And it's All One Kiss

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And it's all One Kiss;

Dear One...

I do hope you forgive me for the flurry. I figure you can digest some of this while you're flying back home. I do hope you know I don't expect replies right now. I know how busy you are, and I'm sincerely and simply offering you the only balm I have - my humor, such as it is (or isn't), my little vignettes and whatever they might spark in your own viewfinder, and my love.

I remain embarrassed at the volume of words. I try not to think too much about how much I think, or how much I think about. I appreciate your apparent understanding of my "intensity" and yes, I'm probably too intense (wrapped too tight, some have said, although I do try to be gracious about it - my tightness, not their saying so) to even understand what an effort it must be for people to be around me.

These aren't the Poor Me's. I'm just trying to practice being aware of my blunderbuss labrador paws tracking my version of things all over everyone elses' version of things. I've not always paid very close attention.

********

Jake Felsenstein's book debut and signing - "The Heart Speaks from Insight Out" - was very sweet. He's 91, and passionate about being 91. He insists that he be listened to. What he says is simple - so much so that it's almost too easy to say "oh yes, I know that already...", and I have to catch myself, to slow myself and sit myself down out of respect for my elder and a suspicion that I might not know *exactly* that *yet*, and listen to him tell me, one more time, to listen to my heart, to feel its voltage, and know its literal, as well as figurative, 2.5 watts-per-beat power that will collectively change the world.

I was so honored to share the song for him, and it was wonderful to share it with a room full of people who knew exactly what I meant. It was especially meaningful because of how the song has circled through my love and care for you, and to speak to you so directly by looking into the eyes of so many people I know, all so ready to believe that "it's all one kiss...", made me feel very close to you, indeed.

I then had a very sweet turn to the story this afternoon, when Walt told me about how, after coming to the signing and hanging with me for awhile that evening, he went to a Burning Man meeting to name this year's Camp. He told them about the event that he'd just come from and then, on the vibe of the evening - Our evening - that he shared with them, his tribe (I believe this is the Gaia Tribe) named their 2002 Camp the Heart-Wave Camp.

So, the first poetic fruits of our ethereal and web-woven love, sung out as if you were all around me (as you are), has now inspired the name of a special camp this summer of the folk who love and live as if it's all one kiss.

Perhaps we'll even have the good fortune to walk through it together, if Fate is kind and you and I do have luck in the work to align...

***********

I am very excited about going to the Bay in late April. I'm trying not to plan it too fully, but there are a lot of people I need or want to see. I probably won't get it all done in one swoop, and I know I must be patient, but how to choose? BTW - do you know Ned (Edward) Hearn? I remember he was with Bay Area Lawyers for the Arts. I used to work for him, back when I was a young sprite full of great potential, and I've lost track of him (no sign on the web - I hope he's still around) It sure would be good to see him again and catch up.

In anticipation of my test run away, I finished the schedule for the staff, and everyone's on a crash course to move into full-store-management mode. It's exciting. I can feel everyone - Kris, Dan, Jan, and all the rest of the staff - start to take hold of the reins.

It's cool. I really have crafted the hand-off pretty carefully, and they're starting to see the steps of how we're going to manage the Transition. This is a pretty complex beast to pass on - it moves quickly. It has a lot of cash flowing through it, and even incremental slippage has a huge cost at this 1% net margin.

Because we're so lean, there's little money or time spent on looking backwards, tracking where we've been. I get to the P&L's about the time I finish the taxes. Our little schooner is so trim, and the channel so swift, that our navigation is done by feel alone, with thought augmenting the feeling, and the bottom line is never a number, but always a tangible sensation.

I worry some about passing off this little machine to these two young men who are only now getting a sense of what sort of an engine is under the hood, and how much of the maintenance is done in the proper driving of it, rather than the dissecting and MBA-filtered analysis of it.

In fact, I tell the guys that using those schooled tools for this business would be a bit like taking photographs of the wake of your boat and trying to determine your course based on the ripples that fan out behind you. You're much better off if you just turn around, plan how to stay upright and forward, and make sure your cables are tight and your sheets right with the wind.

