Thursday, February 28, 2013

In the Shadows

When we pulled into the parking lot, I was disappointed to see that there were three other cars there. I’m not sure why I wanted it to be empty. This kind of experience seemed to want for aloneness.



I pulled into the spot slowly, if only to delay the inevitable by a few seconds. Neither of us said a word.



I parked beside a gray Toyota Camry with a “Coexist” bumper sticker in the back window.



I shifted into park, let my foot off the brake pedal, and breathed deeply.



I turned to Megan.



“Are you sure you want me to stay here?”



“I’m sure. I want to do this alone.” There was a single tear streaming down her pale cheek.



“Okay. I’ll be here. If you need me...”



“Thanks.” She, too, took a deep breath, opened the car door, and got out. She slammed the door shut, and, without looking back, walked toward the entrance. There was a certain determination in her step, but I noticed that she was rolling her hand into a fist, then relaxing it again, over and over.



She struggled a bit to open the heavy, black-framed doors. Then she disappeared behind them.



I looked around the parking lot. There was the Camry next to us, probably twenty years old, a new Ford Focus, and a purple Nissan Pathfinder with ‘baby on board’ signs hanging in the window.



The pavement looked freshly lain and was a stark black, but, oddly, the white parking lines were faded, and so, too, were the yellow parking blocks.



My eyes moved to the building: old, unassuming brick divided perfectly in half by the black doors. There was a sign above them which simply read “Faberman Clinic” in sterile lettering. In fact, everything looked sterile: the building, the pavement. Perhaps it was only the greyness of the day: the skies were blanketed by thin, wispy clouds, and I hadn’t seen the sun all morning. It was cold, too. Thirty degrees, maybe.



Still, I couldn’t shake the sterility of it all. Cold, messy, chaotic, even- but completely free of color.



I turned the radio on, but after a few minutes, I realized I wasn’t listening to it, so I turned it off again, noticing the completeness of the silence. My thoughts inevitably turned to Megan.



We were doing the right thing. We had to be. Decisions like this couldn’t be regretted. This was the kind of thing that could leave a scar for the rest of your life. You have to be strong, to not let it sway you. If the regret ever took over, it would infect everything. I wouldn’t let that happen. Not to me. Certainly not to Megan.



An eternity later, the doors swung open. Megan stepped outside and tightened her scarf, a gift from her mother on her twenty-first birthday last year.



She lit a cigarette, which surprised me. She didn’t smoke. Her dark hair hung loosely over her the right side of her face, and I could only see her left eye, which gazed into the distance. She stood tall, but her neck hung low. I got out of the car and walked to her. She didn’t look at me until I took her by the hand and walked her back to the car in silence.



I started the engine, but didn’t move.



“Are you okay?”



“Yeah. I’m okay.”



“Okay.” I had prepared some comforting words, which didn’t come.



“Are you hungry? We could get some lunch.”



“No.”



“We could go see a movie. The new Meryl Streep is playing.”



“No.”



“What about a walk? We could just go to the park and walk around the lake.”



“I don’t want to do anything. Just take me home.”



“Megan, I can’t imagine how hard this is, but you can’t just do nothing. Help me take your mind off of it.”



“I don’t want you to take my mind off of it. I want to think about it. I want to dwell on it for awhile.”



“What good will that do? It’s just going to make you miserable. I won’t let you lose yourself to this.”



“I will not run away from it.” She turned to look at me for the first time since we left the apartment.



“Adam, I just aborted a baby. Our baby. I have to let that sink in.”



“Why? Why do you have to let it sink in? You’re just going to get depressed. Why wouldn’t you want to overcome it? To focus on the positive things?”



“Because focusing on the positive things won’t make it go away. It will still be there. This thing that I’ve done is already a part of me. It’s already left its scar. I know what you’re thinking, Adam, and I won’t let this define me. It hurts... it hurts so god damn much... but I won’t let this define me. I have to understand it, because it’s a part of me now. If I run away from it, it will catch up to me, and when it does, it will wrap itself around me and suffocate me. If I let it stay, I can come to terms with it. I can let it walk by my side without ever letting it get in front of me.”

In a recent piece for BigThink, author Derek Beres sheds some light on the concept of loneliness.



He begins by giving loneliness some context: it is one of the core truths of human existence; so much so, in fact, that it is the primary “evil” which most religions attempt to combat with visions of community, togetherness, even an afterlife.



There is a fundamental problem with that approach, however:




Loss and death are integral parts of life; you can mask and decorate them, but you cannot make them disappear.




