First Six Books This Year

I am reading these as the year gets underway:

Descartes' Error (Damasio)  This book corrects the science behind the notion that rationality is free of emotion. In fact, emotions are as deeply embedded in our brain centers for making decisions as is our sense of logical reasoning.

How I Killed Pluto (M. Brown) My son gave me this one, by the astronomer who discovered the tenth "planet," and then downgraded both it and the 9th to something less than a planet.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (Larsson) I normally seem to avoid best-sellers, but this one I will read to get a better feel for plot through character.

The Lost Symbol (D. Brown) Ditto, but especially for the plot. This book broke every record for digital downloads for eBooks.

Kafka on the Shore (Murakami) The first of two I will re-read, mainly because he is the master, and I can never get enough of his wisdom.

Norwegian Wood (Murakami) This one is now released as a film that will make it to our shores eventually. I want to re-read the book before going to see the film.

***

On thing I want to do with this blog in this new year is to write more about ideas, especially those ideas that enter our culture through books. And with every book I am trying to imporve as a writer myself.

We learn a lot from each other. Some writers are great with dialogue, others with character, still others with plot, and some transcend categories and are just plain good at everything. As I transition some of my writing to fiction this year, I am in a serious student mode. Whatever these writers have to teach, I want to learn.

No doubt I'll be sharing insights in the coming weeks from these six. By then, another pile of books will await me.

Happy reading to you in 2011!

-30-

The Reasons Why

There's no reason to prolong a decision once you know it's the right thing to do. Over the past 24 hours, I have come to understand why this blog has to continue. I did suspend it at midnight, just as I had intended to do, but by this morning I knew that I had more to say.

This blog is and always has been primarily about hope. There has been a bunch of adversity to work through and I won't pretend I'm at my best right now. But, as a writer, I hold myself accountable for the effects my words have on others.

It isn't good enough to just write with emotional honesty; sometimes discretion is required, because one person's pain may represent another person's burden.

Most of us want to see those we have cared  for thrive in the future, even after they disappear from our immediate lives. I do.

So this blog continues; I'll continue to work through whatever subjects present themselves. Thank you to those who have encouraged me in this project. Thank you to everyone who reads it.

It's the first day of a new decade. We have the opportunity to reinvent ourselves once more. Some of us need to reinvent ourselves because the status quo is not a sustainable option.

The other day, walking along a mountain path, I came upon this little tree establishing itself in the dirt at the edge of the path.

I looked at it. I photographed it. And I thought if that little thing has the fortitude to push itself up and into view as if to say, "Look, I'm here," then I should too.

-30-

Happy New Year

May everyone's path ahead be bright with hope.

-30-

D Minus 1

Sometimes there is no option but to try and write your way out of it. So I'm now officially prevaricating about ending this blog. A big reason is you, dear reader. I've heard from people I didn't even know read my words who say they get something out of them. And that has an impact on me.

One way or another, I'll decide by tomorrow. For today, I'm still here and so is this year. It is a year that started out okay but went downhill fast. Like many journalists, I've struggled with the worst job market of my career. So many journalists have left the trade that it's a safe bet more are unemployed than employed.

But it isn't in the professional realm that my year was won or lost. Today, as the year ends, I need to close a chapter on how I feel about somebody special. Despite all that has happened, this is a love story, pure and simple. And also tragic, like many, though not all love stories.

She met me through my words, right here on this blog. Before we ever met in person, she knew me through my writing. In that way, our relationship was perfect. I tried my best to write in an emotionally honest way and someone else found that appealing enough to fall in love with me.

Over the next four years, she did more wonderful things for me than anyone deserves -- she refurnished my shabby apartment, helped me learn how to live more frugally, and nursed me to health when I was ill.

She joined my family, getting to know all of my children, who all came to love her.

There's more about love that we will never know than what I or anyone else can describe. How we fall, why we fall, both into and out of love.

Her dreams were special, but not all of them proved to be realistic. For a long time, I encouraged her to write a book she was working on. To this day I believe if she wrote it it would be a best-seller.

