tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-51740746315179140232024-03-08T10:53:57.654-08:00simplysimonsimplysimonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14504781777392014597noreply@blogger.comBlogger62125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5174074631517914023.post-31572571795975190182016-10-09T13:33:00.000-07:002016-10-09T13:35:43.084-07:00The Astrologer & The Tarot on the 2016 ElectionThe Astrologer & The Tarot on the 2016 Election<br />
<br />
The Astrologer & The Tarot Reader went to lunch and used their mystic sciences to investigate the American election of Clinton vs. Trump. Both had preconceptions of the candidates. The Astrologer didn’t trust either candidate and the Tarot Reader was reluctantly for Clinton. One used an Astrology app on his phone and the other brought a “TAROT of the WITCHES” deck.<br />
<br />
The Astrologer said both candidates were products of their charts; Clinton chart showed she was not changeable, a hard headed woman who would not change her mind and would use any means to get her way.<br />
Trump was just the opposite; he would alter his beliefs like a ball on a roulette wheel and, no matter where it stopped, would start another spin immediately. The only thing he could be trusted on was to not hold steady and would change his mind, making him look like a perpetual liar.<br />
<br />
In choosing between the two, the Astrologer favored Trump even though he admitted he was untrustworthy and possibly a horror. He believed even holding Clinton’s feet to public resistance would not alter her path. Green was his choice even though he knew she couldn’t win and was then giving Trump a vote in close PA.<br />
<br />
The Tarot Reader laid out 10 cards from only the Major Arcana (universal cards) and laid them out on “The Tree of Life” positions from the Kabbala which allows the mystic science of Numerology equal sway; position means as much as the face on the card. The cards favored Clinton pretty much from the get go. All the major positions were female cards from The Empress to The High Priestess. <br />
<br />
Given that he was going to vote all BLUE anyway, he wondered if his preference was tipping the cards but he had made the Astrologer cut the deck to even out the influences. The final card was “Judgement” which left it debatable whether the Judgement would be good or bad and for whom. The Reader thought Clinton would win, but there would be a test for America to hold her to a liberal agenda and not her wealthy, powerful supporters who worship money and inequality.<br />
<br />
As the Chinese curse says, we live in interesting times!simplysimonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14504781777392014597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5174074631517914023.post-40768529785759746762014-05-09T11:23:00.002-07:002014-05-09T11:23:49.114-07:00THERE & BACKVersion:1.0
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 48.0pt;"><b><i><u style="text-underline: thick;"><sub>THERE
& BACK</sub></u></i></b></span><span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 48.0pt;"></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 36.0pt;"><sub>I
have been exploring “<i>through caverns measureless to man, down to a sunless
sea</i></sub></span><span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 36.0pt;"><sub>”
for the source of all thoughts.</sub></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 36.0pt;"><sub>ENLIGHTENMENT
is the path of a grain of sand becoming EVERYTHING!</sub></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;">When
contemplating my pre destined enlightenment; and what is enlightenment but a
point of view, a place to observe from, simply an attitude towards life and its
ups and downs, going in circles, repeating the same crap over and over and
there is no escape from this hell except death: AND THAT IS WHY ALL MYSTICS
DIE BEFORE DEATH!!! And all achieved "A HAPPY ENDING", Peace in
Our Time.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;">This
was my path to peace. It was all mental, guided by an unceasing,
invisible presence that I projected inside my teddy bear, my secret confidant,
who new all my gripes and joys, and gave loving, soothing council.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He disappeared one day, thrown away by
unsympathetic adults, and I'd been on my own ever since; until I was writing a
film script and MY TEDDY BEAR returned!! INVISIBLE NOW! Over my
shoulder! Cracking those wise, aside jokes, kidding what I was doing!!
A real Kibbutzer, a wise guy, a topper who always gets the last word!</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;">“The
Football Follies” was a great success and I managed not to brand it as my own,
the truth being I was an instrument, a puppet, following specific guidance.
I later discovered what MY TEDDY BEAR's real name was, and our
relationship both personally and tribally became evident; however, to all HIS
fans out there, HE is our Brother, not our FATHER, but HE speaks for GOD and
dictated a cheap correspondence course called “A COURSE IN MIRACLES”, a post
graduate course in coping with a simple recipe for Peace by mixing forgiveness
with an evolving TRUST in the CHEF. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;">JESUS
has a phenomenal SENSE OF HUMOR!!! Well, you could say, if humor is present,
part of life, then HE created it! That's why I know The New Testament is
edited. Where's the humor? 13 Jews hanging out for 3 years and
there are no jokes? Baloney! For all the Light shed, there had to be
some Dark humor (that some ancient editor was guided to squelch, jokes ending
up on a sanctified monastery floor.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Definitely, a cover up!</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;">That
experience of being helped by an interior guide made me question who was really
in charge here and confirmed Captain Ahab’s wise reflections before his showdown
with his fate-full friend, Moby Dick:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;"><i>“I
so keep pushing, and crowding, and jamming myself all the time; recklessly
making me ready to do what in my own proper, natural heart, I durst not so much
as dare?</i></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;"><i>“Is
Ahab, Ahab?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Is it I, God, or who
that lifts this arm?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But if the
great sun move not of himself; but is as some errand-boy in heaven; nor one
single star can revolve, but by some invisible power; how then can this one
small heart beat; this one small brain think thoughts; unless God does that beating,
does that thinking, does that living, and not I.”</i></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;">So
Ahab argues all take credit for The Creator’s Creations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thanks Mr. Melville for “Moby Dick”,
but Walt Whitman puts artists in their place.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On being a poet, humble Whitman said he was like a harp on a
mountaintop, and the winds of heaven blew through him and IT’s music cascaded
down into the valley.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Walt was a
harp, an instrument, not the composer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>As Melville might say:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“God
wrote ‘It’, not I!”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;">Even
this?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;">Those
were dark days without my Teddy Bear.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>My 1<sup>st</sup> brush with religion came when I was 5 and my Mom took
me to a Temple in Flatbush.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
service was in Hebrew and I didn’t understand a word spoken and I got really
pissed that they sent me into this foreign land without an interpreter!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;">I
never warmed to Judaism, never took off for their holidays and never declared
that I was “one of them!”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No bar
mitzvah for this Yid!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Fortunately Dad’s side of the family were outlaws who could care less
for any laws including NO BACON!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;">I
tried to go to Hebrew School afternoons after public school but the teachers
kept beating me up with my parents’ permission.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>See, I had this double edged gift, I was a child
prodigy with a rapier wit which amused my amoral family at home but angered
teachers, both public and Hebrew, when a word or two from the cheap seats would
break up the class.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;">In
public school, they hid corporal punishment; in private Hebrew, they could
blast away publicly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was
addicted; the laughter was applause and I couldn’t stop wisecracking and being
beaten.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;">Also,
my Brother, Mother & Father at home, routinely beat me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was the dog everyone kicked. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;">I
never lasted long enough in Hebrew School to be Bar Mitzvahed, the ceremony at
13 that marks you a man.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I didn’t
want to be a Jew anyway.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We must
be terrible otherwise why would Hitler and so many others through history want
to exterminate us?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;">I
thought I had escaped detection but at lunch with my football teammates one
day, a Jewish holiday question came up and they turned to me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They all knew!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I thought I had hidden “IT”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was outed as a Jew who knew nothing,
even his TRADITIONS!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;">I
had no other religious exposure until I went to a Lutheran college and
scholastic courses in religion were required and taught by top scholars. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One nugget I took with me was the
explanation of what the word CHRIST stands for: it’s a Greek word for the
Children of God United.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>JESUS is
the prototype of what each one of us is capable of attaining in these
lifetimes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>HE is 1<sup>st</sup>
among EQUALS.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;">Back
to enlightenment and Peace. The return of My Inner Teddy Bear inspired me
to seek smarts outside of talking to an imaginary friend within. A wise
soul-mate gave me an anthology on Sufis, kind of a fly over of their philosophy
and some of their great works and workers. I discovered I was already one
of them, a NATURAL.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was like
looking into a mirror and seeing my SOUL for the 1<sup>st</sup> time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I had found my mental and spiritual
home.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Where were they on earth?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;">I
was living in NY, working as a free-lance filmmaker, and found a Sufi
meeting/service on a Sunday morning; so at 33, my official Sufi life began.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;">Sufi
dancing?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Think of going to church
and spending most of the time dancing and singing songs and chants of all
religions with a brief brake for “secrets of the Sufis” (everything’s
vibrations-science’s just catching up), and then there was that “ROSE DANCE”
where my heart burst open and warm tomato soup seemed to be flowing down my
chest and my love canal opened!</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;">I
asked the Sheikh to become a mureed, a student, with the full understanding
that I was free not to become a Muslim and I could remain a Jew without a
religion like most Jews who celebrate one victory over their bosses, the
Egyptians, and keep harking on it and avoiding the MASTODON named JESUS.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;">Jews
go on and on about Moses and their 10 Laws: The First is the only real law;
surrender to God or “your goose will be cooked and eaten to the bone!” The 9
others are a psychological HAIR SHIRT that constantly manufactures guilt
through fear of breaking impossible, double-edged laws.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;">Then
there is the denial of JESUS as The Jewish Messiah.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Check out the 22<sup>nd</sup> Psalm, written by King David
(thousands of years before JESUS), about a guy who was hung on a cross and
cried out “Why hast THOU forsaken me?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>His garments were gambled for (sounding familiar?) and HE ends up
praising GOD.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The crucifixion of
JESUS fulfils the description/prophecy of the 22<sup>nd</sup> Psalm.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Accept JESUS, Brothers, and explore HIS
Wisdom and Love without having to pay for a building fund.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;">All
right, I have to come clean about my “thing” about Jesus and Simon-Peter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Being a Jew raised in a Lutheran
stronghold/community (I can swear in PA Dutch!) I heard for the 1<sup>st</sup>
time in public school readings every morning from The New Testament about this
guy named Jesus and his great henchman called Simon-Peter—I made the “Simon”
connection, as if somehow I could be a henchman to Jesus, like Tonto was to The
Lone Ranger!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Silly Dream. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;">And
then there was “the incident”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
was sitting on the floor in kindergarten and a male called my name, ”Simon”,
from behind me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I quickly
turned, there was no one there but an everlasting memory that HE called me
gently, knowingly, fully; like HE knew ME.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Maybe it was my buddy, Dave, who was 6 years older than me
but there was no one there and no one else turned to hear a stranger clearly
calling my name.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In scholastic
religious circles that’s known as a “calling”, a “vocation”.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;">Somehow
my father instinctively knew my connection to JESUS:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was the moral pain in everyone’s ass with my quick wit,
which emasculated men and disillusioned women.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My Dad would come to the mostly Jews defense by demeaning me
in a friendly way, “Ignore him, his feet stink and he believes in Jesus!”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course he was right on both counts!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;">Despite
the real blood, the real sweat, and the real TERROR, I love and respected KING
BENNY, my 2<sup>nd</sup> hero.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His
Dad was my first.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;">By
the time I was 9, I had come up with a theory about the nature of this universe
that I discovered myself dumped into.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I was the only person really alive 24 hours a day and everyone else was
not real like me; they were just marionettes, puppets, hung up in some closet
and only brought out of the closet when they had to “<i>swell a scene or two</i></span><span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;">” in my life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;">I
lived in a narrow corridor that was real but every thing, the planet, the
bodies, whatever! were just extras in my movie.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was alone and abandoned. And I sucked at intimate
relationships.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nothing was real.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;">I
was <b><i>“A LONE RANGER”</i></b></span><span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;"><i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Don’t mess with me stranger, / I’m a
Lone Ranger.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;"><i>My
gun is never for hire.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>/I play it
strictly alone, Cause I’m only tough on my own.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;"><i>So
stay out, stay out of my line of fire!</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;"><i>“Don’t
mess with me stranger/ I’m a Lone Ranger.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;"><i>Sad
eyes just raise me a grin/.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Rescue
