Day 229: Spongebob

My kids get a kick out of Spongebob. They quote lines. The invest in characters. The look back fondly years later on episodes. Now, my youngest is falling in love with the series. It's funny how something that annoyed me years ago I now find joy in. Maybe it's because of the tie all my kids have to one thing. The oldest can sit down with the youngest and watch an episode and they laugh together. If you don't think that doesn't feel good to watch, you're crazy. I generally have mixed feelings about TV, but it does some things right.

Day 228: Read This, You Won't Regret It

One thing that I feel I'm really good at it passing along things that I run across during the course of the day to those people who I know will appreciate what I'm passing on. It might be a new book, Web site, news article, upcoming movie or play, museum opening, exercise, or recipe. For whatever reason, I've been pretty good in my life about picking up on and remembering those things that particular friends and family find important or have an interest in or have expressed a passion for. When I see something I know someone would take pleasure in or benefit from, it makes me happy in some way to extend it on. 

To that end, here's a link to something that I think anyone will benefit from and that everyone should definitely click. It's a link to a post from a blog called Straight Outta Boise that my longtime friend Clark recently started. I met Clark way back when I was 21. We worked at the same newspaper. He was the Ag editor. I was the cub reporter who didn't know the first thing about anything. Clark not only showed me the ropes, he made life in a new job in a new city a hell of a lot easier. He's been a valued friend since. He's about as smart a person as I know. He's even funnier. He runs marathons in his spare time. He worked his way to becoming an attorney but remained a true and avid outdoors man in the truest sense. All the while, he's remained one of the most down to earth people I know.

This particular post concerns his mom, who recently moved to Clark's city of Boise after losing her husband of many, many years to cancer. As always, Clark's writing is funny and personable, but this post is also particularly touching, moving, meaningful, and thought-provoking, especially for anyone who has a bond with their parents and for anyone who cares about and helps foster the relationship between his or her parents and his or her own children. 

I found this post so moving and meaningful for a couple reasons. One, I never really had a relationship with my grandparents. They were gone before I reached an age where I could form but a scant few memories of them, and those times I was in their presence before that were few and far between. Growing up, it was difficult for me when my friends and other relatives would head off to their grandparents for a visit or when their grandparents would come to visit them for birthday, holidays, cookouts, and other times. I could never relate to what it must be like to have a grandparent in any sense other than I was just envious. I always wondered what it would have been like to head off to my grandparents for a couple weeks in the summer or have my grandfather take me fishing or to ball games. I always wondered what it would have been like to have a grandmother dote on me. As I grew older, I knew I had missed out on something special, including having relationships with people older and wiser that could have taught me much. 

I continue to miss those relationships today, particularly as I've watched how my children have benefited so much over the years from the relationships they have with their grandparents. Watching firsthand how their grandmothers take such interest in their lives makes me entirely grateful and appreciative, but also a little vacant and hallow somehow. My wife consistently speaks so lovingly of her grandmother, who passed years back but who  meant so much to her and so many others growing up. I see and recognize ways constantly of how her grandmother's love influences my wife's own feelings and ideas about family; its an influence that's strong and that I believe has resonated down to my children despite never  having known their great-grandmother. 

Clark's words, however, offer something more than a relationship between a grandmother and grandchildren. At least to me, his post is also rooted in a son's love for his mother and the worry that this invokes. Although he doesn't explicitly state as much, I could feel the pain he feels for his mother's loss and the deep, deep care contained in his words. There's anxiety residing somewhere in these words, in the sense that no one knows what life holds tomorrow for those we hold close; we can only hope for the best and do everything possible today in order that we have no regrets tomorrow, no regrets about what we could have done or said for our loved ones to make their lives better. 

There's much "manhood" and maturity in Clark's words. What he wrote may not be a complete coming-of-age realization, but it certainly contains at least some bits and pieces of someone who realizes that life is constantly on the move and that death and sorrow is a reality, but so too is carrying on and paving new beginnings. There's a maturity and sense of responsibility involved in helping our children create new possibilities but also helping our parents create new possibilities. There's growth involved to reach a place where our relationships with our parents transcend beyond being the child who has traditionally been the one receiving the care and moving into a space and realm where we are giving and doing the caring. 

I'm happy for my friend Clark and the new beginning he's now experiencing. I'm also very happy to pass that experience along to others. 

