Breaking Up With Our Bullsh!t

So much Bullsh!t, So Little Time

July 4, 2021

___________________

News flash: I am full of shit.

And before you interject and say I’m being hard on myself (or, if you know me and are nodding your head vigorously in agreement), I’ll say something else - so are you.

I don’t mean this as an insult, but as a statement of fact. But as being “full of shit” is a term wide open to interpretation and application, I’ll explain what I mean, because I am talking about a specific kind of shit that we can be full of (or should that be, “of which we can be full”? Wait…what?):

I call it Bullsh!t, and yes, the unique spelling is on purpose. This kind of shit isn’t the literal kind, or the “this guy is totally lying to make himself look good” kind, or the “he’s a politician, so what do you expect” kind.

No, Bullsh!t is very specific - it refers to stories that we all can make up about ourselves and other people when we are responding to difficult feelings or circumstances. These stories then affect our own self-esteem, negatively impact our relationships, and disconnect us from people and situations and pathways that could benefit us. And what makes these Bullsh!t?

They are entirely made up and have no basis in reality - at least, the reality of THIS moment, in the reality of Now. Which means that they are stories that do not serve us in any positive way. And, we all make them up - every single day.

So why am I stepping out of my summer hiatus to tell you this? That’s simple - to tell you that we do not have to keep making up those stories; we can let them go. We can break up with them, like we can with any bad relationship that no longer serves us. And, just as importantly, we actually have everything we need inside us to learn how to do so, and do so faster than we may think.

It’s not wishful thinking, it’s not woo-woo, and it’s not snake oil. It’s science, baby.

It is how our bodies are wired - it knows how to help us let those stories go and be in the reality of Now. Our bodies know what we need, and not just with nutrition and hydration; it also knows how to help us navigate challenging situations, feelings, and others.

I speak from experience, from the perspective of one who once spun and believed my Stories of Bullsh!t like my life depended on it. It took me nowhere helpful or positive, and about a year or so ago it took me back to very dark places that I thought I had left behind years ago in my Big Life Crash.

Fortuitously, a friend of mine stepped in to help me at that very moment, and I soon found myself on a new path to breaking up with my Bullsh!t. A handful of months later, this same friend and I coined this specific term and idea - and what it means to break up with it - as part of a new venture that I am honored she asked me to take part in.

Say hello, everyone, to Breaking Up With Our Bullsh!t.

It’s a new podcast and book project venture led by Tawny Sanabria, a licensed counselor / therapist and an emotional integration specialist. She owns a company called Integrated Growth Coaching, and her focus is on helping people identify and work through emotional challenges and traumas by understanding the intertwined relationship between their bodies, minds, and emotions. She helps people see and let go their Bullsh!t stories about whatever they are experiencing in the moment, as those stories are what really cause us stress and pain; it’s not our emotions themselves.

For example, if we experience a bad breakup, it makes sense to have strong feelings of sadness, loss, anger, and confusion. Those are normal and healthy to identify and feel. However, if we make up stories of what those feelings “mean” - “I will never find anyone,” or “I must be too messed up to be lovable,” or “the universe must not want me to be happy” - then we are disconnecting from the reality of what is happening (we are feeling sad about the breakup) and creating unhealthy and harmful responses to stories that aren’t based in any provable truth or tangible reality.

Which means they are Bullsh!t. And yet, we wreck ourselves with such stories daily, and thus end up spending a lot of time up in our heads with those stories and not in reality. But reality is where healing and change happen, and where we can realize that we have the ability to be okay in this moment.

Tawny has been doing this kind of work for twenty-plus years now, and her help has helped and changed me so profoundly over the past year or so that I have recommended her to many others. Her approach is straightforward yet compassionate, clear yet also not prescriptive. She knows how to connect people to their own talents and skills and emotional strengths, and she manages to do it with an enormous amount of kindness and good humor.

A few months ago, out of deep appreciation for her help, I suggested to Tawny that she consider writing a book about herself and her approach - part memoir, part “you all should do this stuff cuz it really works.” After she thought about it for a few days, she agreed to write a book but only with my help. I agreed, then suggested that maybe she consider creating a podcast where she could talk about her methods and maybe help others with their own Bullsh!t stories as a way to collect information and ideas for her book.

Again, she agreed to the idea after a few days - but only if I would be her cohost. So, here we are.

We are recording our first episode on July 7, and it will appear on all major podcast platforms about a week later. Video feeds of each episode from our studio will also appear on a soon-to-arrive BUWOBS YouTube channel and similar platforms. You can get regular content from Tawny and me already, though, in the show’s Facebook group, which I would encourage you to join now for regular updates and new content (almost) daily. Our Instagram and Twitter feeds will be up soon, and you should start getting used to seeing and using hashtags like #buwobs and #debunkthejunk. We will even have Awesome Swag like stickers and mugs because that kind of shit is Good. We also have some other ideas in the works on how to spread the word and get more people on board with breaking up with their own Bullsh!t.

It’s like a Big Deal and stuff.

The journey has already been quite fun and rewarding for both Tawny and me, and the response we are getting to the concept and content thus far has been overwhelming in its positivity and scope. So, we are hoping we are on to something special here that resonates with people, so please consider this your invitation to find out if it does for you.

After all, we each have our own (Bull)sh!t, don’t we?

See you all soon. And until then….

Chins Up, Everyone.

The Ides of June

Next time you have a bad day, remember that his was far worse.

June 20, 2021

_____________________

I should’ve known better than to take a day off from My Sunday Post last week.

It was June 13, and I forgot my Roman history - the 13th is the “Ides” day of June - the Bad Luck Day of this particular month in the Roman calendar. 

I don’t consider myself (all that) superstitious, but there was absolutely no reason for me to court bad luck so recklessly, especially since I already knew that Mercury is in retrograde for most of this month, fire season is already arriving in the West, and my beloved Seattle Mariners (yeah, I know - I’m in an abusive relationship there) somehow lost five of six games against the league-worst Detroit Freaking Tigers this season. The signs of Bad Luck were all there, and I just plain missed them.

I was courting disaster because I wasn’t thinking clearly.

But that was why I ended up taking the day off in the first place - my brain was tired. Actually, my whole Life was Tired. 

It was a realization that emerged earlier in the week, when a Beyond Trusted friend gave me a didn’t-know-I-needed-it-but-I-did swift kick in the ass about how much I was trying to (over)do in my life. “You’re exhausting ME,” they said, “And I’m just following it all, not doing it. Exactly what are you trying to prove, and to whom?”

Well, shit.

I had no idea off the top of my head, so in the following days I slowed down in order to reflect on it more. And slowing down showed me that the answer didn’t really matter - what DID, though, was that I was packing so much into my life that I wasn’t really living. 

I was burning myself out and just hadn’t noticed it yet.

I was rushing from one thing to the next, hopping from one writing project to another to prepping for the next podcast episode and My Sunday Post. In between, I was training for not one but TWO half-ironman triathlons, doing a full slate of work for my day job, and getting query letters ready to send out to prospective agents. It was a big stack of plates I was juggling.

I wasn’t taking in the joys of life as I raced past them in my determination to “make every minute count.” Then, as another friend reminded me a few days after my Swift Kick, “the minutes count anyway, so why try to pack them even more? Just pay attention to them as they happen.” 

Good point. 

So, in one final conversation with yet another friend (yes, I run my shit by a lot of people sometimes), I put everything I’ve been doing lately on the table for scrutiny, to decide what I might need to put aside temporarily or even permanently. 

A few good things came out of it, but most notable was when I floated the idea of slowing down for the summer on My Sunday Post. When I said the words out loud, I literally felt tension pour out of me. Had it been water, it would’ve spilled out all over the coffee shop booth and floor and caused a great deal of alarm for other patrons. Had it been blood, it would’ve served as a great opening scene if someone ever made The Shining 2.

But I digress.

As my head and shoulders sank from relief and exhaustion grabbed a hold of me (our attentive server powered me up with several coffee top-offs after that), I knew I’d found a key adjustment I needed to make. 

So, I didn’t write a post for last Sunday, June 13, and that felt good. But I forgot about the Ides. 

And they hit me HARD. I had a pretty shitty day in just about every way; I had a small household accident that could’ve become a catastrophe if five more minutes had gone by; I was supposed to go to a minor league baseball game that got rained out by a Seattle monsoon; I got the brush off from a friend that was likely not intended as such but landed extremely poorly;  I absolutely exploded on another friend of mine in the aftermath, and it took awhile to clean up; my right hamstring hit the two-week mark of still feeling really sore (from my Walkabout), and that meant my triathlon training / performance was at risk; and, about three different financial issues collided all at once.

It all just sucked. I felt like Julius Caesar must have when he faced his own Ides - of March, in his case - only for him it was dozens of senators stabbing him to death rather than my totally not nearly as bad of a day. 

Anyways….

It was all enough to send me to bed early that night, and that doesn’t happen very often. What was clear the next morning, though, was that my burning myself to a crisp had not set me up for success the day before - after all, my day was made all the worse by how I responded to what happened, not to the events themselves. My responses were overblown and overheated, because I was fully depleted.

Which told me I’d made the right call to slow things down. 

I had to get Present again, not race full bore for the future at the expense of the Now. So, I slowed down on triathlon training and may end up canceling my races - I enjoy the fitness I’m experiencing, but I can still have that and not push myself to the limit every other day or so as training often demands. I also changed my prep schedule for my podcast so it doesn’t take up blocks of time, thus reducing my stress. And, I decided to spend more time writing poetry, as it is the form of writing that most requires me to be present in the Now in order to do it well. 

And I need to practice Now more often. That’s the most important piece and project for the summer. To just Live.

So, with that in mind, I will be taking a much more eased approach to My Sunday Post for the summer, returning to normal around Labor Day. There will be something appearing in this space each Sunday - a mixture of re-issues of previous posts, new poems, and the occasional announcement or update of how things are going. 

It’s not really a vacation, but a breather. It’s a chance to remember why I started all these things - this blog to build an audience for my writing, the triathlon training to get myself healthier, the podcast because it’s fun for me and helps me feel like I’m contributing positively to society. In my haste and rush to do all of that at once, I don’t think I was doing any of them as well as I could, nor living life the way I want to - with ease, grace, peace, and Play. 

So, while I’ll be around,  my metaphorical “gone fishing” sign will be up more often than not.

A refueled and refocused me will be better for everyone, especially for me. 

I know you get it, and I hope all of you take the time you need to do the same kind of recharging. We all need it after the Angst Dumpster Fire of a year that we all just had. 

A giant year of Ides, really. 

Yet we survived them. Unlike Uncle Julius, that poor dictatorial bastard (not really - he deserved it). So, we have that going for us, which is nice. 

Thank you for showing up to read my musings every week these past six months, and thank you in advance for continuing to do so. I can’t express how much I appreciate your support.

See you all again soon, and enjoy your beach days, wherever they may be. 

Chins, Up Everyone.

***************
Thanks for reading My Sunday Post. Instead of some important updates from my past week, here is a picture of the beach I most often return to in my mind.

Push and Pull

A little more conversation and a little less action, please.

June 6, 2021

___________________

I’m Tired. The capitalization is on purpose.

If you’re a regular reader of this weekly column, then you won’t be surprised by that. Last weekend’s Walkabout Day ended up being followed by Wipeout Week, more so than I’d expected. I am recovering well and the hammy pain behind my right knee is nearly gone, yet I’d also be a fool to not listen to my body telling me to roll it back a bit. And if my body hadn’t convinced me, some voices from concerned quarters might have on their own.

It appears that, even to people I know are doing a lot in their own lives, from their perspective I am doing more than a lot - to the point of concerned questions. These are people who I have learned to take seriously when they speak up, so in that spirit I decided to ease back a bit this week and compose a poem to share with you this week instead of a longer post. I wrote it literally this morning over my coffee and quiet, and it’s about those concerns the People I Love have shared with me.

It’s a reminder of things I know, but can easily forget. Most importantly, that to be here and now with myself and others is just about the best life can offer.

Maybe it can help you, too, when you need those same reminders.

Enjoy. See you again next week.

Chins Up, Everyone.

***************

Push and Pull

By JDK Wyneken

I’m taking on too much these days,

Or so I’ve been told.

Maybe it’s true, I don’t know.

I fear I’m too busy running out of time

To stop to breathe and consider.

But even so, I see

It’s far too easy to make

Simple things complicated,

Peaceful times too busy, and the

Pursuit of presence a back-pocket tool,

A break-in-case-of-emergency option

Out of sight and mind far too often

While I compete against an opponent

Of my own creation, keeping score of

A game no one else knows I’m playing.

If I’m enough in all things, then why

Do I try to do too much of more, and

Less of what I truly desire most;

Calm and connection and all the love

That literally surrounds and blankets me?

I could spend more time and ink on why, but

Instead I’ll let that lie and stay

Right where I am right now, and take in

All I can with this one breath in and out,

And tell you what I see.

I’m above the line and can

See all the way to you smiling back at me,

Lazily swirling that drink in your hand

And smirking at me as if to say I

Could’ve stopped to sit with you anytime.

From here I see and hear singing

And laughing and the crackling of a fire

Around which all are welcome and no one

Asks where I come from because

It only matters that I’m here.

It’s where I flow, and we move,

Dancing to the only tune that matters and where

We need no accessories or shortcuts;

Crystal balls and solemn oaths

Are as absent as they are unnecessary;

Where there are more than enough

Flowers to smell, flavors to taste

Love and souls to touch, words to hear,

And reflections and visages to see

To fill my cup with here and now.

So today I’ll slow down to imagine

The bend in our road, to see what I too often

Blow past, resume a slower pace, and keep

My attention on you, me, and where we Are.

This alone is far better than anything I myself can create.

 ***************
Thanks for reading My Sunday Poem. Here are some important updates from my past week:

Soul Book of the Week: A revisit of Return to Love by Marianne Williamson

Book On My Nightstand: Fatherland by Robert Harris. Savoring this re-read.

Best Show / Movie I Watched: Mare of Easttown, Season One finale. What a great show.

Strongest Earworm Song: The Chauffeur by Duran Duran. No idea how it happened. Don’t judge.

Best Triathlon Training Moment: A whole workout dedicated to exercise recovery. Felt great.

Toughest Triathlon Training Moment: Realizing I’ve been overtraining. Need to ratchet it back a bit.

Favorite Hangout Shirt of the Week: This one. Because the New York Black Yankees are one of the great franchises of the old Negro Leagues.

Coolest Thing of the Week: the feedback I got on last week’s Walkabout.

Thing I Know Now That I Didn’t Last Week: that foam rollers are gifts from the workout gods.

Most Helpful Perspective / Advice of the Week: “Stop beating the shit out your body, please.”

Current Wanderlust List: 1) California Still; 2) Ireland; 3) Vancouver, BC. Love that city.

Für Einen Tag

Another Road Less Traveled. It’s how I roll, it seems.

May 31, 2021

_______________________

[Editor’s Note: A word to caution to all of you - to say that this running diary post is both raw and unfiltered is an understatement. It needed to be that way, and hopefully you’ll see why. It goes to places, and touches on subjects, that JDK doesn’t always share with even those closest to him. Some of it is downright ugly amidst all the beautiful. So, to be fair from the outset - strong subject content and coarse language ahead. Keep your arms and legs inside the carriage at all times, and enjoy the ride.]

As I sit here now, a day later and in significant pain, one thought stays dominant in my head:

You might have overdone it this year, dude. 

I don’t agree with that deep down - at all - but the strongest negative emotions involved in a post-Walkabout Day hangover make a really loud case. And sometimes I mistake Loud for Truth. It’s Quiet that really tells the truth, though, and at least I’m remembering that right now, too. Loud is often The Liar. 

But Loud is strong right now because I am so sore, so worn out, in every way. 

Walking 32.68 miles in one day - without sitting down between sunrise and sunset (so, this year, that was from 5:16 AM - 8:56 PM PT) will do that. So why did I do it? I’ve been asked that question a lot these past few days, usually with a colorful adjective added laced with incredulity. The answer, though, is simple:

Because it’s Walkabout Day. 

It’s a new tradition started by me for every Memorial Day weekend, inspired by Dean Karnazes, the famous ultramarathoner, who borrowed it respectfully from the well-known spiritual practice of the indigenous peoples of Australia. Instead of a months-long wandering, it’s for a day - without sitting down - to wander without any specific planning of where to go or what to do. The goal is to see what comes up internally via the external challenge of the process, to connect with self and with All Things Larger Than Us, and on some level, just to see what the hell happens. 

It’s a larger metaphor for life, like experiencing all the elements and emotions of it in one day. 

It also strips away - at least for one day - all the bullshit that I keep around and in myself. In that sense, it’s a real form of cleansing. 

And it sucks. And it’s glorious fun. And it’s immense pain. And it’s full of a-ha moments, both welcome and not-so-welcome-but-I-gotta-pay-attention-because-it’s-the-goddamned-truth. 

That’s Walkabout Day. 

So why Memorial Day weekend? It began two years ago, when I was in Normandy, France for the 75th anniversary commemoration of the D-Day landings that began the liberation of Europe. On that trip, I spent an entire day (or nearly so) on my feet at Omaha Beach and at the American Cemetery there, where thousands of Americans who died in the 1944 Normandy campaign are buried. The place is beyond powerful, beyond words. As I reflected back on that day, I thought of Karnazes’s Walkabout concept, and decided that I’d do a Walkabout Day on Memorial Day weekend - part commemoration of the fallen, part introspection about where I am in life, how I am That Day, and where I should go next.

Me at Omaha Beach - June 2019

The American Cemetery above Omaha Beach - June 2019

A day of reflection, seeking, discovery, and gratitude. 

Last year, I followed through (a big deal for me, Mr. Big Ideas Guy but not always best at Follow Through. Stop nodding, all my friends and exes. I see you), in the midst of a growing pandemic even. I went about 21 miles from where I live in Kirkland, WA and ended at a friend’s house in Issaquah (Stacy and Pete’s - a kind of home-away-from-home for me). It was a lot of fun and very challenging. I listened to podcasts as I walked and explored, got lost about three times, and made some important realizations about how I was handling a few big emotional challenges. I knew it was a tradition I wanted to build on, so I decided that, “hey, next year I should keep a running diary by talking into my phone. Won’t that be great?”

A year later, with a weekly blog and now an active weekly radio show, I had to add, “And I should publish it on my blog so readers / listeners can see it.” It’s the honest thing to do. 

Damn it. 

So here it is, folks. A window into the Soul of my Walkabout Day, 2021. All the areas in bold are what I dictated in real time (without any edits), and the regular typeface parts are my post-event reflections. And, while I know my posts usually include nothing but black-and-white photos, I’ll include color this week to help capture the “feel” a bit more for you. 

All I wrote down, I felt and believed strongly at the time. Now? You decide.

4:45 AM: F***ing Hell it’s early….

4:46 AM: Coffee pot on 

5:06 AM: Three S’s Completed 

5:07 AM: Coffeeeeeeeee

5:16 AM: Sunrise - up on my feet for the day. Here we go….

5:17 - 5:33: News and weather review while standing in the living room. Forecast - totally sunny, 71 degrees, light breeze, high allergen levels. 

5:34 AM: out the door 

5:35 AM: back inside to grab removable long sleeves because holy moly it’s a tad cold this morning.

5:37 AM: Back out the door

Final out the door equipment list: 

Best running shoes, socks and extra pair, moisture wicking tank top (sun’s out, guns out), cargo shorts with many pockets, hydration belt with zip pack - inside is debit card / ID, GU gels, band aids, two protein bars, three ziplock bags, ibuprofen; Removable long sleeve, Fitbit versa watch fully charged, Wireless earbuds with fully charged portable dock, Phone charger, Mask (just in case stores require), Stretch band, Ten packs of GU chews, Glasses and cleaning cloth, Two wicking headbands 

This is a delicate art. Whatever I decide to carry with me, I’ll be carrying ALL DAY. So, finding a balance between need and comfort is paramount. I’d buy food and water / hydration along the way (hence the debit card), so I didn’t need to bring a backpack. The chews and other light snacks I’d lose as drag weight throughout the day, so the goal was to feel lighter by the end of the day as much as possible. 

6:12 AM - Damn it, I forgot sunscreen. Stores open at 7! 

This was the first potential disaster of the day - I couldn’t BELIEVE I’d forgotten something so vital to how the day was going to play out. I was far enough from my house that I didn’t want to go back, and I also didn’t want to slow myself down at all to wait around for stores to open. So, I went to my phone and found nearby markets and drug stores, found the one that was furthest away that would match its opening time with my arrival time, and headed for it. 

6:30 AM: another coffeeeeee via Starbucks. Baristas asked what I was doing with my day, then looked at me like I was insane when I told them. Yeah, it’s going to be like that all day….

Two cups of coffee wasn’t nearly enough.

6:48 AM: Forgot to turn on Strava! Damn it I want the map of whatever route I end up taking! 

At some point in the day, my Strava app must have also decided I was insane and shut off its timer while keeping its mapmaking function going. Weird. Fortunately, I really only wanted the map, as my watch kept all my other stats in real time. 

6;59 AM: Bald eagle catches its breakfast. Bad morning for that fish.  Eat my first snack of the morning in solidarity. 

Seattle from Juanita Beach after sunrise. Eagle had breakfast literally seconds after I shot this.

7:02 AM: Man, is it quiet in my town this morning. Love it while it lasts, because people are going to go batshit crazy with excitement in this weather. 

7:12 AM: Tiny Bird Brawl!! At least ten in the scrum! 

I think it was a fight over a french fry, which got me thinking - who dropped a french fry at 7 AM?? Or did these birds just happen to find it by chance? And is a dropped french fry for a bird the equivalent of a human finding 10 grand in unmarked bills in the street? Yes, these are the thoughts that happen this early in a Walkabout. 

7:22 AM: First song of the day - “Here Comes the Sun” by The Beatles

Seemed fitting. It’s the start of a long playlist I made for another person and occasion, but fit really well on this particular day for me. 

7:25 AM: first rock in shoe removed. Balancing like a flamingo to do it. I bet I look like an idiot. But no one’s watching, so why should I care? Why should I care if they are? Damn it, here we go with Sheldon.

Sheldon will be explained later.

7:44 AM: sunscreen stop! Turn off my earbuds to be sociable with the nice people stuck at work. Song playing inside - “Into the Mystic” by Van Morrison. Tears shed in aisle 2, second endcap. Then Beach Boys, “Wouldn’t It Be Nice.”  Sheesh.

There are big personal stories for me with both of those songs. For that moment, though, they were PERFECT. Do you have songs like that? Ones that bring both beautiful and bittersweet memories to mind? If so, you know what I was feeling. 

7:57 AM: sunscreen crisis averted. Sleeves removed. Huge sigh of relief. Banana Boat Sport 50 SPF, you shall be my Bridge Over Troubled Waters today. Don’t let me down. 

It didn’t. That shit is miraculous. Well done, Banana Boat. That was a weird sentence.

8:01 AM: 10,000 steps already. I giggle. My totally random guess for total steps by the time this is over….55,000 or so. 

It ended up being over 68,000. My leg cramped again just writing that. 

8:20 AM: first time I don’t know where I am  exactly. And, damn you to hell, cottonwood trees. Now I gotta stop for Claritin. 

Then I remembered five minutes later I had some in my pack. Second crisis averted. 

8:26 AM: first song to be sung out Loud - “Butterfly “ by Barry Gibb. Then “True” by Spandau Ballet. Don’t judge me - you’d do the same thing if you were here. 

8:43 AM: Dear City of Bellevue - for a city with lots of money, your sidewalks sure do suck. 

I just don’t get it, Bellevue. What do you have against infrastructure beyond the glitzy neighborhoods? Or is the answer that obvious? 

9:00 AM: 12 hours remaining. 7.4 miles so far. 

I was genuinely shocked by this total, though I don’t know why. I realized I was probably pushing too fast, doing more walking than stopping and smelling the flowers and connecting with the moment. It was a balancing act the whole day, especially once I realized I was going to go over the marathon distance of 26.2 miles by dinnertime at my current pace. 

9:06 AM: running total thus far of smiling  “Hello / Good Morning” exchanges with complete strangers - 14. Now 15.

9:12 AM: First twinge of soreness / pain in right knee and foot. Just like a light taste of it. But even a light taste of salt is salty, you know? Not sure if this bodes well or not. 

Turned out it was neither. Just normal responses to what I was doing for how long I was doing it. It was indicative though, in retrospect, of where my worst pain center of the day would eventually be - the back of my right knee and the smack-dab center of my soles on both feet. 

9:21 AM: I’d like to thank the Allman Brothers and The Kinks for showing up back-to-back. Perfect timing, fellas. 

9:42 AM: sunscreen round 2. Gonna shoot for reapplying every 90 minutes from now on. It’s starting to warm up, and the pavement is going to make it worse. 

Cue the daylong nagging reminders to be careful with the heat and to hydrate and sunscreen. I must have thought I was staving off sunstroke three or four times by the end of the day. 

9:45 AM: “Instant Karma's gonna get you, Gonna knock you off your feet /Better recognize your brothers, Ev'ryone you meet / Why in the world are we here? Surely not to live in pain and fear / Why on earth are you there, When you're ev'rywhere / Come and get your share”

I rewound that verse four times right then. And it was U2’s version, not Lennon’s. I was on a high point then, feeling fully warmed up and invested, having said friendly hellos to lots of people. I felt like Red at the end of The Shawshank Redemption - “Get busy livin’, or get busy dyin’. That’s goddamned right.”

9:51 AM: Petted Morris the Yellow Lab. He seemed happy to see me and likes licking sweat, the freak. Owners thought I was crazy for what I was doing. Thanks a lot, Medina Couple. 

I ended up petting four dogs by the end of the day. I love them, they love me. Seeing dogs loving being dogs inspires me to try and match loving being human just as much. 

10:14 AM: Potty crisis averted. Thank you Medina Police Dept HQ! 

Last year in the pandemic’s upswing, there were no public restrooms open anywhere. That was a serious challenge, for several reasons. Fortunately, then and this year, I only had One Number to worry about all day. TMI, I know, but as I had several people text me during the day asking about how I’d handle the Second option, I figure you’re all wondering the same thing. Anyways, I counted seven potty stops by the end of the day (three outdoors, four….not. Couldn’t be helped. I felt like my mom’s dog marking territory on her daily walks). 

It’s nature. 

10:15 AM: You know how songs get stuck in your head? That happens to me with people, too. Not a bad thing, currently. 

Even on a non-walkabout day, I think about the people I love. Some are always hanging around in my consciousness, as if they were sitting in the same room with me even as I’m focused on work or whatever. Other times, some people circle in loops in my head and heart - people from years ago, former flames, those who have passed on, etc. So far, there’s two or three that keep coming back to me. 

Later on it was one. 

10:42: Electric bikes are cheating, kid. Now get off my lawn.

My first Grumpy Old Man moment, which told me I needed to hydrate and that the truly tough part of the day was imminent - the hottest part of the day, from 11 - 5 PM.

11:08 AM: Phil McCoy, you beauty…..

One of my Brothers From Another Mother, Phil, came down to meet me and take some professional photos of my walk for a while - to use on the website, social media, etc. Phil is an extraordinarily gifted photographer and filmmaker, and he has some new photography toys he wanted to test drive as he helped me. It was awesome, and the photos you see in this post that aren’t selfies or landscapes were taken by him. He makes me look gooooooooood, don’t you think? 

I am eight.

11:09 AM - 12:04 PM: impromptu photo shoot with Phil

These were mostly in and around Downtown Park in Bellevue, WA. I was on my third sunscreen application, too, so I smelled like coconut and sweat, and by this point I knew my right knee was going to have me limping by day’s end. Kept stretching it when I could. 

11:45 AM: wow banner dancing 

The video and photos below show it all better than I can describe it. These women were there from a local church, doing what they called “banner worship” to help people in the park feel good amidst the pandemic. I found out they’ve been coming to the park every Saturday since the pandemic started to help bring some beauty and joy to people in the midst of all the unprecedented challenges of the year. I love seeing and meeting people Doing Good Things Just Because It’s Good. When Phil asked me to walk behind them so he could get some shots of their flags with me in the background, one of the women there - Sally - came out of nowhere and handed me two banners, and I just didn’t question it.

I think it’s evident how much fun I ended up having. 

I may get this picture framed. One of my favorite memories of the day.

This is so much of what Walkabout Day is about - meeting others, doing new things spontaneously, enjoying life and the moment fully. More on this at the end, but it’s why Walkabout Day is a microcosm for life all in one day. 

So thank you, Sally and Sophie and Co., for the Gift of Divine Joy on my Walkabout Day. 

12:07 PM: 9 hour left. 14.2 miles down 

Still a murderous pace, despite my efforts and the banner stopover. Phil was soon on his way home, and I was staring at blowing out my miles record from the previous year. And it was waaaaaay hotter than 71 degrees. Lying weathermen suck. 

12:17 PM: Indoor break. Wow - people in swanky malls sure look at you weird when you walk in, sweaty in workout clothes looking to pee and charge your phone…..

I took more joy in their discomfort than is likely healthy. But I didn’t care. I thanked God for the AC and for possible food court options for lunch. But, I opted out of Mall Lunch because none of the options would have been sitting well at all within an hour, and I knew that wasn’t going to work for me. I have a weird phobia of throwing up in the middle of a busy city street. 

12:22 PM: Recharge phone. Recharge body next. 

Besides forgetting sunscreen, I also forgot bandaids and a portable phone charger. Both were brain cramp omissions. That said, standing inside the mall foyer charging from a random outlet helped me slow my overall pace some, gave me time to people-watch and check in with family and friends, and a chance to really breathe and get centered for what would be the hardest push of the day - and it turned out to be much harder than I’d anticipated. 

That’s called Foreshadowing. You remember that from Lit Class in sixth grade, you just don’t remember that you remember. 

12:55 PM: someone is getting pizza delivered at the mall…? And why Dominos? And why at least six of them? Is The Gap having a staff meeting? 

1:00 PM: Back outside, to the grocery store for lunch. 

1:10 PM: Salami and cheese it is, a handful of almonds, and dark chocolate with Coconut Water as a chaser. I managed to resist the cold fried chicken. Victory. And I love GU-Gels. 

Whoever the geniuses are at GU who come up with professional racing fuel are, they deserve medals. Their stuff kept me alive that day. If any of you know someone there, send them this note. Maybe I’ll get lucky and they’ll sponsor me. 

1:30 PM: Back into the sun. Use the high-rises for shade, you knucklehead. Just a reminder. 

1:55 PM: if right now was a movie, it’d be called “Walkabout II: The Search For More Shade”

As you can tell, it was getting really tough by this point. Shade was an oasis. I was pushing nine hours without sitting, my knee really hurt, and I was sweating like crazy in the heat. I crossed out of Bellevue for the final time and began moving east, in the general direction of Issaquah, where I’d decided right then I wanted to finish the day. I also stopped tracking miles for awhile - I didn’t want to know out of fear that it would only make things harder. 

Combine all those factors together, and it’s no wonder in retrospect that everything that happened - and came to mind - next happened next.

2:07 PM: Realization: I have so much more - and others -  to celebrate and love than I often see. 

As I ended up in more country than city, the amount of people out and about around me thinned noticeably. Fatigue in me can create worry, which triggers fear, which then triggers the desire to end that fear, which never works well for me. So, knowing that about myself, I started to do my breathing practices and let the emotions run their course. The challenge with that, though, on Walkabout Day, is that emotions about everyone and everything can come at me all at once. 

At this moment, as you can tell, those were really fun emotions like gratitude, love, connection, and giddy. I enjoyed this time immensely, and even made a list in my head for a while and talked to a few people in my head. Including the one I mentioned before. 

Later, those “conversations” with them - and with myself, most importantly - began to change. 

2:19 PM: Hottest part of day these next few hours. Found East / west trail, heading east 

You can see it here. My syntax is getting choppy. 

2:41 PM: a mileand a half ago i was in city - now here’s a giant barn and petting zoo ??

The Lost Barn. I’m still not convinced it really exists. Like the Jonas Brothers, only completely different.

I thought I was seeing things. Look at the picture. That looks like something out of Pennsylvania Dutch Country, not suburban Seattle. No one I’ve talked to about the place had ever heard of it before. It was idyllic in a way, but on the other side of it was when things really got crazy and, at times, a bit scary. 

2:45 - 3:05 PM - lost in woods, using compass to go east. Map app can’t get a signal. And I think I’m going to throw up. 

There you have it. Twenty minutes doesn’t seem long, but at the time it felt like two hours lost. Thank God the trail was totally shaded in a beautiful forest, but I barely noticed the beauty because of the thick cottonwood I breathed in so much that it triggered coughing and then my gag reflex. Of course, fighting that off got my mind wondering if I was actually feeling sunstroke despite my good hydration to that point. 

3:06 PM: Back on grid!! 

I cried when I found the road and my Map App found my path again. I wasn’t thrilled that it had taken me at least two miles out of my way once I’d course corrected, but that couldn’t be avoided, at least in the mindset I was in just then. By that point it had become Issaquah or bust, rather than slowing down and just taking what came to me. I’d blend the two together better later, but at that moment things were rough. 

3:22 PM: I just hit 20 miles. Holy shit.  At 3:22. I’m out of my fucking head. 

This was the first moment where I wondered if I’d be able to make it through the day. I felt the accomplishment, certainly, but alongside it was the knowledge of many more miles and hours to go. If it were a triathlon race, it felt like the first mile of the run leg, when so much energy has been expended already yet more needs to be spent at the hardest part of the day. It’s not a fun feeling, but it’s unavoidable. 

3:40 PM: 4th sunscreen application; back of right knee pain informs me it’s considering suing me for divorce, or at least wants us to go see a counselor. 

This is the moment I really hit a big wall. My emotional wave opened up hard at this point, with practically no one out on trails, something that surprised me greatly. But what I value about being on my own is that it emboldens me to do things out of the ordinary, like the following. 

4:00 PM: heroes out loud, German parts too you’re damned right lady!

What I’m referring to in my sweat / fatigue induced haze is the song “Heroes” by David Bowie, which I sang out loud at the top of my lungs. Just unchained, AND in tune. And YES, including the verses in German, which I was sooooo proud of nailing without ANY mistakes. I spun around at various points like Julie Andrews on an Alpine mountainside, except I was coming up out of a forested area to a part of the trail that goes right alongside the busy I-90 corridor. That one person was on my mind, along with the end of Jo Jo Rabbit, so if that only makes sense to the two of us, then so be it. 

And no, it wasn’t sunstroke talking. It was an enormous amount of deep love, pain, fear, regret, confusion, helplessness, and anger coming out along with a strong dose - somehow - of hope. I was laughing and crying at the same time. It might’ve looked insane to anyone else, but it was about as authentic a moment as I’ve ever had before like that. 

Of all the moments I’ll remember on this Walkabout Day, that one might end up staying the strongest. We will see. 

4:11 AM: Jesus, please take the sun away. And show me what to do with all of these emotions, and if you don’t do both then I think I’m going over your head to God and he and I are going to have a really bad fucking argument right about now. 

We had a fight. 

A big one. I called God every name in the book, just like I have many times before. 

If that shocks you, I get why. It fits some official categories of blasphemy, and it breaks at least one of the commandments. But over the past few years I’ve experienced these moments not as times to fear, but times where I am broken open enough to listen and to really express - finally - to someone what is really going on in the darkest and most painful parts of Me. And every time I rage at God / the universe, good things happen. No joke. 

I often wish I could do the same (without the full meltdown) with some of my closest loved ones, but I tend to hold back because it’s, well, A LOT. No one deserves to be hit with that kind of flood. Besides, since I have had some of the most miraculous things happen inside me and around me after God and I go a few rounds, I know in my core that I’m in a safe arena when those fights happen - God can handle my anger and accusations and rage and imploring just fine, thank you. 

I don’t think any of it fits theologically, but honestly I don’t care if it does or not. 

The fact that I’ve never been struck by lightning during or after, that my soul refills in the aftermath of every battle, and that I now know at my core that I Am Enough at that most divine and cosmic of levels (and so are you, so are they, so are we) proves it to me more than any words written or spoken by anyone anywhere ever could.   

And to reassure anyone who might want to send a concerned email after reading that - I’m beyond good, I promise. So are you. So are we. 

4:42 PM: Okay, I see better. I still don’t agree. 

That’s how those fights end. Every time. And I’ll keep having them. 

Didn’t see another soul the entire time. Make of that what you will. I know what it tells me. 

4:43 PM: Thanks, God. Of course it’s this song for this moment. I hear you. 

This one, from that same playlist.

It nearly broke me in half, right there on a back road to Issaquah. It was all I could do to not hit my knees, but I wouldn’t because I had to stay standing. I won’t ever forget that moment, either.  

5:00 PM - Less than four hours left. And this is where i got stung by bees last year. Do not pee here. 

I followed my own advice. I can be taught, it seems. 

5:16 PM - twelve hours down exactly. Status check. Knee is suing for divorce officially, I need more water (i need a 7-11 stat), enough chews and snacks, no point in changing socks. I must be insane for doing this, but I’m not. Stop being such a complainer. This isn’t Patton’s men to Bastogne, or Meade’s men to Gettysburg, or men being marched to death on Bataan. Be thankful it isn’t and you likely will never experience anything like that. 

Amen. 

I had a lot of thoughts like this during the day - part of honoring those sacrifices by pushing myself, at least a little bit, beyond my comfort zone. Theirs were my experience times a kajillion. 

I shouldn’t even say that. It’s not remotely the same. 

Rest in peace, all of you. 

[Editor’s Note: For this next entry, JDK after the fact italicized the portions that are his responses to his own crazy internal critic, who he calls Sheldon.]

5:30 PM: I’m just going to dictate all this so I can get it out of my head. That dream you have, JD, isn’t happening. Give it up already. No, it’s not happening today. Maybe not tomorrow, either. Maybe not ever. I know that. You’re not telling me anything I don’t know. But why should I give up on it? For what purpose. Living in reality, asshole. You’re such a baby on this shit. This is fairytale bullshit and you should give it up so you can just move on. What you're saying is a story, too. You can’t tell the future any more than I can. I already yelled at God about this today, so fuck off. Fairy tales for me died years ago. You know why. I can only do today. What I dream for / want isn’t insane or out of the realm of possibility. That hasn’t happened yet. None of it. Listening to you won’t do anything good for me - it never has. Or maybe if you’d listened to me earlier you wouldn’t feel as awful as you do about this right now. It’s been years, you idiot. YEARS. How long will you choose to be this pathetic and naive? I’m not the only one saying this. You have friends who’ve said the same thing. If I listened to you years ago I’d be dead. Either literally, or in every way that really matters. As for my friends, they can share what they want, but it doesn’t mean what they say is true. I know my compass and why I follow it. I know the situation better than any of them. So just stop. Besides, I don’t even know how to “give up” on dreams, whatever they are. It doesn’t make sense to me. Reality will arrive, whatever it is and whenever it will. And not once has it ever turned out how you’ve warned it would. You’re like 0 - a billion. Now piss off you fucking reaming ugly sonofabitch asshole. Your funeral. 

Yikes. Yeah. It hurts to read that, even now. But it’s where I was at. Sheldon went away eventually. He does every time. 

5:43 PM: Dude get out of  your head. Breathe. Call some people. That’ll help. 

I did. Didn’t share all that was above, but the calls and text check-ins helped a lot. You all know who you are, though you didn’t know the gift you were giving me at that moment. 

5:57 PM: 26.2 miles. I’ve walked a marathon. That’s sooooo crazy. 

Just nuts.

Never done that before. Gotta say it was pretty great. It put a smile on my face for the first time in hours. Then I did the math and realized that my final stop - decided to make it Stacy and Pete’s again - was another six or so miles away.

5:57 PM: Damn -another six or so miles to go. I might die overnight if I survive that.

I wasn’t sure I was overreacting. Not at that point. 99% sure, but not 100%.

6:02 PM: Call mom. She’s going to be worried how you’re doing. 

Did so. Sometimes, a guy just needs to talk to his mom. Turns out I’d forgotten to remind her I was doing Walkabout Day, so she found out on Facebook / Instagram / Twitter like everyone else. Whoops. Sorry, Mom. Thanks for being so gracious about that. 

6:22 PM: I need some Gatorade. The green apple kind that doesn’t taste like apple at all. I love that shit. 

Yep, the punchy had started. I got that Gatorade and it was beyond fabulous. It lasted about 35 minutes inside me, as is how nature intended it. 

6:46 PM: Final push! One big hill left. My guess is 8:30 arrival. 

This is where a second stupid thing happened. Instead of going a shorter way up the hundreds of feet high hill to Stacy and Pete’s I took the far longer - and less forgiving - route. Added at least a mile to my total. Didn’t realize my mistake until I was halfway up the damned hill. 

The tunnel I missed originally. Another metaphor, of course.

7:21 PM: Oh holy hell I went the long way. I’m an idiot. 

That’s the moment I figured it out. 

7:32 PM: 30 miles. Holy living moly. 

Believe me, I feel every one of those miles today. 

7:42 PM: Oh man I just avoided disaster. Thanks conscience / intuition / God / Jiminy Cricket. 

This could’ve been BAD. I mistakenly missed a turn on the pathway up the hill and was on my way deeper into the forest and away from my destination, all with darkness descending and no one around and my phone battery at 7%. The last anyone knew where I was, it was in downtown Issaquah, very far from the deep forest. I would’ve been lost in the dark with my body falling apart had not that little voice not flicked at me, and had I not listened. 

It’s the opposite voice of Sheldon. I shall name him Leonard. 

Thanks, Leonard. 

7:58 PM: Top of the hill. Hardest part done. Go get it. 

I was walking like John Wayne if he were 101 years old and trying to climb onto a horse. Chafed (forgot to prep for that, too), feet aching, knee just plain angry and likely plotting a contract hit on me, caked in sweat and sunscreen grease and dirt. Hungry for some real food and regretting the green apple Gatorade. I saw the sun begin to set from the top of the hill, but didn’t take a picture of it. 

8:00 PM: You’re gonna make it. 

8:17 PM: Turn into Stacy’s subdivision, and coyotes are in the street. Four of them. Maybe they smelled my exhaustion. 

They were right in the middle of the road, hanging there like dudes around a barbeque while the meat cooks. That wasn’t an encouraging image right in that moment. Fortunately, one angry shout dispersed them. I was never remotely in danger, I know, but I also knew that there was no way I could outrun them or get up easily if I fell down. That’s never a good feeling. 

Later, I looked it up and in the Navajo tradition, crossing paths with a coyote is a sign to not continue your journey any longer, because something bad is going to happen beyond it before your journey is over. 

Glad I didn’t know that when it happened, but there was also NO WAY IN HELL that I was turning back, obviously. And nothing bad happened.

8:34 PM: The eagle has landed. But don’t get out of the lander yet. 

I was four minutes off in my prediction, and I wouldn’t sit until sunset at 8:56. So, what to do? Stacy and Pete were out but had left me ointments and meds. So I slowly unloaded my flotsam and jetsam onto their counter and peeled off shoes and socks and threw them outside. I leaned on the counter top to keep weight off my feet, and sent out pics of my stats to people. It killed the minutes one by one.

Flotsam and Jetsam

Then, finally, the time arrived:

8:56 PM: DONE

Here’s the actual moment:

END OF DIARY. 

What followed was glorious - Stacy and Pete brought me food, I was able to shower and clean up because they had clothes there that fit me, I destroyed two Red Bulls (my favorite post insane race /event treat), I got to recount my fabulous day in detail - and make no mistake, this was a GLORIOUS day despite the tough stuff - and revel in the fact that I went far beyond what I ever thought I could do. 

And that’s what Walkabout Day is. It shows that we are stronger than we think, that we can do things we think we can’t, have conversations we think we can’t (even with cosmic powers) and survive, that we can heal even when we are convinced we can’t, and so much more. If Walkabout Day is about life in a microcosm, it shows us that we can get out of it so much more than we think, even when it sucks. In fact, it has to suck sometimes for us to learn how to fight for what’s good on the other side. 

Sometimes, we have to scream “Heroes” into the ether. 

Sometimes, we have to just let God - however we understand him / her / it - just have it, because we’ve had enough. And then see that we can survive. 

Other times, we wave the banners offered to us in celebration of life and all that comes with it. 

And yet other times, we need to let the messages we get that  nearly break us in half. “Someday this will all pay off.” 

Sometimes, we have to let all the feelings we have coexist, even when it feels beyond gross to sit in them like in a dirty bathtub. 

Sometimes, all we can do is put one foot in front of the other and trust that there is a safe landing space on the other end - with Red Bulls - even after the coyotes tell us to stop. The Fates aren’t right, you know. 

Sometimes, we have to remember that others have had it harder, others DO have it harder, and that there are many who have sacrificed everything of themselves to give us the chance to have these battles with ourselves and the universe, the opportunity to do the Things of Life that have so much meaning, both in a joyful and painful sense:

To find love. To lose love. Then maybe find it again. Or maybe not. Or find it in a new way. 

To learn to love and live in the moment, without throwing out the past or trying to control the future. 

To find and build our best selves. Then never stop trying for more. 

To learn what it means to be Enough, then learn how to support others seeking the same. 

To experience not getting what we want, especially when it’s not good for us. Then seeing why. 

To make dreams come true, then dream new dreams. Or have others fail, then - you guessed it - dream new dreams, even when we are convinced we can’t bear to try again. 

And that when we push ourselves, there are always costs and gains - and we need recovery time along the way (mine was a baseball game, ballpark food, and then icing and Epsom salt bathing). The gains are worth the costs if we keep going. 

My reward the next day. Note the brace on my right knee. It’s still not talking to me.

And along the way, we need to go into places for help - for me, it was various grocery stores that had the replenishment I needed, Whereas in life, it could be just about anywhere with anyone who can supply whatever replenishment we need. It takes others to help us, to walk the 32.68 of our own lives, however many “miles” we may actually have left. There’s no way to know.  

I do Walkabout Days on Memorial Day because it’s the perfect time to remember and celebrate being human, to experience being Us, in spaces that continue to be provided by people and powers outside of ourselves. Many lost their chances at full lives before their time, and I struggle to balance the utter sadness and anger about lives cut far too short with gratitude for the results of those losses (even as a historian, I understand why such wars happen) and even support the efforts of some if not all, I still consider it all beyond tragic. Some say rightly that we are naturally aggressive creatures, so wars happen. Yet we are also naturally loving and nurturing creatures who seek safety and community and love and meaning and peace. I will always want and pursue the latter, even if it makes the “how to find / make / preserve peace” questions that much stickier for me. 

That’s why I do Walkabout Day. Because it isn’t easy, yet it’s the most simple concept imaginable.

At least that’s how I see it all today. We will see where I end up as my Life Walkabout continues, but I don’t see any coyotes. 

Not yet, anyway. And even if I do, they might not be an omen of anything. It’s the only way to live life. 

Just keep going.

If you’d like to join me for part or all of Walkabout Day next year, let me know. Or, better yet, do one yourself wherever you are. It could become a thing. 

We could be Heroes. Just For One Day. 

Für Einen Tag.

Chins Up, Everyone. 

 ***************
Thanks for reading My Memorial Day Post. Here are some important updates from my past week:

Soul Book of the Week: Falling Upward by Richard Rohr. Still going through this one….

Book On My Nightstand: First Re-read book: Fatherland by Robert Harris

Best Show / Movie I Watched: Gone Girl. Way late on seeing this one, and Rosamund Pike now scares the hell out of me. And Ben Affleck still bugs me.

Strongest Earworm Song: “Heroes.” See above.

Best Triathlon Training Moment: I walked 32 miles in one day. That freaking counts, right?

Toughest Triathlon Training Moment: The day after. My lower body felt like it was on fire inside cement.

Favorite Hangout Shirt of the Week: This one. Because at first I thought it was just a way to honor Hank Aaron’s 755 career home runs, then after I bought it, when I looked up what the number symbolizes, I loved it even more. Serendipity definitely. Maybe. We’ll see. Or not.

Coolest Thing of the Week: Banner Worship.

Thing I Know Now That I Didn’t Last Week: See 755. Sorry - I’m being lazy. Still tired.

Most Helpful Perspective / Advice of the Week: My own.

Current Wanderlust List: 1) California Still; 2) Lake Chelan, WA; 3) A minor league baseball game. Anyone want to go with me?

Sunrise, Sunset

Uncle Time with Abby and Luke, circa yesterday or seven years ago. Same difference.

May 23, 2021

_____________________

“Time does not pass, it continues.” 

-Marty Rubin

The first time I saw the famous musical, Fiddler on the Roof, I was about seven or eight years old. My sister was in the play as one of the “townspeople,” and I thought she was just about the coolest person walking for its entire run at the University Theater at the University of Hawaii in Hilo. I went to at least a dozen of the showings to watch my sister do her thing, and I even convinced my grade school teacher to take my class to a matinee. I was so impressed to see my sister doing something so grown up. 

The play became a lifelong favorite, despite its serious subject matter (anti-Semitism) and its depressing ending [SPOILER ALERT] - an entire Jewish village exiled from western Russia. In retrospect, I love it as the story that introduced me to what became my professional interest in European history. But the play’s real hook for me and millions of others is its music - I know every single song by heart. Each of them hits on something universal in the human experience - some are hilarious, others are strong and powerful, still others are touching and romantic, and a few are absolute tearjerkers. 

One of the most powerful of that last category is from the wedding scene - “Sunrise, Sunset.” Sung by the play’s main characters, the father Tevye and his wife, Golde, as their oldest daughter marries the village tailor, it’s a song that every parent who sees the child grow up and move out of the house and into adulthood can relate to deeply. In case you’re not familiar, here are the lyrics (but you should really check out the version from the 1971 film, too):

(Tevye)

Is this the little girl I carried?

Is this the little boy at play?

(Golde)

I don't remember growing older

When did they?

(Tevye)

When did she get to be a beauty?

When did he grow to be so tall?

(Golde)

Wasn't it yesterday

When they were small?

(Men)

Sunrise, sunset

Sunrise, sunset

Swiftly flow the days

(Women)

Seedlings turn overnight to sunflowers

Blossoming even as we gaze

(All)

Sunrise, sunset

Sunrise, sunset

Swiftly fly the years

One season following another

Laden with happiness and tears

(Tevye)

What words of wisdom can I give them?

How can I help to ease their way?

(Golde)

Now they must learn from one another

Day by day

(Perchik)

They look so natural together

(Hodel)

Just like two newlyweds should be

(Perchik & Hodel)

Is there a canopy in store for me?

(All)

Sunrise, sunset

Sunrise, sunset

Swiftly fly the years

One season following another

Laden with happiness and tears

I’ve been thinking a lot about this song over these past few days, as I am in Colorado for my nephew’s high school graduation. Luke is the younger of my sister’s two children. His sister, Abby, graduated from the same school three years ago. Luke is headed off to Arizona for his first year of college in a few months, where he will study to become an airline pilot. Abby, meanwhile, is staying in-state to finish her degree in elementary education, and will likely be doing her student teaching in the same neighborhoods she’s known as home for most of her life. Both of them are beyond excited to take these next steps forward, especially after a year of COVID lockdown. My sister, brother-in-law, and parents are beyond proud of them. I am, too, of course. 

We all wonder where the hell the time went.

All of us except for Abby and Luke, I’d wager. For them, times like graduations and end-of-school-years are times for getting excited about a well-earned break and then, the next steps into the future. That is as it should be. 

Meeting Abby, Summer 2000. She’s been giving me Side-Eye since Day One.

And yet, for me oftentimes (and I’ve seen the rest of my family battle with this during my stay), these times can be affected by looking back in time or worrying about what comes next for the kiddos (who aren’t kiddos anymore, damn it. See?) and for the rest of us. That’s probably normal for those of us who are older, since being aware of one's mortality only increases as we age. We can’t really escape it, nor should we look past or downplay the beneficial perspectives the passage of time can give us. 

And yet, I’ve also been realizing lately that it’s not constructive for me to spend too much time looking back (unless it’s That Was So Awesome as opposed to I Wish I Had(n’t) or Should Have) or looking forward with worry. Neither does much more than pull me away from the enjoyment / appreciation / tackling of the present and make me miserable. Yet it is so easy, even with that conviction, to fall into doing both. I caught myself yesterday, in the midst of Luke’s graduation, drifting off into some morbid self-reflection on my past mistakes, immediately followed by a bout of anxiety over steps coming up in my life. Fortunately, I recognized what was happening after a few minutes and pulled myself out of it. I tapped into some techniques I’ve learned for getting present and out of that past / future torture cycle, did a lot of breathing, and opened myself up to whatever entered into my head in that calmer state. 

Meeting Luke, Fall 2003. I was probably about to introduce him to his favorite game - Rocket Ship.

What fell into it was the Marty Rubin quote above, from his dystopian novel, The Boiled Frog Syndrome. Here it is again, so you aren’t annoyed with me for having to scroll up then back down again: 

“Time does not pass, it continues.” 

The quote came to me out of nowhere (it’s been years since I first read it), and its context in the book is nothing like what I am talking about here, but it calmed me and brought me into the present (and gave me this post’s topic) in seconds. What is so powerful about it is that it involves simply the shift of one word - from “pass” to “continue” - to completely change Time from a specter that dominates our views of the past and future to simply a companion in the all-powerful NOW. Which is, after all, the only thing we really have. Until later becomes now, then we will have now then. 

Or something.

The point is, Rubin’s quote clued me into the fact that time is exactly as we choose to view it. Right now, Abby and Luke view time as something less onerous and fearful than I and their older family members often can, and it’s not just because they are “younger and haven’t experienced life yet,” which is something I hate hearing even if it’s technically correct. Why do we seem compelled to remind those that are coming of age that time marches on mercilessly, or time goes by fast, or not to waste time, or how unforgiving time is to our knees and waistlines and hairlines and eyesight and hearing and tolerance for loud music and kids on our lawns? All have the cumulative effect of wearing down a kid’s joy and curiosity and excitement about life.

Looking back now, on many occasions I could have better shared with Abby and Luke that tough times will happen without engendering fear about the future or causing them to look back with perfectionist eyes on their past and judge themselves negatively for it. Offering up “just wait until you’re older” or “you’ll understand when you’re older” without digging in deeper to explain and emphasize the fact that time is simply what we make it - that it always continues, and therefore need not be feared, rehashed, regretted, or fought against - did them a disservice. I am getting better at living in the present, and now talk with them more in ways that I hope will not scare the hell out of them without handing them rose-colored glasses. 

It’s something that uncles, in particular, are well-positioned to do, since we aren’t in the direct line of Parent-Grandparent authority. It’s like being a half-sibling and half-parent. You have some authority if you need it, but really you’d just rather be on their side without their parents catching on. I am blessed that both Abby and Luke come to me for help and advice when they need it, and aren’t afraid to do so - even when it’s about something icky or tough for them to admit. Being that kind of trusted outlet is like winning the Uncle Gold Medal. 

Christmas I have no idea when. That’s my sister’s department.

(I will say here, being an uncle is the best. I wouldn’t trade it for anything, including being a parent myself if it meant I wouldn’t be Abby and Luke’s uncle. That would suck. I’ve learned a ton from both of them about me and about what matters in life, and in my darkest days it was often the thought of staying in their lives and being the best uncle I could be for them that got me out of bed in the morning. No lie.) 

If time simply continues rather than passes, then it really makes it easier for us to stay present. When powerful moments or major celebrations pass, we often yearn to hold on, to keep everything we can of it for as long as we can. That’s understandable, but grasping for the passing moment for too long robs us of the present, and then we miss what’s happening in the now. And then, when we realize we missed it, we want to go back to the past to recapture it. Then, when we fail to do that, we use the present to beat ourselves up and then worry about missing something again in the future. 

Rinse and repeat. That’s a nasty cycle, isn’t it? 

So we don’t need to fight time passing. We can just let time continue. 

That way, Abby and Luke are exactly in the right place, with valid perspectives and the right tools they need to make time work for them. The same can then be true for me, my family, those I love...everyone. It puts us all on the same page with time, and we all read that same page at the same time. 

Right now. 

Tomorrow is the next page, which only comes after we’ve seen this one. Otherwise the next page won’t make any sense, even though we can read the words. 

Then, several hundred pages down the line, when the stories of those we love end, and new loved ones' stories begin, we need not worry about having missed anything.  We will have lived each moment fully as it happens. Nor will the future be an issue.  We will have seen that when we live moment-to-moment, there really isn’t anything major to worry about. 

Letting time continue doesn’t make the past less important, nor mean that the future should go unplanned - it just means we don’t have to spend time lamenting the former while stressing about the latter. 

It’s possible, I promise. 

Another Christmas. Santa didn’t deliver the goods, apparently.

You don’t have to believe me. But my guess is that if you try taking the “continue” approach starting right now when you look at your own children, your parents, your partners and friends, you’ll notice a difference inside you pretty quickly. Name the feelings if you can, but that really doesn’t matter. You’ll feel the difference. It will feel good and right. 

The alternative is what my first sponsor in recovery said to me at one of my lowest points, when I was so torn up with shame about my past and despondent about my future that I was on the verge of giving up on it all:

“JD, the problem with having one foot in the past and the other in the future

is that you’re taking a piss on the present.” 

It stuck with me not only because it was based in juvenile potty humor, but also because it has turned out to be 100% true over the subsequent decade of my Life Relearning.

None of us wants to piss on our present. All it does is splash all over our feet, and that’s nasty. Our feet deserve better, as does the past that we cherish and learn from, and the future that we hope and dream about so earnestly. 

It’s not how I want Abby and Luke to experience their lives, nor how I want to experience the years I have left. I don’t want to stand at their weddings singing, “Sunrise, Sunset”, honestly. I want to sing something else entirely - a song that just screams out “yep, of course this is happening this way, and it’s amazing and beautiful, because this is time continuing. Let’s keep going after this amazing party is done.”

I’ll take your nominations for songs starting now. I’m not joking.  

And, because I don’t say it to them nearly often enough, I’ll say it here: 

“I love you beyond all words and all time, Abby and Luke. That, too, will continue forever.” 

Continue On with Chins Up, Everyone. 

***************
Thanks for reading My Sunday Post. Here are some important updates from my past week:

Soul Book of the Week: Falling Upward by Richard Rohr

Book On My Nightstand: None! I’m getting ready for a re-read festival….

Best Show / Movie I Watched: Nomadland. Worth all the accolades. A film about Seeing People.

Strongest Earworm Song: “The Pilot” by The White Buffalo

Best Triathlon Training Moment: Deadlifting weights I never thought I’d lift at this age.

Toughest Triathlon Training Moment: The day after doing those deadlifts

Favorite Hangout Shirt of the Week: This one. Because Beverly Hills Cop.

Coolest Thing of the Week: Seeing Luke graduate.

Thing I Know Now That I Didn’t Last Week: What Orzo is and that I love it.

Most Helpful Perspective / Advice of the Week: The two quotes above should do it.

Current Wanderlust List: 1) California Still; 2) Hawaii; 3) An all-inclusive resort anywhere

Postscript: The boy LOVED cheese balls. So I got him a Costco tub of them for his birthday once. Big Uncle Points.

Must Be Present to Fly

That was a helluva Play Day.

May 17, 2021

___________________

As most of you know, I’ve been paying a lot of attention to the importance of Play over this past month, both in this space and on my radio show / podcast, This Show Is All About You. I’ve strongly suggested that it is both a lost art for adults, and a still-underappreciated necessity for kids. At its best--when it is spontaneous, open-ended, creative, flexible, and child-controlled--Play develops life skills more than just about any other activity. It literally fires up and supercharges brain development, like leafy greens do for our guts and overall body health. 

Since I’ve been focused on it all month, I’m seeing Play everywhere around me, and have been intentional in cultivating Play for myself. And, this past weekend, I saw it everywhere I looked and went. 

I was down in Portland, Oregon for my job as Strategic Planning Director for Airway Science for Kids (ASK), helping out with the organization’s first two in-person events in well over a year. The first event was a Teacher Appreciation event for local teachers at the ASK headquarters building, the second a kind of “Fly Day” where local private pilots took kids who’d never flown in private planes on free flights around the drop-dead gorgeous Oregon countryside (and yesterday was what locals call a “Five Mountain Day,” when Mounts Hood, St. Helens, Adams, Jefferson and the northernmost peak of the “Three Sisters”  are all clearly visible from the air - a range of over two hundred miles). 

At both events, I saw Play all over the place, especially (and not surprisingly) with the kids in attendance. At the teacher event, one seven-year old girl mastered the indoor drone racing course (yes, it is as cool as it sounds) faster than any of the adults. By the end of the night, she was using the video game style controller to take the small drone (about the size of a Kraft single slice of cheese) through flips and loops. She also learned how to take off, fly, and land a Cessna 172 on one of the ASK flight simulators, build a small metal model plane, and about ten other activities. She was fully invested  - with a giant smile on her face the entire time - for the duration of the three-hour event. Imagine what all that Play was building in her young brain.. 

The next day, thirty-one kids took their first flights in those private planes, and literally NONE of them climbed out of the cockpit without a giant grin on their face. Many hopped and bounded about afterwards, talking with us and their families about everything they’d seen and experienced, and how they wanted to do it again. Many asked what other things they could do, which led to some of them signing up for aviation summer camps and a number of families talking with us about the aviation / aerospace career pathways that ASK helps facilitate. I met kids with dreams of becoming astronauts, commercial airline pilots, and stunt pilots, and talked with others who just loved the feeling of being in the air. One kid even commented how different everything around her seemed after seeing the world from above for the first time. 

Seeing dreams ignite for kids through fun and play is rewarding in and of itself, but I also noticed for the first time another crucial ingredient of Play as I watched those kids this weekend: 

Presence. Being Present. Being wholly In the Moment. 

None of those kids, when engaged in the Play that came with the events of the weekend, were focused on anything but the moment, on anything but what they were doing. In that state, they were fully engaged with all that makes Play so beneficial - creating possibilities, learning to master skills, face challenges and grow from them, push themselves into new directions resulting in new perspectives. 

Powerful stuff through and through. And watching them do all that helped me do the same, even now. 

Flying is really that way - to do it well, one has to be present for every part, for every step. To not be present is to risk missing a step, which risks everything. Pilots I talk to do their best to articulate that state of being, and few use the term “present,” but that is exactly what it is. 

Being present not only keeps a pilot and passengers safe, but also allows for the full experience of flight to be enjoyed and feed whatever dreams and decisions come from it. When we put aside our past and future, the benefits of the present and play come to the forefront, which leads to kids jumping out of the cockpit with a better sense of themselves and of what they want to do and be. At least if this past weekend was any indicator. 

I related a lot to their joy - I felt it myself as a young kid watching jumbo jets take off for the mainland every day from where I lived in Hawaii. My folks would drive me up to the edge of the fence line along the primary runway, and I’d stand on the hood of the car for a better view of those 747s and DC-10s roaring into the sky. It got me thinking of so many other things that stretched my tiny kid world outward and upward - what was the rest of the world like? Where were all those passengers going? How did those planes stay aloft and safe for hours and hours and hours, over and over again? If that’s possible, what else could be? Could I be a part of that? 

That I gave up on my dream of being a pilot in high school isn’t really the point (another story for another day) - my love of airplanes and flight and anything related to it spoked out into all areas of my life in the years since. My love of history, my fiction writing, my current employment, my enjoyment in helping kids, and so much more about me has been fed and buffeted by my childhood wonder, fascination, and yes, PLAY, surrounding aviation. 

It’s not the only area of Play where childhood fed my adulthood, by any means. And, unlike other issues I developed as an adult, none of my childhood Play areas of exploration have ever hurt me. 

Ever. 

Wow. That point only just hit me as I wrote it, and it has me staggering and laughing a bit. That tells me that Play is more than just Play - it’s a kind of superpower, an elixir for growth and health that cannot be replicated by anything or anyone else. It’s foundational for so much of what can and should be strong and driving in us as adults. 

It’s something I need to reflect on a bit more, but there you have it. Play is Awesome, whether with drones or airplanes or something else. 

And for Play to work its magic, we have to be fully present. It sounds so simple (and it is), but we seem to forget about it more and more as time goes by, then dismiss its importance as the price for “adulting.” 

Maybe we just need more “childing”, which means more Play. 

So, more flying. Or whatever it might be. 

More on this next week, after I head to Colorado to visit another budding pilot - and after I get this REO Speedwagon song out of my head. 

Chins Up, Everyone. 

***************
Thanks for reading My Sunday Poem. Here are some important updates from my past week:

Soul Book of the Week: High Achiever by Tiffany Jenkins

Book On My Nightstand: Icebound: Shipwrecked at the Edge of the World by Andrea Pitzer

Best Show / Movie I Watched: Nobody. It’s like watching your lame neighbor turn into John Wick.

Strongest Earworm Song: “Irish Heartbeat” by Van Morrison / Mark Knopfler

Best Triathlon Training Moment: Pounding out my fastest 30 mile ride yet.

Toughest Triathlon Training Moment: Discovering leg muscles I never knew I had.

Favorite Hangout Shirt of the Week: The Hiroshima Carp one. Because Japanese baseball.

Coolest Thing of the Week: Watching kids fly in an airplane for the first time.

Thing I Know Now That I Didn’t Last Week: What a “Five Mountain Day” is.

Most Helpful Perspective / Advice of the Week: “Only Johnny Cash could wear all black”

Current Wanderlust List: 1) California Still; 2) Japan; 3) An all-inclusive resort anywhere

From Up Here

You should see the color version….

May 9, 2021

______________________

[Editor’s Note: As it’s Mother’s Day and coming off a fuller-than-usual week, JDK took the weekend off to spend with Mom and recharge a bit. He’ll be back with Something New next week. Be sure not to miss Monday’s episode of This Show is All About You, when he will continue his monthlong look at Play, and stay tuned for an update on his upcoming new project….In the meantime, he left a note on my desk to share with you this week.]

Hi All -

I never sleep on planes. Ever. Doesn’t matter the flight’s destination or duration. I just love flying so much I want to take in every second of it. It’s not that I love the cramped seats or steadily deteriorating service or the overworked and undersocial TSA employees - I don’t. But I am willing to put up with all of that in order to fly and stare out the window the entire time (usually with headphones on to keep away the John Candy-like Airplane Never Shutups - or “JClans” for short). It’s a perspective on the world outside and below that humans have only been able to have for a relatively short period of time in the scope of history, and I find it one of the most serene and perspective-renewing experiences possible.

Taking in the detail of mountains and plains and oceans on clear days, or watching lightning flash in clouds below when flying at night; staring down at sprawling city lights in the middle of a Red Eye transcontinental flight, and spotting ant-sized semi-trucks moving slowly across interstate highways baking in the summer sun; looking as far ahead as I can for landmarks of coming home like Mount Rainer - and first seeing it from what I know is hundreds of miles away…

It all helps me put things in proper perspective life-wise, and it also never fails to deliver a needed dose of Wonder. As a result, I often end up moved to write when I fly, so I keep a notebook handy in case the words arrive. This poem came to me, almost as is, on one of those flights - one of only two (round trips) I have taken in this past COVID-laden year. What I saw outside brought me that Wonder and Comfort I so badly needed at the time, reminded me of the massive amount of Good in my life, and got me even more excited to see who was waiting for me on the other end.

Maybe you know that feeling.

Enjoy, and may you fly again soon.

Chins Up, Everyone - there’s a ton to see out the window.

*****************

From Up Here

By JDK Wyneken

Everything looks the same as before:

Cobalt rivers run through

Dusty canyons and forested peaks,

Towns and hamlets dot the farmlands

And cities sprawl out like spider legs.

All those below are where they are,

As they are, living as they do,

As it’s always been and will be.

Plagues, politics, masks and manifestos

Can’t conquer mountains

Or obscure the moon

Or block out the stars

Like they can to the human heart

If we forget that we, too, go beyond the horizon;

That we, too, wind and climb

And dive and soar and sprawl

As true to our nature as the contours

I can see for miles from up here….

All the way to, and away from,

Where I know you are.

We are limitless,

Clear as this blue sky from mere inches

To thousands of miles away.

All the way up, then all the way down

Again, we find our way.

We always have. We always will.

***************
Thanks for reading My Sunday Poem. Here are some important updates from my past week:

Soul Book of the Week: A Runner’s High by Dean Karnazes. I’m savoring every page.

Book On My Nightstand: Icebound: Shipwrecked at the Edge of the World by Andrea Pitzer

Best Show / Movie I Watched: A re-watch of Open Range. It continues to age magnificently.

Strongest Earworm Song: “Nobody Told Me” by John Lennon

Best Triathlon Training Moment: Destroyed my swim session on Wednesday. Best times ever.

Toughest Triathlon Training Moment: Arrival of shin splints. “Ice Man” should be my new nickname.

Favorite Hangout Shirt of the Week: This one. Because really missing my Hawaii friends this week.

Coolest Thing of the Week: Hanging out with The Incomparable Erik. More on him in a future post.

Thing I Know Now That I Didn’t Last Week: That GU-Chews are a gift from heaven.

Most Helpful Perspective / Advice of the Week: “Some can’t understand you, some won’t.”

Current Wanderlust List: 1) California Still; 2) Japan; 3) Vancouver, BC. I miss those hosers.

Big Wheel Time Machine

Me and my Time Machine, four years and twenty-five extra pounds ago….

May 2, 2021

____________________________

In September 2017, I went back in time - all the way back to the late 1970s. 

I’m not lying - I really did. And I didn’t even need a DeLorean pimped out with a Flux Capacitor driven by a wild-eyed scientist. 

All I needed was a Big Wheel. 

In a span of about ninety seconds, one ride on the Big Wheel - with my longest-standing Brother From Another Mother filming - took me back in time. 

You can even see it happen in this video of the exact moment:

Did you see it? It happened right when I Old-Man Side-Fell onto my back in the middle of the street and Matt nearly passed out from hysteria.

[Editor’s Note: Matt has always had the greatest laugh in the history of laughs. It’s even better to watch than it is to just hear.]

Watch it again if you missed it. Be sure to turn the volume up.

Here’s a hint - it’s the moment Matt and I start laughing our asses off. 

Right then, I was transported back in time. 

Back to when Matt and I played all day, on any day we could. And laughed just like that all the time.

I have a ton of memories from growing up with that guy in Hawaii. So many of them have to do with moments where we were off playing, completely in the moment and not worried about how we looked, how much time we had, or any of the problems we faced on a daily basis. 

Those So Many Moments cemented a lifelong connection between me and him, one that has only deepened over the decades despite years passing between seeing one another. While we have many grown-up conversations and moments that bond us as adults, we ultimately go back to the one thing we were best at as kids. 

Play. 

I’d bet my next month’s paycheck that your Play memories are coming back to you now. 

That’s because Play is such an integral part of our stories, whether we realize it or not. 

And Play is something that many of us forgot how to do - or at least TO do - somewhere along the line as we left childhood behind. 

I, for one, didn’t notice its disappearance and absence for years. Really, it wasn’t until I went back in time that day - on my first visit back to Hilo, my childhood home, in twenty-five years - that I realized just how long I’d gone without Play. 

Right out there in the middle of the street, the back of my shirt soaking with water, I wondered at how I’d let its absence go on for so long. And I wanted more, right away. 

It’s so easy to lose track of Play. For a million and one reasons, with none of them or all of them convincing, we just seem to let it escape us as Grown Up Life slowly encroaches. Or, it gets pounded out of us somehow.

Equal parts in our DNA and a developed skill, unencumbered and unstructured Play - where the activity / game / fun is more spontaneous than planned - has long been seen by child development experts as central to the healthy emotional and cognitive development of every single human being. 

This is true regardless of time, place, culture, religion, or any other way we humans categorize each other into far too often. In fact, a close friend of mine who knows all about this stuff once told me that Play is the only human activity that ALL humans engage in that has no direct utility or outcome attached to it. It’s just for the joy of doing it. 

Think about that for a second. 

That’s some crazy shit. But she’s on to something (she and all the other experts she pointed me to who say the same thing). 

Sure, universal human activities like eating and exercise and sex can all be fun, but they each also have a utility - nourishment, health, and procreation. 

Hobbies have the same elements, but not all humans pursue the same hobbies for the same reasons. Generally, their utility can be relief from stress, healthy skill development, even distraction. 

But Play is Play. It is human beings being human at our most unencumbered, our most natural and creative and uninhibited state. By letting go of any and all expected outcomes and utility, we end up getting the most of it. 

Funny how that happens - when we let go and have fun, we get more from it than any other activity. 

Whether it’s making up worlds on the fly, taking on personas of superheroes and Jedi Knights (or inventing up our own), or twirling in the middle of the grass yard giggling until we fall over, that kind of Play allows our true selves to really come forward and be revealed, to be discovered for the first time as kids or rediscovered for the first time in years as adults. 

Play helps us figure out who we are, give us ideas of where to go and what we want to become. Play shows us why connecting with our best selves and those of others does so much good for us and for the world at large as a result. 

Yep. Crazy shit, this Play stuff. 

Since my trip in the Big Wheel Time Machine, I’ve noticed more and more the need for more Play in my life. 

For me, its absence can leave my life and relationships feeling too heavy, not light and free as I would like. As I’ve worked through all that, I’ve discovered that “light and free” does not mean “shallow and disconnected.”

Just the opposite, in fact. In several of my closest relationships, embracing Play and “light and free” over the past six months or so has actually strengthened and deepened those ties, just as it did for me and Matt as kids. 

The joy of Play and its shared experience appears to inevitably and deeply bind us in love, affection, connection, and value to one another in ways that intellectual sparring, difficult-if-necessary conversations, and hardship may not. 

Yet, as adults, we tend to rely far more on that latter list than the former. At least I have. 

Which is why back on January 1, I chose “Play” as my Theme of the Year for 2021 (as did my aforementioned friend, interestingly, completely separate from my own decision to adopt it). The challenges of COVID have made me get inventive with finding Play, and I am still in the process of really getting into it regularly. 

But each time I do, it’s an incredibly powerful thing. 

So far, my most regular form of Play is dancing to Motown / funk while I cook (using earbuds so I don’t bug the neighbors). One of these days I’ll take a video of it for you to see. I have some serious rhythm and moves. I ain’t lyin’. You’ll see.

[Editor’s Note: He really isn’t lying.]

I’ve also dedicated myself to laughing and relaxing more with those who are closest to me, and I have found that doing so helps me better see opportunities for Play with them. The results have strengthened all those relationships, improved my mental and emotional health, and sharpened my sense of self. 

Allowing for spontaneity, it seems, is key. To be willing to just go for Play when I feel like it or want it or a chance presents itself. And the more I do, the easier it becomes to find Play again.  

That day in Hilo, Matt and I somehow ended up on Big Wheels again in the middle of his street, like we’d done countless times decades before. Spontaneity is our shared lifeblood - always has been. Perhaps you have a friend like that, too. If so, indulge in Play with them again. If you don’t have a friend like that, then can you find one? Reconnect with one? Turn to your partner / spouse and say “Let’s go Play?”

If all humans are wired for play, then they’re all ready and eager for it on some level - even if they aren’t aware of it yet.

And, can you also Play with yourself (easy does it, all - let’s keep our heads about us. Okay, now I’m giggling, too)? You did solo play time as a kid, so your memories can guide the way back. 

For example, I bought a balsa wood glider I am going to go throw around in the park later today. I loved saving up for those and flying them as a kid, so I’m gonna go do it again. I’m excited and also a bit worried it’ll get stuck in a tree, which means I’ll have to chuck pine cones or rocks at it to get it out….

That sounds like Play, too. Sweet. 

See? It’s all right there, yet we don’t take ourselves back to it because we’ve conditioned Play right out of us and each other with overbusy schedules, an overemphasis on work and achievement, and self-consciousness in front of others.  

And yet right now you kinda want to go Play, don’t you? 

Don’t fight it. It’s rad. 

But like getting back into any old activity, we have to be intentional with it. Or at least jumpstart that old instinct.

So how about this month we all do something together called “JDK’s May Play Challenge?”

I’m giving you advance notice here, as I will be going into details of it on tomorrow’s episode of This Show Is All About You, but this is a real thing I’m suggesting - a month long pursuit or experiment in reconnecting with Play.  

Or something. 

The idea is for each of us to rediscover Play - on our own, and with others. Not super organized, but spontaneous. Creative. Goofy. Open ended. Even made up out of thin air. 

It might feel challenging at first. If so, ask yourself why that’s the case, and be honest with yourself in your answers. Then, still find ways to Play that maybe take those answers into account, and / or find others to go Play with you so you feel less self-conscious.

Because my guess is that’s maybe the biggest hurdle for many - feeling or looking foolish and “ungrown up” to others.  

If you need a place to start, then dance to Motown (or your favorite music) while cooking - I’ll let you steal that one from me. But here’s a PSA tip - don’t do it when anything is boiling.

Or, go pull your old toys out of the attic. Or go get new ones. They still sell Hot Wheels. I checked.

Go Play with your partner in the bedroom. And if you aren’t sure what that might look like, find out together. Even that part can be fun - and frankly, it should be. You’re in the bedroom...C’mon, man. 

This month, start looking to Play Again. Or Play Some More. Or with more people. 

I’ll update you here, on my radio show / podcast, and on my social media feeds about how I’m doing with it, and please let me know how it’s going for you.  

I’m betting you’ll be amazed at how fast it all comes back, and what it does for you now. 

It can even take you back in time like it did me, and in doing so make the present far better and the future more promising. 

We can all use more of all that. 

Once you are laughing like Matt and I did out on that street, you’ll know you’ve gotten there. 

And make no mistake - this is NOT about reliving your childhood. It’s about living NOW. Play is a human thing, not just a human kid thing. It’s necessary for all humans of all ages.

Your kids get it. Just ask them. Or better yet, show them. 

I’ll see you all again soon - I’ve just decided to combine dancing to Motown with my glider flying. Betcha someone videos that. Maybe I’ll go viral. 

Chins Up, Everyone. It’s a Play Day. 

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Thanks for reading My Sunday Post. Here are some important updates from my past week:

Soul Book of the Week: A Runner’s High by Dean Karnazes. He’s the best lunatic alive.

Book On My Nightstand: Pillow Thoughts by Courtney Peppernell

Best Show / Movie I Watched: Warrior, Season One (HBO). Chinese gang wars in 1870s SF. Epic.

Strongest Earworm Song: “How Come” by Ray LaMontagne

Best Triathlon Training Moment: Crushing a back-to-back ride and run in ninety minutes.

Favorite Hangout Shirt of the Week: This one. Because it’s the most comfy shirt in my closet.

Coolest Thing of the Week: Another space company - Blue Origin - offering tickets to space.

Thing I Know Now That I Didn’t Last Week: How amazing Incrediwear recovery gear really is

Most Helpful Perspective / Advice of the Week: “Your body wants to help you figure it out.”

Current Wanderlust List: 1) Still California; 2) Hawaii; 3) Any In-N-Out Burger

No One Expects the Russian Moon Invasion

It’s not nearly as crazy at it looks….

April 25, 2021

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[Editor’s Note: If you are watching Apple TV’s “For All Mankind” and have not yet seen the Season 2 finale, read no further until you have. This is your only spoiler warning. And if you aren’t watching the show,  you really should as soon as possible. ]

My heart was torn out last night - on the moon. 

No, I wasn’t on hallucinogens. And I’m not being literal, obviously. 

Nevertheless, last night on the moon, people who are important to me died. 

No one saw it coming, except for them (eventually). They actually chose it.

I am talking about fictional characters from the Apple TV alternate history drama, For All Mankind. Based on a historical timeline where the Soviets are the first to land a man on the moon, the show takes viewers down a fascinating and decidedly plausible alternate history where the Cold War rapidly moves into space as the superpowers set up bases on the moon and make their space programs much more robust and far-reaching than they have yet to become in our own world. Along the way, we get to know and love (and hate) a wide array of skillfully developed characters, each of whom navigates the fascinating and frightening Space Cold War with varying degrees of trepidation, bravery, and Die Hard style “Yippee-Ki-Yay.”

The show’s second season - set in the early 1980s - wrapped up last night with extraordinarily dramatic events on the moon, on Earth, and in the orbits around them. 

It tore me up with the crushing deaths of some beloved characters - done in the perfect way at the perfect time, yet it was also somehow far too early for them to leave. 

If you saw the episode, you know what I mean. If you haven’t, you may have experienced the same feeling in other shows or movies. 

Game of Thrones did it all the time - Ned Stark, the Red Wedding, that Rat Bastard Joffrey, and about twenty other biggies. 

The Marvel Cinematic Universe likes to do it, too (though super heroes aren’t ever really dead, are they?). RIP, Tony - you did indeed have a heart.   

I’ve written before about M*A*S*H doing it to poor Henry Blake. 

And I must have heard my mom / sister / niece / female friends holler every year or so that Grey’s Anatomy killed some hugely popular character out of the blue with a bus or a plane or a rare fast-moving bacterial blood monster or something. 

It’s one thing when a character leaves a show by choice and we all know it’s coming - it’s sad and bittersweet, but we can all say goodbye in advance. 

It’s another thing entirely when it’s unexpected - we haven’t had time to prepare, to do a retrospective montage even if it’s just in our minds, or know we should be calling upon our friends for emotional support beforehand. It’s even harsher when the actors playing the characters are caught by surprise along with the viewers, as happened with last night’s episode (as I learned after frantically reading through various episode recaps online after I wiped away my tears). 

That’s what tore my heart out last night. And here’s the weird thing…

I love when that happens, even if I don’t like the choice. 

Why? Because it’s storytelling at its boldest, its most raw, its bravest, and its most controversial. 

Because some writer somewhere, it was clear, had allowed the story he / she / they started to “write itself” to an unexpected and difficult end. 

It’s happened to me in writing Krelle’s Inferno, which led several of my beta readers to send me weepy, expletive-laden texts or voicemails in the middle of the night. 

And yet, every one of them also said, “I get it, as much as I hate it.” 

Exactly. 

If art imitates life, then - to me, at least - writing is included. 

That means our own nonfiction lives can - and I will say, should - be allowed to unfold and “write themselves” daily. 

This might take some explaining, because I am NOT saying that we should live without plans, goals, or dreams to pursue. Nor am I saying that we should just lay around like slugs every day and wait for things to happen to us. Neither makes sense - both are forms of giving up, of opting out on life, and are recipes for cynicism at best and self-destruction at worst. 

What I am saying is that in both writing and living, our plans / aims / goals cannot be so fixed from their outset in the “Shoulds” - a checklist or timetable of how our lives should be. It should look this way, it should happen just like this, it should only take this much time, etc. - that they leave no room for the unexpected, for changes and reversals, failure, or even an entirely different outcome. 

I can only speak for myself, of course, but maybe an example from my writing and from my real life can help clarify. 

Writing Krelle’s Inferno was the most unplanned thing I’ve ever done, and that’s what made it so successful and rewarding. I knew how I wanted the book to begin, a few things that needed to happen in the middle, and generally how I wanted it to end. Of the five primary fictional characters I created (I also included real-life historical figures as important characters), only three of them were well-rounded when I started writing. The other two emerged as the story began to take its specific direction.

Each of these character’s personalities emerged, and as they interacted with one another as the story unfolded, my creativity channeled into dialogue and actions that made sense to their personalities and back-stories. The story began to arc specifically to the characters — not to my preconceived notions of where the story should go. I told several friends that the characters themselves seemed to be indicating where their story should go.

As each chapter unfolded and ended, I found myself surprised time and again by what happened, what was said, and where the next step in the story would go. I learned to trust what came to me. Readers would tell me when something didn’t quite match the character's personality, which led to rethinking and re-edits. Questions came up like, “would she really say that/do that in light of her past experiences?” Or, “he said in the last chapter he’d never do that, but here he is doing that. Does that mean he’s hypocritical? Or does that mean I need to change one side or the other?” Important questions, for sure, that needed to be addressed. Each answer changed the story. 

Each development in the story and with the characters not only propelled the story forward, but opened up new possibilities along the way - ones I had never considered before, and honestly, would never have occurred to me without the story being exactly as it was at that given moment. If I remained honest with the story, the characters, and myself each step of the way, the characters would lead me to the ending in time.

Everything about my original plan found its way into the story — my envisioned beginning, middle, and end — but all looked far different from anything I could have dreamt up in the book's early stages. That made the book a thrill to write, and this approach allowed me to enjoy writing for hours at a time .

Now, this is not every writer’s process. Yet, from the challenges I’ve seen other writers encounter when they over-outline and over-plan, there’s significant risk involved in trying to “contain” ones writing. All this accomplishes, from what I’ve seen, is limiting or even smothering the story. The story needs to breathe, to grow, to extend beyond a writer's preconceived ideas of plot / dialogue / conflict / chapter length / total word count / blah blah blah.

My life has needed similar time to breathe, to grow, to extend beyond my preconceived notions of everything and anything. This took me a really long time to start learning and allowing, though I’ve seen that experience is really the only way to learn anything worthwhile and have it really stick. 

Much as my book developed, my life has improved on every front in the last handful of years because I’ve taken this same approach to it. I know generally where I want to go, what I want to achieve, who I want to be with, but I’ve learned to abandon trying to anticipate or force particular outcomes. Whether it be my job, publishing my novel, personal relationships, or whatever, I lose the wonder and surprise and growth if I try to pigeonhole everything — and everyone — into preconceived notions of How I’ve Decided Things Should Be.

I once did everything I was “supposed to do,” and got everything I was “supposed to get,” and it turned out disastrously. But I’ve since learned that those were other people’s “supposed to’s,” not mine. This isn’t to say those are wrong for them, but only that they're wrong for me. 

My story had to breathe, had to evolve as my character developed and new people entered my life. As they did, internal and external forces redirected my life story to places that I never could have dreamed of a decade ago.

That tells me I’m creating my story — both in my writing and in my life — my way. Finally.

In my writing, I came to accept my characters as they developed. I’m getting better at giving the real people in my life the same courtesy, instead of expecting them to fit into the character I expected them to be. By letting them be who they are, they make my story that much richer— more so than what I could try to force on my own.

Which makes life, never mind writing, so much easier without dumbing it down or reducing its importance. Living my Now this way takes care of Later, because I won’t be thinking about Later until it’s Now. 

That’s just how it works for me.

Call it Zen. Call it “Considering the Lilies.” Call it Stoicism. I don’t care.  Just don’t call it giving up or a lack of faith or being childishly sanguine, because it’s none of those. I’ve done all of those before, so I know what they look like.

For me, all this is freedom and serenity. It’s meaning and purpose. It’s both the expression and culmination of faith. It helps me see what is actually happening and who people truly are, each more loveable and beautiful than how I once framed them. 

It’s letting my stories unfold with the right balance of my direct input and of asking others for help, of taking initiative and letting go of control, and of embracing newness while staying true to the direction I need to go. It’s accepting reality of life as it is each day to the best of my ability (some days go better than others), and trusting that I’ll be okay.

Because the story is going to kick way more ass if I do things that way. 

I like my stories with open-ended endings; when the end actually arrives, it allows for a new, open beginning. 

Which means however things go, wherever they go, I win. I’ll take those odds. 

For whatever reason, I’ve had to grow beyond my own preconceived notions and challenge my most steadfast beliefs in order to see what can truly be possible for me. What I am “supposed to” do / be can be so damned limiting, because “supposed to” is too often rooted in fear or judgement or vanity. 

To do that push through is scary as hell, yet I’ve also seen so many others do so and end up with lives richer than they’d dreamed of when they were living on the Safe Side of Supposed To.  It’s not just me, folks. So this is available for anyone, it seems.

I’m seeing that when I bring my best to the table, and let others do the same, we all get the best if we are willing to try new stuff that may taste weird at first.  

So, if this all means that my “story” ends with something as wild and unexpected as a moon invasion and the deaths of characters that I wish would have not happened so soon, then that’s the story. Period. That doesn’t mean the story lacks meaning - in fact, it might mean more as a result. And if the story was one worth telling or living, then I don’t think I’ll have many regrets, however it turns out.

That, too, is open-ended. I wouldn’t want it any other way. Not anymore. 

Plus, this way is so much more fun. Thanks for being part of it.  

Chins Up, Everyone. 

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Thanks for reading My Sunday Post. Here are some important updates from my past week:

Soul Book of the Week: Together by Vivek H. Murthy

Book On My Nightstand: 2034: A Novel of the Next World War by Elliot Ackerman / James Stavridis

Best Show / Movie I Watched: For All Mankind, Season Two Finale. Just get Apple TV already.

Strongest Earworm Song: “Eminence Front” by The Who

Best Triathlon Training Moment: Running my best mile times in months. Workouts are paying off.

Favorite Hangout T-Shirt of the Week: This one. Because they might actually be good this year….

Coolest Thing of the Week: Plotting (yet another) new project. More on that soon. It’s gonna be fun.

Thing I Know Now That I Didn’t Last Week: That there’s a town in Texas named Ding Dong, and one in West Virginia named Booger Hole. You’re welcome.

Most Helpful Perspective / Advice of the Week: “Narcissists can’t stand their own company, either.”

Current Wanderlust List: 1) California (it’s a theme); 2) Lake Chelan, WA; 3) Not Booger Hole or Ding Dong

The Pearls & Perils of World Building

April 18, 2021

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I was ten years old when I realized that J.R.R. Tolkien was equal parts freak, savant, and genius. 

I’d just read his classic, The Hobbit, for the first time and was midway through the first book of his infamous trilogy, The Lord of the Rings, when I did something I’d never done before:

I flipped back to the appendices. And there, I found an entire world, one far larger than “just” what Tolkien had described of “Middle-Earth” in his narrative pages. 

The writing was small, complicated, and detailed. It contained so many words I’d never heard before. It read like some boring entry I would’ve found in the Encyclopedia Britannica about finches or iron smelting. But it wasn’t boring at all once I realized that Tolkien had provided an extensive back history of an entire world of his own making. 

What?!?!?

He cited books with titles and contents he’d entirely made up himself, that had never appeared anywhere but in his own mind. He recounted the centuries-long lineage of main characters, articulated the regional differences and internal conflicts between nations of dwarves and elves and humans, and even wrote an entire freaking language and explained its structure in detail. 

Yes, an entire language. Elvish. He invented a language. 

Just to make his fantasy story - and its fantastical world - more believable. More real. Worth investing in Here and Now. 

[Editor’s Note: You can even learn Elvish in a series of courses at Oxford now. Yeah - Mega Nerd Alert.]

Even as a ten year old, I knew this was a level of investment and literary realism that went beyond what most- if not all - authors in history had ever done. In the three decades since, I’ve tested that theory against the other great authors I’ve had the privilege to read, and no one yet comes close to the depth, breadth, and detail of Tolkien’s world building. 

Tolkien’s close friend, C.S. Lewis, created a more kid-friendly world with Narnia but never bothered with appendices; Anne McCaffrey painted words on a broad canvas with her extensive series The Dragonriders of Pern; George R.R. Martin continues to do his best to drown readers in detail with every sentence in his still-not-finished Game of Thrones series - may they end on a better note (if they ever do end - get on it, George), and with better reception, than the television series did; And, of course, J.K. Rowling did wonderful things with various backstories and made-up volumes of books that don’t exist in the Harry Potter sub-universe of our everyday world, yet…..

She never wrote an entire language. Tolkien (still) for the win, in that area at least. 

My point isn’t to denigrate those authors (that would be insane), nor to compare their work unfavorably to Tolkien’s, because each of those authors does things in their books uniquely better than Tolkien does, in my opinion. In particular, all those aforementioned authors do dialogue better and don’t do maddening things like write only one paragraph to describe a pivotal battle yet spend two entire pages describing an old growth forest or the history of pipeweed smoking.

My point here is that in world-building, Tolkien still holds the championship belt that he first won sometime before / during World War II. 

Tolkien blew my ten-year old mind (and still does) with his world-building, and it inspired me back at age ten to someday write books where I could do my own world-building and hopefully make it believable and “worthy” of extended reader interest and investment. 

Which brings me to “Krelle’s World,” the pseudo-official (or quasi? I still can’t get those straight. Neither can you, so shut it) name I’ve given the alternate history world of 1946 that I’ve created as the basis for my novel, Krelle’s Inferno. Unlike Middle-Earth, Narnia, or Pern, Krelle’s World is an alternate version of our own world, free of elves, dwarves, centaurs, talking lions (as far as we know - how cool would that be, though?) and other fantastical creatures. Instead, this world is our own, just with a major What If shift. 

That’s what makes Krelle’s Inferno an alternate history novel. 

In this case, the What If is “What if the Allies had failed on D-Day?” 

A while back, I talked about this in my post on the “Butterfly Effect,” but didn’t delve too deeply into the world-building part, or the challenges and “art” involved in doing it well. But I thought I’d circle back to talk about how I did it and why, and where my training as a historian and my own creative threads / impulses / talents merged to build something unique and more than a little scary. 

As I’ve said before, those two terms - “historian” and “creative” - are often assumed by the general public to be contradictions in terms. It isn’t true - at least not entirely. Certainly, academic histories studies can be dense, intricate, long, and extensively detailed, while more “popular” histories can sacrifice quality of research and nuance in the name of flash or spicing up a story. But some of the most creative and engaging writers out there are historians who can blend quality storytelling and research together to help readers imagine the worlds of the past and connect with them despite the gaps in context, culture, and time. 

For a historian like me writing an alternate history fiction piece, world building has to meet a similarly high bar, because the world I am altering has to feel plausible in its changes, yet still familiar in its feel. This isn’t an easy balance to find or maintain, I found out, and it certainly took all the skills I’d developed as a historian and new fiction writer to figure out. 

[Editor’s Note: JDK just put on his historian hat. Proceed carefully with an eye for detail, and please exercise patience. Carry on.]

By turning D-Day into a defeat for the Allies and a victory for the Nazis, I had to first figure out 1) how could such a defeat have plausibly happened then recreate it for the reader, then 2) play out step-by-step the ripple effects of such a different outcome on the rest of the war, then 3) bring the details of these changes to life in the narrative and integrate the characters into it, all of whom need to have believable mentalities and perspectives shaped by this different world, with no hints at all of the actual world and history we know. 

It was an enormous amount of fun that engaged both sides of my brain at the same time, yet also took a great deal of time to work out. Each cause and effect I had to examine from a dozen different directions, figuring out what actual historical events would never have happened had D-Day been an Allied defeat, then also leaving room for me to put in new events that never actually happened.

It was dizzying at times, and it involved a lot of reading and review of the events in Europe from D-Day on, some really fun conversations with historian friends of mine to test out my ideas and creative choices, and a helluva a lot of time looking up minutiae like “what did Red Cross uniforms and POW relief boxes look like in 1946?” and “what pistols did Soviet officers carry as standard issue sidearms during World War II?” 

In the end, it will be up to readers to decide if they agree that I succeeded in creating a believable alternate world. For my part, though, I really like - and stand by - what I decided on and rejected. 

Krelle’s World is a scary world, one with distinct differences from our own past history, yet one with intriguing differences that will be really fun to work with in subsequent novels (Krelle’s Inferno is the first of a planned trilogy of books built around my main character, a former German intelligence colonel named Geren Krelle). 

Because of D-Day’s failure - which occurred in large part because the Germans ended up figuring out in advance that the Allies would attempt to land in Normandy - a cascading series of factors came into play that would have created a very different end to the Second World War. After a lot of research and reading, including “what if” scenarios explored by other professional historians, I decided that it was very likely Nazi Germany would have lost the war eventually anyway, but it would have taken longer for them to be defeated without Allied troops closing in on Germany from the west. This meant that the Allies would have continued to bomb Germany and western Europe mercilessly from the air, while it would have fallen to the Soviet Red Army to do nearly all the land fighting. 

And a plausible result of this, I decided, was that the Soviets would have had to conquer all of Germany AND German-occupied western Europe to end the war. This was a staggering idea to me, as it would have fundamentally changed the landscape of the subsequent Cold War. Instead of the dividing line between the Soviet / communist east and the liberal democratic west being right down the middle of Germany as it actually happened, in Krelle’s World that dividing line is the English Channel. 

Gulp. Play that forward more, and that means (at the least) the following:

• All of Europe would have fallen under Soviet control, and any “elections” held in Soviet-controlled territory would have resulted in friendly communist governments loyal to Stalin. Which means, in turn, no basis for the creation of NATO, the postwar alliance that bound all western European democracies and the United States together for mutual defense - a bedrock of the Cold War order in actual history. I have the war ending both in Europe and the Pacific in August 1945, after the US drops two atomic bombs - one each on Germany and Japan….Gulp again.

• The Soviets would have captured the overwhelming majority of German advanced technology, scientists, engineers, and other specialists. This would have given the Soviets a massive advantage and head start on the US and its allies in developing jet aircraft and other modern weapons, as well as on efforts to put satellites and humans into space. The history of NASA, to put it mildly, would have been starkly different. 

• Without millions of their own troops on the Continent recapturing German-controlled territory, the Americans and British would never have recovered, catalogued, and studied the millions upon millions of German documents that explained everything from Hitler’s rise and fall to the fate of Europe’s Jews and other groups the Nazis targeted for persecution and murder. In fact, in my book, the Soviets keep a tight lid on information about the Nazi death camps in Poland and all other elements of the Holocaust. The ramifications of all this for our understanding of the roots, conduct, and end of the war are beyond huge - it would have literally created a different world and a different history of the Second World War than what he have today.

Those are just the Big Ones that are central to my novel’s plot. But the wider ripples are even more fascinating (and will be much more controversial as readers go through the trilogy). Here’s just a taste of what I’ve decided (subject to change, of course) would have likely happened in the broader world as a result of D-Day’s failure, the cascading events that would have resulted, and the factors I just listed above:

• There would never have been a Korean War, at least as we knew it. With a longer war to fight in Europe to defeat Hitler, I speculated that the Soviets would not have had the time or inclination to invade Japanese-held China as they actually did, so their forces would not have occupied the northern half of the Korean peninsula. Instead, I have American forces occupying the entire peninsula with help from the Nationalist Chinese after the surrender of Japan…

• .…Because without a Red Army invasion into China, they would not have been there to give the Chinese communists the thousands of tons of Japanese weapons and equipment that they captured in actual history, which gave Mao Zedong a massive advantage in his renewed civil war against Chiang Kai-Shek and the Nationalist government. This also suggests that the Chinese Civil War could have gone on much longer than the four years of actual history, and it might not have ended in a complete communist victory that drove the Nationalists to Taiwan.

• Nor would there have been a Vietnam War. With all of German-occupied France liberated by the Red Army and a pro-Moscow government installed, there would have been no attempt by France to retake their colonial holdings in Indochina, as communist governments wanted to see an end to European colonialism. With no French war in Indochina, as actually happened in the 1950s, there would have been no attempt by the Americans to save Vietnam from communism in the 1960s - instead, it’s highly possible Ho Chi Minh would have seen a liberated Vietnam happen quite quickly after the war, as the Americans would have had their hands quite full with occupying all of Japan and Korea while overseeing the disarmament of Japanese forces in China (which the Soviets mostly did in actual history). 

Isn’t this crazy? It makes my head swim a bit, too, and I’m the guy who invented all this. There are even more eye-widening alternate realities I’m including, too, like some big ones involving the makeup of the postwar Middle East, social upheaval and change at a much faster rate in the United States, and extraordinarily different postwar experiences for countries like Iceland, Norway, Indonesia, and Argentina. 

Individual histories were altered, too, because of the D-Day defeat. In Krelle’s World, Dwight Eisenhower’s military career effectively ended as a result, as did any chance of a political career after the war. So, no President Eisenhower. Also, D-Day’s failure saves General George Patton from dying in a jeep accident in occupied Europe after the war, so I have him instead becoming a vocal postwar critic of Truman and America’s foreign policy approach to the Soviets. 

Another casualty of D-Day? American confidence in their position in the postwar world against the Soviets. In Krelle’s World, communism’s popularity is global, and most democracies in Europe that would have resisted it have fallen under its control. As a result, European colonial empires collapse quickly, all with Soviet support, which endears them to the populations of these newly liberated independent countries. All of this puts the United States in a position where it is very nearly the sole power left to really challenge communism, and it has no “beachhead” in Europe to leverage against the Soviets like it did in actual history. Interestingly, their leverage in Asia is actually stronger in Krelle’s World than it was in actual history….

If this all sounds grim, that’s because it is. Krelle’s World is not one that would have benefited the majority of the people living in it. Soviet communism was a monster in actual history; in Krelle’s World, it may be unstoppable (honestly, I haven’t decided yet). That, by itself, is frightening. The United States would have faced an immediate postwar crisis equal to that of fighting the war, and longer lasting. What this would have meant in American politics, social cohesion, and economic prowess cannot be known for certain, but it would have been beyond the challenge the country faced in actual history in the decades after the war. 

Pick an area, issue, or individual, and it would have been decidedly different (most likely) in Krelle’s World than in our own actual history. I can only hope that I paint the picture of all this for the reader effectively enough that they find it believable and understandable. It is always a challenge for me to not bog things down in too much detail / nuance. You likely know that by now (don’t answer that). I want Krelle’s World to be unsettling, because that is what is required to drive the story along effectively and illustrate the stakes of what Krelle is tasked to do in this dark world. 

Krelle’s World, in a very real sense, is a main character. So, like my other main characters, it has to be relatable and realistic and compelling. 

I’ve satisfied my own sense of what Krelle’s World should look like, and it took me bringing together all the elements of my life experience, academic training, personal interests / growth, and creative talents to make it happen. It remains to be seen how many people will one day enter and explore Krelle’s World, but today I’m thrilled that I actually followed through on Ten-Year-Old Me’s dream of building his own fantasy world and liking what he built. I just high-fived him.

There’s something for all of us in that, even if alternate history (or even actual history) isn’t all that exciting to you. Any of our dreams require all parts of ourselves - past and present - to give ourselves the best chances to see them turn into reality. And pursuing them has ramifications for all areas of our lives and for those riding along with us. 

Thinking through ramifications of actions, or exploring “what ifs,” is a part of that pursuit in each of us. So, in that sense, we each are world building, all the time. 

Hopefully, though, your built worlds don’t turn out as grim as Krelle’s. 

If they do, we need to talk - so I can figure out how to stay away from you. Just kidding. Sorta. 

Here’s to all of you, world builders every one. Make them good ones.

Chins Up, Everyone. 

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Thanks for reading My Sunday Post. Here are some important updates from my past week:

Soul Book of the Week: A Thousand Mornings: Poems by Mary Oliver

Book On My Nightstand: A Gentleman in Moscow: A Novel by Amor Towles

Best Show / Movie I Watched: The Warrior Season One (HBO)

Strongest Earworm Song: “Sound Your Funky Horn” by KC & the Sunshine Band

Best Triathlon Training Moment: My first session with a personal trainer ever. Amazing. Still sore.

Favorite Hangout T-Shirt of the Week: This one. It’s so versatile wardrobe-wise! And it’s Seattle.

Coolest Thing of the Week: Crushing my first two pool training sessions. Can’t wait for more.

Thing I Know Now That I Didn’t Last Week: That my mom once taught community college

Most Helpful Perspective / Advice of the Week: “Script less and prep more”

Current Wanderlust List: 1) California coastal drive; 2) Nagano, Japan; 3) Anywhere in Italy

Back In the (Bike) Saddle Again

The price of my Intuition is…a lot of gear.

April 11, 2021

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This week, I chose to make my next three months a lot more difficult, and also a lot better in the process. 

I blame myself. 

Or, my Intuition, to be more specific. Which means it’s the right choice, even if I will definitely be cursing at myself daily until the end of July. 

It’s not about my job, or my book, or this blog, or my life - yet, at the same time, it affects all of them positively. Such a paradox. 

I’m getting back on course - on the triathlon course, that is. 

I am returning to triathlon to take a Next Step, one I almost took ten years ago, but didn’t. Now, on the other side of a seismic decade of change for me, it’s time.

I just knew it. Deep down. It wasn’t even a debate. It was more like a light going on that just reveals what’s in the room. And once I see, pretending it isn’t there doesn’t make any sense. 

So at the end of July, down in Salem, OR,  I will be doing my first Half-Ironman triathlon - a 1.2-mile river swim, a 56-mile bike ride, and a 13.1- mile half-marathon. The shorthand is to call it a “70.3.” 

Yes, I am CHOOSING to do that - and it’s an easy choice because it’s the Next Indicated Step. 

The why takes some explaining, but falls under the umbrella of “it’s just what I need to do.” 

Ten years ago, in the midst of my own Truth and Consequences, a friend challenged me to train and do an Olympic-distance triathlon (just under a mile swim, 25-mile bike ride, and a 10k / 6.2 mile run). I’ve documented that story here before, but the postscript of that came two weeks after that first triathlon, when I did an “Aquabike” race (the first two legs of a half-ironman) in Sonoma, CA. 

It’s also the race that earned me the seemingly-permanent nickname, in one particular racing circle, of “Goat Butt.”

But, (ha!) that’s another story for another day. 

I had a blast on that race day in Sonoma, swimming the Russian River before taking on the 56-mile course through wine country, my eyes on the beauty around me as well as on the road. When I crossed the finish line (the rest of my circle were doing half- or full-Ironman races), I was on my own. I remember watching those continuing on the run leg of the half-ironman event, assessing my own body fatigue, and saying “I could totally run that half-marathon right now.” I knew, in that moment, I could do a half-ironman, but as I hadn’t signed up for that race, I had to sit and wait for my group to finish their races. 

Oh well. “Next time,” I said to myself. 

That Next Time didn’t happen. Until this week, nearly ten years later.

Longtime readers and listeners know what happened during that decade. Nowadays, I just look at it as A Lot of Life Happened, because everything I have and am now is far better than it was back then. I’m blessed, I’m loved, and I’m free. It doesn’t get any better than that. 

But this past week or so, as I worked through my daily meditations and reflections, had some revealing and profound conversations with some close friends, and took a look at areas in myself I wanted to improve, my Intuition drew on all of them to show me it was finally time to Totally Do That Half-Ironman.

I looked into the possibility, and found a brand new race taking place in Salem, just a few hours drive from me (and with friends to crash with nearby!). I laughed out loud at the confirmation my Intuition was right, and even harder when I saw the course is considered “beginner friendly.” Translation - river swim and blessedly FLAT ride and run courses). 

It couldn’t get any better for a 47-year old’s reentry into the Triathlon Scene. 

You might be wondering - how did I know it was my Intuition and not my Ego? 

That’s a great question, one I have discussed with friends and experts for several years now (and, will be talking about it with an Intuition expert on tomorrow’s edition of my radio show / podcast, This Show Is All About You.” 

As one expert described it to me, we can tell it’s our Ego when we have an internal debate in our mind about a certain decision - we make up catastrophic stories and alternatives, pros and cons, how other people will respond or think, etc. It’s an internal debate that includes things completely outside our control. 

Intuition meanwhile, arrives as Knowing, on a deep emotional and spiritual level alongside the intellectual. It often emerges unbidden in the moment and, upon reflection, has been building for some time before it lands in front of us. And there isn’t any debate to be had on whether or not it is true.

That’s what this was for me. A Knowing. Like knowing the sun will come up tomorrow. I’ve been listening and acting on my Intuition more over the past year-plus than ever before, and it is improving every part of my life. So much so, in fact, that many of my friends and family have noticed and keep asking me “what’s happened with you, and how?” 

I just started acting on what I was hearing from my Intuition, after getting present enough to listen for it in the first place. 

As I’ve considered where I want to go this next year, my primary concern has been establishing better self-care - in sleep, diet, and exercise. None of these have been bad; they just could be better, and have been before. And with our collective yet slow emergence from COVID restrictions and the arrival of spring, healthy opportunities are increasing. 

Plus, I’m not getting any younger. Whatever bad habits I allow to continue at this point will just get harder and harder to break. 

I never felt better physically than I did ten years ago, but I was an emotional and spiritual disaster. That mess has been cleaned up. So, I asked myself, what if I could bring back that physical peak and blend it with all my other areas of growth and change over the past decade? 

What if? 

Then my Intuition dropped in and said, “You know how to make that happen. So do it.” 

The picture couldn’t have been clearer in 4K. 

Intuition says Yes to things, Ego debates all the reasons why we could say No or Not Yet. Then makes up a million stories around it.

I said Yes (or, more accurately, admitted it), then each step fell into place in literally hours. I found the Oregon 70.3 and registered. I looked into rejoining my athletic club (it had closed for COVID), and found it had opened and its reentry memberships were crazy reasonable. I searched for payment plans to see if I could make all this happen, and - of course - found them. I upgraded some basic equipment needs for similarly crazy low prices, and even got a free consultation lined up from an Ironman racing expert on how to best train in light of a core-area surgery I had a couple of years ago. And then, to top it off, I found a local triathlon training club / group to join - for free. 

I couldn’t have scripted it any better and have it be believable. 

Finally, I knew I’d need accountability and support. What better way to do that than go public with it here and keep you posted on my training and progress? It’ll keep me getting up early to train (I hate getting up early, - HATE It. But I’ll do it.), and give me more outlets for me to connect more with all of you. 

[Editor’s Note: As further proof that what he says here is true, literally in this moment, someone gifted JDK with ANOTHER 70.3 race in October. Cue the avalanche of Goodness. You can’t make this shit up.]

This is what happens when I / you / we  listen to Intuition - it confirms itself as things start happening. It’s something that feels completely natural as it unfolds, too. It’s trippy but fun. 

Therefore, the price of NOT listening to Intuition? Cool things don’t happen. 

To not listen to - and act upon - our Intuition is to gaslight ourselves. 

Chew on that for a minute. 

We don’t want others to do that to us, for good reason - yet we can easily do it to ourselves and rationalize it away. 

That’s not a script worth acting on.  

With that in mind, maybe some of you want to join me in this whole Intuition-in-Action thing? It doesn’t have to be a half-Ironman or a full one (and yeah, a full is one of my longer term goals. I want that Not-Tony-Stark Ironman moniker). It could be a short Sprint distance triathlon (.5 mile swim, 12.4 mile ride, and a 5k / 3.2 mile run), or you could pull some friends together and sign up for a relay race (each of you do one specific leg). 

Participating is fun and finishing even more rewarding, provided training is regular and effective. That’s where the real Life Work and Results come from, actually. It’s that whole “the point of the Journey is not to arrive” thing made reality. I’m excited to get started in my three month training regimen (okay, I’ve already kinda started), and I’m also taking deep breaths daily in preparation for pushing myself up the Training Mountain again. It’s intimidating sometimes and is always tiring, yet somehow it also rejuvenates and balances every area of life. I always want more of that. 

I’m getting all Zen Again, and I love being in that space. 

(Holy moly - I just saw my Editor’s Note above. Now I’ll be cursing at myself daily until the end of October. I need professional sponsorship. Know anyone, anyone?)

Consider this an invitation to join me somehow, even if it is just by following my progress. See what your Intuition says. And if a triathlon sounds worse than a day-long root canal, consider what would be YOUR “triathlon” challenge? What’s your Intuition telling you is Yes for you? What is your Ego trying to talk you out of? What bullshit stories is it telling you? 

We battle Ego and Demons everyday, and that is its own triathlon-style challenge without the intention or the self-improvement. 

Intuition helps us change the battlefield by eliminating that Ego / Demon battle altogether. 

And a clear battlefield means more space for training, racing, and finishing. 

You know what Yes is, I bet. If you don’t, just listen for Intuition and it’ll arrive. 

And when it tells you to go Do Your Race, whatever that is, I’ll be there on Race Day to cheer you on. 

Chins Up, Everyone. So says Goat Butt. 

***************
Thanks for reading My Sunday Post. Here are some important updates from my past week:

Soul Book of the Week: The Dark Between Stars (Poetry) by Atticus

Book On My Nightstand: Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States, 1861 - 1865 by James Oakes

Best Show / Movie I Watched: Joe Musgrove throwing the first no-hitter in San Diego Padres history

Strongest Earworm Song: “Baker’s Globe Mallow” by Brett Dennen

Best Triathlon Training Moment: Rejoining my reopened training club - first time inside it in a year

Favorite Hangout T-Shirt of the Week: This one. Because I feel a binge of their music approaching

Coolest Thing of the Week: Hanging out with my nephew while he looks at aviation schools

Thing I Know Now That I Didn’t Last Week: That dogs can be afraid of Darth Vader

Most Helpful Perspective / Advice of the Week: “Keep breathing - it all starts there.”

Current Wanderlust List: 1) Poolside, 80 degrees; 2) Beach, then Bonfire; 3) Driving Highway 1, CA

With Joy and Verve and Poetry

“And frankly, Bulls fans, he used a word that’s a no-no with umpires….”

April 4, 2021

____________________

“Every day is a new opportunity. You can build on yesterday’s success or put its failures behind and start over again. That’s the way life is, with a new game every day, and that’s the way baseball is.”

- Bob Feller, Baseball Hall of Famer

On the night before Opening Day of every new Major League Baseball season, I conduct my sacred annual ritual - I watch Bull Durham, perhaps the greatest baseball film of all time. 

[Editor’s Note: To stave off the inevitable caterwauling of dissent at that statement, JDK asked me to list his other candidates for GBFOAT - Field of Dreams (except there are no Black players in the “heaven” of Iowa - no Satchel Paige, no Josh Gibson, no Cool Papa Bell, and no Jackie Robinson. That’s a problem, folks. A big one), The Sandlot (“You’re killing me, Smalls.”), Major League (“Are you saying Jesus Christ can’t hit a curveball?”), A League of Their Own (“There’s no crying in baseball!”), The Natural (the exploding lights are iconic), and Moneyball (“There are rich teams and there are poor teams. Then there’s fifty feet of crap. Then there’s us.”). Argue with JDK at your leisure, but don’t expect to change his mind.]

If you haven’t seen it, you should. It’s not just for Dudes Who Like Baseball. It’s equal parts Smart and (Rather) Spicy, the perfect balance of Zen and Budweiser. I’ll give you the basics without spoilers, just to get you in the mood. 

For me, the movie perfectly blends everything that makes baseball baseball, and life life - in the fashion that Bob Feller articulated decades ago. Its two main characters, the wise journeyman minor league catcher Lawrence “Crash” Davis (Kevin Costner) and the master metaphysical baseball and relationship priestess Annie Savoy (Susan Sarandon), have entirely different approaches to understanding and playing the game, yet both come to incorporate the best of the other as they contemplate making major changes in their lives. At the center of the emotional-and-sexual-tension-filled tug-of-war that eventually brings them closer together is Ebby Calvin “Nuke” LaLoosh (Tim Robbins), a young phenom pitcher “with a million dollar arm, but a five-cent head.” As Crash and Annie each teach Nuke their own unique lessons on how to grow up as a pitcher and as a man, the Durham Bulls baseball team goes from not-so-loveable losers in the first part of the season to a team of destiny playing their brand of baseball “with Joy and Verve and Poetry,” as Annie describes it with her usual eloquence. 

“How come in past lives, everyone is somebody famous?”

Along the way, we witness the trials and tribulations of what it takes to be an aspiring pro baseball player, and the even harder trials for each character to grow and become better versions of themselves. There is no easy resolution or tired cliché ending, which again makes it as much a parable about life as about baseball. For all of these reasons, and because of the litany of classic lines throughout the film, I watch it every year as my own “spring training” in preparation for enjoying another baseball season. 

This year, though, the emotional power of my annual viewing caught me by surprise - though it really shouldn’t have. Last year, the pandemic erased the annual beginning of the baseball season. The monthlong Prep Party that is Spring Training in Arizona and Florida was wiped out just as it got started, and eventually all that could be mustered was a truncated sixty-game season (instead of the standard 162), all played in empty stadiums. It was better than nothing, but not by much. 

So last Wednesday night, with a full 162-game slate for thirty teams starting the next day, I found myself even more invested in the Parable of the Bulls than usual. And, in light of the past year’s traumas and dramas, I was struck even more by the timeliness of the film’s themes: 

Starting over (a new season). Hope springs eternal. Old, favorite things done in new ways. Growth and change. Gratitude for what we have, and who we have. Leaning into new challenges. Pushing ourselves forward. While these are common every year, I noticed that this year — coming out of an unprecedented pandemic, a wrenching year politically and socially, and a collective yearning to reconnect in person with family and friends — the arrival of baseball encapsulates them all even more than usual.

“Well, Nuke’s scared because his eyelid’s jammed and his old man is here. We need a live…is it a live rooster? We need a live rooster to take the hex off Jose’s glove and nobody seems to know what to get Millie or Jimmy for their wedding present. Is that about right? We’re dealing with a lot of shit.”

It’s quite the convergence, if you think about it. Baseball begins the same weekend as Passover and Easter this year, coming just after the official arrival of spring and the one-year anniversary of the first, frightening COVID lockdowns. Each has us considering not only the challenges of the past year, but all the changes we hope to see in the present and future. A new start means new possibilities for a different journey, and a different finish. At this moment — at this beginning — it’s hope and possibility that move us forward, “walking to the plate” time after time to swing at the pitches life throws us.

And just like in baseball, sometimes we get a hit and other times we don’t. Sometimes, we just plain strike out. On days where we feel we have our best fastball and off-speed stuff, sometimes it just doesn’t work and life pounds us to the point where we have to call out to the bullpen for relief. We hit the showers early. 

Our “road trips” exhaust us over time, keeping us away from home and constantly on the edge of uncomfortable or worse. We go from hot streaks to protracted slumps, sometimes adopting superstitious or otherwise odd behaviors to sustain the Hot and break the Not. We strive for individual success amidst the “team” assembled around us, all of whom are looking to reach the same goals using their unique gifts. Injuries sideline us; we recuperate and get ourselves back into playing shape. As other teams adjust to us, we adjust to them. Each pitcher or hitter we face is unique, has their own way of doing things, and we work with what they give us or deny us. 

Sometimes, the game / life gets boring and moves slowly, punctuated by moments of excitement and amazing plays that dazzle the eyes and are talked about for days after. Other times, it moves at breakneck speed. Individual games can take a while, but seemingly in another blink of an eye dozens of games go by. The urgency steadily builds to play better, to make up ground, to reach the goal of “winning” before we run out of chances.

The analogies go on and on. It’s why many say baseball is life, and life is baseball. It’s why Bob Feller was right.

Of course, it can be easy to get cynical after spring passes and the baseball season is well underway. Some teams will fall out of contention within a month, while some teams expected to be bad will surprise with their success. Other teams will race neck and neck down the stretch, building the hope of their faithful fans; some will celebrate victory, while others will be heartbroken when their teams fall short. In the end, twenty-nine fan bases will be disappointed every season. Only one team Wins It All. 

Life can feel that way, too. 

Fortunately there’s a new season every year. Every team and group of fans gets to try again, if they so choose. And almost all of them choose to do so every year, no matter how the previous year turned out. We’re resilient that way, us humans.

“Just throw it at the bull, okay? Trust me.”

As Annie Savoy makes clear in Bull Durham, baseball and life are equally paradoxical, yet both still provide beauty and meaning and growth, even if we don’t always see them in the moment. Both are also equally cyclical yet surprising, lived by logic and reason on one side, and by “feel” and emotions and spiritual concentration on the other. Both have their linear and nonlinear elements, and to remove either would destroy what makes the game beautiful. 

Baseball is a game of both tradition and innovation, a case study in the artful science that is Paradox in Action. Like life, it is composed of diverse players, from all over the world, each with different skills and foibles and growth potential that are revealed and honed with each game. It’s a paradox that requires us to stay in the present to play well, leaving past games behind and letting the future ones take care of themselves. We practice and take guidance, engage in trial and error, get advice and tips from those who came before us, and give the same back to those behind us.

While we each play or root for our own teams, it is best when all appreciate the game — of baseball, or life — played well by any side. This took me a long time to learn and live out. I always smile widely when home fans at a baseball game stand and applaud a great defensive play by the visiting team. You will never see that at an NFL or NBA or NHL game - ever. And don’t even get me started on how global soccer fans handle things like that. 

A deep abiding love of the game itself is what distinguishes baseball in that sense. And to me, this is what makes baseball the most beautiful of games. It encompasses all we love about life in all its facets, and challenges us on the parts of it we don’t. It teaches us endurance and focus, to learn to zero in on each moment while also keeping in mind the big picture. It teaches us to improve ourselves first then help others to do the same. 

It encourages us to appreciate life on its own terms, and to come back year after year to try again. 

Even when we don’t win — whatever that really means — we can still find joy in the game itself, because playing the game and playing it well is really the point. It’s what we each remember of ourselves and those we watch play.

Every once in a while, we reach a point where we have to change how we play or what we do in the game. Crash had to give up on reaching the majors as a player, but decided to shoot for it as a manager. Annie, meanwhile, decided to stop playing her yearly lottery game with the Durham players and find new paths to fulfillment and peace for herself. And both of them wanted the other to come along for the ride.

That’s where the movie ends, just as a new chapter in their story begins. I, for one, like viewing life that way. I’m trying to live it that way these days, too. 

I’m trying to publish a book, much as Crash was trying to make the majors. He found a lot of Good he didn’t expect along the way, even though things didn’t turn out quite as he’d hoped. 

At least not yet. 

For him, Hope Springs Eternal. So, I’ll keep swinging like he did and see what happens. 

[Editor’s Note: Seriously, check out Costner’s swing in the movie - it’s fantastic. Unlike Tim Robbins’ pitching, which looks more like a giraffe roller skating than it does a Randy Johnson Wind Up of Death.]

It’s pretty much the best any of us can do.

Along the way, I hope I get to deliver some fantastic lines like Crash’s, “the Rose goes in the front, big guy,” and “isn’t this [outfit] a bit excessive for the Carolina League?” 

Nuke’s worst nightmare - pitching (almost) naked. But at least the Rose is in the front where it belongs.

A new season of baseball, and in life, is upon us. Stepping up to the plate to take our swings as we start a new year is in order. 

And to do that, we all have to start with one thing. 

Chins Up, Everyone - it’s the only way to see what’s coming and where to go / throw / run / hit. 

(And, go Mariners. Because hope really DOES spring eternal)

***************
Thanks for reading My Sunday Post. Here are some important updates from my past week:

Soul Book of the Week: The Furious Longing of God by Brennan Manning

Book On My Nightstand: Empire of Lies by Raymond Khoury

Best Show / Movie I Watched: Sound of Metal (Riz Ahmed is brilliant in it)

Strongest Earworm Song: “Lili Marlene” by Marlene Dietrich (English version is here)

Longest Walk / Run of the Week: 4.38 mile run / 22 mile ride (Saturday)

Favorite Hangout T-Shirt of the Week: This one (Should be obvious why after reading this post)

Coolest Thing of the Week: Opening Day (of a real, full-length baseball season!)

Thing I Know Now That I Didn’t Last Week: “There is no cow on the ice” means “there’s no reason to panic” in Sweden

Most Helpful Perspective / Advice of the Week: “You can pick up the phone, too, you know.”

Current Wanderlust List: 1) T-Mobile Park in Seattle; 2) California - any and all of it; 3) A campfire

When You Wake Before the Sun

March 28, 2021

__________________________

[Editor’s Note: After a helluva week / month / start to 2021, JDK is taking the week off for some overdue rest and rejuvenation. He will return with a new post next week. Before he left for his (not literal) cabana and cocktail on a beach, JDK stopped by to give you a poem to tide you over until then. In the meantime, be sure to catch up on all the episodes of “This Show is All About You”, and the Facebook Live recordings that followed JDK’s shows with Tawny Sanabria and Tennyson Jacobson. And, I almost forgot - JDK included a short note for you before the door hit him in the arse on his way out…

Hi, All. I’m out of words for the month, so in honor of the arrivals of spring and more daylight (finally!), here is a poem that evokes all the best of what comes with the beauty of new beginnings. I hope you like it, and I’ll see you next week. Until then - Chins Up, Everyone.

When You Wake Before the Sun 

By JDK Wyneken 

When you wake before the sun

You’ll see what’s alive before Dawn lights it. 

Whatever you need is there for the taking  

And the gifts that come will delight with surprise 

Even as the birds have not yet awakened to add their songs 

To the one your heart plays in harmony 

With the final notes of last night’s dream. 

You can paint your canvas before 

The day even begins its own 

And it will find its own divine inspiration

In the simplest splendors you live, 

From how you sip your coffee 

To your first steps into the garden 

To soak in the morning breeze.

When you are your own light 

The day doesn’t lead your way; 

It can only follow along 

To take its cue from you 

And then tell the moon and stars 

To watch over what it knows is 

True beauty 

Until you again wake before the sun 

***************
Thanks for reading My Sunday Poem. Here are some important updates from my past week:

Soul Book of the Week: The Heart of the Enlightened by Anthony De Mello

Book On My Nightstand: Seven Years in Tibet by Heinrich Harrer

Best Show / Movie I Watched: Everything that wasn’t Zack Snyder’s four-hour Justice League cut. Yikes.

Strongest Earworm Song: “So Alive” by Love and Rockets

Longest Walk / Run of the Week: 5.98 mile walk / 18 mile ride (Saturday)

Favorite Hangout T-Shirt of the Week: This one. Because I want a final season of Ray Donavan.

Coolest Thing of the Week: Finding out my sister is coming to visit soon - it’s been way too long.

Thing I Know Now That I Didn’t Last Week: That honey is the only food that will never spoil.

Most Helpful Perspective / Advice of the Week: “Use your damned Peloton app.”

Current Wanderlust List: 1) Any warm beach; 2) Fenway Park; 3) that erupting volcano in Iceland

Two Boys, One Mountain

March 21, 2021

_________________________

“C’mon, man,” Matt said to me, twisting me around by one shoulder to face him. “We gotta do this. We can’t chicken out anymore.”

“I know,” I replied, my palms sweating. “You keep saying that, but we’re still standing here.”

We laughed at each other’s fear, yet recognized the other’s desire to overcome this major life hurdle. 

“We won’t ever be Men if we don’t,” Matt said, though neither of us yet knew what being a Man really meant.

Not a Man? 

That wouldn’t do. I already felt wimpy enough. And this was my best friend talking - I knew to take him seriously. 

“I’m tired of this! So are you!” Matt said, still pleading, although he’d already convinced me. “Let’s go - and we can scream the whole time. No one will see. Let’s stop being afraid and just get MAD already!” 

He punctuated his sermon with a scowl that didn’t quite hide his nerves. I screwed on as fierce a look as I could muster and clasped his hand, like Captain America about to go into battle with Iron Man. 

“Yeah. Enough of this. Let’s go kick this thing’s ass.” 

It was time to become Men. Time to face our fear. 

We each took a deep breath, turned together, and stared up at the mountain we’d decided to scale. 

It would be our greatest challenge. And, if we were lucky, our greatest victory. 

We were about to conquer a real mountain….

Space Mountain.

Yeah, the roller coaster at Disneyland. For two boys, it might as well have been Everest. 

We had just finished eighth grade, but even on the doorstep of high school in sunny Southern California, I was STILL terrified of roller coasters. It’s even hard to admit it now, all these years later. Very few of my friends were similarly fearful, and I felt childish and silly and weak by comparison. I usually kept it as secret as I could. But SoCal has roller coasters all over - Six Flags Magic Mountain, Knott’s Berry Farm, and - of course - Disneyland. 

I was scared of every single roller coaster out there. But my Special Terror was Space Mountain, at the Happiest Place on Earth. To me, that one was created by Bizarro Evil Mickey as the entrance to Hell. 

I know - it sounds over the top. But it wasn’t back then. 

So why was I so afraid? What did we do? What are you talking about here, JDK?

The answers start with a tattoo.  

**************

The Eastern Orthodox scholar, David Bentley Hart, wrote a line that leapt off the page when I first read it back in 2014 - “Wisdom is the recovery of innocence at the far end of experience.” While Hart was writing a book about understandings of the word and concept of “God” throughout the world, the line itself is far more about the journey of being human. 

I loved that. But I wasn’t sure exactly why. 

A few years later, the why hit me in a conversation with a close friend of mine. The subject was the Afterlife, and Hart’s line crashed into my mind as I told my friend that at this point in my life I was far less concerned about the Afterlife than I was with the concern of “never truly living.”

And Hart’s line encapsulates, for me, what the course of living looks like - or can and should. 

It sets a fine goal for us all - a “return” to innocence. 

[Editor’s note: If you’re hearing this song right now in your head, I understand. And if you aren’t, it’ll be ear worming its way into your brain once you click that link. You’ve been warned.]

The following year, the quote resurfaced again, this time as part of the dazzling tech at a show by my favorite band of all time (hint: it’s a fairly popular Irish quartet that has the same name as an American Cold War spy plane, and by “fairly popular” I mean they are pretty much popular in every nation on Earth. Good luck.). 

That cinched it - Hart’s line had cemented itself as a cornerstone of my outlook on life. 

And to make sure I never forgot it, I had it tattooed on my chest. 

I’m not lying. 

It’s part of a design, so it’s not just stamped across my entire torso or anything - and yes, it IS Cool AF. Thank you for asking. 

That line - one line - helped me find some renewed hope and direction in the aftermath of an era of many mistakes and failures, a refocusing that could help me truly move past those things and, in fact, make them a part of my new era. 

A new era that required the old one as a midwife for its birth.  

Instead of destroying my past innocence for good, I could find a new version, one unique to my own path and - ahem - experiences.

Everyone gets the same opportunity, because we all came into this world fully innocent: unblemished, pure, uncorrupted and blameless. Hart suggests we can recover that in our lives despite the One Undeniable Fact implicit in his words:

We each, inevitably at some point(s), lose our Innocence. 

It can happen spectacularly, or slowly wear us down until we are on our backs, wounded and confused about how we got there. 

Yet, Hart says, we can return to (or discover) Innocence through those same experiences. And, in fact, doing so is Wisdom. 

If that sounds strange, think of what that itself suggests. 

It flies in the face of current popular belief. Somewhere along the line, optimism came to be associated with naivete and childishness, and cynicism with “being realistic” and as an indicator of wisdom. When did that happen exactly? We fight to preserve the innocence of our children for as long as possible, then denigrate any innocence they hold onto as adults as “out of touch” or “pollyannaish” or “simplistic.” And no one knows where that dividing line lies or why it’s there in the first place. 

Things got turned upside down - whereas experience is positive yet painful,  and innocence is negative yet something we long for. We bounce back and forth, move up and down, from the impact of experience vs. the protection of innocence, lamenting both even as we seek out forms of both endlessly. It’s like riding an seesaw - moving, but not really going anywhere. 

But what if Hart is right - that the journey away from Innocence should bring us back to it in the end, built entirely on whatever experiences took it away from us in the first place?

That means that life is not just about survival, but more about resilience - working through experience with purpose far beyond just surviving. To grow into something new. Or, alternatively, to discover what was really inside us all along. 

My own life bears this out, and yours does - or can - as well. And he better be right - I tattooed his words on me, and it kinda hurt. 

Our experiences and all that comes with them - pain, cynicism, exhaustion, confusion, etc. - need not rob us of the simplicity, beauty, and joy that we associate with innocence. In fact, the process can take us to a whole new level of innocence - newfound perspective, peace, accomplishment, serenity, purpose, and possibility. 

It’s all up and down, back and forth, and side to side, to be sure. 

Our journey between Innocence and Experience and back again is a roller coaster, not a seesaw. And the experience is the required passage. 

Just like Matt and I conquering Space Mountain. 

*************

Matt and I hopped up and down nervously as we worked our way through the line. The further into the innards of the mountain we went, the more our various emotions assaulted us. Fortunately, we laughed through our terror. 

So why were we so terrified of this particular roller coaster? 

Take a moment before continuing and see if you can guess. 

Go ahead, I’ll get another cup of coffee while you think it over….

….[sip]

So did you figure it out?

Space Mountain doesn’t go upside down at all (though I feared those too, and BTW the one at Disneyland Paris DOES!), and it’s not mentioned as one of the classic “scary” roller coasters in SoCal by Any Pre-Teen And Above Ever. 

Matt and I found it terrifying for one simple reason:

It’s entirely IN THE DARK. Inside! You can’t see where you’re going! At all!! 

That, more than anything else, filled us both with terror. 

We couldn’t see what was coming. We wanted to ride the ride, but wanted to see what was coming. We wanted to see when to be scared, when to lean right or left, when to brace for a crazy drop. 

To control and contain our fears. 

Get it now? 

Space Mountain encapsulated our fears about the rides of life - we couldn’t see what was coming. 

It was all in the dark. 

And since it was dark and we couldn’t see anything to control, we did all we could to just avoid the ride. 

I hated that I avoided it. I knew my fear was keeping me stuck, even as I ran from it. 

But just as Matt and I learned, we could only run for so long until the fear of NOT riding the ride outweighed our fear of climbing aboard. 

That night, when we reached the head of the line, the park was a mere ninety minutes from closing. We climbed aboard with the few people left in line, sitting right in the front. As the carriage disappeared into the dark, we laughed and put an arm around each other for support. We gritted our teeth as we reached the top of the main incline. We tipped and then….

We had the time of our lives. 

Oh, we were terrified, yet it was fun beyond words. We’d never had the two exist together at the same time. 

It was an absolute blast. We couldn’t see a thing, but loved the rush of it all. We surrendered to the ride, held our hands up because that’s all we could do, and reveled in the experience of conquering one of our most long-standing fears together. 

Quite the metaphor, isn’t it? 

When the ride ended, we were so exhilarated and felt like we’d just gone William Wallace on the English. So much so, in fact, that we rode again. Since the line was super short, it didn’t take long. 

We loved it just as much the second time. 

And the third. And fourth. And fifth. And sixth. And seventh. And eighth. And ninth. 

Nine times in a row.

Somewhere, David Bentley Hart nods.

We walked out of that mountain as different people - with a new understanding of joy, accomplishment, strength, and the power of Each Other. We were more Men than we were before, but not how either of us expected. 

We had faced our fear AND had embraced the joy of our innocence. 

All at the same time. 

And we couldn’t have gotten there without that experience in the dark. 

**********

It would be easy to leave off at “Life is a roller coaster, so ride it.” The movie Parenthood hit that point well years ago. 

It’s still true, but not all roller coasters are alike, of course. The same is true of the roller coasters in life. Matt and I intentionally chose that dark experience. Life doesn’t always allow for that. Instead, life can make us ride in the dark against our will, out of nowhere and without clear reason. 

The death of a loved one. A sudden loss of a job or a relationship. Being the sudden victim of a crime or accident or a new deadly virus. 

When those happen, we have no choice but to ride - unless we jump off, but that defeats the purpose of the ride and discovering what might be on the other end. And jumping only puts other people on their own painful ride without any warning - it passes on the agony. 

For me, choosing to ride the literal Space Mountain showed me that I could ride ANY roller coaster. No matter my fear of it, the ride only lasts for so long. And when it’s over, I can choose the meaning behind the experience. 

Do I resent it? Never speak of it again? Try to find meaning in it? Ride again? Design my own ride? Laugh at it? Find strength from it? Cower from every ride everywhere else? 

The choices are many, and I get to make them. More rides - chosen or not - are simply research and development. 

Riding life’s roller coasters may shatter our Innocence at the start, but those experiences can nevertheless show us what we need to build an even better Innocence on the other side. Like Japanese Kitsugi pottery, where gold is used to put shards of a bowl or cup back together and makes the new piece even stronger -and more beautiful - as a result. So are we as human souls - no matter what might have shattered our innocence at the start, there is gold available to us. 

Whatever the case, whatever the ride, whether in the dark or out of the blue, it could turn out better than our fears want us to believe. It often does. The gifts become clearer once the ride is over. 

Matt and I found that particular enlightenment at the top of Space Mountain. 

May you find your Space Mountain, whatever it may be. It’s time to ride. 

You already know what it is, don’t you?

Don’t let the darkness hinder you - it's a helluva ride. Time it right, and you’ll hear me and Matt whooping it up somewhere in there. 

Chins Up, Everyone. 

******************
Thanks for reading My Sunday Post. Here are some important updates from my past week:

Soul Book of the Week: The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday

Book On My Nightstand: Fighting for Space: Two Pilots and Their Battle for Female Spaceflight by Amy Shira Teitel

Best Show / Movie I Watched: The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Episode One. ‘Nuff said.

Strongest Earworm Song: “So Whatcha Want” by Beastie Boys

Longest Walk / Run of the Week: 5.34 mile walk / 14 mile ride (Thursday)

Favorite Hangout T-Shirt of the Week: This one. Because baseball. In Japan.

Coolest Thing of the Week: Receiving $210 I’d totally forgotten was coming.

Thing I Now Know That I Didn’t Last Week: That Febreze really does work - on anything

Most Helpful Perspective / Advice of the Week: “We are not robots. We are all ninjas.”

Current Wanderlust List: 1) A California beach 2) Glacier National Park 3) A Japanese baseball game

“Let’s Put On The Girls”

The Incomparable Jackie Cochran

March 13, 2021

“Girls in Aviation Day”

___________________________

[Editor’s Note: As today is “Girls in Aviation Day", and in honor of Women’s History Month, JDK is publishing this edition a day earlier than usual. Be sure to visit and support Women in Aviation International for more information and resources.]

I had my head in the clouds from a very young age. 

When I wasn’t racing around my house with toy airplanes as a kid, I was learning about pilots and astronauts. Their names and exploits fueled my love of history and an unquenchable passion for the possible - the Wright brothers,  Charles Lindbergh, Jimmy Thatch, James Doolittle, Chuck Yeager, and Neil Armstrong were the first biographies I devoured from kid-level history books. As I grew up, I learned about Eddie Rickenbacker and Yuri Gagarin and Richard Bong, and with the rest of the world raised my eyebrows and shook my head at the unpredictable Force of Nature that was Howard Hughes. 

But the only woman pilot I ever heard about was Amelia Earhart.  And all I really knew about her was that she had vanished without a trace. It was her mystery - not her flying - that I learned about, nothing more. 

I’m embarrassed to admit this, but that didn’t change until I was well into my thirties. 

Yes, my thirties. After earning a Ph.D. in twentieth-century history and a lifelong obsession with aviation and aerospace; despite rigorous training that instilled in me respect for every area of  historical inquiry, particularly women’s history; and despite being raised in a family - and surrounded by friends - who believed in gender and racial equality. Female pilots were never on my radar (forgive the pun) and exploring why I overlooked these powerhouses for so long remains an uncomfortable, though important, exercise for me. 

The sad, larger, conclusion is that I never asked about female pilots or astronauts, even after all the excitement that accompanied Sally Ride’s first foray into space in 1983 (I was ten). While I had no trouble with the idea of women being pilots or astronauts, I had no idea how much of a historical struggle it had been for women to earn their seat in the cockpit. 

I know I wasn’t alone. It’s only been in the last few decades that public attention and interest has developed around the history of women in aerospace, something that grew hand-in-hand (or wingtip to wingtip, if you will) with the rise of women’s history and other social history categories in the larger discipline.  

Before those stories could be known, they had to be noticed. And before they could be noticed, someone had to care enough to notice. Noticing led to quests for information, research, writing and publishing. The trickle down from academia to mainstream education has been slow to follow.  I missed most of that in my schooling. 

What (or who) started to catch me up was Jackie Cochran. 

Talk about a Force of Nature. If you didn’t know that her biography was true, you would think she was either a fictional swashbuckling movie character or early an comic book super hero. 

I’ll only cover some of the highlights of her life here, but this article here can provide what I leave out. It’s a helluva list. 

My interest, instead, is more about why she resonates with me (and with so many others) and what we can still learn from her in our own time, when women still make up less than 9% of all the pilots in the world (among other areas in aviation and aerospace where they remain vastly underrepresented). 

In a nutshell, Jackie Cochran was one of the greatest pilots in history. Period. 

Among her many flight accomplishments in no particular order; she was the first woman to break the sound barrier (and a close, deeply respected friend of the first man to do so, Chuck Yeager); she was the first woman to win the famed Bendix airplane race in the 1930s, and did so flying the notoriously dangerous “Gee Bee” race plane that she once called “an absolute killer”; created and ran the Women’s Air Service Pilots [WASP] program that tested and ferried American warplanes to various theaters of war during World War II; and became an outspoken advisor in NASA’s space program during the Mercury years. By the time she died in 1980, Cochran owned well over a dozen all-time aviation records and was one of the most distinguished pilots of all time. 

Her personal accomplishments were no less impressive. She escaped a difficult, largely uneducated childhood in rural Florida, then worked her way up to self-sufficiency in various labor-heavy jobs before making a name for herself as the founder of a successful cosmetics company. Encouraged by the wealthy man she would later marry (as her second husband), she took up flying to draw more attention to her company, but quickly developed a deeper love for flying than anything (and, one could say, anyone) else. After she’d become a famed aviator, Cochran continued with her successful cosmetics business while hobnobbing with the elites of American society. She is also credited as the one who finally convinced Dwight D. Eisenhower to run for the American presidency in 1952. 

Her personality matched her flying - without fear or second thought, speeding through life by the seat of her pants, and unpredictable to the extreme. She could be foul-mouthed and hot tempered, yet always paused to apply her makeup and fix her hair after flying so she could prove to the waiting press that a woman could be both a successful pilot AND feminine (contrary to the media - and nation at large - who insisted otherwise). She advocated fiercely that women could fly just as well - or better - than men, and set a standard and tone for the women who flew with her that they prove it with every hop. In each new endeavor, she faced dismissal and worse from many male pilots, yet used that as fuel to beat them in races, grueling missions, and aerial chutzpah.

She wasn’t without her contradictions or social difficulties; she made enemies. She worked hard to rewrite the known history of her troubled childhood. During World War II, she strong-armed the USAAF into giving her command of the WASP -  by absorbing another similar organization of women ferry pilots into her own group. When scores of male USAAF pilots flatly refused to test fly the new but dangerous B-26 medium bomber in 1940 - 41, she called them all “sissies” and, after successfully putting the B-26 through its paces herself, told General Hap Arnold that if he wanted to get those male pilots in line, then “Let’s put on the girls.” It worked, yet increased resentment among male pilots for their female counterparts. She later said, “I’d have given my right eye to be an astronaut,” yet some deem her responsible for scuttling the “Mercury 13” project to introduce women astronauts into NASA. Competing so vigorously and successfully against a male-dominated industry, ironically, made her far more comfortable around men than women - she counted among her few female friends Amelia Earhart and Helen Maitland, the wife of the famed general Curtis LeMay. She also led with brash humor and bravado, as if she had to prove herself as “tough” a human being as she was a pilot. She was also known as a fiercely loyal friend who considered all people as equally capable of magnificent accomplishments, regardless of their gender. 

Taken all together, everything about Jackie Cochran’s extraordinary life continues to strike me as remarkably, beautifully, and undeniably human. 

It’s precisely her contradictions and vagaries that make her accomplishments all the more impressive. They underscore just how much strength and commitment and bravery she possessed that she rarely felt comfortable to  show others. She never believed women were inferior to men, yet had to push herself to continually prove that truth over and over again; any mistake or failure could - and would, after she became famous - become public fodder for the widespread prejudices in the United States that insisted women weren’t cut out for the “men’s work” of flying. Absolute perfection was the unfair societal standard for women, though not for men. To gain acceptance among her male peers, she had to balance “acting” like them with holding onto her femininity, establishing a lifelong internal tension that had to have been beyond stressful. Perhaps she loved to fly so much because it relieved the weight of the demands that sat on her shoulders far too often. 

Sadly, it’s a condition to which women in aviation and aerospace today can still relate - because those same pressures still exist. 

Despite the recent  increased public awareness of the accomplishments of Jackie Cochran and so many other legendary female aviation and aerospace pioneers - Bessie Coleman, Jacqueline Auriol, Amy Johnson, Harriet Quimby, Valentina Tereshkova, and Sally Ride, for starters - that has not translated into greater female representation in the skies and space. 

In what comes as a surprise to most everyone I ever say this to, the overall percentage of women pilots and astronauts in the world today has not changed fundamentally from what it was in the 1980s. Yes - that’s now forty years ago. United Airlines currently leads US commercial carriers with the highest percentage of female pilots - at only 7.4%. The highest percentage in the world is currently held by Air India, with 11.2%. The percentages of women of color in global airlines is far, far lower. 

Similarly low percentages still exist among the astronaut corps of nations around the world, among newer commercial space companies, and within the “support” industries of engineering and specialized manufacturing. 

These disparities exist despite the steady increase in workforce demand in these industries over the past forty years, despite decades of widespread initiatives to bring women more fully into these fields, and despite increased public knowledge and acceptance of the past contributions of women to aviation and aerospace. There remains a distinct disconnect between all the efforts and the ultimate results.

The answer to raising those percentages, of course, remains elusive. Continued conversations, initiatives, and innovations in education, public policy, and social development are vital parts of finding that answer. History teaches us that the process of such change can be frustratingly, maddeningly, unfortunately slow.  

Which makes it no less imperative to continue to push for it - not only in the name of increased equity and equality, but also for the broader benefit of the aviation / aerospace industries, the global economy, and humanity as a whole. By doing so, each of us honors those who worked for such change in the past, and sets the course and opportunities for those who will work for such change in the future. That’s part of being human,  just as we each pass on our own accomplishments and stories down to our children for the benefit of our families and communities. These are all interrelated, and require continued and consistent effort. 

For now, that means continually retelling Jackie’s story to more and more people - women and men; retelling all the stories of women in aviation and aerospace that are known and yet to be written; to use these stories to both inspire and guide women into the industry; for the industry itself to reevaluate its priorities and practices to incorporate more women into their workforces; for educational entities and nonprofits to embrace more quality research and innovative ideas to make their programs for efficient and effective; and, above all, each of us taking on the slow, steady, challenging work of changing minds - one person at a time. 

It is only a matter of time - if we choose to take on the challenge.

My own contribution as a historian is to tell stories such as Jackie’s to any who will listen, and as a writer by including Jackie Cochran as a character in my alternate history novel, Krelle’s Inferno. Expanding the nonfiction history of female aviators into the worlds of historical fiction only introduces more people to such women, which leads to interest in knowing more about what they were really like.

In such ways, history is expanded and enriched by adding more voices to it. It’s telling the truth of our collective pasts more completely and honestly - which is the entire point.

I am doing what I can do with what I know, while always seeking to know more. 

What can you do? First, figure out what you know - and don’t know. For example, did you recognize the names of the women I listed above as readily as the men I listed at the beginning of this post? If not, go ahead and start there.

If you do a quick Google search, finding “top ten” lists of the “best” female aviators of all time is easy, and the same names tend to appear in every one. Tellingly, similar lists of the “top ten” male pilots are much more varied and debated, as there are exponentially more of them to move up and down that “all time” list - literally thousands more. For an industry and history that are barely a century old, that discrepancy says more than thousands of pages of words can ever do. 

And yet, ironically, if women pilots and astronauts someday (hopefully sooner than in another hundred years) numbered so many as to create similar “top ten” debates among thousands of options, it would  honor Jackie Cochran and her female contemporaries by manifesting what they’d always believed and practiced - that good pilots are determined not by human gender, but by human skill. 

Which would be, in the end, a way to point humanity towards larger equality, opportunity, and accomplishment of the kind that aviation and aerospace has always inspired in people of all ages, races, and gender identities from its earliest days. 

In short, it’s the proof that what we deem impossible can indeed be made possible, then made into reality. Then we dream again on top of that new reality. 

That is how the stories of women like Jackie Cochran can help women today and tomorrow take their equal, rightful place in the larger human story. 

We each can help write that story, by first helping them fly in it today and tomorrow - built on yesterday. 

Just like Jackie wanted. 

So let’s Get ‘Em - and Keep ‘Em - Flying.

Chins Up, Everyone - so you can get a good look at them as they bust all our barriers.

**If you would like to learn more about Jackie Cochran, she wrote two autobiographies that are worth reading. As her role with the WASP is her most famous legacy, reading the various books by Sarah Byrn Rickman should be your starting point for learning more. If you’d like to help young girls find the inspiration and develop the tools for careers in aviation and aerospace, be sure to check out and support Airway Science for Kids, a Portland, OR based nonprofit that works with underserved youth of all kinds to develop life and career pathways in aviation and aerospace.**

******************
Thanks for reading this Special Early Edition of My Sunday Post.

Here are some important updates from my past week:

Soul Book of the Week: I’m Proud of You: My Friendship with Fred Rogers by Tim Madigan (a re-read!)

Book On My Nightstand: A Writer at War by Vasily Grossman

Best Show / Movie I Watched: For All Mankind, Season 2 (Apple TV) Geeeeeeeeez it’s good so far…

Strongest Earworm Song: “World Turning” by Fleetwood Mac

Longest Walk / Run of the Week: 5.86 mile walk / 19 mile ride (Thursday)

Favorite Hangout T-Shirt of the Week: This one. Unleash the KRAKEN!

Coolest Thing of the Week: My Monday podcast and Facebook Live.

Thing I Now Know That I Didn’t Last Week: That I am (again!) allergic to milk.

Most Helpful Perspective / Advice of the Week: “We can’t think our way out of exhaustion”

Current Wanderlust List: 1) A baseball game. Any game. 2) A warm beach. Any beach. 3) Japan

Pitching Fatigue

I feel you, CB. I do.

March 7, 2021

__________________________

“Hey, JD - how do you feel about maybe pitching our next game?” 

It was one of the most exciting questions this third-grader could have been asked way back then. I loved playing baseball, but had never thought I could ever be “good enough” to pitch. 

But Coach seemed to think I could! So did that mean I was actually good enough? 

I played it cool. 

“Uh, sure, Coach. I could do that. I’m ready.” 

“Great! So get out on that mound and show me what you’ve got.”

Ummmmm…..(gulp).....?

“Right now?” I asked. It was just a standard after-school practice, but everyone seemed to be watching. I wouldn’t have any time to psych myself up - or out. 

“Yup, right now. That’s what practice is for, isn’t it?” 

Of course. Okay, Coach. 

I was nervous. I wanted to do well. I didn’t want my teammates to see me struggle (I was, and remain, far too conscious of other people’s attention on what I’m doing). I wanted to succeed. 

My first throw from the mound, I “overthrew” it. It sailed over the catcher (my buddy Reedy) and whacked the backstop. Great velocity, Coach said, but slow down and focus on the catcher’s mitt. 

My second throw hit the dirt two feet in front of the plate. Reedy lofted a “what was that?” shrug at me. 

Crap. 

I was already sweating. Coach told me to take a deep breath. I did. Everyone was watching. 

Damn it.

(Even at that age, I already liked breaking the taboo of saying Bad Words. Or thinking them, at least). 

My third pitch found Reedy’s mitt, but was well outside the strike zone. 

F%@#....

That brought Coach over to the mound. He sensed what was happening. 

“You’re good enough to do this. You believe that?”

I nodded, a total lie. He nodded back, not convinced. 

“So what’s the problem?”

I kicked at the dirt. He asked twice more. I wanted to crawl away back to my usual spot at second base and let the Pitch Dream Die. 

Reedy wouldn't have it. 

“It’s too quiet for him,” he said to Coach, walking up to the mound. Then he pointed at me with his fat mitt. “You can do this, and you know you want to. So just hit the mitt. The guys will respond. Just watch.” 

He went back to the plate, and Coach stepped back. “Deep breath, relax, and have fun. Remember the fun of this.” 

Fun. Yes. This is fun.

The team watched me try to remember fun. 

“Fun, brah!” Reedy whooped as he renewed his crouch behind the plate. That made me smirk.

Just Hit the Mitt. That’s all. 

I wound up and pitched - I didn’t think. 

SNAP! The ball hit the mitt - a perfect strike. 

And my teammates roared with excitement. All of them. 

It was the perfect sound for a sensitive kid lacking confidence. I exchanged wide grins with Reedy and Coach. 

That was fun. Do it again. 

SNAP! SNAP! SNAP!

Three strikes in a row, all followed with shouts of support from my teammates. 

They knew what I needed. 

They kept doing that for the rest of practice, then in the game a few days later. I pitched well overall, and I had fun. 

In all my anxiety about getting the chance to pitch, it took me a while to remember to….just pitch. And to have fun. And to trust my teammates for help. We all wanted the same thing - to have fun, to compete, and (ideally), to win. 

**FAST FORWARD THIRTY-NINE YEARS** 

Last Thursday, that childhood memory swam vividly through me as I prepared to pitch again. 

Not in a baseball game this time, but on Twitter - pitching my book manuscript to potential agents and publishers.  

It’s a quarterly event known to writers everywhere as “Pitch Madness.” 

On those days, any writer with a finished book manuscript has three chances to pitch a 280-max character description out into the Twitterverse via hashtags particular to their genre. Literary agents and publishers then watch for any that catch their interest. If that happens, a writer may get their shot to send that agent or publisher a query letter, short book description, sample chapter(s), or even a full-length manuscript. 

It can launch a writing career, and has done so before. 

Hundreds of thousands of tweets go out in each event. So yeah, it’s definitely Madness. 

Last Thursday, I dove into it for the second time. And it played out a lot like that day long ago on the pitcher’s mound. 

My alternate history novel, Krelle’s Inferno, has been done for a while now. I’m proud of it. I believe in it. I’ve had readers - some of my teammates - say it’s good. I know they believe in me and support me. 

Writing my novel was like playing second base as a kid - I knew how to do it, and enjoyed it a lot. My confidence there wasn’t ever a problem. 

But pitching?? That felt altogether different, and far harder. Because pitching my book on Twitter is putting it out far beyond my own comfort zones. I felt like everyone was watching. 

I even had a coach this week to prepare for it - a fantastic prep course I signed up for a while back. The other attendees were my teammates, all looking to do the same thing. I felt ready by Thursday. 

But when I finally “took the mound” to pitch,  I was so nervous - so aware - of my vulnerability, of the singularity of what I was pitching: 

MY book. MY dream. MY Labor of Love. 

All the doubts and questions flew at me like they did that day in front of Reedy and Coach. 

Can I really do this? I think I can, but does anyone else? Will agents? Can I even hit the strike zone?

My first pitch - tweet - went nowhere. One person, a fellow writer, noted it and retweeted it. Just one. 

Crap. Maybe I overthrew it? 

Actually, I saw I forgot to pin the tweet to my profile (my coach had suggested that earlier). So I did that on the second one, and it did a bit better. I didn’t do much other than watch. More writers noticed it and retweeted it, but no notice from agents. 

Damn it. 

I was nervous. I was doubting myself. I was dejected that my pitches didn’t seem to be very good. Pitching is way different than playing second base. 

I had one more pitch for the day. Would I miss the strike zone? There was no Coach or Reedy this time to set me straight.

But, as I soon saw, I still had a lot of teammates. My fellow writers. 

You know, all those OTHER writers doing the same thing as me that day, all feeling the same feelings as me. All pitching and wondering if they’d hit the strike zone. 

They all encouraged each other, offered to retweet out pitches and asked for the same in return. Writers not participating in the event - published and unpublished alike - also offered to retweet pitches, increasing the chances for agents to see them. In the process, everyone built their followings, a key development for any writer these days. 

It was encouraging, supportive, and - yup, you guessed it - fun. 

Or could be, if I just let it. 

So I decided to have fun and be a good teammate. 

I heard Reedy in my head - “Just Hit the Mitt.” 

I threw my last pitch, pinning it to my profile. Then I FINALLY started retweeting pitches from my teammates with gusto. I decided to actually enter the game, to play with my fellow writers instead of “against” them - or against myself.

And sure enough, the “cheers” for my own pitch followed. My last tweet got a lot more attention and support, and I added nearly three dozen new followers to my “team.” It was invigorating and eye-opening. 

So did I hit the “strike zone” with that last pitch? I know you’re wondering. 

I did. But not in the sense that I got attention from an agent. That didn’t happen. 

Yet.

But the clarity I got instead - and the confidence that my writer teammates gave me - made my last pitch a doozy that, for my money, hit the right strike zone with verve. 

It reminded me to have fun and to invest in my teammates, and to allow them the chance to support me. It showed me my next steps - to be a lot more active in connecting with writing groups on Twitter and elsewhere, to do more to promote this website and my podcast among my fellow writers and their followers, and to simply breathe and….pitch. 

Just Hit the Mitt. 

Do that enough times, and it will eventually work in the Game. And with help, I can maybe win. 

My query letter for agents is strong, and it’s ready to go. I even have the names of the agents I want to send them to for consideration. I just haven’t pitched it yet. 

So just breathe and pitch, JDK. 

The online writing community is huge and ready to help each other in more ways than I can anticipate. 

So just breathe and pitch, JDK. 

Up until now, it’s been too quiet for me. Like that practice day all those years ago, I thrive off my teammates' support. I keep forgetting that.

So just breathe and  pitch, JDK. 

I’ve been overthrowing from overthinking.  

For example, each edition of My Sunday Post thus far has, for the most part, been a long read. I’m proud of every one of them, AND I want people to have the time in their busy days to finish them. I can reframe them to be more digestible in one sitting. That’s starting right now, right here.

So just breathe and pitch, JDK. 

That will help me build my team, and that then will make everything more fun and meaningful. It’s pretty much the same as anything else in life - relax, breathe, pitch, take in the cheers of those who love us, and give back the same. 

The rest follows. All we have to do is Just Hit the Mitt. 

Over and over again. And remember to have fun. 

So if it’s too quiet for you on your mound, remember to just pitch. Your Coach believes you can, Your Reedy will catch it, and you have Your Teammates who will cheer you on. 

That’s all that really matters in the end. 

I don’t remember if we won the baseball game I pitched that day. The outcome turned out not to be the most important part of the story.  Imagine that.

Instead, I remember the fun, my teammates in my corner, and my love for the game. Everything else took care of itself. 

Call it Life Madness. It can be a fun game to pitch in, if we let it be. 

So just breath and pitch. 

If you need a Reedy to catch for you, just ask….

Chins Up, Everyone. 

******************
Thanks for reading My Sunday Post. Here are some important updates from my past week:

Soul Book of the Week: The Way to Love: The Last Meditations of Anthony De Mello. A Top Ten for me.

Book On My Nightstand: Everything Flows by Vasily Grossman.

Best Show / Movie I Watched: I Care A Lot (Netflix). No one to root for in it, but it works somehow.

Strongest Earworm Song: Rational Culture by Tim Maia. Twelve minutes of Serious Groove.

Longest Walk / Run of the Week: 6 mile run (Wednesday) and 18 mile ride (Friday).

Favorite Hangout T-Shirt of the Week: This one. In honor of all my California Peeps.

Coolest Thing of the Week: Pitch Madness.

Thing I Now Know That I Didn’t Last Week: How WandaVision ended. I liked it.

Most Helpful Perspective / Advice of the Week: “Recipes ain’t meals - you still gotta cook it yourself.”

Current Wanderlust List: 1) Anywhere sunny; 2) Anywhere sunny with baseball; 3) Japan

Shoulda Coulda Woulda

One with Mars on it would just look red. With a few little robot dots on it. And a teeny tiny Matt Damon.

February 28, 2021

_________________________

If they gave out gold medals for neuroses, I once would have been the Jim Thorpe of the Second-Guess-Myself Decathlon - over the years, I’d become a master. 

It’s clear to me now precisely because I don’t participate much in that death sport anymore. It’s the current absence of it that makes its past presence so glaringly obvious — like waking up one day and discovering that there’s always been an elephant in the living room but you’ve always just sort of worked around it despite its size, aroma, and droppings.

Granted, I made enough boneheaded and self-destructive decisions in the past to warrant some healthy second-guessing, but some of those decisions I made so often that second-guessing never really changed anything. Rather than being my voice of reason, second-guessing became just one stage of my endless cycle: self-destructive decisions, second-guessing, shame, numbing, lather, rinse, repeat. And nothing changed.

Except the second-guessing.

I know I’m not alone in this. It’s a fine line between second-guessing yourself and learning from your mistakes. The latter, when done well, leads to self-improvement and growth. The former, I’ve learned, just keeps us stuck in our cycle of self-doubt, recrimination, fear, etc.

But that’s not very fun to read about on a Sunday morning, I make up. I don’t want you to waste your coffee and favorite breakfast on hearing (even more about) my past mistakes and the lessons I’ve learned.

Instead, I want to explore the good kind of second-guessing, one that can be fun and instructive and educational.

I call it the “Fun of the What If.” 

Or the Exploring of the Possible. To open up willingly to new ideas in anything — big life choices, hobbies, careers, relationships, beliefs.

Anything at all. 

For me, the biggest “What If” Question I’ve asked myself in the last handful of years is, “what if I tried to write an alternate history fiction novel?”

That’s right — a “what if” question about writing a “what if” story. 

Then, I wrote it. Took me about three years. It’s entitled Krelle’s Inferno. You may have heard me talk about it (insert your eye roll here).

The experience of writing it gave me more than anything else ever has, and that’s saying something. It taught me so much more about positive vs. negative “what iffing” than I’d ever thought possible. 

It was also the most fun I’ve ever had in my life. 

And, it was easy - and I don’t mean that snidely or arrogantly. It was a lot of work, yes, but it never really felt like work in the “daily grind” kind of way. Not once in the three years I was writing did I end up saying anything close to “this sucks, it will never work,” or “I have no idea how to solve this dilemma I just created,” or “I can’t go any further with this.” I never had classic “writer’s block,” though I did take time (days or weeks on occasion) to consider what paths to take / ideas to follow / details to check before diving back into writing. 

It all felt natural - this “what if” felt natural. That was new for me, and genuinely exciting because of it. 

Unlike when I wrote nonfiction history in grad school and after, where ascertaining every fact and sequence and consequence is of paramount importance, alternate history fiction allowed me to play around with the possibilities in a story rooted on a premise of a well-known historical event having a different outcome. Essentially, alternate history fiction explores the “Butterfly Effect” of how a change in a prominent historical event would create “ripples” outward that would change subsequent history’s unfolding in profound ways. 

In the case of Krelle’s Inferno, my chosen butterfly event was the famous Allied invasion of Normandy on “D-Day” - June 6, 1944. In actual history, that day produced one of the most important victories of the Second World War for the Allies, and one of the most important victories in all of history. 

In Krelle’s Inferno, however, I turned that day into the exact opposite - a calamitous defeat for the Allies and one of the most consequential defeats in history. 

Sounds sacrilegious, I know. It kinda felt that way to actually write, to be honest. And I ended up creating a pretty scary alternate world based on it. But it also became an excellent catalyst for exploring the possible outcomes of that defeat which could tell us a lot about our own actual time - and selves - in ways that nonfiction historical accounts can’t. 

To explain this idea a bit more, some other examples of alternate history fiction can be helpful. For example, in Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle - the 1962 work many consider to be the “first” alternate history novel, and written by the same guy that penned Blade Runner - its premise that Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan won the Second World War and divided America between them at the Rocky Mountains allowed for uncomfortable questions to be asked about race relations, sexism, and cultural imperialism in the American world-view at the time. The possibility of a future where such differences emerged in a fashion so starkly different from our own experience shines a bright light on our own reality, asking us to consider how the choices we make politically, socially, and even personally can shape subsequent events. The strong suggestion, of course, is that different choices can produce different outcomes - perhaps even more positive ones in the midst of calamity. The recent hit television series based on Dick’s novel went even further than the book in highlighting prejudices, cultural assumptions, and accepted racial / gender roles in not just the postwar era, but (even more so, as would be expected) our own time. 

Speaking of television shows, the first season of For All Mankind chooses a huge historical event - the first moon landing - as the basis of its Butterfly Effect story. Three weeks before Apollo 11 is scheduled to make Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin the first humans to walk on the moon, the Soviet Union surprises the world by beating them to it. Instead of Armstrong, the name that goes down in history is some Cosmonaut named Alexei Leonev. To say that America’s confidence is shaken to its core is an understatement. The series challenges America’s sense of self, its views of women and gender roles, race, the conduct of the Vietnam War, and even the outcome of presidential elections. It asks us to consider what might have been different - and maybe should have been - had we embraced different ideas. 

[Editor’s Note: Let’s be clear - JDK is beyond okay with Neil and Buzz getting there first in real history. Scoreboard, Brezhnev! All your heavy medals didn’t get you there first! Sorry - obscure Cold War history reference]

In writing Krelle’s Inferno, I confronted similar “what ifs” in composing a world in which the Allies lost D-Day but still won the Second World War over Nazi Germany. In real history, hundreds of thousands of American, British, and other soldiers advanced on Germany from the west after D-Day as the Soviet Union closed in from the east. In my story, however, the Soviet Union has to conquer nearly all of Europe to end the war. As a result, instead of the “battle lines” of the subsequent Cold War being drawn right down the middle of Germany and dividing Europe as a whole, the line is the English Channel. 

Yikes. 

The “what ifs” of this scenario came at me in waves (and, it’s worth noting, Dwight Eisenhower - who was in charge of Allied forces on D-Day - gave the invasion only a 50/50 shot of success). How would this have changed America’s confidence as a global leader after World War II? How would it have affected their relations with Britain? How would an explosion of communism’s global popularity have changed things like the end of European colonialism? How would the United States exert its influence without any troops in Europe? What would have been the ramifications in American society? 

I came up with possible answers to these and many more questions as I wrote. Women get to fly in the military much earlier. The Soviets surpass the US in developing technology that leads to jet aircraft and manned space flight. France makes no attempt to reconquer its empire in Indochina (thus, no basis for an eventual American war in Vietnam). The Soviet invasion of Japanese-held territory never happens, so no Soviet forces occupy the northern portion of the Korean peninsula - soooo no basis for the creation of North Korea or for a war there, either. Or the continued threat there in the decades to follow. In the US, there is no attempted reduction in military forces like there was in actual history, the wartime economy continues on unabated, and the Soviet’s constant propaganda about the US being an unequal society for women and ethnic minorities results in serious political and social upheavals and changes in America. 

Yikes again. D-Day sure is a big butterfly. 

Besides the fun playing with possibilities, writing an alternate history reinforced to me why our actual history is so valuable — by casting in sharp relief the potential effects and consequences of them not happening.

In that sense, alternate history fiction can teach history from another direction  - like peeking through its windows or entering it through a back door. Though not in a creepy way like that kinda sounds.

Never mind - you get the point. Moving on. 

The most significant influence on this element of my “what if” exploration has always been the novels of the English writer and journalist Robert Harris, whose alternate histories are frighteningly believable and deeply poignant. His 1992 novel, Fatherland, is my favorite alternate history novel by far, and one of my top 10 all-time favorite books. Its main character, an ordinary policeman named Xavier March, remains one of my favorite literary characters in any genre. The novel is set in Nazi Germany in 1964 (yup, you read that right), just before Hitler’s 75th birthday. In this alternate history, Nazi Germany also defeated the allies at D-Day, and managed to push back the Soviets in the East. As a result, in 1964, Nazi Germany occupies all of Europe from the English Channel to the Ural Mountains in Russia, the United States and Nazi Germany are involved in their own Cold War that is being fought around the globe, and the fate of all of Europe’s Jews remains unknown.

Serious yikes. It’s an astounding novel on every level.

I won’t give away the plot. You need to read it. Harris uses historical events masterfully to create tension and actual historical documents from the war as a key element to the story’s resolution. The book floored me. I re-read it twice immediately, and later assigned it in college classes I taught on the history of Nazi Germany to drive home the point that the Nazis intended to win the war and had horrific plans for afterwards. It’s easy to forget that. This novel, like so many alternate histories, makes clear that nothing is inevitable and that human agency has consequences far beyond their own time.

That makes these “what ifs” worth exploring. 

Inspired by writers like Harris and Dick (and more who are mentioned at the end of this post), I wanted to create a Cold War world quite different from the one of history, both plausible and vivid for the reader. I like to think I’ve succeeded. Finding out for sure is what constitutes my next set of “what ifs.”

Having turned the “what if” I wrote a novel into an “I did” led me to a new “what if” - what if I get it published?

Well, the short answer is it would be awesome and the realization of a lifelong dream. It would give me an opportunity to write more and, perhaps, do it exclusively; I have two more Krelle novels planned, and have already started on the second one, tentatively titled Krelle’s Archipelago. 

But who knows what specifics will happen? Those are the types of “what-ifs” that I cannot predict – specific outcomes. No one can. I could speculate, but not with any degree of confidence like I could with the consequences I altered in my story. So I really shouldn’t waste my energy on such fantasies, when all it does is kick me out of reality - which is that I have work to do to get the book published. 

And notice the “what if” question I ask myself is NOT “what if I don’t get it published?”

I don’t ask it (not very often at least) because the answer is obvious — it doesn’t get published. Any specific outcomes after that require new questions. Self-publish? One chapter at a time on the Internet for the hell of it? I don’t really know. 

But why worry about that? Especially if I, *ahem*, just keep working on getting it published? 

In the writing communities I am in and follow, this is the area where I see the most challenge for writers like me trying to get their first novels published - they stop trying. 

But not because they don’t want the book published anymore. 

Instead, it’s because the feeling of beating one’s head against the wall, getting rejection letter after rejection letter from agents or publishers, wears down confidence and will to keep going. Stamina certainly is required and tested in just getting the book written in the first place, and then more is demanded to attract it the attention it needs to get on an agent’s radar to then be put in front of potential publishers. 

I get it. It’s dispiriting to get rejections. I’ve gotten some.

It’s exhausting hearing conflicting advice and trying to decide which is best to follow. I’ve gotten plenty and have taken time to act.

It’s so hard to juggle a day job with the night job of prepping everything you need for submissions, identifying agents to query, getting materials out to them, then tracking which ones actually answer. 

Many don’t. It doesn’t feel good. 

Each author writes a book not only because it’s something they wanted to do, but because they decided it was important enough to them to write AND put out into the world. There’s heavy emotional investment and vulnerability in that.

And with rejection after rejection, silence after silence, the message can seem to be that the world doesn’t want it. And then it’s easy to go from “the world doesn’t want it / think it’s good enough” to “the world doesn’t want ME / I’m not good enough.”

Which is complete bullshit, of course, but it is nevertheless a slog to walk through that process, like trying to hike up a mountain in shin-high mud in a rainstorm. 

It’s a grind, to be sure - writing the book wasn’t for me, but this next step often is.

And yet, what I am also finding “easy” is not giving up. 

Yep, this “what if” isn’t a candidate for one of those old Second-Guess-Myself gold medals. If it had been, I honestly don’t think I ever would’ve finished the novel in the first place. 

I don’t know exactly why I feel that way, but I know better than to question it too deeply. I’m just happy that the idea of quitting hasn’t ever crossed my mind. 

“What If,” at some point, has to become “Just Do.” 

Because by doing so, I give myself more chances at getting “lucky” here. 

The great writer and philosopher, Joseph Campbell, wrote about this throughout his life — a point made over and over in the insightful documentary about the effects of his thought on modern artists, Finding Joe. We have to finally face and slay our Dragons - the beasts that keep us from realizing our dreams - in order to make them happen.

So what Campbell means for me is that the more I put out query letters, the more chances I give myself of someone taking interest in it and publishing it. 

In shorthand, we make our own luck. 

I don’t need fifty agents or publishers to want to publish Krelle’s Inferno - I need one. And I have a far better chance of finding that one if I send out three hundred or three thousand query letters than if I send out thirty.

Or three. 

Or none.

So I just need to keep doing it, the same way I “just did” the book. Keep going until it’s done. Make time every day and put more of it out there — instead of ruminating endlessly like I have about so many other things in the past. Or quit when the time frame I have decided is the “right one” doesn’t materialize. 

That would make me the problem, not the phantom agent or publisher out there that just doesn’t know that they need to publish me NOW.

The “what if” question — what if I keep putting out queries and never give up — will only be answered when I get an answer. 

I create more possibilities of an answer I like by doing more. 

Then continuing to do it. 

If this sounds like I’m talking myself into this, I get it. And if it somehow is (even though I don’t think it is), there is no hurt in giving myself a pep talk today.

Or every day. As long as I don’t quit.

Quitting is not a possibility I’m willing to consider. I’ve already earned a life-time achievement award for all the Second-Guessing gold medals I’ve won.  

Writing Krelle’s Inferno broke me of that habit, thank God. Most of the time….

Along the way I was surprised to learn how badly my old second-guessing had hurt me. By showing me what it felt like to never second-guess myself, I began to trust my intuition and my writing. 

It taught me that the answers to any day-in-day-out “what if” question can only focus on taking action, not trying to predict outcomes or calculate potential consequences. As with anything else, outcomes and consequences don’t lend themselves to easy prediction. If they did, we all would be millionaires.

And I’d be publishing Krelle’s Inferno’s seventeenth sequel in my own publishing house. From my private jet. Any of these.

A story that I created, that I sketched/scaffolded/experimented with/moved around/pitched to friends/made as realistic as possible taught me more about myself than practically anything else I’ve ever done — simply by doing it.

Sometimes — a lot of times, I’ve found  — that’s enough in any situation, at any time. Just doing something in the moment to further the process forward is digestible. It doesn’t need to be graphed or run through a computer to test outcomes or even be handed over to some deity, incantation, superstition, or therapist for help.  

Because doing something is just that. The rest, at least for me, has to do with trying to control the outcome and get it the way I want it. 

But by not focusing on that, I make the outcome I want far more likely. Because I’m keeping my shit out of my own way. Trying to anticipate all the outcomes or consequences is the equivalent of trying to eat another full meal on top of an immensely satisfying one. It just leads to stomach aches and no appreciation of either meal. Which defeats the purpose and destroys the joy of eating in the first place.

Even if you haven’t written a novel and tried to get it published, this still works. For anything, really. You already know what it is for you, I’d bet. What that Dragon of yours might be.

We don’t have to be blown around by the winds produced by some butterfly somewhere, asking ourselves why the wind is so strong or how we will survive it or where we will end up when the storm ends. 

We can just be the goddamned butterfly. 

So let’s get flapping. 

But finish your coffee first, or you’ll spill. 

Chins Up, Everyone. 

******************

The literary world of Alternate History Fiction is extraordinarily rich, and television / film media are noticing that there are audiences of all ages for it, as the successful television adaptations of Philp Dick’s “The Man in the High Castle” and Philip Roth’s “The Plot Against America” make clear.

For my money, anything by Robert Harris should be read and re-read. He started out by chronicling the true story of the so-called “Hitler Diaries” forgery back in the 1980s in his riveting book, Selling Hitler. In addition to his aforementioned novel, Fatherland, I also suggest his books Enigma and Archangel. His most recent standard historical fiction novels, Munich and V2, are both excellent as well.

And seriously - read Fatherland. Then read it again. Then give it to someone else to read.

Professional historians have also done work with alternate history, some of which has been quite influential for me with Krelle’s Inferno. In particular, the fantastic collection of essays, If the Allies Had Fallen, brings fine historians from around the world to consider a number of alternative scenarios within World War II. Denis Showalter’s piece on D-Day was a direct influence on the scenario I set up in my own novel to explain the D-Day defeat. The three volumes of “What If?” also feature historians exploring scenarios from throughout global history like “What if Pizarro Had Not Found Potatoes in Peru?” and “What if Martin Luther Had Been Burned at the Stake?” So much fascinating history to be learned this way - by seeing what might have happened instead of what DID.

Enjoy the possibilities.

******************
Thanks for reading My Sunday Post. Here are some important updates from my past week:

Soul Book of the Week: Barking to the Choir: The Power of Radical Kinship by Gregory Boyle.

Book On My Nightstand: Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman. It’s a f#@%ing long book.

Best Show / Movie I Watched: For All Mankind, Season One (Apple TV)

Strongest Earworm Song: Roman Candles by Hard Working Americans

Longest Walk / Run of the Week: Four mile walk, 30 minutes on the stationary bike (Friday)

Coolest Experience of the Week: A friend giving me a Pop Tart as an (unnecessary but appreciated) apology - see last week’s post

Thing I Now Know That I Didn’t Before: That blue herons nest in trees, and often in groups.

Most Helpful Perspective / Advice of the Week: “Keeping things ‘Light’ doesn’t mean ‘Shallow’”

T-Shirt I Didn’t Want to Take Off / Wash: My old-school 1980 “Miracle On Ice” USA Hockey shirt

Choosing Our [Blood] Brothers

Cue the Waterworks, Y’all!

February 21, 2021

___________________________

Between the ages of eight and ten, I loved Mondays.

You read that right. Loved them. And, no, it wasn’t because I was one of those good students who liked going to school. I didn’t. To be more accurate, I loved Monday nights, because I got to stay up an extra thirty minutes past my bedtime…

To watch M*A*S*H.

It was, and remains, my favorite TV show of all time (to ward off the inevitable questions about what other shows make my All Time List, here are a few in no particular order – the original Magnum, P.I., Night Court, the original Law and Order, and more recently Ray Donovan floored me). In all the years since, M*A*S*H has been a show that stops my channel surfing in its tracks, and its recent inclusion on streaming platforms like Hulu literally has put it at my fingertips. Of course, I’ve long owned the entire series on DVD , so even if my Internet is out I can still watch it. I know – it’s a sickness.

Not really. A sickness is something that takes away energy, that drains life temporarily or long-term. M*A*S*H has always been really positive for me and remains a comfort. Then recently — in the last six months or so — it’s been resonating more deeply than ever before. Mainly, because I’m seeing just how strongly the show portrays genuine human connection. In particular, friendship.

Friendship of the deepest, fiercest, most enduring sort.

The show’s setting and premise lent itself to an intense examination and illustration of the deepest bonds of friendship. If you don’t really know the show, here’s your primer: a mobile army surgical hospital a few miles from the front during the Korean War of 1950 - 53, staffed largely by draftee surgeons and nurses. While trying to save an endless stream of shattered bodies, they must wrestle with their own physical and emotional trauma of everyday life in a medical version of hell.  

As such, the show’s characters come from all over the country — some from real places like Mill Valley, California, or Hannibal, Missouri, and others from fictional places like Crabapple Cove, Maine. Personalities run the gamut from down-home innocence (Corporal Walter “Radar” O’Reilly) to haughty arrogance (Major Charles Emerson Winchester III) to zany faux-insanity (Corporal then Sergeant Maxwell Q. Klinger). None of the characters really wanted to be in Korea doing their bloody work (with the notable exception of Major Frank Burns [Editor’s Note: “what say you, Ferret-Face??”] and the early-seasons’ version of Major Margaret Houlihan), but lived up to the challenges with the skill and dedication that relied on — then fed back into — deepening friendships based on trust, common experience, and acceptance (most of the time) of each other’s personality quirks and ways of looking at the world.

Of all the wonderfully rich characters whose various friendships became the fabric of the show, the central friendship in M*A*S*H — it’s veritable heartbeat — was the one between Captain Benjamin Franklin “Hawkeye” Pierce and Captain BJ Hunnicutt. They first met at the beginning of Season Four in what is, in my book, the greatest major character transition in television history (replacing “Trapper” John McIntyre). By the end of the show’s eleventh and final season, they were more brothers than friends. And yet, somehow, they were so much more than both together or either alone.

From a young age watching that show, I recognized the power of their bond. It had a profound effect on how I understood friendship — and how I wanted mine to be.

Yes, in a way that’s a lot of heavy lifting for a kid of eight to ten years old. At the time, though, I was really getting into military stuff; my grandparents were Marines in World War II; I lived just a short flight from Pearl Harbor in Hawaii and saw that for the first time; and I was really drawn to things like military aviation (because, you know... airplanes!) and big giant battleships and aircraft carriers. I liked the confident swagger and the power that came with military bearing, so I ate up books and shows and movies on those subjects whenever I could. 

My parents understood this in me, but I think they also wanted me to see the human costs of war. M*A*S*H  accomplished that in as real and honest a way as could be done at the time. If I was going to be interested in all the bells and whistles, they figured I also needed to see the pain and loss inevitably involved in war. I think they hoped I would find a balance, and I did. I never did join the military, for instance, but I’ve always retained my respect for it and its various roles. I also ended up studying the World Wars, the Korean War, Vietnam, and other wars professionally later in life and have benefited from this immensely. So, thanks Mom and Dad! 

Yet now, over forty years after I first watched the show in its original run (and then I had only watched the last few seasons, when the show had moved from being a slapstick comedy to a much more serious “dramedy”), what resonates with me most is the friendship between Hawkeye and BJ.

I think it’s actually the ideal friendship, one any of us would be beyond blessed to have. I have several friendships like this that in many ways are foundational to my growth as a human being.

In many ways, the two men were strikingly different from one another. Hawkeye, played by Alan Alda, is the quintessential malcontent, and anti-everything that could possibly be considered standard operating procedure or socially appropriate. At his worst, he is a self-righteous and self-absorbed womanizer who can’t show real vulnerability to anyone and operates from a position of rage against any and all injustice in the world. At his best, he has a moral clarity and compass that are unparalleled, and he is a zealously protective friend and wise confidant. 

BJ, played by Mike Farrell, on the surface seems to be the exact opposite; he’s a relaxed, jovial, happily married man completely in love with his wife and a devoted father. He is the epitome of what many look for as the American dream. Without a doubt, the producers intended to create this clear set of differences when they introduced BJ at the beginning of Season Four — in previous seasons, Hawkeye and Trapper John McIntyre were in many ways exactly alike, so this switch allowed the show to push the two primary surgeons in the story to deeper and broader places. I remain convinced to this day that the show ended up lasting so long because of this change (along with Colonel Sherman Potter replacing Henry Blake as commanding officer of the 4077th after Henry’s death in the Full-Stomach-Punch final episode of Season Three).

But over time, it became very clear that their opposites not only “attracted” Hawkeye and BJ to one another, but also disguised core similarities that made them unshakable brothers in arms. In particular, both share a strong aversion to the human costs of war and have equal irreverence for military brass and group-think. They are both zealous surgeons who uphold the Hippocratic oath, and seem to apply that bedrock axiom of the medical world to “do no harm and always be honest” to their relationship with each other and others in the camp. They also, each in their own unique way, embrace humor to cope with the horrors of war. As any two tightly knit friends know, shared humor goes a long way in deepening the bonds of friendship. Both are merciless practical jokers, including busting one another’s chops, as a big part of their friendship investment.

Time after time, Hawkeye and BJ show up for one another during difficult times, although they take differing approaches to problems. Hawkeye shoots from the hip and doesn’t think about consequences until he’s cooled off; BJ, by contrast, is much more reserved and inclined to take a more circuitous — and likely safer — approach to a solution. Their moral compasses inevitably, if eventually, point them in the right direction. They share their thoughts freely, especially when they disagree, but they don’t judge or reject the other one for it. Their honesty with, and yet full acceptance of, each other is profound.

Hawkeye has no idea what it's like to be married and happily settled, and BJ cannot relate to Hawkeye’s unguided missile approach to life. Yet that doesn’t keep them from knowing exactly when to give direct feedback, or to stay quiet and just be there for the other, or to step in to help prevent disaster (or produce victory) for the other. Even when they have full blowout arguments, to the point of screaming matches or one of them moving out of the Swamp (the nickname for the surgeons’ quarters) for a time, they always find each other again — and each grow from one another’s perspective and insights and support. They are never afraid of Messy - they love each other too much NOT to go there.

This is evident in just about any episode from Seasons Four through Eleven, but as illustration I offer you three of my favorite examples of the fierce beauty and durability of their connection. 

In Season 7, Episode 23 (“Preventative Medicine”) Hawkeye and BJ both develop and express a deep loathing for one Colonel Lacy, a commander notorious for producing high numbers of casualties in attacks on targets of dubious necessity. The fact that Lacy is gung ho, yet also somehow blasé about the number of men he gets killed and wounded, only infuriates both of them further. But they come to odds late in the episode, when Hawkeye hatches a plan to get Lacy off the front line for good. They invite Lacy to the Swamp for a drink of their homemade moonshine, and Hawkeye spikes Lacy’s glass with a powder that gives the colonel unbearable side cramps. BJ, initially going along with the ruse, says it must be a bad case of gastritis, which will then take Lacy off the line for a day or two. However, when Hawkeye insists it must be appendicitis and wants to operate, BJ can’t believe his ears. While Lacy is prepped for the unnecessary surgery, BJ lets Hawkeye have it — he tells Hawkeye that cutting into a healthy body is mutilation, and goes against all that they stand for; he warns Hawkeye that he will lose his self-respect and hate himself if he follows through on his plan, and BJ refuses to take any part in it. Hawkeye, in response, unleashes his fury with Lacy at BJ, saying that if all it takes to get a “butcher” off the line is a simple appendectomy, he will gladly do it to save lives. It’s one of those situations where the viewer can see the validity in both sides of the argument. In the end, Hawkeye operates and when he returns to the Swamp, he finds a cooled BJ waiting for him. Hawkeye is clearly feeling remorse, but as BJ tells him that more wounded are on their way in by helicopter, Hawkeye sits heavy on his bunk, thoroughly defeated. BJ says calmly, “You treated a symptom — the disease goes merrily on.” Then comes the most remarkable part of the episode for me; BJ stands to attend to the wounded and as he passes Hawkeye he reaches out, grasps his shoulder and says kindly, “Let’s go, Hawk.” And a chagrined Hawkeye, who can’t look BJ in the eye, grasps his friend’s arm tightly. Bond strengthened.

I cry every time. 

In Season 8, Episode 6 (“Period of Adjustment”), BJ melts down when he gets a letter from Peg describing the recently departed Radar’s short visit with Peg and their toddler daughter, Erin, at the San Francisco airport. As BJ relates to Hawkeye, when Erin saw Radar in his military uniform, she ran up to him shouting, “Daddy!” In response to that letter, BJ embarks on an epic alcohol bender. When Hawkeye tries to empathize with BJ, it doesn’t go well — BJ rejects Hawkeye entirely, saying there’s no way he can understand being away from a wife and baby. When Hawkeye angrily points out that he’s been in Korea far longer than BJ, the rampaging Hunnicutt not only destroys their prized moonshine still, but punches Hawkeye in the face before storming out of the Swamp and into the night. Hours later, he shows up drunk beyond belief on the floor of Colonel Potter’s office. When Hawkeye comes in to see him, he wears his combat helmet for protection – only half jokingly. BJ sees him and then says, “You know what I did today? I hit the best friend I’ve ever had. I’m sorry, Hawk, I’m sorry.” Hawkeye responds by just joining his friend on the floor. BJ finally opens up — the first time Erin had ever said the word, “Daddy,” it wasn’t to him. And, he was never going to be able to get back the time he’d lost, which was, as he put it, “Erin’s lifetime.” He then breaks down completely, and Hawkeye holds his sobbing friend quietly. No words needed. 

I cry every time.

And finally, the coup de grace: the final scene of the final episode of the series. Season 11, Episode 16 (“Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen”). It remains the most-watched television event by percentage of households in history, a two-hour finale that, to put it mildly, stuck the landing. When the armistice to end the Korean War is (finally!) signed, Hawkeye makes it abundantly clear that he’s not going to miss anything other than BJ. In light of that, Hawkeye really wants BJ to actually say “goodbye” to him, just in case, despite their best intentions, they fail to stay connected back in the States. BJ refuses because “it’s not goodbye,” and it leads to some significant tension between them. But in the final act of the episode, as each main character, one after another, says their goodbyes to the others and to the audience — first Klinger, Father Francis Mulcahy, Margaret Houlihan, Charles Winchester, then Colonel Potter — it all comes down to Hawkeye and BJ. After giving Potter a full military salute as a sign of love and respect (and yeah, I break into tears at that scene, too), Hawkeye and BJ stand next to the helipad, a helicopter ready to fly Hawkeye away while BJ heads out on a motorcycle. The two friends face each other, and things get real — and heartbreakingly beautiful. At the end, when Hawkeye tells BJ he’s going to miss him, a finally tearful BJ says a line that, to me, epitomizes the essence of that kind of deep friendship: 

“I’ll miss you — a lot. I can’t imagine what this place would have been like if I hadn’t found you here.”

I cry every time. 

Hell, I’m crying right now.

Then, after they hug one final time (see this post’s title photo), as Hawkeye is lifting off in the helicopter, BJ shouts out, “I’ll see you back in the States, I promise! But just in case, I left you a note.” As the helicopter rises up, Hawkeye sees a one-word message spreading across the helipad laid out with stones - “Goodbye.”

Now I’m crying some more. Damn it.

Watch the whole scene yourself and see if you can maintain (don’t judge me!). 

I remember vividly watching that scene that night — February 28, 1983 — and falling apart with the rest of America. I remembered hoping that Hawkeye and BJ would find ways to see each other in the years ahead. Of course, at the time, it could only be in person or by phone or letters — video calls and social media and email were only figments of someone’s imagination, so the depth of what Hawkeye and BJ faced and felt as they moved back to separate coasts a continent apart felt visceral to me. I wanted them to take vacations together, to call each other on the phone whenever they could, and write letters regularly - and randomly visit Fort Wayne, Indiana to torture Frank Burns somehow. But there was no way to know their fate, of course, because 1) the show ended, and 2) it was a fictional television program, JD….

The emotional impact of M*A*S*H, and its final episode, stuck with me for a while before cementing in my emotional template and memory six months later, when my family moved from Hawaii to Southern California.

And I had to leave my best friend behind.

I don’t know which one of us was Hawkeye or which one of us was BJ, but Matt and I were just as close in real life as those two fictional characters were in Korea. Like those two, Matt and I had very distinct differences (and still do), but our core spirit connected us from a very young age. And those differences have taught us about ourselves and each other in all the years since, despite going years between visits. We backed each other up at every turn — in fights against our siblings or even other friends, he and I were always on the same side. When we argued, it didn’t last, and we both knew how to say we were sorry to each other. I remember one time after a particularly intense argument over something I can’t remember, as a peace offering Matt brought me a heated up Pop Tart (a really cool snack gift from one seven-year-old to another). I promptly split it in half with him as a thank you, and on we went with our friendship.

Sometimes, the best way to say sorry is with a heated-up Pop Tart. You heard it here first. 

When my family left Hawaii, leaving Matt felt like leaving a limb behind. I didn’t know how I was going to function without him. I was a sensitive and often scared little boy, bullied at school, but never by him. That mattered a lot to me, and I remember appreciating very deeply how easy it was to be his friend and how much he enjoyed being mine. There was no one I was happier spending time with, and I looked forward to our sleepovers and baseball practices and Cub Scout outings because I knew I’d get to spend time with him. We had met at church as toddlers, so we had no memory of not being in each other’s lives. So many of our earliest memories and accomplishments were together, and I just couldn’t see myself replicating any of that with anyone else, whether in Hawaii, Southern California, or the surface of the moon. It just couldn’t compute in my young mind and heart.

It was my first real experience with grief of loss. I understood how Hawkeye and BJ must’ve felt. We knew we loved each other deeply, but had no idea if or when we would see each other again, despite our best intentions and wishes. It was a crash course introduction for me that life is uncertain, our time with each other is finite, and we need to enjoy every present moment. And, like Hawkeye, at the end I flew away.

When I did, I remembered the words BJ said to Hawkeye when they parted, and it’s probably why I remembered it so well all these years:

“I can’t imagine what this place would’ve been like if I hadn’t found you here.”

That was beyond true about Matt. Among all the great things about living in Hawaii, having him as my friend was by far and away the greatest. It was the truest form of love that I could have possibly understood at the time, a depth of connection that even my adult self today struggles to articulate.

While I believed then that we would never lose that connection (and we haven’t), it still tore me in half to leave.

Before Departure Day (August 31, 1983), Matt and I spent a lot of time together, enjoying everything as much as we could and keeping at bay for as long as possible the feelings we knew were on the horizon. We even replicated a “blood brothers” ceremony that we saw on TV or in a movie or something (it may have been in the Lone Ranger movie that came out in the early 80s, but I honestly don’t remember). We took our Cub Scout knives and each cut one palm of our hand, then clasped them together. Decidedly not hygienic and downright dangerous, nonetheless we both felt so powerful and so committed and so grown-up. We still talk about it to this day. That bond has lasted over four decades now. 

I have lived all over the country; Matt has by and large stayed in Hawaii where his roots run deep. I went a long time between visits to Hawaii — from age sixteen in high school until the summer of 2017. Nearly thirty years. Though we had talked on occasion and saw each other a few times on the mainland, it was still a long series of gaps. It never worried me, but time sure went by faster than I intended it to. But, of course, when I did see him again in 2017, it was like no time had gone by it all. I liked it so much I went back the next year. Seasoned and softened and toughened by years of experience — successes and failures alike — we appreciate even more the gift we had been given as children.

Each other.

I’ve thought a lot about Matt, Hawkeye, and BJ this past month as I dedicated all my writing at this website and all the episodes of my podcast, This Show Is All About You, to the various types of love that are so central to our lives. And while self-love and romantic love have historically been challenges for me, when I think of Matt and the others in my life who I have similar Hawkeye/BJ friendships with — Seth, Evan, O’tee (Rest in Peace, brother), Jason, Phil, and Jay — I cannot help but laugh in gratitude at how easy it has always been to be their friends, even though I’ve had my disagreements and outright fights with each of them.

These men are family to me, and yet far more than that. We all have a Family of Origin — and mine is immensely important to me — and our Families of Choice. The bedrock of that is my friends. There are times where I get lost in scarcity, focusing on what I lack in my life, and/or get lost in recriminations as to why I don’t have them, or why I did once and lost them. But it all too often blinds me to the abundance that my Family of Choice provides me.

It is without those people that I would truly have scarcity, where losing them would cut more deeply than any other loss. We all have friendships that don’t last a lifetime — yet still influence who we become — but the ones that do, it seems to me, are the greatest treasures imaginable. Our Family of Origin certainly can be a treasure, a powerful dynamic of blood and upbringing and heritage; Families of Choice, though, are made up of exactly that — choice. My friends chose to be my friends, and I chose to be theirs. A Family of Choice might change (and individual friendships end or change) for a multitude of reasons, yet they are incredibly empowering no matter their duration.

And like the goodbyes between Hawkeye and BJ, or between me and Matt, this is reflective of life in general. We all know that those lifelong friendships eventually end, at least in this world. And yet, in my experience, they really never do end even when one passes away. I don’t have words for that either, though I wish I did. Instead, the connection shifts to a different form of communication, one that is no less real. I cannot put a price on that.

I share this with you in part to conclude our month of Love Talk, but mainly because I’m seeing just how we  all have this in common — Families of Choice that have members who simply will last for a lifetime and beyond. If you’re like me, it’s easy to rest in the security and knowledge that those friendships are ironclad and timeless. But I’m in a stage in my life where I no longer want to rest on that timelessness. I feel a sense of urgency, or… something… prompting me to share this with you and, by extension, remind each of my friends how much I love them.

These days in particular, it feels like the right thing to let them all know again just how important they are in my life. Perhaps this will inspire you to do the same with your Lifetime Members of The Loving You Club. You know who they are — you’ve been thinking about them for a number of paragraphs now, haven’t you? You’ve counted back in your head at least once now how long it’s been since you chatted with them, or perhaps even more so, since you told them exactly how you feel about them. 

We all have those friends to whom we could say, speaking about life in general:

“I can’t imagine what this [life] would have been like if I hadn’t found you here.”

What would’ve it been like had we not chosen each other as family? What would we have missed? What wouldn’t we have learned? What wouldn’t we have enjoyed? Fortunately, we don’t have to spend time on these kinds of questions or “what if’s,” because everything that has happened has done so just as it was meant to happen. And that’s the damned beauty of it all — it was supposed to be exactly that way, with exactly those people.

There is absolutely no scarcity in that.

I’ll always be grateful to Hawkeye and BJ for teaching me that — every time I watch M*A*S*H.

Now go make that phone call/send that text/post that tribute to the person(s) you’re thinking about right now.

No knife-slicing-hands-then-clasping-them needed, though. 

Chins Up, Everyone. 

************

A few other observations about M*A*S*H:

• I enjoy the motion picture that the series is based on, but my association with the television characters makes any viewing of the film jarring.

• It’s amazing the growth this show exhibits over its eleven seasons - the first season is full of cringe-worthy moments, nicknames, and activities that could never make it on TV today - with its writing always quality even as it’s tone and and character-building changed markedly.

• The show debuted in 1972, just at the end of America’s involvement in Vietnam (and let’s face it, the show is really about the disillusionment with Vietnam more than it was a reflection of sentiments about the Korean War at the time), and carried on through the years where the nation had to reckon with that war’s aftermath. I was watching it as a kid unaware of all that, but I’ve always wondered how it must have landed with adults who lived through the Korean and Vietnam Wars….

• I preferred Colonel Potter to Colonel Blake (though Henry was hilarious), but Henry does take the honor of having my favorite meltdown in show history in Season 3, Episode 14 (“Private Charles Lamb”). It’s the scene where he finds out Radar has shipped the lamb sent to the 4077th to be the main course for Greek Easter home to Iowa so it wouldn’t be killed. I laugh so hard every time (“one more chewing out and my belly button will cave in.”)

• Many of my favorite all-time episodes are the ones that feature Dr. Sidney Freedman, the army psychologist. Especially the episode, “Dear Sigmund” (Season 5, Episode 7).

• There is a robust M*A*S*H fan community online. Check out the “MASH Matters” podcast, for sure, if you want to hear anything and everything about the show, including a lot of in-depth interviews with former cast members. One of the hosts is Jeff Maxwell, who played Igor on the show….

• No character on the show changed more for the better than Margaret Houlihan - by the end of the show she’d moved way beyond the old “Hot Lips” stereotype she was written as in the early seasons, and the show was far better for it.

• I could go on forever, so I will just stop now.

******************
Thanks for reading My Sunday Post. Here are some important updates from my past week:

Soul Book of the Week: On Love’s Path: New Versions of Rumi, Kabir, and Hafiz by Mark Ruskin

Book On My Nightstand: Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman. Russian epic no one thinks about but should. This will be on the stand for awhile….

Best Show / Movie I Watched: The Sinner, Season 3 (Netflix / USA). Creepy but can’t turn away from it.

Strongest Earworm Song: Ain’t Wasting Time No More by The Allman Brothers Band

Best Guilty Pleasure: A way-too-big box of Hot Tamales candy

Longest Walk / Run of the Week: NONE. Fail. I did yoga instead. Rebooting next week.

Strangest Experience of the Week: Weird snowstorm “hangover” on Monday. I was a Zombie.

Biggest Sigh of Relief: My parents getting their second vaccine dose (and my sister and niece getting their first)

Most Helpful Perspective / Advice of the Week: “There’s No Problem Here Unless I Invent One”

Coolest Thing I Saw: The Perseverance rover landing successfully on Mars. So Nerdtastic.

“The Rose Still Stands”

Yup - this story (and all that inspired it) means that much to me.

February 14, 2021

_________________________

[Editor’s Note: For this Valentine’s Day, JDK has decided to share his first short story with you. It’s a story he mentioned in his most recent episode of his new podcast (click the February 8th episode), and one that helped him better come to terms with the meaning of love in his own life. And yes, it even inspired one of his tattoos. It’s a longer piece broken up into sections, so watch for the ********** marks and take your time with it. It’s funny - if this were written in a book, it would be a standard “short story.” But because it’s on the internet, that makes it a “long post.” So enjoy it at your own pace. And Happy Valentine’s Day from JDK-World.]

The Rose Still Stands

By JDK Wyneken

“Time to wake up, boys. There is something new out there to discover today.”

Every day, first thing in the morning, a learned man and famed gardener named Hideo sent his two grandsons, Mitsuo and Chuichi, through the mountainous forest to fetch water from the nearby river. Its water was far cleaner to drink than what they could draw from the well. Though their task was important, Hideo mostly wanted his grandsons to start each day out in the beauty and strength of nature, hoping both would absorb and reflect such attributes in their own budding lives.

  “Not yet, Jiji. It’s too warm under my blanket to get up yet.”

Chuichi, his bright eyes and inquisitive energy reflective of his seven years of life, grumbled each morning when Hideo woke him, but inevitably made each visit to the river an adventure, full of fantastical dangers that his invented heroes inevitably conquered with joyous whoops and laughs.

        “You say that every day, Jiji, but nothing new ever happens. Every day is the same.”

Mitsuo, eight years his brother’s senior, was the exact opposite. Typical of boys his age, he shunned anything but what he wanted to do, and mostly he wanted to sulk. He hated the daily jaunts and his brother’s company, and always complained to Hideo about his sore arms and legs after their return. Hideo, for his part, just thanked his grandsons for their work and set them onto their daily routine of studies and household upkeep.

        “It is up to you to discover the new, grandson – not the other way around.”

Hideo saw each day as an opportunity for growth, whereas Chuichi sought adventure and curiosities, and Mitsuo just wanted to be left alone. Or so he told himself.

It took more cajoling, but soon Mitsuo and Chuichi were up and moving slowly through the morning twilight, each putting on warm coats and their jika-tabi boots for their daily trek. They paused between bites of their rice porridge and fermented soybeans to warm themselves by the hearth fire Hideo had lit an hour earlier, long before sunlight cracked the eastern sky.

        “Could we not have eggs and miso for breakfast someday, Jiji?” Mitsuo asked. “This is what I mean – we eat the same thing every day.”

Hideo smiled and shook his head as he opened the thin shoji doors looking out into the courtyard garden. He could keep time by Mitsuo’s daily complaints.

“We can certainly have those, grandson, as soon as enough new chickens are born. Give it time. We always need some eggs to become chickens, remember.”

“I remember. I still want eggs,” Mitsuo grunted, before nudging his brother roughly. “C’mon. Hurry up. Let’s get this boring thing done.”

Chuichi, never one to be pushed around, shoved his brother playfully in return. Very little could dampen his enthusiasm. 

“You are so grouchy. When we see my dragons today, then you’ll forget to be grumpy and run for your life.”

“While you play with them, I suppose?” Mitsuo replied, shaking his head at his brother’s obsession with the mythical beasts. “You’d run from them, too, if they were actually real and not just your silly kites.”

“They are NOT silly, and they are not just kites! They will not harm me, right, Jiji? Tell him why they won’t.”

Hideo pulled his shawl around his shoulders as he stepped out into the courtyard to inspect his gardens, ignoring the cold from snow leaking in and around his zori sandals.

        “Because, grandson, dragons never turn on their creator.”

        “See? That’s right, Mitsuo. They will turn on you instead, when I tell them to.”

        “Sure they will. Let’s go already,” Mitsuo ordered his brother, handing him two empty wooden buckets. “The sooner we are back, the sooner this boring day can become more boring until its boring end.”

“Maybe we can fly my kites later, then,” Chuichi suggested. “I have two, remember! One big red one for you and one small blue one for me!”

“We will see.”

Picking up two buckets of his own, Mitsuo led the way out into the courtyard, not pausing as he passed Hideo. Mitsuo deliberately set a fast pace to make his brother nearly have to run to keep up.

Hideo turned to watch them leave.

       “Keep one eye on each other, boys, and the other out for what the world offers you.”

        “Dragons!” exclaimed Chuichi to the sky as he chased after his brother.

        “It offers us snow and trees and rocks and silence. Just like every day,” Mitsuo grumbled.

As he watched his grandsons pass through the arched wooden exit out into the forest, Hideo spoke the same prayer he uttered the same way every morning, for the same wish.

        “May today bring them something new.”

 Something new was already awaiting them. 

*****************

“Why must you always walk so fast, Mitsuo? It makes me tired and I can’t stop to look at things. Jiji doesn’t care if we take our time.”

        “There’s nothing to see except what we always see, so why bother going slow?”

Mitsuo believed he knew every rock, tree, rise, and dip in the path by heart. He knew right where and when to look to see the tree that had been hit by lightning long ago, or the pointed rock cliff that jutted out from a hillside above them. He had counted the exact number of steps it took to get to the river and back. 

The only thing that ever changed was the season. In the summers, they strode under the hot sun, seeking the occasional shade of towering pines. In the spring, they strolled among cherry blossoms, through warming breezes and light showers of mist. In the fall, they breathed in the crisp morning air and crinkled their noses at the smell of the fallen leaves sinking into the feasting soil. And in the winter, the stillness of the air over the fallen snow made every footstep crunch loudly and their breath rise like icy smoke into the sky. Chuichi never seemed to tire of any of it, and that bothered Mitsuo just as much as any part of this daily routine. 

  “There is so much snow up in the trees!” Chuichi exclaimed, ignoring his brother’s melancholy, craning and twisting his neck all around them. The buckets swayed and batted against his spindly legs. “How come the clouds that dropped all the snow are gone so fast?”

Mitsuo only glanced at the pine branches closest to him, then quickly up at the sky increasingly lit by the eastern sun. It would be a clear and cold day, he knew. He could feel it already.

        “It is the weather. It changes all the time. The winds blow the clouds in and out. It’s just how things are.”

        “That’s a boring answer. You’re right that you always know what’s boring.”

        “What do you want to hear, little brother?” Mitsuo asked, exasperated. “That it is the sweep of dragon’s wings that make the winds blow? That it is their fiery breath that makes some seasons warm? That it is the tears of their victims that makes it rain?” He’d already had enough of his brother’s foolishness, and the sun wasn’t even above the mountain yet.

        “Wow! That’s the best explanation you’ve ever had!” Chuichi cried, laughing as he ran ahead of Mitsuo, his arms outstretched like he was flying – with a bucket at the end of each wing. “Yes, that is exactly what it is! I will draw that with Jiji when we get home!”

“Stop running around like that,” Mitsuo snapped back, “Or you’re going to slip and fall. I can’t carry you and all our buckets if you break your neck.”

But Chuichi was already too far ahead, running and making dragon noises as he reached the crest of the hill above them. Mitsuo opened his mouth to yell at Chuichi again, but didn’t when he saw that his brother had stopped abruptly at the top of the hill, lowering his arms until the buckets hung slack at his sides. He stared at something ahead that Mitsuo couldn’t yet see.

        “What’s the matter?” Mitsuo yelled up at him. But Chuichi didn’t answer. He simply stood frozen in place. Fearing it might be a predator like a wolf, or even maybe an actual dragon come to life out of one of Jiji’s old bedtime stories, Mitsuo forgot his irritation and ran as swiftly as the snow would allow to his brother’s side. “What is it?”

Chuichi, his nose and forehead crinkled in confusion, simply pointed down the pathway, an area where the tree line wandered from the path, exposing it to open sky. Unblemished snow blanketed everything in sight, as if the world had been erased and awaited a new artist to paint it.

But there was a single spot of vibrant color, bright against the white, that drew Mitsuo’s eyes immediately.

        “It’s…that,” Chuichi said in an awed whisper.  “Is that what I think it is?”

Mitsuo heard the question and knew the answer, but still couldn’t believe his eyes. Transfixed, he moved down the hill towards it, holding his breath for reasons he couldn’t understand. Chuichi followed, silent for once, willing to follow his older brother’s lead. When they reached it, they both dropped their buckets into the snow without a thought.

It was the most beautiful thing Mitsuo and Chuichi had ever seen.

It was a tall, broad, deep red flower, glistening in the morning light, standing strong and bold in the breeze, its color dazzling to the eye. Its layered petals swayed gently in a type of harmony, as if dancing to a silent melody. The flower’s inviting fragrance gently washed over them as if they could bring it to their lips like water from a stream. 

        “I don’t understand,” Mitsuo whispered, awed for the first time in years. “This shouldn’t be here at all.”

        “It’s a really pretty flower,” Chuichi observed, more as a question. “A big one. It’s almost as tall as you! And it’s growing out of the snow. It shouldn’t be alive in winter. But it is. Do you know what kind it is? It doesn’t look like any of the ones that Jiji grows in the courtyard in spring or summer.”

Mitsuo barely heard Chuichi’s words, mainly because he was saying the same ones to himself. He didn’t have answers. But it felt almost...magic? He couldn’t find the right word. He found himself memorizing every part of it, from its bud down its strong, green stem to where it disappeared into the deep snow, its roots somewhere far below. Thorns adorned the stem at seemingly perfect, intervals, adding a layer of warning and strength to its elegant beauty. 

“So what is it? What’s it doing here?” Chuichi asked again. He never stopped asking questions until he received an answer. 

“I don’t know,” Mitsuo answered. “Everything you said about it is right. And yet it’s more somehow.”

“You never say I’m right about anything,” Chuichi said, surprised. “But I don’t know what flower this is. Do you think it’s magic? It has to be, doesn’t it? It shouldn’t be out here in winter. Do you think Jiji would know? He must. He knows everything about flowers.”

“No one knows everything about anything,” Mitsuo replied absently, though Chuichi had the right idea. Their grandfather would know. “But you’re right, we should go ask him. Let’s dig it up right now and take it back to him. We could plant it in the courtyard.” For some reason, Mitsuo dreaded letting the flower out of his sight. 

Chuichi recoiled at the idea, somehow feeling protective of their new discovery. He wanted to leave the flower just as it was, where it was - he wasn’t sure why. But why didn’t matter. It wasn’t a lost jewel, or their prize to take home. It belonged where it was. 

“Are you crazy, Mitsuo? You must be. Why would you dig it up? It might die, and it’s too beautiful to let die. Leave it alone.”

Mitsuo’s anger flashed abruptly, surprising both of the boys standing in the snow. 

“You don’t know anything! I’m the oldest, and I say let’s dig it up. Now help me.” 

“I will not! Leave it! Jiji would agree with me!”

“Then go get him and bring him here,” Mitsuo said angrily. “I’ll wait.” 

“You’re not supposed to leave me out here by myself! And you never have before. Why would you do that now? Jiji will get very angry with you if I go back alone.”

