Category: life

A Buddhist flavor

“A Buddhist Flavor”: Hello, Kelley.

I took my refuge vows a year ago and am going to be taking my bodhisattva vow this summer, which is basically a promise to help all other sentient beings achieve enlightenment before I do (wish me luck). Consequently, wrestling with one’s aloneness is, needless to say, definitely more than a little on my mind.

So, here I am, minding my own business, taking a guilty break from some very heavy Buddhist literature and reading along in this novel I picked up from Borders called Solitaire. Not expecting anything but a good yarn, I suddenly come across what sounds like a very accurate accounting of someone being forced to live, consciously, inside their own head for a seeming 8 years and to just simply “deal.” Now, if this isn’t Buddhism, I don’t know what is! I really can’t tell you how strange it was to be reading this in the midst of attempting to digest some other very intense training materials much less engage in exactly what you have Jackal doing. So I am thinking, what is going on here? Are the gods and devas and asuras and Ko’s conspiring to make sure I take those vows, or what??!!

There is a book written along these lines by a senior teacher of my particular lineage, Pema Chodron, entitled, interestingly enough, The Wisdom of No Escape.

Just to rephrase what you alluded to so well, the fact that Jackal could not escape from her “prison” was in my view perhaps her saving. Partly because she had to, and also because she was who she was, she prevailed in facing her “worms” and digesting them and then seeing what came up, which inspires me yet again to face my own crocodiles. In addition, I find it fascinating how you told this plot through the eyes of an imperfect world, which is exactly where “it” happens –” the juiciest material lies under the dirtiest rocks, calling to us in our fear and trembling to come out, come out, wherever you are … and take a look. And just perhaps we can relax in our groundlessness and insecurity after all.

By the way, I found your approach to the description of the love between Jackal and Snow very, very well handled and true. Making a new start after the world shifted for the two of them was realistically portrayed, refreshing and interesting in the ongoing changing kind of moire pattern two very different personalities can create. In this, I liked how it appeared you left the door open on whether or not things worked out between the two of them, like any relationship.

Finally, I also appreciated the description of the place called Solitaire in that I, too, as some other readers expressed, feel as perhaps a solo might feel –” a woman without a country due to some pretty precarious upbringing with no strong roots. Aftershocks, panic attacks, alien people surround me … a place like Solitaire sounds like home where people of my ilk could treat me tenderly and with understanding, and I them.

So, thank you so much for your willingness to go through what you did to give us the VC experience. I would love to hear your comments on how you “got there,” or for that matter, anything else you’d care to comment on, like how you are today — and, sure, how is Snow …er…uh… I mean, Nicola today, as well (teehee).

I certainly do wish you luck. The idea of taking such a vow fascinates and frightens me. I imagine it requires (among much else) a full bucket of responsibility and an empty bucket of expectation. That must sometimes seem a very high hill to climb.

I have one of Pema Chodron’s books, The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times. I just pulled it off the bookshelf. It’s been a while, and your email makes me want to read it again. One thing that struck me anew flipping through the book is this passage (in the chapter, “Finding the Ability to Rejoice”):

It is easy to miss our own good fortune; often happiness comes in ways we don’t even notice. It’s like a cartoon I saw of an astonished-looking man saying, “What was that?” The caption below read, “Bob experiences a moment of well-being.” — from The Places That Scare You

Joy is something I work on. I’m learning the joy of everyday things, the joy that I seek consciously when I open myself to an ordinary moment, and the joy that comes unexpectedly. I think they reinforce each other; the more I seek, the more finds me. This is one of the things I wanted very much to put into Solitaire, especially into Jackal’s VC experience. For me, hope is based on this constant possibility of joy even in the most brutal, barren phases of our lives.

There’s an article that might interest you from the Seattle Times, about a group of high school students who recently met the Dalai Lama and asked him what he apparently thought was a very interesting question.

I’m not sure how I feel about what I understand of Buddhism, particularly the emphasis on selflessness, but I understand the value of true compassion, and the burden that our expectations can place on each other when people practice something that they call compassion but that really smacks more of control. I like that the Dalai Lama thinks compassion is important, and that his head spins too. I have, as I believe I’ve said before in the virtual pub, an innate distrust of most authority, including (perhaps especially) spiritual or “moral” authority: but I liked the Dalai Lama in this article. He can be on my party list (which I hope doesn’t offend you: it’s a genuine expression of goodwill, since I take parties and hosting very seriously).

How am I today?

  • I am listening to U2, The Radiators ( New Orleans, not Ireland), and Ursula Rucker.

  • I have finished the proposal for my Kansas book and am working on the outline of my mountain book so that I can submit both to my editor, in the hope that she will be so impressed with my long-term potential that she will throw vast sums of money at me. (Edited to add in 2008: Hah. Find out what happened here.) I’m really pleased with both books right now: the Kansas story has come together nicely, and the mountain book shows signs of doing the same. I had expected to do a very skimpy outline for the mountain book (maybe 500 words to set up the situation and then promise that a bunch of interesting stuff will happen). Instead, I have a real story poking me in the arm for attention, much more coherent at this early stage than I have any right to expect.

