the ingredients of stuff

Fathers, Every Day

2010-06-20T10:37:00.000-07:00

Here we are, right in the middle of Father's Day, gifts & cards & hugs given, memories held close, tears shed & I can't help thinking: how do men know how to be fathers?

How do they know how to make a feast of a crisp autumn day, a football game, tomato soup & a grilled cheese sandwich? How do they know how to weave a soft blanket of safety when we sleep in the back seat of the car, purring down the long road home?

How do they sift our own dreams out of our promise to be part of the whole world?

How do they know how to teach us fairness, generosity and patience? How do they know how to reach for our hand and when to let go?

How do they know? I think of the men, the good & the great, in my life & it occurs to me for the first time: they don't. What they know is to love. To love.

They learn, as we all do, along the way.

Every day, all around the world, men become fathers and they will teach their children, one way or another. It's a good time, on Father's Day, to love them, our men - to play with them, to laugh with them, to cry, to plan, to dream adventures. This is what they'll share with their children.

Their children are ours.

You may not remember the time you let me go first. Or the time you dropped back to tell me it wasn't that far to go. Or the time you waited at the crossroads for me to catch up. You may not remember any of those, but I do & this is what I have to say to you:
today, no matter what it takes, we ride home together.

Riding Home

Happy Father's Day, all! Happy Father's Day, Brian.

Love, Cris

Our Dazzling History of Mistakes

2010-05-26T09:46:00.000-07:00

Don't you wonder sometimes about that fellow who invented the line: Let me make my own mistakes!! Me, too! I envision him shivering with mirth over the mischief, even the havoc, he packed into a few little words.

What a trick, almost designed to get us caught in our own stubbornness. What a silly thing, to sign up for thinking of mistakes instead of ... oh, for instance, understanding and perspective.

I think that he knew that people - young and old and all the ages in between - bristle when bossed around, especially when the bosser is doing it from a narrow and orderly little life, the kind that might be pretty but is so obviously built from small fears. He knew and was taking gleeful advantage of it.

We might get testy, being bossed around, and will say any old thing that comes to mind, like: Let me make my own mistakes! But when we're not being bossed around, when we're invited to play in the big piles of collected knowledge, it's nothing but fun. How amazing that people have collected wisdom for forever and luckily, were willing to share most of it.

For many of us, it's more than fun. We spend the rest of our lives jumping in those piles and rummaging around for wonder-filled clues and twinkling secrets and sparkety ideas. We'll still come up with a few mistakes - ha! - but we're more likely to find new mistakes, original mistakes, extraordinary mistakes with extraordinary fixes.

Oh, yes, indeed, I think that fellow was messing with us. He's getting royalties on 'let me make my own mistakes' when he could have just as easily invented the line 'Tell me a story.'

He didn't, though, and so it's for us to pass that on, to tell every child, every new graduate the truth - stories pry open the future and reveal more than we might even be able to imagine.

Doesn't THAT sound like part of a dazzling history? Yes, I think so, too!!

- post by Cris in Santa Barbara

The Sparkling Gift Inside

2010-05-02T11:06:00.000-07:00

This is true: when someone shares a rare story - one they've protected or one they might not remember they even owned - a moment of immeasurable power is created. In that moment, a life can change. In that moment, is a gift.

Once, coaxing others to share stories was what I did. I had conversations with artists, film makers and writers and then wrote essays.

The conversations seemed to require little skill, but in order to get to the interesting stuff, I had to learn how to listen actively. I had to learn how to be genuinely interested in knowing, instead of quick to believe I understood. I had to learn how to ask one more question.

That question could rarely be prepared. No. That question had to be made from genuine curiosity. That question had to be borne of the moment.

Artists aren't the only ones with conversations in them. I found that anyone I listened to and asked true questions of kept treasures.

Then I made a shift in my career and started doing other things. The internet came along and everyone's daily escapades started filling the ether. There didn't seem to be a need for any more questions.

A while back, though, the memory of those stories started nagging at me.

I tried to remember the value there was in knowing someone else's story. And that, you ask, would be ... what?

It makes most people happy, to have an audience that's genuinely interested.

But it's not all about making others happy. Asking questions from a mindful, genuine place and listening to the answers, is not unlike finding a silk ribbon that ties us to a marvelous gift. As you untie it, the gift opens gently. And that gift is yours.

I bring this up now because we're approaching Mother's Day. Mothers have stories, stories that might not emerge when we just ... talk with our mothers any old way. So many of us are accustomed to telling our mothers about ourselves. And so easily, we can fancy ourselves with a little halo for talking in such kind and gentle tones of voice.

When I thought to try again, it was because of my mother. And I've heard a number of stories from her past, but it's the stories of her NOW that glitter.

I ask one more question and she answers with quite unexpected things. We find ourselves freed from accounts of what she bought and where she went and old gossip and are in a different, wide open space. We are in utterly perfect, luminous moments.

It doesn't matter who you're talking with - when you're right there, you are also assisting in the unwrapping of the story. Someone struggles for a way to express - you offer a suggestion - and the ribbon is freed from a knot of habit. The whole memory, the whole story, can change with that word.

And suddenly reveal the sparkling gift inside. It's extraordinary. Every single time.

- posted by Cris in Santa Barbara

The Company of Happy Women

2010-04-20T06:40:00.000-07:00

Last week, even before taxes were finished, a new neighbor asked, Are you always this easy going? I laughed, which was shorthand for What, are you crazy?
I try to stay positive, the neighbor said and waved her government forms in the air, but they make it hard to be happy. Right?
And I laughed again. Yes. Yes, they do make it hard to be happy.

* * * *

Ooh, I can be serious. SO serious.

I didn't start out that way. Oh sure, I liked to dabble in it - a little beginning philosophy, a little indignation with government policy - but mostly I wanted to frolic. I was a natural at frolicking.

When finally it came time to join the grownups (which might have been my first mistake) I didn't know the rules. There are no Cliffs Notes, just people ... being grownups. I looked to other women, in that discreet spying kind of way, and studied what they were doing.

They were doing serious. I joined up. I learned the slightly furrowed forehead and earnest tones. I guessed it was the time-honored way to prove sincerity and loyalty.

Thing is, it wasn't fun. And certainly - for me - it wasn't useful. The more serious I get, the more serious I am and not only is that not fun, it's not very creative.

Whew. I'd barely joined when I started sneaking away, every chance. I knew there was an alternative. After all, I'm a woman, too.

The alternative is other women, women who give each other permission to be playful, to laugh at ourselves and our mistakes. My own circle of friends has a remarkably high playfulness content.

We talk of important things. We help each other. We solve. We trade valuable information and expertise. We offer true sympathy, empathy and insightful ideas for healing and recovering from hurts. No one's glib or unmindful of the pains and sorrows that appear in any life - oh no. But there's an unspoken agreement to aim at being delighted and contributing delight and laughter and good humor.

I notice this happy phenomenon just as often among friends of StoryPeople - on Facebook, for instance. Moved by any one Story of the Day, women share snippets of joy from their lives. Mothers tease daughters. Daughters laugh in return. They make me so happy, having fun and I seem to breathe more easily and deeply and that is the source of inspiration.

I think of my mother whose first impulse is to play and I think that THIS year, I will thank her and those mothers who did the work, who gently guarded that happy conversation and all its possibilities for us. I'm going to be giving these stories:

Underwear Parade

I think we should make all the flags in the parade out of long underwear, he said, because then only the really fun people will come.

Enlightenment Life

all the things you need for enlightenment if you've got to be back to work early on Monday

Smiling Eyes

She turned to me & whispered, don't you just love it when you get so excited you forget to breathe? & the thought of her smiling eyes still makes me laugh

- posted by Cris

And, in case you're no where near Facebook, I'm going to include a little animation we posted awhile ago. It's from our 'Elevator Stories' series. With love ...

If They Left Us in Charge

2010-02-25T12:39:00.000-08:00

This morning decided it would like to be used for sending Valentines and I agreed straight away, not bothering to mention that the real Valentine's Day was ... um ... oh, a week ago, and now we're both giddy. (You should see the day here, shining bright and clear and hopping around.)

If they left me in charge, I'd institute a regular day for valentines, maybe once a month. Of course, I'd fiddle with the Mission Statement (much as I do with the real day). And I'd yank both sides of the aisle in for a little sit-down and 'let's get this straight' chat. Look, I'd say, people invented this and they did what they thought was useful so let's not complain about it or refuse to budge; let's just do a little re-inventing. We made it, we can change it. NOW we're going to include everyone.

Of course, someone would pout. "I'm not included. I'm not in a relationship," and I'd say, Nonsense and rubbish. If you're part of the world, you're in a relationship.' (And then I'd let them ponder it because there'd be so much more on the agenda we'd have to get through.)

Yep, that's what I'd do. I like valentines. They are a simple way to practice giving love. And, if you yearn for something a little more challenging, it can be about giving it when it's not easy. Easy is when someone lights up, wraps their arms around you and is eager to hear your laughter chime. Not easy is when it appears you get nothing in return.

Those are the BEST valentines. They're given freely, as quiet little acknowledgments that you recognize someone helping create your world. They're the moments when you actually care about someone else's story, when you care about the state of their imagination, when you care about them flourishing.

There will be plenty of people who don't want your valentine, who suspect ulterior motives, or who want their love expressed in a different way and it will be tempting to just pack up your love and go home. My love tends to like action and creating. I nearly say: Okay. Here's 110% of my mind and imagination. Let's get cooking! I assure you, this is not much appreciated by some.

That's okay. Not a chance in hell I'll quit giving it. I don't know what love's made of, but when it's exercised, you can hear dreams and feel the greatest good working its way out and you can almost taste the promise of a big, rich world coming your way.

Have to run. Valentines are waiting and I sense the day starting to pace ... :)

- from Cris

Oh! If you're not on Facebook, you might have missed some of the Valentines we posted. These are JUST the thing I'm talking about. Little messages to send and say: I see you and I love sharing this future with you.

What to Do When the Creative Won't Go ...

2010-01-28T14:34:00.000-08:00

Every once in awhile, the creative flow will suddenly - and seemingly without any good reason - gunk up. It'll actually keep running because we are creative beings and it's what we do, but there's a whole lot of stuttering and the stuff that comes out of us is soooo off.

Fixing it can be a great and satisfying pleasure. It can be fun.
It can also bring us to tears.

I forgot the tears part until a friend called the other day. The note of defeat was pretty loud and self confidence was definitely threatening to run away.

Only days before, I'd had to do my own self repair and was all warmed up so I jumped in with gusto, barely stifling a 'yippee!' I could hear my friend's eyelids blink, startled by all the enthusiasm. She is fairly new to a full-time creative life after spending spent years in the corporate world, and thinks creativity is a part that needs expressing. I suspect that point of view is the culprit.

To me, creativity is a way of life. A way of life makes room for everything and is always teaching us how to live into higher, truer sweetness. A few years ago, I interviewed Brian (Brian Andreas, to anyone who might not know who I'm talking about :)) about how he takes care of his creativity.

(In case you're not connected to us through Facebook, here's a treat we made to help us surf out January ...)

If I think creativity is a way of life, he must think creativity IS life. It's really as if there's no distinction for him. His antennae are up at all times, seeing the delightful in just about everything. In fact, sometimes I think the delightful that hides from so many of us actually comes out just for him. (I should hunt down those notes and post them, shouldn't I? Yes, I should and maybe I will. ) ANYWAY, one of the things we didn't talk about was what he does when there's a bit of a hiccup. IF there's a bit of a hiccup.

That's okay. This is what I do when my machinery starts misfiring, things I check in on, things I ask myself, expecting me to answer very VERY honestly:

1. Is there any - and I mean ANY - part of me focusing on applause or admiration or flickering daydreams of them gasping and grasping, finally, my genius?

This is a very private thing and no amount of talking about it in a pub will clear it up. I like sharing my work and want to do stuff that's good for my career and I even have visions of doing projects that speak to a big old audience, but I have to do that from the business part of mind mind, not the creator part.

2. Am I holding on to stuff just because I did it?

Oh, THIS was a problem when I first started animating. I told myself - PROMISED myself - that I'd just 'try it out' but after hours and hours of work, my brain's hands would wave all over the place while it shrieked: I can't! I can't do any more! Oh, those were some ugly moments. When I started teaching Flash to kids, it's one of the first things I tried to impress on them: let it go.

If the computer blows up, you haven't lost anything at all. You've been teaching yourself SOMETHING, guaranteed, and often, if what you had was great and wonderful and wanted desperately to be in the world, you'll be able to recreate it - only better.

The thing is it's not enough to hope stuff disappears by accident (except my car the insurance company totaled. I really wish I'd go out one day and it would be - poof! gone.) Some things need revisions, need re-doing, need to be thrown away. It's a gift to stop and start all over.

Clinging to what doesn't work is making a contract with a poverty consciousness. When I hear any echo of 'I can't,' I know it's true.

I'm pretty committed to 'I can.'

3. Am I paying attention? Am I receptive? Am I loose?

Or am I letting some irritation nag at me, some tiny resentment I thought was hidden away scratch its way to the surface? I take the time to set it straight with some spiritual exercising; forgiveness is a good thing to start with and being really big grateful for all the creative juice I can squeeze out. THIS is where I want to be, buoyed by bliss-y stuff.

4. Am I doing the work? Am I pushing my boundaries and edges and DOING the work?

I really like the work involved in living. Everything I do, even the tedious stuff, informs the final outcome. To know more is to have a richer vocabulary I can access (and I don't mean a vocabulary of words, but of ideas and techniques).

I'm not so fastidious - I just enjoy the sensation of discipline and the results.

BUT. Sometimes, I'll decide to try something new. And I'll forget that I only got where I am after work. Some how, I allow myself to be deluded into thinking that by sheer force of wanting it, it'll work out. Working out is not the same thing as doing the work. Sigh.

