I often hear people say about Kate Middleton, future Queen, “Well, good luck to her, but I wouldn’t want to put up with all that protocol.” There is no accounting for the stupidity of the plebs. Think about it.

1. You would never have to keep a drawer full of grey cotton knickers because you made a mistake in the washing and you can’t afford to replace them at the moment.
2. Ditto bras.
3. You could have all your bras made to fit perfectly.
4. You could have all matching sets of undies instead of ones for “best”.
5. You could keep all your favourite clothes because you would have tons of cupboard space.
6. None of your clothes would smell of mothballs.
7. You would always be able to find stockings or tights with no runs.
8. You wouldn’t have to wear Lycra T-shirts to make ironing easier.
9. You wouldn’t have to iron.
10. You wouldn’t ever have to clean your shoes or your husband’s.
11. You wouldn’t have to clean the house, the dog’s mess, the baby’s bum.
12. You wouldn’t have to wash the nappies.
13. You wouldn’t have to sit around in your dressing gown feeling tired because you couldn’t cope with the kids and the cooking and cleaning.
14. You wouldn’t have to walk the dog
15. You wouldn’t have to cook meals or even plan them.
16. You wouldn’t have to go to the supermarket again.
17. Your food would always be fresh and of the best quality.
18. You would drink only the best wines and not have to choose between CAVA and Veuve Cliquot when you invited friends around.
19. You could take umpteen travel bags on holidays without being charged extra.
20. You wouldn’t even have to carry them or even pack and unpack.
21. You can ask to have Harrod’s department store all to yourself to do your Christmas shopping in private.
22. You can get free tickets to every exhibition you ever wanted to see, go to all the best shows, get tickets for the ballet and best opera performances.
23. You can meet all the best people.
24. You get a handsome prince as a husband.
25. You can have as many houses as you want – all decorated for you.
26. You would never have to get rid of books or records when you moved house.
27. You wouldn’t have to wonder who to leave your Grannie’s chamber-pot to because it would be in a museum collection.
28. You could buy the latest technology as soon as Apple or Google produced it.
29. You could have your mobile phone made to your own specification so you couldn’t be traced.
30. Your hairdresser would come to you.
31. You won’t have to shop till you drop.
32. You will be able to return an item without having to have the bill.
33. You won’t have a cowboy plumber.
34. Your heating will be repaired instantly.
35. Your electricity will never be cut off.
36. Your car will always start (it will probably be warmed up for you).
37. Your car will never break down ( difficult as it will have to be a British car).
38. Y our children will go to the best schools and you won’t have to drive them.
39. You won’t have to put the rubbish out.
40. You will never have to wear dentures.

Mind you, I can see that having Elisabeth Regina as a mother-in-law might be a bit daunting, but there isn’t a mother-in-law who isn’t so it’s a small price to pay.

40 Reasons for Wanting to Be a Princess: Royal Wedding Thoughts is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

Charlie Sheen, the lovable, charismatic bad boy paid millions to entertain is now a lowly, crazed thug, says Nathan Thompson. What does his public meltdown say about life as human?

I haven’t owned a TV for years, nor do I really pay attention to TV shows on the internet. Rarely do I care at all about an American-made movie enough to go see it in any form. I mostly skim the newspaper these days, and get 95% of my news and information online. I occasionally listen to five or 10 minutes of talk radio just to get a snicker, or hear what the latest bullshit tag lines are on the days social issues.

And yet, the meltdown of actor Charlie Sheen has still made it into my world. Repeatedly, from several angles.

So, I don’t do much pop culture. It’s one of the ways I’m “different” you might say. Until I saw a photo of Sheen in a Cleveland Indians jersey, I’d completely forgotten he was a star in a movie I watched over and over again as a baseball obsessed teen. I have a very strong memory, even for tiny details, but remembering such things as the stars of movies or TV shows is completely irrelevant to me most of the time.

However, since good old Charlie has been tossed into my pop-culture-deprived life, I’m gonna offer a few bones about it all.

I have long felt dismayed at the amount of celebrity and hero worship in U.S. culture. Certainly, this is not a uniquely U.S. phenomenon , but perhaps the level of pervasiveness is. It’s tainted everything, from the way we elect public officials to how we view our spiritual leaders. Riding the elevation to a peek with a celebrity, as well as participating in an almost ritualized form of character destruction when they fall, are both elements of a collective addition around famous folks.

