One-Hit Wonders

One-Hit Wonders

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I suppose we are all one hit wonders,
each heart beat
within every human
unique and melodic
in its own way,
every sunset poetic,
every tear prophetic,
each dream sacred
within the undulating folds
of each day
wrapped inside the memories of a universe,
composed of quantum
strings
that sing
across a Milky Way
on a Tuesday
afternoon
entertaining Thursdays
on Friday morning
when Mondays are forgotten
in the twilight of our lives
as we grapple with the questions
we were too afraid to ask
ourselves
when we chased time
and space
only to realize
that what we think
is not how we feel,
or real,
in the ways we were taught
in schools
with arbitrary rules
protected by men
and their tools,
fools
carrying ideas on their backs,
building bombs
and launching attacks
on outer spaces
that bleed
within hearts
that need
sunsets
and tears
more than numbers and years,
rivers and dreams
more than pots of gold,
laughter and love
more than certainty,
because rainbows
never grow old
nor do hearts
that open and fold
in a universe that may be black
yet need not be cold,
because the meaning of life
is in between the spaces we see,
it’s what we hold
and what we breathe,
blurring the difference
between you and me
earth,
sky
and sea,
as we wave
within another
for eternity,
blades of grass
swaying in open spaces
carrying the remnants
and faint traces
of the lives lost
and the cost
because silence
is a sound
that feels hollow,
and we are what we follow.

About Spaciology

Spaciology is not abstract theory; rather, it is a practice you can feel.

  • Inside: Pause, breathe, notice.
  • Outside: Design rooms, rituals, and agendas that slow the spin and invite care.
  • Between us: Make dialogue a place where different truths can live together long enough to teach something.

Ultimately, leadership is the art of making space for what’s important (for everyone) and letting that clarity shape the next step. When we change the spaces from which we lead, our strategies change with them.

Spaciology Learning Commons

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  • Paid membership opens full access to courses, live sessions, and the complete Field Guide.

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The Sun Will Never Set

The Sun Will Never Set

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There is a world inside
every song 
experienced in every heart
within the souls
of those who live on planets
that spin
inside galaxies that turn,
dreams that burn
within
the hopes and fears
of lost men at sea,
always searching
for the elusive ‘me’
within the me
that cannot change
because it must not die
nor must we try
to decipher
because
there is space
in every time,
time in every space,
love in every trace
of what once was
alive and real,
tangible and could feel
the wind,
the fire,
the earth,
and the sea
that churns beneath
the sky,
the dome,
the envelope,
the home,
the beauty
amidst the fear
behind the smile,
perched on the tear
of the woman
who holds
and carries the sphere,
the here
beyond the now,
past the how,
outside the known,
beneath the love,
outside thought,
before yesterday
and tomorrow
exists a universal sorrow
that once one is,
one eventually will not,
and yet galaxies will spin
and light will travel
and the sun will never set.

About Spaciology

Spaciology is not abstract theory; rather, it is a practice you can feel.

  • Inside: Pause, breathe, notice.
  • Outside: Design rooms, rituals, and agendas that slow the spin and invite care.
  • Between us: Make dialogue a place where different truths can live together long enough to teach something.

Ultimately, leadership is the art of making space for what’s important (for everyone) and letting that clarity shape the next step. When we change the spaces from which we lead, our strategies change with them.

Spaciology Learning Commons

Want to go further? Join the Spaciology Learning Commons.

  • Free membership gives you access to community conversations and introductory resources.
  • Paid membership opens full access to courses, live sessions, and the complete Field Guide.

Stay in Touch

Gratitude for the Unknown

Gratitude for the Unknown

There is beauty in the unknown,
unknown in the beauty
of the unknown
is the beauty
of the unknown,
which is beautiful
on an unknown sphere,
so dear,
here
in the unknown
beauty
of the unknown
is the beauty
that rests,
waxes
and wanes
and seeks not to interpret
nor explain
the beauty
of the unknown
beauty
within the unknown
that hurtles
through internal and external space
in the tears
and the lines on the face
that grows old
within the beauty of the unknown
is the beauty
and the softness
that yields
and flows past childhood
and the memories
we lose
so we may gain
the wisdom
of what we cannot know,
or explain,
because
beauty is not an experience
that resides in the brain,
but in the spaces
within which we move
in bodies,
on bodies
spinning through outer spaces
and nebulae and black holes
and foundations
floating through time
and rhymes
about the beauty in the unknown,
the unknown in the beauty,
and how two is three
because space
has presence,
character
and grace
within every fold
and untold beauty
and a secret
tucked inside the unknown
times
of space,
elegance and pace,
the dance inside the space
of the unknown beauty
is a place
plus one
and two
is space
in the dance
of happenstance
and chance
is the beauty
of the unknown
in the spaces
of space,
past the beauty
beneath the place
inside the heart
of every body
is shared space.

About Spaciology

Spaciology is not abstract theory; rather, it is a practice you can feel.

  • Inside: Pause, breathe, notice.
  • Outside: Design rooms, rituals, and agendas that slow the spin and invite care.
  • Between us: Make dialogue a place where different truths can live together long enough to teach something.

Ultimately, leadership is the art of making space for what’s important (for everyone) and letting that clarity shape the next step. When we change the spaces from which we lead, our strategies change with them.

Spaciology Learning Commons

Want to go further? Join the Spaciology Learning Commons.

  • Free membership gives you access to community conversations and introductory resources.
  • Paid membership opens full access to courses, live sessions, and the complete Field Guide.

Stay in Touch

Wading at the Edges

Wading at the Edges

All my life, I have essentially waded at the edges of the proverbial pools of life–a condition that does not lend itself to transformation, an idea I recently gleaned from Braiding Sweetgrass (2013) by Robin Wall Kimmerer. A book that weaves Indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge, and the teachings of plants, Braiding Sweetgrass is stunning in its simple wisdom that is really not that simple at all.

