Crossroads Dispatches

I felt the feeling of wet earth oozing between my naked toes.

One of the most beautiful, inspiring things I've read lately. I'm keeping this one tucked in a pocket. And more importantly, applying.

"If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform one million realities." - Maya Angelou

{Context: There's been a three-year drought in the southwest USA...}

"The old ones say that it has been over one hundred years since the rains have left us for so long," David replied. "That is why we have come to this place, to call to the rain."

{David prays, and arises.} ... "Already?" I asked, a little surprised. It seemed as though we had just arrived. "I thought you were going to pray for rain."

... "No, I said that I would 'pray rain'", he replied. "If I had prayed for rain, it would never happen."

{That afternoon it begins to rain--a lot.}

..."When I was young," he had said, "our elders passed to me the secret of prayer. The secret is that when we ask for something, we acknowledge what we do not have. Continuing to ask only gives power to what has never come to pass.

"The path between man and the forces of this world begins in our hearts. It is here that our feeling world is married to our thinking world. In my prayer, I begin with the feeling of gratitude for all that is and all that has come to pass. I gave thanks for the desert wind, the heat, and the drought, for that is the way of it, until now. It is not good. It is not bad. It has been our medicine.

"Then I chose a new medicine. I began to have the feeling of what rain feels like. I felt the feeling of rain upon my body. Standing in the stone circle, I imagined that I was in the plaza of our village, barefoot in the rain. I felt the feeling of wet earth oozing between my naked toes. I smelled the smell of rain on the straw-and-mud walls of our village after the storms. I felt what it feels like to walk through fields of corn growing up to my chest because the rains have been so plentiful. The old ones remind us that this is how we choose our path in this world. We must first have feelings of what we wish to experience. This is how we plant the seeds of a new way. From that point forward," David continued, "our prayer becomes a prayer of thanks."

"Thanks. Do you mean thanks for what we have created?" [, author asks.]

"No, not for what we may have created," David replied. "Creation is already complete. Our prayer becomes a prayer of thanks for the opportunity to chose which creation we experience. Through our thanks we honor all possibilities and bring the ones we choose into this world." - The Isaiah Effect, by Gregg Braden

"Creation is only the projection into form of that which already exists." - The S'rîmad Bhâgavatam (or the Bhâgavata Purâna).

Art Credits: Sonoita Rain, by Nancy Weaver Monsman

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.

buildings (frozen music) will be temporary like concerts

"The ancients and our modern quantum physicists are in agreement; everything in the universe is in a state of vibration which means they are in motion and all objects in motion create sound. This includes every portion of the human body." - Jonathan Goldman psychoacoustics teacher and musician, "The Sound of Science," Common Ground magazine, May 2007

"Now, the need for BEING SPACES is nothing new. Sociologist Ray Oldenburg coined 'The Third Place' in his 1990 book 'The Great Good Place', and described it as a celebration of the places where people can regularly go to take it easy and commune with friends, neighbours, and whoever else shows up." - Trendwatching March '06 report: Being Spaces & Brand Spaces

I read this in the book, Darkness and Scattered Light, and thought of you, fellow bards and druids. And I thought too of what I imagine a clan of artists would move through the cosmos like:

"The architecture of the future, I imagine, will be modeled on the architecture of matter itself, seen not in its aggregate nature as plastic material to be molded into shape, but in its musical structure as a crystal or as an archetypal geometrical form. The acoustical space of the ancient pyramids, cathedrals, and mosques is a celebration of sacred geometry....

What the future cathedrals of Chartres will be, I have no way of knowing, but I imagine someone playing a musical instrument and expressing with it certain images in algebra and topology; as the instrument is played, the physical form of the building is created. Perhaps my fantasy is simply one of a Bach-like God sitting at the keyboard of the universe, but I imagine a future architecture in which you turn on a building the way we now turn on the lights. These buildings will be temporary like concerts, and not enduring like the pyramids; and so when the use of the building is finished, the people can move on. The culture will be similar to the nomadic way of life of the old paleolithic hunters and gatherers; the people will carry their cultures in their souls, and so familiar will they be with earth, wind, and stars that civilization will be unnecessary ."

Art: Aerie © 2007 Timothy Lantz; Eurydice © 2007 Timothy Lantz

p.s. Feeling more in a curatorial and twittering mood of late. (And should you connect dots of Popup plus Being Spaces plus (Still) Made Here reports sans the commerce you may ascertain some parts of what been concocting lately.)

could you or I believe how fantastically weathly they all became?

I run across more & more hyperspace artists everyday.

Sometimes the art may arise unbidden from an unconscious quest question that arises from the seventh dimension or the fifth octave of our multidimensional existence. The question a breathing being of its exhaling its own universes, visitors and dwellers.

A play of consciousness that pervades every masterpiece of inbreath & outbreath, every interstitial realm, every parallel universe within parallel universe, fractally holographically multiversally limitless infinity. Questions that unfurl of their own without prodding like:

"How can perception, an act of perceiving which is receptive, be the same as the active process of creation?" - "The Infinity Codes of 2007", Starchild Global

Don't necessarily look for hyperspace art at your uptown museum. That art tends towards the retrospective.

Hyperspace art may show up in the guise of the graffiti artist, the street performer, the acrobat clown, the fractal equations playing with the astrophysicist, the bedtime story you're telling your child that morphs in the telling, the unusual conversation about the cosmic Egg, unicorns, simultaneous timelines, aborginal songlines you're engaged in the initial 3.33 minutes with the seeming stranger at the bank checkout line.

You never know. But on the other hand you know when you feel it.

You know because you are this multithreaded existence. You have been there in your imagination. A sense of deja vu so refined it is as ethereal as a griffin feather's touch. So subtle that you aren't sure if you are officially awake or merely dreaming this art into existence on the spot. You known this from the 'tween terras of sleeping dreams. And in the haunting dragon wind that flashes sweeps reverberates up and down your spine.

