My Sullied Flesh

Dogwood mp3 By Matthew Sully

This is a song I wrote a few years ago about my love-hate relationship with the geographical location of my youth. Okay, its really about the love hate relationship with my youth. I'm writing a string section for this song. Stay tuned. 

Dogwood

Invisible Mountains

Invisible Mountains

  I have an invisible mountain. Several actually. I am constantly climbing, climbing, climbing. We all have them. What’s yours? I’ve been climbing this mountain as long as I can remember. This mountain that no one can see but me. In a way I believe I was born on it. The only path, leading up hill. At times I’ve been quite lost or stuck in a ravine. At other times just comfortable at one plateau. At this moment I am climbing with great intent. It is a hard climb at this level. The terrain rugged and steep. The path is not always clear or defined. The progress seems slow and disproportionate to the strife and labor of the task. How did I get on this mountain? Why did I take this path? What am I doing?

    This morning I awoke after a rare good nights sleep and prepared for todays climb. I paused to reflect and enjoy the view. I was astonished at the progress made and how far I had ascended. Having done so, the path again became clear. The task turned into passion. I am ready to climb!  

  It's so easy to put your head down and get lost in the task. In doing so the climb becomes a means to an end. We also may lose sight of the reason for the journey or worse. We may not enjoy the beauty of the journey and ascent it self.  

  For now on, this day and everyday, I am going to turn around every now and then to enjoy the view.                   Matthew Sullivan

Not quite the News, but Truthiness.

Truthiness

I was just talking with a friend the other day about how hard it is to just get the news or facts watching cable news programs these days. There is always a strong sense of political party affiliation, sponsorship or slant delivered with each news cast. Some networks stronger than others. Truthiness is a term first used by Steven Colbert in 2005. "Truthiness is what you want the facts to be, as opposed to what the facts are. What feels like the right answer as opposed to what reality will support".

  Author Seth Godin has a blog that I like to read. In todays entry he has broken down the elements of todays cable news cast. Truthiness was the word that kept popping into my mind. Thank you Seth for your insight.

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/

Welcome to my Blog.

Spent a lot more time getting this blog up than I had planned. 

My life story.

And now something from Hamlet:

O that this too too sullied flesh would melt, 
Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew, 
Or that the Everlasting had not fixed 
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter. O God, God, 
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable 
Seem to me all the uses of this world! 
Fie on't, ah, fie, 'tis an unweeded garden 
That grows to seed. Things rank and gross in nature 
Possess it merely. That it should come to this: 
But two months dead, nay, not so much, not two, 
So excellent a king, that was to this 
Hyperion to a satyr, so loving to my mother 
That he might not beteem the winds of heaven 
Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth, 
Must I remember? Why, she would hang on him 
As if increase of appetite had grown 
By what it fed on; and yet within a month-- 
Let me not think on't; frailty, thy name is woman-- 
A little month, or ere those shoes were old 
With which she followed my poor father's body 
Like Niobe, all tears, why she, even she-- 
O God, a beast that wants discourse of reason 
Would have mourned longer-- married with my uncle, 
My father's brother, but no more like my father 
Than I to Hercules. Within a month, 
Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears 
Had left the flushing in her gallèd eyes, 
She married. O, most wicked speed, to post 
With such dexterity to incestuous sheets! 
It is not, nor it cannot come to good. 
But break my heart, for I must hold my tongue. 

(Hamlet, soliloquy-- "Hamlet," Act 1, Scene 2, lines 129-159)  William Shakespeare