curlysalamander's blog

Gift

So the Reverb prompt asks what's the most memorable gift, tangible or emotional, you received this year? Well it wasn't really a big thing, but it sure stuck in my mind. A client sent me a $20.00 gift certificate to a local bookstore. In all my years of consulting, no client has ever sent me a Christmas gift and I never expected one. This one came especially out of the blue, since my knuckles had been rather severely rapped by this same client, only months before. Proof, that there is nothing like ambiguity to capture one's attention.

Doing the Reverb 10 (reverb10.com) -- actually the very tail end of it, since I just discovered it a few days before it ends. Today's prompt is to write about a defining moment in the past year. I guess for me that has to be Dad's death. Nothing quite so defining as the loss of a parent. I feel a whole lot more mortal, for one thing. My Dad was a perpetual youth, so even in his mid 80's he did not really feel that much older than me. I want to live every day of my remaining life as fully as possible, with as much awareness as possible, and kindness

My Dad was a gentle, basically happy person. He spent a lot of time with me as a little girl. He sang beautifully and his voice is what I most strongly still remember about him -- probably because the geographic distance between us made the phone our main means of communication. He took me to a local dairy where I got to try milking cows. We went horseback riding together. He got me a sailboat when I was 10 and a red Corvair convertible when I was 16. His parting words to me, throughout his life were, "Have fun." I was blessed. I'll miss him.

This transition seems pretty seamless. I'm impressed.

Teambuilding

This post is a bit out of left field for a personal blog, especially since my work life has been, shall we say, ephemeral, for the past several months. I've been having trouble deciding whether to think of myself as unemployed or retired. However, the topic of team building came up in a causal conversation recently and I realize I have a need to rant about it.  

Most people I know who have been through a team-building exercise will tell you that its main benefit to them was to have some time off work and to have some guided play time with their co-workers.  Generally that good feeling of gliding down the rapids or negotiating a ropes course evaporates quickly once the tensions and stresses of work reappear in their day-to-day experience.  

But teamwork is important at all levels of any organization and it doesn't usually happen automatically or even in the thrill of white water.  You might learn to all paddle in the same direction, but it's unlikely those skills will actually translate into your next project meeting.  In the rare instances where teamwork does seem to occur without a lot of effort, you can bet there is an experienced leader, and generally some experienced "team players." 

Almost by accident I discovered an approach to team-building that is grounded in the real work of the organization.  I was conducting a strategic planning exercise with the executive team of a major health care provider in California.  After we developed some reasonable goals and objectives I asked the normal question -- what are the barriers we need to overcome in order to achieve these objectives?  No real response.  So I started writing some typical barriers on the white board -- lack of resources, lack of manpower, dysfunctional team, etc.  Bingo.  Everyone wanted to talk about their dysfunctional team.  

So instead of planning an off-site team-building, we decided to embed team development in the strategic planning process.  Using Patrick Lenzioni's book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, we did an assessment before we started and after the four three-hour planning/team development sessions.  Although dealing with the team issues slowed down the planning process quite a bit -- the end result was pretty amazing.    

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable (J-B Lencioni Series)

I've always wanted to revisit that process, but it's not an easy sell.  The people who look for assistance with strategic planning are not generally focused on team development, and the human resources people are often excluded from the strategic discussions (another rant, for another day).  Or not.  

Now, back to your regularly scheduled programming.

Oldie but Goodie

My current hospice client is just about the same age as I am.  I see her once a week for Reike, chat and whatever humor or comfort I can offer.  Yesterday, for some reason, we were talking about the need to take your place in the world -- not aggressively, but clearly and gently.  Although I hadn't thought of it in years, this well worn poem of our youth came to mind, and it struck a chord for both of us.  It still works for me, after all these years.

desiderata 

Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.

As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant, they too have their story. Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit.

If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself. Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism. Be yourself. Especially, do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love, for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is perennial as the grass.

Take kindly to the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be, and whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul.

With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world.

Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

Max Ehrmann c.1920

How Does my Garden Grow?

