A huge smile, hug and thumbs up to all those walking today!

We watched Baraka in class today,

The world has always been beautiful, and becomes more so in new ways every day.

Having said that, the Earth has been a stage of absolutely abysmal atrocities, and will continue to be so in new ways, hopefully not every day, but things seem to play out that way.

The reason the world is still here to improve in creativity and love is because people have worked with love in their hearts and their heads and their hands to help each other and this world of ours.

I think it's a good idea to stop looking at the monsters here and there and have yourself some nice enjoyable moments so that you can renew your strength, motivation and spirit, but you must also keep paying attention and fighting for what you know is best.

Most importantly, keep your heart alive...

If we do, Earth's soul will survive

I am happy being who I am

Expression

Vibrations... so much going on all the live long day... When you see the stories that work together to make the news from day to day, in the short term, or even learning about how we got here with maps called history books, you can get frustrated by politics, society, culture, beliefs, even human nature.  You can get impatient.  Effort, action, sometimes even just being kind... they can feel pointless.

That's why today is so important.  An American named King read about and learned from an Indian named Gandhi.  That Indian named Gandhi had read an American named Thoreau.  Both King and Gandhi supposedly read a Russian named Tolstoy.  Gandhi and King learned from their mothers and wives, who learned from their cultures, which were formed from other cultures, which were born and raised by those who experienced the adventure of life and put their impressions of their journeys into words, which helped both their contemporaries and brave voyagers of existence for generations to come.  People have been recording and sharing to help each other understand life all throughout ourstory.

Ideas, art, love matter.  When their expression is creative, sincere, heartfelt, you affect worlds in ways that will surprise you.  It may take some time, but the results come.  The waves need time to travel.  Please keep up the courage, exploring, learning, thinking, sharing.  Your world will be happy you do

Resolve

In 2017 I am going to do my best to have fun while appreciating beauty, creating art, living healthily, connecting the poetic dots, honing my empathy and loving the miracle of being alive.

More importantly, I hope to help many others do so.  I suppose I did all that last year though... and the year before.. well, I might as well keep it up and do it some more.  There is still an awesome abundance of the world to explore

I will add that I want to initiate some major changes in where and how I spend my days while continuing what already works

I approve

Speaker

I am looking forward to a gifted speaker giving us one more performance

When I was at the halfway point as a government major in college, my father and I watched him give the speech about one America during the convention, and we turned to each other and said, "Wouldn't it be great if he could be president some day?"

We never imagined we would be watching him give his final speech as president just a little more than a dozen years later.

Whenever students have to speak in front of the class, more than half of them are usually very shy, and it isn't just the language barrier.  It isn't easy to speak in front of an audience, and this one isn't very large.

So if you enjoy a gifted orator addressing the United States of America as President and using the English language like a seasoned master, enjoy him while you can!  

1/7

I love being alive with humans, poetic journeys, and harmonious imaginative thoughts propelling the mind to greater heights, the ingredients for a very delicious experience of light, 

Warmth

There's a hot water pipe in my room which provides the heat, and I guess overall I have to like it, because I need heat in the winter.  The problem is that hot/cold isn't a simple battle of good/evil, and is instead, as with most things in life, a relative spectrum with each side being preferable based on the circumstances.  So, when the heat kicks on full blast and I have no way to adjust it, I quickly find myself in a room with temperatures somewhere in the 80's, if not hotter.  If I'm really lucky, the pipe starts rattling with all sorts of strange pangs and bangs.  Opening a window is the obvious solution, but I can't sleep with it open all night, and besides, Broadway is too noisy.

I tell this tale simply to point out that I barely slept twice this week.  One of those nights was Wednesday night, which was even more frustrating because I was already exhausted from sleeplessness.

So on Thursday night, I was thinking I'd turn in early, but then it just started snowing, and all those snowflakes started flying by the streetlight right outside my window, and I knew what I had to do.  I opened my window, put on my layers, grabbed my camera, and went on another one of those long wandering walks that reminds me the world is a work of art.

I got home 2 hours later, to a perfectly comfortable room, and slept for a full night.

On the way to work today, I realized I had to look up the topic for workshop.  Yes, I know, I should prepare more, but I've done these workshops so many times that I have plenty of ideas for each topic.  Thankfully, the topic today was "Art & Music".

After many different activities and discussions, I played some music for them while they wrote stream of consciousness.  One girl wrote amazing rhyming poems in just minutes for each song.  They were much more creative than most groups.  As much as I fight with New York City in my mind, there's a lot of beauty here.

Life is good

1 Train Owed Me

Today I met a former Democratic governor of New York on the subway and had a 10 minute political discussion with him.  I liked that he was riding underground with us.  It's the first time I've ever met a politician.  I never thought that would occur on the subway.  As he put it, "You move from a 45 room mansion back to a two bedroom apartment in Harlem!"  I think I would much prefer the opposite, but then again, a 2 bedroom apartment sounds really good right now

Note:  I just checked my journal a few hours after writing this, and was happy to learn that I began moving to Harlem on January 3, 2014, and completed moving sometime after midnight on the subway on January 4, 2014.

When I first moved to New York in 2006, my friend told me that you weren't officially a "New Yorker" until you lived in the city for 3 years.  I resented that, because I'd been a resident of the state of New York my entire life, and in three different areas (Long Island, Capital Region, and Finger Lakes), with a lifelong connection to a fourth (North Country).  Why did the city dwellers get to be called that?  Either way, 11 years later, I have been living in my own residence in New York City for exactly 3 years, and for the first time on the island of Manhattan for exactly 3 years... more on that soon

NEW

I wish you an awesome new year filled with musical adventure