Crossroads Dispatches

the eighth-grade dropout who could neither play an instrument nor read music

"One's philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes." - Eleanor Roosevelt

More than half of my November was consumed in Salt Lake City sorting, giving away, and packing the remains of a former life not-so-neatly contained in a cavernous storage locker, not to mention the guest room of my sister's home.

A good friend whom has moved many times in her life says she gives everything away, keeping only handwritten letters and artwork.

"Furniture, clothing, you can get anywhere." In short, she cherishes heART expressions over commodities.

In my frenzy to give away all "self-help" books (which I don't consider art), I'd added Pam Grout's Living Big: Embrace Your Passion and Leap into an Extraordinary Life to the pile. Something made me open it up before the pile made it to library. The book was packed with stories (yes, examples with the self-help formula of a moral, or statement to make, yet they still captured me).

I am sharing the story that stopped me in my tracks at the end, and this snippet below: 

"There's a strong sentiment afoot that creativity is frosting [on the cake], expendable, unnecessary. This is the same voice that tells you you're expendable, the voice that assigns you a number, a punch card, a place in line [a rank on Technorati ;-)]. It's the voice that's desperately afraid that you're going to figure it out.

Usually when we aspire to be "spiritual," we think of things like being kinder, being more understanding, saying more prayers. But in order to fulfill our destiny as spiritual beings, we must also become more creative, more open to the magic, the deep vistas that gush through our souls." - Pam Grout, Living Big: Embrace Your Passion and Leap into an Extraordinary Life

About the same time as I'd re-discovered Living Big, I came across a clipping from week of  November 15th astrology that stirred me to a new resolve to share more direct experience, more art, and less opinion:

"Stories interest me more than beliefs. I'd rather hear you regale me with tales of your travels than listen to you regale me with your dogmas. Filmmaker Ken Burns agrees with me. He's worried about the increasing number of people who love theories more than stories. "We are experiencing the death of the narrative," he told the San Francisco Chronicle. "We are all so opinionated that we don't actually submit to narrative anymore. That's the essence of YouTube: Abbreviate everything into a digestible capsule that then becomes conventional wisdom, which belies the experience of art." Your assignment, Leo, is to help reverse this soul-damaging trend. Spout fewer opinions and tell more stories. Encourage others to do the same." - FreeWillAstrology.com

"Live your beliefs and you can turn the world around." - Henry David Thoreau

Actually, I'm fine with the death of the narrative. Quantum, nonlinear, holographic vibes for me. I agree that dogmas disengage, disconnect, whereas art unites. It's the pithy pundit and the didactic pandit that's heralded these days at the expense of the poet and dancer.

By the way, didactic comes from the Greek didaktikos which means "to teach". Whereas, educate comes from educare, which means "to draw forth". Big difference.

Art educates.

Okay, here's the story that inspired me to share my (short-term) vision with y'all finally in this blog. (The long-term vision is the stuff of science fiction for most eARTHlings...but that too in its time.)

"In January 1959, a thirty-year-old eighth-grade dropout from Detroit borrowed $800 from a family savings plan to buy a house - not an unusual goal for a man of his age. Only this enterprising thirty-year-old had his sights set a little higher. He was going to use that unassuming two-story house to start a record company.

The man, of course, is Berry Gordy, the record company is Motown, and the plan, well, let's say it worked. Between 1959 and 1972, Gordy's Motown released 535 singles, 75 percent of which made the pop charts. From a recording studio that's barely larger than a king-sized bed, Gordy produced 60 number one hits before he moved to Hollywood and sold Motown to MCA Records for $61 million.

I tell you this story because it demonstrates the power of opening to a bigger possibility. Berry Gordy could have easily settled for less. He was black at a time when black wasn't yet beautiful. He dropped out of school in eighth-grade, had already failed at an upstart boxing career, and could neither play an instrument nor read music.

But he had a dream. He wanted to write songs. And if nobody else would produce them, well, he'd just do it himself.

Catching a dream is the point at which all of us must start. We see a vision. We hear a tapping on our heart. We start to wonder if "maybe, just maybe, we might be able to"... write a song, dance a poem, leap into a new way of being. We become willing to say, "It is possible."

When we first begin to listen to our dreams, we don't always know where they're leading us. This is good news. If we could see the final outcome, we might get scared off, put on the brakes, and think, "Whoa, Nelly, that's way too big for me." So luckily all we have to do for now is take the first step, put that first toe out the door.

The other thing that the Motown phenomenon demonstrates is the wealth of talent that so often goes undiscovered. Had Berry Gordy been content to plug lugnuts at a Detroit auto plant, one of many jobs he tried before starting Motown, he would have never plucked Diana Ross, Stevie Wonder, and hundreds of other poor black kids out of the ghetto. It seems impossible that superstars of their stature might have taken another path. But had Diana Ross not caught a vision, she could very well be just another bag lady on Ninth Street; Stevie Wonder, another blind kid on welfare. Thank God, they had the opportunity to tap the creative spirit that was within them.

If Gordy hadn't turned 2648 West Grand Boulevard into a "happening" place to be, "Heard It Through the Grapevine," "Ain't No Mountain High Enough," and thousands of other songs would never have been written.

...The same kind of talent that Gordy found in his ghetto protégés is hidden in the people we walk by every day. It lies hidden because nobody bothers to look, nobody bothers to say, "Hey, look what we can do." It lies hidden behind thoughts of unworthiness, behind "masks" that we put on for a good show. 

