You can see it on his face, in his eyes;
You can hear it in his words,
Written so long ago;
You feel the sadness of a generation;
You mourn a President dead in Dallas;
The blood soaked years of Vietnam;
This unconscionable crime;
We share his pain;
The held-back tears;
We stand with him.
So poignant,
So sad.
Monday, September 03, 2012
Thursday, August 30, 2012
Skip The Light Fandango
I don't care.
Sounds reckless, irresponsible and oblivious to consequences.
On the contrary, it is the only way to get through the maze of life.
When you don't care about outcomes, you don't worry. When you don't worry, you don't stress. When you don't stress, you live a happier and longer life. You have confidence in yourself, your actions, your footprint.You stand tall, you smile, you are fun to be around and you appreciate, then devour all that life has to offer.
You skip the light fandango.
Sounds reckless, irresponsible and oblivious to consequences.
On the contrary, it is the only way to get through the maze of life.
When you don't care about outcomes, you don't worry. When you don't worry, you don't stress. When you don't stress, you live a happier and longer life. You have confidence in yourself, your actions, your footprint.You stand tall, you smile, you are fun to be around and you appreciate, then devour all that life has to offer.
You skip the light fandango.
Saturday, August 25, 2012
Baker Street
Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
-Steve Jobs
Sunday, August 19, 2012
L'art pour l'art
As a second year student at the University of Michigan, I took a course on cinematography taught by Professor George Manupelli. Rather than sit in a big lecture hall, Dr. Manupelli taught us film sitting is a cramped colorless classroom filled with 19 year-old aspiring filmmakers.
On the first night, (most of his classes were held at night), Dr. Manupelli sat on the edge of a desk and asked us why we were there. Eventually, someone got it right, we were there for art.
"Why art?"
What seemed like a thousand answers later (it was only 40 minutes), he told us:
"Art for art's sake."
On the first night, (most of his classes were held at night), Dr. Manupelli sat on the edge of a desk and asked us why we were there. Eventually, someone got it right, we were there for art.
"Why art?"
What seemed like a thousand answers later (it was only 40 minutes), he told us:
"Art for art's sake."
Saturday, August 04, 2012
These are the days
These are the days of the endless summerI looked for this video on YouTube, it found me instead.
These are the days, the time is now
There is no past, there's only future
There's only here, there's only now
A portrait of earth's wonder, of stillness by design.
It will touch your soul in breathtaking silence.
It will change your life, as it did mine.
These are the days of the endless dancing and thePlay this for someone,
Long walks on the summer night
These are the days of the true romancing
When I'm holding you oh, so tight
before it is too late.
Before being taken from each other
into another life.
These are the days now that we must savor
And we must enjoy as we can
These are the days that will last forever
You've got to hold them in your heart
Monday, July 30, 2012
High Hopes
Encumbered forever by desire and ambition
There's a hunger still unsatisfied
Our weary eyes still stray to the horizon
Though down this road we've been so many times
The grass was greener
The light was brighter
The taste was sweeter
The nights of wonder
With friends surrounded
The dawn mist glowing
The water flowing
The endless river
Forever and ever
Wednesday, July 04, 2012
Something
It's hard to imagine, think, grasp, that most of the people in this video are dead.
So many of us grew into adults with the Beatles at our side. They are remembered today by the raucous crowds and their silly interviews, for their pilgrimage to mysticism and drugs, for their break-up and solo careers.
Four kids from Great Britain, thrust center stage into the dissonance of a generation. We remember them for their music, for Ed Sullivan, for the tragedies that somehow sought them out, leaving only two still standing.
I downloaded $40 worth of their songs from iTunes. Along with the flashbacks of my youth, the music reminded me of how much we all wanted to find love, the love described in their songs, the sweet romantic love, the kind they each found in their lives, despite and not because of their fame.
I know this is not the best quality video of the Beatles. Or maybe it is, not in a technical sense, but in a romantic sense. They lived the dream. Not of fortune, nor of fame. They set a standard for love, deep, all encompassing, impassioned love. We owe it to ourselves to fight that good fight, to wherever, to whoever, it takes us. We owe it to ourselves and we owe it to them.
So many of us grew into adults with the Beatles at our side. They are remembered today by the raucous crowds and their silly interviews, for their pilgrimage to mysticism and drugs, for their break-up and solo careers.
Four kids from Great Britain, thrust center stage into the dissonance of a generation. We remember them for their music, for Ed Sullivan, for the tragedies that somehow sought them out, leaving only two still standing.
