TURKEY SANDWICH

Ordinary things can still surprise us. One small change from ordinary expectations can push back the boundaries of reality, of possibility, of dreams.

In the Dick Tracy comic strips of the 1940's, the hero wore a culture-altering talisman portending the future: a wrist radio. Reinvented twenty years later in Star Trek's communicators, the Enterprise crew (Picard era, for those who care) called the ship or each other by saying the name of the intended receiver into their handset.

Siri, anyone?

Extraordinary becomes ordinary, fast.

Arbitrary deviations do not count. You can't simply bolt a jet engine onto the back of a Volkswagen and get a reliable flying car. (But you can get a very, very fast one, apparently.) Most arbitrary deviations are usually forgettable, or unpalatable, or otherwise aesthetically undesirable. In biology, they're unsuccessful mutations; in automobiles, their Edsels.

Here's the part I love most. When the limits to expectation move outward, the domain space of possibility inside is simultaneously larger than it was a moment ago--larger and ordinary. Everything that fits into a newly expanded domain of possibility rapidly loses its potency for provoking strong emotion. Here's a real world example. Imagine the amazement provoked by hearing a telephone ring in the 1880s. By comparison, what does your cell phone ring do for you now?

I know what you're wondering. What's the deal with the title to this week's blog. The answer comes in the form of a reciepe, of sorts. Here's what you do.

Take two slices of terrific bread, preferably something with texture and density and lots of flavor. Pumpernickel, rye, or a good sourdough are my first choices. Between them add the following:

freshly roasted turkey (not pre-packaged junk) leaf lettuce (iceberg does not count) thin slices of purple onion thin slices of nectarine Russian dressing

Et, voila! One fabulous turkey sandwich you've never made before, but one you're also not likely ever to forget. (Yum!)

What? Never had nectarine on a turkey sandwich before? The world expands, one small surprise at a time.

-MS

PS -- Yes, yes, here's where the good people of 1AU ask our dear readers to share what you've read with friends and colleagues. And here's the place where you think, "Oh, sure, one more imposition of my precious time." Well, we're asking. It's something we value above rubies, above gold: if you like an idea enough to give it a moment's thought, then consider giving it a measure of freedom. When you share an idea with another person, you release an idea to grow freely in the world. Like what you see? Set it free.

DREAMS, PART II

Last week we discussed the value of paying attention to your own dreams, especially in terms of using them as sources of creative inspiration. Today we're talking about your experience with a much more conscious kind of dream. These are the dreams of desire, of invention, of need. These are the mixtures of longing and inspiration that provoke us to action, to pursuits of life. These are the waking thoughts that follow us around through our days, the things we wish were different, the things we believe might transform the nature of the world in which we live.

Hopes and dreams are the propulsive engines for creative acts. Whether they're things as intangible as trying to capture the essence of a tomato in a few poetic lines or something as tangible as a desire to make lots of money through innovative software development we all dream about worlds that float beyond our grasp.

Some details we try to hide, even from ourselves. Some we want to share with everyone. Always, always, always, we wonder if they're worth the pain of pursuit.

The answer is: sometimes. Each of us undoubtedly has a list of imagined existences for ourselves, more fantasies than dreams. Sure, more money is better than less. Green lights along your morning commute are always welcome, and guilt-free cookie breaks at 2:30 in the afternoon would be a pleasure, too.

Those aren't the dreams I'm talking about.

The ones that matter, or at least matter here, usually concern the inevitable trade of intense effort for something you may have trouble explaining, even to yourself. Why run a marathon? The answer doesn't immediately explain itself. It's possible to be a terrifically fit person and never run a marathon. Why write a novel? Most novels never get published. Thousands that do hardly ever get read, and you'll clearly have more free time to read good ones if you don't try to write one.

Some dreams simply defy good explanations, but they move us anyway. Some dreams have immediate explanations. If you're dreaming about paying for your children's college tuition so they're not burdened with debt, explanations are easier to unspool. If you're hungry, homeless, or hopeless, dreams of a life with less struggle and more purpose are immediately clear and resonant.

