davidrobinsoncreative

Follow Barney

Posted on August 15, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

876. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

It’s morning and I am sitting in the sun. I have coffee. There is a gentle breeze blowing off the water and rustling the leaves in the trees above me. The shadows are dancing. In the distance I hear a train, a mower, and some wind chimes. The birds are lively and playful. There is a pond to my left with a gentle fountain gurgling and adding to this morning’s symphony.

A few weeks ago I followed Barney up the hillside through the vineyard. Barney is jolly like Santa with roots, like Santa’s, that reach back to Odin. He is filled with laughter. On our way up the hill he plucked flowers, showed me roots, talked about soil and nutrients and cycles and seasons and energy and motion and force. He taught me about polarity and balance. Midway up the hill he stopped and said, “This is what people used to worship. It is life, concrete and tangible. Now we have this abstraction called spirituality.” The penny dropped for me. It’s sacred – all of it. That is no longer an ideal. It is tangible like soil and seeds.

Once in class, after leading a meditation, Alan and I talked with the class about the purpose of meditation. The purpose is not to take you away from reality but to bring you in to presence. Using meditation as an escape, to move away from the moment, is to protect yourself from presence.

Presence is word like paradigm: it is so overused, misused and abstracted that it has come to mean nothing. Be present. Be Quiet. Be. What does it mean to be present in an urban (urbane) world with clocks in every device, lists, lists, someplace else to be and something else to buy? How can presence be anything other than an abstraction when separate from the root? How can we understand presence when we do not experience it or ourselves as growing, changing, energy exchanging, vital, inhaling and exhaling, and full of life? It’s not an abstraction if you take your shoes off and stand in the dirt, feel the breezes, and listen.

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Invite The New

Posted on August 14, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

875. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

This morning I caught my first whiff of fall in the air. It was subtle yet distinct. There was a chill in the breeze, the scent of falling leaves, harvest and melancholy. People are running to the beaches or into the parks “for the last time” this season. What seemed boundless just a few weeks ago is now limited. I’m counting the number of times I hear, “I only have a few more days!” It is the limit that makes life precious.

For me the fall is the time of renewal. It is a time of new beginnings just as a new school year represents a new beginning. For the past week or so I’ve been meditating on what I want to invite into this new beginning. What energy am I bringing into the world and what energy do I wish to allow into my life? Last year at this time I was pulling things apart, melting down the known, stepping off the edge; I was inviting in chaos. I was opening the door to fire and hot transformation, to forge and anvil.

I am quieter now. I have no room for crazy-makers or backward looking. I have no room for my self-inflicted crazy-making. Once in a workshop a woman asked, “Why did it happen?” I responded, “The question ‘Why?’ doesn’t matter. It happened. What will you do going forward?” Sometimes to ask “Why?” keeps alive the pain-loop – it’s a great strategy for not taking the next step. The question “Why?” can be a swamp. Who knows why?

I have lived too many years of my life with my eyes in the rearview mirror asking “why?” The last year of my life makes no sense and I have spent an inordinate amount of time either looking for sense or trying to make sense of it. I can explain it fifteen different ways and many of the explanations are contradictory. None are true. All are true. In the end it will have the sense that I give it. It will have the energy that I assign to it. It will carry the sense that I invite into my life. Sense making is energy creation. It is a lens. So, I ask myself, “What is the energy that I want to bring into the world and what is the energy that I want to invite into my world?” I’ve had enough of fire. Now it is the time for breathing. Now is the time for inviting new breath and clean air.

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Let Go Of Zero

Posted on August 13, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

874. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Last week while I was in Colorado at my father’s 80th birthday celebration, knowing I would not have enough time to write, I reposted pieces from over a year ago. I selected them at random so it was an accident that many of the posts were about zero. Since rereading those reposts I’ve decided that I no longer believe in zero. Don’t get me wrong. I see the value of zero as a mathematical construct. I remember hearing in my middle school math class that the invention of zero revolutionized reckoning.

It was an invention, a representation of nothing. It was a starting point with no point. I don’t believe in zero because I’m hard pressed to imagine anything in this vast universe that is empty. This vast universe is alive. It’s energy. It’s vibration. There is nothing that is truly nothing. There is no such thing as less than one. It’s all one.

