Of green grass – Ashok Chandwaney

Why can’t the grass ever be green enough?

We almost always want more for ourselves – more money, a bigger home, better life conditions and what have you.  Why can’t we normally be satisfied, take the moment for granted and leave it at that?  It seems that good enough is no longer good enough, not for us.  

Be a hero – Ashok Chandwaney

In the 4^th grade, our counselor came in and drew a jagged line on the whiteboard.  This, he told us, was life: a series of ups and downs.  Maybe here, one of the lows, our pet just died but it’s okay because here, pointing to an up, he told us that it was our birthday party and the new episode of that one show came on – turns out the superhero won out against the villain after all.  If only life were really that simple.  What he didn’t tell us, back in 4^th grade, was that we each had a chance of experiencing at least one very, very long down in the course of our lives.  I was talking to the friend I wrote about last time, and one of the things she had to say about that entry was

Sometimes all we ever needed was for someone to care about us enough to know that a push into the dark would help us find a brighter light

[your name here] – Ashok Chandwaney

Many are quick to talk down the morality and inherent good nature of humankind.  Back in the day, it was also said that our little rock was this universe’s center.  In the 13 days following Haiti’s tragic earthquake, early estimates are coming in at $100 million fundraised for various charities’ relief efforts.  That’s almost $10 million every day since the quake – what was that about greed being a part of human nature, again?

We’re powerful, humans.  From the Kennedy’s declaration of our aspiration to space to the Apollo 11 landing, a mere 8 years passed.  Let me say that again: it took us less than half my lifetime to put a human on the moon.  In our history, our brethren and predecessors have toppled tyrants, unified nations, and held relentlessly our highest of ideals.  Events like those in Haiti always prove the pessimists, skeptics, and cynics, soundly wrong; the global unity and compassion that humanity has shown to the Haitian survivors and refuges is incredible.  Red tape, slashed, litters the ground; our pockets, empty in economic downturn, are lighter still as we show our support; heroes have departed from all walks of life to donate their hands to pull survivors out of the rubble. We saw people in need; we gave them, as a species, our help.

The Odyssey of Making a Film about Suicide – Julio Ramírez

“A long, wandering and eventful journey” is the common definition found in the dictionaries for the word Odyssey. But like many concepts, a real definition seems to be truly understood only when experienced first hand.

David Brooks says in his article The Odyssey Years, that Odyssey is also the name of one of the new life phases and the least understood. “The decade of wondering that frequently occurs between adolescence and adulthood.” As a person who went through this phase experiencing cultural changes, and in the midst of an existentialistic flare, I find the name Odyssey very relevant and indelible.

Several years ago while recovering from a long and painful hospitalization, I turned the TV on searching for uplifting content that could help me forget about the pain that I was experiencing. An anchor on the daily TV news was reporting a tragic event: a woman was attempting to commit suicide by jumping off a bridge. Ordinary citizens saw her suicide attempt as a mere interruption to their daily routine. An inconvenience.

“It’s Not You, It’s Me” – Jana Moseley

I will never forget that day. It was a cold night in the winter of 2001. I was just getting home from Christmas shopping with my mom. I returned to several phone calls from my best friend’s mother, asking if I had seen Mary. This was one of the rare occasions I hadn’t spent all day with her. Slightly concerned, I dialed her number. Megan, her 14-year-old sister, answered the phone. In the few minutes we talked, she gave me some fuzzy but chilling facts. Mary had been in an accident. She was in the hospital. That was all she knew.

My dad rushed me to the hospital to see Mary, and to find out details about the accident. Arriving at the ER, I told the receptionist I was there to see my friend Mary who had been in an accident that evening. My feelings of dread were not made better when she motioned me to a small room and told me to wait for the doctor. When the doctor came to meet us, he had a somber look on his face. He spoke to my dad first. The two of them discussed, for what seemed like an eternity, in whispered voices, every once in a while casting a frantic glance over at me.

