Giving Thanks

admin — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 23:38:57 +0000

I want to share with you an event that occurred the night before I arrived home for Thanksgiving this year…

Since a few weeks after his graduation from HS last May, our youngest son, James, has been sharing an apartment with three great friends Murphy and I have come to know well. It’s in a neighborhood we had tremendous reservations about, but they were somewhat lessened knowing he was among friends and not alone.

Sunday night, late, while Sam and Ryan were out having a smoke, James and Daniel were inside when two men armed with automatics tried to enter the house. James held the door as long as he could, until the two overpowered him, and came in the door shooting. At him. He made it up the stairway, two rounds splintering wood on the column support inches behind him. He grabbed his phone and his friend, and they made it out the upstairs landing down to the street — as the two gunmen exited the apartment, chasing and firing at Sam and Ryan — six rounds from two pieces, missing both of them. James had already called 911, but hollered loud enough to raise the alarm, and
break the gunmen away from his mates, but not before they’d tackled Ryan, put a pistol in his mouth and took everything he had.

I believe that our firstborn son, Patrick, taken from us in the brilliance of his life, was in that house that night, that moment…that instant; perhaps shielding his brother with wings….perhaps shielding them all. Miraculously, none were seriously hurt, or worse.

It was, to paraphrase, the worst of times and the best of times — at the same time, giving Murphy, me, Tucker and Jesse, the greatest
of all reasons on earth to be thankful this day.

Life is measured in instances; in the blinks of our eyes, in instant moments that change our lives from that moment on, forever.

May God hold each of you in the hollow of his hand, and wrap wings around you this day, and always.

Memoigraphy. 1

admin — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 03:34:26 +0000

I began writing the first pages of my first book towards the latter part of January, a few weeks after my twenty-ninth birthday, and a few weeks before the birth of our first son. They were handwritten, ruled leaves, filled with unwieldy blocks of impatient narrative and knotted threads of uneven dialogue, all in differing tints of blue and black inks, and all running through two yellow Mead legal pads. There was the occasional stray revision or margined note in grey number two lead, but my use of pencils -mechanical or otherwise- was rare, believing that by their construction alone they encouraged erasure; a dangerous habit, easy to cop. It all starts out innocently enough, harmless experimenting with some simple punctuation -lose a semicolon here, an apostrophe there- you tell yourself no one will notice, and no one gets hurt. Pretty soon, you catch yourself disappearing chapter titles and footnotes. Before you know it, you’re rubbing out entire scenes, erasing dialogue that you swore was brilliant when you wrote it, or worse, losing whole paragraphs — with nothing left to show but a few hundred little pink rubber shavings from the ass-end of a Dixon Ticonderoga, and some faint lines that only hint at the words that are gone from the page forever.

Ink’d, however (and don’t start – don’t tell me about ballpoints with ink-erasers. I’d like to horsewhip whoever the smartass at Paper Mate was that came up with that bright idea) and the words you heard, or saw or felt when you formed them on the thin, blue horizon of the empty line midway down the page of the legal pad have been given a sort of permanence — for the time being, at any rate; they are no longer fluid, vapid thought-scenes or exchanges, at the mercy of eviction by the next thought that enters, but…now they exist. Now they’re real. You can see them; you can see the thing they portray, you can hear the resolve of the words your character speaks, and feel the effect they have on the characters hearing them.

The unfortunate fact that in most first drafts, it might look like and sound like a complete idiot wrote what you’re reading doesn’t matter. Actually it matters. In fact, it may matter more than any other part of the process. For me, at any rate. I sort of figure that if I’m capable of recognizing that something I’ve just written sucks so badly it would peel the paint off a bumper if you read it aloud in your car, I’m ahead. And I don’t want to forget that I’m more than capable of writing shit that sucks that bad. But, hey — if I erase nauseating dialogue I’ve just written, it’s gone. Like I never wrote it in the first place. Convenient. My handwritten drafts are free of any shit that sucks. Cool.

Not.

I want to be reminded of what shit that sucks looks like, and reads like. I want to be reminded regularly of how not to write whatever the hell I’m writing at the moment. I am also, however, a pragmatist, and something of a hoarder, prone to saving everything I’ve ever scrawled, no matter how awful. And that practice, that habit, serves to remind me of something equally important – for me, at any rate – that somewhere in the mess of unintelligible crap I’ve just scribbled down sitting at the curbside waiting for my fifteen year-old to grace me with his presence after school, might be — might very well be something. A thought, perhaps; a name, an analogy, maybe, or an insight that coursed fleetingly through my subconscious, tickling my sense of composition and syntax, and now…is gone. Nuked by a round of stray synapse, fully charged from the venti cappuccino I decided to stop for on the way.

