Phil RedBeard

Welcome 2023

I just found a LEGO minifigure in the pocket of my shirt. I haven’t worn this shirt in a long time, and I have no idea where this little person came from. I don’t recognize it, so I don’t think it is from my childhood. Starting off the new year with a mystery that cannot be solved is a fascinating way to begin. Here’s to discovering new things and adding new friends to our lives!

I ended last year talking about my favorite things, and I’d like to begin 2023 discussing a few hopes and dreams. People that know me know I don’t exactly like to do New Year’s Resolutions, but call them what you will, it’s hard not to look at a fresh calendar year and not then think about what you’d like to accomplish.

Reading

I’ve probably said this many times before, but I really want to get back into a habit of reading. Of late, it has become really difficult for me, and I am not entirely sure why. Long-covid? Depression? Latent ADHD? Who knows, but as a child/teenager/young adult, I read voraciously. Lately? Hardly at all. This hasn’t stopped me from collecting many books that I would love to read, but I just don’t read them. I have a reading journal to keep track of pages and time read, and that did help to finish reading Dune last year, a book I really enjoy. I hope to take journal and fill it up with pages read, even if for only a short time each day.

Making

This year is wide open, and I’ve already begun a few making projects. I am a follower of Adam Savage’s Tested, and the former Mythbuster consistently inspires me to want to make things, both physically and digitally. Last year I was trying to complete a 52 Week Photography project that I did not finish, but this year I want to be a lot more free and open with my toy photography. I have many figures, and want to shoot what appeals to me when I am inspired. Towards the end of last year, I was getting bogged down in my restrictions (one a week/Star Wars figures only) and I think that hindered. I am hoping freedom of choice will mean more expression.

I also want to paint more. I like to customize my action figures, and have already started a new one, a NED-B droid from the Star Wars: Kenobi show. I bought two last year, one to keep pristine, and one to customize. I pulled all the arms and legs and things apart to hopefully make painting easier, and can’t want to get started turning him from yellow to another-color-yet-to-be-determined.

A few years back, I bought a tiny X-Wing Bandai model kit and built a tiny diorama of a crashed X-Wing, and for Christmas I acquired a slightly larger X-Wing and a TIE fighter. I want to build two dioramas of crashed (?) ships, and have purchased 10-inch turntables to build them on. I am still working out the details and designs in my head, but I think those will be fun projects.

Writing

I have built an excellent habit of writing at least twice a month on my blog here, and I think I will be able to continue that. To all my faithful and occasional readers: thank you! I appreciate your time spent hearing what I have to say. It is cathartic and focusing for me to write out occasional thoughts, or to elaborate on what interests me, and I welcome friends along for the ride. If ever you have thoughts, suggestions, questions, or anything you want to send to me, email to PhilRedbeard AT gmail DOT com. I will always welcome interaction.

Personal Growth

I want to continue to grow as a good human being. I want to spread love and joy to those who know me, and those I encounter in life. I want to be better than I am now, and improve on what I am building in my life. Some of that includes what I’ve already mentioned, but that also means listening to other voices, and challenging my biases and privileges and my own status quo. That won’t be easy or comfortable, but I think it is necessary to create real improvement as a person. Staying stagnant is never a good thing, and I don’t think I will ever reach a state of being that can’t be improved upon.

That is all I can think of for now. I am sure that 2023 will present challenges and difficulties I can’t anticipate, and already has some curveballs it is winding up to throw. My self-awareness and memory of the past informs me that this will happen, and the only thing I can do is try to be prepared. As Adam Savage says: “It’s a not a problem to solve; it’s a process to manage” and I really take that to heart. Like unexpected LEGO, I can take what I meet and make new things from it, and always try to build something positive from whatever may come.

I hope your 2023 is all you want it to be and more, and may you have strength and creativity to meet all that comes your way.

Best of 2022: Sundry

I wrote a few days ago about my best things from 2022. That post covered media that I was particularly enthralled by or enjoyed from this past year. Now, I thought I would discuss my best things from 2022 that are tangible.

Apple

I am going to round up the first few into a category of Apple devices. I began my past few Best Of’s writing about an iPad. First it was an iPad Air that I inherited from my father. Then I upgraded that to an iPad Air in green. This year I upgraded that iPad to an iPad Pro, for several reasons. First: FaceID. I can’t overstate how buggy TouchID has been for me, and what a frustrating user experience it is when it doesn’t work properly. Second: USB-C. This is apparently the connector of the future, and it charges much faster than Lightning. Third: external display. While I have yet to use this feature, having just now been enabled in a software update, I am eager to get an external display and use it with my iPad. Fourth: the Smart Connector. This leads into another best thing, the Magic Keyboard. Being able to connect a keyboard without using Bluetooth, that also gives me a trackpad? Genius! I have used my used Magic Keyboard for many months and I use no other iPad stand or keyboard. It is perfect for my needs. And, when I need to truly go mobile, I can just disconnect from the magnets and go.

Next up, still in the Apple category, are my AirPods Pro. I got these in the spring of ‘22 because my wife and I were taking a trip via aircraft, and I hate dealing with jet noise in the airplane. Enter active noise cancelation! I know there are a plethora of other headphones that have that feature, but the ability to effortlessly connect to my iPad or iPhone just by picking up the device is magical. For me, a huge part of technology is the user experience. I am an Apple customer for exactly that reason. Any other tech I have used has been overly frustrating or clunky. AirPods Pro have other features I love, but the ANC is my top feature.

Action Figures

If you follow me elsewhere, you know I dabble in toy photography. I started with LEGO, but since have moved almost exclusively into traditional action figures, and specifically the Black Series Star Wars from Hasbro. This year I collected quite a few of those figures to bolster my collection, but one of my favorites actually was the most expensive I have ever purchased and it wasn’t a Hasbro. This was a Tamashii Nations Ronin Mandalorian and Grogu.

Lone Wolf and Cub, a Samurai Mandalorian and Grogu

This figure reimagines the Mandalorian as a wandering samurai warrior, complete in Japanese samurai armor. Little Grogu sports a top-knot and is pushed in a wooden cart. The Mandalorian Disney+ show is directly influenced by Lone Wolf and Cub, a Japanese manga from 1970, and this captures that mashup perfectly. The price of the figure is completely justified by the quality, and it is one you really need to see in real life to appreciate the level of detail and thought that went into its creation. (I did not take the above picture, it is from the marketing materials. I have yet to photograph this figure for myself.)

Other action figures I picked up include an Ant-Man figure I really want to use in some creative pictures, a George Lucas as a Stormtrooper, a Buzz Lightyear from the Pixar film Lightyear that came out this year, and a Rocketeer figure. All of these speak to me in some way, or are deep dives into my personal nerd that I appreciate on many levels.

Tools

I’ve started to collect tools for use in making and household projects. I finally got a toolbox for them all. I had a basic toolbox with the removable insert, but it was crammed full, and the plastic hinges were warping and it needed replacing. I bought a Craftsman toolbox on wheels, with multiple levels of various sizes, and a few removable inserts that fits my needs perfectly. It is portable, in that I could wheel it places or put in the back of my car, but mostly it stays in the under-stairs closet, which is fine. The top part, with my most used tools, actually separates from the wheeled portion, so that I can take it places.

For upstairs I bought a tool bag exactly like the one my dad keeps his electrical tools in (my dad being an electrician by trade) from a military surplus store, and keep a few tools I need for drawing and making there. I also have a new Lufkin tape measure I bought after seeing Adam Savage use it on Tested. It is neon green on black, and I think the numbers glow in the dark even, though why you would use a tape measure in the dark is beyond me, but hey! Why not? Anyway, it is a fantastic tape measure, and I use it to help me rearrange furniture and measure things. I mean, what else do you use a tape measure for?

In Conclusion

I am reminded that my Best Thing from 2021 was life itself, having faced real death in the hospital with Covid in January of that year. Certainly objects in space are fleeting and transient. Tech comes and is replaced with something new and better. Tools wear out or are no longer useful and are upgraded. Toys bring fun and joy, but can sit in a drawer in between uses. Even the media I love exists outside “real life”.

My true best things of 2022 remain my life, my wife, my family (including my two fur children) and those I am privileged to call friends. As my mentor-from-a-distance Adam Savage is fond of espousing, I want to collect experiences and moments of meaning. That is all I truly possess, and anything else can be lost or taken away. With that in mind, what are your Best Things from 2022, tangible or intangible? I’d love to hear about them, so send me an email or something.

Here’s to a great 2023, and may we all be blessed with many Best Things in the year to come!

Best of 2022: Media

One of my traditions on this blog at year’s end is a best of compendium of the previous year. I got the idea from Tested, it isn’t mine. I like looking back at what I am thankful for, and what has been really useful to me, or that has found a place in my life. You can find previous Best Of posts in December of previous years.

This year I thought I would break my best of into two posts, the first for media (music, books, television, movies) and the second for objects (tech, collectibles, etc). I am also doing these a little early in December because this year will end with a big family Christmas bash that will last about 10 days, and I don’t think I’ll have time to write much. So here goes with Part the First: Media.

Moon Knight

In the realm of television shows, I started with a great limited series on Disney+ called Moon Knight. It is a Marvel show set in the Cinematic Universe, starring Oscar Isaac as the titular Moon Knight, a superhero, of sorts, who must contend with dissociative identity disorder. Oscar Isaac is one my favorite contemporary actors, and I loved his portrayal of all the alternate identities of the Moon Knight. The show itself stands alone, and isn’t dependent on knowledge of the rest of the MCU, which I enjoyed for a change of pace from the myriad connections that now exist in other superhero shows or films.

Star Wars: Kenobi and Andor

Two live-action Star Wars shows premiered on Disney+ this year. The first, Kenobi, followed the washed-up former Jedi Obi-Wan Kenobi ten years into his exile on Tatooine following the destruction of the Jedi Order and the Republic at the hands of Emperor Palpatine and Darth Vader. I love Ewan McGregor as Kenobi, and this year was a perfect time for McGregor, at the right age and physicality, to play the defeated and broken Obi-Wan. The show took an episode or two to get going, but it delivered at the end.

Andor was helmed by Diego Luna, but also included such stars as Stellan Skarsgaard, and Andy Serkis in a surprise role. Andor follows Rebel anti-hero Cassian Andor who the Star Wars universe met in the stand-alone film Rogue One a few years ago. Season One of Andor describes the origin and rise of the Rebel operative and the beginning to the rebellion against the Galactic Empire. Razor sharp, tense, without being too overly dark, and never plodding, Andor takes Star Wars to a place it’s never really been before. Skarsgaard has one of best monologues in cinema during an episode late in the season, and it’s one I want to memorize eventually. It was that good.

Top Gun: Maverick

Sure to be on the top of many people’s lists for movies, the sequel to the 1980’s action flick Top Gun arrived with a roar, and lived up to the hype. A vehicle for the mega star Tom Cruise to reprise his role as Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, NAVY aviator, this one flew off the screen. Enjoyable, nostalgic, cinematic in every way, and with a good story and great cast, Top Gun: Maverick is one I will watch again and again. Also starring Jon Hamm, Miles Teller, and Elizabeth Connelly, some of my favorite actors, this one will be a classic along with the original Top Gun.

Glass Onion

Another, well, not quite sequel, but second in an anthology, Glass Onion follows Knives Out from director Rian Johnson and actor Daniel Craig. A whodunit murder mystery in which Craig plays the hilarious southern detective Benoit Blanc once more, this time in a new mystery and setting from the previous Knives Out story. This mystery was every bit as engaging and intriguing as the first, and the conclusion I again did not see coming. My dad loves these films, and the my wife and I and my parents got to see this on a rainy Thanksgiving Day this year for a great afternoon out.

Fitch

Fitch was on my list for a while, ever since it debuted on Apple TV+. Tom Hanks stars in his first apocalyptic sci-fi role, and pretty much carries the movie alone, acting alongside a robot and a dog. It is heartwarming, tragic, and just a great little film. I compare it to the Martian, another film about a man alone in a wasteland carried by a great actor and a very real feeling setting, despite being a world we don’t quite recognize.

Spirited

A musical. A Christmas story. A comedy starring Ryan Reynolds and Will Ferrell retells, sort of, the Christmas classic A Christmas Carol. I was unsure of this film, and put off watching it for a while until I just sat down and turned it on a week or so ago. Instantly Spirited became my favorite musical. My favorite Christmas story. AND my favorite telling of A Christmas Carol (sorry Kermit!). The songs were immediately catching, and while I thought I knew how it would go, it surprised me at every turn. That makes a great story that I will want to watch every Yuletide from now on. Available on Apple TV+.

Music

Musically, I rediscovered The Lord of the Rings and Hobbit soundtracks, re-listening to all six this summer. Howard Shore is a masterful composer, and I loved reliving the stories through just his scores. I put it on in the car, and every day back and forth from work, I would listen. It was pretty great, actually. I found plenty of other music this year, but I won’t exhaustively list it out. Suffice to say: AppleMusic is a key part of my life, allowing me to listen via download or stream pretty much anything I want to find, for only a small monthly fee. Plus, I get to share it with my wife and parents, so that is a terrific deal for all four of us.

Books

Sadly, I didn’t read this year quite like I thought I would. I still struggle with being able to engage with and complete a book, but I still try. I did finally finish re-reading Dune by Frank Herbert, and I have enjoyed flipping through the Art of Star Wars books that have come out in recent years, covering the new trilogy, and each of the recent shows on Disney+. More illustrations and art than prose, each is a deep dive into the creative process that begins a film or show in the Star Wars universe from a design standpoint, be it environment or vehicle, costume or character. I particularly enjoyed the books for the Mandalorian, and look forward to the Kenobi and Andor books, whenever they will arrive.

Well, that rounds up my favorite media from 2022. I can’t wait for 2023 which will have a few new seasons and shows that I am very much looking forward to, both in universes new, and far, far away. Stay tuned for part two of this post in which I describe my favorite objects and tech from 2022!

Letters from Antarctica

Seven days from today, Ariel Waldman will arrive in Antarctica for two months of research and to film a documentary. She has already been to Antarctica once, to photograph microscopic life forms on the frozen continent. I can’t fathom what an adventure it must be to embark on such a journey, and experience the things that she will experience, not just once, but for the second time!

I know Ariel through a website called Tested, run by former Mythbuster Adam Savage. Mostly a YouTube channel now, Tested has several contributors besides Adam, and at the end of the year, they all share their favorite things from the year. Today, Ariel Waldman shared her favorite things, mostly gear related to her expedition to the snowy southlands.

