I got to the stopover city with no problem, but then found that there was a problem.  The flight was delayed.  Apparently, one of the stewardesses was late getting to the flight, so it delayed my flight, which was supposed to leave around 7pm.

Then, when we finally got on the plane at 8:45pm, the pilot announced that a few of the bags had been mis-tagged (or something ridiculous) and they had to pull the bags off the plane to re-tag them.

Then they had to pull more bags off.

Then they had to come back and do more things with the bags, but nobody is sure what they were doing.

Finally, at about 9:50pm, we were off and running, but somehow a 55 minute flight took 85 minutes…but we made it!

Now, I know the Internet is full of rants about the airline industry, and I won’t add too much to that.  I guess my only point is that flying has become such an awful experience, it seems to generate its own negative energy.

Seriously.

It’s come to the point where everything is so intense, late, expensive, and annoying, that it really does become a self-fulfilling prophecy.  I tried to make every moment in that plane a meditation.  I tried to induce relaxation instead of reaction.  It was hard…and I failed on multiple occasions, but the important thing is that when I failed, I felt myself failing.  I was aware of the failure, and I tried to get myself back on track.

Meditation…relaxation…failure…awareness…meditation…

It became somewhat of an internal mantra…something to which I could cling while my day drowned in a sea of frustration.

But I’m here.  It’s all good.  It’s just a memory…

But how I got here?  Well, I’ll try to keep that mantra going.

It was nice!

We played with Matchbox cars.  You know the last time I did that?

Years ago.

We played today with cars, trucks, convertibles…and they rode up and down a little construction lot.  It brought back some great memories.  There was innocence and focus, intensity and laughter.

It was all there, and all so simple!

All the cars I used to play with are somewhere in storage, I think.  No idea where .  It’s funny…when I was young, I couldn’t get enough of them, and now, I couldn’t even find them.

Is that tragic?

I’m not sure.  I’ve moved on to more complex toys and forms of entertainment.  I don’t want to knock those things, but I can’t help but remember there was a time when a one dollar car was just as fun as a Wii…When wooden blocks brought the same smile as an iPhone…And when a slide was just as thrilling as a drive north.

I’m not sure what happened between “way back when” and “right now”…Is there a fundamental difference?  Am I the same person?  What really matters to me today?

We can all ask these questions, I think.  As we age, we are more and more pressed by responsibility and, possibly, a growing angst around the meaning of life.

Where are we?  Who are we?

Maybe those answers can be found by going back into memory and re-discovering who we were…or what we used to play with.

-josh

I am.

I went to school in St. Andrews for a while and it is simply wonderful to watch the Open Championship and see a lot of the places I used to go.  If you look carefully in some of the shots, you can see my old dorm.

Really.

I could see the 18th hole and the sea from the bathroom.

Really.

I still remember where some of the pubs are where I used to hang out, and I see landmarks that I used to pass on my way to class.  Those were some good days and there are lots of good memories of that time, I can tell you.

I took a lot of it for granted, I’m sure.  I didn’t always appreciate it when I was there, I’m sure.  So much of it passed so quickly like scenery on the road.

I met a lot of people that wonderful semester and I have lost touch with so many of them.  But I guess, in the end, that’s really the sum total of so much we do.  It’s not really about who we met along the way, but how we remember them down the road.

And I have good memories.  I have photo albums.  I have funny stories.

I’ll be in front of the TV tomorrow watching golf in Scotland.  But is that all I’ll be doing?

Nah…I’ll be traveling there in my mind and re-living a good time in my life.

Not a bad way to spend an afternoon.

-josh

Have you seen it yet?  Have you seen the wind?  The gusting?  The blowing?  The players who teed off early had such an advantage.  Their scores are pretty stable.  But the people who came later in the day?  Well, not so much.

Take, for example, Rory McIlroy.  63 yesterday.  80 today.

Ugh.

And it has nothing to do with his talent, but all to do with conditions.

And isn’t that the lesson here?  Sometimes, there are situations beyond our control.  There are situations that we cannot change.  We find ourselves in something big…  something full of history or with the weight of immensity upon us.

Rory is on the world’s biggest golf stage at St. Andrews in Scotland.  He is at the home of golf.  He shot an unbelievable score the first day.  It looked like there could be some history for the 21-year-old.

And then, the winds of change blew in.  Literally.  And he is just one of the pack again.

What do you do when life hands you potential greatness and a great obstacle?  What is your approach?

Do you rise above?  Or blow away?

-josh

________________________________________

I stood in silence tonight and watched the fireworks.

I get a private show!

Where I live, I can stand in my backyard and see four shows at once.  Pretty amazing.  The sound travels so far.  I can hear fireworks from shows that are probably 20-30 miles away to the west, south, and east.

It was so quiet outside.  Just booming.  Booming.  Booming.

