Friendship

We had the occasion to spend an evening with some dear friends, and I reflected on what constitutes a friend. We have many acquaintances. We have co-workers that we are friendly with. We associate with folks with whom we share a common interest, and we might deem all of these friends. Yet some relationships that we have had the good fortune to make seem to be a degree closer; some immeasurable quantity finer.

I remember observing my children and watching them form friendships. As 4 year olds, they had no fear in sharing with a peer and, the formation of a friendship seemed instantaneous. They would come home from kindergarten telling us about their new friend that they had just met, and while they might have some playmates that they preferred over others, they seemed to be a friend to everyone in their class.

As they grew, their friendships became a rarer quantity. There were friends they would play with after school, those they might have on the same sports team, friends in the same Sunday School class, and those that just lived in the neighborhood. As parents, we also began to spot the kids who were not friends; the bullies and those who would only talk to our children when there was no one around who was a more desirable associate.

We would occasionally find our children sad or even crying over the real or imagined affront from a friend. As their wounded hearts and feelings healed, they were, perhaps, more reluctant to enter into friendships for fear of being hurt by someone they trusted.

Teenage years were full of the cliques of the cool kids whose self-importance seemed to center more around whom they could exclude from their groups than the common interests the members of the groups might hold. At times, the gossip and the put-downs that were inflicted on the vulnerable caused wounds that were as real, and at least as painful, as if they had been physical ones. Maybe the common interest they shared was in whom could they belittle or shame or insult or hold themselves forth as superior to.  

That isn’t to say that teenagers weren’t friendly to each other. As an outside observer, the cliques weren’t always exclusive. Many times they just weren’t inclusive enough to welcome others into a group and thereby hurt the tender adolescent feelings of those around them through their virtual exclusion. Kids on the same sports team or in the same drama production or even in the same class in school might still be seen as friends, but not as close friends, and a social interaction in one group didn’t translate into the invitation to join another.

I’ve witnessed a group of girls in a Sunday School class talking among themselves with a new girl sitting among them, completely ignored. Any one of the girls could have easily introduced herself to the new girl and welcomed her into the group, but by mutual consent they failed to do so in what should be one of the most welcoming of associations. I don’t believe the girls would have thought of themselves as being rude, but were not willing to take the non-existent risk of inclusion. What might any of the other girls in the class have thought if one had made the invitation?

These situations have almost completely neglected the neurosis-inducing complexity of boy-girl relationships. Intersex pairings can create a cause for purposeful exclusion of individuals from one group or another as jealousy and competition for attention are introduced into the relationship game. The human insecurities we all share translate into the creation of enemies and frenemies where they need never exist.

We prefer to think that, as adults, we have matured beyond the seemingly petty insecurities of the teen years, but it is not universally so. I have seen workplace drama whose participants would feel right at home in the cliques of high school. It does appear that as we enter into the 3^rd and 4^th decades of life, that interpersonal cruelty becomes much less common. Perhaps the experience of living through those years has allowed us to see beyond the folly of treating others as less than ourselves.

 I believe we do see past the folly, but that we do so at the cost of forming close friendships. There are many that I count as friends that I would be willing to help, and who would unreservedly help me were the need to arise, and yet they are not ones I would comfortably share my hopes and dreams with.

In that group I count my spouse, my children, and only a few others. I might define the others as friends that, though I haven’t seen them for years, our closeness endures as though no interval existed.

Completion

     

                We humans derive a peculiar emotional feeling from completion of a long term task or activity. The feeling is, at once, joyful and celebratory as well as of a melancholy sadness. I remember being told that my high school graduation would be one of the important events of my life. Graduating honorably, with good grades and with the benefit of a scholarship to look forward to just didn’t have the exuberant feel that I’d expected. It may have been that I was leaving behind all that was familiar and looking forward to new experiences I had not yet had not yet known, but the completion of my first 12 years of schooling left me with the conscious feeling of having been abandoned. It left me with a profound sadness that lasted until I was immersed in the next “thing”.

                Major events in our lives are relatively few: Marriage, birth of children, death of loved ones, completion of schooling or other training designed to give us a worthwhile livelihood, new employment and loss of employment, among others. Some of the these are happier than others, but I, for one, feel some trepidation with each.

