November 2002 Archives

For two years after, you came back to me on random street corners. From a distance it was you, closer to you it was someone else; oh such hope, such despair, to know once more that you are just gone!

Fifteen years have gone by since I touched my cheek to yours, since I held your warm hand in mine. I see you less clearly. It takes more work for me to conjure you up; your face. I have to strain to bring your essence into focus. Three precious years was all we had together. So many very strange and peculiar years have come and gone since you left.

Were you real or were you just a wonderful dream? Into my life you came one February afternoon in nineteen eight-four, at Carol’s voice studio. Your lesson was just before mine, I was a bit early and so I sat in and listened to you sing.

You had wavy-length hair
Your smile…water sparkles
Your face open and engaging
Your eyes alight with flickers of passion
Your hands, handsome taking hold of the piano for support as you sang
Your vocal honesty filling the room

And a door opened up and I fell through it into the deepest, most erotic longing I have ever known. “If I get to know him”, I wrote in my journal, “I will be….” And I sure was.

So the days and weeks passed and you came more and more into the center of my life; two steps closer, one step back, until we were almost one soul and all eternity.

And when at last we had made a home together, two years had gone by.

The snows had come and gone three times. Now it was autumn and the sudden leaving had begun. First they took things out of your skull; I thought you would never speak again. Then the cold, and snow and fevers came; and I thought you would never walk again. Then the toxoplasmosis came, and the goddamned spring came; and I knew all spring that you would never wake to hold me again.

Seven of the longest months of our precious life together…

I watched you slowly make your way back, to a place I could not follow. Then in the early morning hours of May 7, 1987, you were gone. Days later I stood by your coffin, wanting to pick you up and shake you back into the now, to press my cheek against yours and to whisper you back into this life. But I could not wake you up.

Fifteen times the leaves have fallen since you left
Eight times since Richard went to you
Seven times since John went to you
Six times since Duncan went to you

One thing is certain, you are not alone wherever you are now, and that gives me some measure of comfort. Mercifully, you’ll be glad to know, and who would know better than you Wilson, that God has stopped taking my friends for now. There were precious few left.

For two years after, you came back to me on random street corners, from a distance it was you, closer to you it was someone else. Oh, if only it had been you; if only it had been a nightmare and that I was finally waking from it.

What is that saying? Only the good die young? I must have done something evil, for here I still am, and you could definitely not call me young.

And so a new day begins…

The leaves on the apple tree outside my window have turned completely brown now and they are notoriously the last to fall which can only mean November is moving into its end phase. I have yet to start my Christmas shopping.

It’s at this time of year that I usually start feeling somewhat nostalgic about Christmas. This nostalgia usually manifests itself in the sudden and incredibly strong urge to sing and record Christmas songs, much to the chagrin of my living companions. How many versions of thatmark singing Silent Night do we need? What about My Grown Up Christmas List? Didn’t Amy Grant and Natalie Cole do definitive versions of that song? What about the Christmas Song by Mel Torme, does that need to be done again…of course not. Still, it’s not something I have a whole heck of a lot of control over.

To me, Christmas is all about enchantment. I definitely have a more difficult time finding the enchantment in life as I grow older. I wind up sifting through my memories of enchanting times to be able to feel it again. The feeling of enchantment seems to be more and more linked to my reminiscences. Wasn’t it great then…wasn’t New Years 1984 the most enchanting moment in time?I am beginning to understand the phrase “the good old days”. Are we somehow biologically predisposed to feelings of enchantment in our youth? And does our ability to feel enchanted about current events diminish as we grow older? It seems that way to me.

But if I daydream into my fondest memories, I find so many enchanted moments there. Christmas songs are like doorways leading into a more enchanted time, a time of innocence, a time when the thrill of being alive still coursed through my cells, from head to toe.

And so a new day begins...

Play mp3

Nobody hands out guarantees
You never said that you would stay
Now you’re gone and I’m alone
But I am gonna find my way

Play mp3

Here’s a distance I need you to cross
Here’s a door that’s wide open
I’lll give you this star
That you could toss
So Far
So Far

It is misery outside; cold, wet, sleety, icy misery. Inside the heat is turned up and I have reached a new place…a new beginning. I have crossed a meridian line and something murky and ancient has become startlingly clear. Something has loosened, while something else has tightened.

