Drowning in the Now

I gave up music for the past two weeks. In as many shapes and forms, I stopped listening, playing, hearing, buying, music. This is not an easy thing for me since I’ve been submerged in music in some form or another sense I was a wee one. Music is as normal to me as breathing, and sometimes just as essential. It can, also, suffocate my ability to hear what is happening in the Now.

To give an idea of how long music has been core to my life, I still remember listening to the Beatles’ ”White Album” watching the power lines jump up and down as my parents drove us to the beach; my first tape cassette purchase was Eric Clapton’s ”Slow Hand” in 1978 – I was 5. Not much later I stood in my parents’ room, in my pajamas, watching Itzhak Perlman, crutches and all, playing violin and turned to my mom and said, “I want to be able to do THAT.” Thus, started my first of eight instruments I would learn to play.

Music is pretty much a constant in my head if not outside of it. I wake every morning with some song in my head, and even after two weeks without, I still woke every morning with something playing like a radio in between my ears. Words more than not come through my head as song. Every person that talks sounds like music to me, has a certain rhythm and cadence that is akin to song. (Which is probably why I can hear how things are said better than what is said).

So, when I gave it all up these past weeks, it brought a significant silence to my world. And its absence has sweetened its return. I hear things I lost in the ever-present-ness. I would even go so far as to say parts of me went dormant as if planted parched ground waiting for rainfall. There is color to the sounds that had grown as faded as a Technicolor Polaroid from the 1960’s.

Giving up music gave me ”the music of what is happening.” “The music of what is happening, that is the finest music in the world.” Granted, the past and the future rushed in to fill the spaces at first, pushing out the Now. The best parts of me know the Now is where things are, where life is at its brightest and most lucid. That doesn’t stop the other parts from distracting me elsewhere. Not to mention how it fuels relationship, the Now, giving them life or making it clear there never was one to begin with. I suck at the Now, but it truly is where the music of what is happening dwells, the only music that matters in the end. Or as Matisyahu sings, ”Shout Loud, breath in, won’t you Drown in the Now.”

The first song I heard when I started listening again? Frank Sinatra’s ”Summer Wind"

So close, Separation

Is My Bed Really Empty Without You Beside Me.
Originally uploaded by Simon Nicolas Rey.

“And I close my eyes
To everything you've rearranged
And I close my mind
To everything you've kept the same
Put the axle on and roll again
- ”A Loverless Bed(Without Remission)”

I have never known a marriage, with some miles under it, that hasn’t hit some form of separation. Some never leave the house, other’s move out for a time, often leading to the end of the relationship. And others, after months of hard walking, self-examination, asking questions most never glimpse, come back together into something new, where all the petty things no longer matter, and there is a something solid underneath that no one else can touch.

I know no other way to describe the recent months. Ups and downs. Moments of “ah, I think we are going to make it.” And just as many “There’s the last drop, I am calling it a day, done.” (This might just be one of those moments) After 22 years you’d think you would know someone. After so much shared, so many adventures together, you would think that counts for something. "You cannot enter into any sort of significant relationship if you aren't willing to forgive a lot, & allow yourself to be forgiven a lot", I've heard it said, and know is true even in the unknowns.

But what if after all that time you wake up more and more mornings to the awareness that you don’t know this Other at all? Do you go another 20 some odd years? Or cash in the tickets for the next 20+ rides and go your separate ways?

What if leaving wasn’t an option because you can never really leave this person no matter how little you seem to know him? Stuck in a loveless marriage? Or just at a crossroads where all that you thought was love has fallen away like ashes on the path, and maybe, just maybe there is something else called Love sitting in the quiet to be discovered?

I hope it’s the latter. After 22 years, I haven’t much left in me to stay. And yet, I have even less in me to go, nor anyplace I can go. In the marriage to Life there is no leaving.

“I hate you God,
Love, Madeleine…
I love you Madeline,
Hate, God” from “The Irrational Season”

A Beautiful Hell, Book Props: Todd Clary

hell
Originally uploaded by KiloRoam.