                Trepidation after the birth of a child? The joy is undoubtedly great, but as the responsibility of raising that child descends there is a trepidation. It is perhaps borne of the humility we may feel over being entrusted with the physical and emotional and spiritual education of a human being….like being a partner with God. Trusted by him but perhaps not by ourselves.

                When I separated from the Army at my own request, the melancholic sentiment was nearly overwhelming. I left for a well-paying job and far better working circumstances, yet leaving the familiar surroundings that I had been nurtured in for 16 years felt was surprisingly difficult and deeply depressing.  On one day I was a respected senior officer and on the next I was unwanted and unwelcome. I could not even get in the gate without a sponsor. It felt like a betrayal.

                Obviously, the circumstances and the triggering notion in the examples above were different, yet, to me, they each harbored the sentiment of sadness at completion. A wedding should be overwhelmingly happy, but the uncertain and enthusiastic commitment of a life together coupled with the tension of the special day often overshadowed by the expectations of loved ones and friends and the desire for perfection in the ceremony and the reception are anticlimactic when it is all over. Maybe anticlimax is, in fact, the best description.

The feeling of completion in a major life event is much different than that associated with a short term accomplishment. Receiving a good grade, finding a bargain at the store, enjoying the success of a loved one, summiting a mountain on a day hike, or even the completion of a routine chore like mowing the lawn or painting the garage or even doing the dishes leaves us with the pleasure of success without the somber mood engendered by the completion of a major step that will change our life for better or worse.

Perhaps that is the answer. Most of us fear change despite the opportunity that it affords us. The constancy of the known which becomes commonplace in our lives is upset by the potential consequences of an event that might or might not throw our lives into turmoil; that may force us into making decisions that we would rather not confront because of the possible negative consequences that may result.

As I consider my own feelings and what I assume are those of most humans, I am, perhaps unfairly, judging the rest of humanity. I have no evidence that the rest of mankind suffers from my particular neurosis. I have known others that are not afraid to leap into the void of uncertainty. “Damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead”, is apparently the attitude of some, and it may be that devil-may-care sort of risk-taking is what the ultra-successful in our society possess. Did the President experience melancholia on winning the Presidency, or did he find the whole process nothing but invigorating?

It may be that aversion to risk-taking prevents us from being the best that we can be. Hopefully, our life experiences teach us that we can deal with difficulties and problems and enjoy the challenge of overcoming them. If risk aversion leads us to completely avoid a challenge, then we may never graduate from college, or move on to a potentially more rewarding job or form rewarding relationships that requires us to give of ourselves on a continuing basis. Maybe that is what separates the short term completion from the major one: That we must continue working every day to extend the completion…the winning streak…so that we may find ultimate success in life.

A Bit of Wind

I picked my sweetheart up from the airport at 2:30 this morning.  We came home and went to sleep. She had been in San Antonio helping our 2^nd daughter with the aftermath of childbirth, so she is accustomed to the Central Time Zone, and I am pretty well re-acclimated to Alaska time after our Eastern Time Zone trip to Maryland to see our 4^th daughter’s family. She woke up before I did and had sorted 2 weeks’ worth of mail by the time I got up. I used to take care of the mail, but she complained that she never got to see it. Now she sees it all, and I only get the bills and statement I wanted to see in the first place. A perfect solution.

She announced to me that she was going downstairs to work out on the treadmill and, feeding off her enthusiasm for exercise, I said that I had thought about climbing Baldy this morning. I actually think about it every morning, but she had spurred into action and the other fall pre-snow projects seemed to be under control, so I began to prepare to follow through on my pronouncement.

It may seem odd to begin to prepare, but preparation itself has a beginning, a middle, and an end. I first had to dress for the mountain’s ascent which, in this season, is pretty easy. Our October weather has been unseasonably warm and all I needed was a flannel shirt, my hiking stick, and my boots. By the time I was dressed and had gone outside, I noticed that all of the things that I had stacked on the front porch as I cleaned up for winter were all over the driveway, stuck to the fence, and in the branches of the trees. A crate of apples that had been on the porch was upset with apples all over the place. You didn’t even need to listen to the howling of the wind to guess that it had been blowing during the night.

I picked up all the paraphernalia and put it away before I finally got my hiking stick, set my heart rate monitor on my wrist, started the trip recorder on my phone, put on my headset, and started the audiobook playing. I was finally ready at 10:44 and started up the trail.