  • I wrote what is in my humble opinion a kickass article for @U2 on the African Well Fund, an organization raising money to build wells in Africa.

  • I had a conversation with my ASL teacher about the origins of humor and the difference between comedy and drama, notable because it was an actual conversation and not just me looking blank and trying to keep up.

  • We have a leak in our basement and our washing machine makes scary noises.

  • I discovered the hard way this weekend that red onion is strong and you shouldn’t put too much of it avocado salad.

  • It’s going to rain all week.

  • I love my sweetie (who isn’t Snow, honestly, although that’s a whole other conversation that I’m willing to have if someone will remind me in a couple of weeks –” I will also be happy to talk more about “how I got there” but can’t do it today, so it would be fine to remind me of that as well if you are so inclined. Not that it’s anyone’s job to be my secretary –” it’s just that I am a bit distracted by book-world right now, and so if you really want those answers you might have to ask me again).

If people could always treat each other tenderly and with understanding, well….there’s a goal. I expect it is part of the vow you will take. My very, very best wishes to you.

Consciousness

I recently finished reading your novel, Solitaire, and was astonished at how good it was. But you’ve probably already heard the same many times, so I’ll be more specific.

First, the plot rang true. I’ve spent my adult life working for a single, large corporation. They’ve provided interesting work, have treated me well, and I’m a loyal company man. Probably that’s how affairs will continue until I either die or retire. Yet I know that if, for some bizarre reason, the welfare of the company depended on me being crushed and humiliated, then so it would be. Just as in your story, there would be no malice, there would even be kindness to the degree possible,­ but it would be done.

Second, your characters came to life. Again, that’s pretty general, so more specifically… I was able to dislike and yet feel sorry for Jackal’s mom. I felt, even at first introduction, a simultaneous dislike and grudging admiration of both Gavin and Crichton — the same kind of feeling I‘ve gotten in person when talking to executives, not being able to help admiring them even when I know damn well I’m being manipulated. And, I got teary-eyed at Jackal’s and Snow’s reunion.

Third, the book was joyful. Most great novels are — even if reading academic reviews would make you think they’re gloomy and ponderous. And what I most want to say is that I enjoyed the optimism of your novel and hope that your future work is similar in that respect. Please understand that I’m not trying to give fan guidance on what you ought to write. I’m just offering a thought, a hope, and letting you know what about your work appealed to me. But life can be painful at times and, during those times, coming across a living, breathing, believably optimistic story about what it is to be a human can be a very big deal.

Last, I wanted to let you know that I’m a middle aged, straight, more-or-less conservative research scientist (your Crichton would call me a lab coat nerd if she were in a good mood). If you were able to make your story gripping to someone so different than how you describe yourself, then I’m guessing that the appeal of your writing must be nigh well universal.

Best Wishes,
J.

P.S. I saw that you used to be an executive at Wizards Of The Coast. My younger daughter has been a Pokémon fan for several years now. Congratulations on your marketing.

For me, one of the most complex treatments of ambivalence to create in Solitaire was the corporate culture. I have few mixed feelings about bad companies — they just suck, you know? But the good ones are less easily labeled. I spent five years in executive positions at Wizards of the Coast (which was for me an excellent experience in general, although astonishingly hard in particular moments), and in various positions at smaller companies before that (almost uniformly Suck City). The thing that made Wizards an excellent place for me was not that it was seamlessly good, or smart, or efficient. It wasn’t (oh, the stories….). But it was a place where a person of skill could, given a good manager, create an excellent experience for herself. Perhaps this is the best we can hope for, this combination of opportunity and support, but I have to believe it can be better than that, or at least more organized. When I led the project management team at Wizards, I tried to carve out a space in the company in which anyone could have an excellent experience. I expect that not everyone did, but I do believe that project management was considered a “better” part of the company to work in because of the way we built the team.

I get restless and impatient when people talk about corporations being “evil” and “greedy” and “heartless.” Corporations are big stews of people who often make uninformed or unimaginative or fearful decisions, which is just as bad in effect but makes a difference to me on some level. I find stupidity more forgivable, or at least more easily rectified, than evil or greed. What’s interesting is that I’m much more willing to characterize whole corporations as “supportive of employees” or “socially conscious” or “learning organizations” — I don’t have so much trouble with these kinds of generalizations. I think this is because for a whole corporation to be perceived as actively “good” in some way, a lot of people have to make a conscious agreement about how to behave and then live up to it on a daily basis. Chaos requires less consciousness and courage than order (or kindness).

