Captain’s Log – Page 15

Check-up twenty17: Jan and Feb

January came and went, and with it blustery winds and driving snow. Well, not here in Texas, but I am sure somewhere that was true. Anyhow, along the way I made a few non-resolutions, and one of them was that in twenty17 I would write more. I want to regularly assess how I am doing and introduce a few new non-resolutions into the mix. Here goes…

January twenty17

Ok, first, writing more. How am I doing? Well, I wrote four blog posts in January, so for that I will give myself a 5 out of 5. Great! Second, reading more. How did I do? I read a book, The God Who Is There by Francis A. Schaeffer. And that was all I resolved publicly at that point, so for all of January I get a 10 out of 10 and for the year a 100%. Not bad so far.

February twenty 17

Writing…well, sad to say I didn’t write anything in February. I am forced to give myself a 0 out of 5. I did read a short book of mostly pictures, Myth and Magic: The Art of John Howe, and I finished The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien so I will give myself a 5-5. For February a total of 50%. For the year that puts me at 75%. Not terrible, but I need to write more.

Looking ahead twenty17

Here is where we introduce more opportunities for points. So far I have #1: Writing. I will introduce #2: Reading, #3: Building, #4: Art and #5: Activities. A précis of each will follow, a standard set of guidelines by which to judge myself and my progress, and then I will re-do February and look ahead to March.

#1: Writing – I will write at least twice on the blog, about anything, any time.

#2: Reading – I will finish at least one book per month. Any length, any genre.

#3: Building – I will build at least one LEGO My Own Creation (MOC) per month. Any size.

#4: Art – (here things get interesting) I will create one piece of art each month. This includes photography of LEGO or stormtroopers, or painting, or building of a physical piece of art. Anything artistic, any size, any media.

#5: Activities – I will get out of the apartment for at least one activity each month that does not include my parents or siblings.

I will grade on a bit of curve to begin, to give myself a chance at building a feeling of success, but will lessen the curve as I go on to be realistic. Ok. Let’s look back at February.

February twenty17

#1: Writing – I didn’t write. 0-5
#2 Reading – I finished reading two books. 5-5
#3 Building – I built a MOC of a rally sport dune buggy (pic to follow). 5-5
#4 Art – I didn’t make any art (I didn’t take the pictures of my MOC until March). 0-5
#5 Activities – I met with a friend to chat. 5-5

Total = 70%, grading on a curve I gave myself a retroactive 2.5-5 for #4 since that wasn’t technically a requirement in February.

For the year I get an overall score of 85%. Yeah!

I am looking forward to see how March works out. I will have written at least once on the blog (you’re reading it!) and I have made some art, did an activity or two, and am reading, so here’s hoping I finish well.

Now, for the promised shot of my LEGO rally sport dune buggy:

rally sport

A Tale of Two Parts

Part the First

This is difficult for me to write. Yesterday, January 3rd, would have been my seventh wedding anniversary had I not been divorced. Unlike a spouse who died and is no longer upon the planet Earth, I am dealing with a different kind of loneliness. It is the loneliness of no longer being wanted. I know, approximately, where my ex-wife is, and approximately, what she is doing. And that hurts, because she isn’t here, and she isn’t with me. Once upon a fairy tale time, she was right by my side doing what I was doing, or I was by her side, doing what she was doing. We were together. But now she is beside someone else, and they are doing things together. And that hurts spectacularly.

I don’t know what the time period is supposed to be for getting over a spousal rejection, but I am apparently not there yet as I still memorialize a coupling that has uncoupled. I am sure I will get there at some point, but in the meantime, I am stumped by a simple question: now that she has moved on and put me behind her and someone else beside her, I am a free man. I am as if I was never married. That thought gives me some release, some comfort, but what do I do now to anchor that thought in reality? Do I burn all her love letters in a massive bonfire of dead desire? Do I delete all our pictures and digital memories as if scorching cyberspace? Do I forget her name and erase her influence from my life? Is such a thing even possible? I signed up for eternity. I was hers forever…until I wasn’t. I don’t know what to do.

Except, maybe I do know. I will do what I have done since the first noniversary rolled around: keep moving forward.

