Shackleton's Antarctic Nightmare

An old friend was passing through Portland January 11, so I missed the opening of Lawrence Howard's solo storytelling concert, Shackleton's Antarctic Nightmare: The True Story of the 1914 Voyage of The Endurance. I managed to make it to the closing night of the show, which ran for four sold-out nights.

Shackleton had been to the Antarctic before. Twice, his expeditions fell short of his goal (reaching the South Pole): by 200 miles and by 97 miles. An experienced adventurer, he led a talented and loyal crew on the attempt to cross Antarctica. Not a single man was lost on the harrowing 22-month journey that never even reached the continent; one of the many miracles of the soul-stirring story.

I was born and raised in Southern California, so this week's cold snap --overnight temperatures in the 20s -- seems intense, but it's a spring romp compared to what the Endurance's crew experienced.

I don't think it's possible to express just how much the story moved me. The one-mile-per-day rate at which the men persisted over the ice floes on foot, some pulling a sled in harness. Shackleton and photographer Frank Hurley sorting through hundreds of glass negatives of the journey, together choosing the 150 finest photos, and destroying the rest. The standards of obedience expected of British ships' crews. The unthinking bravery, the methodical planning, the 2000-foot slide off a mountain's precipice... it all inspired me in ways I can hardly describe.

I am a fan of inspiring stories: the tribal youth who walked from a South American jungle to the USA, worked as a janitor to put himself through school, and became a nurse; the single mom, struggling to make ends meet, who authored a children's book that became a global phenomenon; the man who suffered burns over 90 percent of his body, not expected to live, who established himself in a successful career and even ran for mayor.

There are so many people who want to paint those people as exceptions... and they are exceptional. But I think they are exceptional because they dug down and freed the determination and potential that we all possess, but so many of us leave untapped.

That said, I could not imagine how any human being could have risen to the challenge of Shackleton's expedition. Lawrence painted such a grueling picture (and I shudder to think what he left out), it seemed beyond the capacity of anyone to survive. And yet, they did.

It was one of those evenings where the rest of the audience dissolved from my awareness, and I lost track of where and when I was. I let the narrative lift and carry me. When Lynne Duddy first told me the performance clocked in at around 2-1/2 hours, it dampened my enthusiasm. But once Lawrence began speaking, I never once noticed the time.

"Storytelling" means different things to different people. Some think of fables and fairy tales. Some think of sacred tales and myths. Some think of children's stories. My favorite stories are personal and adult. I think of Daniel Pinkwater's stories on NPR, David Sedaris, James Thurber, E.B. White, Joan Didion. Some are more essay than story, but they still represent what I think of when I think of storytelling: Personal stories. Memoir. Humor. Evoking the exceptional out of the ordinary.

The story of Shackleton's expedition fascinated both Lawrence and his father, and I found that thread touching, as well. Children and parents often have difficulty over the years as relationships evolve or deteriorate. The story of a lifelong passion shared by father and son added a poignant shading to the story of Shackleton.

Next up in Portland Story Theater's 2008 Solo Series:

• Okage Sama De (I Am Who I Am Because of You) by Alton Chung, Feb 8, 9, 15 and 16;


• On Sale Now! by Rick Huddle, March 7, 8, 14 and 15; and


• dark matter by Lynne Duddy, April 11, 12, 18 and 19.

Portland Story Theater - Nov 2007 review

It's no secret: I'm addicted to Portland Story Theater. Rick Huddle and Alton Chung will return for performances in 2008, but founding members Lynne Duddy and Lawrence Howard continue to anchor the group, and this month's show brings the delightful addition of Penny Walter, who shines in her stories, plus guests Robin Bady (November 2-3) and Rebecca Cohen (November 9-10).

Licking the Plate is about "wanting it bad and getting it good," about nourishment and cravings -- for food and for family, for direction and identity, for joy and power.

Duddy opens the current show, reminiscing about a 1962 outing to the Space Needle, one of those special, family, dress-up excursions where children thwart the vision parents have of the how the day will unfold. The megalomaniacal symbolism of finger food has never been so deftly portrayed, and the silent conspiracy of neighboring dining guests -- separated in age by decades -- provides equal measures of amusement and victorious satisfaction. Her second piece is a deft adaptation about an attempted robbery and assault foiled by that turned cheek we hear so much about, but rarely encounter.

Bady (Nov. 2-3) resurrects her grandparents' lower east side tenement in New York in a tale about her mother's childhood obsession (and disenchantment) with maraschino cherries. There's rhythm, humor, and intensity in Bady's telling, and she has skillfully crafted a narrative of innocence, idealism, willfulness, drive, and denial. It's a rich, heady mixture rivaling the spread of delicacies at the milk bar in which the story is set. Bady's second piece addresses the vagaries of perception as she riffs on Aesop.

Howard continues to construct a solid body of work with each successive show, chaining links in a personal history that's tender, earthy, learned, and loving. I can only hope the Six Gods of the Universe in their flaming rainbow teepee bless me before I die with a collection of his stories. "The Night on the Island" describes a coming-of-age when you had to be ten years old and know how to swim; and another transition at 16, when all you needed were a flock of migrating geese and the guts to follow. There are dads, uncles, and brothers; warm liquor and limericks; and an excruciating (and hilarious) lake crossing in a canoe.

