Category Archives: Deep Thoughts

Art and Life: Living Fully

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Many personal growth sites on the Internet offer lots of advice on how to live better, be richer, be more successful. But few suggest habits and attitudes which enhance the personal, subjective quality of living, the sweetness of moment to moment existence.

For that I suggest taking time from a life of achieving great things to enjoying great things. Listen to arias from the best operas to learn how beautiful tragedy, love and death can sound.

I remember Tom Hanks’ character from the movie Philadelphia playing a recording of Maria Callas singing “La Mama Morta” from Andrea Chenier’s “Giordano”.

This is how the aria is described in the movie. “This is my favorite aria. This is Maria Callas. This is “Andrea Chenier”, Umberto Giordano. This is Madeleine. She’s saying how during the French Revolution, a mob set fire to her house, and her mother died… saving her. “Look, the place that cradled me is burning.” Can you hear the heartache in her voice? Can you feel it, Joe? In come the strings, and it changes everything. The music fills with a hope, and that’ll change again. Listen… listen…”I bring sorrow to those who love me.” Oh, that single cello! “It was during this sorrow that love came to me.” A voice filled with harmony. It says, “Live still, I am life. Heaven is in your eyes. Is everything around you just the blood and mud? I am divine. I am oblivion. I am the god… that comes down from the heavens, and makes of the Earth a heaven. I am love!… I am love.”

I cried along with everyone else in the theater when I saw this scene. I had not heard of the aria before. That scene made the movie, which was otherwise just a good movie about the politics of AIDS.

I like crying at movies, operas, plays. I feel cleansed. No self-help advice can do that for me.

Art is not entertainment, as many people mistakenly think. It’s meant to challenge our comfort zone, push us where we don’t normally go. Life is not just a problem to be solved. It is a lesson to be experienced, never completely learned.

Take time to learn from art, music and poetry. Art goes beyond just living well. It shows us how to live richly and fully.

The Edge

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Sheer Cliff
Standing at the edge of the cliff
We notice there are two possibilities.
One, we can remain, safe, where we are.
Or we can jump into an unknown future.

On one hand,
we are freed by the possibility of not jumping.
But imagining the flight without experiencing it
is a also a kind of suicide.

Seeing both sides of the view is not one or the other,
but a third angle, floating beyond hesitation and demise.
This is the philosopher’s island of peace.

Yet paralysis and demise are ultimately choices.
Most of us are not philosophers.
We yearn to fly.
Flight implores choice.
Our wings need to be developed as we grow.

Decisiveness resides deep in the body.

The Place of Infinite Peace

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Green Infinite Inner PeaceWe all have the ability to know our natural state of inner-peace. It’s always there, always accessible…but not always our main state of being.

For the past few months, as Summer faded through Fall and into Winter, I have felt the pull of darkness in my spirit. This happens to me every year. I’ve written poems about it, fought it, tried to nurture it, but it always happens. Shorter days and colder temperatures dampen my spirits.
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I think, therefore…I think. I think?

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The ThinkerIt sounds comical if you say it enough times, like the sound of a bag of beans or rice plopping on the counter: “Think!”.

In Buddhism or Yoga it may be called any number of things: “monkey mind” or “chattering mind”. I have a more personal pet name: “mental diarrhea”. It’s the constant psycho babble going on the the background of awareness. It follows like a parrot (or, in my case, several of them) sitting on your shoulder, commenting on everything, even about thinking.
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Keep Your Sights High

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Autumn Distance PerspectiveI was jogging in the park today and began looking up at the trees to enjoy all the gorgeous, rich leaf colors. I noticed how light my head felt, how smooth it felt to jog. Since I was focused quite a bit above the ground and also a bit further ahead, the scenery moved slower past me, and the bouncing sensation of jogging became less evident. It felt as if I were floating along, rather than pounding the pavement, or asphalt in this case.
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