Day Six: A Character-Building Experience

I could hear his Escalade, muffler removed, pull up in the driveway. He swung the door wide open and let it crash behind him with a BANG.

“HONEY, I’M HOME!”

My aunt rushed to greet him with a hug.

“Come say hi to Gene.”

I don’t know how she didn’t get soaking wet. The sweat stains on his buttoned shirt with the collar and tie pulled loose indicated a long day. The wrinkles in his forehead and his gray, thin hair signified a lifetime of long days.

“There’s only two things I care about right now, my drink and my dinner!”

And with that, he retired himself to his recliner in the master bedroom, every step producing a THUD louder than the last.

A few solitary hours later, I heard his footsteps again, but he caught me trying to sink into the couch.

“Look who it is! And what have YOU been doing all day, just sitting around reading your book?”

“Well, actually–”

“When I was your age, I didn’t have TIME to read! I worked two jobs just to put myself through college, ya know.”

I could smell the Evan Williams on his breath as his gut brushed against my cheek.

“That’s the problem with kids these days,” he muttered to himself as he sauntered unsteadily back to his room.

A few minutes later, I could hear snoring like cannon fire. After that, I shut my book and dragged myself to bed.

Day Five: Be Brief

I checked the address on the letter and the address on the mailbox. This was the place. I stood in front of a shotgun house in desperate need of a paint job, overgrown with weeds. It certainly took me long enough to find him, but I knew that my efforts would not be in vain. I walked down the cracked concrete and knocked on the door. A few minutes later, a middle-aged woman opened the door. Her eyes were glassed over and her cheeks were red and puffy.

“Is Oliver Brinkley home?” I cautiously asked.

“You just missed him,” she sniffled, tissue in hand.

“I found something he will want to see,” I said as I handed her the letter.

Her eyes widened and she placed her hand over her mouth as she read it, mumbling “Lord, Lord,” over and over to herself.

“I haven’t seen that man in years. Please, come inside.”

Lying there on a cot in the corner of the living room was little Oliver Brinkley. As I watched his mother shut his eyes and pull the blanket over his head, I tried to imagine living an entire lifetime without knowing my father. If only I had found him in time, maybe he could have. I wrapped my arm around his mother’s shoulder, and I wept.

Day Four: The Serial Killer

Today I want to focus on a post I made earlier. The day my dog ran away was an interesting one for me because it taught me a valuable life lesson. I am amazed by what life can teach you in seemingly inconspicuous moments as these.

The rain had just started to come down in sheets on one of those hot, humid June days. June is probably the wettest month in south Georgia, and also the hottest, with July being a close tie (as well as May, August and September). I had walked out on the front porch to admire the weather, because what else can you do during a storm besides “ooh” and “ahh” at the rain and lightning? There is something comforting about being outside under a roof and yet unexposed to the elements.

I went back inside for something, I don’t even remember what, but as soon as I was halfway to the kitchen the wind had blown the door open. Ok, I had left it open myself. Was it on accident? Not really. My dog Pinta, only six months old, looked at the door and then looked back at me. Before I had a chance to grab her, she took off like a streak of lightning through the open door. I had never seen anyone move so fast. I chased after her, screaming, but my efforts were in vain. She was already down the road by the time I was at the door. I yelled her name and ran to the end of the yard, but she was out of sight.

At this point I’m not panicking yet, but my stress level was rising quickly. My first thought was, “I’m soaking wet and I’ve only been out here for two seconds. I should go to the car.” As usual, I had no clue where my keys were, so I had to search for those before I began my real search. Five minutes felt like an hour as I ran from my room to the kitchen to the living room, back and forth and back and forth again. Eventually I found them sitting on the breakfast table. Of course that would be the last place I look.

I can feel my blood boiling when I run to the car and jam the keys in the hole. No seatbelt, no shoes, no wallet. No time for those things. That vein in my forehead is throbbing at this point. I quickly pull out of the carport and onto the road. Of course I can’t see five feet in front of the car, and this is with the wipers on full speed. I’m going full speed myself, but trying to control the car before I plow it into a ditch or a tree. Or even worse, God forbid.  I live down the road from an elementary school, so I begin my search there. No signs at the baseball field or the track. She’s so small, I worried that I couldn’t see her even if she was there. I was just hoping I would see her plodding alongside the road, but I never got that lucky. Several laps around the neighborhood and I decided to head back home for the time being.

On the way back home, I am already thinking of ways to explain what happened to my mom. “The wind just blew it open, I swear.” She would never believe me, of course. I park the car and sit in the carport for a few moments. At this point I realize that I am powerless. There was nothing I could do about it right then. Driving in a monsoon is damn near impossible, let alone driving in a monsoon and looking for a tiny, extremely fast dog. I felt bad enough, and I knew my mom was going to make me feel worse. So guess what I decided to do? I decided to not feel bad about it any longer. Should I have felt bad about it? Yeah, I guess so, but what was I supposed to do? There was nothing I could have done in that situation. But at that point, I realized the only thing I could control was my emotion. I told myself that I wasn’t going to worry about this anymore. What happens happens. At first, I felt guilty for telling myself this, but I knew it was the only way I was going to feel calm again. So as I sat on the porch and meditated, those feelings of guilt slowly melted away. And by the time the rain had subsided, everything had turned out for the best. That’s when I learned to just let go a little bit.

Day Three: Commit To A Writing Practice

I was going to write about “Five to One”, but it is too late (or too early) for such an energetic song. So instead I’ll dive into a song from another great dead rock star, Duane Allman. He’s a little closer to home and shot considerable less heroin. However, his manga opus is not a rock song. In fact, it is one of the most beautiful finger style songs ever composed for acoustic guitar, and that song is “Little Martha”. Hearing this song reminded me of walking for the first time. Baby steps, one foot at a time. I stumbled a little and fell flat on my face, but that was ok. Yeah, no one remembers walking for the first time, but this song reminded me of what the feeling is like. I got right back up and kept toddling, right into my momma’s arms. No matter how scared I was or how many times I got it wrong, I knew you were always there to care for me. I like to play this song in Open C on my Seagull S6, and I don’t play it the exact same way or near as well as Duane, but I still play it, because of the way it makes my heart feel and the way “Little Martha” makes my worries melt away. I let the harmonics ring out and by the time they fade away in my ears, I am reborn. The simplicity of “Little Martha” is understated by the complexity of its execution. It takes a lifetime of dedication to master such a song whose melody may sound simple and yet when played is the most beautiful vision my ears ever saw. Very few songs have the power to wrench tears out of me, to evoke such emotion. I believe that Debussy’s “Claire de Lune” is similar to “LIttle Martha” in that it is the song’s simplicity that gives it so much power, that the interpreter who plays the song is merely a vessel for an undeniable well of innate love that springs out of the heart of every human being. I can feel the tears now in the corners of my eyes. What is like to touch a soul? Is it universal? When I hear the evocative emotion that pours through every not and every rest, I wonder if every person on the planet feels the way I do.

Why Sometimes the Best Action is No Action

One of my dogs ran away today. She just bolted through the front door. In the pouring rain. I mean, these torrents were blowing sideways. I have to admit, I panicked for a little while there. What if she was ran over or hurt by a bigger dog? She’s only six months old. So I jumped in my car and started searching the neighborhood. After a while, I realized this was pointless. I felt powerless because there wasn’t much I could do in this situation until the rain died down.

Pinta, the Little Rascal

So you know what I did?

I sat on my front porch and meditated. I watched the rain flood the streets and the wind shake the trees and I forgot about everything for a while. I had to tell myself, “There is nothing you can do right now, and you know what? That’s okay.” Sometimes we have to let ourselves let go just so we can feel better. Because the way I had felt, I knew I could not accomplish much in that state. After about ten minutes of meditating, I stopped worrying for a while. The rain had calmed down slightly and the birds were beginning to return out of hiding. I watched them for a while. What does a bird do that’s so different from a human? We are here on this earth to eat, sleep, and fly just like they do. Well, not just like they do, but you know what I mean. I took comfort in knowing that if these birds will be alright, then so will my dog.

A few minutes later, I felt just as calm and serene as before my dog ran away. The rain had stopped completely, so I decided to make one more lap around the neighborhood. And as I walked to my car, guess who showed up? That’s right, my dog came back home! At first, I was a little angry for her disobedience, but I was too overwhelmed by happiness and relief to punish her. When she saw me in the backyard, she ran straight towards me and jumped in my arms. She was soaking wet, so I wrapped her up in a towel and put her inside. And to think, if I had been overworried about her, I would still have been driving around the neighborhood, and I may never had found her. That’s why I say to not worry too much about things. They have a way of working out, if you believe that they will. And that’s why I say sometimes the best action is no action. Sometimes all you have to do is sit and wait, and trust that everything will be okay, because everything will.

Unfinished Hemingway: “The Last Good Country” and “Crossing the Mississippi”

I recently picked up a copy of The Nick Adams Stories and I highly recommend it for all you Ernest Hemingway fans. If you don’t know, Nick Adams is a character loosely based on Hemingway through which he tells the story of growing up, war, and finally life as a writer. However, up until this book was published, these stories were published sporadically and out of chronological order, taking away any sense of Nick Adams as a fully developed, fleshed out character with a rich story and background. This book compiles all of the published Nick Adams stories as well as the ones found in Hemingway’s unpublished manuscripts. A lot of people may cry foul for tinkering with Hemingway’s work without allowing him final permission, but that doesn’t mean that his unfinished work isn’t worth a look.

One of his unfinished pieces, “The Last Good Country”, tells the story of Nick and his sister Littless on the run from the game wardens. This story, coupled with “Crossing the Mississippi”, essentially ends the second section of this book, On His Own, an appropriate segue into the next section, War. In “The Last Good Country”, Nick hones the survivor skills that will carry him through the tribulations of war, but it is more about his de facto exile from his homeland, much like the Indians that had left long before him. Nick had wished he was an Indian, and he might as well have been. They were persecuted just for being who they were and eventually driven off their own land. Nick is on the run from the game wardens for killing a buck, even though he never intended to do so. In the last virgin forests in the country, Nick says goodbye to his sister Littless, whom although he loves, he knows that they cannot be together.

