Matthew Stillman's Blog

There are inscrutable positions that we find ourselves in. Rocks. Hard places. Swords of Damocles hanging over us…and then it falls.

There is this Shangri-La we hope to live in sans difficulties, sans sorrow with abundant happiness.

While I certainly agree with the Shakespeare quote:

“Nothing is either good nor bad, but thinking makes it so.”

That doesn’t mean things will be easy or happy for that matter. It doesn’t mean they won’t be either, though.

So where does that leave us?

Life is not for happiness. Nor is it for sorrow. Life is not meant for ease nor for struggle. But life has these things in them and to be present to them when they arise is to be alive and participating fully in the action of life.

In the artist section of Union Square there are a regular cast of characters who show up every day selling their wares. Many scrape a living out of it.

R is the estranged wife of one of these men. I have seen her around and she has said hello before and we have briefly chatted in the past but recently she sat down to talk. She took four wadded up dollar bills and opened them up and then folded them together before she sat down.

I insisted that she didn’t need to pay for anything until I did something. But she insisted.

R has been married to this man, the vendor, for a few years but three years ago she had a stroke which left her not able to work. She has been on disability since and has a small inheritance she uses to stay afloat. R speaks with that sort of a slushy lisp from the stroke and she apologizes for it in a very endearing way. After her stroke her husband started getting upset that she wouldn’t (but obviously couldn’t) do the things around the house any longer – laundry, cleaning, cooking.

He encouraged her to move in with her sister. She did that and he started seeing someone else very quickly.

She is staying married because her husband is a veteran and in three years she will start getting a pension. R says that the whole thing has been painful because all her friends know about this and she always feels embarrassed that she is staying in this relationship for a pension – which she would need but also because she knows how angry it makes her husband that she is going to get his pension. She said that it is very strange for a Jewish girl to have found solace in Jesus but she said that her Judaism and Jesus have together given her much solace.

But she asked me…

“What do you think I should do?”

What do you say? This story is crazy and terrible and R is totally sympathetic. I asked her if she had ever considered connecting with a new circle of friends who didn’t know her husband. Maybe connecting over shared interests?

R said that she hadn’t made new friends in years.

“I have a routine. I talk to who I talk to and I go where I always go.”

And I could feel the grooves that she had worn into the sidewalks from her apartment to her various destinations.

I asked her about movies or a ceramics class or playing an instrument. Something that interested her where she might meet other people. Here I was just listening to this woman. I think that she valued just that alone – the listening, the asking. She smiled in a reminiscent way and said

“Do you know that I have always wanted to be in play? It doesn’t have to big or on Broadway or anything like that. But plays have weird people in them sometimes and I am a weird person.”

I said that I didn’t know of any plays she could be in but I asked her what she thought about taking an acting class and seeing who she met. She might make new friends. She moved from her slumped position to the front of the seat and wondered aloud

“That could be really fun, right?”

I wrote down a few names of acting schools and I told her to do some research before she spent any money and to talk to someone at the school to see their thoughts.

“Should I look on the computer first?”

That seemed like a good idea and then actually visit the schools and find out about an eight week course or something else.

R sweetly thanked me by kissing my hands and left the table with the same words that many arrive in New York saying:

“Maybe I can be an actor.”

This whole talk was beautiful and heartbreaking. As sweet and genuine as R is she is equal parts an odd duck to be sure.  I wonder how she will fare in her search. I felt like I couldn’t do much for R except listen and offer what I could where I could but sometimes that is enough.

The difficulty that R was experiencing wasn’t assuaged by our talk. But just listening to what she had to say and both of us being present to it allowed for a new door to open up that may start to change her day to day experience. It won’t necessarily change her difficult situation but it may allow for her situation not to be the overriding thing in her life.

In permaculture philosophy it is said that if your garden seemingly has too many snails and slugs your problem is not a snail/slug surplus but a duck deficiency (ducks eat snails and slugs).

All too often we try to eliminate the slugs and snails of our day to day lives rather than putting something in place that can keep  the slugs and snails in balance.

Perhaps an acting class might be the duck to R’s snails. What struggles are you simply present for? What might be the duck you would add so that you have just enough snails?

