reflection

Today I must look in the mirror and be thankful for the person who I find staring back at me. For although the reflection is terribly imperfect, and I know that full well, God created it with enough room that one day it would be perfect. And if there is nothing else I can find to be thankful for, let me begin here.

Me, well, there is meaning to the work and things I've done. But I never started an exercise revolution. I never became controversial because of my political beliefs. I don't believe I've affected change on a grand scale. I think I made a contribution. I know I've made people laugh. Through characters I have played, I've certainly allowed people to access their own expression of sadness or remorse, anger or disappointment. I've always believed that being an actor is a great service job. And I am of service. But it's just a job. So much of the glitz and fame, I can't even remember. I have blank spots where spotlights have been. It's easier for me to remember the ordinary goings-on of my life, because that's what my life is most of the time. It's just a life. Mine, like yours, has moaned and groaned. Stretched and turned. Sometimes good, oftentimes bad. People up and gone, love found and thrown away. Many moments make up a life. I am surprised by how many of my fame moments are blank spots. The volume turned down. Fame wants to turn up the volume on everything. It wears me out and intrudes on my need for solitude.

Pegi just recorded "I Don't Want to Talk About," written by Danny Whitten, the original Crazy Horse guitar player and singer who's all over Early Daze, an album of songs from the beginning of Crazy Horse that I have been working on compiling recently. Danny was every bit the artist I am, but he died of a heroin OD in the early seventies. Every time I hear Pegi sing that song, it makes me tremendously sad. She sings it so beautifully, phrasing it to break my heart. She does it justice. You can see I have some unfinished business with Danny.

I remember making that vow, the one not to forget. Not to remember what happened, but to remember who I was and how I felt.

Odd as it may seem, I am my remembering self, and the experiencing self, who does my living, is like a stranger to me.

Maybe to have a memory you need time for reflection, however brief, just to let the memory find a place to settle.

I may appear to suffer from some sort of compulsive repetition syndrome, but these rituals are important to me. I have many places where I sit and think, __ have been here before, I am here now, and I will be here again._ Sometimes, lost in reverie, I remember myself approaching across the same green, or down the same footpath, in 1962 or 1983, or many other times. Sometimes Chaz comes along on my rituals, but just as often I go alone. Sometimes Chaz will say she__ going shopping, or visiting a friend, or just staying in the room and reading in bed. __hy don__ you go and touch your bases?_ she__l ask me. I know she sympathizes. These secret visits are a way for me to measure the wheel of the years and my passage through life. Sometimes on this voyage through life we need to sit on the deck and regard the waves.

It__ okay to have differences, to not be like everyone else around you. It doesn__ make you weaker or less worthy than anyone else that might appear normal. It is what it is. You__e just different. At the end of the day, we all want the exact same things in life and I think Isabelle and I are living proof of that.

The purest form of thanksgiving unto God is a reflected in our knowledge and understanding about who He is, not what we receive from Him! Thanksgiving is a continuous celebration of God's awesome nature and Supreme Being!

Live in the shadow of the moon until you're bright enough to give birth to your own suns.

Pick the weeds and keep the flowers.

Choose your friends carefully. They are a reflection of you.

I think this is one bad side of a mirror; it helps us to see the reflection of the effects of our own actions on ourselves. We smile and it smiles back to us, we frown and it frowns to us. How I wish it shows us the reflections of the effects of our actions on other people as well so that we will be conscious!

Thoughts turn to other's just a little more this time of year. Days grow shorter and memories grow longer. Families and friends gather in celebration or hope. Giving is a reflection of our love and caring for each other and those less fortunate. May your thoughts turn to gratitude this holiday season and carry on throughout the next year_

Your friends are a reflection of you.

There is nothing to fearFrom your reflection

Everything is reflected in both - outside (out there) and inside (in here) - marvel at it, experience, learn. The personal is also the universal, and the universal is also the personal.

People like us, we think differently, don't we? We are different. We do all the things that others do. But when it comes down to it, we don't need anyone else. We're happy doing what we do and having obligation interferes with that. And sometimes I think we don't even need ourselves. What's most important is to find out whether we're right or not.