I think joy and hope also require consciousness. Hope is almost always a choice to value oneself, in my experience, and joy is almost always a choice to celebrate value in oneself or the world. Maybe it’s that order and kindness and hope and joy are connecting forces, and fear is disconnecting. Maybe it’s that simple. What do you think?

Anyway, as a writer I’m interested in connection. I will write about fear and sorrow and the fractures within, and between, people because that’s part of the human terrain that I map in all my work. But I believe in joy and hope and growth and love. They are things I’d like to see more of in the world, and I hope I am never so sundered from them that I would want to write a book designed to separate the reader from them as well. I can imagine it. Nicola and I have talked about what might happen to our writing if the other died, and I can see the bitter books that I might wish to unleash on the world. I think I’d probably have a talent for making those people real too, and perhaps there would be some value in it, but I don’t like to read those books, and it would be a challenge to write one that I could be proud of. But I can imagine a state of soul in which it would seem like the thing to do. And if it were a choice between writing something like that and not writing at all…. well, those are the interesting questions, aren’t they?

I’m guessing that Crichton would only call you a lab coat nerd if you did something she didn’t like (grin). And I’m glad you liked the book. Cheers.

Pain

I found this via Alas, A Blog:

The Girl Who Feels No Pain, an article about a real-life “Alien Jane“, the three-year-old Gabby Gingras.

Ide Cyan

Oh my. Life will always have to be so conscious, so hyper-vigilant for these people. They’ll have to develop systems to watch Gabby, to check the environment, anticipate the hazards that are invisible to her because she can’t process the warning language of pain. They will have to read the mind of the whole world.

Nicola and I talked a lot about this over beer last night. I believe that humans are potentially limitless in spirit, in toughness, and in the capacity for joy in the face of adversity, but I wouldn’t wish this on anyone. I felt particularly sorry that there are no resources for these folks, that they have to do all the work of discovery as well as implementation. I hope they have loving and imaginative people around them to help: it’s the sort of thing that takes imagination, not treacly pity or platitudes. One thing that astonished both of us about this report is the sentence, “There is no cure, nor will she outgrow it.” If I told someone my child had a condition for which there was no cure, and they said, stupidly, “Well, maybe she’ll outgrow it,” I think I would put their head through a wall.

The world is often stranger than fiction, and harder too.

Mind the gap

You responded, “I was intrigued by the idea of Solitaire as an experience unmoored from plot, and did a little random reading in it myself. I’m not sure what I would make of it as a new reader…”

Not necessarily a plot unmoored. The reader still gathers the plot from unusual angles.

John Cage published a written work that consisted of three very different works, interlaced, with each work color-coded. Unexpectedly, the reader becomes more attentive, rather than confused. Though sequentiality is still maintained in that example, it somewhat illustrates the random approach.

My disenchantment with science comes from having studied it extensively and finding the politics of its interpretation to be a huge, probably unconscious, part of everyone’s lives, a virtual reality.

I am pleased to read your thoughts about your writing process, “laziness”, etc., the process of arriving at the completion of something, Michael Ventura’s essay on writing, the room, too.

Anonymous

Yes, I understand your point about discerning plot from unusual angles, although I find this more enjoyable in film than in prose. I enjoyed Memento, for example, even though it wasn’t seamless — I had fun with the layers, and admired the screenwriting. Someone put together a fantastic website (you need to allow popups). I’d love to have something like this for a book, with visuals and artifacts from the story, that could offer glimpses of the story. Most of the websites I’ve seen dedicated to books (as opposed to writers) are static, in all ways unengaging. Connection, interaction, that’s the strength and beauty of the web (as well as all art, in my opinion). I’m guilty of this too, as regards Solitaire; that part of this site is pretty boring. (Edited in 2008 to add: I hope not so much anymore!)

I agree about the politics of interpretation as regards science (and just about everything else). There’s a model that I used in the classes I taught on effective communication and meetings, called the Interpersonal Gap. I don’t know whom to credit for it, but it’s widely used.

I send a message (face to face, email, etc.). I intend to communicate something specific. First, the message has to pass through my personal filters — how my day is going, how I feel about the other person, my assumptions about them and the situation, my socialization, whether or not I’m in a hurry. All these factors color my communication in ways I may not be conscious of. The person I’m talking to can’t see my personal filters, and so cannot be expected to be aware of specifically how they affect my communication.

My intended message, already affected (perhaps distorted) by my personal filters, is now out in the space between me and the other person. This is the realm of observable behavior — body language, vocal or physical language stresses (depending on whether I’m speaking or signing), where I’m looking, etc. This is what the other person sees and/or hears.

This altered message has to pass through the other person’s personal filters, which aren’t visible to me. Did they eat a bad piece of corned beef for lunch? Do they like or dislike me? Is some of my observable behavior attractive or objectionable for cultural reasons? Are they in a hurry? Are they tired? All of these factors color the way they receive my message. By the time my message arrives in their brain, it may be something quite different from what I intend, because of factors that neither of us can control absolutely. And that’s the message they respond to, and the whole cycle starts over.

