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.
Friday Chicken #102: mind in the dinosaur gutter again
Because it’s Friday AGAIN. And because traditions are important. In which I cover the good stuff and the hard stuff in my week, trying for the non-preachy, non-annoying side of self-reflection.
And you get to join in if you feel like it.
I know I ask this every single week but seriously, how is it Friday?
That makes no sense.
And yet, here we are. So let’s chicken away.
The hard stuff
Curse you, Devilish Mosquitos!
Gaaaaaaaaaaaah.
Everything I hate about summer.
Walls of gnats. Having to claw your way through acres of spider webs just to get out the door.
Those awful baby crows with their endless evil adolescent raspy cawing.
Way too much to do.
And it keeps building up.
And I wasn’t able to work on any of the really important things this week because of the distractions.
Distractions of the worse possible kind.
People needing stuff from me, always when it wasn’t a time or a situation where I could give it.
Mini-project-ey things coming up that I didn’t ask for and didn’t want but turned out to be unavoidable.
My stuckification around not wanting to do these things making them take longer.
Lots of people in my space. All kinds of resulting sovereignty challenges. Getting irritable and impatient.
One thing gets resolved and another gets borked.
Each time I’d put on my imaginary crown and my super hot sovereignty boots, and solve the thing that wasn’t working.
And then, no sooner than the problem du jour got zapped into being okay, the next sovereignty challenge showed up.
It was like a very not fun video game.
Also, I suck at estimating times, it turns out.
So each time I’d finally get a window to work on that thing I thought I needed twenty five minutes for, it would turn out that it was actually a fifty five minute thing.
Or I’d avoid something because I knew it needed half an hour of uninterrupted time but then it really only needed ten minutes.
Very frustrating.
Drunk Pirate Council.
So I love having Drunk Pirate Council instead of the dreaded “meetings” we used to have avoid.
But what with my crazed teaching schedule, we haven’t had Council, drunk or otherwise in nearly two months.
As if my own Piles of Doom were not enough, the first Council back was hardcore.
We put a time limit on it but it was still way too intense.
The good stuff
We’re back to Drunk Pirate Council!
Everything goes better when there’s a) someone present to help me, b) someone to tell me what to do, and c) whiskey.
Cheers to the First Mate, who does a remarkably admirable job of putting up with my fits of despair.
Genius advice (and help) from Hiro.
I’d been dealing with two different but equally challenging situations that were basically the same thing.
People abdicating responsibility for their choices and the consequences, then blaming me for it and then playing victim.
I turned to Hiro, who did a bad-ass healing for my related stucknesses and then, full of wisdom, as always, suggested:
Give them their blame back. They can do whatever they want with it. You don’t have to accept it into your life and you don’t have to resist it.
Just hand it right back to them and let their little gift-wrapped packages stay with them where it belongs.
This is really what my cousin Anat always says — “just because someone hands you shit doesn’t mean you have to take it from them”.
But this time I think some deeper part of me actually got it. Progress. Yay.
World Cup.
This really needs to be in the hard and the good. But I guess mostly the good.
Also the being done of it is a good.
Oh man. I love it with a passion and yet it hurts so much.
But it’s so beautiful. But.
Exactly.
Ah. Relief.
Got an extremely scary-looking envelope from the Bannister (what I call our business attorney, because having an attorney is weird and because the word barrister is funny).
But it turned out to be just a receipt for payments made, etc.
And exhale.
Everything I love about summer!
Sitting on the porch swing! Smelling the roses! Oregon cherries! And raspberries! And blackberries!
Hoppy House is just the perfect place to live in the summer.
And our blueberries are full of love.
I can’t even tell you how happy our vegetable garden makes me. Just hooray for all of it.
Teaching something fun.
I asked Mariko to co-teach a class with me at the Kitchen Table on the art of cutting your losses.
It’s called something like Sunk Costs, Saying Goodbyes and Getting Out of Dodge.
