When I was announcing to people in L.A. and environs that I was heading up to Portland, they’d invariably ask, “Why Portland?”

When I’d announce to people in Portland that for a big hunk of the time, I was actually going to be staying in Camas, they’d ask, “Why Camas?” Or sometimes, in the case of my car-free and/or bike-happy friends, “Where the hell is Camas?”

Camas is a tiny Washington town just across the Columbia River from Portland. It sprung up around an old mill that’s still in operation, albeit with far fewer employees (that’s automation for you) and a new name (ditto, conglomeration). It’s got a mid-sized city to one side and another tiny town to the other, and a whole lot of natural beauty every damned place you look. It’s also home to one of the most adorable small hotels it’s been my pleasure to stay in for some time.

The 100-year old Camas Hotel had fallen from grace when its present owners, Karen and Tom Hall, fell in love with her beautiful bones and decided to restore the rest of her. They went above and beyond, by all counts—I got the lowdown from the wife of the town’s retired GP, a 52-year resident of Camas who was treating her husband to a night in one of the Camas Hotel’s beautifully appointed rooms in honor of his 80th—or was it 85th?—birthday.

Didn’t get a chance to grill him on the history of the town or the hotel: he was out for his regular morning constitutional. (Note to self: time to reinstate the regular morning constitutional, and to add hills.) But everyone in the town whom I did speak to—and I spoke to pretty much everyone I ran into, as they’re a friendly lot—concurred: the new and improved Camas Hotel is every bit of both. I can personally vouch for the meticulously rebuilt bathrooms with their period-style mosaics and HOLY CRAP HOLY CRAP HOLY CRAP the beds! The beds. I slept the sleep of the dead every night, which was just what I needed to do for that week.

Once there, you’re a walk away from the awesome in any direction. I got a fine, $45 haircut at a nearby salon, plenty of good work time in at the gorgeous new Camas Library (which recently won an award for being the finest in the state) and had delicious Chinese food from the shop around the corner. There were at least three spa-type places, for them of you what indulges, plus a high-end pizza joint, a wine bar, several other tasty-looking restaurants, scads of cute shops and an old-fashioned post office that still smells good. Oh—and the corner diner, with its floor to ceiling windows on two sides (and they is some high ceilings, boy howdy), makes a fine borscht. So you know.

The time I didn’t spend in the above I spent at the world’s greatest coffee shop, Piccolo Paradiso. I dropped staggering amounts of money there, considering I mostly just indulged in the phenomenal Americanos. Pam, the owner, fell madly in love with Italy some 16 trips back, and Italian excellence pervades the joint: delicious pastries and tasty-looking snacks, fine wines from Italy (natch) and of course, that old Italian stand-by, free wifi! I also picked up several bottles of well-curated, locally-produced wine to give as gifts; my hosts thus far have let me sample and, um, I’m planning one last swing by there to pick up some more on my way up to Seattle today.

Should you make a trip up to Camas just to see Camas? Your call. If you are a lover of hikes in nature (or Pendleton jackets—factory is one town away!), possibly. But if you’re in Portland, or Portland-bound, or doing a Portland-to-Seattle tour, by all means treat yourself to a day and a night in town.

And tell Karen & Tom “hi!” from me…

xxx
c

To take away
subtract
remove
excavate

To open up
share
extend
love

To choose
with care

tend to
with patience

mind
with attention

To ask
each and every time
“Is this the truth?”

and to go back
and ask again
until it is

What will
you possess
apply to the enormous task
in front of you
every moment
of every day.

If you can do what is simple
the rest
is easy.

xxx
c

Image by Adrien Nier via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

When your head is down and you’re doing the work—and you must, if work is to get done, allot great swaths of head-down time—you will start to think you’re going nuts.

I’m not talking abut the hard-work times when you throw yourself into something to make it: the writing of the five-minute, 20-slide Ignite presentation, or the mad throwing of paint onto the canvas, or the endless and endlessly exhausting (but invigorating) hammering out of physical details during the mounting of a play (mount that sucka!) or what have you.

