The Last 15 Minutes in My Office: When Transformation Asks Us to Let Go

I'm not leaving the Crow Museum of Asian Art. But today I am leaving our offices here. For good. We moved into this sprawling office (complete with the Center for Contemplative Leadership) twenty-three months ago. I had a private corner office with stunning views of the Dallas Arts District and we enjoyed a hall you could roller skate on or have a mean game of bowling. We never did that, but we thought about it.

This is my seventh office in twenty years at the museum.

My First office was at the Front Desk. I sat there for a year. This was one of my favorite offices I've had: direct contact with our visitors truly on the pulse of the museum activity.

The second was on the first floor just off of the then Japanese Gallery: a tiny house for five employees. Great views of Flora Street and all of the activity there. Once I looked out at saw a car that looked like my Isuzu Rodeo being towed on a Friday at 4:30. Turns out it was my Isuzu Rodeo. It was a long weekend until I could retrieve it. We laughed until we cried.

We expanded that space and created an office for the Director: in 2002 it became mine. (Third.)

Then we turned that space into the Lotus Shop: always growing and creating larger space inside of space. We moved up to the 31st Floor for our Fourth office home. It felt too far away and for a spell I was in the First Lotus Shop just off the front desk. It was tough to be so "exposed" --I was bombarded with too much information. It had a large sliding glass door that closed me in like a cell. This was my Fifth office.

Next, after the opening of the Performing Arts Center, now the AT&T Performing Arts Center we moved into their former preview space on the mezzanine of Trammell Crow Center. Office number six. This was a period of remarkable growth: a large shared office area with our first conference room and kitchen. Next we expanded to add a library and a larger conference room. It was a sweet suite and with each move we felt we grew up a little more.

And then, two years ago, with generous support from our Landlords, we were invited to take a large space on the 35th floor: the original Trammell Crow Office space that opened here in 1984. It's rumored my sprawling corner office was also Trammell S.'s office back in the day. Good karma. We loved it up here: Corgan completed a stunning renovation. LA-based artist Amanda Giacomini was commissioned to paint a mural of 10,000 Buddhas in her continuing series. We held a very sacred puja when we opened the office. Seven was heaven. Literally.

I learned about a new ecosystem: what the world looks like from the 35th floor. I watched traffic and tracked emergency vehicles to make sure they weren't coming to the museum. I watched Care Flight go back and forth from Baylor to Children's Medical. I studied the renovations of the Cathedral, the roof of the Meyerson and the construction of Flora Lofts and the Hall Project(s). It is a completely different world up here. I did a lot of work whilst in Suite 3550, too. This was the Design Center for our Big Vision to become part of the University of Texas at Dallas. I am sitting, here for just a few more moments in the room where it happened.

And Monday I will be in a new room in my Eighth Office. It will be a place of designing our future museum for the Campus at UT Dallas: a place of building new futures for the museum so much farther beyond what we have known--even as I sit 35 stories in the sky. Vision can happen anywhere. And it's not the offices you sit in that matter: it's the people you choose to spend those hours with and the dreams you go for.

So, goodbye Seventh Office in the Sky. May our inspirations that happened here carry forward for the next inhabitants. And I know that ultimately the sky never leaves me. 

What the Moon Saw and Other Secrets of White Rock Lake

When I was growing up my Mom had a book by Brian Goldsmith: What the Moon Saw. It was a book for learning concepts of "heavy" and "light"; "long" and "short"; "weak" and "strong" through a dialogue with the Sun. I always thought it was puzzling to think about what the moon "Saw" because the last line of the book was how there was one thing the Moon never saw: the Sun.

I don't think it's true actually, because the moon's light comes from the Sun. It was the first time I realized an author can say anything. And the Moon sees everything.

Today has been a sad day. For almost two weeks I've been watching the news story about a young couple that left their car just after midnight, with the doors open just a few hundred feet from the shore of White Rock Lake, and on the other side, just a few hundred feet from where we live. Weltzin (the young lady) filed a restraining order against her estranged boyfriend two weeks before they abandoned the car.

In the days following their disappearance the woman's sister posted flyers on the telephone poles on our street. I don't think I've ever seen a flyer for missing persons in our neighborhood. Their smiling faces: as once a happy couple, parents of children, haunted me.

It rained one night and the paper signs dripped away from the tape. Their images disappeared, too.

For a few days we saw "police activity" around the woods between our house and the lake. I started following "Help Us Find Weltzin" on social media: a page started by her hopeful sister. I watched the interviews of her mother.

Last weekend they took the rescue boats out into the water. What do they know? I wondered. I prayed they wouldn't find anything. It was a very cold and wet weekend. I tried not to think about the divers. Work no one wants to do: honorable, compassionate work.

This morning I heard the helicopters before I saw them. They hovered too long for it to be a passing interest. I went to the feed: "Body pulled from White Rock Lake. Rescuers Boat Capsizes During the Retrieval". Her sister wrote in big black letters on the "Help Us Find Weltzin" Facebook Page: "Please people stop speculating: IT'S NOT MY SISTER".

There were rumors of a fisherman. Not Weltzin or her husband Alfonso Hernandez. And now a few hours later: the body is confirmed to be that of Alfonso Hernandez. It's impossible to think about it, but it happened just over the "sledding hill" of our Lakewood home. And this discovery is just half and none of the mystery. Only the moon knows what happened on that dark night.

The Moon and the Lake have to see a lot of things that are unimaginable. I am sitting with this weekend--the veracity of truth. Yes, the lake is a beautiful organism: luminous at sunrise, a moment I have captured thousands of times. The Lake is an organism and organisms can't always be beautiful. To be alive is to live in truth. But those grasses are also the grasses someone stumbled through while no one was watching: the same grasses I walk often. Under the same moon.

This reminds me of a line from a Mary Oliver poem: "I don't know what a prayer is" and in this case I don't know to pray for the man pulled from the lake, alleged to have hurt her? To pray for their children and parents? To pray for her sister who spends her days fighting still hoping Weltzin will be found alive? I'll pray for all of them: sit for a few minutes for each of them: for the police, the detectives, the boat rescuers who went into the frigid waters today. I'll pray that those working to end domestic violence will be given what they need to keep working to protect the victims. I'll pray the restraining orders work next time. I'll keep on writing and breathing. And looking at the Moon. And Walking with the Lake. May she never be alone.