If I’m home, You’re always welcome.

If you’re hungry, help yourself to anything.

If you break something, it’s alright.

If you need anything, I’ll buy it for you.

If you make a mess, help me clean it up.

When you leave, give lots of hugs & kisses.

* * *

“Grandma’s Rules” is a sign on the wall in Mom’s Country Deli in Houston.  It’s my new favorite restaurant because of the atmosphere, signs like these, the food, and the people who work there.  Mom’s son and daughter chose the signs, and Mom really works there.

I’ve started applying these rules to my business.  I’ve also started to expect others to live these rules.  Some are harder for me to live than others. 

And to anyone reading this who thinks they can take advantage of someone who lives by these rules, please, use common sense.  One easy way to corrupt these rules is to ask people to be enablers of bad habits or dependency.  Just as you shouldn’t buy an alcoholic the drinks they ask for but you should provide an intervention, if you know someone who keeps getting what they ask for and using it to block their bigger goals in life, get them not what they say they want, but what they seem to be indicating they need.

Perhaps another sign, this one above the cornbread in Mom’s Country Deli, sums it up:

PLATE LUNCH CUSTOMERS

HELP YOURSELF TO HOME MADE BREAD

PLEASE TAKE ONLY WHAT YOU CAN EAT

LET’S NOT WASTE

     Love, Mom

* NO TO GOES PLEASE *

* * * 

Also, I think this whether coworkers live up to this sign is a good measure of how well people work together over time:

  Don’t Fuss

  Call Us

Today I went to the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.

I was attracted to a special exhibit of Archimboldo, who lived in the 1500’s.  He made these super-modern paintings. 

The painting above is a man made of vegetables, called “Sommer” (”Summer”). 

Archimboldo’s paintings of food…

are actually reversible.  You can view them upside-down…

and they are faces of people!  I loved watching kids look at the still life paintings, then look down at the mirror below and see the reversed images turn into faces.

In another set of paintings, “different professions were represented by characteristic objects, a cook by kitchen utensils, a cellarer by barrels, a farmer by agricultural tools and so on,” writes the curator.  This is the court historian who wrote 50 books:

I’m wonderfully overwhelmed by the architecture of the museum building itself.  Although these pictures don’t really show it in all its magnificence, the entrance lobby has this dome with a circle cut out at the top.

When you walk up the stairs to see what’s in the heavens,

there is a dining hall.  Although I’m not usually a big fan of brunch, because of the glorious architecture and the food, it’s a new goal of mine to have brunch in the Kunsthistorisches Museum.  Unfortunately, reservations are required at least three months ahead.  Next time in Vienna….

I know, I know, it’s not June yet.  But hey.  Time to sing. 

‘I like New York in June, how about you?
I like a Gershwin tune, how about you?
I love a fireside when a storm is due.
I like potato chips, moonlight and motor trips, how about you?

Holding hands in the movie show when all the lights are low may not be new,
But I like it, how about you?’

“How About You,” music by Burton Lane and lyrics by Ralph Freed.  I first heard it in the movie The Fisher King.

Of course in my last writing I focused on explicit planning in relationships.  Most of my work focuses on explicit planning in relationships and then getting the plans done in surprising ways which emerge in the moment.  When you come out of a hike in the woods and come out on the highway, you can choose to go left or right, and sometimes having an explicit map to show the way is desirable.

Sometimes, like hiking in the woods, I want my way to be tacit.  I want to follow my senses without even thinking about where I’m going or why or how or when.  This is kind of blissful for me.  But when I get to a point where I don’t share connection with the woods any more, or when I’m in a relationship where we’ve lost our way and don’t know why we’re together any more, that’s when explicit communication and planning helps.

Of course, there’s the third way.  I’ve had times in my life where I’ve gotten out of the woods, seen the highway racing by, not known what to do, and stopped.  I’ve sat down by the side of the road.  And sometimes that is okay.  Sometimes that is what we want.  Sometimes we don’t know what to do, and we don’t even want to know what to do.  Sometimes we want to be in that place where we don’t know what’s going on, we don’t know how to make it better, and we don’t want to do anything.

What I’ve learned over the last year is, that being wherever we’re at without having a way forward is sometimes what we want.  And when that happens, well, sometimes I like being okay with the not knowing and not wanting and being caught up in despair, or separation, or whatever it is.  But sometimes I want to do something.