Remember last Christmas? thoughts on the Tranquility Pillow, six months later

It’s now been six months since the annual “Caring Professional Thank-you Week” sponsored by Honey Girl Books and Gifts, and the word is in: the Tranquility Pillows really do work!  Read on to see how last year’s winners use their special gifts at work and home, to soften some of life’s hard moments…

“The Tranquility pillow sits on a small chair in my office where students sit for a time to relax.  When I invite them to sit in the chair, the child instantly picks up the pillow and places the it on his/her lap.  As we begin to talk the child begins to calmly ‘pet’ the soft satin or velour.  Then I would allow the student to change the star to reflect the emotion being felt.  This worked really well.”

–Melissa, Title 1 Intervention Specialist, South Bend, IN

“I love to sit in my chair and hold it in my arms when I am talking to my daughter; it’s great to snuggle up to.”

–Erin, nurse from Seattle, WA

“This beautiful pillow has a prominent place in my office and has provided a perfect dose of tranquility to both adults and students. The ‘Moonrise’ design on satin and velour feels luxurious and the pocket on back is very convenient for holding the pieces. The deeper messages about coping and dreams were perfect for our students, and the children especially enjoyed expressing their feelings with the monster star.”

–Erin, fine arts teacher from South Bend, IN

Order your own Tranquility Pillow today!

Available only from Honey Girl Books and Gifts LLC 

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Congrats to the caring professionals and Happy New Year to all!

Happy New Year, everybody!

To follow up on my post of December 17, “Tonight’s the Night!”:

Five caring professionals have come forward to capture the prizes in our second annual “Caring Profession Thank-you Week”:  a fire captain and a nurse from Seattle, two school teachers from South Bend, IN, and one school teacher from New Orleans, LA.

Congrats to all of you, and hope to see you and your feedback soon on the “Happy Clients” page of Honey Girl Books and Gifts.

Other big news: Tranquility Pillows are now available with Velcro fasteners or the traditional snaps, to make it easier for tiny or tired fingers to attach and remove the three cloth stars. As the tag says, “Snap on a star and let your feelings be seen. It’s as natural as a night sky.”

 

Tonight’s the night!

Hello!

Dec. 18 is a very exciting date. It is the day that kicks off the “caring profession thank-you week”: a tradition I created last year as CEO of my own business, Honey Girl Books and Gifts (est. 2017).

Each year in the week before Christmas (beginning Dec. 18), Honey Girl Books and Gifts gives away a Tranquility Pillow ($80 value plus free shipping in the USA) to the first five “caring professionals” who request one (with a scanned ID or other proof of profession). Caring professions include K-12 teachers and counselors, nurses, midwives, doulas, fire and police officers, and day care providers. In return, we’d like a little feedback about the product’s therapeutic effects and permission to share those anecdotes.

Want to join the contest?  email juliawsea@gmail.com beginning on 12/18 (that is, for the eager, at midnight tonight)

Don’t delay!  inquiries have already arrived from teachers and nannies in cities ranging from Seattle and New Orleans to South Bend, Indiana!

Thank you for your service to humanity; we could not survive without you!

This year’s winners will receive a Night model in the Moonrise design, as seen below.

taming our fears — and back to school

I just reread The Little Prince slowly, over the course of the last three days here and there. What a great vacation read! Along with bemusement over the clever wording and adorable illustrations, I was left with a sense of awe at the way the author weaves moral philosophy into a classic travel tale to make a story that has much to say to readers of all ages. Few “children’s books” can do that so well.

The concept of taming–spoken by the lonely fox whose ears are too big– knocked me over again, just like it always does.

On ne connaît que les choses que l’on apprivoise, dit le renard. Les hommes n’ont plus le temps de rien connaître. Ils achètent des choses toutes faites chez les marchands. Mais comme il n’existe point de marchand d’amis, les hommes n’ont plus d’amis. Si tu veux un ami, apprivoise-moi !*

“One only understands the things that one tames,” said the fox. “Men have no more time to understand anything. They buy things already made at the shops. But there is no shop anywhere where you can buy friendship, and so men have no friends any more. If you want a friend, tame me!”

