The Storyteller's Tapestry

It's not often that you can see creativity unfolding and blossoming right before your eyes.  It is even rarer to share this experience with an appreciative audience and to be linked to the creator by blood and history, to have known her since you welcomed her with great excitement into your seven-year old world as your youngest sister.

This was the amazing experience I had on a warm August Saturday in Indianapolis in a small IndyFringe theater, when for the first time I saw my sister Nell perform her new improvisational Story Theater show, "And I Am Not Making This Up."

Each of Nell's shows is different:  true improvisation.  After a few words with the audience, she begins with some movement, seeming to reach out into the cosmos and gather multicolored threads of memory and insight and humor, and then right before our eyes she weaves them into a tapestry that is greater than its parts. She speaks, gestures and flows, telling vivid stories based on her own experiences and often from the childhood that we shared and did not share. (If you have siblings you may know that one child's family experience can vastly differ from another's.)  

She tells of southern Indiana summers, of camp at McCormick's Creek, of her older brother Paul now lost to us, who teased and terrorized her unmercifully as he suffered and battled his own demons, and his final redemption as she finds and holds close a loving memory of him from better days.  She shares this memory:  when Paul died, the two of us went to the funeral home to say goodbye.  With mixed feelings, she touched his cheek.  So cold...as cold as snow, evoking a memory of when she was perhaps five and was on big brother Paul's back on a sled speeding down the steep Dewey Drive hill in Ellettsville...icy snow flying in their faces, a fast, scary ride, the laughing tumble off the sled at the bottom of the hill.  

She plucks these memories from the air, and weaves them together with another story about her first summer camp, the night hikes in the dark Indiana woods as she clings to her counselor and clutches her gigantic flashlight.  Singing camp songs by the creek in the darkness, she imagines a scary maniac, perhaps battling his own demons as he lurks up above in the limestone cliffs and peers down on the tiny campers below.  The singing closes with a hymn Nell humorously hums and mumbles, explaining that she never really went to church and so doesn't know the words. In my separate childhood I did go to church, so I know the hymn:  "Praise God from whom all blessings flow.  Praise him all creatures here below....".  And the maniac up in the cliffs is also redeemed it seems, as he rumbles a rusty A-m-e-n at the end of the song.

Emergence of light from darkness seemed to be a theme in the show I saw:  fear in the darkness for the tiny campers on the night hike clinging to their flashlights but then turning them off as they sit by the creek singing--the imagined fears the darkness generates.  I expected her to tell the tale of the candles set in little boats to float in the darkness down the creek, but she didn't this time.  Fortunately I had already heard that memory from another show she did in a woods years ago, and candles were really floated on the water for that one. 

Later she tells of the fire balloons set off from the deck behind our house into the darkness, and of the black Labrador madly barking his alarm at a flashlight sent up high into the night sky on a kite string by our equally creative and complicated father.

The most extraordinary part of the performance is to see my sister pluck those images from thin air and thread them together with the themes:   darkness and light, loss and redemption. I know she prepares beforehand to get her head into the place it needs to be, to be ready to capture the images on demand on stage, weaving in whatever the audience and ambience might hand her from cell phones ringing to plaintive train whistles in the distance.  It is nothing less than a miracle of creation and in August she did it six times over the course of a week or so. 

From the darkness of the stage Nell shone her light on images and memories I share with her in patchwork patterns, each of us seeing them through different lenses.  Darkness, light, redemption, love, forgiveness.  Classic themes, beautifully told.  It was a privilege to see.

Near Enchanted Mesa...

Near Enchanted Mesa the breeze breathes
through the pine trees.

Many spend forty days, forty nights
or more
in the wilderness 
seeking the centered peace I feel 
right here, right now.

"I'll Have What She's Having..."

We have lost the sophisticated and enlightened humor of the great Nora Ephron at the young age of 71.  She wrote the classic "When Harry Met Sally."   Who is not familiar with Meg Ryan's fake orgasm scene and the middle-aged woman at the next table (played by Rob Reiner’s mom) telling the waiter "I'll have what she’s having."  She also wrote and directed "Sleepless in Seattle" and "You've Got Mail" among others.  Her last film was “Julie and Julia.”  She was great friends with Meryl Streep, who said at her memorial service “she was a breathtaking original.”  