*** *** *** ***

And that's it. They work like a dream. They return me to being connected to happy, playfulness and when I'm there, I can race like the wind. (Which is a hell of a lot faster than my car is going right now ...)

PS. Am also happy to report that some of the above worked beautifully for the friend, too. So, finally, Yippeeee!

- posted by Cris

Winter Pearls

2010-01-12T15:14:00.000-08:00

If you know anything at all about StoryPeople, you know some of us brace ourselves at the mere mention of winter and by the time it strikes, we've become certain we're the target of a terrible conspiracy.

Good for you if bitter winter is refreshing and invigorating and the absence of daylight makes you merry. I couldn't tell if they were being cheerful or snippy because the cold does that, but one of your sort once said, 'If you don't like cold, you should leave.' And I thought it was a fabulous idea so I said good-bye. It really does all work out, doesn't it?

Winter doesn't seem to have a problem with me, she said, so I think it's right that I should be the one to leave. I think it'll make it easier on everyone.
- Original Drawing #1656 by Brian Andreas

We went back to California and now we live in what feels like perpetual spring. We have plenty of weather adventures, courtesy of Nature, but not much of that breath-taking cold stuff, so any winter we experience is entirely our choice. Wheeeee.

It makes a big difference.

Brian twittered the other day about sub-zero temperatures in Switzerland, but by the next day, he was given 36 bonus derees and was able to purr at the charming postcard scene (not so different than Decorah on a silent, snowy, golden-glowy night). Deeeeelicious!

We ourselves just returned from Spain, where we spent a wondrous Christmas, and there was plenty of serious cold and relentless rain, but not one eye was batted in complaint.

I began to recall other places I've gone quite deliberately when there was nothing but winter weather on offer (skiing doesn't count): Zurich, Paris, Manhattan, Venice, Prague, Budapest.

They were cold and sometimes, not even decked in fluffy snow, but steeped in clammy fog - that most melancholy of conditions. But I don't remember any misery when I think of them. Instead, because I chose to go, because I chose the story, they come back to me - luminous and truly lovely memories.

... my landlady in Budapest proudly sending me off to a film festival in Siberian temperatures wearing her prized silver fox ensemble. For a week, I lived in Dr. Zhivago.

and ... standing in the center of the Piazza San Marco, under drizzle and in piles of mist, feet in half an inch of winter water, talking with an old friend about nothing at all. You know. Philosophy.

Sigh.

Well, enough with all the sentiment.

Winter's awful, but it has a fathomless store of stories and that's good - that's really good - for those of us who like it just enough to visit.

Filling our Box for the Future: Instructions (kind of)

2010-01-06T11:49:00.000-08:00

Of all the human quirks, this is one of my personal favorites: there we are, dancing around with our acrobatic, sparkly minds when someone, excited by all the merriness, says: Here's something to play with. Do whatever you want. And we freeze.

(Or start puttering, pottering, pondering til the deadline's passed.)

Yep. Nothing will muck things up more than giving us no instructions.

Last installment of this blog, we invited you to join in and send us your fun stuff for an animation of 'Box for the Future.' And we gave no instructions. This time, we made a little video. They're not instructions so much as illustrations of the sorts of things you can send us and how they'll fit in the box for the future.

You'll want to decide what courage and love and play look like and sound like and feel like, but if you're looking for a little inspiration (besides your own private stash of stories), I'd head straight to Brian's stories.

A big swell of courage fills me every single time I read 'Riding Home.' The story about talking Polynesian leads me right into the zippy, fizzy part of my head. They're as good as recipes, stories are.

And that's about it. You can send your stuff for a couple of weeks. If you have any others questions, just ask.

Making a Box for the Future and You're Invited!

2009-12-31T11:57:00.000-08:00

It's remarkable, isn't it, what we can create with something as ordinary as a piece of time? The year we've just lived is now entirely unique, but it began like any other. We've made a marvelous map of experiences, all of them now dancing on strands of time so delicate and fragile it's hard to believe they can hold the weight of so many memories.

But every year - in fact, every segment of time we measure by, starts with the same - full of room in every direction, space for all those silky threads and beautiful patterns we weave together.

That is remarkable.

Over here, in this little corner of StoryPeople, we've pledged to create things with more color, more bounce, and much more laughter. Laughter makes everything look so beautiful.

And you're invited. Because it's the new year, nothing sounded better than the story 'Box for the Future' ...

this is a dress-up box for the future
& it's filled with stuff like courage &
love & play because they're the only things
that are any use at all
when you get right down to it.

IF you'd like to contribute a drawing, a character, any kind of artwork, actually - or maybe some music or the voice over (yes, we'd LOVE you to give a reading of the story! You only have to record it and save it as an mp3 file) tell us here or send us an email.

We'll mix and mash and make something fun (or break down in tears, trying. :))

It's true, this is just for fun and there's no big prize or anything (we're still saving that idea). You only have to draw it and send a picture (a jpg or png will do) and we'll weave your work in an animation and we'll all celebrate at the end because we spent some time together playing and creating.

It's a really good way to start any year.

With love and wishes for peace and your heart's true happiness ...

Merry New Year!

Extra Little Gifts for You

2009-12-24T00:07:00.000-08:00

We made tiny, fun cartoon gifts for you. We wrapped them up and put them under the public zoo site. A few needed a bit of extra tinkering, so I brought them along to Spain and am adding them to your internet stockings right now: Side by Side for same sex couples.

A few months ago, some wonderful someone asked if we could make cartoons of Brian's love poems for same sex couples. We blinked. We blushed. We shuffled through all the thingies on our workbench. You see, we couldn't quite believe we hadn't thought of it ourselves.

Maybe we would have been right on top of it if we were better at marketing and advertising and demographics but what WE'RE good at is really and truly believing in love and peace and forgiveness and more love and lots of lots of fun. What we're good at is imagining a world ...

Of course, even the best imagining needs us to take some action, put sweet ideas into practice, stop talking and start doing. We really think that's the exciting part. A gift, really, and you can't tell whether you're giving it or getting it. (Especially when you're doing it from Barcelona. :) ) Wheeeee!

And so, for our gay and lesbian friends (and, frankly, for men who have men friends and women with women friends): Side by Side.

Merry Holidays to us, to ALL of us!

The Gift of Adventure

2009-12-18T04:05:00.000-08:00

One of the great joys of life is the moment when you know, with perfect clarity, that the rules are all made up - especially the rules of adulthood.

off on another adventure of a lifetime & hoping he won't forget halfway through this time

Adventure of a Lifetime
- Brian Andreas

Of course, after centuries spent in refinement, some of the rules work beautifully. A lot don't. Figuring out which is which can be one long frustration or an adventure. In fact, every once in awhile, I wonder if it's the adventure - starting every day all over again.

A lot of adults follow rules that make them appear very serious or sophisticated - both of which are fun in small doses and neither of which are fun at ALL as a way to live. Still, they have their fans who are really good at waking up to start looking for disasters and injuries and bad stuff in general and then marshalling all their resources to keep the bad away.

Aow.

Today, as we give you this little animation to celebrate the beginning of Storypeople Kids, it seems much better to start the day with the excitement of a child, the child who hasn't learned to believe that he or she has to expect a certain outcome.

Maybe that would get boring, though.

I don't think so, do you?

- Cris, writing from Madrid

Connections

2009-11-17T18:36:00.000-08:00

Note: Hi! We just found out there are actually a few signed prints available - which is SUPER great for the Unity Shoppe!

We asked Brian if he'd help out a little more on this first one, just to make it extra special, and he said, 'How about an original drawing?' and he didn't even have the question mark out of his mouth when we said 'Yes!' There's no end to the stuff that'll happen when you're in the mood to be part of something bigger ...

In just ONE day, the auction will end on a 'Connection' print signed by both Kenny Loggins and Brian Andreas. The auction proceeds will benefit the Unity Shoppe of Santa Barbara. You can find it right here and bid with gusto. Or cheer on the other bidders. :)

There couldn't be a better story for this organization, a local pearl - you know, one of those gems that isn't shiny and show-offy, but the reward of a lot of grit - and luminous for it.

Allow me to remind you how that story goes:

there came a moment in the middle of the song
when he suddenly felt every heartbeat in the room
& after that he never forgot he was
part of something much bigger -

- Connection by Brian Andreas

When it comes to helping each other, people do what they can do. And there are countless reasons why they do it, why anyone steps up at any time to give support or lend a hand.

Nothing is better, though, than the hand reaching out because it knows the hand it's reaching for wants the same warm feeling of safety, the same strong grip of hope.

Or the voice that advocates or negotiates for the one who is just trying to findthe the right way to talk of a future to its children.

Or mind that opens wide and creates solutions and imagines EVERYone flourishing.

This is exactly how the Unity Shoppe operates. There are no halos on parade. There's just a promise that's made and met every day: dignity for the clients. Real dignity.

I don't know if it's in their mission statement or a formal matter of policy, but I'm going to trust my experience and guess it's borne out of a vision of our connection.

It seems as if all involved know this to be true and so, whatever they say, however they assist, whenever they're organizing or distributing - there is nothing but an unfailing attitude of unity.

It's wild and it's wonderful and fills all of us in this community with big gratitude. What other way could you feel when you're invited to be part of something much bigger?

** I've included a few pictures of the grocery store and children's clothing boutique for anyone who wants to be stubborn and refuse to believe it. Ha. Each of them gets a little bigger when clicked.

http://www.unityshoppe.org/
http://www.logginsfans4unity.com/

Creative Stretches

2009-11-16T09:57:00.000-08:00

It started innocently enough. Brian emailed a photo of a painting he's working on.

I liked it so much. In that mysterious way of art, this one felt luxurious - softest Egyptian cotton, one bottle of champagne at a South of France lunch luxurious. Ymmmmm.

He added that he wasn't sure if he'd leave it alone.

Even I, who am still a novice at painting, know that stage. In fact, very recently, I hauled out a few unfinished canvases that had reached it and been put away until I decided their fate. Unfortunately, my decision involved fiddling, fixing, tinkering with parts. I painted with gusto.

It was disastrous in just about every way, plus some since I'd done it to several. Eeek. I've included a picture of my solution. Consider it cautionary. :) Really, it was all I could think of doing since I liked all the rest of it.

Naturally, I had a few questions for Brian about the future of his painting.

I wrote:
What if you thought you'd painted the perfect eyes and glasses, but wanted a corresponding mouth - would you just paint over the mouth and hope they then worked together? The entire face changes with every expression, of course, so would you feel obliged - in a painterly way - re-do the entire face?

Brian replied (in part): I'm more a fan of the entire painting. There is no such thing as the eyes & glasses are perfect but I need to do a different mouth.
Then there's a paragraph about his technique, but he goes on to write this:

Sometimes that means painting the entire thing over with white & starting again. I think of it as trusting that the painting you're going to end up with is going to be better than the sum of the parts along the way. Once you start messing with one piece, you have to be willing to go all the way & adapt the other parts of the painting (the parts you thought were perfect) so that it all works together. Doesn't mean you will, but you have to be willing to kill your darlings. What's true in writing is equally true in painting.

That simple email conversation glinted and glittered in my head and like a little shard of diamond, stuck itself in my mind. When Brian enters the conversation, this often happens. You don't have to like his work or be his biggest fan to appreciate this: he is always exercising some hidden, creative muscles.

That he shared was wonderful I love that generosity. Computer people, graphic designers, animators do that, too. They share.

But I realized that what he does made me giddy ... you have to be willing to go all the way & adapt the other parts of the painting (the parts you thought were perfect) so that it all works together. Doesn't mean you will ...

I can do it in writing. I can let go, throw away an entire draft, cross out a sweet turn of phrase. But what an excellent, EXCELLENT exercise for all parts of our creative life ... including our life.

Well, that's what I think. How about you?

- Cris, Santa Barbara

Walking with Ghosts

2009-10-30T14:55:00.000-07:00

Halloween's a bit of spectator sport for me. Love the candy, love flinging the candy, love eating the left-over candy, but otherwise, I'm best off just watching.

That said, I do love Halloween or rather, that it ushers in the season. Not technically, of course. Autumn's long been underway, but Halloween is the portal into stuff that's not as easy to appreciate.

At least in the Northern Hemisphere, it's colder, darker, plainer. But things start getting interesting. (True, the second it gets wintry raw and the wind starts sheering off skin layers, all bets are off, but until then? It's fantastic.)

If you're an English major, you're probably thinking: POETIC FALLACY!! POETIC FALLACY!! If you weren't an English major, here's what everyone's yelling about; when we fancy the weather keeping pacing with our emotions - you know, like when you're sad and it rains? - that's poetic fallacy.

To anyone crying poetic fallacy, I say: pft. These crisp, chilling early nights bring with them a new silence, shadows, mist. Others will race into the light and towards warmth, but if we can resist the easy comforts, we can take a different route home. We can walk in the quiet and quiet ourselves.

We can walk in stillness and we can listen to our own heartbeats and, if we have acutely good hearing, the heartbeats of just about the whole rest of the world.

It's the best time for walking with the ghosts of forgotten ideas and passions, forgotten only because we were too busy. You know how it is - just when you've found the perfect balance, a big and very heavy new problem climbs on board and nothing's easier to forget than how we ever got happy in the first place. But the answers are still there, floating around us, in us, along side us.

October will turn into November and we'll still have cancer to cure and children to save and arguments to resolve and agendas to make transparent and it'll look hard, and we can think: Hold on. We know how to do it, we know how to create way more beauty. We just forgot it for a second. Let's walk with this awhile until we remember when we knew and understood completely - REALLY - that it's about love.

That's the best ghost of all, although it does walk a lot faster than you'd expect.

- Cris, Santa Barbara

You're Invited!!