To tame is to “make less dangerous or frightening,” according to the dictionary. But for Saint-Exupéry, taming is the basis of friendship: we allow each other to depend on each other, and the world becomes less dangerous and frightening. Pictured here are the pillows I’ve been making during this same time period, which feature hand-made shooting stars designed to resemble  Saint-Exupéry’s. I make them to help people tame their fears. And maybe the making helped me tame my fears of being suddenly in this new place with a new name, no job, and starting over again…

Taming fear is what Tranquility Pillows allow us to do.  By expressing an emotion–by snapping on one of three stars–you can put that feeling at arm’s length, or make it into an external object. If you snap on the scary black star, your fears wield less power over your mind, because you can see that they are just a little black star.  They exist out there in the air, like the Little Prince on his planet, and you may or may not ever encounter them in person during this life. And maybe a friend or parent will see you’re worried and lend a helping hand…

So this year as you head back to school, why not get a Tranquility Pillow?  Let the pillow  help your mind rest now and then, while you are working so hard…

 

*Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Le Petit Prince / The Little Prince, 1st ed. 1946 ; (Paris : Gallimard, 2000) 69.

June 21 Solstice arrival: So many thoughts on the Night pillow… and the move!

I’ve been so enjoying the exciting build-up to our move; I’ve been looking forward to this event for almost three years! It does however deliver a very intense impact to the nerves when many things suddenly come to a head: in the last six months, I’ve retired early from a career I rocked at, sold and packed up a house I adore, abandoned tons and tons of books and notes from that job, and made plans to create a new life in a city I haven’t lived in for 34 years. Oh, and I launched a new business too. Phew.

It makes the stillness and silence of this house feel quite precious. Doing T’ai chi in Nick’s old room is now very flowing. Readers of The Tao of Painting will not be surprised by that. Mai Mai Sze explains that “Silence and emptiness of space possess vast powers of suggestion, stimulating the imagination and sharpening perception. And only through exercise of these highest faculties can the Tao be apprehended and expressed.”*

The emptiness and silence of the house when I’m sewing is filled with my happy thoughts and wonders about the life to come. I’ve barely even been in that Seattle house, apart from one day at closing and a one-day walkthrough each summer. In creating, one can only focus on present thoughts, so I’m channeling all that wonder and joy as a feeling into my new Night designs for Tranquility Pillows.** Sewing extremely detailed work like this is a profoundly engrossing activity: perfect for training the “wild horses” of your mind and keeping them in harness.

There’s another reason why I’ve been feeling immensely creative and inspired lately: Because I don’t have much more time! It’s an old habit of being a student for so long—we always procrastinate. We think we work better under pressure. And actually, we often do.

It is interesting to realize that even when we retire from a job, as an entrepreneur we can still create that same thrill of discovery. You can force yourself to jump forward conceptually under pressure. Only now I’m doing it for my own fun (and potential profit), in hastening to create prototypes for two new pillows: the Baudelaire “Giantess” pillow and the Tranquility Night pillow (with the new “Freak Out” Star for suicide prevention). I’m working with my hands in satin, cotton, and flannel, instead of working only with my Mind. This new life is thus a genre-change as well as a new way to relate to people through literature, and an effort to forge an art of my own making. Oh, and there’s that moving over 2,000 miles. That’s all.

Maybe all these crazy-making details are why I’m so drawn to the spare, evocative simplicity of Chinese aesthetics and the abstract thinking of Zen. I love Chinese Calligraphy and the way Chiang Yee describes his work:

“One of my incentives in writing this book is to help such people [ie Westerners] to an enjoyment of our calligraphy without putting them to the labour of learning the language. If the student can understand the literal meaning of the words, so much the better: for an aesthetic appreciation it is not essential. You will understand my meaning if you think of a landscape painting in which the familiar forms of scenery of your native land touch a chord of memory. You have a different and more pleasurable sensation from such a picture than from a painting of an unfamiliar scene. But I do feel that, without this sense of recognition, it is possible, provided one has a sense of line-movement […] to appreciate the beauty of lines.”***

The beauty of lines and the sense of line-movement: so obvious yet overlooked!

