Watts

Let’s suppose that you were able, every night, to dream any dream you wanted to dream, and you would, naturally, as you began on this adventure of dreams, you would fulfill all your wishes.  You would have every kind of pleasure during your sleep, and after several nights you would say, ‘Well, that was pretty great.’

I knew a guy named Mogi Kenzaburo, we played little league baseball together in the 2nd grade.  He wasn’t very good, in fact he was quite terrible.  One play, Jorge Alvarado of the Tigers hit a molasses slow grounder down the third base line and Mogi swiftly kicked it back toward home plate and yelled “GOAL!” then proceeded to celebrate with himself.

Just himself.

As I and the rest of our teammates groaned in disgust, the girls in the stands swooned over his misconception between baseball and soccer.  This is because he batted 1.000 with the girls.  If nothing else, it was impressive to witness, even at a young age.  I’m sure (more so hope, to put on my full display of jealousy front and center) his batting average went down since then.  We lost touch after the 3rd grade, I was that kid that moved every other year.  But I did see Mogi did well for himself into his adult years – attended the University of Oregon, snagged a nice job, met a nice girl, and eventually learned the difference between a shortstop and a goal post.

Instagram tells me that they never married, but they did have a daughter fairly young, who has now logged 8 total years into this world and, get this – plays second base for the Epiphany Eagles – the same team we suited up for when we were kids.

Cue “The Circle of Life” by Sir Elton John, please.

But now let’s, uhm, let’s have a surprise, let’s have a dream which isn’t under control.  Well, something is gonna happen to me that I don’t know what it’s gonna be.  Then you would get more and more adventurous and you would make further and further out gambles as to what you would dream and, finally, you would dream where you are now.

Do you know what Instagram also tells me?  Instagram also tells me that Mogi has cancer, and has been battling for his life for the last two years.

Cue “The Circle of Life” by Sir Elton John, please.

Mogi’s Instagram shows his best days and his best days only, though I have more than enough understanding about cancer that when it’s not so good, the last thing you want around you is a camera.

This brings up that age-old question, why do bad things happen to good people?

Because life isn’t fair?  Well, I think we all have a cold, hard grasp of that mundane perspective.  Let’s take another route, and see this from a different vantage point of what life actually is rather than isn’t.

Life, is free.

Life is free to love, and free to hurt.  Free to give and free to take, free to build then free to crumble.  Life will see you, then will ignore you.  You will gain and you will lose.  At the end of it all we can only hope that our time is well-balanced between the bright and the dark.  Because too much pain is a bad thing, right?  Guess what, so is too much bliss. And perhaps this was never the point – rather than attempt to find the beauty in struggle, understand that struggle implies peace, and that already makes it a beautiful thing.

My childhood friend Mogi is dying.  But you know what?  Mogi is still living, too.  I too, am dying and living.  And so is the person that ran just passed me, and the person that’s right in front of you, and the people in this building, the person in the room next to yours.  The people in the elevator you’re with and the driver of your rideshare you took earlier.  Everyone you’ve ever met, and everyone you’ll never see in your entire life are all dying, and all living.

If you awaken from this illusion and you understand that black implies white, self implies other, life implies death. You can feel yourself, not as a stranger in the world, not as something here on probation, not as something that has arrived here by fluke, but you can begin to feel your own existence as absolutely fundamental. What you are basically, deep, deep down, far, far in, is simply the fabric and structure of existence itself.
–           Alan Watts 

You are free to spend life as you may; bunt single implies goal.
–           Michael Arce

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Cine

First of all, my God it’s been a long time.  My ideal plan was to write at least once a month.  That hasn’t been working out so well due to a plethora of other priorities in line.  In any case, life is life and we all must continue to write on.  And, for the sake of writing on, let’s touch base on something you all may already know that is near and dear to my heart – films.

It’s unfortunate that due to lack of free time I don’t watch as much film as I once did.  I no longer have the will to watch anything and everything, and my ability to the be attentive and study each film has become rusted and dull in the toolbox.  The result – my taste in film has greatly evolved and I’ve become highly selective and picky with what I choose to watch.  There’s several layers of security for a movie to be able to pass and get to my eyes, ears, and feels, and the the biggest one is (still) the director’s chair, and who’s name is on it.

While the Zemeckis, Chan-wooks, Nolans, Tarantinos, and Smiths of the world will always hold high spots on my shelf, there’s been a more recent and modern wave of film directors that possess my golden ticket.  If their name is on a poster then I’ve got to see what they’re putting together.  And the first name on this short list is Adam McKay.

