you can be anything you want to be

The Promise of Intimacy

Intimacy. Is there any more misunderstood word in the English language? Any word that promises so much, yet seems so challenged to deliver the smallest amount? Any greater desire on the part of the average human being?

When I wrote last week that I was going to bring out intimacy as the self healing area for this week,  such an obvious choice on one level and yet so dreaded on another that it has taken me almost six months to approach it, I knew I was opening a can of worms. And yet the time has come. One can only stall for so long, and then the moment of truth always arrives.

In the comments for my Human Scale post last Friday, Richard Reeve of CCSeed brought up the idea of looking people in the eye, something so uncommon in street life that I had almost forgotten to miss it! When I was growing up it was so common to greet everyone I passed on the street, and certainly to be greeted by everyone that I didn’t acknowledge first, with a hand wave, or a smile and a head nod, or a salutation of some sort: a “hello”, or “how’s it going?” or a “what’s up?”.

Over the years this has diminished to the point that it almost seems a violation to burst into someone’s private bubble; to say hello to someone on the street is to interrupt their phone call, distract them from their iPod, their private thought. So privacy and intimacy, once bed partners to be sure, now seem to be at opposite ends of the spectrum.

Pornographers vs. Marketers

Of course, this is almost inevitable in a society such as ours in which we are continually bombarded with attention grabbers, advertisements and quasi-pornographic images, on billboards, buses, store windows, telephone poles, in which we are induced to buy that which cannot be bought: love, contact, connection.

At this point it has even become hard to speak of intimacy without seeming to imply sex, yet when I think of intimacy and its centrality in our lives, the first image that comes to mind is that of a newborn baby laying on it’s mother’s belly, skin to skin, flesh to flesh, with hardly a true notion of where one ends and the other begins.

This seamless contact between mother and newborn is emblematic for me of intimacy in its most true and intense form, and the next image that comes to mind is equally simple, yet perhaps surprising. It is the image of a hand, wet and sudsy, holding a half submerged coffee cup, and another hand holding a sponge, washing the cup.

For some reason this simple image of washing dishes by hand, the very simple and aware contact of that, brings to me a feeling of deep intimacy, of deep contact and mindfulness. And a lost art, almost. So I’m not sure who to blame the most for the dearth of true intimacy in our daily lives, the Marketing Pornographers, of the Appliance Makers!

Oh well. Since blame and a buck fifty will buy you a decent cup of coffee, I’ll  set that aside and look at a few simple ways to bring some human scaled intimacy back into our lives, with the aim of deepening our connection with the here and now, which is the true home of intimacy, of increasing our mindfulness, and of bringing us into a more holistic state of health and well being.

Another List of Things to Do

1. One thing at a time.
2. Slowly, slowly.
3. Use your hands.
4. Quiet time together.
5. Extra Credit!

First Things First

The first thing is to take some time doing just one thing at a time. I could rail against the computers for this one, as never before have we had such an opportunity to do so many things at the same time, to divide ourselves up into such a fractionated existence, so that I don’t know if it is even possible to sit down at a computer and remain in any sort of intimate state (compare and contrast word processing vs sitting down with pen and paper, even better quill and ink!).

And yet we are focusing on what to do here, so regardless of whether you are washing the dishes, driving your car, eating breakfast, or talking to someone on the phone, getting down to the simple one thing at a time will help to bring on the mindfulness and human scale that is so necessary for a sense of intimacy in life.

Take it Easy

The second thing is to slow down. Whatever it is that you are doing. Speed and intimacy are pretty much antithetical, I think, and unbounded time is necessary to really get into a deep connection with what you are doing, and who you are being, at any given moment.

Of course, a bit of simple math reveals that this is going to require a lot of pruning on that list of things to do. If you are only doing one thing at a time and you are taking twice as long to do it, that’s easily a factor of 2×2=4, and quite possibly 3×3=9! Yikes! That’s a lot less shit happening! Of course, when we ponder what happens when shit happens, thats bound to be a good thing.