Part the Second

It is a brand new year, an entity I am calling twenty17. Thus far in my life I have mostly eschewed this whole idea of “New Year’s Resolutions” in which one is hereby resolved by the arbitrary Gregorian calendar to radically change one’s life in some way. It has seemed like so much hokum to think that just because some number has rolled over on a time keeping device, one is now able to change their life. In my nearly 30 years of experience, I haven’t seen that to be particularly possible. But here I am, about to resolve something on so public a forum as to not be ignored.

I resolve two things, first: to read more. I was a voracious reader in my youth. You would often find me curled up on the couch, or stretched out on a bed with book in hand, eagerly flipping pages, absorbing content like the proverbial sponge absorbs water. In the last few years, my reading has slackened pace to have almost stopped completely. The only reading ritual that continues is my annual reading of the Hobbit, the Lord of the Rings, and the Silmarillion. Even that reading has become less a pleasure and more a chore. But I want to regain the magic of reading, and that means actually reading again. Part and parcel with my goal of reading more is to actually find a local library and get a library card so that I might read to my heart’s contentment.

Secondly may it be resolved: to write more. I used to be a prolific writer, at least one who wrote semi often about current events or currently occurring thoughts. However, as can be seen from a perusal of the right hand column on this blog labeled “archives”, there is a gap from 2015 to 2017 in which I didn’t write anything. This I want to remedy. I won’t resolve to write every day, or even every week, but I do promise to write at least once a month. So far, I am doing spectacularly as this will be my second long form essay in this month alone. Go me!

Part the Epilogue

Hereby it can be seen that these two parts join together. In leaving behind one form of life, I pick up another, and move forward. And that perhaps is the answer. Hannah, I sincerely hope, will live a long and happy life, and thus we may even cross paths again in the future. The only way I live life with that knowledge and survive that eventuality with any semblance of me is to create a once and future life that is again mine own.

Excelsior!

As of Yet Untitled

I am frightened that I won’t be any good at this “writing” thing. It’s been over a year since I’ve written anything of note.

I’m terrified. Honestly scared. I am frightened that I won’t be any good at this “writing” thing. It’s been over a year since I’ve written anything of note. Sure, I’ve penned a few poems in recent months, but the last time I wrote something longer form was just after The Force Awakens was released in theaters in 2015.

I have an image in my mind’s eye. I stand upon a precipice, about to fall over. One wrong step, and I plummet to my death. I should be staring at the setting sun, watching the moon rise and the stars appear, but instead my gaze is locked on the long dark below me. Inside my shoes, my toes are desperately curling, trying in vain to clamp on to the narrow ledge in front.

This image represents my fear of failure. It has been so strong it has kept me from writing for over a year. I don’t know where exactly it came from, what manifested it inside my brain, but it has been there: lurking.

I have many things I want to write about: Rogue One, Passengers, the untimely death of a princess turned general, my not-7th wedding anniversary, the passing of the most logical being in the galaxy, a few new year’s resolutions, all the death and gloom that was twenty16, and the list continues. But I have been afraid. Afraid that my opinion is not valid, afraid that I won’t have the words, afraid of what she will think, afraid to memorialize too late, afraid to say the wrong thing…afraid.

The abyss rises to grab me.

I had an interesting experience this evening. I am still not sure what it was I saw, but as I was locking my door, on my way out to pick up dinner, I saw something out of the corner of my eye, something dark and shadowy that disappeared behind the corner of the house as soon as I focused on it. I don’t put faith in ghosts or apparitions, though because of medication that I take I have been known to hallucinate from time to time, except only when I don’t take it. I thought about what I saw all during the drive out and back. Initially, I was spooked. I had no idea what I had I seen, if I had in fact seen anything, and that unknowning, that uncertainty scared me a little. I’m a grown man, almost 30, in fact, and I am not given to remaining afraid. Except…

Except I haven’t written in over a year out of sheer bloody panic.

In the end I decided, on my way home, that what I had seen was the coattail of my future time traveling self ducking out of the way so that I wouldn’t see myself and thereby destroy the space time continuum. (Or pass out from shock.) Instantly, I was unafraid.