I saw a tweet from Kevin Honeycutt (I am a huge fan of Kevin. He is my brother from another mother) a day or so ago imploring teachers to see their students on day one of the new school year as the writers and artists and astronauts that they really are. Every single child is magic. Every single teacher is magic. It is our investment in zero that lets us see the amazing children and dedicated teachers as less than one (to think that they are in school to pass tests is to see them as less than one). They are the one. Each and every one of them is the one. There is no zero. There is no less than one…. So, join Kevin in seeing the one, the gifts as they walk through the door and return this fall to this thing we call school.

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Use All Of Your Colors

Posted on August 12, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

873. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

I’m tired today and getting ready for travel. Actually, the last time I truly got ready for travel was in December when I left my last apartment. To travel one requires a stable place to leave. I’ve been traveling all winter so in truth I’m not getting ready for travel I’m preparing to shift locations. I am my only constant and isn’t that a great lesson to learn!

Over these months I’ve unloaded most of my possessions. I have my paintings and my books. I have a few treasures from friends. I’ve eliminated most of my clothes. I am light in the world and it feels good. For me, times of great change have always come with layers of stuff (literal and metaphoric) dropping off. It has happened so many times now that I recognize it like an old threshold guardian. “Ah,” I say, “time again to let go.”

In these times I am always reminded of what’s important and most real. I spent the day with friends. I talked to people I love. There is nothing better. I’ve been thinking about the last chapter of the book Siddhartha: an old man in a shack by a river. Metaphors upon metaphors upon metaphors – nothing is permanent. What matters is this moment and this is no longer and abstraction to me. It is not a cliché. Walk out of your door for a year and after a few months you will know what it is the live in the moment and recognize that all you have is a moment. Even if life looks like the same thing day after day it is not but it takes old eyes to see the impermanence in everything.

I have had the gorgeous opportunity this past year to have no patterns. Life today bears no resemblance to life yesterday or tomorrow or last year or next week. I work. I draw cartoons. I listen. I consider where to stay tonight. I eat when I am hungry. There is no day-to-day rhythm to even the most basic of my needs. I’ve never been happier. I’ve never felt so much terror, laughter, grief, joy…, all the colors of life are on my palette and I have a big brush and nothing but canvas in front of me.

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Become Life

Posted on August 11, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

872. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

I learned a lesson again in tai chi today: stop trying to force action or push forms into being. Instead, drop into center and listen. It is in the deep listening that the path will become clear. It is in the deep listening that the clarity of action, the simplicity of impulse will be apparent.

In class we are practicing push hands, a partner exercise in which the object is to knock your partner off center. It is deceptive because the way to successfully knock your partner off center is to NOT push. It is to listen. It is to feel when they are moving off center and simply help them go in the direction that they are already moving. As Saul says, they give you their center so you merely take it. The moment you push, the moment you try to force an outcome, is the moment you will offer your center (abandon your center) and be helped off balance.

At only 2 years into my practice, I am a novice. The more experienced students say that if I continue I will in 7 – 10 years have developed a sufficient capacity to listen. I delight in this practice that acknowledges that there is no end. There is no path to expertise. There is a greater and greater capacity to move the chi and root the energy. I believe my life is changing because of this practice and the reorientation it requires.

In the past several months I have repeatedly learned that life opens for me when I stop trying to force outcomes. Life flows when I stop pushing and pulling and fretting and worrying. When I listen, feel and respond to what’s there, when I release all impulse to control, I participate. I become a “part of…” instead of a resistor or governor. Instead of blocking the movement I enter the relationship. Instead of forcing life I become life force.

There is a vast difference between the consciousness of a controller and the consciousness of a participant. A controller withholds and resists. A controller judges him or her self and, therefore, the world (good enough and not good enough are judgments and epicenters of control). A controller separates. A participant joins. A participant becomes. Life is always found in the direction participation.

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Pass It On

Posted on August 10, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

871. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

The locus of my family has shifted from my generation to my nieces and nephews. They are now having children of their own and I delight in watching them assume the role of parents. They are the generation of becoming and are hungry to learn the family narrative. My brothers, sister and I are the story-bridge generation. We are now grandparents and grand uncles. We are the channel between the elders, my parents, and the youth.