Tiger Woods, who featured heavily in parts of the Buddhist blogosphere last year, is a great example. Millions upheld this man as an image of the perfect modern man. He was astoundingly good at his sport. He was articulate, mostly polite, and rarely combative with those competing against him. He was a “family man.” As a man with a diverse racial background, he was also considered — like President Obama — to be a “representative of a more racially balanced future.” Lots and lots of projections. And then, when it came out that he was a serial cheater, all hell broke lose. The man on the pedestal, the great role model for young people, suddenly was a lightning rod for pent up hatreds and grudges which often had nothing, really, to do with him.

Lost in all of that was the small sliver of intelligent criticism looking at, amongst other things, the way some celebrity men embody deeply abusive attitudes toward women, and how often their sexism, and even violence towards women, is dismissed or minimized in an attempt to keep the celebrity around, doing what they do best.

Charlie Sheen is also a great example of this. His drug abuse has been long known, and yet it was, for a long time, just considered part of the “bad boy” image that looks good on TV and movie screens, never mind that it is cause of a hell of a lot of suffering. Incidents of domestic abuse were dealt with lightly by the legal system, and apparently had little impact on the hyper popularity of Sheen’s recent show Two and a Half Men. In fact, running the line between laughing at the stupidity of sexist behavior and finding sexist behavior funny seems to be a theme of the show itself.

Sheen’s history of using racial slurs (here’s one example, also, apparently had little impact on his overall public image. It seems that like the slow downfall of Mel Gibson, it took a lot of odd, public ranting in the media and some strange twisting around anti-semitism to finally bring the guy down a notch. But odds are he’ll now just be dismissed as wacko who hates Jews and believes in conspiracy theories, which really does nothing to address the cultural sickness around celebrities, nor the worst behavioral manifestations amongst the “fallen icons.”

Then, there is the Elephant Journal post I linked to above, which is not only one of many Sheen posts on that spiritual website, but also one of many Sheen posts on many spiritual websites. Again, the guy is everywhere. Author Kristoffer Nelson (of the Elephant post in question) is trying at humor, while also offering a bit of spiritual wisdom in the process. He writes:

What I find most interesting about our social obsession with Sheen’s insanity is that his ramblings aren’t too far from what the tradition’s masters claimed as the enlightened experience. There is a fine line between insanity and freedom. If Rajneesh said, “I have tiger blood flowing through my veins” would we laugh in dismiss or sign-up for a retreat? If a Yogi Bhajan said, “I closed my eyes and in a nanosecond I cured myself… I have a disease? Bullshit. I cured it with my brain.” would we completely disregard the comment or buy his book hoping to achieve the same? Make a vision board, anyone?

Given a different context, less porn stars and blow binges, Sheen could possibly be our next Eckhart Tolle: “Apocalypse Now will teach you how to live inside of a moment between a moment.” Sound familiar?

Sheen is easy to dismiss because we think we’re not him.

Yeah, I like the last line. It’s a good reminder.

But the whole post is also too damned cute, and represents this sort of amused, compassionate gaze that some spiritual types like to offer that takes the bumbling idiocies of celebs and uses them for some individualized spiritual development offering. Which is fine in one sense. Recognizing the suddenly strong reactions against a fallen pop culture icon are probably more about yourself than about the icon is healthy. And that celebrity X’s “bad behavior” is something you could easily do under the right causes and conditions — again, a healthy attitude.

However, the same amused, compassionate gaze fails to address the systemic, root reasons behind both the allowed excesses and abuses of the celebrities themselves, as well as our collective additions around the rise and fall of these people. There have been numerous articles and discussions online in recent months about the role of unquestioning, fawning students and sanghas in the rise of Buddhist teachers who abuse sex and power. Also numerous articles and discussions pointing out that there’s something seriously wrong with just blaming a fallen teacher for their bad behavior. The way I see it, this could easily be expanded to pop culture, politics, and other areas of life — because all of it has been deeply tainted by forms of celebrity and hero worship.

