Everybody freeze!

Tonight, I’m thankful for my body.

Most of our lives, we only realize how precious the gifts we have are when we lose them.  But every now and again, we have the presence of mind to stop, and imagine what things would be like if we no longer had those cherished possessions.

*Every Wednesday I make the soul sacrifice and make the incredibly long and arduous journey to Midtown Atlanta to participate in what we call ‘Session’.  Ok it’s not really that long but after a long day at the yob the couch is looking might comfy.  Session is what you will hear a bboy or a bgirl(more commonly known as breakdancer) refer to quite often.  It involves other dancers, a particular kind of music, and usually some linoleum(used to be cardboard, but hey its 2009 people). It is not practice, it is not rehearsal, it’s Session.

One of the things you will quickly realize upon entering this scene is the physical prowess and stamina that many of these people possess.  People contorting their bodies to get a move right or repeatedly drilling a technique is a common sight to see.  Over time, a dancer’s body and mind start to sync in a fantastic way; a song plays and the body responds, the beat changes and so does the style.  If not for the body, none of this would be possible.

Anyone who knows me knows I warm up slow.  It can take me a while to build up the trust to really show you what type of person I am.  Maybe it’s because I’m a thinker, not a talker.  But that’s for another blog.    With dance, however, all that fades away.  Hear a song, we start to dance a similar style, and there is an instant, wordless connection.

This drive to push our bodies to the artistic and physical limit will even transcend culture.  During a visit to Japan, I was at a school with some friends.  On our way out, I heard a particular song, a song I had only heard in a particular setting, a song I had only heard around breakdancers.  I immediately ran to the source and to my surprise I found some Japanese bboys!  My language skill was fairly low at the time, but it didn’t matter; we both had something else we could connect on.  And to the dismay of my friends we ‘connected’ for the next two hours until they forced me to leave.

I know that when I am injured and I can’t perform at my max, I become miserable.  It’s something we take for granted and often overlook.  I don’t worship it, but I am fascinated by how it moves and reacts and how it was designed.  It’s an amazing gift.

So tonight before you go to bed, or tomorrow when you wake up, take a few moments and give thanks.  Do a stretch, eat an apple, take a few deep breaths; take care of your body.  Cuz you know what, you’ve only got one.

Friendship

What a peculiar invention, friendship.  I may not take a whole lot of things seriously in life, but if there’s one thing I don’t mess around about, it’s my friends.  From as long as I can remember I have always been passionate about the people who I can call ‘amigo’.  I remember moving from California to Illinois just before the 4th grade. Some kids were playing basketball so I started playing with them and by the end of the day we were like old chums; checking out each others houses and borrowing each other’s video games and so on.  I’m sure it’s different for everybody but when you’re younger it just seemed a whole lot easier to make friends.  And when I made those friends, I always just assumed we’d be best buds for life.  I wouldn’t have said that out loud, I’m sure the thought never even crossed my mind, but had you asked me if we  would still be hanging out a year from now, I would’ve said “Of course!”.

As I have matured and gotten a bit older I have learned much about the importance and the nature of friendship.  I’ve learned that time and distance can tell us much about how genuine our relationship really was, at the very least if it was based on a solid mutual foundation.  I realized once I made that move to Illinois I didn’t have a whole lot to talk about to my best friend of three years(and that’s a big chunk of life when you’re not even 10 yet).  Having moved all over the US I’ve seen this firsthand.  Time/space is not a wedge, it just stretches what is already there.  Not without a little effort, some people we will remain friends with in spite of being separated by time or space.

Something else I learned at a young age: with a general exception of family, most of the of bonds we make, or the people we meet will only be an intrical part of our lives for a season, maybe two.  My assumption is that if you take a moment to reflect on this you’ll find it to be true in your own life.  I learned this potentially painful lesson for the first time in the 6th grade.  A family with a son the same age as me moved into a house on our street in the summer, and we were instantly inseparable, we even shared the same name.  He was the kind of person you could get into an all out fist-fight with, and then 30 minutes later share some pizza while watching a movie(yes that happened at least once).  But sometimes good things come to an end, and his dad got transferred to Oregon.  So we said our goodbyes and tried to keep in touch, but it quickly deteriorated into a family card at Christmas time relationship.  But the feelings don’t go away so quickly.

Sometimes for periods of our lives it seems like we get to spend every waking moment with those that we love.  It gets to the point where it feels normal, it even feels right.  But then someone starts to move in a different direction, or isn’t around as often, and so you find yourself reminiscing about “back in the day” when the whole gang was there.  And while we may be blessed to have reunions from time to time, it will never be the exact same as it was originally; for better or worse we are not stationary beings.  We are constantly changing, evolving, learning, forgetting, striving, and resisting things all around us, so that the next time we meet, we bring something new to the table.

