Wednesday, November 26, 2008

It's My Job!



I started Saturday so well, I was a ‘Be-Here-Now, New-Age Marinite’….I wrote in my gratitude journal, I meditated, I visualized…I was sure, “everythings going my way” just like the character, Curly, sang in the musical ’Oklahoma!’


I was downstairs enjoying my new storage, planning eBay sales, when the phone rang. It was my apartment manager telling me that my eighty-some-odd-year-old landlord had decided he wanted my new storage and that I had to move back into my old storage (which has no shelves and that I had completely dismantled, emptied and cleaned.) It is also uphill to my old storage. I felt my self start spiraling upstream, upside down in my kayak. I locked the door and went upstairs.


Determined to not let this unreasonableness defeat me, I decided to consciously take myself to another head space and work on my vision board. I was at the section I had designated for career and at first I was looking for images of books and poetry….then all of a sudden it hit me…I have always said I am my career so I switched gears and started printing out pics of me…then I remembered how the little girl I raised used to always color pictures of me using lots of different colors (other people were always one color), as she got older she would tell me the rainbow followed me where ever I was and I realized she was seeing my aura (people who read auras have always told me I have a rainbow aura)…I started looking for rainbows to put in my collage….then I remembered the visualization a friend had taken me on about my favorite gift as a child…the one where I had found my tiara in the Christmas tree from Santa and decided to put tiaras on all of the images of me in my collage…. Needless to say by this time I had completely forgot about the storage debacle. I loved the collage.


I started getting ready to go out, my neighbor was taking me to see “Dame Edna’s First Last Tour” in the city. We had great seats in the 4th row and I was ready for a night of laughter. She was hilarious and the audience was great and really responsive so she was having a great time and started talking to individuals in the audience. I immediately wanted to be one of those people and I deliberately started vibing that at her and every time she walked my way I would fan myself, like I was having a hotflash, because I knew that movement would catch her eye….sure enough she pointed at me and said “You darling”…I said “me”…she said “yes, schnookums, come up here on stage with me”….well, I was out of my seat and up those stairs before you could say abracadabra….some people ran up and slapped a name tag on me and put something on my head… I was given a stool…then she pulled some guy out of the audience…he had a name tag slapped on and was given a top hat and I saw that his name tag said groom…Dame Edna told us that she was going to marry us and started interviewing us…she asked what my name was did a double take and said something like why and I got to do a whole spiel on my name…the guy said he was Forrest (appropriate I was wearing my Goddess pendant) …then Dame Edna asked him what he did he said some thing like truck driver…she turned to me with an indulgent grin wanting to know what I did ….there I was on stage, in front of hundreds and hundreds of people, wearing a tiara and veil telling everyone that I wrote and illustrated children’s books and that I had one coming out titled “Don’t Touch My Body Where I Go Potty!” she almost came unglued and squeezed my shoulder trying to hold in her laughter, because that was a comic opening if you ever saw one but then she kept up her banter with me and we were (performance wise)feeding off each other and the audience was roaring …we did like 10 minutes of improv, then she asked me if there was anyone who would be disappointed to not be at my wedding and I said yes, Joe (my best friend, I had been his best person at his wedding) she wanted his phone number and they brought a phone on stage that was hooked into the loud speaker system…she called him and he thought it was me imitating Dame Edna!...I hollered out “Joe, I’m on stage with Dame Edna” then she had the whole audience say hi to Joe, they were cheering…with Joe in attendance she married Forrest and myself we kissed and then took a huge bow with Dame and the audience roared with approval and she was great and had the whole audience singing….I thought it would end there but at the intermission this old friend, Peter, came running up to hug me…I couldn’t believe it he and I had done “Oklahoma!” at the Mountain play a dozen years ago...every performance he would ride in on his horse, as Curly, singing “Oh, what a beautiful morning” to my Aunt Eller …I had always told him he would sing at my wedding, and he did! At intermission all sorts of people seriously asked about my book…then throughout the second half of the show Dame Edna kept referring to “Our author Charselle and her book we are all going to buy “Don’t Touch My Body Where I Go Potty!”….admittedly it was an odd endorsement but it was like an hour long infomercial of me. I was thrilled and higher than happy…I am my job! Thank you Dame Edna! And so it is!

