Category: Captain’s Log

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.)

Star Trek: Mayweather

Today I introduce a new writing project: Star Trek: Mayweather. It is my intention to write a Star Trek “show” in a serialized format on my blog. This is something that I have wanted to do for a long time, and now I am finally daring to do it. I am a huge Star Trek fan, and hope to do justice to the legacy of Gene Roddenberry and the Star Trek shows and films that already exist. More than anything though this is “just for me”. I don’t particularly care if it goes anywhere or accomplishes anything, I am writing it first and foremost for my own enjoyment. Legally this is a fan fiction as I have no contract or permission to write a Star Trek novel. So, all Star Trek contained herein is only a tribute and used under fair use license and isn’t for resale or profit and Star Trek is the sole property of those who own it.

I am sharing it with you because I believe in sharing my work, and I find it almost impossible to write if my writing goes “nowhere”. So here it is, in all its nerdy, fan fiction glory: Star Trek: Mayweather.

Star Trek: Mayweather takes place just after the events of Star Trek: Nemesis, and just before the destruction of Romulus as depicted in the 2009 film Star Trek. This takes place in the prime universe.

Star Trek: Mayweather follows Captain O’Sullivan, a man struggling with anger and depression over the recent death of his brother. His mission is to solve crises across the galaxy as they occur, and operate in a support capacity to larger missions as needed. His ship is the NCC-72187 the USS Mayweather, a Nova-class starship, small, agile, and possessed of a small crew, perfect for her mission.

I do hope you enjoy it as much as I do. Coming soon to my blog on a computer near you.

Little Poems

I sat down to sharpen a pencil, because I was depressed and couldn’t fathom anything more. I ended up with 12 lines of iambic pentameter and two little poems. There might be something to this. Seriously, these poems are not great or amazing, but I am so happy right now, in a depressed sort of way. Without further ado…

The Bills

The bills are stacked some ten or twenty high
they must be paid today or soon or else
someone may come to take away my funds
and leave me high and dry without much fun

 

Albatross

But you cannot take ‘way the sky from me
it is my home my life my everything

my little albatross is fair and wise
beyond her years she flies with me for luck
she reads the minds of lesser folk its true
but freak or not my River is my crew

 

The second poem is inspired by the TV show Firefly, and once I figured out that albatross had enough syllables to scan into iambic pentameter the rest of the poem kinda flowed. But like I said, these are rough and simple, but they make me smile because of reasons.

 

The Poet Within

Previously today I wrote about wanting to write more poetry. Today I went to Barnes and Noble and bought a notebook for my poetical playings. On the cover it says “In the midst of our lives, we must find the magic that makes our souls soar.” This for me is the perfect quote. It is exactly what I want to do: in the midst of my depression, find something that can make my soul soar and make me able to be creative and maybe, just maybe, a little bit happy.

Today I was able to do this. I found my notebook, bought it, and then found a quiet corner of B&N and sat down and worked through the first chapter of Ode Less Traveled. Fry, the author, introduced meter and iambic pentameter in particular. The exercises involved identifying iambic pentameter and the stresses in each line and then writing some iambs of my own. It was a little difficult as I am a bit rusty and unused to writing in formal meter, but I had fun. As a result, I even wrote a couple little poems. They aren’t spectacular or amazing, but they are written in iambic pentameter, an accomplishment for me. Enjoy!

The Books All Sit

The books all sit upon the shelves in rows
and wait for some to come and buy their souls
they speak with many words and some with songs
of joy or sorrowful they weep and cry
the words all run and wash away today
oh please, won’t you buy one to save its life?

Down and Out

My pencil is not full of lead or ink
but it is running out of writing steam
eraser is a nub and now I need
a new pencil to write, unwrite these lines
of poetry and nonsensical lines

That, as they say, is That. The Poet Within is coming free. 

The Ode Less Travelled

Recently I have been floundering, awash in a sea of self-doubt, self-loathing, and self-not-going-anywhereness. These are symptoms of depression and part and parcel with a life lived with anxiety. The depressed individual often finds simple tasks difficult, and finds it difficult to do anything of any import. That has certainly been me.

