(A few more than ) 28 Days...Later

“Grappling with fate is like meeting an expert wrestler: to escape, you have to accept the fall when you are thrown. The only thing that counts is whether you get back up.”
― Deng Ming-Dao, Everyday Tao: Living with Balance and Harmony

As it has been about a month since I last "tripped the blog fantastic", 2 movies with similar titles and vastly different stories came to mind:

28 Days  A dramady starring Sandra Bullock - "A big-city newspaper columnist is forced to enter a drug and alcohol rehab center after ruining her sister's wedding and crashing a stolen limousine." 

and

28 Days Later A British sci-fi horror flic  -  "Four weeks after a mysterious, incurable virus spreads throughout the UK, a handful of survivors try to find sanctuary."

The last month has been a whirlwind of new experiences filtering thru a lifetime of previous experiences.  It's been like watching a movie of a story you wrote about an event in your own life, acted out by new characters. Everything seems REALLY familiar, but there is a slight disconnect, like the bad dubbing of a kung fu move from the 70's. All the words are there, but I found myself fighting to understand.

It has taken the better part of a month, the support of a great family and the guidance of a great new mentor to help me get out of my own way, relax and realize that I HAVE been here before.  The mental 'muscle memory' is there, I just have to do what I do and be who I am.

I got back up...

Kinda like a rehab patient, and the survivors of a zombie apocalypse...excepted for the all of the living dead.

  

My Life as an 80's movie music montage

I am unapologetic in my love of pop culture, the cheesier the better. There are few culture touchstones of cheesy that can top the ooie-gooieness of the music montages found in the movies of the 1980's.  No matter how on the nose the song  - Walking on Sunshine from seminal underdog makes good  Michael J. Fox classic "The Secret of My Success" - to the   hauntingly silly Meet Me Halfway from the wonderfully awful arm wrestling epic starring Sly Stallone "Over the Top", these bite size chunks of gouda are, well, just too good.

During my run this morning, I had such an over whelming rush of...I don't know -  Emotions? Endorphins? Senility? Joy? Peace? Contentment? Calm? - that I felt as though I was in my own montage. 

The thoughts running thru my mind were so jumbled and euphonious (look it up!) that at times I just stopped running and began to laugh. 

All the elements in my life seem to be falling into this wonderful rhythm.  Things that in the past would cause me anxiety and panic now are just challenges to overcome. The small pleasures in life now are like the biggest present on Christmas morning.   My family brings me more joy that any man deserves.  My kids, despite my fumbling missteps as a parent, are growing into wonderful, caring, compassionate, funny, smart, beautiful humans.  My beautiful wife is my rock, loving me unconditionally in the face of my oddness.  I marvel every day that she said yes.

Cliches exist.  They are there so that the poet in all of us, when at a loss for our own words, can latch on to a saying to express the complexities of our emotions. Deal with it. 

Life is Good!

And now, for your ear worms and flashbacks for the week, enjoy a small collection of music and video cliches.

Get busy living or get busy...blogging?!?

I've been living!  The pure energy of doing what you love and having that energy spill over into all  aspects of your life is truly the best feeling in the world. 

Now I need to reign in this rediscovered energy, channel it, focus it. 

Thanks Ferris (and Morgan Freeman as Red in the Shawshank Redemption) .

Nurture the Expression

Disney is known for many things...some good, some bad.  Regardless of your own take, I saw something at the park this past weekend, and I think they really highlighted something wonderful.

We sat and watched a Jr. High string orchestra perform for about 30 minutes.  Wonderful musicians, great music, proud parents.  Just  wonderful.

What struck me as we walked away, was that there was a group of people - students, parents, educators, administrators, and others that I cannot think of, that had worked together to allow these young people to express themselves.  Yes it was music, classical music,  a form of expression that has been acceptable for many, many years,  but it got me thinking about all the other ways we express our creativity.

Disney provided a stage, but more than that, they exposed a group of people to creativity and expression.  My hope is that others saw and heard these kids today, and it got them to think about how they can help the kids in their own areas express themselves.  Music, theater, dance, fine art, sports, math, science, hell, ANYTHING...help the people you know express themselves in anyway you can.

