Random | The Direction of Intention

Look At The Pictures

Posted on September 19, 2014 by davidrobinsoncreative

H’s wife passed after a long illness. This afternoon we went to the vigil and Kerri sang Amazing Grace for the service. We looked at the photographs of her life.

This summer, at my grandfather’s funeral, there was a similar board of photographs showing the span of his lifetime. They are a record of moments. He posed for some of the shots. In some, he had no idea that a camera was pointed at him. We are different when we know a camera is aiming our way. We put something on, a kind of mask, an attitude or assumption.

The photographs on the board served as a history of technology, black and white to color film, and then a jump to the proliferation of digital images. What was difficult became easy. What used to need chemicals and processing became instantaneous. This capacity to snap photographs and see them in a moment has changed us. Selfies abound! Once, at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, I watched with fascination as people posed to have their picture taken with Van Gogh’s painting, Starry Night. They rarely looked at the painting. They just knew it was famous and wanted their picture taken with it. They primped. They smiled. They mugged for the camera or looked serious. Proof of life? Just like a handprint on the wall of a cave, those photographs shouted, “I was here!”

We are among the first people in the history of humanity to have this extraordinary window into our lives. I looked at the photo board of H’s wife and saw H at age 30, at age 40, and 50 and 60 and 70, 80, and I know him now at age 90. In the photographs I can see the cocky young man, the father, the achiever, the dreamer, the man who stopped resisting, the surrender,…each phase of his (and his wife’s) life. More to the point, he can see it. He can see the progression.

Two hundred years ago a photographic record of a life span was impossible. No one posed because there was no need. An old man remembered his life but did not have the window to see his path. No one had the opportunity to see the growth and process of age through the phases of their life. It changes us. And, it is a sword that cuts both ways. We can see. We can record. We can story ourselves like no other time in history. We can be known to future generations. We can talk to the future and the future can hear us. We were here. We had something to say. We had so much to share, so many rich experiences of living! And, we can miss our moment in the recording of it.

Kerri asked H what was his favorite photograph on the wall and he laughed and said, “I don’t know. We had happy times. Look at how much I weighed back then!”

“You need to eat more, H!” Kerri admonished and gave him a hug. He began to cry.

“I’m trying,” he said, laughing through tears. “I think I just need to drink more Frosties!”

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Filed under: Navel Gazing, Random, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: camera, life, memory, photograph, recording | Leave a comment »

Simply Listen

Posted on September 1, 2014 by davidrobinsoncreative

I call this one Pieta with Paparazzi

I am standing in a lobby listening to people compare their tragedies. It is more than comparison; it is a festival of one-ups-manship. “If you think that’s bad, my niece was just diagnosed with a terrible cancer….” The first speaker, now crestfallen, reaches into her story-bag of pain as another member of the group competes, “That happened to my brother just after his daughter was hit broadside by an enormous truck!” The group coos in sympathy, each in a hurry to make their personal story of hurt the center of the conversation. I wonder at their need to outdo each other in tragedy.

I suppose it is human, this feeding frenzy of drama. I want to reject my supposition outright. Suppose it is not human? I wonder if this dis-ease is cultural, an expression of the fragmentation that comes from the too-busy, the clan that avoids internal quiet at all costs, filling every moment with television, gaming, texting, emailing, gossip-news. As Anne Morrow Lindbergh wrote in Gifts From The Sea, it is impossible to know who you are without dedicated inner spaciousness and quiet. To listen to your self is the only way to really know your self. Filling the quiet space with incessant noise withers the root.

Maybe.

All stories require conflict to move forward but it is also true that the point of all storytelling is transformation. Through the conflict we are transformed. Perhaps that is what bothers me as I listen to this pain frenzy: the emphasis is on the suffering. The investment, the identity, is in the wound, not the transformation.

There is a simple Buddhist prayer that I like:

May I dwell in my heart. May I be free from suffering. May I be healed. May I be at peace.

