heathervescent

2013: A Year in Review

It seems like not long ago I was writing my 2012 review in a hotel room in Southern Utah.

When I reflect on where I was a year ago, it's like a different world. I was in Portland. I had just packed up my mom's house and condo. We had held her funeral and I gave an Eulogy. I had just got into her car and drove to Montana. I had no idea where my life was going. It seemed like everything had or was breaking down. You only live once, so I surrendered to my unfolding life. 

2013 was a year a shifts and changes. 

The elephant in the room was grieving for my mother, the closure of her estate and the reintegration of myself after her death, which included a priority shift from my career uber alles into healthy consciously created relationships. There was also the case of my broken heart. 2013 was the birth of my most ambitious project to date: The Future of Money TV Series.

• On my birthday in January, I bought a Geodesic Dome in the Mojave Desert.

 

• It was also the month I voiced my idea to make a future related TV series to the person who would become my distributor partner.
• In Feb, I finally ended my longest LTR, and began this grieving/healing process. Ugh.
• I changed my diet and began my love of reformer based pilates.
• I launched the 3rd year of my Future of Transactions Survey.
• In March, I spoke at TedxZwolle and visited amazing Amsterdam.

 

• Spring was spent working on the dome, rebuilding friendships, reformatting my body/brain and developing the series.
• Summer was lots of conference travel, great friends, love. I went to Orlando, Chicago, San Francisco, Palm Springs, Portland and Seattle.
• I organized the Association of Professional Futurist's Professional Development Day, where we looked at Casual Layered Analysis and created a mapping of the history of futurist roles. It was very successful.

• I spoke twice at the World Future Society's conference. A Possibility Tour. The Human Problem. Both well received talks.
• My paper, The Human Problem, won 1st place.
• I kicked off a new research project, The Future of Intimacy, with colleagues from OCAD. We'll be presenting this work at SXSW 2014. 
• The Fall was the unveiling of the Future of Money TV Series, successfully raising $37k on Kickstarter and garnering lots of press in the process.
• And I finally got the dome ready for unforgettable experiences in the Mojave.
• I launched my 3rd Bitcoin survey.
• And I'm heads down on production and preparation for Q1 2014.
• With plans to write a book. Whew!

Not too shabby of a year, especially considering the circumstances.

I'm leaving 2013 a healthier person, physically and emotionally. I have amazing friends I love, who love me. Great collaborators. And great projects that I believe will culturally change the world and make it a better place. I've successfully recovered/reintegrated the shocks from 2012 and 2013. I'm a different person, but I'm also still the same heathervescent!

I'm exiting 2013 in the best shape of my life - personally, professionally, physically.

So 2014... the newly evolved heathervescent is finally ready to start my life's work...

Unraveling, Integrating

Note: I wrote this on December 13, 2012, with an update from tonight.

I always wondered what it would be like when one of my parents died. You see people fall apart when their parent dies. They become someone different after the experience. I watched it with my mom, when my grandmother died. I've seen it in other people. I knew it would happen to me, sooner than later. Mom told me she had cancer in 2009. I was at SXSW when she told me. I had a lot of road trip driving to think about what it meant.

I feel like I have a good relationship with death. It is a real friend of mine, whom I use on an almost daily basis to motivate myself to be conscious, aware, to be the person I want to be, to realize my potential. Death and I, we're old friends.

My grandmother, who was the most important person to me, died 7+ years ago. I dreamt her death days before she died. I felt her acquiesce into it through my dreams. I was in a strong personal place, and able to send her off well. When my grandfathers passed, again, I was in a place of power and strength, able to send them off on their next journeys. Back in August, I knew my mom was going this time. I was in denial of course. Until I saw her in Portland in October. The face of death does not lie.

And here I am, barely two months later. What's it been like, this experience of my mom dying? 

