squint

it was probably a dozen years ago when i first watched Bowling for Columbine.  i didn't see it immediately, but rather on dvd a couple years after release.  i recall being dumbfounded.  my world was smaller then and my abundant idealism obscured reality.  it was a period in my life though when the blinds were opened, one twist at a time.

with each turn of the rod, i not only saw more, but i squinted more.  in many ways, i have always believed myself insulated from the dangers and dangerous.  it infuriates those in my life who are self-described worriers, but i figure i balance out their fear with unabated optimism.  so as my heart has broken more with each passing headline, my eyes have narrowed in response.

and before you comment that this is the problem with people: willful ignorance let me clarify.  i am not turning from facts. i am not turning my head and pretending the evil and pain are merely there if i look.  on the contrary, as the blinds have opened, i find myself pressed against the glass, aching to see more.

my eye doctor once explained to me that there are two general patterns of vision impairment.  those who have terrible vision at a very young age and whose vision must be corrected with strong lenses forever.  and then those whose vision starts to degrade in puberty, levels out in the early twenties, and then improves slightly in your thirties.

and then there are those who have perfect vision their entire adult lives.  until middle age.  

regardless of your vision prior, it's an accepted fact that most people will suffer some age-related degeneration in middle age.  and it's then that we begin to squint.  i say 'we', but mind you, i'm not in this category yet.  let the record reflect that.  if you are of this certain age you can confirm, the squint does not impair the vision; but rather enables the eye to focus more clearly.  

it is this effect that my squinting strives to achieve. i squint to block the rhetoric. i squint to block the noise: the blame and fear.  i squint to block the clouding circumstance. and i focus my vision where my heart is focused, on loving compassion and hope for imminent change.

d: middle age squint for all
b: hope springs eternal
g: not quite middle age yet, per my eye doctor

newton

i started this blog as an observation on down and out.  i considered breaking (one word title) form and entitling it as such; but then i was struck by the visual marriage of the two words. down..out: doubt... and perhaps it's more than an optical illusion.

spiralling down and out, my thoughts and feelings feeding off each other.. and multiplying the doubts.  doubt in my direction, my purpose, my place.  doubt in my perceptions, my impressions, my understanding. and ultimately in myself.  

but like a spring, i'm resilient.  i've been in difficult low spots before, wondering and dismayed.  disappointed and disillusioned.  and doubting my judgment and decisions.  

and like a spring, with every contraction and expansion, it gets a little easier.  

a loose interpretation of newton's third law and an overarching belief in karma assures me that for as low as i've dropped.. as far as i've spiraled down into doubt, there is an upswing coming.  an expansion.  a spiral outward and upward that i am certain of.  

today marks a week of momentum.  forward momentum.  upward momentum.  positive momentum.  my friends reached in and lifted me up unexpectedly, three days in a row.  jobs with exceptional potential, three at a time.  and both boys celebrated small personal victories.

so now i'm invoking newton's first law of motion as i ride this spiral the other direction and preparing to harness this energy for what's to come.  

d:  powerful manifestation

b:  powerful resilience

g:  powerful inertia

market-ing

over the past week or so i've been sending out emails with the subject line, 'In the Market...'  even as a marketing professional, it has struck me as odd every time i type it.  but odd in a good way, i think.

it's made me hyper-aware that marketing, the word, is a derivative of market.  and moreover, what i find so compelling about marketing, the business principle, is getting inside the market's collective mind.

so now that i'm quite literally marketing myself, seeking a new career opportunity, it's a high stakes proposition.  while i am able to easily articulate my brand and value propositions, and have a clearly defined space in the mind of my established customer base; i'm hoping to reach a new audience.  a new audience that i haven't put a name on yet. 

and when the commodity you're selling is yourself, the transactional significance skyrockets.  it's a vulnerable place to be, the market.

when i first entered the world of qsr marketing, we often joked, 'Right or wrong, it'll be gone in 30 days!'  on a promotional calendar that cycled with haste and regularity, every month was an opportunity to experiment, learn, and improve. every promotional analysis incrementally exposing the market nuances. 

thankfully my career hasn't changed at the same manic pace, but the principle of continual learning has still prevailed.  and at this junction between known and unknown, i am confidently curious about what's next.  so far, each potential buyer has been more compelling than the one before.   

d: a successful campaign
b: a commodity with wide market appeal
g: continual expansion and growth

therefore

If a picture is worth a thousand words, a metaphor is worth a thousand pictures.

