A Dime a Dozen

Don’t let anyone tell you who you’re not. What people think about you is none of your business. 

A**holes are a dime a dozen. Remember you’re one in a million.   

Fools Gold

When you carry yourself in animation and passion, top billing on a marquee is only fools gold. 

Stimulus

Reactions spill hot coffee and it burns us.  Responses are like sipping cool liquids through a straw and are  pleasant to the senses. 

How Do I Want to Live?

Not dependent upon the emotionality of others.  

Ghosts

The ghosts no longer chase me around because they know I can see right through them.  

Worry

What is worry? The fears we speculate about will come true.   

Watts Watt?

There you have it electricity the high priestess of false security is at it again. Not enough watts for everyone and watts more LIPA is thinking of exhuming James Watt who invented the term. I think we need to ask Ben Franklin watt was he thinking when he invented it in the first place.   

I am Responsible

I’ve learned that I am responsible for the effort not the outcome. In this way I can remove disappointment from my life knowing that I have given my level best in every endeavor I engage in.  

Alone

The aftermath of this storm is quite devastating for many and as I look out my backyard I think it was just province that kept those trees off the house.

 I feel the most alone I have ever felt in my life these past 24+ hours and in the end we are alone no matter how many people we are near. For me though living in this house alone has made me reconcile with the fact that there’s not much between living and dying now. 

I know that may sound a bit dark but that is how I am feeling right now alone and for the first time in my life I feel despair. I also know that all things pass and so its just a temporary thing. 

Agenda

When people have an agenda you have to subtract their interest out of the equation. In this way you will begin to see the truth.

Blank Fields

There are times when my life gets so cluttered with debris from my past it interferes with the construction of a new day.  Then when I realize that God doesn’t take me this far to drop my on my head I “sober up” and erase the old entries from my past and start over to fill in the blank fields.  

Fear

Our fears never live up to our expectations. 

The Boy Who Cried Wolf

Remember the boy that cried WOLF?  Whatever happened to him? Most of the stories would have us believe that when the wolf finally did show  the furry rake made a juicy meal with all of the pranksters flock.  But I heard a different version of the Aesop tale. In the happy ever after script the shepherd boy made friends with the Wolf’s wife and when her husband arrived to devour the unsuspecting sheep his wife greeted him with a blood curdling growl and   bared teeth.  Upon seeing this the  big bad wolf became wide-eyed and sat back on his haunches. You see he had been out drinking all night with the boys and happily the flock was saved. 

The Moral: don’t believe stories or even what you read in the newspapers because it’s usually just an old wives tale.  

Talking

I have learned that when I talk behind someone's back I wind up having to speak to them face to face.

Rumors

Rumors are cowardice disguised in the envelope of gossip.  

Under My Skin

I’ve learned not to let anger get under my skin because if it does the dis-ease spreads throughout my whole body.  

One Bullet

We don’t need to fill the chamber often one bullet will do. Preparing to do anything in life does not always require we that we “load up”. More sometimes is just too much.  

It Appears to Me

An agreement not to do something takes the pressure off performance and the need, desire and obligation to do something you don’t want to do.  

The Rooster and the Hen

Why did the rooster cross the road? Answer: because there was a hen on the other side. But what he failed to see was the oncoming car that flattened him dead and sent his beautiful feathers flying. The moral is  a rooster  can’t fly but when he’s chasing a hen his feathers can.  

Flower in the Wind

The lily bends in deference to the blowing wind and it never gives the force of nature anything more. Its weight keeps the flower in its bed. We need that lesson too because we often add more than weight to situations that only help us break.  

Knocking About

 Waking up the unconscious mind is done with a silent alarm clock.  But the first thing we need to shut off is the noise of random unsupervised thought.

When pain is so familiar you think there is no alternative but to complain about it, it may be time for a new set of questions to ask yourself.

Picking up the pieces after a fall can be a daunting experience as we sit with the "why me" too long but as one of my teachers showed me the new space I hadn't seen before isn’t so bad.

Not knowing is the most fearsome place our mind runs to. Pretend instead that not knowing means we are headed for uncharted happiness with faith as our companion.