The prayer is like a musical round that progresses from the “I” to the “You” to the “We.” The emphasis is on the transformation. It begins with dwelling in the heart.

Maybe.

What bothers me most is the absence of the capacity to listen. The first speaker needed to be heard, not outdone. I wonder what might have happened if the group had simply said, “Tell us.” I wonder what might have happened if they had been able to be present with another’s pain. To listen, simply to listen, must be a route to free each other from suffering, to heal, to create peace.

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Filed under: Identity, Perspective, Random, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: identity, inner peace, listening, peace, quiet, suffering, transformation | Leave a comment »

Ask Them To Be Kind

Posted on August 11, 2014 by davidrobinsoncreative

A black cloud moving in.

While driving across South Dakota, the darkest cloud I’ve ever seen rolled across the sky and consumed the light. The cloud was dense and black. It was heavy, its belly hung over the car and seemed to press us to the earth. It seemed more than cloud. It was ominous, a presence.

When we started the day we’d intended to drive through the Badlands but a prodigious rain had slowed our progress. We saw the rains marching toward us across the open land. It was both beautiful and daunting and hit us with a wave of authority. This storm meant business. We crawled through Wyoming with other back road drivers, watching the barely visible white lines to keep on the road. Motorcyclists pulled off the road and stood next to their bikes; there was no shelter to be found.

Although we lost a few hours to the storm we thought we might still make it through the Badlands before nightfall. And then the black cloud appeared and ate the last light of the day. Once many years ago I did a night dive through the wreck of a sunken ship. In the dark of night, deep in the ocean, while swimming through the bowels of the ship, it’s decks between me and the surface, I felt as if I couldn’t breathe. This blackest of clouds enveloped us like the ocean at night and I felt that same sense of pressing suffocation.

The gods of nature are not to be ignored. Once, I sat with a Balinese man who told me that, according to their belief, it was with the dark forces of nature that people need alliance. There is no hell in their paradigm so dark and evil are not bedfellows. There are forces: creation and destruction in an eternal cycle of rejuvenation. Their rituals are about making peace with the black clouds, the gods of lightning and rain. “The forces of light are already with us,” he said. “We ask the dark forces to be kind.”

Looking through the windshield at the ominous pressing cloud I whispered, “Be kind.” It was. It let us go. We heeded the warnings and left the Badlands for another day. Later that night, sipping wine from plastic hotel cups, safe in our room, we sighed and laughed at how utterly small we felt on the open plain amidst the power of the storms. With that smallness came the gift of alertness. We were fully awake, alive with moment, stripped of the illusion that humans have dominion over anything. We savored our moment, temporary, passing, and perfect.

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Canopy by David Robinson

Filed under: Power, Random, Story | Tagged: black cloud, gods, nature, power | 1 Comment »

Entertain Random Thoughts

Posted on July 9, 2014 by davidrobinsoncreative

I am awash in random thoughts.

Kerri told me that flies barf when they land on you. Swinging in the hammock on a lovely Wisconsin afternoon, plagued by a single persistent fly, she swatted and added, “They poop on you, too.”

I laughed. I doubted. To be honest, I mocked her ridiculous assertion. And then she Googled, “Do flies barf?” And, horror of horrors, they do. Not with every landing but often enough to alter my relationship with flies.

“Might this be a metaphor?” I asked to save face for my mocking-gone-bad.

“I think it is a metaphor for the small things you learn each day,” Kerri smirked in victory.

“I think it is a metaphor for insurance companies in America,” I said. “They poop on us every time they land on us and that seems to be more and more often.”

“My metaphor is positive and your metaphor is dark,” she said, swinging the hammock and looking to the sky.

“My metaphor is more appropriate,” I replied.

“How?”

“I learned today, thanks to you, that flies taste things through their feet.”

“What?” Kerri asked. “So?”