Kin·dle [kin-dl] verb.

admin — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 01:21:51 +0000

Like many first-time writers, I believed that God had imbued me with a great talent; that it was my destiny to place something perfect on a blank page; something that would stand the test of time for generations to come. Through wars and depressions, great scientific discoveries and changes in the balance of world power; through births, lifetimes and deaths—I would write perfect words that would live on. Years, decades, centuries from now, some seeker of knowledge, a reader, perhaps a student, or maybe a bricklayer, would come upon the cover of this book, or glance at the spine perchance, and be drawn to it as if it were a magnet made of paper and ink. Like an archaeologist, stumbling upon what they know instinctively to be a great treasure; the find they’ve sought all their lives, they would slide the book out of its place between other lesser tomes, regard it with the barely contained exuberance of a museum curator, open it carefully, breathe in the gentle exhalation of time and wisdom, fear and love, hope and despair from within its pages, and they would know. They would know deep within the recesses of their hearts, in the very depths of their souls: I have to read this book.

Eventually, with the help of time, and appropriate dosages of prescribed medications, I came around.

November 18

admin — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 17:20:51 +0000

Super 8 hits the DVD street next week…JJ Abrams’ homage to Steven Spielberg. Most cinephiles are aware of the Spielberg Super 8 lore; the backyard mini-movies he made on the camera he’d been given as a boy. But many are unaware that when he took those legendary reels out of the closet twenty or so years ago, he hired a then-unknown film editor to restore them. His name was J.J. Abrams.

I was unprepared for the emotional pull and power of this film; I went in sort of primed for The Goonies Meet The Thing, you know – A motley crew of scrappy kids uncovers a secret that could change the world — but what they find may destroy it first. What I got was a classic story of redemption, love, and the power of family; lost, found, and saved over 120 minutes of some of the most heroically cool movie-making of the last five years.

Buy this movie. One of the best films of the year.

Imbecilic tweet of the week from Hollywood: “Marriage is incredibly hard. Sometimes marriages fail.” What the hell did Demi Moore think was going to happen, here? She married a child, for God’s sake. Kutcher is a moron, a fool and a loser — and not nearly as funny and charming as he thinks he is. He will burn out before the end of the second season. What an asshole.

Welcome back.

Penance

admin — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 16:51:29 +0000

I have been in the grip of a profound depression for some time, now. It is called, I believe, delayed grief, from what I’ve read. I do not recall when it claimed me; what year, what month, what hour of which day. I don’t recall where I was, or what I was doing when I was wounded or where I was first struck; my head, my limbs, my intestines, my heart, or my soul. I have only a vague recollection of awaking one day, one hour, years after losing him, empty of all happiness, vacant, and contemplating, awaiting, planning for and seeking my own death.

I have hidden this thing from all those I love, not wishing to shake whatever faith they might still have in me as a father and husband, friend and teacher. All my life, I have sought to be the rock that others could lean on, to be emotionally strong when faith and hope slipped from my family’s grasp. To be the man, the harbor, the stone, the strength. The refuge. The authority. The father. The one who doesn’t flinch, the one who is never afraid. The one who will carry them through corridors of darkness until the light finally appears.

Now, no one in my family needs a rock, no one needs a map, no one needs to be carried anywhere. No one needs me to protect them.

In my mind’s eye, I see the harbor, a long pier, the pilings old and weathered, jutting out into the water. Just beyond pier’s end, a small two-master is gliding effortlessly over the waters towards me. At the rudder is Pack, the keel in his hand, sure and steady. A light breeze pops the canvas on the sails, and he smiles at me as he comes about. I know, even in my waking dream, that if I step from the pier to the deck, my life will end.

Ink and Vanity

admin — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 16:26:03 +0000

I don’t write because I want to. I write because I have to; I have no choice in the matter. It is tortuous, bitter work, this; obscuring the purity of a blank page; clean and virgin, like new snow, with something so meaningless as words. Strung together, for God’s sake.!

Vanity, thy name is Author.

Cadbury Chocolate has apologized to Naomi Campbell. We can all sleep now.

What is up with the new Tom Hanks trailer… Larry Crowne? Is it just me, or does he look… odd?

Paris Hilton is blaming Oxygen for her basement ratings coming out the shoot on her new “series” “The World According To Paris.” I read about this on AOL. Where I get all my news, now. They connect you right to PopEater, which has their own show business Insider column. What the hell else do you need? CNN? Maybe MSNBC? What do they got, man? I mean, have they got Rob Shuter’s column? Naughty But Nice? Don’t think so. You go, Paris. Slap that network, baby. They so mean.

How many freaking idiots do we need to elect to the Democratic Party? It’s embarassing.

I have no idea how Charlie Sheen convinced so many people he was funny.