One of my long-time partners in deviance has put together a book that may make you think twice about having children and marriage, and then thin twice about that, again. The book is "A Beautiful Hell," by Todd Clary and you can buy it Here.

I had the privilege, if not endurance, to be the editor on this book. Having been around for many of the stories he writes about in his book, well, made editing a bit more personal and fun. I even got all teary-eyed at one of the stories even though I'd heard it the day after it happened. Todd is that good at coloring in the picture of life whether it be with whit and humor at the absurd or cuttingly profound at the beautiful - all of which makes for a beautiful hell.

So go buy it. You will not only be glad you did, you will want to share it with friends... as I am with you.

knowing what you don't know

Wisdom...far beyond his years.
Originally uploaded by andrew.paquet.

”Don’t know much about love,
Think it starts with belief.
I’ve seen it there for healing,
I can feel it beneath my feet.” - Sarah Masen

By weeks end I will be crossing over another birthday, another year of being alive, learning about belief/love…and what a year it has been.

A friend just asked, “where do you see yourself in ten years?” That’s a question I don’t give much credence to. Life experience has taught me that the journey we set out on and the journey we actually take are never what we expect or plan; and whenever I’ve fought to keep what I expected, I missed the beauty that was given. Not to mention that most everyone I’ve met that actually achieves all the things they wanted in their ten-year plan seem to be some of the most miserable people around… likely because what they wanted so badly kept them from seeing the amazing right before and around them along the way. But in ten years I hope to be more loving, more creative, more human, and that the “things” of my life reflect this – be it relationships, work, writing, kids, community, art, changing the world, or simply breathing.

No surprise, then, that the past few months I’ve been delving more into the realm of Love – that nebulous, undefined, disturbing, wind-like reality. What does it look like? What does it mean to love? What would life be like if it was truly fueled by love? What areas of my life are cracked, parched ground that need the water flow of love?

George Macdonald wrote, ”As it was love that first created humanity, so even human love… will go on creating the beautiful for its own outpouring.” Creating the beautiful out of love, so to love. Yep, I want that. The artist in me can’t help but “get this;” and my heart in relationships gets this, too. And the rest of me, um, is still catching up. What might happen if I approach work, occupation from this place? To choose meals, exercise with this in mind? What would happen to friendships if this is more at the center? How would I see you differently? Myself, for that matter?

And if it’s Love, the Real Thing, then it isn’t flowers, furry rabbits and sunshine, all soft-lit like some Hallmark special. Love gets dirty, mucked, bleeds, cries, holds close and yet open-handed; sometimes makes a mess of things on the way to creating beauty, walking hopeful through utter darkness even when that darkness is the person right next to us, or our self. Lately, I am surrounded by relationships that are battling through the hard places of love – marriages trying to rediscover each self, navigate cancer, stroke, separation(s). Love seems to have forgiveness at its core and forgiveness is often the most difficult of feats for our humanity, (and yet, it is what makes us so human). I’ve had to navigate my on versions of these ways of love, too.

”You don’t know you don’t know,” is something my friends and I say often. It is said of single people (of whom I am one) who think they have an understanding of marriage, it is said of twentysomethings who think they have an idea of thritysomething, or of thirtysomethings by the next decade; of parents to those that have no children, and the list goes on. At it’s core is the fact that until you’ve been down that road, in this place, loved like that you just don’t get it. There is a reason older often means wiser. And if Love has been the fuel behind experience and the years lived, then there is grace not to hold against you what you don’t know. (Though it doesn’t stop me from getting uppity when “they” don’t get that they don’t know)

Crossing over the midpoint of thirty, I am aware my rudder runs deep as the waters grow deeper, sometimes darker, and that my sails are more ratty-torn, not as full as they were in my teens and twenties. Many of the things with which I left safe harbor have been tossed overboard for all the drag they were. And I find that the ocean is much more exciting and unpredictable than staying close to shore, that there are quite a few weathered friends close by whose rudders have depth beyond mine and, brushing all pretence aside, come to each other’s rescue because we know what’s it like to brave the crest and plunge the troughs together.

