Bliss of the Abyss

 

  Stepping into the abyss

  of “ignorance is bliss”.

       (it hasn’t happened to me

       so I can ignore their plea)

          Going over the edge

          with my empty pledge:

             “In God we trust”

              yet support the unjust.

Christmas Eve in Columbus

 

A quiet and cold morning here in Columbus, Ohio.  There is frost on the grass where Nala is nosing around looking for a place to potty.  I forgot to unplug our Christmas lights on the bushes and front porch so they are still glowing softly in the darkness.

The drive to work is unhurried and the roads are mostly empty.  There are no challenging merges to be negotiated with so few cars on 315.  It’s like the explosive growth in this city has been dialed back to some earlier less hectic time.

Pulling into the parking garage across from Grant Medical Center I wave to the parking attendant and find a prime parking spot that is typically gone by now.  It is quiet downtown.  It’s like the world is anticipating something… a birth maybe.

***

Attack on Titan

 

For eight years my son and I followed the saga of Erin Yeager in the Japanese anime series “Attack on Titan”.  It is a strange title in that it appears it was either mistranslated or something was lost in translation as there are “attacks” and there are “titans” but there is no “attack on titan” as such.  Before watching it I thought “titan” might be a planet or something.

When we started watching it together my son was 11 and when we finished it he was 19.  With some degree of verisimilitude he was aging at the same rate as the protagonist-turned-antagonist.  I first showed him a scene of an “abnormal” titan running through what looks like an old European city flopping its arms and bouncing off of buildings.  This titan was 45 feet tall and intent on eating any humans it could catch.  It looked like a “normal” adult male but had no clothes and no genitalia, strangely enough.

It confused and fascinated him at the same time, but he was hooked.  The themes running through it are profound and play out in intense relationships, politics, and the horrors of war.  The depth of imagination necessary to create a world this complex is awe-inspiring and has been the topic of many conversations between my son and I over the years.  

[At present this process is repeating via the TV series “Severance” though on a smaller scale.]

The image I created is a combination of the series poster and a picture I took of the Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. mural in Indianapolis that is titan-size.  I found it today going through some photos from 2021 and just realized the young figure of Erin Yeager could represent my son and KVJ looming over the wall is me as an elderly male.  From a developmental perspective it is like a metaphor of my son needing to grow and overcome my dominance/control in order to eventually take his place as an adult in society.

***

Morning Fog from the Fifth Floor

 

Yesterday morning the fog sat full on the head

like a bowler pulled down to ears and eyebrows.

I experienced it from the fifth floor of our building

looking out over roofs and treetops... a tower.

The clouds, unable to fly high, rested on the earth

where I breathed in their cool air and water vapor.

It was womb-like in the lack of light, enveloped by 

moisture, and hearing the heart beat of Our Mother.

I am a fish out of water in so many ways, having 

lost the routine of moon cycles and predictable waves.

I am too dry, not sure why, wanting to cry and water

the earth with repentance, to regain reconciliation.

Yesterday morning the fog sat full on my heart,

heavy hands rhythmically pumping up and down,

like a code had been called in this hospital on the 

fifth floor to try and bring me back to life.

***

A View from Above

 

The huge wrap-around windows in our Neuroscience tower offer a view of the Columbus cityscape off in the distance.  

This is especially true from the 9^th floor where I was seeing a patient today.  It always gives me pause, to stand and look out.

It reminded me of a recent conversation with my son who is a junior at the University of Dayton.  He in a sort-of existential phase.

He shared how wonderfully strange it is that thousands can live in a city in close proximity, all with their own unique lives.

In a very real sense it is a multiverse of beings who are physically self-contained but spiritually interconnected and intermingling.

I remember those days in my early 20’s when wider views and deeper thoughts shook up my small town perspective, changing me.

Sitting in Uncertainty

 

I’m learning to sit in uncertainty,

balanced on a rock 

in the middle of a roaring river 

that seeks to sweep me away.

It requires some degree of diligence

to find my center of balance,

to push back on the panic

when it tries to enter at the periphery.

The rock has deep roots in the earth,

a planet’s depth of gravity,

the raging water only at the surface.

