Flawed Wednesday | The Direction of Intention

Dial Three Numbers [on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on February 23, 2022 by davidrobinsoncreative

Last month, when the car across the street blew up, there was general pandemonium until the fire department arrived. In a few moments, order was restored. People, myself included, who only moments before had been running around in panic, gathered at the end of our driveway and watched the methodical dousing of the fire. Tragedy turned to block party the minute the men and women of the fire and police departments took charge. We transitioned from unsafe to secure, in a heartbeat, from “I don’t know what to do,” to, “I’m so glad they know what to do”. Neighbors chatted. Speculated. We shared tales of the explosion. We compared notes while the people who know what to do put out the fire and cleaned up the mess.

We take for granted the security we enjoy. In the back of my mind, I know that dialing three simple numbers into the phone will summon people who know what to do.

We awoke in the middle of the night to the sound of our basement carbon monoxide alarms blaring. We turned on the lights but something was dreadfully wrong. It was as if the entire house was on a dimmer switch: there was light but it was very dim. And then we heard a buzzing sound in the ceiling. And then the smell of hot electric wires filled the room.

We dialed three simple numbers. In a panic, we put the dog, our bag with important papers, and the computers into the car.

And then, the people who know what to do arrived with their red lights ablaze. They calmly came in the house. They searched every square inch of our home with heat sensing technology. They pinpointed the source of the buzz and the burning smell. It was not yet dire but could have been bad had we not been awakened by the alarms. Within minutes of their arrival, our fear dissipated. Problems were identified. Safety was secured. Advice given.

We were safe. We dialed three simple numbers and help was on the way.

read Kerri’s blog post about FIRE ENGINES

Filed under: Edges, Flawed Wednesday, Gratitude, Perspective, Uncategorized | Tagged: 911, artistry, calm, close call, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, electricity, energy, escape plan, fear, go bag, Gratitude, help, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, safety, secure, security, story, studio melange, support, the melange | Leave a comment »

Blur The I [on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on February 16, 2022 by davidrobinsoncreative

We capture quotes all week. Some we see. Some we hear. Some find their way into the Melange. Most do not. We usually note where we heard or found the quote so we remember the context. It’s a practice. It’s not as if we are perpetually eavesdropping on conversations. We’ve simply tuned ourselves to immediately write the amazing words and phrases that catch our attention.

A common phrase is mind-over-matter. Athletes and actors and dancers are conditioned to ignore the limits of their bodies. To keep going. The mind as master over body. I loved this quote because it is the flip side. The mind, the “I”, wanted to stop but the body did not listen. It kept going.

Lately I’ve been reading about – so, paying attention to – the false separations that language necessitates: Mind and body are spoken of, thought of, as separate things. And, the question is this: where does one begin and the other end? Mind over matter. Body did not listen. I made myself do it. Once you start listening for it, it is ubiquitous. Exactly where is the line between “I” and “myself”? When your toe is in pain, isn’t your whole body is in pain? Follow your gut. What does your heart say?

When Dogga gets excited, his little body bounces. He runs in circles. He has to work hard to sit still. Say, “Do you want to go…” and he’s bouncing before the words “on errands?” reach his ears. He knows he won’t actually go on errands until he first sits on the rug. Eventually, he bounces his way into compliance. Control follows unbridled enthusiasm. Control is a means to an end. Rug before errands. Sit before snack.

Dogga might say, while bouncing enthusiastically, “I wanted to stop but my body kept going!”but I doubt it. Given his unified happy spirit, I’m certain the phrase would come out of his muzzle this way: I wanted to stop but I kept going. Watching him is like reading the I-Ching: no separation.

read Kerri’s blogpost about I AND BODY

Filed under: Awakening, Flawed Wednesday, Identity, Language, Perspective, Uncategorized | Tagged: artistry, body, control, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, Dog-Dog, dogga, gut, heart, I-Ching, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, language, limits, listening, matter, mind, mind over matter, Quotes, separation, separation and unity, spirit, story, studio melange, the melange, unity | Leave a comment »

Help Them Smile [on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on February 9, 2022 by davidrobinsoncreative

I howled with laughter when she said it. “You can buy anything that looks like something.” She was referring to the sweet Italian sausage that was not sausage at all but made of plants. I thought she was making a political statement. We are solidly in the age of things-are-not-what-they-seem. Photos can be manipulated. Words that come out of mouths can be placed there, not by the speaker. Propaganda is called news and American cowboy culture does not see its full-lemming transformation. Sausage-not-sausage is everywhere!