“When they land on you they decide through their feet whether you are a good snack or not worth their time,” I replied.

“So?”

“Have you ever heard a better description of an insurance company?” I smiled.

Kerri rolled her eyes. “Random,” she said.

See. I told you: awash in random thoughts. You learn something new everyday. Some things you want to know. Some things you don’t.

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Filed under: Random | Tagged: barf, flies, insurance companies, poop | Leave a comment »

State The Obvious

Posted on July 7, 2014 by davidrobinsoncreative

Sometimes it is necessary to state the obvious (to myself). Sometimes, for me, the potency of life is found in stating the obvious: children are born and children grow up. They leave home. They become parents. Parents become grandparents. Grandparents grow old and pass away. At no point do things stand still.

Or, the obvious can be stated another way: children have dreams. They pursue their dreams or run away from them. Either way, they pass through the stages of becoming – and, at some point, believe that they have actually grown into something (doctor, clerk, lawyer, teacher, vagabond, parent, athlete, etc.). They learn that their dreams are infinitely more complex than they realized. All dreams come with challenges, regrets, and discomfort. Regardless of the path, at no point do things stand still.

We want to “get there.” We desire to arrive. Usually, the misperception of arrival leads to crisis when things change. And things always change. This river of life never stands still. It is never static. It is never fixed. The moment of birth begins the progression to dying. And, depending upon what you believe, a new form always arises when old forms fall away. The new form, the new leaf, turns brilliant colors, withers, falls to the earth, becomes soil and mineral, feeds the root, and reemerges as the grape that ripens, is picked, and becomes wine.

Where is the arrival?

Even inner stillness is fluid. Try to hang on to it; grasping always disturbs the pond. Stillness is more akin to surfing than to stasis. Chaos and order are not opposite sides of a polarity; they are essential phases in a single cycle. Ripples are necessary to experience stillness. Fulfillment and emptiness are necessary to each other. One does not gain without losing. One does not live without dying.

There is no arrival. There are fluid moments of recognition, moments of presence (a word that is often mistaken for an arrival). Presence, otherwise known as consciousness, might be defined as the awareness and appreciation of each moment amidst the realization that things always change. To try and stop the river, to hold on to the moment, to try and stop time will always bring frustration. Presence describes your relationship with change.

This is the obvious thing: nothing is certain. Nothing is still. We always step into uncertainty. We always step. We are never still. Our steps are always into the unknown because no one has ever lived their moments prior to the living of them- despite what the to-do list and cubicle illusion might lead us to believe. Realize it and life is rich and mysterious. Resist it and life is rigid and rich with hardship.

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Filed under: Random, Seeing, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: change, presence, relationship, stillness | Leave a comment »

Take Casey’s Advice

Posted on July 6, 2014 by davidrobinsoncreative

Clarence Ira Metcalf

The other night we saw the first fireflies of the season. We were sitting by the fire pit. At first I thought the fireflies were sparks from the fire. My mind made a small u-turn when I realized the sparks were, in fact, fireflies. I laughed and clapped my hands. They are magic and I delight at their return.

They blink on. They blink off. I have always thought their light was like a life span or consciousness. We are here for a moment. We are a musical note made meaningful by the silence that surrounds us.

I thought of the first fireflies of the season when I received the news that yesterday afternoon Casey passed away. He was my grandfather. He was working on his 106^th year.

Casey was born before people invented world wars. The airplane was in its infancy; it was more of a bicycle with wings than the jumbo jets we know today. He was a young man just getting started when the market crashed. He learned his trade (he fixed sewing machines) during the great depression. By the time people decided that one world war was not enough, he had a family so he fixed sewing machines for the military. He saw Pearl Harbor. Then there was the introduction of the atom bomb, a thing called television, a Korean war, a cold war, a moon landing, and a Vietnam war, and so on. Typewriters became personal computers, phones became cordless, mobile, and small enough to fit in your pocket. In fact, the phone in his pocket had more computing power than the ship that landed on the moon. I’m not sure if he had much use for the internet but he saw the revolution that it inspired.

