Climbing To New Heights

In which I fulfill the role of conference chair for the Institute for Challenging Disorganization, pulling off an event more successful than my wildest expectations.

The conference chair's job is assumed to be over once the speakers are booked and all the arrangements made with the hotel to facilitate the smooth running of the program, but to me arriving in Denver two days before I was to appear at the podium for this annual conference of the Institute For Challenging Disorganization, I felt my job was only just beginning.

At the networking mixer the night before the program was to start, a handful of long time subscribers and board members thanked me for the quality of speakers that I had put together for the conference. They had come to this conclusion based on the write-ups and the bios of the speakers in the program. Our theme Climbing To New Heights inspired by our Denver location, had also helped. Their acknowledgement allowed me a measure of breathing space and I could relax a little. Later I would wonder what combination of luck or skill had helped me put together such a program.  

What for instance had allowed me to pick the speakers for programming with such confidence? "Beginner's luck," I had said to the board president when she first saw the line-up several months ago. 

It helped that I had no reputation to uphold so I did not feel I had something to prove. The board had already placed their confidence in me by asking me to take on this role. I could proceed with some calm based on my experience as program chair for my chapter meetings. I had made so many mistakes in my two year stint, I at least knew what didn't work. My predecessor Marci Katz had taught me how to approach and negotiate with potential speakers during my two years on the ICD conference committee. She left me a few leads and a sample of a letter to write to prospective speakers. Then she retired from the committee leaving me to it. 

It's lucky that I like to read, I thought. In the last decade I had read enough to answer most of my questions about how the world works in the political, sociological, psychological and spiritual arenas as well as in the practical realm of carpentry, plumbing and gardening. I liked ideas prompted by bio-mimicry and ecological systems. I liked how social science could be reframed with new theories and discoveries. I enjoyed new studies about how the brain worked and theories about how it could be retrained. I had also read enough inspirational material and entrepreneurial fluff to distinguish between an original thought and one borrowed and dumbed down to fit a particular marketing approach. 

For the conference I had gone in search of authors who had the educational background or personal experience to develop enough original thinking to fill a a book on a subject that might interest my colleagues. Which meant that I had to know my colleagues in the context of ICD. And having attended every conference since it's inception I felt that I did. It was the brain trust of the organizing profession as one colleague put it. Given all our past conferences and our monthly tele classes, we were well versed in the basics of hoarding research, ADHD, depression, bipolar disorder, brain damage and the practical impact of a slew of other diagnosis on people's ability to function. At our conferences we moved as one hearing all the same speakers and discussing them at the breaks together. We also did not live on theory alone; we wanted practical applications for the knowledge being given.

The Speakers

Speaker suggestions had come in from subscribers and committee members, but many of these speakers were too famous to afford or so popular they were already booked out. Many were also cribbed from other conferences and so had a professional veracity to them rooted in traditional therapy that were certain to be acceptable, but I found them less than fresh. 

From these suggestions, I picked two I thought were different in their focus. One was Lee Shuer who gave his presentation from a recovering hoarder's perspective and introduced the fairly new development of peer responders stepping up to help their fellow hoarders take the first step to recovery. I saw him speak at the Hoarder's conference put on by the San Francisco Mental Health Association. (My colleague Kim, sitting next to me prompted me to go after him.) There was also Dr. Suzanne Chabaud who was a clinical therapist focused on hoarding and lately on the impact of hoarding parents on children. She was eager to connect with organizers. Therapists so rarely acknowledged the role of professional organizers that I was intrigued. She had also appeared on 29 TV hoarding shows although that was not a venue that readily impressed us.

To fulfill CEU credits for our new certificate on aging, the committee agreed that we needed to find a speaker on dementia. It so happened that the San Francisco chapter had had a panel on aging at our own regional conference. I had not seen it so I asked the colleague who had moderated the panel, to recommend someone. Diane Judd and I had worked together on a conference once before. She also happened to be a dedicated ICD subscriber and was eager to bring us Laurie White, an expert on dementia, elevating her from panelist to presenter. Diane even invited her to lunch in her own home along with me and two other colleagues to make sure Laurie got to know our full professional scope. This made me feel lucky indeed and immensely supported by my own chapter members. 

The board also cut me some slack by agreeing with Kate, my board liaison, that it would be a good idea to have an Ask The Organizer panel so we could put our own people up on the podium to provide the increasing number of newcomers with opinions of veteran organizers. They also agreed to us having a gig we tried before at conference several years ago which was to have one of our own people moderate a case studies discussion. This had been the brainchild of my long time friend Denslow Brown so I was happy to facilitate a revived session with additional twists she wanted to add in.

For my own picks, I was inclined to take risks with material I found provocative. And so I had chosen three who pushed the envelope for me. One was Dr. Thomas Armstrong. His refreshing perspective on ADHD from the perspective of neurodiversity rather than the medical model of a disease to be treated captured my attention. I put him as our first presenter. He turned out to be a dynamic and practiced speaker who was quite funny about stepping outside of the mental illness model in a way that completely tickled my anti-authoritarian, anti-psychotherapy view of the world. In addition he also engaged us in exercises that would test for some of the nine intelligences he offered as part of the neurodiversity package. 

"Pick a partner," he said. "Now decide who will be A and who will be B".

 "I'll be B," I said to Kate sitting next to me. "You be A."

"Okay," she said.

"You're done," said Dr. Armstrong and we laughed having expected more to it. Then he pointed out the people skills needed to settle such a negotiation. Kate and I congratulated ourselves on the efficiency of our exchange. 

I easily failed the math intelligence, but there were others I had never seen listed as intelligences before and those included knowing oneself and the desire to find answers to existential questions—the big Meaning of Life questions. I instantly felt a great deal smarter having spent so much time on both. Plus he had mentioned shamans twice and shown a picture of an indigenous shaman as part of his point about how other civilizations worked with the messages of aberrant behavior and non ordinary psychic phenomena.

"One day I will bring shamanism to an ICD conference," I had said to Lenore, my shamanic counselor. 

"You already have," she said and I realized she meant me.

Another speaker choice from California had created a company in Marin County to give workshops on eliminating stress. His approach was just the right mix of science and a slight mystical component. I read his book Mystic Cool just to make sure. His graphics were clear and beautiful and we could all remember his point that you have 90 seconds to extinguish thoughts and judgements that might escalate your brain to full fledged fear. Fear being the heart of a disorganized brain, he said. To distract ourselves from the fear response of the reptile brain, he taught us to press a finger into the palm of the opposite hand, imagine it connecting to our heart, take a breath, then count to 3 and visualize the numbers in colors—red for 1, blue for 2 and green for 3. This he called the clear button.

