Crossroads Dispatches

i can't talk to all the theoreticians because there don't exist theories where i am

I smiled when I saw my buddy DK Brainard's post after all the science talk yesterday... now science fiction. He's admits to reading tons of science fiction and fantasy genre lately, and not any mainstream or classics. I can relate:

"Part of me has a hard time copping to my current obsession. You see, I have a Master’s in French Literature, obtained jointly from the University of Paris and the University of Cincinnati. I have a double B.A. in English and French

...[Eventually,]

I stopped looking at the world as this fundamentally fixed environment and I realized that the more radically I change my internal reality, the more the Universe I perceive changes also.

We hear all the time, “Change your mind and you will change your life.” But what I’ve found is that this is true far beyond what most of us are willing to consider.

I think that’s why I’m so drawn to fantasy literature right now. Because it’s pushing me further out of my preconceptions about what is possible for me. You see, after nearly ten years of dedication to a meditative practice and the spiritual path, I’ve seen that the mind can work amazing changes on my outer reality. But I also know I’m just scratching the surface of my potential.

The more I read these books – and reflect on the many well-documented accounts of remote viewers, spoonbenders, shape shifters and people who can levitate objects using only the mind – the more I wonder, “Why aren’t we doing more with what we have?”" -excerpt from D.K. Brainard, "Reality vs. Fantasy", WordsForThePeople.com

I've also gravitated toward science fiction and fantasy myself--that is when I read any linear novels anymore. Strange, as I'm the gal who won regional contests in high school for essays on Jane Austen. Why read Cliffnotes--that's like skipping out on desert? I devoured The Classics--even ones that weren't assigned. I wished to study English Literature and Philosophy in college, but I was fiercely into financial indendence at that age and opted for a Computer Engineering degree, instead. Part of me always wanted to be a creative writer.

I put in a whole year coming up a narrative alternate reality game that would push the edges of people's consideration of possibility by relying on the age-old "suspension of disbelief." I put my money where my faith was and even showed up to Book Expo America in New York to grok the publishing world even though that meant I left a weekend job behind, and showed up with $50 (I don't do credit cards) in my pocket at JFK. (That's another story--the prosperity hunch and experiments have altered yet again.)

I found myself being so drawn into the storyworld and its characters, I'd abandoned the original mission... which is Life itself. The whole ARG was to get people more engaged with their own life and see it as an adventure. I didn't want folks to be so entranced by the storyworld that they willingly push aside their own life to find out "What happens next..." to fictional characters. I tabled the whole project recently; although it might find a form later if I make your life the main storyworld.

I wondered why can't we talk openly about possibilities and paradoxes and miracles and marvels without the pretense of fiction (although that can be fun)? Why make taboos or heresies out of exploration and experimentation and edges?

This is the hunch I have: that your life right now as it is is guiding you to the edges of possibility, to the unknown. Yet I'm thinking we also take the lead in asking the questions.

It's pretty tuned to your specifics, too. Don't do bibliomancy?--no problem, it'll spill from the mouth of babes. Don't do external clews?--no problem, you'll get inner inclinations, lurching gut, tingling pulsing currents or emotional beacons. Anything I say may or may not apply, it's tailored for you. Be skeptical of common wisdom and theories and be wary of bandwagons, and go for your own data--directly (sometimes 'experience' is a bit less visual, and more visceral or employs other senses besides the eye).

I recently read The Hunt for Zero Point after a deep quest to learn more about Vickor Schaumberger (originally my interest was water... but I never know what I'm going to uncover.) The point here is that the author started following threads of personal interest in a taboo topic in his field of aviation journalism. It's just "science fiction," they scoffed around his office. He followed his gut and kept digging into anti-gravity propulsion. Years later, he interviews a brilliant scientist at an aerospace company that he thinks might give him more clues.

The main takeaway the scientist tells him is you get to a point--which if you look at Life as the grand experiment--where you've gone as far as the theories take you, or the data pouring in is altogether new and not quite fitting in. That's how new theories develop.

The data is important--not adhering to an established theory.

You have to pay close attention to your life, to reality as it is showing up for you. And maybe even entertain the notion that perceived reality (not necessarily Absolute/Formless reality) is dynamic, so that even a theory that worked yesterday may be obsolete. Or even that that last sentence may be utter nonsense if time is simultaneous.

"But now that the interview was over, the minders [there's always PR people monitoring corporate interviews] were looking the other way. They'd done their job and I'd done mine. Boyd Bushman had spilled no secrets either on or off the record and that was what mattered. Nor had he in any way tarnished the reputation of the Lockheed Martin company. [Funny, I used to work for what is now known as Lockheed Martin--in the million-dollar video games department, aka flight simulators.]

That I had learned nothing of value must have shown on my face, for without warning, Bushman leaned forward and put his hand on my shoulder.

He asked me what was wrong and I told him.

"It's a lonely walk, but a rewarding one," he said, so quietly that I almost missed it. I looked into his eyes, which were quite blue but for that superficial milkiness that sometimes denotes the onset of old age.

He smiled at me. "Keep traveling the road and you might just find what you're looking for."

"What do you mean?" I asked cautiously.

"In all my years with this company, no one has asked me the questions you came here with today." He paused a moment, then said: "Here, I want to show you something."

He produced a videocassette from the folds of his loose-hanging suit and gave me the same smile that had crossed his face a number of times during the interview; usually, I noticed, when he needed a moment or two to think about a particularly awkward question I'd thrown at him. He looked not unlike Walter Matthau, the Hollywood actor, with a kindly, hangdog expression and thick straight hair to match. Instinctively, I'd liked him. But more to the point, I knew that I could trust him. Unusually for someone who toiled in the heart of the U.S. defense-industrial complex, he looked somewhat like someone who was incapable of telling a lie.

Bushman appeared beyond the retirement age of most good man-and-boy company men, which in itself spoke volumes about his ability.

Before I met him, I'd been told that he was a one-off, one of those people who liked to think out of the box--defense jargon for a guy in the trade who looked at things differently. Just how differently, I was about to find out.

The picture on the TV screen steadied and I found myself staring at a scene of such ordinariness I thought for a moment that Bushman had plugged in the wrong tape.

From the graininess of the film and the way the camera trembled, it rapidly became clear that this was some kind of a home movie. It depicted the interior of a garage or workshop. In the middle of the frame was a saw on a pockmarked wooden work surface. Beside it was a pair of pliers and a handful of nails.

For a while, we both just stood there watching a picture in which nothing happened. The minders had taken a quick look and apparently decided it was an eccentric end to a quirky afternoon's work, because they went back to their own conversation.

