Happiness is Poetry: Sapphire

Posted on February 18, 2021 by Michael Kane

Happiness is Poetry: Sapphire

happiness poetry sapphire

 

 

 

 

Tonight we return to the land of outlaw poetry and a really brilliant poet named Sapphire.  Her stuff is raw and intense and amazing, but be warned her language and visuals are shocking and of an adult nature, so have a read and a happy day my friends ~ Rev Kane

Originally posted March, 2019

Humpty Dumpty Heart

my heart leaks knowing
since you shot my sheets
with light,
lifting me out my skin
past sky.

i look for your tongue in light
& listen to tales of a new daughter
apartments, mortgages, wife;
knowing i was just a blurred night–
black, whited-out & lost.

Out the blue you call back the years
like a movie reel rewinding,
after six deaf years i hear
you want to come over.

the silence of blind rooms
goads me to balance
humpty dumpty like
one more time the weight of light.

& i would,
but for the bleeding yolk
that lies in cracked knowing–
once it’s eaten
it’s over.

*********************************

Wild Thing

And I´m running,
running wild,
running free,
like soldiers down
the beach,
like someone
just threw me
the ball.
My thighs pump
thru the air
like tires
rolling down
the highway
big & round
eating up the ground
of America
but I never been any
further than 42nd Street.
Below that is as
unfamiliar as my
father´s face,
foreign as the smell of
white girls´pussy,
white girls on the bus,
white girls on TV
My whole world is
black & brown & closed,
till I open it
with a rock,
christen it with
blood.
BOP BOP
the music
pops thru me
like electric shocks,
my sweat is a
river running
thru my liver
green with hate,
my veins bulge out
like tomorrow,
my dick is
the Empire State Building,
I eat your fear
like a chimpanzee
ow ow
ow whee
ow!
My sneakers glide off
the cement like
white dreams
looking out at the world
thru a cage of cabbage
& my mother´s fat,
hollering don´t do this
& don´t do that.
I scream against the restraint
of her big ass sitting on my face
drowning my dreams in sameness.
I´m scared to go
it hurts me to stay.
She sits cross-legged
in front the TV
telling me no
feeding me
clothing me
bathing me in her ugliness
high high in the sky
18th floor of the projects.
Her welfare check buys me $85 sneakers
but can´t buy me a father.
She makes cornbread from Jiffy box mix
buys me a coat
$400, leather like everybody else´s.
I wear the best, man!
14 karat gold chain
I take off before I go wildin´.
Fuck you nigger!
Nobody touches my gold!
My name is Leroy
L-E-R-O-Y
bold gold
I got the goods
that make the ladies
young & old
sign your name across my heart
I want you to be my baby
Rapper D
Rapper G
Rapper I
my name is lightning
across the sky
So what I can´t read
you spozed to teach me
you the teacher
I´m the ape
black ape
in white sneakers
hah hah
I rape
rape
rape
I do the wild thing
I do the wild thing
My teacher asks me
what would I do
if I had 6 month
to live.
I tell her I´d fuck her,
sell dope & do the wild thing.
My thighs are locomotives
hurling me thru the
underbrush of Central Park,
the jungle.
I either wanna be a cop
or the biggest dope dealer in Harlem
when I grow up.
I feel good!
It´s a man´s world,
my sound is king
I am the black man´s sound.
Get off my face whining bitch!
No, I didn´t go to school today
& I ain´t going tomorrow!
I like how the sky looks
when I´m running,
my clothes are new & shiny,
my tooth gleams gold.
I´m fast as a wolf
I need a rabbit,
the sky is falling
calling my name
Leroy Leroy.
I look up
blood bust
in my throat
it´s my homeboys
L.D., C.K. & Beanbutt!
Hey man what´s up!
I got the moon
in my throat,
I remember when
Christ sucked my dick
behind the pulpit,
I was 6 years old
he made me promise
not to tell no one.
I eat cornbread &
collard greens.
I only wear Adidas
I´m my own man,
they can wear New Balance or Nike
if they want,
I wear Adidas.
I´m L.D.
lover
mover
man with the money
all the girls know me.
I´m classified as mildly retarded
but I´m not
least I don´t think
I am.
Special Education classes
eat up my brain
like last week´s greens
rotting in plastic containers.
My mother never
throws away anything.
I could kill her
I could kill her
all those years
all those years
I sat
I sat in classes
for the mentally retarded
so she could get
the extra money welfare gives
for retarded kids.
So she could get
some money,
some motherfuckin´ money.
That bitch
that bitch
I could kill her
all the years
I sat next to kids
who shitted on themselves,
dreaming amid
rooms of dull eyes
that one day
my rhymes
would break open
the sky
& my name would
be written
across the marquee
at the Apollo
in bold gold
me bigger
than Run DMC
Rapper G
Rapper O
Rapper Me
„Let´s go!“ I scream.
My dick is a locomotive
my sister eats like a 50 ¢ hot dog.
I scream, „I said let´s go!“
„It´s 40 of us
a black wall of sin.
The god of our fathers
descends down & blesses us,
I say thank you Jesus.
Now let´s do the
wild thing.
I pop off the cement
like toast outta toaster
hot hard crumbling
running
running
the park is green
combat operation
lost soul
looking for Lt. Calley
Jim Jones
anybody who could direct
this spurt of semen
rising to the sky.
soldiers
flying thru
the rhythm
„Aw man!
nigger please
nigger
nigger
nigger.
I know
who I am.“
My soul sinks
to its knees &
howls under the
moon rising full,
„Let´s get a female jogger!“
I shout into the twilight
looking at the
middle-class thighs
pumping past me,
cadres of bitches
who deserve to die
for thinking they´re better
than me
You ain´t better than
nobody bitch.
The rock begs my hand
to hold it.
It says, „Come on man.“
T.W., Pit Bull, J.D. & me
grab the bitch
ugly big nose white bitch
but she´s beautiful cause she´s white
she´s beautiful cause she´s skinny
she´s beautiful couse she´s gonna die
cause her daddy´s gonna cry
Bitch!
I bring the rock down
on her head
sounds dull & flat
like the time I busted
the kitten´s head.
The blood is real & red
my dick rises.
I tear off her bra
feel her perfect pink breasts
like Brooke Shields
like bitches in Playboy
Shit! I come all over myself!
I bring the rock down
the sound has rhythm
hip hop ain´t gonna stop
till your face sees
what I see every day
walls of blood
walls of blood
she´s wriggeling like
a pig in the mud.
I never seen a pig
or a cow
´cept on TV.
Her nipples are like
hard strawberries
my mouth tastes
like pesticide.
I fart.
Yosef slams her
across the face with a pipe.
My dick won´t get
hard no more.
I bring the rock down
removing what she
looks like forever
ugly bitch
ugly bitch
I get up
blood on my hands
semen in my jeans
the sky is black
the trees are green
I feel good baby
I just did
the wild thing!

