Words...

You know what I love? Well besides my wife and children (extended family good friends, pasta and medium rare porterhouse steaks, etc.)? I love words. I love the subtle nuances and the contemplative depths and various levels that a gifted writer can evoke in a reader's thoughts. I love comedy for that reason. Good, well thought-out comedic genius just fuels me. But erstwhile what really fuels me, is prose that speaks to the very heart and mind of the reader. I love finding the ability to connect with someone as they read what has just naturally evolved. I was explaining to Stacey that sometimes ninety percent of what I actually write is almost given to me the very moment I say it. It's really a profound thing to be a part of. Now, dont get me wrong, I'm not claiming divine intervention here, but I am saying there is something that happens while I'm telling a story, recounting an event. Something that transcends what I feel are given to my actual capacities alone.

My favorite things to write involve the human condition. What it really is that speaks to a person's heart. Those things that are unspoken, that most people are afraid to feel, and more often than not, afraid to admit. The best books I've read in a very long time were, "The Kite Runner" and, "A Thousand Splendid Suns". Both of which I realize I identify with. Not because of an individualized understanding of the subject, but by virtue of how the author left his guts out on the table. As I read, "Kite Runner", I was amazed at the personal angst that the author left bare. It was as though he was really giving an account of his personal weaknesses. Instead of apologizing or making excuses, he just left them there hanging. Not for judgement purposes, but as an oblation to what it means to be frightened, what it means to be humiliated by one's own actions, take accountability for them, and then move forward honestly despite that personal failing. It was as though this was not a novel of fiction, but one of personal confession.

Other things I bask in besides cerebral comedy and honest tragedy, are descriptive texts about beauty. I mean real true and honest beauty. I think the greatest gift for an author is to ignore the obvious and tie beauty to tragedy, accountability to growth, and growth to cathartic understanding and ultimately to personal acceptance.

So beauty, there's something right there. When I think of beautiful words I think of certain authors that have given snap-shots of the Hand of God in all things. I think I really strive to find those things in authors of today and yesterday. I believe you can find that in Poe, you can find that in a poem by Frost, in a quip by Dickinson. But it's really difficult to find those things throughout a particular author's total works.

I get frustrated at times to be honest. I travel quite a bit and often buy two or three books in the airport and digest them in transit and while sequestered in my off-time. More often than not I'm dazzled by the standing in the New York Times List, but left shaken and weak at the authors' lack of personal integrity of their work. I think when you do find those books, they are priceless. They change you. Dont laugh but I think the one before that that got me was, "Marley and Me". A story about a stupid dog. However it was honest in the range of emotive requirements in owning a 100 lbs of kinetic power in the form of a tail and a tongue which brought them to the very brink of insanity. But at the end, as you may have surmised, over the life of that animal you can see that the line between love and hate, the dichotomy between expectations and reality weren't really all that distinct.

All good writing has an element of tragedy. All good tragedy has multiple levels of irony contained therein. All good love turns to hate, and back again. Without which, we really can't see the world through the eyes of our Creator.

See, I think the entire reason we're here can be boiled down (in addition to the religious requirements of any particular religion) to learning about the condescention of God. We learn as parents what it is to have love of others more than self. We learn as neighbors to care for those in need. We learn from spouses what ultimate hurt is. We learn shame from realizing that all these things we've been a part of are not necessarily clean, sharp and in focus but the best we could do but not quite enough.

I guess what I'm trying to say, is I love being alive. I love this grand experiment we've all qualified to be part of. I love the very tops of ice-capped peaks. I love to smell the rich dirt of a garden. I adore baby ducks, and I just plain hate to love things I should have never been a part of but cant have become who I am without.

Most of this rambling none of you will understand. The minute group of you that do in fact care, will understand and commiserate with my plight. A search for words, that are tragicly beautiful, horribly profound and intestinally motivated and exhibits a higher purpose than self is really a life-long quest.

I hope you find your snap-shot of beauty today. I hope you find it in the way you can conceive best. For some it's visual. It's the sun setting over the Great Salt Lake as you exit off at Lake Point Utah. The icy water which never freezes lying still and the reflection of a range of mountains touched by the warm glow of the Hand of God. I hope you see it in a mother duck crossing the road in Spring. Her efforts to get them beset by all nature of dangers and traverses necessary to the survival of her down-covered chicks. I hope you've taken the time to smell those same dirty little ducklings and know exactly what they smell like as you wait stopped in your car for them to cross. I hope you see a picture of your children, frozen in time on a swing-set with the genuine thrill of the moment captured therein.

I hope that you can find these things which I too have seen, and capture them yourselves. I trust that if you did so, maybe the most beatiful prose that you can ever see, will be that of your own, read years later by your children and grandchildren. That they can know, hear, feel and smell the dramatic way in which you lived. I hope that my thoughts here today can inspire you to start seeing those beautiful things. That you can perhaps capture them in your own way and provide them to someone else, through your own eyes.

Anyhow, it's time for me to close. Have a great day and we'll see you again real soon.

Love ya all and color outside the lines,

Jon