Mountains and Teachers

 

This is my last week off work before I go back to the boat world for a few months. It’s crazy to be writing about boats in this very same blog that I once so long ago wrote about boats, the cycle of things and the connections everywhere are both so evident. Yesterday I was laying in the grass in front of my house with my beautiful son and my gorgeous wife. Bits of the magnolia tree had fallen and collected from it’s recent pruning and Salem sat before the most amazing photo I’ve ever seen of him. I began to think of other times I’ve felt so free and suddenly as if a giant wave had passed over me I was transported through the travels of my life.

Long ago I sent out to travel the world and I had never even dared to come up with a good reason why. “Why” would imply a question and I knew such self-interrogation would only come up unanswered. Maybe I was a coward, maybe too young, but the world scared the hell out of me. Life scared me. I wasn’t afraid of death but afraid of a life less lived. It seemed to me that our culture, at least the one I’m familiar with here in the Midwest, had been missing out on something. The young, punk-minded boy that I was wanted to feel something older, I knew there was wisdom in all things older, I had a feeling somehow. Maybe that’s why I used to watch documentaries about tribes in Africa and South America who had so little contact with the outside world. As a college kid who experimented in ways to chug beer and design illogical bongs out of aquarium parts, I had begun to feel the need to find something deeper in my freedoms. The balance between my understanding of living life to it’s fullest and my desire to understand more about the ways of the old world were something always called into consideration.

I long for a type of freedom as there are many freedoms. To me, freedom means being lost in nature where the Earth is your guide and her mountains are your teachers. That’s a heavy concept for the world of sights and sounds to understand as we so frequently and unceremoniously dedicate our lives to our careers and our pursuits of something greater. I respect the art of work, I plan to work as long as I can. In this brief experience here on Earth I’ve called many professions my job but nothing has ever brought me the satisfaction of being called a teacher.

I’m working on it. In recent posts I’ve felt choked up by uncertainty but I see clearly now what I must do. I’ll finish my degree this year and even before doing that I’ll be calling myself a teacher again. This time around I’m going to start remotely, living with my family wherever our passions and curiosities may take us. I want to wake up near the mountains, grateful for the lessons they have prepared for me that day.

Man, I’ve been working hard. Too hard. It cost me a trip to the emergency room and a replacement on my radial head of my right elbow. It could have cost me much more and I shudder to think about it. There is no denying now that this was clearly an act of fate and I need no more proof that there are forces in this world stronger than you or I can comprehend.

“The universe is conspiring in your favor.” Somebody once told me this and once in a while the truth of that statement surfaces itself. For now, I need four and a half months of washing boats. Washing boats. Washing boats. I remember writing those same words into this same blog (the mookfish version) so long ago when I was waiting to be sent to Samoa with the Peace Corps. That was the most amazing feeling being on the verge of something so great and today it’s even more amazing to be feeling that all over again. Believe in me, in us.

Chess Pieces

 Salem just turned six months old last Sunday.  He's grown so much from a tiny baby into a little boy and I've been home for the last six weeks to see some of his most amazing changes.  I loved watching him discover new things.  It's amazing when he drops what he is doing and becomes so immediately focused on my hands or a tag hanging from a pillow.  The world is very new to him and I am so blessed to be a part of it.

I'm at a very peaceful place.  Books are interesting to me, which is something very out of character if you know me and my embarrassingly weak reading skills.  My arm is healing although I'm becoming increasingly aware that parts of my arm will never return to normal and that is a humbling feeling.  Things are well at home but I want to talk about my escape plan.  Five months of washing boats then I'll begin school fulltime as well as taking a part time position teaching English online.  That gives us an unimaginable amount of freedom and I've been racking my brain trying to figure out what to do about it.  The mountains are calling me but I'm not sure from where.  It's a beautiful and familiar voice that hasn't spoken to me in a long time and now that she is back I promise not to stop listening ever again.

Think young fool, think... what is the next move?

I think I need to get to Seattle in September, but what next?

How to Build an Airship

 Many moons ago I lived in the company of some of the greatest minds I've ever met and they are still my best friends today.  During the later years of university we would stay up all night, drinking potions and talking loudly about the world we knew, trying to make sense of something that we all felt we were a part of, something huge.  We didn't know it at the time but a feeling in our guts was beginning to tell us that the journey we would each be setting out upon, a journey personalized for each one of us, would be very difficult and come with many life-changing experiences that no fortune teller could ever predict.  We were building an airship and until very recently it had been quite long time since I felt the excitement of being involved in such a project.