Each and every one of us has that same creative spirit. But, no, you're probably thinking Detroit was different. The list of superstars goes on and on - the Temps, the Tops, the Vandellas, the Supremes. But you know what? Gordy could have just as easily opened that record company and been just as successful in Cleveland or Chicago or Omaha, Nebraska, for that matter. There are Temps, Tops, Vandellas, Supremes everywhere. There are people who are just as talented, just as musical. The only thing they don't have is Gordy's vision.

This is not to deny the huge talent that existed in Detroit at that time. What they did on that little three-track recording system in Studio A can only be described as the musical equivalent of sitting in front of the bus.

But it only happened because one man was willing to step up to the plate, was willing to say, "I believe."

"Not to dream more boldly may turn out to be, in view of present realities, simply irresponsible." - George Leonard

p.s. In truth, it's just my hunch that I'm Leo ascendant. While I'm first-born somehow my mother seems to have erased all consciousness of my birthing.

p.p.s. Oh, my, will serendipities never cease. The artwork at the top of this post is from a blog I stumbled across Googling for images with search terms like "supremes art" and "musical chairs". The Pro Commerce blog also makes mention of an interesting twist to a "restaurant." (I did still keep my copy of Marketing Without Advertising by Michael Phillips, the blog's author, after giving away almost all of my marketing and biz books. I also kept Brand Hijack, if you're curious.)

After my friend Cindy's recommendation, I ended up eating and absorbing the inspired spirit of One World Cafe just about every single day for a week. It's been influencing the vision. And I knew the visioneer, Denise Cerreta, when I lived in SLC. Much mo later, or l8r, as I say in emails.

UPDATE: Now this is up my storytelling alley - both for my admitted attention span as writer, present sketch focus vs. distillation of memory, and adoration of the first, raw draft as final draft. Via Reckon (twitter.com/reckon): "[Donald] Barthelme's short stories are often exceptionally compact (a form sometimes called "short-short story," "flash fiction," or "sudden fiction"), often focusing only on incident rather than complete narratives. (He did, however, write some longer stories with more traditional narrative arcs.) At first, these stories contained short epiphanic moments."

Art Unknown artwork that I stumbled across (via Google Images on Michael Phillip's Pro Commerce blog); Irish mailbox photographer unknown (via Emerging Writer blog); current photo of Berry Gordy's unassuming recording company, now a museum; cover art for Stevie Wonder's early album, Innervisions.

urban fantasy alternate reality what if's breathing our world into being

"He believes in respecting forms already established for the novel. I believe in a form which is constantly mutating." - Anaïs Nin

Don't want to say too much more this minute. Let it unfold. But my semi-fictional character, Awen M. Currie, has a new blog, http://revelocean.blogspot.com. (Yes, nevermind linear storytelling, like most blogs it's reverse chronological which still isn't very sensical in a nonlinear reality.) And he's been twittering away at twitter.com/awen8.

I'm experimenting with new ways of playing What If. Visioneering.

"Your weakness is due to your conviction that you were born into the world. In reality the world is ever recreated in you and by you. See everything as emanating from the light which is the source of your own being." - Nisargadatta

The inspiration series was enlightening. The imagination series was fun. Yet there's something richer, more immersive about memoir and fiction that pulls you square and center into the picture in a way that self-helpy non-fiction and expository blog rants can't.

Check out World Without Oil (weekly story index here) if you've a few minutes. Rather than preaching and lecturing (yawn, if you ask me) on a post-carbon peak oil possible future, they've posed relevant scenarios.

You're asked to imagine this is happening. So you've just walked into this global storyline, suspending disbelief, how do you react? Discuss on the porch, over tea, at the water cooler, via blogs and phoned-in calls. Act as if. Live it. For instance, their Week 1 began:

Supply uncertainty drives prices higher    

"Fuel prices jumped this week, led by gasoline which gained over a dollar a gallon on average. Oil distributors pointed to several "renegotiated" delivery contracts as proof that a long-rumored shortfall in the supply of U.S. oil has finally arrived. Oil producers were tight-lipped about the adjusted contracts, and as I write this it's still unclear how extensive the shortfall will turn out to be."

Weave us into a possible future, let us picture ourselves in the middle of a plotline, rather than just spout out more statistics in a news item. I like.

"If we see it from the scientific, intellectual point of view, we see it as almost impossible. If we see it from a magic point of view, we can feel that yes, we can make a difference." - Mayan priest Gerardo Barrios Kaanek

p.s. Jane McGonigal is one of the creators of World Without Oil.

(Psssst, it's no secret, I'm a utopian.) Thus what-if possible futures I'll throw out look radically different. I'm a believer in: Whatever we can conceive of, we can build. Although, the challenge is our collective imagination muscles have been weakened by centuries of defeatism, centuries of utter rationality. Build it, and they will come.

Art I just finished reading The Magician's Nephew, and The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. Tres immersive storytelling. Dreaming of Narnia, by Sarah Carter. What I'd like to call the Wood Between the Worlds, photo via Tamo-Do: The Academy of Sound Healing, Color Therapy and Chi Movement. ("You could almost feel the trees drinking the water up with their roots. This wood was very much alive. When he tried to describe it afterward Digory always said, "It was a rich place: as rich as plumcake." - The Magician's Nephew, C.S. Lewis)

you are not a troubled guest on this earth...you were invited from another and greater night

"Hafiz stands
At a juncture in this poem.
There are a thousand new wheels I could craft
On a wagon
And place you in -
Lead you to a glimpse of the culture
And seasons in another dimension." - "Wise Men Keep Talking About", Hafiz

"To be human
is to become visible
while carrying
what is hidden
as a gift to others.

To remember
the other world
in this world
is to live in your
true inheritance.

You are not
a troubled guest
on this earth,
you are not
an accident
amidst other accidents
you were invited
from another and greater
night
than the one
from which
you have just emerged." - "What to Remember When Waking", David Whyte

Bonus: More inspiring poems at Panhala.net.

p.s. Back from my mission in The Mission district of San Francisco.

