Halloween Chic

I have never had much imagination in designing a Halloween costume, as being someone other than myself is not appealing. (How utterly devoid of playfulness can one be?)

That being said, the human mind is capable of amazing combinations and permutations of inventiveness when invited to do so. But this year, let's forget about witches, ghosts and goblins. That's so fifties.

The best costume of this new era, spotted at a Halloween fete recently, was a man dressed as a Netflix envelop and his mate, a box of popcorn. Now that's hip.

Nonetheless, the propensity for people to shock, horrify, or otherwise disgust their fellow partygoers still remains a big draw. Thus, the best costume to hit the market for 2014: 

"The Sexy Containment Ebola Suit" (CNN, Ashely Banfield)

While healthcare workers might disapprove of this mockery  of a seriously serious issue, why not? People decorate their front yards with tombstones, skeletons, hands coming out of the ground clutching helplessly to dig themselves out of the tomb...not to speak of bloody heads severed from bodies and cobwebs shrouding house window panes.

So viva death and destruction. Let's party hearty my fellow Halloweenies.

Forgiveness and the Brazil Butt Lift

OK. The usual morning ritual of the past ten or so years - turning on CNN with the morning coffee - had been abandoned lately. Tales of ISIS, Ebola, murderers and politicians had become just to, shall we say, too much.

Yet with a deafening inner silence that could not be blotted out with Yanni on Pandora, desperation drove me to the TV remote. And what a blessing appeared on the screen. A middle-aged, plump Vietnamese woman stood at a podium and she was talking about forgiveness. This obviously well-groomed, well-fed woman had been the iconic image of a napalmed human being during the Vietnam War. The picture seen round the world, captured by a journalist, shows her pre-pubescent naked body running toward the camera, her clothes burned off her body, with an expression and body language evoking hell on earth.

Today, she was honoring the Vietnamese photographer who shot the photo, and who had also taken her to a nearby hospital where her life was saved after his journalistic coup de grace.

She said, "He could have just done had his job and be gone, but he went the extra mile. That is what we all need to do now. Go the extra mile. I have forgiveness and am now the happiest person on earth because the kingdom of God is within me."

Then she pointed to the elderly photographer who had carried her that extra mile. He was still taking her picture.

Segway to TV remote ritual before bedtime (not advised by psychologists and sleep experts by the way). Low and behold, more tales of salvation. This time the Brazilian Butt Lift. Women who already looked damned good in their bikinis waxed rhapsodic about the new and improved butt burner that took away that extra quarter inch of fat and gave them the smoothest butt God could have ever bestowed on them. They seemed ever more grateful than the Vietnamese miracle of humanity (no sarcasm here).

What kind of upside down world do we live in, folks?

I Have Nothing to Say

The Power of Art

If you are sad, do not, and I emphasize, do not listen to sad songs. Those little melodies and words will creep into your heart and wring it out like an old dishrag; tears dripping down your cheeks like rain on a dusty window pane.

Similarly, if you are sad, listen to some elevating music, pick up the Good Book (and it ain't necessarily the Bible but any Scripture from the soul of humanity) and voila! The soft heart will begin to glow with a faint light and the air invigorates the lungs with new oxygen.

Sometimes it might seem frivolous to build museums, concert halls, install art in subways, statues in city plazas, build state of the art sound studios, buy the  tiny sound systems with huge volume, or any of the other gizmos that bring art, music and literature into our lives. (And let's not forget the wonderful graifitti artists of the world.) After all, aren't at least a billion people, if not 2 billion or more, in dire need of food, water, and medical attention?

And yet, as our cave dwellers knew, art brings a meta-level to our lives, without which a gray dullness could set in. So viva color, words, notes, and all the other wonderful expressions of the human heart that make life a little more precious!

As If Your Hair Were On Fire

One of the basic tenets of Buddhism is that the consciousness separates from the physical body at death, shedding it like a suit of worn clothes. Continuing on with its journey, the experience of mind/awareness minus familiar trappings such as the former body, its given name, place(s) of residence, family or lack thereof - all those anchors with which we used to identify ourselves are now gone. Gone, human being, gone.

That, according to the Tibetan Book of the Dead, is where the rubber meets the road. Stripped of all external props and illusions, what will a being do, feel, react to? Did that charitable guy who gave to his church every Sunday do it out of pure compassion or to look good - and even perhaps assuage his guilt for some trespass? Did the walking wounded of damaged egos, assaulted dignity, blinding ignorance see the Light? Did they become liberated from all wrong-doing, or is that consciousness still traveling with a nightmare of karmic baggage (minus the illusory body which veiled the truth)?

If all the proponents of "life after death" and "karma" agree, then it would be wise to heed the words of an ancient seer:

"Go to the dharma (truth) with the speed at which you would if your hair were on fire and you needed to stamp out the flames."

The Spark of Music

My parents were atheists, born of an era when Jews flocked to America to avoid pogroms in Europe or stayed and got trapped by Nazi insanity.

My father, a second generation American, also grew up in a tough area of the Bronx, a member of the only Jewish family amongst street-wise Italian immigrants. He reports that he had to fist-fight his way through the neighborhood on a regular basis.

My parents felt that there was no God - as who would allow such atrocities on this earth -  and thus turned to music as their divine source; he a violinist, she a pianist.

As a latent mystic, it irked me no end when my father pronounced with unerring regularity, "Music is God." Sure, music can elevate the dragging soul and lift it to ecstatic heights, but so can heroine.

Ecstatic bliss may feel good, yet what goes up must come down. An endless stream of consciousness goes on and on and on. (That train of thought never went down well with the parental units.)

But today, even this obstinant, pig-headed daughter must admit that music can potentially raise the dead. As I slogged through bills and paperwork that has been lost in space along with the addressee, a tune came on Pandora: "The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys," by Traffic.

The Bose was turned way down to enable me to converse with billing departments (I always give a credit card to get miles) when that Traffic classic began to play. I kept telling myself it was OK to listen softly and continue the long overdue paper pushing momentum. But ever so gradually, the low spark became a high spark and my ass left its seat, my feet lead me to the Bose, and up went the volume as I rocked out to the last verses.

So for all those sad souls and happy souls and inbetween souls, turn on your favorite tunes and dance! Either way, it will donate to your day a feel good moment or two.

Alone Together

The famed author Joan Didion wrote that true grief feels as if one were the only person left living on earth; a sentiment echoed by many others who have suffered the death of a mate. While this perception has merit, as experienced firsthand by this blogger, in fact we are not alone as lone survivors in the shipwreck of life.

The spirit of a loved one does in fact exist. While invisible, the feeling/being of that person can envelop you so deeply that you feel whole again, at one with the being that was lost to this life. Said entity has a life of its own, responding sometimes in predictable patterns but then again so full of surpirses too that one becomes a believer in the mate-in-spirit paradigm.

As comforting as that out of body connection may be - even bringing tears to my eyes when it happens - somehow the earthly touch, the physical body, cannot be replaced by a lovely visitation. In that sense, aloneness is palpable and painfully real.

They say that time heals all wounds, and that time is also elastic. As comforting as those truisms may be, it makes me wonder if somehow the fabric of time could be bent a little closer to speed up the healing. Any quantum physicists out there with a method?