Do It Yourself

The third thing is to try to do things by hand which you have relinquished to some automatic processing machine (even the human ones!). Like washing the coffee cup by hand, the feel of warm sudsy-ness, of sponge and cup, each hand feeling something different, involved in different sensations, and the hand! The hand being the greatest instrument of intimacy in our arsenal!

Or actually making that coffee or tea or favorite hot beverage for yourself (or yourself and a friend!). Pouring the water into the kettle, putting the kettle on to boil, grinding the beans yourself for each cup, rather than buying your coffee pre-ground. Smell that freshly ground bean! And then pouring the hot water onto the freshly ground coffee and watching the process, the swirls the colors the bubbles. Smelling the instant transformation of dry coffee to wet grounds, of wet grounds to coffee.

If you count the number of times in a day that you stand in line waiting to give someone money so that they can have your experience for you, trading time and money (which is pre-traded time) for experience, it is not wonder our lives have been drained of the real juice, the real intimacy.

Another great thing to rescue from the machines is written communication. When we write a letter we actually get to include so many of the elements of intimate experience, the touch, the smell, the sound of paper, pen and ink, the formation of complex figures by hand, the closest that most of us ever get to drawing, that we are bound to bring all of these elements into the communication itself. And something that used to be commonplace is now experienced a few times a year at most, at birthdays and holidays.

I could go on and on, for the opportunities to regain intimacy in our daily lives are all around us. There is virtually nothing we do that isn’t an opportunity for deep contact and connection. And my last suggestion is the one that will perhaps be followed the least, for it is a bit of a challenge.

Alone Together

Suggestion number 4 is to take a few minutes each day to sit quietly with someone, a friend, a family member, a lover; just to sit quietly and be present with each other. No tea, no snacks, no television, no music. Just you and another person being present with each other. And just noticing and being present with anything that comes up.

Extra credit is to look into each others eyes. Smiling is permissible.

Extra extra credit is to do this every day for the next week. With one person or with many. One at a time though, please! It’s just the simple silent being-ness that creates the sense of contact and connection, of simple pure intimacy.

Whether you follow one of these suggestions or many, the sense of intimacy in your life is sure to increase, leading to a greater sense of, you guessed it, health and well-being, and all the things that go with that, happiness, creativity, energy…

And please share your experiences as well as your own thoughts about intimacy and how to bring more of it into daily life. Pax!

photo by eviltomthai

Knives are a really good Invention!

So going for real, fresh, unprocessed food definitely calls for more use of knives and less use of scissors, can openers, etc. And cutting out the excess of bs that can come flooding in as soon as you open the lid of your laptop calls for another type of knife. Yikes. Funny how as soon as I made the commitment to get down to basics, starting with food, I immediately became aware of just how tired and overloaded I am feeling lately.

So step one was just to step back…focus on the food…and make the observation that things aren’t falling apart. Wow. I’ve stepped back and things aren’t falling apart.

Step two, which will intensify next week when I take on Intimacy, is to get things back to a Human Scale. Given that the projects and tasks in my life seem to multiply faster than open browser windows, this is going to take some fancy knife work. 

Human Scale

The ironic element being alive and well, the first thing that happens when I contemplate the human scale is that I come up with another Project. The Human Scale Project! Let’s look at Humanity from the dawn of time to yesterday at noon and then extrapolate outward to 2020 and see just how long it will take to reach…

On second thought. I think I’ll start right here in the center of my heart and discover what is actually necessary for me to be happy and fulfilled. And then start cutting away all the excess. After all, isn’t the perceived need for more more more what got us in the economic,and environmental crises that are filling up the pages that the rapidly sinking newspaper industry continues to decimate forests which are the largest consumers of the CO2 that is threatening …

Maybe I should get off this train before it gets moving too fast.

Yep. That’s the kind of week it’s been. 

2 3 Questions

1. Is it possible for a human being to really grasp something as large as the internet, the federal government, the banking industry?
2. Hell, is it possible for a medium sized city to get it’s buses to run on time?
3. Is it possible to step back from this huge and unwieldy system of macro macro macro, into something of a size that we actually can grasp?