”To the impossible: Yes! Enter and penetrate…Only the absurdity of love can break the bonds of hate.” wrote Madeleine L’Engle. On the eve of my birthday I say Yes to the impossibilities, knowing that in all things it is dirty, wonderful, messy love that creates beautiful… and it’s the only life worth living anymore.

”Think it starts with belief…”

Control Monkey, Love

Holding onto dear life...
Originally uploaded by MsYuri.

Control is everything I grasp for and most of the time it never does any good. If anything, it usually leaves a pretty significant wake of disaster or destruction or hurt. It was Annie Dillard who said in Holy The Firm , “We are most deeply asleep at the switch when we fancy we control any switches at all.” Something I forget when I most need to hear it.

The place where Control taunts and teases me to grab it the most is usually in relationships. I’m sure it is a habit I learned early on when family no longer seemed the safe place it was once perceived to be. After all, it is in families that we first learn what is relationship. Most of my control came out of the dad dynamics. I’ve seen it show up in others with their mom, and sometimes both parents at once. Fast-forward to adulthood and friendships and dating and marriage…and there is that Control Monkey making a racket here and there – sometimes screaming, sometimes, in a quiet whine.

One of the last relationships I was in ended via my need to control, and I was rather abrupt, cold – but that tends to be how Control plays the cards. Though, things had been going off the rails and the end was obvious, it was my Control that wielded the axe, severing, rather selfishly, all ties never giving her a real space for closure, to be heard.

Me, in my slowness, well, it took being on the receiving end of similar Control behavior, from someone else, to see how hurtful, nearly vengeful and outright petty selfish I was. Sure, I can toss out any kind of justification – “I was trying to protect my heart, I was weary, I needed to set up a strong boundary” - and though valid… they each lack grace, they lack true freedom, they lack life, nothing like Love. They are constrictive; cutting off flow, cutting…but so goes the way of Control. So much for my friend’s quote ”Love deeply, hold loosely.” I’d come to Love shallow, if at all, and held deathly.

Nearly a year later, I tracked down the one to whom I did this and let her know that I know, now. Because, when you know how it hurts, it takes little grace to understand you need forgiveness.

In the past week I’ve watched another love story that begs for Control and yet, so clearly has no way for it to get in the door. Two dear friends that have been married nearly 47 years have entered a part of the journey none of us ever wish to see, but will come if love last this long. He watched as his wife went from a severe headache to eventual unconsciousness on the way to the hospital. They had just spent “the perfect day” together, he said. She was Life-Flighted into ICU where she is now in a coma after a stroke.

Control is jumping for the chance to be heard, because when someone you love that much and is no longer able to communicate, Control wants answers, wants movement, wants progress and solutions. Love, though, is deeper here than any waters you or I have ever swam. And it is in that depth I watch this beautiful man hold loosely every day, as he spends time with his beloved.

I am sure there are moments where he thinks he might go stark raving mad, where the only control he barely holds is over the tears that want to run like wildfire down his face. And he will tell stories of anniversaries, of her little quirks, how she always does this or that, laughing memories and the way she loves their daughters. Does this sound like a man overcome with the need to Control? They are the ways of a man overcome with love.

There are very few things I, you, we can control in life. Life is far too wild a ride to try and control it. And so it is with Love. Maybe that is why they are so synonymous. It is where Control is wielded that death is not far behind.

Nouwen once wrote, “The temptation of power is greatest when intimacy is a threat.” Power, Control; potato, patahto. I’ve had my share of crushing intimacy with control, and I’ve seen my friend run towards a new kind of intimacy with his wife yielding all control just be near her. Which one would you want in the end?

Disorienting

Kangaroo Silhouette
Originally uploaded by JIGGS IMAGES.

