Fine, Thank You

I’m not sure how to honestly characterize my emotional and spiritual state lately. I am not, as I have in the past, experiencing something I can call “depression” or “anxiety.” I am in a pretty good mood most of the time, actually. I enjoy my working day, on average, probably more than I ever have. I take enormous pleasure from spending time with my incredible family and friends. I even manage to read a book and see a movie every once in a while. I’m productive and useful most of the time.

But just below the surface I’m a complete and total mess, in a way I can’t even really understand or explain.

It’s safe to say that I’m struggling with the idea of time and the relationship between reality and memory. I feel more and more these days a kind of disconnect between the things I experience and the way I experience them. I would call it numbness, but I don’t think that’s what it is, not exactly. I am capable of exuberance and irrationality, as quick to anger and as quick to joy as I’ve always been. But I can’t quite reconcile everything in a way that makes spiritual sense. I struggle to tie it all together, and I can’t convince myself that it’s ok if it doesn’t all tie together, or have faith that it does all tie together and I just can’t see it yet, or that everything ebbs and flows and all energy connects and all that shit. I can think it, I’ve always been able to think it, and on some rare occasions I can feel it. But not fucking lately.

I am in mourning, of course, that’s what it is. It’s been nearly five months since my father died and the shock waves are still rippling, are maybe just beginning to ripple, are maybe just gathering speed and force and forming a tsunami that will knock me down, hard. Except I think also that might have already happened, and what I’m doing now is stumbling around muttering nonsense, blinking at the sun, peeing my pants.

What I should be doing is lying on a lounge chair reading the classics and staring at the trees. Looking to Proust and Thomas Mann and Tolstoy and the way the sun peeks through the canopy of leaves in my front yard in order to find peace and perspective. I am not doing that, and the obvious reason is that I don’t have the time, which is of course true on a certain level. I’m extremely fucking busy, and I love my family and I want to be useful and available. But I am sitting here drinking coffee and typing on a Saturday afternoon instead of reading Virgil or contemplating nature. I can barely summon the energy to even do this, though, as evidenced by the increasing infrequency of these blog posts. I’m tired, all the time. And I’m tired of talking about how tired I am. And I am shoveling food and alcohol into my body as if I were the defending champion in a perpetual consumption contest, with a hungry young challenger nipping at my heels. Feeding the fucking beast, with wild abandon. That is how I’m mourning, really, through desperate gluttony. I go to work and remain productive, I am emotionally available to my friends and my family, I don’t break down crying when I hear certain songs or see certain scenes from certain movies. But I absolutely *numb* myself with food and drink at every available opportunity. And the opportunities are always available. This is America, ain’t it?

It is a kind of numbness I’m experiencing, I guess, there’s really no other word for it. Is turning into a glassy-eyed but efficient emotional cripple who is eating himself into oblivion better than pulling the covers over my head and not getting out of bed for six months? Better than rending my garments and howling at the moon? Better than shooting heroin and crashing my car into a Caltrans sign at 4:00 in the morning? Who the fuck knows?

Because the truth is, well…the truth is inescapably earth-shattering. I am, on a certain level, immune to even my own consolations, in ways I don’t even understand. I don’t think I can even let myself truly process my own reaction to my father’s death, not yet, because I don’t have the emotional and spiritual strength to confront the implications of that reaction. So in the meantime I’m broken, and the trick is learning to live that way until I can gather the strength to face it. I need crutches, and I know there are much better ones available to me than the ones I’m leaning on now. As Bob Dylan said—“You can go to the church of your choice, or you can go to Brooklyn State Hospital. You’ll find God at the church of your choice, you’ll find Woody Guthrie at Brooklyn State Hospital. You’ll find them both at the Grand Canyon, sundown.”

Maybe I need to get myself to the Grand Fucking Canyon. Breathe in some healthy air, see the vastness of the universe in front of me. Or maybe I should start with just taking a walk, or putting my feet in the ocean, or writing a poem. Or maybe this is the start, filling up this blank page. I guess time will tell. But I’m not giving up. I’m not giving in. I know I have at least a fraction of the strength my father had somewhere deep down inside me, at least enough to face each day as it comes. He taught me that much.

