Here to There

There was a flash of light.  Time slowed and thoughts melted away until there was nothing else.  It stretched and enveloped.  There was no touch, taste, or smell.  It consumed everything. Endlessly filling the void left behind with itself.  It was everything and nothing.

Then just as quickly as it began, it was gone, and we were there. There was a sense we had just hit a brick wall at Mach 1, and suddenly we were ourselves again.  Everything and nothing were gone and the yawning gap left behind was replaced with our fragile bags of meat. Private Waters retched and drained his lunch on the polished metal floor.  The others stumbled and leaned against the walls and cargo either dizzy and seeking balance or just looking for something solid to touch to prove they were still alive.  It's the same every time.

A stocky man with a clipboard and an ill fitting grey jumpsuit covered in stains approached them then.  He wrinkled his nose in disgust at the smell of Waters' shame.  "There's always one in every delivery," he said with a sneer and a shake of his rapidly receding hairline.  He gave the rest of them a snort and glanced at his paperwork before continuing, "I'm a busy man, we've got to get these supplies off the landing pad before the next delivery.  The exit is that way," He gestured vaguely in the direction he had come from. "I haven't got all day," he added gruffly when no one made a move to leave immediately.

"Well.  That's fucking frontier hospitality for ya,"  growled Private Jacobs while grabbing his gear and rifle on wobbly legs.  "Get it to-fucking-gether Waters.  We trained for this for a month back at base," he shot over his shoulder as steadied himself and took a few practice steps. Then,with a final snarl, and a rude gesture to the Technician that so rudely greeted them, he strode out of the Receiving station without looking back.

Sergeant Kandrini watched him go while clutching the handrails mounted on the wall.  "That one is going to be a discipline problem," she thought.  With a final squeeze of the cool solid metal she pulled herself upright and looked at the others.  "Squad!" she barked.  "Let's move it!  Get your gear and line up outside.  Private Timball help Waters get his gear.  Move. Move. Move."

With a practiced calm she watched them.  Combined with her words it had an amazing affect.  While no one had so much as moved when Jacobs stormed out.  Now they were moving like the soldiers they were trained to be.  The unreality of Point to Point matter transmission across 10 light years and coldness of their greeting were quickly forgotten and shortly the last of them marched out of sight, and all that remained were the Sergeant and the Technician.

Next: Part 2

Day 2

Day 2 sucks.  You wake up one morning and decide you are finally going to start running, start dieting, start bathing.  Then day 2 comes.  You're sore, hungry, and covered in rashes.  Day one has all of the enthusiasm of a well dreamed credenza and then you move into day 2 and the insecurities come.  The pain comes.  I've had a busy day and so I kept wanting to get to the pages, get to write.  The reaction wasn't what I intended the writing not what I thought it should be.  But I'm here to type.  Doesn't matter if it's crap, it's just to keep my fingers moving.  Get in the habit of creating stuff.

Yesterday was funny, all I wanted to do was keep writing.  My brain and heart were overflowing with ideas that my hands couldn't keep up with, whenever I was free, I was writing.  The morning pages yesterday tore off the scab & the scars and chased away the wolves.  But I didn't write today.   It's 10 at night and I was lying in bed hating myself for already giving up, already folding, already been the incompetent bastard that I was trying so hard to fake that I wasn't.  And I made it 1 day.  I had this sweet short story in mind for today but it isn't going to happen.  Scipio Africanus wrote a better one than I could anyway.  Prophetically accurate.  Where's the target?  What are you supposed to hate?  I mean do you hate the bike?  Do you hate yourself?

I was lying in bed grasping for something to feel guilty enough to roll over and grab this stupid machine and start moving my fingers.  What if Merlin Mann sees I already failed after 1 day?  He isn't going to read this.  What about X being disappointed?  The strange thing was that no matter how many names I populated in column X I was just too tired to feel guilty and feeling guilty, although wonderfully self destructive just doesn't have the same motivational rigger it had as a younger man.  My give a damn was irreparably shattered last year and now I'm almost reactionary to the emotion.  I am obviously still obsessed with it because I'm writing about it right now, but more out of the habit of feeling it than really feeling it.

