When It's Time to Write: What Creative Writing Creates

I've spent the last few years preparing for this year: the unsettling inertia of a privately-held public museum grafting into a major university system. Our arrival as the Crow Museum of Asian Art now OF the University of Texas at Dallas was comet-quick: we "closed" just over three months after the real negotiations began. True to form it was "Trammell Crow Time". Sometimes the hardest decisions need to be the quickest; I think shrewd real estate gurus know this. I am learning this.

In the one-hundred days since we became "UTD" I've had the opportunity to see the future: a welcome and necessary balm to the things we've said goodbye to: our sky-lined office, colleagues, the Pearl Art Studio and the way we were.

The familiar is always nearby. I've been dropped off at college before: twenty-five years and seven months ago my parents left me on the third floor of Scottish Rite Dormitory at UT Austin in a dorm room with a blue and white striped comforter that matched my sweet roommate's decor from Mount Pleasant, Texas. I cried in the bathroom stall hoping no one would hear me. I went outside to see if my parents really left. It was a quick goodbye: they were gone along with the way things were: the wood paneled Buick Century Station Wagon (The Party Wagon), Joe, Stu, Jonathan and the rest of the Six Pack. They became my past.

But at the University of Texas at Austin I saw the future: on the first day I met Brian, Ian and Hillary: new friends for the ages. I saw myself as an art educator. I fell in love with my museum studies class and the works of Helen Frankenthaler and Jim Dine with Sue Mayer. I studied in the Best Place on Earth to Study: The Architecture Library. I ate lunch in the Law Building looking for a husband (no future there--he was somewhere else!). My context had changed, and while it took a few more than a hundred days I became that future: curious, challenged and called.

I am that college freshman again: wandering the buildings at the University of Texas at Dallas: imagining what the founders of the Harry Ransom Center were thinking before it was built: before the Huntington Art Gallery and the Blanton Museum of Art. I am beyond the past of the Crow as it was and before the future of the Crow Museum of Asian Art as it will be. I have so much to learn.

Last week I tried to run out to the metaphorical front of the dorm to see if my parents were still there. They weren't. But even if they were, we are different now: the context has changed: 29,000 students are waiting for us to write the future and we have work to do. Through these moments of change and uncertainty I am using the tools I've practiced: mindfulness meditation, creative writing, breathing and yoga. It is as if I knew I was going to need new and serious, disciplined practices to take with me into this future: I am prepared and ready. It's all in where I've been that gives me the fearless heart to walk into where we are going: curious, challenged and called.

And so the work begins to dream up the next chapter. I see myself as a university art museum leader and educator both continuing to create unparalleled experiences in the Dallas Arts District location (which is not going anywhere!) and creating the new second location at UT Dallas. I see myself mentoring university freshmen who might be crying in the dorm room bathroom. And I've fallen in love with what the Crow can mean to this new world: this campus and the community: intercultural, inclusive experiences with works of art. We get to lead as a complex of museum collections: a museum that will respond with relevance and belonging to others who arrive on their first day on campus: curious, challenged and called. 

I Want To Tell You About A Petal

At the Dallas Arboretum there are hundreds of thousands of them: petals. Spritely extensions of a flower stalk: heads up, bright, illumined by spring light, in perfect form.

But I want to tell you about one.

One petal of one tulip, on one stem.

It's shape is lovely, part spoon, part moon: the curve of champions. It holds air and scent. Warm sun and the drops of dew and rain.

Petal as rain-catcher.

This petal is part sculpture, statuesque and lean; defies gravity in its own definition of elegant posture.

First glance might tell you it is white. It is not. It's a warm white, near pale blush like a shoji screen caught by the flicker of candle or day. On a palate, white with the faintest dab of cadmium orange. Barely white.

From the base of this petal, as if left by brush stroke, a new color breaks the tradition of this white: warm pink. As if the Artist drew the loaded watercolor brush up, flattened the brush and lifted off the page at just the right moment. I want to tell you about this color:

The edges of the pink are indeterminate: a cadence of shading, a gradation impossible to capture in anything but the experience. This is real magic, this stroke of color I found on a petal of a tulip today.

It was my first miracle after lunch.

I'll make sure there are more. 

The Time Away Form

Recently my husband and I hosted 8 sixth graders for the Middle School Church Retreat. We also enjoyed meeting 3 college-age gentlemen who stayed with the boys in our home for the weekend as the “Retreat Leaders”. I was responsible for receiving meals from generous volunteers and making breakfast. I was excited about the weekend: drawing on my camp experience as cabin counselor, art teacher and girls camp director. I declared that our bungalow 2 bedroom home was being transformed into a Really Big Tent for the weekend. I was all in. 

One of the boys left a “Time Away Form” on our front entry. The title caught my eye. A Time Away Form? I thought. Don’t we all need this. My wandering thought was wrangled by the footnote of responsibility. Ah, yes, I am the one needing to be aware of this young man’s exit for a basketball tournament –and ultimately his return. I am the one. Time away. Got it. 

But what if? What if we had our own version of a Time Away Form? What would it be Time Away from? 

I find that if I self-schedule a weekend home without events (like the long week between Christmas and New Year’s) I am pulled like a magnet to the closets, the deep clean of the fridge and even the attic. I see others –too—pulled away from Time Away time as we line up at the Goodwill Truck depositing the things we thought we needed. 

Time Away competes with so many things: technology, the feed of friends, the myth of busy, the dubious luxury of “social” media. Time Away competes with habits of comparison, competition and easy shopping. In the time before I get out of bed in the morning I can easily “lose” the quiet hour to any number of social media platforms. It’s that easy. 

