In anticipation of our trip to England & Scotland next summer, which I will be blogging extensively, I took my camera/phone with me on my morning walk today. I am learning a few things: how to take good pictures while walking fast; which site to use for uploading purposes; best way(s) to carry the phone to keep it handy, yet out of the way; and how lightweight my new one will need to be.
For now, I’m using my cheapo cellphone camera because I don’t really need a fancy phone yet. I work out of my house, so I’m always near my tech. Once I’m on the road, however, I’ll definitely need a much higher end phone with a really good camera in it. (I have a good camera, but I’m not taking that for these walks–too heavy and unwieldy.)
Anyway, that will all come in time. I have until next summer to research for the right equipment. Meantime, here are some pictures I took this morning. I don’t promise that they’ll be interesting. This is just an experiment:
This article, headlined, “Miley Cyrus calls Blackpool the ‘weirdest place she has ever been’, people of Blackpool revolt on Twitter” gives me cause to smile.
I’m not going to say anything bad about Miley Cyrus. She’s a kid, and I’ve matured enough to know better than to take easy pot shots at a young celeb. But I will say that I’m glad that this child, with her particular taste in lifestyle, doesn’t like a place I am itching to visit.
A clue! A clue! (Joe was fine, but I liked Steve best.)
Sometimes I wish that the Universe would make its messages easier to decipher. I recognize that coincidences and synchronicities reveal patterns in the chaos, but the meaning of that pattern isn’t always clear. My daughters and I oftentimes kid that we wish the Big U would leave a big blue pawprint to show us, “Yes, this is definitely a clue.”
Sometimes the clues don’t make sense because they’re nothing more than seeing lots of number sequences on clocks and license plates, etc. Doreen Virtue has a list of meanings that these number sequences have, but I don’t always have that list handy, so the message isn’t concise. I may be wrong but I believe that things like this, the ones that don’t have a specific message, are simply there to show we’re on the right track. Our actions and overall vibe are in alignment with where we want to be heading. We see these things because everything is ticking along nicely, all lined up.
Sometimes it’s hearing the same song over and over, in strange places, until you finally listen to the lyrics and hear what the clue is trying to tell you. Sometimes you just happen to open a book to a page that shows you the exact information you were looking for. Sometimes the clues make perfect sense, like the ones I’ve been writing about lately, with the tea party, or the fact that Blackpool is coming up in conversation with people who have no good reason to bring it up.
I have a new one that I haven’t yet figured out, but it’s certainly got my attention. Here’s some background:
I recently started reading John Steinbeck‘s The Grapes of Wrath for the first time. I know, I know–someone my age should have read it by now. Bare minimum, how did I get through school without being forced to read it? I don’t know. Somehow I’ve managed to avoid reading what I assumed was an incredibly depressing story about dirt and poverty. In any case, I’m almost done reading (it’s brilliant–Steinbeck is dazzling–but that’s not today’s subject).
Last week I watched Louis C.K.‘s latest HBO special, and out of nowhere he started talking about The Grapes of Wrath. What are the odds of that happening? Seriously. How weird is that? What an amazing coincidence! (But then he blew the ending! He told how it ends! I even tweeted to him to let him know he ruined the book for me.)
“I don’t mean to ruin that book for you, but you should have read it by now.”
(Do not watch if you’re easily offended or haven’t read the Grapes of Wrath.)
I’m almost done reading, and I’ve learned a lot from the Joad family and their struggles. I’ve made a lot of connections between what they experienced and today’s economy. I have a new, non-sexist view of why there was such thing as “men’s work” and “women’s work.” My understanding of social structure has been vastly broadened.
Most importantly, this book has taught me that an Oklahoma accent causes a girl named Rose of Sharon to be called “Rosasharn.” That name has been stuck in my head, like an earworm, since I began reading the book.
So imagine my surprise when I went for my morning walk today and happened upon this:
Aside from this book, or out shopping for plants, I never hear of Rose of Sharon. It’s not a well-known flower. And I’ve never seen a truck with that company name before, that I can recall anyway. It’s not a local company.
