CNN’s Bangkok-based Hunter Forgan did a thoughtful long-form piece on the economic and social prospects for my home island of Koh Phangan, Thailand this week. He and photographer Aidan Dockery stopped by my house for an extended afternoon feed. My dear Supansa Boonmatum whipped up a feast, which Hunter said was the best Thai meal he had had for weeks. Of course it was. 

Here is an excerpt, with my short quote. 

I launched Koh Phangan’s public forum Phangan Forum in February after getting 500 responses to a post.  On Earth Day, 22 April, 2021, we will hold our first program, a 3-hour event at Jaran’s.

We will use the TED format, all talks under 18 minutes, focused on one brilliant idea, artfully presented. A license application to TED for a TEDxKoh Phangan event in July is pending. 

The theme of the event is focused on Koh Phangan’s ecological future:

How do we help keep our gorgeous island protected, pristine, and unpolluted? What are the rich eco-initiatives deserving attention and support? How do we live a life contributing to rather than despoiling Phangan’s natural beauty? Who are the eco-heroes doing the work, and how might we participate?

For more on Phangan Forum, go to our Facebook page, 

https://www.facebook.com/groups/phanganforum

I will be moderating a panel with three Myanmar political activists at Karma Kafe in Srithanu, Koh Phangan Saturday night, March 6, at 8pm. I will share my experiences holding a “writeshop” with a social justice project in Yangon, and leading a tour of NGO initiatives in country with senior EU reporters (including forums on journalism and the rule of law), in conjunction with the European Journalism Centre. 

We will also host a presentation by the Amnesty International campaign leader for Myanmar. 

The event is being put on by the restaurant’s proprietor, Brogan Dinsdale, and Roxy Nagarwalla. 

Please join us! The event will conclude with specific ways to support the Myanmar community on the island and their efforts to restore democracy back home. 

I have been privileged to work with Aaron Wexler on his new book, a fascinating guide for young athletes seeking inspiration and a balanced life. While coaching Aaron, he started a podcast which has had marvelous success. Check it out. And thanks Aaron for the shoutout. The complete interview can be found on Shout Out LA. Here are excerpts.

Within The Game Podcast is all about learning about what tools others use to stay inspired, and how you can best relate the information back to your own life. For me, the work has been 2 fold: researching and learning about my guests to be best prepared for our episodes, as well as implementing what I learn from each guest into my own life. During this process, I have found that I am becoming more inspired in my own life, more creative, more focused, and I flat out am having more fun with my journey as a writer and business owner. Looking back on my journey, I am most proud of the relationships I have created and grown. I love connecting with other people, especially those who’s stories’ really inspire me. I am proud of knowing that I am making a positive impact on my community with the content I am putting out by sharing their stories. I am also proud of the questions my writing coach Brian Gruber and I came up with because they are truly unique & eccentric, especially for athletes, coaches, and entrepreneurs!

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?

I would like to dedicate my Shoutout to my writing coach, Brian Gruber (grubermedia.com)! I met Brian in Thailand at a yoga ashram, and after taking a creative writing workshop led by him, I signed up for his coaching services. Brian has been with me every step of the way in the writing process of my forthcoming book, as well as in the creation and structure of my podcast. I can’t thank him enough and highly recommend him for anyone looking for help with their own book or idea for a book! I would also like to give a shoutout to my team of editors Olley Thorpe & Garette Shaun of DAF Global (dafglobal.co.uk). Olley has been instrumental in helping me setup a vision for my podcast and coaching me through the nuts and bolts of its operations, and Garette is an absolute pro when it comes to editing.

I had the pleasure to coach Wendy May through her process of writing and publishing her book Regenerative Purpose. She also conducted a highly successful Kickstarter campaign to support key aspects of her product launch. I was privileged to write the book’s Foreword. 

Wendy recently announced the launch of her audio book. You can purchase the audiobook – and all other versions – here. 

She is also leading a workshop that may interest you. This from an email she sent out today:

2020 has certainly tested us… with physical, emotional, financial and egoic death. We’ve had to meet our limits and transcend them. We have been permanently changed. 