But she abandoned that project, and I'm not sure why. Every month, for one of her assignments, she had to collect American sayings, such as "that's the way the cookie crumbles," etc., cliches. I proved to be very good at providing her ten or fifteen of those every time she asked me.

She also loved to travel and we took many great trips together -- to Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon, Death Valley, New York, Vancouver, Tokyo, Hakune, and many, many other places. Sometimes we would just drive around the Bay Area, staying in towns on its outer edges, while she practiced learning how to drive.

The day she earned her driver's license was a happy one in our family. My youngest child made a congratulations sign and put it on our front door.

***

We loved to discover new diners and cafes that serve good, cheap meals, and we found a bunch that -- even after decades here -- I'd never before visited. When I go back to them now, it is always with a heavy heart.

She is a very quiet person, reserved, somewhat shy, and she says she needs a lot of time to be alone and quiet. At first, I was too noisy around her, but with time, I quieted down as well.

She taught me so many things about food and cooking that it is hard for me to go into my kitchen now without remembering one of her tips.

It would be hard to find a kinder, more compassionate heart. Her empathy for me -- and the struggles of being a single parent in a bad economy, aging and worried about the financial havoc created by a bad economy and unfortunate events like an IRS audit -- literally got me through. I never could have survived some of these challenges on my own.

I know that now.

Since she's been gone, my entire world has grown colder, darker, and much, much lonelier.

You never can tell the people you love what they mean to you too many times. I know I tried to tell her over and over but somehow I must not have done it enough.

And that is how this year ends.

-30-

Beats Go On; Why Not You?

The view from there, three days before one man's hopes were shattered. Funny how that goes. You can be sitting, staring into space, thinking of somebody special and what you want to tell her, and an image begins to form of a house partway up a hill where you both may live.

But this is dangerous thinking, a therapist friend told me. She also said "you can give too much of yourself away."

As this year, and this decade, crawl away into history's morbid shadows, I'm filled with gratitude, as always, for all I have, and deep sadness for what has been taken from me. A friend points to a picture -- that should be you, the friend says, but it quite clearly isn't you.

The reason your friend had to bring this to your attention is that you've been too depressed to look for yourself. You didn't want to know.

But we live in an era where there are no secrets -- everybody shares everything -- so of course this perfidious evidence exists, and has existed since the very moment, three days after the photo above was snapped, for you or anyone to see, had you wanted to.

You still don't want to, you turn your head away, but your friend is insistent. You turn instead to look at her face, reflecting her deep concern for your welfare.

"You haven't been out for weeks," she says. Her lovely eyes and long hair, black as Michigan dirt, complement her round face, her prominent lips, her red cheeks.  Not to mention her tiny, 5'2" frame, clothed this time in jeans and a tight-fitting, low-cut T-shirt and red tennis shoes.

She is a baby compared to you, with many decades ahead to learn the lessons you are reeling under, should she survive that long. She's a smoker, of both types of the smokes available around here, so you often remind her that her time might prove to be much more limited than it could have been otherwise.

She just smiles, shrugs, and pokes you in the ribs: "So I can grow old and be lonely like you, Mister Giveaway Man?"

She gave you this nickname because (like that therapist) she thinks you are always giving yourself away to people -- to the point that pretty soon there won't be anything left to give...but what does she know?

"C'mon," she says, grabbing you by the hand. "Let's go back to the studio."

Inside the cramped, cold space under a freeway, the band is cutting its latest CD. You've both been hanging out here off and on for days. Those that drink have been drinking; those that smoke have been doing that. The sweet smell of 420 hangs over the place, and you squint to see the lead singer as he twirls your lyrics into their latest sequence: "I'm okay, every day, I'm just fine, most all the time, but then comes night, and all of a sudden I'm just not right..."

So few people know of your second career or your third; you've kept too many secrets all of these years. It's ironic, isn't it, that this willowy little girl knows more about you as a songwriter than your closest friends or family members?

