2014 QUOTES

01 JAN 2014
This year, instead of New Year's resolutions I'd like to offer a few suggestions:
1) listen to the song 'Sunscreen' by Baz Lurhman.
2) Make 'pay it forward' a habit you do AT LEAST once a day. If it happens to you, do it twice.
3) Read one page of any great literary work every day. If you want to read more, do so, but at least one page. Most people have not read a single book in many years, but if you did this every day for 50 years you'd have quite a bit to talk about.
4) Learn to say 'Please' or 'Thank You' or 'I'm Sorry' habitually. Or be an over achiever and say all three habitually.
5) Understand that MOST people do not intentionally cause harm or pain or sadness. There are those who do and who take a sick amount of gleeful pleasure in the obnoxiousness of it, but they are not worth assuming the majority is of the same ilk just because they are not paying attention. That's unfortunate, but not worth the anger and defensive posture that should be reserved for those who do it on purpose.
6) Write one page of a story of your own creation. Forget about plot formation or grammar or punctuation. Just write your story, one page every day. At the end of the year it will be as long as a novel. Do not tell yourself you can not or do not have the skill to do it effectively. Just write it.
7) Bend. Be willing to compromise. Expecting a person to wholly comply with your own wishes, opinions, expectations, or demands to solve a problem to your complete satisfaction is no better than them telling you that your opinion is of total irrelevance to them. No one gets it ALL their way. Even you.
8) Go outside of your comfort zone. Seek to understand and know a person within the framework of their own experience. Date a person of another culture or ethnicity, a major disability or handicap, a different job or lifestyle. You don't have to subscribe to it, but try and see it through their eyes with their value system. See it for it's possibilities and it's inherent limitations.
9) Find awe in something. Anything, but find something you can't quite wrap your head completely around and embrace it for the fact that it is much bigger than your ability to understand the whole of it on your own. It doesn't matter whether it's religion or nature, or astrophysics or chicken farming. Find it and get lost in it. It might just scare the shit out of you. That's a good thing. It means you are learning.
10) Take pictures. We live in a world of absolute documentary technology. Use it. There are THOUSANDS of generations that wish they could have had what we do and do not use to its fullest potential.
11) Make amends. Apologize, atone, account for, repent and restore.
12) Forgive, forget, give chances comparable to your own desire to have good things succeed from it. Bury hatchets, erase grudges, absolve debts, and let go.
13) Consider the possibility that regardless of what you think or feel, you may in fact be DEAD WRONG.
14) Consider the possibility that regardless of what others feel, you may in fact be ABSOLUTELY CORRECT.
15) Be careful when, and where, and how you put your foot down in either case.

JAN 2014
"Wounded soldiers are wounded soldiers. We do not define the whole of collateral damage to any individual solely on the mechanism of injury alone, and must wait to see the possibity of additional impact of treatment and recovery before it is known.
PTSD is a wound. It is invisible, and therefore difficult to recognize in a person. We are so overly conditioned to a concrete and material, objectivity (length, depth, weights..) that when it comes to abstract and immeasurable subjective causes, we inadvertently assume that objective abstract and immeasurable methods will suffice. They do not.
Hearing that you belong and are loved and are but a phone call away is all fine and good but that was true just as much when they were deployed as when they would get home, and yet they still needed to be home. Why?
The truth is this. When you tell a soldier you are just a phone call away, and that is it, that's no closer to them, now, than when they were half a world away. It's still not close enough.
Good medicine and medical proficiency is only one side of a wounded service member. The OTHER hand, that concrete measure able,weighted hand, is the other. A phone call away is not close enough."

JAN 2014
"Perhaps the greatest account of our own lives is to ask ourselves, at its end, how it is that we see and confront our death. Our mortality is inevitable, and not a soul, however grandiose or humble in its expression, will escape it. How you meet Death, whether as a friend for whom you have waited the whole of your existence to carry you onward, or as the haunting spectre of your worst nightmares that comes to rob you of your life, hinges solely on how you defined your true ambitions toward others. To those who gave of themselves, there will have been a daily expression of what it means to live. There is no fear or regret in that. For others though, there is only the horrifying regret that they must now leave this mortal world wholly unrealized, and that all they ever clung to for the whole of it, was yet another empty day. Death comes for us all, and his countenance is what it is. At least be able to look him in the eye and tell him you have already accomplished the gift of your existence without regret. Take its hand, and know that the pathetic groveling to be given yet another day to do nothing at all, was not within you to need."

