Let’s begin with what is real …
Earl grey ice cream.
Two rough draft chapters now buoyantly merged into one.
An improvisational theatre course designed to heighten the intuitive muscle for … mediums.
Let’s start with earl grey.
And let’s circle around a cup of earl grey tea. If I hadn’t accidentally experienced the subtle sublimity of the tea I might never have been tempted by the heavenly earl grey tea ice cream.
And let me hop back a bit further … to that moment when I ordered my go-to green tea staple at the Starbucks in a small town on the outskirts of my hometown in Kentucky.
And yes, there is a Starbucks, well there are two … no, at least three, within ten minutes of my house, but I intentionally drive to the Starbucks in another town for my afternoon tea because there I write easily, in the flow in this tucked off my beaten path Starbucks. As a writer, I am particular about my creative musing spaces, and have long-ago abandoned reason and rhyme and just trust my impulse and the inner nudge on where to land and set up shop for my writing time.
So I am there … at Starbucks, with the barista who affectionately has dubbed me as “Darlin’”, which melts my heart a bit because it’s lovely to be noticed and perhaps this kind noticing is what makes me feel at home there. And I order my Emperor’s Cloud Green Tea, and I know I ordered it and I know that she heard it because for whatever reason I always struggle to eloquently articulate that tea’s majestic name, and then hastily tag on, Grande.
And a few sips in, I realize with a quick glance to the notifying tea tags … this isn’t a green tea, it’s an earl grey. But I don’t mind. It’s not my preference, but I’m not in the mood to change.
This happens a few more times. I stammer out my order of the Emperor’s Cloud Green Tea to different baristas throughout the month of March, and with smiles they repeat it back to me, and then, happily call out my name and deliver an earl grey. And though slightly annoyed, the taste is actually growing on me and I still experience the same elevated boost of energy, so I lift a quizzical glance to the Universe and decide to trust that this mistake has a purpose.
And the reason reveals itself in the busy hum of Starbucks in the Atlanta airport. My shoulders complain of the heaviness of my carried-on backpack. I’m still waking up from my on-flight nap, and am taming my grouchiness with steady breaths.
“We are all out of green tea.” apologizes the barista who will call me Honey, which again I find to be endearingly sweet. “Is there something else? “
The man behind me audibly sighs, assuming that I’m going to hold up the already snaking around the corner line.
But I do have back-up. And my inner grouch grins as I swiftly place the order, much to the surprise of the people behind me.
This is a small moment, but as I brace the airport’s maddeningly thick hallways, feeling serene and clear, it feels like a heart-pounding big moment. Like I got a real quick glimpse of my life’s tapestry, and for a breath of a second, I have an understanding of how all those unassuming working threads wove themselves together to get me right here.
I saunter and sip. I cradle my cup of earl grey and weave with my fellow passengers, finding and flowing with the dance of movement within the airport chaos. My thoughts are calm, and I emanate this peace that helps me not trip over the erratic roll-on beside me and bestow supreme grace to the slow-movers in front of me.
Let’s go back to what is real … this small moment of peace.
This is a small moment of real peace, simple and unsophisticated, but life is made of these moments, these little decisions where we are offered our order and we decide how to respond, we choose how to show up. There will be times when the aligned action will be to ask for the tea I initially ordered, and yet, there are times when staying curious to what is given is the aligned remedy, the divine prep for the next stage of the ongoing journey.
What else is real? The two chapters now combined into ONE.
The earl grey tea accompanies my rewrite.
It’s the same lesson … energized by the tea. I’ve been in and out of coffeeshops, from Starbucks to lavender-hued local spots, writing my book. And over the past few weeks, I’ve written two chapters … and along the way, in reviewing what I had written, in listening in on what the characters had to say and the pulse of the plot, I realized … this can be one chapter.
And there’s the initial reluctance. The whining resistance. The grouch who glares and declares, “UGH. You’ve just wasted all this time. What a mistake.”
I sip my tea and meet that raggedy green furry monster’s beady, blazing eyes and remind him of a lesson that I learn and keep relearning in my improv training, “There’s no such thing as a mistake.” And that sobers him up a bit … enough so that he grumbles and goes on his way.
Let’s remember the realness of the process, not perfection, in art making.
This is a small moment, too. This artistic decision to rewrite, revise, renew. To trust that everything, all those words and all that tea, happened for a purpose, and that purpose is now a tight chapter that keeps the story moving forward. This is a small moment with big impact for me. I don’t strain, struggle, strive. I let go enough so I can revive. I can get messy with my prose, have faith in my discipline and in my story’s structure - that I can delete passages and rearrange them like a collage. It’s a real victory … to be a writer who listens and responds to the muse. Merge the two into one. And with the help of tea I do.
What else is real? The improvisational theatre class for mediums.
Mediums from across the country and Europe gather on the online stage of Zoom. The instructor is testing out and teasing out a new curriculum … a course that utilizes improvisational theatre games to strengthen the intuitive muscle for mediums.
Apparently, trusting the imaginative, spontaneous ideas that come through in an improv scene is very similar to being a clear channel for the whisperings of spirit.
Example: The focus of the improv game is to eat a meal while carrying on a conversation about strawberries. I find myself eating pasta with veggies, and am cued by the instructor to reach my hand out onto the table and pull back something. I do … and find that I pull back a Sweet n’ Low sugar packet and suddenly, I’m tearing open the packet and pouring it into a newly materialized iced sweet tea, and I am chatting about how long one freezes strawberries.
I am one of the few participants with improv experience, and mostly I can tell, not because of cleverness, funniness, or imagination, but because of another telling sign. After every game, my fellow players, these engaged and enthusiastic mediums, apologize for how they think they played the game and they negatively rate themselves.
“I wasn’t very good.”
“I didn’t communicate that very well.”
“I was awful at that!”
And I’m heart-bursting to say, “No, no! There are no mistakes! Just different ways to play.”
The instructor is wise and knows how to direct, so I sit back and breathe, and it’s again, a small moment of noticing … this very real, human desire to be good, to be good enough, to be seen as enough.
To free ourselves from “approval” and “disapproval” is the aim of Viola Spolin’s improvisational theatre games. Then we can be liberated from our self-consciousness to PLAY. And I can see this in my medium players, because I know it so well within myself.
And when my sister offers me a taste of her bold buy of earl grey ice cream … I say YES – because of my new earl grey tea afternoon affairs, and because of the chapter rewrite, and because of that make-believe eating scene in improv … to experience life.
If the perception of mistakes could be compassionately rinsed away, from switched-up tea orders to what-was-said or not-said in an improv scene, then I’m left with what is real … not the story about the experience, which tends to be constricted by the approval or disapproval narratives, but with the experience itself.
This experience of living. As a creative human being.
And all we need to do … is begin with what is real.
So sip the tea. Be open to the magic of the rewrite – it’s about being awaken and intrigued to the process. Reach out your hand and be spontaneously surprised by what your imagination happily puts within your reach. It may be earl grey ice cream.