Winter Melody

One of the ways in which I am a True American is in my emotional weakness for shitty music. Don't get me wrong, I like good music better than shitty music, but I am susceptible to the charms of crappy pop songs, overwrought ballads, dad rock and various other musical vagaries that would shame any self-respecting music nerd. I've memorized way more Bob Dylan songs than Billy Joel songs...but that still means I've memorized a shit ton of Billy Joel songs, I ain't gonna front. That's the thing about music, any music. If your guard is down and you run into a melody--even if you're not really sure how it goes, but it's sad and it's sweet and you knew it complete when you wore a younger man's clothes--you're gonna feel the impact. And my guard, more often that I'd like to admit, is prone to slippage.

Sixteen years ago on brisk winter night in Orange County my uncle died. He was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer in August and he was gone by late December. I had spent much of my time in the intervening months at his side, along with others in my family, in what I can now recognize as the most intense emotional period of my life. Driving home from the hospital, on my way back to Vista to tell my mom that her brother was dead, "A Long December" by the Counting Crows came on the radio, with lyrics about "the smell of hospitals in winter" and so now that song is part of me, and that's just the way it is.

I take refuge in art and love and the simple pleasures of a Sunday morning, but I also cloak myself in a layer of emotional armor that can block out the light and I wish I could stop doing that. I wish I could lay down my weapons and study war no more. But the rawness of a December night can still cut me to the quick when I take out the trash, no matter how happy I am, no matter what joy and beauty wait just inside the doors of my house, and when that happens I get scared, so fucking scared, and I find ways to chase it off. But I want to stop fighting it. I want to feel it, to become who I am in that and every moment and in so doing persevere, bloody but unbowed, despite the absence of armor. That's what I'm after, and in that regard here's hoping that next year will better than the last.

Should We Talk About the Weather?

There's something undeniable about a burst of late spring rain. It makes me feel like a witness to something holy and eternal, the universe capping off the season of rebirth with a baptismal sprinkling of distilled life. There is so much beauty right outside the window, and it's all growing stronger and more harmonious by the minute.

But in spring begins the journey to winter, of course, and if my binge-watching of "Game of Thrones" has taught me anything, it's that winter is coming. (And then it's just rinse and repeat, for as Shelley reminds us spring is never far behind.) All that blooms and grows will wither and die, and in the blink of an eye the life-affirming shower turns into a torrential downpour. The knowledge of which should only serve to make days like this more precious and beautiful for the evolved mind that understands both that we were born to die and that death is not the end. 

And so there's my mood today, changing as fast as the clouds shift in the oblivious sky. Things outside are looking California, to borrow a phrase, but I'm feeling Minnesota. And that's alright with me, for now at least. I'm not interested in forcing myself into or out of a particular mood today. I think I'll just play it as it lays, and resist the urge to make some grand dramatic gesture borne out of what could either be hope or desperation (they can look so much alike.) That may come later, and if so I'll need to save my strength. 

So for now I'm looking out the window, listening to the birds sing and trying to shut the fuck up for awhile. It's not a bad way to spend the day, all things considered.

R.I.P Ringo Dingo Dawg.

There are worse things in the world than digging a hole to bury your dead dog in the front yard in the dark so the boys don't see his body in the morning and hitting a root or a rock or cement or the limit of your own shallow strength or Whatever with the shovel and tripping backwards, somehow, and spasmodically (I'll call it falling but empirically you would really have to say it's more accurately termed) flailing into the street and hitting your gimpy shoulder, which is gimpy because now you "swim to stay in shape", flat on the curb, as if Tony Soprano had kicked you. There are worse things. I've experienced, them, and god fucking knows (or willing) I'll experience them again.

But let's just say this wasn't the best night ever. Let's just say that.

We don't know how old he was. We got him when Robbie was about a year old I think, a little more maybe, because we had decided it was time to get a dog. Like you do. We had the house, we had the baby, we had just built a fence....so next comes the dog. Natch. Dawn wanted to be selective, to go through a service, to look at labradors and golden retrievers and such. Like you do. Me, I wanted a mutt. A mangy mangled moppy mick of a mutt. Who needed a home to go to, and a bowl to drink from, and a door that would open.

