"Never more boredom was found than in an effort to live a normal life."

This appeared in my inbox the other day. Thought I'd pass it along...

"The quest for average is not as much a goal as it is a disease of retreat. It quietly moves to a passive place where one teeters on the brink of hope and hopelessness. Its tentative posture has within it the bias of nothing good or bad ever happening, and it is a way of life practiced by many. In contrast, the quest for an amazing life brings with it a focus that clarifies your vision. It lives on the edge of something big or something bigger and it teeters back and forth between passion and purpose, progress and prosperity. There's something big in all of us and it is only our quest for normal that keeps it sleeping. Plan out something amazing today."

-Dean Del Sesto

JFK Terminal 8

If you ever need a reminder of what love is supposed to look like, spend an afternoon in Terminal 8 at JFK (or any park in Mexico for that matter). Terminal 8 is the international terminal where some people, fresh off an epic adventure of some kind, reunite with their loved ones with fresh eyes and a renewed heart. There's no time wasted on etiquette or politeness here, just pure uninhibited public displays of affection. I saw an older married couple embrace, without speaking a single word, for what seemed like an eternity and so tightly that I wondered if they had trouble breathing. Moments later a woman in her 40s literally leapt into her husband's lap and giggled like a 6th grader. It never gets old to watch, that is until the making out and groping begins.

It was at terminal 8 where I was lucky enough to witness my friend, Philosopher King, Josue Lajuenesse as he reunited with his daughter Danielle after she had been left stranded in Port au Prince and forced to sleep on the streets for more than a week as a result of the earthquake that destroyed Haiti on January 21. Having been a father myself now for about 16 months, I can imagine on some level what that must have felt like to think of your own flesh and blood amidst all that devastation, death, and rampant violence. The attachment that develops between you and your offspring is almost inexplicable and otherworldy - and the instinct to protect and preserve, ridiculously overwhelming at times. The scenarios that undoubtedly played in his mind must have been torture on him.

Of all days, a truck had overturned on the Beltway in New York preventing Josue from getting to the airport in time to meet Danielle at the gate. I sat with Danielle for two hours while she shared with me in her broken but vastly improved English what she had been through the last week and a half. I asked how she was able to manage food-wise and she replied, while politely munching on a can of Pringles and Dove chocolate, "I drank water mostly". I struggled to think of appropriate responses and quickly realized there were none. I just sat with her in silence and imagined the rows of corpses she must have walked by everyday, the individuals trapped beneath rubble and screaming for help, and how shitty it must feel leaving her friends and mother behind and being among the "priveleged" few who could afford the bus fare to the Dominican Republic and airfare to get home.

Josue walked hurriedly through the entrance of the terminal holding a small bouquet of flowers frantically scanning the room for Danielle. When he spotted her near the back of the room, I could see the adrenalin that had sustained him for the last week or so drain instantly from his body as a calm came over him and his hurried pace nearly came to a stop. It was as though he had no reason to move anymore. She was safe.

The embrace was everything one would expect to see: tears flowing, few words exchanged, death-grip embrace, a beautifully raw display of love between a father and his only daughter.

Just Another Day at the Office

A recent online chat I had with an insurance agent:

Patrick: I'm going to Haiti on Friday. I need insurance that would cover emergency medical expenses and life insurance if I'm kidnapped, killed, or harmed in any way.

Alan: Hello, my name is Alan, I'll be happy to help you with that.

Patrick: Great.

Alan: Well, we have products that can provide coverage for those events - but not all on one policy. For instance, kidnapping insurance will require an application that would need to be submitted to an underwriter for Lloyds of London. We also have accidental death insurance from the same company, but requires a different online application.

Patrick: Oh ok. Well, my main concern is if I'm hurt or killed in the event of a kidnapping that my family will be taken care of. Does accidental death cover that?

Alan: Accidental death would cover your family if you are accidentally killed - it does not cover kidnapping however.

Patrick: So if I'm kidnapped and killed, accidental death won't cover me?

Alan: Death by kidnappers is not accidental - it would be an intentional murder. And then there are coverages for medical expenses as well. Do you need coverage for war & terrorism for the medical expenses?

Patrick: Um, I believe I do need War and Terrorism for medical expenses. Would that cover me in the event that I'm injured as a result of a kidnapping (or something along those lines) and need medical attention?

Alan: How much medical coverage and accidental death coverage do you require?

Patrick: Maybe 20-30k? I don't know how much it costs to evacuate someone.

Alan: One moment please.

Alan: You might want to consider our Security First War Risk Long Term plan.

