Tony Curtis

When I was a little girl, I was OBSESSED with old movies. Well, the comedies anyway. I saw them all. I loved Betty Hutton, Bob Hope, Marilyn Monroe, Bing Crosby…I loved them all…even Danny Kaye. Tony Curtis was on my list. He was cute and was silly enough to wear a dress in Some Like it Hot. And my young mind was unencumbered by all the faults of alcoholism and drug abuse and whatever. Those were invisible to me. He was just fun.

I went to France to go to school for a year when I was 17. I was trying so hard to be cool, but everything was new and I was not cool. Probably not for a single moment while I was over there. I learned a lot about myself…but one of the big things I began to become aware of while I was there was that I was closer to the fumbling around slapstick style glamour of those old movies I loved than the sophisticated bored glamour of the film and music stars of my day. I have totally settled into that now, but I was just figuring it out then and it was slow going.

I dragged two of my friends with me to the Cannes film festival that year. Somehow I was expecting the streets to be absolutely littered with movie stars. I had seen the pictures in the gossip magazines. We would see them in cafes and on the beach and walking down the street. Strangely, we saw almost no one. Almost.

On a side street we took to cut through to the main drag I spotted Tony Curtis walking down the street. It was just us and him. The rest of this tiny little back street was empty. Without thinking I yelled out “Mr. Curtis!” My heart was racing a mile a minute. He certainly looked a lot older than I remembered…but he still carried himself like a movie star and it was unmistakably him. I wanted to tell him how much his movies had meant to me as a kid. I wanted to tell him how cool I thought it was that it seemed like he did not take himself too seriously. I wanted to tell him that of all the movie stars I could have stumbled upon in Cannes that year, this unexpected meeting was far and away the most exciting one that could have occurred for me and that I could return to my dorm completely satisfied that I had met him. He turned toward the sound of my voice and I panicked. I jumped into a doorway and he did not see me.

I don’t tend to regret a lot about my life. What has happened has brought me to where I am and I rather like where I am. But I do regret that moment. I have no idea why I panicked. I am not typically afraid of approaching people. I have actually met and talked to some serious movie stars since then and it was not that big of a deal. But this was Tony Curtis. He was a little unreal to me. I just could not hold it together.

Tony Curtis died yesterday. And, of the many deaths of people I have grown up watching, this one hits me just a little bit harder than most.

That was me on the back street in Cannes, Mr. Curtis. I just wanted to say thank you.



Kimberley

Vancouver is Lovely

What a vapid start to this entry…but there it is. And it is true. I swear I don't think I have ever been to a lovelier city than Vancouver.

There is no arguing the beauty. Across the Pacific, tall mountains tower over the water that is as deep as they are high. Colorful flowers I have never seen before grow a bit wild here in the summer. Dense hedgerows cloister homes along the main boulevards. Waterscapes and art are built up around the city belying a culture clearly in love with the aesthetic. Perhaps inspired by the art of nature there.

And the people are nice. Like, really nice. And not in that “duh-i-have-to-be-nice-to-you-because-you-are-the-customer” kind of way. The way they are nice feels like a habit. Like something they do involuntarily, like breathing. Even the street people begging for money are gentle, “maybe you will have some change on your way back?”

The rains are gentle. The cold is gentle. The newspaper headlines are gentle. It is a nice place to rest.

It did not occur to me until last night what I was missing in this place. I could not figure out why I felt so uncomfortable there. Then it hit me. I had not heard anyone laugh since I arrived. No one. I was constantly in meetings…on trains…in crowds…in restaurants…in shops. No one laughed. No one erupted in anger. I saw no one who was clearly unhappy.

I am not suggesting that my four days in Vancouver represents a complete picture of the city. In that time, I realize that my experiences are extremely superficial and can only represent my personal snapshot from the pieces of the city I visited. But I leave here today feeling a little odd. I wonder how long a fiery person like me would last in the kind of world that, at least in my small impression of it, did not appear to have a lot of emotional variance going on. At least publicly.

