BoldUlysses.com

Some thoughts on recent books I’ve read:

Believe, Ross Douthat: It’s difficult to pin down who the author’s intended audience is. Christians reading the book are already persuaded, and non-believers will accuse him of fatal bias. To the extent that there’s a very small persuadable minority of open-minded non-theists, they might find it interesting; compelling is another matter. Still—Douthat’s style is appealingly nerdy and philosophically compact, but it falls short of being the “Mere Christianity for the 21st century” many have been hailing it as. Douthat simply doesn’t have Lewis’s everyman tone (he writes from a more academic, white-collar perspective), nor Lewis’s genius for analogy. The best parts of the book are where the author meditates on the relevance of current developments like AI and what that means for the case for a noumenal layer to the universe, probably because those events are immediate to his day job as a newspaper columnist. I’d still recommend the book, but mainly for those looking to buttress their faith against accusations & doubts, both from within and without.

Project Hail Mary, Andy Weir: Hoo boy. Take The Martian, add an existential crisis for humanity and a funny alien sidekick, and you have this pulpy sci-fi romp. As with his earlier (and vastly superior) book, it purports to be scientifically grounded, but the amount of Gary Stu-ishness completely breaks suspension of disbelief and, ironically, makes for a worse read than if he had simply stuffed the book less full of techno-babble. And I say this as someone who loves thoroughly nerdy sci-fi that revels in its in-world precision. The characterizations were desperately thin as well; everyone was a cardboard cutout, a cultural stereotype without any arc to speak of, and the protagonist was simply the author’s self-insert fantasy, Mark Watney Part 2. The only bright spot was the chemistry between himself and his alien sidekick; it was genuinely funny and touching at times. Otherwise yeah, a brisk, low-calorie read.

Out of Sight, Elmore Leonard: The movie’s one of my very favorites, basically perfect in every way, so I’d been eager to read the source material for a while. So how does it compare? It’s both better, and worse. It’s worse in the sense that the film definitely tightened up the plot. The movie really benefits from Steven Soderbergh’s (the director’s) non-linear structure, the chronology is more compressed, and many of the secondary characters (like Adele, Glenn, or Chino) feel more real on screen, even though there’s technically less of them than exists in print. The book is better in that it feels like a director’s cut of the scenes involving dialogue—which are the core of the story. The lines are fleshed out, and you hear their internal monologue. The movie has the luxury of showing that, versus telling, but the book does an equally good, if not slightly better job given the constraints of its medium. Leonard’s style is conversational, clipped, choppy, well-researched and seems to assume some familiarity on the part of the reader with crime dramas or police procedurals, which I’m not, and I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d been able to follow the plot without having been familiar with the film. I might try another Leonard book to test myself on that front, one that hasn’t been adapted to a movie. Oh, and by the way, Jack & Karen’s romance is every bit as compelling and sexy—without being lurid or graphic—in print as it is on screen. Recommended.

Slicked-back concrete, the odd swish of the wipers. A sharp right up onto Georgia Street; the entrance always looks like a dormant pedestrian area. Climb the hill toward Veterans’ Bridge, Radio Paradise on. “The Shape of My Heart” plays as I crest the rise and head out over the bridge, stacked rows of lights merge the foreground of the riverbanks with the background of the ridge in the rainy November evening. Elmore Leonard on the brain. The wheels thump over the manhole covers; I wind my way up toward Hixson, glancing just once to my right before I reach Altamont. That’s all you get. All. You. Get. And I keep going, retracing a route I know well, applying a translucent veneer of my current state in the process. Memories get overlaid, layer by layer, day by day, minute by minute, second by eternal second. Moments like this help; the urban evening becomes a companion, I borrow the city’s life, and I’m a little less alone. For a while.

all along, along, there were incidents and accidents
there were hints and allegations

So, what did I learn?

1. Discuss ALL the dealbreakers up front, as soon as a conversational baseline and some basic interest is established. Heaven forbid they come up later in the relationship, when you’re more emotionally invested.
2. Unless she explicitly asks, or it’s somehow directly relevant to the discussion at hand (and even then, think twice), DO NOT share anything about previous relationships, experiences you’ve had, things you’ve done, etc. The ONLY possibly acceptable information to volunteer would be things you haven’t done and would like to experience for the first time with her. Anything more invites comparisons, feelings of inadequacy, or worse.
3. Be VERY careful about expressing any kind of certainty about your future early in the relationship. Be upfront and honest about your intentions, but slow roll any kind of commitment-level talk—even if she does. Time is your friend. Build a foundation first.
4. It should be relatively easy in the beginning. Relationships take work, yes, but if it feels like drudgery from the get-go just to think of things to do with her, or to purchase/make for her, then it could be a sign that you’re trying too hard to make something work when there’s no spark. In other words, ensure you actually fall in love. The work will come later. She should walk on water, so to speak, for the first month or so.
5. Let the physical side of the relationship develop at a natural pace; don’t stifle it OR indulge it to the point of distraction in either extreme. Make sure she feels desired, and that you’re on the same wavelength, but don’t let it crowd out needed exploration of other areas like spiritual commitments or common interests.
6. Be confident in your nerdiness. Don’t talk at her until her eyes glaze over, but if she asks, there is absolutely nothing wrong with flexing that you know, for example, a high-pitched airliner noise comes from the IAE V2500 engines of an Airbus A320-214 on approach. No need to act ashamed that your mind is stuffed with random tidbits like that.
7. Make sure your commitment to the kids is always front and center. Let her know exactly how much time the kids require, and assess her expectations with it comes to time spent together. Find a balance that works—and maintain it.
8. Be open and honest, but don’t go out of your way to talk ill of your former spouse. Unless she asks, don’t bring up the sordid details of the scenes that led to the marriage’s breakdown. And be clear that there is NO grieving or lingering attachment present.
9. Make sure you try to plan for every conceivable contingency in every scenario. Bring supplies for every possible activity OR thing that could go wrong. Concert in a faraway city running late, for example? Have a hotel in mind and a change of clothes on hand. Things like that.
10. Remember that there is nothing lonelier than being trapped in a bad marriage. You have agency, flexibility now; recognize that for the gift it is. You can be cast aside, but you aren’t trapped in a prison of rejection. Are you lonely? Sure. But, there are many women out there who would jump at the chance to pursue a relationship with you—even if their feelings aren’t reciprocated. You’ve (gently) turned down four already just in the last two months. Seize the opportunity when it comes, and remember that you have a lot to offer in spite of your loneliness.
11. Don’t be afraid of conflict, but discuss your inexperience with conflict and your resolutions and wishes for how to resolve it before you have a fight, so she knows she can trust your verbal and emotional backstops.

post-mortem eleven

I still don’t know what she saw in me.

College, second half of sophomore year. After the complete disaster that was the fall semester (lived in a dorm far away from main campus on account of having missed the window of opportunity to claim closer lodging), I secured a cozy room in the basement of Syme, and I was roommate-less until the final month or so of the semester. Having overindulged in television during the first half of the school year, I went tube-free for the spring. I bought a nice rug for the floor, and I put my record player on the wide windowsill and frequented the music stores on Hillsborough Street and Avent Ferry to add to the vinyl collection. I remember leaving the small window cracked on cool spring evenings, and listening to the “quiet storm” jazz station while I read my textbooks. After being trapped in a spiral of laziness the previous semester, I’m honestly not sure where my newfound motivation to make a “home” on campus came from. If I had to augur a guess, I’d say it was something intrinsic to the dorm; Syme has an appealing texture, and its immediate proximity to the design school means some of the aesthetic sensibilities of its academic neighbor rub off. Regardless, I’d found my nest for the next 3 years.

Besides my lodging situation, another new development was interest shown by the former roommate of a girl I briefly dated freshman year (and who holds the distinction of having claimed my first kiss). As roommates, they didn’t work out; rumor had it an actual physical curtain was erected down the middle of the room after only a few weeks. I’d never officially met the girl who expressed interest in me, and I actually don’t even remember how she struck up a friendship; I have a vague memory of her cold-calling me and leaving a message on my campus voicemail. If so, that must’ve taken some guts. I was curious, and met her for lunch. She was medium height, with short brown hair, and was a Park Scholar (full ride + benefits), so there was intelligence there—albeit coupled to almost unbearable shyness. For what it’s worth, I remember putting my best foot forward, even inviting her to one of my friend Greg’s (chaste) pool parties, where she essentially cowered in the corner of the pool despite our best efforts to include her in a game of volleyball. The chemistry wasn’t there, and I really wasn’t that attracted to her, but I also wasn’t mature enough to consider her feelings and keep from stringing her along, since I enjoyed the interest, even if I was still mystified about what prompted it.

I don’t look back on the final (literal) dance with a great deal of pride. After yet another date spent trying desperately to coax her out of her shell, I invited her back to my dorm room, and we sat rigidly on the futon together and attempted to converse. I think maybe she was expecting a “move” at that point, but instead, for some reason, I decided to indulge a fantasy, and I put Suzanne Vega’s “Gypsy” on the record player and asked her to dance with me on my little rug. She agreed, and we swayed awkwardly for the duration of the song, and a few minutes later…went our separate ways. I don’t remember seeing her again. Given her academic credentials, I’ve no doubt she’s doing fine. For my part, I wish I had taken lessons from that non-fling and resolved to not lead girls on, but unfortunately, over the subsequent years, it would take a few more failures before I would really commit to being upfront as early as possible.

It’s always a good feeling when you can correct the teacher.

I was only in my mid-20s, but I was already considerably farther along than the other students. There were a handful that matched my age, but most were still pimply-faced teenagers, straight out of high school, and didn’t have my life experience, or more significantly, my mechanical experience—both practical AND theoretical. I’d simply steeped myself in the knowledge of the inner workings of aircraft (and cars) for most of my life, and had actually rolled up my sleeves and gotten to know cars in particular in a hands-on way for the better part of the previous decade. So obviously, the more technically focused sections of the private pilot’s license curriculum weren’t that much of a challenge for me (learning to fly by feel was—but that’s a post for another day). At the end of the first semester, we took the written part of our license evaluation, and Mr Hahn promised a steak dinner to anyone who received a perfect score. I was crushed that I only missed one question. So close.

