Cary Tennis Books
July 26. 2010 New workshops start Aug 3 and Aug 7!
Greetings!
 
Wow, I tell ya, I've been down in Loma Linda, California now since the beginning of June and I'm heading back to the city Friday!  I mean, I am so ready. So ...
Writing workshops start Tues. Aug. 3 and Sat. Aug 7. So let's do it!
Man, I am ready.
Life, death and money

 ct head

You know, I just finished another column this morning and want to talk to you from the heart. I want to say that the last nine months have been like an arduous and necessary climb through snow and ice and raging water; the bright and lovely world I had become accustomed to was threatened; it became clear that I like every other human am only a few heartbeats away from unexpected death. It put me firmly on earth, this encounter with disease. It made everything unexpectedly precious.

So I just want to say how important it is to me to be coming back to this practice that has grown up around the AWA method, and around my love of writers and writing and my dream of publishing the work of people I love and respect. I came back to the house a few weeks ago for a weekend visit and was astounded: I live here? This is my house? My life? After weeks living in Loma Linda, California, getting proton beam radiation treatment five days a week, staying in a little motel and then a little apartment in a desert town founded by missionaries, at a hospital that is a Seventh Day Adventist institution ... I had grown accustomed to being an outsider, a traveler among strangers.

So I just want to say that for me the workshops and publishing and retreats and all the friendships and projects that have been born in these workshops and have taken root around us:

This is all an act of love. People come and reawaken or strengthen their imaginative capacities, their ability to recall and express hurt, vision, trauma, genius; their courage to put these things out into the world comes alive. All these great things happen. But it is also a business. We calculate costs and expenses and pay bills and do taxes and make fliers and advertise, we do filing, we do  spreadsheets, we make sure the numbers add up right. We do all these things and in the process we make friends and form deep bonds so all this takes place in the realm of the sacred and also in the realm of business. We try to make things work together, the sacred and the business. As we do this, we fight our own anti-business upbringing, those voices that say making money is bad, that we should not ask people for money. We have to fight that. So we do. And this last nine months I was pretty much laid up, unable to run the business, plan ahead, market, create new things. So we are behind and hoping to catch up. We are hoping to catch up by doing more business than before. Plus, I am more eager than before, because what we do has become so much more precious; after not being able to do it, I truly see its value.

So I want to make up for lost time by creating a very vibrant set of workshops, filled with the vibrant voices of people getting what they need, which is the chance to tell the straight, unadorned truth, to tell the truth as it arrives, in whatever form it chooses to take, sometimes strangely, opaquely, sometimes profanely, angrily, in colors, its own umbilical cord looped around its own neck, tap dancing, telling riddles, chewing gum, talking out of the corner of its mouth, speaking in tongues: However the truth arrives, in whatever guise, that is what happens in these workshops: We tell the truth, and everyone is lifted up by it.

That is why we charge $380. That's what the money is about. It's about making a pact to tell the truth. It empowers us. I say that because it makes me uncomfortable: $380. Exact sum. (Takes me straight back to childhood: Never enough money. No money for this. No money for that. Don't talk about money. Can I have some money? Don't ask for money. Money is dirty. Money means hustlers. Money means con men! -- Voice of my mom.) So it's

So I confess sometimes I worry that we won't make enough money on the workshops. When we're a few days away from them I start to fret. And sometimes I feel that I am not worthy of asking you for money. I worry that I am taking your money and will make you poor. (What does that mean?) But I think, if I think about it, that by asking for your money -- and I don't mean to be cute here -- I am actually making you rich. And I am honoring your money, because it is going to your highest self. Your money is going to support your highest self. So I address your highest self when I ask for $380. That is what is going on. The $380 could go from you to any number of things -- dinners, clothes, PG&E bills, little things that you like but don't really get high on. The money could be frittered away. I know how money can just dribble away and life does not change. So this is one way that you can put this money somewhere where it can actually change your life. So I feel good about it.

Still, I'm kinda neurotic about business. So I just had to share that. I'm not a natural businessperson. In my family, businesspeople were looked down upon! My mother took a vow of poverty! She retreated from the world and lived on nothing. My father, too, retreated. They had great gifts of self but did not learn to live in the world using money, and so their gifts did not reach people; they did not support their creative selves in a healthy way, so the world was deprived of much joy they could have given. That's how I look at it. They were amazing people but they opted out, chiefly by refusing to use the world's blood. Money is the world's blood. It's what flows through. But in my family money was always a hardship and a burden.

I don't think it has to be like that. I think that collectively, those of us who value writing, and speaking our personal truth, and putting out journals and having readings, we can learn to make money work for us, by using it in the service of our highest ideals.

That is what the business is about. That is how I plan to get over my neurotic fear of sending invoices.

OK, it's a long struggle, and I laugh about it, but it's also quite real; it's not something I can laugh off. Money is a measure of energy and love; it is a tool; it is the language of worldly action. It is a way to get where we're going. The use of money is a high calling, a sober exchange. So I promise to send you an invoice if one is called for. It's the least I can do. I promise to ask for the money! I'm shy about it but it's my job! If I ask for the money then everything works. If I don't then I'm letting the business run down. And it's my job to take care of the business.

Sometimes I think of the money like this: It's my job. It's for the business. it's my job to keep the business healthy. The business is the thing that I love. So I keep it healthy. I feed the business. The business puts on the workshops and retreats, and makes the baked goods, and keeps learning and reaching out and inspiring. The business works for us.

I had to go to my Inner Economist, Elizabeth Husserl, to get straight about this, to get untangled in the money realm. She was a great help. I'm still neurotic about money. I still put off sending invoices. But unlike before, I know, deep down, that there will be enough. I know that as long as we do this thing right, honestly, giving voice to our own souls, to our own voices and fears, that as long as we just honor ourselves and be who we are without a lot of bullshitting and prevaricating and shucking and jiving and nonsense, that the business can run just fine, and there's nothing to fear.

So let's not worry about the money. Let's just ask for the money and see what we can do if you don't have quite enough; if you don't have quite enough, or if you value the workshop differently, let's talk about it openly. We can set a price that works for you and me both. I want you in the workshop. I what to be doing this work. The last thing I want is for you to be deprived of this invaluable experience because we did not work creatively to find the right form of exchange. So let's not let money be a barrier. Let's use money well, and honor it.

Yay, money!
I am definitely ready to come home

 ct headAnd there goes that darned emergency medical helicopter again!
 I mean ... I've got a sweet, tiny little cottage in walking distance of the hospital so that's nice, and they have that heliport that goes 24 hours a day, saving the lives of children and such (really). I've got a TV with a remote, and cable, and HBO, and a fridge I've stocked with Trader Joe's buriyani and frozen mushroom pasta, and I've been getting pretty good on the ukulele Jim Bradbury lent me, and I drove into L.A. last week to see El Topo at the New Beverly Cinema, and I'm not in pain or anything, But I Really Have to Get Back To San Francisco!  And I'm coming home tomorrow!