Bobulate

On stage at Radio City Music Hall, I hid The Power Broker. All 1,200+ pages of it. I clutched the paperback close, under my academic regalia. On stage, helping deliver diplomas to eager graduating students at SVA, I sat behind the unmatched Robert Caro himself during a not-brief graduation ceremony where he would deliver the final Commencement address. I would ask him to sign the hidden book afterward as we walked offstage.

I knew nothing of what seminal authors did after a Commencement address or how to approach one for an autograph of a book hidden under a robe. Yet I was determined. It was 20 years earlier when I had moved to New York City, and used the subway as a reading device for the book. I wrote once about reading Caro’s book for Field Tested Books, a guide to reading a specific book in a specific place, from Coudal Partners:

I’d travel throughout the city in the molded plastic seats of the 1975 Pullman Standard F train. As I read about the making of our parks and transport systems, I’d pass the same on the subway. Sunset Park, 4th Avenue, 2nd Avenue. Two lives, two stories — one on the page, one out the window. But I never finished it. 465 of its pages are unread. Today, my neighborhood replaces chapters. My block replaces pages. My conversations are my marginalia. The city has taken me over.

As I walked off stage that day after the ceremony at Radio City, I learned Caro had been swiftly escorted backstage and picked up by car. Poof. He had left undetected, working behind the scenes as he does, to continue his work. My copy of the book: still unsigned. 

I was, then, irrationally excited to learn of 99% Invisible’s power broker book club, 100 pages at a time, commencing January. I am in.

After all this time, I admit I still have 465 pages to go, two decades after starting the book. So it’s for the best. Now I can finish it. And, like my relationship to New York City itself, my relationship with the book continues.

Empathy is traveling. Traveling from yourself to expand and meet another in their place and context. Travel I did this past week along with nine others to walk alongside Craig Mod, Kevin Kelly, and walkers for a Walk and Talk. With an unbending pace, we walked for seven days in the hills of northern Thailand, across local farms, across elephant camps, across rivers, across bridges and under waterfalls, and into the reality of cultures and one another’s lives. 100.3 kilometers on a path.

This path was a Walk and Talk, a gathering of about 10 people, beginning at the highest point at Doi Inthanon, then descending many conversations and adventures later into the old city of Chiang Mai. It was a path, chartered by our thoughtful local walking partner and seven days unfolded long and full with conversations in sets of two and three, as we traversed together each day. As we traveled, we journeyed in layers — those in the evenings, Jeffersonian Dinner-style, and those in groups by day, winding our ways into each other’s ideas and context. With this formula, empathy quickly emerged.

More than one hundred years before, back in 1909, at least one significant thing happened: someone named Edward Titchener coined the word “empathy.” I learned this from Rebecca Solnit who notes the root word “path” is from the Greek for “passion or suffering.” And “[i]t’s a coincidence that empathy is built from a homonym for the Old English path, as in a trail. Or a dark labyrinth named Path. Empathy is a journey you travel, if you pay attention, if you care, if you desire to do so.”

On Day Four of our own journey, our empathy and attention turned toward another walking companion, a small dog who joined our group. This spirited and besmitten dog joined us at an elephant camp where we had lodged the night before. Gaining the name “TD” for “Thai Dog,” he trailed us over fields and hills, roads and villages, swimming his way down a river to stay with us at one stage.

The river may have been the end of our time with TD, but he traversed tangles of trees, rocks, and swam to hop a bamboo raft and float with us, showing off his rather unflappable side when we got to land. He followed us another 50+ kilometers into the old city of Chiang Mai.

Through the generosity of a series of strangers in the old city, we found TD vet care and a permanent home where he could live north of the city among fields, a (female) dog friend, other animal companions. The particular tenacity of his loyalty was shared and passed on to a caretaker through the kindness of Thai strangers who helped us get him there. Empathy traveled.

Empathy means that you travel out of yourself a little or expand. Ten days later, they are mingled and entwined — the stories, the remarkable people, the dinner topics, the walking, TD. They are mingled and entwined in a path forward from the hills to Chiang Mai into today and a series of tomorrows. One where everyone gets to return to a home full and expanded.

Coda: So grateful to Kevin and Craig and Chris. Could have walked another 100.3 kilometers — with some rest in between. Thanks to Silvia for manifesting, dog care, and high-speed tuktuk rides.

We used to make these crayon mashups as kids. They were combinations of all of our favorite crayons in the box. Choose a couple of most-loved Crayolas, bake them together in a cupcake tin, let them cool, and you had a super-giant-crayon combo of favorites. A paraffin disc of possibility. You could draw with that thing for what seemed like forever.