"We should be wondering tonight, "Is there a world?" But I could go and talk on 5, 10, 20 minutes about is there a world, because there is really no world, cause sometimes I'm walkin’ on the ground and I see right through the ground. And there is no world. And you'll find out." - Jack Kerouac (soul kin, a pioneer to the counterculture of the sixties and muse to many hyperspace revelers)

Here graphic novelist meets visionary comic strip:

"Quoting again Patrick Farley's visionary future [Electric Sheep Comic's Chrysalis Colossus, or, An Illustrated Blue Unicorn Travelogue], "Could you or I believe how fantastically wealthy they all became?" we can now see what this might mean. When wealth is separate from accumulation but refers to a richness of relationships, each person's wealth makes everyone wealthier. Art, the creation of beauty, will no longer be limited by what we can afford, for money will be art's ally not its enemy." - Charles Eisenstein, The Ascent of Humanity (from Chapter 7, The Age of Reunion)

Consider treating yourself to a vortical excursion of your 360 degree spherical life. Unhinge from linear time and travel into your present future through the fiction of the graphic storyteller (they call themselves comic strip) recommended above: the Chrysalis Colossus.

 "Ask yourself,"

said the Caterpillar,

"is there really such a thing as a 'trivial occurrence' at all?"

- Chrysalis Colossus, by Electric Sheep (my favorite line)

p.s. "If a librarian isn't sure where to shelve a book, that may be because the material is interstitial in some way, not fitting comfortably into a single, conventional literary category." More hyperspace art is coming. In the very near future, and it will absolutely shatter attempts at single, linear, conventional categories. Boundless as outer space, through the art you won't be tethered to comfortable, single, conventional categories either.

Instead of discrete fits and starts,  digital 0's and 1's, on and offs, Boolean true and false - duality's offspring glides in one fluid fluxing symphony of electric hues and magnetic glyphs. Occupying many categories simultaneously they'll totally flabbergast librarians and curators. (The word category ceases to have meaning.)

p.p.s. No coincidence some of these artists were labelled ADD as kids: hyperactive, impulsive, inattentive quite often equates to hyperdimensional, spontaneous, nonlinear. Hyperspace art is quite ADD. Ritalin and other restraints are akin to the librarian's quandry, How do we shelve this confounding interstitial book conventionally comfortably in a single category on the shelf? Answer: It's not the book; the Dewey Decimel System ain't gonna work anymore, Alice. Consider this: take a second look at these kids not as defective, but as perfectly conceived for the age and time they are born into.

Art: A frame from Chrysalis Colossus, by Electric Sheep Comics artist Patrick Farley; glasswing butterfly photo via Splendid Pictures Around the Net (more transparent butterflies photographs there)...symbolically, as our own sense of transparency deepens, lightens, after the larval stage, and space pervades within and without, we 'bleed' more apparently into hyperdimensions.

summer of love 2007

"We were becoming world citizens. Peace and love weren't just slogans but states of mind and experiences that we were living and bearing witness to. Living in harmony with the earth was an ideal that we felt and perceived as real experience. We were bringing forth a second Renaissance that would change human culture." - Allen Cohen, co-founder of the underground paper San Francisco Oracle, essay "Summer of Love"

Everytime I go out for an late afternoon visit with the sun and the clouds and the morning doves and the redwood grove and the children gleeing at Rainbow Park, I return flooded with a clarity of information download(s) and renewed vitality... a rush!

Dusk last night, texting a co-inspirator: "summer of love 1967. haight-asbury. 40 years the children wander Egypt. beatles all you need is love, 62567=9. 62507=22. umm yum summer of love in fruition 2007"

"Performing at the height of the Vietnam War, the group [The Beatles] wanted to spread a message of peace and love to the world. They broadcast a live set, at 8:54 p.m. GMT [on June 25, 1967], singing John Lennon's song, "All You Need Is Love", which had been written especially for the occasion. The Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, Marianne Faithfull, Keith Moon and Graham Nash, among others, showed up and sang along. The performance was done after a single rehearsal." - Wikipedia on first worldwide satellite broadcast, Our World

It's summer... have you looked! Nature's display is shamelessly fecund and prodigious. The magnolias buttery sweet. Petals the size of my palm open in an untethered gliding sliding slurring surrender off the edge of the satin ivory sheets bedpost. Any minute she may float like an orchestra note landing face to face with Gaia's cheek.

Summer. A time of expansion. Love is definitely sowing its seeds like dandelion weeds. People say I seem to be in love.

Love is in the air
In the whisper of the trees
Love is in the air
In the thunder of the sea - John Paul Young

People say I seem to be in love. Yet they say this as if I am in love with. If they only knew!

On Valentine's Day I wrote in my Zaadz blog (ah, so many blogs, so little time):

I was flipping through WeAr magazine (adore it, if you're into global fashion/ retail/ art you might get a kick out of this large-format Berlin mag) when I came across a layout of Richard Kidd store in Vancouver.

Under glass skylights and the criss-cross steel beams of chic industrial bohemia, a wall mural reads:

I CAN NEVER BE IN LOVE

BECAUSE I AM LOVE

Profound poetry appears in the most unexpected places. Love letters to an unspeakable God ditto.

“Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.” - Sir Winston Churchill

p.s. I love that tagline in the image: "It was the end of believing…”

(and, the beginning of being)

"Someday, after mastering winds, waves, tides and gravity, we shall harness the energy of love; and for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire." - Pierre Teilhard De Chardin

The foundation for the law of attraction is the law of love. How can one be immersed in abundance and be divorced from its prima mater, the animating spiral of Love? I was pleasantly blessed with I stumbled across Standing Elk's website recently "by accident" and was stunned by the clarity of its wisdom. He writes simply, eloquently, about each of the universal laws. On the Universal Law of Love he begins: "This is the Greatest Law of them all. This is just my opinion here, I would want you to know that, but it is an even higher law than the Law of Free Will. For that is what all creation is, is based in Love..."

"I do not say that you cannot learn to materialize every wish of your being - and this aspect of alchemy is for some the easiest part of the whole, while for others it remains the most difficult. I do say that the design of those wishes ought to be contemplated more than the wondrous science of bringing them into manifestation from the invisible. For to create a worthy design is a most noble endeavor, worthy of the God in man, which alone can set him free to fulfill his immortal destiny." - Saint Germaine (aka Merlin)

I believe the hippies were aiming for an unfurling Renaissance that summer of love, 1967. I believe they were planting the seeds for something that would require an exodus through the desert of our collective and personal dark night, the moist black soil, through the Abyss, to come to fruition.

I'm not into nostaglia though, nor slumbering back in the past. History is intriguing in it reveals the seeds. I'm simply thrilled we'll be around to see the harvest.

