I’ve missed you before I miss you, and never to have another conversation encompassing laughter.
Songs shared with fondness and sometimes a tear. A heart felt hug and kiss on the cheek. A friend never taken for granted. Many times. The silent hangs.
The banter of improv without filters and judgement. The warmth of a smile. The happiness of seeing you appear and the anticipation of an enjoyable time.
Just one more day that will never be. Sadness without analysis.
The rain cascades downward, purifying the sky and all things below. Like a baptism, a new beginning. Rejuvenating elegance, tranquil, a serene force of transformative renewal, nourishment and salvation.
The mirror of puddles collecting reflections while undulations created by droplets from a cloud. A splash from a child’s boots. The shiny moisture gathered on the ground.
The scent evokes memories, smiles and a pathway of colors and fragrance revealing a spectrum of sensory sentiments.
The melodic splashes of rain drops landing on different surfaces, composing an enchanting melody, ever-changing the auditory experience, never as before.
A poetic celebration of Mother Nature’s celebrated transformative power of love.
Do we have to stay consistently informed about everything? Do we have to focus on every little minute detail about the clashing of society’s impractical cognitive dissonance? We have seemed to have lost not thinking about anything and just sitting in stillness.
Our eyes don’t always have to be glued to some screen of preconceived images. Our ears don’t need to be consistently plugged with plastic technology interlinking manipulating stimuli.
Unplug.
Reconnect with nature and its environment. There is beauty all around us, beauty all around us. Rediscover tranquility and listen to your breath, listen to your breath.
Appreciate the sensation of respiration. Tune into the rhythm of your heartbeat. Gently cascade your fingers across your forehead and soothe your cognitive process.
Read a book. Let your mind’s eye provide the images, colors and emotions from the words, taking you on a spectacular voyage, created by your imagination.
Or just lay down and look at the vastness of the sky.
After working in family business for a decade, I decided one day to pursue a dream of mine and take an acting class at the local community college. I was bitten and started a journey that I am still on today. I loved college and performing.
I graduated with highest honors with an associate’s degree in drama and auditioned for Emerson College in Boston Massachusetts. I was accepted, received a scholarship for half my tuition and continued my journey.
I rented an apartment on Boylston Street right next to Fenway Park. Sold my Harley-Davidson motorcycle to help pay rent and get me situated. Later, I got a full time job at Banana Republic in the Copley Mall. I loved it.
Working full time, in college full time, performing in plays and musicals, I was loving life. Just walking around that beautiful city was a privilege.
I graduated and lived in Riverdale, New York for a minute with a friend and then off to Los Angeles, CA. I’m still here twenty four years later.
My life isn’t what I pictured from my most creative outlook decades ago let alone a year ago. Much to our chagrin, we aren’t in control of what tomorrow will be or whether we will have a tomorrow. So how can one even consider the probability of a year or ten years from now?
It’s all a conundrum of minutiae.
Life’s trajectory can deviate significantly from our expectations while swimming inside our own pool of ignorance. We need to reset the stimuli in our consciousness and be grateful for the moments we get to live more than imagining what may never be. A consequence of our mental conditioning through learned associations and ingrained patterns. Akin to a Pavlovian dog.
It is good to set goals in your journey of life, but remember most goals are made of rice paper. It’s better to understand the resilience of how to skillfully and strategically manage obstacles and challenge adversity in everyday life.
An outcome of mental growth is, what you thought or believed today will most likely change as you grow older. Just the way one thinks about what being older would be like and actually aging and living that experience. I can tell you from my experience, you can’t really know fully as my younger self took walking without pain for granted, until it happened.
The path of one adventure may lead to the beginning of another. So what my wildest imagination may set forth, with allusions of grandeur is just that. After all these many years, I’m happy that I’m alive and healthy today.
Norman Lear was an artist that used the rich tapestry of language, fostering diverse communication and challenging conventional boundaries. Every subject was fair game, regardless of its controversial nature.
Never shying away from challenging preconceived stereotypes while still incorporating those same stereotypes into his characters and writing. Because he was about truth.
He wrote about interesting individuals with a complexity and multifaceted nature using the truthfulness or accuracy of something.
A pioneer in sitcom writing and producing. With his openness of heart and mind, he created some of the most iconic characters and sitcoms of the twentieth century, that even today people watch, talk about and love.
I introduced my children when they were young to these shows and they loved them. Binge watching during 2020 shutdowns.
Even at the age of 101 he seemed like a young soul during interviews. He loved making people laugh and watching people laugh, rolling back and forth.
With Norman Lear’s passing a piece of me is also gone. As he was a significant part of my night time as a child in the 1970’s. I will always remember my family laughing while one of his shows were on the television set. My dad even rolling back and forth until he fell on the floor, still laughing.
I was enthusiastic decades ago to discover that he went to Emerson College. My Alma-mater. I hoped I would one day meet him. Through his writing and interviews, it seems I already have.
Chu The Cud 