30-Day Finale; TMGI Day 30

Thank you for taking the

Time to humor

My 30-day challenge

To see if I knew more

Than I realized on

How to resource

The inspiring thanks

Through my protracted discourse.

 

Gratitude for words,

For coffee and effort;

Design, my grandfather,

And Rabindrath Tagore;

 

For rolling my car,

And my arm’s ink;

For Abracadaba

And a shave at the sink.

 

Inspired by mercy,

And music of swing,

By enjoying the process,

And by things not seen;

 

By the concerts I’ve attended,

And when the desert does rain;

By opera, Pavarotti,

And by a teacher named Jane.

 

Inspired by Rome,

The City Eternal;

By driving alone,

And a love paternal.

 

Grateful for the struggle,

For tech low and high;

For Caravaggio’s art,

And for candles in pie.

 

The one final thing

I’m inspired by too

Is that time was taken

To read these by you.

 

Happy Thanksgiving.

 

Giving Thanks Day; TMGI Day 29

I like Thanksgiving.

I like that it’s not called ThanksTaking.

 

Even though much of what we all do on Thanksgiving involves taking in quite a bit, it is hopefully done surrounded by the people in your life we most cherish – whether family biological or family elective, family nonetheless.

 

I like that there is a holiday – a federal, nationally recognized holiday, no less – whose sole purpose is to remind us to be thankful, to be grateful: for the people in our lives, for the things that we have, and for the things we don’t have, too.

 

And while I believe strongly that giving thanks to whatever higher power, god, or deity in which you might believe is something that should happen more than once a year, I also believe that that’s your business.

 

Thanksgiving can offer an opportunity to give thanks in a different way.  It can be a day to give thanks to each other.  Thanks for someone’s friendship, dedication, or commitment.  Thanksgiving can be a day to give thanks for other’s patience with us, tolerance of our shortcomings, or willingness to reach out when no one else has.  It can be a day that celebrates the unsung sacrifices others make so that we may flourish in our own lives.

 

It can also be a day of giving thanks for the never-ending opportunities we have to begin to make changes in our lives that take us toward being better versions of ourselves.  Like Gabriel García Márquez wrote about one of his characters in the book Love in the time of Cholera, “He allowed himself to be swayed by his conviction that human beings are not born once and for all on the days their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them over and over to give birth to themselves.”

 
So maybe Thanksgiving can also be a Birthday of sorts. That by engaging the mechanisms of humility and gratitude in a more integrated way, we can begin anew:  both cultivating and discovering a life that doesn’t only pay homage to the merits of thankfulness on the 4th Thursday of each November, but does so throughout the year.

 
This year, put a few candles in the pumpkin pie and blow them out before you serve it.  If anyone asks why, just tell them it’s our birthday.

 

 

Cutting Room Floor; TMGI Day 28

With the Month of Gratitude and Inspiration coming to an end, I thought it would be a good time to share some of the ideas that were in the works, but for one reason or another didn’t quite merit their own article.  Some were too specific as not to be conducive to a longer piece, and some were just dead ends.  They’re all still things for which I’m grateful, or by which I’m inspired…they just didn’t make the final cut of the movie; they were left on the cutting room floor.
In no particular order…

Soccer

University Campuses

Little League

Sleeping/Naps

Trigonometry

Multi-Lingualism

Comedy

Atoms/Molecular Biology

The Casa

Fire

Forgiveness

Astronomy

Baking from Scratch

Christmas Specials on TV from the 80s

Scary Movies

Loyalty

Playing in a Band

Healing

Authenticity

and Goats.

The Other Michelangelo; TMGI Day 27

The first time I heard of him, I was intrigued.
The first time I saw a picture of his art, I was impressed.
The first time I saw his art in person, I was inspired.
Perhaps lesser well-known than Michelangelo Buonarroti (painter of the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling and wall, sculptor of the Pietà, the David, and all-around prolific Renaissance icon), Michelangelo Caravaggio inspires me.