yourself, I don’t care./ Dreams take all the time I can spare./</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;"><i>My
guns shoot silvery light/ Cause shadows are all that I fight./<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m stuck in this skin that I’m in!</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;"><i>“Don’t
mess with me, Stranger. / I’m a Lone Ranger.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;"><i>Lies
are my legends of daring!/ Heroes are made out of popcorn!/<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They burst through there shells to be
born!/<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Someday I might love and be
sharing, /</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;"><i>But
right now I wear a mask, the Mask of Not Caring!/<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Don’t ever ask, always I’ll wear this mask./ Always I’ll be
a Lone Ranger!/<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Someday, Someday,
I might love and be sharing, but right now,/I wear this mask, the mask of not
caring.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of not caring.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;">That
was a song I wrote with Earl Robinson for an unsold screenplay but mirrors
where my head was at growing up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
was an Agnostic, someone who didn’t know or not know about God; a safe, neutral
position while professionally, I was focused on “charging the canon’s mouth for
bubble reputation” with a couple of Emmys and honors from museums.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;">So
back to the Sufis and my enlistment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>A Sufi name is given to a new student, a name whose “vibrations” are
said to infect and transform.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;">Imagine
the hairs on the back of my head rising as the Sheikh gave me my Sufi name,
“Simon-Peter” and heaven sang, or at least that part of heaven that’s in
me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I could arise from my skeptical
stance and bask in my coronation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I am JESUS’ henchman! Watch out!!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><i>HE IS THE KIBBUTZER</i></span><span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;">!!!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>So am I.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;">After
I had displayed continued interest in singing and dancing my heart away, I was
assigned a mentor who questioned me on my readings of Hazrat Inayat Khan, the
Master who founded The Sufi Order of the West.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My Mentor, Ezra Winston, was a pupil of Hazrat’s and
appreciated my take on the Master’s teachings, and, before I knew it, Hazrat’s
son, Pir Vilayat Khan, ordained me Reverend Simon-Peter!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And he said it stuck forever.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;">What
did I learn from Sufism in NY?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
started as an agnostic, not knowing, and ended up an ordained reverend, someone
who KNEW.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is a
practice in 12 Step Programs called “AS IF” which means, even if you don’t
believe in GOD or a HIGHER POWER, operate “as if” GOD was real and able to help
us through life’s challenges.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
believed in God but had not experienced THE FAITH THAT KNOWS.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;">For
a while, I conducted a Sunday morning service in NY; and then, an attractive
job offer came from DC, so I worked in the nation’s capital for a year with
little contact with the DC Sufis.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I wasn’t really serious about spiritual practices, I was a Natural and
that was reflected in my work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Long before I had become a Sufi Whirling Dervish, I had created a NFL
football ballet, “The Headcracker Suite”.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;">I
was thirsty for more metaphysics in DC and took the Scientology introductory
course, but when I had to confess to a stranger the most dreadful thing I’d
ever done, and who I wouldn’t want to know about “my sin”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I said I masturbated and didn’t want my
boss to know that about me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Perfect setup for blackmail; so, using due diligence, next time I saw my
boss in the hall, I told him that I masturbated.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Free at last!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;">One
of my coworkers in DC went from being shallow to being deep overnight and he
invited me to an <i>est training</i></span><span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;"> graduation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The people were ballistic with joy and relief, they could now pee
unrestrictedly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was cheap, 2
weekends and transformation was possible.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I’d seen it work in that coworker!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;">My
father had died 15 years before my<i> est training</i></span><span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;">.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I never mourned him, in fact,
hated him, but I rediscovered a memory at the <i>training</i></span><span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;"> from when I was a child
in his arms in the surf at Coney Island.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I’d never felt so secure. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
couldn’t swim but he was that person who went deeper into that ocean than
anyone else, and, from that royal position, looked back upon us all and
relished the spectacle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>King
Benny!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My <i>est training</i></span><span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;"> opened me to forgive my
father so that eventually, 50 years later, I cried uncontrollably at his grave.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;">Fortune
or misfortune found me in LA, fired but inspired by visits to psychics on both
coasts that LA would be “the land where all of my dreams would come true” and
they did, although one looked more like a 30 year Beloved Nightmare named
Kelly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;">I
met a fellow seeker at an <i>est</i></span><span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;"> event, Patrick O’Flynn, Sr., who had just been
fired too (from his own company!)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>who was doing this home study course in metaphysics, spiritual stuff,
that took a year to complete and it was called ”A COURSE IN MIRACLES” and it
has delivered for many years. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;">We
became close, unemployed friends, learning to do nothing gracefully and we
talked about God for 3 years everyday.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Sr. called it “the conversation about God” and we found an old friend in
”A COURSE IN MIRACLES”; JESUS, HIMSELF, dictated it to a Jewish woman in NY (He
kept it tribal).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;">Patrick
started 33 lessons ahead of me but we one-a-day-ed it for a year.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Halfway through, Patrick was in the hot
tub and, like a stroke of lightning; he became ENLIGHTENED and started pouring
wisdom out of every pore of his body.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I was the Sufi Reverend but Patrick was “in the spirit”.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;">The
“Course” has 3 parts; a workbook of 365 one per day mental exercises and takes
a year to complete.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is a 700
page “TEXT” that I read every word and didn’t understand one word.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thank God, I found my Cliff Notes for
the “TEXT” in the 2<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>volumes<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>by Gary R. Renard, but WARNING!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are spooks.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;">The
3<sup>rd</sup> book, “The Teacher’s Manuel”, is a measuring stick of how well
you’re practicing “Trusting God” in your everyday life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Want to get to Carnegie Hall? ,
Practice!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Same thing with
enlightenment, PRACTICE!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ups
and downs are perfect practice.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;">Your
life becomes a lab to apply your new attitude to every day stuff.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You graduate, and, like any graduation,
you’ve still got mountains to climb and ditches to avoid or get out of, but you
have a new tool to extricate Your Self from yourself.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;">The
“COURSE” answers the basic questions; Who am I and Where am I?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am a Child of God, like you, and
we’re learning to take over the family business of running the universe with
the rest of us God Kids.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Neither
of those answers is believable because they speak of our united spirit, Our
Oneness, and not our separate bodies of animal, vegetable or mineral.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;">The
“COURSE” suggests that we are not our bodies, these human vehicles we use for
living on a space ship circling through space around a circling sun.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When we leave the spaceship, we don’t
take our Rovers with us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They are
buried or burned or fed to nature’s clean up squad. Nothing here is permanent,
especially our human vehicles.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
spirit within is permanent and is who WE really are.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;">Not
only am I not a body, I am free to choose my daily bread from what’s available
(gluten free?).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And if The
All-Powerful God, like Ahab says, DOES EVERYTHING, then we’re not to blame for
whatever you or I did, so we all get endless forgiveness (JESUS Knew This On
The Cross!).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I discovered all my
temptations have led me not to evil but to ILLUMINATION, ENLIGHTENMENT.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am so blessed and so are you, when
you waken.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;">If
that last paragraph sounds like The Lord’s Prayer, I stole it from THE AUTHOR
of “A COURSE IN MIRACLES”: JESUS dictated ‘THE COURSE” to a Jewish Psychology
Professor, Helen Schucman, in NY in the 1970s.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;">The
last lesson has been my mantra since 1984: “This Holy Instant would I give to
YOU.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Be YOU in charge.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For I would follow YOU, certain that
YOUR direction gives me Peace.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If
there is an All-Powerful GOD, then everything is EXACTLY the way GOD wants it
to be at every moment; so TRUST and TOTAL SURRENDER are actually
appropriate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am following the 1<sup>st</sup>
Commandment.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;">How
this TRUTH carries through in my everyday life is by forgiving everything by
putting all judgments of blame or praise onto God; if blame, wait for further
developments; If praise, THANK GOD WILDLY!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Somebody CARES for ME!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;">Patrick
O’Flynn, Sr. had been a bank vice president, a computer systems salesman to
major corporations and a failed Catholic wanna-be-priest with 3 kids. After his
enlightenment, he stopped shaving, getting<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>haircuts, gave away his custom made suits and wore only
sweats and Birkies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Eventually
he returned to the church, became a lay teacher and hasn’t missed a mass in
over 25 years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was a
“Homeless Guest” of Patrick’s wife, Barbara, for over a year.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;">My
best memory of Sr. was I had been to the east coast and made my film, “The War
Follies” based on the teachings of the “COURSE”, and returned to LA on a
cousin’s green handshake with a new camcorder and we sat on the hot tub and I
recorded a string of wisdom from Patrick.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;">My
favorite was about Who teaches Us?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Parents, teachers, friends, all tell us what to do.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What we agree with, we do; what we
don’t, we find a way not to.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Who
is the teacher?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Who is the
Chooser?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;">I
tried to spread the “GOOD NEWS”; a wealthy friend hired the Theosophic Hall in
Hollywood on Tuesday nights for several months but we didn’t draw a crowd.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Mom, I made it to Hollywood!!) Even
though homeless and sleeping on Patrick & Barbara’s floor, I
wangled/produced an half hour Public Access TV show in Santa Monica starring
Patrick as the all-wise one and me as the congenial host.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;">We
did 5 shows and then I wanted to bring the dog I was babysitting on the show
and Patrick refused to be on the same show with a dog.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The dog was booked so I fired
Patrick.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For good.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I did around a dozen more half hour
shows on the metaphysics of the “COURSE”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I occasionally dug ditches with wetbacks to have spending and gas
money.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;">According
to Hazrat Inayat Khan, enlightenment comes in 3 stages.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>First, we acquire knowledge through
some form of study (not necessarily academic), then we meditate/marinate on
what we discovered and finally understand it well enough to live IT, to share
IT, and to be IT.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In fact, “IT” is
my new name for GOD, eliminates the male versus female stuff and opens neutral,
universal territory.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;">When
I returned to the east coast, I was homeless, jobless, destitute, but with a
new metaphysical (above the physical) philosophy of the world based on “The
COURSE”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For 7 years I was a
“Professional Homeless Guest”; strangers, old friends, new friends, all took me
in and I learned humility, gratefulness and TRUST in A HIGHER POWER from this
physical/spiritual trial. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;">I
went into the biggest film library in the world at that time, Sherman Grinberg
Film Library, with offices in NY, LA and London.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I knew the NY manager, Bernie Shertok, from my days as a NY
filmmaker and showed him some of my pieces as a reporter and producer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He gave me the green light to make a
feature length movie using documentary footage from their vast worldwide
library.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;">I
love to test the JESUS statement that “The Kingdom Is At Hand” so I asked only
for a string of films/video on a shelf, “at hand”, in the main room.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They were Paramount Newsreels from 1940
to 1957 and they became the actors in my DOCUMENTARY FICTION that I called “THE
WAR FOLLIES” because WW II was the big news of that time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I decided to look at war from a spiritual,
metaphysical perspective rather than the usual propagandistic cheerleading.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;">The
library covered all my expenses, which came to a whopping $1,000.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A friend in Sparta, NJ, had an editing
system at home and let me use it and stay there for weeks at a time as I wrote,
narrated and edited the film.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Completed, no one wanted to buy it. Grinberg was sold and the new owners
