Category: Planes

More developed ideas, conversations, narratives, and philosophies.

Too Fast, Too Young

Published on April 19, 2025

When people talk about all the celebrity deaths at age 28, it’s always to ask, “Why did they die so young?”. But as these folks occur among your own peer group, your perspective changes.

In my own case, I find myself asking, whenever reflecting back on it, “What did I do to live so much longer?”

What would [great deceased artist] sound or look like or talk about if they were still alive today? Imagine what you could do at 28 and pretend you could still do it the same way today. What would THAT look like? Wouldn’t you start to figure at that point that you’d given a lot already, and didn’t feel it absolutely necessary to pull it out of mothballs and get a few dollars for it?

You say, well, there’s all kinds of folks out there who are your age and older who still seem to be living an authentic experience and sharing it in some way with millions of other people. Lots of artists who influenced you growing up that are still around and making it happen.

And I say, well, they all lived past 28 too. Everybody’s got to live their own life or someone else’s. And everyone one of them is different. Except for one thing: we all survived our Saturn return. And we survived by changing something in ourselves. Not the same thing, of course, but something.

If we can get past that, then we can think on what I actually wanted to talk about.

When I ask the question, “What did I do to live so much longer?”, what I really mean is something completely different. What I should have said, and what I was really thinking at the time, was “How did I actually live longer?”

Did I just give up sooner? Did I not have the inner drive to make a bigger or better impression? Was it just never in the cards? Or was I really just afraid: scared of producing the frequencies that would destroy the record player? Does any of that really matter? Then, or Now?

The answer is, “I don’t know.“

The path is where you have your feet. You don’t have a map, because you are the territory. All you do is keep moving forward. Many years ago I wrote the line, “The path I’m on doesn’t have a name. It’s not done yet.”

I haven’t wasted 38 years since just worrying about that. There are too many much more important minutes to consider and live in right here and now.

You can’t worry about how you’ll get through the next five minutes. You already have.

And here we are. Still standing. Still here. With most of ourselves left.

What now?

20 Apr 2025

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A Walk In The Rain

Published on April 19, 2025

Well, into every life a little rain must fall, and the careful man learns to keep himself dry.

Another great line from The Bat (1959) starring Vincent Price and Agnes Morehead – two paragons of the styles of performance they each represented. Whatever that means to you. They’re both very watchable, to me. And ever since I learned that Agnes played Orson Welles’ love interest and confidante Margot Lane during his stint as radio’s The Shadow, I’ve liked her even more. Vincent? Well, he loved art and wine. But I often wondered why he bothered wearing disguises in any of his movies. He was usually the only really tall person in his films. So who could that masked villain be? It isn’t gonna be the little guy. But I digress – as always.

Back to the quote – and in this movie, it’s the chauffeur who gets the best lines. I would extend this a little further: rain is going to fall, but it’s not always in your best interest to hide under your umbrella. As the Sufi saying goes, “Never name the well from which you will not drink.” In the desert, a drop of hot sweat can seem like a cold drink.

The trick is when the rain does fall, to find a use for the water. And make sure it’s appropriately distributed. Is that some kind of socialist ideal? Not at all. No more than public highways, law enforcement, armed services, or health and welfare safety nets.

The other thing about rain is it’s not the same everywhere. Altitude, latitude, and distance from large bodies of water affect climate, seasons change the receptivity to precipitation, and that’s even before you toss in the human factors like lack of green-space, overpopulation, inappropriate ground cover, non-native species, loss of topsoil, carbon emissions, and chemical imbalance.

An inch of rain in one place is a deluge in another. So keeping dry, if that’s what you need to do, is not always so simple. But it’s an important job, particularly if you’re not just looking after yourself. It deserves a bit of study, practice, and consistent application.

Because it’s not always sunshine and rainbows, is it?

19 APR 2025

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The Old College Try

Published on April 19, 2025

You can’t make this shit up. But somebody has to, right? It doesn’t just pop up out of nowhere in full bloom without first starting as a seed before it germinates, breaks through its shell, sends out roots and tendrils, shoves it’s way through the surface into the sunlight, soaks up the sights, sensations, and a couple bowls of soup on the way. It got here, this shit, like everything else does. One piece at a time. And time may be an illusion masking the fact that past and future are both shadows that only exist in the here and now, but sometimes it certainly feels like a minute. So you’ve seen this shit before. You can’t pretend you didn’t see it coming.

So if you didn’t make it happen, how are you part of it? Because you are, you know. We’re all connected; there’s no real or permanent separation between you and me and us and them. You have a role and you play it. Just like everything else. It’s like a round table though, because there is no head. In true egalitarian fashion, the one with the skill required for the issue at hand takes point for a little while, to address what they can direct better than anyone else around. And then when somebody else’s strong suit needs playing, that person takes the wheel. Until the next one.

Does that leave anything behind, any scraps, money on the table, cards unplayed, debts owed, or grudges unpaid. Sometimes. But it beats the alternative. Because there really isn’t an alternative, is there?

19 APR 2025

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Change Your Mind

Published on April 18, 2025

“I have an idea. I want to find what the average man thinks of it. Then when we’ve found out what he thinks of it, we’ll change his thinking.”

A great quote from Vincent Price’s Champagne for Caesars. But is it about advertising or religion or politics? And does it matter? Aren’t the effects the same? So loaded with promise, so ripe with possibilities. If a better movie, in a better time, with a greater social media presence and more mentions per capita, it would probably be a text studied alongside Machiavelli’s The Prince, Sun Tzu’s Art of War and Donald Trump’s Art of the Deal. No kidding. I’m gonna go write a doctoral thesis on that now. Give me a minute.

