Redefining Your Life

¡Hola! Everybody...
First, my Jets were humiliated last night. That's ok... this will show whether the team has the spirit to bounce back, to play, to redefine itself. I owe you all a post on the third term of the Bush administration, also known as Obama. Perhaps I'll finish it later today or tomorrow. I'm trying for a vacation and I need to tie a bunch of loose ends here at my real job (the one that pays the rent -- I only play a blogger on the internet).

Today, I was reminded of this story by my son, who is a guitar player for a rock band...

* * *

-=[ Making it Happen ]=-
Don’t play what’s there, play what’s not there.

-- Miles Davis

I want to tell you a story. A story I love -- perhaps you have heard it before?

Years ago, the great violinist Itzhak Perlman was giving a concert at Carnegie Hall, or some prestigious venue like that, and the house was packed...

He hobbles onstage, puts aside his crutches, and takes his seat. The orchestra begins, and then fades for his entrance, he begins to play, and when he hits the second or third note, a string breaks.

Goes off like a shot.

And everyone’s thinking, Well this is it. Instead, very quietly Perlman signals to the conductor to begin again. Perlman then proceeds to play the entire concerto on three strings. According to the individual who told me this story, you could all but see him rethinking, recreating, the part in his head as he was playing, rearranging it, recasting it, remaking it passionately. And he does this faultlessly, impeccably. He gives the performance of his life, in the process driving the audience to musical heights.

Afterwards he says, “You know, sometimes it is the artist’s task to find out how much music you can still make with what you have left.”

What a powerful example! Isn’t that what life is all about? To make a beautiful, sublime work of art with what we are given in this life? If you’re waiting for the right time and place, the right job, or the right lover in order to sing the song of yourself, then yours is a wasted life.

Love,

Eddie

Sunday Sermon [Adversity]

¡Hola! Everybody...
I had a stomach ache last might... LOL

* * *

-=[ When Shit Happens ]=-

In the late 70s / early 80s, I worked in the Wall St. area at a well-known corporation. I was young and dangerous (LOL). I worked with a group of young men just like me, young, full of life -- and mischievous. I wasn’t allowed near the secretarial pool (no problem, I got them in the elevator); I worked hard and played harder. Our department was called “Romper Room” because we were always getting into some type of trouble or causing drama.

One of the things we did was play pranks. The prank playing would eventually cause two of us our jobs (playing a prank on CEO is not a good idea) and it got so bad, I used to walk around looking behind me all the time. We were very creative. For example, I advanced to a quasi-supervisory position (not because of my work ethic, but by dint of seniority). I would order one of the guys to pick up some garbage around his desk, act as if I were having a baby behind it, have him sweep it into an envelope, and then secretly mail it to his house (it took him years to figure it out).

The mother of one of the crew kept receiving subscriptions for Screw magazine (don' t, look at me!). Mothers and girlfriends were favorite targets. You can’t get any lower than targeting a mother. I mean, mothers were off limits, you could get killed for targeting a mother, but that never stopped us. As our antics “evolved” we found newer and more creative ways to go lower.

Hot foots, phone calls in the middle of the night, booby traps that would make Rube Goldberg mad with envy -- it was all there in our department of about 10-15 men in their early 20s. Let me tell you, those days were a lot of fun. It was then that my partying began to take on epic proportions and believe me, when I got high, I was

Out. Of. Control.

Well, one day, I was visiting one of my co-workers in New Jersey. Another friend of ours lived across the street and I got in into my head to order a truckload of sand and have it sent to his address. His father had a lawn that he loved more than his own son, I think, and that upped the wow factor up a few notches. My accomplice/ friend upped the ante even more when he suggested we change the order from sand to fertilizer. Pure genius!

We made the call, put in the order for a truckload of fertilizer, and gave our co-worker’s address across the street. We sat by the window and waited...

A while passed and we saw the truck pull up to our co-worker’s residence and then something happened we didn’t plan for: the driver dumped the fertilizer right there on the lawn!

