with scars.

"There's a fine line between denial and faith. It's much better on my side."
~ Rose Nadler, LOST ep. 1.12

(57)

tabula rasa

“An optimist stays up until midnight to see the new year in. A pessimist stays up to make sure the old year leaves.”
~ Bill Vaughn

Today is New Year's Eve. It's the last official day of the year and the sixth day in that week that sits low in the shadow of the all important Christmas Day. By the twenty-fifth of December it always feels as if the year might as well just wrap it up.

We humans do love to create our little pockets of time. We demarcate our daily lives into little bite size pieces, we accept our television programming at regulation lengths, and we take special note of changes that affect us in our check writing or at tax time. Within the realm of all of the seasonal celebrations, we also gain the opportunity to reflect. Some seek solace in their financial gains while others look inward, perhaps finding themselves more satisfied with that figure in the mirror than they were 365 days earlier.

(56)

in gratitude

Most things given or received won't fit into a box.

(55)

making impressions

(54)

joyeux noel

“The greatest gift is a portion of thyself.”
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

(53)

exhibit A

The practice of having standards is often underrated.

(52)

unfettered joy

Children play with wild abandon, not questioning consequences, fearing the worst or wondering what others might think. Adults get stuck on the outside, jaded and circulating around them with too much information, too much knowledge, and too much of a superiority complex. They often want to project their misery upon the children, sap their pleasure and happiness, and simply know better. Adults whose growth is harshly stunted tend to do this as well, to their relatives, to their friends and certainly to their enemies by proxy. I think we can all learn a lot from children.

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mood lighting

Having seen friends, acquaintances, and those in the making come and go on the turn of style over the years, I realize that knowing someone for eighteen years is significant. It is the stretch of time that separates the Beatles arrival to the United States and the launch of MTV. It's what divides John Lennon's assassination from the likes of Spice World. We're talking about birth to high school graduation.

And we're talking about the years since I met a close friend and this past weekend when I attended her first year anniversary party with her wife, witnessing all of the love, passion, and strength of a wonderful soul. You never can tell with these things. The people most important to our lives don't always stick out. They hold the torch of brief impact during a few conversations or when we develop teenage feelings for them or when they weave in and out of every year to follow. Fate sometimes holds the reins. Often we just need to keep waking up everyday, going about the current day business at hand without the full realization of the glue that holds together our life. It's connections like this.

(50)

a diminuendo

(49)

keep out

(48)

good luck

The most recent play I directed closed two months and twelve days ago. The production was an intense, trying experience fraught with battles of egos, wits, and sensibilities. I have directed three plays now, and I learned a boatload professionally, artistically, and personally from each piece.

The theatre has already been making the call for show submissions for its 2012-2013 season. I have been contacted directly by folks hoping I'll submit a show, yet I still sense the flavor of that bad taste left from this last show. This moment feels like the sheer definition of dilemma.

I have until January 15th to sort out my decision.

(47)

corporate entity.

We all represent something bigger than ourselves. We each have beliefs, ideals, religions, communities, families, and preferences. We don't exactly choose any of them, but are instead drawn in their direction, whether by circumstance, happenstance, or positive mental trigger.

Within my daily routine, I represent a huge corporation that is so widespread that 95% of the upper forty-eight are within five miles of one. It's all a numbers game. Everything about every interaction is calculated and arbitrarily compared to the year prior, or the day prior, or the hour prior, or another store or region. Their ideal representative would be a consistent robot with streaming pop-up ads.

(46)

tree hugger.

(45)

southern lights

welcome Christmas
fah who for-aze
dah who dor-aze

(44)

maple staple

The year of our rabbit, 2011, has but ten days to go. From one perspective this year has seen the end of certain eras, while being translated as transitional via another, whereas a third would see the dawning of the proverbial new day. Depending on how close your gaze is, and by what clarity, this could be the definition of most years. I don't intend to have a generic opening, but there it sits, suggesting the most mundane of personal blurbs.

There was once a bar. Let's call it a pub, or perhaps an Irish pub for good measure. It served mean, strong drinks, had more than adequate seating for the conversational, and the best karaoke in town. I spent more than my share of time there, drinking, carousing, singing, and moving about in the cold of my own shadow. My tales that surrounded that place were lurid at best and depressing at worst and they all became buried under the certainty of its closure earlier this year. It wasn't alone.

One plays ode to their history time and again. We continue down roads until they dead end, wind back on themselves, or become uninteresting. The stories we weave with others in our reach follow a similar path. Some people, be they co-workers, friends, family, or whomever else, join us for such a minute part of our journey. We can't question this, or fight against it. Some people are there as mere emissaries to introduce us to our futures, or remind us briefly of our past, or merely to get us to the train on time.

