White Noise

We had another snow storm earlier this week that blanketed New York and surrounding areas in the Northeast with much more snow than we were expecting. The pictures above are from the day after, in Brooklyn Heights, as we took to the car-less streets admire the still life beauty that a big dusting of snow brings.

The best thing about a snow storm in New York is the quiet. Certainly there's the lack of noise when you eliminate cars (and their horns), the sheer volume of traffic and people that moves in and out of the city every day, the hustle and bustle of urban life. But the quiet is also a type of internal stillness, the 'walk in the woods' sense of hearing snow crunching underfoot, slowing down, actually paying attention to the environment all around instead of getting from point A to point B. Really opening your eyes. Observing. Listening.

Snow brings a kind of white noise to type A city, and, even if just for a day, creates a pause, a momentary shift of focus, a brief recognition and reverence of our very small presence in the much larger environment and eco-system of the natural world we actually live in.

I'm reading a beautiful book, "The View from Lazy Point", where the naturalist Carl Safina has the same effect as the snow; he makes you stop and pay attention to red-winged blackbirds the way that E.B. White let us observe life between swans and their cygnets in one of my favorite books "The Trumpet of the Swan". And as you're seeing these birds through his eyes, you're seeing your own relationship to the world, and the relationship between us and millions of other species on one planet that we all share. He writes:

"...Life is - more than anything else - a process; it creates, and depends on, relationships among energy, land, water, air, time and various living things....The red-wings call, listen, call again. One note is not music. It is what lies between the notes that makes the music, and what is between them is: their relationship. Relationships are the music life makes. Context creates meaning. Asking, "What is the meaning of life?' is the wrong question; it makes you look in the wrong places. The question is, 'Where is the meaning in life?' The place to look is: between..."

Life returned to 'normal' on Friday. Streets were plowed, people were commuting by train, bus and car, and the noise and energy of urban life in New York City was back. As the snow underfoot turns to sloppy slush, it becomes harder to feel that snow storm quiet, hear the white noise and feel our connection to the ecology of the natural world.

Of course it's still there, we just need to remember to consciously pause and look and listen for it. Between....

Last night

No matter what political party you align with, or personal issue or issues you or loved ones are facing right now, we are certainly fortunate to live in a country where our President can say:

"What we can do - what America does better than anyone - is spark the creativity and imagination of our people."

Personally, I've found that the sparks tend to come not during life's highs, but in life's lows. During times of crisis, doors slamming shutting, things not working out as planned, the utter mess you don't see a way out of. The small spark of inspiration from the abyss.

Make sure to listen.

Dreams

So while I am not working today, in honor of Martin Luther King Junior, I do have an early morning meeting about sea turtles for Plant A Fish with my friend and neighbor Fabien Cousteau and his lovely girlfriend Susan. The picture above is from El Salvador where over a million baby sea turtles were released. The joy of new life, in all creatures great and small...

Over the weekend, I met for a quick coffee with Fabien and Susan and we were talking about the importance of setting goals and having dreams that are far bigger than you are. While the facts around 'pretty soon no fish left in the ocean' are daunting and overwhelming, but if you don't dream that things can be changed, how will they be? Where is there room for others to help? Where is there room for grace?

Not so long ago, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had a dream about equality, which likely seemed impossible at the time. Our President Barack Obama gave a recent speech around the tragedy in Arizona that spoke to the part we all play in humanity and striving for big dreams:

"We recognize our own mortality, and we are reminded that in the fleeting time we have on this earth, what matters is not wealth or status or power or fame, but rather how well we have loved, and what small part we have played in making the lives of other people better."

I think that includes baby sea turtles too.

Happy MLK Day everyone. Dream big!

Closer

Santa brought these two iTouches for Christmas and after the holidays I had to get a new text plan because of it! While I was still in Florida, Ellie would text things like "Will you get me some juice?" (While I was in the next room). And Katy would text "I don't want you to leave." I would text back, "Me either."