YES

I was listening to a broadcast by Joel Osteen and he talked about the series of “no’s” before you get to the ‘Yes” and I thought how revelatory he was even though this is not a new paradigm by any means. He sighted Edison’s two thousand no’s for an example and how he just kept on moving closer to the eventual Yes. And why is it any different for us? And there is no difference it is just that we get stuck on a ‘no’ and leave it there. 

The Other 9 Pins

 There are days when God goes bowling and you’re the PIN.  And even if you do get knocked down you can always pick yourself up afterwards. And if you talk to the other 9  they’ll know exactly how you feel.  

Legible

I’ve been thinking and know what?  It doesn’t help much. I trust more in the triggers that

fall nascent when I ask the questions I need to know and as long as I am open to the answers in fine print my mind will stay legible.

The GG

Those summer visits just after the decade of the 60’s began was more about being smothered with attention which I so felt I lacked at home than anything else. I was the eldest and only boy and by that time 3 of my 4 sisters were alive and this was my way to as it were get away from it all.  And the Woodside-Greenpoint sojourns were just what the doctor ordered.

 Sometimes my father would drop me off in Queens or as he felt I could manage it he let me take the LIRR to Woodside station and trek the 5 blocks to Grandma’s house. I loved the independence of that ride and when it came to traveling to Greenpoint later in the week I took the GG subway from 65th Street to Nassau Avenue in Brooklyn on a 15 cent token ride. When I would emerge from that hole in the ground and walked but one block to turn the corner on Manhattan Avenue I would love the smell of the subway below that rushed my olfactory nerve up through the black iron gratings. I could never figure out what was so pleasant about it but it was one of the biggest anchors that reminded me heaven was just a few steps away.  

Light and Dark

The difference between light and dark is seeing and unseeing. Might sound rather obvious but I think that what we see in the dark is often more real than what we see in the light because the mind plays tricks on us when our eyes are open but when they’re closed we’re guided by instinct rather than emotion.  

It's the Presentation

Some people are blessed with many gifts of the mind and spirit but don’t quite know how to wrap the presents.   

Vantage Point

The perfect vantage point often leaves me seeing what I don’t want to see but it’s usually what I need to. 

Heart on My Sleeve

I wear my heart on my sleeve that’s why I always like to wear sweaters. 

Feed Your Head

 Feed your head used to mean take drugs. I heard that verse in “White Rabbit” by Grace Slick of the then Jefferson Airplane. Now we feed our head with useless drivel on television with 24-hour news channels and self-deprecating sitcoms that do no more than dampen the human spirit.  

Drop It Like It's Hot

 Drop it like it’s hot. When I heard this song I thought to myself that this was one of the worst attempts at urban prose I’ve ever heard.  But on reflection maybe it’s more that just a silly collection of words that tickle our funny bone.  Drop it like it’s hot means just that keep your hands off the hot stove unless you’re wearing oven mitts.  

Your Welcome

When did “Your Welcome” get replaced with the new age phrase: “No Problem” What the hell does that mean?  Where did this piece of Americana come from? I guess I could google it but I think I won’t try to understand impoliteness and just stick to my own tried and true compliment to Thank You: Your Welcome. Just sayin.  

Bottomless Pit

Am I really that deep or am I just a hole in my own ocean of dreams?

The Shirker

I could get used to shirking the responsibilities that I can’t quite put my finger on right now.  

The Path of Revenge

Revenge is for those that think they’ve been left with no other alternative than to seek relief from the pain they feel. Unfortunately the pain remains after their intended target has been hit back often with a greater force.  

Horizon Blue

When we read words they are in black and white. It is when the images they paint glow in Technicolor we see beyond the blue horizon. 

One Door

One door closes and another one opens.  However it’s the time that we are stuck out in the hall when both are closed is when our faith is tested. 

The Captain

We can give ourselves credit for things that we think we did well and it’s a great way for us to feel some sense of self-esteem even if we engage in hyperbole as to what actually transpired.  We all tend to exaggerate at times and that’s okay as long as we keep our heads right size and don’t get too carried away. 

Thin Spread

When you spread yourself thin you wind up with no jam on your toast.