The last I heard from myself in the form of this blog I was feeling a hefty burden of uncertainty that was beginning to tighten her grip on my spirit.  I could hardly use my good arm and it was very difficult to type.  I still have trouble holding a pen or playing music but for now I'll keep the happiness that came with my modest improvements in whichever form I can get.  I sat alone with myself and looked deep into my everything.  Gods, I have been so foggy lately yet now things are beginning to focus again with clarity.  I know now what I have to do so let's stop being esoteric about it and explain.  I'm going to try to expedite my Master's degree and get this party started.  There is no need to lay out a formula on here for how I'm going to do it, this is nothing I can't handle, but I'm speaking directly to my future self and declaring that a few short months after my 40th birthday I will indeed have a fine airship built, ready to fly again.

To build an airship, a majestic world-wandering machine fueled by magical principals, one must grant oneself a simple and well thought out list of tasks.  This list is your blueprints.  It is foolish to build something so important without blueprints.  Next you must define the supplies and tools with which you plan to accomplish your task and part of this includes actual budgeting of how much time and money you can afford to spare while building an escape pod in your backyard.  This is of course something you're probably doing in secret during your free time.  People will notice and therefore the next step is to have an alibi of your plans.  People tend to look at you weird when they know you are building an airship, sometimes they are jealous, yet sometimes you will chance upon other airship craftspeople who know exactly what you're up to.  Lastly, you have to learn how to fly.  I can't teach you how to fly, I just jumped from a cliff and into the clouds and that was long, long ago.  Now I'm learning how to fly with a family.

Doubt

 In the past I had always boldly sworn that uncertainty and doubt were old friends of mine.  I used to think that the subtle loom of worry and the creeping anxiety were sign of something great to come, not fear of an undesirable outcome.  This type of uncertainty makes our heads spin if we let it so these days I'm trying to keep it together and so far doing fairly well.  My arm is pretty busted though, I was hoping by now to have been typing with both hands.

As of now I have only just started looking into this new path I'm on, maybe I'll be esoteric about it and maybe somebody still reads this blog and gets what I am talking about.  Something huge is in the air and it feels like a massive change.  It is not only globally but each of us individually, no doubt, I see it all over my friends and my strangers.  I thought my arm would be better by now and I thought I'd feel courageous enough to begin asking for advice about my path but these things take time.  It's okay to stay up late looking at the snow and wondering if it were ever sunny outside.  My son is loving this time I am blessed to spend with him and it is truly through him that I have reawakened.  I feel like my body has just been pulled from the matrix and I'm trying to get feeling back in my limbs fast enough to grab my family and escape from this burning rock.  That's perhaps too dramatic.

Focus man.  Keep your head up, way up.  The tingling in my arm and numbness in my hand will pass, it has already started doing so, and soon you will see things more clearly.  I know that.  I'm only human but I plan to be an awesome one, you should expect no less for yourself.

Balance and Rehabilitation

 I'm writing this with one hand.  I don't have to explain that, it's been a long week and I'm sure I won't have any trouble remembering the fracture and replacement of my right radial head.  However this story which I am now writing is being told much slower and I'm sure there is something special about that irony.

As of this moment I'm only a few short days out of surgery and honestly the pain has dropped dramatically since the first night.  My plan to become a teacher in the world again has been expedited, but the cost is very great.  The challenges are new and unexpected, yet mixed with fear from the trauma caused by the accident.  I want to hold Salem so bad, I can only hope that this passes quickly.

Now I have to find my balance and the sooner the better.  

Find yourself, lose yourself, repeat.  I'm really no stranger.  Maybe that's balance by definition but that seesaw tilts high.  What is in the middle?  Pure white light?  The answers?  I don't know, I appear to be a little off balance at the moment but I'll find myself again and when I cross that threshold between pain and pleasure, negative and positive I'll be sure to keep a close eye out for it.

Rebirth

I made it through my second week of grad school with a small hiccup in my plan but it was one that was easy to fix with the help of a patient family and a few extra hours after work.  The poisonous thought entered my mind which tells us to quit as soon as we are confronted by the most minimal of setbacks.  That very poison is probably responsible for causing so many people to stop playing musical instruments or never getting past the first paragraph of that book they have been wanting to write.  Maybe it's doubt.  It's probably doubt and I blindly recognized it as a force that was going to grow stronger against my favor unless I destroy it in its infancy.

Lately the idea of 'rebirth' has been playing in my mind.  I feel like a new person.  I hate that I wrote that, it doesn't describe how I really feel.  Let me try again.  I feel like an old part of me has died, a chapter has finished, and while I have the option to stop writing this book all together I still have a much more exciting option of not-giving up.  And it feels good.  Salem was responsible for this.  When my wife was pregnant I began to see the future in a way I never thought would be physically possible.  I could begin to imagine myself and where I will be in eighteen years and admittedly the thought concerned me a bit.  I began to worry about my job and the sustainability of my body while I work in such a physically demanding profession.  That very profession has given me a house to our name as well stability in my home country, something I never had thought possible a few years ago.