Part of that sharing was her newsletter that will chronicle her time in Antarctica. It is incredible to me this futuristic age that I live in! I can view livestreams from the edge of space, receive high resolution photos from probes that traverse the solar system, see videos from the surface of comets, read social media from a robot on Mars – and newsletters from one of the final frontiers here on earth – the frozen landscapes of the Antarctic wilderness.

When I was a kid, a long distance phone call still cost extra money. Now, with home internet, which, to be fair, does cost something, I can receive all these things and more on any of my home devices. I am constantly reminding myself that I live in the future I once read about in my science fiction books as a child. Wrist computers, and hand held portals to the world’s knowledge, and astronomical exploration are all so commonplace now it barely moves most people’s needles, but for me, I am mind-boggled and flabbergasted and simply amazed.

I already read the current newsletter, in which Ariel Waldman wrote about being seven days out from arriving at her research station. I can’t wait to read the next. It just struck me that Ariel will spend Christmas in the ultimate winter wonderland, while I will most likely spend it in shirtsleeves here in Texas. But, while the winter months drag on in America, Ariel will be living a dream of mine. I am excited to see how her trip goes, and what challenges she faces, and how she overcomes.

Also: I’m jealous. Ever since, as a young child, I learned about an entire continent that was like the ice planets of LEGO and Star Wars, I wanted to go there. I’ve read about early explorers, and what it is currently like down there, and that has only whetted my appetite. Still, Antarctica isn’t really a tourist destination. It is dangerous, inhospitable, and only really available for researchers, as far as I know. I would love to go as an artist, but I don’t think they would let me take up a valuable spot on an expedition just to explore art where it is really, really cold. Like space, only scientists (well, and billionaires now, I suppose. Sigh.) go there.

I wish Ariel Waldman the best of luck and a terrific time while down in Antarctica. I thank her for putting out a newsletter and letting people like me in on her trek. I will wait eagerly for each new update to land in my inbox. If you would like to receive letters from Antarctica, you can sign up via this link. For myself, I will echo the best of exploratory traditions: “Godspeed, Ariel!”

It Happens

I finally snapped my streak of writing at least twice a month on this blog. In July of 2021, I wrote an incredible eight posts, and ever since have managed two or more. Last month I only wrote one. I am a little sad that I didn’t manage to keep that streak alive longer, but as they say in baseball “a new streak starts today”.

It is once again early morning while I write this, with the sun not yet awake. Why I am awake is a mystery. I wish I could ever figure out my sleeping patterns, or lack thereof, and manage good sleep in my life. Seems not to be. Mostly I do ok, but every so often, I just don’t sleep well. Conscious of bothering my wife with tossing and turning, I get out of bed and come over to the craft room to browse social media or whatnot. Sometimes, like today, I break out my keyboard and write.

What to tell you today? I recently re-watched You’ve Got Mail, the 90’s rom-com with Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks, and sometimes I feel like the pair of them, writing anonymously to each other. I don’t know who reads this blog, aside from my mother, so I imagine I am writing to a friend, out there in cyberspace, who is waiting to read my words once again. Hello, to you, out there.

I guess what is on my mind is this business of “failure”. Like my streak of writing on my blog, I have failed two other endeavors that I was working on, or meant to: a photography project and a writing project. I had been working through a 52 Week Challenge photographically, in which I would follow a prompt and take a picture every week. For awhile I did so consistently, but then I would fall behind and catch up a few weeks at a time. At present I am six or so weeks behind, and can’t find it within myself to catch up again. I have called time of death on that project, and have set it aside.

Second endeavor is a book that my wife started, on how to write, like a “Couch to 5k” but instead of meters, it’s words. She has wanted me to proofread and punch up the prose, and I meant to do it in the summer, but as I’ve written about, the summer got away from us, and then I meant to do it this fall, but I haven’t, and now it is December. I despair that I shall do it before the holidays, and this year the holidays will be full of family and cheer.

What do I do with failure? First, I don’t see it that way. I am certain I have touched on this before here, but failure or quitting, to me, isn’t a negative. It is simply a status, like at the beginning of a project, or a relationship. I am “it’s complicated” with my endeavors, and so I’ve decided to move from something that has served me before, and isn’t serving me now, to things that will.

There is absolutely no shame in abandoning something that no longer serves. There is all the futility, in fact, in continuing something that will not work. And futility is not something I need in life. Like trying to sleep when I am not somnolent, I go somewhere else and do something else. I may go back to bed at some point, or return to a project, but walking away when restless and finding a state of rest elsewhere is healthy.

I am happy with what I accomplished with the photography project. I took a few photos that I am really pleased with, that delight me, and a few I want to revisit at some point and retake to improve upon. Everything is inspiration to me for future creative projects. With my wife’s book, at this point, I still want to work on it, and the time will come. If she remains patient with me, I will get there, I just don’t know when right now.

I lay aside one, or a few things, and pick up something new. The blog continues today, I will always take pictures, and words flow when words flow. Sleep will embrace me once more, of this I am certain, until the forever sleep that comes for us all eventually blankets me. But I’ve not earned that, so I will stay awake and stay creative.

To you, out there, whoever you are, stay creative and stay healthy. Don’t pursue that which doesn’t serve what you need, and don’t be afraid to say “I failed” or “I quit”. Moving on is healthy, inevitable, and can be invigorating. I’m excited for what will come next for me this weekend, this December, and in the new year 2023.

The Media that Made Me

My dad had a habit of going to the public library and renting VHS tapes and we would watch them together on the weekends. On each tape? Two episodes of the Original Series Star Trek from the late 1960’s. I don’t remember a time before Trek. As I got older, my brother and I would wake up late at night (or was it early in the morning?) to secretly watch re-runs of Star Trek: The Next Generation as it aired on television in the mid-to-late 1990’s.

Star Wars, that grand dystopic space opera, is a film that I don’t remember a Time Before, at least for A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back. I always remember having seen those. Return of the Jedi, on the other hand, I didn’t see until I was older, something to do with Carrie Fisher’s gold bikini, I think. The first time I did see it, it was with the first 20 minutes missing, starting as the Millennium Falcon and Luke’s X-Wing soared away from Tatooine. It would take a few years before I would see the beginning of the film. But it, with Empire and Hope, became foundational to who I am today.

Both Star Trek and Star Wars made me who I am, and I never made a conscious choice to watch either one. It is strange to me that I cannot remember a Time Before those galactic adventures. They were just always on, or available, to me. I guess I have my father to thank for a key part of my identity, because it was he who truly loved both, and must have shared them with me. It was my mother who thought them slightly ridiculous, in my memory, and would censor Jedi for the longest time (But I also remember her enjoying them, to a point, so perhaps it was her as much as my dad.)

Other films and shows would be introduced to me by my parents as they discovered them. I remember that they would watch things first, and then if they were good, or acceptable, they would watch them with my siblings and I. Some have become favorites that I, or the family, enjoys today, but none so invasive to my soul as the outer space tales. But why did they grab me so strongly?

For Star Wars, it was the story that captured me. The rise, and fall, and the eventual victory of Luke Skywalker always fired my imagination. His tragedy and triumph, the loss that he experienced, as well as the exotic side characters and locales that he encountered along the way. Star Wars is supreme story telling, in all it’s color, and grime, and reality most of all, despite the fantastic trappings of the story. Star Wars resembles my current earth.

For Star Trek, it is the utopic vision of the future. To this day, there is no world I want to live inside of more (with one exception*) than the pristine Starfleet as a part of the mighty Federation. The sheer hubris of their goodwill, good intentions, and desire to love and accept all, and shepherd all to be their better selves. That is a future I despair of seeing made reality, because, it is at once too perfect, and too distant, as my current earth is too far from becoming. But I believe that it can be, that humanity has the potential to one day not only sail the stars, but to be that good. Star Trek resembles a future earth that I want to inhabit.

There are two other franchises that became central to me, and the first, chronologically, that I encountered was The Lord of the Rings, and later The Hobbit, as helmed by visionary Peter Jackson. My mother certainly did give me JRR Tolkien’s vision of a world from a distant past, as when she heard of the films, she took me straightaway to the library to check out the books first. But simultaneous was my experience with Tolkien’s words and Jackson’s films. The themes, characters, and struggles of Middle Earth hit me when I was beginning my descent into depression, and so often the hardiness of hobbits became my own. If Bilbo could walk the goblin tunnels and spar with Smaug, if Frodo and Sam could march into Gorgoroth, while Merry and Pippin roused the Ents, then I, too, could endure the breaking of my mind. I’ve carried hobbits with me ever since, as an inner source of strength.

Finally, the microcosm that is *Firefly is the only other world I want to live in. I encountered Serenity and Malcom Reynolds when I was at college. A group of friends and I watched the film Serenity, and when I learned it was based on a show, albeit a tragically short one, I immediately found it and watched it over two days. I want to be a crew member aboard Serenity, pulling heists and sharing life, and aiming to misbehave. When I was going through dark times, away from family and friends, I would watch Firefly and it felt like being with friends who were family, and I still feel that way every time I watch through that series. I can’t think of a reason why anyone would want to leave Serenity, once they have boarded her.

I suppose it’s telling that the only prop replicas I possess are Gimli’s axe, Bilbo and Frodo’s Sting, Thorin’s Key to Erebor, Malcom’s pistol, and the Mandalorian’s camtono. I now find it astonishing that I don’t own any Star Trek props, and need to remedy that as soon as possible. But these are the media that made me who I am today: Star Trek, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and Firefly. Other shows and films delight me, and I enjoy them and find meaning in them, but these four are core to my being. I will always love them the most, and never tire of watching them again and again.

