Be Here Now: How? With Offers You Can't Refuse

“Thy light alone like mist o’er mountains driven,
Or music by the night-wind sent
Through strings of some still instrument,
Or moonlight on a midnight stream,
Gives grace and truth to life’s unquiet dream. ”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley, Hymn to Intellectual Beauty

Lan Su by Aaron Clay

Lan Su Chinese Garden – a haven of peace and tranquility “designed to inspire, facilitate personal growth, and spark creativity,” according to its website – is located in the middle of the busy bustle and noisy mayhem of downtown Portland. Artisans from Suzhou in China’s Jiangsu province modeled Lan Su after their own historic Ming Dynasty gardens, which were intended to be spiritual utopias for their visitors and inhabitants. So why construct such a place downtown? It turns out the decision was very purposeful. The garden is meant to provide a bit of a break from the hustle of everyday city life, which is a concept I found interesting. While it is nice to wholly escape the perpetual grind (vacation, please?), finding calm in the midst of the storm is the order of the day for most of us.

Chinese guzheng by Aaron Clay

Lan Su turned out to be just as described – a bit of a respite. When I stepped inside the inner courtyard, the pandemonium of car horns and barking dogs and cabs zipping to and fro faded into the background and were replaced with the serene melody of a traditional Chinese guzheng. Flowers and plants of all kinds bloomed and shared their fragrant fortunes, and stones on the ground were perfectly arranged to create pretty little pictures. The gurgles of Lake Zither beckoned us to come and listen a bit more closely and to watch the koi fish play. I walked a little further and looked up to discover rows of beautifully decorated drip tiles. I was told that each tile allows a single droplet of rain at a time to fall to create a pearl-like curtain of showers (wow). A little more wandering and I found myself in a structure – The Reflections in Clear Ripples Pavilion – that was named for the reflections of light that are cast upon it as a result of the way the sunlight hits the water upon which it sits. A little further still and I stumbled upon detailed reliefs inspired by traditional stories, lines of poetry written on columns in calligraphy with Chinese characters, and blooming lotus flowers swaying contentedly in the water. Around every corner was the evidence of ardent dedication to beauty.

Lotus flowers by Aaron Clay

I’ve been thinking a lot about presence lately and my experience at Lan Su reminds me that beauty has a significant role to play. I was able to attend to, and rather easily, the minutest details in front of me despite the ever-present commotion just outside the garden walls. How could I account for such acute awareness? Certainly, I was on vacation and my mind was clearer than usual. I had walked barefoot across tilted stones and my Qi was flowing more freely. There was the green tea that I had had at the teahouse. It could have been any of those things but I suspect the extraordinary beauty of those minute details had a lot to do with it too. Lesson learned.

Filling life with more of the beautiful things from which one cannot possibly turn away is as brilliant a strategy as any for staying more awake. Plus it’s proactive and requires us to exercise our abilities and power to bring our desires to life. We must look for those lovely things in which to indulge and if we can’t find them, we must necessarily create them. As I’m sure the Chinese artisans I now hold in such high esteem would attest, cultivating beauty takes time and attention but it’s a worthwhile pursuit and important for its own sake. How much effort was required to build The Reflections in Clear Ripples Pavilion so wonderfully? How much awareness was required to perceive the details necessary to authentically name it as such? How many people have been enriched when they see those reflections tell their story?

Most of us are not able to maintain a constant state of Zen, finding bliss and harmony all around us. It’s there but our tantrum-throwing toddlers or attitudinal teenagers or difficult bosses or crazy schedules keep us from seeing it. We do have available moments, however, and so much can happen in a moment. We can take a moment to perfectly plate and add a little color to our dinner. We can take a moment to put a few sprigs of lavender under our pillows. We can take a moment to grab some wildflowers and stick them in that plastic bottle we were going to throw away (how’s that for up-cycling). We can also see beyond the tantrums, the attitudes, the difficulty and the craziness and find the beautiful truth. We can fill our lives with a little more beauty, every moment of every day and I believe that beauty will reward us with something precious in return – open eyes.

Love in all things, 

April Eileen

Be Here Now: How? Insights From That Time I Almost Missed Le Diner en Blanc

“But I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.”

— Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

Diner en Blanc tablescape by Aaron Clay (Tablescape by Jennifer Thompson)

We got in! I coveted an invitation to Le Diner en Blanc like I do food on my husband’s plate. Every story raced through my mind in glittering detail – secret locations, beautifully decorated tables, fierce attire, new friends and, of course, the ethereal white. What’s more, I was going across the country to attend Seattle’s inaugural event.

I certainly could not have pulled this off myself. The adventure was spearheaded by my cousin who, for the record, is much cooler than I am. (Little ones leave you less cool and more lukewarm. She has none to date). She called at one of those hours when I was prepping to go out and she was just coming in. “Seattle just opened registration” – because cool people keep tabs on stuff like that. “Go to their website and register…now!” It was a long shot. Tales of waitlists with thousands of people were not only true, but apparently common. I humbly took my orders and pulled out my laptop.

A few weeks later, over a Fourth of July vacation in Cape May, my phone rang. Cool cousin again. “I got in! See if you did too,” she screamed over club-thumping music. Groggy, I rubbed my eyes, looked at my phone and there it was – the emailed invitation. At that point, the real work began. We had 3 weeks to collect tables, chairs, décor, food…oh yeah and ourselves clad en blanc. Several Amazon packages later and some choice words mumbled here and there, we were ready. We made it, we were fabulous, and the experience was epic. I can say that with confidence but I was very much in danger of not being able to. Here’s why.

