Be Strong…

I’m writing this to try and shed some light on something that I think more of us should think about, focus on and put into practice every day. What we do with our percieved ‘strengths’ is essential to our relationships and the well-being of the human race, or at the very least our immediate surroundings. Now granted I dont believe that we have all of the answers to our problems, and God knows that I dont have many answers at all. However in my 34 years I have asked a lot of questions and received answers as different as the people I have asked. Of course, I have done a good deal of demonstrating my percieved physical, mental and emotional…STRENGTH.

Of course, who am I to tell anyone about anything. I am neither an authority on this issue, and frankly there is not much to learn from a few words written on a social platform. The proof is in my progeny and the way that they interact with people when they reach my age. At any rate, the issue of strength-demonstrated has been with me for at least 10 years and it’s time to describe the fruits of the above theories, thoughts, actions and results I have collected on this subject.

First of all, and it may be obvious, but strength is far too often seen as a one-dimensional quality. Long ago a wise man wrote, ‘the race is not given to the swift, nor the battle to the strong’ and of course there is the fable of the tortoise and the hare. Many seem to only look at the feature of strength in themselves as a weapon. For instance we have all heard at one time or another heard someone refer to a ‘display of strength’, or ‘feats of strength’ whereas the actor demonstrates their ability in one discipline or another to the fullest extent. In this competitive context, it is applied to show a greater capacity for ‘doing’ one thing or another. Usually this is given us by nature, but can be enhanced by training and focus, and most definitely has mental and emotional aspects that are not completely understood.

Of course, in our sports and competition obsessed society, it is this aspect of strength that is most cultivated. Those who posess a degree of physical strength are celebrated, with little regard paid to the manner in which it is applied in life. Lots of these folks, and I dont think it is without meaning, tend to the extreme in their relationships with others. We train at the gym, we take classes and do excercises to increase our capacity for physical strength. For the most part however, the true measure of strength is something similar, but even more important.

True strength is akin to courage, but I wont define courage so as not to get off track as I have already written too much. True strength brings to mind a game of poker and the talent of ‘knowing when to hold’em’. In the same vein, we apply it everyday in life, especially parents. Jesus alluded to what a strong person is when he said of his followers ‘turn the other cheek’. In both cases, be it holding a royal flush or facing an aggressor on the wrong side, ‘restraint’ is the other side of the coin whose payoff usually results in an increase.

Reality television is a cottage industry of people saying foolish things under duress. We see it everyday on the nightly news when it involves road rage, which is essentially an offended person excercising the extent of their percieved strength and it usually turns out bad. Not to mention the person who started the issue in the first place – in a rush and paying no attention to others sharing the same road and MOVING IN THE SAME DIRECTION…

Yes, restraint! Or even better, control of ourselves, which alludes to the capacity or capability of one mentioned above. However, we are not in competition with one another, in fact we all play on th same team. In any team game, like say basketball, it is inherent to the goals of the team that each member control themselves at all times. If one player excercises his strengths to the fullest extent at the wrong time (here’s looking at you Amare Stoudamire), then the team concept is out the window.

Of course, there are many instances where one needs to ACT, and to the fullest of their capacity. That is essentially the difference. Like the woman whose child is under a car and she needs to lift the car off of the child in order to save her life. There are many who have one aspect of their strength developed to the nth degree, yet have no idea that strength excercised, unbridled, indicates weakness. In life, a beautiful woman has a capacity, or an ability to get many, many things she may desire. Of course, clearly understanding how to use her power (the game she is playing) is extremely important. Conversely a handsome man all the same has an ability to get many desirous (not neccesarily ‘good’) things, but nonetheless a substantial volume of the things he may so desire. Of course restraint is based on the principle of ‘what goes down sweet and easy, comes back hard and bitter’. Here, I’m talking about restraint that leads to an advantage. It’s what we want to teach our kids, and everyone knows how hard that principle is to learn.

I just hope that more people can learn to excercise true strength; that is understanding a situation (the game) and knowing when to act (shoot, dribble, pass) and when not to. To know that sometimes (I’m not advocating asceticism) the advantage lies in holding yourself back, and snatching the advantage from what seems to be weakness (thats for another day…or maybe never). Our team is depending on you to play your part, and when you dont play along, we all are the worse for it.

January is the new Fall

Today I called a taxi to take me and my sons to kindergarten this morning…we were running late. He got there pretty quickly, we go down and wer’re on our way. The taxi driver and I had an interesting conversation about the weather (aren’t they all!). Its like 7 celcius and maybe 45-50 fahrenheit in the middle of January. It rains a little and the wind blows, and I remarked ‘yeah, it only gets warmer from here’. I thought it was hella strange to see a fly in my crib the other day.