Where's the connection between the dreams of accomplishment and the dreams of necessity? They all turn on a sharp point of creativity. And make no mistake: the point is always a sharp one. If your dreams really and truly matter to you, there will be a terrible, growing pressure to see them through. If you're hungry, you'll go to great lengths--any lengths-- of invention to feed yourself. If you're desperate to complete a series of paintings that you've been carrying around in your soul for years, you'll also go to great lengths.

Do I conflate the desperate, vital needs of sustenance against the comparatively bourgeois desire to make art? Not at all. There's clearly a hierarchy of need here, and a worthy social discussion about how some people can have nothing while others have the privilege--the luxury--of contemplating what kinds of self-indulgences they want to pursue.

But the point here is that dreams are not precisely the same as interests, or even desires. They're bigger, deeper, richer, more powerful. They compel us. They push us. They take us in unexpected directions.

It's no laughing matter to dream about leaving a disease behind. There's never anything wistful about dreams of peace in places that only know violence. What's more, real creative solutions always exact a cost, often big costs, and they always cost upfront, when there's no guarantee that the effort will amount to anything valuable. But imagine the novels that matter most to you, and then imagine them not written. Writers dream their stories, and those dreams must overcome the exhaustion of busy days at unrelated jobs to become real. The power of dreams to remake the world overcomes exhaustion, fires furnaces of invention, remakes souls. At least it does for those who answer the call. If it didn't, music would be unsung, marathons un-run, justice undone.

The philosophical distance between the so-called art world and the world of justice turns out to be infinitesimally narrow. Into that breach, we commit ourselves, our dreams, and create new worlds. By dreaming of worlds that have not yet come to be, we widen the space of possibility, and once the spark of possibility chases shadows from dark places, the rising dawn of invention at least has a chance to follow.

Remember the song? It's very simple: "All we are saying…is give peace a chance." Leave it to the artists of the world to see this so clearly.

-MS

PS -- Yes, yes, here's where the good people of 1AU ask our dear readers to share what you've read with friends and colleagues. And here's the place where you think, "Oh, sure, one more imposition of my precious time." Well, we're asking. It's something we value above rubies, above gold: if you like an idea enough to give it a moment's thought, then consider giving it a measure of freedom. When you share an idea with another person, you release an idea to grow freely in the world. Like what you see? Set it free.

DREAMS, PART I

Everyone understands the unique logic of life experienced while dreaming. And it IS life, of a sort, fully tasted and felt. If we remember physical sensations, even if they were in dreams, they must have been real, right? What's to say this isn't a form of life? In the logic of dreams, there's a perfectly rational explanation why you're tying your sneakers at the big presentation you're giving to the Board of Directors. You understand why you carry around your laptop in a pizza box. It makes sense why your high school best friend's car is parked in front of your house. On it's roof. Now.

Dreams have their own logic.

As everyone knows, capturing the substance of dreams can be as elusive as capturing a handful of air. The imposition of waking stimuli overwhelms the gossamer strands that tether dreams to our physical lives. Some make themselves more persistent than others in our conscious memories. Some come flooding back into mind when we least expect it.

If we usually see ourselves in our own dreams, what can they possibly tell us in terms of creativity? If we only see them as reflections of ourselves, probably not much. This is not to undervalue them, but instead to say that unless we're paying closer attention they won't amount to much more than fuel for understanding our own feelings. But if we allow ourselves to try and to believe in the solidity, the realness of these interior images, they become powerful, informative palimpsests.

Allow yourself not only to experience the newness, the imaginative, and thoroughly unexpected states of being in dreams. Allow yourself to notice details, too. What are the little things you remember from your dreams that you leave out when you're telling somebody what happened? What were you wearing? What was the music playing when you passed by that peculiar shop with the bright, green light? What did you smell? Why where your fingers so cold?