And finally there was the highly animated and attractive professor of film I had so looked forward to meeting. I had inherited Melinda from my predecessor Marci based on the recommendation of another artist who had done a presentation on art and hoarding at a previous conference. Melinda lived in Boulder which was flooding just as we were coming up to the week of conference thus adding the suspense of natural disaster impeding her arrival. But arrive she did by bus less than two hours before she was to speak elegantly dressed in a shimmering vintage cocktail dress. The conference committee had been split about whether to invite her; the ones opposed felt her topic was too far removed from any practical application or knowledge. We would not however have to pay hotel or transportation costs to have her so I went ahead and booked her. She in turn tailored her talk on women collectors to the specifics that I emphasized would be helpful for us. Mainly how do collectors give up parts of their collection? She added her own. Could squalor be elevated to an art form?

Women she said tend to collect treasures that have stories attached to them. And given that women had not been able to legally own anything until quite recently, her point that women collected objects that reflect back to them their own identity made quite a lot of sense. She also mentioned the concept of having the right to gaze at an object; this right having been chiefly granted to men. Thus collections allowed women the right to gaze. As for the relinquishing of possessions this was akin to experiencing loss or death in some way. Thus death had to become part of collecting perhaps in a symbolic ritualistic way. For to live was to be willing to let go of something, to die over and over again. 

This admittedly was a little precious for some, but it did evoke the heavy emotional burden that many of our hoarding clients carried about their possessions. And her slides had numerous photos of famous hoards, pithy quotations and film references; it gave people a lot of entry points. And I made a friend. Melinda took one look at my white cowboy hat, lime green vest, purple pants and cowboy boots and decided that I too was a sympatico soul seeking to collect an identity that stretched into the realm of artistic expression.

The Outfit

I loved the limelight, but public speaking still terrified me. Given all the hardworking and highly credentialed colleagues who came to these conferences, I did not have a high enough opinion of myself to stand at the podium in "business attire" as it is worded and speak to our organization as a peer. I didn't' really get me in a business context. I had spoken to this group before at a previous conference as part of a panel and they had found me funny. I never knew quite why. I was just being myself. It was the same with my chapter meetings. Some combination of my English accent, my use of language and perhaps a certain racial and gender bending essence had created an unexpected personality. (One that warmed up with the attention of an audience especially an audience that was predominantly women). But it was not professional in the traditional sense. 

For what I was attempting to do as conference chair, I needed a role to play, part emcee, part ringmaster, part wrangler. A character who would hold the group together in celebration as they experienced the most important event of the organization. In short I wanted everyone to have a terrifically good time. And having a good time was one of the last remaining things a live event can offer in this day of online webinars, tele classes and copious free information, not to mention recordings of the conference onto CDs which could be listened to while driving and didn't require the expense of airfare and hotel fees.

We had recently changed the name of the organization and got a new logo so it had become popular to wear the ICD logo colors of purple orange and green. Many evenings I drew with the colors various designs for a vest. Eventually I decided to simplify it to a green vest with orange piping which would be a good way to play down the most difficult color—orange. When I found purple jeans on sale in the Macy's boys' department I knew it was confirmation for my design. To dress up the vest I searched for textured fabric and learned from a book, on decorative vests, that I could create texture with ribbons woven into a fabric. I had found ribbon to match the logo green. It took longer to track down the right width and buy up all that was available—five spools of ribbon—than it took to weave them. The orange covered buttons was the final touch. I also needed a light weight shirt to wear under it since it would likely be warm. I had a pair of cool-to-the-touch, silky, white farmers pants from Thailand wide enough to cut up and sew into a pirate style shirt so I did that.

And since Colorado was the heart of cowboy country I longed to bring my two toned Tony Lama boots. Which naturally meant a hat which I happened to find a week before conference. But I could not fully embrace this iconoclastic Cowboy symbol until I had brought in a Native American piece to it as well (to reclaim the damage done by the Cowboys). That I did with the two braids in my hair that I had been wearing of late and my hair pipe choker I had made as a teenager. These Native American touches also evoked the intuitive shamanic work I had been doing with my spirit guides. I had brought my shamanic rattle for the purpose  of calling them in to help me. (It was given to me by a friend who got it at a climate change event in the Brazilian Amazon.) All this brought up that crazy making topic of cultural appropriation of minority symbols. Was it exploitive? 

While in Denver I visited the Denver Art Museum with my pals and stayed longer so I could see the Native American collection which occupied an entire floor. I took in the "spirit shirts" of painted and beaded fringed buckskin and read the description of how Native Americans used clothing and artistic expression to draw power for ceremony or hunting events. I too was creating a spirit outfit to help me step into my full power. I also saw the military jackets from Victorian era uniforms that had been given as gifts; the recipients had incorporated into these samples of the white man's power clothing, their own decoration. This cross pollination gave me a more fluid definition of cultural exchange. I was borrowing two elements from American cultural symbology to help me make a business event my own even though none of it was part of my own heritage. It was pushing the envelope, but I was willing to risk claiming it. 

I did however get the skin test for explosive residue as I traveled through SFO with my white cowboy hat. An Asian cowgirl carrying a backpacker's soft sided luggage on a vintage luggage cart was just way too suspicious.

From The Podium

I memorized my opening remarks wondering if any of it would be funny. Just before I left my room, I thought of something absurd to say. I went on stage, I introduced myself and showed off my outfit. It was cautiously admired (but simultaneously complements were tweeted). I told them it took me 7 weeks to design it because all the details of conference had been so well worked out that all that was left for me to do was to guild the lily. This was not a common enough phrase to be funny, but the character that I continued to bring out at the podium was indeed something of a ring master. The language of hyperbole fell from my lips. 

"It is my great pleasure to stand before this august body of intellectual and intuitive boldness," I said seeing in their faces the sense that I was trying to woo them. "You inspire me," I declared. Did they believe me? No I was clearly trying to flatter them. "This shirt used to be a pair of pants," I pointed out holding up an arm. The room burst into laughter. Yes that was an unexpected juxtaposition. The fun could begin. The rest of the conference was a matter of getting people on stage to introduce the speakers. I was merely the tour guide. But there was a piece of the action I could still claim. It was left to me to thank each speaker after each presentation and I was able to insert just a few words of summation into that space that took paying attention to what was their overall message. Most were simple enough to sum up, but there was one that defied definition.

"Thank-you Dr. Barlow for that fascinating intersection of stuff, art and death," I said widening my eyes as I tried to think of something more explanatory, but I was stumped and that got a laugh. Then I was free to do schtick. 

"This is your captain speaking. We have now gained a little time in our journey and as a result are ahead of schedule, but please come back in ten minutes anyway."

By the second day, still wearing the same outfit, I had nothing new to show off so I decided I must sing. This was bold of me considering that music was not one of my intelligences. But I had the microphone, hummed a note, looked at my buddies in the front row and sang that rousing little ditty from Singing In The Rain appropriate to the 8:30 am hour as people took their time coming in. 

"Good morning, Good mo-o-or-n-ing. We're so glad to have you back. Good morning, Good morning to you…." "Now you know why I don't do musical comedy," I quipped, but they seemed to appreciate it. 

The first speaker Dr. Chabaud brought with her a guest, a poised younger woman who turned out to be of equal interest being an adult child of hoarding parents, but she wasn't scheduled to speak. Marci came up to me at the break and suggested I try to fit her in any way. This is the sort of in-the-moment challenge that gets thrown into the lap of the designated driver. So I figured out the logistics with the help of Jim who headed our management company and announced that we would have her speak during the lunch hour and answer questions that had come up with her introduction. We were having a box lunch so it worked out perfectly.

Coming into the home stretch we had to make a room change just before closing. These logistics took up so much of my bandwidth I could hardly think in the case studies session, but I was so in the groove by then that nearly everything I said was funny. I did get my closing remarks in and thanked everyone I could think of (remembering late that night that I had forgotten to thank the 40 or so volunteers who were running around taking photographs and handing off microphones). But finally I could hand off the role of program chair to the next year's person along with the hat which looked great on her and would be just as fitting in Nashville, our next conference city. 

"And whatever you do don't say what a hard act to follow," I had told her beforehand (because that's what everyone says when I do schtick with a costume). She nodded saying "We'll just go with the positive, then". "Yes" I said. We were after all members of the same team.

And when it was her turn at the podium she simply said "Didn't she do a great job" as I hopped off the stage. When I looked up again everyone was standing up applauding. They were giving me a standing ovation! I was so dumbstruck my jaw dropped open. (This was one of those finishes that you just want to live over and over until you figure out why it worked.) The new chair turned on a music video she put together to drum up interest for Nashville; Jim came to the front of the stage in his orange polo shirt and did the wave to the music getting everyone to join in. It was indeed a celebratory finish.

When I got home I drove around for a week in silence, laughing at my own jokes and hearing in my head bits and pieces of things speakers had said. I had stepped into my power. Where do I go from here? I wondered.

The Play's The Thing

Story telling meets audience resulting in a rich discussion of race and gender, visceral reactions to segregation and the need for seeing our mixed race experiences reflected on the screen. The backstory performance of American Ubuntu, presented in Oakland. 

A Play Is Born

The kernel of the idea, when Lenore took on the gig at Joyce Gordon Gallery, was to offer the audience an experience of racial segregation. And we didn't warn them ahead of time. That was the surprise audience participation part of it. What they did know was that this was a story of a high school romance set in the '70s with an interracial component—a bold confident black girl pursues a shy sensitive white boy that she has noticed watching her for some time. 

And because no tickets were being sold it was hard to know if anyone would even come, save for friends and family. But all who signed up to help produce this show were committed to see it through.

When I came to the project, six weeks ago there was neither a script nor actors, just a conversation with Eric the gallery curator to present a live performance in a segregated environment. On top of it Lenore was going to be away for two weeks. I was not accustomed to this approach, this diving into the deep end to sink or swim. But I was intrigued by it. And as Lenore posted to her Facebook page "you can only create fantastically when you're willing to fail spectacularly".

Labor of Love

A community derived grassroots production has a lot of room for participation and for some reason I needed to prove myself to an artist with a big vision. Possibly because all of my visions had gotten so small they were hardly worth doing. But also because working with someone on a project with high stakes and a deadline is a very good way to get to know who they are. 

When I arrived at the gallery the week before the performance I had my eighteen tables ready to go. And two helpers to put them together with me. Eighteen tables have 72 legs. Seventy two legs that I wrapped with rubber bands and masking tape to make them friction fit into the pre-drilled holes. It worked without too much difficulty especially once I figured out to wax them so they would slide into the holes better. Seventy-two pieces multiplied by all these procedures takes a while. Nearly thirty hours went into these tables with their many legs. It kept me connected to the project and made me feel like a genius when I had worked through all the design problems.

I loved seeing them in the space, a bit quirky and cartoonish with their legs slightly askew. All of them different and you could still tell they were doors since I had left them unpainted. (I liked for people to be able to see things transformed into new things; it breaks the consumer mindset.) And though not robust they were light and easy to move. The holes where the doorknobs had been we used for cup holders. As we put them around the room, it became clear that the tables were the set; they delineated the space into an environment that would hold all the action and the audience too. I was proud to have made such a significant contribution. And rewarded by the look of appreciation in Lenore's eyes for all I was doing.

Down To The Wire

I built them while Lenore was away at Hedgebrook working on the script. (Hedgebrook is a women's writer's retreat on Whidbey Island.) When she returned two weeks later she still had no actors; the actors she originally had in mind were booked that weekend and though they said they would help find others they had not done so (possibly distracted by Spring break). Lenore was asking me if I knew anyone. I had one tiny lead to a boy actor which turned out to be a dead end. Time was ticking down. She would have to go to the mat to find them herself. Ten days before the show date she was able to meet the drama teacher at Berkeley High to let her audition students there. And finally she had her actors.

When Hannah walked into the gallery Lenore introduced us and told me she was playing Will, the boy lead. I was surprised especially since she was wearing a skirt. (She had just come from a memorial, Lenore told me later.) Boy actors had been hard to come by in my day and that apparently had not changed. Hannah had come to the audition wanting to do Will's part. And in fact, there had been a boy actor there too, but he just refused to get who Will was, argued with Lenore about how things should be done, wasn't getting the meaning of the play and generally sounded like a jerk, while Hannah nailed the part of Will from the beginning. Though her girl's voice did at times interject a layer of lesbian subtext to the mix messing with my mind.

