Originally shared on 11 June 2018 via TinyLetter.

Though I’ve never been a foodie or truly adventurous eater, after many years of international and cross-country exploration, I have a great fondness for unassuming gems and really special memories of meals cooked and shared with others – expired-food potlucks, fusion-culture Shabbats and one very spontaneous mid-week Thanksgiving dinner in Peru, where I bought a turkey at a word-of-mouth store down a dark alley in a neighborhood I barely knew. Thirty non-Americans showed up with dishes from all over the world to celebrate with a very delighted gringa that night.  I remember being invited into homes by strangers in India, kindly curious about a foreign woman in a sari exploring their streets. I jumped on their mopeds, map-less and happy. And in Italy, when a few fellow archaeologists and I hitch-hiked to “House of the Hunt” to eat wild boar for my birthday. Of course, too, my aunt, uncle and cousins will remember my first urban food adventures when I traveled with them to Montreal and New York City and asked the waiters about every unknown item on the menu at these strange restaurants that didn’t serve all-you-can-eat soup, salad and white bread. I remember the conversations more than the food. I am grateful for those experiences.

Today, for y’all, I have an unpredict story. On Friday, out of cell range, before hearing the bone-sad news of the frank and curious Anthony Bourdain, I stopped at one such special future food memory place. The chef, named Mel, a Vietnam Vet, said he opened this place so he could connect and talk with people regularly – he said that relating to others made him feel happy, that the food was the excuse to do that. 

When I walked in, Mel asked, “Have you ever had strawberry rhubarb pie?” I hadn’t in a long long time. He said, “I made my first one last night!” He cut me a sliver to try, reminding me to eat dessert first on some days. We talked about pies and local produce and other recipes and traditions. It was an unintentional, unpredicted moment that happened because I figured that any sign hand-stenciled with “biscuits n gravy” was made by a good person – and I was hungry, in need of nourishment.

While sitting at the table, chatting with Mel, as he made my food, another man jumped into the room followed by his quiet dog. Mel asked, “Hi there, Russ, want me to make you something?” Russ was a little rough around the edges, his body and brain constantly swaying from topic to topic, in the way that unsettled cats enter new rooms and stalk into corners in search of unseen shadows. His truck had broken down. He had collected many many elk antlers. He showed me gold he had panned from a river in northern Idaho, name unknown. He sat down across from me to eat his chicken while I munched on my avocado wrap.

In the Mountain Man Traveler’s Outpost, a gold panner with a broken truck full of elk antlers ate across the table from a wandering sola Jewish-esque women in the middle of rural Idaho because a kind-hearted vet named Mel intuitively knew that tables and griddles bridge identities and transect race, class and gender and all the other strange nouns and adjectives we use to define our ephemeral tribe. Also, Mel knew that he needed people around him — “people from everywhere”–  to keep him connected to himself and grounded in the present world. These people-full moments kept him bright-hearted, with twinkles of possibility in his eyes.

Russ looked up from his sandwich. “I was collecting those elk antlers, and then NPR came on my radio – in the middle of nowhere – can you believe that? In the middle of nowhere. There was a volcano in Guatemala. It killed a bunch of people. Boom. They’re gone. Just like that. We’re sitting on top of a volcano, too, you know. ” With his next bite, he stopped swaying, the food giving him a brief respite from his unsettled soul.  “You know, I just can’t believe it. One minute, blue skies and the next, they’re gone. I mean, my truck is broken but I’m alive. I’m lucky. I’m grateful.” Then, Mel said, “We all gotta listen to the earth before it breaks.” And, he added a few pieces of rich, green avocado to both our plates. 

Russ turned to me, “Mel has the best food.” I nodded and smiled at him and at Mel, my soul also settling into this moment of peace and rest in a restaurant only marked by a biscuits and gravy sign, a sign that had called me in from the defined path of the highway into the unknown, and there, I found more nourishment than food alone could provide. 
 

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Your unpredict: Scroll to the bottom of your text messages on your phone and reach out to the person you sent your very first text to. Tell them you are grateful for them, if you can. If it feels right, keep reaching out to the next person up with another gratitude message. Maybe share some food-nourishment. Do more than check-in. Show up. Go to a restaurant. Have a picnic. Cook together. 

Drink air. Breathe sunshine or be grateful for the rain that brings flowers where there were seeds.   

And if you can’t reach out, if you are standing on a dormant volcano, I’ve been there, and I’ll be there again, and it’s still hard to say that without feeling the churning pressure of inside-of-me-loneliness. I hope it never explores for you, or for me, or for anyone else, again. 

with love and nourishment,

xoMo

Originally shared on 4 May 2018 via TinyLetter.

