Phil RedBeard

Dog Days

Well. We’ve landed. Not where we wanted or planned to land, but sometimes all you need is wheels on the ground. A few years ago my parents and sister bought a large house half an hour south of where my wife and I used to live, and they’ve lived together there ever since. That house has a few extra rooms that have been seldom used, and as soon as my sister heard of our predicament she reached out to me to say “you are living here!”.

We’ve been here a week today, and already it feels longer. We have settled in well, except for our bewildered dogs who are constantly asking when we are “going home”. If only I had a way to communicate to them the abrupt change we made in their lives and why everything is different. But really, if only there was someone to communicate to me the abrupt change in my life and why everything is different. I am still not sure I understand.

On top of that, the day we moved, and the week since, has been the hottest and most humid we have had all summer. Dog days, indeed.

Another house came available the other day, and while my wife and I drove by and looked at the particulars, we both agreed that we didn’t have the mental wherewithal to even consider the decisions and complications necessary towards procuring a house. While it won’t be available until October, we need time right now to rest from major decisions. If that house is sold in the meantime, so be it. We cannot right now, and that is ok. Our dogs have it easy with only deciding when to bark and where to pee in the lawn. If only my decisions were as easy.

As it looks like we will be living where we are for some time, I went through the process to change our address where necessary and fill out the new address enough times to already memorize it. We will be receiving new IDs in the mail, and whatnot. While our space isn’t large, it is more than adequate for now, and even a little comfortable. We shared a meal with my sister last night, and while quiet and unassuming, I think my wife and I both needed quiet and unassuming. Our dogs even begged for scraps a little and it was all so…normal. Nice, for a change. Things haven’t been that level of normal for several months.

I don’t know what happens next, or where we and our dogs will eventually land. I hope it will be somewhere with room enough, and a fenced yard for them to traverse. I would like a room for LEGO, and an office, and a comfortable bedroom and room to entertain guests. I don’t need much, really. All the same, I realize how fortunate I am. And really, we aren’t that much different from many in the world. A past job I worked was teaching English to Koreans. Many of them live in multi-generational homes, with grandparents and children all in the same dwelling, and sometimes, a dog. I think it is even more natural than everyone having their own home, which we preach so loudly here in the United States. Not to say I don’t want a bit more space, but our current arrangement is normal, too, globally speaking.

So what do I do now, while I am waiting for things to settle, for things to work out, for a house to become available? Last time I wrote, I mentioned putting one foot in front of the other and forcing myself to keep going. While that is still true, I think this may be more a season of putting my feet up and relaxing for a bit. I feel something telling me to wait, to rest, to just exist for a while.

Right now, while I am typing in the new-to-me office, I am watching the sun rise across agrarian fields. There is a pale pink and light blue in the sky. A gentle breeze is stirring leaves and flowers. A cow bellows in the distance. It is peaceful here, and I can see why my parents and my sister chose this place, beyond the concerns of enough space and a good size kitchen. I feel connected for the first time in a long time, connected to something bigger.

We won’t stay here longer than is required, but while I am here, I will do some soul searching, and try to determine exactly what I need out of a space. The last house I moved into was already established, my wife had bought it before we were married. It was a fine house, and served us well. Now we occupy space in someone else’s house, and it is serving us well, too. In between, I think now with space to look back on the last few months, we might have been forcing it a little. Rushing from one house to the next, barely stopping to take them in, flitting from one room to the next, hastily imagining ourselves living there. Certainly, some of the houses we looked at didn’t necessitate much looking (there were some truly terrible examples we toured) but some might have warranted a slower approach. I hope, the next time we venture out to look at homes, it might be on a more relaxed pace, and with more thought behind it. Part of the trouble we had this last time was the fact that we had already promised to sell our house, and had a deadline to move out by. That won’t exist next time round.

For now, it is patience and rest, and then it will be time for contemplation and examination. While slightly uncomfortable now, going from a four room house to one room in a house, I believe the time here will yield dividends later. And in the in-between? Rest. I am so thankful for my sister who insisted we be here, and my parents to support the move, and my nieces to fill the house with laughter and play, and room for the dogs to roam. I think we needed this, though we knew it not.

Fragile Dreams

My wife and I dreamed that we would buy a new home, a better situation for life and health, and a new start into the next stages of life. But that dream vanished.

There was once a dream that was Rome. You could only whisper it. Anything more than a whisper and it would vanish… it was so fragile.

– Marcus Aurelius in Gladiator

I feel like our dream was too audacious, too ridiculous, too ambitious, and ultimately, too fragile. We’ve been denied funding for our new home, something to do with income. I don’t pretend to know the ins-and-outs of the process or the legalities, I just know that a man that I’ve never actually met called this evening saying that my wife and I cannot go forward with the purchase of what we had finally begun to think of as our new home.

And we are closing in a week on the sale of the house we are currently living in, a deal we cannot stop, and probably honestly, still wouldn’t stop if we could. There is only a path forward, not backward, even if we cannot see where that path leads or what lies along the road.

