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I just stepped out of an old tiny screen, $3 for fresh popcorn, ticket vendor is the concessions stand vendor, crane your neck from springy red velvet seats movie theater. The sun has not yet set and I can see thunderheads over the tin roofs of the funky Key West houses. Bars are cranking up their sound systems (a guy on a stool strumming chords and stumbling through Dave Matthews covers), floors still sticky and smelling of thousands of spilled beers. I have dazedly made my way next door to Sippin Cafe where I sit on a loosely covered couch surrounded by ketchup bottles of paint on tables, tin cans full of pens and paintbrushes, canvases on every conceivable surface. I feel at home in such places, even though my art has never been painted, penciled, except in the loops and squiggles of my supposedly accepted mother tongue recorded across blank pages of endless journals, now generic characters on a screen.
I sit in a coffee shop sipping lukewarm decaf (with a splash of regular, please! When I was young I could drink espresso late into the night and fall into bed without a problem. A big mug of coffee after dark reminds me of high school calculus finals and listening to jazz and smoking cigarettes outside coffeehouses by the beach and writing furiously, passionately, feverish with thoughts into the early New York frosty mornings. Now with a touch of caffeine I toss and turn and etch To Do lists onto the gelatinous backside of my forehead).
Diversions aside, I still sit with a mug of decaf and contemplate the inspiring forms of media to which I have recently come into contact.
The movie I just saw? "Creation" with Jennifer Connelly and Paul Bettany. What a call to arms to create, believe, follow through! To confront and take responsibility for the past, to move forward. And that is just my interpretation of the content. The quality of the film is another show of beauty, although I have to admit I am a sucker for that darkly shot overlay with splashes of specified color to amplify (gently, gently) foreshadowing. The most striking images for me (I have picked up my camera again recently and am seeing things a frame differently): maggots devouring a baby bird (the munching, crunching of delicious buttered popcorn suddenly ceased) and Connelly in a red velvet coat among blood red stalky flowers against a deep green lawn.
Images, ideas, creation of life, creation of art, creation of science.
Lo mismo.
On passage from Grand Cayman to Isla Mujeres, journeying across the sea, I finished reading "Into the Wild" by Jon Krakauer. Everyone knows the story right? Young man starves in the Alaskan wilderness after giving away all his money and living as a vagabond across the West. The West! When I was in college my first roommate was from Buffalo and spoke constantly of going 'out west.' I was from California and had no concept of "out west." She wore cowboy boots and tromped through northeastern forests and dreamt of Oregon. I fled the west, fled my family's Oregon trail covered wagon, Strawberry Hill naming history, ignored the majesty of the Grand Canyon, of the glacial lakes of the Sierras of my childhood. For awhile at least.
I admire, identify with, feel like I know several Chris McCandless'. I myself was not so bold and brave, idealistic and intellectual, reckless and fickle in my early twenties. Or maybe I was but in a different way. Regardless of any comparison, I find the story fascinating and inspiring. We all gotta die somehow. Some of us die young, some old, some exactly when they are supposed to. Supposed to? We all die, we might as well be as bold and honest and wonderful to each other as we can be.
And Krakauer's writing vacillates between a neutral, soothing cadence and a breath-stealing gallop, especially when he speaks of his own adventures.
In Isla Mujeres I began "Half the Sky" by Nick Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn.
It is taking me to Africa and Asia and welcomingly shaping my future. To say it is about oppressed women is inaccurate, even though the majority of the text addresses social injustices that target women around the world. The intensely propagated message of the book, however, is that the smallest of efforts made by anyone, in developing or developed countries alike, can tackle enormously daunting quandaries worldwide.
It's slightly disconcerting while I turn over in my air conditioned bunk on a multi million dollar mega yacht after getting tumbled on margaritas to read how a few dollars a year spent on school uniforms can keep girls in school longer thus decreasing unwanted pregnancies thus decreasing abortions or obstructed labor injuries or death.
And that I can help by becoming aware.
Just reading and refusing to ignore, to end the message when I end the book, is a beginning.
I am now creating my sequel.