The title of this post is “Why Charlie Sheen Kind of Matters.” I say “kind of” because it’s not really about him particularly, but about what he represents. Like Kobe Bryant, Ben Roethlisberger, Mel Gibson, Rush Limbaugh, John Edwards, Newt Gingrich — the list goes on and on — Charlie Sheen is a highly privileged male celebrity who has done plenty wrong, gotten away with more than the average person would, and now has become the fodder for jokes, gossip, hatred, and general public abuse. The lovable, charismatic bad boy paid millions to entertain is now a lowly, crazed thug.

Aren’t you all tired of going on this roller coaster ride already? I know I have been for awhile now.

Why Charlie Sheen Kind of Matters is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

There has always been something about Buster Keaton that really moved me. While I have only seen a small fraction of his work, what I have seen always spoke to my heart and it has always been my intent to see much more of his work.

About eight or nine years ago, a friend of mine asked me if I had seen Benny & Joon. The film has a wonderful cast including Johnny Depp, Mary Stuart Masterson, Aidan Quinn , Julianne Moore & Oliver Platt.

I loved this movie right from the first few moments and it immediately became one of my favorites. To me, this movie speaks volumes of the human spirit and it never fails to put a smile on my face. If you have not seen Benny & Joon, you have missed a great movie and I highly recommend that you track it down and watch it.

In the following video clip, Johnny Depp does an amazing Buster Keaton impression. I could watch this over and over. I hope it puts a smile on your face!

Here is a higher resolution version though it is often slow to load
and is missing 35 seconds at the end of the clip.

Photo Credits

Buster Keaton Thumbnail – Public Domain

Johnny Depp Does Buster Keaton! is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

Ladies and gentlemen, it is a pleasure to introduce most scrumptious woman ever, the Petite Powerhouse — MISS ROSIE BITTS!

There are few people these days whom you could truly call charming. But charming is a word that fits Miss Rosie Bitts to a “t”, from her effervescent giggle to her Jackie O shades to her sense of humour and smarts.

This “starlet” from Vancouver Island took to the burlesque stage only three years ago and has already been named a “Notable Woman” by the National Post. She has a dazzling burlesque solo career, teaches burlesque and “pin-up” classes, and she even started her own production company, Best Bitts Productions.

In her clicky high heels, Rosie taps across the floor at the Superior restaurant in Victoria, her round little bum wiggling in a 1940-esque turquoise dress with a slit up to here. She tosses her long, blonde mane, positively oozing sex appeal.

My gosh, and it isn’t even martini hour yet. But that’s the real beauty of hanging out with this rising burlesque starlet — wherever she goes, whatever time it is, it’s happy hour…and I’m not talking about booze.

Miss Rosie Bitts has the kind of sweet, cheeky, sexy charisma that is equally appealing to men and women, gay and straight – and she makes you smile. But isn’t that what burlesque is: blending humor and sexiness into a a true art form that is currently enjoying a welcome resurgence.

And I’ll tell you the most delicious thing about Miss Rosie Bitts and it’s not even the reveal, which she does very nicely, thank you very much. Miss Rosie Bitts is the real thing — authentic. And that’s not easy to find in showbiz or anywhere else. So here’s what we talked about…

Kerry: How do you choose a stage name for burlesque? Are there rules?

Rosie: Hmmm, there are no rules. It’s really a labour of love. Some people mix words together, like your favourite alcohol drink and favourite sparkly thing…I didn’t begin with Rosie Bitts — she just arrived as my character started to grow. There a [burlesque] legend named Satan’s Angel and she didn’t like what she called all the “shit names” but she liked Rosie Bitts. You have to think about your name and be sure you are willing to live with it.

Kerry: How is Rosie different from your off-stage personality?

Rosie: She is much more ballsy! Slightly raucous. I would never spend as much time on hair and make-up for myself…Now I feel like it’s a responsibility to leave the house glamorous.

Kerry: What are the burlesque essentials in your closet?

Rosie: Only two things — false eyelashes and lipstick.

Kerry: If you could come back in another life, who would you want to be?

Rosie: I’m having an awfully good time as myself. I often say I’m living the best life ever.

Kerry: Pasties or pastries? What do you like more?

Rosie: Actually, I have a gluten allergy so it would have to be pasties! But I do love to eat.

Kerry: What’s the biggest myth about burlesque artists?

