What's in the gallery?
We dissolve stuck and rewrite patterns. We apply radical playfulness to life (when we feel like it!), embarking on internal adventures (credo of Safety First). We have a fake band called Solved By Cake. We build invisible sanctuaries, invent words and worlds, breathe awe and wonder.
We are not impressed by monsters. Except when we are. We explore the connections between internal territories and surrounding environment to learn what marvelously supportive delicious space feels like, and how to take exquisite care of ourselves. We transform things.* We glow wild.**
* For example: Desire, fear, worry, pain-and-trauma, boundaries, that problematic word which rhymes with flaweductivity.
** Fair warning: Self-fluency has been known to lead to extremely subversive behavior, including treasuring yourself unconditionally, unapologetically taking up space, experiencing outrageously improbable levels of self-acceptance, and general rejoicing in aliveness.
What's in the gallery?
We dissolve stuck and rewrite patterns. We apply radical playfulness to life (when we feel like it!), embarking on internal adventures (credo of Safety First). We have a fake band called Solved By Cake. We build invisible sanctuaries, invent words and worlds, breathe awe and wonder.
We are not impressed by monsters. Except when we are. We explore the connections between internal territories and surrounding environment to learn what marvelously supportive delicious space feels like, and how to take exquisite care of ourselves. We transform things.* We glow wild.**
* For example: Desire, fear, worry, pain-and-trauma, boundaries, that problematic word which rhymes with flaweductivity.
** Fair warning: Self-fluency has been known to lead to extremely subversive behavior, including treasuring yourself unconditionally, unapologetically taking up space, experiencing outrageously improbable levels of self-acceptance, and general rejoicing in aliveness.
The first visit to the Flairground.
A couple weeks ago I found myself cycling into a loop of stuck every time I started thinking about the venue for Shivanauticon.
Shivanauticon (which I say in my head with about a thousand exclamation points!) is the extremely sparkly Unconventional that we’re throwing this August.
It’s a giant crazy project that both thrills me deep into my bones and also is kind of scaring me, because it’s so vital and magical and necessary — for the world, you guys! — in ways that I don’t yet understand.
Anyway, venues. I had hit a wall. And that was interesting. A clew!
So I sent up the bat signal and called metaphor mouse to help.
It turned out the wall had some good information.
Like the fact that I have lots of negative associations with the word venue that I didn’t even know about.
That — for me, because definitions are highly personal — a venue meant something boring and super straight.
Having a venue would make it the kind of thing that everyone else does, that adults do.
Like signing contracts and wearing nametags and yelling into a bluetooth. Horribleness.
“Where are we on signing the venue, Bob? Corporate wants to know!”
Venues — again, in my head — are expensive and complicated and kind of smell like conference rooms. Nooooooooooo!
Knowing what I don’t want helps me pinpoint what I do want.
Metaphor mouse reminded me to ask me what qualities, words and feelings I associate with the thing I want, even without knowing what that thing is.
Here’s what came up:
[+playful] [+fun] [+magical] [+delight]
[+sparkly] [+grounded] [+hidden]
[+alternative] [+welcoming] [+belonging]
[+special] [+surprising] [+gleeful]
[+wonder] [+stars] [+possibility]
[+joy] [+patterns] [+flair]
What else do I know about this place?
It’s like a bigger Playground. But it’s not there all the time.
It appears and disappears.
It sets itself up one day in this cool place that didn’t really exist before. A temporary home for this hugely special Occurrence. And then when it’s gone, everything is different.
Like a fairground.
It’s kind of invisible until all of a sudden OHMYGOD THEY’RE SETTING UP THE CIRCUS! It was always a fairground but a fairground-in-potential. Where you forget what it can be.
So it’s something that is conjured up and then it goes back to being potential.
A fairground! Of course!
A Fairground is an obvious cousin to the Playground, which is my teaching center in northeast Portland.
But it’s a special Fairground. With flair. Yes.
It’s a FLAIRGROUND! And once we knew that, it found us.
