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Meatloaf and Mashed Potatoes and Guns

Tonight I’m eating meatloaf and mashed potatoes and peas, classic American diner food, and the news in the background is talking about the school shooting in Nashville. I can’t stop thinking about the grandboy. I’ve never seen any human eat as much that kid. It’s a mathematical impossibility anyone so skinny can eat so much goddamn meatloaf.

He’s a good athlete, and he doesn’t like girls; on girls I just tell him to give it time, he’ll out grow that. He doesn’t like girls but he’s been in one fistfight, I know of, sticking up for his sister and I supported his decision on that fully.

He likes dinosaurs, but he says I don’t have to send him dinosaur news to his mom’s cell phone anymore. That makes me a little sad because he growing up but a little relived because it’s not very easy to find dinosaur news everyday. He likes mechanical things like cars and bikes and learning about electrical circuits and video games.

This summer he wants us to build a catapult and a robot. He thinks I’m smart. He’ll out grow that too. He’s nine.

Me and Osama Bob have a 1992 Mustang with his name on it. The boy will learn to build engines and how to work a clutch and shift a five speed and I’ll see to it he does.

So, I’m eating my meat loaf and mashed potatoes and I’m choking back tears because the news is reporting about Nashville and those kids were eight and nine, and this keeps happening in America because we love guns more than our kids and that doesn’t even make me mad anymore, just fucking sad

The Laws Of Man In 2023

I’ve learned a lot about modern man and law recently. Sadly, the most I learned reaffirmed and cemented my opinion of the legal system in this country.

I thought in that moment about Atticus Finch, and how it’s all fallen down now.

I swore an oath to a god I’m not quite certain I subscribe to. As I was swearing to this god, I was again pondering why or how he/she/it has time to manage all the important goings-on in the universe, and trivial lawsuits, the goings-on with my penis, the penises of the world, and complimenting vaginas of others, dirty thoughts and who is naughty or nice etc., my ongoing confusion between Santa Claus and God and maybe the Easter Bunny and now, the law.

Anyway, I swore not to lie to anyone, including this very busy god.

I found the swearing to tell the truth and nothing but the truth concerning and in the busyness of being grilled for almost six hours, I frequently found myself questioning what exactly the truth had to do with this entire escapade. Truth in the legal system is a subjective truth. As a boy squirming and wiggling in church and getting slapped and told to sit quietly, I was told the truth, especially this god entity’s truth, was absolute. In the years that have passed since the era of that sweaty and squirmy and dirty little boy, I’ve learned that truth was nothing more than a part of the narrative. A colorful bit of fun snuck in between words and questions to hopefully fit a legal defense or someone’s story.

It was astounding to me to hear the question asked and within a few seconds of silence, to be forced to decide what part of the narrative this question was trying to support, and what picture were these words trying to paint. Answer in short and cryptic sentences but tell the truth and don’t elaborate.

I watched two men, two men who must be far better men than me, because they seemed to be the keepers of this elusive truth at five-hundred dollars an hour—each—use the same short and terse words that had just passed my lips become molded and fabricated to completely different explanations, again angled and injected into part of the larger story. As a writer, I was quite impressed by their handiwork.

While I had fun wearing a tie and answering questions to the point that my throat was actually sore, my opinion of the judicial system plummeted.

How can anyone, armed with the information fabricated, twisted and polished in this manner, be presented as unvarnished fact and evidence, and then decide the fate of another human being?

This has been my position for decades, that I am not fit to serve on a jury, and my new revelation that I’m not fit to serve as a witness either.

I wanted to speak the truth, not some speculative truth, but an absolute truth, the absolute truth. But that wasn’t an option. I spoke of the truth as I understood it. What a sad state when one is incapable and as confused as me, must somehow now be a defender of and keeper of and witness for some truth that seems elusive at best, and more realistically, fabricated and twisted right down until its very essence is gone. Only empty and hollow words can remain.

I told my truth, and my truth was as close to the truth this god was looking for as I could possibly make it, but I’m not sure it was the whole truth and nothing but the truth because that truth did not not seem to be any part of the presented questions.

I hope I caused no one any undue harm and I hope I did some good, but I’m sure the god who is summoned at the outset of such spectacles and ceremonies must be a very sad and disappointed god…

If this nation has failed, the failure started when truth became a commodity, bought and sold at five-hundred bucks an hour.

Blackwing Pencils And The Greatness

There are gifted people who walk among us mortals who are just better. They walk a step ahead and above the rest of us. This isn’t good or bad, it simply is how it is. I read somewhere that a hundred and twenty billion people have lived on earth since day one. The greats, the legends, are a hair thick slice of that number.

I remember being introduced to the great writers in high school. Hemingway and Faulkner and Steinbeck. Books like Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird and Salinger’s Catcher In The Rye… The Grapes Of Wrath and East Of Eden—a book whose central theme was the word ‘timshel,’ a Hebrew word that translates to—with regard to god or man’s triumph over sin—thou shalt, or thou mayest. The battle between the will of God versus the will of man. Do we live by preordained fate or free will… that one word was the core of that work. Steinbeck’s genius was expressed in longhand.