The goal of this model is to help me understand that what I think I’m sending isn’t necessarily what the other person is receiving. We need to make filters observable if at all possible, to help close the gap. I need to be as aware as I can of my own filters, and I need to ask questions to identify other people’s filters or intentions. For example, I might tell the other person that I’m distracted because I’m in a tricky place in my book, and my brain is giving the problem a lot of attention. Or I might say, “Did you mean to snap at me, because that’s what it sounded like.” It’s not rocket science, it’s just technique. It falls under the category of not expecting other people to read my mind. Often I hear people complain that someone didn’t get the message — “It was obvious I was in a hurry, but she wouldn’t let me go!” Well, maybe it’s not obvious — who knows how everyone’s filters are distorting the message? Making it obvious improves the odds that the real message gets through.

I find this model accurate in my experience, and it’s been very useful to me not only on a personal level, but with regard to the interpretation of information. The people who deliver information have their filters. Cultures and disciplines have filters too. My culture is biased toward the notion that data is superior to, and more valid than, personal experience. But ask anyone who’s been medically misdiagnosed because her symptoms didn’t “fit” what she thinks about that.

Filters matter. Often they are integrated at such an unconscious level that it takes a lot of work to dig them out. But it’s work worth doing, in my opinion.

Note from Kelley in 2008: If this interests you, you’ll find more about the Interpersonal Gap and other communication models/tools in Session 2 of the Humans At Work curriculum (follow the link and check the sidebar).

The naming of things

Hello Mrs. Eskridge. So… I was reading Sirens and Other Daemon Lovers last night and turned to page 270 and nearly had a heart attack. The Eye of the Storm by Kelley Eskridge. I couldn’t believe it. Eskridge! You see my last name happens to be Eskridge.

I read your story and enjoyed it very much. Because the name Eskridge is not as common as the names Smith and Jones I really got excited. I’m a freshman at Smith College in Northampton, Ma. and I truly enjoy writing. I’m also taking several acting classes this semester and I read that you studied theatre. For the past several years, my sister and I have been curious about our last name. Unfortunately we haven’t been able to make any sense of the history connected to this mysterious surname. When I saw that you shared this unusual name, had a career as a writer and was familiar with theatre I thought it was just too many similarities to pass up.

Well I guess that’s all I wanted to say. I thank you for taking the time to read my question… comment rather.

It turns out there are more Eskridges in the world than you might imagine. I can tell you a few things about us, at least my part of “us.” My family probably came to America from the north of England. If you look at a map, in the northeast part of England you’ll find a town called Whitby located on the River Esk. It’s hilly country there, and it’s an easy guess that some of the people living on the ridge over the river became Eskridges. Actually, Nicola informs me that there are two or more rivers named Esk in the UK, but this one is my favorite. Apparently river names are some of the few surviving words of Celtic (as opposed to Anglo-Saxon) origin: esk comes from uisc, which we think means life, and if it doesn’t, it should. It’s also the root word of whiskey.

Edited to add in 2008: It turns out that we Eskridges are historical! George Washington’s middle name was Eskridge. Here’s why. (/edit)

We Eskridges also have an entire town in Kansas, which tickles me. Imagine, a place where we never have to spell our last name for anyone.

I hope you’re enjoying Smith College. One of my first paying jobs was at the Tri-County Fair at the Northampton Racetrack. I was fascinated by the horses, the jockeys, the self-contained world of racing. Watching jockeys was one of the first times I remember actively noticing how someone moved. And I liked Northampton. This was about a thousand years ago, so I’m sure much has changed, but I hope that you can still lose a few hours in an old house with small rooms and no right angles that has been turned into a secondhand bookstore, and then go have a grinder and a beer.

The naming of things has a certain power, doesn’t it? I find it peculiar to be called Mrs. Eskridge, and in fact even if Nicola and I did marry, I still wouldn’t want to be called Mrs. It’s too much of a possessive, and while I don’t mind giving, I prefer not to be owned. I also hate sharing my name. For a while my stepbrother was married to a woman named Kelly who took our name, so there were two Kell(e)y Eskridges in the family. Then my dad and stepmother adopted a dog named Kelly, at which point I had a polite tantrum on the phone. There wasn’t much I could do about the sister-in-law, but I figured the dog would have to be flexible (she became Chloe, and lived a long and happy life). It was interesting to find myself being so territorial about it. But names matter: not just our given names, but the ones that people hang on us, the nicknames or category labels. These things give or take away social and cultural and personal power. What we call people, what we call ourselves, makes a difference.

Mementos

Hi Kelley,

I am planning a 15th class reunion and we are wondering what are some of the mementos we can give our fellow classmates?

karla and bessie

Hmm. It seems to me that mementos fall into two basic camps: the commercially easy but relatively impersonal, and the lots-of-work-for-you but more personal. I suppose it depends on how much you like your class and whether you really want to (or have the time to) do a bunch of work just to give them a gift.

