Crossroads Dispatches

Whisked to 1740s Paris: Next Salon Sept 6th, Gervais Restaurant

"For more than a century, pilgrims from all over the world seeking romance and passion have made their way to the City of Light. The seductive lure of Paris has long been irrestible to lovers, artists, epicureans, and connoisseurs of the good life..." - film historian and author John Baxter's memoir, We'll Always Have Paris: Sex and Love in the City of Light

Inspired by 1740s Parisian salons, join us at Gervais Restaurant in downtown Saratoga village (right next door to the yummy Saratoga Chocolates!) on Wednesday, September 6th. Enjoy a Paris-styled menu, engaging renaissance-sparking conversation in a cozy sidewalk patio reserved for 20 of us, and a private reception for the evocative paintings of a French-born painter and friend of mine, Gilbert Marosi.

Parisian journalist and video-blogger Jean-Baptiste Su lives in Silicon Valley covering the high-tech world for La Tribune, France's Wall Street Journal equivalent, shares his passion for food with his newest creative baby, the Gervais, along with his chef-partner Vietnamese-born Vanessa Van Trang. They are totally in tune with bridging and mixing the ingredients of the food, arts, social media and technology worlds. And they totally get the European-styled slow scintillating foreplay of conversation.

We're still dreaming up a 1740s salon-inspired menu...but expect delectable temptations in range of $25 (excluding alcoholic beverages).

Please request an invite if you are attuned to slow food, slow conversation, inspiring living and a Silicon Valley renaissance. We are limiting to 20 to assure camaraderie and intimacy.

More details forthcoming, but I know this is enough information to follow your heart's desire. Again Wed, Sept 6th, we'll start gathering the salon at 6 pm. The patio is ours for the evening. Please, yes, your partners, significant others, mistresses and lovers (well, perhaps use your discretion!) are most certainly warmly invited.

"The [Paris] salons of the 1740s [composed of writers, artists, nobility] were, as has been well put, "un lieu de brassage social intense (places of intense social ferment)." - Madame de Pompadour: Mistress of France

Oh, the rest of the backcover of Baxter's "We'll Always Have Paris" is too lusciously tempting to leave out, especially if you, like I, wish to be whisked to Paris at the very least in spirit, if not flesh:

"...a delightfully salacious tour of the sultry Parisian corners most guidebooks ignore: from the literary cafes of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and de Beauvoir to the brothels where Dietrich and Duke Ellington held court, where Salvador Dali sated his fantasies, and Edward VII kept a sumptuous champagne bath for his favorite girls." 

Au revoir,
Evelyne (nom de plume for the next salon)

images Three Graces, Arms Akimbo, and Rome by my friend, Gilbert Marosi

Ebony Moon: Clarity, Commitment, Purity on the August New Moon

  It's an ebony moon tonight, also known as the new moon. An extremely symbolic time to reflect on clarity of vision and commitment. I can easily be thrown off my unwavering clarity. Which probably means it wasn't that unwavering ;-)

These days I handle public criticism quite well, but my closest friends often vacillate between thinking I've gone off the deep end: either I'm too giving or I'm being too selfish these days. It's much easier to answer the "Why are you doing that? What's in it for you?" question as there is no me, there is no Other.

Yet this kind of statement strikes me like a stab (and so I've had to look at my reaction, feel my feelings of hurt and anger, and see through the projection):

It's nice to read about fashion and food, but what about some real life issues, Ev.

The short summary of a very long reply was:

Every path leads to God because we are already at the destination.

I've actually never felt clearer in my life as I do now. That I emphasize the feminine aspect of God is unnerving and alienating many many people close to me that are more used to my renunciate ways which divided the world neatly into meaningful, spiritual pursuits and then there was everything else. (FYI, feminine = immanent, masculine = transcedent. It's both for me. There is nothing but God, but Consciousness.)

Yet I've come to the point on the road that I cannot rely on other people's clarity, it must come through me. The other night in Santa Cruz, a teacher is answering a question from the audience: "I don't know what to say to my neighbor who 22-year-old son died when a drunk driver hit him. I've run through what I could possibly say that would be helpful. And I'm at a  loss." Mokie answered, "Don't prepare what to say. Go empty, soft-bellied, see what wants to come through."

Empty like the new moon. Invisible, pure, potential.

The point isn't whether my friends or others are applauding or are doubting what I'm doing or not doing, I am the one that needs to stay clear. Most people drain their energy telling you who you are and what you should be doing, when they have no idea what they are and what they should be doing. With clarity comes action and commitment:

Nothing conflicts with Oneness. What is there to decide? For it is conflict that makes choice possible. The truth is simple; it is one, without an opposite. And how could strife enter in its simple presence, and bring complexity where oneness is? The truth makes no decisions, for there is nothing to decide between. - A Course in Miracles

How do we clarify? I cannot answer for you, this is my process: Mostly I wait until the muddy waters settle. Take the next most obvious step, says my teacher. Sometimes like many novelists the inspirational spark of the contours of a story begin in my mind's eye. And that skeletal story won't go away. It haunts you even in the belly of a whale. Good writers follow that spark, then allow that inspiration to unfold and take a life of its own.

The paradox, and it's difficult to explain in words (the doing of it is a lot easier) is that I hold this vision and simultaneously I am empty. Which is probably the summation of the Bhagavad Gita: do your work yet the fruits, the outcome is not your business.

If you have never felt more right in your life about a direction, stay with that energy and relax in the energy of pure potential. Believe in the vision despite appearances.

Another paradox: I maintain conviction in the general gist of the vision and deep humility that I don't have control over how it'll play out nor concrete certainty that I haven't distorted it. Is it really a pure vision? The sincerity of the latter question, Is it pure?, refines the smudges and shadows of your original vision so it becomes clearer and clearer. Many people ask instead of Is it pure? this same question reframed: Is this for the highest good of all concerned?

There are two things I reread and reread when I'm in doubt about the clearness of my vision. And I'm sharing them below.

1.  Only in our love of Truth does the heart break open, and we finally stop asking, “How can I hold onto this Truth? How can I maintain this realization?” We don’t look at it that way anymore. We only look at it as “How can I serve this realization?” There’s no more interest in holding on, finding safety or satisfaction.