I’m talking about the in-between, unplugged, unmoored time Between Big Goals, where things are stewing and churning and sorting themselves out. The wandering in the desert years.

These are the times that try Type-A souls. The time between “clicks,” or getting It, or synthesis, for you Hegelian types. The mooshy, squooshy, ambiguous times where your only answer to “What’s new?” is “I dunno…not much…”, delivered with a rictus of a smile and a fervent wish for either the floor to open up beneath you or the Star Trek transporter to kick in and for the love of all that’s holy, get you the h-e-double-hockey-sticks outta there.

This is the part where four-year-old you is tempted to dig through the soft soil to reassure yourself the seed is, indeed, sprouting roots, or the seven-year-old you is tempted to pick at the scab or the 16-to-33-year-old you (assuming you’re female) is tempted to ask where this relationship is going, anyway.

It’s going. It’s stitching itself together. It’s growing and happening and doing all the stuff it’s supposed to, so leave it be and do something else. There are these things called books, and there is this practice I’ve heard tell of called “reading for pleasure” and this other practice of sleeping in between regular sleep times called napping and…well, lots of stuff. A unicorn, too, I think.

Sometimes you work-work, and sometimes there is burrowing. I will not lie to you—I am one of those who forgets, every damned time, about the burrowing, and fills time that could be spent “reading” or “napping” or “riding” my “unicorn” with worrying and gnashing of teeth and endless reorganization of files.

Please. Do as I say, not as I do: let your sub- and unconscious selves do their heavy lifting when it’s their turn.

And yes, this message comes at you from someone who is, I believe, coming out of burrowing and is being written by what I believe is a thin slant of light from the other side of what I can only characterize as the world’s longest, blackest tunnel.

Stay with me. Better yet, stay with you.

Stay the course…

xxx
c

Image by AndyRob via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

For the record, throwing yourself out there does not get easier. Because while you get more practiced at doing it, the hurling is still effortful and terrifying and completely unnatural in feeling.

On the other hand, not throwing yourself out there gets easier and easier each time you don’t do it. Or do do it. You know what I mean. (You will also note that I said “do-do.”)

Notice that neither one of these gets a qualifier of “better” or “worse.” They just are what they are: choice “a”, or choice “b”.

When it gets hard to make the call, try considering this:

You can do the thing that terrifies you and watch your world get a little bit bigger. Or you can do what you have done before and have your world shrink imperceptibly. As in, you will not notice it, whatever the size.

There are still no rewards for the former but the former. There are no consequences to the latter but the latter.

On Thursday night, I will get up in front of 800 or so strangers—and the few of you I do know are pretty strange, too, now I think of it—and tell the story of my bloody epiphany. In five minutes, with the aid of 20 slides which, god willing and the creek don’t rise, will advance automagically every 15 seconds. (They kinda-sorta did during the rehearsal, when they were there, only five seconds off.)

Am I not terrified? Of course I am. I would be a damned fool if I wasn’t at least a little bit nervous, and I am nobody’s fool, so yeah, I’m terrified.

So what?

SO WHAT?

If I do it, whether or not I do it well, my world gets a little bigger. And this is a choice I made seven years ago, when I decided to keep my colon, and 15 years ago, when I decided to quit advertising, and four years ago, when I decided to quit acting, and two years ago, when I decided to quit whatever the hell it was I did for five minutes after I quit acting only to have it not feel exactly right, even though there was no other ridge in sight. I want a bigger world for everyone, or at least the choice of a bigger world, or maybe even just the knowledge of the choice of the bigger world.

I talk about fear to drag it into the light, to help myself see what exactly it is that I’m dealing with. I thank you for being my witness. I hope that it provides something helpful by way of illumination for someone else, too…

xxx
c

Image by Pink Sherbet Phorotgraphy via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

Comparison, according to the Sufi tradition (by way of my friend, Mark Silver—I’m no Sufi, believe me), is of the Devil.