We have always been free. We have always been able to break away from the things that seem to hold us in place, only we don’t know it. These seemingly heavy connections are fragile, easily bitten through, easily pulled apart. What makes their strength illusory is the perceived risk associated with unraveling them. Let them go, the greatest risk by far is of not taking the chance. Giving in to the chains means that we will never reach our rightful, purposeful place.

At what point are we just done? At what point, what breaking point do we just walk away from all the things that once seemed so terribly important but have become frustrating barriers to our destiny? The chains are imaginary…they actually have no mass. Don’t pull to hard on them unless you want to discover that what holds us in place is paper-thin; like the Christmas decoration chains we once made from construction paper in Kindergarten, the holding patterns of our lives are fragile to the tug.

The strength we need is in seeing through the illusions that bind us.

Sometimes, when it rains and sleets, the sun shines on the inside of my mind…and all that was clouded over and obscured by misery at once becomes sparkling and transparently clear.

And so a new day begins…

And so this is how it goes.

It’s Stephen, on the phone, in tears,“My Grandmother died this morning.”

We had just been talking about her this morning. I watched the Today Show and there is this segment that always features people who are over one hundred years of age and still going strong.

“I’ll kill myself if I live to be one hundred years old!” I say.

We briefly talked about Stephen’s Grandmother.

She had been extremely frail and in ill health for such a long time now. It was her birthday yesterday. Stephen’s Mom and Dad had organized a little party for her. This morning she is gone. We don’t have any details yet, but I suspect that the thread to life just got too thin. Right now all I can say is that I wish her speed, and light, and finally freedom on her magnificent journey home. The heavens keep expanding as yet another loved one leaves us here to ponder the absurdity of it all.

Have mercy on this day.

And so a new day begins…

It’s now Wednesday and the Jetta is still in the shop. I guess the engine fell out and they couldn’t find it or something. Hmmm. I knew this was going to happen.

A few weeks ago I received the following email from Steve in Kalamazoo, Michigan:

Hey Mark!

Steve
Kalamazoo, MI

Indeed Steve, there are more crazies out there who expect their new automobiles to be rattle free for at least the first three to four years.

As for my Jetta, I dropped the car off Monday morning and haven’t heard a peep out of the service department since. Not a word; silence. Now if only the driver side door could be as silent as the Queensway Volkswagen service department now that would be a happy day. What are the odds?

And so a new day begins…

And so this is how it goes.

I actually had a good nights sleep. How did that happen? I guess I must have been exhausted. Willi isn’t feeling well. I left him alone for too long yesterday. He hasn’t eaten a single thing since Sunday night. Perhaps the stress of being left alone for eight hours. Poor guy.

The Jetta has something wrong with it. Oh what fun. The engine light came on solid and then the engine fired on only three cylinders. Not a good sign. So I read through the car manual to find out what the light means. “Take car in for immediate service when engine light comes on.” So, yesterday morning I drove to the dealership on three cylinders.

“How can I help you today sir.” Says the man behind the service counter.

“There’s something really wrong with my Jetta. The engine light has come on and it’s firing on only three cylinders.”

“Well, we will try to look at it today, but we have to take care of the cars that have appointments first.”

How silly of me, I should have scheduled my car breaking down a week in advance, then I could have made a smart, chic little appointment for it, with little frilly, sparkly things to spruce the whole thing up.

“Anything else you would like to have us looked at today?”

In my head I hear a voice: How about the fact that you are sullen and resistant and I am getting strange vibes from you because you are battle fatigued from dealing with all these unreasonable people commonly known to you as the customer. Customers have a way of becoming overly unhappy and demanding when their brand new thirty-something thousand dollar car is behaving itself badly. I am looking for the service department. If I wanted the lip service department I would go to any government office and stand in line for an hour with a bunch of overheated, nose-running, tubercular-coughing, parka-wearing, smelly people.

“Well, you could look at the CD player since it now only skips when it’s playing.”

“Anything else?”

Anything else. Did he say anything else? I’m sure he said, “Anything else?”

Ok… lets try this again.

“Well, there is that rattle in the driver’s side window. You guys can’t fix it. I’ve been here five times in the last year. Your people can’t seem to handle it. It sounds like the window is loose, but your guys can’t fix it.”

My blood pressure is beginning to spike. There is a part of me that is starting to feel unhinged. I want to bury my head in a pillow and scream, but which pillow? I want to throw things, but which things?

