Crossroads Dispatches

choose the story with wild animals, magic, and divine intervention

Hearing (and living) lots of adventure stories lately. Recently regaled with Hamdi Ulukaya's story of growing up milking sheep at his family’s dairy in near the Euphrates River in Turkey. I listened to CEO Ulukaya's tale unfurl into Chobani Yogurt's entrepreneurial odyssey with all its adventurous twists at New Orleans Entrepreneur Week.

Yesterday, I heard the ups and downs of Edgar Degas' storied life and his journey to New Orleans for a respite from post-war France.

While I adore true-life epics--unless the protagonist of the tale is deceased leaving behind all their authentic private journals and letters--what happens often is so much of the nitty-gritty roller-coaster ride of life is portrayed as a flattened-out glide towards overnight success, or gussied up for its publicity effect.

Obstacles omitted, accolades exaggerated. Something gets obscured, even lost, in the veneer, and I'm not sure what's tossed out is not the pearl in the oyster.

Last week, I had an epiphany when I attended a talk on the three-act structure motif of "The Hero's Journey" for screenwriters (see the slides here: Hero's Journey Three-Act Structure for Screenwriters courtesy of New Orleans Video Access Center). The most vivid quotes (from my notes) were:

• "The plot is just a vehicle for inner transformation."
• "The character reluctantly surmounts a trial or obstacle but in order to prevail he must first conquer his own flaw or inner fears," as well as often an external embodiment of those fears and resistance in the form of an antagonist.
• "[In Act II,] Create highs and lows in the quest and the first hard setback."
• "The most difficult obstacle yet has to be overcome and the hero must do--or die."

And, most significantly:

• "The inner change of the character is put to the test."

Listening to the Hero's Journey talk while stepping back from being the star of my own life, I witnessed the stage from a spectator's distance. Rather than bemoan the obstacles in my life, these could be easily interpreted as what makes for a fascinating, unfolding mythic tale of an explorer. Then donning back the heroine's role, obstacles appear to keep individuated life in step with the dynamism of Life rather than stagnating.

I googled the active, verb form of "adventure" and received back:

ADVENTURE: "Engage in hazardous and exciting activity, esp. the exploration of unknown territory: "they had adventured into the forest". Synonyms: verb.  risk - venture - hazard - jeopardize - dare - jeopard."

I googled "expedition," which is more the word that has been coming up for me for months. EXPEDITION:

1. A journey or voyage undertaken by a group of people with a particular purpose, esp. that of exploration, research, or war.
2. The people involved in such a journey or voyage.

Guess what?  The synonym for "expedition" is "dispatch." And the name of this blog is Crossroads Dispatches!

Embarking on an expeditionary series hosted here over the next month (or so), and everyone's invited. We'll call the spontaneous scribing, "Everyday Adventure." Expect (as in expectancy more so than expectation) enchantment, experimentation, experiential engagement, and perhaps excruciating epiphanies (alas, perception doesn't always come cheap) to abound. Echoing Marcel Proust's aphorism, we won't be seeking out new adventures as much as welcoming the one we're already on with fresh eyes. This might emcompass a turnabout and facing and embracing obstacles as they come as part of the spice of the story we're inhabiting, for instance. It's playing improv with life (in improv the key words are: "yes, and....") to keep the story rolling. 

Count this as Day Zero.

All I'll intend to be doing is breathing, living, morphing, shaping, and sharing stories, experiments and puzzles--mine as well as others--that elicit your own creative and uniquely woven yarn, not passing out step-by-step prescriptions. (How adventuresome would that be?) Lest I forget, I'll repeat this as mantra to myself: "Think questions, not answers. We're storytellers, not teachers,"  as presenter Ashley Charbonnet said at the start of the NOVAC Hero's Journey for Screenwriters talk.

Bonus: From Lazi Yogi blog (love that blog): 

dontmilkme asked: In Life of Pi, which story did you choose to believe at the end, or which story do you believe is true? And why?

"Given the option, I will always choose the story with wild animals, magic, and divine intervention.

 Being the fact that the Life of Pi is itself a work of fiction, both stories are of course untrue. Why not choose the story of transformation and wonder? :)

Namaste"

 
Art credits: First, two expeditions diaries: sketch of trout in William Clark's expedition diary from the Lewis and Clark expedition; and a page from Keri Smith, author of "How to Be an Explorer of the World" own personal journal (plus she quotes Thoreau from his own journals in that blog post); and the curious Hypatia of Alexandria via Wise Women Pinterest board.

They had no problems understanding light speed and teleportation except that they could have done it more discreetly. - Malidoma Some

"The millet fileds were generous and the harvest was good. The hard work of collecting and transporting grain from the farm to the roof of the houses where it waited to be put into the granaries was over. Now, in the fallow season, the villagers turned their attention to spiritual matters, to initiation. The dry season would be painfully idle if there was nothing else to do. One afternoon I was sitting outside with my sister when a town crier came running to my father's house. In a Dagara village, the town crier is considered an envoy of the spirit. He does not greet people or otherwise behave normally, for he is possessed by the message he has been commissioned to convey. He appears very agitated while doing so because he is responding to what the spirits have told him to do.

Out of breath, he stopped in front of us, mumbled something, and drew a cross on the mud wall of the women's quarter. He said nothing, but instead sang a bizarre song. As he was about to go away, I stopped him.

"Wait a minute. What's all this about?"

"What? You don't know? Well, a child who lives in this house will become a man--if he lives that long. . ."

This answer transfixed me, I sat down. I had imagined that Baor was scheduled for the middle of the dry season.