My own thinking led to the question of how to create the right shape of star for my new Tranquility Pillow Night design. There are so many star styles to choose from, but after a bit of reflection, it was obvious: Le Petit prince. Le Petit prince has the best stars: being handmade and imperfect, they project a winsome air. (See last blog post for a few cute examples)

So I got a pic of that up on my screen. Then I went hunting around for a piece of cardboard to write on. Since we’re moving in one week, everything’s a mess and there are no tablets to be found. Finally I looked in a wastebasket and found a file folder from the Hesburgh Library reserves department from years ago, for a photocopied chapter of Mlle de Scudéry’s Clélie, a long slog of a novel from 1654. (I know I know! I was crazy to inflict such torture on my students, for which I apologize.)

At the sight of the stamp “2hrs. Library Use Only” under my name, I felt a surge of tenderness. For those nameless, long-ago students and for all students. As I drew my version of Saint-Exupéry’s star, I tried to make the line-movement convey a sense of hopeful yearning, a reaching forward.

Lesson of the day:

it is amazing what you can do with a simple shape, if you focus on intention.

Question: but can you use intention to make a prickly situation less prickly?

Short answer: I am trying to do so.

Long answer: you may be wondering how or if I’m going to keep up the rigorous morning routine during the five days it will take us to drive across the country. La chance ça se prépare (Luck is planned). I’ve already announced to my dearly beloved that we will not hit the road until 10am each morning. He will sigh, and grumble, and pace around impatiently, but he is a man of his word. That gives me time to get up punctually, have my coffee and fruit, and then find a quiet spot somewhere in the motel or outside to bring my laptop and do T’ai chi along with the video of Master Peng, like I do every day. I may draw some strange looks!

It is crucial to continue this routine when spending the other 12+ hours of each day alone (apart from Honey Girl) in a car with the same person you’ve been married to for 32 years, whose lack of self-trust and aggressive ways frequently grate on your nerves, although he means well. Honey Girl and me will keep him calm somehow, or block him out. 🙂

*Mai-Mai Sze, The Tao of Painting, 96.

**Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, 220.

***Chiang Yee, Chinese Calligraphy, 3.

The new styles coming to life!

Zen message of the Night pillow: “Even when we enter disturbed waters, we can still align with the moon, until such time when we can see it directly.”

1. Tranquility Pillow-Night design no. 1, shows the satin moon’s reflection on a sea of navy flannel.
2. Tranquility Pillow Night design no. 2, features lines of grey, black, and white satin and navy rayon, on a navy flannel sea below a white satin moon.

the strangeness of eleven: on Bachelard, attics, and a “Night” pillow

Eleven days is a strange amount
You’re kind of in and kind of out
Living in limbo round people and stuff
Stuff is easy, people are tough.

 

boxes boxes everywhere and not a sheet to write

Nice discoveries, love renewed.

a reminder of calm

I love this little room with its sunny windows, blue walls, and cozy feel. Here is Gaston Bachelard on attics, from The Poetics of Space:

“Up near the roof all our thoughts are clear. In the attic it is a pleasure to see the bare rafters of the strong framework. Here we participate in the carpenter’s solid geometry. … The dreamer constructs and reconstructs the upper stories and the attic until they are well constructed. when we dream of the heights we are in the rational zone of intellectualized projects. But for the cellar…” – Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, p. 39.

Bachelard on the way space absorbs emotion, solitude, and creativity

“All the spaces of our past moments of solitude, the spaces in which we have suffered from solitude, enjoyed, desired, and compromised solitude, remain indelible within us, and precisely because the human being wants them to remain so. He knows instinctively that this space identified with his solitude is creative; that even when it is forever expunged from the present, when, henceforth, it is alien to all the promises of the future, even when we no longer have a garret, when the attic room is lost and gone, there remains the fact that we once loved a garret, once lived in an attic. We return to them in our night dreams. These retreats have the value of a shell.

In the past, the attic may have seemed too small, it may seemed cold in winter and hot in summer. Now, however, in memory recaptured through daydreams, it is hard to say through what syncretism the attic is at once small and large, warm and cool, always comforting.”

–The Poetics of Space, 32.

***

A pillow is born!

In this time of extreme agility and movement, of seeing people and dealing with stuff, quite a paradoxical effect has arisen. Instead of feeling overwhelmed or tired, I’ve had so much energy and creativity.