JAN 2014
"If, regardless of the circumstances, you demand that others blindly accept and believe that you can do no wrong, and that you are superior to them in your own thoughts and actions under every possible scenario or situation, to them and their own, is it any small epiphany that what you say, and how you say it to them, is in fact, the larger part of the reasons for why those around you feel as though they can do no right? I'm not saying a person should give undue credit where there is no reason to, but neither is there the critical necessity to inform them of every dissatisfaction or disapproval, either. There is no real perfection of yourself if the only way to attain it is to force everyone else to be imperfect by default."

Jan 2014
There seems to be an overriding, and pervasive thought process regarding nearly every facet of American culture. From religion to politics, business to relationships, ethics and morals, the adherence to simple common sense statements, combined with an almost obscene demand of specifics designed to make a wholly unique personal exception for one particular person, and then the additional invalidation of any further statements or claims of others to the contrary. It has us all at a societal standstill because the short term benefits that can be gained at the expense of adopting and condoning our own Cognitive Dissonance is enabled by automatically forbidding the very same in others, at all. Our demand that the truth always be told to us from others while at the same time being intolerant of anyone who does not enable us to manufacture, not only for ourselves but others by default, any artificial reality we choose and criticize or lessen the importance of them for not conforming to the whole of it based solely on their our own unique perspective and their 'right' to it at the full expense of someone else.

As an example, if I make the statement "Having an alligator as a pet is extremely dangerous because alligators are known to be aggressive, unpredictable, territorial, and bite.", for the most part, that is agreeably true for the majority of people for the majority of the time. Common sense, right?

But then, I make the demand that you can call it anything you like but DO NOT call it an alligator. That's a deal breaker, and to say so is tantamount to heresy. I'm not disagreeing with what it is, just with what you call it.

Then I bring in a very large, scaly, green reptile, with a long tail and snout full of teeth, and plop it into the center of the living room to hold territorial glaring court with everything that is now forced to contend with it.

You say to me, "Holy shit, there's a frikken ALLIGATOR in the living room!!" It is PAINFULLY obvious, label or not, that it is what it is.

But I tell you that you have violated the ONLY restriction I made. I told you not to call it an alligator. Claim invalidated.

You then attempt to call it anything else, BUT an alligator, but that is not what it really is, is it? The claim you make now, any claim other than the label I forbid,is now made to be incorrect either way. You either call it an alligator and I invalidate you, or you call it something else and I invalidate it because it isn't true. Statement invalidated.

See how easy that was? See how inherently contrived that was too, though.

So what is the result? The falsehood gets to remain as is, undefined, but no less than what it was in the first place, and no less of the whole than the sum total of its debilitating parts. The new 'reality' changes out the ugly face for a pleasant mask. The truth is denied, the whole of it is made real by default by your own inability to be seen as anything except incorrect and anything you say is false at the feet of it.
Perfect, Alice. Just frikken perfect. So all we need do now is follow you into the rabbit hole and just call the direction we all plummet anything but down? Just great.

This isn't how it should work, but it seems as though people are ceaselessly MORE concerned with winning just for the sake of being right in their own minds rather than they are at how they came to arrive at that victory at all. Does it matter? It should.

Know what you call an alligator wearing a bunny costume? If you are as wise as you are honest, you'll call it an alligator LONG before you wade neck deep into the water and try to feed a carrot to a bunny costume."

JAN 2014
"Remember when the only thing you had to get around on was your own two feet? They worked fine, and then someone told you they didn't want to walk beside you because someone else had a wagon?
You finally got a wagon, but the person you really wanted to be with had made the decision long before that and that was just too bad.Then you found a person who liked to ride in your wagon, but someone else had a bike and wanted to ride on the handle bars more than in your wagon.
You finally got your own bike but by the time you did the person you had wanted to ride with was gone. Oh well. You met a person to ride bikes with and that worked right up until someone else had a car.
They couldn't possibly ride a bike when a car could be had, and by the time you got a car of your own, it wasn't as nice as the car they wanted to ride in and you never got a second chance because you didn't have the right car.
Then you got the same car but now it was an older car and someone else had a newer car. They had standards and 'why couldn't you just be like them and push yourself to get the newer car they had?".
So you got a newer car that was the same as that one but theirs was black and yours was blue.
You finally got a black car but by the time you did, they were gone with someone with a bigger car.
Now you've got the bigger, newer car, that is the same color that is no different than anyone elses car and you drive around in it alone.
I stopped one day and asked someone if they'd like a ride. They replied that they couldn't possibly lower themselves to be with a person who didn't enjoy walking and "besides, you're too old".
What. The. Fuck."