Day 227: Bad Karma Day? So What

This day has been one calamity after another. I mean, I haven't experienced a day like this in a long, long time (thankfully). It started brutal, it took another turn down an equally brutal street (literally), and it's ended up even more brutal. But at some point in mid-afternoon, I had somewhat of an epiphany: Things may get worse yet, big boy, but so what.

I think I've excepted that I can control only a very few things. Moreover, I can't control the way anyone thinks or reacts. I don't even won't to. I just want to put my head down and keep going full steam ahead. What comes, comes. What doesn't, doesn't. That's it. It's that simple.

Man, that's positive change for me. There was a day not that long ago when I would have obsessed about each and everything thing that had gone bad. I would have turned them over and over, pick and prodded, and then gone into angry, depressed mode for however long it took, all the while giving off the vibe that I didn't want to be screwed with. Today, I felt myself entering that all too familiar space and just backed off. Didn't run from it, just backed off. Recognized where that place was going to take me, knew it wasn't going to end up well in my favor, and turned around and walked the other way. That's a good progression for me, and I'm happy about, even if this day is the shits.

Tonight, I'll just lay my head on my pillow knowing the events of this or any other day won't always play out the way you want, and some days, the events will bash you upside the head in rapid repetition. But so what. They only leaves bruises. They don't hurt forever. 

Day 226: Being Grounded Means . . .

• Picking up poop left behind by creatures lower on the food chain than yourself
• Cleaning up other forms of excrement that emit from the bodies of previously referenced creatures
• Eating macaroni and cheese out of a box because your kids likes it
• Listening to KRFX and other bubble gum-spewing radio stations because you know it will make the someone riding in the backseat or passenger seat happy
• Spending Super Bowl Sunday at your kids volleyball game 
• Skipping Sunday morning golf because you'd rather see your kid play ball
• Handing over the last $5 in your pocket because your kid is thirsty
• Spending your hard-earned money on braces vs. the motorcycle that's eluded you for a lifetime
• Wearing the same white work shirts until holes emerge in the elbows so that your offspring can have new school clothes 
• Forgoing date night again because the sniffles, coughs, and running nose has reared their ugly faces
• Sleeping on the very edge of a king-sized bed because your toddler had a nightmare and is now sleeping horizontally and hogging far more than her share
• Mowing the lawn long after you've reached your 40s
• Washing and folding someone else's underwear
• Cleaning a toilet 
• Unclogging a pipe
• Cutting your own hair

I'm a firm believer in being grounded and being humble. Nearly every person is grounded in same way or another, even the most self-gratifying people I know. Some people I know are so grounded and so humble, it literally amazes me, and in some ways mystifies me. My admiration knows no boundaries for such people, and I spend a lot of time wondering how I can obtain such levels. Fortunately, there are plenty of examples of people who I encounter daily who exhibit behavior I never want to pattern myself after. I'll never run dry of reinforcement. 

At any rate, today, I'm feeling especially grounded and real. I love these days. I love feeling not only down to earth, but below the earth. For some reason, I've grown so tired of the complaining and snarky, condescending pissing and moaning polluting my space lately, maybe I'm feeling compelled to run in the other direction. Or maybe, just maybe, all this positiveness really is taking hold. Snarky, condescending complaining used to be my bag, after all. Maybe I just need a vacation.   

Day 225: All The Way Up To 11

Nothing, and I mean nothing, feels as good as switching on an amplifier, plugging in a guitar, and feeling the shock and buzz that travels up the cord and blasts you all the way up and down the arms. It's unbridled magic. It's the personification of power. It's fricking' all out bliss. If you've let even one E chord rip in your time, you know of what I'm talking about. You know the potential that three notes combined can offer. Chug away at an F power chord and you hold the keys to skyscraper full of ass-whoopin fury.

Some days, the amplifier and guitar sitting in the corner of my basement are the only things that get me back in the game. Some days, I'm beyond wiped out. I'm beyond exhausted. I'm beyond paying attention anymore. I just want to blast my face right off my skull, and electricity is the means I choose to do just that.

It's amazing to me to watch people who can't play a lick give it a shot anyway. I love to see their faces light up when they get an axe in their hands. They noodle around like newbs will, but god it's beautiful how power can take them away, transport them into a new land. Every time I see it, I think, "Oh yeah, kid, another would-be Hendrix has been born." When they're done, I guarantee they're better off than when they began.

One of the greatest days of my life was when my neighbor came knocking on our door in the middle of the afternoon, imploring that I turn it down. "Sure thing," I replied. When she hit the bricks, I went from 8 to 7 and proceeded to make myself happy and fulfilled again. I never promised how much. These days, as I'm laying awake in bed on any given night when her daughter throws a party and the god-awful music she's polluting the air with is throbbing against my outer walls, I feel no regret at all.