As someone who has long struggled with envy, I get at a deep, deep level how comparing oneself to others can be one’s ruination. What’s been rather more surprising to me is getting smacked upside the head by the evils of comparing myself to…myself.

A little past last year this time, I was freshly back from another trip up to this beautiful part of the country, also to clear my head and get a little distance from the day-to-day-ness of my woes. I came back invigorated and refreshed and full of new plans and new skills.

This year? Not so much.

My first week here was wonderful—don’t get me wrong. I caught up with my friend Chris (and met his wife, Jolie); hung out with my gal, Jean, partner at the place that makes one of my top five pieces of software for the Mac (and at a schmancy ladies’ party in the Pearl, no less); and finally met the aforementioned Mr. Silver (and his lovely wife, Holly, and their lovely boys) in person. I’m now happily ensconced in Bend for the next couple of days, visiting my friend, Sam, and his lovely wife, Linda, for Sam’s Work the System Boot Camp. Two days of systems stuff in one of the most beautiful corners of the world? That alone should be enough to thrill me to my toes.

And I am thrilled, don’t get me wrong. So much beauty! So many lovely wives! Plus tonight, there were meatballs—on a salad!

But because there was a benchmark trip, I keep comparing it to this one. This time last year, I’d had more revelations. My writing was better. I’d made bigger strides, both intellectually and emotionally. It was sunnier.

I thought of that last one today, as I drove onto the sunny, high-desert side of the Cascades, after white-knuckling it for a half-hour at the snowy top of the mountain. It was sunnier and warmer and more inviting everywhere I went last year. Because it was September? Or because it was last September, a whole year and change from this year?

Yes. No. Both. Doesn’t matter. I’m calling bullshit on myself. Pretty easy to tell other people to live in the moment; pretty hard, apparently, to take my own medicine.

On the other hand, there’s no learning like on-the-job learning…

xxx
c

Image by jfowler27 via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

Back on traveling holiday, with the cable TV access* that entails, I’m reminded again of what a vast wasteland the world of commercially-produced “entertainment” truly is.

In stark contrast to this lies the brave, new world of consumer-generated entertainment: all of the wonderful things people make on their own, fueled by love or passion or some combination thereof. The stuff you see on YouTube and Vimeo, Flickr and Twitter, blogs and podcasts and pretty much any other digital outlet available these days.**

What’s especially wonderful is watching the ancillary services and ideas popping up to support this space (you’ll pardon the hackneyed bizspeak) as it matures. YouTube has added revenue sharing as one way to encourage budding content producers, of course, but what is really thrilling to me is stuff like Kickstarter, a site helping people raise funds for their projects via crowdsourcing.

Put This On!, a delightful new show devoted to the idea that it’s time for men to get down with “dressing like grownups,” is one of those projects. Created by (full disclosure) my friend, Adam Lisagor (of You Look Nice Today fame) and Jesse Thorn (America’s Radio Sweetheart™ and star of PRI’s The Sound of Young America), the show and companion blog detail the details of men’s style that make it worth paying attention to. It’s charming and interesting and informative, which is pretty much the ding-ding-ding trifecta of my own personal entertainment criteria.

The writer-producer-sartorialists successfully raised the money for their pilot episode through Kickstarter by offering various treats for differing levels of commitment. Now they’re boldly moving forward and plotting their next six episodes, offering more goodies for the people who help them put this good stuff on the internets.

You can chip in anything from $3 to $1000 (and up, most certainly!), receiving anything from their hearty thanks to full producer credit for the entire season, plus an embroidered jumpsuit. I kicked in $200—enough to make myself realize I mean it, but just shy of a jumpsuit (that decluttering thing, or I’d be on it like white on rice).