Walter joins PST for the first time, and I certainly hope it's not the last. She brings an energetic playfulness to the table that's sometimes rueful but never self-indulgent. I am still grinning at her recollection of family dynamics, growing up the baby on eastern Washington farmland, when a milkshake could remedy just about anything... and some of the challenges were dire indeed. Walter's tale of going from apathetic truancy in first grade to finally hitting her stride in high school is one that will stay with me for a long, long time. It's hard for me to imagine this sparkling, wry teller as a puppeteer, where I (probably mistakenly) imagine her in sort of a backstage role. I hope to see a lot more of her at storytelling showcases.

Once again, this is a short run: two weekends, and then it's gone. And Robin Bady is only appearing one more night. And the next four productions are all solo shows, rather than the ensemble. So get to Hipbone Studies (oh, crap, I forgot to write about the venue -- but it's late, and I'm tired, so I'll just say it's warmer and more inviting than the perfectly fine but somewhat industrial Brooklyn Bay).

October (and November) fun!

Maybe it's from so many years of school -- K-12, then junior college, then college proper -- but for me, September always seems like the start of the new year. There's change in the air. Autumn is coming, with the equinox, the harvest, the weather changes. New projects get traction after the easygoing summer. Schools, churches, businesses, nonprofits -- they all seem to ripen with a final-quarter burst of energy.

But October really takes off like a rubber band in the hands of a practical jokester. ZING!

FRIGHTTOWN OPENS as of October 6. Woo-hoo!

Baron von Goolo's Museum of Horrors and the Robot Slavechicks from Mars is this year's incarnation of Portland's most ambitious haunted house. What can I say? I love it. I'm a sporadic volunteer, dressing up and scaring the wits out of too-cool-for-school teens and grown-ups. But even behind the scenes, the place creeps me out. I went through as a member of the paying public once; never again. I froze halfway through and had to be escorted out.

FrightTown's Tim Burton Meets George Romero sensibility splatters itself over the walls of Portland's Memorial Coliseum through Halloween. This place won't just fill a couple hours of your evening with BOO. It will have you wishing for some of that eternal sunshine of the spotless mind. I still can't get the Karaoke Nuns out of my head. If your nightmares had nightmares, they would be on exhibit at this museum. Go see.

October 24 Comedy Hypnosis Show with Michelle De Lude at The Porterhouse Restaurant, 14611 SE McLoughlin Blvd., Milwaukie. Show starts at 8:00 p.m.; with the show, you get a $5.00 discount off dinner. Yum! Just think, a comedy hypnosis show without a fairground corn dog. What is the world coming to? A fun dinner show! Tickets are $7 or two for $10, and seating is limited, so reservations are recommended. Two-drink minimum. And if you get tickets at the door on the night of the show, they are $10.

Portland Story Theater announces its 2007-08 season, so save the first and second weekends in November for their first show, Licking the Plate. I'll have a review up November 3 or 4.

And look for my November 15 Comedy Hypnosis Show at Duff's Garage in SE Portland.

Getting unstuck: Logical levels

One of the presuppositions of NLP is the Law of Requisite Variety, which is a fancy way of saying that more choices are better than few choices. If you're stuck, it may be because you're... well, stuck. You need more choices.

If you have two choices, that's better than one, but you may still feel stuck. To reach a comfortable sense of flexibility and freedom, you'll want to have at least three.

What are some ways to find new choices?

NLP has a model called logical levels you can use to explore any situation in which you need more choices. Making change at any level can affect the whole system.

Level 1: Environment. Environment is everything around you. Nothing occurs in a vacuum. Becoming aware of the environment may seem extremely basic. Why bother?

The more familiar you are with the environment, the more habituated you become.

Have you ever had a clock that chimed every hour? How long did it take before you no longer noticed it? Or have you ever taped a reminder to your computer, refrigerator, or mirror, and over time forgotten to look at it so that it became "invisible"? Take a moment to quiet your mind, ask some questions, and explore this first, most basic level.

What's the context of the challenge? Where does it occur? (If your answer is, "EVERYWHERE!" choose one specific example and start there.) Is it confined to home or office? Certain locations? Who are the people involved? What time does it occur? Mornings? Afternoons? Evenings? Weekdays or weekends? What do you notice about the surroundings? What sounds do you notice? Where are they coming from? What's the quality of light? Do you notice a lot of movement, or are things quiet? The more facets of the environment you can notice, the more options you'll have when it comes time to make the changes you desire.

Observations again

A recent kerfluffle on a couple of online communities (one of them focusing on conflict resolution -- HA!) have me musing once again on the concept of what are called "observations" in NVC and "clean sensory channels" in NLP.

It's amazing how much of our own self-talk we accept as coming from "out there." We know, without even thinking about it, when someone is angry, sad, puzzled, or delighted.

But those realizations are based on something. That something is sensory experience: information that comes in through our eyes, ears, skin, nose or mouth. You know the drill: sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste.