When the real heart breaks open, the question becomes, “How can one serve the One?” How can one be this Truth?” And there’s no final answer to that kind of question. It’s always in the moment, at every moment, to be it now—not “How can I be it?” in some image, but just to be it now. We discover that we’re no longer a gatherer of beauty, a gatherer of bliss, a gatherer of peace. We’re not a hoarder. We’re its servant, you and I.

You can’t lose what you serve. That’s the secret. What you serve, you can’t lose. What you don’t serve and what you try to hold onto, you can’t hold onto. It’s always slipping out of your fingers.

That’s why you can never separate wisdom or insight or realization from love or devotion. One has to find in their heart the devotion to serve the Truth that’s found, moment to moment. That’s an act of love, to serve. It gets us out of the last vestige of self-centered relationship with our experience.

When you touch into real love, the farthest thing from your mind is “How can you serve me?” It’s just not there anymore, not in the true spiritual heart. It’s not there in the heart that’s broken open by realization. Then we’re not looking at that Truth for what it can do for me, even though it does for you and for me, over and over, constantly giving itself.

This is an open secret, an obvious secret to living in Oneness: you have to serve it—not because anybody said so, because you don’t have to serve it if you don’t want to. But you don’t get to live it all the time unless you serve it all the time.

When I say serve it, I don’t mean anything that might even be really obvious. I don’t mean serve it in a way that might even be noticeable. It doesn’t have to be served with career, life meaning, goals, and all that. That’s not what it’s about. It’s about each moment, each moment, each moment. Is Oneness being served, or is it not? Is it being embodied, or is it not? - Adyashanti, "Serving the One"

2. In this world you can become a spotless mirror, in which the holiness of your Creator shines forth from you to all around you...You need but leave the mirror clean and clear of all the images of hidden darkness you have drawn upon it. God will shine upon it of Himself...Reflections are seen in light. In darkness they are obscure, and their meaning seems to lie only in shifting interpretation, than in themselves. The reflection of God needs no interpretation. It is clear. Clean but the mirror, and the message that shines forth from what the mirror holds out for everyone to see, no one can fail to understand. - A Course in Miracles

p.s. I'm getting to point where I'm quit comfortable being the only one that will be going to fashion designer and buyer trade shows like the upcoming MAGIC, Pool, and intensives like "Servants of Truth" with my teacher Adyashanti within the same two weeks. Let's meet up if you're at either - and especially if you are going to both ;-)

image an ethereal fabric sculpture called 'stone waves'

This Season Only: My Food and My Fashion Live in the Season

Reading an Anthem article on fashion designer Tao Kurihara, I was about to completely revise my post The Myth of a Quiet Launch for 2006, which happened to be the first time I was ever Scobleized (latest Scobleization here).

But then I had a conversation, which catalyzed this post instead. There exists many a fashion designer looking for the big bang launch: wishing Paris Hilton wears their creation (if you're a book designer, you might hope Oprah pitches it) and they'll make their mark, and their sensation will ripple out like waves through the oceanic universe. Yet rare is the fashion designer that considers everyone wearing cookie cutter clothes any utopia.

Talking to two friends, let's just call them designers outside the fashion industry. I could tell that the word fashion connotes what someone else says is "in fashion." What someone else dictates is de rigeur.

To me, fashion is in season. Fashion is wearable art. I don't particularly care if it's regarded as in style - although if I'm really in tune with the collective mythos of the moment, it tends to feel right and fit with the times. A snapshot of one season of the collective consciousness in movement.

Wordplay: Fashion from Old French façon, from Latin factionem (nom. factio) "group of people acting together."

"The function of the fashion industry is to have things be temporal: this season only," she says. He adds tidbits about the fashion industry's consumerism and how it behooves them to crank money each and every spring and fall.

"I like design because it is the intersection of function and beauty. Design lasts," she says.

I've come to realize I prefer my food and my clothes to be extremely temporal.

Fresh.

Flowers are the enlightenment of plants, Eckhart Tolle begins in his latest book. They have no utilitarian purpose. They simply are. Beauty. In May, I watched the roses in the garden bud, blossom and begin to wither; in June, the magnolia blossoms; in July, the agapanthus. Each time I was absorbed in the cycle of their life as I'd stroll past them. As one flower decayed, just then another species would be coming into their own.

I like temporal, it reminds me of life and not to take it for granted. I like ephemeral. On this green and blue sphere, I know of only one thing that lasts - flux. I know of only one thing that lasts - that which is timeless, deathless, unconditioned. Whenever an artist tells me: "that's original, one of a kind, and I never repeat my work," it's like music to my ears.

"Live in the moment. Live in the season. Live in the moment," read the bright sunflower and California poppy-colored facade. "Seasonal California cuisine." I walk into the adjacent store where hiring was set up for the debut of Tanglewood Restaurant in San Jose. "What type of position are you looking for?" she asks. "I'm actually not looking for a job. I just had to meet the people behind the 'live in the moment, live in the season' philosophy." And that's how I began my love affair with Tanglewood, a restaurant that hasn't even opened yet, but I've spent hours chatting with.

Ephemeral. Ethereal. Renewal. "One meeting, one time," the elder woman ended the tea ceremony demonstration with the Japanese equivalent and bowed to her guest (at the recent Obon Festival, Palo Alto Buddhist Temple). The narrator explains the scene before us, "They close the ceremony acknowledging there will never this precise moment again, thus they cherish it."

I recall in my now lost Tea Celebrations book that the Japanese tea masters have a theme for each tea - a cohesive, almost curated, pattern, poetry, music, theme that celebrates that particular tea time. They are never repeated. That signalled an acknowledgment of the infinitude of the reservoir of possibility. An acknowledgment of the river of flux within time: "You cannot step into the same river twice, for fresh waters are ever flowing in upon you," said the ancient Greek philosopher, Heraclitus.

I lost one of my favorite blouses I've had for years on my last trip to Seattle. Left behind in the hotel dresser. It was the color burgundy. I'd been musing about burgundy and gold accents and accessories for a new look in the bathroom when I packed the blouse. Serendipitously, when the sleeveless top was left behind, I started envisioning avocado green and sunflower yellow vividly in my mind. I'd opened up a fresh door by accepting this loss, this death, this cycle...that is after I tried in vain to reach housekeeping from the airport.

