I needed a quick post today or I am never going to catch up let alone get ahead.
Home.
I grew up in Gull Lake, Michigan. I had the pleasure to return and live there with my wife for the first two years of our marriage in the house I helped build with my family on West Gull Lake Drive. I shared a bit about this house in T-shirt #94 and our BAT POLE.
For me, Gull Lake is home.
Living in the beautiful place on West Gull Lake Drive from 1979-1981 and then from 1985-2003, and then to return there in 2009 and live there until 2011 with my wife and kids makes me a very happy and a very lucky person.
The West Gull Lake Drive house is a beautiful architectural model. My kids called it the "Vampire Tree-House." I am not sure about the vampires, but it is very much a tree-house.
I count myself so lucky to be able to live there with two families: my parents and my sister, and then my wife and step-kids.
Just looking at the pictures make me nostalgic and wistful.
It is a magical place and a home filled with memories both good and a few that are tragic.
I am grateful.
Thank you to all my readers.
But, I am warning you now, I am going to cheat again and re-publish content here that I originally published as part of T-shirt #78: Suzanne Vega.
You do realize that I cross-reference my blog posts like this because, while I have your attention, I want to try to catch your interest in postings you may not have read. For a few of you, this is not an issue as you have told me that you have read the whole thing. This is a feat I find very impressive, and I am honored. Thanking you for making me part of your daily or weekly life (not sure how often some of you who read it all read it).
Anyway, this chunk of text seemed worthy of a repeat. So here we go.
LAST WORD ON THE GRATITUDE THING: I got the idea for the gratitude prayer (meditation, list, incantation, catalogue, rumination, reflection, or whatever you want to call it) from a movie called The Secret. I am not quite promoting the movie as a "true" exposure of an actual science. In fact, many of the stories in the film are a bit fatuous. However, I like watching it. I showed it to a class (my second viewing) about a month ago, and the idea of the daily gratitude thing struck me. In the movie, one of the interviewees (I forget which one and it's not important) explained how he had a rock in his pocket. At night, he would set it on his dresser with the other contents of his pockets. The next morning, he would retrieve it and remember to list the things for which he was grateful as a daily routine, like a prayer. He had a visitor from South Africa and told the man about his rock and gratitude practice. The man called it a "gratitude rock." After returning to South Africa, he wrote his American friend and asked for some gratitude rocks to be sent to him because one of his children was very sick, and he did not have the money to seek medical care for the child. The interviewee balked at sending "gratitude rocks" because, after all, "they are just rocks," he said. But he found three nice rocks and sent them to his South African friend. Months later, the South African wrote back. The rocks worked! His son was healed and recovered. They paid for his medical treatment by selling a hundred gratitude rocks. People believed in the power of the gratitude rocks.I found this story inspirational. I do not use a rock, but every day, I make my gratitude list. I send energy into the universe. I focus on the positive and try to limit or dismiss the negative.
I think it's working.
"Home is where I want to be
Pick me up and turn me round
I feel numb - born with a weak heart(So I) guess I must be having funThe less we say about it the betterMake it up as we go alongFeet on the groundHead in the skyIt's ok I know nothing's wrong . . nothing....
Home - is where I want to be
But I guess I'm already there
I come home she lifted up her wings
Guess that this must be the place "
Home.
- chris tower - 1308.25 - 18:09
