Getting back at it

Due to the fact that I'm pretty disillusioned to Facebook, I will be blogging a lot more.  I see it's been over 2 years since I've last posted.  Believe me, the outcry has been, well, there actually hasn't been an outcry.  I'll be posting more, though.

Don Miller does not endorse this message

This is dedicated to Emily Scavuzzo whom, several months ago, said I should update my blog because she's always looking for something interesting to read.

This is also an apology to Emily Scavuzzo because it's less than interesting.

I believe I've had a realization that I am perfectly mentally healthy and that it's my inner monologue has ADD. It's true. And I don't know if it's a reflection of reading a lot of one of my favorite authors (Donald Miller). When I read Mr. Miller, I feel like I'm just reading a text version of his inner monologue. The latest chapter I'm reading of A Million Miles in a Thousand Years talks about Mr. Miller meeting some people who want to make a memoir of his life. Reading his experiences just makes me think of my own inner monologue going throughout my normal day.

Getting to the point: I was sitting here at my rented house watching Intervention, I wondered out loud to my roommate, "Is it wrong to watch this show while having a drink?" My inner monologue suddenly piped in, "What a paradox!"

After the show, I was sitting on the porch and of course my inner monologue was thinking about the Intervention show and how really hopeless the situations are with some of these subjects. I was also thinking about the immense love (selfish or genuine) these family members had about these subjects. My inner monologue then progressed to the fundamental question of the human experience, "What is life for?"

The subject of this show, after much bullheadedness, accepted the gift of treatment only to find out that he had esophageal cancer. He went home to get cancer treatment and died three weeks later. The guy's son said how his sober father got to watch his last basketball game of the season. He said something to the effect that he was at least happy his dad died sober.

My inner monologue went to a dark place. All the questions of the meaning of life and what am I doing with my life came to be pretty loud statements. It can be pretty dismal.

Then, within a second of those thoughts, I thought of my weekend. I got to go see my favorite band perform with a group of good, good friends. We sat through hours of down-pouring rain. We waded through the mud puddles in our flip-flops to get back to our campsite just to get rained upon again. We shared lots and lots of laughs. We watched a wonderful performance (Dave Matthews Band) with the sun in our faces. We (ok, more so I) sang our lungs out.

Thankfully, my inner monologue took an Aderall or smoked a J; and reminded me that there are balances to everything. No matter how good and bad. No matter how joyous and painful. No matter our status; no matter our environment; no matter our upbringing, there is a balance to it all. And, most importantly, there is beauty in our smallest of interactions, our choices and our experiences. Lots and lots of beauty.

Community

So I left a party this evening. A known Agnostic to me...and I give him credit because it takes guts to be Agnostic...left me with a simple phrase: "Peace, brother." My response, and I give myself way more credit than I should. However, for me, this was profound. I responded with, "Always peace."

That's the greater issue here. Not Catholics vs. Protestants. Not Jewish vs. Islamic. Not Democrat vs. Republican. It's peace. I want peace. What do you want?

Tin Man

So I work near downtown. Granted, this downtown is hardly like any downtown you might imagine. I think they make the stoplight patterns long enough to piss people off and make it look like there's a lot of traffic downtown. PLUS...they have one-ways going every which way so it takes you twice as long to get to a place that would have been a lot simpler by making a left turn.

I digress. I do that sort of thing.

Anyways, a particular afternoon a couple of weeks ago I was sitting at a notoriously long light and I looked out the car window and noticed this homeless/wanderer guy. I don't really know if he's homeless. From the front porch at my office, I've seen him carrying big bags of aluminum cans and such; sometimes twice a day. And this guy is pretty short. Sometimes the bags are bigger than he is. Anyways, I remember seeing him in the winter wandering around with a t-shirt on. I went home, found a few sweaters (which he would probably have swam in) and hats and such that I don't use and kept them in my car for the next time I saw him wandering around. I didn't see him the rest of the winter. I thought, "Thanks, Lord. The one time I am going to try and employ your teachings, the guy goes off and freezes to death."

Again...digression. Tired yet?

I'm sitting at this light, facing west. I see him walking on the sidewalk heading the other direction, walking briskly as he does with a slight drag to his right side. All of a sudden, almost parallel to me, he sees this rose bush in front of this old, rickety apartment building. He stopped. Looked at it. Half-bent over and took a huge whiff of one of the flowers, turned and kept walking.

I sat there and thought...here's this probably homeless guy; hopefully at least a shut-in. He probably doesn't have much to do, I don't really know. But he took a total of maybe 15 seconds to stop and enjoy something of beauty. I thought, "Why don't I do that?" I know there are 15 seconds in my day when I can do that. Heck, I might even be able to carve out a minute or two. Most of the time, I don't. I know it's cliche...stop and smell the flowers. Figuratively speaking, though...I think we would like our lives more if we did something like stopping and smelling flowers. Appreciating nature. Acknowledging something of beauty. I think I should.

After over a month, I'm finally updating this thing.  There were some good comments on the whole art-immitating-life question.  However, the reason for my writing about that topic, is that I have and am experiencing an art-immitating-life situation.  My situation, relates to Something About Mary.

Go ahead you can laugh all you want, I got my philosophy

Dearest sheep-

So I finally decided to man up and get a blog.  You'll find, with me, that's either subtle irony or a paradox.  I like to consider myself somewhat of a writer; not a great one, but I can hold my own at times.  However, I have long thought that blogging (and in a prior time, even before when "journaling" became cool) and generally keeping a journal or diary, was basically a good tool for self-therapy.  You know, you pour your heart out on the page (in this case a formatted set of text, code and color) and you hope other people read it; mostly for sympathy, methinks.  If I may reference pop-culture: remember the scene when Alli Sheedy dumps out her purse on the couch so that Anthony Michael Hall and Emilio Estevez can look at her junk and therefore get a gauge on the life she thought was so crummy. *editors note: I tried to find a clip of it on YouTube...guess not.

Anyways, I suppose most people write down their thoughts with some sort of meaning and people are supposed to read and react to it.  Or, by not reacting, react to it.  Yeah, I think I confused myself.  Moving on...What I'm getting at is that I'm going to pose a fundamental question of philosophy and I want anyone to chime in with what you think.

The question is: Does life imitate art, or, does art imitate life?

I'm sure you've experienced it once or twice.  You watched a movie and you could adapt a portion it to your own life experience.  For example, however unfortunate on many levels, I can adapt to Dane Cook's character in Good Luck Chuck.  *(Unfortunate because of his circumstance and much more unfortunate at how bad the movie was).  

So, I want you to throw out your comments and blurbs and I'll follow it up with another post.  Fair enough?