2009-10-15T10:09:00.000-07:00

Today, as I write this, one of my deariest dear friends is in surgery for a double mastectomy. Prayers and blessings and visions of super hot healing are going strong and you are invited to join in.

Hey! What kind of party IS this?! This does not sound fun (are you thinking that?). Maybe you're thinking: I don't even know her.

Ah, but whether you know her, love her, care that her beautiful body is restored to its best health is not the point of the invitation. Here's the point:

This is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, all decked out in pink ribbons. This is the month we have multiple and great opportunities to get really alert to signs, to clues, to taking action, to getting care, to becoming advocates. (It's a great month for men, too. Education and consciousness build, don't they?)

But I'm sitting here, on this day, knowing that in just the last two years, I've had three others of the dearest people to me get diagnosed. You, too? Maybe, in fact, you?

Here's what else I know. Sorrows ride in on cancer - fear and anger and the weight of acting brave, just to name a few. Today, we've gathered to lift those away from my friend to make room for the most potent healing. And frankly, I don't see why we can't take that concentrate of love and light and essentially say: Go. Fan out. Radiate. Use your wings & find others. Wrap them in love, too.

Oh, yeah. In a month dedicated to breast cancer awareness, I think there's definitely room to concentrate on the love and healing part.

We can do that for everyone. Can't we? We can.

Imagine it. Really. Imagine that we made a world rich with love and laughter and fun. For everyone. Imagine that we want that for everyone.

Imagine that we don't wait til we're besieged or struck down. Imagine that we don't wait to get wise and filled with grace. Imagine that we agree that simple, true happiness and beauty spreads out to all of us. Without much effort at all, we KNOW what it would feel like. Great love will soothe us, all the stuff that heals will find easy purchase. Yippety-yip-yipee.

How? you ask. How would that work? (You obviously need another party cocktail, oh you who can't stand easy breezy answers. Relax. This isn't any new agey quick fix. I can guarantee it, because I'm allergic to those and I don't feel any symptoms.)

Let me try it from this direction:

We know that only one among us with anger, fear, despair can affect us all. We can turn away from them, but we can still feel their stuff. (Oh yes you do, don't even pretend you don't. You're affected. That's how it works. Butterfly wings and all that.)

The great, great thing is that the reverse certainly has to be true. One blissful heart, one heart rich with love and delight lifts us all. Really, how cool is it, to BE the blissful heart?

How cool could it be to be the blissful heart among loads and loads and loads of OTHER blissful hearts.

That's the invitation. To do what we can do - not just pretend to imagine it for everyone. No, no, no. We can REALLY imagine it. We can aim for it, act on it, live for it.

Let's choose the story that helps our loved ones heal and the whole world along with them.

I hope you'll join us.

If you can't think how, allow me to suggest starting by including some new stories in your life or sharing stories that lead others towards the idea. I've included several below, including 'Lifetime' - all profits of which go to cancer research.

there came a moment in the middle of the song when she suddenly felt every heartbeat in the room & after that she never forgot she was part of something much bigger

Connection by Brian Andreas (click to buy it right here ...)

(It can be changed in barely a blink into a man's version.)

We're here to end it, I said & she said, No, we're here to begin it &
then she turned & opened her arms & everywhere I could see,
there were people,
like bright birds,
calling with a thousand voices
& suddenly I understood.

Here is where it begins.

With all of us, together giving our daughters
a world worth loving
for a lifetime to come.

Lifetime by Brian Andreas (click right here to buy this print)

All profits from the sale of this print, both here on the site & at our gallery partners worldwide, will go to fund breast cancer research for as long as it takes to find the cure.

Imagine it: a StoryPeople cartoon on tv

2009-09-25T15:47:00.000-07:00

Way at the beginning of the month, we entered a cartoon into a competition for holiday animations.

These are the last few days to see our entry in the contest (it's three minutes long). Here you go! For anyone who likes to copy and paste into their own browser - http://is.gd/3FOCA.

We love imagining things like this - a StoryPeople cartoon on network tv.

We love imagining places where we can play with all sorts of ideas and ways of telling stories. In fact, we love that you often cover territory we never thought of.

It's just big fun (which is kind of convenient since we can't help ourselves). Some people are really good at being doctors. Or librarians. Or ... politicians. (I would, I admit, like to meet a few more of those. The ones who are good at it, I mean.)

We're good at playing.

Which reminds me that I should also admit that making a cartoon is not all play. Since the whole goal was getting this cartoon in front of People Who Know Their Cartoons, we had to wear serious faces on more than one occasion. The People Who Know etc. etc. are really nice people, we're sure, but they do have an awful lot of rules and restrictions and guidelines.

And sometimes? When you've animated a whole scene and realize it doesn't work - it just DOES NOT WORK - and that scene needs to be tossed? Okay, that is definitely not play. That is highly poopy.

Still, mostly, it's wonderful. Ful of wonder. (Does make you think it should've been wonderfull, doesn't it?)

It can't be that different from those moments you have on your own blog, in your own writing and photography and dance and acting. You deliver the exquisite line on Facebook, you have a conversation with someone really listening.

Those are wonderful moments, aren't they, when we know we're spreading the tendrils of stories. And those stories are changing things.

Imagine THAT. Wheee!

Hanging With the Happy Cows

2009-09-23T08:14:00.000-07:00

If you follow Brian's tweets on twitter, you may have caught that he opened an office in Sausalito. It's where they're working on a super fun, let's seriously-but-with-lusciously-creative-methods think of a whole new way to rock the world project.

I've been to San Francisco plenty, but never across the Golden Gate Bridge and that's where Sausalito and Marin County sit - flirting through the fog. Flirt away, I always thought. I'll resist. (Now I'm wondering: for what? The point of resisting was WHAT??).

Last week a dear friend forced us to move out of our comfort zone. She was innkeeper of the coolest little motel but was leaving. Last chance. We seized it. We went over the bridge (ooh!) and into Marin County, over to Point Reyes.

I'll skip the adjectives. You can just figure it was AMAZING. The world managed to cram enchanted redwood groves, the San Andreas fault, lagoons, spectacular beaches, magnificent cliffs and migratory routes for a trillion amazing birds AND whales all on to one little bit of land.

It was the people who settled there who made the difference, though. Oh, come on. There are beautiful places all over the world with happy cows and goats. Here, though - they just stepped up and took care of the business of protecting the place. I'm guessing it wasn't easy but now it's a cultural habit. It's 'how it's done.' They don't just do organic farming and ... food-ing. They do super organic, but since everyone observes the standards, it's not prohibitively expensive.

It's easy, when we look back, to think in terms of a movement. We like to believe everyone just climbed on board. But I think almost always, someone had to take the risk and set things in bigger motion and hope that, eventually, economy of scale will kick in.

It's one of the things you might not know about Brian. He's just one of those people, by nature, who's an early adopter. He's not an activist, not an advocate armed with pamphlets, not a preacher of green or a lecturer on the power of focused energy. He's just a ... do it-er. Oh. I bet a better word is 'do-er.' He just likes to be a do-er with a glass of wine in hand. :)

They nailed it a long time ago, didn't they? Take your pick of old philosophies and there's the gentle advice: get yourself in the company of the excellent, the enlightened, the geniuses. If those ancient poets - or even Goethe - had known there was going to be a green movement, I feel inexplicably safe saying they'd have urged us to cozy up to people who get it.

You Are Not Alone vs. We're in this Together

2009-09-18T11:59:00.000-07:00

It's great fun to find how many women's groups are now sprinkled, twinkling, throughout the internet. If you're a woman - and I am - you can find a group for, well, everything. I haven't looked, but I'm hoping all the female plumbers have their own little corner, too.

I noticed recently that thread after thread on some forums are full of women pouring out their stories of heartbreak, despair, fear and crisis. It's a lovely thing, to read the replies, to feel people giving - without hesitation - a virtual embrace and promising: You are not alone.

It's one of the great gifts we're given, isn't it? The ability to reassure, to reach out and lead each other to safety.

It occurred to me that it's equally wonderful from the opposite direction. We also invite each other to savor the delights. We guide each other towards joy and magic.

One embrace comforts and whispers: You are not alone. I'll stay here and soothe you.

The other embrace inspires and ignites and sings: We're in this together. I'll stay here and laugh and make up a whole new plan with you.

I think we'll have become really clever when we figure out how to get all of it in one single embrace. I'd like to get one of those.

New Totebags have arrived!

2009-09-04T11:56:00.000-07:00

They're back! & in four different designs... We've brought back the ever-popular "Big Strange Family" & created three brand new never-seen-before totes, including one sleek & sophisticated black & white design. You can see them all up close right here.

We've been noticing for quite a while that even though we haven't had totebags available for almost a year, "StoryPeople Totes" has continued to be one of the top searches that has brought readers to our blogs. It's been a little bit agonizing for us, actually, knowing that we didn't have something a lot of you were looking for. So you can imagine the relief, excitement, even pleasure it brings us to be able to announce on each of our blogs ("ingredients of stuff" & "PeopleStories") that they're back. They're ready! We've got what you're looking for...

What's that? Oh, sorry. If you've come looking for an art print that features a Brian Andreas story about the perils of "Overexcitement", well, we've got that, too, along with all kinds of other cool & quirky stuff over at www.storypeople.com.

Peeking In: Decorah

2009-09-03T12:51:00.000-07:00

One of life's great, almost secret, pleasures is discovering yourself in a city - or village - and feeling a perfect sympathy.

I bet there's some scientific reason why it works, but I've got my own ideas. I think they're places created by such characters - designed, built, restored, decorated, embellished - that you can step into the spirit, the rhythm, the conversation and just know you belong. Sometimes it's for an afternoon (which is plenty long), sometimes years.

Decorah, home to StoryPeople, has that possibility for many. It sits in picturesque landscape - pretty, pretty and all that, but it's not the prettiness that makes the magic. The town is full of special talents, rare personalities and plain old quirky folk.

There's no Eiffel Tower, Empire State Building or ocean view,but that's part of the formula. Who'd want to get distracted from the peculiar goings on?

I thought I'd give you just a peek into some of what I think makes it charming. Oh sure, I took a lot MORE pictures, but on review, I see that wine seems to have made them ... um ... rather fuzzy. Eeek.

But on to the little itty bitty tour: At top is Water Street at a Sunday twilight. It's dreamy.

Below that is a glimpse of the famed loft, site of many many potlucks and spontaneous parties. It, too, is dreamy. :)

To the right is a picture of Eric, of the great wry wit. He's particularly lovely for being sooo funny and never mean. (I am pointedly sparing you photos of Eric, his wonderful wife Deb and us because, well, see above wine-making-things-fuzzy excuse.) That bookcase in the same picture was made by our deeply loved and missed Eric Johnson. It was for a photo shoot, but we couldn't bring ourselves to dismantle it.

Below is a picture of Elisabeth Maurland and her very dear and delightful daughter. Elisabeth is a potter, a maker of gems. GEMS. Oh, here. See for yourself. Her husband's a potter, too.

In the center is a picture of some of the StoryPeople crew at a local favorite joint. There's Matthew and Ben and Julie and Missy and Karen's hidden. Then Bethany and Nettie. Robin, Arne and Shawn are on the other side of the camera. There's probably a way to take a picture that gets every one in it, but you can already see I'm not much of a photographer, so it's unlikely I'd be able to figure it out.

The last picture is of Benji and Aryn. They've quite literally dedicated themselves to turning on everyone they can to living the positive. I don't think they can help themselves. They've got a magazine going on and regularly produce great shows in great little venues.

And that's all for now.

Break Time's Over! Whee!

2009-09-01T07:12:00.000-07:00

One of the BEST things about engineering a life where you really like what you're doing is that stuff doesn't so much get divided into Work and Play, as it becomes a regular review of 'How am I feeling about this?'

I guess right now there are a few people thinking: Oh, pleeeease. I'd be happy to just have work, forget how I feel about it. (I have a few friends thinking this pretty openly, that's how I made my guess. :) All that talk about 'following your passion' is talk they do NOT want to hear.)

Here's where you can either keep reading or just watch a little animation. Kind of a fork in the road. :)

Knowing the Score by StoryPeepsgreat free widgetsWidgetbox

Personally, I never fell for the following your passion thing. No, I did not. I liked Joseph Campbell and all, but I'm not much of a 'ooh, there's a philosophy I could follow' kind of gal. I'm more of a 'does this feel true?' one. (WHAT is up with all the quotation marks? Sorry about them.)

I hear that a lot of the new people in the work force - Generation What Do I Care What Letter It's Supposed to Be? - are all uppity and own short attention spans and a sense of entitlement and a host of other bad habits.

I'm way older and suspect the same was thought about me. I've had plenty of jobs that started at exactly THIS hour and went to exactly THAT one. And I bristled badly. Still, the idea that working for someone else is soul sucking is, to my mind, complete crap.

True, it was my good fortune to work for people who made adjustments. And, generally speaking, it seems they were all pleased to have me on staff because, for all my bristling, I LOVE doing work that helps a company flourish. They might perceive it as loyalty, but I've always openly admitted that I get the BEST feeling doing the best I can. Yep. It's ALL about me. :) I thrill to learning stuff, practicing accuracy, giving excellent support, being totally engaged. Whether I've been a waitress, receptionist, title insurance document creator or running a non-profit - it can't be helped.

When I bring my best, I get the best. Isn't that weird?

I take that question back. It's not weird at all. It's how it's worked. And along the way, I ended up doing what I really REALLY like. Maybe there's a correlation.

Side by Side

2009-07-04T08:25:00.000-07:00

Sam had just come back from Paris - one of those quick holidays Marine Guards get. He'd been given one little mission - return with champagne.

He'd never had real champagne before and suffered, in my champagne drinking opinion, from the mistaken belief that it was for special occasions. Yep. I share this opinion with Brian; as opinions go, it's one of the best to share. :) Anyway, I suggested that champagne was for whenever you had the chance and if you went into it right, the special part would follow.

He was willing to give that a try and was ready to share that first effort with me. Oh, I was so happy!

We met on the bank of the Danube River at twilight and found a concrete platform to sit on so our legs dangled over the not so blue water. Across from us was the Parliament, a pretty regal bit of architecture. Behind us was the castle and the fairytale Fisherman's Bastion.

Dusk turned into night and the theater of Budapest would have started. Light must have fanned up the buildings dramatically. The Chain Bridge would have begun to glow; the floating casinos and clubs down the river would have been glittering,

It must have been pretty darned beautiful. A lot of places are beautiful. A backyard dancing with fireflies is. A front porch watching over the swooshing sprinklers is. The kitchen counter with chairs pulled up to it is.

It could have been any of those places. We just didn't notice. I mean, it's great to sit back and savor your scenery, but we were just having more fun being friends. We had nothing but the future to talk about.

Living abroad with guaranteed changes ahead - new assignments, moves to different countries - makes the future a pretty popular topic. But we had that kind of friendship, that that loves to trade ideas and help fill in the other's plans.

I feel pretty lucky to have quite a few friends like that. You have those friends, too, don't you? Aren't they WONDERFUL?! Oh, it's good having friends to review the stuff of the day, to complain and cry to, but the friends who are there to imagine with! Wow.

Actually, in the middle of writing this, I called another friend and by the time we were off the phone, we'd cooked up a whole new business. She'd accidentally forgotten what an enormous talent she had for event design and what with all the new weddings possible in Iowa ... It was great.

Sam. I haven't seen him for the longest time. He went to the Ukraine. Or Belarus. I went to England. But if he visited tomorrow, I believe he knows I'd be sooo happy to sit with him all over again, side by side, and look out at the future together.

Maybe with one less bottle of champagne, though, because my futures don't like hangovers so much.

P.S.

2009-06-18T16:14:00.000-07:00

Writing that last one nearly made my head explode!! Maybe I should have just posted the animation of 'Imagining World' and let the interpretation chips fall where they - how does that line go? Fall where they may? Fall where they will?

Yah. Maybe I should've done that and run away really really fast.

Imagining World

2009-06-18T11:20:00.000-07:00

A few years ago, a friend bought a number of StoryPeople prints for gifts. For each person on his list, he found a perfect story and we marveled at how easy it was.

And then he chose a print for himself. Or rather, it sort of chose him. It seemed to cast a spell. I watched him return, over and over to it. He had to have it. Even though he didn't understand it. Not at all.

'At all?' I didn't quite believe him. He managed high risk projects in emerging markets. That almost pre-qualified him for understanding it. Besides, anyone can take a stab (and sometimes, a punch) at interpreting. 'At ALLLLL?'

'Not at all.' He read it one more time. 'Nope. What does it mean?'

Well, I couldn't explain it. Or maybe I wouldn't. One of those.

It's great when we meet art, whatever kind, and have instant sympathy. But a whole lot of art gets a whole lot of better when we invest in it, when we explore it, when we learn enough to understand it (you know, like The Wasteland. Which is why I'll never EVER believe ANYONE who pretends they just picked up a little James Joyce for light reading. STOPPPPPP it. You are KILLING me!)

And then there's the art, the literature, the music that we have to do something a little special for. It doesn't need, or even want, a PhD. It doesn't get better if you can recite all the obscure names ever associated with it.

It just seems to want us to open up, be freely curious, hear it, let it lead us out of what we expect into what we can imagine. Oh, I don't know. Hard, isn't it, to describe it exactly.

Either way, he got it for himself. 'Imagining World.'

And now, especially now, at this time in the world, I really do wonder if he's come to understand it. I imagine he has.

Sleeping

2009-06-15T14:43:00.000-07:00

If we ever start a weekly story potluck, you might as well know I'll be bringing the Humor Ones every time.

You can bring the julienned red bell pepper stories. They're delicious, too. The ones that make me weepy or stir up big love are great. (Makes you wonder if whoever invented catharsis knew the gold mine they'd unearthed).

But of all Brian's stories, it's the wry, the sly, the ironic, the ones with the slight sting that I find I'm always hungry for. (Okay, really, this is the end of that potluck analogy. You'd think I'd learn my lesson. :\)

Anyway, no matter how many time I've read them - the 'funny ones', they seem to have little hooks in them that snag on my mind. One second, I'm as complacent as you could be, the next I'm contemplating.

And so it is with Sleeping. It's simple, funny and a little too true, and you'd think that'd be all. But I hardly ever read it without accidentally wandering into wondering ... um, what am I doing right now? Slumbering luxuriously? Recovering? Gathering up my strength? Or am I just stubbornly refusing to sit up and wake up.

How could you NOT love a story that does that? :)

A Future with a Lot More Fun

2009-06-13T09:42:00.000-07:00

The future is a funny thing. All that power, all that unbelievable expanse and a billion routes and ways to be and choices to make again and again and it STILL lets us settle into little ruts. So far, I haven't met anyone who hasn't found themselves stuck on occasion.

You'd think the future would send out a few guides with maps, to fix tires and give nudges. Hmm.

On the other hand, now that I'm thinking about it, maybe getting stuck is one of the secret joys of being a human being. Getting stuck and then having the wonderful experience of getting UNstuck. We're forced to probe our minds and spirits for the beauty and possibilities of everything. We get to teach ourselves to discard and embrace and discover all over again.

It's really why this cartoon was one of my choices for the 'Let's Celebrate the Future' series. It's always a good sign when I realize I'm kind of pouting and worrying and wishing that the fun would show up that I've somehow gotten off track of BEING in it all. Suddenly, there it is - the perfect chance to shift my mind and head out into a different future, one with a few more sparkles. And a lot more fun. :)

Graduation Animation - Whee! It Rhymes!

2009-06-10T13:02:00.000-07:00

I'm so happy to sneak back in here between Brian's blogs and twitters to introduce our little series of cartoons celebrating graduates and, well, anyone else who's heading into the future. I reckon that's most of us.

Graduates can be forgiven for thinking it's all about them, what with all those diplomas and caps confusing the issue.

Well, the rest of us have been waiting a long time for them - not postponing any fun or adventure - no, no, no. Just waiting. Waiting for new members of the club, players at the table, voices in the choir, chefs in the kitchen, ideas and talents in the mix. New ingredients always make things interesting.

We call it change. It is THE best game on the planet. Of course, it can be scary, but it's also invigorating and exciting and guaranteed to push open the borders of our minds (the very borders that'll snap shut just as quickly, so we like to send the nimble young 'uns in first. Ha!)

Welcome, graduates! Let's start playing!!

And to start us off, one of my personal favorite stories: Air Juggling.

How to Impress Mom on Mother's Day

2009-05-08T11:12:00.000-07:00

Since moms are truly the center of the world (we do call our planet Mother Earth!), we made some cartoons to impress her. Not just impress her, but to remind, inspire & remember moments with her. We know she likes flowers & chocolates & chihuahuas, but we think stories are the best way to let her know that over all these years, we loved & still love her deeply. Here are two of our favorite stories in her honor...

Hindsight: Some day, we hope someone will invent such powerful hindsight that it might, maybe (please oh PLEASE) leak into the present so a few of those sassy teenagers can experience foresight. Hahaha. We laugh so we don't cry. :) We really wish we'd know a thing or two about how little we really knew....

Hindsight by StoryPeepsgreat free widgetsWidgetbox

True Map: Even the internet can't change the fact that the world is very big & in my not-very-good-at-geography opinion, has way too many capitals. In the end, though, home & those who create it really are the heart of the matter.

True Map by StoryPeepsgreat free widgetsWidgetbox

How to tell stories. Part 2.

2009-04-05T08:32:00.000-07:00

Hey everybody,

I got an email from somebody a couple of days ago asking me when I was going to put up the next installment of How To Tell Stories. Yikes. I'd been putting them up on Zen Bandit & just assumed that everyone was already getting them. My bad. (I love that. Not the doing it. The saying it. My bad. It's such a useful phrase. Which we hear around our house a LOT. Especially in relation to dishes & the garbage going out. I'm convinced my elder son has one of those internal electric fences they use to train dogs. Only his electric fence will NOT let him take garbage outside the perimeter of the kitchen...)

So, I'll be better about going outside my internal electric fence & I'll get the rest of the How To Tell a Story installments over here, too..

(Also, I'm going to steal some of Ellen's stuff from her blog & put it here over the next few weeks. Absolutely beautiful & moving writing. Since she's had an extraordinary year of fighting breast cancer. If you can't wait, here's where you can find what she has to say: ellenrockne.com )

OK, back to the stories. Before we begin the second thing you need to know to tell a good story, we should probably start with an absolute basic. Like: why?

Why should you know how to tell stories in the first place? It's simple. Because stories will forever & ever trump facts. You can argue this all you want. You won’t win. (Especially since this is my blog & I have all the administrative rights. HA!). Facts are secondary to our stories about facts. Maybe not for you & the three other people in the world who were actually there & really know the truth. But for the rest of the world, the story matters more.

Life is about two things: the boring details & magic. Obviously, this doesn’t apply if you’re already enlightened. Then there’s only one thing & it’s all the same. But if you’re like most of us, magic is more important.

So, let’s face it. Magic will always be with us. People are not going to suddenly have an epiphany one day & start acting rationally. We aren’t rational. This is not going to change in the foreseeable future. So, instead of complaining about human beings being the way they are, I suggest that you learn to work with them.

That's why you want to learn to tell stories.

OK, enough of the why. Let's get to today's thing you need to know to tell stories:

We have two sons & when they were younger, every night I’d go in & lie on the rug & before they’d go to sleep, we’d tell stories. Tell us about the Queen of the Pirates, Dad. How she chops off the heads of the bandits with her sword. & the heads roll down the street. Thump. Thump. & the dogs chase after them & eat the eyeballs. Yeah. (It’s definitely a boy thing). But one night, my son Matthew said something I’ll never forget. Tell me some pictures, Dad. Tell me some pictures.

OK, you should write this one on your hand. It’s that important to telling a story. Stories aren’t really about words. We just use words to get the pictures across. Knowing this gives you a secret edge.

One more thing. If you want your stories to come alive, use pictures that are jewels. Clear. Dazzlingly bright. All your senses at once. Walking barefoot on wet grass. The smell of burning autumn leaves & the crunch of buttered cinnamon toast, the warm sticky feel of a child’s hand in yours. Pictures that tell us that you love this world & can be trusted to hold it gently. You have to be one of us, before we’ll even BEGIN to listen to your facts.

OK, is that rational? No, but it's true. This is why you want to learn how to tell stories. If for no other reason than WE KNOW THEY WORK. We have thousands of years of practical experience in how to tell stories to people & buried deep in our genes, hundreds of thousands of years of hearing stories. It's why when you start telling a good story, people actually listen to you & then afterwards come & sit at your feet & ask for autographs & make offers of other fun stuff...

Why fight a good thing?

with love, Brian

BTW, I'm on twitter now. Woo-hoo! at brianandreas

& my other blog is: zenbandit.com

A very short story...

2009-03-27T08:12:00.000-07:00

You know when someone says, I just thought I'd teach you a lesson? I've always wondered what the real lesson was (since it never turned out to be the lesson they were teaching).

Even now, here's all I can remember of the lessons I've been taught:

1. when you're being yelled at, it's a good idea to act like you're listening. Smiling & starting to dance your own little happy dance is definitely not good.

2. when people ask you when was the last time you balanced your checkbook, tell them regularly, every month & that you must have missed an entry, or you have a bad calculator.

HA! Some student I am...

You see, I'm not that good with being taught a lesson. I'm much better about looking back about ten years later & going, Oh, that's what that all meant. Like almost everybody I know (DRAT. Including my own children.) I'm better at learning my own lessons, however slowly.

So, if you ever hear a story from me (like the one here) with a moral, you can count on it being really short & ambiguous enough that you're never going to be sure if I actually meant to teach you anything. (Because I probably didn't. )

with love,

Brian

P.S. By the way, you can click on this thumbnail & get a larger version. I think it's about the perfect size to print out & give to your favorite happy person who is having a short period of forgetfulness. It's got a Creative Commons copyright, so you can use it for non-commercial purposes as long as you tell people where you got it from. (That would be me & StoryPeople. Not from somewhere on the internet. Just to be clear. :-))

Here's all the Creative Commons stuff right here in case you want to learn more about how to happily share your work with the whole world (just so you know I'm not trying to teach you a lesson...):

Creative Commons License

me on twitter: twitter.com/brineypup

my other blog: zenbandit.com

How to Tell a Story (Part 1)

2009-03-26T18:38:00.000-07:00

Some of you know that I've been working on a guide to help scientists & technologists learn to tell stories. It all started at last year's TED (which is a great place for ideas, if you've never run across it before. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment & Design. TED has the tagline: Ideas Worth Spreading. They have an incredible lineup of speakers every year on every field imaginable. Quantum physics. Robotics. Medicine. Music. Design. There is a general belief at TED that if we harness our ideas & our energies towards a greater good, we could actually launch ourselves into a true Golden Age for all humanity. There is also a general counter-belief at TED that the best of TED was all in the past, in Monterrey. Before everyone knew about it. As if the tagline should actually be "TED: Ideas Worth Spreading. But Not Too Much Because Then Everyone Will Be Almost as Smart as Al Gore. Which is Much Worse Than You Can Even Imagine" So, like most things human, it's a mixed bag...)

Anyway, after a couple of days of mind-numbing talks, I figured out that all the years I've spent making stuff up could actually turn out to be useful. (Fancy that!) I could teach these scientists & technologists how to keep from being burned alive by angry crowds of people who just wanted revenge for being bored out of their skulls. In fact, that became my working title for it: How to Explain Science & Technology so that People Don't Want to Tie You Up & Burn You at the Stake.