The practical test—the checkride—came at the end of the second semester. Prior to the checkride, we’d have one final evaluation with the lead instructor, Mr Kelly: The dreaded final stage check. I say “dreaded” because the entire purpose of the exercise was for Mr Kelly to nitpick every little misstep and discrepancy in our technique, with the idea that the checkride itself would be less stringent in comparison, and so the stage check would take the edge off, as it were. How that worked out in general practice, I’m not sure, but I do remember being equally nervous for both…

In any event, for the stage check, the day was crisp and perfectly clear. The little Cessna 172 was fueled up, waiting on the ramp. Mr Kelly, clipboard in hand, gestured me over to the plane, and I completed the preflight by the book. I hadn’t flown with him before, but he had a reputation as a gruff, demanding instructor who tolerated little deviation by his students, but produced highly competent pilots. I was intimidated, but went through my checklists, started the plane, and taxied to the runway. So far, so good. The wind was northerly, so the plan was to take off on runway 2, over the 50-foot trees just north of the threshold, fly to the practice area, and do whatever exercises he told me to do with the aircraft (presumably some slow flight, stalls, turns around a point, flying on instruments, and so on). I back-taxied down the runway, swung the plane around, made the appropriate radio calls, and gunned the engine. The little Lycoming roared, and we were on our way, hurtling down the runway and up into the air. On instrument panel, there were a whole host of switches and knobs, and two that controlled the engine: The throttle and mixture knobs. For takeoff, per procedure, I had set the mixture knob to full rich (all the way in), when I advanced the throttle (also all the way in). Standard protocol dictated leaving the mixture on full rich all the way up to cruising altitude, which, on that day, would likely have been somewhere between three and four thousand feet. At that height, the air density is less than at sea level—not much less, but a measurable amount. I knew, from my mechanical experience, that an internal combustion engine runs best at a certain air/fuel ratio: Typically 14.7 (air) to 1 (fuel), or a little leaner (less fuel). So, as the plane climbed, and the air thinned ever so slightly, I instinctively reached for the mixture knob and backed off the fuel a little bit, just to help maintain the right ratio for optimal engine performance.

“What are you doing that for?” barked Mr Kelly.

“Just leaning out the mixture a little since we’re going up in altitude,” I stammered.

Silence.

“Push that knob all the way in and keep it there.” Mr Kelly finally retorted.

I complied, and remained focused on my instruments and the task at hand, but from the tone of his voice, if I had had the capacity to be able to glance over at his face, I have a feeling I would have caught a smile.

And I did pass the stage check.

post-mortem, chapter x

Another productive counseling session yesterday, if not quite as much of a watershed as the last one. We had good intentions of picking up where we left off in discussing how to “fight well,” but she let me ramble on for a little while about various aspects of my personal history, friendship history, and the evolution of my convictions. We eventually came around to discussing conflict, and I had flagged a few things to explore coming out of the previous session:

• Identifying the cause(s) of frustration.  Many times in my marriage, I’d be deeply frustrated and/or angry, but couldn’t pinpoint the cause in order to be able to have a conversation.  Or maybe there would be multiple causes (they tended to stack up after a while).  But I would just have a general sense of malaise or a deep unhappiness that I couldn’t tie to anything concrete, even after dedicated thought.  This has been a challenge for me for my whole life.
• Determining whether the pressure point even deserves to be shared and worked out in the first place.  Kind of relates to the “self-advocacy vs. selfishness” question I raised last time.  Do I just share everything and let the chips fall where they may?  That seems like it could be exasperating/discouraging for a partner.
• Strategies for compromising.  How do I know if I’m conceding too much, or not enough?

We camped out on the first bullet point for a while. She reassured me that it’s a challenge for many people to identify why they’re feeling frustrated or upset, but that there’s an element of acceptance that could be beneficial. I tried to explain how, for me, my process of conflict resolution is kind of like a flow chart, and determining the source of the frustration is Step 1. In other words, if I can’t independently tag the emotion and its cause, I can make any progress. It ties back to the “airtight case” mindset I’ve always had about interpersonal conflict; it’s always felt like I’ve had to have something to present as I initiate the conversation. That way, I related, even if I get shot down, at least I’ll have a sense of personal integrity to fall back on, as it were; I’ll know that I failed in pursuit of a righteous cause, so to speak. This seemed like a novel approach to my therapist, to the point where she started taking notes for the first time in one of our sessions. I expressed surprise, as it dawned on me that there might be another way to resolve conflict, and I started to consider for the first time how that might work itself out. Maybe, just maybe, I could have a talk with a partner wherein I identify the causes of the frustration, and work out a solution in real time. I actually got emotional when I began to speculate about what that would require: A commitment by both parties to some basic ground rules, like no threatening to leave, no blanket accusations, listening while assuming the best of the other person’s intentions, and a whole host of other dynamics and resolutions that I’ve never, ever seen or experienced in a relationship. I think I’m beginning to understand why this whole idea of “fighting well” has seemed so alien to me, and has made me feel so insecure, when in reality, it’s something that I should, if not actually look forward to, at least be prepared to encounter as a normal part of a relationship. But still—just the idea that there could be someone out there with whom I could have a conflict and not have them dangle everything and the kitchen sink out the window in an attempt to get their way… The mind boggles.

Radio Paradise delivers yet again. Also, Billy Corgan is a genius and I will brook no dissent.

Well, the bloom is off the rose—for P, at least. We reunited after her classes today, and she was, if not exactly distraught, then something close to it. Disillusioned at the very least. Turns out she got into a heated, two-versus-one debate on the acceptability of using AI for art, and one of the two on the “pro” side was her art class professor. To her credit, she said she stayed calm, and tried to keep the conversation on reasonable grounds, but still, when her peers and even an erstwhile mentor are using a machine to generate art prompts, or to shortcut life-giving, consciousness-expanding parts of the artistic process, she felt something was deeply wrong—and I share her point of view. The creative process is so personal for her, so deeply knit into the fabric of who she is, that outsourcing it to an algorithm amounts to surrendering part of her humanity. And I get it. Are we that wedded to convenience, to the idea of saving ourselves just a little time (especially in an arena like art, where time is less critical) and constructive effort that we’d forego part of the very process that defines the product in the first place? Leaving aside the question of the quality of AI-generated art, we create not only for others, but also for ourselves, and I struggle to imagine how skipping part of the journey enriches the experience. It’s like training for a marathon and thinking that riding a few laps on a golf cart is going to make you more fit for the race. No—it’s the struggle, the effort, the push that feeds us.

In spite of her newfound disillusionment, I’m so proud of her. She has a worldview, a robust mindset about her craft—and she’s not afraid to defend it. That’s going to carry her a long way. She thinks about these things, and thinks clearly. I can honestly say that one of the best things about the kids, and P in particular, getting older is the privilege of having these kinds of “debriefs.” It’s a meeting of a fellow mind, and I’m beginning to learn as much from her as I hope she has from me.

Excellent, productive counseling session today. I’m so grateful for her. She listens well, she’s thoughtful in her responses and in what she encourages and how she gently nudges the outcome of my mental groundwork in particular, healthy directions. Significantly, I feel like I can express myself well in her presence; there’s a quality to the dialogue that makes it easier for me to articulate (and in doing so, often come to a realization about) what I’m thinking and feeling. That’s no small thing.

I don’t really remember what prompted it, but I shared some of my ponderings about fighting in relationships, and my desire to learn how to “fight well,” and that topic defined the latter half of today’s session. I asked her if she could help me learn, and she replied “Absolutely” with such a definite tone that it made me smile. We delved a little deeper into the possible causes for my (perceived?) inability to fight well: My fear of abandonment that I still don’t know the source of and it drives me crazy, and the fact that, like I shared previously, I never saw my parents fight and reconcile, which, as I told my counselor about, it dawned on me that it was perhaps a more significant obstacle than I thought. I’ve always given them a pass because I knew they made the resolution to never fight in front of us kids with good, honorable intentions, but in the long run, it may actually have done more harm than good. Am I resentful to them for making that decision? Not at all—neither of them exactly had happy childhoods, and it’s really nothing short of miraculous that they turned out to be the fantastic parents they are. But they weren’t perfect, and I would be well served to start challenging my own convictions about key choices they made, ones that I’ve always bought into. When I think about it way, it gives me a lot of hope that I can uncover things that will enable me to gain some real confidence when it comes to future relationships. I’ve told my counselor that I don’t know what I don’t know when it comes to my past, but I’ve always had a vague sense of…something like foreboding, maybe, when I envision a new relationship, anticipating a similar pattern repeating itself. For the first time, I feel like I may have a glimpse of a real off-ramp.

post-mortem, ninth installment

Incredibly vivid dream last night. It was the first time I can recall, ever, sobbing my eyes out in a dream and feeling my face for streaked tears upon waking. I sent myself a shorthand version of it on my phone, but let me see if I can flesh it out some more. I won’t be able to do it justice, not by a long shot.

I was in Boston, and the whole dream was centered around a long, long slide down the crook in a series of grassy hills. I remember some kind of aerial survey beforehand, where I recognized the slide path by the difference in grass textures. It was like a long, twisty, single-person rollercoaster. I drove on a narrow, winding road to the top in order to start the slide, but for some reason, I couldn’t start at the very top, so I had to enter using an opening in the track a certain ways down. The slide was inside the hill at this point, and I had to maneuver through small openings to gain access, at one point having to completely turn around and back through the small door. I vividly remember thinking of Alice in Wonderland.

The horrific part of the dream started here, where I was given what amounted to a living cat hand puppet: Just a head, and kind of a fabric “cape” coming off the neck, and I was supposed to hold onto this all the way down the slide. I remember asking if the cat was alive, and I was told yes, it was, but that it didn’t have long, and would die shortly. This was (obviously) heart-rending, and I cried, great wrenching sobs that were mirrored by a nameless other in my dream.

I woke up and felt my face. I looked around and saw Draco on the pillow next to mine, and Odin occupying the other side of the pillow my head was on. I petted them both and felt very grateful it was only a dream.

The second session of the three-part lecture series on US history from an indigenous perspective was just as fantastic as the first—even if it felt a little compressed. Greg covered, in his words, “annihilation and assimilation,” or roughly the period from 1790-1930, when native tribes were systematically marginalized and yes, there was an attempted genocide, and then whoever was left afterwards was forcibly assimilated into white, Euro-centric culture, being taught that everything about their indigenous heritage was wrong and undesirable (to put it mildly). It was a profoundly shameful and, well, evil period in American history. We have a lot to account for as a nation, and there’s still so much work to be done. It was a lot of ground to cover, and Greg did the best he could in an hour and a bit, but we could have been there for much longer.

During the Q&A session at the end, we discussed in more detail the philosophical underpinnings of these policies, concepts like the “doctrine of discovery” and “manifest destiny.” Greg pointed out how wrongheaded those concepts were from the standpoint of evangelism, assuming, as they did, that the native populations were completely in the dark spiritually, and only the enlightened Europeans could deliver the gospel on a silver platter. But, as he pointed out, the Holy Spirit is at work everywhere around the globe, and it’s the height of presumption to assume that missionaries are coming into cultures completely bereft of any kind of spiritual insight. Instead, he argued, it’s our job as believers to simply learn from the native populations, to recognize what the Holy Spirit is already doing, and to simply lean into that, and never in any kind of coercive or make-the-sale kind of way. Greg decried the motivation that underpins a lot of (most?) missionary organizations: The desire to hasten Jesus’ second coming because of a literal take on Matthew 24:14, and the quasi-mechanical missionary-industrial complex that produces. I pointed out one of the similarities between the indigenous genocide and the modern missions movement is that they both seem to be profoundly selfish and ignorant initiatives in search of philosophical or spiritual justification to prop them up. Greg roundly agreed. I can tell you, it really motivates me to be on the lookout for other ass-backward, cart-before-the-horse assumptions and mindsets. They’re SO insidious; the cultural air we breathe, and so destructive. Looking forward to the final lecture this week.