Somewhere buried between the words of these men I uncovered my desire to write. Not to just write long strings of words, but strive to write with the power men like these men possessed.

I remember taking some harsh and well-earned criticism for the opening words of one of my books. I took it because the critic was right. My opening words didn’t, in his words, ‘grab the reader by the balls…’ I went to a place quiet and alone and re-read the first paragraph of Grapes, where Steinbeck wrote of the red Oklahoma clay and the rivulets of rainwater that cut through that dirt and found its way to the planted seeds and, in time, sparked the growth from seed to cornstalk. His words didn’t grab me by the balls, but they were the words of the gifted, and they were well crafted and perfect.

At the end of the same book, a book whose overarching theme owned a Dickensian bent: hunger and want and starvation and greed; Rosaharn, having just lost her baby by miscarriage, her breasts still full of milk, opens her blouse and feeds a man dying of starvation in the boxcar of a train.

I put down that book and said to myself I’ll never be fit to even sharpen Mr. Steinbeck’s famous Blackwing pencils. I still hold on to that belief fiercely today. The true greats are a bridge too far, a mountain too high.

A friend, a reader friend, asked me for my address a few weeks ago. I didn’t think much of it. I know her pretty well. This week, unintentionally arriving on my birthday, was a package for me at my P.O. Box. I opened it to find three Blackwing pencils.

I have been staring at them since they arrived. I don’t know if many people would be moved to tears by a gift of a couple of pencils.

I’ll put them in a box I need to find. A box built with wooden dowels and dovetail joints, not nails and glue. The maple or oak will be stained gently and rubbed deep into the grain with some sealing oils. It will have a glass cover and the pencils will rest on that fancy foam stuff where they will lie in an impression and the three will be kept there, at least as long as I live. I’ll never sharpen them. I will never see it as my place to sharpen them. They are not a tool to use to put words on paper, they are an aspiration.

I’ll put them on a shelf with some of my dad’s wrenches and I’ll look at them frequently. I will be reminded of what true greatness is and Mr. Steinbeck’s mastery of the art.

When I ponder them, I’ll know how it feels like to be less than great, but how it feels to look to greatness. Left un-sharpened they will never allow me to become consumed with myself and my work. And in the best moment on my best day I will strive for the simple good, and if that is ever attained I’ll be quite content.

Thank you, Eveline J Soelberg. Your gift means more than you could possibly ever know.

Talking To A Writer Friend

I’m talking to a writer friend last night. We’ve never met face-to-face, but I’ve read her work and it’s very good. Often raw and real. She is a poet, and a genuine poet. She was expressing to me her disappointment, and possible disillusionment, at this whole writing and storytelling world some of us find ourselves in, almost a quarter way into the twenty-first century.

I think many of us start writing to express an inner voice and to tackle some social issues, to talk about and examine the human condition, to tell stories and examine a talent we’ve been told we possess. I don’t know how many of us expected our first book to sell 10 million copies, and we’d end up writing in an oak lined den, wearing a corduroy jacket with leather patches on the elbows, but I’m sure some of us did.

The reality is nothing like that, not even close. This writer friend of mine is a fiction writer, and she works in science fiction. Braver than me, I think I’d get lost writing science fiction and my work would be really bad. We discussed the fact that there’s so much absolute garbage fiction out there flooding the market today. There must be a million books published yearly about rabid, werewolf-zombie-vampires with bare chests. Male and or female nipples exposed for sales purposes. It’s embarrassing, and it’s disheartening. I’ve got no issue with nipples. Hell, I might even be a fan, but I don’t find zombie nipples attractive or thought provoking.

I think my biggest takeaway from my years in this writing business has been that you just have to write from your gut and if somebody likes it and they connect to it, then that’s good and if you sell a couple hundred books your book was a success by today’s standards. We’re drowning in a world of bad stuff being written and rehashed. Like things from 1960 and ‘70s TV shows. They just dug up and re-warmed Magnum PI, for Christ’s sake. Couldn’t anyone in the past fifty years do anything newer and more original than a marginally entertaining TV detective show from fifty years ago? They re-hashed Hawaii Five 0 a while back too. Book ‘em, Dano… Jesus, shoot me.

I’m going to continue to write about a recovering addict’s struggle with the third step, and the perceived need to subscribe to and handover your life to a God that you may or may not believe in. I’m going to continue to write about old mobsters, looking back on their lives with some remorse and regret, and maybe a little amusement, and con-men and racism and hate and fear and the real things I think we need to talk about. I’m going to continue to write about things that matter to me.

