The Stories You Can't Tell

I've been thinking a lot about Demeter and Persephone.  And mostly just Demeter.  And how hard it is to watch someone you carried have to face the steep learning curve of adulting and being in a position where you've literally done everything you can do to help and now it's all up to them and the only thing left to do is hold your breath and see if they can figure out how to fly.

And rich-crowned Demeter did not refuse but straightway made fruit to spring up from the rich lands, so that the whole wide earth was laden with leaves and flowers. -- Hymn to Demeter, translated by Hugh G. Evelyn-White

I know.  Last week's newsletter wasn't great.  There's a story I'm holding, that I'm part of, but isn't mine to tell.  It's really hard to watch someone you love have a hard time, to be doing as much as you can do for them, and to still not know if they're going to be able to accomplish what had, for years, seemed like a sure thing.  Especially when that person is your kid.  

So that's where my mind is at right now -- holding a story that is an overwhelming part of my life right now, but recognizing that it's not mine to share.  

At a distant second though, I've been thinking a lot about Demeter and Persephone.  And mostly just Demeter.  And how hard it is to watch someone you carried have to face the steep learning curve of adulting and being in a position where you've literally done everything you can do to help and now it's all up to them and the only thing left to do is hold your breath and see if they can figure out how to fly.

And back to the the lesson of the concert a few weeks ago - realizing the need to let go and let things unfold. It may not be what I wanted, or expected, of this time, but this is where we are and I can push and pull and try to make sure the right things happen, but in the end, what is going to unfold is what is going to unfold. 

And.

In the end.

We find our way.  (Most of the time).

When one door and path closes off, there are many to replace it, the only question is really which one to take?  And in fact, just because there is a door or path open, doesn't mean that it's the right door or path to take.  No matter how much "easier" it might appear.  Or even in fact might be.  Sometimes it's just not the door that you're going to go through.

Some of us are stubborn that way. (Ask me how I know. Or don't). And it's still hard to watch from the other side.

There are many pathways to success and they don't all look the same.  Life is a complicated, messy thing.  Kind of like birth.  But really drawn out. And (mostly) not as outright painful (just sometimes).  What else can we do?  You can't go back and change the past, but you can always choose a new way forward to change tomorrow.  Each second is an opportunity.

I don' t know where I'm going with this.  I don't know how to do this, I've never done it before. At least not on this side of the equation.  And, I will sort out what I can sort out, and what will be will also unfold and be what it is. 

I'm not sure this was any better than last week, but it's somewhat more accurate to 'what I've been thinking about' anyway.

With love and curiosity,
--Susan

Like No Big Deal

Sometimes things feel like a big deal.  Sometimes in retrospect things don't seem like the big deal they seemed at the time.  And sometimes looking back, those things are pivotal.

And you never know until later. In the meantime, it's all, are we going to squeak past by the skin of our teeth or no?

“Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.” --Anais Nin

I'm not feeling full of bright wisdom right now. My brain power has mostly been focused on untangling the knots of making information accessible and some other stuff going on. Today we graphed out multiple dimensions of documents - primary and derived research sliced by static and dynamic/living and how our particular model worked within this framework.  Earlier this week we were creating the lifecycle of an insight.  It's all very interesting but... tonight I feel like I do not have two brain cells to rub together.

So this one is short, mostly to say what I've said.  Well, that and...
 
With love and curiosity (even when everything seems very complicated and like it might actually be a big deal),

--Susan

No Name

One of the things I've been thinking about is how names give shape to meaning.  Have you ever had a feeling but couldn't quite make sense of it and then it dawned on you what the feeling was, and all of a sudden a whole bunch of stuff started to fall into place and make sense?  That.  

The limits of my language are the limits of my mind. All I know is what I have words for. -- Wittgenstein

It's been quite a week here for various reasons.  One of the things I've been thinking about is how names give shape to meaning.  Have you ever had a feeling but couldn't quite make sense of it and then it dawned on you what the feeling was, and all of a sudden a whole bunch of stuff started to fall into place and make sense?  That.  Until you know what to call something, it is hard to make sense of.  There is always the danger of giving things names that aren't the right names - that can cause a lot of problems!  

Why am I thinking about this?  Because it's my job.  Basically.  Dealing in metadata all day, we have a very limited scope of terms available, but we're working with a really responsive team, and they ask for the terms they need.  Or sometimes they ask why we want to add a term.  I wouldn't say every term leads to an interesting discussion, but a good number of them do.  

