heathervescent

Foreign / Not Foreign

I had a strange realization just as my Virgin Atlantic flight took off from Los Angeles bound to London last week. I was listening to the directions - all in that lovely internationally sounding female British voice. I overheard my fellow passengers chatting - most in that British accent. Flight attendants also all in that British accent. Finally, the captain came on and welcomed everyone on the flight that would take them ... "home."

Home?!?! What shock then! Los Angeles is my home! From my perspective, this flight is taking me away from home!

That's when the epiphany came. _I_ was the one with the accent. I was the foreigner. 

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As I've walked these London streets this past week. Managed my jetlag (brilliantly, I might add), met with people, had conversations, eat, go to the office, go to stores - all the normal everyday things I might do at home, I've been aware of my foreigner status. I've made no effort to try to blend in. I've made no effort to change my LA (recently strongly influenced by Texas) style. I'll bet, I'm the only person walking around the London Bank district in black cowboy boots. They're just my favorite pair of shoes at the moment and I couldn't bear to not bring them with me. 

What fun is it being a foreigner if the whole time I'm trying to fit in - trying to smooth over my standing-out? Squashing my California expression? Does a rock star change their style when they are traveling to fit into the local look? I don't think so.

The point of all this a awareness. The conscious choice to stay attuned to my culture, while in another culture. This goes for corporate culture too. 

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When I send emails from my corporate account, the British English spellcheck always catches specific words, trying to convert them into their British spelling. This is a strange thing for me - because for some words, I already use the British spelling (thank you International Flight Attendant Mom). But for others, I use the "American" English and refuse to change the spelling. 

It was a cute thing at first... and it's certainly helping me learn differences between American and British English. But if I ever start saying/using "maths", will you please shoot me with my own gun?

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When I was a teenager, "banished" to grow up in Iowa - the great plains - the MidWest - farm country; I used to entertain myself in the afternoons by driving the open roads. I'd spend hours exploring gravel roads, barely paved paths, of course at as high speeds as I could push my teenager-safe car to go - I would listen to new-wave rock and think about other places. Exotic, cultured, foreign places. Places like Europe, Africa, India, South America.

One day it hit me (after I had returned from six months in Brazil, so full of saudade I could explode) - this place I lived in - where I freely drove to Hell and back. Down to the Mississippi on a midnight lark. Racing trains, kicking up dust on gravel roads, triumphantly stopped on the bridge overpass, waving as the train passed under. Hiking old Indian paths in the forest, barely visible, picnics in old horse thief caves (long since collapsed). These "boring" "normal" "unexotic" places to me - were to someone else ... quite exotic. And these were grand adventures. 

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It's about perspective. Where you stand when you look. Isn't that magic? That the same object, the same experience, the same thing... can be interpreted dramatically differently?

Who can say, which perspective is "right" or "correct" - rather than "is."

The Montessori Smile

As I was packing some of my favorite books today (faerie tales, Italio Calvino, Brothers Grimm), I wondered what my first social experiment was. As I flipped back through my memories I came to 3 year old Heather. I went to a Montessori school just down the block. I was bored, having already finished the assignments - I had too much energy - my teachers didn't know what to do with me.  

It was picture day. They lined us up. As I stood there, waiting for other kids to get in place, settle down, they said they would take three pictures. Bored, waiting there, I wondered how I could know which picture they would use. There was no way I could know this now, before the fact, or during the picture taking, but I could do something that would tell me which picture they used in retrospect. I decided to make three faces. Then I could remember the order, thus knowing which one they used. Ready for the first shot, I made my big usual smile. Second time, a slight smile, Mona Lisa style. Third shot I went full emo frown. (I wanted faces that didn't look like I was making faces.) 

When the picture came back, I was disappointed with the choice but I knew which one they used. It was the third one. Of course, then I wanted to know what criteria they used for their selection. 

It's probably not my first social experiement, but it's the one I thought of today.

The Present vs The Future

Eckhart Tolle's work and the concept of being present has come up in my network from several places recently. For several weeks, I've been percolating upon my issues with this work, trying to reconcile my negative associations with it - while practicing and living in the present moment - something I have spent years doing with various successes. I wondered, why does something about his work rub me the wrong way, while I generally agree and practice the concept?

It's important to note that I've spent years business/life planning as well as professional training to be a futurist (using scientific and creative methods to explore future possibilities).

And I've spent more than three decades understanding, decoding and reprogramming my own programming.

Here's the rub. It's not either/or. It's not a choice between the intertwined past, the present or the future. One must move fluidly between these states; mining, acting, learning and creating.