And though she may deny it, I didn't really have to make too hard of a sell once we saw him. He reminded her of Scruffy, the old family dog that patrolled the backyard of her youth, and he didn't have a harmful bone in his body. He passed the "kid test" with flying colors--you could yank and pull and pinch and poke the fuck out of him, and he was cool with it in his mangy way. So of course we got him. And of course we called him Ringo.

My work friends didn't know I had a dog and were always shocked to find out I did, because they always talked about their dogs like their dogs were kids, like you should recognize the name of their fucking dog when they use it in a conversation. I referred to myself as a 1970s style dog owner. We feed him and give him a place to sleep and clean up his shit when we get around to it and pet him when he seems to want it and he, in turn, acts like a dog. And it's cool.

And he got old quick. He got deaf, and then he got mostly blind, and then he pretty much got totally blind. And we didn't know what to do for him, after awhile, the last few years, except just make him comfortable, and give him a place to be who was, and so we did.

He seemed better lately, Dawn had just said. But he wasn't, not really. I wonder if we broke his heart, a little bit, when we got Candy this spring. A beautiful fuzzy little puppy with the best credentials that we paid a bit less than one month's mortgage to secure and had been waiting for and talking about for weeks upon weeks. We acted like we had never had a dog before. We treated her like a kid. We expected other people to recognize her name when we use it in conversation. I wonder if that fucked him up on some level.

But he did liven up the last few months, with a puppy nipping at his heels. He got a bit of a hop to his wobble. This morning when I woke up he was just standing in the hallway staring blindly into the computer room. And I wondered what he was seeing, in his mind's eye, where his journey was taking him. And I patted him on the back, or at least I'm going to choose to believe I did, and he in that moment knew I loved him.

Because I did, godammit. I did.

RIP Ringo Dingo Dawg. RImuthafuckingP.

A Narrative of the Recent History of My Thoughts Told Through Hyopthetical Internet Search Terms

harry and teh hendersons goodbye scene
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why do humans have jobs?
supreme cout decisions im supposed to know about
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bacon (image search)
highfiber foods
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training children
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mixing whiskey and lexapro
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puny inexhaustible voice

Be The Noodle

One night last week I found myself alone in a crowded, trendy "gastropub" near my office scoping out a seat at the bar within view of a big-ass television on which to watch Game 6 whilst imbibing a red ale from a microbrew that you've probably never heard of and scarfing down bold reinventions of classic American comfort food resulting in a bill big enough to feed a family of 12 at a place that served classic American comfort food, minus the bold reinvention, which I think means cilantro. Or sea salt.

That's not what happens most nights. Most nights I go home to my family and boldy reinvent whatever I do or don't feel like boldly reinventing on my own damn time. And that's the way I've come to like it, by Jimminy!! But I had an evening to kill before a softball game, so there I was. I found a seat, eventually, and watched the game and ate the sea salted delicacies and drank the Very Earnest Beer. I was sitting right next to a couple of Japanese dudes wearing waiter uniforms from what I presumed to be a Japanese dining establishment having a conversation in Japanese and drinking Bud Light and eating turkey burgers, I shit you not. About halfway through the game the first guy got up to go smoke a cigarette (as I gathered after the fact by the the smell on his clothes when he came back) and the other dude very drunkenly decided to engage me in conversation. The conversation consisted of him holding his iPhone up to my face and showing me pictures of food while loudly saying, respectively:"Japanese Noodle! Japanese Noodle!", "Japanese Steak! Japanese Steak!", and finally "Japanese Cake! Japanese Cake!"

It went on from there. A few beers in I was playing international fucking pictionary with the guy and his friend trying to tell him, Hey, I stayed in Roppongi once for three days! In good time we parted in good company, left with no fucking idea what the other party said throughout most of the conversation. Later, I thought, wait....did that guy show me all those pictures of food because I'm so fat? Because I kind of think he did. I'm Godzilla to that dude. He was taking the piss, as the British say.

But everybody plays the fool, like the man says, so fuck it. Maybe he was. Maybe he wasn't. You can choose to stay home all the time or to not stay home all the time. You can choose to just connect, like the other man says, or you can just turn it off.