Chuichi was right, and Mitsuo hated him at that moment because of it. He looked around - there was no one in sight as usual, and it wasn’t as if the flower could move from that spot. It wasn’t far back to the house, and they could be back with Jiji in minutes; he moved pretty fast for an old man. And then, Mitsuo knew, once he saw the flower their grandfather would agree with him and help dig it up to bring back to the courtyard. Jiji would want the most beautiful flower in the world to live with them, tended by him. Otherwise, why be a gardener?

“Alright, fine,” Mitsuo said, pretending to still be upset. “Let’s go get Jiji. Leave the buckets. We will go to the river after we….after Jiji gets here with us.”

Chuichi jumped with excitement and relief. It felt good to convince his older brother to do something he wanted - to change his mind about something. That didn’t happen often, so Chuichi grabbed his brother’s arm, pulling him towards home before he changed his mind. They needed to leave the flower alone. 

“Then let’s go! Jiji will know what to do!”

Mitsuo let his brother drag him away, but craned his neck back to look at the flower until it dropped out of sight behind the hill. Once that happened, Mitsuo shook off Chuichi’s grip and ran ahead of him. They slipped and slid at times, with Chuichi shouting out for his brother to wait up. Behind them, as the sounds of their voices and the crunch of their steps faded, the cold morning wind blew gently through the treetops and caressed the snowfields and the cliff faces. The flower swayed along with it, exactly how and where it belonged at that moment. 

***************

“Slow down a bit, boys. I am not as spry as I used to be.”

     “You must hurry, Jiji! It’s not far now. Wait until you see it! It’s so big and red and shiny. It looks like….like a Dragon Eye! But not dangerous like a dragon would be.”

Hideo had never seen Chuichi more excited, and it made him smile. He also had never seen Mitsuo more urgent, and that surprised him. He wasn’t sure what to think, but he knew whatever this flower was, it had captured his oldest grandson’s attention like nothing Hideo had seen in a long time. At least since….

Hideo shook away the memory as he worked to keep up with his grandsons. They had been in such a hurry to drag him back down the path that he was still in his zori sandals, so his feet were getting quite cold. But it was worth the toe numbness to see what had so ignited his grandsons’ interest. Whatever they had discovered was thrilling to them — and that thrilled him in turn.

“A Dragon eye, you say? Indeed, this must be some flower, a gift from the gods perhaps.”

     “It’s not a Dragon eye, Jiji,” Mitsuo said testily as he led the way back to the flower. “But I’ve never seen anything like it before. And I knew you’d want to see it for yourself.”

      “I said it looks like a Dragon eye, not that it is one! Wait! There is the top of the hill!” shouted Chuichi, pulling at his grandfather’s arm as they trudged through the snow. “It’s right on the other side, along the path!”

The three made their way towards the top, Hideo short of breath before they reached the crest. He tugged at his shawl to keep warm and silently thanked his ancestors that they were almost there. But he was surprised when, upon reaching the top of the hill ahead of him and Chuichi, Mitsuo stopped suddenly and shouted into the blue morning sky.

“NO!!!!”

His angry cry carried disbelief and betrayal in its wake, echoing off the hillsides and cliff faces before soaring into the sky. Alarmed, Hideo redoubled his efforts and ignored his burning lungs to reach Mitsuo’s side, pulling the again-silenced Chuichi with him.

      “What is it, grandson?” Hideo asked Mitsuo, whose chest heaved with fury. But it was Chuichi who answered, shouting out himself.

       “It’s gone! Jiji, it’s gone!”

Chuichi ran down the hill, Mitsuo right behind him.

        “I knew it!” Mitsuo roared as he ran. “I knew we shouldn’t have left it here!”

        “Where did it go?” Chuichi asked. “Did someone take it? Did an animal get it? Are there animal tracks? People tracks?” He spun around searching where the flower had been just minutes before, frantic for answers. It was a mystery that needed solving, and his imagination had not yet come up with the creative possibilities that so often comforted him.

Mitsuo, meanwhile, fell to his knees in where the flower had once stood, a hole in the snow marking where it had once been. His face flushed, and he gripped his hands in such fury that his fingernails dug into his palms. He felt robbed, teased, and denied what he’d so desperately wanted for himself. He felt tears rising in his eyes, and that infuriated him beyond words and reason. He kneeled unmoving in the snow, not noticing that his legs got colder and wetter as a result.

Hideo slowly moved his way down the hill, watching both grandsons closely. When he reached Mitsuo, the boy looked up at him with a expression that Hideo had not seen in his eyes before. It was a pain he’d always known the boy had carried, but was surprised at what was finally bringing it to the surface.

        “There was a flower here, I swear it,” Mitsuo said to him, half angrily and half pleadingly, as if he feared Hideo wouldn’t believe him. “It was almost as tall as me, a giant red bud at the top, sharp thorns on its stem, and unlike anything I’ve seen before.”

Chuichi seconded his brother's words as he continued to scramble around looking for clues to the flower’s disappearance.

        “I believe you both,” Hideo replied soothingly, hands out to calm the boys. “I can see where its stem reached down through the snow to the ground. Dig it away now both of you.”

Mitsuo and Chuichi jumped to the task quickly, kicking aside their empty buckets to concentrate on their work. Within seconds, they had the snow cleared away. The brown of the hard, frozen ground lay bare, the soil completely undisturbed except for a small circular hole the exact width of the flower stem. Mitsuo and Chuichi both looked up to their grandfather for guidance.

        “This is indeed curious,” Hideo said to them both. “I see no other tracks or evidence that any person or animal took away this flower that you saw.”

        “So what does that mean?” Chuichi asked urgently. Mitsuo’s face showed he had the same question. Hideo thought for a long moment.

        “Well,” he said measuredly. “What do each of you think? If no human or animal took it away, what is the only other possibility?”

Mitsuo was in no mood for one of his grandfather’s quizzing games. He felt his anger burn deep inside his belly.

        “Stop making us try to guess,” he snapped bitterly. “And just tell us already!”

        “Wait! I know!” Chuichi yelled, jumping to his feet with excitement. “It must be magic!”

        “Don’t be stupid, Chuichi,” Mitsuo said harshly. “There’s no such thing as magic, and even if there were, magic has to be done by someone or something. It doesn’t just happen out of thin air.”

Hideo held his hand out gently to Mitsuo.

        “Chuichi is not stupid, Mitsuo, and you know that. And I believe he is a lot closer to the truth than you are right now.”

        “So it’s magic, you say?” Mitsuo spat out in furious disbelief.

        “It is?” Chuichi said, even more elated at the prospect. “It’s magic? I was right?”

Hideo couldn’t help but smile at the younger boy, even as Mitsuo fumed.

        “In a way, yes,” Hideo said. “But Mitsuo is also right that something has to make magic happen. So if it wasn’t some person or some other thing, what is the only thing that could work such magic to make that flower disappear?”

The only sounds were the wind and the boys’ labored breathing as they considered the answer. Mitsuo wanted the solution, but more wanted a target for his anger at losing the flower. Chuichi, meanwhile, furrowed his brow deep in thought. Then his eyes widened.

        “I know! It had to be the flower! It has its own magic! It made itself disappear!”

Mitsuo rolled his eyes and sighed in exasperation, but was utterly shocked at what his grandfather then said.

        “Exactly right, Chuichi. Well done.”

        “WHAT?” Mitsuo shouted, jumping to his feet. “You’re saying the flower made itself disappear? That somehow  it has its own magic? That’s insane, Jiji! Do you have other flowers back in our courtyard that have magic?”

        “Not that I know of, grandson,” Hideo replied calmly. “But right now that is the only plausible answer.”

        “Now why would a flower want to make itself disappear?”

        “I do not know,” Hideo said, “But there is no way to know why. So focus instead on the fact that it does. Think, Mitsuo. You’ve read the legends and the histories with me. In those stories, there are always reasons for actions, even if we cannot see them. So, what does it mean if there is a flower that can make itself disappear? What is the logical conclusion?”

Mitsuo did not want to play his grandfather’s game, but the answer came to him nevertheless. He huffed impatiently and stamped his cold feet.

        “It means that if it can disappear, it must also reappear somewhere. It is in its nature to do so. That’s its ‘magic.’ It is its nature, even though we cannot see it or understand it fully.”

Hideo beamed. He knew Mitsuo had paid attention to those lessons far more than he had let on.

        “Well done, Mitsuo. Yes, you are right. That is the only conclusion we can make with what we know. That flower that seemingly appeared here out of nowhere, has disappeared and gone elsewhere. And we do not know where, sadly. I very much wanted to see it.”

        “I know where!” Chuichi suddenly shouted, pointing off the path and towards a clump of trees some meters away from them. “Look! I think I see it!”

For a moment, both Hideo and Mitsuo thought the boy had to be imagining things out of wishful thinking, but both were surprised when they, too, saw a bright red dot right where Chuichi was pointing. Before Hideo could say anything, the boys were off like a shot, leaving the path and running down the gentle slope towards the tree line. Hideo moved as quickly as he could after them, calling out for them to slow down and be careful. When he himself reached the tree line, again huffing and puffing, he found both boys grinning widely — the youngest with a smile like he’d solved the greatest mystery, the older a smile of relief and what Hideo could only call desire.

He understood their reactions, because between them stood the most beautiful flower Hideo had ever seen — and he had seen many. It was truly stunning, like an imperial palace painting come to life. Nature had never ceased to amaze him, but it had truly achieved perfection with this particular flower. Hideo moved closer, not touching it, to examine it as closely as he could. Its perfume was hypnotic. somehow comforting and more than a little familiar. It touched his mind, his heart, and his soul in ways he had not felt in years.

        “What do you think, Jiji?” Chuichi asked excitedly. “Isn’t it amazing?”

        “Yes, it is truly the most beautiful flower I have ever seen. It is called a ‘Rose.’ But I have never seen one in this country before, nor ever one as beautiful. It is from another land, far from here.”

        “We knew you’d think so!” Chuichi clapped in glee. “And we knew you’d know its name! Didn’t we, Mitsuo? We knew he would!”

Mitsuo could only nod. He was already focused on the most important question, the most important thing at that moment. In his entire life. He had to have it. 

        “So, Jiji, considering all that, don’t you think we should dig it up and take it with us back to the courtyard? Before it disappears again, or someone else finds it and takes it?”

        “No!” Chuichi shouted in protest. “I told you we have to leave it alone!”

Hideo did not like the tone of Mitsuo’s voice, or the look in his eyes. He had seen such looks before in the eyes of other men about other things, and what had resulted had been nothing but pain and heartbreak. He anticipated the reaction he was about to get from Mitsuo, but nevertheless shook his head decisively.

        “No, Mitsuo. We will not dig it up. We will not keep it in the courtyard.”

Mitsuo’s face turned dark red, and his eyes flashed in fury.

        “Why not? We have to take it with us! It will disappear again if we do not! You are a master gardener! You can take care of it, or you can teach ME to take care of it! I do not ask you for anything, but I am asking you for this! Please let’s take it with us!” 

He pushed Chuichi down into the snow when the young boy came at him in protest.

Hideo knew his older grandson had asked him for many things in the past, but that did not matter. He reached out and seized Mitsuo by the shoulder.

        “Stop, Mitsuo. We will not do this. You will not harm your brother, and we will not dig up this Rose. Even if we did, we’ve already seen that it can disappear at any time for reasons that are unknown to us. We don’t know what might happen if we dig it up, it might die right on the spot. We do not know its nature, Mitsuo. But the flower itself does, so we must honor that. We must accept all living things as they are, and let them be as they are. We cannot possess what does not want to be possessed, or corral what does not want to be corralled.”

        “But you corral all the flowers in our courtyard!” Mitsuo shouted, tears finally overpowering him. “How is that different?”

        “If they each had the same power as this Rose, then they likely wouldn’t allow me to tend them. But this flower is clearly unique, so we must let it be as it is. To try otherwise will only hurt it, and you.”

Mitsuo had heard enough.

        “Hurt me? Me? How could that hurt me? What is hurting me is NOT taking it with us!”

        “Stop yelling at Jiji!” Chuichi said angrily, back on his feet and moving to Hideo’s side. “He’s right! I told you we had to leave it alone! It has its own magic!”

        “I am not leaving until we take it with us!” Mitsuo shouted, at his wits end. Pain flowed through him, anger at his grandfather and brother, at the whole world. “If we leave it now, it will disappear and we will never find it again!”

        “I found it again!” Chuichi said. “And I don’t think it will go away for good. I think it let us find it the first time!”

        “That’s ridiculous!” Mitsuo roared back. “You just invent stories to make yourself feel good! This is serious!”

Hideo saw it before the two boys did.

        “No, it is not ridiculous, Mitsuo. And, it doesn’t matter now anyway. Because….” He pointed, and the boys looked.

The Rose was gone again, only a small hole in the snow to mark it had ever been there. 

No one spoke for a long while. Then, with a glare of rage at his grandfather and brother, Mitsuo stormed off, back to the path and towards the house. Hideo and Chuichi stood hand-in-hand and watched him go. Hideo looked down and saw the young boy crying.

        “What happened, Jiji?” Why did he get so angry? What’s the matter with him?”

Hideo wiped a tear from the boy’s face, then led him back up towards the path.

        “I do not know, grandson. But we must let him sort it out. Come. We will get the water together today.”

They gathered the buckets and set off towards the river. As they did so, Mitsuo stormed back to the house, nearly tearing off the shoji door from its runner as he threw it open. He ripped off his coat and shoes, hurling them all into a corner. 

He’d made a plan on his march home, and he would see it done, no matter what his grandfather and brother thought.

He’d do it in secret. He would get that Rose. And he would make sure it could never disappear from him again.

****************

Mitsuo had said nothing to his grandfather and brother when they returned that day, even disguising his excitement when they told him they’d seen the Rose again on the far side of the river. Then they had seen it again near a rock escarpment on their way back to the house.

        “Good,” Mitsuo told himself silently. “So I can find it again, too.”

Hideo tried to talk with Mitsuo alone that night after dinner, but the boy wouldn’t speak about what had happened, or about his feelings. He’d instead gone to bed early, leaving Chuichi to talk about the Rose with Hideo alone. The boy asked many questions about the Rose, some of which had no real answers. The boy drew pictures of the Rose that night, and with Hideo’s encouragement, came up with stories about its origins, what it was doing when it appeared and reappeared, and even about its place in the divine universe. The boy had a wondrous imagination, and Hideo wanted him to indulge in it.

But Hideo worried about Mitsuo.

The next morning, Mitsuo and Chuichi again went for water, but Mitsuo didn’t say a word to his brother the entire time. Instead, he’d kept watch for the Rose. They saw it twice — once close by the path, then again in the Valley. Both times, Mitsuo had stopped to take a close look at it, leaving his brother to ask his questions without offering any answers. Instead he took in all he could about the Rose, and upon returning to the house wrote down everything he could remember and kept his journal hidden from his brother and grandfather.

All the while, Mitsuo plotted. And, with each passing day, he went about his routine while internally remaining entirely focused on getting the Rose for himself. Each day, he saw the Rose at least once or twice, even as the snow melted and spring began to nip at the air. So he wouldn’t arouse suspicion, he made sure to do all his daily chores, keep up on his studies, and talk with his grandfather and brother about mundane things. He didn’t mention the Rose to his grandfather at all.

Which is how Hideo knew Mitsuo was thinking about it constantly. Chuichi told him whenever he and Mitsuo saw the Rose, so Hideo knew Mitsuo always stopped to look at it. He also saw that Mitsuo was withdrawing further and further into himself. Hideo knew he could not prevent that, as he was the focal point of Mitsuo’s anger, but believed the moment would soon arrive when he could get through to the his grandson again – when the boy would reveal what was really going on inside his heart.

As the spring rains invited flowers to bloom again in the courtyard, Hideo worked devotedly every day on bringing everything to life. The large Japanese maple that soared above the house from one corner of the yard cast shade on the increasingly warm days, and blossoms covering all the colors of earth and heavens grew, meticulously tended to by Hideo. Chuichi took on a deep interest in helping his grandfather, inspired by his excitement about the Rose. He learned how to help the soil breathe, and how to care for each unique plant. They spent their afternoons in the garden together, following the study hours, and always invited Mitsuo to join them.

He nearly always declined, however, preferring to go out “exploring” in the woods on his own. In truth, he was putting his long-laid plan into action. All winter and early spring, he’d quietly moved tools, an oil lantern, and other goods into a cave in the woods where he could work undisturbed. He’d first come upon it a few days after first seeing the Rose, and it started as a place where he could sit and think out of the cold. It descended only about twenty cart lengths into the ground at a gentle slope, and it didn’t look to be a home for any wild creatures. The space was high enough for him to stand comfortably, but he could also reach the ceiling with his fingertips. He could even stretch comfortably on the tatami mat he smuggled out there one day. Mitsuo adopted the cave as his own, and now used it as storage for his project. 

He collected large stones from the streams, and cut wood from fallen trees that he’d then honed down into small boards and poles with a small hand ax, saw, and sandpaper. He lit small fires in front of the cave mouth to warm it, and even cooked food for himself sometimes. He worked most of the afternoon hours, then packed all of his materials back deep in the cave, hidden in holes he dug in the earth, before heading home for the night.

Each night, he planned his next day in his head. 

By the time summer arrived, with the courtyard and surrounding forests exploding with color and life, and the birds and insects buzzing constantly, Mitsuo had completed his project and readied it for the next day. Trying to contain his nervousness, he rushed home to eat and get to his bedroll early – since he planned to be up long before dawn the next morning.

        “Tomorrow,” he told himself in the dark that night, “I will have the Rose for myself.”

******************

            When Mitsuo opened his eyes, darkness and silence hung thick over the house. Immediately alert, Mitsuo forced himself to move slowly away from his bedroll to not awaken Chuichi, just across the small wood-floored room. He could hear his grandfather’s gentle snores from the other side of the house, and kept one ear focused in that direction as he quietly slipped on his trousers and shirt. He picked up his sandals so their flap-flap sound wouldn’t echo in the quiet, and inched the house’s main shoji door open slowly. Once he’d stepped out, he closed it again with equal patience and tip-toed down the main path of the courtyard to the exit. Around him, all his grandfather’s flowers and plants stirred gently, but Mitsuo ignored them. He had only one flower on his mind.

Leaving the courtyard and entering the near-complete darkness of the forest, Mitsuo counted out twelve steps along the courtyard wall, then turned and knelt. Feeling around with his hands carefully, he finally found the bush in which he’d hidden a small lantern a couple of days earlier. Grinning to himself in the dark, Mitsuo slipped on his sandals and lit the lantern, keeping its shutter low enough to provide just enough light to see a few steps ahead of him. After waiting a moment for his eyes to adjust, he set off in the direction of the cave, having memorized the path in the months since he’d first seen the Rose.

        “There is no turning back now,” he told himself. “This plan can work.”

Only one thing was out of his control – somehow finding the Rose in the darkness with only the aid of the lantern. But he knew he could, even if he had to sneak out a hundred early mornings to do so.

        “One step at a time,” he told himself as he moved through the dark woods, the sounds of his passing muffled and lost among the sounds of a forest deep asleep.

When he reached the cave, Mitsuo opened the lantern shutter fully, bathing the inside with light. He squinted as he uncovered the tools, stones, and cut wood pieces. Moving them to the front of the cave, he deftly assembled  his project, having practiced for days. When it was done, the cave was still surrounded by darkness. Mitsuo estimated there were still a few hours remaining until dawn, and he congratulated himself for being so prepared.

Mitsuo picked up a wooden bucket he’d kept in the cave, and quickly put in the tools he needed – a digging spade, and hand rake, and his trusty hand saw. Wolfing down a quick breakfast of dried river fish, he picked up the lantern in his other hand and began to cut his way through the forest towards the path from the house to the river. He’d pick it up beyond sight of the house and head towards the river – his months of observing the Rose had shown him that it never appeared close to the house, nor did it ever seem to be completely out of sight. He’d seen it every day since that first sighting.

        “Which means I should see it today, too.”

It took a few minutes to complete the journey, and Mitsuo kept his senses keenly focused on his work. Stepping out onto the path he knew so well, he threw open the lantern’s shutter to get as far a view as possible into the dark. Somewhere in the distance, a fukuro – an owl – hooted, its voice resonating through the night and in Mitsuo’s chest. He smiled at the blessing of good fortune, and it redoubled his confidence.

He set out towards the river slowly, swinging his lantern to and fro, eyes following along in sweeping arcs, seeking his quarry. He knew he’d spy it easily, and several times frustrated himself with false sightings that turned out to be just some other forest plant. Time passed slowly but inexorably, and Mitsuo’s earlier enthusiasm slowly turned to anxiety and anger as dawn creeped closer.

        “If this goes on too much longer, I will have to give up to get home before Jiji and Chuichi awaken.”

As more minutes passed, he angrily muttered to himself, sweat pouring off of him, both from his emotions and from the warmth of the summer night as it gave way to the day. He’d gotten a fakuro blessing – how could he not find the Rose??

Then, suddenly, there it stood, in the center of a clearing just several cart lengths off the path. He’d first spied it in his peripheral vision on the other side of two tall pines that made part of the clearing’s perimeter. Mitsuo suppressed his shout of joy and ran to the Rose, falling to his knees beside it and emptying the bucket of tools all in one motion. He ran the lantern light up and down the Rose, from its bud to where its stem met the earth. It was as beautiful as always.

        “And now I will finally have it!”

Setting down the lantern to give him the best light for his work, Mitsuo picked up the spade. He took one hand and laid it next to the stem where it met the soil, and spread his fingers as wide as he could, his pinky a hair’s length from touching his prize for the first time. He then held the spade point next to his thumb – he would begin digging there, then all around the flower until he could pull it out of the ground with its roots intact, then put it in the bucket for its journey back to the cave.

Mitsuo, grinning widely, picked up the spade and aimed for his mark. He had to dig deep and work fast to get back to the cave – and then home – in time. There could be no mistakes, no delays.

He lifted the spade high in triumph, and he anticipated its plunge into the soil around the Rose more than anything he had before in his young life. He thrust it down, nearly shouting as he did so.

        “Yes!”

But as the spade hit the ground, it twisted awkwardly and painful tremors shot up Mitsuo’s arm. He lost his balance from his knees and fell back with a surprised yelp. Reflexively, he grabbed his arm in surprise and pain, staring at what was left of the spade.

It’s blade had shattered into several pieces and broken away from the wooden handle. And it hadn’t so much as made a dent in the soil next to the Rose. Mitsuo stared in disbelief.

        “How did that happen? Did I hit a rock?” he said out loud, the sound echoing into the dark outside the lamplight.

Frantically, he scrambled to pick up the shards of metal and the handle, as if he could somehow put them back together. But it was useless – none of the pieces would dig fast enough or deep enough. Angrily, he threw the wreckage of the spade into the darkness; they all landed with thuds beyond his sight. He grabbed the hand rake and attempted to dig it into the soil at the same mark.

With a screech that reverberated around him, sparks flew from the rake’s teeth. The soil remained unmarked, as if it were made of pure stone. Eyes wide with fear and fury, Mitsuo tried again and again, slamming the rake with increasing force against the ground, trying to break it open. Each time, it sparked and rang out loudly, but with each effort Mitsuo cared less and less about the noise he was making.

        “No! Damn you, no! Let me in! Let me in!”

The soil would not give. With a howl of outrage that echoed all around him, Mitsuo stood and flung the rake into the darkness.

        “How can this be?” he screamed at the flower. “Why will you not budge! Why do you do this to me?”

He stalked around the Rose in a circle, his love of its beauty lost in his lust to own it for himself, subsumed in the anger that it would not submit to his bidding, not follow his plan. His eyes blazed and tears ran down his cheeks, a dam breaking open to release a flood of emotion that had been building for months, perhaps longer.

In a rage, he pounced on the Rose as if he were a starved wild animal, grabbing it by its stem to yank it out of the ground. He immediately recoiled with a howl of pain as its thorns dug into his hands. He stared at the wounds as they leaked blood, eerily black in the lantern light, then stared hatefully at the Rose as if it had attacked him.

        “I will have you! I don’t care how much you make me bleed!”

He reached for it again, the thorns tearing into his hands as he gripped the thick stem. He kept his hands firm and yanked over and over again, to no avail. The stem wouldn’t budge from the ground, no matter how his muscles bulged, his hands bled, or his voice strained as he cursed violently. Finally expending all his energy, Mitsuo threw himself to the ground and glared at the Rose, unsure of what to do next. Months of careful planning, hours spent dreaming and scheming, days full of a singular desire for this one thing, and not only was he failing – but it looked like he could never succeed. The Rose could not be removed from the ground.

        “How? Is this your magic? Curse you!! If I cannot have you, if no one can, then what is the point of all this? What is the point of YOU?”

There was only one thing he could think to do. Lost in his need for vengeance, Mitsuo stalked over to the bucket and picked up the saw with a bloody hand. If he couldn’t keep the Rose for himself, then he never wanted to see it again. 

He seized the Rose again, gripping its stem near the soil. He leveled the saw to cut through it, but immediately saw that it, too, was no use – the saw’s teeth simply slid off the stem, leaving it as unmarked as the soil had been. This time, Mitsuo didn’t even bother trying again, and hurled the saw into the darkness with a cry of heartbreak and defeat. He fell to his hands and knees, sobs wracking him. Next to him, the Rose still stood, unmarked and unmolested, its deep red bud shimmering in the lantern light. It watched him impassively, unthreatened by his furious flailing and harsh words.

Mitsuo refused to look up at it. He slumped over to sit, his back to the Rose he coveted so passionately, that had defeated him so easily by doing nothing. By simply being.

        “I don’t understand,” Mitsuo said over and over again, weeping as fatigue swept over him. His hands bled and throbbed, and his temples pounded on either side of his hot eyes, which felt like they were shriveling into nothing. Mitsuo lifted his head to the sky, trying to see it beyond the glow of the lantern, but all he could see was black. It was as if his entire world had shrunk to just inside the light, his only companion the rejection he’d just experienced.

“I don’t know what to do anymore.”

A new sound gave him his answer, and an unwelcome one.

Beyond the reach of the lantern light, out in the darkness at the edge of the clearing, something walked.

And breathed.

Evenly, steadily, a decidedly living sound.

Mitsuo’s heart froze in his chest, fear numbing his muscles as he struggled to stand. Somehow he picked up the lantern and held it in front of him, towards the sound.

        “Who is there?” he spoke loudly into the night. “Show yourself or leave me alone!”

A low rumbling growl answered him.

At the edge of the wood, behind a tree, Mitsuo saw the gleam of two thin eyes staring hungrily at him. Terror froze Mitsuo’s feet to the ground. The Rose stood behind him, a silent witness to the consequences of his hysterics.

It could only be a wolf. And where there was one, there were bound to be others. There weren’t many in the mountains – some called them “Ghost Wolves” – but they did exist. And now one, at least, had found him. Likely more were on their way.

Fear and shame washed over Mitsuo.

        “I drew them to me,” he said to himself, his body trembling with fright. “My shouting. The smell of my blood. And I threw all my tools away – I have no defense against them. I’ve been so foolish.”

He whirled around when a similar set of sounds emerged from the darkness behind him. Then more from either side. He saw more pairs of eyes winking in and out of the darkness as they circled around him, growls and movement in the undergrowth closing in on him.

They were surrounding him. He had nowhere to run, no way to help himself. He’d done himself in. His grandfather and brother had no idea he was in danger. Sorrow and regret welled up in him. He recognized the folly of his past months, the consequences of his obsession, laid out clearly by the wolves pacing around him. But he had no way to make things right. Jiji and Chuichi would never know what he had tried to do, why it had all gone so horribly wrong, and how much he loved them at his very end.

        “I’m sorry!” he screamed at the wolves, whirling himself and the lantern in a circle around the Rose as he did so. “Leave me alone! Let me go so I can do better!”

But the wolves were not listening. He knew they were waiting, planning, plotting, readying to make him their own just like….

        “…. like I did with the Rose.”

Like a veil lifting from his eyes, like a fog clearing, Mitsuo saw the truth. He’d been a wolf, singularly focused on conquering – consuming – what he felt he needed to survive. He’d stalked his prey, planned to capture it, to destroy it where it stood, to haul it back to its cave and devour it.

“I’m so sorry,” Mitsuo said to the Rose, his back still to it as he moved in circles around it. “I shouldn’t have done this. I didn’t understand. And now it’s too late.” He repeated it all over and over again, as the wolves tightened their ranks around him. Their growls began to reverberate, and Mitsuo knew his time had run out.

Mitsuo couldn’t see it, but far to the east, behind the mountain beyond the river, the first sign of the day’s light began to awaken.

But in the west, along the path leading back to the house, another light had also appeared.

*************

“Get away from me!” Mitsuo shouted at the wolves, even though he knew it was futile. There wasn’t anything he could do but die defiantly. After all his cowardice and scheming, he wanted to act bravely just once.

The wolves continued to circle closer. Soon he could see their mottled fur, lean muscled bodies, and sharp jaws join their hungry eyes in the death dance they wove around him.

But Mitsuo didn’t want to die. He wanted to do things differently. He wanted another chance.

        “Help!! Help me!” he cried out to the sky in one last plea.

A fukuro hooted.

And a piercing shriek erupted from the direction of the path, and down into the clearing, bursting into the lantern light out of the gloom, two forms swept into view, giant wings flapping and fire blazing in front of them.

Mitsuo cried out in alarm, tripping over himself and stumbling to the ground. The wolves were also caught unawares and yelped in surprise, scattering back into the trees. Mitsuo tried to make sense of what he was seeing.

        “Dragons?” was all that would come out of his slack jaw. But that didn’t quite match the sight.

There were two of them – one small and blue,  and one large and red, the smaller shrieking loudly as it sped around the perimeter of the clearing, fire whipping back and forth in front of its head as it moved. The larger one moved a bit more slowly, but appeared to have even more fire at its disposal.

Then Mitsuo realized the dragons were…. talking?

        “Get back you Ghost Wolves!” the smaller one shouted. “Leave my brother alone! You will taste our fire!”

Mitsuo gaped as his mind struggled to catch up.

        “Get up, Mitsuo! Get up!” shouted the larger one. “Add your voice to ours! It will scare them away!”

Mitsuo leapt to his feet still confused by what was happening. Was he dreaming?  Was he already dead?

        “Shout, Mitsuo! Jump up and down!” the small dragon yelled, still running around with his fire.

        “Here, Mitsuo, take this!” the bigger one shouted, approaching him and thrusting fire into his hand. “Wave it around!”

Mitsuo stared at the flaming torch in his hand, the familiar smell of burning oil filling his senses. He looked at the bigger dragon and saw him clearly for the first time.

        “Jiji!?!?!”

        “Wave that torch around! They hate fire!” Hideo hollered as he ran back towards the tree line, waving his own torch around his….

“…. wings and dragon head?”

His grandfather was a dragon?

        “That means that the small one must be…” Mitsuo realized, finding the smaller dragon zooming around, fire frantically spasming out in all directions.

        “They are running away, Mitsuo! They are running away! My dragons are obeying me!!”

        “Chuichi!!!” Mitsuo yelped in disbelieving delight. He ran towards his brother, seeing blue wings waving wildly in the light as he waved his own torch in front of him towards the forest.

Suddenly he understood.

        “Your kites!!” Mitsuo shouted. “It’s your kites!”

        “It’s my dragons!!” Chuichi insisted, whooping and shrieking at the wolves as they retreated loudly into the undergrowth. “They never forsake me! We wear them with honor!”

        “Keep waving that torch, grandson!” Hideo shouted from across the clearing. “Scream, yell, whoop, be crazy!”

Mitsuo did as he was told, joining the fray. Despite the pain in his hands and heart, he ran and waved the torch around, screaming at all pitches. Soon, a cacophony of sound and movement exploded from the clearing, whirling flames bouncing shadows and light off the trees and, occasionally, off red and blue dragon’s wings.  It went on for many minutes, it seemed, so long that when Hideo finally called for a halt, the sky above them had brightened noticeably.

The sun was rising. The long night was over.

        “How did you know?” Mitsuo panted, holding his torch aloft despite his aching muscles. “How did you find me?”

        “First,” Hideo said, “Both of you come here beside me.”

Both boys moved quickly to their grandfather, one bloodied and dirty, the other with a blue dragon kite strapped to his back, its wood-framed wings and fanged head arcing out over the top of the boys’ sweat-matted hair. Hideo’s larger red dragon hung crazily off of him, and heaved up and down as the old man panted wearily.

They gathered next to the Rose, which stood, as always, unperturbed.

        “We will stand here together until the sun has fully arrived,” Hideo said. “Only then can we safely return home.”

For long minutes, they stood  in a tight circle, holding out their torches and breathing hard from exertion. Soon, the clearing was clearly visible, the sky became bluer above them, and morning birds began their songs in earnest. When Hideo dropped his torch to the ground and sat, the two boys collapsed next to him without a word. The Rose stood guard over them.

Mitsuo knew he had to be the first to speak.

        “How did you know?”

Hideo shook his head and shrugged.

        “Your brother woke me, hearing yelling in the distance. You weren’t in your bedroll. He said he knew it was you and that you were in trouble.”

Chuichi nodded, grinning and wiping sweat from his face.

        “I heard you, and I just knew you’d gone looking for the Rose. I didn’t know why or what was wrong, but in case it was animals, Jiji grabbed torches.”

Mitsuo chuckled over tears that had begun anew.

        “And the dragons?”

Hideo pointed to the younger grandson.

        “Of course, his idea. It was a good one, though. If you faced predators, he said, then they’d be frightened more of dragons than people. Especially Ghost Wolves – they hate dragons. So he says.”

        “And my dragons always do what I say,” Chuichi added devoutly. “I knew they’d save the day if we joined with them.”

Mitsuo and Hideo shared a knowing smile. It was not a point worth arguing. Chuichi had been right all along. His dragons had saved them all.

        “We then just followed your cries down the path to this clearing. We could hear the wolves when we got close. As for the rest….” Hideo said, looking at Mitsuo gravely. “Tell us what happened. Don’t leave anything out, grandson. You’ve been keeping secrets for so long, and they have plunged you into this darkness. It’s time to bring them into the light.”

Mitsuo nodded and didn’t hesitate. He told them the whole story, from his anger at them the first day they saw the Rose, to his discovery of the cave, to his scheming and planning, to how he’d snuck out of the house hours before, and all that had led to him being surrounded by Ghost Wolves. As he recounted the story, Hideo tended to Mitsuo’s wounded hands as best he could, ripping away parts of his own shirt to use as makeshift bandages. Chuichi listened to the tale with rapt attention, never taking his eyes off of his brother. When the wound tending and the storytelling were both done, Mitsuo wept. He curled himself up onto a ball and hung his head, teardrops splashing the ground.

        “I’m so sorry, Jiji. Chuichi. I don’t know what’s happened to me. I’m sorry you had to put yourselves in danger to help me.”

But Hideo stood up and reached a hand down to Mitsuo.

        “I know you are sorry, grandson.  But right now, we are going home to clean up and have breakfast. Then you will take me and your brother to see this ‘project’ of yours. On the way, consider what is happening in you that led you to this. The walk will do you good. You will find the answer.”