We are all amalgams of the media that made us, and I am so glad to have been given such rich treasures as these. After all, humanity has been telling stories from the beginnings of memory, and we all wouldn’t be who we are without stories to tell, to listen to, and to learn from. Stories are humanity’s spirit, I believe, transferred from one generation to the next, to embody the best parts of ourselves for others to take in and manifest.

It is difficult to express further how and why two tv shows and two movies have embedded themselves as strongly as these have. But I am forever who I am because of them entering my life. Two before I ever remember a time without, one because my mother insisted I take it in, and one because I searched it out for myself. I am so glad that I have this media to enjoy, and to remember most of all. For when I think I am alone, I have the familiarity of Serenity; when I think the world is too far gone, I have the hope of the Enterprise; when I struggle, I have the Fellowship; and when I want to overcome, I can jump aboard an X-Wing. A man could do for worse companions in life than Reynolds, Picard, Gamgee, and Skywalker.

The Gray

I’ve heard it said:
“Kids will bring the gray.”
Which explains why ginger
Still locks up my follicles
Though my beard and brows
Have been golden and red forever.
Was I born aged, or like wine,
Will I catch up to my purpose?
Either way, gray finds us all,
Eventually, visibly on the head,
Or in the soul, wearied from the world,
Or in the heart, love gone cold
From years and years.
The eyes, I hope, go last - 
I wish to see one more sunset,
Bursting with yellow and scarlet,
Before a final dusk settles
Turning the earth to gray night.

Friday Night Baseball

Friday night descends, warm and full of crickets. It is a nice change from the rowdy din of cicadas, an old stand-by down here in Texas. A quiet blankets the craft room; I have just finished watching a few hours of playoff baseball. First, the Cleveland Guardians won against the New York Yankees, and then the Philadelphia Phillies rather soundly defeated the team from Atlanta. This year baseball has excited me in a way I thought lost.

One reason for the renewed thrill? My team is back in the postseason picture, with the Guardians having won their division, and now the Wild Card Series, to land in the Division Series. Another reason, more prominent, is that a good college friend of mine is a huge baseball fan, and her team is the Phillies. She is perhaps more passionate about sports than I am at the moment, and her fanaticism is fueling my own. The Phillies did not win their division, but they played well in their Wild Card Series and are now one game away from winning their Division Series and advancing.

I am thankful for Brittani, and her enthusiasm. Baseball has always been a top passion of mine, and for her to bring out that competitive spirit in me and renew my love of the game is huge. I haven’t had someone to share baseball with in this way for a long time.

I will go to a few games a year with my parents, but my mom is being lost more and more to football and soccer, and my Dad quietly enjoys baseball, but isn’t as deep into as I can be. Yelling about a big play, and living and dying with each strike or foul ball is something I used to do all season, but a few partners that couldn’t care less have dampened that in me a little. I am glad to see that part of myself flourish once more.

Game three between the Yankees and Guardians is tomorrow night. Cleveland is two wins away from advancing to the next round. I want this scrappy team from northern Ohio to do well, and prove the naysayers wrong. They are about the youngest team in baseball, but their never-say-die attitude is invigorating to experience. Their future is in their hands, to win or lose, proving once again that October remains the best season for baseball!

In June, or even August, a series win or loss is not so important. There is time to make up a mistake, or regroup for the next series. Not so in October. Here, each moment is full of tension, promise, and promises the greatness of victory or the ignominy of loss. Teams win or lose in a moment, and once gone, those moments never come again, except in happy or bitter memory. I have many such memories from my thirty-five years of watching baseball, and I cherish them all. One day I will see my Cleveland Guardians win it all, something I’ve not witnessed yet, though they’ve been tantalizingly close a few times. Brittani’s Phillies won it all in 2008, though that now is fourteen years past. Time for them to win again? We shall see!

She and I have talked about a Phillies/Guardians World Series, and while that would be fun, I would have to cheer for the team from Cleveland and she the team from Philadelphia, and I hope the odds wouldn’t break up the fun we have now. But, we are a long way from there, and many wins yet to achieve before that can be possible. Still, the possibility remains.

All this to say, I have been a one team fan for (most) of my life: the Cleveland Guardians. They are an American League team, and I have thought for a while about picking up a National League team to root for. While in Pennsylvania, it was the Phillies, and for a while after. Then I moved to Wisconsin, and flirted with the Milwaukee Brewers. But my first love was always Cleveland. But, would it be possible to return to an old champion, and pick up a fandom once more?

I don’t think it would be the Brewers. I have too many bitter memories from Wisconsin, and I don’t like beer anyway. I remember, memories now fading, of the early 90’s, and watching an old Phillies’ team play in the postseason. In 1993, when I was six, the Phillies made it all the way to the World Series, only to lose to the Toronto Blue Jays. I don’t remember much beyond a few images and feelings (even then the excitement of October was like so much magic to me) but I remember the Phillies. Plus, my name is Phil, and well, that just fits.