And here I am writing. It still took me a few more hours of mindless mobile Scrabble and Ticket to Ride before I pulled myself off my bed and settled down in front of my laptop to actually put one word after another. And somewhere, in my head, in my heart, deep in the outer rim of my soul, I am still afraid. But I cannot let that fear stop me from doing what I love and that is to write. So I will write. I will write about Carrie Fisher, Leonard Nimoy, my ex-wife, movies that I have fallen in love with, what I have resolved this new year, the late twenty-teens and so on.

I am stronger than my fear. I back from the ledge to catch the last few rays of sunlight fading into twilight blue. I write.

The Awakening

Palpable was the excitement of going to see Star Wars Epsiode I: The Phantom Menace in the spring of 1999. I distinctly remember riding in the back seat of my father’s car, driving along the highway towards our local theater. I remember sitting on the end seat, next to him, and my brother on the other side of my father as the lights of the theater dimmed and the opening crawl floated up the screen. Despite my high excitement, disappointment followed. I was twelve years old then, and had grown up watching the original Star Wars trilogy so many times that my first experience with Star Wars had long been forgotten. It seems I had always loved watching Star Wars.

It is now nearly the end of 2015, and with it a new era has been born. Unless you’ve been hiding out on Dagobah with a broken holonet receiver, you know that the sequel trilogy has been launched with Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens. I’ve seen it twice now, once in regular old two dimensions, and once in IMAX 3D. If you want to stop reading now to avoid spoilers on the story, I will simply say this: it was better than the prequels and a true Star Wars film full of the space adventure and fantasy we’ve come to love from that galaxy far, far away…

What has made the Star Wars universe great and has allowed it to endure for generations are the iconic, memorable characters. From the beginning of The Force Awakens, we receive terrific new characters that I believe will live on in the zeitgeist of the world consciousness just as have the original characters from the original Star Wars.

Right away we are introduced to the first non-human character that will drive a large portion of the film as a Macguffin and that is the orange and white ball droid BB-8. Early on in the marketing and releases about The Force Awakens we saw BB-8 and I must admit I was less than impressed. I thought the robot was overly cute, and was attached to my nostalgia for R2-D2 and C-3P0. But from those first few moments on screen, BB-8 captured my attention in exactly the same way Artoo and Threepio did in the beginning of Star Wars. Moments later we meet Po Dameron, the heroic and dashing X-wing pilot and Kylo Ren, the angry, yet strangely compelling new Dark Lord. At this point, I got caught up in the story and the film, and wondered where these characters would take me. Again, early on, as these characters were revealed, I thought that Kylo Ren in particular was trying too hard to be the new Darth Vader, but seeing him on the big screen, as the story unfolded, I saw an angry, hurting young man trying desperately to live up to a legacy he admired, albeit for all the wrong reasons. As the film progressed we were introduced to the main characters, Rey and Finn the defecting stormtrooper. Rey is a simple human living in the literal shadow of a decades old galactic war, scavenging for survival and awaiting her future. Finn is rejecting the only life he has ever known and seeking a way to freedom. Both meet up, and the adventure really gets going as they steal a familiar piece of space garbage and outrace the new Empire: the First Order. Reintroducing the Millennium Falcon and previous owners Han Solo and Chewbacca was less a slavish devotion to past glories, but an acknowledgement of the age of the universe and the passage of time. Things move on from our lives and sometimes old friends return in unexpected ways. Later we meet Leia Organa, less princess and more general, and even she feels like a totally new character. She is no longer young and feisty, but now strong and resolute with the burning fervor of conviction and experience. I loved the thousand year old Maz and her little cantina on a backwater world, her unexpected wisdom and yet shadowy side as someone who hung out with the dregs and downcast. She was the dark mirror to Yoda, ancient and wise and somehow a young outlaw on the back edge of the galaxy. All of these new characters immediately became as interesting and compelling to me as the droid duo, Luke Skywalker, Ben Kenobi and Yoda, and Han Solo from Star Wars. I desperately wanted to know their stories and follow them on their adventures.