Later that night I ejected myself from the softball game in the 9th inning for telling a guy to go fuck himself after coming dangerously close to a fistfight for the third time in the last few months and then got mad at my wife for not showering me with sympathy when I got home and before I fell asleep I thought: Japanese Noodle, motherfucker! Accept the noodle. Or at least the picture of the noodle. Slurp it up. No...Be the noodle. Be the fucking noodle.

So I'm going with it. I'm a Tom Noodle! I'm a Tom Noodle!

Stay tuned to see how that works out. As if you don't already know.

Mi Padre

I figured out that my dad was different somewhere around the same time I figured out that most people are kind of just assholes, really, somewhere around the time when "different" started to mean "better." And so I was never really embarrassed, not really, not where it mattered. In case you don't know my dad lost his voice to cancer of the larynx when I was 2 years old. Thereafter he had a hole in the middle of his throat through which he breathed, and he spoke with an artificial voicebox that he held up to his neck, and he sounded like a robot, and that was just how my dad sounded and it never seemed weird to me, not for years, because that was just my dad and so the fuck what? And by the time I understood what the fuck what, I was smart enough to know that what the fuck what didn't mean fuck-all for fuck's sake, so go fuck yourself, motherfucker.

I think actually that my dad taught me was how to be happy and smart and sensitive and special in a place like Vista, which means really in a place like Anywhere, which means really how to be different, how to be happy, how to be who I am. How to love the things I love and do the things I want to do and then just kind of filter out all the rest of the bullshit one piece of bullshit at a time.

And no matter how tight I hold my kids today, no matter how warm and safe and loved I feel today, no matter how much I enjoy Father's Day as a "father", I still am also and ever and always a son, and of course it breaks my fucking heart. It breaks my heart not to have my dad here, in my patio, eating steak and bratwurst and watermelon and pistachios and strawberry shortcake. No to have my dad here by my side watching Game 3 of the the NBA Finals, with my puppy in his lap fast asleep. It breaks my fucking heart and I miss him so fucking much.

Goodnight Dad. I love you.

This Man's Art and That Man's Scope

I stood inside a boat this evening that was docked to the shore and mildly rocking with the tide, and within a minute I broke out in a sweat and then didn't want to go down the stairs and then had to come back up the stairs and look out at the horizon and then suddenly had to get off the boat, right away, with the dog in my arms and everything. And as I stood on the dock, in my socks, as my wife and children waved from the deck, I thought--yep, I'm the guy on the dock, in his socks. I will always be that guy.

And in the past at points I may have felt sorry for myself for being the guy on the dock, or romaticized myself for being the guy on the dock, or been angry at myself for being the guy on the dock, or vowed then and there that I would get my shit together and figure out how to stop being the guy on the dock by the time I turned thirtywhatever. But tonight I just thought--that's cool, I'm the guy on the dock. Look at all this cool shit I can see from the dock! I think maybe I'm actually kind of done trying to be what I am not, and I understand that I am most happy when I am being who I am, or at least engaged in an activity that I think will help me understand who it truly is that I in fact am. Or maybe I'm just tired of wanting to be someone else.

We are, all of us, weak and fragile creatures, subject to the winds of circumstance and the fluctuations of time. I've chosen my constants, the things from which I will not waver. Everything else is just a change in the weather. My heart is my reason. My body is only an umbrella.

Land Where My Fathers Died

I am not patriotic. I don't believe in patriotism. There are very few things to which I pledge blind allegiance. Some of those things are represented by actual living people, some of them are represented by special books, some are even represented by a vague floating notion that nudges me ever so gently toward Grace. But none of them are represented by flags.

And yet, on a day like today, on in fact *this* day, it's all I can do to keep myself from jumping down and kissing the ground and belting out "God Bless America" (and brother I can hit the roof).

A beautiful Southern California day, with all the things I love deep inside my warm embrace, catching the wave that takes us to shore and deposits us comfortably on the cliff at sunset with the wind caressing our wet hair. A hazy back-of-the-El-Camino hug.

And I think of my father, on beach somewhere in the Pacific, beaten down and battle weary and half-exhausted with Malaria, wiping things off his helmet that wouldn't be permitted in an open casket. I think of him choosing (at an age when I was choosing between Mountain Dew and Dr. Pepper) to try to stay alive, maybe without even knowing why. Maybe just discovering then and there that he was, in fact, a fighter. Realizing this, of course, only after he had knocked that other motherfucker to the ground.

