Before I'm Swallowed by Sleep

Massive Old Oak Tree - seen on Coon Creek docent hike, Montaña de Oro, 18sept2008 - Leader: Jerry Kirkhart
Originally uploaded by mikebaird

It's late. I just got home from a night out with a dear friend. I will leave you with this poem. When I was growing up, I was fortunate (mostly,) to have grown up in a rural neighborhood with a group of adventurous kids. I have many fond memoirs of those days, including those of my first "crush." While there was never any future for us, we did some fun and crazy things, and this poem is one of many in tribute to the boy that I knew then.

It Always Comes Back to This

left arm scarred
cinder-block burn
a scraped escape
one hiding place
to the next

two in a tree
bark-brushed thigh
a chance maneuver
and blood chills
under the wind

love's agonizing scrutiny
these left-overs
nothing but empty
shells litter the earth
spilled seed pods
scatter with the
same breath
that says goodbye.

Maybe your Saturday linger as long as you like, unless you have to work, in which case, I hope it flies.

A Health to the Company

We all have our blessings, things we go to bed at night thanking the Gods for. When I step back from the shadow of the day, I can't complain about the hand I've been dealt. Sure, I have wanted more at times, and there have been other times when I was sure that I deserved more than I got, but when it all comes down to it, there has been very little in my life I have had to do without.

As I mentioned in Sunday's blog, I was blessed with the good fortune of finding my soul mate early in my life. On that same note, I was lucky enough to encounter two of the greatest friends I would ever know in those final years of high school, and I'm sure it was their love and friendship that saw me through some of the most awkward and difficult moments of my youth.

Good friends are hard to come by, especially when you're young and the way you define friendship is so confused by all the nonsense going on around you. There were a number of people I kept in touch with for awhile after I left school, but even they dwindled out of my life, our experiences and dreams putting a wedge between us that made us no longer as identifiable to one another as we once were.

Maybe our values changed, or our habits differed. Maybe one grew up and the other didn't. The truth is, people move on, but you can tell who was meant to be a part of your life longterm when after eighteen years, you can look to your left or your right, (or even on your facebook page,) and see their smiling face beaming back at you. Even after all this time, you can still share a good laugh together (sometimes so hard you almost pee your pants.)

Today, my friend Mindy commented about how lucky she was to have been blessed with real girlfriends in her life. People she had lived with, gone through weddings, births, divorces and deaths together. People you could call at any hour of the day when you needed someone, and that was one of the things that got me to thinking about this topic.

I know that I am blessed. I have some of the most wonderful friends in the world, people I have shared dreams and shattered hopes with. People who stood on the sidelines and cheered me on, or got up and walked the walk with me, even through rain and sleet and snow, sometimes without shoes. People I would do the same for without any expectation whatsoever, because that's what love is.

So, here's a health to the company, let us drink and be merry all out of one glass. I hope you'll all raise your glass tonight (be it filled with water or wine,) to all of the friends in your life, be they old or new, borrowed or blue (they could be aliens... I don't know). In a world that all too often seems at odds and war, the more often we reach out and squeeze the ones we love around us, the less daunting the hardships will be.

The Beatles once said, "All you need is love," and I'm inclined to concur. Thank you, good night, I love you all.

Love...it's exciting and new...

This morning was a great wake-up. To be able to roll over and cuddle up in those final few minutes before climbing out of bed. I have been married to my best friend for almost thirteen years. We've known each other for nineteen years, and even after all this time, there is no one else in the world I want to spend time with as much as I do him? We've been through a lot of difficult times together, and yet even through the toughest of them we managed to come out of them even closer than we were before. That is love.

What got me thinking about love is the interaction between two of the charcters in the current story I am working on. A male cybernetic being is talking to a human woman about love and death. She mentions that her husband died before war broke out, shot by terrorists in the park, and had she not shortly thereafter discovered that she was pregnant, she would have taken her own life. She tells him that now if anything ever happened to her son... if it ever came down to it, she would throw her life down without a second thought to save his. He is perplexed by this, not able to process the notion of love being strong enough to dictate the outcome of one's life, but for some people it really is that strong. Romeo and Juliet... suicidal at the mere thought of one losing the other. Characters in a story, yes, but as Oscar Wilde once said, "Life imitates art fare more than art imitates life."

Love is such a powerful force. Those five words seem limp as three day old lettuce in comparison to the actual power of love. When I sit down and try to imagine what my life might have been with him in it, I seem nothing. No him would mean that the child I have now would never have come into being, and thinking about a life without either of those two people just isn't something I like to do.

