A Call to Inaction!

Let me start by saying the next Ramble project is not going to win me any popularity contests. My family is not going to like it. Heck I don't even like it. But as they say nothing worth having comes easy. If you know me you probably know that I am an active person. My idea of a relaxing day starts at the gym has me in the kitchen cooking all afternoon and ends with dancing. I do not live happily in the grey areas between movement and sleep. Inactivity is something I do not do well if my eyes are open.

Joe on the other hand is much more apt to enjoy staying still. He appreciates time moving slower allowing more things to gently fall into place. He functions better this way, perhaps that's why he didn't flinch when I mentioned our next project. Our kids are a hybrid of us. Dylan and I run at the same speed.We motor through things trying to squeeze as much out of the day as we can. We Spring out of bed in the morning and fall asleep easily in the evening. Emma is more like Joe, not understanding why anyone would choose to move that quickly if no one was chasing them. They are fans of the snooze button and never wake easily. It is as if it is an affront to their system to have to rise in the morning without at least a half hour lead time. They are also night owls. They end the day on their terms,when they are ready,  not when the clock or the moon urges them. So with that it will be interesting to see how this project plays out. Who will benefit most from it and who it will challenge.

So here is the premise and here is why it is different that a lazy afternoon home with nothing to do. For four hours every Sunday for a month we will shut down all electronics. That is no TV, no music  computers,or cell phones, no activities just stillness. The idea is to stop and take note of where we are. What does that mean? Imagine you are travelling somewhere along a road,moving ever forward at a frenzied pace. What would happen if you stopped for a minute? or five minutes or four hours? That's the question that I hope to answer. Now I know some of you may be saying I stop all the time. I relax and slow down. Let me just say I am not sure if I believe you. If sleeping doesn't count,
 how often do you stop without your cell phone at hand or nearby, without the television
or computer or a relaxing activity like yoga or deep breathing or reading? What I am proposing is different. I mean just stop! Just look around and wait or witness what's floating around you?
If you are one of the rare people who is already doing this then this challenge is not for you. (but please do share who you are I may need a pep talk from you before I begin my  hours) As for the rest of us I believe this is not going to be easy! It is similar to the lights go out during a black out and that moment where you sit there thinking NOW WHAT!?

 I leave it to you to hop on to the crazy train with me and do this! Even for 15 minutes  a day if that's all you can muster. Below is the link to an amazing Ted talk that will inspire you as it did me. I will also leave you with an idea; What if you emptied out a little space in you day or life and allowed the universe to fill it what then? Let us find out together. Ramble on!

http://www.ted.com/talks/pico_iyer_the_art_of_stillness?language=en

36 Questions

 In a recent New York Times article they referred to a study by psychologist Arthur Aron. This study poses three sets of twelve questions. Each set getting exceedingly more personal. The goal of the study was to explore whether intimacy is fostered by mutual sustained personal disclosure.
 I am lucky, I fell in love before Instagram, before mutual affection was as easy as clicking the like button. I was a teenager I sat in a scarcely furnished basement apartments and got to know my friends and boyfriends the old fashion way , by talking to them. Thirty six probing questions does not scare me, it never did. To me its the easiest way to separate the men from the boys. Anyone willing to let you see them that close is brave, and I have always liked bravery. I have never held something back from someone who earnestly asked, and one of my favorite sayings of all times is "Sunshine is the best disinfectant".
 So all I could think when I read this article was Thirty six Questions, bring them on! But wait I am already in love, there are 26 years and way more than 36 questions between us, so what will become of doing this experiment with my husband? would it reverse the spell? Were we in danger? would it bring us closer? is it like playing Black Sabbath backwards? would we hear Satan? So in the spirit of the Ramble project I decided to shake up a Monday night and set out on our very own thirty six question experiment, but with a twist.
 We would turn it into a bit of a drinking game. For each question answered we would take a sip of our drink of choice (in this case Jameson), but since this is a family blog and combining alcohol and probing questions about intimacy sounds a bit iffy  we need something to keep things respectable. What is the most respectable thing I could think of? Scrabble!  What is more wholesome than scrabble? nothing! So we set off to begin our modified experiment/drinking game/game night to see what would become of us.....