When Taylor, who was playing the part of Sharon, the young black woman, arrived, the two got right down to rehearsing their lines. Taylor was just right for the part, pretty and sassy, but sincere and heartfelt. I stayed for the entire rehearsal because Lenore was going to let me be one of the videographers and I took the opportunity to practice. Her friend Scott would shoot with his camera on the other side of the room. The more experienced person she wanted on the job was already booked. Nothing like having the decks cleared of competition to feel needed. And there were more props to be made. I volunteered to make a stand for the confederate flag that Will's father displays at his house and a sign for the restaurant where the young lovers are refused service. This gave me more fun stuff to do until the play date.

An Audience Is Ready

By the time the actors came to rehearse the morning of the show, they had really bloomed into their roles. Will embodied his epiphany of his racist white heritage in a touching way that was honest without being self flagellating. While Sharon as a young woman filled with ideas she picked up from progressive parents, was full of confidence and smitten enough with this white boy to bridge whatever social barriers came between them and forgive his whiteness.

The 30 minute show partly acted, partly read in prose form gave more backstory to the movie than most movies have front story. The greeters were prepped as we awaited an audience. They would be the ones who told people where they could sit so they would be segregated by race. One was an African American man, Antonio, who had been the model for the Black Panther character in the poster. Another, Rabia, was a soft spoken African American muslim woman whose words were so carefully chosen it gave her a  calm elegance and the third, Ignacio, was an immigrant from Columbia with a friendly open face. 

Soon the gallery was filled to capacity, mostly with people of color, mostly black. As it happened I had chosen to be the videographer on the colored side of the room. The effect of being immersed amidst a majority of people of color flooded me with the realization that I spend a lot of time being white. By this I mean I forgive with regularity the exclusion of my experience; I don't mention these observations to anyone and I make excuses to myself for people's ignorance. 

Even though I was not a member of the African American community I shared the hyper vigilance of living in a white man's world. Of knowing that at any given time something will come out of nowhere and remind you that you are the other, that you are excluded from an assumed privilege. And how this can feel like an attack so you have to learn to fight back. But what was more draining was that in such a world, your impact is largely ignored, your chance to influence the world deemed irrelevant while the concerns of the majority in power—of white men— are the center of the discussion. Standing on the colored side of the room there was comfort in being seen in numbers too large to ignore.

A Story In Common

This was an audience who had come to hear their story told. And once the performance started they hung on every word, hardly making a sound as each line spoken revealed a path well traveled by those who live intimately with mixed race issues. What prompted this young couple's interest in each other? What did Sharon's mother say when she found out? How did Will come to terms with his alienation from his dad's racist perspective? How would they handle how the outside world greeted their love?

In many ways this story was mine too both in the element of forbidden love and in the mixed race aspect of it. My parents mixed marriage had been notably unusual wherever we lived and when they divorced somehow my identify took twice as much to explain. I am touched whenever color lines are crossed, made whole again. To love across the color line (or any divide) is to appreciate what is different from your own point of view and respect that perspective as if it were your own. It forever changed you. I identified with Sharon's strength and confidence expressing her sexuality and her ideas. And with Will for I also had a father who's conservative politics and alienating social opinions I had to separate myself from.

After the performance was over all were silent until Lenore and crew clapped to prompt the audience that the play had ended. We then moved the tables out of the space and invited the audience to form a circle with their chairs and integrate themselves again. No one left as people often do when an event threatens to become touchy feely. Everyone had questions, wanted to know what this was about. And about the movie that would be made from this story.

Lenore asked the first question—did people think this couple would stay together? A range of answers all from the black audience members, some generous to the romance some fearful of the social pressures against it. But one question hung in the air. An older black woman sitting next to me asked the question. What was it that prompted Lenore, a white woman from Iowa, to take on this story? This had also been my burning question when I came to learn of the project. Lenore explained that she had been a part of a mixed family by adoption of a Native American brother; through him she learned how different the world treated him. Thus she had been an activist for civil rights from the age of fourteen. And she had also had interracial relationships, she said. This seemed to be her ticket into the club, for the black woman also shared that she had had a relationship with a white man in her youth, a Jew. (My first lover had also been a Jew; Jews seemed to be the entry level white lover for people all across the board for both people of color and white Christians curious about the Other.)

Lenore also asked how people felt sitting in the segregated spaces. Again an articulate response from a black woman explaining that it was part of the black experience to be segregated often purposefully for protection and support so there was no sting to it, but she herself wanted to know how the experience had been for the white people who were told they couldn't sit where they wanted to. Several white women shared their discomfort at being separated from people of color, for being denied the unified family feeling of oneness that they had come to the show to support. While a young mixed race woman shared that she was given the choice of sitting in either section, but had stayed on the colored side. Was there any benefit to sitting on the white side in this scenario, I wondered? Apparently not. 

People also shared their responses to the characters whether they believed them or not, whether what the characters said rang true. Much discussion about whether the aggressiveness of the young woman in the relationship was a stereotype of black women. (It was not one I was familiar with stuck as I was with the stereotype of Thai women being assumed to embody the loose morality of the sex trade we're so famous for.) The only discussion for Will's role was why the part had been played by a young woman rather than a guy, but people agreed that Will's sweetness had been successfully expressed by Hannah. The success of the play was that it was a story about how race divides us, but Lenore had told it in such a way that everyone could empathize with everybody. 

She explained how this back story related to her movie, but she hardly needed to for everyone was already eager to see it, had made the leap from the play to the movie. The movie itself was a post 9/11 political and spiritual thriller with Will now an FBI agent haunted by the memory of Sharon. He goes in search of her and discovers that she is no longer with us, but she has left a legacy of forward thinking ideas which have led to the creation of a utopian vision of Ubuntu, a village looking very much like an eco village with its adobe houses and farmed fields. (Ubuntu means I am what I am because of who we all are.) The movie's heroine is Sharon's daughter, a healer seen in the poster with her shamanic panther drum. Part of the drama was a battle over water rights.

There were so many elements of this movie that I could relate to. Others would too, but does the existence of an audience drive the forces that get movies made? It had for the gay community, but this movie was bigger, more ambitious with a budget of 5 million. It was an idea that encompassed many threads, many communities. It offered so much that needed be addressed. Our audience would have stayed long past our allotted time sharing their insights. In fact more people had come in just to see what was going on. But we had to send them home.

