The Modesty Writers Guild

The average person watches about 3 hours a day. Some statistics say as much as 5! (http://bit.ly/LX5f97) But for the sake of the median, as most of us don't watch every day, lets say simply 2 hours of television a day. 2 hours X 7 days= 14 hours a week 14 X 4 weeks in a month= 56 hours a month 56 X 12 months = 672 hours a year (6,720 hours every decade) 672 hours a year divided by 24 hours a day = 26.8 continuous days a year we spend in front of the television! That is almost one entire month of every year, 24 hours a day, of TV watching every year! Think of what trade or craft you could master if you spent learning, lets say cooking or auto mechanics, if we studied it 24 hours a day for a whole month! 1 month X 85 years old (modern medicine is allowing our current generations to live longer on average) = 85 months 85 divided by 12 months = I will spend 7.1 continuous years of my life watching TV. 7.1 = Don't we have anything better to do with our lives tha...

don’t look unless you want to be taken back a little. the crazy thing is your probably within one foot of it and it is absorbing you. slowly. so many things in life that i want to learn. if i could implant some microchip in my brain and instantly learn kung fu, spanish, how to cook breakfast, and a full knowledge of architecture i would. but learning takes time, and anyone will tell you that to really master something you must practice for 10,000 hours. i don’t have that much time, i just need more time. we can find time, perhaps its that we don't really want to look in depth where our time is actually going. curiosity is the beginning of learning, you have to be somewhat interested in a topic for you to fully explore it. sir issac newton holed up on in his room on a summer break from college in his early twenties with a prism and changed our entire thinking on light and color. imagine if he had access to internet radio and the app store, would we even know his name? phone. ...

“All of man’s (or woman's) misfortune comes from one thing, which is not knowing how to sit quietly in a room”- Blaise Pascal

i daydream of planting people on an island with like-minded souls, it sounds odd but randomly enough i think about it a lot especially when i am watching the news. you know those people, their extremists in their belief to where whatever it is they are ‘standing up for’ has become more of a lifestyle for them rather than a simple opinion or a complex philosophy. and it is not one thing in particular, its republicans and democrats, its pro mother nature and anti establishment, it’s the super religious and the acute atheist’s. just out there. just so obsessed that no one else is allowed an opinion or another view opposing his or hers. so my daydream consists of putting all people of one particular extremist view on an island together for just a year or so and let them see what happens. think about it, what if you put all the anarchists together, no social rules, no laws, no religion, and just let them live. they would instantaneously believe that they had found true freedom and liberat...

its amazing how easy that we as humans can justify whatever we want to revolve around this ever changing universe called ‘us’. i have watched over the years as men and woman of all ages have tunneled their way so deep into the caverns of their own selfishness that they end up lost and suddenly have the need to blame God or others, without taking a step back to see what got them there. the breathtaking irony is that we as people know when we are wrong, we know when they have reached a place where we have isolated themselves from humanity , right, and wrong, and yet feel comfortably numb to remain there. the course in correcting this colossal mistake is not easily corrected because selfishness and pride are can be easily chalked up to individuality and ambition. have you ever lied to others so much that you actually started to believe it? have you ever repeated a story so many times that it became a true mythological tale in your own life? i have. because for whatever innate reas...

i only have one memory of my grandfather, anton. we were wrestling in the living room of his house on niles avenue in saint joeseph, michiagn. he was egging me on to wrestle, but being shy and very young i avoided his taunts but remember clearly the big smile and heavy accent that accompanied the moment. my grandfather died in 1983, much to early for me to have a deep or meaningful relationship or conversation with him. growing up he had always been a folklore to me, the stories that were passed around at sunday dinners were my childhood mythology. my grandfather wrote a short journal when he was in a hospital in the 1970’s. it has circulated my family for years but wasn’t translated from german to english until recently. the first time i read it i was in tears, then the second time, and so on. this short book takes that original journal and turns it in to a story, where all the characters and events were absolutely factual. i kept as close to the journal as i cou...

i wrote a 'book' for my mother, it is about her parents and their escape from the hardships of germany in world war II. i am in the process of creating a website for it for those who want to read it for free. i found my opa's (grandfathers) 30 page journal and set out to create into a dialog and story without distorting the truth or message. i will deliver soon, hope you enjoy it.

im in montreal, walking up and down the streets, exploring in stereotypical fashion, when i glace up and see a sunglass’ advertising that says ‘no regrets’. no regrets? really? people still say that, or rather people still believe that? to live without regrets is ridiculous, it would in essence be saying that every decision you had made in the past was either the correct one, it was stupid and you don’t care, or you had a lobotomy and are lethargic. we have to live with regret, it haunts some of us every day, for others we drowned it in substance, entertainment, or preoccupation. making bad decisions is a part of life, but we learn from them and we move on, constantly aware of our weakness and trying at all costs to avoid it. to say ‘no regrets’ is to fail flat on our face stand up, throw our fist and cheesy mantra in the air and fail again with no regard for our own human dignity or responsibility. the ad was 2 couples all wearing sunglass’ sitting in each others laps, as if to say, ‘...

dear high school stephen, there is so much i want to say, but a lot i don’t because in life sometimes you have to learn the lessons the hard way. people can try to teach you, and beg you to change, and hope for the best but at the end of the day you have to learn the lesson. you are absorbed with the opposite sex, but honestly you are not going to end up with any of them, actually you will lose track of everyone you have known from this era of your life except for a few people… and those were your guy friends. instead of trying to hang out with the opposite sex all the time why don’t you concentrate on developing meaningful long term friendships. trust me there is no point to attempt anything else. popularity is the most pointless pursuit you could ever honestly strive for in your whole life. you are going to look back at these days with near disgust thinking of the clothes you wore, the clubs you joined, or didn’t join, the people you hung out with, or left behind, all in attempts to ...