Is parenting simple? Is love simple? Are the truths peddled by various experts in any number of fields (business, marketing, real estate, etc., etc.) actually simple? Must every question have a definitive answer? Must every question beget a (pick your number) step solution? Is anything linear?

Perhaps the answers to these questions lie in the waters around (and within us). Am I speaking metaphorically? Kimmerer certainly is not when she says the following:

Among our Potawatomi people, women are the Keepers of Water. We carry the sacred water to ceremonies and act on its behalf. “Women have a natural bond with water, because we are both life bearers,” my sister said. “We carry our babies in internal ponds and they come forth into the world on a wave of water. It is our responsibility to safeguard the water for all our relations.” Being a good mother includes the caretaking of water. (2013, p. 94)

Kimmerer says, “Transformation is not accomplished by tentatively wading at the edge” (p. 89), and I cannot help but interpret this statement as descriptive of my approach to life. It has been easy to hide in my role as marketer, pitching ideas in service of systems and processes developed by others–and yet, what is my responsibility to others, to Earth, to myself now that I have completed my doctorate in Transformative Studies. Am I not transformed? Am I not now charged with a (sacred) responsibility to be of service to others?

“In one short life where does responsibility lie” (Kimmerer, 2013, p. 95)? Indeed, how do I answer this question? Perhaps, I can look to the apple tree for this answer:

The apple tree leans out over the water and makes for a shadowy arbor. In spring a drift of pink and white blossoms send plumes of fragrance wafting down the hill and a rain of petals on the water. For years now I’ve watched her seasons, from frothy pink blossoms, to gently swelling ovaries as the petals fall away, to sour green marbles of adolescent fruit, to the right golden apples of September. That tree has been a good mother. Most years she nurtures a full crop of apples, gathering the energy of the world into herself and passing it on. She sends her young out into the world well provisioned for their journey, packaged in sweetness to share with the world. (2013, p. 95)

I’m not sure I will ever look at a tree (or mother) the same way again. I also cannot imagine I will remain content to continue to wade at the edge(s). What can I offer? What can any of us offer? Questions like these speak to a scarcity paradigm, a concept explored at great length by Canty (2022) in Returning the Self to Nature.

References

Canty, J. M. (2022). Returning the self to nature: Undoing our collective narcissism and healing our planet. Shambhala Publications.

Kimmerer, R. (2013). Braiding sweetgrass: Indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge and the teachings of plants. Milkweed editions.

About Spaciology

Spaciology is not abstract theory; rather, it is a practice you can feel.

  • Inside: Pause, breathe, notice.
  • Outside: Design rooms, rituals, and agendas that slow the spin and invite care.
  • Between us: Make dialogue a place where different truths can live together long enough to teach something.

Ultimately, leadership is the art of making space for what’s important (for everyone) and letting that clarity shape the next step. When we change the spaces from which we lead, our strategies change with them.

Spaciology Learning Commons

Want to go further? Join the Spaciology Learning Commons.

  • Free membership gives you access to community conversations and introductory resources.
  • Paid membership opens full access to courses, live sessions, and the complete Field Guide.

Stay in Touch

Great Pains

Great Pains

Love is not a place,
or strategy,
direction,
or inflection
of voice,
or choice,
thing,
way,
or dream,
even though
it may seem
like one
to me,
a man
lost in his own sea
and multiple versions of ‘me’,
each one a fortress
designed to shut out the mystery
of self
and the feelings in my head,
as I struggle to remember
what I meant
when I said
my soul had limits,
and boundaries,
and things no one could understand.
———–
As I bid adieu
to the many versions of you
who
were me,
I wonder at your place
in my story,
your history in my space,
as I age in place
without an observable trace
of the pain I experienced
and caused,
the scars
inside my heart
that will not heal,
because some questions go unanswered
and perhaps are not real.
———–
In a world full of 6-figure dreams,
it seems
like the cost of what I gain
causes too much pain
inside my heart
and the nature of my soul
tucked away inside
the forest that is childhood,
sprawling,
crawling
with wonder
and hope and sounds
within smells inside memories
caressed by small hands
that held nothing
except everything
I needed in moments
framed within a boundless imagination
near streams
and stones
that knew
and know
that the nature of myself
is but a ripple in a sea
that is and is not me,
and so we
undulate together
in a galaxy
far, far away
on a summer day,
dreaming of childhood’s end
and what’s around the bend,
future and past
nearly touching a charcoal sky,
stars twinkling,
I ask why,
but is that the question
I need answered before I die?
———–
I guess the answer depends
on whether there is a distinction
between the means and ends
and how I tell my story
and whether I frame myself as a hero
or simply a man
without any answer
or plan.
The universe is vast,
but is it grand?
Is there land
beyond the sea
that is me?
Is there a hard edge to finity,
or might I slip through
my own reverie
to discover I am
but one blade of prairie grass
swaying in the great pains of life…

About Spaciology

Spaciology is not abstract theory; rather, it is a practice you can feel.

  • Inside: Pause, breathe, notice.
  • Outside: Design rooms, rituals, and agendas that slow the spin and invite care.
  • Between us: Make dialogue a place where different truths can live together long enough to teach something.

Ultimately, leadership is the art of making space for what’s important (for everyone) and letting that clarity shape the next step. When we change the spaces from which we lead, our strategies change with them.

Spaciology Learning Commons

Want to go further? Join the Spaciology Learning Commons.

  • Free membership gives you access to community conversations and introductory resources.
  • Paid membership opens full access to courses, live sessions, and the complete Field Guide.

Stay in Touch