And from my Twitter stream: "Why I'm Blogging Less: 3. Harder to articulate, blogging not stratching the creative itch. Fantasy graphic novel may be in the cards."

Can you say mythopoesis?

All pictorial art is the transformation
of dead material into something spiritual. -Anonymous

Same goes for writing.

Art Charles Vess illustration from Neil Gaiman's Stardust graphic novel.

flickering Lights, film is dead, David Lynch & Sundance here i come

"At the end of the novel, "Pyschical Detective" Lew Basnight complains about the movies turning "wild ancient days into harmless flickering entertainment." - Tom LeClair (1)

"Sitting in front of a fire is mesmerizing. It's magical. I feel the same way about electricity. And smoke. And flickering lights." - David Lynch (2)

I used to go weak-kneed when someone quoted the Upanishads. To quote the sweetest scripture is like quoting a tempting menu: "That which is unbounded is happy." Great, I'll have one to go please.

I'm only satiated by eating these days.

So it's wonderful to see David Lynch quoting the Upanishads liberally in Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity. I'd been thinking about video and thinking about Lynch lately as I tend to surrealism and magic realism myself, so I did a double-take when I spotted his book in the Mountain View bookstore window.

I reckon Lynch eats it up too: "The thing about meditation is: You become more and more you."

(And maybe my fav quote from the book:) "We're like lightbulbs. If bliss starts growing inside you, it's like a light; it affects the environment... and if you ramp it up brighter and brighter, you enjoy more and more of it. And that light will extend out further and further." - David Lynch (2)

"I'm through with film as a medium. For me, film is dead. If you look at what people all over the world are taking still pictures with now, you begin to see what's going to happen...

Working on INLAND EMPIRE was very different. We shot it entirely in digital video, so the level of flexibility and control was amazing.

Also, I didn't have a script. I wrote the thing scene by scene, without much of a clue where it would end. It was a risk, but I had this feeling that because all things are unified, this idea over here would somehow relate to that idea over there." - David Lynch (2)

"This reversion, if you will, to a cruder visual medium (but one that's in many ways more fluid, both for the actors – who can work through without pauses – and the editor – who has handy software – and the crew – who can be fewer, and work lighter), has stirred up the director's creative juices, brought him back in a way to the raw energies and immediacy of Eraserhead. Thus it's a return to youthful beginnings and yet something completely new. It's burning the bridges and rediscovering roots at the same time, which basically is what any artist to stay alive needs to do... After fifteen years of disappointment with and doubt about DL, it is possible to love his work again." - IMDb user Chris Knipp reviewing Inland Empire

So yeah, probably not a journal but a DV camera I'm taking to Nola end of February Mardi Gras 2007. We'll see where weaving New Orleans post-Katrina (water), 9/11 (fire), and 1906 SF earthquake (earth), and perhaps an air element? -- and the Book of Revelations, jazz and prophecy, Kerouac and Charlie Parker, unfold as it unfolds.

p.s. I'll be at Sundance Film Festival this Saturday, Sunday, Monday. Call, or text me if you'd like to meet up 408 513 7324.

p.p.s. Lynch's Inland Empire will be playing Feb 8th, 7 p.m. at the Castro Theater during SF IndieFest. From the IndieFest program: "The movie tells the story of an actress, Nikki Grace (the extraordinary Laura Dern), who is signed in to star in a movie that her neighbor (in a gloriously bizarre turn by Grace Zabriskie) warns her is based on a gypsy curse. The story unfolds like a Chinese box: a film within a film that flows back and forth from Hollywood to Poland and from real to surreal. And then there are the giant talking rabbits. Lynch's cinema works at a level below rational inquiry. [Or outside of it.] It's the stuff that dreams are made of."
 

(1) Tom LeClair, "Lead Zeppelin: Encounters with the unseen in Pynchon's new novel", Bookforum, Dec 2006/Jan 2007

(2) David Lynch, Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity

images Grace Hartigan's ('A work of art is the trace of a magnificent struggle. All time is comprehended.") Hunting the Boar; and bison cave art from Altamira Cave circa 15,000-12,000 BC

5 Things You Don't Know About Me

Thanks to Tom and Jill, here's five things you don't know about me: 

1. I'm not as anti-Christmas as I thought I was.  Normally I wouldn't be here. I'd be somewhere sultry and exotic and as far away from the shopping hordes as possible. Somewhere like Quetzaltenango, Guatemala or sea-kayaking in New Zealand or Phi Phi Island, Thailand or tracking jaguar paw prints along the beach of Corcovado, Costa Rica or... Quite often for six or seven or nine weeks at a time.

I don't do Xmas cards or Xmas trees or Xmas gifts. I'm more likely to give you a gift out of the blue on September 19th or July 1st, than December 25th.

If I go as far back as I can recall, I remember the first Christmas I spent in Miami I wrote a story and personally illustrated and hand-bound with yarn. While at some levels I moved up in the world trading in bermuda grass for the asphalt playgrounds of Newark, I was nostaglic for snow. So my story revolved around the gleeful first snowfall in Miami and it occured on Christmas day.

"Blessed is the season which engages the whole world in a conspiracy of love." - Hamilton Wright Mabie

As gifts, I enjoyed making and giving handmade art books of my favorite Christmas carols scribed as lovingly as the monks penned the Book of Kells. Fine, I exaggerate, perhaps as devotional as any nine-year-old or eleven-year-old can be. (In one of your lifetimes, you must go to Trinity College in Dublin and drink of the Book of Kells for yourself.)