I downloaded $40 worth of their songs from iTunes. Along with the flashbacks of my youth, the music reminded me of how much we all wanted to find love, the love described in their songs, the sweet romantic love, the kind they each found in their lives, despite and not because of their fame.
I know this is not the best quality video of the Beatles. Or maybe it is, not in a technical sense, but in a romantic sense. They lived the dream. Not of fortune, nor of fame. They set a standard for love, deep, all encompassing, impassioned love. We owe it to ourselves to fight that good fight, to wherever, to whoever, it takes us. We owe it to ourselves and we owe it to them.
Friday, June 15, 2012
Dream of a Fallen Soldier
This is about a song from 1971.
I had just graduated from the University of Michigan. My girlfriend Claudia and I decided to take a summer road trip. We started in Ann Arbor where we drove first to Boston to visit Elliott and Cookie. The four of us then drove to Vermont in two different cars, one couple each. We camped out in the tranquil, spiritual Vermont woods for two nights. It was Cookie's first time with weed. Then Elliott and Cookie went back to Boston where Elliot started his first year of law school at Boston College. Claudia and I continued on our road trip, driving first to Montreal where we got on the TransCanada highway on our way across that beautiful country all the way to Vancouver.
We camped out mostly. I remember laying in the tent in Thunder Bay, Ontario, where we were kept up all night by the most severe thunderstorm of our lives. Across the vast flatlands of Manitoba and Saskatchewan to beautiful Alberta where we were mesmerized by the beauty of Banff and of Lake Louise. We were still camping, eating mostly brown rise and vegetables. We were kids in the first genuine love of our lives.
Then we hit the Canadian Rockies and stoned as we were, it was the most breathtakingly exquisite two-days drive-though of our lives. All the while, the music of our time provided the soundtrack, sometimes gentle and romantic, sometimes loud and rowdy, all out of the radio of the Chevrolet Vega. By the time we reached British Columbia, we realized Western Canada was one of the most pristine places on earth. Through the beautiful city of Vancouver, across the US border, south through Washington and down the Oregon coast to California, to Berkeley, where we stayed at a,"Hostel for Couples."
By then, we were hardly speaking to each other. Traveling together for six weeks like that, relationships either blossom or die. It was the latter for us. We turned back and drove all night to Salt Lake City were we checked into a motel about 8:00 am and stayed for a very uncomfortable 24 hours. Three days later we were back in Ann Arbor, road weary and broken, a couple-once-in-love.
Your Song, which meant so much to us in Vermont, became a cynical commentary on what was only the naiveté of two kids who knew nothing about love.
I saw Claudia only one more time. About six months later I drove back to Boston, stopping at her parents house in New Rochelle where she was staying to say good-bye one last time.
Forty years later, I listen to Elton John and remember that for one fleeting moment in my life, words seemed so real, so warm, so perfect. Forty years later, its just the dream of a fallen soldier.
I had just graduated from the University of Michigan. My girlfriend Claudia and I decided to take a summer road trip. We started in Ann Arbor where we drove first to Boston to visit Elliott and Cookie. The four of us then drove to Vermont in two different cars, one couple each. We camped out in the tranquil, spiritual Vermont woods for two nights. It was Cookie's first time with weed. Then Elliott and Cookie went back to Boston where Elliot started his first year of law school at Boston College. Claudia and I continued on our road trip, driving first to Montreal where we got on the TransCanada highway on our way across that beautiful country all the way to Vancouver.
We camped out mostly. I remember laying in the tent in Thunder Bay, Ontario, where we were kept up all night by the most severe thunderstorm of our lives. Across the vast flatlands of Manitoba and Saskatchewan to beautiful Alberta where we were mesmerized by the beauty of Banff and of Lake Louise. We were still camping, eating mostly brown rise and vegetables. We were kids in the first genuine love of our lives.
Then we hit the Canadian Rockies and stoned as we were, it was the most breathtakingly exquisite two-days drive-though of our lives. All the while, the music of our time provided the soundtrack, sometimes gentle and romantic, sometimes loud and rowdy, all out of the radio of the Chevrolet Vega. By the time we reached British Columbia, we realized Western Canada was one of the most pristine places on earth. Through the beautiful city of Vancouver, across the US border, south through Washington and down the Oregon coast to California, to Berkeley, where we stayed at a,"Hostel for Couples."
By then, we were hardly speaking to each other. Traveling together for six weeks like that, relationships either blossom or die. It was the latter for us. We turned back and drove all night to Salt Lake City were we checked into a motel about 8:00 am and stayed for a very uncomfortable 24 hours. Three days later we were back in Ann Arbor, road weary and broken, a couple-once-in-love.