Dreams often concern unexpected, unexplainable juxtapositions. They challenge us, tease us, defy us to understand them. Some return again and again, and one wonders if these should be regarded as banners unfurled against the midday sky. Some hover just above the borders of memory, dipping beneath the surface of our own awareness only to reemerge periodically like messages in a bottle bobbing on the sea.

Suddenly you have it: ocean waves, banners unfurled, midday skies, bare feet in deep emerald grass. In the space of dreams, raw materials for your own creative flights come to you while you sleep. If ever there were a rich mine of creative ore ready for refinement, this one costs you nothing except your own willingness to pay attention.

More on dreams of a different sort next week.

--MS

PS -- Yes, yes, here's where the good people of 1AU ask our dear readers to share what you've read with friends and colleagues. And here's the place where you think, "Oh, sure, one more imposition of my precious time." Well, we're asking. It's something we value above rubies, above gold: if you like an idea enough to give it a moment's thought, then consider giving it a measure of freedom. When you share an idea with another person, you release an idea to grow freely in the world. Like what you see? Set it free.

FLY BY NIGHT

It's a long day's journey into night. Upon arrival, perceivable distance shrinks. Dangers lurk. Passions rise.

Night transforms expectations, emotions. It builds drama; it adds intrigue. When The Sun goes down the air cools off, winds slow, moisture condenses.

People change clothes. Some retire their working day duds for favorite sweats. Depending on whether there's work the next day, some transform their sartorial presentations in the opposite direction, opting for sleeker shirts or dresses--clothes meant to be seen, ironically, at the time of day when natural light is least available.

What of those who work at night? Nighttime is the province for labors out of rhythm with the natural order. Night work requires a conscious effort to travel against the temporal grain like a salmon going upstream. It demands that energies ramp up as most of the world ramps down. It demands internal engines of motivation. It requires constant reinvention for successful work to happen at all.

At night you cannot forget who you are; there is no autopilot. As an artist, night imposes itself on your spirit, provoking simultaneous dream-states of invention while it lulls you into complacency, a siren song to all who make things: it won't matter too much, so just relax!

A successful night of work invigorates as much as it exhausts. Traveling in the opposite direction from a normal day's trajectory, you feel a sense of clever competence, a sense of doing a hard thing about which the rest of the world can only dream, warm and cozy in their beds. But a night of unsuccessful work reminds you just how much you're missing, how the day will come and you'll be dry and exhausted for it, nothing to show for your labor and nothing left to recharge you. The day feels out-of-joint, and you're stuck with the knowledge of time forever gone.

Do I ignore the obvious? What of risk? What of romance? In the privacy of night there's the opportunity to try out an idea without announcing it to the world. Whether that idea is a new melody line in a sonata or the potential to construct roads to romantic liaisons, the innate privacy of darkness suggests a measure of anonymity, and thus confidence. We become agents for our own ids, artists and super-spies everyone. There's risk, there's darkness, but there's also a constant awareness that soon, soon, night ends. The Sun also rises, and what we create in nighttime spaces has the potential to live and thrive through the day.

"Nighttime," as the great Ray Charles once put it, "is the right time."

-MS

PS -- Yes, yes, here's where the good people of 1AU ask our dear readers to share what you've read with friends and colleagues. And here's the place where you think, "Oh, sure, one more imposition of my precious time." Well, we're asking. It's something we value above rubies, above gold: if you like an idea enough to give it a moment's thought, then consider giving it a measure of freedom. When you share an idea with another person, you release an idea to grow freely in the world. Like what you see? Set it free.

BE BRAVE WITH TIGERS IN BOATS

What do we want when we ask people to help us with things we can't do ourselves? Usually we're looking for precision, like the kind we may ask of a surgeon before the anesthesiologist sends us for a nap. Oftentimes we're looking for elegance, as when the architect who's designing that addition to your home comes up with a clever way to catch the morning sunlight without adding additional cost. Sometimes we're looking for stimulation, like when you listen intently to endless demo recordings trying to find that perfect band to play at your wedding without spending a fortune. But how often are we looking for something that's genuinely new?

