This past weekend I participated in Jamie Ridler’s first Dreamboard Telecircle! Such a wonderful concept – joining people together around the world to share the experience of creating one’s own dreamboard. I love what I came up with, and plan to work with it more to continue to find out what I’m telling myself with my choice and arrangement of images.

The year was 1993. I loaned a friend $500 so that she could afford to reserve a beach house on Cape Cod for a family vacation. I then found out that I needed a new car, which I could not afford. My mother received a $500 check in the mail from Toyota as an incentive to buy a new Toyota. She gave me her old Toyota and I was able to sell my car for $500.

 What did this series of $500 events mean? I chose to see it as what goes around, comes around; an affirmation from the universe that my gift to my friend had not gone unnoticed.

 There was a time when I knew nothing of synchronicities (i.e., the coming together of inner and outer events in a way that cannot be explained by cause and effect and that is meaningful to the observer). I simply wasn’t that aware of what was happening around me. But once I understood the nature of synchronicity, I realized that if I was on my right path synchronicities appeared everywhere.

 In 2004 my new husband and I went on our honeymoon to the high desert country of Sedona, Arizona. It was a place I had always felt “called to” although Roy had never heard of it. We weren’t in town for 24 hours when Roy said, “You know, I think I could live here.” I was stunned to hear a Long Island, New York surfer say those words, but we weren’t looking to move, so I didn’t take him seriously. But somehow, during that wonderful vacation week, we found ourselves pricing land for “sometime in the future”.

 After a Harley ride on our second-to-last day we decided to stop and pick up a T-shirt for a friend. As we exited the shop, we made a wrong turn and instead of being back on the main road, found ourselves in the parking lot of a real estate agency. We figured that as long as we were there, we might as well check it out. We were greeted by Amy the agent who suggested that we take a look at a few homes that were on the market, just to see what we liked.

 The first house was kind of ramshackle, so we drove to the second which was newly built and had only been on the market for two weeks. The minute we were in the door we were captivated. This was the lay-out of the home we always dreamed we might have one day. After 15 minutes of checking around Roy and I met up in the kitchen and he asked me, “Do we need to look any further?”  It was a surreal moment but I shook my head “No”.

Amy stared at us, not quite certain if she was hearing correctly. We had suddenly gone from casually checking out the neighborhood to preparing to make an offer on this house.  We were so unprepared that we had to ask her if she took credit cards.

Although we clearly had Red Rock Fever, a condition not uncommon to first time visitors to Sedona, we still carefully crunched the numbers before we made a final decision. We planned for the house to be an investment for our future retirement. However events moved us along more quickly than we could have imagined and we moved to Sedona full-time in 2007.

So what would have happened if we didn’t go shopping for a T-shirt that day and make the wrong turn into the real estate firm’s parking lot? It turned out that housing prices shot up right after we bought the Sedona home, and plunged immediately after the sale of our house in New Jersey (which, by the way, was purchased by a young couple who, synchronistically, had proposed to each other in the gazebo that they didn’t realize was located at the end of our block.) If we hadn’t acted when we did, we wouldn’t have been able to afford Sedona, or get a fair price in New Jersey. Our timing appears to have been impeccable.

 Some friends and family were sure that we were crazy when we came back from Sedona with a new house. It was a hard thing to explain rationally, because it wasn’t entirely rational.

 But we had been attuned to the signs all along and knew that we had found “home”.

We trusted what was happening and accepted that we were being presented with an unanticipated opportunity. I truly believe that everything is connected and that there are no accidents.

I know that beliefs are very personal but for me, living with the possibilities inherent in each moment makes sense. It gives me hope and has demonstrated to me time and again that things are meant to work out somehow if I pay attention to the messages I’m receiving. The system works.

And I ask you, if you’re always being shown where to go by a benevolent source, why not believe?

Is it possible? Can anyone have too many books?

 Yes, if those books are piling up on chairs and nightstands unread, and you don’t know where your favorites are and you’re plumb out of bookcases or wall space to hold them all. And I’m saying this both as an organizer and as a book lover who has too often run short of shelving in my own home.

 If this is your problem, where do you start? First I have to reiterate my maxim regarding the need for conducting regular mini-purges: Remember That Everything Changes. What had meaning to you five years ago or three years or even last year is not necessarily the same as what has meaning to you today. If you keep accumulating, without staying current on your needs and preferences, eventually you’re going to find that you’re out of room.

 This goes for books too. The problem is that books are rarely JUST books. They represent connections, untapped possibilities, knowledge, history, comfort, security – all of which make it hard to decide which ones should stay and which should go.

Yes, books are our friends, especially when they’re bound to us by the special memories of discovering the joy of reading. I can recall the magic of driving to the library in the winter with my mother when I was young. I was allowed to check out six books at a time and I knew exactly what I wanted – horse books, dog books, mysteries and books about growing up. When I got home, I would run upstairs to my room, carefully balancing the stack, and drop them on the floor next to my reading chair. I’d kick off my shoes, settle into the chair with my chosen book, and press my sock-clad soles against the wall’s hot air damper. An icy wind might be blowing outside, but I had pumping heat to toast my toes and my imagination. Rereading any one of those books brings every bit of it back.

 Book management is certainly easier if you can take advantage of your local library. However it’s still possible to get into overstock trouble when you can impulsively click a button on Amazon at home, or books somehow come back with you whenever you stop in Barnes and Noble for a frappucino.

