In The Garden Living an RPG Life

That is the name of the comic book text book.  It is also what I think I’ll be doing this year for NaNoWriMo.  I seem to have let go of everything that keeps me from being happy with a coloring tool in my hand.  Spent a while today coloring in a friend’s coloring book. Working out the shading for the princess’ dress.  Getting the shadows on the faces right.  Choosing the right colors.  Checking out what the mark-making effects of crayons are when I use the drawing signature of DaVinci and Gorey.

What does this have to do with novel writing?  Well, the main characters keep drawing journals as part of their work practice.  A lot of my character creation has been through illustrations in old children’s story books.  I’m just realizing how much keeping a journal figures in my novels.

In the first novel, the journal full of visual ideas, sparks the consequences, literally.  In the second novel, it’s both journals (the ones belonging to the same person as in the first) and children’s books.  In the third, hmmm.  I don’t remember having journals but now that I think of it, why not?  The fields of music and knitting both have journal keeping as their practice, if not exactly as we think of them.  In the fourth book, its those journals again plus another person whose work requires them.

Whew!   I thought the retrospective didn’t occur till after one was dead, and then not for a long time!

I don’t know if I will be making pictures while I’m writing. I will wait and see what happens.   The one thing I’ve learned from my own renewed attraction to drawing is to not push it.  Most of the re-acquaintance came from my conversations with Gretchen about her own relationship with drawing.  I got to feel lonely for drawing.  Mind you, I haven’t let it go completely.  My journals are organized around making some kind of pictorial mark.  I make a rectangle on the top right corner of each new page and put a nice border around it.  Only after I write the date next to the frame do I start my entry for the day.  There are still blank frames on some pages.  I’m not committed to filling them up.  I just acknowledge that there is a place for drawing in my writing life.

Between my Catrina figure and my desire to build a fabric design practice, I’m realizing the perhaps I have really only thought of drawing as a tool and not something to do just for the heck of it.  I am not, even though I might like to be, someone who loves drawing.  Just as I am not a musician.  Or an electronic technician.  I may not even be a writer, for all that I write.  I am a person who can do all of these things toward some other end.  Or because of some other inspiration.  I don’t know how to talk about it any better than that.  I am expecting things to come together though, as I age a little more.

Something about how the spirit moves or can be perceived to move through all my interests and endeavors, seems to bring me peace.   There are people for whom all those activities are roads to spirit.  For many practitioners, art, electronics, music and the like are their path to something much larger than themselves.  This something gives them comfort when their Adventures take them deep into dungeons where they need to find their way past familiar and unfamiliar monsters.  I think, for me, writing is the Way.  The other activities seem to be just a way to see into the Mystery through eyes that are only partially focused through music, electronics, drawing and the like.

Fine.  Now I’ve gone and got deep.  Not to worry.  It’s Day of the Dead eve and these are perfectly good thoughts to have tonight.  The souls of those who know more about these things are about to be let loose to visit in our dreams and desires.  Might as well get things properly lined up.  Who knows what gifts of insight my Mae might bring me, what experiences of the other side I might receive from Ricky or Darryl.  And mom and dad and all the others behind them might have stories I can use to clarify my purpose.  Sam, dear Sam, might even bring me closer to the forge and show me how the center of the earth creates, what the Earth Dragon dreams about.  I can use that in my story tomorrow night.

Night all.

Blessings on us all.

Spoonflower Marketplace is open to the public!

Believe it or not those two things are quite connected.  The business in the world I’ve created to write about is all things fiber related.  Think Silk Road.  And, the fiber business is also my real life RPG goal.

Quick review: I like the order that playing  Dungeons and Dragons imposes on keeping track of lots of different personal (in the form of the characters) material.  The only place I can think that would have such useful tools as a skills sheet would be a school counselor’s office.  Unfortunately, the school counselor’s office wouldn’t have a place on that sheet for magic spells or equipment.

Funny.  I’ve never made that connection before.  The connection between school and RPGs.  OK, I have, but not in the way of what kinds of information I might actually get from school.  From a counselor or good teacher.  For me, the structure of the RPG fills in blanks I didn’t really recognize till now.  Mostly, I think, because I have a friend with some of the same blanks that I feel.  Like how to have so many ideas and not get overwhelmed by them.

I think this is what life coaches are supposed to be good for.  Me, I’d rather make up my own character sheet and do a personal inventory of all the skills I have to see if I have enough to level up. I also need to find other Adventurers who want to take this –what would you call it?  No one has aksed us (me) to slay a dragon or search for something or rescue someone.  Ooo.  That’s what I need to figure out?  Not what the task is, but who is asking it to be done!  Cool.