Seeing my perplexity, my sister tried to clarify things for me. "You cannot be told about it until the day before. If you know ahead of time, something is wrong."

"So my initiation begins tomorrow--and I am not the least prepared for it."

"Your not knowing is your being prepared." [replied his sister] - Malidoma Some, Of Water and the Spirit

Now is the dry season. The millet harvest was good. The season of initiation for my eternal boy. Not just in the Northern Hemisphere. Or in the tribe of the Dagura of Africa. Here in the imaginal hemisphere, too.

Typically, I wouldn't be thinking what I was doing or who I was being ten years ago although the recent attention to 9/11 had that effect. Plus, the photographer Brooke Shaden wrote an open letter to her future self in ten years time.  

"I’d like to see the world, but not in the way that most people say they want to. I want to go places and sit in every open field I can find in each unique country and hear the wind talk to me." - Brooke Shaden, "34-Year-Old Me"

Ten years ago... ten years ago. I read both Of Water and the Spirit: Ritual, Magic, and Initiation in the Life of an African Shaman as well as Hidden Journey: A Spiritual Awakening by Andrew Harvey in the same time frame in the winter ten years ago while I lived in Salt Lake City and was still a computer engineer (unemployed) and still married (separated). Both books influenced my life by upending what I thought I knew about how the world works. Yet my life was already being upended as our startup closed up shop January 2001, I found looking for work as a former dot-com CTO daunting (the "new economy" was now a pariah in traditional IT circles) and my husband asked for a divorce.

I was more willing to listen to alternative answers than I'd been ever before. (The open-ended question I threw out was, "What is my purpose?"--pretty standard, yet almost any question will do....)

"So it comes to pass that, when we pursue an inquiry beyond a certain depth, we step out of the field of psychological categories and enter the sphere of the ultimate mysteries of life. The floorboards of the soul, to which we try to penetrate, fan open and reveal the starry firmament." -Bruno Schulz

Okay, I'm willing to listen. Maybe consensual reality maybe wasn't a fixed reality or reality, after all. 

"To a Dagura man or woman, the material is just the spiritual taking on form." - Malidoma Some

It also shook up my belief that everyone has pretty much the same universal world-view.

In a letter to a friend, Gustav Mahler reveals this about the composition of his Third Symphony, "I tell you in, at certain places in the score, a quite uncanny feeling takes possession of me, and I feel as if I had not created this myself." I would read things like this in 2001, and it'd sound romantic and soothing to hear--although, then, truthfully, I had no clue what Mahler meant.

So reading Of Water and the Spirit was like standing at the edge of a lake--the first body of water I'd ever set eyes on. Although no book is going to be an experiential dive, and until I at least dipped a toe, I would not know wetness. The book did, however, entice me to care about exploring and experimenting with wetness.

So, a few days ago in a Google+ exchange, someone was sharing how they were upset by a brand-new violent, pornographic game (or book?) and another person replied: "Words are wind." And added, that it doesn't matter what the content is as it's only make-believe.

"The world of the Dagara also does not distinguish between reality and imagination. To us, there is a close connection between thought and reality. To imagine something, to closely focus one's thoughts upon it, has the potential to bring something into being." - Malidoma Patrice Some

If I fully believed that words are 'merely' wind, I wouldn't be writing now nor ever. Although paradoxically, words are wind. It's only that many underestimate the power of Air.

In fact, there is a good deal the dismissive tone of the comment, "Words are wind" stirred a fire within me. Noting my anger I connected it with something a mentor of mine said recently, Stifled passion, sooner or later, ends up bursting out as anger. All which has catalyzed me to wholeheartedly commit to accomplishing a few "word as wind" projects with optional interactive elements that I've had on hold (for several reasons with "no money" among the excuses).

“Words that merely come from other words are hard and aggressive. Such words are also lonely, and a great part of the melancholy in the world today is due to the fact that man has made words lonely by separating them from silence.” - Max Picard via Dennis Lewis, "Some Impressions on Words, Voice, Listening, and Silence"

"As in the case of "Star Trek," Westerners look to the future as a place of hope, a better world where every person has dignity and value, where wealth is not unequally distributed, where the wonders of technology make miracles possible. If people in the West could embrace some of the more positive values of the indigenous world, perhaps that might even provide them with a "shortcut" to their own future." - Malidoma Patrice Some

Bonus: Excerpt from Malidoma Patrice Some's introduction to his memoir here. It speaks to the fluidity of 'reality' and the power of imagination.

Announcing: I'm offering Tarot readings (the Tower archetype of 9/11 got me thinking about Tarot again) as a whimsical way to do a personalized consultation for your creative idea--be it a new business venture, new product line, or a Black Rock Arts Foundation grant proposal. Whatever you desire to make tangible through your sheer creative expression and exuberance. I'll throw in my own quirky amalgamations to the alchemical William Blake Tarot deck's two cents. All proceeds to fund a month-long online vignette du jour (there's more to it than that as you may infer from the above post) creative project using the setting of the city of New Orleans. (Thus, the tie-in with Tarot as Nola is where I learned the archetypal craft.)

ART CREDITS: All photographs on this post by Brooke Shaden. (Brooke's blog here.)

i lower my standards - william stafford

Today is the first day of the Casi Cielo Intensive Salon--an online group encouraging living in the present moment and sharing the art that emerges from Now with other artists. Daily blog posts consisting of contemplative and writing (and sketching) prompts through Easter are public (subscribe to Casi Cielo Salon blog free here via email).

