Turning My Own Table- Things I love

I decided to write this because for whatever reason I'm bursting from my heart a tremendous amount of love for things today. I'll try to keep the comedy in this.

This is going to read as though a 2nd grader wrote it... Just warning you.
When I'm really happy, I'm like 7 years old... And the main point I'm making is how hard it is to only say what we love and make it funny... So this is an experiment of sorts. I'd also love to hear what you love.

I love nice large teeth. I enjoy watching people speak, love watching people smile, and when someone smiles from the heart, like truly smiles, there's NOTHING I enjoy watching more than that. Nothing. Except maybe the things that caused the smile in the first place.

I love dogs. All canines. I think dogs, all dogs, all canines from foxes, wolves, coyotes, the wild red spotted dog of Africa, scary dogs, mean dogs, stupid dogs, fat dogs.... I love them. I think they are actually on earth to save us from ourselves. l

I love it when people take the time to write me something so complimentary that I'm humbled to the point of tears. So many people who have done this random act of kindness thing, have NO idea how they've affected me and restored my faith. Thank you.

I love brisket, chicken & dumplings, sushi, the texture of a hard fried egg, beans-- all beans, I'm a lover of a bean... you can call me a beaner and I won't get offended because I love a' bean. Mexicans across the country know of my love of a bean. In fact, there's nothing I love more than a bean except one thing... Cayenne pepper. I carry it in my bag, no lie.

I love the color yellow and I love yellow even more when it's paired with turquoise or orange. Yellow makes me happy. Yellow can bring me from feeling a bit blah-blah to feeling like dancing by myself to Frank Sinatra in the living room. It has that much of a powerful effect.

I love black people. I will say it until the day I die, but black people are the reason this world has any type of value. Music would suck without black people.  There would be no music without black people. Black people understand Jesus better than anyone. Nobody would be inspired by athletes if black people didn't exist and NOTHING would be as funny if there weren't black people. I could go on but I'm the biggest fan of the passionate raw delicious energy of black people. If you are black and reading this... I love you.

I love smile lines... even my own.

I love watching assembly line machines, gears in clocks, any metal machinery. I could watch metal being bent or molded all damn day. I really could. I love the sound of a drill when it screws in the hardware in the most perfect way. It makes my mouth water to watch a machine work in a perfect way. I would be happy as a tinkerer in a garage for the rest of my life.... but nobody would let me just do that.

I love airplanes. I love to fly. I love the sound of a plane breaking the sound barrier. I love the idea that I can be in another part of the planet in hours. Planes are magic.

I love Israel. It's the most beautifully complicated place on earth with the most unique people on earth. The way you feel sitting at a table overlooking the sea and talking with Israelis is like no other feeling in the world. It's the most important little strip of land in the world and there's a reason why it's the promised land.

I love New York, Memphis, Chicago and Baltimore.

I love Texas. I love being a Texan. I love the vast beautiful openness and diversity of my home state. I love how each area of Texas is like its own country. I love the good, bad, great and ugly of it. I love how there are animals here that can kill you and ones that can inspire songs, poems, and art. I love the shape of Texas. I love that it contains everything from the desert to the lush swamps of east Texas.

I love the idea of UFO's, Bigfoot, and every crypto animal that has been seen by people across the world. It makes me feel excited to think that we don't have everything figured out. It gives me a sense of great possibility to think that there are things out there that could change our whole perspective of how vast and mysterious creation truly is.  It makes God bigger.

I love well made clothes.

I love risk takers. I love people who against all public scrutiny decide to take a stand either for a cause or for themselves and do something unconventional for the greater good, personal discovery, or out of passion that comes from the gut feeling, "this feels right." Even if I don't agree with all of them, it gives me hope for mankind when someone swims the other direction against the current.

I love the sound of a hearty belly laugh from a baby. Who doesn't?

I love Jack Hanna. I think he's from the light. I love his enthusiasm for animals, I love the stupid names he comes up with for his rescued turtle or cheetah, and I love how truly elated he gets when he's talking about animals. I love his deep southern accent and his dumb face. I love him.