Dear all,

I’m headed to Nashville next week for my sister’s graduation from law school. I’m feeling a bit nervous, so I’ve been writing, biking and reaching out to some close friends. If I could sum up the ping-pong flow of worry, it is:

I won’t fit in. <> I’ll have to conform.

This might be one of my fundamental artistic questions in life. Maybe it’s a fundamentally human question because we are community-based species with a wild and wondrous ability to seek and live by our own free will. We ask “Who am I?” with the same breadth as “Where do I belong?”.

This worry can be broken down into detailed questions. Here is one that is on my mind, this week:

How do I relate my unruly professional life with one word? <> Do I actually yearn to be a named profession?

I don’t have an answer but I do have a challenge for myself and for all of you. Today, while weaving through my multigenerational world, I realized that adults will ask, “Are you a dancer?” but kids will say, “Come dance with me!”.

So, with that in mind, this next week, try this:

Embody a verb. Not a noun.

Go bike. Not a cyclist.

Imagine a book. Not a writer.

Sing. Not a singer.

Wander with words. Not a poet.

Shabbat Shalom, everyone.

Share your verbs, go forth and be playful. 😉

Love you!

xoMo

 

PS. If you know anyone in Nashville who might want to ride bikes or read poetry or collaborate on writing or exploring or art, please put me in touch!

Originally shared on 7 January 2018 via TinyLetter.

Hey everyone!  

January 1st happened. I hope everyone enjoyed the shift from 2017 to 2018 and got to celebrate and feel and connect with themselves and those around them. I wish that for you every week! If you did anything that felt especially meaningful, I’d love to hear about it.  

The new year really began for me on Wednesday when I was watching a friend’s kid. He has no concept (yet) of “2018” and “resolutions”  — you know, those concrete culturally mandated goals that seem ubiquitous when we talk about January 1st. We’re just throwing a ball around and building train tracks and making up games as we go along. 

I often care for others’ children. I love it but it is also work that requires emotional dexterity, focused energy, creativity and adaptability to the unexpected (dare I say, unpredicted!): you never know when someone’s favorite food will suddenly become the grossest thing ever and be thrown with true conviction across the living room. Bonus points if it stains furniture!  

But the other bonus is this: you never know when you’ll use a light-up death star beach ball to knock over plastic bowling pins arranged as subversive rule-breaking structures on a carpeted staircase in a suburban home.   So, Wednesday. I’m playing with my friend’s kid and he is rocking his sentence structures. Complete noun-verb phrases with adjectives and multi-part action. And I remember that six months earlier, this kid’s verbal communication consisted of emoted words — e.g. milk! water?! drink. now?   If you ever get a chance to get to know a kid and watch them develop from nonverbal to verbal communication, it is one of the most incredible things to hear. It is also a good reminder of how much we can communicate with facial expressions and body movements and primal sounds — things we still have access even after we begin using words. Talking really only adds to what we’ve been saying since the time we were born.   

There is a fascinating science in childhood neurological development. Essentially, with structure and support, with nourishing food and love, children learn to talk, to walk, to read, to sing. They do this by playing, by mispronouncing words and scraping knees — and, there is a person they can go to and play with, while they are figuring out, basically, everything.  Ideally, children are surrounded by people who provide the support and encouragement for them to mispronounce words and recombine sentences that make no sense and all the sense in the world.  

This support is the most vital ingredient in achieving these big things that require 1000 little steps that seem impossible to break down. (Also, this!)    I think about this, too, when someone wants to try something new, something beyond what they comfortably know — yoga, coding, singing, stand-up comedy. In the SheExplores episode Permission Slip, Amanda Machado reflects on how she was able to access the outdoor adventure world: she was given space to grow into becoming a hiker. Someone bought her a backpack and helped her figure out what gear and food to carry with her. Experienced hikers walked with her at first, and now she is an experienced hiker herself.   

I’m not sure if there is a specific unpredict here, but one thought:  Is it possible to reimagine a goal you made (either January 1st or anytime in your life) and nest it in some type of support structure? Reach out and ask a friend who is an expert. Or send an email to a mentor in your field. Or, possibly, there is a community space or meet-up group you can join.   

Finding support and allowing yourself to rely on it is challenging — I know it is for me! But I also know that for nearly every big thing I’ve achieved, someone has been there for many of the little steps along the way.  

For that, I feel gratitude.  

xoMo

Originally shared on 29 December 2017 via TinyLetter.

Hey everyone!

Thank you for sharing your unpredicted phrases and words! I loved seeing all the creative ways that language can be recombined to understand and express our beautiful, true and evolving selves. 

