Green Parka Man

Some guy dressed in a massive green parka stood next to me on the train platform. Let’s just say grooming wasn’t a priority for him.

He had a cellphone pressed against his ear. He looked off sideways as he listened to somebody on the other end. 10 minutes later I saw him again as he limped his way up the aisle of my train car, same cellphone pressed against the same ear. Same sideways glance, listening intently.

I never heard him say a word. Could’ve been somebody on a 10 minute rant on the other end, or maybe a conference call he didn’t feel the need to participate in.

Reversal

Last night Cam read me a story. I just finished reading to her and, frankly, I was tired of the tales and didn’t want to read anymore. In a moment of inexcusible laziness, I asked her to read me a story.

"OK, Daddy.”

We were huddled together on our impossibly comfortable couch. I rested my weary head (watching football is hard work!) and listened to her little voice.

She read “Guess How Much I Love You.” It’s a story of two nutbrown hares (a dad and son) in a game of who-loves-the-other-more. They one-up the other in describing their love. It’s a gushy piece of sentimentality, pefect way to sugar coat any evening.

Cam started flipping the pages and reciting key words and phrases on each page. Fragments of the story came together. One scene cryptically strung together with the next. She made hand gestures, put emphasis on certain words, she even said “the end” when she made it to the back cover. I was blown away.

Then she proceeded to re-tell the story a dozen times.

That's when I fell asleep.

Damn, she’s good.

Be a Star

Unseasonably warm out in the burbs today. We’re a bit rainsoaked, but Senor Sol is determined to burn it all away. Sunglasses are holstered for my walk from Union Square to the East Village.

These are giddy days for the Church of Scientology. Tom/Kat will wed and will likely reproduce many more L. Ron Hubbard worshippers. Gotta love dudes that abbreviate their first name. Waddya think? Lawrence? Lothar? Lenny? Whatever it was, Ronny didn’t want to run with it.

I used to live near a Scientologist sect. The Clearwater, Florida HQ. On my way to the beach, I’d see their faithful scurrying around downtown with their baby blue button downs and navy work pants (how come Tom and Katie don’t have to wear them?). Not sure what the Sci-Fies were doing in downtown Clearwater which consisted of a beat up department store, a wig outfit and hat boutique. Apparently, Clearwater was big on the headwear and religion.

Well I’m sure the Sci-Fies are a lovely bunch. And Tom and Katie are a lovely couple, even though she’s a solid 4 inches taller.

Who was Katie Holmes before she hooked up with the Cruiser? And why would the Cruiser ever split with Nicole Kidman? She is the epitome of Hollywood glamor—with a sweet accent to boot. And is Cruise really his last name? C’mon. I’m sure it’s Wojohowitz or something.

Hollywood is a funny place, man. The epicenter for inauthenticity. They pay you gobs of money not to be yourself. Bad name, fix it. Bad nose, fix it. Bad hair, fix it. There’s a Director of Glamor out there somewhere making big decisions. Publicists, creative teams, marketing gurus all brainstorming how you should be.

Your dreams are in Hollywood. Sure you wanna chase em? All you need is a face and a pulse and someone out there willing to sculpt and tweeze you into the next star.

I’ll look for your name in the credits.

Eating Apples Whole

Great weekend. No homework. No obligations. Just fun. Kris took a CPR for professionals course for most of Saturday, which gave me a lot of time with Cam. We went to the park and I watched her climb and run, fall and laugh. It’s like she’s trying out her new limbs, workin em in, seeing what they can do.

She’s quite fearless. Scares the wits out of me when she manages to climb up the monkey bars to a platform 6 feet high with no guard rail. Who designs jungle gyms anyway? They are made out of skull shattering steel, held together by a foundation of exposed cement packs. Nothing soft and cushy to absorb a fall. I think it's a conspiracy by ambulance companies.

Now that Kris is well-versed in CPR and Himelich manuvers, I don’t bother chewing my food. It takes entirely too much effort. The upside? Meals only last a minute or two. And our knives never dirty.

My outdoor soccer season ended on Sunday with a win against the 2nd place team from Waterford on Sunday. We wound up placing 7th in a field of 10. That means there were three teams worse than us—which is a miracle. We were a mess in the spring; people quitting, getting kicked out of games, yelling, crying, moaning. It’s the same thing now, the only diffence is we’re scoring more goals than the opposition.

Perry’s in town tonight, so I’m sure there will be plenty of laughs to report about tomorrow.

Until then, enjoy your Monday as much as you can enjoy a Monday.