If you think a conversation or a creative approach like this could be of use to you where you are now, please book a session with me today.

The post Snail Surplus? Might be Duck Deficiency: On being present to difficulties. Sometimes I just listen. appeared first on Stillman Says.

K came to the table and asked

Okay, do you have some time?

Indeed I did. KD told me he was an artist with a project that had stalled. The work was autobiographical in nature. I asked him to tell me about it.

K used to work as a caricaturist in the library of a major, major, majorly major animation company.

So, I can’t tell you what the animation company is but I can tell you that I was really good at my job. But the work environment is so, so crazy racist. It is from another era. Another age.

“The 50′s?” I asked.

but K corrected me

Nope. The 30′s!

K is black and pleasantly and artistically nerdycool. He said that he was targeted for unusual number of harassing reviews by his superiors. Because he was black and his colleagues were racist he didn’t have friends at work but complaints were lodged about him scurrilously about the way he acted at after work events with co-workers – which he never went to…because his co-workers were racist. He also hilariously said that many of his co-workers had been at the company for such a long time that some of them started to look like the characters they drew! Some of K’s tormentors looked like The Country Bears!

Anyway K got let go. He filed suit for wrongful termination and harrassment. It turned into a big thing with settlements and all sorts of legal drama that drove him to New York to seek a new career.

K tells this story with some flair. While all of us use hand gestures to tell stories K had some really wonderful devices. He would tug his ear when mentioning “listen to this” and while you and I might move an index finger from left to right while signifying movement… K made upward circling spirals. He intermittently popped his hands into little shapes that almost seemed like what you would make shadow puppets out of. It was not distracting but just wonderful and very unique.

Anyway, K has moved on professionally in many ways but he still found the experience at this big animation company to be very telling and funny and interesting.

I want to make a book out of this experience somehow. I can see the all the pictures – everyone of them! I have even drawn many of theme. But I am an artist. I do pictures. Words aren’t my thing.

I ask if he has part of his portfolio with him and he showed me really amazing stylized pencil sketches. They have a sort of oldtimey Western flavor to them but still feel very modern. They are very stylish and clearly the guy can draw.

How do I write a book about this story of mine when I don’t write?

I responded.

K, your images are so cool and arresting all to their own. Do you need words at all? Why do you think you need them? There are plenty of graphic novels that are brilliant but wordless.

K reveals that he has never read a comic book or a graphic novel – familiar with the form, of course…but never read one.

The names of three wordless books that tell complex stories were on the tip of my tongue but not coming…but I promised K that I would email them to him by the end of the day and that seeing them he would get moved. The image alone,in its wordlessness, can invoke some of our most powerful emotions.

But I told him about his hand gestures and how unique they were and that he had to use them as transitions from panel to panel in his book – he had to figure out how to translate his spirals and shadow puppets onto the page to lead the eye from point A to point B. K was getting excited because he started to see images getting strung together in a new way.

I insisted to him that he didn’t need to know exactly where he was going with the book but just to start – bring one brick, not the whole house…and see what he can build.

K was psyched. Later that evening I found the names of the books which I highly reccomend…

The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selzick

The Arrival by Shaun Tan

The Mysteries of Harris Burdick by Chris Allsburgh

A week later K stopped by and told me that he had looked at all the books I mentioned and was feeling totally inspired and that his drawings were flying out and he was excited to see where it would go.

A week after that K stopped by again to say that the bricks were being turned into a different house! While he is still working on the book the fact that he was working on it had him showing the work around and telling the story and he is now working with people who want to turn his story into a puppet musical based on his drawing style!

Amazing? So do you have any wordless books you reccomend? And why is it that sometimes words get in the way?

Do you need a creative approach to something you are stuck with in your life? email me at m@stillmansays dot com and set up a session.

I am always grateful when someone as lovely as K comes to the table. She exuded a simple joyous quality coupled with a fine air of stillness that radiated from her in equal measure. Soft spoken but clear and easy to talk to. The sort  that you just start talking, assuming that you have already been friends for some time.

In her admiration of my project she revealed what she needed a creative  approach to.