i recently fell in love with this slant on the oft used root expression.  i think in metaphors.  i really do.  it exasperates some people in my life, those assuming i'm questioning their ability to follow a literal thought.  others tolerate it, but immediately summarize my literary visual with their interpretation.  so, you're pissed/sad/tired/hurt? 

they remind me of my least favorite math course in college, number theory.  it's unfair to term it math, because it was an exercise in mind-bending that required shifting the literal to the abstract in every way, abandoning the very thing i love about math:  the finite absoluteness.  but what's brought to mind is the last line of work that completed a number theory 'problem' (generally, a proof of some sort).  at the end of a grueling iterative process, the proof would be concluded with three little dots in a triangle, representing the word therefore.  and then some brilliant conclusion was made.  nine times out of ten, the conclusion was exactly what you started with.  (and that 10th time, i probably did it wrong.)  all the work, all the effort, all the creative thinking reduced to a simple therefore...and suddenly you're right back where you started.

and in math, i'm ok with that.  i say, skip the proof and accept the theorem.  but in personal expression, i cannot abide the therefore.  i would, if i could.  truly, it would make communication so much simpler sometimes.  but when my mind wanders to the abstract, to the emotive, to the philosophical, the words it chooses are all nouns and verbs and concepts are all expressed in scenes and stories.

it's a puzzle to me as to whether it's due to an abundance or a lack of verbal expression.
i can't find the words to describe the abstract feelings or thoughts, so i turn to literal objects or experiences in metaphor.  that would be a lack.  
my abstract thoughts and feelings generate elaborate stories and pictures though, which i share as metaphors.  that would be abundance.

but i digress.  i didn't intend to write four paragraphs on my metaphor factory.  i have a running list on my phone of thoughts i want to blog on and when i opened it, i laughed at my cryptic metaphors and was struck by the realization it's my language.

yesterday, someone reminded me of the value in transparency.  Transparency and honesty. Just aim for that.  You've seen what havoc and hurt it creates when you don't.  and so today, while i yearn to reenter my world of words through a metaphor, i am instead remaining literal. 

although, or perhaps because, it comes most naturally in my personal expression, my writing here often leans on metaphor.  instead of revelatory, though it feels that way at times, it appears more often as a shroud.. of secrecy, privacy, or even shame.  i recognize that and while i won't even attempt to abandon my language, i will try to add a few more therefores.  after all, that clarity is what i'm seeking in the first place.

d:  clarifying metaphors easily therefore'd
b:  a language to express myself with, rich in images and symbolism
g:  a gentle reminder of the importance in setting it aside and simply being seen

jam

so often when i listen to live music, i find myself fixated on who i wish were also there, hearing and seeing the performance.  i can be obsessed with my certainty that this person or people would be transformed or should be exposed or inspired by what i am experiencing.  i will torture myself with trying to record the most exemplary clips or trying to capture the tone and magic of a live performance with still photography.  (from a phone, to make it all the more absurd.)   and at the end of the show, i leave wistful.  

it just occurred to me last night:  what an idiotic waste of a concert that has been. 

ironically, that clarity arrived at the end of a show in which a misguided, ungrateful thought of who could be enjoying it alongside me never once entered my mind.  i can't claim that i realized the irony of hinging my enjoyment on that of another and hence consciously made this change though. it was more likely due to the fact that one of those who i often long to share things with was there with me: todd.   

a first, of its sorts, really.  though i've taken him to many concerts, we've never shared a table at a live music venue (i.e. a bar) and sat shoulder to shoulder as adults...  perhaps it's semantics.  perhaps it's maternal nostalgia.  or maybe it was the glass of wine i enjoyed.  whatever the cause, i contend it was a first.  

my memory uses shorthand when it comes to media.  i rarely remember what a book was about, what happened in a film, or even who sings a song or what a certain musician's style is.  but in the scribbling notes of my mind, i can usually recall my opinion.  often it's as rudimentary as a thumbs up or down; but occasionally there's an exclamation scrawled in the margin.  

when todd asked me about the musician i invited him to see last night, i said, the most amazing f'ing guitarist i've ever seen.   he asked what kind of music he played.  shrug  he asked me who his music resembled.  shrug  he was understandably skeptical of my high marks with little to substantiate and said, i guess i'll see..but he won't hold a candle to hendrix, i'm sure.  silently i hoped to myself that my memory's headline wasn't skewed or exaggerated.  

