Sacred Saturdays

 

There is something semi-sacred about Saturday mornings.  Sure, Sunday mornings are more traditionally the thing, but the quiet time of early Saturday mornings has its own spiritual resonance with me.

On a week day my alarm goes off at 6am and I am out of the house by 7am.  Saturday mornings I sometimes imagine I will sleep in if my daughter doesn’t need to be taken somewhere for her boundless activities.  I awaken around 6 and go in and out of dream states until by 7 I imagine it’s probably at least 8:30 or 9, maybe 10, but it is just 7 and I am wide awake and must get up.

This is the time to feed Nala, gather up my reading and writing materials (books and an iPad usually), and then let her out in the front yard to do her business followed by her luxuriating in the grass watching someone else walk their dog so she can quietly woof at them.  And let’s not forget that coffee must be made for sipping on the front porch while all of this is going on.

When I finish a chapter or section of a chapter I insert my bookmark, close the book, and listen.  There are two birds with two distinct songs in two different trees singing back and forth like antiphonal singing at church.  I notice a lone firefly looking to land on the hostas which brings to mind the lovely scene last night of him and his buddies winking on and off like stars twinkling over my darkened front lawn.

Before the sun fully appears in the sky I feel like I am in a liminal space of sorts between night and day, outside of time and the cares of this world.  When the rest of the world wakes up that will be my time to re-enter the normal flow of things, but in that brief moment it is like I have touched something transcendent, free from externally imposed expectations.

***

SAVE THE CAT!

 

I’m guessing it was sometime around 2013 when the idea presented itself for a novel.  The fam and I were traveling up to see a particular doctor whose practice was in a quaint old house somewhere south of Cleveland in the country.  There were two different appointments to be had that day with a few hours between them so we decided to go out to find something to do with the kids.

We found a putt putt golf course out in the middle of nowhere.  We were the only people there apart from the lone employee at the front desk.  The setting was peculiar in its isolation and had a kind of lost melancholy feel to it.  The idea that surfaced from that experience was of a monk-like figure who has taken up habitation in this type of a place, but the putt putt has been long abandoned.

From this I brainstormed what the theme of the putt putt would be: Its decorating scheme, layout, and vibe.  I began jotting down ideas and notes in a notebook of these possible themes: Pirates?  Haunted House?  Outer Space?  Each idea got a subset of what structures might be a part of such a putt putt place and how I could tie it into the monk’s story in a creative or clever way.

I ended up going with the Outer Space theme because I’ve always had a fondness for Science Fiction since my first introduction to it in elementary school with Alexander Key’s “Rivets & Sprockets”.  When I ran out of ideas I doodled what I thought the putt putt course might look like.  The main character was going to be “Aaroneous Monk” and resemble my son with red hair, a long beard, and wearing a faded cassock.

Over the years I revisited this idea from time to time to see where it might lead and what ideas might pop out of my subconscious which I was sure was working on it outside of my awareness (or at least I hoped it  was).   When I came across books about how to write a novel I would buy them and read them through.  It all seemed too overwhelming and complicated to the point my frustration seemed to stifle any real progress.

After writing everything else except a novel over the past 13 years I’ve decided 2026 is the year to finally do it.  Part of this determination came from finally finding a book that can walk me through the process in a way that is organized and makes sense to me.  I found that book a few months ago in downtown Lancaster Pennsylvania in a very cool independent bookstore.  My daughter was competing in an indoor field hockey tournament there and while they slept in at the hotel Saturday morning I roamed the streets.  

The red cover caught my attention where it was sitting next to some other titles about writing novels that I’d already read.  The book title itself was inauspicious in that it was published under the umbrella of a “SAVE THE CAT!” series.  I flipped through it and was interested enough that I reserved it at my local library when we returned home.  As I made my way through it I realized most of the beats of my story were falling into the categories the author was describing in a way that a structure started to materialize before my eyes.  I could do this!  

When the book was due back at the library I used the speaker’s fee I’d received the weekend before from talking about my book of childhood stories (Flowers from the Dirt) and bought a copy of my own at our local independent bookstore - Storyline Bookshop.  For the first time in 13 years I feel like I can see a way forward.  I’ve organized the outline and essential structure with 3x5 cards drawn from the notes I’ve taken over the past several years and new ideas that have started to flow from working through the SAVE THE CAT! book.  It doesn’t have a title, but the opening scene and ending scenes have been worked out and I’m super excited about an Epilogue entitled “A Thousand Years from Now”.  All that’s left is that massive middle section that is about 95% of the rest of the book.

***

Apologia Contra Arial

 

I was eating breakfast with my 15 year old daughter yesterday in Nashville at our hotel.  We got onto the topic of the upcoming event at Orleans Public Library to discuss the collection of stories from my childhood growing up there - Flowers from the Dirt.  She has been concerned that I’m using the Arial font for all my books and “everyone hates Arial”.  That struck me as a bit forceful if not exaggerated, but she assured me that that was the consensus amongst her classmates and English teacher.  I explained that I liked the simplicity of it but she insisted, “Dad, it’s too basic.  It’s like being in a room that has nothing but white walls.”   

