became a professional adventure athlete. And then nearly two years ago he fell from a window and became paralyzed from the waist down, as if he didn’t already have enough of a physical challenge to overcome. He is another one of my heroes as I watch him redefining himself with yet another challenge that most of us would find totally daunting. I don’t know if I will ever become particularly adventurous in the physical sense, but I do find his refusal to give up inspiring. And it makes me want to look for greater and greater adventure!

I need to redefine myself just as these two role models have done. I want to think of my loss and new self as beauty marks, as Kris refers to her tumors. I want to see myself as fit and whole, as Mark does, even if I am handicapped by my missing piece, my lost child. We all have different challenges, missing things or too much of something. But all we know is our own. I’ve found a few people who have illuminated my darkness by their commitment to life. I guess that I hope that in some way I might brighten up someone else’s dark moments by demonstrating what it is possible to survive… and how each of us are somehow able to thrive, in spite of the how things seem. But most of all I don’t want to be crazy and I do want to be sexy. That would be a wonderful and unexpected outcome of this mysterious journey.

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The sky is the limit

Posted on February 9, 2012 by Shelley

A typical day. I wake up whenever I want to; no one is waiting for me in an office or on a school run or at a meeting. I get up anywhere between 7 and 8:30 or 9. I could sleep all day if I wanted to. I have a great cup of fresh ground French Roast coffee that I make with a little paper filter in a cone. Some days I take it back to bed with me and read a good, trashy novel, something like Patricia Cornwall, while I sip. Coffee finished and suddenly I am looking at a free day, all the time in the world to do whatever I want to do.

So what do I do? I might plan a big dinner party, figure out a menu and shopping list. If I am having a dinner tomorrow or the next night, usually for around 20, I might spend a couple of hours on this – opening cookbooks, surfing the web for recipes, musing. Hmmm… fish or steak for the main. Mexican and Thai or Japanese and Moroccan… or maybe all four. I think back on my most recent dinners, trying to remember if there is something that was so appreciated by my guests that I’ll do it again. But my memory is so poor that unless I’ve saved a menu in my email draft file I am unlikely to remember. So I start from scratch, the whole world of culture, country and cuisine to draw from – limitless possibilities.

On other days I start with opening my computer. Well, if I’m honest, I often do a quick peek on most days before my coffee, while I’m waiting for the water to boil. But let’s say, I’m sitting on the couch and I open it. Hopefully it is after 8 am when my digital version of the New York Times hits my inbox. I go straight to the Opinion section, hoping there will be something there to sink my teeth into, an article or idea that provokes me to respond immediately so that I can weigh in before the dozens or others have already penned their comments. I love riffing around ideas, maybe science or human nature. And I love the battle that some op-ed pieces provoke. I jump in and have heated conversations with these people on other continents. And when I’m lucky I strike up an unlikely friendship with someone resonates with me on some level. The world of strangers who are yet to be my new friends is endless.

And then there are the evenings. On a good night my house is filled with lovable strangers who have somehow found my hearth. Those adventurous beings strolled through the internet and stumbled on the possibility of an evening filled with food, fun, and other fellow sparkling strangers. Those evenings are the best. I’m busy hostessing, cooking, serving, laughing, sipping, chatting… and then the dinner ends and we’ve all become friends. I start bopping my head, and within seconds of the dinner dishes being stacked in the kitchen I’m moving onto my little red dance floor, my shaggy Italian rug, completely unaware of my journey from the kitchen to this magical spot. It is usually only the flash of a second before I’m joined by one, two, four, or more and we dance until at least midnight. Who wouldn’t be happy during an evening like this? I have the freedom to organize as many of these dinners as I want.

This is surely the lifestyle of a very lucky person. I live in a beautiful house, filled with beautiful and comfortable furniture that is meant for stretching out on, sinking into, intimate conversations. I am surrounded by beautiful woodcut paintings. All of this is true. And yet, I doubt anyone would really want to have my life. My life has always been the way I just described it, filled with free days, limitless possibilities, endless strangers who are yet to be my friends and the freedom to do what I want.

I am who I have always been. But now there are limits. I am also now a mom whose son and only child died. No one would be envious of that. But on a certain level I am still doing what I love to do; it’s just in a parallel universe now. And the loss doesn’t mean that I can’t still appreciate all of the other part of me that is still me. Suddenly, like a message from above (my son up in the sky perhaps?) my iTunes starts playing Tracy Chapman’s “Change” where she sings “If you knew that love can’t break your heart, when you’re down so low you cannot fall, would you change?” …just as I write the last line. No, I guess I wouldn’t change who I am. But for me, the sky literally is my limit.