Because loneliness is so central to the human experience, we can never make it disappear. By building these alternate realities, as Derek says, we only mask the issue, adding layer upon layer of comfortable fiction, until the loneliness is hidden from view by a swirling vortex of fantasy.



Beres goes onto recollect the affirmations offered by friends after his divorce. He was in pain, he was lonely, and those around him attempted to apply their own band-aid to his pain. Of course, they did little to comfort him.



Some friends, though, didn’t attempt to “sugarcoat” the problem. Instead, they offered some sage advice: don’t run from loneliness- run into it.



They turned him onto Pema Chodron, a Tibetan Buddhist nun, who had this to say:




Understanding that loss and loneliness are the underlying banes that humans suffer from reminds us to be compassionate in all of our dealings.




Here, I think, is the key concept: understanding. This is not knowledge, nor insight, but wisdom itself. To understand those things which are comfortable, or pleasurable, is admirable. To understand those things which we run from is beautiful.




Contentment means not escaping from your issues, rather acknowledging them as part of a process that, like all else, will one day be gone.




This is such an illuminating statement: to acknowledge the transience of all things is to appreciate them more fully. Your happiness, your sorrow, your job, your mother, your pain, your lover, your self: it is all a speck of dust, waiting merely for the next wind to carry it away.




As Chödrön writes, ‘Loneliness is not a problem. Loneliness is nothing to be solved.’ While she already brought up cultivating less desire, this step simply means recognizing when you are engaged in an activity that is masking your loneliness, and to stop engaging in it.




I’m conflating loneliness with pain here (but, to my mind, a Venn Diagram of the two would overlap to an alarming degree): when I think of the things in my life that have caused pain (or loneliness), I am struck by the fact that there was also so much joy mixed in. My professional triumphs came with a degree of pain: in my striving, I’ve failed and succeeded. Without the one, the other would not exist. Those times that I have loved, the same rings true. Love brings pain and joy, sometimes in equal measure. My daughter is perhaps the most perfect example: I have never known a more perfect love, and yet to see her suffer is the greatest pain man has ever known.



Pain, then, and loneliness are inseparable from joy. Run from one, and you run from the other. (Let us take care not to mistake pleasure for joy.) The only way to live authentically is to run towards loneliness, to embrace it, to accept it for what it is: the shadow in which our reality hides.

Thursday, February 21, 2013

Two Mornings

Scenario One:



Each morning, I step onto the patio, and before the world opens its eyes, I listen to it sleep. I know instantly what type of sleep it is by the strength of the wind. It is the sound of the world breathing.



I step onto the ledge and I breathe with it. Some mornings, it is calm and gentle: a peaceful slumber. Others, it is swift and ferocious: a turbulent sleep.



The birds are awake, but they don’t notice me- or, if they do, they pay no mind. What a wonderful feeling, to roam freely amidst the dreams of an entire world, undetected, unseen.



Someone else is here. I hear his forceful footsteps before I see him. He is hunched, but just a bit, and his Wolverine boots land with a thud on each step.



He comes into view slowly. His mouth is curled into a scowl, which seems to lengthen his already long face. He is clean-shaven, and his brown hair is trimmed neatly except where it covers the top half of his ears. He’s wearing simple blue jeans and a blue argyle sweater. He looks uncomfortable in the sweater.



He still doesn’t see me. By the time I reach the end of the driveway, he’s past me.



“What is your most prized possession?” I call.



He jerks his head around, looking for the voice. Finally, his eyes land on me.



“What?”



“What is your most prized possession?” I repeat.



He looks behind him, then turns back towards me. He doesn’t speak for four, maybe five seconds.



“What the fuck kinda question is that?”



“Mine is an old baseball. Got a Cleveland Indians logo on it. I took it to every Indians game my grandfather took me to. One day, Bob Feller was there signing autographs. He was my favorite baseball player, even though he pitched forty years before I was born. Wanted to be just like him when I was a kid. I took my ball up to him after the game- had to stand in line for almost an hour. He signed it, and afterwards me and Grandpa went to our favorite hot dog joint. I showed everyone that ball, holding it like it was the Hortensia Diamond. Best day of my life, I think.”



The man stood silent for a few more seconds before he started scratching his head.



“Do I know you? Why the hell are we having this conversation?”



“When I get a bit pissed off, I think about that baseball. It calms me down. Works every time, in fact.”



The man nodded a small smile of recognition, then extended his hand.



“Name’s Ted,” he said.



I shook his hand. “Tom.”



