moving.

as of next week, i will be living downtown in a loft by myself. it's been a long time coming, something i have wanted to do since i was a kid. live in the city, big ceilings, concrete and brick, old floors.

needless to say the past three or four years have been... life changing, life making, life everything. But this is not about me and my triumphs and a "pat your back" thing, it's more of to tell everyone that if you set your mind to something and you want it, then maybe you will get it. It takes hard work and baby steps and the patience to know that you have to bide your time. Not that I've "made it" or anything. Yet.

Keep pushing, keep breathing, keep searching, keep fighting. If you want it, you will get it. Be stubborn til every door closes, then try to find another way in. If i can do it, my meager and black hearted self, then so can you.

hope

I am not one who holds theological validity to every movie ever made, though I do believe there are small truths in every piece of art, secular or not. I recently made a tough decision, one that was not easy to make and hard to stand by, but a friend told me that's what men do. I suppose so. I miss talking to you. I want to. But I watched "shawshank redemption" - and I know it's a quoted movie- but there are some great lines about good things in there. And so this is just going to be a note to you, with lines from that movie letting me talk to you, even though I can't. I hope that you are the one. I hope that you find your way back to me. I hope that you respond. I hope.

So here are my quotes for you:

Andy: That there are places in the world that aren't made out of stone. That there's... there's somethin' inside that they can't get to; that they can't touch. It's yours.

Red: What are you talkin' about?

Andy: Hope.

"I have to remind myself that some birds aren't meant to be caged. Their feathers are just too bright and when they fly away, the part of you that knows it was a sin to lock them up does rejoice, but still, the place you live in is that much more drab and empty that they're gone. I guess I just miss my friend."

"I find I'm so excited, I can barely sit still or hold a thought in my head. I think it is the excitement only a free man can feel, a free man at the start of a long journey whose conclusion is uncertain. I hope I can make it across the border. I hope to see my friend, and shake his hand. I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams. I hope."

"Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies. I will be hoping that this letter finds you, and finds you well."

armada

When I was a kid, I used to have these books. I'd get them from the school library, don't know how or why they had them, tucked away underneath biographies for third graders (who has two thumbs and as a 9 year old reads jfk and winston churchill biographies? this guy!). Most of them were geared as GI Joe books, or books with adventures in them, ie Hardy Boys or Sherlock Holmes, and they were short, very simple books. And they let you decide the fate of the next part of the book. You'd have a series of next steps and then jump to that next section of the book. And so on and so forth and on and on until the end of the book. It was amazing how easy it seemed, how those futures were told so easily and you could literally be in charge of the fate of what happened next. That's empowering for a 9 year old, hell it's empowering for a 28 year old.

Sometimes I wish life was like those little books, know the next steps based on the current action. That we could flip a few pages ahead and cheat, know what the next 5 years brings us, steps closer to something we don't know about yet. Finding the person to spend the rest of your life with, or maybe you have already found them, maybe there are journeys within journeys. Places we have to go to, places that we haven't been before, and that is okay. Those books always felt so magical, that with a few flips back to a page I could rewrite history, or at least the history I was holding in my hands.

Someday, in the future, I will be in a large field, and there will be a wind in my face, and it will travel down and around the contours of my face, and I'll squint from the breeze, tears forming near the edges of my eyes, being blown back. They will fall to the left, because I'll be happy. and you will be there. and so will You. There is a tree behind us, we can hear the wind shift its branches, leaves rubbing together making the noise of a broom sweeping. Your hair will be in your face, I'll wipe it back with my hand, hold your chin, and you'll:

(tell me what's next)

like sugar pouring into tea

There are soft sounds in this place we exist in. Like fish moving through water in a fishbowl, or fabric of strangers gently touching one another, or the quiet kiss of lovers in the dark. Small things we miss when busy doing the rest of our life. Or we make a resolution and vow to stand firm, to not change course, to stop this or that, to get our old bodies back, or get a new job. Doesn't matter if its New Years or a new day, we like to set goals, to see ourselves as more than beggars by the end of the day, yet when that time comes and our heads hit the pillow- another soft sound- we deem our attempts all failures.

But to try is something. To lean forward against the current, to fight the waves as they crash on your chest, to resist is something. Means something. And those lies we fight in our heads, the ones that tell us how awful we are, they can go to hell. We have to have the discipline to do what we said, but also the grace to forgive ourselves when we feel as though we failed. What good is grace or forgiveness if it's not practiced on ourselves. Now I suppose I should counter my argument with the introduction or rather the discipline within the idea of grace. That while all things are forgiven, they are all not all encouraged. Why want to lose weight but eat nothing but fast food? or want to say "no" but can't find the courage to do it? When we fail at those daily goals and we see that we did, we can either get fiery mad or we can get grit our teeth and say "tomorrow is another day".