My gaze drifted back to the TV just as one of the nails in the center of the screen began to twitch and the pliers moved--jumped, rather--a centimeter to the left. Within seconds, everything was shaking, as if rocked by a series of earth tremors. And then, quite suddenly, the nails stood up, like hairs on a cold forearm.

I looked at Bushman, who was studying the screen intently, "Watch," he urged, "this is the best bit."

One by one, the nails took off and shot off the top of the screen. A moment later, the pliers started to do a crazy nose-down dance across the work surface and the saw began flapping around like a fish out of water. Then they both went the way of the nails, shooting out of frame toward the ceiling.

Then, the picture switched: same background, different still life.

Ice cream was creeping up the sides of a see-through tub. A lump of it broke away and rose toward the ceiling trailing little pearls of cream. Seconds later, the whole tub jumped off the bench.

My skepticism was working overtime. But Bushman read my thoughts. "It's no fake," he said. "This is as real as you or I." He cast a look over his shoulder at our companions. "The man responsible is a civilian, nothing to do with the defense business. That he's a genius goes without saying, of course. You needed to see this, because it's confirmation of the data." He emphasized the word as if somehow it would help me understand what I had just seen. "You must get to see this man. I think, then, you will be closer than you think to the end of your journey."

"Data? What data?" I looked at him more closely, hoping for more, but he said nothing.

As I was ushered out of the room, the scientist looked down at the thick pack of material he'd handed me before the interview. I hadn't had time to look at it. Now, I wished I had.

That evening, I sat down with Bushman's file in my hotel room. He'd loaded me down with so many papers, I didn't know where to begin or what I was really looking for. There was a stack of photostats relating to the patents he'd filed during a long and illustrious career that had included stints at some of the giants of the postwar U.S. aerospace and defense industry: Hughes Aircraft, Texas Instruments, General Dynamics and Lockheed.

There was his resume, which noted his top secret security clearance, as well as copies of scientific papers, stapled neatly at the corner, with exotic-sounding titles that meant little to me.

My eyes swam over pages of complex mathematical equations and algebra sets. I was looking for clues, but seeing nothing that made much sense.

I pressed the "play" button on my tape recorder.

From the tenth floor of my Fort Worth hotel room, the lights of the city shimmered in the sizzling 90-degree heat, even though it was a good half an hour after the sun had slipped below the skyline. Inside, the air-conditioning was cold enough to prickle my skin.

". . . I went back to some of the first work on gravity done by Galileo. . . "

[Aside on Galileo: "When he later defended his views in his most famous work, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, published in 1632, he was tried by the Inquisition, found "vehemently suspect of heresy," forced to recant, and spent the rest of his life under house arrest.]

Bushman's voice crackled in the darkness, clashing for a moment with that of a CNN reporter on the TV. I adjusted the volume on the tape recorder, hit the fast-forward button and pressed play again.

"So, what I think is: Follow the data and log your data very well and don't throw it away because you have a theory. The theory of gravity is just a theory. Einstein improved on the original theories of Newton and he was verified by data--and data gave precedence. No one believed Einstein until the data arrived. Well, our data's arrived. . . "

I scrolled the tape again. As I did so, I spotted something among the collection of papers Bushman had given me. Tucked beneath the patents and company brochure material on weapons technology was a grainy photocopy of a UFO flying low over a straight stretch of desert road. A handwritten caption underneath identified the location as Santa Ana, California, and the date as 1966.

Flicking past it, I found another cluster of photostats taken from the "Ramayana of Valmiki--Translated from the Original Sanskrit." A stamp on the title page identified the book as belonging to "Lockheed/Fort Worth."

Puzzled, I toggled with the buttons on the tape recorder and finally found the part of the interview I'd been looking for.

"Nature does not speak English," Bushman had been telling me. "Not only that, but if we verbalize it, we're probably approximating, but not telling the truth. Math comes close, but it isn't there either. What Nature tells us is what must be honored. It has been talking to us on many domains."

I let the words echo in my head for a moment.

Bushman was a senior scientist for one of the world's biggest defense contractors; a member of the fraternity that I'd looked to for expert comment all my professional life, and he was telling me to trust in what I saw. Folllow data, he's said, not theory. He worked on programs that lay beyond the cutting edge of known science.

"I can't talk to all the theoreticians," he'd told me, "because there don't exist theorires where I am."

"For the past ten years, I had been following data and the data had shown me that existence of something real. And yet some of the brightest minds on the planet were struggling to produce theory to underpin it. How could there be no theory for effects that were genuinely manifesting themselves in the environment?

What Nature tells us is what must be honored. It has been talking to us on many domains.

And we'd only understood a fraction of what it had been saying.

If we verbalize it, we're probably approximating, but not telling the truth.

And then it hit me. That's all theory was or ever had been--an approximation of the truth. Sometimes that approximation worked out and held fast, becoming scientific currency; other times it didn't and was superseded by another theory.

In this case, there were so many holes in our knowledge, it had allowed for people like Podkletnov and Schauberger to fall through the gaps, to show us things that science couldn't account for. Because science theory hadn't mapped them yet.
...
Einstein had followed Newton and data had verified them both. But in this field, as with other fields of scientific endeavor, the data was still coming in." - Nick Cook, The Hunt for Zero Point: Inside the Classified World of Antigravity Technology

Bonus: I have my own notes from the book I'll share. It's worth a read if you're peering over edges, especially related to energy research.

Art/Photo Credits: Sylvia Ji's Spring; can't find the original artist source, but I got this whimsical illustration via Copper Witch's cached blog; going for the labyrinth myth and clews angle too, this awesome digital composition is by loutremauve on DeviantArt.com; gravity-defying levitator is a photo effect via Geekologie; the 3D rendered anti-gravity propulsion vehicle is by Victor Alatorre (can't find his website) via Paranormal People; and, whoa 'miracles' that look really fun...walking on water ball.

hunches messes serendipity accidents research & where do good ideas come from

"If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it?" - Albert Einstein

I'm not sure when it happened. It might have been one of the museums in New York City, which one isn't important as I packed in the Guggenheim, the Met, the MoMA, New Museum, PS 1, and a few others into the last two weeks of September. It hit me that I was not an artist, by any strict definition. What I actually care about is inspiration, improvisation, infinity, and innovation at the broadest levels. Levels that may not be confined in a particular artifact such as book or painting. Add ideas. I care about encouraging a diversity of inspirations in all manner of fields that may not fit the "art" category.

I also realized around the same time (someone else's epiphany which I just re-stumbled upon) that art is putting ideas in form. So I ended up coming full circle. As that is what I want to do... put ideas into this formscape we call reality.