JAN 2014
"Our lives are so incredibly short even under the best of circumstances. Sometimes the paths we take shorten our own lives even a bit more, to lengthen and protect the lives of others. Some will walk with you, and for those particular people, you stop seeing them as mere men and call them, Brothers. The path becomes no shorter, but is made easier and even enjoyable by knowing we were not so alone because of their company. Rest in peace Bryon Hulsizer. You will always be missed. I always shared my coffee and you always shared your Oreo's. When I get there, don't comment on how slow I marched and I promise not to tell anyone I put Hello Kitty bandaids on your blisters."

JAN 2014
"If I disagree with you in part, it should not automatically imply that I am wholly against you, either. It simply means that there needs to be more clarification or communication on both our parts in order for me to understand the whole of the issue the way you expect. You may be correct, in which case we will be stronger allies as a result. Then again, perhaps the clarification will result in a further divergence of viewpoints to such a degree that we must follow separate paths, but if the only other acceptable solution to that perceived total disagreement with you, is for me to say nothing at all, it should not automatically imply that you are any more correct now, because of it, than when you started. You simply adopted the same effective use of intolerance as a justifiable tool to your own cause and invalidated the larger issue by eliminating ANY voice or ANY opinion at all to the contrary, as subversive. That has been the root cause of innumerable injustices in the past and a poor method to validate anything positive in the future . "Agree with me wholly, or say nothing at all against me" is hardly the mantra that should be demanded of anyone for anything, and is little more than a justified mouthpiece for unopposed tyranny."

JAN 2014
"If you discredit an educated and intelligent person because they lacked the experience to validate their thoughts, and judge the actions of those who learned great wisdom through their own experiences because they were not educated or intelligent, you can not hope or expect to be either intelligent, or wise, by refusing to listen or learn from either one."

JAN 2014
"When life gives you lemons, make lemonade...but shared lemons makes for better lemonade. Share both the lemons and the lemonade, but share.
Life is NOT about weathering the storm alone and then learning to dance in the rain. That's acceptance of the condition through the denial of the adversity. Open and umbrella, share it with someone, acknowledge the adversity for what it really is, and , and count your blessings that you have both a friend and a shield. But share the awareness between each other of both.The rain will not stop either way. That is the nature of adversities. It is also the absolute validation and true purpose of both umbrellas, and friends. But share.
If I have but a half a loaf of bread, and already less than what I need, it is still more than I can afford to eat alone while someone else gets even less. Share. You will gain more from your generosity under adversity toward others than can ever be achieved by a half a loaf if bread all to yourself, once. Share."

JAN 07 2014

My wonderful "Grandma With The Hot Rod" has passed away. She wrote to me in Hawaiian, corrected my English grammar, and read Chaucer. I'll forgive her for that one, though.
She was once purposefully ignored by King Farouk of Egypt while breastfeeding my uncle, chosing to address a suckling infant rather than offend her with his unannounced intrusion.
She taught me that anything that can be said can be made to be far more caustic and biting in its underlying truths as much as heartfelt kindness becomes beautifully poetic in its simplicity, provided that both are done with sincerity and wit. If the pen is truly 'mightier than the sword' then my grandmother was an Amazon and a Titan.
She swam a mile a day for as many days as I have been alive. She believed in Heaven and in God, and in the grace of angels, but I honestly believe that Heaven has within it an abundance of water and a sea that stretches to infinity. My grandmother will not receive wings. She will however, be bestowed with the gift of fins and show the whole of heaven that she is no less blessed than those who fly. Swim, Tutu. Swim, and know you are truly loved and missed , felt in everything that is reflected off the surface of water, and calls everything beneath its waves, home.