Filling out and committing to a Time Away form is harder, but the reward is beyond bliss: the bliss of solitude brings greater well being, a sense of peace and balance I’ll never find in work email or Facebook. 

This is the practice: make your own Time Away Form: 

Name: 

Purpose of Time Away: Set your intention 

Date of Time Away: 

Length of Time: 

Activity: 

__Mindful Practice __ Reading __ Writing __ Napping __ Walking __  _________________ 

Reflections on the experience: 

You can also come up with your own guidelines for your Time Away Time. Decide how you will interact/ not interact with technology, your children, your friends. Set up a space for time away: make it yours, light a candle during your Time Away Time. This gift to yourself, as a gift of solitude and contemplation, makes it sacred. Honor your time with a beginning and an ending: a short period (1-3 minutes) of silence marked by a bell. Take these entry and ending moments to focus on the breath and be with the intention you’ve set. 

Above all, be kind to yourself: your Time Away may last just 5 minutes. And the benefits of those 300 seconds will be the spacious well you can go back to later in the day. The more you practice the more you know: self compassion gives you what you need to give to others. Small dips are incrementally and infinitely beneficial. One day you will realize this sourcing is just the undercurrent –wholly part of who you are and as natural as breathing. 

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. 

Letting Go is Love

Yesterday at 3 pm a media flurry launched with new news about the Crow Museum of Asian Art and The University of Texas at Dallas. For me, it was a much anticipated announcement after 14 months of hard work.

Just over a year ago we began talking with the University of Texas at Dallas about a possible union: Asian Art to the University in trade for perpetual care and support to a museum needing an evergreen future. We maximized our resources to a greater good. For those of you who have asked, this is very good news, and I am truly thrilled. Our region celebrates one museum in two locations: one one Flora and one to come on the campus of UT Dallas.

Here are four things this "acquisition" brings the Crow Museum of Asian Art:

1. Room to Grow: we called ourself a museum without walls because we've always lived beyond them: in vision, in practice and in heart. UT Dallas has space and vision.

2. Auditorium: At least weekly I am contacted by a member of the Asian-American Community asking about opportunities to present dance, theater and the cultures of Asia. That mean's I've said no 52 times a year for 20 years. I'm sure I am exaggerating, but the point is, now I can begin saying yes. UT Dallas has beautiful auditoriums.

3. Students: 24,000 to be exact-ish. I've longed for a University partner. We are an internationally-minded museum. Universities are too. We will bring the world to Dallas together. And Dallas to the world. Through research of the collection (and beyond) offering new contexts for how art is among the greatest human commonalities. Art and Academia are nothing less than Double Happiness.

4. Forever: Trammell Crow had a practice of planting saplings: little baby trees that he knew would grow far into the future offering shade he would never experience. We were this. The family nourished us with spectacular generosity. We invited others to our "Community Garden": Asian-American Leaders, friends and Asian Art Enthusiasts. Our Garden Grew. UT Dallas is the Future: blazing trails in STEM and rivaling CalTech and MIT. Universities are forever and now we are too.

This was an idea that felt impossible at times. Some days I felt like I was working two jobs: missing basketball games and spring break to push these two comets together. I had tremendous support from Trammell S. and my new mentor at UT Dallas, Dr. Hobson Wildenthal. I am learning that when you let go for big futures, you find that you have exactly what you need.

And the lessons in non-attachment! When you're working with new partners and going for big vision you have to be prepared to see their vision, too. The Tibetan Mandala has taught me a few things over the years and inside of this immense change, we may feel like we're being swept up, but truly we are the sand. We will form again in a different way, but the DNA of our museum: compassionate, inclusive and accessible will always be there. I'll write more about this but for now please know that all is well, very well. The future is bright. 

Mindfulness and the Stack of 2018 Holiday Cards

I have a bowl I use for my holiday cards. It was a gift from a student at Armstrong Elementary back in the day. It's glass with molded Christmas Trees on the sides: a solid design that comes out for the month of December for my ritual "containment of the cards".

What to do with these lovelies? I know some of you talented, organized friends keep an excel document of who sent and to whom you will send next year. I gape.

For a few years I kept them in ziplocks: 2007, 2008, stored away for...well I am not sure what. Mine were headed in that direction this morning. And it occurred to me that these cards have a new purpose: a source for mindfulness.

With the virtual feed of social media, the holiday cards have to compete for our attention.

I decided this morning to have a practice of sitting with these cards each morning this week. I took a small stack off the top and looked into the joyful faces of my friends and their children, full of promise and vitality. I started praying for them: that their lives will be supported with the things they need. I prayed that they will do all the good works God has prepared for them and that they will know they are instruments of his peace. I expressed gratitude for these humans creating amazing good in the world and sent prayers of hope and possibility to their outcomes.

I did this as a silent meditation in my morning hour, and the bowl of cards has taken on a new meaning for me: compassion practice. I changed the context from the racket of what to do with these items to a reminder of the joy, intention (and hard work!) they are to bring to our lives.

At the end of the week I will recycle them like the sand mandala, sending these positive and healing energies back into the world. I am grateful for the time they brought into my morning: the moment to give gratitude for my circle of everlasting love and support.

2018 is the Year of Love and one of the first practices is to find love and sit with it. This morning I found love in the Christmas Bowl from an adored student at Armstrong Elementary. I wonder where I will find it next.

Love came down at Christmas,
Love all lovely, love divine;
Love was born at Christmas,
Star and angels gave the sign.

Worship we the Godhead,
Love incarnate, love divine;
Worship we our Jesus:
But wherewith for sacred sign?

Love shall be our token,
Love shall be yours and love be mine,
Love to God and to all men,
Love for plea and gift and sign. 

Christina Georgina Rossetti