“We'll have a look at it again sir.”

How interesting…again then…looking at it again.

This is the sixth again.

How about fixing it once and for all? I am losing confidence here, not to mention a part of my mind. I have to let you know that it’s pretty much a done deal that I will never buy one of these shitass-fuckedup Volkswagen contraptions again. But you should really do something about this rattle because it is driving me out of my friggen tree. If you fix one goddamned thing…fix the rattle. I can deal with the three cylinder thing myself…but God have mercy on us all and fix the mindfucking, Chinese water torturing rattle!

Thank you.

And it all started out so pleasantly about the dog. You just never know which ditch I will skid into.

And so a new day begins…

The weekend was all about computers. I now need to strain to remember a time before computers. I think it was 1983. My brother bought his first computer then. I remember thinking it was an oddity. So, what can this thing do? What would you want one of those things for? To do calculations…ya…and to do word processing. Oh. Word processing? What is word processing? Why would I need that when I already have a typewriter?

This thing had a tiny built-in screen approximately four by five inches in size. It had no mouse, and the keyboard would also double as the lid to the computer. Lid? Since when do computers have lids? This one did. We call those types of computers laptops now. The Osborne would have been an extremely uncomfortable laptop. Does anyone out there remember this thing?

Back then I certainly never imagined just how this little personal computer idea would transform itself over the next decade, in the process changing the world we lived in so completely. Nineteen years later it has now become quite common for an entire weekend of mine to revolve around computers. I am saying “computers”, meaning plural. There were at least six of them involved in this weekend; three of them mine, two of them Rob's and one of them Yvette’s. So, since Friday night, I’ve been formatting them, configuring them, networking them, defragging them, and to a lesser degree, even using them. I’m using one right now. What was life like before computers?

I want to say… more soulful.

Life had more meaning and more feeling in it before computers. Or did it?

Perhaps.

Or is it just that I was young then and it always seems that life is more meaningful to the young; they have more to lose.

Sunday morning the snow was still coming down. The trees were bending under the weight of the wet snow that had been accumulating all night. Still, as the day went along, it continued to snow until finally there was nearly half a foot covering the ground.

It’s winter Mark. Yes indeedy do.

Rob came over Saturday afternoon with two computers. We spent the entire afternoon and evening configuring and setting up his new computer. There are now more Windows Updates than there are people in all of Canada. Finally, we networked his computers together and called it a day, but not before watching the very first episode of the Sopranos on DVD, which Rob had never seen before. Of course he was instantly hooked. By the time we went to bed it was well past 1:00am.

Since Rob didn’t feel like driving home in the snow, he stayed over and slept on the futon in Stephen’s office. In the morning Stephen cooked us all a hardy breakfast, consisting of thick slices of ham, sausages and BBQ beans.

Before noon Rob packed up all his computer gear and headed back into the city. At one point in the morning I have taken a few pictures of Rob with my digital camera to good effect. In the afternoon I did some work on one of the pictures in Photoshop, (once again using a bloody computer) bringing out things in the photo that were just underneath the surface.

As I said yesterday, I vow not to procrastinate with my Christmas shopping. I will start today, even if it means just buying one small gift for myself…like a new bathroom. I swear it!

And so a new day begins…

The snow started falling Saturday afternoon and kept right on falling well into Sunday afternoon, for an accumulation of about six inches. Not bad for November, even if a little unusual for this time of year. Immediately the snow transformed itself into a photo opportunity. It’s been my plan to change my website banner from month to month to reflect the change of seasons, so naturally when I saw how pretty the snow looked this morning, I immediately grabbed the chance to capture some images in the snow, in the hope that I would have something I could use for my holiday layout. I want December to have snowy, happy holiday imagery, so I went into the basement and brought out the box of Christmas tree decorations and hauled some of them out into the snow for a wee photo shoot.

I hear Stephen’s voice in my head as I am setting up the decorations in the snow, “You should make a wish list.”

“Good idea”, I hear my inner voice saying. Hmmm, let me see…

Wish List

1. I wish to be happy.

End of Wish List

Christmas and the holidays are quickly approaching. I swear I will not wait until the last minute to do my shopping…not this year. I swear it.

And so a new day is practically over…

The leaves on the apple tree outside my window have finally turned to yellow. They are usually among the last to go. Once they fall, there is no turning back from winter. Today they are just yellow, but I will keep you posted.