As the drummer steps up the beat, she begins to dance, twirling around and gyrating, her smile getting bigger and her body enticing you to join her.

Okay, here you go. You've always been a good dancer -- that's what the ladies say -- but if it's true it's only because you feel the music as it passes through you like electricity.  In an instant, you're back in Chicago, then Nashville, then Miami, then L.A.

So many songs, so many singers, and the royalties, all filed under a pseudonym, adding up bit by bit into a tiny fortune that you'll be able to leave to -- who, exactly?

***

You've always accepted change, including in your personal affairs. "People fall out of love," one of those you loved the most once told you.

Thinking back to the photo your little dancing friend has forced you to view, you suddenly realize that that is what must have happened here, right?

Otherwise, why so quickly after leaving your embrace was she so obviously and publicly in this new man's arms? Who is he anyway? Why does his face have such a nasty expression?

"Hey, Mister Giveaway Man, where you goin'? Your little friend is stoned and twirling farther and farther away from your perch on a barstool, here where there is no bar.

You think back to a place much like this long ago. The smoke choked the room then like it does now. The music? The blues, in the Village, a long time back.

Only one other person knows about this story. She went there with you, to listen to a legend. Afterwards, you handed him a slip of paper with some words scribbled on it.

The royalties from that one have never amounted to much but you still like their ring:

Now I see you,
Now I don't.
Now I love you,
Now I won't.
Take it with you,
When you go.
Day will come,
You'll miss me so...

On and on. Songs of love, love lost, betrayal, the pain of having your heart cut in two. There's a song, one you did not write, that claims that the "first cut is the deepest."

But that's only a song. The worst cut, much much worst, is the last one, the one that leaves you to bleed to death just outside of the light where the music is playing, your friend is dancing, the smoke is rising, the beat is building, life is being lived, all except for yours.

-30-

Secrets

Look up, look up, the sky is open.

Look down, look down, your footsteps leave no trace here.

Under cover of darkness, all manner of secrets find refuge.

In distant places, new thoughts take root, and old stories find new chapters. Driving through the rain, threading your way between two huge tractor-trailers, the image forms of what would happen if you slipped a bit left or a bit right. Sudden demolition of all that has been. A release.

How did it happen? the voices would ask, but they would be too late.

***

Back in the City, walking alone until suddenly you have a companion. Where did you come from? Is this a dream?

Is anyone watching us? Does anyone know you're here? The rain closes around you protectively, keeping all the rest of the world at length. This is your place, just you two, making amends.

***

"This never happened," she breathes into your ear, stepping on her tip-toes to do so.

***

Once a writer poured his heart out, not onto paper but into cyberspace, a keystroke at a time. There is nothing remarkable about this; people post to blogs all the time, and much of the content is so intensely personal that it strains credulity.

But now I must return to being simply a journalist, just recounting the facts.  Even I have trouble accepting what I am about to divulge.

How can it be that a man can be alone in his house, writing, when he suddenly senses a new presence? Someone new is listening; she may be close or she may be far away, but she is there, he knows it.

Suddenly it is as if an invisible presence has taken over his hands, his fingers, willing him to say things he otherwise might not have said, not like this, not here, not now.

It's a spooky sensation, as if he, the writer, no longer controls his story. Then again, maybe that isn't so strange; writers often don't know where their writing is going until it gets there.

Still, this time is special. His unseen visitor is encouraging the words to tumble out of him. "Tell me, I'm listening," she whispers on the eastern wind. "Do not fear, I will appear in the flesh," she whispers from the west.

He looks up, he looks down. There is nothing, not even a shadow.

But the words begin.

"I'm sharing my secrets with only you. I know you are there, reading them, reading me. You see me as no one else has ever seen me."

He waits for her answer. It comes in the form of a whisper from the north: "I know, I know. Just keep telling me. I'm waiting."