Rosie: The biggest myth is that we are both similar to strippers AND that we are not [similar to strippers]….We’re doing what I call an art form that many women were actually beaten for doing and arrested for doing in the past — taking off their clothes. I’m connected with a lot of the legends [of burlesque] and I consider them my foremothers. They were wild women who decided not to compromise. A lot of them were ‘out lesbians’ which wasn’t common at the time. They were unapologetic about making money with their bodies. Some of them would do 45 minute shows…and hold an audience of men and women. There’s a saying in burlesque that if the men were excited it was a good night, but if the women were excited [the burlesque dancers] were really happy.

Do you get more men or more women hitting on you since you began burlesque?

Rosie: Well, let me see, I’d have to say more women but the biggest growing group of fans is males 18-24. For some reason they seem to be interested in older women.Maybe it’s a reaction against all the nudity and sexuality in our society, and the fact that they were used to certain types of girls and body tupes, but to see a woman with a more natural body, hmmm. But I’d say my prime groupies are lesbians.

What would the movie of your life so far be called?

Rosie: I’d steal the title from Marlene Dietrich’s I Wish You Love because love is always the basics I go back to and what I bring to everyone I entertain.

Kerry: To which female celebrity would you love to teach burlesque?

Rosie: Ellen Page. She’s, like, the cutest little thing ever.

What about a male celebrity?

Rosie: Adrian Brody.

Kerry: Who is your favourite fictional heroine?

Rosie: My favourite female character (for this moment) is Hine from the short
story “Skin and Bones”  in Once Upon a Time in Aotearoa by Tina Makereti.
It is the retelling of a classic “Creation” story and Hine has only a few
lines in the whole story but she won my heart by her reply to her
“creator” (a man):
“I’m Hine,” she said. “I’m so glad you figured it out. I’ve been waiting for ages.”
He was stunned.
“Aw, look at you,” she said, “you’re all skin and bones. Let’s make a feast. Time for a celebration, don’t you think?”

For some reason that little bit of dialogue just rings so true to me. Such a womanly thing to say and a beautiful, subtle way to show her
equality-she was always there-just waiting to be discovered/created in the physical form.

Kerry: Who is your favourite burlesque artist?

Rosie: There are so many wonderful ones. I love Immodesty Blaize out of the U.K. Oh, and Tigger! the most lovely human being…

Kerry: What’s the hardest burlesque move to master without pulling a muscle?

Rosie: It’s not just a burlesque move but I’d say the Sidesplit in a Tango Fan dance. And backwards tassel twirls can be very touchy.

Kerry: Are you salty or sweet?

Rosie: Sweet. Hmmm. Or kinda sweet with a salty hint. I’m a broad!

Kerry: Do you remember your first time on stage as a burlesque artist?

Rosie: The first time I was on stage I wasn’t yet Miss Rosie Bitts. And it was terrifying! I felt like I had been broken in half, but in the end it was absolutely the right thing for me to do. I’m a professional actor and I learned that if you have that feeling — like being broken in half — it’s good. It’s really good. And it’s gratifying to see that people actually want to see you.

Kerry: What interests you most about life as a human?

Rosie: I’m so happy to wake up every day and be alive here, every day. I am so excited about just being here.

Miss Rosie Bitts will be performing at benefits for the Dirty Wall  Project on September 19 in Victoria, BC and September 12 in Nanaimo. Stay tuned for more info.

Photo Credits

Photos 1, 2, by Ailsa Dyson www.ailsadyson.com,

Photo 5 (feature photo) by Que Banh www.thephotographyelf.wordpress.com

Miss Rosie Bitts Brings on the Burlesque is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

Mel Gibson has been hitting the headlines again, mostly for allegedly hitting his partner and child in a hissy fit and generally losing his rag. Is this a Hollywood publicity stunt to attract attention when his films are doing badly? Can this be the very same religious family man who had communion delivered to his hotel room every day when he was in Matera?

We came across Matera while following in the footsteps of John Julius Norwich in search of the Normans in southern Italy. My first guide book, which I lost, hadn’t made much of Matera but the second was more forthcoming, informing me that Mel Gibson had shot the film The Passion of the Christ there and it was the site of a multitude of early Christian rock-hewn churches.

The town carved out of rocks along the Gravina Valley is almost entirely troglodyte. It was certainly one of the earliest occupied sites of man in Southern Europe. We had no idea how to get into the centre so followed the signs for Locanda di San Martino along an ever-narrowing little cobbled road.

