Captain’s Log – Page 6

The Right Tool

I’ve been working on several projects lately. I recently wrote about the book I am writing in conjunction with my wife, but I have others in process. I love to make things in the physical world, not just the literary one, and my dad loves model trains. Together he and I are working to build a grand train display in his hobby room. My dad is coming up with the layout and some ideas, and I will be doing most of the building when it comes to scenery, greenery, and other such things.

The first step is to build trestles. My dad has an HO (a larger scale, for the uninitiated) train that he wants to be on a square oval in the middle of his train table. In, around, and underneath that train track he wants to weave his N gauge (a smaller scale) train tracks. To do that, the HO needs to be elevated. Plastic risers such as they sell in the mass market for elevating train tracks are not tall enough, so it fell to me to build new ones.

I went to my local hobby store, and perused the shelves for what I could use to construct sturdy, yet lightweight, trestles. I found some balsa wood rods that were a quarter inch square and thirty-six inches long. Perfect! I found some reference pictures online that could be close to what I wanted to build, and then it was figure-it-out time! I played around with some sizing and how to build a lattice, but then came the cutting.

I don’t have many blades at my disposal other than a few pocket knives, but I do have an Exacto blade. I figured the balsa wood was soft enough that I could cut through it with that. So that’s what I did. Man, was that a bad idea! It took forever, didn’t always give me good cuts, and in the end, gave me sore fingers and a massive blister on my thumb where I pressed down on the Exacto handle. Not fun.

Eventually, I finished the trestles (with some Vallejo sepia wash they even looked like railroad ties and not balsa wood) and delivered them to my dad’s hobby room. Unfortunately, what we thought we needed was not enough. The track required a bit more support than we initially figured, meaning we had to move the trestles closer together than originally planned. That meant I was back in fabrication mode. My blister had finally healed, and I didn’t want a repeat performance from my thumb. Enter the Home Depot.

Home Depot sits across from the hobby store in the next town over, and after purchasing enough balsa wood rods to finish the project, I thought to myself that I would at least see if Home Depot had something I could use to cut them to make the job easier. I took a look at the hand saws, chisels, box cutters, and other blades and eventually found something I thought might serve my purpose: a small 8″ hacksaw with a small, many-toothed blade. So I bought it.

Coming home I tried it out on a scrap of balsa wood that I had left over from my first foray into trestle making, and it worked perfectly! The blade was small enough to cut the quarter inch rod, and sharp enough to give me almost the perfect cut! Wow, I wished I had thought to buy that at the beginning! The right tool for the job really does make the job that much easier. And now I have a small saw for other building projects I undertake in the future.

I quickly cut up the balsa wood I had purchased to make the rest of the trestles, and of course it took me an hour instead of half the day to chop it up into the lengths I needed. Now all that is left is assembly and paint, and then I should be done making trestles. After that comes securing them in place, placing the HO track on top, and, well, the project continues from there. N gauge track underneath, planning the scenery, and taking it further. This won’t be a quick project, but it has already been fun. I have had the opportunity to grow my fabrication skills and later I will be able to flex my creative muscles as well. I can’t wait!

And making things is a great diversion from writing, which I had been doing fairly non-stop until my dad and I embarked on the Great Train Project. Now I get to take a break from stringing words together and can cut, glue, and paint (usually in that order). And once I’ve come to a finishing point in the fabrication, I can get back to writing. It allows me the chance to work different processes, and not get burned out in doing only one thing all the time.

Other projects are also in the works for me, such as photography, organizing, action figure customization, and the list goes on. I might need to start scheduling my time to get to it all! We will see. For now, it’s “All aboard!” in finishing the train trestles, which I think I may do after lunch.

A Book

“Hello” he typed, in what he hoped were friendly letters.

I am working on a writing project! A few years ago my wife started a book, and I agreed to help her punch up the language and refine the message. I started doing just that, and somewhere along the way put it aside for other things and never quite picked it up again. Now, in light of my recent lay-off from a job, I decided to revisit the manuscript and finally get it into good shape.

For the past couple of weeks, I have been doing just that. Starting from chapter zero, the introduction, I have been trying to work on a chapter a day. Life still intervenes and I cannot sit and write for an entire day, but today I finished up work on chapter four (of eight-ish)!

It feels really, really good to sit down, light a scented candle (a Middle-Earth inspired scent created by my friend Alisha), put on some music, and write. In this case, most of the words are there already, but they need shaping, like a child using the sand of the beach to form a castle. I add a little water, cast the damp sand in a shaped bucket, and overturn it upon the dry sand beneath. Or something.