“Car won’t start,” he said. “I’m late for work already, and my wife was giving me hell about it. Said I should just take a day off and stay home like it’s a sign from God. I can’t afford to, ya know? In fact, I was hoping to get some overtime this week.”



I smiled.



“I was just about to make a cup of coffee. I make it good and strong. You seem like you could use a cup.”



He looked behind me and down the street.



“Yeah. Yeah, I sure as hell could use a good cup of coffee,” he said.



“Follow me.”






Scenario Two:



Each morning, I step onto the patio, and before the world opens its eyes, I listen to it sleep. I know instantly what type of sleep it is, by the strength of the wind. It is the sound of the world breathing.



I step onto the ledge and I breathe with it. Some mornings, it is calm and gentle: a peaceful slumber. Others, it is swift and ferocious: a turbulent sleep.



The birds are awake, but they don’t notice me- or, if they do, they pay no mind. What a wonderful feeling, to roam freely amidst the dreams of an entire world, undetected, unseen.



I take a deep breath before returning inside. I start a pot of coffee, then pull out my phone while it’s brewing. Three mentions. Four retweets. Two likes.

Thursday, February 14, 2013

A (Second) Open Letter to My Daughter

I was eleven when we met at Lisa Sheena’s birthday party. I was standing in the hallway, looking for the bathroom. I’d had four cups of punch, and it wouldn’t wait. Lisa’s mother had told me that the bathroom was the third door on the left, but it wasn’t. I wasn’t sure which door it was, and didn’t feel quite right about barging through every door, so I stood there, paralyzed, desperately hoping that someone or something would come along and show me the way before I made a fool of myself. I don’t know how long I stood there. One minute, five.



I remember coming around to the inevitability that I it was going to happen- I was going to piss my pants, out of sheer stupidity. I knew how ridiculous it was, and yet I could not move.



Then she came around the corner. Her amber hair was braided, but one lock strayed, falling over her face and curling just under her chin. She paused for just a moment, then smiled slightly. She walked past me, to the fourth door on the left, and opened it. I walked past her, lowering my gaze, and slammed the door in her face.



When I finished, and opened the door, she was still there. I tried to convey my gratitude without words, and as she entered the bathroom, I watched her close the door. I started back to the party, full of humiliation and relief, and examined each door as I went. The second door was a linen closet. I hadn’t factored that into the equation.






Hi, Peanut. It’s Daddy... again. I know I did this open letter thing already, but I’d like to impart some more wisdom, if you don’t mind. I’ve been collecting it, and I’ve got to get rid of some to make room for more. You don’t mind, do you?



Did you read that little story up there? It makes a very important point, and one that I want you to remember. See, you’re at the age (you’re eight as I’m writing this) where the world is starting to come into focus. It’s like you’ve had water-filled goggles on until this point, and we just took them off. You’ve seen everything, but it’s all been distorted, blurry.



Now you’re starting to question things. And you’re getting annoying answers when you ask questions; answers like “We’ll talk about it when you’re older” or “Nevermind- that’s grownup stuff.” It’s frustrating, I know. You’re exposed to so much more stuff than I was when I was a kid. I couldn’t even have conceived of YouTube at your age. As a result, you’re finding out more about the world, and some of it doesn’t make sense. Some of it seems silly, and some of it seems plain wrong. Of course you have questions.



Here’s the thing, though: you come to us grownups for answers, but the truth is we’re like that little boy in the story up there: we have no idea what we’re doing.



Sometimes we just don’t know why things are the way they are or why people behave a certain way. In fact, lately people have been taking a certain pride in their ignorance, your dad included. We’d be making Socrates proud (Socrates was a loud, ugly genius who changed the world; we’ll talk about him later), but that doesn't really help you. It just doesn’t suit us to tell you that we don’t know what we’re doing.



We can’t admit that we’re letting you grow up in a world in which virtually everything is unknown. We want to give the impression that we know what the hell we’re doing. We don’t.



See, people much smarter than Daddy have been studying other people for years, and it feels like it’s all coming to a head. So much of the research indicates that we’re not nearly as intelligent a species as we like to think we are.



There’s the Dunning-Kruger Effect, which seems to afflict the majority of the population — or so you will come to believe if you turn on a cable news channel for a bit — which tells us that a person who lacks intelligence will never know that they lack intelligence because... well, they lack the intelligence to understand that about themselves.



That’s just one cognitive bias, though- there are many others, like the ever-popular cognitive dissonance and my personal favorite, belief bias. Belief bias basically means that we only give an argument as much strength as our original belief allows us to. That means that if you argue with me, I’ll only believe your side if I already believe your side. Yeah, I know, it’s pretty ridiculous- but keep that in mind when you tell me what a safe driver you are after you ask for the car keys. I’m already not hearing you.