This year, Mr. Salamander fenced in an area right outside my office to make a garden.  Without fences, the deer eat everything.  Now even I will admit they are kind of cute this time of year, but they eat absolutely everything you might want to plant.  Hence, the fence.

Bambi

We've had a crash course in soil and organic gardening because it turns out that there were some problems with the soil we bought from a local guy who thought he was selling us his version of sea soil.  When tested, the soil had very low levels of nutrients, so something wasn't quite right.  We've been adding compost and organic fertilizer and things seem to be perking up a bit.  

The most enthusiastic growers have been the peas -- right there in the center.  No actual pea pods yet, but a gratifying amount of foliage.  It turns out that peas don't actually need fertilizer, they make their own, like other legumes.  

I've got lettuces, arugula, a cucumber, a pumpkin, some delicata squash, beets and some tomatoes that someone organically and lovingly brought to a transplanting height.  This isn't the best area for tomatoes, but hope springs eternal. The biggest lesson so far is patience.  I tend to anxiously hover, but these things really do take their own sweet time.  Sure is pretty, though. 

Garden

Garden lake

Blueberry

New Music I Love

I've never before posted a music video on this blog, and this is a bit unusual because it is a TED episode, featuring Natalie Merchant's ambitious new project to set old children's poems to music.  In the hands of a lesser artist this could easily have backfired, but instead she has created a magical two-album set that is spell binding for children of all ages.  Enjoy!

Natalie Merchant sings old poems to life

The Fruits of Introspection

I haven’t posted to this blog in quite some time and even now I’m not at all sure what I want to say.  I’ve been having a period of introspection, which is soon to end with a very busy and engaged trip to see pretty much all of my blood relatives in one fell 10-day swoop through the east coast of the U.S.  And when I get back, “hospitality season” will be soon upon us, so there will be less idle time for woolgathering. 

 So, if only for the record, here’s what I’ve been up to for the past several months or so. First of all here's what I haven't been doing: entertaining, working, or travelling. It's been lovely to pretty much move in our own little orbits and in a way it felt like a really deep kind of vacation.  Here are a few of the things I have been doing.

Swimming  -- I swam a whole mile on New Years Day.  I generally swim a kilometer at a stretch and go at least once a week.  I now have a cool underwater mp3 player, which makes the whole thing blissful.

Sleeping -- You just can't beat getting regular long sleeps.  One of the nicer things about low stress and B.C.'s cool long nights.  

Woolgathering – Of course I’ve been knitting and spinning up a storm.  I’m all but finished with the immense Tree of Life afghan, and I have also produced a bunch of smaller bits.  Mr. Salamander has taken to making spindles, so I have been doing much more hand spinning, and liking it even more than spinning on my wheel, if that is possible.  I never thought it would be possible to have more spindles than I could possibly need or want, but we are approaching that delightful state.

The Red Book

Jung – I have been reading a chapter of the Red Book each day.  It’s a lot like going on someone’s acid trip with them – a very intelligent someone.  I would say so far that the main take-home message is not to ignore your shadow.  That means death and everything that disgusts you…which brings me to my next topic:

Disgust – There’s a lot to be revolted about in the world, much of which it is possible to ignore.  Lately one of the things I haven’t been able to ignore (thank you Mr. Salamander) is the way our food has been hijacked by Big Business. Start with the documentary Food, Inc. to get scared about the genetic manipulation of vegetables, and then get ready to gag over the very well written Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer.  I don’t like giving up sushi not one little bit I tell you that.  

And for more retch-worthy intelligence about the killing and eating of dolphins, check out the academy award winning documentary, The Cove. 

Food, Inc.

The Cove

Eating Animals

Unrelated to food, but equally enlightening and disgusting was The Price of Pleasure: Pornography Sexuality and Relationships. I'm a congenitally, perhaps overly, open- minded person and don't think I'm easily shocked, but this made me want to cry and/or hurt somebody.  I'm not at all sure whether Muslim cultures that repress women are any worse than cultures like our own that view it as entertaining to treat them like objects to dominate and hurt.