The funny thing is, we were destined to be together. I truly believe that. We met at the local mall while I was still in high school. He had only just come back from living in Los Angeles. Being a giggling teenager, I and my friend Liz followed him and his friend Andy around the mall for about an hour before we finally followed them out one of the exits, pretending we were going to our car. He came after us. Being incredibly shy, it was a feat for him that only fate could have pushed. He came over and gave me his phone number and the next day we talked on the phone for six hours before he finally convinced his friend to drive down to see me. That night before he left, he kissed me for the first time and told me that he could already see himself spending the rest of his life with me... like we had known each other for an eternity.

I don't like to think about what my life would be like without having ever met him. There were times in the past when things seemed tough that I thought maybe we both would have been better off had we never met, but I know better now. Life's experiences, the ones that we lay on our deathbed contemplating, it's those types of experiences I want to be thinking about. How I was blessed enough to have loved so deeply, to have been loved so deeply... how that no matter how low I felt because of things I had been through, or how badly I felt about myself, there was someone there for me who couldn't see all of those flaws I thought were fatal. And if he did see them, he could see through them, into the person that I really was, and that was who he loved.

I think about all of the people who never find love... who marry out of loneliness only to find themselves even more miserable than they were when they were alone... who marry because their parents' made a choice for them before they were even old enough to think about their own future, and it makes me very sad. Sure, some of those people fall in love. I am reminded of the scene in Fiddler on the Roof (yes, life imitates art, yet again,) when Tevye comes home and asks Golda, "Do you love me?" It seems an absurd question to her. Their relationship has gone on so long that they no longer thought about love the way the young do, but it was there nonetheless. Despite having an arranged marriage, over time they came to love one another very deeply, but not everyone is so lucky.

So when I think about how lucky I am, I don't gloat, but I do treasure it, and I hope that everyone in the world can experience the kind of love that I have been fortunate enough to know. It makes the world go around. Some days it may seem like money, war, hatred and greed are what spin the globe, but that's what the media would like us to believe. They want us to dwell on the gloom and the sorrow, but there is beauty and wonder out there yet.

There are people who are filled with love and hope, and in the end I feel very strongly that love will triumph over all this darkness. Maybe I've read too many fairy tales, but that's what I believe. The strength and power in love is more powerful than hate, it's just easier to sink into hate when things feel dark.

Love. It's the order of the day.

Oh yeah, and GO STEELERS!

Fourteen

Today is my daughter's fourteenth birthday. I'd love to withhold the sappiness of saying, "It seems like yesterday that I held her in my arms, her static tufts of golden hair..." but it really does seem like that. The passage of time moves so quickly, and yet I feel blessed to have lived through every moment of it with her. I can still see the roundness of her bright face, the overwhelming smile that had the capacity to melt the heart. She had the most wonderful little voice when she learned how to speak, and if I close my eyes, I can still hear it.

She always loved to sing. I have videos of her from when she was three and four years old singing as though she was having a concert. I don't know how many times the bear went over the mountain before she finally felt like letting him see what he could see, but she would allow no one to tell her when it was time to go forward. "No, Mommy, I will do it!"

Those words, "No, Mommy, I will do it," soon followed questions like, "Do you want me to tie your shoes?" and "Let me pour you a drink." Before long it applied to "Do you want me to dial Grammy's phone number for you?" and "Can I make you some lunch?" Soon it'll be in response to things like, "Do you need a ride to the mall?" and "Do you want me to help you with your homework."

Her independence is liberating and exciting, while it simultaneously pokes me in the ribs with nostalgic despair. One day I hope she'll be a mother herself so she can understand and enjoy the kind of wonder children inspire. Pre-parenthood, we arrogantly think, "Ha! All those years I had to take lesson from them, now it's my turn to teach the lessons." In truth, I have learned more from her in the last fourteen years than I did during the twenty years that preceded her birth. I could be wrong, but I don't think you really understand how to love others unconditionally until you've had children. That compelling madness that forgives every wrong, the strength and ability to look beyond the mistakes and wrongdoings. There have been mothers who loved their children so much as to forgive them for crimes as dark and unforgivable as murder. Only a mother could love so deeply that she sees beyond the fatalist of flaws.