Sex, now Eros coursing through all the chakras, everything is erotic, well beyond sense of self or Other, co-mingling light bodies Drugs, now simply letting go of control, opening to the inner planes of reality, space, light, Life.  Rock 'n roll, now singing our signatory soul notes, attunement, oui, "All I need is the air that I breathe" music music everywhere too, in harmony with water, earth, fire, air, aether, stardust, the music of the seven spheres.

new soul kin's email: once in [a lovely country] friends walked along hilltops, alternations of voices reading a new earth by e. tolle, a rennaissance of consciousness, observing the day moon rise into blue sky.

my reply: my renaissance in consciousness, reading prajnaparamitra sutra, or maybe it was just the tea at Peet's went down the wrong pipe ;-)

This, the Season of Renaissance. Now, the Summer for the Art-Happening called Awakening. As Paul Levy says, "For the deeper purpose of Art, to quote philosopher Friedrich Schiller, "...is not merely to translate the human being into a momentary dream of freedom, but actually to make him free.""

"Or the late, great psychedelic alchemist trip-master Terence McKenna , who rhapsodized about magic mushrooms, the collective over soul, gathering eminences, star ships, microbial creatures, membranes of inexplicable love, transcendental dramas, and birthing the self. McKenna and others believed that mushrooms are trying to tell us something in some cosmic fungal language— a bit of madness that arguably is more in tune with the thinking of today’s artists than a show of Beatles album covers is." - Jerry Stalz, New York Magazine Art Review on the Whitney's Summer of Love exhibition

Another friend theories, queries: "fairy tale futures remember aoristic internet" & "a curious hypothesis wonders how might a forest's fungal internet respond to the world wide web?"

Me and my soul family make McKenna seem sane. Alchemists, all.

"I'm a revolutionary artist. My art is dedicated to change." - John Lennon

And, hey, we're not even on drugs when we bounce sparks off each other. Me, never so much as touched a cigarette. (Mostly because I was afraid where drugs might take me... I might not be in rigid control, or something.) Now, unless it's ayahuasca with a shaman maybe Santo Daime in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest or tasting the clouds in the Peruvian highlands, it's superfluous.

I'm tripping enough.

We're jamming on unconditioned love and truth and the exilir of life.

And we couldn't do it alone. Enlightenment takes mirrors of our own selves refracting, reflecting, refluxing, remembering, reigniting, rekindling, realizing our own face before we were born squarely back to Us. And this synergestic combustion is what I think started to happen in the late 60s:

"The Oracle would go from hand to hand and mind to mind in the evocative states unveiled by marijuana and LSD. It was a centering instrument for that intense, aesthetic, and expanded perceptual universe. To this day I meet people who tell me how they had seen an Oracle in some small town in West Virginia, or thereabouts. They attribute to that sighting of the Oracle their recognition that they were not alone on a dark planet in an empty universe. From that moment on they date the beginning of their journey toward self-realization." - Allen Cohen, Notes on the SF Oracle for the Haight-Asbury in The Sixties CD

I see the future, I see the Art-Happening called Awakening (see Bonus Deux), and well beyond to the Golden Age because it's Here, and it was all set into motion Then. (We set the Future-Present-Past into motion every moment).

You can see it so clear in 1967... Clearer still right this June Seven, Two-O-O-Seven, no?:

"Thus, the Oracle pages correspond to the methodology of the Thanka art of Tibet and Byzantine art in which artists established a visionary state of mind, through meditation, chanting, abstinence and/or prayer, and tried to convey that vision in their painting.

The perceivers of the art then could mount to that same elevation, and experience within their mind the same visionary state. So, looking at an Oracle could be a sort of occult trance experience communicated across the dimensions of space and time, through the tabloid medium, from one explorer of inner worlds to another. That was the magic, the fire, that spread from mind to mind with the Oracle. Motifs and techniques were universal -- from ancient Chinese spirals to Sci Fi. Wings, rays, auras, arabesques, swirls, unicorns, and centaurs, mandalas, collages, flying saucers and their inhabitants, op-art, flowers and paisley, nudes, feathers, and ghosted images were interwoven into a dazzling cross-cultural spectacle of multidimensional depth, pattern and flow." - Allen Cohen, Notes on the SF Oracle for the Haight-Asbury in The Sixties CD

p.s. In San Francisco on June 25th? Expect an Art-Happening... details unfolding...

Nostaglia/ background info: Wikipedia on Summer of Love; Whitney Museum Summer of Love exhibition (showing May 24-Sept 16); Summer of Love Whitney exhibition in NYC, review; San Francisco Chronicle's 40th anniversary of Summer of Love coverage; lyrics to "All You Need Is Love" and Wikipedia's two cents; a cover to an issue of The San Francisco Oracle; Summer of Love essay by Allen Cohen, of San Francisco Oracle fame and co-organizer of the Human Be-In; San Francisco Oracle and Haight-Asbury history, compiled by Allen Cohen; Seattle Times' coverage of Summer of Love 40th

BONUS: "A mover and shaker in the hippie scene [& living in H-A in 1967] and now a social critic and professor, [Theodore] Roszak summed up the Flower Power movement in the following way:

"I don't think the Summer of Love left any blueprints behind on how to build a better world. It was much more a showcase for enjoyment, for happiness, for freedom, as people understood it then. But if you probe to the underlying values of displays like that, protests like that, you can perhaps see the seeds of a better social order than the one we're living in now. If the ideals of the Sixties had prevailed, it would be a world, where people lived gently on the planet without the sense that they have to exploit nature or make war upon nature in order to find basic security. It would be a simpler way of life, less urban, less consumption-oriented, and much more concerned about spiritual values, about companionship, friendship, community. Community was one of the great words of this period, getting together with other people, solving problems, enjoying one another's company, sharing ideas, values, insights. And if that's not what life is all about, if that's not what the wealth is for, then we are definitely on the wrong path." - Mark Vallen blog "Art for a Change", Summer of Love, Take 2

images Yab-Yum, by Paul Kagan (Oracle issue #7 cover); 2nd photo "It was the end of believing...", origin long forgotten, definitely not Sixties;  Vernon Panton's Phantasy Landscape Version II (1970/2000) at the Whitney/ photo © Panton Design, Basel; light show from Gene Anthony's photo gallery from the 1967 Summer of Love; Erick Wong's photo from the 1967 Summer of Love (via SF Chronicle's 40th anniversary coverage)

Bonus Deux: Paul Levy on the Art-Happening Called Awakening (my twist is bit mo over the top immersive experential fun):

perhaps consider what life would be like if we truly lived by what we believe

"Perhaps consider what life would be like if we truly lived by what we believe." - Lost & Found on The Hierophant

When I first got to the Marigny neighborhood of New Orleans, and saw that there were no full-on grocery stores, that's when I first got a clue that the trip was going to be a tad more expensive than I'd anticipated.