Anyway, really excited about this, since it’s something I keep learning the hard way. And I’ll try to post some notes here as well about some of the stuff we’ll talk about. Excellent.
Selma is a superstar! Again! Sort of.
One of our readers — inspired by Selma — used a duck in his short film, to spice up scenes with one of the characters.
Worth seeing if only because it also features my all-time favorite German-ism — Haaaenh?!
Here’s the video! That’s Michael’s. Right on.
The first official Shiva Nata class at the Playground is here!
Tonight!
And people have been doing figure eights in the air, as we say in Hebrew, to get there.
Various lovely Shivanauts and the shivanautically-curious are making their way to Portland, Oregon to spend two hours with me and Selma, workshop-ing it up.
So Elana went through hell trying to get here from Vancouver, but wild horses etc.
And then Léan was in California (she lives in Dublin) and talked her monsters into letting her have a secret sale to raise the monies to make it the rest of the way.
Miraculous things happened, the power of community, the magic of the Twitter and so forth. And she’s coming too!
Excitement.
(If you still have no idea why Shiva Nata is the best thing in the entire world, we need to change that.)
A wonderful thing I read this week:
This piece of extreme fabulousness is the very first post ever from Michelle (who is @shellbelle on Twitter.
I freaking LOVE the grey box at the top that says AAH OH GOD WHAT IS THIS BOX FOR NOW. And the title. You should go read it and welcome her to the world of blog because we like her.
And … playing live at the meme beach house!
Yes, that’s a Stuism too.
My brother and I have this thing where we come up with ridiculous band names and then say in this really pretentious, knowing tone, “Oh, well, you know, it’s just one guy.”
This week’s band is a bit … uh, salacious-sounding. But their music rocks.
Slow Motion Dinosaur Sex
What a show, if I may say so. Except that in the end it turned out to really be just one guy.
That’s it for me …
And yes yes yes, of course you can join in my Friday ritual right here in the comments bit if you feel like it.
Yeah? Anything hard and/or good happen in your week?
And, as always, have a glorrrrrrrrrrrrious day and a restful weekend-ing.
And a happy week to come. Shabbat shalom.
More thoughts on exiting the middle.
I wrote yesterday about how hugely important it is when we exit the middle.
The short version:
Beginners don’t need to be given challenges because everything is challenging.
In an advanced practice, you find challenges, because you have a conscious, intentional relationship with yourself and the world around you.
It’s the middle you want to watch out for. When you need other people to create challenges for you.
Most people think the middle is where you are until you get good, but the middle is where you stay until you decide it’s time to be conscious.
And … lots more to say that I didn’t get to.
So. Some answers to questions, and more thoughts on all of this.
What about rest? What if I’m used to resting in the middle?
Rest is a big deal.
And an advanced practice isn’t about straining. It’s about being present and having a conscious relationship with everything you do. So of course rest gets to be a part of that.
You can be engaged and still allow yourself to rest. In fact, you can be engaged in the process of resting.
Example!
In yoga (yes, again with the yoga examples), it’s the beginners and advanced practitioners who prioritize rest and the middle who scorns it:
Someone coming to a class for the first time will totally take you up on that offer to “take a child pose”. And people with advanced practices have enough awareness and sovereignty to know when they’re worn out, and to take a conscious, intentional pause.
Beginners love shavasana because they’re exhausted. In an advanced practice you love shavasana because that’s what you’ve been building up to.
But if there has been safety and rest (or other useful qualities) in your experience of the middle, you definitely get to take these with you when you leave.
What if you’re gifted so you sail past the beginner stuff and land in the middle?
This was Sheridan’s question, and it’s a good one.
We need to differentiate between the material you encounter at the beginning of learning something, and the approach of being a beginner.
When you bring the qualities of the beginner — genuine curiosity, receptivity, willingness to be wrong — to whatever it is you’re doing, it’s conscious.
