A Gift to Myself, for All

It is sometime in the late afternoon as I write this. I don’t normally do this sort of thing.

It’s my birthday today—sometime after eight p.m. on this day twenty-four years ago I made my grand entrance, DRUG FREE I’m told, which is how I remain to this very day.

For the most part.

It’s my birthday, and I’m blogging. No real plans to speak of for later. That surprise anyone? Well it shouldn’t.

I am a writer. Is it a bit presumptuous to call myself that at this point? You have to be published first, don’t you? Or at the very least have won an award or two for what you’ve written. Or am I only really a writer once I receive my first paystub? I’m still wrestling for a foothold in the publishing industry. Still crafting a platform. Still filling my hard drive with half-finished stories and prompts, poems, and late night idle thoughts and essays. If I’m paid for anything I write, I’m not sure where they’re mailing the checks. Is something relegated to a mere hobby until you are paid for it? Or is it not still what defines you? Isn’t it still therapeutic? Isn’t there still some kind of problem existing either in me or in the world that I illuminate or solve through my words?

At any rate, I will continue to make up and imagine things, and write them down, and hopefully someday many will read, and enjoy them. (Possibly even BUY them...) In addition, writing helps me to impose some small measure of order and organization to the chaotic tempest that is my inner mind.

(Picture a huge tornado whirring around, maybe an F4 or something. Got that? Right, now imagine all the crap, the myriad randomness spinning around in it amidst the dust and lightening: trailers, farmhouses, cows, street signs, wrinkled grandmas in their rockers exhilarated for the first time in years, octopi, Carl Jung, the rings of Saturn, a samurai and a cyborg locked in mortal combat, a stylishly clean shaven Knight’s Templar behind the wheel of an orange two-seater hot rod, a magical talking carp who grants wishes—don’t worry about his breathing, the mystical lake he swims in is also present—and the occasional half to mostly nude woman…)

In the chocolaty center of this funnel cloud of ideas, places and things is the storm’s eye, the nerve center that works to fashion a context for all these machinations.

Need a visual? Imagine that scene in the final Matrix film where stoic hero Neo walks into the bleach-white room full of security screens depicting all facets of human life. Here he is greeted by a neat and dignified looking older gentleman resembling Sigmund Freud—the ‘Overseer.’ What you would find is basically that, except the walls of my room are a speckled Crayola mishmash, and replacing Sigmund monitoring the outer shell is an ADD afflicted twelve year old with a mop of tousled hair, darting around from screen to screen in spaceship sequined pajamas.

Organization isn’t something I do particularly well…

My college diploma came yesterday in the mail. I haven’t actually opened it yet, though I am expecting a cover letter on the inside that reads like some variation of the following:

“Happy birthday Adam, and a thousand salutations and congratulations from us to you! Enclosed here in this big square of Federal Express cardboard is a sheet of the highest quality parchment, adorned with Latin calligraphy and signatures from “highly distinguished educators” signifying you are a Bachelor of the Arts [great, a bachelor in some other venue…], and have attained, through the culmination of four years of dedicated study, a base understanding of the English Language’s literary traditions, from it’s Anglo-Saxon roots right on up to the American Contemporaries and every stop in between!

Feel special? Well, you should—this piece of paper cost more than a big screen plasma television, Playstation3, platinum engagement ring, new hybrid car, and season Yankees tickets…COMBINED! That’s right! Think of it as currency for your livelihood and future; a voucher entitling you to recognition in any professional setting that values a creative and expressive mind, the advancement this fine culture through the arts and letters, as well as the propensity to be a bit loquacious.”

…

……

For the record, I feel a great sense of pride and satisfaction when I think of that diploma. It is proof of something that I am the first in my family to achieve. It doesn’t necessarily mean that I am more educated, or smarter than most. What it proves is that four years ago, I made the decision to undertake a responsibility. I decided on a path of knowledge and personal growth and was lucky enough to come to the understanding early that I had to be my own guide. I took what I needed. Learned about what I needed to learn about, and even amidst the undergrowth of gen-ed requirements and other superfluousness, rounded myself according to my vision.

At the path’s end, you were all waiting.

I walked out and greeted you. You cheered, mostly…I had made it.

It was a path that several had doubted my ability, for whatever reason, to walk in the beginning. They then doubted my motivation for being there, and the practicality of just what it was I was taking away from it. Of those several, some still wonder what I am going to “do” with it. Is it enough to get me through? Will it open doors? Were my efforts all in vain, fruitless?

Yes.

No.

I don’t know.

And frankly, I don’t care.

The course I am on currently is one I set myself. I stand at the helm. I steer the rudder. I am headed for new, exotic worlds, each one vastly different from the other, beset on all sides by uncharted, stormy waters.

I’ll show them to you. With whatever evidence I return with, I will tell you all about them.

I am ever exploring. Discovering. I write. It’s what I do, and it’s what I will continue to devote my life to until I can no longer navigate those waters.

Or until I lose half my vocabulary to age and dementia, and my mind as a result. Though I may be more fun then, wont I?

