Searchlights & Signal Flares
How Do You Manage Success?
April 2003
This month: Ken Rodgers, Betty Winslow, Susan Bono, Tony L Johnson, Betty Rodgers,
Arlene Mandell, Susan Starbird
In
these extraordinary times whatever our relationship to world
events and economic conditions may be, our connection to
Self provides the foundation of how we respond to these circumstances.
If we are looking for safety and a sense of security we
know it resides within. With the excitement of the
holiday season merely a memory we have the opportunity to
check in with our inner wisdom
How
do you manage success?
Let's
see. How to articulate this notion.
- I let success inflate my head for just a little while.
Maybe a week or so. Then events
conspire to remind me that I need to pull my pants on one
leg at a time. Generally, it's best to locate some warm
fuzzy spot up behind my gall bladder. A
protected space where no one can get to it with a Bowie
knife or a sharp tongue. I store my successes there
and go about my business of seeking another one to enhance
the collection, knowing that the heady feelings are ephemeral
as cow pies in the pasture.
Ken
Rodgers, Sebastopol, CA.
I
try not to let it tempt me to sit on my laurels and coast.
Even when I've just made several big sales, I
need to keep pitching, keep writing, keep plugging away
at my job, to ward off the cycle of feast and famine that
freelance writers are so often cursed with. (Besides,
I'm no Jerry Jenkins or Dee Henderson, so my success - so
far, at least - hasn't needed all that much handling. Here's to more success!)
Betty
Winslow
If
I think of success as a commodity, I want to rush to my
nearest discount warehouse and buy my triumph in an industrial-sized
box. Does that mean I want to be a Big Star, a huge success?
Or am I thinking success is like laundry detergent and I
need a gigantic quantity so I can wash my one good suit
of clothes over and over until I finally get it clean enough
to wear in public?
Over
and over-I get the feeling that I have been covering the
same ground repeatedly-tramping down a little grassy circle
around my clean but tattered tent. "Step right up!" I call
in my best barker's voice, but it's hard to hear me over
the noise of the midway. I persist, trying to entice the
passing crowd, and over the years I've gotten a little better
at it. I've lured my share of spectators inside with descriptions
of my two-headed calf and Little Egypt's cousin. A few dissatisfied
customers have burst out the tent flap and given me a piece
of their minds, but they've probably walked right past my
prize exhibit.
In
a corner of the tent, next to the tattooed man, is a small
table lit with a single spotlight. On it sits a crystal
bud vase containing a single pink rose. I made a sign once
that said, "The Singing Rose," but I lost it a few seasons
back and I haven't put up another. I don't even mention
it much in my patter. The people who need to seem to find
it without help. Word gets out.
I
can tell when folks come in knowing. They head directly
to the table and stand behind the frayed velvet ropes in
an attitude of rapt attention. They wait patiently, oblivious
to the gentle tauntings of the Bearded Lady, who has a hard
time being ignored. I watch a dreamy softness drift into
their faces when they pick up what sounds like the faint
hum of invisible violins and a butterfly singing.
Sometimes
I think I should get rid of the rest of my acts and try
to make it big with this one, but the others been with me
so long. Otis the Frog Boy, Penguin Girl, The
Human Flytrap. I know I'd miss them. We stay up late at
night after the crowds go home and listen to the rose together.
They protect my prize from damage and theft. They may even
be the reason it stays so fresh.
Susan
Bono wants editing work to pay for Penguin Girl's costume
and repairs to the tent. Email her for info: editor@tiny-lights.com.
Success
I have spent my life looking for
a quiet place inside. During childhood, this was an effort
to preserve my sanity in a home filled with fury and alcohol.
I went into my room, closed the door and began a fierce
listening. Inside the quietness of my room, I could hear
a voice that told me never to give up. That voice
sustained me when I had nothing else to hold on to. Years
passed, the voice slowly became mine and was never very
far away. I grew to love quietness, so I kept listening.
I listened to mountains, to stars, to music, to the wisdom
of teachers, the sound of wind and time. Now when I listen,
I see a man dressed in white who sits peacefully next to
a river. He has a twinkle in his eye and he is quiet.