And once your relationship to what you’re doing is conscious, you have an advanced practice.
You can still breeze through the material, but as long as you’re having a conscious relationship with it and yourself, you’re not in the middle.
In fact, by asking that question, you’re not in the middle.
Is that what people mean by “beginner’s mind”?
Kind of.
Beginner’s mind is about taking on the qualities of beginning:
Curiosity. Receptivity.The willingness to be wrong (or surprised!), the noticing of things, the excitement, the anticipation, the lack of attachment to any One Right Way.
When you’re in this state, everything is new.
And yes, the (obvious) implication: as soon as you choose to consciously invoke these qualities, you’re in an advanced practice. Engaging with beginner’s mind is an advanced practice.
Exiting the middle: pursuing “beginner’s mind” and going beyond it.
It’s the combination of choice plus conscious awareness that does it.
It’s not the mindset of beginning-ness all by itself. It’s the fact that you’re consciously choosing this state that negates the middle.
And choosing the challenge of being in it.
So an advanced practice is not just agreeing to approach things like a beginner might.
It’s making a decision to invoke the qualities of beginning, with intention and focus and maybe even with love.
But what if the middle is where I belong?
It is really tempting to stay in the middle. Because that’s where the struggle is. Where you’re constantly trying to get better.
And it feels good. It feels familiar. Striving for an advanced practice that doesn’t really exist, instead of choosing the actual advanced practice of engaging with where we are.
We all go through this — I have been in many a middle. In fact, I’m probably in all sorts of middle spaces right now. The middle is a place that we all stand sooner or later.
We just don’t have to stay. And the second we’re conscious of it, we’re already on our way out.
What about when you want so badly to be “advanced” that you can’t move forward?
It happens.
Back to the yoga example … my teacher used to say, “it’s better to do yoga with your head, not with your leg behind your head”.
And I knew he was right, but it was so appealing to keep striving to get there. So I stayed in the struggle of the middle, hoping that someone would help me (or make me) overcome something.
I knew, intellectually, that I could be the person who engages with her own relationship to something, instead of the person who needs to master something.
But I didn’t want to exit the middle.
What if I can’t stop judging myself for being in the middle?
That’s part of the middle. It’s part of being there.
We’re there because we don’t know that we don’t have to stay there. And we’re there because we beat ourselves up for being there.
The middle itself is not a bad place, necessarily.
It’s just that we don’t need to stay.
We don’t need our desire to be good at something to keep us captive in the struggle of trying to get somewhere. Because as soon as we decide to mindfully, compassionately find out more about where we are, we’re done being there.
But how do you exit the middle?
You choose it. The way out of the middle is choice. That’s all.
An advanced yoga practice does not require you to be able to stick your leg behind your head or balance yourself on an elbow.
That’s the stuff the middle strives for.
An advanced yoga practice begins in that moment when, say, standing in the post office, you begin to notice something about how you’re standing or how your’e breathing.
You are in a state of reconnaissance: observing yourself and your relationship to your surroundings.
You notice. You question. You make adjustments. You meet yourself with love. Or: you meet your inability to meet yourself with love.
It’s about saying yes. And asking questions.
I don’t care if we’re talking about business or gardening or embroidery, it’s all the same. You exit the middle by saying yes to this state of being engaged and present with what you’re experiencing.
So the challenge that we’re saying yes to doesn’t have to be big and super challenge-ey.
Having a conscious relationship with yourself and your stuff is the challenge.
It might only be the challenge of noticing where your breath is. The challenge of giving yourself permission to stop when things get hard. Or the challenge of paying attention to what you’re feeling and thinking in any given moment.
But it’s yours. And you choose it.
Confidential to CB.
And everyone else who hit a wall with yesterday’s post, or whose monsters are using this concept of the middle to make you feel bad about yourself.
You’re not in the middle, sweetpea. The middle is where we are when we choose not to consciously engage with our stuff.