Still, it was nice to rest. And I really did feel peaceful in this lovely city.

xo,
K

Am I as Brave as Issa?

I am a sucker for a story. Even if a movie is terrible, it takes an act of congress to get me to walk out of it…I have to know the end of the story. This is why I am addicted to blogs. I long for people’s stories. I check my regulars every day and am always looking for new ones. Some make me laugh. Some make me think. Others make me feel. The ones that make me feel are my favorites. Today it is Issa who has me thinking.

Issa does not exactly write as much as she opens her heart and pours her feelings into her blog. Reading her blog feels almost too personal…like I am reading her diary. Her pain is right there…right up front. So is her love, longing, joy…whatever she is feeling. She is not a clever writer…I have never read a witty turn of phrase from her. Yet she has many many followers, because she is completely there. People identify with her because she is real.

It occurs to me today that I write to entertain, not connect, and I hate this. It is not that I think there is anything wrong with entertaining, but it is not what connects us…human being to human being. And it is not who I am. I am wildly emotional. I work hard every day to restrain as much of my crazy emotional life as I possibly can. Virtually our whole lives are spent packaging ourselves for how we want to be seen. And all of us for a secret longing to really know who everyone is. To really KNOW them. I believe this guarding of our own truth is responsible for our lack of real connection. It’s not that we are alone, there are people all around us, it’s that we are not authentic enough to connect to.

My challenge to myself now is, can I put down years of messaging to “hold my tongue?” Can I just make a decision to stick my neck out and write what I feel? Can I show you my shadow? Can I share my dark side? The parts of me that embarrass me? Am I brave enough to do that? Am I as brave as Issa?

Cool New Learning Model

I am such a geek.

This fall I am participating in an online “course” (quotes used intentionally) in personal learning environments. The course, which looks different than anything I have ever seen, is sponsored by the Technology Enhanced Knowledge Research Institute at Athabasca University. It is delivered online to explore and clarify Personal Learning Environments and Personal Learning Networks.

I have no idea what they are talking about. But the course design is blowing me over. You will have to go to their site to really get the big picture…but here is a snapshot of how it will work:

1. They will send LOTS of content. LOTS. You are not expected to read or view it all. You are expected to pick and choose based on your interest level.

2. Keep track of what you have read/viewed with your ideas on it somewhere. This can be as simple as a list or you can track it online with a blog, twitter, facebook…whatever.

3. Then, periodically, you create something new from all the stuff you have been reading/viewing. You put the pieces together. You come up with connections.

4. Feed forward. Then you share your “something new.” However you want to.

I found it in a blog by my fave learning genius (after Tina, of course), Jay Cross. If you are not reading his blog…you should be.



He is taking it too, btw.

I am actually giddy about this. And this is the way I do everything. Here is something new. I stumble onto it then dive into it without even checking to see if I have the right gear. We shall see. This looks like fun. In any case, it is INCREDIBLY different and I am all about that. Different is good. Change is good.

Check it out and then come join me and Jay.

xo

I Need Your Brains On This One

A dear friend of ours is in the hospital. She is not ill, her father had a stroke (or two) and she is staying with him. There is so much involved here that it is exhausting to think about going into in this note…suffice it to say that it is virtually impossible to be of any help to her or her family whatsoever.

We work with her too, so we have 21 people asking us daily what they can do. Tina’s mom is friends with the family as well, so there are requests to support from that angle too. And we are not even in contact with all their friends…the church…the community…you get the idea.

The thing is, I know she and her mom need stuff. There is so much stuff weighing on them right now that they just cannot figure out how to offload any of it. Really what they need is an “assistance coordinator.” Someone to come in and figure out what they need and coordinate it.

“Looks like you need someone to hang out with your daughter for an hour and a half once a day while you commute back and forth from the hospital.”

“Looks like you need someone to wait in line for you to turn in those forms.”

“Looks like maybe you need someone to make up a basket of easy-to-eat foods in a basket that you can just pick up and swallow whole for times when the nurses come in and you can have a 3 second break.”

“How about someone does your laundry?”