For many people religion reinforces what's already familiar, what's safe. Art reminds us about our humanity, what moves us to create. Plenty of people will say that religion has been the inspiration for countless pieces of art, but even though history proves this to be true, I think it's an intellectual red herring. The profound power of familiarity should not be taken as a proof of reality.

Ang Lee tries to touch this in his masterful cinematic adaptation of the book Life of Pi. In the story two Japanese investigators question the protagonist about his tale of an extraordinary ordeal at sea. Lee stages this scene brilliantly, placing the main character in the center of the frame, seated upright in a hospital bed, nothing but a white wall behind him as the camera pushes in slowly. Without visual context, we're forced to listen to the story without artifice, without distraction. Free of external stimulation, the story meets our own, private preconceptions of reality head on, and we're faced with a mirror to our own view of reality.

If you haven't read the book or seen the movie, it's about an almost impossible-to-believe tale of survival, a boy and a tiger surviving for months alone in the vast Pacific Ocean. Color, sounds, high drama, and intense introspection propel a fully visceral experience. The boy telling his tale to the Japanese investigators does not present himself as an incredible witness, but his story nonetheless does not resonate truthfully. For the investigators there are no analogues, and of course, there is no evidence. Therefore it simply cannot be believed, even as the main character tells it calmly and with surprising dispassion.

The power of the scene comes from a feeling we've all had. It's tough to accept a bold idea that doesn't at least resonate with experiences and ideas we've had before. Anything genuinely fantastical is always threatening. Star Wars got crummy reviews in it's initial showing; no one had seen anything like it before. Remember that Apple commercial a decade ago, when the wizards of Cupertino started to turn the company around? “Here's to the crazy ones,” it began. We all smile knowingly because we intuitively understand: all inventors of genuinely new ideas are nuts until they're proven sane. The message to take from these examples should be a clarion call to listen, to see, to be brave. There have been adventurers who've gone beyond the horizon and by their bold actions taught us to take heart, to be not afraid, or, if we cannot fathom that kind of bravura, at least not to be daunted.

But you're thinking, "I'm a suburbanite. I do quality assurance for a kitchen remodeling business. What's brave about that?"

Don't miss this. It's not the narrative trappings of brave tales that makes them brave. When you ask someone to listen to you you're asking them to trust you. When you actively listen to someone else, you're implicitly committing yourself to be open to what he or she has to say. In that transaction the seeds of a brave existence germinate.

Try love. True and genuine love is always the high wire creative enterprise where stabilizing familiarity requires endless reinvention, discovery, and risk. Complacent expectation is the death of love, just as a lack of familiarity denies the potential for intimacy. If you replace the word love with art, you get precisely the same thing.

So? Art = love? Is that the message? Or is it love= art?

Perhaps it doesn't matter.

Maybe the important message here is that you may not be asking the right questions of yourself. When we ask ourselves what we want when we ask people to help us with things we can't do ourselves, we're allowing ourselves to think creatively. Still unsure? Remember: when we open ourselves to thoughts and experiences we cannot entirely control, we open the doors to creativity. That makes everything possible.

--MS

PS -- Yes, yes, here's where the good people of 1AU ask our dear readers to share what you've read with friends and colleagues. And here's the place where you think, "Oh, sure, one more imposition of my precious time." Well, we're asking. It's something we value above rubies, above gold: if you like an idea enough to give it a moment's thought, then consider giving it a measure of freedom. When you share an idea with another person, you release an idea to grow freely in the world. Like what you see? Set it free.

THE VAGARIES OF SUSPENDED ANIMATION

… and no, I'm not talking about cartoon characters who haven't been properly processed on the render farm.