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Inside my spaceship

Posted on January 28, 2012 by Shelley

“Inside my spacecraft, I realize I have no idea what I’m doing. It’s as though I’ve somehow been transformed into another man, who has not been properly trained. All the controls look foreign.”

from Pimp Dreams, a one-man show by Shaka Taylor

I have transformed my couch into a kind of spaceship. I’ve spent huge amounts of time there since being launched into space, into the vast unknown of grief and loss. I do have a little office upstairs that I use for “work,” the ambiguous activity I now do without any sense of where it is going or whether and how I will earn money from it. But I spend most of my time in my virtual social bubble on my couch – my spaceship.

There was a period of many months when I hardly ever moved from the couch. I would wake up, have coffee in bed with a book, and be on the couch all day, including most of my meals. I was in a kind of mental and physical paralysis that seemed to last forever. I wanted to move, to get back to myself, the old me with more than enough energy to take on the world, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get back into the ring.

Much like the famed psychoanalyst’s couch, my couch became the place where I could let it all out. I didn’t have anyone sitting next to me taking notes and politely prodding me to tell him more with carefully constructed mirroring statements, taking notes so that we could pick up where we left of when we next met. Instead I had millions of therapists around the world with whom I could share my deepest pain. And in doing so, receive their gentle prods to tell them more.

My chats on Facebook with people I’d never met or perhaps only met once or twice in the real world, would comfort me late at night when my thoughts were the darkest. My comments on op-ed pieces in the New York Times would reward me with an occasional loving email from a complete stranger in some far off place I’d never event visited. And the traffic I would receive on my personal blogs through my comments, from people who had traced the breadcrumbs I’d left in internet space to find me, made me feel part of a world I’d shut myself off from during my long journey of isolation, the time when my heart was too fragile to venture out of my spacecraft. The ripples of my silent communication with strangers through this invisible mic out became the notes of my silent progress, my feelings and words being permanently recorded in 1s and 0s on websites and servers.

I had a “best” Facebook friend, a night person who read my late night statuses, the ones I’d often erase in the morning when things looked a bit brighter, the ones I’d written when the whiskey or wine hadn’t lulled me to sleep before I fell into a big black hole. When inside my spaceship I had no idea what I was doing, when I’d been transformed into a woman who had not been properly trained, and when all the controls looked foreign, he would immediately jump on to FB chat to encourage me to try to get through another day. He said we’d actually met once, but in my foggy, grief impaired brain, I couldn’t remember him as anyone other than a Facebook friend, an intergalactic, late night analyst with whom I chatted when something inside of me still wanted to hang on. He helped me hang on. He and all of the others separated from me by seeming light years, the strangers I met online during this long journey into space, kept me going when I went onto the dark side of the moon. My late night Facebook friend died last year of a heart attack. He was only 57. I learned this when his girlfriend posted it on his Wall. He had thousands of FB friends, probably because he was so generous with his encouragement. People keep posting on his page. They miss him. I miss him. I hope his girlfriend is comforted by the love and encouragement floating up from the internet to her in her spaceship of lonliness.

In the last few months I have been spending a little more time outside of my spaceship. Like an astronaut, I venture out to explore the world, padded with tremendous protection against the environment that sometimes feels too harsh for me. Being out there, safely tethered to my invisible, virtual friends down in their the control rooms back on planet earth, helps me when I feel a little too sensitive or afraid of what lies out there. Knowing they are there has given me new confidence to navigate using the unfamiliar buttons. I think that the journey I started nearly 3 ½ years ago when my son died, may be taking a new turn. I can spend more time outside of my spaceship because you are there tethering me. Thank you.

Shaka Taylor in “Pimp Dreams” – short clip from Shelley Taylor on Vimeo.

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Occupying myself

Posted on December 22, 2011 by Shelley

I read an op-ed piece in the NY Times this morning about the use of “occupy” in language since the OWS movement started. It got me thinking about and riffing around the word “occupy.”