“Lighten up Mark”, Amanda will say.
“I am lighter than a fart in the dead of winter”, I will say.

When I was twelve, I had a very short yet interesting conversation with the wife of one of my father’s business associates. I was twelve years old. We were in Barbados…in those days my family still took vacations…and each Friday afternoon, the Colony Club had a swizzle party to welcome new visitors to the resort. This was the second Friday of our stay, and I was becoming an experienced swizzler. With my fruit punch cocktail in hand, minus the vodka, I proceeded to mingle with the adults, “Sssssswizzle, sssssswizzle sssssswizzle.” I would say to each person that I encountered giving myself the impression that I was being every so talk-show-cool, entirely beguiling and floating from one unexpected victim to the next like helium, all the while stirring and sipping my cocktail in a manner which I imagined could only be perceived by others as devastatingly sophisticated. I had a lot of hair then, it must have given me uncalled for bravado.

“Mark Darling”, came the olived complexioned voice of my father’s business associates wife. “Let me give you at little tip Darling….ummm… Repetition weakens.” Her voice like menthol cigarette smoke.

Haaaa?

Oh.

I thought I was being every so light, ever so charming…entirely too adult and in with it like nobodies business. What I was actually being was a twit of one trick pony.

Repetition weakens.

We all must keep our eyes and ears peeled for those unfortunate moments in which we find ourselves lapsing into the swizzle party delusions of youth. I have never forgotten her words and every once in a while I have to remind myself that in the event that one finds oneself fall down drunk on ones own stupidity, one has the option to, at the very least, play it out with more variety. One must make a concerted effort to continually enlarge one’s swizzle party repertoire in order to prevent oneself from becoming overly predictable and in the process inviting the inevitable, yet well deserved ridicule that will inescapably follow such an event.

You said a mouthful Toots.

And so the day begins…swizzle, swizzle, swizzle.

Yesterday I tried to integrate the German language into thatmark.com for my European relatives and friends, but as it turns out it was a slightly greater undertaking than I had first imagined it to be. As it turns out we now have two separate versions of the site. Just so you know, the German version may lag behind by a day or two, time permitting. Also it moves forward from November 9th and only chosen archived entries will be translated.

Once again I want to thank Yvette for contributing her translations efforts to the site and for making me sound good in my mother’s, mother tongue. Some are saying I sound better in German than in English. I say, whatever drops your pants, right?
I will be back to writing my daily blatherings tomorrow. In the meantime I need to build some computers. Just for shits and giggles I recommend that you check out a web journal that I find amusing and hope you will too.

So a new day begins…Inside Gretchen's Head

Today I am introducing my first translations of my journal into another language: German. For my family and friends in Austria, Germany and Sweden, most of whom speak English to some degree but will find the journal entries a lot easier to follow. I want to take a moment to thank my cousin Yvette, for taking time out of her already much too hectic schedule for making such a generous and gracious contribution to thatmark. Yvette already spends some time each day going over my English copy to find the typos that I inevitably make. Thank you so much Yvette for your time and effort, and for being my number one supporter and contributor.

What a trip it is to see my blathering translated into a different language. My German has been rotting away since my last German Language course in high school 452 years ago. Perhaps these translations will help to bring it back a bit.

Unfortunately I’m running very late this morning so I’m afraid I will have to cut it short. And additional thanks to all of you who keep coming back to read thatmark day after day; you know who you are. What a blast.

Yvette, hope you are feeling better this morning. (She was getting a cold yesterday).

And so a new day begins…

Usually when the telephone rings first thing in the morning it’s someone who wants something from me, wants to design my day, wants to set the agenda. When the phone rings, we need to remember our own agendas. “You have an agenda for your day? Since when? I swear you said you were going to do that last week? Don’t you know that my agenda always takes precedence over yours; why else would I be calling you first thing in the morning? How dare you!”

This is how I dare.

I’m sorry that you have things on your plate that you need to get done. Just go and do them. I’m sorry that you want others to know how horribly important and special those things are. Can’t help you there. I’m sorry that you think you can arrange my life without first asking me what my plans are. How presumptuous.

I am sorry.

Believe it or not…I have an agenda too. Only difference is... I am not calling you first thing in the morning to tell you what your agenda will be because of it.

How many ways and how many times can a person say they are sorry?