And then I think: Ok, yes. Yes. There will always be fighting and dying. There will be always be those who protect and those who are protected.

There will always be Fathers and Sons.

Is there a problem?

I have participated in what you could generously call "fistfights" on two occasions in my life. The first time I was riding my bike home from 4th grade with a friend when a bully out of central casting (I think his name was Kim, like a girl, which is probably why he was a bully, like the Johnny Cash song) growled some kind of bully growl (the details escape me) and I stepped in to object. The Boy Named Kim responded to my chivalry by tossing my bike into the middle of the street, and in an unprecedented burst of bravery I punched him, aiming I'm sure for his big fat face but instead landing a glancing blow on his...shoulder.  Yeah, his shoulder. He paused briefly, and then socked me square in the mouth. My braces cut my bottom lip wide open, creating a geyser of blood that quickly ran down my jaw and stained my Star Wars shirt, the sight of which seemed to freak Kim out (he didn't mean to kill me, after all) and sent him running back home. I retrieved my bike, wiped my mouth on Han Solo's face, and claimed victory.

The second, more recent brawl took place over two decades ago in Mrs. Miller's 7th grade reading class, when my friend Gregory Corso pushed me because I accidentally stepped on his black karate-shoe-clad feet with my clunky Reebok high-tops. I reflexively punched him in the nose and knocked him back into the pencil sharpener, giving him both a bloody nose and a nasty bump on the back of his head. I received Saturday School and a huge heaping of guilt in return, and vowed never to use those lethal weapons called fists again.

And yet for some reason I've come dangerously close to fisticuffs on two separate occasions in the last week, and I can't quite figure out why. I'm a grumpy, quick-tempered, moody fuck to be sure, but my volatility traditionally manifests itself through sarcastic quips, obscene rants, self-loathing and screaming tantrums, not physical violence. But something inside me is hankering for a fight, it seems, and I'm going to have to show some uncharacteristically strong self-control if I want to keep from knocking a bitch out, or more likely getting my own punk-ass knocked out, or stabbed or hauled to jail or whatever the hell would happen if I actually gave in to my impulses. Which I won't, I'm pretty sure, so don't worry or call me or recommend yoga or anything. That would just piss me off more, anyway,  thereby quickening my descent into barbarism. And you don't want that kind of blood on your hands.

The first near-fight was last Thursday on the trolley, of all places. I don't take the trolley, normally, so I don't know what line to catch from the train station to my office, and the only reason I wasn't walking the fairly short 10 minute walk to my office is a recent flare-up of what I have google-diagnosed as metatarsalgia, a fairly common runner's injury that is in effect a bruising of the ball of the foot and middle toes that comes from overuse or ill-fitting shoes. (I don't run unless someone is chasing me, but I do go for a rigorous walk most days at lunch). So I wanted to take the trolley, but I either got on the wrong one or missed my stop and somehow ended up at the trolley transfer station, which is twice as far as the train station from my office, in the other direction.

I was about to take my earbuds out and investigate the situation when a trolley-worker (porter? conductor? troll?) burst into the car (empty except for me) and loudly, rudely, informed me that the train was out of service and I needed to exit immediately. I got up and tried to leave but...let's just say that I tend to, as the Robert Downey Jr. character in "Tropic Thunder" put it, "go full retard" (no offense intended) in certain stressful situations. My brain just shuts down and my motor skills (admittedly limited to begin with) completely abandon me. And I just could not figure out how the fuck to open the godamn trolley door, no matter how long I stared at it. So, in desperation, I called out to to the trolley-worker seeking assistance. He was displeased, to say the least. Dude was clearly having a bad morning, and he yelled back something like "push the fucking button!!" The only button I saw was a big red one above the door, so I pushed it. It was the wrong button, turns out, as the attending alarm made clear, and this is where it starts to get interesting.

