New look at trash and art

E felt like a crunchy sort from the moment she stepped to the table. Her Birkenstocks and her Central Americany looking patterened shirt and army pants paired with her broad and handsome face was the very picture of an eco-traveler.

But E upped my impressions.

She told me that she is concerned by the amount of trash in the world. Particularly where she lives in Ecuador.

Not that I disagreed at all about the amount of trash and the problem of it - we chatted about the North Pacific Garbage Gyre and other problems of consumption and trash. But E more specifically put her finger on the problem of trash in Ecuador.

"It disconnects people from nature. Here we are in this beautiful country and people who live there don't see it. They only see it as a place to dump their stuff. And they are losing chances to save it."

It was a full and honest appraisal of her adopted country but certainly it could be applied to any nation.

So I asked her "What are you being cut off from? What is your experience in the Ecuadorian nature?"

The first word she said indicated the depth of her presence: "Open." She paused and continued "and connected."

I waited a moment and felt the simplicity and richness of her simple statement. What shot into my mind was the hope that she was artistic...but I didn't know what sort of art might be relevant.

So I asked with fingers crossed "Are you really artistic?"

E said haltingly "I teach ceramics at a college there."

She looked at me like I had done a low grade job of reading her mind - impressive but not terribly specific.

I lit up and said "Encorporate trash into your ceramics! Make new shapes guided by the trash! Embed the stuff into clay!"

E looked at me and said "Hmmm. That is really interesting. I wonder about outgassing when you fire them... But it is a really good idea to repurpose the trash and render it functionally inert and use it for counter-purposes."

In response to her outgassing concern I said that I had no idea about the outgassing at all but what if she did low heat firing or sun baked firing like in traditional ceramics. E liked that a lot and suddenly went into a small riff on how traditional thick walled ceramic styles of pots and sculpture reclaimed could partially rehab the Ecuadorian landscape.

How cool is that? She said she would look into the outgassing problem but was certainly going to start seeing how trash and clay would start to work together.

Creative Approach for Jet Blue Terminal 5 at JFK

Heathrow Airport in London hired noted writer Alain de Botton to sit in the main terminal and just write about anything he wanted. His words showed up on a big screen behind him and travelers could approach him and talk and interact and all of it would and could change the nature of what he wrote. There was a great response to his presence and the endeavor.

Jet Blue is a company that has consistently innovated in ways to entertain and serve their customer. This blog is a testament to my commitment to do the same.

I would like to propose that Jet Blue takes my "Creative Approaches" table and chairs project that has been running since April in Union Square and documented on this blog and offer it to their customers by having me sit in the main space of Terminal 5 at JFK and bring the open spirit of the de Botton experiment to New York with a fun and helpful spin.

Creative look at the personal isolation of credit card debt

A works as a professional dogwalker and said to me. "I need $5,000 in a week. " She had a lovely demeanor but after her opening she laughingly added "Do you have a creative approach to that?" - she air-quoted "creative approach".

I asked her why she needed the money so soon. Was it just a sense of urgency or was there an emergency or was there a gambling debt and broken fingers on the way?

She told me that it was credit card debt. She was just sick of it hanging over her. She was sick of it not going away and sick of it bleeding into her inability to pay off her student loan as well.

The main thrust was that she felt controlled by this debt and sickened by it and isolated by it - not doing things with friends, being self critical, worrying. She was so passionate and clear. Sadly many know this feeling but A was in her mid 20's and it was a new experience for her.

I told A that I wanted to offer her a non-creative approach first. I shared with her some of my checkered financial past with credit card debt. We talked about how it is great to magically whisk the debt away in one blow but how it usually doesn't work that way but by aggressive work on the debt you can start to shift the emotions and outcomes.

But I heavily endorsed MyVesta as a service to help deal with debt.  -Edit- It now seems that MyVesta is owned by credit.com and is no longer a non-profit. While I stand by my past experience with MyVesta I suggest looking for a non-profit debt counselor/consolidator. They were invaluable to me in consolidating my debt, stopping the torrents of interest piling up, making a budget and most importantly doing the arguing with the credit card companies for me. They were a boon to me. The staff was uniformly supportive, easy to work with and helpful and faster than I thought I had dealt with thousands of dollars in debt. And I got personal written notes from three staff members when I finally made my last payment!

A had never heard of them and appreciated my recommendation and wrote it down sure of looking into their service. But I told her that I thought that the isolation she was feeling from the debt was what I wanted to work with her on if she was willing. I knew that aloneness and feeling of personal monetary failure that she was expressing.

We commiserated about this feeling and I got to feel the shape of it more.

I told A that I wanted to offer the opportunity to do some art - collaging, painting, a real mixed media sort of thing. A representational triptych.

