My Founding Father

"Where is Caesar?"  Try South Dakota, they have a fax machine that works.

There is a statue of my father. It may be symbolic but, trust me on this one, where it stands in my heart, this statute is stronger than steal, gold, silver, or bronze. Unlike the statute of the Great One outside the Staples Center, which is awesome, this statue will never be replaced. No pigeon will fly over this piece of art, and rain will never stop the parade. The statue is my father. 

He is my Rushmore, alongside his partner in crime, and there are no better icons to look up to and try to imitate. His lessons live in my heart, gut, and the very soul that they gave me. His kind spirit has also worked its way into the hearts of who-knows-how-many others on this earth, and I thank the stars above that I am part of the select few that get to call him Dad. 

The weight of the creation is entirely owed to him. Nobody forced him to be the man that makes us all smile when we bring him up in conversation. He shares kindness to anyone who needs it - whether they want or ask for it is not up for debate. He will go out of his way to make our lives better, and that is the end of the discussion. He has a knack for knowing when a smile precedes a donut. He speaks his own language – a strange combination of Italian, Spanish, and East L.A. His presence is addictive, and everyone understands his generous heart. 

His statue was sketched during the great depression, but the details were filled out by him. He took the idea of Caesar and really ran with it. He didn’t have to be so amazing. It may come natural to him, but he deserves credit where it is due. He makes the choice each and every day to be him, and for that I am truly blessed. I am grateful for his kind heart, selfless approach to the next minute, and the inspiration he ignites in each and every stranger he talks to as if he has known them his entire life. 

My blog is not a Hallmark card. But to my 31, let it be known that on this day, I am humbled and grateful for my father. He inspires me when the sun rises, he guides me to make the right decisions, and more than anything he stands tall in my heart as a statue that tells me, no matter what, everything will be okay. 

I love you Dad. There isn’t a raw material in this universe that could replicate you. Kryptonite isn't even close.  I love you with all my heart, gut, and that same soul that you gave me. 

Happy Father's Day! 

Twain Tables Up for Landing

Vanity, definitely my favorite sin.

Post from a LOT Airlines napkin: 

When I have the displeasure of leaving this world, I at least want to leave a quote behind. Or maybe a witty saying. Quotes are awesome, and I want one. Maybe something I write down on a napkin. I don’t even need my tray table; I have a knee, a napkin, and a blue pen. Better yet, I can just say something really witty to my neighbor. But he is Polish (i.e., doesn’t speak English). 

Kids may say the darndest things, but adults say the damndest things. Hey that is good. Not going to do it though, keep practicing. 

Post continued, off the Napkin onto the back of my boarding pass: 

Damascas-ers Annoy Me

My ears are covered and I cannot hear you!

I have a slight addiction to reading how-to write books.  The need to feed on ego-driven lessons about what an author learned when they wrote their first three award novels is now getting to a dangerous level.  The more confident the writer is that they have all the answers, the sweeter the read.  It's strange because I curse them with the flip of each page.  It's almost like, why are you writing a how-to invest and make millions book when you should be following your own advice and investing to make millions.

Addiction aside, I do come across a few nice nuggets of wisdom that generally apply to life in general.  This one, happens to be my latest favorite and adopted mantra for the month of June (plan a mantra a month in advance was my mantra in May):

If you are not afraid of the voices inside you, you will not fear the critics outside you.  Natalie Goldberg - Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within (Shambhala Library)

So feast on that you eD slugs, and get ready for one king-hell of a month of June where the internal editor goes on vacation to Damascas.

What Is Your Number?

How About Them Apples?

Numbers make me tick (and tie). Hey, I never promised that I wouldn’t make accounting puns so please hear me out. When I say numbers, I do not mean dollars or pence. I mean real numbers. Numbers like 26.2, 100, and 50,000. 

For me, numbers are an easy way to represent my goals, and an even easier metric to identify when I have reached them. Numbers, they are like handle bars on a shiny new bike. You can reach towards them and grab a hold. You can use them to point yourself in the direction of your goals and desires. You can squeeze tight around them and even point uphill when you are really feeling it. Handlebars and numbers, you can really own them. 

Eary Feeling

I'm sorry I can't hear you. 
I have been physically abused in the ear.

It’s my last night on a business trip to a familiar place. I have returned to the city that I just moved away from and it feels, well, funny. It’s exciting, it’s sad, and most of all it is just odd. I know, two posts in a row on items that I find strange, but I really think that returning to a previous home town is a confusing phenomenon that you, my dear followers (c’mon 29 going on 30), will understand. It is great to be back in the Bay, but it just ain’t the same.