I’ve been to reunions where the main mementos were T-shirts and/or baseball caps. Neither of these excited me particularly, but they certainly aren’t bad in any way. Deciding what design to put on them can be fun, and they are easy to get produced. There are also things like mugs, calendars, etc. that can be produced with photos or text. On the work-your-ass-off side of the scale are the customized items –” music, photo albums or montages, reunion books. The CDs I made took me at least 150 hours of planning, programming, duplication, and graphic design time, and I would assume that other customized items would require a similar commitment.

I can imagine lots of things that might be fun to do, but it’s not clear to me how feasible they are. Given time, you could project-manage a huge collaborative memento –” everyone (who wants to) contributing a message to the class, or a piece of art, or a photo they took, that embodies their experience at school.

My take is that mementos, whether mass-produced or personally crafted, should be A) something that people can actually interact with (read, drink from, laugh and wonder over, or use in their everday world), and B) something that will reconnect them with their school experience. Giving them an object with the school’s name tastefully silkscreened on it does not, in my opinion, accomplish this: they already know the name of the school, after all. But something with a picture, or a text memory, or a special class motto, might do the trick. Mileage varies, as always.

You will have to pay for this stuff up front and collect the cost as part of what you charge each person to attend the reunion, unless you are fortunate enough to have a school budget already available for such things. So be warned: stuff is expensive (grin). If you want to make sure everyone in your class gets a memento, and not just those at the reunion, then the people who come to the reunion pretty much end up covering the cost of the mementos (and shipping) for those who don’t. Charge accordingly.

You haven’t said if this is a high school or college reunion, or anything about your class. I’d be interested in hearing more: where did you go to school, and what was it like? Are you happy about being in charge of this event? (I can imagine it being equal parts fun and nightmare, myself.) What are you hoping for?

Good luck with it. I hope you have a blast.

Dreaming big

Congratulations on an awesome book! I hope you succeed beyond your wildest dreams and have a life of writing, beer, and Nicola.

Cara

I must admit that succeeding beyond my wildest dreams is a stretch goal, because I dream big. I’m thinking, well, okay, what’s my wildest dream of success, and I can’t even post it here, it’s just too over the top.

I find that I am not embarrassed to have these dreams, which are a very powerful force in my personality and my life. But I am sometimes embarrassed to share them with other people. The endless question: what to reveal, what to keep private. It’s hard to have precious things misunderstood or dismissed. Yet I also believe that dreams are harder to achieve if they are too closely guarded, never made external in any way. It seems to me they need to be expressed somehow, even if it’s just out loud to myself in a field miles from nowhere in the middle of the night. It’s mighty powerful to say, “I want this.” It sets up echoes that come back at the damndest times.

So thank you for your kind wishes. I hope so too. I want it.

A sad and lonely pig

Thanks for the round! It’s great that you had so much fun at your reunion. I didn’t go to my 5th or my 10th. As much as I loved my school, I couldn’t wait to leave. A girl I had a crush on found out about it and the last six months of senior year were a bit unpleasant. I don’t know what I ever saw in that girl. She wasn’t a nice person to begin with. And I ate pickled herring for her!

I’m so happy that you’re curious about the project. I don’t get to discuss it much with my friends because they’re not really into it. They don’t understand why I get so excited over something as simple as diffusion spray.

I get what you mean about process. I think that a year and a half ago, we had some “bad process”. Each of us had a specific need that wasn’t being met. But we didn’t communicate our needs. And that led to a lot of frustration. Then Alx (how he spells it) wanted to hurry up and film. I didn’t see the point in rushing, especially since the characters weren’t fully developed. And Rich was a “Silent Bob” of sorts.

Now, things are different. We have a master plan. So, when stupid shit pops up (and it has), we work through it more efficiently.

Wayfarer 1 is a full length digital film. But, we have to film it in parts because we don’t have a lot of money. We refer to each part as an episode (i.e. Wayfarer 1: The Search for Devil’s Tower). Even then, the “episode” is broken down…to a 15 min. short. We hope to put one out every 3 months, but we’ll be happy with one every six. And we’ll be even happier if we can create a little underground buzz.

That being said, our first short is almost finished. We have to re-shoot the first two scenes and the last scene. Then Alx will compose the soundtrack (he was in a band once upon a time…big in Germany and Japan). We borrowed music from The Matrix, Aliens, Sneakers, etc. for our “in house” copy. It will be a few months before we pass it out to people at the sci-fi convention. Oh, and the Renaissance fair. Then we’re going to set up a website where everyone can watch it if they want to.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote five new scenes and made up two new characters (Agent Savage and Agent Tallent. They’re the elite members of the Recovery Team. And they just so happen to be remote viewers). Now, I do believe what you said about good process, but I have to tell you that there’s nothing like a good sign to go along with it. I was on the phone with Alx, discussing my idea and explaining why I thought Nate (lead female) should refer to Savage and Tallent as “the Swanns” (after Ingo Swann) –” I got a call waiting beep. Normally, I’d ignore it. But for some reason, I clicked over. It was my neighbor from across the street. “Lindsey, you have to come outside! There’s a swan in my front yard!” I had just said, “swann” to Alx and now there’s a swan. I’m not embarrassed to say that I took it as a sign.

