Happy Thanksgiving

Eight days ago I died. Not that I remember any of it. According to my wife, I'd gone to the basement to use my bike trainer after an early dinner. From upstairs she heard me fall heavily to the ground. She found me moaning, and I quickly stopped breathing. She called 911 and performed CPR on me until the EMTs arrived. Simply speaking she saved my life.

They rushed me to the hospital, and for the next 48 hours I was in a coma with a respirator down my throat. That time was followed by another 48 hours of drug induced short term memory loss which was highlighted was an angiogram that revealed there was nothing structurally wrong with my heart (I merely have fickle ticker), and the implantation of a defibrillator an inch below my left clavicle. I remember bits and flashes of those two days like old snapshots. Finally there were two semi-coherent days, and then they discharged me.

I came home a couple days ago and have been overwhelmed by the love and support that has been extended to my family and me from friends and family. People I've met only once or twice over the past decade have called to wish me well. The families we've grown to know from Karl's soccer team all chipped in to buy us a Thanksgiving dinner so my wife, who has been through even more of an ordeal than me, wouldn't feel obliged to cook. I've received multiple thoughtful cards and gifts from coworkers. One of the most enjoyable presents were a couple custom built crossword puzzles created by friends with whom I daily provide with the NY Times crossword.

I am equally overwhelmed by the by the enormity of my situation. I was clinically dead. I was pulled back from the abyss by the love and know-how of my wife. Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. I remember Thanksgiving. It used to be a big deal. It now seems to be relegated to an afterthought holiday sandwiched between the two retail boons of Halloween and Christmas. It's that overwrought family dinner that currently seems to be more of an excuse to play some extra NFL games than anything else. A couple of my friends are using this long weekend as an opportunity to leave the continent entirely. One is going to Hawaii and the other to the Bahamas. I was envious of them when I first heard where they were going. That's not the case for me anymore. This year I am so overflowing with thanks that I can't comprehend missing Thanksgiving dinner with my family for anything.

Most of us have far more to be thankful for than we realize. I'm especially thankful and happy this year because I died. Dying made me realize just how precious life, friends, and family truly are, and tomorrow I will enjoy Thanksgiving like never before. I hope you do too. 

Just a selfie.

The jersey actually fits now that I'm down 20 pounds. Only 10 more to go. 

Reworking My Online Persona

I've made a couple changes to my online persona recently. Last week I finally terminated my Face Book (FB) account. I'm still in the 14 day waiting period before they allegedly will delete my account permanently, but I've signed off and submitted the formal request to delete it. We'll see if I can remain strong and not reactivate it. I've already become weak twice before and didn't follow through. I'm suspecting it's because I didn't give myself another outlet. I'm attempting to address that potential failing this time around. I still hear the siren call, but I'm lashing myself to the mast of my ship.

Instead, I'm choosing two distinct paths for my online existence. The first is Twitter. Yes, yes, I know. Exchanging FB for Twitter is like swapping meth for crack. I get it. Regardless, for those who can't digest bites of text longer than 140 characters, I've got you covered. You can follow me @KBeta. It's an old account, and I honestly don't even know why I started it. I think Twitter was less than a year old when I did. There's a hip-hop artist in North Carolina who was rather put out that I scooped the handle before he did. KBeta is one of the two nicknames I've collected through the years. The other nickname was Bubba. Yes, I'm a recovering Bubba. Neither nickname really stuck, but I always preferred KBeta to Bubba. Besides, @Bubba was long gone.  

The second venue is this blog. Writers writer. If I wish to actually manifest as writer other than in my fantasies I need to force myself to write, and I mean REALLY write. Not re-posting the thoughts and images of someone else. Not engaging in pointless political and religious flame wars. Not belching out futile attempts at prose to an audience that isn't visiting FB for narratives. It's been years since I've seriously put in the time and effort that is necessary for me to write at the level at which I know I'm able. It's a skill, like all other skills, it needs to be exercised and honed. I'm woefully out of shape in that regard. Of course, it's a self-indulgence. Most writing is. My thoughts are neither unique nor original. The point is not to enlighten or inform the reader with my profound insights on the nature of the human condition and the universe around us. There are much better sources for that kind of information. The point is to get my voice out there. It's really not important if anyone listens. Frankly, I don't expect many will. The sheer volume of content in the inter-tubes will swamp out my pathetic squeaks, but at a minimum these squeaks to be uniquely mine. I will present myself it the form that I choose and not in the form that is dictated a medium that not even vaguely interested in genuine thoughtfulness. Thoughtfulness is what I'm hoping to put forth here. 

