Overheard

“Yes you are.”

“I am not!”

“You is be.”

“I ain’t is be nothin’!”

(The best part about this is it was between two very intelligent individuals. Bad grammar just for kicks, anyone?)

“I’m in love with anything that’s alive.”

I didn’t used to cry during movies. It took a lot for me to even near that point, and only one or two movies had claimed the title of pushing me over that point.

But all that’s changed now.

I’ve allowed the characters to start reaching through the screen and touching the deepest chords of my heart. Or maybe the roots and flowers in my heart have broken through the concrete shell. Or I’ve finally found the way to let the well overflow.

Either way it’s movies like In America and Bella that contain moments of such beauty, and self-less love, and community that I just want to sink into my chair and drown in a puddle of my own tears.

I want those things so much for this world. I want that for the people of Amsterdam; the ones that seek for love and hope in everything but find it in nothing. I want it for my own town; a place that seems to be either asleep or dying, and whose people desperately need true community and authenticity. I want it for my family. I want it for the strangers I pass everyday.

I know we all want it to an extent and maybe I’m just one more person saying all this, but there’s so much opportunity around us that I barely know where to start.

I just know that when I look back on my life I want to be able to see that I at the very least tried. Tried to bring beauty, love, hope, and community to wherever I am in life.

Oh. Maybe I do know where to start.

Tomorrow is a place to start.

Think twice before you invite cockroaches in.

I was in the middle of a movie when someone called and asked if I could send an email for them while they were out of town. I said yes, then had to go digging through my email to find the correct email address. Amidst all the digging, I came across an email from 2005.

“If worse comes to worst, I can stay at the motel down the street. I love you enough to sleep with cockroaches. I’d prefer not to, but I would.”

My response?

“‘I love you enough to sleep with cockroaches.’? Alan, think twice before you say something like that again.”

I did actually do something productive in the way of blogging this week.

Hard to believe, I know.

As you’ve probably read from me in the past, Sunday mornings are absolutely beautiful for me. Something this year has completely changed Sunday from being just one more day I get up early to a day of the week that is restful, peaceful, insightful, and a day that offers intense clarity.

My Moleskin notebook is the closest thing to me on Sundays. I occasionally have to zone out to what my pastor is talking about to write things down in the middle of the morning. But, at the same time I feel that my mind might fog up and cause me to forget them, so I try to write them down before that happens.

I wanted to put these bouts of musings and insight someplace. They didn’t quite fit over here at Soul Like a Spider. I mean, they did, in a way. It’s just that my Sunday posts were emerging at something of their own and I wanted to give them a place of their own.

So, ladies and gentlemen, I present to you: The Sunday Pen.

Written by yours truly.

Running the numbers…

I am so excited about life right now.

1. On Saturday morning I had breakfast with two of my best friends that I haven’t seen in ages. It’s been at least six monhts since I had seen either of them due to the way our lives have split and headed in such different directions. We stayed at the coney for almost four hours just talking. Best way to start a Saturday. Hands down.

2. I’m going to Amsterdam in May.

3. Jason Castro is decidedly the single reason I am watching American Idol this season. I come into the room when he sings and then leave when he’s done. During the last episode I was asked, “Hey, is your dreads boy still in?”

3. Today it hit 50 degrees and there was sunshine pour out onto our pale earth for the latter part of the day. I don’t mind cold weather all that much as long as it stays just about thirty degrees… But I have to say that I have really missed sunlight. So today with the thawing of the ground and the warmer weath, and the incredible sunlight, I was a very happy person.

4. Because of the warmer weather I was actually able to drive with my windows down today on my way home from work for the first time in months. I’ve been dying to drive with my windows down. And finally! Sunlight, warm air, windows down, and the John Mayer Trio.

5. It feels like the world is opening up. I’m on the brink of so many opportunities I hardly know what to do with myself.

Happy Thursday! Celebrate a little bit, even if you just have a party in your own head. The world is alive!

Hello Birdy

I haven’t posted much lately. It’s due to the fact that by the time I get around to having time to post I’m exhausted. That, and I can’t stand just posting to post. It irritates the creative purist in me.

I do know that two days ago I stepped out of my car and heard birds singing.

This absolutely made my day. Actually, my week.

Winter is so silent and the snow does a magnificent job of muffling and silencing all sound outside. I’m so used to getting out of my car at work in the mornings and feeling like someone hits the mute button until I enter the building.

But on Wednesday… I heard birds singing. I didn’t realize how much I missed hearing birds in the morning until I heard them again for the first time in several, long, cold months.

This is a wonderful time of year because it’s like the earth wakes from a deep sleep, and is starting to open its eye. Only a slit, and it will probably go back to sleep for a bit. (I can prove there’s a snooze button: we’ve had everything from 55 degree days to snowstorms this week.)

The awakening is upon us. Hello birdsong, and hello the first traces of a new season.

Tasty Metaphors

Sometimes it’s weird what small things we bother spending our negative energy on.

Now, I’m not completely above it myself and I’m not perfect. But sometimes I stand back listening to arguments and upsets and think, What? What are we arguing about again? Can someone please inform me on how this started?

For instance: cookies.

Everybody loves cookies. That’s fine that everybody love cookies. But to assume things of other people, assume that the other person is assuming something about the other person, get in under-the-surface arguments, instigate tension… What?

A couple of solutions:

1. Um, stop?

2. When anyone asks for a cookies, grant them one as long as each individual in the household gets the same amount at the same time as the person who asks. Makes it fair and rationed.

3. Get rid of the cookies.

Bingo, problem solved.

It doesn’t matter how expensive they are or how tasty they may be; they aren’t worth the ensuing disharmony among members of a household.

Nice Beetle

We’re sitting on a two-lane road in a huge line of traffic. Some jerkbrain decides to move into the left-hand lane and drive in the opposing traffic’s lane to cut in front of everyone. I honked.

Hae: Honk!

Me: I did!

Hae: Honk… Louder then!

Me: No, I don’t want to honk at this nice [Volkswagen] Beetle in front of me.

Dani: How do you know that it’s nice?

Hae: Because they have flowers on their license plate.

Ready, set, SLAM!

There’s a slam poetry coming to town this month. I mentioned this to my mother two days ago when we met for lunch.

She said, “What’s slam poetry?”

It goes without saying tht I had a very difficult time explaining it.

These two pieces by Vanessa German are the best examples I have heard in a long time. Her poetry is mesmorizing in the sense that you get lost in how every word and sentence tugs on your sleeve. You get lost in her pictures.

I hope you enjoy her as much as I did.

(There is a video version of this through the Pop!Tech podcasts on iTunes.)