Amidst the news cycle this last week you might have missed the BBC Story about a kangaroo that, for no explainable reason, decided to hop out into the ocean, only to find it couldn’t swim (could you with a grocery bag for a gut and those tiny arms?). It was a surfer that saved the poor kid – “kid” being the name for younger Kangaroos – by pulling the Roo onto his board and paddling him into shallow waters. The Roo proceeded to hop off down the beach a bit disoriented, most likely thinking, “Now why was I trying to hop across the ocean? What was THAT all about?”

I can’t knock the Kangaroo.

I’ve felt quite a bit like him/her this past week. Disoriented. Finding myself in places that I am not exactly sure what to do next. It’s not that the situations or circumstances changed. It’s me that has changed. Without me really knowing. So, I “hop” into these places I’ve been before and don’t know what exactly it is I used to do here, but I used to do something... I just don’t know what it was, and it seems I don’t need that way of operating anymore. So what now?

More than I am aware this is affecting so many areas of my life.

It is the result of... well, if you read everything that’s been written before this over the past month or so, you get a bit of an idea.

There is something that happens inside of a person on the backside of healing, resolution, rewiring. Without warning, behaviors and ways of engaging the world that were more out of hurts and less out of life no longer exists. Some examples: I don’t have even a flicker of desire anymore to chase after friendships that are obviously one sided but desire to be ever more present in the ones that bring life; I, all of sudden, am more aware of my age in any given setting – which means I have a lot to offer, and there are a many things I don’t waste my time on anymore, and I am free to not let my age hold me back from being young in all the ways that are life-giving and none of the ways that are amateur hour; and, to some degree, I am more comfortable in my own skin than I’ve been in awhile.

The trick is, it takes time for the new ways of responding, living to settle in. This is still happening for me.

And the result is… I tend to make absurd movements like that Kangaroo on the Gold Coast, hopping off into the ocean, needing rescue once in awhile, and finding myself a bit soaked, hopping down the beach saying to myself, “Now what was THAT all about? I really must be disoriented.”

”…be sad and silent with enthusiasm, hurl your happiness into people’s faces… to convey happiness you must be happy, to convey pain you must be happy. Be happy, you must suffer! Don’t be scared of suffering, the whole world suffers!” from one of my new favorite films, “El Tigre Y La Nieve”

It’s all a bit disorienting

Seeing, Seen

See with your Heart
Originally uploaded by annieA.

Seeing is something I am still learning.
My eyes might have opened the rainy, chaotic Texas day I was born, but I certainly have a lifetime of learning how to see.

I am still learning that how I see isn’t what really is. Elementary indeed, but it doesn’t make it any less true. I have filters like the filters on a camera lens that change the color and shape, the sharpness or the focus of what I see. Often, like a camera, I take those snapshots seen through those filters and think the prints are the reality.

They’re not.

They are two-dimensional at best.

We humans, though, are not two-dimensional. We are much more than we think we are, much more than we see.

We are not just paintings on a wall. We are sculptures in a garden that seen from one side or another will change how we are perceived. And depending on where I stand will change how I see you.

There is an old Zulu saying, “I see you with my heart.” It implies a way of seeing that moves past filters, facades, wounds, and circumstance. It is a seeing that uses grace instead of light to see by, love instead of lenses to perceive. Peter Gabriel sings in his song "The Book of Love,"”I, I love it when you give me things. And You, you love to give me wedding rings.” This kind of seeing of the Heart, is akin to receiving and giving wedding rings.

It is a way of seeing that I hope is growing in me.

Seeing you with my heart, seems to require being seen with a heart, too. For my journey, the one who sees me best with the heart is the One who created me. His way of seeing me will always be the most perfect and correct perception. And somehow, in that I can start seeing you with his Heart, the way you are meant to be seen.

Oh and somewhere in all this perception, there are ways you see me that are more true than the ways I see myself. I am learning to drop my own snapshots and prints for the ones you see…. Because a chord in my heart rings true as you share with me what your heart sees in me.

My Percival

wasteland
Originally uploaded by dontcallmeikke.

“April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing,
Memory and Desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.”

So goes some of the most famous lines in poetry by T.S. Eliot, from “The Wasteland.”