The last week she was alive, I experienced life very different from my usual way. (I usually live partially in the past, present and future. Past and future give information I frame and interpret in the present to act in the present.) With my mom, I lived 100% in the moment for several weeks. The past, the future, had no meaning. I knew they existed as two bookends, but they were abstract. I knew I would think about them, and visit them again, but in the moment, they did not matter. At one point I was sitting and talking with my mom and her friends and I described my experience like Burning Man, but I wasn't on drugs. There are a variety of experiences that force one to live in the moment. When I perform or put on events, I plan, but the moment comes and the planning ends, performance or execution happens in the present moment. Like last Saturday. The event begins, and you enter into present tense.

Re-entry to everyday life (moving between past and future) was difficult. Much like re-entry to life after a week in the desert. However this re-entry feels harder. There's an echo. And frankly, I continue to reference those moments of presence in October even now. 

Part of this is that I have the burden of unraveling another person's material life. I'm sharing this burden with my brother, so this helps; but we each have a lot more than usual going on. My own life is completely unstable - part of this was of my own doing as an attempt to stabilize for a different paradigm (a traveling all over the world for work paradigm).  

So that's the material challenge. But there's the emotional. 

I've got the usual cocktail of emotions around this, but on top of it all is a lot of anger. Anger at the timing. Anger at me being already in a reduced state due to other set-backs. This anger is compounded by a lack of trust.

Despite this impossible situation, I move forward. But often, each forward step is replied with a push backward.

-----

Fast forward to today - June 16, 2013. Mom's been gone for months. I've had time to get comfortable with her absence. The anger has subsided - as has my focus on unraveling her estate and dealing with the material world. 

Last Sunday, her ashes were scattered into the Pacific. With that act, a sense of relief, a weight I did not realize I felt, was lifted. 

Sure, I've had moments of missing her. Especially when all her furniture landed out at the Dome. I really wanted to call her to tell her all her stuff arrived. Of course, it's not a phone I could ever make to her alive. 

Like my grandmother and aunt who passed before her, I have her, their things. My writing desk was my Great Aunt's. Much of my furniture and cocktail ware was my grandmother's. These things comfort me. They trigger the positive memories of these women - a version of themself in the strange loop of my brain. 

I work now to integrate, discriminate, differentiate, decide what I want in my life, as part of my character. It's a strange piece of work; this braiding, dovetailing one life into another. I will be someone different and yet the same after it is done.

 

Eulogy for Mom

Tomorrow morning, I have to give an eulogy for mom. What the hell do I say? What can I say? Given a choice, I'd rather drink this bottle of Malbec and stress about my lack of funeral clothes. So, here goes, old blog. Let's get to writing. 

Hi everyone. I want to thank you for coming out today to celebrate the life of my mom, Pamela. 

I don't need to tell you what an energetic, thoughtful, friendly, person she was. We all know that from her actions. So I thought I'd share some stories about her. I was reminded of these stories going through her things and coming across some photos of our travels together.

Growing up, it was really cool to be her daughter. I knew it was special, but I didn't realize how special it was until much later, that mom enabled me to experience the world and many different cultures so early in life. My parents often talked about their time in Italy. I always had an awareness of the world that was larger than the small town I grew up in; especially thanks to the Italian Globe Bar in the library. Mom introduced me to many high cultural tastes like sparkling water, which I have come to live off of. Pasta was always spaghetti carbonara (never with red sauce or peas). And desert wasn't worth mentioning unless it was chocolate mousse. With mom, it wasn't the world on a shoestring - it was the glamorous life, even if we were at home. I remember jars of Nutella from Europe in the pantry and once my brother and I woke up to a a live lobster in the crisper! Which we later cooked with great celebration.

When I was 14, mom took me to Egypt. This was a dream trip and I look back on it as one of the highlights of my life. During the two week trip, mom would keep me behaving properly by joking that she might sell me to the many men who attempted to buy me. I understood I was traveling in a more primitive culture so I was never worried, plus there was no way mom could transport 50k camels back to Missouri!

