Rider of Chariots

Rider of Chariots,

Bringer of Light,

Farseer with Spectacles,

and 

Giver of Hugs.

He is Simeon.

Watch him roll.


***

Seeing Myself in My Son

It's like being given the opportunity to go back in time,

but instead of getting a do over, I am an observer.

I see him lying on his stomach in his bed with a book.

He is warming up at a baseball game in his uniform.

I watch him fly out of the garage on his bike, not even

looking back, escaping to a friend's house after school.

I watch him stand at the dinner table, unwilling to sit,

afraid that if he does he will be trapped or impeded.

Everything he does is to avoid pain and struggle until

inspired by seeing an athlete training hard and then

he is running, doing pushups, and punching at the wind.

There are intense ongoing negotiations with his mother.

There are frequent opportunities to annoy his sister.

There are the doodles and stories in a spiral notebook.

And, mostly, there are the attempts to make you laugh.

I am seeing myself in my son almost every day and

as I extrapolate his behavior out into the future I am

exhilarated and terrified for him at the same time.

***

Thoughts About Writing

Every morning I try to write a little while sipping coffee in the cafeteria of my hospital.  If I am not careful, I find myself instead scrolling through my facebook page or get sidelined into manipulating photos with a variety of apps.  Three years now into this writing experiment I think I am starting to more clearly understand what clicks and what does not click.

I am also being drawn more and more into wanting to write in a hybrid style that combines prose and poetry.  By that I mean I want to write in paragraphs, but of a uniform (smallish) size and with lots of commas and metaphors.  I first ran across this idea when I read some prose poems by Alexander Solzhenitsyn several years ago.  I guess that is what I am trying to get at, "prose poems."  I really should take a writing course or read a book about the different kinds of writing to learn what possibilities are out there.

I imagine more people would write if they could find the right vehicle to support and guide their words.  This approach, as explained above, seems to work best for me because my brain does not work well with indeterminate distances or anything resembling a kind of extended or rambling style.  My brain regularly yells "get to the point!" or "don't get carried away!" when I am trying to write.

These ideas came most clearly into focus for me recently when I revisited a story that started out as just a writing exercise.  As sometimes happens, I did not know if I was going to approach it as a poem or as prose.  Because I was stuck I left it alone for several months, but then found it again when trying to herd the proliferation of unassigned writings into their proper electronic folders.  The idea intrigued me anew and some new ideas popped up so I started writing again, but started confining it to paragraphs of a uniform number of lines almost arbitrarily.  If the paragraph was too short, I added to it.  If it was too long, I took something away.  If I did not want to take away any of the ideas I would simply find a way to transfer that idea downward to a new paragraph and develop it that way.

The story is "The Hovel" and I would consider it a successful experiment.  The original idea came from visualizing a "happy place" several years ago that I could go to in my mind as a way to de-stress.  It is a technique I'd used in residency to help soldiers on the inpatient psychiatric unit at Walter Reed.  I sent a copy to my parents and I got a surprise call from my Dad who loved it and my Mom who thought I'd really had a seizure.  I think they are too easily pleased (or frightened, whichever the case may be), but it was worth it just to get an excited call from someone I love and do not see very often.


***

Godzilla Returns

Since when did the world get so complicated?  Since I left home I would guess, though it was complicated then too, the difference being I could foist my failures off on my parents who had not raised me right, who had zigged when they should have zagged, while I wallowed in self-pity and dangled on the rope of their subsidies, kicking and swinging to avoid the undertow of worldly responsibilities swirling below me like a massive whirlpool.

I am fully an adult now, or so I imagine.  I have a good job that is secure and satisfying.  I took so many detours to get here that I am not exactly sure where "here" is.  I frequently have dreams about all of those detours and missteps which drown me in a sea of despair.  It is only when I am ascending from the depths of sleep that I slowly realize... I have a job!  I have a family!  I pop up on the surface and take in a huge breath of relief!  In my choose-your-own-adventure-of-a-life I somehow found the right page and the right path in spite of myself.

But even now, in my middle years, things seem shaky, like I will wake up one day and the dream will have been the reality and not just the torment of my aimless twenties.  I've seen movies like this and they are some of my favorites, maybe because they are not me and I have avoided such a fate, or so I imagine.  And what does all of this underground angst gain me?  It fuels a powerful underflow of empathy that surfaces when I need it to, especially when dealing with my colleagues and patients at the hospital.

But what about home?  Where is that understanding and empathy when it comes to those I am actually related to by blood and marriage?  It is harder and I don't know why it should be harder.  Maybe because we are more clearly connected, our fates intertwined.  It is much scarier to have to fulfill those obligations first and foremost without fail or foisting.  There is no escape route when things seem overwhelming and it becomes a matter of hunkering down even as the Sirens circle and attempt to call me away.

Maybe this is at the core of what it means to be an adult, a healthy human being, an agent of stability in a chaotic world where the monster of SELF rages and destroys like Godzilla leveling cities, looking down his snout at others, exhaling a withering blast of condescension and sarcasm.  And how did I end up with a Japanese B-movie metaphor?  It's complicated, I guess, and so I am back where I began.


***

When Your Daughter is a Girl

When your daughter
is a girl
like a candy stripe
'round a swirl
there is nothing to be done
but hold on tight
and have some fun.


***

I Will Walk into the Storm

I will walk into the storm with hope

that it beats me to the ground, then

whips me skyward in a mad frenzy.

I will walk into the storm because I

know that my soul needs violence

to awaken from the sleep of death.

I will walk into the storm of my own

free will, otherwise its terrible power

will have no positive affect on me.

I will walk into the storm expecting to

walk out the other side, by grace, made

capable of love through brokenness.

I will walk into the storm for no other

reason than to be worthy of those

who depend on me to be true.

***

The Lonely Walker

It was a beautiful day with white fluffy clouds
floating in a deep blue sky full of breezes,
but the walker knew nothing of this, his head
slumped down, chin to chest, a jaundiced eye
watching the railroad ties so as not to stumble.
He'd been walking for god knows how long,
day and night, night and day, feeling crummy
and hungry, always hungry, with no sleep and
no need for sleep, manic but with no energy.
It was not a healthy lifestyle despite all of the
miles he'd logged with his unnatural stamina.
The crows eyed him warily from the dead wires,
wanting carrion and wondering how he carried on.
He was the saddest thing imaginable, a man driven
by passions with no possibility of stillness or satiety,
a lonely walker on the tracks under a lovely sky.


***