December 23 2023
It’s alright to be lonely. There’s nothing to fix, nothing wrong. There is no evil to combat. No drink is needed to numb and escape.
It’s alright to have unmet desire. The ache is neither good nor bad; it merely is. Maybe it holds hands with good.
There’s nothing that needs to be filled. The canyon does not require a bridge.
Sanity is being able to be in want and simultaneously know nothing needs to be done. There we are held. There we discover we are never alone. What a gift it is to feel anything at all.
December 22 2023
Laying in bed next to me, head on my chest, my 5 year old asked me, “Dad, when am I going to die?”
“Oh my boy, my boy, my boy. You and your brother will live forever, through time and past time, under and around it. You will slay countless dragons and hike though thousands of forests. You’ll meet dwarfs and witches and giants and magicians. You, my big man, are at the beginning of forever.”
He asked me a grandiose question and I reply with the same energy. It’s not that he isn’t ready for conversations about mortality — readiness isn’t the point — what I think he’s asking in part is “Am I safe?”
He both is and is not safe, so I convey that concept through story. But if I say “You are and you are not safe,” then I’ve done the same thing as if I said, “Yes, one day you will die.”
Is it true that he’ll die? I think so, yes. Is it true for him? It’s not. For instance, even though he helped shovel soil onto our dog’s body in our backyard after Jack died, both boys often say they saw Jack running beside the car, or that Jack is now in the body of another animal.
Both boys have a sense of eternity, renewal, foreverness. To them, everything is enormous. Adults are giants. The world is endless. The universe is growing.
They are teaching me to live in that space far more than I am teaching them.
December 15 2023
There are a lot of angry men. Some are angry at women, some at culture, the news, some at their bosses, politicians, some at their spouses or kids. They might listen to Joe Rogan or Andrew Tate, a voice from that camp. Others might be quiet, removed.
Kindly I’ll say why don’t you go back to Ohio and confront your father, or go to his grave and get after him there? Boy do they ever not want to do that. They want their rage, and taking it to the father requires them to act and maybe lose something. They stare past me, into a landscape on fire, shaking their heads.
It’s not about throwing the father under the bus. He’s already been there for a thousand years.
Maybe crawl under a tire next to him. Tell him I hate you I love you thank you I’m sorry I forgive you. You don’t even have to mean it! Just dip your toe in that river. See what happens.
December 14 2023
They want to be held.
The younger one seeks it out. He comes to find me, in my chair or on my bed or at the stove. If he’s not at my side I know soon enough I’ll hear quick footsteps on the hardwood floor grow from faint to loud, then there he is.
The older waits for it. He will stay wherever he is — reading on his bed, drawing at the kitchen table, popcorn and a show on the couch, for hours. When I go and sit next to him he wraps his arms around me tight and says, “Where were you? I missed you.”
I need to keep these two moves in mind: receive and go towards. A third move: teach them to do the same. That’s the work.
December 13 2023
When teaching my sons (5yo & 8yo) about any larger concept, sex or death or betrayal or that one day they will have to leave me and their mother to become their own men — if I tell them about these things in a flat tone, or if I am direct and dry in my language, they shut down. I have seen them become guarded. This often leads to never telling them what they need to learn in bits and pieces over time. But if I walk into those concepts by beginning with the words, “Once upon a time there was a king and a queen in a castle near a great woods, and that king and queen had a son….” — my boys light up because the playing field has been leveled. It’s no longer dad talking. It’s generations. It’s our ancestors. It’s mystery. They don’t put that language to it, but they know it’s not simply me. By using story I can tell them about absolutely anything, and they are enthralled.
December 10 2023
Before any religions made their holy books, before verses and chapters and surahs and ayahs and sections and poems, there was earth — the original text. Who we are, why we are, what we are, all surrounds us in living stories of life, death, renewal, love, protection, battle, nurturance, scent, texture. What do you see, my boys? Who are we? What is all of this, and why? What is the Source, the Mystery, the Face? They don’t hesitate. They don’t ponder and articulate. There’s nothing to say. They only smile and run.
