You Carry the Cure Within You

Prayer by Jim Cohn, taken from Prayers for Healing: 365 Blessings, Poems, & Meditations from Around the World

You carry the cure within you.
Everything that comes your way is blessed.
The Creator gives you one more day.
Stand on the neck of Fearful Mind.

Do not wait to open your heart.
Let yourself go into the Mystery.
Sometimes the threads have no weave.
The price of not loving yourself is high.

I Want to Thank You

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank God for the many blessings that he has given me lately.

First I want to thank God for the lawyer in that little town in North Carolina who got the charges on the traffic citation that I received dismissed.

I want to thank God for getting MCAssist to pay the hefty charges that a certain rental company would have had me pay after the accident that I had in that small town in North Carolina. And Lord, thank you for getting that company to pay all those thousands of dollars. (You and I have already had a good session about this.)

Thank you God for my daughter who brings me joy and sunshine on a daily basis.

Thank you for my new friends who come from all parts of the world. (Now I know why I had that dream eight years ago about the people speaking Russian who showed me such love and acceptance. You do work in mysterious ways.) Thank you for my Brazilian friends who have showed me magnificent acceptance, concern, and compassion.

Thank you for that more-than-needed tax return money. Phewww! Lord, You are always right on time!

Thank you for sending me the jobs that I’ve needed to support me and my daughter. I always knew that you would provide for us.

Thank you for my parents who are always there with a net and/or reassuring encouragement when I need it.

Thank you for my family in North Carolina who have wrapped their arms around us, both figuratively and literally.

Thank you for that special lady in Lebanon, Tenn. who always has our back.

Thank you for my friend Cheryl the Pearl who will be my friend for LIFE.

Thank you for the very wise counselor that I have who continues to open my eyes when I see her.

Thank you for my new church family, for their smiles, teaching, and spiritual guidance. I’m especially grateful for what they mean to my daughter who looks forward to attending the children’s program each Sunday. (Thank you for my old church family who is still lifting us up in prayer. I know because I can feel it.)

And finally God, thank you for my sanity—which I’m more and more sure about with each sunrise.

He'll Be Here Soon!

That's right! Mr. Obama will be coming to the lovely city of Charlotte in just two days! I know a sea of folks will be trying to get a glimpse of this fella, but if I'm not working, I may have to brave the crowd to get a peek.

I can't wait to vote in the North Carolina primary on May 6! Who knew that our vote would weigh so heavily in the process?

This is where he'll be this Wednesday:

Grady Cole Center
310 N. Kings Drive
Charlotte, NC 28204

Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Doors Open: 1:30 p.m.
Program Begins: 3:30 p.m.

Obama campaign confirms Charlotte visit
The Associated Press

Illinois Sen. Barack Obama will bring his Democratic presidential campaign to North Carolina this week.

A statement issued by the Obama campaign on Sunday said he would be making stops in Charlotte and Fayetteville on Wednesday.

No further details were available on Obama's visit.

The fight for delegates between Obama and New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has made North Carolina's primary a crucial stop in the 2008 presidential campaign. North Carolina and Indiana have primaries on May 6, two weeks after Pennsylvania.

Praise for the Equity Project

A Teacher’s Salary You Could Live On

If I could get one of these teaching jobs, I would seriously consider going back to NYC. I used to live just a few minutes from the location of this school anyway (in Inwood). Check out the salary—wouldn’t that be grand? I wouldn’t mind singing, “I love New York,” if I could snag this job. Kudos to the founders of the Equity Project (TEP) Charter School, the new school in Washington Heights that will pay its teachers $125,000!

Read all about it here.

Click here to visit The Equity Project (TEP) Charter School Web site.

Resting at a Cool Place

From the Odu Ifa: The Ethical Teachings

Let us not engage the world hurriedly.
Let us not grasp at the rope of wealth impatiently.
That which should be treated with mature judgment,
Let us not deal with in a state of anger.
When we arrive at a cool place,
Let us rest fully;
Let us give continuous attention to the future;
and let us give deep consideration to the consequences of things.
And this because of our (eventual) passing.

