The Last One Left- Part 2

...Command.
...Systems.
...Upload
...Control connected
...recon systems online

"Houston? You there? Over,"  says Captain Joseph.

Static.

Joe- "Houston? Anyone? Over."

Static.

Joe- "I just woke up from hypersleep Houston. I'm a little confused, over."

Joe- "Systems are good, but they tell me it's 2185? Is this true? Over."

Static.

Joe- "OK. I accept that. I'm a really old man in a really young body. I'd love to know what ha- ha-. I'd like to know what happened to my family. Over."

Joe- "Where is William, my brother? What happened to Andy? Where are my kids? I'm alone up here. Everyone I tried to wake continues to sleep. They aren't breathing."

Static.

Joe- "Any news from Captain Steadway?" "He was scheduled to come home 50 years before I was to wake up."

Static.

Joe- "I need to know he is awake and safe. We went to college together...we shared a dorm. I wanted so badly to be in his place so I could see my kids as grown-ups. Live or die, I will never see my kids again. I held my daughter once when she was very young. I let her little wet lips touch mine. She tried to swallow me. I guess that's what babies do. Her little fingers were wrapped so tight around my index finger. I knew when I signed up that I would never see her again. This was the plan. I never wanted to be a father...but when my skin touched hers, she seemed to look so deeply inside of me. All of the sudden I wanted everything she was. It was too late to turn back. Steadway was supposed to come home in 50 years and I would follow in 100. Captain Brian will follow in 150. She has to be gone.

...

Joe- "Houston, tell me I've just woken up early and she is still alive. I've looked on the video messages feed and she is absent. Did she grow up hating me or did the world end before she could respond? The last few nights I have had bad dreams. I think I'm awake, but my thoughts travel. My eyes close and re-open to fear and panic. I want to go home. I'm sorry I left in the first place. When I was a kid I had surgery on a gland. The doctor told me I would wake up and get to see my mom. That stuck inside of me. I woke up several hours early and ended up trashing the place looking for my mom. I hope to God that this is what is happening. Why are the rest still sleeping?"

Static.

Joe- "They're dead. I tried to wake them. I checked the computers and logs. They were all wake for a few years. They couldn't figure out what went wrong with my sleep pod. They tried to come home, but no one answered their beacons. They spoke to static as I do now. They starved to death."

Joe- "I wonder why they didn't use my food supply? Why would they let me be fed in a lost cause on a lost corpse? I don't think I'll ever know. I guess I'll die as they did. Alone. I guess they all felt alone too. It's hard not to when you are in a ship lightyears from the very spot you were born. I'm not upset really. I'm just sad that I didn't choose to live. By choosing this ship, I was committing suicide in a way. I left a little girl."

Static.

Joe- "I was the last to go to sleep. They all just went like it meant nothing. All singles without kids. I acted like I was going in, but I didn't press that button. I sat there for several days and watched the stars fly by. I thought of her and dreaded pressing the button. I wanted to see her, but I knew it was too late. If I pressed that button, I wouldn't awake until she was dead. The thought of her in school with the smell of pencil sharpenings and the image of her in a wedding dress without me haunted me. This ship wouldn't land on earth until her grandkids were my age. It made me so profoundly sad that I wanted to kill myself. Instead, I pressed the button and went to sleep. It felt like actually dying this falling asleep. It really was the same thing as suicide."

Static.

Joe- "I'm gonna press a button again. This one charts a course back to earth. I know it's been longer than expected. I am at least 100 years older than expected, but I have to go home to die. Houston, I don't believe anymore that you are a place, but if your and there are people there, tell my great-grandkids I'm coming home."

Static.

...chart course
...earth
...alpha
...charm...
...home

......







Sing.
Migrate.



Thanks for reading...Z

Whatever You Wanted

   
     You want to be what you saw that you would be as a child. There aren't obstacles when you are a kid. If you want it, you will get it. People haven't failed you yet. You haven't failed you yet. You just see it the way it should be. I wanted to see space with my own eyes. You can see that in my short stories; as I write a lot about space and being somewhere other than here. A kid understands himself more than the adult. As a child, we eliminate excuses. We don't even understand how something could stop us from our future. As an adult, we make excuses to why we disappoint ourselves. Childhood may be unrealistic, but they aren't wrong entirely. We give up on ourselves way too easily.

     I've done a lot of giving up on myself over the past five or six years. It's utterly exhausting really...thinking so much about my foolishness. Even though I have anchors in Will and Joe's mom and my wife, who both bring me back to who I actually am..I spend altogether too much time thinking about who I am becoming. The real truth is that I don't know who I am becoming or if it is even a bad thing. Maybe the thing that has always held me back was this naive thought that life could be held on to and mastered. That faith in God could be known at all. Maybe it can't. Maybe I have to learn to deal with not having control and not expecting God to shield my eyes from terror like I had imagined He would.

     With my own kids, when something happens that is scary, I try to protect them by downplaying it or even lying to them to keep them safe from fear. It's an instinct that I think most parents have. We don't want our most precious children to have to see the real evil that lives in this world. We know they eventually will see it, but as a kid, they should play baseball and jump rope. But that doesn't stop kids their age from killing themselves or finding a way to heroine. My kids have to see it and have to learn new ways to deal with it. This is a new world we live in. One that hurts and hurts until the children break.

     Life may not be about protection from our God or protection for our kids. It may be about showing whatever light and love we have to people that may not have it. I've been a lot of things in my life, but one thing I haven't been was a person that doesn't feel things. Lately, I haven't been feeling much for people outside of my family and friends. This has alarmed me and I don't like it because it offends the very base of who I have always been and what I've always know to be true.

     It's not God that is tired...it's me. I'm tired of being disappointed in myself. I'm tired of people hurting people around me. I'm tired of cancer. I'm tired of suicide. I'm tired of abuse of all kinds. I'm tired of people being hurt because they are different. I'm tired of little innocent kids being punched in the face for no reason because some parents raise terrible kids. Somehow, there has to be a difference maker. We can't control how people raise their kids. We cannot control how well raised kids control themselves. We can't control how any person controls themselves...but we can control ourselves. We can weep and pray for those that get hurt. We can volunteer and share love with each other. We can do the best we can do. Maybe that is the only answer to all of this hatred.