A black man helped me take down the sets and the job was done quickly. I had introduced myself to and talked to more black men and women than I've probably met my entire life. Antonio had told me about his martial arts training and asked about mine. Rabia had shared with us her experiences of dating a white man in her youth in Ohio. And while looking at a portrait painted by a Thai woman of Tiger Woods displayed on the wall of the gallery, Eric the curator and I discussed the various cultures who claimed Tiger. He shared with me his trip to Thailand and how he had a Thai girlfriend there. (Had I had more time I would have asked how he had been received in Thailand for it was not so long ago that Thai text books taught their people that the African race was inferior in intellect.) Through these brief interactions and shared stories I felt enriched for having discovered this world of people so aware of the issues of moving between cultures. 

Lenore had worked hard to bring this show together and had overcome all the obstacles. Whatever perfection she had sought, she had let go with grace, celebrating what we had accomplished each step of the way as a new achievement. She would frame this event as a success bringing the movie closer to reality and would soon look at where it could go next.

As one of my writing group members once said, trying to get published is like throwing popcorn at the moon. But that didn't discourage us from the attempt. Or having fun trying. This performance event was an uncommon bid to attract a producer, but it had ignited further interest in the movie. And the homegrown phenomenon of it beckoned for more such events—for an ubuntu village of its own. Whatever the fate of the movie, what it was already was a happening that brought people together in multiple moments of unification and healing, not to mention all the fun we had. And for that I was satisfied and grateful.

Eighteen Tables For Two

In which I relive my past as a movie theaters projectionist, renew my interest in filmmaking and vie to become a part of my shamanic counselor's movie project.

I Am A Camera

We can see now, that having lost the confidence and wherewithal of my ten year old self only to then loose the passion and faith in life that my 19 year old had achieved, there was little left of me to fend through my twenties. Just a nihilistic, romanticized posing, shored up by a suit of black leather standing in black steel toe motorcycle boots (with the requisite motorcycle to go with it). 

Shortly after I dropped out of College V, I worked as a projectionist at several movie theaters in Palo Alto. It was more than a job, it was how I was saving my hollow, soul-less, sorry ass self. 

"At least I'm not a heroin addict," I told myself. I had successfully failed all the expectations of my fancy prep school (funded by two frugal working parents and a partial scholarship the school had offered me). The high academic standards (three and four hours a night of homework plus weekend essays) had trained me to meet the goals of teachers who took a personal interest in me. College had been without such structure and my nihilistic peers, having taught me to scoff at passion in anything, had helped in my unraveling. All my equity in advanced placement credit was used up in unfinished classes. I needed a reboot.

I went home and lived with my dad. If I avoided asking my parents for money I felt I could start from scratch to shape my own life, find for myself what interested me. I did not trust my writing to the ethnocentric (and homophobic) literary culture I had encountered so I turned to art. Working nights at the movie theater funded my art supplies and tuition. 

Movies had informed me how life could be lived. I was still in high school when I saw Bob Fosse's Cabaret with its hint of easy bisexuality and tawdry, ominous picture of pre-war Berlin. "Divine decadence," said Sally Bowles waving her green fingernails and giving me my mantra for my youth. While Fosse's Lenny Bruce movie offered me my first scene of women touching each other, naked torsos beautifully shot in black and white. (The disgusted reaction of the audience informing me how such acts would be received.) Thus it was to the movies I returned to feel whole, to feel anything at all. At the movies I could live somebody else's life, house the characters in my body and feel their emotional unfolding. That high lasting for about a week before the effect wore off. 

The first theatre manager who hired me (and dated me) was a screenwriter. He taught me how to look at film from the writer's point of view, how to pick out why the filmmaker had made certain choices. As projectionists, we could watch our favorite scenes over and over. Midnight Express played then at our second run theater. I learned how suspense was created. How much the music and sound mattered so that only a closed door could be shown. What made a love scene unfold. The script said no to the homoerotic love scene, but the filmmaker said yes with the lighting and  the beauty of the two men together thus revealing the truth of the book. This was my film school. My dreams had tracking shots in them. 

I caught myself one day deep into my movie addiction. Walking down University Avenue, my eye tracking down the sidewalk like an establishing shot, I felt a momentary wonder at the 3 D ness of it all. "Reality is just like a movie you can walk in," I thought to myself then laughed at my own topsy turvy observation. But it was not a wake up call to return to reality for I could not imagine a future beyond the age of thirty.

Over the next five years I was a projectionist and manager of the Biograph, the Aquarius, the Bijou and the Festival Cinema. I sold concessions for The Palo Alto Square when China Syndrome opened 12 days before Three Mile Island had a near meltdown. (Life imitates art! Every show a sell out that week.) I also did graphics for The New Varsity calendar. 

All but the Palo Alto Square were within blocks of each other on and off University Avenue. Most showing one flavor or another of independent films, retro films, second run films, foreign films and the occasional left over block buster i.e. The Blues Brothers and Coal Miners Daughter. It was glorious; a renaissance era for movie theaters and we didn't even know it. Although I did refer to the Varsity as the center of the known Universe, my Universe because that's where I would go after closing to talk to my friend Tim, a fellow UCSC dropout, who tended bar there.

Nearly all my life long friends would come out of this period. I was happiest if every possible day could be spent in a movie theatre (especially the awkward, terrible holidays after my parent's divorce). Between working full-time and spending my days off going to see movies via the free pass system for theatre employees, I managed to achieve this goal. I loved nothing better than to stand outside a movie theatre under the marquee lights anticipating a new film.  

Piano Lessons

There was one other thing that I did during that time. I paid for piano lessons so I could imagine Ingrid Bergman sitting down next to me and saying, in that voice filled with longing, "Play it, Sam, play As Time Goes By". Hopeless romantic that I was. Instead I sat in the presence of a nurturing mother figure, a white woman who lived with a black man she wasn't married to and seemed to understand that I was queer without asking. I rode my motorcycle up to her house every week, zipped off my black leather suit down to my preppie LL Bean pinstripe shirt and blue jeans and she never made a comment about my appearance (except for telling me off for wearing jeans and sneakers at her annual piano recital). She grew up on a farm in the midwest, told me how she shrunk her Levi's by sitting in the watering trough and letting them dry on her. She married the first man who would take our out of there.

Once I came in at the end of another student's lesson. She was speaking sternly to this boy and I sensed that he must have said something derogatory about me (probably involving the word dyke) and that she was defending me. I was getting a lot more than piano lessons I realized. Someone, an adult and authority figure was defending my right to be. 

