Sunday, 7th o April 2002
I have a confession to make. I've thought about this for a long time... it hasn't been easy. I've decided to come out of the closet. I've known for some time... maybe I've always known. It's been a hard road, full of denial... what will they think? It's been rough, not knowing if you were the only one, where are others like me? Let me just say it here first.
I own every Celine Dion album, and I am proud of it!
Okay, now I've got it off my chest. Whew! Why you ask? Oh why, oh why? Well, I just have to say, once you get past the insipid lyrics and sometimes overly indulgent production... well you get to a point where you see that she really does BELIEVE it. That counts for something in my book.
If art is hands, heart, and head, she's got two out of three, and what she doesn't have in head she makes up with more heart. She's a good person, a nice person, an inspirational non-self absorbed pop icon. That counts for a lot in my book. These times we live in post Sept 11th, it's driven home even more poignantly, we don't need more angst in our lives. We have all the drama we need right here in the real world. Angst ridden pop stars, rebellious youth that rail against the establishment to try to feel... something, just isn't where it is right now. We need inspirational, feel good movies, songs, TV (why is JAG making such a resurgence?).
I've always been a romantic, dippy, silly, pushover for a Disney movie, and I'm admitting it here. I'm OUT now, and for those of you who've always known, thank you for your support *G*.
Tuesday, 26th o March 2002
Alice smiled to herself. You know, what, she thought, I really find that I love warm, lumpy, oddly shaped cookies afterall.
Monday, 25th o March 2002
Powerpuff Olaia recharging her powers
Olaia, has this hilarious thing she has been doing lately. She thinks she has super powers (too much Powerpuff Girls, I guess). When she get's tired she tells us that her powers are gone. Hehe. "Mommy, Daddy, my powers are all gone."
"Oh, really, little girl."
"I'm not a little girl, I'm a big girl!"
"Okay, maybe if you go to sleep your powers will come back."
So off she goes to bed. When she wakes up in the morning, she comes out and blinks rapidly at me. "Daddy, my powers are back." I fall down as she zaps me with her eye beams.
"Oh no, you got me with your eye beams."
"They are not eye beams, Daddy. They're lasers."
"Oh. Well, you got me with your lasers!" She smiles and laughs and chases me around the house. I tell you, it's a riot.
Wednesday, 6th o March 2002
We Look for Answers to Questions that are Irrelevant?
Haven't written much lately... been concentrating on esoterica for some reason. Lots of thoughts and emotions have been swirling in my mind. It's almost like the things I have been trying to come to terms with all of my adult life are narrowing down, coalescing, reaching a perfect limit. I am more sure of many things than I have ever been before. I am cooking on one helluva long deep introspective soul bearing post for the near future... but for now let me leave this here as a reminder to myself that I need to get off my ass and write it.
My most common, and I believe most people's most common mistake in life is asking the wrong questions. A lot of conscious and good human beings ask the question, "Why am I here? Why does the universe exist?" Wrong questions both. I believe. No! I know! (The Matrix yields good philosophy, eh?) These are the wrong questions to ask. THE question should be, "What... What am I to do with my life?" Why am I here morphs into an acceptance that I am indeed here... something that I KNOW... that everyone knows. There is no belief, no faith, no reason to doubt. It is as clear and beautiful and easy as anything that I or anyone has ever known.
John Lennon's "Imagine," used to irk me. It sounded blasphemous to my young Catholic ears. But now that I am older, its wisdom is not in the wish for no religion, no hell, no heaven, but a clear message of "stop arguing and fighting over those things... those toys. You know what, if you can't behave, it's better that the toys never existed. These toys make you fight, and be selfish and fearful. What value are they then?" - Once used on Olaia and her cousins as they fought and cried and carried on over some stupid plastic playthings. Anyway, that's John Lennon's "Imagine" in a nutshell.
The question left after you have made this obvious observation and stopped riddling yourself with rounds of automatic doubt and fear, is this: What are you going to do with this life you have?
This folds neatly into so many different philosophies, truths, and ways and it's so simple. Why the hell didn't I see if before? Well, as I later point out (Dragons and Rats), we have this tendency to view saviors as slayers of dragons (Jesus, Martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Mandela, Ghandi) rather than teachers of rat killing. Which is why we decide to kill them when they fail in their perceived mission. They all preached smallness, adherence to simplicity. Be humble, empathetic, loving, do not do violence to one another, respect, challenge each other. Do not have fear. Instead we fixate on our fear and believe that this person is going to slay it. He will conquer the cause of our fear. He will dispell the Romans. He will beat back the white people. He will deliver us from the British. He will deliver us from Apartheid. He will grant us eternal life.
No, no, no, you fools! Actually, I could see Jesus today with a group of college kids, "Dude, dude, that's not what I'm after. You're not gettin' it. I'm not here to save your ass. I'm here to tell you that I've been down with you since the beginning. Listen, I've got this study guide here that's gonna help you out tons."