I was an old hat at International First Class travel. While most of my trips were domestic, I would stand in the international terminal in St. Louis and dream of exotic locations. All free thanks to mom's air passes. 

Later, I took a trip Istanbul with mom and my grandmother in the nose of a 747. We flew first class of course. You could still smoke on airplanes back then. A famous pop star sat a few rows ahead of us. I recognized him (he was from Milli Vanilli) and joked to mom about going to talk to him. Mom replied back, seriously, you should interview him for your school newspaper. I shrugged off the idea, saying I'd do it after take off. We had a 6+ hour flight from JFK to Paris, but mom wouldn't let me forget. I rallyed my courage and talked to him. Eventually his manager and me swapped spots and we spent a few hours chatting as we crossed the Atlantic. 

Experiencing these diverse cultures at an early age gave me a larger view of the world. It has made me who I am. I'm thankful for these world experiences. 

I wasn't one of these kids that hid things from their parents. (This was impossible anyway.) It was difficult to surprise her no matter how hard I tried!  However, the reverse was not true. One evening we were sitting on our beds in a shared hotel room. I was playing with my computer, when from mom's side came the sound of America The Beautiful on Harmonica. I stopped everything I was doing as my jaw dropped. I thought, when did mom start playing the Harmonica!!! She still had the ability to surprise me. I thought it was so cool that she played Harmonica. She then told me about her harmonica trio. I was so excited to be surprised by her! I know playing harmonica gave her great joy.

Most of all, mom taught me I could do anything. It wasn't an explicit lesson. I saw mom do all kinds of things, so naturally I went ahead and did them too - and a lot more. I didn't realize not everyone had a mom like her. To this day, I do what I want, I am who I am because I can be and that's because mom always supported me. She never held me back (except for that one time she wouldn't let me go to debate camp). She was my biggest supporter - and while I never did anything for her approval - I didn't have too - knowing she was proud of me in my achievements meant a lot, especially my speaking and career successes.

I remember when mom told me about her cancer. Back in 2009 I asked for a miracle. I wanted her to have a few more years. There were many things she still wanted to accomplish, do, see. Mostly to see Aedyn grow up. I think she used her time well. She wrote a book and became an educational advocate for ovarian cancer. Still, we all wish she was still with us today.

I have more stories of mom, as I'm sure you all do, but I won't keep you here all day. While the physical form we called Pam, or mom is no longer with us, I don't think she's gone. I have a version of her up here - with me at all times. We all do. I know I can always talk to that person. It's a shadow of the real person we knew and will miss. But inside us, she lives on. And for now, that's the best we can ask for.

PDX Closings

It's the hardest part of the marathon. I'm past the mid-point, but do not see the finish line. 

This morning, I am in the center of chaos. A chaos of my making. A pre-requisite of the new order. It's not a choice. The path is often messy. Chaos does not scare me. Nor order. I pull both sets of strings.

Clothes are out of drawers, closets. Surfaces are covered with items to be sorted. To be distributed. A life unraveling. Threads of a story, unwoven, extracted, to be threaded into other stories, lives. Some known, some unknown.

There is no end. There is no beginning. Except there are.  Bookends.

And while all this ending/beginning is occurring in this space, all around me is the world. Cars driving across the bridge. A ship being built. The river keeps flowing. Eating. Sleeping. Breathing. 

It's more chopping wood, carrying water.

Breakfast in Bed

As I've mentioned, Mom was a flight attendant. That meant she was gone from home a lot, but home a lot too. One of my favorite things to do was to make her breakfast in bed. On a Saturday morning, my brother and I would get up early and Mom would still be sleeping. (She might have gotten home late at night or maybe at 6am that morning.)

I'd enlist my brother in the kitchen to help. Mom had this great wicker bed table and I would lay a full First Class breakfast for her complete with linens, multiple pieces of silverware for the courses and a fresh rose from the garden. The menu was usually some melon, scrambled cheese eggs (a family favorite), maybe a piece of bacon or sausage, some toast or a fresh scratch baked biscuit. (I was quite a cook back then - as I am now.)