McKay has the spotlight for this year’s Christmas Day opening for his latest film, Vice, starring the excruciatingly intense Christian Bale, who will be playing former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney.  Vice also reunites McKay and Bale, who’ve previously teamed up in The Big Short (2015) which happens to be a top 5 film of mine.  McKay has an obvious skill for comedy (Anchorman and Step Brothers), but his style for storytelling, pacing, and timing is what wins a ticket.  If it wasn’t for Avengers: Infinity War, McKay’s take on Cheney would have topped my 2018 list for my most anticipated film.  Speaking of Avengers –

The Russo brothers also hold two of my golden tickets.  The currently unknown title of Avengers 4 will likely be 2019’s biggest draw, closing the book on the first decade of the Marvel Cinematic Universe films that will (likely?) allow the fans to say goodbye to the original cast.  The MCU is not only a once in a lifetime experience in film – it’s the first of its kind in cinematic history.  While other studios struggle to replicate their intertwined universe, the Russos continue to evolve the MCU with their knack to flesh out painfully compelling antagonists, which eventually pushes the protagonist(s) to make the most difficult decisions.  Appealing villains combined with the fallibility of heroes tend to make the best cinema.  This has been apparent dating back to their initial entry – Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014) – where many fans regard this as MCU’s greatest film.  Sadly, Avengers 4 could be their swan song from the MCU, but it may not get any bigger come May 2019.

If the answer ‘Studios that struggle to create their own superhero cinematic universe’ showed up Jeopardy, ‘Who is Warner Bros?’ would be smart reply.  In fact, bet the farm because you’ll be right – Warner has failed DC Comics and its extended universe as hard as I’ve failed at taking Anne Hathaway out on a date, which is every single day for the last 12 or so years since I saw Ella Enchanted.

They have one successful entry in Patty Jenkins’s Wonder Woman (fight me if you think there’s more than one right now).  And, speaking of betting farms,  I’m betting that James Wan’s Aquaman releasing in a few weeks will be not only a fun film, but a great film.

James Wan has a golden ticket, and no it’s not because of Furious 7, albeit a few creative action set pieces and one of the most heartfelt tributes at the end.  I have a love/hate relationship with paranormal horror films – I hate watching them, but if I do, I end up falling in love with its (sometimes true) mysteries and the efforts on how to both tell and shoot that story.  Wan’s The Conjuring was as much of a masterpiece as it was terrifying.  Combine his keen sense for suspense with filming action, Aquaman could completely alter the landscape and finally give DC something to look forward to and build upon.

Other notable directors with golden tickets include Lee Unkrich (Coco) Jordan Peele (Get Out), Paul Feig (Spy), aaaand whomever directed Bumblebee.  Looks like they finally decided to make a real Transformers movie.

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Vino

Sips.

Another night, another glass of vino.  It’s a fairly new habit I’m trying to keep up with.  For the record, it’s not due to the possible health benefits that have been associated with drinking a glass of wine every night.  Rather, it’s a simple and easy reminder to consistently flirt with vulnerability.  If that sounds scary to you, you’re right.  If it doesn’t, then you’re lying to yourself.

It’s scary as shit, but that makes it a good thing.

Sips.

Throughout our lives we’ve been protected with careful rules and recommendations designed to keep both physical and emotional harm at bay.

Look both ways before you cross the street.
Be sure to visit your doctor often.
Don’t put foreign objects or substances in your mouth.
Don’t like Instagram photos more than four weeks ago.
Don’t do drugs… but didn’t Steve Jobs create Apple Computers from one or several trips to LSD? I’m just sayin’.

Meth. Definitely don’t do meth. Or heroin.

Sips.

Many of these rules are in place to control and prevent chaos, and I’m not oblivious to the fact that these are required to be in place to reach and maintain a good quality of life.  I’m also not insinuating that you go completely rogue on society and start sprinting through red lights while sucking on Tide pods as you continue to light up hearts on photos from that girl’s (or guy’s) posts from March of 2017.

I merely want to emphasize balance – when playing it too safe you’ll feel unfulfilled, and if you are vulnerable for too long you’ll probably die from eating the detergent.

Sips.

And as I get closer to meeting the bottom of this glass of vino, I can tell you this – I feel a healthy sliver of imbalance and drowsiness, increasing the frequency of typos.  My judgment, however, is very much intact; I just misspelled judgment (initially judgement) but immediately corrected this.  My mathematical prowess also remains flawless.  Check this shit out:

Sips.

To solve 31! you must multiply 31 (x) 29 (x) 28 (x) 27 (x) 26 (x) 25 (x) 24 (x) 23 (x) 22 (x) 21 (x) 20 (x) 19 (x) 18 (x) 17 (x) 16 (x) 15 (x) 14 (x) 13 (x) 12 (x) 11 (x) 10 (x) 9 (x) 8 (x) 7 (x) 6 (x) 5 (x) 4 (x) 3 (x) 2 (x) 1, which is 8,222,838,654,177,922,817,725,562,880,000,000.

Sips.  Damn I’m good.

My mental foundation is drilled into a bedrock of euphoria.  There’s a warm blanket of elation draped over my body and mind, making me impervious to bad thoughts and feelings.