I don't care if it fits in a museum, or on an iPad. Maybe it's a spaceship. Many it's a new way to exchange resources. Maybe it's a business. Maybe it's a new way of wellness (prefer that word to health). Maybe it's a new method of agriculture.

"Thomas Edison didn't tinker with building a better kerosene lamp; he abandoned the use of fire--the only human-generated source of light since prehistoric times--and broken through to a new source. That was a quantum leap in creativity. If you are the creator of your body, what is the quantum leap awaiting you?" - Deepak Chopra, Reinventing Your Body, Resurrecting Your Soul

In a nutshell, what I want to do is a lab for exploration and uncompromised inspiration.

"Lab" sounds dry, so sometimes I use the word atelier instead. Mostly it's a space for people to mingle at the hazy hunch stage of ideas. A place to discover and be bewildered by other hunches that may at first seem opposed to yours or plain odd or not particularly relevant. It's not necessarily a magnet for "like-minded" people (as often I find that limits my imagination to more of what I already know rather than exploring what I don't know that I don't know).

"There's nothing we really need to do that isn't dangerous." - John Cage

It's actually a real, geographical place too. Even with all my Internet experience (in the industry from 1995-2005), I cannot find the "form" or format that this would work online (yet?).* Although I am itching to do something right away.... so at least here on the blog, I will share wild nuances from a variety of sources, intriguing possibilities, and open-ended (not leading) questions that let you unfurl your own self-created outcomes.

      "Hell, there are no rules here - we're trying to accomplish something." - Thomas Edison

"Messes can also be beneficial in presenting unexpected connections and juxtapositions. These often lead to new ideas, explorations, combinations, and solutions." - Keri Smith

Steven Johnson asks a most intriguing question: "What are the spaces that have historically led to unusual rates of creativity and innovation?" (Short 4-minute video with author of "Where Do Good Ideas Come From?" here.) I was really struck with the idea of richness of diversity as important factors to "good ideas". In fact, page one of Where Do Good Ideas Come From? starts with a narrative of Charles Darwin being mesmerized by the profuse bounty of species supported by the coral reefs around the Keeling Islands. Another story shares how if Johannes Gutenberg hadn't mingled outside his context with the vintners of Rhineland, Germany the trained metallurgist would "merely be a pioneering typesetter making an incremental improvement on Pi Sheng's moveable type," rather than the inventor of the printing press.

"The natural state of ideas is flow and spillover and connection. It is society that keeps them in chains." - Steven Johnson, Where Do Good Ideas Come From?

"Ideologies exclude openness, diversity, resiliency, and multiplicity, the very qualities that nourish life in any system, be it ecosystem, immune system, or social system... Ideas are living things; they can be changed, and adapted, and can grow." - Paul Hawken, Blessed Unrest

I was looking for a gift for my 5-year-old cousin yesterday, and was surprised to see one of Keri Smith's journals in the children's book section (mind you, not even the independent reader part of the kiddies or YA section). I guess only one as a child would think to purposefully wreck their pristine journal, or explore the world. I plop down in an armchair with Mess: The Manual of Accidents and Mistakes. (And already cradling The Accidental Billionaires among a hefty pile in my arm. When I open The Accidental Millionaires, it falls to beginning of Chapter 21: Serendipity. Serendipity is also a chapter in Steven Johnson's book, Where Do Good Ideas Come From?)

"In the film ["Broken Fall"], there is an interview with an old Dutch sailor that sums up [Bas Jon] Ader's work perfectly. He speaks indirectly about the process of improvisation, but the connection made from it is that point of Ader's "falls" is not the falling but the moment (1/10th of a second) where he makes the decision to let go. That is the moment of transcendence when you leave everything behind and leap into the unknown.

As improvisers, artists, or experimenters, we are trying to re-create that moment--when you leave everything behind and leap into the unknown. Because we've done it before and it's addictive--that seductive release, a sense of giddyness mixed with fear [note: like a roller-coaster!]. For an instant you get a feeling that you are really doing something worthwhile, living out on the edge of something big, yet unnameable. A kind of opening (with all the vulnerability that comes with that).

We all know what it feels like to fall, but how many of us have experimented with gravity as a medium? Isn't falling or breaking things something we only do by accident? What does it feel like to throw yourself off balance on purpose?

Definition of "mistake" or "accident" (for the purposes of this book): Happenings or occurences by which the creator does not have complete control over the final outcome (end result) that result in conclusions the creator did not predict. We might also call them "experiments."" - Keri Smith, Mess: The Manual of Accidents and Mistakes

* Online, folks tend to share ideas that are already fully formulated, or something they already know pretty well (in an educational or consultative manner, a how-to). Rarely do we share wisps of half-baked visions, yet it's precisely hazy hunches colliding with one another that Johnson says is important to breakthrough creativity. Here's that short vid:

 

Bonus: Another video. In my opinion, this TED video doesn't do the book justice. But anyhow, at 7:23 there's a picture of a "messy" (and fruitful!) co-mingling of ideas where Johnson states: "The spaces that have historically led to innovation tend to look like this--This is Hogart's famous painting the kind of Political Dinner at a Tavern--but this is what the coffeeshops looked like back then. This is the kind of chaotic environment where ideas were likely to come together, where people were likely to have new, interesting, unpredictable collisions--people from different backgrounds... This is what your office should look like--that's part of my message here." And if anyone can tell me the name of the painter and the painting, I'd be grateful. I thought I heard Hogart, but a search yielded zip.

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

fluid celebration - blog action day 2010 - water installation

This is my contribution for Blog Action Day. This year's theme is water. I recall a ferry ride across the Mississippi in the setting sun in April 2008. My intuition was going haywire giving me something about a "water installation." As I landed in New Orleans, I noted a department store mall storefront on Canal Street with the words charity : water. I wrote it down since the serendipity was too vivid to ignore. I'd never heard of charity:water before.

I kept getting hits of intuition and inspiration involving a water installation, ("but I'm a writer!" I protest to the universe). I continued to brush these inspirations away.

After the Gulf oil spill April 2010, I understood the urgency and regretted that I didn't follow through. So that's partly the inspiration for the following.

"Water is the driving force of all nature." - Leonardo da Vinci

Setting: Sometime in the "future."

Women dressed in diaphonous cloud gingerly twirl with jars balanced on the tiptop of their crowns. In single file, they tiptoe to a well. One filly breaks into a trot and the rest scatter bouncing and bounding in a frolic to the spring. Behind them the scene is draped in waterfalls. On their return with filled jars weighing up to forty pounds, they circumnavigate the circuitous stream feeding the spring in a slow dance that exudes both sublime saunter and rapturous giggle.

The live installation celebrates the purification of water worldwide and the emancipation of women from retreiving water from miles away and storing emotions.

