TrackersNW has now begun hosting SHIFT at the Scout Pit in SE Portland. For more info check out the the SHIFT page in the sidebar.

Someday I’ll put up a calendar around here for events like these. In the meanwhile:

WHAT: Story Game evening
WHO: Anyone wanting to work their storytelling skills through collaborative story-gameplay, and playtest some independent and creator-owned/published story games
WHEN: Sunday, 5pm, Feb 3rd (More or less weekly)
WHERE: Scout Pit, 5040 SE Milwaukie, around back next to the parking lot, basement level double doors.
BRING: Pencils, snacks, drinks
PLEASE: RSVP - if you just show up, you may find we have moved location or something, if I don’t know to expect you. RSVP even if you only think you might come!

My dear friend Julie for years has diligently explored a world of what I call ‘invisible technologies’ - things that we don’t mention, because fundamentally we don’t value, so we don’t see them. Daniel Quinn, author of Ishmael, expressed this best when he said (paraphrasing) “You can hide a secret best, in plain sight”.

An intact traditional and native culture comes heavy and pregnant with these kinds of secrets-in-plain-sight, constantly renewing its people with the ho-hum, everyday magic that a nourishing culture provides, and that remains so untouchable and mysterious to modern peoples enmeshed in the anxiety of materialism and a failing worldview.

Recently she wrote an article on ‘intention’ that I really like, and I encourage you to check it out.

Introducing the Intention
I would like to introduce to you another option that gets met our need to continuously expand into better and better feeling places and into new experiences of our lives and our potential. It is a method that does not include any trying at all, as a matter of fact, the more you try, the less it works. Welcome to the power of setting Intention.

Finish the article at her website.

It may not surprise you that shared personal history plays a significant role in building social teams that can collaborate effectively (and that, of course, team members communicate this history by telling and reliving stories of it).

It may not surprise you that the stories that grab us the most, whether movies, television, written or oral traditions, operate off of central characters that must make a defining decision when confronted with a difficult choice.

The stories that may wow us stylistically (special effects, cleverness of prose, etc.), but still leave us cold and disconnected from true highs, forget about these kinds of characters, struggling to find their way down thorny paths. Thus you have Hollywood action movies and so on.

It may not surprise you that, when your parents or elders put you into tough situations, that compelled you to make tough decisions, and they told you it would “build character”, they meant exactly this (even if they didn’t know it).

Human beings eat story like a food, breath it like air, walk on it like earth, deepen intimacy with it like physical touch.

Most of us avoid conflict and discomfort, and help others to do the same, without realizing that a world without conflict and discomfort means a world devoid of story.

Which means a world devoid of food, air, earth, and physical touch.

Some peoples in the world experience constant conflict and discomfort (how many wars in the ‘third world’ do we have raging right now?), so the answer doesn’t lie in neverending struggle.

Rites of Passage, intitiations, and such experiences create a safe space to have conflict and discomfort, and to make difficult decisions.

Also, living a life where, once we’ve recovered from the last one, we dive right into the next edge-pushing experience, will build our interwoven personal stories and characters.

The most powerful and intimate relationships come from people who’ve shared incredibly harrowing experiences - plane crashes, war, abuse, and so on. Sometimes, rather than strengthening bonds, this breaks them, and the people involved. But when they work, they work because of the extremely condensed story they’ve shared together, of one conflict after another. One could have the same result just by having a friendship over many years. Sooner or later the number of conflicts and ‘character building’ moments will add up. Unfortunately, sometimes conflicts do overwhelm the participants, and rather than building them up, they break them down.

Thus the need for safe space for conflict! Our culture itself can create (or discourage) an atmosphere of this. Unfortunately, our culture conflates conflict with violence, and intimacy with sex.

An argument means you’ll come to blows, and a heart connection means sexual attraction, according to our cultural mythology (’our’ meaning modern American culture).

Can you get into a safe argument with someone?

Can you feel a heart connection safely (with a matching gender, depending) without sex coming up?

Don’t get me wrong. I love violence, and I love sex. I also love conflict that doesn’t break friendships, and heart connections that enrich rather than unnecessarily complicating my life.