Really I poke at it, delete a little here, add some there, rearrange this or that, and read read read. I read each chapter again and again so that I retain the flow and higher order ideas of the chapter, rather than get bogged down in a particular sentence or paragraph. It is ok to really hammer out the grammar of a particular phrase, but not at the expense of the whole. My tendency is to want to be elegant and precise and highfalutin’ but sometimes I just need the damn thing to say what it needs to say, beautiful phrasing be damned. (See, I just used “damn” twice in one sentence, a thing I usually avoid, but hell, it just needed to be like that. So, too, the book sometimes just needs to be what it is.)

I am cognizant as well that my wife wrote most of what I am editing and shaping. If I change too much of that text, it won’t be what she wrote any longer (insert Ship of Theseus metaphor here). I don’t want to lose her voice, or too many of her words in adding my own. She says things in different ways than I would, and as I am becoming co-author there will be plenty of me in there as well, but I don’t want her to disappear either. It becomes a balancing act.

I think that is what I am loving most about this work: the act of balance. It requires much of my extant skill to pull off this balance of retaining my wife’s phrasing, adding my own, while fixing errors, adding missing bits, and removing extraneous information. I truly hope the end result will be worth reading, and accomplish the goal we now share in writing. It has been exciting and invigorating to sit down each day and shape the castle one sandy block at a time.

I will announce more what the book is about when it is much closer to completion. For now, it is a project that is allowing me to stretch my muscles and really get into some word-smithing.

“Anyway” he wrote, changing topics slightly, “this book project is consuming a lot of my writing energy.” He paused. Continuing he typed: “that means that my blogging may not continue as frequently, however, I will try to maintain my ‘two blog posts a month’ schedule that I have for a long time now.” He typed a period and closed his quotation marks, and felt good about that particular sentence. He decided that he had said what he needed to, and that he could hit publish and be okay.

The Ecstasy of Guns

Trigger warning: guns and gun violence is discussed.

America has a gun problem. That much is obvious. Death by guns is the leading cause of death for our children; the NRA has bought and paid for politicians who continually block sensible gun control legislation; and one can barely turn on a television without seeing something gun related on the screen.

It is this last part I want to discuss today: the rampant image of the gun on screen. I am old enough to have been a teenager when the Columbine school shooting occurred and I remember then that many people blamed the violence on video games. I believe that myth has since been debunked, that violent video games do not directly cause gun violence, but I think it is still a related topic.

Guns are glorified in America. They are made to appear “cool” and “desirable” and as positive means of solving problems. Their aesthetic design is one such to make them as slick and natural an extension of the hand and arm as possible. The sound design of films and television shows is done in such a way as to enhance that glorification. Have you ever noticed someone in a movie using hearing protection when firing guns? I can count on half a hand. Guns are loud. I can tell you this from experience, but guns are never really that loud in film, unless it is germane to a funny plot point. Everything about the way guns are presented is to minimize their faults and maximize their luster.

That simply cannot be an ancillary fact, ignorable to the overall desirability of gun shaped weapons. And when a gun is seen as “cool”, and shown over and over again to be the solution to, dare I say, any problem on screen, then it cannot be coincidence that guns are turned to as the solution to many real-world problems as well.

I watched a mid-grade science fiction film the other night, the new 65 starring Adam Driver and Arianna Greenblatt. Driver is a pilot of a spacecraft that crashes on a world of dinosaurs, and quite unbelievably to the plot, he has a convenient locker filled with survival gear including, you guessed it, a futuristic assault rifle. The rifle is the solution to the dinosaur problem, it makes a nifty sound when fired, and looks amazing when the rounds explode from the barrel. Without it, the marooned pilot and friend would surely have perished. Not only is the rifle a lazy solution to a light plot, but it is also just one more example of guns superseding ingenuity in a difficult situation, cinematically.

A popular film franchise starring Keanu Reeves, John Wick, I believe exists solely because American, and to be fair, world wide audiences as well, love gun play and gun violence. In fact, John Wick is lighter on plot than 65 is, and almost the entirety of all four Wick movies to date are almost entirely comprised of various gun battles. The camera lingers on the guns themselves and shows them in the best of lighting and situations so as to amp up their already prodigious role in the films. This is nothing new. Guns and gun violence have been apart of cinema since the beginnings, with western films and others. The 70’s and 80’s were heydays of “action” movies, with “action” being a codeword for “gun violence” in many cases.