I have no idea what this clue means, but I wouldn’t mind if Louis C.K. spoiled the ending for me! But, hey, if you look real close, peeking out the window, here’s you a dog. And a blue pawprint.
Ever since Jeff and I have decided to make this trip to the UK actually happen, things have been falling into place in fun and bizarre ways. Here is the latest:
In a scene from the BBC mini-series Blackpool, David Tennant‘s character, DI Peter Carlisle, interviews Hailey, the prostitute, (played beautifully by Lisa Millet) about the murder of Mike Hooley. The interview takes place, I’m assuming, in the famous Blackpool Ballroom, with the also famous Wurlitzer organ being played in the background. Carlisle is interviewing all of the local hookers, and has invited them to neutral ground and supplied a nice tea.
Lisa Millet, as Hailey, and David Tennant as DI Peter Carlisle, having tea and questions about sex and death in the Blackpool Ballroom.
One of the things we (well, I … Jeff doesn’t know it yet) intend to do while in Blackpool is have tea and pastries, like Hailey and Carlisle, at the Blackpool Ballroom, hopefully sitting in the same spot and getting a picture or two.
Because having tea in England is not like it is here (usually at a McDonald’s drive-thru) I have no idea of the proper etiquette and I’ve been doing some research so that I’ll know how to behave. 😉
Here comes the amazing synchronicity. Last week, a friend asked me to meet her for lunch somewhere in Mesa, a city about 45 minutes away from here. Because it’s a long drive, I plugged my iPod into the car speakers and listened to a playlist. Yep, I played the Blackpool soundtrack (obsess much? you betcha!). One of the songs is “I Second that Emotion”:
Imagine my surprise when I walked into the place we were meeting, and that song–which I haven’t heard, aside from the soundtrack, in many years–was playing on the radio.
But wait! There’s more!
My friend, who has no idea that I’m planning this trip, had a surprise for me. It was an English-style tea party, complete with manners and etiquette lessons. Let me reiterate that she had no idea that I was wanting to learn this very specific and unusual thing.
Boom. Out of the blue. Just like that. I now know how to not embarrass myself once we hit the shores of a country where drinking tea is like breathing.
The trip that Jeff and I are planning for next summer is based pretty much on things we’ve learned about the UK from the BBC and BBC America. We are focusing, primarily, on the better known British offerings to the entertainment world, like Doctor Who and the Beatles, but we’re wavering off the path to see some that are lesser known here in the States like the seaside town of Blackpool. One of those I’m adding today is to see a Paolo Nutini concert, if he’s performing in the UK next summer.
We saw him perform Pencil Full of Lead on the Graham Norton Show and were completely blown away by the voice that came out of this boy (we’re in our fifties–to us, he’s a boy). Watch him wail and tell me that you wouldn’t go see him live, if you were in the vicinity:
This is just a quickie post, about another Blackpool synchronicity. After my first blog on the subject of our planned trip there, my new friend British friend (and Blackpool expert) posted a whole bunch of great links for me (Thanks, Mike!). One of them was for another show that was filmed in Blackpool, called Funland. One of the main characters in the series is named Lola, a rather unusual name. Coincidentally, the main character in my novel series is named Lola–a rather unusual name.
My most recent blog, about our planned trip to Blackpool, England, has indirectly caused me to realize that this trip will be the fulfillment of a longtime series of very specific recurring dreams. I’ve been dreaming about Blackpool for years, but didn’t recognize it!
I used to dream about Florida, long before Jeff and I ever thought of moving there, and once we arrived I was able to recognize scenes from various dreams as they were happening in real life. It’s so weird to have them come true like that, when I didn’t even know what they are showing me. I remember a Florida dream about a garden near a swimming pool, with statues and spiritual symbols in it. It turned out to be a serenity garden in which Jeff and I got married.
The first psychic dream that I can remember coming true took place in approximately 1989. I had a bizarre dream that took place in a darkened room, where there was a big, black control panel and weird geometrical shapes of light in the air. Because I had never seen anything like it before, it was kind of scary and I thought I was nuts. Why on earth would I be dreaming about something so alien?