I have plenty of material for this blog, and so the daily tidbits of inspiration will stay separate and over at the Casi Cielo blog. Yep, you can still sign up to participate in the private, shared space with fellow Salonistas, and/or donate. To give you a peek, sample post today is below:

"Contact with the awareness of the Absolute can come about only when the mind is fasting, when the process of conceptualization has utterly ceased. When the mind feasts, Reality disappears. When the mind fasts, Reality enters."  - Ramesh S. Balsekar,  A Net of Jewels

Today is Mardi Gras. Fat Tuesday. I've lived in New Orleans--and in fact, was residing in the Marigny neighborhood during last year's Mardi Gras. Fat Tuesday is a holiday, and traditionally the last big hoorah to indulge before Lent begins. (Although, in New Orleans curbing indulgence isn't in the city DNA.)  Alhough I was marginally raised as Catholic--I quit after my communion, I don't observe Lent either, at least not in any typical sense. 

Me? This year I'm "giving up" memory. I'm giving up rehashing the past for Lent.

Live by the current of inspiration alone.

Perhaps, spurred by the quote by Balsekar above (just serendipitiously sent by a friend this a.m.)  give up believing in my thought gyrations. Reality happens in the present not in the synapses of my brain. Beyond (or more accurately, below) what I think it is, it is.

Today I'm not providing a writing prompt. 

Indulge your intuition. Feed on your inner muse. What does It prompt?

When I Met My Muse

I glanced at her and took my glasses
off--they were still singing. They buzzed
like a locust on the coffee table and then
ceased. Her voice belled forth, and the
sunlight bent. I felt the ceiling arch, and
knew that nails up there took a new grip
on whatever they touched. "I am your own
way of looking at things," she said. "When
you allow me to live with you, every
glance at the world around you will be
a sort of salvation." And I took her hand.

-- William Stafford

Most people 'paralyze' the muse with their thought gyrations of perfection. Consider that anything you write is okay, and that you can not write it wrong. Trust in simply showing up... each day for 40 days (minus Sundays). When poet William Stafford was asked how his daily practice of writing one poem a day could possibly produce quality poetry of high standards, he replied:  "I lower my standards."

"William Stafford woke up every morning, seven days a week, at 4 a.m., made himself a cup of instant coffee and a piece of dry toast, and stretched out on his family's living room couch. There, notebook on lap, he wrote until the sun came up. He wrote a poem a day, a process he describes in the short lyric "Just Thinking": "Got up on a cool morning. Leaned out a window. / No cloud, no wind. . . . Let the bucket of memory down into the well, / bring it up. Cool, cool minutes. No one / stirring. No plans. Just being there." Stafford was a late bloomer whose first major collection of poems, Traveling Through the Dark, was published when he was forty-eight. It won the National Book Award in 1963. He went on to publish more than sixty-five volumes of poetry and prose." -- "The Poets Laureate Anthology" edited by Elizabeth Hun Schmidt

ART CREDITS: Sure takes a lot of showing up every day to a blank page to get this vortex of words. Book sculpture and architecture by artist Matej Kren.

"to all the muffled... joyfully add yourself, and cancel the count" - Rilke

Be--and yet know the great void where all things begin,
the infinite source of your own most intense vibration,
so that, this once, you may give it your perfect assent.

To all that is used-up, and to all the muffled and dumb
creatures in the world's full reserve, the unsayable sums,
joyfully add yourself, and cancel the count.

- Rainer Maria Rilke, “Sonnets to Orpheus”, II:13, translated by Stephen Mitchell

Those stanzas of poetry distill the spirit of Casi Cielo Salon that is going to delve into present awareness, ordinary rapture, and shared writing starting March 8th.

"Unmuffle yourself; come close to the hearth. Come into the circle of home," intones the portable quotable online I Ching.

Come from wherever you are whoever you are. You don't need to book a flight to a deserted island to be. You don't need lots of eccentricities or 'character' either.

I'm currently living in the edge of the suburbs in the Mojave desert. It's not the kind of atmosphere that I normally find inspiring. There's an constant urge to say, Not this, not now. To postpone to perhaps some other place, some other time.... later, when it's better, or shinier... rather than be and write from here as just me.

Funny, I was skimming through one of Byron Katie's books and her husband, Stephen Mitchell, wrote this in the Forward (yep, same Stephen Mitchell as translated Rilke's poem above):

"The Mojave is bleak even by desert standards, it lacks the whimsy of cactuses, yet becomes truly beautiful if you start to pay attention to it. If you take a walk with Katie there at sunset, the warm wind seems like a caress and the rocks are subtle in their shades of brown and yellow and black and red, and the shadows are blue. She will lead you up canyons to places where hidden water drips and you might begin to see the desert as kind and believe her when she says it was her teacher."

Bleak, or not (that's an interpretative layer anyhow...).... it too is Wholeness. So are you. "Unmuffle yourself; come close to the hearth. Come into the circle of home."

Casi Cielo will have a free, public, online component as well, but if you really want to jump into the sandbox with us....

WHAT: Facilitated Intensive Salon of peers interested in living in present awareness, ordinary rapture and sharing their everyday writing. Loose and structured. Loose in that you decide on your topics of rapture and length and style of writing--erotica or renku or brochure or video game or watercolor sketch....; structured in that there are optional daily prompts (excepting Sundays) and I'll nudge you to submit something to the private group shared space if we don't hear from you in a while (i.e. no spectators).

WHEN: Seven weeks March 8th-April 24th. (Sneak start for early-birds starts March 1st.)

HOW MUCH: Seven weeks for $40 covers all daily prompts, feedback, facilitated online group (private and cozy as most writing circles are). Included as a bonus if you subscribe to Encanto newsletter+pilgrimage ($25/month). Register Encanto+Casi Cielo here. Register Casi Cielo Intensive Salon here.