I doubt this will be the last posting I ever make about air travel. The act of trusting your physical self to a metal shell of some sort, often surrounded by people whom you might not ordinarily even think to notice, is strong evidence to me that life only has meaning by force of will. Travel by plane particularly amplifies this phenomenon because at the beginning and end of almost every flight, you pass through the churning mass of humanity surrounded by generic, anodyne establishments shilling for unnecessary consumer goods and carbohydrates. This thing called travel has nothing to do with walking from one place to another.

Travel by car is entirely the same and entirely different. If you're driving alone in a city or town, you're isolated in a metal and glass bubble even as thousands of other bubbles pass perilously close at high speed. There's little you can do but actually operate the car. In fact, you'd better not be doing much else if you're the person behind the wheel!

Assuming you're driving with others, the experience shifts, but only a little. It's only in cars that we willingly choose to sit so close to other people in largely immobile states for extended periods of time. Even people we love don't generally tolerate suppression of their own movements when they're seated close to us. But here in the artificially imposed stillnesses of travel by modern mechanical means ideas flood in.

Artists hate restrictions, yet it's through restriction that artists often find their greatest inspirations. Some artists never travel at all. Some travel incessantly, wandering the physical world as much as they travel the world of ideas. But the very concept of travel alone fuels the creative soul, through inspiration, through exasperation, through anxiety, through epiphany. Travel is the act of willingly restricting yourself in order to move through space to a place where you may discover new freedoms. Through restriction, we find openness.

I struggle sometimes to keep a steady rudder beneath me on travel days, and the reasons are not what you may think. It's not just from getting up at odd hours, or schlepping luggage, or suffering the indignities of security queues: travel days always present a strange tension between the spontaneous generation of ideas and the nearly comical inability to do anything with those ideas while getting from one place to another. Travel days torment me with infinite lives not taken, with roads skittering off into uncharted stories that I can only glimpse through the window of my train or plane or rickshaw. The instant freedom afforded by travel bangs squarely into the rigid realities of inevitable plans already made. Spontaneity crashes into obligations; dreams meet practicalities. I experience alternatives, I invent possibilities, I dream.

Then I wake.

By definition travel requires movement over distance. In covering that physical distance, travel over many outcroppings of aesthetic terrain seem to stop. Except for an elite sliver of society, travel becomes an equalizer. Low-end material surroundings juxtaposed against endless streams of humanity place the wealthy and the weary in close proximity, and often it's impossible to tell the players apart on sight. Everyone wears comfy shoes, everyone obsessively checks the time. People may have vital things to do when they reach their destinations, but in the time in-between waypoints, there's a dislocation of creative acts. Reduced to nothing more than outward action through space, travel upends aesthetic momentum.

And all of this is to say, I relish a good trip. I marvel at the flood of new ideas that often rush in, sometimes while I'm ordering a cheap cup of coffee in an airport or in a shop on an anonymous highway exit, and sometimes days after I'm back home reflecting on what's transpired. Suspended animation yields kinetic force. By moving through the real world we learn how to create new abstractions of it, bit by bit, mile by mile.

--MS

PS -- Yes, yes, here's where the good people of 1AU ask our dear readers to share what you've read with friends and colleagues. And here's the place where you think, "Oh, sure, one more imposition of my precious time." Well, we're asking. It's something we value above rubies, above gold: if you like an idea enough to give it a moment's thought, then consider giving it a measure of freedom. When you share an idea with another person, you release an idea to grow freely in the world. Like what you see? Set it free.

DRY

Sometimes the well runs dry. Sometimes clouds block the sun. Sometimes the air hangs heavy, like wet laundry on a line.

Whoa, that was close. I thought the scene might not come together.

Sometimes it's hard to get down to work, make meaningful use of limited time, do anything productive. One of the great, terrifying, vicious circles threatening creative lives is the risk of grinding away at something that doesn't yield much worth saving. The effort to create anything useful expends precious energy and focus no matter what you're doing. If the experience yields limited value, it becomes harder to spend similar resources a second time, a third, a fourth.

It's hard enough to put out the effort when things are going well. Work…takes work.