Secondly, the locations hearkened back, in a good way, to the the original trilogy. There was the desolate desert world of Jakku, the ice planet/superweapon of Starkiller Base, the forest world of Takodana, all mirroring Tatooine, Hoth, and Endor. This became a theme to the Force Awakens: revealing the new through the lens of the old. There was the Millennium Falcon given new life as the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy racing along the Jakku dunes and derelict Star Destroyers and the new planet destroying super weapon. Far from drudgingly repeating the past, the new Star Wars gave me quick tutorial in what I already loved, setting me up for something that I will never have imagined in Episodes VIII and IX.

Thirdly, there was plenty of new twists and further revelations of the galaxy far, far away, which is far more vast and old and lived in than I imagined. I loved the brief introduction to other smugglers and outlaws aboard Han’s new freighter, the rathtar beasts Han was transporting, again, hearkening back to Jabba’s den of despicable denizens and the rancor which lurked below. I loved the X-wing/TIE fighter battles, the exchanges of blaster fire, the familiar yet new First Order risen from the ashes of the Empire, Jedi mind tricks, and unexpected stormtrooper humor, no longer clones but real people fighting for a cause they believe in.

I thought the acting in this film was superb, and that is what ultimately won me over to the classic nature of the new Star Wars. Harrison Ford, Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Adam Driver all did fantastic work in breathing into their characters the breath of life. I believed all of them. But the real surprise was the reveal of Luke Skywalker at the end. Mark Hamill communicated so much without saying a single word that I was totally blown away. The shot lingered on his face as he turned to see Rey and what her outstretched arm held and I saw sorrow, pain, recognition, remembrance, resolution and so many more emotions in his eyes. He realized the fullness of what his failure to train Ben Solo had wrought on the galaxy, he acknowledged what his absence fostered in current events, he recognized his lightsaber, and with it the pain of his failure and loss against Darth Vader so long ago, and he made the choice to no longer look to the past but to rejoin the present in hope of a better future with Rey and the Resistance.

Finally, the death of Han Solo, which I completely expected to happen given Harrison Ford’s complicated relationship with the character, was still shocking and emotionally gutting. Here was everything that was awesome, funny, and beloved about the original trilogy being brutally murdered by its own offspring, the sequel trilogy, and the message was clear: despite the winks, the references, and the familiar, this is not your father’s Star Wars anymore. This is a new beast altogether and in the future, nothing is certain. Here the brilliance of Lawrence Kasdan’s writing and JJ Abrams’ direction was shown in full: this was the narrative being constructed below the cool space story above.

I know I just said finally, but I must shoutout to the stellar John Williams and his amazing score. If the special effects and characters are the body of Star Wars, Williams’ music is the soul. One of the greatest composers of our time, Williams brings the best of his genius to underscore every beat of the Force Awakens and I will enjoy his new music just as much as I have loved the original soundtracks.

The Force Awakens is not without it’s flaws, but for every seeming plot hole or convenient occurrence, I am reminded of similar aspects to the films I love: Star Wars, the Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi. The original trilogy succeeded on the spectacle, heroics, and characters we loved, not from perfect plotting or consistently complete logic. Star Wars is a space opera, a grand fantasy adventure among the stars, and should be loved as such.

Remember, Remember or What Guy Fawkes Day Means to Me

Today is the fifth of November, and you might hear, or see people on social media sites quoting from the film V for Vendetta or the graphic novel it was based on or the old traditional Guy Fawkes rhymes “remember, remember, the fifth of November, gunpowder treason and plot. I know of no reason why the gunpowder treason should ever be forgot” and the history that it was based on.

That history is Guy Fawkes Day, which in short, is a commonwealth holiday that celebrates the failed plot to assassinate King James I in 1605 by one Guy Fawkes of the Gunpowder Plot. Whatever the original reasons Fawkes and his cronies had for killing the English monarch, it is clear that his failed plot’s celebration means more to people today, and more to me, than just a failed murder.

I abhor violence, and don’t believe in death as a way to move a social agenda forward so I might be called a traditionalist when it comes to the celebration of a failed assassination. In fact, my introduction to the world of Guy Fawkes and the “fifth of November” cult that has grown up around him comes through the film V for Vendetta. In the film, a future Britain is controlled by a totalitarian regime that has become, or perhaps always was, evil and that government is taken down by a man in a Guy Fawkes-esque mask known only as V.