I admitted in my FB sign off that I've done my fair share to add to the internet cacophony. I posted plenty of pointless, useless crap. Mercifully, there were only a few cat videos. It's painfully easy to regurgitate effluence in that medium. In an ADD world FB is an ideal venue for the knee-jerk reactions and unconsidered emotional outbursts. I've had enough of such feeble communications both from myself and those I know. I don't mean to diminish my collection of friends on FB, but that venue seems to me to be more about posting for the sake of posting then posting with purpose. My posts here will be fewer and farther between than on FB, but I hope they will be more substantive. 

The goal, for now, is for a minimum of one post per week. I haven't selected my topics as of yet, but I initially intend to steer away from polemics about incendiary topics. Enjoy (or despise) my silly political rants available in my previous posts. I do not intend to revisit those topics. I'm past the absurd Red-Blue battles which are largely manufactured by the media and intended to divide us. I'll probably still drone on about baseball from time to time, so be forewarned. I'm a card carrying atheist, so don't expect me to automatically respect your beliefs if they are arcane or demonstrably false. Other than those caveats, I may post just about anything here. I hope you'll find it worth your time. Hmmm... maybe some more haikus... 

Seeyoubye

I got nuthin'.

... but here's a flower. 

Mistakes, Acting, and a Buddhist Gift

Robin Williams said in an interview on Inside The Actor's Studio in 2001 that one of the best pieces of acting advice he'd ever received was from Jeff Bridges on the set of the Fisher King. Jeff told him that when there's a mistake, go with it because it's a Buddhist gift. Robin went on to elaborate that it's especially true on film because “film is all about creating moments for THAT moment.”

I was struck by that comment: "creating moments for that moment." In the context of film making it makes perfect sense. When making a film actors will work and rework scenes until they capture the moment the director is trying to create. They'll shoot take after take until they get it just right. If only we were so lucky as to be able work and rework the moments of our live to make them as perfect as the movies. We don't, of course, have that option in our day to day lives. That's why the movies are magical, and our live can seem so mundane. However, there are those moments... those moments when the magic occurs.

I experienced precisely such a moment in the one acting class I took in my life. It was a moment that could have been marred by a mistake, but it was enchanted by it. For our final project my partner and I had chosen to do the open scene from Edward Albee's play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. It's acrimonious beginning to an emotionally exhausting play, and we thoroughly enjoyed being utterly nasty to one another during our rehearsals. We worked and reworked the moments until the were air tight.

The crucial moment arrived, we were on stage in front of our class, and to abandon all modesty we were hammering it. We were in the moment. Unfortunately my staging started to fall a beat or two behind the dialog. The nerves of situation made it difficult to keep ourselves from speeding up. At one critical point, just after I'd removed my shoes and put them away, I needed to wheel around and confront my partner to escalate the argument. I took off my shoes, but because we were talking a bit too fast I didn't get them put away. So in the performance that counted the most for our grade, unlike what I did in any of our rehearsals, I held my shoes in my hands and gesticulated with them throughout the entire argument scene. It was a mistake, and for the briefest moment, I saw my partner's eyes widen with the unspoken question, “What the fuck are you doing with your shoes?” But we both went with it, stayed in the moment, and we created that moment, and we rocked that moment. We accepted the Buddhist gift of staying in the moment, and we created magic. Our instructor and our classmates were bowled over.

Everyday we're handed script which is our life, and we are expect to do a cold read. Most days we stumble through well enough because our experience serves as rehearsals, and we can make it mostly believable. Most days we make mistakes, but it's our choice what we do with them. We can push back and resist the moment. We can break character and let the mistake stop us cold, or we can accept the Buddhist gift. We can embrace the mistake, and by doing so we can discover what magic it holds. That's how we create moments that live for our whole lives.