If you’re asking yourself questions about your relationship to the middle, that’s conscious engagement. Which is already a very advanced practice.
And the thing is: consciously interacting with ourselves and our stuff is hard. And you are brave and wonderful for being in it. That is all.
And comment zen for today…
Oh, this is hard, challenging stuff. Working on our stuff is so full of things to trip over.
It’s a process. And sometimes it’s also kind of a pain in the ass.
Wishing you support with whichever part you’re working on. As always, we let people have their own experience, and we do this by being supportive and kind and not giving advice unless they ask for it.
Internet hugs all around, to anyone who needs one.
Exit the middle.
When I was a yoga teacher in Tel Aviv, there was a class I liked to attend that was just incredibly slow.
The simplest, most basic poses. Transitioning in and out of them at an extraordinarily slow, almost ritualistic pace.
It was, technically speaking, what you could call an “easy” class. But I wouldn’t have called it that at all.
The place of no middle.
This slow-slow-slow simple-simple-simple class was usually attended by absolute beginners.
And me, along with the owner of the yoga studio and occasionally another teacher.
At the end of class, we’d be pouring sweat. All of us. Wiped out.
The beginners would be sweating from the exertion of being at the beginning.
Where it’s all new and challenging. A million things to notice, feel, examine, experiment with, process.
Those of us who were teachers were sweating because when you have an advanced practice, you bring it everywhere.
We were bringing all of ourselves into each rudimentary motion, all of our curiosity and attention into each stretch of a limb.
We were in it. And so it was as exhausting and challenging as a hard physical practice, maybe even more so. This class became about immersing fully in each sensation, which is intense.
The middle.
If you caught a glimpse of us after class, red-cheeked, sweat-stained and blissful, you’d have no idea which of us were the advanced students and which the beginners.
But you could always tell when people in the middle were there.
They weren’t sweating, for one thing. Because it wasn’t hard for them.
Also, they were complaining. About how it wasn’t hard, how boring it was.
The problem with this class, according to them, was that it wasn’t a challenge. But only because no one gave them a challenge.
The problem with the middle.
Beginners don’t need anyone to hand them a challenge. Because everything is challenging.
People with advanced practices also don’t need challenge. When you have an advanced practice, you find challenge everywhere because you’re curious and intentional about every aspect of what you’re doing.
Your challenges reveal themselves naturally. You experiment. You play and explore. You intentionally choose to interact with everything in a conscious, curious way.
You don’t need to wait for a perceived authority to tell you how to make something harder. Or, if necessary — and often this is necessary! — how to make something easier. You trust your own ability to solve this.
You make adjustments. Because you’re in it. You’re there. Consciously engaging with the world around you as a way of being.
This post is not actually about yoga.
I mean, in a sense it is. In the same way that all my posts are actually about yoga.
But it isn’t about yoga.
The middle exists everywhere. In business. In the blogging world that I inhabit. In gyms and coaching programs and on Etsy and on Twitter.
Everywhere you look: middle.
How the middle works.
In the yoga studio, the people in the middle are the ones who want harder poses. More exertion! More challenge! More fixing!
In my own classes, the middle doesn’t show up nearly as much because the basic premise is a) we’re supposed to be doing it badly, and b) the whole point is seeking out challenge.
But you still see it. It’s the people who want you to challenge them instead of finding new ways to challenge themselves. Or it’s the people who want you to tone it down, instead of giving themselves permission to do less.
In business, the middle is filled with people looking outward to find out what the “internet famous” people are doing, instead of inward to find out what is theirs.
Instead of innovating and making (or playing with what’s there in order to make it your own), the middle copies what already exists.
In the middle is all this wanting to be there already. It is not fun, being in the middle.
No one is keeping us there.
Most people think the middle is where we are until we get good, until someone tells us we are ready or gives us a grade. No. There are no grades, and external sources of legitimacy are not relevant here. The middle is where we are until we remember we get to be conscious.
