"Pleased to meet you take my hand, there's no way back from here."

Morning sunlight penetrated the room between the slats in the blinds, forming a ladder of light beams starting on the floor climbing partway up the wall. The Heart had been awake for a while, at least an hour he estimated by the distance the light had shifted across the room since first creeping in at dawn. “Two, three, four rungs on the light ladder.” He stayed very still and quiet, waiting for nothing in particular.

The Heart was nearly certain he was actually awake. He considered getting out of bed to see if anybody else was up, to see if anybody else wanted to get some breakfast or maybe just a strong cup of coffee down the street. “Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen rungs…” The rest were probably hung over from the revelries of the night before.

“Twenty-eight, twenty-nine.” It had gotten too warm to have the blanket completely covering him, but it was too comfortable not to. Another weekend was passing by, another chance for the Heart to sacrifice his own comforts so that others wouldn’t be hurt. “Thirty-four, thirty-five.” Another chance to accumulate stories that he couldn’t tell in their entirety to anyone.

The light ladder was crawling slowly up the wall now. “Forty-one, forty-two.” Why couldn’t he get up and take himself out for coffee, tell his stories to a medium green tea chai latte, listen to the stories the wind has to tell, laugh at the jokes life is cracking all the time?

The Heart got up out of bed and placed his hand next to the shadow ladder on the wall opposite the window. “Sixty-eight rungs total.” A ladder that went nowhere. An exercise in futility. But then the Heart turned back around to the window and said to no one in particular, “Plato was right about the cave.” He walked over to the window and pulled the blinds all the way up, revealing an entire world teeming with beauty— effectively killing the shadow ladder. He took a deep breath and drank it all in, and he hoped to God he could remember this the next time.

"It's easy to be, easy and free, when it doesn't mean anything..."

So last weekend I was hired by the Travel Channel to work as a production assistant on a taping of the TV show Taste of America at the Lenexa Spinach Festival. I may not be a big fan of television, but considering this was a well-paying PA role (rather than the unpaid positions I've taken on the last two feature films I worked), there was no way I was going to turn this opportunity down.

The crew were a delight to work with, and since they all had to be fairly young they were all willing to impart some advice for a young film student looking to start a real career in film/video production (not to mention some very fascinating advice on the subject of "cougar hunting" from Ben, and the current state of the German film industry from Tonja).

Everyone at the festival knew that "the Travel Channel" was coming to cover the gala, and therefore we were treated like celebrities. Everyone wanted us to eat their food, so on top of my wage I got delicious free food all day. We shot the various booths serving up their own recipes, Popeye and Olive Oil serving the World's Largest Spinach Salad, and even the judging of the Spinach recipe contest.

At one point Kacie and I even got some time on camera, seeing as how our age group didn't seem to have a very good representation at the festival. I basically eat a plate full of different spinach recipes and talk about the flavors-- hopefully I don't end up completely on the cutting room floor.

All in all it was a fantastic time and a great new addition to my resume of film experience. I can't wait for the next one to come along. Considering the great time I had, I don't know why everyone doesn't pursue a job in the film industry. :)

Life is truly beautiful.

"nothing is static, everything is evolving, everything is falling apart"

The only patterns that exist out there in the chaos are the ones our human brains look for and assign arbitrary meanings to… but maybe that’s enough.
Maybe something is more beautiful on the authority that we want it to be beautiful; that we need it to be. If we perceive beauty, then it really is—the only thing I can trust is my own perception anyway (if even that).

We westerners look at the historical Christ to solidify our Christian faith, yet in Eastern traditions, they could care less about the historical Gautama Buddha. It doesn’t matter if he was truly all they say of him, the message in his sutras is the same regardless.

Would “love your neighbor as yourself,” mean anything different if Christ wasn’t actually the son of God?

Life is way too beautiful to ignore—which is exactly what we are doing when we sweat the small stuff, like “intended meaning.” There is no intended meaning behind the leaves outside my window, and that makes them no less important in my book. Perception is meaning.
The substance of style.
One thing after the other.
Beauty and darkness in the eye of the beholder; our post-modern world.
It can be so beautiful.

It is what it is, now get over it.
(And I used to love the movie Signs…)

"Here i am expecting just a little bit too much from the wounded"

There are two men.

Man #1 does fine in school, goes to college and makes connections with people in the marketing school and ends up with a fairly high powered position in a big business. He partied pretty hard in college, never really made any extraordinary connection with anybody when he didn't think it would get him ahead in any way. Man #1 enjoys the way his job allows him to live: he has a nice home and a highly respectable home theater system. He eventually marries a girl he's been seeing; the sex is really good and they get along well enough (though he doesn't realize that she compromises 90% of the time so as not to make waves). They live a perfectly normal life with 3 children.

Man #2 does equally well in school, but goes to college to find it's hard to be motivated by money alone, and that he desires to live his life pursuing a dream job regardless of what it pays him, or how long it takes him to find it. He also realizes how important the people in his life are, so he spends more time working at his relationships than he does at his schoolwork, and therefore gets, maybe Cs and Bs. He above all understands the ultimate value of love and beauty. I won't tell you whether or not he succeeds in his career, but I will say he's very passionate about it, and he at least makes enough of a living to provide a comfortable life for his 2 children and his wife. His wife also works, but the two of them find time to make passionate love more often than any of their friends because they are more in love today than they ever have been in their lives. Man #2 also loves his children very much.

Which of these people is the "successful" man?

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This one hurts a lot worse than the last one.

"One thing I can tell you is you got to be free."

Well, I finally did something with the footage I shot at the 10,000 Lakes Festival. Nothing fancy by any means, but a good flavor of what the festival was like.
I had a fantastic night tonight, and what better way to remind myself of how beautiful life is than by reflecting on tonight's festivities and posting a video I shot when I was the happiest I can remember since... well, since before the summer.

Goodnight moon. Life is beautiful.