A Breath of Life – Ashok Chandwaney

Today, something incredible happened.  All of my friends woke up.  To a lot of people, this sounds fantastically ordinary.  To more people, this next statement will break the constraints of political correctness.  My friends’ suicidal thoughts make their ability to wake up and even breathe extra ordinary.  All of my friends are fortunate enough to have had some sort of intervention before they attempted suicide.  But I’m sure you can imagine the fear, crippling indecision (perhaps you’ve even faced it) when a friend says, “I’m thinking about killing myself right now.  It would be real simple….”

Nobody should have to deal with that much pain, sadness, self-doubt.  I will admit, I began to question this conviction, 6 hours later at 4 am.  After getting the runaround from a couple different suicide hotlines, I finally ended up finding the right police officer’s phone number.  While convincing my friend that I wasn’t going to report her in an instant messaging conversation, I was both reporting her and trying to keep her typing so I would know she was alive.  That is stressful, even more so because as a minor without a car I couldn’t just drive over and stay with her.

Welcome to Nothing Against Life Blog – Julio Ramírez

As the director, and one of the producers of Nothing Against Life, I want to welcome you to our official promotion and fundraising campaign. We know that there is a great deal of work waiting ahead of us to complete our goal of shooting our film in the summer of 2010. But we also know that it takes an entire community to produce a good quality film. Precisely, it has been the support of a great community that allowed us to launch this campaign today. It is with the idea of community in mind, that we would like to invite you to learn about our project and become an active member of the making of Nothing Against Life. We hope that in the process, you will feel that this is also your film.

We also want to thank all the great friends and supporters that Nothing Against Life has gained from the moment the project was conceived, particularly during the last year and half while we were in the process of creating our campaign. Without your time and friendship we wouldn’t have been able to finish this stage of the project.

Today, we want to share with you the joy that we feel as we launch Nothing Against Life’s Official Website.

Thank you. Thank you very much.

Carl Adelson, Chris Duerkopp, Keith Kemp, Jesse Gunderson, Heidi Eng, Kay Bullitt, Dorothy Bullitt, Kemp IT, Kirk Portman, Darien Portman, Laura Kastner, Philip Mease, Valentina Montecinos, Northwest Film Forum, Lyall Bush, Dave Hanagan, Philip Dawdy, The Actors Group, Jamie Lopez, Philip Andrew Peterson, Jennifer Patrick, Kevin O’Brian, Megan Winston, Rick Stevenson, Suzanne Bouchard, Hilary Pickles, Sean Rawson, Jimmy Lyons, Andrew Lewis, Aaron Barker, Kathleen MacGuire, The Community from Grace Seattle, The Staff at NWIRP, John Abramson, Dale Sherrow, Elise Burger, John Haralson, Michael Subracko, Bauhaus Books and Coffee, Jacob Strange, Jana Moseley, Ashok Chandwaney, Paola Hernández Moreno, Anna Wetzel, Emily Darling, Brittany Kaye, Deb Matthews, Carol Molchior, Amy Pennington, Jennifer Brown, Carmen Alcala, Nahomi Hiramoto, William Hamer, Lori Stein, Wig Master Dennis Milam Bensie, Rose Hurley, Britanny Powers, José Osorio, Sonya Lea, John Siegel, Scott Logan, Ross Haverlah, Malala Mahoney, Kathryn Cornell, Margot Kenly, Bill Cumming, Carolina Forero, Megan Griffiths, Paul Hurlihey, Audra O’Dell, The Neighbors at Federal Ave E, Saint Mark’s Cathedral, University of Washington, Serafina Restaurant, Horizon Books, Vu Boutique, Joe Bar, Dave Sharkey, The Quite Ones, David Totten, Herbert A. Wetli, Olga Lucía Ramírez, Brandon Herbel, Dojcak, Jon Del Toro.

Happy New Years!