"You gotta learn to love the bomb."

In the middle of a really strange and beautiful day, filled with so many hard emotions and lessons and, somehow, so much laughter -- I read this article about Stephen Colbert called The Late, Great Stephen Colbert.  

Stephen Colbert lost his dad and two older brothers in a plane crash when he was 10 and, in the midst of this conversation about his incredible success, he talks about how you have to accept suffering.  "You gotta learn to love the bomb."  

"I asked him if he could help me understand that better, and he described a letter from Tolkien in response to a priest who had questioned whether Tolkien's mythos was sufficiently doctrinaire, since it treated death not as a punishment for the sin of the fall but as a gift. “Tolkien says, in a letter back: ‘What punishments of God are not gifts?’ ” Colbert knocked his knuckles on the table. “ ‘What punishments of God are not gifts?’ ” he said again. His eyes were filled with tears. “So it would be ungrateful not to take everything with gratitude. It doesn't mean you want it. I can hold both of those ideas in my head."

I've been struggling lately in dealing with loss, overthinking, learning to truly give people the benefit of the doubt, having faith, believing in myself...  geez, it's crazy to write it all out like that.  And, as it turns out, I'm starting to realize that I'm really scared.  But, I gotta learn to love the bomb.  And, I think that knowing this.  Writing about this.  Will help me to grow and move forward.


At the end of this difficult magical day, I was driving home from East Oakland and was t-boned on the corner of 45th and Bond when a girl apparently "didn't see my car at all" after she allegedly came to a full stop at the stop sign, and then blindly plowed into the intersection.  She had a stop sign; I did not.  She also had a phone...  

I screamed as we made impact, and my mind jumped to a conversation I was having minutes before with the friend I had just dropped off about people dying in car accidents.  As we made impact, I thought, this is it.

Moments later, the flying glass settled and, as I started to feel the sting of the airbag along my side and my arm, I realized I was still alive.  Shaken, kind of pissed that I was hit, and incredibly grateful that nothing was bleeding or broken. 

Be grateful.  Take the gift.  Do your very best to always give people the benefit of the doubt.  And, laugh your ass off as much as possible. 

Visits!

Stacey came to visit!

Saha, Field Music at the Independent, hanging with Linda and Kai in Mountain View, Koh Samui and the Monkey, comedy night at The Foundry, Souly Vegan, hiking in the Oakland hills, Il Fornario, Disney one man show, Cha Ya.  

And, Todd came to visit too!

Ceasar, Love our Neighborhood Day (Novel opening and Destiny Art's stage), Goorin, Summer Kitchen, Audium w/ Joan and Paul, Bob's donuts, North Beach breakfast, Beach Blanket Babylon, fight choreography for King Lear, Warriors game w/ George, X-men, Twinsters, Inn Kensington, Sausalito, Sushi Ran, Aunt Mary's, YouTube, awesome sandwich place.  

I'm so grateful for these two, for the time I got to spend with both of them, and for our mini adventures. :) 

Say anything

I used to write everywhere and on any surface -- paper (of course), napkins, the side of a coffee cup, my leg -- feverishly trying to capture splintered thoughts, haunting moments of possibility, the torture of a longing heart, wishes on pennies in fountains, an intoxicating kiss...

Bad poetry and gushing prose bleeding all over the place.  It was messy and honest and free. 

When I read back through it, I hate most of it -- but, I do find something pure.  Something present.  

Obsessive moments permanently inked...