Are you sitting down?

Normally I post every other week, but I asked Marty if I could do a sequel to last week’s “The magic of Molly”.  This just couldn’t wait.

Let’s start with a dog named Dudley. He arrived in our household twenty years ago when his owner was no longer able to care for him. I thought the boys might like to have a pet.  It didn’t take long to realize that this just wasn’t going to work.  Great dog.  Wrong household.  One day I heard that our neighbours’ Bart the Wonder Dog had been hit by a car on the highway and they were devastated.  I picked up the phone that very day and said to them, “this could be the most insensitive phone call you’ve ever received, or the most well timed, but I have a dog that desperately needs a better home. They arrived 10 minutes later and for years afterwards were grateful that I had offered Dudley to them.

Next stop on our timeline… 6 months ago. I had already begun to formulate a vision of my dream wheels – a turquoise, convertible Mini – and wondered if there even existed such a car.  I walked down to a local restaurant for our weekly business association meeting, and there, out front, was a Mini.  A turquoise, convertible, 6-speed Mini! I was stunned.  I took the picture because I wanted to have it on my phone and put it on my vision board. When I walked inside the restaurant, I looked around to see if I could match the car with the owner.  The only person I knew was Dudley’s “dad” from way back when, but I didn’t get a chance to talk to him as I had to chair the business meeting. When we were finished, I looked around to see if he was still there, but he had left.  And I didn’t even know if the Mini was his.

In the meantime, the search for my Mini intensified.  I contacted the dealerships around town, and some of them told me it would be like finding a needle in a haystack. Others said that colour didn’t exist.  I sent them my picture.  They said perhaps it was custom ordered. One of them even suggested that red Minis were all the rage.  I promptly wrote back and told them that they clearly didn’t know me and my level of determination to find my dream car.

Roll forward to two nights ago when I was singing at Hugo’s Restaurant – a now-weekly gig that keeps me off the streets. Who walks in but Dudley’s “dad”.  There I was, up on stage, supposedly paying attention to the song I was singing, but in between verses, I craned my neck to look out in the parking lot to see if there was a Mini out there.  There wasn’t.  I was undeterred.  After my set, I went over to him and we got caught up.  We probably hadn’t spoken in ten years.  I decided to go for it and ask if he drove a turquoise Mini.  He said he did, just not that night! I showed him the picture on my phone, and he said that was his exact car. So at this point, having nothing to lose, I asked him if he would sell it to me. And without batting an eyelash he said, “of course”.  Like it was a no-brainer for him.  Like it was obvious to him that it needed to be mine.  To say I was gobsmacked is a complete and utter understatement.  I stammered that I didn’t have the money yet, but that I only needed to get it before my birthday in June.  He said that was no problem, he needed to keep it for a couple of months anyway.  When I asked him why he would sell it, he said his new partner doesn’t drive a manual transmission so he has to get a new car. We settled on a price (I already knew what it was worth) and shook and then hugged.  And then I had to.  I did a happy dance right in the middle of the restaurant floor.

Lots of laughs and “holy cows” from my friends who were there. They knew I’d found my Molly.

Now I just have to find the moolah.  No problem.  The hard part is over.

Branded by determination,

Buns

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZ6h0kyqSRk&feature=kp

The magic of Molly.

Stop me if I’ve told you this before, but when I was a teenager, I used to watch “The Beachcombers” on CBC every Sunday.  At the time, I was living in Ontario, and the characters with all their West Coast antics – and romantics – enchanted and captivated me.  To me, it was quintessentially British Columbia. I had a major crush on Bruno Gerussi, I loved the boat, Persephone, and when I grew up, I wanted to be Molly.  She owned the local restaurant and all the guys would gather there after a hard day’s work to soothe their souls.

I often fantasized about operating a cozy little eatery in a small village, where the locals would meet and we’d all get to know each other as part of a tightly-knit community. With university, marriage, and kids arriving in the next few years, the idea of becoming Molly was relegated to the back burner. However, I did end up moving to the coast with my young family.  From our new home, we could see Gibsons, where the original TV series was filmed. I even became friends with one of the women who co-starred in the series!