I think as I feel my pagan spirit reasserting itself, and I am more attuned to seasons and the earths' tides and the moons' crescents, this winter has made me realize that I thought I could (and wanted to) escape the stripping, raw, stark somber radiant quietude of this season of my lifecycle. What a blessing to stay home it has been.

2. I was Ugly Betty. Although I don't watch TV (you already know that), I've seen Ugly Betty grace the covers of magazines while I stand in line at the grocery counter. So I look at her on that cover and this is what I see: Hispanic girl with long dark hair (mine was far frizzier, hey it's humid in Miami), braces (hers are more fashionable than mine), glasses, socially awkward and painfully shy, her parents probably won't buy her the right (read: expensive) brand of jeans either, no doubt excels in mathematics and chemistry, hangs out in the library and reads Charles Dickens and Jane Austen for fun... Check.

I was a late bloomer then. And in every aspect of Beauty still am today. I'm finally okay with that.

"A garden's beauty does not diminish with age; rather it takes years for it to become all that it can become." - John and Stasi Eldredge, Captivating: Unveiling the Mystery of a Woman's Soul

3. I'd rather read erotica at an open-mic than (gasp) a prayer.  Alright I'm ultra-shy reading erotica in public too, but I've made myself do it.  I was walking past an Asian man sitting comfortably in the lobby of The Palace Hotel during Web 2.0 on my way out the door with Stowe Boyd. And in the corner of my eye, I spot him reading The Energy of Prayer by Thich Nhat Hanh . My first impression: "Whoa, that takes guts to be here out in the wide open with that book."

I received The Energy of Prayer from a publicist in June. Normally I get business books sent for potential review, nothing like this. What a timely gift that book was.

Prayer adds a devotional awestruck wondrous quality to life. I think the most unsettling part of the book I started drafting in May was that the sex read like prayer, and the prayer read like making love. I usually speak from metaphor and symbol, yet even in the literal it totally made sense to me, but I worry about what they would think.

So, whew, there you have it. I love writing prayers (no specific religion, in the "prayer and a candle", "my religion is love" vein) and I am going to be working with a visual artist and maybe musicians to illustrate, to sing the prayers I pen.

4. In a past life, I was a minstrel.  Gulp, first prayer. Now, past life recall? I believe know only thought reincarnates, yet on the relative realm, I can when and if I'm not freaked out by clairvoyance get downloads of bits and pieces of the so-called 'past' and 'future'.

Or maybe I'm fuzzy about whether it was a minstrel precisely. Perhaps a trobairitz? "Trobairitz were Provençal female troubadours of the 12th century and the 13th century who wrote in Langue d'oc."

I have a soul fashioned for wandering, for courtly love ("winning one's heart, not the bed" and I picture Dante and Beatrice or Vittoria Colonna and Michelangelo), and for sound, vibration, voice, the sway of rhythm, poetics, the shared word. 

When I'm not blogging, my writing tends to be lyrical. Leaning towards a Beat-poet jazz-improv style that's impossible to skim and difficult to grasp. I think you just listen aloud like a symphony and forget about whether you capture each metaphor, since the next note is coming right up. As it gets difficult to grasp onto, your mind surrenders and maybe, just maybe, is lulled into the Gap.

Even though today the first thing I see when I open the front door is a piano (my housemate's a musician), I realize I have effectively managed to shut music off from my entire life.

No more - the music of the spheres has permanently seeped in and the Muses want to play.

Ar em al freg temps vengut

quel gels el neus e la fainga

el aucellet estan mut,

c'us de chanter non s'afrainga;

Now we are come to the cold time

when the ice and the snow and the mud

and the birds' beaks are mute

(for not one inclines to sing) - attributed to 12th c. Azalais de Porcairaques

5. I walked the streets this year.  That's practically all I did. From Phuket to Khao Lak to Colombo to Galle to Palo Alto to Los Gatos and many parts in between, I spent almost every part of this year offline talking and observing more people face-to-face than I have my entire life previous. Punctuated by extremely brief spurts of blogging, and a few emails that required attention (I'm notoriously always behind). Not watching YouTube, not scouring Techmeme, pretty much not any of it if it involved booting up a laptop and staring at a screen instead of a person.

"Do you know that conversation is one of the greatest pleasures in life?" - Somerset Maugham

My neo-Luddite phase is behind me and I like how Peter Hamlin in Dialogue: The Fine Art of Conversation puts it:

Technology

can either be used for more efficient isolation or more meaningful intimacy

Dialogue

is an opportunity to further develop this theme

I think that's what I care about intensely these days, intimacy and relationships and god I hate that word, but whatever, social capital. Not the kind of social capital that scores you an executive post at a Silicon Valley start-up (but not excluding that either) but the kind of social capital that sustains us together as humans. The kind of social capital where a neighbor that knows your name walks up to your door to enthusiastically show you the new robin on the block through their binoculars, or that time you've got a sore throat and a cold, a so-called homeless stranger you just met texts you: "would ice cream make it better?"

Just like my favorite writing blurs reality and fantasy, I'm intrigued by the blurring and the sweeping back and forth through the frontiers and borders of the online and offline.

Teahouses historically connote "social intimacy." So I don't think I've ever blurted this out in so many words online yet: I'm opening sometime somehow next year a teahouse that will be a hub, a nexus, a salon for the virtual and the visceral, media and the immediate, art and life.