I love your table and have been thinking about doing something similar called ‘public listening.’ What do you think of it and what could I do with it?

Hearing a woman of this depth say those two words – public listener – I could just see her out there being an amazing resource. My experience of putting myself out there with chairs and a table interacting with the public as a service/experiment/art project/exploration of something I am good at has been a total joy. Profoundly rewarding and deeply nourishing for me and others.

As my mind telescoped into the future I could see moments of the same for K. But as I looked into the sweet face of K the one twist to the project popped into mind that somehow fit with K.

This is brilliant. What if you actually just listen only? You don’t speak. You just have a pad of paper to say anything if you need to say anything. Just receive. That could be a service unlike any other  particularly because of the depth of your presence and attention.

As I said this K broke into real tears of relief.

Yes! Thank you for saying that. I’m a professional singer. I love singing but need to do it all day. Sing songs. Sing commercials. At night I sing at bars and shows.  I am almost at a point where I need a break from hearing myself. I didnt realize that this project could save me and give me space too. How could you have known this about me?

I understood why she was crying. The realizing that our own ideas often have the keys to our own freedom. To what we need most. I saw the unspoken silence in K and called it out. Her silence spoke back. We lovingly embraced goodbye like new old friends.

Sometimes it is just that simple out there in Union Square.

J, a good looking young guy with hair in a gussied up version of bedhead wanders up to the table. He is friendly but seemed distracted. He started by telling me that he is in the park today mainly to play speed chess. But what is pressing on him more heavily are his dinner plans.

J’s father died less than a week ago. He makes a joke about it but it didn’t have any heart in it and wasn’t really funny. J ,of his quip, says

this is what my family does – we mock pain.

Nonetheless he goes on with his explanation of his current situation.

Two different friends have asked me over to dinner tonight. They both want to check in on how I am doing in the wake of the death of my dad.

Then J says heavily…

I feel like I have an obligation to go.

J feels that heavy obligation to go to one or the other for two compelling reasons.

1) both are close friends and each friend has a relative with them who were dear friends with his father and;

2) he is busted. totally broke and has only eaten ice pops for the last two or three days (both shock and poverty are at play) and he would like to have a real meal.

He says the choice is really arbitrary but for some reason he is struggling with it and asks for a creative approach…

Where should I have dinner?

The noiseless and patient space of death rested there between us for a long moment.

After offering my sympathies I asked him

Is going to dinner feeling like choosing between the least amount of pain?

J assented to that fair assessment but that one had to be chosen due to the constraints mentioned.

Are you grateful for the offers from these friends?

Without hesitation  J expressed his gratitude but on the heels of that was the gnawing sense of obligation. I wanted to return to his desire to play chess and explore if something might be there for him that was yet unexplored.

I mentioned that I was, at best, a poor chess player but decent at Reversi/Othello. They don’t have too much in common in terms of strategy but that both games reveal hidden lines of force that start to reveal themselves when you get past the first few moves. Moves emerge along them or in opposition to them. The intelligent player knows how to move with these lines and perhaps move those lines to your advantage for strong play.

J was nodding with me.

If you know where these lines are you can make appropriate sacrifices of pieces for seeming short term loss but actually serve the longer game.

J knew I was going somewhere with this direction but my strategy was just opening up and starting to make a way forward.

So what if the lines of force in the situation in the chess game of your life today pointed towards not going to either dinner? Why choose between two pains? Why move in a way that will sacrifice pawns or bishops or knights for no good reason? If you are grateful for the invitations – tell them so but say that it is too soon. They, being friends will understand. Play a longer game.

Grief can fog reason and obscure vision and amazingly J said that he actually hadn’t even considered not going but saw the chess analogy making sense to him. He was totally relieved, almost confessing, saying that he does actually just need a walk, some space and to play some chess more than talking with well intentioned friends. So we had cracked open a real need of his – to be alone in his disorientation and his grief and let his love for his father be known in that way at this point.

But dinner still called.