The guy came barreling out of whatever little trolley closet he was working in and loudly said "Not that fucking button!!" before shutting off the alarm and hitting the proper button, the one just to the left of the door. "How did you get on in the first place?," he said, and that's when, for some reason, I finally lost it. Lost it, completely. "I walked through an opening fucking door, that's how I got on, you fucking asshole!!!", or words to that effect. He told me to "pull the fucking headphones out of my ears and pay attention" and I got right up in his face and yelled, creatively, "FUCK YOU! You're an asshole!!!" I was ready to punch the dude, I swear to God, I was gone, and looking back I think his response is the only thing that stopped me. "So are you!!!" So are you. He didn't deny he was an asshole, he didn't question my parentage or threaten me, he just told me I was an asshole too. And he was right. And the door opened and I walked off the trolley, just in time to see three transit cops drinking coffee and eyeballing me suspiciously. And I just hobbled off on my fucked-up foot, stewing in anger, shame and aggression all the (needlessly long) way to work.

And then on Saturday, at a pool with my kids, I noticed a group of teenage boys, the kind of whitebread, date-rapey, football team, privileged fucking shitheads that nearly ruined my own high school years, chilling out in a private cabana paid for by one of their plastic cougar moms. On our way out of the pool, my two young sons and wife right me, I was carrying a load of wet towels, my whale-like flesh unmercifully exposed far more than usual, and I turned and saw one of the kids look at me, then say something to his friend, who then looked at me, and then they both burst into laughter. I've been a fat kid my whole life, and I damn well fucking know when people are laughing at me, and that was this, for sure. And I stopped, and fixed my gaze at shithead #1, and when his eye caught mine again I held the gaze and said, loudly: "Is there a problem?" And, like the little bitch he was, he said "no" and looked down quickly. And then and only then did I keep walking. I would have jumped into that cabana like the fucking Hulk, I swear to god, and pretty quickly gotten my ass kicked by the La Costa Canyon varsity offensive line no doubt, if I hadn't gotten the response I wanted.

So the question remains: what the fuck is wrong with me? I don't know, exactly, but I have a few ideas. The reason I was on the train on Thursday to begin with, the reason I didn't drive to work like usual, is because it was the second anniversary of my father's death, and my wife and mother and kids were picking me up later in the day to visit my father's grave site. So yeah, that might have something to do with my pent up rage, I suppose. Or maybe, as my wife suggested, on some level I'm too comfortable and feel the need to shake things up. Or maybe I'm just turning into a fucking idiot as I get older. I don't know. But I do know this--if you see me coming your way anytime soon, it's probably best not to piss me off. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry.

Righteous/Melancholy

May 11--

"She says the joke is on me, I say the joke is on her.
I said: Well, I have no opinion about that.
We'll just have to wait and confer."
--Paul Simon

When I was seventeen (it was a very good year), I fashioned myself a bit of a crack investigative reporter, a four-time San Diego County High School Journalism Write-off Champion, Runner-up, or Award Recipient, depending on the category. I took that responsibility seriously, unlike pretty much every other responsibility I rubbed up against at that age, and I embraced it. Through my leadership capacity on the school paper, I volunteered  to write a "candidate round-up" article about the upcoming school board election. I arranged phone interviews with all the candidates, among them a kind of proto-Sarah-Palin Fundamentalist Christian Soccer Mom who had made "family values" a cornerstone of her campaign. I prepared a list of tough but fair questions and sprung them upon her one day from the journalism room phone. Somehow, I believe at her prompting, the discussion of abortion came up. I told her my opinion, she told me hers,we finished the interview. A few days later I received a letter from the candidate, addressed to me C/O the school paper, thanking me for being a student journalist who cared about the future of my school and then reminding me that murder was a sin in the Eyes of God, and that Abortion Was Murder, and just in case I didn't fully understand that she had included a series of photos of dead fetuses to illustrate to me the consequences of LEGAL MURDER. 

That was over twenty years ago, and it still freaks me out. Soon enough I got the fuck out of Vista, and then over time Came the Fuck Back, and now I am who I am, a guy with a family and a life who has chosen to live here, to raise my family in the place I was raised. And last last night, for the first time since I was an intrepid high school Woodward and/or Bernstein looking for The Story, I found myself deep in the thick of local educational politics. And it was UGLY. 


May 16

I wrote that five days ago. I nodded off before I could finish it, then never came back to it. So it exists now as a record of my general disposition the night after the school board voted to cut all arts funding to my son's performing arts school. There was going to be more, it was going to be epic, with lots of comparisons to Dick Cheney and Sarah Palin and what have you, but I fell asleep. And my blood still boils about it but it is not what I am thinking about tonight.

