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.

***

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.

***

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”.

***

Remembering to Forget

 

In the empty halls of memory 

I chase my childhood around

blind corners into dead ends.

I think I hear laughter but it is

too hard-edged to be truly the

sound of a carefree childhood.

My energy was something big

people thought to dampen with 

belts, paddles, and switches.

Now I find myself wandering

these chartreuse corridors of 

dodges and disappointments

remembering to forget.

***

From a Great Height

 

I am a giant of colossal sadness lumbering

along the sand with my head in the clouds.

I hear a child’s laughter lost in the wind.

Sunbathers lie like scattered leaves that

I have to be careful not to step on but over.

There is no fear, no screaming or pointing.

I am invisible to them, an absence of wind.

There is nothing for me here, I wade out into

the ocean, that great and mysterious mother.

***

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.

***

Sad “Happy”

 

It’s a sad “happy” song which seems exceedingly peculiar.  

The song is “Happy” by Pharrell which was a big hit several years ago and had an infectious beat that made you want to clap and dance or at least tap your toe.  In the video that is exactly what people are doing.  It is a dizzying diversity of human beings in the streets, on sidewalks, and in alley ways dancing and clapping with abandon.

When this song first came out my knee jerk reaction was to dismiss it as trite.  I viewed it as a one-hit-wonder that would quickly leave my awareness never to return unless it made its way into a movie soundtrack or perhaps sung by a contestant on The Voice.  My view softened a bit watching Pharrell as a judge on that show.  Great guy.

But then something miraculous happened.  An artist known as Woodkid made a “Sad Remix” that shook me to my core.  He took out the beat and instead added strings and a piano.  The key sounds minor, but that may just be the impression given by the profound change in mood.  I was completely bowled over by this odd juxtaposition.

The video is identical to the original one, but everything is transformed by the melancholy vibe.  Like a metaphysical magic trick it reveals the underlying pain and sadness that we all struggle with in a perplexing world while showing we are not confounded; raging against the dying of the light as Dylan (Thomas) would have it.

PS:  It’s like Woodkid grabbed Pharrell’s ankles and pulled him back to the ground but in doing so also gave him wings.  A paradox, I know.

An Internal Flame

 

An internal flame 

flickers and faints,

it’s all the same

panting and paints

a subtle blame

for not being saints.

***

KID MAY BE CLOSER TO LEAVING THAN THEY APPEAR

 

There are few things that make me more sad or more excited than this looming reality.  It is a frame-of-reference thing where I am either an empty-nester or proud parent of a pre-adult on the cusp of living their own adventure.

The two oftentimes live simultaneously in my awareness and it reminds me of a well known icon in the Orthodox tradition regarding Mary “Joy of All Who Sorrow”; that juxtaposition of joy and sorrow somehow intertwined.

I’ve also heard it referred to as “bright sadness” in Orthodox spirituality that recognizes the profound beauty all around us as well as the taint of that beauty in how we treat ourselves, others, and the world created by God.

Maybe it is the simultaneity of that experience in relation to my daughter’s leaving home eventually that aims for something deeper and allows me to skirt the edge of despair that I sometimes find myself teetering on.

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Flim & the BB’s

Not too many years from now no one will remember that I loved an obscure Jazz quartet known as “Flim & the BB’s”, alas.

They had their heyday in the mid to late 1980’s which was perfectly in sync with my late high school and early college days.

It was in the infancy of musical compact disks that were transforming recorded sound from analog recordings to digital ones.

The few CD offerings of the time were sold in long and narrow cardboard boxes that I would cut up and use to create wall art.

On those CD’s were three letters, either AAD, ADD, or DDD which indicated Analog or Digital: [recording][mixing/editing][mastering].

In those early days Flim & the BB’s were practically the only ones doing all three digitally with the rare designation of three D’s.

This is because in the late 70’s they were a group of studio musicians brought together by 3M labs to help develop the digital technology.

But they stayed together to record several CD’s (all of which I have) and their second one won Jazz album of the year in 1984.*

“Flim” is Jimmy Johnson who plays fretless bass and has gone on to back many famous artists as a much sought after bassist.

The other three include Bill Berg (drummer) and Billy Barber (keyboardist) who provided their initials for the aforementioned “BB’s”.

That leaves the saxophonist and sometimes flautist Dick Oatts who I later learned was a jazz professor at University of Cincinnati for a time. 

Their music is a time tunnel that has wormed its way to the present and is bidirectional,  connecting older me to the younger me.

It takes me back to my high school physics teacher’s house where he introduced me and my two best friends to some great music.

And if Flim & the BB’s are headed towards obscurity, well, I guess I am not too far behind and my kids will inherit these ancient “CD’s”.

*Tunnel

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