San Francisco

Those city lights I watch; or, they watch me.

Each night they shine, and call us all to see;

Rising has been done, each day and each night,

I long to rise and join the distant light.

My warmth the winds must take as I depart,

            The miles and miles to travel ‘fore I start,

            A home awaits with love, laughter, good cheer;

            To me such things a dream can make appear.

            Who looks out th’ window of such a home,

            A blinking star in the night; as I roam,

            And search for life among the distant haze,

            Find there a pair of eyes to match my gaze.

With Love, Seven-Year-Old Self

At age seven, I unknowingly wrote a love letter to myself using only a few pieces of play money. I'll explain.

The other day I witnessed a 97-year-old woman and a 3-year-old boy enjoying the comfort of the same living room. Someone made a comment about the parallels between the very young and the very old ('seasoned' if you want to be polite) and I immediately recalled a poem I used to read and re-read of Shel Silverstein's. Earlier this evening I ventured about the house in hopes of stumbling upon my hardbound copy of A Light In The Attic. My eyes fell upon the title and I snatched the book with much excitement, knowing I would be flipping the pages as I did ages ago to search for that poem. A surprise awaited me.

Carefully tucked into three pages were three pieces of play money. (For the record, the play money consisted of only dollar bills--apparently I was a frugal 'pretend' business woman.) The three poems I had chosen to mark were the following:

'Cloony the Clown'

'The Little Boy and The Old Man'

'The Oak and The Rose'

'Cloony the Clown' is about a clown that just wasn't funny, but caused the whole world to finally break into laughter only after having explained to them his sad situation.
'The Little Boy and The Old Man' is the very poem I was looking for.
'The Oak and The Rose' is about a tree and a rose plant that were friends until the tree outgrew the rose. The rose is upset by the tree outgrowing it, only for the tree to explain it was really the rose's fault for remaining so small.

Looking back, I was a unique 7-year-old to say the least. These poems are by far of the saddest and most melancholy variety in the entire collection and yet, I was motivated to mark the pages for future enjoyment. Coming across this years and years later feels as if I came into direct contact with my self, only much younger. What did I come to discover? These poems are still by far my favorite.

THE LITTLE BOY AND THE OLD MAN

Said the little boy, "Sometimes I drop my spoon."
Said the little old man, "I do that too."
The little boy whispered, "I wet my pants."
"I do that too," laughed the little old man.
Said the little boy, "I often cry."
The old man nodded, "So do I."
"But worst of all," said the boy, "it seems
Grown-ups don't pay attention to me."
And he felt the warmth of a wrinkled old hand.
"I know what you mean," said the little old man.

Seth Godin's "The Places You Go"

Again, Seth Godin wins. 

Received this blog entry in my gmail inbox this morning and re-read it several times. Please read and enjoy.

"Over the weekend I visited one of my favorite places. It didn't matter that I hadn't been there in a while, or didn't know most of the people I encountered. The second I walked in, heard the noise, saw the walls... even the way it smelled... I was transported.

It’s incredible to think about--a room could magically change the way I felt. A physical room with the right memories can do this in just a heartbeat. So can a metaphorical one, even a brand.

The states of your emotions (your moods and passions) are like rooms in a house.

Anxiety, flow, joy, fear, exhaustion, connection, contemplation, emotional labor... each one can be visited at will if we choose. Sometimes by entering a real room, but more often in metaphor...

Do you have a friend you can have an intimate, tearful conversation with anytime you pick up the phone? Is there a topic that if you bring it up with your boss, it will quickly lead to contention? Is there a place or a memory that never fails to bring melancholy along with it?

Occasionally we encounter emotions at random. More often, we have no choice, because there’s something that needs to be done, or an event that impinges itself on us. But most often, we seek emotions out, find refuge in them, just as we walk into the living room or the den.

Stop for a second and reread that sentence, because it’s certainly controversial. I’m arguing that more often than not, we encounter fear or aggravation or delight because we seek it out, not because it’s thrust on us.

Why check your email every twenty minutes? It’s not because it needs checking. It’s because the checking puts us into a state we seek out. Why yell at the parking attendant with such gusto? Teaching him a lesson isn’t the point--no, in that moment, it’s what we want to do, it’s a room we choose to hang out in. It could be something as prosaic as getting involved in a flame war online every day, or checking your feeds at midnight or taking a shot or two before dinner. It’s not something you have to do, it’s something you choose to do, because going there takes your emotions to a place you’ve gotten used to, a place where you feel comfortable, even if it makes you unhappy.

There’s a metaphorical room I can go to where I’m likely to experience flow--a sense of being in the moment and getting an enormous amount done. Down the hall is the room where there’s a lot of anxiety about something I can’t change. I can visit that room if I choose, but I don’t. And yes, it’s a choice.

Great brands figure out how to supply a ‘room’ to anyone who chooses to visit. Soap opera fans, for example, can count on being put into a certain state anytime they tune in. The Apple store is carefully calibrated as an architectural and retail room that will change how you feel when you enter it. Chiat Day built offices in New York and LA that triggered huge waves of creativity. And there's nothing like the face of a kid eating a Hershey's bar...

YouTube isn't just video. It's a room. Not everyone uses it the same way, but most people use it the same way every time they use it. If it's the site people go to see stupid pet tricks and write stupider comments, then they know why they're going and it's going to be hard for it to become something else...

Is your brand providing the right room to the right people at the right time? Most products, most services--they provide a thing, a list of features, but not a room for my emotions.

This insight about our moods and your brand is all well and good, but it becomes essential once you realize that there are some rooms you’re spending way too much time in, that these choices are taking away from your productivity or your happiness.

Why are you going there again?

Every time you go to that room, you get unhappy, and so do we. Every time you go that room, you spend more time than you expected, and it stresses out the rest of your day. Every time you go to that room you short-circuit the gifts you give to the rest of the team.

Once your habit becomes an addiction, it’s time to question why you get up from a room that was productive and happy, a place you were engaged, and walk down the hall to a room that does no one any good (least of all, you). Tracking your day and your emotions is a first step, but it takes more than that. It takes the guts to break some ingrained habits, ones that the people around you might even be depending on."

Dylan

"You lose yourself, you reappear
You suddenly find you got nothing to fear
Alone you stand with nobody near
When a trembling distant voice, unclear
Startles your sleeping ears to hear
That somebody thinks they really found you"


-Robert Allen Zimmerman

Lights in the Distance

I believed this place I would leave

Lest my feet root in the ground

Yet I only settled upon different soil

No different from my old town.

Help! I'm on Yelp!

There has been a monster created, justsoyaknow.

Recent reviews by Monique V.

What's this?

I happen to be a fairly opinionated consumer and Yelp is tailored for my kin -- to "share our experiences" in hopes of benefiting potential customers of restaurants, hotels, spas, etc. However, this outlet also creates a monster in that it promotes me spending more time on the Internet writing and contributing to public forums. I have a Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn, Blogger (obviously), BRMC FanPage, Pandora, and now Yelp account. I've virtually abandoned MySpace (my About Me consists of "Remove Profile" in hopes one day the MySpace people will do away with my page) yet have continued joining social media sites. I can sit here and fuss about it all but the fact of the matter is--I love it.

June?

June.

The month passed and this blog remained bereft of an entry.

In commemoration of the ghostlike month, I decided to run the Google Test on "June" and pay homage to the very month I neglected.

A personal fave: June Carter Cash

Flaming June by Lord Frederick Leighton