3 Strikes?

Okay. So I think I know the answer to number 1 and 2. Which leaves me placing all my chips on number 3. Which means that instead of hitting one big giant Babe Ruth Barack Obama Home Run, it’s all going to come down to billions and billions of little tiny solutions coming from billions and billions of beautifully shining Human Hearts.

Which means no more Business As Usual. No more Master Plans. No more Templates. No more Step by Step Solutions.

Which brings us right back to human scale intimacy.

See you next week!

photo by cogdogblog

Let’s go Fly a Kite!

It has been a cold and rainy spring so far up here in boston, and this past weekend May have been the defacto beginning of summer, as we hit a trifecta of sorts here at the roslindale ranch.

First off, I began harvesting the mesclun mix from the garden. That certainly seems like a summery thing–food from the earth in my own backyard. No more going to Whole Foods to buy the stuff in clear plastic tubs shipped in from California or who knows where.

Second thing, on Saturday afternoon Rowan and I went out to fly kites! I flew the swoopy swoopy tiger and Rowan flew the ready steady black cat. This was Rowan’s first real opportunity to fly a kite completely on his own, and he did a great job, discovering and mastering the little flippy flippy wrist motion that let’s the kite go way way way up up up. And then Randi showed up with a picnic lunch that included those mixed greens I had cut from the garden! How much more summery does it get?

And thirdly, we busted out the grill and spent the afternoon in the backyard. There is something about sitting outside at a table in a garden eating corn roasted on the grill, with the house in easy sight, under a big open sky—it just gives a feeling of outdoorness that means summer to me.

Working the Wheel

To celebrate the onset of Summer I thought it would be fun to Work the Wheel, see what would happen if I took a systematic trip through my own wheel of life, truing it one spoke at a time through the Summer to see what I’ve got at the end of August. Funkily enough, this Summer is also host to a rare planetary alignment of Jupiter, Chiron, and Neptune, part of a little dance that Chiron the healer and neptune the mystic are engaged in over the next couple of years.

According to Dan Furst, 

When Chiron meets Jupiter, some will act their healing purpose on a truly heroic scale, others will party heartier than they ever have before, and they will serve us some of the most useful lessons in non-judgement that we’ve ever had.

Well, that sounds like a beautiful combination to me, especially the part where he talks about “the festival in the meadow…dancing barefoot on wild thyme under the Moon,” so I’ll be acting the part of the party hearty healer for the next twelve weeks, playfully adjusting the spokes of my wheel to get the truest, fastest, smoothest ride possible.

Starting with Food

And I’m going to start right at the start, at the place we all start when we come into this world, totally helpless, defenseless, and dependent on the love and good will of the Mother who brought us here. I’m going to start with food.

Now, I’m not going to go on a diet of mothers milk, yet I am going to spend the next 7 days interacting with food as an offering of pure nourishment from my Mother the Earth. As unprocessed as possible. As close to the Earth as possible. As local as possible. As nourishing as possible. 

In fact, I’m going to get this show on the road right now, going outside to harvest a mess of greens to toss with olive oil and balsamic, avocado, strawberries, and pumpkin seeds for my lunch. I may even soak some alfalfa seeds to get some sprouts going. It’ll be a week of beets and apple kale smoothies, of carrot and kale juice straight from my counter top juicer.

Then for the next 12 weeks I’ll recapitulate my life as a growing and individuating human by working the wheel as much as possible in the order we engage it as we grow from little dependent diaper dirtiers all the way to our interdependent figuring-out-how-to-make-a-new-world shiny selves. 

Precapitulation

This week food, next week intimacy, the two of which are inextricably linked to the young squirt who came into the world fresh from it’s mama’s womb, and which grow and flourish in increasing physical separation and psychic communication as we grow older. Somewhere in the middle of that I’m sure I’ll have some insights about comfort food, and I’m sure I’ll sure those along the way.