In the first panel I wanted her to visually embody the great qualities about herself that she had learned in the past - her patience, her handling skills with dogs, her listening...what ever her long list of qualities were in any aspect of her being. She had to either create or find images that represented these admirable features.

The second panel would be images of her present blessings and good fortunes.

The third panel would be images of her imagined future - things she hopes will manifest, qualities she hopes to embody and the like.

After all the panels were done I told her to draw arrows with a Sharpie pen connecting the content or images that were related and give the arrows little titles - humor, persistence, stability to start to see what some of the unifying themes in her vision of her life.

When all that was done I wanted A to reflect on the first panel in her triptych and consider  who she had learned these qualities from. Did her Mother teach her patience? Did her Counselor in Summer Camp teach her about being a great friend? Who ever it was I encouraged her to reach out to these people and thank them for their gifts and update them on where she  was finding herself.

A said she was "up for some art" and that the project sounded "fun and worth doing as a way to shift my constant negativity" about her debt.

Hey, that is all we can do right? She told me she was looking forward to both suggestions and was off on her way.

Declaw? Or is there another way?

G was a fidgety Woody Allen type who ummed and erred and gesticulated wildly as he told me about his 8 year old cat.

G's cat is a chronic scratcher of furniture and has ripped up two couches. Also his cat hates getting his nails cut and makes the whole process pretty uncomfortable. G has been looking into declawing. He knows about the controversy around it and has found that most vets just wont do the surgery anymore. In Europe the surgery is illegal! He has finally found a vet who will do the surgery but the procedure is really expensive and very far away.

So G asks? What  can I do?

I reiterated to G that declawing is really taking the entire first joint of the paw off - it is really amputation that allegedly makes cats miserable and changes their personalities. I also told him about a product called SoftPaws. When I had cats I never used them but they are little vinyl caps that allegedly work like a charm. These were all practical suggestions, I suppose.

I asked G if his cats slept as much as my cats did. He assented that they did. My experience with cats was that it is almost always a waste of time to fight with them but that they are very compliant when asleep. I told G to try cutting the cat's nails when the little guy was asleep. It is a trick that has never failed me with my own cats or with others. Works for pills and liquid medicine as well.  Just stroke their throats while they are asleep, pop the pill in hold their mouths closed as they return to their  slumber.

G waved his finger in a "aha!" motion  and put some money in the jar and said in his nebbishy way "Thank you, thank you, a hundred times thank you. I hope that this idea works."

True, this wasn't my most creative idea ever but it does sort of embrace the whole juijitsu of conflict resolution that I am into. Besides, I wanted to share this tip about cats that I felt wasn't widely known.

Doth God Exact Day Labor, Light Denied? Or Gratitude and Scrotum

If you haven't visited me in Union Square I often sit right by the fountain and the person who I talk with usually sits in the chair opposite from me. But D decided that he would sit on the steps.

D was 19 years old and a day laborer in the construction industry. He basically calls general contractors he knows from 3pm to 7pm to see if there is a construction site he can work on the next day. Often he'll be on a site for a while but he isn't a union worker so the work is hot and cold but it is off the books and in cash. D is sullen and a smart ass but friendly-ish...sort of.

D rents a room for an astonishingly cheap $300 a month in a house in Jackson Heights in Queens. His landlady owns the house and rents out her extra room. D's landlady is a drug addict.

He has only been there for a month or so and in the last two weeks D has had $200 stolen from his room while he has slept from his pants pockets. He is so tired when he gets home and it is usually so late that he usually just collapses. Because of his hours he cant get to a bank regularly either. He is too poor to move - though he wants to. He is trying to save money to get out of debt and then finally move to a real apartment. But he is trapped because the only thing he can do right now is day laboring and his hours are erratic and this place is really affordable. So he wants to know what to do? How can he look at this differently?

D sits on the step like a workman. Buzz cut, knees askance, smoking a cigarette, clothes covered in paint and plaster.

I had a lot of compassion for D. His situation sucked. He was sure that his landlady was stealing from too. I wasn't sure where to start because in some way he had told me a lot there also wasn't a lot to go on somehow.

There was no real reason to start where I did but it is where I went.

M: Is there any redeeming quality about your landlady? Nice art on the wall? Good hair? Anything?

D: (definitively) No.

M: Ok, gun to your head - death or say something nice about about her.

D: (smirking but intent on holding his ground) I choose  death.

M: (searchingly) Name her most ridiculous quality.

D: (laughing) She is laughably stupid. I remember once she wore her underwear over her pants and said "I'm going to make a million  dollars starting this  new trend of  overpants." So fucking stupid...she's like an ultimate stupid person.

M: Are you sure that's not just her drug  addiction talking?

D: Maybe but I have seen her high and not so high and she is dumb all the time.

M: How often do you laugh at her stupidity?