Nora Ephron’s writing is a sure-fire recipe for laughter, in my book.  She was devoted to Manhattan, cooking and her family including the wonderful husband she finally found after a disastrous marriage to a philandering Carl Bernstein. She was also a strong feminist.  I knew very little about her until now, after she’s gone.  The more I read the more I admire her humor, her courage and her love of both reading and writing.

Newsweek and the New York Times both had good articles about her.  She came from a family of writers, both parents eventually ended up alcoholics.  Her mother famously told her, "Everything is copy." She turned many of her experiences from a bad marriage to the disappointments of aging into highly amusing scenes in her books and movies.  (I loved her hilarious book of essays from 2006 called "I Feel Bad About My Neck.") 

A life well-lived, ending too soon with a terminal illness.  Here are a few quotes attributed to her that I found interesting.

"I try to write parts for women that are as complicated and interesting as women really are."

"Reading is one of the main things I do.  Reading is everything.  Reading makes me feel I've accomplished something, become a better person. Reading makes me smarter."

Some quotes from a 1996 commencement address to the young women at Wellesley:

"Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim."

"One of the things people always say to you if you get upset is don't take it personally.  Understand:  every attack on Hillary Clinton for not knowing her place is an attack on you.  Underneath all attacks are the words:  get back, get back, get back to where you once belonged.  When Elizabeth Dole pretends that she isn't serious about her career, that is an attack on you.  Any move to limit abortion rights is an attack on you--whether or not you believe in abortion.  The fact that Clarence Thomas is sitting on the Supreme Court today is an attack on you."

How refreshing--the idea that it might actually be appropriate to take it personally, to get angry and fight back. 

Farewell to Nora, an inspiration to women and particularly to those who know how to write and to laugh out loud.

Blogs and Conversation

The Observation Deck card says: "Ask a Question." Here's one: Why do I write this blog?

One reason is to record my voice. I've wished many times that I had more samples of the voices from my past--those I've loved and lost. Another reason is that I want to capture certain ideas I find valuable and remember them for future reference. Sometimes I look up an old blog I've written to remind myself of things I've figured out before, like Gretel following the trail of breadcrumbs through the dark forest.

A third reason is that I've always enjoyed writing. Why? Words fascinate me, and putting them down in just the right way to truly express an idea gives me satisfaction and joy. Just as others might express themselves with a painting or a song or a scientific experiment or a challenging rock climb, I express myself best with words.

A related question running through my mind quite often is: Why is it so damn hard these days to find good conversation? Sherry Turkle published a NYT article a few weeks ago called "The Flight from Conversation" that bemoans our tendency to focus on short electronic communications rather than the admittedly more messy, stop-and-start of genuine, real-time connection that can actually be had by looking someone in the eyes for an extended period of time, listening carefully and patiently to what is said, and then responding in turn. We do this, God help us, even when a person is sitting right there (I do it too). A recent Atlantic article asks: "Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?". Perhaps so.

In the olden days (my children), there were salons where intellectuals gathered for fascinating discussion. I fantasize about starting a monthly conversational potluck, where everybody brings a dish for dinner and a topic written on a slip of paper. Over dinner we would draw one topic at a time for discussion.

What could possibly go wrong? A political or religious topic might throw the group into heated argument--what joy! Or...nobody would know how to get started because we've all forgotten how to actually converse. People would clam up, or retreat to the bathroom to check their iPhones. But surely intelligent, verbally adept people could get beyond these obstacles. The more I think about it the more I love the idea, but I also fear rejection--what if I try it but nobody wants to come? They'd rather stay at home "liking" on Facebook and tweeting into the ether, or simply enjoying peace and quiet. As Sartre pointed out, "Hell is other people." Can conversational skills actually atrophy? Real conversation still happens for captive audiences on airplanes who are wirelessly deprived, so I see a glimmer of hope. Although I admit I am the first one to bury my nose in the book on the airplane, sending the clear signal that I Don't Want to Talk...perhaps I should revisit that.

Ribe Tuchus (Sit Still)

According to the Observation Deck, the literal Yiddish translation of ribe tuchus is "rub your bottom on the chair."

