Today’s post will be on? Living.

With all the fucked up shit going on in the world today it’s a challenge to stay upbeat. Cops gunning down unarmed beatniks (if that is still a usable label), nuclear reactors blowing up and spewing toxins around the world that will not go away for hundred to millions of years, feudalization of our society. I wake up everyday and have to tell myself not to dwell on all these injustices that I had no part in creating but will affect me and my friends and family forever. I once believed that I if just minded my own business and did unto others… Then everything would turn out alright. I guess that was pretty naive, but I like being naive. It beats being cynical, which is a much easier mode for me to fall into. Actually it has become my default mode. I do try to put a humorous face on it as often as possible even though there is not a lot of funny shit going on these days. Even the stuff that passes for funny is often mean spirited fun at someone else’s expense or misery. I can hardly watch America’s Funniest Home Videos because of the amount of pain that is peddled as comedy. When was the last time you thought it was funny when your grandmother did a face plant? The fact that you don’t know these people shouldn’t make their pain funny. It seems a symptom of our illness that we find entertainment in other people’s personal conflict. Watching two people fight used to cause anguish and stress. Now it rates prime time? Perhaps it’s an attempt to escape our own conflicts, to make them seem no big deal. Or perhaps it’s an attempt to make us feel that through our bitch fighting and meanness we are actually worthy of other’s attentions. Either way, life is too short and full of my own issues to try and fill it up with other people’s.

Moving on. I find a bit of meditation usually does wonders. If I can slow down and turn off the monkey brain for a few precious minutes, I always have a better day. Something about tuning into the present and tuning out of the past and future helps me stay happier. The past and future are not real in any physical sense. They are only perceptions generated in our minds, specifically one side of our brain. Shut that side off for a moment. Get good at it. Then realize that living is about what is going on with you, right now, here at this moment. Live it. It’s better than TV, honest.

Sending positive energy, thoughts and prayers to our friends in Japan. Hope things get better soon.

Thanks to my very busy friends at Corduroy in Portland, Maine for making me their featured shaper for the near future. They have been busy with a new web presence and I think a new location. We’re trying to get some more boards up there soon and hope to do a show shortly thereafter. Cheers!

You’ve got to go out on a limb sometimes because that’s where the fruit is.
Will Rogers

My friend Takashi’s very cool shop. CLICK HERE