Anyway, one of the ideas I came up with has something to do with a response you gave here in the pub. Our main characters work for Mr. Timm. He’s the head of the spy ring, but no one actually sees him. His spy ring is called, “the gameboard”. There are two kinds of spies and they are called, “players”. Then we have our tactical remotes and recoverers. And then there’s Mr. Timm’s right hand woman. She runs the show from behind the scenes. One day, I was thinking, where the hell are these people operating from? Then I came up with the idea of EXALISSE… a company that manufactures boardgames and trading cards. It’s a front, obviously. And it makes sense. That’s not stealing anything, right? I hope not because it’s so perfect.

Until July, that’s pretty much it for Wayfarer 1. In the meantime, I have to grow some hair. Right now, I have what I like to call a “feminine fade”… it’s what I have to tell the hairdresser to keep her from squaring off the back of my head. I’ll be playing Tallent. She’s going to have a “dragonballZ” kind of thing going on. Oh, Wayfarer 1 is our spaceship. I don’t think I mentioned that. And yes, it’s a really cool set. We built it ourselves.

Just one more thing… I liked your response to that question about what you hoped to accomplish in the next 25 years. I think all of it is possible. Even the U2 thing. Screenwriting, once you have a vision, is pretty easy (somebody probably wants to shoot me for that). And it’s even easier if you have Final Draft software. It’s the rules that are tricky sometimes. But we’re not sending our script to anyone (though we are getting a copyright), so I’ve broken quite a few of them. Our actors are not professionally trained, so I use more description than what is allowed, in hopes that it will get them to that place. If that makes sense.

Well, take care.

Lindsey

Oh, yeah! What was that 4th grade teacher like???

Well, this all sounds pretty cool and I hope it’s working out, although I’m trying to imagine where one builds a spaceship set without upsetting the neighbors. If you will let me know when your website is live, I’ll be happy to link to it. And if your superspies want to use a games company as a front, more power to them: it’s certainly a chaotic enough business to hide any amount of ulterior motive or general wackiness.

My 4th-grade history teacher was a mean and angry woman. She also seemed, even to my nine-year-old self, sad and lonely and confused by a world that had backwashed her into a dead-end situation. In the 1960s it was hard for suddenly-divorced or widowed women in their 40’s and 50’s to find lucrative, soul-satisfying ways of taking care of themselves. My grammar school was a place where some of them ended up. Some of my teachers were there because they loved their work, and they made a huge impact on me. But some of them were there because they lived in small windowless apartments and made daily choices between the electricity bill and the new timing belt for the car. And they’d never even heard of a timing belt before, because their men had always handled that, and maybe the car mechanic was bullshitting them about the whole thing. How to know? They didn’t have college degrees or special skills or even much practice at mapping out a life, and they understood that there weren’t many options for them. Those people had a huge impact on me too.

Anyway, long story short: my history teacher disliked me intensely. Maybe she didn’t like any of us, I’m not sure, but I’m positive about me. One day I was in the girls’ bathroom alone. I had tooth that was just loosening, but not nearly ready to come out –” just at the point where it moved slightly and bled a little if I poked it with my tongue or finger, which of course I was doing all the time. This teacher came into the bathroom and found me in front of the mirror with my mouth open, poking. So she took some dental floss out of her purse, pinned me in a corner while she wrapped it around my tooth, tied the other end around the doorknob, and slammed the door. It hurt, it bled, it scared me, I cried, and she was happy. She may have been a nice person in some other areas of her life, but that day she was a pig.

Reunion

Greetings and cheers to everyone in the Dream Pub. This one is my round, while I explain where I’ve been –” up to my ears in ASL studies and events, banging my head against the new book, and working on a project, more about which below. Lots of doing with not enough time for thinking or feeling or just being, until recently.

Some of it’s just timing, the conjunction of: end of the term in ASL school with the attendant papers and exams and commitments; the latest issue of the newsletter that I do layout for; a certain number of happy but inconvenient social activities; and emotional and practical preparations for a Big Event.