One grey-eyed dancer takes a large clay jar and pours water tenderly into a thin-necked copper pitcher, another woman with flowing black hair pours a jar into a wide porcelain pitcher. Each chooses her own vessel.

Spritely as a naiad, the porcelain pitchered empress brings the pitcher to a young man sitting in the circle.

He looks into the pitcher as if a mirror, and reflected and refracted in all the pools they see passing emotions skipping across the sloshing oval like a stone across a lake--a flash of fiery anger, an image of an old grudge, the anguish of an ancient trauma...a flood, perhaps---and the stone stops, the ripples fade, the water stills and pitcher is passed to the next in the circle. He stands up and joins the dance.

The celebration is performed on a regular basis. No two the same. We can't tell you when the next one is exactly as time itself is fluid--we'll be expecting you. 

make our destiny -- it's in the cards

Starting this coming Monday, October 11, 2010--excluding weekends--for 54 days, we're going to collectively contribute to a group "notebook" (it's NOT this blog).

Our group notebook will provide a space and impetus to roam in the arena of "the world I want," something most of us don't always give time and attention to comparatively. The bonus is the act of fleshing out details in writing or drawing crystallizes our visualizations into a pre-reality. As I mentioned, let's use the example of Leornardo da Vinci's stetchbooks of fantastical and visionary inventions and events for our own.

"Men of lofty genius when they are doing the least work are most active." - Leonardo da Vinci

This notebook will be easy to post to. Include your wildest imaginings and aspirations for a beautiful future written in present tense (be specific as possible), and any accompanying photos via email to post@loteria.posterous.com. Everything is anonymous unless you specify your name in a signature at the end of your email.

"There are lots of people who mistake their imagination for their memory." - Josh Billings

Because this is new, I'll give you a hint of what to expect for Monday. We're going to be cycling through the 54 cards in the Loteria deck since they are simple, concrete rather than abstract symbols. There really is no rhyme or reason to the selection of the Loteria cards. There is a story, however. But the story can wait.

Monday the card theme is La Campana, or The Bell. (Because it's a US holiday, submissions may start on Sunday.) The card will change daily.

If you're a writer, consider the card simply as a writing prompt. You need not be held to the literal symbol in your daydreaming. Use the Bell simply as a catalyst or starting point.

Perhaps it takes you off into a vision of using sound and vibration to lift raw materials, such as stone block, for the construction of buildings ala the Great Pyramids. Or perhaps you it reminds you of a friend whom wanted to install bell towers all through New Orleans and synchronicize the music. Or perhaps you remember a bell ringing everyday in Oaxaca and that reminds you of how much you adore town squares and plazas. So you write about town squares and common areas. Who knows?

"Impossibility is only the figment of an insufficient imagination." - Phil Duncan

You may also submit sketches, collages, etc and never write a single word in a language if you wish, or even create your own language. I'll investigate if and how we can post music and video (only original or remixed, please) onto the notebook.

"Live out of your imagination, not your history." - Stephen Covey

The guidelines are:

1. Truly desire what you are writing, imagining, concocting, conjuring, sketching for yourself. If it's just so-so for you or just seems like something you should want, consider what a friend told me: a 99% yes is still a no. Why settle? The notebook is meant to be liberating! Go for it! If it's not ringing true, keep going deeper and perhaps use your first draft as a springboard to delve deeper or sideways or simplify or be bolder with your vision. It's easy with pervasive media to get caught up in second-hand dreams that aren't necessarily yours. This 54-day process will help us sift through these dreams streaming through us, separating the pure from the dross, the inspired from the expired.

2. Write or draw in present tense. Describe or draw it as if it is happening. One viewpoint is to even consider time as "simultaneous," so that we don't get caught up in past, present, future tense at all. (For instance, consider time as a river. From an eagle's perspective it may view the entirety of it; from a piece of flotsam floating in the river it feels more linear.)

3. Write in the positive. For instance, "The world is without disease and decay" can be phrased "It's a world of perfect health and regeneration. " (For the notebook, I'm aiming for more specific and fleshed-out images and narratives than generalities such as above.)

You can also use other folks' daydreams as a springboard to your own sketches and writing, as well. In fact, that's pretty much the fun part of having this be a group project. More on why this is a group project, I could have simply done the notebook solo, in future posts.

Join us, and spread the notebook to your soul kin: Make our destiny--it's in the cards. Send submissions to post@loteria.posterous.com from October 11, 2010 to December 23, 2010. (You can start on October 10, 2010 for The Bell.)

p.s. The notebook is definitely NOT this blog, so if you subscribe via email your inbox won't be deluged. This blog will be focused on topics related to inspiration, imagination, innovation, and infinite possibilities.

You can view contributions to the group notebook by visiting http://loteria.posterous.com

ART CREDITS: One re-imagining of da Vinci's notebook (not an actual spread from da Vinci works) by Dreimond; a page from Brion Gysin and William Burroughs' Third Mind cut-up notebook (I was blessed to see this great exhibition); the Bell loteria card; this one is an actual page from a Leonardo da Vinci notebook

the future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams

"The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams." - Eleanor Roosevelt

Are you failing at sequestering and segregating yourself into the molds that creativity is confined by these days? I am. Without going into the long story, I have tabled a long-standing narrative alternate reality game (ARG) that I've been working on for over a year.

Why?

I realized that there was a far more direct path to what I wanted to achieve than an ARG. (It was a means to an end.)

If what Ana Mendieta's work was is called body art, and Patrick Dougherty's sculptures are environmental art, then maybe what I'm/we're going to attempt might be called "aether art," after the archaic spelling of the fifth element.

My art seeks to challenge prevailing notions of "impossibility."

While walking in Manhattan last week, I saw an HSBC billboard: "O.3% of Saharan solar energy could power Europe. Do you see a world of potential? We do."

I am more than aware that many folks are more focused on what's wrong, and who's to blame. I am not concerned with them. Do you see a world of potential? How do you crystallize these types of visions?

The thing with "aether art" is its mostly invisible to the naked eye. Aether art is basically daydreaming taken up to the level of an art form. And although aether art ends up materializing in matter eventually, there is no way I know of to prove any linkage between the imagination and the materialization. So the world of matter tends to be one of unsigned artworks. Yet like Leonardo daVinci, we'll keep a notebook of our imaginary inventions and vibrant visions to serve as an artifact and as our studio/stetchbook.

If you're familiar with ideas from books like The Power, by Rhonda Byrne (also author of The Secret) and the teachings of Esther and Jerry Hicks (for instance, the metaphor of the stream of life), you'll have a clue to what I'm aiming at. However, the caveat being I don't buy into notion of the "Law of Attraction" in the same sense (for instance, I don't really regard thoughts to be the medium of the canvas, metaphorically).