Now…it’s time to grab the clippers and harvest some baby kale, arugula, oak leaf lettuce, red romaine…

What are you eating this week to nourish your life energy and creative spirit? Any advance thoughts about comfort and food? Feel free to share your thoughts!

photo by pk2004

Balancing with the Moon

As we begin the sixth month of the year, the initiation of the drive to halfway, the moon is a beautifully balanced 1st quarter, aka half moon, and the thing that keeps recurring for me in this weekly focus on self healing is the difficulty of achieving balance. There is always something pulling pulling pulling me into one sort of extremity or another. The recurring theme seems to be one of busy-ness, of spending time, and attention, in the direction of business.

Of course there are forces of economy that play on this, Boston is not cheap, and when you are self-employed this can happen rather easily. As your own schedule-maker it’s easy enough to just put in a little more time, just think about it some more, just look at calendar/email/twitter one more time before closing the lid on the whole thing. And of course I can sit back and see the need for balance, the need for focusing on all areas of my life in a way that brings everything to its natural state of full and happy expression, and for some reason it’s always back to getting busy about business.

Slacker-Hayseed-Nature-Boy

Which is funny because my true nature is as a slacker-hayseed-nature-boy, doing just enough to get by. Hanging out, going to the park, riding my bike, playing guitar, writing a song, going to the health food store, cooking a meal, hiking in the woods…any number of ways to just enjoy life, participate in the natural simple process of being alive and interacting with the world. And all of that seems to have changed since I joined, or rather re-joined, the digital world, back in the year of the triple oughts, 2000.

So way back in the way back, 1984 or something Orwellian like that, I had one of those ridiculous little computers that didn’t do much more than play Pong, or spell Happy Birthday on a blinking screen, which just happened to be my television, which I bought so that this little POS would have a monitor of some sort. 

What was that thing? A Vic 20. Yeah. And that was a bust of course, one more case of the marketers convincing my little monkey brain that it needed what would eventually kill it–and yet computers were the future, the shiny rosy future–and I wanted to live in the future.

My next foray into Digi-land was something that actually did something, an Apple IIe. This was the educators computer, and it did the trick as a word processor. It  got me through grad school, 2 years of creative writing courses, about 20 short stories and a 200 page thesis.I used it to put all of the songs I had written into digital form and to print them all out legibly, etc. 

Out of the Matrix

Then I got divorced, gave her the computer, dove deeper into slacker On The Road musician mode, and spent 12 blissful years out of the digital loop. I missed Al Gore’s invention of the internet, email, Napster, and all that stuff. Twelve years of bliss until suddenly in the year 2000 I bought a house and decided it was time to get hep to the times and rejoin the computer world.

That didn’t last long

Well well well–that was a deep dive and it was almost instantaneous. I feel like I only came up for air just this minute. Whew. Wow. Yikes. Is there any aspect of my life that has not been shaped and reshaped by this laptop revolution? And is there any addictive substance I have encountered in my life that has had the overwhelmingly powerful effect upon me that this iMac, iBook, MacBook triad has had for the past 9 years? Ack! Double ack!

Well, I’m smart enough to know when I’m acting more like the White Rabbit than Alice, more “I’m late I’m late” than “Curiouser and Curiouser”. And seriously, and in all Levity, this seems as good a week as any to put some strong energy into spending as much time as possible in the Real World, even though it seems that every strategy in business is directly linked through the matrix of Computer-Land, leaving me with a choice of Work/Computer or Play/Real World.

The Work vs. The Business

At any rate, this is definitely one of the things I will have to figure out, as the actual work, the service, the powerful effect I can have on people, doesn’t require any sort of connection to the internet, or to a keyboard and screen, etc. I work with my hands, I work with my voice, I work with my heart and my mind.

And then on the back end, on the business and communications front, the announcing what I’m doing and finding the people who need what I have to offer…Well in that area it seems that this laptop has its little fingers in everything. So that I can’t really separate the two. And in point of fact, I hardly open that machine up for any other reason.

Taking the Red Pill?