Most of all, I’m poised and willing to fail.  Matter of fact, there is not a flying fuck on this planet that I give.  It’s like traveling back in time to assassinate Overthinking so it longer exists in the present.  And that’s where there is true magic in vino – rules that are scary to bend or even break in vulnerable situations no longer seem so scary at all.  Life is good, life is all right, and regardless of the outcomes from scary decisions made within that hour or so of drunken haze – whether you land on your feet or flat on your face –

Sips.

Everything is going to be perfectly okay.

One last reminder – do you know what overthinking is?  It’s a game of chess between a mind reader and a clairvoyant – it’s always one without a winner.

Don’t be stale, mate.

Sips.

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Stupid

“You know, you have to be a little stupid.”

It may not sound like much, but let me tell you the who-what-when-where-why of one of the most compelling, impactful, and important things anyone has ever said to me.

INT. GYM/WEIGHT ROOM – AFTERNOON

We’re somewhere in 2008 of the timeline.  I’m at the gym working out with my two good friends Joe and Chris. They’re a lot bigger than me, and to give you a visual of that, picture the standard icon of the strength of your signal on your cell phone.  There’s five bars, and if I’m the middle bar, Joe and Chris are labeled to the right respectively, aptly giving you the best possible signal on your phone for crystal clear conversation.

Many times I wondered why they let me train with them.  Maybe because I made them laugh – not because I told jokes so good that they could be exchanged for pure gold, or wit so sharp it made you say cheddar, no.  They laughed because I couldn’t lift weights for beans, and understandably so, that holds a lot of entertainment value.  Fair enough; I laughed at myself, too.

We’re doing burnout sets, which means we’re flirting with death until we decide it’s okay to come back to life.  More technically, we’re doing one exercise – repeatedly – toward the brink of utter exhaustion at the end of a series of exercises that were performed in a more standard x reps for y sets.  You can imagine it’s only fun if you’re crazy.

Or in this case – stupid.  But, in a good way.  Let me explain.

For the burnout set we’re doing push ups – a classic exercise with the right amount sadism.  Naturally, I burn out first.  I can’t even tell you how many I did (couldn’t have been much), but I can tell you how hard my body flopped to the floor at the end of it.  Have you ever seen someone try to run through a glass door they didn’t see was there?

Harder than that.

Chris, the tallest bar of the cell phone signal icon, actually burns out second.  That leaves Joe as the iron man of the burnout set, and my jaw drops watching him keep at it.  One after another, he pushes himself up, and descends down, then back up, and repeat.  I didn’t lose count, because I wasn’t trying to keep one.  At this point, I was awed and inspired.  Chris, drenched and dripping with his own sweat, turns to me and says these words I’ll never forget, and words I have and will continue to live by:

“You know, you have to be a little stupid, you know?  You have to be stupid to just keep going.  That’s all pain right there, why wouldn’t you just stop, you know what I’m sayin’?  Like, stupid to the point that you can’t even register what pain is.”

Joe is still going – one push up after another.  Grunting, muttering expletives under his heaving breaths.  Just when I think he’s going to burn out, he pushes right back up.  His determination was so heavy it felt like you could gather chunks of it from the air, pack it up in tupperware and save it as a post-workout snack for later.  Joe finally burned out his set, but even after a gutsy display of tenacity I still thought he could have easily kept on going.  I was convinced he felt more tiresome of Chris and I staring at him with jealous eyes.

While it seemed like an insult (albeit a playful one) at first, there is something powerful to be grasped from Chris’s genuinely honest observation about Joe – what we all understand as an innate human reaction of instantly pulling your hand away once you touch a hot stove was something Joe seemingly didn’t have.  In this case I took this not as a lack of intelligence, but rather a strong indication of mental toughness.  Only in the specific manner in which Chris diagramed his view of Joe did I conceive strength in a completely different light:

“Stupid” people won’t know how to quit, even when they’re burnt halfway to hell.
“Stupid” people take on challenges that are already labeled as impossible.
“Stupid” people go toe to toe with adversaries that will beat them to a pulp, and “stupid” people will find a way to get back up.
“Stupid” people avoid using excuses, especially the most valid ones.
“Stupid” people find ways to be vulnerable, in order to stay humble.

Joe is pretty stupid, in fact one of the most stupid guys I’ve ever met.  Chris is no different, and I’m lucky to have met and befriended several other people that can be just as stupid.  I want to be the same, if not even stupider.  In fact, I try to be the most absolutely stupidest person in any given room I walk into.  I want people to say about me, “That guy?  Michael Arce?  That’s one stupid motherf—-r, man.  So stupid he *willingly solves math problems when he’s completely inebriated with alcohol.”

So, Joe and Chris used to call me Mikelovin’.  There’s absolutely no point to me mentioning this at all, I just wanted to say it because I’m still the shorter end of this cell phone signal metaphor, I have zero appeal going for me so far, and we’re already at the end of this story.  I needed appreciate the ego boost.  I’m the one writing it, and I can do so.  Do somethin’.

I’m with stupid.

*true story

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