The best days

I have done nothing today....  nothing except sit and chat and hold and Love...  Curled on the couch with the other half of my spirit...

Sometimes it is enough to do nothing...  Sometimes it is perfect to do nothing...

Sometimes nothing = happiness

It was a fantastic day.

lighter than air...

Taking a stroll yesterday to do some small errand I invented in order to take a stroll yesterday, I was captivated by the beautiful day.  The sun was shining, the air was crisp and cool but tasted brand new and fresh.  It was still and calm and despite the traffic and the construction it was peacefully alive.  If I stood still, breathed deeply and looked up so that all I could see was the tip tops of Boston's skyline and the deep blue of the sky it was as if - just for a second- the world stood still and became relaxed.  While this undoubtedly generated some odd looks from passersby, I hardly noticed.  It is a gift to be able to find a moment for yourself in the hustle and bustle of American life. 

During one such moment, to my utter delight, I discovered I was not alone at all but sharing my patch of sky with a glorious Red-Tailed Hawk...  

Anyone who knows me will know that I love birds of all kinds.  However within the bird realm 

the raptors are my favorites...  The sleek and deadly hunters that drift with effortless ease on currents of air... So free, so beautiful.

Even on the streets of Boston, with no wilderness for miles in any direction this wonderful bird, feathers fully spread to catch the hint of an updraft off the pavement and rooftops, spiraled as effortlessly around a building as its cousins do around mountains.   When it alights on a rain gutter or window ledge to survey its domain of brick and tar it is no less proud than its cousins who alight on treetop or cliff edge and look out upon field and forest.   A supreme example of adaptability and finding a place in life that I think could benefit a lot of people these days.  One that I try and live by - trying to find a 'home' in everyplace I've ever been. 

For just a moment this master of the skies took me with it. Up, up, drifting right and down, following the streets and dodging cranes, back left and up the glass face of a building.  For a moment it showed me its world and made me lighter than air.

A simple smile...

Nearly every day I wait for the bus at the same station at pretty close to the same times.  Every day the crowd is a little different, some familiar faces, some new.  One face is always there though.  Each and every time I'm in the station a large beggar woman comes up to me

"Hey young man! Can you afford to spare any change for a lady today.  Just a few cents? Makes a world of difference in my bones, those pennies!"

Nearly every day I legitimately have nothing to give her but admiring her persistence I can usually manage a smile and a cheerful "sorry" with a shake of the head.

Without fail, her reply is:

"No worries young man.  A smile is more than I usually get.  Warms my soul"

and she meanders on to the next group waiting for the bus. 

This simple exchange never fails to leave me smiling and often wondering what the world would be like if we all went about our jobs with cheerfulness and simple gratitude?

Pretty close to my philosophy exactly....

But most days, if you’re aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at this fat, dead-eyed, over-made-up lady who just screamed at her kid in the checkout line. Maybe she’s not usually like this. Maybe she’s been up three straight nights holding the hand of a husband who is dying of bone cancer. Or maybe this very lady is the low-wage clerk at the motor vehicle department, who just yesterday helped your spouse resolve a horrific, infuriating, red-tape problem through some small act of bureaucratic kindness. Of course, none of this is likely, but it’s also not impossible. It just depends what you what to consider. If you’re automatically sure that you know what reality is, and you are operating on your default setting, then you, like me, probably won’t consider possibilities that aren’t annoying and miserable. But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down.

- 

David Foster Wallace

Red Light Moment: Tractor v. Truck

An amusing moment from my ride home today...

Stopped at a red light at a 4 lane intersection.  We were in the far left "turn only" lane behind one other car.  In the lane immediately to the right of that car was a tractor/loader/backhoe combo and to the right of him was an electric company truck.  

Sitting minding our own business when we realize that the tractor and the truck are reving their engines and squeaking forward in the attitude of drag racers waiting for the light to go green at the start of the strip.  At first I could not believe this because it made no sense in my brain... but sure enough, after continued observation they were definitely jockeying for position.

We cracked up... There is something extremely amusing in watching a piece of excavating equipment and a small box truck engage in the rush hour equivalent of "mine's bigger than yours".  The guy in the car immediately behind the tractor didn't look like he was quite as amused as a 2 ton backhoe rocked back and forth 4 feet from his windshield amidst the sound of high RPM engine noise...  but I can forgive him for that.

The light turned green...  Predictably the box truck blew away the tractor, which, lets face it, isn't exactly built for 0-60... ever...   and we were off again back into the commute.  How often can you say you watched a box truck win a drag race though?

More good advice...

ANYTHING is possible :-)

Borrowed thought...

One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon instead of enjoying the roses blooming outside our windows today.

— Dale Carnegie

Makes one think about life philosophy eh?  Stop and smell the roses... no matter what form they might take for you.

Window Shopping for Houses

DREAMIN...

Tried something new this weekend....

Window shopping for houses.   That's right!  I went to a few open houses with the Lady and LOVED it!   Let me be clear in saying that actually purchasing a house is not in the cards for me in the near future...  However, going to look at them is an awesome way to look at new spaces and think creatively!  A great exercise for the mind!

I highly recommend going to check out open houses in your neighborhood... even if you aren't interested in buying a house now or the house is run down or was last inhabited by someone with decorating tastes that trend towards 1940's retro. Try and picture what it COULD look like...  The potential is always there to make the space everything you've ever wanted in a dream home... and if you get the juices flowing the right way all the bits and imaginative pieces you've seen  in houses along the way will coalesce and your perfect house will come to life in your head when you ARE ready...

Fun Fact for the day (2-16-09)

Over 2/3 of all human conversation is gossip...