Are you clear now on what’s next? How do you want to shape 2021?

For me, so many questions have arisen about…

MY PLACE IN THE WORLD
What is the nature of life and death? What makes a human life worth living?
How do I speak my truth when the word “truth” itself triggers confusion?

MY RELATIONSHIP WITH SELF
How do I measure my value in the world when I’m not actively working? 
What does it feel to take up space when I’m not confident in my direction?

MY LIFE LESSONS TO LEARN
Can I love and give fully and fearlessly, without knowing who will receive it?
Can I boldly walk to the edge of my discomfort and expand from there?

AND, HOW TO KEEP GOING
Can I step forward into what’s next without being able to see the whole path?
What is it to be a leader in the new planetary paradigm? Am I ready for that?

SO MANY QUESTIONS

Maybe you have been considering some of the same questions.

I don’t know any of the answers.

But I do know that when we come together to ask these kinds of questions, magic always happens. I’m inviting a small group of devoted souls to join me in kicking off 2021 with Regenerative Purpose Co-Lab.

Announcing… REGENERATIVE PURPOSE CO-LAB

• It’s an 11-week journey to support the living integration of Regenerative Purpose.
• It’s not coaching. It’s not an online course. It is a group r/evolution co-creation lab. 
• It’s limited to 6 people, to make sure there’s spaciousness for sharing and reflections.

The purpose of the Co-Lab experience is to come together in community and find clarity, while releasing the need for control. We are pointing each other towards that sweet spot of creative contribution that is active (not pushy) and receptive (not passive).

This work helps us get clear on what we want in life, how we want to live and serve, and what choices we’re willing to make to realize that reality. Yet we can relax the normal management and control functions that create stress around striving. We learn the art of reading and responding to life, so we can shape our path with ease.

For experienced coaches and facilitators, there is also the possibility to get trained and licensed to lead Regenerative Purpose Co-Lab circles yourself.

If this sparks something in you, you can read more and apply here.

Before embarking on the Surmountable book project, I interviewed 25 community leaders, business owners, long-time residents, characters, and storytellers, both Thai and expat. With Surmountable about to launch, I have resumed the Koh Phangan interviews. 

The short-term intention is to get an oral history ebook up by mid-year 2021. And, then, a longer-form work for print and ebook by year-end. These things take the time they need to take, so those are tentative, though achievable timeframes. 

My first visit to the island was 10 years ago. I moved here full-time five years back. I hope to relate the magic dimensions of Phangan life. There are many stories to tell.

We are all storytellers. Imagining the world, then sharing our tales through the written and spoken word is our genetic heritage. Come join Writers of Koh Phangan each Tuesday night at Orion’s waterfront Beach Shala for an evening of communing, writing, and sharing. Every level of writing experience welcome, including non-native English speakers. We learn, we swap ideas, and we have a ball writing and sharing on a theme, from a prompt. Bring something to write on, then shuffle in to the shala next to the restaurant, grab a mat and a bolster or two, and leave with a new story.

Mark Phinney’s epic weeklong Koh Phangan Man event, the second in a series, concluded this week. One of the joys of living on the island is the presence of numerous artists, entrepreneurs, and idealists innovating new modes of living, entertaining, and transforming.

With the talented Gabrielle Leon providing the background tunes, Liz Griffin and I performed the entire 3,000 word poem Howl as part of a playful sunset poetry happening we organized, “Filthy Sunset.” I also read Love’s Victim from  Ovid’s “Amores.”

Earlier this year, I visited City Lights Bookstore, the scene of the legal battle to publish Howl six decades ago, and talked to the store’s manager Elaine Katzenberger about that unique fight for First Amendment free speech protections. Here are excerpts from that interview, parts of which will be used in my upcoming book on the art and alchemy of successful political protests.