would not honor a word of mouth contract even though Grinberg never charged me
for weeks of viewing, normally at $35/hour, and shelled out a $1,000 but Bernie
could have hidden that in petty cash.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;">I
was friends with the late Gil Cates; an Oscar Telecast Producer, Film Director
and Head of UCLA Film School.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Gil
looked at “The War Follies” and told me to enter it into film festivals, but with
the rights not locked down, I couldn’t.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;">Bottom
line, that film saved my life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
was depressed over the way my life was going, I needed something to chew on
while I was waiting to be fed a new life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>There were a few dark, gun moments.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;">In
the summer of 1988, my homelessness ended with a summer relief editor job at
ABC News in NY.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was back with
bucks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What followed was a
spiritual marination for 14 years while attending 12 Step Programs for
compulsive over eating and sexual anorexia.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I wrote about the experience:</span><span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS";"></span></div>
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<h1>
<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 16.0pt; font-weight: normal;"><i>Intimate
Strangers</i></span></h1>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 16.0pt;"><i>I found a new family in
my 12-step program.</i></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 16.0pt;"><i>Brothers and sisters I
never knew,</i></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 16.0pt;"><i>Forgiving me
unconditionally.</i></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 16.0pt;"><i>Total Strangers who
tell each other the truth</i></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 16.0pt;"><i>Become a family of
Intimate Strangers,</i></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 16.0pt;"><i>Sinners who do not
throw stones.</i></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 16.0pt;"><i>We attend The 12 Step
Church</i></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 16.0pt;"><i>Our God has no name
except Higher Power</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 16.0pt;"><i>We believe Confession
purges the soul </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 16.0pt;"><i>And the Truth sets us
free.</i></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 16.0pt;"><i>In anonymous rooms we
Confess and are forgiven.</i></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 16.0pt;"><i>In anonymous rooms we
hear Confessions and forgive.</i></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 16.0pt;"><i>We hear of damage, we
hear of recovery, we learn of hope.</i></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 16.0pt;"><i>The anonymous rooms are
actually halls of mirrors,</i></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 16.0pt;"><i>Each one of us, a
mirror to the rest.</i></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 16.0pt;"><i>We are the many who are
one.</i></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 16.0pt;"><i>We are not alone,</i></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 16.0pt;"><i>We came to this
fellowship shameful liars.</i></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 16.0pt;"><i>The lies hid secrets
even from ourselves.</i></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 16.0pt;"><i>The Truth inspired
miraculous recoveries</i></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 16.0pt;"><i>Among this family of
Intimate Strangers.</i></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 16.0pt;"><i>Some have even become
Intimate Friends.</i></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 16.0pt;"><i>Love is not only a
possibility,</i></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 16.0pt;"><i>It is the very mortar
of our 12 Step Church.</i></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 16.0pt;"><i>Where open wounds are
closed,</i></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 16.0pt;"><i>Where closed worlds are
opened.</i></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 16.0pt;"><i>And where the Truth of
Intimate Strangers</i></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 16.0pt;"><i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Triumphs!</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;">Back
home, free-lance editing, living in L.I.C., acting in a couple of off-off-off
Broadway plays, acting in a couple of short films, did some stand-up, some
poetry and always loving NY, my adopted city, until I saw those burning
buildings from my apartment window and working night and day, being part of the
messengers of doom, the news, and I burnt out too and was fired, Thank God!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;">I
sat around in Riverdale in the Bronx for a year, spending my savings, not
knowing what to do next.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>GOD
jumped right in with a heart attack: FOUR MINUTES OF FLAT LINE!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was dead for 4 minutes!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>2 is bad!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was a math wiz!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No more.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Best
thing that ever happened, a sneak preview!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;">Killing
me was like sending a navy seal to infiltrate DEATH.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>AND RETURN.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To
tell you all, to tell you what you’ve always suspected: there is no DEATH,
there’s just “a change of address” but your own consciousness moves with
you.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Your inner self doesn’t miss
a beat whether you see lights, friends, whatever you experience, these
“returnees” all were conscious while they were supposedly DEAD.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yes, their bodies were dead,
flat-lined, but their consciousness was not!!!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;">So
I have no fear of DEATH; been there, done that; however, the fear of exactly
HOW one exits, is a fear few lose.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;">Fully
retired after the heart attack, finances forced me back home to a suburb of
Allentown, Emmaus,PA.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
re-discovered the writings of Hazrat Inayat Khan on the internet, but, on this
second reading, everything was being filtered through “The COURSE” via JESUS.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;">I
was harmonizing these 2 sources, saying daily prayers from each to center
myself, to push aside my ego (the sound I hear in my head, full of judgments
and worse case scenarios.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There
is also a listener inside me with a deeper, quieter voice that gets quite loud
if I seek it by focusing on the spirit within that we call THE SELF or GOD
WITHIN. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;">Hazrat
speaks of the importance of actually making up a “God Ideal”, someone to speak
to within and I had One already made: TEDDY BEAR JESUS!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is me, Kingasabe, your faithful
servant, Simon Peter!</span></div>
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<div class="MsoTitle">
<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-weight: normal;"><i>THE
ZEN OF AUTO PARTS</i></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;"><i>Auto
parts are a lot like body parts, you got to have most of your parts or your
whole thing won’t run.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So, I got
this job delivering auto parts to garages and auto repair shops in this semi
rural valley I was born and raised in.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Driving around my valley, I’m learning about nooks and crannies I had
heard of as a child but didn’t have a clue about their actual whereabouts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;"><i>Now
their location is of paramount importance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some auto or truck is sick and the automotive doctors have
determined a replacement part is needed and I am driving quickly, safely, to
save a sick puppy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am riding to
the rescue in my clown colored car to make two people happy: the vehicle’s
owner and the mechanic. I have a mission.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I am a happy servant.</i></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;"><i>I
use to complain that someone should make a car that never needed fixing.
Nothing is made to last!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Planned
obsolescence I called it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then I
looked in the mirror.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Whoever
created this universe didn’t make anything to last.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The automakers are only mirroring nature. </i></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;"><i>Part-time
auto parts delivering fits my retirement to a “T”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It greases my income, and gets me out into the world so that
I can swirl in its weather and play with everyone: even co-workers and
customers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have a good time no
matter what the weather is physically, socially or financially.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s what us retired guys should
do.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Have a good time!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;"><i>It’s
written in the Declaration of Independence, that stuff about the pursuit of
happiness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If you haven’t gotten
happy while sliding down your last slope; then, When?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So it’s my constitutional duty to have a good time no matter
what the weather throws my way.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;"><i>It’s
my solemn duty as a guy on the way out, to go out laughing, or, at least,
smiling.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So, here’s my secret
recipe, given to me by the ancient sages of antiquity; it’s simply this:
Imagine having an All-Powerful Being to blame everything on!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s not my fault or your fault that
the world is the way it is.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s
that interfering, got to have it My Way, All-Powerful Thing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Shakespeare called it, a “Divinity that
shapes our ends, rough hew them how we may.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;"><i>I
send all my complaints to the Maker.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I also send my compliments.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I hope my objections are noted but rarely do I get things my way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I blame the All-Powerful Designer, wash
my thoughts of the whole matter and continue practicing happiness by being
happy with my lot, whether its full of lemons or auto parts.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;"><i>I
get paid to look at Pennsylvania’s rolling hills in the bowels of this valley
that probably once was a seabed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The autumn sunlight plays games with my sight, blinding me one moment
and then hiding for days, sending those misty tears we call clouds in the sun’s
place and making me yearn for the return of the light.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I love the balance, the harmony of
it all.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;"><i>The
streets of my childhood are filled with friendly ghosts of my past superimposed
over the brief permanence of the present.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I feel the undertow of the world to come.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am a child of Providence delivering auto parts.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;"><i>Simply,
Simon</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;">Simply
Simon has taken more than one step backward and many forward.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s a dance!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;">I
had an epiphany on THANKSGIVING 2013.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>A Universal Holiday for the whole SPACESHIP (aka Earth).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Every day is THANKSGIVING if you relish
what you’ve got and count your blessings instead of losses and you’ll fall into
eternity, counting your blessings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Start by being grateful for breathing and take it from there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Remembering BEAUTY is the easiest
“work”.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt;">I
now have a PEACE that is beyond understanding, surrendering and TRUSTING IN GOD
(by any name or none).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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simplysimonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14504781777392014597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5174074631517914023.post-87202901048546472014-05-07T08:41:00.003-07:002014-05-07T08:41:42.780-07:00The DraftTHWARTED EXPECTATIONS is the name of the game called "The Draft".
Watching players you know MUST be on your team or you've "lost"
something you never had is a prescription for having a nervous weekend
on an up and down merry-go-round. Given it will take years to determine if the wage slaves won in this poker game are fantastic workers or busts, the emotional ride is manufactured joy and sorrow, "sound and fury, signifying nothing".
The same could be said of all sports activities, anything to distract
us from the ordinary. Manufactured Excitement is the name of all games. I will attempt to skip the "live" draft and wait for the glorious, endless debate
on who got what even before who got what has a chance to actually
play. Who says life isn't fun? We manufacture or own joy and sorrow
out of nothing. <br />
simplysimonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14504781777392014597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5174074631517914023.post-68708999438255614662014-03-01T22:58:00.002-08:002014-03-01T22:58:59.710-08:00Emailing MetaphysicsSomehow I think I should apologize for the preponderance of metaphysics that I have been posting on FB and emailing but that is my game, my sport, my Super Bowl. I FaceBooked this:<br /><br />I have been sharing portions from "The Bowl Of Saki" by Hazrat Inayat Khan, the founder of the Sufi Order of the West because: "A person who, alone, has seen something beautiful, who has heard something harmonious, who has tasted something delicious, who has smelt something fragrant, may have enjoyed it, but not completely. The complete joy is in sharing one's joy with others. For the selfish one who enjoys himself and does not care for others, whether he enjoys things of the earth or things of heaven, his enjoyment is not complete. So it is only in this third stage that the following of the message is fulfilled, when a soul has heard and has pondered upon it, and has passed the same blessing on to others." HIK<br /><br />If this stuff bores you, you have my permission to ignore it and you won't hurt my feelings. s,s<br />simplysimonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14504781777392014597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5174074631517914023.post-75564845853459809412014-03-01T22:52:00.002-08:002014-03-01T22:52:58.303-08:00Coming OutIn honor of Ellen Page, Michael Sam and all those others who "came out", known or unknown to the world.<br /><br />COMING OUT<br /><br />My friend has left the room<br /><br />To face some possible gloom.<br /><br />The price One must pay?<br /><br />What others will say,<br /><br />But for Those who have courage of thought,<br /><br />Their actions are what Their minds hath wrought.<br /><br />Simply, Simonsimplysimonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14504781777392014597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5174074631517914023.post-88929608697345692812014-03-01T22:48:00.001-08:002014-03-01T22:48:32.030-08:00Email to Howard Katz, COO of NFL Films:Email to Howard Katz, COO of NFL Films:<br />
<br />
