Nothing about life is constant.
Things change. People change.
And sometimes people move on.
I am a creature of summer. It has long been my favorite time of the year,
But the summer of 2009 has been challenging, disrupting, disconcerting.
A colleague departs for that next great adventure.
One chapter ends and another begins, for him and for me.
This is life.
Always unsettled.
Always evolving.
We move on as best we can.
We search for our own next adventure.
Thursday, July 09, 2009
Wednesday, July 08, 2009
Life is Fleeting
I didn’t want to share my thoughts on Michael Jackson until some of the dust had settled, until the media horde had found something else to talk about.
My initial reaction upon learning that Jackson had died was a feeling of indifference.
I had, after all, become less interested over time in what I thought he had become as a man and as a musician.
But then one night I went into the spare room in our town home and pulled out the Jackson Five album, the one I had sung along with many years ago as a kid on Palfrey Avenue.
I’d run upstairs, close my bedroom door, pick up anything that resembled a microphone and pretend that I was just like Mike.
I would sing and sing and then sing some more, all the time mimicking Jackson’s moves as best that I could.
I chased the dream. And while my music career was much different and much shorter than Jackson’s, I can trace its origin back to those days, that record.
When my band broke up, I searched for that next great adventure.
Eventually, I was hired as a newspaper writer.
Funny thing, as a journalist, I’m still searching for that groove.
Then you get to that point when one column fades into another and one month blends into the next.
Before you know it, the days are disappearing at an increasingly expeditious pace.
It happens.
Sometimes we let the groove become a grind.
Then there are those moments when something grabs you out of the abyss, an event that tugs at your deepest emotions.
Sometimes death can be a reminder as it rips another stitch from that fabric which has blanketed us with hopes and dreams and ambition, with the courage to try things we never imagined would be possible.
In those days, when I sang along with Michael, I was inspired. I was a December kid who dreamed and imagined and expected to live one hundred years.
While Jackson and I have never been any closer than complete strangers, I once lived a part of my life vicariously through him.
But it is so easy to lose our way, to forget what it was like to make the most of every day, to test our abilities and our comfort zones.
With Jackson’s death, there is, for me, this gripping and unsettling warning: Life is fleeting. It is what we make of this time on earth that will define who and what we are.
I am now looking more closely than ever at that man in the mirror.
My initial reaction upon learning that Jackson had died was a feeling of indifference.
I had, after all, become less interested over time in what I thought he had become as a man and as a musician.
But then one night I went into the spare room in our town home and pulled out the Jackson Five album, the one I had sung along with many years ago as a kid on Palfrey Avenue.
I’d run upstairs, close my bedroom door, pick up anything that resembled a microphone and pretend that I was just like Mike.
I would sing and sing and then sing some more, all the time mimicking Jackson’s moves as best that I could.
I chased the dream. And while my music career was much different and much shorter than Jackson’s, I can trace its origin back to those days, that record.
When my band broke up, I searched for that next great adventure.
Eventually, I was hired as a newspaper writer.
Funny thing, as a journalist, I’m still searching for that groove.
Then you get to that point when one column fades into another and one month blends into the next.
Before you know it, the days are disappearing at an increasingly expeditious pace.
It happens.
Sometimes we let the groove become a grind.
Then there are those moments when something grabs you out of the abyss, an event that tugs at your deepest emotions.
Sometimes death can be a reminder as it rips another stitch from that fabric which has blanketed us with hopes and dreams and ambition, with the courage to try things we never imagined would be possible.
In those days, when I sang along with Michael, I was inspired. I was a December kid who dreamed and imagined and expected to live one hundred years.
While Jackson and I have never been any closer than complete strangers, I once lived a part of my life vicariously through him.
But it is so easy to lose our way, to forget what it was like to make the most of every day, to test our abilities and our comfort zones.
With Jackson’s death, there is, for me, this gripping and unsettling warning: Life is fleeting. It is what we make of this time on earth that will define who and what we are.
I am now looking more closely than ever at that man in the mirror.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Words
Sometimes we just need an escape, be it a cozy tree house, a Sunday drive or a even a blog.
This is my escape.
These are my words.
None may see them but me. But that does not matter.
For they are my words.
This is my escape.
These are my words.
None may see them but me. But that does not matter.
For they are my words.
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