No, I don't have a Ferrari in my garage, but on a good day,
I know that every moment is holy.
Tony L. Johnson, Petaluma, CA. Tony has collected his writing
in Anything Can Happen, available from the author
at fumhouse@aol.com
.
According
to The Random House Dictionary, success is defined as "A
favorable result that one has tried or hoped for."
That was the first time an accomplished poet/friend looked
at me, smiled, and enthusiastically stated, "Betty,
you're a poet!" Or when someone uttered, "Mm-mmm," when I read my work aloud.
Or when I offered what seemed a feeble attempt at a writing
assignment, only to be told how creative and unique the
results were. Perhaps the ultimate success, though,
was when I felt confident and satisfied enough with a poem
to actually send it out to a few close friends and relatives.
That act felt like success. How did I manage it?
I sat back, took a deep, satisfying breath, and whispered,
"Finally!"
Betty
Rodgers, Sebastopol, CA
Success? Who Me?
During the past fourteen years my successes as a poet, essayist
and short story writer have been like sparks from distant
stars on a moon dark night. I don't stand outside
in the chill staring into the void waiting for a brief flash
of recognition. I'm just out there with the dog while
she sniffs bushes and circles clumps of grass, seeking precisely
the right spot for her relief.
All right, if you insist. I'll admit I maintain a
file folder with my list of Published Works. And I'm
vain enough to keep a running count: 163 to date.
That's practically one a month, I see, but the numbers are
misleading. It sometimes feels as though eons pass
when I receive only those mimeographed rejection slips...or
no response whatsoever.
Please forgive my whining. Just yesterday a letter
arrived from Small Brushes, a quarterly poetry journal in
Long Valley, NJ, advising they had nominated one of
my poems, "In Our Brooklyn Kitchen," for a Pushcart
Prize. "Yes!" I shouted, startling the dog.
Then I considered the long-odds possibility that a modest
slice-of-life poem, written twelve years ago, might make
it into an anthology with such stars in the literary galaxy
as Joyce Carol Oates and Grace Schulman.
Returning to the tasks at hand, I recycled the junk mail
and took the chicken parts out of the refrigerator to marinate
them for dinner. Could there be a poem in this?
I hope not.
Arlene L. Mandell, formerly of Brooklyn, NY and various
parts of New Jersey, can be found at her computer in Santa Rosa when she isn't pulling weeds or walking
the dog.
How
I manage my celebrity, you must mean. Oh, how
smug I was once in my
notoriety as a Weather Subject. So often was
my photo on the front page
(top right corner, 2" x 3") that even my mother
stopped collecting the
clippings.
What a proud pipsqueak I was! Then I made it
big. Today as a Public
Intellectual, I gamely suffer the calls of radio reporters
to comment on the
significance of society's current events and trends.
I do it for the
money, of course. It's my job, and as to the
compensation, suffice it to
say, I abandoned my Weather Subject status without a second
thought.
There's a benefit even more important than the big bucks,
rest assured.
The moment-to-moment risk of being called
for insight on command forces me
to stay on top of my reading. Please
don't hold it against me, but as a
Public Intellectual, I am lavishly rewarded for reading
WHATEVER I WANT.
For the first time in years I'm actually caught up on my
Wall Street
Journal, Science Magazine, and of course that most reliable
of hard-news
sources, The Funny Times.
Ascending from Weather Subject to Public Intellectual was
not the expected
course of struggle and setbacks. Here's how
it happened. I was walking
across the street - it was the Kentucky Street crosswalk in front of Aram's
sidewalk café, and at lunchtime all the tables were full.
Suddenly a tiara
held by unseen hands descended and planted itself on my
head. I didn't
really understand what had happened until people near me
stopped in their
tracks, shielded their eyes from the reflected light, and
shouted, "My God,
it's a Public Intellectual!"
As soon as they collected themselves they ran forward, crowded
around me,
and begged for answers to their most pressing questions.
"Is there any
strategy whatsoever to this war?" "Is
there any logic whatsoever to energy
prices?" "Can I make cheese in my
backyard?" All these questions and
more set my busy little mind spinning, and I haven't looked
back since.
Susan
Starbird, Fantasist and regular Weather Subject, Sebastopol,
CA