Maybe someday I'll take everyone's advice and aspire towards "a real job." One of those more "respectable and focused careers."

I am going to close this with what I could have begun it with, and I do hope everyone listens to it. It is the voice of my favorite author reciting his “Writer’s Prayer.” It is short, and simple and covers every real blessing a writer need take with him/her. Hang around for a minute through the bongos and tambourine rattling, and he gets to it, don’t worry.

(And I am aware of the irony of his first statement…)

http://neilgaiman.net/sound/01-a-writers-prayer.mp3

Directions

Drop the canteen you are hefting around in the desert you are walking through. Let the wind bury it in the sand; let the dunes overtake it. The weight of it is immense, and you are tired as it is. It reminds you always that you are thirsty. It reminds you of how profoundly sweet and cool the water that flowed from it once was, how it quenched that deep thirst so perfectly; nourished your heart, your body, your mind—saturated the root of you and made them new each day.

Drop it, for it is gone. What you hold is empty. Hollow. A shell of memories. A still-life reflection of what was, instead of a moving representation of what is. Don’t stop to think about it. Don’t make a production out of it; don’t grant it undue pomp and importance. It doesn’t deserve to be seen off; you aren’t saying goodbye to anything you need, or will miss.

Just let it go. Let it fall unceremoniously along your way, and don’t look back. No matter how cracked your lips become, or how much your chest starts to ache, don’t look back; build the distance; keep moving...concentrate on each drift of sand you kick, listen to the wind blow. It will whip, and blow through you from time to time. Love is a blanket, and for now you must keep yourself warm. Strength is a fortifier, for now build your own shelter. The world may seem impossibly dark; the fire inside you burns bright always-let it light your way

Move in a straight line, and never stray from your path. Trust yourself, your instincts, and what you do. Take pride in them all; Take them with you, let them be your guide. Give faith to your process. Continue to plant seeds, even in this barren place, continue to grow and create as you labor through.

But don’t exclude all else.

Go and be where there is life. It has a pulse. You will recognize its rhythm. Never deny its vibrancy.

See it.

Walk with it.

Touch it.

Drink it in—let it wash over you, and you will walk out of this wasteland, whole, renewed, intact. Above all, never stop moving. You will live again. You will find it again. You may realize, under the moon and among the countless stars that you already have.

When you have arrived, You will find me there. I will be waiting.

Now go.

Strands of Memory

In the past year or so I started noticing a small, almost indistinguishable spot of thinned out hair at the northern most pole of my head. At the front, a peninsular hunk of hair juts forward, while at the sides it seems to be retreating ever so slightly. When styled, my hairline comes to a point at the center of my forehead. I was told by friends that the term for this is a “Widow’s Peak.” Naturally, I googled it, horrified to learn I share the same ill-fated hairstyle as Eddie Munster. I had held out hope that this development was simply the result of a bad haircut, and in four weeks time I’d be back to my old head.

…

Only in a memory.

That head is long gone. I had always had full, healthy hair that grew like wild grass and at only twenty-three, the change was…unexpected.

I’m not actually losing my hair, I tell people, but rather it’s just retired from the stress and grind of my head, and relocated to my neck and upper back. Thankfully I don’t boast any of those reclusive strands that seek the privacy of my ears.

I’ve also thought often about the reaction I’d get if I told people that my hairline receding is actually news to me, that in all likelihood, it’s merely retreating back in disgust at the sight of their face.

…

To experience hair loss is to go through the five stages of grief. I think the above illustrates anger fairly accurately, especially since most people have the good social tact and decency not to mention anything to you, and you say it anyway. Depression entails thumbing through all the bogus hair restoration creams, shampoos and realizing you’re too poor for the surgeries, whereupon you bargain with every mirror in your house good enough to listen, saying, “If I could just keep most of it in this area….”

Denial is a comb-over. That stands pretty well on its own I think. Possibly even bolder on a t-shirt.

It all rounds out with biting the bullet, shedding a tear and then shaving your head.

*Sigh…* Acceptance.

The thought of shaving my head horrifies me. On the one hand I’m lazy, and I’d find the amount of effort it would take to run a razor over every nuance of my scalp every few weeks or so tedious and exhausting. Farther along that hand, I think it may hurt too much to watch what’s left of it go every time. I see it like pulling a plug over and over, or maybe putting a pet to sleep. Did I mention there isn’t a stylish enough hat in the world that could cover the shame of my big, hairless gourd?

Actor Ed Harris in decline, very, very few people can pull off the “balding look.” Where having gray hair can sometimes add an aura of experience, or seasoned maturity to a man, turning a blind eye to balding after a while is like walking around with a giant red-wine stain on your shirt, a widening tear in your pants, or a square of toilet paper stuck to the bottom of your shoe that doubles every few steps.

“You’ve got, you have…a little something, there…RIGHT THERE, yeah. You gonna…? (Is he ever going to DO something about that?)”