Besides being in metadata, it's metadata and content about research - so it's studies literally about identifying and naming insights, experiences, and recommendations based on that.  How to represent experience in these little weird black squiggles on a screen or page is a daily discussion that I never seem to tire of.  

How to represent experience is how I started off this week with Mother's Day.  We went to see U2 live as they are touring behind the 30 year anniversary of their album, Joshua Tree.  

(We *could* have been higher up in the stadium). I'll admit, it wouldn't have been how I would have chosen to celebrate the day.  I'm a pretty classic introvert and my idea of a good time does not involve literally thousands of people, pretty much ever, much less stadiums. As it all got closer, I resolved myself to the fact that this was going to be a thing that was going to happen, and it would make my little family happy.  

We got there, we eventually got to our seats, as I settled in, it was a pleasant spring evening, though there were dark clouds that threatened rain. I'm happy to say it didn't rain.  The opening band was nice enough.  A good opening band for U2.  Solid. 

It wasn't until between sets that I really settled.  While they were breaking down the opening band set and getting ready for U2, on the screen they scrolled poetry.  Poetry that spoke to the themes of Joshua Tree, and to U2's core value set.  I sat there and read the poetry as it went past.  As I relaxed and allowed the moments to unfold as they would unfold, letting go of expectation and desires for something else, I relaxed and allowed myself to be open.  

I thought I was prepared.  I've seen U2 before.  Like their opening band, they put on a good solid show.  They know how to put on a show that is both intimate and scales to the size of the crowd they're working with.  It's really sort of amazing to pull that off.

I was not prepared.

This is the backdrop of the show.  It was really quite stunning.  But, that just added to it all.  They actually started out pre-Joshua Tree with Sunday Bloody Sunday from their 1983 album War, which is a song in part about the Bloody Sunday incident in Derry, Northern Ireland in 1972 where, per Wikipedia,

British soldiers shot 26 unarmed civilians during a peaceful protest march against internment (imprisonment without trial). Fourteen people died: thirteen were killed outright, while the death of another man four months later was attributed to his injuries. Many of the victims were shot while fleeing from the soldiers and some were shot while trying to help the wounded. Other protesters were injured by rubber bullets or batons, and two were run down by army vehicles. - [Bloody Sunday (1972)]

It also harkens to the1920 Bloody Sunday.  Both were escalations of hostilities between opposing forces in Ireland. In a time when it feels very much like everything is polarizing and escalating in ways that are explicitly explosive - from #blacklivesmatter, to Standing Rock/#nodapl, to the slap in the face of democracy that is the Trump administration nightmare reality show, to Syria, to Russia, to Afghanistan, to so many so many so many places.  

For reference,here's the song...  And this is how it starts out - 

I can't believe the news today
Oh, I can't close my eyes
And make it go away
How long...
How long must we sing this song
How long, how long...

And here we are, continuing to sing this song.  And so I cried because sometimes what else is the proper response?  (There is no proper response). 

So to say I was unprepared is wildly an understatement.  The entire concert was really just sitting or through waves of emotional response that I was not prepared for.  Joshua Tree, the album is (more wikipedia),... influenced by American and Irish roots music, and through sociopolitically conscious lyrics embellished with spiritual imagery, it contrasts the group's antipathy for the "real America" with their fascination with the "mythical America".

So, very resonant for the times.  The song Where the Streets Have No Name refers to a story about Belfast where a person's religion and income are evident by the street they live on.  Which brings us back to naming showing or hiding attributes that mean many things can fall into place, and how the absence of naming can not only mean that thing that you can't quite put your finger on, but can provide freedom to create your own story, to give something a new and different name, a new identity, undefined by what has gone before.  
 

There is power in naming.  There is power in words.  There is power in knowing when it's time to let go of what you think you want and power in letting things unfold.  There is power in taking direct action to change things.  We must remember and do all these things.

With love and curiosity,,
--Susan 

Puttin' On My Top Hat

You were once wild here. Don't let them tame you.
-- Isadora Duncan

What have I been thinking about this week?  A lot of stuff.  A lot of content strategy, project management, more content stuff, more project management stuff... and how hard it is to watch a loved one go through something difficult.  

Some how this results in me watching a lot of dance videos.  I dunno.

Cinco de Mayo

Sometimes it seems like celebrating too often is sort of frivolous, but celebrations are an expression of gratitude and love.  Gratitude doesn't get worn out when you express it.  Love doesn't have any less meaning when you tell someone you love them frequently.  Joy likewise.  Why should celebration be any different? 

