Things To Do, Ideas, Examples On jeff nadonza Bucket List: Polar Bear swim/jump

Things To Do, Ideas, Examples On jeff nadonza Bucket List: Polar Bear swim/jump

While I Still Got the Time. . .

Last day of my Thirties. Its been a good ride. Been blessed with great family and friends I would die for.  Sun is shining right. Roads are wet right now from last night rains. Listening to the SHeDaisies.  Sitting here in the St Mary’s parking lot. Will be heading to 8:30 am mass. Its been some time since I’ve been to weekday morning mass. 


Lots of things have changed since last year. Lots haven’t. Precie is headed to high school soon, maybe Paraclete. Lynn is steady as always. Angelo blossoming Star Wars fan. We got him the DS Star Wars II game yesterday. He seems a little unsure, but he will find his way. Christopher and Jewel are married. Rod and Shena might be heading to PI after all. Jason is studying still. Luz is laid up. Hurt her back. Sucks. I’ve read Mike and Lani’s stuff on Facebook. Their kids are winning dance contests and the like.

Lately, I’ve been retracing some family history. Did so a couple years ago, but got bit by genealogy bug. Cousin Michelle and Aunt Mary have been updating me on much family history. There is so much I don’t know and still to learn. Scanning old photos and awards and stuff. Been Microfishing old newspapers. Sent some friend request to relatives I have never met and just recently learned. Even looked up my old friend’s birth certificate.

Made a faux pas. Got to get this “adding”, Kuya, Ate, stuff down. Sorry Minnie. Thanks Michelle for educating me. Still have a few things I’ve done and haven’t done yet that I would like to do. I’ve never seen my Father’s funeral. Its been sitting by my VCR, but I haven’t watched it yet. Learned some stuff that I never knew with talking with my mother. Also discovered that my grandfather, Itay, was POW in Korea. It helps to ask.

Been searching stuff about my half-brother Mike. He looks much like Kevin. Will go visit him soon. Not sure when, but sooner than later. This is a definite. Been making contact with some of his old high school friends on FB. Hope certain feelers I threw out will prove fruitful soon. Will head up to Arvin cemetery. Found out someone took a picture of his grave for some website. Can’t tell you how happy to discover this. Wasn't sure how I was going to find him. Got an email and phone call from Mike’s friend.

Made a family tree a couple years ago. Maybe some stuff were transposed in faulty software gremlins. Maybe I wrote it down wrong. Maybe some one misremembed.  Its been an adventure trying to retrace family history. But I am re-doing again. Been Microfishing and sending out emails.

Haven’t been writing lately because I have been in introspection. Research. Taking time percolating questions and re-examining life stuff.  On Facebook, I looked up some pictures of ex-girlfriends. Seen pictures of their kids. It made me wonder, that could have been mine. Elaine, Shell, Mandy.  Then I think, I was an Asshole.

I was wrong. Can never get time back. Never will. Got to live with this. Time is always in pursuit. Guess that's the reason for why I’ve been blogging and recording family history. Just in case. This is all I got to say about that. One of my relatives had a name change. It was not cheap and the emotional meaning behind it. . .well, it was needed. What it took to do this, I understand why and I. . .well. . .this is all I got to say about that. People in our lives that show up and have been there have messages/ answers to questions we may never knew we had.

 A few years ago, diagnosed with CHF. Tried to make conact with Em and Dana. It hasn't worked out like I wished. Life is mysterious twists in turn has its own timing. Got an email from a cousin I haven't thought about in years. Dismissed at first, then the Universe was insistent. Aunt Mary said, "I am your relative." Listen. Since then I've retracing some family history.  It kick started things that are well under way. Not sure where this road will take me, but I am game.

A family reunion is something in the embryonic stages now. Hope it pans out. I’d like to keep in the States, but if it’s the PI, I really need to bone up on my Tagolog and Ilakano. From the missteps I’ve taken, well. Much work needs to be done.

One of my favorite singer is Darius Rucker, formerly of Hootie & the Blowfish.  One song keeps coming to mind the day before BDay.

Each representin’ a million mistakes
The last one still burns, there’s a wish I can make
This time I’m getting’ it right
So I close my eyes and I take a deep breath
And I promise myself in the time I have left

No more excuses and no more me doing things wrong
Life is too short, baby, I’ve wasted ours for too long
And baby from now on

I’m gonna work like I don’t need the money
I’m gonna laugh like I’m not afraid to cry
I’m gonna dance like nobody’s watchin’
I’m gonna love while I still got the time

Mass is starting in a few minutes. To those that read, thank you. Gian, I know where you been. No words advice, but if you are longing for accolades and kudos, do something else. Fame is fickle. OctoMom was the flavor of the month. Awards, ribbons and trophies are nice to have, but the only person that you really need respect from is the one in the mirror. People like and hate you for various reasons. Leave being judged to American Idol contestants, gymnast and beauty queens. Some are known and will never be known. There is simply too much stuff out there that needs doing then worry if others click, "Like." 