Before 1984’s Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, there existed three ratings for movies: G, PG, and R. G for General Audiences, PG for Parental Guidance suggested, and R for Restricted, meaning 18 and older only. Steven Spielberg wanted another rating between PG and R to keep his younger children from asking to see Temple of Doom, and he petitioned for, and received, the first ever PG-13 rating. Suddenly a new genre of film was born that could include much of the violence (read: guns) of other films, some non-graphic nudity, and swearing (without more than one fuck) and be acceptable for children 13 and older.

There is much to say about the ratings system, but for now my point is that gun violence, which primarily had been restricted to adult audiences, was now widely available to teenagers for the first time. Temple of Doom didn’t have a whole lot of gun violence that wasn’t cartoon-y, but it had some. But many, many other movies have had a lot more. John Wick is still an R-rated flick, but others with only slightly less gun violence are not. What have we unleashed with this bright, technicolor tableau of silver screen gun violence? I don’t believe it directly causes real world gun violence, but I believe it is contributory to an overall culture that glorifies the gun.

Such horrific weapons as guns should not be glorified at all, should not be presented as solutions to problems in fictional stories, and should not be desirable objects to possess. They are far too destructive. As our stories take us as humans, there our hearts and minds go. Make something “normal” or “acceptable” on screen, and we will start to normalize it in real life as well. Usually, I would champion this for acceptance, for representation, and for many other things, but when used to negative effect, I must condemn it.

To take another example for a moment: show characters making racist jokes in a positive light in a popular movie and wait and see how long it is before you hear those same jokes in your world. Our former president unleashed a slightly hidden part of our culture by making sexual harassment, racism, and all sorts of evil acceptable from our highest political office and the effects are still tearing America apart. Presidents, and movies, can do that very well.

I don’t have an immediate solution to Hollywood’s obsession with guns, but I can do one, small thing and that is this: I will no longer glorify guns. I find myself doing it in a small way: one is when talking about photography. For some reason that I have not researched, gun metaphors are used for photography. Shooting film, getting the shot, taking a shot etc are all code for taking a picture. As much as possible, I don’t use these phrases. I don’t use a film camera, but I can get a picture or take a pic instead of a “shot”.

Another example is in my toy photography. I love Star Wars as a franchise (despite it, too, glorifying shooting weapons to a degree) and take a lot of pictures of Star Wars action figures. Almost every single figure comes with, or has a place for, a gun shaped object. To display or photograph them naturally is to have a place for their tiny plastic gun. Going forward, I want to only take photos of the figures in positive aspects, and to minimize or remove entirely their weapons. This will be difficult in a conflict heavy galaxy far, far away, but I believe it can be done.

The journey towards de-glorifying guns starts with personal choice and action, much like the decisions to reject sexism, racism, homo/trans/etc-phobia and many other evils. It some ways, it starts with me. I want to see positive change, therefore it is incumbent on me to evidence that positive change. I stopped going to gun ranges for fun a while back, I am choosing less violent (gun-centric or otherwise) movies to enjoy, and changing my photographic vocabulary and the object of my photographic endeavors is a part of that. Ultimately I believe positive change is possible, but it takes many small steps along different paths than have been previously traveled.

Accepted

I have bonafide acceptance into my first ever grad school! While I see this as a stepping stone in my graduate level education, I am nonetheless excited. As I’ve written before, I am also nervous. I am uncertain that I will be up to the challenge of school after so long out of the game, and worry that I may fail in this endeavor. Challenges are to be faced, though, and are ultimately what define us as people, so I am going to face this one as bravely as I can.

Meanwhile, I have been thinking about the step beyond this one: the Master of Fine Arts in Writing. I really, really want to jump into that, but must test myself first. My advisor at my first ever grad school has given me a lead into a community, Art House Dallas, that centers around creative arts of all kinds. After perusing their website, it looks as if they have plenty of written art events.

I have not been a part of a writing community since my undergraduate days when I was part of a quite exciting group of writers that were my peers and fellow students. I miss that sense of belonging intensely, and the fun of writing together with other enthusiasts. It particularly sharpened my skills and made me a better writer. I write on my blogs, but am not eliciting feedback on how to improve my writing. More online journals, these blogs give me a chance to throw words at the screen and not lose the ability to craft a sentence, but they are not trying to be high art.

