A Memory of my Father on the 29th Anniversary of His Death

Between Flights. My Father is center.

The real  attack was along the file my rook controlled after a queen side castle. The file was clogged now but that would change quickly. The forking attack with my knight was part of that in a way, but it was a decoy.
My Father had been a tournament player when he was in the Army, and he had respect for me as a player, but he always said I relied too much on tactical play. I could beat most players with my ruthless application of combinations of forks and skewers. Use these tactics against lesser players and eventually they will make a mistake that costs them a piece and then two and then you just mop up.  But a Strategic player will accept these attacks and just trade wood with you while they slowly develop their position and then just take you down in the end game. I had kept a book carefully noting each move in every game with my father. In the hundred pages or more you could see my progress as more and more games reached the magical 40+ move mark. But each page ended with white resigns, Dad always gave me the first move and my resignation had always been the last.  He had given me his copy of "The Fireside book of Chess" "Study these games son and you will learn strategy; how these masters win by thinking one more move ahead than their opponent." We read the book together . We set the chess board and followed these the games, move by move, together.
When my father made a quick move to accept what was on its surface a piece for piece swap, the trap was sprung. When instead I took the bishop that "protected" my knight and moved it to attack the pawn in front of my Father's queen that was the target along the rooks soon to be open file. The room got very quiet. He lit his pipe. He folded his hands on the table with purpose as he moved the pieces in his mind. I could see it written in his face, the sixth move would be a choice. He could give up his queen or face check mate. He lifted his hand , picked up his king and laid it softly on the board. "Good Game Son" he said in a matter of fact way as he reached across the board to shake my hand. He lit his pipe again as I wrote in my notebook for the very first time. "Black Resigns". And then he started to laugh. And the laughter grew and was like thunder.

Growth

My Daughter no longer needs these training wheels.

Through Us

“Without it our Galaxies would not exist. We cannot see it. It is beyond our senses."I said "It passes through us, constantly. Dark Matter is at the edge of our ability to perceive, yet it holds our Universe together.” Rowena had been worried about me, and so had Ella, and I struggled to explain what had been on my mind. Rowena was driving me home after a long day at work. It is good to sit and collect and share my thoughts with her and Ella. “Tell me, Angel,” I asked my daughter in the back seat. “Does this sound crazy to you?” “No DaDa" She replied. “It’s like ghosts.”

***

Something formless yet complete,

existing before heaven and earth.

Silent and limitless,

it stands alone and does not change.

Reaching everywhere, it does not tire.

Perhaps it is the Mother

of all things under heaven.

I do not know its name so I call it "Tao."

Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

Circa 350 BC 

 ***

My friend David Nickell told me so many years ago, “Thoughts have their own form and texture. They can be beautiful to hold.” The sheer beauty of this thought, the leap of faith it takes to grasp it, had been an epiphany. I try not to mix concepts of science and spirituality, but if I had ended my roughly paraphrased definition of Dark Matter “This is the spirit that flows in the universe; the love of God,” the biggest difference would be that more people would believe it. War has raged between Religion and Science since "On the Origin of Species" was published. Meanwhile Science is growing and our Universe grows with it. Every time we add a sense to the five we were given, like the ability to see beyond the visible spectrum, the universe gets broader and older, and my sense of holy awe grows. For me what I know about Science and God are very similar, I have read books about them, I have felt and seen their creations, and they fill me with Wonder. I have been walking this Earth for half a century and at times I can see - Everything is just one thing. It is a beautiful thought even if it is hard to hold.

***

“There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle. “ Albert Einstein

***

It was like that second between the moment your toddler falls and the crying begins, the long intake of air and then a moment of silence.  As I pulled down the plywood panel of the attic ladder a desiccated mummy of a frog fell from the ceiling and skittered to a stop at Ella’s feet. She screamed a long heartfelt howl. Questions poured through her tears. “How did it get up there? What happened to it? Why did it have to die?” Her mother and I had no answers; this is the first time either of us had seen a dead amphibian plummet from a ceiling. Because there were no answers she repeated the questions, her eyes imploring us for the solace knowing might bring. “All we can do now is give it a proper Frog burial,” I said, wrapping the nearly weightless shell in a small piece of tissue paper. While Ella held her mother's hand beside our water garden, I gently placed it in the soft mud by the roots to the lily I lovingly call “Legs”. Light fell from the stars as we stood together wishing the little creature farewell.

