- When someone shows you who they are, believe them. (Oprah)
- Tell me slowly and I will understand quickly. (Eat, Pray, Love)
- We are all responsible for our own happiness. (My Mom)
- What you put into the universe ALWAYS comes back. (Maury, Abraham, Buddhism, Life)
- Don’t worry about changing the worlld. Just do something that makes you come alive. Because that’s what the world needs. (–Harold Thurman Whitman)
- Keep your goals in focus, but be flexible on the path. (Life lesson while on olive farm in Turkey)
- When making big decisions, remember that often, the moment of absolutely certainty never arrives. (My Mom)
- Two sharp stones cannot make flour. When you become the surface, you are not lesser, you are wiser. (Bulgarian Proverb from friend Ellie)
- Act as if everything depends upon you, but pray as if everything depends upon God. (Live Life to the Fullest Plaque from my Aunt Sue)
- All truly happy people share the understanding that happiness exists at just one time and that time is now (Paraphrased from Willie Nelson)
- Look for God. Look for God like a man with his head on fire looks for water (Eat, Pray, Love)
Archive
This is my new favorite song. For anyone enchanted by bluegrass, carnivals and rockabilly style, cup your ear to this:
Snaps to Thomerson for the rec.
Writhing. It’s not a word that should be used lightly. It indicates pain and suffering. But that day I saw it.
I’m certain that the idea of “snorkeling”, in most beaches across the earth was started by some marketing genius to make tourists feel “active” after all the Coronas and lying around. So at least I knew, as we counted the pesos and lopped our legs over the side and hissed open a cold Tecate, I knew that this excursion was just putting a little wind into my hairstyle.
Luckily after 45 minutes of ho hum snorkeling, we saw an octopus.
I have this playground of images which live in an old pirate trunk at the back of my mind. Creatures which I full well know are real, but remain mythical and monstrous until I actually see them in person without the presence of fences or glass. Giraffes live there. Sharks. Gorillas. And definitely octopuses.
When it was first thrown onto the beach by our mustached, Mexican guide , it wasn’t writhing. With all eight arms–or were they legs–slithering in cartoon-like coordination, the octopus wasn’t squeezing some diver to death. The octopus was only walking, just trying to go home, back to the water. He was scary and scared all together, with iridescent, army-green skin and a layer of viscous slime.
But then we watched that Mexican turn that boneless creature’s head inside out, clutch the brain and toss it into the Gulf. All the octopus’s defense mechanisms–an ink sac, color camouflage, arm detachment to distract a predator–were each a merely fascinating Animal Planet factoid in the face of a human.
Then we heard the octopus cry, its toothed tongue rasping for life. A wheezing sound one makes when they are laughing so hard that they can’t breathe.
Then. We watched the octopus die, all three of its hearts slowing to a stop on the beach.
On the way home, the wind tied knots in my hair, the octopus lie still on the floor and my eyes followed the scalloped V of our wake.
Life is a game to be played. Do you want to play with me? –Michael Boudreaux, December 2008
That night, we went to Cherry Creek Mall and I picked up a couple things at Z Gallerie. Boudreaux drove around while I ran my errand. When he picked me up, we called our friend, Greg, in his Janus office building across the street and made him come to the window to see us. Then we went to the Esquire theater, bought our tickets and walked a block to the liquor store. We bought beer, grabbed two, put the rest in the car, then entered the theater, opened the bottles with my mascara and watched Slumdog Millionaire.
There is no climax. Nothing else happened.
It was the most normal American night in our old ‘hood.
And I’m still thrilled about it.
I noticed something when i was in London this past July.
For years, when traveling, I’d always hoped to find a face I knew. An old advertising professor in the Frankfurt airport. A kindergarten classmate on the Spanish Steps. I’d think of something clever to say, we’d chat briefly and then part, both lost again in the metropolitan common collage of expectations and emotions, backpacks and cobblestones.
But last time I was in London, not so. As we walked the Thames riverfront, fascinated by starving artist’s faces in the sand and perusing the used book market, (where I bought Veronica Decides to Die) I saw bits of everyone I know in others. That woman in the pea coat and paisley scarf-the soft cushion of her chin and nose reminds me a little bit of my Aunt Beth. That man there, he walks just like Dustin–with such urgency. The tanned shoulder of a Swiss tourist–it’s the exact shade of my Mother’s skin. A shade of coffee sprinkled with melting snow.
