Down the other side

Well, today I turn 45. I figure I'll live to about 90, so that puts me at the top of the mountain looking down the other side. I turn around to look the other way and I see the past stretched out. Half of me on one side; half of me on the other side. Ah, screw the poetry; I'm a very happy man. I theorized a long time ago that happy people don't write much. I don't know if that's really true. Wait a minute...I'm writing right now! Does that mean my theory was wrong or does that mean I'm actually unhappy? OR, if my theory was wrong, would that make me unhappy? And then, would I turn out happy because I'd be writing more now that I'd become unhappy? I think maybe I spent too much time watching Three Stooges growing up. Anyway, that is what this blog is all about. Just to get to the writing. I had an English teacher in high school that was trying to teach us how to write. An exercise during class was to simply not lift your pen off the paper until he called the time. It would be about 10 minutes I think. He'd tell us, "I don't care if you have to write your name over and over again, just keep writing." I really had trouble with it. I would write my name over and over again. I do remember those years as very good years though. It reminds me of a project I'm working on now. Each summer I take a group of teenagers on a week-long thing we call Science Camp. One of the fundamentals we try to teach is the concept of a "Paradigm Shift." Now, we really don't go too deep into Thomas Kuhn's Philosophy, we just introduce the idea to teenagers who are interested in Science. One of my challenges this spring is to come up with some ideas of some movies that portray a paradigm shift. And, I remember when I was in high school I read Robert Heinlein's Universe and it really had an impact on me when the character went through his shift. It was like my eyes were being opened to a new reality. During that writing class I found myself composing many stories based on this theme of paradigm shift for a character. So, if anybody can think of a good movie that portrays this drop me a line.

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