It's like we're blinded by them. By the notion that they once existed inside of us, as a part of us. That there was a time in their life that they were helpless and relied on us to care for them in every way. They don't remember that time in their life, of course, so when you yell at them for trying to roller skate across an icy parking lot, or for divebombing off of the bed and into nothing more than a highly stacked pile of laundry, they think you're insane.

Sometimes I can't believe it's already been fourteen years, but on the inside, I only hope that I am blessed enough to see the next fourteen years of her life, and the next fourteen after that (and the next fourteen after that...)

And for what it's worth, the fact that she still likes to play dress-up at fourteen is one of the most refreshing things in the world:

Hancock: A View on Relationships

Last night we sat down to watch the movie Hancock about the superhero gone wrong. I am writing this blog for those who have seen the film already and will probably mention things that may be considered spoilers to those who have not yet seen the film. Consider this fair warning not to read on, but feel free to return after you've seen the movie and let know what you think.

The concept of Gods evolving into angels and then becoming superheroes with the times was a fascinating view on mankind's inability to find the extraordinary amidst his own kind, but what really struck me was the commentary on relationships. This is my own personal interpretation, and not something I read elsewhere so it is riddled with speculation and opinion. I am not claiming that what I am about to discuss was in any way intended as a message by the writer or director of the film.

During the film Hancock becomes associated with a PR man named Ray and his family after saving he saves Ray's life. Upon meeting the Ray's wife, Mary, one gets the impression that Mary is somewhat disgusted by Hancock, and rightly so considering the lifestyle he's led. She warns her husband not to get involved with Hancock, but Ray has plans that he is sure will change the superhero's life and image.

After Hancock begins to turn himself around, he tells Mary and Ray his story. He woke up in a hospital with nothing but a pack of bubble gum and two movie tickets in his pocket. He'd had his skull cracked, and amnesia set in. Later the next day he discovers that Mary knew him at that time. She at first claims that she is his sister, but later she tells the truth. They were paired together. All of the gods were paired when they were born, but when drawn together they become mortal and die. Together they had survived more than three thousand years, and Mary had left him in the hospital that day so he could live.

After a showdown with the movie's bad guys, both Mary and Hancock are mortally wounded in the same hospital and the only way to save their lives is if they are separated. With every ounce of his being, Hancock flees the hospital, bringing Mary back to life and restoring both of their powers. They can only be immortal heroes when they are apart. Only by sacrificing their desire to be together can they function as heroes.

This made me think about how heavily many people in today's society rely on relationships. From the minute teenage girls enter into the fifth grade they are already planning out which boys they want to spend the rest of their lives with. Many graduate high school and enter into relationships immediately. Some wait until they finish college and enter the workforce, but it seems as if everyone is searching for their soulmate all the while.

Once the soulmate is found, many set aside dreams they once had and never pick them up again. They sacrifice their wings, or at least he dreams that once inspired their souls to fly, and sink into relationship mode. Soon there's a wedding, a house, possibly kids, a dog, a white picket fence... but no more dreaming. But what if we knew our soulmate was out there. Like a guarantee on the future we could set out to live our lives to the fullest potential unhindered by the restraints and confinements of love. Through sacrificing that bit of time with our soulmates, we would really find out who we are and what we are capable of becoming. We would get in touch with our true selves. There would be no fear of loneliness because we would entrust the universe to bring us together when the time was right.

Imagine if you managed to fulfill your plans and goals before settling into relationship mode. The wanderer would be quelled, the dreamer fulfilled. Wouldn't that time with our soulmates be all the more satisfying? There would be less divorce, less dissatisfaction with our relationships. In knowing ourselves fully, we would take the time to know our soulmates and there would be no strange surprises.

Maybe that's crazy. I know that I wouldn't give up my soulmate for anything. He's been my rock, my support system and my best friend through many long and difficult trials, but I know even he has wondered what wonders we might have achieved in this world if we had met after we'd had time to pursue the dreams that fueled our souls.

There are others who believe that without their soulmate they could not have gotten to the place they are today, or become the wonder they are now, and maybe that's possible too. Some of us need a boost, a little rocket-fuel to shoot us into the stars, and maybe the rocket fuel comes from the love and support of one's soulmate.

There's no way of knowing. If you've taken one path, you can only speculate what the outcome of the other might have been, but in the film the suggestion seemed to implicate that while they were soulmates, they were more valuable to the world if they were apart and focusing their energy on mending the world and its people.

Probably nonsense, but it was a nice bite of food for thought while I was in the bath tonight.