We'd open the curtains. I might have gotten my brother to take the tray into mom and we'd jump into bed with her with our own plates. I always made too much food for her. In retrospect she was probably pretty jetlagged.  But who can complain when your two blonde kids come in with a full breakfast tray. We were happy to see her.

Chad and I found that wicker breakfast tray in her garage a few weeks ago. I pulled it down and talked about it. He didn't want it, so that's one thing that's coming back to LA with me. 

It's a bittersweet memory for me. It's one of the things I did for my mom, because I wanted her to have that experience. Partly I wanted her to give her that experience, because that was the experience I myself wanted to have. It's going to be a bittersweet memory, because if I want that tray filled with breakfast again. I will probably have to do it. Instead of the experience of receiving it.

 

 

My Grieving Rules of Engagement

As I am dealing with my mom's death

• I may not always act at my best. But I am always trying to do my best.
• I will not accept personal or judgemental attacks on my behavior, even if I am not acting my best.
• I will not accept personal attacks on taking time to take care of myself.
• I will give myself as much time as needed to deal with the death of my mom and her estate.
• I will give you the benefit of the doubt that you are doing your best, and not judge or attack you for your behavior.
• I will protect myself when I am attacked.
• I will have compassion and empathy to the best of my ability.

I am doing the best I can, honoring my human form, my emotions, dealing with this difficult time. I ask for care, kindness and compassion. 

I refuse to go through the grieving process isolated and alone. I refuse to bottle up my emotions. I refuse to bury my sadness in work and other distractions. I refuse to pretend that I can take on and solve everything. 

I know through time, space, compassion and attention I will come through this grief recovery process with the wonderful memories of my mom, with her estate wrapped up in a teal bow and with closure for her amazing life.

Death Ramblings

(This post was written on Oct 18)

I was on Highland when I got the call from my brother. I was driving to Hollywood, to kick off the first Los Angeles Ignite at CineSpace (several years ago). I knew something was up. My brother and I weren't really talking to each other much at the time. I wondered who died. It was my Grandfather - Poppa Schlegel - the Patriarch of the Family. I pulled over to the side of the road before I answered the call.

Twenty minutes later, I was at the venue. My phone rang again. It was my Dad. I stepped into an empty closed back room and talked for 10 minutes. My Dad told me how Poppa died. We talked. And then I had to get off the phone, take a deep breath, and get up on stage and introduce the evening. And laugh and smooze and stuff. 

I did it. 

Part of me did it to see if I could do it. If I could segment the news of the passing of the family patriarch and go on with the show (called life). 

I had my moments of mourning later. I went back to my hometown, to the Church, to bury Poppa in the cemetery I spend so many teenage goth years hanging out in, a few blocks from his house.

----

I'm reminded of this. I'm reminded of Poppa's death. I've been in Portland for much of this week. My mom is dying. 

It is amazing how stripped down things get. How things boil down to their essence. My schoolwork, goes undone. I have, against all odds, produced the most amazing third film I have the honor to work on. I applaud the team I hired. I applaud what we have created together. It has been a nice distraction.

----

The veil is thin. 

I can already see her going.

I am thankful she is not in pain. I am in awe at the woman she is - the woman who is not my mother. The woman all these people know. I only knew her as my mother. But she stands as an amazing individual on her own. And I think about this. I think about this fabulous person who is my mother. Who had so many challenges in her life, and faced all of them, mostly alone, a single woman.

I'm sitting here in her guest room, finally having a view of her, as she is. Not wearing the mom glasses. Not doing the nitpicky things like telling me to stand up straight or stop biting my finger nails, but as the woman who travel around the world, who had great friends, who enchanted men all over the world and ended up being my mom in Kansas City, Missouri. 

I am honored to be her daughter.

Retro-causative grieving

Back in August, as I was preparing for my last trip to Europe, I had a premonition. I was driving around in my car, my beloved manual saab turbo and a weird thought popped into my head. I was going to get a new car. I thought, WTH, I don't need a new car. And besides I love this car. And then everywhere I looked, I saw my the same model my mom drives. And I felt, mom's going soon. I pushed the knowledge away.

As I was packing for the trip and talking with mom about it, I felt the knowledge again. That mom was going soon. Again, I pushed the knowledge away, after I briefly acknowledged it.

I didn't question it. I didn't deny it. I didn't tell anyone about it. I was dealing with enough shit in my life at the moment. Finishing up a film project I was proud of. Working through a crappy business situation, a disintegrating/bumpy romantic relationship all while keeping up a crazy travel schedule. I wanted to focus on the trip, finishing my commitments and exploring future possibilities.

Through all this, my emotional volatility increased. I chalked that up to my triple threat stress level. I couldn't stand my life. I almost ended it several times. I'd be fine one moment and the next, I'd flip out. While I am an intensely passionate individual, these emotional swings were exponential from any I previously experienced. Pretty much exactly what I am experiencing now that mom is gone.

About this time, I kept remembering this old boyfriend of mine. The last two weeks we were together, he was grieving for the loss of our relationship. I asked him about his behavior once, wondering why he was being like this now, before we broke up. (It was imminent that we were breaking up.) And he replied he was getting over it now, while we were still together, so he'd be done when we actually break up. Why did I keep remembering this?

There's this theory, called Retro-causality. Where the effects of an action are observed before the action occurs. Back in 2008, I attended a panel on the timing of conscious experience. This was the first time I heard about retrocausality and it was fascinating. And familiar. 

I've often had an uncanny ability to know just slightly what is coming next. My timing varies, sometimes it's seconds, other times months and more often than not - years. And despite my conscious attention to understand if these were just good guesses or what, I have no conclusion. However, I to support the hypothesis of retrocausality - always wondering how one might create an experiment to test it. Even myself individually. 

Despite being unconvinced of its existence from the scientific community, and myself at times; the only way I can explain my explosive emotional roller coaster the past few months, is with retro-causative grieving.

Why I lost my shit to Chase today

So Mom died a week and some change ago. She had two accounts with Chase (among many others). Many of these accounts refuse to give you any information unless you have a death certificate. In Oregon it takes about 2 weeks to get one. We got ours in 8 working days. 

I called most accounts the day or two after mom passed and notified them. Got the paperwork in motion, sent in the mail, while I waited for other things to move. Well, Chase, unlike EVERY OTHER ORGANIZATION I SPOKE WITH (and I spoke with 15+ of them) REQUIRED me to go into an ACTUAL BANK to speak to someone about mom's account. Well, I thought, there's no point talking to them until I have the Death Cert, so I waited until I had one. 

I was dreading going into a bank. I don't even remember the last time I did it. It was probably before the economic collapse. Anyway, today, after talking to the priest about mom's service and having a not so relaxing spa experience, I went in when I had a free hour before a dinner, thinking that I can at least get things started.

What ensued was that I waited to talk to a banker. Then when I told the banker what I was there for, he was not necessarily trained in all the death stuff. I had all the paperwork. We're dealing with both a trust and probate. I had statements and information about her accounts. I had information. I wanted to know my options. I wanted to know what could be done with the account.

What I got was a conversation with a middleman. Since my situation was complicated, and my dude (it wasn't his fault the company he works for has this situation) could not tell me anything about what to do himself. He had to call the legal department to find out the answer to every single question. After about an hour of this, and several calls, because every answer he gave me (telephoned from the legal team because I could not directly talk to them on the phone) caused me to ask an additional question, I was frustrated, but understood the fucked up system I had to deal with. I was about to walk out to report back to my brother and decide what we wanted to do.

