As my life zips by at warp speed I barely see the signposts ahead, the lives dripping by, the rain that falls or the
multiple times that particular moments  grab me by the stones and scream ‘LISTEN!’.
There is an incessant drone that accompanies the soundtrack of my life.
Like any constant, the human condition adapts and moves on, uninterrupted and undisturbed.
The body is made in a way that it simply adapts and adjusts.

Example: Where did I put my glasses?
Answer: They are up on the top of your head.

If we didn’t have this ability, wearing clothes would drive us to insanity.
I work in a cigar store and hear on a daily basis,
“This store smells wonderful! It reminds of my Dad/Grandfather/Uncle.”
Truth be told, I can’t smell it.
I can be away for weeks from the store and upon my return?
Nothing.
No smell, no recognition.
I am for the most part physiologically incapable of recognizing it.
But I could walk into another cigar store and the smell grabs and smacks me in the face like the cigar smoking bitch that I am . . .
(in a good way, I love tobacco).
My point is that as we live our lives we sometimes build up an almost unintentional immunity to things that mean the most to us.
This includes people, places, things, moments, songs, food, smells, feelings, emotions and more.
It’s physiological and biological as well.
It’s how we are hard-wired.
We are bombarded by so much media that much of what we see consists of perpetuated and virtual cybershit.
Don’t know about you but seeing that on a daily basis puts me on a virtual merry-go-round.
But now and then something throws me off the ride, in a major way.

My 2011 Ford Escape has one hell of an amazing sound system.
It is equipped with Microsoft Sync, Sirius Radio, a great CD player and a USB port for the 4,000+ songs on my Ipod Classic. (and it gets close to 32 miles/gallon highway)
Not sure but judging from the sound I think the speaker system may be made by Bose.
At any rate this thing kicks some serious sonic ass.
It is AMAZING.
(and it has an awesome Australian Southern Cross vanity plate to boot)
I was driving into Boston last Sunday morning and had my Ipod set to ‘Shuffle’ (random songs).
I can fast forward or rewind using the controls on my steering wheel.
As I made my way onto the Mass Pike THIS song came on.
I’ve listened to Marc Jordan for years but never listened to this song as I did this particular Sunday.
It’s meaning was crystal clear as to what and who the song was about.
The next song was THIS from Michael Sembello (aka, Maniac from ‘FlashDance’ fame)
Although I’d listened to this album years ago, I never heard the actual words.
What came to me towards the end of the song was that someone is trying to get in touch with me.
Someone is trying like hell to make me listen.
Someone is going out of their way to get me to wake the hell up in terms of my life.
If you feel like doing some homework, listen to these two songs.
Who do YOU think they are about?
Know that I am listening and know that in my heart the songs are both about the same Man.
Is He Superman?
It’s all about interpretation.
I’m thinking I understand and it’s always been all about Superman . . .

~m

I have never been shy about professing the love I have for my wife.
Over the years she has been my greatest advocate, critic and friend in a way that defies the actual meaning of love.
Since I ceased writing music (for now) I listen daily and in a deeper way than ever before.
Now and again a song comes to me via chance/serendipity and explains to me why God sent this gentle and beautiful soul my way.
Yes, I am sappy but I couldn’t care less what people think.
I love this woman and am not afraid to tell the world every chance I get.
I heard this song for the first time tonight and was close to tears on the train home.
It hit me like a ton of bricks.
It is a deep version of Pamela and me in so very many ways.
Those that are close to us will possibly understand.
If you haven’t listened to Marc Jordan or even heard of him, check this song out.
I’ve listened to him for well over 20 years. He is quite simply awesome.
This song is not unlike a personal anthem to a woman that has stuck by me through thick and thin for almost 29 years.
She is absolutely the ‘best part of my life’ . . .
[lyrics are below. took me the better part of 1.5 hours to transcribe them as they are nowhere on the web]
(as with most of my posted videos, headphones are essential)
lyp . . .