I close my eyes and cling tight.

***

Memories of Rockwell Way

A clown’s* former house in a cul de sac. 

A pear tree in the front yard giving fruit.

A sweetgum tree dropping spiky balls.

A black and white dog chasing squirrels.

A small boy geared for battle on a trike.

A neighbor whose twin sister fools me.

A Chinese lady calling a dog, “Popcorn!”

A gazebo *Flippo called his “gazooby”.

A pergola covered by trumpet vines.

A home for ten years with two kids.

***

Fyodor in San Fran

 

Holy Trinity Cathedral was the oldest Orthodox church in the United States prior to the acquisition of Alaska in 1867, founded in 1857.  I was in San Francisco for the American Psychiatric Association’s annual conference in 2013 and I decided to walk from my hotel to this historic church for Vespers on a  Saturday evening.  It would be another day or two before I figured out how to use the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) system and my Army days weren’t too awfully far in my past at that time, so why not?

Per my map it did not look super far from my hotel, all things considered, but between here and there were those famous San Francisco streets that go way up and way down like a giant urban rollercoaster.  I ended up sort of short-step jogging down the declines and then leaning into the inclines while keeping my arms swinging.  It took an hour or so for me to get to the church - sweaty, slightly dehydrated, and with very sore hips.

I hadn’t known how long it would take so I’d left at least a few hours prior to the service and ended up hanging at a coffee shop across the street from the church, “Notes from Underground”.  It was a bit of a thrill to find it as I was a huge Dostoyevsky fan in my roaring 20’s and it was the title of a novella of his that I loved.  I’d read “House of the Dead” roaming Eastern Europe after college and “The Brothers Karamazov” in medical school by keeping it on the back of my commode.  Melancholy was my love language and Fyodor was fluent in it.  And of course it made perfect sense to be across the street from a church whose US roots came by way of Russia.

Sitting there sipping coffee and contemplating my place in the universe now that I had a wife, two kids, and a dog I was treated to a rather bizarre scene for someone who grew up in the Midwest.  Apparently there were festivities somewhere in the vicinity whereby three men in funny hats and body paint suddenly appeared bicycling down the street, naked for all intents and purposes.  Maybe I was dreaming?  A Nightmare?  I felt like Prince Myshkin in “The Idiot” - not exactly scandalized as much as simply incredulous.

Sputnik

 

For me writing is a way to reach out to the world 

and reveal my inner thoughts but outer heart,

the words sent out like the beeps of Sputnik

hoping they resonate with fellow strugglers who

are looking to find a healthy place on this planet.

But like that first satellite it sometimes feels like

my heart is a ball of metal circling the globe 

alone and isolated in the cold darkness of space. 

Reentry is where temperatures escalate to burn

away pride, ego, self-delusion, and lack of love.

That fall is the grace of suffering:  the divine fire

that purifies gold, that burns off impurities,

that allows the heart to glow like the sun and 

provide warmth and light, though I still circle…

*beep*  *beep*  *beep*  *beep*  *beep*  *beep*

***

The Half Moon

I step out of my garage tonight into the cool evening to let Nala do her before-bedtime-business in the yard.

There is a soft breeze and a trilling of insects as I stand at the midpoint of my driveway under the basketball rim.  

A light in the sky pulls my gaze upwards to a perfectly halved moon situated in the V of trees across the street.

It looks like a pale tangerine slice that I can simply reach up and pluck out of the night sky and put in my pocket.

I glance around to see if there is anyone in the vicinity and when I am sure I am alone I reach up to grab it.

It is a silly gesture but seems needed in the moment in a way that is not really rational yet somehow essential.

***

The Aaroneous Monk Blog

 

It’s a screenshot of one of the very first posts I uploaded to my new blog 20 years ago.  I had been using the pseudonym “Aaroneous Monk” while posting comments on community websites like “THEOOZE” and blogging was something that was becoming increasingly popular at the time so I jumped on the train.  I actually started out as “Augustinos” in deference to my patron saint and then transitioned to “Augustinos aka Aaroneous the Oft-Mistaken” and finally to “Aaroneous Monk”.  AM seemed to strike just the right balance of self-deprecation and piety I was looking for plus I was a lover of Jazz music a la Thelonious Monk.