Diner en Blanc sailboat by Aaron Clay

When we arrived, I walked across the bridge and stood for the split second it took to gasp at the beautiful water and sailboats. Then I took a selfie. The first one wasn’t right so I took a few more. I paused in front of the 4-person musical ensemble long enough to Instagram it. No clue what the group was playing. Choosing proper filters takes time and attention. As my cousin put together a truly creative tablescape, we questioned whether we should leave it to the powers that be to post it on Pinterest or whether we should take it upon ourselves to ensure its debut. Better not leave things to chance. I was about to go AWOL for the napkin wave - a long-standing Le Diner en Blanc tradition – trying to get my photographer husband to take pictures of my own table, but I was fortunate. He stopped me, pulled in the reigns with his calming manner, and saved me from myself as usual so I could actually be there.

Diner en Blanc napkin wave by Aaron Clay

Of course, I took time to reflect on the experience. Why had I missed so much and more importantly, how could I avoid missing stuff in the future. I talked to my friend Sarah Eisenberg, a clinical psychologist, to see if she could shed some light. According to her, we don’t ever really multi-task – it just sort of looks like we do. Our brains, magnificent as they are, are really just switching between one or more things very quickly. Juggling our attention in this way can cause “cognitive load” – a state in which our brains need to work harder and can get tired <sad face>. The effect is poorer performance.

So if we’re meant to focus, just how are we to do that in our modern world, with all of its distractions? Mindfulness can certainly help. “Being present is simply bringing awareness to stimuli inside and outside. Once you are aware, you can make conscious choices rather than unconscious ones,” says Sarah. Just like waking up at Le Diner en Blanc and course-correcting, we can do the same thing day-to-day when we find ourselves not paying attention to our children or not totally listening to our partners or neglecting a sunset because our pocket computers yelled at us with urgency. We can practice being aware of those moments and make better choices - choices that reflect what’s important to us. And those important moments move from the periphery of our mental landscapes to the center stage where they belong. 

While I really wanted to write one of those “I ditched my cell phone for a week and went crazy” kinds of posts, I think that learning to manage our technology rather than trying to escape it will likely be a more effective approach in the long run. This way we can get good at caring for our minds by allowing them to really attend to the brief and beautiful moments that color the story of our lives. Plus, we can still find Uber drivers.

Love in all things,

April Eileen

P.S. I missed a few photo-ops at Le Diner en Blanc and I settled for blurry and imperfect pictures to mirror my blurry and imperfect life, but I did get one that’s worth mentioning. These are friends we made that evening because we took some time to #beherenow.

Diner en Blanc friends by Unknown

Be Here Now: Why?

“You need to feel your life while you’re in it.”

— Victoria Erickson, The Edge of Wonder: Notes from the Wildness of Being

Lately, I’ve been thinking as much about why we need mindfulness as how to achieve it. The great sages and many a fortune cookie say it’s necessary to be mindful of the present because that’s where life happens. Far be it from me to elaborate on the words inside a fortune cookie (or of a great sage, for that matter), but I think the present moment is not only where life happens, but it’s also where we get to actively participate in our own lives. That little addition is really empowering for me, particularly when I’m caught in the throes of errant thoughts about green tea and its health benefits, or whether my grocery list is too long, or when Jon Snow finally gets to find out about his parents. It makes me feel like life isn’t just happening to me but that I get to do something about it. Let me further explain my theory.

Mindfulness by Lesly B. Juarez

Human beings are pretty awesome-sauce, evolutionarily speaking. While the opposable thumbs thing was epic, the makeover our brains got was pretty impressive too. We have the ability to sift through information, tune-in and out at will, categorize quickly to make sense of the world, and to remember the past and anticipate the future. And because we’re not escaping mountain lions or hunting buffalo, all that brainpower is pretty much unfettered, to be used as we see fit. So, why were mere mortals gifted with such super powers? Presumably to inform the present and make it more to our liking. For what other reason would we logically have them? I mean, certainly, we could use them to regret the past, idealize the future, and incessantly judge the present, but that would just be silly. Oh, wait…

Inhale future, exhale past by Toa Heftiba

Clearly, we’ve missed the point. We’ve gone rogue and we’re no longer using our super powers for good. We envision bad outcomes and get all control freakish, uselessly trying to avoid them. We put ourselves in boxes because we’re obliviously invested in the past. We allow our own inner voice to speak unkindly to us. We absolutely need to wake up and pay attention because in doing so, we have the opportunity to use our minds to make our lives more beautiful. We can learn what we didn’t love so much yesterday and change it, dream of what we might love a little more tomorrow and take steps toward it, and savor the moment we’re in because we’re making our mark on it as informed participants in the universe.

Over the next few weeks, I will certainly share more about the how - a series of posts that detail some of my own strategies for being more present (stuff that works for me in real life – you know, with work, and relationships, and Facebook, and statements like “Don’t you dare put those eggs in your slippers!”). But let us not forget the why - why we’re here in this present moment – to use what we have to make our environments brighter. I would absolutely be honored to hear your thoughts and ideas so please chime in on this and the coming posts and let’s help each other out!

Love in all things,

April Eileen

P.S. Check out my inaugural experience, Dinner and Dessert in the Dark, for a great opportunity to practice being here now!