Method acting

A few months ago, I watched from my office window as US Airways pilot Chelsey Sullenberger landed his Airbus A320 on the surface of the Hudson River.  

Of course this in itself was an amazing feat, but what I found the most remarkable was the response of the New York Waterway ferries (12 in all). Quite literally within seconds, commuter ferries from both the New York and New Jersey sides of the river mobilized to locate survivors.

It is that quick action borne from gut instinct that impresses me. In such situations I, a person who weighs every possible outcome, every nuance of every angle, would probably stand stock still gawking and pointing until someone else offered up a viable plan. You could say all of this second-guessing is due to a lack of trust in my intuition, but really that comes from a failure to live in the Now. In fact, author and illustrator Florence Scovel Shinn wrote that intuition is a spiritual faculty and does not explain, but simply points the way. 

Superb athletes, battlefield soldiers, and pilots about to crash often describe the "zone" of intuition when they are completely entranced in what they are doing in that moment. Using their training, they simply react. Make that superb athletes, battlefield soldiers, pilots about to crash, and one Chad Lindsey, an actor/proofreader.

Chad was waiting on the Penn Station C platform yesterday afternoon when a man took a swan dive onto the tracks. He hit his head on the rail and passed out. Our hero's (although he is very uncomfortable with that term) intuition kicked in and he didn't hesitate. "I dropped my bag and jumped down there. I tried to wake him up," Chad said. "He probably had a massive concussion at that point…He just wouldn't wake up, and he was bleeding all over the place."
 
Chad saw the glow of the train's headlights reflecting on the tracks as it approached the station. Did he panic? No way. Chad was in the zone. And his current role in an Off Broadway show that requires him to repeatedly lift another character who can't walk didn't hurt either. He grabbed the man under the armpits and hoisted him toward the platform. "It's kind of higher than you think it is." Some men on the platform pulled the man up and then Chad hopped up himself with 10 to 15 seconds to spare before the train barreled in.
 
The EMTs arrived and whisked the man to the hospital. Chad hopped on the next arriving train and went about his business. "It was quite a New York day," he told a New York Times reporter who tracked Chad down only after his friends saw this post and outed him. 

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm weighing the difficult options of taking the 2 express or staying on the 1 local.

 

Pakistan dilemma

Struggle for influence between Zardari and Sharif has pushed Pakistan further into chaos in the last couple of months. The country was already in turmoil because of rising militancy in the Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP), an economic slump, and the growing strength of Islamic fundamentalists demonstrated by the brazen attack against visiting Sri Lankan cricket players earlier this month. In broad daylight (around 9 a.m. local time) gunmen attacked a convoy carrying the players, killing six security personnel.

In order to establish some sort of control over its territory in NWFP (the Swat Valley), now under heavy Taliban influence, the Pakistani government signed a peace agreement with the militants. Now, Taliban rules the valley and is introducing Shariah law in the area. According to Bloomberg, they have already replaced government-appointed judges with mullahs.

Rising militancy is not limited to the remote NWFP; even big cities are getting hit. AFP says that earlier today a suicide bomber killed 14 people in the city of Rawalpindi. Last month an American UN official was kidnapped by separatist militants in Quetta, the provincial capital of Baluchistan. He has not been released and is said to be seriously ill.

 

Free speech under attack in Afghanistan

Seven years since, none of the initial goals have been met. Instead, millions of dollars and precious lives have been lost in military operations that have bought very few positive results. The Taliban was ousted from power for a while, but now they are regrouping and back to their old ways. In many parts of the country the Taliban is actively recruiting and rearming. They have also re-launched their campaign against educating women and girls, freedom of expression and speech, and religious tolerance. Al Qaeda has spread its tentacles from Afghanistan into neighboring Pakistan, while the U.S. spent millions of dollars trying to crush this organization.

Another disturbing aspect of this war is that the U.S. and its allies support a totally incompetent government lead by President Hamid Karzai. Under this leadership, or lack of, corruption is rampant in the country while warlords are roaming around with impunity and the mullahs are terrorizing journalists, women who dare ask for their rights, and those with a different view on Islam.

Attacks against free speech and journalists have resulted in a 20-year prison term for a young Afghan student journalist.

According to The New York Times, Parwiz Kambakhsh, 24, has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for blasphemy. His crime? He is accused of downloading articles on women's rights and distributing them. The prison term comes after an earlier death sentence was commuted.

The trial against Mr. Kambakhsh was shoddy and unfair, his family alleges. They say that the court ignored that many witnesses had retracted their earlier statements and that the verdict was reached in secret without the family being notified properly.

Unfortunately, Mr. Kambakhsh is not the only one being attacked in Afghanistan for his views or his alleged activity. Journalists are begin systematically targeted in the country by the hard-line fundamentalists who are trying to silence the call for a more open and democratic Afghanistan. Mr. Karzai on the other hand is silent on the issue and refuses to stand up to the fundamentalists.

 

You know you’ve been riding the subway too long when…#2

 

You know who Dr. Z is and, during long train delays, have actually given serious thought to using his services.

[For the uninitiated, Dr. Zizmor's ubiquitous ads in every fifth car of the NYC subway system have developed a sort of cult following. ''Is your skin loose? Do you have more than one chin? Has your skin lost its firmness and tightness? Do you think you look older than you should for your age?'' Never fear. Dr. Z is here. With the image of Dr. Z himself at the end of the rainbow, he says, "Now you can have beautiful, clear skin."]

 

Do animals care about art?

"She was a star in college and she is a star today," I thought. "And, what am I doing with my life?" Within seconds my black tortoiseshell cat, Cinderella, jumped on my stomach and started her usual kneading and purring. Then all of a sudden it hit me: I could sell some prints of my paintings and photographs online! Why hadn’t I thought of that before? Where had this idea come from? Then, I looked up into the most soulful green eyes you have seen. Cinderella was staring intently, deep into my being.

"Could it be?" I asked myself. "This cat was speaking to me telepathically!" I jumped up with fresh enthusiasm and ran back to my computer and logged onto a website that allows artists to sell, advertise, and create prints of their artwork on demand. I was amazed that this idea had suddenly popped into my head out of the pits of my pity party, from the eyes of my cat, and it warmed my heart having the belief that she loved me that much, even in that ugly private moment. Did she really make the connection that I am happiest when I am doing my art?

Once, I was underground in a Manhattan subway terminal and saw a jazz musician holding a sign that said "Art is Life."  Art has always been my life, but what could that mean to the rest of the world? The slogan stuck with me all day. If art is life, then life is art. We need it to breathe. If I am not doing art, I am not living. I think Cinderella understands that.   

A day after my online art epiphany, I saw an elephant painting with his trunk on Animal Planet. He appeared to be truly enjoying himself. They also showed a cat that played the piano while his owner played guitar.  My old childhood cat, Odyssey, was an avid Miles Davis fan, especially the Kind of Blue album.  

There are many great books that have recently come out exploring the phenomenon of animal destiny and how many times it is intertwined with humans. There is no doubt in my mind that all living creatures are connected to one another. Playing and dancing under the sun is not species specific. It is our relationships with one another, whether it is human to human or human to cat, that create fulfillment in our lives. Art is a natural reflection of this.