you have no idea, then again i can't say i have much of an idea as well. we believe because we can look at it from the outside and watch your glass world crumble and know exactly what we would do in that situation because, well, were not in it. we are all so quick to judge on other peoples little empires. i once saw an article on a politicians wife who decided to stay with him even though he had cheated on her and the scandal became public. she stayed with him out of love and with the willingness to forgive this atrocious behavior deep into a vow. and yet the comments that followed the article were perhaps worse than the acts committed. the people ripped her up, calling her weak, and not a real woman. how many of these people have walked in her shoes, had the years of committed relationship, or knew all the details. but because we sit perched high above it is so easy to summarize her life and feel we know best as for what she should do next for her and her children. i do it to. whe...

whether we understand it or not this life that we have is so fragile. i look around at the world today and see so many natural catastrophes and wonder how they came to be, and why now, and how is it that with so much technology they could not foreshadow this coming. it could happen any minute to any one of us, and yet there are days that we wish would hurry up and end. sometimes i let my mind wander to the events of the day of a person who loses their life. they wake up, like every other day and brush their teeth, put on their favorite t-shirt, have a bowl of cereal, and on their way to work they stop at the gas station to fill up. then it happens. out of nowhere, and when they woke up just hours before they had no idea. i heard that if our planet was one degree closer to the sun we would burn and if we were one degree away we would all freeze, how fragile this world really is. who can account for mother nature the beautiful sunrises and the storms that brew in the evening. this is not...

the song 'empires' is available exclusively on anchor&braille's vinyl 'FELT' available here

they always looked so lonely to me, and i never understood how people could be so cruel as to keep them in such a small bowl, floating in one place for, well... for the rest of their lives. siamese fighting fish, or betta fish, live solitary lives not because it is cruel as i had thought growing up, but because in most situations they will attack or kill any other betta fish they are near, as they are very territorial. i recently visited my brother tim in washington, dc, and he had one such amazing fish. it had a beautiful long tail, multi colored in purple and blue's. we began to talk about it and he was telling me random facts and behaviors of this 'lonely' fish and mentioned its aversion to mirrors. i had never heard about this and so tim showed me, the 'trick' is to hold a mirror up to the tank of the siamese fighting fish and it will puff up to more than twice its size because it thinks that in the mirror is another betta fish and must now defend its terr...

i think i was more excited about getting the used and dented helmet than actually what i was going to use it for. i lined up in a single file line, filled with anticipation, that wrapped around the small shed-like brick building. all boys were right around my age, no older than 12. i was asked my last name, crossed off the list, and then handed a green mesh shirt which i proudly wore around the house for the rest of the day, and most of the next. the helmets were white with a police sticker on the side of it, it looked like a badge but to me the whole outfit was a trophy itself. pee wee football, in my mind, was close to the NFL and spending many sundays sitting next to my dad watching him cheer for the cowboys, i felt it was my turn on the 'gridiron'. there was one small problem though, literally. i was actually develop more like a cheerleader, and not so much a cowboy. i was stick like and more than once my mother worried i had some virus or parasite living in me, keepi...

we are all going to die. just a heads up.

i was driving home one night, hours from home and my favorite passenger was fast asleep. i rarely turn on music when i drive, most bands i listen to our not good for 3 AM dark, long stretches of highway anyway. i usually listen to some sort of talk radio, (you hear the most random and borderline insane theories on backwoods talk stations). i stopped on a story about an all to familiar character, but this was not about his headlines, but about the low points of his life. when it comes to the past we often hear of the success, but rarely ever of the failure. if you think about it you never hear anyone at a funeral walk on stage and belittle the deceased or question publicly their character, you only hear the positive even if there is very little to speak of. in the same light i had heard more positive stories than negatives of this american man. i had listened to the speeches, envisioned his dreams, read books, and even wrote several papers on his influence in my own life. but this radio...

the slogan 'stay in school' is not just grossly overplayed, it really doesn't explain anything. it is more like a command, 'here is what you must do. why you ask? don't ask just stay'. this revelation hit me as i walked the halls of my mothers K-6 school in Haines City, Florida (probably because it was plastered on a few walls). I was there for a 'release party' my mother called it, not a record. butterflies. we gathered the children around, songs were sung, lessons were given, and i had the duty of releasing them into the 'wild'. These kids were asked to stay but i wondered if they truly had any idea why. that night i spoke at the community college i attended. afterwards i was asked to give a brief interview for the schools newspaper and one of the questions was 'do you think your education has had an impact on your career'. that's when my thoughts started flowing and i realized that it had not only everything to do with my career...

i really despise and adore estate sales. i guess its rather a love and hate relationship, i never really buy anything but just to be able to walk through someones house is almost like being able to read their journals or something. you can see what is in important to them, the pictures, the books, the organization, or lack there of. estate sales are basically a garage sale of, well everything. you can walk through a persons house who has probably died, which explains the reason why i hate them so much. its just creepy, i mean less than a month ago this piece of art was probably someones prized possession but now its for sale, tomorrow if its not sold it will probably have a big red slash through the ticket on discount, and if its still not sold it will most likely be in the dumpster or goodwill by the end of the week. someone LOVED that piece of art! at an estate sale a few days ago i walked through someones treasures and sifted through memories and prized moments ...