There is no point in the incessant battering of our own ego. We are our biggest critics by far. I know I have a list of what's wrong with Sean that I look at. But the truth is, the the good outweighs the bad, and always will. So no matter how fat or pale or whatever I think I am, there are other things that make those uniquenesses rather small and just silly. And I want you to know, too, that we all can forgive ourselves, but lets fight. Let's do what we say we will do. Let's wake up tomorrow and find our goals and achieve them and live everyday like it's a continual spiral staircase, and improvement and progression is the only answer. I know I don't want to be who I was when I was 24, and no one else should either. But those are only parts, not the whole, just a sentence in a story, while the rest of the novel writes itself.

Let the pan and the paper decide what's next. And that's another one of the softest sounds.

kindling

For those of us who do not know much about firemaking, or firestarting, and humanity's long history and long obsession with watching flames dance, it's quite a complicated process. Not really complicated, let me correct myself. It is some sort of deep longing, deep connection we have with it. We make a campfire, and we can stare at the embers flickering, at little flames licking and kicking up into the night sky. We watch the coals glow, we hear the pop and fizz of water trapped in a log being quickly found and done away with. The black smoke rises into a dark sky, losing it as our eyes cannot fit black on to more black, stars twinkling in between plumes. Green flames, blue flames, white and yellow and red flames. We stare, we are taken back, to some far away place long ago that we did not exist in, learning of our existence and of our importance by seeing that everything burns.

Why not be utterly turned into fire? Why not just lean back, prop your feet up, feel them toasty on the fire, your soles smoking lightly from a slight singe because you are too close?

For thousands of years, we have piled wood and whatever we can find to create heat, to put our hands together and rub them, blow into them for warmth and then extend them outwardly towards a heat that seems magical. That chemical reaction is happening inches from our fingertips, the release of energy being converted into heat and flame as a mass is consumed, and ashes are left.

How to start a fire? As any man knows, there is something primal about being able to actually get a fire going, inserting twigs and kindling, rolling up paper, maybe dousing it with gasoline or kerosene. And if he fails in his adventure, there is a part of him that feels lost, that feels as though this simple task must be, has to be, completed, for it makes him or breaks him. But that really is not true, just another one of the oldest types of lies. But starting a fire is quite simple, and of course, as most things are, very profound.

One of my favorite parts of a fire is kindling, the brittle yet flammable pieces put in. It's the best way to get a blaze going quickly, and it's acutally the blood sap of a trees that makes this. A tree is drilled with holes, bled out before cut down and the sap pools to the bottom. It hardens, collected, and then sold or given away. The life of the tree is the most flammable part of it, the first to go up. I think there is a lot to be learned there, and I almost have my finger on it.

Why not be utterly changed into fire? When we are hurting, bleeding, dying from whatever wounds we take over the years, it is good to know that those open wounds can actually be turned into something that can refine us and rebuild us and remake us. And that we can take hope in the fact that something bigger and better is happening. We just have to have the patience to let that blood harden, congeal, scar up and over, and watch as we start a fire. And we watch the world burn and as the flames rise and the smoke covers the sky, we can lean back and prop our feet, feel the heat began to singe our boots, and smile.

Give us the patience to become kindling.

The Greatest Lie Ever Told

(In memory of Kenny and all his douchebaggery *single tear)

"dudes you'll never believe what happened to me. OMG I'm so sorry I'm late. So yesterday I'm driving in my roadster and the top is down and as I go under a bridge a guy that was trying to commit suicide jumped off the bridge, landed in my car and pulled a gun on me. He began demanding I drive him North, but just then my tires blows out. He told me to keep driving, even on the flat tire. In fact, he leaned over the side and shoe the other three tires out just out of spite. There I was driving on rims... heading north... farther and farther from the chapel. The rims on the pavement creates sparks and we hit loose oil from a spill. All four lanes of traffic go up in flames and we are spinning out of control with no wheels and fire all around us. Just then the circus comes into town. And we walked to said town? And he stole the tiny clown car and said I must accompany him on his trip until he no longer needs me. I knew too much now. He made me swear a blood oath and I said, 'Hey man, I gotta wedding in like 2 hours!' And he said, 'This. Is. A. Blood. Oath.' So we were brothers now. And as we drove our tiny clown car into the horizon our adventure had just began. He turned to me, 'you say you have to be at a wedding? I was suppose to be the photographer at one today.. til I broke my camera. My wife said if I lost one more job there was no point in coming home tonight. That's why I jumped off the bridge.'" *Meanwhile back at the chapel the best man and the wedding photographer are MIA.*