For my part there aren’t many other condensed words that explain the month I endured called April.
Cruel.
Breeding life from the dead
Memory and desire both stirred and mixed and muddy and stinky dirty with the washing like rain.

From a scholarly standpoint, “The Wasteland’s” major theme has its source in The Fisher King, “When the king is injured, his kingdom suffers as he does, his impotence affecting the fertility of the land and reducing it to a barren Wasteland. Little is left for him to do but fish in the river near his castle; Knights travel from many lands to heal the Fisher King, but only the chosen can accomplish the feat. This is Percival.”

From a personal standpoint – my “Holy Fuck!” place of existence - I can’t really sum it up better than that.

Like the starting gun at a race, the month started day 1 with a change in what seemed like everything -the end of a relationship/friendship that wounded deep, and like a blast on the land it unearthed other deeper injuries; along with a general sense that storm clouds rolled in heavy over my life, creativity dried up, isolation settled in. I won’t get into details other than to say I do not wish these kind of hits on my worst enemies; though for all the good, rich outcomes on the other side, I might wish them upon my closest friends.
*wink.

For all my ranting and raving, all my cursing outbursts inside my heart and head, more often than not there was little more to do than sit where I lay – “fish the river near “ home, so to speak. Desire was gone in all the areas that were thriving just weeks before, in all the areas of my life: no sense of desire for anything other than relief. Yeah, my “landscape” was barren - no creativity, not much to give in friendships, not even sure anymore who were my friends, no work, not much money; I’ve easily lost weight for all the days I had no appetite, forcing myself to eat the barest of foods. (And even the last days of the month I was without my Mac, no writing, no escapes, no connection.)

Yeah, it sounds grim.
I know.
I was there. And some of you were too.
And all the therapists in the world could label me with some benign diagnosis, which ultimately misses the humanity behind the label. I've done my share of labeling the things that are hard to understand

As April came to it’s end, there were often times I was sure I’d come to mine. Still, there was my Percival. If you’ve ever seen Terry Gilliam’s film of the Fisher King, Percival, is played by Robin Williams and called, “Parry.” For all appearances, Parry is a nut-case homeless man running around the streets of New York, dancing his naked hairy ass in Central Park, and embodying everything society shuns or despises. He’s a romantic with an unblemished devoted love, a knight seeking the grail, he knows what it is to be destroyed, lose everything, love everyone and did I mention he talks to invisible floating fat babies that follow him around?

My Parry shares many of these characteristics, if not all of them and more.

Into my Wasteland came a relationship so shit scary and subtle, so direct and raw intimate, so present and accepting. It’s a relationship I’ve known in smaller, more compartmentalized capacities, but this time as the landscape was laid waste it took a relationship vast enough to cover the acreage; just as uncomfortable to be around as Robin Williams’ Parry, but also getting at the heart of it all – since the heart is where it all is anyways.

But it didn’t come without its moments of harsh words and lashing out. Like a marriage on the edge of divorce after 20 some odd years of ups and downs, hurts, and joys… I was fighting to see if there was anything worth saving of this relationship with Him. It was in this closest breathing that all my blame for the past month finally had its focus. I was ready to be done with Him regardless of our history together, yelling out loud on the hills outside Denver, “What the Fuck, huh?!?!”

And like a marriage with so much behind it, I ultimately wanted to work through whatever shit was there to get to that place on the other side of the sun – where either peace was found in walking away or intimacy was steeped even deeper than I’d ever known before.

I’d say I found both. The walking away from a life not worth living into one that is, and intimacy that makes sex look like kid’s play.It was as if the blasting had been a clearing of the dirt and weight that was hiding the red-burn coal of my soul, and He was dusting the last bits off to warm the fire. As Julia Esquivel once wrote:
"Porque eres
mas fuerte que yo
me he dejado seducir.
Y tu amor
quema mi corazon"
(Because you are stronger than I, I have let myself be seduced. And your love burns my heart).

How things change, what that looks like, what I heard and the various ways of experiencing the rest of the story… well, I am still not sure how to tell it in words.

