Winning Streaks Are Nice to Have

With his clipboard, whistle, and red coach's cap, he walked behind the line of girls on his team as they greeted the team they had just beaten, 1-0, a few blocks from the Pacific Ocean in the late afternoon sun.

He's quietly, calmly, and steadily building them into a team of winners.

He has gotten these girls' attention, which means they can learn from him both how to win -- and to lose -- games.

In sports, somewhat more dramatically but far less painfully than in real life, you learn what it means to lose, with lots of short-term pain involved. You also learn the joy of winning, which also turns out to bring a relatively brief sense of ecstasy.

No matter what happens, from the coaching perspective, there is the next game to prepare for. So what you are really teaching is persistence, improvement, resilience.

-30-

In a Nutshell

I'm not sure when I've seen tomato plants go this crazy before -- they've soared into giant bushes, although they are bearing very little fruit.

It's the weekend. Watching my young coach work with his team tonight, several other parents and I agreed he seems to know what he is doing.

The team is 2-1 with their fourth game tomorrow in Golden Gate Park. Problem is this is a huge free concert weekend and the area will be clogged with people and cars.

Beyond logistics, it should be another good game, after their 1-0, 1-2 and 2-0 contests.

He also played two games himself this week; his team is 6-3, one point out of the playoff race with seven games to go.

Whenever the rest of life becomes almost too much to bear (which was the case at times this week for me), I turn to my kids and their soccer, their homework, and their needs that I can supply -- food, clothes, drives, and so on.

It sounds mundane, and much of parenting is indeed mundane.

There isn't a lot of excitement in my life and hasn't been for a while now. I write every day, working hard for my two clients and filing my professional blog posts.

And I parent.

That's it. That's the sum of my life.

Or not.

There is much more, of course, including all that must remain secret, but for that part of the story I would have to switch over to the realm of fiction.

-30-

Bob Dylan, Merle Haggard and Willie Nelson

Two Apples Can't Make Love, Sorry

What I like about photography is the unexpected. If you shoot lots of pictures, as I do, sometimes you get a surprise. I wasn't trying to capture apples, actually.

It's the same with words. You don't always know what you might be able to do with words when you're writing them. First, you don't know who will read them. Second, you don't know what they will draw from them if they do read them. Third, you don't know, really, what you want to happen.

It is an act of faith every single time that you write, especially in this era, with blogging. For all we know, this will turn out to have been an interlude, and blogs will be replaced with other forms -- if so, hopefully more lucrative, which would not be difficult when your financial reward is precisely...zero.

But the emotional reward can be significant from writing, on blogs or elsewhere. Just knowing that your words touch somebody, move them, brighten their day, is magic.

Most of my career I was an investigative reporter. In that phase, my words were more likely to wound or injure than to inspire or heal. I still have the capability to act as an investigator. Once you acquire that skill set, you never really lose it.

Investigators can find out pretty much anything we what to find out about anybody anywhere -- except, of course, what matters most.

Because no amount of investigative reporting will ever reveal the inner secrets of the human heart or untangle the web of human emotions.

You can gather all of the facts you may wish but they do not add up to a narrative. They do not add up to a story. And most certainly, they will never add up to the ultimate, which would be a love story.

-30-

Letter to Someone

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 death = release.


How did it happen? The voices would ask.



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 tiptoes 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 would freak us all out if we decided to listen.


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, just as you are now.



Suddenly it is as if this 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 was 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."



Her eyes big as moons but dark as the night, hiding as much as they show. 

But nobody saw. So nobody knows.