SPACIOUS Blog
Encouraging recess, engaging otherness, having adventures...
Writers have to write the way pregnant people have to give birth. If they don’t they explode. Thus here’s a steady stream of Cary’s musings on spaciousness:
The SPACIOUS State Playlist
If/since SPACIOUS is a state of mind, it needs state symbols like any good state has — a state reptile, a state protein, or perhaps the more common state flag, state bird, or state dog.
We’ve already chosen a state dance, and I wrote about it here.
We’ve already chosen a state meal, the potluck, and I wrote about that.
Today we’re celebrating a SPACIOUS playlist that my partner Joey and I have co-created. Yes, it represents the weird combination that we are — 23 and 51 years old, respectively. And Joey is a love-to-go-to-shows sort of guy, and I am a love-to-get-to-bed-early-to-read gal.
Perhaps you can figure out who contributed which songs from the songs themselves or from the descriptions: (more…)
Fire and Rain
“I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain. I’ve seen sunny days that I thought would never end. I’ve seen lonely times when I could not find a friend….”
My SPACIOUS partner Joey and I have had some good conversations about fire, reflecting on what it means to be on fire and to need to be on fire because there are icebergs to melt (a favorite quote of mine from abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison). Fire is an apt metaphor for me for energy, passion, and warmth especially as directed into relationships and the needs of the world.
I’m working on a memoir about my own personal movement from being a person who locked myself away emotionally from engagement with others, preferring to live in a metaphorical fireproof building, to a person who gets involved with others and risks getting burned. I’ve come to appreciate the need for fire in my life if I am going to move beyond my own concerns and try to live a life that will benefit others.
Conversations with Joey and others indirectly led to the creation of SPACIOUS as we talked about how we wanted to be people of action in our circles of friends and communities, people who did something, created something for people.
I get particularly riled up about people feeling lonely, not noticed, not seen. And of course society encourages us all to act cool, to never let anyone see us sweat, to give off the impression that we’re self-sufficient, happy and “fine,” (the ultimate four-letter word when it contributes to our staying stuck). That pretension contributes to loneliness because it leaves each of us thinking we are the only one who ever feels that way, some sort of freak-show of a person who must not have a single good relationship. (more…)
Before You & I Die…
What do you want to do before you die?
Art installation walls asking that question are popping up around the world. D.C. is sporting one down near Logan Circle at 14th & Q Streets, NW. You can read about it in The Washington Post.
I’ve loved visiting; I went twice in the first three days. It’s such a joy to see the connections made between people who are simply stopping by to add something or to read the entries. And it’s fascinating to read what people are writing.
I love it that the Post article says that the D.C. one is more multi-lingual than others and that we are a bunch of do-gooders. Not a shock. I love my gloriously intense city. (more…)
One-Trick Ponies and Sailboats
Sometimes there’s something we become known for, and no one wants us to change. The relationships and worlds we inhabit just work with us playing our little roles. In fact sometimes we don’t allow ourselves to morph, change, or move on because we think of ourselves as the gal who totally __________ or the guy who always _______________.
What’s in the blank for you? Are you the one who always…
- wears red?
- drinks Yuengling?
- stands in the corner?
- plays softball on Sundays?
- entertains everyone with your jokes?
And do you like wearing that, drinking that, doing that? If so, great; that’s beautiful. But others feel like they’re seen as one-trick ponies and yet they know they are so much more multi-dimensional than the world knows.
If you don’t like the role you’re inhabiting, the rules you’re following, why stay stuck? You may not be able to change everything in your life, but you can change something.
Have you ever thought of all the factors that conspire to keep you where you are? Change is hard. There’s a common image in family systems therapy that talks about mobiles, those Calder-esque things that hang and are connected by filaments. When you set one part in motion, the whole thing wobbles. Aren’t families and offices and communities like that? You mess with one part (even for positive change), and it all has to adjust. And not everyone wants to have to react to the ways you change.
Let’s say that you are desperate to go to a particular college, and yet you know that they will reject as many strong candidates as they will accept. And yet the one thing that stands out about you is that you are the missing link in their almost-complete orchestra for you play the saxophone, and last year a stellar sax player moved on to graduate school. So they let you in, because you are the best sax player that applied. And now you’re in, and you damn well better be planning on playing the saxophone — even if it was only one of your interests pre-Yale. You won’t mind that if you truly love to play, but you might mind if you only emphasized your sax playing to gain a berth there and you’d rather spend your time in the pole-dancing club. The one-trick pony may be stuck in the barn.
It’s simpler if everyone stays in their roles or boxes or patterns. Then we know how the world will work, how the day will go. Or at least we have that illusion, for we never really have the control we think we have, do we?
So do you see places in your life where you are a one-trick pony, and where you’d like to be more well-rounded or known as more well-rounded? Or do you like being known for a particular thing?
I’m more of a sailboat… headed in a general direction, sometimes moving fairly effectively though often stalling, but generally liking having the wind help me tack here and there, open to changing directions frequently.
Which are you? Which would you rather be?
The Flight Back to Conversation
If a smile is the first currency exchanged in a potential relationship, think about where actual words might take you. And then think about what is robbing you of the joy of conversation.
I last wrote about missed connections and people who were seeking to find strangers they wished they’d spoken to when they spotted them in public. Most of them simply exchanged a smile, and yet the smile had stayed in the memory of one party, who was now desperately seeking the other. I hope they connected. And began conversations.
If there are perhaps five people on the planet who are not talking about and sharing Sherry Turkle’s New York Times article, The Flight from Conversation, I hope those five people are reading this. Because we should all read the article, watch the TED talk, and then get on with walking the talk.
Or rather we should all get on with talking. In person. With other people. Live. Un-aided by technological devices. Good old-fashioned conversation. (more…)
You Smiled
I’m thinking about missed connections. I’m reading a five year old Washington City Paper “I Saw You” column, that I’ve kept for its poignancy factor, in which people placed ads to try and find people they’d briefly encountered on the street. Most of them write with wistfulness, desperately hoping that the person they’re looking for will read this somewhat obscure column at just the right time, realize someone’s looking for them and then get in touch. They’re hoping they can make up for their stupidity at not grabbing that person right then and there and marrying them on the spot.
And I can see why it’s sad. Because I met my husband in a mud puddle back in 1979, and we did have a conversation, and that conversation led to my certainty that he was the one, and — well — I was right. I don’t have regrets (at least not about that!).
So I’m wondering if the folks who smiled at each other at the corner of 5th and F, NE or the Borders in Fairfax, or at the Chevy Chase DC post office or the Sparkle Carwash… well did they ever connect? (more…)
Personal Power and Lady Gaga
How many times have you walked into a room and scanned the horizon for a friendly face, someone who would motion you over to be part of his group, knowing that if you could connect like that it would make all the difference?
How often has someone said to you, “I’ll save you a seat” when you were heading to an event together?
Is it common for you to make eye contact with a homeless woman who asks for money, even if you choose not to give, or especially if you choose not to give?
And on the negative side of this spectrum, have you ever felt like bursting into tears because someone yelled at you in traffic (I have)?
Or have you wanted to crawl under a table when you went to an event and had to circle around pretending you were going somewhere because you couldn’t figure out who was amenable to talking to a stranger, and you didn’t want to look pitiful standing by the bar alone?
It only takes one person to make a huge difference. I was reading an interview with Lady Gaga in TIME, and I was struck by this exchange: Lady Gaga said, “… once I put the Born This Way album out, I noticed a tremendous desire among fans to become braver and more active members of society.”
The TIME interviewer, Belinda Luscombe, answered, “How would, say, an 11-year-old girl live out your idea?”
To which Gaga replied, “She could go up to one person in class who maybe is not one of the cool kids and say, ‘I really like your T-shirt.’ That would be her one great loving and accepting deed for the day.”
That doesn’t sound like much, does it? But do you remember junior high school as I do… and how one word like that from a peer made all the difference?
Or for that matter, do you remember last week and how someone’s inclusion or exclusion of you made all the difference? I do!
Which generous one are you?
Have you seen the video of Caine’s Arcade? You NEED TO stop and watch it now (please!). If you don’t, this post won’t make sense. But more importantly if you don’t, you’ll miss a chance for your life to be enhanced.
This has been all over the internet, and it’s worth wondering why it strikes such a chord.
Okay, you watched? And you’re back?
Let’s talk about the characters in this real-life story:
- Caine’s dad — gave his kid space, believed that he could do something productive while he himself worked, let him have some materials, encouraged his gifts, allowed the flash mob to happen, helped facilitate it
- Caine — did his thing without worrying about outcome, enjoyed the process
- Nirvan — played a game when he stopped in (that’s no small thing in and of itself; most people don’t do that), and then went a lot further and created the flash mob and made the movie (which led to a huge scholarship fund for Caine)
- The crowd — read about it online and came out and played (more…)
Washington Post features SPACIOUS
Emily Wax of the Washington Post has more or less written my blogpost for me today. Because how can I improve on her story about SPACIOUS and other cool organizations that are advocating and facilitating play!?
Here’s the story, which graced the cover of the STYLE section in the print version of the Post.
We’re definitely about recess. Add to that a desire that people are known deeply, that we banish “us and them” thinking, that we realize our creativity and practice generosity, and that’s what SPACIOUS is about.
Thanks to Emily Wax and to photographer Evy Mages (and to our friend Mitko Gerensky for his video of our pie fight at our recent adult recess day).
It’s so much fun to be featured in the Post, and we’re already seeing new connections and new relationships develop as a result. That’s what it’s all about!
Who do you want to play with?
I want to play with the kids who don’t care if they have egg in their hair. And who want to try something new. And who don’t mind if they’re a little too much of whatever their culture says is wrong (dark skin, light skin, big, small, funny, serious). Who just think, “Screw all that; I’m going to have fun.”
Those are the people I want to play with or hang out with or drink coffee or margaritas with… those people who won’t be defined by shame or perfection or shoulds or by anything other than their God-given fabulosity and the right to take up space on the planet “as is.”
I read a quote once that I loved. It was by Sarah Broom, in O, The Oprah Magazine. She wrote about poetry parties she hosted in her Harlem home, inspired by a New Orleans childhood. I just copied this quote down and stuffed it in my “Why didn’t I say that?” folder (except I couldn’t have said it cause I’m not from New Orleans, except way back two generations). In messy hand-writing, it says:
When I was young in New Orleans, I never invited anyone over to my raggedy, falling-down house, out of shame, and now I want to make up for all that silliness and pushing away. (more…)
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