My email box is all of a sudden full up.  I expected one or two comments of interest from my innocent suggestion of an in-person meeting.  From then to now there’ve been way more of you said you’d like to come than the event can hold.  From Australia, from Europe, from the USA and Canada.  Nobody from Russia, my guess because of travel and modesty about language skills.  For other-language family, by the way, we can have Google Translator on a big screen, if you’d like.  I’m holding a Russian spot open just in case.  Why: Because I remember flying on the west side of the “Iron Curtain” looking at Soviet aircraft on the east side, thinking we were closer friends that we were with many of our own countrymen.  This no matter the fact that we were expected to kill each other if our leaders said so.  I still feel that friendship, yet I’ve never met a Russian pilot in person.

This may whittle things down a bit, some new guidelines I just made up:

It’s for individuals only.  No children at the event, no spouses in the meeting but spouses OK there if they passionately want to attend.  The point of the gathering is to meet others of what we think is our strange little family, not children of family or spouses of family.

Part of the whether it’s for you may be this: If you’ve felt for most of your life as if you were dropped off on the wrong planet, if you sense everyone around you takes this place for real, they think the physical here is all there is in the universe and you’re the only one who thinks that’s crazy so everybody else thinks you’re crazy unless you shut up and pretend to be just like them and after a while you can’t do that any more, you’d rather be a hermit.  If that’s you and you think there’s a fair enough chance this meeting might connect you for a few hours with others of your own kind, that’s what it’s for.

Maybe it’ll work, maybe it won’t.  You’re willing to take that chance.

If it does work, though, this meet-ing, something we don’t quite know what will happen but we’ll know it when it does, then we can have other meetings just the same with others coming, or you’ll have them, as you’re already planning, so as not to have to cross oceans to meet.  You’ll announce it on the website and you’ll say children and spice are fine to come along if you want that.

Meanwhile I’m checking out venues nearby (I have at least one for sure that will work), considering a date for a two-day event (probably not a weekend no later than the end of October and almost for sure before that), reading emails of who wants to be here and why they’d like to come.  This scheduling will probably not be convenient for those with children in school, work schedules, and ceteras.  Easier schedules can happen later for other events, here and anywhere.

I’ll respond to those who’ve offered to come to this one.  My arbitrary judgment system will send them back an invitation or a maybe-next-time message.  It’s important to know the system, it’s not business, it’s personal: my reaction to what you write of who you are and why, and how you write it.  Add my own personal biases and you have a pure quirky arbiter at the helm.

I’m startled, did I say that, that there’s been such a sudden response?  Are you as impulsive as me?  Heaven help your loved ones!

I also get to be psychoanalyzed on the website, a service for which I ask, by writing as I do.  Usually that’s the job of book reviewers, verdicts kind and caustic, both.  Being analyzed here is more fun.

One piece of advice about Internet seminars, from a friend I’ve respected since we met in high school, one with major credentials in telecommunications:

Don’t Do It!! and a flood of reasons why not, no one of which I had considered. She shouted, “LANDMINE!” a second before I would have stepped on it. Thank you, K!

Another dearly respected heart put it clear and simple for me: “Let yourself see the event just as you most wish it would be: no tensions, no have-to’s. You know what it is, now imagine it clear and finished, and tell yourself exactly what it looks like, the meeting that would make you happiest.”

She was right.  I knew exactly what it is, and had buried it under a cloud of that-won’t-works and is-it-fairs and nobody-will-like-its.

Maybe nobody will. It’s my job to please me, it’s others’ job to please themselves.

Therefore:

What shall it be?
It’ll be a one- or two- or three-day event for a small group, up to 20 or 30 of this family. No hurry, time to talk and to listen, share the best answers each of us has found to the questions that move us all: Who am I, Why am I here and So What?

Let those questions come forward in this group of advanced souls (you define “advanced,” Penny), we’re gonna get some interesting answers.

Where shall it be?

On San Juan Island, northwest Washington State, USA, somewhere near the Roche Harbor airport so Puff and I can fly in.  I don’t know if there’s a comfortable place around there that would acommodate this many with a quiet place to meet and talk, but I imagine there is.  The San Juan Islands quadruple their population during the summer season, there’s got to be some place that’ll work.

Who shall come?