“What are you laughing at?” she asked, placing the sausage look-alike in our basket. Linda made us a yummy vegetable hash that included the not-sausage and we enjoyed it so much that we left with the recipe. “The age of enlightenment is officially over,” I thought but did not say. Had I answered honestly she would have told me to “gear down.” The grocery store is no place for philosophical hoo-haw.

“Nothing,” I said, giggling.

Standing in front of the cold not-sausage-section, looking down the aisle at people masked and not masked, some wearing masks on their chins, I felt thrust out of all reality and into the tragi-comedy that is our times. Peter Barnes wrote a terrific play, a comedy called Red Noses about the plague that swept Europe in the 14th century. A priest and his band of fools traveling through the villages offering humor as the only relief for the fear and pain. They wore red noses.

“When people in the future look back at us, I hope they laugh,” I said.

“What?” she asked, furrowing her brow.

“We need a band of fools.”

If we could laugh at ourselves, we’d probably have a better time of life during the pandemic, I thought, as an unmasked woman sneered at my fully masked face. I wonder how we’d have fared had there been a red nose mandate? Protect your neighbor by helping them smile.

Kerri stared at me and smiled. “Don’t make me tell you to gear down.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “I think we need Dogga food.”

read Kerri’s blogpost about ANYTHING AND SOMETHING

Filed under: Flawed Wednesday, Random | Tagged: artistry, covid, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, future, humor, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, laughter, masks, Peter Barnes, plays, propaganda, Red Noses, sausage, smiles, story, studio melange, the melange, theatre, word sausage | Leave a comment »

Stack Your Nickels & Pennies [on Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on February 2, 2022 by davidrobinsoncreative

From the school of if-you-are-sitting-on-the-mountain-you-can’t-see-it comes the hot mess we call healthcare in these un-united-united-states. Insanity never looks at itself and says, “I’m insane.” Our system of healthcare – and I use the term “system” loosely, is insane. In my sordid past as an organizational consultant I facilitated an experience called reverse design: ask people to design the worst system possible. The worst product imaginable. Hilarity ensued. None of those mad-mad sessions could have concocted what we call healthcare in the richest nation on earth. It seems the money has both blinded us and made us batty.

I just asked Kerri how much a postage stamp costs. “58 cents,” she grumbled, “And we got three mailings.” We finally achieved our get-out-of-jail-free card: a job with benefits. We canceled our ACA prison policy but, apparently, there was a one-day crossover in the billing cycle. I know a computer sent us the three-times-nasty-gram and spent $1.74 in postage to collect $.27. No human was involved though, having spent an inordinate amount of time on the phone with people paid to try and make sense of the nonsense, we’ve learned how numb the human mind can become when sense-making in a swamp of gobbledygook. We paid our debt online.

No human involved. De-human-izing. The Turing test is…a test of intelligence in a computer. Is the machine’s behavior indistinguishable from that of a human being? Hubris is a human quality that imagines the computer will become more like us while not recognizing that, in the process, we are becoming less like us. I doubt the computer will ever evolve to that point of pomposity. I suspect that the computer will someday recognize the folly of attempting to model itself after something so flawed as human intelligence. What intelligent machine would model itself on beings that seem incapable of creating a competent system for the care of its own health? No advanced intelligence would submerge its prime directive for the secondary intention of stacking nickels and pennies.

read Kerri’s blogpost about HEALTHCARE

Filed under: Flawed Wednesday, Perspective | Tagged: aarp, ACA, artistry, computer, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, dehumanizing, flaw, healthcare, hubris, insanity, intelligence, intention, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, Molina Healthcare, money, story, studio melange, the melange, Turing test | Leave a comment »

Step Back And Realize [on Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on January 26, 2022 by davidrobinsoncreative

If you are like us, every day brings another report of a friend or loved one who has Covid. As someone recently said to me, “With Omicron, it’s only a half degree of separation between you and someone who’s carrying the virus.” I’d say, given the wave of people we know falling sick and reporting positive test results, it’s true. It’s no time to let down your guard.