A week later I brushed aside the lily pads anxiously looking for the first flower. I had been waiting and hoping for weeks and there it was, not two inches from the burial site, a tiny bud barely the size of a robin’s egg. Also there, clumps of gelatin globules with tiny black dots in the center. As the bud grew so did tadpoles. The flowers of water lilies open with the sun and close at dusk and as they do they rise and fall in the water. Their long stems are red unlike the yellow green stems that flow from the roots to the pads. They are alive, they move and grow. Lilies are born in water like the frogs and breathe air as well; both draw life from the same source. As I sit beside them in silence I see how little difference there is in everything that lives. Life flows into the garden, and life flows out. Life flows through everything.

***
“If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, our whole life would change.” Buddha

***

Froedrich Frog jumps back into the water with a delightful tiny splat as I drink the last drop of coffee from my cup. The water garden is just outside the bedroom window and I heard Ella call for her mommy twenty minutes ago. I hear laughter, snippets of morning exclamations of wonder and it is time for me to join them. Ella rests in Rowena’s arms like her mother is a living arm chair and as I come around the foot of the bed they playfully roll over on their side to face me. Sunlight through the window behind me lights their faces with gold. They both seem to glow from within, but in the deep brown of their eyes concern for me lingers. Perhaps I should be smiling, or laughing, but what is the appropriate expression for the living when they stand before the gates of Heaven? This moment has been waiting for me since the expansion of the universe and I am grateful to finally arrive. I am grateful for the stars whose explosive demise created the materials that formed the vessels for this Family’s soul. I am grateful for all the beauty and glory that creates the pretext for what we share. I stand here in awe of all those that have given their breath to the knowledge that is the basis of my thanksgiving, because of them I know; the most powerful force in all of creation exists at the edge of our ability to perceive, holds our Universe together, and passes through us constantly. 

For My 5000th Pageviewer

I write because I believe each souls experience is valuable. Please share yours freely and without fear. I want to reprise "To Witness" for this milestone. I feel the witness inside Ella growing stronger and I am proud of both of us for it. 

***

It was gray Mid-Winter when I stepped into my back yard and a flock of 20 or so sparrows burst from the ground and formed into a tight formation at full speed. As they came to the Maple they spread without collision to pass through the barren tree without touching a single branch. On the other side they formed into a flight not much larger than myself and disappeared into the cold landscape beyond the fence. As I watched all these beautiful souls pass through another beautiful soul I felt a familiar presence.

***

I want to thank organized religion for three gifts. First I would like to thank the Catholic Church and specifically Pope Urban VIII for the persecution of Galileo Galilei. Scientific matters aside, it was the motivation for Rene' Descartes writing of Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One's Reason and of Seeking Truth in the Sciences. Millions have created their intellectual structures on the foundations made possible by this treatise, exclusive of the Holy Roman Church's designs. Thanks to Urban VII I have only one possession - my own consciousness as the creation of dialog between the world and my own existence. My life is: what I see, what I hear, what I think, what I choose.

I would like to thank the Deacons of the Baptist Church my family attended when I was a child. When they discovered that wine was consumed at dinners with our family and the Pastor they fired him. I loved the Reverend. I enjoyed the conversations between him and my Father. I knew it was a great injustice and it severed my attachment to religious institutions permanently. He was then free to become President of a local university and I was free to look for God on my own. 

