Monthly Archives: October 2012

Words to Live By

October 3, 2012 By in Random Tags: Leave a comment
st. augustine

Unfollow.

Looking for inspirational and motivational quotes to help you face life’s challenges?

As a matter of fact, I am!

Actually, this is just another lame excuse for me to make fun of all of the gobbledygook found on Beliefnet (and so much for ever blogging for those guys).

Continuing on:

These famous quotes will uplift your spirit and inspire you to follow your dreams.

OMG! I think I may have just heard an angel sing! Let’s take a look at their top 5, shall we?

1) The mind is like a parachute. It doesn’t work unless it’s open. – Unknown

Are you fucking kidding me? This is the Number One quote?! It sounds like one of my old tweets … that I immediately deleted. Of course it’s by “Unknown.” I wouldn’t put my name on it either. And yeah, maybe this quote is “famous” … in a special circle of Henny Youngman Hell. Take my open mind — please.

2) Patience is the companion of wisdom. – Saint Augustine

Note to self: Immediately unfollow @SaintAugustine. This is the kind of vague drivel that you sometimes find in fortune cookies and it makes you angry when you read it because you just had fried dumplings and scallion pancakes and General Tso’s chicken and it was so delicious, and then they ruin the whole meal by giving you this stale crap that leaves such a bad taste in your mouth. And anyway, we all know that patience is a virtue, Saint Dipshit!

3) If man is man and God is God, to live without prayer is not merely an awful thing: it is an infinitely foolish thing. – Phillips Brooks

Who the hell is Philip Brooks and why is he making me feel like such a goddamn idiot? I’ve been doing just fine living without prayer, and if I ever change my mind, I’ll call up Bon Jovi. So what Albert’s brother is basically saying here is that we non-believers are a bunch of retards for eternity. You know what, Phil? If man is man and God is God, you’re a stupid asshole!

4) Anyone who is indifferent to the well being of other people and to the causes of their future happiness, can only be laying the ground for their own misfortune. – Dalai Lama

Now I’ve always liked the Dalai Lama – all 14 incarnations of him. And I’m not sure which one of his holiness’s uttered this particular axiom, although I’ve always heard rumors that most of his material was written by the South Park guys. On further reflection, it actually sounds a little too Mother Teresa-ish to me, which ironically lays the ground for a fortune … to be made in a copyright lawsuit that will help the poor and sick. Win-win. I take it back. This really is uplifting.

5) My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness. ­– Dalai Lama

Not sure how the DL got two quotes in the top five, but I suspect Richard Gere had something to do with it (Jesus H. Christ! What a cheap ass joke!) In all fairness, I really do feel that these are words to live by and they’ve inspired me to follow my dream – creating a new site called Disbeliefnet.

I’ve Just Seen a Face

October 2, 2012 By in Women Tags: , Leave a comment
mary louise parker

MLPC.

I’ve gone out with hundreds of women recently. Really it’s only been two, but over the course of dinner and brunch, it seemed like I was with every woman who I’ve ever known.

This happens pretty much all of the time. When I gaze across the table at a new face, it’s like looking at a group portrait. Sometimes it’s the way she tilts her head or a trick of the light. Sometimes it’s just a recognizable expression or the easy way she laughs at one of my stupid jokes. Her eyes may shine or narrow into soft slits, it doesn’t matter, because it’s in these moments where she shape shifts into a completely different person.

One who I’ve found especially attractive in the past. My heart tends to see what it wants to see, working it big time like a fashion photographer shooting a model. “Okay, angle your head a little to the right and try to look like my ex-wife’s hot friend, Julie.”

I’ll imagine what these women looked like as young girls and what they’ll look like as elderly ladies. For a moment, they may resemble my mom or my fourth-grade teacher, Miss Toback, and then transform into Caryn or my most recent girlfriend. Sometimes they’ll morph into a celebrity; oftentimes Mary-Louise Parker.

I envision what it might be like to be with them and even what it might be like to be with them forever. It’s such a strange phenomenon, and will make a great montage sequence (cue the Beatles’ “I’ve Just Seen a Face”) when filming begins on the story of my life. And most of the time, this is all going on before arriving at the main course.

Which, of course, is love. And that’s what this is really about. “Is this a face I can love?” asks a secret voice somewhere deep inside of me. And the faces keep changing and changing until the answer is “yes.”

Moving Day

October 1, 2012 By in Family Tags: , , Leave a comment
stuff from my house

The things I carried.

Sitting on my dining room table are several videotapes of my children when they were little, my autograph album from the sixth grade, a baseball from the 1992 All-Star Game and a mini-version of Harold and the Purple Crayon. These are the last things that I took out of the house where I lived with my ex-wife and kids for almost 20 years.

I went over there the other day to help Caryn pack up and move to her new place. After what felt like forever, we were finally able to sell our house in Long Island, allowing us to officially get on with the next part of our lives.

It’s strange how an empty house can overwhelm you with memories. We started up in the attic, boxing up old books, which is where I found Harold and the Purple Crayon. I flashed back to reading it with Rob and Zach, and still think I loved Harold more than they did (the simple half moon that followed him on every page always killed me). There were books about adoption, child rearing, marriage – the last remnants of all of the homework life had given us – and, to be honest, I’m not sure we ever got anything out of any of them.

“Remember this?” I asked Caryn while showing her a dog-earred copy of The Ghashlycrumb Tinies by Edward Gorey. “I think I bought it for you right after our first date. Along with that book of photos by Diane Arbus. Those were your clues, babe. You should’ve run for the hills right then and there!”

“Would’ve been so much easier,” Caryn said and smiled.

We then went into the bedroom because Caryn needed me and my tallness to take down a bunch of board games at the top of a closet. We were both big game players (I’ll let that allusion pass), and all of the boxes were thick with dust, and the first thought that hit me was how I used to bug the shit out of Caryn by taking forever to play a word in Scrabble. She always got her revenge with Boggle, where she’d routinely kick my ass. Scrabble and Boggle – cleverly making points with words – was one of the many storylines of our marriage.

There were boxes everywhere, filled with artifacts of our thirty years together. Photo evidence — from the summer we met at the Jersey Shore to hundreds of  family snapshots, would be going to Caryn’s new house. A dozen or so videotapes (in 8mm format, shot with a Sony Handycam) of the kids first birthdays, steps, words and all the other new parent thrills, came home with me so I could have them digitized. Neither one of us particularly wanted our Ketubah, which is a Jewish marriage contract, for obvious reasons.

After a few more hours of boxing shadows, I packed up the kid vids along with Harold and a few other odds and ends in a small shopping bag, took one last look at the house and closed the front door.

Caryn drove me to the train station.

“Thanks for helping me today, babe,” she said as I got out of her car. “I really appreciate it!”

“You’re welcome,” I said and waved goodbye.