The second caveat is I'm interested in invention, I know you can "manifest" a ripe plum or a Mercedes Benz with equal ease. While most of these teachings focus on creating things you're already familiar with such as jewelry, cars, real estate or situations like a new job, I am not. That's called shopping. Nothing necessarily wrong with shopping. Simply I am inclined toward inventing new and never-been-yet, or at least remixing the ready-made objects into something original.

I keep saying "we" because I'd like you to take your dreams into reality, too. I believe it was the same night I saw the "Do you see a world of potential?" billboard, that I went to see an exhibit of Brion Gysin's artworks at the New Museum. In 1958, he moved into a residence hotel in Paris that also housed William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, and Gregory Corso. It was affectionately dubbed The Beat Hotel. The curator noted because of the intense interaction between the artists (especially productive between Burroughs and Gysin), "Gysin's four years at the so-called "Beat Hotel" would be his most productive of his entire career."

I work best if I can have peers as a sounding board. Maybe you do too? There's more. I'm hoping to magnetize and galvanize a very creative group of people that is able to catapult all of us into larger possibilities than we could have conceived of solely ourselves. 

“I'm not a teacher, but an awakener.” - Robert Frost

I'll go into this more in future posts. It's all going to be public. And I'm going to refrain from self-help teaching (I'll still offer original opinions) as it's not necessarily my foremost passion. I want to connect with peers, and the student-teacher relationship precludes that.

Even the idea of "awakener" can be construed in some hierarchical sense. My slant is towards awaking what's already a seed in you and having that be nurtured toward growth.

When I worked part-time at a hat store that stocked probably a hundred styles, people often gravitated immediately to their ideal (not always), and if it truly were a click everyone would exclaim, "Oh, that's you!" I'm looking to encourage people to yield to the aspirations that truly fit them, not making anyone conform to my style, or prevailing popular ones necessarily either. I may cite copious resources in the footnotes perhaps, and hope you're either (a) already familiar with the application of the material or (b) able and willing to experiment on your own. The focus is all on what imagine and create in our world and examples of folks that are suspending disbelief and imagining the so-called impossible, rather than any how-to's.

A lovely sense of creative camaderie that really speaks to me is captured in a snippet of an interview in Iceland:

"I ask Larus [1] about the creative buzz in the Reykjavik[, Iceland] air. Where does it come from--and how can I get some?"

He presses his glasses against his nose.

"Envy."

"What about it?"

"There's not much in Iceland."

The lack of envy he's talking about is a bit different from what I saw in Switzerland. The Swiss suppress envy by hiding things. Icelanders suppress envy by sharing them. Icelandic musicians help one another out, Larus explains. If one band needs an amp or a lead guitarist, another band will help them out, no questions asked. Ideas, too, flow freely, unencumbered by envy, that most toxic of the seven deadly sins. Once unleashed, writes Joseph Epstein in his treatise on the subject, "envy tends to diminish all in whom it take possession."

This relative lack of envy is one sure sign of a Golden Age, says Peter Hall. Here he is describing turn-of-the-century Paris but could just as easily be describing twenty-first-century Reykjavik: "They lived and worked in each other's pockets. Any innovation, any new trend, was immediately known, and could be freely incorporated into the work of any of the others." In other words, the Paris artists of 1900 [more accurately, 1900-1920s] believed in open-source software. [2] So, too, do Icelanders. Sure, they compete, but in the way the word was originally intended. The roots of the word "compete" are the Latin competure, which means to "seek with."

... But I still sensed I was missing something. How can it be that this flyspeck of a nation produces more artists and writers per capita than any other?

"It's because of failure," Says Larus, pushing his glasses hard against the bridge of his nose.

"Failure?"

"Yes, failure doesn't carry a stigma in Iceland. In fact, in a way we admire failures."

... The more I thought about this, the more sense it made. For if you are free to fail, you are free to try.

... There's no one on the island telling them that they're not good enough, so they just go ahead and sing and paint and write." - Eric Weiner, The Geography of Bliss: One Grumps Search for the World's Happiest Places

[1] A bit more about Larus whom the author interviewed: "In forty-odd years, Larus has earned a living not only as a chess player but also as a journalist, a construction-company executive, a theologian, and, now, a music producer. "I know," he says, sensing my disbelief. "But that kind of resume is completely normal in Iceland."

[2] Hailing from the software industry, I know that open source software developers tend to collaborate on a common project, whereas each of the "Golden Age" artists had their own body of work. I'm more keen on you creating your work of art, than necessarily jumping into a bandwagon that may not be your true calling.

Bonus: I gave a copy of The Power, by Rhonda Byrne to someone close to me. Their remarks after a few chapters. Long sigh, then: "I wish it were that easy. I have too much to worry about." Soon after, I happen to read the following paragraph. Yes, our minds will continuously harp on the impossibilities and seeming unsurmountable odds. But we're not attempting brain surgery, it's heart work. Something we can all tap into:

"I dedicate all of my work to the more beautiful world our hearts tell us is possible. I say our "hearts", because our minds tell us it is not possible. Our minds doubt that things will ever be much different than experience has taught us. You may, as you read the forgoing encomium to a sacred economy, have felt a wave of cynicism, contempt, or despair. You might have felt an urge to dismiss my words as hopelessly idealistic. Indeed, I myself was tempted to tone down my description, to make it more plausible, more responsible, more in line with our low expectations for what life and the world can be. But such an attenuation would not have been the truth. I will, using the tools of the mind, speak what is in my heart. In my heart I know that an economy and society this beautiful is possible for us to create, and indeed, that anything less than that is unworthy of us." - Charles Eisenstein, "Sacred Economics" (in Reality Sandwich magazine)

ART CREDITS: Noeltykay's Bottom of the Ocean Floor and Top of the World; Ana Mendieta's Tree of Life;  Luke Jerram's Aeolus; Ana Mendieta's Alma Silhueta en Fuego.

True fearlessness comes from the knowledge that we will never lie to ourselves, that we will never evade a single moment of our lives.

I'd never watched Heroes until a few weeks ago when I saw a few episodes of Season 1.  (Mostly I was curious what producer Tim Kring had done before his latest "fictional experience using interactive theatre, mobile and alternate reality gaming (ARG), music and physical participation ‘to do good in the world’..")

Anyhow, there's a scene in Heroes, where Nathan has just won the Congressional election. He won't allow his wife who's now completely healed from her paralyzing injury to walk on stage of  her own accord. So she carries on with the facade of being strapped in the wheelchair because Nathan tells her behind the curtain, "People don't believe in miracles."