I recently spent some time with a friend who I won’t see for a while.  They are moving on to the next season in their life, and that is something to be happy about.  But I’d be lying if I said it doesn’t hurt a bit to know there will be a vacuum of space the next time everyone gets together and they’re not there.  But in avoiding the quicksand that memory lane can be, there is always a good to look forward to; of making new great friends, more people that will change your life forever.  The possibilities are endless.  And hey, who knows, but I think there’s a pretty good chance you’ll get to meet those special people again someday.

“All who share it will be our companions; but one or two or three who share something more will be our Friends.  In this kind of love, as 「Emerson」 said, Do you love me? means Do you see the same truth?–Or at least, ‘Do you care about the same truth?’ The man who agrees with us that some question, little regarded by others, is of great importance can be our Friend.  He need not agree with us about the answer. ”  -C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

Music

On the way home last night I threw the ole’ iPod on shuffle and skipped around for a few tracks until I found something that felt right.  That’s just the type of person I am; ask me to Dj for a party and I’ll have a hard time.  I don’t remember Artists and Song names on the spot very well, but ask me to make a playlist and tell me what mood you’re looking for, I’m all over it.  Sometimes you just have to let your(for lack of a better word) soul tell you what kind of music you’d like to hear.  That’s why shuffle is such a great innovation; I don’t need to waste time thinking about what I want to listen to, I just wait until the right song comes up and ride it out.

Which brings us to my next point: What is music to you?  Rather, what does it do for you, or why do you listen to it?  A friend of mine asked this question a while back and it got me thinking.

So I’m in the car and this song comes up, it feels right so I let it play(in my own defense I’m not always this philosophical about what I listen to).  I’d heard it many times before, and as I listened, I found myself less concentrating on the track and more thinking about what the song made me, well, think of.  As with anything else, I can often associate music with an event, or and emotion, or a period of my life.  In a fairly detailed manner I started thinking about a girl I had recently become re-aquainted with and how things might turn out between us and all of these other things associated with it; and I haven’t even reached the 2-minute mark on the song yet!  Other thoughts flowed in and out and before I had realized it, the 8 minute song was just about over and I snapped out of my “day”dream, surprised at myself for getting so lost in my thoughts so quickly.

On the opposite spectrum, music can have a great physical affect on us.  This place where I was coming home from was a bboy(breakdance) session where off and on for 3 hours I danced my behind off.  I consider myself to be in pretty good shape, but 10 minutes of going at it hard can leave even the most conditioned athletes gasping for air.  So what makes a person able to push through the exhaustion?  You guessed it.  Ask any bboy, or any dancer for that matter, and they’ll tell you that when you hear a great song come on, you’ll be back on your feet like Jason Statham after a bad movie or Popeye after a can of his favorite green stuff.

So when’s your favorite time to listen to music?  Where do you like to listen to it the most?

music, originally uploaded by basilyskos.

Never(Past Tense) by DJ Tiesto

Bboy Track

Blogging

Good day, my faithful blogland constituents.  The purpose of today’s post is to address something that I think has been missing in my life for the recent months.  Blogging was originally a creative vent for me; a place where I could share thoughts, anecdotes, pictures, and experiences with the friends in my life.  Even though I love FB and Twitter as they force you to strip your ideas down to concentrate, I still feel the need to write at long lengths why life is just really tough right now or why eating a good apple can make the whole day better or why a man needs to walk around his house naked or in his underpants from time to time.  You get the point.  So congratulations, confetti, and handshakes all the round as I re-inagurate myself back into the office of ‘Blogger’.  I will make it my duty to provide you with incredibly dry and tasteless humor, let you in through writing to the secret places and thoughts that run through my mind everyday, and generally share with you the not-so-unique observances I make filtered through the oh-so-unique perspective that I hold.  Let’s take blogging back to where it started.  Post from the heart, I say.  Let your first draft be your only draft, unless of course, you’re the Chicago Bears.  That being said, let’s begin.

Today’s topic:  Sandwiches, Burgers, Wraps

I’ve often heard it said that American Food isn’t necessarily ‘American’.  On many counts I would agree.  Being the multicultural schmorgisborg that we are, our specialty is having the best of all worlds.  Italian, Mexican, Korean; I’d be hard pressed to believe you can’t go somewhere in this country and find a pretty good representation of a certain country’s staple cuisine.  So bringing us back to the point, what would you consider America’s Food to be?