He told me where he lived and suddenly it was easy. I told him where a Fujianese restaurant was at the corner of Eldridge and Grand where he could get a huge meal for $3…after calling his friends he could take a walk there for dinner, walk back and play chess all night. This was total relief. He had three bucks. He liked Chinese. The whole thing had changed now. He was playing longer and seeing the lines of force that served him more deeply.

We talked a bit more about his dad and how his mom is relieved that the suffering is over.

He thanked me and he and I shook hands in that way that guys sometimes do when a handshake actually stands for crying while being hugged.

The chess board is an interesting space. Though it is called the King’s Game and is commonly thought of as a war game, it has 28 boxes on the perimeter making it aligned with the moon. The most powerful piece on it is a woman – the queen. And in the same way that the moon is regulator of tides and impacts our lives in very tangible ways the chessboard, this feminine field, became the space that J found himself able to submit to grief and not fall victim to a binary choice. He was able to find a mysterious third.

Look for the mysterious third in feminine spaces. Tremendous things can open there.

If you think a conversation or a creative approach like this could be of use to you where you are now…

please book a session with me today.

If you don’t live in New York City it is unlikely that you know about the Black Hebrew Israelites. 

Though there is a long and interesting history of the intersection of African Americans and Jewish culture in New York City, there is one group with amazing uniforms that is both vocal and incredibly racist, who preach loudly and belligerently on the streets of Harlem and Times Square about their understanding of the Old Testament and how Jews are devilish impostors. They openly condemn whites as evil personified – deserving only death or slavery. Additionally, part of their theology is how various peoples from Central and South America and the Caribbean are actually the original tribes of Israel.

I’ve seen them for years.

I’ve been shouted down as a “so-called Jew” white devil who kills black people for fun and who has built my home on the bones of black children by these guys more than once.

Charming.

———————————

When W came to the table, he sat down and reported that that he had recently left his religion entirely. He was 20 years old and a former Black Israelite. He quit two weeks before he sat down with me and said that though he was raised in the religion, the racism and hatred finally became too much, so he quit and is now questioning everything he thought he knew.

He doesn’t miss it.

So how can I be of service to you? What do you need a creative approach towards?

This sweet and spiritually longing young man took off his baseball cap and plainly stated,

I am now not sure how to live my life and by which principles to follow, now that I can’t trust the ones I was given.

A stranger on the street asking another stranger how to live his life? What philosophy should he take up or follow now that he has shed his?

No small question and no small responsibility.

I didn’t speak it but what came to mind immediately was the story of a counsel that Gandhi offered to a Hindu man.

[indicates boy’s height]


[indicates same height]

: Only be sure that he is a Muslim and that you raise him as one.

It is a beautiful story. I was inspired by its counter intuition. How can the Hindu raise a devout Muslim son?

He must.

And so the direction was the same. Go where you have just closed the door. Looking W in the eye I asked,

I know why you left them. What was the greatest gift and lesson that the Black Israelites gave you that you could still say was true?

W was startled by the question. His open face suddenly darkened as he buzzed through memories. After coming up with a few starts of sentences he finally came through with a pause and then,

I learned how to be with someone and know if you can trust them.

I knew what he meant.

Even if the lesson was used in a skewed way the lesson itself can be accurate. I told W that this is the gift that he must be grateful for and must not ignore. He can refine and elevate the gift but he must not forget to honor where he received it and where they received it from. That his lineage of trust went all the way back.

W appreciated this. He was heartened and said so. It soothed the sting of the break up a bit. But the issue still wasn’t settled – how to live his life? Gratitude for trusting wasn’t enough.

It would have been so easy to espouse the merits of Zen or Advaita Vedanta or Marcus Aurelius or Hermes Trismigestus or any philosopher. This man had been under a harsh and controlling discipline. He was full of newness. But Emily Dickinson came to meet him instead. He had never heard of the Belle of Amherst. But I told him that she was a superior American poet who wrote poetry without fail every day. It was her unflinching passion. A quote of hers seemed to meet the moment:

Why must the ecstatic be pushed to the margins?

Poetry was her ecstasy. But she is right.

That which makes us feel transcendent does indeed get pushed aside.