How many times do we hang behind the curtain, resist rocking anyone's illusions (including ours) and pretend we're paralyzed (i.e. unaware) on the stage of life?

[Eduard:] 'I used to wonder why they always depicted the Virgin like that.’

[Veronika:] 'And why do they?’

[Eduard:] ‘Because the Virgin equals female energy and is the mistress of the snake, which signifies wisdom. If you look at the ring Dr Igor wears, you’ll see that it bears the physician’s symbol: two serpents coiled around a stick. Love is above wisdom, just as the Virgin is above the snake. For her, everything is Inspiration. She doesn’t bother judging what is Good and what Evil.’

‘Do you know something else?’ said Veronika. ‘The Virgin never took any notice of what others might think of her. Imagine having to explain to everyone that business about the Holy Ghost. She didn’t explain anything, she just said: “That’s what happened.” And do you know what the others must have said?’

‘Of course. That she was mad.’ " - Veronika Decides to Die, by Paulo Coelho

I don't have any concise, articulate reason (although I may just have a rhyme), yet I've been nudged to form a peer group of 25. Maybe it's for the same reason that Ernest Shackleton or Meriwether Lewis (Lewis chose Clark as his co-captain) sought a crew for those expeditions--uncharted terrain isn't necessarily a solo pilgrimage.

Below is the legendary advertisement that Shackleton placed in a 1912 London paper that drew an influx of 5000 applicants.

"We don't hold ourselves back for fear of being confronted by something that's unpleasant, uncomfortable, or overwhelming. Rather than close down and try to protect ourselves, or drive ourselves forward through fear of missing out on some valued experience or opportunity, we face everything that arises in our experience and avoid nothing, without resisting it or believing it shouldn't be happening.

Opening up in this way--accepting what is without any resistance--is heroic because we risk losing everything we're attached to. In order to open up to what's happening, we let go of our sense of self-control. "True fearlessness comes from the knowledge that we will never lie to ourselves, that we will never evade a single moment of our lives," says Shyalpa Rinpoche. "We will be fully present for every moment and every consequence." - Radiant Mind: Awakening Unconditioned Awareness, by Peter Fenner

As best I can see there's only space for 25 total (and that includes me). I can promise if we're sincere, that we will inevitably lead creative lives that spring from the infinite fountain of Intelligence moment-to-moment rather than re-creating and re-acting from memory and conditioned extrapolations of the past. Paradoxically, we will be pushing the edge of known human experience (in form) by not pushing against or pushing away. (It may appear like "pushing" the wave, but the surfer is cooperating with the inevitable motion of the ocean.)

We will be on a journey together for possibly two years, although it doesn't necessitate any geographical treks. Most of the space we may transverse is vertical. This is not a class. This is not a workshop. It's more akin to an experiment, and an adventure. We'll communicate online via a role-playing interactive mixed-reality game+group blog, via dream and telepathy. You have a option to bail after about six months, but it's best to simply commit wholeheartedly once and for all.

"The game is tailored specifically to each participant. Think of it as a great vacation, except you don't go to it, it comes to you." - The Game

I'm purposefully not making this a sexy or exciting announcement. Perhaps, we shall time travel and bilocate and chat up rutabagas, and perhaps not. So often expectations can obscure what we don't know we don't know. Expectancy is okay; expectations, not so much.

"One way to begin to accept our experience is to simply say yes to it when we realize that we are saying no to it. When we hear ourselves objecting to what's happening, we can think, "Okay, I will be present to this experience.

It's easy to think that in order to let go of our resistance, we need to change and become a different type of person. But when we let go of our resistance, nothing needs to change. In fact, that's exactly what we're doing in letting go of our resistance. We're letting go of our need for anything to be different.

We let go of what we think is happening, and we let go of what should be happening, in order to allow ourselves to be present to what is actually happening." - Radiant Mind, by Peter Fenner

BONUS:  Since I've two Asian-American characters in our role-playing "game", I decided to  consult the I Ching about the motivation for the group of 25, and got Hexagram 8. A beautiful explanation below by Brian Donohue written on January 1, 2010 (nutshell, Hexagram 8=Union: "...this is the message of Hexagram 8, that “holding together brings good fortune.”):

"Numerologically, the year we have entered is a 3, in contrast to the 2 we have left (you simply add the numbers in the year until you have one digit: 2010 adds to 3; 2009 adds to 11 which in turn adds to 2). As unnecessary as it might be, there is too much potential for opposition and conflict in the binary; this is one reason why Pirsig, in his classic Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, proposed that Nature operates according to a trinary code (I have a full quote of the passage here).

I tend to agree with Pirsig, and I think that much of the more mature wisdom of the world, from both past and present, is in tune with the value of the trinary. The I Ching speaks frequently of a third presence, of a helping third, of the value of three. Three is the number of beginning, of opening, of two being joined and supported, nourished, by an invisible but genuine third presence. As they often do, Anthony and Moog vibrantly express this natural dynamic of completion, in their commentary to Hexagram 8, Holding Together:

"All unity between two people is made possible by their recognizing and respecting each other’s boundaries; this being the prerequisite, the Sage then makes their harmonious connection possible. An image of a harmonious relationship between two people is the horizontal figure eight. The two circles of the eight represent the respective spaces of each person. It is their seeing the true self in each that enables them to connect. The point at which their two circles connect is love (mutual respect)."

Perhaps another association has occurred to you as you read that selection: the figure eight laid horizontally is, of course, the mathematical symbol for infinity. A successful and natural relationship — a friendship, a love relationship, a marriage, even a professional relationship — partakes of and connects with the infinite, even as it operates amid the realities and vicissitudes of daily life. The two are not, however, the source of the infinite touch to the relationship: the noumenal energy that flows through them, connects them, and guides them is the invisible third that nourishes their union of form (the dark) with light.

As with most of what we teach here, this phenomenon has to be experienced, or else it is a mere stream of words across a page, easily brushed off as New Age fluff. For most of us, however, it is fairly easy to turn inward and look back on our relationships to discern those that were superficial and coldly pragmatic from those in which you could feel that third presence, the pulse of light, inspiration, or love that gave it an amazing vibrancy, a depth of meaning and a sense of endurance.

I’ll mention once more that I do not ask anyone to believe in this third presence, this Sage. It is better, in fact, that you do not believe. Personal experience is a far better teacher, a far truer guide, than belief or faith. So I’m merely suggesting that this year of 2010, this year of three, may be a good time to explore your relationships — those of the past and your current ones. Examine them, ask questions of them, and let your feeling response to them flow freely through and around you. Even the most skeptical of us can try this much: your beliefs (and certainly your anti-beliefs) will be easily recoverable after you’ve tried this experience. But if it goes well, perhaps you won’t need them all back, or have to grip them so tightly as you did before.

