Roger Ebert

An excerpt from the recent Esquire article about Roger Ebert of whom I am a big fan.  It’s a very sad end to his life but I am also inspired by how he has never laid down in the face of adversity. I mean shit, the guy has no lower jaw, cant talk, cant eat food and has a hole in his mouth “the size of a plum”.  Anyway, of everything in the article, this is the part I find to be the most impactful.

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“Ebert is dying in increments, and he is aware of it.

“I know it is coming, and I do not fear it, because I believe there is nothing on the other side of death to fear, he writes in a journal entry titled “Go Gently into That Good Night.” I hope to be spared as much pain as possible on the approach path. I was perfectly content before I was born, and I think of death as the same state. What I am grateful for is the gift of intelligence, and for life, love, wonder, and laughter. You can’t say it wasn’t interesting. My lifetime’s memories are what I have brought home from the trip. I will require them for eternity no more than that little souvenir of the Eiffel Tower I brought home from Paris.

“There has been no death-row conversion. He has not found God. He has been beaten in some ways. But his other senses have picked up since he lost his sense of taste. He has tuned better into life. Some things aren’t as important as they once were; some things are more important than ever. He has built for himself a new kind of universe. Roger Ebert is no mystic, but he knows things we don’t know.

“I believe that if, at the end of it all, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do. To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn’t always know this, and am happy I lived long enough to find it out.”

Read more: http://www.esquire.com/features/roger-ebert-0310-7#ixzz0gDVi4YYe

Ramblings, maybe the start of many

wow. this whole blog thing is kind of cool. just set it up yesterday. dave israel helped me get it set up and gave me a cursory overview of how wordpress works, how you add posts and change themes and everything else. dave, if you’re reading this – thanks. super cool. i already uploaded a few posts since yesterday (or whatever the jargon is)

there’s so much i may ultimately document here, not the least of which my love for art and music and generally cool stuff. how cliche, i know. but i gots to report in on the stuff that makes me go ‘holy shit’ and why not make it be here. (that’s rhetorical.)

i dont really plan to tell people that i have a blog. cant imagine how i’d ever bring it up in a conversation. this is more for me to try a personal experiment – to see how my life would look if told in a blog. it’s gonna be fun.