And don’t get me wrong on the other count either - ‘building character’ doesn’ t have a linear progression. One can build one’s character into a sneaking and deceptive diplomat, as well as a forthright and nurturing caregiver. I know who I’d want to spend more time with, but a good story needs all kinds of folks.

So, ‘building character’ really means revealing character.

In fact, working on a team with someone who I know has a tendency to lie or shirk jobs, under certain pressures, may work out just fine, because at least I know them.

I know their limits, and I know the times they’ve supported me too.

In fact, suddenly I wonder if anyone exists who wouldn’t reveal ‘interesting’ character under intense enough pressure.

Then this all starts to make much more sense - virtues and flaws fall away, and we begin to realistically care for another, and understand each others capacities and incapacities.

And so working on a high-performing team of folks, or interacting with a close and collaborative family, means you’ve reached that point. You’ve lived the story, you’ve seen character revealed, and you accept each other, warts and all.

Familiar warts can actually inspire quite a bit of affection, don’t you think?

I just realized that I have abused Robin Dunbar’s intriguing model of how humans maintain social groups.

Not only me, but many others have ‘dumbed down’ Dunbar’s idea that the mean maximum for functioning human social groupings hovers around 150 persons (precisely 148, with a 95% confidence interval of 100-230).

What does this have to do with the College of Mythic Cartography? Hell, I don’t know. I mean, it has everything do with it. Ask me some other time. Let me get the issue down on electronic paper first.

Most folks hear this notion, and think one of several things (non-inclusively):

1) I can only have 150 human relationships

2) I can only have 100-230 human relationships

3) I can only have a mean maximum of 150 meaningful human relationships

4) Only 150 of my Myspace friends count

5) Companies should number no larger than 150 employees

6) Ideally sized Towns have 150 people in them, or neighborhoods of 150 people.

And the drivel goes on, with the magic number ‘150′ tossed around like a new-age talking stick. If you say someting, and include the number 150, you’ve said something profound.

All of this misses an important secondary assertion that Dunbar makes. Namely, that it takes substantial work to maintain a social network.

Dunbar’s number only refers to a tightly cohesive human social network, capable of efficient (and life-affirming!) collaboration. Villages, military units, highly focused groups that emerge in the presence of intense environmental or economic pressures. Each of those possible 150 relationships that Dunbar refers to operate at a high-functioning level that many folks in our culture have never experienced beyond a very small group of friends or family. For some, only a family member or two, and a couple of friends, have relationships with them that fit the profile.

Dunbar estimates that to maintain the (mean) 150 high-functioning relationships, intrinsic to original and indigenous human cultures (village and cultural lineage groups), one must spend 42% of one’s time ’social grooming’. This almost requires a certain level of constant physical proximity. The smaller the group you maintain, the smaller the portion of your time dedicated to maintenance (but also the less benefit you receive). A social network of 10 would not require 42% of your time spent in strengthening intimate social connections.

He coins ’social grooming’ from the behavior of primates who spend time bonding through grooming behaviors. This should give you some idea of the nature of the work involved in maintaining a high-functioning relationship, rather than an acquaintanceship. ‘Social grooming’ doesn’t mean ’spending time with’, it means creating and strengthening intimacy.

Think about this.

The fact that ancestral villages and cultural groups could get to, and maintain, a group of 150 tightly-knit individuals that stayed in relative physical proximity, constitutes an amazing achievement and a testament to the power of those traditional cultures.

This implies that most modern humans rarely experience these relationships on any significant network level. How much time do we spend bonding with others in a meaningful way?

And once we’ve started these bonded relationships (childhood and school friends, family, etc.), we can still lose those connections as the years pass, too, when we don’t know the value in them, and don’t maintain them.

Perhaps what has destroyed the landscape of modern american families, friendships, and workplaces, amounts to the problem that we have huge networks of acquaintances, but precious few fully human relationships.

Not families, but regularly interacting acquaintances.

Not friendships, but folks who ’share interests’ and ‘know each other’.

I don’t say this to pronounce dire and certain doom on our lives. I say this to so that we can go, “HEY! LOOK! A thing! A thing that matters.”

When your Grandma (if you luckily had one like this) said, “Family comes first - family matters most,” you may not have known the profound human survival wisdom embedded in that statement. When she, or any other relative or friend, pestered you to attend that party, or that event, that you passed up because it seemed such a waste of time, now you know you (and your children, and your family) have paid for that in the wages of depression, exhaustion, isolation, disconnectedness.