I worry that in a community of writers I may not be accepted. I know that this is imposter syndrome rearing it’s inauthentic head, but I cannot shake the feeling that I wouldn’t belong, or that I would be an outsider. As with most people in a group, I would want to belong in the group, be a full, contributing member. I don’t want to hang on the fringe, or just exist in the space. I want to commit and become an integral facet. I would like to offer as much as I would be given, in terms of feedback, critique, and a fresh perspective. Maybe Art House Dallas could be the opportunity I am looking for.

I have a friend in Pennsylvania who is a young adult author and she has invited me to be part of her group of writers. To date, I have not taken that plunge either, but I feel that it is time to do so. If I am going to commit to a life of writing, and make it a viable part of my life, I really need to be part of communities that write.

I also need to get more serious about writing every day. My wife has a few book projects she would like assistance writing, and that I have agreed to help her on. I need to get started with those in a real way. My blogs are doing fine, I last wrote here ten days ago and on PhilMartin.blog four days ago, so I am regularly enough publishing posts, but I need to inculcate myself into the habit of writing. I cannot improve without doing, and doing so regularly.

I have an action list: join Art House Dallas events, join my friend’s group, start on my wife’s books, and continue blogging regularly. Taken together, that is more than enough to keep me busy. Grad school classes start this August, and once they do, I will really be in the thick of it. All the better! Without having a full time job, I need to be employed doing something. Even more so if that something is writing. (I hope to have a job again though, and relatively soon, but that remains To Be Seen at the moment.)

I look back and re-read that paragraph: my action list, and I am excited. There is potential for so much good there. It is a risk, of course, as most things new are, but without the threat of risk there is no hope of reward. I don’t achieve by sitting around doing nothing, and that gets boring after awhile anyhow. I must have something to do, and I have chosen, for better or for worse, writing.

I was thirteen the first time I consciously sat down and wrote a poem. I still have it, but it isn’t any good. It is evocative, but amateurish, has imagery, but lacks sophistication. I was thirteen, after all, and just starting. But it really reminds me of the poet I would become, and the sort of thing I write now, just, better. Before then, and since then, I have written a lot of different things, but that I consider the true beginning of my intentional writing career.

That is another long term project I would like to commence at some point, by the way: revising my book of poetry. Did you know that I self-published some poems? Well, I did, and you can buy the collection on Amazon. As good as I consider them (I am offering them for sale, after all) I would like to see what some intense revision could do. I want to put them through the wringer of my own critique, and others’, and see what emerges. I think I have enough to work on for now, but that remains a longer-term goal. Look for a second edition of Whiskey Poetry in the future! (But for now, buy the one that is out there. Amazon has it on sale for a little over $5. Can’t beat that!)

I am now thirty-six. That is twenty-three years in the profession. I have been paid, to date, if memory serves, $130 for my writing. That is for one job I held writing educational materials, a blog post for a website I used to contribute to, and two copies of my book to my mom and a friend. But professional writers don’t often become multi-millionaire New York Times bestsellers. Sometimes they aren’t even published. But they are still writers. What matters is how you do it, and I want to do it like they do: consistently and at a high level. Small beginnings are not to be diminished.

Consider my acceptance into grad school another small beginning. I am making my way forward, and that is what matters.

Graduate School

My application is complete for my first graduate school! I am so excited about the future of my education. Ever since I was in high school, I’ve thought about attending higher education, first as an undergrad, and then as a grad student. Now I am close to being another step further along the journey. Acceptance is being considered by the admissions committee, but I foresee no complications in being admitted.

I am going to take a few general courses to begin, because honestly going back to school scares me. I have been out of the scholastic game since graduating in 2010, and then I had completed tours at two colleges in five years culminating in a Bachelor of Arts degree. At the moment of graduation, my mental health was declining and I was exhausted. Now, thirteen years later, I feel ready to again tackle some classes.

I am pursuing a Master of Fine Arts in writing, the terminal degree for creative writing. I would like to focus on poetry and memoir writing, or literary non-fiction. Lofty dreams, as these are traditionally the hardest programs to get into. I need a portfolio of my best writing, and to find a good program that won’t break the bank, or that is not far away. Most MFA programs depend on being able to be on-site somewhere for at least a few weeks out of each semester to workshop and learn from a professional. The rest of the time, from what I understand, is spent reading and writing and re-writing and re-writing.