Today I'm writing about a different kind of struggle. Doing good work is one thing, and comes with costs just as much as it comes with rewards. But as everyone know who makes things for a living, work does not always come in the door when it's convenient. It comes when it comes, sometimes borne on the backs of winged horses, sometimes borne by tired mail carriers holding wrinkled manila envelopes. When they both show up at your door at the same time, you'll discover the merits of your mettle. Especially if your phone is ringing at the same time.

By all means, a huge crush of work suggests that something must be going right. Business accelerates only when business likes what it's getting. Business always flows where the action is. As we like to say, it's a good problem to have.

Then it happens. It feels as if the thread suspending the Rock of Eternity above your head has snapped. Super powers or not, you've got nothing left. Whatever the world wants isn't happening. The good ideas have vanished; the will to find them fled. What's more, you suddenly can't seem to recall what it was that exhausted you so much in the first place. You're crushed, burned out like a match, bleached and rough like an old cattle bone drying in the high desert.

It's too easy to expect that a big whack of work must also come with promises of plum payment. Money is the great manipulator, and so often creative people find themselves chasing it to the detriment of doing good work. Sure, sure, if it weren't for getting paid in the first place, creative people would have an even tougher time pursuing what they do, but it's easy for the pursuit alone to consume the potential of doing work substantial enough to sell. Too much work can force a reduction in value in each little bit produced. But to abandon the endless call of "just one more thing" is often to harm your own future for the sake of a little rest, a little solace in the here and now.

What's to be done? Is there anything, anything at all? Does this slow-motion lethargy, this stiff, dulled, insensate mass you've become ever find new fuel again? The world, once banging at your door seems to have run off to the next shiny thing like paparazzi at a rope line looking for celebrities.

Solutions elude. It's true that this is far from the worst of all problems to have in the great big world, but in the microcosm of your own life, it's a problem that doesn't offer easy outs.

At nighttime, air settles down as the planet cools. Springtime prompts the flight of fireflies. You watch, hardly appreciating their soft lemon glows fading in and out.

Then one alights on a branch, one on your hand, one on the fencepost in your backyard. Exhausted, you simply watch. The bugs blink, on and off, looking for love.

In the quiet space of observation, it occurs to you that money is not the reason why you're a creative person in the first place. You're creative because you have to create. It's part of being alive. It's your glowing light in the night, looking for love, and there's nothing you can do about it.

You feel the first drops of rain and think to yourself, It's good just to stand here feeling water from the sky. The colors of deepening blue night expand into infinite, peaceful shadow. Here and there golden flares of hopeful fireflies signal to each other, "Hey, I'm full of life."

Then you get an idea.

-MS

PS -- Yes, yes, here's where the good people of 1AU ask our dear readers to share what you've read with friends and colleagues. And here's the place where you think, "Oh, sure, one more imposition of my precious time." Well, we're asking. It's something we value above rubies, above gold: if you like an idea enough to give it a moment's thought, then consider giving it a measure of freedom. When you share an idea with another person, you release an idea to grow freely in the world. Like what you see? Set it free.

SILENCE

In the great cacophonous, chattering clatter of the world, I've come to value silence. I do not value it above sound, just as I do not value clarinets more than violins, nor cherry pie over pizza pie. But as a frame of consciousness, as a describable quality that may be invested in a day, a moment, in an intentional space, silence becomes a surprisingly powerful and moving state of being.

Do not be misled. It's far too simple to regard silence is a mere absence of sound. The world is a noisy place. Children talk, birds squawk, cars honk, printers balk. Sound surrounds us. It informs us, carries us. Music becomes the apotheosis of organized sound, and as such defines its great potential. Language in its many spoken forms simultaneously joins us to each other and transmits information of all types. We define the boundaries of space and time by the sounds around us. In your own home you know sounds unconsciously, communicating subtle, vital details of your most intimate space. The heating element on that old coffeemaker emits a tiny tick as the metal subtly expands after it's been on for a while. The spring hinge on your front door squeaks in a certain way on the last third of its arc. The floorboards under the carpeting at the top of your basement stairs groan every time they tolerate the weight of a person standing there.