Hi Howard,<br /><br />The last time I saw Steve Sabol in the hall at NFL Films, he greeted me loudly as "THE ORSON WELLES OF FOOTBALL FILMS!"<br /><br />Just thinking that NFL Films would be remiss not to tell of my contributions to its success by creating "The Football Follies" and the ballet (both in MoMA) cornerstones of NFL Films' reputation that benefitted the whole league by countering public resistance, complaints of excessive violence in this newly emerging favorite sport. There were also other noteworthy pieces, especially the one starring my 6 yr. old son that is also in MoMA. I sent you my memoir, "Inside The Football Follies", that could be used as a guide. Then there's some of the work we did at ABC Sports and TWI. <br /><br />There is also some real good video in my life outside the NFL: producing and writing multiple Emmy winning hour specials for Post-Newsweek TV on how CBS broadcasts football and Detroit's New Americans, weird TV feature reporter (couple of Redskins players swore they got high to watch my stuff), Emmy winning film editor at ABC Sports, Enlightened Poet who spent 7 years as a "homeless guest" in the 80s. His current "EKLEKTIK ELECTRIK" college radio show ranges from Spike Jones to Beethoven.<br /><br />I think it's a great story. You may not and since NFL Films is now your sandbox Howard, I defer to you..<br /><br />Simply, Simon<br />simplysimonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14504781777392014597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5174074631517914023.post-54285845990397024142013-05-02T23:38:00.001-07:002013-05-02T23:38:25.823-07:00"The War Follies"<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">"The War Follies"</span> is my 90 minute satiric documentary on WW II that I made during my 7 years (it was biblical) as a "Homeless Guest". I fun house mirrored the movie experience of the 40s with a newsreel and a cartoon (music/poems) and a Feature Film featuring the beginning, the fighting and the aftermath of the War stressing equality and forgiveness. <br />
<br />
The picture quality suffers from being many generations away from the original but I never got the money to complete post production. Some times this video stalled but patiently came around. Let me know if you have any problems. The address is https://vimeo.com/user1277282 for just "The War Follies" but clicking on my name takes you to other stuff, including the hour at MoMA.<br />simplysimonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14504781777392014597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5174074631517914023.post-68058985299334062192013-05-02T23:34:00.000-07:002013-05-02T23:34:28.945-07:00The Documentary Poet<div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
The Documentary Poet<br /><br />Came up with a title, "Documentary Poet", that seems to describe me and separates me from my peers.<br /><br />There are the wordless visual musical poems: "The Headcracker Suite", "Game Today" (my son at 6 just turned 50), "Aerial Ballet" (Wide World of Sports), "Your Father's Mustache" (Football Anger), and "That Football Thing" (animated football, a la Mondrian);<br /><br />The game highlights like "The Raven", "The Fairy Tale" and "The Circus";<br /><br />The poem/essays like "The Football Follies" (PR film satirizes PR films), "Sonny Jurgensom Tribute" (nom for writing Emmy), "Baseball: No Place to Hide", "Cliff Climbing in Wales" (metaphysical "American Sportsman", Teddy winner), "Gung-Ho Din" parody, "The Joggers" with rock score, and "The School of Dance" (Prez Nixon fave);<br /><br />The poetic feature reporter: "Discovering Flowers Jogging", "Breaking Ankle Jogging", "Mass. Ave." (I become street), "Disco Laundromat" (holocaust survivor), "Met Singer Commutes From Detroit", "The Statue" (An amateurs gift of Love) and "Night Mare" (painting explained).<br /><br />Hosting a Public Access metaphysical show in LA where I translated a dog's lecture, "Honey on Love" and discovered "The Cosmic Orgasm"!<br /><br />All or most of this stuff will be on my account with Vimeo.com.<br /><br />Simply, Simon<br /></div>
simplysimonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14504781777392014597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5174074631517914023.post-66225815189508497542013-05-02T09:43:00.000-07:002013-05-02T09:43:21.836-07:00DUSTIN HOFFMAN IS RATZO RIZZO!!!Today is Barbra Striesand's 71st birthday and in reading her bio in IMDB was this sentence: "[on Dustin Hoffman] We were in the same acting school when I was sixteen, seventeen years old. I used to baby-sit to get free acting lessons, and he was the janitor." That is the same time I attended Allan Miller's private classes with Barbra. That means both Barbra and Dustin were in my fucking class! I was friendly with Streisand, she dated my best friend and hung out with our gang of Beatnik Actors who worshipped Marlon and studied with Miller. Miller was a hot-shot teacher at The Actor's Studio but taught the method privately to avoid The Studio's stringent, subjective auditions.<br /><br />I don't remember Hoffman being in my classes unless he was that skinny, creepy kid who looked like he never bathed and twitched around like a cockroach. Holy shit! The real fucking DUSTIN HOFFMAN IS RATZO RIZZO!!!<br /><br />We did an exercise in class where you had to sing a nursery rhyme, but you could only use one note throughout and not get self-conscious in front of your peers. It sounded terrible! If you did it right all your discomfort came out emotionally in your voice. Barbra nailed it every time because every time she did it, you cried. I only had that reaction one other time towards another classmate, THE CREEP! I dismissed it as "even a broken watch is right twice a day" but didn't realize I had a glimpse at a student's emerging greatness.<br /><br />I should recuse myself because of that much later time at PJ Clarke's when my party was waiting for a table, standing for half an hour; and when one opens up, that great fucking asshole, Dustin Hoffman waltzes in and takes our fucking table! <br /><br />DUSTIN HOFFMAN IS RATZO RIZZO!!!<br /><br />simplysimonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14504781777392014597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5174074631517914023.post-20561869459614388912013-01-22T12:51:00.000-08:002013-01-22T12:51:35.168-08:00Howard CosellI was a film editor at ABC Sports, working with Roone Arledge on the Ali fight with Evangelista (an unranked pretender). Alex Wallou, "The Prince of Promos" (his attribution) and future ABC network el presidente, is sent all around the world to film interviews with knowledgeable fight promoters as to the merit of the challenger. Alex returns with a load of BS that I screen for Roone, Alex and 2 corporate lawyers on an overtime Sunday afternoon. Late to the meeting, suffering from jet lag, is Howard Cosell who is the scheduled to host the fight on ABC this week. There is a couch in the editing room and Howard in his silk silver custom built suit stretches out on the couch, exhausted.<br /><br />All the VIPs agree that none of the interviews have merit because all the interviewees avoided the central question: Is this "bum of the month" a worthy challenger to the champ? Roone's gift is to see the obvious; this is a championship fight and we're covering it because every sports journalist in the world will be there. Forget the big ratings, we're providing a free service to the public for the price of a "few" commercials. But Howard has to sell this to the public. Roone asks for a preview of Cosell's opening gambit/speech.<br /><br />Howard unglues himself from the orange, leatherette couch and walks to the far corner of the room where my close friend and assistant, Wayne Weiss, is guarding the door from any interlopers to this earth shattering discussion. What I don't see is Howard's face as he walks to the corner but Wayne sees him coming toward him and, just before Cosell turns to face the rest of the room, he gives Wayne a wink. The exhausted giant turns to face us and all of a sudden, in full throttle, Howard "the man we love to hate" Cosell with nasal passages whinnying does "his thing": <br /><br />HOWARD: "AND SO, ..." (we're here because all of sports journalism is here for a championship fight no matter the merits of the contestants.... ). Roone congratulates him and days later the fight goes on just as rehearsed. As Howard is delivering his opening, the video switches to all the reporters with pen and tablets poised, and local news crews dutifully blasting away. The fight was nothing. Ali danced for a few rounds and then politely finished him off. <br /><br />To me, the earth shattering news was to learn that Howard Cosell was an artifice, a face a man put on to face the faces that he met. Otherwise, he was a regular guy, a bit insecure, that the public and Ali had turned into a god. <br /><br />AND SO, he played his part perfectly.<br /><br />Simon Gribben<br />simplysimonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14504781777392014597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5174074631517914023.post-2274576774811188272013-01-14T19:59:00.002-08:002013-01-14T19:59:40.902-08:00How I Got Into Muhlenberg CollegeI grew up 2 blocks from the Muhlenberg College campus and used it as a playground, swinging on the obstacle course ropes into deep sawdust pits that were there because of the navy unit that was being trained here during WW II; the Trexler Library now sits on top of the obstacle course. I met one of the sailors 30 years later who never went to college except for his brief training at Muhlenberg but Ed Cioffi ended up as a network reporter and Paris bureau chief for ABC News. I gifted him my Muhlenberg summer jacket and he proudly replaced his suit jacket with our gray and red colors for the rest of his day in NY.<br /><br />Although we lived in a middle-class neighborhood, my family was working class; there were no books in the house and my ex-con father wanted me to be a business major in high school so I could cook the books for the family business of distributing supplies to shoemakers. Since all the kids I grew up with were going to college, I took the college prep curriculum which pissed off my Dad. I got beaten whether I went along or not, so I took the beatings along with the college prep. My family was not on board with me going to college so I'd have to pay my own way and that meant Muhlenberg was my only option. It was college or the army with Vietnam around the corner (Goodbye Bobby Butz).<br /><br />But I had a problem. A BIG MOUTH. I was a gifted wise guy who could easily break up classes with my one liners and usually only in English. I spent most of my senior year English classes in the library at Allentown High School because my teacher hated my gift of levity but didn't want the administration to know she was incapable of teaching me. Came final exams, she flunked me. Flunking English in high school is not cool for college entry. The summer after high school graduation I was on pins and needles pressing the Head of Admissions, Haps Benfer, to be accepted. I had been the college's Morning Call paperboy for several years and he had been one of my customers.<br /><br />My summer job was cleaning private swimming pools for the second year in a row. One of my customers, a Mr. Mosser, had a large estate in Trexlertown with a 3 foot wading pool. Mr. Mosser would walk around the grounds with a putter and a dog, a Boxer. I'd always had trouble with Boxers, they always barked at me until I escaped. But I couldn't escape. I had to clean that wading pool! I came up with the strategy of talking to the dog like we were old friends. At first he was hesitant but then he relaxed into the patter and I was safe except his owner caught me talking to his dog like we were old buddies.<br /><br />Mr. Mosser asked me what I was planning to do after the summer and I described my college entrance plight. It was near the 4th of July and he was going to have a party and Haps would be there. He asked me to write down my name on a slip of paper and one week later I was accepted at Muhlenberg College, Class of 61. I saw Mr. Mosser the next week and told him of my success and he told me to work on my English. I have since learned he was a trustee at Cedar Crest and probably Muhlenberg as well. So I got into Muhlenberg by talking to a well connected dog. <br /><br />I was offered a half scholarship to go out for the football team by coach Ray Whispell during Freshman Orientation Week but turned him down to focus on The Theater. It took me 6 years to graduate as I spent 2 years in NY studying "The Method" but never made any ripples as an actor; however, I did well as a writer/producer/director/editor of news and sports films for television winning several Emmys and having 5 "easy pieces" in the Museum of Modern Art in NY as well as dozens more in the Paley Center for Media. I couldn't have pulled that off without that dog and actually attending classes as an English Major at Muhlenberg College, my Alma Mater.<br /><br />20 some years after graduation, I returned to campus to show a film I made on WW II and an article in the school paper spoke about my accomplishments including that I had been ordained as Sufi Reverend Simon-Peter. I ran into my favorite religion professor, Rodney Ring, and he said I was exactly the kind of student Muhlenberg wanted. I was blown away. Who knew? Not me, for sure. Maybe the dog knew.simplysimonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14504781777392014597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5174074631517914023.post-31633870629183140452012-12-27T11:36:00.003-08:002012-12-27T11:56:13.490-08:00Lost A Friend<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b><i><u>Lost A Friend</u></i></b></span><br />
<br style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Lost a friend yesterday, Xmas Day; Paul Steuber flew up the chimney with Santa and will not return unless he subs for Santa, having the smile and girth. Actually I didn't lose a friend, I lost a broken down vehicle whose usefulness was over and it was time for Paul's pilgrimage as spirit to continue. I have full confidence that Paul will climb whatever ladders spirits need climb to reach the North Pole of the Universe.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I gather blessings like others pick flowers. These blessing are memory movies in mentalspace starring all the stars in my life, a cornucopia of endless variety that entertains and enlightens me. Who do I thank? Santa Clause? Why not? An embodiment of generous, unthreatening love.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">So Paul Steuber you shall receive the first and maybe last Santa Clause Award for Generous, Unthreatening Love. Too bad we don’t know if you can still tune this channel from where you’re hanging out. You’d be a sea of salty tears reading what people from every walk of your life are saying about you. Wow, that sucks if you can’t gloat over good press reviews.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">You are a star in every heart you touched.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">See you at the next bend.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Simply, Simon</span>simplysimonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14504781777392014597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5174074631517914023.post-34609177063514824472012-12-08T12:48:00.000-08:002012-12-08T12:48:13.459-08:00Jack, Bob & BarbraWas reading a comment I made at HuffPost last April 23rd on Jack Nicholson's birthday:<br /><br />“Met Jack briefly in 59 on a summer afternoon in Greenwich Village. He and his mates were on huge Harleys almost blocking the corner of 8th St & McDougal. One of my acting buddies, Bob Vernier, was in The Actor's Studio with Jack and he introduced us. Jack gave me that huge, gorgeous smile and it was one of those moments that you remember for a lifetime. This was 10 years before he broke out in "Easy Rider" and this "nobody" had star power even then. I'd love to meet him again now that he's a Super Star! I sussed it way back before it happened. Happy Birthday, Jack.” <br /><br />When I read it over something jumped out at me: "the corner of 8th Street and McDougal"! That was where the yellow brick road began that led to the "BEAT" Revolution, "Howling" for Equality that pretty much ended with the Beatles. (Together, the Lads were invincible; split, occasionally sublime rather than nearly always. Dylan gave them pot and they gave us Sgt. Pepper.) The Yellow Brick Road for this breeding ground of Dylan and Streisand, the playground of Kerouac and Ginsberg, stretched west on McDougal to Bleeker, made a left turn south and ended up just past The Bitter End. <br /><br />McDougal between West 3rd and Bleeker, one single small block, had a dozen coffee cafes and just 2 bars. There were poetry readings practically every night in every cafe, where the cost of admission for the whole evening was a single cup o coffee while poets poeted and a nobody like Dylan got up to recite his latest poem for free on an "open mike". You weren't allowed to clap, there were packed tenements above these walk down, basement cafes; so you snapped your fingers in hushed appreciation or not. It was "live" so the response was immediate. Hearing no sound was deafening to a failure.