A troubled and dichotomous man, Caravaggio was lauded and exiled from almost every major region of Italy.  Notorious for being a streetbrawler, he often got himself into trouble because of his proclivities for talking with his fists.  He moved from his home in Milan to Rome after being involved in several fights, culminating in the wounding of a police officer.  At only 20 or 21, he fled to Rome – homeless and penniless – with only his considerable talent to support him.  After a couple of years there, his work caught the attention of a Cardinal, and Caravaggio was elevated in stature.  After several years of continued atristic success, he was known as the most famous painter in Rome.  His standing changed irrevocably, however, when in 1606 he killed a man in a fight over a woman.  He fled to Naples, then to Malta where he accosted a knight and had to flee to Sicily, then back to Naples.  It was here that an assassination attempt was made on him.  He survived, but his face was likely somewhat disfigured as a result of the attack.  Perhaps tired of the constant fleeing and hiding, he wrote to Rome to ask for a pardon for the murder from 4 years previous.  He took a boat to Rome to receive that pardon, but never made it.  He died of fever on the trip.  He was only 39.

Of course, it isn’t Caravaggio’s lifestyle or violent tendencies that inspire me.  What I find fascinating, what I find inspirational, is that a man who lived so fast, with so much tumult, and with such anger, could also create such beauty, redefine the direction of art, and perfect a technique that is so characteristically his own.  Caravaggio’s style, especially in his later works, are focused on a more realistic depiction as opposed to the histrionic implements of many other Renaissance artists.  But it isn’t just the realism that is striking, it is the use of light and dark.  His paintings seem to give off light, and yet be incredibly dark.  In his paintings like

St. Jerome, David With the Head of Goliath, The Entombment of Christ, and The Incredulity of St. Thomas, the stark contrast between the dark background and lit foreground are dramatic. The wrinkles on St. Jerome’s brow, the grotesque expression on Goliath’s face, and the hands, faces, and wound in the painting of St. Thomas take on not only a tangible quality, but feel slightly less like paintings and slightly more like we are witnessing these moments in-person.

My favorite Caravaggio work is The Crucifixion of St. Peter.  It is huge, and it is imposing, and spectacular.  Famously crucified upside-down, the painting shows St. Peter being lifted, feet first, in the moments before his death.  With an almost completely black background, and the other men’s faces obscured, the only face to be seen in St. Peter’s, and he almost glows in the center of the piece in white light.  His body still strong, his face showing fatigue and realization more than fear or saddness, the painting seems to be moving, and a picture happened to be taken at just this moment.

As a man who vascillated between his darker tendencies and his illuminating talent, it’s no surprise that he would one day be famous for the same qualities in his paintings.  Caravaggio painted his life.  For better or for worse, he was clearly aware of the struggle within and found ways to show that in his work.  Aside from the staggering beauty of the work, and revolutionary style, what is most inspiring to me is that no matter what the subject matter, no matter what the theme, the harder Caravaggio’s life got, the more distinct and contrasting his paintings became.  In the struggle between his own tendencies, his work reflected the knowledge that when a light comes on in a dark room, the darkness is filled with light, the light doesn’t succumb to the dark.  And maybe through his work, he was hoping that neither would he.

High Tech, High Touch; TMGI Day 26

One morning last week, I looked over a research paper by one of my clients who goes to school out-of-state, communicated with several teachers at 4 different schools in 3 different cities, I  bought a couple of Christmas presents, chatted a few times with an old friend who lives in Texas about our shared enthusiasm for coffee (which came up after he read THIS), and studied up on eukaryotic cell biology and the nuances of Article 2 of the Constitution in preparation for work this coming week.

100 years ago, I couldn’t have done all that…at least not in a few hours.  The research paper alone would have taken days and days in the mail not only to get to me, but to get back to the student.  Nope, the reason I was able to accomplish these things in only a few hours is simple:  technology.

As our technological capabilities have increased exponentially, the constant and consistent debate is in weighing the pros and cons of this ever-expanding automation.  And as this debate rages on in contexts economical, ethical, and educational, this month’s theme of inspiration leads me to the point of intersection where human interactions are enhanced by technology, and where technology is enhanced by human interactions.  High tech, high touch.