Casey loved to fly fish. I remember sitting on the bank of a stream watching him whip his line, again and again, until he floated it to just the right spot. He carried a personal pool cue in a special case; he assembled it like an assassin in the movies assembling his rifle. He lost a leg (from the knee) in a hunting accident, and rather than treat the loss like an obstacle, he invented things like gas pedals for his car and for his bike that accommodated his hoof (his prosthetic leg was more hoof than foot. In fact, in my favorite photo of Casey, he is standing in front of a cannon using his hoof/leg as a cannon ball ram).

His garage was a goldmine of machine parts, tools and workbenches. He could fix any machine. I asked him how he learned to fix stuff and he told me that when he was young there was no such thing as a repair shop for your car. If it broke you had to figure it out for yourself.

You have to figure it out for yourself. That could have been the central mantra of Casey’s life and the best bit of knowledge that he passed on to me. He said, “You can figure out anything if you give yourself the time. It’s when people get in a hurry that they decide that they can’t do stuff.”

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Filed under: Random, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: Casey, fire flies, life lessons | Leave a comment »

Ponder The Pieces

Posted on June 28, 2014 by davidrobinsoncreative

Kerri’s head exploding.

My beautiful Kerri’s head just exploded. I am currently surrounded by exploded head-bits and a dog-dog running loops around the house from the thrill of experiencing his first head explosion. Baby cat had the good sense to hide. There’s nothing for me to do but drink wine and write this post. And drink more wine.

Heads explode when the world ceases making sense. Beaky, Kerri’s mom, 93 years old, is no longer capable of crossing the room with her walker. Mobility is a problem and the source of Beaky’s despair. For months Kerri has been working to get Beaky an electronic wheelchair. Her doctor prescribed it. A physical therapist diagnosed it. A bevy of nurses recommended it. A mountain of paperwork was filled out and filed for it. Medicare did the expected and requisite thrice denial before begrudgingly approving a lesser model (apparently, Beaky looks like a reckless driver and can’t be trusted with too much speed). At long last, after hours of phone calls, pleading, cajoling and begging, the chair was ordered and scheduled for delivery. And then there was Jose. The man who measures aging bottoms to make sure the chair is a perfect fit decided that, while measuring Beaky, she was not yet ready, at 93 years of age, to have an electronic wheelchair. His reason: Beaky is too mobile.

Kerri playing for her mom and the other ladies.

I wish I had filmed Kerri’s head explosion. I’d send it to Jose, the man with the measuring tape and the power to explode heads. As I watched the pieces of her mind drift back toward the earth I couldn’t help but remember the statistic – relative to the rest of the developed world – of how much Americans pay for their health care and how little they actually receive. Our costs are astronomical. Jose just showed me why. I wondered how many man/woman hours of work that Jose just annihilated. As Kerri said to the electric wheel chair supply company representative, every day of Beaky’s life is an extra inning or like a dog year. It is a gift. To tell this woman that it will only be a few more months before she will be approved is cruel. It need not make sense. It is merely cruel.

On another related note, today was Josh’s first day of work as a nurse in an emergency room. He wrote that he had a very good first day. The highlight was extracting a penny from a young boy’s nose. Apparently, the boy tried unsuccessfully to swallow the penny and coughed it up and into his nose. A hole in one! What are the odds of such a perfect shot? If I ever have a penny up my nose I want Josh to do the extraction. He cares for people. He is kind. Mostly, I want Jose, the man with the tape measure, to meet Josh, the man who helped a kid with a penny problem, so that Josh can explain to Jose how to recognize a person in need and what it means to serve. Service often requires dropping the tape measure and looking at the person being measured.