But now we need a place to live, and we only have three weeks to find that place for the two of us and our two dogs. Three weeks and not one because our buyer gave us a free two weeks of rent-back. What once seemed a luxury now seems a life line, cast into the surging seas of the unknown when we didn’t know we’d need it.

We are devastated, of course. Angry, sad, bewildered, and grasping for answers. Our well-meaning real estate agent reminded us that “all things work together for good” but that is little comfort in our time of uncertainty. My wife said it seemed like someone had died. Maybe it was our nascent dream, so close to coalescing, evaporating in the harsh heat of reality. I don’t know.

I am so tired of fragile dreams. I’ve lost so many dreams in my thirty-seven years. I thought for once I would gain something. This was to be more than a house, a structure. It was going to be a home, a place to settle down and put out roots, and cement me where I wouldn’t have to leave. Ever since I was sixteen, and honestly for years before then, I’ve been on the move, always on the move. From the home I still dream of as home when I close my eyes at night, to Florida to Papua New Guinea to New York to Pennsylvania to Wisconsin to Texas. From dorm to dorm at college; from college to college. From family to family for Christmas. From life and wife to life and wife. Now to move again and to know I have to move again after that. I am so tired of fragile dreams.

What do we do now? For me, I force my feet ahead and stagger into the weekend in a completely different mood than I thought I’d be experiencing. I think I’ll take this weekend and just exist. I can pick up the business of living on Monday. “Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof” the Good Book says. I guess that is true enough. I just know it will be awhile before I dare to whisper again, and that is what really hurts.

A Dream

A great novel* starts with these words: “it was the best of times, it was the worst of times” and I feel that in my bones. I’ve been silent lately, not writing, and saving up my thoughts.

My wife and I are living our own *Tale of Two Cities as we are packing up our lives, selling our house, moving to a new home, and resettling. (The only thing that would make the scant metaphor complete is if we truly were moving cities, but I suspect we will stay in the same town we live in now.)

We don’t know where we will live, because we have only just managed to provisionally sell our house and haven’t yet found the replacement. We go out on Friday, it being Wednesday now, to see a few more locations. “‘There are always possibilities,’ Spock said” and for the moment we have several to choose from.

My wife’s knees are deteriorating lately and living in a two-story home is starting to exacerbate her condition. There are also a few things about this current home that we have come to not appreciate as much as we did when we first came to live here, and for those reasons we are choosing to relocate to a one floor domicile.

This is my first time being party to a house sale and purchase, though I have moved more times than I care to count in my life. My wife acquired this house before we were married, and I moved into it already being established. We have made a few improvements, but it is largely as it was five years ago when she first occupied. Technically, I guess, she is selling and we will be buying.

The process started some weeks ago when we had a discussion about moving, and made the decision together to say farewell to our housemate who has lived with us since before we were married and to bid adieu to the house. I don’t remember when exactly it was that we decided, but we’ve been talking about it for some time. Suddenly it felt right to formally start the process, and we packed a box, and since then we’ve been living with the garage full of boxes and the house as empty as possible.

We found a great real estate agent, and endured showings and an open house, and a few weeks of anxiety. They say that selling and buying a house can be the most stressful thing you can do as a married couple, besides the challenges that one faces with raising children, and I feel that is true.

We have been brought to the point of physical, emotional, and mental exhaustion more than once in the past few weeks. I fear that will only happen again. First, we still need to find a place to live, and second, we will need to endure moving in the hottest time of the year in Texas when we do find a new-to-us house to move into. Summer, unfortunately, remains a less-busy time at work, and therefore a good time, weather notwithstanding, to move.

The first house we found on the ads we thought sure would be our next house, that is, until we actually went inside. What we found did not match the expectations we had in our minds or saw in the pictures. Naïveté, I suppose. At any rate, we moved on. The second house we went into we again thought sure would be ours, until we put a bid on it and had an inspection performed. Then we found more troubles than we could shake a stick at and then some. While the sellers eventually agreed to fix many of the problems (though not all) we were sufficiently spooked to want to move on. So we did.

Meanwhile, the showings continued, and each time we would pack up our valuables, including our dogs, and leave for half an hour, or longer, to wander aimlessly or get an ice cream at Sonic while someone else decided if our house met their expectations. The process quickly got old. Then the whiplash of finding a house we liked and getting our hopes up enough to make a bid, having it accepted, then our hopes being dashed by the inspection report. It nearly crushed my wife’s spirits and mine were scarcely better.

Now? We are hopeful once more. Buoyed by the offer we have received, and excited by a few of the aforementioned possibilities before us, we go into the remainder of the week. What it will bring is to be seen, obviously, but I know that necessity will assist us in choosing our next dwelling.

The process, the feelings, and the tribulations I have described are of no earth-shattering revelation to those who have been through this process themselves, but for me, this is all new. This blog used to be called “down the dusty road” and I haven’t walked this particular avenue before, despite being thirty-seven this year. Fortunately, I have my wife beside me, a woman with whom I am grateful to be facing these challenges.

We have a dream of improving our living situation, of paying off some debt, and of starting some real savings, and hopefully that dream will be realized soon. Every endeavor expects much hard work, and this is no different. I’d hazard a guess that we are halfway through this particular part of our journey, and while it seems there are miles to go yet, I know we will get to a new home in the end. Honestly, any where I am with my wife and my pups will be home enough for me.

Tears and Fears

Trigger warning: bullying, self-image, abuse

I retain two memories of being bullied as an adult. I don’t remember being bullied as a kid, mostly, probably, because I was homeschooled and not around my peers much at all. But I do remember two occasions of being targeted by bullies as an adult.

The first was way back in 2015. Nine years ago about this time I attended a showing of the film Furious 7 from The Fast and the Furious franchise. Paul Walker had recently died in a car crash, but the film was completed and came out in theaters as his final performance. I’ve been a fan of the F&F movies since 2001 when the first film debuted, and of Paul Walker in particular. I’ve seen most of his movies, and still believe he was the soul of the Fast films. Consequently, the prospect of Furious 7 stirred up emotions in me even before I saw the movie.

I bought my ticket, and went to a showing. I don’t remember how many people were in the theater that day, but the ending of the film, written in light of Walker’s passing, is bittersweet and sad. I cried. As I was walking out of the theater, I was wiping tears from my eyes. Even now, as I recall the memory of that moment, I want to excuse my behavior or defend myself because of what happened next. A few men waiting in line for their movie to start called out “hey, that guy’s crying!” and started to laugh derisively towards me as they pointed.

Most of my adult life I have hidden my emotions. I don’t cry much now, as unhealthy as that still is, and I don’t really feel furious, or other “negative” emotions like I once did. Part of that is the medication I am on to control my depression and bi-polar tendencies, but part of that is a life-long steel grip on my emotions.

I am not sure entirely if this is where it all comes from, but I do remember that when I was “in trouble” as a child and my dad spanked me, I would cry out in rage, fear, and pain. I think, afraid that someone would hear and call the police, he forbade me from making any sound while he thrashed me with his belt, bent over the bed as I was. I learned then to suppress outward emotions, and certainly tears and cries. Anyway, I didn’t cry much, and still don’t.

That I walked out of the theater with tears in my eyes that day is a testament to how much I was affected by the moment. But, as soon as I was pointed out, embarrassment, anger, and shame followed my sadness. I had nothing to be embarrassed about, and shouldn’t have been made to feel shame because of my emotion, but those bullies made me feel ten again, or however old I was when my dad was routinely spanking me for acting out. I couldn’t help it. I don’t have an answer for that moment, and am not entirely sure why I feel compelled to speak about it now, but it has been on my mind lately.

The second event of bullying as an adult came a few years after that. I don’t have it timestamped in my head because I don’t have an anchoring memory like the Paul Walker film. But I do know where I was. I had been shopping at Harbor Freight here in the town where I live, looking for some tools or supplies, I don’t remember which. I was minding my own business, shopping in silence as I usually do, not talking to anyone, and had just finished checking out.

A security guard near the entrance called out to me as I passed, and I have a sense memory of him poking me (though I am not sure he actually touched me), but he said “he’s a thick’un!” as I passed by and he laughed. He was, of course, referencing my size. I am not a small person in size, though I am short. I haven’t much talked about my weight, but I am definitely overweight. All my life I have struggled with self-image, even before I had grown large. I remember, again, being a child, and being excited to tell my mother that a large enough t-shirt would hide my belly. I am certain that at the time I was not fat at all, but I remember being relieved that there existed some way to hide what size I was anyway.

Fast forward to a few years ago: no 3x size t-shirt is able to hide my gut, and this security guard could obviously see how large I was/am (my size hasn’t decreased since that day). That he would feel the need to point it out to me and to the other customers in the store was more than humiliating. I didn’t say anything, but walked out of the store and to my car and drove away. But I was angry, ashamed, and guilty. I was angry that he made me feel less than. Ashamed that I was fat and “undesirable”. Guilty that I feel like I have done this to myself through a lack of self-control. None of those three things are true, but they are ingrained in my psyche nonetheless.

I am more than my size, and am allowed to cry and express emotion. I know that, but I don’t emotionally internalize that. I still am upset every time I see myself and how large I am. I still don’t cry. I don’t know what to do with this, but maybe now that I have admitted it to the world what reads my blog, maybe I can slowly start a healing process. I am tired of holding all my emotions inside, and never releasing them. I am tired of being ashamed of what I look like.

These bullies still live rent free in my head as the memory of both days is clear. I don’t remember good days and happy times readily, but these stick out. I guess that is part of the human condition, but I wish it was the opposite. I wish I could forget these cruel individuals and instead remember more wonderful events with my family, or my wife, or my friends. Alas.