The strange thing is I rolled over today and grabbed the computer heavy with baggage because I'm tired of feeling this way.  I'm tired about feeling this way about things I really enjoy and about myself.  I commit to both of you that I will start creating something other than self-diagnosing sob stories but today isn't the day.  Maybe I'll write tomorrow what I meant to write today.

This morning pages thing is actually quite serendipitous.  I actually started journalling again, which is basically the same as the morning pages, simply lacking the publicity, commitment, and realness that this exercise is attempting to create.  Writing those pages I remembered a story I wrote when I was in 6th grade.  I'm going to try over the next 29 days to rewrite it here as it has haunted me like nothing my mind has imagined before or since.  I have memories of living that story that are more vivid than any of my real life memories.  For 18 years this story has been bubbling away and I haven't been willing to try to write it because I don't think I can communicate it well, but at least now I need to just write pages so it may as well come out.  But the day before I decided to commit to 30 days of writing was the day I decided that I needed to rewrite that story and exercise the demon.  Last year I uncovered the original story and what felt like Pulitzer prize winning in 6th grade actually sucks and sounds like a kid wrote it.  Which is exactly what happened.  Never read anything from elementary school that you're proud of.  Not only has the story stuck with me but the experience of creating and sharing it broke something that I've been to afraid to acknowledge and fix.  That story just poured out of me, which has happened a lot since from stories to academic papers, I don't often have trouble writing and I tend to get good grades for what I write.  It was the first time, though, that I remember it happening the way it did then, though.  The story existed like Plato's perfect chair and I was simply recording it, which is a lot for a 6th grade boy to process.  Trying to fit that in the middle of a conversation about how to properly flip someone off to make the best impression is difficult even for an adult to do.  The good news is that Cory did flip off Mrs. Vogeley as she drove by quite accidentally while he was attempting to make his point and we all thought next time we went to that house there would be a .303 with our name on it, which would have very effectively solved the existential debacle I was attempting to resolve.  The story writing was a little odd.  When Mrs. Blackwell asked for volunteers to read their story I volunteered to read mine.  This is how I remember it, which is strange because I don't tend to volunteer my work to be read, which is why this is so difficult for me.  I remember reading the story and it was still difficult to read because it was so much more real than what I had put on the paper, my ability hindered the message.  I fought back tears reading the stupid thing.  Half out of the memory of the story, and the other out of sheer frustration that none of these kids would get it, there was this crazy big, uncomfortably beautiful thing, so much more real than the hormone riddled roller coaster we were all beginning to ride.  All they could see was the obese teacher's pet, floundering through a story, probably just looking for a chance to show off again.  I can still feel the tightness in my chest and the churning of my stomach staring at the page, reading what was there, looking in those words for what had been there the night before.  Why wasn't it there?  These strange graphite hieroglyphics weren't the story, they weren't what  had wrestled with and cried through the night before.  Had I written it right the room would feeling colder, the snow and wind would have made us shiver.  We could have smelled the blood and trembled from the haunting call of the pack.

When I finally lowered that insufferable page I saw Mrs. Blackwell in the back of the class with red rimmed eyes and she got it.  She knew the story was more than I could write and she had seen it, though no one else had.  And I felt a terrifying burden.  A weight of responsibility that I was in no way mature enough to handle.  I had affected this adult and it scared me.  It scared me a lot.  Now as a fat kid in elementary school I was afraid of everything, everyone.  I was afraid to ride my bike as fast as my friends.  I was afraid to fail in school.  I was afraid to do too well in school.  I was afraid of the high schoolers walking down the same side of the street as me.  I was afraid constantly.  This was different.  In a world of fear I realized that this kind of fear was different.  This new feeling, this new strange power had scared me that I ran from it. It was the first time to run from something having to do with words.  I love reading.  I love writing.  And yet this scared me.  It wasn't the last time.  I remember when we took some standardized English test in 8th grade and I had scored the highest in the school or something and my teacher asked if I wanted to go on a walk.  I heard a snicker behind me and was mortified to be alone with this big busted Black foot woman with beautiful hair.  I was afraid that I was the only boy who had a strange feeling in my stomach when around pretty much any human being with 2 X chromosomes.  And I was afraid that I had slipped.  That someone was going to expect even more of me than I felt everyone already did.  And I was afraid that someone had found my secret.  That someone was finally going to force me to start writing.  This strange horrible thing inside me was finally going to be exposed and I said, “No thanks,” and hurried back to my desk as fast as I could, my soft swinging jowls lit up red like a hooker's night stand.  I've always wondered what she was going to say, always wondered what opportunity I missed.  If only I wasn't afraid of this stupid writing thing.  If only I wasn't afraid that she might molest me like I wanted her to.  If only I wasn't afraid.