Sing.
Migrate.


Thanks for reading...Z

Forgive.

One of the hardest things in life is to forgive without an apology. 

Overgrown

     At some point, your kids stop being little kids and become different kids. At some point, you stopped being a little kid and became a different kid. The things that were so dear to you just fade away. My kids used to play all day on this swing-set. Now it sits behind our garage to make room for the trampoline, which will make room someday for more overgrown grass. I don't like it at all...this kinetic transition from the beauty of childhood to the beauty of being an adult.

     Me and Andy used to make these carnival rides in my back yard out of the swing-set and the "Old Blue Elephant" slide. We would charge people because we were opportunists, but we also profoundly loved laughter. We wanted to create something that made other kids laugh. At the time, neither of us were laughing much.

     I write a lot about the passing of time. I've written several short stories about the experience of Earth without people, after everyone is dead. The topic is interesting to me because we have all felt the feeling of taking things for granted. "You don't know what you've got til it's gone," is a central theme of every tragedy. I think this fascination of mine has to do with the transition of time and the speed in which it goes. It's too fast.

     When I was a kid, I couldn't wait to be in fifth grade so I could be a safety. When I was in seventh grade, I couldn't wait to be in high school. When I was in high school, I couldn't wait to get my driver's license. When I became an adult, I couldn't wait to get it all back.

    It's hard to grow up. Things get better and worse. I've got a wonderful wife and beautiful children, but lost much of my childhood and adult life to death. You succeed, but regress. Life is cruel, but life is beautiful.

     Every moment I get to spend with my family is perfect. Watching my kids grow is both the most rewarding and the hardest thing to watch. Sometimes I look at them and the love I feel actually hurts me. I don't want them to hurt so much. Then something breaks them down and I mourn with them because I don't want them to hurt so much. The world is full of hurting so much.

     But...

     The world is also full of some of the most beautiful people and things ever imagined. There are people that feed people for no reason. People that abandon rules to stand up for what is right. People who fight for those that can't or won't fight for themselves. People that give without expectation of receiving. These people are the hope of the world. A hope I want to be a part of.

     So as I watch my kids abandon the swing-set for bigger things, I'll take hope that Laura and I have done a good job, and that our children will see the hurt in the world and will desire to become the answer.




Sing.
Migrate.




Thanks for reading...Z

Collateral Damage

     My very first memory that I can really describe was on a courtroom pew. I have brief and vague flashes of things that may have happened before I was potty trained and still eating baby food. Things like people walking past me or patterns from different fabrics I may have sat on. I remember eating bottle if Flintstones vitamins and my mom picking up the bottle, then the phone. But this one memory won't leave because it was a significant moment. I was lying on the pew staring at a small hole in the nylons of one of my mother's friends. I wanted to make the hole larger...it was really bothering me to have to stay on that pew. Eventually I gave in and started playing with the hole until I had completely exposed a toe...then she told me to stop. I was ignorant of my surroundings. I just remember a lot of the furniture in the room was made of wood like the old churches I would sit in. There were people in front and behind me, sitting quietly as people spoke somewhere in front of me. Where was my mom? I didn't know. She was with me in the car and now she isn't. I wasn't concerned, I had this hole in these nylons to worry about. I had no idea that I was actually stupidly witnessing the separation of a father and a son.

     It's difficult to predict the consequences of our actions when we are making them. It's easy to live life just trying to minimize the damage we are causing to those around us instead of minimizing our own mistakes for the sake of not being a jerk in the world. We don't always think that this one thing we are about to do or decision you are about to make may put someone's life in shambles. We know drinking and driving is wrong. We know that drinking after even the slightest "buzz" is wrong. But thousands do it every weekend and every weekend we read of a group of kids and parents who are dead. Further than that, statistics show a high rate of divorce in couples that have lost a child. That divorce may wreck the lives of siblings and who knows what else. All because of a very common and easy-to-make mistake. Or you can make a big one like leaving your family behind and forget to think about them ever again. That mistake may have meant nothing to the ignorant baby, but to the teenager, it meant quite a bit.

     Many of us live with our moral compass being based on avoidance of getting caught or fear of that consequence. It's not a bad thing to fear consequences,but what about living the life that you know is right even when there is no foreseeable negative consequence to someone else? Isn't that the definition of integrity? Doing good for the sake of doing good may be the most honorable way to live for yourself and also for others. It is the only way you can assure that you aren't damaging someone else terribly.

     I like to speed. I have had more tickets that I can count. I know most of the speed traps and now know when to take my foot off the pedal. However, I always get caught, even when I am sure I won't. Maybe the best way to drive is to "not speed," instead of trying to avoid getting caught. If we lived this way across the board, we wouldn't get fired, kicked out, arrested, lose friends, broken up with, stabbed, or suicide bombed. Most of all, we wouldn't hurt so many people so many times by just trying to not cause too much damage and still act recklessly.

   




Sing.
Migrate.




Thanks for reading...Z

The Last One Left

Transmission: Hel...hello?
Empty room with radio: Static
Transmission: Houston? This is Empire, Captain Steadway,  over?
Empty room with radio: Static
Transmission: Coming home Houston, over?
Empty room with radio: Static
Transmission: Please answer Houston, we haven't heard from you in 50 years. We are entering your atmosphere finally, with some help from spare parts from the space station over.
Empty room with radio: Static
Transmission: Not sure what's down here, but we're coming anyway. Got nothing else. I want to see my wife. I want to see my grandkids. We've been sending messages for decades. My only prayer is that they have gotten them, but can't respond. We are bound for a hard landing. Data gives us just more than 50% chance of surviving it. Either way Houston, I love you. I've wanted to be outside of this rock my whole life and you gave me a chance. I don't know what happened that lost our communications 45 years ago, but we would really like to hear from you right now in case we burn up in re-entry, over.
Empty room with radio: Static

Transmission: Static...Coming home Houston. Static.



...