I don’t have a happy ending here. But I want to change, to embrace who I am and how I feel, and that is something to build on. I may need to find a therapist again, and explore parts of myself I’ve kept hidden away for far too long. It would be nice to be one and whole again for the years I have left on this planet.

DoNotErase

Browsing social media, as one does in this day and age, I came across a quote. It is unattributed:

“If you went back and fixed all the mistakes you ever made, you would erase yourself…”

The second part of the quote was added, and it said:

“…and that’s all I’ve ever needed to hear.”

I’ve been puzzling over this ever since. Initially, I want to agree. I want to consent that, yes, should I erase my mistakes, I as I know myself would cease to exist. Bound up with this is the assumption that as I am now, that who I am is a Good Thing. Well, I would like to mostly agree with that, too.

But, I find myself examining these premises a bit more deeply and questions arise: would I even want to fix my mistakes? Would that be desirable? Could one extract their mistakes from their successes and fix one while leaving the other unaltered? Are the two inextricably linked, in other words?

Am I anything without my mistakes, I wonder existentially? Without driving too far into the metaphorical weeds, the point is, I think, made.

Second, then, are the queries around whether or not who I am as I am is a Good Thing, warts and all. Are we, as humans, made by our failures? Do they, indeed, define us? The same could be said about successes. Are we who we are because we found success? Because we, at some point, did well? That infers that doing well is a good thing, and that doing poorly is a bad thing.

My society is tremendously invested in maximizing success and minimizing failure, as generally defined. The dearth of success is seen as lack of morality. Lack of backbone, of the Right Stuff. To not have success is, by definition, less than. To be successful is to be blessed, to be superior, to be on the Right Track. Do we exist in a black and white world, in which success is good and failure is bad? I reject that binary. The more I examine the life I continue to live I have come to the conclusion that life is capricious. The universe, as a whole, is uncaring about such small things such as success and failure.

Furthermore, success and failure are the same thing, given a long enough view. They are complementary sides of a two-faced coin, spinning in space, flipped, but never landing. One must have failure to have success, and success to have failure. Indeed, now we come to it: success and failure define each other. How do you know what success is unless you have failed? Without success, you don’t know what it is to achieve failure. Without the absence of light, luminosity has no meaning, in other metaphors.

Therefore, no, in answer to the many questions I posed earlier, I wouldn’t go back and erase the mistakes I made, thereby erasing myself as I am known. I know that I am who I am, and my mistakes/successes are but one fibre of my being, and are inextricably linked to each other.

Am I a person worthy of existing now as I am now? Yes, because my worth is not predicated on failure and success but on existence. I exist, therefore I am worthy. Whether I have succeeded or failed is irrelevant. As meaningless as those constructs are to place in opposition to each other, they are equally meaningless as a measure of worth, because worth is not about that at all.

Concluding the matter in mind is the conclusion of the quote: “and that’s all I needed to hear”. Not even close. I need to hear, and I need others to hear loudly and clearly, that success and failure do not make you who you are. They are but one facet of the multilayered being you are. They are not a measure of worth at all, that one should go back and erase one or the other. They are simply waypoints, signaling location, a way of saying “here I am” and nothing more.

I, Jedi

I don’t want to be angry. I know, I know: I just wrote an entire blog post about getting back into the fight, but over the past few days I’ve been doing some thinking. I don’t want to be angry; I want to be passionate. And there is a difference.

The picture above is a very simple picture of the creature Jar Jar Binks from Star Wars: The Phantom Menace facing the viewer, sitting on a grid, leaning against a yellow crate on the right with a red crate on the left. He appears to be lost in thought, resting his head on his left hand with his legs splayed out in front of him. The image mirrors how I’ve felt the past few days.

Including the Binks picture is more than just illustration. It reminds me of the difference between the Jedi and the Sith, two opposing factions of Force users from the Star Wars universe. The difference I wish to discuss is the difference between anger and passion. The Sith, categorized as evil and dark, use anger as a pathway to power, and as a tool to wield power over others.

Jedi Master Yoda says the Dark Side of the Force is “easier, quicker: more seductive” just as anger which is “quick to join” in the heat of the moment. Much more subtle is the passion of the Jedi. Passion must be fed, it must be nurtured: cared for. Passion derives its strength from love, ultimately, and slowly builds into an explosive force (no space-pun intended).

For the uninitiated, the untrained, the unwary, and the impatient, anger can seem like passion, but it has an edge and a bite. It cuts and crushes, and ultimately exhausts, leaving a bitter shell behind. Passion fuels, paradoxically softens, like sand paper smoothing a rough edge leaving a gentle curve. Both produce heat, come at the expense of friction, but only passion boosts and allows its wielder to thrive.