I love W.C. Fields. I find nobody who has ever lived on planet earth funnier than W.C. Fields. Nobody. If you haven't watched any of his stuff.... do yourself a big favor and watch the following, "The Golf Specialist," "The Dentist," for starters... then follow the breadcrumb trail of hilarity. I consumed W.C. Fields short films when I was a kid almost daily. I wore out a VHS cassette by watching it too much. It never gets old to me.

I love words. If you've ever been around a real wordsmith person, there is nothing more impressive than someone who knows how to put words together in a perfect way to describe an abstract idea. I have always envied and admired people with a veracious vocabulary. I try but it isn't my superpower... yet. I'm working on it.

I love grapeseed oil for moisturizing. If you haven't tried it, you should. You will feel like Cleopatra after you slather yourself in it post-shower. It's luxurious.

I love angels. I think angels (the good ones) are probably the most bad ass thing in the universe. I love the idea that there are watchers of this planet who on God's command can intervene and change the outcome of any situation. To me, there would be no better job in the universe than this. I love the descriptions of them and being a power nerd of Marvel comics, I feel like in an epic battle of The Avengers, it would be the raddest movie ever if Stan Lee tagged in the archangels alongside Thor n' the gang. I would get too excited and have a heart attack in the movie theatre over that shit.

I love that prayer or quantum entanglement actually has been proven scientifically to work. That lets me know that our "made in His image" thing is even more true than we know. "All thoughts are creative matter." -Einstein. So we create by thought, just like God does? Fantastic.

I love painting. I need to do more of it.

I love mythology of any kind from anywhere around the world. I love putting the puzzle together and realizing that we all have the same mythology throughout time but the character's names are changed depending on the culture. Mankind has these ancient superhero stories of failure, triumph, and divine guidance, bad decisions, and repentance and it connects us to our ancestors and makes me realize that we are still waiting for that one situation that will change everything in our lives forever. I love that.

I could go on and on and on.... but I'd love to hear some of your loves.
I figure with all my negative funny rants I post, I should balance out the acid a bit by releasing some flip side fuzzy stuff every once in a while. I hope you will feel free to allow yourselves to express what you love no matter how insignificant you think it might be to those around you... express it! It will infuse you with energy today.

Magic Happens

I can remember about 11 years ago this one conversation I had with a well known actor sitting in his car in a parking lot of a Barnes and Noble, and he said something to me that I've never forgotten.

He made me visualize a time in my life when I was forced to overcome something out of nothing but personal will power. I was quick to reply, he told me to shut up and really think about it.

At the time I was going through a major personal brick wall of what seemed to be a no-end situation. So... I sat there, really thought, thought hard and long and then I told the following story...

In 1994, I was 16 years old. In my history to that point, I had already had many reasons to rejoice in my triumphs and likewise, I could've very easily focused on the upsetting things of my life as well. I was a child entertainer. I was also an orphan. I was the winner of many awards, the star of many productions, national commercials, a prodigious tap dancer by the age of 10. I was also a fat kid with a lisp, unruly hair, a major learning disability, was sick all the time, and painfully picked on by kids my own age. This fat kid, i.e. me, had spunk though. I had just enough "dumb" in me to believe only the good things, and most of the time I ignored the bad things. In fact, I'll go so far as to say I didn't really admit to anything that was negative.

Some people would say that I was naive, but they would be wrong. If being naive to negativity is a bad thing, then that goes against anything that anyone has ever accomplished, overcame, won, or persisted through to reach victory.

I'm writing this blog because recently I've been in what I would call "the pit." A phrase that was coined by a dear friend who actually died while laughing. How fantastic! The "pit" is a symbolic way of describing a modus operandi that isn't the highlight reel of your life at that moment. The pit I've been in recently is residual because of the thoughts that came before the manifestation of 'said' pit. If you are thinking correctly you'd never know of that pit.

Why create it? Is it cozy there? Warm? Does it feel good to be in it? Nope. Nope. Nope.

Moving along.. I had an epiphany of something I've known as long as I've known myself. It goes back to what this actor friend told me in his car that day. He made me recall a time that I overcame something major and not only succeeded, but WON over all odds.