Would it be too much bandwagon to jump back into the Phillies’ fandom once more? Can a man love more than one team, in my case, the Guardians my first love and the Phillies my second? Is that possible, permissible, acceptable? You know, I wrote awhile back about embracing live, and living exuberantly. I also wrote more recently about cherishing memories, and walking with a smile. Baseball allows me to do all of this and more, and if the Philadelphia Phillies brings that back, who am I to worry about made up rules and social norms?

Leave it all behind, I say, I jump in to the ocean of life. Let it wash over me, and carry me on it’s strong tides* to distant shores on which are baseball diamonds and magic! Who cares what anyone else thinks or says? Not me. So: go Phillies! and always, go Guardians!!

*Speaking of tides, the Norfolk Tides, a AAA, or semi-pro, baseball team was the first team that I got to see in a real life honest-to-goodness stadium. I remember sitting in the upper deck with my family watching Minor League baseball. We didn’t have a Major League team in our city, so this was the closest we could get. I loved those summer nights out at the ballpark, feeling on my face the breezes in from the sea, and watching baseball. So much of my core identity is out there at Harbor Park with the Tides. So I already have two teams, if I’m being honest. What’s one more?

Smile Time

Enduring mental health disorders isn’t for the weak. I’ve been diagnosed with at least general depression and anxiety. I’ve talked about both a lot on this blog. I probably have a few other conditions, but I’ve never talked with a psychiatrist, so I don’t know. If you regularly read my blog, or like me just re-read it, I sound a little bi-polar. Whatever is going on in my brain isn’t fun, I’ll tell you that much.

For what it’s worth, I am much better than I used to be ten years ago, or twenty. Then I was undiagnosed, and dealing with so much without the amazing help that is therapy and medication. I would say it is a wonder I made it out of those years alive, but it isn’t a wonder. Sheer force of will and a refusal to succumb to the darkness is what pulled me through. My therapist said on more than one occasion during those years that she was amazed at my fortitude. After all this time, I am finally able to accept her compliment.

Lately I have been mired in an existential quagmire. I feel that nothing will matter, does matter, or could matter. I see death smiling at me from every mirror or windowed reflection. I struggle with feeling like doing anything because nothing seems to matter. Some of this is fueled by the seemingly terrible and precarious position of the world I inhabit, but some is just me being bi-polar/depressed/anxious/whatever. Shaking the feeling is quite difficult.

I am remembering the line from Gladiator, where Maximus is talking to Commodus at the end. “I knew a man who once said ‘Death smiles at us all; all a man can do is smile back’.” I marvel at that as I haven’t much felt like smiling lately, or if I do, it is with dread looking through the smile. Maybe it is because I am thirty-five now, and getting older and more broken down every day. I admit, I know that thirty-five is still quite young, but I am older now than I have ever been – perennially true and inescapable!

Whatever is really going on – early mid-life crisis, mental illness, life – pushing through is the most on brand thing I can do. Better even than smiling back at death, I need to embrace the eventual end for what it is: a final rest. Life is exhausting, yes, but it is meant to be that way, for it is full of joy, pleasure, wonder – full of feelings. A friend recently climbed to the top of a mountain in the bitter cold to take amazing photographs of the dawn from the summit just for the fun of it! That sums up what I mean: life is fun and painful and chilling and amazing all at the same time, and if you do it right, you can walk away with memories and maybe even a photograph.

We recently crossed the thirty-fifth anniversary of Star Trek: The Next Generation. That show, born the same year I was, has meant a lot to me over the years. I remember a moment from the end of the first TNG film, Generations, where Captain Picard is looking for his photo album, and reflecting on life, and the trouble he has just endured. He says to Commander Riker “Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives. I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey and reminds us to cherish every moment, because it will never come again. What we leave behind is not as important as how we’ve lived. After all, Number One, we’re only mortal.” What a comforting insight!

Rather than smile in defiance at death, as Maximus would, I think I will take its hand, and invite it to walk with me as Picard does, not as the Grim Reaper, but as Father Time, a companion, not an adversary. Mental struggles being what they are, it won’t be easy, or even constant, but that is what I hope to do each day. Day is dawning now as I write, and there is much to accomplish. My hope is that I can genuinely smile, full of all that life has brought, cherishing each moment. That, for me, would be living well.

Living the Questions

This feels odd to say, but: I am going to begin a Bible study this coming Tuesday.

If you know nothing of mainstream Christianity, then a lot of what I am about to write may be incomprehensible to you. If, like me, you have always lived a life surrounded and inculcated with God, then what I am about to write may sound very familiar.

I’ve undergone such a journey in my life regarding faith, and religion, and God, and the Bible: I’ve walked away from it all several times and come back a few times. Being a Christian was and was not ever a choice I made. I was born into a Christian family, and a very conservative one at that. Prayers were offered, beliefs re-affirmed, a life was dedicated and re-dedicated to following precepts and “the way one should go” more than once.