I think the length of happy can be sort of like that crayon mashup: you get to color only with your favorites with no end in sight. But the hard part is choosing your favorites, leaving most others behind. And if you knew when it would end, you might stop drawing, speed up drawing, overthink the drawing. But when you have only color and paper and tomorrow, you keep on sketching.

“Who you hang out with determines what you dream about and what you collide with. And the collisions and the dreams lead to your changes. And the changes are what you become. Change the outcome by changing your circle.” That’s Seth Godin in a passage I learned from Tina Roth Eisenberg in an unmissable Guy Raz interview about her journey to human mashups, CreativeMornings, and happiness.

The trick to the super-crayon was to keep adding new favorites back into the tin, baking, and repeating, for many tomorrows to come. Combining favorites to make new life happinesses.

“Are you alright?” It was Hanna calling my mobile phone in the middle of July. I had left my Brooklyn neighborhood for upstate New York that summer month “to write” and Hanna, my neighborhood dry cleaner was calling to check in on me — never having called before — worried that something had happened to me since she didn’t see me walking by daily with my dog.

This is New York.

It was on this day 23 years ago that I moved to New York City, intending only to stop here on my way to something else. It seems the city has become my something else, many times over, its pedestrians upon dog parks upon stoops upon protesters upon subways upon heat-lamped dinners becoming the backdrop and material of my world.

Today, I enjoyed looking back on some of my city accounting since:

• The city that is a goal
• New York City startups, and designing for people
• Where the water towers are
• OK and real New York
• In unicum
• Sudden rejuvenation
• There are roughly five New Yorks
• New York truths according to Gopnik
• Teammates
• This is New York
• The thing about long-term relationships

Am I alright? I am indeed, for I have known what it is to have been a New Yorker.

January has been Month One of something unknown. “All human beings are invited to have a friendship with the unknown,” shared poet and author David Whyte.

This is my formal acceptance of that invitation.

This month, I’ve intentionally wandered into opportunities whose dimensions are unknown. “How long will this last?” a friend asked, listening to what I’m doing. That is unknown, of course, I replied. That is the point of Month One, and all months going forward.

I accept.

I escaped yardwork. Weeding, raking, planting, raking, sweeping — no matter the job, I could worm out of it. When all four kids and two parents spread out into each corner of the yard on a Saturday morning, I strode across the lawn with an excuse.

It’s not that I disliked invasive species, it was the act of being committed against my will that was the issue. (I was also 13 years old and disliked nearly everything.) I had to demonstrate my independence.

Today, I find excuses to spend nearly all my time in my own garden. I chase down opportunities to weed, find excuses to plant, I rake, I sweep, I stare at dirt, and simply observe small bits of life in between. All states bring equal joy: green, grey, wound, discordant, bloomed, browned, fallen — all owning their place, all participating. Without participation, there would not be the opportunity for experience. John Dewey reminds us:

Such happiness as life is capable of comes from the full participation of all our powers in the endeavor to wrest from each changing situations of experience its own full and unique meaning.

To see the greens, the reds, the browns, and love it all is what is worth staying for. In our work, to love both the dark side of one’s workmanship and the shining side of one’s craft is perhaps to experience one’s true self.

To have the integrity to respect all states — and participate in humanity — might be one definition of grace. How we use it is up to us.

Knowing when to stop is not exactly the same as knowing what to start. Determining what’s worthy is harder than simply finding something interesting.

That’s John, long-time supporter of my ideas, who wrote these two powerful sentiments years ago upon the restart of writing on this website after a long hiatus. Years later, as I emerge from what does indeed feel like an extended dormancy, I’m still seeking clarity on what’s worthy. But what I do know: time to start, it is. These handful of words mark an official commitment to an unofficial restart of writing. While in the past, I’ve collected signoffs, talked about the etiquette of endings, and thought deeply about quitting, I’m now focused on beginnings. To new chapters. And to the intentional organization of starting.

Thank you, as ever, John.

Always go for a run even if it’s raining.

Enjoy the journey

never forget to play

and feel the joy of life.

Jump for joy when you’re happy.

Surround yourself with the people you love.

Live in the moment,

have boundless energy.

Listen more than you talk.

But when you do talk, speak from the heart.

It’s never too late to learn.

Look for the best in everyone

and be loyal.

Love unconditionally

and with all of your light, all of the time.

When things feel complex, murky, convoluted, dark, lonely, we have the unrequited companionship of our dog friends to lead us. Here, lessons from Pépite and Jolyn.