Tonight I am thinking about another night, exactly two years ago, when I stood a lonely vigil on the wall. And then the night finally surrendered and soonafter so did my father, and then everything changed. If you're looking for the "Before" chronicles, you're in the wrong spot. Click the fuck back in my "Older Posts" section. Because you're smack dab in the The After Diaries.

Tonight i feel mournful. I feel old. I feel sore. I feel blessed and battered. I feel loved. I feel tired.

I feel sad.

(Wo)Man at Work, or: Thank God I'm a Country Bear!!

My wife is home. The children are alive. Cue applause. No autographs, please, I just need some "me" time. I don't want to stain your program with the tears of a clown.

And she is already, again, still--back to work. Almost 11:00 on a school night and she is sawing away, in the garage, (on one of those kinds of saws that have to be plugged in and have different kinds of blades and are really dangerous and stuff), while I struggle through a very challenging bout of Games With Friends with this guy who went to fucking Yale Law School, for fuck's sake! And beneath her safety goggles there is a gleam in her eye. If she could hear herself think over the hum of the electric saw, she would whistle whilst she worked. "I almost feel like Gepetto," she said to me tonight, which immediately qualifies as One of the Best Things She's Ever Said and she's said a lot of great shit.

And then eventually I thought, as I always do, "How exactly in what specific way does that pertain to me?" And then I thought: Who do I almost feel like? Just think something and then say it right away. And I said: "I almost feel like Bartleby!! I almost feel like Gregor Samsa!!"

And then I thought: Oh, shut the fuck up. Don't be such a douchebag. I like to get up in the morning. I like to go to work. I like to build and create and convince and cajole and coast-when-I-need-to and, when all is said and done, cross the finish line or break my back or die trying. I feel like fucking Gepetto too godamnit.We're a couple of Gepettos here, and Fuck You if you can't handle a little gay marriage all up in your shit. Wrong century, bro.

I am built for the thing which I am supposed to fit into. I am built for the thing I find and fit into. I am made to be the man I am, or the man I will be; either way I Am Becoming. And that takes work. And us Huntingtons were born with orange vests and heavy beards and arms of steel.

Life Without You, Day 7

And we call this next piece: "I Miss Mommy: A Study of the Maternal Archetype in Wood, Paper and Ink." But we'll come back to that. First, I will give you something my wife is an artist at creating, like many other things, and something I am weirdly unable to figure out to how use and instead simply mangle and make fun of and co-opt in a kind of robot-trying-to-play-human way, like many other things: a list.

Since You've Been Gone I Can Do:

1. Whatever I want.
2. Virtually nothing right, it seems, about half the time.
3. Some things kind of adequately, some of the time.
4. Some things heartbreakingly, heroically, Rocky-Balboa-Vs.-Clubber-Lang kind of INCREDIBLY WELL FOR AN UNDERDOG, pretty much all the time in my own head including the time I remembered where the hand soap refill was, a heroic act! but in reality absolutely none of the time.
5. Any kind of dance you'd like, any kind of tune you want to hear, any kind of treat you'd like to eat, anything you want me to do if you will JUST. FUCKING. LISTEN. TO. ME. To my children, I mean. I am the dancing monkey, and I've got mantits.

Since You've Been Gone I Can See:

1. Whomever I Choose
2. Messes. Everywhere. Every minute there's another godamned mess! And nobody else sees it! Nobody else sees it but me! Come on!!!!!!
3. Why so many parents fuck up so many kids because they just can't keep on a lid on their own crazy.
4. The following scene (dig, if you will, the picture, to do a paisley mash-up): 5 year old Finnegan Joseph Huntington, sitting snuggled up against his brother, cloaked in a mosaic knit blanket his Grandma Bibi made for him (special ingredient: LOVE), sniffling and wiping away tears as I stumble out of the shower first thing in the morning. "What's wrong, Finny?" "Well, two things are wrong. I can't find my gorilla, and I had him when I woke up and I had him when I walked in here!!! And, usually, when I wake up and I'm alone in bed in the morning and Mommy is awake I walk into the kitchen and she hugs me!!!" Sweet Jesus, the hug I gave that kid then. The hug of all hugs, the primal, rocking, goes-from-standing-to-sitting-and-snuggling whole body kind of hug. The kind of hug that defines what the word "hug" means in your mind. And he perked up. And I did too.