Yesterday I visited the Flairground for the first time.
It’s perfect. The way that a baby is perfect, and you want to kiss it on its tiny glorious breathing nose.
Like the Playground, it has magical elevators (except these work), outrageously high ceilings and gorgeous chandeliers. But it’s the Flairground.
There are patterns everywhere. Which is perfect because we’ll be doing lots of shivanauttery, and Shiva Nata makes you hyper-aware and appreciative of patterns. You find meaning in shapes. There will be shapes.
It talked to me, in the same way that the Playground did when it was just a tiny baby idea. And in the same way that the space where the Playground lives said YOU when I walked in the door.
It said YOU and it said YES and it said IMAGINE. While it hummed love into all the corners. I get that this is a crazy thing to say but it is true.
Other things I can tell you about this Flairground.
- You can feel the special right away.
- It’s in downtown Portland.
- There is kooky stained glass (with a sense of humor).
- There’s a Refueling Station that you can hide in when you want to be alone.
- And a scribbling room if you want to sit and journal or do arts and crafts.
- There’s a water fountain.
- We might be able to have a cotton candy machine, you guys! Because hello, it’s clearly a secret circus in addition to being an Unconventional and a gathering and a safe sheltering blanket fort.
- There is the exact stage that I have always wanted to teach from.
- We can project stars on the ceiling and transform everything into night, like at the Playground.
- Doing Shiva Nata here will be so beautiful and important that you might have to cry. I’m kind of tearing up just thinking about it.
- THIS is a place for joyful togetherness. And also a place for having space to yourself and standing in your sovereignty.
- The instant you set foot in this building, you will know. It’s the one.
A Flairground is not like other places.
It has flair. And flares!
It does not allow for stressful or boring things.
No one gets lectured at there. There will not be keynote speeches or sitting and passively receiving information. There also won’t be awkward group bonding exercises or having to touch strangers or describe yourself in X words or anything like that.
That kind of stuff doesn’t live at a Flairground. A Flairground only has things that are congruent.
Like cotton candy. And a refueling station to hide in. And quiet nooks. And inspiration by the bottle.
Shivanauticon could never accidentally turn into a conventional convention in a place like that.
It will always remember who it is.
Celebration! And the commenting blanket fort.
You guys!
I am feeling giddy with delight at how quickly the Flairground and I found each other and fell in love.
And, at the same time, this is definitely a tiny, sweet thing for me.
It’s vulnerable and important. So I need us all to tread really gently.
Here is what I would like!
If you would like to say HOORAY!
If you have colorful confetti that dissolves as it lands so that no one has to sweep it up.
If you would like to be enthusiastically joyful with me about any aspect of this.
And you can sign up at Shivanauticon.com to get details as soon as we have them.
I should say that we already have more people on that list than can be held by the Flairground, but of course not everyone will come. So join in, because who knows? Maybe we will be able to flail together at the wondrous flailing Flairground in August.
And even if you’re sure you won’t be able to make it because you’re in New Zealand or just moved to Bolivia, sign up anyway because we might have a streaming video option.
That is all. Big love to all of you.
Thinking about us is the thing that fills me with hope when I dream up a place like the Flairground, and then discover that is already exists.
Very Personal Ads #125: It stands. For many things.
Personal ads. They’re … personal! Very.
Each week I write these VPAs to practice asking for what I want. And to get clarity on what that really is, even when asking feels conflicted.
I always get useful information about my relationship with various aspects of the ask. Join in if you like!
Ahhhh. Wishing.
Sometimes the gwishes flow out of me, and other times I putter around the Playground, avoiding them.
Today was like that.
So we’re taking a breath. Acknowledging the hard. Remembering that now is not then. And committing to discovery, play, and wonder. And, as always, safety first!
This means I might have to proxy a few things.
Let’s start with the easier one…
Thing 1: A stand for the PLUM.
Here’s what I want:
Everyone loves the Playground User Manual, affectionately known as the PLUM.
In fact, I’m pretty sure that we named it here in a past Very Personal Ad.
