Sitting here watching "A Tale of Two Johns," it hits me squarely that due to some unnamed fear, most of the pleasures I have derived from life seem to have been left behind as little capsules of memory. As though my existence is a small boat floating downstream on a river populated with a huge variety of fish. Every so often, my line gets a tug and I reel one in. Delighted, I look over the fish, mesmerized by color or size or design, marveling at how the world could create this fish. And, then, driven by some indescribable need, I unhook the fish and let it slip back into the river.

There's a treasure trove of interests strewn across the paths I have journeyed. Some that I grew out of -- The Electric Company -- but many that I let go of for no reason than to avoid become too deeply involved -- the piano.

I was introduced to They Might Be Giants the summer of 1989 -- right before they gained some national traction, according to this documentary -- in Boston by a roommate from Philly. The music was entrancing: light, witty, melodic, harmonic, discordant, subversive. I held onto that feeling and interest for about a year and then let it go when they got larger.

Yet it still entertains and delights me, so why the catch and release? It's time to inventory the fish past and seek to hook some once again. A time to take a stand on the things that transport me and accept who I am because of them not in spite of them.

Overflowing with kinetic, crazed energy brought on by a surge of creative ingenuity (not mine).

So often people trudge, or walk or stomp or slip, through the daily tasks and obligations of living that they don't stop and consider ideas larger than themselves, their family, their town, their job.

It is the interaction with a creative endeavor -- be it a painting, a book, a movie, a song -- that, if one pays enough attention and expands the mind's exploration, can jump start your brain. Your heart races, you have an uncontrollable desire to share this overwhelming sense of understanding, joy, comprehension, knowledge with someone else.

To commune with another person on this realization that there is something interesting about human existence that goes beyond the task-oriented, evolution-focused lives of plants. That if we can be open, honest, caring, sincere, straightforward and loving there is something larger, more powerful, surging that can accompany us on the journey.

And that is what a movie has done for me this evening. It doesn't matter which, it matters more why and what. Sometimes daily routine blocks an attempt to sit and think and focus on a movie, book, painting, speech, idea for fear of the energy that will be sapped from interacting with that creative force and the effort required to consider.

But we forget that often it is the very effort of giving ourselves to an idea, experience or other person that returns the most energy.

Go out and interact. You'll feel better, I promise.

Shoephoria

one's feet experiencing a feeling of well-being or elation as a result of shoes worn/'shü'fOr-E-&/ [noun]

Standing in Macy's flagship store in Herald Square unexpectedly in the middle of a very advantageous sale event (around 35% off), the shoe department called out. With only a pair of casual black shoes and a pair of dress brown shoes, my foot fashion was severely limited. Searching out a pair of casual brown shoes, the ease, price and selection drove me to consider adding a pair of dress black shoes to the fleet.

Now, the new brown shoes were definitely comfy, and the black ones shorn at the time were okay but nowhere approaching new faves. So, setting out in search off nice black shoes I found myself surrounded by a mix of mostly way-too-fashion-forward-for-my-comfort and weren't-those-carried-by-Buster-Brown shoes. Until one pair called out to me: traditional, well made, yet carrying a certain sense of style.

Slipping on each shoe, I immediately sensed the difference, as though the shoes had been personally crafted for my feet. Only when I had worn my dress brown shoes (an expensive purchase) had I felt this feeling. As though cushioned by a cloud and wrapped in warm cloth, akin to digging your toes into freshly cut grass on a warm spring day, there was a sense of rightness in the world, luxurious goodness for my feet and confidence in my choice of footwear (a rare occurrence).

This was shoephoria. And then I learned a valuable fact about shoephoria: it has a transitive property. That's right. Convinced with the purchase of these new shoes, I put my plain casual black shoes back on and felt a strong echo of the shoephoria. These shoes, that minutes before had felt okay, but made there presence known, now contributed a sense of sheer comfort and pleasure. For thirty minutes, my basic blacks carried the aura of expensive dress shoes as my feet held onto ingrained sense memory of that shoephoria. And it was great until it started fading and I found myself needing to put back on the nice pair for more shoephoria.