Fast forward to the late ’90s, and I found myself the proud part owner of the Lions Bay Café where I got to know the locals very well and I was in my glory.  I was also the editor of The Seagull, our community newspaper, and for a while, I was known as “The Queen of Lions Bay”. I hadn’t kept the possibility of becoming Molly at the forefront of my mind, but it was so real to me when I was a teenager that I guess it remained anchored at a much deeper level.  Then in 2003, I co-created another establishment in nearby Horseshoe Bay, and although not a café, I have been nourishing souls there too from a more spiritual menu. Only quite recently I realized that I had put all the ingredients together and I had cooked up my own version of Molly – not once, but twice. 

Now that I am closing the doors in a couple of months, I have been conjuring up the next reincarnation.  She is going to be a 5-speed, Ice Blue Mini convertible.  And her name is going to be Molly.  While this is a bit of a departure from the original icon – it’s what she represents to me that counts. I have dreamt about owning this particular car for a long time, and I am using my absolute belief of its becoming a reality as my fuel. (In fact, you might say I have been taking it a little too far… last week I decided to pretend I was already driving my Mini, and my real car is bigger.  I actually was so in “Mini Land” that I smucked the front end on a garden retaining wall.) I decided to dial it back a bit, and still enjoy my current wheels until Molly arrives on the scene. 

Molly #3 represents to me the undeniable Truth that our thoughts create our reality. I hope that she will continue to remind me of this. I want to take it a step further, and look at the thoughts that I’m unaware of… they are the ones that could be holding me back. One more piece and I’ll let you go… Molly played a very independent character and I don’t remember if she had a partner. Her “loves” were her adoring public… if she was married or in a relationship, that wasn’t what I liked about her. I am going to ponder that for a bit and I’ll get back to you on that.

Branded by conviction,

Love Buns, a.k.a. Molly

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENMOwXwRTZU

Falling Uphill

My spark keeps wavering. Like a Bunsen burner it flares, I feel ME and then just as suddenly it dampens. I wonder what the heck this means. And I get nowhere. Like Sisyphus I long to get that boulder up to the top of my mountain and often experience the journey as a few days rolling up and then down it goes. Unlike the Greek myth I do not feel I am being punished by Zeus for being deceitful but there may be an element of blindness that keeps the process in motion.

I don’t really know what the rock represents. What am I rolling up this mountain? What the hell is the mountain? Who says I have to go uphill?  In not knowing am I deceiving myself?

Here is what I do know…the sensation.

This wavering pulse of energy when flowing bright is like radiant life force. I feel hopeful and full of possibility. Life is delightful and humorous with many random synchronistic punctuations. And just as suddenly I wake up immersed in a cloudy weight of meaninglessness. And like Sisyphus I am trying to regain lost ground, rolling that damn rock back up that mountain. Maybe the rock is my old structure, my old identity and I am not meant to roll that old girl uphill.

Could the weight of holding onto something archaic be generating this sensation of bringing me down?

How does one dissolve an identity that has served for years but no longer fits? Wish it was as easy as taking off your constricting clothes after a long day’s work and getting into jammies. Not a whole lot of thinking needed there. The desire for comfort is instinctual. This feels tight…take it off. This feels good…put it on. That’s clear.

 This process I am in the middle of …is not!

So what can I do but pay attention and keep accepting what arises? Ride it out and trust. Hey it’s a bit like being on a train clearly going somewhere but I have no real idea where. I know I can sense the destination though. That feeling that is me when fully in the moment and open as love. Both solid and light, full of bubbling possibility and the pleasure of connection with others and the world. Playtime mixed with purpose. Just like that dive into the stillness of a lake that is so much a part of my primal yearning for peace and freedom.

Surrender Dorothy. That’s what I tell my head so I can land myself back into the now.  Surrender and breathe. Just lean into it and fall.

Ahh….  

Branded by the exhale,

Authentically Yours,

Marty