so long (a john brehm poem)

To break this day
free from all
the others

to stand at the
morning end
of it and

push off from
the shore
sail beyond

the reach of all
my failures
calling after me

“You can’t just
leave us here”
shaking their fists

crowding into
the water
clamoring “We

made you who
you are” to
feel their voices

growing small
underneath
the surf

the wide un-
knowable ocean
all before me.

- “So Far” by John Brehm
Poetry Magazine Vol 178, June 2001

it’s all guinea pig, all the time

During a recent conversation about event design with my friend, Kathia, one topic that came up was the notion of balancing “pushing the envelope” with the notion of keeping a familiarity and meeting expectations among the participants, at least until a field of trust and engagement is established. While we didn’t couch it in these exact terms, this was the gist.

The more I think about it, the more I think designing to the expectations and familiarity of the participants lacks power and handicaps, rather than helps, a facilitator’s ability to unleash group genius, breakthrough thinking, and shifts of mind…

go to great depths; your idea awaits you there

“Ideas are like fish.

If you want to catch a little fish, you can stay in shallow water. But if you want to catch a the big fish, you’ve got to go deeper.

Down deep, the fish are more powerful and more pure. They’re huge and abstract. and they’re very beautiful.

I look for a certain kind of fish that is important to me, one that can translate to cinema. But there are all kinds of fish swimming down there. There are fish for business, fish for sports. There are fish for everything.

Everything, anything that is a thing, comes from the deepest level. Modern physics calls that level the Unified Field. The more your consciousness—your awareness—is expanded, the deeper you  go toward this source, and the bigger the fish you can catch.”
- David Lynch, from his introduction to Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creatity

waters of life

My friend Kelvy posted a great quote about dealing with pain and suffering. The gist of the quote is that suffering is like a handful of salt; when you put that salt in a glass of water, the water taste bitter, but put that same salt into a lake and the water still taste refreshing. Thus, when suffering, expand your context, your awareness and sense of being, to that of a lake, rather than a glass.

After reading the quote, I got to thinking about emotions of joy and happiness – the honey of life, if you will. To better taste this honey, might we want to revert to the glass, shrinking our awareness to the singular moment at hand, and thus be able to savor the sweetness, fleeting though it may be.

And when should we become a stream? There are times when it might be best to be narrow and shallow enough notice the nuances of salt, honey and all the other flavors life offers, yet with enough current that these feelings flow through us and then pass on, making space for what’s to come.