Later, I leave work for a walk and…man, it’s beautiful out here today. My pictures are simply the contrast to what I know January to be. Maybe in 100 years someone will look at these fotos and say ‘that was the beginning and they didn’t even realize it’. Anyway, here are some fotos I took as I was walking around Jena today. You’ve seen them all before, but there’s some stuff I haven’t yet gotten thats’ here…

This is when I’m walking out of my holistening to Amy Winehouse. Poor girl, I been listening to her a lot lately. Nice sober, funky mood to get out there, as they say.

The picture below is what I see from my terrace…I think it’s nice how everything looks like it was here when the earth was formed. It fits together so nicely or…

So yeah everything is kind of dark but not forever. Anyway, I needed a target of where to go. I’m American so I want to go and look at some old stuff…because we dont have any old stuff in America. Maximum 400 years old and that’s maybe a rock, or a hill but no homes. I like how they line residential areas with bushes though.

There is a building around here that looks like a castle. There are plenty of those around here and you can see them in my photos section on Facebook.

Notice the berries.

Nobody is going to do that though. On the way to Castlevania, I was strolling and my breath was snatched away.

Dont you just love when a picture is framed by beauty?

I just stood there like, there is no way I’m going to lose this one. EXACTLY what’s in my mind I’m gonna GET IT and show it. I guess only time will tell.

I finally reach my target the castle.

Yeah, it’s not as spectacular as I thought because I didn’t plan well enough or something like that. I guess that’s why there are professionals and people like me. Makes you be thankful for memory.

So I have reached where I wanted to go and then suddenly this building just kinda slapped me on the forehead like, slap “WAKE UP”. No, like seriously. Seen it a thousand times, still I was shocked…

I have to say I aligned that one quite nicely. I noticed when taking these kinds of pictures, the little screen on the back of my camera is pretty much useless. I can’t make out the contrast and the color and the saturation and all of that. It’s like I know what I like, make the setting and shoot. I was looking at stuff the whole time and it was like, in the UNIVERSE of what I wanted…everybody should take a few pics now and again.

Paterno – Focused to a Fault

I wrote a post about this a little more than a year ago, “The Good, the Great and the Extreme“. I guess now, we can add Joe Paterno to the list of those who while striving for greatness tend to leave the rest of us behind.

Joe Paterno was fired as coach of the Penn State Nittany Lions football team because he had knowledge of a child molestation. He told his boss about the incident and left it for others to handle. He had a football to plan for, and besides the man who the accusations came against was an upstanding citizen. of course, the graduate assistant was “distraught” as he relayed to Mr. Paterno that he saw a man in the showers with what looked like a 10 year old boy. Who should the graduate assistant tell about the incident, BUT the iconic, legendary coach who has been coaching football for longer than most of us have been alive? He would know what to do…after all Penn State has never had a major NCAA violation.

As far as the issues and guilt about who should have done what, why etcetera, there is not much debate. The graduate assistant was right to tell Paterno, Paterno was right to tell his boss, but he should have ensured that the matter was properly handled. That is, if there was any truth to what the witness said or not. However, there is another point I want to bring out that is not so obvious.

When looking at what happened, I think it is clear that Mr. Paterno was focused on the reputation of the university, the football team and all the things that have to do with that. Joe Paterno has coached at Penn State – COACHED – for over 40 years. One job, and one of the best ever at what he does. Linebacker U. Ki-Jana Carter and Lavar Arrington. Blair Thomas and Kerry Collins and countless other great college players. Not to mention national championships.

Penn State football unlike Miami, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Alabama, Ohio State and practically every major university has never had a major rules violation. It can be argued that in Paterno’s time there, the school has been just as successful as any program in that time. It speaks to the man#s focus that he could get fine athletes AND manage to keep them out of major trouble and that this aspect never got away from him. How did he do it…?

Well, I think we have a peek inside the window now. The incident that happened in 2002 shows us that Paterno was intensely focused – to a fault – on the success and every aspect of the program. How could he miss the principles in this issue everyone asks…well if you have tunnel vision you cannot properly see the peripheral items in your line of sight. This was Paterno who managed every aspect of the program so that success was always in reach. Of course he neglected to see at least in one respect that outside of the campus football complex, the world was still going on.

The Utter Foolishness of being a Sports Fan

Image via Wikipedia

I can remember when I was a kid how my father and assorted, but related, older men would watch television sports of just about every kind. Baseball, basketball and of course football, for pops hailed from the state of Alabama. Unlike some, I was never driven into sports or told to like one team or another, and had no built in allegiances other than the ones that came with the region where I grew up. When the older dudes watched the game, I went and played something else for it was sooo boring to me that I can still remember the sentiment.