December 9 2023
My tracks in the mud will rise, covered by leaves, soaked with water, the imprinted earth will recover into smooth ground. No one will know I’ve been here. Seeds I plant will bud, grow, die, bud, grow, die, forever. No one will know I’ve been here. Love has been given to me, swirls around, goes out of me in a me form, into you, swirls in you making a you form, into another, forever. Light from the beginning or the end or underneath or around enters our atmosphere, hits my skin, warms me, some of it reflects off of my eyes, goes back out of the atmosphere into the beginning or the end or underneath or around, forever. No one will know I’ve been here. I heard words, received teachings, worked with my hands, have these two beautiful beautiful beautiful beautiful boys who are not mine but are gifts, tell them words, teach them, watch them work with their hands, maybe have their own kids. Forever. No one will know I’ve been here. This is all such a joy.
December 8 2023
I made a coffee table for me and the boys. I moved into this apartment with them a little over a year ago, and it only took me that long to get a proper table for us. There's no sarcasm in that – a year isn't bad for a personal project that isn't pressing. Up until now we've been using a bench I made as a stand-in. It served us well. Now that bench is used for butts and not for books and bowls.
Started with a piece of walnut I’ve had for a few years, the end of a slab that was a drop, or a cut-off piece, from a previous project. I've always imagined I would use it for a coffee table, but you never know. The board was leaning against a wall thinking about what it wanted to be.
I didn't draw out any specs or have a design in mind. Instead I simply made moves as they felt right, a sort of woodworking jazz. Walnut sings as a material. It doesn't need any ornamentation. I prefer to integrate all of the checks and cracks as opposed to filling them with epoxy. One of the reason to either fill a crack or put an inlay in a crack is to prevent the board from cracking further over the years as the wood expands and contracts during seasonal changes. I'm ok with it cracking further, and I doubt that it will crack enough in my lifetime to lose structural integrity. It'll be fine.
After I made the cuts to the board the shape ended up looking like some kind of shield or amoeba. I knew I wanted to funk around with the base of the table – not too loud to where it drowns out the table top, and not too quiet to where it feels boring or nonexistent. There's no right or wrong move.
My neighbor across the alley was doing some home renovations and he removed some copper piping from his basement and asked if I could use it. This was, I don't know, last spring. Yes I will take all of your copper. Copper is a great material. Give it a hundred years outside and it will transition to a green color. Old urban church roofs were sometimes clad in copper, and because they get rained on they oxidize over time and turn green. It's amazing.
So I like copper. These legs won't turn green, but they have a great patina from being in a basement for probably 60 years. I didn't do anything to the legs except cut them to length and deburr the edges so they wouldn't catch on the rug. I made plugs from plywood and hammered them into the legs using only a friction fit. This will allow me to add furniture glides if I ever need to.
Before I made the holes for the legs I placed them in various orientations and numbers until I found a look and feel that resonated. Who know how all this works, or if it works. The freedom is part of the fun. I ended up using all 9 pieces. It doesn't feel too busy to me, but I did think during the process, "Well I'm not making the vacuuming process easy for myself." So it goes.
I used epoxy to set the legs into the bottom of the table top then touched up the lengths of the legs so that they are generally equal. Last move was to oil the top and let it cure. The process took me a day but also took me 6 years of doing this kind of work and acquiring tools and expanding my aesthetics, curiosities, and a sort of courage to be weird with it to be able to do it in a day. It feels freeing. Make a move, make another move, consider those moves, go backwards or forwards or sideways, turn it around, talk to it, send it to friends, tell it a story, listen, make more moves, see what happens.
That's one way to make a thing.
December 7 2023
The Return
Some day, if you are lucky,
you'll return from a thunderous journey
trailing snake scales, wing fragments
and the musk of Earth and moon.
Eyes will examine you for signs of damage,
or change and you, too, will wonder
if your skin shows traces of fur, or leaves
if thrushes have built a nest of your hair,
if Andromeda burns from your eyes.
Do not be surprised by prickly questions
from those who barely inhabit their own fleeting lives,
who barely taste their own possibility, who barely dream.