Anyway, I want some sort of cool stand for it. Like a dictionary stand?
It should be sturdy and maybe a bit elegant or goofy or something.
And we can move it around the Playground and let it have adventures. That way people can leave it open to a favorite page, and it will have its own special home.
Ways this could work:
It could magically appear.
One of my readers or students who lives in PDX might have one or know of one.
Craigslist. Ebay. The usual suspects.
Someone could find me the right one.
It could make its way to the Playground in just the right way.
My commitment.
To be receptive to the wanting.
To maintain my connection with the vision but let it take many forms. That is, I need to focus on essence, not form.
The superpowers of this stand are: stability, grace, grounding, portability, play, delight, sturdiness, surprises, home, dedicated space, possibility, wonder.
So I’ll spend some time with those qualities and get a sense of what that’s like.
The monsters: “Why can’t you just look for it online like a normal person?!?!?! Argh, you are so embarrassing.
Thing 2: Consolidation!
Here’s what I want:
The superpower of letting all the amazing things that happened last week at Rally (Rally!) assemble themselves into the new patterns.
And making time and space for the processing of epiphanies and the sorting of notes.
Ways this could work:
Not working.
Hanging out with the Anthologies.
Using markers.
Reflecting.
Lots of mini marathon-training sessions (shhhh, this is a secret agent code word for the thing my monsters are suspicious of).
Dance it out!
My commitment.
To invoke the superpower and find out what I know about it.
To research this.
To talk to Cairene.
To maybe do more of it with images instead of words, just to see what happens.
Thing 3: Making three scary things less scary.
Here’s what I want:
Oh, of course this is all happening at the same time, major life theme.
There are three things I am committed to doing this week.
All of which scare me!
These things need to become less intimidating and more approachable.
Ways this could work:
I could stop caring so much about how people will react.
Lots of Shiva Nata to rewrite the patterns.
Reminders about how now is different from then.
Making safe rooms.
Finding out (by interviewing Slightly Future Me?) what happens AFTER I do these things.
My commitment.
To maintain compassionate curiosity.
No forcing. Just finding out.
To take extra good care of myself while I’m in this vulnerable state.
To immerse in warm water every chance I get.
Thing 4: Congruence.
Here’s what I want:
So many things that need to change.
So many things that need to come into a more harmonious relationship with themselves and each other and me.
Ways this could work:
Ten tiny changes each day? Five? Three?
Writing a love letter to the part of me who has this figured out.
Interviewing myself.
My commitment.
Trust. Practice. Love.
Progress report on past Very Personal Ads.
Just to update you on what’s happened since last time.
Ha! I asked for congruence last week and totally forgot about that. But that was a very specific ask about bringing the Playground website up to date so that it can reflect the present.
And I did manage to rewrite the main page. HOORAY!
The next ask was for a new staff page. Which I wrote (it will double as the about page), but haven’t put it up yet.
Next I wanted progress with Shivanauticon, and I was able to work on that all Rally, with the help of the Rallygators who let me run an Enthusiastic with them.
Then I wanted to do lots and lots of Reflecting (my secret embarrassing practice), and I did that EVERY SINGLE DAY. This is kind of amazing and I am astounded that it happened without more resistance.
And I asked for Rally #15 (aka the Great Ducking Out) to be absolutely glorrrrrrrrious! It was. It definitely was.
Huh. Somehow I remembered last week’s asks as being giant and intimidating, but that was a false remembering. Yay for finding out.
Play-filled comment zen. Here’s what I’d love today.
- Wanted: Your own personal ads, small or large. Updates on past ones if you like.
- You can also do these on your own or in your head. You can always call silent retreat!
- Leave your gwishes! Throw things in the pot!
- Things we try to keep away from: the word “manifest”, telling people how they should be asking for things, unsolicited advice.
- VPA amnesty applies, of course. Leave yours any time between now and next Sunday (or whenever, really) — it’s all fine by us!
xox
Friday Chicken #173: pickles, you say?