Our life story is in a constant process of trimming the fat, siphoning out what matters over time.

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ghostly machinations

(42)

ice storm

This past weekend, I spent a glorious Saturday at a high school on the north Florida coast judging the regional Thespian competition. I have been doing the same for the last three years. This was my favorite session, containing the opportunity to watch and critique nine straight hours of a total of sixty-one scenes having a cast of two.

After a 5AM caffeine-induced musically eclectic back roads trek, I arrived at the heavily populated and intensely hormonal grade school and made my way to the sign-in area. Immediately I felt the tailored shoulder of an old friend, as he leaned in to me with a good ol' dude hug. This particular guy has been sadly distancing himself from me since the predictable aftershocks of my divorce. We have a bevy of under-resolved issues that might not be worth pursuing. On his coattails was another long gone close friend whose level of disrespect over time still reeks in the occasional air we share. He and I had a total of seven words.

The day also gave me the chance to become completely enthralled by two teenagers doing great justice to a five minute scene from Angels in America, in what my panel deemed the best piece of the day.

(41)

cropped life

The old psychological query ponders whether we first see the forest or the trees. I have often felt myself capable of doing both in equal measure, craving the intimacy of the details but enjoying the manner in which all of the distinctive pieces fit into the whole. Art can easily be cropped life, as information is isolated to draw the eye and trick the mind into focusing on specifics.

(40)

gimme shelter

Find your safe harbor.

(39)

rear window

(38)

family relations

The holiday season seemingly returned as Black Friday warmed its shadow across casseroles built around leftovers and all things commercial. Somehow it is now suddenly December the 12th, or a mere thirteen days until Christmas. Out of the haze came the displays, the music, and the financial demands, and like the ethereal village of Brigadoon, it too will pass. This time of year only gives us a small fragment of time to enjoy its splendor, as it hustles on by our collective windows. We must find our way to harness its genuine gifts, opportunities, and cause for celebration.

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lonely avenue

A good family friend once told a story about a road trip she had with her mother when she was a child. Along the way they took enough wrong turns to become lost. When she became frantic and upset about the situation her mom pulled off to the side of the road to talk with her, reassuring that they weren't lost after all since they were right there.

I feel we could all benefit from that perspective.

(36)

earthbound mystic

Can't keep my mind
From the circling skies
Tongue tied and twisted
Just an earthbound misfit, I
-"Learning to Fly", Pink Floyd

(35)

hidden treasure

The trouble with living life by guided tour is that there are never surprises.

(34)

snap peas

“Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple.”
~Dr. Suess

(33)

altered ego

There is astounding power in reflection.

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fragile frame

The Back to the Future films evoked a sense of home, a sense of wonder, a sense of dread, and so many other things by its simple framing of a car-lined street burrowed under a canopy of trees. Our lives offer us innumerable places with similar emotional arcs, whether they are the street we grew up on that no longer extends to oblivion, or the old workplace that has made way for a condo village, the neighborhood you've lost visitation rights to, or merely the crossroads in your daily commute.

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super 8.

move·ment (n.)

• an instance of moving; a change in place or position
• the suggestion or illusion of motion in a painting, sculpture, or design
• the progression of events in the development of a plot
• a self-contained section of an extended composition
• a mechanism, such as the works of a watch, that produces or transmits motion

Movement.

The word flows through your lips with such power, only to be unceremoniously scrubbed at launch time. Its lifespan appropriately works in similar starts and stops. It is a concept that comes to my mind quite often. My soul was born at the wild intersection between artist, gypsy, drifter, dreamer, and being relatively undefined.

I remember a hastily assembled piece of prose I wrote for my sixth grade English class about my life at thirty. It was etched in the penciled shorthand chicken scratch I used to convey my ideas at the time. It involved a world far from the one I was presently living in, due changes in time, location, status, and level of hope. The actual details don't stand out this far down the road, but it brings to mind a level of longing I have always had. Not coincidentally this was the time that my passion for writing, filmmaking, music, and sex were building up momentum. My tastes were more fully finding foundations, and my sensory development was enhancing.

June 10th of this year, J.J. Abrams new film Super 8 found its way to theaters. My girlfriend and I dropped in on it during opening weekend. Wrapped in a veil of Spielberg worship and with throwaway thrill ride sequences that recalled Cloverfield was the story of innocent burgeoning filmmakers trying their hand at the craft in the brilliant beige of 1979. It was unexpectedly a great work of cinematic entertainment and one that touched me deeply.