That old flashback anxiety came up the first day or two when I went out to eat, paid the bill and then flash forwarded into the future calculating in my head the total spreadsheet amount for food expenditures  for the two months (plus in actuality).

It didn't take me very long to get into the New Orleans' laidback vibe, however, and feel that somehow everything was going to be alright.

What I ended up recalling (my life flowed with grace and miracles in Thailand and Sri Lanka the winter of 2005 too) was when I take the initial, if faltering, step, the Universe takes at least 99 on my behalf.

Small example. I rarely needed to take cab rides while in New Orleans. I would simply decide where I wanted to go  - be it in Tulane or Magazine Street or the Mapleleaf Bar - and voila! someone would inevitably offer me a ride - typically without me asking.

The first time, I'd only been in town for two days so I took a cab to the Jung society meeting on the Enuma Elish myth in uptown. There I met Dan and Diane - literally right next door neighbors to where I was staying - voila! a ride home materialized.

I had no idea when I got there how I'd get home (it was a church tucked off the beaten path; a cab would definitely need to be called out.) Yet I did know I needed to be at that particular meeting. That was the step. When you listen and hear, "Go." You don't balk, "But that's all the way in uptown. It'll cost $25 roundtrip. And...."

Don't give up even before you start. You move in the direction you're being pulled despite appearances that you ought to wait until all the ducks are in the row, and you've lined a ride home, and the stock market is, and the...

I don't wait for evidence to present itself that I'm on the right path. Evidence comes, if it does at all, in hindsight. You move because the wind blows you that way.

"The only thing that will move you (and I don't mean to be too poetic about this) is the same thing that moves a leaf hanging from a tree. It's simply because the breeze blows that way. So you always know what to do: The breeze blows that way, and that's the way you go. You don't ask questions anymore. You don't evaluate why the breeze is blowing that way because you know that you don't know why. And you know you can't know why. There's never been a leaf anywhere that knows why the wind blows that way on that day at that moment. That breeze changes the orientation of your life, moment to moment to moment, simply because that's the way life's moving. And when you're living in your awakened self you have no argument with the way it's moving because it is the same as you are." - Adyashanti

Actually, that's the way I met my friend Wyatt. I didn't know how I was going to get home that day I met him busking on University Avenue either. That was our opening exhange. He asked for money. I walked over, lowered my voice and explained that I'd give him something but I didn't have enough for bus fare home myself. (Tended to go through these feast and famine cycles in the past.) I only know that something was compelling me to go to Palo Alto that day. I followed that whim. Of course, I ended up getting a ride home from my friend that works at IDEO... yet I didn't know that apriori.

I found that New Orleanians were generous, sharing and less of a "me, mine, and my" frame of mind than I'm used to observing in the US.

It's there it all dawned on me that money would end up becoming extraneous.

Call me quixotic, idealistic, dreamer. (I cannot explain the how's) I've seen into the future. (Though yes, the future keeps shifting because we change it.) Surprising myself, I feel moved toward "collective" (for lack of better name) and cooperative ways of sharing which don't necessarily involve money, or monetary systems.

I want to play in that realm. Live by that belief that we can take care of each other.

To me, art isn't to be merely visited, watched...it's more like a space you inhabit, you absorb, you be. Doubt I've said this, but I'm into social art. Not social as in we're going to exchange comments, trackbacks, and I'll add you to my buddy list.

Social as in art that creates civilizations...like this...

You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world

- John Lennon, Imagine

I witnessed so many acts of collectiveness in Nola, ah, where to begin. Okay, here's one I witnessed: One evening I run into a cool pianist I've met at Mimi's upstairs. He is giving away a newly inherited piano to a fellow pianist sitting there at the counter. They'd met the week earlier at Mimi's. It's an extra piano, and she doesn't own one.

That logic doesn't resonate with everyone. Why not put the piano on Craigslist? Why not eBay? Why not donate it to the ___. Because he met whom it was intended for.

Last week Donna wrote in comments: "For some real fun, try giving money away, and watch how fast it comes back to you. ;^)" Yes. (The Diamond Cutter is a marvelous true story of this in practice. If it matters, he ended up a multimillionaire in the process.) Obviously one doesn't give with any expectation of getting. I don't give for quid pro quo or karmic brownie points.

Anyhow, once I got the lesson of giving, I found another lesson was waiting.

& it has to do with truly living by what I believe. As runners are wont to say, though, your mileage may vary.

There are those who give little of the much which they have - and they give it for recognition and their hidden desire makes their gifts unwholesome.

And there are those who have little and give it all.

These are the believers in life and the bounty of life, and their coffer is never empty.

There are those who give with joy, and that joy is their reward.

And there are those who give with pain, and that pain is their baptism.

And there are those who give and know not pain in giving, nor do they seek joy, nor give with mindfulness of virtue;

They give as in yonder valley the myrtle breathes its fragrance into space.

Though the hands of such as these God speaks, and from behind their eyes He smiles upon the earth.

It is well to give when asked, but it is better to give unasked, through understanding;

And to the open-handed the search for one who shall receive is joy greater than giving

And is there aught you would withhold?

All you have shall some day be given;

Therefore give now, that the season of giving may be yours and not your inheritors'.

You often say, 'I would give, but only to the deserving.'

The trees in your orchard say not so, nor the flocks in your pasture.

They give that they may live, for to withhold is to perish.

Surely he who is worthy to receive his days and his nights is worthy of all else from you.

And he who has deserved to drink from the ocean of life deserves to fill his cup from your little stream.

And what desert greater shall there be than that which lies in the courage and the confidence, nay the charity, of receiving?

And who are you that men should rend their bosom and unveil their pride, that you may see their worth naked and their pride unabashed?

See first that you yourself deserve to be a giver, and an instrument of giving.

For in truth it is life that gives unto life - while you, who deem yourself a giver, are but a witness.

And you receivers - and you are all receivers - assume no weight of gratitude, lest you lay a yoke upon yourself and upon him who gives.

Rather rise together with the giver on his gifts as on wings;

For to be overmindful of your debt, is to doubt his generosity who has the free-hearted earth for mother, and God for father.        