I really don't know why this is so scary and I really wish I hadn't committed to posting this on my blog, and for the first time I'm happy very few people ever read it.  But hopefully if you are scared of that thing that you know you are supposed to be doing, even just to relieve that daily cycle of hating yourself just a little bit, go ahead and do it today.  Just long enough that you can say, today I did what I'm made to do.  Today, for the first time in a long time, I'm finally myself.

A false fresh start.

He hid in his room.  The door closed, the shades drawn, the covers over his head.  The deafening beating of his heart drowned out all sound, and cold sweat trickled down his back.  His eyes were open, peering into the dark, but seeing nothing.  Ragged breaths pushed through as he clutched and clenched his hands in a well practiced dance that accomplished seemingly nothing.

Yesterday things had been better.  Yesterday was the best day.  The sun had burned away the clouds revealing the true colors of things.  Promises were made and plans set in motion.  People stepped out of the shadows and became human again.  He had vowed not to be different this time.

The park.  Green grass and sparkling water.  The dappled shade of many trees inviting and patient.  A promise of quiet reading, or leisurely strolls and pleasant conversation.  This was the life that he deserved.  The time for hiding was done.  Both feet would be planted and with a powerful and clear voice the world would know he was ready to be happy.

It had started with the new bike.  Bought months ago and assembled with impatient glee.  The sense of pride and purpose was lost when the rains started the next day.  But yesterday, things were perfect, and so was he.  Nothing could stop him.  Athletic clothes and comfortable shoes.  Lock the door.  Walk the bike to the road.  Mount it and just start peddling.

It was a bit of a rocky start, sure.  Years and decades had passed since the last time.  But, soon muscles and mechanics worked together and the world rolled by.  There were people and so many cars.  He managed to not hit anything or anyone, for which he allowed himself a smile.  A random man walking saw it and smiled back.  Yesterday had been a great day.

Arriving at the park tired and sore, but elated was almost enough.  He stopped and looked around and caught his breath while he wiped the sweat away with an equally sweaty forearm.  There were people everywhere.  There were young women sunning themselves on blankets on the hill and playing with their phones.  A group of men threw a ball back and forth in the large open area by the lake.  Attentive parents escorted children and pets with equal ease through the throng.  Others ran and swam and absorbed themselves in individual pursuits of all manner.  They were Everywhere!

His heart had started racing then.  Surrounded by them, watched by them, and now he was just staring at them.  They were going to notice.  They were going. to. notice.  He was going to be the weird guy with the bike, just starting at them.  They would know he didn't belong here. The dryness of his throat was demanding his attention.  He averted his eyes staring at anything else.  My the sky sure was interesting all of a sudden.  Wow.  Look at that tree over there. Quickly, before he drew any more attention to himself, he walked the bike back up the trail, and climbed back on it.  His smile was long gone, but he forced his lips and face to pretend it wasn't. 

What was he supposed to do now? 

