the difference between writers and animal doctors

I think the thing that makes writers differant from people who have normal jobs like aeronautical engineering and professional bass fishing, is that writers write things down. Because if you think about it, all of our lives are filled with moments worth writing about, we just don't put them down on paper. Then we forget, so we have to read books about other people's lives to remember our own.

turtle neighbors

A couple weeks ago I was in southern Florida where the royal palms sometimes bend over highways to make natural tunnels. I was visiting my great aunt and uncle who live in a pole barn turned house surrounded by orange trees. This is the kind of place where you need not buy artificial scented orange cleaner. Simply crack the windows, allowing the sweet blooming aroma of valencia to float in.

After visiting their neighbor, an old turtle, I got a tour of Uncle Jim and Aunt Suzie's place and watched tv from thier spiral staircase. What I love the most about the home is the paneling on the walls and the paint spattered ladder they used for the loft guard rail. When I asked my relatives about the bohemian arcitecture, they said the walls where made of salvaged cabinet doors from ramshackle houses they tore down in West Virginia, which were replaced by new structures for those who had no place to stay. And it was for these projects that they used the paint splattered ladder if I remember right.

I thought this beautiful because everyone should have place to call thier own. And if possibe, it should be a house built with recycled materials, and a home made of memories.

talking

There's a pretty girl speaking sign language to a deaf boy and I can't help but eavesdrop. I have no idea what she is saying, but it is beautiful. I think words were meant to be danced, articulated not just with lips and tongues but with arms and faces as well. Like conducting an orchestra. Like directing traffic or beat-boxing.

When I talk it does not feel like dancing. I feel clumsy when I speak. I would rather write. I can take my time. It is easier to erase written words than spoken words.

I think we all have a way of talking. Everyone is trying to translate their thoughts into language. That is what art is. That is what music is. People talking. In fact, everything we do is communication in a way.

But sometimes, it seems, that I just can't find a way to say what is inside. Have you ever tried to speak but could only pronounce silence? Utter nothingness?

My grandfather was ill suddenly and I was far away. I had been far away for sometime, I regret. Being away, however, had made me realize how lucky I was. I just starting to realize that. To comprehend what it meant to be a grandson. To discover that there were generations in my very DNA. That I am, in part, made of other people. I am the blood of my father. I am the blood of my grandfather and so on. Then to realize that there were not only other people in me but good people, that made me proud.

That's sort of what I wanted to say to my grandpa when I sat beside his bed in the hospital, but I didn't know how. I was stuck. I could not yet articulate it.

I was trying and one morning in Rochester I was thinking about writing a letter to my grandpa, walking down Monroe Avenue scribbling out phrases in my mind, wadding up thought after thought. Nothing seemed to say it right. So I called my mom for inspiration…

The timing and irony of my phone call was amazing horrific. I barely got out, "Hey Mother-deary!" when I was bombarded by tears and screams. My mom's words were hysterical and mangled, but the message was clear: "Grandpa is dying." Within minutes I was in my truck headed West on I90. Six hours separated me from the hospital. I was only to Buffalo when his heart stopped beating. When his blood stopped pumping.

Hearing about the death of a loved one is "like walking up the stairs to your bedroom in the dark, and thinking there is one more stair than there is. Your foot falls down, through the air, and there is a sickly moment of dark surprise."*

Nothing hurts like an unwritten letter. Like words unspoken. Regret is the hardest pain because regret is a lesson learned too late.

It has taken time to be ok with this. To be able to journal this. Because I should have at least tried. Words don't have to dance…dance well, that is. Sometimes they do, but more often they are clumsy. I should have flapped my arms in the air, spat out some words with my tongue tied in a knot and said something, anything. Because dying men needed to know that there life was worth something, anything.

I know my grandfather believed this. That his life was worth something. He even said so. And I heard other people tell him. But I wish I could have added my part. I wish I would have written my letter. But I was slow, I was too slow. And I missed my chance.

We are all dying, in a way, moving toward our inevitable death. And what makes us feel alive are other people who are glad that we are around. We need each others words. They make our hearts beat. So speak. Say anything. Make the phone call. Write the letter. Your chance is right now.


*Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events.

cover letter

I am delightfully haunted by a place called I Woo and often find myself telling stories about this magical land, stories with wonderfully named characters like Riske and Umfundisi. Now there are some that say college is not real, but as I describe it: a short period of make-believe. They insist that those who pretend it to be anything else will be in for an awful awakening in “the real world.”

I have lived in this real world for two years now and have met the people that make these terrible assertions and have come to believe that they are in fact the silly ones, the ones who are pretending. Where on earth did they get the unbelievable idea that church was supposed to be dull and that you are not suppose to know the people in your pew? Or the idea that you are to stop learning when you are older (unless of course some more education would get you a promotion)? I see it as make-believe to think, as they do, that in real life you must own your own of everything. And that at a certain age adventure is only a memory. Or that answers are more important than questions. Doctrines more important than conversations.

The truth is that the most magical place is the most real place. God is not ordinary, but extraordinary. Can the world He created be anything else? Two years later, I still believe in Indiana Wesleyan. It is not a fairytale, but the most real place in which I have lived, a standard in which I seek to emulate in the neighborhood I find myself now. “Take it with you,” Dr. Judy Huffman told me, speaking of the community I told her I would miss.

When I dream about the possibilities of church, I see a place like Hodson Hall with its nakedly honest community. When I am feeling dull, I know that buying stuff will not make me feel new. Learning and wonder make life new. This I learned from a fiery bearded man some call Stonehouse who had a sleeping bag for a bed and a bulky dictionary under his arm. The adventurer JMak taught me the beautiful nature of mystery, which is not simply a temporary feeling (a truth not yet revealed), but a part of reality (a truth unexplainable). He says has a “box” for mystery in his life, a part of his mind to hold those truths too incredible for understanding. Moreover, there are echoes from I Woo that bounce at me unexpectedly from time to time and I often hear God in the voices of those I knew at Indiana Wesleyan University. “God is after you,” I hear. “Follow your heart,” I am told. “Be here now,” nudges me.

magic

"The grass seemed signalling to me with all its fingers at once; the crowded stars seemed bent upon being understood. The sun would make me see him if he rose a thousand times. The recurrences of the universe rose to the maddening rhythm of an incantation, and I began to see an idea...A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitallity, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, 'Do it again'; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, 'Do it again' to the sun; and every evening, 'Do it again' to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daises alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them...In short, I had always believed that the world involved magic: but now I thought perhaps it involved a magician. And this pointed a profound emotion always present and sub-conscious; that this world of ours has some purpose; and if there is a purpose, there is a person. I had always felt life first as a story; and if there is a story there is a story-teller" (G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy).