Writer's Note: I Really Am Thick

I am so thick it is laughable.  Honestly, if it didn't cause me so much pain, I'd laugh too.  In fact, when I finally am able to learn something, I often do laugh at myself.  I am so consistently wrong that it amazes me that I still often think I am right.

Where is this coming from?  

You have "The Incredible Jessica James" to blame.  

I watched this movie tonight, which is about a playwright in NYC, and there is a scene in the movie that just blew my mind tonight.  The problem is that it is so simple that I felt like an idiot when I had my AHA moment.  

The premise for the scene is this:

Jessica meets her longtime playwright idol at a weekend retreat.  Before introducing herself by name, she gushes over the artist.  When the artist finally gets her calmed down, Jessica asks her a question, a sincere question, a question that many artists wonder about/ask.  

"When do you know you've made it?"

The playwright replies, "I'll let you know when I get the memo."

Jessica replies, "But you won a Tony..."

After a short give or take, the playwright gestures around to signify the weekend retreat they are on, and she says, "Isn't that what we're doing this weekend?"

For me, my heart finally broke of many of these crazy illusions about success, the writing life, etc.  I just...stopped.  It was so simple.  It was so easy.  I couldn't believe how thick I had been.  

As I sit here and write this post, I'm a writer.  I've arrived.  I'm here doing the work, and that's it.  I enjoy being able to write in my own voice to an audience.  That's it.  That's the pleasure.  Everything else is...everything else.  

P.S.  I enjoyed "The Incredible Jessica James".  Jessica Williams is just about as charming as they come.  Thank you, Jim Strouse for your body of incredible work.  I have just now realized how much I enjoy his films.  Check out his IMDB profile here.

Man Note: Love's Cowardice

Thanks for the quote, Bob Marley!!!

I'm a monster.

My love makes me a monster.

My use of love for my own purposes makes me a monster.

This post is going to be hard for me, but it is one that I must finish.  Before I begin, let me emphatically state that this post is about me and my capacity for love, and NOT the objects of my love.  This is an introspection and not an accusation.  In my recent self-evaluation, I've been looking at my behaviors and trying to find things I can improve on, ways of getting out of my own way.

In evaluating myself, I came to a realization about my roles, which is largely the reason I started this blog.

I am a husband and a father.  These are two of the biggest roles I have ever taken on in my life, but I have been abusing my roles.  It is a two-fold abuse.  I have been abusing myself in my roles and I have been abusing my loved ones.  I use the word abuse because it is accurate, it conveys what it is I mean to say, but it makes me wildly uncomfortable.

I have willingly chosen my roles, but lately I have been using my roles as a way of excusing myself from my life as opposed to a way of enriching my life.  I have put the anchor of "responsibility" so heavily around my neck that I have had very little room for anything else.  Instead of seeing my marriage and my child as the blessings that they are, I have used them as a downer, an excuse for not living up to my potential.  I have shouldered myself with the burden of doing all things for them.

What is funny about this, is that I have probably been at my least helpful during this phase.  I have been surly, combative, and depressed.  I have not engaged in my normal activities with the family.  I have stayed away instead of joining them in activities.  I have buried myself in work and called it "working for my family" when it has been doing anything but "working for my family."

This quote is for my family.  They don't deserve my disrespect.

I have been burdening myself with an over-proportioned sense of responsibility.  The sun and the moon do not rise and fall because of me.  I am not responsible for all things.  I can do what I can do, and that's about it.  I have been abusing myself with my inflated sense of responsibility and its been crippling.

I mentioned the flip side of this inflated sense of responsibility earlier.  I've been surly, combative, and depressed.  The depression has caused me to want to place blame.  I've been silently blaming my family for my actions, and the sheer injustice of this does not escape me.  It is so unfair to them that I have been projecting my sour feelings on to them.  Most of the time, they don't have any idea as to why I am so surly.  This realization has been one of the hardest for me to deal with.  The thought of causing my loved ones pain, and all because I've been struggling with my self is horrifying to me.

But this isn't about making myself feel bad for past sins, it is about moving past this depressed phase and getting my feet underneath me.

So here's where I stand on this: I've been a coward.  I've used my love as a way of avoiding risk, of avoiding myself, and I vow to stop.  I vow to use my love relationships as a way of filling my cup instead of capping it.  I vow to treat my loved ones in the way they deserve to be treated.  I vow to treat myself the way I deserve to be treated.

And I vow to take a pin to my inflated sense of responsibility when it gets out of control.

It's going to be hard work, but I want this.  I want it a lot.  I deserve it, and my family deserves it.

For now, I simply ask their forgiveness.  And patience as I work through this.

Another piece of wisdom from Gandhi.

Personal Note: What Vacation Teaches Me

The View from my cabin at Odell Lake

I just got back from a short 4-day vacation at Shelter Cove Resort at Odell Lake in central Oregon.  It was 4 days without cell service, without alarm clocks, without commutes, work days, and all the accoutrement that goes with the modern life.  Here are 3 things I was able to take away from those 4 days.

