Sloan Creative

I have this set to come up in my calendar to read once a month. I find it helpful and thought you might too.

To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not, rich; to listen to stars and birds, babes and sages, with open heart; to study hard; to think quietly, act frankly, talk gently, await occasions, hurry never; in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common–this is my symphony.

WILLIAM HENRY CHANNING

If you’d like to spend a bit of time with a bright, wise delight, watch Martin Marty’s conversation on his latest book with Bill Moyers

Click here to watch

I found his discussion of “Child-ness”, that openness to the wonders and joys of life, refreshing and enlightening. His book on the subject is The Mystery of the Child

Dennis Vogt, a good friend and a good mind, forwarded me this just a bit ago… a very interesting look at our linked world.

 http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.08/tech.html

 It reminded me of this great E. M. Forster story I re-read just the other night. 

http://brighton.ncsa.uiuc.edu/prajlich/forster.html

As it all gets so easy, so interesting… what might we be losing? 

What risks increase as systems become more complex?

What risks does The Machine lead us to discount or forget?

An interestng article on “Normal Accidents” here:

http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/sep06/4423

No time to muse further, I’m working hard on a local loosley coupled system; connecting farmers and local citizens to the land via the Trust for Working Landscapes

I tighten the tarp; Maxi stomps and rustles her bridal.
Cool morning, nice for driving.
Our eyes meet, welling, there’s far too much to say;
Just another turn of history’s wheel, I’ve left before, ahead of fevers and hot rebellions.

Today, harvest in, house ready for destruction, Anni and the girls safely ahead.
If I don’t turn and go now, the centuries of stories
And now Jóska’s embrace will hold me here forever,
Until my life hangs at the end of a red-eyed, young peasant’s barrel, or a revenge court’s decision that I am an enemy of the people.

I flick the reins, the horses strength creaks the leather, the tongue, the wagon,
Onto the road and turn east, facing the red masses over the Tisza river who are starting west this morning; killing this way for another day.

By noon, I’ll be turning west, toward the Duna, my first watery protector, and a future anywhere but here.

Today, I write, at my grandfather’s age that day, trying to unravel the darkly poetic forces driving his story and mine, knowing

“that the dead can live only with the exact intensity and quality of life imparted to them by the living.”*

Can the living live with anything but the exact intensity and quality of life imparted to them by the dead?

Today, I wonder.

In the first days of October 1944, as the Russian army approached, my grandfather Zoltan Bárczay packed what he could into a horse-drawn wagon and left the family farm in the Hernad Valley, family seat for the last 800 years. He had sent his wife and daughters ahead towards safety the day before.

*Quote from Joseph Conrad, Under Western Eyes

I have found, in any project that is important, but not urgent (meaning any project that really moves the action forward in a creative way rather than just being reactive) requires an almost brutal hacking out of time for its pursuit.

Mom is writing her memoirs, in a space I have hacked out for her.

We are encouraging her to keep writing in her own, quirky, exactingly-detailed way and she is worried about making it palatable to a general audience. Her writing style captures so much of her personality it would be unthinkable to wash HER out of the writing by watering it down.

Given that the time is precious (as all our time is) and she is unique in her experience and personality, I think a machete might be needed for both the time and the emotional space, the self-trust, to say what only she can say, exactly as she would naturally, whimsically, say it.

I was reminded of some lines in Emerson’s Self-Reliance:

• Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have always done so, and confided themselves childlike to the genius of their age, betraying their perception that the absolutely trustworthy was seated at their heart, working through their hands, predominating in all their being. And we are now men, and must accept in the highest mind the same transcendent destiny; and not minors and invalids in a protected corner, not cowards fleeing before a revolution, but guides, redeemers, and benefactors, obeying the Almighty effort, and advancing on Chaos and the Dark.
• Your goodness must have some edge to it, — else it is none. The doctrine of hatred must be preached as the counteraction of the doctrine of love when that pules and whines. I shun father and mother and wife and brother, when my genius calls me. I would write on the lintels of the door-post, Whim.

Maybe we are all more like Mom than we realize.Go forth, hack out a place for your Whim.

I came across this wonderful word in Nietzsche’s, On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life.

Quisquilia is Latin for “odds and ends”.

I set up a wiki for our family history project.

I invite viewers and any contributions. Eventually, we hope to create a print version from the information we collect here.

My friend Molly Gordon has found success by writing what is true for her and letting coaching clients who resonate with that find her on the web.

I’ve always come from a much more proactive and hands-on selling culture, but I’m dipping my toe into these waters.

Here are a few early attempts at writing on small business marketing topics.

“Permission to contradict, Sir!”

 Somehow, over the years, I’ve been acculturated to value consistency.

I was not conscious of it until last night when I was reading Emerson’s essay, “Self-Reliance”:

 ”A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.  With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do.  … To Be Great is to be misunderstood.”

Let the inconsistency and misunderstanding begin! 

Greatness of soul?  Well, history will decide.