Since You've Been Gone I Can Eat My Dinner:
1. (On the couch, in the kitchen, outside, in the dining room, in my car, at Chuck. E. Cheese, but definitely not in a...) Fancy Restaraunt.
2. With the constant perfume of cat piss in the air about my head. After finally dealing with the litterbox today and then immediately changing my clothes, washing my face, washing my hands, washing my hands, washing all the towels and rugs and clothes, washing my hands; I have come to the following conclusion: the catpiss lives forever inside my nostrils. It's just a thing that happened, and it can't un-happen, ever.

And that picture, up at the top there, that. Finny was working away with blocks in the living room while I worked on the laptop, then scurrying to get paper and a pen, then getting his child scissors, then returning to the blocks. Finally he called me over to show me what he had made: "A picture of mommy. I couldn't use wood, you know, for the face, so I had to draw it on paper."

My Bathroom...Smells...Kind of...Funky...

Blunt force. That's kind of how it goes, whether you want to believe it or not. Maybe it's a timeline like this: Innocence....Fear...Anxiety...Anger...Defeat...Sorrow...BLUNT FORCE!!! Still, the last one leaves the biggest impression, you gotta admit.

I have been taught some lessons in honesty, in authenticity, in love and in loyalty this week. I have been taught those lessons by a five year old child. MY five year old child, to be exact. The fruit of my loins, as it were (...if there were some expression like that except way less creepy and oily and "ok, thanks, nice meeting you, gotta go..."than that). And the kid has got a point.

He can't do anything except tell me the truth. He loves me too much to lie to me. He has been dealt with fairly, and he will deal with others fairly in return. He will take part in their joy, he will acknowledge their sorrow, and when their eyes meet his he will tell them the truth. He is the boy this slouchy half-man wishes he could be. He tells the truth.

At various times during the past three matriarch-less days, the Truth has been: "I love you daddy. But I REALLY love Mommy." "I ate all my chicken! I'm a good eater. But I don't want to get fat! Just a good eater, not fat!" "You should be Jabba the Hut or maybe Hagrid for Halloween" and the following exchange: ME: "I miss Mommy too, and I'm doing the best I can. We're having lots of fun! Aren't you having fun hanging out with Daddy?" HIM: "Um...sort of."

And he's right, every time. And he loves me, like a rock. Like I love him. And it doesn't occur to him to not tell the truth. It just doesn't occur to him. And godamnit I fucking hope it never does. Tell the truth, Finnegan!! Always and with pride, tell the truth! You are loved! Tell the truth!

So for my part, The Truth, tonight: I am lonely. I am anxious. I miss my wife. I worry, you know, about what's going to happen...to everyone, everywhere. I am afraid that if I lived alone I would very quickly qualify for a Very Special Episode of Hoarders. I feel like I've spent a fair amount of my life pretending I was toughening up, only to discover that I had really just been getting more fragile. That my shoulders cannot bear the weight of the villages I have constructed atop them. That I don't know anything and everyone else knows even less. That maybe there is something I'm missing about the band Rush, or L. Ron Hubbard, or that show about that vampire who was sarcastic but still totally had lots of wounded feelings. That there is no comfort but false comfort, and my greatest aspiration is just to weave fantasies out of pixie dust.

And that my bathroom...smells...kind of...funky. After only three fucking days. Come on!!!

Why You So Fat?

I hear voices, in my head...like everyone does, right? And one of those voices is the "why you so fat?" lady. I've talked to my wife and a few other friends about her before, but basically the "why you so fat?" lady is a short, middle-aged woman wearing polyester and bi-focals who, upon first meeting me, sizes me up right away, looks me up and down quickly, and says the first thing that comes to her mind. Which is, of course: Why you so fat?

I've actually kind of really had that happen before, but the story would sound so self-pitying and racist if I told it that it wouldn't get the point across, which is probably why I created this fictional version in my head. She greets me primarily in moments of self-sabotage. Moments when, say--and this is purely hypothetical, mind you--I might be sitting at Chuck E. Cheese, 62 pounds down since last July, having walked the wall in Carlsbad this morning even with the kid scootering at my heels, having kept under WW points all day, eating a salad from the World's Saddest Salad Bar(TM)...and I reach over and inhale half a piece of picked-apart pepperoni pizza off my son's plate in less than a second flat. She appears, then, across the booth and says, simply, plainitively...Why you so fat?