Rebirth.. Birth.. Salem.. I'm watching this little beautiful and curious baby turn into a toddler and although it is cold outside I cannot help but think about how nice it will be to take him into the lake this summer.  I had a premonition about this a long time ago that one or two of you might remember about this, it's a very meaningful to me.  Salem saw his first squirrel today, at least the first one I was around to see with him.  We have been staring out the window on this very lazy weekend and I realize that it has been quite a long time since I've let my spirit so free.  No phone, no distractions, just an open heart and an open mind.  Then I heard her calling again..

Today I want to look at many maps as if I have never seen a map before.  I want these maps to collect and be found by my son in a few years and I want the world to suddenly seem much larger than he can understand.  He has barely seen our backyard, God I have so much to show him.  And this is how I found my rebirth, through my beautiful son.  He is the biggest motivation I have to get back out there and be bold and amazing.  I'm perhaps one of the last people on this planet, so it seems, that still believes in the good of things to come and I want to show my son this world while there is still a possibility to find other believers out there.

Rivers

 It wasn't that long ago that I was searching for a new metaphor.  One of my best friends wrote a book and in the first few lines the book asked, "they never taught us that metaphors are magic did they?"  So I wanted a new metaphor. 

You're sitting by a river, meditating, observing.  Some rivers flow free and some crash dramatically into logs and stones and pieces of broken highway left to slow the passing water.  Some rivers are almost still, they are shallow and you can see the colorful stones painting the bottoms of their aquatic dwelling.  Some rivers lead into many faraway unknown destinations while some rivers fall down to places below.  I'm at my river, dear diary, and I have come to know this body of water very well.  I know the way it flows and sometimes I'm certain that nobody knows better what this river needs than myself.  I was here first.  These things should have all been true but somehow my river was beginning to clog itself.  

What is the great metaphor?  I believe that our rivers are full of beautiful things: friends and family, acquaintances, branches and stones as well as many troubling things: doubt, fear, uncertainty, sharp pointy pieces of glass, litter.  I'm beginning to see my river in my meditations, those I'm able to find time for in this new chapter in my life about being a parent.  The ability to reflect is a luxury.  Again, you need still water in order to reflect, do you not?  

So I took to my river and began to rearrange the beautiful stones and branches as well began to clean up the litter.  It looked nice from my grassy riverbank.  It's not done, in fact some branches are being stubborn and snagging leaves and seaweed.  Every now and then I slice my toe on a broken bottle.   It's working though, I'm beginning to feel my flow.

Time is but a Blink of the Mind's Eye

 Hey Salem, if you’re reading my blog I hope you start here because this is the best part.  This is around the time when you came into my life. 

 

I stumbled on this old photo I took when I was in the Peace Corps about 15 years ago.  It’s nice to look at a number and watch it grow over time, you’ll understand that someday.  But this blog is not intended for nostalgia anymore, in fact it is something I wish to use to look forward.  I am writing this very entry on the day before I went back to school to become a teacher again.   

These moments in my life are sometimes stamped on my body, typically in tattoos.  A long time ago I had certain glyphs from the early people of Mexico tattooed on my back and I had it done to celebrate my decision to become a teacher.  Time would pass and I’d long enjoy the completeness I felt in my profession but some events happened in my life that took me off course, yet I cannot write those words and feel honest about them as I know now where that course has led me upon today.   I had to cover that tattoo to make way for a larger one (fun fact: you’re in there) and it happened around the time I thought I had ended my career as a teacher.  Well, that has changed now and I’ll begin my Master’s tomorrow fresh with a healing glyph upon my left forearm. 

This special Sunday feels perfect.  Your mom is so beautiful.  Your grandparents love you and you’ll see them today.  Sometimes I look at you and I feel ‘forever’ in the same way that you look up to the silence of God’s mystery and feel comfort and stillness in the idea of ‘forever’.  I’m so proud of you and I can’t wait to meet the beautiful young man you’ll become. 

Please tell me which is better as my curious mind has never resolved, to inspire or to be inspired?  Are they not a balance like all things?  Does the 38-year-old child who authors this blog ever satisfy himself with answers to pointless questions like this?  Personally, I feel a whirlwind of both these days.  Something like ten months have passed since our planet became infected with a horrible virus that has managed to stack very high brick walls between our family and friends.  These were isolating times and often people saw this as an opportunity to soul search, I myself included.  I am beginning to see the future through a slightly more focused periscope and it scared me to have had such uncertainty about how things might have unfolded.  In the past I was kinda crazy, I still am. 

So, this is my commitment.  I have about two years of a program and I’d like to check in weekly with at most one photo to share with you and whatever thoughts pass through this curious mind might reach the ears of others who know what I’m feeling.  This is my path to get back into the world while managing to keep part of myself here with those whom I love.  It’s a challenge and it seems extraordinary to society but I’m going to write for us a very different path and I hope you all love it.

Samoa, 2006