Most of this information comes in and is processed subconsciously. You don't typically notice or analyze, with your conscious mind, how you know what you know.

When you're in a struggle, either with another person or with yourself, this can lead to deepening conflict, rather than resolution.

Take a step back. Ask: What am I noticing? Is it something I see or hear? What conclusions am I coming to? Could I possibly come to different ones? (We'll explore that question in an upcoming blog entry on reframing.

This can be extremely difficult to do in a moment of upset; human brains and bodies react to emotional threats the same way they react to physical ones, and the flood of stress hormones creates obstacles to rational thinking. So if you've ever "lost your head" in anger, don't beat yourself up about it. Just know that you can take steps to keep your cool, and you can do it without squashing your emotions or denying what's bothering you. (Emotions feed you information about whether a situation is healthy or dangerous -- you don't want to cut yourself off from valuable information!)

Of course, it's best to practice on a daily basis, when stress is low or mild, to develop the mental and emotional muscles you want to come into play when you're in a situation where you really need them.

So: Do a check-in exercise. Set an alarm, or find a way to signal yourself, to stop periodically throughout your day. Do a body scan. Are you relaxed? Tense? Happy? How do you know? Which muscles are tight, and which relaxed? (Pay attention to your face muscles, too -- when you're relaxed, happy, worried, annoyed.) What's you're posture like? Scan your senses. What are you seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, or taking in with your skin? (Many people focus on texture, but don't ignore pressure and temperature.) Lastly, what sort of internal dialog have you been running since your last check-in? What have you been telling yourself about what things mean?

The point of this exercise is to practice separating sensory awareness and internal dialog. If you did this all the time, you'd never get anything done, because you'd be paying attention -- consciously -- to the way the light hits the water cooler, the cooler's proximity to other objects, the amount of dust or moisture that has collected on various surfaces of the cooler, the amount of pressure you need to use to press the dispenser bar, the sight of the water level rising, how the cup and water and breath smell and the texture of the cup and water on your lips... you get it, right? All this normally happens in 15 or 20 seconds, and you're oblivious, thinking about the work you did or haven't done or the questionable dating choices your kid is making or your lunch forgotten on the counter at home or whether you need to get any last-minute groceries for dinner...

Learning to notice the boundaries between sensory experience and internal experience can boost your ability to shift between the two, so the next time you're about to accuse someone (maybe yourself) of something you'll regret, you can more easily switch gears to a more productive and resourceful solution.

Book Review: Stumbling on Happiness

Daniel Gilbert's book ought to be required reading for every college freshman, and for everyone considering a major life change... or where to go for dinner.

Gilbert says we're astoundingly poor predictors of what will make us happy in the future. As we decide on career pursuits, marriages, restaurant reservations, transportation, and what to plant in the garden this spring, biology conspires to make life simple, and in doing so, thwarts many of our efforts even as the electricity whizzes toward those little light bulbs in our brains.

Happiness! Who doesn't want it? But what is it, really, and how do we get there? Are there standards we can use to measure? Is there a blueprint for having more happiness in our lives?

Well, yes and no. Gilbert's hilarious book runs us through the processes of perceiving where we are, predicting where we want to be, and all the pitfalls along the way. From magicians to man-on-the-street, Gilbert describes the way brains sense and organize the present, imagine what will come next (seconds from now or years later), and how we think we'll bridge the gap between the two. It's fascinating and funny stuff.

What makes us happy? Is one person's idea of happiness different from another's? How do we make comparisons between where we are and where we want to be? Although we spend our lives thinking about this stuff, Gilbert illustrates how we think we think is largely an illusion; the brain covering its tracks to save us time and trouble.

With amusing and compelling stories, Gilbert shines the laboratory light on everyday decisions and planning strategies, and yes: He even provides a formula for attaining happiness, which he claims most readers will never accept or use.

(But if you're reading this, you're not "most readers," are you?)

Vision boards and the Portland Pen Show

I spent some of this past weekend at the Portland Pen Show, where fountain pen collectors from all over the country buy, sell, trade, and admire new releases by pen manufacturers and vintage models lovingly preserved or restored from the 1960s, '50, '40s and earlier.

When I began collecting fountain pens, I made a collage in Photoshop and put it on my computer desktop. The pens I wanted to purchase were there for me to look at every moment I was at my computer. All day long, I stared at those pens, imagining how each one would feel in my hand; what I would be writing; how others would look at them and at me.

According to some gurus who recommend vision boards, I should have some of those pens in my collection, right?

Well, I don't. Does that mean I did something wrong in my "vision board"?

No. I listened to feedback as I made my collection plans. After I created the vision board on my computer desktop, I learned that some of the pens I wanted weren't worth having. Some turned out to be too large and heavy for my hand. Others, although pretty to look at, had flaws that prevented the ink from flowing evenly. Nevertheless, I now have a fantastic collection of fountain pens that bring me a lot of joy.

Knowing your outcome is a terrific starting point. By making your goals visible, a vision board can help you stay focused and motivated. Make room for course corrections, though. Be willing to say, "This -- or something better!" By focusing too exclusively on one factor, rather than the big picture, I've missed opportunities.

Treasure your goals; stay flexible and alert.