So here is how it went. I remain the undefeated scrabble champion. I realized Joe is not very good at multitasking. Answering questions and playing scrabble posed a bit of a challenge for him. (note to self : remember that next time you are playing chess with him, maybe that's the trick to ending his winning streak).
The interesting thing about the thirty six questions is  that the beginning ones (the easier and less probing set) took longer for us to answer. The second half went much quicker. Now I have my theories about this. Perhaps once you have warmed up to this almost interviewing style of questioning  it gets easier, maybe the Jameson consumption helped move things along, or could it be the scrabble focus sharpened our minds making us more pliable? All this is plausible. However I cant help but think that less personal questions take longer to consider because they may have many answers, depending on the day, year or circumstances. The really probing questions have answers that are more solidly planted in our minds and hearts.
  Another noteworthy aspect of our questioning was the feeling of surprise I had at some of Joes answers. When you live side by side with someone for so long you assume you know everything  about them. I am happy to report though that this man can still surprise me, and I am grateful for that.
So what did we gain from this exercise? In the end did this disclosure have the expected effect? I am relieved to say It did not reverse the spell! I remain today as in love as ever. But what it did do was make us laugh, it made us laugh a lot. It slowed down time in our quiet sleepy house and created a space where only we existed. It made what we thought and felt the most pressing matter of the moment, and most importantly it caught us by surprise. Let me explain why. Neither of us read the questions before asking them. We did not know what was coming next. Our answers formed naturally, and in the moment. We followed the progress of the question and answers organically.  Slowly the answers built a story about us that we didn't plan to narrate. I think for many people that's exactly how you fall in love. In A Fault In Our Stars John Green writes "I fell in love the way you fall asleep; slowly then all at once" I think that's the funny thing about love and this experiment. It is possible that after 36 questions or 6 dates or 4 years or a glance across the tracks of a subway that you can fall in love. I think the 36 questions are arbitrary. It is the decision to open yourself up to someone that allows the universe to sneak up on you and let love in. So I leave you with this warning if you decide to go ahead and  ask these 36 questions to someone be careful you never know what could happen!
Below is a link to the 36 Questions
Ramble on my friends!

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/11/fashion/no-37-big-wedding-or-small.html

Ramble Project 1

 Florence Nightingale said "I think ones feelings waste themselves in words; they ought all to be distilled into actions which bring results"

With that in mind we set off to Woodstock NY to start our first "Ramble Project". For many, a road trip has a way of getting you out of your normal habit loop, but for us road trips are the norm. We take them often, and have been for a long time. Anything we do regularly enough manages to become somewhat habitual. How could we shake up our road trip so as not to be on auto pilot?

 Now anyone who knows me knows that I am an obsessive photographer. If you follow me on social media you are most definitely witness to the chronicling of my family and world around me through pictures. It is fitting that our first project would require a few shudder clicks.

The premise is simple:
We set a timer for every 20 minutes. Regardless of where we found ourselves we had to chose something to photograph. Now for those of you who are thinking why create a structured project  to break up the structure of habit I have this explanation: The random element of stopping every 20 minutes  would force us to look at things we might have never focused on. It was a way to freeze time, stop us in our paths and shake up our day. Before I go on I will Show you some of the photos of the day beginning with mine.

The interesting thing about my photos are they are all still life. and all have some architectural quality to them. This is in contrast to the photos I normally take which focus on people action and nature.

Below are Joes photos:

Also all still life, and the one photo with nature is a fake tree juxtaposed against a real one.

Emma's are below:

Of course our random time would put guitars in front of my music loving daughter, further proof that Emma is somehow in control of the universe (inside joke)
Last but not least Dylan's photos are below:

 

 

 

Clearly kids have a way of finding themselves in the moment regardless of how random it may be.

 

For me this project did something unexpected that made it bigger than four somewhat unique to me pictures. The serendipitous result of this experiment is it put me in the moment, but not how you would think. Normally I would have photographed much more of our day. I would have tried to get that great photo of Emma and Dylan laughing at lunch, or that quaint little side street with the light hitting it just right. The camera sat zippered into my bag waiting for the timer to ring. This kept me free to witness twenty minute chunks of time without it. Other than when the timer rang I didn't even think of it. On my normal days I do spend a good portion of time doing what I call freezing memories. Photography has always given me a way to honor the moment by recording it, but sometimes this habit has a way of putting a thin glass wall between me and the action. My experiment helped me accidentally break this habit and be more in the moment (in the 20 minute lapses between the timer ringing). When the timer did rang it forced me to look at the things I wouldn't normally record; those quiet ordered bits of still life that colorfully stand around begging no attention. The experiment was a success but not how I thought it would be

 and that makes me very happy.