Flannery O'Connor had a rule that she would sit at her writing desk for three hours each day. If she had nothing to write she would stare at the wall, but she often did have something interesting to say as we know. I also find that by sitting still with my notebook I often surprise myself by having something to say after all--sometimes I get a jump start by observing my immediate surroundings and describing them. 

Right now I see a slender young woman sitting immediately on the other side of the coffee shop window on the patio, feet up on one of the black wrought iron chairs, typing on her laptop. It's hard to imagine how she can see anything on the computer screen in the bright sunlight, but she continues to continue. She's dressed in a green-toned camouflage tank top, extremely short faded denim cutoffs, a two-inch wide belt beaded in orange and turquoise, many silver bracelets on both wrists with one pulled up past her elbow, and large silver hoop earrings--but she wears no rings at all. Her long, dark hair is piled high on her head with a few strands artfully coiling down to frame her face. She wears woven ankle-high sandals. She chews gum furiously as she finally decides to move herself to the shady half of the table where there is some hope she might be able to view the computer screen and opens two books on her lap, pen in hand, a page of notes peaking out from underneath the laptop and flapping gently in the breeze. She takes a brief call on her cell phone and then turns back to her work.

I'm guessing she's a CU student and I once again feel that surge of envy I often have for those whose entire focus in life is learning. I didn't appreciate it as much as I could have in my youth. Of course if asked, this young woman might assure me that her life is far more complicated than simply learning, and a far cry from the bliss I imagine. In any case, I remind myself that I also continue to learn at my work, through my experiences with people and technology and in brief furious spates of research, for example each time I hear yet another technical acronym that is new to me. One of the best things in life is that we continue to learn until the very end; all that's required is that we remain open and curious.

Squint

The card from the Observation Deck says:  Squint

The idea is that squinting at a familiar scene lets you see it in new and less familiar ways by observing lighting, angles and nuances not previously perceived.

For me, it becomes a blurred and shimmering glimpse of a terrifying future in which one of my most precious senses, my sight, might be diminished.  I'm filled with intense gratitude right now that I still have my vision.

Both my mother and her mother had macular degeneration - an eye disease that, spot by spot, robs you of your central vision leaving you with some peripheral sight if you're lucky.  For years my mother brought Granny talking books from the library so she could continue enjoying one of her greatest pleasures, reading.  Famous actress Dame Judith Dench who has the disease and now has to have new scripts read to her, has said that the thing she misses most is being able to see the face of her dinner partner at a restaurant.

Recently my optometrist gave me a sheet of paper with a grid and two angry red dots at the edges to be used for self testing. She sees the first signs of the disease in my eyes.    The idea chills me to the bone; of course, fear of what the future might bring is one of the things I am constantly trying to resist.

There are preventative measures:  diligently wearing sunglasses in the Colorado sun, taking supplements like lutein, regular check ups.  How could I face not being able to see the forest in Spring, a beautiful sunset, a future grandchild's face, or words on a page?  If all prevention fails me, will I in fact perceive the world in new ways, hearing the birdsong in the forest at dusk more distinctly and the beloved voice of the grandchild more clearly?  Helen Keller, who surely knew, said, "When one door of happiness closes, another opens."

Need a new perspective?  Just squint.

Create a Sacred Space

Since I've had quite a dry spell in my writing, I decided to pull out The Observation Deck--a deck of cards with creative writing ideas to give myself a jumpstart.  The point is to make your self write something about the idea on the card no matter what; there's a little booklet with a few paragraphs about each card to help get the juices flowing.

The first card I pulled read:  "Create a Sacred Space"

I was reminded of my small efforts over the last several months to create a more welcoming spiritual place for myself in my office at work. It's a small corner office many would envy:  huge windows facing west the a clear view of the Front Range. In one corner of my desk I've placed a small cascading fountain and I've arranged my five little ivory laughing buddhas around the fountain and up its steps.  Nearby stands a small white statue of a guardian angel given to me by a friend during some very dark days a couple of years ago.

Next to the fountain is a meditation chime--a metal cylinder cradled on a wooden base with a small wooden mallet which can be used to strike the chime, issuing an extremely clear, bell-like tone that fades ever so slowly back into silence again.  The chime helps me remember to breath and be present.