W smiled at the permission that Emily cracked open. I told W that we know of no reason that pandas do handstands but they do them all the time. Perhaps they just do them for the joy of it. So I asked W what was his ecstasy that he could always count on?

W and I were now open and friends. When you ask a 20 year old guy what his ecstasy was it was not a surprise that his first slightly embarrassed (but not really) answer was,

Pussy, dude.

We both laughed but I said that required someone else. His ecstasy had to be self-contained. He gazed up and to the left as if the answer resided a yard above his head and came with a second answer,

Basketball.

But what about basketball? What moment is ecstatic? What moment to you feel free?

W said that he loved the game and every moment was fun and exciting.

“But when do you feel ecstatic? When does that freedom take over?”

I was pushing for him to be precise with his experience and see what opened up there.

It was like tugging at a secret that he longed to tell until it popped out.

In a jumpshot. When I am almost at the highest point and I have beaten my defender and he is below or on the side of me and then I am at the top of my jump and I know the ball is going to go in. Man, I play for that moment.

Who wouldn’t? How beautiful. When he spoke it, it was true for me too. And I never was much of a basketball player or fan.

I asked him if he had other ecstasies. Now that the gate was open he went right for it. He pulled out a pad of paper and showed me his drawings. W said the final stroke of a drawing when he knows the drawing is done is an amazing moment for him.

“It seems,” I told W, “that you have a way forward. Follow those ecstatic moments and see what philosophy that leads you towards. There may be a whole different life to live – let alone a way to live it. And while you are at it maybe read some Emily Dickinson.”

W put his hat back on and shook my hand and said,

Thank you so much. I never would have thought of this. I am really happy to know it now.

He handshake/chest-bumped/half hugged me and was off.

I was overjoyed at being available for him.

——————————-

What is the ecstasy that you have been pushing to the margins?

Take a walk baby, we’re going to talk some business.

K clearly knew what he wanted. He strode up with his girlfriend and asked no questions as he sat down and sent her away with the proclamation.

She took a walk and K introduced himself and told me about his relatively new business that he needed a creative approach towards. Ten seconds in and we were  suddenly at the races.

Here’s what’s going on, dude. The last two years I’ve been developing and coding software from scratch designed to help small colleges. Mostly the ones that teach medical technician skills to do background checks. Dude, I thought this would be simple but there have been lots of complexities and laws that I’ve had to accommodate for in the final product.

K has made very little money in the last two years because of his focus on the project and now that it is ready, and in his mind a great product, he is ready “to get paid” but – lo, and behold, the economy sucks and colleges aren’t buying new services like they were five or six years ago. He has a few little schools in the South but nothing more.

So his question was

How can I get my useful and needed product/service out there in this economic climate?

I had to say, it was a good idea. At least I liked it and I liked his industriousness and focus and told K so. I asked him

What is the Harvard of medical technician schools?

He had no idea.

Do he have any sense of what the Ivy League equivalent schools are in the field?

He didn’t.

But he asked why that was important. He justified that he can make his money on the margins.

I asked if he was making money on the margins – as he said, he wasn’t.

So I offered to him the idea of finding out what those schools are. Or what those schools are in a particular region or state. Then he should call them, find the right person to talk to and give away his product for a two year term (or whatever).

He was seriously taken aback and stood up.

Give it away? Dude, I need to get paid right about now! Ain’t no way I’m giving my shit out for free!

Indeed it was true but I reasoned with him that he had gone years with basically making no money he could go a bit longer.

I continued by asking him if he was confident about convincing a school of the value of his product and if price was off the table was he confident about them taking the service.

And he was totally confident about his skills and the value.

We went further down this road…if he could get the medtech version of Harvard then he could tell other schools that the med tech version of Harvard uses his product.

He quickly saw the marketing potential by giving his product away for some period to him most visible and potentially valuable customer and said

I am going to do this shit starting today! That is a damn good creative approach. I never would have thought of that.

His girlfriend wandered up and he said

Girl, you better talk to this motherfucker he can look at your shit in a different way.

A great endorsement indeed, but she declined as K dropped $20 into my jar and took my card.

Though this is a classical textbook approach to marketing it actually points in a subtler direction.