I’ve got 300+ stuff on my Sharebucket list. Only have 25% done. Just take care of the six inches in front of your face. The inches we need are everywhere, but we got crawl and scratch for those six inches. (Sorry, this is from the Any Given Sunday Inches Speech) Life has a way of working itself out. To those in my life and those before and soon to come, thank you for being part of my story. Hope to play a good part in yours.

Oblation

It happens in seconds. Click here and click there. Passage of times and its gone. Where did that lifetime go?  A moment you are in diapers, in a moment you are putting them on. In a moment you are wearing them again. It’s the way. It’s supposed to be that way. Best and the brightest learn that it never has to be the best and the brightest. We search, we struggle, we hope. We always hope for more meaning, for more purpose, for more. Do we ever find it? Sure, we do.  Do we ever need to find it? Sure we do.

Our times are borrowed in shells that are fastly becoming obsolete. We take steps to take care of the vehicle we drive. We glorify the youth and it’s never ending possibility. But at what price? We forget that this all borrowed time and we should happily pay for this journey. We pass on the lessons past. Fix the mistakes of those gone ahead and pray for forgiveness to those that follow.

We can never be complete. Should we always strive? Of course, yes. It is the belief that pushes further than we can ever believe. As one said, “. . .What is a man, if his chief good and market of his time, be but to sleep and feed? A beast no more. Sure be that made us with such large discourse, Looking before and after gave us not that capability and godlike reason to fast in us unus’d” If you know who wrote this, bonus points.”

The life before us is unmade. The time before us is finished. The life. . .

We stand in places walked on before. Scanning old family pictures, I am struck at the same places visited by relatives before.  We visit places long ago. We see ones now old so young. A happiness of a smile of future beaming so brightly. I see a pose and smile of a time filled with such energy. I am reminded that there still much more. We be mindful of the duty, the task on hand.

A wonderful lady named Minnie introduced me to a picture of a statue.  It is one where the head is leaned back, chest out. Arms spread out, like an eagle taking to sky. She said, it reminds her of an obligation and duty that she willingly accepts.  My cousin Robert recently had a new one join the ranks. Had the covenant for the child. A Circumcision. Not sure if too many people know the meaning behind the ritual of circumcision. It was a physical act in which one makes an agreement with God to show his faith. There is more to the meaning, but ask a priest or a rabbi.

The statue is the Oblation.

Saw a statue similar to this one at MOT. Only thing it was upside down with Star of David in the background. It is housed on the bottom floor of the Museum. It is a powerful image. Not sure of the meaning behind it, but these images touches in a way I never really understood, but always knew. Its visceral. It has a symbolism that I am not equipped at this time to put to words.

Never been an artist, but my Aunt Mary says we have many of them in our family. I used to like to draw. I used to like to read comics. I still do on the latter. I see it in my nephew. He doesn’t draw. He play fights Star Wars all the time. He likes the light sabre, he has two. There is something about the story that rings some thing basic. Some thing primal. He, I think, likes the imagery, the story between good and evil. He likes the sound effects and the music. Many of us do.

She said that Many are called, but few are Chosen.

Its Oscar season and there are many movies with shots at the highest honor for Hollywood. Watching Black Swan now. Finished Kings Speech a few days back. Saw the Fighter, too. Got Facebook on DVD. Recently, LA Times published a section comparing this year’s crop with past Best Picture winners.  Social Network, Beautiful Mind. Inception, Sting. Toy Story 3, Oliver. Fighter, Rocky. True Grit, Unforgiven. Black Swan, Amadeus/All About Eve. 127 Hours, Everest. The Kids are All Right, Terms of Endearment. Winter’s Bone, No Country For Old Men. King’s Speech, Chariots of Fire.

There’s something about Magical about the retelling of these stories. Stories of Ascension/ Descension. Stories of Discovery. Stories of Transformation. There are stories of quest. Stories of Excess. Stories that tells of follies and foibles of person kind. These are stories that elevate the spirit where we belong. It is a recognition that we are so much more and that we have so much left.

The beauty about movies, about stories, about art. It is this. It speaks to you. It connects us with what has gone before us. It speaks to those we never met. It carries a message, good and bad, that we will go on.  So enjoy your stories, they are important.  It fuels the fire of possibility, it bounds with a never ending fuel of youthful energy. It looks a t obstacles with delight, because it unlocks creation and brings us  truth and beauty. One great person said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.”

