After The Rain ...

Venice is so so so pretty after a good rain. The colors are as crisp as the air, and it looks like everything has just had a thorough scrub down. It's a bit like the feeling of regrouping after a good, long cry.

Which is needed sometimes, as much as the rain. Things always look brighter after both (Just stay out of the water for a couple of days!).

"After the rain, the sun will reappear. There is life. After the pain, the joy will still be here."
                                                            - Walt Disney


Yep. The joy is still here!

Gratitude In The City Of Angels

We all talk a lot about gratitude at this time of the year, and as Thanksgiving is coming right up, that's great. It's so much more than a word to toss around, though. When you truly feel it, it's super powerful, and as a guru lady on the beach once told me ... "Gratitude is the glory." That is truth right there.

I missed out on a bunch of fun things over the weekend, because last week I woke up on Thursday with my face so swollen it was deformed. It was painful and atrocious to look at, and further reminded me why I would never be a candidate for botox or lip fillers. Yuck. Not a good look. At all. I took Benedryl. Nothing. I finally went in to Westside Walk In Clinic to see the wonderful Hannah on Friday, and though we still don't really know why this happened, my face was pretty much back to normal by the next morning. I still feel a little weird, especially as I don't exactly know what went down, but MAN, did the whole deal make me SO grateful for when everything is working and looking good. We used to see a guy in a wheelchair down on the Boardwalk all the time, and call him our "Gratitude Guru", because he was always so positive and upbeat, despite living under very trying circumstances. People let the littlest things get them down, but when you don't have your health, nothing else really matters. Nothing else can really get done. You simply cannot take it for granted.

A gratitude walk was ultra-necessary for me this morning - especially now that I felt I could go back out into the public. The sky was filled with wispy clouds resembling angels, and I felt completely full with thanks and praise for this beautiful place, and for the upswing in my health (I think). There's still a whole bunch of things that need real work in my life (housing in Venice! lots more work! cool dudes!), but the simple pleasure of not feeling pain and not looking like a total Elephant Woman made me almost click my heels together in the air as I breathed in the golden day and fresh air.

As we gear up for this busy, fun, friends and family time of celebration, let's be seriously thankful - in addition to every other good thing - for every easy step we take, every non-labored breath, and every moment that feels no pain.

To your health!

Driving Out The Snakes

This past weekend was mainly all about this. Me on a spit. 

It's been just crazy hot weather, as if we're skipping Spring altogether and jumping right into Summer. Like I jumped right into the ocean in March (earliest ever), without even flinching. It was that hot.

Which maybe contributed a bit to an overall feeling of lethargy and irritation, which was totally out of place in the bright sunshine, but still present, for some reason. I read a lot. I read a lot of disturbing things, but also a lot of good things. I was really disappointed in some people, and kind of fed up with the whole town (except for the beach). Flakes everywhere. Fakes everywhere. Users. Opportunists. Studio executives that say filthy things like, "Everyone understood because we all live in this weird thing together called Hollywood ... If we all actually were nice, it wouldn't work," and the idiots that buy into that very wrong way of thinking. Snakes, all of them.

Then you feel yourself starting to think negatively, kind of like, why bother being the nice guy if this is how people really are. Then you start seeing the world like that. Thought is very powerful. Thoughts become things. Thought manifests things, good and bad. Like walking home from the beach, this dang flower looked just like a snake.

Then going out again later and looking up to see a snake cloud.

That's when I put a halt to that fatalist way of thinking, because if you start in like that, the terrorists win. And terrorists are sometimes just terrible people that make you think terribly too. And I don't want that in my life. I want to see good things in the flowers, in the clouds, and in people. 

Re-set. Just in time for St. Patrick's Day, all the snakes have been run out of the town in my head. Happy beautiful, gorgeous Monday!