Putting aside that they are both of them lovely and talented young gents, I’m supporting them in what is for me a financially significant way because I see it as my emphatic vote for the way I’d like things to be: excellent and fine, made with quality, attention and care by anyone who chooses to make them, not just folks with a golden ticket that gets them past the gates of Willy Wonka’s Magic Network. And no, I’m not saying that everything you’ll see via a major outlet is crap (although much of it is) and that there’s no value in a vetting process by smart people. There is; this is just another flavor of that, and equally viable.

At least, as someone with a number of creative projects I’d eventually like to bring to a broader audience, I’d like to think so.

Folks! We’re at the beginning of a bold and exciting, Wild-West kinda time. We can all help to make something beautiful together. Take a gander at the pilot Adam and Jesse made. If you like it, consider kicking in a few bucks. Or just enjoy the wonderful blog for now and pass along the word to a friend.

As Jesse said recently, the title is more appropriate than they perhaps knew when they came up with it: we really can put this on…

xxx
c

Photo © Dustin Roe of: (l to r) Jesse Thorn, Huell Howser (who LOVED the pilot!) and Adam Lisagor.

*Not to be confused with cable access TV, which is almost always entertaining in its own way.

**In no way do I mean to diminish the marvelousness that is actual, live creating—I single out digital because it can be enjoyed outside of one locus,

Some rest
some road
some work
some play

And in between
the waiting
and waiting
and waiting
and waiting.

You can’t yell at answers
to hurry up

Or you can
but they won’t.

They reveal themselves
in good time—
after rest
on the road
during work
before play—
but always
in their time

So rest
and walk
and work
and play
with no intention
but full attention

It will not speed your answers
but often
it pleases the gods
enough to throw in
a free gift
with purchase:

life, well-lived.

xxx
c

Image by nicolas nova via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

It’s been four days since I split from the ever-lovin’, everlasting sunshine of Southern California to the decidedly cloudier, grayer skies of Portland, and on this fourth day—which Nature chose to fill with uncharacteristic amounts of bright and cheery sunlight—I find my mood has shifted dramatically for the better.

Uh-oh.

I harbor these dreams, you see, of me, living elsewhere. Somewhere with a chill to it, and some weather. Somewhere I can wear one of my 14 light-to-medium-heavy jackets (accessorized with one of 25 complementary scarves and 10 or so pairs of leather gloves) every ding-dong day. Non-bikini, non-shorts, non-sunblock-wearing weather, where it is crisp all day, punctuated by an extra chill morning and night. Where politically incorrect fires can burn wastefully, beautifully in brick fireplaces, allowing more politically incorrect wastage of heat up the chimney than they emit from the hearth. Where soup and chili and roasty meats (again with the political incorrectness!) are perpetually on the menu, and the principal fruits and veggies are apple and winter, respectively.

Now I’m wondering whether I’m built for unrelieved gray or not.

When the one thought that punctuates the fog that wraps itself around you is “Damn, I feel low,” and it only squeaks through at around 3 or 4pm, when the bulk of the sad, sad day is trailing forlornly behind you, you might want to have another think about this relo thing. Yes, I feel instantly at home here in Portland—weirdly, eerily at home, almost in a deja-vu kinda way. Maybe, however, that is less of an awesome thing than once I thought. Maybe it’s better for me to be a somewhat uncomfortable stranger in a strange and sunny land than it is right at home in a place where my happiness baseline seems to float a good 15 inches in a downwardly direction. Maybe I am so unbelievably mundane that my naturally sunny disposition is not, in fact, natural at all, but like most folks’, a byproduct of extra light during the day.

I get the whole as-much-coffee-as-humanly-possible thing in a way that I did not last year, up in Seattle. And I think it is because last September and October while I was there, Seattle was uncharacteristically sunny. The misty rain and gray I found so noteworthy was, you’ll forgive the expression, a drop in the bucket compared to the usual fall weather. Dour skies call for more coffee—they just do.