Some things have to be believed to be seen.
― Madeleine L'Engle

Happy Cinco de Mayo.  RIght around this time of year there are a handful of celebrations marking the passage of time and that's what I've been thinking about this week.

May 1st is May Day (Beltaine if you follow the Celtic agricultural calendar) and International Worker's Day.  May 4th is... I mean, May the Fourth be with you.

And of course Cinco de Mayo.  

Sometimes it seems like celebrating too often is sort of frivolous, but celebrations are an expression of gratitude and love.  Gratitude doesn't get worn out when you express it.  Love doesn't have any less meaning when you tell someone you love them frequently.  Joy likewise  Why should celebration be any different?  

Not a long newsletter this time, mostly I've been thinking about creating structure and organizing so that I can track and get things done and trying to figure out how to express what I think needs to be done in a way that will get it done.  It's the funny little things that make me tick.  I have been, perhaps, a little too absorbed in that this week. Then again, I feel like I'm finally getting somewhere so the absorption is paying off.  And I sleep *well* at night... :) 

With love and joy and celebrations and curiosity,

--Susan

A Spoon Full of Sugar

I have learned this about myself.  If I am put into chaos, I will start to create order and make sense of it.  Eventually either the chaos *becomes* order, or the chaos is meant to be chaos, and I find just enough pattern in the chaos to be able to mostly float along the tops of the rapids.

“Perhaps we are born knowing the tales of our grandmothers and all their ancestral kin continually run in our blood repeating them endlessly, and the shock they give us when we first bear them is not of surprise but of recognition.” 
― P.L. Travers, About the Sleeping Beauty

I cannot believe how fast this year is suddenly moving.  I feel like last week was just the first week of the month, and now here we are at the end!  

Granted, I guess in that month, things turned around and now I've got a brain full of information management and trying to figure out a job from basically scratch and quarter-prepared processes.  It's been keeping me busy!  

As a result, I've been thinking a lot about how uncomfortable not knowing things is for me.  I want to be doing everything that needs to be done.  And I want it done right.  And for it to be the right thing to do.  I know.  Fussy in that way.  (Except when I kind of don't care which does occasionally happen).

The thing is, no one can really tell me pretty much anything - because they don't really know either.  Which is both great and sort of worrying.  But, I have learned this about myself.  If I am put into chaos, I will start to create order and make sense of it.  Eventually either the chaos *becomes* order, or the chaos is meant to be chaos, and I find just enough pattern in the chaos to be able to mostly float along the tops of the rapids.  Mostly.  Every now and again, some whitewater or a rogue wave gets me.  But that's part of life.

Someone called me Mary Poppins the other day, it's sort of apt, both generally & in this particular situation, having sort of blown in as quickly as the wind changing direction.  Hmm.  Actually, I think that might be useful.  Not so much with having to manage Jane and Michael, but just the matter of fact, super direct, while also meeting all requirements for social propriety, and navigating the most ridiculous, and also fun, situations with brilliant uniqueness.  Those books were really brilliant.  No so much the movie, which is a delight in its own way but doesn't really have anywhere the depth of the books.  I still re-read all the Mary Poppins books periodically.  P.L. Travers was an amazing story teller.  It's probably past time for me to re-read What the Bee Knows too - in all my spare reading time... My stack is growing by the week, it seems!  

Another thing I've been thinking about is how complex the details are.  I look at the project I'm working on (human insights research content management & the associated system), and on the surface it appears really straightforward... and then a tiny question appears, and then all of a sudden (to switch childrens' books metaphors), you're down the rabbit hole with Alice.  Boom. Which is interesting, but sometimes we have tangents on tangents on tangents and forget what we were trying to get answered in the first place.  Soon I will know all and it will be fine.  Or I'll have recreated it in a mutually shared image... And it will be fine.  :)

I got a big piece of puzzle this week though.  Part of the issue has been that this program has been managed across no less than four project management systems, and several sharepoint sites.  Of course we can't manage anything, it's everywhere!  I finally was shown what I thought was an incidental project tracking location, that turned out to be pivotal and a whole bunch of stuff dropped into place.  I went from having about seven things assigned to me, to having nearly 300 - though some of that was because a predecessor was *way* too granular with creating work items to a ridonk degree.  More that I can fix! Just link to the spreadsheet instead of entering every row from the spreadsheet and tada! 