I launched into my story with him and it went a little something like this...

Being the fat kid who was super talented, I knew very well what tools I had to make people accept me. I had humor, I had talent, I could turn on the charm, I could talk to ANYONE about ANYTHING with full joy reverberating from my soul. Then something weird happened... I grew up. I no longer knew myself or how I fit in. I didn't have the kid thing going on anymore and it wasn't "cute and adorable" to be dumb, fat, and naive at the age of 16. The roles I auditioned for were given to the leggy tall blondes and I was a better dancer than my taller more beautiful counterparts?!!! All I can remember is thinking, "The summer is coming up and I'm going to reinvent myself. I WILL be beautiful. I WILL be dynamite. I WILL come back full force and I'm gonna shock even myself!" The summer I turned 16(in June), I spent most of my days alone and walking through the park just visualizing everything I wanted to be, look like, and do. I was in my own little world. [side note: I was so into my own head that my family thought I was on drugs. ha ha ha I've never done drugs in my life... already wired for "fun" Dig?]

So anyhow, I spent every single day that summer visualizing, visualizing, visualizing. I imagined myself center stage singing, dancing, and getting a standing ovation from my peers, my family, and a multitude of people that I didn't know at all. It's important to say that at this point, I was out of the loop of performing for the last 3-4 years. That doesn't seem like a lot of time, but when you have spent literally your entire childhood touring and performing and it's all you know- it's a long time to NOT do the only thing you know how to do. Dig?

So the summer goes by... I had visualized everything from getting a car, the perfect car, and the performing for people, standing ovation, being tall, beautiful, funny, smart, etc... over and over and over again...

When school started back up in the fall, I had literally grown about 3 inches in a summer(don't say "that is impossible" but with your mind, anything is possible.) I was about 120 pounds and around 5'7, long blonde hair, and even the very essence of my energy was radiating. My lisp was GONE, I was no longer the same person physically at all. More importantly- I had evolved emotionally. Nobody knew who I was when I returned to school. I was still being picked on but for an entirely different reason. I was being picked on by people who were jealous. "Who is that girl? Ugh. She thinks she's so awesome. Whatever. Why is she smiling at everyone? She makes me sick." I knew for the first time that I was being picked on because I had something they wanted. MY ENERGY. I realized I'd had that affect on people my entire life but never was aware of it until I chose to be aware of it.

There was an audition that year for a big musical. A huge production. I had NO business being the lead in this production. I walked into that audition and was so embarrassed and terrified to sing or show off at all that I completely froze. I asked the director if I could please just turn my back to him and sing because I was too scared to face anyone. Then something amazing happened. I barely squeaked out a verse from a song that I used to win awards singing when I was a kid. This director stopped me and said, "No Melodee, I know you can do this. I have a feeling about you and I know you can do this. Just go for it." I took a breath and then put the image of the center stage standing ovation I'd visualized all summer into my mind.... and went for it. What came out of my mouth wasn't even known to me. I had NO idea I could sing like I was singing. I sounded like a 45 year seasoned jazz singer in 1940. It was incredible. I got the part. I also had the "haters" of life saying "who is that? Can she even hack it? Bad decision on the part of the director. She must be sleeping with someone who is making the decisions around here."

A month or two later I was standing center stage and 600 people were standing up screaming and clapping as the curtain closed and I was taking the biggest bow of my life. I was also getting the biggest apologies from my fellow cast members for doubting me only 2 months prior to that big ol' bow center stage.

Long story made longer- I told that story to this actor friend and he said the following to me and now I'll say it to you.

He said:

"Hey Mel... When you doubt things going on in your life, just think about that story you just told me and remember THAT is what you are made of."

I'll leave you guys with one other quote right now... I hope it finds you like it found me earlier today.

" Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions." -Albert Einstein

So imagine greatness. Imagine love. Imagine beauty. Imagine health. Imagine something so grand that if you achieved it, it would actually blow your mind.

Thank God for epiphanies. Whew~! Just in time.