Staying in the middle means being cut off from sovereignty.
In the middle, you need other people to show you what to do. You’re constantly waiting for other people to deliver. And constantly disappointed when what they give you doesn’t live up to your expectations.
Once we step out of the middle, we get to make conscious decisions about what appeals to us, what we might want to try.
The way to exit the middle is not by doing something or accomplishing anything or getting anywhere.
You just decide.
You just decide. You say it:
Here I am. I’m ready and willing to consciously engage with everything in my life, with the ecology of my life.
I’m open to finding challenges in the places where challenge is needed, and challenging myself to find ease when ease is needed.
That’s it. We’re out of the middle.
Comment zen
I have a lot more to say about this, unsurprisingly. Examples. Ways to apply this. Caveats and disclaimers and so on.
But it was starting to turn into way too much to digest in one post.
So take this as a beginning: a useful concept to start playing with.
As always: we all have our stuff. We’re all working on our stuff.
And if I accidentally stepped on your stuff while processing my stuff … I apologize. Not my intention.
In the meantime, if you want to think out loud about about situations where the getting out of the middle is the best thing to do (or other ways to exit the middle), I’m here.
EDIT: Here’s the follow-up post with more thoughts on all of this.
Talking to the Book Monster.
I talk to my monsters. Kind of a lot.
Last week I talked to the one who doesn’t want me to go on Skabbatical. This time: an especially bizarre conversation with the most giant monster of all: Book Monster.
Usually I get a Negotiator to show up. But the only one who is intimidated by my book is me.
So it was clear that I’d need to do the negotiating on this one because no one else can even see this monster.
Also: usually my book monsters are the scariest, most doom-filled, threatening, “you don’t deserve this and you’re not good enough and everyone will hate you and you will FAIL” monsters ever, but that’s not at all what happened. Anyway.
A very unlikely beginning.
Me: So. What happens if I write the book?
Monster: Gaaaaaaaaah. Disaster!
Me: Tell me more.
Monster: (sighs) Where do I even start? First of all, you’ll get fat.
Me: Huh?!?! Where did that come from?
Monster: Look at all your friends who gained weight like crazy while working on their books. It’s like a pregnancy, but worse. Especially since no one ever says, “oh, you’re eating for two” when you’re writing a book.
Me: (cracking up) You’re kidding, right? That’s what you’re worried about? You know, I wasn’t sure what you were going to come up with but I DEFINITELY wasn’t expecting that. Really? That’s my fear about writing a book? That I’ll gain weight?!
My monsters like to know that there’s a plan.
Monster: (tries to be menacing) And never take it off! And you won’t get any sympathy! From anyone!
Me: You know, I have to say … I’m not completely sure I believe you. I think you’re probably trying to distract me. But I did write a section in the monster manual about how it’s good to treat monster objections as if they’re legitimate. So … okayyyyyy.
Monster: Nu?
Me: Alright. Can we come up with a plan for this?
Monster: What kind of plan?
Me: I don’t know. What if we walk for 45 minutes after every hour of spending time on the book?
Monster: That would be good.
Me: So what, you’re not worried?
Monster: Not if you have a plan.
Me: This is really screwed up.
Monster: Just tell me you have a plan.
Me: Alright! Good to know. I have a plan. What’s next? Give me some more objections. Why is this book a Very Disastrous Thing To Be Avoided?
Monster: You’ll turn into an annoying pompous asshat once you’ve been published.
Me: You believe that?
Monster: No. But it happened to so-and-so. And also that one person.
Me: Okay. I’ll come up with a plan for that one too. Actually, I’m pretty sure there is something about that in my Pirate Queen Vacation notes.
Monster: Fine.
Ah. Here comes the Doom!
Me: So what else? What do I need to be worried about, in your opinion?
Monster: (frowns seriously) You might not finish it. You do, after all, come from a long line of people who don’t finish things. It’s your heritage.