"In contrast to the  West, where tea is marked by its aristocratic associations, in the East tea is a dietary staple for one and all, and a sign of hospitality even in the humblest of surroundings. Chinese tea houses, India's roadside tea  stalls, Afghan chaikhanas, and the little cafes of Turkey and Egypt are democratic and lively - the opposite of tea rooms in Europe... From the Mediterranean to the Pacific, teas are as varied as the people they unite. - Sangmanee, Kitti Cha et al, The Little Book of Tea 

YOU'VE BEEN TAGGED: I'd love to hear 5 Things from Jennifer Rice of What's Your Brand Mantra, David Chamberlain of Exquisite Safaris, Dan Oestreich of Unfolding Leadership,  Siona van Dijk of  Zaadz, and Senia at Senia.com. (Trust me it doesn't need to be near as wordy as mine!)

Bonus: Same wavelength! Today Siona shares this pagan-prayer-poem on tea by, who else, Thich Naht Nanh.  (Why, of course, she is Zaadz's Synchronicity Coordinator.)

Drink Your Tea.

Drink your tea slowly and reverently,
as if it is the axis
on which the world earth revolves -
slowly, evenly, without
rushing toward the future;

live the actual moment.

Only this is life.

- Thich Naht Hanh

p.s. You gotta love Google. I search for the book, "Dialogue: The Fine Art of Conversation" and the first result is:

The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Kama Sutra - Page 130

images Virgin and child facsimile from Book of Kells via Skriptorium's catalog; Troubadour composing lyrics from Wikipedia and an art nouveau poster e-card

Web 2.0, Connective Transactions, and the Odyssey of a Fascinating Stranded Musician On the Way Back to New Orleans

Yesterday on Palo Alto's University Avenue I met a guy named Wyatt.

In another time I'd have just packed him up to the bus station and plucked down my credit card for his bus ticket to New Orleans myself. BTW, I talk to people, including street people all the time.

Wyatt's different. He went into denial when Katrina hit. He was touring around on the road, playing music in Humboldt, CA when it hit.

I got the long version of story, he's very cool, very much at a turning point where he can face the loss of everything he'd known in Nola and is ready to go back and rebuild and contribute. He's got a great attitude considering, and he manages to score a roof over his head more often than not and makes a little money playing guitar on the street; so he pretty clean.

"To this day I still never reached 95% of the people on my phone list. And the people I cared about the most I only knew from their first names, that's the scene I'm in we only know first names, like Math from "I Hate God" [band]."

He was telling me about the 1964 Beatles mixing console that's gone forever ("the recording studio was on the edge of the Ninth Ward").

He's a musician, recording engineer, and seems to be a bit of a geek -- knows how to code a bit in C++ and Java and HTML and his nickname is "Wire".

Funny thing, now I think about it, that the most vitally interesting part of the story of 'disaster' and 'loss' is the aftermath, the wake, the recovery. Nearly no one asks me about that myself, mostly people want to hear about the very day of the tsunami.

Thankfully I was in no position myself to hand him a bus ticket (he never asked, it was what I would have wanted to do) or even a quarter. I hunched down to ground level to chat with him and look directly into his peacock blue eyes:

"So are you from Palo Alto?" "Naw. Stranded. I'm from New Orleans. A woman in Belmont gave me a roof last night, dropped me off here."

So instead I came up with a better idea that is a social media experiment...and relies on what Larry Harvey, Burning Man founder, calls connective transactions.

"The great efficiency of the modern marketplace depends on the fluidity of value as it flows in one form of commodity to another. If I should buy something from you, no relationship and no moral connection is left to relate us to one another. The value of the money I have spent speeds on to take new form as further goods and services. This is the fuel that powers our economy and produces a flow of never-ending capital around the world.

But what this transaction does not necessarily produce is connections between people. It does not produce what Robert Putnam and other writers have described as "social capital." Social capital is a very different concept. Social capital represents the sum of human connection that holds a society together, and it is fostered by networks of personal relationship. It is social capital that a culture is made of." - "Viva Las Xmas", transcript of speech by Burning Man founder Larry Harvey, April 25, 2002

Wyatt is an articulate and handsome 30-something and would be great on camera. I just pitched the idea to PodTech folks like the Scobles forgetting they are in Europe right now. Brian Oberkirch who did the Slidell LA Katrina blog just pinged me back and said he'd pitch in to help.

Part of my idea involves getting bloggers and the like to videoblog him each day as he wends his way back to Nola in a "connective" manner.

And maybe we'd help him get to the next leg on his journey using online tools (whether Craigslist to score a ride to Austin, or MySpace to post his music and get a small audience following him on the road, or CouchSurfing.com for a place to crash, etc etc).

Few people know what it's like to have everything you know pulled out from under you, and then go through the stages of denial, anger, resolution, etc. He admits he spent too long in denial, but he also seems to see it retrospectively as a growth opportunity. And getting back on his own to Nola is like a test, like an odyssey, for him.

"So why can't your recording studio boss just get you a ticket home? You said he wanted you back to help rebuild it."

"It's kinda a test."

"He's testing you? Or you testing yourself?"

"Little of both."

I have his cell and email...and I don't know how long he'll be in Palo Alto (I live about 25 miles south, just happened to be there yesterday for an IDEO author talk, Made to Stick:Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die), he's trying to head south as soon as possible. I figure if he can pull together bus fare, he can stay at my place tonight.

"So what do you think was mixed on that Beatles console?" I ask Wyatt.

"Hmmm, 1964." He stops for a minute reflecting. "All You Need is Love, I bet."

p.s. This social media experiment in connective transactions just hatched. I absolutely cannot do this alone. Please pass along, leave suggestions especially how you'd like to participate, trackbacks, etc. Thanks! Blessings! My phone is 408.513.7324 and my email is crossroadsdispatches =at= gmail *dot* com.

images Beatles; Jordon Romney's Burning Man 2004 "The Love Project" photo; and Gary Pirnat's 2002 New Orleans photo

Bento Box: A Piece of Uncensored Corporate Art

Rare, if ever, that I've called a corporate blog a work of art. Most honestly bore me. But I'm highly impressed by Bento Box. My impression of BzzAgent from their first corporate blog was it was a highly controversial arena (word-of-mouth buzz marketing) to be launching such an incredibly transparent no-holds-barred blog.