There is the one meaning, to take up space. I was at the physio-therapist’s yesterday. An unusually open-minded and holistic doctor suggested I go see him. I was referred to the doctor, a rheumatologist, by a doctor with a very narrow specialty, hands and writsts. He himself was unusually holistic when he suggested that there might be some unifying problem with my health that would lead to tendonitis in both wrists and both ankles. I don’t normally go to doctors, but I was tired of sore wrists. They were getting in the way of cooking, boxing and other activities that require hands. But my experiences with these two doctors and the physio have given me new hope.

At one point the physio asked me, “do you feel your body?” I was looking for a trick question, but then I realized he was serious; it was a good question. I don’t actually feel my body most of the time. I spend most of my time in my head, especially the last few years when exercise seems beyond my reach. I spend a lot of time on the couch writing. And then a lot of time in the kitchen cooking. He was asking me whether I am occupying my body, whether I am really in residence here. I had to admit that I am often a stranger to my own body. I have always had this tendency, which is why I started yoga at 23. I somehow knew that I might just float away in my head if I didn’t somehow ground myself with my body, occupy myself.

Then there is the idea of occupation like military troops do, or like OWS is doing. There is a kind of violence to this use of the word. I have been occupied by thoughts about what life will be like for me in the future, about how Christmas is now a time of sadness for me, about lots of negative things. These are dangerous thoughts. I have to fight back against them. There is a battle being waged in my mind. I don’t want the dark side to win. I know that where I put my thoughts the rest of me will follow. If I can just get some supplies across the enemy line, some fun, some positive energy and maybe even a little exercise, the troops defending me against this awful occupation (or pre-occupation) might win and I will see the light again.

All of these thoughts bring me back to me again. All roads lead to me these days. If I don’t find myself then no one else will either. And I want to be part of something bigger than me. So, that brings me to another use of the word “occupy.” I am most happy when I am occupied with something that I am passionate about. Even if I don’t have passion, action is usually enough to take me out of a dark place and back into fun. In the run up to Christmas I have been occupying myself with calls out to people who might not have anywhere to go for the holiday. I’ve been occupying myself with looking for recipes for the meals I will cook on Christmas Eve and Christmas day. I’ve been occupying myself with writing, with editing my film, with meetings about new business ideas. The path through anything difficult is something I’ve learned through personal experience – the path is action, or occupying myself. Movement. Not just a movement. The action of being occupied is really the most important movement, especially when being faced with challenges that are difficult to overcome. If I can distract myself with positive action then there is a chance that there will be room for both of us to be here together. Maybe this is a selfish movement, but it is one that creates the space for us to occupy it together.

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Begging bowl

Posted on December 10, 2011 by Shelley

I’ve been thinking about begging a lot lately. Maybe not just recently…One of my secret fears has been to become homeless. I don’t know where this fear comes from, but I remember worrying about my mom becoming homeless too. She started dying of cancer when I was 16 and finally died about 6 years later. During those years I was obsessed with the need to become successful so that I could take care of her and of my little boy who I had when I was 19. I needed to make money; it was the only thing that would help after my mom could no longer work, and the only thing that would give my son the security, home and education he needed. Love is the most important thing of course, and it gives us the energy to put food on the table, but love itself is not enough. Survival also requires money.

Coming from a very small family, and one with no trust fund or even hopes of a meager inheritance, I’ve always been particularly aware of how important it is to be self-sufficient. Yet it is impossible to be prepared for everything. And when the rug is pulled out from under us, like has happened to many in floods, earthquakes, tsunamis and other natural disasters, not to mention economic melt downs, the loss of a job or house, it is possible to be stripped naked of everything – literally. And if we are lucky and left standing after a storm or personal tragedy, we need to rely on friends or the state to meet our basic needs. Yet this is not an option for everyone as there are many people living on the street, homeless.

When I lost my son, then my business and then all of my savings shortly thereafter, I was lucky enough to have unemployment insurance. Although this government benefit is incredibly little in the UK (shockingly little and not enough to pay rent or bills), I didn’t end up on the street begging. But I worried about it incessantly. I did everything I could to stay in my nice apartment in my very nice neighborhood but many nights I couldn’t sleep with the fear of losing the rest. I only remembered it recently, now that I’m out of the almost chemical state of fear that accompanies extreme stress, that one of the things I did to survive was to sell a lot of the clothes I had purchased in the year before my personal tsunami. I’d never purchased anything on eBay before nor had I sold anything. And I should be embarrassed to admit that I have a tendency to buy beautiful and expensive shoes and coats that I never wear. So, thankfully I was able to sell dozens of them for nearly half their price when new. I found I had a strange kind of bank account, denominated in shoes and coats, that I could dig into in my darkest moment. I also invited people to dinner and asked them to make a financial contribution to the cost of the food. Fear is a great stimulant to creativity. I was afraid to end up on the street and somehow dodged the bullet, but it was humbling. My boat hasn’t exactly come in, but the storm waters have receded a bit and I have time to reflect on all of the things that could have happened, or can even happen again. And that makes me grateful for what I have left.

