It’s Friday, Nov 5, 2010. A warm bright day in Jakarta. As I usually do, after waking I called folks back home, made a cup of coffee, and sat down to check e-mail. As it usually does, my e-mail brought some good stuff, and some issues for me to grumble about. Then I read the news:

“Eruptions at Mount Merapi are still continuing and with increasing intensity. And it would seem that the recent earthquake off West Sumatra may have also contributed to increased activity of other volcanoes – with some 19 out of 68 volcanoes in Indonesia having been given yellow status – that is, a heightened level of alert due to escalating activity – including Anak Krakatau. Authorities in response have declared a no-go zone within 2 kilometers of Anak Krakatau. Meanwhile relief efforts have been hindered at the Mentawai Islands, West Sumatra due to bad weather.”

Here I am focusing on my petty issues when a few hundred miles away—the distance from San Diego to LA or New Orleans to Houston—volcanoes, poisonous gas billowing, lava, rock and ash spewing volcanoes are erupting. The caretaker of the mountains spirit is dead, along with at least 92 others.  A friend who lives about 40 km from Merapi said “the ash is falling like snow.”

Ashes from Mt. Merapi erruption are falling like snow

As events  often do, they brought to mind a book: Life As We Knew It by Susan Pfeiffer. This book, with its tsunamis, rising water, erupting volcanoes, storms, devastation and deaths did to me what Orson Wells’ broadcast of War of the Worlds must have done to listeners during its day. It terrified me—and captivated me—and is still haunting me—more with every day’s news. Written as Pennsylvania teen Miranda’s diary, this futuristic-cautionary tale is a real-time account of Miranda and her family’s struggle to survive after an asteroid knocks the moon off course. Pfeiffer’s Miranda makes my bitch, moan, and complaining feel normal. Even after these worlds collide,  Miranda sweats the small stuff, fights with her mom, longs for romance. I like that in her.

News like this, books like this, make it hard for me to go about my business. It might be different if I were a health service provider or provided a service. But I’m not and I don’t. I write. And when I’m not writing I plant flowers, make frivolous hats, organize parties, or go, as I am scheduled to today, for a mani-pedi and cream bath. It’s difficult to carry-on with such blatantly hedonistic pursuits in the midst of so much horror. It makes me feel like Nero.

So, instead of doing what I usually do, I wandered around the house wondering: what should I be doing?

Should we change who we are because what we are isn’t noble or necessary? Should a cat stop being a cat?

Then I remembered the 2001 holiday season. Some society maven (maybe the breakfast cereal heiress?) was thrashed by the media for holding her annual holiday fete that year. Popular opinion dictated that in the Wake of the 911 Twin Tower attacks no one should make merry—especially not to the tune of U.S. millions. Her response (I paraphrase): You give your way; I give mine.” She then published an itemized bill for the party and suggested critics consider how many people she is employing and how, by throwing the party, she was doing her part to bolster the suffering economy.

She had a point. Maybe the best thing I can do, especially considering what I do, is follow her example. And, as Sam told the radio talk show host when she asked how he was going to get over the death of his wife, Maggie:

“[I’m going to]get out of bed every morning and breathe in and out all day.

And after a while I won’t have to remind myself to do it.

And then after a while I won’t remember how perfect things were.” -  script from Sleepless In Seattle

From Gypsy, the musical based on the life of infamous Burlesque stripper, Gypsy Rose Lee, (Styne, Sondheim & Laurent 1962) I learned “You Gotta Have a Gimmick.” Translation: What’s your hook? If you can’t tell me in one sentence what your story is about, then you aren’t sure….and make it sticky (ala The Tipping Point)!

From My Fair Lady, based on Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion, (Lerner and Lowe 1956) I learned “Now once again, Eliza, where does it rain?/ On the plain! On the plain!/And where’s that soggy plain?/In Spain! In Spain” and “Ay not I, O not Ow, Don’t say “Rine,” say “Rain.” Translation: Practice makes perfect and grammar counts.

From Mary Poppins (Richard and Robert Sherman 1964) I learned how to deal with critique and rejection letters: “A spoon full of sugar helps the medicine go down…”

But the most important lesson of all, the life lesson that has helped me focus, direct my energies, and define what I want to achieve through my writing and for my life came from The Music Man (Meridith Willson, 1957). Professor Harold Hill, a smooth-talking, womanizing, flim-flam man cons the “good people” of River City, Iowa,  into buying band instruments and uniforms for their boys under the guise of forming a “town band.” Professor Hill (Robert Preston in the movie)—who can’t read music or play an instrument—instructs the boys using “The Think System,” asserting that music can be learned just by thinking it.

At the climax of the show, a moment that still stops and then warms my heart, the boys, in their ill-fitting uniforms and wielding their shiny new instruments, are assembled in the gym. The tar is hot, a bag of feathers handy….Love interest, Marion the Librarian (Shirley Jones in the movie version) snaps a pointer in half and hands it to the handcuffed Professor. It’s do or be done to time for good old Harold.

Professor Hill raises the pointer, cocks his head, squeezes his eyes closed and implores: “Think, boys, think!”

And they do. Every boy in that room blows, bangs, or beats his instrument with every drop of musicality he  has. And I’ll be danged if they don’t make music!  It’s not perfect; the band is far from on key or in time, but those boys play music! Before our eyes the motley crew become a shining, high-stepping brass band—76 Trombones strong. “That’s my Barney!” one dad calls out (our family’s ataboy!)

The current name for it is the  “Art of Abundance” defined as:  “ The secret to getting the goals you set begins with setting an intention — a powerful tool that generates results because it reprograms your brain to see the truth: That you are easily and effortlessly accomplishing what you desire.”Oprah touts it, preaches it, devotes programs to it. Books like The Secret and The Passion Test teach it. Before all of them, Meridith Willson had it (it may have taken 8 years and 30 revisions, but he proved it with The Music Man.): The Think System.

You can do it! As sure as those boys played those instruments, you can do it–whatever your IT is. You can write that poem, that play, that book! You can achieve everything you want…but first…first….first: You have to Think It.

To paraphrase Professor Harold Hill “Think, Writers. Think!”

The capitalizd “ADULT” is theirs:  The people who smirk when I say I write “children’s books” and think I’m the worst sort of underachiever when I say  I’m good for about 750 words–no more, and often, no less (not good, as picture book publishers seem to want younger and shorter). And, no, my ambition is not to write the next great literary novel, or the next Harry Potter-ish  zillion-seller.

I write mostly picture books (and recently, chapter books).  Books  for children–children between the ages of 0 and 9, yeah, those little guys. The ones that can’t read well, or can’t read at all… yet. Because inside–regardless of what this blousy, saggy, wrinkled body I inhabit may imply–I am a child aged somewhere between 0 and 9. I realized today, as I walked all alone down some unknown road in an unfamiliar city–feeling little, lost, lonely and sad–that  (to paraphrase my own text) no matter how big I get or how old I get, I will probably always be a child.

I want what every child wants: love, acceptance, companionship, and reassurance that whatever I do or don’t do, at the end of the day someone fearless and reliable will make sure I am cozily tucked in. That I have everything I need–including a glass of water and lovies. That, those mean, scary under-the-bed spookies have all been chased away. And that, at the end of it all, no matter how ugly, or mean, or hard it seems–everything is going to come out just fine.

Don’t you?