I did learn to play As Time Goes By as well as a simplified version of Gershwin's Rhapsody In Blue which was the opening music to Manhattan in which Meryl Streep plays a lesbian and the very young Mariel Hemingway slept with Woody Allen and defined love. "We care about each other. Your concerns are my concerns; we have great sex."  Tim and I joked that it was all true for us only we didn't have sex at all (having already been there.)

Sitting in the ticket booth watching the night life go by was my idea of being in the world. The lobby was my living room. Evenings filled with film buff friends standing around playing games of movie trivia. The walls of the lobby decorated with movie posters. Lots of time on our hands spent staring at those movie posters subconsciously looking forward to the promise of yet another new film experience.

American Ubuntu

The week I met Lenore for the training for the Solstice ceremony, she was in the middle of running a kickstarter campaign for her movie American Ubuntu. Ubuntu is a Zulu word meaning I am what I am because of who we all are. The name itself speaking to community and she was asking each of us in her virtual community to contribute "as we found it in our hearts to do so".

I had never contributed to a movie fundraiser before though there had been several friends in my life making movies. I wanted to discourage them from such a Quixotic quest. All the filmmakers I knew were broke. At college V it was great fun being in their films. They were the nicest people I met, but because of their penniless example I did not even consider studying filmmaking myself; it was hard enough keeping film in my camera as a still photographer. So I never gave money to my friends' movies. But Lenore's movie had a poster. This made it half way to being real. All those years of lobby posters, of the promise of coming attractions kicking in.

The American Ubuntu poster was confrontational, gripping and provocative with a blockbustery air about it. A movie with a big story to tell embodied in the details and lives of its characters. A girl holding a drum, a man in a black beret, a man with an FBI badge. Only one of them white. The smoking twin towers in the background on the left; a pastoral scene of hand built adobe houses on the right. The people positioned in an interrelating triangle of strangers, a tiny smiling disembodied face in the center.  I could read it left to right. Conflict, political intrigue, racial tension, spiritual mediator heroine, a mystery from the past, post-apocalyptic resolution. The shamanic drum pulling me into the story. That part I knew something about, at least. And it had a panther on it. Definitely an independent film. In fact it was just the sort of film that would show at the Aquarius theater, the one remaining theater of my projectionist past. 

I knew that if I gave any money I would step closer to wanting to see this film get made, be drawn to get on board in a hands on way, perhaps. I thought about it for a while before I submitted my usual donation amount of $30. The campaign was a cliff hanger winning half the required $30,000 in the last twenty-four hours. This was exciting and significant in itself for it meant that a critical mass of people were on board with the film's story and wanted to see it made.

Detention

Three weeks later, after the solstice ceremony I entered Lenore's office as a client. As I walked in I wondered how many years it would take to spring myself from this change in status — five? However, long it took I would work through it I told myself. I had come seeking community, but now I felt I was in detention, possibly blacklisted from all future ceremonies of any sort. 

In the therapy contrived convention of our times, entering into a consulting relationship with someone who sits in the therapist's chair somehow removed you from life. It was not allowed that the two worlds would cross, the one inside the consulting room and the lived world outside of it. But this was different; a shamanic counselor was part of the community. And before long she invited her community to help her. She was going to do a stage production of the back story of her movie. I wrote in the Facebook comments of the announcement offering my help.

When I next saw her a few days later, it was her turn to look apprehensive. After I gave my report about how the integration of my soul parts was going, she asked what I wanted to do with the energy the returning soul parts had brought back with them.

"I want to do something collaborative," I said immediately, "in fact I want to work on your movie project if you'll let me," I added pleading my case. "Otherwise I'm trapped in this office—in this box," I said looking at the ceiling. I had not made myself into the world's most useful house elf for nothing. I listed off my skills.

She said okay we could discuss it. A shamanic counselor did not follow the model of therapy, she told me, but more the model of the ministry. And it was in the realm of the ministry for clergy people to mingle with their congregation outside of the functions of the church,  join them for tea perhaps. (Pictures of meeting the vicar came to mind. I was photographed with him at my grandparents' church in England when I was eight.) But we would not discuss her project on my time, she directed, marking the boundaries of this new layer of complexity.

"I want us to do this consciously," she said.

"Yes," I agreed. This was exactly the kind of border crossing I was used to making, slipping from one paradigm to another, from one defined role to another, one culture, one language, one class to another. I looked forward to the challenge. 

Eighteen Tables For Two

And so we walked outside after my session to the coffee shop next door. She bought us cups of tea because you always feed your crew, she said, and asked me to pick a table. Thus settling the customs of this new relationship, we sat down and she began to tell me what her back story required. It was to be performed at Joyce Gordon Gallery in Oakland, a theatre in the round experience. The story of young love in Kentucky in the '70s. A bold sixteen year old black girl venturing across the aisle—across the color line—to talk to a white boy. The white boy responding and treating her with such politeness and respect that I was won over by him as I listened to her describe the scene. Respect. How rare that word was in America. And to bring up race in our culture even more rare. (I know because I tried writing about it once and have the scars still from what I learned from the attempt.)

What Lenore was committed to do in a little over a month with almost no resources and no actors found yet, defied normal expectations. This just made it more intriguing to me, not to mention what she was attempting to do with a live audience to create an experience of racism (and healing with elements of shamanic ceremony). I was used to overwhelming impossible situations. Used to listening to the grand picture of what a client wanted to have happen. And then attempting to make it happen because I had been summoned to hold the space for this vision. And it was not just with practical skills that I could offer help. There was a part of my mind that took up watch at the perimeter of the vision and guided the energy to make it happen. Lenore needed videographers, stage hands, sets, props, refreshments, chairs and tables. Eighteen tables in fact to create a schoolroom. Two people sitting at each desk. Three rows of three on either side of an aisle.

I offered my skills as a videographer. She wanted the performance documented with two cameras, but the shooter had to have the skill of a photojournalist able to make a story from whatever was going on with a hand held camera. Very high standards indeed. She herself had been a photojournalist in her past. My experience was with tripod work on equipment that was now obsolete. But I had other skills. Memories of my teen years at the Palo Alto Children's Theatre and school plays coming back to remind me of the excitement of putting on a show. Theater production was where I had first wielded a hammer building sets. 

We did not decide anything at that meeting. She advised us to sleep on it. Then she let me take the initiative. So I wrote her two days later offering my continuing commitment. She wrote back that she would love to have me work on the project. Indeed love was what would fuel this venture. That was the fun part about crushes. How many different ways would love inspire? Transform? How many new things would be undertaken? I was happy now. My mind could be set into motion. 