Technology is like money or power: not inherently good or inherently evil, but which it becomes is completely dependent on how it is used.  When I see technology being used in ways that can draw us closer together – especially in ways that at one time would have sounded like science fiction – it’s an example of the best of what we can accomplish.  When sending a text message is all that’s required to donate to something like Haiti earthquake relief, technology increases our ability to reach each other.  A parent can record a few seconds of video on their phone of their giggling toddler and send it instantly to any number of friends and relatives, near and far.  Family members seperated by distance can now video chat as easily as make a phone call.  In each of these cases, higher tech leads to higher touch.

The high tech/high touch phenomenon doesn’t just exist from technology to people, but from people to technology too.  In other words, our experience with the technology can either encourage or inhibit our willingness and likelihood to use it again, which can, consequently, increase or decrease our connection to others.  This is the reason, ultimately, why Apple is so successful.  The interface and interaction between a person and device is as much a priority as the performance and software itself.  Not just in the tactile response of the keyboard – which is such a satisfying feeling – but in the flow of the operating system, the intuitive choice making, and the engineering to make it look beautiful too.  At one point, the title of this article was going to be “iDrank the kool-aid” because after ending years and years of Window use, my enthusiasm for Apple and their Macs is so high.  But my enthusiasm is so high particularly because of the high tech/high touch factor that is innately Apple – in the Mac, iPhone, iPad, and iPod.  There is great opportunity for creation and for connection through technology, and there is great value to the hand-made and analog.  If we can find more and more places for these things to intersect, then not only does our shared interconnectedness increase, but the technology that facilitates that connection can promote and protect it too.

Everybody Loves Ramen; TMGI Day 25

There are some days, I have to admit, when the selfishness and greediness of others reeeeally gets to me.  It confounds me.  And instead of going on a rant about it, I decided to employ one of the final days of this 30-day challenge and spin my frustration in a more positive light.  So….

Today, I am grateful for the power and gift of the struggle; for earning the hard “B,” for months of training to finish 4th in the race, for the hours of studying, for the years of doing without, for the times in college when all I could afford was to put $7.36 worth of gas in the car.  I am grateful that as a child I wasn’t taught to measure happiness by posession, and that not getting everything I might have wanted helped me learn the value of patience and to value what I DID have.  I am grateful that I didn’t grow up expecting that I was entitled to whatever I desired, and that my link to a concept of self-worth was not ultimately connected to materialism.

College might be the greatest biome in which to study a twenty-something’s ability to make-do with what’s available.  For many, even affording college in the first place is a stretch, and can bring a steep financial burden; a privilege to be sure, but not necessarily an easy one.  Low-cost and no-cost activities and food were as much survival skills as studying and test-prep were.  We knew when the cheaper movie tickets were sold, or better yet, where the dollar theater was.  Going to the gym on campus was a regular activity especially because its fees were automatically included in our tuition and therefore already paid for.  Often times, deciding whether or not to attend some club meeting or job fair or information session was influenced by whether there’d be free food there too.  Everybody knew that if you wanted people to show up to your club’s event, advertise free food!  Not because we were destitute, but because it was a way to make what we did have last just that much longer.  I saw friends splitting a pizza 5 ways, stocking up on crackers from restaurants because they were free, or subsisting on days and days in a row of generic cereal or bread and bologna.  And there is, of course, the pièce de résistance, the ubiquitous go-to, sure-fire, never-fails, 21-for-a-dollar, college staple: ramen.   It was hot, it was pretty good, and it was cheap.  Cha-ching.  There was even a group of “ramen gourmets” who would have ramen parties and experiement with mixing different flavors of ramen and had a whole strategy of ramen-tracking to find the best and cheapest kinds at near-by grocery and convenience stores.  A bit extreme? Maybe.  But there were definetely weirder groups or practices than that in college, and the ramen group had fun; but it’s a great example of how “the struggle” doesn’t necessarily mean “the suffering.”