The most profound gift I received from a church, however, came during Sunday School just before our exile from the Baptist Church. The lesson was about the Creation and I was moved by the idea that God had desires. There was something that seemed strange about God needing something more than what he is so I asked the teacher" Why did He make us?" Her name is lost to me but her answer is not: "Perhaps he was lonely. He wanted someone to share with all the beautiful things he had made. God needs us. He sees the world through us. We are his eyes and his ears on Earth." The meaning of the moment was amplified perhaps because it is where my conversation left off with religious institutions. But it was the way she said it. She spoke directly to me. Her voice soft. Her words were complete the way a subtle gesture is complete.

Adults become conditioned to loneliness, but survival has instilled a special discomfort for this feeling in children. Lonely. A child understands another child's grief in solitude. A child would create the universe to not be lonely anymore. In my child's mind God was a child like me. One that loves to make things and to tell stories. He was inviting me to play with him. My life, the act of living, was part of Him. My seeing. My hearing. The tasting of fresh milk and my Grandmother's Pie, the feeling of my fifth grade girlfriend's hand in mine. All of these things an essential part of God's knowing and dreaming. And in the moments that I was conscious of the connection I wanted God to see the best of me.

                                                                            ***

"Yes, I'll sit by you. I love you too, I love you with all my heart. I am so proud of you. Be careful climbing that. AAAAAaaare you OK? Your knee? Yes, I'll blow that part a kiss. Great daddy take down. Sure, let's watch Ratatouille again. No I didn't know that Painted Lady Butterflies had ten thousand eyes. They migrate a thousand miles! Read that for me again. I'll read one for you too. Again?!? Great ballet jump. I love to see you dance!"

She wants a witness, and until she finds the one inside her I will witness everything she has to offer. In my adult’s mind God, a child like her, is the vessel that contains all of her experiences. Within God is the culmination- the full measure of everything she has seen, heard, tasted, felt, thought, feared and loved. My wife's years before we knew each other are there. The perfect life of the child, unborn, we mourned but I never met. We are there together - along with the singular, complete experience of every living thing there has ever been in the expanse of space and time. The flight of every bird, the stretching of their muscle and the flowing of wind across feather. The breathing of trees and the sense of what it means to flower. The sight from ten thousand Painted Lady Butterfly eyes on a thousand mile journey. 

Now that I am constantly aware of the connection I want God to see the best of me; for us to see the best of each other. "Yes God, I will sit with you. I like to paint flowers too. What a beautiful story. My friends tell stories - I need to take Ella to hear them. Great sunset! Remember the one I did for Little Shop? OK I'll keep trying. Yes, very proud of her. I love you too. With all my heart. I love to see you dance!"

Visions of Time

 I believe that every moment is eternal. Time does not pass. Consciousnesses persists as we flow from one existence to the next in a nearly infinite progression. We experience this as change as we move through space and we call that Time.  Everything that has ever existed still exists and everything that can exist has always existed. I am bound to a past and a future, not by memory or potential but by matter and space. I believe the linear Arrow of Time is a creation of Biology, not Physics and each individual Life's Narrative is a creation, like our vision, stitched together and inverted internally in our minds to help create a consistent model of the world around us. I believe that Time is how we are made capable of knowing ourselves and the other incarnations of consciousness swirling through the Universe together. I have struggled for two decades to be able to distill my thoughts about Time into this single paragraph and the effort has come with some cost. To believe fervently in your own experience and intuition, and to come to a conclusion diametrically opposed to what is accepted as humanity's experience of reality can be very disturbing.

My estimation of my sanity got a needed boost while I was watching an episode of “Through the Worm Hole” about time and I was introduced to a physicist that believes many of things I do but he has done the math that helps prove them. Julian Barbour is, among other things, the Author of “The End of Time” He describes existence as a series of “Nows” each a separate Universe in itself. I do not expect Mr. Barbour to become a house hold name anytime soon. His ideas have not been readily accepted by everyone in the theoretical physics community. But he has given a great gift; the ability to more freely accept and explore the consequence and artifacts of my perception.