So hey. Let’s get together more often. And when we do, let’s play some games, sing some songs, and take some risks to do some stuff that actually brings us closer. And lets build up our little groups, and count our wealth one by one, in each deep and fully human relationship.

Because it matters. It really, really matters.

Below you’ll find another early draft excerpt from Chapter Fourteen in the upcoming Rewild Adventure Guide.

I’d like to start getting some feedback on these draft excerpts. Do they help? What have I left missing? What part works the best?

This feedback will end helping create the final version of this chapter. You’ll also notice this bears substantial resemblance to ‘the Riddler’s Way’ article on this blog, with some notable additions. I haven’t decided yet whether or not to split each of the sub-headings in the Riddle section into its own major section.

The Riddler’s Way

Developing your spoken tradition skills means developing your Riddling skills. Let’s celebrate a return of Riddles, and the delicious torture they induce in linear minds!

Achieving skill at solving and creating will change you into a different human being. A riddling animal. This of course describes our ancestors, for each one of us, if you go back far enough - the original questing, riddling beings. Seekers of holy places, plumbers of mysteries, never satisfied with answers that don’t open up further questions.

The Question

Everything in the world has a voice, and tells its stories over, and over, and over….everything. Challenge yourself to open a vaccuum, a pulling space, in your mind, in your senses. Embody a constant wordless question. The great Riddlers of old would fade away to nothing more than a human ‘?’, invisible ghosts upon the land,. Stretched out to the horizon, they knew everything that happened the moment it occurred.

It all begins with a question. Nothing more.

Pick a single object, the more mundane the better. Once a day, for a week, ask 50 questions of this object. Pick a new object every day, if necessary.

Count off the questions with your fingers. When you reach ten, touch your head with that finger, as a marker. Starting with your fingers again, count until the next ten, touching your left shoulder to signal twenty. Then the right shoulder. Then the left hip. Then the right hip. You just marked off 50 questions.

Does 50 questions sound impossible? Good. Find them anyway. Cheat (and if you can, you’ve probably discovered some foolish limits anyway, that you’ve imposed upon yourself for no good reason).

Ask simple, obvious questions at first. Ask questions that a martian, or a visitor from dimension X would ask of that object. Start very basic.

You do not have to answer any of the questions, though you may find yourself curious about them. Later on, do what you like with the answers. For now, just the questions.

The Web

Much like a spider’s web, you now weave a map of connections, everything leading back to the center, that object upon which you asked the 50 questions.

Once a day, find 50 links back to that object, 50 ways it connects to other things in the world. Count off the same as before. Links can consist of links-of-links, as far removed as you like, as long as they lead back to the center. You can consider the links in the web as relationships, metaphors, or associations, or poetic allusions, if it helps. Find those kinds of connections.

The Chronicles of the Dreamtime

Every night, when you go to bed, one part of you sleeps, while another remains awake. This one will teach you to master the riddling world, if you learn to speak its language.

When you wake up, you have two options. Immediately tell the story of your dreams, or what momentary snatches of them you remember, to the person next to you. Or, write them down. It amounts to the same thing. Some cultures honor the telling of dreams, and make space for it. In ours, you may find your best audience in the pages of a journal.

Write down all the details that you can remember, even the stupid, foolish, unpleasant, inconvenient, embarrassing ones. Especially those.

More layers exist for this, but essentially, take nothing for granted in the dream, and begin your mapping web on it. 10 links for every detail you can single out. Results don’t matter at this point, but the practice does. You don’t want to find out what anything ‘means’ - you want to see what connections you can make.

The ‘Aha!’

Having said results don’t matter, you may notice every once in a while, you get an ‘aha!’. Something clicks. Something makes sense. You accidentally decode a little piece of dream language. Good for you. Write it down. But don’t let it suck you in…focus on the practice, not the results.

The Waking Dreamtime

If this next notion doesn’t turn your world upside-down, I don’t know what will. Because before you now lies the task of treating your waking world like a dream. Take one short interaction, between yourself and the world and treat it like the dream. Find the connections, 10 connections to every element you can single out. How short? Make it short it enough that it seems effortless. Then make it a little longer every time you practice anew.