I'm going to excerpt a few sections of the book over the next couple days here StoryPeople. (Now, I don't HAVE to do this. It's actually a curiously masochistic thing, because it forces me to go through & finish the last pieces that need rough edits. 'Rough edit' is my personal code for stuff that's still in my head, which I'll get to some rainy day. Of which there are only, like, five in an entire year in Santa Barbara. Those are days I usually stay in bed all day & read my Kindle anyway. This is the real reason I have to set up situations like this. OTHERWISE, I'D NEVER GET ANYTHING DONE. EVER.)

Anyway, there are really only a few things you need to start telling stories. Maybe 10 or 12 in all. So, I'll give you one a day until I run out, or until I decide I'm fine with the rough edited version...

So, what are we waiting for? Here's number one (by the way, this is number one hands down. No contest whatsoever):

1. With any story, treat me like a friend. I’ll forgive a lot if you treat me like someone who matters. Then whatever story you tell me is one I want to hear. Another way of saying this is: it’s not about you. It’s about me. Telling a story is a very intimate act. You are asking me to listen with my child self. The self that wants to imagine & play along with you. This is really important. You may not remember this since you’ve been an adult for a while & the rules are a bit different now, but playing with people who are mean to you isn’t a whole lot of fun. We usually won’t do it more than once & we’ll remember that you were mean to us. For a very, very long time. Probably for every time we run into you for the rest of your life.

The funny thing is that you can actually use this to tell why a story isn't working. Why you're not interested, or why you're bored, or why you're angry. Next time it happens to you, just stand up with an intense look of pitiless retribution on your face (think Old Testament. That'll put you in the right frame of mind...) & say I WILL NOT LISTEN TO ANOTHER WORD UNTIL YOU TREAT ME LIKE A FRIEND. Then, turn around & walk out into the sunshine & the sound of children playing & the wind, like a promise of eternal spring in your hair.

I can promise you it will be one thing you will never regret.

(But, if you do, it'll make a really good story. Does that help?)

Until next, with love,

Brian

my twitter: http://twitter.com/brineypup
my other blog: http://zenbandit.com

Falling down the rabbit hole...

2009-03-21T16:52:00.000-07:00

After much wailing & gnashing of teeth, I've finally been dragged into the blog world. Well, to be fair, I haven't actually BEEN dragged. I HAVE DRAGGED MYSELF.

I blame it all on twitter. I have a friend who told me I'd love twitter. It's exactly the way you write already, she said. Short. To the point. Even better, she told me that she was on twitter, too, so we could tweet (or twit. It's sometimes a fine line between the two...) back & forth.

It was fun. Three days into it, she stopped twittering. She said she had too much other stuff going on to keep up with it. I, having already proven multiple times before that I have more enthusiasm than sense, continued.

I find I get a bit anxious if I don't twitter at least once in a day. It's like twitter scratches some itch buried deep in my genetic code. It's raw instinct. Like a dog peeing on a tree, or a child drawing on a sidewalk with chalk, or Ellen shopping in second-hand stores. We tweet because we must.

(Yeah. I know. That's a dark view. But how else do you explain the fact that people send somewhere on the order of 150 million tweets a day? This is definitely not a sign that human beings are rational...)

Anyway, I'm here. Kicking & screaming in a half-hearted way. But looking forward to unveiling bits & pieces of what keeps me occupied on a daily basis. A guide on how to tell stories. Quick drawings & stories from my notebooks. Paintings, before & after & then a bit after that (since I can never quite be satisfied with before. The more I paint, the more I understand the painter who once said that the painting would be well & truly done when he was dead.) Audio fables. New works from my secret band (oh yeah! That's a story in & of itself.). General mouthiness (which is one my favorite things)...

You know. I take it back. I'm thinking I'm pretty happy to be here... :-)

Until next, with love,

Brian
Santa Barbara

Twitter: www.twitter.com/brineypup
My own blog: zenbandit.com

Lingering Effects

2009-03-11T18:19:00.001-07:00

You can always get over this flu that's going around, but the effects of Little House on the Prairie last forever ...

I Swear I Meant to Finish the Tour

2009-03-09T16:33:00.001-07:00

Today was going to be the next installment in our little tour around the studio and while I'd have liked to do that very much, I couldn't and can't. I went and got myself all riled up trying to make YouTube work.

Nine trillion times, that's how many it took me to get an animation up there so it actually worked. I'd be happy to tell you allllll about it because I KNOW nothing would be more fascinating than the tale of the labyrinth routes I took to find the right codecs and you'd be shivering at the part when I managed to load ONE MORE that was actually, finally, good, but YouTube was on the prowl and noticed a similar video already up. Poof. Good-bye and gone. See, I'd tell you that, but it would take some spicy language.

Oh no, trust me. When your video disappears in a poof, about the only thing any sane person can say is 'oh dear, those r*t b*****ds are at it again.' See? Not the same with little astericks, is it?

I'm telling you. Writing a blog for StoryPeople, with its love of things friendly, witty,tender and merrily hilarious, is not without difficulty if you're someone like me.

We were just about all raised with that idea that swearing is the sign of - well, funny, that. I can't think what the rest of it would be. Something. Who made that up? Someone who sat in a lovely little garden pouring lemonade all day long, that's what I think.

Nevertheless, made it up they did, whatever it is, however it goes. Fair enough. It's probably true. Except for the part where they didn't have to get animated videos to play on YouTube.

* * * *

If you made it through this, then you probably deserve a leeeeetle peek at something someone's been dabbling with.

Can't show you t-shirts because I don't have any pictures. Can't show you the FABulous new tote bags because - yes, I don't have any pictures.

But I CAN show you my personal favorite new hope chest/imagination box. Most of the versions feature a wondrous and wonderful palette of super saturated colors, but this one is just ... serene and handsome. Today, it's exactly what I need.

Test Kitchen

2009-03-04T09:36:00.000-08:00

There's always stuff going on around here and lately, even more stuff than usual. A whole lot of it might never make it beyond our doors or off our computers or out of notebooks filled with sketches because ... well, because that's how ideas in motion work.

I think the same thing's happening all over the place and it's really exciting.

If they made it into a job, I'd sign up just to go around all over the place and see what people have going on. People work so quietly and out of the spotlight and sometimes think, 'Oh, there's nothing I can do with this.' and it takes someone else, someone interested to help out and think: Are you kidding?! Let's rock and roll.

Yah. I love that. Anyway, I thought I'd spend a few days sorting through our drawer of things we're playing with.

This first one is a clip from when I was just testing how a theme song might work. It's ridICULOUS, but still made me giggle. The good news is that I didn't use it. The really good news is that we ended up with a real theme song and a wonderful plan for these little chappies.

But we didn't get the wonderful plan (thanks, Ren!) until we had some material to play off of and throw away.

There's Not Much Time. Yay!

2009-02-23T09:10:00.000-08:00

Isn't it great, how we don't have much time?

I forget that a lot. Instead, I waste what little time I have thinking that if I had more of it, I'm almost positive I'd do something really good with it. You can't believe how many hours have been spent on trying to figure out how to 1. get some world peace and 2. fix our economy. (Way too many. It's a little like buying a lottery ticket. You start thinking about it and hoping that - swoooosh! - deserving or not, you might be the very lucky winner of a stroke of genius. Wheeeee.)

Yeah, well ...

This morning, out of nowhere, I thought: no way. I'm glad there's not much time.

It's one little life and it just ticks away, whether or not you're doing anything fun or good with it. Now, this is a belief you may or may not subscribe to - that you get one shot at realizing all the stuff there is to realize, to do the stuff that can stand doing. Fair enough.

Thing is, it's what I believe. Remembering it was great. Suddenly, I remember that if I just do what I do and you do what you do, we cover a lot more ground. I don't have to learn to - well, for example ...

... knit (which is kind of sad because those cute little hats in our knitting shop aren't for sale. No, they're not. They're only samples to show what you can make with their yarn. If you're a knitter. I'm knot.) Oh well. I'll have to buy one.

... love cooking. I'm glad you do, but I don't. I can love other people's cooking. I can go to cafes and restaurants and bakeries. You know. The places being run by people who do like cook?

... garden (even though I really love gardening. However, my idea of gardening assumes that not one seed or bulb I plant will survive until the next blooming cycle. That's not really an idea as much as my experience. The other half of our household LOVES to grow tomatoes and peppers and likes pretending to have plans to become a small farmer. Frankly, he's had the same experience, the refusal of any plant to return, but it keeps our local nursery in business.

Yah, there are a few things I won't have time for. But that leaves plenty for the things I really want to do.

When I grow up, I want to remember that I always wanted to be about a thousand different things & one lifetime didn't seem nearly enough. When I grow up, I hope it's at the very end when it doesn't matter anymore anyway.

- Perfect Time from 'Some Kind of Ride' by Brian Andreas

when women shine

2009-02-18T13:37:00.000-08:00

I'm almost officially an older woman. Woo-hoo! This is very exciting.

Wait a second. We can probably do without the adverb: Exciting. Just exciting. The most exciting part? I'm not even a little bit afraid of trying to make things happen. Before, I might have hesitated. Before, I tried to not look ambitious. Before, it was more important to seem 'fun' than 'focused.' For who? Oh please, I don't know.

Anyway, I found a nifty offer on Valentine's Day - whee for meee! They were giving free tickets to women to a big Flash conference in Toronto. I only had to submit a video. Or flash animation (which takes about 50 times longer but for some reason seemed the way to go. pffft.) Anyway, I didn't even look at the calendar to see if the dates fell in 'cold season' (exactly how long DOES snow last up there?) Here's my entry:

Everyone I know has been really impressed by the effort to get women more involved in the flash animation industry. I'm told all sorts of industries are making a bigger effort to involve women. On the one hand, how could I not think it's wonderful?

On the other hand, I wonder if it wouldn't need such a big effort if we were teaching our young women to create without apology, to contribute without changing their work so men would approve, to participate without worrying about competition.

Actually, I thought that's what we were teaching our young women. I might have been wrong.

If you know Brian's stories, then you probably know this story that's very dear to me:

For a long time, she only flew when no one else was watching.
'Flying Woman' by Brian Andreas.

I guess it will never go out of style, but just for today? I wish it would.

Being a Valentine

2009-02-13T11:48:00.000-08:00

Valentine's Day is one day, one little day to choose to live a story that's about love. Simple simple simple. It really hasn't changed that much since we were little, when we might have cared whether or not we got Valentines cards, but knew the biggest fun was the giving them.

Those kidlets sure are clever: one day, to BE a Valentine, to give love.

What Love Should Like Like

2009-02-11T16:05:00.000-08:00

You know how they ask: Who's your ideal partner? and people can actually answer? This amazes me. Of course, consider the source. I've been married twice - to polar opposites - and am currently in a long long relationship with a man who'd basically make a third polar opposite. If there were that many opposites, but I don't think there CAN be, so forget I said it.

There's still a great deal of love between me and the men I was married to. It was the marriage part that wasn't good, not the love. And in between them have been a few other men and, of course, friends I could NOT love more and I'm going to have to say that about the only things they share are that they're men, they tend to like sports, ... um. They're men. (But I used that one already, didn't I?)

One of those friends mentioned above, a friend well over 40, told us recently that he won't consider any woman his age. Now this is strange to me, to have a friend who's an idiot. (Oh, don't worry. I'm not talking behind his back. It's the first thing we said to him: Are you an idiot?) On the other hand, as dear a friend as he is, I wouldn't want a woman his age to have to waste one second trying to prove her worth or her charm or any of the many other mysterious, delightful, interesting things she's rich in.

At the same time, I have a girlfriend who's teaching her teenage daughter to make young men work for her friendship and attention. 'They'll value you more,' she says.

Ay, ay, ay. I really think we should all sit down in one room and read 'Creature on Fire' together. And maybe not let anyone out of that room until they agreed that it's the only thing that makes sense. It's the only thing that's EVER made sense.

Well. Now I feel good. How about you?

Dating

2009-02-10T10:30:00.000-08:00

For the longest time, even the word made me cringe: dating. Didn't like it, refused to do, tried it, hated it, went back to refusing to do it. I'm not exactly sure why it was so bad, but I think it's because NONE of us knew how to make it work.

There really are no rules, except the ones we kind of invent among friends. You know - you have a date, you share the details, friends either howl with laughter or sigh with envy and there you go.

We think we figured something out. And the thing is, we didn't.

In my considered opinion (ha!) dating 'rules' should be ignored unless, at the top of the list, it says: Neither of you has to prove how special you are. And (yes, it is kind of a long rule) neither of you should have to spend any time convincing the other that THEY'RE special.

You both are. You just are. Now please get on with spending an experience together.

When I started doing that, dating got way better.

Love a Difficult Woman Today

2009-02-06T16:13:00.000-08:00

This is the perfect animated love poem today. I'm crankety. And sick. And crankety. Difficult, I'm sure. Difficult to love? Well, I might be for some people, but luckily, there are plenty of others who I fit fine with.

The 'difficult women' complaint (and its many variations) has always entertained me. I'm even MORE entertained by women who brandish it. There's a reason, but I don't always get it. All of us, in any kind of relationship - friendships, too - are difficult. We're people. I don't know how you get around it.

I didn't exactly decide it, but figured out quite awhile ago that it was much more fun and loose and rewarding to be with people who didn't think I was difficult as much as interesting. It's a wonderful freedom that's exquisitely romantic.

I do the same for them. And we feel love for each other. We don't all curl up on each others' laps, that's true, but our minds and hearts hug.

It's perfect.

A Limit to Love? I think Not.