This took the prank to a whole other level. We were beside ourselves with laughter. The sight of our co-worker’s mother running out and then his father and the ensuing argument was priceless to us at that time. Then our co-worker came out, looked around and it hit him that he was being pranked. LMAO!

I know, I know, it’s fucked up, immature, blah blah blah... as we would say back then, “Unclench the anal sphincter bitches... ” Yeah, it was wrong, but we were young, dumb, and full of cum, shoot me.

Shit happens all the time. The Buddhists have a pretty cool teaching story/ metaphor for this truism.

Imagine you’re having a beautiful day at home with your spouse. All of sudden, out of the blue, you realize someone has dumped a truckload of shit on your front lawn. There are four realities to this situation:

1. You did not order it. It’s not your fault.
2. You’re stuck with it. No one saw who dumped it, so you can’t call anyone to tow it away.
3. It’s filthy and offensive, the aroma fills your whole house. It’s almost impossible to endure.
4. No, I didn’t order it.

In this metaphor, the truckload of shit on your front lawn symbolizes the traumatic experiences that are dumped on us in this life. As with the truckload of shit, there are four things to know about the tragedies in our lives:

1. We did not order it. It’s not our fault (the “Why me?” factor)
2. We’re stuck with it. No one, not even those who love us most, can take it away (though they try).
3. It is awful, it destroys our happiness, and its pain fills our life. In fact, at times it feels as if it almost impossible to endure
4. No, I didn’t cause it.

Taking into consideration the above realities, there are several ways we can respond when shit happens. The first way (and this seems the most popular) is to carry the shit around with us. Some of us put the shit we’re handed in our pockets, in our baggage, and some inside their bras. We even pout some down in our pants. What happens is that some of us quickly realize carrying shit around leads to the loss of many friends. Even your best friends don’t like the smell of shit.

“Carrying around shit” is a metaphor for falling for the seduction of depression, anger, or negativity. This isn’t unusual. In fact, it’s a natural and understandable response to adversity. But our loved ones disappear because it equally natural and understandable that our friends don’t like being around us when we’re so depressed. The smell of shit often gets worse, not better.

But there is another response we can choose. We find that we’ve been handed a truckload of shit, we can acknowledge the tribulation, sigh, and then get to working. We can bring out the tools and shovel the shit into our wheelbarrow, wheel it and dig it into our garden. This hard, exhausting, and often very difficult work, but deep down we know there’s no better option.

Some days, we can barely fill our barrow. But the fact that we’re doing something about the problem, rather than complaining, helps lift us out of our depression. Every day, we dig into that shit, and the pile begins to get smaller. Sometimes it takes years, but the time comes that the shit on your front lawn is all gone. In addition, something else has happened. The flowers in our garden are bursting out in a riot of color all over the place. The sweet perfume wafts down so that your neighbors and even people passing through smile in delight.

Your fruits and vegetables are nearly bursting with ripe fullness. In addition, the fruit is so sweet, you can’t possibly buy anything like it at the local supermarket. We share those gifts freely, even with strangers, without planning to, or expecting anything in return.

“Digging into the shit: is a metaphor for welcoming the tragedies and fertilizer for life. It is work that we have to do alone -- no one can help us here. But toiling in the garden of our solitude, day by day, lessens our pain. When we have lived through tragic pain, learned its lesson for us, and toiled in our garden, then we can put our arms around another experiencing deep loss and say softly say to them, “I know.” And they will realize that you understand. It is here that compassion begins. We can show them the gardening tools and offer them encouragement. But if we haven’t grown our own garden, this can’t be done.

Love,

Eddie

Sunday Sermon (Making it, Faking it)

Hola Everybody,
First, I’m going to go out on a limb and state right out that the Giants will win today. Whatever the case, if the game comes down to the wire with everything in the balance, it will have been worthwhile. If the Giants win, some young lady here (I’m not mentioning her name, but I’ll take a quick look! LOL!) owes me a “swallowing” BJ. I’ll take that with a little choking and some slurping noises, btw… LOL And I plan to collect on our lil wager!