"Miranda hired me. She knows what I look like," Andrea says as she stands in Runway magazine's cafeteria line balancing her corn chowder on a tray.

Nigel replies, "Do you?" - from the movie, The Devil Wears Prada

The infinitude expressing itself as Evelyn is constantly growing and evolving -- like nature.

So if one can have compostable cutlery, why not clothing? I only need it to last for this season anyway. And so it is that someone else today is enjoying the oversized curvaceous collar, the burgundy, the cross-hatching that reveals the contours of a nude back on that long-lost shirt.

I listen to what I said six months ago, my own teacher has said, and to myself, he says, I sound like a buffoon. Did I say that? That's what I say about my own blogging. The zen of blogging: It's where I'm at today, what's up for you or me right this precise moment. In six months, I may not even believe anything that I wrote then. That was then, this is now. Blogging is a slice of a seasonality revolution:

A fundamental shift in what the Web is. In fact, it's something brand new. Allen Searls calls it the World Live Web. The Live Web is current. - The World Live Web, by Phillip Windley

Current, just like the river's current.

Bonus: Check out how Italian fashion designer Luisa Beccaria lives in the season, lives in the moment at this slideshow. One photo caption: "The family's fresh bread is made daily in this old-fashioned oven (do not try this at home while wearing a Beccaria dress!)." Another: "Luisa's husband, Lucio, produces his own olive oil."

Bonus: Check out Linda Loudermilk (see also Treehugger's Picks for Best Sustainable Designers. Loudermilk had an epiphany she describes as: “I realized I didn’t want to be just a fashion designer; I wanted to boost people’s spirits, not just their egos.”

Maybe compostable clothing isn't far off, she already does a Luxury Eco line. A sustainable denim line is due out Spring 2007: "Loudermilk uses a corn-based fiber called Ingeo from Italy and sasawashi, a Japanese leaf that has antibacterial properties, in addition to bamboo and organic cotton blended with 1 percent spandex."

And says Apple profile on the Patrick Tighe, the "urban, green, socially conscious" architect: He’s creating a store where fashion designer Linda Loudermilk can showcase her environmental sensibilities — and not just in the couture clothes she creates using sustainable materials, but in the “Luxury Eco” lifestyle products she’ll introduce to bring more green options to her customers.

“The store is an extension of her whole philosophy,” explains Tighe. “It will be a fully LEED-certified green building, using all recycled or rapidly-renewable materials, with a roof garden irrigated by a storm water retention system. Linda will even sell some of the materials we’re using to build the store, like tile and renewed wood products.”

images A tea ceremony photo by Anatol; Linda Louderback bamboo fiber blouse: "Ever an artist, Loudermilk traces the blouses’ pattern of delicate Audubon birds and swoopy, circular lines modeled after natural forming lava tracks."; a Luisa Beccaria winter 2006 coat.

Excavating the Creative Contours of Your Customer

I assume you've read the Anthropologie piece. I assume you read that founder and chairman Richard Hayne's training as an anthropologist was put to use when he spent nearly two years on a "cultural odyssey" to make sure his next post-Urban Outfitters venture was on target.

That the headquarters staff keeps their pulse directly on the customer, not focus groups, on cultural events, not trends research reports. That they say fieldwork is never ever done.

"If you really want to understand your customer, you have to spend a portion of your time excavating the creative edge of the culture that defines her. For Anthropologie president Glen Senk, that means lurking around upscale neighborhoods, looking for blue plastic New York Times delivery bags and calculating the ratio of Starbucks to convenience stores. (Fast Company)"

On August 24, and August 25 I'll be leading two separate afternoon expeditions. Highly individualized excavating-the-creative-edge-of-your-customer safaris into the upscale European-boutique-inspired Santana Row shoppes in San Jose, California. One to five curious adventurers per trip. Absolutely no guarantees of safely returning back to civilization with the same eyes, same senses, same palate:

"In my experience, retailers spend most of their time looking at things from the company's perspective or the marketer's perspective," [Glen Senk, CEO of Anthropologie] he says. "They talk about trends and brand but rarely about the customer in a meaningful way. We're customer experts. Our focus is on always doing what's right for a specific customer we know very well."

The catch: I'm doing this research myself anyway. We'll start the afternoon by having lunch at the one restaurant I've been waiting with intense anticipation to open: Tanglewood Restaurant. (If you have to write a press release, that one's a beauty. It's actually a story. And it's no accident we start the dig at Tanglewood.) So that means you guys and gals split my lunch check, that's it. You must be into slow food and exploration into the unknown: what you don't know you don't know. You must be an independent owner (or marketing representative/agent of), designer, artist, artisan, creator or somehow convince me this would be of benefit to your business if none of those vaguely applies. High-tech companies especially Web 2.0 consumer-oriented would gain insights. This isn't about retail. It's about customer. RSVP: c r o s s r o a d s d i s p a t c h e s +at+ gmail +dot+ com and I'll send details.

Like a River, Life

"They were such intelligent, interesting, and reallllly nice people. I hooked up to do a weeklong backpacking trip to the top of the highest mountain in the lower 48. I'm going to rekindle my art after twenty-five years (my mom had my metal sculptures in the garden hauled to the dump). I set to definitely go to Iran after nearly bagging the idea earlier this week. I met my awesome yoga teacher's husband..."

At this point I'm losting track of my ability to remember the insightful connections David (blog) is rattling off breathlessly as we have a cup of tiger spice chai tea at the Coupa Cafe last night after the first salon. "And I learned," he said wrapping up, "I don't need to be in control."

"Well, that's an infinitely more pleasant way to learn that. And you didn't even need a tsunami. What do you mean, though?"

My friend David, whom was helping with errands yesterday afternoon continues. "Well, I've never seen you so stressed before. And when we show up at Diane's gallery, I'm thinking to myself: It's six o'clock, there's people already here, and we haven't even started getting ready. My thoughts were, Evelyn's a great writer, she's great at lots of things, but she is definitely not an event-planner. I thought this is going to be a disaster. But I learned from watching you give up control."

"Yeah," I begin. "I was meditating on the drive over."

