Posts in the “personal” category

February 8, 2021: I’m reminded of this:

“I’m going to do my best. I offer you my heart, and my spirit.”

~ Carlos Santana to Faith Hill, before playing her song Breathe.

“My purpose is to serve humanity ... every day is a battlefield ... if you fight with anger, you’re part of the problem, if you fight with joy, you’re a solution. You have to have conviction, ‘Before I die, there will be hearts touched by my spirit.’”

~ Carlos Santana

Back in the day I lived in this house.

I don’t know how long it lasts, but on Feb. 6, 2021, I just saw that Amazon is having a big sale on the Ring Alarm Five-Piece Kit.

In an alternate life I became a baseball pitching coach after high school, and taught many pitchers how to throw a changeup, among other pitches. This photo shows Trevor Bauer’s changeup grip, which I originally saw related to this espn.com page.

For a couple of weeks the song “This Beat Goes On/Switching to Glide” by The Kings has been in my brain, so in an effort to get it out of there, here it is:

Introduction: After reading the following text in the book, The Science of Enlightenment, I decided to try meditating outside in sweatpants and a hoodie in the freezing cold in the evenings. It’s now my favorite form of meditation because you either do it right, or suffer the consequences. Here’s the text:

~~~

Several months later, as winter approached and it was getting cold and uncomfortable, the Abbot told me that if I wanted to be trained in traditional Shingon practice he would allow it — but I would have to do with the old-fashioned way. I would have to do a solo retreat for one hundred days in winter, most of the time with no source of heat, in complete silence other than occasional instruction from him, and with no meal after noon.

My training began on December 22, the day of the winter solstice. The Abbot had warned me that part of the old-fashioned way involved certain ascetic practices derived not from Buddhism, but from the shamanic tradition of Shinto, Japan’s pre-Buddhist tribal religion. One of the most common methods that tribal cultures use to obtain visions of gods or spirits is through prolonged exposure to extreme hot or cold. In India, Hindus have the five fires practice; in North America, Native Americans have the sweat lodge and the sun dance. These involve heat. The traditional Shinto shamanic practice goes in the other direction. It involves cold — squatting under freezing waterfalls in winter, standing in cold springs, dousing your body with ice water, and so forth.

If you haven’t seen the movie I.Q., it’s a cute love story. This line in particular reminds me of a couple of people I’ve known who have great minds, but don’t seem to trust that.

When I have some free time I’d like to work with this image to make it look more like an oil painting. It’s not really mine to name, but I call it, Death of the Father.

The following quotes are from this article about how (and why) Peter Garbiel left Genesis and went out on his own:

“He (Gabriel) was a joy to work with, so smart and witty. It was just that sometimes he was a little overwhelmed by the speed and intensity of the sessions. A British interviewer came out to Toronto to meet him; then the headline declared: 'A Mumble-Free Gabriel!'

"With us he developed a new confidence and swagger. Prior to that he was a bit shy. He had to learn to shout to get through to us. There were just so many characters in their own right involved.”

Ezrin praises the contributions of guitarists Steve Hunter and Dick Wagner, bassist Tony Levin, synth player Larry Fast and other key players.

“We put a fantastic band together. They were like the Dirty Dozen – each of them was a psychopathic expert in their particular field of destruction. It felt like letting the crack criminals out of prison and putting them together in a gang for the Big Job.”

Facebook tells me that I found this quote by Janis Ian back in 2014. Still seems like a good idea. :)

“My father always used to say, ‘Don’t raise your voice; improve your argument.’ Good sense does not always lie with the loudest shouters, nor can we say that a large, unruly crowd is always the best arbiter of what is right.”

~ Archbishop Desmond Tutu

“If we think we want to get joy for ourselves, we realize that it’s very shortsighted, short-lived. Joy is the reward, really, of seeking to give joy to others. When you show compassion, when you show caring, when you show love to others, do things for others, in a wonderful way you have a deep joy that you can get in no other way.”

“You can’t buy it with money. You can be the richest person on Earth, but if you care only about yourself, I can bet my bottom dollar you will not be happy and joyful. But when you are caring, compassionate, more concerned about the welfare of others than about your own, wonderfully, wonderfully, you suddenly feel a warm glow in your heart, because you have, in fact, wiped the tears from the eyes of another.”

~ Archbishop Desmond Tutu, in The Book of Joy

“Make today the most important day of the year, because tomorrow is not guaranteed.”

~ a quote from John Altobelli, who lost three-fifth’s of his immediate family in one day

Hold me in your thoughts
Take me to your dreams
Touch me as I fall into view

When the winter comes
Keep the fires lit
And I’ll be right next to you

Shadows are fallin’ and I’m runnin’ out of breath
If I leave you it doesn’t mean I love you any less
Keep me in your heart for a while

~ Keep Me in Your Heart for a While, Warren Zevon (lyrics slightly rearranged)

When I went to Texas A&M University, we discovered a restaurant just down the road in Bryan, Texas, called the “Chicken Oil Company.” Once there, we discovered that they made something called a “Deathburger,” known in this photo as the, “Hamburguesa de Muerte.”

Back around 4:30am on January 13, 2014, I pulled into a rest area in Virginia after staying in Virginia Beach for a while (and experiencing a tornado warning there), and found this cat waiting for me.

It felt like we might have a tornado in Virginia Beach today, with that familiar and unusual low-pressure feeling. At one point it even looked like the ocean water was being pulled up into the sky.

~ January 11, 2014

As I walked into the Starbucks today here in Virginia Beach, an alarm went off on my phone saying there was a tornado warning. So I asked the three people working there, “Which is worse, a tornado warning or a watch? I can never remember which is which.”

So rather than google it, we talked about whether “watch” or “warning” implied more danger, then we talked about some other things while we watched stuff go flying down the street. Never did figure out which is worse, but eventually I got a coffee.

Later in the day as I was walking down a street I came across a gift shop that had been blown all over the place by the winds, and found this t-shirt amongst the ruins.

~ January 11, 2014

“One’s agony is assuaged to some extent even by speaking of it, but to whom shall I speak about it? For there is no one who will understand. The reality about the chord of love that binds you and me, dear, is known to my soul alone; and my soul ever abides with you. Know this to be the essence of my love.”

~ A god speaking about his love for a devotee in the Ramayana, as seen in the book, Miracle of Love