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Great Hikes & Treks

Posted on February 17, 2021 by Michael Kane

Great Hikes & Treks

happiness, appalachian trailA vigorous five-mile walk will do more good for an unhappy but otherwise healthy adult than all the medicine and psychology in the world.                 ~Paul Dudley White

Shorter Hikes (Under 100 miles)

Rim to Rim Grand Canyon (United States)

Western Highland & Great Glenn Way (Scotland)
– I’ve done the Great Glenn portion of this, not challenging and very scenic

Tonquin Valley Trail (Alberta, Canada)

 

happiness, everestMid-Level Hikes (100+ miles and/or major elevation)

Base Camp Mount Everest (Nepal) – I’ve personally done this trek with Kamzang, the photos are from the trek.

Sierra High Route (United States)

Inca Trail (Peru)

Petra Trail (Jordan)

happiness, everestBig Ones (Long Distance Mileage and/or Elevation)

Appalachian Trail (United States) – I did a thousand miles last summer, absolutely magnificent.

Pacific Coast Trail (United States)

Continental Divide Trail (United States)

Kungsleden, The King’s Trail (Sweden)

Snowman Trek (Bhutan)

happiness, everestOther Posts You Might Enjoy!

Appalachian Trail Happiness: Reader’s Favorite Posts

Himalayan Travelogue, including My Great Glenn Way Hike

Adventure & Happiness

My Polar Bear Adventure

 

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Happiness Moments: Help I’m Drowning

Posted on February 16, 2021 by Michael Kane

Happiness Moments: Help I’m Drowning

river tubingEveryone smiles in the same language. ~ Author Unknown

So a little writing experiment for the blog. I’ve been wanting to find a way to do some free writing as practice. And I’ve been wanting to capture the moments in my life that have brought me true happiness. I need that little pick me up right now with everything going on in the world and no real chance to travel. So, some writing about happy moments in my life, hope they bring you a little happiness too.