As the channel I am more acutely aware that not all stories are created equal. There are the day-to-day stories. These pass through. Then there are stories that belong in the cabinet of curiosity. These are life event stories like the day my sister brought her future husband home to meet the family. We tortured poor J.T. on that first meeting and he laughs heartily at the retelling. The story is legend in my clan. The subject for debate is whether or not my dad carried a shotgun on that first meeting (he doesn’t own a gun and never has but he’s also remarkably resourceful when an opportunity for mischief presents itself)? I know the answer but won’t tell (I was there and wore a Little-Bo-Peep costume). I like the debate and the gales of laughter that it brings my sister’s children.

And then there are the campfire stories, the narratives that define us. These are foundational identity stories. Every family has them though in our modern era it is common for a family to not recognize them. These are the root stories and from these stories the family vine grows. The answers to the three great questions (who am I, where do I belong, what is mine to do) are blossoms of these tales. No one truly knows who he or she is separate from his or her foundation narrative. Vines cannot grow without a root. People cannot grow without a meaningful connection to their root story.

Stories form layers of personal and family identity. Stories serve as both root and nutrient. The next time my clan gathers in such numbers I will be the elder, my nieces and nephews will be the channel to their children who will have become parents. And the cycle continues. We recreate ourselves in the telling. We nurture the soil in the sharing. We make visible the web of our connection. Stories are so much more than recounting the past. Stories are how we re-member ourselves, affirm our belonging, and reach from the past through this day into the distant future.

Filed under: Identity, Story, Truly Powerful People | 2 Comments »

See Your Reflection

Posted on August 9, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

870. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

My desk is littered with pencils and pens. They are escapees from the coffee mugs scattered across my desk where the pencils usually stand like toy soldiers jammed in a kiddie pool. I have multiple lists going. They are scrawled on standard notebook paper and they provide a crisscrossed tablecloth of sorts. My lists are not contained in the lines. They spill out in every direction. I tend to write at any angle and I bend the words, as the moment requires. I have 3 notebooks: a journal, a work journal and a cartoon idea book. All three are open and stacked in no particular order. They are well worn and loved and filled with scribbles and ideas. No one could make sense of them so I feel that my state secrets are safe. No code breaker would willingly take on my handwriting.

I have a sun of blown glass. Tamara made it for me because she knows that I suffer from the absence of light in the Seattle winter. Her gift of the sun has brought to me great light when I most needed it. Next to the sun is a clay vase that Tom made for me many years ago. I’ve cherished it these many years because it was his very first clay project and he wanted me to have it. The vase is wabi sabi, it is a leaning tower; in it I keep incense from Bali and from special people. Both the sun and vase are sacred to me.

Two empty Altoids tins, a sandwich bag with cords to charge my phone, a binder clip, a pocket flashlight, a pencil sharpener, little post it notes and a spattering of business cards for accent. Overseeing it all is a sculpture I made of wood, wire, clamps and paper: a crow cawing at the world. Next to the crow is a set of Unblockers. They are a gift from David and are “writer’s inspiration dice.” Each die has a word from Hamlet on each face. There are five dice and I throw them every once in a while for kicks. Right now they say, “Mercy sword, soldiers, weakness. Farewell.” David feeds my creative soul and sends me music treats and periodic whimsy to stoke the fire. Once, he and I did a collaborative painting on several panels spread across my kitchen floor. I have saved it all these years. Someday I will have a proper space to hang our painting (or I will surprise him with it!).

My desk is a snapshot of my life. Multiple projects in motion, chaos rolling on top of attempted order, talismans from friends and cherished loved ones. It is warm and whimsical and sometimes maddening so I restore order only to achieve swirling motion and chaos once again. The pencils and pens look like leisurely sunbathers scattered here and there and I will give them a reprieve for another day. Besides, like me, they are more productive when rested. Order looms on the horizon and I will invite it in soon but not too soon. Premature order will limit my choices.

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Dream And Follow

Posted on August 8, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

869. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Patti used to say that she refused to make business cards because a business card was a commitment. Say it and you will have to walk it. I’ve learned in the past several months that entrepreneurs resist talking to potential customers for fear of learning that their idea – their dream – may not have merit. Today Sean said it best: people are afraid of failing at their dream so they find a thousand reasons not to pursue it.

Dreams can be deferred but they will not be denied. A dream rejected becomes a knot in the belly. A dream ignored becomes low-grade anxiety, heart palpitation, road rage, a good reason to drink too much, an investment in notions like perfection or not-good-enough, a deathbed regret. Ignore a dream and it will twist and block all flow.

“What if…?” is a powerful question when in reference to the future. It is a call to action, a fount of possibility, an imagination tickler. “What if…? is equally powerful question when in reference to the past. No action is possible. It is an imagination tormentor. it is an abdication of responsibility to your self.