The wind normally is not as fierce climbing up through the woods as it is at the house. The house sits out on a prominence where it gets the brunt of the wind and the storms that pass through Meadow Creek Canyon, but once you start up through the woods, things quiet down and the buffeting stops. That was partially true today, but the wind was gusty and whipped around a lot on the way up. By the time I got to sit down at my favorite overlook about 2/3 of the way to the top, I had spent a lot of time picking and eating the High Bush Cranberries, the Blueberries, the Low Bush Cranberries, and the Crowberries. I wasn’t in a hurry and my book was entertaining and the autumn berries were a treat.

During the last 1/3 of the climb, the wind picked up a bit. By picked up, I mean that it began howling like a banshee. The closer I got to the top, the harder it blew. I knew it was serious when I felt my hat was about to fly away and I took it off and threaded a finger through the strap on the back. A bit further along and I could no longer hear the book playing. That was because my headset had been blown off and I had to backtrack to locate it by the side of the trail. It joined my hat interwoven in my right hand’s fingers while my left hand was still occupied with the hiking stick. My glasses were the next to feel like they were about to leave me, so I took them off and hung the bow hinge over a button in my shirt with the glasses under the shirt. By this time, I was nearing the top and the wind had become awesome. I don’t remember every having been in wind that I literally could not stand up in. To advance on the summit, I had to crouch low or move forward on my hands and knees. What a surprise that there were no other hikers on the trail!

Finally, instead of standing on the very summit in victory, I reached up and touched the highest rock with my hand before turning around and being blown to the ground, jamming my phone in the mud, and scraping the heels of my hands.

Challenging? Yes. All in all, a perfect day for a hike.

               

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

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In the category of, “No Good Deed Goes Unpunished, I have been taking care of the list of “Honey-Dos” left me by my beloved. She, as The Angel of Mercy, gone to help my daughter recover from the birth of my 26^th grandchild, has left me alone to take care of the menial household maintenance and prepare for winter. I was given the assignment of freeing up the rusted grinders in the garbage disposal in the kitchen sink. We have lived in our new home for an unbelievable 14 years and the disposal had ceased to function as a disposal should, i.e. , it should grind up waste, and didn’t. I dutifully sprayed the grinders with a rust and environment destroying , but commercially available, chemical and in, but 48 hours, was able to free the grinders such that the waste disposal unit functioned normally.

Unfortunately, in the interim, and in a completely unrelated episode, the dishwasher, which drains into the disposal unit, had its control board burn up in the middle of the night. I awoke to a terrible “ozione-ish” smell that seemed to originate in the kitchen. I sniffed throughout the house and finally came back to the kitchen where the odor was the strongest. Since the dishwasher was no longer functioning, I took the front panel off and found the main control circuit board had burned up during the last dishwasher load. There was a crispy black and burned segment adjacent to one of the relays on the main control board, and the temperature sensor was also irreversibly fried. I searched online for the appropriate parts and found both the board and the sensor available on Ebay and Amazon. I tried to order the least expensive parts but found that the vendors wouldn’t ship to Alaska. As Alaskans are always confused by the unwillingness of shippers to send goods by the US Postal service to Alaska, I was gobsmacked and wrote to the shippers asking that they might make an exception as it would be no more expensive for them to ship to me than for them to ship to an address in, say, Seattle. Both promptly wrote back apologizing, but informing me that their policy was not to ship to Alaska. I finally accepted the Ebay offer of a vendor who would ship to Alaska for only an additional $10 and began waiting for the arrival of the appropriate parts.

In the meantime, after freeing the grinders in the disposal unit, I tried them out by grinding out some carrot tops. I watched from under the sink while the detritus spewed out a crack in the disposal’s side. We have only lived in the house since June 1, 2004 and have accumulated a few undersink items that include 4  packages of Scotchbrite sponges, 4 quarts of Jet-Dry, 10 spray-cans of oven cleaner, 4 quarts of various brands of calcium remover  (Lime-Away and others), 3 pints of granite sealer, ¾ gallon of lamp oil, ¾ gallon of wax remover, 5 packages of household surface wipes, , 3 containers of various Stainless Steel cleaner, 3 quarts of humidifier bacteriostatic treatment, and several other various and sundry items. Needless to say, this was the first time the undersink area had been thoroughly cleaned out. It would be easy to blame my spouse for accumulating the duplicated essential home-maintenance items, but I am equally responsible because I, too, bring home those things I remember we “need” while out shopping.