2009-02-02T11:01:00.000-08:00

Pick a week, any week, and someone is aching over a love affair. Any of us who belong to the world (any volunteers?)can testify to how much pain's involved, which sort of begs the question:. If we're supposed to love others, then just where is all that pain coming from?

If you're one of those who just volunteered, please tell the truth now.

With a love affair, is the pain about feeling rejected, humiliated, forgotten? Is it about having lost something?

There's a certain point when you've got enough love under your belt that you can see that love travels in many directions. The pain tends to come when we're looking for love's arrival, when we most want it to show up. We want, expect, crave and when it fails us ... well, aow and ouch. It's just not very pleasant.

I don't know about you, but I wouldn't trade one little bit of any of the pain, none of it. Wait a second. Let me test that. Maybe I'm just saying it.

Nope. None of it. I guess it's the only way I could have measured the difference between the love we're waiting to get and love we have to give. Now THAT's love that only makes me ache with big happiness and why, exactly, would I ever put a limit on that?

Maybe love hurts, but loving? Doesn't.

Tiramisu - a love potion

2009-01-26T17:26:00.000-08:00

Tiramisu, the film, is nothing but delicious (tiramisu, the food group, is not so bad, either). If you're following Brian's twitter (http://twitter.com/brineypup), you probably read his recommendation. It's showing at our local film festival. Will you get to see it if you don't catch it at a festival? I don't know but I wish you could.

I mean, I really really wish you could. Aren't those great moments, when you discover something and suddenly, there you sit with this experience and you know, you believe, that if the world was introduced to it, a spell would be cast?

The story is fairly simple. An actress with lavish spending habits has a new accountant who discovers she's about to lose her houseboat.

The movie is one big love-life festival. It's zesty with love. And forgiveness and all humor and gusto and (hey, any time you want to step in here and help out with the adjectives, you're welcome).

From beginning to end, it's beautifully acted, beautifully shot, beautifully everything. It was filmed in 24 days and shot on a budget of $350,000. Which is enchanting all on its own.

So, no one's asking, but if they did? I think they should call this film's director and Brian and anyone else who has the gift for showing us how life sparkles, even when it doesn't seem possible, and put them all in a room so they can cook up one big love program for the world. They have the recipe.

I think that would help. At the very least, it would be a feast.

Going Green in Winter

2009-01-22T14:02:00.000-08:00

Here's our new animation: Green Kids - An Elevator Story

And speaking of green, our new President issued the challenge and I like to think that all of us, every one, agreed to stand up and meet it. However, I was kind of glad I could do it from the warm west coast. I have memories of bitter winter and nearly all of them are, aptly, bitter.

'Well, if you don't like it,' folks who like winter are prone to snip, 'you should leave.' Last time I heard that, I thought: good idea.

I think that if my new President had urged me to join the green revolution back when I was freezing my butt off and my brain was full of icycles, it would have been hard to listen. Oh come on. It just is, when your every fiber's chanting: Heat. Heat. Keep me warm. Give me light. Make the cold go away.

It's hard to hear about deprivation when you're cold. It's hard to care about earnest, solemn stuff when you're just trying to stay happy.

I think a lot of people who haven't really embraced green thingies do think: deprivation. And lectures. They hear: Turn off the lights! Turn down the thermostat! Turn in your car!

And, in truth, maybe it IS about deprivation. Definitely, it's too often been about lectures.
But it's also about the joyful and warmth of intimacy. It's about snuggling in and having stories to share. Bundling up and walking or skiing and turning off the tv to read or paint or learn something.

Our homes don't have to be shrines to electricity-devouring appliances. They can be places of companionship and laughter and art.

Just saying: it can be a romantic life. And we won't have to feel deprived.

The Twitters of Brian

2009-01-20T18:55:00.000-08:00

Brian discovered Twitter and he's one of my personal favorite Twitterers (Twitterees?) to be signed up for. Among other twitters, he wrote this today: sitting in a warm California winter morning, feeling the tremors of our future spreading out from Washington

And this is from a few days ago: enjoying the afternoon with my family (who are at their most entertaining when they're simply being opinionated. About everything.)

He can take 140 characters or less and paint some kinda picture with them. Pbpbpbpb. I need a whole blog and THEN some.

A Chance for Romance

2009-01-19T08:09:00.000-08:00

My grandfather used to say nobody gives a damn anymore & the thing I remember most
about him is the way he never let that stop him from giving a damn all the days of his life.

- Giving a Damn by Brian Andreas

These are some heady days. Today, Martin Luther King Day, where the past and the future finally meet, is - arguably - even more exhilarating than tomorrow (of course, haven't been there yet. Don't know.)

Today is a miracle created by men. One man became its figurehead, but many many stepped up without promises, without guarantees, without security from any source but their own hearts and said to the world: We think this way. Things will change. Not we can, not we'll try. We are. Watch us.

There are many ways to define a romantic life, many ways to live a romantic life, but Martin Luther King's was the epitome. To me. Just in case you thought I was suggesting you should think the same. Am not.

Before he became a legend, one of the greatest heroes of a whole century, Martin Luther King was a man. Not a man with great wealth, not a man with a fleet of private jets, not a man who held the most important office in the world and could marshall a great nation's resources.

Say you weren't alive during his lifetime, say you only have grainy footage to judge him by. It takes one afternoon's walk through the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, the site of Dr. King's assassination, now turned into a civil rights museum, to know and feel it.

Men sit in tiny, unexceptional motels and imagine a whole new world.

I don't know much, but I know this. Want to live for justice? You're going to have to make a few people uncomfortable.

Want to make a change? You're probably going to have to reach out beyond the already converted and the circle of friends. That's a clique, not a change. That's a tight-knit circle, not a movement.

Right now, as a nation, as a world for that matter (whether or not you voted in this administration), we have the chance to move out of rhetoric into action, from hope spread on whispers to thinking out loud.

This is our chance to start, as a nation, as a world, a great romance with life.

A Story of Run-away Worry that Came Back Golden

2009-01-12T16:46:00.000-08:00

Leaning out as far as she can, hoping she'll fall soon so she can stop worrying about whether it will happen or not.

Hoping to Fall by Brian Andreas

I used to envy them just a little bit, the people who could worry well. They had this way of collecting others to worry with them and I just assumed there was some bonding going on. I like bonding. I'm slow at it, but when I bond, it's super adhesive.

Thing is, I couldn't. Or at least not very well. I tried, but my brain's got little itchy fingers that start pick through the compartment where all the fix-it things go: tape, scissors, staples, thread, ideas about what to do to solve the thing.

This last week, I could have really really used some better worrying skills. I wanted so much to worry - not solve. Worry. There's a law going into effect on February 10 - a brand new Consumer Protection law.

I fancy myself a reader - able to string enough words together to glean at least a smidgen of meaning- but this thing is IM. PEN. ETRABLE. (If anyone's giving points for restraint of expression, then send 10 my way because you can't believe what it took to not call it a piece of legal poop). It was so hard to read, a lot of us had to rely on newspaper articles and wild guess work at the consequences. They were not good.

For a week, a whole bunch of us were under the impression that children's clothing could not be resold. Not at thrift stores, not at consignment stores, not at Goodwill or any charity shop. Not even at yard sales.

This piece of Consumer Protection, ironically, seemed to be the handiwork of professional worry-ers. In a noble effort to protect our children from dangerous thingies, they seemed to have made all sorts of stuff - poof - illegal. As of February 10, it seemed that nothing could be sold that wasn't tested like crazy.

Here's the good news. There was a little update. They (you know. 'them') released an easy to read-and-understand memo that normal people could understand. In fact (well, I oughtn't say that: in fact). They seem to be trusting us to know what's harmful and what's not.

By way of clarification, there's now a super duper easy to figure out line:

When the CPSIA was signed into law on August 14, 2008, it became unlawful to sell recalled products.

(If I were giving emphasis, I'd give it to 'recalled'. Hell yes. Take those RECALLED PRODUCTS off the shelves, you iditos.)

Anyway, this is very very good for all the retailers and re-sellers of used children's clothing. But mostly, it's good for families. It was the families that I wanted to worry for so much. Just worry.

I think families are perfectly capable of reading labels or, if they don't read English well, making a judgment call on a product's safety. If you can't tell on a visual, you can definitely do a lot by touch. See, I imagine it works something like this:

'Oh, this little t-shirt is dotted with all sorts of sharp, glass buttons sewn on badly. I bet my 3 year old shouldn't wear it.'

'THIS toy looks just like it was made with the cheapest, most plastic ingredients possible and stuffed with danger-Will Robinson crap. It smells slightly toxic. I probably shouldn't give it to my neighbor's infant.'

Oh yes, right now is a bad time to tell families that Congress thinks they should buy all things new for their children 12 years and under.

So I wanted to worry. I couldn't. I spent the last week turning over solutions. I bet a LOT of people were. But there were no solutions to be found, not if the new law was that rigid.

Here's what I think happened. I think lots and lots of people objected. Lots of people and organizations rallied. Suddenly, although the law had slid through the process barely detected, people started paying attention and asking questions and saying stuff like: Are you crazy? Look what your worrying has gone and done NOW.

And someone stopped worrying so much on our behalf and did something reasonable.

They issued an explanation. We can stop worrying.

Jewels

2009-01-07T07:25:00.000-08:00

We're so happy to show you this ... this jewel of a little film by Brian Andreas. He calls it an experiment in filmmaking with no images. OOoh! (We love his experiments. Sometimes there's a little smoke and a lot of fire involved, but sometimes? They're jewels like this.) Turn your lights down low and your volume up. And enjoy ...

The Idea of Colors from Brian Andreas on Vimeo.

And, as long as we're talking about jewels ... Men and women make great things. Small, intricate things. Big polished pipe-y things. Furry, curly, slender, plump and marble-y things. And because we live all over the world and have done so for a long, long time, the things we've made and make are scattered jewels. Not 'like' jewels. But jewels. They're jewels. It's one of the great pleasures of life to find, to discover, to spend a few minutes with them.

Not you? Fine. Not you. A whole lot of others, representing every kind of person and profession, love those jewels. I think it's because they're made of stories.

We'll dream of traveling to Easter Island to rub our shoulders along the chins of the famous statues, the moai. (Yes, of COURSE, I wiki'ed that one. To me, they're just big old ancient heads.)

We'll cross St. James Square in London to meditate a little on the plaque that silently commemorates the site where Allied commanders put their heads together to outwit the Axis powers.

We'll visit Normandy. And Stonehenge. And the ruins of Catholic churches destroyed after Henry VIII's split from Rome.

I can probably stop the list, can't I? Those are big things, but there's nothing - nothing that I can think of - that is not made of little stories. Little jewels. Our own stories. Those are jewels, too.

We might not be able to tell our own story or maybe we believe there's no one really interested in it, but a jewel's a jewel, whether or not we believe it ourselves.

Some are a little more luminous, some spread more light and reveal more - the curious and quirky truth, our noble or silly natures, how irrepressibly fun and imaginative we are. And some are buried deep, waiting to be unearthed and cut and turned into a little film ...

Wind-Up Year

2009-01-06T09:09:00.000-08:00

Historically, traditionally, January is a month of holding still, huddling in our huts and waiting for the days to grow longer, brighter, warmer. If I had my way and I never do, but if I did? I'd let a whole lot of traditions go 'poof' - Morris dancing's at the top of my list and a lot of archival music on NPR. Really, don't make me listen to one more tune that was sung in a rowboat that bobbed its way across the Atlantic.

It's kind of my contribution to job creation. If we let them go, then lots of people can start training to be revivalists. There's no job in revival if we never let the things disappear, now is there? No, there's not.

Just saying. This isn't the hare-brained scheme you think it is.

ANYWAY. This year's barely begun and I'm delighted to report that in my little world, there's a lot of motion. Gentle, steady motion. Climbing. A friend is making his way up Mt. Everest, with the help of a sherpa guide. (Is that redundant?) I get to follow his literally breathtaking progress because there are internet cafes. That's a slippery slope.

There are projects already begun - video projects and web projects and films and books.

From my little point of view, this is a year that I'm seeing people approach their own stories with gusto. We've had too many years to count where we sat in our story and said, 'well, that's that. This is what I am. This is how I'll be.'

But now there's a small movement afoot. Maybe it was helped along by politics. It was certainly helped along by the financial fireworks of last year. I don't really care what's helping it. I just see a lot of personal decisions to wind things up again instead of just letting their old story tick its way to the predictable end.

It's going slowly and there's nothing spectacular about it (well, if you don't count the views from Mt. Everest) but it's there. Exciting, isn't it? Really, I can't wait til the new stories start spilling.

A New Year, whether or not we want it

2008-12-31T12:26:00.000-08:00

It's a novel experience, isn't it? To know, for a fact, we have one wild year ahead of us. It's exhilerating. Finally! A year we can do something with and we can do it without all those fiddly resolution thingies.

I've never quite understood the resolutions thing. It's always seemed enough to meet every day and see what happened at the end. There have been some big surprises and incredible moments. Oh, and a few disasters. If you're going to have a disaster, I say be unprepared for it. It'll be half way over before you even realize it's any kind of catastrophe.

This kind of year is tailor made for those of us ready to imagine a future, people who not only don't mind change but thrive a little. We see, in this year, the chance for imaginations to rock and roll, the chance to create stuff that the world has remembered it needs.

There will be plenty of people who'll want to describe this future for us, just like they have every other year of every other century. This year, though? It's not, as they say, how we're going to roll.

We've been gently gently inviting you to join us. This year, we're going to start doing that a little more actively. We have stories and little films and animations and .... VISIONS to unleash. Wheee. Of course, you don't have to join us. We'll do it anyway. But can you imagine if you DID join us ...?

It'll be one big kick butt great year.