Naked, you could say. (Patrick, Robert Scoble's teenage son said he fielded questions from school buddies about his dad's porn book. The business blogging tome is titled Naked Conversations.) Fresh blood, Ginsberg could say. Refreshing, I say.

Here's three reasons I find it delectable:

1. Tom Parker, a local writer and instructor in Palo Alto, once said that memoir and fiction writing plays with time. One can stretch five minutes into fifty pages or squeeze fifty years into five paragraphs. Well, blogging is a different animal. Time marches fairly linearly on a reverse-chronological time-stamped blog. I've wondered about the linearity of time and how to unhinge from it on a blog. I've wondered how to play with space, rather than time, via a blog. I've wondered how to experiment with an art installation using a blog. And so I had to smile when I got an email announcing the Bento Box. "Think part Blog, part art show, part essay, part media experience," they said.  Aha, great minds think alike ;-)
   
2. How many companies you know hire two artists-in-residences and allow them simply observe untethered the inner workings of a corporation and then freely express their observations online? None come readily to my mind except BzzAgent. I mean one of the early sketches/posts had a dangling penis forgodsakes! And they still didn't squelch the artist on his second penis portrayal either (or is the plural penii, anyhow you'll have to search yourself to find that post).
   
3. "For the next twelve fortnights (24 weeks, or 168 days, or 4,032 hours), The Bento Box will be open for dining." Limited edition. This season only. It's just me probably, but I adore limited edition. I prefer hand-cranked-one-of-a-kind-never-to-be-repeated because there's plenty more creativity where that came from over cookie-cutter-mass-produced lets-churn-this-cash-cow-out until we're all bored to tears. Plus I like how they slying unveil burlesque-style the 168-day installation: "Each business day, another piece of the box will be available for viewing."

   Like CEO Dave Balter said, "All good things come to an end." Amen to that.

Okay, that's just a few reasons. I'll be sharing conversation tidbits from my chat with Dave as I promised over the next week.

It Was So Hot We Stopped Talking About Google (briefly)

"So your offices don't have air-conditioning either?," I say as I plop down next to two laptop-focused solo office warriors gathered at a long bamboo table yesterday at Fantasia.

102 degrees in San Jose Saturday. Broke 100 Sunday. Wicked hot ever since my writer's workshop at Foothill College - so much so that heat came into personhood. Virtually its own character in one thread of my white peach poem. (I like to write multiple versions sparked by differing inspirations -- then weave and snip them together later.)

If my brain was functioning I might recall the economic study that shows industrial nations congregate around temperate zones. Equatorial = poor. Who needs studies? I do not doubt that these languid days I cannot muster energy, or productivity, for much except poetry. (Yep, summer turning brains turn to mush.)

Peaches waltzed into my head as the fan whirred, the air limp in the stultifying college room during the writing workshop two weeks ago.

"In Reading Lolita in Tehran, Azor Nafisi wrote about women who could be expelled from the university because of the way they eat a peach." - Bunny Crumpacker, The Sex Life of Food

Peach. Why peach? That wall set against the stained glass Art Deco door....is it coral, salmon, copper, better yet Copper River salmon, smoky rose or perhaps peach? Whether it's the book, poem, love letter - alright maybe even marketing copy - I care about words more.  The words selected are not accidental, they're richly evocative, archetypal. (Fair enough, you cannot always tell this from the blog.)

Archetypal? Yes, peach evokes fruit - a fragile vulnerable, sensual one - evokes tender surrender, giving flesh, evokes the forbidden ripe fruits of the garden of Eden, evokes the garden of Gethsemane, evokes praying until dawn, evokes the Tree of Life, evokes fertility, evokes creativity and the feminine, evokes sultry July peak ripeness, evokes the orchards beneath the concrete of Silicon Valley. It's the perfect choice for all the themes of my book. It's perfectly clear that all the other pinks are not.

"Peaches are one of the most delicious summer fruits. I prefer the white peach, which is the most flavourful, scented and luscious, though also the most fragile. As a boy, I used to remove some of the velvety skin from a nice white peach and then suck up only its nectar," writes chef Bernard Loiseau - very heavenly evocatively.

I'm entirely entranced. I'm wooed reading the rest of the copy for Monseuir L's recipe Roasted White Peaches with Yellow Peach Sorbet and Red Currant Sauce. He languishes on peach words: Téton de Vénus, Belle de Vitry, Anita and Manon. He courts us with the story of peach origins from China to Persia to France and Italy. I travel everywhere with him and arrive paired with mint and cinnamon. Delicious...writing.

Plus there's something sweetly innocent and refreshing about recounting our passions as young children when they are our passions today. I remember being carried away by chef Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential and certainly not because I chose the book (rather it was my women business owner's monthly book club's selection five years ago). I was sold because the first few pages were remembrances of food intertwined with stirring memories of childhood:

I ate ray in beurre noisette, saucisson a l'ail, tripes, rognons de veau (kidneys), boudin noir that squirted like blood down my chin.

And I had my first oyster.

Now, this was a truly significant event. I remember it like I remember losing my virginity -- and in many ways, more fondly.

