Delicious Caramels & Caramel Corn from Annie B's!

Annie B's makes incredible caramels and candied popcorn. They are always running fun contests on their Facebook and Twitter pages.

They recently asked: In 10 words or less, tell us why your mom is the best, and win her some caramel-y goodness!

I replied: She still hasn't stopped reading me fairy tales. I'm 30. #WhyMyMomRules #GiveHerCandy

I made the mistake of having them send the candy loot to my house- when really, it should have gone to straight to my wonderful mum. I think you know what happened next... The sweet note inside warned that the popcorn was especially addictive, and it didn't take me long to polish it off.

In fact, I just had to place another order to make it up to my sweet mother, who really does still read me fairy tales.

Best of all, the caramel corn is gluten free, perfect for my Mom, recently diagnosed with Celiac disease and who recently celebrated one year of living gluten-free. She says she feels like a new woman since cutting out flour

I have a feeling she's going to enjoy every sweet, salty, buttery and delicious morsel.

Merci Annie B's!

Escape from the Internet: A Digital Diet for Creativity

Escape Key by Elhorno

Being submerged in the internet for work each day means that managing my screen time has become a central issue in my life. I'm developing tricks for limiting technology use so I can stay present in my life. One is the digital diet outlined here. I like the simple metaphor of food he uses, because we all have to eat, but what, how much and when, all need to be tailored to our own bodies. 

I've personalized my digital diet by staying offline before and after work, (including my smartphone). For me, the five to eight hour window at work to check and reply to emails and get updated on Facebook is more than sufficient. I've also begun using mindfulness practices, list making and task batching to keep focused- a huge challenge since managing social media is my job! The cyclops we know as television is still part of my life, though I like to keep it at less than one hour per day, preferably none. 

However, none of this addresses the issue of finding time to be creative outside of work. Brene Brown says, "Unused creativity is not benign. It metastasizes." This haunts me, and I feel it with increasing urgency being back in a city so devoted to the arts. 

I've been trying to see a live arts performance at least once a month, since the Twin Cities is second only to New York City in theater seats per capita. The quality is impressive, and it's quite affordable if we see something edgy. During each of these performances, I feel that pang Brown spoke of. It's a squeeze of admiration, awe and jealousy for the people up on stage who are living their dream so fearlessly. It's not that I want to be a great actor. It's that I am an artist and I am not practicing my art. 

In the film Pollock, Lee Krasner says, "You are Jackson Pollock and you don't paint!", and it is her deepest recrimination. He's also a womanizer, and an alcoholic, but she can't forgive how he has turned his back on his talent. 

When I had the luxury of more time to pursue my creative work, I often wasted it on household tasks. I love to potter around my house, baking, organizing, crafting and sometimes, blogging about it. But do those things develop me as an artist? They are creative, but are they art? Are they the one, unique song of my soul? 

I don't think so. They are things I do to feel productive, without actually tackling the work. Artistic work is internal, it means peering into your own soul and seeing what bubbles up from that dark, deep, mysterious well. The housework is tangible, I can see the result when I sort my underwear drawer or mop the floor. Art  sometimes has a physical result, a drawing, an essay, but that isn't the reason for it. That is just an after image, a footprint, a shadow. The real thing art does is to fills you up, in an invisible way, with satisfaction at the effort of looking, taking, and making. It also fills you with a yearning for more of that. 

So how can it be that something so good for me can be so hard to do? So hard to make time for? What is stopping me? My jobs aren't stopping me. My housework isn't stopping me. The internet isn't stopping me. It's me stopping me. But why? Where does fear come from when only good things have ever come from practicing art? 

Do you wrestle with finding time to be creative? Do you want to take the time to listen to the song of your heart, but also feel afraid to listen? 

How to Choose a Yoga Studio

"Shoulder Stand" Original Drawing by Becky Kazana. Please do no reproduce without permission.  

Finding the right yoga studio is like choosing a church. You are looking for something intangible, a mood, a vibe. All of these places are pretty similar; usually clean, bare rooms with polished wood floors, maybe a wall of mirrors, maybe plants, maybe candles, maybe a singing bowl. Some use music, some don't. Some are hot, some warm, some cool. The teachers are important, but you will learn something from every person you take class with. The style of yoga is part of it- but you will learn something from every practice, from Hatha to Bikram.