Your Song, which meant so much to us in Vermont, became a cynical commentary on what was only the naiveté of two kids who knew nothing about love.
I saw Claudia only one more time. About six months later I drove back to Boston, stopping at her parents house in New Rochelle where she was staying to say good-bye one last time.
Forty years later, I listen to Elton John and remember that for one fleeting moment in my life, words seemed so real, so warm, so perfect. Forty years later, its just the dream of a fallen soldier.
Thursday, May 24, 2012
Where am I going?
The last day at the beach began with grace bestowed beneath an orange morning sky. The divine gifts of sunrise, of seabirds and of that calming cadence, the symphony that is the ocean. Two daughters and a father, a moment frozen in this snapshot of three lives.
In the Charleston drizzle we say our good-byes and soon my plane soars above the clouds. Around me strangers travel with their own tales and woes. I try not to think too much. Say yes to a Jack and ginger ale. Why have I left them behind once again? Where am I going and why am I going there? When the Jack comes, these questions will fall away unanswered and I will kick them beneath my seat.
"We Bought a Zoo," is shown hanging from a screen in the first class cabin. Matt Damon and his two children buy a zoo to move on, to ease the loss of his wife and their mother. The story is about living from your heart, not your head, letting go of the past and living your life in the present on your way to the future. At the end of the movie Damon takes his son and daughter to the spot where he first saw, first talked to their mother. He finds 20 seconds of courage and the words to fill them. "Why would such a beautiful woman like you want to talk to a person like me?" She looks up, sees his heart through his eyes and answers, "Why not?"
We didn't get to land in Phoenix, not as Delta planned. Wind shear swept under the nose of the plane just 200 feet from setting down on the Sky Harbor runway: Divert to Tucson. Safely in Tucson, strangers on the plane become intimate friends, together having flirted with, then avoiding disaster. We were in the hands of a talented crew well trained to save lives. We mingled while men in green overalls refueled the plane for the 90 mile jaunt back to Sky Harbor in Phoenix. This time we touched down, the cabin door opened and baggage was unloaded. Two hundred twenty stories scurried into the waiting embraces of friends, families and rental car shuttles. Not a seabird was seen among them.
I'm tired, my years dwindling, drifting away. Yet there was still joy to be made out of the moments when six foot-prints worked a path through the sand. From under my seat I had pulled out the one that asked, "Where are you going?" It's where I have always been going. A special place where someone cares that I have come home. Where she reaches out to touch me and remind herself that I am in her life, real, that she found me and will never let me go. That is where I am going. It is a journey that never seems to end.
In the Charleston drizzle we say our good-byes and soon my plane soars above the clouds. Around me strangers travel with their own tales and woes. I try not to think too much. Say yes to a Jack and ginger ale. Why have I left them behind once again? Where am I going and why am I going there? When the Jack comes, these questions will fall away unanswered and I will kick them beneath my seat.
"We Bought a Zoo," is shown hanging from a screen in the first class cabin. Matt Damon and his two children buy a zoo to move on, to ease the loss of his wife and their mother. The story is about living from your heart, not your head, letting go of the past and living your life in the present on your way to the future. At the end of the movie Damon takes his son and daughter to the spot where he first saw, first talked to their mother. He finds 20 seconds of courage and the words to fill them. "Why would such a beautiful woman like you want to talk to a person like me?" She looks up, sees his heart through his eyes and answers, "Why not?"
We didn't get to land in Phoenix, not as Delta planned. Wind shear swept under the nose of the plane just 200 feet from setting down on the Sky Harbor runway: Divert to Tucson. Safely in Tucson, strangers on the plane become intimate friends, together having flirted with, then avoiding disaster. We were in the hands of a talented crew well trained to save lives. We mingled while men in green overalls refueled the plane for the 90 mile jaunt back to Sky Harbor in Phoenix. This time we touched down, the cabin door opened and baggage was unloaded. Two hundred twenty stories scurried into the waiting embraces of friends, families and rental car shuttles. Not a seabird was seen among them.
I'm tired, my years dwindling, drifting away. Yet there was still joy to be made out of the moments when six foot-prints worked a path through the sand. From under my seat I had pulled out the one that asked, "Where are you going?" It's where I have always been going. A special place where someone cares that I have come home. Where she reaches out to touch me and remind herself that I am in her life, real, that she found me and will never let me go. That is where I am going. It is a journey that never seems to end.
Go
And beat your crazy head against the sky
Try
And see beyond the houses and your eyes
It's ok to shoot the moon
So darling
My darling be home soon
Monday, May 07, 2012
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