What Moves You?

Monica Is Moved By…Love Dance

I was at an American Legion dinner (in West Virginia) on New Year’s Eve.  There was a country band playing and my husband and I were just down the table from a very elderly couple.  I don’t know what song started to play, but the gave each other a meaningful look, got up simultaneously, and he led her to the dance floor.  They spent that entire song and several more lovingly in each other’s arms -  never looking at their feet …

Charlotte Is Moved By…The Journey Back From Alcoholism, A Gospel Choir, and An Old Man Named Ed

Many such moments are very personal - maybe too much so - to share.  Here are mine. You decide:

My second son’s brave and funny, heart breaking, heart healing journey back from alcoholism.  He’s 4 years sober now, building a life that gives him joy and self-respect

The singing of the choir in my old church- a genuine Black gospel choir, singing from the soles of their feet up.  They worshiped- and I worshiped with them.  I miss them.

An old man named Ed, playing old humans, softly, on a jazz saxophone.

There you are.  Thanks for jogging my thoughts.

Will Is Moved By…The Miracle of His Daughter, Lucy

Lucy was born with a congenital heart defect that required open heart surgery to correct. At four days old, she triumphed over more than most grown men ever face when doctors opened her chest, removed her heart, repaired it, and placed it back inside her. In the two years since, she’s grown into the strongest, most beautiful little girl.

Still, I can’t help but see a shadow of the frail, broken-hearted baby every time I look at her. Her strength, and the realization of how very close we came to never knowing her, moves me.

Doug Is Moved By…No One

I just love the morning light at this time of year,
it’s so warm colored, orange, red
and if I head up over the coastal range before the sun
makes it over the hills in the east bay
then the slant of the sun hits the surface of the water
at Crystal Springs in such a way that it appears to be a huge misty mirror.
It only lasts a short time before the air warms up
and the local fog dissipates,
but those brief moments are pure magic.
Well I know the magic goes on moment
to moment but it’s so easy to get caught
up in temporary beauty and linger in the memory.

I don’t know how many times
I’ve slipped through that black hole
in the center of the galaxy,
center of self
and as you slip closer, objects
become more solid and you begin to get lost
in the illusion that the feeling of connectedness
is bound with the objects you share space with
until you collapse upon yourself into the long dark hallway.
From here you can hear the voices on the other side in the other room.
And you can hear them, but even your voice can’t escape the intense gravitational pull.
But I’m beginning to feel that the center of that hallway is where I belong?
That maybe it’s the pull of nearby stars that gets me lost in an orbit not my own?

We go where the horse’s head is pointed but I’m not sure whose hands are holding the reins?

And I don’t know why I’m here now writing a love letter to the universe,
whispering words that fall from my lips like lead.
you hear them thump into earth like asteroids
daring to enter her atmosphere.
But maybe that is what I do?
I speak to no one.

Karon Is Moved By…Earth & Sky

The incredible landscape of the southwest and the ever changing skies and the intensity of the sunsets here take my breath away.  When caught up in daily minutia and I suddenly get a glimpse of the red orange sunset as I’m driving down the highway, I am so taken and lost in its beauty that I forget all the little stuff, forget the crap, the worries, the fear and am moved and filled with joy at the greatness of this earth and sky.

Berthold Is Moved By…The Internet

It’s not so much just one particular site or topic or person. It’s the fact that through sharing our ideas and knowledge, our mistakes and fears and our wishes and dreams with the world we connect in a way that was not possible before.

It’s no longer happening on the other side of the country, the continent or the planet. It’s happening on our desks, in our homes and in our hearts and minds. Incredible joy and incredible sadness, both just a click of the mouse away. Lives ruined and saved, 24 hours around the clock. All part of a new, global consciousness. All there for us to learn from and interact with everybody else.

Joint efforts to solve problems we wouldn’t even have known about 30, 20, even 10 years ago. That we wouldn’t have been made aware off by the mainstream media because these are not sensations, these are real people. Real people with eyes and ears and hearts everywhere. People who can change the world, one problem at a time. Who are free to take matters in their own hands.

It’s no more us and them. It’s just us.