Since arriving in Minneapolis, I'd gone the Groupon route, trying out Heat Yoga, Core Power, Minnehaha Yoga, Your Yoga, and Yoga Studio. I've barely scratched the surface of studios in my area- there is Life Power, Iyengar Yoga and a Bikram studio, all within easy walking distance of my apartment.

So far, One Yoga has definitely been my favorite. They offer a wide variety of classes in many styles, almost every hour, so there is always a class that is convenient. But the intangible something is in the air. Bold letters on the door announce "YOU ARE ENTERING A CALM PLACE." and it's true. You can feel it when you walk in. The rush and bustle drain away as you pull off your wet boots and hang your coat on a peg, find a spot to unfurl your mat and go inward, slowly and deeply.

During practice recently, I had an idea to make this drawing. I love looking at my legs and feet in shoulder stand- they always look so tiny and far off up there, and it's nice to send all the blood flowing in the opposite direction from feet to head for a change. I often have a dream that I am looking at my hands, feet or body from a distance as they slowly swell gigantic and then shrink back down to teeny tiny, and somehow this pose reminds me of that. Everything in your life is a matter of perspective, plain and simple.

Do you practice yoga? What's your favorite pose right now? What do you look for in a teacher? A studio? Do tell!

Movie Review: Ruby Sparks

Ruby Sparksis the story of a wunderkind writer, Calvin, who wrote a masterpiece as a teenager. Now in his  thirties, he's trying to come up with a second novel. He's suffering from writer's block. It's terrible. He's seeing a shrink and his only real friend is his brother. He's gotten a puppy called Scotty, who appears to be as neurotic as he is (he pees like a girl dog), in the vague hope that a dog will help him meet people when he's hiking.

One night he dreams about a beautiful red headed girl, back-lit by the sun, and begins to write about her. His writer's block seems cured- he's writing obsessively about Ruby, as though through the typewriter he's actually spending time with her. He realizes that he's falling in love with this character- and that she isn't real. But he is too lonely, too full of anxiety to stop writing.

That's when Ruby turns up in his kitchen, exactly as he'd envisioned her in the dream, munching on cereal. He's terrified at first, convinced that he's losing his mind. When he takes her out on the street and strangers can see her too, he stops resisting. Why shouldn't he fall in love with her? After all, she's the perfect woman, his dream girl! She was made for him- by him.

Now, in a typical romantic comedy, things would play out from here along the silliest and most trivial lines. But here, they go for the jugular to get at the heart of what makes relationships so difficult.

All relationships are like a mirror. The people we love show us things about ourselves. A new lover, especially reflects a version of yourself that you want to believe in and adore. But as time goes on, the beautiful light fades. We are forced to see ourselves as we really are in the mundane, day-to-day moments of our lives. When faced with our own imperfections, we don't want to gaze as closely at ourselves, and so we begin to look for imperfections in the other person instead.

That moment of dissatisfaction is where the premise of Ruby Sparks gets really interesting. What if you can change the person you're in love with? What if you can control what they say and do? This is the perfect scenario, right? They will love you unconditionally, and you will never have to change.

Calvin tries to resist at first, but it starts to look as if Ruby might not stay with him left to her own free will, and he changes the rule book. He begins to tinker with her, adding lines to his novel so that she will adore him more, never want to leave him, and be miserable without him. She becomes despondent when he goes out to get the mail. In following scenes, she clings to him like a drowning man to a piece of driftwood. Unable to take life as a conjoined twin, he writes instead that she is filled with joy. Suddenly Ruby is deliriously  vacantly, creepily happy about absolutely everything.

Calvin discovers that controlling Ruby's thoughts and feelings destroys his reasons for loving her. Free will is essential to the idea of true love. It's part of the mystery of it- that someone could have the planet full of people to chose from, and from those billions, they plucked you, and you them. What a beautiful mystery!

I won't spoil the resolution for you, I will simply say that this film was a wonderfully thorough investigation of why and how love works and how freedom and risk are the only ways to the ecstasy of true love.

Mama Artists

Having babies has been on my "Maybe Someday" list for a long time. But something is shifting.