G

Born in Burkina Faso

I’ve been writing an annual report for an non-profit org that helps the absolute poorest people on earth take their first steps out of poverty by giving them grants to start a business.

It’s a f-ing brilliant idea, I tell ya.

In the process of working for this org, I’ve learned that I’m one lucky bastard. Top .00001% lucky. The valedictorian of lucky.

It’s hard to hear the conditions these people live in and not feel pangs of guilt. Especially when you’re hearing them over a $2 Starbucks coffee.

They live on 50¢ a day. They survive on one meal of fish flakes a day. They can’t put their kids in school, can’t buy medicine, can’t celebrate weddings, can’t even bury their dead. They have no safe water, no sanitary latrines. They live with crippling diseases (literally), they walk around with fist-sized goiters on their necks. They suffer from polio, rickets, malaria you name it, man. They are caught in the middle of political wars. And on top of all that, they can’t read or write.

Even more shocking: 1/3 of the world lives like this. That’s astonishing, frightening, and sad.

And the only difference between them and us? Geography.

As the president of the org says, “we’re members of the lucky sperm club.”

New Eyes for an Old World

We’re dancing on an eggshell. We’re paving, razing, digging, pulling and pushing with everything we’ve got. Underneath us is a soup of magma at a rolling boil. Pressure’s building inside our lovable blue bomb.

On my way to NY, NY or Asphalt Eden as Mr. Kilbey would say, or Concrete Capital as someone else would say. 1000 miles of road. Bad road. Pot-holed n pock-marked. Terrible for tire alignment. Great for mechanics.

Miles of train track scar the landscape, slicing through backyards. Tunnels, bridges, overpasses, thoroughfares. We have the right of way because we have to get there on time. Time is money. Money is happiness. Happiness is our right. So, outta my way.

It’s acid raining outside and I forgot my umbrella. Nothing to protect me from those tiny pellets as they sting my skin. They hit with a hiss and soak into my bloodstream frying capillaries, red and white blood cells, proteins n mitochondria n nuclei. Perhaps a virus or three perish as it floods my cerebellum, eating away my memories one at a time.

I’m born again. The world sounds colorful but looks looks off key. Right angles mixed with wrong ones. Abstract ugliness. Beautiful in its randomness.

Everywhere I Look, There I Am

Science says about 14 billion years ago, I was born. Actually, it’s the time all of us were born—entering the scene with a big bang. It just took 14 billion years for us to finally meet up.

In the context of the universe, that’s a pretty far out coincidence. Well, I for one, am glad to meet you.

So what is it that brought us together? Just close your eyes and listen. It’s whisper quiet, but you can sense it. That’s the faint push of energy. It’s glacial in pace put doggedly persistent. Unwavering from its commitment to plod onward. It’s been moving through epochs, ages, eras—and there isn’t anything we can do to stop it.

So here we all are, 14 bill and change later, buzzing along, remanants of our lovely big bang, our bodies brimming with cosmic dust. Just enough gravity to hold us together. Just enough energy to push us forward.

I was walking through Grand Central and was struck at the notion that I am part of the world and the world is part of me. You and I aren’t separate. We are all part of this force of energy, part of this sea of consciousness.

The mumbling drunk. The disinterested cashier. The blackberry noodler. The Jehovah’s Witness. The steroided jock. What separates me from them? The image of myself? My projections? And my perceptions? My envy?

I was born from different people, who intern were born from different people—but trace it back far enough, like 14 bill, and you’ll see that, well, we’re in this together. In essence, part of me is moving through you.

That thought may creep you out, but like it or not I’m there, along with the rest of the universe.

Out of Nothing, This

Allright then. After 15 loads of laundry we made it to the next day. Cam has survived her bout with spontaneous regurgitation. The contractions have subsided. The floors are clean. A collective sigh of relief. Back to work.

We’re helping an agency pitch a chain of restaurants (can’t say the name because of our agreement) and it has been an exciting week. We are firing on all cylinders and our product is receiving rave reviews.

My company has been working together for years, but I feel like we’re just starting to engage in something breakthrough. There’s an ease to the creative process that I haven’t experienced beyond a short spell here and there.

It’s playful and fun, which is always the case, but now there’s a speed and efficiency that makes it all seem so effortless.

I used to think I was the ultimate creative partner. I came into every brainstorm with an open mind, ready to accept any idea and any possibility. But I’m realizing now that image of myself was propaganda manufactured by an overdeveloped ego.

At my old agency, I had a lot of good moments with partners, but more often than not I needed to fight and argue in order to be heard. And if I didn’t get heard I’d pout and grumble.

What a baby!

