3/12/2013 1 Comment Up The Next HillEvery hill leads to....another hill. I think my brain has shut down. So many ideas, so many missions, so many things to do and, well, to think about. My brain has had enough. Or so I would posit as an adequate excuse as to why I am not being terribly productive. Must be something like a brain failure. Why else would I find it so hard to sit down and write? Why do I put off going to out and making images? Why to I find a million exuses for not pulling weeds, cleaning out the garage, working on my estate management case...all the "shoulds" that should be done? And yes, I know how much better it feels to get things done. It is oh so exhilerating to not have duties and obligations hanging over my head. I get that! I truly do. Yet I procrastinate. I put off. I don't do today what I can put off until tomorrow. And somehow I survive. Sigh. Well, it sounds much worse that it really is. I know my deadlines. I know my limits. I know that if I don't take care of myself there will be no one around to take care of business. So there you have it. So all that said, I did write this blog. Tha's something. That's a start. And every moment is an opportunity to start again. And every completion opens another chance complete more. And so it goes.
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3/7/2013 0 Comments Tater Tunes InI can always depend on Tater to tune in. She is always paying attention. She is always on alert. If I move, she moves. If I stir, she stirs. I can never do anything that she does not intuitively know about. Tater's full name is Tater La Totte or Tater Tot depending on how French she is feeling that day. She was named for her color when she was first found in a parking lot up in Mission Grove. Lost and alone, she came to my friend, Kerry, and jumped into his car. He couldn't keep her. I couldn't let her go. Tater tunes in. She is the one I think understands everything I say. Sure, I know I tend to anthropomorphize my animals...animals in general. Sure, I know in my head that she a dog, motivated by food and staying safe, but truly, isn't that something we are all motivated by? Don't we all seek food and safety? If we didn't we surely wouldn't survive long. And I know some of it comes from the natural proclivity of dogs to be part of a pack. So? I seek the same thing. So whenever Tater tunes in, I thank my lucky stars that it is me she is tuning in to. And I think Ching Ching, Miquelito and even Nina (the other members of my "pack") are glad she is there too. Sometimes I think they would sleep right through dinner if Tater didn't rouse them. Look at those eyes. They know. I know they do. They know. 3/6/2013 0 Comments RhodaToday I am saddened to learn that an iconic actress from my early adult years had terminal brain cancer and will most likely die soon. Valerie Harper who played Rhoda Morgenstern on both The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Rhoda was as much a part of my life in the '70's and were those "real" people around me. Rhoda was unique. Valerie Harper was a genious in bringing her to life. The character of Rhoda was quirky and whimsical. She dressed inspired by her own inspirational whims. Was Valerie Harper like this in real life? I don't know. I do know that she gave the world a fabulous gift in her portrayal of Rhoda. Rhoda had neurosies and insecurities much like we all do. She was not afraid to share them and work through them. Rhoda was herself: an important role model for not only women, but everyone who watched and enjoyed her. Valerie Harper is known for her own personal ethics and sense of justice. She stand up for what is right. That, too, is important for us all to see. From all the reports I have heard and read this morning, Valerie is facing what will probably be her last days with grace and integrity. I am sure she felt she needed to share this very personal time in her life with the public because of who she is and what she has represented all her life. Rhoda Morgenstern will live on in reruns forever probably. What a gift. I only wish I could leave such a legacy. Perhaps it is not too late. 3/5/2013 1 Comment Living in the ConnectivityWhenever one of my communication devices fails to connect, I feel lost. Recently, three times actually, I left home without my cell phone. It was the strangest feeling. What if the car broke down? What if I fell and couldn't get up? What if someone tried to reach me with news that would change my life forever like winning the lottery or Santa Claus was real? What if... Well, soon the "what if's" subsided and I was okay. My sense of being cut off from the world faded into a lovely feeling of being free. I relaxed. Then I began to wonder: what does it mean to be "connected"? Most of the time I cannot see my connections. I have Wi-Fi on my computer and cellular airwaves for by cell phone. I am not physically connected to those things. I have no land-line and they tell me that land-line phones are on the way out. Yet I am connected. When I think of you, my friends, my family, my blog readers, I am connected to you even though I cannot see or touch you at this moment. There is a sense of connection. I feel it with every word I type. I am connected to the electronic page with electronic signals sent by my fingers tapping on a keyboard. I have no idea really how it all works...and I really don't need to know. I just know I am connected and it works. And if I look to hard, the connection becomes even more illusive. It is like a feral cat whom you long to pet and feed, but runs when you approach it. Best left to the realm of psychic telepathy. And maybe that is exactly how God works. A friend commented on my last blog about Nothingness saying that perhaps it is in our pursuit of God that we lose our connection to God. Just let it be. The scientist wants proof. Yet even the scientist recoginizes the limits of the science. There is is something beyond what is knowable. And perhaps we are not meant to grasp it just yet. Maybe never. But the connection is there. Between me and you and nature and space. It is in the nothingness and the manifest something. It is everywhere and nowhere at the same time. That is where God lives. That is where we experience God. There is nothing quite like it...nothing. No, I mean nothing. There is nothing like it. Nothing. No thing. No thing like nothing. And how do I know there is nothing like nothing? Because I have done nothing about it for a couple weeks and nothing came of it. I went to a lecture last week on the origins of the Universe where the instructor, a well know professor with access to the Hubel Telescope, who is exploring the outer limits of the Universe, actually posited the theory that it all started with nothing. Nothing. There was nothing and then there was something. And that something came into being in a Big Bang. And the result is the exploding Universe continues to expand into the nothingness, creating, well, creating something. That something is what we call the Universe. It all began with an explosion in the nothingness and then there was nothing but light. And the light continues to travel and expand and create what we now experience. And that is something. Can something come of nothing? I imagine it can. I can being doing nothing and suddenly something occurs to me so I act upon it, thus creating something out of the nothingness. Near the end of the lecture, the professor said something I thought very telling. He was talking about the Laws of Physics and why certain things have to happen in certain ways. Like cause and effect and every action having a equal reaction, etc. Yet he could not and said it cannot be determined how the Laws of Physics came into being. Who or what created those? That, he said, we may never know, probably never can know. That is when he said the most amazing thing. It was the Creator (God) who created them and we cannot hope to understand God. So if I understand him correctly, and I could be wrong, God is the nothingness....which, if I am not stretching it too far, is everything. Everything and nothing. One in the same. And one cannot exist without the other. My brain starts spinning about here. Yet somehow it all makes sense. And in the end, there is nothing we can do about it. Nothing. |
Rob McMurray,
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