I thought about something as I was standing out there.  What if I lived in a country where, on the fourth of July, I heard booms?  Loud booms in the distance.  But they weren’t fireworks.

Maybe they are bombs.

Maybe it’s gunfire.

Some countries celebrate their freedom from bombs with booms.  Some people just want to be free of the booms.

I picture a mother holding a small child in her arms.  Maybe she is standing as I was, watching the sky light up in many directions.  It is red, orange, yellow.  There is flashing and crackling.  Rat-tat-tat.  But they aren’t fireworks.  She won’t go back into her house and grab an ice cream before running back outside.  She won’t have a TV on in the background with reruns of other booms, like the Boston Pops fireworks show.  Instead, she’ll pray the booms stay away.  Far away.  After all, it’s not safe in the backyard.  This is her third backyard in as many months.  The booms were too close in the last one.  And the one before.

Booming.  Booming.  Booming.

Maybe she’ll pray at her child’s bedside.  She’ll pray quietly to the same God the boomers are using to justify the booms.

I don’t live in those other countries.  But I see them on the news.  I read about them in the newspaper.  I keep them in my prayers.

And I think about them as I stand in my backyard.  Where I have the show I wait all year for.

Where I stand in silence and watch the fireworks.  Where I listen to the booms.

Where it’s safe.

-josh

A good day!

Today, was wonderful and stereotypical.  We took Dad to a movie and an early dinner, then came back and watched golf.

Nice, huh?

The only thing missing was the tie!

Actually, I don’t remember the last time I bought Dad a tie.  Actually, I’m not sure I ever have!

Maybe that’s why we have such a good time every year.

It’s worth thinking about!

-josh

Really hot.

My friend referred to it as the surface of the sun, to which I added, “Yeah, it’s like we’re on a sun that has another sun blazing down on it!”

But it’s really not that bad.  Honest.  We’re inside most of the time, and even outside, a lot of businesses have water misters, and there’s shade.  The heat is a small price for being able to go out without a jacket 98% of the year.

There are things blooming outside.  Full bloom.  Big, bright cactus flowers, trees in a full splay of yellow.  There are animals running around, and we even had bobcats in the yard…A while family.  That was quite a treat.

In other words, the outside doesn’t complain!  It just sits quietly in the shade when it’s hot, or blooms when it ought.  It goes on its merry way.

We create artificial shade, put in misters, use precious water resources, muck up the Gulf with oil, and countless other awful things.  I guess we forget that sometimes, things are best how they are…no change or complaint necessary!

It’s hot.  But there’s always been heat.  There just hasn’t always been me complaining about it.

-josh

So, we compromised on a cut and paste, and you know?  It’s probably gonna look really good.

And isn’t that how it goes with memories?  They really are that cut and paste job.  And if we want, we can make them as nice as we want.  Even the bad ones, with enough time, get the power of perspective behind them and turn out pretty nice!

So, it was a fun exercise tonight.  I may go through some old pics just to see what I have.  You don’t need permission for nostalgia.

Maybe I’ll go through them with a lifelong friend…

We can search for that one perfect pic that doesn’t exist!

Did you feel that?

Right there.

Does it feel different?

Maybe.  Maybe not.

It depends if you’re paying attention.

Mercury retrograde has finally…well…regressed (progressed?) and we are free once again to pursue new projects, sign contracts, and move ahead (of course, May 13th is the better day if you wanna be safe, but who’s counting, right?).

We’ve posted about mercury retrograde on here before and, well, it’s always good to post about the end of it.  You see, mercury retrograde is a time of messed up communications, on-the-fritz electronics, and sometimes, depending on other factors, a feeling of ick.

HOWEVER, that is not to say it doesn’t have its upsides.  It is also a time to get in touch with old friends, edit, take care of old business, and reflect on life in general.  Sort of a time to sort it all out.

Not bad, right?

Still, when it ends, it’s a nice feeling.  A freeing feeling…where we are hopefully a little calmer, a little wiser, and a little more grateful that the time that has passed was given to thought and re-connection, whether with others or ourselves.

Enjoy the feeling of moving forward now.  Enjoy the feeling of freedom.

Why?

Because the next retrograde will hit on August 20th.

Ugh.

I mean, yay!

-josh

A woman had my dream antique:  Original art from Charles Schulz.

Wow.

Original Peanuts comics.

Wow.

I love Peanuts comics.  I love Linus.  I played Linus in a production of You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown, and it was just so great, and I have been reading the Peanuts books for years.

There’s just something so simple and wonderful about Peanuts.  We can identify with Charlie’s loneliness and sense of angst, and we all at one time probably had a blanket or some other crutch in life.  Maybe we had a favorite dog like Snoopy, or we long to spend our days on the doghouse like he did.

It’s all there in that lovable gang of kids, from the mind of one cartoonist.

The value of her collection was something on the order of $450,000.

Ah, but aren’t the sweet memories priceless?