This word just in from Chris Bliss:

A quick note, in case you forwarded this link to others: The server shut down the site yesterday due to the traffic, but it will be back up and running within a few hours today. Please pass that word on to anyone you may have sent to view the video, as I've been getting a lot of these emails about viewing problems in the last 24 hours. More info later. I've just been swamped with all kinds of requests.
Thanks,
Chris

So hang in there and try back again later. Believe me, it will be worth the wait!

I had two good cries today. The first was when I happened to catch the last half hour of Mr Smith Goes To Washington on the TV at lunchtime. Gets me every time.

The second was when my friend Arthur sent me a link to - of all things - an amazing juggling performance by a comedian named Chris Bliss. You might not believe that juggling is the type of activity that can be raised to a high art, but I assure you it can. The grace and ease and musicality of this performance just cut me right open and by the end of it the tears were streaming down my cheeks.

I had a friend years ago in Atlanta, a guy who'd had a really rough time of things - particularly where women were concerned. He was about as guarded as it was possible to get. But he told me once he used to love to watch the pairs figure skating championships on TV because the seemingly effortless symbiosis of the male and female skaters in their routines was the perfect embodiment of this dream he still cherished of the possibility of a graceful, effortless and beautiful pairing between himself and a woman. I think it was the fact that the best skaters made it look so easy that brought him to tears every time he watched.

It makes me think, also, of the time I once had the great pleasure of attending a concert of the New York Philharmonic when the soloist was Alicia de la Rocha. I'll never fully understand what happened there, either, but there was something about her touch on the piano - it wasn't even a question of tone, but more the sound produced by how she touched the keys - that was unbearably beautiful; I started to cry literally after the first three notes...

Bliss truly is pure poetry in motion. What he does seems so impossibly complex, you can't believe it's even possible - and yet he makes it look so completely easy and natural that you're simply disarmed as a viewer. The guards drop and you just let it in. You won't be the same after.

If you'd like to see the performance, just click on the link to the right. If you'd like to comment on what you've seen afterwards, please feel free to come back to this blog and let me know what happened to you as you watched it.

Enjoy.

For those of you who know her, here's a story about my daughter, Licia (age 5 1/2) .

Licia has had a bit of a cold lately - nothing too serious, but a good bit of that nasty post-nasal drip, which has meant that she had a few rough nights where her sleep was interrupted by occasional coughing (now thankfully finished).

But the other night, she awoke a few times and called to me (our rooms are across from one another), needing a little bit of attention and reassurance that she would be able to go back to sleep.

The third time she awoke was around 3:15 in the morning. I heard her cough once or twice , but decided to wait and see if she would go back to sleep on her own or call out to me. Instead, she got up out of bed and came creeping into my room.

"Mom!" she whispered.

"Can't sleep?" I asked.

"No! I keep coughin' like a frog!" she answered.

I pulled my sleepy self out of bed and started guiding her gently back toward her room.

"Don't worry," I said. "You'll be able to go back to sleep. You'll see..."

"But, Mom," she insisted. "I just keep coughing like a frog! I'll never get back to sleep."

"Licia-lou," I answered firmly. "You've just been sleeping for five full hours without a single cough. You're gonna be fine. Just get back in bed. You'll be asleep before you know it."

"But, Mom. I keep telling you. I just keep coughing like a frog."

By this time I had gotten her back into her bed and she had pulled her covers up around her little shoulders and settled into the position she always assumes before falling alseep. I could see she wasn't going to be long for this world.

As I gently rubbed her back, I couldn't resist taunting her ever so slightly.

"By the way, Licia,"I said. "Frogs don't cough."

And from just this side of Orpheus' embrace, she nonetheless managed to shoot back,

"This one does."