"Okay, this is making me feel odd but I'll do it. What else do I have left to lose? I've already lost everything my heart held dear -- a sweet loving partner whose eyes looked upon me with kindness, whose lips met mine in long embraces as our arms held each other in an embrace that neither wanted to ever end...But it did. End, that is. She had to go, I don't know why. Maybe she told me, maybe not. I've searched back through everything, but the evidence, if it exists, has vanished, just like her."

"What was she like?" comes the breath from the south. "I'm here, all around you, just let it flow."

"Okay, okay. She was like a feather floating in on an unseen breeze. Her eyes big as moons but dark as the night, hiding as much as they show. Her tongue soft and wet; her hands soft and warm. She folded into me like my long-lost other half; we kept each other warm when the air grew cold."

"Yes, that's good. Tell me more."

"O-o-okay. I liked to run my hands over her; first her face. I would cup her cheeks in my hands as I kissed her lips. Then, very softly, I would stroke her arms, so soft, so warm, so small compared to mine. In fact, the all of her was so much smaller than me, I could pick her up off of her feet and swing her about like a child."

"That must have been fun."

"Once I did this in front of her friend, who was shocked. She wasn't accustomed to see her swept up by someone much bigger and stronger that way. We were on a sidewalk in a strange city, outside a car. We were saying goodbye or maybe hello, I don't remember now."

"Keep telling me."

"Then...It was a summer night, we were in a cafe. I was looking at her and she was looking at me. Somehow we both knew this would be the night. As I walked her back toward her place, my arm was around her waist and hers was around mine. I felt my excitement grow, there's no other way to put it. I said, 'let's take a drive," and she readily agreed. Up, up we drove -- to the highest place in the city. It was a beautiful night..."

"What did you do up there?" The whisper now has become ever so slightly constrained.

"Um, well, I don't want to say that now, not here, not out loud."

"Then come here and whisper in my ear -- I'll hear but no one else will discover your secret."

And so he did.  Now, just the two of them know.

***

The rains pounded down that night. Propelled outdoors by some unknown force, he forced himself to walk to the appointed place, appointed by whom? How did he knew to go here?

Our rendezvous. After all that's transpired between them, maybe it is not so surprising.

As she caught up to him, the rain stopped, or at least it seemed that way. Just the two of them standing alone in the dark, outside of a darkened building where no one suspected what was happening below.

"I've been listening all the while," she started. "I knew now was the moment to come to you. It's just that simple. I'm here, just for now, maybe for the last time, I don't know."

Now she had become the one racked with uncertainty.

"But, but, I thought you were with..."

"Shhhh," she pressed a hand to his lips. "Don't ask any questions. This will all become clear to you later on."

But, his mind raced: How to account for these things -- is this a new betrayal, now of someone else, or just the righting of a balance between the true two?

Next, a kiss that lingers. Does it matter whether anyone saw us?

Who knows what's right any more at the beginning of a night that never happened. The rains definitely returned, of that much he is sure, but where they lay,  it somehow remained dry and warm.

And nobody saw. So nobody knows.

-30-

Sweet Love Stories.2 (Fluffy Cats)

Here is another in my series of posts from the past. This first appeared on August 10, 2006.



Last night was hot in the city. You could sit out on your back balcony in a t-shirt, talking and laughing into the night, as we did. It felt magical.

To me, finding love always feels like magic. I never expect it. When it happens, the world stops turning while I start spinning out of control. She and I stay up all night; we can't get enough of each other. Just looking at one another brings a smile to both of our faces.

At the same time, this is so difficult you both start to feel physically sick. It upsets your balance; you feel out of control.

But I like that feeling. Everything is intensified, agitated, hyper-sensitive.

There's a lovely soft water color painting posted at the top of this blog. It's called "Fluffy cats." These soft, simple brush strokes capture the feel of new love...

-30-

Those Shadows on Your Face

Winter storms batter much of this country, recalling my younger self just outside of Detroit decades ago, nose pressed against one side of the window while snowflakes pressed against the other.

Magic, for me, was learning that no two snowflakes are the same. This happened at a young age, maybe four or so. Of course, no two people are the same, either, not even "identical" twins, as science has instructed us, though they probably come as close as any to this odd ideal.