ART CREDITS: Leonard Knight painted the hills at Salvation Mountain and it's now a "National Folk Art Shrine", photo via Life magazine; Kelso dunes in the Mojave photo by Cami Renfrow

live in the &

even lotus blossoms
bend a bit...
oh floating world!
-Issa, 1819

While listening to this archived Ken Bechtel radio show about Living from the Both/And (rather than Either/Or) last night (it's a treat I recommend) AND nibbling on a sliver of my favorite organic dark chocolate, Green and Blacks (with tea!), I noticed on the packaging their trademarked tagline. I stole it for the title of this post:

Live in the &.

Plum blossoms, delicate pink, have started to bloom here.

I'm re-reminded that the heroine of a narrative that's been weaving in my mind's eye since the '08 Beijing Olympics is named after the plum blossom. It's time to write, again.

behind me
laughter at my rags...
plum blossoms
-Issa, 1804

And, just to have company, I'm starting a Salon for folks that want to delve into present awareness, ordinary rapture AND write--check out the Casi Cielo Salon. An Intensive version of the Salon starts March 8th, that includes a private, intimate, sharing, gathering space for inspiration in action.

In both/anding fashion, during the Intensive Salon (March 8th-April 24th) public inspirational cues will be available for all similar to (but not same) as the 40 days of Everyday Inspiration in 2007.

Here's a little background on the Why's:

"The best time of my life (thus far...) was a period in 2006 where I kept a journal for forty days and wrote  in the present tense and of the present moment. It was subtitled "40 days of Ordinary Rapture."

I was 'stuck' in the further suburbs of San Jose, CA without a functioning car. Although I had a roof over my head, I was having trouble putting food on the table. I was whining to a local friend, "I am getting tired of tea and toast everyday."

She put me to a challenge. What if every time I ate a piece of bread to view it with fresh eyes and senses as if, "You have never tasted a morsel of bread before that moment."

So the journal became a way to record my daily ritual of tea and toast at dawn and tea and toast in the twilight. I was also "playing" with Jesus' intent of forty days of fasting in the desert, and this sentence: "Man does not eat by bread alone, but by every word from the mouth of God."

There are no adventures of ice-climbing across New Zealand or marrying a rock star in that journal.  Yet I saw magnolia trees in my neighborhood for the first time. Before I just drove by them on the way to something else without a second glance.

The scent of roses blooming was richer, and one day I understood their voice. I strolled to the local park and felt the glee of children at play. As I walked everything shimmered as if in an enchanted fairy tale; and yet, nothing changed externally.

Soon, I could afford more than Earl Gray with bergamot and sourdough. I enjoyed white peaches that dripped with sensuousness from the farmer's market. I fell in love.

There was none of my typical ennui. A subtle and sublime joy suffused my daily life, just as it was. I suppose one can call it mindfulness, but it was more like Wholeness."

"...impossible things are happening every day" - Cinderella and Fairy Godmother duet

“Sometimes those that know us best don’t necessarily support our wildest dreams and deepest core beliefs when it is beyond their own experiences, and spirit-friends are necessary to keep the flame alive.” - M.B., Filmmaker, Tennessee

In the Vietnamese new year which began yesterday, it's the Year of the Cat. (Year of the Rabbit in China.)

"The Cat Year is about following your clear inner truth through subtle currents, psychic waves, underlying thought forms that require extra sensitivity to navigate." - Mark Borax

Chúc mừng năm mới!

"Tradition also dictates that you should clean your entire home before the new year so you start off with a clean slate," says writer Thien-Kim Lam. I often wonder why people lust for a clean slate. Nothing to lose? The perception of freedom and peace? I'm still confounded by people that are envious of my position--"you're so unconstrained" as one person put it, as I've "lost" and/or given away whatever it is they might fear losing (from partner/relationship/marriage, job/career, house, car, all savings, etc. etc.)

Maybe this is an enviable position, but.... but, I still have my reputation and self-image to uphold! So, as minimalist as you might go, there appears to be always ONE more thing we can cling to that is holding us "back" from giving it all we've got, I suppose.

In his essay, The Missing Near-Future, Kevin Kelly (founding editor of Wired) writes about science fiction and speculative fiction story-telling as a platform for hashing out and fleshing visionary options--ours, yours, mine:

"The near future – let’s peg it 2020 and beyond -- is a blank because there is almost no vision of a near-future that seems both desirable and plausible. Most stories, “worlds,” and scenarios of say the year 2050 are dystopian. Take your pick of nuclear self-annihilation, mortal pandemics, planetary floods, robotic overthrow, alien invasion, or fascist apocalypse. They are all very plausible, but not desirable.

The advantage of the far future is we don’t have to be told the story of how we arrived there, of how we passed through the near future. It’s far away enough that the creators can punt past it.  But the near future is such a conundrum that is it has disappeared from our culture."

Pretty cool, Kelly used the word "blank" beause he doesn't know what's next. The unknown. That fuzzy near-future where anything beyond the very next most obvious step is fuzzy at best. Another kind of clean slate is stepping into the unknown, and then then the next unknown, one foot after the other.

I don't feel the near future is as much as a conundrum as Kelly asserts. I don't think he's looked under all the nooks and crannies. Many idealists tame their findings and share something "plausible" enough to blend in and maybe this fails the "desirability" test (mediocre is usually not that desirable); many form their own groups in seclusion, or they cast themselves off in (frustrated?) isolation from the "plausible" constraints of community. Honestly, I yielded to the third option these past two years. Perhaps, this tyranny of plausibility is changing. Perhaps it is not.