In which I cover the good stuff and the hard stuff in my week, trying for the non-preachy, non-annoying side of ritual and self-reflection.
And you get to join in if you feel like it.
I am completely baffled by the Friday!
Being sequestered at the Playground all week for Rally (Rally!) has been really intense. And time is all warped and makes funny sound effects now.
Mmmhmmmmmmmmm.
But we’re here.
The hard stuff
Tired tired tired tired.
Despite several marvelous Playground naps.
Just tired.
It’s so wet and cold, you guys!
This week felt like winter.
Thanksgiving.
Even though I don’t have to deal with 99% of it because of running the Great Ducking Out (which is awesome), it’s still in the air.
Everyone’s stuff is out and present. Everything on the internet is annoying. Etc etc etc.
Everything needs to change.
The problem with realizing what you want is how incongruent other things become all of a sudden.
Half tempted to take down most of my websites and re-do it all.
Rally is ending today.
Sadface mouse!
Reeling from the epiphanies.
We’ve been doing lots of super-fun and very-crazy Shiva Nata all week, and the realizations are landing about every five minutes.
And some of them are so…WOW WOW WOW WOW… that I can’t even move because I’m boggling so much.
Need time to rest, process, consolidate and find out what this all means.
Something I’m anxious about doing.
It still needs to be done, and I need to find the right way in.
The good stuff
Rallyyyyyyyyyyyy!
Rally is the best!
And this one — #15, aka the Great Ducking Out the Second, is just so much fun.
I have had the most incredible discoveries, and gotten so much done (surprising things! in surprising ways!).
It’s been AMAZING. And every single person there is so great!
The Playground.
So at every Rally, I tell people that the Playground is theirs to play in, outside of my captain’s quarters. And that they can move stuff around and build blanket forts and do whatever.
Which they do, gleefully. But it usually takes a couple days.
This group was super creative and funny about space. They did the neatest things! Like taking the giant pink beanbag chair out of the Refueling Station, and using it to make a napping nook underneath the mast!
Or creating little hidden projects spaces that no one has ever thought of before. And making some sort of weird butt-monster sculpture.
Not sure what the story was but it looked like fun and there was a lot of giggling involved.
It is so joyful for me to see the space that I created for playing to be played with so intensely.
The Day of Ducking.
Our ducking-out-of-Thanksgiving picnic feast was so delicious.
And so much fun.
I could not be happier.
Stars on the ceiling.
There is no way to describe how beautiful this is.
The Playground has this giant and impossibly crazy-high ceiling.
And we have a special projector that projects a planetarium sky (with DEPTH and cloud cover and wind and everything) onto the sky. The sky being the ceiling, yes?
We turn off all the lights, pile the floor with blankets and cushions, put on some music and stargaze from the cozy floor. In the deepest darkest most star-filled way.
And I do not have words to describe how completely magical and restful and play-filled this is.
It is simply the most enchanting experience. We had stars. It was blissful.
Happy hand-on-heart sigh.
Shivanauttery!
So much great Shiva Nata.
We did it with sound effects (and a magical sound effect happened just when we needed one).
And with nouns and with qualities and with numbers, singing, music, stomping, wishes and various combinations of the above.
It’s been fantastic. I can’t wait for Shivanauticon, you guys!
Mmmm pickles.
The Gentleman pickled a ton of cucumbers from the Hoppy House garden, and now I can eat pickles whenever I want.
And they’re really good! So good.
Knowing what I want.
It feels really reassuring, even as parts of it terrify me.
I know what I want.
This is big.
The fun part of the Chickening happens here.
Tabstravaganza! Or: what’s Havi been up to with all those open Firefox tabs?
- I love the Cranky Shivanaut’s daily helpful persona. The pictures are the best!
- I spent way too much time enjoying the entire world that this inspired: Beyonce songs re-imagined as undergraduate theses.
From the archives.
