The Silly Siberian Story

Proposed Church Building Project, a photo by []Aaroneous Monk[] on Flickr.

I've decided on a new strategy for writing. Instead of trying hard to write well and failing, I will start out writing as poorly as I can with the reassuring thought that I can only improve. This story in particular is dedicated to my friends at the Orthodox Writer's Guild. May you stay warm and write well.

Aaron
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It was a dark and stormy night in deepest Siberia. The church was encrusted with snow and ice obliterating all trace of color to the point it looked like a white cardboard architectural model in a church fellowship hall. The worshippers in their big furry Russian-looking hats scurried inside like homeless mice looking for bread crumbs. They would not have batted a frozen eyelash if Dr. Zhivago himself had pulled up in a horse drawn sleigh with his girlfriend named Lara.

Inside the church-cum-ice palace they huddled in a shivering mass looking for all intents and purposes to be a giant sleeping bear which was ironic because this region of Siberia was known as Ursa Somnolus. The walls might as well have been made from cardboard in trying to keep out that ultra-severe bone chilling cold, but as I mentioned earlier this was not an architectural model in a church fellowship hall somewhere in the MidWest, but a bona fide Russian Orthodox peasant church from deepest Siberia in which this story is set, OK?

So, where was I? Oh yes, the figurative sleeping bear was waiting for the service to begin. The mighty Russian deacon tromped out onto the solea but not before the bell ringer's mallet shattered the brittlely frozen bell into a million little singing pieces signaling the service to begin. Nonplussed, the deacon bellowed out with a deep basso profundo voice that set the church's foundations to shaking. The huddled mass of wooly worshippers began to awaken as large cracks began to spread through the floors, like what happens in movies when they try to really ratchet up the suspense. With nary a whimper the colorless structure collapsed into a heap of sanctified rubble.  KA-RAAASH!  BOOM!  *secondary explosions*

Within minutes a supersonic helicopter zoomed in overhead and a lone figure erupted from its innards like a black condor giving birth. With only feet to spare the figure deployed his parachute at the last possible second and pounced on the pile of ruble. It was none other than Vladimir Putinovich himself who promptly ripped off his shirt and began throwing large beams of wood off those trapped below. His torso steamed with sweat and super human effort. Within minutes everyone was freed, had been given CPR, and were communed with the reserve host from the altar which had been left miraculously untouched by the cataclysm.

Dr. Zhivago never did show up, but they all lived happily ever after anyway.

Zombie Story by Elias

On a typical day when Elias is unable to play outside due to inclement weather or being sick he will spend an inordinate amount of time on our computer creating worlds on Minecraft.  When the computer is unavailable he will sometimes fire up my old laptop that he has inherited and use the word processing program to write letters to me and his mom, journal about some recent activity, or write a story.  

Below is a story he wrote a month or two ago.  The photo is something I did for fun on Photoshop when he was three and we were living in Tennessee.  I hope you enjoy this very short story:

One day this guy was going to play with the neighborhood kids and when he was going to play with the neighborhood kids they were all zombies and skeletons and then I ran away. Then I ran to my house but my mom and dad were zombies and then I saw a guy with mind control and I fought him and I won and all the people were not zombies and skeletons. It was safe.

"Aaroneous Monk"

"Aaroneous Monk", a photo by []Aaroneous Monk[] on Flickr.

The past few summers my family and I have made several trips to see a doctor who practices in a quaint little town near Cleveland. As part of these trips we frequent a putt putt golf course that is situated in the middle of nowhere about 5 miles from the doctor's office. It is a melancholy place surrounded by forest and with few patrons, or at least the day of the week and the time of day we visit there is rarely anyone there but us. The strangeness of its isolation sparked an idea for a story last summer which in its most basic form involves a monk living alone on an abandoned putt putt golf course. Over the course of this past year the story has grown in complexity and made some very strange twists and turns in my head eventually giving me an opening scene, a climactic scene, and a scattering of events in between.

There is one small problem. I am not a writer. Ever since Elias was born I have satisfied myself with telling stories by taking photographs. This has given me a great deal of pleasure but it is not the same thing as using words to tell a story. The closest I've gotten to writing are the poems I've penned in conjunction with particular photographs I've taken. This practice of pairing poems with photographs proved to be most poignant for me when I was deployed to Iraq. Whatever pain I was feeling at being separated from my wife and two year old son or the intense conflict I felt about being a reluctant participant in a war could be bound up in a photo-poem and released in a kind of creative catharsis.

But this idea has continued to grow in my head sending out shoots in odd directions to the point I feel compelled to at least take a crack at it. My first step toward this goal was to pull my old copy of Strunk & White's "Elements of Style" off the shelf and start to look at the basic mechanics of writing. Next I ordered Stephen King's "On Writing" as an e-book to see what a popular and prolific author might have to say in the way of crafting fiction. A few months ago I e-mailed author Jim Forest asking for advice. He basically said to "keep putting sentences together until it makes sense." Working from that I've been trying to blog more and even wrote a Short Story inspired by a weekend call at the hospital in which I mingled coffee with the apocalypse. It clocked in at ~7500 words which is probably the most I've written in a single project since my senior thesis 20 years ago.