Also on the desk is a daily Zen calendar with a new quotation for each day; I've saved some of my favorite quotes which are arranged somewhat haphazardly on the desk for repeated reference, including:

"Always stay in your own movie." - Ken Kesey

"Only the madman is absolutely sure." - Robert Anton Wilson

"My father considered a walk among the mountains the equivalent of church-going." - Aldous Huxley

"Awareness is therapy per se." - Fritz Perl

A weekly calendar is on another corner of the desk with beautiful photographs of nature and wild animals;  I look forward to turning the page each Monday morning.  A monthly wall calendar has nature photographs and quotes by that master of the here and now, Eckhart Tolle.  A carved wooden bowl sits nearby which I keep filled with tangerines and apples.  

On the wall opposite the windows is a framed panoramic photo of Boulder's Flatirons glowing pink and orange at dawn.

I spend a lot of time at work and I'm glad I've succeeded in creating a welcoming and spiritual space there.

My bedroom at home is a restful place, with a huge picture over the bed of the ocean viewed through a window with thin white curtains stirring gently in the sea breeze.  Deep blue glass bottles filter the light from the window, pictures of my family grace the walls, a big white goosedown comforter covers the bed.  On the wall by the door is a photograph given to me by my true love of a tree-lined Parisian walkway, the sun filtering down through the leaf canopy.  Perched on one corner of the picture frame is a yellow and purple feathered Mardi Gras mask.

So I think I know how to create sacred spaces for myself.  But when it comes to my writing, I lean toward extreme portability. I like to load my backpack for long walks, carrying with me everything I'll need to write anywhere.  In this case I carry my sacred space inside my head by staying aware and noticing the vastness of the world around me.

Do you have a sacred space?

Gamify This!

Last weekend I succumbed to temptation, and with the kids watching on in amusement I downloaded a game onto my iPad that I had been curious about for a long time—a game called “Angry Birds".

The premise of the game is that the green pigs have stolen the birds’ eggs and the birds are now attacking the pigs, who lurk in various precarious and increasingly elaborate structures made of stone, wood, boulders and other materials. The gamer’s challenge is to launch each angry bird from a sling shot and hit the pigs and their structures at just the right angles to destroy them. It is very much a strategic problem of physics to determine angles and accurately predict cause and effect—since at each of the many levels you are given only a certain number of angry birds with various capabilities.

The game boasts many sound effects—bird chirps and pig mutterings along with a high-pitched cry of “Wheeee!” from each bird as it is launched by the slingshot, sad little “oofs” and “ouches” when they fall to the side after missing a pig, and of course the smug chorus of pug grunts that occurs each time you fail in a try to get all the pigs, along with the triumphant “Woo hooooo!” from the birds when you succeed.

There are many levels and tasks to achieve, all clearly laid out and tracked so you can see your progress or lack thereof as you cycle through various strategies for getting the most pigs with the fewest birds. Clear and straightforward—unlike the messy ambiguities of life you are escaping when you play the game.

“Be sure to turn off the sound when you’re out in public like on a bus—or everybody will jump you,” advised my son as I sank further into addiction with my new toy. I found myself driven to achieve the next level and to think about the problem at each level and come back to it later to try new strategies. I stayed up past my bedtime working to get just one more level. I did research on the Internet to learn about best practices. I strove to beat my personal best. I did many of the things with Angry Birds that companies want their employees to do.

After a recent acquisition I’m now part of a very large company that, among other things, develops software applications used by companies to run their businesses. And in this company, one of whose goals is to produce “beautiful software,” the concept of gamification” comes up fairly frequently. The idea is that if the same compelling qualities that games possess could be injected into business processes and applications used by employees, those employees would become more engaged, involved, and driven to achieve the desired results, especially if they could understand exactly what they had to do and could always see their standing and progress from both a personal perspective and in comparison to others.

This is an idea I can buy—I saw it in action recently when I signed up for an exercise program at work. Each employee who signed up pledged to do 2100 minutes of exercise in 7 weeks, and record their minutes on an ongoing basis on-line. And each employee could see their personal progress, the cumulative progress for their site, and how they ranked overall in number of exercise minutes—updated every quarter hour.