Mitsuo and Chuichi obeyed, rising to their feet. Chuichi grabbed the empty bucket and Mitsuo extinguished the torches. As they left the clearing, Mitsuo turned to look back at the Rose one more time.

But it was gone.

        “Don’t worry,” Hideo told him. “You will see it again. It is also in its nature to reveal itself to you. That, at least, is now abundantly clear.”

The three walked up the path towards the house, a red and blue dragon catching a ride on two pairs of shoulders.

*****************

Just before midday, Mitsuo led his grandfather and younger brother to the cave. Though he had washed up, guzzled down water and food, and had allowed his grandfather to skillfully clean his wounded hands, Mitsuo still felt awful. He was sad, embarrassed, and confused, yet filled with gratitude for the love his brother and Jiji had shown him. It was much more love than he’d shown them in months – maybe ever.

        “This is quite the project,” Hideo said, hands on his hips surveying Mitsuo’s handiwork.

        “Wow,” Chuichi agreed. “You sure did a lot of work on this. It’s like a little house. With a shoji paper roof and walls!”

        “It’s to let in light,” Mitsuo mumbled sheepishly. “So the flower could live inside it and not die.”

“I don’t think that’s how it works,” Chuichi said. “But okay.”

        “And this door on the side,” Hideo observed, crouching down on one knee for a closer look, “that is for you to open to look at it whenever you wanted?”

Mitsuo’s face burned hot with shame, so he only nodded.

Hideo walked around the little wood-framed dwelling, which stood on four honed poles with a cantilevered roof, thin paper stretched between each piece. It stood on a high pile of rich soil spread inside several layered circles of smooth stones. On one of the stones sat a metal candle stand and incense dish. Hideo looked over at Mitsuo, who struggled to meet his eye.

        “This looks like a shrine, grandson. Is that what you intended?”

Mitsuo hadn’t thought of it that way, but he could see why his grandfather did.

        “No. I wanted it to be a beautiful place for the Rose to stay. If I made it nice, maybe it would stay.”

Hideo shook his head, eyes narrowed.

        “But you built a roof and walls to keep it inside, grandson. To trap it. To hold it for yourself.”

        “That’s like a prison,” Chuichi said, not unkindly. It was only an observation, and the truth of it stung Mitsuo deeply. He blushed again as Hideo nodded in agreement with Chuichi.

        “Indeed, it would be a prison. But tell me, Mitsuo – even if you had gotten the flower inside, why did you think it wouldn’t be able to just disappear from inside of it?”

Mitsuo hung his head. It was something he’d thought about, but had never liked the answer.

        “I didn’t,” he admitted. “I just hoped it would stay inside it, maybe because it was always out in the open before.”

Mitsuo was worried his grandfather would be angry, but was surprised when Hideo nodded and sighed.

        “I understand,” Hideo said. “We build such things to hold all that we love in life. So much we do not want to lose, so we make structures that we hope will keep them with us. We say it’s for their best interest, to protect them, but it is really about our own fears of loss. Do you understand?”

Mitsuo thought he might.

        “I think I understand,” Chuichi said, sitting down in the mouth of the cave. “It’s like with Chichi and Haha, right?

Mitsuo’s knees buckled and he sank to the ground at hearing those names. He couldn’t bear to think about them, but they never drifted far from the back of his mind.

Hideo smiled sadly at both boys.

        “In a way, yes,” he said kindly. “It is like when your father and mother left us. We could not prevent either of them from leaving, though we gave them all the love we could to try to keep them here.”

        “Haha was sick a long time, and nothing we could do or give her saved her in the end.” Chuichi said. “Her soul went away to live in the sky. That’s why I fly my dragons sometimes, to try to reach her.”

Though his youngest grandson was sad when he said it, it didn’t weigh him down like it did Mitsuo, Hideo observed. The older boy had begun to cry openly.

        “And then Chichi disappeared after that,” Mitsuo said bitterly. “He was so sad that he just left. He said he’d be back, but he hasn’t returned. And he won’t.” The last came out as a yell, an accusation against a father far away.

Hideo knew Mitsuo had found his answer, why the Rose had become such an obsession.

        “He may yet, Mitsuo. We don’t know he won’t.”

“I’m tired of things I love leaving me!!” Mitsuo exploded, hoisting himself up on his knees, his tear-streaked face reddening with emotion. “Of them not coming back!! Haha died and cannot come back, and that was bad enough. But our father left us! I wanted to run away, too, but he said I could not! He said it was cowardly for me to run away, then he did it himself!”

Hideo nodded, his own tears leaking out to join Mitsuo’s on the ground. Chuichi scooted over to sit next to his brother, wiping at his own eyes.

        “So, when you saw that beautiful Rose…” Hideo prompted Mitsuo. The boy wept so deeply that Hideo thought he might get sick.

        “It’s so beautiful, more so than anything I’ve seen since…since Haha. It reminded me of her, but also of how Chichi felt about her. He loved her so much! Seeing that Rose, it was like getting to be with them both again, yet it was also new, something just for me. Like it spoke to me. I didn’t want that feeling to disappear again, like everything else. But more than that, I don’t want that feeling of love to disappear from inside of me! It was gone, the Rose brought it back, and suddenly I was terrified I’d lose that, too!”

Mitsuo staggered from releasing his grief, as if a serpent had exploded out of him, leaving a torn husk behind. He fell to his side weeping, and Chuichi cried gently as he rubbed his older brother’s back.

        “I think that is both the saddest and happiest reason I’ve ever heard for wanting something so badly,” Chuichi said, looking up at his grandfather. “Now it makes sense why he was so sad and angry. Why he wanted the Rose this much.” 

Hideo kneeled down next to his grandsons, gathering them in his arms. Both rested their heads against him and cried at their own memories and from the emotion of the day. Hideo had shed many tears for his son’s disappearance, for the slow withering and death of his daughter-in-law, and for what all of it had done to his beloved grandsons. They deserved so much better.

They sat there together for a while, remembering those they loved and missed, and listening to the summer wind in the trees. Finally, Mitsuo sat up and moved to his project.

        “So I wanted to make sure that the Rose didn’t disappear again. Or hoped it wouldn’t. I’d dig it up, put it in here, then I’d always know where it was and could look at it at any time. It wouldn’t leave me again. It was so stupid of me.”

Hideo shook his head, standing stiffly.

        “Understandable, grandson. I see that now, as do you. And yet, as I said that first day, it is not in that Rose’s nature to stay in one place, and you learned today that its nature is not to be caged, either. The reasons don’t matter – what does is that you see its nature and accept it. If you want to love something – or someone, as you will someday – you will have to love them not in spite of their nature, but because of it. For if we do not love people as they are, we don’t truly love them – we instead love what we think they can give us.”

        “That sounds kinda selfish,” Chuichi said with a frown.

        “It’s tricky, certainly,” Hideo told him. “Do you understand what I mean, Mitsuo?”

The older boy nodded, his pain ebbing away.

        “I think so. Haha couldn’t be controlled either, now that I think of it. Chichi sometimes tried, and that never worked.”

        “He’s where you get your stubbornness, and from her your passion.” Hideo replied. To Chuichi he said, “And you get your creative joy from her, and your fierce bravery from him.”

Both boys grinned despite their heavy hearts.

        “And they both love you,” Hideo said. “As best they can, from where they are. Not in the past. But the present. They love you now, as you are. And you cannot – and should not – be controlled, either. You must live your nature, like that Rose does.”

        “I wish I could disappear and reappear whenever and wherever I want,” Chuichi giggled. “I’d pop in on you both to scare you all the time.”

Mitsuo shoved his brother playfully, then looked somberly at his project.

        “I suppose I should take this apart, then?”

Hideo considered something. A way to help both his grandsons learn from the New Discoveries the day had brought them.

        “Yes, but then let’s take it all back to the house. I have an idea.”

*******************

By the time the sun was beginning its descent below the western hills, they were finished. All three were tired, dirty, and thirsty, but it had been worth it.

Standing in a corner of the courtyard, just under the outer edges of the Japanese maple, they had reconstructed the layered stone circles of Mitsuo’s project. Hideo had then filled in the space with the finest soil from his expansive garden, and Chuichi had helped his brother put up the frame of the little dwelling – after removing all the shoji paper from it. The bare wood now stood as if its walls and roof were invisible, the soil inside unimpeded from rain and sunlight.

        “We can decorate the wood, too, if you want,” Chuichi suggested to Mitsuo. “We could use some of my paints to color them, put symbols on them.”

        “Like dragons?” Mitsuo said to his brother with eyebrows arched. But Chuichi shook his head vehemently.

        “No, this is what you built. You get to put on what you want. I’ll just help.”

Hideo smiled at both boys. He was proud of them both beyond measure.

        “This looks really good, grandsons.. This is the best we can do.”

        “Explain it to me again?” Chuichi asked. But unlike the first time when Hideo had done so, this time it was Mitsuo’s turn.

        “This little plot is what we can offer the Rose. If it wants to ever come here, it can have the best spot in the courtyard, its best soil, its best sunlight, and its best shade. We can then enjoy it for as long as it wants to stay. That way, we honor its nature, love it for what it is, and enjoy its beauty in the moment. That’s the best we can ever do.”

        “I like that,” Chuichi said. “So it might stay for an hour? A day? Or longer?

        “No way to know,” Mitsuo said. “It may not come at all. And we will likely still see it out in the forest. But someday we might not. It may not be in its nature to stay in one area for too long.”

Chuichi thought hard about that for a moment.

        “Then I guess we really better enjoy it every time we see it, for however long we can.”

        “Yes,” Mitsuo said with a ruffle of his brother’s hair. “Like we did with Haha.”

Hideo put aside his shovel and put his arms around his grandsons.

        “That Rose is what it is, and it can be a reminder for you that all good things – especially Love and those we love – are best enjoyed in the moment, as they are. That is the only way we can see them and accept them. As they are.” 

        “And if they leave,” Mitsuo added quietly. “That doesn’t mean they won’t come back. Or that they no longer love us.”

Hideo hugged the boy tightly. He understood.

The next morning, Mitsuo and Chuichi went to the river for water. On their way out and after they returned, they each checked the special plot. Both times, it was empty. They saw the Rose on their way to the river, amidst some rocky boulders near a cliff face. It was gone on their way back.

The next morning, and each one after that through the summer, the boys repeated their routine. Every day, they saw the Rose and spent a few minutes with it, but it did not appear in the courtyard plot. In the afternoons, after their studies, Mitsuo and Chuichi spent their time helping Hideo with the gardens, learning how to tend each plant. For Mitsuo, who had never liked gardening, it was like discovering a new world. He learned to love and appreciate the beauty in all of his grandfather’s plants, seeing them all as such for the first time in his life. The Rose remained the flower he loved most of all, but it had also taught him to seek and enjoy the beauty and uniqueness of all the other flowers, too.

On rainy or lazy days, Mitsuo helped his brother with his drawings and his stories, and whenever they had time, Mitsuo helped Chuichi fly his dragon kites. Some days, out in the Valley pulling them through the mountain breeze, the Rose would appear as if it wanted to watch them fly, too.

Each day into the autumn, the courtyard plot remained empty, and Mitsuo worked hard to remain patient. Some days doing so was easy, other days were tougher. He wrestled with his embarrassment over how he’d acted, and struggled with the anger he still felt about his mother and father. His grandfather told him the experience was helping him build character, but that was something grown ups always said when something wasn’t fun.

Then on one cool, wet day, Chuichi came running into the house, calling out for Mitsuo.

        “What is it? You’re being loud,” Mitsuo said irritably.

        “Come with me! I want to show you something! I’ve been working on something in secret for you, and now it’s done!”

Mitsuo tried to put it off, but Chuichi used his effective “I saved your life that one time” technique to get his older brother to do what he wanted.

Chuichi took them into the forest, shouting out to Hideo that they’d be back soon. Mitsuo soon recognized their path, and within minutes they’d arrived at the cave. Mitsuo hadn’t been there since That Day. He’d avoided it since.

        “Come inside with me!” Chuichi said excitedly. “Here’s a lantern!”

Mitsuo sighed and followed his brother as he lit the lantern and opened its shutter wide. Light shone on the grey-brown walls and ceiling. About halfway down the cave, Chuichi stopped and pointed to the wall beside them.

        “Look!”

Mitsuo gasped at what he saw. The entire wall was painted.

“It’s a story!” Chuichi shouted. “About you and the Rose! The whole thing!!

Chuichi wasn’t lying. The whole story was there. It started on the left with them walking for water, with the Rose in the snow, then there they were with Jiji. Then it was Mitsuo working at his cave, then him out in the darkness with his lantern, followed by the Rose refusing to budge, the glowing eyes of the Ghost Wolves. The dragons with fire soared in to drive them away. Finally, they were building the courtyard plot and helping Jiji tend his garden. There was even Haha’s spirit floating away, and Chichi far away riding a strong, black horse.

        “This is perfect,” Mitsuo mumbled in awe. “It’s wonderful, Chuichi. Thank you.”

“It’s not exactly done yet,” his brother admitted suddenly, picking up a brush and handing it to a confused Mitsuo. “There’s one more thing.” He led Mitsuo a bit further down the cave wall to a spot where he’d painted a life size image of the courtyard plot. “You need to add the Rose to this. That way, it will always at least be here, where you can see it anytime you want.”

Mitsuo was moved beyond words. He knew what he needed to do.

        “I don’t know how to paint like you,” he said to Chuichi. “I think it will be perfect if you do it. I’ll watch you, and it will turn out just like it’s supposed to.”

        “Really?” Chuichi exclaimed. “You don’t want to do it? I want you to like it.”

        “I will. I promise. I’ll watch.”

Chuichi clapped his hands and took the brush back from his brother. He poured out water from his canteen and mixed it on a block pallet with red and black powder. Mitsuo watched his brother closely, seeing him clearly for who he was.

With focused concentration, Chuichi’s hand flowed over the wall, up and down, across at every angle. He considered every movement, but didn’t hesitate. His hands moved assuredly, his eyes in perfect harmony with every stroke. After about thirty minutes, Chuichi stood back and smiled widely.

        “It’s done!”

It looked like a rugged calligraphy, as if the greatest artist of the royal court had brought his own brush to the rock. Sweeps of black outlined the Rose’s stem and petals, and a burst of bright red brush strokes filled the bud, some of it bleeding onto the black, which somehow seemed only fitting. Not all the space was filled with red, though.

        “It’s because if I fill the bud fully with red, then the Rose can’t keep growing,” Chuichi explained. “I gave it more room to keep living. It captures its spirit this way.”

        “That’s perfect.” Mitsuo told him, his heart filling and aching at the same time.

The two brothers stared at the Rose painting for a while longer, then decided to head for home. They stepped out of the cave, and stopped short. 

The Rose awaited them. There it stood, as it always did.

The boys looked at each other in wonder, then approached it reverently. They investigated closely its petals and stem, tapped its thorns, and leaned in close to smell its fragrance. It made them even happier than they’d been moments before in the cave.

After a few minutes, it was time to go. The brothers said their goodbyes to the Rose, then headed for home.

But Mitsuo stopped. He motioned for his brother to wait, then jogged back to the Rose. He stared at it, then spoke softly.

        “I don’t know why you are as you are, but I want you to know – you are perfect as you are. I see that now. And I love that I get to see you every day, and even when I don’t see you, I still do. So, you are welcome in my courtyard at any time. We have a beautiful plot just for you, and there are many other beautiful flowers there to keep you company. I will take great care of that plot for you while you are there, and you can stay for as long or as little as you like. I just wanted to make sure you heard me invite you.”

He turned and went back to his brother, and the Rose gently swayed in the breeze.

When they neared the house, Hideo was waiting just outside the main courtyard entrance. It was unlike him to do that. Seeing a strange smile on his face, the boys glanced at each other quizzically. Behind Hideo, tied to one entrance post, stood a strong black horse, a worn empty saddle and fully packed bags adorning it.

Hideo pulled Mitsuo and Chuichi close to him and knelt down. Tears welled in his eyes as he smiled widely.

        “We have visitors, grandsons. Two of them, and you know them both well. I have no idea how long each will stay, but they are both here now. Go see them.”

The boys raced into the courtyard, hearts pounding. Standing inside the open shoji doors of the house they found a familiar form and face, one who called out to them with joy and then swept them both into a fierce, tearful embrace.

And in the courtyard plot, the Rose stood, watching it all unfold. 

******************
Thanks for reading My Sunday Post. Here are some important updates from my past week:

Soul Book of the Week: The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (I’m 47 years late to it)

Book On My Nightstand: Germania: A Novel of Nazi Berlin by Harald Gilbers (debut novel)

Best Show / Movie I Watched: Family Tree, Season One: Episode Six (The Civil War Reenactment Episode - I nearly peed myself laughing)

Strongest Earworm Song: Into the Mystic by Van Morrison

Best Guilty Pleasure Meal I Ate: Hamburger Helper Cheeseburger Macaroni (for the LAST time…)

Longest Walk / Run of the Week: 3.1 mile run / 10 mile ride (post-vaccine recovery, Friday)

Strangest Experience of the Week: Aftermath of Vaccine Shot #2 - it’s like being sick but not. Doozy.

Best Thing I Found That I Thought I’d Lost: one of my favorite all time sweatshirts (my car ate it)

Most Surreal Moment: A giant snowstorm making me look for Mr. Tumnus in Seattle

Biggest Surprise of the Week: Getting brownies in the mail (not THOSE kind - as far as you know)

Ode of the Same Story Twice

February 7, 2021

___________________________________

“Stay in your lane, asshole….”

I’ve said that to many a driver in my life (haven’t we all?), but in recent years I’ve said it far more times to my Crazy Hysterical Reactionary Internal Storyteller (CHRIS). He’s as much a part of me as my size 11 ½ feet where my middle toe is longer than my big toe, the weird birthmark I have around my belly button, and my innate ability to apply a M*A*S*H quote to any real-life situation. 

Except CHRIS is out to really mess me up – unlike my feet, birthmark, or Hawkeye Man Crush. 

CHRIS is deviously creative. CHRIS can be devastatingly subtle, or unbearably loud. CHRIS can be the first to arrive in a crisis and the last one to leave my best party. CHRIS can arrive disguised as a friendly Muse, or arise out of my internal fog like the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come (or WTF). CHRIS can appear to soothe while actually poisoning my thoughts and feelings. CHRIS pretends to look out for me, when his goal is to bury me in a fetal position (typically because of whatever story he is telling me that I am believing). 

CHRIS sucks. 

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about him this past week, because I’m sick of his shit. 

I’m sick of what I let him do, and of seeing him wreak chaos in others that I care about (he may have different names with them, but he’s the same. Give yours a name – it helps). CHRIS needs to stay in his fucking lane, and if I can’t run him off the road, I hope to at least get him so tired of chasing me that he exits my highway. 

CHRIS is always loudest and strongest around what we care about most, because those are the things that can, paradoxically, bring us the most pain – our jobs and livelihoods, the dreams we hope to make reality, our family relationships, or the deep love for someone we fear losing or yearn desperately to have one day…and then somehow not lose.

CHRIS has chimed in on every one of those areas of my life over the years, and I’m sure he’s proud of his work at various spots. Last week my therapist (and, yes, everyone who emailed in to ask – she IS a rock star) helped me see CHRIS’s handiwork about the “blew up my life” story, and once that Cat was out the proverbial Bag, I saw others that he’s been working on and some that stopped working a long time ago. I also recognized CHRIS doing his worst in some people close to me, too, but those are their stories to wrestle with and tell. 

Instead, I will just share one of those CHRIS stories with you – one about the ubiquitous Love We Hope To Find Then Never Lose.

CHRIS has twisted me up around a lot of various things in my life, but never more so — or more thoroughly — then on this issue. From a very early age, when I identified boys as bullies and girls as safe, the story of “finding the love I’ll never lose” coursed through my mind and my emotional veins and arteries more than just about anything else. CHRIS had a lot of help, too - television, movies, peers, cultural and religious expectations and exhortations, you name it. So much out there seems to indicate not only what the kind of love you find and never lose was supposed to look like, but also how to act/be to get it and keep it.

The messaging was as crazily mythological as it was confounding to me, even well into adulthood. I needed to be “good” and “upstanding” but also “tough” and “exciting.” I needed to be attractive and compelling, but also mysterious and accessible. I needed to be down to earth, but had better have a good amount of money. I needed to be humble, but I also needed to stand out from all the other suitors out there (as if such things were finite, like pie). 

CHRIS essentially pushed me to play a role to achieve a certain outcome, instead of figuring out who I was and just being that. And of course when playing that role didn’t work, CHRIS’s story had a twofold effect; there must be something fundamentally unlovable about me, and/or there must be something really wrong with the women from whom I sought that love that I would never lose.

It was an untenable way to build relationships, and CHRIS knew it. By the time I was actually old enough and far enough along in life to seek and build partnership, the stories about myself and other people had become so much of my “reality” that I could not function well in those relationships. I wanted love, but didn’t know or trust how to either give it or receive it. The stories CHRIS wove didn’t allow for my own healing, or forgiveness for others not living up to my ridiculous expectations (which are simply resentments waiting to be born).

CHRIS helped me create a mental list of criteria and attributes that no human being could ever reach. Hell, no Greek goddess could have ever reached them, either. Which meant, of course, I was always disappointed eventually with the real person in front of me. But instead of looking at the folly of my own stories, I made all our failures about them. Naturally, I never gave myself a list of all the ways in which I needed to show up better for someone else. Why would I? The problem was never “me” — it was everybody else.

It took me a long time to recognize and unlearn all of that.  Even then, it took time to show up differently in my relationships (of all kinds, but especially romantic ones) and not hold anyone to “A List.” The CHRIS stories were so constant, for so long, that even though I learned not to listen to them I still didn’t know what to listen to instead. 

Then, a few years ago, the effects of all this hit its lowest point in terms of the elusive “love that I had always wanted and then would never lose.” For maybe (actually, really truly) the first time in my life, I knew who I wanted such love from, and from that person alone. It was wonderful to feel that desire, that certainty. But in the end, CHRIS got me again. I was so focused on getting that particular outcome, and so afraid that anything other than that would doom me to a life without love, that it short-circuited and limited everything that was real between me and this person. In short, the very thing I feared happening I made happen. She certainly had her own CHRIS to battle and her own demons to face, but I was unable to see even that and - out of compassion, or at least recognition - relax and allow us to just be who we could be to and for each other.

Something based on Reality, not my stories. 

Instead, in not getting the outcome I thought I wanted, I focused on her “failures,” which were really just more stories. What was she really about? What had she not told me? What things about her could I trust or not trust? Did she really mean all the things she said and did? I had a million theories that I called convictions, a million more fears that I called intuition, a million fake conversations with her that were really just my wounded ego’s latest civil war.  It all did nothing useful; I inevitably felt bad about myself and angry and distrustful of her, and that was all I got from all my fruitless effort to “find the answers.” 

If I did focus on myself, it was on all the things that I must have done wrong. When did I say the wrong thing? When did I make a mistake? What should I have done differently? Why didn’t I see the reality of her blank/blank/blank/blank [all made-up shit]?

When the stakes felt the highest in this Most Important Of All Questions, CHRIS again had me tied in knots, unable to see how all the cords twisted together to tie me up. And hence, I had no clear idea of how to untie them.

See? This is why CHRIS sucks. 

[Editor’s Note: Don’t worry, folks. That’s not the end of that particular story. Just keep going. It gets better.]

Though I probably sound angry about CHRIS, I am not really. Not at the moment. But this past week I’ve been thinking a lot about him – and to be clear, he is the stories I make up about others, myself, the future, etc. – because of the major (and no longer true) story I discovered last week that CHRIS has been telling me for years. After that revelation, I couldn’t help but revisit some old stories of his, and also find some new ones that he’s been slowly cooking up. As I did, I divided those stories into two categories- the ones that I tell myself about me (which I call “my side of the street”) and those CHRIS makes up about other people (“the other’s side of the street”). It’s on the latter that I’ve kept coming back to throughout the week, and I blame the Greeks. 

Yes, the Ancient Greeks. Their mythology, to be specific. 

In last week’s post, you might’ve seen that the book on my nightstand was Circe by Madeline Miller. It’s an exquisitely written book, one that I’ve taken my time reading. I described it to someone as like reading a painting, if words were the paintbrush. It’s also given me a crash course review of Greek mythology. And talk about a lot of stories where made up perceptions of others collide with things like fate, chance, and destiny to create tragedy, farce, and the outlines of human frailty and strength. No wonder we still read Greek mythology today – it’s all so wondrously and frighteningly FALLIBLE.

Just like us. 

Within big human questions like What About Fates and Is There Only A Crappy Afterlife, If There’s One At All, the other constant in Greek mythology is that every character gets themselves into trouble at some point because they’re making up bullshit stories about someone else, and in the process are trying to control some sort of outcome for themselves out of fear. They each have a CHRIS. If they are mortal, CHRIS ends up killing them. If they are Demigods, death just takes longer to arrive. If they are gods and goddesses, then they end up punished / exiled / chained to a rock to have their livers perpetually eaten by birds. 

So yeah, as we see in Greek mythology, CHRIS never takes anyone anywhere good in the end.  Which is what makes CHRIS the great universal warning scream from our Ancient Greek forebears:

STOP MAKING UP SHIT ABOUT WHAT OTHER PEOPLE DO AND THINK AND FEEL ABOUT YOU!  LOOK AT YOURSELF INSTEAD!

(I imagine Prometheus shouting this to me daily, straining against the chains binding him to solid rock. Not really. But thanks for Fire, Promey. Much love. I like barbeque and camping a lot. Actually, maybe it should be Odysseus shouting it at me from across the River Styx – that dude’s CHRIS did a number on him in the end. He’d know to warn me.)

Much like with CHRIS, it would be easy to say that all Greek mythology is purely cynical about humanity, the nature of existence, the afterlife, etc. CHRIS is the real power in Greek (and maybe any) mythology, not Zeus or Helios or Athena or any of those other Ancient World Avengers in Splendid Loincloths. 

I don’t think that is all there is to CHRIS, or to Greek mythology. Maybe the written lines of CHRIS and Greek myths are all that, but between those lines is a silver lining, I noticed this week. Greek mortals and immortals alike all had a CHRIS, but they also showed an ability to ignore him. And when they did, they often prospered and found success, inner strength, and peace. It didn’t always last, but they showed us that if it can be done once, it can be done again. And again. In that sense, CHRIS himself shows us what we can do instead of listen to him – we can listen to the OPPOSITE of him. 

There is an opposite, I’ve learned. And who is that? 

That would be CHRIS’s antipodal twin sister, CASSIE - my Courageously Authentic & Self-Sustaining Intuition Explorer. She’s as much a part of me as my penchant for crying at movies, my need for a cup of hot tea every night at 10:00 PM, and my secret desire to go to Mars just to build a Red Sand Castle and put Star Wars action figures in it. 

And CASSIE is out to really build me up - by focusing me on the reality of things, as best I can see it.

CASSIE is consistently kind. CASSIE can be quietly subtle, or unmistakably clear. CASSIE can be the best friend in a crisis and the best bouncer at my best party. CASSIE doesn’t disguise herself at all - she’s a friendly Guide and the Spirit of All the Stuff that May Be Possible. CASSIE actually soothes me by helping me identify, and own, my thoughts and feelings. CASSIE looks out for me, helping me keep my own path clear of obstacles and prevent me from shooting myself in the foot.

CASSIE does not suck. 

I’ve also spent a lot of time thinking about her this week, because she is The Shizzle. 

Interestingly, I don’t think I would’ve recognized CASSIE as readily as I did when I did unless I knew CHRIS so damned well in the first place. Funny how that works. Sometimes one has to recognize a lot of lies in order to understand what the truth is. She’s always been inside me, but it’s only recently that her voice has finally grown stronger than her brother’s. As is true with so many things, I first heard her in me by hearing from her in other people — my closest friends, my family, my therapist, and more. Including the person that I mentioned earlier, actually. Her CASSIE is strong, too, and has been for awhile now.

With their collective help, I started to recognize and listen to CASSIE, then act on what I found. By abandoning all the made up stories about others in my past - their supposed motives, failures, etc. - and focusing instead on what my mind AND my intuition (my heart/spirit) told me together, I started to see the mythologies I had built around “finding the love I’d always wanted and never losing it.” And there were many — in that sense, it’s CASSIE who really showed me CHRIS. 

I also saw a truth that I had avoided for a very long time. 

Namely, that real love for someone cannot be attached to a specific outcome and be expected to last. Love cannot be real if it comes with a checklist, or has to look or be delivered a certain way in order for me to accept it.

Take the person I mentioned earlier. CASSIE shows a different reality to that same story. The problem wasn’t that this person lacked love for me, or that she wasn’t being honest with me about who she was and how she felt (she was very clear on both). The problem was I was so focused on the “type” of love that I wanted to get from her (which was really just an illusion of love) that I couldn’t see the Reality of the genuine, deep love that she truly offered me. Because it didn’t look how I “needed” it to, I didn’t seem to want it. And that’s not love — that’s…. something else, far away from love. It did a major disservice to her, and to myself.

All the attempts I’d made to “figure her out” had been pointless exercises when it came to ascertaining the truth. Making up stories about her didn’t bring me anywhere close to the Reality of her; instead, they drove me further away from her by feeding my neuroses and my resentments. Based on myths.

In reality, that storyteller in me —CHRIS — was never right about her once. Not once.

Fortunately, I was able to clear all of that up with her once I started listening to CASSIE instead. And Reality with her has turned out to be far better than all the crazy stories and scenarios I once cooked up in my mind. She and I are both better off - and now know and love each other far better and more authentically - as a result.

Thanks, CASSIE.

Listening to CHRIS, I only made a list of demands, of how I wanted this person to be, instead of loving her for who she is, no matter what that meant for me or us. To do otherwise is to love with certain conditions attached. And frankly, that’s not love - that’s imprisonment or hostage taking, and a recipe for disaster in any kind of relationship. I’ve seen it happen to people around me throughout my life, and I’m sensing that many of the problems we run into in our relationships - no matter their type or duration - stem from these stories / lists / expectations / demands that we put on each other.

We get ahead of ourselves. We focus on expected outcomes in order to feel secure in the love we have and to try to turn the hope that it won’t go away into a reality. For me, CHRIS had me wanting love without any risk, connection without any vulnerability, and the feel-good illusion of love rather than the truly intimate, vulnerable, sometimes-painful-but-always-meaningful reality of it.

CASSIE taught me a lot; she not only saved me from my own flawed ideas about love, but also helped me mend many relationships that had been damaged by me (and CHRIS’s stories) over the years. Those people know who they are, and I’m beyond grateful that I now know better how to give real love to them, and accept it in return from each of them.

CASSIE has shown me that I am not lacking love in my life. Romantic love is still a work in progress for me, but that’s true for all of us no matter where we are, who we’re with, or for how long. Interestingly, but not surprisingly, by letting go of the CHRIS Myths about love, and accepting those that I love (and who love me) without making up stories in the process, the Reality of love in my life is being revealed more fully every day.

It’s been in front of me all this time. 

It’s there, ready for me to accept it, and those who have given it to me are willing to accept it from me in return. And though this may sound sanguine, it’s a truth that I know in my bones and beyond — when it comes to love, I’ve got nothing to worry about. I have plenty from others and from myself. And it’s that last part — myself — that CHRIS hid from me for so long. And that kept me from seeing the Reality of others. 

This week, amidst all the Greek mythology and reflecting on the pulls and powers of CHRIS and CASSIE, I reveled in the calm and peace this Reality brings me. It’s not present 100% of the time, of course, but it doesn’t need to be for me to know that it exists. More and more, when I realize I’m not listening to CASSIE, it’s getting easier to hear her again.

I stop what I’m doing. I ask myself, “What story is CHRIS telling me right now?” When I have the answer, I do — nothing. I let it sit. Why? Because CHRIS relies on me to build onto his initial story to make it more powerful, to make it truly destructive. So if I just leave his story alone and don’t add to it, it rots right where I leave it, like a piece of fallen fruit left on the ground. Just being aware of that story, and aware that the truth is elsewhere, robs CHRIS of his power. And then, CASSIE doesn’t need to do much. She just points me back to myself, to my own questions about my assumptions, my fears, or whatever is in the way of seeing the Reality of me being okay.

And I am okay. I’ve said before and it’s worth saying again — each of us has survived 100% of all the stories our CHRIS has thrown at us, all the real pains and losses of life, all the setbacks and tragedies and uncertainties. Each one of us has survived every single one of them. And so, weirdly, even when things in the world definitely aren’t okay, we have space to be okay ourselves in very real ways. Our track record proves it. And that changes worlds - each of ours, one at a time. 

If we aren’t going to share our stories with the people we are making them up about - in order to see if we are dealing with reality or not - we are better off dropping those stories and focusing on our own side of the street instead. We can’t go anywhere at all on their side if we aren’t willing to just, you know, ask them if our stories are true, completely insane, or somewhere in between. 

Because it is only when we can share our stories - and all the fears and insecurities and vulnerabilities doing so requires, and the risk of hearing that we might be dead wrong - can we develop the intimacy, trust, and connection that is at the heart of any deep relationship. It’s how we can reality check ourselves with each other, learn more about each other, and learn to truly love each other As We Are. And that, in the end, is what we all want for ourselves. 

I wonder what all the Greek gods and goddesses would think. My guess is that they’d have no idea what to do with any of that. 

Fates? Go ahead. Whatever you scheme, it’s okay.  Oracles, too. If more Greeks had believed in their inherent Okayness, maybe the legendary stories we know would be a lot more boring and not as instructive - and likely not as well known. So the fact they didn’t see their Okayness is, um, okay.

But for us, in between the lines, that silver lining of Okayness is clear if we know where to look. 

There’s plenty of love in us, and available to each of us from others. So go and pick some up. It may not look like how you expected or think you wanted or needed, but it’s likely far better than the versions of it you’ve tried to dream up. 

CASSIE says so. And she knows what she’s talking about. 

So listen to her and stay on your side of the street, asshole (and that means me, too).

I say that with love. 

Chins Up, Everyone. 

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Thanks for reading My Sunday Post. Here are some important updates from my past week:

Soul Book of the Week: In My Head [Poetry] by J.M Storm (By a car mechanic turned famous poet)

Book (Still) On My Nightstand: Circe by Madeline Miller (I’m savoring it like a fine Olympus Nectar)

Best Show / Movie I Watched: News of the World (Tom Hanks in his first ever Western)

Strongest Earworm Song: Second Time Around by Indigo Girls

Best Meal I Ate: Sirloin Cap Roast (Instant Pot) with Onion/Garlic gravy

Longest Walk / Run of the Week: 4.78 mile run / 19.2 mile ride (Thursday)

Best Recovered Memory: My buddy Seth visiting me back in college and sleeping in my closet

Best Thing I Found That I Forgot I Owned: A solar powered cell phone charger

Biggest Shift In Life Style: Putting myself back on a regular bedtime. Finally (right, Mom?).

Biggest Thing Next Week: Second COVID vaccine dose (Tuesday)