And so a new day begins…Sorry, but not derailed.

Take a moment
To remember why we now live in freedom
Take a moment to remember the young men
Who were shot to death on the battlefields
Who fell from the skies
Who drowned in sinking ships and pools of their own blood

Take a moment
To remember
Each and every one of the millions of
Men, women and children
Who died senselessly and agonizingly at the hands of war

How many moments would it take
To picture each one of their tormented faces
To imagine the grief-stricken howling that rippled through
Each broken heart
Through the walls of each home
Into the streets
And into the world

Imagine the rivers and lakes of their blood that flowed

Listen quietly for a moment
Can you hear their spine chilling cries for mercy?
Remember them exactly
In their most private moments of terror
How fragile they were
How fragile we are
Wanting to live our simple everyday lives in freedom

Then take a moment
And remember them exactly
And tell them to their faces
It was worth it

And so a new day begins...

Did anyone catch me singing at the end of one of the narrations last week? Anyone who can tell me accurately which narration it was will get a free copy of my CD, “so far”. Just email me with the following info:

• The journal date of the narration
• Your email and mailing address

Worked on the website for a good part of yesterday. It seems that I am incapable of relaxing. Have I become a workaholic? Stephen and I did get around to watching an episode of the Sopranos but then I was back at my computer tweaking the look and feel of thatmark. I have a seasonal thing happening right now so I decided to run with it.

I spent some time talking to Rob on the phone about the significance of internet publishing and how, for better or worse we are all publishers now. How will the world sift through all this digital junk we are creating daily? These are definitely interesting times.

I need to do different, get away from the computer. How about going to see a movie? What movie? Anyone have any suggestions? I’d like to see the new movie with Meryl Streep but I don’t know what it’s called and haven’t the faintest idea if it has opened yet. Does anyone know?

So, the sky is spitting warm drops of rain against my office window, and I am about to take a shower and rinse it off. The rest is all up in the air.

And so the day begins…

Yesterday…all the leaves blew off the trees. Boom…gone. Well not every tree, but most of them. It was as if the trees were just fed up with their leaves and threw them out on the street to fend for themselves. Our neighbor’s maple tree behaved itself like a cartoon. One minute it had all its leaves, the next, there was a perfect circular blanket of leaves at its base and the tree was completely bare. I wonder if the trees suffer from separation anxiety.

I get amazed by the simplest of things these days, don’t I?

I’m not going to post a narration today. From what I can tell from reading my web logs very few people are listening to them. Any comments on the narrations would be greatly appreciated. Are they a good idea, or are they just something that I should forget about? If you don’t want to leave comments on the site you can email me directly with your feedback.

I am going to relax a bit this weekend, just read a book, do some laundry, and watch another episode of the Sopranos. The skin infection I’ve got on my face just makes me think perhaps I’ve been burning the candle at both ends again and need some rest.

I just want to say thanks to those of you who keep coming back day after day. Nothing could be more heartwarming for me than to know that I am reaching people with my writing. It’s all about the story, and the day to day things that make us think about our humanity, our desire to live a more meaningful life, at the same time to face the sadness and despair that comes with an awareness of our own mortality.

All this will end.

In the meantime,

A new day begins…

P.S. Did anyone catch me singing at the end of one of the narrations? Anyone who can tell me accurately which narration it was will get a free copy of my CD, “so far”. Just email me with the following info:

• The journal date of the narration
• Your email and mailing address

Narration (mp3 format)

It gets better. For a good two hours yesterday I sat in the Queensway General emergency room. It sounds worse than it is. As it turns out I have a skin infection on my face. Can’t show you pictures of that because it’s just too disgusting. I think it’s a delayed side effect of the antibiotics I was on a few weeks ago. My immune system was pretty battered by them. Then again it could just be a coincidence. All the wonderful things a person can get…isn’t it riveting?

But while I was sitting in the emergency ward, I saw a thing or two that made me feel grateful. There was a man in a hospital bed across the way from me who had no legs. When I say no legs, I mean no legs, no hips, no pelvis…no nothing. And it made me think about the human spirit; what reserves of strength and dignity lie dormant within each one of us. What can a single human being take? I say, I wouldn’t want to live with half my body missing. Or would I? Yes, it sounds right but I bet it is not that simple. After all we are programmed to want to live even when half of us is no longer there.