Thank you, too, for supporting my (and your) vulnerability with your words. I’m grateful to all of you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Also, Happy New Year! At some arbitrary time this Sunday, the year will change numbers and on Monday I’ll eat black eyed peas, collard greens, cornbread and ham to celebrate and bring in luck for 2018 — my dad calls every year to make sure that I have a good recipe.

I was originally planning to spend the transition from 2017 to 2018 at a dance retreat because dance, for me, is a way to connect and heal and be funky and have fun. But, I couldn’t fit it in so I’m unpredicting my own, personal new years retreat this weekend – a couple of longer mountain bike rides, extra yoga, a Skype dinner date with a friend, IRL cooking with friends, re-watch Jurassic Park (because Laura Dern!) and permission to do many things I enjoy even if nothing is particularly epic. 

Even though I felt bummed to cancel my self-care dance retreat, it forced me to take a step back from focusing on THIS event and THIS deadline and THE CLOCK WILL STRIKE MIDNIGHT and where will I be and what awesome thing will I be doing?

Because the awesome thing that I will be doing is preparing for the next day after midnight, to wake up with the sun, drink coffee and go on a bike ride, embracing my own rhythms and pace — giving myself time and space to treasure those complex phrases that I named for myself last week. On Monday, I’ll still eat black eyed peas, but just feel a bit freer from the constraints of tying celebration to a numbered minute and day.

After all the new year will happen again on February 16th in the Chinese calendar. And again on September 10th in the Jewish calendar, and again next year on January 1st, 2019. And on all the days that we create personal new beginnings for ourselves in between all these big named dates, too.

You’ll find me dancing in innumerable and unpredicted ways all year round. Hope you can join me, whichever day it is! 

with love and spirit,

Mo

Originally shared on 22 December 2017 via TinyLetter.

Hello everyone!

It’s been a dark few months, nights full of stars and full moons, but also half moons and no moons, too. 

And now it’s the holidays, a time of many social gatherings full of new people and familiar people, a yearly ritual that can be joyful. I love the glitter, and all the lights, which are just glitter in electric form. And I love sharing sweets and laughter and dances with everyone in my communities. I love the extra excuse to put on feathered vests and golden pants.

But — it is also a time of year when I am surrounded by painful visions of my past future perfect self* – the person I thought I would be, by now, based on who I thought I would become, back then. During the holidays, I feel engulfed by these unwelcome sugarplum fairies — surrounded by others’ unpacked decorations while, in my parents’ home, there is a labeled box of Christmas ornaments that I may never put on a tree.

Some of the more vulnerable nouns are: mother, physician, leader.

And sometimes it feels that I have to confront the ways, both external and internal, that I am not these things — these defined, concrete nouns— and I feel trapped and stuck in this past future that never happened, not feeling the truth of the present, too shaken to imagine my own future, a future that I am creating — that I have created — with the tenacity of birds building nests from scavenged treasures.

My nest is constructed of turquoise glitter, bikes and photos tucked into corners, cozy spaces to welcome others and windows overlooking an endless, multicolored desert.

I need to create more complex nouns than society offers, and unpredict offers a way to release myself of these constraints: I can unpredict words and phrases to make my own world, my own answers to this question: “Who are you?”

These are some of my unpredicted set of complex nouns:

person-who-would-take-a-bullet-for-a child-not-her-own

spirit-who-has-an-inclusive-and-ever-expanding-view-of-community

geek-who-never-thought-the-sci-fi-canon-would-include-a-character-as-badass-as-Rey 

grown-child-who-misses-everything-and-nothing-about-the-place-she-was-raised

wanderer-who-sleeps-in-a-tent-alone-sometimes-because-the-beauty-of-the-outdoors-outweighs-every-other-fear

adventurer-who-tried-out-skiing-for-the-first-time-this-year-and-felt-great-joy

feminist-who-wants-to-be-hugged-by-everyone-in-healthy-loving-ways

Mo-who-prefers-howling-coyotes-over-the-concrete-of-cities

Happy winter solstice everyone! May your nights be full of the glitter of stars, and your days full of a mosaic of ever-changing skies. I can’t wait to hear what your unpredicted nouns are, and welcome you to share. Let’s celebrate them together. 

xoMo

*The inspiring Christina hosted a writing circle on Releasing our Past Future Perfect selves back in October, which helped put me into a healing mindset during the struggles of the holidays. If you are into writing circles, big questions and comics, check out her Patreon. 

Originally posted 13 October 2017 via TinyLetter.

Hello! I’m playing around with a mini-project and want to try it as an unpredict. 