So.  Yeah.  And that's just *one* of the places my brain has been.  It's been sort of the Red Queen's race, from Through The Looking Glass, really...

"Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!"

RIGHT?

And speaking of which, it's time for me to double my fast-as-I-can.

With a spoon full of sugar, a piece of cake, an elixir of your choosing, and love & curiosity,

--Susan

Laughter & Grace

Eternal now, happiness, and joyful community?  It's not splendor or beauty, but laughter is definitely a grace.  

Laughter is the key that grace has arrived. 
-- Anne Lamott

So one of the things I've been thinking about since the beginning of the year is Grace.  What does it mean to have grace?  To be graceful?  In more than just a physical movement sense.

Relying on the trope they taught us K-12 then told us to never use ever again because it's so overused, here, according to Merriam Webster, is the definition of grace:

Definition of grace
1  a : unmerited divine assistance given humans for their regeneration or sanctification
    b : a virtue coming from God
    c : a state of sanctification enjoyed through divine assistance
2  a : approval, favor stayed in his good graces
    b archaic : mercy, pardon
    c : a special favor : privilege each in his place, by right, not grace, shall rule his heritage — Rudyard Kipling
    d : disposition to or an act or instance of kindness, courtesy, or clemency
    e : a temporary exemption : reprieve
3  a : a charming or attractive trait or characteristic Among disagreeable qualities he possessed the saving grace of humor.
    b : a pleasing appearance or effect : charm all the grace of youth — John Buchan
    c : ease and suppleness (see 1supple 2b) of movement or bearing danced with such grace
4 —used as a title of address or reference for a duke, a duchess, or an archbishop
5 : a short prayer at a meal asking a blessing or giving thanks
6 Graces plural : three sister goddesses in Greek mythology who are the givers of charm and beauty
7 : a musical trill, turn, or appoggiatura 8 a : sense of propriety or right had the grace not to run for elective office — Calvin Trillin  
     b : the quality or state of being considerate or thoughtful accepted his advice with grace. 
--Merriam Webster

So I'm still trying to make sense of what exactly grace is.  I have the year... in the meantime...

Graces plural : three sister goddesses in Greek mythology who are the givers of charm and beauty... the three Graces are Splendor, Beauty, and Laughter.  One of these things is not like the others, right?  Laughter?  Why is laughter one of the graces?

Laughter brings grace - it always occurs in the eternal now.  NOW.  While you might laugh about something that happened in the past, you are laughing about it NOW, in the present.  

Laughter also, in its' purest state, is about bringing happiness.  Yes, there's bitter laughter, and the awkward laughter when you get the giggles at a really inconvenient moment, but true belly laughter is not that.

And laughter, in the presence of others, laughter in community, can create a bond that lasts a lifetime.  We laugh with our friends, our loved ones. 

Eternal now, happiness, and joyful community?  It's not splendor or beauty, but laughter is definitely a grace. 

May we all be so blessed with such grace.

Love and curiosity,

--Susan

Roses

All the roses that are around are starting to send out their shoots.  Little green sprouts.  The local wild roses more abundantly than some of the more decorative roses, but at this point they're all growing.  

Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose. --Gertrude Stein 

Our yard is in less than optimal shape for anything right now.  We grow moss really well, but it seems like not much else despite some trying... Our yard requires a little more than benign neglect.  But slowly it's taking shape.  It has had much to come back from, so all things in time.  

I might have talked about it some already here.  We've had to rehabilitate our yard.  The previous owner used so much roundup on it that there were no birds, squirrels or any other little critters that would come into it.  Now we have weeds growing!  Dandelions, stinky bob, and all sorts of other things, with big tap roots, breaking down they clay-y soil and reintroducing all sorts of nutrients that the soil needs.  We have moss -- I love moss, and will be happy to watch it spread, especially across the hard clay soil in the front.  

Other things that have done well for me in the dark and damp are not happy here.  Our rosemary is... I don't think it's dead, but I'm not entirely sure it's alive either.  Perhaps this is the year I'll figure out what's going on with it. Or not.

But regardless, spring is finally here, I think for real this time.  The April showers will bring us May flowers.  I was lucky enough at lunch today to make it to the place I was having lunch and back again without getting caught in ridiculous down pours.  One minute sunny and the next, pouring rain, seems to be the how it goes right now.

And so a new cycle begins.  

With love and curiosity,
--Susan