Meanwhile, I have my project completed for the next Spoonflower contest.  It’s a doll panel.  Nice combination of what they are asking for and what I like.  It helps that I also want to give it as a gift.  Or, that the actual image has sparked a few more ideas.   I don’t know what goes into the Etsy shop, now.  Have to take the Spoonflower market into account for fabric.  Final products?  I still have a few of those ideas to develop.

And this last novel will give me ideas and help focus my plans.  It’s about the business of the world and how it collapses.  We also get to hear more about goblins and dragons.  Drawing, too.  It’s all in there.  Isn’t that what Nano is about?  Getting it all in and editing later?

Oooo! Less than 30 days till NaNoWriMo begins and I can start writing for real.  I’ve got lots of notes and ideas for the last of the five novels in this set.  The first one is The Tailor’s Tale, the one that started it all.  I’ve already told some of the story behind the story, though, so I’ll spare us the retelling.

I had a revelation this morning.  Not just another idea, but the kind of revelation that I feel with my whole body, a feeling of living the idea rather than just having it wriggling about inside my skull.

I was thinking about some of the ideas I had for Spoonflower fabric and Etsy.  With Spoonflower working on a marketplace, I need to rethink what I want to use Etsy for.  This is where the RPG meets Real Life.  I’ve been talking about role playing a little mystically, invoking the world of magic that is usually associated with gaming while trying to keep it on this side of fantasy.  There’s more to my idea of what a role-playing game can be, though.

It’s no coincidence that the world I built is made from the fabric trade. It’s a medium I have a lot of lust for.  I can practically hear and feel the rustle of embroidered silks and velvets when watching The Tudors for example.  The weight of the swirling cape in the opening credits is very nearly fabric-pron.  You wouldn’t know this about me if we met however.  All I talk about is the magic-leaning stuff.  I am, on a day to day basis, an advocate of empowerment, a fool for personal transformation, a getting-to-good type geek.  In another life, I used to tell myself (too keep myself sane), I would probably be a shaman.  Now, though, with the chasm of retirement looming before me, I’m thinking that I should consider myself a shaman with a fabric shop!

The RPG part?  Well, I don’t know nothin’ ’bout birthin’ no business, to misquote another nurse/nanny type.  For me the format of the role-playing game is perfect for organizing what I know and what I need to find out, while keeping the whole process on the higher side of fun.  NPC’s are in place as the creators of Ravelry, Etsy and Spoonflower, for example.  My Adventuring party?  So far there is only one other person, I think.  We’re friends and kind of on the same path.  Whether we are on the same Adventure…?  I don’t know yet.  Only the encounters and the traveling through the landscape will tell.

The first part of my journey will be finishing the novel. Part of finishing the novel, I discovered, is finding out more about money and economics.  The other part, a continuing part, is taking the magic part seriously.  I have always taken it seriously as a study. I’ve just not practiced it in any formal way, with any kind of focus.  Now it’s time to turn information into knowledge and knowledge into skill.

Talking to Gretchen about all of this, we came to the conclusion that this is one way to change a life, to become someone different.  With that in mind, and since documentation is also part of the RPG, I’ll be keeping track of my process.  One reason is that it’s fun.  Another, more important reason, is that some of what I am planning to do is inspired by questions from many non-RPG places.  Some of the questions are those Gretchen and I have asked each other and together of systems we’ve both investigated.

My plan is to show how I move from the system, through the questions, and into some kind of tool to be used in my Game.  The name of my game?  I guess it’s Retirement.  Retirement, the Game.   Ok… Maybe that’s just the working title.  I have an idea that there is another title waiting to be revealed, but that’s another post.

Meanwhile, consider this the first of the pre-NaNoWriMo posts.

Yeah… I actually have made progress.  Not what I was expecting either, when this idea came to me.  And it keeps unfolding.

There is this boundary area between the real world and the imagined world that is not easliy accessed or understood.  I figured out today, that’s where the Adventures are.  Getting through there is what a Guide is needed for.   And why would anyone even consider going into that place, whatever it is?  Ahh.  That’s just it.  We usually choose to avoid going there.  It’s the place where our ideas of who we are and what we’re doing get stretched out of recognition.  We usually just barely cross the boundary when we’re dreaming.  And you know how quickly you want to get out of that state, don’t you.

But.  What if you took a different approach?  What if, instead of taking it all so grown-up seriously, you decided to play?