Having finished the book, here are some selected favorite quotes from Sarah Addison Allen’s Other Birds:

• Zoey had spent too much of her life as an outsider to ever think of running to anyone when she was afraid. It wasn’t that she was particularly brave, she just didn’t want the disappointment of being turned away.
• It had taken him all his life to understand this, but even unlikable things have worth. It was how, after all, he’d learned to live with himself.
• She was still trying to process the fact that what she knew might be all she would ever know, and there would be no guidance on where she came from or where she should go from here.
• She was young enough to think that drama was something you had to run toward. She had no idea that drama doesn’t need to be chased. It knows exactly where you live.
• Oliver now found himself in the untenable position of not knowing how to maintain her interest, because he didn’t know where it was coming from.
• She was feeling emotionally spent, and when that happened the real her, the one who craved permanence and connections and simply being still, started peeking through the cracks.
• …a local accent that always sounded to Charlotte like they were getting to the good part of a story.
• It was an odd feeling, when she really thought about it, not having anyone in the world who knew everything about you and loved you anyway.
• Stories aren’t fiction. Stories are fabric. They’re the white sheets we drape over our ghosts so we can see them.
• So Zoey understood that mothering was in the details you never saw. And the lack of it was the things you always noticed.
• She had been the source of all that was good in his life. Had she known that? Was part of his holding on proving to her how much he loved her, because he hadn’t said it enough?
• “Does it ever feel to you like the best things go away too fast, and the worst things never, ever leave you alone?”
• Oliver knew she had a long road ahead of her, learning to accept that the one person you wanted to love you the most was the one person who never would.
• …it hadn’t actually been dread he’d been feeling—dread at facing all those boxes, or the walls that were literally closing in on him, or another argument with his mother, which he would sometimes pick on purpose to try to get her to say something other than “You think I had a choice?” when he demanded to know why she’d had him in the first place. No, it hadn’t been dread at all. It had been hope. Hope that, somehow, things would be different. Every single day that hope had buoyed him, and then sunk him.
• “Is today your birthday?” That made him smile, the same smile from his early school photos. She found herself thinking, There you are.
• There were only two times in a person’s life when a family secret should be revealed—at the very beginning, or at the very end.
• She was used to bottling everything up until she fell with a white-hot intensity that felt like the hunger of her childhood, when she would quickly fill herself out of fear of not getting enough.
• I spend my childhood believing the birds were actually these people, simply transformed. I remember the musty, sweet scent of them. I remember the bloom of dust on their wings.

I have to admit that in the act of compiling the quotes, my appreciation for the book has deepened. On the surface, it seemed like and easy, breezy read, and there’s nothing challenging whatsoever about the prose, but it’s peppered (pun intended) with little piquant points of profundity and beauty, like the ones above. Some characters are more successful than others, and Charlotte in particular seems to be the more completely realized one, maybe because she’s the one in whom the author saw herself the most. The ending, with the sudden arrival of Charlotte’s mother, felt like a bit of a “reverse” deus ex machina, and the climax is resolved with an action sequence that Allen doesn’t really have the chops to pull off, but otherwise, the mystery is engrossing, and the reveals felt well paced and organic. One nitpick would be the sprawl of characters and perspectives; there are sudden shifts in internal monologue that require rapid recall and reorientation to the mindset of the present character. The book feels like a piece of theater, and I think a tighter, somewhat deeper cast would have served the story better. Still—those are minor complaints; overall, I really enjoyed it, and some of the author’s descriptions of alienation, rejection and being hounded by a past you’re desperate to leave behind hit close to home in some ways, and will stick with me.

Greg and Tricia were out of town, so after my (slightly caveat-ed) wonderful experience at Theology on Tap last Tuesday at the Anglican church downtown, I thought I’d actually attend a Sunday morning service, just to check it out.

First impression: It was packed. They have 3 services: 2 on Sunday, and 1 on Saturday, and the 2nd Sunday service I attended was just full to overflowing. If I had to hazard a guess as to why, it’s because people are just so hungry for something of substance, something grounded, and yet spirit-filled and transcendent, and the blend of liturgy with contemporary elements in the service delivers that in spades.

The church is also located in a rougher neighborhood downtown, and heavily prioritizes mercy ministries in its budget, which is attractive also. People want to be a part of that—myself included. It felt a little strange, but also appropriate, to be driving by the county Family Services Center and all the unhoused folks out front on the way to church. There was a man handing out pizzas from the back of a pickup truck after church; he was getting a lot of attention.

Other thoughts: The worship team is very proficient and artistic, and we sang “Not I, But Through Christ in Me,” which is a favorite. The later parts of the worship got a little mantra-ish, which bugs me somewhat; shades of the charismatic church I used to attend back in NC. I really like the fact that there are women in senior positions on the ministry team (read: pastors), and I liked all the call-and-response participation in the service. No simple spectating. I was bothered by the communion process, specifically the fact that everyone is compelled to come forward, and indicate whether or not they feel prepared to receive the elements by either holding out their hands if so, or crossing them over their chest (and receiving prayer) if not. The service is SO packed, that there wouldn’t have been room to scoot around someone who decided to remain seated, so I get it, but even so, I would have felt very exposed, if I hadn’t felt worthy, but stood in line and crossed my arms for everyone to see when I reached the front of the line. There were four lines, but still… I wonder if that’s a general Anglican thing, or whether it was just informed by the logistics of this particular church?

It’s tough. I feel a strong sense of loyalty to Greg and his church, but it’s so small, and there’s a much greater likelihood of me finding a community where I feel fed at the Anglican church. Also, the PCA is still against women in ministry leadership roles, and that bothers me more and more. There’s the possibility I could attend the Saturday service downtown, then Sunday morning at Greg’s church, but that’s a lot, and anyway, not until L is driving himself back from work. I think I’ll stay the course for now, but open a dialogue with the Anglican church to see what their small group situation is like. I can’t express how much I enjoyed the ToT lecture, and the prospect of finding like-minded folk who also enjoy discussing and thinking about the topics covered is very tantalizing.

It felt almost cruel.

I attended a lecture at an Anglican church in downtown Chattanooga yesterday evening. The lecture was titled “The Subversive Prophetic Imagination: How the Arts (and Brueggemann) Can Help Us Navigate the Rise of Christian Nationalism,” and the speaker, one Mary McCampbell, wove together various threads of cultural history, from ancient to modern, to construct the thesis that true creative enterprise is inherently anti-“empire,” her term for a perverse fusion of the religious and political—a phenomenon she took pains to elucidate goes back pretty much to the dawn of history; it’s nothing new. She used Walter Brueggemann’s book Prophetic Imagination to scaffold the lecture, but referenced a whole bunch of works by luminaries I need to read, from Flannery O’Connor to Frederick Douglass to Michel Foucault to Charlotte Brontë (the Goodreads list is about to get much longer).

The lecture was hosted by a local group called Theology on Tap, whose name hearkens back to the one I used to attend 20-odd years ago at a pub in downtown Raleigh. I felt refreshingly at home with the attendees, echoes of my last, best real friend group prior to marriage occurring and overwriting that whole side of my life. I definitely plan to continue attending, and not just because of the free beer, although the tasty Oktoberfest I sipped while listening to the lecture certainly enhanced the experience.

So what felt cruel? During the lecture, as mentioned, the speaker name-dropped Flannery O’Connor, an act which drew an enthusiastic burst of mini-clapping from the pretty woman sitting by herself, offset a bit to the right in the row ahead of mine. During the break between the lecture and the Q&A session, I leaned forward and mentioned offhand that I still needed to finish Mystery & Manners, a compilation of O’Connor’s essays and short stories I’ve had sitting on my shelf for ages. We struck up a conversation, and I learned she’s an English professor at Bryan College up in Dayton, married to a videographer and filmmaker, and that they collaborate on films; she writes the screenplays that he directs. She joked that she felt a little like an army wife because of how much he’s away on shoots. She inquired about what I did for a living, and we discussed a few other things before the Q&A session started, and during one of the speaker’s answers about whether or not art is always subversive, or can be used in service of “empire,” I muttered “Birth of a Nation” and the woman immediately countered with “Triumph of the Will,” and we both chuckled.

That’s all I want. All. I. Want. A tall, pretty college professor (any subject; it doesn’t even have to be English) to whom I can just sit and listen for hours as she rattles off the highlights (or lowlights) of her day in front of her students, or navigating the vagaries of academic administration. I don’t think that’s asking for much. Maybe it is. And it keeps getting dangled in front of me, tauntingly close—or within my hands!—before being cruelly jerked away (not that I would have ever in a million years done anything with the woman at the lecture; but she embodied the concept). The fact that it happened within the context of the lecture, an experience I thoroughly enjoyed, makes it seem even more wanton. I know it’s all in my own head, and I shouldn’t let it color my overwhelmingly positive impression of the evening, but just the same, it’s hard to shake a feeling of divine capriciousness. It’s still difficult to imagine how it could possibly get any better than it was earlier in the year, but in order to have patience, if I put any stock at all in his promises, I have to remind myself that the Lord does have something better for me, whether in this life or the next. Or maybe he doesn’t; maybe that was the romantic high water mark of my life. Either way—I’ve got nothing left but that blind hope. There’s no solace there except some vague notion of singular, in-and-of-myself integrity and consistency, which is fine as far as that goes, but it certainly doesn’t do my emotional state any favors. I’d sure like some good news one of these days, Lord. It’s hard to be patient, but I have no alternative.

I always wanted to visit the cockpit. I still do. It’s my “dream office,” and why I didn’t pursue it in earnest, I’m not entirely sure. I was still into aircraft during my later high school years, when conversations about potential careers start to firm up, but I only remember drifting into design because it’s what my parents said I would be good at. Architecture held a bit of aspirational appeal, partially because of the occupation itself, but if I’m honest, also because I thought it would be cool to introduce myself as an architect. The idea of the profession held a certain cachet. But to be a pilot? I don’t clearly recall the reasons I dismissed it as a career choice.

If I had to speculate, I’d say it was probably because I had a very fixed idea of the track I needed to be on in order to enter the profession, namely, getting my private pilot license as early as possible (age 16) and then, well, I wasn’t really sure what would happen next. I think my parents would have been hesitant to foot the bill for lessons, but… Seeing how supportive they were of my aborted attempt at becoming a missionary pilot 8 years later, they might have entertained the idea of bankrolling me if I had shown the requisite drive and focus—two things that were in short supply toward any end at that point in my life, I’m ashamed to admit.