Ricardo Is Moved By…Living the Moment

I am a curious guy, I have been all my life, so I like to try new things, and normally I have a lot of fun doing it. I like to put my heart in all the things I do without violating my principles (honesty, respect for others and reliability), and without worrying to much about the future. Being this way thing have always turned for the best.

Aurora Is Moved By…Human Touch

I am moved by endless things, but the most powerful, I would have to say is skin to skin contact.  I love to touch and be touched.  It is a connection so deep that it can make some people uncomfortable.  It brings me back to the sentiments of intimacy and the bare minimum.  If we are naked with no possessions, we can still touch and feel. Touch can be a beautiful intimate moment with no indication of anything other than the fact that we all possess a life force beneath our skin that longs for more closeness than achievable in our bodies.

Scott Is Moved By…The Divine

There are moments when I feel the divine.  The soft fur on the bottom of a cat’s back paws.  The repetitive crack of bat hitting ball in batting practice, children yelling on a distant school playground.  A saxophonist holds a note low, creating new life with his own life breath. 

I only feel tied into humanity, to compassion, by a desire to serve something greater than myself.  The light of people, come together, casting aside differences to celebrate and fight for what they hold in common as human beings.  Without that, I have no purpose.

—excerpt from my unpublished novel, Smugglers Rising

Malena Is Moved By…Tetslaff Tchaikovsky’s Performance

I was moved by the last movement of the Tchaikovsky’s violin Concerto played by Christian Tetzlaff with the San Francisco Symphony in March 2010. It was the best interpretation I have heard in years, took my breath away and I felt like waking on air.

Unfortunately it was  a live concert at the San Francisco symphony and they didn’t record it, but here is a version by Perlman:

Carolyn Is Moved By….Knowing That It Is The Effort, Not The Talent

There is nothing as significant as effort. It never fails, never. I am moved by those who understand that.

Lamiatopia Is Moved By…the Knowledge She’ll Die Someday

What moves me is the thought that someday I’ll die and be forgotten. The thought that I’ll leave this life just as I’ve came to it. I believe that the only way to reach immortality is by leaving a legacy strong enough to survive the test of time. What moves me? The quest for immortality…

Jim Is Moved By…His 4-Year-Old’s Compassion

My son is 4 years old and just one bundle of energy from the time he gets up in the morning until he goes to sleep at night.  A kid that has a hard time sitting still for more than a few minutes and is just constantly on the go and exploring the outdoors and what makes things tick.  And he is very high strung, stubborn, and strong willed… often to the chagrin of my wife and I.  However, there are times when I will see him interacting with a baby at the daycare and he will make sure they are comfortable, bring him/her toys, and just sit down and play with them in the most gentlest of manners that completely belies his usual frantic state.  It is in these moments, seeing that he somehow understands the need to care and be careful, that I feel moved.

Scott Is Moved By…His Own Death

I know this sounds morbidly strange but when I’m bored or frustrated or out of sorts, thinking about dying has a surprisingly positive effect on me. When I realize I will die someday, and try to visualize it, imagining the notion this will all be over, my senses vibrate in a way I can’t explain. It’s a crapshoot to be alive at all, and here I am, born at a time and place where I have a million choices, I can read any book, see any movie, visit any art, make, do and feel more things than 99% of all humans that have ever lived, it’s all there waiting for me, right NOW. Confronting the notion of the end of my own life, as far away as I’d like that to be, is one of my most reliable ways to feel moved in the present. To sit and watch TV or wallow in my own hubristic complaints seems unbelievably dumb. And I don’t like to feel dumb. 

Kafka wrote “The meaning of life is that it ends”. Every one of my choices matter because I won’t have them forever.  Jim Morrision said “I want to get my kicks in before the whole shithouse goes up in flames” and Horace wrote Carpe Diem! If I’m not getting what I want out of my life while I’m alive, or giving to those in need or who I care about before I kick the bucket, when the fuck do I expect to do it?

So there it is. I confess, I’m moved by the idea of my own death. I want to die regret free and the thought of confronting my last moments and having to justify being bored with my own life to myself as  I die compels me to make, and passionately appreciate, the choices I make in the now.