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Morning Sun

Each and every morning
When the sun lights the skies
The beauty of your face
Is the first image to touch my eyes

Terra Feminina

For a moment your body is my world
a landscape of hills, slopes and cliffs
my breath and whispers become the wind
over a terrain that I explore with my lips

What will my 30s be about?

I'm turning 30 in less than a month and that has got me contemplating about life and where I want to take it over the next decade.

I've always had a pretty clear vision of what I wanted to do with my life, what made me happy and how I could get there.

My 20's have been about becoming independent -- not just from my parents, but from the over the shoulder boss, from the demands of society to get a job, find a wife, raise a family and stage it all in a house in the burbs behind a white picket fence.

I've rejected that concept entirely: I designed a professional life for myself around the creative activities that I enjoy and found a way to monetize it all the while leaving free time and flexibility to continually improve myself, to get to know the world and my knowledge of its culture, history, current events, sciences, politics... to spend time with my friends and family and to leave my mark -- and that turned out to be the key to happiness... at least my specific flavour of happiness: do what you enjoy and leave a legacy while you're still alive to appreciate the satisfaction of looking back at it.

My friend Kim, who's also turning 30 brought to my attention that it's a custom to make resolutions when entering your "Dirty Thirty's" so I gave it a little thought and wrote back...

I've always been an ambitious person and one to achieve the goals most important to me. I think my resolution is going to be to continue to really live life by fulfilling my goals but doing so with a laser beam focus, with a bigger sense of urgency. I'm getting my pilot's license over the next several months and that'll allow my 30s to be about travelling the world even more prolifically and living each day as an adventure. Photographing the people I meet, writing their stories. It'll also allow me to fill my second resolution described below.

We think we're all grown up being in our late 20's. I'm recognizing that there is still so much to learn, so many things to discover about one's self. This past month, I discovered a brand new feeling, one I had never experienced before. I discovered altruism. I truly experienced the joy of helping somebody without any expectation whatsoever of retribution or personal gain, even going as far as to put myself at a loss just to help this person succeed. I found myself caring for the well being of somebody that I had just met and I did so without hesitation, without regard for myself. If I had to sacrifice something of myself for this person, I would... and I did. And surprise: it felt incredibly satisfying.

I look forward to expanding on that so that my second resolution will be to help others up when they're down, to bring awareness to situations where I can make a difference with people who are down on their luck, who need help, who's life can and should be redeemed and fixed.

Some people anguish in the idea of moving out of their 20's. I look forward with a child like giddiness to my 30's. October 29 can't come soon enough.

Lost In Translation

Films these days tend to miss that sense of taking you to another place, forgetting about your own routine and anxieties and enabling you to travel along with the movie.

I watched Lost in Trasnlation last night. It took me on that ride.

I enjoyed the atmosphere that it involved me in. It's that feeling of being an outsider in a far away place. While everybody goes on living their lives around you, you can't help but notice how different their concept of living is than yours.

I get that feeling every time I travel. Being able to get me there while sitting on my couch is telling of the success of Sophia Coppola's Oscar winning screenplay and the portrayal of the characters by Bill Murray and Scarlett Johanson.

I didn't see Murry and Johanson as actors. They were the characters.

I've been yerning for a good movie like that. In the middle of all the over produced commercial crap being regurgitated into theatres, a movie like Lost in Translation is a welcome respite.

From the Ground Up

So the learning begins.

Folllowing my thrilling introductory flight over Toronto's beautiful downtown skyline one week ago, my ground school manual has arrived. The journey towards earning my pilot wings starts here.

In a year, I'll live and breath aviation. I'll know this book front to back, back to front.

With this manual tattered and crackled, highlighted and note ridden, thrown in the back seat of single engine flying machine, I'll transition from theory to practice... and I will know then: this is what makes life worth living:

Goals and ambition to achieve them.

Once you're devoid of goals, you are no longer alive regardless of what your beating heart tells you. I've got plenty of them to go around for many Pedro's.



Gallery here.

Man On Wire

Inspirational. Uplifting.

A brilliant documentary on how Philippe Petit and his group of friends were able to string a cable across the two towers of the World Trade Centre ending in the inevitable climax of Philippe in his element, euphoric, walking in the sky, putting a smile on the face of New York City.

This film breaths of nostalgia of an era prior to the now acceptable hyper-security, where every one is a suspect, every one a potential terrorist. Those were simpler times.

It was no easy accomplishment however, and the tension is palpable throughout the film: this dream may be impossible after all.

Man on Wire is a historic record of the towers lost and a reminder of the subtle gradient that has led us to this day where such a feat would be impossible.

Watch it. It certainly is worthy of the 2009 Academy Award for Feature Documentary.

Bravo Philippe Petit! Vous avez conquis votre rêve!

That piece of the pie chart

I'm 29 and discarding women like rounds on a semi-automatic. I'm not proud of it, but I'm proud of my decision to not settle for less than what I know I want in a partner.

I'm driven by the belief that there are intelligent, independently minded, ambitious and creative women out there. Surely some of them come wrapped in a physical package that tick off the Face-Boobs-Bum side of my chemistry checklist to the tee...

Perhaps I'll turn into a 40 something, expert dater focused completely on myself and what I enjoy doing in life with women coming in and out of it to fill in the sex section on the "How to Be Happy" pie chart.

I've already had a taste of wanting to be with one woman forever, but it turned out that this female mirror of me demonstrated that the exact qualities I want in a woman – namely "independently minded" – contradicted the picture of us being together.

I still have this belief that having children is a form of immortality. Your genes and your knowledge live on in another body. I also feel that a substantial sliver of the previously mentioned pie chart is dedicated to raising a family.

So my journey continues, not quite giving up, yet preparing to become the next "Bachelor" on ABC.

Debbie makes a "strong pull"

Random Education: Lecture hall on Day 1

The hall sits empty, the projector Vrooming on, a lecture seems
immenent.