- Kahlil Gibran

UPDATE: As soon as I hit publish, I get this about circles of sharing and generosity entrepreneurs in my inbox:

"Imagine walking down the street and a woman comes up to you and says, 'Hello. I have an offering for you.' Puzzled, you look up and in your palm falls a $7500 check. 'Why me?' 'Serendipity,' she says. 'What should I do with it?' 'Whatever you want.' 'How did you decide on $7500?' 'We sat in a circle of silence, wrote down a number on a piece of paper and it averaged out to $7500.' And then she walks away. Now that's a pretty ridiculous story, but that's what has brought us together here." - "A Radical Experiment in Generosity Launches," CharityFocus.com

images Visit (detail of entire painting above) by Mari Klarwein; Breath of Gaia, by Josephine Wall (btw, discovered via a cool art blog by Melissa Ulto you may enjoy, Multo.com::Visual Magic); Tree of Fruitfulness, by Lieve Prins; can't find origin (from Myspace page while surfing) but probably one of those fantasy games

the Initiation beyond our Wildest dreams

If your knowledge of fire has been turned
to certainty by words alone,
then seek to be cooked by the fire itself.
Don't abide in borrowed certainty.
There is no real certainty until you burn;
if you wish for this, sit down in the fire.
- Rumi

Today Beltane. The ancient festival sacred to the Celts and folk of the British Isles. Come after the gloaming to the bonfires burning high on the hill flickering long into the charcoal night.

Way after midnight, in the wee hours of the night, sweep away with the pregnant moon that Buddha himself sat down and ate of the fig tree. We'll fly to the Vesak festival is the holiest of holy days in Buddhist temples in Sri Lanka to hidden valley ceremonies in Tibet.

Wikipedia tell the tale thus: "Like the festival of Samhain, opposite Beltane on Oct. 31, Beltane was a time when the Otherworld was seen as particularly close at hand." The Otherworld weaves strands into the times at hand stronger on any random day in 2007 than Beltane eves of the last few thousand years.

So this makes the Beltane-Vesek-Full Moon of 2007 particularly special. Or does it? A friend reminds me last night that today shall be a particularly powerful time to set intentions.

"What we need is more people
who specialize in the impossible." - Theodore Roethke

It's not about believing, he reminds me. Or thinking. Know.

"It's another day like any other day," I say. "Is it powerful because so many people ascribe the day with more importance, more power. And thus that sense of sacredness gives it more energy?"

"You got it."

Of course, all of this is a moot point if you haven't come to the Point of No Return. And crossed the bridge of swords.

At some point, you leap.

You say Yes, yes, whatever it takes, yes! And fair warning, my blog is going to make even less "sense" if you haven't made that commitment. Yes, I yearn to be whole. Yes, I want to be my real natural Self. Yes, I want galactic peace. Yes, I desire to live the Grand Love Affair with Life itself. Yes, I will not settle for less than that which is every moment embodiment in movement of truth, beauty, grace, power, love, joy, magic, ease.

I remember how my ex-husband used to pine that men had no real Initiation Rites any longer that marked the path. No threshold to cross, no test of bravery, no fire of truth proscribed rites with the tribal shaman.

Open your eyes: In the 21st century initiation comes into your life as it is (or was) Now. Usually it looks like a 2X4 smacking you across the skull, or the rug being pulled from under your feet, sometimes quite literally. That's your soul's initiation; no ritual necessary.

So I'm saying if you haven't recognize the wakeup call, and said Yes, this blog will appear to be a sputtering marvel of gibberish. I notice two types of  people reading and replying: those that are on the fence, and those that have said Yes (although they might be wishing they can retreat)! I will be focusing more on the latter because the gulf between the two is simply growing too great for me to straddle, and because so many these days have bowed Yes.

"At the second stage of the quest [for the symbol Holy Grail], Perceval is instructed at length by a wise old man, who is his Initiator.  This latter has recognized in him [Perceval] the necessary aptitudes: goodwill, self-detachment, total availability." - "Parsifal, The Grail, and Initiation"

Total availability being most important.

“And after that final no there comes a yes
  And on that yes the future world depends.” - Wallace Stevens

So there is a fork in my post today. If you are on the cusp, I will be praying and meditating in a vigil all night. My intent will be focused on readers and every person that has ever ever crossed my path & whom yearn for Yes (yet lean towards "Yes, but...") a little boost of certainty and clarity and courage. In a free will universe, however, absolutely no one can say Yes on your behalf. This applies today if you are on the cusp:

"Until now only those seekers who had stepped away from the collective and traveled their own solitary path have had access to the consciousness of unity. The door to this quality of consciousness was only opened to individuals who had passed certain trials, who had faced the darkness of their shadow and purified their lower nature. The wonder of the present transition is that the collective is being given access to this next step in consciousness without having to make this laborious and painful inner journey. Now the doorway to unity stands open to the whole of humanity.

The work of the mystic is to make human beings aware of this possibility, to stand within the doorway of unity and welcome the collective inside. Most people do not even know that a consciousness beyond self-oriented individuality exists. They do not see the light that is streaming through, the wholeness that is beckoning them. The patterns of our collective conditioning have created a veil which blocks our awareness of what is being given. If we do not know what is being offered, we will not be able to fully participate in its magic, in its new way of being. We will not step through the doorway.

Even many spiritual seekers still think in terms of effort, of trials and tests. But there is no longer any key needed to open the door. It cannot now be closed.

This change is so simple and fundamental it is easy to overlook. It is not a problem to be solved. There is nothing to be learned, no steps to success. Something is being given freely, with no strings attached. All that is required is for each of us to say "yes."" - Sufi master Llewellyn Vaughn-Lee, Working with Oneness

If you've said Yes, this applies today:

"The Lotus Heart is the foundation for not only all our future endeavours, but for the fulfillment of our Wildest Dreams. The Lotus Heart differs greatly from the One Heart because it signifies the merger of our deepest, truest heart's desires with fulfilling our true destiny and purpose while serving the One as One Being. We no longer have to choose between our most personal yearnings and fulfilling our true destiny, for they are no longer separate. The two pathways have converged into one clear, strong expressway.

The first thing we must do is to focus on what we really want. We need to get totally clear on this, by going into the deepest vaults of our heart of hearts and bringing out our most sacred, intimate personal heart's desires and our most precious dreams.

