42

I don’t believe, not for a second, not at all, that deprivation and suffering, for the sake of deprivation and suffering, makes people good. In other words an ascetic life – not merely ascetic but one which is stripped of pleasure – is a wasted life.

To be given and granted all that is desired without exchange is equally a waste. When everything is free and easy it is meaningless, valueless.

Life is meant to be lived to its full capacity. It should be seasoned with laughter, good food, good work, kind words, and the arms of friends. The greatest good is to live in this manner and to contribute to a world which is not mean and stingy with such things but makes them more abundant.

This is the meaning of life.

Ever vigilant in internal dialogue … set your guards against the enemies of this life.

Bill Radawec: Into the Blue

Bill Radawec: Out of the Blue

Statement on Bill Radawec's Website

Bill Radawec Website

Bill's Facebook Page

I have come recently to believe that it’s more important to live an interesting and engaged life than it is to live a “happy” life. It occurs to me that these two conditions are sometimes in opposition to one another. An interested person is awake, aware, eyes are open, a state that doesn’t always make for happiness.

I moved to Cleveland in January 2001 and thus I came to know its strange energy. A tension of opposing identities, on the one hand, rich and replete with possibilities, on the other, shrouded in a veil of self-doubt. Cleveland is a place in transition and it rests rather uncomfortably in this liminal space. It waits still to know what it will become next.

Within this clear medium of Cleveland’s particular time and place are suspended defining moments of intensity. From opening to opening, from event to event, I have made my way. Again and again, I would see him, meet him, be introduced, and reintroduced to him. Eternally coming to know, never knowing, never coming close – ever the thought “sometime in the future …”

Un temps perdu.

What I can tell you about Bill that I do know? That he exuded energy in every meeting. Smiles beamed forth and some spark radiated from within him. He seemed both happy and interested. An anomaly within the world for there was no doubt, from seeing his work, that he was thinking, thinking, thinking, and to this uniqueness he added an even rarer condition when he married Ibojka. He became, clearly, a happily married man. The two of them together magnified and redoubled the energy that had been Bill’s alone. There was a joy between them.

Ibojka and Bill, together, moved through the world filled with the wonder of discovery. It was a way of living the two of them carried through what became Bill’s final illness. Ibojka and Bill let the world into their lives with an unimaginable generosity, sharing this most intimate part of themselves.

We know, don’t we, that we all have times like these to come, and in their generosity they have shown us how to do it best, with joy, love, and grace.

Cleveland is going to miss Bill Radawec.

Bill Radawec passed away on July 5/6, 2011

happiness ...

some part of being happy is giving oneself the permission to be happy.

happy is maybe not the most satisfying state to live in.

it is more important to be interested i think.

yearning to be free

Tangled Webs by James Stewart


We are free.

Free to choose, to act.

Free to decide where we will put our energies, what we will sow and to some degree, what we will reap.

It seems sometimes that our culture has lost any sense of ethic. Lying … and it doesn’t seem to matter if someone knows that you’re lying … as a way to manipulate situations and people … has become a matter of course … and next to that as strategies are anger and manufactured drama.

How do we shift this?

Personally … I have chosen to eliminate those who regularly lie as a strategy of control from my life. The only thing I can do is to choose not to participate.

thank you Mr. Cave ...

Harry and Herminone: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 - O Children by Nick Cave



There’s something potent about this song and it was genius on the HPDH1 director’s part to give it to this scene. It at once embodies the promise of youth – beautiful, strong, alive – married to the inevitability of loss and gain. The song is poignant and thrilling … It sounds like being in love.

Ignorant, arrogant beautiful youth – it possesses us still – even those of us left on this rocky crag and lost to its breathlessness.

the use of cheesy movies ...

I love cheesy, escapist fantasy movies. They shelter my soul and embedded within them is the ancient wisdom of all our cultures and to prove it here's a quote from a cheesy movie that I doubt I'll ever watch but the trailer had this ...

"I'm not here to save you. I'm the main character of my life." - Daydream Nation.

And it's true ...