Life in a Big Head

The Cove

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 20:04:57 -0800

I wish I could write about happy shit. There is good news out there. Happy things happen. Somewhere. Unfortunately, the horrific crimes against nature and humanity trump happy.

Ric O’Barry is not your normal activist. Sure, upon first glance you see a passionate man (albeit a little old) with a just cause, but that is significantly altered when he claims to be somewhat responsible for the slaughter of the 20,000+ dolphins and porpoises killed each year in Japan. Ric knows his dolphins. And you know Ric. Nearly everyone has heard of a little TV show called Flipper. It aired between 1964-1967 on NBC. While dolphins have been in captivity since the 1870’s, it was in the 1930’s that training them became the thing to do. Hollywood believed they would be great for movies, a new tourist attraction was born, and eventually (in the 40’s and 50’s) this led to an explosion of oceanarium developments across the world. I guess they were rescuing a lot of dolphins back then, right? Well, early on that’s exactly how dolphins and humans made contact, but eventually they were just captured. Ric O’Barry caught all of the dolphins (5) used in Flipper, but he was also their trainer. Ric lived in that little house by the lagoon where Flipper was filmed and continually trained them to do whatever the script called for. So, what turned Ric O’Barry from a premier dolphin trainer into a leader in the fight against dolphin (all cetaceans) continued captivity? Watch the movie and find out. You will not be disappointed in this Oscar-nominated documentary.

con·se·quences

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 20:55:21 -0800

As of 2020, nearly 25 million Chinese men (of marrying age) will be unable to find a Chinese woman to marry. In 1979, before the prevalent use of ultrasound technology, the Chinese government implemented a population control policy that limited couples to having only one child. The rest of the world rejoiced because fear of Chinese overpopulation was basically the same as nuclear war in the 80’s or climate change in the 2000’s. There was never any doubt that they would top a billion, but the rate of growth has somewhat slowed from 1.33% in 1979 to .55% in 2008. At that rate there are roughly 7.2 million more Chinese every year than there were the previous. Seriously, Bill Gates gives you a 1.3 billion dollar loan that you must repay in 1 year. For some reason or other the bank gives you a pathetic interest rate of .55%, but you don’t sweat it because in 1 year you’ll have over 7 million dollars and Daddy Gates only wants his 1.3 billion back. I could survive off of 7 million. So could you. And so will the Chinese. Don’t be fooled people because they are still taking over the world. And with 25 million Chinese men unable to get a girl by 2020... they are going to be royally pissed off! Of course business at Hooters is going to be insane (invest now). And that’s what happens when you tell a nation of a billion people that they are only allowed to have one child. A certain percentage is willing to abort and try again if it means they’ll have a boy to carry on the name. Is that what it’s all about? Carry on a name? We are witnessing a genocide of female fetuses. Maybe the ‘Right to Life’ advocates should focus their attention on China. But they probably don’t see Chinese fetuses being equal to American fetuses (specifically white fetuses). Fuck the Right Wing. Fuck the Left Wing too. Fuck ‘em all. Everyone has there own agenda and the fools who follow blindly are nothing more than puppets.

In this world of ours, this reality we’ve created, there is no black or white. There is grey. Lots and lots of gray.

If I told you he was your brother
We could reminisce
Then you would go about your day
If I said you ought to give him some of your water
You'd shake your canteen and walk away

The perception that divides you from him
Is a lie
For some reason you never asked why
This is not a black and white world
You can't afford to believe in your side

This is not a black and white world
To be alive
I say that the colours must swirl
And I believe
That maybe today
We will all get to appreciate

The Beauty of Grey

If I told you she was your mother
We could analyze the situation and be gone
If I said you ought to give her
Some of your water
Your eyes would light up like the dawn
The perception that divides you from her
Is a lie
For some reason we never asked why
This is not a black and white world
You can't afford to believe in your side

This is not a black and white world
To be alive
I say the colors must swirl
And I believe
That maybe today
We will all get to appreciate

The beauty of gray

Look into your eyes
No daylight
New day now

“The Beauty of Gray” - Live

One day we’ll all be just human. One day we can leave the self-righteousness and just bring the righteousness. We are all the same and experience it all differently for a reason...so that we can become whole again. One day.

Upward Over The Mountain

Sun, 24 Jan 2010 18:50:44 -0800

There was a lump under my left arm. Maybe they were lumps, plural. Anyway, there was one or more of them under my left arm. If that didn’t have me slightly paranoid, the lump that soon appeared under my right arm did. They were slightly painful, I think. I made excuses for their cause and settled on, “Must be some sort of reaction to the tuxedo.” I had worn a rental a couple of days prior to their appearance and you never know what they use to clean those things. As the days went by, the lumps remained. Later that week I found myself searching the internet for ‘lumps armpit’. My searches turned up bacterial infection, cat scratch disease, lymphadentis, sporotrichosis, cyst, lipomas, cancer. Cancer. It runs in my family. And now I have it... suddenly. I just had the most wonderful weekend watching my best friend get married (hence the tux)... and now I am going to die.

Five days before the first lump appeared I was on Northwest Airlines flight 202 from LAX to MSP. We were approaching Minneapolis when I thought, “So, these are the people I’ll die with if we crash.” It’s a thought I have on virtually every flight I take. Morbid? Perhaps. I like to think about every possible scenario during various times in my life. In my mind I play the ‘What if?’ game because a part of me believes it will lead me to being better prepared if that unexpected moment does arrive. When I was 12 or 13 I saw ‘Psycho’ for the first time. A classic. Hitchcock was a genius. His art burns into your brain and makes paranoid look normal. How many of you have seen a flock of birds and hurriedly went the other way? But it wasn’t a fear of birds that led to my sick visualization. It was a shower and a knife. Back then I usually took my showers the night before school because when you grow up with four females in a house with one shower (and one bathtub), you find yourself working around their schedule, not the other way around. The shower was all the way on one end of our ranch house. And it was there, in that shower one night, when the thought struck me.