Since many of us haven't dared to look there for a long time, it might be a bit difficult at first to discern what you most want...

As we enter the new matrix of the Lotus Heart, the stamp of purest, core level TRUE LOVE is superimposed over everything. It is the air we breathe, the ground we stand upon, the food we eat. It is not only the prevailing current; it becomes the only current that we can feel....

Express out loud the things you most want. Write them down and put them on an altar. Call for them to come into your life. Call for them throughout the day and night. Express your readiness to receive them. Then live your deepest truth on a core level in every moment...

And your Wildest Dreams will start pouring in....

And please be careful that you don't push them away when they start coming in. Especially if they require dramatic changes in your established lifestyle, which they probably will. Be ready to welcome change without any resistance and be ready to move anywhere!" - Solara's 2007 Surf Report: Beyond Our Wildest Dreams

UPDATE: Via Karen Bishop: "As I write these words, an angel messenger has appeared (very unusual) with these words to share:

A new reign of peace and serenity is now upon us. A new surge of light has heralded a new dawn. We can rejoice in the bounty that it will bring. It is truly the dawn of a new era. Know that new opportunities abound. It is a time for magic. It is a time to wave your wands and watch as miracles occur.”"

A holy wholeness Yes to that! Will hold this beatific vision in my Heart all night as well.

Bonus: Origins of word, Beltane: In Gaelic the terminal vowel -o (from Belo) was dropped, as shown by numerous other transformations from early or Proto-Celtic to Early Irish, thus the Gaulish deity names Belenos ('bright one') and Belisama.

From the same Proto-Celtic roots we get a wide r ange of other words: the verb beothaich, from Early Celtic belo-thaich ('to kindle, light, revive, or re-animate'); baos, from baelos ('shining'); beòlach ('ashes with hot embers') from beò/belo + luathach, ('shiny-ashes' or 'live-ashes'). Similarly boil/boile ('fiery madness'), through Irish buile and Early Irish baile/boillsg ('gleam'), and bolg-s-cio-, related to Latin fulgeo ('shine'), and English 'effulgent'.

p.s. We shall all rise from the ashes like the Phoenix. We shall all be Shining Ones.

images bonfire mandala (via Earth Mandalas.com); Poi Circles by hendrik; ESA artist's view of Hugyens probe lander dropping from Cassini to the surface of Titan; medieval Phoenix, source unknown

Sauntering Towards A Waltzable Web

I stepped off the Aeromexico flight and right away I knew that even the extra days I spent to 'acclimate' in one of the largest cities on the planet - and, yes, to see with my own jaguar eyes the Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera home - hardly prepared me for the landing in Las Vegas.

I had re-entered a new territory, and this terrain came without sidewalks. Not even cracked tottering foot-high sidewalks like in the streets of San Cristobal de las Casas.

Later that evening, my mom who lives in Las Vegas, drove us to the off-strip casino with the adjacent shopping center and we entered into the cavernous cacophany of the Cheesecake Factory.

The street vendor's tamales at the Oaxaca market, the steaming chocolate at the neighborhood cafe in Quetzaltenago a few alley zig-zags from the town square, the tortillas and the sweet pineapple Christmas-fruit drink (and, yes, you can spike it) that Erica made were still vivid to my tongue, to my nose, to my eyes, to my skin right then.

It's now three years later. Today, the aromas are a waft of memory. But some caresses leave fingerprints like they've never left your body though the touch is no longer evident by sight of a hand.

My eyes did not quite register the 360 degree dominos of marquee neon signs, and water fountains synchronicized to symphonies as I drove my mom's car into asphalt football field-sized parking lots of the convention center. Armies upon armies of HDTVs spinning scenes and MP3 players assaulted me as I entered "the largest technology industry event." (This year 140,000 attendees are expected according to the San Jose Merc.)

Las Vegas may not yet be my favorite city in the world, but I'd never ever had such a visceral reaction like this before. And I've never been back to CES since.

I'd just spent seven weeks in Mexico, Guatamala, and a brief sojourn at the Copan ruins in Honduras when I went to CES 2004. The family I lived with for more than three weeks in Quetzaltenago took me in as their daughter, and I lived with their grandmother, grandfather, Erica's sister and her boy, and their own son and daughter. I went shopping with the family, strolled the streets in December following the neighborhood processions of revelers, ate three square meals a day all including hordes of tortillas in the kitchen, watched the Simpsons dubbed in Spanish with the boy, changed ringtones on teenager Jessica's new cellphone, ate barbequed pork and joined in on the firecracker frenzy when celebrating Christmas and New Year's with their extended families.

I wasn't disgusted by Las Vegas. That's not it. I simply...

Ached. There was a longing like the longing a baby that's been left in the crib for too long might have to be held by its mother.

I don't know need to try to dig up my journal from the trip right now to tell you the thought that kept ringing through my head over and over:

This city isn't built to human scale.

I was in Manhattan this September. I found myself walking as much as I ever did in Quetzaltenago, Guatemala. Walking to the meteoritic hole where twin towers once stood (on 9-11-06), walking to the Alex Grey gallery, walking to the Whitney Museum to meet Senia, walking to meet Rita for lunch and then walking through the flower district with her to see her artwork hanging at her apartment, walking that weekend to the yoga workshop in that little Cuban enclave near the Lower East Side, walking to the deli with Tom in Little Italy, walking through the smattering of darling boutiques and cafes in NoLita (adore Nolita).

Walking, walking, walking. Waltzing! Have you ever noticed that walking and waltzing are first cousins?

Walking connects me with the touch and movement and breath of humans.

Maybe that's the real reason that when my car left me stranded at the Colma BART Station this past November 2nd, I was not very inclined to fix it.

Sauntering: not a tour, but a never-ending enterprise. Playful and serious. Thoreau discovers his own etymology for the word. The saunterer may begin, he says, in the familiar fields of Concord, and some time later find himself in a place where "...jurisdiction ceases, and the idea which the word Concord suggests ceases to be suggested." - Joshua McKinney, Saunter

I say walking. Henry David Thoreau says walking but likes sauntering even better.

Sauntering's roots are tangled with meditating and musing too. And moreover, it means: "Some, however, would derive the word from sans terre, without land or a home, which, therefore, in the good sense, will mean, having no particular home, but equally at home everywhere," writes Thoreau.