If your hands are empty, treasureless
if your toes have not grown claws,
if your obedient voice has not become a wild cry, a howl,
you will reassure them. We warned you, they might declare,
there is nothing else, no point, no meaning,
no mystery at all, just this frantic waiting to die.
And yet, they tremble, mute, afraid you've returned
without sweet elixir for unspeakable thirst, without a fluent dance
or holy language to teach them, without a compass
bearing to a forgotten border where no one crosses
without weeping for the terrible beauty of galaxies
and granite and bone.
They tremble, hoping your lips hold a secret,
that the song your body now sings will redeem them,
yet they fear your secret is dangerous, shattering,
and once it flies from your astonished mouth,
they-like you-must disintegrate
before unfolding tremulous wings.
- Geneen Marie Haugen
(My worst best friend Jeffrey sent me that.)
December 6 2023
“His father seemed to hear voices from far out in the night. He is described as a listener who encouraged. When William was nine or ten, his father, walking with him in his alert, bird-glimpsing way, remarked, ‘Now Billy, look carefully in these trees—you may be able to see the hawk better than I can.’ That's astonishing in this world where so many fathers compete with their sons: ‘Give me that wrench …you're ruining everything.’”
— Robert Bly writing about the poet William Stafford and Stafford’s relationship with his father (from the introduction to Stafford’s book of poetry “The Darkness Around Us is Deep”)
November 23 2023
Mythologically, historically, things fall apart for men at around 40. Could be 33 or 37 or 45. I don’t know when it is or if it is for women. Could it be that because women know what it means to bleed and to lose something of themselves from the time of puberty that they intrinsically know what death means in their bodies, over and over, rhythmically (the word -flow- here holds a poetic sense), and because of this knowing they don’t fall apart, a big death, like men do sometime near middle life?
This is a thinking that goes back to forever. Nothing is new except the shaping and molding of forms.
This falling apart for men needs a name. It needs to be named. It doesn't have a single name. I don't like "mid-life crisis"; it is a tame, domesticated. That won't do at all.
You have to listen for its name or name it yourself or give it a name others have given it before you. Let it go unnamed and it becomes far more dangerous. You can spot when a man has gone through a big death and not found its name. That man goes out and buys a car. That man dates someone and you think, “Dude. Come on.” That man gets a gym membership and tries to get his body to go back in time, become a boy again. He doesn't know he's still a boy. He could have saved so much money! (As I type the thought came to me "maybe I should get a gym membership".) Watch out for that man. Wish him well, hope for him, but stay out of his path. There is a trail of blood behind him and a trail of blood in front of him.
When you do not listen for the name of a big death then you are never able to sit in it and submit to it and let go of the control you thought you had. You will try to overpower it and you'll lose, but not by your own submission; it will slowly destroy you until your final breath.
Listen for the name and be crushed by it. Find out its name and discover that, while it is more powerful than you, it does not define you. It will not hold you down forever if you allow yourself to be held down now. The more you let go, the more it lets go, almost as if you are partnering with it, dancing with it, maybe even thankful for it.
The man who has submitted to that death – behind that man are footprints of ashes instead of blood. He accepted the poverty. Keep an eye on him and watch him fly. Nothing will stop him because he no longer needs to go anywhere. How can you be stopped if you do not need to move? He has everything he needs, wherever he is. When he does move it is in complete freedom. The ashes in his footprints nurture and rejuvenate the soil with every single step, depositing minerals back into the earth that would have otherwise taken decades to decay and decompose.
I know some of those men. They are amazing.
November 20 2023
No need to tell me about your successes. You’ll bring them up naturally, without knowing it. So will I. Do tell me about your disasters; those are always helpful. The ruined places are where we learn about each other. Tell me where you went down in flames, where you laid or are still lying in ashes. Now this is a dangerous telling, so be a good editor of your stories. Do not lie. People can smell the stench of falsehoods. Instead choose the truths to expose, and allow them to be spoken in time, sand falling in an hour glass. Break the glass and the sand buries the listener. Just let them fall as they fall and try trusting a bit, then a little more.
November 16 2023
Maybe the man who gave away his gold at too young an age, the man who lives with more than a modicum of fear, who lost something of his gravitas - maybe that man needs a push down a hill or a strong kick in the ass. Maybe he needs someone to say “show me what you got”.