The photo of the blue window was taken with my newly purchased digital camera (Canon Powershot) which was also something new and coming onto the market at the time.  Digital photography blew open the doors to express myself creatively with its instant results and the ability to download the images onto my laptop to further manipulate and post them on flickr.com .  This website was an online community for folks who love photography and provided a place to share images, comment on them, add them to themed groups, and participate in contests.  I learned a ton about photography on this online community and made some good friends with similar interests (having small children of similar ages mostly).  

At this point I must mention Jim Forest of blessed memory.  I connected with him early on flickr.com when I found him there.  I had read his book “Praying with Icons” and attended one of his talks several years previous when I was newly Orthodox.  It turns out he was an enthusiastic photography hobbyist and soon thereafter he gifted me a professional account that allowed me to post as many photos as I liked which further fueled my creative output.  He became a confidante of sorts during my deployment to Iraq and a treasured electronic pen pal thereafter.  In honor of Jim’s passing I printed and framed the last photo he took on a walk in Alkmaar for my office wall.

There’s a song from the early 80’s called “Video Killed the Radio Star” which was actually the first video played on MTV circa 1981.  In the same way Facebook (FB) killed flickr.com over the next several years as most everyone migrated over there for a more full social experience that was not exclusively tied to photography.  The downside was (and is) that photos uploaded to FB automatically have their quality downgraded to save space.  And flickr.com still exists for photography purposes but is greatly diminished.

My blog continued on unabated but not used much until 2013 when I became more intentional with it after deciding I wanted to start writing more.  This motivation was mostly triggered by a SciFi story idea that I thought would make a cool novel, but I needed the writing chops and more experience to be able to tackle it.  My postings went from a handful a year to about 50 per year on average which has continued to the present day.  

The novel has yet to materialize, but early last year I did self-publish a collection of short stories culled from my blog and late last year I followed that up by doing the same thing for a collection of stories from my childhood.  They are both the same length and comprise the yin and yang of one fiction and one non-fiction with 2 stories that appear in both, interestingly enough.

Circling back to the beginning, I love that photo of the window.  My wife’s mother was visiting us in Washington DC where I was doing my residency and we’d just finished dinner when I glanced up and saw that deep blue glow coming through the window surrounded by the warm glow of the dining room light.  There was a deep snow cover outside creating this phenomenon in the early evening.  I grabbed my Canon Powershot and instructed everyone to move away from the table so I could take a picture.  They laughed at me and my strange request but when I saw what I’d taken in the small digital screen on the back of the camera I felt like I’d captured something truly beautiful as well as ephemeral.  It was the beginning of countless images to come.

***

NOT AN EXIT

 

I haven’t written anything other than poems for several months now.  My previous routine has ceased to exist due to my changing work schedule and I increasingly feel like I have no grounding.  In this time period little graces have arrived just in time to keep me from spiraling into despair, but there is a heaviness I can’t seem to shake.  

Growing older is a blessing and a curse.  The curse part is easier to understand as my body increasingly betrays me and full freedom of movement becomes a distant memory.  Exercise can keep it at bay but not fully.  Sometimes I awaken from dreams of earlier times and other possibilities that seem cruel in my waking state.  The blessing side is less obvious and requires deeper reflection.  That reflection has been the function of my writing which, as I have pointed out, has been in decline.

This is when I thank God for poems.  They’re still there in their brevity and immediacy.  They still distill the truth and do the work of self-reflection as an antidote to self-deception.  And in the meantime I am reaching back to things I’ve written in the past 12 years since I started this writing journey to find themes that might be collected into a book(s).  

January of last year it was “Tales of the Strange & Wondrous“ followed 8 months later by “Flowers from the Dirt” and earlier this year it was “HOSPITOCALYPSE”.  The challenge now is to find a new routine and once again begin to find some meaning and create some structure out of the chaos.  Time is whipping by at an accelerating pace like I’m caught in the time distortion of being too close to a blackhole.  And I feel like I am wasting what little time I have left.

***