Things like that. Because organizing and writing down a list of things people can help you with is daunting…and then you have to ask. Why has no one ever thought of this?

How about you? You got any ideas for me? Everyone out there who has ever been in a situation where you could not begin to imagine how to wrap your head around what you need and ask for it…now’s the time.

What can I do for my friend? What have we not thought of?

xo

...then I tell two friends, and so on, and so on...

I got my hair cut and colored today.

As I write that I am wondering what that statement brings up in you. Getting my hair done is always a very sensory rich experience. It verges more on entertainment than simple cosmetic maintenance.

My quietly alt hair personality is created in a funky little house in the Heights in Houston by Sharon. Sharon’s room is bathed in natural light, so if there is artificial light (and I imagine there is) I don’t remember it. It is pretty, but not spa-like. So you feel a little pampered, but not like you should have brought your purse dog with you and gotten her hair dyed to match.

I walk out with my hair impossibly soft falling against my face. It is wonderful. I love the feeling of swingy newly cut hair.


(What you can’t really see in this shot is that my highlights are burgundy. I love them.)

I once heard a story on This American Life about someone shaving their head. The way he described it was amazing. The feel of the breeze on skin that has never felt the breeze… the rush of water over an exposed scalp…the sensation associated with exposing skin that has never been exposed. He did it on a lark for a story and now does it once a year to recapture the feeling. I think my jaw was dropped the whole time. It sounded incredible. I wish I had the guts. I swear the thought brings tears to my eyes.

(By the way, if someone has heard what I am talking about and has a link to the story…I would be sooooo grateful for the hookup.)

Would you shave your head for the sensation alone?

A Yellow Balloon

Today I was in a meeting on the 26th floor of what used to be the Enron building. I was in a meeting with some pretty serious folks talking about some pretty corporatey stuff. Ten of us in the room and four people joining the meeting via conference call and some online collaborative tool. I was talking through a presentation and guiding the team through a series of questions to refine the content when a yellow balloon floated by the window. It floated between our building and the building right next door. I stumbled over my words and was grateful when a conversation started without me at the table for a moment so I could watch the balloon drift by. I was the only one who saw it…at least the only one in our room. It occurs to me now to wonder how many people saw it in other offices in either building as it drifted up between us.

It was like something in a movie. I could see the balloon and the reflection of the balloon in the glass in the opposite building. Everything all glass and steel around us, except for that balloon. It was beautiful.

I wish I worked in the kind of world where I could have stopped the meeting, stood up and shouted “Oh My God! Look! How cool!” But I don’t. I am respected for what I do, but what I do is not considered to be very important in the big scheme of things. In fact, it is considered to be a little “touchy feely” by many. One moment of “Lookie lookie! A balloon!” could totally seal the deal on that. So I sat, grateful for the chair I had chosen at the table, relieved I was able to resist jumping to my feet with excitement and thrilled to have had the opportunity to see a yellow balloon floating by on this very serious day.

Wild Weather and Grandfathers

Three nights ago I laid down on the ground and watched the lightening light up the clouds above me. I have been wishing for storms lately. Not rain. Storms. The kind of weather that puts everyone on edge. Big crashes of thunder. Electricity lighting up a dark, wet sky. Wind that howls until it matches the wildest pain you have ever felt. Heavy drops of rain that almost sound like hail as they fall on your roof, your grill, the leaves on the trees.

There was no storm that night.

The ground was not even wet that I lay on, though we enjoyed a respectable little downpour not five miles away at dinner. I laid down in the grass and wondered how much time goes between me feeling the ground on some part of my skin. Between shoes, floors and concrete…how much do I really feel of the ground?

Looking up into the gentle show of the sky, I remembered a time sitting on the front porch with my Grandfather in Florida. He loved the weather and was mesmerized at how, from the vantage point of his front porch, he could watch the electrical storms cross the sky in the distance. I felt it too. It was so beautiful and intense.