Captain Aaron Steadway: "Channel 9- static. Channel 10- static, Channel 11- static... useless" He says into a rusted microphone.
Private Jones: "Sir, it's not too late to reverse course."
Cap Steadway: "Yes it is Private. We all knew what we bought in for. Neptune was going to be hopeless and in fact IS hopeless...gas." "The problem isn't what Neptune is, it's what and where we are right  now.
Private Shumway: "Sir...do we have enough O2 to retreat to the base?"
Cap Steadway: "Negative private. We have nothing."
Private Shumway: "Sir? Is this it?"
Cap Steadway: "Afraid it is kid."
Private Shumway: "It's been a pleasure ruling the universe with you Captain Steadway."
Cap Steadway: "You too kid."Sending final attempt at communication with Earth.

...transmitting...no signal...trying gain...Transmitting...no signal...trying again....
 ...transmitting...no signal...trying gain...Transmitting...no signal...trying again....
...transmitting...no signal...trying gain...Transmitting...no signal...trying again....

The heat burned away the outside edges of everything. The desire to see their children gave them tolerance of the fire for their kid's sake's. The room shook and "Private Page" started foaming at the mouth and seizing. A small cadet smothered him with compassion, but he would die on impact.

Selflessness.

...

Impact.

...

     Steadway's eyes flicker like butterfly wings before opening to face the sun warming everything. A wire hangs from above his head. A fire burns to his right and to his left. Smoke billows from almost everywhere. There are no sounds of life fading away...only machines flaring and fighting and losing. He looks to his left and sees a burning Private Shumway, eyes open and mouth agape. He looks right and sees Private Page impaled by a support beam. He reaches out before his hand falls limp. Steadway doesn't feel any pain anywhere. He only feels dazed. He has been here before. When he was 7, he climbed a large tree and became too afraid to come down. He started to panic and cry for his mother. She came rushing out to him but couldn't help him unless he trusted her. She told him to let go and fall into her arms. She would catch him. He held on to that brach like a new mother holds her baby. The wind couldn't shake him off and neither could she. Only he could make the decision to let go.

     Steadway reached for the floor and embraced it's stability to help himself up. In his memory, he sees himself letting go of that branch and feeling the wind move between the layers of clothing separating him from where he came from. He had to trust because he trusted no one but her. He reached his feet in that ship and surveyed the damage. Everyone was lost. Blood pooled and eyes seemed to look directly at him as he passed, but stayed fixed on the ceiling as he drew further. In the cabin was a familiar smell...the smell of blood. The sound of shrieking as every machine screamed out for help. His senses brought him back to the tree when he let go. He fell so far. He felt her arms wrap around his back and grip firmly, then falter. He remembered the very intimate moment when her fingers slipped beneath him and she shrieked. Just like the machine sounds.

     Steadway opens the hatch and introduces sunlight into the haul. The light pierces his eyes and sends him backwards until he could adjust. He had never seen the sun from Earth before. "It's beautiful," he thinks. "Almost painful in both beauty and terror." He goes back to the tree and feels the unforgiving gravel crush his spine, the his head. He hears the shriek again, then a gurgle, then a large gasp for air. The noises aren't coming from him...but his mother. She had been crushed. Silence filled the air. He heard nothing at all. Just like when the sun invaded his life. He walked out staggering into the sunlight and felt an uneven surface beneath him. He smelled what his ancestors would have called "grass clippings" 60 years before he were born.  He felt the wind on his face and the sway of the trees as he staggered.

     There was something so beautiful about the moment that he forgot he had once killed his mother. This was the first time he could remember not caring about her.

     On the ship, they had built these replica trees that served to remind them that home was somewhere out there. He liked to climb them. This one time in our history, he climbed the largest tree because he was afraid of an astroid storm that was coming. He climbed too high and she came to his side again...like always. He couldn't find it in him to look down, so he let go.

     Steadway gained his balance and looked upon the earth. Pieces of broken and dilapidated stone told him stories that he had only learned about in history books. He saw statues and buildings pierced with large stalks of weeds and trees separating them from what they once used to be. He stood for a moment and remembered the way the wind felt as it rocked him to sleep in those trees. You can hold on and not fall and nothing will happen, or you can let go and find out what life seeks to do to you. Captain Steadway takes another step, then another until he sees the entire world, empty of humans. Empty of death and suffering. Empty of the beauty of togetherness.

     He couldn't help but to think of his mother, who had died trying to catch him. She had been buried so long ago and no one but him has thought of her in all of the earth. This made him sad, so he moved on and found an old 7/11. One of the Slurpee machines was still churning sugar somehow. This was the first electricity he had seen. Before he left, solar power was rare. In the city he saw posters all over the walls of missing people. He saw abandoned cars and bones laying all over the road.

     Mostly he just felt the wind. This was a place foreign to him and the wind was the only thing he liked. He didn't much like the bones or the broken structures, so he left until he found another set of broken things, then left again. He eventually found a farm with working plows and a lot of trees to climb. No one was screaming at him...nothing beckoning him for justice or peace. He just felt the wind.

     He lived until he was no more and the earth lived on alone.







Sing.
Migrate.



Thanks for reading...Z

Memory

     There was this symbolic thing I picked up from the movie "With Honors" somewhere in the 90's. When something that means something happens, you pick up a rock from the ground below you...or the nearest rock to you. This will be a stone memory of the event. I liked it in the movie. I now have a collection of rocks in a shoe box. I remember every one of them.

     I grabbed a little green stone pendant from the Meijer grocery store vending machine when we bought the pregnancy test that confirmed that I was going to be a father for the first time. I picked up a rock the first time I stepped foot in the Scottish Highlands, the place I ultimately came from, and a place I had wanted to go my entire life. I picked up a pebble that was next to my shoe when I kissed my wife for the first time. I knew we would be married.

     I know why collectors collect things. These are things that mean something to them. Ebay is still in business because of our nostalgia. We want what we used to have and lost. Somewhere we or our parents threw those things away without us knowing how much they would meant to us. The collected is the last bridge to our youth. I have a house full of relics. You have a house full of relics. When grandma dies, you ask for that one piece of her belongings that equate you to her and you hold then tight to your heart.

     I have a clown that Will's mom gave to me that means more than most non-living things to me. It means so much to me because it not only connects me to Will, but because it connects me to her. I have sweaters and hats and photographs. They all mean the same thing. I have a connection to what is lost to me that I can still touch.

     I think a lot of art is made out of this feeling of connection to the past. It's sad really. We...I long for what I can't get back. I want to see my brothers again. I want to just watch us make all of those dreadful mistakes again. I want to build the world largest penis on a snowman the world has ever seen again. I want to fish in the night while all of you are sleeping again. I'll be sure to put our catch into the video store drop box again.

But I can't.

     It is because of the "can't" that we try so hard to relive or redeem the past. For some, the reason we do this is to remember. For others, it's to forever punish ourselves for letting go of such beautiful things. Both are true for me. I would never want to go back and stay there. I wasn't really happy then. I only see it as happy now that it's gone in some ways. This is an illusion...a trick our minds play on us. I would want to go back for a few hours and just watch because it would hurt me so badly to do so. Doing what makes it hurt worse makes it feel better, but eventually makes it worse. Really, the only truly happy moments I had then were spent with Will, Joe, Andy, and Jeff. Half of those people left my sight. So I cling to the last two. I cling to the past. Some of those times were beautiful and some were the heartache of being a foolish teenager.

     It is very easy to idolize moments in your life and people because of your emotional attachment to them. We tend to put blinders on the things we idolize. I think the best me hasn't happened yet. I think we are constantly improving...even if that means we have to be purged from the ass of the devil to get there. My Creator isn't done with me yet. He isn't done with you either. Isn't ever great story of redemption built from the foulest manure? It's all about hope.



Sing.
Migrate.




Thanks for reading...Z

Beth.- People at a Funeral Part 3

   
     Beth, the third birthright of Albert, stands in front of his grave ten years after she had helped the groundsmen put him there. This is the first time she has been here since. She lives in California, all the way across their world growing up. Growing up, they didn't have the money to travel, so the entire world became America, and the west coast was the end of existence. Albert was more than just her father, he was something of a hero to her. Beth had uncontrollable asthma. Everything seemed to aggravate her breathing. He was always right there with the right inhaler or would quickly find a source of steam. She had suspected that he had saved her life more than 1,000 times.

     When she got the call from Bill, her brother, she fell down. He continued to speak and yet she didn't hear anything but her own horrible shrieks of grief, then her quickened breathing and tight airway. She grabbed her inhaler and used it twice. The rescue inhaler helped to get the longer term medicine into the deeper areas of her lungs. She breathed, then sprayed, they tried to breathe again. She decided that the tightness in her chest wasn't her lungs...it was her heart.

     Most of her siblings didn't like Albert very much. Beth understood why. He hadn't been there for them. He worked all the time and didn't attend many of their activities, even if he was home that day. But he was always there with an inhaler. Always.

     "So why is this the first time I have visited his grave?" she asks. Because she wasn't angry with him. The rest of her siblings hated him for reasons that were not even his fault. Reasons like their teenage pregnancy or inability to keep a job. They projected these things to her, but she wasn't the one that got hurt...not by him. He was the only person she had ever counted on. He was the only one she knew would be there. Sarah, her mother, was always in a different place. She wasn't a real mother. So Sarah got the panic attacks. Albert was there with an inhaler.

     Right now Sarah stands at the wooden box that holds her wax father. Tim, a strange person that says he's her brother, wails in the front of the room. Sarah stands next to his bed and smiles as she hugs distant relatives. One right after another. Beth remains seated on the front row, waiting for the funeral to start so that it can end. She wants to go home and never see these people again. She didn't hate her family. She was just her daddy's girl.








Sing.
Migrate.


Thanks for reading...Z

The Art in Me

   
     I don't write very many beautiful things that don't involve the beauty of sorrow. Most of the digital flowers people give me are because of my grief ( I told Josh I would steal that one, so I just did). But tonight, the air is perfect and the wind is silently sleeping. I sit outside on the porch and look at the moon. It appears to be a full moon, but it's hard to tell because of the clouds. They float on, giving me only a partial view of this beautiful thing that I have always felt was watching over me somehow.

     The moon is a constant. At night, you can look up and expect to see at least evidence of it's presence. This is what I have always longed for. Maybe the only thing I have ever desired from life...a steady presence that isn't ever going to die or leave. It sits in the sky as if it were a constant eye watching over us. But it's not. It's a cosmic rock that lights up our sky just like the moons of other planets that guard their night.

     I have what I have always wanted. I wanted a wife that would share my experience of being human in this world and vice versa. I wanted children that truly thought I was Superman. I have known love of many types from genuine people. I wouldn't ask God for any friends different than the ones I have. I have beautiful people all around and my life is teeming with everything I could have ever asked for. But yet I am still sad. Still searching. Still looking for beauty in something.


     I don't know why. It may be because of the heartache of losing people you love so deeply. It may be because I never had what most people would call a "normal life." It may be because there is something profoundly wrong with me. But I don't believe any of those answers. They are a product of me.
   
    My friend, mentor, and pastor took me to a concert last week. A concert of a musician I deeply respect, who sang songs that reflect my heart. He asked if I'm ok. I told him the truth. I am. He asked me how things are right now. I knew he didn't mean this in a small talk way, so I answered him like I knew his intent. "I'm working on it." He didn't judge me for that. He understood. A beautiful thing that people forget about is when another person who cares about you understands instead of projects their fears about you, to you.

     He said something to me that night that makes a difference and I'm not sure if that was intended or not. He described me as a person that grabs things from the air and portraits them as art. And that art is different from other art. This is a paraphrase, but I got it's intent. I'm not great or am any kind of pure artist. But I understood what he said. Sometimes, the entire world and the way it works is art to me.

     It occurs to me that I am picking the wrong things out of the air. I am only choosing to pick the things that reflect my heart right now and forgetting the things that reflect me as a whole. He chose to describe my sense of humor. I try to be funny. I mask things by being funny. I am a clown. In fact, when I had no hope at all, I painted clowns all over my bedroom walls. This is the way I deflect. But still....I love to make people laugh. I think that's because I love to hear people laugh. It helps me to cope. I feel better when other people are laughing.

     So I look at this moon that peeks around the corners of these clouds and it makes me so happy to be alive. I love my brothers, but I am glad to be here still. I'm gonna try and pick out the beautiful things from my existence instead of the sad ones. I watched this musician grieve and give up his spirit in front of thousands of people and I knew that this is real art. Art means sharing what no one else will allow others to see about their hearts. There is art and beauty in tragedy. There is also beauty and art in joy. I think I may have painted the wrong picture to people that don't know me. I think that if you just know me from this blog, you are only seeing the things I can't say in public.

