I wish all my visitors and loyal followers from all over the world—76 countries
so far—the very best of this season. For us Christians, that means MERRY CHRISTMAS! (para mis amigos hispanohablantes, ¡FELIZ NAVIDAD!) For my Jewish friends, it's HAPPY HANUKKAH! For all of us here in the northern hemisphere, it's HAPPY WINTER SOLSTICE! 

Whatever your celebration, may these days be kind to you, your families and your loved ones. May they bring you new awareness, wonder and gratitude!

SMELLS LIKE BLUE – And Other Cross-Sensory Interplay

This morning, walking along East River Parkway, I found myself in a pleasant space of clarity I rarely occupy within my own thoughts. It was like a meditation on everything at once: my steps; the feeble mid-December sunshine; the coziness of being nearly encapsulated inside my jacket, hoodie and mask. It all connected.

Providing the digital sound track of my reverie was the great jazz guitarist Pat Metheny. The interplay of his etherial electric guitar, some piano, lots of tinkly symbols and clear, wordless tenor vocals got me thinking What is it about Metheny that’s stood the test of time so well with my ears since way back in the late 70s?

And I came up with a word to describe the sound: shimmering.

Isn’t it funny, I thought, using such a visual descriptor to depict a sound? Truth is, though, that we cross sensory boundaries with our vocabulary all the time and don’t even notice.

Haven’t you ever described a taste as sharp? How about Uncle Duane’s garish ties. Loud, right? Bright flavors. Screaming pain. Sticky situations.

     They open the door not just to Polyhymnia,
     the muse of grammar, but to those of love,
     music, dance and, yes, poetry.

WRITING IN 3D
As a writer, of course I’m eager to sharpen my powers of description. It’s entirely possible to recount an observation or an experience using language that’s precise but not very interesting. Just direct, literal sensory terms. The designer employed earth tones for Bob’s new man cave.

Acceptable, but pretty dry, right. (See, I’ve just done it again!)

But introduce a metaphor that lifts off of one sensory plane and into another and the description takes on new dimension. The language turns from descriptive to evocative. The designer dished a savory stew of burnt oranges, ochres and umbers for Bob’s man cave.

You see, it’s like the difference between a flat image and 3D.

Delicious texture. Smooth flavor. Thin voice. White noise. The possibilities open the door not just to Polyhymnia, the muse of grammar, but to those of love, music, dance and, yes, poetry.

USE IT OR LOSE IT
This device enriches not just how I write about sensing, but how I actually do sensing. It’s like putting your faculties through a team-building challenge, pushing them to both sharpen their skills and work together.

Your taste buds help your eyes to “see” flavors. And your eyes might return the favor by “tasting” colors (as I’d hope the reader would do with my designer example above). How about “hearing” images? Or “touching” sounds? 

The long-standing notion that we humans actually use just ten percent of our brain power has been debunked by magnetic resonance imaging. But it just might be true for how we use our senses.

I’m afraid it’s a matter of use it or lose it. And if we fail to use our amazing senses—all of them—well, let’s just say I can smell the handwriting on the wall. ;-)

DOUBLE TAKES – How to Second-guess Regret

 I wish I could claim this bit of wisdom as my own, but it’s inspired by a sweet little romantic comedy Sally and I watched tonight: About Time.

In it the wise old dad—with just weeks to live—shares with his son one of his secrets of happiness: to live each day twice. The first time, you let it pass with all the cluelessness and distraction most of us abide most days.

The second time, you live that same day, but with the benefit of hindsight. This time you do it right: noticing and celebrating small wonders; making room for joy; fearing less and loving more; and showing that love to those you may assume already know it.

And then, you commit that second take to reality and pretend the first one never happened.

Well, that’s not so hard if you have the gift of time travel as both these characters do. But what about the rest of us?

I'm thinking the trick is you live both days at the same time. For each significant moment, you anticipate the second take as you start living the first. And hope it spares you at least a few of your regrets.

Does anyone else just love this concept?

AS IF FOR THE FIRST TIME: YAWNING

HO-HUM HUMDRUM
Yawning’s an amazing and mysterious thing. It crosses all geographic and cultural boundaries. Humans of all ages do it—even those in utero. Nearly all vertebrates do it, including fish and birds, but with the exception, it’s said, of giraffes and whales.

It’s one of those bodily functions that’s so ubiquitous that, like blinking or breathing, it usually comes and goes without our slightest notice. But have you
ever felt a yawn coming on, stopped what you were doing and allowed yourself
to be fully present with the experience?

Here’s what it feels like for me: it starts, subtly, deep inside my head. It’s like my whole cranium, or at least some compartment or sac within it, is about to expand. Then in my ears I feel some kind of passages opening up; it sounds like the two sides, coated with earwax, start out pressed together and then pull stickily apart.

My mouth starts to open, not the way it does when I talk or eat, but from the back, as if the jaw hinges themselves were separating—like the way a python unhinges its jaws to consume large prey.

           The experience, much like farting, 
           is much more satisfying when you 
           really open up and let it rip.

Then the rumbling starts. Again, it seems to come from somewhere deep inside my ears. It's loud, but somehow doesn’t drown out the music and other ambient sound here in my studio.

By this time my eyes close reflexively. I notice I can keep them open if I try (something I’ve never been able to do while sneezing). I start salivating and my eyes water.

Sometimes I keep my lips closed while yawning—usually when I think someone might be looking—but the experience, much like farting, is much more satisfying when you really open up and let it rip. Same with that universal little non-verbal vocalization that always wants to accompany a good yawn.

For me, there’s a distinct tipping point in a yawn. Somewhat like a sneeze or an orgasm, it starts with an impulse, builds in tension, crests and then, inexorably, releases. Occasionally, it doesn’t quite reach that crest and fizzles disappointingly.
_______________________________________________________

AWARENESS CHECK: I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but chances are you’ve yawned at least once just since you started reading this. See if you can be aware of the next one coming on. I decided to log my yawns when I started writing this, and in the hour or so it’s taken me to this point, I’ve done it no fewer than nineteen times!
_______________________________________________________

MONKEY SEE…
There are many theories as to why we vertebrates yawn. The most popular seem
to be: that it’s the body’s need for a rush of oxygen; that it’s a muscle-stretching process (which might explain why it’s so often accompanied by the urge to stretch the arms, legs and back); that it triggers a surge of alertness when the brain senses we’re asleep on the job (this one seems counter-intuitive to me); and that it somehow helps regulate the temperature of the brain.

None of these theories enjoys common agreement; in fact, most have been debunked in one study or another. All I know is my own experience with yawning. Yes, like just about everyone, I yawn when I’m tired and bored. But, more curiously, I also catch myself yawning when I’m nervous or anxious. How about you? When do you yawn?

        Simply writing about yawning makes 
        me yawn (doing it now, as we speak).

One of the most fascinating characteristics of yawning is its contagiousness. Among all the causal theories, none disputes this, although several possible reasons are suggested. Almost everyone agrees that it’s an empathetic response, one wired into the circuits of earliest man, perhaps to demonstrate our ferocity (as in don’t mess with me!) or even as a pre-verbal signal for a group to change activities.

Whatever the reason, this power of suggestion is undeniable. We don’t even have
to see someone yawning; we can simply hear them yawn over the telephone. And
I can tell you from my current experience that simply writing about yawning makes me yawn (doing it now, as we speak)—not just now and then, but repeatedly and often. (Since the awareness check, above, I've done it at least five more times.)

Are you aware of what triggers your yawns? Has reading this post, along with the inspirational photos, unleashed the ho-hum monster in you? Do you have a favorite memory or a trick involving yawning? We’d love to hear of your jaw-dropping experiences! 

 

HOW TO BE IN THE MOMENT – Tip #102

 Savor the luscious fusion of sense and emotion.

There’s a place where all the sense impressions that come into you churn and stew with stuff that’s looking for a way out.

You keep what you need, but the essence, the aroma of it, exudes through your skin, inviting more, inviting others.

(Happy Thanksgiving to my U.S. readers!)

FRESH AIR – Soaring with Gershwin Above Election Day Stress

This morning, Election Day 2020, I'm feeling cautiously optimistic about the pending outcome.

I'm nestled in my recliner, pecking out what just might be my last post for Pop This Boil!, my Trump-resistance blog. (It's about the psychology of bystander inaction in the face of cruelty, and how that syndrome might help explain our soon-to-be-former president's base's failure to stand up to the man's oft-repeated assaults on their fellow citizens and on democratic institutions—not to mention on their own interests.)

And then, on Minnesota Public Radio, they play Gershwin's majestic Fanfare for the Common Man. I put down my laptop, turn the volume way up and just listen. I let those sounds, the soaring and the sublime, transport me. For these four glorious minutes, my spirit has taken wing.

From this lofty vantage point things are so clear. I see all those tens of millions of my countrymen boldly asserting their voices, refusing intimidation and inconvenience. I breathe easier knowing the wheels of democracy are turning, my country busy reclaiming the hope, the aspiration, the decency that's been sucked out of the room for the past four years by a petty tyrant with an insatiable ego.