But lately I have wanted to break free, to really lurch forward, and make a road for myself. I wrote previously about Joss Whedon, and that somehow he found the time while filming the Avengers 2 to write a simple little folk song called “Big Giant Me”, and is collaborating with the artist who performed it to produce an EP. If Whedon can find time and energy like that, surely I, in the midst of my depression and social anxiety, can find time to make my own road.

To that end I have blown the dust off a book I picked up in college entitled The Ode Less Traveled: Unlocking the Poet Within by Stephen Fry (and yes, the Stephen Fry of staggering Twitter celebrity, of Jeeves and Wooster, of A Bit of Fry and Laurie, and of V for Vendetta and the Hobbit trilogy). In this book, Fry helps the gentle novice explore the world of poetry from beginning to villanelle.

I consider myself more than a novice in the poetical world, but the truth is, I write mainly free verse, and I’ve never labored to master meter or many poetical forms. This is something that I would like to remedy. I would like to explore and push myself to learn and to obey the rules as the masters of the craft have done. Maybe I will still mainly write free verse, but I would like to know that I have done what I can to learn the ropes, as it were.

To that end, I will work through the Ode Less Travelled with Stephen Fry and learn what I can. When I am depressed and anxious, hopefully I can push myself to create just a little. Having a guide and a path easily marked usually helps the depressed individual move along, and the Ode Less Travelled should be such a guide and a path for me. Whatever else I may be, I want to be a poet. Perhaps I can unlock my Poet Within.

I tell you about it because I have a need to share most things, and because I want this to be real. I will be sharing what I write with the world, and I am starting at the beginning. Thus far I have mastered the introduction and end user agreement of the book. Well, almost. Mr. Fry wants his readers to have a notebook to keep with them always, as well as writing utensils, and I think buying a new notebook and new pencils will make this somewhat more real to me. To that end I must do something else I am loathe to do: enter the world of men and move around, but I think I will head to Barnes and Noble, a place certain to have what I need, and also a quieter place in the wide loudness of the world.

So pray with me, as I pray to the universe, to allow me this small breakthrough of my depression, that it may lead to greater and bigger things, or a least a little poetry.

Big Giant Me

I want to be Joss Whedon when I grow up.

To be clear, I do not want to be the mega famous man, but the small creative genius. A few years ago when Joss Whedon finished filming The Avengers, he somehow found the time and energy to film an adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing. This year, during the busyness of filming The Avengers 2, Whedon somehow found the time and energy to write a folk song called “Big Giant Me” in collaboration with Shawnee Kilgore, an indie music recording artist he met on Kickstarter. You can read all about that on Buzzfeed here and I highly recommend you do.

I want to be able to harness my creative energy, my spirit, and my energy to create, well, anything. I write occasionally, I pen little poems, I take pictures, but it is all so very hard for me to do. Why? I suffer from depression. Depression actively sucks energy and destroys creativity. I wonder what I would be able to do with the boundless energy that Joss Whedon seems to have. I wonder how he finds energy, while insanely busy, to do small personal artistic crafts. Really it is only because of Whedon’s fame and celebrity that we know anything about Much Ado or “Big Giant Me”, but the fact is he has created small, personal, highly creative things in and around his giant projects like Avengers, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and the other amazing things he has created.

I just want to be able to create small, personal, highly creative things in and around the giant bouts of soul crushing depression that I am prone to. I want to know Whedon’s secret. Or maybe there is no secret, maybe it is just plain hard work. But something Whedon said sort of stood out to me. He said that “it is nice to have the balance between something that is genuinely enormous and something that is crystalline and tiny” and that the song “was so small and contained, I was able to sort of focus on it, and it was very liberating. It would relax me, while still being a very difficult little puzzle, but one that you finish, and then you go onto the next one.”

I think maybe I will start taking that to heart. Something tiny, crystalline, something small and contained that I can focus on in the midst of my depression and sadness. Maybe if I take that approach, in the hugeness of my mental illness I can find time and energy to create small, personal, highly creative things. Just maybe through plain hard work I can be Joss Whedon when I grow up.