1. No one but me will defend my time.

I need downtime.  Everyone does.  But I am terrible at protecting myself and insulating myself from the pressures of work.  I almost always say "yes" to requests from work, and it is starting to become a barrier to my own personal desires and the relationships with my family.  When I did some poking around and reading about work/life balance and overworking, I ran into this quote:

We often hear of people breaking down from overwork, but in nine out of ten they are really suffering from worry or anxiety. - John Lubbock

This is very much true for me.  I have a tendency to put off my personal desires in pursuit of work, or of tending to my family, which is not to place blame on them.  It is a character fault of my own.  I need to be a better defender of my own time and to be more disciplined in accomplishing my own goals.  

This is the first lesson.

2. Reading is still one of my favorite pasttimes.

I finished a book and a half in the 4 days I was on vacation.  It was marvelous.  Almost every morning I awoke before the others in the cabin.  I turned on the coffee pot and sat with my book.  I pounded through the last half of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck and I almost got all the way through One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories by B.J. Novak.  

It takes me back to grad school where my advisor, John Rember, once told me, to paraphrase, that "the writing life looks like sheer idleness from the outside."  When I spend 4 days in the woods reading and ruminating, I feel like I've gotten something done.  I feel like I can breathe and work and create.  

In the time I spent in the large windows of the cabin, bathed in morning light, I came up with a couple of new ideas for the TV series I am writing. I got myself unlocked from a plot thread that had me pinned for a moment, and I was able to actually dedicate a portion of my mental real estate to my own creative endeavors.  The words of others help me with this.  Reading helps me with this.  Being submerged in the waters of others' creative works gives me hope that my own creativity has a place in the world.  

3. Sleep is my friend.

I'm a terrible sleeper.  Well, once I'm sleeping I'm fine, but I am a terrible self-manager when it comes to putting myself to bed.  I can distract myself with this, that, or the other for hours on end in the wee hours when the rest of my family sleeps.  I used to think this was my most creative time, but I am slowly learning that this is probably not the case.  

Many times, I will find myself distracted by the television, by the internet, by a stiff cocktail, or any number of other things.  What I need to be doing is putting myself to bed so that I wake recharged with the energy to dedicate to my own creative endeavors.  

Self-care...not my strong suit.

I have an eye mask that I know works to put me to sleep, as well as some lavender pillow spray that helps me fall down into sleep, but I don't use them.  I somehow allow myself to engage in "mindless idleness" instead of "mindful idleness."  It's time to change the way I behave in order to encourage more of the latter.  In fact, that may just be my next blog post..."Mindless Idleness vs. Mindful Idleness."  More on that soon.

So, for me, next steps are to remember my lessons, to rededicate myself to the process of working hard for a creative life, which sometimes means indulging in pure idleness.  Thanks, John Rember, for the permission.

Personal Notes: Principled Pleasures vs. Pleasure as Principle

Image Sourced From all-free-download.com

As a result of reading The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by blogger Mark Manson, I've been thinking about the idea of pleasure lately.  Pleasure is a large word to throw out there, but I will be using it in this blog post to address physical pleasures (i.e. food, drink, sex, etc).  In reading Manson's book, I've been thinking about pleasure in relationship to entitlement, a word that gets thrown around a lot these days, and I think I've stumbled upon something that helps me clarify the "issue" of pleasure for myself personally.  It all hinges on the use of the word "principle."

A principle is the building block, or foundation, or a system of belief.  In mulling over the idea of pleasure, I found myself using this word in a couple of different ways, and I decided that I'm going to start using the metric of "principled pleasure" in my personal life.  I need to work on striving for "principled pleasures" as opposed to using pleasure as a principle.  Here's how I seem them as being different.

A person who uses pleasure as a principle is looking to achieve pleasure, in all its myriad forms, as a moral "good."  He/She is looking to achieve pleasure as a result or outcome of action.  By using pleasure as a principle, it is then easy to choose any action that results in action, no matter if that action is good or bad.   It sets the end result as priority over the evaluation of the individual action.  By using this framework for decision making, one could justify any number of actions as long as it lead to the end result...pleasure.  I'm uncomfortable with this framework, and I believe it leads to sloppy decision making.

In contrast, if one is seeking "principled pleasures," then one is seeking to prioritize individual principles as a basis for achieving pleasure.  The moral "good" in the eyes of the individual becomes of greater importance than the outcome.  It is only through the choice of the moral principle that one would be able to achieve pleasure.  One would feel good about decision making, and, therefore, achieve the feeling of pleasure one is seeking.

Some practical examples are necessary here.

1. The lawn needs mowed (unpleasurable).  The completion of necessary maintenance of the house, the chipping in of time/effort on communal household chores, and the desire to be physically active are all principles the individual holds. Choosing the easy pleasure of an afternoon spent "Netflix and chilling" would be more pleasurable than mowing the lawn, but upholding the individual's principles provides a deeper more sustained pleasure than the easy, passive pleasure of streamed entertainments.
2. Having a drink after work provides pleasure at the end of a long shift.  It is the culmination of a day's work, but returning home and spending time with family is a principle the individual holds.  While it is easy to write off the post-work drink as "harmless" and "earned," the prolonged satisfaction of having a close knit family and spending time with loved ones trumps the easy pleasure.

These are two simply examples of the distinction in action.  Holding this framework for decision making will help any individual (but especially me) become better at accomplishing life goals and living a life that fulfills in the long term and not simply in the short term.  

Manson's book is challenging my basic precepts.  I'm starting to look at my life in a new way that is reminiscent of some of the best times of my life.  I've been lazy in my thinking (or lack thereof) and I need to continue to challenge myself in order to achieve the quality of life I desire.  

I sat down today to blog about my thoughts, even though the easier pleasure would have been to simply pick up my book and continue reading.  I hold creativity as a life principle.   It is something I always want to have present in my life.  So...instead of making a sandwich and curling up with a book, I've set myself in front of the computer and written this blog post.  It is much more satisfying.  By living the principle I set for myself, I was able to achieve a deeper sense of pleasure in my day.  By living my standards, instead of flauting them, I was able achieve a sense of satisfaction that otherwise wouldn't have been present.

I'm beginning to think I'm on the right track here.

Personal Note: Picking up the phone

Image Source

The universe has been calling me.  It happens to me more than I like to admit, but lately it has been a full court press.  I don't know if others experience this phenomenon the same way I do, but my life has a way of reminding me what I'm supposed to be doing when I lose my way.  These calls often come in the form of chance encounters, unforeseeable opportunities, and unexpected people.

In the last couple of months, I've seen a resurgence of old friends I met during my MFA program.  They've been reaching out to me to get a coffee date, a phone call, or a writer's group going.  I've also had old friends from unknown quarters in my life offering me the opportunity to engage in creative projects.  The universe is trying to tell me something, and I'm trying to make myself available to listen and participate.

Image Source

In the last two months, I've been asked to participate in an oral storytelling project, a writer's group, and, now, a side project that includes writing for the screen.  I'm over the moon about it.  The trick now is to find the time to engage with all of those opportunities.  All of them are worth while.  All of them are being orchestrated by good people.  I have an immediate and powerful creative connection with each and every one of those endeavors, and all of them ask that I return to the keyboard, that I return to the state of empathy that writing requires.  All of them require that I open my heart to the world and begin listening again.

For a long time, I've been very career-minded.  I've been stressed about titles, money, and pride.  All of those things were about me, which is never where I succeed.  When I am narrowly focused on self, I am not at my best.  When I obsess about my position, my notoriety, how I appear to other people, I usually wind up in a box that I have to struggle to escape.  That's been the case in the last couple of years, and I've seen my creative expression dry up as a result.  It's time for a change.

It's time to listen to what the universe is telling me about my own purpose and to stop trying so hard to direct my life to where I "think" it should go.  All of this means taking a risk, putting myself out there, being uncomfortable in certain situations, but that is always where I find personal growth.

There is that famous expression, "Jesus take the wheel."  Well, I'm not overtly Christian, but I can identify with the sentiment.  It is time to allow the universe to take the wheel and guide me a little bit.  Sometimes the best form of direction is submission, submission to your life's calling, to what you are meant to be as opposed to what you want to be.  I'm going to try real hard to allow myself the freedom to do so.

Image Source

For any of you who are experiencing the same thing, I hope you find the courage to do the same, and I'd love to hear from you in the comments below.  Knowing that others are experiencing the same thing brings me strength, as I hope this post has done for you.

Personal Note: Six Months

My last post on this blog was on December 7th, 2015.  Six months ago.  Much like a New Year's resolution to hit the gym, recommiting to the a creative endeavor can be fraught with much of the same personal pitfalls.  How many of us have told ourselves we are going to get in shape this year, to hit the gym three times a week, and then failed to show after week 3?  I know I have.  The blog is much the same way.  Once I miss a writing goal, I appear to abandon my craft entirely.  Here's the thing.

I don't care.  I have to get back on this pony eventually.  I can't allow myself to put so much emphasis on my failings.  They are things of the past, and I cannot change the past.  I am here now, and I am typing words on to the screen.  That is all that matters.  I fell down, but now I must get back up.

The thing that brought me back to the screen?  A funeral.  The funeral hasn't happened yet.  It is on Wednesday, but, once again, people close to me have chosen to enlist me to help them say goodbye to a loved one.  The person who died?  Margaret Ellen Gitts, my friend's grandmother.