The principle is

Give what you think you lack.

In K’s case he thought he lacked business opportunities. So considering giving a business opportunitiy seems like an anathema.

But if you think you lack time…give it.

You lack love? Give it.

You lack good company? Give it.

Lacking money? Give value.

In the act of giving we find that we have what we seek and in this way we can cultivate a bit of stillness in our turbulent hearts.

What do you need to be giving away?

 

In the late afternoon a tall blonde woman came up to the table. She was perhaps in her early 60′s. Quite striking looking and, if I had to guess, had Parkinson’s Disease. Perhaps it was something else but she tremored and had that somewhat palsied face. If you could see her you’d know that she was very, very beautiful when she was younger and not burdened with Parkinson’s or whatever she had.

But I didn’t ask. How can you really?

She came up with a friend who just stood and watched our interaction the whole time.

She introduced her name as R and asked

How do I keep my brain sharp?

I asked her if she was worried about her brain function – I wasn’t trying to be ignorant of her likely condition – I was just asking, you never know what an intention might be.

She replied that it was simply something she was concerned about. And that was fair enough. Prying isn’t required.

Starting off we chatted about how we are literate, pattern seeking creatures here in the west. We tend to find ways of doing things well and repeat those sequences. That approach essentially creates grooves in the brain – or neural pathways if you want to be fancy about it.

The brain is quite plastic and so to keep the brain supple and in top shape it is important to break patterns and recruit other parts of the brain to do the jobs at hand.

Here is a laundry list of what came out with her as she sat there – interested and engaged:

Do the things normally done with her right hand  with her left.
When walking to common locations to take alternate routes.
Find the key to the front door of your home by touch and then open the door with closed eyes.
See things you don’t normally see – museums, locations, people etc
Get all multiple senses stimulated at the same time.
Smell things and try to guess what they are.
Write the alphabet on your hand with your tongue.

Basically radically break up the schedules and patterns of your life and do fun things that challenge you in lots of ways. She appreciated all this and smiled at the funness and silliness of some of the suggestions.

But I offered one other exercise that we could try in person together.

And she said she was game to try.

We have tremendous processing power in our brains but we often focus it through our language processing parts. But we can actually process quite a lot conversationally through other means. Gibberish conversations can be quite fun but we are going to have a conversation with numbers.

This is an improv game where the two players (though it could be more) have a conversation using sequential numbers instead of words until an agreed upon end number 7, 17, 48, 103 or whatever. So the first person says “1″ and the second says “2″ and next line from the first person is “3″.

Then the conversation goes on. But the trick is to imbue your number with emotional context, with gesture, with meaning. If done correctly everyone knows exactly what is happening despite the lack of words that convey any meaning. For a brain trying to keep sharp it is a dream – processing numerous things at the same time, disassociating words from meaning and reapplying them elsewhere, working outside the lingual network.

After describing the game and saying that we were going to have a conversation to 20 she planted into her seat.

I stood up from my chair and took a good look at her.

She had suddenly gone from relaxed to a little demure. Her legs tightened together and she looked over her left shoulder with the faintest hint of coyness. From that I took my cue.

I reached out my right hand onto her thin black shearling coat and leaned into her with a Lotharic, slightly pleading…

One.

She adjusted herself and looked right at me with a playfully prudish…

Two

Slightly rebuffed, I backed off but upped the desiring intensity trying a new tact, a new rationale…

Three

She quickly retorted, cutting me off but still leaving the door open by smiling and showing how she liked the pursuit…

Four

That open door was all I needed and I softened, sweetened and moved my arm around her and spoke a gentle

Five

While pianoing her arm down to the inside of her wrist.

R got bashful but turned the corner and started to be convinced by my longing feeling into our moment

Six

My pleading was now teasing and promising all sorts of things as I hushed

Seven

R smiled and said

I don’t think that we need to go all the way to 20.

Hot!

We both laughed and R’s companion smiled broadly.

It was brilliant and fun. We both knew who we were, what was happening and we were shockingly in the present with each other. There we were – young lovers on a porch late at night trying to come up with reasons to stay up and fool around and the girl happy to be convinced and not trying very hard to ignore the affections of her young lover.

