Jaime Mathis and The Words

People pay a lot of money to hear Tom Kenyon in person. The first time I ran across his sound work, he was channeling whales . Yes, you heard me, he was making whale sounds that were most authentic. I'd never heard a person be so whale like before. He can throat sing too. Think Tibetan monks with the fabulous mohawk hats and the deep, bi-tonal, cow-like bellows that echo across Lhasa. There is even a documentary about his sound work and boy, is it unique. He visits caves in southern France and channels earth spirits living in the caves. He chants Vedic mantras while playing the tingshas and singing bowls. He's got to have at least a three octave range. From a musical standpoint, he's got an impressive instrument. He's also a trained therapist and has collaborated on numerous research projects focused on how sound affects the brain. The results are, as you might expect-just as interesting as the man himself. His public speaking manner seems to be a blend of well

Some of you may have noticed a flurry of nature photos on my Facebook page over the last five days. Water, moons, horses, trees- all of this adds up to an explanation. I was set free into the wilderness of the San Juan Islands to seek out the sound shaman, Tom Kenyon and a Tibetan healing wizard simply known as Amchi-La. A bit more detail, please? But of course. Every Autumn, it seems that I find myself on a personal pilgrimage to reclaim the singular experience of life as me. Just me, not in relationship to or identifying as, anything other than Jaime. Not Jaime the mom. Not Jaime the wife. Not Jaime the Mathis. Just gloriously anonymous, completely undefined, moi. Usually this involves some kind of travel and learning, since that's what fires up my imagination. And this particular Fall, my pilgrimage retreat took me to the misty isles of the San Juans and the particularly winning, Orcas Island . Fate was conspiring with me. Last year at this time, I found myself h

It may have been the whiskey the princess and I consumed after he boarded the plane. Maybe the parting words he whispered before stepping on the escalator, “You always take my jokes seriously and laugh when I’m telling the truth-what more could I want?” All these tiny sub-plots shacking up together until our destinies were a tangled mess of co-dependent probabilities.  We were made for loss, the three of us. The opposite ends of the globe conspired for eight weeks to fuse our skins until geographical impossibilities ripped them into separate humans again. A line of happy paper-dolls forced to face the world as flimsy individuals. The universe never holds its breath.  So we ricocheted back across oceans, finding places where the booze ran free and our lungs recognized the air. Still, the ache. Memory became an angel that tortured and sensitized.  The princess faded like Sleeping Beauty, letting silence lull her into a dreamland where everything floated in suspended animation.  He and I

All that pretty hair drifting through your fingers on the way to the ground. So light the sun blows right through, like all that care was a dream. That heavy hand of hope pressing out the color from adolescent afternoons, our hands slow, careless, quivering novices. All those noes before inhaling, stilling regret, then speaking. One more morning dive beneath covers before sailing down a river, smelling pomegranates, and knowing your stomach turns at someone else’s longing. There’s the almost of an early Spring, one breath away from frost, the upheld pause, suspension that expects the fall. Inevitable, endless, earth; we no longer recall how to regain the moon.

Self-publishing outstripped the traditional publishing market in terms of titles produced around 2010. Yes, you might agree, but how many of those titles are complete rubbish? Furthermore, selfies are the ones who got rejected from real publishers so what could I possibly have to learn from them, right? There have been naysayers since the dawn of time and if we’d listened to them, the bicycle, the computer, and humans on the moon might never have happened. So what IS there to learn from the world of self-publishing, and how might it make your career as a writer more fulfilling? Confession time. I never even approached a traditional publisher. With any of my books. I did my research and decided that the open road was the way for me. Why? Let me be clear. I like control: I like to create what I want to create and write about what I want to write about. I also want to be connected to any money I make and any decisions about how I am portrayed. Self-publishing appealed to me like the wi