God gave me the guitar. He didn't give me all the talent that he gave others to go with it, but he gave me the guitar. And in doing so, he gave me an outlet. He gave me an avenue. He gave my electric glory. He gave me escape. It may not always sound pretty. It may not always be polished and refined, but dman if it isn't satisfying nonetheless.

  

Day 224: A Lost Painting

I used to have a painting years and years ago that I bought at some Goodwill store or another. I hadn't really bought too many painting up to that point, and doing my painting buying at Goodwill probably didn't put me in a positive light among my artist friends, but as more than one of those friends has beaten me over the head with during the years, "art is art, man." 

I loved that painting. It was black and white and had this island vibe and Jamaican feel about it that put me completely in a zone of comfortableness and joy that was a bit hard for me to enter without the assistance. I must have been 21 or so years old when I bought that painting, and I'd stare at it for what seemed like hours at at time some days. I had plenty of spare times on my hands, depending on the day of the week, sitting in the tiny, run-down apartment I called home on the top floor of a three-story house. I had no television, computers were around then, and music was pretty much my only companion on my days off from work (Tuesdays and Wednesdays). Well, music and the paintings and photos that I hung on the walls of that apartment. That particular painting, though, was my favorite. 

Most of the art I've gravitated to during my life has tended to lean toward the dark and gloomy side, not necessarily in a "I'm hear to glorify Satan's presence on Earth with this depiction of him cultivating souls" sort of way, but certainly in a Edvard Munch "Evening on Karl Johan" sense where the subjects of the piece don't appear all that thrilled with being alive, or at least appear to be struggling emotionally or spiritually to make their way from one day to another. I think "struggle" typified the way I was approaching life at that time; it was less about embracing the minutes as they presented themselves and more about surviving them. The sense of surviving, it seems, introduced itself to me early in life and never really wanted to leave. Work and toil, work and toil, work and toil. That summed up how life felt many days, starting very early on. And while that can definitely still be the case on any particularly day now, that feeling of "work and toil" isn't nearly as defining or as strong, and it definitely doesn't stick around nearly as long. I credit that painting I bought at the Goodwill for what must have been $10 tops in some ways to making me see the light. 

I remember that painting had a spiffy, ornate frame that was painted gold. It perfectly complemented the black and white colors that the artist (I have no idea who he or she was) used to create the women that the painting featured. While they didn't quite reach caricature status, the women and their over-exaggerated smiles and too wide of eyes and amplified bosoms that were accentuated by skimpy island dresses sure came close. The overall effect caused me to daydream endless about meeting such women, about traveling to such islands, about finding a place among the locals, about finding a place was life was so joyful and simple. 

I think about that painting often. I don't recall when or why I parted ways with it. I'm sure it wasn't for a good reason, but such has been the way of many things in my life--no good reason. But despite being physically absent, that painting lives on. Such as been the way of many things in my life. 

Day 223: Finding Time To Be A Kid

Today, my daughter and I went to the Children's Museum. She loves the place, and although the luster has sort of rubbed off the place for me a bit (not surprising considering I've going there for 16 years or so and not much has changed), I still appreciate the opportunity to watch my kid grow and pick up on how she's changing. A couple years ago, she would move from station to station, play with a toy for maybe a few seconds, and move on. Today, she uses her imagination to the fullest, devising up scenarios, and putting her heart and mind into each. She stayed at the puppet theater, for example, for what seemed like a half hour, going through a dozen or so puppets, and putting on as many performances. I was thrilled, humored, and having all kinds of fun. I realized that she's growing up, but more importantly, her mind is growing up. She's creating her own word, her own possibilities. What's not to enjoy about that.

We didn't have things like children's museums when I was a kid. We had pretty much what was in the front and back yard or down the block or around the corner. That was it, and that was OK. We made do, and I don't feel like I missed out on anything of great important. Still, it would have been nice to have the opportunities my kids have had. I wonder how my imagination and creativity might have been altered and how that would have influenced the way I see the world now. It's impossible to say, but just perhaps I would have gone down some different paths. Who knows. What I do know is I'm thrilled to have these creative outlets available for my own kids, place where they can 1.) have fun, 2.) explore in a safe environment, and 3.) create new world and sensibilities. I have to admit, as many times as I've been to the Children's Museum, I still manage to let my own reality go temporarily and just find time to be a kid again.