"To use an obsolete Latin word, I might say Ex oriente lux; ex occidente Frux. From the East light; from the West fruit."  - Henry David Thoreau, Walking

So I smile when I read the CES coverage in the San Jose Mercury News this morning. Sub-headline: DOT-COM GLITZ IS DROPPED FOR FRUITFUL CONNECTIONS

"HP did briefly toy with the idea of bringing in big-name celebrities, but decided against that. "You don't get the value from it,'' said Phil McKinney, chief technology officer of HP's PC business. "It's about building relationships, and the only way to build relationships is with that face time.'' - "Parties Take on a Different Life," San Jose Mercury News, January 9, 2007

Yes, I'm supposed to make some 2007 Web predictions tonight.

"The best way to predict the future is to invent it." - Alan Kay

So I predict that the time of mass scale will be come down like the Berlin Wall in a velvet revolution yearning for the freedom of human scale.

And this time too, when the Wall comes down, there will be dancing in the streets.

Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nicked and Dimed shares in her brand-new released-today book, Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy, that "human beings are innately social, naturally taking part in celebrations and festivities that involve feasting, dancing and dressing up. Though these impulses have been suppressed at times,...they can never be kept down; the need for communal joy is a core feature of humanity."

My umbrella prediction (which all other predictions tumble out of) is that 2007 is the year that the Web is likened to a communal table rather than a printing press. Sans piping hot tortillas perhaps or perhaps not, but a gathering that exuberantly explores that human impulse towards collective joy and the delight of sauntering into people on the sidewalk.

Bonus: "We had a remarkable sunset one day last November. I was walking in a meadow, the source of a small brook, when the sun at last, just before setting, after a cold grey day, reached a clear stratum in the horizon, and the softest brightest morning sun- light fell on the dry grass and on the stems of the trees in the opposite horizon, and on the leaves of the shrub-oaks on the hill-side, while our shadows stretched long over the meadow eastward, as if we were the only motes in its beams. It was such a light as we could not have imagined a moment before, and the air also was so warm and serene that nothing was wanting to make a paradise of that meadow. When we reflected that this was not a solitary phenomenon, never to happen again, but that it would happen forever and ever an infinite number of evenings, and cheer and reassure the latest child that walked there, it was more glorious still.

The sun sets on some retired meadow, where no house is visible, with all the glory and splendor that it lavishes on cities, and perchance, as it has never set before,—where there is but a solitary marsh hawk to have his wings guilded by it, or only a musquash looks out from his cabin, and there is some little black-veined brook in the midst of the marsh, just beginning to meander, winding slowly round a decaying stump. We walked in so pure and bright a light, gilding the withered grass and leaves, so softly and serenely bright—I thought I had never bathed in such a golden flood, without a ripple or a murmur to it. The west side of every wood and rising ground gleamed like the boundary of elysium, and the sun on our backs seemed like a gentle herdsman, driving us home at evening.

So we saunter toward the Holy Land; till one day the sun shall shine more brightly than ever he has done, shall perchance shine into our minds and hearts, and light up our whole lives with a great awakening light, so warm and serene and golden as on a bank-side in autumn." - excerpted from essay Walking, Henry David Thoreau

Bonus: Speaking of Dancing in the Streets: "The best-selling author of Nickel and Dimed peeks inside the group behavior that breeds joy" will be speaking in S.F. on January 18th. Say hi, I'll be there myself. 

p.s.  Alright, so I'm more of an essayist like Thoreau than a dialogue-and-scene crime novelist. The whole intent is I want to avoid speaking in off-putting gobbledygook like "the timeless spaceless matrix of beingness dissolved into the One which it had always been." The litmus test is if my own family has half a chance at making heads or tails of the post, then I'm happy. He, he, gobbledygook was coined by a guy named Maverick: 'His inspiration, he said, was the turkey, “always gobbledy gobbling and strutting with ludicrous pomposity”.'

Nuff 'splaining Lucy. Like Frida says, ""I paint because I need to, and I paint whatever passes through my head without any other consideration." Amen, sister.

images La Molendera, by Diego Rivera (yep, she's making tortillas); my friend and local artist Gilbert Marosi's Looney Gamblers; Frida Kahlo's Still Life with Parrot and Fruit; Henry Gasser's The Lord Loves Dancing

What Are You Earnest About?

What are you passionate, zealous, vigorously resolute (resolute = resolutions) about?

What are you earnest about? (Not so much what you ought to be earnest about, what what are you earnest about now?)

"That which you are most earnest about orchestrates your whole life - inner and outer." - Adyashanti in satsang, November 14, '06

I committed myself - hmmm, that begins awkwardly like the way one is committed to a mental asylum...

I committed myself to run the 100th Boston Marathon in 1996. That doesn't seem like such a big deal, but one doesn't just waltz up and send an application in for Boston.

You must qualify to participate in the Boston Marathon. Qualification for my age bracket at the time meant I needed to run a 3:40 marathon the previous year. That means run 26.2 miles in an official marathon in under three hours and forty minutes. Still no biggie, right?

Perhaps I neglected to mention when I said that I was Ugly Betty, that hanging out at the library (or my room) reading Austen and Salinger correlated precisely with being the last (perhaps second to last, Jimmy Knickerbocker was usually last) person to be chosen for the softball team. P.E. was decidely not for me. At age 14, I thought that bermuda grass edging the asphalt could have been my last dying vision when I had to run manage to go the three laps around the track (yeah, that's less than one mile).

To make a very long story short, I did finish the St. George Marathon in 1994 with a qualifying time of 3:28 (and was euphoric crossing the finish line...this is when you picture Rocky heading up the Philadelphia Museum of Art steps and you start humming the theme song). I went on to run the 99th and 100th Boston, plus many other marathons and quite a few rugged trail ultra-marathons (including a few 50-milers in Texas and California and a gorgeous 41-miler on the wild and scenic Kepler Track in New Zealand).

My running group, the Locomotion Running Club, witnessed the transformation of a mediocre jogger into a Boston qualifier then an ultramarathoner in the space of roughly a little over two years. So they'd ask me once to speak to an audience of newbies before a marathon as if I knew anything really.

You see, I figured if I (aka the-person-least-likely-to-be-or-care-about-being-athletic) could do it, anyone could do it.

The only 'secret' I had was that I knew I wanted it, and I really wanted it. And then I followed the thread until I did it.