Sound is neither good nor bad. In its different manifestations, we are in constant dialogue with it, sometimes provoking it into existence, sometimes adapting based on what it tells us.

It's often intentional, too. It must be, because the natural state of the world is noisy, vibrant, loud. By seeking out moments of silence, or appreciating them when they're encountered, we avail ourselves of the creative person's most powerful tool: transformation. We must transform the world to make it quiet, and the act of transformation from any one state to another inevitably affords discovery through unexpected refraction.

Silence is different than our ordinary moments. Quiet spaces generally require effort. They must be created, or at least they must be pursued. There are different levels of silence. Sit in a quiet space for a few minutes, and you're likely to hear the sound of a distant ticking clock, rhythmically texturizing the space. Does that clock intrude, or does it remind you that there is no other sound? Silence is like that. It presents questions even as it offers opportunity.

Every day older, I'm aware of silent times more and more as they remind me of my own silent future, an inevitability that continues to approach no matter what I do. It approaches us all, and perhaps it's because of death's ultimate arrival in stocking feet that we spend so much time talking, singing, tap-tap-tapping out rhythms, as if to convince ourselves--prove to ourselves--that it's not here yet.

Silence offers clarity. As a condition that doesn't easily happen without intention, it provokes a byproduct of internal reflection. In a quiet space, along with your own thoughts, clarity of mind is all you have. For many, that clarity provokes fear more than anything else. No doubt it's the fear of clarity that sends many into endless pursuits of stimulation, of noise.

I'm not opposed to sound, even loud, raucous ones. To be so opposed would be akin to rejecting tarragon or garlic for no good reason. I may avoid putting garlic on my peanut butter sandwiches, but applied to other things, garlic is wonderful. Same for sound of wide and varied type. I cannot live without music. I love the chatter and thrum of a New York City sidewalk, the electric vibe of a movie soundstage, the steam and clinking buzz of a cool coffee shop with vital conversations mixing all around.

But with time's relentless evaporation seemingly accelerating, I discover a certain wholeness and rationality in silence. Then: irony. In quiet spaces, I find the whole world for me opens as an artist, a creative person. It is then I hear the music I want to write, the lines of poetry I want my characters to speak, the sounds of revolution and passion and humor that I hope will take up residence in my work as an artist. In silence, I am reminded how much I do not want to live there, even as I find a great desire to visit quiet spaces regularly.

That's because for me, silence often provokes the chorus of the universe to sing.

-MS

PS -- Yes, yes, here's where the good people of 1AU ask our dear readers to share what you've read with friends and colleagues. And here's the place where you think, "Oh, sure, one more imposition of my precious time." Well, we're asking. It's something we value above rubies, above gold: if you like an idea enough to give it a moment's thought, then consider giving it a measure of freedom. When you share an idea with another person, you release an idea to grow freely in the world. Like what you see? Set it free.

SCREEN KISS

You know they're just actors. It's fiction, after all. They're not really in love. Nonetheless, many, many people closely guard memories of their favorite screen kisses, proxies for embraces they wish were their own.

Not you? Perhaps you're more of the heroic type. Perhaps you imagine yourself clipping the red wire four seconds before detonation. No doubt the batteries in your walkie-talkie are long since dead, and you're unable to get help from the demolition experts back at HQ.

Not quite right? Did you see yourself as the girl with the winning piano performance in front of a hostile audience? Did you see your teenage nemesis grudgingly stand with respect when you took your bow?

Fiction gives us raw material for vital thought experiments, while simultaneously presenting us with a forked decision tree. The fictional circumstances into which we project ourselves offer distraction and respite from day to day realities. That means they can either become permanent blindfolds as we're never going to find ourselves with orchestral scores rising behind our actions, or they can show us constructive alternatives to the lives we're already leading. How we imagine ourselves will always be the first step in creating selves capable of living lives we value.

