the walkers!!

(134)

dog years

“Dogs are wise. They crawl away into a quiet corner and lick their wounds and do not rejoin the world until they are whole once more.”  ~ Agatha Christie

(133)

old soul

You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you'll discover will be wonderful. What you'll discover is yourself.
~Alan Alda

(132)

slow down.

(131)

recalibrating pathos

(130)

multi- tsk-tsk

As of today, my self-prescribed photographic blog journey is 41% complete. For the last five months this page could easily be subtitled something in that vain. Today also marks 365 days since I dove into the deep end on a thirty day song challenge. So, as I get set to stir a 30 day film challenge into the mix, I submit a cable season replacement show's worth of unsung posts from that previous series:

a song that boosts your confidence/self-esteem
a song suitable for a break-up
a song in a foreign language
a song that got you through a hard time
a song that makes you hungry
a song you want played at your wedding
&
(something about) the next ten songs on your iPod

Stay tuned.

fine patina

Home.

The word itself evokes images and feelings. Often we don't know the full story of a person until you get a peek at their home life. Saturday night I got an eye full. A karaoke compatriot of mine lives way out in the boonies with nine cats and what appears to be a well-preserved, but dusty museum of a life that must have disappeared some years ago.

There was so much sadness in the air. The musty, old remnants of a reality stalled out stood out in sledgehammer whacked sore thumb fashion beneath the slight traces of contemporary life. Though many rain drenched branches were burned away with faith and gasoline as the small group of us chatted sex, drugs, and apocalypse out back, the inside reeked of a place needing an emotional clearing before psychological asphyxiation takes complete hold.

(129)

american splendor

Love will remain a mystery
But give me your hand and you will see
Your heart is keeping time with me . . .
~ Aqualung ("Brighter Than Sunshine", 2005)

(128)

residual damage

Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end.
~ Semisonic ("Closing Time" - 1998) via Seneca

We weave in and out of one another's lives much like traffic flows through an intersection. The longer we live the more complex the design, and the more likely the nasty collision.

Allowing someone back into the fold of your life is a complicated matter. As time passes and change takes hold, we can't always be assured of an easy fit. I have found this to be the case since opening myself up to letting an old friend back into my life.

He was the person I considered my best friend. And he was someone with whom I shared confidences and secrets unknown to most and certainly my at the time estranged spouse. The fact that a relationship between them ensued following the crumbling debris of that whole matter should come as no surprise to anyone who knows the in and outs of melodrama.

This past January I broke my silence with him. It felt like the right time, and I was in the right mindset to spot clean the slate. There's still a ton of baggage stacked at the foyer of our new beginning, however. Not all relationships can move forward with war wounds like this, especially when those involved were fighting on opposite sides.

(127)

calm warning

When I was solely focused on filmmaking as the end all and be all in my artistic life, I would collect quotes and advice from writers and directors I admired. Pedro Almodovar has been making brash, beautiful, brilliant cinema for several decades. I once read an interview of his wherein he said, "I think it is very important to be born in a place that you don’t like, because it establishes very early on the things you are going to confront in your life.”

My sister wages this war well. She puts up her dukes, unearths and exploits her past again and again, in literal terms. I go about it differently. I'll grant her the means she battles her rival. I have found my own method of weaving strands of this pain into what I write and what I create.

Everyone needs a nemesis.

We all need that something else that runs counter to us, assuring us where we stand. Democrats need their Republicans just as vegans wouldn't be the same without their meat eaters. Lovers need their exes. And Kurtis Blow needs his breaks. Britney defected against the music and CBGBs took things out on the disco ball. From our opposition we stand. We can't fit everyone into our bubbles, and buying the world a coke isn't going to remedy a damn thing. From it all arrives some truth, though. The things we loath and the things that challenge us the most are also what bring us most fully out of our shell and into focus.

(126)

love nest.

(125)

no idea

(124)

clean break

(123)

wet sex

The simple things often create the most significance.