Anyway, the spewing leak required that I completely clean out the undersink area to find the problem. I quickly localized it to the disposal and found that I could replace the 1/3 horsepower unit with a ½ horsepower unit for only $109 at either Lowes or Home Depot. I remembered that Costco occasionally sold disposal units and, though they don’t have their inventory posted online as do both Lowes and Home Depot, I found in a telephone call, that they had a 1½ Horsepower unit for sale for only $79.99. That was $10 more than the online price, but considering the price of shipping to Alaska, was a bargain.

I trekked into Anchorage this morning to buy the disposal from Costco, returned home and installed it fairly simply in only about 30 minutes. After finding a couple of leaks in the drains requiring me to repair the existing connections with new ones, everything worked.

I am currently waiting for the dishwasher parts I ordered from Amazon and Ebay to arrive when, I trust,  that the kitchen will be back to normal before the return of my beloved. I wonder what might have occurred if I had not followed her instructions to fix the disposal grinders in the first place.

In my mind, I have to conclude that my wife is always inspired.

*800 words, as if you care. See my post of a few days ago entitled, 800 Words.

How To Write A Novel

Nearly 6 years ago I decided to try my hand at writing The Great American Novel. I’m not sure what that title implies, but I am an American and I wanted my novel to be great,  Ergo Sum….( or something close…. I don’t speak Latin).  I had read a book called No Plot, No Problem, by Chris Baty, whose premise is that you, too, can write a novel. You don’t need characters, story line, plot, location, or anything else except the time and inclination. It will all come to you. The philosophy was attractive and convincing and I took the author at his word and wrote. 50,000 words and a month later, I was a novelist.

Baty conceptualized National Novel Writing Month (November), and originated and weaponized the website, Nanowrimo.org. Through the website, an aspiring novelist can joint other writers throughout the world to write a novel during the month of November, post their progress during the month, and win swag at the conclusion for being successful. (As an Army veteran, I had learned a whole different meaning for the term SWAG, but had to dig deep within the google results to find it)

                I serialized my first novel by posting a chapter a day on Facebook, and a few loyal friends really read it that way, but what worked for Charles Dickens with David Copperfield didn’t resonate with today’s readers. They….Want It All, And They Want It Now…(thank you, Queen). Since then I have invited a few select and loyal readers to beta-test my writings, and will eventually get them all published via Amazon.

                The Nanowrimo plan is to write every day during the month of November. A novel the size of The Pearl or Of Mice and Men is about 50,000 words; a short novel to be sure. Writing 1667 words a day for 30 days gets you there. Writing 1667 words a day only takes a few hours and the promise of No Plot, No Problem is realized; you really don’t need the whole plan in advance. It really will come to you.

                I will be starting my 6^th novel on November first this year. The first one was a heady experience, like no one had ever done it before. I harbored the secret hope that the world would embrace my book and it would be on the Best Seller List immediately. It didn’t happen (surprise) for many reasons. First, a book has to be edited and formatted to even be eligible for self-publishing. The grueling truth is that editing is much more difficult than writing. Getting all those commas in their proper places is tedious, but I have become more appreciative of what Mrs. Douglas taught us of dependent and independent clauses in the 7^th grade.

                Formatting is also a painstaking task. Just getting the page numbering right took me a day for my second novel. Sure, I could hire someone to do all that, but at this stage I am still way too cheap to pay the hundreds of dollars it would cost for just the editing and formatting. Then there is the cover design that requires more of an artistic eye. I could pay for that too, but not when I can wheedle my daughter, Rebecca, to do it (and she does do it wonderfully).

                Amazon started out as a bookstore (remember when?) and still is. They also have the tools for self-publishing. Createspace.com has been their author’s tool, but it is currently morphing into Kindle Direct Publishing where the same tools should be available to help with formatting, cover design, final review, and publication. They don’t stock a warehouse with copies of your book to ship out at a moment’s notice; instead they print on demand, one at a time….and ship it out at a moment’s notice.