Of course nowadays, I am also no sports fan aside from the fact that I do read the box scores every single day of the week and write blog posts about sports and post comments to forums. Still, I would not call my self a big sports fan. Where I live, the sports that people play do not interest me and I dont understand them so that’s that. There really aren’t any statistics to follow over here regarding analysis so I cannot manage to get deep into anyting without some kind of room for non-visual analysis aside from wins and losses (and ties for crying out loud).

The part of my life between being completely indifferent to sports and where I am now…well, I was a HUGE sports fan. That must have went on for a good 10+ years. I guess it might be strongly correlated with watching television. I attended very few games, but boy it seems like we played sports every single day of my childhood…that is once I became interested in what was going on. I can still remember clearly the first time someone handed me a football. Sitting on the sidelines, looking at the older kids run, jump, throw and catch and someone asked me if I wanted to play. I forget who it was because I was so shocked that someone wanted ME to play. The guy asked me if I could catch and threw me the ball, and I caught it, by golly! I musta been around 5 or 6.

I dont think I was ever really good at playing anything, but I have long arms and legs and a nice sized brain case so I knew what to do. Plus as a kid I had some speed which can’t be taught. I could outrun just about any kid on my street which was a big deal, and I held that title for a long time in fact. We all know that 20 some odd years ago the kids actually went outside to play, and my clique was definitely of that group. We would play basketball and football and even baseball now and again. We set up games against other streets, against the other side of the street, and against ourselves and all comers in  our age group. An average ruddy bunch the lot of us were, constantly thirsty and sweaty every single day of the summer.

Of course when you are playing sports as a child you are thinking about the guys who do it best, that is the professionals. Well after I played my first game of football and felt the exhileration of being chased by someone or chasing someone, I was hooked. It took me a while to figure out the rules and such, but eventually I could throw a pass, catch with the best of them, and as mentioned before I had some handy fast-twitch muscles. The first team I heard about that I really liked were the Chicago Bears. I had heard about quite a few teams up to that point, but not all of them. Then of course I figured out that my home town had THREE major league sports teams, the Major League Baseball Indians, the National Baskeball Association Cavaliers and the National Football League Browns. So those were the three sports I concentrated on early on.

Eventually I started to get to know players. my first favorites (not idols…) were Walter Payton, The Fridge, Daryl Green, Mike Singletary (there I just dated everything for you) and some others. Those were the superstars, but then I discovered the guys who played for the home town team. Bernie Kosar, Frank Minnified and Hanford Dixon, Kevin Mack and Clay Mathews, Joe Carter and Cory Snyder, Mark Price, Brad Daugherty and Larry Nance who had actually won a dunk contest. We would always say who we were when we played on the streets and in the park, and this is around the time when I started deciding the kind of person I would like to be.

It took me a while and I flopped around a bit before I settled on Joe Montana, Phil Simms and John Taylor. Joe Montana because he was cool under pressure, Phil Simms because he seemed like a nice guy, and John Taylor because he worked the shadows of all the stars on those great 49er teams of the eighties. I didn’t have any posters or jersey’s or anything of that sort, but I always kept up with them. I was a statistics freak, but I think my real talent was analyzing the players, or something like that. I would buy trading cards (in a totally saturated market), and eventually had the starting lineups of every team in the NFL.

I can remember how as a kid I would imagine growing up and having kids of my own and training them to be football stars because of the wonderful athleticism genes they would inherit from papa (that would be me). Today, I was out with my boys in our backyard garden throwing them a football…one of them with an Ohio State University jersey, and the other with a Portugese National Team Futbol jersey. Got me to thinking about all the crap that sports has been about from the time of my youth when it was all that I cared about, to now when I really care nothing about it.

Now of course, as a Cleveland fan, I dont have many fond memories of great athletic achievement connected to my favorite teams. Still, my high school won the Lake Erie League in football a time or two and played in the state playoffs. There were some minor achivements that we all could think about. It seems however, that for every championship any team wins, there is just tons and tons of heartbreak.

The Mets won the World Series in 86, but does that make anyone who remembers that feel any better about that team now? The Detroit Pistons won back in 04′, but what about the years before that, and everything since? Granted, if you are a Lakers, or a Steelers, or a Yankees fan it’s just a matter of time before another ‘ship comes your way. However, the overwhelming majority of us are looking for the one shining moment, but ultimately must make do with disapointment over and over and over again.

