Ghostly mushrooms with thin stalks stand sentry on rotting logs as my husband and I dare to disturb the quiet with our footfalls.  We hike at this nature preserve, complete with a pond and two waterfalls, frequently.  We pass by the translucent white fungi, having not exchanged a word for the past half hour.

Approaching the pond, I scan for beavers.  I've only seen a beaver here once, it's head much larger than I would have thought.  He parted the waters from the neck up, carrying himself with great dignity, before disappearing into the murk below. 

Once again, I'm disappointed; I haven't seen what I am looking for.  Fall leaves crunch under our boots, and I shift my gaze from searching for beavers to admiring the mist hovering over the water.  A black and white duck bobs on its surface and my mind takes flight.  I imagine a world in which all is black and white. 

Black waterfalls splashing over white rocks. 

White banana slugs leaving a trail of black slime. 

White cedars draped with black snow.

But, oh, how much I would miss the subtlety of green.  The lime green moss.  The hunter green of my husband's coat.  And the oh-so-delicate-green of what looks like four-leaf-clovers floating on the pond's surface.

It's then that I notice a whole other reality.

A rend in the green floating on top of the pond reflects the trees and the sky.  It's as if a whole forest grows beneath the water.  The tree trunks appear to be shooting downwards, perched on top of canopies of green.  While my husband turns back to the trail, I pause and reflect.  Maybe it's not the sky mirrored in the pond, but the pond mirrored in the sky.  We assume that we know which direction is up.  How funny if we have it backwards.

These ruminations slip beneath my surface when my husband coughs, signaling me that it is time to return to the black and white earth beneath my feet.

Mid-Week Mantra Eight:  I invite new thoughts into my world, eager to see where they take me.

I love garage sales.  Over the years, I've found treasures on their way to the trash that I cherish: A set of eight highball glasses etched with a silver-plated "G."   A cheerful vase with painted butterflies and ladybugs.  A Queen of Hearts pin that I've fixed to my raincoat.  When I see these things, it brings me a smile. 

Much to my husband's consternation, I gain equal pleasure from holding garage sales.  He doesn't understand the joy of waking up super early on a Saturday, stapling balloons and signs to major cross streets, and unpacking boxes of used items to display fetchingly on card tables.  He hangs back while I talk to perfect strangers, telling them the story of that particular necklace, punch bowl, or gee-gaw. 

My favorite buyers are the senior citizens, who engage at such a deep level, that a part of me just wants to tell them to cart it all for free.  I wouldn't want to deprive them, however, of the fish tale they'll tell to their sibling or grown daughter of the one that didn't get away. 

At last weekend's sale, an elderly gentleman held up a necklace with palsied hands.  A disk of dusky orange carnellion swayed from his gnarled fingers.  "How much?"

I knew that I'd paid around fifty dollars for the necklace, but when I saw that he was trying to hide the purchase from his wife, who stood admiring my old dishes, I said, "Five dollars."

"Four?" he asked.  When his wife turned towards us, he shoved it into his pocket.

"Sold," I said.

"Honey," he said.  "Come on over and meet this nice lady."

When she reached us, he pulled the carnellion necklace from his pocket and held it out to her.  She beamed.  I pointed out how the orange in the disc picked up the paisley in her blouse.  I knew that if his hands could work the clasp, he would drape it around her neck, so I reached for it instead.  She stood very still, head held high, while I adjusted it to fall perfectly.

"I know I'll wear it every day," she said.

When they left, I watched his old Buick bounce into the curb, then right itself down my street until they were gone.  I dropped his crumpled bills into my cash box and stood considering the mound.  There lay the ones I garnered from the lady who bought my daughter's Beanie Babies to give to her church group.  They met monthly to pack stuffed animals into overnight bags for children who'd lost their homes.  She almost cried when I sold them for only a dollar. 

And then there was the quarter from a little boy who was spending his allowance on a doll for his mother.

The clouds gathered and a drop of rain hit my cash box.  Time to fold my tent and count my take.  I looked at that money and wondered how I would spend it.  Usually, a spa treatment would appeal or copious amounts of sushi.  But when I saw those old bills and shiny quarters, I knew I couldn't fete myself.  Closing the lid, I vowed that I would give it all away--a dollar here, a five there--to new owners, where the true treasure would be the smile on a stranger's face.

Mid-Week Mantra: I am a money magnet and the more I share, the more I attract.

I stood outside one of two stalls in a cramped bathroom on campus, annoyed.  My class began in ten minutes, and after the riot act I had read my students, they knew I placed timeliness high in the pantheon of good character traits.

