Leaving Just Ain't Fun

I am writing from my sister's home in Anniston AL, this sleepy town is where she makes her home with her husband Bill and two beautiful kids...and now...my 3 rug rats...

I came up to spend the weekend with them and had a blast with them attending their soccer game (we lost 3-2) Diego almost scored...Anthony, well it's slowly coming to him...now I must leave on my 5 hour drive back to Charlotte and 10 minutes into my drive I will miss them like crazy...as I type, my sister is working with Victoria in teaching her Spanish...it is really cute...

there is no point to tonight's post, no anecdote, no application for me...only an entry to remind me every time I read this post next week just how much I love them right now, how much I treasure them and how much it sucks to be away from them...having said this...here with my sis is the best place on earth for them to be at right now...so now to quote Jude Cole..."Start the car...gotta move..."

My Silent Hero

I often speak of my guitar heroes, my favorite movie directors, my favorite epic figures and those who I feel have shaped the world and humanity for the better...the ones who have stood up to adversity and said "I will not go quietly"...those who inspired others to follow and make history. These days though my hero has a different face...these days my hero is someone who has been there next to me all of my life...my hero is a woman very close to me who made room for 5 were before there were 2...my hero is my sister. My sister answered a call to love and care for my children when they needed a mother in their life...she goes to school, cares for her 2 beautiful kids, and yet finds the strength and energy to care for mine as well while I run around the world playing television. She knew that my work demands would make it impossible for me to watch and nurture them they way they needed to be nurtured and she pleaded with me to let them go with her. Doing so was one of the hardest things that I have ever done because I knew that they would miss me on top of missing their mother not to mention the fact that I miss them like crazy. I love my little kids like nothing else in this world. I speak to them daily and go out there to see them every chance that I get...The truth is that children need a mother and in the darkest of times my sister became a beacon of light for my future...and a pair of arms to hold my little treasures tight and kiss them when it's time for bed... For this I will never be able to repay her, but only to be in her debt forever...I love you Karin, you are my sister and my hero and I'm thinking of you tonight.

~...and then you know why you did...

Just when I think I've got life all figured out, a new curve ball the size of a watermelon hits me between the eyes and I wake up 2 hours later with a headache and an epiphony...what if you finally realize that its not just a streak, all of you, all along your heart was simply stubborn...no! beyond stubborn?? and once a long time ago you fell in love...? what if the day came along when you were suppossed to let go, but you did not?...what if spring, winter, summers, and falls rolled by...many times...and your heart still held on?

What if you found love and were devoted, commited and respectful, but that memory was always on the fringe...like that alarm clock in the empty hotel room next to yours...it goes off and it is playing your favorite song at 5 am but there is no one in that room to shut if off...you love the song but right now is not the best time for it to go off...because as much as you'd love to indulge yourself in it...it just cannot be...but you pull that pillow really hard over your head so that some Saturday morning you can listen to it fondly without the flashback of the hotel room....what if love was like that?

What if your stubborn heart holds on year after year? what if you continue to dream of a time that might never come...? what if even in the most clear of realistic mindsets those thoughts keep you warm in the winter? ...what if they light your days when they are the darkest? what if they mend your heart when it's broken? what if????

And then the question....is it love or infatuation? why cant' I let this go..."God, if this is not of You, please take it away...I want only what You want for me and nothing less...but if this is not of You, I need for you to supernaturally take it from my heart...because I can't do it on my own...." but it never goes away...it stays there...and if you really believe in God, you must deduce that He IS answering your prayer...

So you hold on year after year, and you think of her, and you pray for her, and you make a million plans for a million days that will never come...and you write 100 songs, that she'll never hear, and wake up a hundred times to the same hundred disappointment of a hundred dreams that you were having...

But then one day the phone rings and the familiar voice on the other end of the line says things that validate every single day that you had these feelings and thought these thoughts and dreamed those dreams...for once in your life a fairy tale ending doesnt seem impossible and you have to pinch yourself to make sure that you're not dreaming AGAIN!...you just know it's gonna happen...you wait for that silly segue into lucidity but it never comes...no stranger comes up to you and for no apparent reason starts to say "wake up...wake up"...no this time the pinch hurts, and this time you REMAIN in a dreamlike state...with your eyes wide open...

You think of all the times that you thought of letting go...you thought of giving up, you thought of moving on...and you wonder why you didn't...her words fall on your heart like seeds on potting soil...you wonder why you held on...and then you know why you did...

destiny.

The only thing as stubborn as my heart.

It's not because of you, it's because of me...

I remember hearing a joke many years ago where a man opens the door for a hardcore feminist woman to which she comments..."please don't open my door just because I'm a lady..." he answers..."I did not open the door because you're a lady, I opened it because I am a gentleman...." Does it ever feel like no matter how much you give it's never enough? I am in the middle of that right now...the blame game...the rethorical questions...the feeling deep inside that you'd be better off packing it all in the car and driving west to get a job as a construction worker that clocks out at 5 pm...

I will not quit...not because I don't feel that I can make a good case for demanding repect, but because I cannot sell out my standards to those who arm chair quarterback...I will not quit because my kids deserve better... Mr. Miyagi told Daniel Larusso..."Danielsan, never put passion before principle, even if it means...you lose". I once read on a Motley Crue album cover, When you give the world your best and the world kicks you in the teeth, give them your best anyways...

Back from Katrina/The Gulf Coast

Wow! eventful weekend to say the least...first of all, somehow our travel agent managed to get me tickets into an airport that had not reopened after the storm...so I found myself on Friday at the Charlotte airport at 5:45 AM trying to get rebooked to a different airport BUT one that had an available rental car!! it ended up being Mobile AL. As it turns out, it was all due to divine intervention...INSP was going live with a benefit on Saturday night...I managed to get on a small 2 seater plane (they left the door open so that I could tape) and I was able to get pictures of Bayou La Batre where the Bubba Gump scenes were taped for Forest Gump...storm surge waters put the boats a quarter mile inland and there they sit...I don't know how the heck they'll get them back in the water...

I was able to find a FedEx that was delivering and was able to get my areal footage as well as some other devastation shots to INSP and they made air on Saturday night... I spent the night in my car Friday night (no hotels), and by a miracle of God, I ended up car #3 in a gas line of over 50 cars...I filled the tank (which the rental car place had given me with only a quarter of a tank!)...having filled up the car, I was able to venture out to north of New Orleans to Picayune Mississippi, and to Slidell...I met up with The Convoy of Hope guys there and was able to coordinate a live Satelite Phone uplink to INSPs live show at 9pm E...the later part of the afternoon me and a new friend of mine by the name of Curtis went to Slidell....The town is flattenned! the destruction is undescribable...I taped about 3 tapes worth of footage and took a bunch of pics...as the night fell and curfew began I headed east to Gulf Port...I ran around from town to town shooting all day...after all my running around (controlled and strategically mind you-there is a terrible shortage of gas) I spent the night in my car again, this time about 15 yards from a police checkpoint they offer to let me park there as there had been several carjackings the night before...that was cool of them... I got up today at 6 am, reloaded my camera with a fresh battery and hit Gulf Port (which till now I had only seen at night)...Gulf port was even worse than Slidell...I shot about another 3 tapes there and then had to make my way back into Mobile with brief stops in Biloxi and Ocean Springs...

My trip ended back in Mobile where I got back on a plane to Charlotte where I spent just enough time to take a shower, repack a bag, label all of my tapes and get back on another plane to Washington DC where I am now falling asleep at the keyboard as I write this...thanks for all of your prayers...they got me through the weekend...!!!!!