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Remembering Fear and Terror

What I remember most about 9/11/2001 is fear. Everyone was in shock and afraid. I was at a tech expo that afternoon.

We all stood around waiting for the next wave. About an hour in we all decided we should be home with our families, not some marketing event.

My friend Rich Long was at my house hooking up a hot water heater. I think he’s the only person in America who worked that day.

The days after I heard really scary things, patriot acts and rounding up people in putting them in prison without trials.

I listened to President Bush talk about the need to make us all safe and secure.

I thought about what Ben Franklin said about a man willing to sacrifice his liberty for security will soon have neither.

About three weeks after the day I was out for my morning run. There was an eerie feel to the day. I’m running out of Montgomery toward Stewart airport, I didn’t see a single plane, you always see planes taking off, flying over Montgomery.

Fire alarms started to sound.

I turned around mid-run, convinced that’s we were again under attack. I ran up to my front porch and grabbed the paper. The front page was black and in giant red letters it read:

“TERROR”

I threw the paper down, knew I’d been played and said LOUDLY, so the entire neighborhood could hear me…

“FUCK THIS!”

Remember the daily, sometimes hourly ”terror alert levels?” Orange was bad, red was really bad, I think, I forget…”

I never believed another word I heard about it.

Yes, never forget they are playing you for a fool and pandering to your fears.

That is how they own you.

Snakes, Quicksand, School

When the cowboy movies came to the Paramount Theater, for a Saturday afternoon at least, we could put away our unending and always present fear of slow death by snakebite or quicksand and just be boys.

Death was always imminent during boyhood. The likelihood of surviving to teenage years was terrifyingly small. Most didn’t, we knew them, it was sad. They didn’t make it, ok, maybe a few did, but not many. [Read more…] about Snakes, Quicksand, School

Signs… Richie O’Malley

Signs…

Writing is hard.

And fun.

And hard.

A couple of years ago, at the time I wrote my first book, I wrote some tongue and cheek blogs about the industry and my shock at what it looked like when you pulled back the veil. It’s just like every other business, hobby, occupation or criminal activity. It ain’t nothin’ like what you expect it to be – under the hood.

It’s sleazy and slimy and crawling with grifters and self-impressed clowns who want to suck the life from you. If you are fortunate, like I’ve been, you also run into some incredibly helpful people who guide you along the way.

I’m getting to the signs part in a minute.

I think every one of us who decides to take a slide down this slippery path secretly harbors a fantasy that their book will be a major overnight hit.

Publishers and movie agents will be beating each other to get to your door. You’ll never have to market or promote – Hell, you’ll never have to work again. Me, I was headed to Key West to hang with Hemingway’s ghost, with an occasional side trip to visit Faulkner’s haunts in Pirate Alley in New Orleans…

But that’s not how it works…

I’m getting to the signs thing…

You know when you first fall in love or someone you love is sick and dying, you may be like me and have a really loose grasp on the whole eternity/God/Creator of the universe thing, or you may be a deeply spiritual, even religious person.

Regardless, signs pop up all over the place right? Signs emerge that show you that THIS lover – number who knows- is THE ONE, or you’ll get a sign that the loved one is going to a better place… and even if you don’t buy into this stuff there is a comfort in the signs, right? It may be secret and private and known only to you, but, you got your sign. You get your comfort.

So, anyway, I wrote another book. I think it’s a great book. My editors didn’t tell me – yet – to burn it, but I’m a realist. My first book is doing ok, but I’m not quite ready to take up residence at Sloppy Joe’s in Key West…

I have good, maybe even high expectations about the success of my second book, but I’m keeping it contained.

This book is dark, it’s about a friendship, it’s about death and crime and drug smuggling and self-examination. The main character, Richie, he carries with him his entire life a stolen Smith and Wesson .38 snub-nosed police revolver. This gun has a history all it’s own. Maybe a life all its own…

Richie always has 5 bullets in the chamber of six. He’s at times been known to play Russian roulette.

I’m getting to the signs part…

So the other day I’m walking out of a place and I’m frustrated and angry and I see behind the rear wheel of my Mustang – my most prized possession – this thing with all these spikes pointing up. Mad, I kick it aside. How dare this spiky thing attempt to puncture the tires on my Red Ford.

It lands under another guys tire. Not being a complete jerk I can’t let him get a flat, so I crawl under his car and pick it up. Flipping it over I realize it’s some kind of a replica of a .38 chamber – with one missing – after some googling, I find that the device when new has all six chambers full. I also find it’s a grinder for weed. Kind of fitting.

So here is sit, with my weed grinder, 5 in the chamber and wonder…

Was this a sign from the universe that my second book is going to be a rousing success, or did some doper just drop his pot grinder behind my Mustang?

Summer at Sixty

The mid-summer cicadas… the saddest sound I know.

A reminder nothing good lasts forever.

They are telling me that somewhere the first winds of winter are about to move across the surface of some cold northern lake…

The summers of youth, wasted and discarded. Beer cans out car windows…

What would it be like to once more have a stack of summers out there waiting, disposable.

These soft summer days didn’t seem so precious in 1975… I burned them fast, arms out the window, Springsteen on the radio. Ninety miles per hour. [Read more…] about Summer at Sixty

Saman Kunan

The twelve boys trapped in that cave in Thailand was so two weeks ago.

We live in this flash of news cycles. Endless, and every day it seems to get a little more surreal, it becomes oppressive, it’s a 99 degree July day, with 100% humidity.

I can’t breathe some days.

I want to scream some days.

Then I remember when we were all focused on those boys. What a complex and terrifying time and place, but it unified us, some of us, many of us.

There was a guy, this guy, Saman Kunan.

What a bad ass. What a hard-core bad ass.

What a spectacular human being.

Saman and the news of his death made me challenge and question everything I know about myself. What I like, what I dislike, what drives me, what I love, what I fear – I fear my cowardice above all else.

He made me face the image in the mirror.

Maybe, I’m sure, he had his fears and his cowardice too. He rose above it.

And, I’m not saying he’s all that unique. Every day brave people put aside their fears because the love they have for another human being or beings is greater than the love they have for themselves, their own life.

All I’m saying is in the face of this daily 24/7 News cacophony lets not forget that there are still guys, men, and women, like Saman. When it gets really dark and ugly and confused let’s not forget this man and the others like him.

The fact that we admire and honor and mourn the courageous tells me that we are all, at some very basic level, more like them, like Mr. Kunan, than those that make all the noise.

Quiet dignity, grace, and courage. That’s what I see in this man’s face. That’s what I want to remember. That’s what I want to strive to be.