Eric surprised me with tickets to Verdi's La Traviata at the Cowles Center. It was a stripped down production with no sets or costumes. One of the sopranos was gloriously, Venus of Willendorf-ishly pregnant. She stood in the spotlights in her black evening gown, hair spun into a French twist, neck and wrists dripping with glittering jewelry. I couldn't stop looking at her belly as she sang- watching it lift and pulse as she belted out arias. I imagined the little baby inside of her, listening to those sounds vibrating all around her body, comprehending none of it, but understanding it perfectly.

A few weeks later, we went to see the James Sewell Ballet at the very same theater. The dances ranged from traditional to modern, the performers wearing tutus in one sequence and leopard spotted spandex in another. One of the dancers, long and lanky with acres of neck and legs, was also pregnant. She wore a sheer black blouse over a black bra and tiny shorts- her belly sitting low and oval, like an ostrich egg. Her pregnancy was unmistakable and yet not the first thing you noticed. Her confidence and self possession shined out of every movement she made. She leaped and jumped all over the stage, so light and free in her changed body. I wondered the about her and her baby- what was their life like? How had she decided to get pregnant? Was this her first baby? Did she ever feel nervous moving like that with a baby?

I thought about these two women for weeks. How strange see two hometown performers in different mediums both pregnant at separate shows only a few weeks apart. Both women were doing creative work that demanded so much from their bodies- they had to be completely engaged in what they were doing. Both could have opted out, maybe were even advised to, yet neither one did.

You can choose to become lost to yourself. You can ignore the lessons life offers you by looking at the wrong things, avoiding pain, deadening your feelings, zoning out. So it must be the same with parenthood. Children can either be something to lose yourself in, or something to discover yourself through.

Entering into parenthood feels even more sacred than marriage to me. You are guiding a spirit into a body, teaching it how to be human, how to move through the world. You must be worthy of imitation, in the words of Rudolf Steiner. It fills me with awe to even think of it- bringing something from the void. By mixing my soul with my husband's, we can bring forth a new being- it's such an honor and tremendous responsibility.

That's why seeing those Mamas up there touched me so much- I couldn't look away. For them, motherhood didn't stop their work, it enhanced it. It pushed them further into the mystery of living, pushed them deeper into the reasons they make art to begin with. At it's best, art puts you in touch with the unknowable, the awesome, the deep possibilities. And at it's best, parenthood offers you the same lessons. I wonder why I never understood that before.

A Murder of Crows Stay the Night

"A Murder of Crows" original illustration by Becky Kazana. Please do not reproduce without permission. 

Crows don't migrate like some birds, and there is a massive group of them circling in Minneapolis this winter. You can see them fluttering through the air like bits of singed paper, especially in the evenings at dusk. I've seen them roosting in different places- always in tall trees and often in loosely formed clusters, not too near one another, but most definitely in a group.

The other night as we were starting dinner, I noticed their calls outside the window and went to look out. Sure enough, they were all settling in the tall oak trees that line our street. These glossy black birds are so associated with Gothic literature and bad omens, (a group of crows is called a "murder" after all,) that it felt a little eerie. On the other hand, Eric loves to tell me how they are among the smartest animals on earth, able to solve complex problems, use tools and recognize and distinguish human faces. It's not their fault Edgar Allen Poe decided to immortalize one in a spooky poem.

Their acrid calls and awkward shuffling is rather endearing when you imagine them as a gaggle of cranky old men. They certainly were striking up there silhouetted in the tangle of branches as the sky darkened around them. In the morning, they were all gone, a spray of splintered branches on the sidewalk and snow the only evidence of their night spent on our street.

TCB Means Taking Care of Business

Elvis had a personal crest of sorts; a lighting bolt emblazoned with the letters TCB. It stands for Taking Care of Business. Since reading Peter Guralnick's monumental two part biography of The King, TCB has become part of our household lingo. We've even created our own complementary phrase, TAB, which stands for Taking A Break. Eric and I like to joke that we're always doing one or the other.

For my 30th birthday, Eric presented me with a sterling silver replica ofElvis's own TCB design. The necklace is my secret good luck charm and I love to wear it under my clothes on days when I know I need extra stamina. There have been lots of those days lately. I feel like I'm moving at top speed from place to place, ticking task after task off my to do list. It makes me feel like Superman.

Do you have any household lingo? Or a little trick to make you feel invincible on days you know you're gonna need it?