<br /><br />Conversations in these coffee cafes expanded to neighboring tables as the merits of Dostoevsky's "The Grand Inquisitor", a chapter in his "The Brothers Karamazov", is chimed in on by poets, actors, painters, writers, singers and any and all lost seekers. There was no alcohol, just the freedom of open exchange and by consensus all these lost souls discovered a code to live by that was liberal humanism and they took that with them wherever they went, high or low. One I knew and watched develop was a girl from Brooklyn.<br /><br />A few blocks north on Bleeker you run into Gay East, aka Christopher Street between Greenwich and Hudson. Around the same time McDougal was bursting with Dylan poetry, a singing superstar was discovered on Christopher Street. A monster to the right wing, a full blown LIBERAL SUPERSTAR! A certain teenage singer named Barbra from Brooklyn got her breakthrough gig on Christopher Street, sleeping on the floor of her gay mentors tiny apartment on 10th Street rather than go home to Mom in the middle of the night. She was mature for her age and was an attentive listener to her life mentors, Beatnik actors, and she carried the faith in equality with her as she rose to astounding heights. Her success as a liberal icon has yet to be determined: "It ain't over, till it's over!"simplysimonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14504781777392014597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5174074631517914023.post-82948858716031707342012-11-06T15:15:00.001-08:002012-11-06T15:15:57.771-08:00The Ghost of NFL FilmsHi Colleen,<br /><br />For the record:<br /><br />I saw a late interview with Steve Sabol and his Dad on NFL Network and Steve repeated a lie Ed had told on Father's Day the year before about "a janitor suggested in 66 or 67 (before I was hired in 68) about a ballet with tch-tch-tchkaikovsky's music". First of all, when I suggested a ballet to Ed during my hiring interview, I had not decided on which composer and music I would use were I to actually create a ballet. So it sounds like the Sabols were denying my legendary work for the league by turning me into a janitor at the very least and denying my real contributions to the "Legend of NFL Films".<br /><br />The thing that bothered me about Steve's quoting his Dad was I always thought of Steve as an equal, a filmmaker; someone who respected other's work, not someone competing for top dog fame. Where is the thanks from the league for my contribution of the ballet and the Follies to its fame and fortune? Hidden under Sabol & Son, aka NFL Films. I admired Steve's work ethic as a filmmaker and skill as an executive but I was saddened when I heard him voice the party line on me and explains why I wasn't given a clean shot at doing more creative, memorable work for NFL Films, a loss for the league and the countless fans of my work.<br /><br />Given your loyalty to the Sabols, Colleen, I don't expect sympathy for my complaint but I feel the need to air my grievances to Steve's assistant who was kind and respectful to me while vetting my memoirs with Steve. In the John Wayne/Ford movie, "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, the truth is hidden and "the legend" is what is printed. Sounds familiar to me.<br /><br />Love,<br /><br />Simon Gribbensimplysimonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14504781777392014597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5174074631517914023.post-32028400101800702092012-11-06T14:58:00.000-08:002012-11-06T14:58:44.222-08:00Kevin SpaceyOnce upon a teenage time, I considered a career as an actor and went to study acting in NY and was guided to a teacher named Allan Miller who taught The Method at The Actor's Studio but gave private classes for those who couldn't get into The Studio. Some of his well-known students include Barbra Streisand, Dustin Hoffman, Meryl Streep, Geraldine Page, Lily Tomlin, Sigourney Weaver, Peter Boyle, Rue McClanahan, Dianne Wiest, and Bruce Davison. Streisand was in my class and we were friendly. One of the actors who guided me to Allen was already in The Studio and was one of Marilyn Monroe's scene partners but Bob took the private classes for even more training. Of course you all know his name by now, Bob Veneer, because he's become so famous-NOT!<br /><br />Acting as a career is a huge crap shoot and I facilitated over acting or returning to college and college won out but it seems every 10 years I would go back to Allan's classes only to retreat again. Miller had moved to LA and I also found myself in LA and taking classes again after another 10 year break. I was assigned a scene from the play "Becket" about Archbishop Thomas Becket and King Henry II. Richard Burton and Peter O'Toole had starred in a movie version. I was to play Becket and this young actor I didn't know was to play the young King. <br /><br />I don't recall rehearsing the scene which was a reunion for the characters after a schism but when we played it in class for Allan and the other students, this guy starts crawling all over me, salaciously. He's playing the King as aggressively GAY!!! I'm trying to keep my composure but this clown is all over me. Miller was notorious for whispering in an actor's ear and giving him a "secret" to use in the scene without revealing what it was. To this day I wondered if Allan set this up. Actually, it worked for the characters and keeping my cool was one of my favorite challenging moments as an actor.<br /><br />The kid invited me to lunch and we chatted pleasantly and never met again as I ran out of money for classes. On reflection, the kid looked like a young Kevin Spacey. He had made a bold choice in that scene, something you routinely expect from Spacey. Though Spacey is not listed as one of his famous students on his site, I've written to Allan asking about Spacey but doubt I'll hear from him; I was not one of his favorites as I bounced back and forth from college and acting. He pulled me aside once and said I had to stop treating life like a buffet, picking here and then there, but sit down and eat a meal, commit! I never did. I dabbled on life's buffet. And still do. <br /><br /><br />Simon Gribben <br /><br /><br /><br /><br />simplysimonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14504781777392014597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5174074631517914023.post-55403251765754438872012-11-03T10:57:00.001-07:002012-11-03T10:57:50.972-07:00<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS';">11/3/21, the date of Charles Bushinsky's birth. Grew up poor around the coal mines of Central PA. Went to the mines at 16 and grew large worker's muscles, lean but well cut. Almost died in a cave-in and had a life-long fear of enclosed spaces. Drafted into the Air Corps in 43 and became a tail gunner in a B-29 with 25 missions (think of the horror of "Memphis Belle" as his working chore). Won some medals and used the G.I. Bill to study art in Pasadena (a life long passion for this "Brute") and then moved over to acting. He then changed his name to Bronson, the street's name that leads to the famous Paramount Gate. Retired in 98 when he had a hip replacement followed by the Big A, Alzheimer, and died in 2002.</span><br />
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So what? A man has haunted me since around 1955 or 56 when I was 16 or 17 and delivering shoes supplies to shoemakers, the family business, in the coal regions around Summit Hill, PA. There was one shoemaker in this suburb of Mauch Chunk, now known as Jim Thorpe. I entered a small shop and sitting there in a sleeveless undershirt in the most relaxed position possible, obviously doing no work., was the most powerful man I had ever seen and as a football player and construction laborer, I was used to seeing well built men and boys but this guy had them all beat and was not even close to flexing his muscles, they just rested where they lay, bursting with potential power but he was chilling, an easy smile on his face.</div>
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He explained that he was just baby sitting the shop and knew nothing about the ordered supplies that were usually paid for when delivered. What to do? He didn't have the money, best as I can remember, and shoemaker's usually only ordered what they needed for a particular repair, so what it was down to was, do you trust this guy or not. His way with me won me over. Confident, at ease, friendly. I gave him the goods and wondered to myself, who was that cool guy with that winning smile and all those muscles? I believe his name was Charles Bronson. I could be wrong but I have mojo with meeting famous people before they are famous like Striesand and Dylan. I don't know for sure if it was him but I do know a man I met won me over in a heartbeat and isn't that what a star really is whether known or unknown to the world.</div>
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Simply, Simon Gribben</div>
simplysimonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14504781777392014597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5174074631517914023.post-31238831910286752492012-05-13T09:56:00.003-07:002012-05-13T09:56:59.996-07:00The Girl With The Dragon Tatoo/Rooney Mara<style>
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<span style="font-family: CourierNewPSMT; font-size: 16pt;">If
you haven't seen THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATOO, that is the<span> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: CourierNewPSMT; font-size: 16pt;">American
version of the first of this explosive Swedish literary<span> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: CourierNewPSMT; font-size: 16pt;">trilogy,
switch the channel as I am going specific and I don't want<span> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: CourierNewPSMT; font-size: 16pt;">to
spoil your fun unless you read mystery stories last-page-first.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: CourierNewPSMT; font-size: 16pt;">(OC)
ANGLE CHANGE</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: CourierNewPSMT; font-size: 16pt;">This
is not a movie review; it's praise of a great young actress who<span> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: CourierNewPSMT; font-size: 16pt;">just
happens to be American Royalty, that is if you're a fan of pro<span> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: CourierNewPSMT; font-size: 16pt;">football
and two of its greatest teams, The Steelers & The Giants.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: CourierNewPSMT; font-size: 16pt;">(Stills)
Her first name is Patricia but she (CUT THAT OFF) and<span> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: CourierNewPSMT; font-size: 16pt;">(NOW)
goes by her middle and last names: Rooney Mara,Those two last names belong to
the founders of the aforementioned Steelers & Giants, her
grandfathers.<span> </span>So this is a girl
who was raised in the<span> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: CourierNewPSMT; font-size: 16pt;">upper
1%, a child of enormous privilege even though the families<span> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: CourierNewPSMT; font-size: 16pt;">might
vote Democratic.<span> </span>Imagine living in
the lap of luxury and<span> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: CourierNewPSMT; font-size: 16pt;">deciding,
"I WANT TO BE AN ACTOR!"</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: CourierNewPSMT; font-size: 16pt;">(Stills?
Clips?) But not just any actor, (SHE WANTS)to be in the DeNiro,<span> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: CourierNewPSMT; font-size: 16pt;">Bale,
Day Lewis class where you lose or gain a ton of weight, subject<span> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: CourierNewPSMT; font-size: 16pt;">(HER)self
to pain and suffering just for your art.<span>
</span>Meet Rooney Mara<span> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: CourierNewPSMT; font-size: 16pt;">with
real pins sticking into her mouth, nose and eyelid.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: CourierNewPSMT; font-size: 16pt;">(OC)<span> </span>I read where she even got nipple rings
but I guess you'd need<span> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: CourierNewPSMT; font-size: 16pt;">blueray
to see that at home.<span> </span>Next time I
rent, I will.<span> </span>And full<span> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: CourierNewPSMT; font-size: 16pt;">nudity
while being raped and making love; nothing is left to the<span> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: CourierNewPSMT; font-size: 16pt;">imagination.
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<span style="font-family: CourierNewPSMT; font-size: 16pt;">(except
maybe being there yourself but not in the rape<span> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: CourierNewPSMT; font-size: 16pt;">scene
because her vengeance is too satisfyingly horrible.) </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: CourierNewPSMT; font-size: 16pt;">MAYBE
CUT THIS-MORE TITILATING IF YOU END ON “IMAGINATION”)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: CourierNewPSMT; font-size: 16pt;">(Clips)
The current James Bond, Daniel Craig, plays her partner in<span> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: CourierNewPSMT; font-size: 16pt;">sleuthing
but she is the one to do the heavy hitting and rescues<span> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: CourierNewPSMT; font-size: 16pt;">him.<span> </span>She's hot but can be cold as ice.<span> </span>A female James Bond although<span> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: CourierNewPSMT; font-size: 16pt;">this
one is "Bond, JANE Bond" with nipple rings.<span> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: CourierNewPSMT; font-size: 16pt;">(CUT
TO OC FOR THIS ONE LINE-LOOK PAINED AND PUT YOUR HAND OVER ONE OF YOUR TITS.) “<u>Ouch!!!”</u>
(CUT BACK TO CLIPS) </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: CourierNewPSMT; font-size: 16pt;">Hopefully<span> </span>they will film the trilogy so that we
have 2 more times to see this<span> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: CourierNewPSMT; font-size: 16pt;">artist
work this character.<span> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: CourierNewPSMT; font-size: 16pt;">(Clip)
Oh, and if you caught "THE SOCIAL<span>
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<span style="font-family: CourierNewPSMT; font-size: 16pt;">NETWORK",
that slick, sophisticated girl who outwits and drops the<span> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: CourierNewPSMT; font-size: 16pt;">founder
of Facebook in the opening scene, her name is Rooney Mara.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: CourierNewPSMT; font-size: 16pt;">(LOSE
D. HOFFMAN ASIDE)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: CourierNewPSMT; font-size: 16pt;">(OC)
Rooney Mara can go deep and also challenge the middle.<span> </span>An All-Pro in the<span> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: CourierNewPSMT; font-size: 16pt;">making.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: CourierNewPSMT; font-size: 16pt;">Simply,
Simon</span><span style="font-size: 16pt;"></span></div>simplysimonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14504781777392014597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5174074631517914023.post-1667593687056809342012-05-13T09:51:00.004-07:002012-05-13T09:52:27.571-07:00A Shot of John Wayne<style>
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<span style="font-family: ComicSansMS-Bold; font-size: 27pt;"><b>A Shot of JOHN WAYNE</b></span><span style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-size: 16pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: ComicSansMS; font-size: 19pt;">(OC)
John Wayne is dead, a tombstone overhead, an archetype of heroism is gone but
his legacy as an American hero lives on in films, westerns a bunch, but
also some World War II films like (Stills or clips) Back to Bataan, Sands
of Iwo Jima, They Were Expendable, Flying Tigers, and The Fighting Seebees.;
all made during the war that Wayne unheroically skipped. Many a top star like
Jimmy Stewart and Clark Gable volunteered and saw real action while Big John
Wayne stayed home and made his reputation as America’s He Man on camera wearing
makeup, but serving as an inspiration to soldiers and civilians alike. </span><span style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-size: 16pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: ComicSansMS; font-size: 19pt;">But
hold the phone! He’s Back!!</span><span style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-size: 16pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: ComicSansMS; font-size: 19pt;">[Clip
from Battle Los Angeles (BLA) where soldier mentions “John Wayne” for the 2nd
time and Echart clips from former films and then BLA) Aaron Eckhart, the actor
who played 2</span><span style="font-family: ComicSansMS; font-size: 16pt;"><sup>nd</sup></span><span style="font-family: ComicSansMS; font-size: 19pt;"> fiddle to Erin Brockovich and
became the two faced villain in The Dark Knight, going from DA to the Devil,
has brought the movie version of John Wayne back to the screen in the riveting
“BATTLE: LOS ANGELES”. This is a sergeant who could give Sergeant
Alvin York a run for his Medal of Honor. The film is a
deliberate homage to Big John
(1</span><span style="font-family: ComicSansMS; font-size: 16pt;"><sup>st</sup></span><span style="font-family: ComicSansMS; font-size: 19pt;"> time Wayne mentioned).