"Regardless of the name of this Great Power, or the conscious admission of a God, the Power is capable and willing to carry out to a complete and perfect conclusion every earnest desire of your objective mind, but you must be really in earnest about what you want." - R.H. Jarrett, It Works

My issue is I don't always have that same conviction, that same earnestedness, the same dogged clarity, as I did back when I first said Yes to running the Boston Marathon. I have definitely had that steady earnestness come up in a few scenarios from snagging a CTO spot at a venture-funded startup to what is classically termed 'awakening' (which is contrary to popular opinion only the beginning, not the end of the path). At other times, I drift in not being sure what it is I want or second-guessing that which I clearly do.

"Your objective mind and will are so vacillating that you usually only WISH for things and the wonderful, capable power within you does not function." - R.H. Jarrett, It Works

This year I'm committed to following my heart - wherever it leads me.

I'll say Yes to that which I  feel wholeheartedly committed to, No to everything else, and eliminate Maybe from my vocabulary. (To me, Maybe is vacillating.)

Last night I wrote out four pages in my journal totalling ten conditions or things that I do want in earnest written in vivid detail. 

My list ranges from the fruition of the teahouse to having a personal chef to a new place to live (moving north, either to Palo Alto or the city) to "living completely spontaneously" to the establishment of a social finance REIT that invests in community spaces to collaborating with filmmakers and musicians to being in relationship with a muse-collaborator-playmate-lover partner.

What's your earnest list?

p.s. The etymology of the word earnest:

O.E. eornoste (adj.) from a noun eornost "passion, zeal" (surviving only in the phrase in earnest), from P.Gmc. *ern "vigor, briskness" (cf. O.H.G. arnustarniba "struggle," Goth.  "safely," O.N. jarna "fight, combat") The proper name Ernest (lit. "resolute") is from the same root.

images wild horse running in Desert Run by Robert Dawson; Rangers by Wendy Caro

Why Do Anything

I'd decided somewhere recently to get out of the advice-giving business, also known as consulting. Most of my advice is a) never heard (b) summarily dismissed, and if I'm really honest, (c) it's really some wise part of myself sneaking in sage counsel to my own self in the guise of advice to you. For instance, like I told a friend (variation of a theme to three friends same week...and that's a clue it's really about me):

"We usually aren't frightened by being bankrupt/homeless as much as we are at how grand and beautiful and overwhelming the dream/vision/calling is and if we are worthy to execute such a wonder. I think you are getting ready to move from endless possibilities to making a firm step in one."

So what would I write if I wasn't telling you what you should do?

Might explain my huge lapse in blogging. Maybe not. Been travelling lots (and future: NYC Sept 8-13 if you'd like to meet up). Excuses galore. Way busier people like Fred manage to blog everyday. And remind me why we do blog: Voices. People. Yet my voice is radically changing (and I am), and I don't know what that'll mean but it'll make for an interesting trip.

"I wanted to have my own platform to put ideas out there without any barrier between me and the idea and the world, and fashion is just that," says a former new media and marketing guy.

Said former marketing guy is today L.A. menswear designer Scott Sternberg.

So if you're flying on Southwest this month, I highly recommend swiping this month's inflight magazine issue and reading up on Scott and his line, Band of Outsiders (oh, yeah, that's a very bloggy website).

The other day I'm chatting with an elderly couple sitting in their car looking over the bluff at the Pacific Ocean. We're gawking at the surfers catching waves. He's a retired school bus driver. One grandson, now in high school, wants to be chef 'when he grows up'.

The culinary school he wants to go in Campbell is $21,000 a year tuition.

The school even says all the restaurants around here are already fully staffed.

I quietly listen to their laundry list and thinking of a successful chef I know that quit Harvard, "Sometimes chefs open their own place."

But you know the failure rate of new restaurants is 50 percent.

"Yeah, that's certainly true. More than fifty percent of restaurants suck." 

Then we talk about the high school in my neighborhood. Yup, he's driven kids right there. We talk of other things while I wistfully wish I could meet their grandson.

"I came home from work and the girls were drinking champagne in the living room," Dean says..."A few minutes later, Kent came over, and he pulled me aside. He said, 'We can't let this happen. And I said, 'Kent, we're gonna be the good husbands here and let the bank be the evil person. They'll never make it past the bank. No one's gonna loan the girls money when they've never put a restaurant together before." - "They Can Take the Heat", Southwest Spirit, August 2006

So said husband (and celebrated chef) Dean Fearing about his wife's Lynae and her friend/partner's Tracy Rathbun's crazy venture to buy out and renovate a Dallas sushi restaurant. Go figure: bank did loan them the money after all.

"I didn't even have to wear suits at CAA [Creative Artists Agency, former employ]...But I'm 31 now and just thought, 'I need to own a suit.'

Eventually, I started saying to a designer friend, "I'd love to make suits, but I'd have to find the right factory and...'

And he said, 'Shut up and do it. Just figure it out!" And I booked a trip to New York and met the two factories that could do it the way I wanted, and the second I got the first sample of the suit -- which didn't even fit totally right -- once I slipped it on, it was like, 'Omigod. Just keep making this.'"

Scott's suits premeire this fall.

I'm mostly swimming upstream these days in every area of my life. Don't expect kudos. Don't expect others to assuage your uncertainties. But if you have a kick-ass friend like Scott's designer buddy, thank them profusely. They are rare finds.

Me? I'm like that looney friend that sends you quotes in your email inbox when your rent is past-due like:

Make no little plans; they have no passion to stir men's souls. - Architect Daniel Burnham

Or these few snippets from very same Southwest inflight mag about the MacArthur Fellowships:

Most of the time, the first thing they say is, "You know, I'm not a genius."

..."It sort of honors the fact that you've taken risks already, and says, 'Here, take some more' -- which is a pretty amazing thing."

A very amazing thing to be sure.

Band of Outsiders? Naw. We're out there. It only appears lonely when we're in doubt.

Psst...it's not about the suit, anymore than it was about the bike. Uhhhh, is kick-ass inspiration the same as advice...?

p.s. The Shinsei restaurant name means 'pure' in Japanese. There's a Buddhist slogan painted on their avocado green walls: "By absence of grasping one is made free." And seems like the inspiration for the Band of Outsiders menswear, the film by Jean-Luc Godard is tres Buddhist too: "Le narrateur: Franz is wondering if the world is a dream or a dream the world."

image Shirt & tie by Band of Outsiders (Teen Vogue via Band of Outsiders blog site).