for a moment
Posted on 17 April 2012 | No responses
today i was awakened by the sound of poetry
there was no reason or revenue to it
it was beautiful words written about a beautiful time
and a beautiful place
and the missing of someone now gone from the earth
there may be no place on the web for poetry
there may be no beauty in 140 character blasts
there may not be anyone listening – only skimming
just for a moment – i’m stopping – everything
even this…
Noah Marion – Alive Tribe / Next Gen
Posted on 24 April 2012 | No responses
NOAH MARION / Quality Goods (craftsman, artist, humanist)
He’s making hand-crafted leather goods. Like you might have gotten from your kids after summer camp, except, well, the ideas and designs are all grown up. Noah Marion is doing craftsman work and he’s setting a trajectory with heart and passion that is impossible to not to be inspired by.
Spending a few hours last night with Noah, I was convinced that I’d just met the first Alive Tribe / Next Gen member. He is passionate about his work. He is centered and un-rushed in his determination. And his heart is in the right place. And finally, he makes beautiful things. He is an artist.
click to visit noah's store
He handed me a little leather case last night, “I made this for you.”
I was honored and confused at the same time, I wasn’t sure what he had given me.
Later in the evening as we talked about stuff, he talked about wallets. That’s what he had given me. And immediately I got it. I took everything out of my old-school Target-found leather wallet and was instantly in love with my mini wallet from Noah.
“Time to simplify,” I said. “I don’t need 70% of this stuff in my wallet.” I tossed the old machine made wallet in the trash on the way out the door.
And this afternoon I am in love with my little wallet. That it was made by the son of a dear friend, and that he picked out the leather earlier in the day with me in mind… Well, that part was magic.
So I am adding Noah Marion, as the first member of the Alive Tribe / Next Gen. And I highly encourage you to give Noah’s site a look. He’s making each of these pieces himself at the moment. He’d like to hire a bunch of people to make them for him. “It’s Quality Goods Hand-Made in America,” he said when I asked about shipping the work to Mexico so he could drive the price down. He was very clear.
“It’s one of the biggest issues. American-made, hand-made, and made to last. We live in a culture of built-in obsolescence. And that drives me crazy.”
Welcome Noah.
@jmacofearth
alivetribe.net
For My Brother Robert Davidson Marion – AliveTrive iLuminary
Posted on 4 April 2012 | No responses
Always one to greet me as “brother” with a massive open hug, his hugs had begun to have an infinitesimal but noticeable opaqueness. Rather than open with the possibilities ahead and how he and I would join again soon for many things, I felt a resignation to remain separate with our joys and most clearly with our pains.
A spectacular healer, Robert was able to counsel me briefly about my shoulder pain, and treat me with the same care as I had come to expect in the 50 or so times I had seen him as a patient over the years. And he did stay in the room with me for a few minutes to chat about life. But he quickly moved along out of the room without sharing any of his life or passions. And that was a loss for me.
Often people come to doctors for listening as much as treatment. It is proven that merely telling another person about your pain or sadness has amazing healing powers. And if there is a “connect” as I call it, the bond allows the healing to flow both ways. And Robert was no longer willing or able to allow that flow to happen between us. I felt a great loss upon leaving his office for the last time.
Now I can release Robert back to his highest form.
He picked me up as a patient when I was struggling in a bad relationship. He treated both of us. He never spoke unkindly about my then wife or ultimately ex-wife. He merely commented on her beauty and fire! But what Robert did for me was synthesize so much of what I believed about life. Eat well. Breathe. Drink less. Exercise.
I am not sure how well Robert himself was practicing these things over the years since Adam died.
As a shining star, Adam was his artist and poet and sensitive son.
All four of the Marion boys have remarkable talents. And each one grew up wrestling with a big bear of a father and learning to fend for themselves against their remarkably energetic and feisty bothers. The scenes of the boys, running amok and wrestling, fighting, crying, hitting, laughing and running off again in ecstasy, will never be lost in my memory. For me, at that time, Robert and Janice and four boys were my example of a family that I dreamed of creating, a massive joy and connectedness and struggle that I longed for in my past and hoped for in my future.
Robert took care to nurture the talents and feelings of each boy as an individual. Someone wanted to play music, then hire them a teacher and have him come every week and submerge them in the sound. Someone wanted to be a cook or a judo master or a lawyer, they would be supported to do what they needed to do to get there. Of course this is the rosy picture of an outsider.
As a dad and husband myself I understand that much more was in play in the private relationships. But what I know about is how Robert “fathered” me and supported me through many life transitions and growth spurts and breakdowns. Always there, always solid, always a warm hug and rub of the ZinGuShway on my back, Robert was always a piece of bedrock that formed part of my foundation.
I can feel, looking at his picture in the paper, as well as the photo I grabbed from an online article about his healing powers, that Robert is here with me. Again the shining brother. Again the bear hugger and spiritual guide who lead sweat lodges and taught Kushi Macrobiotics at the old EastWest Center with Janice.
“How is your music?” He will ask me more frequently, now that his spirit can roam freely and hug me more deeply.
Namasté dear brother.
Update: 2-3-09: The photo from yesterday’s touching service.
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