The SAYINGS of MANDELL LOVEMAN CYPRESS “Well now let me tell you something…” “Everyone knows the right thing to do… whether or not they do it is another thing.” “The easiest money you’ll ever make is the money you don’t spend.” “You haven’t made any money until you button the button.” “In business, when you have to kiss somebody’s ass, just give it a little peck, you don’t have to hug it.” “Everybody should read The Richest Man in Babylon.” “If you don’t ask, you are lazy.” “You got to be a friend to have a friend.” “You know, I get more pleasure out of giving than I do receiving.” “We’ve had a good run.” “I love you. Thanks for coming.” These sayings were on a placard at Mandell’s funeral. He used to coach me on how to talk to people. Often, he reminded me to do one thing when in conversations with people who are boorish or selling me a line of bullshit. Mandell told me the secret to all conversations: when someone is speaking, shake your head up and down as if you are listening and just say, “Uh-Huh? Is that right?” No more needs to be said. If the person you are talking to is an idiot, let him be an idiot, you don’t have to point it out.

Thanksgiving 2009

A clear early dawn sky, the sun approaching in the southern part of the east, the day seemed as if it would be just like last year. However, by mid-morning the clouds gathered like gray chopped drop biscuits. With the incoming low pressure front, the sky turned and mimicked my emotions the day of Thanksgiving 2008, the day I fell in love, felt abandoned, and stung from a cold back-hand slap from Madame Karma. All at the same time, all at once, all converging at high noon. A year ago, I dropped off a fellow traveler at the beginning of the Natchez Trace with his bicycle and a seventy-five pound external frame backpack. Crouched over the handle bars, the pack heavy on his frame, my friend could not look back. Literally, he could not look back. He was off to pedal past his demons, face his fears of mortality, and create his own identity. An artist, life itself is his medium. My friend was off to prepare his next installation. After watching him pedal up the steep exit and disappear, I went on with my Thanksgiving Day by dining at the table of one of my spiritual advisors with multiple friends sharing stories, laughter, and our vices. A year later, I am attending Thanksgiving dinner with the same beloved friends and making the same pies with everyone's favorite crust. I just don't tell them that an egg and vinegar are the secret components. While running this afternoon, I watched the wind carry an oak leaf falling from a nearby tree. I stopped moving forward and ran in place as the leaf stalled and fell, dropped and spun. Headed for asphalt, the leaf lilted and limped as it finally changed course. I watched the leaf tumble to the side of the road. The leaf's curled points landed on the softness of grass and a lawn. I thought about how my friend on his bike landed not on the asphalt, but Austin, Texas. I wondered if he was like the leaf floating haphazard. Or, I wondered if the leaf was more like my friend, it saw a nice place to land.

Good Art = Conflict and Resolution

Conflict and Resolution Makes for Great Drama Tension Builds Creating Solutions Solves the Problems Cringing Subdued Rise and Fall Cycles Return Like a Cyclone One more Obstacle Added Tension Another Collision Calls for Conclusion This the Danger Decision to Reside As a Wanderer Art as Life Bound to Interface Within the Constructs Casting Contrasts In the Light

thirty-four days

October 22, a big day for me, I stood less than ten feet away from a red tail hawk. This was the closest I had ever been to a wild hawk. Right outside my house, the scraggly young male bird's eyes met mine in a gaze that lasted the length of time it took for him to finish eating the small rabbit lunch. I thought about the Medicine Cards that Jamie Sams did years ago, the hawk as the messenger and the rabbit as our fear. The symbolism penetrated my psyche and I started to run. Not a conscious choice, not a reaction, not a mapped-out decision that today I would start running, but the action of moving my legs faster than they have moved in a few years arose in a spontaneous moment. I missed day eighteen out of leg cramping, and day day twenty-seven out of an emotional upheaval that left me wrung out of options other than bed. Here I am at day thirty-four, and I continue to run. Though, I have picked up the pace, experienced a posture shift as I gained in strength, I continue to let the third dimensional distractions melt away through the bottoms of my feet, into the earth, grounding out the outdated, the outmoded, outside of me fear that no longer serves me and my time left on earth. I am accenting my ascent each time my foot, bound in new balance running shoes, touches down.