Not Just a Collection of Short Stories

By Anne Wilson Schaef PhD

There is an important place in the literary world for short stories and always has been. Many of the world’s greatest spiritual leaders and teachers have done their most effective teaching in the form of short stories and parables. Who are we to ignore what they have taught us about the form or process of teaching as well as the content? In this world of overloaded focus on content, perhaps it is the awareness of changing form and process that will ultimately save us as a species and a planet. Who knows? Certainly we can leave no stone unturned in our quest to heal and grow personally, as a society, and as a planet. We need all the help we can get.
Schaef is well-experienced in the world of living life, observing, and participating with others as we all attempt to bumble along together. This is a warning before you begin to read.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Nov 26, 2021
• ISBN: 9781663231277

Anne Wilson Schaef PhD

Anne Wilson Schaef is a New York Times bestseller with several million books in print. Her writings have focused on healing, recovery, transformation and spirituality for individuals, organizations, societies and the planet. Schaef has a doctorate in clinical psychology and an honorary doctorate in human letters. This is her first sharing of personal writings.

Book preview

Copyright © 2021 Anne Wilson Schaef, PhD.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or

mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the

written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue

in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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ISBN: 978-1-6632-3126-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6632-3127-7 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021922315

iUniverse rev. date: 11/19/2021

Contents

Warning

About the Author

Preface

Introduction

How Dare You!

Simple Words

A Core of Positivism

Section I: RELATIONSHIPS

The Tradeoff—Trying to Make Relationships Work

Tradeoff

Redundancy—Friendship

Redundancy

Missing

Family

Not a Quiet Silence—Relationship Wars

Not a Quiet Silence

Our Teachers Are Everywhere—Not All Our Best Relationships Are with the Two-Leggeds

Our Teachers Are Everywhere

On the Death of a Pet

A Relationship—A Series of Poems about a Relationship

Surprise!

Why Do I Love You?

Sunday Night—Three Weeks Away

Keep It Simple

A Foreign Land

Truth Speaking

Poor Choices for Wise Living

Shadowlands

Pushed Too Far

Mein Blaues Wunder

The Seething Anger

Did I Ignore

Tiredness

Ugh!

Dissipating Smoke

Usury

Programmed

Go ’Way

Settling Is Not My Style

Perhaps

Truth

Before This Death

Getting Clear

Seventy-Five

Where Have You Gone?

Your Kind of Loving

Whew!

You Don’t Say!

Destruction

I Believe

Enough Now

Contributing

Are We Having Fun Yet?

Multiples

I Would Hold You

An Old Love

Choosing Freedom

Enough!

Full Circle

Life

Section II: LOVE

On Love

Kinds of Love I

Kinds of Love II

Kinds of Love III

Poems on Loving

I Would Do More

Love?

Male and Female

Pete

Section III: ON WOMEN

To a Woman and Her Four-Year-Old Son Swept Out to Sea by a Flash Flood

Feminism

Evolving Feminism

Breast Cancer

Cancer

Breast Cancer

Sacrifice I

Sacrifice II

Support

Women Being Women

Failure

Women Beware

A Padded Cell

Peckers Away

Section IV: CULTURE

Native Born

Native Born

Only with You

Healing Cultures

Not My People

Currents

Native Peoples

Gentle People

The Poetry of the Oppressed

Money

Understanding Youth?

The Young Visitor

Relevance

Generation to Generation

Differences

Effortless

Boring

Gay Men

Family

Please God

Comfort

In Fairness

Healing from Inculcated Ideas

Old Lovers Can’t Be Friends, nor Should They Be

Self-Centeredness—Once Removed

Estrangement

Letting Go

Tragic Lessons

Religion

Fancy Food Fads

To Fuse or Not to Fuse

Passion

Section V: HAWAII

Kauai

‘Aina Embrace

Kauai

‘Aina

Leaving ‘Aina

What Cost Civility?

The Merrie Monarch Parade

A Sky-Kissed Parade

Kauai, First

My Island

The Healing Aloha of Hawaii

The Healing Aloha of Hawaii

Sovereignty

What Kind of Nation Is This?