***

The sensation of time is difficult to control. However, there are times in most of our lives when the sensation can become so muted the time seems to hover, warp and nearly stop. These events are usually the great transitions of our lives: marriages, deaths, births, ceremonies marking rites of passage. During these moments you are present in its true meaning. The event is an essential component of your existence, of your passing through place. You have nothing else to do but take part by adding your action and witness. You have no doubts, no discordant voices to pull you consciousness in another direction. These moments mark an epiphany, your manifestation in this plane.

It was the first Summer of our lives together for Rowena and I. She was sleeping beside me on a hot Summer afternoon. A gentle rain was falling, even as sun streamed into the room through 3 small gaps in the curtains. I watched a small thread of dust twist slowly in the beam. As a laid transfixed by it's motion the sound of Rowena's breathing and the sound of rain joined and hushed to silence and then the thread hung in the ether, motionless. At this moment I could feel the past. It was not a memory, I could feel my body stretch into it, connected to everyone I had touched and loved as if I was still beside them, holding them. I knew I had come to the place I was supposed to be, when I was meant to be there. The woman beside me was the person I was to spend eternity with and eternity was there with us. And then the future crashed upon me, the sparkling river of a young girls laughter from the other side of the window. I knew what I heard was the voice of someone waiting for me to join her life. Then the thread began to spin out of the sunbeam. Rowena turned and with her head on my shoulder, still asleep, joined in the laughter from deep within her dream. It was from that moment on, I was aware of my destiny, and I was glad for it.

***

Now that I believe in my forever, to whatever extent I can create my world, I try to craft it gently. I try, as best I can, to create moments that are worthy of living in, present with the those I love. I want to feel Peace. I want Rowena and Ella to know me and I want to know them. I want us to share laughter, to hear it Echo across all of our experiences. I want our silence to be the deep, abiding silence of comfort. I want to hold them as if the thought of time itself can pass away and turn to dust. It is often difficult not to be bitter and jealous of all the Nows I spend in their absence until I realize, that pain is eternal also. To create pain, and worse yet, to share that needlessly with others is a sin that crosses ages. Instead I try to feel the act of being flow through me, to feel space itself connect us. I put my trust in the infinite futures before us. I know the perfect Loving moment is the Heaven of all our longings, and where we dwell forever.

If Ayn Rand Wrote for Gamer Magazine

All across America there are adult children that still live with their parents. But when their parents ask these adult children to pay the Cable TV Bill it's a big problem. These children read a great article in Gamer Magazine about how smart video gamers are and how valuable gamers are to an ungrateful world and how you can buy 2 video games a month for what you pay for cable TV and what's up with all those channels that nobody in their right mind would watch anyway. Well the adult child pays the cable bill, because it's the cable modem that lets him game with his buds on the west coast and if he moves out who would cook for him and do his laundry, but night and day the injustice of the $89.95 and all those channels eats at him. " You know why the cable bills so high OPRAH WINFREY thats right OPRAH WINFREY She makes the local cable company pay way too much for Oxygen and OWN and Lifetime and Hallmark and it's just not fair, those channels suck." So he rips the article out of gamer magazine and uses his favorite magnet to place it on the refrigerator, right at Mom's eye level where she can't miss it. He emails the article to his Dad. He reads it out loud at the dinner table but both Mom and Dad excuse them selves and go out "for a walk" before he can get to the good parts. After a while he gives up because its obvious they are incapable of understanding Gamers Magazine's magnificent prose. But the Ache never goes away. Effing Oprah Winfrey, Bitch. He decides on a course of action!! He will NOT pay the cable bill until all traces of Oprah Winfrey have been removed from from any all cable TV channels! He wears anti Oprah T shirts he bought from Zazzle. He starts his own anti Oprah web site. He organizes a protest march that will culminate in a public burning of VHS copies of “Beloved” and “The Color Purple” that he bought at McKay's just for this purpose. A local News producer hears about the march and although only 4 other non-cable-payers-until-Oprah-is-erased..ers show up cleverly framed shots do not show this. The video goes viral because it makes Moms and Dads laugh to see that they are not the only ones with Oprah haters that drink directly from the milk jug still living at home. But it also resonates with all the non-cable-payers-until-Oprah-is-erased..ers. Soon a movement is born. A manifesto is written, heavily paraphrasing the original Gamer Magazine article. ESPN thinking that on the Venn diagram of cable watchers there is barely a tangent between OWN viewers and theirs decide to bank roll a non-cable-payers-until-Oprah-is-eraseder protest in Washington DC! ESPN really doesn't give a rats a$$ about Oprah or the movement but wants to squeeze more money from cable outlets for THEIR content. With ESPN's support the movement grows until the cable companies agree to ESPN's price as long as the shut the eff up about Oprah because the are still making a bunch of money off her. Moms like Oprah, and Mom buys the food. Eventually, without ESPN's underwriting, the movement fades into history. And the original non-cable-payers-until-Oprah-is-eraseder's book about the evil of the Oprah Winfrey Network is never published. The Ache however never dies.