Meditation is much like a river. It is a movement, a flow. (Source forgotten)

I looked over at the trees, bushes and grasses along the highway and I felt such stillness. I knew everything was not proceeding according to my vision of it. I had no time to finish collating and knotting together the inspiration handouts with ribbon. I never got an inkling of a chance to handwrite the name badges onto the French cards with turquoise ink calligraphy pen. I wasn't sure if Diane would have enough serving platters for all the fruit. Did she get the fresh flowers? Dozens of loose ends.

Other people have panic attacks the way I have guilt attacks. (Although panic was in vogue yesterday.) Perhaps the Buddhist Catholic thing. The last major guilt attack I had I've never blogged about, but it happened a day before the realization. I realized my mind could be racing, I could be devolving into a bucket of nerves, and yet strangely enough I could still simultaneously perceive this enduring unchanging stillness under that layer of frenzy. Yet it was not my calmness, my stillness. Simply Stillness.

Last Sunday, after I'd bought a few tomatoes, almonds, peaches at the Santana Row farmer's market, I listened to the flute player at the courtyard under the sprawling tree as a dark-skinned four-year-old girl played with the water spigot near the mosaiced fountain as her dad watched, families played chess under the honeysuckle trellis, and I sat on one of the Smith-and-Hawken wooden chairs. I'd written email to a friend that day but he was already on his river trip. Among all my long lost friends there's probably a few more on a river trip somewhere.

The peace of a river trip was right there with me that Sunday afternoon. I write in my journal:

"The flowing river, my Self in flux. Nothing needs to be added or subtracted or...anything. This. No need to stain it with commentary, interpretation. This. Just this.

I think about the river, I think about the rapids and how tumultuous my life appears right now. [Every big ticket C-item: car, computer, cellphone went kaput within two-week period. Worse: I started believing my old conditioning...Enough said.] But beneath it churning water is this pure calm current going surely to the ocean over granite boulders and all manner of obstacles. No matter how it meanders, definite.

I remember that gooseneck on the Colorado [or is it the San Juan River? or both?], where you go dozens of slow miles and miles to end up right where you were. Yes it's like that."

There's a part of me that could weep right now it is so beautiful. Most people could not withstand this much light and flow - or so they think."

So by the time I veered off the Alpine Road exit yesterday evening, I knew that whatever happened it would be just as it should be. I knew it wasn't going to be my perfect and that's okay. I was re-reminded by my both my Sunday book group and this week by my friend Kamal's timely email:

J. Krishnamurti, the great Indian philosopher and spiritual teacher, spoke and traveled almost continuously all over the world for more than fifty years attempting to convey through words - which are content - that which is beyond words, beyond content. At one of his talks in the later part of his life, he surprised his audience by asking, "Do you want to know my secret?" Everyone became very alert. Many people in the audience had been coming to listen to him for twenty or thirty years and still failed to grasp the essence of his teaching. Finally, after all these years, the master would give them the key to understanding. "This is my secret," he said. "I don't mind what happens." - Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

Kamal adds: Wow, this post made me stop flat. Had to immediately mail it to other people. Reminds me of what a monk in a monastery in Big Sur told me when I asked how he finds peace. "I say yes," he said. "Yes to all that happens."

I tell David last night: "I remembered what Daniel Odier said in Desire: The Tantric Path to Awakening. He said people think tantra is a ritual. They think that getting the romantic candles, the silk sheets, the perfect music playing, the whole bedroom in the just the right mood is tantra. But not any of that truly matters."

"Your lover simply wants the totality of your being. If you're fully there, the candles, the music, the room ceases to exist. Heck, time, space cease." I didn't say it, but I was thinking: They want to be seen straight through to their divinity, to be known as One, not Other.

I had the right ingredients: Fresh cared-for fruits of the season from people I'd actually met at farmer's markets and small artisan boutiques and, mostly, importantly, a small circle of good people.

The secret to a salon is curating the invite list, not the fine handmade paper stationery the invite arrives on. Everything else was totally out of my hands. (And even invite list arised purely from intuition.)

"What your objective for this evening?" David had asked as he lifted the heavy box with cherokee purples, marble stripes, brandywines [varieties of heirloom tomatoes], figs, white peaches, goat cheese, kalamata olive and walnut chunked breads, bufala mozzarella, almonds, balsamic vinegar into my disheveled (and marginally functioning after a trip to mechanic) car.

"I gave up having an objective. It is a gift. What sparks, sparks."

Marmontel's remark about Julie de Lespinasse suggests the secret of the salon in French culture:

"The circle was formed of persons who were not bound together. She had taken them here and there in society, but so well assorted were they that once there they fell into harmony like the strings of an instrument touched by an able hand."

- Wikipedia entry for Salon (gathering)

The evening before the salon, I thought of the title of Milan Kundera's novel, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, I thought of the assumption of the Virgin Mary into the Light as it was going to be Ferragosto celebration after all, and the light breezy weightlessness of summer in a mountaintown in Italy I once spent July. And that weightlessness spirit, invisible as it may be, was the experience intended. On one hand, I was petrified to have only disposable (made from corn, not plastic) knives and forks rather than real metal cutlery, on the other I knew no external decor - not the best chateau silver, linens, even the beauty of flowers - could possibly evoke this unspeakable simple sense of lightness.

Bonus: Two beautiful excerpts [1, 2] from Italian writer, Italo Calvino's book, Six Memos for the Next Millenium on his "investigation into the literary values that he wished to bequeath to future generations." The first chapter is on lightness. And he shares a moon poem and the ethos of Silicon Valley in same chapter! From an Amazon reviewer:

Calvino draws on areas as diverse as mythology, poetry, art, science and history to illustrate his theses, and brings fresh insights to, for example, the story of Perseus and Medusa. A few small extracts from the chapter on various aspects of Lightness will serve to illustrate this diversity of supporting material:

First, from poetry. "... there is a lightening of language whereby meaning is conveyed through a verbal texture that seems weightless, until the language itself takes on the same rarefied consistency... Emily Dickinson, for instance... "A sepal, petal, and a thorn// Upon a common summer's morn-// A flask of Dew-A Bee or two-... "

Then, from computer science: "It is true that software cannot exercise its powers of lightness except through the weight of hardware. But it is the software that gives the orders, acting on the outside world and on machines that exist only as functions of software and evolve so that they can work out ever more complex programs. The second industrial revolution, unlike the first, does not present us with such crushing images as rolling mills and molten steel, but with `bits' in a flow of information traveling along circuits in the form of electronic impulses. The iron machines still exist, but they obey the orders of weightless bits."

p.s. Thanks to Diane Michlig of Legends Fine Crafts Gallery (816 Santa Cruz Avenue, Menlo Park, CA) for graciously hosting. And everyone for the totality of their being: Andrew, Charles, Darren, David, David, Diana, Don, Ekta, Faun, Jacqueline, Lisa, Maryam, Robert, Stephen, Siona, Tom and the couple that were strolling by downtown that followed their heart inside.

images Jacqueline Osborn's Angel of Veronna reminded me for some inexplicable reason of the Holy Spirit overflowing through the Virgin Mary. Jacqueline's (and her husband Stephen Osborn's) recent work are currently on display and available for purchase at Legends Fine Crafts Gallery in downtown Menlo Park. And one of the long gooseneck bends along the Colorado River.