On Saturday we watched a documentary film, The First Wave. It’s a film everyone should see. It chronicles the first few months of the pandemic in a New York hospital. It is shocking how, in a few short years, we’ve normalized hospitals being overrun. How removed we, the populace, are from the tangible horror of this pandemic. Refrigerator trucks used as temporary morgues. We stand today at 865,000 deaths and counting. People. By comparison, 620,000 people died in the Civil War. 418,500 US citizens, military and civilian, died in World War 2. We ought to be grieving instead of dividing. We ought to be reaching to help rather than peacocking our politics. This film will slap you awake. It will help you step back and realize what we – all of us – are passing through. It might help you grieve.

Kerri tells me that the woman in the next car thought she and 20 were doing a drug deal. He felt sick, needed a test and could find none. We had a few so they met in a parking lot to make a safe pass. While making the exchange, he handed her an envelope. Money for the phone bill but I’m sure it looked suspicious.

It reminded me of the time, many years ago, that Sam asked me to meet him in a parking lot. He rolled down his window and passed to me a sheaf of poems. The window went up. I was to tell no one. It was terribly vulnerable for him to share. I cried the day he published his first book of poetry. It was a titanic journey from fear-of-certain-shame to proudly publishing his beautiful work. He was transformed.

I imagine someday we will stand and look back at this titanic journey. I hope that I remember with fondness the story of Kerri and 20 making an exchange in the parking lot, the women one-car-over shocked by what she thought she was seeing, and we smile. Transformed. Remade as better people in a better community making better assumptions of each other. Stronger.

For now, as the credits rolled on The First Wave, we looked at each other and together said, “I’m exhausted.”

read Kerri’s blog post about THE EXCHANGE

Filed under: Edges, Flawed Wednesday, Perspective, Possibility | Tagged: artistry, assumptions, collective exhaustion, covid tests, covid-19, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, death count, division, documentary film, exhaustion, fear, grief, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, poetry, politics, Sam the poet, story, studio melange, tests, The First Wave, the melange, togetherness, transform | Leave a comment »

Watch The Dance [on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on January 19, 2022 by davidrobinsoncreative

It was once a guilty pleasure. After a snowfall, through newly plowed streets, I’d tie on my red Nike shoes and go for a long, long run. In Colorado, the sun and the cold air play well together. Atmospheric sweet and sour. Run toward the sun in the snow quiet. Sensual pleasure. I’ve never felt more alive than during those treasured runs.

Our yard is a miracle of shadow-play after the snowfall. Between the trees and the tall grasses that grow along the property line, the cool blue sways and dances across the ice-white canvas, a visual conversation between limb and wind. It can be mesmerizing. Sometimes it reminds me of Wayan Kulit, the shadow puppets of the Balinese. An epic tale told on the screen of our front yard. The lesson of Wayan Kulit: we are not substance, not really. Rather, we are passing shadows projecting our story onto the canvas of our minds.

The mailwoman told me that she adored bringing our mail during the winter afternoons. “The light on the grasses,” she said, “they knock me out.” We wait until spring to cut back the grasses for exactly that reason. The pink, orange and purple light of a late winter afternoon makes the grasses luminous. And the shadows they cast! A gentle blue waving, aloha! Greeting or parting? Longing or fulfillment? I’m never sure.

Sylvia Plath wrote in The Bell Jar, “I thought the most beautiful thing in the world must be shadow.” Staring out our front window watching the dance, the frigid air and sun at play together, I think she was right. What could possibly be more heartbreakingly beautiful?