One of the chain-links in my family’s DNA, both sides, must clearly be labeled “Monk Balding Gene”. It is that series of nucleic formulae that ensures a nice visible patch of cranium in the middle of our heads by the age of thirty. The affected area spreads into a kind of crater, until stepping out from the shower in a brown colored bathrobe you may be mistaken for a lost Benedictine friar.

A hairpiece is both desperate, and out of the question. They are very easy to spot, and call just as much attention to hair-loss as, well, hair loss. While some of them are actually twined together out of real hair, they have to be replaced after so long, which would leave me a kind of second string cousin of the Vampire, preying on humans for their hair. I see it now:

In my struggle to function and fit in the human world, I would try and turn elsewhere for my epidermal lust. Neighbors will undoubtedly become suspicious when their dogs and cats return home in the wee hours of the morning completely shaved, while I walk out my door every few days with a new hair color and style.

Monday: Shaggy, shoulder-length retriever blond

Thursday: Short, business-like Labrador black

Saturday: Dalmatian salt and pepper. (There’s that seasoned look…)

A shy, emotionally repressed girl whose beauty is kept in check by thick reading glasses and a purple cardigan will take a strange liking to the provocative “chameleon man.” The image of her long, strawberry blond locks will pervade my dreams. I breathe deeply of her hair when we embrace, though I promise myself I will not make her my next human victim. Out of love and shear force of will, I struggle, conflicted…

I smell a series somewhere in all of this.

The Japanese top-knot was elegant and quite dignified but, much like the Jerry curl or the Flock of Seagulls haircut, relegated to a novelty of another generation, and unlike bell-bottom jeans or strawberry shortcake shows no sign of resurgence. And even if I did go with the neo-Samurai look, it sadly requires a certain amount of hair on the top and back, a weak spot for me, reducing it at best to a top-nub.

Looks like I will be recycling my kimono and hakama to the back of the closet rotation once again this season.

Damn…

Perhaps I should just let go now to save myself future aggravation and anxiety. After I shave my head, maybe I’ll take to rubbing beef brine on my face for that rawhide feel, file my teeth down by biting caps off beer bottles, and resign myself to spitting wads of Skoal into the empties, with a pack of unfiltered Lucky Strikes rolled up in my sleeve.

Or, with little time left, I suppose it’s as good an incentive as any to get out there and project my current youthful appeal. I’ve had friends who dreaded losing their hair until it was finally gone, from the first strands lost to their shower drains to the final clumps shaved off with their razors. They spent their last full days with it lamenting its loss, grieving with their heads down and covered for something that hadn’t gone yet, rather than enjoying what they had left.

How much different am I really with a little less hair? Will women really view me in a diminished light? Will I stop being me? Will people stop reading my blogs and stories? Will it stop me from writing and dreaming things up—from imagining? If the answer to that one is no, then the rest will fall in line accordingly.

Elegy for Dad, & Other Stuff

Some months ago in a creative writing course, my classmates and I were instructed to do an exercise wherein we took the traits of a parent and matched them up metaphorically with an object of some kind. We were to then briefly explain the connection.

Dads were old golf clubs, while moms were garden equipment or the musical instruments they barely played anymore. There were tools and car parts, even a steering wheel in one case. All were true representations in their own right, in fact it’s impossible to be wrong in this sense, but I felt that nothing about the things my classmates equated to their parents truly personified them. Each one, the golf club, the baseball, the wrench—they were things that stood objectively outside them, representations of hobbies and trades.

“My father is a golf club. Because…he likes to…play golf?”

“My mother is fond of gardening, and can become quite dirty out there, so this HOE…”

…

I suppose I could have associated my own father with a paint brush, that being the chief tool of his trade. Maybe a roller or paint stained steel ladder, or a speckled, used tarp. Or maybe a pair of bleached overalls and a beat up flat brimmed ball cap. They would all have made sense. I could write of the little empty lemon and lime juice bottles that he mixed all of his specialty colors in. He had an eye for color, my old man did. He could breathe new life into the drabbest room of the mustiest, most dated Victorian you can imagine.

With both Father's day and his birthday looming at the time, any of those would have worked as the perfect homage.

However, the truth is if I mentioned all of those things first it would have been a blatant lie. Nothing quite captures the essence of my father as accurately as a bottle of Jack Daniel's old Tennessee sour mash whiskey.

Something about the shape of that bottle, and that black label. Something about the way it stands out among the fancier liquors, the way it belongs up there among them and yet doesn't, like some little rugged, rough hewn gentleman. It's amazing, the contradictions this simple drink embodies; it can be a gentleman's specialty one day and a tramp's vice the next. A headliner at cocktail parties showing up in classy snifters or drams, while the night before it graced a dirty, wet bar top in a foggy mason jar. It's known as American Bourbon by a "worldly" few. To those well acquainted, it's just Jack. It's been there to toast successes, and drown failures. It stares down the pipes of screaming thralls, while other times it sits on a small kitchen table next to a lonely shot glass with despondence staring back at it. It is at once social and solitary.