So this is the week to do more with less? To just walk away from the “one more email” mentality, to let everything take a little bit longer, to make hay while the sun shines (that’s a metaphor flipped completely onto its head, eh?), to find a happier balance. Wish me luck!

And how about you? What pulls you off balance? How crazy busy are you? How much time to you spend glued to that “hopeless little screen”?

photo by Maciej Chojnacki

Thorns and Roses

Well then. Another week has come and gone and here I sit with the task if weighing it out, sorting through, deciding what to put in the stew pot. Friday Afternoon Update number what? Wow. Time keeps on ticking, ticking, ticking, into the future, as Steve Miller pointed out some 33 years ago. Double wow. It sure does!

So it’s been quite a week. We’ve had roses, we’ve had thorns, and we’ve had everything in between. On the thorny edge it’s been rough navigating between the potentially all-consuming deeds of business. 

Ha! Now there’s a sudden flash of real-i-zation, as opposed to organ-i-zation. Methinks I may have to do some deep looking at words some day soon. And for now it’s just a re-cognition of the busy-ness of my business, and the dead heart that is built into busy. 

Which is ironic being that the chief victim of that busy-ness that comes with my business has been my primary relationship, so even as I have made the point to be relatively on top of making sure that I have some sort of a life outside of making this slow transition to successful self-employment, and in particular making sure that I don’t fall into a Cat’s in the Cradle trap regarding my relationship with Rowan, there have been challenges in the primary relationship that I have let slide, things that I could have been doing to enliven that relationship that I have been blinded to, or rather acting awfully dead hearted to. 

Ack. Well this isn’t exactly dooce-ville, so I’ll leave it at that and say that noticing is really the biggest part of the game for me, that and acknowledging.

Okay. So I’m humbled. And contrite. And hopeful. Okay.

So in the roses department, aside from Noticing, and Acknowledging, I’m leading a few intrepid souls on a Spring Cleaning Safari, and Adventure into 7 days of exploration into cleaner and cleaner eating, 7 days of changing the habits of food. And along with the few that I am leading, another 4 or 5 souls, brave and independent, are making that journey on their own, using the guidelines which are available in the free tele-class and notes that you can access for a limited time in the sidebar of this blog.

That’s right. To everything there is a season, and it serves to reason that come June 21, Summer Solstice, longest day of the year up here in the northern hemisphere, there will be no more offering of a free Art of Spring Cleaning teleclass recording and notes, if not before. So grab it now. No reason to wait.

Stumped

Now. Here’s the real meat of the week. A place that I am stumped. Yep. You heard me right. Stumped. OMG. I know. WTF. Me? Stumped? What’s going on? Surely the end of days are upon us! 

And what is it that is bringing this armageddon/2012 upon us? Well. It’s been 11 days since Rowan got his bike. And it’s been almost a week since he rode it. Rain, true. It’s been wet. And the bigger thing is that 3 or 4 days into it he pedaled over an uneven elevation challenge and took a spill. And now he’s afraid to get back on it.

What is a sensitive Papa to do? Be even more sensitive and patient I guess. Yikes. Will this ever end? he thinks. Yes. Oh yeah. Soon enough. And in the meantime I will hopefully not turn into Alan Alda!

photo by peasap

So it’s Memorial day here in the states, one of those days when most people are firing up the grill, taking in a street fair, going to pay respects at a cemetery, or some combination of all of the above. And for me it’s a day to get up, scribble on 3 pages of unlined paper, take a shower and go to work. All of this because due to a series of unfortunate events I’ve been forced to take a job, which I’ve mentioned before and won’t go any further into today.