I want passion. I reject anger. I know, I also quoted the OCB which says “be angry and sin not” but I don’t much like that translation or that connotation. I prefer a verse that says “be passionate, and not angry, which leads to sin” but I didn’t write the thing. At any rate, I don’t want the edge, the cutting force of anger to incite me to fight. I want to overcome with passion, and be overcome by it. I don’t want to fight. I want to be moving so powerfully that no one, or thing, could come close to fighting me, that it would be a futile waste of effort. I am not a violent person, and don’t wish to become one in the chase away from lethargy.

In the novelization of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, Master Jedi Obi-Wan Kenobi is described as a “devastating warrior” who would prefer to “sit alone in a quiet cave and meditate” and that is more akin to what I would be. So full of the Force of passion, that would I ever need to do battle. I’d be unmatched, but really, I’d want to be amidst the life-giving Force itself. Kenobi so disdains battle that he is known throughout the Clone Wars as the “Negotiator”: the fighter who prefers to talk. That’s exactly what I want to be, in this example.

Yoda wasn’t great because he was a warrior; he reminded Luke Skywalker that “wars not make one great”. Yoda was great because he chose not to fight, not to engage, and to amass wisdom, peace, and patience. Eventually, evil was brought down by its own hubris, blindness, and corruption: from the inside. By fighting at all, Luke was being drawn towards the Dark Side. Only in throwing away (literally: his lightsaber) his fight could he start the course of action that would lead to evil’s destruction. That is what I want to be, in that example: the fighter who chooses love instead.

Maybe that sounds all too space hippy, but why not? Glamor all too often chooses the wrong target: the bold, the brash, the battler. Perhaps the ones who deserve the glory are the peacemakers, the meek, and the gentle. It takes passion to wear away the rough edges of confrontation, of power-lust, and of greatness-seeking behavior. Color me invested in rebelling against the quick, seductive lure of anger and moving towards the patient cultivation of passion. I don’t want to be the hero, the Anakin who fell to anger’s dark lure. I want to be Kenobi, be Luke, Yoda, passionate about what drives my passion and full of light. That is what I am chasing.

Look, I wasn’t wrong a few days ago, just unrefined. I want to constantly be growing, and moving in the right direction. I think I’ve found the bedrock beneath the sand I was sifting. Now I have something I can build on. True growth, I believe, is in admitting when one is wrong, and by altering course to fly in the right direction. So here’s me, in my little starfighter, headed for meditation and growth and away from battle.

The Fight in Me

I’ve got my cans on, listening to Jeremy Renner croon it up. (Wait. Hawkeye from the Avengers is a singer?)

Renner inspires me. Crushed nearly to death by a snowcat, he still survives, thrives, and lives. Lately I’ve been watching his Disney+ show Rennervations in which he takes these worn out and decommissioned vehicles and turns them into something that gives back to a community, whether it be a mobile dance studio or music studio (built out of a tour bus or city bus!). I have two episodes yet to watch in the first season and hope the show gets picked up for a second, and even if it doesn’t, I hope Renner keeps up the philanthropy anyway.

I think about Renner, and how he forced himself back from the brink of oblivion to draw breath again. If he can, so I can. I’ve been behind the eight ball, under the surface, floundering. I’ve been knocked senseless, and can’t quite feel enough rage to get back off the mat and fight back. I don’t know that I believe in fighting anymore, but those standing over me with fists raised don’t seem to care. I recall “be angry and sin not” from the OCB, and think maybe it’s time I drew up some righteous anger to fuel my fight.

There is plenty to make me angry, to enflame my passions: injustice, cruelty, and outright black evil. But I spent my childhood in a blind rage, fighting anything and everything. I engaged in one final war to end all my wars and break free from my personal hell. Ever since I’ve been trying to rest and be at peace. I haven’t found it. Rest eludes me; peace isn’t mine. Maybe that’s because there are battles yet to fight.

Jeremy Renner is acting again, and released an album about his horrific accident. I can’t muster the impetus to get off my butt and engage with my hobbies. I am mostly healthy, and though depression is a constant specter, I have few excuses. I wonder what would happen if I was in a terrible accident and was faced with the choice Renner was: give up and die or get up and live? What would I do?

I’ve wanted to keep my head down, and not engage. I am afraid. What if I start fighting again and can’t stop? I remember the black temper of my teens and early adulthood. I don’t want to go back there, but maybe there is a middle ground? I remember a moment from Avengers: Age of Ultron in which Renner’s Hawkeye is fighting the robotic army of Ultron, and takes a second to try to motivate the inexperienced Wanda Maximoff.

“Hey, look at me. It’s your fault, it’s everyone’s fault, who cares? Are you up for this? Are you? Look I just need to know because the city -it’s flying. Ok, look, the city is flying, we’re fighting an army of robots, and I have a bow and arrow. None of this makes sense. But I’m going out there because it’s my job, okay, and I can’t do my job and babysit. Doesn’t matter what you did or what you were. If you go out there you fight, and you fight… Staying here you’re good, I’ll send your brother to come find you, but if you step out that door – you are an Avenger.”
Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner)

For too long I’ve been in the shadows, kept down by trepidation, fearful of my own shadow. It’s familiar territory. I spent my childhood in a prison of anxiety, unable to walk into a Blockbuster (kids, ask your parents or grandparents) to return a video. I was angry at everything, and nothing. Afraid of everything. Then I grew up and imagined that I got help for my demons and convinced myself that I was healthy.