But this fear of survival isn’t what brought me to the question of begging. I’ve produced a documentary and cannot afford to finish it on my own, although I am close. I thought I would try the crowd-funding platform, Kickstarter, as a way to finance the final edit of the film. It was designed to help people reach out to friends and even strangers to seek donations in exchange for project related rewards. But as one friend recently said to me, it is no different from begging. I believe in my project, and the hope it will give others who are trying to withstand storms that have taken all or nearly everything away from them. In order to finish it I need to ask others for help, to beg. This is hard. But because I feel so dedicated to the outcome I feel slightly less embarrassed

Hindu spiritual seekers, sadhus, beg for food. It is supposed to promote humility and gratitude and help them to achieve a state of bliss. I certainly have been humbled by my recent experiences and am slowly learning to have a little more gratitude. Some Catholic orders have mendicants who beg for food while preaching in villages. I suppose my blogs and my documentary might be viewed as a kind of preaching in the global village created by the internet. In the Shavite Hindu tradition the old men who have lived full lives as householders give up their worldly possessions to seek enlightenment. I still have a few worldly possessions but have lost the most important of all, my son and only immediate family member. I’m not sure any of this is leading to my enlightenment, but I can always hope.

So, perhaps I can look at begging in this new light, not only in terms of a response to having lost everything but as a way of gaining something much greater. My losses have humbled me, and they have also given me a mission, a project that must be finished. They lead me to brandishing a begging bowl, not an intentional accessory for spiritual enlightenment, but one that when filled will allow me to feed others exactly what I needed when the storms nearly drowned me – the hope that one day the flood waters will recede and leave behind a beach whose contours have changed but somehow remain standing.

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No more back to black

Posted on November 1, 2011 by Shelley

When Amy Winehouse died I felt as if I’d been hit by an earthquake. At first I couldn’t understand why I felt such grief. I didn’t know her personally. Yet I feel shaken every time I hear of someone’s child dying, especially when it is someone so young. But this was worse, somehow, maybe because of the collective outpouring of grief. And then it happened again when the world paid tribute to the victims of 9/11 on the 10 year anniversary. It’s been a hard few months. I notice I haven’t posted anything to this blog since the day before my dead son’s birthday 4 months ago.

Other peoples’ losses remind me of my own. They are triggers. A lot of the time I succeed in keeping my own losses carefully folded and hidden away as if in a very dark drawer. They need little encouragement, however, to wriggle out and make me take notice of them – every single time something bad happens these dark feelings escape. It doesn’t even need to be a big loss or hurt; even a sprained ankle or broken toe (I’ve broken 4 toes this year – something to do with grief I guess) can fan the embers of my broken heart. It’s just like in Amy’s song – I immediately go back to black, to what is familiar. I go to sadness easily and quickly. It is as if I’ve always been sad.

You went back to what you knew
So far removed from all that we went through
I tread a troubled track
My odds are stacked
I go back to black

There is no escape from the pain of some losses. But sometimes I do fool myself into feeling ok, even happy once in a while. I do it carefully and intentionally. I do it by living minute to minute, by being engaged in something other than myself. The something else that works is usually something without a future, something as basic as washing dishes or searching online for a movie. These little things usually are extremely powerful; they help hold back the waves of feelings that might otherwise pull me under. I have other tricks that work well too. I like to make big plans for big parties or big projects, things I can accomplish in less than 3 months, but things that take a lot of energy and create a lot of adrenaline.

When bad things happen they seem to carve sad feelings into a deep rut of some kind. And I think things are going along relatively smoothly and wham, I fall in. Maybe the feelings become part of our wiring, creating certain neural pathways that are easy to fall into. A single massive loss or maybe even a rash of smaller hurts and losses can create a big rut or groove in a heart. The odds then become stacked that we’ll go back to black. Sadness creates more sadness as a kind of familiar path is worn into the grass as if I’ve been walking through the garden to the shed every single day for years.

