A very wise man who sadly is no longer with us wrote these words just a few short weeks ago:
When an organism — a person, a society — gets really, deeply ill, gentle medicine may not be sufficient. The easy, comfortable path — well, maybe if you’d known a few years ago, but not now. Now you need the strong shit.
But the strong shit HURTS. You look around blearily and cannot comprehend why you’re enduring this. You make what you think are sane ultimatums: no more, unless we can get these side effects under control. No more unless the tests show it’s working. No more unless you can eat ice cream again. But this is not sane; this is despair creeping in.
Remember, then, why you are doing it — why you’re trying the strong shit. For some it is a fight. For some it is just…the thing to do. For me, for you, it is love: love of a person, of people, of a society. Hold on to that love. It does not make the pain, the shock, the outrage go away — but it provides a direction.
Hatred, despair, negativity, these have no direction — they go everywhere and nowhere and you end up in the same damn place.
Love flows always forwards. As a person, as a society, hold on to that love. Hold on to each other. Love each other. Always.
It’s that time of year when the weather abruptly turns cooler, I need to clear the fallen leaves off the patio at least once a week, the rain comes back, and I know I’ll be driving home from work in the dark for the next 4 months.
Kind of depressing, really.
On the bright side, I did get a nice shot of this colorful leaf today before the rain hit.
For the last 2+ years, my primary home computer has been a 13″ Macbook Pro. And although I love the easy portability of a smaller laptop, I’m also a little frustrated by the small screen. Editing photos, playing games, and Powerpoint all suffer when you’ve got that little screen real estate.
So as much as I love portability, I’m also seriously thinking about buying a nice big monitor and spending more time at my long-neglected home office desk instead of computing on the couch. I’m even considering buying a small desktop computer to go with it. With so many cloud sharing services these days, synching files across devices isn’t the pain it used to be.
The main thing that’s holding me back is what going back to a desktop might do to my back. I screwed my back up badly before I got the laptop by not paying enough attention to my chair and desk quality, and I don’t want to make the same mistake twice. On the other hand, I don’t really want to spend a bunch of time trolling Craigslist for used Aeron chairs.
It might be a fun Xmas Shutdown project though… Hmmm…
Today we learned of the passing of Steve Jobs. We’re not going to see his like again for a very long time.
Here’s to the crazy ones.
The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers.
The round pegs in the square holes.
The ones who see things differently.
They’re not fond of rules.
And they have no respect for the status quo.
You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them.
About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them.
Because they change things.
They push the human race forward.
And while some may see them as the crazy ones,
we see genius.
Because the people who are crazy enough
to think they can change the world…
are the ones who do.
As the death penalty seems to be in the news tonight, I thought I’d share my thoughts.
My feelings are not complex: I am not opposed to the death penalty as a concept. I believe that there are some crimes so heinous, that display such a complete disregard for your fellow humans, that it is not unreasonable to deprive the person who commits those crimes of his life.
That said, I am well aware that the American judicial system has massive systemic problems, and that as a result, the death penalty can be (and has been) imposed on people who were not guilty. And that is a terrible wrong. If we cannot prevent innocents from being put to death then we shouldn’t do it at all.
Or put more simply, the American justice system does not work perfectly, but I still think that some really evil bastards deserve to fry for what they did.
The night of my 18th birthday, I spent with my family eating dinner at Windows on the World, looking out over New York City. I remember Dad bribing the headwaiter to make sure we had a good view. I remember us talking about the history of the city and how all the streets in Greenwich Village were so clearly at an angle from the rest of the grid. It was also the first night I ever tried venison (it was yummy).
Fast forward a few years, and every morning as I left my post-college Soho apartment, I would look to the left and see the World Trade Center rising over 6th Avenue as I headed for the Spring Street subway station. I’d periodically meet friends at Windows for drinks, to celebrate special events. I even considered having my wedding reception there. I’d walk through the Concourse daily, on my way to work at two different jobs. And I still have clothing that I bought in the shops there.
The World Trade Center was an integral part of my life, and of my New York.
Until the day it wasn’t.
Photo by Andrea Booher/ FEMA Photo News
Ten years now. It seems a bit unreal that it has been so long, when I can still close my eyes and go back into the utter horror and chaos and fear that was 9/11/01. I try not to, though. Even ten years later, the memories are too vivid and painful to spend much time revisiting them.
I’m not going to write about that day. I could call up the memories, put them down here, but my story is a simple one, shared by thousands of others, both too commonplace and too painful to retell. Some year, perhaps, I’ll write it all down, but not this year.
This tenth anniversary finds me outside the USA, and I have very mixed feelings about that. On the one hand, I feel like I should be at home, honoring the day in some solemn and proper way. I’m reasonably confident there will be nothing untoward today, but there’s that nagging “what if” that makes me think not being home is a bad idea. On the other hand, I have a job to do and places to be.
And then, there’s Kath. I’m in the country of her birth today.
For the first year or so after 9/11, not a day went by that I didn’t think of Kath. 10 years later, I don’t. But even so, in a way, I feel that I’m living for both of us. Or perhaps a better way of saying it is that I feel a responsibility to use this time that I have, which she did not get, in a way that honors her.
If there’s any lesson to be drawn from 9/11, it is that you can never give in to those who want to bring horror and sorrow and pain into the hearts of others. You must life your life to the fullest rather than embrace fear.
I try to remember that. For Kath, and for the 343, and for all the others whose lives ended so terribly and so suddenly, ten years ago today.