And still, since it is Memorial Day, a day of remembering those who have gone before us, it has got me to thinking about how I will be remembered, and how I would like to be remembered, and certainly “went to work on May 25th 2009” is not very far up the list of things I’d like to see chiseled into granite, assuming granite and chiseling will have anything to do with my eternal resting place. >Yaawwwnnn<

Rosebud

At any rate, I’ve just got to thinking “how the hell do I want to be remembered” and “what the hell would I put on my tombstone”, and when I’m laying on my deathbed what will my last thoughts be? What memories will I have coming to the fore? And like the most famous man in the world dying with thoughts of his childhood sled in mind, and that mysterious phrase “rosebud” rolling off of his lips, I’ve got to think that the words productivity, launch, and marketing are not going to be on the list. Neither are

• working on Sundays
• squeezing in a few quick emails before going to bed, or 
• making one last important call while…

Anyway. This seems like a good week to really get to the essence of what is important about my life, seen through the lens of an obituary (final blog post?), or an epitaph (the ultimate tweet?), or the final thoughts or final words…that sort of clarity arising from the onset of impending doom sort of thing.

One thing is for certain, it’s been a squeezy couple of weeks, which I mentioned a few days ago–way too busy and all the things that go with way too busy:

• Short temper with those I’m closest to
• Preoccupation with “things to do”
• Lack of real presence with the “beneficiaries” of my physical proximity

You never took us fishing!

Ah yes. The long suffering family. And the friends I don’t call, write visit, or have any sort of hanging out with situation since Universe knows when. And while I may exaggerate for dramatic effect, there is still a certain feeling that I’m going to Hell if I don’t change my ways…and not the hell of lyin’ and cheatin’ and stealin’ and killin’. No this would be the hell of sittin’ in front of a machine when the sun is shining outside, of being impatient and bossy and short tempered and all the things that I hated about my father when I was a young mite.

Funny thing there, in one of those “I can smile about it now but at the time it was terrible” ways. When I was 10 or 11, my father was supposed to take my brother and I fishing, and something came up and the adventure got cancelled, and then it never happened. Actually, nothing else that could remotely be imaginged to be an adventure ever happened. Ever again. And for years that was our mantra: “you never took us fishing!” yikes! What a tombstone that would make!

Epitaph

So somehow, in between all the things I gotta do, and in between taking the time to do the things that I wanna do and gotta do, and sure as hell oughtta do if I know what’s good for me, I’m gonna write something…a full-on obit or a phrase, an epitaph, that will give me something to shoot for, a rosebud in the making, something along the lines of 

Never too busy to take us fishing.

And in the midst of all that…start making it true!

How about you? How do you want to be remembered…and would you be remembered that way if you took your final taxi tomorrow?

photo by Tony the Misfit

Monkeys and Chickens

Oh boy. What a week! Packed to the gills despite the complete absence of monkeys and chickens! Although it started out close enough to monkey territory with the 3rd annual (so it seems!) Jungle Birthday Party for Rowan. This year it was a Roar party–Get Your Roar On as it were, so that Rowan had an excuse to spend 3 hours roarin’, I think. 

And if 30 kids in a 300 square foot space is the kind of thought that gives you the chills and sends you running for medication of one sort or another, imagine 30 kids playing drums, jumping through flaming hula hoops, Roaring at will, breaking piñatas, taking unsupervised elevator rides, pumped up on chocolate cake and juice, and basically being as Jungle-y as 2-3-4-5 year olds can get, and there you have a picture of Sunday afternoon over this way.

Strangely enough, it all seemed surreally serene to me, and it was only when I was describing the scene to a friend that I realized just how chaotic the whole thing was. Did I mention the pigeon? Oh. Well. Use your imagination, please! Enough to say that it came to roost and refused to leave anything more than deposits until it saw what the little beasts were doing to the Lion during piñata time, at which point it got wise and flew the coop.

And that was Sunday!

Monday was the zoo and the grandparents. One of the unique pleasures of having the grandparents over to visit is sleeping in what can only be described as completely uncomfortable conditions. Because that’s how it works. We give Nana and Happy (I’m not making this up!) our bed, and Randi and I end up sleeping on a futon that feels kind of like…well, let’s put it this way. When I was in high school I had a book called How to be a Grouch, by Oscar the Grouch, and one of the chapters offered Oscar’s sleeping suggestions:

Fill your bed with rocks, make a nice pile of trash on the floor and use it for a pillow.