What if someone breaks into the house and kills my whole family? He/they could be here right now and I wouldn’t be able to hear them because I’m all the way back here and this shower is so loud. I wouldn’t be able to hear them... but they could hear the shower. They’ll hear the shower, walk to this end of the house, turn the lights...

And the lights went out. Seriously. This moment has stuck with me since. A couple of dozen years later and I go back to that moment instantly. Outside of the theatre world, never have I encountered a moment that happened right on cue. As soon as I thought ‘out’, the lights went out. And I screamed...like a girl.

I knew I was as good as dead. You see, as this vivid scenario played out in my head I was conscious enough to turn off the water and listen for the killer(s) approach before those lights faded. I heard nothing, but nothing is what I expected. They would be very quiet. And they would have knives just like Norman in Psycho. It all lashed though my mind in an instant. Fear took over and my impending death in that shower was all I could think of. I was screaming bloody murder because it was going to be bloody and it was going to be my murder. I was going to die naked in a shower just like Janet Leigh.

And then the lights burst on like a movie set.

A voice said, “Sorry. I didn’t know you were in there.”

It wasn’t a murderer. It was my sister.

“That’s OK,” I said, trying to sound calm and cool.

She knew I was in there. She knew. She thought a little pay back was in order for all the times I did whatever it is I did (which I did). I have never mentioned this to my sister, in fact, I’m not even sure which of the three it was. At the time I knew, but that detail has faded. When I tell the story to others (as I do on rare occasion) I always insert the word ‘sister’ instead of a name. It could have been any of the three. Each had a motive. In any case, it was that scream that turned a joke into an apology. She would have expected a, “Hey! Turn the lights back on!” and that would have probably resulted in the lights staying off. Joke’s don’t always go as planned. The reactions are not always what you expect. I once scared an ex-girlfriend as she came out of the bathroom. I expected, “Ahhh! Don’t do THAT!” Instead I got, “Ahhhh!” without the air behind it. You know someone is scared when they can’t really scream. The fear sucks all the air out of your lungs before you have a chance to scream. She ran across the room before realizing that it was me. And then she cried.

We walk through this world with the expectation that our foot will hit the ground and propel us to take another step. Most of the time that’s the way it works, which is why we have that expectation. Once in awhile we lose our footing. We slip, trip, or step onto unfamiliar ground. And sometimes we go out for a jog and have a massive heart attack in the middle of beautiful Pasadena. She was only 32 years old. It happened on a Saturday earlier this month. It happens all the time.

We were over the runway, maybe 50 feet, when I thought I was losing more than my footing. The Boeing Airbus A320-200 tilted severely to the right. Passengers screamed. I was not among them. The woman next to me grabbed my hand. The woman behind me prayed, “Please God keep us safe. Please God keep us safe.” I believe she got through it a third time before it was all over. Just like my sailboat ride 20-something years prior, the plane did a tilt to the left before going back to the right and eventually, like the captain on the sailboat (my father), a decision was made to abort the landing (or our trip to Marion Island in the case of the sailboat). We were back up in the air in no time. It was then that I took a breath after holding the last one through the ordeal. A minute later the captain’s voice came across the intercom, “Folks, we had an unexpected wind gust down by the runway. We’re going to go ahead and circle around and try this landing again. It happens from time to time.” Not to me. My first thought was, “This is it. I am going to die.” That was quickly replaced by another, “No. Not now. This is not how it ends.” And thankfully it wasn’t. But for a moment I REALLY thought it was.

Most all of us will not pick when our time is up here (suicide is probably somewhat debatable). We don’t pick death. We don’t pick life. We do get to decide how we live. Every day, every moment we decide how we live. Most of us walk the path, making plans, setting goals, looking forward, looking back, and the voice in our head keeps us company. The voice (usually our own) brings up yesterday while dreaming of tomorrow. Rarely are we ever living in this moment. This moment. You know, the only moment that will ever exist. The moment we usually miss out on because that voice, those non-stop thoughts, keep reminding us about something that already happened or something that we want to happen. We live in the past or in the future with little regard for the now. But, if I tell you that your life will end tomorrow would that voice be quiet? Would you live in this moment? Would you hear the wind through the trees, feel the sun on your face, and smell the dirt and grass? Would you sip that water and feel it slid down your tongue into your body? Would you feel the air enter your nose and fill your lungs? Would you think about what was or would you focus on what is? The fact is, many will never take this moment to really appreciate life and the fact that we are all a part of something much bigger than ourselves. We have that opportunity to do so right now. We can tune out the incessant thinking and tune in to what is. There’s a buzz when you do. You’ll feel it. When you truly tune into the now... you’ll tune into the energy of everything.

The Kubler-Ross model says there are five stages of grief. They are:
1. Denial
2. Anger
3. Bargaining
4. Depression
5. Acceptance

They don’t necessarily come in this order and there is no guarantee a person will experience all five, but ultimately Acceptance is what would be ideal in the end. But really, the only way we can get there is to accept the moment as it happens.

We all know the end. Our future was decided the moment our life was. We will die. This physical body we posses will only carry us so far. Acceptance can happen now. Maybe that’s when a life is truly lived. Now.

The lumps went away after I switched from an antiperspirant to just regular (no chemical) deodorant, but I’m still going to die. Morbid? Well, I didn’t think about crashing the last time I flew. Just think more about life and the living of it. It’s the journey. And the journey is happening right now.