Anthropologie: We Spend Money on Experience, Not Marketing

I stopped shopping at my ex-favorite chain store Chico's some time ago. Their catalog still arrives in my PO Box, but when I walk by the store I rarely venture in. I haven't bought anything there in maybe two years. I read with passing interest in the Wall Street Journal that "Chico's Falls Out of Fashion With Investors" (7/28/06): "Chico's shares have fallen more than 50% since reaching a high Feb 22 of $49.40."

Yesterday, I'm walking along the European-styled street promenade at Santana Row across from my new retail chain favorite (I'm more of a boutique gal), Anthropologie, and the pair strolling in front of me start a converation as they walk past a potted profusion of lavender agapanthus and the Crepe & Brioche French Artisan Bakery's stall at the organic farmer's market.

The thirty-something woman turns to her friend and gasps, "I am dying to, but I cannot go into Anthropologie!" She's resisting the urge to browse its "latticework chaise lounges, velvet patchwork pillows, ornate birdcages, leather-bound books, sari fabrics, teak benches...vintage-inspired cardigan sweaters...Chinese pajamas and cobwebby camisoles."

Me, I gave up resistance -- and I'm talking far beyond resisting enchanting lace skirts, guava scented candles and Portugeuse china too.

I feel young at heart these days and, yet, when I walk into Anthropologie, I feel younger still. A sense of wonder and enchantment welcomes you as soon as you open the door. Music streams, a couple sits side-by-side on an antique sofa immersed in a coffee-table book of Leonardo da Vinci's complete works, a mother and her teenage daughter with their coiffeured black poodle buy a whimsical sun dress evocative of Provence for Mom.

Chico's tends more towards a baby boomer crowd and I'm right on the cusp of Gen-X and Baby Boomer. Yet I spot many women both younger and older than what the retail critics cite as Anthropologie's so-called demographic of 30-45 years. But then again Anthropologie could care less about demographics.

John Moore of the Brand Autopsy blog shares:

As a marketer, I adore Anthropologie. They do a masterful job of making sure every store is the same, yet different. “The same, yet different” retailing strategy is something we strived to do at Starbucks and because of me, this article found its way on many a chair at Starbucks’ HQ. In fact, I still freely share this article with retailers wanting marketing advice.

As a human (whom happens to be a woman, customer and marketer and much more), I adore Anthropologie. Here's just one reason why:

"One of our core philosophies," explains Anthropologie president Glen Senk, "is that we spend the money that other companies spend on marketing to create a store experience that exceeds people's expectations. We don't spend money on messages -- we invest in execution."

Experience the Message. Intimately Know Your Market. "The aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous," said Peter Drucker.

The Fast Company article's author totally understands the wonder and essence of Anthopologie. This article gives insight into far far more than simply retailing. I totally wholeheartedly recommend it.

And you gotta love any story that begins like this:

My mother used to use a phrase, "shop like a Frenchwoman," that I never really understood until the summer we spent a month in Normandy. I was 15, and my parents, along with my aunt (my mother's twin) and her family, had rented an old farmhouse on the top of a hill in the rolling countryside. My schoolgirl French was deemed the most passable of the four cousins', so I was the translator for the women's daily trips to the markets of the little town of Manerbe. There I began to get the picture.

If the twins couldn't exactly talk like Frenchwomen, they could cook with the best of them -- and that started with their approach to ingredients. They would pick over baby potatoes, inspect haricots verts for color and crispness, smell herbs for freshness, and poke and prod everything within reach in the outdoor stalls. They'd move from charcuterie to boulangerie , passing over the pâté for some particularly succulent chickens or pointing out the exact baguette they wanted. As often as not, an unexpected or particularly fresh item would result in a surprise twist in the menu.

It wasn't efficient, but we usually came away with a story: a conversation with one of the shopkeepers, a motorbike run amok in the marketplace, a circle back to replace the tarte Tatin devoured in the car on the way home. And, inevitably, the smells, sounds, and textures of the market seeped into our dinner, adding an intense flavor.

These days, for the most part, shopping like a Frenchwoman is a lost art, having vanished somewhere between the sommelier at Costco and the organic arugula now available in virtually every supermarket in America. The multisensory ritual, with its open-ended sense of discovery and the thrill of the hard-won find, has given way to a uniformity of style -- and a stylish uniformity.

And then there is Anthropologie...

images Yeah, it's a sleeper hit alright. With no advertising, Anthropologie's reliance on its store experience, intimacy with its customer, art, "high touch, not high tech" (says their architect Ron Pompei), evocative soulful catalogs and word-of-mouth makes it seem uber-radically traditionalist. Radical traditionalist, like me. Images from their website.

Things Sing, Poetry Sings, Copy Should Too

"As an art form, poetry predates literacy. With its roots in the ancient Greek word for "I create," poetry has served as a way to pass knowledge and story in cultures throughout the world. It is vocal creation in its earliest form...When it was inextricably tied to performance, poetry relied heavily on sound and rhythm to be transmitted effectively." - from Vision Magazine, "Oral Traditions" issue, August 2006

A friend sends me to his business' Google AdWords landing page. What do you think? he asks. (I think as I said your thing must sing.) Songs are primal, ancient, closer to pure essence in that they precede thought. I know my friend's business, and his copy missed the mark. I jot back an email:

I am getting wickedly picky even though my own writing is not always up to par.

