I'm not depressed but I worry I'll get to the end of my life feeling I haven't done all I wanted to do.

I posted this on Instagram & received awed replies commenting on my signed copy of the 'Before Sunset' script; alas, I'd just found it online (gratefully).

Before Sunset

By Julie Delpy, Ethan Hawke, Richard Linklater

Earlier this year, I re-watched two-thirds of the "Before" trilogy. I held out on re-watching the third because I didn't want to be sad!, instead seeking the optimism of the first two. 

As expected, 'Before Sunset' again induced sweeping heart feels. I think it is a near perfect film, with the most perfect ending. (Nina Simone's 'Just In Time' may very well be in my top 10 songs of all time—because of this film.)

Now that I'm of the same age of Jesse and Celine, with more experience, the film is more resonant and relatable. I reveled in their romance and dialogue!

Jesse

Definitely. Are you depressed now?

Celine

No. I'm not depressed but I worry I'll get to the end of my life feeling I haven't done all I wanted to do.

Jesse

What do you want to do?

Celine

I mean I want to paint, write more songs, learn Chinese, play my guitar each day. There are so many things that I want to do, and I end up doing not much.

He laughs.

Jesse

Well let me ask you this: do you believe in ghosts, or spirits?

Celine

No. 

Jesse

Do you believe in reincarnation?

Celine

Not at all.

Jesse

What about God?

Celine

No, no.

Jesse laughs. 

Celine (cont'd) 

But at the same time, I don't want to be one of those people that don't believe in any kind of magic.

Jesse

So you believe in Astrology.

Celine

Of course! I mean, you're a Scorpio, I'm a Sag, we get along. No. There's that Einstein quote that if you don't believe in any kind of magic or mystery, you're as good as dead.

Jesse

Yeah, I've always felt there was some kind of mystical core to the universe. But I don't believe that me, my personality, has any permanent place here. And the more I believe that, the more I can't go through life and think "This is no big deal." This is it. What do you see? What do you feel? What do you think is funny? Every day is the last.

What do you love? If you get close to what you love, who you are is revealed to you and it expands.

Give yourself permission to be creative

By Ethan Hawke

A gem-filled, inspired ten-minute TED talk on creativity by the one and only Ethan Hawke.

"What do you love? If you get close to what you love, who you are is revealed to you and it expands."

On soft Spring nights I'll stand in the yard under the stars -- Something good will come out of all things yet And it will be golden and eternal just like that -- There's no need to say another word.

there are so many interesting covers of this one

Big Sur*

By Jack Kerouac, narrated by Ethan Hawke

I started this blog with Jack Kerouac, read The Dharma Bums in 2013, and then left Kerouac alone for a while—at times seeking inspiration from his haikus with blues, but otherwise favoring other writers.

Then in October, the New York Times mentioned a new audio release of Big Sur, narrated by Ethan Hawke (!). With my love for him not having faded in the least—absolutely expanding, in fact—this felt like a good way to re-engage with Kerouac.

There's a raspy—sometimes weary + wistful, sometimes charged + energetic—characteristic to Ethan's voice that serves as the perfect conduit for Kerouac's spontaneous prose, and for this heartrending autobiographical novel in particular. Ethan's telling carried me through this reading. There are such moments, especially, where the slightest shift in his tone during a sentence, or a word even, made all the difference to the language and deepened its punch. 

“Ah, life is a gate, a way, a path to Paradise anyway, why not live for fun and joy and love or some sort of girl by a fireside, why not go to your desire and LAUGH . . . but I ran away from that seashore and never came back again without that secret knowledge: that it didn't want me there, that I was a fool to sit there in the first place, the sea has its waves, the man has his fireside, period.”

(Chapter 9)

"But in the morning (and I'm no Milarepa who could also sit naked in the snow and was seen flying on one occasion) here comes Ron Blake back with Pat McLear and Pat's wife the beautiful one, and by God their little sweet five year old girl who is such a pleasant sight to see as she goes jongling and jiggling through the fields to look for flowers, everything to her is perfectly new beautiful primordial Garden of Eden morning here in this tortured human canyon -- And a rather beautiful morning develops -- There's fog so we close the blinds and light the fire and the lamp, me and Pat, and sit there drinking from the jug he brought talking about literature and poetry while his wife listens and occasionally gets up to heat more coffee and tea or goes out to play with Ron and the little girl -- Pat and I are in a serious talkative mood and I feel that lonely shiver in my chest which always warns me: you actually love people and you're glad Pat is here."

(Chapter 23)

"But that's my relationship with Evelyn, we're real pals and we can kid about anything even the first night I met her in Denver in 1947 when we danced and Cody watched anxiously, a kind of romantic pair in fact and I shudder sometimes to think of all that stellar mystery of how she IS going to get me in a future lifetime, wow -- And I seriously do believe that will be my salvation, too. A long way to go."

