Monthly Archives:

October 2012

Bidding the Ocean Adieu

The deep roar of the ocean.

The break of waves on farther shores that thought can find.

The silent thunders of the deep.

And from among it, voices calling, and yet not voices, humming trillings, wordlings, and half-articulated songs of thought.

Greetings, waves of greetings, sliding back down into the inarticulate, words breaking together.

A crash of sorrow on the shores of Earth.

Waves of joy on–where? A world indescribably found, indescribably arrived at, indescribably wet, a song of water.

A fugue of voices now, clamoring explanations, of a disaster unavertable, a world to be destroyed, a surge of helplessness, a spasm of despair, a dying fall, again the break of words.

And then the fling of hope, the finding of a shadow Earth in the implications of enfolded time, submerged dimensions, the pull of parallels, the deep pull, the spin of will, the hurl and split of it, the fight. A new Earth pulled into replacement, the dolphins gone.

Then stunningly a single voice, quite clear.

“This bowl was brought to you by the Campaign to Save the Humans. We bid you farewell.”

And then the sound of long, heavy, perfectly gray bodies rolling away into an unknown fathomless deep, quietly giggling.

~ Douglas Adams, ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’

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From the Mouth of a Madame

“Doesn’t it seem to you,” asked Madame Bovary, “that the mind moves more freely in the presence of that boundless expanse, that the sight of it elevates the soul and gives rise to thoughts of the infinite and the ideal?”

~ Gustave Flaubert, ‘Madame Bovary’

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Somewhere Between Sea and Sky

“Hark, now hear the sailors cry,
Smell the sea, and feel the sky
Let your soul & spirit fly, into the mystic…”

~ Van Morrison

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That Big Dick

“There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody’s expense but his own.”

~ Herman Melville, ‘Moby-Dick’

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Holding the Ocean in Our Hands

Andy and I first came to Ogunquit over twelve years ago. It was in September 2000, and we had only known each other for a couple of months. It was our first trip anywhere together, and I had no idea what to expect, or how it would work. History had proven that I did not live well with others, or at least that others did not live well with me. How might that translate to a long weekend in one single room with no escape route, hundreds of miles from home? Well, we know how it turned out, and every year since then we have been returning to this Beautiful Place By The Sea, where the magic and gratefulness I felt on that first trip a dozen years ago come flooding back the moment we step into the sea-scented clime. We’re different now than we were then – how could we not be? – but some small part of who we were remains. It is, I think, the very best part, and we hold onto it, careful to treasure it, careful to hold it closest to our hearts.

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The Madonna Timeline: Song #76 ~ ‘I Fucked Up’ -Spring 2012

{Note: The Madonna Timeline is an ongoing feature, where I put the iPod on shuffle, and write a little anecdote on whatever was going on in my life when that Madonna song was released and/or came to prominence in my mind.}

I fucked up,
I made a mistake,
Nobody does it better than myself.
I’m sorry, I’m not afraid to say
I wish I could take it back,
But I can’t…

There’s no more difficult task in the world than learning to say you’re sorry and asking for forgiveness. It’s probably the thing I do worst in life, finding it incredibly uncomfortable to put aside my pride and admit when I’ve been wrong. Though it doesn’t happen often to the practically-perfect-in-every-way, when it does I can now bring myself to say I’m sorry. It’s still not easy, but it’s the mark of a mature adult.

I fucked up,
I made a mistake,
Nobody does it better than myself.
I’m sorry, I’m not afraid to say
I wish I could take it back,
But I can’t…

Perhaps the most blunt title of any Madonna song, ‘I Fucked Up’ was on the Deluxe Version of her most recent album, MDNA. As one of the newer ones, it hasn’t had time to sink in and make a hugely significant impact on my life, though I do think it’s one of her stronger cuts of late – both musically and mentally powerful. It starts off as a slightly sing-songy ballad, one that lyrically finds Madonna owning up to past mistakes. For someone who claims to have no regrets, ‘I Fucked Up’ may be the closest she’ll ever come to truly saying she’s sorry, and the hurt and pain of the ending of her marriage to Guy Ritchie surely played a pivotal part in the emotional display on hand here.

I’m so ashamed, You’re in so much pain,
I blamed you when things didn’t go my way,
If I didn’t, you’d be here,
If I didn’t fight back, I’d have no fear,
If I took another path, things would be so different,
But they’re not…
I could’ve just kept my big mouth closed,
I could’ve just done what I was told,
Maybe I should’ve turned silver into gold,
But in front of you I was cold.
I fucked up, I made a mistake,
Nobody does it better than myself,
I’m sorry, I’m not afraid to say,
I wish I could take it back,
But I can’t…
I thought we had it all,
You brought out the best in me,
And somehow I destroyed the perfect dream,
I thought we were indestructible,
I never imagined we could fall
You wanna know how to make God laugh: Tell him your plans.