The first 20 or 30 (or 5 or 10) (or 2 or 3) (or 1) who write me a message to say they want to meet and why.  If I get 25 or 30 thousand messages, priority will go to those 20 or 30 who’ve been longest around the website, this past year.  If there’s a significant demand, we can do more.

What will it cost?

Nothing.  Well, it will cost your time and your travel and your lodging.  I’ll say how much it cost to rent the hall, and the cost of food beyond my simple panbread.  If you feel like defraying that, you can.

When shall it be?

Sooner than later, this first and maybe only time.

What are the requirements?

You’re required to be an advanced soul.  You’ll need to want to be there.  You’ll need to care about the nature of being, enjoy thinking and talking about it and what it means in daily life.  You’ll benefit most if you’ve read my books especially The Ferret Chronicles, also published as Curious Lives, the parts about the Courtesies and the values cherished in that world.  Since I’m most articulate in English, some knowledge of that language would be a help.  You’ll laugh at my French and Spanish, but I also speak Horse Latin and King Tut.  I can sound out Greek and Russian, though mostly without a clue of what the words mean.  I know one sentence of Mandarin, one of Danish, a few bits and pieces of German.  No Italian, disgraziatamente. (Besides Ciao and disgraziatamente.)

What else needs be known?

This is just me guessing, but I’d guess, if you had any doubts about the creativity or the problem-solving ability of our little world-family, you’ve just put those to rest.

I was up late last night, notes everywhere about my challenge…how more deeply interestingly to connect with these strange folks whose values so nearly match my own.

Here the raw notes, a bit fitful, between 1:00 and 4:00 am:

——-

Our lives are our own personal laboratory, discover wha we wish to learn about anything that catches our fancy.

It’s my website, I can say whatever I want to say.

I’ve done brilliant and done dumb, this lifetime.  Which is this?

Here are the requirements — read J, I, , RFS, HM, Ferrets,

Anybody can get up and leave any time.

No negative comments… “We’re not getting any younger,” I’m gone.

I write of meetings w/ family, but not use your name

Email first for introduction

Danger?  Yes

Have to be advanced soul

No money

Some of family are national treasures.  Do their countries even know they exist?

Maybe no one will do it

—————-

Some ideas I didn’t write, since I was sleepy and they were so good I was sure I’d remember them in the morning.  I wonder what they were…

Come this morning, a number of private emails from the website.  Uh-oh.  Three of them think this is my way of finding a mate.  Not shockingly untrue, but how explain what happens, when one’s been living alone for a few years?

By now, my list of mate-requirements stretches deep into the impossible.  She would have to have zero commitments elsewhere, no family, no job, no attachments to place, willing to change all, have all my quirks as her own (no alcohol, no cigarettes, no drugs, no medicine, no television, no parties, no nightlife, no negativity, no age; and have all my quirky positives as well: a passion for flying, sea and sky, wild plants, Shetland Sheepdogs, chess, fencing, Mark Twain, Ray Bradbury, original unexpected thought, had some personal contact with the Is, the Light, the One, a Near-Death experiencer, a match of my archetype of beauty, by the way; love languages speak or read several, be wildly articulate, with a delight and a passion to communicate what matters to her.

I remember when the list was shorter: please like me, be pretty, be smart, be kind to animals.

Times change, don’t they?

So my fascination for communication has shifted from the closest inner circle, a mate, to the next circle outward, a family.  Sound familiar?

A perfect setup for huge disappointment.  What if someone of this family, bright on every facet, turns turns to me: “And I really think we ought to bomb Iran!”

“You think WHAT??!”

Do I have any idea of what I’m messing around with, meeting family?

Truth to tell, no.  But I’m messing with it, anyway, making notes of your notes, and your many excellent ideas.

Love the suggestion, Jennifer, of hopping around the world to say hi.  But I won’t fly commercial air since the USA has become so terrified of “terrorists.”  I’m old-fashioned enough to enjoy being treated as a human being instead of as a madman stuffed with high explosive, so jetliners are out.  That leaves Puff for air travel, and I’m so happy flying locally that long-distance doesn’t call me.  So local it is.

The “no money” note means that.  I won’t pay anybody to visit, I won’t ask a visitor to pay me.  I’ll do An Evening with Richard Bach event, for an audience of a thousand or so, but I won’t set it up myself, and there’s not the demand for my talks that there was before I priced myself out of that business, fun though it may be.