Eventually we parked and went further on foot and found the lovely little hotel created out of Sassi (stone caves). It has all the luxuries (including spa) plus very helpful staff and great breakfast. Your car is taken and parked somewhere in the new town for an extra fee.

After wandering aimlessly but appreciatively the first afternoon, we took the hotel staff’s advice and hired an English-speaking guide for a few hours the following day. This was well worth it as the guide, Nadia, was extremely informative.

We also realised how easy it was to get about. Every level is accessed by stone cut stairs and although it seems quite daunting to have to go up and down, the main square led down into the bottom of the valley opposite a restaurant called Nadi conveniently located a hundred yards from our hotel.

The whole of the old town was more or less empty except for a few restaurants and souvenir shops and a couple of old ladies of 80 who have refused to move out and still live with only basic electricity, no toilets and a local well.

The old town had flourished under its various conquerors Greeks (later Orthodox Christians), Lombards and Normans (Roman Christians) and lost little in the struggles between the Emperors of the West and those of the East.

The tiny rock churches have the most beautiful wall paintings of great antiquity and because of the difficulty of moving up and down levels, there are little churches everywhere. Matera lived, like many semi-medieval villages, a quiet peasant life until the inter-war period when the population exploded.

Although some people were able to add frontages to their houses to live a more sanitary life, others still had their horses tethered at the back of the cave (so that they couldn’t be stolen), the chickens slept under the beds and the rabbits were put in a cage by the front door at night.

The elder children often slept in the back of the cave with the animals or in a separate cave with the animals while the babies were suspended in cots above the parents’ bed to keep them away from the rats. Ten children was the norm and there was an 80 per cent childhood death rate among them. The dead were often buried on top of the houses below, which wasn’t conducive to good health when the rains ran the decaying remains and their consequent germs down into the houses underneath.

Fathers got up at 2.30 a.m. to go off to work in the fields. The nobility’s land disputes over the centuries resulted in the fields where the Materans worked being a two-hour walk from the village. Nobody got get back until 8pm. Most times, however, the mothers worked too.

Children under seven were not allowed to work, so had to be left in the house to look after the babies. Sometimes, the babies had no one to look after them and were drugged with opium to keep them asleep all day so they didn’t cry for food.

Mistakes were made and children died. With over-population, came water shortages and too much human waste polluted the streams, gathered mosquitoes and spread malaria.

They were no longer living like human beings, like Christians, but like animals. Christ hadn’t got this far. He had stopped at Eboli.

Christ Stopped at Eboli was the tale which alerted the Italian authorities to the plight of Matera, Eboli, Aliano and similar towns in the poor South in the post-war period.

It was written by an anti-fascist Jewish artist Carlo Levi who was banished to this Italian ‘Siberia’ from 1935-36. He was at liberty but closely watched so that escape along tiny mountain tracks was impossible. He chronicled all he saw and hid all his papers.

His frequent letters to his sister were censored. His sister was allowed one visit and she brought some much needed quinine. She was profoundly shocked by the incredible poverty – the sort we expect to see only in the slums of Calcutta or war-torn Ethiopia.

Levi was released but continued to be a thorn in the side of the government and fled Italy for a while. After the publication of his revealing book in 1945, the dreadful poverty of the South was declared ‘La Vergogna d’Italia’ – the shame of Italy. In 1954, the Government cleared Matera of inhabitants and re-housed everyone in the new town.

Matera is now a Unesco World Heritage Site and attracts tourists and film-makers. At least five famous films have been made there –The Gospel According to St Matthew, King David and The Passion of the Christ among them.

For some reason the incredibly soporific film Christ Stopped at Eboli wasn’t filmed there and didn’t do justice to the tragedy of the place or to the fine observations of Carlo Levi. In fact, Levi was imprisoned in another village entirely – Aliano, which in his book he called Gagliano.

The suffering (Passion) of Christ, as graphically portrayed in the Gibson film, is representative of Christian suffering over the centuries but the citizens of Matera had too many crosses to bear, unlike Mel Gibson who seems to fly in to the wrong sort of passion.

Mel Gibson should go back to confessing and taking communion everyday and give passionate and soulful thanks for his blessed life!