But that is later. Right now I need to make sure I can perform at a graduate level. Like I said, I am experiencing some intense imposter syndrome and real fear. What if I am not good enough? What if I can’t get back into the groove? What if I no longer have the magic touch when it comes to wordsmithing? What if I, quite simply, no longer belong in school? I am having to take some deep breaths and move forward.

For a long time, I have had a strategy when it comes to jobs and other endeavors: go forward until someone or something stops me. It has the advantage of being simple, and easy to remember, and as such, easy to implement. It is amazing to me how often that has worked, too. My most recent job, as a member of a Human Resources team, was like that. I had never done HR, had little idea what that meant, and was feeling very unsure of myself when I applied. But I applied, I interviewed, and was hired. After I found my footing, I realized that I had a knack for HR and was good at my job. Eventually, I was laid off through no fault of my own, and my former boss just told me she wished I was still working with her. I do, too, but had it not been for the layoff, I would never have considered quitting for grad school. Now I have been given this opportunity.

I will go forward, indeed, I have already: I’ve applied, submitted my transcripts, paid the fee, acquired references, written a letter of intent, and at this point, there is nothing more to do but wait. The admissions committee will meet and make their decision, and that will dictate what I do next. I will either register for classes, or seek out another grad school to apply to. I feel strongly that before I begin my MFA I need at least a few classes under my belt to get going. I am aware of the fact that applying to schools is somewhat of a lottery, so it won’t be until I have been consistently rejected that I will assume that this is something I should not pursue. I am not there yet, so forward it is!

Another big hurdle that has me concerned is the financial aspect of it all. I am unemployed, and grad school isn’t cheap. I am not ready to take out loans (still paying off undergrad loans) but I have some savings to at least get me started. I will be researching scholarships, applying for financial aid, and doing what I can. Right now I am also uncertain about the prospect of being able to work and study, so I am not seeking out a full time job. Might try to get something part time, at least through this first experimental semester, but traditionally it has been difficult for me to find the kind of job I look for.

Sigh.

I overwhelm easily at the myriad aspects to chasing a higher degree. But, I have good support from my wife, my family, and those friends that know about my desires. That support is bolstering me through these early days. In the back of my mind, I begin to think that I can do this, that the questions and doubts are nothing but smoke screens and shadows. I’ll take all the help I can get throughout this entire process (if you would like to contribute towards my school fund, I am open to discussing options), but I also know that if I am to succeed in my dreams, and graduate with that MFA, I will need self-confidence and the ambition to work hard.

Maybe that is what scares me the most: that I am the only one who can pull this off. I’ve never been very self-confident, or self-reliant. When pursuing my undergraduate degree, I didn’t stop long enough to think about what I was doing. I raced from class to class, reading and writing long into the night and early morning (sometimes). But I didn’t do much self-reflection. Thirteen years gives you time for self-reflection, and now, with experience and maturity, I am much more aware of what I am about to do. And it scares me.

Scared or not, I’ve started, and I’m not about to back out, not yet, not by a long shot. One step, as the cliche goes, at a time. Forward. I can do this.

Launched

I have launched my second blog! You can find it at philmartin.blog. My writing there will be centered on religion, social issues, and my intersection with both. If those sorts of topics interest you, perhaps go over there and give me a follow. Otherwise, feel free to stay here and read about pop-culture, baseball, poetry, and whatever else I choose to write about.

Thanks for reading and have a great day!

Looking Back, Looking Forward

My lava lamp slowly blumphs away, against the wall beneath the television. One dog lays snoring a few feet away, another lays atop a footstool and sighs, looking at me, and then looking away.

The night crawls towards midnight, but before it gets there, I wanted to gather a few thoughts and toss them into the void of cyberspace. This week has been both full of activity, and also full of rest. My wife and I returned on Sunday from a long, two-week trip, driving from Texas to Pennsylvania to North Carolina and back to Texas. We drove a total of 3,681 miles.

The trip was ostensibly a work trip for my wife, she being one who earns a living by raising support in the form of monetary donations from individuals, churches, and other organizations. She works in distance education for a non-profit university, but her salary is comprised of these donations. It is necessary, time to time, to visit those who send in donations. I accompanied her because since we got married in 2019, and there was/is a pandemic in the intervening years, I had yet to meet some of these people.

The time exhausted both of us, not just in the car driving and traveling, but in always being “on” in presentations in front of churches an in one-on-one interactions, or in small groups. We are very glad to be back home, in the quiet of our upstairs studio, with our dogs (who did not accompany us on the trip).