One interesting thing: who would I talk to this way, who would I write to this odd intimate way, besides family?

The entire flight today took less than half an hour’s flying, a couple of landings on a quiet inland ocean.  Here’s one:

Then, because she’s an amphibian, she can choose to come back to civilization on a whim and her wheels, whenever we want.

What if:

you were me — that is, you’ve spent some years living as a mortal, going through the difficult times mortals bring upon themselves now and then and the glad rewarding times in between till they’ve all come together in a sort of coherent full-circle rainbow, and;

your choices have led you a wildly beautiful place to live, and;

you live there alone, yet you’ve discovered recently you’re one of a world-round family who shares your values and ideals no matter how strange they seem to others, and;

you’ve spent a while practicing certain principles about freedom and choice and respect for self and others, noticed the effects of doing that, and;

you much enjoy talking with and listening to others of your family, learning from their experience and sharing your own, loving their different accents and languages though you speak only English and Francais-faux and Espanol-falso, and;

you value your privacy and your pretend-reclusiveness, and;

you think it would be a pleasure to meet some of your family in person, for just a little while, long enough to say hello and prove they’re in fact what you imagine them to be through story-fragments they’ve shared in email and on the Internet, and;

your personal technology skills suggest it will be a while before you can figure out global videoconferencing, and;

you believe some sort of meeting would be fun, all low-key and informal, but maybe that isn’t a terribly practical idea so you haven’t much explored it even though you’ve thought it to death;

if you were me, what would you do about it?

Would you:

Offer large-group, small-group, individual meeting events not far from your home?

Get serious about technology and find a reliable webinar provider?

Stick with what’s working fairly well on the website and not ask for trouble?

If you did anything but the latter, would you charge for the meetings or would you pay people to come?  If so, how much would you charge, or how much would you pay?

Would you devise some sort of filter for those who would respond, ask why they’d choose the meeting, what they thought would be gained?

Would you suspect you’d regret making any such offer and turn pretend reclusiveness into the real thing?

Would you suspect you’d enjoy it far beyond your imaginations?

If you were me, having written this journal entry sort of in fun but probably more seriously than you know, would you have the courage to press the “Publish” key and then pretend you never did, run out of the house and go flying?

If you did find that courage, when you came back home this evening would you erase what you’d written and wish you’d done no such thing?

You can see I need help.

In the first one, it looks as if she’s flying about how fast, would you guess?  Hint: Most light aircraft cruise between 80 and 150 mph.  Other can fly slower and faster, but that’s about the  85% range.

Answer: Right around 80 mph.  She’s slower than most airplanes, but her natural habitat is over water, she doesn’t have to dodge microwave towers, avoid houses and barns and livestock, look out for high-tension lines.  So when she’s snuggled down a few feet above the surface, that slow 80 mph feels like she’s going like a bat.  (Although I haven’t clocked any bats, I think she’d keep up with most of ‘em.)

The second video’s the contrast.  We’re anchored off a little island (where a boat came by and chatted about SeaReys, as the skipper’s been researching and wants to build one), and the only sound save for our chatter was the lap of waves against Puff’s satin hull.

So there you have it: images from parts of my day moving in the world of appearances alongside parts of six and a half billion other subjective days.  It’s a big stage, seems like it, sometimes.

This is Dan alongside Jennifer in the water, waiting for Puff to make a low pass for photos:

This is one of the pictures he got:

and this, to explore an uninhabited island:

and this, same island.  That’s me waving, by her nose:

and to an airport (Puff likes this shot):

Days goin’ by fast!

Here she is watching a Cessna 185 on floats take off:

While she appreciates the Cessna is bigger, heavier, faster, can fly farther with more payload through weather, she still smiles, happy that she’s smaller, lighter, slower and can land anywhere.  When we left the fly-in she took off in 300 feet and was perhaps 400 feet higher in the air than the Cessna was in this photo.

Here’s a 1946 Luscombe, the same type that I washed and polished in exchange for my first flight lessons from Bob Keech:

Then we were off over the river:

And in it:

Tjhe water felt softer, and I realized that we’ve become so used to landing in salt water, that we notice floating a little deeper in the fresh.

A pretty, blessed, almost typical day’s flying.  Puff’s one happy little seaplane.

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/author-magazine/2012/07/24/author2author-with-richard-bach