Alan: That can provide Accidental Death and Dismemberment coverage as well as $250,000 coverage for medical expenses and $100,000 emergency medical evac coverage - War & Terrorism is covered.

Patrick: Sounds great!

Alan: May I redirect your web browser to the page with that information? Would you like me to do that for you now?

Patrick: Yes.

Utopia = No Place

I love the fact that the Greek word "utopia" translates to "no place". I think about this often and it reminds me that there is no real destination in life. Or to put it another way, each moment in life is a destination. We're wired to always be in pursuit of something - of happiness or success maybe - and we often find it difficult to feel any satisfaction until we've obtained it. How different would things be if we found satisfaction now, even in the midst of great suffering? It might free us from anxiety about the future and perhaps we wouldn't be so inclined to shelve happiness for later enjoyment, but partake now and always.

Post-Production Diet

I'm about three weeks into post-production on The Philosopher Kings and all is going well. I've got a really rough 22 minutes of the film edited which means about 50-60 minutes to go! I've encountered some of the typical challenges editors face at this stage. Editing is a little like acting. You want to immerse yourself so deeply that you are living and breathing the material rather than a half-ass representative of it. No real editing can be done until one has become fully immersed in the material and life, so full of distractions, often works against this process. A frequent consequence of my desperate attempts to remain "in the zone" is having to eat crap food. It's within reach and quick to prepare and consume. I like the microwaveable Japanese stuff. As crap food goes, it's pretty awesome.


I'm no Picasso but I like the way he worked. He would often stand before the canvas for three or four hours at a time making almost no superfluous gestures. He's famously quoted as saying "while I work I leave my body outside the door, the way Moslems take off their shoes before entering the mosque."

Of course there are beautiful distractions. "Golden Delicious", the latest Mike Doughty album was my beautiful distraction of the day. I downloaded it and got a much needed shot of inspiration before jumping back in. It's the distractions that seemingly have no value to the task at hand that you try desperately to avoid, but are simply no match for that are a cancer to my process...like pretending that people actually read my blog.

Religion Is Not The Problem

At a post Flight from Death screening Q&A session in Canada several months ago an audience member asked an intriguing question about the "u-turn" the film takes at the end. I tanked when attempting my answer, as I often do, so I wanted to spend a few minutes briefly addressing it here.

The "u-turn", as he called it, referred to the film positing that religion was the problem at the heart of the world's conflicts and how by its conclusion, the film seemed to contradict itself by offering a mildly religious prescription to the problem.

Religion is not the problem and not necessarily any sort of prescription to the problem either - at least as far as the film is concerned.

There are individuals of all faiths and non-faiths who have done "evil" in the name of their beliefs. Some blow up federal buildings, some fly planes into tall buildings, others go on shooting sprees. Clearly, religious belief cannot be singled out as "the problem". What is consistent among these sort of apocalyptic acts of violence is the perpetrators' death grip on their beliefs, leaving no room for the possibilty that their worldview can co-exist among other worldviews. While the fundamentalist and perverted ideologies alluded to above may certainly be a part of the problem in those specific cases, I believe the problem overall is not ideology itself necessarily, but our relationship with ideology.

It's analagous to agoraphobia. When the walls that separate us from the rest of the world begin to define everything about us, we cannot, often out of fear, and will not, see past them. If we are to live constructively together we have to step outside, where the world does not revolve around us, and immerse ourselves in the real world which is made up of all sorts of contradictions before we can fully appreciate and understand our own ideas about how we should live and what to believe.

As Socrates might say, accept the possibility that you are wrong or that others have something to teach you, and maybe someday we'll actually learn what it even means to be "right".

As for Sam Keen's closing about hope, it certainly feels religious but one doesn't have to be religious to appreciate being alive and to appreciate the mysterious force that brings us into (and out of) existence. With so much darkness and hopelessness in the world, it helps me to remember that it's better to be in the world rather than NOT in it.

Old Dudes

There's something about the looming inevitability of bingo nights and adult incontinence that inspires people, as they grow older, to stop messing around. Whenever I want to take inventory of the things in my life that ultimately don't matter, I look to old people. Like, really old people. They don't dress well, they don't smell that great, they walk slow, they're cranky when they want to be, and they could sit on a bench all day feeding bread crumbs to pigeons and never once complain about "where the day went".

"I enjoy talking with the very old, for we should ask them, as we might ask those who have travelled a road that we too will probably have to follow, what kind of road it is, whether rough and difficult or smooth and easy." -Socrates