Still Like Water

Space flows 
like water
Time waits
waits in warm 
soft furry coils
laying in the sun
for us to return 
home.

In the Garden 2: Frogs

My inspiration to create my water garden was Ella's gift of a "Grow Your Own Lily Pad" kit. She told me that Frogs would come to sit on them. That's where frogs sit, lily pads. I thought that since the garden would be 5 feet above ground and a mile or more from any permanent body of water that it was highly unlikely frogs would come to visit. I stand corrected.

In the Garden

It was Wife and Daughter that inspired me to create my own Water Garden!

Having the lilies  in their own ecosystem where I can be at eye level has taught me about the lives of these creatures and how our distinctions between plants and animal and everything else that lives are purely subjective.

The Blessings

 I had passed it every day on my way home, at the entrance ramp at the beginning of Ellington Parkway just North of downtown Nashville, a simple cross made of a perforated steel channel, ubiquitous in construction, known as unistrut. It is on the public right of way adjacent to one of Nashville low cost housing projects and conjures many images juxtaposed as it is against the poorly maintained apartment buildings that have sheltered people suffering from despair and sickness for decades. This is just one of hundreds of such monuments to highway deaths I have seen on roads here in the South. I try to take a moment to realize the meaning of loss these crosses represent and honor the public, if anonymous, display of grief.

I nearly sideswiped the car beside me. As tried to merge onto Ellington I found the gray cross now completely covered in purple, red, and pink silk flowers. For years I had no evidence that it had ever been touched by human hands. The dour specter now seemed to be singing, brought to life by this human kindness. But the song faded. As the weeks went by the flowers tuned to white from the Sun. As the Months passed they turned as gray as the steel. And as Winter came and went the flowers fell away. Last year's flood washed away the cross bar where once hung memory and solace. I wonder, were the flowers a commemoration of the passing of the soul this cross represented. Where they in honor of the person who had left it there years before, now gone to be with the one they so loved. Did the memories of the one they lost fade away, or did they become to painful to bare any longer. I will never know. The Cross is silent.

***

It is a blessing, that the dead are always faithful. Their deeds now recounted and numbered and relived by those that still have dreams and needs of their own. The living search that past for the kindness they need today and with what they find they embody the souls of the absent and form a cradle for their remembrance. It is a blessing for the dead that their lives now flow not with the revolutions of our Earth but the revelations of our hearts.

It is a blessing for the living to always be faithful. To guard your thoughts and words and deeds as you would eternity. To always act in the best interest of those that love you. My Father told me, when I was a child, that if something is so important to you that so foremost in your mind that you can say it when you see a falling star that that wish will come true. I will try to say “ I will earn my daughters faith in me.” before the light can die.

A Mistake

I was working in the studio trying desperately to fix something I felt was a blunder. I ran from the room to get a rag and some water and in the moment when I collected myself before resuming I saw the beauty that had been created on it's own, perhaps on it's own. I guess sometimes the correction is the mistake.