Personally, I abhor this awful drink; just the smell of it buckles my knees. But the old man loved it. Some go toe to toe with it. Most fail, miserably. It’s by nature a hard thing to take. And so was he.

My father was a man of towering contradictions. On one hand he had a tremendous talent for what he did. He stood out in his family with a sizable capacity for abstract thought. He held firm beliefs, was a spiritual man, and for much of his life a devout Catholic. He had certain creative gifts, some athletic potential, and a high IQ.

He had potential.

…Then there’s that other hand.

He alienated his family and retreated to the bottle. A manic depressive, his proclivities soon led to destructive and volatile behavior, growing paranoia, and to the development of a massive superiority complex. He burned bridges to friends and most anyone who loved him. In his arrogance, he blamed everyone but himself.

My father died a few years back, succumbing to what a sheet of paper listed as congestive heart failure, hastened no doubt by nearly a lifetime of alcohol abuse. He died in a modest tenement, after sundown the report says, in the middle of a dusty old reclining chair alone.

They say in order to understand something fully one must go back to the beginning.

Here goes…

I believe that from an early age, my old man fell victim to what Steven King coined in his novel IT, as The Derry Disease.

For all those horror fans like me out there this reference should be self explanatory. For the rest of the world, The Derry Disease is a term the main characters of King’s novel use to personify the undercurrent of complacency, melancholia, apathy and tunnel vision that grip the citizens of their town. People cling to their faults and fears, hold on to their old prejudices, and continue to feed their vices until their goals become ever more shortsighted, their lives more trite and meaningless. They resign themselves to life in the town; the life of their parents, and their grandparents.

So absorbed in their own mediocrity and depression, they turn a blind eye to one another. One scene in the book, as told through a flashback by a female character, details her physical and sexual assault by a group of punky young men. Terrified, and with tears streaming down her cheek, she looks around for somebody, anybody, who can help her. Her silent, frightened gaze settles on a grown man in the doorway of his home. He peers out, a dumbfounded mixture of fear and shame on his face, and then slowly shuts the door, leaving the girl to the mercy of the gang.

In King’s novel, this backwards undertow of negativism and destructiveness provides the life force for an ancient, demonic being that had insidiously plagued the town of Derry for generations. On the surface it terrorized as Pennywise the Dancing Clown. In its true form, a sinister, spider-like entity, it literally and figuratively had its limbs stretched out through every artery of the town. It fed on its negative energy and bad karma, and in growing larger and larger it thereby perpetuated it year after year, draining the vitality of Derry's citizens.

Of course there is no murdering clown traipsing around Hamden or its nearby towns, let alone a grotesque, monstrous spider living underneath its streets.

That I know of…

*Sigh* Only in Maine...

King’s narrative was at least in part to me, a metaphor for what an inescapable deathtrap for personal growth and fulfillment a small town mentality can be.

People are born there. They dream. They live out their lives. They defer their dreams. And they die there.

It’s true, there is not, and never has been a life-sucking arachnid existing in the bowels of my town that influences its citizens to stray from the righteous path, but there is this inherited, renewed ethos that places great emphasis on bogus ideals of practicality and success, measured among other things by forty grand to start, a cell phone and maybe a company car. It is a choral mantra sung that endorses materialism, greed, and artifice, while condemning uniqueness and originality.

It starts with an empty home life and diminished expectations. It's followed by a desire for escape with no clear destination. Eventually there is the fear of failure:

“You can’t shoot for that, what if you miss?”

Complacency soon takes over. What began as a reason people couldn’t start something becomes an excuse why they won’t. Tomorrow becomes next week, and then next month until they drown themselves in eventually, and one of these days. At the first sign of a big paycheck they get caught up in an unfulfilling job. Then settle into a mundane, two-dimensional lifestyle. Suddenly, the idea of leaving seems impossible, just a foolish, fading memory. These people let others slap an expiration date on what they can achieve, and a time frame for things like marriage, and children.

The divorce rate in this country isn’t decreasing any in recent times…

The reins of their life no longer in their hands, they may regret year after year how all they wanted to do was leave this town and travel, be a painter, or go back to school. They lie to their wives, and husbands. Neglect their children. Forget their parents, and throw friends under the bus. Slaves to commodity, even education was never more than a business proposition to them. Some become self aware, donning the role of that guy on every bar stool in America who laments his position in life, perpetually unaware that tomorrow, in a few hours or even in the next ten minutes they could turn things around completely. Many remain ignorant to any of this, and sit happily in that bar(s) each weekend drinking with the same people at twenty-seven they sneaked in there with at eighteen.

A person like my father would have fallen just outside of this demographic. This would have been the yard stick presented to aspire himself to, and hopelessly at that, due to his family’s social and economical status. Not only was he told what he “should” achieve, he was reminded of what he never could.

As a lower middle-class, Italian Catholic, college was not a novelty he could afford, much less would it have been pushed in a household like his. From both ends of the perspective my father would have heard, “You’ll never be able to do that.”

He seemed frustrated all the time, angry at everything, and nothing in particular. He too never realized he could change any time he wanted to. As his son, I believe he could have. I believe that he was made for greater things, but was derailed early.

