Category: Life

I like how things feel…

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“Self-examination? I’m ripe for it, always. As much now as ever. I’m sure there’s never an end to it. No full closure.” […]

What sort of “Goldblum mania”?

“I don’t think I’ve ever said to anybody out loud. If anything, most everybody would get the impression that I’m doing well, that I’m comparatively stable, full of purpose and focus. But just between me and me? Let me see. Garden variety moments of anxiety, possibly.” He goes on to talk about sometimes running out of patience with his young sons and his frustration with himself about that. “They are primal. They’re experiencing raw, unexpurgated life. And in proximity to it, at least I find, I don’t know about you, things come up in me more readily and fully. Including temper.” […]

I ask Goldblum how he talks to his boys about masculinity and their behaviour as men in the world.
He thinks, pouting. “Off the top of my head, masculinity overlaps into good humanity, no matter what gender. Which is an ethical, honest and authentic morality; a contributive, caring kindness; a loving navigation through the world.” He prefers to ask a different question of his sons: “How do you be a good person?”

He’ll say to them, “‘Listen. I don’t want to step on your spirit, or suppress you, or hog-tie you. But you’re in this world. Don’t hurt each other. Take care of yourselves. Have regard for the gift of your own human life. Have regard and respect for the lives of others.’” He says he has a general approach to life that he cribbed from a book of philosophy by Sam Harris: “Always tell the truth. Don’t even go, ‘Hey! I love your sweater!’ Or don’t go backstage and say, ‘You were great, you were spectacular!’ Graciousness and elegance demand that sometimes you need to not tell the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, all the time, to everybody. You have to honour kindness over cruelty and be sensitive to somebody’s feelings. But don’t lie.” […]

You’re tactile, I say to Goldblum. Is it that you think you need to feel things to understand things?

“Probably so. Human beings do. I like to. I’m glad I have my vision. I certainly like to hear. Smelling is very important to me. I’m a big taster. And then last, I believe, is … Yes, I like how things feel. I do like to feel things.”

— Tom Lamont, excerpts from an interview with Jeff Goldblum titled “‘It’s foolish to mask your age. Accept it. Present it’: Jeff Goldblum on vanity, mortality and becoming a father in his 60s.” (The Guardian, August 3, 2024)

Photograph: Jeff Goldblum (71) with his wife Emilie Livingston and their two sons, Charlie and River. (Photo by David Vintiner/The Guardian)

Walking. To Eternity.

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3:15 am.
I flip through the morning papers. Jesus, why do I subject myself to this?
Politics (sigh), Middle East, Ukraine, Senator on the take, Earth camped out on a hot tin roof.
Alexandra Fuller in Fi: “How quickly we’ve messed this all up: everything melting, flooding, on fire.”

1536 consecutive (almost) days on this daybreak morning walk at Cove Island Park. Like in a row.
And what a day it is.
While everything burns, I walk, here, on Fantasy Island.

Stars, stars and more stars painted on a cloudless sky.
6 mph breeze from the north. Leaves rustle overhead. Birds beginning to wake.
65° F.
This is mid-July people.

And, setting aside the weight gain which I will NOT let throw shade on a beautiful morning, not a single body part hurts. Not one.

There’s no doubt, absolutely ZERO chance (mostly because of my diet and conditioning discipline) that I will not live forever.

Continue reading “Walking. To Eternity.” →

Guest Post: Janne bala nas ma btindas

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DK: “Beautiful photo, shame it was marred by a Human.”

Dear all,

I was inspired, actually triggered by a comment from David on one of Cara’s Cove Island Photos yesterday morning. It’s that photo above, and his caption below it that he shared in the comment section. The photo was taken by our very own Cara Denison, another outstanding Cove Island Park photographer.

This is not just any human. This is our human, David himself.
The photo was not marred. The photo is whole because he is in it.
Where I come from, we have a saying, “Janne bala nas ma btindas.”
This translates to “Heaven is not worth stepping into if it had no humans in it.”

… and again, this is not just any human. This is our Human.

Side story: A few weeks ago, while I was riding the elevator at work, a coworker looked at my badge and asked, “Are you the Sawsan from International?” “Yes, I am.” I looked at their badge and saw that they were one of the doctors I had worked with for years but never met. My office is on the ground floor, theirs is on the 2nd. For three years, we never met. When things happen, they seem to come in clusters. Within a few weeks, I met a few more individuals in person that I had been working with for years and had not met in person.  

Every time I met someone in person that I had known for years, a softness settled on me like a fog blanket. My soul needed the reminder that this is another human. I tend to forget.

Kicks and giggles aside, I come here to this blog to be inspired and, in this crazy world we live in, to feel human again.

And every photo by Cara documenting the human behind Live & Learn is Whole.

Now I know DK that you prefer no humans, solitude, and silence. The fact is that the core of your blog is the human experience. Sorry, you can’t always be the observer! 

Here’s another one of Cara’s favorite photos of DK at Cove Island Park. Cara said she’ll explain why she chose this photo in the comments section.

Sawsan.

Sunday Morning

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I also painted a study of a seascape, nothing but a bit of sand, sea, sky, grey and lonely—sometimes I feel a need for that silence—where there’s nothing but the grey sea—with an occasional seabird. But otherwise, no other voice than the murmur of the waves.

— Vincent van Gogh, from a letter to his brother Theo, 17 September 1882 (via Vincent Van Gogh: The Letters)

Notes: DK Photo, 5:21 am. Saturday July 6, 2024. Quote via More Than Ideas.

Walking. In gratitude for those working this morning.

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1510 consecutive (almost) days on this daybreak walk at Cove Island Park. Like in a row.

While you are all (mostly all) sleeping, and I’m sleepwalking through my morning walk, so many others are working. Working on a early Sunday morning. Picking up our trash, combing our beaches, keeping our parks clean, tending to our sick in hospitals and keeping our communities safe — while we sit and enjoy our morning coffee easing into our day.

Here’s to all of you who keep our world spinning.

And our gratitude.

DK

Notes:

  • More pictures from this morning’s walk here.
  • Post Inspired by D. Nurske from “Riches of the Interior”: “Pity these souls who could not endure our burden of endless gifts.“
  • Post also Inspired by John O’Donohue from Anam Cara: “It is a strange and magical fact to be here, walking around in a body, to have a whole world within you and a world at your fingertips outside you. It is an immense privilege, and it is incredible that humans manage to forget the miracle of being here. It is uncanny how social reality can deaden and numb us so that the mystical wonder of our lives goes totally unnoticed. We are here. We are wildly and dangerously free.” (Thank you Hammock Papers)