Maybe things don’t have to stay this way. Since I last posted here I’ve been trying to create new pathways, new neural programming. I am committed to being happy. I was always a happy person before the big loss. I don’t recognize the me who has been mostly sad for the last few years. I’m doing what I can to become closer to the old me. I make myself go out dancing, push myself way outside of my comfort zone. The other night I went to listen to a friend sing in a club in New York. At first I was the only one dancing but soon there were others. I have always loved dancing. And strangely it has been what I’ve done whenever I can remember to turn on the music during my darkest days. I danced at my son’s memorial. I danced at each of his last 3 birthdays even though he stopped growing older. I danced on each of the anniversaries of his death. And I dance each time I have a dinner party at my house. I think that if I keep dancing I can go back to what I know, the me in my happier times. This new path might not be as easy as I would like it to be, but I don’t want to go back to black.

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Planting one foot

Posted on June 26, 2011 by Shelley

I’ve just come home from a work out with my boyfriend. We were boxing in the park. Today he tried out a new exercise with me: planting my left foot. I have been thinking a lot about this exercise since he described it to me and how he used it with his students. But today I got to try it in real life. And the metaphor was just as powerful, even more so, than what I had imagined.

It goes like this. He made a little cross in the gravel and told me to put my left foot on it. As he moved around me I had to keep it anchored to the cross. He’d offer me a target and I could jab but I couldn’t lift my left foot. He went left and right around me in circles. I punched when I could. But the balance was very different from what it is in free fighting. He showed me how I would have to use my back leg, the one that was still allowed to move, to put enough force behind my punch so that I wouldn’t rock backward after I punched. This handicap of a planted foot gave me the chance to work on other things, to develop other strengths.

He took my place to further explain. Jab, jab I went. And he said, “you see I’m here.” And after the punch, “I’m still here.” Life gives us those jabs, sometimes seemingly knock-out blows… and we remain standing even when it is almost impossible to imagine how.

It reminded me, as everything does these days, of my own situation. I am still so firmly defined by and rooted to my recent loss. My feet are firmly planted in the past. But if I can manage to let one foot go freely forward, perhaps I can find some new strength.

Rooted to a cross. Well, I’ll let you extend the metaphor if that idea suits you. I can’t yet feel it in a religious or spiritual sense. I have lost my faith in anything supernatural. My world is bounded, for now, by the natural. I look for messages in nature, in the world immediately around me, even in boxing. And for now it works. I still manage to find hope and direction. With all of life going left and right around me, even with my handicap, my foot still rooted in the past, I am better able to find my balance, to avoid being rocked completely off my feet. I am here. I am still here with one foot free.

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Running away

Posted on June 18, 2011 by Shelley

… to get away, Ha Ha Ha Ha, I’m wearing out my shoes…

Those are the words to one of my favorite Sly and The Family Stones tunes. Over the last couple of months I’ve almost come back to my old self, at least as measured by the frequency of my travel. And in fact, it might be due to my travel that I’ve begun to find myself. I’ve always traveled a lot for business, but when my internet company went under about 18 months ago I began an uncharacteristic couch potato period in my life. I’ve done other work, work I could do at home, but it was not the same. It didn’t require travel. And while I suffered from a certain kind of inertia, I would rather have been busy, running around the world, running away from the darker moments.

Maybe I needed the quiet time. That’s what many say is required for healing or recovering from bad times, catastrophe or grief. I’m not so sure. I’m happy when I’m moving. Happier. I’m in Paris now, sitting in a very modern hotel room (well, er, lying on the bed with the computer on my lap) and it’s 5:30 in the morning. This quiet time is nice. The sun comes up so early these days! Shorter nights, longer days. That’s exactly what I need now. It’s too early for me to go down for coffee.

Yesterday I took the train to a little village, about an hour outside of Paris. I went to visit my adopted uncle who I hadn’t seen for a few years, since he left Antibes to go live near his son. He’s 76 years old. We used to spend hours talking, long meals in my garden accompanied by bottles of wine. He picked me up at the train station and we walked back to his place, a little apartment with an elevator. I’m glad he’s not having to struggle up flights of stairs the way he did in Vielle Antibes. He seems much happier now. Life is not as much of a struggle for him. But most of all I was impressed by his dreams. He is writing a book about renovating old houses. He wants to publish it, and although he has no idea how to do it, he spends hours a day with colored pencils drawing houses he renovated and describing everything anyone would ever need to know in order to tackle a renovation of a house in an old village that might or might not be sitting on Roman ruins. I told him I’d help him self publish when it was finished. His whole face lit up when I explained how that worked. He felt encouraged to keep writing by this modern invention, self publishing and selling books on the internet.