Many quiet little competitions sprang up over the 7 weeks between people and sites, and I have no doubt more than a few people pushed harder and got more exercise because of this very public feedback, myself included. It was gamification in action, not only at an individual level but at a group level with the site rankings. If we could figure out how to do this for software development it would be very interesting. The agile approach, dividing the group into small scrums and measuring the productivity of each scrum over short periods of time with very publicly demoed results, can be tricky, since the challenges each scrum faces may be very different, and comparisons may negatively impact cross-scrum cooperation. Complex and creative work is not easily measured. And how do you inspire greater individual achievement without discouraging collaboration and teamwork?

Is all of life a game after all? And how do you avoid ending up with a flock of angry birds slinging themselves at throngs of obnoxiously snorting pigs? Gamify that.

Cargo Cults

I recently discovered the concept of "cargo cults" while reading about potential pitfalls in science and software development. The term surfaced after World War II. The South Pacific island natives had welcomed the valuable and more advanced cargo brought by the planes during the war. And when the war ended, the planes and cargo stopped coming to the islands. Since the locals never understood why the cargo was coming in the first place, the only thing to do from their perspective was to duplicate the previous conditions--so they built crude runways, wooden planes, bamboo radios and headphones, all in hopes of luring the planes back, and with them the cargo. Some of these ever-optimistic cargo cults persist to this day in the South Pacific.

Now that I've heard the term, I've started to see signs of cargo cults everywhere. At work, I see mixed results from efforts to put the structure of agile development in place (short iterations, Scrums, standup meetings) in some cases without a full understanding of the underlying principles of the Agile Manifesto (e.g., individuals and interactions over processes and tools, working software over comprehensive documentation, responding to change over following a plan, trusting a motivated team to get the job done). I see senior managers without a true belief in the end results possible with agile (greater opportunity to quickly respond to changing customer requirements, better quality much earlier in the process), conducting the scrum meetings with agendas they've devised but being unwilling to listen to and trust their teams enough to let them surface and resolve impediments, grow and improve together each day.

Some organizations go through the motions; they “do agile” without “being agile" and then are perplexed not see the hoped-for results. Without the willingness to trust the teams, good results can be hampered by fear-driven behavior.

If the previous jargon-filled example sounds like mumbo jumbo to you then consider my kitten, Zuni. Each morning (barring an egregious lapse by her faithful guardian), Zuni's food bowl is refilled with just enough cat food to keep her from becoming a fat little indoor cat. Who knows why it happens from Zuni's perspective, this reappearance of food, but it does happen with great regularity. On the rare morning when the bowl remains empty longer than expected, Zuni searches the house for one of her toy mice, carries it to the food bowl and sets it down. If there is no result soon, she searches the house again for a second toy mouse, sometimes placing this one inside the bowl for added emphasis. The weird thing is that this ritual does work from her perspective--eventually food appears in the bowl, and Zuni's cargo cult continues. Of course, this is my own less than scientific theory about Zuni's behavior and I have to admit therefore that the cargo cult in question may be my own.

I propose that a good number of religious activities in certain contexts are also examples of cargo cults. What cargo cults have you seen in your journeys?

Do You Want Assertiveness with That?

There are all the other promises to myself, of course--like exercising, losing weight, and connecting more with other people. But my main resolution for 2012 is to be more direct. I am astounded at how often I phrase a desire or intention I have as a question. Instead of making my desires clear, I throw out a query. What often happens next is that the perfectly reasonable recipient responds with what he or she wants and that becomes the plan.

This is not because the other person is an overbearing asshole.

It's because I almost always default to what other people want. So I end up getting less of what I want, and quite unnecessarily. The reasons for this are rooted in the distant past and likely have to do with my childhood; therapy fodder for sure. Meanwhile, a yellow sticky is emblazoned on my computer at work that says, “Be Direct.” I am mildly encouraged that it does not say “Shouldn’t you be more direct? ” or “What do you think of the idea of my being more direct?” Or a crafter, sneakier version: “I’ve been thinking about whether I phrase too many of my ideas as questions lately—what do you think?”