Last item, I wanted to deposit a check that came to my mom into the account. It was for $207. 

Well, he said, after calling legal for like the 4th or 5th time, they couldn't do that now, because she was deceased. 

And I exploded. I'm not sure if I went full Angelino or New York Asshole, but I had it.

I was done with their fucking rules and bureaucracy.

I was trying to do the RIGHT THING - being deposit a check written out to my mom, BEFORE SHE DIED, into her account. 

But no.

They can't do that.

Instead, I have to request the check be written out to her estate.

And deposited into an estate account. (That doesn't exist yet, because I don't know big he estate is going to be filed as. And there's a snag in that, because they won't tell me how much is in her account, despite me being her daughter and beneficiary - to know at what size we have to file at for her estate.)

And guess who gets to do that legwork. 

And call the company to ask them to reissue the check?

Moi.

All because their bank can't take on the risk of the $207 check. READ THAT AGAIN. A $207 risk.

ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? 

And guess which fucking ivory tower legal team can only be talked to from a telephone puppet banker in a brick and mortar archaic bank?

I was so livid, I couldn't even think who I knew at JP Morgan to complain to. 

I know, they are NEVER GOING TO HAVE MY BUSINESS. And they shouldn't have your's either.

Really Chase, you should be ashamed of yourself.

Update on Mom, Me

It's been a week and a half without Mom. She passed rather quickly. Talk about exponential change.  I wrote a blog post on her blog a week or so ago to tell her friends there. 

I haven't really felt like talking about it much. Some days I feel like I am doing ok. Then the next thing I know, I'm hit with some emotion. Sadness, weirdness, anger.  Crying. Just par for the course.

I've been distracting myself with launching my latest film. With Los Angeles Santacon. With Stanislav Lem. With School. 

I've been spending a lot of time with my brother and his family. Me and Aedyn, my nephew, are great pals. (We're building on the great Thanksgiving lego experience.) It's healing.

I miss my dog. I miss Los Angeles tree lined streets. I miss some fucking stability.

The Time is Now

If you are going to love me

Love me now, while I can know

The sweet and tender feelings

Which from true affections flow

Love me while I am living

Don't wait until I am gone

And then have it chiseled in marble

Sweet words on ice-cold stone

 

If you have tender thoughts of me

Please tell me now

If you wait until I am sleeping

Never to awaken

There will be death between us

And I won't hear you then

So if you love me even a little bit

Let me know it while I am living

So I can know and treasure it.

- Unknown, found in my mom's important papers

On Death, #2

Mom's cancer is back. It's fast this time. It's bad. I think this is the one, despite my attempts to pull a positive wildcard out of the field of possibilities. I know a way exists, but perhaps, we already walked that way, and that's what's lead us to here. Perhaps I pulled that card three years ago.

It's hard seeing her weak. Watching her body fail. I think how hard it must be for her. I think of my own. Aging every day. I remember my grandmother's death. Her body. Our dreams each evening. Every night I fight in my dreams. I rip out lips and wander angrily, anxiously through dream corridors. I wake myself in the might, fighting with an invisible adversary, trying to take my favorite book from my hands. 

I find this quote, from Terrance McKenna,

I always thought death would come on the freeway in a few horrifying moments, so you'd have no time to sort it out. Having months and months to look at it and think about it and talk to people and hear what they have to say, it's a kind of blessing. It's certainly an opportunity to grow up and get a grip and sort it all out. Just being told by an unsmiling guy in a white coat that you're going to be dead in four months definitely turns on the lights. ... It makes life rich and poignant. When it first happened, and I got these diagnoses, I could see the light of eternity, a la William Blake, shining through every leaf. I mean, a bug walking across the ground moved me to tears.

I've spent the evening with a group of my mom's friends. I am reminded of my own deaths. Not many, a few. Those times I've turned the wheel. Those were not final. Those were metaphors, methods to help me become a person I could only dream of. My mom's death is not one of those. She will be gone.