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Commitment to Self, Purpose and Realization

Part one
(Wheeee that’s a big one!)
Birth, setting out on your life journey and deciding which path to follow… some of us know early what path we are on. I wasn’t surprised, when I heard, Obama had made a statement, in second grade, that he was going to be President. His journey has been brilliant as he has followed his star of purpose unwavering, directly on his path. One of my brothers has been like that, declaring in grade school that he was a Bio-Chemist…he is.
I am one who set out on “a road less traveled.” I had major gift at the beginning of my journey, my wonderfully creative mother gave me an original and beautiful name. From the git-go I have known I was ‘unique’ and was supposed to do something. Trouble was I didn’t know what! That minor detail was irrelevant to me as a child and my baby books are peppered with stories of my taking off, the first time at the age of two, then pitching a major fit, screaming “GO! GO! GO!” when my mother scooped me up and brought me back. I wasn’t even on a path much less a road but instead was blazing bull-headedly through the overgrown jungles of possibility, with the blind trust of bullet-proof youth. Problem is even though I’ve always known the direction to go, I’ve never known just exactly which mode of transport I was to master.
Friends have told me they had no idea what they were going to be as adults. I have always known…I recently framed a self portrait created when I was around three and a half … there I am clear as day …on stage…I have always known I am a performer …what type has changed many times but no matter what, through out my life, I have found myself up there risking it all, baring my guts, exposing my vulnerabilities…feeding on the adrenaline that terrifies most. I have power on stage, a power that I can harness and for a brief moment in time take my audience on my journey.
The feeling of power is more real and more strong than anything else I ever experience. When I am plugged in, so to speak, I know the reason for my being and I am most alive. I am so energized that if there were something like an aura meter I am sure I would be a fountain of energy, vibrating with stars of sparkle all around me. In the acting world there is a phrase “finding your light” I do it instinctually and moving into this state of hyper awareness in which I can even see my own eyelashes. I do things I don’t even know I am going to do and audiences love me.
For years I struggled trying to decide if these needs made me a megalomaniac or was it this strength of ego that allowed me to bare my soul in public. The struggle of an artist …the absolute necessity to create. Eventually I came to the understanding that I had been given the gift of the storyteller, the teacher, the one who unabashedly exposes the deepest inner thoughts, the pinnacles and subterranean dark depths of life and allowing others to learn vicariously through me. For my life to have meaning I must tromp the boards…it is my job…I must go there again and again… it is why I am…

Sunday, November 9, 2008

That Great Come and Get It Day!

You know those photo ops where the candidate kisses a baby...Well, I was one of those kids, two weeks old when Adlai Stevenson posed with me, to my mother's great pride. Politics, the right to vote and being an American have always been important in our family. My grandmother was a post master (not post mistress thank you), and remembered August 1920 when American women won the right to vote. My Mom was a great campaigner and took me along with her when she was stuffing envelopes or waving signs...I loved it...the excitement... the adrenaline, when the candidate would come into view..the bright colors...the whooping and hollering...The first actual candidate I remember working for was President Kennedy. I still have the flag I was given to wave for him and a photo that was sent to me after his election... I saw him twice and my stomach still stirs at the memories..it was an excitement akin to my later screaming for the Beatles...even as an eight year old I knew that I was seeing and being part of something important, that a new, wonderful chapter was beginning in history! I have thousands of other political memories but nothing had felt like that long ago time until this past Tuesday when I was fulfilling my post as an election offical...Mom had always told us we were 7th cousins to Abraham Lincoln and that lucky honor had never felt so huge...I woke up with the tune "On that Great Come and Get It Day" running through my head...all day long I kept bursting into this song...then as the results began rolling in and it was getting closer to his being declared the winner...I would dash out to my car to listen briefly to the radio...I kept bursting into tears...then a fireman pulled me aside, at the firehouse I was working at, and told me Obama had been declared the winner!...The song in my head changed to the chorus from the"Battle Hymn of the Republic", it was Lincoln's favorite abolionist song during the Civil War...GLORY,GLORY HALLELUJAH!...Godspeed and bless you President-Elect Obama! Indeed finally a new page of history is awaiting for you! May you flourish and may Peace reign.

This link about the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" has an audio file also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Battle_Hymn_of_the_Republic

Saturday, November 8, 2008

Is My Behavior Getting Me What I Want?

Am I telling the same old negative story?...I don't have a boyfriend/happiness...As long as I waste time telling that old negative story over and over I am just perpetuating the same condition because I am doing nothing to make change...To get what I want I must change my behavior to the positive, active claiming of what is mine.




Like attracts Like



Check out what these people have to say:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTb6mKAwftA
Esther Hicks - Inspirational Speaker

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9BzcP0HsA0
Will Smith - Actor

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skHwFjaCx2Q
David Childererley - Success Coach

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywimjn9wdhc
Money Magnet Song






Friday, November 7, 2008

Entertain the Brain

I firmly believe that to keep your brain in optimum working order, you must exercise it, entertain it! Otherwise your brain will rot and your brain will become inflexible and you will become an old fuddy duddy. People who become stuck in their ways, who never try something new are sentencing themselves to a frustrating old age and are on the way to being a has-been or even worse a never was. :( This need not be the case for you! An entertained brain will be your best companion, play toy and will make you irresistible!

Some of ,my favorite web sites for brain exercise and entertainment are:

http://freerice.com/ (this one also will make you feel philanthropic)

http://www.us.mensa.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Games&Template=/customsource/game_amlgames.cfm
(the Mensa Game room)

http://www.monkeysee.com/ (how to do stuff)

http://www.charselle.com