Posted by Carl D (152.163.201.83) on March 01, 2001 at 10:07:13:
I feel I have just awakened, and I have not even slept in days. In fact, I have had a total of 5 hours sleep between Friday afternoon when I woke up up to Tuesday evening, and have not had a moment of shuteye since.
It is so profound where this has come from, I must share it with you all, as I feel it would be a crime if I did not.
I have been in pain. Both my teeth hurting and my jaw hurting combined with non-stop shadowing have taken a toll on me these last few days to say the least. In the last 24 hours, I have watched a movie that I watched over Christmas at my brothers house (while under heavy sedation, and kind of 'missed it'). I watched this movie both yesterday, and I just finished watching it again. It is a movie I feel everyone in the world can get something out of, if you "look closer".....
The movie is called "American Beauty" - with Kevin Spacey and Annette Bening. This movie won 5 Academy Awards - and I can see why now that I "Look closer"...
You see, I have been so captivated by my pain and suffering that I forgot how to live. I forget sometimes I am even alive outside of the pain that nevers heals - it never goes away. I learned alot from this movie about myself - from every single character in it. From the man fed up with his duldrum sedate life, to the daughter who feels ignored, to the boy next door who sees what everyone else misses: The beauty of everything around us. There is a scene in which he is showing his girlfriend a home movie, where he just videotaped a bag being blown around by the wind. But he describes something one could miss if one had the sound turned down and didn't hear the dialogue. What most would see is just a bag being blown around. In his eyes, the bag is dancing for him. It is putting on a show. It is teasing him. It is laughing with him. It is crying with him. It reminded me that there is so much we miss by simply not "looking closer..."
I lost my father when I was 18 two days before Thanksgiving in 1998, and then lost my mother on a significant day in 1993. You see, I was born on my mothers birthday. I was her gift. On our birthday, April 20th, 1993 - she was taken from me. I have found it hard to celebrate my birthday, and so the years following her passing on, I either was too engaged in work while on the road with a music job I had, or would spend the day alone, just drinking to drown out the pain of her loss. Last year I turned 30. She would have been 60. It was the 7th anniversary of her death. Once again, I shut off the world.
I have decided that this year, I will celebrate not only our birthday, but her life as well.
You see, I just woke up. I just realized that we get so enraptured by the chaos that ensues our everyday lives, that we forget to appreciate the small details around us in this remarkable world we live. From the changing of the leaves, to the picture they leave upon the ground once they have fallen. A man once took a photograph of a snowdrift, and in it you could see an image of a dove. At first I didn't see it, but then I looked at it more closely. After awhile, I saw it too - very clearly. Everytime I saw that photograph from then on, the dove was so obvious.
After I got done watching the movie again, I was washing up in the bathroom, and I looked at myself in the mirror. It was not just looking at myself, nor was it merely gazing upon my own appearance (which is slightly disheveled), but I saw something else. I saw something beautiful. I saw my mother giving me a hug. I saw my father, talking to me for the first time (actually communicating with me instead of yelling at me) when I was 17, because he realized that the last of his 3 boys was growing up too. I saw my mother being like a little kid again playing Dungeons & Dragons on our old Intellivision videogame. It was her favorite game. It moved at a slow enough pace she would often fall asleep on the sofa. I saw father working on an old beatup TV that had the round screen to it in our living room, that was dying of old age, and the picture would slowly dissolve into a small spot on the screen once this relic overheated. I saw so much in just those few moment I gazed into the mirror. I saw beyond myself once I "Looked closer..."
When is the last time you grabbed someone and told them how much they mean to you? When was the last time you asked someone how they were, and then listened? When is the last time you told someone how important they are to you?
When was the last time you actually listened beyond the noise of chirping birds and heard the song they are singing? When was the last time it rained, and it felt as though all of heaven were crying tears to wash away all of the damage we've done?
Do yourself a favor and "Look Closer.."
I am going to get some sleep now.
Peace........