Why odd? Well, the better we get to know ourselves during life's strange odessey, it's rather frightening to imagine that there could be another soul, somewhere in a parallel universe, breathing in and out, laughing and crying the same way we do, no?

For my part, I wouldn't wish my consciousness on any other soul, and I do not mean that to reflect badly on me or on him. It's just that I don't like thinking that someone else could travel these pathways, unknown to me. For if he did, I wish he would give me some help here.

***

New lovers see us in a different way -- that is part of their appeal. Old lovers know us well and sometimes stop seeing us at all -- that is part of their problem. Humans are restless by nature, even when we deny it, we are looking with at least one eye over the horizon, wondering what might await us there.

I was thinking about all of this today as I drove alone along a long highway, something I intend to do a lot in the coming weeks and months. A casual reader of my posts might see me as a man who feels sad at losing his lover. That would be partly true, but it wouldn't capture more than a small percentage of my current state.

I'm also a free bird, unencumbered by any woman's claims, or for that matter, any employer's restrictions. In fact, no one can tell me what to do, whom to do it with, where to go, or how to get there.

Since that is my truth, I'm starting to think that I may not close out this blog after all.

Or I might.

But what's the difference? Either way, I'm no longer looking at another's face, however lovely. Therefore, I'm no longer responsible for helping to make the shadows go away for her.

That is someone else's problem.

Meanwhile, nobody is looking at my face, either. Therefore, I am nobody's problem but my own.

-30-

What Only Remains

Just the little things. They're all that's left now. And the memories that jump up and bite you anywhere, anytime.

You did so many things together; how cruel is fate that only you now remember in pain, whereas she bounces happily through her new life, trampling all that passed between you as if none of it ever happened -- or rather as if it were not sacred ground but merely dirt, at last.

That's how it is with new love. You have to self-censor a lot, lest the new partner discover how many memories of your ex- still haunt your current experiences together, for now. Not forever, you hope, though you can't be sure. Just once or twice going to the same places, doing the same things, but now with your new love, and the connections to the old will wither away like dried fruit, hanging onto winter's naked branches, off-gassing.

Yes, you have to tell lies, even if only of omission. Funny thing is there is someone who knows all of this and that is your ex-. The new love never will know what he doesn't know, which may be for the best for all concerned. But, oh, what an encyclopedia of detail could be disclosed by the one left behind!

Little things, almost invisible to the untrained eye, and so unexpected.

Even this forgettable street in a distant place, named with only the first letter of her name. You walked it again, realizing as you did so that the only other time on this earth you did so, she was at your side.

Your hand curled around her waist; you two took your time. It all comes back to you now. It was a warm season then; now it is bitter cold. You were together then, innocent of what was soon come to pass; now, you are more alone than if she had died.

The same route to the same store, crossing the street with the first letter of her name as its name at the same place you crossed it with her -- jaywalked it actually. She would remember none of this; it is so trivial that you probably wouldn't either, except memories are all you have left now, so your brain, from its emotional storehouse, conjures them one by one, forcing you to relive your times together, now with a searching mind.

When did you begin to lose her? How much was she really yours on that other time together on this street, not very long ago in the scheme of things? What force was already at work within her that she could leave you barely weeks later and immediately fall for someone new? What kind of signs did you miss? What was it that you could have stopped if only you'd known? What could you have said to reassure her, to prevent all of this horror?

Your memory traces the path to the store -- yes, you both stepped here, between that plant and that young tree, then followed that walkway. Then, as now, there was a girl outside smoking, perhaps the same clerk on her same break, who knows?

In the same door, down the same aisles, maybe you even bought the same item, but your body memory cares nothing about that detail.

As you retrace your steps out of the store and back to the street and on to your destination, she is silently by your side. Her hand is now around your waist, she is smiling and telling you a story.

It is a story about love -- you both talked a lot about love for four years together -- and about how a woman from far away came to these shores and met a man here and came to love him and they built a life together and now they would grow old together.

