Marcel Marceau - A Dime of a Mime

Legendary mime Marcel Marceau passed away recently. For 50 years, he spent his career performing without uttering a single word. Whoever coined the term 'gift of the gab'? It fascinates me that the man achieved so much during his lifetime without speaking. It has always been thought that the ability to think, reason and communicate through words are two of the main reasons that make man the highest being in the order of the animal kingdom. Marcel Marceau probably never heard of the theory since he flouted it so beautifully...the ability to succeed without communicating verbally, that is. Not the ability to think and reason:)

A survivor of the Holocaust, Marceau said (offstage, he was famously chatty) that among the many children who died in the genocide, there may have been a Mozart, an Einstien, someone who could have invented a new cancer drug. I hadn't thought of that before.

To a man who survived one of the ugliest periods in human history, to an artist who revived a dying art, to someone who believed in constantly going on...to Marcel Marceau who lived, loved and entertained...I salute a genius.

Home - or someplace like it

I guess many of us don't realise all the things we do and all the places we go on an average day. There must be an infinite number of schedules that people all over the world follow. But all - or at least most - of us come back to someplace that we call home.

So what exactly defines a home?

I've heard lofty sayings that a house is just four walls of bricks but a family makes a home. I've never really been one for lofty sayings.

It would probably be safe to say that a lot of us really don't think about what 'home' is until there's some space between us and the place that we take for granted at the end of every busy day. I've recently had the chance to reevaluate what home means to me...the concept, the physical space, the insitution. In my opinion, it's where I feel uninhibited. Don't get ideas...it just means that much like a person that you're in love with...home is where the walls have stood witness to your life...that if they could speak, they'd have fabulous accounts to give of the years that you've spent within their limits. Which is why plenty of people call their schools 'home' or a place that they go to trek often as 'home'. It's because the particular space can give testimony to their evolution, in every sense of the term.

Like I said earlier...home really comes to mind only when you're away from it for a while. Well, at least in my case. I've been living out of a suitcase for the past few weeks and frankly I hadn't felt at home for sometime now. The phenomenon of always being on the go gave me a feeling of discombobulation. But the other day, I regained a sense of oreintation. Which led me to develop a strong conviction. That home really is where the heart is. Looking into your heart is the only way of figuring out whether a space is home or not. Because the space that we call home is a part of our heart. We travel with it. And so in a sense, we never leave it behind. So if you're in a space and can manage to look into your heart and bring those fuzzy feelings that remind you of a safe familiarity that you associate only with home, you know you're there.

When I developed the conviction, I was able to do just that...look into my heart and feel like I was home. Because home really is where the heart is. And quite honestly, I think that's probably the only lofty idea that exists.

Of Time Crunches and Thanks-a-Bunches

Ever had one of those days where twenty-four hours just don't seem enough? I've been feeling like that lately. From the minute I get out of bed to the unearthly hour that I crawl back in, (only to wake up soon after) my day is packed. There's just so much to do that it seems impossible to fit everything in! It would feel so good to be able to look down at your wristwatch or the time display on your cell phone and just be able to push a couple of buttons to see the numbers magically reverse, granting you a couple more hours of breathing time. I'm sure a lot of you out there would agree with me when I say that that would be an invention of the millienium!


Getting back to reality, I've begun a new chapter in my life in so many ways. I'm at this crossroad where it seems that there are an infinite number of paths ahead of me. And the permutations and combinations in which I can take them, endless...each leading to a destination more fascinating than the next! I'm grateful that my life's going the way it is. Plenty of work, not as much sleep as I would like, pressing deadlines...bring it on. I'm ready to take on the world!