Next: Part 2

May 30: Dragons

My son loves dragons.  We started reading the Hobbit yesterday and the big hook for him was that there was a dragon.  He loves watching Wahammer 40k battle reports with me and has creative ways of converting something in the battle into something he can call a dragon.  Some people may wonder at this as there is not, nor has there probably ever been, such a thing as a dragon.  The primary impetus and cause here, I think, goes back to the fact that my son has a father that loves dragons.  I love how they lithely float through the sky, I love the shimmer of their scales, I love the terrifying eyes, I love the rampant destruction they cause.  I even have a soft spot for their non-flying cousins the drakes.  Ice dragons, swamp drakes, Imperial dragons.  I love them all.  I love the crazy, fluffy, dog faced thing on Never Ending Story (which should be converted into the most comfortable bed in existence outside of a walrus).  Japanese Dragons, Aztec Dragons, ancient alien theorist contend dragons.  My poor innocent son has not even a glimmer of an idea of the wide world of dragons that is available out there.

Now I know there are lucky dragons, and good dragons, and guardian dragons.  I know that there are good dragons besides dead dragons.  Acknowledging that 1 thing I love even more than dragons is slaying dragons.  Insanely courageous men and women who through sheer bravado, desperation, and cunning are able to out fight the greatest threat known to man.  Armored, flying, intelligent beasts of single-minded destruction.  Whether it be Beowolf, a fellowship of mixed race fantasy creatures, or a horribly written tank driving dragon savior (“We can do this the easy way, or the real easy way”) I am continually mystified by dragon fighters.

My son was trying to cover my eyest while I write so I asked him to stop, I'm writing about dragons.  “Dragons!” he whispers.  “What kind of dragons?”  He knows the way to my heart.
“All Kinds”
“Black dragons?”
“Should I write about Black dragons?”
“Yes”

To be honest I usually imagine my dragons a deep red, shining emerald green, or a mix of colors that blends into a mystifying brown that slowly changes and shimmers as the beast moves about its golden hoard.  The is a very specific reason that I don't think about black dragons.  They scare me the most.  Totally blending into the night sky, slithering unseen through the thick woods.  A shiny black dragon, could walk write by your house, this very minute, and you would not know.  Think about that.

Luckily as a nerd I am allowed the cultural flexibility to still think about dragons and it not be a surprise to anyone.  Most of my dragon slaying these days is through the pages of a novel, little cards on a table, or plastic and metal warriors frozen forever in the pose of defiance.  But I still vividly remember the last time I fought a dragon.  My friend Pat had a large stick.  Kurt and I had smaller ones.  If your brain works like mine then you already understand that the large stick wielding Pat was in fact a dragon.  A dragon whom Kurt and I were dutifully bringing a gory end to.  Pat was up against the steep side of a service road that was located at the bottom of a small canyon behind Kurt's house.  We darted in and out of the chaparral parrying and thrusting.  Shouting curses and commands.  Bloodying knuckles to the rattling sound of wood swords striking wooden scales.  Rat-Tat-Tat... “Go back to the Hell from which you came, Beast!”...Rat...slide...tat.tat.tat.   If you are going to fight a dragon in the middle of quintessential suburbia we were doing it in the best place possible with the brash slogans and aplumb that only come from the childhood innocence of never having fought a real dragon.

My daughter just came out to the porch wearing a bright red bandanna tied about her like a super hero's cape.  She has the freedom to be the hero, be the princess, be the dragon slayer.  She can look into the eyes of the beast and not have eyes that fill with the tears of remembered scars.  Cuts and gashes deep inside from the dragons you have already fought.  Dragons you have defeated and outwitted.  Dragons you have slayed, but just barely, and not at all like in the fairy tales.  The fairy tales don't talk about the heroes collapsing from exhaustion and blood loss next to the corpse of their defeated foe.  Just wanting to rest, unable to continue on the adventure, seemingly as dead as the freshly dispatched nightmare.  Armor still smoking, sword still hot.  The fairy tales don't talk about the fear of applying for job after job knowing that your young hot wife is working her tail off and you can't help provide for your new, fresh family.  The stories don't cover living in an apartment with holes in the roof which birds and snow enter at will because you can't afford a real apartment.  The stories don't cover how that funny story felt like utter failure and defeat when you stared up through the utility closet and saw the little money you had going up through that frigid sun lit abyss in the form of electric heat.  The stories don't show the hero curled up under his desk because he doesn’t have the answers and can't fake it anymore.  In the stories the burly bare chested barbarian sits at a table laden with suckling pig and dark ale, surrounded by equally inappropriately attired Valkyries and pagan deities.  I've never fought that dragon.  I've never been that hero.

I can tell you for me, fighting dragons does not give me the courage and confidence to go dragon hunting.  Everyone tells you, “You've been here before.  They didn't eat you.”  You should now be able to do anything because you did this already.  That is not what I feel.  I feel scars and damage.  Deep brokenness.  You may have finally in an act of utter hopelessness plunged your dirk deep into the gullet of the beast and been washed by the fiery blood, the last life force of the monster.  But that was only because you were already in its mouth and it was savoring the last moments resistance before it crushed you.  And you know it.  You know you were only saved by a monologue, a twist of fate.  But looking back at the stories most of the great heroes are too.

I may have been saved by a monologue but I can take the crazy risks again.  I can be the burn scarred and broken hermit who dwells in the mountains because he has seen the monster like no one else has.  I've done it.  Maybe you have done it too.  But when I cloister myself within a cocoon of scar tissue and hurt I'm safe, but I'm not alive.  That tomb of memories and pain leads only to self-condemning depression.  The hole only gets deeper.  The beast only grows in your broken reminiscence.

I know that sometimes the monster has leapt on me in my wanderings, unannounced; the black dragon.  Those moments are filled with confusion and doubt, fear and contagious inadequacy.    If I'm truly honest with myself, though, most of those ambushes have followed a very intentional avoidance of confronting the beast.  I've skirted the mountain with my fingers crossed.  The huts are burning around me and I've thought it a pleasant time to go for a walk.  I knew the monster was there and just had the bad luck that it finally found me.

There have been rare moments when I decided to climb the mountain simply because I saw the smoke rising from the crevices.  To hurl myself into the cave though there was nothing but darkness and stank inside.  When you choose to make the leap, when you dive into the mouth of the crypt you are no longer the victim but the hero.  And that moment is when I feel most alive.  It is terrifying to write up that cover letter for a job you are totally unqualified for.  The doubts scream at you when you see the gap you know you are too scared to jump, but why don't you jump it anyway?  Why don't you throw aside that bent and chipped sword, you've only been using it to block him anyway.  Pull out that dagger and charge her gaping maw with a sound that is far clearer than your courage and strength.  So what if you fail?  So what if she finally eats you.  At least they will write a song about it.

I think in replacing our viking sagas with real stories of burden that we have forgotten how to be heroes.  We have collectively forgotten how to fight and maybe we never have.  We are sourounded by zombies and Marvel movies because we see how our souls are being consumed and we are desperate for someone to save us.  We are the young scared boy running with Brad Pitt's family.  We are looking for an anchor and a strength.  Well, why the hell don't you stop whimpering in the corner and be the hero yourself?  You can totally kick Bear Grylls ass and you have no clue because you've never done it.  You've always ran, always hid, always just been the fleeing 8-bit villager with your hands in the air.  I know I've done it enough.

Rat-Tat-Tat, rat-tat-tat.  Maybe that dragon really is just a big stick with a menacing bend.  Maybe you just have a stick but what if you used it?  Bring a knife to a gun fight and kick the crap out of all 10 of them.  Who knows what it would feel like if you were victorious for once.  Not just because of a coin toss and a monologue but because of a leap and a snarl.

Morning Pages

Hey team,

I've been inspired by the Back to Work podcast with Merlin Mann.  I've decided to write 3 pages every morning for a month to get my fingers moving and, just because I need to stop being such a wuss, I'm going to post it here for both of you to see.

Enjoy.

There will be a slight stop when I'm in the mountains in a few weeks but that is a sign of exuberance not failure.  I will deliver 30 days of nothing.  To that, dear reader, I commit myself.

