The Unclad Soul

I am fascinated with TV series that deal with the seedier side of life. I loved The Sopranos. And Peaky Blinders. Also, Boardwalk Empire, Gypsy, House of Cards, Orange is the New Black, and Nurse Jackie. These shows and others like them portray people caught in their human frailties. They are deeply flawed people, wounded, sometimes by their own poor choices in life and sometimes by people who betrayed or used or mistreated them in some profoundly cruel way. I am currently making my way through Showtime’s series, “Ray Donovan.” Soon to begin its 6 th season, the series centers around the Donovan family, a father and three sons mired in old hurts, deception, corruption, and crime. Ray (Liev Schreiber) is the middle son, a “fixer” for L.A.’s elite crowd of Hollywood stars, producers, financiers, and old money people who inevitably cross the line into affairs gone wrong, crooked payoffs, illegal deals, and so forth. Mickey Donovan (Jon Voight) is the father, an old-schoo...

One of my Facebook friends posted a comment about my recent essay on the HBO series, Deadwood. He stated that he stopped watching the program because of the excessive use of the f-word in the episodes he saw. He considered it a sign that the writers don’t “have the skills to express thought other than shock. ” I agree that the series overuses the word as well as some other pretty raunchy ones. But I cannot agree that it is because of any lack of skill from the writers. In fact, I think the writing is brilliant.   Deadwood is about a raw, unruly town of endlessly muddy streets, soiled revolting men, the subjugation and debasement of women, corruption and scheming so widespread hardly anyone is honest. It’s a drab, filthy town of derelicts and degenerates, con men, and crackpots. Al Swearingen (Ian McShane) owns the Gem Saloon and Brothel and he’s about the vilest character you’d find in an HBO series. He seems invincible in spite of a brutal beating by Sheriff Seth...

"You live like this, sheltered, in a delicate world, and you believe you are living. Then you read a book… or you take a trip… and you discover that you are not living, that you are hibernating. The symptoms of hibernating are easily detectable: first, restlessness. The second symptom: absence of pleasure. That is all. It appears like an innocuous illness. Monotony, boredom, death. Millions live like this (or die like this) without knowing it. They work in offices. They drive a car. They picnic with their families. They raise children. And then some shock treatment takes place, a person, a book, a song, and it awakens them and saves them from death. Some never awaken."  ~ Anaïs Nin, Author and memoirist born to Cuban parents in France

“Outside the freezing desert night, This other night grows warm, kindling.” ~ Rumi

I saw a bumper sticker the other day: “Siri for president.” I laughed out loud. Who wouldn’t want a truly smart person to lead us who could provide direction, information, and assistance on nearly anything, in a pleasant voice, even-tempered , polite, professional and unbiased? I suppose it would, after all, take a skillfully programmed, artificial intelligence to do that. Which is sad, when you think about it. Why can’t humans be as intelligent and as nice? Singer-songwriter, Julie Gold, who gave us the Bette Midler song, “From a Distance,” was interviewed a few years ago and was asked what she might have been if she had not been a musician. She said, “I've never had any other loving heartfelt  desire . From the minute I heard  music  I knew why I was  born .  To make music to play, to listen to music; and for some reason I have been lucky enough to live this beautiful life as a musician. I don't know. I don't know what else I would have done, beca...

From the Desiderata by poet Max Erhmann – A line a day for the remaining Holiday season: “Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive God to be. And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul.”

“Everything in your life is there  as a vehicle for transformation.”  ~ Ram Dass, Mystic/LifeCoach/Author

“Religion can be a bridge to the spiritual, but the spiritual lies beyond religion.”  ~ Rachel Naomi Remen, Physician/Author

“This is a record of your time. This is your movie. Live out your dreams and fantasies. Whisper questions to the Sphinx at night. Sit for hours at sidewalk cafes and drink with your heroes. Make pilgrimages. Look up and down. Believe in the unknown for it is there. Live in many places. Live with flowers and music and books and paintings and sculpture. Keep a record of your time. Learn to read well. Learn to listen and speak well. Know your country, know your world, know your history, know yourself. Take care of yourself physically and mentally. You owe it to your-self. Be good to those around you. And do all of these things with passion. Give all that you can. Remember, Life is short and Death is long.” —Fritz Shoulder, Native American Artist

Fighting Germs & Staying Healthy

"There is a desire within each of us, in the deep center of ourselves that we call our heart. We were born with it, it is never completely satisfied, and it never dies. We are often unaware of it, but it is always awake. It is the Human desire for Love. Every person in this Earth yearns to love, to be loved, to know love. Our true identity, our reason for being is to be found in this desire. Love is the 'why' of life, why we are functioning at all. I am convinced it is the fundamental energy of the human spirit, the fuel on which we run, the wellspring of our vitality. And grace, which is the flowing, creative activity, of love itself, is what makes all goodness possible. Love should come first, it should be the beginning of, and the reason for everything." ~ Gerald G. May, "Living in Love"

The Layers By Stanley Kunitz I have walked through many lives, some of them my own, and I am not who I was, though some principle of being abides, from which I struggle not to stray. When I look behind, as I am compelled to look before I can gather strength to proceed on my journey, I see the milestones dwindling toward the horizon and the slow fires trailing from the abandoned camp-sites, over which scavenger angels wheel on heavy wings. Oh, I have made myself a tribe out of my true affections, and my tribe is scattered! How shall the heart be reconciled to its feast of losses? .... Yet I turn, I turn, exulting somewhat, with my will intact to go wherever I need to go, and every stone on the road precious to me. In my darkest night, when the moon was covered and I roamed through wreckage, a nimbus-clouded voice directed me: "Live in the layers, not on the litter." Though I lack the art to decipher it, no doubt the next chapter in my...

But often, in the world’s most crowded streets, But often, in the din of strife, There rises an unspeakable desire After the knowledge of our buried life: A thirst to spend our fire and restless force In tracking out our true, original course; A longing to inquire Into the mystery of this heart which beats So wild, so deep in us—to know Whence our lives come and where they go. ~ Matthew Arnold I have always loved this section of Arnold's long, old poem. The phrase, “There rises an unspeakable desire / after the knowledge of our buried life” resonates so deeply in me. There are times I want to uncover the buried life of my boyhood when I dreamed of baseball and girls and someday hitting a home run with both; the buried life of the years with my grandparents who were ballasts that kept my young ballooning life from flying away into nothingness or into destruction; the buried life of my struggling search for God, to go beyond the burdensome rules of the church that wer...

“What you seek is seeking you.” ~ Rumi, Persian Poet