The beginning of the week was spent just re-acclimating back to life at home, and tending to the yard which had grown into a jungle while we were gone. I got the oil changed in the car and the tires rotated (a good bit of maintenance, considering the miles put on the car in just two weeks). We’ve also been looking after one of our dogs who will undergo surgery early next week. He needed a blood draw and a check-up prior to being put under anesthesia. I also spent a day with my mother and nieces seeing the bluebonnet fields, the ubiquitous spring flower of Texas. Today was laundry day, among other chores.

*deep breath*

While Friday, and the week, draws to a close I reflect back. It has been a good three weeks in total. The trip was paid for through one-time donations from churches and individuals, and others may begin, increase, or merely continue regular support. This most recent few days of performing tasks was productive. Going into the weekend, I feel ready to rest, relax, and spend more time with family. I don’t want to accomplish anything other than fun and frivolity. I believe I’ve earned a little of both.

This is also a breath before a plunge into work. No, I haven’t regained gainful employment. Rather, the opposite: I am going to try being gainfully unemployed for the time being. I am going to pursue full-time writing for the summer (at least). I have many topics and ideas of things to write about, and to that end I have registered a new domain through WordPress where I will be setting up another blog to handle most of that writing. It isn’t directly related to this blog’s topics and interests, so it felt natural to give it a new space in which to flourish (hopefully). More on that later.

I also want to pursue higher education. Formally, I have only acquired a bachelor’s degree (of Arts in English) and would like to add to that a Master of Fine Arts in Writing or a related field. I need to do serious research into schools, financial aid, and other things. I’ve been out of the education game for a while and need to reacclimatize my mind and body to being studious. To this end I think I want to register for two fall semester classes at my wife’s university (where as spouse I receive a 33% discount already) just to see if I can still do the whole scholastic Thing.

Work lies before me. I seriously want to devote about 6 hours a day towards writing, and a few hours each week towards getting geared up for the fall semester. I don’t want to do this halfway. I am serious about taking my loss of job as an opportunity to try something different. I can’t say “new” because I’ve been writing since I was a kid, and I’ve been in school since I was six, but to a new and different degree, perhaps.

As Friday ends I realize that while I have been busy recently, a whole new kind of busy is about to begin, one mostly unknown to me, and more than a little scary. I don’t want to fail, I don’t want to put the financial burden of my family squarely on my wife, and I don’t know how to alleviate that and be a writer/student at the same time. But one step at a time, as I’ve always done. First, a good night’s rest, then the weekend, then: Monday.

*breathe*

I can do this.

Birthdays and Byways

I sit typing while listening to clothes tumble in the dryer. I look out my brother-in-law’s North Carolina window at a tall pine tree and the dappled light shining through needles far above. I miss this part of the United States: the east coast. I grew up not far from here, in Virginia, about 20 minutes from the shores of the Atlantic Ocean.

I miss the pine trees, the smell of the ocean, and the climate. Most of all, I miss my childhood home and the wonderful times spent there. Oh, there was plenty of angst, bad times, and drudgery, but most of that is lost to memory. I usually only remember the good times, the specialness, and my family.

While driving south from Pennsylvania, where I have been the past week and a half supporting my wife’s work, it took all my effort to keep right on the highway towards my destination in Charlotte, North Carolina, and not go left to my home city of Norfolk, Virginia. I had just visited my cousin in Richmond, and remembered well the drive south from there, highway lined with tall evergreens and green grass. While I drove, memories flooded back to me in a rush, like the cars passing in the left lane.

My sister was born a bit before we moved to my favorite home on Sheppard Avenue, 30 years ago today. They tell me that when she was announced, still ensconced within my mother, that five-year-old me jumped on my bicycle and rode away upset. I remember wanting a little brother at the time, and not being happy that I was, in fact, going to receive a little sister, but I don’t remember anything about an angry bike ride. (Truth be told, I wanted a little brother so I could beat up on him and I knew I wouldn’t be able to do that to a sister. I was not always treated well by my older brother, and thought turn about would be fair play. What can I say? I was five. I’ve matured since then.)

Anyway, a few months later, just after I turned six, my beautiful sister was born on the 29th of March. I remember being at school when my mother went into labor, and being called in to an office with my brothers and told that my mom had given birth. There is a photograph of my dad in the hospital holding newborn sister and the three of us crowding around to catch a look at her. I don’t know if the school memory is real, but I suppose it could be. I’d have to check with my brothers and see if either of them remembers.

