Take A Look Around Your Soul

I read a magazine called The Sun.

I read it for many years and then cancelled my subscription because I thought it was kind of depressing; didn't always make me feel good.

I recently renewed. My head is in a different place now. I think I may have cancelled because the magazine is so goddamn real.

First things first and very important: The Sun is a non-profit publication supported through subscriptions and donations. Because of this there are no advertisements.

No fucking advertisements.

It is a deeply personal magazine that is all about truth and emotion and life as it really is, not the way we want it to be.

The website says: "The Sun is an independent ad-free magazine that for more than forty years has used words and photographs to evoke the splendor and heartache of being human. Each monthly issue celebrates life, but not in a way that ignores its complexity."

Dead on, baby - dead on.

Each issue explores one topic through essays, poems, fiction and non-fiction offerings.

I love it because each issue makes me laugh and smile, tear up a bit, think and feel. Pretty heady stuff.

This month the victim is love and marriage.

Here are some quotes I like from this issue.

" George Bernard Shaw described marriage as an institution that brings together two people 'under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions. They are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part.'

Marc Maron: " I married her for the wrong reason - because it was safe. I believed at that time that people got married when they had that moment, when they're looking at themselves in the mirror and say 'Holy shit. I'm going to compromise my dreams, get fat, sick, old and die. I kind of want to have someone around for that.' You don't want to be sixty, fat, sick, and alone, saying to your reflection 'Look at me. I'm a fat failure.' No, you kind of want someone around to say, 'It's OK, baby. You look great. Let's go get some Tasti D-Lite, cowboy.'

Chris Rock: "Marriage is so tough. Nelson Mandela got a divorce! Nelson Mandela spent twenty-seven years in a South African prison - got beaten and tortured every day for twenty-seven years, and did it with no fucking problem. Made to do hard labor in hundred degree South African heat for twenty-seven years, and did it with no problem. He got out of jail after twenty-seven years of torture, spent six months with his wife, and said, 'I can't take this shit no more.'

Priscilla Dean: " I can love you unconditionally. I cannot live with you unconditionally."

Those are just the tip of the iceberg; a taste. I'm really giving you kind of a skewed perspective; there is so much more to the magazine.

I also read two thought provoking articles about the history of marriage throughout the ages and the difficulties of two people fully committing to one another.

A couple of poems.

Socrates said: "The unexamined life is not worth living."

I believe that. You gotta check yourself out and make changes. You can learn from other peoples' lives as well.

The Sun helps you to do that.

The Sun is an excellent magazine because it offers life up to you from many perspectives, raw and unpredictable.

What you do with that information is up to you, Bubba.