Nora Holzinger

I pat the bed next to me almost frantically. I need my cat, Sammy, to lie next to me for the next 30 minutes and I need him to feel loved doing it. You see, Sam is a sensitive boy, and disruption to his routine, or even a feeling of disconnection from his primary caretaker (me) sends him spiraling.  And by spiraling, I mean he pees on things. And me. Repeatedly.   Sam came into my life as a foster fail. My first cat, Waffles, had died suddenly a little while before and the littermate he left behind, B, was deeply disturbed by Waffles’ absence.  I was too. I had had Waffles since he was a tiny kitten found alongside his littermates in a Baltimore City dumpster. When I came home from the emergency vet with an empty carrier, I laid on my living room floor and sobbed into the night, not at all numbed by the half pint of vodka I had drank to escape what had happened. Waffles’ premature death rocked my world.  A day like any other was shattered by a strange cry from t...

I begged my partner to ferry me on the back of a motorcycle up the rutted, unpaved eastern side of the Sandia Mountains. I was searching for something. It was mid-October and still hot in Albuquerque, especially in the valley. The AC was on and we wore shorts while our local stores stocked plastic pumpkins and Halloween decorations. An unusual spate of rain gave the parched weeds false hope, and they rioted green in our yard. Autumn was not arriving, despite all the faithfully conducted rituals. The chile had been roasted, ristras strung, the hay baled and put up in barns, the crows returned, Balloon Fiesta chaos packed in, and tarantulas scuttled across the road searching for mates.  Every morning the sun rose a little later over the top of the Sandias, and every evening the sun painted them adobe a little earlier. Slowly the sun traced its way south along the eastern ridge of the Sandia mountains.  Every marker of the changing season had arrived except the one I lusted after...

  The morning sun peeks over two mountain ranges in New Mexico - the Sangre de Cristos of Santa Fe and the Sandias of Albuquerque, both moodily draped in clouds.  Two writers begin their morning pages - a stream-of-consciousness brain dump to kickstart creativity. One of these writers is me, hunched on my tattered blue cloth couch, scribbling as quickly as I can before I have to get ready for my desk job. The other is Julia Cameron on her leather upholstered chaise, in her million-dollar Santa Fe home. Nestled next to me is a cat I found in a dumpster. At Julia’s feet, a purebred westie .  We are both completing one of the pillars of her New Age self-help creativity bible, The Artist’s Way. The book draws a direct link between creativity and spirituality as the means of “unblocking” creatives who feel stuck or unproductive. It promises to be effective for “any one interested in creative living”, whether your art is a career or a hobby. Elizabeth Gilbert, Alicia Keys, and ...