The best part of “the struggle” is that it can be an experiential pathway to empathy.  Even as most people move beyond the struggle, there are always going to be others who haven’t, who can’t, or never will.  Having even anecdotal access to what this means or feels like can serve as the sometimes-necessary reminder that we have great opportunity to help those around us.  The goal isn’t for one person to fix everyone’s problems, the goal is for each of us to do what we can, when we can.  That can mean living a life traveling the world doing missionary work with the people and in the places most in need; it can mean volunteering at local shelters and human-service facilities; and yes, it can mean financial donation at your place of worship or to charities you know and like.

So, today I’m grateful for “the struggle.”  I’m grateful for its lesson, and for its lasting impression.

La Vita è Bella; TMGI Day 24

Any list of my favorite movies will include, in no particular order, The Shawshank Redemption, Braveheart, The Usual Suspects, Glengarry Glen Ross, and Life is Beautiful.  Some of these movies are so well written, so cleverly constructed, or such epic stories executed so well that they have stood out as memorable and favorites.  But some art is so sweet, so heartbreakingly lovely, that it’s almost too hard to describe.  When that artistic medium is film, it’s even more rare because films that try to achieve that often go over the line, reach too far, and fall into schmaltz.  But this last movie I listed is pitch perfect.  Life is Beautiful doesn’t reach too far; it is meant to mix satire with drama, comedy with romance.

 
First of all, the movie is in Italian.  If you’ve never seen it, go for the subtitled movie as opposed to the version dubbed in English: so much of this movie is in the subtext of the way words are said and their tone, and this gets lost in the dubbed version.  I tried watching it dubbed once and it felt like when I was 8 and tried to put on and walk in my dad’s shoes – it was clumsy and not very fun after a few seconds.  Subtitles might be a bit of an adjustment if you’re not used to them, but it will only take a short time to become acclimated.

 
This movie takes place in Italy and Germany from just before the start of World War II through to the end of the war.  And with such a brutal and violent backdrop, this movie is ostensibly a love story.  Actually, it’s two love stories.  The first half of the film details the love story between a man and a woman, while the second half of the movie is the love story about that same man’s love for his son.

 
It is in the telling of these love stories and the devices that are used to tell them where the beauty of the movie lies.  Love stories are a dime a dozen.  But told in 1930s Italy with street cars and grand hotels and bolts of red silk being unfurled down rain-soaked steps is…just…sublime.  Running gags with cars and hats and flying keys and broken eggs seem at first to be simple, funny devices that, frankly, are even funnier if you know any Italians personally.  These gags come together, however, in a way that is not only sweet, but endearing and (probably because the lead actor and actress are actually married in real life) rings true.  The second half of the movie takes place a few years later, when the man and woman from the first half of the movie now have a son, and are living their lives, even as the spectre of the war continues to build.  Then in one scene after another, the beauty that was built in the first half becomes dismantled as the war finally sweeps them up in it.  I won’t go into too much detail here, as not to deprive you of the emotional experience of seeing it if you haven’t.  What I will say is that the same devotion and thoughtfullness the man showed the woman he was pursuing in the first half is equally present when comforting and protecting his son in the second half.  Without giving anything away, what I didn’t expect the first time I saw the film was the way some of the themes – both dramatic and musical – from the first half would show up in the second half.  I think it’s safe to say that you just might remember Offenbach for some time after this movie.

 
This movie is small, without being self-conscious.  It is authentic, without being condescending.  And it is a throw-back to the comedies and dramas of the 50s & 60s, with storytelling and cinematography that feels both vintage and modern.  In my list of favorite movies at the beginning of the article, you’ll find extended, bloody battles, prison beatings, explosions, mysterious criminals and a tirade of swearing in Glengarry the likes of which I’ve never heard in any other movie – and they’re all SUCH great movies.  In Life is Beautiful, there is none of that, and it’s equally great.  For that, I am grateful.

Driving Force; TMGI Day 23

I remember the first time I did it alone.  It was only a few miles, and I was following my dad in his car because he had to take it to the shop.  But I didn’t care.  I was 15, and I was driving by myself.