In fact, I look for writing that blows me away. Attention is so scarce...even if someone lands here it's not juicy enough to capture me, whisk me away...we all skim stuff unless it stops us still in our tracks.

Seduce them [I know my friend well enough to know he understands this as unmanipulative; more like woo me, romance me, charm me]. You've got it easy compared to so many yawn companies/product categories - [biz category] is sooooo sexy already. Inspire desire.

There is so much romantic sensual copy in [I mention category magazine] adverts, the expectations are pretty high.

Lately, this is marketing writing I've noted online - and I'm barely online these days - that is notable and compelling. They speak for themselves:

• I don't think I can ever eat another loaf of bread and be satiated after their Roasted Garlic. I'm thoroughly spoilt now. Horrid pun: I'm pining for more, but I won't get to farmer's market until Sat: http://www.baybread.com/pine.php
• This too (Click on "About"): http://www.modernspiritsvodka.com/
• This too: http://www.theworldwidegourmet.net/fruits/pitfruit/loiseau.htm
• And this (wickedly expensive candles, highly seductive packaging, I've been mesmerized in boutiques myself. Click on "An Invitation"): http://www.dlcompany.com/Site/dlhome.htm

Write a story, trust me, short & sweet & simply evocative of feel-and-sense-of-it about ONE of your clients that loved your stuff. Call them Harry & Sheila - change their names, it's okay, but stay
true to the experience - and evoke the EXPERIENCE.

Keep it short. But breathtaking.

I can help, but I don't have a true authentic nugget of a story to even start with, so take your first shot.

- E

p.s. Of course the only way to inspire desire is to be inspired.

image Troubadours, some of the early poets sang ballads and as one can see were definitely inspired by the muse. Visiteurs is a painting (limited edition prints and original available).

I Have A Crazy Crazy Love of Things

"Thoughts and ideas in the rarified field of the Ethereal plop onto Earth and perception as things," I wrote on a slip of paper as I walked around the block as the sun was settting the other evening. Maybe, I wondered, I've become obsessed with things the way I had been obsessed with ideas.

"The most important things in the world are not things," the stencilled letters announce the upcoming Sunday talk at the neighborhood church.

"Amos las cosas loca, locamente..." a quote by Pablo Neruda ("I have a crazy, crazy love of things") is how Barry Katz, historian of design at the California College of the Arts and at Stanford University, began his lecture on the 100-year perspective on the state of the design and design thinking last week at the Palo Alto Art Center.

Things. Things? Things! Why bother with creating a flower boutique or bakery when you can really rock the world as activist or spiritual guru?

"Blumenkraft" is a conjunction of the words blumen - "flower" -- and kraft -- "power." Kraft describes a physical force like electricity - or a hammer coming down hard on steel. It has nothing to do with the quaint 60's English term "flower power"...It's an entirely new linguistic creation, coined by Gregor. "The metaphoric power of flowers is based on a paradox," he says. "They seem weak and fragile but they inspire visual, emotional, and spiritual strength." - The Flower Shop: Charm, Grace, Beauty, Tenderness in a Commercial Context, by Leonard Koren

There is a physical visceral palpable energetic power in things. When I picked up and read one version of the Prajnaparamita Sutra this April the words buzzed with the force of a current.

Yet another inexplicable magnetic force drew me to a jewelry store in Saratoga last Saturday (and this in context, we're talking about a former renunciate that didn't care for jewelry....the Buddhist priest in Moratuwa, Sri Lanka says to me in February: "I see you lead a charmed life." I: "How so?" He offering me a biscuit with my tea: "You do not wear jewelry.") where particular objects nearly leap out at me the resonating vibration was so strong the jewelled things sang; the jewelry store owner a Siren. When a creator merges wholly for a moment with its creation, we know it as beautiful.

Lust. Lustrum. Luxury. Luster. Light. All have the same Latin roots. No surprise, beauty and light peer through many luxurious things with luster. The veil between thing and light of consciousness being so thin that some artists and creators know it to be as gossamer as a figment of our imagination.

This life-force is so unspeakable, so I talk about thngs. And they'll simply look like things. Few will see the lightning bolts from on high or the spiritual manna flowing from heaven...that's because it's so subtle. (Expecting fireworks? You're seeking, and missing it here now.)

Sometimes things are expensive like the nearly $7000 price tag on that divine garnet and pearl necklace at Deja & Co. Sometimes things are inexpensive like the pineapple heirloom tomato from the Saratoga Farmer's Market sprinkled with fresh basil and balsamic vinegar. Both sparked with fire, with life.

Things per se are only as interesting as the invisible behind it. Yet so few actually see the invisible. So abstract. Most, though, they can see, feel, hear, touch, smell things. So I work with things. To me they are the symbols of the invisible.

The alchemy of things. Alchemically transmuted even base desires are the stuff of our highest selves. For instance can you feel the intention behind things? "Design is the first signal of human intention," says William McDonough. We resonate with, attracted to, like intention even if it is not conscious. Why do you pick up that book, or this CD, that candle or walk into that store?

"When people talk about innovation in the '90s, they really mean technology. When people talk about innovation in this decade, they really mean design." - Bruce Nussbaum, BusinessWeekOnline, January 3, 2005

When a student asked George Nelson for advice on his course of study in design, Nelson replied, "Don't study design. Study life."

Regardless of outer perception, this will never ever really be a cool-hunting hip-chasing blog. In the words of Colleen, it's about smart woo-woo. I care for and will share only things that remind and connect me back to Me and point towards that which we know in our heart of hearts of life and truth.

Bonus: Do you think alchemy is about turning base metals into gold? The Harry Potter books brought 14th century Parisien bookseller and alchemist Nicholas Flamel back into the limelight. Legend has it, he's the only one whom ever located the secret of the Philosopher's Stone, or the secret of gold and eternal life:

This book fell into the hands of precisely the man who was destined to receive it; and he, with the help of the text and the hieroglyphic diagrams that taught the transmutation of metals into gold, accomplished the transmutation of his soul, which is a far rarer and more wonderful operation.