Parental Review 2014

This last weekend my hot young wife and I got away to celebrate our 10 year marriage anniversary.  We took along with us our 4 month old but the other 2 went off to spend the night at a friend's house.  It was wonderful to sit by the pool, relax, and eat wonderful food.  What surprised me was that it gave us a chance to just talk about hard things which had not been pressing enough to resolve.  What is wonderful about having a truly remarkable wife is that most of the things she brought up were things that I had been thinking about but didn't know how to verbalize.  She was able to extract truths from me that I was nervous about or unsure of letting out into the wide world.  

One of the primary topics of discussion was how we can do our most important job better.  It has been truly wonderful to see Bumpkin and Buddy change so much over the past 6 months.  At their age 6 months allows for a massive amount of personality development.  Personalities that are so radically different to each other.  It gave us a chance to discuss the beautiful changes in our adorable children and how we needed to really change our parenting styles to fit the specific developments of each of the 2.  Bumpkin is a dancer and Buddy is a tinker and they way they react to almost anything is different.  My parenting still had some homogeneous tendencies from when they were little and those needed a radical shift in this stage in life.  My cognisant son and daughter have very different ways in which they need to receive my love and attention.  For my daughter it is playing dolls, dancing to the closing soundtrack of Frozen, having Daddy Daughter Dates.  For my son I thought it was building things.  I love building things with him but it is sometimes hard to come home and try to put Legos together in a methodical way and not steal from him his joy of tinkering by an impatient, overworked father.  He had become a little more aggressive and disobedient recently (in small ways he is still an amazingly easy kid) and my young hot wife suggested to me that I needed to spend some time wrestling with him.  I thought that would be a great way for him to just work out some of that extra energy that sometimes sprouts out as doing what I asked him not to do, which is really the basis for what he has been doing lately, he is just fidgety.  What surprised me was with what deep intensity he threw himself into Pappa wrestle time.  He dove into it like a parched man into an oasis.  Like a gasp of air and he loved it.  

On the one hand it was amazing to see a psychological need in a human being filled, especially when it was my son's need.  What really surprised me, and made me feel more than a little guilty, was how over the past few months I hadn't really wrestled with him like I used to and that lack was leading to some real uncertainty in his life.  It really re-centred me.  I have been procrastinating on a Father-Daughter date for some time now and this weekend it is happening.  Not because Bumpkin has really done anything to deserve it but because I just love the crap out of her and want to make sure that she knows she is more important than all the other garbage that I could be doing.  And today when I get home I'm going to let out a primal roar, even if it is after bed time, and wrestle my little buddy until we smash heads together or until his asthma catches up to him.  Today I'm going to be a little better father than I was yesterday.

A Clean Pipe

I sit on my balcony on this unseasonably cool morning listening to the pitter-patter of the odd, pre-hot season rains.  Every day this week we have had these wonderfully short little showers that cool the breezes and wash the air.  It is not the muggy, heavy air of the monsoon.  Monsoon air is still warm from the heat of April and May and carries in it the overflowed sewers and flooded streets that are the direct result of that delugional period of the calendar.  This air is Spring air.  Fresh and alive.  It dampens the sounds of the tuk-tuk traffic and the horns seem to be carried more distant by the gentle breeze that it rides.

I sit on my balcony in this near perfect mix of air and water because I wanted to start working on a book.  This book has been building in my mind since college and I've been fairly surprised I haven't run across it already written.  That tends to be the fate of most of my good ideas, someone else has already had them.  This theme of my life, which apparently no one else has written about, has been pushing against the membranes of procrastination and doubt and feels as though the time for delivery has come.  The idea was conceived in college while listening to my favorite professor at that notable institution and it has been slowly and powerfully germinating all those years since.  Since I vocalized a few weeks ago to my young and hot wife that I was going to finally write my book I began to slide into a completely debilitating state of depression.  These last few weeks have been miserable.  My camping equipment has continued to dwell in its fabric state and my aspirations of greatness for this year have dwindled to a mere survival mentality.  A combination of personal doubts, my own self labeling, and the influence of certain parties who do not want said book to be written had pushed me this morning to a near comatose attitude lying on my bed trying to motivate myself to get ready for yet another day.