For many of us, myself included, 2009 was a year of reversals — outer misfortunes, losses, and stagnation. But it was also a year of contemplation, realization, and a sense of a burgeoning recovery. The coming year may be one of inviting that third presence into our lives, our relationships, our paths of healing and growth. It is not a god or some magic or other esoteric, religious miracle: it is simply a wave-form, an energy of the universe that is always there for those who will open themselves to its refreshing and restorative flow. The Chinese called it chi, the Japanese ki, and it is referred to as prana in the Sanskrit. In our human relationships, it may even be called quantum gravity, because it is, as Anthony and Moog indicate in the passage quoted above, a principle of attraction that honors each individual as it joins them with an energy that enhances them both. It is the completion that overcomes separation and dissolves division: this is the message of Hexagram 8, that “holding together brings good fortune.” "

latent talent, or the rays emitted by sapphires can change the molecular structure of other gemstones

 
"Only now I the one who say "keep on keepin' on!" to new girls. I show them how the dialogue journal work. You know how you write to teacher 'n she talkin' on paper and you could SEE your talk coming back to you when the teacher answer you back. I mean thas what had made me really like writing in the beginning, knowing my teacher gonna write me back when I talk to her." - Push, by Sapphire (film adaption Precious won Oscars and Sundance Film Festival awards)

In 1977, Ramona Lofton moved to New York City with twenty dollars to her name. She had wished to become a writer, but instead wound up working in the sex industry around Times Square. She'd changed her name to Sapphire because: "I had read somewhere that the rays emitted by sapphires can change the molecular structure of other gemstones--and that was exactly what I wanted to do with my life."

Later she became a remedial reading teacher in Harlem and the Bronx. With not much more than a pen and sheer talent, her first book "Push" was published by Knopf -- and she received a whopping $500,000 two-book contract. (Source: Wikipedia, Answers.com)

Alicia Keys been singing since she was four. Fortunately, singing isn't too expensive. When she started expressing an interest in piano, it wasn't easy for her family to pay for lessons, let alone get her a piano. "A friend ended up not needing this piano and gave it to us," she explained. She went on to say that people always ask what her biggest break was and her answer is: "That piano." (Source: Iconoclasts, Sundance Channel)

We believe that talent is latent (catch that anagram?) within everyone. Creativity isn't the purview of a few with the studio budgets and mass media connections.

When the Internet started catching on like wildfire in the late 1990s, I was enthused about how much freedom of expression would now be not only possible, but feasible to amateurs (etymology: "one who has a taste for (something)","lover of").

Fast forward to 2010: Sometimes there's a subtle impression given that one needs to wait to produce. Consuming and surfing are nearly free, but the means of production seem to balloon as our expectations for polished content escalates.

We can't possibly start our creative project because _____ (fill in the blank). Until we get the venture capital funding. Until the film is financed. Until we get the recording studio up and running. Until we get the game designer hired. Until we get Final Cut Pro and Adobe Illustrator. Until we secure a job at Electronic Arts or Pixar.

Deftly postponing and deferring the creativity that is bursting to come forth right now.... until we get the ____.

In 1999, I was the CTO at a venture-backed Internet startup. Among our collective mistakes, the one that sticks with me is that we believed we needed the next round of funding to "really" accomplish what we envisioned. I ought to mention that we had $1.4 million in funding, although it didn't seem like "enough".

It was too late to save that particular startup, yet around the same time as dot-coms were imploding, I was fortunate to meet both Alistair Cockburn and Jim Highsmith and they opened my eyes to an iterative, agile approach to completing projects. Not only did it seem that this was the process for the future, it also struck me as the the most engrossing, engaging and effective way to see a software project come into fruition bit by bit with a feedback loop that sought to collaborate with the users.

Fast-forward. I've had a story kicking around my mind two years ago to date yesterday -- August 8, '08 -- opening ceremonies, Beijing Olympics a Chinese-American 19-year-old film student named Mai is birthed in my imagination. Since then an intricate cast of characters has joined her from Iris circa 1915 Montparnasse to Sam in present-day New Orleans.

There's an inner voice... call it The Perfectionist that feels we ought to wait until we have all the resources to tell this story "properly." For some people, that's an option. More than likely, for us, there's a grant, or a patron, or even a fundable business plan that we could pitch that MIGHT line up all the resources we'd need in one fell swoop. Perhaps. We have the option to wait.

Jean-Michel Basquiat, while homeless, wrote poetic tags on Manhattan walls, sold $5 handmade postcards and painted on salvaged materials he found in the Lower East Side. He didn't wait. He couldn't wait.

Precious, the young, urban protagonist in Sapphire's novel, is advised by her case worker to quit school, give up her baby and get a job as a home care aid assistant. Luckily, Precious' teacher spots her potential, and intervenes with something as simple as a journal -- one in which the two pass poems and notes back and forth to each other.

The iterative process is like that.

It starts with a blank page. We pass notes back and forth to each other. Building a body of work, together. Beginning with the barest of skeletal frames that's minimally functional. Starting where you are with what you have. Evolving, expanding from there.

"If you are not embarrassed with your first version, you've released too late." - Reid Hoffman, founder LinkedIn

Bonus: In this current project, Latent Talent: Leaping from de Poverty Line, we aim to show that even on federal minimum wage salary cusping the poverty threshold, anyone can create compelling self-expression because inspiration isn't dependent on income.

p.s. Mai, guest blogger, is announcing her own blog tomorrow/soon. She's had quite the flurry of life and death experience lately. We've both realized we haven't been as risky "real" as we could be. Of late, I've pulled away from astrology as I'm not too intent on knowing where fate lies, and rather create fate, yet I did happen to read this today which sums up love and creativity (is there a difference?) aptly:

"In fact that is probably what you are going to start learning about big time this summer—exactly what love is all about.

It’s really the ability to show yourself, allow yourself to be revealed as you really are with all your strengths and weaknesses. Being able to love deeply means being vulnerable, and when you are vulnerable you are bound to make strange choices. Nobody can criticize or guide you along this new path, mainly because there are no mistakes when you are learning to open yourself up. Opening yourself up romantically is of the same nature as allowing your creative talents to be developed."

willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith

"Sadly, humankind is divided by a different vision when interpreting the world, humanity, its reason for being, and its destiny. Western culture found its answer in the form of material reasoning, while the Eastern world developed based on natural thinking." - Don Isidro, Guatemalan Mayan in The Book of Destiny: Unlocking the Secrets of the Ancient Mayans and the Prophecy of 2012, by Carlos Barrios

Mai,

Precisely as you are reading The Heart of the World centering around the intrigue of utopian hidden-lands and secreted super-sanctuaries of Asia, I'm reading about the Mayan equivalent of beyuls.