Tourist guide

Nadia Garlatti, Via Passarelli 47, 75100 Matera; email: nadiagarlatti@tiscali.it

Further Reading

Christ Stopped at Eboli by Carlo Levi

The Other Conquest by John Julius Norwich

Websites

www.locandadisanmartino.it — the hotel is also a spa with a lovely pool – quite magic. The site is worth visiting for the wonderful photos.

www.panoramio.com — Specify which town, e.g. Matera, Aliano, Grassano and you will get the Google Earth views with detailed photos.

Photo Credits

“Mel Gibson on the set of The Passion of the Christ”

All other photos © J Mclean: “Old Houses in Matera”, “Peasant Kitchen, Matera”,”Children’s Graves”, “Typical Houses”, “Rock Church Paintings”, “Stone Stairs”

The Passion of Mel Gibson is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

Alright, guys. I’m sure I’m not the first to discuss this one, but I just. Can’t. Help myself. Ergo, I bring you my piece on this crucial world issue, sarcasm intended.

I was in my room getting ready for work the other day and, as usual, I was absentmindedly listening to Today. I mean, between frantically putting on my makeup and, you know, getting clothed, I like to have some knowledge around me that makes me feel like I’m at least tuned in somehow.

But on this particular morning, my ears suddenly perked up upon hearing the following:

Bristol Palin and Levi Johnson are engaged.

Hold up.

Rewind.

Did I hear what I think I heard?

That Sarah Palin’s oh-so-very dense, birth-control-savvy-lacking daughter is to be betrothed to her absurd, previously unnecessarily naked (Hef, I’d like a word), media craving baby daddy?

Okay, after reading that last sentence, I realize that it may only seem logical for this duo to tie the knot, seeing as they did have a baby in their teens and want to do what’s right.

But after lashing out at each other for months on national television, saying how unfit the other one was as a parent? Really?

No, this wasn’t a dream (come true).

This was actually happening. I stopped and looked directly at the TV, only to see the upcoming Us Weekly cover featuring a starry-eyed Bristol and Levi, along with their (and believe me, I hate to admit this) adorable son, Tripp. One big happy family.

I started laughing. No, really. I did. I laughed. And I’ll tell you why.

I suddenly had this vision of Sarah Palin, a woman who thinks she is more than suited to run our country, pitting her poor, confused daughter up against this boy with the hopes of breaking them up, stealing Tripp and plopping him down to play with her son and live happily ever after.

Whether this little vision of mine is true, I could not tell you. All I can say is that if Palin’s winning strategy is to continue to look absolutely ridiculous and stupid – well…she’s done it again.

My sincerest congratulations to the dysfunctional happy couple!

Photo credit

US vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin (R), holding last-born Trig, greets daughter Bristol and her boyfriend Levi Johnston after addressing the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota, on September 3, 2008.  Photo by PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP/Getty Images)

Bristol Palin, cover of People magazine

Levi Johnson, cover of Playgirl magazine

What A Tripp! Sarah Palin’s Daughter Stands By Her Man Again is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

He’s only half human but Mr. Spock still rates a farewell of honour on Life As A Human. As Captain Kirk’s half-Vulcan, half-human science officer aboard the Starship Enterprise in the original Star Trek series, Spock’s logic served as the perfect foil to the hotheaded emotionalism of Kirk, Bones and Scottie — the humans.

At 79 years old, Spock’s real-life human host Leonard Nimoy is tucking in his pointed ears. After 60 years in the biz, he’s earned his right to embrace other aspects of life. Fortunately, Star Trek fans got to spend time with Spock in last year’s J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek film remake.

Spock (Starfleet service number S179-276) was the child of Sarek, a Vulcan diplomat, and Amanda Grayson, a human schoolteacher. Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, in his TV show pitch for Star Trek, first described Spock as “probably half Martian” with a “slightly reddish complexion and semi-pointed ears”.

Apparently, writer Samuel Anthony Peeples told Roddenberry that Spock seemed too alien. He recommended making him half-human so he could reflect more believably upon the human condition.

Over the years, Spock has been a favourite of Trekkies everywhere. There is even an online church devoted to Spock, The Church of Spock of Latter Day Science Officers.

But some of his most devoted fans are in the town of Vulcan, Alberta in Canada (pop.2000). Today, Spock finally visited Vulcan.