I had met her before, sure, but I didn't know the woman well, but I got the chance to talk to her family and I received emails detailing aspects of her life.  My job is to then distill all of this rich material into a shorter form, to put it in some kind of order, to make sense of a 90 year old woman's life in the space of about 20 minutes.  I loved every minute of it.

The reason I did?  Margaret was FASCINATING.  She was a wonderful Depression-era woman who sewed, cooked, ran a dairy farm, a dahlia farm, who raised 5 kids and a gaggle of grandkids.  She made her family's clothes for generations, learned to ski in her 60s, she traveled the world in her later years.  She devoured life with a passion and grace I am forced to marvel at.  She is wonderful.

So, how did that bring me back here to this page?  It brought me back to writing because I realized that more than anything I like making sense of the world by processing it in words.  I love the complexity of life, and I love the challenge of trying to distill that complexity into something that others understand.  I love...connection, and my words are my best tool for making that connection.

My perch on the patio.  Not bad.

Writing about the family's love for Margaret reminded me that I love the world too, and my way of loving is to tell my reader's how much this world is worth our affection.  It's been a long time since I've been here, sitting under the starlit sky at two in the morning with a glass of whiskey and the sound of the wind and the keyboard in my ears.  I'll try not to stay away so long next time, but if I do disappear again, I know I will be forced to forgive myself until I find my way back.

Personal Note: Fear and Silence

I've been offline for a couple of weeks now.  This hasn't necessarily been intentional, but it has been necessary.  I recently had a health scare that sent me spiraling into a pit of anxiety, covering all the necessary stops through denial/isolation, bargaining, etc.

It was a lump.

I found a lump on/near one of my testicles.

It scared the hell out of me.  This was weeks ago.  I didn't tell a single person.  Not one.  At first I denied it was there.  Then, I bargained with myself and said, "I'll give it a week or two and if it doesn't go away, then I'll go to the doctor."  Eventually, I realized that it wasn't going away, and I had to do something.  I resigned myself to calling the urologist who did my vasectomy.  I figured skip the general practitioner and head straight to the specialist.  When I called to set my appointment, I set it for the earliest possible date.

I couldn't handle waiting another day or week.  Once I had accepted that this situation was real, that is was worth examining, there was nothing that could have held me back from that appointment.

The appointment revealed that I have a spermatocele, a relatively harmless condition brought about by a blocked tube in my testes.  It is nothing to be alarmed about, nothing that needs any further medical analysis, and I was free and on my way.

This was last week, a week ago to be exact, and for some reason I am still working my way through the news.  While I am in perfectly good health, I still get the jitters, an uneasy anxiousness that sits within the pit of my stomach and reminds me, maybe for the first time, that I'm mortal, really mortal.

The most extreme medical treatment I've ever had was to get my tonsils out, maybe when I had my wisdom teeth removed, but I've never had anything serious, nothing that made me really concerned for my overall well-being.  Those weeks when I didn't tell anyone were some of the most anxious of my life.

The only person who really picked up on it, the only one who really looked me in the eye and said, "What's going on with you?" was a twenty-year-old hostess at my work who often reveals herself to be an astute observer of people's personalities.  Because she persistently asked me what was happening, because she kept insisting something was "going on," I realized that the lump was starting to effect the way I carried myself throughout my day, and I decided to take action.

The first person I told was my wife, and the moment I had the news out of my mouth, I was on the internet and looking up my doctor.  I had an appointment for three days later.

There was no reason for me to delay the appointment, besides a fear of the unknown, a fear of recognizing that there was something potentially serious happening with my health, and I was a fool to let it go on so long.  As I sit her typing these few choppy paragraphs, trying to work my way through the residual relief and fear, I realize, as I often do, that writing would have helped me through all of this.  Writing is processing.  Writing is putting things in order, puzzling out knotted threads, finding a way to navigate difficult situations, and I shouldn't allow things like this to keep me from the computer for so long.  I am really backed up on promise posts (yes, I'm still doing those, even though I've missed two during this time), and I may just march forward instead of trying to catch up on the back log.

I'm feeling more and more like myself with each day.  Today will help.  I'm watching a friends daughter for a couple of hours, allowing Shea and her a couple of hours of play.  In the background as I write this, the girls are creating an original song with an electric keyboard, a pen, and a small pad.  Their giggles and their earnest efforts to commit words to the page serve as an inspiration for this small effort, my effort to somehow capture the complexity of what I've experienced in a blog post.  I have a feeling I'm not done with this subject.  I'm done with it for the blog, but I have a feeling it will find its way into my writing in other forms.  Writing is processing after all.

Thanks for listening.

Promise-ary Note: Kyle "Falls" into Personal Time

The last promise I drew was to find 3 hours to spend with myself.  It's hard as a father, husband, teacher, and bartender to carve out these little niches of time, so I had to drop everything on Tuesday and rush out of the house in order to get it in.  This meant leaving stacks of grading left ungraded in my bag and rushing out in order to be back in time to get my daughter, but I got it done.