"Now this is the point where things get fuzzy. Our clown car ran a stoplight and plowed into a snowplow. But there wasn't any snow on the ground. And we both dragged one another from the flaming clown car. Just then a helicopter lands. The entire time I kept saying, 'Must. get. to that wedding. They're relying on me'... I would have called by my phone was swallowed by the bearded lad while back at the circus during a new routine she was was trying... The helicopter lands and it's the bearded lady. She told me I had a few missed calls. So I told her thank you and she got in the helicopter and flew off. The man with the gun and I were hiding in the woods eating squirrels and other varmints to survive. We had no compass; only the gun and the spare tire. And I had to get to the wedding but..."

(and this is one of the many reasons why i like this girl.)

like a ship righting itself

Oftentimes it feels like the world likes to go topsy turvy right as the moment we think the waters are calm, here comes that dreaded and lauded seventh wave, breaking over our bows. And we do all we can do to bail water out, to keep our feet, holding on to whatever rope is nearby and hoping that rope is attached to something stronger than your stomach is feeling at that moment. Your heart is beating a million miles an hour, you can't hear your own voice screaming, everything is in a chamber, your hair is salted, your face weathered and wet, and all you can think about is not the past or the future, just the now.

How you feel in that moment, waters rising, boats sinking, waves crashing, you're losing, or you feel like you are. And in that moment, you're not thinking about your family, or everything that could be your future, or places you could hide from this mess, you are just thinking, "oh shit. i am going to die." what some men would tell you, those salty dogs. Let the ship go down, when it capsizes it will right itself after the seas calms. If you can hang on for that long, if you can persevere, if you got the willpower inside you to fight, to fight for every gulp of air, to find pockets of it in that upside down boat, then you will survive.

Sometimes we have to wait for the pendulum to swing back, to watch things right themselves, to correct. The world does it, science seems to show us that things do it, so if we can stand tall, grit our teeth, out-stubborn the world and time and everything, then we will see the sun come up from the right way, we will see the world back on solid ground. I've only literally kissed the ground twice, both times after horrific plane rides, but those rides were two of the most bloodpumpingheartattack kind of things that I have ever been a part of. Spent half the time cursing, the other half praying, mixing my Lord's name and curses strung together like popcorn decorations at Christmas.

But the ship will right itself, we can push through. Hold on tight to something stable, or at least stable enough, lean on the ones that don't have to lean on someone else, hold your breath, let the bottom become the top, and stay strong, because it's all going to turn itself right back around again.

Kiss the ground, but remember the ride.

foxholes

Piecing together parts for a new book. I am excited, because it's a departure from something I have not tried yet, yet it is exactly what I like to write about. Summed up best, I'd say it's this:

"And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love."

And that little sentence is what the world is about, even the universe. Every tree that looks dead and whose leaves have scattered the earth, whose bare limbs look like skinny hands raised to heaven, from every bicycle moving their spokes down old streets near old bricks and small vines growing in between mortar. Every. little. thing. whispers about those three that remain. And in all things there lies a reflection of something Greater, of something that can hold all three that remain and make them into One.

And every night when I lay up late, go outside, watch the moon hang there, the clouds and their cold move by I can feel it. And every morning when I smile because of someone and feel the heat of the yawning sun I know it. For such a long time there was a separation of heart and mind, of knowing these things but not getting it. Things change though, tons of small cogs and pins and wheels turning ever so slowly, locking into place until the pins fall and the safe is opened.

So, here I am warming up my mental vocal chords, stretching my fingers over a keyboard, knowing that I may never make a cent with anything I write. But then again, if one person is affected or changed or can feel something that did not feel before, then I am the richest man in the world. Just can't buy a house with that kind of wealth. Well, not here anyways.

The world is changing. It's about time.

Sight

*old poem I found in my (cough cough) Lisa Frank notebook

Sight.

