STRIKING THE ROCK OF APATHY – CLEAN DRINKING WATER FOR ALL KIDS OF THE WORLD
Sometimes I feel like a waterfall in West Hollywood, that just won’t stop. Where the water comes from within the spirit that feels dry, jaded, tired on grey winters days, ironically on days when it pours with rain – I don’t know.
One thing I do know, is that 2 million innocent children, die each year in our world, on our watch, regardless of what flags we wave above our heads, or what parades we have under them for whatever reasons to gratify our own sense of worth and identity. While our flags flap around in the wind, the lives of these children do too and many die because they don’t have access to clean drinking water. They get sick, their lives and their potential in this world are cut short.
Sometimes I wish, that people who are told and even say themselves that they are Kings & Queens would rise up like the legend of Moses in a dry desert, and take the wooden staff of their generation’s destiny and dare to strike the rock of greed, of apathy, or blindness, of entitlement, of nationalism, of hatred, of extreme and costly ‘paper gangsta’ capitalism, of those attitudes of detachment masked in those nonhuman words ‘that’s them and not us,’ of leader’s pride, human blind spots and prejudices; and our own too judging these leaders who are at best, mirrors of ourselves that we elected in many cases (or, the flip side too of letting go of the paralyzing and crippling fear of extreme loss and grief that inevitably follows in that degree of sudden loss too, it’s all the same constructed coin)–and these royals of the earth would say “enough, let these children go free” and cause water to flow to children they don’t know, whose parents they’ve never seen, whose dreams are more real than us at times or our bank balance or the figure we are told of our paper worth or lack of, or the excitement in our allocated and imagined carbon credit worth too. We are so green thinking these days!
[Excuse the Kerouac-esque lack of punctuating all proper, in that last paragraph].
Then I realise, sh*t, these Kings and Queens are on this blog everyday. They’re you and on a good day – I could be in your good company too. On a good day. Giving the gift of water to someone else is perhaps the most powerful thing we can do in the 2010′s. One of the true signs we have actually evolved with all of enjoyment and claims of new technology et al that have radically changed our lives. Giving water and saying to someone else, “I love you and you are much loved” are two simple yet vital things we can do each day.
HOLLYWOOD ACTOR CLIFF CURTIS HAS COURAGE TO LOVE, A NOVEL BY ROBERT ELLIS
Hollywood Actor Cliff Curtis has Courage To Love the Middle East
Hollywood actor and film producer, Cliff Curtis holds his early edition copy of Courage To Love, the new Romeo & Juliet novel by author Robert Ellis. The modern story of forbidden love that is set in Israel and the Gaza strip, is getting good early buzz in Hollywood. Curtis describes the book as being “beautiful.”
Of this pivotal novel, Curtis features here in his hand, filmmaker Bill Birrell says: “I have been looking for a human scale story about the Middle East: but one that will both entertain and provoke. In short I believe Courage to Love is it. Not since Elie Wiesel, the Nobel prize-winning writer, has an author distilled these conflicts into such human terms. Put another way, while the story touches on significant issues, it is really a tale of two young people and their struggle to be allowed to love each other.”
Cliff, a newly wed himself, is all about love these days and furthering love’s potential in a world wind epic romance he finds himself caught up in, in his real life. His Hollywood career also has elevation. Curtis currently stars as Firelord Orzai in M. Night Shyamalan‘s 3D film franchise, The Last Airbender and has just signed on to two films starring opposite, Zoe Saldana (of Star Trek and Avatar film franchises fame) where he’s cast as Zoe’s closest family member. Coming up, Curtis will also star with Sigourney Weaver and Bruce Willis.
