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.

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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.

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Things on my Desk

 

The things that make up his desk may very well make up his life.  

They are artifacts of a man named Aaron who once was a boy.

I see Spiderman hanging from a monitor shooting his spiderweb.

I see a Wild Thing that defined his childhood with “I’ll eat you up!”

It is near the paper-made basketball, a life-long love of that sport.

A photo of his two very small children who are not small anymore.

Two paintings his 9 year old daughter made during the Pandemic.

A clay pencil holder his son made at the same age 6 years previous.

The son’s senior picture taken 9 years later than that (a knowing look).

His daughter in middle school: cheerleader, lacrosse, and field hockey.

An icon from Russia: St. Panteleimon, the physician and unmercenary.

His iPad with a sticker that reads “So it goes” from Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

The family in their entirety to include their dog on a city sidewalk.

A coffee cup sitting in the shadows where it proclaims “God is good”.

.An island of light in a dark world where he works, loves, and prays.

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It is Good

My zinnias are having a laugh riot of growth in my front flower bed.  The sun is up and none too soon for the party to begin.  There is a hilarity of color and sweet smiles from the smaller buds just beginning to bloom.  

Yellow blossom sits highest and is most like the sun.  The bees are appreciative because the dandelions in the yard have been mowed down (anyway, the zinnias are like luxury landing pads in comparison).  

The birds are singing a melody and the bees are buzzing a drone underneath.  I am simply the observer, like God above seeing his creation and saying “It is good”.

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