It is an old adage: the only certain road to failure is to not try. Failure is an abstraction. It is a construct that exists only as a story in your mind. It is an investment in what other people might think. Hint: other people have their own dreams and usually if they are negative about your dream it is because they are ignoring theirs; they need allies in their impotence.

As Tom used to say, “A painter paints.” A Painter does not succeed or fail. A painter paints and becomes a better painter. Failure is not an option when you are following your dream. Success is not an option when you are following your dream. Dreams do not dally with failure or success. Dreams call. All that is required is to follow, to grow, to learn, to live. To love.

Filed under: Art, Business, Creativity, entrepreneur, Possibility, Story, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: dreams | 1 Comment »

Let The Story Carry You

Posted on August 7, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

868. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

I’m at 37,000 feet in a plane (of course) returning from my father’s 80th birthday party. He is the patriarch of the clan since his brothers are now all passed away. And isn’t that an odd phrase, passed away? They didn’t just go away. They passed away. I love how delicate and inexact language can be when we have no real grasp of what we’re describing. Passed away: an inexact reference of time and place. Perhaps it is a phrase of transcending time and place. They existed but are now away. Perhaps it would be more appropriate to say that they passed this way.

Many cultures believe that in death we return to the elements and the elements are forces. They are energy in motion. So, when they say, “My grandfather’s breath is in the wind,” they mean it. He was this. He is now that. He is vital and living and present. Energy can take many forms. After my grandfather died I sat in the mountains listening to the wind through the pines and I wanted to have the consciousness that saw death as transformational and generative. I imagined I could hear him in the wind and in the rustling of the grasses. He was this. He is now that. He was present. Of this I was certain: I carried forward his story.

It is rare for my immediate family to gather – my siblings have children who have children. We are spread out across the country so we often have a quorum but it is unusual for us to find a crossroads accessible to all. We all made it to this celebration. There was no question. We needed to see my father. He needed to see us. We needed to celebrate him and reaffirm our identity through sharing stories. We needed the young members to hear certain ancestor stories and through the story plug into the vitality, depth and breadth of their roots. In telling our story we revitalized and made visible the potency of our vast web of support always present in this world. We needed to know where we belonged in both linear and vertical time. I think I needed it most of all.

The event was made even more special with cousins that I have not seen in decades. My web is much larger than I understood. The entire space-time layer cake of my family was immediate visible. My niece brought her infant son, there was a tribe of two and three year old children playing, teenagers dreaming, college students aspiring, twenty-somethings and thirty-somethings achieving, mid-lifers taking stock, many nearing retirement and yearning to be free of achieving, elders appreciating and playing, and a very few tissue paper hands who whispered to me as we said good bye, “This will probably be the last time we see each other.” And I could not deny it although I said, “Don’t be silly! I will see you soon.”

As I said good-bye to my father this afternoon, I knew as I have never known that story is a force. It is elemental. It is both constant and constantly transforming. I can feel my ancestors present in our story just as my grandfather was present in the wind. I am a carrier of this story and grateful beyond words at how this story carries me.

Filed under: Story, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: family | 1 Comment »

Seek The Key

Posted on August 6, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

867. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

For the next few days I’ll be at the gathering of my clan. My papa turns 80 so I’m reposting from the archives. This one was post 407:

I found a key today. It was on the sidewalk. It was a skeleton key, antique and mysterious. “Now here’s a story,” I said to myself. A lonely key is a beginning of a mystery tale.

Finding a key is different than finding a button or a toy. The story of a lost key points to treasure or secrets or diaries. A key is a guardian, a gatekeeper, so finding a key can be like finding a genie’s bottle. What requires locking implies value.

The flipside can also be true. Malidome Somé wrote that a society that needs locks on its doors is a sick society. When you cannot trust your family, neighbors, and community the society has disintegrated: the real value is lost when the society resorts to locks.

This key comes to me at a time when I am unlocking life patterns, seeing my life, past-present-future, through new eyes. My experiences of the past several months have worked like a key unlocking new chapters in the book of, “How did I get to this place again?” One question illuminated; many more beckon.

I hear Megan’s voice announcing, “metaphor alert!” Yes, indeed. Isn’t it the mystery that keeps us vital? Isn’t it the search for the keys to ourselves that drive the quest?

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