I'm also reminded about the whole notion of "suspension of disbelief" which makes reading fiction like crossing a threshold to experience another's window of reality--without making a big fuss whether it's feasible, or tacitly agreeing to be sequestered "over the threshold" forever.

What if I lived my entire life suspending disbelief? What boundaries might we learn are simply arbitrary? What impossibilities might be seen as flimsy fencing? Here's a snippet of what stirred me today:

"Unlike the Western world's more linear vision, the Mayan perception of time is intertwined with space and frequency. Time, in the West consists of limits in the form of schedules and agendas. This is perfectly summed up in the expression "time is money." Space is seen as a physical, territorial manifestation in the form of possession. This division is what has given rise to conflicts and confusion.

...

"Follow the light," we've been told, as if darkness were negative. However, when Mayan sages say to follow the light, they don't mean follow behind it, but get ahead of it. The idea is to move forward and exceed the speed of light. Light and dark are merely facets of reality. Once one achieves this, one's connection with reality is no longer linear.

If we are able to manipulate the light, it means that we're able to shatter constraints inside our spirit and consciousness and go beyond it. We blaze a new trail, and everything comes into focus. This is when we acquire a sense of being. We no longer struggle with demons. We are outside the limitations of space-time; frequency is our channel to transcendence, to exceeding such limits. 

... The Mayan were obsessed with breaking through these [cosmic] borders in order to travel in space-time. Najt [space-time] is where we reside and what most people understand. More precisely, it is where most people are trapped, in what we call reality. It is also what leads us to what we call the past or future, both of which are abstractions. The past does not exist. It existed. Now it's only a memory. The future does not exist either; it's what will be. There is only this instant, this very moment, the eternal present.

Explosions in the universe can be compared to those that take place inside inside of each of us; one has to explode mentally in order to break free of the limitations of one's perceptions.

This then begs the question: are there other dimensions or realities? The answer is yes. There are other dimensions where space-time-frequency is measured or configured differently and is beyond our comprehension.

... The Popol Vuh speaks of parallel dimensions as paradise and calls them Paxil and Kayala. In Paxil our perceptions are different. Our senses sharpen, and we are surrounded by a tranquil, harmonious, peaceful energy. It's like going back to the matrix, the origin.

... Light behaves differently in these parallel dimensions. There is no sun. The light is brighter, but not warmer. It's a clear, all-encompassing light. The most exquisite fruit and the most incredible stones can be found in Paxil, but most importantly, we are accepted unconditionally there..." - The Book of Destiny, by Carlos Barrios

p.s. I gave The Heart of the World as a gift to my ex-husband, an avid river runner, as a gift when he was recovering from a serious head injury. His car accident eerily occurred roughly 10 days after the Boxing Day 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, which cracked my heart wide open. I've not read the book myself.

art credits Michael Benson exhibition currently showing at Smithsonian, Beyond: Visions of Planetary Landscapes 1. Erupting into Space, by Michael Benson (Jupiter's Io) 2. Europa and the Great Red Spot, by Michael Benson (Jupiter's Europa) 3. Mars, I believe, also by Michael Benson via NY Times. Don't miss the awesome slide show.

travel beyond conventional limits--to imagine worlds, and selves, without boundaries or walls

"And to the visionary lamas of earlier centuries who entered Pemako's forbidding wilderness without fear, hope or hesitation and saw beyond the veils of common vision. These terton, or treasure revealers, discovered in the Tsangpo gorges a place of transformation and inspired others to travel beyond conventional limits--to imagine worlds, and selves, without boundaries or walls." -- Ian Baker, in his acknowledgments The Heart of the World: A Journey to the Last Secret Place

I must have fallen asleep under the catalpa tree. Leaves whorling in giants' pinwheel of chartreuse spades, named by and for a tribe of River People. All I can remember is the tail-end of the dream: I decide not to bow on stage with the others. Slink back behind the stage and exit in the rear. Someone from the performance walks up to me. Even though I have never been to China, sense that's where I am in the dream.

Except in the logic of dreams, I am speaking Spanish for the performance. This lady I assume will be re-editing the sound that walks up to me with the tape recorder. Asks me to repeat, "Hoy." (Spanish for today.) I say, "Hoy," with h intangible into the mic.

"So what did I say instead when I was on stage?" The tape recorder lady replies, "Joy. You said joy."

The security guard in his golf cart startles me. "You can lay down in the Cherry Esplanade -- not here." 

The morning glory!

It has taken the well bucket.

I must seek elsewhere for water. - Chinyo-ni

I have been thinking of water before I dosed off reading The Heart of the World. I don't want to create entertainment, entrainment--Irather something enchanted. Enchanting. Harmonizing what you've hinted about the spell-casting power of art. Yet without conniving or contriving a spell. I think it goes, again: The geese overheard have no mind to cast a reflection. The water below has no mind to hold their message/image.

Instead of focusing on seemingly dead (are they?) boddhisatvas like Guanyin or the nun-sage Chiyono, the story concept for the film morphed. It goes like this now: A modern, future Buddha combines the visionary inventions of Viktor Schauberger and Bernard Eastlund to introduce a brand-new energy source. She is hindered by the limits of her imagination, and the collective shadow of apocalypse.

"'Water is the mirror of our mind' that is what I was taught by water. - Masuro Emoto

 

"It's a bit like quantum physics," he reflected [he, speaking here is Dalai Lama], "which recognizes parallel dimensions and multiple universes." - page 14, the first page I open book

I'm still in the Borders aisle skimming,... reading. The Heart of the World is a true story of a decades-long search by the author to find a mythical waterfall. Beyond the waterfall, it is purported that if one is pure of heart a magical land lies -- a beyul, a paradise, an Eden, a Shangri-La.

I'm somewhere in the chapter The Call of Hidden Lands, when I get a text message from a 347 area code.

It reads, "bouyant fearlessness." That's it.

When Viktor Schauberger was 18 he told his father he was not going to University, and instead went to study and learn from the forest. Direct. Firsthand. I've not told my family I'm not going back to NYU... yet. 

In this way and that I have tried to save the old pail
Since the bamboo strip was weakening and about to break
Until at last the bottom fell out.
No more water in the pail!
No more moon in the water!

-  Chiyono

On page 432, a note falls out from the book.

art credits! Lady Pink. 1. (Images left to right: Lady Pink, Queen Matilda, 6′x4′, acrylic on canvas. Lady Pink, A Lovely Entrapment, 40″x72″, acrylic on canvas.) 2. Another brick lady... photo by c-monster.net 3. Lady Pink doing her thing... Photo by Irene Kittenclaw.