It's hard to leave people you love. Of course after a certain amount of years, most of us start to become separated by geography by close friends and sometimes family. At the time when most everyone lived in the same place, or were together at college, you don't have the foresight to realize that its not always going to be this way. On a regular basis I miss people I love in Florida, California, Chicago, Austin, Michigan, Atlanta, London and Kanab, Utah, as well as those who've left for a better place.

Last week there was a spontaneous reunion for kirshenbaum bond & partners alumni, the wickedly smart, creative and fiercely independent ad agency I used to work at. It felt like stepping back into the late 90's as we drank pints of beer at Cafe Noir followed by late night cheeseburgers at Lucky Strike. And the one person I wanted to talk to about it, who we all wanted to talk to, was the one person who we weren't able to any more. Though I know what Dave would say - "It's D&D Advertising Time" - with a nod to the infamous 90's TV show Melrose Place.

In the cold days of early January I've been thinking about why I moved back East - and as a hint - it wasn't for the weather! It wasn't for work or great restaurants, culture and nightlife, for the walkability of the big village or unparalleled New York energy; it was and still is to be closer to family and friends.

The great gift of life are the people you get to share it with. The big 'Enjoy the Ride' reminder is to treasure it, all of it, and especially every face you get to see regularly or in your thoughts, that you love.

Back in New York

The concept of a new year is exciting! Even returning back to piles of garbage, discarded Christmas trees and temperatures much less flip flop friendly than in South Florida, there's new energy in the air. The sense of a fresh start.

Last night right before going to bed I heard about one friend getting a job offer, and another friend as a top finalist for Good Morning America's "Advice Guru"! AND I spotted a 'snowed out' M.I.A. sanitation truck yesterday too....

I'm not in the prediction business but do have a sense that 2011 is going to be a year for good things happening.

Sometimes I think years are like the second film in a trilogy, where it seems like hope is lost and the bad guys are going to win, "Empire Strikes Back" style. I think we have to go through these transition periods of the pruning, but the essential third film set up, before we can perceive the overall plan unfolding.

1-1-11

Yesterday as I was happily enjoying sweet potato encrusted grouper over a bed of greens and mango at a late New Years Eve lunch at the incredible“Food Shack" in Jupiter, I was telling my father about an email I received the night before from the Brooklyn Heights Association. Essentially they were telling brownstone owners not to put garbage outside on the snow banks because sanitation workers aren’t expected anytime soon due to unplowed roads in the Heights, and "no one wants to have trash piling up" (!).

I feel a long, long way from home right now.

While of course I miss friends, plans and seeing New York as a winter wonderland covered with a carpet of snow, I’ve enjoyed my unplanned South Florida “snowed out of New York’ extension, even without my sister and her family.

Driving around in my sister’s car in the ‘burbs of the Palm Beaches, I’ve had a few “Orange County moments” where I’ve missed my exit, have missed noting which shopping plaza I’m supposed to turn into because they look pretty similar, have missed whatever house I’m trying to find in a gated community. Though turning around is how you learn...

Despite a few navigational challenges, I’ve really enjoyed spending more time with my father and his new fiancé, seeing my sister’s friends, boating and the simple pleasures of going to Native Yoga in Juno Beach wearing flip flops and minus a down coat, smelling ocean air when I leave class.

Last year I walked across the Brooklyn Bridge for the first time the day after New Years. It felt dramatic and a little symbolic too. I do remember I picked one of the coldest days of the year and ended up running over the last half of the bridge because I was so chilly. This New Years Day morning I’m barefoot and enjoying coffee on the deck, listening to birds and the breeze ruffle palm fronds, watching water move. In a couple hours I’ll be joining my sister’s friends Christine and Bob and several others for a New Years Day boat cruise down the innercoastal and cook out on Munyon Island under a bright blue sky.

Sometimes when things don't go as planned, you get more than what you expected. Happy 2011 everyone. Don’t be afraid to dream big!