The loss of his limbs was obviously not new. I am certain that this was a trip among many to the emergency room since he had lost his legs. I overheard him talking to the nurse about the virtues of morphine. He said it was wonderful, it makes all the pain go away. The tone in his voice had a religious fervor when he spoke of the drug. Even when you have been chopped in half there are things to be enthusiastic about.

The doctor eventually got around to me and diagnosed me as having a very common skin infection which I promptly forgot the name of. He then wrote out a prescription for…you guessed it, antibiotics.

As for the man without legs…I am so sorry. I hope and pray that God knows what he/she/it is doing because I don’t think any of us can figure it out.

And so a new day begins…

Narration (mp3 format)

I went to the ear, nose and throat specialist on Monday morning/afternoon. Now that was a lot of fun. First of all, I had never been to this doctor before and so I made a concerted effort to be early for my appointment, which I was, by fifteen minutes. Down a long narrow corridor there is an open door, and people are overflowing through it into the hallway like a boiling cup of coffee in a microwave. It's like an overheated United Nations, only without the interpreters. I squeeze myself up to the front desk passing several representatives from Afghanistan, Italy, and Poland. Only in Toronto can a person go to the doctor and traverse large portions of the European continent in what amounts to no more than a few footfalls.

Footfalls?

I introduce myself to the ever so chatty receptionist and she hands me a clipboard with a form for me to fill out.“Just demographics”, she says. The waiting room is overflowing with people from all ends of the earth. The chairs are tightly packed together and there are no windows or vents. After filling out and returning the paperwork to the receptionist I sit down and start to read the book I have brought along with me in the event that there is a bit of a wait.

A bit of a wait later…(read 103 minutes) I am beginning to develop a secondary condition for which I am going to need an entirely different type of doctor. I am beginning to have issues with rage control. I am not alone. It is hot. People are beginning to become unhinged; they are starting to grumble under their breath in their respective mother tongues. Despite the fact that there are no interpreters the meaning of their mutterings is clear. It seems that frustration and annoyance sound a certain way regardless of the language in which they are given voice.

Finally it is my turn. Oh goodie! After sitting me down and going over my file…and the please stick out your tongue and say aaaaaah thing, we arrive at the good stuff, “And now for the most uncomfortable part.”…Oh, yummy.

“You will feel a little pressure now”, says the doctor, as he slowly shoves a long tube with a light and camera on the tip of it up my nose and into my forehead.

Pressure? Oh that’s what pressure feels like. I always just thought of that feeling as pain. Hmmm, pressure. Actually, pressure is what I felt in your waiting room for the past hour and a half. That was pressure…this is pain. Ok?

Once again the Canadian health care system had not let me down.

“Well, your exam is clear”, says the very fine doctor. Clear, ha? “We can do a CAT scan.”

Good…very good.

January 22, 2003…oh, what’s the rush? What if I have a brain tumor or something? I guess it can wait.

Pressure…hmmm.

I feel so much better now.

And so a new day begins…

Narration (mp3 format)

I have always been a compulsive journal writer. It’s the way I process my experiences and at the same time it becomes my experience. I can’t conceive of a life without writing, it’s simply the thing I do the most of just after breathing and eating.

Do you like to write? Have you ever kept a journal? Is it something you have ever thought of doing but were afraid to do because someone might read it? Are you comfortable with what is going on inside your own mind when confronted with it on the page? Could you make the time for it? There’s no doubt that there are numerous hurdles that one has to jump over to keep a daily appointment with oneself.

If I look back through my earliest journals, I see how much internal censorship I lived with in my teens and early twenties. Not only was I afraid that someone might know what I was thinking…I was afraid to discover it for myself. Still I wrote with one hand tied behind my back and managed to persevere.

Then I fell in love. It was a good thing I was writing then, because without some help, love can kill you. Falling into anything can be dangerous, but fall into love is the steepest, fastest fall. God help us.

And to add insult to injury I fell in love more than once. Someone once said that the definition of insanity was doing the same thing again and again and expecting different results. Also, hindsight is perfect.

The worst falls are the ones you do in front of the person you are falling for, but where they are left standing…unmoved, unshaken, seemingly unaware…blameless. “Are you alright?” they say looking down at you from a very high place. “What am I going to do with you?” they mumble assessing the damage and wondering if any of it has rubbed off on them. You have fallen and they have not, despite all the obvious flirtations to the contrary …well not entirely…they are confused but definitely, cool, calm and collected. If you look carefully, and who does that, you will see that one foot is already out the door.