When I moved away from home and actually a little earlier than that I stopped watching television. It was more convenient to read the paper and I could look over the details and scores at my leisure. Watching the games totally lost it’s thrill. I even stopped playing after a good 10 years of doing it all the time. Not only had Cleveland never won in my (short) lifetime, but right after I left home, the Browns MOVED(!) to Baltimore! That hurt me even though I was more than 1000 miles away from home. Then a few years later the Indians were up in the BOTTOM OF THE NINTH INNING IN THE SEVENTH GAME OF THE WORLD SERIES…and lost. Then the Browns moved back and have been an utter embarrassment to professional football with disease epidemics, draft bust after draft bust, and oh yeah…the last coach we had before the team moved away has gone on to become one of the greatest of all time.

Cleveland athlete’s have a long history of leaving and achieving greatness. There was Paul Warfield who had great success in the state of Ohio, but who went on to become a legend when he took his talents to Florida. Then there was Ron Harper who was shipped out only to win several NBA titles with Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls. Earnest Byner, Joe Carter, and favorite son Bernie Kosar even won a Superbowl with the Miami Dolphins. So this whole Lebron stuff is just a drop in the bucket really. We dont just lose games, but we also lose athletes who seem to go on to bigger better things, namely championships.

Anyway, so today I’m throwing the ball to my sons, and the youngest has on an OSU jersey I bought the last time I was back home. I bought my big boy a Grady Sizemore Indians jersey, and a Lebron Cavaliers jersey. I think it goes without saying that I have no clue what to do with the Lebron jersey (not burning it), Sizemore is on the DL, and OSU is disgraced and their National Championship from a few years ago is even tarnished. Now, I bought the jersey’s to represent where I come from. Sure, I keep up with my teams (the Indians 1 game from the Series in 07′, the Cavaliers giving Lebron no choice, the Browns organizational ineptitude) but all three jersey’s are just begging to be moth balled away.

It’s not just these sports though. Cycling is just about the dirtiest sport out there and has almost no credibility anymore. FIFA is just a mess, and has re-elected a president who has presided over bribe scandal after bribe scandal and rogue sponsors who act like owners. MMA? Well there’s nothing I can really say about that other than it’s much more brutal than boxing. Forget about boxing. Tennis is half decent except for the whiny, disresepctful personalities of the women and a men’s game that is fairly boring except for two or three contenders (Fed, Djokovic and Nadal). Besides, tennis and the ATP is getting more suspect all the time (see: IMG tennis scandal). Golf is ok, but, well I played 9 holes in my teens and frankly Tiger is no good anymore. Nascar’s most popular driver hasn’t won a race in years and hockey is almost as obscure as handball from where I’m sitting. Oh yeah, the NFL and NBA are either on strike or are going on strike. Sheesh!

Sports used to be so much fun, and while I can remember the passion with which I indulged it as a youth, it seems that as I get older it’s best kept as I keep my youth. In fond memory…

What Every Man Should Know

What makes a real man? Apparently one of the themes of the day is what every man should know how to do. I have a take on the subject that might be something you haven’t heard yet…that is, I haven’t recycled someone else’s thought. I have thought about it for a long time. I actually got the idea from the biography of Oscar Wilde, the British author who rose to fame and burned in shame so long ago. He said something very interesting though, namely “women are just like their mothers, that’s their tragedy, men aren’t and that’s theirs”.

Yet again I was thrown into deep thought. Or rather as deep a thought as you can get at 22 or however I was back then. No offense to you young bucks out there. He said that because I think deep inside of himself he wanted to do some of the things women have the privilege of doing, like sleeping with men and it being socially acceptable. That’s not a subject I want to broach here though. There were surely other things that he admired about women. Perhaps their way, and style of dress, perhaps their station in society which sounds absurd considering he lived over a hundred years ago, but still…

Being a father/bread-winner/ protector has made me appreciate what it means to NOT be a man. Women in today’s society have so many things open to them. In East Germany, the women were brought up to have a sense of Emancipation, being culturally equal to men in almost every respect. The contradiction comes when you consider that here in Germany there are still serious issues about mother’s staying at home to raise the children, as they are all over the world. Women get the CHOICE to wear the pants, or a pant leg, as it were. Women have a greater range of choice in choosing their mate, but the downside is they tend to be dominated by emotion and the pretty ones are overwhelmed by choice.

Again on women (even though I am talking about men here), they must be the most beautiful creation in the universe. For a man, what is possibly better than having a beautiful, loving, thoughtful women at your side? The angels in heaven, according to Genesis came down from the presence of God himself because they desired the women here on earth. Edgar Allen Poe wrote about how the saddest thing imaginable is the death of a young woman and while that is debatable, it is surely in the top five of saddest things (the death of a child would take my top spot, but still). Whether sun or stars, awesome landscapes or the wonders of creation, nothing can compare to the beauty of a woman…for a man.