A rush washed through me, and all the cliches of feeling free and invincible suddenly came true.  I had practiced driving many times before with one of my parents, and it surprised me how different the feeling would be with just one less person sitting next to me in the car.  But it was, and I was hooked.

Driving is therapy.  Driving is the interconnectedness of man and machine.  Driving is leather-wrapped steering wheels and the tires gripping the road and custom shifter knobs.  Driving, to me, is contemplative; it is equal parts being painstakingly aware of the road and ensuing responsibilities, and completely leaving everything behind.  I think sometimes about how the first human must have felt the first time he/she traveled faster than they could run or be swept by the river.  I mean, it’s not like they grew up being carted around in the back seat of caveman dad’s sedan.  The concept of speed was, at least for a time, something we either only observed in some animals, or didn’t even understand at all.  And in that first moment a human traveled 75 mph, was he/she giddy?  Was he/she moved by the experience?  Did it awaken something in them?

I think aside from procreating, “moving” might be man’s elemental imperative.  We moved out of the trees, out of the caves, across the lands, across the oceans, and into space.  We crawled, we walked, we rode animals, we made wagons, cycles, trains, cars, planes, jets, rockets, and the space shuttle.  Our evolutonary arc is marked by further expanding movement…and my connection to that inherent compulsion to move is fed as the roads of black asphalt, loose gravel, and unpaved dust move beneath me, one mile at a time.  Driving creates and requires a syncopated orchestration of systems human, mechanical, and natural.  The direct connection of my mental awareness and physical movements to the space-age machine that is my car to maneuvering through nature itself inspires me not only in the action itself, but inspires me toward the possibilities of where we will move next.

Eternal City – part 2; TMGI Day 22

I don’t know if it’s a secret.  But there is nobody in Rome during Christmas.  There were tens of thousands of people in St. Peter’s square for midnight mass, and at least twice that many people there Christmas morning…but to be honest, I have no idea from where they came.  There were no exorbitant  lines at the Vatican museums, the Coloseum, or any of the other churches or museums we toured.  I only bring this up to further demonstrate how much this added to Rome feeling intimate and personal.  The access we had to the spirit of Rome, not by way of throngs of tourists or half-day sprints from landmark to landmark, but in a relaxed, steady, almost private pace that allowed the experience to feel more like reading a great book than being in a foreign country or city.

It’s easy to focus a lot of attention on the great and grand parts of Rome.  It’s easy to get swept up in the scale and immense beauty of St. Peter’s Basilica, the glimmering jewel that it was on our Christmas morning walk.  The Roman Forum, with its relic remnants reminiscent of the height of the Roman Empire, is enough to overwhelm and inspire awe.  Standing at the bottom of the Coloseum engulfed by one of the most famous and oldest symbols of man’s ingenuity ever created coaxed thoughts and feelings I don’t think I ever had before, nor had I words sufficient to represent them.  And while trying to rank or order these places in terms of “favorite,” or “most memorable” would be futile, I will say that the vision of the Pantheon lit at night makes me pause.  For reasons I can’t fully articulate, the Pantheon stands out as being somehow differently beautiful, singularly representative of a world, a culture, an empire that built this very building nearly 2000 years ago.  Even Michaelangelo, not easily impressed and often critical, marveled at it, claiming it of “angelic, and not human design.”  (Yet another thing he and I have in common.)

But the great and the grand weren’t the only draw.  On the contrary, the quirky and quaint, the small and symbolic parts of Rome were the mortar to the big bricks of epic in the walls of our own temple to Rome.  Things like La Bocca della Verità, a giant, ancient face carved in stone was believed to bite the hand off of liars who placed their hand in the face’s mouth; thus the name, The Mouth of Truth.  Across the street from San Giovanni in Laterano is a small chapel which contains la Scala Santa, the staircase believed to be the one Christ ascended to meet Pontius Pilate before his crucifixion, brought to Rome by Constantine’s mother, St. Helena.  It wasn’t just landmarks, though.  It was also taking a coffee in Piazza del Popolo and people watching; strolling up the Via Veneto toward the Borghese Museum; browsing the little Christmas fair in Piazza Navona; sipping a ciocolato at Sant’Eustachio on a cold, late night.

