Fluent Self Item!A somewhat goofy mini-collection of stuff I’ve been reading, stuff I’ve been thinking about and oh, some completely random crap.

Basically the stuff that never gets mentioned here because I’m not the kind of person who can just make some teeny little point. Not into the whole brevity thing, as the Dude would say.

Actually, I’m under the strict compulsion to write ten pages about anything on my mind. So this is me. Practicing brevity.

Wednesday!

I am in headless chicken mode again — getting ready to head off to North Carolina to teach a weekend workshop of fabulous wacky brain training.

So today’s Items! may be (Item!) a bit more chaotic than usual. If that’s possible. Which I don’t really think it is.

Item! Post No. 31 in a series that has pretty much become a tradition despite itself.

Item! Walking the path.

Remember Waverly Fitzgerald (Waverly!) who got me to name my moons and then you played with me? Wasn’t that beautiful?

I loved this post from her called The Path.

So sweet.

“My path is more like a maze. My work is five blocks south and three blocks west of my house. I haven’t really worked out the math but I figure there are probably at least 45 ways I could walk those blocks, depending on which block I turn at, and that’s not including the occasional alley (I love alleys).”

Her book Slow Time is such a favorite of mine, and she is an outstanding teacher. So smart and so kind and so curious and so full of play.

Love.

Item! I heart Christine Bougie.

You might know Christine Bougie if you hang out here a lot in the comments.

I’ve been listening to her music all week.

Oh. My. God.

The album is Hammy’s Secret Life and it’s fantastic.

She’s @christinebougie on Twitter.

Item! Don’t mess with Pisces!

Super interesting (and funny!) post from Shannon Bowman about her conversation with the Pisces moon.

She takes the wacky-talking-to-yourself stuff that I do and takes it somewhere completely new.

Of course, I know pretty much nothing about astrology other than that I like hanging out with Virgos (hi, Colleen and Mark and Hiro!). And that apparently I am the posterchild for pisces.

But the fabulous fish drawings knocked me out with their freakishly accurate description of my good and not-so-good traits.

And the post is still really great even if you’re not into any of this.

Pisces: “What do you always tell people about Cancer?”

Me: “Crunchy on the outside, chewy on the inside.”

Pisces: “Ok, good. Well, you already have the crunchy part covered, so you’re not ready to work on that yet. You have to get the middle part down first before you can put the shell on; otherwise you’re just empty inside.”

She’s @clover on Twitter.

Item! This is the best comment I have ever had the privilege of receiving.

It’s from the brilliant Wendy Cholbi (whom I adore) and she wrote it in response to this bit I wrote on the Shivanauts blog about the Retreat in Taos.

“Here’s a poem I wrote during the retreat (it’s a double dactyl, which is an eight-line poem with a specific syllabic stress pattern that makes it perfect for wacky observations — also the stress pattern helps me remember the correct way to pronounce “shavasana”):

Higgledy-piggledy,
Holy shavasana!
Dancing with Shiva is
breaking my brain.

Molecules, neurons and
thoughts reassembling
into a radical
new kind of sane.

I feel obligated to explain that there’s an implied “Batman” after the “Holy shavasana!” line. Because I always hear it in an excited cartoony voice in my head.

Time to submit this comment before I chicken out…”

I. Love. Wendy.

Holy shavasana, Batman!

She’s @wendycholbi on Twitter.

Item! Stuff changes.

So back in May (really? that long ago?) the fabulous Laura Fitton aka Pistachio and I taught a class about how not to be strategic.

And not in an ironic “ten ways to NOT succeed in business” sort of way.

Actually about the strategy of not being strategic. And how that is our sneakified way of being successful.

Specifically it was about using Twitter and social-media-ey stuff in a non-gross, non-overly-intentional way to have fun and get your thing in front of your Right People.

But without being (or feeling) icky or weird.

Anyway, we were going to raise the price back up to something semi-normal, and then we both got crazy-busy.

So. Last I heard, it was going up to the regular price of $64 on September 6.

Item! “What an extraordinary question!”

This post from Mahala Mazerov is so completely perfect.

Some questions are so outrageously inappropriate … that you don’t really have to answer them other than acknowledging that yes, they are … extraordinary.

What a great lesson.

“It makes a thundering statement while saying very little, and prevents getting hooked into any ugliness. Used skillfully, it cuts through so cleanly that nothing more needs to be said.”

She’s @LuminousHeart on Twitter.

Item! Update from the land of the Peculiar & Hilarious Shivanauts!

The “peculiar and hilarious” thing comes from Melynda’s sweet bit about Butterfly Wishes.

I really haven’t been doing anything on the Shivanauts blog other than planning for Berlin and the two months of madness fabulous workshops to come.

Well, that and working on the manual.

But things are moving and shifting under the surface. Go-go-gadget-epiphanies! Or something.

Item! Comments!

I’m still having fun with the theme of words that are cool to say over and over again.

So let’s stick with that.

And anything you think I should be reading!

That is all.

Happy reading.

And happy Blustery Windsday. See you tomorrow.

The Fluent Self