Just last week I found "The Nighttime Novelist: Finish Your Novel in Your Spare Time" by Joseph Bates at Half Price Books. It has helped me start to think about what I need to do to pull this beast of an idea together in order to make a cohesive novel out of it. The analogy that came to mind today was that I want to build a house, but I've never built a house before and I don't have all the tools I need.  Worse yet, the materials needed to build it are scattered about in random piles.

It is easy to become overwhelmed with the thought it could take years to bring to fruition ("Pre-order now with expected publication in 2025!") and with no guarantee that it will ever really go anywhere. So, to make it feel more real I have created the book cover to my unwritten novel to psych myself out. It is a picture of Elias and me that gives a feel for what the overall theme of the book might be. The working title is the name of the protagonist, Aaroneous Monk, which will likely change before publication (think positive thoughts, think positive thoughts). The use of "A. Wesley Haney" was something I thought of years ago as a pen name when I wanted to write but wasn't. Wish me luck!

The Mystery of Dragon Valley

Soyo San, a photo by []Aaroneous Monk[] on Flickr.

Miracles are funny things. In the Eastern Orthodox tradition there is a prayer that begins, "Heavenly King, Comforter, Spirit of Truth who is everywhere present and filling all things..." In light of this prayer and in the experience of the Saints there is a sense that miracles are not rare but in fact continuous, albeit mostly unnoticed. Sometimes even those of us who are not pure in heart can see them. By this I mean catching a glimpse of God at work in a way that can be experienced as something extra-ordinary. It is one of these obvious miracles that came to mind this past week while posting pictures online of my son jumping snow ramps on his sled.

The story goes back to 1992 when I was 23 years old and an infantryman in Korea. The year previous I'd been a senior at Indiana Wesleyan University but when the first Gulf War broke out I made an impulsive decision to join the Army. An opportunity arose to join a group led by our Chaplain to go skiing over a three day weekend and I jumped at the chance. We caravanned South to YongPyeong or "Dragon Valley" which is a famous ski resort in South Korea. I had only skied a handful of times before but considered myself quite the accomplished skier. This was partly the braggadocio of youth, partly a superman complex, and partly the fact that I had always picked up sports quickly and with a sense of ease.

Well, YongPyeong Ski Resort was *not* Paoli Peaks in Southern Indiana where I'd learned to ski. It had actual mountains with some very treacherous spots. One of my friends who came along on the trip had relegated herself to the bunny slopes which earned her my light hearted derision. We had heard that a Korean girl had died earlier in the season by going off the trail and into the trees which should have given me some pause, but I was no girl! I was Superman flying down mountainsides without a cape!

Over the course of the three days at YongPyeong I skied from sunup to well into the evening hours. My daring-do escalated day by day with the growing certainty that I was a world class skier able to accelerate down the slopes at eye watering speeds. At one point there were some older Korean men off to the side of a run standing around and talking. Beside and above them was a wall of snow and ice whose angle was not much off of vertical. I was going at a high rate of speed and impulsively decided to go up that wall and over them by about fifteen feet or so. I was not content to be Superman but had to be Spiderman as well. My skis were shaking violently with one leg folded up under me and the other extended fully to maintain contact with the wall. As I passed above the men one of them was yelling at me and shaking his fist with an angry expression. At the time I was mystified by his reaction but now as an older adult myself I realize he was angry because what I was doing was extremely foolhardy and was endangering myself and others.

On a different run another young enlisted soldier and I found more ways to push the envelope. Two slopes that weren't particularly steep ran parallel to each other and you could choose one or the other by which direction you got off the ski lift, left or right. By choosing the lower slope we could build up enough speed by half way down to hit a small connecting incline up to the higher slope. This patch of steep ground was not made to ski on. There were several sizeable rocks peaking out above the snow and the ski lift towers ran up through this area. With enough speed (while avoiding the towers) we could throw sparks from our skis when hitting the rocks and then catapult up onto the higher slope catching some air. Thank goodness my Mom did not know what I was up to in Korea!

The last day of skiing at YongPyeong found me sore and starting to feel the drain of the previous two days. My friend was still on the bunny slopes that morning and she asked me to take her camera so she could have some pictures from the top of the mountain. I readily agreed and put the camera in the side cargo pocket of my pants. I made my way up to one of my favorite runs which included a switchback. The first few times I went down it I noticed some young male Korean skiers in flashy ski gear and goggles hotdogging the switchback. The trail was quite wide and circled around the side of the mountain until making a 180 degree turn before continuing down again going the opposite direction. On the upper part of the switchback you couldn't see the lower part because the earth between them was a raised lip with trees growing all along it. Right at the point where the inside of the trail made its 180 degree turn the lip was treeless and formed a hump. I saw these Korean skiers shooting across the trail at such an angle that they could ramp over the hump and down onto the lower part of the switchback from the upper part. Lining the outside of that curve were iron poles with orange mesh strung between them to keep anyone from careening over the edge and into the trees if they couldn't make the turn.

