The Revealing

In those few timeless seconds as we greeted
there was a recognition of each other
and a sweet embrace to open the moment

Nothing expected or hoped for

just a random meeting on a winter’s day
but

All this a prelude, a rhythm of paths where strings of

past, present, future, hearts, souls, and so much more
suddenly immersed themselves

Connections that have never been lost reconnected

forgotten memories that have never been forgotten remembered
universes come and gone all present at once

The instinctive and spontaneous collapse of disguises

for the revealing of a shining star and an entire galaxy
whose expression defies any depiction

These minds are not wired

to comprehend such a thing
or the eternity of such a flash

We wait and wait and wait

for moments like these in a life time
to be struck by lightning, or more

Be there it was

in the midst of the focused energy of a workday
despite the random energy of the retail sphere

The great poets have voices of these moments

with the grace, knowing, and spirit inspired in us all
even as they bow to their own flames

Grateful am I for the briefest encounter

that split atoms and revealed souls
as only another could

Software as Art

Alright, I might be stretching it a little to postulate that software can be art, but give me a chance …

I’ve had this idea in my head for a while that writing computer software is a form of art and deeply creative. Occasionally I have described what I’m about to write to a few people as well. I was reminded of this again while watching a video on www.code.org. In that video, which is encouraging young people to consider a career in software development, there are ideas and philosophies that I can align with.

So let me build an analogy. There are hundreds of languages in the world. Each language begins with an alphabet, a set of characters or symbols. Then these characters are combined into words which have a meaning. The compilation of all those meanings becomes a dictionary. Those words are grouped in types, such as nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc. To do anything with those words requires grammar, a set of rules on how words can be used together. All this learning and none of it has been used in any communication!

Then we take those words and use our minds and hearts to create something – sentences, paragraphs, Haiku, poetry, plays, books, short stories, epics, songs, and so on. Each one is a creative effort. Even the mere idea of composing a sentence such as this one requires a great deal of creativity since it’s likely a sentence rarely if ever repeated before. Of course some are more artistic than others, some touch us and resonate more than others. But that’s language and art all mixed together.

In software development there are also languages, dozens of them. Again each language has an alphabet, most often Latin. Then for each language the characters are combined into words which have a meaning within the software language, though the set of words is much smaller. Again those words are grouped into types such as conditional statements, mathematical, logical, and so on. Software languages also have a distinct grammar of how to put those words together. There is one piece that is highly unique about software and that is it allows those who write software to create new words or concepts by combining the prescribed words using the rules of the grammar for that language! That’s cool.

While spoken/written languages are primarily about communication, one of the essences of software is to solve a problem. It may be a superfluous problem like Angry Birds, or something specialized like the software for the Space Shuttle. For any problem there are thousands and thousands of ways to solve the problem, everyone would most likely solve it quite uniquely. It’s the same with spoken/written words – there are thousands and thousands of ways to express the same idea.

So software is about problem solving, not necessarily about logic as everyone presumes so quickly. Problem solving of this kind to me is just as creative as writing a poem or an epic story. How can the design be made elegant and efficient, and even beautiful? I know I’ve looked at code other people have written and admired what they’ve done; and I’ve seen spaghetti code that boggles my mind as well. Of course software is rarely seen at this level – it all gets compiled into programs that run on computer or phones which has no resemblance to the actual code that was written. To me there is beauty, and creativity, and art in software which unfortunately most people will never see, much less understand. Maybe I’ve turned your opinion just a little – ask me and I’ll show you my code sometime (can I use that as  pickup line;-).

Maybe we could take code and put it up on our refrigerators, or frame it and hang it on the walls of our house like any other art!

Proud to be a software artist.

Alive!

As I wrote the path for this piece, I thought of the shortcut word that’s often used in software developer for an exclamation point - bang.