First of all, I have friends and family right across the bridge that I can’t see. Second of all, I have restaurants and bars I want to go to but just don’t have the time. Third of all, some of my dearest friends and famimly have already moved on.  And finally, oh yea, I live in London now.

A Chance Encounter with a Lesson

We ran across an old man in a busy pub.  With unsteady hands, he took his pint from one corner of the bar to the next but each seat was covered by a backside.  Our bag from the park with our Kings blanket hadn’t yet settled on the hook beneath the two-top table just off the bar, and with a couple of connected eyes we willed the elderly man towards our table.  Truthfully, we wanted something by the window anyhow.

“You’ve found a spot now,” I said.  It took him a while to make his way over.  Just below a generous amount of grey nose hair, his mouth seemed to stay open even after his smile gave way. 

We shared a table with a couple gents and dug into our Anchor Steam and cider.  Before long we had two empty chairs across from our half-filled pints, and who else to show up?  The old man, of course, with his stayed smile and now in an even more crowded pub.

In Memory of My Sister

This post is a little bit on the heavy side.  It isn't for everyone, in reality in some respects it may be just for me.  Why share something so personal?  Well, for selfish reasons.  It brings me closer to her.  But also, it is a chance for me to put some real feelings on paper, and to try and capture the utter loss I felt on that day, one year ago.

If you are up for it, read on.  If not, totally understand.

What is Love?

We know what it is, though we may not know exactly where it starts and where, if at all, it ends. There have been countless books, movies with Matthew McConaughey, poems, and Hallmark cards that try to elicit the feeling or tell us what exactly love is. But what is it to you (using my NY accent here)? Love it or not, I’m trying to identify my thoughts on the matter, so that I can give it a fair shot in my book. How do you describe something that is so…so…I’m in trouble. It is indescribable, and that is not a good thing. Or is it? 

Is this a kissing movie?

To me, and hopefully my characters share some aspect of this thought, love pushes and pulls, it is an infinite paradox. It is universal and personal; indefinable and recognizable. It is shared and horded. It is emotional and physical, and sometimes everywhere in between. It drives us to make stupid and wonderful decisions. Love causes heartache and butterflies, it grows and fades. It’s an excuse for the irrational, a wakeup call to the calculated. 

Show and Don't Tell

Show, don't tell.  

True love is the greatest thing in the world...Except for a nice MLT. A mutton, lettuce and tomato sandwich, where the mutton is nice and lean and the tomato is ripe. 

It's a beginning writer's mantra.  Perhaps, it is even an apt collection of words to tattoo across the top of a novice scribbler's hand.  Do not tell the reader that your character started to feel old, instead show them.  

Let's draw on personal experience, shall we?

Remember Me-at-Ball State?

The Meatball. Ah, the Meatball. It just brings me right back to the kitchen in the big cabin by the lake, in Minnesota, where I spent many of summer nights noshing on the culmination of our family’s perfected recipe.   The Meatball also refreshes childhood memories of Aunt Helen’s kitchen, and the way she shuffled about in those pink slippers. Meatballs also reminda me of a B movie from my childhood, but that is a different story. What is important is that the Meatball has landed in Fulham. 

You must be the short
depressed kid we ordered. 

Aside from the Meatball’s obvious and voluptuous culinary qualities, an indifferent observer must recognize that the golf-ball-of-delight has a cosmic significance of its own. It encompasses the perfect combination of ingredients that span the spectrum and that are always, in part, a secret.   The final product is something that may slide between thinly sliced pieces of fresh baked filone, dominate a bowl of al dente pasta of any variety, or be used as a substitute currency in a family game of Monopoly. 

The Butterflies

It’s that feeling in your stomach when someone else controls a fate that you once believed to be predetermined.  The extraordinary commotion inside of you puzzles your gut when you realize that perhaps the next instant may not unfold in the way you wanted it to, even though you would give the world to will momentum towards what you imagined. 

Valerie, it feels like there's
a bunch of butterflies flapping around
in my stomach right now.  Is that normal?

The second before a coach announces numbers after a try-out, during the silence that follows the first time you say “I love you,” or when your boss calls you into his office and says, “We need to talk,” you feel it.    Your insides turn sideways, upways, and that way; it is both chemical and mystical.  You know that moment, we all do. 