And I feel a soaring sense of pride and faith in the beacon of freedom and opportunity I know this country can—and will—continue to shine.

Yes, it was a good day. The first, I trust, of many, many such days to come.

AS IF FOR THE FIRST TIME: Reading

I’m sitting out on our sunny deck, martini in one hand, a novel in the other. When I’m outdoors, though, I find it hard to concentrate on a book. My senses get continually plucked at by more immediate wonders— the bees flitting from one blossom to the next in our window boxes; a few early chimney swifts darting and twittering overhead; the three-legged mutt sniffing the lawn across the drive.

And then it comes to me, the perfect reconciliation of the purely escapist act of reading with the curse of my nagging, here-and-now awareness: a momentary indulgence not of the novel, but of the wonder of reading it.

                    

       Each of hundreds of thousands of
       letter assortments nearly instantaneously
       elicits meaning.

MY WORD!
I don’t mean just the miracle of an author’s ability to make up a very long story that manages to elicit another person’s knowing and feeling. I mean the whole idea of looking at a bunch of odd little shapes strung out in various sequences, and effortlessly decoding them all at a glance.

There are roughly 6,500 languages and 3900 alphabets or writing systems in the world. With the numbers of characters in each of them ranging from Rotakas (Papua New Guinea) with only 12, to Chinese, with at least 8,000, that makes for a staggering number of those little shapes and symbols literate human beings routinely memorize.

But let’s say one speaks only English. There are just 26 letters in the English alphabet (a few of them elucidated with accents). The Second Edition of the 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary contains full entries for 171,476 words in current use. And let’s say one knows only a third of those words. That’s about 57,000 words, 57,000 unique combinations of those 26 tiny, cryptic shapes.

And that’s just the present-tense, infinitive forms of the verbs, the absolute forms of modifiers and the singular form of nouns. Not to mention various compound forms and other variations. Well, you get the idea: each of hundreds of thousands of letter assortments nearly instantaneously elicits meaning. This mastery of reading many of us so take for granted is nothing short of phenomenal.

       Isn’t reading outdoors simply a choice
       between a real, immediate perfection and
       an imaginary scene borne in black marks
       on white paper?

GOOD WRITING STINKS
So, I’m reading this novel. I don’t really think about each word, much less each letter.
                              

As one who’s learned a second language as an adult, I know there’s this incredible moment when an intermediate-level learner’s multi-step reading process rather suddenly distills down to one step. One moment you’re seeing the word, perhaps tacitly pronouncing it, translating it and finally seeing the meaning in your mind’s eye.

The next moment, no sooner do you see the word than that image appears. You’re no longer translating; your brain has made a direct connection from word to image—perhaps even to emotion.

There are words…and then there are compositions. Like notes of music that combine into rhythms and harmonies, words, when well-chosen and creatively sequenced, far transcend their individual values to make magic.

While even a pedestrian writer might accurately describe, say, a bar scene set in the old West, a gifted one will do so in a way that captures not just who and what can be seen, but evokes the ambient sounds, the quality of the air, perhaps even how the crusty cowboys smell.

        

READING REDUX?
Like everything else in my wondering world, reading, now that I’ve picked it up and examined it from a few different angles, has transformed from a curious trifle to a treasure. Seeing it that way, I might never again open a book or log into a blog—or read a billboard for that matter—with the same nonchalance.

Does this mean I’ve finally found a way around my lifelong dismissal of reading outdoors as simply a choice between a real, immediate perfection and an imaginary scene borne in black marks on white paper? We’ll see…

COPING WITH COVID – No Better Time for Seeing Generously

 At first glance, vision may seem like a simple one-way transaction. We open our eyes. An image goes in and gets processed by the mind. If it's something important, it may move us to feel or do something, or it gets stored somewhere for future reference.

In fact, it's easy to think of all our senses like that—merely taking in sensations. But it doesn't have to be that way. Consider touch. I mean we generally see, hear, taste or smell anonymously—without any involvement of the thing we're sensing. But when we touch something, it always, automatically, touches us back. 

REAPING WHAT WE SOW
Until recently, I thought touch was the only one of our conventional senses that could do that. But with COVID-19 trying to suck the life out of our touching, it seems a good time to reconsider the reach and intention of our other senses.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if seeing were more like touch? If one could actually impart something akin to the warmth and gentle pressure of a hug or holding hands without violating social distancing guidelines?

        You purposely, preemptively, dismiss the
        distractions and open your soul to wonder
        before you even know it’s there.

It's hard to imagine, because we've gotten complacent in our seeing. We expect to find our images delivered effortlessly to us on screens, often while sitting alone or at least in our own little worlds. With virtually no contact with the actual things depicted on the screen, it's kind of a sad exercise in anonymity.