I walked on all these streets in victory and defeat
gathering the fragments before the sky turned grey
but always in my mind, you’re with me all the time
and every while now Lord I take . . .
I feel you like the rain . . .
And from this windowpane the world feels like a dream
the lights shine on these streets where you and I have been
sometimes I think I see . . .  you looking back at me
‘cause loving you has been a story without end
a river running through,  my heart and back again
A place where I was safe,  when the world felt like a knife
loving you has been the best part of my life

Your arms gave me faith, to reach out for the light
and although I was lost sometimes I ran to you each night
and if these wounds could speak they’d cry your name out loud
and if my heart had wings I’d fly beyond the clouds
I’d carry you away beyond this maddening crowd
‘cause loving you has been a story without end
a river running through,  my life and back again
a place where I was safe, when the world felt like a knife
loving you has been the best part of my life

From this windowpane the world seems like a dream
the lights shine on these streets where you and I have been
sometimes I think I see you looking back at me
to a place where I was safe when the world felt like a knife
loving you has been the best part of my life . . .

~m

It is currently 9:16PM here in Massachusetts.
The countdown is on as are The Three Stooges.
2011 was a year to remember for many reasons and a year to forget as well.
As I get older the passing of time seems to take on less significance than it once did.
Seems it should be the opposite but personally it’s just another year.
Another chance to get it right, another chance to possibly mess the sombitch up.
The house is warm and filled with all sorts of wonderful food and drink.
Jonathan (Sarah’s fiancee) and I just got done smoking a very nice cigar on the deck and for the moment life is good.
Hopefully 2012 will be as good as tonight seems to be.
I wish all of you peace, joy and more happiness and good fortune than your lives can reasonably handle.

For myself, I ask for the grace and peace of the One high above me;
To do more for others than I do for myself,
To smile more than frown,
To love deeply and give freely,
To find the words that move me and the music that inspires me,
and to finally give myself a break for a change.
I am too damn hard on myself.
A few sent angels would be nice as well.

So Happy New Year to you, my dear friends.
Thank you for making my life so worth living.
Here’s to another year of whatever it is that makes all of us tick . . .

~m

The next several days are going to be somewhat hectic as I sell the masses cigars, humidors,  pipe tobacco and everything you can possibly smoke to make the holidays memorable.

I want to thank all that have visited and commented here in the past year.
Although I have been a slacker in the ‘Department of Replies’ know that I have read each and every comment left and that I really appreciate your visits.

I will be celebrating the holidays with family and many close friends and consider myself  blessed.
This is a time for the celebration of love.
And there is so much that I love.

I wish for all of you, tender and sweet dreams, hot chocolate memories, stockings filled with holiday confections and joys of heaven, healing conversation and the ultimate love of a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes asleep in a manger.
Somewhere in Bethlehem . . .

I even wish for you some snowflakes on Christmas Eve.
Just not too many.

“One of the most glorious messes in the world is the mess created in the living room on Christmas day. Don’t clean it up too quickly.” ~Andy Rooney

A Merry Christmas to all,

~m

It began as an innocent and seemingly serendipitous friendship that came by the way of my personal weblog some 5+ years ago.
If you’ve read my blog before you will know the backstory of all that I am about to say.
If you haven’t, this will be a good time for reading a pretty amazing story.

How this friendship happened seems to defy any logical explanation because that’s how many friendships start.
What happened in the ensuing years is the stuff of fairy tales and Ripley’s ‘Believe it or not’ stories, all but true.
I still have to pinch myself some days though; days when I find myself woolgathering about whether me and Pamela did actually visit Australia for two simply incredible weeks this past July.
It’s taken some time to not only process the whole experience but also to figure out
just what I want to say . . .
[Interpretation: this is gonna take a lot of  posts]

We left Boston on a sunny,  pure and crystal late Friday afternoon in July -  our first destination: LAX.
Good weather, nice takeoff, flight is smooth, everybody is happy, life is good . . .  piece of cake, right?
As we crossed somewhere over Lincoln, Nebraska at approximately 30,000 ft my gorgeous wife grabbed my hand and said, “I don’t think I can do this.”

“Do what?” I said. [me thinking about the mile high club]

“Flying this far. I don’t know if I can do it.”

“Sure you can,” I said, “we’ll be fine,” as I squeezed her hand harder in mine.

“You promise?” She said.

“You betcha,” I said.