August that first summer was spent in La Teste de Buch, a tiny oyster village on the Bassin d'Arachon in the Gironde (southwest France). We stayed with my aunt, Tante Jeanne, and my uncle, Oncle Gustav, in the same red tile-roofed, white stucco house where my father had summered. - Anthony Bourdain, Kitchen Confidential

(Me? Passion stirred and inextricably tied to books. That's why the grand love affair with books, with words. My fondest memories as a child are with fairytales and myths. Stories - and storyworlds - allowed me to fly beyond the horizons of my birdcaged childhood...but that's another post.) What was your first love?

Good stories exudes care, devotion, consideration, cherishment. Like making love: "I think Doc has said [something like] "sales is real; marketing is bullshit." That's like saying "orgasms are real -- and sex is bullshit." ...People like a little foreplay. It's the romance that makes them feel special. Marketing's fun. It's the promise of the world class customer experience. And that promise, if delivered seductively enough, can actually enhance the experience," rejoins Harry Joiner (couldn't resist pun) in a comment on Hugh McLeod's gapingvoid blog.

I don't know Harry from Adam, or Eve, but I sense he's a man who can appreciate an upcoming post (or series depending on my bravado) on how becoming a great lover transfigures you into a superb innovator and marketer.

Few few marketers are attuned to romance. Take a close look at the next press release, next marketing brochure, next product packaging you come across if you don't believe me. Romance? Think not. It's pushing the line into rape.

One tweak Harry, nix the seduction (connotes: manipulative, creepy clingy, whats-in-it-for-your-notch-on-the-bedpost). Please do woo me, oui. But I'm more into mutuality of interest. No pressure. Let's see where this slow dance unfolds, k?

p.s. Piqued your interest, below is the current draft of thread 1 of the poem-in-progress. (The second thread was triggered by contemplating Harry's Bar white peach puree and prosecco inspired by Renaissance painter's Bellini's painting The Agony in the Garden, and later, Michelangelo's Dawn located in the Medici Chapel. Thread 2 adds depth, layer and textures of meaning, like Sufi poetry, when woven in.)

Did you know that white peaches like White Ladys and Snow Kings are available primarily through local farmers? I like Kashiwase Farms peaches. "White-fleshed peach varieties were known in Europe as early as 1655, although they were so delicate compared to yellow peaches that they nearly disappeared from commercial orchards."

thread 1, white peach bellini dawn

the bounce of a white peach in your hand
low jazz overtones
lullaby sleepy fuzz heat
tonight's ebony moon casts
no shadow no shade
pure ivory sheets drenched

in your perfume
our bodies a poem
one word breathes
against each other

sweet glaze trickles down your back
yearn to sprinkle slivered almonds
and glide my tongue dripping
glide my body
the window open
sighs moan with birdsong

bite into voluptuous giving
flesh of White Lady
gobble me falling
away clean halved to the pit

wish
we are splashing cool desire
dripping juice in the Trevi fountain
feet rub against copper half-pennies
& shoulders against marble crevasse

your lips, mouth, sink into taut
skin of Snow King
swirled with prosecco
puree me into libation
puree me unto dawn

p.p.s. Borrowed headline from a tech story in the Monday San Jose Mercury News. I coax you to have a White Peach inspired salon in the next few weeks. (Harry's Bar resembled a salon in its day: "Since its inception nearly 70 years ago, Harry's Bar has played host to writers, artists, celebrities and aristocrats -- all attracted to the simple yet elegant atmosphere, great cocktails and cuisine.") I'll share some of my White Peach Dawn Salon curator's notes in a bit. Perhaps a new parlour blog off to the main room here hosting these longish curator notes for salonists?

images I couldn't resist the recipe - or the photo. (Sure got me eating out of his hand.) I've got Art Deco on my mind because I'm envisioning vintage Parisien + Art Deco inspiration for my boudoir. That a door at the Chrysler building in NYC, the most erotic city according to The Sex Life of Food. (Peaches, apples, the forbidden fruit thing: get it?)

Love Letters Trump 333

I almost couldn't resist the headline "333 is so boring too" to piggyback on Seth Godin's "332 is so boring" post. Despite his headline, Seth is enthusiastic about the one thousand paintings for sale which are numbered from one to one thousand (pictured left). He bought number 552. He gets off on the marketing campaign too:

"It's so classically, perfectly viral. It will make him hundreds of thousands of dollars in just a few weeks. And it will make you smile."

You've probably surmised these paintings do nothing for me. The sultry heat of the cash register ringing thousands of dollars for the artiste does not make this art-lover's (and buyer's) heart beat faster.

Call me contrarian, but I'm of the opinion that "Was it good for you?" does not cross your customer's mind. And if they do care, you'd better first be a damn fine lover yourself.

Now here is something hot.

Love letters from PaPaYa Cards. I've seen PaPaYa cards. I've bought PaPaYa cards. I love PaPaYa cards.

Most recently I bought the glittering "Beauty is Everywhere" card with the nude nymph. At the cash register, the bookstore owner says they are all fast-sellers. For me, the card leapt out from among the others on the rack tantalizing: "Run away with me.'

Letters (for PaPaYa, they're love letters) are always yummier, more evocative, more seductive than numbers for any human being whose armor can still be pierced by the sight of babies or puppies or the first spring flower bud or a sunset.

Delicious copy explaining the origins of the PaPaYa brand from their site (and an even more luscious blog - I love owner/artist Anahata's blog!!!)

"It's branches sprawling like arms raised up to the sky, and the most delicious fruits hang ripe and full on a shameless naked trunk. The fruits, when sliced in half reveal the most ancient of all symbols. The womb...full of seeds. This is the essence of PaPaYa. Luscious, bold and vibrantly alive with color, texture and new seeds of inspiration."

Any regular reader of the popular advertising blog Adrants - or peek any day of the week - knows their bottom line (a recent post merely underscores): Or, most accurately, it proves that sex, well, just sells. I'm fine with that premise, yet thoroughly underwhelmed by the advertising industry narrow-minded view of sex...and brilliant ads.