Making Riddles

To actually create a riddle, take one of your webs-of-links about an object you choose, and use that to write a short poem that captures your sense of that web, without mentioning outright the subject of the poem. Poems don’t really differ from Riddles. To some people this comes as news, to others not so much.

Solving Riddles

Do the riddle crafting in reverse. Take the details, weave out a web, and see what it all adds up to.

The Door Has Opened A Crack

You’ve just learned the most rudimentary practices of Riddling - rudimentary, but unspeakably powerful. Any single one of them could turn a life upside down, if practiced consistently. Consider that, if doing them all seems like too much. Start with one piece, one practice. Then add more practices, slowly, one at a time.

And the door will slowly open, inch by inch…you’ll hear the hinges complaining, but pay them no mind. Uncared for, abandoned, rusted with old grief, they have the right to complain, the Riddlers of Old (that took such care of them) having long ago disappeared into the maw of the machine that eats beauty and excretes despair. Make yourself indigestible to that machine. Keep the door opening, and oil the hinges with your Riddling mind.

WHAT: Indie role playing game day, where we playtest games that work our storytelling muscles in new and exciting ways.
WHO: You or someone like you. Including people you know who would really enjoy it.
WHEN: More or less weekly, and coming up next - Sunday Jan 20th at 3pm
WHERE: The Scout Pit, 5040 SE Milwaukie, around back next to the parking lot.
WHY: To explore new tools for stretching our storytelling muscles, to innovate methods of teaching these skills, to help design possible tracker and animist-oriented story games. And to while away the rainy days of winter doing what humans have always done best this time of year: telling stories!
AND DON’T FORGET: Please RSVP if you can. Portlanders suck at RSVP, I know, so I don’t require it, but it’ll help me set up chairs and tables and snacks.
BRING: Pencils, snacks, maybe something to drink.
p.s. we’ll have the upstairs noise problem fixed by then too!

Natural Way: Indigenous Voices is Honored to Present

Rekindling the Fire - An Evening with Calvin Hecocta

Thursday, February 7, 2008, 7:00 to 9:00 p.m. (Note: This is not on Friday this month.)

Calvin Hecocta was raised by his parents and his elders in the Numa tribe near Beatty, Oregon. He learned the ceremonial and spiritual blessing ways from his grandfathers, uncles and others who were true to their traditions.  Calvin has taught Native American religion, philosophy and environmental ethics at Willamette University and Portland Community College. Of his work, he says, “The forests and the rivers are the greatest classroom in the world. I was lucky enough to be raised right, to value the land and its people—all of them, not only humans.”

Calvin conducts cultural and environmental workshops dealing with ancient beliefs as well as contemporary issues. “My lectures, workshops and performances are based on values and rituals that were provided me in my community. I use stories, poetry and music as bridges between cultures, allowing each listener to find his or her own soul place in this ancient yet new world. By incorporating my personal experiences and feelings into every lecture or performance, participants discover clarity and find individual relevance to matters in their own lives.”

Location:  PSU Multicultural Center, 228 Smith Memorial Union, 1825 SW Broadway at Harrison, Portland, Oregon

Cost: $10-$20 donation requested for speaker’s honorarium

Co-sponsors: Earth & Spirit Council at www.earthandspirit.org, PSU Multicultural Center at www.culture.pdx.edu , Trellis Earth at www.trellisearth.com, and The College of Mythic Cartography at www.mythic-cartography.org.

So I’ve spent a long time trying to develop a culture of storytelling amongst friends, students, family, and so on. Recently I’ve stumbled across a whole little movement, the world of small press and independently published, owner-created role-playing games. I blame Jason Godesky.

I’ve gotten excited about them enough to start having playtest days, where we see what makes these games tick, use them to work our storytelling muscles, and possibly develop our own games.

WHAT: Indie role playing game day, where we playtest games that work our storytelling muscles in new and exciting ways.
WHO: You or someone like you. Including people you know who would really enjoy it.
WHEN: Sunday Jan 13th at 1pm
WHERE: The Scout Pit, 5040 SE Milwaukie, around back next to the parking lot.
WHY: To explore new tools for stretching our storytelling muscles, to innovate methods of teaching these skills, to help design possible tracker and animist-oriented story games.