Not what you want to hear from a wife on the verge of tears and only 3 hours from your point of departure.
We still had another 13+ hours in the air to get to Brisbane after getting to LA.
This was not working out as I’d planned.
It rarely does though, right?
It was about this time that I was able to connect to the net with my laptop.
I have never loved Facebook more than I did at that particular moment in time.
“Here,” I said,  passing her my laptop, “Play Farmville or chat with someone who’s on.”
Maybe sometimes a human connection is all you really need to get you over a flying hump.
The Facebook diversion worked and we landed safe and sound in the City of Angels at 9PM (PST) Midnight (EST).
Our flights were connecting so we didn’t need to worry about our checked luggage as we would pick it up in Brisbane on our arrival on Sunday morning (thanks in part to the International Dateline)

Turned out that our 11PM flight was delayed and we didn’t take off until 1AM (PST) or 4AM (EST).
We were both sleeping in the terminal like oh, so many homeless people when our plane started boarding.
We made our way onto a V-Australia huge ass airbus and found our seats.
We were ready for some sleep.
After a nice snack we both hunkered down for a long summer’s nap, as visions of the calming waters of the great barrier reef danced in our heads . . .
(alright, I made that part up)

If anyone tells you that flying to Australia is easy and you could ‘do it in your sleep’, tell them they can go pound sand.
It is a long ass ways away and when we finally landed in Brisbane [19+ hours later] if all that we saw was two crazy kangaroos getting their freak on with some abo playing the didj, we would have left happy campers.
Truth.
That’s not what we found.
The air was different.
The sky was different.
The layout of the land was different.
The spring water was different.
The birds sound were different.
The toilet water flushed the wrong way.
And the people are friendly! [unlike some in Boston]
And they drive on the wrong side of the road (a trip unto itself!)
I think I actually shit my pants as we drove through our first roundabout.
Bringing adult diapers is merely a suggestion.

We found out very quickly that Australia was more than just an island,  a huge ass country, and a continent unto itself.
It was a place of incredible beauty and majesty, a place of tropical fish the likes of which we had never seen, wildlife that boggles the mind, food that makes us yearn for more, Cadbury chocolate that will never see the US shores and nighttime constellations that are unique to the southern hemisphere.
We also found out that Australia is a place where one very special family would open their hearts and homes to two American strangers they’d never met before.

We got our suitcases in Brisbane and headed to Australian Customs before embarking on the final flight to take us to Tropical Queensland and the home of Mark and Maureen Harrod, friends of a lifetime.

We didn’t know it then but we’d already fallen in love with this magical place called Australia.
As I looked at the Southern Cross in the sky on our first night,
I decided I should stop dreaming. I was here, we were here.

to be continued . . .

Peter Hanson made a cell phone call to his father at 09:00am on 9.11.01

“It’s getting bad, Dad. A stewardess was stabbed. They seem to have knives and Mace. They said they have a bomb. It’s getting very bad on the plane. Passengers are throwing up and getting sick. The plane is making jerky movements. I don’t think the pilot is flying the plane. I think we are going down. I think they intend to go to Chicago or someplace and fly into a building. Don’t worry, Dad. If it happens, it’ll be very fast….Oh my God… oh my God, oh my God.”

[As the call abruptly ended, Hanson's father heard a woman screaming.]

In the past few weeks I have had numerous hits on my blog and
70%  of them have been related to the tragedy of  9/11.
It’s a part of our history that will be told from a million different perspectives and from a million different hearts.
A sunny, beautiful and blue sky forever September day that changed the face of the United States forever.
The tenth anniversary of anything as monumental as this will have 99% of people scouring the internet for information regarding one of our nations darkest of days.
On the 5th Anniversary of 9/11 a website was born, dedicated to the writing of tributes to all those taken by this senseless and avoidable tragedy.
I thank Dale Roe for taking on the challenge.

I have written 3 tributes for the site thus far:

Amy Jarret, a stewardess on UA Flight 175
Bobby Minara, a NYC firefighter that was to retire in two months
Steve ‘Jake’ Jacoby, a passenger on American Airlines Flight 77 that hit the Pentagon.

I decided to write another tribute on this 10th anniversary;
for Peter Hanson, his wife Sue and their 2 ½ year old daughter Christine.
The conversation you read at the top of this post was from Peter Hanson’s cell phone, a message left minutes before Flight UA175 hit the south tower of the
World Trade Center, the plane we all saw live on national TV (and the flight Amy Jarret was on).
My thoughts now are what was going through the mind of Peter.
You are on an airplane that is headed for a destination unknown and you know it’s not a good place.
Consoling a 2 ½ year old is trying enough without knowing that you are about to die.
The plane they were on was descending at 5 to 10,000 feet per minute towards the end.
You can’t explain that to a child.
You probably wouldn’t want to.
My heart broke reading about the final moments of their all-too-short lives.
In my heart, I know they were all together and died in each other’s arms,
a beautiful prayer of sorts.
To the Hanson family, I can’t even begin to estimate the size of your sorrow.
My heart breaks for all of you with the upcoming 10th anniversary on Sunday.
In my mind, I see three candles lit and burning brightly, piercing the darkness.
Three souls together.
Three hearts finally at home, albeit a bit too soon.
God bless you Peter, Sue and  little Christine.
You are all with the angels now.
Of that I am sure.