This post isn’t an attempt to exonerate the things my father had done; rather I am just putting into perspective a problem that threatens a lot of young, talented people.

For those of us who nurture dreams atypical of our locale and that require growth and life experience its stifling limits could never provide, this prepackaged lifestyle becomes a kind of sickness that pervades the psyche. We become subject to conditioning that dulls colors, nullifies emotions and expression. It stifles rhythm and quiets music. It kills the soul. If left in it too long, it assimilates us, holds us prisoner. We need to do all we can to liberate ourselves from being the latest batch of casualties to this monster, sacrificing our futures to feed it, keeping it alive to infect future generations.

A Writer's Rant.

"The artist, like the God of the creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails."
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Stephen Dedalus


Forgive me, but, it had to happen.

Sitting here, I find myself at a terrible impasse. As a writer, one who makes use of the written word as his primary means for expressing himself and his art, I realize I am at the mercy of a time and a place where visuals mean everything, leaving words hollow and meaningless.

Through language I strive to paint pictures, and beyond that arrive at various personal and perhaps universal truths. Through a range of tools like metaphor, simile, and punctuation like ellipses or a question mark, I rub two words and then three and then more together to make fire burn on a page.

With my own audible voice, I try my best to communicate the trueness of a feeling, garnishing it with various tones, and pantomimed actions.

I dig deep inside myself for the quintessence of that feeling. I dig it up, and sift it through all the choppiness of inner dialogue and confusion of cascading emotions. I cannot demand quiet because this is a place that is perpetually saturated with sound, that never truly sleeps.

With my eyes closed, I methodically and deliberately string syntax together. It becomes a monologue spoken semi-aloud; no, more so a dialogue I actually have with myself over and over again until it is refined, until the beauty of the feeling shines bright, and I am hopefully liberated by the truth discovered within it. Sometimes the beauty is measured in exquisite pain, and the truth is difficult, irrefutable and permanent.

By that point the voice announces: "I need to write this down."

I sit to process an understanding of the pain I am feeling in order to derive some form of hope if possible from a hopeless situation

I have organized something. Untangled a frustrating knot.

I have given something a name.

I have uncovered reasons for something, and dear God, I think I can change something for the better of myself or maybe others.

It’s my gift. My proclivities lie HERE. It’s what I’m good at.

It’s also a bit of a curse, in a world when everyone asks "What have you DONE for me lately?"

I review every image in my mind; revisit every memory, over and over. It is as though I am traveling back to the past with an aim on changing the present with what I find there. Each time however, I am hopelessly observing from the sideline, like watching a time reel.

The words fall short. Words are forgettable. Words can’t change a mind, no matter how true or poignant. Promises and odes don’t move hearts, no matter how much vindication they are spoken with. Rarely can one argue for another chance at anything.

Strike three is usually always, in most contexts, strike three, and words can’t change it.

Dylan Thomas wrote and recited poems to the woman, or women he loved. His work spoke not just for itself, but for him as well. Perhaps he was the exception to the rule in a world where symbols stand taller and louder than words. Men have painted ceiling masterpieces, and grown hanging gardens. They’ve waged ten year wars, commissioned the building of palaces and pyramids and the world’s first and only automatic Lamborghini in the name of love, devotion and adoration for someone or something. It seems a losing battle however to pit the medium of the written word up against stone, steel, stain-glass, gardens, near human sacrifice and Italian auto mechanics.

Shakespeare’s characters could move nations and fickle hearts alike with their soliloquies and poetic proclamations. What they say is emotionally powerful, unselfconscious, and honest. They bare their hearts and minds to lovers, comrades, ghosts, faeries and the audience, and that’s more than enough. Their words read off a playbook like magic.

Only in fiction...

Everything we do is steeped in some kind of magic. Our minds are like a terra-forming universe, explosions and chaotic bright flashes of light against a sheet of blackness. Out from that we pull something magical, something that is steeped in love.

We draft new worlds or opaque representations of this one, and populate them with characters and animals and other things, giving them a history. The drive to create something and then interpret it is probably the last divine cord connecting us to paradise. We actively steer the destiny of these worlds and peoples. Though they are guided by our hands, we discover just what that destiny is at the same time they do.

When asked why he came to the decision to kill off the little boy in his novel Cujo, Steven King said that he did not actually decide to have the boy killed in the end, but rather, he found him there dead.

Life as a writer can be one of constant anxiety and self-doubt because it is almost entirely dependent on the free flow of a process that is so often interrupted and distorted by, as Robert Lowell once described, the balance of ‘salt’ in the brain. Due to certain physical and emotional dams, certain receptors may become dulled, and desensitized almost to the point of shutting down.

The lifeblood of the process lies in discovering the numerous shades of color in the world, recognizing a melody in the even the simplest tone, and moving fluidly to that special rhythm of cause and effect. We take all these pieces singularly, and put them together into one fluid kaleidoscopic color sequence, lyrical progression, or rhythmic waltz.