Thanks to a little help from the internet, I was able to find a hike that suited my time frame. I wanted to get out of town, to explore a section of Oregon I had never encountered before, to scout a hike my wife and I could do alongside our daughter, and I found it in Wahclella Falls just outside of Cascade Locks.  Portlandhikersfieldguide.org provides a nice write up of the trail, so I knew what I was getting into. 

It'd been a long time since I'd gone to the Columbia Gorge, either through traveling through it or to explore it, so when the Gorge opened up in front of me past Troutdale, I made sure to soak in scene as I drove.  Some of you might remember my earlier post about my love affair with driving.  I decided to use my block of time to satiate my desire for the road, for open air, for new vistas, and the Gorge did not disappoint.  It was a beautiful sunny day, and I was hellbent on using it.

Just short of Cascade Lakes is Bonneville Dam.  From Highway 84 eastbound, one simply needs to take this exit (Exit 40) and drive south of the freeway.  The road splits east and west, and a sign points the westward way to Wahclella.  The trail is an easy one, one mile in and one mile out in a lollipop formation.  While there is a rise in elevation on the trail, it isn't anything too extreme.  

Since I was pushing time, I huffed it down the trail, quickly working up a sweat once I hit the inclines.  As it was a Tuesday, the trail was almost completely deserted, only a few families and couples appeared along the way.

I don't know what it is about waterfalls, but I'm drawn to them and the landscapes they create.  There is something about the mix of elements that immediately appeals to me.  The intersection of water misting the air in its descent elevates my spirit as I breathe deep the cascading rumble like the sustenance of sound.  As water crashes into earth, my imagination drives forward like an elemental force, and I find inspiration in the violent energies unleashed in the collision.

While I took a lot of pictures of the falls while I was there, I made sure to leave the electronics alone and to perch myself upon a rock inside the plume of mist.  This communion with nature felt like a baptism, a dip into a holy fount.  I reveled in the strain of the hike as I settled into a melting pleasure of idleness.  The goal having been achieved, I rested and I rested well.

Oregon is full of magical nooks and crannies that can transport us outside ourselves while centering us inside ourselves.  Positioning oneself inside external majesty is a great way to provide the essential insignificance of a life.  I find it important to remind myself of my own immateriality, to beat back my ego, and to remind myself that I am small in all the best ways possible.  

We all occupy the space of our own lives, sometimes even eclipsing the lives of those around us, but encounters with the wider, even wilder, world serve as a sometimes gentle reminder that we are not as important as we think we are.

All in all, the trip was a success.  I spent the drive home blasting the radio, driving with the window down, and recounting the multiple ways my life is a blessing.  Not a bad way to spend three hours if I do say so myself.

The next promise I pulled is also an exercise is getting outside myself.

Personal Notes: Pulling Threads

Image Source

The illustration above evokes a project I'm working on right now.  It is an illustration of an exercise to limber up the fingers for a pianist, but it speaks to what I'm working on in interesting ways.  Much in the same way a pianist must exercise in order to better their craft, I must "limber up" if I am to improve in my art as well.  My hands are an instrument of my art, dancing over the keyboard in an attempt at making music of another sort, and so I was drawn to this illustration.

I've been "pulling threads" over the last couple of days.  I've had an interesting email exchange with my aunt who dropped a picture on me that I wasn't prepared for.  It's called to the surface a set of questions, a mindfulness, I wasn't prepared for in terms of how I think about myself.  It is a simple picture, a picture of my grandfather, which lead me to exchange additional emails with my aunt, and then my father.  The picture opened a door to a subject I had never considered, like the muse dropping inspiration on the unwitting artist.

My grandfather and his first wife

This is the picture that started this process.  It led to other pictures and other questions.  I debated creating a blog post about the subject, but I'm realizing that the material this picture opened for me is more of a long form essay, something that needs to be developed in the longer, more formal rough draft, revision, new draft, revision process that is typical of the work I try to publish in literary magazines and other venues.

Sometimes the past feels like a closed book to us, chapters that are completed and spent.  Other times, the past comes alive for us, a place to be explored, a darkened room in which we stumble around and grope at the walls for a switch that will light the darkness.  This picture feels like the latter, or a doorway to the latter.

I'm excited to explore the subject in detail.  One never knows where inspiration is going to strike, but we must all remain open to it.

Personal Note: Moving Past Grief

I've lost a lot of people over my lifetime.  It's the perils of living in a small town, I guess.  I've attended a lot of funerals, officiated a handful more, and dealt with grief both as a person trying to bring comfort to others and as the mourner.  It's a formidable life experience to deal with the nearness of death, to see someone close to you slip past the veil of life and into the "after," whatever your conception may be here.