                My first two books, The Closet and The Fort, are available on Amazon. The third, The Mine, will be out as soon as Rebecca gets her priorities sorted and the new baby takes second seat. The Quake and The Cabin are still awaiting editing, and I do that best on a hammock in Costa Rica….maybe in the spring.

Why else, other than availability, are my novels not first on your reading list? Competition! There are literally millions-and more every day- of other books that people must choose not to read in order to read mine. What helps? Nice reviews on Amazon makes their algorithm let more people see a book, but for the part-time writer, word-of-mouth seems to be the most effective tool.

In the end, one must decide what they are willing to sacrifice to be a successful novelist. By my own measure, I write because I enjoy it, and I hope others enjoy what I’ve written. And I guess that is enough for me.

800 Words

My wife and I have been watching the Australian show, 800 Words. We’ve watched many shows over the years and when one ends we don’t find it too difficult to waste more time on another. We’ve made our way through all the seasons of Grimm which we thought got better and better until it ended when it was at its best. We watched Once Upon A Time until we quit when it got worse and worse and we stopped in disgust. We saw all of 24 and Longmire, both of which became unbearably politically correct in the end, and are avid watchers of The Blacklist.  We’ve even seen every episode of Psych and Castle. I mention these to establish my credentials. I feel like judging requires a library of experience and knowledge only gained through dogged pursuit, parked in front of the big screen, remote at the ready.

My tolerance level is somewhat lower than my wife’s. I can watch a show for a while and finally be put off by the theme or the silliness or the writing, but she will watch a show ‘til the bitter end. I attribute this to my early start in television viewing. She maintains that, as a child, she rarely watched television. She lived in a small town in eastern Arizona where it wasn’t quite as warm as was Phoenix. She claims that she was outside most daylight hours. I spent plenty of time outdoors, but they called it the Valley of the Sun for a reason, and that was because it sounded better than the Valley of the Heat. There was no shame in coming into an air conditioned house when the thermometer threatened to explode, and to keep my mother from having her internal pressure pass the breaking point, we often watched television.

Television was new in the late 1950s and 1960s. The networks were still trying to figure out what worked and what didn’t. Until the early 1960s, all shows were black and white, and most televisions were black and white until much later than that. Ours was, anyway. We would gather around the 12 inch screen in the 4 foot cabinet and watch Leave It To Beaver and Father Knows Best and The Andy Griffith Show and The Rifleman and I Love Lucy and Hazel and Dick Van Dyke. As Hollywood started to take off the training wheels and color became a thing, Bonanza and Lost in Space and Gilligan’s Island and The Time Tunnel and Star Trek, and even Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color came and went. Eventually Rowan and Martin’s Laugh In and the Smother’s Brothers and Carol Burnett lit up our living room.

I didn’t even realize that having a television was a status symbol. I assumed that everyone had one; in fact, most of the world was not so fortunate. Nothing was being broadcast in most of the world, either. I had the occasion to visit my cousin in Omaha in 1968 and was stunned to find that they had five televisions…for four people in the house. Little did I know that was the shape of things to come. Now, the rest of the world has television, both broadcast and appliance, and they watch what we’ve been watching for decades; syndicated, and translated where necessary.

Which brings this back around to 800 Words. First of all, it is Australian. That means that translation is sometimes needed. As my wife and I watch we often have to pause and replay to figure out exactly what was said. It is not the least irritating; the Aussie accent is so appealing to our ears that are so used to the flat pronunciation of our home in America that we would gladly play it again and again. That isn’t the only thing appealing about the show, however. The premise is that a 40 year old Australian man writes a column for a newspaper in Sydney. Peculiarly, every installment of the column is exactly 800 words. You might imagine that there is appeal in that for me; I write. The defined length implies saying something in a succinct manner that is worth reading. When writing, I estimate that 800 words is of a shortish length and takes about 60 to 90 minutes to write, which also appeals.

The story proceeds that the man’s wife dies and he moves to the small town of Weld, New Zealand with his two protesting children and against the wishes of his in-laws. Starting over is hard, but the town characters are interesting, the story is intriguing, the scenery is beautiful, the acting and writing are good, and the show is a runaway success in its home country. If it is time for you to pick a new show, you will enjoy 800 words.

This is 800 words, in case you were counting. (not including this line).