Someone else lives in the home we were in then, and in the home on Sheppard. It is no longer “mine” though I still dream of purchasing it and moving in someday. I have no idea what renovations or upgrades have been made since then, but in the ever present realm of memory, it still looks as it did. I would probably be disappointed if they had cut down any trees or uprooted any bushes, or changed a room or something, so it may be best if that house stays in memory. I don’t know.

My sister and I grew up in that home on Sheppard. For ten or so years, we lived, played, loved, fought (don’t be fooled, we fought a lot), made up, and matured (I told you I did!) in that home. Like I said, bad memories and good memories. Then my dad took us to Orlando, Florida, and then the island nation of Papua New Guinea (but that is another long story). I did most of my growing up in Norfolk, and there my sister started her life journey.

Another memory invades my recollections, of hanging out on the Gettysburg battlefield while I was in college. My parents and sister had come to visit, and we went out to the fields and forests of that old war ground to spend the day. (I think we would have been around twenty-two and sixteen?) I remember, too, longer ago, my mother taking us on field trips to Fredericksburg, Yorktown, Williamsburg, Jamestown, and many other historical places in Virginia, as it is a state littered with the memories of dead soldiers. That day in central Pennsylvania, a chill wind blew through the trees and shade, though the sun was warm as we walked from place to monument and old fortification.

Today we live over a thousand miles away from Norfolk in Texas, near Dallas, but we are fortunate to be close, both geographically and emotionally. I love my sister dearly, and now her two daughters, the eldest of which is the same age I was when I found out my sister was on her way. They are precious souls that I cannot wait to see in a few days when my time here is completed.

I wonder what the next thirty years will bring to me, and my forever little sister. What joys, sorrows, hard times, and celebrations will we face together? I obviously have no idea, though I can imagine some: birthdays, holidays, the growing up of her children, and our adulthoods spent pursing careers, hobbies, and togetherness. I can’t wait for all of it, even the darker times, because I know she will be there with me, as she has been for thirty years past, through long plane rides, foreign lands, university, sadness, and happiness. Thanks, sis, for being there for me.

Blue Ridge Bookworm

As I write, it is the quiet of pre-dawn in the mountains of Pennsylvania. The only noise, aside from the muted thunking of my keyboard, is the hum of the refrigerator. The skies are grey-blue through the window, and the budding-yet-still-naked tree limbs, outside. I now hear one faint bird, off in the distance.

I awoke this morning from a deep sleep to ponder my future. I am here in the Appalachian woods with my wife while she is on a business trip of sorts. She is a missionary, and part of that job is raising funds to continue to work, mostly from churches and the individuals within them. I am here to support her in any way I can, usually emotionally, but also to meet people important to her work and life that I haven’t met yet. Living in Texas as we do, we don’t get up this way very often.

But my own work position is no less precarious. I was laid off, as I’ve written before, from my Human Resources position, and have yet to secure another job. I have been thinking about what to do, and in which direction to go, ever since. I don’t have any direct answers, but I have a few feelings about what to do.

I graduated university with a degree in English Literature and Writing (it was a dual focus). Mostly that is an unemployable degree, as I have found. Even were I to teach, I would need either a higher degree, or a certificate to go with it. On it’s own, it isn’t quite useful to be an English Major. Oh it awarded me several useful skills, such as the ability to write coherently and well, how to research and compile information, and how to be organized in the presentation of that research. But directly hirable? Not as much.

But lately a worm has been burrowing into my brain, a bookworm, if you’ll allow the conceit. This worm I cannot dig out without causing harm to my cerebral grey and white brain cells. This worm says to stop looking for a job and pursue the one I have: writing. I have many pent-up words just waiting to spill out, and this worm seems intent on excavating them and letting them out into the world.

But this new thought terrifies me. My wife and I are dependent already on the generosity of others. My employment was shoring that up; supplementing her support. Without my income, how will we survive? The bills still want to be paid, especially the mortgage, and the grocer, and those that hold the title to my car, among others no less important. So what am I do? Can I cease looking for outside employment and sit down at my desk to write full time, with no guarantee of publication or income? How could I ask my wife to shoulder that burden? I have already been working part time, and had no left over mental energy for writing, so I doubt I could do both.

But still the worm burrows, ever deeper, ever more entwined within the tendrils of my cerebral cellular network. I don’t know what do to, and I certainly don’t have an answer at this time. Only questions, desires, and a thought that won’t perish.