It is a wonderful film, and I suppose its primary message is “People should not be afraid of their governments, governments should be afraid of their people” but I am no revolutionary, at least not one of swords and drums and guns. Indeed, if there is a quote from the film that sums me up, in so much as a film quote can, it is this one: “Ideas are bulletproof.”

The protagonist of the film, Evie Hammond, a small, frightened girl who becomes a patriot afire for the cause under the tutelage of V, says that one “cannot kiss an idea, cannot touch it, or hold it; ideas do not bleed, they do not feel pain, they do not love” and while all that certainly sounds true it isn’t quite accurate. Evie is speaking of the man behind the ideas, her Guy Fawkes that she loves, and how her love for him is more real to her than his ideas are and I think she misses the point of her own drama.

Ideas do not die. Ideas can change the world. All the women and men who have ever fought for an idea have died forgotten. We do not remember their names. We only remember why they fought, why they died. I know nothing about the real Guy Fawkes, all I know is his idea: that one could change the world through gunpowder, treason, and plot. And while he ultimately failed, people still believe that to this day. That idea is pervasive and powerful.

I believe that ideologies and ideas are more powerful than puny bombs and bullets. I believe that one day we will lay aside weapons of mass destruction as a means of advancing ideas and instead fight directly with words. Words cannot be stopped by force. Words endure the death of the speaker. Words shape ideas. Words are remembered.

That is what I do, each fifth of November: I remember. I remember the ideas that have come before me, that inspire me, that challenge me. I may not remember who first generated the idea, or why they died, but I do remember the words they used to articulate that idea. I remember the words they used to advance that idea.

And I try, just as they did, to articulate my own ideas with words. It is likely no one may remember me, but there is a chance they will remember my words, and my ideas. My ideas that love triumphs over hate, that prejudice and fear are transitory and that acceptance and unity will win the day. That reaching for something is just as important as grasping it. That moving forward will always trump moving backwards. That every inch is just as far as a mile. That ideas are bulletproof.

So today, remember, remember the fifth of November and remember the ideas that created today, and generate some ideas that will create a better tomorrow.

Ten Years Down the Road

With the haunted look of a midnight rider I stare into the mirror, bloodshot eyes staring back at me. I can see in the reflection cracked plaster and unoccupied bathroom stalls. This is my third gas station in two days, and they all look the same. Each station sells the same wares, has the same tiled floors, and each station attendant wears the same tired smile. I can’t tell if I am in Wisconsin, Wyoming, or Grayville, Missouri, which in my sleep deprived brain has become Gravyville and an inside joke with my passenger.

I picked up a highly metaphorical man in Joplin, Missouri and we are driving toward the rising of the sun and old friends in new locales. This man I haven’t seen in ten years, yet we slipped into casual conversation and deep affection as easily as we slipped into sleeping bags last night for a brief respite, he on the left, I on the right, at least until I started snoring an avalanche of nasal somniloquys and he was forced to vacate the premises.

Where was I again? Oh yeah, a gas station bathroom in Grayville, MO. I blink my eyes again, sigh again, and turn off the water faucet. I stumble out, not quite as tired as I make out, and consider buying one of a dozen different snacks. Eventually I decide against them all and purchase an overpriced bottle of SmartWater, the only brand of bottled water I enjoy. $2 later I’m back in the car and ready for more driving. I have to traverse Illinois and Indiana before I will enter Kentucky and be close to my destination. When all is said and logged, I will have driven nearly 1000 miles to be where I was this past weekend: Cincinnati, Ohio.

I spent the weekend with fourteen of my high school mates, not counting assorted spouses and adorable children named Ender and Zaya. We met, once upon a long ago, in the country of Papua New Guinea, out upon the western rim of the world. Our parents were there collectively for mission work, and we were there to be shiny, happy children attending missionary school. Then there were 42 of us, and like the good book says, we were the answer to life, the universe, and everything, at least in our own minds. There was little we could not accomplish, or reach out and grasp and have as our very own. And to some extent, we have accomplished much. Some of us are nurses, or aide workers, or family therapists. We are salesmen, teachers, and studying to be so much more than we are currently.