Instead of wishing it was them, I was simply glad to be reminded of them. I was appreciating what was there, intangibly on my table. A memory. A glimpse. A moment.
The feeling hit me again, from a different angle, in Mexico.
We were wandering the avenue, now overrun with high prices (is that pesos?) suburban mall windchimes, tequila trinkets and beaded belts that would look beautiful hanging in my closet for the next ten years. I was seriously considering some purple earring made of palm fronds when an art gallery caught our eye. My first thought: But we can’t buy anything. It’s just not in our budget right now. So why go in?
Why, to appreciate the art of course.
And so we did.
During Holy Week in Jerusalem, I was discussing the failures and successes of the Catholic church and my difficulty in finding a new church community with our friar-to-be friend Erik one day in the Petra Hostel lobby.
“I just don’t have a lot in common with the people I find at a church,” I said.
“Why do you think that is? Are they too “nice”? he asked. “Like, you know: ‘How are you? Good to see you! Let’s have some coffee!’ Because I find that, too. There’s a big difference between kind and nice. And I think a lot of people are nice but not necessarily kind.”
While this was not my problem with churchgoers, I thought it was an excellent point.
Definition of Nice:
1. pleasing; agreeable; delightful: a nice visit.
2. amiably pleasant; kind: They are always nice to strangers.
Definition of Kind:
1. of a good or benevolent nature or disposition, as a person: a kind and loving person.
2. having, showing, or proceeding from benevolence: kind words.
3. indulgent, considerate, or helpful; humane (often fol. by to): to be kind to animals.
They’re different. Quite different. Being nice is somewhat of a default setting. But being kind takes a little more effort and intention. And it’s much more important.
Do you ever wonder if someday you’ll get to that point, you know. . .that one point, in life, when you’re so happy with that Cambodian silk patchwork bedspread you purchased on impulse, so pleased about how far you’ve come in your Portugese classes and how great last season’s tomatoes turned out, so confident in your job as a recruiter or television producer or product manger or art teacher and so comfortable with that path you’ve chosen–regardless of whether it took you past wildflowers or a few mountain lion dens—that you’ll see someone else’s life as a. . .filmmaker or Mom or real estate agent or bio-engineer . .with her Victorian home and pin-ball machine collection and three kids and perfect Christmas cards and all the right things in her purse at any given moment and NOT think: “Well, I wish I was like THAT.”
I think I might be getting there.
And I’m telling you, it’s a fucking beautiful place.
Bizarre, but beautiful.
This place where I’ve realized that I CANNOT be all things, all people, all beings.
I can just be me.
In Rwanda, they always open your soda bottles at the table. This proves they are not poisoning you.
In Rwanda, long muddy streams the color of my coffee were lined with Primus beer bottles. I didn’t like it.
In Rwanda, we had a beer at the Hotel des Milles Collines. Remember? There was a pool.
In Rwanda, we were not big news. No.
In Rwanda, you cannot eat on the street. Inside only.
In Rwanda, we rode on motorbikes. With helmets.
In Rwanda, Antonia–a chin like a fist and a the bun of the woman in the ABC afterschool special who lives in the house on the hill. We saw giraffes together.
In Rwanda, there was a mouse in our room. I stood on a chair.
In Rwanda, the tea fields were the green we must see in the womb. The cups of tea were terrible.
In Rwanda, an older–perhaps more violent, perhaps more scared–version of everyone. You just can’t tell.
In Rwanda, the grey-crested crane is the national bird. I didn’t care for him.
In Rwanda, we watched Miami Vice and Friends in French. It was the one where Ross almost drinks the fat.
In Rwanda, we went to the border of the Congo. We peered across into Goma, where there is now a lot of trouble.
In Rwanda, the sun was a drop of Tang. That was the morning of the crows.
In Rwanda, we bought a ticket from Ethiopian Airlines. We went home.
The other day I heard an interview with Dar Williams on NPR. Her voice sounded like that of the beatnik lover, Rosemarie Whitman, in MadMen. She talked like today was the best day of her life, the first day.
But she said something I loved:
Perspective is our reward for the the anguish we go through earlier in life.
So true.