What I will do, for now, is branch off of this blog a new one in which to collect the beginnings of some of these thoughts. I’ve recently been reading Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott, a book on writing and life. I read parts of it in university, and it is partially responsible for planting the worm in my brain (along with a conversation with one of my wife’s supporters). Anne strongly suggests a daily writing habit, terrible first drafts, and small windows through which to peer at the world. This second blog will be all those things. I hope. I don’t know. So much about this is unknown, and that, too, is frightening.

One thought I cannot stop is that this job loss is an opportunity to try something new, something different, and put everything I have into it. I don’t know if it will work, I am no prognosticator, but it is exciting to contemplate. So here’s a call: if you want to support my wife, send me an email and we can talk, but beyond that, if you want to support my efforts, be on the lookout for a new blog announcement coming soon, where you can read my terrible first drafts of thoughts and give me feedback.

For now, I have a few more days in Pennsylvania before heading back to Texas in which to deal with this little bookworm burrowed deep in my brain.

Forever Young

I don’t want to wake up in metal capsule, in a cold, dark warehouse fifty years outside my time, only to suddenly age and become an old man. While that’s the basic plot of the 90’s film Forever Young, I wish for a different kind of perpetual youth: the kind that never grows up.

I am starting my thirty-sixth journey around the sun, hosted by the earth (my deepest gratitude, you are a wonderful home!), and as I begin this newest trip, my social media is filling up with good wishes. However, I wanted to express some wishes for myself. The first and foremost is to never grow up.

Life can make me older, and experience can make more more mature, but I never wish to lose the joy and mirth that comes with being a kid. I see my youngest nieces, Rae and Cassia, and the vigor with which Cassia in particular attacks life. Rae does as well, but with less tenacity it seems. She is somewhat more reserved about things, but Cassia can’t spell reserved (or, well, anything, she is only 3). My point is, I want to be more like them going forward.

I still play with action figures; I am reminded how I used to stage endless battles with my GI Joes with my childhood friend Luke. Nowadays it is more customizing and photography, but I yet like to collect and display my figures. I just finished painting an action figure last night, and can’t wait to reassemble its disparate parts and see what the entire paint job looks like all together. I also am into building dioramas in which to pose the figures, and have much fun with that.

I am not into LEGO as much anymore, a surprising turn of events if one considered my later childhood and teenage years, in which the building blocks were ubiquitous for me. But I still enjoy constructing the odd set, and have a few I don’t wish to part with, that I enjoy seeing displayed in my bedroom.

Every time I am in Walmart, or Target, I inevitably head for the toy isle, looking over the Hot Wheels, Hasbro, and LEGO. I don’t often buy anything, expect for the drain cleaner or toilet paper or whatnot that I am actually there for, but I wish and dream and covet just as I did when I was a child. I never want to lose that excitement for the endless possibilities in play.

I want play and playthings to be around me the rest of my life. I want to be a fun and good uncle to my nieces and nephews. I want to always be odd and rambunctious and unpredictable in the delight I bring with me for the world and life. Even as a tottering, old man, I want a twinkle in my eye and a smile on my lips, and laughter in my mouth. If I ever become crotchety and misanthropic, something will have gone terribly wrong inside. I hope to never walk that path.

Beyond that, I want to be wise and understanding. I want to be able to judge things rightly, and to be fair and even in my dealings with other people. I would like to be full of love, not just for the kids around me and my family, but to all I meet, those like and un-like myself. The world is full of interesting and unique and different individuals and I would hope I have the capacity to love them all. Some, I know, are intent on being unloveable and hateful, but even then I would wish to bear no malice towards them, only hope for their healing and a better life.

I work as much as I can on acquiring these goals, and renew myself to them once more as I turn thirty-six, a still young age at that. I do the math, and if the world is kind, I will have more time than has already passed to yet be alive, and I welcome every second and year. I have come a long ways from the kid playing in the grass with action figures, or on the living room rug with LEGO, or on the sandlot with a baseball, and I think of all the growth I have achieved in that time. I hope I can make as much progress in another thirty-six years.

So here’s to me, and my many happy returns, and to remaining forever young, yet perpetually wise and full of love. I truly wish that to be said of me all my days on this planet, and after I am mouldering in my grave. For now, the sun is shining, it is a bright and glorious start to March the 12th, and I can’t wait to celebrate with my family, and my littlest nieces. Rock on!