The truth is: I feel like Wanda Maximoff. Caught in an unstable situation I don’t understand, that is partly my fault, and unable to make sense of what I am supposed to do next. But I feel words coming to me telling me that it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what the past held. What matters is what I do next. I need to muster the courage, the righteous fury, and energy to get up, step out the door keeping me held back, and become what I am meant to be.

I need to fight again!

Be Quiet

My newest muse is a woman I’ve never met. I’ll call her Heather, because that’s her name. I don’t know precisely where she lives, or at all what she looks like, but I’ve been reading her words for a while now. I don’t even remember precisely when I met her. But I am glad I did.

Heather wrote recently and what she said has arrested me so completely. Her thesis?

I wasn’t made for big things.
Heather

Heather explains that while our current western, capitalistic society is shouting that we should live loud, out-there lives on social media, and sell ourselves and everything else as side hustles, she feels drawn in the opposite direction: towards a small, quiet, un-sold life. I resonate with that so hard I feel I might vibrate apart.

Time and time again I’ve been wrongly convinced that any strengths, thoughts, or feelings of mine (any of ours) are to be packaged, marketed, and sold to the masses. That if my own ideology isn’t going to be picked up, it’s not worth putting down. That if too few people “like” what I create it’s to be immediately archived to save face. That if I have a specific skill or trait that makes me stand out among the crowd it is my unending duty to brand it, niche it, box myself into it for monetization’s sake. Otherwise, without a what’s next what’s the point of a what’s now?
Heather

I’ve battled my whole life to feel relevant. Probably leftover feelings of inadequacy in the face of being born third, or simply a constant imbibing of a message of “matter or don’t matter!” that’s been shoved down my brain ever since I could consume media. Either way, I haven’t found what “I am here to do…” and it has been quietly driving me to the mental hospital in an antiseptically white van.

I don’t want to showcase that I’ve been here. I don’t want it recorded that my mark has been made here. I simply want to show up, exist, and let any lasting effect ripple with time, completely unbeknownst to me. I want to sit with someone I just met and invite conversations that are never meant to be shared beyond the sacred moment we have them… I want to visit desolate, unhurried places and leave footsteps in the wildgrass without pictures to prove it.
Heather

I feel this in my bones. I love taking pictures, recording moments, and capturing time on a stretched canvas, but I’ve also had the thought many, many times to just enjoy a moment unrecorded. “This one is for me.” I’ll murmur, and not pull out my camera to trap it in a 4×5 frame forever. I’ll let that moment breathe, and be, and then scamper away to join its mates in the backward running stream of time to be lost forever, to be regained only in memory ever after.

I want to be the slow bob of a wave at deep sea, holding close and passing on the songs of a humpback whale and the electricity of a box jelly. I want to be infused with every touch of life, instead of grasping desperately for its hand in dance.

In my heart of hearts, I think I was meant to live quietly. Simply. Small, even, in a lot of ways. To love what I do, to love who I do, to store it in the safekeeping of memory and story…
Heather

This. So much this.

I have dreams and aspirations, of course, but they are meant to service me, and not the other way ’round. If I end up doing something noteworthy I almost want it to be by accident; I want to do it along the way of just enjoying what it is to be me, wholly me, and no-one else. Be that being a professor, or a writer, or artist, or whatever, it must be in the flow of Phil-ness and not because it is What I Was Meant To Do. I don’t know that I even believe in Destiny or Purpose or whatevers.

I believe that great ones are great because of how they treat those around them, and not for anything they Do. That every someone who ever had a statue made of them was some sort of scoundrel or other and that the truly noteworthy never really get wrote about. I am not sure I even want to be remembered for any “accomplishment” of mine, but for who I was to my wife, my nieces, my sister, my parents, and those I am privileged to know in this life.

May they remember me as I am: a flawed, simple man, trying to find my way in the universe. That will be enough for me.

Thank you, Heather.

Breaking Spring

I’ve got three jobs now. I’ve presented an academic paper at a conference. I’ve been sick and gotten well again. I’ve made several runs to airports over half an hour away. I’ve spent more money than I had to repair my car. Again. It’s been a long three weeks. Or longer? I can’t really tell, except by going back to count days on the calendar which I haven’t done.

Fortunately it is spring break at the university I work for, which means I was afforded (mostly) this week off. I’ve had a few short tasks to see to, but nothing too elaborate. Today, Thor’s Day of break, I am finally starting to feel like I can relax and enjoy myself, which is unfortunate because I feel that could have used the past four days as well.