I don't want to talk ad nauseum about Apple, and that's why you'll see many many non-tech examples featured in this blog to trigger additional inspiration, but I repeat Apple understands sex. Oh, and beauty, sensuality, abundance, resonance, rich symbols, creative abandon and much more too.

Sure, Jean-Louis said lust.

Lust is what most marketers aim for, settle for. Don't.

"The rainbow colors ... were in opposite order from how they appear in nature, symbolizing the company's rebellious nature. ... 'I couldn't dream of a more appropriate architecture--lust, knowledge, hope, anarchy." - former  Apple senior vice president of research and development Jean-Louis Gasse (quote source)

Bonus: Wow if only my journal were this beautiful. I understand now after seeing calligraphy at a weekend ArtFest at the Triton Museum, why Steve Jobs studied this art in college. I'm aching to do the same myself. You must check out these journal pages from owner Anahata Joy Katkin and art journaling workshops.

credits All photos except top left are from PaPaYa Cards including love letters H, O, T; Parlor Room and Blue Buddha cards. Art prints also available.

The Great Mother

I'm hosting the Carnival of Healing this Saturday. Please send your entries via submission form or to my email this Friday 5 pm Eastern. It'd be lovely if you have a post that touches on the Great Mother theme (think Isis, Virgin Mary, Prajnaparamita, Mother Nature, your own matronly Goddess) or talk about the healing in your relationship with your own mom (it's Mother's Day May 14th), but anything on topics of holistic health, wellness, spirituality, and self empowerment very welcome. Last week's carnival #40 is hosted by Dr. Deborah Serani.

Speaking on the Great Mother, I've a relevant journal entry to share today. It's a whole other story but I've started a book last week.

Pinned to describe it to a painter and digital artist at her villa Sunday (lilac wisteria hangs from trellises around her studio), I finally came out with this out of the blue: "It's a cross between Sufi poetry, Walden Pond, and Anaïs Nin erotica."

This is the one and only time I'm sharing a snippet before publication. Caveats: Blog-raw stuff, not book-quality yet. Although agents and publishers welcome to contact me ;-)

I got up this morning as I have been lately at 6:30 a.m. to sit on the patio outside with my tea and toast. I have the orange spice black tea again.

I just washed my face this morning so it's still a little cool to the touch. Picture a big porcelain water pitcher. Like you might imagine a woman heaving it from her belly with two arms and the water pouring onto the floor, onto my face. I let some of it dribble down my parched lips, into my mouth, refresh myself.

There's a new visitor this morning, a snail, out in gusto outside too with me. Such a vulnerable body, I murmur to myself.

I open "The Journey Inward: Quotations for the Soul."

"God changes his appearance every second. Blessed is the man who can recognize him in all his disguises. One minute he is a glass of fresh water, the next your son bouncing on your knees or an enchanting woman, or perhaps merely a morning walk." - Nikos Kazantzakis

Last night Jon, one of my housemates, helped me to see Him as feminine.

"It's like this," I spread my arms like an eagle, extending, arching my chest and arms. "Loch Kelly, that teacher I told you about who awoke in Manhattan, says the bliss isn't contained, crouched. It's spread over the whole earth."

I gesture like I am smoothing the linen sheets over the bed. "So it's not like rockets or fireworks going off. You didn't hear that talk, The Innocence of Awakening, when Adya [our teacher's nickname] said to this woman, "You're looking for more. It's less. It's less."

Spread like butter over the cosmic toast, like a pitcher of water over the tile floor in the piazza in Venice coating every crevice smoothly, evenly.

Jon says, "Oh, so it's feminine, not...." He gestures a motion with a penetrating fist, vigor delving.

I nod. "Yeah."

Yeah, it's feminine. A very subtle seductress. And tender just like Taiwanese owner at Jade Tree always says. Tender is her word. The Jade Tree is the local Chinese restaurant with the incredible Firecracker Chicken. You've got to meet her.

Antonio, a new friend, tells me of the mystical times when he held his daughter in the dark of night cooing and rocking her. He noticed if he was agitated, she was agitated.  She relaxed into his stillness. It was his first taste of meditation.

Guy, the owner of the infamous Phi, Phi Thailand Maprao bungalows whom returned my journal to me after the tsunami -- one of the only possessions I got back, since everything else was looted -- told me his stories everyday for ten days this winter. I'll tell more you another day. One night he was holding his baby son when he was living in Greece. He walked outside with him to watch the day break. And Everything broke.

There was a point last night. A point when I was talking to Jon after the phone call with you. After he read me the email from Rachel where she begins, "I liked you the moment I met you." They met three years ago at the hospital after his neice, his sister's daughter, was in a serious car accident. They were both in other marriages at that time. She lives in Boston. She goes on to say what she remembers his gentle way with the family, how he was supportive and soothing.

A point where Jon is talking, and I am melting.

Her pebble drops. Starts at my heart gently, the liquid pool ripples in one contiguous sweep from that center. More like a wake than  a ripple that goes far beyond my cells. The love overwelling onto the floor, the ceiling, the kitchen counter, the spice jar, the dishes, the tea kettle.

I feel like jellyfish. Transparent. When the two sides touch on the other side of  the earth, god knows if that's Sri Lanka or India, it overlaps. The way the mother envelopes her child at dawn. Dissolving luscious time and space into one pool of tears.  Have you ever wept in gratitude?

The snail. I check up on him, he's made it off the concrete path into the rose bush. I open the screen door and go inside. 

p.s. Names have been changed, except business owners and business names as you've really got to meet them for yourself.