It is said that every man should know how to fix things to fit the stereotype of the ingenious provider who can make something from nothing. MacGyver if you will. Then of course, every man should be able to control his feelings or to not cry. Men are supposed to have physical strength which I guess means we should be able to pick up our children until they are teenagers. We should have the ability to feed and protect our family from physical harm,  be decisive, natural leaders, and above all we should not really give a damn about how we look. We are also allowed to stink (sometimes), granted we have performed some kind of hard work or exerted ourselves strenuously at play. A limited bunch we are, but that and a little more is what is expected of every man. No?

The thing is those things fail to take in the fact that every man is half-woman. That’s ridiculous you say? Well women seem to have no problem (or at least getting through the first waves of resistance to) working at construction sites, and being engineers or racing cars, playing every sport and serving in the military. It has been said that the problem with the women’s movement is that men never changed anything. That is, men never wanted to share in any of the things that women traditionally were tasked with women, like taking care of the kids, staying at home, knowing how to cook for the family, being tender and supportive, or being anything other than the stereotypical man…though that is not so much the case nowadays (see metro sexual).

The fact that every man is made by both a man AND a woman means that we have some traits inherent to women that need to come out. Namely, we need to be able to cook, to have the sensibility to comfort the kids when they need to talk, to be able to cry. I can remember thinking when I went to Sri Lanka how utterly practical it was that the men wore skirts. Okay they have a name for it that definitely doesn’t mean skirt, but I bought one and fully intended to wear it back home. When it’s hot out, it would be mighty cool to rock a free-flowing skirt, or? Women do it all the time. Alas, I wear it around the house and not around my kids but it damn sure is comfy when the humidity is up!

The point is that women have learned to take the (perceived?) best character traits and added them to womanhood and now lead nations. Look at Angela Merkel and Margaret Thatcher and Hilary Clinton and Condoleezza Rice who are all most definitely woman, but have enough man in them to lead. I don’t think it’s so much that they have enough man in them , but rather they let the man in them come out. They are after all, half-man in their woman-ness.

Of course culture and women are not all so ready to let that happen in every instance. If a man and a woman have children, when they split, women are ALWAYS given the benefit of the doubt as if a man is somehow not built to take care of his own children. I in fact know a man who has raised two daughters, my brother is doing the same, and there are others who are raising their children alone. A man who is sensitive is chastised by society, and men never, ever cry in public. Hell, some folks are even convinced that we are not allowed to ask for directions if we get lost! Not only are we limiting ourselves, but at the same time women aren’t quite completely ready to share some of the provinces that they dominate.

The title of this post is ‘What Every Man Should Know’, but the emphasis I want to stress is on the word SHOULD as in, we don’t all already know it. We should know HOW to get in touch with the part of us made by our mother. We don’t absolutely need to suffocate ourselves when tragedy strikes by holding our emotions in. That leads to heart attacks, hypertension and an assortment of ailments that kill us off young. We should take an active part in the lives of our children, cooking them meals and holding them when they need it; even recognizing when WE need it.

We need to understand (or tryto understand) what it is to be a woman. Not in the sense of trying to get them in bed, or to find the right mate but rather so that we get more out of life. I don’t mean we should start wearing blouses with pretty little pink flowers, or rocking a white knee-high skirt with pleats like I saw on some cat not long ago. Men should know that to ignore one-half of our makeup, doesn’t make us more man, but rather half human.

Zenith of Civilization…the end

SO surely you have heard that today, May 21st the end of the world is nigh upon us. I hate when people say stuff like this…and dont tell us the time zone. Will the end come like a wave washing from east to west so that 6 pm everywhere the world will end? Or is it New York time (Eastern Standard), the world’s melting pot?

The truth is, the world is coming to an end one way or another. It’s just sensible to think that the way we live is not sustainable in no way shape or form. As the guy in Matrix said, we are at the zenith of civilization. I think what that really means is that we can send pictures just about anywhere from anywhere. We wont colonize Mars or the moon, but we got great pictures of both!

Another truth is that we are facing problem that will only get worse and one way or another, it is all going to come to an end. SARS and bird flu, tsunami’s and earthquakes, war, murder and the lack of love permeate everything we do. Osama bin Laden isn’t responsible for terror, humankind as a whole is responsible. It’s not just that the news is able to propagate information better, but rather things are really getting worse. I am only in my early thirties, and I can remember going to the store to get stocking hose for my sisters as a 5-year-old. Coffee black. Try sending your 5-year-old around the corner today. Forget about the kidnappers and the certified crazies, the neighbors would have you locked up for putting your child in danger.