All I know is I agree with my friend D.K. in "our right to be our idiosyncratic selves and still belong to the group of our choice."

"Man plans, God laughs. In that case I'd rather be God." - me

Last night, I watched a Bruce Lipton video where he asserted that although he was successfully publishing his stem cell research in the medical journals, "I found myself to be in a very small crowd of one in my community because I had violated the central dogma." Later, Lipton says that small children, due to primarily to theta brain wave orientation until they are six years of age, are easily imprinted with other's "plausible" expectations, opinions, and belief systems: "What we acquire in our development is that we're just average people."

Back in December, I started writing the narrative in the last post (there's more, although not online yet) for io9's Environmental Writing Contest: "Your story should deal meaningfully and plausibly with some aspect of environmental disaster. There are no limits on the kind of disaster you explore."

"The tyranny of the norm is that part of modern existence that seduces a person out of their truth in favor of conforming to the pressure of collective thought forms." - Mark Borax

Didn't take me even 1000 words into writing out my near-future scenario before I realized, "Nope, this isn't going to meet their "plausibility" standards."

And what did they mean there were "no limits" on imagining the disaster itself, yet I am limited to a plausibility constraint when I consider the solution? Huh? I kept hearing the refrain echoing: "Fol-de-rol and fiddle dee dee and fiddley faddley foodle all the dreamers in the world are dizzy in the noodle..."

"Science classes are unscientific; students just sit there." - skateboarding physicist Dr. Tae

I've a fondness for dizzy in the noodle dreamers... a.k.a. disruptive innovators, like Dr. Tae. He quit teaching university-level physics because he's looking for better ways than the status quo to teach science. He's not afraid to point out that the emperor has no clothes, and offers his two cents on a new vision for teaching and learning.

So I'm going to start singing this new refrain, "For the world is full of zanies and fools who don't believe in sensible rules and won't believe what sensible people say. And because these daft and dewey eyed dopes keep building up impossible hopes, impossible things are happening every day."

Bonus: Cinderella: Who are you?

Fairy Godmother:I'm your fairy godmother.
Cinderella: How beautiful you are.
Fairy Godmother: I'm made of all of your most beautiful hopes and dreams and wishes.
Cinderella: Oh, Fairy godmother, I have only one wish just now.... to go to the ball.... and I know it is impossible.
Fairy Godmother:Impossible? Bah, what's a fairy godmother for?
Cinderella: To make my wish come true?
Fairy Godmother: If you wish it hard enough. Now let me see you'll need a coach, and four horses, and a coachman, and a groom.
Cinderella: Is it possible to get those things by wishing for them?
Fairy Godmother: Well, the sensible people of this world will say
(sung) Fol-de-rol and fiddle dee dee and fiddley faddley foddle all the wishes in the world are poppy cock and twoddle.
Cinderella: (spoken) Aren't they?
Fairy Godmother:Not always. The sensible people will also say (sung) Fol-de-rol and fiddle dee dee and fiddley faddley foodle all the dreamers in the world are dizzy in the noodle.
Cinderella: (spoken) And aren't they?
Fairy Godmother: Not always, especially when there is someone who loves you to help you. Now, to work. For a coach I believe I see a pumpkin over there-- that'll do very nicely.
Cinderella: A pumpkin?
Fairy Godmother: I see you have four pet mice in a cage.. they'll do very nicely for the horses
Cinderella: Mice? For horses?
Fairy Godmother: Mm hmm.. Now let me see, something's peering at us from under that shrub, oh yes, it's a fine fat rat with whiskers, and his brother they'll do very nicely for the coachman and the groom.
Cinderella: Oh, dear Fairy Godmother it all seems so impossible!!
. . . . .
Cinderella: (song) For the world is full of zanies and fools
who don't believe in sensible rules
and won't believe what sensible people say
Both: And because these daft and dewey eyed dopes
keep building up impossible hopes
Impossible things are happening every day.
-- from the Rodgers and Hammerstein Cinderella musical

 

p.s. The dream is to have a center to do implausible, impossible and desirous things with other dewey eyed dreamers; and plus also we can jointly host impossible things Salons in your city. Ping me, email or comment...

Art Credits: "Spring Festival" photo shoot by Steve Meisel via Honestly WTF blog; stained glass cat via The Paintshop Pro Users Group; rabbit detail from the Disney Cinderella castle mosaics done by controversial mosaic artisan via The Disney Blog; photo of Dr. Tae by Clayton Hauck for Chicago Reader; detail of Eric Nyquist's Ramsar Rights (I found Eric's works through the curated Gawker Artists gallery); more Steve Meisel.

Sometimes we have to travel to the edge of ourselves to find our center. - Buck Ghosthorse

"No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader." - Robert Frost

It appears that my "about" bio is at least three years out of date. Yet, one thing on it remains relevant (not much else!). And that is that I love this quote: "Sometimes we have to travel to the edge of ourselves to find our center." - Buck Ghosthorse, Lakota Medicine Man. In the spirit of truthfulness outlined in the last post, I need to continue pushing the envelope, not necessarily to be trendy or anything fancy, just because that is what greenness feels into, what life nudges: grow.

Whenever I hold back, I lose my enthusiasm for sharing (and living) because I'm shying away from the fertile verge and the lunatic fringes and, uh, vulnerability too.

"[B]logging success comes from pushing your own personal edge. Too many young bloggers are trying to write what they think other people want to read, instead of writing work that actually challenges themselves.