We have to find the pieces behind the scenes. Hidden, beneath the leaves.

However, it’s from behind the scenes that we conduct it. With one leg there, and another back here, we plug away at a typewriter, and make something that then seems to exist free of us, as though it spontaneously willed itself into existence. In comparison with what we writers create, we ourselves don’t seem nearly as bright or colorful. So we remain in its shadow

"Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain..."

No problems there. No one usually does.

How often is an actor or actress worshiped in the end based on the myriad of personae they step in and out of? How often is it that backstage, or once the music stops playing, the person with the guitar or microphone is still the impetuous rock star-poet? For that matter was he ever? Crowds seem to think so...

Our work doesn’t speak for us in the same way.

We want to take people to these places, but they choose to go by themselves. They forget that we conjured the magic they get lost in; took elements of life and made a story out of them, deciphered the most difficult emotions and brought them to the surface. They forget walking with us is to walk through the process with us.

If the process hits a muddy snag, they can help bring us back to neutral and offer a push. This may be a difficult time, but there’s a dedication in it for them.

Maybe even a character...

We can reveal nuances about the world they couldn’t previously see.
The pictures are up to them. We just help them to see. Help them use their mind’s eye, and open their heart.

How else can you yell without making a sound? Speak in different languages without moving your lips? Tell a secret without the need to whisper, or confess something utterly stutter free, without self-doubt?

Musings On Love: Attraction

There is something cathartic and ceaselessly amusing in simply sitting back, and watching a plump house pet. Whether impossibly cute or entirely repugnant, observing their hastened waddle across a newly mopped kitchen floor, the way they labor to keep up with the nimbler, more lithe animals of the neighborhood, chase around their zigzagging food bowl, slosh through their drinking water, or suffer through the heat of the day just makes my life seem suddenly less of a struggle.

With a wide grin I cannot fully explain, I pat its fur-coated back fat, and while ruffling its jowls with both hands I chuckle with affectionate empathy, and say in my baby voice, "Oh, you poor little bastard!"

And yet, when they rest their heavy, wet faces on your lap, or spin their awkward fuzzy bodies into a pile on top of you, you can’t help but be taken with the genuine enthusiasm for where they are and surprisingly warm, well meaning nature. There is nowhere in the world they would rather be, and it shows. Despite the drool and the sloppy kisses, you feel the same way.

I have witnessed relationships that seem to function in MUCH the same manner.

I have known guys far less than perfect who defied all shallow peer expectations by charming the hearts and minds of class-A beauties. From a distance it seems as though these women, intelligent, attractive, and talented have either based their choice solely on commodity, or that strange, love-pity hybrid. But up close, astonishingly, they are very much in love, or are well on their way. They connect on every level; enjoying each others company, and a mutual physical and emotional spark.

Over time I came to view the good fortune of these peers with a mixture of satisfaction and frustration. On one hand it was great to see people of real substance and goodness come away with something great, desirable, and meaningful. On the other hand, it has truly sucked to see other people hook things that were great, desirable and meaningful.

I suppose it’s because I came to view myself in the same light. While not fat, or hairy, I believe I too possess a certain ragamuffin dog appeal, like the male lead from Lady and the Tramp, or a canine Oliver Twist. A bit shy, ever loyal and well meaning, I’m the thin, possibly underfed, under loved pup with a heart of gold and a patch of dingy brown fur over his eye that you can’t fathom, because the rest of me is off-white in color. I’ve got the big eyes that howl "Take me home!" My nubs of ears suggest I made a little extra scratch wrestling raccoons in back alleys. If I had a resume attached to my makeshift, fishbone collar, it may read:

*Affectionate
*Works well with other pets (and children)
*Can herd sheep (and children)
*LOVES peanut-butter (...)
*Does not bite (too hard...)
*Guard Dog: will watch the house, the tv, the stove (and children)
*Toilet trained
*Proficient in sit, lie down, play dead, fetch, reverse-lie down, etc...

...Among other things.

There may be this desire for you to throw money at me. Perhaps that’s the reason I might be seen with a hobo at first.

So I lack the superficial purebred features of a Great Dane, or the intimidation factor of a Rottweiler. I can’t compete with a Golden Retriever in ruggedness either, but so what? Those are just images, is any of that honestly important? I’m the dog you really want. I can jump through all the hoops, and more.

Take me home, Dammit!

Repeatedly Reproached, or kicked to the roadside, I couldn’t understand what I was doing wrong. Were people really that critical, and elitist? Well, Some are for sure.

Then my mind got moving...

There is another familiar side to the image I’m channeling. It’s one of a dog that always seems to be cold, and shivering. It sometimes cloisters itself away rather than approach people. Upon being reached out to, it may quiver nervously, a clear sign it’s been hurt before. Disaffected, it projects itself as though there is something wrong with it, as though it were somehow aware that that brown patch doesn’t match the rest of it. Hopeful, it may follow you around after this.

The revelation that hit me was a bit painful.

