My Philosophical Similarities With Alyssa Milano

I was watching an episode of The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson recently, and I found myself completely mesmerized by the segments that included Alyssa Milano. Now, I am not ashamed to disclose that part of this was attributed to purely aesthetic reasons, but I don't think that would be the most scandalous admission anyway. To be honest, it was actually more than just a petty infatuation. Even though most of her work as an actor does not really come through my wheelhouse, I still became a fan of hers over the years. With my limited exposure to her career, I have come to know about her only through her various appearances on talk shows and through the great love affair that sports blogs seem to have with her. It is in this way that I learned of her passion for the game of baseball, and with that knowledge she became a woman after my own heart. Given this, and my possession of a completely idle mind on this particular night in question, I decided to learn a little bit more about this woman and ventured my way towards that bastion of information, Wikipedia.

I found a lot of what I had expected to find. I scrolled through her early life, a summary of her work, and the seemingly prerequisite section that celebrities have on their devotion to vegetarianism. It was not until I landed on the section labeled "Personal Life" that I found something that really grabbed my attention and inspired this very odd blog. Yes, I know this line of thought has been a little weird thus far, but trust me there is a point to it all within sight. To that end, as I read through the descriptions of her various relationships, I stumbled upon this quote:

"I learned so much from him about love, hate and about myself. Just because it ended doesn't mean that it wasn't beautiful."

And here is where we arrive to the point of all this Milano-related build up. That simple quote that she gave a magazine over a decade ago summerizes the idea of the book I wrote better than any of the myriad of ways I have tried to describe it since it was released. As I first set out to write what would become my first book, the driving force behind it all was love. At the time I was experiencing a level of emotion that I had never even caught a glimpse of before. The pages that I began to produce became reservoirs for all these feelings that seemed ready to burst through the levees that existed in my mind. Unfortunately, there are times in one's life where love seems to strain under the pressure of the world and we are forced to look at our relationships in ways that we never wanted to or had imagined we would. We question not only the quality and motives of the love that we thought would be there forever, but we ponder its mere existence in the first place. To me though, this is an exercise in futility. Why do we rake ourselves over the coals with memories that appear out of the past like the undead hand shooting up out of the grave. Why can we not accept our past for what it was, and live with the fact that even though something has ended doesn't mean that it wasn't beautiful.

In the end that choice is ours. We can wallow in the warm feelings of placing blame elsewhere, but in the end they turn cold and provide no comfort. The real solace lays in accepting things for what they are, and appreciating the people and things that come into our lives no matter what amount of time they choose to be with us. The further I got in shaping the lives of the characters in my book in this manner, the more I came to realize that this line of thought had become my own personal philosophy, and I found great comfort in it. The truths that I had to face hurt more than I can describe, and still do to this day, but this philosophy treats like a soothing salve and takes away at least a little of the sting. Little did I know that I was an unaware disciple of the school of Milano, though.

If anyone would like to purchase this book I speak of, here are some links:

Amazon & Kindle

Createspace

Finding Inspiration in Space Grizzlies

It was nearly a quarter century ago, but I really do remember it like it was yesterday. The memories of being curled up with my parents and reading my favorite book are far too vivid for the passage of time to carry out its familiar dirty work. Along with a few select things that have dotted the canvas of my life, the image of troves of "Space Grizzlies" chasing Brother Bear through his dream has a permanent spot in the gallery of my memories. Sitting, listening and following along as my parents read the words to The Berenstain Bears and the Bad Dream, I found my youthful mind falling captive to the world that had unfolded before me. The colors, the illustrations and the characters all grabbed at my attention, but it was really the words and the story that clutched onto my consciousness with a Samson like grip. After my parents read the book to me what feels like at least several thousands of times, I slowly began to pick up the skills necessary to drag the book out myself and let my own eyes do all the work. Suddenly, the world around me appeared limitless. The physical boundaries that permeate this world truthfully didn't hold much significance to me in those days, but any sort of mental barrier that existed in the expanses of my mind came crumbling down in the face of the written word. The feeling that I could step into this little dream world and take it in any direction that I saw fit filled me we a wonder that very few things have been able to since. Why would I let the pressures of this world crush me into smithereens when I could find countless others to escape to and shed the weight of life?

As the years of my life began to pass by, I sought out all these countless worlds and devoured them with the ferocity of a shark at feeding time. I found myself walking along with hobbits as they bravely marched towards what seemed like impending death. I traveled the lonesome dusty roads with migrant workers who only wanted to recapture a tiny piece of the life they once had. I became unstuck in time with a man bouncing back and forth between the unimaginable horrors of World War II and the inconceivable trials of the future. As the number of these worlds that I let myself slip into grew, so did the seed of an idea that I could construct the words on a sheet of paper into a private sanctuary in someone else's mind. From that seed gradually grew a dream and finally from that dream grew a reality.

One day earlier this year, and with the help of the people closest to me, I decided to bring down any physical boundaries and forget any mental barriers that my adult mind had attempted to reconstruct. I sat down in front of a computer and let loose one of the many worlds that had started to clutter my mind. Several months later, in spite of a few trials and tribulations, a book miraculously appeared. My dream, at long last, had finally come to fruition. I sincerely hope that it is entertaining. I hope that it is interesting. More so, I hope that it opens a small little refuge for someone out there to crawl into, take cover from the pressure of reality and explore with a curiosity that leaves them in awe as much as the Berenstain Bears did for me.

If anyone would like to purchase my first book, Means to an Ending, here are a few links where it can be found:

Createspace
Amazon & Kindle