Either we will kill ourselves or nature will do it. Some epidemic will come along in the food or the water, or be transported via plane, train or automobile. Then yo have the fact that there are rich people who are trying to get their hands on the bomb. Thats about as deadly a combination as I can think of. Greed is the ultimate commonality of people everywhere, and those who have the will and the means will eventually get what they want…God help us.

Then of course, there is simple human arrogance. I feel so bad for the people of Japan but I like a lot of people had to ask why oh why did they build so many nuclear reactors on fault lines? It’s just like the guy on the Titanic said, “Not even God can sink this ship”. I am in a constant struggle with my children trying to convince them that no, you cannot climb to the top of the jungle gym because you may fall and break my heart. Then you have the Americans and New Orleans and building a city under sea level. Our arrogance will get us in big trouble before you know it.

Think about it. Just about every nation has had some serious issues with terror, natural disaster, pestilence. All in the last 30 years or so. Add to that the general apathy and desensitized nature of us all because every year there is SOMETHING.

Eventually, it’s all gonna get us and we likely don’t even know what it is that will kill us all. Or at the least most of us…

The Beauty of M. Allen’s art

I wrote a post about a year ago that was very well received (it was featured on WordPress’ ‘Freshly Pressed’). It was mainly about Tiger Woods and his fall from grace. The point of my “The Good, the Great and the Extreme” was that genius talent isn’t always worth a damn. In most cases, high achievers tend to the selfish, that is, they achieve great heights in business, sports, the arts, education and other fields to the detriment of humanity as a whole. For example, if a cancer researcher finds a better way to treat lymphoma, but leaves his children and wife alone and the kids have to fill a hole in their hearts, there is a net negative there. He may have added to civilization in one way, but the neglecting of his family means that his children will (likely, not definitely) spread his bad parenting habits to their children. They may end up spoiled, delinquent, or otherwise threatening to society.

There were a few comments that were mostly in agreement. There was one however who wrote his own post in the comments section. He made some very valid points about some gross assumptions in the article I made. I was in fact wrong to characterize all gifted people as ‘tokenists’ who only mean to improve their lot, or get their itch scratched. I also made some points about how the servants of our society are the only ones who sacrifice anything. How without them, the rest of us are nothing. I still stand by some of the sentiment there. For instance, if there is no garbage delivery and we all have to carry our garbage to a place in the woods and dig a hole every week…well, our lives would be hell without society’s ‘lower classes’.

At any rate, the post from Cobalt Gradient made me think deeply. This post isn’t a retort, but rather my thoughts about what I said at that time, refined.

I worked in Frankfurt for about 9 months recently where I stayed at the infamous Frankfurt Hostel in the heart of Kaiserstrasse. Kaiserstrasse is full of whores and johns, drug users and dealers, houses of ill repute and the like. Just up the street you will find the biggest banking center in continental Europe and one of the biggest in the world. It goes without saying that the seedy end of the street is hard to tell. Both the bankers and the street workers on the other end use each other to no end.

I met many people in my time in Frankfurt. There was one person however who stood out among the rest. He is a street artist who goes by the name M. Allen. He is a wonderful artist, and a very thoughtful person, and I consider him a friend. He is just like any one of us in that he has a past that haunts him, a present that is sometimes precarious, and a future of which he is not so sure about. We had so many conversations, Murdock and I over a few beers in the hostel lobby, in his studio (or rather the stair well where you enter the hostel), and sometimes over a bratwurst on a warm day.

He is originally from Argentina from an aristocratic family, and has traveled all over the world so I listened to his words, and the spaces between his words. He was essentially my escape, because at the time I was there, my daughter was in the belly of her mother, and I had a high pressure project going on in a Frankfurt suburb. At the end of everyday i would have a fight with the mother of my children, drink a few hefeweizen wheat beers and chat up whoever happened to be running through the hostel. Of course, M. Allen was there on most days.

There was one conversation we had though where he really opened my eyes to something. We were lamenting our place in life (which tends to happen after a few too many)…however, he was lamenting being poor and proud, and I was lamenting being well off but trying to stay humble. He would tell me that I have wonderful children and a great job, and being fairly young and able to do anything I wanted. I told him the same thing more or less and I wondered at that moment what was the common thread that bound us…we were both obviously right even if it isn’t yet apparent to you.