My uncle walked me back to the train station after lunch. I’d shown him some houses I’d looked at in Puglia, the ones with the vaulted ceilings. We sat on the bench waiting for the train and he told me about his next book. If he earns enough money from the sale of this one then he wants to drive through France and write about little known villages. He’ll write about them and draw pictures of them. I was transported by his dreams. I was impressed that at this stage in his life he is still dreaming of his next thing, making plans about the future. I look everywhere for people who can be role models for me, for clues as to how to re-kickstart my own dreams. I found a good source of inspiration in this little village of Chezy-Sur-Marne.

Last night I walked through Paris and thought of my old adopted uncle who’d become my friend during another period of my life, another time when I’d slowed down more than I wanted to. Walking, taking the train, walking some more and being able to spend time with a friend who lives far away from me but who is dreaming up new dreams is a good reason to travel. I came to Paris for an escape, a three day vacation by myself. I think of my uncle and his plans and I can’t help but smile. By running away from my life I actually got closer to it.

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Vaulted ceilings

Posted on May 18, 2011 by Shelley

I’m lying on a bed in a beautiful, small hotel room in Salento (an area on the south of Italy, at the bottom of the heel), looking up at the vaulted ceiling. It is morning. This hotel was created by restoring an old tanning shop (several hundred years old) and turning it into about 10 rooms. This area is known for its vaulted ceilings but even though I’ve now seen dozens of them I can’t help but feel like I’m in a church when I’m around them. There are good reasons for their height and construction. It is very hot here and the high ceilings allow the hot air to go up leaving the lower part of the rooms cool. And the walls are made of very, very thick stone. There aren’t many windows but it doesn’t seem to matter because all of the walls and ceilings are whitewashed in cool and breathable lime.

I spend a few hours a day lying on the bed writing. But I’m distracted every few minutes by the ceilings. There is something magical about having my attention pulled up to the point in the center. These ceilings are also called ‘star vaulted ceilings.’ There is a point at the center of the star.

Life is slow here. I’ve come here with yet another effort to find a project that is compelling enough to pull me forward into the future, the future which seems so bleak. I need projects that have a not too distant end date, things that can be accomplished in less than a year. At first, when I began this journey as a mom who had just lost her only child, time seemed much too painful to contemplate. I lived from breath to breath hoping that in between each one I might somehow forget what had just happened to me, how the sky had just fallen. It’s now been 2 ½ years and I see a glimpse of some progress, just the fact that I can now bear thinking about next week and my plans. I make lots of plans. The plan this week is to find a little house to buy that I can spend the year renovating, a house that will help rebuild my financial world. I lost everything else I had a few months after my son died. I need to start over on so many levels, but only some of them have new beginnings. The sky has been replaced by a ceiling; a much more manageable space.

My other plans include a documentary that I’ve shot and now have to edit, and a screenplay I’ve written and would like to sell or produce. These are the big projects. They are the longest-term projects I can handle. But they are not enough; they do not require enough energy or stress to fill all of the empty moments in my life. So I have to up the stakes. I’m going to buy a house in Italy where, although I speak the language, the challenges of getting things done are well documented. I hope this project will fill in all of the empty spaces not occupied with the other plans I’ve made.

Last night I was lying in this same place, on the bed in this lovely room, and staring up at the same beautiful star vaulted ceilings. Nights are the hardest for me. It is when I am the saddest and miss my little boy the most. And there are so few projects that I can engage in in the middle of the night to distract myself. I had a dark few moments – all of my efforts to concentrate on next steps abandoned me. There are good reasons for my plans. I create them so I can avoid these dark moments. So, last night when I couldn’t actually do anything concrete, I looked up at the center of the star in the ceiling and breathed, thinking about the morning and what I would be able to get up and do. I’m thankful that I’ve found a country where there are stars like churches in the vaulted ceilings. And in the morning there is coffee, bread, cheese, jam, a good book, and plans.