They say its your birthday...

"My 20s were difficult. I think that those are
hard years for most men. Older men want to kill
you, and girls don’t really want you. They’re
most interested in the rich, older guy. For me,
money was scarce, and I was extremely lonely.
But New York was such an exciting place then
that it compensated for all my insecurities." R. Gere

It's never what you imagine it'll be. Sex, death, suffering... Thats
a constant truth in life. Its never how you think it will be.
Literature, arts, film, all provide a glimpse, elude to the feeling of
what the experience is like but its almost always a different kind of
wonderful.

Its like that touching scene in "Lost in Translation" when Bill Murray
is in bed next to Scarlet explaining what happens to a man when he has
a child. Everything changes, and we try to understand what It will be
like, grasp out of curiosity or longing the idea of a thing rather than
the thing itself. We become obsessed with ideals, love, honor,
dignity, death, suffering, only to understand that they are
abstractions. Silly abstractions.

Why do we keep trying to understand when it will never be like the
words we read, the pictures we saw, the music we listen to? Perhaps
because there is pleasure in it. The pleasure in making the attempt.
Or perhaps we like to lie to ourselves. To pretend we know rather than
bravely face the unknown.

It does work the other way around though, ironically. Once you have
lived something and then you encounter a work of art that speaks to
that experience, it is liberating, elating and enlightening. You feel
less alone, you are caught in disbelief that someone put into words
what you always knew, what you felt, in a way, the art form brings you
full circle, confirms your experience and gives it meaning.

What would all this be like if art didn't exist? Where does art come
from? What does it mean in our life? I remember a friend of mine when
he read "Brothers Karamazov" a highly influential book in life tell me
it did nothing for him. How was that possible? My god, to not be
moved by the Russians? He was lame though, maybe he will re-read the
Russians one day. When in trouble read the Russians, an old but true
adage.

I look for art to transform me. To change my actions. To guide me.
and in my most vulnerable moments comfort me. I will often spend a
friday night in bed with poetry listening to jazz while the world gets
drunk and stoned. I'd rather scribble bad short stories in my notebook
and read them to lovers than partake in meaningless conversation about
the weather. I want to create. I feel ready now that I have lived a
little. Just a little, there is much more to do, news doors to open as
others close behind me....

We can never go back. There is no going back. And in that there is
beauty and perfection. Don't look back. Look forward. Chin high.
Don't cry. Ok cry a little. If its for the lost ones. The ones no
longer here, the ones we will see again in some other form. The ones
who loved us. The ones that don't. To all those who wanted to...its
for them I really live.

Peace.