Oh, well. Time and circumstances will tell. The BF and I have also toyed with the idea of relocating to a different yet equally grim climate, in a place far less fabulous in other regards than the naturally glorious and culturally significant PacNW. Part of getting away—much like peeling away and paring down—is making it easier to see what’s really there, like it or not.

“Liking” is almost beside the point…

xxx
c

Second, uh…off, I’d originally intended to do a screencast on Evernote, my favorite digital scoop-’em-up device, but then Evernote decided to take the site down for a little maintenance right as I was getting ready to roll, so I went with Google Reader instead. (Look for a doodly-wah on Evernote at a later date.)

While I do my my best to be entertaining as all get-out, those of you who are already web-savvy may want to skip this one. There’s a bit in there about some tricks I use to keep my GR nice and tidy; you can skip to the last third of the video for that portion, including a visual demo of the excellent Gina Trapani’s excellent Better GReader add-on for Firefox.

But if you only ever read this site by actually going to the site, or if you only read sites by subscribing via email, you’re in for a treat!

Here’s the video. Click on the button with the four arrows to make it BIG, baby:

Show me yer rig! (Google Reader edition) from communicatrix on Vimeo.

At some point, I’ll figure out how to actually edit these and make them slick and purdy. Until then (and even after), I’d be most grateful for your feedback. Too long? Too short? Features I’m blipping over?

Thanks!

xxx
c

BONUS TIP: from commenter Claire, to only show the blogs with updates, click on the downward arrow tab next to “Subscriptions” and select “Show Updated.” Nifty! Anyone else?

We have established that to a great extent, we see what we have put it in our minds to see. So it’s tricky, this saying “thus and such is happening more and more” where “thus” and/or “such” are not quantifiable, measurable things.

I will go out on a limb, though, and say this: in difficult times, there may or may not be a chance of more fabulous happening, but the likelihood rises that we will witness it. Is it because in difficult times, we are more raw, exposed nerves than myelin sheathing? Because there are fewer resources to devote to the kinds of super-shiny objects that grab at our attention in plush times? Because time seems to slow down? (I don’t know about you, but this is the longest short 10 months I’ve lived through in a looong time.)

So many, many good things seem to be coming from so many different directions right now—almost too many good books, good business ideas, good blogs, good you-name-its to enumerate: shows; podcasts; art; food. Throw a rock in L.A. and you will hit some phenomenal food truck (our track record with coffee is not there yet, alas). This year saw the introduction of a hall devoted to sausage and beer, an event devoted to architecture, sunsets and wine, a pop-up bistro devoted to that which could be handcrafted on a hotplate, a countertop convection oven and a jury-rigged smoker out back. Locally. Who the hell knows what’s up in your burg? And I’m not even what you’d call a “foodie.”

Where were these things when it was 1986 and I was dying slowly inside? I don’t know. No—literally, I don’t know. Maybe they were happening then, and I couldn’t find them. Maybe they weren’t, because we didn’t yet have the means of production.

Maybe, as Seth suggests, we are collectively at a point where the means are there and the need is there (i.e., the bar has been raised) yet the traditional path to monetization has been blown to kingdom come, so WTF—hoist that freak flag as far up the pole as it’ll go, and see what’s what. I’m really not sure.

What I do know is this: I was wealthy in dollars and the prospect of more and never did anything like this. I could buy my way into a lot more and never met people as exciting as these. I had health, youth and prospects and never lit out for parts semi-unknown for month-long or half-month-long sabbaticals with no “purpose” other than to clear my head, open my heart and maybe tell a story (for free, of course) to some fellow travelers.

These are crazy times, dear friend. Crazy and fabulous. If you have yet to cast off the shackles of “normal,” fat times, I offer you my somewhat rusty key (and an axe and bottle of whisky, should you have to free yourself the hard way) and say, “Have at it!”

Never a time of more, nor more intense fabulous.

Or, as we say around these here parts, “fabulosity”…

xxx
c

Image by wohlford via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.