I’ve been on a learning curve the last two column weeks, mouth
mostly closed, ears open and listening to the stories of others—and through
theirs was reminded of my own. I learned about literary boundaries and I
continue spinning a web of words in my head that will find its way out the end
of my fingers and onto the page.
I don’t have cable or satellite television. I stopped that
madness, as it pertained to my life at the time, in the spring of 2012. I don’t
miss that kind of television at all—not the news programs, the soap operas, nor
the prime time weeknight tv dramas and comedy shows, or drone of incessant
commercials about hair shampoos and shiny new cars.
This is not to say I don’t partake in “TV World” once in a
while, as I did in mid-January in my hotel room during a weekend in the big
city. I was glued to the blue-light eminence that never really loses its
addictive quality no matter how long one boycotts it.
And as I did Sunday night, when I watched in its entirety the
“88th Academy Awards,” ceremony “’LIVE’ from the Dolby Theatre in
Hollywood.”
I was parked in front of a flat screen television on a comfy
couch in my comfy clothes, with two of my favorite people, amid homemade
appetizers of tasty measure, a glass of red in my right, and my left hand at
the ready for proverbial “thumbs up” and pumping arm gestures in support of
really great movies, sound mixes, adapted screenplays, and the men and women
who played the roles that made their big screen pictures a nomination station.
I listened with much interest that night to the very public
black and white controversy of who is and who is not getting the roles they
believe they deserve.
And I watched and listened with silent honor and speechless
admiration to the powerful message of “Til It Happens to You” performed by
“Lady Gaga.” The soul filled song is the “Pied Piper” for the documentary “The
Hunting Ground,” which continues to face controversy and challenges in its
groundbreaking movement to open the doors of awareness.
To paraphrase Mark Nepo, “It is essential to bear witness to
our own naked stories.”
Nepo goes on to write about the never ending work of
relationships and how “each of us in our own time and way move the stones
between us, repositioning the heavy things that get in the way, so the life of
feeling can continue. The weather of simply living jams things up, and we, like
every generation before us, must roll up our pants and sleeves, step into the
river, and unclog the flow.
What are the heavy things that get in the way? They are habits
of not: not seeing, not hearing, not feeling, not being present, not risking
the truth, not risking the heart’s need to live out in the open.”
Every day this life teaches me more about who I am and what
matters most to me—but only if I listen.