There is a museum at the intersection of Broadway and Columbus in San Francisco’s North Beach neighborh0od dedicated to the beats. It’s worth visiting but for my money the sacred epicenter of the social movements that shook the youth of a nation for decades is across at the street at City Lights bookstore. Any bookstore is magic, the holder of promised secrets and a slice of the grand history of human knowledge. City Lights, with its mythic origins and tumultuous past is one of a tiny subset of literary shops that holds something more, something sacred. I walk in and a mother stands at a respectful distance while her pre-teen boy engages the cashier in a line of questioning. Do you have this book, where can I find books on that subject, mom knowing some of the answers but choosing to allow the experience of discovery.

I met the manager of City Lights bookstore (and publishing house) some years back when I video recorded and livestreamed some of their author events for FORA.tv. Elaine Katzenberger is, as you might imagine, a thoughtful and interesting woman, two attributes required to choreograph the visitor experience and keep it relevant as one of America’s important bookstores. On this weekday morning, the place was packed buzzing with visitors, the out-of-town tourists, the loyal locals, and no doubt one or two devotees of the faith, the never-ending pursuit of that one new book that will crack open the universe in some new way.

Gruber: Why is City Lights such a quintessential part of San Francisco’s civic life?

Katzenberger: Well, I don’t really think of it as belonging to San Francisco because people who don’t live here come for the same reasons that you do and that I was originally drawn here. San Francisco was the place Lawrence birthed City Lights, but it has transcended that, it’s more of a world location and it holds something that people need. It also may sound a bit abstract or metaphysically corny…

Gruber: Keep it coming.

Katzenberger: It has to do with ideals, feelings of integrity; there are a lot of interpretations that have been layered over the founding stories. Some visitors are just tourists, and some are clearly making a pilgrimage, but everybody is looking for the same thing on some level.

Gruber: And what is that?

Katzenberger: People would use different words – it’s a large stew – but it’s that creativity trumps capitalism, and that the human spirit is somehow communicating with other human spirits in this way that is authentic, and not subject to the rules that the rest of the economy is playing by. Maybe that’s why San Franciscans who have lived here a long time want to claim it, because the city used to talk about itself that way, it was an illusion, but a lot of people came to San Francisco for the same reason that people come now to City Lights.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gruber: Lawrence is about to have a big (100^th) birthday. Can you articulate what was the ethos at that time, the ethos of the beats that motivated Lawrence to publish Howlin 1956? What was happening then, particularly in the context of how that might be relevant now?

Katzenberger: Lawrence always talks about how, first and foremost, he wanted to publish it because he identified it as groundbreaking poetry, he thought that Ginsberg was doing something that no one had done, and that had to do with poetics as (much as) anything else. And then, in terms of the content, the way in which the poem decries capitalism and militarism, that is what the counterculture in the 1960s was trying to talk about, rebellion against conformism, against the celebration of what capitalism was supposed to bring to quote, unquote average Americans. It meant reaching for freedom outside of that, somehow captured in this poem, which was especially exciting to him (Ferlinghetti). It was also the shared declamatory nature of it, very much talking about making poetry some form of actual communication, and that was part of what the beats were about, poetry as speech, poetry as a way of actually getting the message across.

Gruber: A key focus for the store is books on progressive politics. What does it mean to be progressive?

Katzenberger: Another big question. Something to do with putting the social contract with other human beings and other life forms on the planet before profit and power.

Gruber: One of the premises of the ’56 trial was that Ginsberg and, by extension, Ferlinghetti, were subversive. Do you think that the acts of protests of Ferlinghetti and the beat poets and the kind of literary explorations that City Lights does are patriotic, are aligned with what the founders had in mind in terms of how citizens need to be engaged politically?

Katzenberger: Obviously. If you want to be able to participate in a democracy, you need to be able to not only be informed, but to form opinions based on critical thinking, all of those things are part of civic life and a healthy democracy.

Gruber: When a visitor walks out of your store, what do you hope they leave with, in addition to a large handful of books? What’s the experience?

Katzenberger: I hope they feel validated in being part of a community of interesting, thoughtful, sensitive human beings. That’s what books have always given me. That’s what I hope that books give other people too.