     I am not that person. I am happy most of the time. I like to joke around. I am loud and say exactly what I feel sometimes. I don't have time for small talk ever, and I like to speak in either riddles or hypotheticals. I will ask you a "would-you-rather" question to try and figure out who I am talking to. I really do love people. I want to help people. My issue is that I'm tired of losing people. Right here, right now, as I stare up into the sky, I remember what I am here for. To make people laugh. To point people to their Creator. To help people forget that they have been hurt.





Sing.
Migrate.



Thanks for reading...Z

A.V.H

   

     I was unsure of myself at that age. I hadn't learned my worth or the value of real friendship from them. They (my future classmates) could never be Andy...my very best friend. I showed up in new clothes. A pair of Toughskins jeans with patches on the knees, because somehow they knew. I probably wore a vertically striped velour polo. My hair was probably combed to the side, just like it is now. It was my first day of school and I was nervous but so excited.

     I won't forget the moment I stepped through those doors. The smell of sawdust and graphite pencils. The way it sounded when a teacher's hosiery shredded together and alerted us to be quiet before she got to the door. Elementary school was the best time of any kid's life. We get to see our friends and make new ones everyday and the teachers rarely cared about what we are doing. In fact, one day I asked to use the bathroom. Mike asked 2 minutes later, then Jason. The three of us eventually ended up smoking weed for my first time in that bathroom. I felt nothing because I was too scared to inhale. I was in 4th grade and my mom had taught me that these drugs could and probably would kill me instantly. I wasn't going to take the chance, but I wanted to test it.

     I remember a few years later and a different school that had this talent show. At the show, some fifth graders did a California Raisins bit which brought the house down. During this bit, I would think of the greatest anti-drug commercial ever for only Nancy Reagan to see. The problem now is that I can't remember the jingle. I just remember it being perfect. It's so close to my tongue that I promise to update you when I think of it again.

     I moved forward until we moved again. We moved every couple of years, so I made a lot of friends but never knew them very well. I made a good friend (Mike) at this time, but lost connection to him when I moved again. For years, we would be inseparable. Somewhere that would fade and I wouldn't see him again, except for the one day I cut school and went to see him at home. He was a year older than me, so he had graduated high school. I went and played basketball with him in the street like we always used to. It was as if we had been playing for years. We played the game and I left...again not seeing him.

     I think the link between people comes when you experience things together. I think the day that me and Andy became brothers is when we were almost abducted together as little kids. Maybe that's dramatic and maybe not. We were at a video store and Andy's mom was renting us Wrestlemania I. A guy came to the passenger door and put his hand in to unlock it. I jumped across the seats and rolled up the power windows until he had to remove his hand an run away. For years after, I told Andy I was the one that defeated and killed Bruce Lee and that I had special powers. He believed me, probably because I rolled up that window. I was always the strong one until he saw me broken for the first time when Will died. I think this broke his heart. I was nothing but exaggeration and lies and that came to finality when I couldn't keep my knees from the floor.

     The great thing is that whenever I walk into my kid's schools, I still smell that graphite pencil smell and it reminds me that home is wherever you are. Home isn't a building or a house. Home is that feeling you get when everything halts your senses to remind you of a particular feeling. That feeling is home. Maybe home isn't where you live, but the feeling you have while living there.



Sing.
Migrate.






Thanks for reading...Z

Justice...

   
     It may just be that throwing up your hands and resigning to not know all of the answers is the correct answer. I may not seem very analytical to you in person. But really, I do think about things, maybe too much, and obsess about what things really mean. Sometimes, things don't mean anything at all. Sometimes things happen because of random chance and the fault doesn't belong to any particular person or incident. This is a hard concept to accept for me because I have always believed that there was a purpose to everything and that some things demand our attention.

     Man I'm tired of writing negative things and feeling negative feelings. I have this desire for justice and sometimes maybe justice isn't for me to judge or experience. Maybe character is built through injustice. Maybe this is my lesson to be learned and I can move on. I simply don't know and I'm tired of thinking about it. So maybe the answer to injustice is to throw up your hands and let what has happened remain in the past. The last bit of anger left inside me may be related to people not getting what they deserve. That's a bad place to be I think. I can't really fathom what I deserve, so I have a self righteous view of justice. That's a problem because I believe I am right, but I just may be wrong.

     It's exhausting. So I'm going to try and leave it behind and move toward the sun. I'm going to try and stop wishing bad things on people I consider bad people and stop thinking about them at all. Right now, I need to think about the way the sand feels between my toes and the sound of rain and thunder as I am laying down to sleep. I need to spend some really quality time with people that breathe positivity and light into the world. The Bible says that God's people are the light of the world. Maybe with all of this darkness, I am seeking the wrong sources of light. For once, I should let go of my own devices and throw up my hands and let the world be the world and let the sun shine on me and through me.

***

 I'm not me. I haven't been me for a long time now. I want to be me. So I have to try to be me again.



Sing.
Migrate.


Thanks for reading...Z

Songs of a Little Sociopath

(Warning; This blog contains pseudo bad words partially censored with symbols and suggestive and sometimes blatant adult themes coming from the mind of a child. Please prepare yourself to be maybe offended.)


"I get laid, and my songs get played. Laying on a bit%$ my bed is made. I got songs. My comedy is at large..." Adam Coffman- 9 years old (First Deathstone song, and I can't remember the rest of the words.)

     I'm gonna come clean with some terrible things I did as a kid. Most were directly influencing my much more innocent little blood brother Andy, 6 or 7 years old at the time of the above band quote. Andy was my lead and only guitarist. In fact, my hair metal band had only one musician. Every day, Andy would bring over his little white guitar and a small amplifier that would clip to his Bugle Boy jeans. When it was time to rock, I would turn up the bill of my Vision Streetwear skater hat and Andy would hold his hand onto the heart of his Hypercolor t-shirt until the chemical reaction was complete. He would switch on his amp and Satanic and perverse things would come from my mouth. Things that would make anyone's mother slap me. (Unrelated, but once I was on vacation with a friend and his mother actually did slap me after commenting on her neglect of her bikini line when we were about to go swimming.)