Last weekend I went to my 25th high school reunion at St. Paul’s School in Concord, New Hampshire. Exuberance alert: my years at school were an incredibly special time and place for me, and I am still bubbling from my reunion experience. I will not dwell on the relative unhappiness of grammar school, although if anyone really wants to hear the story of the 4th grade history teacher, just ask… And from that, I went to four years of living and learning and growing in a place of privilege and dreams. To this socially isolated low-income kid from the South, it was Narnia. I walked through an unexpected door into a magical place where I could dare to connect, learn how to think, practice autonomy, flex my imagination, use my brains. Challenge my assumptions. Invent a self I liked better. Change my prospects. A place where I had some measure of personal power. All of this tucked away in nearly 2,000 acres of old brick buildings and woods and lakes and sky, where it was dark enough at night to see the stars and I always felt safe.

Of course, it mattered that I didn’t have the right clothes or vacation destinations. I learned some hard lessons about different worlds, about class and status and behavior. I experienced the impact of other people’s assumptions. I made a lot of assumptions of my own. Blah, blah. Going there was one of the five best decisions I’ve ever made. It shaped me in ways I’m still learning to understand.

So: it’s 25 years later and here comes the reunion. There was no question about going: it’s been on my radar for a couple of years. I decided several months ago that I’d like to give a gift to my Form (i.e. my class, the Form of 1978) –” a compilation CD of music that was playing in our dorms, our dances, in the Coffeehouse where we went to smoke cigarettes at night. The organizers liked the idea well enough that it became one of the official reunion mementos. So for the last couple of months I’ve been selecting music (my choices and suggestions from classmates), editing the mix into a 2-CD set, and making an insert booklet and labels. The booklet includes a high-school photo of everyone I could find, roughly 125 people.

I had a great time doing this. It was a huge amount of work, but that’s what makes it a gift. And it helped me be ready to go into the reunion with my arms and mind and heart wide open, and no expectations. Even though I didn’t exchange more than a few words with some of these folks for the entire time we were in school, we were still a part of the fabric of each other’s daily lives. We lived in dorms together. We ate our meals in each other’s company. We were on teams and in clubs and at the Coffeehouse together. We passed each other in various stages of inebriation on the way to or from the woods on Saturday nights. We grew up together, and what I learned this weekend is that it matters. In some ways these people are my family.

So here we came, more than half of us, mostly happy with ourselves, eager to see each other, with the adolescent divisions seemingly dissolved, or at least in abeyance. I heard so many fascinating stories and had a glimpse of such different lives. Some of the re-connections will last, and some will not survive the daily distractions of all our lives, but that’s just details: the bottom line is we had so much fucking fun that it makes me smile to write about it, and it was the kind of fun that comes from being connected, even on the most tenuous level, for more than half our lives. Another lesson: the wheel goes around.

    Unreformed: SPS 1978 – Disc 1

  1. Do You Feel Like We Do (edit) – Peter Frampton
  2. Born To Be Wild – Steppenwolf
  3. Don’t Fear (The Reaper) – Blue Oyster Cult
  4. Riders On The Storm – The Doors
  5. Dream On – Aerosmith
  6. White Rabbit – Jefferson Airplane
  7. Dreams – Fleetwood Mac
  8. All Along The Watchtower – Jimi Hendrix
  9. Can’t Find My Way Home – Blind Faith
  10. Kashmir – Led Zeppelin
  11. Truckin’ – Grateful Dead
  12. Get Down Tonight – K.C. & The Sunshine Band
  13. Just What I Needed – The Cars
  14. Suffragette City – David Bowie
  15. Play That Funky Music – Wild Cherry
    Unreformed: SPS 1978 – Disc 2

  1. Fantasy – Earth Wind & Fire
  2. Moondance – Van Morrison
  3. Layla – Derek & The Dominos
  4. Landslide – Fleetwood Mac
  5. Happiness Is A Warm Gun – The Beatles
  6. Time – Pink Floyd
  7. The Low Spark Of High Heeled Boys – Traffic
  8. The Needle And The Damage Done – Neil Young
  9. Sultans of Swing – Dire Straits
  10. I Wish – Stevie Wonder
  11. Brown Sugar – The Rolling Stones
  12. Rebel Rebel – David Bowie
  13. Born To Run – Bruce Springsteen
  14. Free Bird – Lynyrd Skynyrd

In praise of process

Leroux’s blackberry brandy in celebration of one of my own projects (a group project actually)!!!!!

I just had to let you know that, two weeks ago, I reread, “The Hum of Human Cities”, way too many commas here, I’m sure…I was distracted the first time I read it and couldn’t enjoy it the way I wanted to. Anyway, it got me thinking about a project that me and some friends had been working on. Oh, our thing was nothing like your short story, so I don’t even know why it made me think of it. I guess it got me thinking back to a more creative time.

It’s a film project, sort of. My friend came up with this idea in 1993, but it didn’t start taking shape until 2000 (that’s when we met and became friends). I suggested that some of the dialogue could be better so he gave me what he had and told me to rewrite it. So, I did (I’m not a writer. Just an okay ear.). This got him and an other friend thinking up even more ideas. So, the three of us spent hours writing together…and drinking blackberry brandy. We rewrote the thing 17 times because we kept coming up with better ideas (that and one of the locations we wrote around got torn down).