Alive bang

In a recent conversation with a friend she offered the idea that what seemed vitally key to me was being and feeling alive. As she spoke I knew exactly what she was expressing about me. So let me explain …

It starts with the emotion or idea of happy or being happy. I read so many books and quotes that talk about the goal of life is to be happy. I hear so many people describe something similar, that they want to be happy. Now I don’t want to be unhappy or miserable or anything similar for long period of time, but I can’t remember ever saying that being happy was important to me. It’s not that I didn’t want to enjoy myself or experience happiness, but that has rarely been a goal. I don’t mean to say that happiness is not a worthy ideal or goal, but for me it’s not my thing.

Without the goal of being happy, I wasn’t entirely certain was I was seeking or hoping for, but it different from happiness, not more or less, just different. And still it’s been these even if I didn’t have words to express it. Alive is part of that. So is autotelic. And so is joy.

With joy I make a distinction from happiness. Happiness to me, as I’ve seen it is an experience or emotion that often arises because of something external. Perhaps it’s a person or an experience. Because of the external nature, often it can be fleeting; it comes and goes. It’s unlikely we will retain happiness with that kind of input, especially when so many other things happen in our life where we feel so many other things – pain, sadness, grief, ecstasy, anxiety, love. Most of these come and go as well.

But joy … in my experience of joy, joy is internal and spontaneous. It happens just because, for no specific reason. It bubbles up from nowhere and can last awhile or only a moment. For me it’s a delightful, energetic state of being that just happens – sometimes with a giggly kind of smile. I’ve also experience this kind of joy even in the midst of grief or frustration – it’s mixed in. It has an entirely different texture and quality from happy, one that satisfies and lights my body and soul in a more profound, deeper sense.

I’ve written about autotelic before - http://fiercewolfspeaks.blogspot.com/2012/03/autotelic.html. It’s about the idea of enjoying every as it is and the act of doing something is simply its own reward. For me that’s frequently the case. Of course I gravitate towards those things I tend to enjoy more, and still I enjoy what most would consider mundane such as washing dishes.

The idea of being alive or feeling alive encompasses so much for me. Joy is an aspect of it. Autotelic connects even deeper because it’s so prevalent. Alive goes even further – it’s about experiencing life fully, being in life completely as often as possible. Feeling each emotion as it happens. Appreciating sensations whether it’s smell, touch, taste, hearing, or seeing – or even intuition or other sense. It’s letting each moment be rich and simple and whole in itself. The moment might be a reflection on the past, or a hope for the future, a loving caress, or a new understanding of how to solve a problem at work, or a passionate kiss, or a keen insight into how two things relate, or how the keyboard feels as I type this. It doesn’t matter what it is – but being in life, of life, part of life – that’s thrilling beyond any happiness I can imagine or have experienced.

That’s life. That’s being and feeling alive. With a big bang!

Transitions

For those of you who’ve been to a yoga class, have you ever noticed some of the amazingly beautiful, graceful, gorgeous transitions some women artfully express as they move from one posture to the next? If I wasn’t doing the practice myself, I imagine I would just watch with awe and wonder.

There’s a part of me that wishes my transitions had a similar quality, and I’m fully aware that what I see and admire is not my style. So I awkwardly play around with my transitions, hoping to surrender to what might want to reveal itself. To this point, I’m not terribly satisfied  with the changes from my pose to the pose.

Recently I asked Kirsten Werner about this. I made the same comment about the transitions, and how can I, as a man, express a transition in my own way, in a more masculine way. I loved her answer. What she said was that transitions were just as much a form of posture as the postures themselves. That they have their own alignment, their own intention. Just as every posture has a prescribed form with many variations, every transition is similar, but rarely spoken about. So she encouraged me to approach the transitions with a similar mindset as I do with the asanas.

Around the same time as I spoke with Kirsten, I was given an ‘assignment’ from Sofia Diaz – to notice every transition for 24 hours. Notice my own energy, notice the energy of the new environment, and notice how they blend together. And I did it. It was amazing to notice how many transitions there really are, that we rarely think about. Even as we walk about our own home, we transition from a kitchen into a hallway through a doorway, into a bedroom and so on. The transitions are endless, even down to every breath, every blink, every footstep. It was a remarkable exercise to notice all that.

As I’ve ruminated on transitions and yoga, I also remembered something about some very core energies of the masculine and feminine. An essential feminine energy is flow, movement – which is exactly what transitions are in yoga. They are the yoga between the yoga asanas themselves. It’s no wonder women are so naturally expressive in that space. A fundamental masculine energy is stillness and groundedness – which is exactly what the yoga asanas themselves usually are. I am much more comfortable with a yoga practice that involves holding poses longer, and in the very rare times I’ve been in a yoga class with all men, that’s what we do a lot of.

With these ideas I’ve been bringing more of the awareness and surrender I often feel in a pose into the transitions themselves. To feel them completely, to notice how my body naturally moves, to listen to the changing energies with the movement.

One of my favorite ideas is the more I know, the less I know. I’m not sure if that’s a quote from somewhere, but it always resonates with me. Each nugget of information I learn reveals dozens or hundreds of nuggets attached to that one bit, especially since knowledge is as interconnected and relationship as people are. I had some idea that yoga it a spacious body of knowledge, wisdom, and practice – and yet each new morsel reveals so much more that’s available. So it is with transitions as well.

On to something new, again!

The Only One

As I’ve been to more yoga practices in the past three months, I’ve come upon a curious situation. In about a third of the classes I’ve gone to, I’m the only man present!

For my work with computers, it’s entirely the opposite. In the office I’m in, it’s more than 90% men. In fact most of my life at work has been like that. I’ve had the experience of being in environments that are mostly women, but it’s unusual. At one point for a year I was a manager with six women reporting to me, so I am familiar with some of the energies and dynamics – but with yoga it’s different.

There are many things striking me about the unusual nature of being the only man in a yoga practice.

For me, it’s been an opportunity to feel my own energy and being in relation to such a potent, focused feminine energy. As the solo-man thing has happened more and more, I am noticing different aspects. There’s the question of what is my energy right now. Another question of what do I want my energy to be. Then the feeling and question of what’s the energy in the room like. And how do I relate to that energy, or fit it the energy, or sit in that energy, or even bump up against that energy. It’s different every time.

I remember when this really started to become a curiosity for me, and then reflecting back on what I had naturally felt and done. The practice was a small one, 7 of us total including the teacher. I felt my energy as being good, but not deeply seated as it sometimes is. I began to wonder about how did I want it to feel and I sensed I wanted to bring forth more of my energy. As I started to do so, I could feel my energy bumping into and even somewhat being resisted by the energy from the women in the room. So I felt that energy and while it wasn’t forceful it had a beautiful, soft, comforting, and even deep, rhythm to it that didn’t want to be disturbed. Then I just melted into that energy and what a difference that made as the class flowed so well in that space.

I’ve also noticed that where I am physically with the room can make a difference as well. If I’m in or very near the middle, it’s much easier to be in a masculine type energy and hold the space with the feminine around me. If I’m on the edge, it’s easy for me to be on the edge – noticing the fuzzy boundaries and holding my place while not being pushed out of the container. Other areas feel more challenging as I’m not quick sure where to land between the center or the edge, and in some of those cases, as in the above class, I just melt in.

I notice when a man or masculine energy isn’t really expected or wanted. As if the class has a general tendency towards all women, and then unexpectedly a man is there. I also notice the opposite, when there’s a welcoming sense to having a man present.

It’s a bit like being a minority. I’ve been in foreign countries where being white is certainly a minority – Vietnam, Tanzania, Peru. I know I stand out, and yet I don’t recall feeling as much of a difference in those situations as I do in a yoga class as the only man. Maybe it’s the concentrated, engaged energy, maybe it’s the small space. Maybe I really do stand out that much.

It’s a space for me to play. To know my strengths and energies – and the differences. To know when I’m strong and can meet a roomful of women. To know when to be a graceful man in a field of feminine. When and how to hold a boundary or maybe resist, or to join what’s arising, or to contain and hold. It’s a fun exploration I’ll continue to play with as the only one!