There are a lot of reasons why I'm so fat. Since you asked. I have a PhD in Advanced Studies of Phenomenogical Theory on Why Tom Is So Fat. A partial list:

1. Because I'm not you.
2. Because I'm me.
3. Because I'm fat.
4. Because I don't really give a shit about all the things that most people give a shit about, all right? I can't make myself care about it, I'm sorry. I can't make myself like "Glee." I can't make myself drink Vodka. I can't make myself want what I do not want, no matter how much I'm supposed to want it. I don't care about it the way you care about it. I want to look the way I feel. I am large. I contain multitudes.
5. Cheetos
6. Genetics.
7. Because you're all so fucking skinny. Why are you all so fucking skinny? Why are you all so plastic and skinny? The runner-up to the salad bar at Chuck E. Cheese as the The Saddest Place on Earth (TM) is the pool at the La Costa Hotel Resort and Spa. You can bounce a quarter off of everyone's "skin." Bronzed plastic Oakley tight. Why are you all so skinny?????? Is this an alternate universe where bacon was never invented? Get your dirty paws off me, you damn dirty ape!!!!
8. Because I Hate Myself (TM)
9. Butter. Pecan. Ice Cream.
10. I am in a constant struggle not to lose my shit. Every waking moment is a battle, another signpost in the war. I am a valiant warrior, a leader even, and I spare no mercy for the enemy. But late at night in the foxhole I crave some sustenance. I seek relief. There are times, as the man said, when I am so lonesome that I take some comfort there. By "there" I mean "double-double."
11. I may be way fatter than you but I just know you've eaten one of those Doritos (TM) tacos from Taco Bell (TM). And I would never do that.
12. Nobody pays attention to normal people unless they used to be abnormal. I am the "Before." Watch the fuck out for the "After." Cuz he will fuck you up.

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.

Muddling Through Somehow

My wife is a Christmas junkie, and through the years her overwhelming enthusiasm has managed to virtually erase my own Scrooge-like tendencies. And you can't really pull off a humbug pose with two young kids nipping at your heels--even the hardest heart melts like Frosty in the greenhouse at the sight of your own offspring bursting with joy on Christmas morning.

So I'm not trying to resist the cheer this year. I'm letting it in, and I'm extremely grateful to be able to celebrate and revel in the love that surrounds me. And isn't that what Christmas is really all about, Charlie Brown? (Enough with the shepherds already, Linus. Save it for right-wing radio.)

And yet, there's a reason that the suicide rate skyrockets this time of year. Circadian rhythms, shorter days, the constant barrage of manufactured blah blah blah...It's not that for me, so much, actually. Instead, I am reminded of very specific losses during the holiday season, in ways that we probably all are, and those wounds feel as fresh to me now as they did over a decade ago.

I see a couple ghosts, in other words, more clearly than ever this time of year, and I can't pretend that I don't. I don't want to pretend that I don't, because I still love them, I still miss them, and I'm grateful that they're still here, even if it cuts me deep to catch a glimpse of them in an empty chair next to the Christmas tree. I'll take those reminders over real absence any day, and in my own way I'll try to thank them for hanging around to keep an eye on me and help guide me forward. Because God knows I need them, now more than ever.

So here's to a clear-eyed, open-hearted holiday, absent of expectations and filled with real love and joy. And lots of booze. And chocolate.

Speaking of which, I'm still ploughing through on the fitness front. I've lost 7 pounds in the first week and have slipped into a fairly workable exercise routine. The real challenge lays ahead, of course, and I'm taking Christmas day off to indulge as I see fit with the belief that I can hop right back on the wagon the next day. We'll see.

And because there is no way to avoid Christmas music in the Huntington house these days, I present to you what has become far and away my favorite holiday song, sung with just the perfect bittersweetness by Sweet Baby James--assuming I can get this embed code to work. I don't care if it's cheesy--it's a flat-out beautiful song, and it perfectly captures my mood right now. So have yourself a merry little Christmas, now.