Source : PBS's series on Evolution...  Specifically "The Mind's Big Bang"

Lovely weekend for Love!

I acknowledge completely that its a commercialized holiday based somewhat loosely on a decapitated saint.  (I'm still not sure how that happened.)  Regardless I still love valentines day!  What other holiday is dedicated purely to the ideas of love and happiness.   I have friends that argue that you don't need a designated day to be happy, and that often the effect is lost on those who are single...  

Second point first...  I've never found being single on Valentines day to be a downer though... you just have to think about it differently.   Boy-girl love is not the only kind (though its awesome when you DO have it, I'm not going to lie) that can be appreciated.   There is also love of family, and friends, the love of happiness itself.   Valentines day to me is a reminder that there is a great deal OF love in the world, and a great deal TO love in the world.  Its an excuse to wander a beautiful city.  To see the lights from a hundred windows refracted and reflected on the surface of a harbor (like along the harbor walk in Boston).  Its a great day to hang out with friends, have breakfast with family... sit around the table and chat about life.  To pass out valentines reminding strangers on the subway to smile!

As for not needing a day to be happy...  of course I agree!  One should make every effort to be happy all the time!  However, riding the subway to and from school its impossible not to notice that people rarely are happy, or take the time to notice the joy in other people or other aspects of their life.  They're too busy trying to forget that they're crammed on a train, or stuck in an office, or too cold or too hot.  I don't think it hurts to have a day were people are forced to remember that beauty exists and that it should be embraced in whatever form it takes...

There was an editorial in the Valentines day edition of the NY Times that I liked written by a former Jewelry store owner. It spoke to the idea of what a valentines day gift should be.  The short version is that the point of a gift is that it comes from the heart and it shouldn't at all matter how much it costs.  I wanted to share it because I believe it to be true.  Make a card, write a story, sing a song.  People will appreciate it more if they know it comes from your heart and that you mean it....   This is what valentines day is all about to me...

Yay for people doing the right thing :-)

Sometimes you remember just exactly how humanity made it this far...




Here's the newspaper article...

Happy Birthday Darwin!!

Charles Darwin would be my answer to that timeless question; "If you could have dinner with any historical figure who would it be."

Seriously, what an amazing guy.  Above and beyond the theory of evolution, which is still ahead of its time in many ways, he was also a world traveler, a wonderful thinker, a champion artist, prolific writer (you can check out his complete works online, including much of his personal correspondence which I find fascinating thanks to this amazing project...), possessed the dedication to study barnacles for many years...  ...and he married his cousin!

Admittedly, I might be a bit biased, being a (much more humble) scientist in my own right but I still think that his powers of observation were astounding.  Just read his journals and letters to see what I mean.  His theories he worked on for 20+ years.  They are written in picture perfect English that still manages to sound contemporary today.  They are amazing... but its his observations of the moment I find most astounding.  His thoughts on all the species of plants and animals he saw immediately after climbing a mountain in Peru for instance, before having a chance to work it all out in his head.  His descriptions of all the myriad colors of rain forest flora and fauna.  His painstaking descriptions of each and every species of beetle he could find.

Maybe having sailed on a ship for 5 years gives you a lot of time just to think, but I'll admit that I don't notice even a fraction of the details of the world around me on a given day.

So... I say again, Happy Birthday Darwin and I highly recommend everyone check out a chapter of his Beagle diary, or a letter or two...

Feeling sick...

"It's like you're body's erupting through your nose!"

Night of the Chicken Dead

For a friends birthday we all went out to Brookline last night for dinner at Zaftigs -the almost Kosher Jewish deli and then to see a midnight screening of the Troma film release of Poultrygeist, Night of the Chicken Dead...

Dinner was awesome. There is not much better than going out with friends of a similar intellect and imagination. Especially when that imagination tends to run along the lines of surviving zombie attacks. On the downside there was SO much good conversation that I didn't really even know where to start paying attention... overload!

Conversation snippets that I caught:
• "I've seen so many zombie movies at this point that a group of zombies could walk by outside right now and I would be like 'oh, zombies' whatever.' Then I would be like 'wait those were zombies!'"
• A great deal of time was spent arguing (good naturedly) about how to save the economy
• Spam (the food) ... as per usual... came up more than once, including a grand plan for a spam focused restaurant and carving boats out of spam, filling them with deviled egg mixture and giving them little sails made of bacon
• A great deal else
Birthday gifts included an entire book filled with zombie haiku.

We expected the movie to be terrible... terrible... terrible...
It was indeed infinitely terrible. Enough said. Check out the preview at the bottom of this page.
Thanks everyone for an awesome evening!

If only there was a hot tub...

I'm sick...

While unfortunate, this is not the end of the world. Being at home for the day, with time to think has led me to consider all the many good things about being ill! Yes.. good things! Here are some...

• Staying in my pajamas all day 
  
• relaxing/cuddling on the couch
  
• Movies and bad daytime television
  
• Ice cream - (especially when its got rasberry cordial's in it!)
  
• TEA! 
  
• Comfort foods - soup, mac&cheese from a box, noodles...
  
• Time to catch up on news and blogs (which I'm recently into) like this one which I like because it's a random collection of things that make someone happy
  
• Catching up on correspondence
  
• Ice cream!
  
• Having permission to be lazy and ignore my homework for an afternoon!
  
• Looking at photos and reviews of gadgets...
  

Most important, I love the feeling of being cared for by my friends. When I'm sick is one of the only times I can be guilt free about getting all this attention. I have the best friends and the best girlfriend ever!

One thing that's missing... a hot tub... a long hot soak would be perfect right now :-)

A funny moment...

While being tickled

"You're sick! Go be SICK!!"