This consumption mentality of seeing affects even the way we perceive real stuff. For example, we seem to prefer looking at things we already know. Like so many TV re-runs, their familiarity soothes us, keeps us company, actually turns off our minds. Nothing's really new. We give nothing, we invest nothing and, one could argue, we get nothing.

So what is seeing generously? What does it look like?

Is our seeing all it can be?

A CURIOUS TRANSACTION
It may happen unconsciously. Let's say you're looking at something—an animal, a sunset, another person. If, at that moment, your mind has its foot on your spirit, you won't be especially moved. But as soon as you begin to let go of objectives and schedules, turn of the cell phone and truly notice, something begins to change. 

You start seeing more proactively. That is, instead of waiting for small wonders to strike your visual fancy, you actually go looking for them. Instead of expecting them to somehow crack through your inattention, your distraction, you, at least now and then, purposely, preemptively, dismiss the distractions and open your soul to wonder before you even know it’s there.

            When we see things in this way, we grow,
       our consciousness grows and the world
       becomes a more mindful, loving place.

At first, it may be just small increments of investment, feelings like appreciation or satisfaction. That's okay; it's a start. But then, if you can allow yourself to be curious, the way you were naturally when you were a child, the transaction starts to truly transform.
 
Now your seeing's become a gift, not just to yourself, but to the person or thing you're curious about. When we see things in this way—not just with our eyes, or even our mind, but with our heart and our spirit—we grow, our consciousness grows and the world becomes a more mindful, loving place.

WHAT ABOUT YOU?
Have you ever noticed the way a person lights up when the conversation turns from the typical self-promoting, cocktail party chatter to genuine interest in something that really matters to that person? You know, when "Me, me, me…well, enough about me. What do you think about me?" turns to "What about you? What are you interested in?"  When we see someone that way—or when we wonder at one of Nature's miracles—that's a blessing we give to that person, that creature or that thing.

This is even more important during this historic confluence of pandemic with what may well be the most frightening political collapse we've ever experienced in the U.S. It's a time when those with the emotional maturity to do so must recognize other folks' pain and loneliness. If we're ever able to reconcile our differences, we must learn to view even our most bitter political enemies with compassion. 

That is how seeing generously looks and sounds...and has to be.

Do you see generously? Does your ability to do so hinge on what's going on in your life and in the world? Think you'd still be able to if Donald Trump' reign of error continues for another term? We'd love to hear about your ideas and experiences!

CREATIVE GENUS – My Career Path From Crayons to Kerning

My fourth-grade teacher, Miss Berg, taught me that I was an artist.

Okay, sure, teachers—at least the good ones—do that all the time; every kid should feel special. But with Miss Berg it was different. When I produced one of my little masterpieces—usually rather dense compositions of geometric shapes and patterns using those luscious, off-color crayons like blue-green, mahogany and Indian red—she would not just encourage me, she’d point to my work as an example for other kids whose design muse evidently wasn’t speaking to them.

            

I guess that’s all it takes to plant the seeds of a human being’s self-actualization. Sure enough, even though I’d done nothing consciously to hone that dull blade of creativity, by the time I got to college, it just seemed obvious that I’d major in Art. (For some odd reason, my boys military high school had offered no art program. The powers that be must have considered art unmanly—so we had mandatory football instead. Seriously.)

PHYSICS, SCHMYSICS
As college graduation—and the Vietnam War—loomed, I had to figure out a way to continue my education and thus earn a deferment from the draft. It had to be a field that would not only put to use my nascent artistic talents, but lead to an honorable, paying career. So I headed to architecture school.

The creative aspects of architecture tapped into that designer mentality first encouraged by Miss Berg. It seemed a perfectly logical branching out from just two-dimensional shape and crayon-rendered color to three dimensions. Turns out I was pretty good at visualizing space, stacking it, dividing it and making those divisions flow one to the next.

I also loved the creative process: analyzing the requirements of a project, sketching concepts, giving and getting feedback from classmates and faculty “crits,” drafting, modeling… I even enjoyed the bleary-eyed rigor of all-nighters spent in the studio, exchanging ideas and encouragement with my fellow designers.

Unfortunately, along with the third dimension, architecture demanded that I not only design buildings, but make sure they’d stand up when built. And for that, the barely-passing physics and calculus grades I’d eked out in college proved lacking. So I had to take both courses all over again and be ready to apply that knowledge to the second-year architecture class that came closest to engineering: Building Technology.