You may not understand what they are trying to say, but it is imperative the let them say it!

Brand new App for my 'Smudges

When I started writing this blog, I told you all (all of you that are...interested?) that I may stick my foot in it on occasion, or need to be put back in line, or as my lack of postings over the past few weeks has shown, drop the ball and not write as often as I had planed.  

Well, I'm calling myself out, for the best possible of reasons.

I started a brand new job this past week.  As with every new adventure, I have been buried with the discovery of how things work, where things are, who is who, who does what, and most importantly, how can I be the best possible 'me'.

In just two short days, it has been very apparent that I have found a great new professional home. The energy, the drive and the desire of everyone that I have met and dealt with has been phenomenal.  It has been exhilarating to get back in the game (pun very intended), and I am hard pressed to remember a time in the recent past that I have been as genuinely....excited.(non family events/interactions not included)

I still will write...promise.  Or threat, depending on your point of view.  

Music and Memory

In the late spring, early summer of 1986, I was driving in my silver IROC Z28 Camero (insert small....joke here) from my house in Moorpark over to CLU where I was a junior working on my Communication Arts degree.  It was a really brilliant blue sky warm day.  Nothing really of note was happening that day, just your average, ordinary day.

I had just made a cassette copy of a "Till Tuesday's sophomore album Welcome Home, so on the drive I popped it in.  The first song 'What about Love ' was the big hit off the album (peaking at 26 on the Billboard Top 100)  I halfheartedly listened, humming a bit as I had heard the song several times on the radio, and it was in pretty heavy rotation on MTV- ya know, back when there was MUSIC on MTV...but I digress. 

Then the second song started.

'Coming Up Close' was a fairly simple pop song, but for whatever reason...the lyrics, the melody, Aimee Mann's lilting vocals, the sunshine...I was floored.  This song hit a part of my brain and made such a mark,that to this day, I just have to hear the first few notes, and I am IMMEDIATELY transported back to that sunny afternoon. 

I can vividly recall so many details about that drive...over Tierra Rejada road, past the family farm that had awesome strawberrys and fresh produce, up to the 90 degree right hand turn that I loved barreling into, breaking at the last possible second, up the winding hill to the top of the grade, then back down to Moorpark Road, and over to CLU.  I had on a pair of blue Vuarnets  'cat eye' sunglasses, and a Big Gulp Dr. Pepper in the cup holder.

Now, before you all call my wife to tell here that 1) I have cheesy taste in music (she knows) and 2) I need a CAT scan,  I know that it's not the best song in the world.  It's a bit dated, and the lyrics are fairly generic. I don't go out of my way to add the song to my iPod , nor do I actively seek it out when I'm just at the computer needing to listen to some music.  It is just burned into my brain and it has these wonderful, vivid  memories attached to it. 

More than the first dance song with my wife at our wedding (Harry Connick Jr. 'It had to be You' by the way - I'm not a total git) more than any other song that I can think of.

I don't know why.

So, why am I writing about this today?  Pandora, on my run, in the cold, windy , pre-rainy morning. 2 notes in , and I was 21 years old in my Camero on a sunny day. 

Pretty cool.

For your ear worm of the day, please enjoy.

Mia Culpa (+ 1)

It has been said that you should never say something on the internet that you wouldn't want on the front page of you local newspaper.  Don't panic - I haven't. 

Just a bit of mental/karmic/editorial house keeping:

• Two Latin headlines in a row.  As I am not the Pope, I should expand my vocabulary and not depend on a rich, but somewhat dead language. 
• My last post was a bit on the pity party, woe is me, whiny side of the street.  I stand by my words and thoughts - this is just not the channel that I have created to express them, and more importantly, not the show you put on your online DVR.  Nothing worse than sitting down to watch Mad Men and getting Dance Moms.

Like I said when I started this, "If I stick my foot in it, call me on it."  Well, my foot got a bit muddy, and I called it.