Me: First of all, that’s hardly true. And even if it were, what happens if I don’t finish it? What’s the big deal about not finishing?
Monster: DISASTER!!! DOOM!!!
Me: I know, I know, but what kind of disaster? Is it the shame and humiliation I should be worried about? Or other people’s criticism? Or self-doubt? Or is it that I’ll get paralyzed and won’t start other projects missions? Or the world will have expectations of me that I can’t meet? Or …?
Monster: Yes.
Me: Yes?
Monster: All of that.
Me: And … what if I’m okay with the possibility of not finishing it?
Monster: What?! WHAT?! Are you trying to break my head into a million pieces?! I do not even understand your question but I DEFINITELY DON’T LIKE IT.
This is The Book we’re talking about.
Me: So you’re saying it’s unacceptable to not finish things? Or, alternately, do you meant that it is impossible that I’d be okay with it?
Monster: Both.
Pause. We look at each other.
Monster: But more the second one. I just don’t see it. Why would you be okay with it?!
(That last bit said with such utter disgust you’d think I’d not only suggested eating worms but insisted that putting olive oil on them makes them more tasty).
Me: Huh.
Monster: Anyway, I wouldn’t let you be okay with it.
Me: I know. That’s why we’re having this conversation.
Monster: Which I didn’t want to have to begin with.
Me: I know, honey. And I appreciate it. Thank you.
Monster: Hmmph. Don’t try to be nice to me. It disrupts the order of the cosmos.
Me: Clearly. Anyway, why are you so determined to not let me be okay with starting a mission and not finishing it?
Monster: Are you kidding me?! This is The Book we’re talking about. The Book! If you start being okay with abandoning your dreams, we’ll have total chaos around here. End of Days! Doom!
Tell me more.
Me: Tell me more.
Monster: If you abandon a dream, it sticks up the works.
Me: The “works”? Are you speaking metaphorically.
Monster: Maybe. The point is, you really shouldn’t abandon dreams. It’s very bad for the system.
Me: The system.
Monster: My job is to make sure you don’t abandon the important dreams. But also that you don’t make progress on them. That way at least we maintain the status quo.
Me: Riiiiiiiiight. I have to say, this conversation isn’t going where I thought it might. Let me get this straight. You need to keep me from forward progress on dreams. While still making sure I don’t abandon them.
Monster: Yes.
Me: And tell me again why this is so important.
Monster: Oof. I told you.
Me: You said abandoning a dream sticks up the works. But what about moving forward? That sticks up the works too?
Monster: (extremely agitated) It disrupts the balance!
What do I know about balance?
Me: And balance is important because …?
Monster: What the hell kind of yoga teacher are you? Balance is an Extremely Important Principle!
Me: You’re right, at its essence. But this isn’t balance. It’s limbo. It’s living in limbo. Though this does kind of explain a lot of things in my life.
Monster: (suspicious) Limbo? Like sticks?
Me: No, like purgatory. Frozen. Paralyzed. In between.
Monster: (relieved) That’s what we’re going for, yes.
Me: But that’s not balance.
Monster: (narrows eyes) What do you mean?
Me: I’m a yoga teacher, remember? So I know about this stuff. Balance is related to flow. Things that are in a state of flow can achieve balance, which they do by reacting and adapting to new input. Paralysis isn’t balance. It’s stasis. It’s stagnation.
Monster: What are you saying?
Me: You’re not helping me achieve balance. You’re keeping me from achieving balance.
Monster: Oh no! Are you sure?
Me: Yeah.
Monster: Uh oh. Because I’m definitely supposed to be working in service of balance.
Remember San Francisco?
Me: Remember San Francisco? How the buildings are flexible instead of rigid so they can withstand earthquakes? That is balance.
Monster: (hangs head) Oh.
Me: Okay, so back to The Book. Assuming I’m in a state of balance that is informed by flexibility and flow … what if I start the book and then realize that another mission is actually a better use of my genius right now?