At one point while living in Sacramento California I took a raft trip down the American River with some friends.  Now to be clear this was more of a float than serious rafting trip and accompanying me were five of my friends including two couples.  The one couple consisted of a friend of mine and his girlfriend from Germany.  Now there was some drinking going on during this little trip and the girl from Germany didn’t drink so I thought it was important that I be able to call for help in German should I need her assistance.  She patiently taught me the phrase,” help I’m drowning” in German, and laughed like hell when I repeated it.  I assumed I was somehow butchering the accent, but we were communicating and I felt safer.

During this trip one of the most amazing things I ever saw happened.  At one point while were playing around in waist deep water, the other woman with us on the trip was sitting on the edge of the raft drinking a cup of beer.  The raft was bucked by her boyfriend so violently that she actually bounced up and did a full flip landing feet first standing in the river.  That was not the amazing part, throughout the entire bounce, flip and landing she never spilled a single drop from her cup.  It was truly beautiful.

Throughout the day I kept playing around and yelling in my butchered German, “help I’m drowning!”  My friend’s girlfriend continued to laugh and laugh and then at the end of the day she came up to me and explained what was making her laugh so much.  Apparently a slight mispronunciation on my part had changed the phrase from help I’m drowning, to the more appropriate, “help I’m drinking!”  We all got a great laugh out of that and this story and that phrase has gotten me a lot of laughs from a lot of Germans I’ve met.  So remember to laugh my friends, even if it is at yourself.

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We all need a timeout

Posted on February 15, 2021 by Michael Kane

We all need a timeout

sunset selfieI have discovered the virtue of patience and I don’t quite believe that taking a break for good reason can be a risk. ~ Dia Mirza

It’s been a hell of a last twelve months, and as someone who manages people I have seen first hand what a year of the extra pressure that the pandemic has brought to us has done to people.  I have supervisory responsibility for about sixty people.  Which quite honestly has meant sixty different reactions to life in the pandemic.  Some people melted down immediately, last April I reached out to ever employee just to check-in, some folks were really struggling and I did what I could.  Summer seemed to mellow things out at some level, I think people getting outside had a lot to do with it.  But since Christmas the pressure has really been building, people are tired of being under restrictions, the numbers for infections and deaths were rising quickly, the vaccines, which are a light at the end of the tunnel, have not been distributed quickly or efficiently enough, political turmoil has been on the rise.  All of this leads to high levels of uncertainty and certainty is something that makes people feel safe.  When people don’t feel safe they are like the proverbial cat on a hot tin roof, and they act out in a variety of ways.

I am not immune to this effect.  While I personally feel safe and have not been as negatively impacted by COVID as many people have, including those who I supervise it still impacts me.  Being responsible for these people, responding to their reactions has made my job incredibly stressful.  I’ve lost all of my emotional reserves and as such I’m certainly a bit shorter and snippier than normal.  Being stressed out and on edge for a nomad has a simple, single answer — wander.  But right now I can’t wander, I can barely even travel to do anything other than stay in a hotel room somewhere, at least not safely.  So I’ve been considering wandering in the grander sense, I’ve been exploring new jobs and opportunities.  This for me, in itself, is a form of stress relief, and taking action to wander has always been helpful for me.  While change makes other people feel less certain about the world, oddly for me, it’s something that makes me feel more comfortable, the definition of a nomad I guess.  But that’s the bigger picture, and while helpful to me personally, probably not helpful for those of you reading this post.  So what would be helpful?

Take a timeout.  Let’s start with what I’m doing.  This is for me, a four-day weekend.  This is one of the great benefits of working in education, we get a lot of holidays.  So I decided that this four-day weekend is a giant time out for me.  That means letting all of my responsibilities go for the next four days.  Dealing with nothing that stresses me out in any way at all.  So ignoring all email, reducing my social media contact, avoiding family and absolutely doing nothing related to work.  And the flipside is to do things that make me happy.  I’ve been jonesing for Mexican food so I went out and got some takeout from a local restaurant, it added an extra cheat day to my diet this week but it made me feel good.  I went online and played the ponies, I’ve been doing some writing, I burned some CDs down to my new MP3 player, I’ve slept in for three straight days.  Today I made a big pot of soup, had a lovely big Sunday morning breakfast and bought and read an honest to god paper copy of the NY Times.  I even took two days off from working out.  In essence, what it has been is a giant deep breath.