Opening Day

When I was in elementary school, maybe 8 0r 9 years old, my dad kept me home from school one day and didn't tell me why. We woke up, went out to breakfast, then drove down to San Diego in his Chevy pick-up. We ended up in Mission Valley around noon, in front of one of those old-fashioned one-screen movie theatres that long ago were torn down to make way for Nordstrom's Rack or The Calvary Chapel, to see the very first showing of Rocky III, on opening day. Let me repeat that, in caps: MY DAD KEPT ME HOME FROM SCHOOL TO TAKE ME TO AN OPENING DAY MATINEE OF ROCKY III. That was my dad.

When I was in sixth grade and my best friend Ben Knickerson kicked me in the balls and the whole world, suddenly and without warning, looked upside-down, my dad picked me up from school and took me to see the Padres play the Astros. I fell asleep with my head on his shoulder somewhere in Poway on the 15 North, the salt of peanuts on my lips and the cadence of Jerry Coleman's voice on the radio lulling me to sleep like Frere Jacques. That was my dad.

I saw the Lawrence Welk production of "Camelot" when I was 11, after listening to the 8-track original cast recording for over a week in my dad's truck. I could handle a weedeater like nobody's business by fifth grade. I can still name the entire roster--not just the *starting roster*--of the 1984 San Diego Padres, without pausing for a breath. I know that Jameson's is better than Bushmill's, that5 Card Stud is a man's game, that a dog will always love you no matter what, that Nazi movies, Spy movies and Mafia movies are always better than Westerns, Romantic Comedies, or Serious Epics, that breakfast is the best meal of the day, and that the best way out is always through. That was my dad.

As an adult, when my father asked me a question, all he ever really wanted to know was: Is my son happy? I wish I had always said Yes. Because I realize now that was always actually the answer.

I miss my dad so fucking much.
I miss my dad.

Barely Coherent Thoughts That Seem Loosely Connected in My Own Head but Seem Slightly Insane When Written Down

I've got a song stuck in my fat head, and it goes a little something like this (hit it!):

"Nonsense prevails, modesty fails
Grace and virtue turn into stupidity
While the calendar fades almost all barricades to a pale compromise
And our leaders have feasts on the backsides of beasts
They still think they're the gods of antiquity
If something you missed didn't even exist
It was just an ideal -- is it such a surprise?"

-Elvis Costello, "All This Useless Beauty"

So how about that then? If something you missed didn't even exist, it was just an ideal, is that such a surprise? No, Mr. MacManus. Not it is not.

And is that a selfish, narrow thought? Is it hubris? Is it missing the forest for the trees? Or is it just an observation, a feeling, a current passing through like any other, captured, articulated and then contextualized? Is it beautiful, even, in it's way, the spiritual brother to the notion that the world only ever exists in the moment you're living in? Is it sad and joyful, cynical and optimistic, ugly and beautiful all at the same time? Yes. No. All of the above.

Art has to hurt, I think. And so does love, of course. Love hurts in order to soothe, when it's real. Art soothes too, but sometimes it soothes just by hurting. Just by feeling it, sharing it, calling it what it is, giving it back to us.

And so today, like every other day, I get to choose what I say. But do I get to choose what I see? Somebody's choosing, I believe that much, and I'd like to think it's me. But if that's true, then I've got some explaining to do. (And at this time, I seem to be employing a form of internal rhyme. Inconsistently, as you can see, but that explains a lot about me.)

Another lyric stuck in my head today: "I've got debts no honest man could pay." The Boss that one, from the one Springsteen album that has found it's way into my personal cannon, the spare and haunting "Nebraska," the soundtrack of my morning commute today, which says a thing or two about my morning disposition, in case anyone is keeping track, which for the record I sure as sure shit hope nobody is.

I'm not the Knight of Atlantic City and trouble ain't bussing in from out of state, but I kind of feel like I've got debts no honest man could pay. In a good way, I guess. What I have been given is far more than what I am owed, I am sure of that. And it scares me.

Fuck it, turn it up.

The Destination

I am in Barcelona for a week for work, missing Valentine's Day with my wife, an ocean away from my ailing father, losing a four-day weekend with my children. And, of course, soaking in an incredible city for the first time.