(How ironic that larger corporations are forced to steer that backwards-looking way in order to be "accountable" - I'm surprised they can compete at all; in fact, maybe that's why they can't, and why they have to eliminate the competition, because they simply don't have good tools for moving ahead. I'll have to think more about that some day.)

I'm struck by the mantras I have to repeat:

"Reserve the management of complexity for yourselves as long as you can". Don't outsource complexity-management. Generate pockets and oases of simplicity (and success) for your staff, and use those places for your cushion during change. Share the complexity when things are stable, but be able to re-assume the burden of it in a crisis - Ken Lay could have used this one. The buck needs a place to go, so that it can actually stop before running out the door...

"Don't change anything without exploring its ramifications". The system is tight; all activities serve multiple ends. To eliminate an activity is to change the Whole, so minimize change, especially unexamined change.

"If you have to change due to a crisis, restructure according to principle as soon as possible."

"Listen to your gut. Don't do what your gut tells you to do - guts don't do; guts notice change. Guts ask. Minds answer." This one has been particularly fun with Julie, one of my workers who's a lovely blonde, very bright, and hyper-sensitive about being a "dumb blonde". She hates making mistakes, and is always torn between whether or not to say something (she might be wrong) or keep quiet (and thus frustrated and stuffed). Yesterday I had to get her to make a change in something she was doing according to "our book".

She said she'd thought about mentioning the problem but didn't, and it was a great opportunity to remind her about how powerful her intuition is, and how important it is for the Whole that she learn to hear that small voice when it first says "But wait - shouldn't we...?" and then speak from it.

It was so good to see her take that in, and understand it in this small example of putting little treats into a cellophane bag, while connecting it up to the larger arena of her life - I could see her wheels turning, and the smile of deep recognition at this growing that was bound to make her more powerful someday. I'm really going to miss this part of the Work here.

At the same time, I still need to hold the reins, for my lead animals are getting excited about the terrain, and starting to think they've got the map. But I haven't handed it over yet.

It's fun to figure out how to keep their enthusiasm up without having too heavy a hand - reminds me of when I'd have to *work* one of the race horses, and my job was to fool them into thinking they were running as fast as they could, while making sure that they weren't running all out...

Actually, today I had to tell Kris "If you can't tell that you're making changes, then you need to slow down because nothing is to be changed without my direction until the escrow closes..." He smiled at the carrot of "when the escrow closes." And slowed down.

That's my mantra - "go to the place where the escrow closes."

Gosh, I must be a challenging person to work for. Perhaps that's why I have such an incredible staff - and I hear it all the time. They *have* to be incredible to work with me, and to live through all my aphorisms and verbal yardage and still want to come to work the next day.

***************

Well, I'm going to close this one for the day. I love writing to you, for it makes you seem near. I look back over the chronology of the missives we've passed, and I see these spurts that I flow in and out of, like tides that pool into these lagoons of word, filled with little lives of soft anemone and shy star fish that cling to the sides and wait fearlessly for the ocean to return.

I remember the one post (and, BTW, you just have to go to the URL that's always listed at the bottom of these bboard@greenspun.com messages, and use the pword [next] and you'll get in to the complete listing of them) that I sent about Time-Carving.

I feel very satisfied at my progress in time-carving. I know that I spent too many years with no time to slow down and attend to the person I loved. I am so pleased that this is changing.

I remember when I began to write to you in earnest, again, around Thanksgiving, when I realized that the flow to you was not abating, and there was nothing to do but resign myself to its current and see where it led. I remember deciding to devote time to the muse's call, to develop more respect and gratitude for the impulse to connect, and to carve the space out of my artificially demarcated life during which I would share - with you, for awhile, and longer if it went that way - but from now and on, with Some One, somehow.

It makes me very happy to see that is being done.

I'm proud to be coming to know you. I'm pleased to love you. I admire your work, and your effort, and the soul of you.

Be well. I hope you've had a successful trip, and I look forward to hearing about it, and so much else, sometime.

One love,

Cynthia

PLUR. Remember PLUR


Peace
Love
Unity
Respect


Peace


-- Anonymous, March 12, 2002


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