A Life's Pursuit: August 2009

Monday, August 31, 2009

Uplifting Gravity

weightless realities, Defying Gravity




I was watching my Sunday night show Defying Gravity and I heard a line that was memorable. The show is set in the year 2052 (with flashbacks to five years earlier in the story's continuity), the series follows eight astronauts—four women and four men—from five countries on a six-year space mission through the Solar System, where everything they do is monitored. In this episode (105), the doctor of the ship had saved over 3500 patients' lives while serving in a war. He was asked who he remembered. To the shocked listener, he replied no one. He explained that he only remembered the lives he didn't save. Why? He only remembered the situations he learned from -- which were his mistakes, i.e. the patients who died.

Somehow that made sense. I prefer to think of my mistakes as my scars — the undeniable badges of some hopeful wisdom gained by some hopefully educational mistakes. It would seem that our humanity is a never-ending struggle against our very DNA for darkness. In the end, our scars determine the altitude possible.

Friday, August 28, 2009

Fridakus!

Once again the end of the week is here and that means only one thing left on the list to do; create Fridaku!



Longing Stems
Expectations full
The flower leaking its joy
The bee lights thrilled.


Waving
Friday past, time spent
Dasies, roses, standing tall
waving in Autumn's breeze


Arousing Life
Jutting, thrusting, proud
Rising beneath thin layers taunt
Tender leaves stretch up.

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Why Strangers May Be Your Best Friends

“the



Growing up, I recall being constantly told not to talk to strangers. I’m sure I would have heard it even more had I been female. Anywho, we are taught from a very young age to be wary of strangers, people we don’t know or don’t look like us. Growing up in the South, I was very accustomed to being told where not to go and what not to do because of my color; but not from folks who didnt look like me, from those who did. I am certain it was out of safety and concern. Afterall things are much different now ... right?

“the



Anywho, I rented this movie called the Visitor. Of course I was thinking SciFi; but this was none of the sort. The plot is as follows:
The Visitor is a contemplative drama filled with subtle humor and a lot of humanity/passion for its characters. Walter (Richard Jenkins, "Six Feet Under") is a widowed college professor that meets two illegal immigrants - a Senegalese woman (Danai Gurira) and a Syrian man, Tarek (Haaz Sleiman) -, living in his apartment in NYC. After the initial discomfort of the situation, Walter decides to help the young couple and an unlikely friendship is born.

"The Visitor" deals with human relationships and discusses post-9/11 America socio-political issues (the plight of immigrants, xenophobia, etc.) with no hidden agendas. Director McCarthy has proved himself as a sensitive director/writer, and he extracts an astounding performance from Richard Jenkins, a character actor who gets his first leading role at the age of 60. Jenkins is rivoting to watch as an ordinary man trying to find himself while being confronted with his own conceptions about the world around him.


“the



This is a terrific movie that really transforms your ideas of the things that really make the human race the better animal. Tiny moments of greatness will hurl you through a string of emotions that will leave you wanting more by the end. I don’t know that this movie or its participants ever got their just due; but they should have. It is a very tender story about some very prickly issues that we would just rather glass over and tip toe out of the room on before being asked to comment. In the end it is still a love story. In the end, love conquers all. In the end, what are we without it?

the visitor





See the trailer...


There are at least ten incredible points made in this movie. I will only pick three.
1) In our hearts, we are all the same. No matter what race, religion, orientation or etc.; we all crave to live out loud and be accepted. Each of us wants to be of some value to someone — to have a purpose that we were created for performing. In this our hope is that our lives arent meaningless meanderings from one reaction to the next.

2) There really is no “them;” just “us” next time. This movie does a wonderful job of showing diversity and singularity. Sure some of us a great at music, painting or calculus; but that doesn’t mean that we all have to be good at the same things. Sure we may go through life pretending that we are so much better than “those” people; but we all cry, we all bleed and we all die. Thus, are we really what we think of ourselves? I don’t know that you understand what it feels like to be profiled until you’ve experienced it. I don’t know that one understands someone else’s tradgedy until we have experienced our own. I do know that at the point of death, there is the most deafening silence I have ever heard. I don’t know that I could explain it to anyone who hasn’t heard or been there at the very last moment between life and death.

3) Love conquers all. It is that moment that we actually leave ourselves or open ourselves to be vulnerable to another living soul that we begin to go beyond feeling love to experiencing love. There is a point in this movie that you see the moment of switch and the subtle shift of emotion that goes from empathising to experiencing. You see some very different looking people who unite in their experience of love/suffering and become one race — human. I dont know why it takes tradgedy to distract us from our irrelevant differences. I dont know why chaos unites us when peace never could. I dont know why one man dies and another does not. I do know that all humans die and that makes us all equal.


Once love even conquered the grave so that others might live. Perhaps that alone shows the value of the human race; not the races of humans...but that was another Visitor.

Friday, August 07, 2009

Tomato Fridaku





Its finally friday and true to course my little Fridaku for you.


Ripe, tight red for skin
with an odor to savor
sweet frim tomato.

Thursday, August 06, 2009


Evacuation to fun!

football stress reliever




To say it has been a strange day is probably putting it mildly. Despite being Thursday in Music City USA. Despite being unseasonally warm in Nashville, TN. Despite a dense morning fog on the commute into town; the day seemed to be oddly normal. Obviously, I was going to be late, so I opted to be comfortable too. I stopped at Hardees and got my two favorite sandwiches for the slow ride into to town I saw over the horizon.

Three hours into work, something was wrong. The next thing I knew we were being told to evacuate the building! There was some sort of gas leak that smelled pretty serious. I grabbed a bottled water from my desk and headed downstairs to the exit. The smell was really strong downstairs! Deciding that this could take a while, I immediately proceeded to my vehicle parked across the street. I asked a coworker if he minded passing a little football. Of course he said of course not. Among other things, I typically pack a nerf football for just such a moment. Within minutes, we were joined by at least four other coworkers. Despite the warm temperature and odd circumstance, the football took center stage. We are fortunate to all like each other and our coworkers. The football allowed us to laugh together as we coordinated who to pass to next. We shared our strengths and weakness concerning this funny-shaped projectile being tossed from one to the other. It was very relaxing. We learned things about each other as we played. Even those watching us had fun taking note of our connected discourse. We had a blast without there actually being a blast. Almost thirty-five minutes later, our situation had been downgraded and we were free to reenter the building.

We didn't know why we hadn't done this sort of thing sooner; but we agreed not only to the fun of the moment, but also the relief it provided mentally and emotionally. One of us was closing on a house, another working two jobs, one rebuilding from a tornado and others who just needed a rescue from the mundane. Folks under estimate the need to blow off a little steam. For creatives, its essential to have some outlet to life's snares and bogs. We were certainly much happier after tossing the ole football around. I don't know if it was so manly or just the exercise together or the outbursts of laughter; but the evacuation was a success in more ways than one. It would serve others well to get out of the office on occassion and do something completely unrelated together.