"Come on already."  I glanced at the student standing in line behind me to see if I'd actually said that out loud.  She seemed lost in the world pounding through her headphones.

Five minutes later, I was wringing my hands to keep them from jiggling the handle.  The door in front of me finally swung open, and a young Asian woman emerged. 

"Hmph."  I knew I'd muttered that out loud to punctuate my annoyance.

That's when I noticed the stump at the end of her wrist.  I immediately stopped wringing my two perfectly good hands.

The woman began tapping the walls with her one functional hand, and I realized that in addition to missing part of a limb, she was also blind.

And here I'd been, sending her negative vibes from the other side of the door.  What had seemed like selfish, bathroom-hogging behavior to me had probably been rather heroic on her part.  It's hard to imagine doing something as simple as making a bathroom stop without a hand or vision.  My being on time shriveled in importance before my own eyes.

I waved the student behind me into the open stall as part of my penance.  For all I knew, she had been battered by her boyfriend.  Or her father had cancer.  Or, with that music turned up so loudly, she was partially deaf.

Everyone has their own stories.  Why should mine take precedent?

Your mantra for the week is:  I respect that everyone has a story, and mine is no more important than anyone else's.

I was having lunch with my new friend, Gayle, just over the border in B.C.  Though it was only fifty degrees, give or take a degree, she suggested we sit outside on the restaurant's patio.  I agreed, not wanting to seem like the wimpy American that I am.  Though Gayle sported red fleece, I noted that the other Canadians on the porch looked comfortable in their shorts.

While I surreptitiously shivered over my pastrami sandwich, Gayle told me about a workshop she'd attended over the summer.  "We talked about what makes us spiral up or spiral down," she said.  She zipped her fleece jacket down in punctuation.

Hearing about spirals, a shape that a Detour Queen such as myself appreciates, reminded me of a conclusion I'd come to a while ago:  There is no such thing as neutral.  Neutral is an illusion; you are either on your way up or your way down.  The best thing you can do about feeling neutral is be aware of it, then catch things before they head south.  It's as if you're a pilot in an old war movie, screaming into the microphone, "May Day, May Day," while you wrestle the flaps upwards.

To head north, I suggest you quickly grab a book with an emphasis on the positive and shove as many sentences into your head as possible.  Or jump in the car and head for the border, like I did, to spend some time with hearty, happy people such as Canadians.  Or you can look to nature to inspire you.  Just try and remain neutral when a squadron of geese flap in a V formation over your head, honking their brains out.  There's something so loony about their call, that as they swerve south, it sends the corners of your mouth north.

Or, if it's a chilly day in October and your new friend makes you smile, even if your face freezes that way, give thanks for the uplift.

Your mantra for the week is: I notice when I'm neutral and course correct north before I head south.

Every Saturday I drag myself out of bed to join my 8:00 am walking group for a six-mile hike.  Though my body protests, my soul insists it knows what's good for it.  And it's always right.

This past Saturday, as we stood catching our breaths while gazing out at the lake, a little woman I hadn't met before told me, "I used to have what looked like a swollen cyst on the inside of my wrist."  She held out her arm, pointing to the smooth flesh where the cyst must have been.

I had no idea why she was telling me this story, but I've learned that when people appear out of the blue, it's usually to deliver a lesson you need to learn.  I adjusted my rain hat, preparing to hear what the cyst had to teach me.

"I went to the doctor," she said, "and he examined it.  He said it wasn't cancer, or anything like that.  So what was it, I asked him?"

The group turned to walk back to the trailhead, the little woman with them.  "Wait, what was it?" I called after her.

She looked earnestly over her shoulder at me, "An imperfection.  He said sometimes we just have to live with our imperfections."

Our mantra for the week is, "I embrace my imperfections because they are what make me, me."

Every few months I choose a word to live my life by.  As I flipped through the dictionary in my mind, the usual suspects presented themselves: joy, surrender, hope, persevere.  None of them really spoke to me from the pages in my imagination.  Annoyed with their silence, I sat at the breakfast table gazing at my Tuscan Melon, as if a word might spring forth from its flesh.

And one did:  Enough.

I took a bite of melon and chewed over my new byword.  What more in life did I need than this moment, this simple meal, and those whom I love and who love me?  So much of life we spend striving for more.  Like the Hungry Ghosts in Buddhism, we go through life with a terrible emptiness that nothing can truly fill.  What if we faced life full? 

There's something liberating about putting down the spoon and pushing away from the table before we become bloated and sluggish.  And I'm not just talking about food. 

So this week, say to yourself, "I have enough; I am enough," and let me know if that was enough.