A Merry Can I Doles

I'm not crying,
my eye is leaking.

Wine glasses are meant to be broken, people are not.  I knew we were in trouble immediately when the scenic opening of American Idol from San Francisco made us verklempt before the scrawny host opened the audition door for the first contestant. 

“We used to live … right there!”  Literally, the helicopter captured a scenic shot over the span of the Golden Gate Bridge, leading right into the Presidio.

“I know.  Will you get me a napkin?”  The view of our apartment from above made it look exactly as small as it was.

“For the wine, or for your tears?”  Bloody hell.  Both.

Keeping it G-Real This Christmas

Keeping it G-Real this Christmas!!!

All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth, my two front teeth!  Really?  I mean, wouldn’t you at least ask for a full set of molars?  I judge and make bad jokes.  It is just that Christmas, and all that it stands for, is now behind us and I suppose we have to ask ourselves: did we get what we wanted for Christmas? 

I must say that I did, but not so much in the way I expected it. 

Probably an unrealistic item on my wish-list, but going into this Christmas all I wanted was an undivided conversation with each member of my family.  Twenty minutes, me and you, family member – we can sneak our chat in between two layers of peppermint bark (that red tin is my water cooler).

Location, Location, Wait What Was I Saying?

We apartment hunt like we are trying to lose a tail: speed left; u-turn and take the first alley-way; fix your scarf and engage the flashers (mind out of the gutter, boys); reverse back onto the traffic circle; mind the gap and rouge packet of crisps; and leave the car with the agent and run up to see the joint before anyone takes notice.  Seriously, in two days we have seen twenty different apartments in no less than 6 or 7 neighborhoods.  This adventure has been, in a word of my newly acquainted brethren, massive (a major thank you to our zealous pilot).

Utilities are minimal...

Here is the funny thing, zigzagging across my island (“yea, my island” – name the movie and get a free eternal domnation t-shirt*) has literally taken two full days.  Little did we know that all along we passed the now recipient of our official offer of tenancy** each and every day on our way to the tube!  Are you kidding me?  The place we decided on is two blocks away!  You have to love it.

 

To make a home is a beautiful thing; it is so cool to watch the speed of this transformation when you are along side that person, and that person alone, who makes absolutely any place where you stand together, home.  Well, we have been in the UK for 10 days, and we already call Fulham home.  Truth of the matter is that Fulham is our home because we have spent the last 10 days here, together.  And even though I still haven’t received any mail with my name on it (Publishing Clearing House, this is your final notice), I could not imagine myself anywhere else.  

It is an extraordinary thing putting in an offer on a place only two blocks away.  In short, it is brilliant.  The place we want was there all along.  And I do not think this uncommon.  Wish us luck on the British negotiations, renting can certainly be a pain in the arse.  No more writing tonight…

*pending finalization of sponsorship from an anonymous source.

** we sent an e-mail saying we want it.

Thank You, and Happy Weekend!

Grown man laughs for 780 yards...

Your support and encouragement has meant the world to me.  My blog has exploded, the readership is already in double digits!  You may think I am being sarcastic, and maybe I am ... a little bit.  But the reality is that I thought that maybe my siblings and wife would peruse if prodded.  Aside from them, I considered my saved words akin to a word document.  Yet now, and trust me I check the stats, there seems to be about ten of you keeping tabs on my ramblings!  And that is so incredibly humbling and entertaining.  Let's make it eleven...

Bottom line:  If you keep reading, I'll keep writing.  Until Monday, happy weekend!

Yo, Self, Get Out There!

I was 22 when I stuffed two large backpacks into a locker at Nadi International Airport.  I just finished almost a full year of travels, and I jumped at the opportunity to have an island stopover on my way home.  The flight cost the same, and I could get by for just a few bucks a day, so why not punch another stamp in the old passport?  It was an easy decision, even though for the first time in my life, I would be in a foreign country, alone.

Wilson!

Utterly alone is exactly how I felt when the man from the tour company dropped me at the dock (sticks tied together with vines).  It was probably close to midnight, and there was not a single volt of electricity anywhere in sight.  Pitch darkness followed the man’s tail lights as he sped off into the night.  Really?  You are going to leave me here, alone?   I was at least an hour away from the airport and it did not take me long to recognize that I was completely at the mercy of a man on a boat.  There I was, under more stars than imaginable, surrounded by unfamiliarity and I loved it.  The rain came at me from every direction; even splashing up at my Rainbow sandals from below the dock.