I can’t think of a better way to tell you to stop drinking the water. Or Kool-Aid. Or Drano. Whatever it is they’re telling you is in the Dixie cup, or what you wish or you’re hoping it will be. It isn’t going to be what you think. Cause it’s never going to be forever. Nothing is.

As was said in another film, The Princess Bride, “Life is pain, princess. Anyone who says otherwise is selling something.”

19 APR 2025

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An Actor Prepares

Published on April 18, 2025

At what point in your life do you look back at what you’ve been doing up to that point and say to yourself, “Man, that shit we just went through was the worst thing that could happen to a person. And it was completely and absolutely our fault. It’s there a really bad actor in this scenario, you’re it. No excuses, alibis, justifications or obfuscations. Tag, you’re it. There’s no way to talk, walk, dance, sing, shimmy, wiggle, slide or slither out of this one. If you try that one again, you’ll end up dead.”

And how many times have you seen or will you watch that movie? Make your friends or lovers or kids or grandkids or work associates or teammates or even mortal enemies watch it with you? How many times will you switch the channel to it if it’s on? It’s your favorite feature film. It’s the greatest story ever told, because it’s about you. And you’re the star, the narrator, and the director. You picked the music, the scenes, and the lighting. You got all the best lines, had the best pieces of business. Looked like you owned the set, the scene, and the show. It must have made money, right? Because we’re all still here. Oscar worthy, that’s for sure. And since as they say you are always your own worst critic, you’ve really no worries about your rating or star power. It’s in the bag. If there was a better, higher budget, better marketed film out there, you’d be in it. And have a piece of it too.

But whose film is it really? How many of your supporting actors think it’s their film, or have agents and friends telling them it should have been theirs? More than you’d like to think. If you do think about it.

At the end of the real film, the final reel, will it really matter whose name came first or which was in the larger typeface?

19 APR 2025

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Change My Mind

Published on April 18, 2025

What do you think it really takes to convince someone about anything? I don’t mean to the level where they’re nodding their head, flashing a smile, or clinking their drink to yours in a display of temporary solidarity. I mean convince someone: change their mind, their point of view, their way of seeing the world. Touch their inner core, self, soul, atman.

It’s not like selling them a used car. It can’t be. The stakes are so much higher, and the consequences may be in that moment, and for many more thereafter, profound, lasting, and of monumental importance.

Especially when you’re dealing with a species you’ve been told are self-focused, narcissistic, hedonistic, opportunistic, and worst of all, just not all that interesting. This is a way-station after all, a proving ground, a temporary assignment, a pit stop or slight detour on the way to something better. Convincing anyone of anything at all, even given infinite time, space, and energy to achieve it, is no walk in the park.

That’s why charlatans are so effective: just like a great ballet dancer or singer or athlete makes it look so easy, so effortless, a con artist makes the lies and empty promises and misdirection seem so simple, guileless, and without visible support that they are the spoonfuls of sugar that make the medicine go down. But not all that glitters is gold; not every drug is a medicine. Some are deadly poison.

Most really good evangelists know to work the room, but more importantly, they know how to pick the room. Preaching to the choir is a lot easier than preaching in the wilderness. At a minimum, there’s better cell coverage. And where you can connect to the world, you have a message. Messages, however, are a lot like drugs. Only some have medicinal value.

Do you have what it takes to do the convincing? What would it take to convince you? Maybe you think those two are different ends of the same stick. Maybe you don’t. But whether you believe in that kind of cosmic balance or you don’t, when you pick it up, it’s the whole stick. Don’t ever expect anyone to ever be a bigger pushover than you, because it’s one thing to be stubborn about something, but it’s quite another to keep beating yourself on the head with it.

It’s a big job.

19 APR 2025

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White Hat Testing

Published on April 18, 2025

Too many people only seem to do good deeds, or even want to be caught doing them, if there’s a reward in it: remuneration, recognition, or at least reputation. Even saints want to get in good with their patron (or patrons, male or female, mortal or divine, immanent or imminent, true north or morally ambivalent). And that’s good, in some respects, because it means of all the good deeds that need doing, at least some of them may get done. Because there’s always somebody promising something to those who believe in something enough to do something stupid about it. And usually, the feed doer doesn’t find out too soon that the eternal reward promised isn’t as advertised. But by then, for better or worse, the good happens.

But it doesn’t last. Because good, when not done just for its own sake, with no attachment to the results, and absolutely no personal gain in the achievement, takes a lot of energy to sustain. Chasing after an elusive jackpot celestial lottery gets tiring, and what was once a glowing, white hot burning flame of righteousness becomes a dying ember, fading in the last few moments of encroaching twilight. The good you must do becomes the good you may do. The good you may do leads to the good you can do. The good you can do melts away into the good you should do, which is worn to the good you don’t to, which slinks off in the dark as the good you won’t do.

Like compliance with a standard, a good that stays on the floor when it could be the ceiling is like the good people who do nothing, letting evil thrive and deepen. How good is that?

It’s not really about morality or ethics, is it? After all, most of the most obvious guides to self-preservation, like “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” or “every cause has an effect which is itself a cause,” don’t need sophisticated theology or sociology to explain them. They are in fact, self-evident. You just have to know where to look, and how far back toward the beginning to start. Give it a little time. You’ll get it. Anyone can. Anyone who tried getting out of their own way does.

Who are the “good guys”? Look for the ones not taking credit.

18 APR 2025

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