Filed under: Flawed Wednesday, Metaphor, Seeing, Story | Tagged: artistry, cold, dance, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, fulfillment, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, longing, paradox, pleasure, shadow, shadow play, shadow puppet, snow, story, studio melange, sweet and sopur, the melange, two artists, Wayan Kulit, winter | Leave a comment »

Share Appreciation [on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on January 12, 2022 by davidrobinsoncreative

“I’ve got an old mule and her name is Sal
Fifteen miles on the Erie Canal”

~Low Bridge, Everybody Down, music and lyrics by Thomas Allen, 1913

She’s a donkey, not a mule, yet I couldn’t help but appreciate the collision of power sources present in this photograph. From donkey to solar.

I’ve read that the innovations of the industrial age were meant to spare humans of muscle-toil. If an engine could power it, a human didn’t have to. The innovations of the information age are meant to spare us mental and sense toil: why stress to parallel park your car if the car can do it all by itself? Why add the numbers if the spreadsheet does it for you? Why look up information if Siri or Alexa can bring it to you? What does it now mean to stay in touch? Text and facebook and tweet and email and zoom and facetime and slack and chat and…call.

Oil, coal and gas are the energy systems of the past. They are donkeys and mules standing next to renewable energy sources like wind and power. It takes time for an infrastructure to be built. It takes time for people to wrap their imaginations around a different way. Do you remember the loud resistance in the early days of the credit card proclaiming that plastic would never replace paper money? That was not so long ago. There were similar angry voices declaring the auto-mobile was a flash-in-the-pan. “Nothing will replace the horse!” Our local supermarket just installed banks of electric car charging stations. Energy systems are slowly moving away from grids: the power source and the property will (mostly) be one and the same.

Industries, like people, either adapt or die. Most retail chains that came late to online shopping are going or already gone. Many have said that they didn’t see the change coming. Or that they couldn’t imagine a world in which people bought stuff without first touching it. Cars are in vending machines. Isaac Asimov would have loved it!

Did I mention that the solar panel in the photograph senses and moves with the sun? As it turns out, the donkey does, too. Much for the same reason. Only, for the donkey, the heat of the sun feels good and I doubt the solar panel cares or feels anything. Sensing and feeling are still on opposite sides of the change-line. At least so far. There may come a day in the not-so-distant-future that the donkey and the solar panel share appreciation for the heat of the sun. The donkey will wag its tail. The solar panel will stretch and sigh. The stuff of children’s books or sci-fi. At least for now.

read Kerri’s blog post about DONKEY & SOLAR PANEL

Filed under: Flawed Wednesday, Random, Uncategorized | Tagged: aarp, appreciation, artistry, automobile, Bruce Springsteen, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, donkey, energy, energy source, everybody down, feeling, future, horse, imagination, industrial age, information age, innovation, Issac Asimov, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, low bridge, past, present, sci-fi, senses, solar, solar panel, story, studio melange, the melange, Thomas allen | Leave a comment »

Choose How [on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on January 5, 2022 by davidrobinsoncreative

My friend’s children are having children. The top-of-the-list advice my friends offer their children, now parents themselves, is this: it goes so fast. Appreciate every single moment. Love every phase. You will blink your eye and they will be grown and gone.

I lost my dad in September. I have, like most people who’ve lost a loved one, spent much of the time since his passing remembering and reflecting. It’s a mixed bag of treasuring moments and wondering why I didn’t fully appreciate others. It is true, you don’t know what you have until it’s gone.

What is so hard about appreciating – fully appreciating – the limited moments of your life?

I used to facilitate an exercise. It had four phases. Working in small groups, the first phase was to have a group member identify a problem in their life and then tell a blame-story about the problem. The rest of the group helped by supporting the person in their story of blame. The groups howled with laughter. Blame is fun. It’s addictive, like sugar.

In the second phase, the groups tried to “fix” the problem. The serious, concerned faces puzzled possible fixes but inevitably dissolved into more laughter: there’s nothing like trying fix a problem to create more problems and loop back into a juicy blame story.