“I have been a Vulcan for 44 years — I figured it was time I came home,” he told the cheering crowd. As a farewell to Vulcan fans, he gave the Vulcan salute and said, “May each and every one of you live long and prosper.”

In honour of Mr. Spock, here are some of my fave Spock quotes:

“It is curious how often you humans manage to obtain that which you do not want.”

“After a time, you may find that having is not so pleasing a thing, after all, as wanting. It is not logical, but it is often true.”

“Judging by the pollution content of the atmosphere, I believe we have arrived at the late twentieth century.”

“If I were human, I believe my response would be: ‘go to hell’. If I were human.”

Photo Credits

“Spock” and “Spock and McCoy” courtesy of CBC Studios

So Long, Mr. Spock. It’s Only Logical We’ll Miss You. is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

Believe it or not, Elizabeth Gilbert was a name surprisingly unfamiliar to me. Prior to having seen her inspiring video on creative genius last year, I had only ever heard about this author’s “freakishly” successful non-fiction book Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia.

The book was a prominent feature on many friends’ coffee tables and came highly recommended. Everyone was talking about it.

Eat, Pray, Love had been on my list of books to read for some time but once the buzz had waned, so did my memory of wanting to read  it. Then one day a wonderfully creative young friend of mine came for a visit and asked me if I had ever heard of an awesome website called TED.com. That was where I discovered the video of Gilbert’s talk “On Nurturing Creativity”.

I spent the following 20 minutes in awe. Elizabeth Gilbert was delightful and sincere. Her brilliant presentation about the creative process was both warm and humorous,  and spoke volumes to my own creative spirit. She simply offered the idea that by shifting our perception of how we look at our creativity, or lack there of, we can potentially prevent ourselves from spiraling downward into an abyss of creative despair.

She also shared the most useful tool you can have at your disposal in the event of a creative melt down — it’s a tool I call upon myself every now and again when my own creativity isn’t quite flowing as well as I would like.

I think this video ties in wonderfully with my Life As A Human article called “Limiting Beliefs: A Tale of Mistaken Identity“. I sincerely hope this video will inspire you as much as it inspired me. As Elizabeth says, “Ole!”

Elizabeth Gilbert’s books include Eat, Pray, Love and the follow-up, Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage.

About Elizabeth Gilbert

About TED.COM

Elizabeth Gilbert on Nurturing Creativity: Eat, Pray, Love Author Talks to TED is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

A friend and I were having dinner when we heard the news that Frank Sinatra had died earlier that day.

She said something about how she never got it, the Sinatra thing. That her mother always went on about him, sang his songs on car trips and like that. I didn’t say anything to that. We ate and drank a little, talked about the day.  I went into the other room to put another disc on the player. Without much thinking about it I pulled In The Wee Small Hours Of The Morning off the rack. The CD, with its Hopper-like illustrated case, pictured Sinatra leaning sad against a backdrop a block away from the Boulevard of Broken Dreams. It looked like it always had. Perfect. I put it on.

Even now when I hear his voice, I can smell dinner on the stove and I know that my father is on the way home. My mother is singing softly, “It’s a quarter to three, there’s no one in place… .”  It was like that every day for years. It was safe and it was mine. Years later I realized that the song itself wasn’t sweet, it was sad. It was the end of things. I didn’t know precisely what a soundtrack was or how it influences the moment, and equally the memory, but it surely did.

I had seen Frank Sinatra in black and white movies on the Dumont TV in the dining room. From Here to Eternity, The Man with The Golden Arm, High Society. He was…cool. And it turns out, everything I thought I would become. I knew that there was sadness inside his music, even in his more popular AM radio hits that played all day long. I couldn’t have said that at the time. What I did know was that his voice told me a lot about who I thought I was. About my own sadness, and oddly my curiosity about what being a man would be like.

I used to listen to Make Believe Ballroom every Saturday morning, a radio show from Philadelphia. “Learnin’ The Blues” was a big hit that year. I lay safely under the covers as I imagined that I knew what it meant to be learning the blues.

I was pretty sure that if I could learn the blues, that “ol’ low down mystery,” (that’s what the DJ called it), I would be a man, all grown up. And when I grew up, I would “walk the floor til”  I  “wore out my shoes”. It was romantic, like a movie, but like a movie it seemed right. It was what men did. That and work all day, come home to eat, and go into the study, close the door, work some more and do it all over again the next day. Well, it was what my Dad did. Or at least that’s how I remember it.

