MISTAKES IN WEBLAND AND OTHER SAD STORIES

October 21, 2011

Over the past couple of days I have taken to posting in various chat rooms. Two actually. Deadline Hollywood and Fanatasy Surfer. Oh, what a strange and hilarious person the Lord has wrought in me!

The fantasy surfer surfing postings have been uneventful. The other fanatsy surfers seem to appreciate my opinions. Oh yes! I know my pro surfing, y'all. However, my posting on Deadline Hollywood the topic of which is too humiliating to mention, engendered some very nasty, angry responses. Well... at first I didn't like that. But then I took a walk and I realized that what I had posted had been - you guessed it - mistaken. So I went back on the boards and I acknowledged the errors of my original post and said I was grateful for the insights of the others and that I was surprised that by participating in an online "discussion" (I use that word with a large dose of irony) I had actually learned something. Well needless to say, no one acknowledged my mea culpa, or my new found enlightenment, but they did continue to react to my original post, to vilify and mock me and to glorify the other posters who had so marvellously attacked my original argument. There was only one guy who actually responded to my (I thought hilarious) admission of my error and he did so by taking my humble posting and using it as ammo against me. It was a very personal attack I felt. So I posted again, said I was glad I would never have to work with him and signed my post "so and so (the moniker of the poster) is an idiot." How's that for spiritually evolved? Actually, I rather enjoyed that part. Oh well.

So what have I learned from this little online adventure? One, that I should stick to Fantasy Surfer, two, that there are a lot of angry people out there in webland and that most are looking to attack, not have a discussion, three, that I would be better off not wasting my time in chat rooms (or whatever you call responses to articles) and four, that I can indeed learn and find humility and glimmers of wisdom in the most unexpected places. If I am open to admitting my mistakes, and hearing the insights of others, no matter how much vitriol their insights contain, I can continue to grow... in baby steps.

I also learned, for the zillionth time, that I am a never ending mistake maker. I learn from mistakes, but I never seem to avoid finding new ways to make them. I am not one of those cautious people who thinks things out in advance and sees the potential for disaster before it occurs. I am a doer, I throw myself over the ledge, whatever the ledge may be, and sometimes I land on the rocks, but I usually enjoy the fall.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

STEVE JOBS, SPIRITUAL GIANT?

October 6, 2011

All day long they've been reporting that Steve Jobs spoke at a Stanford commencement a few years ago and suggested that we should all ask ourselves if we knew we were going to die tomorrow would we still choose to do what we're doing today? Or something like that. Sorry if I misquoted you Steve.

Well, ain't that a hell of a question? I mean, it's an impossible question I think, as though any of us has that much control. It's the kind of unhumble question that is asked by an unhumble man. How about we ask instead, did we do our best to act with love and see the beauty in what we were doing?

Steve also suggested that we should not let the opinions of others guide us, but should follow the truth inside our own hearts. (Again I apologize for the undoubtedly sloppy paraphrasing.) And again I recoil from the arrogance. I mean, it sounds mighty good, mighty lovely and mighty Gandhi-like (or San Francisco self-help blogger-like), but I don't honestly think choices are that simple for most of the people in the world. Having bodies and living in time we find ourselves required to feed ourselves, school our children, pay the insurance and work within the world where we've been born and, in my case at least, where I have stumbled around for 46 years wrestling with idealism and reality to make a go of it the best I can. The idealism of the kind Mr. Jobs seemed to be espousing, well, I'm not sure it embraces the full humility of being human - the less than completely in control of it all - that is a more real truth - for all of us, even Steve Jobs.

Mr. Jobs' passion and intelligence were admirable. He helped to bring new things into our lives that are lovely and functional and visionary. But the main lesson I get from his untimely demise is that money and fame and accomplishment cannot insulate you from the greater truths in life. They cannot keep you alive. They cannot prevent pain. They will not make you happy. I read that one of the last people with whom Mr. Jobs shared his precious last days was his biographer. His expalination for this is that he wanted his children to understand him, to understand why he hadn't been around more often - and yet wasn't hanging out with his biographer more of the same? Why not spend the time with his children instead and tell them himself. Perhaps that's unfair. Maybe he did. Anyway, I think I'd like to have a biographer around as I was dying too.

I don't mean to get on Steve's case. He obviously did the best he could and that was, as far as I know, quite a lot. But the things he said at Stanford were being reported on the radio and in the papers today as though they were great insights from a spirtual giant and they were compelling enough to make me think. To make me question my life choices. (Truthfuly, I've been doing that a lot every day lately anyway so he doens't get that much credit.) Utlimately, maybe my reaction to his Stanford speech is just defensive. I didn't start a huge technology company today or invent a new way to communicate, or even sell my music on itunes (yet). All I did was to chip away at various goals. Did well on some, didn't even get to some others. I did make it to the dentist and held my daughter's hand while she had some teeth pulled. And I took my dog on a nice early evening hike which we both enjoyed. And no, the rest of the day was definitely not the spectacular productive success Steve might have envisioned for me (or for himself at least), but I'm okay with it.