Any more it feels like it takes longer and longer to recover when an extended break comes around. Maybe I am feeling my age, finally (I did just turn 37). I don’t think I’m that old, but again, most of my life I’ve felt years younger than my biological age.

I am grateful for the days off that I’ve had, and will have yet to come before week’s end. But that doesn’t stop me from wanting or needing more. I’ve talked about it before, but the constant run run run run of modern life just isn’t sustainable. I certainly don’t have the mental reserves to keep it up. I need rest, and more and more frequently. I really don’t know how anyone does it for long. I haven’t felt like I’ve wanted it all to stop like I used to in before times, but then again, I haven’t had this much work to do for a while either.

Deep sigh.

I haven’t touched hobbies in a long time. I look at my work space and waves of despair wash over me, threatening to drown me in their dark embrace. I long for peace, and quiet, a simple life filled with simple pursuits. Damn this modern age’s will to dominate and to usurp and to exhaust all! Someone once said that once upon a long time ago we had the option to swim naked in clear pools and lie on fresh grass to dry and breathe clean air. But we humans invented religion and industry and that all changed. Maybe we never were that idyllistic as a species. I don’t know. I just long for an Edenic existence right now.

My mood is melancholy, obviously. And that is ok. It has been a gray day today and they say thunderstorms are on the way this evening. A perfectly wretched way to end a melancholy day. I’m here for it. This isn’t one of those posts that really goes anywhere or achieves a moment of zen at the end. It is one that expresses, vaguely, what my spirit can’t quite touch, imprisoned beneath bone and flesh.

Maybe what I long for is the freedom of my soul to wander the cosmos free of bond or need of oxygen. To flit across the motes of vacuum between galaxies and to ride on the waves of radiation beaming off of stars that my mortal eyes will never see, thrusting forth light across a darkness at once deeper than any I’ve seen in my mind and at once brighter than any terrestrial black. Once I wanted the forever sleep of eternal death, to assuage a lifetime’s weariness, and while that still appeals to me greatly, sometimes I think unending life unbound would be better still. To cast off bone and skin and weariness and finally untethered be. Either way, as beautiful as Earth still can be, I don’t know that I’ve really seen it enough lately to be firmly grounded anymore.

Maybe were I back in Virginia, gazing out across the sea crashing into the shore once upon a sunset, smelling the salt in the air, listening to the wistful cries of the gulls above and feeling sand between my bare toes, I wouldn’t be so disconnected from the life pulses of my terra madre. Or walking in a pine forest and seeing trees taller than buildings on a warm summer afternoon. Or swishing my legs through deep leaves on a cool Appalachian morning in autumn. Maybe what I long for is my birth home, where my bones feel surges of life in them again. I don’t know why I am so connected to that place, having now lived away from it longer than I lived there, but I feel the call.

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,

And a grey mist on the sea’s face, and a grey dawn breaking.

And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,

And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.
John Masefield

Whatever it is…eternal sleep, galactic freedom, or home, I think I need it soon. I feel myself cracking inside, breaking down, and starting to come apart. Stitched seams are wearing away and my life is leaking out, drop by drop. It’s pooling in the crevices and soaking through the skin, sweat to yield to gravity’s yanking force, falling to unforgiving pavement and disappearing in the abominable heat of the Texas sun.

Tears well and threaten to spill. I’ll wipe my eyes, sigh once more, and in a few minutes decide I’m fine and that I’ll be ok. I’ll lie at first, but then make it true, because it needs to be true by Monday when I return to work, and Tuesday after that, and Wednesday after that and…I can’t face any more after that’s right now. As the Good Book says “sufficient for a day is the evil thereof” and I’ve experienced enough evil to fill years and years. And today.

If I’m quiet, I can almost hear the ocean, but it is muffled, like in a shell held to my ear, and then I realize it is only the blood in my head, crashing against the shores in my skull.

Don’t worry. I’m fine.

I’m fine.

The Assassination of Padme Amidala

Trigger warning: misogyny.

I’ve been trying to read more, and I’ve found a strategy that works more than it doesn’t: reading before I retire to bed for the evening. This gives me a solid half hour or longer where I don’t feel I should be doing anything else, and can relax into a book. In this way I finished a re-read-through of the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings. I then cast about for another novel, and happened upon an old favorite, the novelization of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith. I’ve probably not picked up that book in over a decade, and was excited to dive into Star Wars and rediscover another old friend.

I was disappointed by what I found.