     Andy and I would spend every weekend together when school was in session, and every day together during the summer. The summer was really when I blossomed as a psychopath. Below, I'm just going to list some things I did and get them out of the way for the sake of keeping a timeline for this blog and to prevent jumping around.

• I started an actual fight club in my backyard, using my mother's daycare kids as the warriors. every nap time would garner the blood of a small child or many children. 
• We would make forts, then charge other kids hairs from their heads to come in. We saved all of those hairs in a container of broken dreams and hurt feelings.
• We would go to Chucky Cheese and start fights in the ball pit. We would grab a kid and hold him under the balls until his mom would hear him shouting for help. Then we would run. 
• I warned another 9 year old who was picking on Andy in his neighborhood to stop or I'd break his arm. He didn't stop, so I went over to Andy's that weekend, grabbed his arm, and twisted it until it snapped. I think the bullying stopped...at least on Andy.
• I would go around with a tape recorder and tell little kids to say terribly violent swears and record them secretly. I would then show the tape to their moms, who would then chop off their tongues or whatever. 
• With Will and Joe, I used to throw grilled hot dogs at the mentally handicapped kids living at the group home in the back yard. We once started their yard on fire with a huge "Crow" symbol just after that movie was released. 
• I struck a middle schooler in the head with a baseball bat after he hurt my brother Jason with a skateboard. I was in elementary school at the time. I cut school, walked to the middle school, and hit the kid and ran. He lived. No harm, no foul.
• I got a great idea to paint the bottoms of Andy's little sister and her friend's feet and faces red with model paint, then wake them up so they would get scared looking at each other. I did not foresee them running with red tracks all over the carpet or ruining the wall paper of their newly remodeled bathroom.

     I'm going to stop there to prevent my mother and my friend's mothers and your mother from having a heart attack. Whew, I feel better now that you know all of that. I wasn't really a bad kid. I just had a very intense way of getting revenge and dictating justice to all of those around me. For the most part, I've outgrown or been punished enough to take more intelligent and palatable methods of venting. Although, I do still get these knee jerk reactions to decimate my foes every so often. Once my mother made me go to a family reunion dinner at a fish and chips restaurant. I didn't want to go. I was 18 and didn't have much of a taste for some of the characters infamous in my family. I took revenge. As the entire family was at the table, I announced the future arrival of my first child, to be born just after I graduated. I literally saw the blood leave her face, only to return when she saw everyone looking at her. She said, "Are your serious?" "Yup," I said and sat down. In hindsight, that was probably a bit harsh of a penalty for making me eat cod with family. Nine months later Olivia was born. 

     I'll save the rest of my high school years for other times. It just occurred to me today that I was probably the most dangerous kid another kid could be around. 

     




Sing.
Migrate.



Thanks for reading...Z

Feeling for a Way Out

Sing.
Migrate.


Sing about what? Migrate to where? I'm not going anywhere.


...



The above was a melodramatic post that I wrote but didn't publish months ago. I look past it whenever I post a new blog, but can't find it in me to delete it. Why? Because at the time, it was a real feeling that I was afraid to put into the world. It wasn't because I believed I would feel differently, but because of all of the people I have preached hope to. The hope exists, but at the time everything was blurry. It's still blurry, but I can drive.

When I was a kid, we would go to this church three or four nights a week and my mom would practice her songs or her skits with her friend. Me and Jason would occupy our world in whatever way made sense. We were and are very different people, but would find ourselves in the same building over and over. I'm not really sure what he did with his time...he was more of a loner. I would explore every dank, wooden crevice of that building. There is this certain smell of old Bibles and felt paper whenever you enter an old person's church.

This one night, I was in the basement searching for something interesting among all of these boring books when the lights went out. I was alone in the basement of an old wooden building as a 7 year old. I rushed to what I thought was the door and ran face first into something old, creaky, and wooden. I got something in my eye. I started to panic. I didn't know which way was out and I couldn't see anything beyond the blur that the tears were bringing. I shouted and got no answer. I shouted more and got only my own echo off of the wooden lecterns.

Life was doomed.

I used my hands and crawled my way to an opening which led to stairs, then out into ear shot of my mother who was talking to her friend. She got me in the car in hysterics and taught me this trick to getting things out of your eyes. She sat me on the passenger seat of our old duct taped conversion van and looked into my teary eyes. She taught me to pull your upper eye lid over your bottom. If it was just and eyelash, the problem would be solved. If it wasn't the tears would drive out the beast. It was an eyelash.

I won't forget that moment because of the feeling of being completely alone and in the dark. I felt that again when I wrote the words above. What I wasn't thinking of was that I found my way out of that dark wooden basement and to the safety of my mother. I think I remember a lot of terrible moments and focus on them without focusing on the way out. I guess right now I'm feeling my way to safety. That's a comforting feeling because I know safety is within earshot.



Sing.
Migrate.

A Good Memory

I've seen my share of the insides of jail houses. Nothing crazy, just immature and kid stupidity. The first time was with Will. We liked to steal things that no one would realize were gone. There was a beauty in taking away things that people took for granted. We would steal (boost) silverware, plates, beer mugs, and those mats on the counter at McDonald's that told you the current value meals. I had a closet full of our accomplishments.

I've written about this day before. I'm not gonna rehash the details of our incarceration. But I did smile today thinking about my time sitting nervous in a cell next to my brother Will. When I get nervous I talk too much. When Will got nervous, he would go to sleep. I sat in that cell thinking the worst things and kept getting up to pace the floors. I was scared of everything in that moment. It's strange that I feared at all during this day, I didn't have much to lose really. No one really expected much from me and this would be par for the course.

As I sat there trying to find a way to blame someone else, Will's snoring stopped. I waited for a moment for words, but got nothing. I knew he was awake and he knew I was awake. Nothing happened.

Then out of the corner of my eye, I saw a toilet paper roll race past my cell leaving part of itself behind as it traveled. This single moment in time will never leave my memory. It was a reminder that some things don't really matter that much. What really mattered was who I was and who was with me. I had some very beautiful people with me.