So my friends, how do you get a giant deep breath?  What does it take for that to happen for you?  First of course, it has to be planned, you’ve got to consciously make the effort to create the time.  For those of you with families that can be tough, especially if time with family is exactly what you need a deep breath from at this point.  If you’re fortunate enough to have an understanding partner, perhaps you can enlist their help in allowing each of you to take a turn getting your deep breath the way you need it.  For some of you, that deep breath may mean taking a deep breath with your entire family.  If that’s the case then create the space, camp out in the backyard or in your living room, turn off the phones and computers and just get yourself a day or two away from the world.  While I was able to find a four-day weekend, a day or even an afternoon or evening might be enough for you.  But I think right now my friends, it’s imperative for all of us to take a timeout in order to have happier days. ~ Rev Kane

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Holiday Happiness: Accept, Appreciate, Believe and Love Yourself

Posted on February 15, 2021 by Michael Kane

Holiday Happiness: Accept, Appreciate, Believe in and Love Yourself

love yourself, happinessDon’t forget to say positive things to yourself daily! You must love yourself internally to glow externally. ~ Hannah Bronfman

Originally Posted in December 2019

The holidays are a very stressful time for everyone and an exceptionally hard time for some.  So, until the New Year I’ll be posting a Holiday Happiness post each day to try help folks out who are struggling.  As always you can reach out to me at Happinesskane@aol.com for a kind word or someone to listen. ~ Rev Kane

During this time of year, those who get down on themselves often start to feel bad because of a sense of loneliness and disconnection.  For me, the place that I grew up is the toughest place to be this time of year.  In addition to plenty of painful memories, there is the cold, the dark and a feeling of isolation that winter at that point in the year creates in me.  I seem to feel the blackness that comes in the night, the cold penetrates a little too deep.

No matter what seed starts the feeling, being depressed this time of year can lead you into the well, that place where you feel down and don’t seem to be able to get out of.  Of course what spirals you down into the depths is that once you feel bad, you start piling on to yourself.  You tell yourself that you’re not worth the connections, community and happiness other people have this time of year.  You focus on your faults and inflate their relevance, you stop reminding yourself of all of the good qualities you possess.  You start to assume that people don’t want you around, you decline invitations because you convince yourself that people are just being nice, or that it really won’t be fun.

As I’ve written about it before, this time of year it is particularly important to focus on the positive, even something as small as remembering to smile.  You have to believe in yourself, you have to accept that you’re not perfect and be ok with that, you have to love yourself.  Stay as positive as possible and the holidays will be past soon enough and by staying positive you CAN have happy days my friends. ~ Rev Kane

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Happiness is Art – Monet

Posted on February 14, 2021 by Michael Kane

Happiness is Art – Monet

happiness, monet

Tonight a quick tour through some really beautiful art, the paintings of Claude Monet, enjoy and have a happy day my friends ~ Rev Kane

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

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Sometimes it’s good to slowdown

Posted on February 12, 2021 by Michael Kane

Sometimes it’s good to slowdown

There’s no advantage to hurrying through life. ~ Shikamaru Nara

Originally posted February,2019

I’ve been going pretty hard since the end of March.  At that point I was heading west to California and applying for jobs.  Once I get to California I had a number of interviews and so I was driving around the state doing first and second interviews, my schedule at the whims of people who had jobs available that I wanted.

Once I landed a job at Skyline College, I had to find an apartment and once that was settled move all of my possessions up from Southern California.  At that point, I was living off of my credit cards and the last of my savings, so I had to use the cheapest option to move.  That included me doing four round trips in a van between the Mojave Desert and essentially San Francisco, about a 300 mile round trip.  Between my official hire and start dates I had about three weeks.  Just enough time to get all of the necessities done, cable, internet, dry cleaning and getting my apartment set up finding my way around my new home.

Then the job started, a couple of weeks of overlapping with my predecessor made the start far mellower than normal but it was still getting back to work after a year off.  So back into the routines of getting up early every morning, establishing a workout schedule, making lunches etc…

slow down quote

Then, as of July first the real fun started, my new position was all mine and I got to dig into it.  Of course, as with every new position you start in a hole, you are climbing a huge learning curve and the first part of the semester is the busiest time of year.  So the real hectic schedule began, which bled into the first week of classes and twelve hour days.  And  here we are, in between I’ve been checking off places to see and places to hike in the area.  So I’ve been on the go now for almost six months and it’s Labor Day Weekend.  For many years, this weekend is normally the time I’m driving home from Burning Man.  But when I’m not, I really like to take it easy on the busy holiday weekends.  It’s the worst time to be on the road and every place is crowded, it may be a long weekend, but it can leave you more tired than a normal weekend.