It was a very satisfying story, you smile at the memory.

But there's only one problem.

It wasn't a true story. All that remains is the dirt beneath your shoes.

-30-

Mountain Road Trip

On the road again...

Toward the snow, heading east.

You met the most interesting man in the world.

Roadside cafes have always been among your favorites -- you'd like this one, probably, but it was closed.

But this one wasn't (closed).

Out to the apple farm.

The only thing better would to be able to do it together. But those days are gone, never to return.

It's like the highway ahead when you are running away from life's unbearable truths. You can never turn back, eh?

-30-

Case File of Patient X

Sobering news from one of the most eminent thinkers in Neuroscience, Neurology, and Psychology, Antonio Damasio: "One can die of a broken heart."

I came across this in my research for a project based partially in the best neuroscience I could find, from one of the greatest writers in the field.

Damasio is credited with finally persuading scientists that the historical presumption of duality between thinking and emotions is not supported by the evidence; in fact, the two are inextricably intertwined in our brain matter.

Both are equally necessary for our survival.

There are many problems a person has to overcome when dealing with profound losses such as the death of a loved one or an emotional breakup for which (s)he was not prepared. These problems are magnified when the dying (or leaving) person does not or cannot help prepare the one left behind for the difficult transition ahead.

I leafed through a novel by a Chinese woman the other day who described the "final gift" from her mother as demonstrating the "way to die."

In today's world of social media, those breaking up need to be cognizant of how much damage they may do to the one left behind. One way is simply by openly expressing their new happiness, which only deepens the pain they inflict on someone still in love with them.

Of course, anyone with a big heart wants their ex- to be happy ultimately. But when you are still in so much pain that you catch your chest and have trouble breathing, to be assaulted by the new lightness and sweetness of freedom, new love, and happiness that you don't have -- but she does, purportedly -- when she is the proximate cause of your not having them, is actually more than any normally sane and emotionally balanced person can handle.

It actually is.

This is how one becomes ill, often gravely ill, and in the worst case, dies.

Damasio does a brilliant job of eliminating our misconceptions about the interplay between what we often separate out as the "heart" from the "brain." Being very, very smart is no insulation whatsoever from the "heart" pain you feel during grief. In fact, it makes things much worse, because your perception, newly poisoned with the sensitivity of bruised emotions, goes haywire.

You are prone to do things you never would have done -- mainly self-destructive things. You will push away friends and family, mess up any semblance of an organized life, and spin out of control.

All of this is written in our brain tissue, fired by our synapses, finally anchored, dangerously, in our hearts. This is how one dies, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly, bit by bit.

Can fate be avoided? Of course, normally we forge our own path to recovery. All of us works hard at this, no rational being wants to wallow in pain. There is no time for it in this brief existence. So we try to "process," we try to promote the "grieving process."

But this does not lessen the harm in every case. That depends on the circumstances.

What makes this worse for artists is what happens to your creativity. There are survivable traumas, and unsurvivable ones, just as in automobile accidents -- or perhaps a better analogy in this case would be plane crashes.

In the best case scenario, the writer or artist survives the shock and acquires new power from the loss that they can use to strengthen their work, and make it more universally relevant. No artist wants to be seen as self-absorbed; that is almost the worst insult one can hurl in times of pain -- even when the person uttering it is, in actuality, revealing and voicing a projection from her own guilty conscience.

Because there is, in fact, a worst case scenario, and that is the one Damasio documented.

-30-

A New Heart

One of my grandsons has a hole-punch that punches out hearts. He gave me this one, saying I can have it "forever."

I told him that was good, because as it turns out, the other heart I have is broken.

"Your heart is broken? Then you can use this one instead."

I wonder whether it works like that. Guess I'll keep it with me to find out...
-30-

Painting Bird Houses

Cousins working on a present from Grandpa. A rainstorm swept from the coast to the mountains, drenching this place along the way. Inside, there were plenty of diversions.

-30-