We instead try to find the mystical. We look for signs of heaven. Everlasting life. We look for bleeding wounds, pieces of cloth shaped like I don't know what. There was this case in Mexico I believe... or was it Guatemala, where the concrete in the airport was sweating, and the water stain was shaped like an image of the Virgin Mary. People had put out flowers, lit candles, and were huddled around it praying for their souls. Wow... we need so much, don't we.
If we are scientists, academics, or just cynical, we say it (heaven, hell, god) doesn't exist. We argue that it doesn't make sense. That Christians are freaks and deluded... all the while we delude ourselves with thoughts of "why" instead of "what."
If I could just knock their heads together, Christians and Aethiests. Stop trying to prove or disprove the unprovable, the unknowable. We could just wink out at the end of our lives, or carry on in some celestial form. I don't know. I don't even believe.
Belief is for weenees.
Basically belief is just a holding pattern, a wait, for something that can't be known. Don't believe you can, KNOW you can. I know this is the message of all the great men and women of history... the prophets, the messiah, the leaders of civil rights, great people who all had one thing in common. They all knew what they had to do. They didn't ask why (except maybe in darker hours, or during moments of despair). They knew that there is no greater waste than to live life waiting for the next. There is no more selfish act than to seek your own salvation. And there is no greater travesty than to fear the great frontier that exists at the edge of life.
It will take care of itself.
In the meantime, "what do we do?" is crystal clear. We look to others, help them with their pain, fear and doubt. We will clean their wounds, comfort them in their sorrow, and struggle for peace. We cannot do much as individuals... all we can manage is to take up the small battles and kick some rat ass.
Sunday, 24th o February 2002
I don't mean for every entry I write to become some kind of philosophical journey or meandering... but I just can't help it. This melancholic soul of mine just can't seem to sit still. Maybe it's all the hard times we've been through in these past few years or all the joy we have because of our daughter. I don't know what it is, but I just can't seem to shake this smile I have.
I have something else, that I want to write here, but I haven't had the motivation. Something happened to me about a year and half ago that started me down this path that I believe is the right one. Although as I mentioned I don't have the energy to get it down. I've been trying, believe me, but it's just not there yet. However, for the sake of my sanity, I have to get something down, some results, fruits so to speak... better to show than tell anyway.
Tonight was a late night at work. We didn't leave until around nine. Roberto, Laura's brother and Miray, his wife, were nice enough to look after Olaia while we toiled away. Since we were in meetings until late, we hadn't had a chance to eat. Once again, Roberto and Miray came to our aid with a tasty Lebanese dish, a kind of middle eastern meatloaf with pita bread and accompaniments. A meal like that after a hard day at work can't help but leave you punchy and happy.
I don't know how exactly we got started on it... wait, oh yes I do. Miray was talking about ruts. She says, a bit self-consciously, her life might look like it's in a rut. It's not, she assures us, but well, you know, it might be. She takes care of her children, she cooks, she cleans, she picks them up from school. She thinks for a bit. Well there's not much else, she concludes, but it feels full. She says it's not like she feels empty, but sometimes when thinking about all the plans from college, what you imagined your life to be like, what potential, the dreams you never fulfilled. It's the things for which you have no taste anymore. This doesn't taste the same. Was it I who changed?
I've been thinking much of the same things these past few years - not that my life has been boring, but I've been beating myself up for not accomplishing more, for not having what I wanted to have at the age of 32.
And you know what it's all pretty simple, we concluded and somewhat heartening, which is really all that is important when you're trying to cheer each other up and feel good.
What do you use to study the world around you? Maybe you use a telescope for looking at the infinite outside of our solar system, distant stars, great novas, vast expanses that dwarf the imagination. It's so large so great, you feel filled up staring at it, as if you would never get bored staring at the same stretch of sky, that you would never never get old before your time? You lose yourself way up there, imagining you are hanging upside down over this calm sea of infinity. You begin to forget the grass upon which you lie, the blades that formerly scratched your back, made your legs itch. It all seems less important. The crickets fad into a distant blanket of white noise lost beneath the threshold of your consciousness. There's that big thing... and it's all that matters.
Perhaps, though, there is something else that captures your fancy more. Maybe, just maybe you're fascinated by the microscopic. You want to peer into these little spaces that no one knows about. It's not enough to know the grandness of things... it's the smallness that captures your imagination, the mundane, the infinitesimal. You know your world. It's the small things that give you pleasure, the squeeze of a tiny hug, kissing a boo-boo to make it feel better. Do you come home to a little dog to whom you are the entire world and cannot contain herself as she leaps and jumps knocking over everything in her path. Do you feel those things? It's easy to miss the little things while you are staring off into space.
So it was that we concluded that there was the infinity outside of ourselves and the infinity within; one, an infinity of greatness and journey and abundance. One spirit sees and does what all large and great spirits beg to do... to stomp to dream to make loud noises ignite fires and light up the world. The other seeks to pacify and understand and foment. It loves the broken, embattled and the weak. Its empathy and compassion and patience temper the fire, baffle the noise, and dampen the vibrations that ripple all around us.