Spider: A Tangled Web of Reality and Fantasy

by Alicia Benjamin

If you want to take a look at a strange film that explores the schizophrenic mind of a man who can’t distinguish between reality and delusion, order Spider from Netflix or check it out at Blockbuster.

The film, directed by David Cronenberg, was made in 2003 and stars the very fine British actor, Ralph Fiennes, in a role that is vastly different from anything I’ve ever seen him in – and that’s saying a lot when you consider the broad range of characters that this man has played, from the evil Nazi commandant in Schindler’s List, to Jennifer Lopez’s love interest in Maid in Manhattan.

In Spider, Fiennes plays Dennis Cleg, a paranoid-schizophrenic man who has been released from a mental hospital. We discover through a series of flashbacks the extent of Dennis' illness and the level of violence that his life was before his confinement.

We, the audience, can’t quite distinguish reality from the delusions that cloud Dennis’ mind as we see the memories of his life with his mom and dad unfold on the screen. Dennis, the man, mirrors Dennis, the 13-year-old, who seems to be tormented by what he perceives as domestic anxiety and betrayal.

Did his dad actually kill his mom when she discovered the father with a neighborhood tart, or did something more tangled happen? We don’t know if Dennis’ dad is really as sinister as Dennis remembers or if his father’s obscene cruelty is just one of the delusional bits from the mentally ill son's imagination.

Spider is filled with luscious bits of acting from Fiennes, Miranda Richardson (who plays both Dennis’ mom and the foul-mouthed mistress), and Lynn Redgrave, who plays Mrs. Wilkinson, the landlord who oversees the drab and run-down halfway house where Dennis resides after his release from the mental institution.

Fiennes doesn’t talk much in the film but he mumbles brilliantly. Through his indecipherable articulations, Fiennes shows us just how warped and tortured Dennis is. You’ll find yourself laughing at some of the characters in this tragedy, but isn’t that the way life is? Even through the grimmest of times, comedy finds a way to peek through the gloom. The way Dennis scuffles and mumbles along will make you guiltily giggle a little.

Terrence, one of Dennis’ mates at the halfway house, has one of the funniest lines in the film. When Mrs. Wilkinson asks Dennis if it’s really necessary to wear four shirts all at once, Terrence answers for him: “Of course it is Madam. Clothes maketh the man. The less there is of the man, the more the need for the clothes.”

If you’re looking for a stimulating, mysterious, and slightly eerie movie, see Spider. You might not know what’s reality and what’s delusion by the end of the film, but isn’t that also true in life?

A Broken Mirror

From my daughter's book, Zen ABC:

A monk asked Hua-yen, "How does an enlightened person return to the world of delusion?" The master replied, "A broken mirror never reflects again, and the fallen flowers never go back to the old branches."

Ruby, Please Take Home the Oscar

I will be highly disappointed if this woman right here doesn't win the Oscar for her role in the film American Gangster. Ruby Dee is nominated in the Best Supporting Actress category along with Cate Blanchett, Saoirse Ronan, Amy Ryan, and Tilda Swinson.
Dee is one of America's finest actors and has paved the way for many of our country's African American artists. The level of excellence that she and her husband Ossie Davis gave to some of Spike Lee's films is phenomenal.

I respect her not only for her great acting abilities, but also for her work as an activist, and her great teaching talents. She taught me and I will never forget the lessons I learned from her.
Check out what I wrote about Ms. Dee in my personal essay titled "Listening to Nina Simone," which first appeared in The Writers Loft magazine called The Trunk:

I took a solo performance class with Ruby Dee at Hunter College in New York City. From her I learned to always have a purpose when performing or creating any type of artistic project. Ms. Dee screamed at me when I was rehearsing a piece for an upcoming show. “Speak the words!” she said. She was telling me to give it all I had. I’ve been trying to do that ever since. And I’ve got nothin’ but love for her husband, the late Ossie Davis, who would lovingly fill in for his wife and teach her class when she had other engagements. His advice about performing and the arts was always as solid as hers.

Also, read a Variety magazine article about Dee here.