So instead, I did some cooking as I talked about in my post last night, did a little shopping, bought some new work clothes, paid some bills, and even achieved a minor miracle by mounting a rear wiper blade on my car and to celebrate washed it.  Finally I took a hike down to Mori Point early this morning to climb a hill and sit and stare at the ocean for a time.

rev kane, slower pace of life, can make you happy

A slower pace of life can make you happy

The lesson to draw out of all of this comes directly out of tonight’s quote.  There’s no need to hurry through life.  Stopping and smelling the roses may be a cliche, but it’s an accurate one.  We all need to be more present in our lives, to take it easy, to enjoy the moments we have, being mindful of every day, minute and moment makes our lives more meaningful, rich and time slows down as we do.  It also has a wonderful side effect of making you happier.  So slow down, take your time, be present and have a happy day my friends.           ~ Rev Kane

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Happiness Moments: The Best Pizza Ever

Posted on February 10, 2021 by Michael Kane

Happiness Moments: The Best Pizza Ever

pizza pit

Anyone who says that money can’t buy happiness has clearly never spent their money on pizza. ~ Andrew W.K.

So a little writing experiment for the blog. I’ve been wanting to find a way to do some free writing as practice. And I’ve been wanting to capture the moments in my life that have brought me true happiness. I need that little pick me up right now with everything going on in the world and no real chance to travel. So, some writing about happy moments in my life, hope they bring you a little happiness too.

I love pizza, everyone who knows me well knows that I’ve had a lifelong love affair with this food.  A good slice and a coke is about as close to my bliss as I get.  Some people might find that sad, but in a few ways I’m a very simple man.

There have been a lot of great slices in my life.  Whenever I’m behaving myself in terms of eating I allow myself a cheat day per week.  Often that meal is a slice and a coke. When I first got diagnosed as a diabetic I went six weeks without eating any carbs.  That first slice of pizza at that point damn near made me cry.  It was a good slice of pizza, but not spectacular under normal conditions, it was an example of something I call momentary food.  Which is food that, because of the situation, tastes so much better than it ordinarily wood.  Think that first sip of ice cold water after a long run on a hot day.

One of the more recent great slices I had happened while I was hiking the Appalachian Trail.  On town days we ate a lot of food, we ate a lot of pizza, but there aren’t a lot of spectacular pizza places along the southern portion of the Appalachian Trail.  But my friend Second Star and I jumped off the trail at one point to hang out for a couple of days in Washington D.C.  And it a town in Maryland where we spent the night we stumbled into a pizza place across the street from the hotel.  Not only was the pizza NY style and good, but the slices were the largest slices of pizza I’ve ever seen, a single slice was the size of my head.  Add to that the momentary food aspect and these slices were absolutely spectacular.

Currently, the closest really good pizza place is Arinell’s in the Mission District in San Francisco.  This means I get there occasionally but it’s not quite close or easy enough to be able to swing by and pick up a quick slice after work.  So it’s pure joy when I’m able to get there.

But, by far the greatest pizza I ever had, was my first love.  The phone number was 828-1170, now I haven’t dialed that number in over 30 years but it’s burned into my brain as much as the memory of dialing it on the rotary dial wall phone in the house on State Street where I grew up.  They knew the sound of my voice, they knew my standing order.  I folded pizza boxes for them as a kid in return for slices.  The Pizza Pit in Hudson, NY made the greatest pizza I’ve ever had.  Not only was the quality beyond compare but it was also inexpensive.  How much did I love this pizza?  When I was in graduate school in Kentucky I would drive 14 hours to come home for holidays.  I would always start early enough so that 13.5 hours into that drive I could call the Pizza Pit and order a pizza, which would mean it was ready the moment I drove into town.  Writing this, my mouth is watering, I can still, with incredible detail remember precisely what that pizza tasted like, god how I miss it.  The Pizza Pit fell victim to high priced antique gentrification in Hudson.  I guess the upside is now Hudson shows up on lists of the best little towns in New England, famous people take the train up from NYC to shop for antiques and housing prices have gone through the roof.  But selfishly, I would trade all of that prosperity for my hometown to have the Pizza Pit back and it’s not just my opinion.  The photo with this piece is taken from the face group dedicated to the Pizza Pit.