I’ve styled myself an atheist, a Jesus-follower, a Christian, and other things. Thirty-five years into living, I don’t much do labels, or even explanations, anymore. Nothing quite seems to fit, define, or include how I feel and think and, yes, believe so I tend to eschew labels altogether.

This whole business of God, of religion, of Christianity is at once simple, and so very complex. It is familiar, and very, very strange. Frightening, and comforting. Growing up, I was taught the tenants of the faith, the evangelical Christian faith, at the same time as I was taught arithmetic, reading, and history. God was so inextricably intertwined with everything that I had no hope of separating anything mean from the Divine. As an older child, and young teenager, I knew all of the answers, the stories, and the Bible back to front and back again.

But cracks began to show, at the seams, the corners, and the low levels of my life. Depression became something that I struggled with, though I did not know what to call it then. Other mental health issues became prominent in my life, manifesting as anger, and behavioral troubles. I desperately didn’t want anything to do with God or religion, but it was such a part of my identity, of everything that I knew and believed about the world, I didn’t know how to let go of it.

Then my family became uber-Christians: missionaries. We left America to travel to another country, in this case: Papua New Guinea, to spread what we believed to the people who lived there. Ironically, it was there that my life of faith exploded. I met more of my peers than I ever had before, and people from many different Christian contexts, that I had my point of view radically altered. Many of my classmates and friends had conflicts similar, or even deeper, to mine. They had Questions about God that I had never encountered before. Or they had perspectives that I didn’t know could exist. Suddenly my answers seemed small and inadequate.

Whiplash. V, a jerk or jolt (to someone or something) suddenly, typically so as to cause injury.

I experienced whiplash to an overwhelming degree when I graduated from my missionary school in Papua New Guinea and returned home to the United States. I attended a very small, very sectarian, and ultra-conservative Bible institute. For two years I fought quite hard to maintain any semblance of a Christian faith at all. Again, I was immersed in conservative religion. I breathed it, ate it, lived it, but only at night when I dreamed was I free of it. The wide horizons I had marveled at a year prior in another land were challenged hourly and almost completely condemned by this place I found myself. I never before was on the outside of something religious, but only the senior administration’s convenience kept me from being kicked out during my second and final year there. My Questions had multiplied to a level beyond reckoning, and I didn’t know what to do.

Upon graduation, I joined my girlfriend who was studying at another university, this time a liberal arts school that was Christian in name and founding, but in persuasion was much more free than anything I had experienced prior, even more so than the high school in Papua New Guinea. There, while studying one of the languages of the Bible, ancient Hebrew, I met a man who would change my life irrevocably. I don’t remember his name, but he was the former campus pastor and current Hebrew scholar. While in his class, learning to read portions of Genesis and other parts of the Bible, he taught me to Live the Questions.

What he meant by that was to develop a life that was comfortable with uncertainty, with ambiguity, and with not knowing. The complete opposite of me as an early teenager who knew everything, me as a young adult knew nothing about the Bible or God. All my answers had evaporated in the past two years. Sure, I heard them often and loudly at the institute, but they rang hollow and empty now. I didn’t know where to turn. My life was un-anchored, adrift, and tossed. Living the Questions was a philosophy that became a safe harbor. Now I could ask questions prolifically, and be ok to not have answers.

If God is everything I was taught he is as a young child, then he should be big enough to handle a few questions from me. He shouldn’t condemn me for being uncertain, unbelieving, or, for the first time in my life, unafraid. I graduated three years later and almost completely gave up God, religion, and faith. Now, twelve years after that, I’ve yet to come back to where I was even in Papua New Guinea. I am still Living the Questions, and I have even more Questions than I ever did before. Answers are what are scarce. The Bible is at once more clear and much more opaque.

Life my professor before me, I want to model a life that Lives the Questions. I would like to introduce anyone who attends my study to this concept and way of looking at the Bible and the Christian world. I am not out to destroy faith, though certainly mine resembles not what I had before leaving my home as an elder teenager. I consider that a Very Good Thing, but not everyone in my life would agree. What I would like to do is introduce a life comfortable with not knowing, and to help dispel the fear that comes from being uncertain about ideas that one has been taught to be certain about. I lived in abject religious terror for seventeen or more years. No more is that true, and most of that is due to learning to Live the Questions.

I’ve taught Sunday School, attended numerous churches, graduated from two faith based colleges, and read the Bible more times than I can count. I have a passing knowledge of Ancient Hebrew, and am well versed in doctrine, tradition, and church history. I am certainly credentialed enough to lead a Bible study, though it remains to be seen if I am qualified. But, come Tuesday, I will once again be leading a Bible study and be back to all the old familiar places, though in a completely different light and way. I will always Live the Questions, and maybe I can teach a few other people how to do that as well.

UPDATE: the Bible study was canceled after just three meetings, two of which were attended only by myself, and the other by four people on purpose. It did not go as planned.