I saw A Walk in the Sun with Dana Andrews when I was very young, maybe eight or nine. The troops land in Sicily and walk up a farm road to take a German-held farmhouse. Andrews is a lieutenant who keeps trying to write a letter to his sister. He can’t seem to finish it, to say it right.

“Dear Frances…,” he says several times, his voice trailing off. The platoon arrives at the farmhouse; the men are hidden behind a centuries old stonewall. The sun gets higher and higher. They go over the wall. The farmhouse is taken and it is not yet noon.

“Dear Frances,” Andrew’s voice comes over the scene of the bodies lying in the sun in this foreign place, the survivors gathering up and getting ready to move on. That’s also what men did. They went to war, they didn’t say much, they took care of business and they got on with things.

“Dear Frances,” he says. “We took a farmhouse today. It was easy.” Only it wasn’t easy, and it never happens that way. Even I could see that.

Long before I left home my mother stopped cooking as she had. Her soft singing gave way to the constant sound of a classical radio station. She lay on the living room couch most of the day, watching the door. She waited for him to come home from work, all the time getting weaker as her heart gave out.

Every evening during the school year, when my father walked through the door there was dinner ready, wrenched from what dwindling energy she could gather in a day. He came through the door and told her about his day, who did what to whom and how the Dean sabotaged this or that. I set the table, watched the Mets lose, washed the dishes, picked on my younger sister.

Often my mother stayed on the couch during dinner, exhausted by the day. The classical music station played on.

My 14-year-old head was filled with images of lost highways and dead-end midnight dreams, of broken phone calls from far away places, in black and white with fog on the tarmac. Elvis Presley replaced Sinatra for me as did Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, Sam Cooke and The Drifters.

It was a different world, made up of nuclear nightmares and feverish daydreams about red headed girls in Geometry. Even though Sinatra was not as evident, Ol’ Blue Eyes still had his hold on me. I knew more about loss by then; certainly I was aware of being afraid, of being uncomfortable, of being outside looking in. It wasn’t his lyrics, they were mostly sappy to my emerging existential self. It was still that thing in his voice.

Sometimes I would take the bus to the Idlewild, now Kennedy airport, just to listen to the flights being called; “Pan Am 3, Paris, Istanbul, Cairo.” I turned my collar up like John Wayne in The High and the Mighty and snuck out on to the tarmac. I always imagined I saw a single horn player with a battered leather case, shuffling slowly to the plane through the fog swirling on the runway, pulling me along to somewhere unknown, a place just beyond my reach.

Elvis and Benny King were in my head, this long before Walkman and iPod. It seemed that everything was far off, magical, a “rose in Spanish Harlem”, glimpsed but never taken, that life was elsewhere. I couldn’t wait. The music spoke of broken dreams and lost love and sex and every word seemed meant only for me. Get on with it, kid, it seemed to say, time’s winged chariot ain’t waitin’ at no station.

Nearly every night for most of my late teens and early 20s I had dreams of a battlefield grave, a rifle bayonet in the ground with dog tags and an empty helmet hanging down from the rifle stock. There was a single horn playing Taps. I always woke up in a cold sweat, cotton-mouthed and resigned. I woke up before I was close enough to read the name on the tags.

When my mother died I was in another country, on another coast. When I went home for the funeral with my own 10-year-old son, the classical music station was off and the study door was still closed.

I no longer wonder what happened to my childhood’s lonesome highway, to the bloodied heroes and the feverishly imagined manhood where the bars are still open at a quarter to three and morning is a distant fire streaked across the sky. Where the neon in the darkness offers promise that shit will turn to gold and the door will open and my Dad and I will talk together.

Cocaine and whiskey have taught me what I needed to know. Taught me that it isn’t easy and that it never happens that way.

Sinatra’s voice cuts across our wee hours from the other room. He is still walking the floor, she is still gone, whoever she was.

Two nows, 40 years apart. My friend and I dance slow and close, keeping time together. Under a cold spring moon our shadows play across the kitchen wall.

Photo Credits

Photos of Franks Sinatra, courtesy of WikiCommons

“Flaming Highway” WTL Photos @ flickr. Creative Commons. Some rights reserved.

Ol’ Blue Eyes: Music of Broken Dreams is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN