To be on a wintry Rockaway beach, to be alive to possibilities, and not to be fabulous – now that is a challenge. This is the daily challenge I face – swinging my legs out of bed and shellcrushing my way through the early morning chill to run 5 miles of hard packed sand at 5 am. I run for my head. And my inner winner. All of the other great benefits I gain from this I am sure contribute to my well being, but I am deep down rewarded by knowing I have just overcome the biggest challenge of my day. So whatever the day holds for me, bring it on.
Getting to Wow!
I am on my way to Wow!
Wow! is a great place to be. And a great feeling to inspire around you. How often do you see people that seem larger than life, possessed of a persona, a magnetism, a power that is unmistakeable as it is distinct?
Do you wonder sometimes, how you can make that happen for yourself? I like to think that getting to Wow! is a journey that makes demands that remind me of falling in love. A handing over of your palm to be stamped with Desire, followed up by Vulnerability and a round trip propelled by Courage.
And what is it exactly that takes their breath away and draw closer to you? Do you want to create that space for yourself, where people stop in admiration clutching their visual visas and whisper, “Wow!” as they enter your realm?
Living in a big old beach house has its charms but squirrels, and I mean several, at least a million, scurrying inside the walls do not make for a charmed existence. Chris, the squirrel guy, closed up the holes in the wood, cut down some branches and promised to come back if there were still squirrels in the house. To make sure of that, he set up a squirrel trap. A squirrel trap? To me, that means that someone, and I can’t imagine that would be moi, will have to pick up the trap, drive it far away and somehow release it so it never comes back. Sure enough, not only was there a squirrel in the trap this morning, it was a dazed and crazed squirrel that probably got caught in it last night and spent the night freaking out. Hello Chris?
I told my neighbor, Mrs. Murray, all about our squirrel problem and what a great job Chris was doing in repairing the holes, setting the traps, offering to drive the squirrel away, and checking in with us. When Chris came to take away the squirrel, I thanked him for coming over so early, Mrs. Murray was on her porch waiting to talk to him about a job and as I handed him a bag of freshly made chocolate chip cookies for his kids, he looked up at me in surprise and said, “Wow! Thanks. OK, now you just call me if you get another squirrel in the trap and I’ll take care of it for you.”
I basked in my Wowness. By simply following my simple advice, you, too, can achieve fabulousness, not that I am saying that should be your only reason to do this, however, you can be sure straight out appreciation and a chaser of admiration can go a long way in building a relationship with your squirrel guy who, as Seth pointed out to me later, is a guy – and guys who make their living trapping squirrels appreciate beer more way than chocolate chip cookies.
Say thank you in a way that is meaningful to the person
What was I thinking?
As Chris drove away, I made a mental note to have a mean six pack of beer around for the next time we catch a squirrel.
More for you
To be in the crosshairs of Valentine’s Day, Presidents’ Day and Chinese New Years is the perfect time to launch this journey to feeling good, doing good and looking good. I will post the best of the best style notes that I discover as your artspy, momspy, nonprofit knitter. How many of you are working on the Desire, the Vulnerability, and the Courage to fall in love with being the best you can be? Let me be the first to crack the champagne bottle and offer a toast to you getting to Wow!
If you’d like to read more about getting to Wow! and especially looking Wow!, here are some of my Style Notes.
Some of the most unexpected and inventive ways to say thank you I have learned from you. Please let me know how awesomely appreciative you are and leave me a comment!
Tomorrow I will be in Washington for meetings on the Hill regarding a request for SBA (Small Business Administration) funding. Katherine and I met with everyone in October for “advice” and now we are asking for money.
I am pitching a wow project. It is called Artful Business and it is a project that teaches innovative marketing and networking skills to small businesses and arts groups in Queens as part of the Queens Art Express. Our goals? More jobs for businesses and artists, more awareness of Queens as a destination site for niche cultural offerings.
What I remember vividly is walking, running, jumping in and out of cabs in between our meetings.
I also remember my studded boots setting off every metal detector so this time, I am wearing shoes that are comfortable, non metallic, perhaps a cool designer sneaker.
As soon as we get into Washington, I begin to see them – nondescript gray pumps that DC women seem to own by the hundreds. Hard on the feet, hard on the eyes. My faith in government is gravely undermined by this disturbing lapse of style.
You are probably thinking to yourself – what a shoe snob! Well, I am.
Shoes are what shapes your movement. Your posture, your presence. Would you trust all of that to inferior footwear?
To be successful, I need to look fundable. Someone who can inspire allocations and multiyear grants. You know that I am going to be wearing shoes that:
Pedestals. Platforms. Places held aloft. These words fall from your lips, shapely, softly, so much better than – heels. How flat that sounds and how it deflates my vision of me in my lovely shoes.
You know that not just any pair of beautiful shoes will do when it comes to love. And when that love leaps into the lap of obsession, you can be sure I will lose even more sleep and closet space – actually Seth will lose what closet space he has left – maybe he should just move out, although he was the first one to suggest I learn how to make my own shoes without even considering how absolutely aufregeht I could be with that kind of power. What was he thinking?
Too late.
Now what?
You probably guessed correctly. You know I am an artspy and a nonstop nonprofit knitter. We do not take things lightly. We take journeys.
I am on a journey. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. A single stiletto, to be perfectly clear.
I am on a journey to master the art of shoemaking. I am going to become a Mistress of Shoe Art, a Shoe Shiva.
I am going to create a pair of shoes, mules, to be precise, in a beginning custom shoemaking class on April 8th. My instructor is Lloraine Neithardt who was “born among birds and makes magic”. We are to bring sketches, inspiration, ideas and dreams to our first class to transform into footwear. You know how wonderful, how sexy, how beautiful a perfect pair of shoes can make you feel. I am determined to learn how to mould and tape and fuse that power into a pair of magical shoes.
Stuff I want to show you
Everyday I am going work on designing my shoes. Some sketches, some research, some soul searching. This post is part of the journal of my journey that I want to share with you.
Tonight I looked at the work of selected shoe artists. Fantastic creations of character wrapped in luxurious leathers, feathers, flights of fancy. Instinctive and uninsured inner soles. Breathtaking in their arched boldness.
I am dreaming of a pair of mules, with rounded points, rising on slim, slightly impertinent, curved heels. Burnished in a brilliant peacock feather blue, the front of the upper part tufting languorously across the front of the ankle – for the left shoe only. I see a myself striding, unleashing my left shoe with its curled back frontpiece followed by my demure right shoe, the peahen to the peacock. Unmatched, unexpected. This is when I realized what I am really designing. A moment. My momentous moment. And what my moment demands are my inner shoes, the vehicles for my vision.
Why get so crazy over shoes?
There were long ago women in my family – first wives, concubines, martial matriarchs with bound feet living with a very different kind of relationship to their shoes. Their tiny sculpted shoes were a symbol of aristocracy that held women as prisoners of wealth, hobbling in painful privilege. Like them, I imagine that I, too, look upon my shoes, torn between love and hate.
I was at lunch with the recipients of the Rockefeller Foundation NYC Cultural Innovation Fund last week. Near noon, just outside the dining room, people were introducing themselves via what they were doing – the creative arts district prototype project, the entrepreneurial development lab for artists, the center for digital game research and design.
Imagine, fifty intensely creative thinkers in a room. My head was spinning. A brain trust? A transformative trust? A passion trust?
Oh, to be a fly on the wall and hear all of the eager conversations and quick project updates buzzing throughout the room. It was a gathering appreciated by all and captured on my trusty Flip video camera for you.
Sans doute, we had great conversations, some heard and some overheard.
Like this one.
“Oh hi! How great to see you again, you always look so fabulous, what is that you’re wearing? It is way too cool! I never know what to wear to these things. But you always seem to.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You look absolutely fine.”
“Do I? I just walked into a boutique and said, ‘I have to be somewhere in 30 minutes. I need to look like a noteworthy grant recipient. Do something, please!’ And this is what they did. Don’t you love that they didn’t put me in black? ”
“And navy is just as black, only its navy. ”
“I know! I was tempted by something she had in pink…”
“Oh please! Pink? No. Pink is the navy blue of India. What were you thinking?”
“You and Diana Vreeland are so right. So now I don’t have to angst about what I’m wearing and I can concentrate on what everyone is doing.”
I like striding. It makes me feel au courant which is very important when you are among cultural smarty pants in large numbers. Wear great shoes.
Opera length fingerless gloves look fabulous with a simple sheath dress. Handknit, of course.
Stay away from anything with black poppy seeds. They always end up as speckles in your teeth and will ruin your otherwise dazzling smile.
Look thrilled. You should be, for crying out loud. How wonderful it is to be among the cultural cognoscenti in this great city!
Do good, feel good, look good.
Over the next few weeks I am excited about meeting up with some of these intriguing folk for lunch where we can continue our conversations and figure out interesting ways to pool our creative energy. I already know I want to wear something navy blue and will be designing a cool knitting pattern for opera length fingerless gloves.
Last Wednesday, I spent the day in Queens with David Gonzalez who writes for the New York Times. He brought with him two things:
1) a desire to know how and why art is important to people in communities
2) a prayer for parking spots.
Sounds like a journey. Or a knowledge quest. I immediately saw it as a Dance Floor and Balcony moment.
I read about this intriguing metaphor on Beth Kanter’s blog which is a must read for anyone with a passion for changing the world. The term comes from titled Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive through the Dangers of Leading with Marty Linsky and Ron Heifetz .
The idea is the “balcony” is the overarching, big picture and the “dance floor” is when we’re in the thick of operations or “on the ground”. Creative thinkers need to shift between the two viewpoints to be effective.
In our case, we were shifting between perspectives from the single unifying train rumbling above us to the densely diverse neighborhoods below the tracks.
We went to three places located along the route of the No.7 train, “the International Express”, and the sites of our upcoming Queens Art Express spring festival this June. David’s dance card included a business owner, a local gallery dealer, a community activist/art presenter, a cafe owner and the community development manager from Queens Public Television.
In Long Island City, we had coffee at Dorian’s Cafe with Brian Adams of the Hunters Point Merchants Association and Mark Dean of the Dean Project. An interesting question we discussed was: Is art the reason or the vehicle for people to cross the river to Queens?
Thank God for GPS.
It got us to Jackson Heights where we found the place we were looking for and we found a parking spot. Azval Hossein, the owner of Espresso 77 and Bryan Pu-Folkes, a lawyer and a presenter of the Jackson Heights food and Film Festival talked about how the closing of the only two theatres in Jackson Heights forced the festival to cancel its events last year. However, what the members of the community were doing to seek alternative spaces and holding impromptu artist gatherings are perhaps blessings in disguise.
Finally, in Flushing. We met Catherine Lee of Crossing Art Gallery and Ros Nieves from Queens Public Television and got into a conversation about niche. Catherine will be holding a workshop to interest doctors in investing in art. Her building is filled with doctors who are currently not investing in real estate or stocks. That sounds like a niche to me.
David got to talk to a lot of people with all kinds of relationships with art and community. What did I get?
a snowy Rockaway boardwalk at 5:00 am
I write about the art of happiness with style notes for creative people who want to make life their everyday passion. What's yours? 