You've probably heard of the Butterfly Effect, that the flapping of one butterfly on one side of the world can impact the weather on the other side.  What if our thoughts could have the same effect?

So I conducted an experiment from which I'll never know the results.  I imagined a woman in Somalia who had just been beaten by an unknown man holding her at gunpoint.  She's thin, she's sobbing.  Her husband is dead; her children forced to watch the violence against her.  I focused on her face, sending her hope from afar.  You are not alone.  You will have a better life.  Be strong.

Did she look up at my imagined words?  Is she still alive?  All over the world, there are women--and men--who feel hopeless.  Certainly we need to "do" something.  In addition, I propose that we need to "think" something. 

After all, who knows what humanity will understand in two hundred years about the power of our minds to bring about change.  Back in 1972, when the physicist Edward Lorenz was stumped for a title to his speech in front of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Philip Merilees provided this title:  "Does the Flap of a Butterfly's Wings in Brazil Set off a Tornado in Texas?"  Chaos theory and Lorenz would say yes.

If everything is energy, on a subatomic level, how can thoughts be any different than beat of gossamer wings?  We all know about the power of small changes.  I propose, though I can't prove it, that a few words strung together might create the flap needed to save a life.  The world is truly a mysterious place, and that's what gives me hope.

Your Mid-Week Mantra for the week is:  "Let me be an instrument of hope for those who are hopeless."~Bliss Goldstein

And if you can imagine a stranger and send her a message on the wings of a butterfly, all the better.

School started a few days ago.  While my students wrote their first memo of the quarter, I slipped away to the restroom. As I trod down a flight of stairs and into the basement, my way lit by fluorescent lights that were sure to emphasize the hollows under my eyes and imperfections in my skin, my heart sank.  Perhaps it would be safest to avoid eye contact with my reflection.

When I threw open the sticky door,  I caught sight of my harried face in the mirror, then did a double take.  Hanging over my head was a yellow stickee that said, "You're beautiful!"

I drew closer.  In smaller print, it read, "Smile and the world smiles with you."

Of course, even though I was alone, I smiled.

So thank you to a stranger who spread joy in an unlikely place.  I hope to some day soon return the favor.  In fact, next time you're in a port-a-potty, if you spy a fluorescent stickee proclaiming, "Joy to the World!" you'll know the bliss bandit has struck. 

And who her true identity is.

Are you up for a year-long experiment that could increase your joy with minimal investment?  How about a week?

Here's my proposition: Join me in the Mid-Week Mantra Experiment.  Every Wednesday over the next year, I will post  a short saying with the objective of magnetizing the right people, the right ideas, the right attitude into our world.  My plan is twice a day, when waking up and when going to sleep, to say that week's mantra.  For those of you resting next to significant others, it's your choice whether you utter your mantra out loud or silently. 

And if that pattern doesn't attract you, you have lots of options.  You might think about this week's mantra while brushing your teeth, taking a shower, changing the kitty litter, or anywhere else in your life you could make it a habit.

Feel free to draw others into our experiment to make the world a better place from the comfort of our own homes.  I would love to hear what "happens" as a result of  the Mid-Week Mantra.  Does something shift, either internally or externally?  Or does life just grind on with the only result being that you feel stupid whispering to yourself in the dark or with a mouthful of toothpaste?  I want to know.

So that you know who said this week's mantra, I will post the author's name with the mantra, and ask that if you share, that you keep the attribution with the quote.  Though most weeks the mantra will be authored by me, I do want to leave room for guest mantra mutterers.

Are you up for anything happening, including nothing?  Then let's go!  Your first Mid-Week Mantra is:

"I believe the right doors are opening for me and the key that opens them is showing up." ~ Bliss Goldstein

Last night I heard two fellows at a dinner party say with hubris, "Oh, I don't remember names."  One person had introduced himself twice.  The second time, he looked right through me to the bagels on the dining room table.  Maybe he would have recalled who I was if I'd told him my middle name was Lox.

Shouldn't the name "Bliss" been enough to stick like schmeer in his brain?

I sat down with my sesame bagel, and after introducing myself, the young man next to me immediately declaimed, "I'm bad with names.  I won't remember yours in 10 minutes."

A woman across the table pointed her knife at me and said, "Quick, what's her name?"

"Er, Gliss or Bliss," he said, "I'm hoping it's Gliss."

Great.  Not only doesn't he care enough to make the effort to remember me, he's diss'd (gliss'd?) the Bliss.

So here's a shout-out from the woman with no name:  When you don't make the effort to remember people and what they like to be called, you seem like a self-centered boor.  And when you brag about it, what do you think that makes you?

I'd tell you, but I don't like name calling.