So, I let my thoughts go to him completely. It’s funny how you can miss someone more as you grow older. There are parts of him I understand more now that I could have possibly understood then. And many more parts that I am sad I missed knowing as an adult. He died when I was in high school. I thought about that too.

I realize I don’t really know what he was like. I am piecing together the impressions of a child and guessing what that means. I could ask, I know. But no one could possibly tell me what I would have noticed about him as an adult. Only I could know that…if I had the luxury of knowing. But tonight I allowed myself the space to guess.

And tonight I am thinking about him again. Sitting in our new house I am thinking I would so love to call him up on the phone and celebrate the storm bearing down on us. If I could find the whiskey in this mess of boxes, I would break it out and raise a glass to a real mess of a storm…and to my grandfather, who taught me to love the drama of big skies and wild weather.

A few years ago there was a movie called Uptown Girls.



I LOVED this movie. Probably because I am that little girl and I need the Brittany Murphy character to teach me how to relax and play. (RIP Brittany)

Tina has had a very big job of trying to get me to be more playful. Not easy. But help is on the way. And it rides in tomorrow morning.

In honor of Dream Lab starting tomorrow, I am posting my Mondo Beyond list from March.

That’s right…all three of you who read this blog (yes, I am counting myself) will see what Mondo Beyondo made me realize I want to do. For the one of you who does not know about Mondo Beyondo…it is about dreaming big. Not the small “wouldn’t-it-be-nice-to-find-the-perfect-pair-of-flats-on-sale” dreaming. Jen and Andrea had me dreaming of things that made me giggle and blush a little.

I am putting this list down now because I am going to play. Jen and Andrea are going to give me back my mojo with Dream Lab. They promised. And I trust them.

My Mondo Beyondo List (abbreviated, but important, version)
• Live with the kids in another country for at least a year (this one totally threw me off guard)
• Complete and utter financial security forever so that I can live boldly, give freely and not worry
• Become silly and wildly playful (that is this summer’s assignment)
• Marry Tina legally
• Free up the writer in me so I can create things I am thrilled with instead of just making clients happy
• Become someone I wish I knew
• Dramatically reduce my worklife (this is in progress)
• Write and get published

The point of the list is to be dramatic…to think of things you have absolutely NO IDEA how to manifest. There is sssssooooo much more to the course, but I am not interested in killing the drama of discovery. Do your heart a favor and find out for yourself what it wants.

XO

summertime and the living is easy...right?

I need a summer.

And I do not mean this in a “I-need-a-vacation-and-wish-I-was-back-in-elementary-school” kind of way. I mean that my inspiration is drying up. I mean that anything that requires creative thinking at work is now taking me four times as long and that makes me sad. I mean I am burning out and I badly need to fill my coffers.

This February I did something bizarre…at least for me. OK, I actually did a lot of bizarre things, but I am specifically talking about an online course I took in dreaming big. I went in voluntarily, but honestly thought it was going to be too soft and airy fairy for me. I went into it thinking I was going to be rolling my eyes through the whole thing. Looking back, I do not think I was as cynical as I thought I was…I mean, I invested time in it…I must have thought it had some worth.

And it did. It has changed everything for me. That course was Mondo Beyondo. I found some more of myself in that class. I am still working with all that.

But I am bogged down right now. There is too much heaviness. I need a summer. And, miraculously enough, Jen and Andrea have created something called Dream Lab...just in time. It starts Monday. I am so in.

The thing that makes their course work for me is that it is not all “HEY! You are valuable and you can do it!” There is only so much of that I can stomach. I need something I can do…something I can apply to my life. Mondo Beyondo had exercises and assignments that really excavated things for me. And I mean “FOR ME.” I found out things about me despite myself during that class.

I cannot wait for this one to start. I can already feel myself running through the sprinklers, getting grass all over my feet. Come join me...I am thinking about dragging out the Slip and Slide!


xo

The Gulf Between Us

Tina and I are gnawing ourselves from the inside out over the disaster in the gulf. We have gone from mocking the bizarrely and stunningly inappropriate remarks from everyone in the BP camp to letting the reality of what is happening to the body of life just south of us.