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<span style="font-family: ComicSansMS; font-size: 19pt;">(clips)
The movie is shot like the Bourne films, hand held violent action, but better
editing and directing so you can actually absorb the heroic chaos. But
best of all, the enemies are aliens not Germans, Japanese, Arabs or native
Americans; villains who are no longer politically correct to mash.
And there is even a hotshot babe in this politically correct crew of black,
white and brown heroes who make mincemeat of their foes. Hey, it’s a
Hollywood fantasy so expect a happy ending, sort of. Check it out and
have a shot of John Wayne on me.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: ComicSansMS; font-size: 19pt;">(OC)
However, beware; there is also the dark legend that Big John and his equally
large buddy, Ward Bond, would get drunk and seek out Jews half their size and
beat the crap out of them.
They justified their actions as striking back at the Jews who ruled
Hollywood much like the Nazis blamed the Jews for all of Germany’s woes. And all this bullying was going on while the ovens roared in
Europe. Wayne and Bond never
attacked former ironworker, Lois B. Mayer, or the Warner Brothers or any of the
other Jews who employed them. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: ComicSansMS; font-size: 19pt;">Wayne’s
heroism was an act but done so convincingly that his illusion lives on. He was a much better actor than we
thought and BATTLE LOS ANGELES is a tribute to <u>his service</u> to us all.</span><span style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-size: 16pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: ComicSansMS; font-size: 19pt;">Simply, Simon</span></div>simplysimonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14504781777392014597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5174074631517914023.post-56395779886124442602012-03-07T15:49:00.000-08:002012-03-07T15:50:39.767-08:00DIRTY PLAYWhen I went to work as a filmartist at NFL Films in '68, violence was one of the reasons given why NFL Football was not the most popular sport in America; baseball was "way back then". The brutality of football did not appeal to women. In a perfect storm of unpredictable coincidences, that year I created a football ballet, "The Headcracker Suite", which aired on the Emmy show in '69, introduced by the hero of the Super Bowl, Joe "Willie" Namath (a cool, hot stud), and the ladies were impressed. Watch the football audience expanding.<br /><br />Slow motion revealed the amazing grace and athleticism of these men in tight pants and, without a helmet and pads, these guys could be HOT. And the Emmys was a prime time roll out, not just for cigar chomping Sunday afternoons in front of a TV with the faithful; this was a wholesome, family demographic. TV was the last straw in this storm; an outdoor sport to watch in your own "private box" complete with a roof, a thermostat, a potty and a fridge. HEAVEN!!! And a sport seemingly made for TV; not fast and jumbled like soccer, hockey, or even basketball. Baseball was on snooze control. And the game itself with its breaks between plays and scores and commercials meant its snack time! Potty time! Bingo!<br /><br />Football like every other sport is just a reality show, another piece of the entertainment feast the world devours. What you want to avoid is heartburn; like watching someone you love and admire being eaten by the Bears, the Lions, or heaven forbid, the freakin Saints! Will this damage this brutal sports popularity? As a kid, I saw football as a trial of manhood; could I face the the violence, the pain, the injuries and BE A MAN. I could and did and even turned down a half scholarship to play in college back when one could earn one's tuition each summer. I preferred playing on stages where the blood was fake, and I had had my "Bounty" moment in high school more than 50 years ago.<br /><br />My high school team was playing against a dominant halfback and the coach I worshiped, A BIG, STRONG, MAN, our leader. our idol, was giving us the final chalk talk before the game. He put the halfback's number on the board and said if he couldn't finish the game, our chances for winning improved greatly. He then circled the number. On the opening kickoff, we broke his leg and won the game.<br /><br />Then there is the cheating; the holding, the punching, not with fists but with elbows. One of our starters proudly said, "if you're not cheating, you're not playing the game". I had admired him but not so much anymore. I had a "high road vision" of good sportsmanship where there were no bounties, no cheating BECAUSE THIS IS JUST A FREAKIN GAME!!! It's not life and death. It's fun if you're just doing it for the play and even avoid hurting each other so that the roughhousing can continue. I always thought if a player who deliberately unloads on another and causes that injured player to leave the game, I say, throw out the bum for as long as the injured player sits, even if its forever. (God Bless You, D. Stingley)<br /><br />Sure you could cheat but there is no nobility in that. Why do we play? Is it to make money? Then it's a job. And you work in a Roman Coliseum where accidents are planned and the benefits of lingering injuries suck. Yes, I want to change the game. I want to take the game back to just being a game and not "WINNING IS THE ONLY FREAKIN THING!" When fun leads to joy, it doesn't matter who wins unless you bet the rent money or bought a franchise to a brutal nightmare that calls itself a SPORT.<br /><br />I took up that BS in another film I made for the NFL; a PR film that mocks PR Films. I called it "The Football Follies", and its distributor called it, "the most popular sport film ever made".simplysimonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14504781777392014597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5174074631517914023.post-47716281015056181392011-10-25T12:49:00.001-07:002011-10-25T12:49:58.356-07:00NDE<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right;" align="right"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right;" align="right"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span></p> <h1><span style="font-size: 18pt;">NDE: Near Death Experience</span></h1> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Actress Shirley McClaine had one.<span style=""> </span>Psychology guru Carl Jung had one.<span style=""> </span>I even had one.<span style=""> </span>They’re called <u>Near Death Experiences </u>or<u> NDE</u> and they’re becoming more common according to Allentown radiologist Dr. Ken Levin of College Heights Imaging.<span style=""> </span>He says, “More patients are being resuscitated because of the invention of the defibrillator”, commonly called “the paddles” that sends an electric shock to the heart and converts an uncoordinated twitching heart back to its normal rhythmic contractions.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">When it’s successful.<span style=""> </span>It’s not guaranteed but it has increased the number of people who revive from clinical death or what is called “flatlining”, when all vital signs like pulse and respiration cease.<span style=""> </span>There was a movie made in 1990 called<span style=""> </span>“Flatliners” about a bunch of wild and crazy medical students who deliberately stopped their hearts, playing a scientific version of Russian Roulette with nightmarish horror as the result.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">They were searching for the highly publicized NDE of seeing “a dark tunnel with a bright light at the far end”.<span style=""> </span>That’s what Shirley McClaine saw.<span style=""> </span>So have many of the people I spoke to about the phenomenon.<span style=""> </span>Kenneth Brown from Pottstown had his heart attack last July.<span style=""> </span>He saw the bright light and felt himself “moving toward the light”.<span style=""> </span>Brown’s Father-in-law had an NDE but said he had a reunion with a dearly departed friend, his dog.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Brown’s cardiologist, Dr. Eugene Ordway of John J. Cassel, M.D., P.C., Cardiology of Allentown, said that he has often heard restored patients repeat the “tunnel to the light” account but he also had a young woman who saw “angels floating over her head”.<span style=""> </span>Mr. Brown’s heart kept stopping for 10 or 12 seconds at a time and he would come out of his NDE and nonchalantly say, “That was interesting.”<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Dr. Ordway’s curiosity was peeked, “What was so interesting?”, but he was too busy saving Mr. Brown’s life to chat and spent over 2 hours fighting for him.<span style=""> </span>That gave me “8 or 10 of my gray hairs”, Ordway said.<span style=""> </span>The doctor must have rescued many; his full mane of hair is pure white and gray.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Ordway’s nurse, Elaine Smeltz, R.N., spoke to many survivor’s of NDE when she worked in emergency rooms.<span style=""> </span>Most saw “the tunnel with the sparkling light at the end of the tunnel and beautiful gardens, waterfalls, and dead relatives telling them to go back.’’<span style=""> </span>But the most profound were those who had “floating experiences” as if they were cameras on the ceiling and “accurately described who had come and gone in the operating room” while they were “dead”.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Dr. Carl Jung, the famous psychiatrist, floated even farther, experiencing space travel.<span style=""> </span>He found himself 1,000 miles in space looking back at our earth and that was long before space travel was physically possible.<span style=""> </span>But that trip was nothing compared to the NDE of Mr. Mellen-Thomas Benedict.<span style=""> </span>He was broke and dying of cancer and opted for a hospice worker to oversee his final moments.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Mr. Benedict told the hospice person not to do anything with his body for 6 hours after his “death”.<span style=""> </span>An hour and a half after he died, he came back completely healed.<span style=""> </span>But that is nothing compared to what he says his Near Death Experience was like.<span style=""> </span>He saw the light but, instead of going toward it, he asked to have a first class trip through the galaxy and his wish was granted.<span style=""> </span>Somehow, his NDE was interactive and took orders like room service.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Moving through space “faster than a speeding bullet”, actually he said, “faster than the speed of light” he went from one end of the galaxy to the other, but he wanted to see more.<span style=""> </span>He asked to see Heaven and was not only shown the Christian one but a host of others like Nirvana and the Native Americans’ Happy Hunting Grounds which was his favorite.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">He was also shown everyone’s “Higher Selves” and that they were all interconnected proving the old saw that we are all one being.<span style=""> </span>His healing was also moving at the speed of light and that is what he attributes to his miraculous recovery.<span style=""> </span>You can find his fascinating account at </p> <p class="MsoNormal">“http://www.near-death.com/experiences/reincarnation04.html “.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: left;" align="left">After reading Benedict, I felt gypped by my NDE.<span style=""> </span>On September 15, 2002 or nine months, fifteen days and two thousand and two years after the Christ was supposedly born, I died.<span style=""> </span>At least for four minutes.<span style=""> </span>I flatlined and it took 4 minutes to revive my body; on the other hand, my mind never quit.</p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: left;" align="left"> </p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: left;" align="left">I was walking home in Riverdale, New York, around 8 in the evening, up a slight hill, carrying a pizza and a video when my breathing became very labored and it seemed like there was a ring around the front of my chest like the clouds that circle the moon on cloudy nights.<span style=""> </span>It was pretty but it was draining my energy and I was almost out of breath by the time I got to my apartment only one block away.</p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: left;" align="left"> </p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: left;" align="left">What does one do?<span style=""> </span>I knew and did not want to know that I needed help.<span style=""> </span>I was in trouble but didn’t have the courage to call the “marines”.<span style=""> </span>I called Patrick O’Flynn JR, my former roommate of 14 years, and asked, “What should I do?”<span style=""> </span>He said, “Call 911!”<span style=""> </span>I asked, “Are you sure?”<span style=""> </span>More forcefully, he said, “Call 911!!”<span style=""> </span>“911, you think so?”<span style=""> </span>“Call 911!!”, was all he said.<span style=""> </span>I thought, “Me?!<span style=""> </span>Call 911?<span style=""> </span>I am not worthy.<span style=""> </span>I don’t want to make a fuss.<span style=""> </span>I am not important enough”.<span style=""> </span>I finally got the message that I was in very deep dodo and better call the “marines” that we call 911.<span style=""> </span>I called 911.<span style=""> </span>Had I delayed 5 minutes this would not be writ.</p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: left;" align="left"> </p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: left;" align="left">It took 15 minutes for the ambulance to arrive.<span style=""> </span>Two nice guys strapped me into what looked like a lawn chair with wheels, strapped an oxygen mask on me and wheeled me into the elevator and out the front door.<span style=""> </span>The lawn chair became a chaise/gurney and I was lying flat on my back, bouncing through traffic with the siren wailing soothing music, “Step aside”, it sang, “Someone’s in deep dodo!”</p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: left;" align="left"> </p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: left;" align="left">When we got to the Allen Pavilion Hospital in the Bronx, they took me off of the ambulance gurney and onto an emergency room one.<span style=""> </span>I was wheeled through the hallway staring at the ceiling as the lights blipped by, just like in the movies.<span style=""> </span>By now I was drunk or dazed and had no concern for my safety.<span style=""> </span>I was wheeled into a space with a 3-tiered light overhead.<span style=""> </span>People where speaking.</p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: left;" align="left"> </p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: left;" align="left">I was trying to pray but I could only remember a few words of my daily mantra, the last lesson in “The Course in Miracles”:<span style=""> </span>“<i>This holy instant, would I give to YOU.<span style=""> </span>Be YOU in charge, for I would follow YOU, certain that YOUR direction gives me Peace.”<span style=""> </span></i><span style="font-style: normal;">But all I could remember was “</span><i>BE YOU IN CHARGE”, </i><span style="font-style: normal;">and I just kept repeating that over and over to myself.</span></p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: left;" align="left"> </p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: left;" align="left">Then all the lights in the world turned off.<span style=""> </span>With them, went all the sounds.<span style=""> </span>It was silent and it was beyond dark.<span style=""> </span>I marveled at its absolute crystal blackness; not even those pale clouds I see when I close my eyes were present and I don’t remember closing my eyes.<span style=""> </span>My eyes might be open but what I was seeing was not of this world.<span style=""> </span>It had no blemish.<span style=""> </span>It was an absolute state.<span style=""> </span>A space without light.<span style=""> </span>The only thing present was ME, an observer with nothing to see but aware that I was present.