Dreams grow old with us. They evolve, find better music tastes, have children, lose aspects of themselves, but never fully disappear. Unless we do.

(30)

all personnel

RIP Harry Morgan (1915-2011)

Some actors live and breath life into characters so eloquently. For me Harry Morgan was Colonel Sherman T. Potter, the dignified, stalwart commander of the 4077th on those later seasons of M*A*S*H, and in digesting that show at such a formative age he became such a key figure in my personal development. I am truly saddened by his passing.

(*)

to simplicity

Recently I discovered the second season of the Bravo reality show, Work of Art: The Next Great Artist which follows a group of artists as they create art brought on by a variety of jumping off points and with vague parameters. On a recent episode, each of the artists attempted to create pop art (Andy Warhol's awkward adopted baby) for the modern age. As I have been traveling through my spontaneous blog picture-taking voyage, I have been thinking a lot about a quote by Warhol about why he originally painted the Campbell's Soup cans. Basically he said it was because it was what he had for lunch. Who says one needs to plod off halfway around the world to find inspiration?

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born free

Artistic endeavor has been on my mind lately. I have innumerable artistically driven friends, who pursue it professionally, spiritually, or simply on the side. I consider deeply my youth born passions toward creative expression of all sorts as a gift first and a curse only in the occasional retrospect. If there's one truth that continually surfaces, it's the edict to know your limitations, but to always do your craft in spite of them.

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rough edges

We know them by rote. We can see them coming from a fathom away. Their absence often becomes the litmus test that sets the standard between friends and acquaintances. They are other people's perceptions of us. I have been quiet or I have been brooding. I have been anti-social and I have been weird. And I have been referred to as rough around the edges.

Though none of these get at the heart of the matter and have been based off past knee-jerk reactions, I have found acceptance of the latter. I need not wear any tag others may don upon me, but I am quite comfortable being an odd-shaped peg ill-equipped to fitting into that geometrically accurate hole most of the world eases themselves into.

(27)

parallel universe

NASA discovered an eerily Earth-like planet in another solar system this week. Why am I not surprised?

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snap shot

Life can be difficult to alter or manipulate, especially given its great ability to become strained by monotony. It doesn't have to be, so find new glory in the familiar moments and discover hidden treasures off the beaten path.

(25)

perpetual motion

You can ponder perpetual motion
Fix your mind on a crystal day
Always time for a good conversation
There's an ear for what you say.
~Creedence Clearwater Revival,
"Up Around the Bend"

(24)

'73 spirit

Happy Birthday, lover.

(23)

this corrosion

Places don't change. We do.

(22)

game day

I often must remind myself that art doesn't appeal to everyone.

(21)

open window

(20)

inside out

Everything is beautiful
in its own way.
-Ray Stevens

(19)

techno fever

The stranglehold technological has over society often drives me crazy. Even though I sell consumer electronics and know far too many seemingly useless tidbits about the ways and means of it all, I care very little about shiny toys and the advances in cellphones and their compatriots. The Florence & the Machine concert my girlfriend and I saw during this past summer was visited by a pseudo-fascist uprising of the smartphone brigade who simultaneously felt the need to video the proceedings for seeming prosperity. The cold glow from the audience resembled a roomful of old school Cylons preparing to overtake the humans en masse.

(18)

black friday.

4:47 AM.

(17)

give thanks

A multitude of simple pleasures create bliss.

(16)

function junction

The optimist already sees the scar over the wound; the pessimist still sees the wound underneath the scar.
- Ernst Schröder

(15)

in communicado

(14)

no comment

!

(13)

mojo rising

Don't neglect to consider the vantage point of someone else.

(12)

filthy beast

For four years, I had long Jesus locks. There were lengths of time when they'd fall halfway down my back, and there were strands of time that I wore it well, and other spurts that I bound it into a ponytail if only to get it the hell out of my way without any thought of appearance.

During the production of my first play, I demanded a beard of a cast member who played a slimy doctor. In what was initially a sign of solidarity with him, I too began to grow out a beard. I had slacked on shaving again and again over time, and soon realized why. It suits me and is a part of who I am that had been lurking underneath for a very long time.

(11)

ventura highway

(10)

say cheese

Smile though your heart is breaking
Smile even though it's aching
When there are clouds in the sky, you'll get by
If you smile through your fear and sorrow
Smile and maybe tomorrow
You'll see the sun come shining through for you.
- Nat King Cole (1954)

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