Maybe it’s time to turn the mourning of 9/11 into the celebration of the people that once were.
Thoughts of death and dying every year on 9/11 is futile.
It gets us nowhere.
Let’s look at celebrating the vibrant lives of all those lost, the unexpected heroes, the ones that gave all that they had, the ones that took a stand on UA Flight 93, a proud moment for Americans everywhere.
September 11th will never be a happy date but I feel it’s one that needs a serious makeover.
It’s been 10 long years of grieving and the United States of America has accomplished so much since.
I say it’s time we show the world just how strong we really are, and can be.
God Bless this land that we love . . .

~m

Over the years, I have felt a connection with several Bruce Hornsby songs.
Fields of Grey, [don't watch the video but listen to the song!]
reminds me of my daughter Sarah and my intense feelings of fatherly protection and safety for her.
[this strange phenomenon has happened for all 3 girls, truth be told]
When the song shows up unexpectedly on my Ipod I usually text her to see if everything is alright.
She sends me a text that loosely interpreted  says, listening to Hornsby huh?
I listened to ‘Lost Soul’ a few nights ago for the first time and couldn’t help but associate the words to
a person suffering from Alzheimer’s, the most lost of souls.
When the chorus kicked in I heard a female voice and thought, hey, that’s Shawn Colvin.

Here’s the connection with me and Shawn Colvin.
And here’s the song.

Not sure if this song is speaking to the issues regarding dementia or AD but I took it that way.
‘Lost Souls’ is chilling lyrically and musically sophisticated beyond belief.
Play the video and read the lyrics below and maybe you will see.
If not, it’s still a great tune.
Hornsby is an amazing musician, jazz/classical pianist and songwriter and Colvin just gives me a bad case of goosebumps. (and maybe because she’s a real cute blonde)
I am doing my first walk for Alzheimer’s research on September 25th to raise funds for some badly needed research.
Check back in the not too distant future for more info if you would like to help me meet my goal.
I already have a webpage HERE.
Check it out!
Until my next post, please be safe, happy and well.

Michael

There was a man of confused and sad nature
Thought no one loved him that was not true
He said he was a lost soul didn’t fit in anywhere
Didn’t know where to turn or who to turn to

There’s a lost soul coming down the road
Somewhere between two worlds
With an oar in his hands and a song on your lips
We’ll row the boat to the far shore
Row the boat of the loved lost soul

Ever since oh I can remember
We all tried to ease the pain
Took him in when he needed some shelter
Tried to make him feel he was one of us again
There was one day oh I can remember
He sat alone with a pencil in his hand
All day long he drew careful on the paper
In the end just a picture of a man

Of the lost soul coming down the road
Somewhere between two worlds
With an oar in his hands and a song on your lips
We’ll row the boat to the far shore
Row the boat of loved lost soul

Oh dear Mary do you remember
The day we went walking downtown
As I recall it was in early December
After school had just let out
When I see you on the street in the twilight
I may tip my hat and keep my head down
You show me love but maybe I don’t deserve it
I’ve been called but not been found

There’s a lost soul coming down the road
Somewhere between two worlds
With an oar in his hands and a song on your lips
We’ll row the boat to the far shore
Row the boat of the loved lost soul

Maybe in another space,
another time,
another place,
another silly rhyme
we would gently collide,
in a dance of serendipitous destiny and fate;
and all that the blessed heavens could cast in our way
Falling stars, like ethereal butterflies touching our lives without us even knowing,
with whispers of ‘meant to be’,
transforming the colours of life that we once took for granted

When the tired and crimson sun sets on another distant horizon,
know that chance and coincidence are sometimes pure and beautiful random happenings . . .
meant to give our lives an oh, so deeper meaning and understanding
but for the biggest part, they give us love
from a place that’s not so mysterious after all; the heart.

Mine whispered.
And yours answered.
But that 1 click ultimately took us on a long and still unforgettable journey home . . .

for Kel

~m

And the angels sang . . .

“Póg mo thóin!”

~m

“The Gospels do not explain Easter, Easter explains the Gospels.”

-J.S. Whale (slightly adapted)

Nuff said . . .

~m