Then in the mid 90s I started working for Laserium and my boss was Ivan Dryer, the pioneer in the laser concert industry, who performed the very first laser show at Griffith Observatory in the 70s (you can read all about it by clicking the link under the photo of the control panel). Ivan asked the laserist in the studio to give me a demonstration of what they do. It didn’t take long for me to recognized the laserist’s control panel and the geometrical light shapes in the air!
I’ve also dreamed a lot about New York City and somewhere in Great Britain. The New York dreams are coming much more frequently lately, and I have a feeling I’ll be there before the end of the year. For what reason, I do not know.
The exciting thing to me, now, is the dreams of the UK because a puzzle piece has just fallen into place. The dreams never told me exactly where they occurred. I have just been shown that someday I’d be there, near the water, and Ireland entered into it somehow.
But get this. In most of the dreams about the UK, I always saw something unrecognizable embedded into the ground, like tiles or patterns in concrete. Weird dreams. These tiles were set into a circular pad of cement. I could always sense waves nearby and I knew that Ireland was related somehow. I’ve never been able to pinpoint what the dreams were about, but they definitely included this water’s-edge, weird-patterned tilework.
This photo of Comedy Carpet is courtesy of TripAdvisor
Well, I’ve just discovered where in England those seaside tiles are–in a town I’ve only recently heard of, Blackpool. In my research about the town, in an effort to manifest this trip, I just happened to stumble upon this photo.
The tiles (which aren’t really tiles, it is a concrete and granite installation which features catchphrases and jokes by more than 1,000 comedians and writers) are called the Comedy Carpet. (More irony: Jeff and I met when we were both professional standup comedians.) You can see the circular cement pad, and the waves crashing onto the shore. And, Blackpool is on the Irish Sea.
I am blown away to finally learn where in England I’ve been dreaming about for so very many years, and that I was unintentionally planning a trip there! Wow!!!
Oddly, the Comedy Carpet wasn’t installed yet when the movie Blackpool(the inspiration for this trip, starring David Tennant–the Tenth Doctor in Doctor Who, Sarah Parish and David Morrissey) was filmed, so I wasn’t aware that there was a connection to my dream tiles when I saw the movie and began to plan this trip. In fact, I’d been having dreams about the “tiles” for many years before they existed.
I wasn’t even thinking about these dreams when I started to plan our trip to Blackpool recently. In fact, I had completely forgotten about the dreams until I saw photos of the Comedy Carpet. I can’t help thinking that there is a much bigger purpose behind this trip than Jeff and I just having a fun lark-about abroad. I can’t wait to find out what it is!
In which author Lisa Bonnice sets her intention for her next goal: a lengthy visit to the UK, with the pinnacle of the trip being a photo of the sunset over the Irish Sea from the “Eye” of the Blackpool Tower.
I just completed the first major item on my lifetime Bucket List. I have officially become a best-selling author. Boom. Done.
So now what? I didn’t really make any big plans beyond that, because it’s taken 52 years to accomplish this one. It’s sort of been an obsession, so I didn’t make a bucket list beyond that one thing. But now that I’ve achieved that goal, I want to make the next one fun and easy.
Our plan (my husband Jeff and I) is to indulge some of our curiosity about the UK from what we’ve seen on BBC America and our love of the Beatles. We’re going to visit some of the Doctor Who sites and museums (including Cardiff), then go to Liverpool to visit the Cavern Club and do whatever Beatles site-seeing is available, and finally head to Blackpool.
Why Blackpool? A British friend of mine asked that very question. “Why Blackpool!? It’s the Coney Island of the UK!”
I responded, “That’s exactly why. I love kitsch.”
But there’s more to it than that. The BBC aired a mini-series a few years ago filmed in and entitled Blackpool. Through a long and winding trail of links about David Tennant (the Tenth Doctor) I found a bunch of YouTube videos that allowed me to watch the whole thing (all six hours, ten minutes at a time).
Your mileage may vary, but I found this miniseries to be one of the most well-written, well-acted and well-executed productions I’ve ever seen. And it made me fall head over heels in love with the town of Blackpool! I simply MUST BE THERE!