Not every thought experiment needs to be a positive, constructive one. The safety of fictional experimentation can serve as safety valves so that we don't traffic with dangerous trade. Simultaneously, it is precisely because of fictional invention and experimentation we may discover ways to remake our immediate present and long term futures.

The the rain falling around our leads is rarely cold in a Hollywood screen kiss, just as the grime covering the police officer's face when he snips the bomb wire always looks stylishly rogue. It's not necessary to aspire to last minute rescues or endless romantic clinches, but as a viewer you still have a choice. You can let these images bounce off your retinas, eternally imprinted as lives you will never lead, or you can choose to transform them into metaphors, by which they may come to influence some momentary, vital moment when your own life requires depth of feeling or decisive action. And if there's one thing you know, everyone in the entire world will be called upon at one time or another to make a vital decision or clarify a deep feeling.

Here's looking at you, Kid.

-MS

PS -- Yes, yes, here's where the good people of 1AU ask our dear readers to share what you've read with friends and colleagues. And here's the place where you think, "Oh, sure, one more imposition of my precious time." Well, we're asking. It's something we value above rubies, above gold: if you like an idea enough to give it a moment's thought, then consider giving it a measure of freedom. When you share an idea with another person, you release an idea to grow freely in the world. Like what you see? Set it free.

PULSE

In your sharpest suit, or that fabulous dress you never get to wear, you're coming down the elevator. It's nighttime, and you never even saw this event on your own horizon, popping up as it did at the last minute. This thing you're going to, this hard-to-believe-you're-even-here moment, suddenly puts you in orbits with people and experiential opportunity that you couldn't possibly have predicted. Yet here you are, and what's more, you're ready for it. How you carry yourself tonight will determine how tomorrow proceeds.

The elevator slows. The door chime chides you to let go of the breath you didn't realize you were holding. You listen closely, and hear in your ears…

…your pulse: thumping as make your way down the gravel covered highway shoulder, headed for the green fluorescent glow of the truck stop. That stupid car: you've been trying to ditch it all summer. Here it is a chilly, late October at two in the morning, and the smoke seeping from your hood like fumes from the nostrils of a fat and lazy dragon remind you how much you've got to make a change. You knew you shouldn't have left so late in the first place, but that's totally besides the point of still having that stupid hatchback at all. Of course, how can you possibly replace the car with that dead end job of yours? How are you going to get out from under when can barely find the time to get your day job done in the first place? You can't leave--you need the work--but you can hardly get something new started while doing your day job.

But first, you have to walk another mile in the thin Autumn air, with the grim hope there's more than just a pimply adolescent behind the register, hope you can solve this mess before the sun starts to creep up the sky. It's hard to know if it's your walk or the furnace in your chest that has your…

…pulse racing. This is the moment, the one you told yourself you were trying to make happen. Months of planning, of meetings, of negotiations behind the scenes, and now they want to hear about your development idea. Striking a balance between cool, steely confidence and strong, muscular command turns your skin to aluminum, sets your finger tips to painful tingling, dries out your eyes before you realize you haven't blinked in a full minute. This is the chance of a lifetime, the moment you told yourself you wanted, but success in the next few minutes will mean nothing but hard, high pressure work. Of course, failure in the next few minutes will mean a return to everything you tried to escape, what came before, what was unambitious, neutral, ordinary. Success promises the toughest opportunity. Failure promises everything you already know. In your ears you hear your own…

…pulse.

It's that part of your life that tells you you're alive in the first place. It's the thrumming engine of something you're trying to build, the thumping drum of romantic embraces, the defining sound of the future imploring your to lean forward, lean in to your life, try, try, try.

Your pulse is the reassuring sound of your own engagement. It's the journey, not the destination, although it sometimes calls attention to itself at the moment of truth. It's the blood of invention, the reminder of life, the tap, tap, tap of water wearing away hard stone.

It reminds you that what you're experiencing right now is real. Some people lose the ability to feel it any more, to hear it, even to listen for it.

Don't.

--MS

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