I’d also like to take a moment to wish my friend Aqua Kitty Kat a very happy birthday! Felicidades, sweetie!

* * *

-=[ Making it, Faking it ]=-
“Don’t play what’s there, play what’s not there.”
-- Miles Davis

Two things today…

First, I want to tell you a story. A story I love that I don’t think I’ve ever told you. Perhaps you have heard it?

Once, years ago, the great violinist, Itzhak Perlman was giving a concert at Carnegie Hall, or some huge venue like that, and the house is packed. He hobbles onstage, puts aside his crutches, and takes his seat. The orchestra begins, and then fades for his entrance, he begins to play, and when he hits the second or third note, a string breaks. Goes off like a shot. And everyone’s thinking, Well this is it. Instead, very quietly Perlman signals to the conductor to begin again. Perlman then proceeds to play the entire concerto on three strings. According to the individual who told me this story, you could all but see him rethinking, recreating, the part in his head as he was playing, rearranging it, recasting it, remaking passionately. And he does this faultlessly, impeccably. He gives the performance of his life, in the process driving the audience to musical heights.

Afterwards, he says, “You know, sometimes it is the artist’s task to find out how much music you can still make with what you have left.”

What a powerful example! Isn’t that what life is all about? To make a beautiful, sublime work of art with what we are given in this life? If you’re waiting for the right time and place, the right job, or the right lover in order to sing the song of yourself, then yours is a wasted life. And a wasted life is the only sin in my book.

* * *

Secondly, lately I’m sure you’ve been hearing a lot of talk lately about “truth” and “reality” and “change” from the salesmen of belief. They want you to define yourself (and therefore vote) in terms of their particular product and brand yourself as “Republican,” “Libertarian,” “Evangelical,” “Democrat.” The list is as long as the sales pitch.

Our own unknown and hidden beliefs about our worth or worthlessness are the foundation upon which our habitual patterns of behavior rest. What is common to all this is the promise of freedom or fulfillment, of “security,” or some such nonsense.

It’s a lot like those late-night commercials that jar you from your sleep. The volume is twice normal as though they can shout us into submission. Or, more accurately, it’s an approach comparable to the one favored by Goebbels in Nazi Germany. He stated that if you repeated a lie enough times, it would become a truth. And in that way, there are WMDs in Iraq, cutting taxes for the rich is good for you, and Jesus was an American born in a Red state. And if you believe all that I promise you I won’t come in your mouth.

Here, drink some Kool-Aid.

The short and long of it is that we humans have this overwhelming need to make sense of it all in the face of certain death and a seemingly uncaring universe. We all feel incomplete somewhere and we wear masks and amulets (labels) to appease the Big Bad God up there somewhere in the sky. We’re all faking it somehow in fear of the day when the “Guy in Charge” will walk into the room, point at us, laugh, and say, “You’re a phony!”

At their core, all these attempts to make sense of human existence come from this primal fear and insecurity. They seem to offer us ways to become “real.” They hold out the carrot of freedom whether it’s defined in terms of one’s place in an economic system, as in libertarian Voodoo Economics, as an obedient child of God in Christianity, or maybe even as an unquestioning employee for a multinational corporation. Whatever the case, most of us readily drink the Kool-Aid of slavery and agree to call it freedom.

I know this is like howling against the wind on this most holy Superbowl day of the Religion of the Immaculate Consumption, but I submit that your responsibility is what is called “The Great Refusal.” Refuse to sleep your life away. Refuse to drink the Kool-Aid of second-hand beliefs and substitutes for the real experience. Refuse your fake self and reclaim your own dignity – your integrity. In your sleep, dream that you’re awakening.

I will leave you with one of my favorite quotes. In the meantime, you will have to make a choice to play the song of yourself now, or wait mutely until everything’s just right. will you dare dream with your eyes open and with your meager instrument, play the greatest concerto, or will you drin the Kool-Aid and bemoan your fate?

“All men dream but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity. But the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible.”
-- T.E. Lawrence (aka Lawrence of Arabia)

Love,

Eddie