          

Building Technology confirmed my love of designing habitable spaces, but sort of backwards. It raised the question that would, in the end, drive me out of architecture as a career: Why the hell can’t I simply design beautiful structures and let someone else— namely an engineer— make sure they won’t collapse under their own weight?

GOODBYE, THIRD DIMENSION  
One of our class projects—this being the height of the early-70s social awareness movement—was setting up a community design center in the heart of St. Paul’s historically-Black Selby-Dale neighborhood. Though, obviously, the focus of our little shop was supposed to be architectural services and advice, a few of our clients brought graphic design challenges along with their architecture ones.

I found myself drawn to those projects: logos, letterheads, brochures, signage. I enjoyed the work and met with some success.

Examples of 70's-style graphic design

It was at this time—struggling through the third year of my five-year bachelor-of-architecture program—that I noticed a job posting on the school’s bulletin board. The Metropolitan Transit Commission (MTC) was looking for a graphic designer. I was ready for a course adjustment, and the required skills seemed to match my abilities. So I interviewed, was hired and quit architecture school.

I was thrilled to have a real job, getting paid quite well to do something I enjoyed—and no physics required. I designed bus schedules, signage, a comprehensive map of the Twin Cities transit system, and even some advertising materials. As I’d hoped, I was able to apply much of what I’d learned in architecture school about the design process to my work with graphics.

(Much later, when asked by a prospective client how I got from architecture school to graphic design, I explained I’d simply abandoned the third dimension.)

      
THE NEW ENGLAND YEARS
Once that door was open to a career in graphic design, I ventured through it and never looked back. The MTC job— and marriage— led to a move to New England, and other opportunities: as an art teacher, as an ad rep and layout artist for a Vermont newspaper, as a designer with an ad agency in New Hampshire, and then as a free lancer.

        

The free lance thing really appealed to me. This despite the constant pressure of meeting client expectations and wondering where my next gig would come from. And it led to my including copy writing among my services. (Clients were paying me a lot of money to design beautiful layouts, but the copy they were handing me was quite poor—embarrassing really. I knew I could do better.)

With a young family to support, I was barely scratching out a living. And, as beautiful as those Southern Vermont environs were, my spirit just felt out of sync with them. So, when an opportunity came up to work for a top-notch New-York-based fundraising consulting firm—in their Minnesota office, no less—I jumped at the chance, and we moved to Minneapolis.

FIRST SHINGLE
For an interim job it turned out to be by far my most challenging and rewarding work to date. Armed with my still-evolving copy-writing skills and some good instincts for this type of work, I designed, wrote and produced high-end print materials to support multi-million-dollar capital and endowment fundraising campaigns—for the likes of the Cleveland Zoo, the Kansas City Philharmonic, the Indianapolis Museum of Art and the New York City Ballet company.

With that experience—and with those glitzy pieces done for impressive clients in my portfolio—I was able to return to free-lance work, continuing with the emphasis on fundraising.

I hung out my first shingle in 1980. At first, Willius Marketing Communications shared office/studio space in downtown Minneapolis with a small advertising agency. For the next 30 years, now in my own office/studio space, I proceeded to build a respectable client list of my own, comprising businesses, most of the private schools in the Twin Cities Metro (and a few beyond), several entities at the University of Minnesota, and a wide range of other non-profits.

            

           

      

REWARDS
Though I created many gorgeous brochures and coordinated suites of print materials, my favorite projects involved designing corporate and organizational identities—logos, slogans and the like. That, it seemed to me, was pure design and word-smithing—creativity distilled to its essence.

        

There was a very fulfilling back story to many of these assignments. In the course of researching a client, the tale they had to tell, and their positioning in their marketplace, I had to look for those characteristics—usually abstract features like character, spirit or some unique personal or historical narrative—which truly set them apart.

Occasionally, one of these efforts would result in the organization’s very first serious consideration of what and who it was. As a result, some developed statements of mission and values for the first time.

I continued on this professional path for the next three decades, earning a solid, though mostly low-profile, reputation in my field. I won some recognition, including awards from the American Institute of Graphic Arts, the Center for the Advancement and Support of Education and a couple of paper manufacturers, and inclusion in two “best of” design compendiums.

The greatest rewards of my career, though, were the long-lasting relationships forged with clients—the best kind. And, of course, the work, the deep satisfaction of creating something beautiful and compelling, something that helped people and organizations I believed in to be successful.

                                                      ~  //  ~  //  ~

So, Miss Berg, even though you’ve quite likely passed on to the great classroom in the sky, I want to thank you. You, along with my parents and a few others who could see my potential, set me on a path I’d follow happily for the rest of my life.

You caused me to see myself as you did when I was ten. And how very fortunate that I still do.