If such an animal were to amble over to me seeking affection I would find myself thinking, "Hell, this thing needs SHOTS, not hugs and kisses." I would approach it from a strict distance with an obligatory kindness, and respect mixed with sprinklings of pity and discomfort.

I suppose if I couldn’t imagine letting my canine alter ego bury its head in my lap, I couldn’t much less imagine a woman allowing my less shaggy true self to do the same in hers.

...

Oh I get it; it’s a post about how his love life sucks!

Well, no, not entirely. This isn’t designed to be a bitter, self-loathing rant. I am not weeping with my hands in the air, beckoning the love deities yelling WHY?! If that were the case, I would have learned nothing at all. Instead, more so than being an outlet, I hope this shines a spotlight on an understanding I’ve come to that maybe will help other nice guys like me.

At almost twenty-four, I learned these lessons late. I’ve had my heart bruised many times to finally grasp them.

There is this loud and clear projection of something defined and unique, this confident embodiment of what people believe, BY those people. It is what attracts. Intrigues. Captivates. It is sexy.

In Neil Gaiman’s novel, American Gods, Loki, the trickster from the Norse pantheon illustrates this point perfectly when he describes the essence of god-hood to the novel’s protagonist Shadow:

"It’s not magic. It’s about being you, but the you that people believe in. It’s about being the concentrated, magnified essence of you. It’s about becoming thunder, or the power of a moving horse, or wisdom. You take all the belief and become bigger, cooler, more than human. You crystallize."

But what proof is there when you don’t believe it yourself? Or if the projector is broken or damaged, or the essence fractured somehow? People can’t believe in, or grow with something that isn’t whole.

Sure those awkward looking pets may seem pathetic at first, but on the other hand, a stately fat English bulldog seems to thoroughly enjoy the simpler things in its life, and in doing so, reminds and encourages you to do the same. They run about unselfconsciously with such vigor, unaware of any of the shortcomings or imperfections I or anyone else may perceive about them. Wherever they are headed, they’re well on their way.

It’s in those very subtle displays that they let what is best in themselves shine, and because of that, bring out the best in whomever they are around.

In the end, that’s one of the most meaningful, heartfelt compliments anyone can hear:

"I am at my best, when I am with you."

So, if the pieces are all in place, if you believe that you can breathe fire, then breathe it: brightly, fiercely, whatever shade or color it is. Maybe next time out proves greater than just another lesson to be learned. (Try not to burn anyone of course...)

Carrying the Fire, Part One

Years ago in the town of Hamden, CT where I live, there was a man named Gil Nagle. A veteran of the Second World War, Gil was a short, grizzled man with a solid, coiled physique. He was a Hanshi (master instructor) in the Shotokan Karate style, and I’m told, one of the hardest men around.

Mr. Nagle began his martial arts training like so many in the first crop of American martial artists had, as a member of the United States Military while stationed in Japan. The training must have been rigorous, often times bordering on brutal. While Squatting for great periods of time in deep, solid stances, Nagle's Sensei would no doubt have taken great pleasure testing the gai-jin soldier’s foundation with sharp kicks to his thighs, and heavy, downward palm strikes to each of his shoulder blades. After countless knuckle push-ups off the hard dojo floor, Nagle would have been made to execute techniques until perfection, signified by the snap of a karate gi made stiff by dried sweat following every punch and kick, resonating through the tempered pine of the dojo where he trained. But as a warrior by nature Gil embraced it, and over time earned tactical proficiency in the art, and an honorific title few outside of Japan possessed at the time.

The title granted him the permission to spread the teachings of Shotokan to his home in America. Upon returning home, Gil’s interests branched out to the art of Judo. He corresponded to the masters in Japan through several instructors he trained weekly with in New York. He set up a small dojo in Connecticut where he trained adults and teenagers alike in his own synthesis of Karate and Judo. Though far removed from the shores of Japan, Nagle’s training was no less fierce. His students, some no older than fifteen or sixteen, endured the many bumps, bruises, cuts and physical exhaustion synonymous with physical training on a nightly basis. They practiced until their muscles failed, until their voices ran hoarse from successive kiai, until the skin of their knuckles cracked and split, the balls of their feet blackened and calloused, their necks and throats tender from shime-waza (choking techniques) until that same gi snap that echoed with authority for Master Nagle in that training hall in Japan echoed for them as well.

I have never met Gil Nagle, though I would have relished the opportunity. He passed away many years ago, leaving behind a legacy only truly carried on the wind, through the shared collective of stories spoken by his former students and neighbors. Master Nagle carried the flame of a tradition (perhaps two) that at its very core was deadly serious. He engaged his students regularly, pushing them to their very physical and mental limits:

He would dart flawlessly across the dojo floor, cutting seamless angles with his feet, frustrating the attacks of his pupils. Their strikes and kicks were rendered impotent against the forearms and shins of their instructor’s blocks. Aggravated, they would lunge at him, clasping his gi in an attempt at a leg sweep or throw. As if he could render himself momentarily intangible, Gil slipped through the grasp of his students and, in a few deft movements would break their center of balance and send them hurling to the hard pine below. A “soft” technique.