This may be my overactive imagination talking, but there is something about their relationship that seems incestuous as well. Littless and Nick kiss quite often, and Littless talks about marrying Nick. Afterwards she mentions the infamous Harry Kendall Thaw murdering Stanford White for sleeping with his wife. Nick and Littless choice in books points to this theory as well. While hiding in the virgin forest, they bring along Lorna Doone and Wuthering Heights, two famous novels about forbidden relationships.

Of course, this could also be a metaphor for Nick’s forbidden relationship with the place he had grown up. Hemingway abandoned “The Last Good Country” to write The Garden of Eden, a title that seems appropriate for describing Nick’s relationship with his homeland. “The Last Good Country” does not have an ending, so there are many questions that are left unanswered. But by reading “Crossing the Mississippi”, we know that Nick eventually parts ways with Littless and evades the game wardens. As he sits on a train above the river, “swirling a little where the abutments of the bridge jutted out,” he reflects on Mark Twain, Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer, and Robert de La Salle, and in his own way he equates himself with these figures. If Nick has not grown up yet, he surely will in the next section when he sees war.

Day 2: A Room with a View (Or Just a View)

As I walk down the dirt path, I marvel at how bright the stars are around here. They never cease to amaze me. Just ten miles down the main road, the city lights obscure everything. The field of grass that the dirt path cuts through is so thick and tall, we cannot gauge our location until we are already at the end. I usually just mark our position by the tall pines that dance in the gentle breeze.  As Aunt Jeanie would say, “If trees were skyscrapers, Dasher would be a metropolis.” Before long, the road ends at the railroad tracks. Rusty and corroded, the trains had stopped riding these rails years ago, just about when the airport was built in the city. Spikes and rotting wood dot the gravel ditches. I walk along one of the railings, pretending it’s a balance beam. Shelby jumps from plank to plank.

“Careful, the gravel is hot lava,” she warns me. I smile and take extra care to steady my balance. The only way I can see my feet is from the light of the full, white moon and the bright stars that glitter across the black sky. The light reflects off the wall-like grass in a way that makes the long track ahead of us look like a tunnel. Eventually the grass gives way and we can finally gain a bearing on our surroundings. To our left stands the abandoned train station, overgrown by weeds and obscured by pines, and alongside the station runs the main road to the city. Across the road are several well-kept houses, but no lights shine in the windows. Everything is silent and surreal, save for a few chirps from the crickets and a bellow here and there from the bullfrogs. But everything belongs to me. Everything belongs to us. We climb onto the landing platform. Two wooden banisters corner the platform to support a roof that is no longer there. We stand there for what seemed eternity, waiting for a train that we knew would never come.

“How come you never left Dasher?” Shelby asks me. Before I could think of an answer, the sky lit up with electricity immediately accompanied by a booming clap of thunder. Shelby shrieks and scurries through the doorless frame and I follow after her. The small lobby inside is gray and dull apart from the graffiti that gave the walls some color. Cigarrete butts and broken bottles litter the floor, the only glass in the whole place since someone took out the window panes a while back. Otherwise, the lobby is completely empty. “Those clouds creeped up on us,” she says. “Let’s get going so we can beat them home.”

“For sure. But let me go piss real quick.” I walk into the narrow hall that shoots off to the left of the lobby and into the restroom, marked by the fading silhouette of a man. Inside, three stalls face three sinks. I walk into the stall at the end, the one I always use. As I unbuckle my pants and do my business, I skim over the reading material scrawled on the walls. On the bottom of the right wall, I spot some of my own work. Eddy was here 11/13/08. I think about what Shelby asked me earlier, and honestly, I have no good answer.

Food for Thought

“Wisdom is not the product of schooling, but of the lifelong attempt to acquire it.” – Albert Einstein

Watch “Apple Watch – Up” on YouTube

Apple ads are some of the best around. The recent Watch campaign is exceptionally good because it manages to tell stories without words. This one is how Apple Watch helps people get up to exercise. Of course this campaign has to be extra good to make up for such a pointless product, but that’s just my opinion.

How a Stranded Mountaineer’s Life-Saving Strategy WILL Help You Write More Efficiently

I’ve got to remember to do this

Joe Simpson, an English mountaineer, messed up:

In 1985, while descending the Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes, he slipped, landed awkwardly, and shattered his tibia into his knee.

Joe’s climbing partner, Simon Yates, was forced to lower him down the side of the mountain using a belay and rope. But the conditions were less than perfect — it was dark, and a storm was coming through — and Simon accidentally lowered Joe off a cliff.

Whoops. 

The pair were tied together, so, after some time in a weight stalemate, Simon was forced to cut the rope.

Joe fell.

He fell 150 feet down the cliff and ended up in a crevasse. But he didn’t die.

When he came to, Joe realized he couldn’t climb out. Not with his leg. It would’ve been impossible. He would have to lower himself further down the crevasse, hoping there would be a way…

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