Not even sure this is the place for it.

It’s much easier to talk of tragedy and desolation – just look at our daily news- than it is to describe beauty and restoration. Maybe some day I will be able, maybe not. “Words are poor to tell the best things.” - George Macdonald.

There’s a reason Eliot ends his poem with these words:
”Shanti
Shanti
Shanti”

This is why

I've been a runner since I was a wee one. It helps that I have a mother who has run quite a few marathons. In fact, she would pick me up in jr. high and drive down to Rice University where I would run around and play on various Decathlon type things while she was training. I ran my first 1/2 marathon around age 15, and my first full marathon around age 25. I've run in nearly every place I've ever touched my feet to ground in the World, at all times or day or night. This video by Jim Jarvis sums it all up perfectly what it's like (sans drug trip big yellow head sunrise), you can skip to the 1:00 mark to get into the groove:


Onwards from akqa on Vimeo.

Playing open

Originally uploaded by Immortal Thrill-Seeker.

I throw things away.

Pack-ratting was never my style. (I mean jeez, have you ever seen a real Pack Rat!??! They are grotesquely fat and look like they should be wearing a stained wife-beater undershirt with a soggy cigar squashed between their teeth, wheezing heavy through their noses, surrounded by dust bunnies and trash scraps) And don’t confuse these with the Rat Pack – that slick, well dressed gang of lounge/big band, scotch-swiggin performers in the first “Ocean’s 11.”


So for me, if I haven’t used it, touched it, or remember why I have it in the first place it goes into the giant *CLUNK* metal trash bin behind my house. Where, more than likely, the Alley Trollers will poke through and decide if they have a use for it. If it’s clothing, and I haven’t worn it in two cycles of seasons then it is tossed in a grocery bag, and dropped in those little red charity house-bins on the edges of parking lots. Sometimes, if I think it is something an Alley Troller might like – shoes for instance – I just casually leave them outside the trash bin and they are gone within twenty-four hours. But none of these decisions come rash and sudden. I give them time before I choose to toss.

There are times I don’t toss something, usually, for sentimental reasons. Like the “Pearl Texas Bluegrass Jam” T-shirt I hardly wear anymore that I bought in the nearly non-existent town of Pearl, TX during their first-Saturday bluegrass gatherings, because it was there I learned how to play mandolin with some of the oldest and best in the business. Then there is what looks like a broken silver hoop on my mantel but is really a bike spoke that spent near twenty years around my wrist after it and three of its brother’s shattered under the tension and gravel of a 65 MPH downhill outside of New Braunfels,TX.

Even so, the sentimental things are few. They have to have quite a significant impact to carry the place of remaining.

Most of the reason I toss things is that I like to travel lite – be it in real movement or in the existential. Mentally, I have enough voices and things pleading for my attention, so the less I keep the more space I have for the people and things in there that matter. At the heart level, well, a big heart doesn’t mean that it must be filled to the brim with clutter, so I do what I can to keep it light in there, too. Methinks that the bigger the heart the less clutter, kind of like the larger the play ground the more space to run free and play.

An area where this tossing and thinning gets a bit messy and borderline mean is relationships. I am not simply talking about old girlfriends – (though I could, ‘cause none of them ever read this). And there have been some that I should have walked away from sooner than later if I’d any sense. But relationships across the board sometimes have their day of reckoning and that for ALL of the reasons stated above. – clearing out the mental space, the heart space, can’t remember why I am in it, haven’t touched it, who are you again?

And no I don’t toss them out with the trash. Because people are not trash to be tossed, (though someone should try telling that to the racist bigot bastards of the world.) I’ve tried tossing some of the less friendly ones out of spite or hurt but the universe has an unfortunate ability of coming back and biting me in the ass. Case in point, my first three summers out of high school I had to work closely with the only two girls I ever dated seriously in high school. The quick lesson: watch how you walk away because you will eventually walk back into them.