As the music speeds up and the track takes off, the story becomes even more wistful and filled with regret and longing. It’s a story that most of us have had the misfortune to play a part in at some point in our lives – the ambivalent heartache of a relationship that didn’t work out, and the little memories and details and hopes of what might-have-been that run rampant across the mind in the loneliest nights.

We could’ve bought a house with a swimming pool,
Filled it up with Warhols, it would be so cool,
Could’ve gone riding stallions in the country side,
With a pack of great danes, racing eye to eye,
We could’ve toured the world in a private jet,
Gotten naked on the beach, all soaking wet,
We could’ve climbed the mountains,
Seen the perfect sunrise,
Written our names across the sky…

Song #76: ‘I Fucked Up’ ~ Spring 2012

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Call of the Sea

My soul is full of longing
for the secret of the sea,
and the heart of the great ocean
sends a thrilling pulse through me.

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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Naked at Ogunquit Beach

As promised this morning, here is the infamous naked Ogunquit Beach shot.

This was taken a number of years ago, and I do miss those younger scandalous moments…

But if I did this today, I’d miss my clothes more.

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Music For Falling

“Every day, once a day, give yourself a present. Don’t plan it. Don’t wait for it. Just let it happen. It could be a new shirt at the men’s store, a catnap in your office chair, or two cups of good, hot black coffee.” ~ Special Agent Dale Cooper

One of the greatest television experiences my generation has had was the first season of ‘Twin Peaks’. Imagined and executed by the wonderfully dark genius of David Lynch, it devoured my obsessional tendencies in the Fall of 1990. I fell completely under the spell of this strange town and its stranger inhabitants, along with the dorky rigid hotness of Kyle Maclachlan’s Special Agent Dale Cooper. One of the most magnificent parts of the experience was the moody music that gave the series its compelling power. Composed by the brilliant Angelo Badalamenti, the music was gorgeously atmospheric, conveying light and shadows, darkness and disturbance. It was haunting, with accents of jazz that bounced around in your head for days afterward. The theme song, sung by Julee Cruise, was perfectly hypnotic, and I’d listen to the entire soundtrack in a trance-like state of meditation and musing. I felt the ache of Laura Palmer’s parents, the tenderness of Donna’s love for James, and the saucy but sad desire of Audrey’s unrequited crush on Cooper. It was music for the Fall, when the impending slumber of winter started sprinkling its drops of drowsiness in the night, and the wind, rushing through the pine boughs high overhead, carried the last vestiges of summer far away.

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Getting Naked in Ogunquit

By the end of the day, I will get completely naked on this site, but for a watch and a pair of sandals, on the dunes hinted at here. Stick around – my word is true, and my promises are honored. (This is a lot of build-up for something that goes on rather regularly here – and here – and here – and here – and here – and here, but I am nothing if not about the empty build-up.) Incidentally, I never thought I’d need sunscreen there

Up until now, only the foxes saw this scene…

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The Seagull

I cannot escape myself, though I feel that I am consuming my life. To prepare the honey I feed to unknown crowds, I am doomed to brush the bloom from my dearest flowers, to tear them from their stems, and trample the roots that bore them under foot. Am I not a madman? Should I not be treated by those who know me as one mentally diseased? Yet it is always the same, same old story, till I begin to think that all this praise and admiration must be a deception, that I am being hoodwinked because they know I am crazy, and I sometimes tremble lest I should be grabbed from behind and whisked off to a lunatic asylum. The best years of my youth were made one continual agony for me by my writing. A young author, especially if at first he does not make a success, feels clumsy, ill-at-ease, and superfluous in the world. His nerves are all on edge and stretched to the point of breaking; he is irresistibly attracted to literary and artistic people, and hovers about them unknown and unnoticed, fearing to look them bravely in the eye, like a man with a passion for gambling, whose money is all gone. I did not know my readers, but for some reason I imagined they were distrustful and unfriendly; I was mortally afraid of the public, and when my first play appeared, it seemed to me as if all the dark eyes in the audience were looking at it with enmity, and all the blue ones with cold indifference. Oh, how terrible it was! What agony!

~ Anton Chekhov, The Seagull

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The Wind of Banners

If You Forget Me

I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.

~ Pablo Neruda
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Joseph Gordon-Levitt & The Sexiest GIFs Ever

In this Magic Mike spoof from ‘Saturday Night Live’, Joseph Gordon-Levitt proves a hotter Magic Mike than Channing Tatum himself. If Mr. Gordon-Levitt wasn’t such a good actor, I’d hope to see him in the sequel. For now, an SNL Strip Skit will have to do.

It seems Saturday Night Live is still good for something after all.

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Fruit of Fall

The fruits of Fall are sometimes more colorful than the flowers that came before them. These are the enchantments of the season that bring their own joyful surprise, made all the more impressive by their unexpectedness.

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