He put the fear of reality in them, readying them for the inherent violence of the world:

“If I was a seasoned New York street fighter, you’d have ended up in the emergency room, or worse,” he would admonish, as he helped them up, and dusted them off, resetting their dislodged toe or finger.

He would then turn to the class and tell them to consider ripping off a car antennae and using it to get through a truly difficult violent confrontation. It was quite obvious that this man knew more than most people did about unarmed combat. A bit more subtle though was Master Nagle’s underlying message that under no circumstances were any of his students to become a part of that undertow of violence. Times have certainly changed.

Seventeen to twenty-five year olds everywhere glut themselves on images of a new generation of testosterone overloaded martial artists, puffed out, and muscle bound, their skin scrawled with war paint. They squat triumphantly over a defeated opponent, raining their bowling ball sized fists down on their exposed heads with a look of mania in their eyes. They flock to MMA gyms that peddle a strictly physical program usually lacking a character building component, highlighting power and strength over knowledge and perfection of technique and execution. After a few months they ride high on their newly inflated egos, sporting brand name logos on shirts practically painted on their chest and torso. It’s an excuse for many young people to fight; the most fun they will have feeding this drive without being arrested afterward.

Though I would personally like to see a certain level of technical growth in the training of combat sport as well as the attitudes and conduct of its participants, this post is in no way a crusade to condemn mixed martial arts or any other sport like it. I have been an avid watcher of venues like the Ultimate Fighting Championship and K1 Kickboxing for years. A good number of its participants are superbly talented athletes and fighters in peak physical condition, and actively contribute in a positive, inquisitive light to the evolution of the fighting arts. This is merely a microcosm of an issue of greater importance. So much emphasis now is placed on competition. We are constantly in contention with one another, laboring under the false pretense that “might makes right.” Our identities seem in large partly defined by who our enemies are.

A month or so ago, a neighbor and friend of my sister’s was over the house for a visit. Soon enough the subject turned to a friend of hers she used to work with at a local gym. He is a relatively young man, perhaps no older than thirty. He had served two tours of duty already in either Afghanistan or Iraq, which one specifically I cannot remember. Not surprisingly the man is very large, and quite strong. Apparently, he also boasts a severe temper, which at times interferes with the cordiality of everyday civilian life. He plans on re-enlisting soon, and returning to the war.

“I’m really good at killing people. It’s what I’m best at,” he confided in her. “I like hurting people.”

Not to worry though, “he’s really a nice guy.”

It seemed to make just as much sense to my sister’s friend as it did to this man. It’s what soldiers do after all. The root of the American soldier runs deep in the traditions of aggression and blood lust.

...

I took my leave of the conversation.

I had always understood the effectiveness of a soldier to be measured in, among other things, his or her ability to accurately assess threats, keep emotionally distanced from that threat and eliminate it with as much economy as possible, draw on their resourcefulness and untapped courage to meet any situation, all the while keeping emotions at a realistic medium. The conditions of war are incredibly harsh and take their toll on even the best people and I’m in no position to condemn this man I do not know, but I am weary of those who would perpetuate their own form of blind justice from the barrel of an assault rifle on a battlefield. They nurture some collective unconscious drive to subvert human beings. They are the ones who rape and pillage. They see it as an excuse to act on this.

I can’t say for certain, but in the center of a conflict that saw the most catastrophic loss of human life in recorded history, and in a theater known toward the end of that struggle as the most violent, I harbor no doubt that Master Nagle was forced to take life. He devoted his livelihood to knowledge and the perfection of his martial skill, and the passing of that knowledge. The man could fight, and fight well. He probably found certain exhilaration in the physical challenge of it. But he did not subscribe to a mantra that bred conflict. He was not a murderer, nor did he ever actively take some perverse pleasure in exacting his dominance over others. His skill in taking a life never equated to an enjoyment of it. He venerated strength, discipline and perseverance, but valued love and compassion above all things.

Martial traditions, at least those found in the east, all contain philosophical, ethical, and spiritual tenets weaved seamlessly in with the fabric of the physical ones. If the physical application and execution of techniques is the body, these invaluable precepts are the soul. To deny one is to deny the other; the removal of each from the other sacrifices the integrity of martial arts and martial traditions as a whole, upsetting an important balance and sending them spiraling into perversity. Shintoism, Zen Buddhism, Bushido, and even aspects of Christianity in some cases imbue martial doctrine with codes of conduct, temperament, altruism and restraint. But these are just ideas, intangible and so easily ignored. What it all comes down to, what these facets of control, respect, proper conduct, and discipline are all extensions of, is the overlaying concept of HUMANITY. To negate our humanity is to lose touch with the human race. One can’t foster a respect for life in this way, and once that is gone, what is there to fight for? One then isn’t a martial artist, or a fighter, or a policeman, a soldier, or a warrior at all. Without this respect for life, the fires of grand traditions are snuffed out, and the conquering hero is reduced simply to conqueror, a thug, and a predator.