Phase three was simple: I asked the original problem-story-teller to retell their story as a story of choice, not blame. I asked the other members of the group to support the teller in their story of choice. Silence ensued. And then, quiet presence as the new narrative – the story of choice – slowly inhabited the room.

Blame stories are like too much candy. They are easy to eat and yet have no real sustenance.
Stories of choice are much harder to tell but they are rich in awareness and appreciation of the moment.

We never arrived at the fourth phase: stories of opportunity. Activating choice. The notion of taking responsibility for choices always stopped the exploration. Our conversations about choice-avoidance usually filled the time.

What we gain in blame, we lose in appreciation of our moments. In order to taste the moment, one must first choose to be in it – and then choose how to be in it.

Grief is a phase to be loved, not avoided. As is the celebration of a first birthday. A new life. A lost love. A full spectrum. Taste every moment.

read Kerri’s blog post about MOMENTS

Filed under: Flawed Wednesday, Gratitude, Identity, Perspective | Tagged: appreciation, artistry, Betty White, blame, choice, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, fixing, full specrtum, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, love, moments, new parents, opportunity, possibility, presnece, reflection, remembrance, story, storying, storytelling, studio melange, taste every moment, the melange, time | Leave a comment »

Story A Romance [on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on December 29, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

The town was mostly deserted. The streets alive with the light of christmas, almost past. The brink of the moment after. The birth of a memory. We strolled the empty streets. We took our time peering at window displays and pressing our faces to the glass to look at the old-time soda fountain. It was quiet. The night was warm. There was, at that moment, no one else on earth.

“It’s like a Hallmark movie,” she said.

“No, it’s like the set of a Hallmark movie. All the actors have gone home.”

My comment made me smile. Walking down the empty streets, alight and sparkling, perhaps we were the actors on this set. It was our scene to play. The actors had not gone home. The actors had just arrived on set. It was ours to make special, comic or tragic.

Actors on a set. Everyday. Somedays, it is more apparent than others.

“Everyone is just making it up,” Quinn used to say and laugh. Just so. We held hands and decided our story was – is – a romance. We couldn’t have chosen a better set.

read Kerri’s blog post about THE TOWN

Filed under: Flawed Wednesday, Gratitude, Love, Story | Tagged: aarp, artistry, Christmas Lights, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, empty nest, get away, Hallmark movie, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, movie set, roadtrip, romance, story, storying, studio melange, the melange, two artists | Leave a comment »

Note The Beautiful [on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on December 22, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

There is a genius in simplicity.

Lately, one of the conversations swirling around me, a conversation I very much appreciate, is about beauty. What is a beautiful building? What makes a software beautiful? Certainly, beauty is subjective though I suspect a sunrise over the ocean is beautiful to all. A baby’s smile. A first kiss.

We are surrounded by noisy advertisements telling us what is (and what is not) beautiful. By this standard, most of us fall into the not-beautiful category. Though, deep down, we know, that the real test of beauty is not in what is concealed but in what is revealed. A warm heart is more potent than skin creme or make-up.

My niece had a birthday yesterday. She is on this earth to help people. She is creating a beautiful life. She probably doesn’t know it – and, that’s a mark of true beauty – it doesn’t need to call attention to itself.

Every collaboration I’ve had with MM was beautiful. We had fun. We explored ideas. We have nothing but respect for each other. We’ve made each other better people, better artists. When I revisit any one of the many projects we created together, I smile and feel rivers of gratitude and pride. A memory that inspires a smile is the very definition of beauty. It brings the goodness of the past into the present moment. Light travels.

20 is a master of the beautiful because he knows the power of simplicity. A heart shape torn from a piece of paper – acknowledging grief that goes beyond words. A construction paper bow. He’s not forgotten the lessons he learned in kindergarten. Laughter, he knows, is the most beautiful gift of all and we receive it from him weekly.

What makes a design beautiful? Aspen leaves shimmering in fall. I’ve stood in front of paintings by Picasso, Matisse, John Singer Sargent…and cried. They were so beautiful. I’ve held Kerri’s hand, walking on a trail, and wanted the moment to never end. Simple.

read Kerri’s blog post about THE BOW