It was an almost overwhelming experience when I first walked into our reserved room at the Marriott and saw old, familiar faces. It is amazing how fast ten years comes rushing back into your brain with just a glimpse and a glance. The next forty-two hours were far too short a time to spend amongst such excellent and admirable people. We played games, hung out in a brewery, walked Oktoberfest, talked amongst ourselves, took a river cruise and ate more bacon than we should have, considering we are not getting any younger, and not speaking for anyone else, it was a blast from the past and the time of my life. As a culminating event of the summer, for me, the reunion was the absolute best I could have hoped for from life.

You see, I’d been struggling to find my identity again in the wake of a divorce. I needed to know again who I was and where I had come from. Who I am is still a bit of a mystery, but I can now say again with confidence that I have come from Papua New Guinea. I have a life I left behind there, and fragments of that life were embedded in the women and men I saw this past weekend. Having them all there, celebrating life and the past ten years was like putting the pieces back together for me. Part of my identity now looked like more than jagged edges of a half-completed jigsaw puzzle. It looked like me, once upon a long ago. And I liked what I saw.

On the long journey home, between discussions of blue wizards and ancient beings from myth, my compatriot and I stopped off at another gas station. There, in another mirror, streaked with grime and fingerprints, I saw a younger man, a man full of purpose and self-awareness. And after he walked out I saw myself as I once was: young, with the world at my fingertips and life ahead of me.

Ten years down the road, I’ve found a part of me I had lost. And it feels good to be just that little bit more whole again.

Love Wins

For Robin, Ashley, Rachel, Laura and all others who today are acknowledged as the equals they already were.

How to explain what happened today to children of all ages:

Ahem.

“Now everyone in America has the right to marry whomever they love. They didn’t before and that was sad.”

I’ve tried to avoid the soapboxes and the arguments, but I’ve read too much today to stay silent. People whom I love now have the same rights as I do where yesterday they did not. This is no small thing to me. Others want to decry this as society slouching towards Gomorrah, but I rather see it as towards Bethlehem, where society is being reborn to newness of life.

Those couched in traditional Christian church culture will recognize that I am using the language of baptism. That is deliberate. A baptism signifies for a church that someone has moved from disbelief to belief, from apostasy to affirmation of truth. And that is what has happened in America today. America has been baptized into a new truth, the truth that Neanderthals and HomoSapiens are equal. The truth that people of different color are equal. The truth that people of different genders are equal.

And just as before, in a dark, racist past, where blacks and whites were unable, by law, to marry and “intermingle” as this was abhorrent and immoral and wrong and that was proved to be the odious, sickening language of hate and ignorance, so too now, we are emerging from a dark, sexist present where gays and lesbians were unable, by law, to marry and “intermingle” as this was abhorrent and immoral and wrong and that too has proved to be the odious, sickening language of hate and ignorance.

We have been baptized into a new future, where ALL legal, consenting adults have the freedom under the law to marry whomever they love. Love has won the day! Now those that were once marginalized are now as mainstream as the rest of us.

Is this the decay of society, a future of woe and trouble? Only time will tell, but like the ending of apartheid, and segregation, and the birth of Civil Rights, I think history will shine out the brighter after this. Rights acknowledged for one is rights acknowledged for all.

But what about religion, founded on a Bible, a Bible that seems to say that such homosexual behavior is deviant and wrong? Usually I don’t care about a dissenting opinion to freedom and truth, no matter how vocal or quiet, but in this case I know many who might read this who are genuinely struggling with this question. I am no Bible scholar, but I will say this: perhaps those passages have been misread. Perhaps it is your interpretation of them that is lacking. Or, if the Bible really does say exactly what you think it says, then maybe the Bible is simply wrong. The Bible is wrong about a great many things: morally, culturally, scientifically, and socially. How do you know this is not one more error?

I understand that for you this is a matter of deep belief and long held tradition, but know this: beliefs and traditions change in all sorts of ways and for all sorts of reasons. Remember those who held most strongly to the idea that blacks and whites shouldn’t marry? Many of them were your physical and spiritual ancestors of a time not that long ago. Their beliefs and traditions were based as strongly on the Bible as your beliefs about homosexuality and they were as wrong. Please do not live an unexamined life.