Then there are the recent studies that show that when we hear evidence that directly contradicts our beliefs, we not only do not change our beliefs, we actually believe those flawed beliefs more. We are a ludicrous people, we humans.



Why am I telling you all this? Well, I want you to remember it anytime you come across someone who seems to know what they’re doing. These people are all around. Start looking and you’ll see them. They’re the people who make it all look so easy. They’re on top of the world and nothing can keep them down.



Or maybe they just excel at a particular thing. Maybe you’ll be practicing the violin one day, and the person next to you is playing like an angel while your fingers are cramping up and you feel like you’re making an ass of yourself.



Maybe you have kids of your own one day, and you go your mom’s house and she makes her grandkids a pineapple upside down cake, and you’ve never been able to make it taste the way she does and why the hell is everything so hard?



Whenever this happens, Peanut, think of the little boy in the story, standing in the hall, paralyzed, about to burst and make a fool of himself just so that he doesn’t have to admit that he doesn’t know where the bathroom is.



None of us know what we’re doing. That’s the secret. We’re all making it up as we go. So don’t assume anyone knows anything- lend a hand when you think someone needs it. Ask for help when you need it.



I want you to be just like the little girl in the story. Don’t judge, just help. Grab that little boy by the hand, walk him down the hall, and open the door for him- not because he asked you, but because you know (now) that no one in this world knows what the hell they’re doing.



When you get right down to it, we’re all just little boys trying to find somewhere to pee.

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

AMAZING kitchen \ Apartment in The Netherlands by i29 Interior Architects



#

Designer Jess Tasker of Trunk Studio set out to mix a new Canadian aesthetic with the classic clean lines of all things Danish modern when creating her debut furniture line called The North Collection.



#

Update/ Refocus

This site has evolved since its inception, and of course, it must continue to do so. To be honest, I wasn’t sure what it was when I began, let alone what it would become.



I wanted a place to organize my thoughts, and this space has certain allowed me to do that. I wanted to practice my craft, and I have.



There’s been no particular rhyme or reason to the subject matter, but I think it’s time to change that. I call this space ‘Wonderisms’ because my main goal is to keep the fires of wonder burning in me and transfer that sense of wonder to you, the reader. That wonder has come in the form of personal happenings, musings on things I’ve read, and, in the last two posts, short stories.



I’d like to refocus a bit. For starters, that means separating the essays and the fiction.



When I started the site, I hadn’t written in some time. I’d been in sales for almost a decade, and I needed to find my voice. Within the essay format, I think I’ve done that. My voice, my writing still needs refined, mind you, but it’s there, I’m familiar with it, and when I write something I’m proud of, you, dear reader, have responded.



Fiction is another thing altogether. The last two posts here have been short stories which have made it obvious that I haven’t yet found my voice in that arena. Any stories I post will be a bit experimental, then, and because of that, they needed to be separate from everything else. So, there are now two separate feeds: one for essays and one for fiction. (Those links can always be found in the subscribe section and in the footer of every page.



The Kindle version of the main feed is still available, of course, but I think I’ll hold off on publishing the fiction to Kindle for awhile, at least until I’m more comfortable with that form.



Speaking of the main feed, that, too, needed rethought. I’ve exhausted many topics on these pages, and as a result it’s been more and more difficult to find subjects to write about. I needed to go back to why I started writing here in the first place: to instill wonder in myself and in others.



Nothing does that more profoundly than good writing.



I’ve always wanted to keep a reading journal, and I recently started using Evernote for just that. It’s a great way to better remember, comprehend, and understand the things that I read.



It’s also one of the things that gets me most excited about writing. The web is the ultimate tool for those of us who, simply put, like to surround themselves with people who are smarter than we are.



So, that process will be transferred to Wonderisms. Every Thursday, I’ll write about the pieces that I’ve been reading and which have amazed me.



That’s not to say that especially poignant moments in my life will go undocumented here. I’ll throw in, on occasion, a personal story which needs to be told, or a moment needs to be suspended in time so that I might revisit it later. I’ll put together the occasional open letter to my daughter.



Things will change, as they always do, but for now, this is the State of the Site (#SOTS).



Finally, this is a journey, and I have not taken it alone. You, reader, have been with me every step of the way, and I hope you will continue to be. That said, let’s put one foot in front of the other and see where it leads us.

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Read, rest and relax in perfect comfort with our plush Massaging Bed Rest.



#

Thursday, February 7, 2013