I've been driving around these past few days and noticing how much the place I live doesn't look like the West Maui mountains. Every morning for the past two weeks, I opened my eyes to see those mountains by the ocean, to see orchids growing with the extravagance of burdock along the roadside and volcanic hills rolling down to a sapphire surf under a madly painted Gauguin sky.

That was during the evening.

During the day, I stayed in a small but freezy room trying to eradicate writing like the writing above from the face of the earth.

My students at the Maui Writers Conference – one of the oldest and most successful of its kind in the world – were immensely talented. As a group, they had more sheer ability than any other dozen students I've taught.

The only problem they had, as one of them so succinctly put it, was getting out of their own way.

It's probably the hardest thing any of us will ever have to do.

Not just for creative people, but for anyone who dreams of something that seems wildly out of reach, then just beyond our grasp, then just about possible, the nearly impossible thing is letting the dream come true.

What if it doesn't? There’s disappointment and mourning, but not much really changes.

What if it does?

That raises the stakes.

If you write a hit song, you might have to write another.

What if you know, as Don McLean knew, that you would never write a song as popular as 'American Pie,' even though 'Vincent' was more beautiful and compelling? What if you wrote two hit songs and people started to think it was easy for you? It’s never easy! In fact, the more you do something that you do well, the higher standards you set, and the harder it gets.

It's easy to say, do it anyway. Don't hide your light. Take the risk. Put yourself out there.

It's not easy to do. I saw the struggle in my students’ faces: Being safe but unfulfilled is miserable, but at least familiar. Succeeding creates an obligation to a larger world and a real potential to fall on your butt – not simply in front of those you loe you, but in front of those who don’t.

And yet I said to them, do it anyway. As Katie Couric, a widow for eight years as I am now for thirteen, said to me recently, we are finite. We don’t have tomorrow promised to us. All our somedays are this day.

Of course, no one who dies with a song still inside knows it.

But from now until that day…you will know. You'll know you chose to hang around the edges, where the fish were little, instead of rushing out there where the water is over your head and the game was big.

Every one of my students under those spangled skies wanted to go out there, to play for high stakes. Every one of them has the right stuff. What would the world be like if we all kicked over the gate and let ourselves run free?

It wasn't that it was that good a movie.

But the performances, by mostly unknown actors, shuddered with emotion -- love, panic, pity, fear.

It happened in what would, I assume, have been real time. What was compelling to me were the faces of the air-traffice controllers as first one, then two, then three, then four planes went off course. The few air-traffic controllers I know are, for want of a better word, controlling. They do think of the airplanes as entering their sky. As they scrambled to make sense of what was happening, we could almost smell their fear and rage.

The scenes flashed back and forth between Air Traffic Control in Washington, D.C. and the interior of the cockpit on Flight 93, which, of course, crashed in Pennsylvania not long after 10 a.m. on September 11, 2001, before it could plough into the Capitol. Crew members and passengers, truly heroes, took over the plane from four terrorists.

Their ordeal was long. Never have I seen the theory of relativity demonstrated so well. For about fifteen minutes, they endured ten lifetimes of anguish, an eternity of fear. And they did what they needed to do -- perhaps more than anyone else did that morning, more than the military, more than the president. They put their country's welfare ahead of their own, hoping to survive, knowing they would not.

Still, perhaps the most poignant scene was, for me, watching individuals check in to Flight 93.

They passed their bags through a scanner. They walked through a metal detector. But they smiled and joked with the examiners in a way that we simply cannot do anymore. A joke of a particular kind, however innocent, is reason for closer scrutiny. Smiles, even genuine smiles, are forced. The relief, when I can pass through the gate and -- these days -- finally buy a coffee, is palpable.

I travel for business every month for at least a few days; and the moment when I wait to be screeened still is the most anxious moment of the trip. I want to be safe; I want everyone to be safe. But that feeling of adversarial distress has never gone away: We all are the enemy until proven otherwise.

So much has been written about September 11 that anything anyone writes in commemoration of its fifth anniversary is redundant. But when I cried over the movie 'Flight 93,' it wasn't only for the gallantry in the face of death displayed by the passengers and crew.

I cried for the time when we were free.

Jackie M.

Because sometimes this little website is the victim of the slings and arrows of outrageous power outages, once in a while a blog gets lost.

Last week, I wrote a little something about how I was addicted to online shopping.

Online shopping addiction is even more pernicious that credit-card addiction and here's why. When a person goes wacko with a credit card, there are at least goods and services or the receipt (in your hand or your bag) to the effect that money was spent. A purchase to run home and hide by sending in a child to distract your husband while you run for the basement storage room (the sweater shows up later, preferably at a very busy social occasiona, as the modern equivalent of "that old thing"). Only when a couple of weeks pass and the bill arrives does the remorse set in. Only then does the thought, "Stop me before i buy again!" haunt your dreams.

With online shopping, the situation is even more dangerous and ludicrous.

There is no bag! No item! No pedicure! Nothing to hide! No proof that I need therapy ( and, indeed, how could I afford it?).

Whatever you buy shows up later, in a box or an envelope... like a holiday gift! Who knows whence it came? My goodness, it does seem to fit (or sparkle, or look good, or go with my brown suit..) But during the actual DEED, the buying marathon, there is no hesitation, no guilt.

A really good (bad) place to exercise this addiction was introduced to me three weeks ago by my son, Dan. I have since spent roughly the GNP of the state of Delaware on this site, $15 - $35 at a time.

It's called etsy.com.

It's comprised of a collective of artists who make and sell handmade goods at what seem to be outrageously low prices. The prices seem so low BECAUSE THERE IS NO MIDDLEMAN demanding a pound of flesh.

Thus, earrings and handmade paper books and hand-knit sweaters and shawls and ornaments and picture frames can be purchased for what seems like coffee money -- with the artist fairly compensated and my acquisitive little fingers dancing with happy-happy-joy-joy across the keyboard.

I've purchased trinkets and gifts from JOYouz, TVtrayart, mlrstudio, hoolala. They all sell the most wacky, wonderful and unique items (who knew that I could not go on living without bobby pins decorated with a verse from Emily Dickinson? Or a bat necklace? Or a gorgeous charm on a chain with my three-year-old's image on one side and his younger bro's image on the other for the boys' grandmother? Who knew that I needed autumnal earrings, or an Alice-in-Wonderland bracelet?)

After my initial binge, I backed off. Now, I try to go to etsy.com at least once a day as I would go to a pro baseball game -- to watch, but not to play. if I can manage, I only e-window shop.

It's difficult. Like dieting.

One reason why it's difficult is that there is a function on etsy that allows a visitor to REQUEST things be made. Artists write and offer their ideas, at $10 a pop! For example, my son, who'd been carrying his $8 million i-Pod in a case made of duct tape, requested a more appropriate one be sewn for him that had on it, I believe, the French Cross of Honor. And so it came, days later, the perfect thing.

I could go on playing shop-on-etsy (where I've barely skimmed the surface; there are thousands of artists and umpty-ump gabillion tings) and spend enough money so that my children couldn't have mittens this winter.

But hey, I'm sure they make mittens on etsy... and they're probably a bargaiin!

Wheeeeee!

Check it out. I'll enjoy it vicariously.

Jackie M.