Memories of a thousand days come and gone. Toes buried in the sand. Kids carried piggyback through the neighborhood pool. Sitting in a quiet field watching the dove fly by and holding steady because you’d rather preserve the stillness than anything else. Glinting through the leaves of the forest walking a trail alone knowing you’re the only person for at least a mile. The cool dawn of my grandfather’s funeral, less than a dozen in attendance, his whole world. Spring T-ball practice in the evening in 1st grade so long ago in our little country town. Flying across our college campus on my bike to meet her, slowing down before I turn her corner so she doesn’t see my rush. Dusk on the dock by the lake among friends I just met, but would always have.

Give me a sunny day, any day. Any day.

But what I’m finding is that the books I finish are fiction. Good fiction. Because my mind is so occupied by the daily work, it’s the novel that can take me away to somewhere else. Not just more dry facts, but a story, people to connect to and through and to live and be in the world beyond the everyday. The escape that I’ve looked for is right there in those little pages.

I spent a good chunk of my birthday weekend reading Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. It’s a bleak story with a narrow focus on the journey of an unnamed father and son trekking south on a desolate highway in a post-apocalyptic landscape. A grey world without sun or hope, where the daily struggle for food and life and dry warmth are constant and stark. Little is known of who they are, were, what they’ve been through, or what they hope to achieve other than moving on and “carrying the fire” of “the good people”. The chief threat they face outside of starvation are roving bands of starving cannibals who capture wanderers and store them as barely-living foodstuffs. Throughout, finishing the day alive and in each others company are victories for them both. Despite the uncertainty of their tenuous journey, that they have each other is something, enough, and in many ways everything. Their sparse dialog is not unlike so many fathers and sons: pointed, deliberate, with love painted around the edges of purpose and action.

McCarthy’s dialog is clipped, but his narrative is poetic, and his portrait of the miasmic, desperate existence after nuclear holocaust is unlike anything I’ve ever read and probably as accurate as one could imagine.

Never wanting to spoil freshness of the initial cinematic experience, I try to always forestall any research into the movies I see until after I see them.

Now, for the third time, I realize after-the-fact that this awesome movie I just saw was based on a book by Dennis Lehane.

This guy is good!

The great work by Scorsese and DiCaprio notwithstanding, I confess I’m a little partial to writers.

Mystic River was the first one I saw, and it struck a chord with me. My own family history is punctuated by tests of honor, betrayal, and secrets held close for their own sake. This was a movie like I would want to make.

Next was Gone Baby Gone. A film I rented on a fluke and for which I had decidedly low expectations as it was directed by Jersey Girl scapegoat Ben Affleck. It’s honestly one of my all-time favorite movies. It explores so well many facets of the human psyche, frailty, and fears. It leaves your emotions and prejudices laid bare, grappling with your definition of a happy ending.

His masterful hand consistently paints a stunning picture of the richly-textured, rough, and determined Boston everyman, and the complex realities and strength of his neighborhood-centered ethic.

Another theme in his work is the victimization and abuse of children, sometimes overt, sometimes subtly through the selfish whim and prejudice of authority figures, but always with riveting effect. His storytelling revolves more around abusive relationships than abusive acts, which echoes my own feelings that most child abuse is emotional and psychological, rather than physical, but no less damaging. The children of his stories are forced into quick maturity through the hard realities of their environment, yet innocent and children all the same — sympathetic to the end. You want to hold them in your arms and take them away from the situation. He places you into situations where you know what you would do, but in the shoes of the character the answers are never as clear.

Finally, with Shutter Island, Lehane explores one of my favorite topics — madness.

I believe (though I’m hardly the first) that madness lies within all of us, and that it’s only by chance that ones particular flavor of insanity isn’t revealed.

Dennis Lehane’s work is a testament to this notion. He inserts hurting, damaged people into crises remote from most of our experience, but everyday happenstance in the world of his characters, and you watch who succumbs to their madness and who escapes (though he makes clear that no one ever really escapes).

While I’d argue I don’t revel in observing at arms length the darkness of man, I have learned to love the truth above all, and can take the good with the bad, so long as it’s the raw, unfiltered truth.

Dennis Lehane is a man who isn’t afraid of telling the truth of his characters, no matter how bright or dark — and I LOVE it!

I can’t wait to read his other books.

Something got us and at least a dozen other people we know. We’re thinking the fries. Seems to be the common thread. Those who avoided the fries seem to have been spared. For the rest, it’s been 24 hours of toilet-hugging and Pepto.

Joe has taken the worst of it. Poor little guy.

I’m on about 3 hours of sleep. Here’s to hoping tonight is better for everyone.

It’s been a while since I’ve done or thought about anything but work and it’s wearing me thin. I desperately need a distraction to give my mind something to think about in my free time.

Now when I’m bored I just resort to solving challenges at work. Not much balance there.

Going to make a serious effort at changing course in this regard.

Sonny Throckmorton’s lyrics. Merle Haggard’s performance.

The Way I Am…

Wish I was down on some blue bayou,
With a bamboo cane stuck in the sand.
But the road I'm on, don't seem to go there,
So I just dream, keep on bein' the way I am.
Wish I enjoyed what makes my living,
Did what I do with a willin' hand.
Some would run, ah, but that ain't like me.
So I just dream and keep on bein' the way I am.

The way I am, don't fit my shackles.
The way I am, reality.
I can almost see that bobber dancin',
So I just dream, keep on bein' the way I am.

The way I am, don't fit my shackles.
The way I am, reality.
I can almost see that bobber dancin',
So I just dream, keep on bein' the way I am.

I just dream, keep on bein' the way I am.

Someday…

…until then, another day… to watch the bobber dance, to dream, and to keep on bein’ the way I am.

We had talked about getting a dog for years but always found a reason not to.

It took us a few months to get her aligned to our world view but in the last couple months she’s really become the good dog I hoped she would be.

I can now stop regretting working to convince Sunshine to get a dog in the first place, dreading 10-15 years of daily misery responsible for this little life, and trying half-serious to pawn her off on any willing friend or relative.

Next challenge – getting her to sleep in!

Make it your mantra and live by it.

My life has never once been improved by adding complexity to my life, and made only better by simplifying.

This applies to everything, how you approach relationships, finances, faith, hope, expectations, parenting, work — everything.

There’s no area of life I’ve found that doesn’t benefit from application of this mantra.

It’s liberating, truly.

People tend to over-think everything. I’m no exception. But when I can re-center around what’s truly important it comes down to very, very few things, and everything else is just window dressing.

Look it up people, it’s terrorism.

Wouldn’t you say the Oklahoma City bombing was terrorism? The news media sure did. Joseph Stack harbored a grudge against the US Government for perceived wrongs, much like Tim McVeigh.

Several easy-to-find definitions of terrorism (although a widely agreed-to definition somehow still escapes us).

Princeton.edu

The calculated use of violence (or the threat of violence) against civilians in order to attain goals that are political or religious or ideological in nature; this is done through intimidation or coercion or instilling fear.

Wiktionary.org

1. The deliberate commission of an act of violence to create an emotional response through the suffering of the victims in the furtherance of a political or social agenda.
2. Violence against civilians to achieve military or political objectives.

An act of violence against civilians in the furtherance of a political or social agenda is terrorism no matter who the perpetrator is.