family, people, language, breathing, writing, reading, music, art, movies, history, anthropology, sociology, politics, human evolution, genealogy, food. Also, working on my other weblog pages:
belowgorising and
words from the belowgosphere
Music
Bob Marley, Bunny Wailer, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Brian Eno, REM, Tom Petty, Jimi Hendrix, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bach, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, African, Afro-Cuban, other ethnic rhythms and drumming...
Movies
Citizen Kane (Orson Welles), Throne of Blood (Akira Kurosawa), That Obscure Object of Desire (Luis Bunuel), 8-and-1/2 (Federico Fellini), Persona (Ingmar Bergman), To Have and Have Not (Howard Hawks), Naked Lunch (David Cronenberg), Henry V (Lawrence Olivier), Manhattan (Woody Allen), Barton Fink (Joel and Ethan Coen)...
Television
(Shows on TV now) Bones, House, CSI Miami, CSI Vegas, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. (All-time) The Prisoner, X-Files, West Wing, MASH, All in the Family, Dick Van Dyke Show, Frasier, ThirtySomething...
Books
DRAMA: Hamlet, MacBeth, King Lear (Shakespeare), Waiting for Godot (Samuel Beckett). FICTION: stories by Jorge Luis Borges, stories by Eudora Welty, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain), Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (James Joyce), Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (Philip K. Dick), Virtual Light (William Gibson), Contact (Carl Sagan), Nausea (Jean-Paul Sartre), Jealousy (Alain Robbe-Grillet), Devil on the Cross (Ngugi wa Thiong'o). NON-FICTION: Writing and Difference [philosophy] (Jacques Derrida), Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors[anthropology] (Carl Sagan), Catch a Fire[bio of Bob Marley] (Timothy White), The First Coming:How the Kingdom of God Became Christianity (Thomas Sheehan), The Book of J[biblical textual study] (Harold Bloom and David Rosenberg)...
Heroes
My parents Tom and Bobbye Meek, my sons' uncle Mike Gray, my roommate Mark Ullom; Osceola McCarty. Writers: William Shakespeare, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Gertrude Stein, Frank O'Hara, Jacques Derrida, Paolo Freire. Also Gautama Buddha, Jesus, Socrates, Mahatma Ghandi, Mother Theresa...
University Of Southern Mississippi
Hattiesburg, MS
Graduated: 1995
Student status: Alumni
Degree: Bachelor's Degree
Major: English/American Literature
Minor: American Studies
1993 to 1998
Millsaps College
Jackson, MS
Graduated: N/A
Student status: Alumni
Degree: None
Major: English
Clubs: literary mag, student government
Pascagoula High School
Pascagoula, MS
Graduated: 1974
Student status: Alumni
Degree: High School Diploma
Major: college preparatory
Clubs: Band, newspaper
About me:
Hurricane Katrina literally washed me & my older son & his fiancee out of our apartment (half a block off the beach in Biloxi), so I am grateful for each day of my life, for the chance to try to live it with humility & compassion.
I love to play drums & percussion with my friends or alone. I have been playing drums since 6th grade, & used to play & record all kinds of cool-strange music with my brother, Jon, when we were teenagers & a little older.
I have been a reader & writer & player of words since I can remember. Once upon a time, I wrote a lot of poems & essays, but have had trouble gathering myself up for it since Hurricane Katrina washed away every piece of paper & floppy disk I had. I want to keep working at it, though.
Who I'd like to meet: I would like to meet my mother & father as young adults, before they got married. And if I could really meet with absolutely anyone, I would like to be with my father one more time, just to hug him & talk to him for a few minutes. But I know that can't happen, because we have only this one life, so there won't be any angelic reunion in some afterlife of the personalities we knew each other as in this one. This is why I believe it is so important to live this life well & truly, to value & honor the here-&-now, & not to pin our hopes on the imagined rewards & consolations of a heaven to come. "From dust to dust" is reality, but that makes our life on earth all the more to be cherished, & not to be held as worthless or intrinsically "fallen" or "sinful". If there is any god or creator of this world, why would she/he plan existence to be a grand battle between "good & evil", or "Heaven & Hell", so that this life becomes a devalued wasteland? It would be better that history were the blink of an eye, the movement under Vishnu's eyelids in sleep, every moment the same one-&-only moment of Shiva's dance of origin-end.
sharing a moment:
the other day i was returning from a trip upstate. when i reached the pascagoula river bridge, i knew i was close to home and started to relax. i stared out over the expanse and noticed a large 'strange-looking' bird swooping down into the water. i drove closer and it rose up and over the bridge and i realized it was a bald eagle. i saw it clearly. the white head and tail and crooked beak. my first wild siting. i hollered out...look its a bald eagle. no one heard but me. i felt a tear that happens when you know you've experienced something that few will ever see and wanted to share with all of you.
Hey Gar, everything is pretty good here... the first couple of weeks are pretty hard on them especially for the guys, guess that means you got to be extra sweet to them. Thanks for the message talk to you soon
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