Silicon Valley Salon: Ferragosta, Celebrating the Fertility and Slow Modernness of August

"It's unhealthy to eat alone," Fiorella says. She welcomes guests to the table with an innate sense of hospitality. Another plate or three or four, what's the bother? At a summer dinner, Marco looks down at the row of plates and says, "It's good to have at least twenty at dinner," and he's right. - Frances Mayes, Under the Tuscan Sun

Diane Michlig and I invite you to a midsummer night's Italian holiday feast and conversational salon at Diane's intimate garden patio within Legends Fine Crafts Gallery, downtown Menlo Park, Tuesday, August 15th 6 p.m. Guests of honor include artist-couple Stephen and Jacqueline Osborn (current works will be on display).

If you are passionate about digging deeply into the locali soil and being engaged in a fertile Silicon Valley renaissance and cross-pollinating among the agriculture/gastronomic, arts plus technology communities, please request an invite at c r o s s r o a d s d i s p a t c h e s -at- gmail -dot- com. Your significant other is certainly warmly invited (after all, lovers and muses inspired much of the Renaissance beginning with Dante and Beatrice). Limited to first 20 guests.

Ferragosta, August 15th, is an Italian holiday originating from 18 BC "when the Roman Emperor Augustus declared that all of the month of August would be dedicated to the Feriae Augusti, a series of festivals and celebrations that paid homage to "Diana, the Goddess whose task it was to oversee the woods, the phases of the Moon, and Maternity" and "celebrate Vortumnus, God of the Seasons and therefore of the ripening of crops, Conso, the God of the Harvest, and Opeconsiva, who personified the abundant harvest. In short, the Feriae were a celebration of fertility and maternity."

These long summer Mediterranean days often has me dreaming that the defacto capital of Silicon Valley, San Jose, is poised and sitting on the cusp of where Florence was perhaps in the year 1492, and given enough passione and clarity dreams manifest into the world as marble Davids, and concrete Googles (this Friday San Jose Mercury News thought the same possibility too):

"Both in country and in town, according to humanist precepts, Lorenzo [de' Medici, ruler of the Florentine city-state during the Italian Renaissance] established a convention whereby there was no pecking-order in the seating at meals: those first to arrive either took the 'highest' seats, or simply sat where they chose. In addition to scholars, translators and philosophers whom he subsidized and encouraged, he also gathered around him such cultivated men as the book-dealer and chronicler of his times Vespasiano da Bisticci, the musician Antonio Squarcialupi, the painters Botticelli and Ghirlandaio, the sculptor Bertoldo, now a relatively old man who was the last surviving pupil of Donatello; and, towards the end of Lorenzo's life, the difficult, fiery, teenaged prodigy, Michelangelo. He provided a forum for all these artists and art lovers and under his aegis they flourished." - Il Gigante: Michelangelo, Florence and the David, by Anton Gil

Shopping list: Ripe fruits in the farmer's markets including lusty heirloom tomatoes (pineapple, brandywine, etc), figs, white peaches and fresh basil, Bravo Farms cheese, Bay Bread roasted garlic loaf, Spenger balsamic vinegars, Saratoga Chocolates, variety of iced and hot peach black and oolong teas...basta?...

Ferragosta, at first, baffled us as a holiday until we began to understand it as a state of mind. We, gradually, have entered this state of mind ourselves. Simply put, ferragosta, August 15, marks the ascension of the corporeal body and soul of the Virgin Mary into heaven...But the day itself is only a marker in the month, for the broader meaning of the word is August holidays and a period of intense laissez-faire. - Frances Mayes, Under the Tuscan Sun

images Stephen Osborn's La Morra, Jacqueline Osborn's Beach Hut and Afternoon Affair.

Bonus: The coalition of Silicon Valley CEOs and cultural organizations, 1stACT.org, includes in its reading list Carl Honore's In Praise of Slowness: How a Worldwide Movement is Challenging the Cult of Speed (2004) saying:

Canadian born, London-based journalist, Honore, goes in search of balance and illustrates how changing the pace of life is changing the face of commerce. This book is a useful augmentation to reading on creative economies and particularly adds to thinking about cultivating your distinct advantage within a community whether it’s a village of hundreds or city of millions.

p.s. The Slow Food movement began in Italy. If anyone has talents to share -- whether its playing a mandolin, or concocting the cocktail art of a Bella Bellini, please do share and let us know.

Grok This! Gesture Algorithms Superfluous Since Humans Naturally Grok Gestures

Robert Scoble was pleasantly touched by an email from a stranger passing on information about a fire in the Paradise Valley area: "[H]e remembered that my mom lived in Emigrant, Montana. How did he know that? Cause I blogged about that a few weeks back." From that email, Robert infers that maybe Steve Gillmor's GestureLab and gesture concepts have legs.

"Can algorithms fill this role? Sure. For instance, read yesterday’s post by Fred Wilson. What gestures do you see there?

I see that he enjoys personal, authentic information about Venture Capital, music, and that he already reads the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal so don’t bother sending him anything that already exists in those two publications." [Hyperlinks added ;-) ] - "Gesture Firestorm Hits," Scobleizer, August 1, 2006

Can algorithms fill this role? The real question: Why should they...

1. When a human being can naturally grok the gestalt of a moment in its totality - without a single algorithm. (We could call it intuition, instinct, impulse, inclination, gut feel, being wholly present to another person.) Singularity, Turing machine or not, mark my words, machines will never ever grok the way humans can instantaneously.
2. When the intention of the person-to-person reaching out is what typically matters in the first place; the gesture's secondary. (Spare me your algorithmically-generated gestures, I already get hordes of spam.)

What do I mean?

Gestures based on reads on my past - anyone's past, and that includes yesterday or five minutes ago - often feel as dissonant and anachronistic as seeing a Rolex on the wristband on a commoner in a Victorian-period comedy of manners film. Something just feels off.

I find myself bemused at best, unseen at worst, when people come up to me who've not talked with me in ages and proceed to act as if I'm stuck in some time machine. They bring up old topics (no, I don't expect even my friends to read my blog, simply ask: What are you into now?) and introduce me to others based on petrified and stagnant historical data.

