When things are out of whack, it’s a good time to make a list of the everyday ordinary things that set you on the path to average again.I had a few of those days when I felt a little bit out of kilter. When I was driving from yoga on Saturday, I started making this…
Tag: life
How to Stand the Truth
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What is Waiting for Us In the Afterlife
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Everything you can possibly imagine
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Advancing Through the Unpredictable
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In the course of driving to Ontario for Christmas, we encountered a lake effect snow squall. Neither Colin nor I are strangers to snowstorms of any size or might. We are both veteran snow drivers. However, this was our first encounter with a true, pop-up blizzard. Along Interstate 81, we were warned “Lake Effect Snow…
All the Original Everything
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All the original everything has Rolled out the factory. The Whatsits and Whosees along with Their two point oh children Now retired to a retail museum. Wait awhile: won’t be long ’til The oily new marketing rep Sells the idea: it’s time to reinvent you. Latin is dead. Long live the King Of Romance, the…
My Kind of America
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Hold This Kitten, Would You?
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Hold this kitten, would you, While I trick you into Reading poetry. Whoops! Now you’ve done it, Got yerself all intellectified With words in stacks. Poetry, you decry! Save me! Not those tangled up knotted Ideas in shapely stanzas! Look out! She scratches. Still Got her claws. They frown on Hacking off cat digits these days. Ahhh,…
My (Internal) Midwestern Landscape
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The Hard Way
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We’ve got two lives: one we’re given and the other one we make, And the world won’t stop, and actions speak louder Listen to your heart, and your heart might say Everything we got, we got the hard way. –“The Hard Way” Mary Chapin Carpenter Chapin’s song “The Hard Way” was released on the album “Come…
What Writing Looks Like
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What Writing Looks LikeThere’s a romance to the idea of writing. When you tell someone you are a writer, they are often all like “ooohhh whoa soooo cool!” Why is that? Well it’s pretty much because READING is awesome. It’s hellaciously awesome, the single best thing in the wide world to do with any amount…
Hypnotized by the Mundane
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Life is Terrifying
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I can remember one of the first really scary movies I saw.
It was “The Giant Spider Invasion.” That classic 2-star fave came out in 1975. Which means someone in my family let me see that film when I was FIVE! If I recall, it was at the drive-in.
For years and years afterward, I literally RACED up the steps of our split foyer home, anytime I was caught alone on the lower level. Just beyond the doorway, I was sure a giant spider was lurking, ready to pounce.
I love the big, unreasonable scares of Halloween. I love that feeling underneath my heart, the pit of doom in my stomach. I love the ghoulish decor and horrifying costumes. I love “Modern Family”‘s special, and all the other Halloween themed fun.
I take a pass on new fangled “safe” fun, like Trunk or Treat, or going for a spin with the kids in their costumes around the mall. The street where you live may be scary place: the mall is 100 times scarier.
I’m intrigued by those who have a distaste for Halloween terror and frights. Whatever its roots — whether in pagan history or Christian hallows — life itself is terrifying. It’s filled with war, cancer, ebola, racism, rape and major league worship of criminals. There’s bullying, mean girls, political machinations and just plain natural catastrophe. Some days, a zombie apocalypse seems like it would be an anti-climax.
I guess that’s why I love Halloween… it’s the day the dead, the weary, the twisted, the frightened, the entombed, the maniacal — finally getting a chance to feel free.
Here’s a few of my favorite Halloween videos. Enjoy:
Andy, going through the Haunted House:
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From Shaun of the Dead, greatest zombie film ever.
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After the End of the World
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After the doctor broke the news to my mom and dad and me that mom would die soon, I held onto the 15 cent spiral notebook like it was a life raft. There isn’t enough time to ask and get answers to the really big questions in life before life says “I’m outta here.” It…
Alone is Where We Are
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The deluge came out in the general direction of Ridgefield artist Randi Jane Davis this past weekend at City-Wide Open Studios. Her painting (above), called “Three Blind Men” (in private collection) wasn’t the only wonderful piece of work I’d seen that day. But it was the one that reignited my feelings about aloneness. So Ms. Davis…