Maybe that man needs to go dig a face-sized hole in the earth, lay down and scream into the great mother. Maybe he needs permission to say every word he has always been told not to say. Maybe he needs to go and break something beautiful or sacred, to get past that boundary in his mind and destroy what he knows should not be destroyed. Maybe that man needs to distinguish between bullshit machismo, the sort of living that stomps on others in an attempt to build oneself up, or a life that escapes into the brutality of sports where others suffer in play and battle while he sits on the couch safely screaming with potato chip crumbs on his shirt — distinguish between that machismo and what it means for him to be truly masculine, both safe and always in risk, reverent and irreverent, to know when to caress and know when to crush.
If a man cannot bring his intensity and strength in the daily then how will he ever be bloodthirsty against forces like mass incarceration or the killing of people groups or corporations who rape the earth or when his daughter or son is being taken advantage of?
Maybe you’re a man and you’re thinking “that’s not me” then oh boy, watch out. The man who does not think he needs it is the most dangerous one of all because passivity has wrapped itself around his neck and he has no idea that he can’t breathe.
The man who doesn’t need it — he doesn’t need it because he wants it and he finds it; he’s always looking for a little trouble.
But the man who needs it, maybe he gets pushed out or kicked out, he begins to start looking, and maybe that man will come back both softer and stronger, a wildness in his eyes, an energy you’ve never seen before because that man got a little bit of his gold back and he’s not giving it away to just anyone any longer.
November 15 2023
The Journey by Mary Oliver
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice–
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do–
determined to save
the only life you could save.
November 8 2023
Love wants to reach out and manhandle us,
Break all our teacup talk of God.
If you had the courage and
Could give the Beloved His choice, some nights,
He would just drag you around the room
By your hair,
Ripping from your grip all those toys in the world
That bring you no joy.
Love sometimes gets tired of speaking sweetly
And wants to rip to shreds
All your erroneous notions of truth
That make you fight within yourself, dear one,
And with others,
Causing the world to weep
On too many fine days.
God wants to manhandle us,
Lock us inside of a tiny room with Himself
And practice His dropkick.
The Beloved sometimes wants
To do us a great favor:
Hold us upside down
And shake all the nonsense out.
But when we hear
He is in such a “playful drunken mood”
Most everyone I know
Quickly packs their bags and hightails it
Out of town.
(Tired of Speaking Sweetly by Hafiz)
November 7 2023
Let go of the hours, the overtime, the fear of not having enough. Let go of the tools, the keyboard, the emails, the markets, the interest rates.
Let go of the bar, the bottle, the glass in one hand and the cigarette in the other, the needle, the joint, the bowl, the powder. Let go of the numbing and the escape, the avoidance, the cowardice.
Let go of the relationships, the dependence, the fear of being alone and the fear of being known.
Let go of the new and the old and the shiny and the dull. Let go of the appearances and the preoccupations and the racing mind. Let go of what you think they think and what you think you think you think you think.
Let go of what you thought you wanted, what you want, what you will want. Let go of success and failure. Let go of the car that won’t start, the job that won’t grow, the disappointments of what never will be.
Let go of the notion that everything will stop if you stop, that if you lie down then everything will fall apart.
Let go of your idea of God and Jesus and Mary and Allah and Mohammed and Buddha and Brahma and Vishnu and Shiva.
Let go of your children, who and what you need for them to become. Let go of your father and your mother who were there and were not there.
Let go, Joshua. You are connected to all, and all is connected to you, so even if it is not yours, it’s yours. You’re not alone. Hold on to that.
November 2 2023
I showed these photos to my pal Phil, who has three teenage sons.
He said, “I will miss the imprint of grubby little hands on white walls. It used to bother me, now I count myself blessed.”
I told Phil, “That’s funny - yesterday I cleaned off tons of handprints. Then this morning Waits was doing this and I said my man let’s keep our hands off the walls. Then I realized how safe and boring that is and I said fuck it - I’m wrong. Do it again and I’ll take some photos.”