I have never been one of those people who says about themselves "I love to travel!" I do not love to travel. I love to see new places, experience new cultures, drink new beer, eat new food, make new friends, sleep in new beds. Those things are true. But the "traveling" part, the getting there, the journey itself....not so much. The take-offs, the landings, the bumps in the road, the fools one must suffer along the way, the small bathrooms in strange airports, the lack of immediate access to caffeine at all times, the constant anxiety and paranoia about your imminent death at the hands of fate, beyond your control (is that last one just me?)....these things do not sit well with my admittedly turbulent day-to-day disposition. On a spiritual level I subscribe to the notion that "it's the journey, not the destination" that matters. Literally, I think that's bullshit. It is most certainly the destination that matters. I've taken trips to Barstow and I've taken trips to Hawaii. And Hawaii is better.

As destinations go, it turns out, Barcelona is also pretty hard to beat. What a beautiful city this is! It has about it an air of relaxed, coastal charm combined with the thriving energy and old-world depth of a real, world-class city. And the food! Que buena! Prosciutto, chorizo, queso, croquetes, sangria, mariscos...I could eat Spanish food for the rest of my life, or at least until my arteries clog and cry out in rebellion. Which would probably happen in about a month, given my starting point.

So the city part is great, and the work part is fine--old hat at this point. These tradeshows are all the same, and once you're in the confines of the convention center itself it doesn't matter where in the world you are or *who* in the world you *think* you are, because the drill is still the drill, the faces are all blending together, the sportscoats and white shirts with no ties and frantic bluetooth dealmaking in the hot dog line...it doesn't matter if it's Las Vegas, Berlin or Denver--you have reclaimed your place in the International Society of Douchebags, and business must be done.

So I will do my best to enjoy the rest of my time here, to give in to the city's charms, and to endure the journey home and fall back into the warm comfort of my beautiful family, shining like a beacon at the end of the road. The journey is even more bearable when the destination is Home.

Real Life

"As I get older, I get smaller. I see other parts of the world I didn't see before. Other points of view. I see outside myself more. "
--Neil Young

I have been uncharacteristically disinclined to engage in excessive navel-gazing lately, for a variety of reasons, which means, among other things, that I haven't found time to post on this here blog even one time in twenty-aught-ten. I haven't found time to do much in the way of proactive creativity lately, in point of fact. Instead it feels like my task right now is to take it all as it comes, try to assess the impact of the objects hurtling toward me, brace accordingly, and then rest up and repeat the cycle all over again. Real life, in other words. And I'm not complaining (I seem to find the need to write that phrase a lot for some reason). I'm happy for the privilege to live my life, I know it's a good life, and I am grateful for my blessings.

One of my challenges when it comes to real life is is finding a way to be "realistic", which is not a quality I generally admire or aspire to but one which I believe is necessary, increasingly, as I get older and strive to be useful to those I care about. Realism, for me, seems to quickly devolve into cynicism, which quickly devolves into defeatism, which quickly devolves into bitterness. And then I'm just another asshole with a chip on my shoulder, growling and grumbling and patting myself on the back because I'm so much smarter than everyone else.

And that's not the guy I want to be. It's not the guy I am, at heart. I'm an optimist by nature, truth be told, but an optimist with a temperamental aversion to cheerfulness, a highly volatile temper, full blown anxiety disorder and more than a touch of depressive tendencies. To quote the de facto poet laureate of my native land--"Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes."

So I am large, as anyone who's met me would attest, but like Neil Young (a poet laureate in his own right), I'm also getting smaller these days, and not because my diet is working (though it kind of is, in fits and starts, but that's a story for another day). The world outside imposes itself, in all it's infinite complexity, and if you listen closely enough you'll hear a cacophony of suffering, desperation, joy, love, terror and beauty distilled into the rhythm of a hospital breathing machine or the splat of a raindrop at any given moment, and you will feel very, very small.

One of the accompanying feelings smallness can inspire is something akin to powerlessness, which can be another slippery slope down the road to bitterness. In my experience, nothing creates a sense of powerlessness more than watching someone you love suffer as you sit by and do nothing more than bear witness or help pass the time. I have spent a fair amount of time as a bedside visitor lately and it ain't any better than I remembered it. My 85 year old father has been in the hospital for over a week, battling what appears to be pneumonia through some touch-and-go moments. He is one tough motherfucker and is now well on the way to recovery, an act he's perfected through a lifetime of slings and arrows, but this one clearly hit him particularly hard. And looking it at now from what is hopefully the other side of the struggle (the best way out is through) I feel smaller than ever, but with a wider perspective and a better and truer compass. I even feel a tiny bit of his reflected strength underneath my layers of blubber. I am cut from from some hard stuff, so bring it on, real life. You can't keep a good man down.