I’m happy to announce that a new Tranquility Pillow is born:  “Night”

(prototype forthcoming)

imagine this:

the Zen message: “Even when we enter disturbed waters, we can still align with the moon, until such time when we can see it directly.”

a pillow front of navy cotton in sky-with-gold-stars fabric

a Big poofy yellow or white satin Moon, a crescent moon

Waves in black, purple, navy and white or yellow satin, velours and flannel all rippling and converging on a distant horizon

detachable fabric “Stars” (instead of the original “Leaves”), but with a difference!

Instead of two leaves, this model has three. Three Stars to communicate your feelings. One in yellow satin (with “scary” back), one with pinkish satin (“soothing” back) and a third “Freak Out” Star with nightmare “scary” fabric on both sides. Perhaps this soft object might help teens and children express their feelings, is what I’m thinking… in this time of copycat suicides, it is crucial to act. When the nightmare’s on both sides of your imagination, you let it be known!

p.s. To the solitary reader: if you’re terribly sad or lonely, feeling hopeless, and you cannot afford one of my pillows, just let me know:  juliawsea@gmail.com. I’ll send you one for the price of postage alone.

 

Three weeks to go: advice on moving and a word from our sponsor

With three weeks to go, here’s some useful advice on moving and a word from our sponsor, “Honey Girl Books and Gifts”

1. Plan at least two months ahead. Follow this advice on moving

Jen A. Miller, “How to Avoid Stress When You’re Moving,” New York Times (March 31, 2017).

Ayn-Monique Klahre, “How to Hire Inter-State Movers Without Getting Scammed,” New York Times (May 8, 2018).

2. Go analog for long-distance planning

If you’re driving a long way, buy a large-scale Rand McNally Road Atlas and chart out your route and motel stops. Do not rely on Mapquest, which may lead you astray (as it did to us. All we need to do is head due West on I-90 which ends at a spot on I-5 about ten minutes from our new house in West Seattle. Why mess around with I-94 etc.?). Plus it shows where the pretty stuff is–it’s green!

3. If you’re traveling with a dog, find lodgings easily via Bring Fido:  https://www.bringfido.com/

However, I recommend making the reservation in person on the phone, just to make sure that the motel really will welcome you and your big dog when you arrive after driving all day.

And now, some news from Honey Girl Books and Gifts  https://www.honeygirlbooks.com/

1. Good news!

a) revenue just passed $1,000 since the “soft launch” in December 2017 (L.L.C. registration coming in one month in WA state, if you are from govt.org), and

b) I recently fulfilled orders for people unknown to me personally. That is a milestone according to Guy Kawasaki, The Art of the Start.

2. That has led to adding new components as follows for “Tranquility Pillows” (the most popular item):

a) Since every Tranquility Pillow is designed to make meaning, I’ve added this component to the Shopping page:

It helps to know something about you or the person for whom you’re ordering. Please submit a few lines on things such as a favorite book, a long-held dream, or a major life event that you, or your loved one, are encountering right now. This makes each pillow’s mood distinct. For example, the serene-looking “Magnificent Glide” (no. 8) was created to soothe a high school classroom, while “Stormy Waters” (no. 16), with its two waterfalls, honors the ongoing struggles and conflicts of its new owner.

b) New feature! Beginning summer 2018, every Tranquility Pillow will be accompanied by a few lines of verse chosen especially for the pillow’s “story of you.” Poets featured to date include Robert Louis Stevenson, Maya Angelou, and Emily Brontë.

c) Supplies limited. Alas, the light green organic cotton featured in the Spring pillow is no longer available. So when my stock is exhausted this pillow line will end.

3. Coming soon: “Hometown Heroes” a new design of Original Honey Girl Pillows. Features a back made of denim with a jeans pocket and an outdoorsy scene in flannel, and our adorable logo on the front.

4. Coming in July: Second series in the “Limited Edition Literary Pillows” line! Just like the first series inspired by Zola’s department store novel, these pillows will be made of vintage satin and flannel. They will feature a satin woman’s torso, lying down odalisque-style, inspired by Charles Baudelaire’s poem (in Richard Howard’s translation), “The Giantess” / “La géante.”

(I particularly love the last stanza:

… when the fetid summers made her stretch

herself across the countryside, to sleep
untroubled in the shadow of her breasts
like a peaceful village at the mountain’s base.

