playing mindgames with the universe

Entrance to the Actual Cabin in the Redwoods

I’m in a cabin in the woods as I write this.

Cabin, redwoods, the Russian River rolling slowly and somewhat dryly by. Only April and already the water feels thick, too shallow in most places to swim. But I found a path to a bend in the river by the Bohemian Grove, the famous place where Kissinger and Bush (I and II) and other aging frat boys of the Skull & Bones set would retreat to piss against real redwoods and take a break from despoiling the very same environment that they could savor here even while drinking themselves silly and pissing on it.

But back to the actual cabin. As I mentioned, I’m posting this FROM my cabin in the woods. Cabins in the woods these days are tending more and more to have internet access. Not to mention plumbing, heating and electricity. So not only could I bring work with me, work could follow me where I went. Isn’t that great? In the first 5 days after I got here I was launching 2 websites that were supposed to have launched before I left.

My OWN deliverables had all been on time, of course, but the deadline of my leaving town had inspired everyone else on the team to prolific productivity, thus causing us to miss the deadline. Or had just woken them up to getting done what ought to have been done. But who am I kidding? I’m usually the one that’s a beat behind the music. 500 years after the invention of mechanical clocks, we have all collectively internalized clocks; I think we’ve gone further and collectively internalized the notion of setting a clock forward 10 minutes knowing we’re always running late and still managing to run 10 minutes late on top of that.

On the bright side, also during this first 5 days in the woods, I wound up helping a filmmaker do a last minute proposal for online outreach, a proposal which she wound up writing me into. I had been meaning to explore all of this with her for months, and then the grant opportunity arose at the last minute, we went for it and made the deadline. Sweet!

But I had come out here to work on some fiction, a sustained suspension of day-to-day concerns. I thought of it as not so much changing air as changing light. If you want to study the stars, you need to get away from the Sun and the Moon, or else the stars will be invisible to you. Another way to look at it is I had come out here to bore myself into writing more.

I was lamenting this fact on the phone with my friend Amy the other day. Oh, did I forget to mention? I get pretty good cell phone reception at this cabin too.

As I described all the work that had followed me out to this idyllic spot, I realized I had made more progress on the day to day productive work in those 5 days that in the weeks before. In other words, coming out here to focus on writing had given me an opportunity to make incredible progress on the day-to-day stuff. There was no denying it. Fran Liebowitz once said that if not for writing, she would never get around to sharpening all her pencils and dusting her furniture. Or something to that effect.

But this was more. Maybe we were on to something. What if this could be a strategy to becoming more productive?

Choose a spiritual or artistic endeavor on a higher plan that whatever you’re currently trying to accomplish. As you bring your concentration to bear on this new goal, the universe will tempt you with opportunities that you formerly, actively and in vain, sought out. While looking fixedly at your new, higher goal, and pretending to focus on that one, grab greedily at the old opportunities the universe offers while trying not to let the universe notice what you’re really doing.

But isn’t this just procrastination? Or even the doctrine of deliberate, conscious Procrastination expounded by my former student Nick Scoullar. Nick invents some incredibly highflown, ambitious project — for example a novel about Spanish-speaking polar bears — in the hope that he will procrastinate from that task and accomplish whatever really needs to get done.

No, she maintained. This is more than just a game between you and your own mind. You’re fucking with the universe in a very deliberate and conscious way.

My mind reeled at the possibilities of this radical new strategy. “Don’t you think that the universe would get… angry?”

Amy’s laugh, even over the tinny cell phone reception, sounded kind of throaty. “Sometimes the universe might like to be teased. If it’s done skillfully. In fact, she might be grateful and even…. generous.”

I walked out among the redwoods, contemplating their swirling knots and hollows and bark, the great limbs and forelocks of some stately gods that might have inspired Bourdelle.

Rather than feeling serene, i was all stirred up as I got back to my cabin, and back to work.

Cafe Grattitude

I am Blue-ish

If you live in San Francisco, chances are you know about “Cafe Grattitude,” AKA “Cafe Attitude,” a vegan and mostly raw restaurant that serves exquisite, expensive and somewhat pretentious dishes.

It’s a wonderful place, really, and the food makes you go Zing all the rest of the day. It’s a great alternative to the Eggs and Home Fries based brunch that plunges you into a coma from which pots of coffee can only partly revive you.

My only qualm with Cafe Grattitude is the way things are named on the menu. It’s very precious. Every dish is named “I am….” and then an adjective that is luminous and new agey. For example:

“I am Honoring” = Nachos
“I am Elated” = Enchiladas
“I am Insightful” = Spring Rolls

So in ordering, you verbalize a positive statement about yourself and put it out to the Universe!! Get it? It’s so life affirming!! Much better than being in a diner in New York and saying “Yeah lemme get a scrambled egg on Rye, thanks.”

The name of that one would be “I am Impatient and Do You Have a Problem with That?”

Today at Cafe Grattitude I ordered the Chocolate Mousse, which the intensely smiling waitress translated for me: “I am Magnificent.” When I got the check, I thought of a new name for the dish. I wanted to tell them they could call it “I am Paying 8 Dollars for a Chocolate Mousse.”

But did I tell this to the Cafe Grattitude staff? No I did not.  Would that be because…

“I am Chicken Shit?”

Found Poetry on Wikipedia

Dried valerian under Goðafoss in Iceland, November 2007

Found Wikipoetry?  The text below is from the Wikipedia entry for Valerian, a medicinal root. It reads like something out of McSweeney’s magazine or George Saunders.

I quote it at length, for posterity, because who knows how long it will endure in this eerie form:

The name Valerian comes from the Latin word valere, meaning “to be strong or healthy”, generally thought to refer to its medicinal use, though many references suggest that it also refers to the strong odor.

An explanation for the theory regarding the etymological reference to the strong odor is that the herb was also known as “Phou” or “Fy” in antiquity . «Phou» or «fy» is describing a common expression of the peoples of the European continent when smelling a dried Valerian root. According to folk belief this medicine could turn everything painful into good. It was therefore called “wenderot” or similar in Germanic language groups, meaning the root that could turn things bad to good. Domestic animals, pets, especially cats become ardent when they smell the herb.

Is this some wikipedian who channels an ancient nordic shaman?  A case of herb-induced prose?  I have traced the moment in version history when the apocryphal author appeared, but all that can be known of him or her is an IP address that hails from Lillehammer, Norway, north of Oslo….

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valerian_(herb)

We’ve Moved. Again.

Honey, we trashed the house.

We’ve moved yet again.

Extensive market research with unwilling focus groups has confirmed that “Monkey Tea,”  as a brand name for a blog,  conjured up such associations as:

• a liquid in which monkeys have been soaking
• vaguely racist
• compost tea
• a Marx brothers’ movie
• the “URL with a smell”

In spite of the many fond and innocent reasons we had for choosing this name in the first place, we’ve decided to move our more reputable content about sustainability and social media over to… a different place… over there. We’d tell you what that new URL is, but that would create a link between this (disreputable, unreliable) site and that (pristine, professional) one, so we won’t.

So for actual content about sustainability and social media, please go there.  For random observations, free associations, and embarrassing revelations, stay here.  If you want to buy the domain name MonkeyTea, leave a comment below, I’ll make you a deal.

-k

Photo Credit (Creative Commons License):
http://www.flickr.com/photos/carquestguy/199036836/

Alternate Ithaca Tom

A story about a regular guy who comes to a crossroads in his life and imagines a path not taken, which then haunts him until he follows it to its logical and liberating conclusion.  Yes, this could be premise of some hollywood treatment featuring Tom Hanks or Gwyneth Paltrow,  but no.  It’s part of the series of spoken word performance from The Moth —  old-time storytelling where  musicians and writers and actors and the occasional ordinary mortal will tell a true story, of about 15 minutes duration, without notes.

http://feeds.themoth.org/~r/themothpodcast/~5/497957568/moth-podcast-50-tom-weiser.mp3

Why we do what we do: Leviticus, Manzanita, & Monkey-Picked Tea

Torah study on Saturday with Rabbi Lerner, in Berkeley: we read the parts of Leviticus about  dismembering and burning of various animals.  I kept flickering back and forth between historical mindsets: our modern sensibilities, revolted by all the gore of that slaughter and burning, and some glimpse of an earlier mind, immune to the gore, but mystified by the act of sacrifice, the idea of offering all this wealth up to an invisible patron—not to the usual stone statue or animal spirit with a taste for human flesh, but some cantankerous, unfathomable old Jew with fussy eating habits giving dictation from the top floor of a Mount Sinai condominium.

It’s hard to maintain Historical Mind for any sustained length of time.

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After Leviticus we went for brown rice and vegetarian fare at Manzanita, a macrobiotic restaurant also in Berkeley: Carin, Nicole, Rob and I. The food has a fascinating story and philosophy behind it.  Unfortunately, the end result can be described as “variations on a theme of gruel.”

Nicole and I used to be an item. Since then, she’s gone on to even greater renown as the founder of a community-run business here in San Francisco. She is very beautiful in that way that turns down the volume on the rest of the world while you speak to her. She is also hot. She is also wise. She tells me that she finally found a president to run the business side of things.

You mean a prime minister, I tell her. She gets the joke, namely that she is the Queen. She also gets that I may not get that she’s gotten it, and that I might spoil the whole thing by making some redundant variation on the joke, thereby embarrassing myself and her, so she laughs, and says:

I got it.

I tell her I’ve been rereading Rabbi Lerner’s books, the first one especially, Surplus Powerlessness, where he talks about his student radical days at Berkeley and how SDS and the movement in general tended to consume its own leaders. I want her to read this with regard to her own community, so I’ve photocopied the chapters.

You really do love me, don’t you! she says, glowing all radiant across the table from me.

Have you tried the cobbler ? I ask her, helping myself to some more cobbler.

You care about me!

It’s pretty good cobbler, actually.

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Carin knows a great deal about food, being a caterer and a nutrition counselor. She even did a kind of apprenticeship here at Manzanita. She has been the one explaining the philosophy and story behind the food that makes it much more interesting.

There’s been something on my mind, and I ask her about it: Monkey Picked Tea.

Why do they call it that, I ask her.

Because it is. Picked by monkeys, she says.

How?

They train the monkeys to go to the tops of the tea trees, and pick only the freshest tips of tea

Wow, I thought, imagining the scene.  Is this job open to anyone? I ask. Or do I need another masters’ degree?

That is when I resolved to become a monkey tea picker, picking only monkey-picked tea.