Improv Everywhere can just stop its antics now. I’m not sure the group can do anything better than this Bryant Park carousel horse race. It’s amazing.
Costumed race patrons, announcers, and a jockey went to the Bryant Park carousel for the mission. But the real stars are the delighted children. They’re surprised, but they just go with it. It makes me tear up every time.
I’ve never been one to romanticize childhood. I would never want to be a kid again. I wouldn’t mind thinking more like one, though.
When you’re an adult, you have to strain to see the magic. When you’re a child, it’s just there. You don’t have all the explanations yet, so you make up your own. You’re two or three or four feet of raw feeling. No wonder you anthropomorphize everything.
I remember doing word searches in elementary school, imagining the two, three, or four columns of words underneath the puzzle to be separate teams. Who would win first place? I struggled to make it fair. I didn’t want any team to consider forfeiting.
It took me ages to finish one of those things.
I guess the point of this is that we all can stand to be more like the kids in this video. And the adults who stayed in character and made it happen.
It’s always hard to explain to my friends from the Northeast that I grew up where Christianity was compulsory. Everyone believed in God and our lord and personal savior Jesus Christ, because…
Just because.
It’s how everything was explained and not explained. Things that didn’t make sense were part of a plan we were too small to see.
I can’t pinpoint the moment when I went from a confident, inquisitive kid to a self-conscious adolescent, but I think God must have been at the root. One day I went from believing in Him, because it’s what everyone did, to doubting such a being could exist. And if there were some sort of God, I was skeptical that He or She or It would hold some of the beliefs that everyone said He or She or It did.
The songs that capture 2010 for me weren’t the most esoteric or classic. These eight summed up a year of change, starting over, and potential dressed as heartbreak.
“Tighten Up” by The Black Keys:
The story of life in pretty much any year: “I wanted love. I needed love. Most of all.” Here’s to finding it in unexpected places.
Body Integration. This year, when did you feel the most integrated with your body? Did you have a moment where there wasn’t mind and body, but simply a cohesive YOU, alive and present?
Skydiving.
My mind and body were one, all fight or flight with my lips and cheeks blowing back.
Let me reiterate that I didn’t shit myself.
The experience deserves its own blog post. I’ll write it before the end of the year. Promise.
Beautifully Different. Think about what makes you different and what you do that lights people up. Reflect on all the things that make you different – you’ll find they’re what make you beautiful.
It’s hard to look at yourself objectively. I can fire off some things I’d love people to feel about me - that I’m talented and smart and refreshing in some way.
Instead, I’ve opted to copy and paste something my boyfriend said to me when we were just transitioning from friends to people who are dating. He’d kissed me for the first time only days before.
This is how he said he felt about me. (He shared this over IM, which makes it no less special, but much easier to record).
Wonder. How did you cultivate a sense of wonder in your life this year?
This isn’t really a problem for me. I’m naturally a curious person who gets excited about one thing and then creates a course of study.
Years ago, I became really interested in midwifery after seeing The Business of Being Born. Yes, I watched Ricki Lake give birth in a bathtub. I even went to the director Q&A.
