No news, but I feel like talking (writing)

The Winter in Warsaw still is heavy on my mind. (Why would it not be?) I miss it, for the most part. This is a photograph from back then. It was a snowy, cold night, we were listening to music and drinking wine in The Apartment, and I sort of hung out of the third-floor window to shoot this scene. This was Piwna Street as it existed for a moment in time about midnight in the middle of February. The tailor's shop, the jewelry shops, the cathedrals, the delicatessens, the palaces, the restaurants, the antique shops, the pizza places, that I was in the midst of line the street only a few steps away from me. It came to me a while ago that I keep referring to The Apartment as my apartment. It was "our apartment," an apartment for two, for a few months. Anyway, I do miss it and am drawn to the snowy, cold Winter of Warsaw, and feel compelled to return in order to understand my attachment .... or, perhaps, to find another place which might become magical for me next Winter. Berlin, maybe. Oslo, maybe. Moscow, maybe. It must be in the North where it is snowy and cold. Any thoughts?

The nature of love

That I have been spending too much time alone the past three months is not an exaggeration. It is partially by choice, partially by fate, if that makes any sense at all.

From the "by choice" part of the ledger, it is sort of like fasting but, in this instance, I am purging my mind rather than my body. From the "by fate" side of the equation, it falls under the category that "you can’t always get what you want," to quote Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.

One day about the time I was passing on my way from age seventeen to age eighteen, I promised myself that I would experience everything in life there was to experience. Of course, I had no idea at the time that the human psyche is not very well equipped to handle every experience life has to offer.

Also, at the time, I had little notion that I would already have accomplished (if accomplished is the correct word to use in this case) that promise to myself in one form or another by the time I had reached age twenty-five.

This does not mean, naturally, that I had been to the moon or even had climbed Mount Everest, but it does mean I had known life, death, love, deceit, betrayal, exhilaration, nirvana, despair and the highest mountains and the deepest seas of human emotion through experience. These things were accomplished by living in momentary modes = never staying in the same places doing the same things with the same people for too long a period of time. What most people do over years in the passage of time, I often did in days or weeks or, sometimes, months.

Frankly, I do not believe the sins of the father follow the son, or in karma or in predestination. On this point, I would argue against anyone who considers destiny or fate as synonymous with karma, for I think free will -- free choice -- is what determines our destiny. Yes, once more I am back to Robert Frost and "two roads diverged."

My destiny depends upon which road I choose, as does your destiny rely upon your selections. In the past, my choices largely have centered around my wishes and my goals and my desires. Most of us who are alone or even who have a companion but are unhappy with our lives, I believe, are that way because we dwell too much on ourselves. Such individuals (we) are not willing to live for someone else as much we live for ourselves.

It could be that I finally have realized one element to life I have yet to experience -- that element being to live as much for another as I live for myself.

Does this describe you, too?

To quote Mick and Keith once again: "But if you try, sometimes, well, you just might find you get what you need."

A couple more random thoughts ....

(1) All the videos in this post are from Maurice Bejart's "Ballet for Life," a piece celebrating the lives of singer Freddie Mercury and dancer Jorge Donn, both of whom died from AIDS. Bejart set the ballet to music by Queen and W.A. Mozart, and the choreography was performed by his dance company. The videos here are from performances in 1997. If you were in the right place at the right time to see this ballet, consider yourself blest. Even on tape, it is something special.

(2) Surely, there are women in the world who are more concerned about who they live with and how they live rather than where they live. Am I wrong?

(3) There still is time to make it to the Lake Okojobi concert .... hint, hint .... later, baby ....

(4) Speaking of concerts, I received an email commenting about how lucky I will be to have attended two in two weeks. Actually, it will have been three in four weeks. I also went to a concert featuring Styx, Foreigner and Kansas in Minneapolis back on July 1. I have been in a nostalgic mood in more ways than one this summer.