I think Oscar was getting off easy there compared to what Randi and I get when the ‘rents come to visit. Good thing we love ‘em!

And that was the first 2 nights of the week! 

So after 2 nights of that I did the quick recovery and presented The Art of Spring Cleaning. Somehow there was a schism between my spirit and my physical condition–I was in excellent spirits and gave a smashing presentation! Can’t wait for the chance to lead a group of intrepid souls on a 7 day cleanse next week. Are you one of those brave souls who wants to journey into the land of fresh food, clean digestive tracts, and swine flu resistant immune systems?

Please note that the previous statement was neither evaluated nor approved by the FDA or the AMA or any other Governmental or Non-Governmental Organization, and contains only the approval of the infamous Non-Doc, who would like to add that this is your last chance this year to go on a Spring Cleaning Safari led by yours truly!

That’s right. Summer is fast upon us and the strategic timing of cleansing with the seasons is drawing to a close. So what are you waiting for? Click the clicker, listen to Tuesday’s call, read the sales page. You have nothing to lose but your intestinal garbage, your lethargy, your lingering head cold, your fear of exotic (and financially lucrative for pharmaceutical companies) pig related viruses!

Oh oh oh. The Twitter conundrum. 

Havi and Pistachio had their Twitter-ific Non-Strategies for Twitter call on Wednesday, and I missed it, ‘cos I was at music class with Rowan, and the recording only came live last night. Later than I should have been up. So I’ll have to wait til later today to see if they answered the question that is burning in my breast so dearly: 

If I’m not internet famous like Havi and Pistachio (who gets the number two hit for “pistachio” on google btw…beat out only by the wikipedia reference to the nut she named herself after!), then how the hell do I harness the Power and Good Will of all of my “followers” to spread the word far and wide when I have a super exciting project to tell the world and all of my “right people” about?

Do I really have to stretch out of my comfort zone and resort to the dreaded ask? Is that what it comes down to, people? Do I have to ask you to tweet this post? Do I have to ask you to tell your friends that the immortal Non-Doc is leading a Spring Cleanse Safari guaranteed to Increase your Vitality, make your Digestive Tract a Less Cozy Home for Parasites and other Creepy Crawlies, and maybe Knock Off a Pound or Two of Crap at the same time? Is this what it comes down to? Ay yi yi!

Can’t I just sit around in pajamas reading blog posts and eating chocolate all day? What’s up with this web 2.0 reaction anyway? Did I miss something in the fine print?

Okay. That’s that. Consider yourself asked. Consider me gone. ‘Til Monday. Love to you all.

Chas, the Illustrious Non-Doc

photo by karen.tkr

Caesura

There’s a term in poetry   the caesura. A space between words to indicate a short pause   a lull. Not quite a holiday. More like a day off. Or something like that. That’s what I feel like for today. After all the hustle and bustle of the past 2 weeks, preparing for Rowan’s 4th birthday, hosting his party and his grandparents, working my regular schedule plus preparing for my first teleclass, the Art of Spring Cleaning, which is now available as a free recording. All the time and energy getting the word out, also known as marketing, something that goes against my grain when I’m doing it for myself, and of course putting the actual call together…

I could feel a bit of scratchiness in the back of my throat yesterday, and I opened my calendar this morning with the fervent hope that I would see what I saw, what I would see right now if I were looking at my calendar instead of the blank canvas I am writing on, which end up being the same thing: space   unstructured time   caesura   a lull.

Another reason I do what I do

So yesterday after dropping Rowan off at school, on my way to teach my Tuesday morning yoga class, a little opening made its way into my consciousness. It was a Got To Do day. One of those super focused sorts of days that are a blessing and an inevitability to a procrastinator like me. I had things that I had to do–no way around it–and everything came into clear focus and I was on.

The demand to be on and in focus is such a delight! And as I rounded Jamaica Pond on my way to Brookline I suddenly realized that I had plenty of time to prepare for my call, after teaching my class. And the best use of my 75 minute window was not to arrive at the health club early, pull out my laptop, and pretend to be getting things done while bouncing from one window to another wondering what to do first, or what to take care of before getting on to the real business at hand.