On Rebirthing a Nation

There Is a Place

Section VI: WRITING

The Struggle

Choices

A Muse

Bare Pages

Writing

Just

Writing Poetry and Having Fun

A Serious, Meaningless Question

Fun in Ireland

Snot

Listen

Word Play

Un

Oddly

Whatever

Giving In

For Writers

At Last

The Blankness

Writing Spooks

Garrison Keillor and Billy Collins

Final Thoughts on Writing

Some Thoughts on Writing

Empty and Full

Section VII: NATURE

We Have Done Harm

Oh, Earth, I Cry for You—and for Myself

The Way of the Spirit

I Hate to Prune

It’s Odd

Arkansas

The Leaves’ Lesson

Snowscape

Ireland

July

Orcas Island

The Meadow

The Watcher

Otter

The Wind River Range

Realization

Hawaii

The Lowly Hau

All for a Grain of Sand

Water Spiritual

Return

Oneness

Ahhh!

Apology

The Earth

Section VIII: WISDOM

Bits of Learning

Mind-full-ness

Fear

When Shall I Hear the Answer?

Answers

Mistaken Humility

Grief’s Lessons

Admiration

The Grief Process

The Grief Woman

Self-Imposed Constrictions

Comfort Zones

Turbulence

Pondering the Attitude of Entitlement

On Aging

I Really Don’t Mind

Dissipating Fears

Aging

Changes

Lifelong Learning

We Are Never Too Young for Life’s Lessons

Section IX: ENDING/CLOSING

Random Thoughts

A Relieving Thought

Contagion

I’m Not Finished Yet

I’m Not Finished Yet

Stretching Ourselves

Horizons

Common Bliss

Service

The Changes

The Changes

Some Thoughts Pointing to Wisdom

Some Thoughts

A Simple Path

I Believe

Constitutionally Incapable

I Choose

The Greater Good

Random Thoughts

Humility

Turtle—Eagle—Ancient—Now—Eagle Bear

Vapors

Love

Sin Bravely

Closing Thoughts

Bad News

Sameness

Efficient

Simple Truth

Afterword

Warning

Read at your own risk!

This book does not have

to be read straight through—

or, it can be read from cover to cover

Whatever you want

Pick and choose

as you will.

It is up to you to choose

how you approach it.

This is a book to be lived with.

Good luck, and good reading!

About the Author

Anne Wilson Schaef, PhD, is back in the game. This New York Times best-selling author, once described as one of the most important thinkers of our time, has returned from her spiritual retreat and time-out to get clear. She has had four new books come out recently, with two or three on the way. She is not finished yet. She has broken her silence and is now ready to share her observations, thoughts, and wisdom about individuals, relationships, cultural trends, and the world we have created, in which we are embedded and by which we are acted upon.

With Schaef’s previous books, publishers, booksellers, and bookstores always tried to put her into a category—psychology, New Age, women, politics, organizational, addiction—and none ever completely fit. At least the publishing world could pigeonhole her as a nonfiction writer. Well, those days are over!

As an eighty-five-year-old Cherokee Irish English elder, Schaef has a lot to say about her observations, thoughts, and awarenesses, and what she has to say is more focused than, bigger than, and more inclusive and far reaching than any form or category. With a keen eye, wisdom, and humor, Schaef stands back and observes and fully participates in our world today. Gratefully, she has not succumbed to it. With a piercing awareness and a loving compassion, she sees what we have created and reflects it back to us.

In Not Just a Collection of Short Stories, through short stories, essays, poetry, and a collection of thoughts, observations, and participation with, Schaef ponders our world with us.

Schaef often said, Don’t try to girdle me into a category, a form, or a pigeonhole. We are all too big for that. Reductionism is out of style. Reductionism has had its run. It’s time to expand and expand. Don’t be afraid.

Our self-imposed prisons are not necessary. They only give an illusion of safety. Don’t be fooled.

Preface

Some people hate short stories. This book probably isn’t for them—although … it may be …

Often, agents, editors, and publishers think of short stories as, well, short. Authors of short stories are either lazy, distractible, incompetent, or unable to maintain the proper literary erection long enough to finish the job properly. Why don’t they just take a pill and do a novel?