I said to him (in my eternally optimistic way), “dude, you are putting beauty in the world with your art.” People buy his paintings and buttons and jewelry and postcards and feel better about themselves because they carry something beautiful with them. That beautiful thing would not have existed were it not for him. That feeling in that person would not have existed had he not presented it, or rather offered it to be shared with the world. He smiled a beautiful smile that told me he could understand the sentiment exactly as I meant it! I felt good too!

At that point I truly understood that what I was doing in Frankfurt might have been with good intentions, but was nonetheless wrong. You see, I figured that if I am earning tons of cash and buying new kitchens and clothes and shoes and camera’s and vacations for my children, that I am providing for them. After all, I saw them every weekend, took them to school on Mondays and got back to them on Fridays. I could not understand why I was having all of this trouble with the mother of my children. Okay I could a little, but I wondered why she could not see the benefit that I was providing to her and the kids.

When I had that conversation with M. Allen, it became abundantly clear to me that the point to life is that whatever we are doing, we need to set beauty in the world. To make other people happy with what we are doing. The happiness must come later, and not immediately because if it is immediate then it will fade. It’s like if you give a hungry man a fish, he will be full for a moment, but if you teach him to fish he will be full for a lifetime…and he can teach others to fish. Real Beauty (yep I intended the caps) perpetuates itself. Not that real beauty eliminates sadness and despair and depression, but it always has the ability to offer respite from the ugliness we are faced with in this world everyday.

Ironically, after I left Frankfurt, I decided to cut back if not give up completely my artistic pursuits. I am a session (bitch) singer who has a few releases, but was waiting on my time. I am a professional technical writer, but I always had the dream of writing a book, or becoming a columnist. This was the way I always thought to express my creative energy. Of course I was so wrong. I thought long about what might happen if I get the big contract, or a hit single and honestly the picture doesn’t look good. There is the positive side that you can figure out for yourself, but the negative side is that my children will suffer. I would have to leave them regularly to tour, to practice, to do promotional functions. I might even have a couple of other kids with some groupie or other and have to split my time between more households. I might get jaded, and the time I spend with my kids might be filled with life lessons from being alone on the road with people who want something from me. No, the beauty that I could express through music was not one that I want to take as far as it can go.

Which brings me back to Cobalt Gradient and his post. The avatar name has something to do with chemical processes, though admittedly I didn’t spend much time on that topic. That only gave me an idea of who this person may be. His last statement was:

The talented often have to put themselves in the spotlight in order to give their gifts to the world, but in the end, they too ought to remain humble and approach society as a servant. Perhaps that is hard to do, given our human lust for glory, but not impossible.

That resonated with me for a long time. Especially the part about ‘giving their gifts to the world’. Of course, I see things a little differently now and I can see that there is no error in that statement aside from it being incomplete. It must include that there be some form of perpetual beauty that we can all appreciate. Whether it is a talent for physics, engineering or mathematics, or understanding, caring and sympathy. It can be that you relate to a story you have read, or see yourself in the artists’ painting, or appreciate the brush strokes of the artist. Beauty is something we are all capable of, and we should share it with the world, as a gift.

Frankfurt Kaiserstrasse by M. Allen

Look up M.Allen on Facebook as Murdock Allen, or if you stop by Frankfurt Hostel, buy a painting. He’s happy to share…

Eurovision Song Contest…never heard of it?

In Europe (yeah right…I mean the east side of Germany where I live) there are always some interesting things going on. The events are nothing like what we have back home. Especially sports. American tend to think of Europeans as astute and sophisticated and mature, and they sure are…not! They’re just like Americans in that they aren’t too kind to illegals, have their inalienable ‘rights’ (ever heard of ‘gemutlichkeit’ or ‘joie de vivre’?) and like to wear black turtle necks like we wear wife beaters. Of course the Europeans have a really acute sense of the arts it seems, at least when you consider the taste of the French, Italian or something like Baroque. You know what I mean…refined, or something like that.

Well, they have a few things here that I cannot get my head around. In Germany they have the Karnival which is like the Carnival in South America, or like Mardi Gras and even Halloween (so I’ve heard, but they celebrate that too so it can’t be the same…). People get dressed and run around with a pretense for goofiness (see turtlenecks: above). They got this one thing called the Eurovision Song Contest and it is…singular (pinky finger pressed to my lip).

Apparently some (every?) European country comes up with a singer, a song and a producer and battle it out until somebody wins. I first heard of it when my ex was like, (we’re entertaining and she turns to me for confirmation) ‘you know who I’m talking about, the person who won the Gran Prix!’ I’m like, well I’ve only been here for a few months so maybe it was Michael Schumacher, he races cars right? Not only did I learn what a Gran Prix really is, but I also found out about the European Championships of Singular Talent.