Will got bailed and I ate a terrible TV dinner in jail. Later that night, after my mother had taken a loan from a friend to get me out, we sat in front of our parents and told a story. We told a story of two kids crying for help, totally helpless in our need for attention that we robbed a chain grocery store. How they believed it I have no idea, but we left with them feeling bad. Was any of it true? I don't really know. Maybe? Probably not?

What I do know is that the first time I went to jail is one of the best memories of my brother I have. I don't regret it.

This is my good thought. This is my good thing for tonight.



Sing.
Migrate.




Thanks for reading...Z

People at a Funeral- Part 2- Fish

He stands in front of a black hole in his living room, screaming into the abyss. He, Fisher; the eldest son of Sarah, shouts into his closet as if the entire reason for his anger lives in the darkness of his clothing. He screams like a child in the night, waiting for his mother to take him into her arms. He screams until his stomach wretches and he begins to gag.

...

People look over to him as he stands at the head of his father's casket. Albert had always been his first and most important hero. His father had never missed a baseball game or teacher conference. Albert had loved his only son the most of all of his children; at least the ones he knew about.

People swept through the room and across the front of his father's body at a steady pace throughout the day. He hugged so many people. He laughed and cried with them over shared memories. He will smile instead of weep for the sake of his family. He is and has always been the strong one.

Despite the attention he is getting as Albert's "Only son," he couldn't help but notice the attention Tim was getting from everyone. Tim (Albert's apparent new son), was the life of the party. He was the center of everyone's attention. He was laughing and crying and people were grabbing his head and putting it on their own.

Fisher shook off bad memories and focused on the one's he liked to remember.

Once, Albert took him fishing on the pier all night. Albert told him that he was named after this very moment in the past with his mother. He told him that his first date with Sarah was spent fishing. She was so amazed by his lack of dating prowess that she bought into what he was selling. In reality, Albert knew what he was doing. He was smarter than everybody...all of the time.

...

As a kid Fisher would fake seizures. He didn't quite know why we liked it so much, but he knew he liked the outcome. Sarah and Albert would rush to him and hold his mouth open. Later they would hold him so tight and pass him back and forth to even tighter arms. Sarah would weep over him and rock him to sleep, but for a few moments in time, he would remember his father's hard hands carry him to his crib from his mother's chest.

...

Right now, all Fish can hear is weeping from Tim. All he can see are loved ones wrapping their arms around him.





Sing.
Migrate.



Thanks for reading...Z

Changing Everything

Summer always passes and becomes another winter, then another summer. It's no secret that people in the midwest love Fall and Spring the most. These are the two very brief times where everything is neutral and comfortable. People smile more during these seasons. Then winter comes and brings dread and stagnation and whatever life has stabbed you with in prior winter months. Summer brings happiness mixed with nostalgia. Eventually summer becomes hot and sticky and loud. I think people find real happiness in the middle.

This is a hard concept for me to admit because I am an extremist in nature. There isn't a middle ground with me. You are going to love me or hate me. I will take a stance that is one or the other, but seldom in the middle. I am impulsive and act on those feelings immediately. But this isn't where I am comfortable. Most times I just want silence in the middle of being asleep and awake.

If you have been reading for more than a year or so, you will see this in what I write down. I write down my guts at times, which get hard to read for some people. I write down my high times brought on by moments of clarity, which vanish. In both instances, I truly believe I have turned a corner, but really I'm just either in winter or summer. I'm having a hard time finding a middle ground. I can't find solid footing in either season: It's either snow or mud.

I sat in church today and listened to my pastor and friend speak about a God that he is so passionate about. A God I used to be so passionate about. He spoke about the sacrifice and meaning of what Jesus did. I get that. Then he spoke about the danger of anger in your life. It felt directed at me, like most truth does. I get that. Really, my thoughts were that the truth dies in me. Then he spoke of emptiness. The entire sermon was my photograph. It isn't pretty right now. I know the truth and ignore it for anger. I'm not proud of that.

I'm pretty tired of messing things up. I'm getting hurt a great deal by it, and hurting other people too. So it has become clear that I must discover a solution. I have to change the way I think. I think I have to stop looking at who I used to be and measuring it by who I am now. It makes me feel bad and that guilt drives me to give up. I've had enough of giving up in my life, both in myself and my loved ones. I used to fight. I used to be a person that would fight you until you had no strength left. I burned and wanted for life so badly and gave the best of me to everyone when I could.

I'm not sure the best of me is something that I would be proud to see now. So I have to change everything. The last thing I said to Joe in text was "You have to find it in you to change everything." He couldn't. I can. I will.






Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading...Z

Jesus Wept Too

I think about the hands that pushed a compound into the fire to mold the steel that once laid beneath my neck. The kid that got a job right out of high school at a rope factory, that maybe placed his hands on the rope that ended up around my two brother's necks. Sometimes people don't know the evil they are doing when they do it.

But what about the hands that placed the base cardboard that would be rolled in tissue at the toilet paper factory? He didn't know that some of my life's most innocent and beautiful moments would be spent building rockets out of what he/she would only picture to be spent wiping some person's butt after eating at a Japanese Steakhouse.

Sometimes when you love and lose someone or something so much, it becomes easy to hate the very thing that brought you together in the first place. It has to be someone's fault. It can't just be my fault. Someone somewhere promised me something that they couldn't provide. Someone told me that everything will remain right?

That isn't the world we live in. The world we live in is cruel and cold. Sometimes, the people you believe have saved your lives lose theirs and there is nothing you can do about it. You just get to watch it fall apart, not knowing what to do with your hands while it crumbles.

The world tries it's best to wrap this darkness around your hope.

It fails.

It fails because God is in the darkest places. When you are cursing Him and shouting: When you are cringing at the very mention of His name. He weeps. Jesus wept.

Jesus wept. The shortest verse in the Bible. The least amount of words He has used to describe Himself. They are the most profound to me.

When you have lost your heart, your kid, your wife, your husband, or anything else that means true life to you, the last thing you need is a lousy explanation. You just want someone to cry too.

So Jesus wept. His friend died and that friend's family was pissed and sad and wanted more. They blamed Jesus. He fully intended to raise this man from the dead...I think. But instead of words, He wept. After all, His name is Emmanuel, which means "God with us." In that moment, the only thing He could do to be with them was weep. I think the writer of this Gospel thought long and hard about that and smiled at the character of God.