I kept thinking about those tables. All eighteen of them. And then it came to me how I could get them for free. I could cut them from the hollow core doors that recently arrived, given to me by a contractor who knew how much I liked to make things out of doors. I had more than I could comfortably store. I worked out the details in my head late into the night, thinking about what could be used for legs and how to attach them. I wrote Lenore that I could get tables for free. I did not tell her I was going to make them for fear that she would say no, she didn't want me to go to so much trouble. But she didn't. Instead she asked me if I would be mad at her if this performance didn't come together quite as envisioned and the tables ended up not being used. 

"Well we would have them for another time," I said optimistically, casting into the future a series of events.

Then she told me that when someone makes something it sends energy out into the universe that compels the forces of creation to work in your favor. Well, now we were talking magic. And to be the maker of such magic was empowering. I was on. Suddenly it became exactly the project I needed to pull the stale energy of illness from my life. I cleared off my cluttered workshop bench in a matter of minutes and fixed tools that had been broken for years. What seemed overwhelming before was easily dispatched. I got stuff done in twice the speed and was focused enough to keep track of things I habitually spaced out about. By the end of the week I had a table assembled to show Lenore. I set it in the sun room to photograph.

"I'm going through my Zohar Dance phase," I told Catherine in explanation. Zohar was a non-profit that Catherine had spent a great deal of time helping out, enamored of the lead dancer. I had gone on many of the video shoots she had done for them.

I asked Lenore to tell me the make and model of the video camera she would be borrowing so I could study the manual. I was imagining a hefty professional level piece of equipment costing thousands. It turned out to be a consumer model that could be found used for a couple hundred off e-bay. As I researched it I learned that the Canon Vixia was a camera used by film students; just the mere association with film students was enough to ignite my lust. With digital technology, filmmaking was a medium now well within reach.

I bid on the camera and won it. Then one thing led to another in rapid sequence. I found a night course in videomaking that was happening during Spring Break when my martial arts school was closed. How perfect was that? It was taught at the Midpeninsula Community Media Center which turned out to be a terrific mentoring resource with equipment to loan out and its own cable channel. 

Two weeks later the table making project was nearing completion. And I had learned enough from my crash course to make my student video—a four minute movie about creative reuse, making —guess what?— tables from doors. You can see it on youtube.  (And I still had time to cook, entertain a house guest and help a client move.) Unbelievable. I impressed even myself.

But I was only one part of the elephant. How the rest of the performance was coming together was still a mystery to me, but coming together it would. Join me and see for yourself how it turns out. Cross borders. Be a part of the story. Sunday, April 28th at 3 p.m. at Joyce Gordon Gallery in Oakland. It's free. 

Where The Wild Child Lives

In which I learn from my ten year old self, how to stay focused. How I made my first youtube video and how Catherine's illness changed my perspective.

To improve my Shamanic practice I was advised by my Grandmother Spirit to journey every day and write down questions. I was not a very questioning sort of person it turns out. There is an art to asking questions. Most big questions I didn't want to know the answers to; it required a different kind of mind. One that is concerned with shaping the future and I had been raised to allow things to unfold and to pounce when the opportunity presented itself. I wanted to learn to master the art of the question, but meanwhile I could just hang out.

My power animals were very affectionate when I came just to hang out. We moved languidly as if on vacation. On my first hanging out visit, Mongoose and I rode on Bear who made himself as big as an elephant and thus we sat on his back in an elephant chair much like the ones used on Thai elephants. We decided to visit Leopard. I told Mongoose I loved Leopard. "She is your heart", he said. 

We found Leopard sunning herself on her usual rock. She licked my face in greeting and I asked her what to do about Lenore. This was not actually a question on my list, but hey as long as we were hanging out I asked it as one would a friend.

After I wrote about my crush on Lenore I had sent her the link to the story along with all the other stories during those prolific few weeks when I was being reacquainted with my returning soul parts. I wanted to know if she minded being a part of my story. People do not always take kindly to being written about and I was prepared for this. Prepared to walk away. I had an entire flow chart in my head about how many ways I was prepared to walk away, but she gave me a big hug when I saw her next and told me how well I wrote. I did not expect her to follow the writing at all. I was so prepared to be rejected, I had to reorient myself to this warm reception and was not sure how to proceed; how to trust it. 

"Lenore will be there for you as long as you need her," Leopard said. "Stay open for what is offered," she added wisely. And so I let go of my second guessing mind. 

I asked Leopard if we could visit my 10 year old. We all walked down to the River and got in a small dinghy. The River drifted us downstream a little ways and stopped at the opposite bank beaching on a little spit of land bordered by some reeds. We jumped out and the 10 year old emerged from the reeds. She was eager to show us her house, a little round adobe house, whitewashed, with a single window and a thatched roof. I could build one myself from what I learned at a workshop in Northern Thailand. There was nothing inside.  

"It's round," she explained, "because it is more productive; it is the corners that are distracting and catch hold of extraneous stuff." I had to agree with that. Then she ran very fast around and around inside the house to demonstrate. We walked outside again and in the clearing next to the house was a little writing desk. She said she was the one who recorded everything and did the accounting. I had also been a very diligent diarist from the age of eight. I asked her what else kept her focused. She took from her pocket a sling shot with a carved wood handle and gum colored band. It was much like the ones I remembered from childhood. I had not dared own one for my mother was against weapons. I knew these slingshots to be lethal.

"I use it for target practice," she said pointing to the target on a tree 25 yards or so to the left of the camp. I looked at the circles of the red target. (It was much like the logo of the store of the same name.) And suddenly I felt I understood something about having goals and plans for action. It was a brief, but clear message for I was not given to goals or any kind of plans for myself though I admired it intensely in others. 

Before we left, the 10 year old also admitted that she hunted squirrels to eat. Such a wild child, I thought. I mused for a moment how this tale could be told from the point of view of the unincorporated 10 year old soul part hanging around for 44 years watching me live my life and waiting for an opportunity to join in—or not. I was reminded of Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury. 

I went to e-bay and looked for slingshots. There were lots and one was even from Thailand with a lovely green stained hardwood handle. I was the only one who bid on it. I sent the seller a picture of myself when I was ten. He/she wrote back in a Thai sort of English, a tender note of appreciation.