Here are two interesting answers that Dee gave to the reporter:

What's your favorite film? A Raisin in the Sun
(This is, of course, one of the film's that Dee herself helped to make golden.)

What do you want in a director? "I'm an actor who appreciates direction. I respect the fact that a director has studied the text and the road map of work before us, the subtleties, interconnections, underpinnings. ... His job is to paint the entire picture and knows all the colors that have to be in it." 

Here's this master actress playing one of the best roles she had in Jungle Fever, as the mother of Gator, a strung out crack addict. As always, when she and her husband Ossie worked together, it was always a joy to behold.

George Clooney and Michael Clayton

A blog post last week by New York Times writer David Carr gives a good description of two Oscar nominees' performances and why they are both great. I've only seen pieces of Daniel Day-Lewis' performance in “There Will Be Blood” and it gave me chills. But as Carr points out in his review, George Clooney's performance in "Michael Clayton" was just as brilliant, because like Carr, I saw the character Michael Clayton when I watched the film, Clooney was gone.

In his Carpetbagger blog post in The New York Times, dated February 13, David Carr said he:

...was never able to forget while he was watching ["There Will Be Blood] that this was a Great Actor playing the Role of a Lifetime. Mr. Day-Lewis’s substantial skills — an ability to push his body and voice into something remarkable to behold — kept pulling the Bagger out of the movie. He found himself focusing on the actor’s choices and less on the story...

And then there is George Clooney. Mr. Clooney is a movie star who, like his rival in the best actor competition, happens to be a working actor, which is something we tend to forget because he has such a large footprint in the culture. He is where we store cool — Danny Ocean is just one click away from his public persona.

Nonetheless, in “Clayton” he inhabits a lowly servant to power who is constantly being pushed around by seen and unseen forces. He is a loser in a nice three-piece, a guy who traded in his ideals on the cheap and is often seen staring into the mess he has made of his life.

The trick of his performance lies in his ability to dial back his own wattage. He looks doughy, burdened and confused through much of the film, swimming through the detritus of a misbegotten life and finally finding his way. The Bagger is less impressed with his too-pat speech-making that baits the trap to bring the whole thing down and more taken with his modulation and nuance in a quietly demanding role. As a fixer, father, poker player and sibling, Mr. Clooney uses his craft to make us forget about the movie star and focus on a guy named Michael Clayton.

Both actors have already received the ultimate prize — Mr. Day-Lewis won a lead actor Oscar for his freakishly amazing turn as Christy Brown in “My Left Foot,” and Mr. Clooney won a supporting Oscar for playing Bob Barnes in “Syriana” — so there is no historical burden in making the award. The Bagger is not a clapper, but he will be cheering inside, along with everyone else, when Mr. Day-Lewis wins because he is certainly deserving. He just thinks that, in a year thick with excellence — Johnny Depp, Viggo Mortensen and Tommy Lee Jones have their own legitimate claims — the performance that will stay with him belongs to Mr. Clooney.

Final Cut Pro (Not Yet)

I shot some footage yesterday for my first short film. It's amazing how ideas can come to you when you're on a tight schedule and don't have much resources. I spotted some shots that fit the theme of my project (well, even if they don't fit perfectly, I'll make them fit some kinda way). I was in two of my favorite get away places in North Carolina that have spoken to me in the past and spoke to me yesterday as I passed by them. I made a makeshift dolly for one sequence (Lord, please make the shot come out OK).

My first lesson on Final Cut Pro (an editing system) was almost overwhelming, but I've decided to take it one step at a time and get extra help (from somebody!) if I need it--who am I kidding, I already know that I'll need it. My first project will be less than 5 minutes long, but I can see myself spending hours just editing it.

Here are some of the terms I learned from our instructor (an ace editor herself).

"in" point and "out" point
playhead
sequence
rendering
undo (this command is priceless and a life saver)
digitize the footage
video clip
audio clip
batch caputre
log footage
transitions (there are many of these, including the cross dissolve, fade in and fade out)
"J" edit
"L" edit
video filters
color correction
image control
desaturate
crop

HELP!