I am surrounded by artists, by wordsmiths, by generous, bold people.
I am surrounded by inspiring films and books and art.
I am surrounded by multitudes with a chance.
I am recharging and dreaming and connecting. My plans are vast and jumbled and endless.
I am thankful to have visions for the future. They may be constantly changing, but at least I have them.
Because in the end, we all need to create, we all need to empathize and act, and we all need to die living the life we believe in.
I sit in a coffee shop sipping lukewarm decaf (with a splash of regular, please! When I was young I could drink espresso late into the night and fall into bed without a problem. A big mug of coffee after dark reminds me of high school calculus finals and listening to jazz and smoking cigarettes outside coffeehouses by the beach and writing furiously, passionately, feverish with thoughts into the early New York frosty mornings. Now with a touch of caffeine I toss and turn and etch To Do lists onto the gelatinous backside of my forehead).
Diversions aside, I still sit with a mug of decaf and contemplate the inspiring forms of media to which I have recently come into contact.
The movie I just saw? "Creation" with Jennifer Connelly and Paul Bettany. What a call to arms to create, believe, follow through! To confront and take responsibility for the past, to move forward. And that is just my interpretation of the content. The quality of the film is another show of beauty, although I have to admit I am a sucker for that darkly shot overlay with splashes of specified color to amplify (gently, gently) foreshadowing. The most striking images for me (I have picked up my camera again recently and am seeing things a frame differently): maggots devouring a baby bird (the munching, crunching of delicious buttered popcorn suddenly ceased) and Connelly in a red velvet coat among blood red stalky flowers against a deep green lawn.
Images, ideas, creation of life, creation of art, creation of science.
Lo mismo.
On passage from Grand Cayman to Isla Mujeres, journeying across the sea, I finished reading "Into the Wild" by Jon Krakauer. Everyone knows the story right? Young man starves in the Alaskan wilderness after giving away all his money and living as a vagabond across the West. The West! When I was in college my first roommate was from Buffalo and spoke constantly of going 'out west.' I was from California and had no concept of "out west." She wore cowboy boots and tromped through northeastern forests and dreamt of Oregon. I fled the west, fled my family's Oregon trail covered wagon, Strawberry Hill naming history, ignored the majesty of the Grand Canyon, of the glacial lakes of the Sierras of my childhood. For awhile at least.
I admire, identify with, feel like I know several Chris McCandless'. I myself was not so bold and brave, idealistic and intellectual, reckless and fickle in my early twenties. Or maybe I was but in a different way. Regardless of any comparison, I find the story fascinating and inspiring. We all gotta die somehow. Some of us die young, some old, some exactly when they are supposed to. Supposed to? We all die, we might as well be as bold and honest and wonderful to each other as we can be.
And Krakauer's writing vacillates between a neutral, soothing cadence and a breath-stealing gallop, especially when he speaks of his own adventures.
In Isla Mujeres I began "Half the Sky" by Nick Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn.
It is taking me to Africa and Asia and welcomingly shaping my future. To say it is about oppressed women is inaccurate, even though the majority of the text addresses social injustices that target women around the world. The intensely propagated message of the book, however, is that the smallest of efforts made by anyone, in developing or developed countries alike, can tackle enormously daunting quandaries worldwide.
It's slightly disconcerting while I turn over in my air conditioned bunk on a multi million dollar mega yacht after getting tumbled on margaritas to read how a few dollars a year spent on school uniforms can keep girls in school longer thus decreasing unwanted pregnancies thus decreasing abortions or obstructed labor injuries or death.
And that I can help by becoming aware.
Just reading and refusing to ignore, to end the message when I end the book, is a beginning.
I am now creating my sequel.
I am surrounded by artists, by wordsmiths, by generous, bold people.
I am surrounded by inspiring films and books and art.
I am surrounded by multitudes with a chance.
I am recharging and dreaming and connecting. My plans are vast and jumbled and endless.
I am thankful to have visions for the future. They may be constantly changing, but at least I have them.
Because in the end, we all need to create, we all need to empathize and act, and we all need to die living the life we believe in.
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