</p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: left;" align="left"> </p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: left;" align="left">I was alive inside my skin or maybe I was outside of it.<span style=""> </span>Witnesses have sworn I was tossing and turning and shouting that “I am the Orsen Welles of sports films!” , the title of a TV film I was trying to sell.<span style=""> </span>I have no memory of that happening even though I was present in the darkness, feeling no pain.<span style=""> </span>I was actually at peace.<span style=""> </span>My body had died for 4 minutes but my mind never missed a beat.<span style=""> </span>I felt like I was floating in a sensory deprivation tank with all my senses turned off except what I call my mind, my consciousness.</p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: left;" align="left"> </p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: left;" align="left">But it was a different mind. <span style=""> </span>It was patient.<span style=""> </span>It’s like all the brush that had grown around my thoughts had been burned away.<span style=""> </span>All the possibilities and worries had been reduced to the simple “I am”.<span style=""> </span>And I was fine.<span style=""> </span>I had no past, no future, only the ever present now.<span style=""> </span>I was at peace.<span style=""> </span>I didn’t question anything.<span style=""> </span>I just waited patiently for the next act.</p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: left;" align="left"> </p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: left;" align="left">In what seemed less than an hour later to me (at least 15 hours in Earth time), a primal yellow colored line, like from a thin paintbrush, appeared and started drawing a landscape in the blackness.<span style=""> </span>The landscape was the outline of the tops of the heads of all those who had gathered by my bedside, friends and relatives not sure if this was my end or a new beginning.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: left;" align="left"> </p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: left;" align="left">Very slowly the rest of the color spectrum returned and faces came through the blackness and became recognizable loved ones.<span style=""> </span>I had successfully survived a heart attack that had taken me very close to becoming a vegetable or a corpse.</p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: left;" align="left">The event allowed me to lie in the hospital for almost 2 weeks and review my whole life in slow motion instead of “<i>the whole thing flashing before your eyes, moments before you’re supposed to die but manage somehow to survive</i><span style="font-style: normal;">” phenomenon.<span style=""> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: left;" align="left"> </p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: left;" align="left">When I discussed my experience with Kenneth Brown, we both agreed on the peacefulness of our Near Death Experiences.<span style=""> </span>He called it “very tranquil with nothing to be afraid of” and that he had the feeling that he “was going to be alright”.<span style=""> </span>He had been an agnostic but all the lucky coincidences that led him to the Lehigh Valley Hospital and the dogged Dr. Ordway has made him a believer although he is not sure what to call that “Higher Power”.</p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: left;" align="left"> </p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: left;" align="left">I have become a more patient person since I was a patient.<span style=""> </span>I have become a courteous driver, offering others the right of way, something the old Simon rarely did.<span style=""> </span>Even though death is the only permanent resident in this universe, I am happy to still be here and share my story with you.</p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: left;" align="left"> </p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: left;" align="left">However, if I ever get another NDE, I’m going to steal a page from the fantastic voyage of Mellen-Thomas Benedict and request to visit what the eastern mystics call “The Akashic Sea of Consciousness” where the videotapes of all that ever happened in this universe are stored.<span style=""> </span>Then I’ll find out who really shot JFK and if OJ did it.<span style=""> </span>And visit with a few old friends, some of them dogs.</p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: left;" align="left"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i> </i></p>simplysimonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14504781777392014597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5174074631517914023.post-59758142129577166662011-10-25T12:46:00.001-07:002011-10-25T12:46:35.439-07:00DECEPTION<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center">DECEPTION</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">I AM THE DECEIVER.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">I WALK AMONG YOU AS AN ADULT MALE</p> <p class="MsoNormal">BUT I AM NOT AN ADULT MALE.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">I AM A FIVE YEAR OLD CHILD</p> <p class="MsoNormal">HIDDEN IN AN ADULT MALE BODY.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">PEOPLE ADDRESS ME </p> <p class="MsoNormal">AS IF I WERE AS I SEEM</p> <p class="MsoNormal">AN AGING ADULT MALE</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">BUT I HAVEN’T AGED A DAY</p> <p class="MsoNormal">SINCE I WAS FIVE.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">IT’S MY BODY THAT GROWS OLD</p> <p class="MsoNormal">BUT MY SOUL-SELF REMAINS </p> <p class="MsoNormal">THAT SAME FIVE YEAR OLD.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">THE LANDMARKS KEEP CHANGING</p> <p class="MsoNormal">WHEN THE BODY AGES AND THE SOUL DON’T.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">WHY THIS DECEPTION</p> <p class="MsoNormal">WE ALL SHARE</p> <p class="MsoNormal">WHY CHILD HIDDEN IN ADULT?</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">A SEASONING ON EARTH</p> <p class="MsoNormal">BEFORE RULING IN HEAVEN.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">A HUMBLING BEFORE CORANATION.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">WHEN FIVE YEAR OLDS UNITE,</p> <p class="MsoNormal">FRIENDSHIP APPEARS AND</p> <p class="MsoNormal">ADULT FEARS DISAPPEAR.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">GOD’S CHILD REIGNS!</p>simplysimonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14504781777392014597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5174074631517914023.post-82364022560163332172011-10-25T12:44:00.000-07:002011-10-25T12:45:03.385-07:00“Slam’s Court”<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right;" align="right"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right;" align="right"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p> <h1>“Slam’s Court”</h1> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><span style="font-size: 18pt;"><b><u> </u></b></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><span style="font-size: 18pt;"><b><u> </u></b></span></p> <p class="MsoBodyText">When I grow too old to play, will you still love me, will I still love you, and will I finally love me?<span style=""> </span>The answer to all of the preceding is a large, fat <b>YESS</b><span style="font-weight: normal;">!!! </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">If we are what we eat, as some have suggested, then part of who I am is the breakfasts I eat with some of the guys I played football with in high school.<span style=""> </span>They have friends I never knew and some I did but we all swirl together like the clouds in our coffees.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">When I was a kid and there was no television, adults would religiously gather at the end of the day to discuss the day’s events: wins and losses were open to sympathy or ridicule.<span style=""> </span>The confessionals were simply folding chairs on a porch or a lawn or a pavement in front of a house.<span style=""> </span>In the summertime, these confessions were always done outdoors and always with an audience.<span style=""> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">The high priests were wits, wise guys or gals, who made fun of everything, even death.<span style=""> </span>Nothing was sacred and nothing was serious.<span style=""> </span>It was pure entertainment unless it was your turn in the barrel.<span style=""> </span>Then it was pure humiliation when your foibles were made public.<span style=""> </span>If you couldn’t give as good as you got, you became the victim of laughter.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">When I finally returned home after 40 years, I discovered that one of my teammates, actually my hero at my football position, Tom “Slam” Barrett, held court at breakfast every morning at Saylor’s Diner at 19<sup>th</sup> and Tilghman in Allentown.<span style=""> </span>I was new in my old town so I decided to look him up.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">I never belonged to a breakfast club before or any club before. <span style=""> </span>I was like that Groucho Marx joke that I wouldn’t join any club that wanted me to join.<span style=""> </span>So I never stuck with any group.<span style=""> </span>I was a rolling stone who ate too much. But I never ate breakfast!<span style=""> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">I had lived with less and less friends for the last 20 years and had become isolated from the outside world and had finally surrendered to the thought of companionship with someone other than myself (whom I get along with famously but we do have our issues but schizophrenic persons always have issues and everyone’s crazy anyway).<span style=""> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">So I looked up “Slam” at Saylor’s Diner but he wasn’t there.<span style=""> </span>Bruce Trotter, another ex-football friend, directed me down the block to Nick’s Diner where “Slam” had taken up residence because he had been “BANNED” from his usual lair.<span style=""> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">The truth turned out to be that “Slam” had actually banned himself because the owner complained that “Slam’s Court” was taking up valuable seating space on busy Sundays.<span style=""> </span>“Slam” took umbrage and moved his breakfast gang down the street.<span style=""> </span>The waitresses were all upset because “Slam’s Court” were great tippers and the “BANNING” had left them financially short; however, the boss wanted more food orders from each seat.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">I found “Slam” at Nick’s Diner but at first I didn’t recognize him.<span style=""> </span>The dark curly hair was gone, replaced 45 years later with a thin shell of white hair much like my own.<span style=""> </span>We had been acquaintances on the team who came from opposite ends of Allentown society.<span style=""> </span>We were all tribal: the kids from the wealthy West Side didn’t hang out with the kids from the poorer East Side.<span style=""> </span>We all stuck with our “homies from the hood”, rich or poor.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style=""> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">I had always admired “Slam” as a player and found him to be fair in his dealings with me and others but we had never “bonded”.<span style=""> </span>At first, he didn’t recognize me.<span style=""> </span>My black hair was white and mostly gone on top.<span style=""> </span>Hair was important to “Slam” because he had been a barber; in fact he never went to college to go directly into barbering after high school.<span style=""> </span>He could have gotten a football scholarship but he had had enough of school.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">He ended up as a deputy sheriff and had retired when he had a massive heart attack with all the attendant surgery.<span style=""> </span>He was supposed to stop smoking but he complained of chest pain that was only relieved by smoking.<span style=""> </span>If you loved the guy, you wanted to stop him from shortening his precious life, but, if you loved him, you never said a word.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Now his routine was to eat breakfast everyday at this West Side diner near where he now lived on the wealthy end of town.<span style=""> </span>His stay at Nick’s was short.<span style=""> </span>There wasn’t enough room to accommodate his full team of up to 11 diners in a section where “Slam” could smoke and hold court.<span style=""> </span>So, it was back to Saylor’s which had been named Hook’s years before and was my Mom’s favorite diner by either name.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">It’s funny.<span style=""> </span>Going to places that I went to long ago with my dead parents brings back pleasant memories.<span style=""> </span>It’s almost like visiting their graves but they are alive in these places, not dead under a stone.<span style=""> </span>One of my many joys of being home.<span style=""> </span>In fact, I haven’t visited their graves.<span style=""> </span>I prefer to visit their haunts that are still haunted by them.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">The irony of “Slam” holding court was that as a deputy sheriff he had spent most of his time in courtrooms as a security figure; now, he was the master of ceremonies for a gathering of mostly gray or bald males.<span style=""> </span>It was like a locker room for the aged.<span style=""> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">The occasional female visitor was treated courteously and gossiped about when not around but then so were the guys except the guys were mercilessly ridiculed when they were still there.<span style=""> </span>It was done with affection and no one was banned.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">The talk was about sports and politics and gossip about the living and the dead but the bottom line was companionship.<span style=""> </span>“Slam’s Court” was a sober place to go where eventually everybody knows your name.<span style=""> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">“Slam” knew everybody’s name whether they sat with us or not.<span style=""> </span>He noticed the guy who now used a walker as a healthy stranger going downhill, healthwise.<span style=""> </span>We were all sitting very close to the shore between life and death.<span style=""> </span>The waves of what the mystics call “The Akashic Sea of Consciousness” where the record of all incarnations are kept were lapping at our feet and some of us were afraid.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Every time I drive up to the diner, I always check to see if “Slam’s” car is there so that I know he’s still alive.<span style=""> </span>I got there early on the day you’re supposed to turn the clocks ahead and he wasn’t there.<span style=""> </span>I got scared and was relieved to discover my error.<span style=""> </span>The person sitting in “Slam’s” seat told me of my error and when His Majesty arrived, he chased the interloper from his throne.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">I am sure there are billions of “Slam’s Courts” all over the planet, speaking every language, of every race, religion and political opinion.<span style=""> </span>It’s a human thing.<span style=""> </span>What do I know?<span style=""> </span>Maybe animals, insects and fish have their own versions.<span style=""> </span>Only God knows what herds, hives and schools gossip about.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">“Slam’s” nickname came to him because he had a permanent chip on his shoulder like a comic book character who was named “Slam”—a little tough guy!<span style=""> </span>Our “Slam” grew up to be a big tough guy who suffers no nonsense.<span style=""> </span>He was a sheriff before he was a sheriff.