it wasn't.  

and when i looked over at todd's face, transfixed on the magic happening a mere seven or eight feet away, the only person brought to mind was myself at his age...  there's nothing quite like being audience to a jam.  a spontaneous merging of magnanimous talent and the acoustic art that it creates.  

jam.  yum.  

my favorite way to spend a saturday night and put on a biscuit sunday morning. 

d:  savor the sweetness, jessica

b:  my shorthand review held up

g:  the musicians in my life

eighteen

eighteen and sixteen.  the boys are officially on their way out.  

friday night, todd's birthday request was attending the opening of Straight Outta Compton.  so, we threw our fifty buck contribution into the $60 million box office debut and claimed seats at the theater that topped the country in opening weekend Compton ticket sales.   

that's right.  an atlanta theater holds the #1 position in box office sales for last weekend, leading a top ten with nine LA area theaters.  (why do i feel a touch of pride about that?) 

what a movie.  tremendously moving.  engrossing in the complexity.  heart-breakingly enlightening.  and in contrast to the aforementioned pride, utterly humbling.  

one of the pivotal events in the film occurred in my eighteenth year and the entirety of the story spanned my adolescence.  yet, here i am over twenty years later, sitting beside my eighteen year old son,  and getting an education.  although the music and names were familiar, the story was altogether foreign to me.  and that was so very sobering.  

it's boggling how much longer my own childhood felt to me than my boys' has.  to me.  although at times i've thought their "eighteen" would never arrive; overall, the paradox of time has compressed their youth into an instant. 

however, when i left the theater friday night shoulder-to-shoulder with my peers and his, i realized how much broader his life experience has been, than mine was at the same age.  so much content in so little time.  how much bigger his world is.  and in turn, how much bigger mine is.  

ever-expanding.  

ever-learning. 

ever-grateful. 

d:  put it on the required viewing list.  everyone.  asap.  

b:  straight outta lake claire, my heart and mind were moved

g:  shared experiences that continue to enlarge my world

surf

there's a metaphor i've heard used to describe the world view i hold and it goes something like this... just as every drop of the ocean is wholly ocean, the ocean is wholly comprised of these drops.  (substitute each of us for each drop and the ocean for a universal spirit and you get the idea.) 

perhaps it's because i grew up at the ocean or perhaps it's my water sign dominance, but for whatever reason that depiction of spirit has always resonated with me strongly.  and because of that, or maybe owing to this, i find great comfort and renewal in water.  when things are uncertain or upended in my life, i am drawn to it and without exception it brings me back to clarity and alignment with my better side.  

i spent saturday on the lake with friends and while i was there, something caught my attention...and has remained there nagging at me and asking to be incorporated to my world view metaphor.  it was a water sport.  one i've never seen before.  granted, i've spent most of my water hours in the salted variety; but over the past (nearly) twenty years that i've lived in atlanta, i've gotten my lake water-wings too.  and in neither setting have i seen this particular skill in this particular way.  

the boat involved was moving quite slowly and, with an inboard motor, creating a deep wake behind it.  the young guy performing was, at first, holding a ski rope with one hand and standing on a surf board, off to the side of the boat.  the rope was loose, with plenty of slack and i was at first boggled by what was going on.  within seconds, he had dropped the rope and repositioned himself on the board, maintaining an easy balance.  

the boat was still moving peculiarly slowly, very close to the guy, but the casual body language of the board-rider made it clear that all was going according to plan.  next thing you know (and though i'm drawing out the story, this was all within a matter of a few seconds..) he was surfing.  

literally surfing the perpetual and steady wave created behind the boat.  i laughed when i realized how obvious it all was and watched in awe.  i'm not a surfer myself, so this is pure speculation, but i imagine the hardest part of surfing is waiting for the perfect wave.  spotting it, timing it, wiping your brow at the wrong second and missing it, waiting for it again.  

this guy, however, had found a way to capitalize on the inherent, perfect curl that follows a slow moving boat and ride it.  quite simply, ride it.  truly genius.  

while so many lake sportsmen (and sportswomen) are trying to find the smooth, glassy place between the wake's wave and remain steadily within it; this guy was relishing the leading edge of forward motion and riding it.   something i can easily bring into my ever-evolving metaphor of life.

d:  casual, easy balance in the curl

b:  i've caught the perfect wave

g:  a lesson learned and a spirit renewed