Tag: midlife

Monday Morning Wake-Up Call: “Breaking Good”

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breaking-bad-bryan-cranston

Bryan Cranston, 60, a self described “journeyman” working actor since his mid-20’s, didn’t find fame until his fifties thanks to the hit show “Breaking Bad”.  In a 60 Minutes interview with Steve Kroft titled “Breaking Good“, he tells Steve Kroft he’s seizing the moment.

Kroft: Do you believe there will be a time when people will say, “oh, not him anymore?”

Cranston: “I’m riding a wave right now and I recognize that. I want to do as much work as I can and do the best I can and when it’s all said and done, and they say get out of the water, you’re done, I want to be so exhausted, that I look forward to it.

“I don’t want anything left in the tank.”

Notes:

  • Don’t miss the full 60 Minutes segment here: “Breaking Good“
  • Photo of Bryan Cranston on Breaking Bad: hit fix.com

Sunday Morning

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philippe-conquet

Today, at the sacred site of your soul, make peace with your present reflection as you go in search of the body and face you were born with and excavate the many extraordinary faces that have evolved during your many lives…

Embrace the lines that stare back, the parts that sag in the middle or stick out where you think they shouldn’t, the hair that never keeps a curl or never loses it. Invoke the Tibetan poet Saraha’s psalm of praise:

“Here in this body are the sacred rivers; here are the sun and moon as all the pilgrimage places. …I have not encountered another temple as blissful as my own body.”

~ Sarah Ban Breathnach, from “Our Pilgrimage Places” in Something More: Excavating Your Authentic Self

 

Notes: Quote: Thank you Beth @ Alive on all Channels. Photo: Philippe Conquet

Driving I-95 N. With 45s Spinning.

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woman-hide-mask

Picture the old 45 spinning on the RCA, with its slight wobble.

It hits a notch and repeats, and repeats and repeats.

Karen, a blogger friend, from “Healing Grief” had all of the Nacre she could stand.  She gently lifted the arm and suggested a new groove:

Love what Milner suggests practising bead memories. I have a challenge for you Mr K. In your next bead experience, tell us what You feel and see just “being.” No driving, no running, no working, just here, now.”

Healing Grief. Advice from a Woman who has felt Grief. Incomprehensible loss.

Would I be standing as she is, if I was hit? Continue reading “Driving I-95 N. With 45s Spinning.” →

Driving I-95 S. With Nacre.

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spencer-tunick-sunrise

Milner suggests that you select bead memories, and write about the most important thing that happened yesterday. What simple instructions! What a Herculean task. There wasn’t a single gleaming pearl, no, but layer upon layer of nacre, various moments wrapped in a montage of the day. And these moments, they aren’t lustrous, they are insignificant, ordinary really. There I stand watching me, buffeted by winds, gripping a rail, they pass suspended.

4:36 am. T.G.I.F. Yes, an Ungodly hour to be on I-95 heading to work. Yet, some force propels one forward, amped up on achievement dopamine, a member of the Walking Dead at this hour – hulking Truckers, red tail lights of Insomniacs, and Me.

The highway fuel stop.  Mobil Oil. The attendant takes the credit card, rings up the charges and hands the patron his pack of Lucky Strikes – he watches him shuffle out. His shoulders are slumped, his face expressionless, he’s anchored in the fifth hour of his graveyard shift. He breathes ever so slowly, sipping oxygen and his black coffee, teetering on the edge of Thoreau’s zone of quiet desperation. The television perched overhead has breaking news, a warhead hits a hospital in Aleppo. Continue reading “Driving I-95 S. With Nacre.” →

Running. And, slow sailing to a quiet dance.

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drum-drumline
It’s a coincidence. (Again?)
It’s synchronicity. (Do you believe that?)
You made it up, you’re delusional. (Not yet, don’t think so, not just yet.)
It’s a sign, a message. It’s G – – . (Oh, boy.)

5:45 am. I round the corner to Cove Island – low tide.  The sulfur released from the exposed mud fills the lungs – gas, pungent smelling salts.

I inhale.

Geese float silently in the shadows.

I run.

I’m around the loop and back, 1/4 mile from the entrance.  GPS flashes 4.1 miles in. I don’t glance at the time, that’s been a year now, I’ve conceded. “Matured.”  Over 25 years of daily tracking of body weight and notating work-outs, first in a log book, then Excel spreadsheets and now Google Sheets.  And also, now, on a parallel path on a digital step tracker which automatically feeds volumes of data into machines and is charted and graphed and spliced into pieces – all of which I never look at.  The logging, the tracking, the effort, I mean Really! WHO CARES?

Yet, the tension pulls at both ends, a medieval body rack tearing the limbs from the torso. Wired to Do, whipped by a Mind that makes you Do and strapped to a Body that can no longer Do. And, the Head swims in rip currents.

Continue reading “Running. And, slow sailing to a quiet dance.” →