Some old, weirdly pertinent posts that I don’t remember having written, encountered while looking for something else:
- Ten myths of biggification. I’d probably give this a different title now, but the concepts still hold. You should read this. (May, 2010)
Also: not from the archives but yesterday. Did you read about monkeys wearing clothes and all the things you can learn from a proxy? Because it’s useful for later.
Playing live at the meme beach house — it’s the Fake Band of the Week!
Background? Ez and I make up bands. Stu (retired Bolshevik-fearing voice-to-text software) once translated “people will hate me and be jealous” to “they’ll hang out at my Meme Beach House“. It’s just one guy.
This week’s band is brought to you by the Shiva Nata positions Horizontal 2 + 4:
Quantum Hedgehog
They play speedmetal rockabilly in a field of daisies. While wearing bowler hats.
Though did you know? I heard it’s actually just one guy.
Hallo Hallo! I am saying Hallo Hallo. Announcement time.
Picture me wearing that crazy hat…
- Reminder: Rally prices are out of date. They’re going up. Also we can maybe-possibly sneak you in on the January Rally on a stowawayship scholarship ship.
- I highly recommend the Art of Embarking, which is the thing I am most excited about right now. This will be the prerequisite for everything I teach in 2012.
- Oooh, and registration for the Floating Playground will be opening later this month. If you’re not on my HAT list (Havi’s Announcing a Thing), you can sign up on the events page.
I think that’s everything? If not, I’ll add stuff to the Very Personal Ads over the weekend.
That’s it for me …
And of course you can join in my Friday ritual right here in the comments if you feel like it.
Yes? Anything hard and/or good happen in your week?
And, as always, have a glorrrrrrrrrrrrious day, a restful weekend and a happy week to come. Shabbat shalom.
p.s. It’s okay if it’s not Friday anymore. There’s complete chicken amnesty — join in whenever (or not) and it’s no big deal.
Things I know about monkeys who wear clothes.
One of the things we do at Rally (Rally!) is make up a ridiculous and unlikely cover story for why we’re here.
My story for this week of the Great Ducking Out turned out to be that… get this, I have an obsession with monkeys!
Specifically monkeys who wear clothing. And that’s why I’m at the Playground. Because there are several of those here.
Not here to work on a big project, no no no no no! Nothing happening here, monsters!
What do I know about monkeys wearing clothing?
More than you’d think, as it turns out.
Certainly more than I’d thought.
We did some stone skippings after the morning shivanauttery, and one of the stone-questions was this:
What do I already know about why I’m here?
And since why I’m here is to be obsessed with clothed monkeys, the question became …
What do I already know about monkeys who wear clothes?
Things I know about monkeys who wear clothes.
I know that:
Monkeys with clothes are 300% cuter than monkeys not wearing clothes. FACT.- Clothes make the monkey!
- A monkey dressed as a sailor is unmistakably a sailor. A sailor monkey.
- Oh! of course. Wear the clothes of the person who runs Shivanauticon, and that is the next step!
- Costumes are magic.
- A clothed monkey is in a double-costume. And he probably finds that entertaining. I bet he chuckles to himself while adjusting his bolo tie.
- Clothes are a kind of home. Wow. I did not realize that before but of course it is true.
- They are (or can be) a container or a cocoon for the change that they symbolize.
- That’s why CONGRUENCE is so incredibly important.
- Monkeys are always playing.
- Monkeys love Playgrounds. Isn’t it perfect then that I’m at the Playground?
- They are graceful, agile, curious.
- They find alternative ways to get places. YES!
- “Monkey” was already my code word for the favorite place.
- Monkey bars! Like parkour skills. Grace and balance.
- Trapeze! Especially since Shivanauticon is a crazy circus!
- Monkeys do not worry about whether or not people are taking them seriously.
- And what become of the monk the monk the monk the monk….
- Of course! The Animal Fair …. it’s a parallel to the Flairground (the flair-filled fairground where Shivanauticon is going to happen. Yes yes!
I probably know even more things about monkeys who wear clothes.
But that’s where I stopped in order to skip another stone.
Here were the other questions:
What will I need in order to do this?
What needs to change in my kingdom for this to happen?
