Exercise Your Spirits

How long has it been since you looked in your lover's eyes and rediscovered the spark that ignited when you "knew"? There are times when that feeling seems completely absent in my life and I am worried that we "out grow" the ability to be ...for lack of a better word..."enchanted". I often look at my kids and think how jealous I am having many of their "firsts" still ahead of them. Remember your first crush/love? Just sit back and try and recapture the feeling the first time you looked at another and your heart was firing on all pistons. In my case I never even said a word to the girl but that didn't matter. It wasn't being with that girl that was important, it was just the fact of being in love and knowing that you have it in your heart to have that strong a feeling was so..so enchanting and mystifying.

A quick retreat to the Goo Goo and I see enchanted is defined as "great charm and fascination", it is also a movie with Amy Adams and Susan Sarandon (no relation to the cling wrap). The definition leaves me less than enchanted. There is an odd combination of charm, wonder and suddenness that really describes the feeling I am driving at. I am sure you know it too. I suppose we can best describe the feeling in terms of human experience. For example, I felt that way the first time I touched the skin of a dolphin or when canoeing down the south fork of the Potomac having a bald eagle swoop over our craft as both the eagle and I looked for a good fishing spot. Sometimes the same experience at a different time has charm like powers. I probably made a face the first time I tasted coq au vin but when I was twelve it was the most marvelous dish I had tasted next to my mother's marinated chuck steaks. You might think this feeling is trivial but to me it seems basic and well...healthy. There are probably special hormones created at these times that are fundamental for a healthy life.

How long has it been since you looked at a bird with simple amazement as it flapped its wings and rose to take on the breeze and challenge the sky? We have the time. I know we have the time. I regularly look up at the moon or study the changing mountains here in the desert but I rarely marvel at them. Am I just too jaded? I would like to think we can't out grown those feelings. Sometime when I look at "older" people, I wonder if I am seeing the real them or if this is just what is left after the life has slowly drained from them. I guess I also wonder if I am going to be the kind of retiree that complains about nearly everything and examines things rather than appreciating them. Will any of my patience be left when I am seeing the other side of life? As if I have any patience to begin with.

When do we lose that abilty to marvel at the simple. It isn't just a case of stopping and smelling the roses either. I feel my generation is so lucky in that the amount of "free" time we have to stop and enjoy life is good and plenty. Sure that dosen't inherently mean that we use that time to "appreciate life". That was what was so cool about being twelve (or whatever) you didn't have to stop life to turn the masonary work on the sidewalk into a playground, a fantasy game, or an easel to bleed your creativity upon.

So, is this just an age thing? or can be turn back the emotional clock and recapture the ability to wonder with amazement? I am afraid it isn't just a matter of yoga and meditation although not far from those practices. I think it is a skill. Just like other skills, if we do not exercise that skill, train and properly hone the talent we lose it it gradually even if we excelled at it when we were younger. So what do we do? First we have to decide that we want to be enchanted. This is a big step and one that is too easily overlooked. At times I feel like I am done with being enchanted. Let's just live and forget the crap, but then too much time goes by and the feeling of life becomes hollow. We must experience to nourish the soul. So, having gotten here we have to consciously decide to practice our wonder and amazement. I am no expert but I suggest that new experiences are the most important spark in developing these feelings and fortifying the ability to recreate them. Even the word virgin pulls triggers in our subconscious that are powerful. We have to trod in virgin territory and savor each step. Place yourself in many marvelous situations and consciously lead our mind down the positive. Arts, sports, social activities wherever you can find it. Be greedy with your desire to experience and never feel like it is enough. As we develop we have to construct and use a language of positiveness and enrich it with charming amulets of syntax (I always liked that word syntax..especially the syn part). The language we infuse in our lives is the language of our feelings. It isn't necessary to express feelings with other people but to describe to ourselves how we are and what kind of spiritual progress we are making.

So let's do it. Lets go out into the world and marvel, wonder and be enchanted. Recently a friend of mine was describing a situation with a family member calling her progress a small miracle. Do you know the what the difference between a small miracle and a large miracle is?

Nothing.

See you after your next miraculous enchantment.

Something Between Black and White

I imagine this will start to sound like a movie review and to some extent it is but to some extent it isn't. So where to start? If it were possible, I wish I could see a movie and have one reaction to it and then see it again in a different place and at a different time and my feelings towards the movie would be completely  different. This is a hard experiment to create because our memories can be so vivid that re-watching the same movie has the power to transport us back to the time we first watched it and therefore not really see the same movie but in a different way, rather we are seeing the same movie in the same way we saw it the first time even if physically we are in a different spot. Sometimes, however, there are naturally born opportunities that create such an experiment.

For instance, the movie "Flight of the Phoenix", a 2004 movie about how survivors of a plane crash in the Mongolian desert work together to build a new plane. It is a movie that examines human reaction in the face of certain death. It examines issues of hope and it examines questioning leadership, but in truth I didn't really have much of a reaction to the movie when I saw it except to feel really hot and sweaty which is normal for me because I live in a desert; although I would like to think I am not stranded here.

Now we jump a few years into the future to the 2012 Liam Neeson starred, "The Grey" about survivors of a plane crash in the Alaskan outback being chased by wolves and, without reveling any spoilers, fight the wolves and the elements until the wind bitten end.

This time however, the movie for me at least was empirically metaphorical. In truth, at the beginning of the movie I was thinking that this was a remake of "Flight of the Phoenix" but just made on the snow and snarling CGI wolves, but then something changed. I think my opinion changed when the Liam Neeson character referred to a poem that was written by his father (in the movie):

Once more into the fray
into the last good fight I will ever know
Live and die on this day
Live and die on this day

Now on the surface...the two aforementioned movies should have affected me the same, but the later emotional took me places the first did not. I attribute this to two main reasons. The first reason is the slight differences in the production of the movies. The first being the nature of a the movie. "Grey" is cold and calculated, "Phoenix" is hot and slow paced. In "Phoenix" the build up is to a one possible escape scenario. "Grey" is about staring down the ultimate possibility and continuing anyway. "Phoenix" is a movie. "Grey" is a visual metaphor. "Phoenix" is to be watched with popcorn and lots of cold beverage. "Grey" to be watched while you are huddling beneath a warm blanket shared with only your sacred trust (and perhaps hot chocolate). The second reason has nothing to do with the movie but with where I am at (mentally, physically, emotionally) right now. In truth I don't like scary movies I never have, but with "The Grey" I was able to see beyond the celluloid (digital or otherwise) and construct an understanding of the art that is beneficial to me. I am looking for art that will not only relate to me but will help me process.

"Time wounds all heals" or so we learn. Sometimes, the passage of time is a mysterious curtain that allows you to try and peek beyond it, beyond into the past and if we are lucky to contemplate our lives from two different points on the curve of time.

When the lights come on after "Phoenix" the dangers of the expansive desert are behind you, but with "Grey" you leave the theatre and enter the cold world filled with unexpected realities and dangers with white sharp teeth and yet you, as the voyeur, are armed with a renewed strength to jump "once more into the fray".