Culture exists on the fringes. The center is boring, and secretly everyone wants out of the mediocre middle." - Everett Bogue, "How Blogging Evolves(ed)", Far Beyond the Stars blog

As I'm piecing this post together, I'm drinking Jasmine Green Monkey King tea, listening to lyrics "...just love as you are." Yes, we'll continue to grow here but I suspect some of you have more pressing demands than this little tea parlor in cyberspace. However, if you've the inclination there are a couple of other "levels" of play--if you want to notch up and engage deeply with me and other visitors here--and best yet, with life.

"There are three words that convey the secret of the art of living, the secret of all success and happiness:

One With Life. Being one with life is being one with Now. You then realize that you don't live your life, but life lives you. Life is the dancer, and you are the dance." - Eckhart Tolle

1. Encanto. Intimate, interactive salon straight to your inbox about 12-20 times per month. $25/month beginning The Year of the Cat/Rabbit February 3, 2011. Of course, newsletters aren't in and of themselves at all interactive. The interactivity occurs both online--and offline between participants and, predominately, with life. Here's my description so far, it'll evolve with the participants:

"Your everyday life will give you all the koans you need to get enlightened." - Richard Rose

"Patterns, signs, subtle variations in rightness and not-rightness, flow and obstruction; this is how it works. I make it sound as if the universe and I were two separate things, but it's actually the absence of that artificial distinction that I'm talking about." - Jed McKenna

Encanto is a private newsletter where the reader isn't "along for the journey," but full-fledged travel companions. This is an experiential undertaking. Do you accept the challenge of walking into the unknown? Accept every cue and clue and call and nudge that the Universe throws you? (Otherwise, reading this newsletter will be utter nonsense as it becomes further removed from your own experiential reference point.) Be willing to engage wholeheartedly with your life as it shows up along with me... 

You'll know via your own instinct if you desire to subscribe.

2. Narrative "game" on the web, akin to Jane McGonigal's Evoke in terms of "inspiration," but not quite an alternate reality game (as Life is the puppetmaster in this one). I'd like to use Web artist Jonathan Harris' upcoming storytelling platform (it's still months off) although I hardly know much about it. It's a hunch I have. I "met" Jonathan Harris through watching the video of his Cold: Bold talk--highly recommend the video.

And I love Jonathan's answer to:

"How can a website be art?
By its very nature, my online work is designed to be experienced by as many people as possible. This runs against the traditional art world model, which is premised on the scarcity of precious objects. The idea of "acquiring" a website is still foreign to most museums and collectors. Some curators are beginning to consider how a museum might acquire a work that continues to exist in the public domain. For instance, MoMA's Paola Antonelli is interested in having her museum acquire a Boeing 747, and having it continue to operate commercial flights with a small MoMA plaque attached to the plane. Similarly, the Dia Foundation supports environmental artists like Michael Heizer, Donald Judd, and Robert Smithson who install their work in natural settings, for anyone to see. Meanwhile artists like Banksy present their art in the street, among road signs and billboards. I prefer to keep focused on making my work, and not to worry too much about the semantics of what can and cannot be considered art. Sooner or later, with the help of curators like Paola and working artists who continue to insist on the web as a medium, the art world will catch up."

The whole multimedia narrative game will be interactive as is innate to the Web, and freely online if I have a say so (perhaps through sponsorships? suggestions?). It flows out as street art in the way it enages you in your life out there on the streets, in the way that you yourself are public art.

An excerpt from a potential scene in this narrative written by moi to demonstrate as it's not at all this style of blog writing:

Three years later.

The subtlety of jasmine.

Surrounded by huge legs of pork, hanging chickens, a cacophony of bustling shoppers scurrying around me, jostling in long lines and vying for their butchered meat. The scent is outside on Mulberry street wafting from the bakery next door. The scene cuts to grandmother's place off Hester, pouring from a clay pot the juice of blooming flowers and rain and wind chime symphonies swirls into the porcelain cup I'm holding.

Then, the memories drop into vast space like an untethered astronaut.

I'm pouring from a large, silver Thermos pot used to keep coffee warm, but the liquid is silkier and less opaque than coffee. Instead of the burlap sack looking tents I just saw on TV, I'm in a sturdier canvas one and outside yet sturdier wood domes filled with bamboo futons and straw-spun pillows. There are metal platters of food like a buffet in here.

I smell of ginger and turmeric and spices I'm not sure of. I pour out jasmine tea into small white porcelain cups sketched with blue phoenixes. I hand one over to the first man in line. There's dozens behind him. He's wearing a camo hoodie with his youngest son riding his arm, held close to his chest. 

"Favorite year. There was an animated chandelier. The Temple of Gravity," he turning to his companion behind him. His other, older son, is taking the plate of lentils and rice from another volunteer.

Someone in the crowd breaks into song, "We're coming to America... never looking back again.... we're traveling light today..."

Cut. "Alright, let's go to Vegas," I announce.

Shen doesn't seem startled by my statement. "I thought you said we would, ya know, work remote."

"Of course," I reply. "There'll be film people too. Maybe I can pitch the mind movies." Even when she had done the film projects at NYU with Jeremie as cameraman, the result never quite measured up to the vivid images rolling in her mind. She'd learned a lot since then.

"Uh huh, and then we'll sell them Santa Claus," Shen shot back.

"Oh, I'm not about to explain it. I'll show them."

p.s. For those of you that are wondering, I'm serious about the three questions and curious about this one: What if I gave YOU precisely $100? Would you use it to plant seeds? How? One reader totally grokked the intention of the three questions, and wrote: "I am grateful that immediately after reading your blog post the next email was a local opportunity to help someone out. Someone in a wheelchair is raising money to compete in an athletic competition by selling cookies. It's a small amount, but it feels right for now. I like the one to one help rather than giving to a large organization." Thanks!