Recently, I've dealt with a lot of this and had to preside over the services of those close to me.  Granted, they were people of a generation older than me, which allows me the distance of relative "youth."  It allows me the cool remove of "I have time," but that too is a lie, a trick of the mind to push away the reality of death.  So, lately, I've been thinking a lot about what comes next, what survives death for the living?  The answer to this is Hope.  Yep, captial "H" Hope is what I land on.  But where does one find it in the midst of darkness, in the throes of depression?  The answer is simple.

It is everywhere.

For the depressed and grieving, this may appear to be a snide remark, a flippant response by someone who doesn't understand the depths of his/her personal pain.  I know. I've been there.  As a young man, I dealt with a lot of darkness, a lot of personal pain, and it  effected me deeply.  It may be that those early experience wore against my heart like an ill-fitting shoe, leaving a callused patch of skin that now protects it, but I don't think so.  It is my firmly held belief that I chose my way out.  I chose the path I wanted to take out of the darkness and I've been becoming a better man ever since.

Hope is everywhere, but it is a matter of choosing.  Many people in the throes of grief plunge themselves backwards into the river of time.  They exist on the edge of memory, looking backwards toward the past, and because of this they are unable to sometimes experience the pleasures of the present, the promise of the future.  One way is to choose to turn your gaze.  This is a Herculean effort at first.  Shifting one's gaze toward the present, toward the future, sometimes feels like a treacherous act, an abandonment of the person we love, but it is far from that.  I've been reading the book "Dreams of Gods and Monsters" lately, the final book in a trilogy, and two of the characters keep bandying around the idea that the dead do not want vengeance from their survivors.  The survivors are the ones who want vengeance.  This caused me to think about my recent experiences with grief and some grievers who are close to me.

Photo courtesy of Linda Thomas

Here's my revision of the idea.  The dead do not want our tears, our grief.  They want our fond memories, a place in our hearts, and our enduring love, but, more than anything, they want our continued happiness.  In all of my experience with death, I've never met a dying soul who wanted anything more than that last piece.  I've lost grandparents, aunts, uncles, friends, classmates, mentors, etc.  In all of those experiences, I've never known a one who wanted their loved ones to endure the prolonged pain that is grief.  Not one.

So, how do we find the hope?  How do we move past this stagnation of forward movement, of minutes ticking away from our own lives?  We choose to...tentatively at first.  We venture outside ourselves and choose to have one good visit.  One good afternoon with your child, your grandchild, a friend, a loved one of any stripe.  We get outside of ourselves and we invest in another.  This, for me, has often been the easiest way to move past grief.  Give yourself fully to another.  Invest in them, give them your time, attention, and help them to navigate whatever troubles they may be experiencing.  When I do this, when I reach out into my community, into my social circles, I typically get swept up into a current that draws me forward.

Photo courtesy of Jodi Sunitsch

As I get swept away, I begin to make connections to things outside of myself and my grief.  I begin to learn and discover new things.  I get surprised, which causes me to emit a bark of a laugh, a thing which is also a surprise and can sometimes set me backwards in my momentum because I feel that sense of shame that I am rediscovering joy in the face of my grief.  But, one laugh typically leads to another, which leads to another.  A friends laugh will remind me of my lost loved one, or something they say will stir a memory in me, and it will soon not be tainted with a sense of shame or guilt, but it will remind me that my loved ones would have sat right by me given the chance and they would have laughed just as long, or just as loud as I did.

Soon, my emotions shift from lamentations to celebrations.  When I remember my loved ones, I remember them fondly, which is usually accompanied by a story, and I start to tell the stories.  In this way, my loved ones get what they want, what I stated earlier.  They get my fond memories, they get a place in my heart, and they get my love.  In the end, I also get something too.  I get a new strength, a new way of moving forward, a new understanding of the beautiful bittersweet majesty that is a lived life.  I get this because they left me.  I get this because they loved me.  I get this because I loved them back, and I wouldn't trade that for any other material gift anyone could give me.

In this way, our grief is a gift, for it tempers us into a stronger version of ourselves, and that strength is built directly upon the life and memories of the people we had the courage and blessing enough to love.

Personal Note: Turning It Off

We all have our "it."  For me, it appears to be work.  I am a worker born and bred.  I work a lot.  I work for money AND I work for self-satisfaction.  Because of this, I sometimes have a hard time "turning it off" and focusing on other things.  This can lead to dysfunction in other areas of my life, whether it be my relationships, my health, or my free time.

I was, of course, working today, looking up the relationship of Hector and Achilles from the Trojan War because there was a reference to it in my students' reading assignment. As a result of looking up these mythic heroes, I landed on a post on a Christian website by Gene Veith as he discussed the two heroes in relationship to an article by Mark Edmundson entitled "Do Sports Build Character?" The two men used the myth of Hector and Achilles to illuminate different aspects of character, different aspects of what it means to be human, and I found myself sliding down the internet rabbit hole and becoming obsessed with an idea that led to a click here, a website there, and eventually a detour into my own blog.