There I was in my Army issue all-green wet weather gear and cheap aviator sunglasses thinking I could pull off what these flashy (and experienced) Korean skiers were doing. The next time down I hugged the mountain side of the trail waiting to cut across and hit that hump. My heart was racing and I started thinking that maybe I was going a bit too fast. This thought was quickly replaced by "It's gonna be awesome!" I dug the edge of the ski closest to the hump down hard to make the sharp turn and found myself rocketing towards it as planned. What was not planned was encountering someone on the lower trail in my line of travel. I crested the hump and there she was, a female Captain from my group skiing lazily down the slope. I immediately perceived that continuing my arc would end in a collision with her and likely result in broken bones and maybe even a concussion for us both.

A split second decision was made and I allowed myself to fall over instead of continuing on my trajectory down the trail. The laws of physics assured that I immediately beelined for the orange mesh fence since my skis were no longer cutting a hard turn. The mesh was upon me almost instantly and I remember a very hard hit, flipping high up into the air, and then an abrupt stop on the other side. I wasn't exactly sure what had happened. When I opened my eyes I was looking at the trees that grow down the mountainside, but they were upside down. I realized the top of my head was just touching the snow on the ground but the rest of my body was directly above me defying gravity. I bent my neck forward to look up and discovered that the cuff of my pant leg had snagged the top of one of the iron posts that I had hit at near full speed. I started laughing just as a wide-eyed Korean man with a panicked look on his face peered over the mesh fence not knowing what he'd find.

"You OK? You OK?" he panted.

"Yeah, I'm OK. Could you just lift up on my boot", I pointed to where I was caught fast on the pole. He looked skeptical because on my side of the fence the ground fell away sharply and I was practically dangling in space. I convinced him it was OK and another Korean man joined him. With some grunting and lifting they were able to pop it free and I immediately collapsed into a pile on the wrong side of the fence. I flipped over so that my head was now uphill and slid down a foot or so. By flattening out my body I was able to stop sliding and climb back up to the fence. The two Korean men got me hoisted back over and I thanked them in what little Korean I knew. They just kinda shook their heads in disbelief and then skied on.

Sitting on the snow I could not believe I had just smashed into an iron pole, flipped end over end into the air, and then been snagged by the cuff of my pant leg as my body was headed off down the side of the heavily forested mountainside. My pant leg was partially pulled out of the boot and when I went to pull it free something fell out onto the snow. I looked at the two small objects in confusion. I took off my gloves and picked them up. They were batteries. For the first time since going over the fence I realized my right leg was very sore right in the middle of my thigh. I went to rub it and discovered the bulk of something in my cargo pocket right where it hurt. I opened the pocket and found my friend's smashed camera. It had squarely taken the brunt of my leg hitting that pole and most likely saved it from being broken. After getting myself together I continued skiing for another hour or two until it was time to leave. My leg was killing me but I couldn't bring myself to end the trip prematurely. When we got back to base that evening after a long drive I gingerly took off my pants and found a large rectangular bruise perfectly shaped like the camera on my thigh.

So, this could be a kind of miracle, one for someone who is nearly blind and deaf to such things, a sequence of highly improbable if not impossible events that would require CGI effects for Hollywood to replicate. A deeper mystery might be why the Korean girl died and I lived. I cannot bring the incident to mind without thinking of her. As we say in the Orthodox Church, "May her memory be eternal."

Mary was Missing

Elias and I say our evening prayers together each night before bed in front of his self-constructed icon corner in his room. These include the Trisagion Prayers, a kind of free form whatever-comes-to-mind part, and then we finish up with singing "To Thee the Champion Leader." Some time last week we were singing this song and it struck me that there was no icon of Mary present to whom the song is addressed. I pointed this out to Elias and we agreed that this must be rectified as soon as possible.

The weekend came and went with the celebration of Theophany and the blessing of waters. Elias was able to acquire his very own bottle of Holy Water to put in his icon corner. He was sipping it frequently and I reminded him it had to last a whole year until next Theophany. He informed me he just wanted to use it to keep himself from getting sick. I left it at that with the assumption that kids oftentimes simply know what is spiritually appropriate when I do not with my jaded existence and repetitive stumblings. I figured if the bottle empties sooner rather than later we'll just cross that bridge when we get to it. Who knows? Maybe there will be more Holy Water under the bridge.

So then I got home from work today and found wrapping paper strewn throughout the kitchen. Elias came downstairs with something behind his back. He said, "Remember Daddy that we don't have Mary in our icon corner?" Yes, I told him I was aware of that. He then revealed what was in his hands, a beautiful little icon diptych of Mary and Jesus. As it turns out my parents were unable to attend his birthday a week and a half ago because everyone had gotten sick and so they did not make the trip. She couldn't wait for some undetermined future date that we would see them again and so she mailed his gift, the diptych.

We talked a little about how God uses others to show his love in a way that binds us all together.

I am a Lighthouse

Spring Break '90, a photo by []Aaroneous Monk[] on Flickr.

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I am a lighthouse
beam of light
pointing outwards
throwing all into
stark relief
revealing every foible
and inconsistency
illuminating what is hidden
judging what is revealed
but inside this bricked tower
it is black as night
where the light
does not penetrate
I am a lighthouse


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