That’s the idea.  That’s what makes me happy.  Playing in the Boundary and taking friends there with me.  Wonder if there is room for all of us to play there?

So the Garden in the title is a place I am learning to use as a developmental tool.  Learned it from King’s Urban Shaman.  Of course it’s an imaginary place, but so is everything in our minds till we let them out.  Or take them seriously.

I haven’t taken the Garden seriously, till now.   It’s been there, and I’ve paid it a few visits.  But, I’ve never really let the process fill up my body.

The first Image of my Garden is of a dark space.  The only spot of light it the bit of landscape where I contact my big guide.  I managed to find a bit of water in a little wall fountain.  And there is a way under the garden that I can access.

I’ve started paying visits to ask for help of my Guide.  I didn’t think anything would come of it, as usual.  I was wrong.  Something in my has evidently shifted.  I’m learning what to expect from the encounter.  What it feels like in my body.  What the images look like.  What the “stories” are and how they come.  What the “answers” are to the questions I ask.

So, today, I start with the Garden report.

Foggy.  With a patch of green.

A definite improvement over the complete darkness.

This is what I get for feeling overwhelmed by all the ideas and plans and interests I have for my life.  I wondered how all the things might go together or which ones I let go and why.  Like, where does Japanese go in the whole scheme of things?  And how does it fit with Psychology?

Fortunately, the RPG takes all of this and makes it into a story, a living adventure (and yeah, I will make a post defining what RPG is, for me anyway).  I don’t like the “life coach” title.  It just doesn’t suit me.  Where’s the play factor?  That’s the guiding feeling for me: play.  Most of what I want to accomplish is best talked about through imagination and play, through fantasy and creative activities.  Why?  Dunno!  It’s just how it feels best to me.  And trust me, I’ve tried to avoid behaving like a child for a long time now, tried to be serious, get focused, be a grown-up.

Not working.  Even when I am serious, the feeling that underlies being serious is imagination, making stuff up.  Granted, I’m sure it’s just a way of experiencing intuition, but still… the feeling of play lurks beneath it all.  Could be that intuition just feels good.  Being in the flow.

uhhh…. what was I talking about?

Oh, yeah.. Adventure Guide.

So what is that?  Making up a game setting, I think a Guide is the person who hires him or herself out to the party.  It’s the person who has all the information about the locale.  For a fee, he (let’s say it’s Pod this time) will take the party wherever it wants to go, and help them through the local customs, paperwork, and hopefully out the other side.  Of course, the Guide has to participate in the Adventure with the party.

All the other “rules” of adventuring still apply.  The party can accept the Guide as another member or leave him out altogether.  He also has his own agenda which he may or may not share with them.  Hmmm… getting interesting.  Will be a story in this eventually, I’m sure.

The thing about making this a Real Life experience is that I will be finding the correlation between powers and parties in the RPG landscape and RL.  So far, I’ve Guided one group (through aikido) and some individuals.  Guess that’s the place to start, to build the Adventure elements.

I’m blathering a bit, I know.  Still finding out what I am doing, what my plans are.  Making it up as I go along.  Fortunately, I have my inner world to help, my own Guide and Adventure landscape.  More on that next time.

Finally settled on the title of the blog.  What happened?  Well, I finally decided who I am and how I want to present myself in the rest of this lifetime.  Yeah, the knitting is still important to me.  It’s part of how I think on some days.  It’s a tool, a grounding agent.  And it’s  a symbolic reference to story.

As for Living an RPG Life… Role playing games are another symbolic reference.  They represent life itself.  To live my life as an RPG, a role playing game, is to acknowledge the features of the game being active in my ordinary day.  In this moment, I can’t think of anything that relates.  That is not to say that in the next moment something won’t manifest.

This is a kind of coming out for me, a commitment to telling stories. The stories I am committing to tell are not necessarily ones I make up.   Some of the stories I will be telling are true. They might sound made up, though.  That’s because they come from focusing on the world differently.  I am thinking of Douglas Adams and his description of moving into Valhalla in The Long Dark Tea-time of the Soul.  I don’t intend to go that far.  But the feeling of turning to look at the side of a molecule, and telling what I see there… That’s the feeling.

I used to think I would get lost if I did that.  If I let myself really look and not just close my eyes and guess at what I was experiencing.  I found a blog, Shift Your Spirits, whose author, Slade Roberson, seems to have been where I have wanted to go and writes to tell that it’s ok.  It’s not so scary and there are ways of not becoming lost.

I heard Bill Plotkin on KVMR.org the other day and followed him to his website.  He had a similar tale and provided a compass.  Between those two explorers and the itinerary that Serge Kahili King provided me that long time ago in Urban Shaman, I finally feel that I can take off.