<span style=""> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">I suffer from the same chip on the shoulder disease but I never was a sheriff, I was “A Lone Ranger”.<span style=""> </span>Leo Gorcey, who played the kingpin in the Bowery Boys’ movies, was my tough guy hero and always wore a hat on his head and a chip on his shoulder.<span style=""> </span>Standing up for the good and righteous.<span style=""> </span>When he could.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">“Slam’s Court” is ruled by a half-Syrian, half-Irish, All-American cynic who challenges some and courts others.<span style=""> </span>He is a Master in the art of the Schmooze: lips are moving but nothing’s being said but good feelings are being exchanged.<span style=""> </span>He is retired but still cuts a few heads but only for old friends.<span style=""> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">“Slam” not only knows your name, he also knows your story.<span style=""> </span>He’s the barber or hairdresser you tell your troubles to.<span style=""> </span>He asks about your health, your well being and your latest blunder or good fortune.<span style=""> </span>He seems interested in you and keeps his troubles to himself and his old ward buddies, “Muzzy” and “Eskie” who are barbers too.<span style=""> </span>It’s a conspiracy of barbarous proportions !</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">I’m afraid when “Slam” goes, his court will go with him.<span style=""> </span>He’s the magnet, the glue, the charming and generous host: in fact, the game here is to see who can pick up and pay the most checks.<span style=""> </span>There is great generosity scattered about freely.<span style=""> </span>Not a bad club to belong to.<span style=""> </span>I dream of<span style=""> </span>someday being flush enough to pick up everyone’s check and win their game, magnanimously.</span></p>simplysimonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14504781777392014597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5174074631517914023.post-22818993790407266762011-10-25T12:42:00.000-07:002011-10-25T12:43:11.295-07:00THE WHEAT AND THE FLOWER<span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">REV. SIMON-PETER</span> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right;" align="right"><span style="font-size: 16pt; font-family: Arial;"><b><u> </u></b></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right;" align="right"><span style="font-size: 16pt; font-family: Arial;"><b><u> </u></b></span></p> <h1>THE WHEAT AND THE FLOWER</h1> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><span style="font-family: Arial;">He is the steady wheat,</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><span style="font-family: Arial;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><span style="font-family: Arial;">I am the wild flower.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><span style="font-family: Arial;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><span style="font-family: Arial;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><span style="font-family: Arial;">From Him, you make bread,</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><span style="font-family: Arial;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><span style="font-family: Arial;">From me, you make bouquets.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><span style="font-family: Arial;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><span style="font-family: Arial;">He nourishes your spirit,</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><span style="font-family: Arial;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><span style="font-family: Arial;">I amuse your soul.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><span style="font-family: Arial;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><span style="font-family: Arial;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Plant Him firmly in your heart and mind,</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><span style="font-family: Arial;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Plant me by the door to your senses.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><span style="font-family: Arial;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Water us both with tears of joy</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><span style="font-family: Arial;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><span style="font-family: Arial;">And watch your Self grow.</span></p>simplysimonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14504781777392014597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5174074631517914023.post-79194649948422191552011-10-25T12:40:00.000-07:002011-10-25T12:41:32.266-07:00TRIZOPHRENIA<style>@font-face { font-family: "Times New Roman"; }@font-face { font-family: "Arial"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: Arial; }p.MsoTitle, li.MsoTitle, div.MsoTitle { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: center; font-size: 18pt; font-family: Arial; text-decoration: underline; font-weight: bold; }table.MsoNormalTable { font-size: 10pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }</style> <p class="MsoTitle">TRIZOPHRENIA</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">By Simon Gribben</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><span style="font-size: 18pt;"><b><u> </u></b></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">An amazing discovery has been uncovered by a space commander in the outer reaches of consciousness; at least that’s what he tells us.<span style=""> </span>Somewhere in the stars he has discovered that everyone is <u>not</u> schizoid or of two minds, but everyone, and that means me and you and everyone who ever was or ever will be, is actually trizoid—three minds inside each head instead of only two. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">According to our space commander, the way GOD constructed the universe was to create a governing trinity to run the thing and then replicated that triangular system in every human.<span style=""> </span>(<span style="font-size: 10pt;">That’s what the Jewish Star with its interlocking triangles means—as it is above, so it is below.<span style=""> </span>Does this mean that GOD is trizoid too?<span style=""> </span>Impossible, something’s gotta play the North Star—that’s GOD’s job, to be the only constant in a world of constant change</span>.)</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">One part of this mind-trinity rules the body, which often seems to have an emotional mind of its own.<span style=""> </span>Another part represents the brain, the play-by-play announcer/the thinker and the third mind is a second voice in the head—the thing we call a conscience.<span style=""> </span>The body, the mind, and the spirit each have a voice-vote inside your head just like the universe outside you is ruled by the trinity principle.<span style=""> </span>Father (SPIRIT), Son (MIND) masculine and Soul (BODY) feminine.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">For us humans, according to the commander, the personality represents the 2<sup>nd</sup> part of the trilogy, the Son (MIND) and is a mask we wear and project in public.<span style=""> </span>The VOICE we hear inside our heads represents the Soul (BODY), the 3 rd part of the trilogy, and is the emotional merry-go-round behind the mask, the cheerleader and doom sayer inside our thoughts, “the devil’s radio” (<span style="font-size: 10pt;">where fears, like ancient dragons, haunt our every breath</span>),<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Then there is the seemingly silent 1<sup>st</sup> part of the trilogy, the Father (SOUL), a Voice for God in our guts, that thing we call heart: the you you are when you are alone without an audience.<span style=""> </span>Most mistake “the devil’s radio” for GOD’s Voice or just dismiss It as ghosts from childhood that we haven’t shooed away yet.<span style=""> </span>To hear and respect that voice is to become an adult, a menche, and a realized being.<span style=""> </span>The Spirit is connected to all beings, it’s the glue of the universe.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">The space commander says each of us is an actor in GOD’s Theater including the volatile earth herself with her twin terrors of wind and water.<span style=""> </span>We are all fed our lines, and when we accomplish our service here, we pass on to our next gig or service.</p>simplysimonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14504781777392014597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5174074631517914023.post-10905040704404210942011-10-25T12:38:00.000-07:002011-10-25T12:39:27.362-07:00THE VACANT LOT<span style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span> <h1>THE VACANT LOT</h1> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><span style="font-size: 18pt;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Once upon a time there was a vacant lot in Allentown, PA that stretched from Liberty to Gordon Streets at 22<sup>nd</sup>, and it was about the size of a football field.<span style=""> </span>The northern most portion at Liberty Street, about thirty yards, was flat and the rest was a steeply rising hill that went a full block all the way to Gordon Street, the lot’s southern border.<span style=""> </span>Halfway up that hill was a huge blackberry tree that kids and birds circled when the fruit was ripe and ate to their hearts content.<span style=""> </span>If almost 60 years qualifies as a long time, this all happened a long time ago.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">There was a gang of teenaged kids on Liberty Street who were called “The West End Kids” by The Morning Call newspaper when the teens turned the vacant lot into an amusement park.<span style=""> </span>This gang was very different from the storied thugs or rowdies who create havoc in other neighborhoods.<span style=""> </span>In comparison, these were a bunch of model citizens who were playful and constructive rather than mean and spiteful.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">The vacant lot was near Dorney Park, an amusement park that had many rides but the featured attraction, which inspired “The West End Kids”, was a wooden roller coaster.<span style=""> </span>They decided they would build their own roller coaster on their own field of dreams. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">The original idea came from conversations between Billy Kipp, Marvin Hoffman and Ron Burnet.<span style=""> </span>Burnet was a teenager with a natural gift for carpentry and he would be the” Master Builder”.<span style=""> </span>Hoffman says, “I think I only hammered 2 or 3 nails.<span style=""> </span>Ron did everything”.<span style=""> </span>Burnet says, “I had the whole plan for it in the back of my head.<span style=""> </span>I never put anything down on paper.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">They “borrowed” the lumber from a nearby construction site and the abandoned “Open Air School” which had been built at the beginning of the 20<sup>th</sup> Century to accommodate children with tuberculosis and was now being slowly torn down by the local kids for projects like the roller coaster..<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">It all happened in April of 1946, shortly after the end of WWII.<span style=""> </span>The Morning Call published a picture with Billy Kipp riding the single car on its 2-hump voyage.<span style=""> </span>The only way to end the ride was to have a bunch of guys that included Burnet, Hoffman and his brother Donald at the bottom ready to catch the brakeless car.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">It only stood for 2 days.<span style=""> </span>None of the kids knew who tore it down but when they got home from school, all that was left was a pile of twisted lumber.<span style=""> </span>In all honesty, it was dangerous.<span style=""> </span>No brakes, of questionable stability, it was a disaster waiting to happen. But it was only the first of several marvels performed on this unused space.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">The gang quickly responded.<span style=""> </span>There was a tree in the Hoffman backyard, the closest home to the lot that had a trunk about 18 inches thick.<span style=""> </span>They cut it down, leaving a stump almost 4 feet tall.<span style=""> </span>A heavy board about 6 feet long was anchored in the middle over the stump and 2 reinforced crates were attached to each end of the board, and Presto!, there was a new ride, a cheap version of an aerial merry go round.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Unfortunately, none of these rides lasted very long, especially when the parents came home.<span style=""> </span>But came Halloween, the “West End Kids” came up with a winner.<span style=""> </span>They turned the lot into a scary “Fun House” for the local kids.<span style=""> </span>Just after it turned dark, we were led around a marked off course where paper mache spiders dangled overhead and tickled you as you passed by.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Then a white-sheeted ghost would jump from a hidden foxhole.<span style=""> </span>The whole lot had been undermined with underground passageways and you never knew when the next nasty pirate or skeleton masked soldier was going to spring up and shout “BOOOO!”<span style=""> </span>They went through all that trouble just to play with us kids.<span style=""> </span>Paradise was a vacant lot filled with loving, creative ingenuity.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">My favorite of all the experiences was the freezing winter when we had several deep snows that didn’t melt and then we had several ice storms that created a thick crust of ice over the snow.<span style=""> </span>Ron Burnet became inspired,<span style=""> </span>He “borrowed” his Mom’s butcher knife and started cutting out large building blocks of frozen snow.<span style=""> </span>He was going to build an Eskimo’s igloo on the frozen tundra of Allentown, PA.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Soon there was a crowd of helpers and many “borrowed” kitchen knives.<span style=""> </span>Once again, the vacant lot became a place of wonder.<span style=""> </span>I crawled into the finished masterpiece and had the fantasy of being at the North Pole that was now less than a block from the warm comforts of home.<span style=""> </span>It was priceless.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">By this time, the kids had gotten smart.<span style=""> </span>At the end of the day, they smashed the igloo.<span style=""> </span>It could have been a seductive danger for little kids who could be buried alive without the gang around to bail them out..<span style=""> </span>They took as much joy in destroying it as they had in building it.<span style=""> </span>They had their fun and took responsibility for any serious repercussions.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Ron Burnet went on to build a spectacular tree house next to the “Open Air School” (the source for his building materials) that the Morning Call covered and titled “West End Builder At It Again!”<span style=""> </span>Billy Kipp became an Olympic skating coach and was killed in the 1960 plane crash when our entire skating team perished.<span style=""> </span>Marvin and Donald Hoffman (my first babysitters) are still around but Ron Burnet moved away and continued building, earning a living using his gifts.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Eventually the whole lot became the nesting place for a string of identical two story apartment houses and all of the magic of that empty field is gone except in the memories of those of us who had been enchanted by what “The West End Kids” did with it.<span style=""> </span>It taught me a lesson about what you can accomplish when you turn a neglected nothing into a joyful something.</p>simplysimonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14504781777392014597noreply@blogger.com0