The point is this, and it comes from Mark Edmundson himself, "...what is most appealing about Hector—and about a certain kind of athlete and warrior. Hector can turn it off. He can stop being the manslayer that he needs to be out on the windy plains of Troy and become a humane husband and father. The scene shows him in his dual nature—warrior and man of thought and feeling. In a sense, he is the figure that every fighter and athlete should emulate. He is the Navy Seal or Green Beret who would never kill a prisoner, the fearless fighter who could never harm a woman or a child. In the symbolic world of sports, where the horrors and the triumphs of combat are only mimicked, he is the one who comports himself with extreme gentleness off the field, who never speaks ill of an opponent, who never complains, never whines."  

Much of what I obsess about in my personal life is this exact dynamic.  How do I ambitiously pursue the things I want in life while still being a "man of thought and feeling"?  How do I create a life that is stable and loving for my family and friends while still maintaining my teeth-bared, no-holds-barred, I'm-going-to-get-mine attitude toward my writing and my career?  The answer is simple.  I can be both things.  I am allowed to be both things.  These are not aspects that are necessarily in conflict with each other, but they are aspects of being a person that need to be "activated" in their appropriate times and places.  

I can be Hector the warrior and I can be Hector the father.  My daughter will learn from seeing both sides of me.  She will come to understand tenderness, but she will also understand strength, but, most importantly, she'll come to know that there is a time and a place for each of them.

Personal Note: The Big Think

The last couple of days have found me in a personal pickle.  I've been presented with an opportunity to take my life in a new direction of sorts, or to at least pick one direction from amongst the many I'm working at any given time.  It's put me in an introspective space, a mindful insulated place where I don't know what my next move will be.

As such, I found myself feeling that old urge I get whenever I'm percolating a new idea/opportunity: the urge to drive!  After I got off work, I jumped in the truck and proceeded to drive around town.  I've always loved to drive, to take off and hit parts unknown, to drive on roads I'm unfamiliar with and get a little lost.  Although this time, I was drawn almost immediately to the McLoughlin Promenade.

In Oregon City, there is a 7+ acre linear park that runs along the ridge above downtown.  It's edged on one side by a sheer drop and on the other by businesses and historic homes.  It's a nice place to visit in the day, but it feels a bit dodgy at night.  I took the risk though.  For some reason, I needed to sit above downtown and gaze into the distance toward Portland.

It was a beautiful night.

The view from near the Oregon City elevator.

It was perfectly warm and spring was in the air.

Magnolia (?) tree near the elevator

I didn't necessarily come up with any great ideas, any real solutions to my dilemma, but I did find peace of mind and a spot for a quick ten minute meditation as I gazed out over the city lights of Portland twinkling in the distance.

It's important to take a moment to clear the mind before making any life-altering decisions.  A long drive, a meditative moment, or a good run are all good ways of centering oneself before committing to the fray.  I've made many a good decision as a result of these three techniques.  I'm hoping to keep using these techniques in the coming weeks as I begin to decide what it is I really want and how I am going to get there.

Life is a grand adventure, and these moments of decision, or real choice with real consequence, should be a reminder that it is so.  The fact that I find this decision so challenging is because it means I am invested in my life.  In many ways, that's all I've ever wanted.  It's the reason I write, the reason I read, the reason I love.  To quote some Yiddish from Fiddler on the Roof, "l'chaim." TO LIFE!

Personal Note: Anxiety Dreams

My dream consciousness begins with a sound, the sharp dry rasp of a cough in fact.  It comes from somewhere outside my room.  It is my daughter's cough, of this I am sure.  I am a parent and I know the sound of my daughter's cough from a mile away.  I listen from deep in darkness in what I am assuming is my bed because I haven't opened my eyes yet.  It comes again, and again.  That same dry, futile cough that does nothing to move or expel phlegm.

"Searching Dreams" a painting by Herve Martijn, a dutch painter.  Find his work here.

It comes again and again from the other side of the darkness that is my only other awareness.  Finally, I open my eyes and realize I am in my room, tucked away in the bed.  In the dream I don't know if my wife or the dog who normally sleep in the bed are there.  I don't even think of them.  I think only of my daughter and the cough.

I rise.

I move through the house silently, searching for my daughter.  I cross the hall to her room, but she isn't there.  I could have sworn I heard her cough from the other side of the door, but when I open it, she isn't there.  I hear her cough again, but this time it is from down the hall.  I move out of her room and further into the hall.  Her cough sounds like it is coming from downstairs, so I mount the stairs and descend into the further reaches of the house.  I search, always hearing her cough in the next room, around the next corner, but I can't find her.

I'm growing more and more anxious, more and more concerned about her cough as  I move because it seems like the individual coughs are growing more insistent, more frequent, and I don't want her to make herself sick with it.