For the most part, the story was as I remembered, a commendable re-framing of the film from something that is vaguely a mess into something a bit more epic and coherent and a story worth telling. As I began to read, however, cracks appeared in the prose almost immediately, to my eye, making the narrative melodramatic and grandiose. That by itself wouldn’t have caused me to stop reading, after all, that is part of the grand space opera that is Star Wars. What did stop me in my tracks was the following passage about Padme, in relation to Anakin:

This is Padme Amidala: She is an astonishingly accomplished young woman, who in her short life has been already the youngest-elected Queen of her planet, a daring partisan guerrilla, and a measured, articulate, and persuasive voice of reason in the Republic Senate. But she is, at this moment, non of these things. She can still play at them – she pretends to be a Senator, she still wields the moral authority of a former Queen, and she is not shy about using her reputation for fierce physical courage to her advantage in political debate – but her inmost reality, the most fundamental, unbreakable core of her being, is something entirely different. She is Anakin Skywalker’s wife…for Padme Amidala, saying “I am Anakin Skywalker’s wife” is saying neither more or less than “I am alive”. Her life before Anakin belonged to someone else, some lesser being to be pitied, some poor impoverished spirit who could never suspect how profoundly life should be lived. Her real life began the first time she looked into Anakin Skywalker’s eyes…
Revenge of the Sith by Matthew Stover

The rest of the passage passes into an adulation of who and what Anakin Skywalker is, this being that Padme is “privileged” to love. I am trying to find another word to describe this than disgusting, but I must call it what it is: misogyny.

The first part of what I quote is all true, and really is a recap of Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones. But where this description of a powerful and magnificent woman truly goes off the rails is when it describes all of Padme’s accomplishments as belonging to “some lesser being to be pitied” and that she “pretends to be” what she is. As if this woman doesn’t matter, and all her accomplishments are/were worthless until/because she met Anakin and married him and became his property. That is how this really reads: as a description of something that belongs to Anakin, like Padme is no more than R2-D2 or his lightsaber. A magnificent thing that only has meaning because of who it is connected to: a man. And really, the rest of what I don’t quote is a lavish description of Anakin’s man-ness, but it is even more sickening than the defimination of Padme because it is so adulatory. It’s gross.

I’ve never met Matthew Stover and I don’t want to engage in character assassination, but what he writes here is horrible. Maybe he is trying to do some subtle thing where he is describing the truly dark nature of Anakin through this violation of everything that Padme is, but nothing about the preceding parts of the book are subtle at all. In fact, Stover hits the reader over the head with his flowery, verbose, and at times outrageous descriptions of Anakin, Obi-Wan, Dooku, and what happens between them. This bit that I quote and describe is set just after the “rescue” of Palpatine and Anakin murdering Count Dooku. It is hard to miss that Anakin decides to kill the Count in cold blood, Stover even makes that clear, and then the reader almost immediately arrives at this statement that Padme was nothing before Anakin, and that she only matters as his wife.

I couldn’t read any more. I have already read this book a few times, but this go round I had to stop. Look, I am not virtue signaling here. I have a long way to go in my treatment of women and how I regard others outside myself. But I think it personal progress that before I would read this part and keep reading to finish the book. That before I didn’t pause, that I accepted this description of Padme as consistent and approvable, but now I couldn’t not and would not move past it.

I think Dave Filoni’s animated Clone Wars, created after Revenge of the Sith (movie and book), bears out that Padme never stopped being every inch Padme. If I recall properly, Padme and Anakin do not see eye to eye about the politics and waging of the Clone Wars, and that she is not cowed by him or subservient to him, as described in this book. Maybe Filoni was trying to counter this passage, or maybe he simply has a better grasp of the characters of Star Wars than does Matthew Stover. Either way, what Stover does here is unforgivable.

No woman is given meaning through the man she is married to, or engaged to, or chooses to hang around. A woman’s being and personhood are hers alone, and everything she accomplishes, and does, and achieves are hers forever and part of her forever. They are not swept away by marriage or association. I happen to believe women are stronger by far than men, in a variety of ways and for a variety of reasons, one of which is the continued unconscionable way that men treat women worldwide. We have made them into the stronger gender. Like the Barbie movie showed a glimpse of, women are strong in ways that men cannot even comprehend. I don’t believe for one second that Padme only matters because she married Anakin, and that her roles of Queen, Senator, and Woman are meaningless because she wasn’t yet married to this man. That is, quite frankly, misogynistic excrement.

Believe me when I say that Padme neither receives nor is given anything better throughout the rest of the book. Some of that probably comes from George Lucas’ treatment of Padme in the script, an early version of which Matthew Stover no doubt worked from, and that Stover could only do so much to change. After all, Padme dies of broken heart at the end of the story, which is itself a dumb and weird thing to do. But Stover probably had the freedom to describe Padme how he wished in his own book, and he chose to do as I have quoted. It is bewildering to me that he did so, but not surprising beyond the fact that men are misogynistic and get away with it so boldly.

I could say more, but that might risk taking this critique down into diatribe. I will end by simply saying that I wish the novelization of Revenge of the Sith was better than it is, but I will no longer own a copy or read it. Life is too short to allow thoughts and ideas into my head that don’t advance an equal and uplifting view of all my fellow humans. I hope to always advance in my personal growth, and trust that will include how I view and treat others every day.

for Padme Amidala, Hero of the Old Republic