What’s next?
The monkeys told me what to do, and now we’re cool.
Other sneaky problems that the monkeys solve.
This way we don’t have to talk about our mysterious projects (unless we want to, of course!).
And we can speak in secret agent talk.
(“How’s my clothed-monkey obsession going? I’m learning all sorts of fascinating things! What about you? How’s that rug-researching?”).
Plus when the cover story gets to double as a super sneaky proxy, you can work on that instead of your projects.
And then the monsters are extra quiet, because they aren’t invested in telling me how I’m going to FAIL DISASTROUSLY at caring about clothed monkeys.
It’s pretty great.
One more thing I can tell you about clothed monkeys.
They can dangle from anything.
And this is fun for them.
They especially like it when you say YAY when you see them dangling from something particularly unlikely.
Isn’t that a reassuring thing to know? It was for me.
Play with me! And the giant commenting blanket fort.
So, obviously, this is not really about monkeys.
It’s about my project. It’s my subjective experience of these particular monkeys. Who aren’t real. One is a stuffed toy and the other is a picture on a wall.
If your experience of monkeys happens to be different (“Monkeys should never wear clothing! I feel strongly about this!”), of course you are allowed to have your own monkey-experience. That should be a given.
However, I’m going to ask that we play along with my version here today, in support of my mission and my secret project.
If you would like to make up your own cover story for what you’re doing today (double especially if you’re going to be doing something for American Thanksgiving!), go for it.
Then you can look for clues about it while making (or avoiding) the small-talks.
Let’s play! As always, we make room for everyone to do their own thing, and we don’t give advice. Unless people ask.
Lots of love. The monkeys and I are wishing you an extra-strong force field today.
A tragic scarcity of puppy photos.
So yesterday at Rally (Rally!), I was reflecting on my mysterious project.
And here’s part of a train of discoveries from the rabbit holes:
Puppies!
Apparently puppies sleep 90% of the day. For the first few weeks of being alive.
NINETY PERCENT OF THE DAY.
Sleeping.
Cuteness!
That seems like a really good plan.
In fact, it seems like that much hiding, shelter and processing would also be good for any tiny sweet thing.
For any Gwish.
For anything you really care about.
Pause, pause, and then more pausing. Paws!
So then I tried to ignore it.
In the afternoon my body wanted to nap.
But I was having so much fun playing with my project and hanging out with it that I couldn’t bear to go to sleep.
I said, How about we interview Slightly Future Me about the project instead?
Slightly Future Me gave me two useful pieces of information.
And I’ll tell you the second one:
Puppies are smarter than you.
She was right.
So I slept on it.
I planted the thing I wanted to know about my project into the nap and decided to fractal flower it by sleeping.
Then I woke up and did some old Turkish lady yoga, and then about six different outrageous shivanautical epiphanies made themselves known to me.
Which I can’t describe yet.
Being that intensely alive requires a lot of prep time.
Puppies are smarter than I am. They are also more trusting about sleep than I am.
These are related.
Ninety percent of the time.
That’s a lot.
That’s how much I could dedicate to the hidden parts — the processing and recovery and entry. And it would be a valuable investment of time too.
You know what else puppies are good for?
Enthusiasm.
Play.
Joyous fidgeting and exploratory movements!
Snuggling.
Slow sleepy breathing.
Puppies live yoga.
You can’t hurry a puppy.
So why do I try to hurry my deepest wishes and desires?
They’re just doing their ninety-percenting so they can play when they’re ready.
Play! And the giant commenting blanket fort.
Tragically, I do not have any puppy photos for this post.
You can help. Possibly.
The public needs adorable puppy pictures! Share.
Schmoo schmoo schmoo! Puppies!
Other than that, we can play with the concepts here in whatever way we want.
As always, we all have our stuff. We’re all working on our stuff.
Each of us is in charge of our own experience with this. We avoid giving each other unsolicited advice. We’re supportive and welcoming!
That’s it. Love to the commenter mice, the Beloved Lurkers and everyone who reads.