Another reason may have been the fact that I’d always been more attracted to the aesthetics of flying than the act of flying. I loved the way planes looked, and the way they worked, and the concept of freedom in three axes that accompanies flight, but I knew from early on that the reality of an airline pilot’s task is very constrained by rules and procedures—all good, to maximize efficiency and especially safety, but the dream of just hopping in a plane and losing yourself somewhere up there in the air doesn’t correspond with the day-to-day of cockpit life. But, as I wouldn’t learn until I actually started pilot training, there is something supremely satisfying about learning all those rules and procedures, and mastering the act of controlling a flying machine—not that I ever mastered it, but the appeal began to break through my prejudices, and, having accomplished that, to fuse with my love for the aesthetics of the activity, becoming a complete attraction. I even did have the experience of just tooling around freely in the air, many times, when I took my little 172 north up into the practice area and just did whatever my heart desired under the cloudless blue sky: turns, stalls, climbs, descents, figure eights. It was everything I imagined it would be. And I wish I had known all that prior to college.

Still, to this day, I always take a peek at the instrument panel when entering or exiting the plane, a little ritual not unlike my habit of touching the aluminum skin of the door frame, a tactile reminder that in just a few dozen minutes that same skin will be shielding the plane’s occupants from sub-zero temperatures and tornado-force winds. I flew so frequently in my early life, but the activity never, ever lost its luster. I remember the end of one flight on a 767, probably one of our many transatlantic jaunts, visiting the cockpit, tightly clutching a phrase in my mind like a talisman, one with which I hoped to impress the pilots. The connecting flight just prior had been on a then-new Airbus A320, and looking out of the window at the constant movement of the control surfaces along the trailing edge during landing, something struck me that I decided I wanted to share with the pilots of the larger Boeing. Having gotten permission, I entered the cockpit, looked around for a minute or two, and then said, in as casual a can-you-believe-those-crazy-Europeans tone as I could muster (though I’m sure it didn’t sound casual since the phrase had been throbbing in my brain for the past 30 minutes), “We flew on an A320 earlier, and it was nuts; the wing didn’t even have high-speed ailerons.” The pilots looked at each other, and one replied, kindly, “Well, it’s amazing what that plane doesn’t have,” leaning into the perennial Boeing-Airbus rivalry, something on which most pilots inevitably take a side. I didn’t exactly feel affirmed in my effort to sound more au courant about the nuances of aircraft design than the average cockpit visitor, but to the pilot’s infinite credit, I didn’t feel condescended to or dismissed either. Of course, later I learned that no airliner smaller than a 767 has high-speed ailerons—including Boeing’s own A320 competitor, the 737—and felt retroactively mortified at my comment, so it discouraged me from any further attempts to sound intelligent on the flight deck. But it never dampened my attraction to the world of flying, if not, at that point in my life, its signature profession.

I love this place more every time I visit. And yes, the downspout will get reattached to the gutters once they reinstall them; they’re replacing the roof at the moment.

I spent Labor Day afternoon there, by myself for the first time. I wanted to take a little road trip, and do a “dry run” to ensure I can turn on the water and all the correct breakers when I visit for longer. That task done successfully, I sat in the carport and did crosswords for a little while before moving inside and taking a restful nap on the couch for about an hour.

Even the drive was pleasant. I put on old R.C. Sproul podcasts, part of his series of the history of philosophy, and listened to him discuss Kant, Hegel, and Kierkegaard as I drove down the Ocoee on 64. The only slight blip was that I had to make an unscheduled stop in Ducktown to tuck the car’s loose plastic undertray back into place, and in leaving the parking lot of the bank in which I had completed the task, I spied, for the first time, the little East Polk Public Library, a strip-mall, hole-in-the-wall type library that reminded me of…things. This really is going to take a long, long time. But otherwise, it was a very pleasant trip, and reaffirmed my love for the little house and its environs.

Thinking about my post from a few days ago, it occurred to me that singing whilst mowing is something I’ve done a lot, and it goes all the way back to my earliest forays into lawn care.

Euclid Road, mid-’80s. My dad enlisted my “help” in pushing the mower the summer before we moved to begin our first stint in France. The yard was sloped, and I’d wait while he handled the “tricky parts,” i.e. around the bushes and trees. I remember being unable to actually push the mower by myself, and marveling that anyone could be strong enough to do so. We pushed side-by-side, my hands next to his on the handle. And I sang, thinking that because I couldn’t hear myself over the din of the mower, that no one else could. My dad popped that bubble, though, telling me one day that he could hear me, and that he enjoyed my singing, and that he sang along with me (which I hadn’t heard); while I was flattered by the compliment and the solidarity, I think it abashed me a little, and compelled me to sing more quietly as we mowed together.

Eastwind Place, ’90s. The first time I mowed by myself. My parents bought a self-propelled push mower that was, let’s just say, unwieldy at times. I still wasn’t really strong enough to push it myself, but at least the yard was relatively small. My skills improved, to the point where I went door-to-door in the neighborhood offering to mow neighbors’ lawns. I didn’t get many bites (I’ve never been a salesman), but made a little extra cash one summer from the half-dozen or so lawns I mowed.

Chemin de la Plus Haute Sine, ’92. Ah, the bubble-blower era. My first, and thankfully only, experience with an electric mower, corded, no less. Our rented house was almost new, and the yard was small and flat and had only fresh grass. The little appliance of a mower was nearly overwhelmed by its (admittedly easy) task, and the exercise of moving the cord out of the way by hand after every row was supremely annoying. My parents have pictures of me pushing the dinky thing back and forth, looking miserable. If it had been a larger yard, I’d have mutinied.

Birchwood Drive, ’05-’10. The first time I mowed “my” yard. I remember feeling satisfied with my experience of a domestic chore, in a detached, “Isn’t this quaint?” sort of way. Of course, after a few hundred mows, and larger, more challenging yards, the event loses some of the luster it had during that period. Still, I have good memories like mowing around the absolutely gigantic oak tree in the front yard, and actually fixing the mower’s carburetor (pinhole in the float).

Sedgewick Ridge Court, ’11-’13. An absolutely massive yard compared to what had come before. The back, in particular, was huge, and bounded by tall, skinny cypresses. The previous owners left a self-propelled push mower, which was very helpful. I loved the crested lot, and every time I mowed it reminded me how pleased I was with how it sloped away from the house on each side. Also, this was the first time I put any effort into edging and weeding the yard, cleaning up the driveway and doing some basic primping around the margins.

Demars Lane, ’13-’20. Boy, I hated this yard. It didn’t take me long to mow, but it was sloped into the house in the front, a constant reminder of the awkwardness of its situation. And the back was sloped in the extreme down to the base of the oak tree, necessitating some weedwhacker work to finish it off—when I felt like it. The kids did help me mow a small, flat square of the front yard, and earned a few bucks in the process. I remember feeling satisfied as I stood there, arms crossed, and watching them push the mower back and forth, beneficiary of a little delegation.

Current house, ’20-present. To mow the full yard, edge it, blow the clippings, and spray the weeds, takes me a full 2.5 hours. But boy, is it satisfying when it’s done. Several innovations were introduced with this yard, including listening to music via Bluetooth earbuds, availing myself of sweat bands, and using a gas-powered leaf blower to remove the clippings from the driveway and sidewalk. I enjoy it. And I still sing.

time goes slow and time goes fast

P’s 18th birthday was yesterday. Hard to believe it’s been 18 years since that day, when at 1:25 in the afternoon, all of a sudden there was one more person in the hospital room. I remember trying to sleep that first night in the hospital in that awful square-armed torture device they call a recliner, but my discomfort was nothing compared to what D went through, both before and after. It was a hard time, with lots of overwhelm. But P has turned out exactly as I would have wished her to be: Brilliant, artistic, lovely, thoughtful, a complete nerd with fantastic musical taste. I couldn’t be more pleased with her.

Only two of her girlfriends showed up for the party, held at Whitebird restaurant in downtown Chattanooga, but P had a great time nonetheless. We adjourned to the Twilight Market at the Choo Choo afterward, and they plied the stalls and took photos together in the photobooth. At bumpy as her high school years were at times, she really did emerge from them with a spectacular group of friends, who would move heaven and earth for her if she needed them to. I really, really hope she maintains those friendships.

It was a warm evening in the city, all the co-mingling smells twisting around each other as our shoes gently rocked the loose bricks of the sidewalk. My only consistent experience with cities has been in Europe, and snatches of indistinct scent memories dappled my mind like diffuse droplets on a car windshield. It reminded me of how city walks allow you, just for a while, to sidestep your naivete and feel like an old soul, purposeful, with just a healthy touch of cynicism. There’s something energizing, empowering about it that I hadn’t felt in a while.

I’ve never been happier to be shunned.

I consider myself a fairly fast walker, but yesterday, after P met me in the library, as we were making our way back to the car to drive home, she lagged behind, even though I felt like I was walking more even more slowly than usual, so that I could keep in step with her and ask her about her day. I pointed out that fact, and she replied, not in a mean way (really), “Daddy, I just don’t want to associated with you.” And I was pleased to hear it; it means she’s bedding in to campus, embracing her college life and all the relative independence that entails. She elaborated further when we reached the car: “I just really like walking around the college on my own, sitting on the benches and being by myself.” I remember that feeling, freshman year, when I would hang out in the NCSU Brickyard, feeling old and wise and observant, eating my meatball sub, and tapping “poetry” fragments into my Sharp electronic daily planner I received as a graduation present and never really used for its intended purpose. It was exhilarating, in its way.

P will start packing her own lunches next week and be on her own for the majority of the day and hopefully, soon, driving herself to school. Fingers crossed.

For the record, I’m not resentful toward my parents about any of these. They were doing what any parents would: Putting their child in various circumstances to give him exposure, to nudge him out of his comfort zone, with the goal that he’d grow and perhaps embrace the challenge. It’s not their fault that each ended up being somewhat traumatic, to varying degrees. And they all happened in France.

• The ski test. Auron ski resort, 1989. I learned to ski in 1987 at age 8, and after some initial teething challenges, really took to it. I remember psyching myself up, even at that age, by reminding myself to keep an open mind and embrace the activity. My parents enrolled me in group lessons, and at the end of each series, the instructors awarded the students based on their test results. The initial steps were called “étoiles” (French for “stars”), and I handily passed the tests for both my 1st and 2nd étoiles and the conclusion of their respective series. For my 3rd étoile, part of the test involved skiing down a blue (medium difficulty) slope, slaloming between a series of poles, within a certain time limit. I felt confident, and passed all the other parts of the test with flying colors, but ended up just over the time limit for the slalom portion. I felt so ashamed, especially since my best friend Timothy had passed the test, and I lied to my parents and told them that I didn’t realize it was timed, an explanation they bought without question. But the truth was that I had failed the test outright. I’ve since come clean to them, and they laughed it off, but it wasn’t my finest moment.
• The tennis match. Tennis Club de Vence, 1993 (?). I took group lessons here for a number of months, and enjoyed it. Our instructor was an older man who seemed to like me, and helped me focus on my footwork, and encouraged me to make the follow-through on my backhand more compact, among other things. I remember the first time I served in front of the group of students, I completely whiffed, and heard very audible snickers coming from their side of the court. But the next serve I took flat and just drilled it, which silenced them from then on; that felt good. Toward the end of my time there, my parents signed up me up for a intra-club tournament. I remember feeling ambivalent about it; I wanted to do well, but wouldn’t have been crushed if I lost. My first match was held on one of the lower courts in the complex, on a typically warm (but dry), blue-skied Vence day. I don’t recall anything about my opponent, but what stands out in my memory is my dad sitting by the side of the court, head in his hands, seemingly deep in meditation or prayer or something, not even looking at me as I played the match. I think I acquitted myself fairly well, but still lost, and felt a mild sense of relief at not having to go through that again. A footnote would be to contrast my dad’s behavior in that instance with how he looked whenever we’d play each other, and he always had the biggest grin on his face on the other side of the court. I noticed that, and I loved it.
• The recital. La Gaude, 1992. This is easily the most traumatic of the three. I played accordion for a few years in my late tweens. When my mom began homeschooling my brothers and I, she asked me what instrument I wanted to play, and I said “The accordion,” earnestly, because I liked the way it sounded. Amazingly in that pre-internet age, she managed to track down a local ex-hippie who gave lessons, and I learned the basics from him before we moved to France, where, because of the relative popularity of the instrument, resources were more plentiful. My French instructor was more demanding, but he was friendly, and grounded me more in the fundamentals of the instrument than my previous instructor, who flew a bit more by the seat of his pants. After a few months, it was time for a studio-wide recital, something by which I remember being a little blindsided. I selected my favorite song to play, even though it was somewhat challenging, and I couldn’t make it consistently all the way through without flubbing a note or two. The day of the recital came, and I was a nervous wreck, absolutely terrified, but I watched myself stagger to the front of the room and begin. And…I choked. I had to restart the song several times, stumbled my way to the end and was met with a warm, generous round of applause from all the parents for actually finishing the song. I somehow made it out of the auditorium and, for all intents and purposes had a nervous breakdown, sobbing, hyperventilating, etc. I told my parents that I didn’t want to play anymore. Several days later, my instructor, the sweet man that he was, actually made a house call and talked with my parents and explained, not in a critical way, that I didn’t have that “I want to show them what I can do” mentality exhibited with respect to performance by some of his other students at or around my skill level, but said that he still wanted to work with me. My parents thanked him for making the time, but told him they’d respect my desire to not continue. Do I wish now that I had kept on? Kind of. Perhaps I could have negotiated lessons with no recitals, or some other arrangement that would have enabled me to burnish my proficiency and decide myself when I’d be ready to perform again. I should pick up the instrument again and see if ANY muscle memory is still there after 30+ years.

like the wounded star in the movie?
when will you carry me home
take it back to the start when you knew me?

Protip: Loudly belting out Travis songs as you mow the lawn is a great pick-me-up.

In an effort to better occupy the verbal processing part of my mind, instead of just letting it drift over songs I’ve listened to dozens of times, the same playlists again and again, I loaded my mp3 player up with old podcasts I had archived from my first stint at my current company, but hadn’t listened to in years. In the process, I also found I had saved a number of old NPR full concert recordings, among them one of Travis performing at the 9:30 Club in D.C. back in 2007. They put on a great show, and Fran Healy’s stage banter is some of the best I’ve heard (side note: major accent jealousy). As a songwriter, he has a real knack for melody, but beneath the delightful chord changes, the lyrics are deceptively deep. I’d love to hear them live.

Just about every song in their set was a favorite, but “Battleships” freshly stood out to me. Fran introduced it by dedicating it to anyone who’s ever had, or currently was in, a conflict with a partner, parent, sibling, friend, or any other loved one—which pretty much includes everyone at some point in time. As I listened, I thought about the nature of conflict in relationships, and my own approach to it. Some folks seem to be comfortable with it in the sense that it’s something they’re familiar with, perhaps from a fractured home life or a series of stormy relationships. It brought to mind the fact that she asked me, point blank, on at least a couple of occasions, what I thought our first fight would be about. I replied both times that I believed it would probably be just me saying something stupid and then having to apologize for it (which did happen several times, it should be noted). But thinking about the quality of her inquiries, it was like she was almost eager for us to have a proper fight, and then make up. I wonder if she thought that would validate the relationship somehow? Like at that point, we would have covered, presumably, the full range of emotions, witnessed each other in every possible state AND weathered a conflict with our affection (hopefully) intact. And the thing is, I can actually relate to that eagerness; it would have made me feel closer to her.

But on a deeper level, it occurred to me that it takes a lot of self-possession to have a proper fight. I mean, if both parties are honest with themselves and each other, and the issue that provoked the conflict is real and significant, then there’s a nonzero chance that it could catalyze a breakup. It’s a risky thing, and both parties have to be aware of the stakes. It’s far easier, but more cowardly, in a sense, to simply roll over every time the other party makes a demand, or suck it up every time they say or do something that irks you. Now—picking one’s battles is important, and there IS a time and place for compromise and reaching a point of understanding, but there are definitely times when assertiveness need to come to the fore, and that’s something I want to improve on. Put another way, I’m very conflict-averse, and I wish I weren’t. I’ve always been that way, and I’ve often wondered why. I suspect some of it has to do with the fact that I never saw my parents fight and make up; they always did it behind closed doors, ostensibly to shield my brothers and I from their struggles and present a united front—a noble goal, but a side effect is that my brothers and I never really witnessed an example of them having a genuine divergence of opinion, then working through it. And another reason may simply tie into an insecurity over being abandoned, but I’m not really sure how far back that goes, since I never, ever felt that in my family life, and I was conflict-averse before I ever starting dating in my teens. So I’m unsure where ground zero for that instinct is.

The irony, of course, is that the more I simply roll over out of insecurity, the less assertive I am in key moments, and the less attractive I am as a partner, and the more likely I am to actually be broken up with. I think it’s something I need to discuss with my counselor, since I can theorize about paths forward, suss out strategies that would provide a framework in which I would know when to stand my ground, but not having had an example, as noted above, I’d like to get a second opinion. One thing I DO know: I simply can’t wait until I have an absolutely airtight case before I assert myself. That happens SO rarely, and takes SO much time to build that the moment is more often than not completely gone by the time I’m done moving all my chess pieces into place. There’s a topic that should elicit some rich discussion: When to fight, how to fight well, and fight constructively. I’d really like to learn.

It’s been a good first week back for the kids. L is happy as a clam since he gets to participate in concert choir again, his favorite thing, and he’s taking Intro to Music as an elective with the choir director, whom he adores. He’s met up with his knot of friends on campus already, and we got his paperwork squared away for graduation in December. It’ll be sad for him to move on from the community college; I often wish it were a four-year institution, but…then it wouldn’t be open admissions, and tuition would undoubtedly be higher. At least there’s a good four-year school in the area for him to transfer to, where he can complete his bachelor’s. I’m pretty satisfied with the pace at which things are moving for him, and I think he is as well. Steady, but not overwhelming. And his GPA is 3.9+. I’m so proud of him.

For her part, P is finally getting used to managing this college thing. She was ill with a bad cold early in the week, which didn’t help. It was challenging for her to get acclimated to the format of her online math class, but it seems like she’s buckling down and getting her assignments done. And obviously, she’s over-the-moon excited about art, to the point where I’ve had to gently help her prioritize. She said the initial class on Monday consisted mainly of the students sharing philosophical thoughts about art in kind of a roundtable discussion, which she loved, to the point of getting emotional when discussing the concept of beauty. She said one of the other students praised her for being vulnerable enough to cry during class, which is sweet, and I think it meant something to P. It’s still early days, but it’s an encouraging initial sign that she’s among “her people.” I’m excited to see how the balance of the semester pans out on that front.

New life goal; lock it in: Stargazing somewhere in the southern hemisphere.

Walking with L earlier this evening, we rounded a corner, and I was stunned by an eyeful of Scorpius in all its colorful glory. It’s a summer constellation, and given that we can mostly see Cygnus (my favorite, but nominally a summer visitor) year-round, Scorpius is the one that “makes” the season’s night sky for me. Antares, the Cat’s Eyes, the way it snakes around and shimmers in the warm treetop haze, pincers coiled and alert… It’s magnificent in a completely different way than the hard, austere, icy beauty of winter constellations like Orion, Taurus, or Auriga. The summer stars pulse and quiver with life in a way that makes me believe, just for a split second, that I could actually witness them dance a little in their assigned places. I love it.

Still, Scorpius is just about the southernmost constellation I’ve ever seen. Canopus, the Southern Cross, Centaurus, Lupus, etc—it occurred to me that I’ve never traced them with my own eyes. How spectacular would it be to travel to Argentina, or South Africa, or Australia, or New Zealand, just to look at the night sky and see a completely different set of stars? I’m so familiar with what I’m looking at when I glance up after dark here in the northern hemisphere that it would probably feel like I was in a parallel universe. I would love to travel down there someday just to see that.

I finally broke down and created a long-overdue Goodreads account. I’m hopeful having a record of my progress, and something to look back on and feel satisfied about will help me stay motivated to remain more consistent with my reading. The past few months have seen a real uptick—mostly as an only-partially-successful attempt at mental/emotional escape, but regardless of the reason, I’d like to keep it going.