We broke up. What started out as fun became a pain in the ass. People who said they’d act for us, showed up when they wanted to. We took on the roles of the main characters ourselves. We had to get rid of characters because there was nobody to play them…more rewrites. We argued all the time. It was a mess. And we walked away from it with silent fuck you’s. That was a little over a year ago. We haven’t seen or spoken to each other since.

After rereading your short story, my friends were on my mind more than ever. For two weeks, all I thought about was the needless death of our project. Then my friend called and said he was sorry for being an asshole and could we give it another shot. So I said sorry too and yesterday, we met up with our other friend and had blackberry brandy.

Maybe it would’ve happened sooner or later, but for now, I’m chalking it up to “The Hum of Human Cities”. So…thanks.

Don’t worry, I’m not a pub stalker. I’m just really excited about the project and thought to pass the joy along. After all, it was your story that got me thinking so hard.

Thanks again.

Lindsey

Oh, I almost forgot… If anyone is curious, it’s a pg-13 sci-fi, action-adventure, comedy, spy, romance series. It’ll be a whole bunch of 15min. shorts. Sort of like watching a comic book. Fun not deep or enlightening.

I’m curious! It’s been a while since you sent this in (my bad, sorry) –” any developments?

Passing joy along is a Good Thing. I appreciate it. It would be nice to think that Hum had something to do with it, but in the end you and your friends made the choice to reconnect. Choice is what it’s about. Choosing to pick up the phone. Choosing to have the conversation. Or choosing not to. You did the work, you get the blackberry brandy (smile). I hope everyone has a great time together, whether the project gets done or not.

This got me thinking about process (Lindsey, this isn’t about your specific story… just me wandering off into the woods of management theory). There’s an assumption down deep in our culture that if people have the burning desire to achieve a particular result, it will happen as if by magic… and if it doesn’t, it’s because someone screwed up or wasn’t really committed, or whatever. And that’s just not always the case. Bad process brings bad results, even with all the goodwill in the world among the players. How we do things may not be the sole priority, but it’s important.

The biggest conflicts I had in my corporate life revolved around this issue: I worked with some executives who were adamant that process was bullshit: it didn’t matter how chaotic our everyday was as long as we made the numbers and did the deals. These same folks were so surprised that the Project Management team of 26 people could manage half a billion dollars of product development in a year with fewer mistakes and less stress and more workplace happiness than ever before. Huh, they said, scratching their heads. What’s the secret? And when it turned out the secret was in communication, process negotiation and re-negotiation, accountability without abuse, clear descriptions of who was responsible for what, etc… oh, the horror! I could never do that! To which my response was (and still is), what an asshole. Anyone can do it. It’s just a job skill.

But whose fault is this? Our culture has historically valued independence and bootstrapping more than collaboration and community. “Everyone knows” that results without process is better than process without results. My question is, who decided this had to be an either/or equation? And my thinking, more subversively, is that sometimes process is more important. Sometimes it’s better to have agreements about working together so that people don’t have to disconnect in order to maintain their own boundaries or manage their disappointment. If Nicola and I ever collaborate on something, what counts more: the published book (or screenplay, that’d be fun!), or the next 50 years of our relationship? Well, duh.

So why, why, why aren’t these skills part of a child’s basic education? We teach our kids how to be competitive and encourage them to assert their individuality, and then wonder why they grow up with fractured notions of community and the belief that winning is an exclusive activity rather than an inclusive one. It seems that recently a balancing force has come into play in schools –” I hear more about kids being exposed to conflict management skills, collaborative activities, etc. I hope this is true. I don’t think we should raise a bunch of polite robots –” just people who understand that if we’re all going to take so much pride in being individuals, it means we have to do a little more bridging work in order to get a group result. That’s my vision. Have our cake and eat it together.

Rant off (grin). This is all coming up for me in part because of my learning more about Deaf history and Deaf culture, and the particular assumptions that exist in American (hearing) culture about what is language, what is communication, and how do we assign class and status based on those things? We read a book called Everyone Here Spoke Sign Language by Nora Ellen Groce that was instructive. She’s a researcher who traced the origins of hereditary deafness on Martha’s Vineyard, where for most of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century a huge percentage of the population was deaf. During that time, everyone in the community, hearing and deaf, was multi-lingual in some combination of spoken English, written English, and sign. She was able to talk to elders who were alive during this time, and without exception they didn’t differentiate between deaf and hearing status. When asked to remember people who were “handicapped,” they would pull out examples of people losing limbs or with some sort of mental disability. When asked specifically about deafness, one woman said, “Those people weren’t handicapped. They were just deaf.” No one was denied access to the community based on language modality.

Yikes, I’m not going to get started again. Rant control engaged. But my corporate skills and my cultural learning and my concerns as a writer (story, connection, the human heart) are beginning to mesh in some pretty interesting ways.