Monster: Where are you going with this?
Me: Well, maybe that wouldn’t count as “abandoning a dream”, would it?
Monster: I guess not. I hadn’t thought about it.
Me: So what if I stop treating the book like a dream that has the power to hurt me? And start treating it like a project mission that is related to stuff I’m passionate about?
Monster: I don’t know. That sounds really vague. And stupid.
The factory.
Me: Alright. What if we invited metaphor mouse to help come up with a better way to describe it?
Monster: (rolls eyes) As long as I don’t have to be there for that part, I don’t care.
Me: Right on.
Monster: Are we done? Can I go home now?
Me: Home? Where’s home?
Monster: The dream factory.
Me: You live in a dream factory?
Monster: The dream factory. What’s it to you?
Me: You know, usually I really dislike talking to you, but I think I’m kind of starting to like you.
Monster: You better not try to hug me or say namaste to me or something. You pull any of that hippie shit and this is our last conversation ever, sister.
Me: It’s cool. No hugging. I promise.
Monster: That was close.
Me: It so was not even slightly close but whatever, I’ll see you later.
Monster: Maybe.
Comment zen for today.
Talking to monsters is so hard. And challenging. And intimidating.
We all have our stuff. We’re all working on our stuff. We’re here to support each other. And part of how we let people have their own experience is by not giving advice — unless someone specifically asks for it.
This is an incredibly personal thing I’m sharing here — not to be told what to do with it, but in the hope that someone else gets a glimpse of something useful. Love, as always, to all the commenter mice, the Beloved Lurkers and everyone who reads.
The Rally.
When you’re close to someone, you learn all sorts of things about subjects you might not normally be interested in.
My gentleman friend is hugely knowledgeable about yoga because of me.
Thanks to me, he knows how to make really good hummus. Shares my strong opinions on permission marketing. Knows his way around east Berlin.
Thanks to him, I know way more than I ever imagined possible about the history of the west coast, motorcycles and the San Francisco Giants.
I also now know about birds, ukuleles, the Trade Winds, typefaces, why things break and eighteenth century sailing.
It’s all interesting. Mainly because someone I care about finds it interesting. But one thing I really love hearing about is the Rally.
I need to tell you about the Rally.
My gentleman friend is a long-time scooter guy.
(Though right now he mostly rides his motorcycle — a gorgeous 1976 BMW that’s the newest bike he’s ever owned, in case you were wondering).
So even though I don’t ride, I’ve learned all sorts of things about scooter culture.
And my favorite bit is the Scooter Rally. It is a marvelous thing. A thing I need to tell you about.
What happens at a Rally.
A rally is a ride. A group ride.
But it’s so much more than that.
It’s a big, complicated, crazy event. Attended by scooter enthusiasts. And full of madness and hilarity and wonderfulness.
And because I cannot do it justice, I made my gentleman friend answer a bunch of questions.
An Interview with my Gentleman Friend about the thing that is the Rally.
A Rally reinforces the culture.
Me: So the way I understand it, one thing people like about scooter rallies is how they’re an excuse to get together and hang out.
MGF: Right. It’s important that everyone have this thing — riding — in common, but riding isn’t the thing. Or: it ends up not being the most important thing.
I mean, it’s vital that there be a riding component, but there’s way more time talking about riding, thinking about riding, socializing, making contacts, playing goofy games…
Me: And what you get from a ride is …?
MGF: They reinforce the culture.
Once the rally is over, you’ve been immersed in this bath of people who are totally nuts in pretty much the same way that you’re totally nuts.
So when you go back to the world of people who aren’t nuts the way that you are, it’s still with you. You carry with you that glow of approval and camaraderie.
And a patch! Really, I can’t stress enough how important the patches are.
There is much accumulation of swag.
Me: A patch. Got it. And a t-shirt?
MGF: Exactly. Vital.
