Hi from Dave

What I’ve been up to since my last update.

Hi all,

It’s been awhile since I wrote you, and so I thought I would give you an update.

The School of the Possible is going really well. It’s shaping up to be the creative community I have always wanted, the group of people I go to when I need some creative minds to bounce half-baked ideas around with. It’s been three years since I started doing this, and I liken it to a creative kitchen: A place to cook up new ideas and turn them into projects. Finally the kitchen remodel is done, I have my own crew of creative weirdos to play with, we are all following each others creative experiments, and I can now start doing some creative cooking.

The good news is it can work for anyone who wants to join, including you. If you want to take a peek I have set up a free trial, no credit card required. Check it out.

The project I’m working on is a new thing for me: fiction. I don’t feel ready to try a novel yet so I’m going to try my hand at short stories. This is new territory for me, and I’m now in the world-building stage. So far here’s what I know: the stories take place on an island nation and revolve around a group called the Polders, who farm and fish at the edge of the sea.

The working title is Tales from the Umwelt and I’ve set up a newsletter where you can subscribe to my experiments. I haven’t published anything there yet but if you want to stay in the loop you can sign up here.

I continue my daily practice of writing in my journals every morning. This is where a lot of the ideas are coming from. It’s a slow process but ideas are emerging. I read folk and fairy tales before I go to bed and then see what emerges in my dreams. Here’s a snippet from my morning scribbles:

Let me know if this whets your appetite for more.

Summer in Portland is about what you’d expect if you read the news. A combination of awful, weird and wonderful, Portland delivers new surprises every day.

That’s all for now. I hope you’re well! Ping me if you’re passing through or want to chat.