For some reason, all of these things came together right about the time that Jung was going on about embracing his shadow material.  I’m still not sure what to make of it all. So let me end on a more positive note.

Vegetable Gardening -- There's really not a lot we can do about what is being done to us, but I do think it's important, if only for our own sanity, to try to offset the juggernaut.  Jung, similarly, was anticipating the beginning of World War I, and really feeling the crazy energy that led up to that.  Anyway, one small step is that we are going to plant some vegetables.  Another is that I'm not eating any more large fish.  I'm still having sardines and shellfish, because I have been informed that these are sustainable.  My not eating fish will not prevent the devastation of the ocean even a little bit, but there you go.  I'm already on the bandwagon not eating other animals.  I'm not at all happy about this, mind you.  My relationship with my sushi chef is closer than the one I have with my hairdresser and I can't think of any way of explaining this to him, never mind the language barrier.   

Mostly, I think, we have to be willing to look hard at the stuff we want to push away -- the nightmare, the shadow.  Otherwise, it runs us.  

"Are you here for the party or are you here for the pain?"

Reading the homages to mysterious J.D. Salinger, I've been enjoying the trip down literary memory lane.  A recent article along these lines, combined with a slightly obscure song lyric from the song "Seven" by James -- the title of this post-- triggered an odd and rambling train of thought.  

The article (which is worth a read) takes off on the riff that it's really no surprise that Holden Caulfield is not the hero he once was --  he doesn't do much for young readers, apparently.  The illustrating anecdote was that a 15-year-old boy from Long Island was recently quoted as saying, "Oh, we all hated Holden in my class. We just wanted to tell him, ‘Shut up and take your Prozac.’"

Maybe the miracle of modern medicine can enable this newest generation of adolescents to delay suffering and alienation.  Now that we can intervene in the neuro-chemistry of our children, we can strive to have no more unhappy adolescent outsiders asking those caustic, helpless Holden Caulfield questions.  What parent, what teacher, what grinch wouldn't do what she could to make kids happy, all the time, without exception?  

The young prince who became the Buddha led a similarly sheltered life as a boy, having been prevented by his overprotective father from knowing anything at all about death, disease, or aging.   The whole idea of suffering, an idea which he had no reason until his early 20's to consider, hit him like an existential ton of bricks, and (fortunately for generations to come) led to some of the most profound thinking about the human situation that has ever been articulated.  

I remember the day in my late adolescence the party shifted suddenly to the pain.  I was a junior in a small Washington D.C.college, exuberantly on my way across town to meet my boyfriend and head home for Easter vacation when I heard on the taxi radio that Martin Luther King was shot.  More suddenly than you can imagine, the city was a raw nerve and we were all part of it.  I remember the fires, and the sound of broken glass and the tears of the black ladies and old men on the street and the amazing grace singing and the sense that all goodness in the world had been punctured by a single shot.

Here's the thing, not to oversimplify the Buddha.  There's the suffering that makes us feel alienated and alone, and there's the suffering that makes us feel like we are part of the great universal suffering of humankind.  We don't always get to choose which kind to feel, but Buddhism's approach to suffering consistently invites us away from the bitterness and anger of alienation.  It is in our co-suffering, our compassion, that we sense our common humanity.

In contrast to which, feeling good, hanging out with people you care about -- the party -- makes it easy to feel like everything is right in the world . Another insight of the Buddha -- All beings "long, large, middling, short, subtle, blatant, seen or unseen, near or far" want to be happy. There's nothing in his philosophy that extolls the nobility of suffering.  We have the Abrahamic religions (Christian, Muslim, Jewish) with their drama and martyrs to thank for that tradition.

But none of these schools of thought -- Eastern or Western -- understood anything much about brain chemistry, because that understanding is an entirely new thing.

The dance of pain and pleasure, happiness and suffering, is the great universal human operating system.  It will be interesting to see how new generations, capable of greater self-manipulation, reinterpret the choreography and rewrite the code.