Of course there are times when you are the one still standing and someone else has been doing the falling. That can be uncomfortable. Why are we human beings so messy sometimes?

You might think I left something out. Like what about the times where both people fall in love. Ok, well, has anyone seen “I love Lucy” or “The Honeymooners”? You know Fred and Ethel? Well…they must have fallen at the same time, how else would two people wind up together for twenty to forty years. So this is what we are looking at. Anyway you slice it, falling is falling.

Journal writing may not stop the fall, but it can keep you from falling through the floor.

And so a new day begins…

Narration (mp3 format)

Do you want to be remembered, and if so by how many people? Family, friends, your neighbors, your associates, your country, the world? Are you basically a private person or do you long to leave some sort of mark in a public sense? Perhaps if you have children do you see them as your biggest legacy? But what if you don’t? Do you yearn to leave something of yourself that people will remember you by?

Is it art, is it a great invention? How about a novel or a book? Perhaps you are an architect and dream to leave beautiful buildings behind, or do you want to leave your mark in politics, making magnificent changes in the social order? Do you want to be well known or just known well? Do you think about leaving a legacy…is it even important to you? Or would you rather vanish into thin air the minute the air leaves your lungs, and your ashes scattered to the wind, forgotten entirely?

Do we not all want to be remembered, by someone, for something?

And if you answered yes to any of these questions…do you know exactly what you would like your legacy to be? Have you made your mark already? Can you picture the end result? Does it look like you are on track now?

In exactly two months I will be forty-two years old.

And so a new day begins...

It’s miserably grey outside my window this morning. Not exactly the kind of thing that makes one feel all invigorated. In fact, I’ve never been interested in November; it always seemed to be overshadowed by October and December, consequently I’ve never paid much attention to it before. Last night I noticed that the leaves are now aggressively leaving their trees. Hey is this where the word “leaves” derives its meaning? The warms and cools of October have fallen into a consistent chill.

I find myself dreading Christmas prematurely this year. Perhaps if I were only to learn to do my gift shopping early for once, then maybe it would not be quite the drag that I usually find it to be.

Willi was up again at 4:00 am with the runny poops and vehemently insisted that I take him out for a walk. Walking the dog in the middle of the night is hardly up there on my list of favorite activities. There is a certain kind of stillness at that time of night. I imagine as I am walking that in each house there are people cozily asleep in their beds, and I am the only one awake in the world.

When I got back I stared at the ceiling for a long time before falling back asleep. It’s at these times that my body feels loose from the rest of me, where I get a sense of how fragile we are, how tentative this whole thing called life is. Every day is actually another miracle; we simply never know when the gig is up.

By the time I fell asleep I was thoroughly exhausted with all this thinking about mortality and what it means to have knowledge of life and death. I wonder if animals know they are going to die. They are so much smarter than we give them credit for. Willi then cuddled in a ball in the crook of my legs, and I thankfully drifted off for a couple more hours of sleep in the knowledge that at least for now I was not leaving.

And so a new day begins…

Narration (mp3 format)

Who is thatmark? I’m just getting to know him myself. I think he has been building in the background for a very long time. Perhaps he’s the total sum of all my sub-personalities working together. (I didn’t say SPLIT personalities…I said SUB-personalities.) If you stick them all into a room together, and turn off the lights…I think you get thatmark. In some ways he is more than that, but less than this.

He came into being somewhere between the lines of my morning pages, took root, and will not budge from the sofa. More and more he seems to have his way. Some of you will like him now; others of you will grow into him. Yet others may find him offensive, self-centered and narcissistic. Whatever.

Some of you will laugh with him and cry with him, while some of you might just wind up laughing directly at him. Either way, you might find yourself saying…"thatmark…Yikes. Did he actually say what I think he just said?"

I think he is a bit of a loose cannon…but in a good way.

And so a new day begins…with more of that.

Narration (mp3 format)

A best friend is a miraculous thing. I am going to spend some time today remembering my best friends; the ones that are here with us and the ones that are angels in the heavens.

John Lewis... can't wait to see you again sometime

You remind me

Years later

From an echo of a photo

What it is

What it has always been

And always will be about

Love

See how you are!

And so a new day begins...with the idea that sometimes less is more.