It’s like the Olympics, and its held every year and some people sort of make a big deal out of it. I absolutely love metaphors, but I can’t find one to fit to what I’m trying to communicate. Winners are judged according to some arbitrary set of criteria, and the winners are very proud. It’s on television, and you see flags and stuff and I guess they keep score at home. I don’t want to say it’s like the County Fair Blue Ribbon because I’ve never attended anything like that, but it sure seems like it. I think (thanks to my crack research team) that the highest score is like 6 or 8 or something like that, and I haven’t a clue how the judges are picked.

Then, here in Germany, one of the more popular talk show hosts (one of those love/hate polarizing types) figured he could do better than the German singer/songwriting contingent and staged a competition of his own to ensure Germany’s victory. I watched it from a distance, sure, and her song was quite the catchy tune I must say. However, it was kinda like Britney Spears or something like that. I guess it’s all in good fun.

The Day of the Orgasm

Did you know that today (that is May 9th) is the day of the orgasm (google it)? Oh yeah, we didn’t celebrate it…or maybe we did but probably got the days mixed up. Where do these holidays, or rather days come from anyway? Like Arbor Day. I know, I sound like an ignoramus but frankly I don’t celebrate any holidays. Not even my birthday or those of my children (I heard the hush over the crowd). The day of the orgasm is interesting though. Really…

I just saw on some twitter feeds and I guess I am late to the party. Is this the day where we are supposed to really concentrate on appreciating all that the orgasm has done for us. That well, without it where would we be today? It’s one of those rare things though that would likely have supporters of equal measure from both sexes. Not a whole lot for children to do on this day though…kinda like Father’s day or Labor day or something where the kids are not involved, but made. At the same time, it is so clear where our entire culture is today. Isn’t it ridiculous really? What is it about an orgasm that makes me want to write a few hundred words about it…?

Well frankly, it makes me sad (yet again, I know). No but really why do we need a day just to think about something that if taken by itself can cause a ton of pain? There are actually not enough responsible people out there (I’m one of them so I know) that know how to handle looking for an orgasm. Or rather keeping it in it’s proper perspective, and I’m not sure it needs an entire day. Frankly, the sole pursuit of the lives of quite a few is to seek pleasure. If Orgasm Day is a day to appreciate your orgasm, please do it with someone you love. Otherwise you’re just loving yourself at the expense of someone else.

Taken by itself, it’s one of the most pleasurable physical sensibilities animals are capable of feeling, but once it’s gone…it’s…gone! You can get addicted to it, and it can ruin lives and generations if not kept in its place. Of course, the things I am writing here are tongue-in-cheek, but it bears thinking about on your own time.

Crazy stuff…no?

The Steelers Mendenhall ‘creates a stir’…

I wrote a post the other day about the positively inhuman way people all over are ‘celebrating’ the death of a Osama bin Laden. Alas, I am nobody (all the better actually) so no one paid any attention. I was hoping that some folks out there might feel like I do, because that post was not just about sports or a day in the park. It had to do with everything that makes us human.

So I read a Sports Illustrated article today about an athlete who apparently stuck his foot in his mouth. Now what did he say you might ask? His words according to the article were “What kind of person celebrates death?” Now I am sure that offended some people unintentionally, but really that question he posed sums up my thoughts. I saw that some friends on Facebook shared my sentiments and that alone validated my thinking. Or rather, proved to me that there are some people out there who are more humane than blood-thirsty.

Of course, he did sort of stick his foot in his mouth in saying “We’ve only heard one side.” I’m not really sure what to think of that statement because while I am not one to drink the Kool-aid, Bin Laden did in fact congratulate so many killers and terrorist – as far as I could tell. Of course, I wasn’t there. I only watched and read the news just like everybody else, and being a writer I am aware of the power of words, be they written or spoken. We must always consider the source, because damn, how many people have been put to death convicted of a crime they never committed? For those innocents who lost their lives, is anyone calling for them to be avenged?

The point is, no matter if bin Laden planned the bombings or not, if anything express indifference or even a sentiment of chickens coming home to roost. For all we REALLY know, this whole last ten years could be a case of the tail wagging the dog. I don’t think Mendenhall meant his words as an affront to the soldiers who are out there doing what they’ve been told, or what they feel is right, but more shock and people in the streets celebrating like they’ve won the lottery.

It used to be that American cheered Olympic medalists, or a man on the moon, or a victorious team after winning the championship. They say that you can tell a lot about a man by his enemies. If Osama bin Laden’s death is such a cause of celebration for millions of Americans, we need to think about what kind of country we have become.