(Chapter 24)

"...It's blue dusk all up and down the California world -- Frisco glitters up ahead -- Our radio plays rhythm and blues as we pass the joint back and forth in jutjawed silence both looking ahead with big private thoughts now so vast we cant communicate them any more and if we tried it would take a million years and a billion books -- Too late, too late, the history of everything we've seen together and separately has become a library in itselt -- me shelves pile higher -- They're full of misty documents or documents of the Mist -- The mind has convoluted in every tuckaway every-whichaway tuckered hole till there's no more the expressing of our latest thoughts let alone old -- Mighty genius of the mind Cody whom I announce as the greatest writer the world will ever know if he ever gets down to writing again like he did earlier -- It's so enormous we both sit here sighing in fact -- "No the only writing I done, " he says, "a few letters to Willamine, in fact quite a few, she's got em all wrapped in ribbons there, I figgered if I tried to write a book or sumptin or prose or sumptin they'd just take it away from me when I left so I wrote her "bout three letters a week for two years -- and the trouble of course and as I say and you've heard a million times is the mind flows the mind rises and nobody can by any possible c- oh hell, I dont wanta talk about it" -- Besides I can see from glancing at him that becoming a writer holds no interest for him because life is so holy for him there's no need to do anything but live it, writing's just an afterthought or a scratch anyway at the surface -- But if he could! if he would! there I am riding in California miles away from home where my poor cat's buried and my mother grieves and that's what I'm thinking. It always makes me proud to love the world somehow -- Hate's so easy compared -- But here I go flattering myself helling headbent to the silliest hate I ever had."

(Chapter 25)

"...Monsanto will say "That's all there is to it, take it easy, everything's okay, don't take things too serious, it's bad enough as it is without you going the deep end over imaginary conceptions just like you always said yourself -- I'll get my ticket and say goodbye on a flower day and leave all San Francisco behind and go back home across autumn America and it'll all be like it was in the beginning -- Simple golden eternity blessing all -- Nothing ever happened -- Not even this -- St Carolyn by the Sea will go on being golden one way or the other... The little boy will grow up and be a great man... There'll be farewells and smiles -- My mother'll be waiting for me glad -- The corner of the yard where Tyke is buried will be a new and fragrant shrine making my home more homelike somehow -- On soft Spring nights I'll stand in the yard under the stars -- Something good will come out of all things yet And it will be golden and eternal just like that -- There's no need to say another word." 

(Chapter 38) 

*Looks like someone posted the novel online & I hope it's OK to link it here! Keeps my transcriptions accurate, too.

There's always an opportunity to return to center.

courtesy of Nerdist

Nerdist Podcast Episode 625: Ethan Hawke

I listened to this interview last Sunday for the 4th time (now for the 5th as I write); it's an interview I return to again and again because I relate to it so deeply! It validates many of my thoughts. Ethan Hawke is smart, sensitive, wise. Plus, he also loves James Baldwin and John Steinbeck.

At the time I last wrote I had just returned to New York City and felt optimistic about all of the wonderful things that were beginning to emerge in my life. But life hasn't been without challenges, and how they've affected me has taken me by surprise—even though I thought I'd strengthened plenty over the prior months:

• the excitement of a new role beginning to wear off and facing the challenges that come with being in a leadership position (impostor syndrome...HUGE). Also, trying to feel like my best self in the workplace
• being in a new, exciting relationship (my first) with someone I adore; navigating its many ups but also the downs
• coming to terms with the evolution of my friendships and more closely evaluating the ones I have, for better or worse
• my father disconnecting (again)
• the process of finding and moving into my first apartment and discovering what it means to make a home just for myself from scratch (a longtime dream come true but definitely not an easy, or cheap, or quick process)
• the consequences of saying yes to exactly what you'd asked of the Universe, only to learn what you asked for and received wasn't what you needed or wanted. Then, having to take back yeses. In sum: learning the necessary difficulty and bravery of saying NO
• losing love for self in waves

Amidst these happenings, I lost my sense of self and, particularly in the last week and a half or so, I've had to remember: I am who I am, and I love who I am, and I'm proud of who I am. I will forget this again, no doubt. But I feel with each occurrence I become better about returning to center.

There are so many gems I'm eliminating from this interview that I may come back and add in the future. For now, a few quotes that spark my favorite parts of their conversation:

On the best of life:
"It's just the minutiae of life that's wonderful...the good stuff is waking up in the morning. The good stuff is the stuff that's free. It always is."
17:45

On recognizing your flaws, moving forward:
"There's always an opportunity to return to center."
22:10

On being young, not living in the past, and what Hawke would say to his younger self:
"You don't want to lacerate yourself or aggrandize yourself too much."
22:16
"I would just tell myself to relax."
23:35

On what led his mom to being her happiest in her early 60s:
"Part of that transition for her was learning to like herself on her own terms. And the second that transition happened, forgiving herself for the things she was disappointed in herself about."
26:01

On Dead Poets Society:
"What that whole movie is about is finding your voice and letting your voice be heard despite the great pull of the Universe towards everybody being the same and the great applause for mediocrity that happens all the time."
41:40