So! I’m in Spain and I love the idea of sending postcards when I travel, but I only succeed in sending them *maybe* 50% of the time. In fact, I have a box of blank postcards that were sent in an ideal alternate world of mine, but, in this current world, they rest there, scribbled with invisible names and imagined messages, unseen, unwritten and unsent. It’s time for me to unpredict this pattern!  

Essentially, a postcard is a bit of paper saying (in different words) “I’m thinking about you in a beautiful place and I want to say hi!” — but I would feel silly writing that on every postcard all the time, so I pressure myself to come up with something pithy, interesting and heartfelt. And this always results in buying 20 blank postcards, sitting in a cafe and staring at them for two hours over coffee, and then a pastry and then another coffee, before giving up and going on a bike ride.   

I’m feeling inspired by a thing that Rabbi Noa does at The Kitchen at Shabbos services (oh! and Shabbos is about celebration! and it’s Friday so Shabbat Shalom!). She asks people to share “an astounding fact about the wondrous universe”  — and people share facts such as ” We share 50% of our DNA with a banana!” — it’s this lovely mixture of awe and science.   

I likely won’t generate dozens and dozens of astounding facts, so if you share with a friend, you might have the same fact, but hopefully you can laugh and share the wonder together. Some of the postcards may just have a drawing of a leaf or flower that I see while wandering and maybe it’s scientific or cultural name.   

I’m playing around with this idea and it’ll evolve. If you would like to join me, there are a few ways: 1. Reply with an astounding fact and I’ll send it to someone.  2. Send me your address and you’ll get a postcard. 3. Whether you are traveling or not, send a postcard to a friend.      Let me know what you think!

xoMo

PS. If you have kiddos in your life who might enjoy a postcard, I can send science-words or drawings their way.

Originally posted on 7 October 2017 via TinyLetter. Reposted in 2021 and seems just as relevant.

Dear all!

Let’s connect again.

It feels like the world has been in crisis-mode the past few months. Hurricanes, earthquakes, threatening tweets, hateful rallies, a massacre — and that’s only in North America and the Caribbean.

And then our own lives don’t pause when there is a global disaster. We have our own tragedies. Someone we love gets sick. We fight with our partner. We step off a curb and our left ankle twists unexpectedly. All these things crave our immediate and urgent attention. We care for those around us. Our ankle needs ice. Grief and heartbreak carve paths through our lives, and we must follow them.

I’ve been thinking about all the time we spend on these crises. It’s necessary time, yes, but I wonder how it would feel to treat the good stuff in life with the same degree of urgency. We do this with big events like weddings and births, or when we show up en masse for a friend’s going away party (I miss you, Cori!) — but how often do we spontaneously drop everything and celebrate*?

I’ll be exploring celebration in the next few unpredicts and guiding a few happy, spontaneous moments for you to explore and interpret. And, also, if you have a community event coming up, please share! 

much love,

Mo

*The total solar eclipse in August felt like an urgent celebration. I’m still in awe.

Originally posted on 24 June 2017 via TinyLetter.

Happy Summer!

Welcome to the official start of summer. In San Francisco, we have been experiencing warmer-than-usual temperatures, so there have been many impromptu picnics, hikes, barbecues and ice cream consumption. The whole city has been unpredicting the sun without realizing it! 

My unpredict this past week was visiting a beached blue whale with my friend (and scientist) Cori! 

It was a fascinating, multi-sensory experience. We approached the whale from the south and walked along the water.

I didn’t fully realize how large the whale was until I was within a few meters and saw the scientists working to retrieve samples. In the next three pictures you can see just how massive the blue whale is! They are cutting off the flipper using knives, stubbornness, strength and teamwork.

Cori and I were elated by the experience and bonding over seeing a BLUE WHALE while having a picnic close by.

How did this unpredict unfold?

Some people have asked about the process of creating a planned unplanned experience. It sounds like an oxymoron! In some ways, yes, but for my whale adventure, Cori and I had already planned to spend a couple hours enjoying the warmer-than-usual weather by the ocean. The night before our picnic, she texted me to ask if I would be interested in visiting a beached blue whale on a different beach. I texted back “More than interested! This is an unpredict! I’m in.” 

In my mind, unpredict is the process of creating an intentional unplanned experience. It allows me to ask, “ What could I do differently?” — and this idea prepares me to say yes to opportunities and offers such as “Wanna go see a beached blue whale?”. The moment I say yes, I’ve stepped into the practice of creating possibilities for myself — to see something unique, or connect with a friend, or learn something fascinating — and this occurs within the structure of my existing life.

Has the idea of unpredict allowed you to try something different? I’d love to hear about it!

xoMo