I must step foot inside the arcade where Ripley Holden’s life began to unravel. I have to walk along the Promenade where DI Peter Carlisle wooed Natalie Holden. And (he doesn’t know this yet) Jeff and I will have tea, and then dance in the famous Blackpool Ballroom!
We’re shooting for summer of next year, 2014. We’re intending to align our visit to Blackpool with their annual Illuminations festival. We have a year to make this happen, and I’ve already started the process.
As the author of Shape Shifting–reclaiming YOUR perfect body, I hear from a lot of readers that money issues sometimes keep them from taking proper care of themselves. They feel that they have to focus too much time on financially surviving, and there is no time left for themselves. So just for fun, I’m posing the question: If someone offered you a million dollars to reach a reasonable weight/fitness goal by the end of the year, could you do it? If so, how?
Just to make it easier for you, your living expenses are all paid for between now and then. Money is no longer an issue. You have all the free time you need to really take care of yourself. But if you don’t make that goal, you have to pay it all back.
What would you change about your life in order to meet that goal? You’ve just signed the contract and now it’s time to begin. What would you do first, and then what would be your follow-up actions?
If it was me, if money was literally no object, I would begin by setting up some doctor’s appointments because I have some crazy health issues that I don’t have a handle on because I can’t afford the kind of health care that I need. Standard doctors have been unable to help me, and since none of it is life threatening, I just have to live with it and hope to someday be able to afford to find some help.
Potato and Radicchio Flatbread (Photo credit: drmiggy)
In the meantime, I would hire someone to do all of my meal planning, shopping, cooking and cleaning. That person would take in mind all of my body’s needs with regard to sugar, gluten, organics and GMOs, etc. I would be eating the diet that is truly healthy for me and makes me feel good.
Yoga at Wellspring Vancouver (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Next, because money is no object and I don’t have to spend all of my headspace worrying about working instead of working out, I’d join a gym and hire a personal trainer who would be nice to me, and take into consideration how out of shape I’ve gotten due to having to sit at a desk to earn a living. This person would care about me as an individual, not bark commands and belittle me if I wasn’t able to keep up at first.
Boy, it’s no wonder celebrities can look the way they do. They can afford all of this, and plastic surgery, too!
Is lack of money keeping you fat? How is money keeping you stuck in a body you’re not happy with? What would you do if money was no object?
Are there any changes that you could make right now that don’t cost anything?
I was at a “Creative Creation” class and the instructor suggested a little game for us. He pointed to a bookshelf that held several decks of Tarot and Oracle cards and told us all to pick up a deck. He didn’t want us to use the cards to do readings, he said that he wanted us to pull random cards and each build a story out of them. Everyone grabbed a deck and settled in on the floor to begin.
I saw, on the shelf, a bag of Scrabble tiles and I told him I’d rather use them, so I could spell out anything I want. He said that would be okay, but suggested that I make it a little more challenging. He said that I could use the little books that come with the decks to pick out random words and build a sentence out of those.
I grabbed the books and the tiles and sat them down on the floor in front of me. I picked up the first book, closed my eyes, opened a page and plopped my finger down on a word on the left side of the center binding. I opened my eyes and was delighted to see that I was pointing at the word “anything.” I laughed and told everyone, “Check it out! My first word was ‘anything’!”
Everyone was just as tickled by this coincidence as I was, as I picked out the letter tiles and spelled out the word on the floor. I picked up another book, and repeated the process. I was a little spooked to see, when I opened my eyes, that I was pointing at the word “I.”
I found the letter tile and put it next to the tiles that were spelling out the first word in my Creative Creation sentence. I said to everyone, “What are the odds that I pick the right word from the last book?” We all laughed and agreed that it would be amazing and awesome, but somewhat unlikely.
I picked up another book, closed my eyes and pointed. I opened my eyes and the gravity of what I saw shook me. I dug through the tiles and completed my sentence:
Anything I want.
I closed my eyes again and when I opened them I saw that I was in my own bed, in my own room, with Jeff snoring softly beside me. I could smell the timer-set coffee brewing in the kitchen and heard the sounds of the garbage truck down the street, picking up cans and crashing them back down to the curb. It was just a dream.
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