Put in Context

The other night I went to go hear Ross Robertson (editor for What Is Enlightenment? magazine) give a talk at the EnlightenNext Center about his article in the latest issue entitled: A Brighter Shade of Green: Rebooting Environmentalism for the Twenty-First Century. It was a good talk about the old guard environmentalists versus the new.

In his presentation, Ross talked a lot about Buckminster Fuller which made me think back to the Summer of Somehow …

Two and a half years ago I did the Luvviepuffaroo Re-Invention Tour (having successfully completed the Luvviepuffaroo Who's That Girl Tour but yet to conceive of the Luvviepuffaroo Confessions Tour). The Re-Invention Tour involved quitting my job and thumbing my nose at a career that I had stumbled into backwards which then grew faster than Audrey II, sucking up pretty much the same amount of blood. It was an ill conceived career in ... Finance. (insert vile retching sound here).

In a procedure that was much like a no-fault divorce (they called it a "Mutual Agreement Package") my management team, my Human Resources department and I all sat down and discussed terms, shook hands, and decided that after seven years we'd gotten all we could out of the partnership. "You go your way, we'll go ours, sign here". I signed. How easy it all was -- something I though could never be done.

I definitely lost a lot … stability, routine, my whole infrastructure of friends, a steady income, a feeling of security, a reason to shower in the morning. Having once laughed from behind my desk as I watched Odd Todd animations, I now envied how Todd at least was able to fit a walk into his grand daily plan. For the first 5 months, as I lived off my severance package (sorry ... Mutual Agreement Package) I never got much beyond getting out of bed and sitting on the couch.

And some of the things I gained weren't that useful: panic attacks, crazy mad computer game skills, a talent for reciting the entire TV lineup starting from the moment I tossed and turned and finally vaulted out of bed at 10:00 or 10:30 a.m. (The Maury Show -- Tyrell, you ARE the father!) all the way to Fear Factor at 2:00 a.m. Yes, I said Fear Factor. I can't even explain that one.

Though, in solidarity, I did cultivate a pretty large addiction to Starting Over (and ... I'll admit it ... Starting Over message boards).

However, I had two things going for me
1) a real desire to change my life and
2) Ookanuba, my love-her-like-a-sister-never-knew-a-day-without-her-in-
my-life friend who, despite being vastly different from me, was always eerily similar to me too.

I often said that Ookanuba and I had a relationship that was like the earth. On the outside shallow layer, The Crust, we had a lot of similarities. (Love for the Simpsons, Love/Hate for Madonna, passion for writing, quirky sense of humor, that born-in-Brooklyn toughness, an affinity for dropping the F-Bomb into casual conversation). The kind of thing that, if we met today at a party and had a conversation, would leave us saying, "Hey, that was one cool chick!"

Then, there was this whole layer, The Mantle, that didn't match up at all. Ookanuba can spend a week at Burning Man sleeping in the desert, decorating her boobs with a hand-sewn bra and peeing in a porta potty. Me ... not so much. I marked my first anniversary with Quibbit at The Four Seasons dressed in an impeccable black and white ensemble in matching 4 inch heels. Her ... not so much. Not saying I can't go without make up and she can't look exquisite. We can (and often do). We just gravitate more towards our own polarities. Basically it all falls under lifestyle choices. It's the stuff a lot of other people can't get past, especially in a new friendship. That whole layer contains all the deal-breakers for some. But I guess knowing someone your whole life makes you search deeper than these choices, till you get down to the core.

And it is down there, in our Core, where Ookanuba and I match up again. Because in the center of who we are we are exactly alike. Inquisitive. Always striving to find out WHY. Making sure we give ourselves (and each other) the bad news so that we can grow stronger and better. We create together. We bounce things off each other. We're each other's reality check. We're each other's best critic and loudest cheerleader.

So, while it's an amazing coincidence that Ookanuba was taking stock of her life that year at just the same time and had come to the same conclusion as me … it wasn't shocking. Just like the time we hadn't spoken for months and found that both of us were watching Madonna's Truth or Dare over and over and over again. That's just how we are. And so, it made sense that together we would create the Summer of Somehow.

The concept was simple: Empty your life completely. Then layer back in the things that are important to you. In between, allow for anything to happen, and believe that it all will work out – somehow.

This concept was based in part on a quote Ookanuba read to me from a Buckminster Fuller book -- where he explained that he found that when he gave fully of himself to others and found himself depleted and in most need of something, then … somehow … the thing he needed most came from the spot he least expected. An extraordinary and divine gift.

The Summer of Somehow yielded a lot … by Fall I was not only dating but completely in love with my Boo, Quibbit, who had literally (okay, figuratively) dropped out of the sky from the most unlikeliest of places. I'll write that story another time, because I want to do it justice and if I'm going to commit it to a spot for posterity it better be perfect. But even more amazing than finding this exquisite and perfect love, was to find this human being who understood what the Summer of Somehow, and the whole dang shebang that came after, really was all about. Someone who, in fact, had been practicing it in much the same way on his own long before he met me.

The Summer of Somehow didn't cure all, however, and lead quickly into what I called The Winter of "What now?" There were a lot of lulls, a lot of false starts and a lot of questioning why I wasn't just giving in. In all, the Summer of Somehow lasted 17 months ... and that's one heck of a summer.

So here's where everything dove tails …
Watching the Brighter Shade of Green presentation the other night I thought of that Buckminster Fuller quote (which I can't seem to find now), and I looked at the Fuller quote Ross Robinson had projected in front of me on the screen from I Seem to be a Verb, and I thought about all the passages in people's writing that gets quoted … and how all the words surrounding the brilliant quotes go unattributed, and yet they provide the context.

And I thought about the Winter of What Now, when nothing much was happening, but how, when I look back, it provided context for why my life is so great right now. The highs aren't high without the lows, eh?

And then I looked at my life right now (and by "right now" I mean this very month) which is filled with certain difficult situations that I don't want to list here, and these difficult situations are triggering entire paradigm shifts, Luvvie-digm shifts really, and how these difficult situations are overwhelming me, keeping me in a holding pattern, a mental dog paddle.

And how these things have been keeping me from creating and contributing, and how I can't write blog entries because of it, and then, in a flash, it just all made sense that right now I'm living the context, I'm living the pause. The ellipse. And soon enough (because there's always a "soon enough") there will be a shake up for better or for worse, but as mundane as all these "right now" days seem to be, there's no denying they're filling in the paragraphs between the quotes that I'll lift later and refer to. And that, my dear, is just as important.