A few years ago, I can guarantee you I would’ve have a very tough time answering this question.  Unless you’ve got a specific reason for knowing the answer, you might’ve too.  My 13 months of living in Japan forced me to take a good hard look at some of the best things our country has to offer.  First thing I had to learn to live without: Bread.  Now, if you’re the Wonderbread, no taste, no character type of bread eater, no problem.  But for us sourdough, rye, honey wheat, pumpernickle, crossiant, asiago cheese loving fanatics out there, this is a serious luxury to give up.

Next- Beef/Deli meats. Not the most readily available, or cost friendly, commodity in other places around the globe.  Where else in the world can you order Fajitas that come with enough steak to last you three meals?

And finally-Cheese.  We love cheese here in the states so much that we stopped looking at it as an extra, we started making excuses to make cheese the center of the dish, sometimes the entire meal!  Think about it(and notice the progression); Cheese fries, Grilled Cheese, Macaroni and Cheese, 4 cheese pizza, String cheese, Fried cheese!, cheese fondue, cheese queso, cheesecake…we even put cheese on our cheese!  And before you discount it think back to the last time you sprinkled some parmesan on your pizza.  Perhaps we don’t make cheese as good as the French but call me a Chinese Operaman if we don’t know how to eat it better than them.

Which brings us to the pinnacle of our discovery.  Some historians will tell you it was a Jewish Rabbi in the 1st century that made the first sandwich.  Others say it was a pub owner in London during the 1700’s.  I say ‘bah’ to all that gibbery and say it was probably some guy in the northeast U.S. who realized he had lots of the three best ingredients in the world and thought to himself, “There’s got to be a way to combine these things to further heighten my eating experience.”  And so he did.

But, wherever you believe sandwiches originated from, they are a wonderful picture of what our country should represent; food groups and condiments of all shapes, sizes, colors, and tastes coming together to make something that not one of them could do on their own, uniting for a cause much bigger and far more important than themselves; to feed me.

Snapshots..

A rain lover..

A rain lover.., originally uploaded by Ｒｉｃｅｂｏｙ.

Have you seen the movie ‘Amadeus’?

Watch it, and pay special attention to Antonio Salieri. Accomplished in his own right, he pales in comparison to Wolfgang Amadeus, and he is painfully aware of that which separates them.

I feel that way often when I look at “R i c e b o y”’s work. The sunlight in this picture could have easily destroyed the mood by being too strong. I can almost smell the grass, let alone imagine myself laying down in it. A good photo to me is one that makes you feel, or remember, or want something.

He has shown he has the ability to do this. I admire his stuff, but not to the point where I’ll try to indirectly kill him Sorry Salieri. If anything it is a motivator that pushes me to experiment with new things.

What things or people do you see that motivate you?

New Wonder Woman trailer

Yahoo had a short write up saying rumors that Megan Fox was to play the role of “Wonder Woman” in the new upcoming film were false.  I’m familiar with the characters story but not to the degree of a Batman or Spiderman, so I thought it’d be cool to check out.  However, an animated version will be released March 09.  I was being a bit of a naysayer, but then I watched the trailer and now I can’t wait to see it.  FYI its the same people that made Justice League.  Enjoy!

Tomorrow’s the Election Day

Or at least it’s supposed to be.  Let’s hope for smooth, quick, and fair counting.  But I’m sure you guys feel the same way.  The real reason for posting was to show those of you who hadn’t seen this commercial, well…this commercial.  I was in the barber shop today and I was like, “wow. “  My hat’s off to whatever PR team thought this one up.  Wonder if it’ll make a difference?  Love to hear what you guys think after watching it.  It’s 2 minutes long.

Thanks to everybody

for the birthday wishes. Some birthdays seem to have large, somewhat mute implications. Almost more than any other I’ve had I actually feel different today. Even as Fall begins in 4 days(what happened to my Summer!!?) I feel like this is a new season in my life. I can’t but see even familiar things in a different lens. Amidst the joy, expectations, ups, and downs there is a somber sobriety deep down inside, prodding me on. The low-hanging yellow moon tonight seems to echo my sentiments.

Lately I’ve been messing around with HDR. Still got a good ways to go but I’m enjoying messing around with my shots, plus I’m learning a lot about what makes up a photo.

Dreaming away..

Dreaming away.., originally uploaded by Ｒｉｃｅｂｏｙ.

It’s so good it makes me sick! This guy is definitely my favorite photographer on Flickr. I mean, pictures like this make me want a girlfriend, just so I can try to take pictures like this! We won’t even talk about the mood, composition, aperture, and all the other good stuff right now. Man, I tip my hat to you once again, R i c e b o y.