Enchanted by Peace

2008-12-23T06:52:00.000-08:00

The holidays - from Hannukah to New Year's Day - are one big enchantment for me. Don't bother trying to set me straight: I can not help it and I will not help it. I wantto be enchanted by the holidays. I want to be enchanted by the romance and so, there you go. I am. Every time.

A spectacular gala event is nice, but a tiny little twinkling nook will do just fine. It doesn't matter what size it comes in, I love what we create. We take dreams and our starriest ideas and craft them into ballets and songs and stories and beautiful minutes of tranquility. Prayers, I guess.

I once had a friend who objected vigorously to carols and decorated trees. He believed they interfered with the true meaning of the holiday. I thought that if a spare version of Christmas worked for him, that had to be good.

I like the idea of true meaning, too, but my true meaning was a little different than his. My true meaning is mess of sensations and aromas and glittery thingies. And you're thinking: that's not true meaning! That's the wrapping paper.

Well, my true meaning lets me find emblems in just about everything. This is my time to savor, to let my imagination play among all the memories of all the ages - the sort of scenes we see in movies and Budweiser advertisements. They are deeeelicious. Sleighs and sleighbells and quiet snowy nights and those Scandinavian candles that perch on fir trees (but would probably burn down a real house.

The visual magic we so deliberately weave into our lives during this season might very well be driven by vanity,but it's also the tiniest and truest proof of what we have to share. If we can make one little corner beautiful, then we can make another one beautiful, too. If we can hug and kiss our loved ones, then we can at least extend a hand to someone who's been without.

Every one is treasure. These are the gifts of mankind, the ideas and the vision and the spirit of creation. Each of them, to me, is a glimpse of hope, the small warm breath exhaled with love, the touch of peace - snowflake-soft and melting just as quickly.

I accept them all. I want to be rich, rich, rich in them.

I figure you can't share love, goodwill and peace when you're bankrupt.

That's the truth for me. How about you?

Angels of Mercy

2008-12-19T07:36:00.000-08:00

I don't have much to say except that it's taken two whole days to get our Christmas tree in order and since I was adamant about using LED white lights and mixing them with strands of red twinkly numbers we now have a Texaco gas station in our lovely Victorian living room. I'm so for saving electricity, but am thinking a line needs to be drawn at my Christmas tree. You just about need safety goggles, they're so bright.

Oh, and as long as I don't have anything to say, I might as well say this about Angels of Mercy (you know, one of Brian Andreas' most beloved stories, the one that goes: Most people don't know there are angels whose only job is to make sure you don't get too comfortable & fall asleep & miss your life.): I must have walked through one of their conventions because I got more than my share and would be happy to give one or two away. I could really use a nap.

Between the Angels of Mercy and those led lights, staying awake's no problem. Do we think that's fair? No, we do not.

Last Minute Shopping

2008-12-17T11:34:00.000-08:00

Shopping's a thoroughly underestimated talent. A skill, if you will. I know. I've been practicing a looonnng time and I still make mistakes, most of them having to do with a size I persuaded myself was in the realm of possibility. The realm of possibility oughtn't depend on me chopping off toes or going on any serious diet.

I have a hard time imagining what it takes to be a last minute shopper. They must have finely tuned senses, a kind of perfect balance between impulse and calculation. And confidence! They swoop in, with days and sometimes minutes to go, are spared all that agony of weighing options and STILL come out with wonderful, perfectly chosen gifts.

They amaze. This year, I've been so busy, I'm going to try a little of that last minute shopping myself.

You might not be surprised that I'm taking advantage of some StoryPeople suggestions, but I am. I've never done it before, but as soon as they mentioned that the books, Traveling Light and Some Kind of Ride (the hardbacks ones, printed in color) were all wrapped and ready to go, I thought I was on to something. Anyone who ever stops by and flips through Traveling Light gets those doe-eyes, the 'please remember me and this book at gift giving time' expression. Ha. Finally. I'm remembering.

Wheee. My first last minute shopping spree's going to rock!

Travel Advisory

2008-12-15T15:49:00.000-08:00

Holiday travel is not all magic and sleigh bells any more. (Personally, I don't remember when it was, but I like pretending I can remember. Holidays do that to me. They make me nostalgic for stuff that's completely made up. )

Anyway ... our holiday animation fest begins ...

Happy Happy Joy Joy for Real

2008-12-09T11:38:00.000-08:00

I'm better with words when I don't want anything because then I'm just glad to be alive & words are my happy sounds

- an original by Brian Andreas

I'm glad to see you're all fans of irony (or at least have a high tolerance for it) because this one's a contender. Last week, they released the results of a study about Happiness. Every headline made a big deal about how people we've never met end up affecting us. You know, like when a butterfly flaps its wings half way around the world, we feel it. Evidently, if it's a happy butterfly, we feel it AND get a good laugh.

Anyway. They studied Happiness. I've been irritated ever since. Ha.

Look, I like studies. I particularly like studies that show stuff we've believed forever isn't actually true - eeek! - and they've got the numbers to prove it. I like having my beliefs shook up.

I'm pretty sure that's why this study about Happiness is so bothersome. We already knew this, instinctively. Couldn't they have just asked ... well, us and spent that money on something useful? Like an instruction manual? With specifics?

But the media went and reported it, anyway - I guess they were sitting around news desks thinking this would be a good feel-good story and kind of high-concept, too. Really, happiness as a news item is ambiguous enough that there's no need for elaboration.

Unless, apparently, you're me. I need elaboration.

I'm not interested in one more vague standard, like glossy ads, for us to live up to. Okay. Me. For me to live up to (although you're totally welcome to be bothered by it, too. :)) Too many people already feel somehow ... denied or deprived or even insecure for not living fabulous lives like we see on television shows and movies.

We're not idiots. We know it's just a story, but it's seductive. They're all so witty and glamorous and ... well, happy. Which makes the Happiness through Strangers headlines even more ironic, since nothing makes us more unhappy than trying to get someone else to think we're the coolest thing on the planet. OOoh. We're so hip. Are we happy yet?

Ick.

Happiness, as a concept, is a fairly modern invention. (I made that up, but how could it not be?) Surely we felt it before there was language, but once there were a few words to describe it, all hell broke loose and loads of us started trying very hard to get ourselves described as happy. Which one of us wants to be described as as anything but? (Well, except those tortured arteestic sorts. They like being tortured arteestic types. It makes them happy. See? See what kind of mess we make here, sorting this stuff out?)

Anyway, is that the weirdest thing? Which are the people who knew the right way to be happy?

Well, I've decided they didn't know any more about it than I do, so I'm going to do it my way. I know that happiness is - well, to borrow a Brian Andreas phrase - it doesn't have to look a particular way. And more importantly, it definitely doesn't have to feel a particular way. And even MORE importantly, we don't even have to be happy to be happy. (uh-oh. I should probably explain myself.)

I think my head would explode if I was happy all the time. And not in a good way. :)

Happiness is a good thing. A very good, sweet thing. But I'm not exactly aiming for happiness, not exactly. I'm aiming for feeling good and loose and creative. That swoopy sensation when you can think quickly, solve well, move and change and play and laugh and not one little bit of you is spent on worrying whether the next person will approve or be impressed or think more highly of you. When I feel that freedom, that's what I call happiness.

The study showed us that happiness is contagious. This is a great and wonderful thing and not surprising. What do you do, though, if you're not catching enough or any? What if you go out without a hat or mittens and come home without even a sniffle?

I'm going to prescribe spending some minutes with StoryPeople stories.

One of the things I love most about Brian's stories is his invitation to happiness in all its variety, in all its many forms. Sometimes, it's the actually story, but mostly it's the body of work, it's Brian's world view that encourages us to delight in it all.

When I can delight in it all - in intensity and wildness and tenderness and irritability- well, that feels just like happiness ought to. To me, at least.

How about you?

Tools

2008-12-02T13:12:00.000-08:00

About a year ago, I started learning to paint.

I'd tried it once. I'd painted a board blue so I could collage it. I got as far as gluing on a feather. It didn't occur to me to avoid gluing the feathery parts to each other. It was, by anyone's estimation, an unmitigated disaster.

Time. Wounds to the artistic ego. Healing. Eventually, I collected enough forgetfulness to try it again. This time, though, I signed up for a class. I thought that was pretty clever. I bought my little starter kit of acrylic paints and paper and canvases and brushes that were on our list.

I was so ready. I went to class religiously, eager to paint paint paint, but all that enthusiasm meant very little. You'd have a hard time finding any one more mystified.

I knew nothing. Nothing. I didn't have any idea where to start. Forget not knowing where I should start on the actual painting. I didn't know how to mix colors or put paint on the brush.

I tried inventing it on the spot. It seemed worth trying. Maybe there was some hidden genius that could leap past all the rules of art and paint some sort of masterpiece out of all that stuff floating around in my imagination. I'd seen an awful lot of art in my life, all over the world. What's that called, when it crawls into your subconscious? Subliminal. Maybe I'd become a great artist subliminally.

Sigh. I had not.

So, I asked. I asked a lot. I asked about everything. I think that if it was allowed, my teacher would have asked me, in return, to leave her class.

She was more of a 'copy this' kind of teacher. My fun, fellow students were 'just have fun' kind of people. (Except for the very best table mate you could possibly have. She was a ceramics artist and her parents were both artists, so her idea of painting went like this: paint, throw away, paint, throw away, make a mess, do whatever you want to do, ignore the teacher's instructions and throw away. I LOVED her!)

Anyway, copying was not too hard. The top painting was my very first. Then I copied, um, Van Gogh and Picasso and ... oh, a bunch of other famous artists. As long as I was copying, Brian encouraged me to try a little El Greco.

That was really fun and I was so excited to discover a painter who painted like I wanted to paint - big and swooshy.

Well, class ended and life got in the way and now a whole year's gone by with me left to my own devices. Time's been a little short, but I took as many opportunities as I could and ended up with a few paintings that were fun, but nothing at all like what I'd so briefly enjoyed with El Greco.

The good news is I'm not easily frustrated. The bad news is that because I'm not easily frustrated, I kept painting stuff that just did NOT work for me. The mark I was trying to hit seemed to get further and further away. Like it was running for its life.

This made sense to me. It was probably pay back for that glue-encrusted feather I once plastered to a blue board. Whoever's guarding Art does not forget or forgive these insults easily.

And then Brian stopped by. He's helped me so much and best of all, treated me as if I could do it. This time, though, ... well, I think he was thinking we might have hit a plateau. He thought. He thought a little harder. And very carefully, he suggested that maybe, just maybe, I could try to do this motion with my brush.

'I can't,' I said. I showed him my brushes. I got exactly what was on the list handed out on the first day of class. Four brushes. Not one of those brushes was going to work for what I wanted and want to paint.

So. That's the whole story. A long time spent using little brushes which turn out little paintings, even when you want them to be big.

Now I'm going to get the right brushes and practice thinking about painting in a whole new way. The thinking. That's a tool, too.

Play Dates

2008-11-20T10:43:00.000-08:00

Today is Universal Children's Day. Yay! This year's theme? The Right to Play!! Yay, yay and about fifty more of those.

We're unapologetic champions of play. And lots of it. In fact, we were thinking it wouldn't be such a bad thing to tack on a few hours for adults, too.

Playing can be hard. There's always someone ready to give you one of those looks. And strangely, we let them!

We live in a world that likes to recognize itself, that likes to see us dressed up in the same costume and it's pretty seductive to become what we expect is expected of us. Of course, we know better. Don't we spend loads of time demanding no one put us in a box? Over and over, though, we go hopping right in. It's nearly impossible to play in such cramped quarters. Well, for me, it is.

Playing's a great way to pry the lid off that box. You'll get the looks. You might get scolded for not taking things seriously. Gosh. You might even be the one who scolds: This is important!

It probably is. Important. But it's sure hard to concentrate on important details when you're not doing it from loose and relaxed and happy.

Maybe you agree, but you're thinking that playing sure hasn't been made any easier by this economy. How can we possibly think of play when the future is so uncertain and we know we have to still participate or risk worse?

How can we not think of play?

In fact, why don't we practice playing amongst ourselves? We've been scheming for months now, to invite you to help us animate Brian's stories (a perfect example of play being quite a bit of work but soooooo fun, anyway). We have some real production plans, but right now - wouldn't it be fun to just play?

We're making holiday animations. (No, I'm NOT telling you which ones but you can probably guess. :)) IF you'd like to contribute a drawing of a character, why don't you give us an email? It's true, this is just for fun and there's no big prize or anything (we're saving that idea). You only have to draw it and send a picture (a small jpg will do) and we'll pop your artwork in an animation and we'll all celebrate at the end because we played TOGETHER!!! Wheeeee!

Istanbul in a Flash

2008-11-18T12:14:00.000-08:00

It was a pretty fun idea yesterday, to write about how we traveled together to Istanbul - or rather, how we learned to travel together. When I started actually writing about it, though, it came to me that telling you of the experience was a whole lot different than being in it and doing it.

I like to think everyone's had at least one great episode when you know, absolutely, that you were not just a spectator. It's great to be a spectator, of course. But when we go into things together, doing things and building things together, there's not really time or room for spectators. We have to contribute.

We might not know what to contribute. We might even wonder if we're capable of contributing. But the moment we stop worrying and start teaching ourselves to do it ... well, that's the moment we're doing it. Together.

Is that cool or what?!

carries a lot of suitcases but all of them are empty because she's expecting to completely fill them with life by the end of this trip & then she'll come home and sort everything out & do it again -
- Veteran Traveler by Brian Andreas

PS. Of course, now that I wrapped this blog up in thirty seconds, you're probably thinking you won't have to sit through my little slide show. Ha! To your right? Yes, it is! It's a picture of a kitty on a stack of turkish rugs. Istanbul is full of kitties and they are treated very tenderly. This made us happy since we love cats, no matter how much Brian teases us.

