A Trapdoor In The Sun

One thing that we have in common as human beings, something that is definitely absent among the ranks of the lower mammalian, is the unique and beautiful ability to dream. I'm not talking about the random (and sometimes scary) visions that roam about our heads at night while we are in that deep R.E.M. state. What I am referring to is the way we can imagine and produce a mental road map or itinerary of what we want to do, see or accomplish in life. Some call it a plan. Some call it their bucket list. I refer to it as my Wishlist. "You must be the change you wish to see in the world." - Mohandas Gandhi   As babes, we enter life being asked by the grown ups, what exactly do we wish for. I remember in kindergarten, in between the naps and learning the letters of the alphabet, my teacher asking me, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" Most of us replied with the grade school standard 'fireman', 'policeman' or 'astronaut'. An enterpr...

These two guys have been rearing their ugly heads in my life the last week or so and I've been trying to decide how best to handle them. You see, I believe that I've really battled fear and insecurity since I was young. It's almost as if I expect bad things to happen and I'm trying to mentally prepare for the shock. For instance, when I was 21, I worked myself sick during college. I got so bent out of shape that I couldn't work anymore. I spent almost a month broke and feeling sorry for myself, lying in bed trying to figure out what was wrong with me. I was achy, felt awful, and my head was spacey. I ended up going to the hospital and having a battery of tests ran on me... nothing abnormal being discovered. Finally, I had my sister come pick me up and I spent the next two months recovering at home with my family. That moment seemed like such an utter failure to me. I had to drop out of school. I had to leave my best friends and our awesome apartment that had really ...

Back in the blogging glory years of the mid-2000's this was a lively, vibrant blog. I used this to bare my soul and flush all the shit out of my head that was sloshing around up there. I thought of it as Ex-Lax for the soul. With the social media advent of MySpace, and more recently FaceBook, this little blog was abandoned, although I get random comments from time to time about posts I remember very little of. It seems kind of sad when I think of these people visiting my vacant blog. I've decided to come back. For a while anyway. I need to clean things up. I need to vacuum and dust, maybe move some furniture around and let my fung shui flow. I've decided to write about a journey that I am taking soon. This journey I speak of will be the most important trek of my relatively young 40 years. While it is, in fact, a physical move; that is a change in latitude; it is also dependent entirely on a sea change in my attitude. Thankfully, I have already made strides to turn the tid...

by Paul Hawken When I was invited to give this speech, I was asked if I could give a simple short talk that was “direct, naked, taut, honest, passionate, lean, shivering, startling, and graceful.” No pressure there. Let’s begin with the startling part. Class of 2009: you are going to have to figure out what it means to be a human being on earth at a time when every living system is declining, and the rate of decline is accelerating. Kind of a mind-boggling situation… but not one peer-reviewed paper published in the last thirty years can refute that statement. Basically, civilization needs a new operating system, you are the programmers, and we need it within a few decades. This  planet came with a set of instructions, but we seem to have misplaced them. Important rules like don’t poison the water, soil, or air, don’t let the earth get overcrowded, and don’t touch the thermostat have been broken. Buckminster Fuller said that spaceship earth was so ingeniously de...

I was listening to this earlier on my iPhone. I really, truly, love this song. I can't put it into words. It's very simple and childlike. When I listen to the words, I fall back to a simpler time as a kid growing up in Florida. We would take these trips to Walt Disney World every couple of years for our vacation. I remember the long drive back home, late at night, after a long day in the Magic Kingdom. My sister Jennifer and I would lay down in the back of the parent's AMC station wagon and watch the starry night sky through the back window. I remember how good the cool summer breeze felt coming through the cracked windows. I recall falling asleep on the long drive home, trying to pick out Orion and the Big Dipper from a black-blue sky full of gems and rhinestones. I miss those days. I miss not having to worry about bills or making it to work on time. Everything seemed perfect. I roll the window down And then begin to breathe in The darkest country road And the stro...