Et parfois en été, quand les soleils malsains,

Lasse, la font s’étendre à travers la campagne,
Dormir nonchalamment à l’ombre de ses seins,
Comme un hameau paisible au pied d’une montagne.

 

And a personal note of joy: today Rich and I celebrate our 32^nd anniversary! (It rained that day in New Jersey, but as they say, “mariage pluvieux, mariage heureux”).

Thanks for reading,

jdv

p.s. Moving sale this Saturday!  11:00am — 4:00pm, 1207 Riverside Drive, South Bend, IN.

a challenge awaits tomorrow

Today was wonderful in many ways, but one thing stands out for its jaw-drop amazement value. I’m still reeling and wondering what will happen tomorrow.

First a plug for my Tranquility Pillows, via Honey Girl Books and Gifts! I delivered two to the Notre Dame Counseling Center today, for all those anxious folks on campus to gain some relief. Midterms are this week–a good week to disconnect from those phones.

Speaking of disconnecting, can you disconnect from yourself in the mirror?

I had lunch with a friend who I’m starting to suspect knows me better than I realize… or at least she has rapidly zoomed in on a long-time phobia. After sharing many anecdotes of our various creative processes and projects, I told her about my morning routine and how good it makes me feel etc. etc, and she said, “Could you do the meditation in front of a mirror?”

OMG. Never, ever would I have chosen that challenge. I hate mirrors.

I realize she is forcing me to go beyond the comfort zone. It is true. I read and blab all about integrity, being grounded, being “full and complete, yet empty with nothing to protect” (Ralston). I wax poetic about the sky and birds and trees, time and timelessness, “letting go” and being mindful. But can I bear the simple challenge of looking at myself for thirty minutes?  (Can you?)

Tomorrow is day one. Not only do I detest this idea, it also happens that the five days of the challenge lead right across my birthday. But a deal is a deal, and now I’m getting kind of curious.

I said I’d do it if she would do it. But she actually likes to look at herself in the mirror! (For me, it’s more a question of wondering who that person is. She looks happy and fit, but … well, kind of old.) I definitely look more like the elders than the youngsters in in the beautiful and poignant series “Reflections: Portraits of the Elderly Seeing their Younger Selves,” by Dallas-based artist Tom Hussey.  (I especially love the seamstress).

More to come on this bizarre and disconcerting 5-day challenge.

Do it yourself if you dare!

 

new life or new attitude? just be care-ful

Hello and Happy New Year, readers!

Let 2018 be a year of discovery, not routine. Even if nothing else changes, you yourself can change how you perceive things and–most importantly–how you perceive yourself. If each of us did a caring act toward our world and our fellow humans, each day, think of all the good that might result.

News update on the December outreach campaign of HGBG to the caring professions!  As of today, four free “Tranquility Pillows” (value $150 each) have been delivered to the following people: 1) to Jaime, an elementary school teacher in Texas; 2) to Sarah, a middle school teacher in North Carolina; 3) to Maddie, a nurse in Washington state; and 4) to Leo, a high school teacher in Wisconsin.  It will be interesting to hear back from them later, on how the pillow soothes the spirits of their students, patients, or themselves, after a hard day’s work in those demanding fields.

Our hat’s off to all those people who devote their lives to a caring profession in 2018. Thank you.

an irregular economical oddity at work!

 

Hello readers!

It is an elementary truth of capitalism that you must make people pay for what you sell. Yet there is something irresistible about generosity!  As Harvard University economist Stephen Marglin writes:

Love is a very special commodity,

An irregular economical oddity.

Bread, when you take, there’s less on the shelf.

Love, when you make it, it grows of itself.*

***

Honey Girl Books and Gifts wants to help spread love and fellow-feeling! Thus our offer, which is good until 12/25/17 this year, and will be good again each year in the week before Christmas:  to honor and assist people in the caring professions, each year in the week before Christmas we will give away Tranquility Pillows  ($150 value) to all K-12 teachers and counselors, nurses, fire or police officers who request one. Contact juliawsea@gmail.com with your request.  Thank you for your service to humanity; we could not survive without you!

***

* Stephen A. Marglin, The Dismal Science: How Thinking Like an Economist Undermines Community (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), 18.