I used to read a lot more, especially during trips, to the degree that I developed a strong memory association between certain books and travel adventures. Here’s a very non-exhaustive list:

• Mattimeo, Landes – On Gran’s recommendation (she was a voracious reader), my mom read my brothers and I Brian Jacques’ Redwall, and we loved it. I read the next few sequels myself, and was knee-deep in this book, the third in the series, during our trip to southwestern France. We stayed on a kind of summer resort camp, with rustic single-family cabins, and I remember devouring page after page in the top bunk, in between trips through the cool forest, thick with ferns, out to the wide beaches, and down to Spain for a day trip to San Sebastián.
• Watership Down, Lyon – The back cover copy of every installment in the Redwall series always had a line about them being the “spiritual successor to…” or “in the grand tradition of…” this book, so naturally my interest was piqued, but it was a while before I got my hands on a copy, and immediately found it to be more political, allegorical, and less popcorn-ish than its would-be follow-on series. I still liked it, even though it was far more realistic, gritty, and haunting. I bought a gray rabbit hand puppet in Lyon and named it Hazel, after the book’s protagonist.
• The Great Divorce, Istanbul – Though I’d repudiate some of the reflections now, I wrote about book/location experience here. Thinking back on it, there was something almost mystical, transcendent about reading fictionalized speculation on the nature of heaven and how we interface with it, and the sensory input of that city. Several million people and I were all seeking God together, in our own ways.
• Firefox, Sorrento – This is probably the biggest location-story mismatch on this list. Still, there’s a connection, so I feel compelled to mention it. The book is a dark, pulpy techno-thriller, and the town and its environs a jaw-droppingly gorgeous slice of southern Italian picture-postcard beauty. I think I read some Frank Peretti book on the trip after Firefox, but best not to dwell on that…
• Oscar Lobster’s Fair Exchange, Brittany – This was one of the first, if not the first, book my mom read aloud to my brothers and me, summer 1987. We rented a beach house for a couple of weeks, and the story takes place at the beach (albeit a New England one), so there was some degree of correspondence. We loved it. And I started reading the Astérix series here at well; I think Astérix et Cléopâtre was the first volume I read.
• How To Build a Car, Hayesville – I have warm memories of sitting in the carport, marinating in Adrian Newey’s very readable memoir of his (thus far) time in F1, glancing up to occasionally watch a cloud or three glide across the mountaintops on the other side of the valley. I think I spent all morning, several mornings in that state, and I’d give anything to experience it again.
• A Galaxy Next Door (Vol.1), France 2022 – So, this was a cute start to a manga that unfortunately didn’t really pan out, to the point where I sold the four volumes I did end up purchasing. But given the significance of the trip, the sight and smell memories that came flooding back, and especially the fact that we all got sick with COVID and stumbled through various parts of the trip in a delirious haze, the book inadvertently embedded itself in my memories of that place and its associated emotions. I could take you to exactly where I sat on the mustard-colored couch of the architect’s house’s living room as I read certain scenes and chapters. I can’t help wishing that maybe it had been another book to receive those associations, but it’s OK. It could be worse.

P showed me her Pokémon card collection last night. This isn’t a terribly uncommon occurrence, but yesterday’s timing and just the overall feel of the event was significant. It took place in the evening, during her normally-allotted play-with-Daddy time, of which she hasn’t availed herself in quite a while. Given that our relationship has somewhat normalized after a challenging beginning to the year, I’m tempted to chalk up her lack of desire to simply growing out of that phase, the same way L has, but I need more time and evidence to really settle on that explanation. But last night’s show-and-tell session felt for all the world like a substitute event. She’s rightly proud of her collection and encyclopedic knowledge of the franchise, and isn’t the slightest bit reluctant to display either, so it’s not like I had to twist her arm to get her to walk me through her binder. I’d seen most of the cards before, but she compulsively reorganizes it, so the sequence was different than last time, and she wanted to showcase her latest acquisitions, so I gave her free rein, and tried to ask intelligent questions and make thoughtful remarks about esoteric details like printing errors and special editions. She left in a glow, I think, and I felt good as well.

Speaking of Pokémon cards, we made a field trip today to the post office to pick up a card she ordered from Japan, and drove her car, which I’ve only recently reassembled and I’m pleased to report runs spectacularly well. I suggested she drive, but she politely declined, which is fine. She’s anxious about it, especially the idea of having a panic attack while driving, so I’m giving her as much space as she needs. I do hope once the dust settles and she gets acclimated to the college routine, she’ll venture out on her own. I’m going to try to set that expectation as gently as I can. She’s a natural when it comes to the mechanics of driving, and the actual rules of the road, but her decision-making still needs some spit and polish.

For his part, L has been practicing a lot, and is making good progress, though definitely at a slower clip than his sister. He’s always been the kind to not want to try something unless he has it completely figured out, and driving is a learn-as-you-do type activity, so it’s been more difficult for him than P for that reason, among others. Still, as I’ve reminded him on numerous occasions, if little old grandmothers can drive, so can you; it’s just a basic adult skill. He’ll get there. His driving test is scheduled for early next month, so he has a few weeks for some additional practice, but it’s not like the test here is anything more than a leisurely drive around the block. If I can end the year with two kids driving themselves in their own vehicles, I’ll be a happy, satisfied man—if completely broke from insurance premiums.

post-mortem, part eight

I need to remember what an affirmative thing writing is sometimes. Recording something doesn’t make me feel better about an issue; in Nora Ephron’s words:

“I think you often have that sense when you write–that if you can spot something in yourself and set it down on paper, you’re free of it. And you’re not, of course; you’ve just managed to set it down on paper, that’s all.”

but I feel like it can underline and affirm an option. If I’m pondering various sides of a knotty issue, or considering between alternatives, exploring the issue in writing and then coming to a conclusion almost says “THIS is the course of action, or the position I choose.” I suppose that’s a roundabout way of expressing the simple fact that writing is helpful to me when it comes to processing complex issues, but I need to constantly remind myself of that as I type and type, chucking pennies into the void with no real emotional return, and it all feels completely futile. In a perfect world, writing would do 3 things for me: Liberate me emotionally of whatever I’m writing about, help me deliberately examine all sides of an issue and arrive at a definite conclusion, and just provide an opportunity to exercise the mental muscles of verbal self-expression. As it happens, though, the first is exceedingly rare, the second happens occasionally but not often as I’d like (witness how many times I revisit the same subject), and so I’m typically left with just the rote practice of mapping my thoughts onto a screen or page as the only constructive outcome of this activity. And really, that’s OK; sometimes just doing the thing is the thing. But in these times, I can’t help but want more, as the world floods and my olive-branched dove flits wearily over what feels like the endless surface of the endless deep. Why can’t I just pour my feelings out onto the screen where they’ll be kept, locked away behind glass, taxidermied specimens of Past Matt’s Emotional State for me to casually stroll by and say “Hmm; that’s interesting” before finding the gift shop and buying a refrigerator magnet or two?

The world is drowning. Our country’s leaders and vast army of enablers, both in the government itself and the utterly apathetic voting public, are driving us off the bridge, and it feels like it’s only a matter of time before something institutional gives way and triggers a crisis that will make this so-far mitigated encroachment seem quaint. Everything is in flux family-wise; I’m becoming acclimated to the new normal, praise God, but it would be a very tender time under normal circumstances, and D, for all her resentment over “being evicted,” is getting exactly what she wanted—responsibility-free singleness—and is checked out even more than she was when she was here, so it feels like I’m shepherding two young adults through a complex web of decisions completely alone. And then the breakup. It’s a lot, and it takes its toll, and I wish, oh how I wish I could express everything here and find solace, but I flatly type and the words stubbornly refuse to absorb any real emotion in a liberating way.

It takes faith to believe this is constructive. Writing is a means AND an end, but I have to be intentional to recognize the ends, and it gets exhausting sometimes. But it helps that I can look back on past instances where I think writing helped me arrive at some kind of conclusion, even if that conclusion just amounts to “getting everything out of my head and onto a page so I can stare at it.” That’s not nothing, and I recognize that, but I wish the sense of satisfaction would pervade me more thoroughly. In the meantime, I’ll keep writing.

post-mortem, seventh episode

I can’t imagine a nicer morning for L and I to begin our volunteering “career” at Reflection Riding. The light was mild, the shade generous, and the fan gently blew the dappled air under the potting enclosure at the native plant nursery. We were given the tour, a crash course in native plants and the philosophy of the conservancy, and then we set to work making soil and repotting as many Narrowleaf Mountain Mint plants as we could in our allotted two hours and change. L had a great time, once he got the hang of it. I forgot how much he really does love the outdoors. It reminded me of the vibe from our Cub Scout camping adventures, which I endured, but he relished (although I’ll concede there were some significant memories made during those trips). I felt very proud of him as I witnessed him in his element, happy and helpful. We even got a chance to say hello to some of the red wolves in the wildlife rehabilitation center before we left.

Earlier this evening, with a small group at the church, I watched and discussed Gather, a documentary about food sovereignty focused on Native Americans. I appreciated the film, and didn’t disagree with anything put forth in it, or during the discussion afterward, even when it took the inevitable turn toward the systemic racism baked into the Constitution, or this arbitrary notion of inalienable, God-given human rights that are supposedly self-evident, but really aren’t. I’m eager to hear Greg expand in this idea of a “theology of place” during his lecture next month, given how important the concept of place is to me; I’d like to see if it’s possible to integrate those two ideas and create a kind of emotional flexibility that would enable me to feel more at home where I currently am, and wherever I’m meant to be next.

I asked a few questions during the discussion time, but given that we were running long, didn’t get a chance to offer the comment I really wanted to, that in spite of all the hardship and struggle the subjects of the documentary (and the indigenous community writ large) has endured, I do envy them their sense of purpose. They have something they’re fighting for, even if it’s just to preserve a cultural heritage that stretches back hundreds, if not thousands of years. It gives them a nobility, a focus completely absent my own life, and the lives of thousands, millions of their more privileged non-indigenous neighbors. Am I reacting out of a place of privilege in even feeling that way as I watch? I’m not entirely sure, especially since I’ve copped to feeling envious of those who’ve gone through more personal struggles in their life because of their perspective, and ability to speak out of a place of having living through what they’re empathizing with—regardless of their ethnic background. I’ve had to construct meaning out of the flecks of domesticity in which I’m “present,” and the very ordinary mission of being a good father and wanting the best for my kids—one of the most common purposes around, and not one that confers anything distinctive. But I think that’s OK, and I’m equally wary of manufacturing an artificial sense of purpose, just to have one. None of the subjects of the documentary asked for their lives, such as they are, and for their raison d’être to flow out of it. They didn’t seek out purpose as an end in itself, but just embraced what was in front of them. The best thing I can do, at this point, is simply to hold the line, place my heart content in God’s sovereignty, and to keep my eyes open for opportunities. They’ll come.

In no particular order, with Odin on my lap as I type this, here are some thoughts about places to live.

Winston-Salem. Barring any unforeseen changes of situation, I’ll probably move back there in a few years, once L is graduated with a bachelor’s, has a career job, and P has some solid direction, college-wise. That was always the expectation when I accepted the new job back in January, although, to my employer’s infinite credit, they didn’t mandate a specific timeline for the move. But it’s job I intend to keep, and I do like the area, all the more since the visit back in late April, which helped me view it with fresh eyes and appreciate it even more (side note: It’s going to be challenging to visit again between now and Christmas given how special the previous trip was). Cost of living is a bit less than here, and the climate is a touch cooler. It’s also much closer to the ski resorts up in West Virginia. And I like North Carolina’s feel and politics more than Tennessee’s. The only real downside is it’s more flat, with no major river, so it lacks Chattanooga’s sense of place, although there are landmarks around, depending on where I choose to live.