It is my hope my friend Lauren takes a step away and catches her breath and then keeps writing her truth. I think she was has thrown up her hands on marketing, and I get that completely. The creativity and imagination that’s called to write fiction is an entirely different form of creativity that’s required to write marketing hype. The publishing world has transformed over the past twenty-five years. It’s made being traditional published a nearly impossible goal—and if you get a traditional publisher to show an interest in your work they often ask: A) how big is your current subscriber list (10,000 subscribers seems to be their sweet spot) and B) what is your marketing plan… huh? I thought the publisher was my marketing plan…

Stressing sales figures and marketing is to me, anti-art, anti-creativity. It makes me sad. I think a lot of truly talented people have just stopped writing or stop publishing and producing because we’re becoming over washed with nonsense and in 2023 nonsense seems to be what sells. Then we have to figure out Twitter and Facebook ads, and how many hashtags to use on Instagram, and how to attract readers to our blog and email list, and is Pinterest worth the effort and who the Hell even knows how to use Pinterest anyway, and seriously, Snapchat?! WTF even is that? Then the soul searching to decide if we want to give all our personal information to China and TikTok. To be honest, I worry less about what the Chineses government knows about me than I do what the US Government knows about me, but I digress. For the record, I’d market to a Mexican cartel if it would sell some books and get some reviews…

I read a lot of Hemingway and Steinbeck and Faulkner, and those words that were penned a hundred years ago are as poignant and purposeful as anything that could be written today because we really don’t change. People, the problems and the foibles all stay the same and the human condition stays the same. I’m going to let somebody else write about the big titted rabid werewolf-zombie-vampires, and not think about it anymore. I hope my friend Lauren does the same.

And now we have AI generated books popping up on Amazon, like those persistent little flowers that would suddenly appear when we cleaned the barn and spread fresh shit on the fields.

I’m kind of looking forward to competing with AI. AI writing is soulless and shallow. There is no poetry in the prose, but maybe, just maybe, it will come up with something original.

Anyway, I hope my friend Lauren and the other good craftswomen—and craftsmen—and storytellers keep plugging along, working their art, and stop feeling defeated by book sales. Some days it’s like trying to nail jello to a tree, but every now and then you get an email or a message from a reader you realize you’ve made that connection and it’s a bit like magic.

We Were Good

Because Of The Song Bob Wrote

Feet planted on the same ground where we’ve stood since our time began. The beginning of time, in a sense. Before our time, the world was a black and white and grainy four-inch by four-inch square with sculpted borders and pasted in a book. This was a place our fathers knew, and in their passing, it is bestowed a holiness of sorts. But, we are not and do not come from holy men.

Born, not far in distance or time apart, this is our starting point. And perhaps it will be our final stand.

From this place and spot and dirt we came, our roots grow strong and deep. Fed by the nutrients of this place and all that grew from its minerals and salts and water.

Here and upright and connected to this ground, every bit as much from this soil as the trees that now tower over our heads, and creek with age and fatigue and branches and twigs and big clumps of oak leaves fall. Here, in this moment, we are afforded a fascinating and terrifying vantage point to look back and past and through time itself, to another time and back to this time.

If you are quiet and still on this spot, you can hear the laughter and rage and tears of the ghosts who have left this place and left us alone to this place.

Here today, a fascinating and frightening realization that as we have gone our separate ways and lived out the lives we were dealt and assembled and committed and survived our collective crimes, we’ve always somehow managed to find our way back to here, to our common dirt.

From the memory of the sting and the terror of the first kiss and falling in love with a girl, her name is long forgotten to the fog and the wind, to the bloody nose and sore bones of the first fist-fight. The sting of bees and the trampled runs across the high field grasses from deadly vipers, and the swollen, broken knuckle of the first slipped wrench. Then without intent or effort we moved into a life the of broken words and commitments and lies of adulthood, a million-million things have come and gone and come and changed. But, in a way, nothing at all has changed.

On this haunted plain, on this north-windswept, stark, gray day, you ask a truth I always feared….

“Were we good?”

Were we good sons and grandsons and mechanics, were we good and true to our chosen profession, fearful for so many years to be discovered the frauds we know ourselves to be. Were we good guitar pickers and story writers and boxers and cyclists and pick and shovel and socket and wrench and hammer and nail men?

Were we good in our souls and kind and honorable? Were we good to ourselves and each other? Did we feed the hungry?

Were we good in the eyes of a god who confused us and scared us and demanded the slaughter of sons and lambs and asses to prove a faith I cannot find, let alone abide by?

Were we loyal and good friends? Did I step up every time I could have to defend you, or did I run and hide in my cowardice?

Were we good at protecting our own lies and crimes from the prying eyes of daylight’s truth?

Were we simply good because we were not intentionally bad?

Were we good and loyal and did we grow strong as boys in the summer streams and ponds and meadows, comfort and amused by throaty frogs?

Were we good as young men, finding our way in our discomfort and angst, trying to understand and define what it is to be a man? And are we now good as we become old men still trying to figure it all out? So many things went wrong and haywire along the way.

Today you said to me, “We were good!” I can only hope, with a waning confidence, your words never betray the underlying truth.

We were good.