R thanked me for every thing and R’s companion said “Very good Matthew. Very good indeed.”

She put money into my jar and took a card as did her companion.

But there was one more thing.

As R stood up she looked at me with the beginnings of tears in her eyes. Moved, she spoke

I have not been looked at like you just looked at me for years. To be wanted like that and hungered for. Pursued! Suddenly I feel really so very beautiful. I didn’t even know how much I missed it or wanted it. But now that I have it it’s even more than beautiful, I feel light and tingly and very much myself!

And she placed both her hands on my cheeks and slowly kissed me. It was lip to lip, mouth to mouth. There was no danger of turning into a full makeout session but our lips touched fully enough so that that beautiful slight spread happens so that you sense the space and wetness behind.

I have been lucky to have had many kisses in my life but this one ranks way up there for authenticity and suprise. I was touched by it and by R very very much.

R’s companion was walking by the opposite direction perhaps an hour later or so and we chatted more. He stayed and watched another interaction I had and we have been chatting since. Ends up that he is a psychotherapist and he appreciated my method.

Often at the table we can find things we didn’t even know we were looking for that might even be more important than the thing that brought you to the table in the first place.

Freud said that it is the repressed erotic spirit in humankind that allows us to create civilization…but there is a price to pay for that.

Hopefully R became a bit uncivilized.

Maybe we all need to just that.

A man wearing a beret and a trench coat made eye contact with me from 25 yards away and approached me conspiratorially while grinning, pleased with himself with what he was going to say.

If I live another year I’ll be 61. How old are you?

Weirdos approach my table all the time but I had no idea where this guy was going with his line of questioning. I wasn’t in for a creative approach and neither was my visitor.

But this wasn’t a run of the mill weirdo. He was dressed better and with better diction.

“39″ was my quizzical reply.

If you live to my age you’ll be luck indeed. Now Mr. Yamaguchi made it to 93!

I was confused but a shadow of a memory that made sense scattered into my mind and drew me to interject…

Do you mean the Yamaguchi who was the only known survivor of both the atomic blasts at Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Wasn’t he traveling on business at the time and died recently?

The trenchcoated beret man looked like a cryptographer who was pleased that his message landed in the right hands and mysteriously smiled as he said:

Oh, you know this? Then don’t talk to me about fate.

And then he was off.

How odd.

No matter how theistic or karma based your belief system is or is not – surviving the only two atomic blasts used in warfare ever is a remarkable fate indeed. Yamaguchi’s story is just stunning and incomprehensible.

Was trenchcoated beret man saying we are fated to survive horrendous shocks in our lives?

Or was he saying that despite surviving Hiroshima and Nagasaki (good fate?) he died anyway?

I don’t know what the message of this interaction was but it filled me with delight. It was so obscure and secret.

How did that little clue pull all the right memories together on my end?

I don’t know – but don’t talk to me about fate.

I am in process of writing the sequel to my book of biblical erotica – Genesis Deflowered – that expands the text of the King James Bible to turn it into an erotic novel.

The sequel takes on the next book of the bible, Exodus. Exodus Deflowered.

Hey look at that sexy cover over there on the left!

The process of how verses get changed, researched and edited is pretty interesting.

Exodus 2:11-14 is a pretty solid spot to demonstrate this. To put this section in context, Moses is a Hebrew kid pulled from the bulrushes and raised as a privileged son of Egypt. But he has a calling towards justice and he knows of his Hebrew-ness. He is walking around doing official stuff and suddenly he sees something going down…

 

Here are the original verses:

 

 

 

And it came to pass in those days, when Moses was grown, that he went out unto his brethren, and looked on their burdens: and he spied an Egyptian smiting an Hebrew, one of his brethren.

And he looked this way and that way, and when he saw that there was no man, he slew the Egyptian, and hid him in the sand.

And when he went out the second day, behold, two men of the Hebrews strove together: and he said to him that did the wrong, Wherefore smitest thou thy fellow?

And he said, Who made thee a prince and a judge over us? intendest thou to kill me, as thou killedst the Egyptian? And Moses feared, and said, Surely this thing is known.