Seattle. B lives here, as do D&R, and I would love to move there, but I think career opportunities have passed me by. Cost of living is considerably higher as well, and it’s on the other side of the country from my parents and brothers. In a perfect world, I’d love to relocate to that coast, but realistically, it’s a process that should have been started a long time ago, when I was married, and D really had no interest. It would have been too much of a shift. Still—I can’t tell you how fantastic it would be to be able to hang out with B in person whenever I wanted. I really can’t think of anyone else who coheres in terms of perspective on life, general energy level, shared lived experiences, and so on. I miss him a lot.

France. Given that I work remotely full-time, I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t fantasized about moving over there and just working from 2 PM to 11 PM, the corresponding working hours in that time zone. I made it work while we were stranded there for an extra week and a half back in 2022, after all. As much as I’ve experienced, I’ve just barely scratched the surface of all the little nuances of the towns, cities and countryside over there. My memories are draped over the landscape like a blanket, but only sit on the surface; living there would be a chance to burrow down into the texture of the place, the smells and sounds, the little shops and restaurants, the hiking trails and traffic patterns. The silver lining of our unexpectedly extended stay is that by Week 3, I realized “I can do this.” I knew where to get groceries. I knew where the best baguettes were, and where the cheap gas was. I could make real headway talking with the pharmacist, or banter with the waitstaff at a restaurant. Coming back was particularly cruel after that epiphany. But it has all the same challenges as Seattle, with a few more besides, like a work visa and such. Still—I would make lifestyle sacrifices for the sake of trying.

Hayesville. The retirement dream, although if I could move there before retiring and work remotely out of the Hayesville house, I’d do it in a heartbeat. But as discussed here, it’s a little complicated. Given that it’s somewhat closer to Winston-Salem (4 hours vs. 6+ hours), I wonder if my company would be OK with me moving there directly instead of the intermediate step of the city. It has it all: Small town life, a strong sense of place, located in NC, family connections and just…the air, the smell, the sound of the wind as it ruffles the dogwood in the front yard—it’s home. As for the house itself, I’d fix it up and modernize it somewhat. I wouldn’t gut it and start over, but I’d definitely consider moving some walls around and opening up the kitchen and dining area, etc. Given that it only has a carport, I’d have to figure out some solution for the cars, but that’s a challenge I’d be more than willing to take on for the sake of living there. Maybe I could rent space at a nearby garage, or even just find a workable storage solution. On another minor note, I’d like to figure out a solution for the trash so I wouldn’t have to take it by the dump on a regular basis. I wonder if I could persuade the local trash service to stop by the end of the road? That’d be nice for long-term living there. All that said, it is a fair drive from ski resorts, or an airport, and the closest real hospital is 20 minutes down the road in Murphy, so there are downsides, but even so, I’d be a fool to dismiss it for relatively petty reasons.

post-mortem, volume six

P’s college orientation session was earlier this afternoon. It was long, but engaging, and very well thought-out. D accompanied us. We had already done the bulk of what they recommended (registering for classes, figuring out financial aid, getting her student ID, etc), but it was good to hear it reinforced, and to have someone official fill in the gaps in my knowledge of the process, especially when it comes to financial aid. P was a good sport during the campus-wide scavenger hunt, and even made a friend, although since her friend will be starting the pre-nursing program, and P will be studying art, it’s unlikely they’ll share any classes. I asked if they had traded contact info, and P said they hadn’t, which felt a little silly. I want her to excel academically, obviously, but most of all, I want her to find “her people” after years of feeling like something of an outsider, a misfit, in high school (even though she has a great group of girlfriends who love her to pieces) and also, to be pushed artistically. We checked out the studio spaces after orientation concluded, and to our delight, the rooms were open and unoccupied. I don’t know that she’ll have her own desk space like she did at Design Camp last year, but otherwise, there’s a lot of overlap between the two environments. She looked very comfortable and excited, all the more when she saw the lesson outline still on the whiteboard covering a lot of advanced composition and art theory, something for her to sink her teeth into after years of re-covering the basics with the lowest common denominator in high school art. I think she left feeling encouraged.

Apropos, here’s an incident that made my day. I was sitting in the library near the new book arrivals, listening to one of the orientation guides explain to the students how to check their college email and do other computer things, when the librarian interrupted her to address the whole group of 50-odd incoming students: “Is there a P_____ here who works at _____ _____?” Apparently P had dropped her work name tag (which she keeps in her purse), and the librarian had noticed it and knew it likely belonged to one of the orientees. P sheepishly identified herself and claimed her name tag, but I could tell without seeing her (I was on the other side of a partition) that she probably wanted to crawl into a hole in the ground out of embarrassment now that all her future classmates knew her name and where she worked. Little moments like that make being the dad of a teenager worthwhile.

On a more serious note, for my part, it was difficult to be back on campus, especially in the library and around the Humanities building. I felt the weight of past emotions surging toward me through the walls, ambushing me from the little visual touchstones on the grounds, restless, a touch paranoid. But—there’s nothing for it except to be there for the kids, and they won’t be there forever, so I’ll just make the best of it on the days when I’m camping out in the library or elsewhere while they’re in class. I’ll stay focused, stay on task, and who knows, maybe the keyed-up feeling will help me be more productive. We’ll see when the semester starts in a couple of weeks.

Church continues to be a blessing. This morning was the fourth time I’ve been to Sunday service, and I also attended the Mark Charles lecture, and the beading workshop, both held there. One of these days I’ll stay for lunch. I want to fellowship more with the attendees, especially those who look awkward there, like me. The theology is still orthodox, but Greg is very willing to go after what would be considered sacred cows to the evangelical establishment, like climate change and immigration, and I’m grateful for that. He’s beginning a sermon series on Philippians, and introduced it by giving some background on Paul’s establishment of the church, and how it was the powerless and lowly of the time that became its initial nucleus (a woman, a slave girl, and a jailer).

If I’m honest, it still gives me pause when inerrancy is alluded to (even though I know Greg shares my viewpoint on that), or even the primacy of scripture asserted. I appreciate how Greg leans into natural revelation far more than would be typical at most churches, but if I had my preference, scripture would be used and emphasized slightly differently than it is. And I’m keyed into masculine pronouns for God now, to the point of near-distraction. Again, like with scripture, I would make it a point to de-emphasize that, but I know the church’s heart in both cases, and they really are putting their money with their mouth is when it comes to being like Jesus to the marginalized, and being welcoming in very practical ways. They strike a good balance between pulling me out of my comfort zone, and being just familiar enough in other ways to provide a mental and emotional foothold. I think that’s OK.

Also, and this sounds (well, is) superficial, but the worship is sung in a lower key, one that I can actually sing without straining my voice, and that’s been refreshing, even if the worship itself is less professional than at other churches (it’s just Greg with his guitar, Brian with the drum and occasional harmonica riffs from the gentleman on the dais). As small as the church is, I feel like I’m able to contribute more to that side of things by actually singing out. So there’s that as well.

Somewhat relatedly, I’m starting to think my church experience growing up was more atypical than I’d always thought it was. Church was a welcoming, happy place, an extended family of sorts, and I almost always looked forward to it, and didn’t chafe against any of its teachings or emphases, or bristle at its requirements. I’m tempted to think myself naive, or just a follower—and that IS one explanation. But another, more likely one is simply that I had good, loving parents who set proper boundaries, and we attended churches that, in the main, weren’t overly legalistic but were trying to follow Christ’s example with their congregants as best they could. So my memories are untainted by any drama or hurt. But in talking with folks, I’m ashamed to admit it didn’t really register how badly many have been damaged by institutionalized religion weaponized against them. Misapplication of scripture and church members with agendas and axes to grind have caused SO much deep, lasting harm to peoples’ psyches. The silver lining, if there is one, is that it pushed them to be more self-reliant in how they sought out God and truth, more independent in their thinking, and that’s especially healthy in this day and age when people outsource so much of their opinion forming to TikTok videos or “influencers.” In a slightly perverse way, I’m actually jealous of how they came by those abilities and instincts, in the same way being cynical or jaded is an aspirational state of mind to those of us who lean more earnest. I need to strike that balance myself, actually, to more frequently practice the habit of seeking out God on my own time and in my own spaces. Being more mindful is a start, but even so, there’s a side of God in general and Christianity in particular that’s only experienced in community, so if we decide to forsake that, we’re depriving ourselves. Is institutional religion the only community in which we can experience God? Of course not. But still think there’s great value in partnering with a group of people who come together explicitly for the purpose of emphasizing their common faith. If nothing else, it reminds me that God transcends our petty differences, and is bigger than all of them.

L and I are going to start volunteering at Reflection Riding next weekend. It’ll just be helping out in the nursery for a few hours, potting plants and such, but I’m really looking forward to it. It’ll be a great chance to get him some exposure to that environment, to make some connections in the organization, and what’s more, to get to participate in taking care of the natural side of things, restoring creation just a little bit.

L’s never volunteered for anything on a regular basis, and I’ve not done so in longer than I care to admit. I always consider myself at anyone’s beck and call when it come to cars repairs or advice, genuinely happy to offer pro bono help, and that’s something I’ve done through the years when the occasion called for it. All the way back in middle school, one morning a week, my mom loaded my two brothers and I in the station wagon and we drove around delivering hot meals to people as part of the Meals on Wheels program in Durham, NC. Most of the addresses were in some pretty rough neighborhoods, and not everyone was grateful when we knocked on their door and handed them the food. Still, I look back on that experience very fondly. I felt a little awkward, but never unsafe as long as my mom and brothers were there, and some of the folks were incredibly sweet, and so thankful to just see another human being. I doubt some of them got many, if any, visitors, and I really did hate to disengage when it was clear they just wanted to talk and we had to deliver the next meal. I remember daytime TVs on in the background, tall grass, fences and bars on windows and doors, piles of unopened mail on doorsteps, old trees, musty smells and people, just people, trying to make their way in the world like we all are. I really did enjoy it, and I’m unsure why I’ve not followed up since with any official volunteering efforts. It would cross my mind from time to time, but I’d always tell myself that my kids were the front lines, as it were, of any kind of selflessness I put forth—which is true, but it’s not an either-or proposition, and I regret not demonstrating that beyond the walls of the house until now. Hopefully our time at Reflection Riding will be a small step toward making that right. Is it going to be awkward for this introvert? Yep! Will I waltz in and set the place on fire with my natural charisma? Nope! But I’ll do my best and be, if nothing else, another warm body and pair of hands helping out.

post-mortem, fifth chapter

In the wake of some considered thought, I’ve decided that the words “I love you” don’t mean that much to me.