We didn’t run all over the country or all over the continent.  For 10 days, we stayed in Rome.  We took our time, we explored, we wandered, and we got to know a little of the city.  We ate where locals ate, walked everywhere, and had the greatest time.  Unhurried, Rome revealed itself one church, one piazza, one fountain, one cobblestone at a time.  That inspiration I felt, I came to realize toward the end of the trip, wasn’t necessarily put there by the trip or by the city – but instead, the trip, the city, the architecture, the art, the streets, the culture, the history, Rome, brought the inspiration out of me, awoke what had been there all along.  And just as we brought back a small piece of Rome, so too did we leave a small part of ourselves there to rediscover upon our return.  It is in this way, among other ways, that Rome is, as it ever was and ever has been, The Eternal City.

Eternal City – part 1; TMGI Day 21

In 2007, my understanding of what it means to be inspired changed.
In 2007, we spent Christmas in Rome.

After what had been a difficult year, with any number of challenges seeming to hit in rapid succession, one after another, including the death of my grandfather, the idea of leaving to Rome at the end of December was equal parts daunting and exciting.  A much-needed break ultimately tipped the scales in favor of deciding to go, but the weeks leading up to our departure grew increasingly hectic.  I think we all experience those times when it feels as though everything is happening all at once, that there seems to be a cyclical nature to the frequency of when the difficulties pile up, and it had definitely been that kind of year.  In the month leading up to our departure, arranging for plane tickets, hotel, tours, and dinners in Rome was a welcomed distraction.  And by the time mid-December rolled around, we were ready to get out of Dodge.

We flew non-stop from Phoenix to London.  9 hours.  In coach.  Ok, ok, it wasn’t that bad actually.  Was it a bit cramped being that we sat in the 2 middle seats in the middle row? Ummmm….yes.  But we flew at night on purpose, and crossing the Atlantic in a cool, quiet, dark airplane is, I would imagine, considerably more pleasant than if it had been the opposite.  Plus, the excitement of finally being on our way helped make the plane ride even more manageable.  The layover in London was fine, and although I could sense that my circadian clock was ticking oddly,  I was enjoying the trip already.  I think getting a little physical distance between me and the everyday grind was not only a relief, but it also revealed just how much on auto-pilot I had been functioning.

A 2-hour plane ride to Rome, a 30-minute train ride, and several escalators later, we emerged from the Metro station in Piazza Barberini.  It was around 8:30 at night, and drizzling.  Our hotel was a short, yet confusing walk just around the corner.  Three flights up a winding staircase, through a frosted glass door, the desk clerk, an Australian also named Steve, greeted us warmly and showed us to our room.

“Before you unpack,” he suggested, “take a walk down to the fountain.”

At first, the suggestion seemed a bit odd.  We had been traveling for the better part of 15 hours.  But whatever thoughts I may have had not to go were fleeting; we were in Rome afterall, and I didn’t just fly half-way around the world to sit in a hotel room.  We set down our bags, washed up a bit, and headed back out.  Down the winding staircase, out the door, and to the left.  Steven had given us a map, marking the route of our 5 minute walk.  The rain had mostly subsided, and the giddiness had kicked in.

The streets of Rome were quiet, for the most part.  Narrow cobblestoned roads were lined with small shops and restaurants, and there were smatterings of people walking around too, but no crowds, no chaos.

The map showed that we were getting closer, and then about a block or 2 away, a faint wooshing sound could be heard.  As we drew closer, still unable to see it, the wooshing grew louder, and the sound of flowing water filled the air.  We walked down the Via del Lavatore, crossed the Via dei Lucchesi, and saw this, the Trevi Fountain….

There was almost no one around.  Words left me.  I don’t think I had ever seen any man-made thing as beautiful.  And while I’m not one to exaggerate things or jump to unrealistic conclusions, I was keenly aware that what I felt inside me at that moment was inspiration unlike any I had ever felt before, and that this was going to be an amazing trip.