Call this post, handing out a key to the house-sitter.

So writing poems is not the same as posting poems.  I ‘ve got the whole month done.

They are in my journal.

OH.  And I was wrong about American Sentences being 27 syllables. They are 17, just like Haiku.  I’ve had the priviledge of trying to explain the concept to a couple of people lately.  Need to brush up on what I know for sure and what I think I know.  Having certainty in both would be helpful and build confidence.

Meanwhile, I’m back on Second Life on Saturdays leading the Global Healing Circle. That means creating more Heart Meditations.  I am thinking of publishing them in one form or another.  I like the sound of my own voice (in a non-ego kinda way) and doing a set of recordings might be nice.

Writing down my ideas for a set of stories about shamanic kids.  Thought of the idea a long time ago when I was reading more about Navajo and Hopi legends.  It was meeting Kahu and Brun in Second Life and Kuel on Huna Trainer that inspired me to finally put the idea into words.  I could see them in their adult struggles to be like children still.  Struggles with the shamanic things, anyway.  I’m having fun thinking of how to bring the world to life.  I don’t think of them as children’s stories, by the way.  Just stories about children.  I’m looking forward to seeing how they all come out.  I did a recording of the draft of the first one and like what I’ve heard.  Too much information in it, though.

I’m taking an online writing course–Holly Lisle’s “How to Think Sideways” and the lessons I’ve got through so far are really cool!  I like how she thinks and what she’s focusing on.  Since I am coaching a couple of other people in their writing endeavors, it’s nice to have someone coaching me.

Well, this is family weekend and it’s time to pay attention and visit!

Stripes of rain

make empty

streets cozy;

drench trees so

they bow and

tickle snails;

make puddles

and me a

rain dancer.

When I was writing on Huna Trainer regularly, a few of us started writing three-word comments.  It was so much fun that I decided (as a good logarrheatician would) that the three words could be cubed into three lines of three words each.  Well, today I thought I was doing the original “cubes” but realized I was focused on syllables instead.  And then I realized that three sets of nine syllables made an American Sentence.  So, you can read it either way:  As three cubes or as one American Sentence.

Breathing in

breathing out…

the top of my head expands under

the hedge of my hair

the soles of my feet tingle.

Breathing in

breathing out…

chest expands

thoughts contract

into breathing alone.

Breathing in

breathing out…

looming clouds enter

leaves dripping rain move through

wet streets emerge.

Breathing in

breathing out….

stars on one horizon

stars on the other horizon

bones in between.

Breathing in

breathing out…

stars inhaled into bones

bone songs vibrate being

stars exhaled into bones.

Breathing in

breathing out…

stars inhaled into bones

bone songs vibrate being

stars exhaled into bones.

Breathing in

breathing out….

stars inhaled

bones vibrate

stars exhaled.

Breathing in

breathing out….

being vibrates

bones sing

being vibrates.

Breathing in

breathing out…

the wave expands

the bones sing

the wave vibrates.

Breathing in

breathing out…

the wave

the bones

the song.

Breathing in

breathing out…

the song

the wave

the song.

Breathing in

breathing out…

the wave.

Breathing in

breathing out…

being.

Breathing in

breathing out…

the song.

Breathing

in

breathing

out…

Breathing…

I wrote this after a Huna Healing class in Second Life.  Lots of breathing, of course, and also a huge insight.  It’s the Wave again.  It was the Wave in Aikido that brought me first to take classes in electronics.  I didn’t quite understand what the point was.  As it turned out, I got to finish some things I didn’t believe I could even start: my FCC Radiotelephone License and my Amateur Radio License to be specific.  Childhood dreams I didn’t think even belonged to me.

So now that I have them, what next?  That was my question till now.  More wave stuff evidently.  Yes, I used my understanding of communication electronics to build an analogy for interpersonal communication effects, but that seemed really obvious. I was talking to fellow travellers on the Huna Training podcasts, and we mostly knew all that from Serge King’s Urban Shaman.

It was the idea of the breath activating the Wave that was new today.  And from that point, the universe of my novels took a whole and enormous step deeper.  I was so focused on justifying the effects in the world through physics that I didn’t see the truth of things:  It’s the Wave.  Listening to Martha Beck helped me put the few things together.  Again, a confluence of Huna (as shamanism) and Aikido and the Wave of the Dreaming.  That’s all I can say for now since I still haven’t got it all put together myself yet.  Maybe by this year’s NaNoWriMo, it will make sense to me.