Forget the hard drugs, shoephoria is tough to contend with.

Well, it turns out the definition for this word "a lecture or discourse on or of a moral theme" wasn't quite what I imagined. Striving for the post heading (the convention shall be a single word), my definition -- the use of simple story through metaphor to illuminate a moral lesson -- was a bit astray from that claimed by the Church -- "a commentary... the aim being to explain the literal, and evolve the spiritual, meaning of the Sacred Text..." (link).

Still, it is adequate enough for this musing. A question as to why humanity (for I speak for the trees) tends to set aside the simple explanation for the more grandiose, complicated version of the why and wherefore. Hell, Ockham's Razor would seem to point to us that when choosing between two similar theories, choose the simpler one (love that Wikipedia). And yet, it would seem that with simplicity comes a great unease that, with all the brain power evolution has bestowed upon us, an answer could be arrived at with so little strife. That comprehension can take little effort.

Most people (since I speak for the trees) spend a lifetime seeking meaning and purpose for existence. Searching for that one immense thing that they were put down here to accomplish, and I am in this club. But what if we are here simply to exist, interact and enrich? And be good to each other.

And that's where a show like Joan of Arcadia can struggle...against the irony of the times. Granted, shows like Seventh Heaven and Touched by an Angel can make the path difficult: platitudes fed with sugary sweet coatings that strike a little discordant. But Joan of Arcadia is messy, with wrong decisions and uneasy answers to commonplace issues and experiences.

Forget that there is a television show at the heart of this ponder -- that is just my muse of choice today -- and remember that sometimes the answer is simple, sometimes it feels easy. Because sometimes the simplest answer is the most difficult to implement because it is so obvious.

Just be nice to people and think before you act/speak. I try to.

It rained for bits yesterday and today. Frankly, I wasn't sure what it was when the pitter patter began last night. There really isn't much rain here.

There was a light, fresh, cool breeze filling the living room through the slats of the windows. Almost as though gravity was being reduced in my vicinity. This street tends to be quiet most of the time, but the rain gave it a deserted sound.

Cars scatter when it rains because people don't have the experience of driving in it. So the sky was full of rain drops, and there was room between them -- it was as though the rain was creating a map of the world like the green text in The Matrix. So I sat and listened, enveloped in this sense of isolation and contentment. And that's when I remembered.

Memory is funny, you tend to notice what you miss more than what is around you constantly. And rain is rare enough now that I miss it. When I was little, my favorite rain was summer camp rain. Now, it did suck when it rained for several days in a row, but once or twice during the summer there would be a tropical storm. The clouds would circle, the sky darken, the temperature drop twenty degrees and the wind start moving through the trees and around the cabins.

We would sit in our bunks, reading books and comics, playing games, as large raindrops descended upon us. Bouncing off the cabin roofs, filling the garbage cans scattered among the grounds, hitting the equipment shack by the baseball field. And everything would be quiet but for the large drops making contact with us, for the quality of light changed. Moved us from the everyday to the in-between: a hazy, glazy, lazy time when we would enjoy peaceful, relaxed existence. Even the air tasted better during a tropical storm.

It was the quality of enjoying other people, quietly and slowly, pushed out of the impatient, rushing, volatile stream of daily life.

I miss that. But every once in a while it rains. And I remember.

It's simply a question.

When I was little, I would ask it repeatedly in response to answers, desperately hoping that at some point it would help me uncover a universal truth.

It didn't. Well, except that cold pizza eaten the next day tastes better without refrigeration.

And that's the point. Ultimately there is no answer to the question. Some people choose to shoot back with "Why not?" but I find that to be unsound. It begs a question back to the inquiring mind.

So, I simply say "because." No uppercase, no exclamation, no ellipses. To anyone who might question why anyone else has a right to put a stake in the ground, to put thought down to electron, to share what should most likely be a private diary entry, I rejoin "because."

I choose to share some thoughts, feelings, observations, sometimes witty commentary. You choose to read it, or not.

Why? Because.