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My COVID Times Diary: Butterflies or Bust

Posted on February 9, 2021 by Michael Kane

My COVID Times Diary: Butterflies or Bust

metamorphosisSimilar to a butterfly, I’ve gone through a metamorphosis, been released from my dark cocoon, embraced my wings, and soared! ~ Dana Arcuri

When we all first learned we would be locked down back in March we all went through several changes.  The first was of course that we were unhappy about the change, the virus, the new way of life.  But then we tried to make the best of it and folks decided to try new things.  Home workouts, Peleton anyone, learning languages, playing music, reading, painting and drawing.  Baking became very popular, especially making sourdough bread for some reason.  Trying to make the best of a bad situation is what we were all hoping to do.

In a conversation with a friend early on I made a joke that people were going to come out the pandemic lockdowns transformed like butterflies or complete and total messes.  It was somewhat of a joke, but I’m starting to think it was more than a bit prophetic.  I was in a Zoom room pre-meeting the other day where people were discussing how when we come back to work they’ll need to go shopping, since they’d gained weight and their work clothes won’t fit anymore.  I’ve heard too many people talk about how little they’ve been working out since they’ve avoided the gym since the pandemic started.

On the flip-side, I’ve heard people discussing new talents, new media that they’ve discovered, some folks talking about books they’ve finally gotten to read.  No one has mentioned completing a book in conversation but I’m sure people have done that.  For me, partially because it’s the path I’ve been on, partially because of that conversation I had with a friend I focused on trying not to become a mess.  I’m happy to say I’ve had some success on that front.  I’ve kept up my language training on Duolingo completing training every day for the last 372 days.  I’ve also lost 10 pounds and for the last month I’ve been under 190 pounds which hasn’t happened in my adult life.  But I’ve also fallen down, I have a book that needs completing that I haven’t gotten back to, my guitar has set idle for far too long and I really wanted to sell more of my stuff on Ebay.

But here’s the good news, bad news of the pandemic.  Even though vaccinations are starting to happen, we’re all likely to have some reduced social options for a time.  That’s the bad news, but the good news is that means there is still some time to turn into that butterfly.  Start now and in the next six months, by time we’re getting back to some semblance of normalcy, you can’t have achieved something wonderful.

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Happiness and Nostalgia

Posted on February 7, 2021 by Michael Kane

Happiness and Nostalgia

nostalgia, quoteNostalgia, the vice of the aged. We watch so many old movies our memories come in monochrome. ~ Angela Carter

peggy lipton, mod squadI found my inspiration for this weeks post in an unfortunate bit of news.  Last night I was scanning the news and saw the news that Peggy Lipton had passed away.  It was a little sad for me, Peggy Lipton had been one of my earliest TV crushes.  Right after Nina on Zoom and before Susan Dey on the Partridge Family.  Nina was also thin, pretty and had long straight hair, what can I say it was the 70’s and I had a type.

nina lillie, zoom

Nina from Zoom

susan dey

Susan Dey

The Mod Squad was the progenitor of the hip cop shows, the original 23 Jump Street if you will.  I honestly don’t remember a lot about the show other than the actors, the way they looked and that general sense of cool that we all wanted and so few of us had.

Nostalgia is a funny thing, in small doses it can be a really awesome thing.  Having a dip back into the happy parts of our lives, the proverbial trip down memory lane, can be a really warm and wonderful thing.  However, spending too much time down that memory lane can be a problem.  If you live too much in the past, you lose touch with the present.  Particularly if you are doing it to avoid a less happy now.  Using nostalgia as a way to avoid the present, and particularly as a comparison for the present, is a mistake.  You see our memories are imperfect records.  Over time, depending on what we want to pull from our memories, events in the past can be mentally photoshopped to be much better or much worse versions of reality.  So you can get lost in longing for those better times, but often, those better times weren’t really as good as we recall.  We’ve edited out the bad days, the tragedies, and the way we actually felt to create a more perfect time.  Our brains are masters of denial and rationalization and we can create a really wonderful past that never existed.

But dipping your toes back in that pond, thinking about sitting in your pj’s in front of the TV, watching young attractive hippies working as undercover cops is ok.  Just don’t spend too much time doing it.  Finally, my best wishes for Peggy Lipton’s family tonight, a really awful mother’s day and I hope they can find some solace in her long and talented life.  As always my friends, have a happy day. ~ Rev Kane

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