Slingshot Productions

Meanwhile I returned to my leadership obligations and prompted by my conference team, decided to make a video announcement about the conference and all the great speakers we were having. A quick look at similar videos made by colleagues and others showed that there was much room for improvement. This always inspired me, but my standards were already high. I also wanted it to be memorable and entertaining. I could not pull off a professional business attire thing as others would do, but Jim at ICD headquarters encouraged me to go with the same mountain climber costume schtick I had created for my introduction at our last conference and that was enough to set me off and running.

I had no equipment to speak of. Just my iPod touch. Kids were using it to make their movies so how hard could it be? The only thing needed, said the after school tutorial I found, was something to hold up the iPod. I looked around my room and my eye fell on the movie splicer I had unearthed from the basement for my soul retrieval ceremony. It was now sitting on my desk like a giant talisman. Heavy and sturdy, it had flaps to hold the 35 mm film down on a flat bed. I discovered that the flaps would hold the iPod upright and allow easy installation and removal for downloading. I set the splicer on a stack of books on my sewing table in my room. The repurposing of this old movie technology to support the new, pleased me with its poetic symmetry.

I did not have a backdrop of our conference location in the mountains of Denver as I envisioned, but I had a world map someone gave me. I pinned it to my louvered closet doors which looked so obviously like closet doors it added to the improvisational aspect, plus closets have much significance for organizers. Over the doors was a mask of a whiskered wild cat of some sort. It gave my set an explorer flavor and a spirit protector.

I wrote the piece, did some takes and realized I would have to memorize it so my eyes wouldn't be tracking back and forth reading the words on a page. It was also hard to remember where to look since the camera lens was the size of a pinhead. By the time I was able to remember everything in one take, I was exhausted and it showed. I asked Catherine's opinion. She had owned her own videography company and was a good resource. 

"It drags," she said. It was better before when I was animated, but full of mistakes. Well at least it's done I thought and went to bed. I had already spent most of the weekend on it. 

Done was better than perfect as we say to our clients, but these youtube things were forever, would be who you were after you were dead, as I found out when Hester died and that was what we had to remember her by—a lovely series of videos of her talking about being a professional organizer and how she approached various organizing problems. None of us had any idea she had made them, but she must have had help because they were so warm and personable; someone was on the other side of the camera. Too many videos had that dull look about them from people sitting in a room by themselves talking to their computer. 

When it came down to it I had my pride, people to impress. My friends, my colleagues, my organization, not to mention Lenore—a filmmaker herself—would all see this thing. And some of my internet friends had never heard me speak. At least I could be more lively. Two days later, I decided to try again.

By then I had memorized my two minute piece. To liven it up I added expressions for each of the topics we were offering; I moved the camera back to make room to move so it would be funnier. I had an opening shot and an exit and little bits with props. Now there was a premise, a story. The mountain climber hefting a packed rucksack, heading out the door then stopping to talk about where she was going and who should come with. I worked so hard on this thing it took a total of ten hours to get it right after over 40 plus takes. But at least I had made it look easy. To seem effortless was a good marker of artistic competence. Catherine gave it the thumbs up.

When the video was delivered to members in an e-blast, a colleague who had been a long time president of our much bigger umbrella organization sent me an e-mail. "Cute ICD Video. You're quite the actress, ha ha," he wrote. Awe thanks Barry. I had hit my mark with my first attempt, fulfilled my obligations to my colleagues and left my stamp on something. 

The vision of the target in the10 year old's camp kept appearing to me. The simplicity of the slingshot representing a few well chosen tools. I could feel the satisfying connection of target and slingshot coming together. How a vision pulled energy to it. How the role of projects worked to sharpen my skills and move my thinking forward.

The Harpist

Before Catherine's diagnosis my ongoing project was to make emergency off grid equipment and practice self sufficiency. This entertained me not because I had fantasies of being a survivalist although I did read their blogs and write for peak oil enthusiasts, but because the simplicity of off grid living reminded me of home. Or what was home before it embraced globalization and became the mega-tropolis Bangkok of high end shopping malls emmeshed in grid lock traffic. Sigh.

My interests covered all the bases—tiny hand built homes, small boats, rainwater irrigation techniques, co-housing, vegetable gardening, solar oven cooking and living without electricity. Not that we didn't have electricity fairly reliably on my family compound and we cooked with propane, but it was there amidst the water jars, the ponds and extensive garden backing up against empty lots of high grass where old things were allowed to rust and fall into ruin, that I played and appreciated a life of simple handmade things. I had kept up an equivalent interest in California where orchards had given way to high tech. Building furniture from scrap wood, sewing my own designs and making simple home cooked meals kept me connected to that other life.

A lot of that is still there within our family compound in Bangkok. Tucked away beyond the sterility of the formal parlors of the three Big Houses, in the core of the half acre property, the staff live in one-room apartments adjoining an open air kitchen. Surrounded by a courtyard full of tropical plants kept tidy with borders of upended beer bottles, it was charming and anachronistic. When I visited I hung out there talking to our cook who remembered me as a child and told me what was really going on in Bangkok. Because I had left Thailand at such a young age, I never really gave up my affinity for that back kitchen living that was so full of life and things to do.

When Catherine entered into what would be a nine month cancer treatment schedule, I took up residence with her in the high tech, disposable, single serving world of modern medicine. Assisted by teams of competent, cheerful nurses there was nothing do-it-yourself about it. I would have to make something else—art. I amassed a collection of origami dinosaurs, a dragon, fish, a kangaroo, a space shuttle, two dogs and several traditional Japanese cranes. I particularly enjoyed folding my origami models when the harpist trundled her harp into the infusion lab and sat playing for us. There was something about the symbiosis of making art with our hands that made both of us smile secretly at each other. She was otherwise rather dour and made little eye contact unless someone clapped.

And as I whiled away the afternoon watching the cancer patients sit patiently reading, I came to appreciate  the value of art, music and fiction. Once Catherine felt able to read, she chose those simple, charming stories of The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency and I was grateful for their ability to comfort and amuse. From the point of view of illness as a personal episode of collapse, the power to entertain and relieve the mind of the angst at hand made the efforts of artists a form of life saving.

After Catherine's treatment was over, I  returned to my off grid projects, but I did not feel as compelled to tell myself the scenarios of technological collapse that supported the reason for my projects. It would always be a good idea to be self sufficient and handy and it would still be cool to have an off grid refrigerator, but the stories I wanted to tell now were very different.