ART CREDITS: Pale Blue Door is a funky-fertile-fun pop-up underground restaurant. Pictured above is its incarnation in Berlin; photos by Manuel Vasquez. This photo evokes the intimacy and casual artistry I'm seeking in a Salon of peer "travelers." Truthfully, it's the spirit of what I'd like to have manifest more in real-life. And if there was ANY way to evoke a quaint cozy cafe culture in a blog, that's the ticket. Secondly, Dr. Brene Brown's C.S. Lewis quote from her blog, Ordinary Courage; and the rest of the art comes from Ginger Huebner's art (portfolio here) including Ginger's mixed media Touching the Edges, Nourish, and Home.

your work: when you hold back, it holds back; when you hesitate, it stands there staring, hands in its pockets. But when you commit, it comes on like blazes.

“To require perfection is to invite paralysis. The pattern is predictable: as you see error in what you have done, you steer your work toward what you imagine you can do perfectly. You cling ever more tightly to what you already know you can do – away from risk and exploration, and possibly further from the work of your heart. You find reasons to procrastinate, since to not work is to not make mistakes.”

“To the critic, art is a noun. To the artist, art is a verb.”

"Look at your work and it tells you how it is when you hold back or when you embrace. When you are lazy, your art is lazy; when you hold back, it holds back; when you hesitate, it stands there staring, hands in its pockets. But when you commit, it comes on like blazes.”

Those three quotes are from Art and Fear: The Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking, by David Bayles and Ted Orlund. Now read them again. This time substitute "love" wherever the words "work" or "art" appear.

Now read it again one last time, substitute "life" wherever the words "work" or "art" appear.

Intriguing, ain't it?

I haven't touched a business book in a few years. Partly due to burn-out since I used to review business books as a hobby, and since surviving the Indian Ocean tsunami they just felt a little bit, well, cold (no offense intended to business book authors) compared to so many other things I could be doing with my lifetime. After one survives a disaster, reading "Execution: The Art of Getting Things Done" drops a few notches on the "to do before I die" list.

In October I decided I wanted to shake some things up a bit, by attempting to break my routines (being a Gemini a "routine" is anything I've done for more than a year ;)).

I was desiring to break through a personal plateau.

For instance, I decided if I walked into a bookstore (now that act of walking in is a definite decades-long habit--why not a knitting shop instead?) I'd at least be open to "new" topics or ones I was purposefully averting. So I my eyes fell upon, "Who's Got Your Back," by Keith Ferrazzi. I had recently heard it mentioned in one of those ubiquitous "how to get rich" newsletters I decided to subscribe during the same timeframe so I wasn't averting money (part of the shaking things up process). Keith Ferrazzi charges CEOs $250,000 to coach them to better relationships in their networks, often peer networks (in case alarm bells of "too warm and fuzzy" are sounding, although close connections are their own reward in my book).

"Once when I was in Italy visiting my extended family near Milan, one of my great-aunts took me to a local churchyard where many of my relatives are buried. The church itself is one of those Renaissance cathedrals with a soaring dome. Looking up from the pews, it's hard to imagine how it was built. But outside, when you trace with your eyes up and down the exterior, you can see how the vaulted dome rests on firm columns, which in turn are supported by substantial foundations. It's all out in the open, for anyone to see.

To me, the courage to reveal your vulnerabilities reminds me of the structure that supports that dome. No one would ever attempt to build a church from the top down.

. . .The key to building that kind of foundation, leading to respect, empathy, and trust, is to do so gradually, through increasing degrees of intimacy and self-disclosure." - Keith Ferrazzi, "Who's Got Your Back: The Breakthrough Program to Build Deep, Trusting Relationships That Create Success--and Won't Let You Fail"

Ferrazzi intertwines vulnerability and candor with successful risk-taking--which is basically what courage is. In The Different Drum: Community Making and Peace, which I also read recently, M. Scott Peck shares how vulnerability and commitment lead to bonafide community (not a superficial one where it everyone gets along because they avoid everything of any consequence) or a clique.

I don't typically follow Internet meme flurries, yet I was drawn to this video presented by Dr. Brené Brown (Dr. Brown's blog, Ordinary Courage) making the rounds lately (I took notes over in my Footnotes blog):
 
Dr. Brown is firmly rooted in her Ph.D. academic researcher credentials and identity and in the very beginning she shares how uncomfortable she feels with the TED organizer's suggestion to change her title from "researcher" to "storyteller" so it doesn't sound dull in the event program. 

Dr. Brown exclaims, "You're going to call me a "storyteller"? Why not a magic pixie!" I laughed particularly because it echoes my journey. I clung to the identity of computer engineer for so long as it gave me a wide berth from the sticky stuff of people patter. (Machines made much more logical sense.) Then I dipped my toes into soft stuff by route of marketing. Then I started to call myself a writer (eh, close enough to "storyteller").