Day at the MOT

Thirty-one days of no Facebook. Got few messages, photo tags, group invitations during this internet sabbatical. It went by fast. May go again. At times, I would find myself automatically typing the "Facebook" web page once I launch my browser. Trained myself to be addicted to this website. I wanted to post some pictures of places visited. Other times, I wanted to get updated with the going on with family and friends. Nothing has really changed in my world since then beginning of the year. Guess I am long longing to be part of a community again.

Don’t know where this comes from, but it has. We all need to feel connected, to be part of something bigger. Yesterday, went to the Museum of Tolerance (MOT) with Sharmaine and her brothers. It was an event. Listened to a Holocaust survivor speak. Shook her hand actually. Wanted to make tactile connection with a real survivor in a dark, dark , dark time in history. Listening and watching her was nice, shaking her hand made it more real. She spoke for 45 minutes straight and I was enthralled. Her story started so innocently and to hear the decline of society happen so quickly, it bothered me.

Before entering the lecture, we stopped by some the interactive internet stuff. Looking up some of the texts, websites, and blogs out there in the world is disturbing to realize such entities still exist. Don’t want to say there is some ugliness in the world because putting it out there may draw some unwanted attention. Really don’t want some of that darkness in my head. The images are truly disturbing. How people can do such stuff to one another?

No one is really clean nor innocent. Admittedly, I was ignorant and I've and acted stupidly before. Trying to break this habit. No, I am not claiming to have found the light. All I am saying is that I am not so quick to label. Can’t speak for others because I don't walk in their shoes. Sitting on the cold concrete stone seats in the mock gas chamber made me feel ill. Looking up at the shower head wondering how people felt. Cold water or poison gas?  People like you and me being exterminated for some misguided belief system.

People have turned a blind eye when injustice and wrongdoing stares them in the face. I think of Kitty Genovese. I think of Zimbardo social psychology experiment. When I imagine being a subject of Milgram’s shock experiment, I am troubled how easy it is for people to lose sight at that the person across from them is part of the same species. Imagine the last time you were at a stoplight when there is a homeless person with cardboard sign asking for money.

Not all of us are created equal. There are obvious and various levels of talents, skills, motivations, and luck each of us possess. Not all of us can dunk. Not all of will be an astrophysicist nor will win a Nobel Peace prize. Not all of us will be President, but to forget that one next to them is not a human being. It is simply awful. Been more and more troubled of the scape-goating tactics of what is wrong in the world. Lately it has been the illegal immigrants that is ruining the country. Before the Chinese and Japanese. Before it was the Jews. Before that it was the Indians. The list goes on.

Found myself distraught by a kid sitting in front of us. He was young kid, maybe 9 or 10. He had the body of thirteen or fourteen year old. We were sitting in a lecture hall listening to the Holocaust survivor tell her story of Auschwitz. She told of how she can remember the smell of the smoke of the crematorium. Her mother and grandmother were sent there days before. The little big boy was fidgeting all around, constantly asking her mom when were they were leaving. He would make a squealing sound like a pig, begging for attention. He would run his hand of her mom’s hair. It reminded me of the flies walking on the faces of children that are starved in some third world country. It is bothersome, but they let it pass. I know she was ignoring him, not giving him the attention he wanted so. She was practiced not to encourage poor behavior. She was much better at it then I would be. Every so often his whispers would drown out what the speaker was saying. Admittedly I want to smack the kid and tell him listen and pay attention.

Then I realized that one of the kids sitting in the row, my relative, with us was playing with his Game boy while she was speaking. This, too, bothered me beyond belief. You see. Earlier he was so adamant about going to the Holocaust exhibit down stairs and getting some kind of plastic card. It was like going on a ride at Disneyland. Now we are here listening to an actual survivor of the dark time, it was a bit infuriating. Playing a game while this was going on. Made me shake my head.

I was learning the meaning of patience. Sometimes we need to put the fear of God to make an impression of some people. We need to effect an emotional response in order make people remember to make an honest impact. Still, I remained silent. A bit disappointed. Decided to use a the honey approach versus the vinegar one. 

I, too, was blind and ignorant. The folly of youth to be not so vested. He does not know nor has he seen such ugliness that people can and have done to others. Listening to the speaker and watching him play the Game boy. In many ways, I hope he never sees what this lady has seen. I hope in many ways that the greatest worry is finding a girlfriend and getting to the next level of that video game. I rather have him suffer these minor setbacks then deal with the horrors of the speaker. When is the next time you will eat? Will you survive through the winter night? Will the search dogs find him and attack him?

I can only wish that the impact of visiting the MOT will have an impact on his life. Hope he never learns the hard lessons of life these other people have faced. Still, there is Hope. “There is always Hope when people remember.” These were the words in green neon lights that were on the walls of the mock gas chamber.

For me, I will remember. I hope he does, too. If the lady in front of me can survive the atrocities, then many others can, too. George Santayana said it this way, “ Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” If we can remember these hard learned lessons, then maybe. . .