No. The best thing to do was to park my car and walk around the pond! “The hell”, I thought, “why else do I have this crazy schedule of working 7 days a week, odd hours, and all over God’s green Earth? This little chunk of time here is exactly the freedom I am craving. And it’s right here!” So I parked. I got out of my car and walked the pond. 

Lull Time

It was a beautiful morning. Cool, bright, and quiet. Twice I saw a woman running who was so far listing over to her left that she looked like she should be in a wheel chair. I saw an older fellow in a beret who looked like he had spent a good chunk of time in France and spent his days now hanging out in the parks and the cafes, writing poetry with the requisite caesurae. And I walked past a trans-gendered woman sitting on a park bench sketching the pond and 3 baby goslings with their Canada parents. I side-stepped horse poop left by the mounted police.

It was refreshing   it was vital   a lull   a caesura   a space in between. It was exactly what I needed. A perfect reminder of why I do what I do, to have the freedom to take that stroll. And that 45 minutes did more to move me forward and further my business, by giving me a vision and a reason to put up with the horse shit of crazy schedules and scraping by and talking about myself…a perfect complement to seeing Rowan pedaling up the sidewalk on his bike, and a premonition of the lull I have earned for myself today!

What have you done recently to earn a celebration, a rest, a moment of delicious reverie? And how did you celebrate?

Pax!

Chas

photo by Sam Blackman

There’s a shiny new bike in the kitchen. There’s an easel in the corner of the play space. Rowan is sleeping and when he wakes up he’ll discover these 4th birthday presents. One of them will take him far, miles and miles of adventures on the sidewalks and in the parks. One of them will take him on other adventures–of imagination, of color, shape, and form.

Over the years he will express his freedom and creativity in countless ways, and he will probably always remember the little red bike and the big red easel with the Jack Kerouac roll of paper and the blackboard.

A Short Diversion to get us On Track

When I was in 10th grade I remember expressing the opinion that everyone should be an artist of some sort: drawing, painting, playing music, writing poetry or stories; that something or other was bubbling up inside everyone and This World was eager for all of us to be offering our gifts for everyone else to experience.

Most of my friends thought that this was very impractical. “Who would buy the art?”, they asked. If everyone is an artist then who will buy the art they make?

How will an Artist make a Living?

Of course, that question has been with us forever, usually asked by the parents of artists around the time their children are  deciding what to do after high school, when they are choosing colleges and majors. It was a bit of a shock to me at the time, coming from my classmates. “What the hell”, I thought, “who’s talking about money and making a living? I’m talking about being human”.(That particular dichotomy would come to plague me as the years went by…and that is a story for another day.)

A few years later I saw the film My Dinner with Andre, which opens with a lengthy monologue by Wally Shawn, the playwright and actor most famous perhaps as the incredulous Corsican in The Princess Bride–”Inconceivable!” At one point in the monologue Wally says something like:

When I was ten years old, all I thought about was art and music. Now I’m 36, and all I think about is money.

And that is the crux of something. Life is a mystery. And each of us is yearning to express something of that mystery. Not to explain it or make sense of it, rather just to revel in its beauty and wonder, to ride the rapids of expression and fascination, to fulfill the true role of the artist and astonish: a few perhaps, or many.

And then there is the matter of making a living, that euphemism for making some money to support us in living. And tying the two together.

And that is why I do what I do

To scrape together a living that includes in its making the necessary space for creative expression. To engage in work that helps others to live the healthy balanced life needed to have the time, energy, and desire for creative expression. And to offer my son the freedom and opportunity to wake up every morning with love, energy, and delight, with an open road and an empty canvass, the opportunity and desire to make a work of art, to offer up his gifts, to shine like the star that he is, the star that we all are!

What’s your thing, and what’s the struggle you face in doing it? And don’t forget the Free Art of Spring Cleaning Teleclass! To be recorded for your listening pleasure. Sign up now!

photo by paul giunta