Also a pint glass. Because drinking reigns supreme. That is actually the most important part of the scooter rally. The drinking.
Which doesn’t seem like it would go with, you know, piloting a vehicle. That’s why the riding is in the morning.
You find your people.
Me: So how long is a rally generally?
MGF: Usually it’s a long weekend. Or just a weekend. Or a day, depending on the club.
Me: And do you know people before you go?
MGF: There’s generally a rally at the same time in the same city every year. It has a name.
So maybe the first time you go you don’t know anyone, so you feel kind of … hesitant, But you’ve probably been reading about it, or connecting online, so you’ll recognize names and faces.
And bikes. If it’s in your town you’ll recognize people’s bikes. It’s a great excuse to talk to people. And once you’ve gone to one, you’ll know a ton of people the next time.
And something happens. Various crazy, wonderful things.
Me: So you go for the ride but really you go for the bigger experience.
MGF: Yeah. I’m really the wrong person to be talking to about this part though, being admittedly an anti-social weirdo.
Me: No, that’s good.
MGF: Well, it’s just that I don’t have as much of a social experience as other people do.
But I just love the rides. It’s such an unlikely, exhilarating experience to be in a crowd of a hundred vintage scooters, just riding. It’s your people. Doing crazy, wonderful shit.
Me: What kinds of crazy, wonderful shit?
MGF: Oh, it’s almost a rule that there be crazy, wonderful shit.
For example, there’s usually some kind of competition, like a rodeo or an obstacle course or some weird, ridiculous, impossible game that you play on scooters but is actually not something anyone could do.
Involving, say, teeter-totters and refrigerator boxes.
And there are lots of awards: farthest traveled, most beautifully restored vintage, crap scooter, and so on.
What makes rallies so Rally-like.
Me: What’s the coolest award?
MGF: Oh, I’d have to say Best in Show.
[Here he pulls out a bunch of back issues of Scoot! Quarterly — he used to be their design person — to show me the Rally Review sections, and starts waxing nostalgic.]
Me: So back to why rallies are so Rally-like. The good stuff.
MGF: They have names. And costumes.
Like the Portland Dirty Clown Run. Mile-High Mayhem. Or the Poke-and-Dragger, a cross-dressing poker run (a traditional motorcycle-ey event that’s sort of like a motorized card game).
Me: What else?
MGF: All kinds of ludicrous games, winning stuff in the ludicrous games, drinking, mayhem, companionship, goofing off, much letting-down-of-hair.
Making new friends, seeing old ones.
Me: It’s fun.
MGF: Uh, yes. That is the whole point, really.
Me: I love it. I want a Rally! I want a Rally!
This is the concept that I have been searching for.
I’ve been aching to do an event that is completely different from the types of events I usually run.
Usually I teach stuff. And we go through wacky, transformative processes together. And there is time for integrating all that good stuff.
It’s an experience. A big, powerful, everything-is-different-now experience. And it’s awesome and I love it.
But I also want a new thing: something that’s not about learning or processing or experiencing. Something that’s about doing. Your own thing. But in community.
Not a retreat. And not a seminar.
A space to show up and get a bunch of stuff done on a project that you’re already working on. Movement!
With panache. And fabulousness. And costumes. And being extremely silly.
A Rally!
So I’m going to arrange a Projectizing Rally.
It doesn’t have a name yet.
But everyone will show up with a project they’re working on, and there will be playing.
And drag names. And costumes. And badges. And pie, of course.
Comment zen for today….
This is a new-ish idea, which means that it’s still a tiny, sweet thing. Which means we need to tread gently with it.
So I’m not ready for all the ways this could go wrong or not work or whatever.
What I would love is excitement! And drag names! And things that we could take from a Rally and apply to other things! RALLY!
EDIT! Also: go ahead and invent drag names for yourself and leave them in the comments. I need some help with the brainstormings. Selma is going as Duckface a l’Orange. Probably.