Recent examples of algorithms gone awry. If you think algorithms are only a machine function, think again. Humans can easily go into full-blown if-then-else algorithmic-mode:

• The wish-fulfilling gesture robot scans my last few posts and concludes I adore vodka, wine, coffee. Very wrong on all three counts. I'm actually a water and tea gal. Better to be curious and ask me why I'm writing about those three. However, a perfect gesture would certainly be to invite me as your guest to Paris this fall.
• I doubt that I'm alone in the fact that the full expanse of my online life represents only a wee fraction of myself. Nothing I've written in over three years would lead you to believe I'm a huge fan of Gershwin and the flapper jazz culture of the 1920's. And more importantedly no algorithm could piece together why I am. Yet a human might grok it's so sheerly through resonance and intuition.
• I get tons of unsolicited PR emails written purportedly by human beings, quite often disguised as friendly 'gestures'. They scan my bio and perhaps the last few posts. Fair enough. The thing is most humans are astute enough to pick up the true intention behind gestures. I have received only one genuine unsolicited email of late from a intriguing woman that found me via a search on the term "renaissance." My email back to her since I was so floored by her perceptiveness and authenticity was basically, Who are you and how did you find me?
• "Would you like some of spinach-and-egg omelette I'm making?" my housemate would often ask in the morning. Typically my answer was "Sure." After about the seventh consecutive 'no' this May he stopped asking. On a July 4th outing to his cabin in the Sierras we visited his neighbor's goat and llama farm - I kid you not, the couple's name was MacDonald! They gave us farm fresh eggs from their chicken coup on our way out the door. The next morning I overhear an algorithm's gears churning as omelettes were frying. My other housemate is explaining to the guest-cook: "Evelyn doesn't eat eggs anymore." 

IF Evelyn doesn't eat eggs in May AND Evelyn doesn't eat eggs in June AND

IF Evelyn says she cannot eat eggs from Safeway anymore but cannot exactly articulate why

THEN Evelyn doesn't eat eggs in July, or maybe ever again

PRINT GESTURE RESULT INTO ARRAY(1): Don't offend thus don't offer eggs to Evelyn

So I corrected the algorithm-writer and I ate eggs that morning because they were fresh and came from a small farm where the folks loved their animals such that I resonated with the whole place. (You might surmise currently today August 3rd that I am not eating industrial meat, fish, eggs; but it's the why that's the crucial question.)

Recent examples of instantaneous (that's nearly superfluous with grok) grokking:

• I met pastry chef Shuna Fish Lydon briefly at BlogHer. She grokked me. (Grokking happens in a split-second.) She intuitively sensed a fellow lover of seasonal, locali food. She offered me her last copy of Edible San Francisco that I was perusely with obvious relish. We've theoretically never met before. I've never read her blog. She's never read mine. Yet Instant Recognition Happened. No algorithm required. Plus nearly no surprise - more akin to 'yeah I knew that' - when I read in the magazine's bio blurb that she is a lover of stone fruits too.
• I recently bought "Between Friends: M.F.K. Fisher and Me" (at Leigh's) about Jeannette's Ferrary's friendship with the legendary epicurean. Now, even though I had dinner with Susan Getgood Friday night she did not know this. She sent me this email Monday: "[T]he peach recipes reminded me of a book I just finished – My Life in France by Julia Child. If you haven’t, you should read it. Julia and her nephew co-writer really bring Paris of the late 40s and early 50s alive. A time remarkably close in many ways to salon culture. I ate it up like a peach." She's totally right of course. I would love this book. It was a valuable, considered recommendation.
• An attuned publicist sent me copy of Thich Nhat Hanh's new book, The Energy of Prayer. Now this was the very first unsolicited book outside the business book category I've ever received. It was like a timely blessing that dropped from Heaven. I felt someone knew. I continue to get tons of business books in the mail because I was really into business book reviews...in 2004. At a bookstore the other day, I flipped through The Long Tail yet I bought Madame Bouvary instead. Anyone that groks me today (and only today matters) could sense that. The gesture algorithms would lump into this conclusion: Nix sending Evelyn a business book to review. Evelyn is not doing biz books. Semicolon. End do-loop. Wrong again! It depends. I absolutely adore and HIGHLY recommend this recent purchase: former VP of Trend, Design and Product Devolopment at Target's book, The Trendmaster's Guide: Get a Juump on What Your Customers Wants Next.

Bonus: Friends don't hold friends hostage to the past.

Last time I met my ex-husband for coffee he gathered all he knew about me about him like trusty library reference materials. To him, I was still the person that had left an ambitious dot-com career, him, and Salt Lake City.

"So you're dating a Republican?" he peered at me quizzically like a play being performed without regard to memorized lines from the script. I felt like a snapshot. Not a live, evolving being. Whereas, said Republican (now ex-lover) is one of my closest friends and every time we meet I'm a fresh discovery he's eager to learn about. And vice-versa.

Recently I wrote this to a close friend: "Be careful (and I will too) with preconceptions and assumptions....it can kill the mystery of the other person. There's unfathomable depths to both of us, all of us. Trust me you have only stratched the surface of the Infinite expressing itself as Evelyn -- we're even a mystery unto ourselves. Let's stay curious explorers, k?"

Wordplay: GROK (Source:) To grok (pronounced GRAHK) something is to understand something so well that it is fully absorbed into oneself. In Robert Heinlein's science-fiction novel of 1961, Stranger in a Strange Land, the word is Martian and literally means "to drink" but metaphorically means "to take it all in," to understand fully, or to "be at one with." Today, grok sometimes is used to include acceptance as well as comprehension - to "dig" or appreciate as well as to know.

As one character from Heinlein's novel says:

'Grok' means to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the observed - to merge, blend, intermarry, lose identity in group experience. It means almost everything that we mean by religion, philosophy, and science - and it means as little to us (because we are from Earth) as color means to a blind man.

p.s. Grokking isn't Martian. In fact it's reverse: It's alien when Earthbound humans deny their inherent grok capacity. As my teacher said last night, "Truth is innate. There's nothing more natural for a human being than enlightenment; everything else feels quite unnatural." You protest: moi, enlightened? Fine, fine, you may have the dimmer switch turned a bit too far on your awareness of said enlightenment. Yet the light's equally available, and as close as the turning of a knob.

p.p.s. I'm the fourth Evelyn on Google. And it's an utter shame that Evelyn Waugh is not #1.

image Michelangelo of course. (You can Google him ;-)) I bought Il Gigante: Michelangelo, Florence, and the David 1492-1504 during same trip to Leigh's too.