The area that I have the trickiest time with is the relationships that hurt to keep holding but my gut knows I can’t just drop. These are the ones where Madeline L ‘Engle’s words bring comfort: “Love, and let go.” Or as my friend Melissa Meuzelaar is famous for saying, “Love deeply, hold loosely.” Lately, I have learned the desire to drop and walk in these particular instances comes from a place long ago inside of me – that place formed as a kid that coped with hurt by nothing short of fire safety: stop, drop and roll. Self-protection. While it might have served its purpose back then, it doesn’t work so well as a healthy adult. In the playground heart, it’s like making the conscious choice not to play in those vast areas of the heart because someone brought sticker-burrs with them when they joined me over there… in that grassy field near the swings.

So I find there are certain things that I carry with open hands, that some days are heavier than I would like, and other days are so light I don’t even know they are there. They are far too valuable for the Alley Trollers, and much deeper than sentimentality ever could be. They are human. And keep me so, too.

to be alive..

Originally uploaded by AnnuskA - AnnA Theodora.

“To Be Alive is to be vulnerable,” she said.

And I was asking for death the other night. I had too much of vulnerability. Stripped to the red and white bones. Bled dry. A sack of dead leaves for the fire heap. I’d had enough of living.

Then morning came in all the poetic ways that light comes after darkest nights. I was alive. I wasn’t sure if I was ready to be, again. But I was alive. And vulnerable. Hopeful. As with living comes vulnerability so comes hope.

Do you feel alive, she said
Originally uploaded by AnnuskA - AnnA Theodora.

Rudy pt. 2

Rudy is home!
Originally uploaded by zinkwazi.

Last fall I posted a poem about Rudy, born with HLHS (Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome). The journey this kid has been through since he took his first breath... well, it's enough for two lifetimes. He's had heart surgery, his lungs poked and prodded, wires, tubes, and now has a trach. Did I mention he's only a bit over 6 months old?

Greg Lawler went back to UCLA medical to shoot Rudy's last day in the hospital and his journey home for the first time in Rudy's short life. He made a video of the shoot that is about 9:00 minutes long, and worth every minute. Especially watch for the last minute or so as Rudy is held and adored by his sister and brothers. Go watch the Video HERE.

3AM Cards

Originally uploaded by National Library NZ.

The 3AM Card.
Everyone should have one.

Ironically, the people that are more likely to have ‘em are those in 12-step programs. The regular Joe’s tend not to even know what I am talking about as we live in a country that has made an art form of de-humanized, disconnected, isolation. As someone recently said on Twitter, “ I am debating whether I should stop following strangers on Twitter .. but isn't that the whole point?” Friends with everybody and nobody is your friend. They don’t have 3AM cards, though.

”What is this mysterious thing of which you speak?”

It is nothing less than the unspoken code between the closest of close that no mater what time of day or night, even if it is 3AM, you can call on one another. It’s like a personal Bat Signal. Oh that it could only be something as cool though as a spotlight that I could flash with a “3AM” and they would slide down their hidden poles, into rocket powered black behemoths (the current day SUV) to screech at my front door, beer in hand. But text messaging and email comes in a close second, even if it is not as dramatic. Of course there always is that pedestrian form of communication some call the tele-o-phone.

”Under what circumstances would some one use such a powerful device?”

It tends to be in dyer circumstance that it is used most often. What defines dyer to a particular circumstance depends on the individual. I was once summoned via secret red tele-o-phone by a friend who’s wife was at work while he was deftly ill to the point that he no longer had any idea where his children were. It wasn’t 3AM, more like 4PM, but when I got to his house, the door was open with kids coming and going like Oompa Loompas while he was curled up in his daughter’s bed in a haze of fever, dehydration, and a half eaten Egg McMuffin. I took note of his vitals, then asked him what exactly his children were supposed to be doing and had they eaten? His sense of time was lost so he had no idea. I spent the next few hours playing Mr. Mom, cooking dinner for the three little tornados and making sure my mate hadn’t passed out, checking on homework. Eventually, his wife got home and after small talk I was off.