I suppose this is yet another tribute to Doug whose wisdom is worth repeating: “Your problem,” he said to me, “is that you want it all to make sense.” The path to happiness, according to Doug, is to cease the expectation of sense. No mother can make sense of a penny lodged up the nose of her son and Kerri will never be able to make sense of the man with the tape measure. It was her attempt at sense making that caused her head to detonate. I’ll keep that bit of information to myself until all the pieces find their way back to earth. In the meantime, let’s have more wine!

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Filed under: Love, Random, Rants, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: health, kindness, mobility, sense making | 1 Comment »

Embrace The Bubble

Posted on June 24, 2014 by davidrobinsoncreative

A bit of the Eiffel Tower

I am nearly through the throes of jet lag and my inner anthropologist has an observation or two about the altered state that occurs when one wakes up in Paris and goes to sleep in Kenosha.

When 36 hours pass in a 24-hour daylight cycle, the human body (my human body) experiences shock and awe. A soul cannot travel nearly as fast as a body in a modern airplane; that’s why they call it jet lag. The jet does not lag. The soul doddles as a good soul should while the body flings through space in a pressurized aluminum tube. The soul lags (note: my inner anthropologist is a scientist and is dubious about using the word “soul.” He wants you to know that “soul” is my translation of his term, “consciousness”).

Jet lag is like being inside a bubble. There are great benefits to being inside the bubble. For instance, the world is wonderfully distorted. Nothing is normal when sifted through a soapy haze. The bubble is the overlap of dream space and the everyday. From inside the bubble, people move too fast. Or, they move too slowly. The words people speak are garbled and generally bounce off the bubble. Checking out of a grocery store is like a scene in a sci-fi movie. Sense-making is impossible but the surrender to no-sense is sweet and oddly comforting. To release the necessity to understand, the need to recognize, rationalize, explain, or connect even the simplest of thought-dots is liberating. In the bubble, a sigh is the only appropriate response.

From the bubble, there is nothing to be done but to watch the time river roll. Jet lag bubble consciousness makes things somehow more simplistic; complexity is not possible from a jet lag haze. Inside the bubble, life routines that were unconscious prior to traveling are startling and new; they are like gestures from a previous incarnation. For example, this morning, doing the dishes, my hands knew what to do yet I was fascinated with the odd process. I was both doer and witness. Doing the dishes was known and new all in the same instant. The bubble, so my inner anthropologist claims, is a paradox: it dulls the thinking but sharpens the simple moments. It opens the senses. Prior to doing the dishes, watching the sunrise through the fog, I listened with fascination to the wind shake the dew through the high leaves in the trees. It was gorgeous; nature’s rainstick.

Within the bubble, sleep is a constant tug like an undertow. It pulls time into slow motion. It creates a liminal space, a not-here-and-not-there space. It creates a “now” space with a single simple imperative: stay awake for a few more hours.

Stay awake. I like the metaphor: to stay awake amidst the pull to dullness; ultimately it is the gift of the bubble. It is a reminder not to sleepwalk through life, to stay alert to the simple moments. Stay awake or your life becomes like a television running an endless cycle of sitcoms. Dullness is a choice. My inner anthropologist just rolled his eyes. It’s more extravagance on my part; apparently “choice,” like “soul” is not an appropriate scientific term.

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Filed under: Random, Seeing, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: consciousness, jet lag, presence, soul | Leave a comment »

Rap With B-Cat

Posted on May 30, 2014 by davidrobinsoncreative

Baby Cat daydreaming

It occurs to me, as I sit in the studio on this cool spring morning, that there is a fourth member of my household that has yet to be introduced. We have a cat, an elder statesman, a worthy companion and sparring partner for Tripper-Dog-Dog-Dog. He has a name that no one uses because, early in his life, he became a rap star and dumped his given name. He is now known to all the world as Baby Cat.

When I first met Baby Cat I called him Sumo. He is a very large cat, a formidable kitty. Late at night I have more than once thought there was a burly intruder in the house but it was only Baby Cat pacing as he worked out his latest rap. It is an understatement to say that he is heavy on his feet. Sometimes the room bounces when he leaps from a windowsill.