(122)

human remnants

(121)

wonder wall

(120)

come undone

When our eyes see our hands doing the work of our hearts, the circle of creation is completed inside us, the doors of our souls fly open, and love steps forth to heal everything in sight.
~ Michael Bridge

(119)

unsettle me

(118)

skin deep

Our skin cells rejuvenate every seven years!

It's one of those old wives tales that has spread like a virus and ends up toted around in our culture's back pocket. I have always been quite fond of it, even though it's easily disproven by the need to wash one's sheets and replace one's bed pillow thanks to an excess of crusty, old skin flakes taking up residence.

There's a huge power in the number seven! It has meanings of perfection, luck and good fortune on the one hand and broken mirror misfortune, bankruptcy stains, and itchy marital inclinations on the other. There are seven deadly sins and notably seven musical notes. This number is so round, complete, and encompassing.

So, why wouldn't the outer shell of our bodies approach a new paint job every seven years? It's got a beautiful poetry to it. The truth in it would allow us to enter new chapters of our saga every seven years, ridding ourselves of much of what had come before and becoming refreshed and ready for the battles ahead. Having just passed my thirty-fifth birthday, I could likewise find myself prime real estate for just the right make-over to head into my forties with, revved up and contemplating the frivolous purchase of that '74 Ford Cortina from Life on Mars that would be the closest I could come to mid-life stereotyping.

I still believe it.

I just don't believe it on the literal level. I do feel that our internal emotionally sordid, spiritually dimwitted, aesthetically grotesque selves spruce up over time and are in foreign lands within that time frame. Allow me a hot moment to picture myself in 2005, or in 1998, or perhaps 1991, or how about in 1984, or zooming along that Wet-N-Wild picture show that was the birth canal.

Well, maybe not the latter.

Each and every pace along that trail is distinctive to me, and set to very specific music and overtones. It doesn't matter if you believe in literal, well-timed shedding. I feel what's important is that you look inside yourself, and find something to grow from every time you venture.

(117)

life sentence.

"Spiritual progress is like detoxification. Things have to come up in order to be released. Once we have asked to be healed, then our unhealed places are forced to the surface."
~ Marianne Williamson

(116)

of freedom

(115)

road worn

(114)

static. eclecticism.

As attributed to Albert Einstein insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results. We've all been there. It's learning to walk. It's going to the DMV. It's waking up the next day, still trapped in a dead relationship. It's the spin cycle of our existence.

I know we've all played for the hamster home team a time or two, sprinting along that möbius strip to nowhere. The secret is to trace your path around the edge, find your exit to the wild and undercharted, and wave your adieus to Jareth on your way out. If life were literally a game, a requirement for continued play simply must be to continue attaining higher and higher levels.

Screw the mansion, forget the stocks, forgo birthing the same plastic color-coded children, and instead suck the umami straight from the marrow of life and write your own guidebook. If variety is the spice of life as seems to be the word on the street, then I'll take a full rack. Everything we do should be a little bit better, a little bit different, and more seasoned than the last.

(113)

primal screams

(112)

darwin imposed.

(111)

undercover boss

Piss or get off the pot . . .

It just hangs there like something anti-climactically scrolled across a bathroom wall. Common expressions tend to be that way. One moment they are idle phrases and suddenly their truth reveals itself loud and clear.

There's a curse to being born with an artistic drive and another to being but a weekend voyager in the game. As time has worn, I have found that one can play both hands. Over the years I have found myself friend, confident, comrade, and simply linked to one artistically inclined person after another. For a long while I traveled almost exclusively in the circles that would harness this subculture, whether amongst my collegiate brethren, my writer's circles, or while passing through set after production set.

Passion can be a fickle foe or it can be a forgetful friend. Some have left the craft behind for the professionals while others have forged ahead, finding money to be made from their art. I have rattled around somewhere in between, like that metal ball that lives inside a spray paint container, occasionally making a stir but rarely being seen as a force behind the end result.

Holding back has little place in this life.

(110)