She went on to explain about ornamentation and the importance of letters being pleasing to the eye to facilitate reading.  She pulled up fonts on her phone to illustrate what she was saying.  She talked about Times New Roman as the standard of sorts and scrolled through others to include Cambria and Garamond to show me their stylings.  I described my short story collection (Tales of the Strange & Wondrous) as having a kind of pulp fiction feel and she suggested Courier to give it an old-timey typewriter look.  For Flowers from the Dirt she thought Cambria might look nice.  And for Hear Me with its poetry and prose she thought “maybe Lexend?  I don’t know.”  

It was a fascinating conversation because I really hadn’t put much thought into the font for these books.  My focus had been on organizing the stories, designing the covers, and writing the blurbs on the back.  Fonts just hadn’t figured into the creative calculus until this moment of sitting across a two-person table watching her eat waffles.  

She’s a creative kid and I thanked her for her input, though she informed me her interests lie mostly in music.  This checks out as her 10 year old self wrote me a lovely melancholy tune on her ukulele called “Take My Hand” and I hear her sometimes in the basement working out songs on guitar from some of her favorite singer-songwriters.  “I’m not into the visual arts so much” she confided, but I reminded her of the beautiful abstracts she created with paints and a butter knife during the first summer of the Pandemic.  

And then I felt my mind wandering and wondering - where did this captivating young lady come from?  How is it she’s schooling me on the importance and place of fonts in improving the reading experience?  It’s like having a 15 year old literary agent.  I told her I’ve read a lot over the years, but the mystery of fonts had not been fully revealed to me.  The font had to be pretty outlandish to distract me and pull my notice.  In my mind the letters have simply been teeth on a cogwheel and as long as the information is being transferred in the machinery of my brain, I hadn’t noticed the shape so much.  

But “everyone hates Arial” don’t you know?  I’ll have to keep that in mind moving forward and be more mindful of my font choices.

____________

For full disclosure, pretty much my entire blog is in Arial including this post.

***

Reading & Writing, Writing & Reading

Man, this writing thing is so weird.  I feel like I have so much to say but when I sit to write my attention oftentimes shatters into numerous pieces like a dropped glass with the number of shards overwhelming me.  So, when the writing process becomes too difficult I pivot to reading.  I *want* to read more because I keep reading that writers read a lot.  I used to love it and spend hours at it, but that is not so much the case anymore.  I suspect my deep involvement with electronic devices is to blame.

These two books came onto my radar this past week.  The one by Ishiguro has been in my awareness for at least a few years which was intensified by seeing the movie it was based on starring Andrew Garfield.  I was talking to a social worker in the ER here at the hospital where I work when I noticed she had this book with her.  It sparked a conversation about its premise.  She said she thought it was very well written but much of the time she did not know *exactly* what was going on in the overall picture.  This disorientation is part and parcel of the story it is telling.  It’s what you might call “literary science fiction” as a very well written dystopian novel.  This is the kind of writing I aspire to, but my late start and its hobby status provides some serious impediments to me developing this level of skill.  

The second one caught my eye at a local independent bookstore on an end cap.  My daughter and I were on a mission that included dropping in at our local library but we discovered it was closed.  This provided some redirection to explore a nearby bookstore instead and this wolfman on the cover seemed to be looking me in the eye and daring me to pick it up.  It is a collection of essays and the titles of these essays in and of themselves had me intrigued.  Things like “The Night Prince Walked on Water” and “Nina Simone Was Very Black”.  The blurbs on the back mention his “lyrical writing” and the “insight and tenderness” he brings to writing about music and culture from a predominantly black perspective.  I imagine this perspective provides a deep well of understanding drawn up through suffering and the challenges faced by that community.  I would love to have a blurb on a book of mine that would describe me in this way!

So I just started reading “They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us” sitting here in our public library, but then the desire to write overwhelmed me and I put it down to type out these rough and tumble words.  Maybe I am a case study for ADHD with my attention flitting about like a fly, landing for only a brief moment before moving on.  Maybe it’s that I am getting old and the time to explore and create feels like it is running out for me and I’m frantically grasping for what I can when I can?

***

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 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.

***

To Write is to Fly

 

To write I have always needed an opening.  A door of some kind.  A window. Something to let in a breeze of an idea that transforms me into a bird that springs into  a flight of words.  

These past several months my brain seems to have become hermetically sealed.  It is not a pleasant feeling when I am shut into myself with no outside inspiration to rescue me from myself.

Maybe a cage is a better metaphor.  Like a pet bird kept in a basement with artificial lights where no one hears your song because it seems there is nothing to sing about.  A lonely feeling.

But then a flight delay at the airport suddenly gives me time to stew a bit and these words start to find an escape from my brain.  It is the literal denial of flight that is giving me some impetus.

These words are not really going anywhere but maybe now the window is cracked.  Maybe the cage door is ajar.  And if I’m gracious with myself these wings may start flapping again.

***

Weird Ouija Board

 

It takes just the kernel 

of an idea 

or an emotion 

to start the writing process.  

If it is chosen well 

it will take me 

on a journey, paths both

conscious and unconscious.  

And it is those things 

outside of my awareness 

that bide their time, 

pregnant with silence,

BIRTHING 

the most extraordinary insights, 

like a subliminal therapist 

that lives in keyboard strokes

choosing words and images,

a kind of weird ouija board

tapping into worlds

fluctuating in an expanse 

of infinite finitude.

***