I was boiling some eggs at 3:35pm and I watched the whole minute tick away on the clock on the stove and as I watched the clock I was aware that it was the only time that I would ever live through that minute - from 3:35 to 3:36pm on Thursday October 6, 2011. I was aware of how quickly the minute passed and yet how empty it was and how full of unexplored potential. And I was aware of the funny sound water makes boiling in the pan. And then I ate four hard boiled eggs with a little too much salt.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

October 5, 2011

Quote from an Ojibway Indian saying:

"Sometimes I go about pitying myself, And all the while I am being carried across the sky by beautiful clouds."

There are beautiful clouds outside today. It's raining in LA which is rare enough to be precious. My daughter has grown up here and I guess like many LA kids there is nothing she loves more than the rain. I love it too. It is good to cherish the rare events and beauties and perhaps it is even better to cherish all the things that are common.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

MY CLINT EASTWOOD NATURE

September 28, 2011

I recently told my friend John that I was possessed of a Clint Eastwood nature. An aspirational statement no doubt. In essence it means that I am a very unlikely person to keep a blog. Don't like to talk too much, you understand? But you see my life doesn't seem to be going quite so smooothly as one might hope in recent days. The illusion of a career seems to have been revealed as a most shockingly empty trick. I can't say I am devestated. In fact, for a man with no clue as to how I will make money in the future (near or far) I am remarkably content. That's why I bring up Clint Eastwood. I am unlikely to talk very much. I don't particularly like to reveal myself. I don't usually feel I have much to say. But my new pipe dream of a career is that I will generate money in some new fangled internetty kind of a way, and thus I feel it incombent upon me to produce a blog.

Voila!

I have heard from this same friend John that a generous use of famous names can help elevate one's ranking on search engines, so please excuse the frequent and possibly random mention of people in whom I have little interest - Justin Beiber, say? Or people with whom I do - Kelly Slater. I am using them. Fame is the name of the game.

At the ripe and ripening age of forty four add two, I have once again come to a cross roads in my marvelously error prone adventure of a life. My forey into Hollywood has been thouroughly repudiated and I only regret that it took twelve years for it to happen. Hollywood was never really my ambition nor my calling and yet when you work they pay you so shockingly well, and yet on the other hand I have worked and worked for two years now for nary a farthing. That's Hollywood talk for I'm broke. The new thing in Hollywood is getting writers to write for free and then ignoring them and forgetting to even say thank you to them. Sounds like a mistake, doesn't it? Doing it I mean. I think so, but it's a mistake I pursued with too much energy for too much time and now I have much too little to show for it. Think of all the pictures I could have drawn instead!

The theme of this blog is mistakes - glorious ones in particular. And in a way what I really mean to say is that the theme of this blog is beauty. So here are a few of my most recent mistakes. Don't worry, the list is endless. I can write out a hundred of them tonight and I still won't run out for fifty years.

When I was about four years old, my two year old brother came home wearing a brand new pair of shiny red sandles. He was terribly proud of them, but I instantly pronounced them "girls shoes" and he never put them on again. That was a mistake. I'm sorry Ben(ji).

When I was thirty-five I accepted a job writing on a very famous science fiction television show in which I had absolutely no interest. Frankly, at that time I held the show (and all television, really) in a fair bit of contempt. That was two mistakes; taking the job and the contempt.

Today I drove all the way past County Line looking for hurricaine waves and all I saw were weak ripples. I didn't even go in the water. Well, I suppose it was a mistake. I didn't get to surf and yet a drive through Malibu always has its beauties.

I didn't go to grad school - acting - law - English or otherwise. Mistake... or not? Mistake.

The drugs of course.

I often feel - as I do now - that when I do talk, I speak too freely. I tell too much truth. Of course it sounds nice to say you tell the truth, but my truth is usually of the humble sort - that's what makes it true - and humility is surprisingly unpopular at times. Are these mistakes? Undoubtedly they are and yet there's nothing more beautiful than the truth. Perhaps it is the only beautiful thing.

The mistakes I regret more are when the truth of a situation has been appearant and I have failed to speak it, or in many cases even see it. I am quite often clearer in retrospect than I am in the moment. That perhaps is a mistake of genetics - or casting.

And then there's the fact that last week I neglected to go to the meeting to stop the late night motorcycle races and now they are roaring outside my windows. That was a dasterdly mistake. The bastards.

Okay, that's my blog for tonight. I probably won't sleep tonight. I don't seem to lately. Money keeps me awake. Well, actually money in the bank makes me sleep soundly. The lack there of is insomnia personified and so besides the mistake of not adequately filling up my accounts, I have also made the mistake of not having a great book to read in the middle of the night. So who knows? Maybe I will blog some more.