D: At least once a day, pretty hard. I tell the guys on the site about her if they speak English.

M: Okay. Here is what I would like to offer you. You love telling this story. (D smiles in recognition) Yes it is horrible but you really enjoy telling it. You love your insane and stupid landlord and you love letting other people know about it. So I want you to consider the money that she has stolen from you as a gift to her. A payment of gratitude for making you laugh and for giving you a story that you will enjoy telling for the rest of your life. $200 is a small price to pay for that. Do you think you might be able to switch your mindset to one of gratitude?

D:  Maybe. That is different way of looking at it. But how do I make sure she doesn't steal my money?

M: That is easy- tape your wallet to your ball sack. First National Scrotum Bank.

I was serious. D roared with approval at that in a way that only a 19 year old day laborer could show and said "Now that is creative! I'll do that shit." He asked if I would be offended if he paid me in spare change. I assured him that I wouldn't be. I wished him luck and he was on his way.

Changing Status

P came to me with that clear eyed earnestness of yoga practitioner who was working hard to take her yoga off the mat and into her life.

She described to me how she "always dates spiritual teacher types" and what that entailed. She knew if was a pattern but mostly she felt like it was a good thing because she was learning and was generally treated well. But her current boyfriend who she "has good patterns with" is "definitely not a spiriritual teacher. He is just a guy." Her question? Should she stay with her current boyfriend?

I listened to P and felt like she had exposed the heart of the matter very quickly. I felt like I could start the conversation with a big question that ran counter to her assumptions presented thus far.

"Why do you think that being low status in a relationship is the measure of it being successful or worth staying in? In other words, you only feel comfortable if you are somehow being taught."

Her sunny disposition wilted under the heat of the question. It wasn't an easy queston to answer.

She half started an answer and then sort of stopped it. I saw that she was falling into the same pattern with me as she did with her "good" boyfriends - allowing me to ask deep and penetrating spiritual questions that bend her head and she was the low status supplicant who drank it in.

So I jumped to bring her into this conversation on equal ground while still respecting the roles we were each playing - me the creative approacher and her the questioner.

I asked her why there could be no flow of the positions? Why fix her in the position of learner and the boyfriend as teacher? When does she teach? What does she teach? When does he receive and learn and bow his head?

P picked up her head as we talked about the flow of the sign of infinity and the connection it had to the famed Yin/Yang symbol. These icons of universal forces that embrace change while still representing something even larger started to show P that she was simply had a deeply habitual approach to her relationship.

But as she was opening she drew back for a moment into the doubt about her current situation.

I replied "The divine isn't limited in how it will manifest so why are you limiting it. What if he is a teacher but you won't let him show it?"

I told P a story of a dying monastary only four monks left - the abbot and three  others. They all were old men who for years had shuffled around doing their chores, saying vespers, eating, praying and the like. The abbot was friends with a Rabbi in the town and was talking about how the monastary was likely in its last 5 or 10 years. The Rabbi shrugged and told the abbot about a dream that he had. The dream was that one of the four monks was The Messiah. The  abbot was incredulous but he liked and trusted his friend the Rabbi and went back and told the other three. They all laughed. And in their private moments they thought about all the old ideas they had about each other that would discount each and any of them from being The Messiah - but on the other hand they looked again and wondered if those good qualities actually qualifed their compatriots for Messiah-hood. Each of them started treating their fellows differently - as if they might be The Messiah. And quickly the mood of the place changed and was more dynamic and brilliant and somehow more novitiates seemed to stumble in and stay to this newly joyful place.

What if P treated her boyfriend like he was a spiritual teacher and also fearlessly spoke of what she knew and understood? I offered P a counter-mantra to the one she sounded that kept her in her low status place. Though she was warming to the new  possibility that came with equality.

I told her to regularly say to herself "Who I am is  pure, perfect and complete." And see what happens.

She paid me with a bow. And I bowed back.

Embrace your Obsession

Jennifer was late and had called about her being turned around and lost twice by that point. I didn't mind at all, it was actually quite funny and endearing. When she finally arrived and we started talking we just found out with zero discussion that we could be playfully rude and horrible to each other in a way that made us both feel very accepted by each other. And it perhaps shouldn't have been that way since this was a number of years ago when I was interviewing someone to be a potential housemate - one would think that a certain decorum would have been the starting point of that sort of relationship.

But it wasn''t and with Jennifer it never has been. And it is perfect.

I mention this because when A came to me at the table we playfully sneered at each other virtually right away and got to be very forward with each other. It was almost like we jumped our friendship up two or three years.

A was a very, very pretty dyke. Early 30's Short blonde hair and a classic face and dressed in white blouse that was tailored like a man's dress shirt with a pinstripe vest and slacks to match. It was upscale butchyness to a T. She just had that very cool carriage and the sort of sexual energy that just shone out of her while raising a questioning eyebrow at you that signified both interest and playful disdain. And then she laid out what was going on with her.

I am pretty sure I have met the pefect woman for me. And if she isn't a lesbian she is open to being with women. But it is tricky - she is my superior at work though we don't work in the same area. We are about the same age. We get along really well. I have never met anyone like her. I was obsessed. Thinking about her all the time. So I finally got up the nerve and asked her out. But I was rebuffed. Nicely. But rebuffed. Despite that my obsession grew. Months later I ended up going to a conference that she was speaking at just to give myself another shot. I went to her panel discussion, I didn't stalk her. We ended up having drinks alone talking about business and I asked her out again and I was turned down again. How can I stop thinking of her? It is distracting. I can't be in other relationships. I think about her at work all the time. It's insane. And the fact that she doesn't want me doesn't change one thing.

I smiled as she was telling me the story. And I teasingly replied to A "Oh, it must be hard for someone as sexy and desirable as you to get turned down -twice.?"

A stuck her tongue out at me and I scrunched my nose back at her.

I said to A that this was a case of "don''t think of a pink elephant" - that once mentioned the idea of a  pink elephant indelibly sits in the mind. It was a funny trick of our language/brain connection that when negative  descriptors/instructions are given they are seen/experienced as positives. So when a parent says "Don't spill that juice" to a child, the child sees spilled juice in their mind and then the "don't" gets tagged on afterward. Atheism is understood as theism - but not. So in asking "how can I stop thinking about her?" - you can't as long as you are asking the question.

So I offered to A what might be the sort of counter approach that a good girlfriend might give. I suggested that A totally embrace the obsession. Currently her obsession was about a mile wide - all over her life - and a few inches deep. All her current obsession with Woman X was doing was disrupting her daily activities but A was getting none of the benefit.

I told A that she would have to make a very particular time that she would indulge in her obsession. Nightly at 9pm for 15 minutes. Weekly on Saturdays at 4 - she would select the appropriate interval. But during the day when the obsessing distraction came up she would need to clearly tell her mind:

Not right now Mind. I promise you we will think all about her soon. I will indulge every thought but right now we are working.

At the time of her indulgence she would use that time to focus and contain her obsession. She would dress differently than she normally would - ceremonially. She would make paper cut out dolls of the two of them, draw pictures in celebration of their connection, write poems, sing songs, recite prayers, write her name on a sex toy of choice.

The whole thing was sounding pretty erotic even before I mentioned the sex toy and A was sexily biting her lower lip as I was telling her a way to actually dive deep into this thing. I implored her to feel into this experiment like "the discovery of the curve of a new lovers hip as it moves into her leg". I teased A further "But you probably have never had a lover before and don't know how nice that feels..."

"Jackass. That is pretty cool."
I made a kissy face in reply.

In indulging in the obsession and actually letting it move through her body (physical and otherwise) she could stop asking the question "why can't I have her?" because then the simulacrum would stop the mind from asking and allowing her to move on at some point.

Jews meet Hindus. Hindus meet the Jews.

J, maybe 27 or 28, tells me that she is a composer. A determined type that enjoys working and usually doesn't have a problem getting her work done. But she has entered a sacred music competition. She needs to write a five minute piece based on a 6th century Hebrew acrostic poem. J has been working for weeks and feels like she has run out of inspiration and the piece feels pretty much done anyway but it is only 3 minutes. She has three days to make two minutes or forsake the fairly large sum of prize money.

Firstly, I just find it amazing that there are sacred music competitions with fairly large cash prizes in 2009. And I love that there are people entering them. It is one of those funny things that you never had considered and then upon thinking about it you smack you head and say "of course that exists".

I am a fan of sacred music and was excited to meet J. I asked her about the acrostic poem and what it was about. She told me that the poem expressed the spiritual qualities of fire - how it illuminates and purifies and transforms. She  also mentioned how there was a line about how fire burns anything but remains unchanged regardless of what is put into it.

That line reminded me of the Hindu story about Agni - the god of fire. It was said that one of his chief qualities was to remain pure despite being capable of consuming any substance. There is an elaborate prayer ceremony called Agnihotra that uses fire as a way of summoning spiritual fire within us - particularly the Kunda (of kundalini fame) fire that runs up the spine and out the top of the head.

As one sacred music buff to another I asked J if she had heard of Agnihotra, she hadn't but she was a fan of Indian sacred raga music. I am too.

I suggested that since the Agnihotra certainly existed at the same time as the acrostic poem and covered similar ground that perhaps she should consider mixing the two genres. J was with me the moment I started to mention this and cut me off.

"It could be a unified fire theme! A quiet droning chant that is very Indian with additional text from this prayer that transitions into the part I have written and then fades into another drone that harmonizes the Jewish sound and the Indian sound! Totally unique! I can totally see this. I can totally do this in 3 days."

That was where I was going and I have to say it sounded better coming from a musician. She left happy and full of possibility. I begged for J to send me the final piece but she never  did. I hope it turned out as well as she hoped - it seemed it would.

Kurt Braunohler and a moustache can get you to follow your own advice

Normally I report here on what happens at my station in Union Square. But I happened to have had an email exchange with a friend named Y that falls right into something I might have said had we met in person.

The email read

A friend called me asking for advice. I find that when friends do that, I give them great advice. I'm a great teacher and could be a great life coach (if I wanted to be). However, as they say, "those who can, do. Those who can't...teach." I wish there was a way for me to give (and follow) my own advice more. To ask myself the questions as if I was an outsider. I doubt I'm the only one who thinks this about themselves...What would you suggest?

 I wrote back

this is a brilliant question. It seems to me from what you have said thus far that there are at least two options.

A vanilla approach or perhaps a front door approach: deepen and strengthen your will and power of resolution. Cultivate your capacity to get very still and hear the words of truth that come through you.

There is much to be said for that.

I would like to offer you a different approach that I think you might be into. Perhaps a more backdoor or dig underneath the fence approach: play two characters and get them in a dialogue.

The two characters are 1. "Poor Woe Is Me Y" and 2. "Fascinating Social Genius Y"

each are caricatures of yourself and to play them each deserves a distinguishing feature. For example get a mopey hat for the former Y and a pair of brainy glasses for the latter. A stick-on moustache and a mortarboard...it doesn't really matter, they are just symbols for each of the characters and they must be quickly interchangeable.

First practice having a gibberish conversation with yourself with two different voices. One cartoonishly low and the other on the other end of the spectrum. Make sure to use some of the same fake words in the dialogue like we do in real life...for example:

CL: Snooba lop tadoo briz
CH: Tadoo briz? Carpy rashazzd blowr
CL: Carpy stickalarpy. Sto locuto deplesigy
CH: Clampunzel deplesigy. Mex yorovo

etc. This is just to get your brain freed up to go weird places and to establish two different ways of thinking with the same brain very quickly.

After you feel like this is either too weird or you are getting good at it try the Two Y's Meet In A Coffeeshop Experiment.

Pretend you are in a coffee shop in your home. Have a glass of wine first and then pour two cups of coffee and get out your props for the two Y's.

Then have your conversation. Like any conversation you each have a chair that you sit in. For each interaction get up and sit in the other chair and switch props. Each character is a heightened version  of an aspect  of yourself. The props will help but ultimately you have to make emotional distinctions between the two.

If you are lucky the conversation may get to such inspired heights as this

Kurt Braunohler's one man harold from Daniel Abrams on Vimeo.

Then see what wisdom comes out. I would reckon that hearing your own advice in a new way may sneak into your brain in a new way.

I have some other ideas but I'll leave it for now.

 So I haven't heard back yet but I'll let you know how it was received by Y.

Quick! Think of something positive...

My friend Jules had come by to visit and to chat as I was packing up the table and chairs at the end of the day. As I was folding up a chair a woman came up and said "This is wonderful! I want to support it!" and pulled out a two dollars.

I told her that I was happy to accept her compliments and certainly her money but I had to do my part as well and offer her a creative approach to something.

As we introduced ourselves to each other my friend Jules took a step  back and just listened. The woman was named J and she considered her question for a minute and then said "I need a creative way to think  positively." She grinned as she said it.

I asked her if she had a problem thinking positively. J assured me that she had no such problem that she had lived her life for the last 40 years by being positive. J was probably in her late 60s and had a generous disposition.

Her question was both a challenge and also an invitation into her world view. She hadn't given me much to go on and so it felt like I was just leaping off the proverbial precipice into a purely creative space - could I manage to cover some new ground that she has been joyfully patrolling for longer than I have been patrolling the earth.

I waited and looked down and my rolodex of positive thinking methods whirred by. I suppose some good thoughts popped up but they all seemed flat. So I chucked them out.

I looked at J and though I didn't know what her home was like (and I didn't ask) I clearly saw her in her home. So I told J the first part "Go to your home."

And I waited again and either saw or imagined J in home full of lovely things collected from a life. I felt like the things that she loved was on display or easily at hand. I must have been silent for 5 or 10 seconds as I saw J in her imagined home. And then the next part popped into mind: "Find something that you love in your home. Something that has given your great joy but you have lost track of, that you don't use or has been obscured in your house somehow that is still in good shape or working order."

J was patient and was with me through the silence and the few words. She smiled with each part as it came.

I still wasn't sure where this was going but a direction had been set - these first two steps almost promised that the third would be of a certain sort. And then after another pause the rest came to me all at once. I looked up at J and said "Find someone you don't know and give them this thing. Tell them why you loved it and that you hope they will love it now."

J laughed and said "That is wonderful. I've never heard that one but it is good. I have stuff that I should get rid of like that." She gave me her two dollars and I gave her my card. I asked her to please tell me how it goes.

Negative and Positive Space

E gave the table two strong "what is that?" looks as she was browsing the "Beet the System" and "Avant Gardener" t shirts at the artist stall next to me.

When she finally parked herself at the table she said "Okay, I would really appreciate a creative approach to this because I need it. But I don't know what you are going to do - this is tough."

The gauntlet thrown and my resolve steeled I readied myself for something impossible.

E, a brainy Brooklyner in her 50s laid  it out.

Ok, I am looking for a new place to live after 25 years in the same house. But the problem is that I am very, very chemically sensitive and have been for years. I get headaches from new paint, rashes from the glue under carpeting, floor finishes effect my breathing. You name it and I feel it. And the thing is that every place I am looking has new floors or a new kitchen or new something and it makes me sick. So I need a house that isn't new, that doesn't have renovations, that won't make me sick and isn't newly painted because that smell takes months to go away. Do you know Brooklyn? I live in Park Slope and I love it there I have really built inroads in that community with my liberal synagogue and the food co-op - but everything in Park Slope is being renovated somehow. I am barely coming to terms with the fact that I may need to move to another part of Brooklyn.

 I thought for a moment about diving down the correlation between diet and chemical sensitivity (inflammation diets) and sort of half heartedly mentioned it but E said "I have been to every naturopath in Brooklyn..." I cut her off and said "Just wondering..."

I told E that there is a an interesting set of homes and old loft spaces on the 700 block on Bergen Street - pretty far from the 2/3 train but they were raw spaces that gentrification and modernization hadn't hit yet.  I also mentioned moving to Parkchester in the Bronx where it is old, inexpensive and not being built up at a furious rate. She thought these were interesting but I told her that this was just chatting and I hadn't really got to the creative approach yet.

I looked at E and saw a brainy, liberal Jewish woman who was so in her head about this situation. Her discription was full of tension and she rattled it off as if she had been rehearsing it for months - she probably had been.

I played back what she had said and it was clear that she had a very clear idea of what her new home should not be but she had in no way articulated what her new home should be.

When I revealed this observation she literally smacked her head. I had hit the right spot for the next approach to drop into.

I suggested that E take two weeks and draw, paint, charcoal, crayon (anything) her vision of her ideal home. She would have to go through a number of drafts but in the processshe would find the things that she wanted and visualize the things that were important to her. Because she was so brainy I told her to supplement the picture with some text so she could make up for any artistic inadequacies.

In the process of drafting she would refine her vision. Once the piece was finally done I suggested to E that she hang it on the wall and make a small altar of sorts with candles or anything she needed.

She noted that at one time she was a Pagan Jew and was comfortable making altars.

I told her to then ask the picture every day for a few minutes "Where will I find you? Where should I look?" And then see what the picture says back and be brave enough to try it.

But the catch was that she couldn't approach the picture as regular, everyday E. She had to come in a slightly different mindset - like thet 5 year old who confidently speaks to their invisible friend and hears their friend talk back. E needed to dress differently and carry herself differently to make it click.

During this description my friend Corey walked up and he can vouch for the veracity of E's response.

Yes! Yes! Yes! You have hit the nail exactly on the head. That is exactly what I need to do. That is so brilliant and so creative and so spot on that I can't believe it. I can't believe how right you are - you totally have me pegged.

 It was so exuberant and funny and heartfelt that  I felt okay writing this. She gave me $6 and her business card and walked off. But I must say that I didn't feel like I did much. It was her description of her home by negation that had led me to the notion that she needed to create her actual house. I felt like I often do with this experiment - listen closely and then follow what comes up and ask the question "if this is true then what else needs to be there?"
 

Written on the body

E was a referral. A friend of hers who had visited me before personally brought her to the table and introduced us and then wandered off into the farmers market. Its nice to get a referral, I must say. E was fresh out of grad school and positively buoyant. She just had that sparkly loveliness that you too rarely find.

E went to grad school for Creative Writing and knows that the job market is sour in New York so she is thinking about starting her own business since she is living with her parents and has a bit of a cushion in that regard. She loves every part of the writing process so she is pretty set on a writing based business for kids, students and adults helping them learn to write better. She feels that she has a good tool box for teaching that. Her business plan, described by her involves "flyering schools and networking" but she complains "this sounds boring and overly structured and not me."

...a woman after my very own heart. Someone who wants to rock their own boat!

I encourage E that it is a great idea but since the idea is just at the beginning now is the time to experiment with it and have fun and see what it turns into.

It was as if we were kids who knew they were about to play tag - our eyes darted, we bit our lower lips and the excitement of energy about to be playfully spent was crackling between us.

I said to her "Have you helped people with their writing before for free? Just for friends?"

She said she had. "Well what about making the service free for a month and market it as 'Just because we are friends - Free for this month' that would stand out marketing wise."

She giggled "Why not? Then maybe I can discover what people actually need help writing with."

I told her about my friend who has a small cottage industry writing wedding speeches with stage directions for optimal delivery. But helping people would let her know what the needs are in the market.

I continued that in doing this she could just love the service she was providing, enjoy herself and because she had marketed herself as their friend she could expand her friendship circle as well as her potential clientele. She would discover the natural price points by having more interactions and seeing how much her time was worth and how much work might be out there and then do the algebra to see how it would sort out financially.

But it seemed to me that emphasizing the exploration and service part was more important than the financial part at first.

While this playing between the two of us was fun and felt like we just madly stacking ideas on top of each other (good ideas, mind you) E got sober for a second and said "Okay, this sounds great. But don't I need a written plan at some point?"

It was a sweet stop to the rhythm. The writer wanted the familiar - a sheet of paper in front of her that dictated linear time and information. A moment before it was different.

So a way to make the plan unified with her came to mind. I told E that the plan can't be on paper otherwise the business will always be separate from her. But because this business was her passion she needed to write her plan on her body.

"Get a marker and write what your business will be on your arms and belly and legs and back and neck - whatever you can reach. Stand naked in front of a mirror and write in mirror letters all over your body what your plan will be. It will have to be disjointed and non-linear. Maybe one part of the plan being on your knee will be symbolic. Maybe you'll have a more intimate knowledge of your body. But eventually stand there and see that the business is a part of you and not a piece of paper."

And that just cracked her open. She poured out with a joyous proclamation "I can take pictures of my rates drawn on my body. My philosophy of writing could be painted on my ribcage. That would say something about me and would be awesome marketing materials. How awesome would that look?!"

I had to admit, it would be pretty awesome.

E and I had this gorgeous mad moment together where our agreement to play together just took off and took us to someplace new and wonderful - as play often does.

E said that she was so much more excited about going forward with the project. It sounded fun now.

As she was about to walk away she turned and said: "Thank you, that was amazing. Just quickly, do you have any ideas for getting over writers block?"

Plato said that you can learn more about a man in an hour of play than you can in a years worth of conversation. We hadn't spent an hour together but we had played and all I had for E was a generous open armed love. I told her "For writers block? Try drawing in terrible pictures what you might want to say or sing it in a non-rhymey way."

She bowed and I bowed back.

Homeless Dragon Dreamer

I have had a number of people who have pseudo-stalked the table greedily eyeing the money jar waiting for an opportunity to see how they might get the relatively few dollars that happen to be in the jar when they come by. It isn't a regular happening but it does happen.

Usually I see this starts to play out I explain that they need to do the "creative approaches" part in good faith before the variable payment plan can take effect.

Z was no different. His clothing looked like they were picked from a grab bag and they were pretty dirty and so was he. He approached the table while I was working with someone else and asked about the details of how it worked. After I explained it I confirmed that indeed, in theory, he could take all the money if he wanted to after we talked. I told him the sign says "take what you need" not "take what you want" but Z stood and hungrily stared at the jar for 10 or 15 minutes until I finished. Then he sat down and told me his story.

Z lives part time in a homeless shelter and wants some creative ideas for getting a job. He has "millions of ideas" but never gets very far with trying to get them. He is interested in helping people. I asked him about volunteering at other shelters with counselors and other conventional modes of aligning your self with job training.



But I wondered why Z had so little drive to try to make these ideas come to fruition. It felt like a bit of a therapy inspired punt but I wondered what would come from it - "What was your favorite fairytale or story as a kid?"

Z closed his eyes and recalled and then said "Jack and the Beanstalk"

Aha! That made sense. I asked Z if he wanted things to just magically appear in his life - to just throw out the beans of his ideas and they would just be huge in the morning. And that is what Z said he wanted and expected.

It's an interesting wish.

So I asked him if money wasn't an issue what would he really like to be doing. Now up to this point I was taking Z seriously and Z had relaxed a bit and was having a conversation not for the chance at the money but to have the conversation. I only note that because Z's answer shows how much he had let down his guard and was willing to open up.

Z's dream job? To make and sell origami on the street. He knew how to make one type of dragon but it was messy. He wanted to make that dragon better and to learn how to make other things.

I was stunned. This was so specific. So unexpected and so honest. And oddly I had a connection to the world of origami. In his youth my brother was deeply immersed in the origami universe and hung with and learned from true origami luminaries. I always admired high-end origami and really loved the facility and intelligence my brother applied to his pieces. I will always remember what Akira Yoshizawa said about my brother's skill upon seeing a ram head that my brother folded: "You breathe life into the paper."

For a number of years I volunteered and worked at the Origami-USA conventions. While others folded I dragged chairs around and made coffee and got to know the organizers a bit. These were great people who did anything for someone who loved to fold paper.

All this came back to me in the moment Z mentioned his dream - Michael, Jan, Alice, Jerome, Robert, Tony, Marc and Daniel. I told him that I couldn't guarantee a job that would work but if he wanted to do origami better and find people who would support him to go to the Origami USA organization on the Upper West Side. I said to him that if he went there with a sincere desire to learn and volunteer that they would likely meet him more than half way. I gave him a name and told him that I trusted him.

Z was stunned - someone had met his dream and offered a clear door to it. It wasn't a beanstalk but it was pretty good. Z said he would do it but he asked if he could take a dollar to do laundry. I said he could and he did.

Z thanked me and we shook hands. That was worth a dollar to me.

The Regulator

J came up to the table and admitted that this was not such a serious thing but that he was still stuck thinking about it.

He has a great job in a visual effects company. Recently he got a promotion and is now boss to many of his peers that he was working besides just a few weeks ago. The work environment is laid back and fun but he feels that somehow he needs to be or feel like he is "being the boss" somehow tempered with the fun.

I told him that I hope he suffered from such problems for the rest of his life


He laughed and conceded that if this was as bad as it got he was going to somehow make it.

I have to say that sometimes it really takes time to tease out and discover what the creative approach will be for someone and their situation. But looking at J and his jovial face framed by a backwards facing baseball cap and hearing about his job making special effects the approach just magicked into existence like something out of I Dream of Jeannie. It wasn't something I had ever said to anyone either. It really felt like an original thought.

I told J that he should create fun opportunities during workdays that establishes him as a regulator of their schedules. I gave him an example of a job I once had where a cluster of 8 guys who sat together had a Page-A-Day Trivia Calendar. Every day at 4:00 PM there was a sound effect that went off that signified that it was trivia time. We all stopped what we were doing and would have the question read aloud. We would give joke answers or real ones, discuss the inane questions or try to come up with a rationale for why our answer was correct. Then when the answer was read the winner would post the page above their desks. Shared winners would split the page. Mondays and Fridays we did one question from the weekend. Sometimes people would wander in to play with us or if someone was wandering in and it happened to be 4PM they would play too. The whole thing never took more than 5 minutes but it was an absolute joy (one friend admitted that it was sometimes the only reason he came to work).

J was slackjawed with delight at my story about office trivia. Guys love trivia with the same intensity that cats like naps. I told him that he could of course steal the trivia game but more importantly that if he dictated the rules of this new game, whatever it was, and then called "back to work" he'd slowly take on a new air in the office.

Having bonded over trivia we fist bumped and J said "Dude, I am pretty much doing that."

Sometimes it is just simple out there in Union Square.

East or West? Remember to ask Anthony.

N and C were a young couple in the sweet throes of young love. N did most of the talking. As they sweetly batted eyes at each other they explained that they were in still in college but graduating soon and they were pretty sure they would be getting married. But their sticking point was where to live.

C is a singer/songwriter and N is an aspiring film maker. N feels like for his career to start he needs to go to LA and C feels like her singing career needs to be in New York. They have talked about it every which way and have come to no agreement.

So they asked "Where should we live?"

I asked them a bit more about their arguments and defenses of their respective positions in the process I noticed a slim gold chain around N's neck. There was a pucker near the collar of his shirt where a pendant would be but what it was remained unknown. But it looked like the sort of chain that was intentional. It had something on it that I needed to listen to. So I turned the conversation on the proverbial dime:"Are you religious?"



N said he was a lapsed Catholic. I asked if he had any lingering connection to the faith of his youth. He thought and said that he had always loved Saint Anthony.

Saint Anthony is most well known for being the patron saint of lost or misplaced things and travelers but also he is a patron saint of marriage in Brazil and Portugal. N knew the first part but not the marriage part. C liked the idea that her boyfriends favorite spiritual figure was somehow looking over them.

I was excited that a new possibility suddenly seemed open to their question. I told N that since he and C had gone back and forth with little change that perhaps adding a third point into the discussion might open new possibilities.

I encouraged N to set up a little shrine to Saint Anthony and start regularly asking him for guidance on where they should go. Just start asking and don't assume the answer will be one of the two choices. Accept that there might be a few steps involved and see what Anthony says back.

N said that he hadn't prayed in years. I told him that he wasn't praying - just asking for guidance or advice. He saw the difference and said "It can't hurt can it?"

C said "N maybe he'll say to just propose already!"

And that was that. The two thanked me and walked away with fingers entangled.