As far as the Bible, and everything else goes, I believe that love conquers all. Love’s greatest champion was a Jewish guy named Yeshua. I follow his example and love all, regardless of what an ancient text may or may not say. Love conquers bad theology, upside down society, inequality, and ignorance.

Today, love has won.

The Final Rest

Recently, my grandmother died and with her I lost the final of my closest grandparents.

When my grandparents came to visit, usually around Christmas time, my family and I would enjoy the time with them and wish it would last forever. But, as always happened, the time came to an end. They would pull their car out of the driveway, and head down the street. My brother Nate and I had this tradition: we would run on the sidewalk alongside the car as fast and as long as we could until we could no longer stay abreast. Then we would stop and pant and have a rest and wave goodbye.

Some of my grandmother’s last words were “maybe I just need to rest”.

I doubt she knew she was destined to die just hours later. But she longed for rest.

I cannot stand here and tell you with surety what happens after death, but I can tell you for certain what my grandmother believed. She believed in a swift flight to a celestial city and a reuniting with her Savior, Jesus, and the love of her life, my grandfather.

I am no theologian nor scientist; I don’t know what happens when breathing ceases. But I can tell you about a life. My grandmother’s life was a long journey full of happiness and joy. But the thing about long journeys is they often tire the soul and come with setbacks and sorrow. And you long for rest at the end.

My grandmother lived surrounded by many friends, family, and loved ones. She enjoyed nothing more than serving others and loving many. Many can attest to my grandmother’s caring way. But it wasn’t always easy, especially of late as injury and illness started to steal her vitality. And more and more the loneliness of lost love weighed on her heart. And she longed for rest.

I’d like to think that somewhere, my grandparents are reunited, once again young lovers full of life.

But I simply don’t know. What I do believe, what I hope, is that after death came a rest. A rest from this world, perhaps in another.

Did heaven await my grandmother in the form of God’s arms and grandpa’s embrace?

I only know this: my grandmother is finally at rest, from all sorrow and weariness and pain. And that is a comfort to me.

On Friday last week, we laid my grandmother to rest in the Ohio ground. I wrote the following to memorialize that rest.

Into the ground, into dust.
We weep the sorrow of failed fires
and ashes to ashes.

Like the old prayer rhyme
Now I lay her down
To sleep the forever sleep

I pray what lord on high
Her soul to snatch
And in bulwarks keep

Here on earth her shell
Is buried, betwixt her beloveds
‘Neath earth’n deep

Into the ground, into dust.
We weep the sorrow of failed fires
and ashes to ashes.

I will miss my grandparents, now that they no longer walk this earth, but at least they are both together now and are at rest.

Celebrating Life

On April 3rd, The Fast and the Furious 7 will hit theaters, and with it the sharp reminder of franchise star Paul Walker’s death last year. He died doing what he loved: driving.

Today, March 12th, is my birthday.

There was a time when I wasn’t sure I was going to see Furious 7. I wasn’t even sure that I was going to see today. That time was not that long ago, and I haven’t told anyone what I am about to say now, except for my therapist who helped me live through it.

Several months ago now, but still recent enough to haunt me, I was sure I was going to die, and not in any macabre way, I was sure I was going to kill myself. I literally saw no future beyond January 1st. My depression had started to overwhelm me, and I was drowning in it. Days were literally as well as figuratively dark and cold. I looked up and saw no sky; I looked out and saw no horizon. I was alone and I was suffocating on nothing.

I had one thing before me: my sister’s wedding. I had nothing after that. I was determined that I was going to attend the wedding and have one last good time and then end it all. “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die” as the saying goes. I knew I was going to see my immediate family at the wedding, and so I could say one last goodbye and be done with life on this terrestrial sphere.

The wedding was as wonderful as could be. It was warm, sunny, and the happiest of occasions, but a darkness and a chill had settled in my core. I knew my days were shorter rather than longer. Once the wedding week was done so was I. I used up any positive energy I had left smiling for pictures and keeping it together so as to not ruin my sister’s big moments.

I returned from the wedding and stared down a calendar of days until the 1st of January. I manage to stave off hospitalization because I told my therapist I wouldn’t do anything to myself until at least then, but I knew that day was coming.