They say I used to shake the walls at my old agency. My creative director used to call it “Goin’ Greggy”—which meant having a shit fit. I got paid a pretty good salary for acting like that.

I often blamed my partners for my reactions, thinking they were stupid. But it’s hard to blame a partner when you’re the one slamming the door.

Sometimes getting to a good idea was a struggle. It still is a struggle, but I’ve learned to enjoy that struggle instead of resist it. That proabably sounds weird, but I’ll blog about that at another time.

I cared about the work, and I still do. But I think I cared about myself more than anything else. I believe it was more about protecting my ideas, than coming up with good ones. I would resist letting other people elevate ideas beyond what I could see.

And I was probably addicted to the feeling I got when someone liked “my” idea.

Today I realize that no idea is your idea. Ideas come from nothing, just like us.

Vomitopolis

Cam has been sick every 20 minutes since 4 a.m. Yesterday was her first day back at daycare. Can you catch something that quickly? With all the disease going around in one of those joints, you're at risk the moment you walk in. It's the epicenter for virus and bacteria.

Right now she's reclining, watching Nemo. She's content. But I'm on edge. In a few minutes, when the waves of nausea return, she'll be back in that hell—taking out everything in a 3 foot radius.

I feel for her, though. What's worse than that feeling? Papercut on the tongue? Turf toe? Jammed coccyx? I dunno.

I loathe that feeling, friends. It unfortunately reminds me of my friend Brad's bachelor party in Tampa. The night started off slowly. 7 or 8 of us at a local pub knocking back a few, tellin lies. Then Bill, the instigator, starts in with the Jagermeister shots. They come fast and furiously. I shot back 5 or 6 and poured another 3 or 4 on the plant behind me.

That stuff is unholy. Part Listerine. Part tree sap. It literally turned me inside out, and wiped 24-hours off the clock. Everybody was in the same pathetic shape. Luckily, Brad and Angela planned for a day buffer between bachelor party and wedding. When the big day came around, we were 50% instead of -300%.

There aren't too many feelings that are worse than the one she's been experiencing. As far as I'm concerned, she can watch Nemo all she wants today.

12 Shots, the Hulk, a Tranny, and a Guru

A guy walks into a bar. He signals the bartender, “Gimme 12 shots of Red Eye.” Bartender lines em up and pours em out. Guy shoots em back one after the other. Bang. Bang. Bang.

Bartender marvels. “I’ve never seen a guy drink so fast.”

Guy says, “You would too, if you had what I had.”

“What do you have?”

“75 cents.”

BWAAAAAAA. I missed ya over the past couple, my peeps. Kris told me that joke and I think it’s a cracker. I thought I’d break the ice with it.

So, what’s up? Anything gnew with you? Seen any good movies? Transamerica is a pretty good one. Recommended. It’s about a transvestite who is about a week from getting surgery to turn his outie into an innie. Then he gets a call from the son he never knew he had. Yikes!

Cam was a princess last night for Hallow’s eve. Since I’m in the middle of a pitch, I wasn’t able to see her get absoultely buggy about some kid who came to our door dressed as the Hulk. Kris says that she ran inside the house and hid under the dining room table for a solid 30 minutes. After a while she did go to Aunt Rose’s house for some candy. Then she tore the house up until 930 riding the high.

To further my inquiry into this thing called enlightenment, I’ve enrolled myself into a course at a place called EnlightenNext in NYC. I’m studying the teachings of Andrew Cohen. He is a modern spiritual teacher/guru and he founded EnlightenNext.

I’ve heard him lecture on two occasions and I like what he has to say. His thinking, in essense, is that we have to get past our own selfish, narcissitic tendencies in order to live a more fearless and authentic life. A lot of spiritual teachings/philosophies say that, but his brand is pretty radical—it means the demise of your own ego.

Other spiritual teachings help you deal with your ego. His teachings actually help you shift your attention away from it so you live from a more real place. A place free from fear and desire and guilt and jealousy and all those unhealthy feelings we all get.

We are so concerned with ourselves that it distorts how we pursue life. If we’re feeling good, we’re having a good day. If we’re feeling bad, we’re having a bad day. In his mind, we put way too much emphasis on how we feel. And we’re distorting reality.

Makes sense, right?

Well, I’ve heard both good and bad things about Andrew. Many people, including some of his former students, dismiss him as nothing more than a charismatic cult leader who preys on the weak-minded. On the other hand, I’ve also heard amazing things about his teachings. Anyway, if you’re interested, I’m going to be writing a little more about this stuff as I discover it.

Be well. And remember, it’s November 1. Don’t forget your train pass like I did.