As if from a lucid dream, I�m emerging from a weekend of perfection with renewed hope and gratitude. When my brother lost his corporate job a few weeks ago, I offered to fly him out to Seattle from rural Wisconsin (of all places). Separated by geography, tastes, lifestyle, education�he and I have mostly neglected our relationship since we were young children. As a teenager, I suppose I was guilty of all the nasty things so typical of older brothers�ridicule, teasing, and competition. He lived his life and I mine. Sure, we�d exchange a few emails and see each other a few days a year�and everything was fine, but we were simply too caught up in our separate realities and the gap was too great. This has all changed. We should have been twins. From the moment he arrived, we could so effortlessly and freely speak about anything. His perception of the world is, at its core, the same as mine. He lives from the heart. He�s an idealist. A romantic. An artist. A bohemian who has been deeply scarred by a reality that does not align with his soul. His emotional, spiritual, and intellectual intelligence far exceeds his experience and position in life. Imagine, my bro, an evening-and-weekend techno artist (DJ Fuse) from small-town Wisconsin, opening himself up to all that Seattle has to offer. Like a sponge, he spent the entire past several days absorbing everything�listening, observing, but more importantly sharing. We so easily judge each other�we condemn friends, strangers, and family. Yet when we become mature and open enough, we understand that everything is okay. We are all connected and everyone is truly okay. How deeply saddening it is that ideas, values, morals, positions, whatever�should get in the way of human relationships. This is especially true with family. Nothing is so important that it should come between family. So after a night out with my wife and brother in Queen Anne�followed by a walk on a misty Saturday night by the Space Needle, we cranked Rufus Wainwright (I'd already listened to too much B&S during the weekend) while driving home to our apartment. When we had finally arrived at 1:30, none of us had intentions of going to bed. Several hours later, we found ourselves listening to The Beattles, burning incense, and savoring a 1968 Tokaj Konac that we picked up in Slovakia and had been saving for the perfect moment. 1968 was a significant year in Czechoslovak history. It was the year of Prague Spring�during which revolution was ended with tanks sent from Russia. How perfect, we thought, that farmers in Czechoslovakia in 1968 may have been listening to Strawberry Fields on a summer evening during harvest�and now, there we were, in Seattle 34 years later�still hoping and burning for a social and political revolution just as they had. Well, maybe we couldn�t change the world that night, but by 5:00 AM we had changed our lives. We laughed, we loved, we celebrated life�and we woke up at noon, watched a French movie, and felt absolutely no regrets, no awkwardness, and not even a headache. So, as I write this today, my wife is on a plane halfway to Detroit for a business trip, my brother will be returning to a rather miserable reality tomorrow, and I�m finding it impossible to transition into yet another boring, common day at a job that slowly kills me. We will all pay a price for this weekend, but for a few days we were truly alive. Sorry this message is kind of...heavy. I just felt like sharing... __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Sports - Coverage of the 2002 Olympic Games http://sports.yahoo.com +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo@missprint.org. WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "peculiarly deranged fanbase" +-+ +-+ "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000 +-+ +-+ "frighteningly named Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000 +-+ +-+ "sick posse of f**ked in the head psycho-fans" - NME June 2001 +-+ +-+ Nee, nee mun pish, chan pai dee kwa +-+ +-+ Snipp snapp snut, sa var sagan slut! +-+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+