Baby Cat is teaching me about clarity of intention. He leaves no doubt about what he wants (food or pets) and is relentless until he gets it. Truly, he is relentless. He does not know the word “try.” Baby Cat gets. He meets me every morning and guides me to his bowl. If I deviate, he wraps his hulk around my feet or herds me like a shepherd. If physical action is not enough to direct me to his bowl, he begins a verbal assault that would make his mother blush. He wants what he wants and he wants it now. Black and white. In addition to Sumo, I also call him Terrorist Kitty because he resorts to biting ankles as a last resort. Yoda would be proud of Baby Cats force of will. Were he not a rap star I’m certain that he’d be a Jedi. Actors would be well served to study with Master Baby Cat.

Baby Cat is teaching me about simple contentment (yes, like all things true, it is a paradox: intention and contentment are bedfellows). He shows me how to linger in sunny spots or stare out the window for hours, just because. He has reintroduced me to the fine art of daydreaming. He joins me every morning as I stretch and do a bit of yoga, shamelessly positioning himself in the optimal petting zone close to my feet and gives himself over to my affections. And, because he is so capable of presence and pleasure, I’ve found that my morning yoga has transformed. It is no longer a discipline, something I do that is good for me; it has become a practice of simple attention and loving. I am more capable of presence and pleasure. I rest in it. Like Baby Cat, my body tells me what it needs, and I breathe.

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Filed under: Body, Love, Random, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: contentment, intention, presence | Leave a comment »

Make Nonsense

Posted on May 10, 2014 by davidrobinsoncreative

from the Flub cartoon series. Do you catch the joke?

Life just gets weirder and weirder. That’s part of what I love about it. Many years ago when I was full to the top with frustration, Doug told me that my real problem was that I wanted life to make sense – and it doesn’t. Truer words were never spoken! Stop trying to make sense of things and most of life’s frustrations dissipate. Any good innovator or creative type will tell you that what they do is completely unreasonable. Buddhists call this state on nonsense beginner’s mind.

Sense making is often referred to as Reason. Parents are occasionally overheard in grocery stores pleading with their screaming child, “Be reasonable!” Couples married for years make the same appeal when they are not getting what they want from their spouse.

In some circles, sense making is known as Rational Thought. Useful words and necessary when getting onto an airplane (without Rational Thought, you’d necessarily confront the senseless act of getting into an aluminum tube and hurtling through space at 37,000 feet)!

If you are lucky, the more you live, the more you realize that meaning is all made up. What is reasonable to you may be unreasonable to me. What makes sense to me might not make sense to you. What is true for you may be untrue for me. The idea that there is a single overriding truth is the source of much frustration in the world and has created horrors throughout recorded time. The notion of a single truth makes seekers of us all as if we might find truth sitting in a cafe sipping wine. The notion locates truth outside of us and renders personal truth subject to someone else’s definition.

All seekers inevitably come to this question: “What is truth?” Asking the question usually brings the external-truth pursuit to an end. I’ve learned that no matter how diligently I’ve sought truth or ‘the answer’ in the eyes of others, I am only capable of finding what I seek by looking inside myself. Like all seekers, I find truth within. I find truth when I listen within to the still-small-voice. All the trouble I’ve ever created for myself came when I stopped listening to that voice.

Quinn told me years ago that, “Nothing makes sense.” He smiled. He was a master of double meanings. Where he less given to fun he might have said that people are story makers and given to make sense out of nothing. It’s a magic trick. The problem, as Doug pointed out to me years later, comes when we think the sense exists before we arrive.

Go here to get my latest book, The Seer: The Mind of the Entrepreneur, Artist, Visionary, Seeker, Learner, Leader, Creator…You.

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Filed under: Random, Story, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: story. sense making | 2 Comments »

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