Here's a shot of Ephesus. What are the chances that Prince Charles and Camilla were visiting this ruined city, once a great imperial port that attracted disciples and John the Baptist. on the same day? Well, I don't know, but they were.

Wait. One more. This should actually be one from Istanbul, shouldn't it? There. The Grand Bazaar.

Together in Istanbul

2008-11-17T14:38:00.000-08:00

This week rolled around just when I was getting really tired of writing about how we can do this together, how we can imagine a world together.

I mean it every time, but 1. this is a little itty bitty blog and there's not a whole lot of room for elaboration. That'd be a book. :) and 2. it's hard to miss that if you say it a bunch of times, after awhile, it becomes only a word: Together.

See? Only a word. It's the imagine part that gives it power, but 'imagine'? That's just a word, too.

But then I remembered. Last year at exactly this time, my mother and I went to Istanbul for three weeks.

We were unlikely traveling companions. Love schmove. Some people just oughtn't do it together. Of course, that's a warning you ignore wholeheartedly when you have the opportunity to travel with your mother. (Or daughter, I suppose.)

The rewards of ignoring the warning? It was one of those perfect experiences. Rare and wonderful and delicious. Well, of course! (you might be thinking) It was Istanbul. Allow me to clear that up for you. Plenty of people manage to do Istanbul in three little days. The Blue Mosque, Haiga Sophia, Topkapi palace and its harem, a traditional turkish bath, a visit to a carpet seller's store.

Istanbul, I suspect, benefits a great deal from what people would love for it to be.

At any rate. We went. Together. I was a thousand percent dedicated to it being fabulous for my mother. This was not as easy as it looks on paper.

She has a bad sense of direction. She's traveled. but always with friends in organized groups with planned routes and planned excursions and planned meals. She speaks no languages other than English and has only been abroad once. (And everything was planned.)

Note: This blog has been interrupted about five billion times and now it's late, so I think I'll interrupt myself. You know. Stay with the theme ...

Ashes in Santa Barbara

2008-11-14T10:29:00.000-08:00

It's a lot colder in Iowa than here in Santa Barbara and for once, I think that's probably a good thing. :) It's been burning again around here.

It started small - don't most fires? - and within fifteen minutes, flames were bursting and spotlit smoke was billowing huge over the crest of the foothills. And with the Santa Ana winds urging it on, it went racing. The fire gorged itself on the hills and canyons and eucalyptus trees - and homes - of upper Montecito.

The fire hopped over a curling, incredibly scenic highway last night to hit the edges of Santa Barbara.

People we know, people we love and care about, with no time to prepare, lost everything. Their homes, the souvenirs of life, their clothes and art and kitchenware and jewelry.

And now we, who admittedly are mere blocks away, are advised of the possibility of evacuation. The wind's been calm all day, the sky mostly blue. Bruised, but blue. It would be easy to think they're making it all up, if not for the ash.

We've had a few massive fires here in the last two years, but both were just far enough away and neither got caught in the channels of the foothills that could have funneled them right down to us. So we all had a few hours of dread, but those ticked away into calm. It was the ash, both times, that kept me connected.

The ash fascinates me. I'm not trying to be philosophical, but ash sort of makes you get that way.

You could celebrate all you want that the fire didn't strike you, you could believe you were spared for cosmic-whacked reasons, you could actually ignore the whole thing - but when the ash starts falling, you almost have no choice but to deal with it.

It's a concept we all get, that we are connected, but there's nothing like ash to make it concrete. (Ha. Ash in concrete. Yes, yes. Different ash.) Anyway ...

Ash is democratic. Like pure democracy, it can poison. It falls - heavy - on rich and poor, on fabulous car and piece of crap alike. Your garden full of exotic succulents and rare species is going to get snowed on just as heavily as our little patch of herbs. Your house might be tight and prevent the stuff from sweeping in on every little breeze, unlike our apartment in an old Victorian that just about flings open the cracks in invitation, but step outside and we're breathing the same particulate matter. Or rather, we're trying to breathe it.

Yah. I really like having to deal with the ash.

Last night, big flakes of ash were sent flying on the wind and that wind came right down our street. The fire was way over the hill. We were all watching its eruption and path from a safe, safe distance.

This morning, I stepped on to our back porch that has a little cheap rug. And it was dotted with melted holes, one the size of a nickel. Some of that ash was carrying embers.

Some of those embers were starting spot fires.

Now, tell the truth. Aren't you tempted to get philosophical about ash, too?

Remember those stories where your knees or your back starts to hurt when it's going to rain? he said & I nodded & then he said, they're not stories & he got up and walked away & I started to make a list of all the things I want to do before I die because it's never really that long.

- from Original drawing by Brian Andreas

complaining

2008-11-12T16:36:00.000-08:00

They've done studies of everything, haven't they, so it's probably fair to guess there's a study about complainers. Surely, some complaints are legitimate, some just whining, but I bet the study shows that people invariably think their complaints are the former.

It's every one else who whines. (Well, that's what I'd do.)

I myself am not much of a complainer, being more of a 'oh no, no no, let's fix it' kind of person. Believe me, more than a few people have wished I'd just settle down and complain like a sane person.

Thing is, I've tried complaining. (Okay, okay, I try it on a regular basis. It always seems like it will be a delicious few minutes.)

It has never failed to make me feel worse. Even if I'm complaining so that someone can rush in and tell me how right I am, how wronged I've been, what dopes I'm dealing with ... it just always ends up being a very long way to get to the place I could've gone to right away. Maybe that's what's so annoying about complaining. It's just a delay and one that's not even that fun.

Oh there's nothing quite like complaining about complaining. :)

PS. I'm thinking we should start a ratings system. Something easy to remember, like M for Mouthy. I for Irreverent. Hmm. Then we couldn't use I for Ironic.

Crows

2008-11-10T16:18:00.000-08:00

They moved in a little over a week ago, a big gang of crows. The really loud kind. Oooooh, they are just the things to make you crazy. I was about ready to start the big hate-the-crows campaign when we looked up, over the fence, to study the trees they'd camped out in.

There it was. A macadamia tree. With macadamia nuts. The kind that cost a trillion dollars at little boutique food shops. We've lived at this address for over six years and not once did we ever notice a macadamia tree. Fig tree. Old bacon avocado tree. Those we noticed and took big advantage of. It took those damn crows to guide us to the real prize.

There's a lesson there, but since it involves revising my opinion of those crows, I intend to ignore it. Which reminds me of Brian's story, Options from the book 'Strange Dreams':

I told him if he kept being mean to his brother he might come back as a rodent in his next life & he shrugged & said that's the chance he'd have to take.

One Day & the World is Changed

2008-11-05T13:46:00.000-08:00

There's not one of us, not one, that doesn't know this is true: in one day, the world can be changed. We usually say it after a sudden event, a terrible event.

And then we had yesterday. And we shared last night. And suddenly, the proof was undeniable, inarguable. It took one choice, one story. Added to lots and lots of other choices and stories, but they, too, were one choice. One story.

And who didn't feel themselves just about soaring at the magnificence? Who didn't bask in the sublime beauty of it all?

Well. Maybe, if I had to guess, you, if you didn't vote for Obama. You might be feeling a little wounded. You might be feeling that this was not your choice and since it wasn't your choice, this change and this future are not yours.

It's natural and fair, to feel disappointment that your candidate and platform lost and the vision you wanted pursued won't be.

But the idea - no longer an idea, but a solid truth - that on any given day we do set change in motion remains magnificent. That idea and truth belong to each of us and all of us. Everywhere. And we can decide what kind of change to set in motion. We can imagine the future.

We can. We will. We do. We're pretty excited to do it along side you. Let's get busy! Now. Today and tomorrow. And every other day.

Wheeeeee!

Love Poems

2008-11-03T08:38:00.000-08:00

not very good with love poems to the world, so they usually just end up saying, How's it going? to everyone they meet

- Love Poems from 'Traveling Light' by Brian Andreas

If we met on the street, I wonder whether you'd ever think I should be writing a blog on behalf of StoryPeople.

What do you envision when you envision a StoryPeople person? At a glance, I'm probably not the most likely candidate. At a glance, you can probably tell that tea is the last beverage choice I'd ever make (although I managed when I lived in England).

Just for the record, I wear make-up. I like good, Italian shoes and cashmere and international affairs and European history. I'm incredibly impatient with the inauthentic and even MORE impatient when smart people go dumb and I'm told I look like I am. (You know, maybe I should invest in a bigger pair of sunglassess, the kind that hide a multitude of expressions.)

Point is, maybe the writer of this blog ought to look like one of the gentle souls, one of the people who don't have to struggle for forgiveness. Maybe this blog should be written by one of the people who looks a little more ... inspiring.

Oh well. Today, you're stuck with me. The good news is that StoryPeople - the company and its mission in this world - embraces us all, even someone with my personality.

I don't know about you, but I don't think a person has to look any particular way at all to do that. The most chic little outfit, the Hermes tie, the Chucks, the dreadlocks, the SUV, the bicycle - not ONE of those things describe the borders of an imagination.

The doctor, the laywer, the few merchant bankers left, the insurance salesman, the plumber, the concrete layer, the artist, the musician - not one of those professional tags describe the way a story can flow, as pure as pure water, into a heart and mind and restore love and faith in the future.

It's just something to consider. Sometimes, people can only look how they look and ask, 'How's it going?'

Their love is as deep as yours. Their need to be healed as great. Their future as beautiful.

SHINY STUFF!!

2008-10-28T13:05:00.000-07:00

We know. We know we know we know. Halloween is days away.

But getting ready for Halloween is one of our favorite things to do. We start early in the month. We tell scary stories & let ourselves get all jittery & then the slightest thing makes us jump & yell a little & then we just laugh & laugh & laugh.

(We've miniaturized the SHINY STUFF animation. You'll see it over there. No. Over THERE. On the left. :))

You won't be surprised that we all leaped at the chance to animate this all time favorite story. It's sooooo scary - depending on who's reading it, it's scary for entirely different reasons.

For instance, I, who have some genetic love of twinkly stuff think it's scary to contemplate a world without twinkles (okay - twinkles in moderation). Others, I'm told, think it's the twinkles that are so frightful. Skeeerdy cats.

Endorsements

2008-10-27T12:49:00.000-07:00

They don't have much time left if they want to ask me for an endorsement. I think they should get a move on. I mean, if they want one. I think I could handle it. I've taken a look at a few of them and they look a lot like opinions with a little 'why' propping them up.

Opinions, I've got plenty of, and some of them I can even support. The only problem I can see is the not having a bunch of people who I influence. Yah, that'd be tricky.

I'm also afraid that if I ran into a bunch of people who were willing to be influenced, I'd probably spend my endorsement minutes yacking about rhetoric and stirring up a group discussion on the hazards of signing up for a campaign slogan or an expression that pretends to speak for a lot of us.

Just saying. Except for those little problems, I bet I could do it. I'm almost sure. :) Luckily for everyone, this is a StoryPeople blog so it's moot.

Individually, we have plenty of political opinion. Collectively, too. And really, none of those matter so much because no matter which candidate wins, we're still a country and more importantly, a world that really needs to imagine something ... something else. We helped imagine the one we've got now. We can do it again and this time? Better.

I think that if we got to hand out an endorsement, ours would go to - ta da! us. All of us. Allllll the people all over the place with stories, the stories that lighten hearts and loads and make us laugh and cry a little, too. We're the ones with the ingredients to make that future. We're the ones who can imagine it.

Now's a good place to toss up a bucket of confetti. Wheeeee! We win!!

At Dawn

2008-10-25T06:25:00.000-07:00

It's a Saturday morning, but habit's habit and my habit is getting up early to work with folks in the Midwest, so I was up way before dawn. I made coffee in the french press - that's also habit - and went out to sit on the porch. It was 6 am.

It's now 6.30 am - still dark and the sky is still clear and the stars still shine bright.

I love half hours like these, minutes when we don't have to think about it, figure it all out, sort through messes and fix them. These are minutes when everything is concentrated in one big possibility.

The sky at dawn is the sky at dawn everywhere and the moon is the moon. Don't we all love being reminded of that? It happens mostly easily when we travel. One day, we're in Minneapolis, the next we're in Istanbul or Bangkok and there it is - the same moon, the same sun - proof that we're still in this together.

It happens most easily then, but I like it best when I'm sitting at home, on a porch before dawn with everything familiar around me.

For those minutes, everything that's familiar and ordinary is transformed into something pretty rare. There are no houses or cars are wardrobes to judge anyone by. There's no form of government or ruler or president involved. It matters not at all what religion you're attached to or what language you speak.

There are only the aromas of the world and the texture of the air and the tick tick tick of your own heart. Isn't that extraordinary?

I knew that by the time I'd typed this, it would have all changed. And it has. The stars evaporated into light blue. Only one remains.

It's probably a space station.

We Begin at Blogger!

2008-10-22T14:49:00.000-07:00

We just moved in today and there are boxes all over the place and we've got NO idea where anything will actually end up, but we're here. And that's what counts.

Whenever we move, we like to hang up one piece of art or make a space for a favorite piece of pottery. It's our little contract we make with a place: we're here now and as long as we're here, let's all try to keep it creative and full of intellectual freedom, okay?

It's not quite a ritual. Aren't those fancier and shmancier?

Whatever it is, we already did it.

(You can find it over on the side bar. It's called RUDE NOISES.)

It's our very first widget!! Whee. You can share it all over the place! (Well, except at WordPress. WordPress is all persnickety and wants to wait for a video.)

It's a little tilted, I'll give you that and possibly not perfectly centered, but that's okay. It's a sign we're here. It's - well imagine THAT! - it's part of the move-in (haha!) ritual. Okay.

Maybe this is all a ritual is. A small celebration of the stuff we share.

Who's splitting hairs?