I most recently played my card the other day. I have so many moving pieces in my life that I am trying to navigate – as if my whole landscape was in flux inside and out – and I simply knew that I had nothing left in me to keep at it. Not so much suicidal (“only in the morning” says Rusty in “Ocean’s 11) but at the end of my rope. If I were an alcoholic I would have cashed in my sobriety chip and drowned myself in drinks. There comes a point, when I can no longer see how to move forward and need friends to be eyes and ears, or simply tell me, “No, you are not crazy. This is where you are supposed to be.” Actually, 99% of the time it is the latter. I am pretty aware of where I am in the journey, but I need mates to remind that I haven’t lost my mind along the way. So I did the other night. And so my mates grabbed some beer, we met at a quiet place and they walked through my story with me. Nothing necessarily was solved, but things were less messy, and I came home knowing I wasn’t alone on the journey. Though I did joke with them that Frank Black was on to something when he sang ”You can’t crucify yourself, no it takes two. Maybe you could use some help and if you do just say you do.”

”Who makes up such an elite response team?”

Funny enough, it is usually only a few – two maybe three people – in any given space. Contrary to our Facebook Friend quotas - usually made up of acquaintances, re-connected childhood friends and then a few close mates – intimacy and 3AM cards are found amongst the small numbers. It isn’t human to have tons of close friends and even the phrase “tons of close friends” is an oxymoron. There is nothing wrong with them but let’s face it, who of them can you play a 3AM card and know they got your back?

One of the signature qualities in such a crew is trust – in their mental/emotional/spiritual health, their sense of self, etc. There is tremendous freedom when I can put it all on the table and know that no one in the room is going to be threatened by what I say, react with the need to give answers because they need to fulfill some latent family dynamic from their childhood or quietly stew in resentment and anger only to hit me over the head with it months down the road. There is safety in healthy people, in small numbers. And the in the right company there is a good kind of danger too.

The 3AM card.
Everybody should have one.
What’s in your wallet?

A moment of Zen

Creative play always makes me smile and this is no exception. This is a short put together byLondon Squared Productions. Taking real live interviews with random New Yorkers and animating various inanimate objects around the 5 Burroughs, they have created a New York version of Creature Comforts.



The Lost Tribes of New York City from Carolyn London on Vimeo.

And in case you don't want to go find out what Creature Comforts is, just watch this:

Expletive Awe

No More Keeping My Feet On The Ground
Originally uploaded by skye.gazer.

“Holy Fuck!” is quite possibly one of the strangest, most expressive expletives I know. I usually hear it in my head with a British accent, I am guessing because I’ve never heard an American say it. This probably, also, is in part due to a scene in “Notting Hill” when the muppety red head sister meets Anna Scott (Julia Roberts) for the first time in the midst of telling some random story why she is late to her own birthday party, looks up and sees Anna Scott and says, “Holy Fuck!” followed by tender praise and adoration of her.

It is the combination of the two words together that make it so perfect for me.
“Holy” - representing that which is dedicated or consecrated to God, something that has no other place but in the realm of the Divine.
“Fuck” - mostly having its origins as a shortening of the phrase “For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge,” but carrying with it all the taboo, dirty, harsh, negative connotations we’ve come to associate with it; also, a raw if not uncomfortable way of describing sex that has intimacy that lacks knowing.

Bring these two ideas together and you get the weight of the phrase. The sacred divine smashing into the utterly raw human, the purest form of being known with the intimate state of unknowing, when bent humanity meshes with the Divine extraordinary. It says it all. And it is usually why I only find myself saying out loud or in my head alone in the quiet morning or late nights before God. Not exactly what most people would consider “prayer” but then again, most people aren’t sure what they consider prayer in the first place. Regardless, it’s become more and more a phrase that slips out when I encounter the Divine in a manner that is utterly beyond any expectation or perception, and is simply, profoundly down to earth tangible… human.

"Indeed, Every event that occasions reverence also participates in ultimate truth. Reverence is the beginning and the end of everything." Kushner