COST: Free, but we welcome donations for sustaining the Scout Pit, a community center on the lip of Oaks Bottom Wildlife Refuge.

I’ve started work on a book that will sum up a lot of the basic games and exercises I teach here (and at TrackersNW workshops). I’ve decided to start putting up excerpts of early drafts. Things may change quite a bit, according to feedback I get and also collaboration with my illustrator Kristen Dullum. Check out her work.

An excerpt from Chapter Two:

To even touch the wild place, somehow we have to get to silence. You know what I mean - when you see wind rushing through tree branches, rain hitting a puddle, a bird rocking back and forth on a swinging power line, black against the sky. All these beings live in a ’silent’, nonverbal world. Our power of language and thought enables us to do amazing things, but our obsession with it in these latter ages has sundered us from our wild relatives. Somehow we need to reopen that commonality of silence again. Fortunately, I have just the thing.

The Sensory Tune-in Game

This game you can play by yourself or with others, standing in a circle, anytime and anyplace - waiting for a bus, talking at a cafe, out at a park, anywhere!

If alone, direct yourself silently in your mind through the instructions. If in a group, choose one person to lead the others.

0. In this game you want to stay conscious of as many of your five senses as possible, all simultaneously. Once you can do all five, you want to increase the amount of sensations in each sense. In brackets you’ll find directions for different ways of increasing the sensations and challenge. Don’t worry about memorizing the exact words for directing people through each sense, but do note the phrasing, known as ‘pace and lead’. You don’t want to pop the experiential bubble by bossing folks around, you want to gently lead the way. Count silently to 8 seconds when transitioning from one of the 5 senses to another.

1. Owl eyes:  “Pick a distant point in front of you, and park the center of your vision there. As you begin to focus on that point, you can also notice the very edges of your vision, both all the way to the left, and all the way to the right. As your vision spreads out to each side, you can also begin to notice all the way up and down, all simultaneously. Now, as you see everything, all at once, in one great panorama, shadow and light, color and empty spaces, you can….”[notice negative spaces, the empty shapes formed by the crossing of tree branches etc. - how many shades of x color do you see - memorize the whole scene so you can draw it - what smallest detail do you notice - what have you missed - ]

2. Deer ears: “…Now hear all the sounds, all around you in  full circle, in a sphere, each one a separate sound, each one a separate note, or rhythm, or percussion…[ - hear the music in the sounds, as a symphony played them - what quietest sound do you hear? quieter than that? - pick a sound that you consider one thing, and separate it out into its sub-notes and rhythms - ]

3. Raccoon hands: “…”….as you continue to see everything, all at once….and hear…all the sounds, you can now begin to notice the feelings in your body…the movement of air against your skin, the clothes on your body, the pressure of the earth against your feet…the expanse of your back like a big reflector dish, receiving and sending ripples of feeling to, and from, all around you…[- offer out the palms of your hands moving them in an arc around you, feeling for changes in heat and sensation on them, like metal detector wands at the airport - how do different objects and directions around you make you feel, in your belly? in your heart? -]

4. Dog nose: “….as you continue to see everything, all at once….and hear…all the sounds…and feel, all the feelings…you can now begin to notice the smells…how many do scents do you detect…and which direction to they come from…and how close their source…[- what faintest smell do you smell? - how many scent notes can you pick apart from whole smells? - does taking big sniffs make your more sensitive, or do tiny puffs, like a dog? - ]

5. Snail tongue: “…as you continue to see everything, all at once….and hear…all the sounds…and feel, all the feelings…and smell, all the smells…you can now begin to notice the taste of your tongue in your mouth…” [ - do you taste salt? sour? sweet? bitter? how much of each? - ]

6. At some point during this game you may feel your world fuzz over a  bit, as your senses overwhelm your mind, and put you in a dream place. So much for drugs, eh? Who needs ‘em! Make this fuzzy place a goal, every time you do this exercise: perservere until you achieve the dreamy state. This will work the edge of your sensory ability, and make it a little stronger, each time.

Play this game over and over, and every time, learn something new…anything! If you look for it, you’ll find it.  Demand a discovery every time! And then blog about it! What improvements to the game have you innovated? What new sensory questions and challenges have you added to the game? Share with us.