As I move through the house, searching through room after room, I can't find her.  She is always "somewhere else," just beyond my sight, behind one more closed door.

I wind my way through the entire house, making my way back up the stairs again, and I'm becoming more and more unsettled by the whole thing.  I've already taken to calling her name.  I've been calling since I descended the stairs, but the only answer has been that dry hack.

Finally, I open the door to my office and turn on the light.  There she is.  She is curled up in the arms of my old friend Joel.  She is coughing and she is awake, but there is no distress in her.  Joel is equally calm, although he looks at her with a bit of concern.  When he sees me, he says, "I'm sorry.  I tried to take care of it.  I didn't want to wake you.  She's been at it for a while now."  He's so matter of fact about it.  He registers nothing about my panicked calls throughout the house, registers nothing about my pounding heart.  I cross the room to him and that's when I get my first glimpse at Shea.

When I get close to Shea, it is the open wounds I see first.  All over her body are small, crescent sores that glisten wet, but do not bleed.  Each sore is like a grotesque mouth grinning at me from Shea's arm, leg, or face.  The sores have appeared all over her face and one has curled the left side of her mouth into a cleft palette-like sneer.  Her lips are glossy with the seeping sore.  Her right ear is twisted and disfigured with the profusion of sores I find there.  I almost don't recognize her, and I turn to Joel aghast.

"What's wrong with her?"

"What do you mean?  She's got a pretty bad cough," he replies.  His voice is in no way sinister, in no way panicked.  He has the appropriate amount of concern for someone who only worries about a light cough in a child.

I stand Shea up in front of me and ask, "Are you okay, honey?"

"Yeah, Daddy.  I got a cough though.  Sorry to wake you."  This comes from Shea in her normal, sweet voice.  She's always so considerate, and she has no concern over the sores whatsoever.  I run my hands over them, feeling the slight pucker of flesh at each wound and the anxiety of the situation washes over me.  I can feel goose flesh running up my spine and into my hairline.  I itch with anxiousness...

And then I wake.

I wake itching.  While my consciousness in the dream birthed itself in sound, my waking consciousness rises to the itch, the creeping, full body, deep in the scalp itch of anxiety.  My breath is not rapid, but it is not restful.  My heart beats against the plate of my chest with more force than sleeping should require.  I am awake in the brightest, clear-minded sense of the word.  I don't rise through the mist of sleep.  I don't stumble through the cluttered room of consciousness and into clarity, but I rise bright and clear and aware of exactly what has happened, of exactly what my dream has been.

This is unusual for me.  I don't remember dreams.  Not with this amount of clarity I don't.  After using the bathroom and trying to return to bed, I give up on the futility of sleep at this point.  I know I will not fall easily back, so I rise and move through the real rooms of my house, the silent rooms of my house that don't even carry an echo of a child's cough.  I know exactly where I am going.

The nighttime view out my picture window.  A terrible shot, but you get the drift.

My house has a picture window at the front.  I find myself there, indian-style on the floor in front of the giant pane of glass overlooking my street.  It is after midnight and my neighborhood is silent.  I sit for a moment and gaze out into the semi-darkness.  My eyes adjust to the little bit of light coming from the streetlight down the street and the exterior lights of my neighbor's across the street.

The neighbor's light shines out at me from across the way, the nearby basketball hoop catching the light and glowing like a clouded pane of glass that, in another context, might be a patch of clouded sky, it's whiteness a promise of something.  I begin to breathe.  In through my nose.  Out through my mouth.  Again.  Breathe.  In through the nose.  Out through the mouth.  I focus on my neighbor's backboard, that clouded pane of glass.  "My window is dirty," I think to myself, noticing the dog's noseprints on the glass.  I straighten my posture and breathe, focusing on the backboard.  I do this over and over again, wiping stray thoughts from my head as I focus, deeper and deeper.  In through the nose.  Out through the mouth.  Breathe.  Again.  In through the nose.  Out through the mouth.

Picture provided by Jagaro - a meditation blog from New South Wales

I'm glad I chose meditation as my promise of the week.  After an indeterminate amount of time, I felt heart rate return to normal.  Even though the house is cold in the middle of the night, I was able to control my body temperature and focus on sustaining it through breath and concentration.  I felt my posture straighten, not through focus and control, but by my body coming back into itself, coming back through the controlled meter of breath and aligning itself, one vertebrae on top of another, my shoulders pulling back and down, opening my chest, and allowing me to breathe.

I eventually rose and found myself here.  In front of the computer.  I've been able to transcribe the dream with more clarity than I can ever recall having after a dream.  While I wrote this, some of the anxiety returned, the itch came back to my scalp when I remembered the open sores, but it contained none of the electric panic that rocked the earlier dream.  I had breathed that away, one circuit of breath at a time, in through the nose and out through the mouth.

It's something we can all use from time to time: a return to the power and simplicity of breath.