I welcomed it. I cherished the thought of the final release. When one has nothing to live for, one tends to think of the end as blissful nothingness. I hoped, and still do, that there is no afterlife. One life is enough pain and struggle and weariness without another life to endure. When I do die, I want that to be it, for it all to be over. I don’t want to live again, or to live eternally. As the philosopher Yoda said on his death bed, “Forever sleep: earned it, I have.” I want to earn my forever sleep.

More than anything, that dark December of last year, I wanted my forever sleep. My weariness screamed for it.

And then, just when it was almost over, just when I had the bottle of pills in my hand, when I grew tired of setting it back down, unopened, just then I found a glimmer of something else.

Hope.

Hope for a future, for a better tomorrow shone through my deepest depression. I decided to make a radical decision for life instead of against it. I decided that January 1st was not going to be my last day on earth. I can’t tell you exactly where that minuscule drop of hope came from, or why I decided to delay death, but I did. In my mind, I simply decided to see exactly how long I could stretch life. At the time, I didn’t know how long that would be. At least another day. At most, a week. Here I am, three and a bit months later, still going.

Along the way, I decided to move to Texas, to physically grasp a brighter, warmer, sunnier future. I decided to leave all I could behind me, and strike out for something new. I am making my run for the border, eating and drinking and being merry for tomorrow I live.

In just a few weeks, I will sit down in a theater and watch the Fast and the Furious 7, and silently, simultaneously, mourn Paul Walker’s death and honor his life, and I will do what I have been doing since January 1st: I will live fast and furiously, one quarter mile at a time, until I have earned a natural end and a forever sleep.

No more do I contemplate my own death, at my hand or by Nature’s. It will come when it comes. For now, there is living to do. And never more have I been aware of that than today, on my birthday, as I turn 28 and start a brand new year. I honestly did not think I would see today, but here the sun sets and this day is almost over. Another one is coming.

The Power of a Like

I exist on a variety of social media platforms, (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, I think I even have an unused Tumblr sitting around somewhere) and sometimes I post things and sometimes I get likes on them.

For instance, I recently posted this on Instagram, a picture of blue cake with yellow icing. I got a few likes, one from a cousin I haven’t seen since I was 7 or something, one from a friend I haven’t seen in a few years, one from an aunt I haven’t seen in a few years, one from a friend I haven’t seen since college, and one from a person I have never met.

But the in the instance of each like, I felt connected to each person, if only for the briefest of seconds.

My cousin just recently got married, in a very bohemian wedding, in a way that I have come to know is totally her. My friend loves Harry Potter and is a total NERD. My aunt is one of the best people I have ever known. She recently was at a beach. My college friend is a professional photographer, and I love seeing her work, mostly of weddings and other portrait sessions, but also of her dog in the snow and the early morning sun cracking over the Adirondack mountains. One person apparently likes blue cake with yellow icing and posting pictures of LEGO.

I’ve heard all the arguments about how people are glued to their phones and how they don’t interact anymore, and how the world is losing something in its increasing digitalization. But each time my phone notified me of a like on my silly Instagram picture of blue cake with yellow icing I felt more connected in that instant than I had before.

Sure, two of the five people I’ve known since I was born. The others a few years. One I’ve never met. But I follow each on Instagram and thus see the slivers of their lives that they share through little square pictures.

Maybe that is the sad realization of the times, but look at who I was connected to: two friends, a cousin, an aunt, and a person I know only by screen name. The cousin lives in California, the friend and aunt in Virginia, the college friend in New York, and I haven’t the foggiest notion where the other person lives. And I, in frigid Wisconsin, was connected to them all in an instant. At that exact moment in time, I knew that each was doing what I was doing: looking at my picture on Instagram.

Their likes said that they saw a piece of blue cake with yellow icing and it made their moment. They “liked” it. In that moment, it compelled them to tell me that, only that, simply that, merely that. None of them felt the need to leave a comment or communicate further, and that is ok. This isn’t about comments or actual communication, this is about sideways communication, the power of a like.

A like is a very simple way of saying: “You put this in the world, where it didn’t exist before, and I like that”.

I like that, too. I also liked my blue cake with yellow frosting. It was delicious.

(By the way, if you are interested in following me, you can find me on most social media platforms as PhilRedbeard.)