I saw a man hit by a car

I saw a church catch on fire

while the pastor spun his yarn

I saw two birds fighting over a branch

the sparrow never had a chance

I saw a pattern in the fog

that reminded me of dead dogs

I saw a dinosaur in kudzu

I saw a turtle in the clouds

and heard it cry outloud

I saw children hugging

and beggars begging

and they saw me staring

I saw a soft kiss

I saw lovers holding hands

nothing flashy, nothing planned

I saw a street sign

I saw a guest list

and the point of it all I missed

I saw the day die

I saw the night begin

it made sense in the end.

the softest sand

Closed my eyes, for a moment, imagined some years back on the beach, living there, sun burning through my eyelids, water washing into sand, barefeet, jeans rolled up, sand in every nook and cranny. I hear the faint noise of children playing in water, splashing in the distant, sandcastles being made, they will fall to the tide soon enough. Walked to this spot a million times, a million years ago, flat streets, straight shot. Palm trees are making sounds like metal blinds closing on a window.

I have this notebook in my hand, and i've scribbled every thought on it. There is sand in between pages, and everywhere. I make little holes with my feet, feel the water fill them up, then the suction plant my feet to the ground. Back then it felt like the only foundation I had. Funny how we look for rocks to rest on, and sometimes all we can find is sand.

And then I go farther back, further in to a picture I have of me as a child, pale, blonde, smiling, my dad is holding me on the beach, his hair so long for the longest time I thought it was my mom. You can't see his face, he is staring at me. It's my first time at the beach, I am a baby and I look so happy. All the struggles and scars and scrapes and loves and failures and successes so far ahead of me. I was just there, existing, water running over small feet and baby toes. I wish I could remember that picture, instead of only having a copy of a third party memory.

the last memory of the beach: boat in the distance, almost slipping off the horizon, sun is burning down behind it, almost catching that boat on fire it seems. Friends around me, I walk down the beach by myself, feeling the sand shift and sigh with every step. I bend down, touch the water, it's always colder than I think it will be, but I don't mind it much anymore. The world seems colder all the time, and people talk of global warming?

Why does the beach, seeing the ocean, all those visuals just put us at awe? To think that most of the earth is water and somehow the waves are held back, somehow I am not capsized everyday. We look for miracles and signs and great and tremendous things all the time, for untouched fleeces and burning bushes, but miracles are everywhere. In the eyes of someone, their little worlds for eyes, the lines in their skin, their crows feet and furrowed eyebrows. Miracles are in the smiles of little children and in old people kissing each other's cheeks. There are signs in the waves when the tides change, not swallowing us whole and erasing us from existence.

So with my eyes closed I see the ocean and the sand, feel the softest sand between my toes, hear the water crashing, the children playing. I open my eyes to an apartment that should be warmer than it is, with a dog making puppy dog eyes at me and a tv telling me to do something that I do not want to do.

But there are miracles even here, in the calmness of a once wild animal. And I am not talking about the dog.

a year

Funny how i have not posted anything in a year, over a year. So much happens, and stories to be told, but life happens so fast, it's hard to stop and pause and write and elaborate on hours and weeks and months in a matter of sentences. Suppose that's the trick, really. Figure out the best parts, craft a story from that, and that's where heroes come from.

I suppose the last months have taught me that there are people still out there that i can find, that are worth something, that are equals. I thought it all but lost for years, for years and years, that no one would be worthy or good or what I wanted. But my heart softened like warm clay and some great Artist slowly crafts it. And it's troublesome and good and hard and painful and everything ever said.

I suppose it's the cold months when it's the hardest. The need for warmth beside you, the need to feel like someone else somewhere can touch you. But needs and wants are two different things and I refuse to settle for the needs when only wants will suffice, will only wants will fill. It's tough knowing you are and what you want, and finding it, and then having to wait. So tough, but I reckon it's that part of patience we don't get. Why not now? Why can't I feel the way I need to? How much longer must I wait? Is the art of patience in the painting of it, or in the fact that the painting might not ever get done?

We are impatient patients, really. All sick and dying in a world full of hospitals and cures that prolong the inevitable. But it's going to be okay. It's always going to be okay. If the last year has taught me anything, it's that heaven help us and that the sun might still rise tomorrow, and it will fall tonight. And to appreciate and bask in every second in between. To love for just a day, or to live for just a day, just one day, is better than a thousand lifetimes of loneliness and nothingness. And that is where I take hope in my patience, and where I find refuge in my emotions.

We take our moments in amber, our snapshots of perfect lives, the moments where all the positions are right, and we soak it in like exposed film. And I keep it, store it in a box and bring it out on rainy days when I feel like G-d is far away and he doesn't want to hear my prayers anymore.

So we wait for the pause and we wait for the answer and we wait for the dawn and we wait for the yes' and we wait for waiting's sake. And one day those things we won't have to wait on anymore. Amen and the end.