...

I wasn't able to speak very eloquently at either of my brother's funerals. For two times in my life, I had nothing to say at those moments.

I let it kill some of me. I let it kill some of the things I hold very dear to me. I let it make me forget about who gave them to me in the first place. I wasn't much until them. I forgot that He still weeps.

He wept when Will looked up at that strap. He wept when Joe took that rope out of his trunk. He went when I laid my head down on that steel made by some person just trying to provide for their family.

It is entirely possible that God is just as destroyed as I am about their sadness. I think He is.

Jesus wept too.




Sing.
Migrate.





Thanks for reading...Z

Help

Mistake after mistake and they tell you to stop making mistakes. At least stop making the same ones over and over.

Failure after failure. For everything that goes well is another that sinks without you even noticing sometimes. Sometimes, the failure happens while you're sleeping under the sun on a pier, and this boat with all of the life and joy and happiness floats by slowly. This unforgiving boat stops for no one, so you have to get on when you can.

For the rest...? We keep moving. If you stop moving, you perish. People can move forward or backward, but they have to move. No one living gets to stay put: Life just isn't that simple.

You have to learn to live with the lot cast for you in your life. Good or bad, you are in your skin for now and you have to learn to live in it. It isn't easy, but nothing worth your time is.

I've been struggling to figure out what it means to be me in all places I have to be. To many people, I mean different things because that's what I have given everyone. Maybe it shouldn't be this way. Maybe I should just be the whole beautiful and ugly me all the time and let whoever wants to walk with me..walk.

The real question I have to solve is where I am going. I don't know if I'm doing better or worse at this point. I'm just turned sideways staring. Everything I have ever believed has been challenged this last 5 years. I have tried to grasp old thoughts that brought me comfort before, but they are just beyond my reach. Terrible thoughts filled their vacancy and I wanted to hold on to them, but they are exactly what they are...terrible and not true.

I won't stop walking. If I stop, I will fall in. I need to keep moving, so I move in the best direction I can. It may be the right direction and it may be the wrong one, but I see the sun on the outside of one of them, so I will follow that and try not to second guess and follow the one that is completely dark.

I get it now...the most common funeral verse. "Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me." I have to believe that I am seeing this valley and that there is a powerful and hopefully graceful and forgiving God shepherding me to where I can feel the sun.

This is faith I think. To really believe when everything tells you to turn around and leave it behind.

But doesn't faith live in the beauty of the misery of God's people when they mourn with hope? Isn't that sharing in the suffering of Christ? Somehow, I think my whole life I pictured this as growing up without a dad. It's far worse than that. A crucified, and undignified Jesus suffered and I though that sharing in that meant that I had to live without a catch with my dad? To walk with Jesus means true suffering for some people and I guess I never thought that would be me. Yet still others suffer much greater. Suffering isn't of God. What happens during your suffering is.

Meanwhile, I sit here with this wonderful life, filled with people that love me and want to be a part of my human experience.

So then I realize. This is a pity party and I am the guest of honor. I whine about what and who is not here because it hurts. I often forget the other side of the coin. Who is here? I am not on some planet alone. I am here. I am breathing. I am breathing in sync with many people, so I am full. Joy is found beyond sorrow and grief. Joy is found in the man crawling out of the mud covered in blood, but so happy to see help.

Help has always been here.




Sing.
Migrate.



Thanks for reading...Z

Love Just Like Jesus

Religion should never be used as a weapon. Not against gay people. Not against people who have had an abortion. Not against people that can't say no to drugs or alcohol. Religion is for people that understand how badly they need God.

In that case, I need God more than I need food.

It's not a matter of what you think is right or wrong. It's a matter of how you treat the people in front of you.

In the past five years, I've learned some things. People will love you as long as you fit the mold. If I say I love Jesus and am hurting, I'll get maximum support. If I say I'm gay and love Jesus, I'm a liar. If I say I'm an alcoholic and love Jesus, some will have sympathy, but reject God's love for me. This is the religion the world rejects. This is the state of American Christianity.

The question isn't what you do as a human being, it's what rules you have broken. It's the very thing, I believe, that Jesus would turn tables over.

I'm not going to fight over right and wrong. I'm not going to go into Biblical or humanitarian principles. I am only asking you to love everyone as much as you love yourself...just like Jesus did.


Sing.
Migrate.


Thanks for reading...Z

When the Glass Shattered

We had two BB guns. A rifle and a handgun. We had too much time on our hands. So we did what kids do...we scoured other people's neighborhoods and randomly shot out car windows.

I drove a 70's Datsun painted with house paint, Smurf blue. The floor boards under the drivers side seat were gone and I could see the road as I drove over it and what splashed under the car, splashed onto my legs. None of us were a very good shot with the guns. In fact, Will got his "Willy One Thumb" nickname because I nearly blew off his thumb trying to shoot a target out of his hand. We would creep up to a car in the night and shoot it's window until it caused a spider effect or shattered altogether. Then we would drive off laughing. Once My truck stalled as I kicked in first gear to get out of there and we were left with several moments of anxious horror as we waited for the owner to come out. We got away and the owner didn't wake up. That night, we were arrested, kind of. We were pulled over and taken to jail but not officially arrested. Joe hid the gun under my work apron in plain sight...the only place they didn't search. Pure genius.

Weeks later, we were driving through the mall parking lot. We had to stop for an old man crossing the parking lot road. As we sat waiting, we heard a snap and a strange cracking sound and looked in horror at the car in the spot in front of us as it's window splintered and fell under it's own weight. Behind us was a single hand holding the pistol from the back mini seat of the truck. It was Joe. In broad daylight. In a mall parking lot. On a Saturday.

Later that week, Will and Joe would go out together to shoot windows. I was at work at the theater. They showed up with Will angry and holding his hand. They had found a prime window to demolish and Joe had convinced Will to let him shoot out the driver window from the passenger seat. Joe missed so badly that he shot Will right in the muscle of the hand web. I couldn't help but laugh because how did Will not know that was going to happen?




Sing.
Migrate.


Thanks for reading...Z