My young and hot wife saw me in this stupor and in her beautiful and compassionate manner was able to make me see past some of the notions that were festering and reproducing in my diseased mind.  So I decided to start my book.  What follows may explain why my book has yet to be commenced.

If one is going to begin booking it is advisable from this party to begin in the manner of many of the great minds of old.  That manner includes a hot beverage and a venerable briar, preferably with an English tobacco.  I have been cleaning and smoke waxing my pipes recently and the most venerable briar to have yet to receive this treatment was my Peterson St. Patrick's day 2004 shape 606 pot.  This pipe is meaningful to me in particular because 2004 is the year I was wed to my young and hot wife and the celebration of St. Patrick falls on her birthday every year.  The 606 is also a shape that is scholarly in proportion and sweet in smoking and so I had a mind to load it up with the last remnants of what has become one of my favorite English blends, Cornell & Diehl's #970P Pirate Kake.  I could wax poetical about this superb tobacco but as my mind began drifting in that direction I was shocked into a state of enhanced reality when I noticed the abject and discolored nature of this particular pipe's stem.  For my reader who stands outside of the Brotherhood of the briar I will explain shortly the chemical and natural reaction that can present itself in the stem of one's favorite pipe.  My Peterson St. Patrick's day 2004 shape 606 pot has a stem made of vulcanized rubber which gives it a comfortable, slightly chewy feel in the mouth and is near perfect for sitting down and writing one's life journey book, or as it has devolved currently, to one's blog. Vulcanized rubber has the unfortunate propensity to oxidize and like rusted steel is not quite as tasty as polished so oxidized rubber not only creates a distracting taste that detracts from Cornell & Diehl's #970P Pirate Kake's symphony of flavors but it also looks atrocious.  Similar to pond scum on an oily puddle instead of the bright polish of the shoes of a Gordon Highlander on parade that a pipe stem should reflect.  Look at the stem on Dad's wizard pipe and I'm sure you will see a perfect example of this chemical reaction.

One simply cannot begin his or her life work with such a mouthpiece and so the pipe was loving triaged and treated.  A little baking soda and water was mixed together and briskly rubbed on the stem.  This mixture quickly turned from pristine white to the brown of well trafficked snow and in that brown tincture the oxidation was removed.  Unfortunately I no longer have at my disposal a buffing wheel to bring the wet shine out of my dear mouth piece but an application of Olive Oil returned it to a comfortably black matte.

The reason I share this episode at all as I lovingly rub bees wax on the warm bowl of my newly cleaned pipe is to communicate the feeling of setting something right.  Of giving my venerable Peterson St. Patrick's day 2004 shape 606 pot a new lease on life.  A fresh beginning for a pipe that had aged and become diseased with lack of care.  I was amazed to see what a fresh application of attention and concern could do to turn this wearied warrior into something that could once again deliver the multifaceted flavors of my favored English blend without distraction and with a renewed sweetness.  It took the loving words of my young and hot wife to do the same thing to the horrible and confining state of my own mind this morning.  I am not returned to museum quality but most tools in that state are not used but simply displayed.  My pipe now looks like a tool that can be enjoyed but also used.  There are bite marks on the stem that stubbornly refuse the baking soda treatment.  There is a patch of filler on the grain where a sand pit presented itself in the making of the pipe.  The edge of the bowl is slightly singed from loving use.  But it is loved and it is useful and so am I.

The lies that fill our minds and disable us are not the blocks that build us up, however much we try to convince ourselves that we must continue to harden and steel ourselves against the burdens and pains of life.  A wonderful play I once saw performed, yet whose title eludes me, carried the line, "You are hard like steel mama, but you're cold."  Steel can cut and shape and mold.  I have a sword for that.  In opposition I desire to be usable.  I desire to bring comfort.  As my bowl fills with a fine gray dottle I don't want to be polished and I desperately need to stop striving for it.  I want the warm glow of a used but clean pipe.