Why not? Because there is an important place in the literary world for short stories, and there always has been. For example, many of the world’s greatest spiritual leaders and teachers have done their most effective teaching in the form of short stories and parables. Who are we to ignore what they have taught us about the form or process of teaching as well as the content? In this world of overloaded focus on content, perhaps it is the awareness of changing form and process that will ultimately save us as a species and a planet. Who knows? Certainly we can leave no stone unturned in our quest to heal and grow personally, as a society, and as a planet. We need all the help we can get.

In addition, in this age of micro–attention spans, nano–sound bites, and irresistible impulses to plunge into anything and everything, especially nothingness, why not small, almost homeopathic doses of the opportunity to learn something about relationships, our world, differences, and even, perhaps, ourselves? In a short story, this can happen before we are actually aware that learning, or growing, or awareness might impinge itself upon us. We might even be seized with curiosity and questions!

Miracles are, I believe, still happening.

So why not a book of offerings that are More Than a Book of Short Stories??

Why not a little book of (hopefully) gems that doesn’t require the commitment (ah! there, it is—a scary concept indeed in this day and age) or the intimacy (whew, again, sheer terror with this one—our lives are too often geared to escape from intimacy at all levels, not to embrace it) of the long novel? Why not do a short snuggle with a book of short offerings to see what happens?

One won’t have wasted much time, and there is the vague hint of the possibility of nanogrowth in self-knowledge, useful awarenesses, or … just … fun.

Imagine all that in just the time it takes to read a short story.

Before I offer too much, I want to make very clear that I am a novice in the art of the short story, yet, well experienced in the world of living life, observing, and participating with others as we all attempt to bumble along together. I say this as a warning before you begin to read.

The biggest danger is—as is, indeed, almost life’s biggest danger—not to learn anything.

And ultimately, that is up to you, the reader.

Isn’t that just the way of it?

Read on if you wish to take the risk.

Introduction

Writing, when it is done well, evokes the spirit, body, mind, and entire being of the writer and the reader. At its best, writing can inform, entertain, heal, prod for growth, and articulate what we already know and have not been able to form into words, thoughts, and ideas. Writing not only has the potential to birth the nascent; it can prod and push us to a deeper understanding (and maybe even compassion with!) ourselves, our relationships, our culture, and the world around us. Writing can help us fill in the blanks and jog us out of our complacencies to greater understanding and wisdom.

Some writers nowadays choose only to invoke the mind of the reader or hit upon a secret formula and take the easy way out. Usually, these works are not the pages that one repeatedly returns to for the opportunity of a fresh awareness.

The writings that engage our entire being are the ones that call us back again and again and push us to new depths of understanding of our spirits with every reading.

I do not necessarily profess to be one of those writers. I only know how much I treasure their outpourings when I happen upon them.

Some writing is almost too personal to share as we use it to work through our own secret growing pains. And yet, if our muses push us to write something down, I suspect there is some possibility it might be helpful, healing, entertaining, relieving, and even challenging to someone who needs to read it.

Different forms appeal to different people. Why should we be limited to forms anyway?

A college writing professor once told me that one of my early short stories, The Grief Woman, which my muses dictated to me in two hours, was not a short story. She said it was good and was interesting but was not a short story.

Of course it’s a short story, I said. I wrote it as a short story.

Well, it just doesn’t have the correct form of a short story, she proclaimed.

So what does that mean or matter? I fired back.

Carefully and patiently, as if talking to a child, she explained there were certain forms that writing, whether a novel, poetry, a short story, or an essay, must subscribe to, and my short story did not meet the standard.

A few years later, when I ran into her, she rushed up to apologize.

Remember that short story you wrote years ago? she queried.

I nodded. Of course I remembered. You mean the short story I wrote that wasn’t a short story? I teased.

Yes, well … She stammered a bit. The rules have changed, and now it is a short story, she mumbled.

What a relief! I exclaimed, and I hugged her.

Does anyone know the legions of writers who have quit writing or quit sharing their writing because some authority figure said their work did not fit the form?

Who invented the forms anyway? Someone had to invent them. And, they did not exist before someone invented them. And, we can all participate in creation.

How Dare You!

How dare you