That’s an exaggeration of course, but it is true that being told that I’m loved, in isolation, may not resonate with me like it does with some others. It’s significant for me when I make the decision to say it to someone else, and while the hope is that the words will be offered in return, the content of the expression itself doesn’t move me as deeply as certain other declarations, such as:

• You’re doing a good job
• I’m proud to be with you
• You’re enough
• Thank you for what you do for me/us
• I admire you

If anyone wanted to really reassure me of their devotion and send me into internal raptures, saying (and meaning!) any of those would do the trick. For me, those are the subatomic particles of the element of love, the constituent protons and electrons that give the old familiar word its identity and structure. I’d like to think I hear them embedded within “I love you,” but experience has shown me that isn’t always the case. It’s not that I don’t enjoy being told someone considers me handsome, or complimented in another surface-level way, but a partner is going to get a lot more emotional mileage out of any of the pronouncements listed above.

I should probably also address the obvious possibility that part of the reason why the 3-word construction may have lost some of its luster is that I’ve been told that in every significant romantic relationship (4 times now), and every time, its connotations of fidelity and devotion have been walked away from, or broken outright. I half-jokingly commented a number of posts down that considering what’s happened to me, my lack of cynicism is noteworthy; well, maybe it’s there, but just buried in my subconscious, manifesting itself through a lack of emotional response to a declaration that would mean everything to anyone else. If that’s the case, who knows; maybe time will restore the expression’s resonance, coupled with an effort on my part to actively believe what the other party means when they say the words. It’s going to take intentionality; that much I know.

post-mortem, part iv

Had a good conversation with my brother early in the week. Among other things, I asked him for some advice about how to formulate my wishes regarding a life insurance payout, now that I’m divorced. Since the kids are underage and still in progress, it’s a little more complicated than before. I’ve been working on it all week, and I think I’ve laid out a workable plan. I’m really thankful he’s been willing to take on the role of executor, and just to have him in my corner in general. He’s very steady, and gives sound, thoughtful advice.

We talked about all manner of things, among them the Hayesville house, and he brought up something I hadn’t thought about. The house is jointly owned by my parents and my aunt, and while she doesn’t stay there as often as my parents do, she does visit at least once or twice a year, and has an attachment to the house and the area. Her husband, my uncle, is significantly older than she is, and going downhill at a decent clip. They live close to my parents, but according to my brother, my aunt has expressed a desire to relocate permanently to Hayesville when my uncle passes. Exactly how that would play out in terms of my parents’ frequent visits, I’m not sure, but it would definitely make it more challenging for me to just “escape” there for a weekend or such. I love my aunt, but the main reason to go would be to enjoy that restorative time alone. I’d like to have a conversation with my parents and get their take on it, now that I know. I have a great deal of affection for that house, and would move there in a heartbeat if my life circumstances allowed. There are just a lot of stakeholders, many cooks in the kitchen—all people of goodwill; no one’s on a power trip, which is good, but it’s still challenging to know how to navigate the web of desires and intentions, and to know which conversations to have when, etc. Fortunately, as far as my family is concerned, my parents and brothers know that I’m interested in the house. Whether that desire has been made known beyond that circle, I’m not sure.

I didn’t always feel such a strong attachment to the Hayesville house. In fact, before the first time I drove there from Chattanooga back in 2014 (?), I hadn’t been there in close to twenty years, and never felt bonded to it back then. It was just my grandmother’s mountain house, with no air conditioning, and it smelled kind of musty and was full of random things she had picked up from flea markets and thrift stores, like an old Atari 2600 and a handful of games. The TV had bunny ears, and all my tomboyish mom’s childhood toys were there, old board games and a kids’ bow and arrow and a target. So we certainly found things to keep us occupied, but it was far from a transcendent experience. What changed? Frankly, I’m not entirely sure. I’ve had several key moments there but I can’t augur a cause other than just getting older, and having experiences that intersect with those moments and breathe meaning into them:

1. Driving back in my green F150 along the twisty part of 64 that borders the Ocoee, evening sun setting in the rear view mirror, both kids sleeping in the back seat, Kings of Convenience playing softly on the stereo, arm up on the back of the front bench seat.
2. Sitting on a deck chair in the carport, watching the cloud shadows slide over the Nantahala Range in the distance, contentedly reading Adrian Newey’s memoir, a cool drink on the side table next to me.
3. Having put the kids to bed, watching old Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes in the living room with my dad, curtains drawn across the wide front windows, cozy on the couch.

There have been others, but those are the three that come immediately to mind. Maybe the common thread is that the house feels like a part of that location AND a part of my family the way no other house has—the mountains slope through the windows, and the walls have the texture of our relationships—and somehow it took me being a dad, with responsibilities and a full battery of thoughts about place, to appreciate that.

post-mortem, part the third

It’s been more than a month since D’s been gone. Honestly, it feels liberating. In the midst of all the hand-wringing and strife, that feeling has crept in slowly, incrementally with each little milestone, but now it feels full-grown, present. Sure, the house still needs a lot of work, but nothing feels missing, in either space or time. Everyone knows what their days and weeks consist of, for the most part, and they continue to click past—albeit mine still go by more slowly than they should, for various reasons.

I wonder sometimes if I shouldn’t put so much pressure on myself. I’m trying to do a LOT of things at once, and I occasionally have to fight the instinct to indulge my introversion, especially with regard to being more outwardly-focused in a church context, and just making friends in general. The latter is especially challenging. Not only do I have to overcome my base-level introversion, I also have to use relational muscles that have completely atrophied over the course of 18 years. Before I was married, I only ever had one really close friend, and I’d only ever had 3 of them in my entire life by the time I tied the knot at age 27. Gabe was a childhood friend, and we never really remembered a time when we weren’t close. Timothy was a once-in-a-lifetime godsend when we lived in France, and Aaron and I bonded through playing tennis and Odyssey of the Mind before we became inseparable. And even in Aaron’s case, there were (and still are) large gaps in our friendship, when we didn’t keep up with each other. The upshot of all this is that I don’t have a tried-and-true roadmap towards close friendship with another guy. And I’m 46! Talk about learning as you go… My plan at this point is to attack the problem from multiple fronts: Be open-minded and friendly at church and see who shares interests beyond spiritual things, and also explore hobby-based groups like the local astronomy club. Working remotely like I do, it’s even more important to put myself out there socially, given that I don’t have a group of local work friends to provide a daily baseline of social interaction. Don’t get me wrong—I love my coworkers, but there’s just something about being physically around other adults that I desperately need. Still, it feels like a catch-22, since I need to stay busy, especially with respect to cultivating friendships, to keep my mind from eating itself alive, but I also need restorative time alone—the space in which my thoughts run rampant.

The other mental hurdle to overcome will be the sense of being an outlier, an anomaly in groups. I remember in my parents’ church, there were always 3-4 random older men, probably divorced, that just kind of hung around, and they stood out a bit. They always seemed kind of sad, and like they didn’t really have their life together; remind you of anyone? I feel self-conscious about that, especially in a smaller church, but there’s nothing I can do about it. I am curious to find out whether or not that feeling persists in an interest-based group, so I’ll likely be hyper-aware of group composition and dynamics. We’ll just have to see how it goes. And then, after it’s done, retreat to my comfort zone and recharge.

post-mortem, part 2

So, let’s interact with this a bit. In a comment on this post, which I linked to a few posts down, Lindsey said:

“there are things in this world bigger than who you wake up with every morning. it becomes less agonizing in the long run if you don’t believe in soulmates, but instead believe that you could live a fulfilling life with any one of a number of equally qualified people.”

In my reply, I agreed, but tried to bolster my reply with some non sequitur about narcissism and selflessness. In retrospect, I’m not really sure what I was trying to get at. Honestly, I was probably just speaking out of my pre-marriage perspective on relationships. The post was written before D and I started dating, and all the self-talk and justification started, so I think I would have been in a clearer state of mind when considering relationship dynamics.

I do still agree, but with qualifications. Are we called to bear more significant loyalties than the one we show to our partner? Absolutely. We enter any relationship with a set of dealbreakers; on a basic and (I would hope) pretty universal level, we wouldn’t tolerate any illegal activity, or unfaithfulness, or abuse from our partner. On top of that, most of us have faith convictions that, if our partner didn’t share or worse, was openly hostile to, would cause us to think twice about continuing the relationship. So far, so good. But what I think Lindsey was getting at—and this is reinforced by the example she gave—is that even things like a career, or living location, or more surface-level considerations (not to downplay how significant they may feel to us) would be adequate reasons to leave. And that’s where I might disagree. Simply put—and this is not prescriptive—maintaining the integrity of my personal ambitions or preferences doesn’t alone justify leaving a relationship. I demonstrated that once already with D, in leaving pilot school to be with her and L. I valued my loyalty to her higher than the life track I was on. I mean, I did try to make it work, but I quickly understood the scope of what was going to be required of me, so I had to make a decision fairly early on. And the thing is, as fraught as our marriage was, and as difficult as that period of adjustment was, I’ve only had brief lapses of wondering what might have been as far as a flying career. My most significant what-ifs concern the who and the how, not the what I gave up vocation-wise.

I’ve never been a particularly ambitious person. I’ve always been unsure about whether or not that’s a personal failing. I wouldn’t consider my father ambitious; he certainly wasn’t a career climber, and passed over many promotional opportunities to continue to be in the role for which he felt suited, and which gave him the most flexibility as far as his family time. And I’ve always greatly admired and respected that intentionality, so if I’m following that framework, it feels like I’m in good company. But does that make me less defined as an individual? We’re drawn to those who have a clear vision or purpose for their life, or at least for the stage in which they’re situated, and it can be satisfying, or fill a niche in our psyche, to join them in fulfilling that vision. I’ve felt that, in the presence of people with a calling that intersects with a set of spiritual values I hold dear, especially when it concerns others who might be overlooked or ill-served by the spiritual establishment. So perhaps I’m ambitious for that.

Still, circling back to the original statement, it would never be my place to question a potential partner’s dealbreakers regarding personal ambitions or preferences, as easily-overcome as they might seem if I held them. But I would hope, at the very least, to have those conversations early in the relationship, and having reached a consensus about the “ground rules,” understanding that people evolve and grow, that there would be a bedrock of loyalty I could appeal to. In other words, if I reached the point where I could say “forever,” I would mean it, and I would hope the same for my partner. Do I believe in soulmates? No—I do agree there’s more than a single person out there by whom I would be able to be fulfilled—BUT I do push back on the notion that, once committed to someone, that we should be open to the idea that there may be another out there better suited to us as we change and develop. We’re not destined to a series of sequential partnerships, and I don’t think it’s a sign of a weakness or lack of healthy ambition to bend, even to a large degree, for our partners. Thinking otherwise feels like the equivalent of signing an emotional prenup. But everyone has their own threshold, I suppose. And to be fair to Lindsey, I don’t think she was envisioning a scenario in which someone had a new partner (or no partner at all) for each stage of their life. But I still hold that once the dealbreakers are discussed and agreed upon, in good time, once a long-term commitment of any kind is made, my highest loyalty is not necessarily to myself. If I’m understanding her point correctly, that’s where she and I might differ.