 So here you are with too many books. How do you choose which connections to maintain and which to let go? A few suggestions:

 Number One: Identify your most beloved books. Of all your favorites, keep only the ones that are in decent condition (i.e., can be reread without the pages falling out) and those that there’s space to store without exposing them to further deterioration. You may want to save some of your children’s favorites for them to take when they move out, but you really don’t want to leave books in an attic or basement for too long; exposure to dampness or temperature extremes is not good for their survival. Ideally, you should be able to have easy access to any you might wish to refer to again.  If a particular book is valuable enough to you, you may choose to have it rebound or otherwise preserved. If you’re ready to pass it on but want a reminder of its place in your life, take a photograph of the cover. 

Number Two: And then there are those books you’ve purchased but haven’t gotten around to reading yet. Sometimes we confuse buying a book with actually sitting down and reading it. Because they’re not the same thing, the unread books tend to pile up. The best way to deal with this is to survey those books, prioritize them according to your current needs or interests, and schedule reading time. Only obtain additional books once you’ve established a regular reading program. Otherwise, they’re just going to sit in the corner and make you feel guilty.

 Number Three: Books you’ve read that don’t fall into the above categories should be passed along for the enjoyment or edification of others when possible. If there’s no interest in a particular subject, perhaps it has outlived its usefulness and can be recycled.

 Number Four: And what to do with the ones that aren’t favorites, and that you don’t plan on reading? The question is: why have you been keeping these books? Two major reasons I’ve found are that either someone significant gave them to you, or they’ve blended into the scenery and you no longer notice that they’re there. Ask yourself –are those significant someones still in your life? If they are, will they notice or care if you donate the book to a library sale or veterans’ home? If you apply this reasoning, you’ll find that the vast majority of your unwanted and unneeded books can be passed on without a problem.

Books can be treasures, and like most treasures need to be cared for during their various life spans. If you’re not willing or able to expend the effort to do that, you should trim your collection to the manageable few. And if you do have the time and space to devote to a full-on library, you are a very fortunate soul. Enjoy!

 – Peggy Tabor Millin

Saw a good one tonight through the Sedona Film Festival. “Cyrus” is a wonderfully-written psychological comedy about a woman caught between her over-possessive son and her new boyfriend. It should open nation-wide in about a week.

Make sure you catch it!

They say that smell is the strongest of the senses that can carry you back in time. Whether it’s the slightest scent of your mother’s perfume, a whiff of your dad’s old cigars, a hint of salty air on the road leading to your favorite beach or a trace of the honeysuckle that you inhaled deeply when you were nine years old, the power of smell can take you places instantly.

One of my favorites is the odor of new puppies. The smell brings me back to the afternoon my parents surprised me with my first dog. I got off the school bus and came into my unlit, raincloud-darkened house. I didn’t see or hear anyone, which was unusual. I spotted a light on in the downstairs den. I walked down the stairs but the room seemed empty. I was about to head back up when I noticed a strangely sweet odor. I scanned the floor and spotted an unfamiliar-looking container in the corner which upon inspection contained a tiny, sleeping 8 week old beagle. That initial sight and that smell are forever wired together in my memory.

 Of course, there’s another dog smell which is equally well-wired – dog poop. There’s nothing like walking down the stairs in the morning and before you get halfway to the kitchen, the odor hits you. Oh crap, you realize. I have to clean that up before breakfast.

 But thankfully, most of my scent memories are positive ones.

My grandfather owned a millinery wholesale store back in the 1950s and ‘60s. I used to go down there with my mom to pick out handbags, wallets, scarves and novelty items (remember bleeding madras?). The big iron door would open into the retail showroom and I would be hit with the overpowering fragrance of leather. Brand-new, rich-smelling leather that I loved to just run my hands over and sniff.

The warehouse is long gone but I once had a psychic tell me something interesting related to it. She was talking about my grandfather, who passed some 50 years ago, and said that he is one of my spirit guides. She said that I’d know he was around whenever I caught a whiff of leather, out of the blue (i.e., not in a leather shop). And every now and then I do, and I make sure to say hi.

Food smell associations…The spicy Old Bay aroma of steamed Maryland crabs, sun-brewed iced tea, peach crisp baking in the oven, even meatloaf and fried chicken TV dinners. They all have their moments in time.

And of course flowers – roses and lilacs in particular, like the ones my grandma had next to her screened-in porch. I recall being maybe four years old and lying upstairs in bed for a nap at her house. The window was open with its white cotton curtains fluttering. The roses and lilacs would waft in on the warm breeze and it all felt so good.

Colognes are huge retainers of scent-associations. I still keep a small collection of bottles, containing mostly fumes now, that remind me of teenage crushes; popular colognes like Ambush, English Leather, Jade East, Hai Karate.  I wish that they had made a spray scent from the essence of burning leaves in the fall, and one that mimicked the fragrance of my plastic Tiny Tears doll and my pencil case on the first day of school.

My largest reservoir of memories associated with scent comes from the years I spent at my summer camp in Connecticut…the smell of the arts and crafts barn where we created enamel pins, vinyl lanyards and woven pot holders. There were the odors of baking ceramic ashtrays, pine bird feeders; paint and glue, clay and freshly-cut wood. There was the strong, rusty odor of the mineral-laden water; the smell of wet rubber bathing caps and damp towels; the wooly heat from an army blanket on a bunk bed on a sweltering summer afternoon. Anyone remember the smell and feel of grape Fizzies bubbling up your nose? Campfires? Earthworms and freshly-caught fish?

By far, the most enduring of these memories for me is the one I encountered daily on the dirt path that led to the bunk houses. It was a rich, green smell that must’ve come from a certain tree or bush, but I never knew which one. It just “smelled like camp” to me. To this day, I’ll be wandering around with friends in the woods somewhere, and I’ll suddenly make everyone stop and sniff. Do you smell it, I ask? That’s it! That’s the smell of camp!

 Instantaneous travel back to the best times of my life.

Nirvana.