I should be honest here, my intention is not to live a life of happiness, to get my needs met, gain power or money. My intention is to consciously be - create who I want to be/am. Which is both creation and be-ing. It's a "goal" that is never met, always met, never changing, always evolving.

The present moment is about action (or inaction). It's where the shit happens (GTD baby!). It's the moving spark in time of manifestation, creation, action, re-action. It's where choice occurs. It's where one can jump from one quantum branched reality to another. (Which I have done upon numerous occasions.)

But how does one decide how or what one wants to act, or call in the programming (e.g re-act)? Is there is a preferred branch to jump into? How does one know what to look for? To read the signs? To understand the impact, the ripple of one's actions? In the pregnant present - a moment just barely into the future.

One decides how one wants to consciously act by mining the past and visiting/seeing future possibilities/implications.

Of course, it's not as simple in practice. 

Living solely in the present is as much a trap as living in the past or dreaming always about the future. 

Tolle's work, and the mantra to be present in the present moment is too simplistic for me. It's missing a magical world of manifesting, creating the world, creating the future (for accurate work once must know the past). I'm not saying, don't live in the present moment - but to live in the conscious present - you must regularly visit the past and the future.

The Invisible Arts

I lose myself to find myself. 

I'm assaulted by the smell of raw fish and grey shrimp. Cartons of Chinese vegetables, prickly Durian, fat fuscha Dragon Fruit. I navigate the streets full of people. Stopping to peruse the red envelopes and knock off bags. Wandering these small streets, comfortable in my illiteracy.

In the park, my eye is drawn to the Tai Chi practitioners. I don't know the specific series, but I know similar ones from years of warrior practice. Watching them push and pull with energetic tension makes me long for my martial weapons. I continue to watch them and observe they are plucking the strings of energy, pushing and pulling, creating an invisible work of art. It comforts me. Seeing them paint and play and pluck the energy, seeing each series of movements creating a work of art. The body a paintbrush, the painting invisible. 

It's the same with song. There are several groups playing music. I'm loitering near one. I imagine they get together every Saturday to play and sing together in this park. Friends stop and say hello, embrace between stanzas. I'm seeing the invisible. Hearing the song, seeing the relationship interactions, the Tai Chi series paintings.

I am a similar artist. This body, these hands are the paintbrush; my ephemeral, transient life, the painting. A work of art created in/with time - moment by moment.

 

New York Fail

I'm standing at the counter of a UPS store on Broadway crying. My dead laptop in one hand, my phone in the other. What was to be the triumphant sending of my Thinkpad to Lenovo for repair was complete and crushing failure. (This was plan D going into action, after the failure of plan A, B and C.)

Simply, the required packing materials were not at this UPS Store - or any other store in Manhattan either. And no one - not the clerks behind the desk or the UPS Customer Service Rep on the phone could tell me how I find a store with the required packing materials, other than individually calling each store (of which I did call 7 with failure).

In desperation, I called Lenovo and asked them if I could send the machine (aka my other brain) in other packing materials - but No, that would void the warranty. I was completely crushed. I hated this city and all it's people - their unwilling, inability to solve this problem. And that's when I realized what I hate about New York - it's the people - the attitude - this culture. 

Not friendly, not willing to help someone out. Seemingly only in it for themselves, hyper competitive. Ready (and willing) to fuck you over, cheat you, mercilessly watch as you crumble offering no assistance what so ever, no help. What an archaic paradigm.

What the fuck New York? It's not about the competition. You've got it wrong. 

"The battle is not here with your fellow men, but out there, in Infinity."

We can do so much more together.

The World I want to Live in

Feeling beaten down by a stressful week, I am reminded of the reasons I do these things.

"You don't do them for money or fame or because it's easy. You do these things because that's the world you want to live in." - Jean Poulet

I want to live in a world where people think outside the box to solve problems beyond the standard procedure. I want to live in a world where someone can have rockstar hair in traditional business environment. I want to live in a world where granddaughters send their grandmothers flowers - every month. I want to live in a world where people make amazing experiences for other people. I want to live in a world that evolves down a pathway that increases possibilities. I want to live in a world where people are aware of the ripple of their influence on others and themselves. I want a world aware.

I create this world I want to live in - bittersweetly, even if I rarely get to experience it. 

Creating the world you want to live in is a hard task. The status quo beats and attacks and shuts you down. Sometimes breaks you. But there is always another day, another attempt to create this world anew.

Giving other people (who are mere reflections of myself) the experiences I desperately crave.