Pretty straight forward…Moses decides to kill some Egyptian guy who is beating up one of his Hebrew brethren and then buries the body in the plentiful Egyptian sand.

I didn’t touch it.

There isn’t much there (besides a murder) and it certainly isn’t erotic. Move on, Stillman…

Now there is an apocryphal book of the Bible called “The Book of Jasher” that basically retells the book of Genesis and Exodus but with some different details and stories. It is fascinating and can often give stories a really new take. I have been using it as a jumping off point since I started writing GenDef.

In Jasher 71:3 a reason for the murder is given – the Hebrew man who is being beaten up had come to Moses earlier and told of an Egyptian who had raped the Hebrew’s wife and then threatened to kill the man. I had read this and considered using it but Exodus is filled with so much cruelty that I didn’t want to add more cruel rape stuff into the modified text. It seemed better to just move along.

But then my editor Veronica Tuggle implored me to look at the Exodus section again and re-read the section from Jasher and see if I could find something else there.

I got this note from Veronica close to the news about the horrible shootings at UC Santa Barbara by the 21 year old man who was motivated by his intense misogyny and sense of entitlement to sex. There had been lots of pieces circulating about how “rape culture” (that is in quotes because it is unique phrase, not because I am minimizing it) is embedded in our culture. And thinking about this I came up with a different take on this scene…

And he looked this way and that way, and when he saw that there was no man, he slew the Egyptian, and hid him in the sand and delivered the Hebrew from the hand of him that smote him.

And when the man had returned home he took Moses with him to show to him the life that he had saved. And the Hebrew man thought of repudiating his wife, for it was not right in the house of Jacob, for any man to come to his wife after she had been defiled. But Moses spake unto the man and said, Cleve unto this thy wife for she has done no wrong in the eyes of the LORD. For her goodness and her beauty are unsullied. Be still and know her. Take her to the garden hence.

And the wife of the Hebrew man shed tears for now she had been given life. And the man offered his wife to Moses as a payment of his debt to him. But Moses said, Brother thy wife is thine own. Grace her with love as the kestrel greets the day with song. And Moses went back.

And when he went out the second day, behold, two men of the Hebrews strove together: and he said to him that did the wrong, Wherefore smitest thou thy fellow?

And he said, Who made thee a prince and a judge over us? intendest thou to kill me, as thou killedst the Egyptian? And Moses feared, and said, Surely this thing is known.

While the scene is not erotic in the slightest (unless you find the song of the kestrel a turn on) and still totally  paternalistic hopefully it speaks to the fact that the dignity of a woman is still present even if she is raped. To have this fact spoken by Moses will hopefully elevate the importance of the point.

One of the over arching themes of these books is that women should have sexual agency and shouldn’t be shamed for that.

In a small way this section hopefully serves that end.

As for the more patently sexy stuff…that is in there too. Any favorite Exodus sections you are hankering to get a preview of?

I’d love to hear your thoughts and if you’d like to hear more news about Exodus Deflowered, biblical erotica and how to get free books please click here http://eepurl.com/BlHOj

You may recall the recent post that was written by my friend Padma Maxwell recounting her experience of me giving her a creative approach. 

Padma stuck around after we were done and ended up sharing creative approach duty with me. Shortly after I had my interaction with Padma a young author came named Arthur came to the table for help with his writing. Predictably, the story goes elsewhere.

Today is another venture into the audio blog post format. Please listen as Padma and I co-tell the story of Stanley and his desire for his writing and where it might take him. You may not be a writer or an artist but I think we stumbled upon a larger idea that was relevant to Stanley that will be applicable to you as well about how secret ways forward hide in plain sight.

I was grateful for Padma being there and I hope you check out her offerings at her site.

Please tell me…more audio? Would video of me recounting the stories be of interest? Is there a little Stanley in you?

http://stillmansays.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Stillman-Says_-Padma-Maxwell-and-I-tell-the-story-of-Stanley-the-emerging-sci-fi-writer.mp3

Stillman Says_ Padma Maxwell and I tell the story of Stanley the emerging sci fi writer