Not that any stamp of identity is necessary, but if you were to pin me down nowadays "magic pixie" is fairly spot on because what I care about are the enchanting possibilities that most people label "impossible." It's a work-in-progress, however go ahead and peek as I crystallize the vision (that's not the end-product, rather it's a public doodle of its coming into being), please see http://soundwhole.posterous.com--I'd love your feedback.

p.s. There's still time to accept my inviation to be my miracle partner, http://bit.ly/miraclepartner

p.p.s. Wonderful example of aiming for perfection compared to aiming for execution from Art and Fear, "Throw More Pots."

art credits: mural by Jesse Reno; unknown source for the trapeze artists

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."

incantations + imagination

"i have often thought thought of my poetry in terms of incantations: spells (note: magic is done through casting spells which is the same way words are made) or prayers to be recited in the darkest caves and highest mountain tops. in writing, i often feel as if i am deciphering age-old equations and am often as baffled an audience member as any other listener or reader. i have also found numerous occasions where i have felt that i wrote or recited a situation into existence." — Saul Williams, “Saul Williams, "The Future of Language” (complete PDF), from anthology Sound Unbound: Sampling Digital Music and Culture

Mai,
Curious you should mention healers and artists in the same breath. I'm going to synthesize together a few pieces I've recently read that are related theme. I'm full working on the new project (I've told you, but share more soon to everyone here) and thinking about the blessing ceremony I'm leading tomorrow night at Evolver Spore's event, The Spirit of Water.

Saul Williams, once a Brooklynite too, in his "The Future of Language" essay acknowledges the lyrical revolution in hip-hop, and asserts that "vivid, descriptive narratives of ghetto life seem to have come at the cost of imaginative or psycho-spiritual exploration." He continues, "The problem is when we recite the same ol' shit into microphones which increase the sound vibration the same ol' shit continues to manifest in our daily lives, and only gets more deeply embedded. but of course employing one's imagination is problematic when the aim is to keep it real."

Who wants to send a message?

Not surprisingly perhaps, tonight I read this story from the editor of DailyOm newsletter:

"I want to share a story with you. Shortly after the spill began back in April, my husband, Scott Blum, was working on putting the finishing touches on a song he had been working on called "Fragile Day." While he was in the studio with his producer, he was asked what the lyrics meant, "Fish are dimming while they're swimming / Blackened ocean of foam", and he explained that this song, the song he had written two years ago was about an oil spill. Immediately upon hearing this I told him that he needed to release the song and give proceeds to charity."

If it were my song, I'd re-imagine the release of this song as it is written. I understand the value of journaling and expressing whatever may come through us for our own selves, yet disseminating images -- whether in the form of cinema or lyrics or video games -- far and wide is another issue. Imagination is a potent, if invisible, force.

I picked up a fictionalized version of Buddha's life story written by Deepak Chopra yesterday. Here's an example of imagination/healing. Hard to tell the difference, really. Imagination? Or healing? Or is it simply acknowledging creation as it is--Whole:

"The new Buddha arose, adjusted his saffron robe, and began walking toward the road, the same road as on a thousand other days. Once he reached the road, he found it completely empty, even though the time was early morning, when farmers' carts should have been trundling to market. . . .

Buddha could be completely alone in the world. Why not? It was his world to do with as he pleased. He was the one dreaming it. . . .

His powers flowed from the other side of silence, where the mind can make anything happen. For a little while the new Buddha enjoyed himself, pulling the sun through the sky like a toy cart, swirling the winds around on the poles, shedding rain on a parched desert. This private diversion didn't last long. Buddha's world should have people in it whom he could care for. He recalled what Canki had said about a Golden Age--an age without suffering, where abundance was normal and scarcity forgotten in the dim past.

At that moment his vision was shattered by a scream. He saw a woman running toward him, her sari torn to shreds, her arms bleeding. In her panic the woman was blind to Buddha's existence until she was nearly upon him. Then her eyes registered him standing there, still and calm.

With a cry she rushed to throw herself into his arms, overwhelmed with relief. When she was two steps away, he held his hand up in blessing. The woman stopped in her tracks. She quivered with terror, her breast heaving.

"No more fear," Buddha whispered. "Give it to me."

She dropped to the road as if her body had melted and began to weep.

"All," said Buddha. "Give it all to me."

The woman became very still, the crying had stopped. Buddha erased the images of terror from her mind. He saw a knife. Teeth like fangs. A necklace made of severed fingers. The images were nightmarish. With the slightest touch, he made them go vanish. But one image wouldn't melt away--the body of her dead husband. He lay in the dust of the road, his throat slashed.

The woman was touching Buddha's feet now in supplication. Something inside of her knew who he was. She gazed at him through her eyes and said, "Please."

Buddha stopped himself from consoling her. He lifted the woman's head and met her gaze. "It is done," he said. She shuddered and fainted. After a moment, as Buddha stood motionless, a man rounded the corner driving an ox cart. Her husband. Buddha gestured for him to approach, and he sped up. Seeing his wife on the ground, the husband jumped down in alarm.

"What happened?" he cried.

"It will be alright. Let's put her in the cart." The two of them gently laid her in the straw behind the driver's seat. The husband had some fresh water in a goatskin bag; he wanted to splash it on her to reassure himself that she was all right. Buddha stopped his hand. "Let her wake up on her own. She may be surprised to see you, but calm her with loving words. You understand?"

The farmer nodded. By imagining the farmer alive and well again, he had erased the whole attack."

Hope and fear are both phantoms 
that arise from thinking of the self. 
When we don't see the self as self, 
what do we have to fear? See the world as your self. 
Have faith in the way things are. 
Love the world as your self; 
then you can care for all things. - Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

p.s. Did you notice in Persepolis they play "Eye of the Tiger" when Marjane starts to reverse the downward spiral of depression?

art credits: 1. Roughly 15 feet in length, the narrative scroll "Upper River During Qing Ming Festival" resides at the National Palace Museum in Taipei (via The History of the Discovery of Cinematography). 2. Siddhartha (name before he was a Buddha) by the river (via dhammajak.net).