It is so easy to get wrapped up in the insanity that is the business and the politics of what is going on. While we are screaming about money and penalties there is so much life dying in the gulf that it boggles the mind. I cannot even really comprehend the damage, and not just because we are not being shown all of it.

Don't get me wrong. I know we must have discussion about penalties, payments, blame. I know that the circus stage on which our politicians parade around trying to make a name for themselves on our tragedy must be played out. I know that the idiots in charge at BP must be publicly humiliated. I know.

But I am frustrated at the arm waving and the well-meaning, but directionless people. Where are our inspiring leaders? Who can we follow? It is hard for me to get in my car, fill it up and drive to the beach to participate in a protest against offshore drilling when I know I have to get back into my gas guzzling car to drive home. I can't fully participate in that kind of halfway thinking.

Where are the people who will direct us to something to fight FOR? Has this crisis created enough momentum that we can now find someone to follow who will guide us on how to draw attention when research and development into alternative fuels is being eliminated by any large company? Is there someone who will shine a light and leverage this disaster to highlight the numerous times progress toward incredible fuel efficiency or cheaper solutions for fuel have been lobbied away by car manufacturers who do not want to retool their factories? Will someone march us to these leaders and lead us to wail publicly at hastening the demise of a living ecosystem that sustains us in so many ways?

Where are our leaders? Where is the inspiration? Where is the heart in any of this? I just cannot rally behind a bunch of statistics.

Wherein Strangers Distract Me and Make Me Less Agitated

OK. I am better now. Because there are other people who are so confused that they would not even know something was different if it jumped up and bit them on the cheek. (Grant used to do that)

I am sitting right next to a couple who I am fairly sure are not a couple at all, so I do not know why I wrote that. Except that it is a guy and a girl sitting together talking about things like “Are you going to take all the cat toys and cat tower and stuff?” and “we have the big one, and I know we want to keep that one because we got a good deal on it. But do we really need the two little ones?” – and this is where she starts acting like she has no idea what he is talking about and they get a little snippy and says she wants to keep the big one in the bedroom and that he has plenty of room for the cat toys. So, voila. There it is. They are in a relationship.

But then she tells him that she never knows if he wants her to introduce him to her friends…and he says no, because he understands that they are bigoted against straight men, which she denies. And then he is asking all kinds of relationship advice, which I think is weird to ask someone you are in a relationship with…but whatever. But this is not even the biggest problem. She is not even asking the obvious question…”who is telling you my friends are bigoted against straight men?” or even “what? Bigoted against straight men? Are you an idiot?” I so wanted her to ask this question. I almost slipped it to her on a slip of paper, but I did not have one.

Dude just said that English is ghetto. WTF? I need to find some paper to write her some notes.

The Quickening

In the Highlander movie, there is something called “The Quickening.” It is where the immortal awakens to the existence of all the other immortals and realizes who they are really. Where they belong. How they are connected. At least, this is what I have read. I did not see the movie. In any case, whether or not this is what the movie was about…I like this as a concept.

Today, this term “the quickening” has been rumbling around in my head like mad. I would so like to be able to tell you what this means. It would be nice to have a tidy post about why this came into my mind today. Instead, I can only tell you how I feel. And I feel bizarre.

What this feels like for me today is that I am exhausted beyond my ability to think straight and extremely agitated at the same time. I lie down to rest because I am overcome and I am kept awake by my mind racing. This is not your run-of-the-mill anxiety. This is something else entirely. It feels vaguely exciting, like I am heading into some wild ride. Like I am clicking along up the scariest roller coaster imaginable. Only, I don’t really know I am on a roller coaster. And I think you are on this ride with me…all of you.

What I do know for sure is that I am transitioning…a lot. I am moving toward something more sustainable for me. I think maybe we all are. I am not entirely sure what that is going to look like…or if I am going to be able to put my hands up in the air when the real ride begins…but I am having the butterflies in the belly thing. And it is about time. Wow, that’s right…it’s about time.

I am ready for The Quickening. Are you?