Ramble on!

 

The Play is the thing....

I love the first chapter of Alice in Wonderland, specifically the moment that Alice ponders if the pleasure of making a daisy chain would be worth the effort of getting up and picking the daisies. This is a sentiment I understand. Boredom? No not quite. Laziness? No...it's really something else, something more complex. Philosophers, scholars, and existentialists have been trying to explain it for decades. I won't attempt to try to name it now. In the moments shortly following her query she eyes the rabbit and after a brief curious chase, descends down the rabbit hole. This is where the fun begins!

In our day-to-day life we generally know what is next.We are the architects of our destiny, making choices and following through. On good days we collect our daisies, make a chain, and dance. On not so good days we have no time to stray from our paths and collect daisies. Perhaps the best days, though, are the ones where we don't even consider what's next; the days we get to follow our curiosity down the rabbit hole.

Recently, my husband and I had the opportunity to be part of such an experience. Nestled in the unusual setting of what was a former outpatient building of the Greenpoint hospital in north Brooklyn is the immersive theatre production of Then She Fell. I will tell you little about this production because knowing less leaves you in a very good place to start. I will, however, disclose one of the constructs of this production, which is artfully perpetuated by the simple rule of not being allowed to speak unless spoken to. You are also  prompted to follow the actors, immersed in the actions rather than just simply watching them unfold. This is not a typical theater production. As an adult there is some adjustment necessary before you can blindly follow like a child. Giving up control at first feels a bit foreign,  particularly in a room of strangers. However, being unable to speak, question, or know exactly what will come next is not limiting. It opens you up for something else. For me there was a feeling of calm as if everything that was happening was passing through me, becoming part of me rather than being processed by me. Anyone who dances can understand this feeling, the weightlessness you get when the music and movement and you become one. The weight of my mind suddenly lightened and the childlike spirit of play took over. Its hard to grow up, it's never fun to relinquish that beautiful freedom of play to the burden of gravity and sometimes it happens without us even knowing. It wasn't until the moment that I set chase after the rabbit (in this case the actors) that I realized I was falling , and yes that's where the fun began.

I will leave you with just that, and the words of the Red Queen "Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast" Ramble on.

~ST

Today is the first day of 2015. We begin our journey at this finite point. But before we take the first step, lets think about what we are up against. In the book the power of Habit Charles Duhigg writes,

"Most of the choices we make each day may feel like the products of well considered decision making but they're not. They're habits. And although each habit means relatively little on its own, over time, the meals we order, what we say to our kids each night, whether we save or spend, how often we exercise, and the way we organize our thoughts and work routines have enormous impact on our health, productivity, financial security, and happiness"

He goes on to site a Duke University study which found that almost half of the actions people perform each day are habits and not decisions. Now of course it is important to have habits, to hit the auto pilot button every time we get in to our car and just drive rather than having to reestablish the process each time is vital. Creating healthy eating habits, work routines and the like keep us moving positively forward. But what if the same thing that keeps us grounded and functioning, has the ability to also keep us chained to the static hum of mediocrity?

With this blog we start our journey to reclaim what we can of the nearly fifty percent controlled by habit. This is a tricky prospect because we must first forget what we know about how we navigate our lives. This requires a leap of faith, a step outside of the neatly etched tracks we run on. Through the course of this journey we will attempt to expand what we encounter in our day to day lives, reclaim some of the openness and curiosity that we had as kids, and tap into the unstructured power of play. We invite you in, beyond just reading the blog, to take this journey with us (or at least root for us) because in the end we are all of us a bit more free when any of us broaden the terms in which we are defined.

We leave you with this quote, though a bit contrary to the goal of getting you to read our blog, it will put you in line with the purpose of it.

"Any man who reads too much and uses his brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking" ~Albert Einstein 

Help make this project a community. Next time you post to social media, an experience or adventure which took you down an uncharted path or broadened your horizon, hash tag it #RambleProject.